Who else was going to show us in our dumbness?

....At the end of his essay on Dreiser, Mencken manages to pull out of himself what I take to be his finest single thought, as beautifully expressed as it ever has been, by anyone. Summing Dreiser up one last time, Mencken writes: “His moving impulse is no flabby yearning to teach, to expound, to make simple; it is that ‘obscure inner necessity’ of which Conrad tells us, the irrepressible creative passion of a genuine artist, standing spell-bound before the impenetrable enigma that is life, enamored by the strange beauty that plays over its sordidness, challenged to a wondering and half-terrified sort of representation of what passes understanding.”

Ironically, with that one sentence, Mencken redeemed American literature (at least for a minute or two) and realized something of the promise that Emerson and Whitman had gestured to with such profound, irrational hope. But with Mencken, there is no glorious tale to tell, just the desire that someone express the crappy truth as the only glory we’re likely to grasp....

http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article09190702.aspx

Beware the Wild Card

....In the realm of grand strategy and politics, however, it is the sucker punch unleashed outside your peripheral vision that often lands with the most bone-crunching impact. Such strategic blows have the power to shatter carefully crafted political narratives and game plans, and to make a mockery of Washington's conventional wisdom. In the White House, the phenomenon is talked about often enough that it has been given a name: "game changer."

Certainly, tactical surprises are nothing extraordinary, and sometimes administrations even manufacture them to break a negative cycle of news or to stop a plunge in the polls. President Bush's recent and unexpected application of the Vietnam analogy to Iraq and the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld a day after the GOP defeat in last year's midterm elections were viewed by the White House as just such useful communications "circuit breakers."

Truly strategic surprises are beyond manipulation, however, and they are outside the control of even the most powerful leaders on earth. Recall John F. Kennedy riding the razor's edge of the Cuban missile crisis, or Lyndon B. Johnson in the terrible thrall of the Tet offensive in Vietnam. Think of Richard Nixon undone by a Watergate burglary, Gerald Ford consumed by the seizure of the Mayaguez, or Jimmy Carter buffeted by the maelstrom created by an angry mob of Iranian students. Consider Ronald Reagan and the Iran-Contra scandal, George H.W. Bush and the fall of the Berlin Wall, or Bill Clinton fighting off impeachment in the midst of the Kosovo war. Remember George W. Bush on September 12, 2001. Game changed.

What is so extraordinary about this political season is just how many storms are brewing around the world, any number of which could plausibly grow into Category 5 game changers. That's largely the price of a protracted war that is deeply unpopular both at home and abroad. Historically, wars are game changers in their own right, and Iraq has shown the pernicious tendency to exacerbate or ignite other crises, as evidenced by an increasingly unstable Middle East and an escalating confrontation between the United States and Iran. Similarly, the fate of the American intervention in Afghanistan and the fight against Al Qaeda are closely tied to the deteriorating situation in neighboring Pakistan.

"In my career, I can't remember a time when there were so many crises simultaneously affecting U.S. national security interests, so there's no doubt that this is an unusual period and that we're being tested," said a senior administration official, speaking on background. Like Europe was for much of the 20th century, the Middle East is increasingly becoming the epicenter of the security tremors rocking the United States, this official said. "In addition to Iraq, we have to contend with this alliance between Iran and extremist groups throughout the region that affects the stability of Lebanon, Israel, the West Bank, and Afghanistan. And that's before we even talk about the challenge of managing the rise of China and India, dealing with a difficult Russia, coping with a crisis in Darfur, and taking on Hugo Chavez in an ideological argument about the best political future for Latin America. So this is an extraordinarily complicated time for our country."....

Source: "Game Changers" 

http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2007/0907nj1.htm

Networks, Bacteria, and the Illusion of Control

Another great post from Brainsturbator worth reading in full. Some excerpts:

 

....Most of the cells in your body are not your own, nor are they even human. They are bacterial. From the invisible strands of fungi waiting to sprout between our toes, to the kilogram of bacterial matter in our guts, we are best viewed as walking “superorganisms,” highly complex conglomerations of human cells, bacteria, fungi and viruses....

 

....One study concluded that children who grew up on farms had fewer allergies than their counterparts in urban areas. Conversely, health studies have shown that mothers who kept their children in antiseptic environments were actually compromising their health. Children need to be exposed to the natural environment of threats and benefactors so their immune systems learn to distinguish between the two.

...scientists have determined that 90 percent of the cells in the human body are bacterial. Only five percent of the cells in your body constitute “you,” in the sense of your genetic heritage. In relative scale, bacteria are much smaller than your own cells, so they account for only a small fraction of your body weight. Nearly all of these microbes are located in your gut, where they keep you working at optimal health....

 “We would have to accept that bacteria, touted to be our enemies, are not merely neutral or friendly but that they are us. They are direct ancestors of our most sensitive body parts. Our culture’s terminology about bacteria is that of warfare: they are germs to be destroyed and forever vanquished, bacterial enemies make toxins that poison us. We load our soaps with antibacterials that kill on contact, stomach ulcers are now agreed to be caused by bacterial infection. Even if some admit the existence of “good” bacteria in soil or probiotic food like yogurt few of us tolerate the dangerous notion that human sperm tails and sensitive cells of nasal passages lined with waving cilia, are former bacteria. If this dangerous idea becomes widespread it follows that we humans must agree that even before our evolution as animals we have hated and tried to kill our own ancestors. Again, we have seen the enemy, indeed, and, as usual, it is us. Social interactions of sensitive bacteria, then, not God, made us who were are today.”

http://www.brainsturbator.com/site/comments/networks_bacteria_and_the_illusion_of_control/

The Forensics of Sha Na Na

Not remotely important, but the weirdness might make you smile.

Just learned that one of the world’s leading figures in forensic linguistics, a guy who has helped train investigators from the FBI, the NYPD, the Secret Service, and the ATF, a Fulbright Fellow and Phi Beta Kappa member, now a Hofstra professor of linguistics and Swahili…

… was also one of the founders of the rock group Sha Na Na.

So whatever it is you’re doing in life, if you’d rather switch gears, it just might be possible.

http://thismodernworld.com/3970

Bizzare Homeland Security Quest

The Weird Russian Mind-Control Research Behind a DHS Contract

MOSCOW -- The future of U.S. anti-terrorism technology could lie near the end of a Moscow subway line in a circular dungeon-like room with a single door and no windows. Here, at the Psychotechnology Research Institute, human subjects submit to experiments aimed at manipulating their subconscious minds.

Elena Rusalkina, the silver-haired woman who runs the institute, gestured to the center of the claustrophobic room, where what looked like a dentist's chair sits in front of a glowing computer monitor. "We've had volunteers, a lot of them," she said, the thick concrete walls muffling the noise from the college campus outside. "We worked out a program with (a psychiatric facility) to study criminals. There's no way to falsify the results. There's no subjectivism."

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has gone to many strange places in its search for ways to identify terrorists before they attack, but perhaps none stranger than this lab on the outskirts of Russia's capital. The institute has for years served as the center of an obscure field of human behavior study -- dubbed psychoecology -- that traces it roots back to Soviet-era mind control research....

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2007/09/mind_reading

Don't hide your love away

"I may be a dreamer, but at least I'm in good company"


http://www.dailyvanguard.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2006/10/24/453de4d9cb948


Don't hide your love away
Cynicism can be good in small doses
By Tony le Tigre
October 24, 2006




cynic

1. One of a sect of ancient Greek philosophers in the 4th century B.C.
who advocated the doctrine that virtue is the only good, and that the
essence of virtue is self-control.
2. A person who believes all people are motivated by selfishness.
3. A person whose outlook is scornfully and often habitually negative.

Cynicism, to a point, is a good thing. I'm talking about the type of
cynicism that fits the second definition above. That's the type of cynicism
that makes us critical thinkers, questioning the motives of questionable
people. For instance, when you hear an ad by one gubernatorial candidate
slamming another, you don't take what they're saying at face value; you look
past it to the self-serving subtext: obviously this candidate is slamming
his opponent because it may help him get elected. Or when you see a
commercial or ad peddling the latest cologne, or beer, or skin-care product,
and it features a celebrity like Halle Berry or Madonna, you're critical
about the actual value of the product: are you really spending your money on
something worthwhile and life-enhancing, or just buying in to the cult of
celebrity?

Moreover, who is using who in this scenario? It would seem to be
symbiotic: the label or brand is exploiting the star's image to enhance
their product's appeal, but at the same time, the star is using the
advertising mechanism to project their image. This type of analytical
thinking is one of the good things that can come from cynicism, which in
this context is a form of healthy skepticism. It's when a cynical attitude
goes too far and becomes pervasive that you get into the third definition
quoted above. That kind of cynicism is detrimental to the soul.

When cynicism gets out of hand it becomes linked with jadedness and
apathy, and that's the predominant association of the word today. Hipsters
are often described with adjectives like "jaded" and "cynical," the opposite
of hippies, the wide-eyed idealists and flower children of the 60's and
early 70's who actually believed the world could change, that in fact it was
in the process of changing, for the better! The hippie dream never came
true, and our anger and bitterness about that takes the form of
hippie-bashing, a widespread sport these days. Hippies are an unprotected
minority, and a week doesn't go by without either of our local rags, the
Mercury or the Willamette Week, aiming a sneering remark at them. Idealism
has given way to cynicism, but it's gone too far, and has gotten to the
point of being self-defeating now.

Watching the recent documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon the other day
at Fox Tower was a surprisingly emotional experience for me. There was the
eerie parallel to our political world today - Nixon refusing to offer a
timetable for withdrawal from Iratnam (oops, I meant Vietnaq), his bullshit
platitudes about the war going well, accusations from Democrats that his
administration was wiretapping and spying on its citizens - and the sense
that we're seeing history repeat itself, which obviously was the point that
Leaf and Scheinfeld wanted to hammer home with their film. Except one thing
is missing today: we don't have a John Lennon. Or a Martin Luther King. The
Black Panthers are still around, but they don't have any real political
presence. We are in Good Night and Good Luck, but no one's tried out for the
role of Edward R. Murrow. The bad guys are still around - the very same
ones; Cheney and Rumsfeld were both part of the Nixon Administration! - but
our leaders and figureheads have either self-destructed or they've been
destroyed. And the Republican corporatists have learned from their mistakes,
gotten more ruthless and cunning, and they won't be making the same mistakes
again. This time around, the corrupt president is not going to be forced to
resign. We're on our own.

Naturally, this bitter realization leads to increased amounts of
cynicism. The tremendous and original thing about John Lennon was that he
used his international fame as a platform by which to preach the gospel of
peace. He had the American press eating out of his hand, but instead of
merely basking in his celebrity status, he attempted to do something really
radical and altruistic with it, disregarding the damage done to his image by
those who thought he'd gone off the deep end. The seemingly goofy publicity
stunts he and Yoko Ono staged had a serious message behind them, and they
were effective, so effective that the paranoid administrations of Nixon and
Hoover considered him a serious threat and attempted to have him deported.
Who do we have today at that level of cultural visibility and influence that
is using their power the way Lennon did?

Given the way things have gone in this country over the last six years,
it's hard not to feel depressed and desperate at times. The Democrats may
win one or both houses of Congress in the November election, giving them
subpoena power and breaking the Republican stranglehold on our nation's
government, but what if they don't? V For Vendetta is a nice fantasy (and
surprisingly radical, for a Hollywood movie), but it's unlikely that the
French Revolution is going to happen in the United States of 2006. The most
we can do is remain stoic and soldier on, without allowing our spirits to be
broken. Say what you will about those loathsome hippies, but their movement
happened at a time in our nation's history that was profoundly protean and
exciting. I can't imagine anyone recording a song like "Imagine" now and
being taken seriously, but when I watched the segment of John Lennon singing
it in the theater the other day, I felt all my layers of cynicism and scorn
melt away in the face of a piece of music and a vision too beautiful to be
denied. I for one would like to believe that such a world is still possible.
I may be a dreamer, but at least I'm in good company.

Smokey the Bear Sutra by Gary Snyder

SMOKEY THE BEAR SUTRA

BY GARY SNYDER

Once in the Jurassic about 150 million years ago, the Great Sun Buddha in this corner of the Infinite Void gave a discourse to all the assembled elements and energies: to the standing beings, the walking beings, the flying beings, and the sitting beings--even the grasses, to the number of thirteen billion, each one born from a seed, assembled there: a Discourse concerning Enlightenment on the planet Earth.

"In some future time, there will be a continent called America. It will have great centers of power called such as Pyramid Lake, Walden Pond, Mt. Rainier, Big Sur, Everglades, and so forth; and powerful nerves and channels such as Columbia River, Mississippi River, and Grand Canyon. The human race in that era will get into troubles all over its head, and practically wreck everything in spite of its own strong intelligent Buddha-nature."

"The twisting strata of the great mountains and the pulsings of volcanoes are my love burning deep in the earth. My obstinate compassion is schist and basalt and granite, to be mountains, to bring down the rain. In that future American Era I shall enter a new form; to cure the world of loveless knowledge that seeks with blind hunger: and mindless rage eating food that will not fill it."

And he showed himself in his true form of

SMOKEY THE BEAR

A handsome smokey-colored brown bear standing on his hind legs, showing that he is aroused and watchful.

Bearing in his right paw the Shovel that digs to the truth beneath appearances; cuts the roots of useless attachments, and flings damp sand on the fires of greed and war;

His left paw in the mudra of Comradely Display--indicating that all creatures have the full right to live to their limits and that of deer, rabbits, chipmunks, snakes, dandelions, and lizards all grow in the realm of the Dharma;

Wearing the blue work overalls symbolic of slaves and laborers, the countless men oppressed by a civilization that claims to save but often destroys;

Wearing the broad-brimmed hat of the west, symbolic of the forces that guard the wilderness, which is the Natural State of the Dharma and the true path of man on Earth:

all true paths lead through mountains--

With a halo of smoke and flame behind, the forest fires of the kali-yuga, fires caused by the stupidity of those who think things can be gained and lost whereas in truth all is contained vast and free in the Blue Sky and Green Earth of One Mind;

Round-bellied to show his kind nature and that the great earth has food enough for everyone who loves her and trusts her;

Trampling underfoot wasteful freeways and needless suburbs, smashing the worms of capitalism and totalitarianism;

Indicating the task: his followers, becoming free of cars, houses, canned foods, universities, and shoes, master the Three Mysteries of their own Body, Speech, and Mind; and fearlessly chop down the rotten trees and prune out the sick limbs of this country America and then burn the leftover trash.

Wrathful but calm. Austere but Comic. Smokey the Bear will Illuminate those who would help him; but for those who would hinder or slander him...

HE WILL PUT THEM OUT.

Thus his great Mantra:

Namah samanta vajranam chanda maharoshana Sphataya hum traka ham mam

"I DEDICATE MYSELF TO THE UNIVERSAL DIAMOND BE THIS RAGING FURY BE DESTROYED"

And he will protect those who love the woods and rivers, Gods and animals, hobos and madmen, prisoners and sick people, musicians, playful women, and hopeful children:

And if anyone is threatened by advertising, air pollution, television, or the police, they should chant SMOKEY THE BEAR'S WAR SPELL:

DROWN THEIR BUTTS

CRUSH THEIR BUTTS

DROWN THEIR BUTTS

CRUSH THEIR BUTTS

And SMOKEY THE BEAR will surely appear to put the enemy out with his vajra-shovel.

Now those who recite this Sutra and then try to put it in practice will accumulate merit as countless as the sands of Arizona and Nevada.

Will help save the planet Earth from total oil slick.
Will enter the age of harmony of man and nature.
Will win the tender love and caresses of men, women, and beasts.
Will always have ripened blackberries to eat and a sunny spot under a pine tree to sit at.

AND IN THE END WILL WIN HIGHEST PERFECT ENLIGHTENMENT

...thus we have heard...

(may be reproduced free forever)

Banned Books Week Sep 24

Banned Books Week

Free People Read Freely ®

September 23-30, 2006

"Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us."—Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas," The One Un-American Act." Nieman Reports, vol. 7, no. 1 (Jan. 1953): p. 20.

Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of September each year. Observed since 1982, this annual ALA event reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted. This year, 2006, marks BBW's 25th anniversary (September 23-30).

BBW celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met...

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...During Banned Books Week, Amnesty International directs attention to the plight of individuals who are persecuted because of the writings that they produce, circulate or read. Traditionally, Banned Books Week activities take place at the end of September -- but the featured cases are not confined to a week. They continue to need your action...

The freedom within us is larger than the jails that we're in . . . Syrian poet Faraj Birqdar, a former prisoner of conscience

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2005 Banned books

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Kicking Off Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read