A fugitive rock tried to speak
to the asphalt,
but the asphalt like a traumatized child
said nothing
and the rock died.
We were really stressed out
until we heard the rock speak.
The pine trees had a few things to say
that also quieted our nervous hearts.
They said, "Listen, be still."
And the rock answered,
"You're telling me."
But the hummingbirds and the crows
were living on top of Burger King,
singing a song of sadness.
~ Albert Markovski, fictional poet and community organizer
Today I am really glad that my favorite DVD was recovered from the clutches of HM Revenue and Customs. To celebrate I am sharing some poems! Here is another:
Nobody sits like this rock sits.
You rock, rock.
The rock just sits and
is.
You show us how to just sit here
and that's what we need.
~ Albert Markovski of the Open Spaces Coalition
I could say something serious about the actual loss of our open spaces all over the world, but that would be a drag. Plus there are worse things to be bummed about.
Like a dialysis machine to keep us alive in this horrible hell we call earth that we seem to be so proud has evolved from the dinosaurs to our "higher" species when in fact, as with the dinosaurs, it has always been a wretched carnival of violence, consumption, suffering, and survival. Shall we talk about war? Children losing limbs or eyes? Don't feel like it? I didn't think so. Why would you? It is an unbearable drag, all of it. How about your boring job?
Somethingness.... Nothingness.... I guess if I want to talk about actual nothingness I could get back to studying the distribution of voids in the large-scale structure of the universe. Open Spaces indeed! To end on a more positive note, here is another quote from my favorite DVD booklet:
There is no remainder in the mathematics of infinity.
A while ago I saw the documentary "Manufacturing Consent" about Noam Chomsky and recorded some thoughts as it was playing. Watch it yourself if you can, though it is rather long and rather old, or you can trust that my interpretation is a faithful representation of its main ideas - but be aware that these are not epistemically equal!
One of Chomsky's main tenets is that the media deceives and indoctrinates the public (though individuals in the media aren't consciously deceptive, and I think this is a misconception by critics). Anyway, soon in the documentary I realize that why I'm drawn to this subject and why I think it's so important is because I'm fascinated by epistemology, which is the study (or philosophy) of how we obtain knowledge. The dissemination of (mis)information through the media is another example of a process by which people learn about the world and how that information becomes biased, and how they come to believe things that aren't true. This is a lot of what fascinates me about politics, sociology, and religion, and as a scientist this is also what I'm interested in - not discovering the next big weird thing about the universe, but aiding the process by which that discovery can be made.
Process is important. Learning isn't about collecting facts, as if they're shells on the beach waiting to be picked up. The process by which one obtains information says everything about the quality, and even veracity, of that information. It is also important to be aware that you will never know all the facts about a situation. Most are buried beneath the sea, and the ones in view depend on where you are along the beach.
What follows is disjointed snippets of commentary, but hopefully not incredibly confusing to follow.
--
I like that Chomsky is a linguist. Tolkien was a linguist. I love languages and grammar but have never put in the effort to learn another language. (No, not even Elvish.)
... and then he said anarcho-syndicalism was the optimal way to structure societies and for some reason that is associated with Monty Python... yup, found it. Enjoy.
--
Is the "sinister view" of the media's control of information insulting the intelligence of those who consume the news? No. I think it's merely a description of how people think and judge and collect information, which is more often than not in a quick and inherently biased way. This is why understanding unconscious bias is so important to understanding discrimination - because people are often not meaning to discriminate, but merely making judgements they way they usually do when faced with little information, which is to resort to stereotypes and untested assumptions...
--
"More terrifying than the occasional Hitler..." is the "equanimity and the detachment" of observers...
This is quite a statement, but I think I might have to agree. Think about it in terms of the Sandy Hook school shooting (which happened after I saw this documentary, btw). How much more horrible would that have been if people had not been shocked by it, had not been deeply affected? As horrible as the daily atrocities which we ignore. As of this writing, there have been 489 gun deaths in the U.S. since the school shooting. The occasional tragedy shocks us and may start a dialog about aspects of
our society, but if we remain detached we will continue to allow
tragedies to happen. Why doesn't the nightly news say, "There were 15 gun deaths on January 3rd, 15 on the 2nd, and 39 on the 1st day of the year." Why don't we demand it to?
--
Media presentation of gulf war: "This is the people's war," so you need to know everything you can about it... i.e. we are going to war, there's no discussion to the contrary, we will help you deal with it. I remember MSNBC playing in the common area of my college residence hall with the title "Countdown to Iraq" on the bottom... the media just getting people used to the fact that we will go to war, neglecting their duty to inform people of the consequences, to question critically the politician's agenda, the evidence for WMD, etc...
--
This documentary is pretty old (1992) so it's talking about alternative media in terms of magazines, publishers, and radio instead of THE INTERNET i.e. blogs. But even back then, and more so now, it seems there is soooo much information out there - how does one take seriously the job of self-education and learning about the world when there is so much out there and hey I've been thinking all day I'd much rather watch TV ??
I had envisioned writing this months ago. I would arrive in England, unpack my boxes, re-discover what books I had decided to ship across an ocean, and write about what they mean. These are the books I could not live without (or could not fit into my storage boxes) - that meant so much to me I would pay serious money and cause myself serious mental anxiety to have with me.
It turns out they caused me even more mental anxiety when that box simply did not arrive in England! I had my few cosmology textbooks and a few books I put in my luggage, but not the bulk of my favorite books and DVDs. Apparently I did not need them enough to get over my calling-businesses-on-the-phone anxiety (yes, I have anxiety issues, and that makes me anxious...) so I just hoped they would show up and planned to buy them all again until miraculously, a few days before Christmas, they were returned to my mom's house. (Custom's thought I owed duty fees but never bothered to send me a bill. Asshats.)
All of this strongly reinforces what I already knew, and what made moving out of a house I lived in for 6 years so hard, which is that I love my things. A book is not just a book but the experience I had reading it, over and over for my favorite books. I like to look at my things and have special places to put them. Even in the game Skyrim, I love how I can display my books on a bookshelf, armor on a mannequin, and special weapons I no longer use on a weapon rack. Sometimes I try to arrange the books by theme, because what matters is not that I have a bunch of things, but that I have a place for the things I care about, even when they are fantasy things in a fantasy world.
So what about my real books? (And DVDs while I'm at it.) It will surprise no one that I have very special copies of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, and even The Children of Hurin, two of which I brought in my luggage and the other two I packed, leaving the rest of my Tolkien books (you bet there are lots!) to storage. I'm actually glad The Hobbit was in the lost box because that means it is here now and I am reading it to my nephew. The DVDs were mostly movies that I don't have pirated copies of, but especially all 3 LOTR extended edition DVDs. Other fantasy books I brought or packed are the His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman and all 7 Harry Potter books, plus The Tales of Beedle the Bard. I probably debated whether to pack Dune (all 6) or HP, deciding that HP belonged in England. To round out the fantasy genre I also packed Legend. (I will accept no criticism. It is awesome.)
Next I packed The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts, a book on Guided Meditations by Stephen Levine, and The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, because, you know, deep thoughts and stuff. Then there's an awesome old book of the collected writings of John Steinbeck which contains my favorite, East of Eden. Deep thoughts in that one too. DVDs in this theme include I Heart Huckabees and a Joseph Campbell compilation, Sukhavati (I guess the Power of Myth was too big for the box). I will have to either find place in my luggage or download these in preparation for my next existential crises. I also packed The Matrix set of DVDs, which arguably goes here in the Deep Thoughts section, but that will take another blog post of explaining (and room in my luggage). I miss having my things!
The rest is a less meaningful hodgepodge of useful (Julia Child's French cookbook, Chocolate Desserts, French for Reading, Spanish phrase book, and a Guide to Madrid), not yet read (The World of Dreams (a collection of essays), volume one of Sandman by Neil Gaiman, and The House of Seven Gables), and awesome (Kung Fu Panda 2, Avatar: The Last Airbender volume 1, and Planet Earth). Maybe it's not as interesting as I thought it would be to learn that I like fantasy and metaphysics (and cartoons featuring martial arts). Sorry for boring you! But I do believe that the things people value tell a story about who they are.
I will have to figure out what I can fit on the trip back. Obviously I don't need these things. I can live without them. But I want my flat in England to be my home, "where the rooms are a collection of our lives," and for that I need my things.
On the Friday after Thanksgiving my niece Autumn Rayne was born. I think she has my eyebrows, or at least my default cynical expression.
But maybe I am just looking for things that aren't there.
There are a million things I could wax philosophical about at this point. Life! There is a new person in the world! Although she is currently spending her time sleeping, peeing, and sucking, she will be rapidly learning new things in the near future... smiling! holding things! What wonders the world will bring!
There are a million things I could ruminate about, including how frustrating it is to be 5 time zones away, but I keep thinking about death. When I waxed philosophical about (mostly metaphorical) death it was to stress that without death there would be no life, because there would be no change. But that doesn't seem to work the other way around... it is not useful nor wise to think about life in terms of death. Life is the upswing, the start, the beginning of growth. Life speaks for itself, but death cannot. Life needs no explanation because life is.
Just a few days ago Autumn was safe inside her mother's womb. Things won't be so easy from now on. She will have to confront a steady stream of things-she-can't-do, one by one, and turn them into things-she-can-do. She will have 4 older brothers, 2 crazy aunts, and every toy and piece of clothing she will get for the next 10 years will be pink. What if she doesn't like pink? Let's just hope that she does!
New life means endless uncertainty. (Some good and some bad.) There is no limit to what she could do or be and we are free to speculate that it will all be awesome. And why not?
Every once in a while, I look at the clock when it's midnight. I then remember the movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (what a great title!) and invariably get the song Skylark by KD Lang in my head. Sometimes I even sing it. (The full version, complete with sax solo. (yes I hum the sax solo...))
This just happened and I thought I'd share even though it isn't very deep. But it's interesting how things remind you of things that remind you of things.... thoughts fit into patterns and stay there where they are comfortable. I feel comfortable remembering Midnight and singing Skylark.
And in your lonely flight
Haven't you heard the music in the night,
Wonderful music,
Faint as a will o' the wisp, crazy as a loon,
Sad as a gypsy serenading the moon.
Oh, skylark, I don't know if you can find these things
But my heart is riding on your wings.
So if you see them anywhere
Won't you lead me there?
The popcorn noise on old TVs is caused by leftover radiation from when
the Universe was very young, emitted only a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang.
This one might take a bit of explaining, but for that I will simply direct you to NASA's excellent "Universe 101" site, set up for the WMAP satellite that precisely measured the cosmic background radiation. In the image above, the TV noise is represented by actual data from WMAP.
Thanks again to Kara for the image and Science for the cool fact about the Universe!
Starting around 8pm UTC (3pm EST) the 2nd presidential debate will be streaming LIVE from my laptop! I will be following closely and keeping you updated on any notable things that happen (which, judging from the first debate, includes staying awake). Occasionally I may pause the LIVE feed to collect my thoughts. (It's cool, I can just say, "Rockabama, Mo Ro, calm down for a sec okay?" and they will wait for me.)
Join me and watch the PBS Newshour feed here (but don't click too soon or you will break space-time!)
8:15pm HMRT (Her Majesty's Royal Time): Just about to get this thing started. Keep re-freshing the page to get updates, and it's probably a good idea to load the video in a different window so you won't lose your spot when you refresh.
....and we're LIVE! I'm so glad this is on at a reasonable hour over here!
8:20pm HMRT (1:15 video time): Both of you sit down already!
8:25pm HMRT( 5:44 video): Super-young kid asks about college. When did they get so young?
Anyway, I will note that Romney said he will create jobs, Obama said how he will create them.
8:30pm HMRT (11:20 video): BOOOOO drilling and fracking! boooooo!! how do people think Obama is far-left?
17:16 video: FIGHT FIGHT! awww.....
I wish somebody would fact check this "yes you did!", "no I didn't!" nonsense. (they won't.)
8:46pm HMRT (26:40 video): that's right, the middle class has been struggling much longer than the last 4 years and it certainly isn't because of higher taxes! Middle-income wages have stopped growing.
30:30 video: Hahaha "sketchy deal", Obama you are bad at making jokes right now!
36-38: love all of Obama's response on equal pay for women!
9:02 HMRT (38:46 video): Romney got "binders full of women"? My, that is colorful language. I wonder if anything will come of that remark or if the story's even true.
BTW making sure to recruit and hire qualified women as part of diverse hiring practices is indeed important, but doesn't really address equal pay. I hope Romney paid the women in those binders on the same scale he paid the men.
"Women have lost 580,000 jobs. That's the net of what happened in the last 4 years."
Wow, that factually incorrect number is big, Mr. Romney! Turns out it's more like 93,000. Also, I like to point to this graph when people talk about "net jobs" as an example of how taking an integral often washes out important information.
P.S. J. Ro, slow down, the guys are on pause right now waiting for me to type and link to things! We are only on minute 40!
9:09 HMRT (40:40 video): Also I like how Romney's argument seems to be: "The best answer is to have a strong economy so employers have money to throw around and will hire women! Let's face it, in a weak economy who would take that risk?"
46:40: Bored. Here's the image I just linked to. Also topical to what they're talking about.
.... nevermind, it's not a static image, but in looking for it I found something more awesome. Go here and view the source code (Ctrl-U). :-)
9:25 HMRT (54:30): Still bored. Romney still doesn't understand integrals.
On a side note, I filled in my absentee ballot today! It was nice doing it in front of a computer so I could look up the down-ballot candidates for Board of Education etc. and know something at all about who they are, even though I saw a couple horrible websites.
9:33pm HMRT (1:03:00): Immigration Fact-check point goes to Romney. (Also gets in a good jab! He wasn't the standard-bearer 4 years ago, chuckle!)
1:05:20: Definitely almost fought again! Calm down!
9:39 HMRT (1:08:00 video): I hate it when they don't answer the question.
1:13:38: Oh shit, Obama is getting stern with Romney.
1:14:29: Point to the moderator on instant fact-checking! Though Romney has a point as well that Obama didn't say with certainty that it was terrorism for a while after that.
We all know how much I care about being certain here...
9:50 HMRT (1:19:38 video): Ugghhh... did Romney just say that the solution to gun violence is... marriage? OUTLAW DIVORCE RIGHT NOW!!
Ugh. It's the culture of violence, because the parents aren't married.
1:21:19: Another point for the moderator. 1:22:00: +2.
1:24:09: Ugh Obama sit down.
10pm HMRT (1:27:30): Actually, Romney, maybe de-regulation actually led to the economy tanking? Maybe just a little bit?? Anybody remember credit default swaps?
1:31:48: Invest in science research! Yea! Rockabama!
1:36:20: Obama brings up the 47%. I might have had something to say about all that.
