Flowers for Harry C. Pharisee!

(ahem)... Flowers!

I remember sitting in the bar one day, having a beer with Kenny and Dennis. I had been studying Spanish for a bit so, out of my mouth came, "Hey, Kenny, you're from Flores Island, did YOU know that that means 'Flowers' Island!?"

Kenny was a pretty tough kind of manly man, with a heart of gold, but his expression said, "If you weren't my pal, I'd punch you on the nose for saying that!"

Dennis spotted that too and decided to 'back Kenny up', "You are WRONG, because Flores Island was named after a Spaniard named Flores!"

Dennis considers himself a bit of a brain, which is cool 'cos we've had some good conversations, you know, for 'bar conversation', and he was sure that he 'had me there'.

So, not even having to think about it, I piped up, "Well, HIS name was Mr. Flowers though, so it's STILL Flowers' Island, right?"

(YES! Two points for Ian, YAY!)

I was wondering why anyone might consider it 'sissy' to have been brought up on 'Flowers' Island'?

Would Kenny have prefered it to have been named, "EvilBastard Island", or "Ironman Island", or like THAT, perhaps in Spanish?

We just don't know!

Happy b'day Harry!

Emotion = Magick

Seems to me that people are the same in one regard World-wide, from the tiniest baby to the oldest 'fossil'. Emotion. We delight in the delight of others and are horrified at the horror of other and we can delight in the horror of others and can be horrified at the delight of others.

I think that the terms 'spiritual', magickal and emotional are 'inter-confused' very easily and that we are more or less willing participants in this self-confusion and confusing of others.

I wonder if it is true that whoever makes you feel bad is evil, or at least being evil?

Is anyone that is making you feel good a good person or at least doing good?

I'm not sure if the story of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the 'greatest story ever told' but it certainly is constructed to invoke as many emotions as we have, deliberately(?) mixing emotions, mixing the idea of spirituality and emotions.

Jesus body, we hear, after being horribly tortured to death(sadness, anger, sense of unfairness etc.) is brought to a nearby tomb(sense of decency, right thing to do etc.) and the disciples are worried(aren't you?) that something might happen to it.(the body)

The solution is to have it guarded by some unbiased, unimpeachable 'policemen' of the time, Roman soldiers!(law, order, strictness following orders to the letter etc.)

During their watch, Jesus rises from the dead!(wonder, promise of dreams come true, justification of belief, we WILL meet our loved ones again and forever etc.)

((This doesn't necessarilly follow really, depending on whether you imagine another earthly life and not some kind of other-dimensional plane kind of everlasting life.))

But the Roman guards are bribed to lie about it. (disappointment, betrayal etc.)

At this crucial moment in the Christian faith, in this particular version, the guards are to be thought of as unimpeachable, unbiased witnesses to one thing(Jesus' body BEING there) AND impeachable, biased, easily corruptible, lying scoundrels when it comes to seeing Jesus' body come back to life! Or is it being accurate in their statement that no-one came took the body?(well, the essence of evil really.)

Are we encouraged to feel mixed emotions towards the only ACTUAL witnesses to Jesus' physical ressurection? Of course we are. Are we supposed to NOTICE that we're being encouraged to have profoundly mixed feelings towards those guards?

Well, I think that we're supposed to find spirituality in this mixed message, somewhere in this mix of feeling(that KNOWING) that authority is unimpeachable and that authority is(the KNOWING that authority is), at the exact same time, an illusion really, only as strong as the weakest link, men's avarice, in this case.

Meh, I dunno.(sadness)

Politics in the U.S.A.

I haven't involved myself in the day to day minutia(sp?) of politics. From what I gathered growing up it seemed more like controlling people's attitudes than anything else.

I believe that in general, people, the majority on the bottom of the heap, lean, at least slightly to the left of centre. No matter how many businessmen or right-wing academics or pundits claim that the capitalist system will look after them, time and time again we've seen that the 'haves' tend to look after themselves and completely ignore the 'have-nots'.

I have been watching the political news on television lately, noticing what a drama it all is.

Passing the health-care bill is hailed a giant success for the people of the U.S.A. who, according to (at least) right-wing pundits isn't going over well with those people who stand to gain from these new rules.

Anyway I feel that there is a big picture here, where the control of the U.S.A has been compromised by corporations who hire ex-government employees for large dollars to help them control overall outcomes. I understand that it is dynamic, situations are mobile and such but it seems to me that Bush and his gang got in and rolled over the 'will' of the American people so hard that they got themselves booted from power.

Does this hobble the corporate interests? Not in the least. Seems the the left can be kept in check AND pushed to aquiece(sp?) to their agenda by simply paying right-wing extremists, propagandists and media to help block any forward movement of government while ALSO having watered down, right of centre bills passed and being hailed as great victories for the left.

Seems to me that part of PNAC's agenda was, and is, to bankrupt the U.S.A, a libertarian agenda, where they deliberately bankrupt the government, fulfilling their own prophecy that 'government' doesn't 'work'.

Apparently NOTHING has changed, in this regard, after a solid year of the new, so-called left-wing majority in the three branches of government in the U.S.A.

The new POTUS seems to be prepared to give lip service to the coming environmental catastrophe likely due to global warming, while 'negotiating' using environmentally risky ventures, for the sake of bipartisanship? Bipartisanerry? (Don't know, who cares?)

But trying to please the libertarian agenda of NO government is ludricous, isn't it? There is no middle ground. There's either good government or bad government, not some good government and some no government.

Obama is a fool for trying to compromise on an issue that has no compromise, on an issue where there IS NO compromise to be had.

The slippery slope.

How easy is it to imagine this train of events?

Since corporations can now give contributions to political parties for their campaigns we can see that it would be easy for giant companies to insert their candidate greased with big bucks to run for a particular party.

When all the right politicians are in place it would be easy to start changing the rules ever so slightly towards a more orderly and moral society. Perhaps we might wake up one morning to the news that it is no longer permissible to work on Sunday, or, in other words, everyone deserves a day off, these evil corporations have had their way for far too long, forcing secularization on the public at large like this.

Fundamentalist Christians would be dancing in the streets! The right wing media would be ecstatic, claiming peace throughout the land, one step closer to a right and moral society with good values.

A few more obscure laws and abortion suddenly becomes unconscionable, a disgrace, murder even!

Now, not only Fundamentalists, Catholics would be on board, one more step towards ALL admitting that life is absolutely sacred and holy and ought to be revered at least in principle, above all but God.

The next step is to encourage people to see that we are ALL servants of God. We are all here to do HIS bidding after all and the law of the land really ought to reflect this.

At this point the government has been filled with like-minded individuals and it is suggested that, although the Holy Bible is an inspired book it is not the last inspired word of God, obviously, because it seems to cause so many schisms.

The only thing for it really is to change calling yourself a servant of God to plain Muslim, which means the exact same thing after all.

Those who refuse? Well, there are, shall we say, methods of persuasion and the plain facts of the Quran as written by the last Prophet of God, Muhammed, peace be upon him, isn't there?

What do you say? Could NEVER happen?

Can't 'really' know anything...

I'm arguing my point of view with a good man, a nice man, a man who feels like he knows where it's at.

But he seems to think that he's not just bandying words when he says, "I can't 'really' know anything at all!", then I point out that he is not being truthfull here because he obviously 'knows' that he is right about that. Then he goes on, "Oh no, YOU'RE being disingenuous because now YOU'RE using words in a way to mean what you want."

I admit that words are easy to twist. One of my main objections to philosophy, especially the theistic philosophy of Plato on through Descartes IS that the things they say, the conclusions that they come to don't mean a damned thing although they sound reasonable because they take both sides of the argument.

I think therefore I am, could mean that consciousness is like a first cause kind of thing, that it had to be before space and matter could exist OR it could just mean that the only way you can know that you exist is that you are a thinking being and thinking beings are the only 'things' that can think this.

I'm skeptical of this first view because saying that it is 'correct' seems to imply the supremacy of consciousness much as religion needs to and seems to be tending to confrim religious thinking. Having the second view of this statement seems to deem the statement unnecessary. So what if we are the only things in existence that 'know' we exist? Doesn't mean a damned thing right?

Still, convincing me that you 'can't know anything' seems silly because there doesn't seem to be nowhere to go there but to slyly take that all back then convince me that you know a helluva lot more that you're claiming in that 'first philosophy' of yours, yes?

Then if you start getting into 'first causes' and/or 'quantum physics'.. then you're REALLY calling yourself a total bullshitter, if you TRULY believe that you can't KNOW ANYTHING AT ALL.

What's going on?

I'm very suspicious by nature, so when I started getting those 'Forbidden' ... Access Denied 'things' instead of my favourite blogs, I naturally assumed that someone was out to 'get' me.

It's funny, but these things seem to come in waves, or you happen to change one thing and another thing 'just happens' to be starting at exactly the same time, much like Brian's Big Brain Synchronicity stuff.

If anyone is having a problem with this and can't access their own blog, I've found that searching for blogspot then signing in seems to get you to your own blog.

Has anyone figured this out yet? Perhaps you could comment with 'the' solution?

A.I vs. A.A.

I had a flash of brilliance this morning, but how to put in this blogpost in a way that is intelligible, interesting, makes some kind of point, thought-provoking, commentable and/or funny(at least to me)

As with all my flashes of brilliance, this one is likely just 'new to me', so feel free to say, "Pfft, I considered, and rejected that when I was like seven, you moron!", any response is better than no reponse at all.

It must have been wondering through my brain cells for a month or two, my considering Pliny's, what is it, 'idea?', 'notion?' of how artificial intelligence would boot-strap itself up from 'nothing' to avoid problems of biased thinking.

I can't imagine how a Pliny intelligence would operate though, because one of the prerequisites for intelligence is, as is my understanding, awareness. I mean, how does an intelligence solve a problem or avert a crisis if it is not aware of said problem or crisis?

Seems to me that there'd be a hierarchy of nature regarding this, I'll just make one up off the top of my head, why not.

Material. :- rocks and such, completely dumb, unaware, unintelligent.

Simple life. :- micro-organisms with no awareness at all, perhaps fungi, like yeast, barely living at all.

Plants. :- are aware of sunlight, grow towards the sunlight. Some have rudimentary awareness of insects. Venus fly-trap for example.

Fish, animals, birds and insects, which show a variety of awarenesses and quite a bit of intelligence, if intelligence is defined as problem solving.

Seems to me that humans would be on the top of the scale here only if we regard problem solving to be the ultimate in awareness.

There's a good case to be made for that actually. We are aware of our limited awareness and build tools, such as microscopes and telescopes to overcome those limitations. We can't reach out with our minds and 'grok' the stars and galaxies of stars, so we build tools to bring the stars into our field of awareness with photos and such.

Two points here. What is Pliny's intelligence without awareness, if that's what he's saying? What is awareness of the spiritual, what is the spiritual and how is it that quite a lot of people seem to be aware of it?

On the first one, it seems to me that, when trying to build artificial intelligence, we need to build an artificial awareness and that is exactly where bias is going to creep in, the intelligence is biased in favour of it's own awareness because it is not aware of anything outside it's own awareness.

On the second one, I think that spirituality is a confused collection of ideas where we try to imagine that we are aware of something that's just not there. (any ideas on that oneblood?)