Go Sports!

With the World Cup engaging the world at the present moment, I hear lots of the boorish and idiotic argument that attempt discrimination between worthwhile and non-worthwhile sports. Baseball is not worthy because .... Soccer is .... I won't attempt to repeat these are they are mind-bogglingly ethnocentric and close-minded.

Here's a word from Alistair McIntyre on what constitutes a worthwhile activity or practice ...

By a 'practice' I am going to mean any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended (AV, 187).

Possible Equation

complex behavior + cooperative human activity multiplied by internal goods and levels of excellence + achievable levels of human excellence = worthwhile human activity

So, all sports contain this internal logic. Counting blades of grass does not. In counting grass, you usually perform the task alone (because your crazy), there's no recognized levels of excellence (you can't get much better at it) and its none the too complex. You could theoretically add these things to grass counting and it would become a sport. Throw in body checking and it would become a contact sport.

So basically, the sport you grew up with and were embedded in the practice and culture thereof and internalized the standards of excellence therein becomes ipso facto the best sport there is. Of course, you could be an American and like cricket for example, but chances are that you are a difficult and contrarian personality who has a thirst for ragging on the home grown stuff.

In following MacIntyre, this is not relatavism. People can clearly discriminate between grass cutting and baseball. Likewise, people can clearly disriminate between fine dining and microwaveable food. Fine dining is embedded in a rich culinary practice, microwaveable cooking lacks this context.

How Do We Point Out Particulars

How do we talk of particular things?

This is a very basic question, maybe one that concerns philosophy at its best. Peter Strawson claims that we can talk fish out the logical necessities of the structure required to talk about particular things by referring everything back to the present moment of space and time.

Space and time is a unifying structure that links every particular with every other. We want to refer to Aristotle, we know at this present moment of space and time it is now, refer to our internal or an external calendar to get a sense of the 5th century BC when he lived, and maybe even look at picture of him to get an idea of what he looked like. But, what is necessary, is too relate everything to this current space and time moment, and show the relative space current to that.

What happens when this system appears to break down. For example, a speaker and listener are talking and the speaker refers to 'a boy and a man standing at a train station', 'the man then proceeds to sit down'. In this case, we put quotation marks around the story. We can't relate these particular things 1) the train station, 2) the boy, 3) the man to anything in space and time as we do not know the exact location of things or the thime that they occured. So, we must, put quotation marks around these particulars. So, for the listener, the quotation marks put the particular not square in reality but in a frame held by the speaker. The speaker, unless he is making up the story, does not need these quotation marks. He can sufficiently locate these thing within reality.

So what happens when he get something like a phrase "the first dog born at sea". We can make sense of this phrase. It is logically sensible and conceivable. But, we don't know where and when the first dog was born at sea. We can not place it within the logical framework. Strawson argues, however, that it is not completely detached from out talk of particulars grounded in space and time (which in turn can be traced back to the present moment). We can make sense of talking about dogs because we know of other particular dogs, likewise the sea and 'being born'. We could not make sense of the sentence if we could not refer back to any particulars.

Thems the Rules

In Western society, its fun to romanticize rebels like James Dean and villainize bureaucrats and salary men as inside-the-box rule followers. But, what would happen if there were no people who followed all of our mundane mind-numbing rules? What are boring and the middle class' true value? This piece may shed light ...

To drive home the importance of good rules to economic growth, Romer sometimes shows a photograph of Guinean teenagers doing their homework under streetlights. The line of hunched, concentrating figures presents a mystery, Romer says; from the photo it is clear that the teens are not dirt poor, and youths like these generally own cell phones. Yet they evidently have no electric light at home, or they would not be studying by the curbside. “So here is the puzzle,” Romer declares: Why do these kids have access to a cutting-edge technology like the cell phone, but not to a 100-year-old technology for generating electric light in the home? The answer, in a word, is rules. Because of misguided price controls in the teenagers’ country, the local electricity utility has no incentive to connect their houses to the power grid. Their society lacks the rules that make technological advance meaningful.

Rule-of-law: unglamourous, not pretty, unriveting, uncelebrated in verse, print or cinema. But, necesarry.

An interesting question:

• 
  
  If culture really has a evolved to choose and promote the fittest courses of action,





• 
  
  
  and rule of law is the fittest course of action,







• 
  
  
  
  
  then why is rule of law not a celebrated part of our low, mid or high culture?

It may be difficult for Cultural Memetics, a branch of evolutionary psychology, to give a non-throwaway answer to such anti-fit behavior. After all, it is a fact that by-the-book behavior is the most evolutionarily capable strategy in everyday and long-term circumstance. Culture, according to memetics, needs its hosts, humans, to live long and prosper in order to have hosts to feed off of. Then, why doesn't pop, mid, or high culture reflect this fact at all?

Not that anyone would be intersted in cultural artifacts that celebrated such things. And, I can't blame them.

The Third Date

I have no real input on this one ... just interesting ... and I never realized, but there's probably a lot of truth to it ...

That third-date urge
“Welcome to the third date,” Hannah Seligson writes for The Daily Beast, “that moment on the courtship trajectory when the truth comes out about STDs, personal hygiene habits, secret significant others, family backgrounds and, yes, their real age. Anecdotally, the third-date confession has become so legendary that some people have come to fear the third date for what they’ll learn about the up-to-now wonderful person smiling at them from across the table. … The tone, tempo and type of information revealed in a burgeoning relationship can get complicated. Is there ever really a right time to tell someone you are dating you never finished high school, that your father is a Satan worshipper, or that that sex tape of yours is still making the virtual rounds? ‘I generally advise people to hold off on revealing information until things have become exclusive and serious,’ says Dr. Diana Kirschner, a New York-based psychologist and author of Love in 90 Days … Psychologically, Kirschner says, the third date is a moment when you are just starting to relax. And comfort can quickly morph into the impulse to reveal embarrassing or scary information. ‘It’s an unconscious wish to be accepted,’ she says.”

My personal third date confession: I care too much, and, I scream in my sleep.

North Korean Film Imports

No much gets into North Korea. Maybe a boot-legged copy of Titanic. But, who can deal with that? One thing that does make its way into the Black Market is Californian porn.

Though initially counter-intuitive, it probably makes a lot of sense for the North Korean Gov't to look the other way on this.

• First, it paints America as a den of iniquity and decadence to the public. Imagine if they thought this represented main stream American? Pizza would quickly replace hot dogs as the identified food of choice of Americans by Koreans.


• Second, it allows the Korean gov't to give its people some circus over bread, old Roman style. A nation may be food starved, but there are other types of starvation as well.


• Third, everyone over 22 in North Korea is a mother and/or father. Though they may indulge in watching illicit films; they certainly don't want that type of thing in their neighbourhood. So, it keeps the glamourous lifestyle in the 'no thank you' category.

Some stock footage of North Koreans looking at a girly magazines taken last week.

Frames and Reference

Descriptive philosophy greatest accomplishments is in further refining the things we already know. If philosophy is doing its job, we should upon hearing a nugget of its knowledge, exclaim, "Well, that sounds about right". Here's an example from Peter Strawson ...

Upon hearing a story from another person

The hearer, in the example, is able to place the particular referred to within the picture painted by the speaker. This means that in a sense he can place the particular in his own general picture of the world. For he can place the speaker, and hence thespeaker's picture, in that general picture of his own. But he cannot place the figures, without the frame, of the speaker's picture in hisown general picture of the world. For this reason the full requirement for hearer's identification is not satisfied.

Simple, none too controversial. We frame those things that we hear from other people. Everytime someone tells you a story, we put a little cognitive frame over that person's story. If we steal that persons story for ourselves and delude oursleves into thinking it is real, we lose the frame.

Here's a question. When we watch CNN, do we frame the action we see? The event has actually occured though not in front of our eyes. But, the camera is itself just another eye. After all, it is a piece of equiptment designed to process light rays so our brain can in turn process them to form images. As is the eye. We should have no superstitiious prejudice because one is 'natural' and the other is not. It is just 2nd level image processing as it must go from TV lens to eye to brain, but is this enough to qualify it as a cognitive frame? For all purposes, we have witnessed the event as sure as we are standing there.

I would say we don't cognitively frame these events, as the fact they are relayed through TV is irrelevant to our understanding of the action in the event. In order to understand someone's story we must keep in mind (frame) that that person has witnessed it, not I. This framing is unneccesary to understand televised footage, as you can understand the action first hand with reference only to your sensory experience. Of course, it is a lie to say you actually were at the spot it took place, but its not a lie to say you saw the event. So, in a way, we all have been to the (and, every) SuperBowl ever since it became a televised event. And, I saw the Berlin Wall fall.

Does the same hold true for a performance of music on the radio? Should we allow our eyes but not the ears cognitive priority?

Karate

Japan is a country that fetishizes cuteness with a countless array of animated characters; wide eyed and round for maximum effect. They are also a peaceful, sharply ordered country nevertheless with a quiet perversion for the violent. They enjoy re-creating snuff films, creepily enough. When those two aspects of the culture come together, the creature in the picture below is shat out and willing to kick ass and take names with ridiculous, short-legged abandon.

Meterological Equation:

Hot Front and Cold Front (multiplied byX) Collision = Thunder and Lightning

From this the General Rule

Two extremes collinding create a Electric clash

Ipso Facto:

Sociological Equation:

Cuteness + Violence + Judo Mat = Cultural Thunder

Nice mushroom cut, loser.

On the Ancient Limit of Reading Aloud

On our recent ability to read silently to ourselves:

At first, books did not have any spaces between the words, and required a lot of work to understand. They were typically read out loud, and those who could read silently to themselves, like Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, were viewed with amazement. Eventually, punctuation marks and spaces between the words eased the "cognitive burden" of reading. The "deep reader" was born. Readers trained themselves to ignore their surroundings (countering our evolution, which encourages wariness) and to focus on a text. Writers responded to this new reader. "The arguments in books became longer and clearer, as well as more complex and more challenging, as writers strived self-consciously to refine their ideas and logic," Carr explains. Private carrels were built in libraries; reference books sprang up to help the solo reader.

There's a lot of interesting information in this paragraph regarding how reading basically made us different people with an increased depth. We examine the effect of literacy on societal developments - how the writers of the Enlightenment, for example, led to man thinking of himself as deserving of the political respects and rights that we now take for granted. But, we rarely examine how reading in general -i.e. no book in particular - effected us cognitively. New ideas in books didn't just give us new ideas; even if the value of the idea was negligible, the act of reading uncorked a whole new set of cognitive skills.

But, most astounding, though perhaps least relevant, is the fact that reading silently is something people had a hard time doing. I just always assumed reading and silence went hand in hand. After all, aren't nerds the strong silent type? But apparently, it was something that takes quite a bit of cognitive work and represents a tier up on the smarts plain.

A little more more on this Bishop of Ambrose ...

In this same passage of Augustine's Confessions is a curious anecdote in which bears on the history of reading:

When [Ambrose] read, his eyes scanned the page and his heart sought out the meaning, but his voice was silent and his tongue was still. Anyone could approach him freely and guests were not commonly announced, so that often, when we came to visit him, we found him reading like this in silence, for he never read aloud.[20]

This is a celebrated passage in modern scholarly discussion. The practice of reading to oneself without vocalizing the text was less common in antiquity than it has since become. In a culture that set a high value on oratory and public performances of all kinds, in which the production of books was very labor-intensive, the majority of the population was illiterate, and where those with the leisure to enjoy literary works also had slaves to read for them, written texts were more likely to be seen as scripts for recitation than as vehicles of silent reflection.

On an unrelated note, Ambrose also chose celibacy ...

In a passage of Augustine's Confessions in which Augustine wonders why he could not share his burden with Ambrose, he makes a comment which bears on the history of celibacy:
Ambrose himself I esteemed a happy man, as the world counted happiness, because great personages held him in honor. Only his celibacy appeared to me a painful burden.

When one looks at the glorious reverse white lions mane beard glued to his face, we can only think what a waste. Its one thing to be ugly and celibate - its just a good excuse and no one is burdened. But, the world cries a little when one so bearded and beautiful chooses lo' solitary path.

Super Foods And the Morbidly Obese

Look at this title ...

People who eat ‘junk food’ aren’t junkies. The idea that the food industry has turned us into fat, helpless beings desperate for our next fast-food fix is based on a degraded view of human beings.by Rob Lyons

This title comes from an article claiming that there is no such thing as food addiction. http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/8927/ It argues against the thesis of a book by David Kessler who says that modern food, and the wider food environment, leads to a state of ‘conditioned hypereating’.

Kessler's answer is that our food has been re-engineered to maximise palatability. Almost all the processed and convenience food we eat has been fine-tuned to turn our sensory responses all the way up to ‘11’. We get hooked on our food. At every level, our food is made more pleasurable to eat. Salt, sugar, fat and starch levels are tweaked to achieve the perfect balance; colours, smells and flavours are synthesised to heighten the experience of every mouthful; food is broken down, shredded, moistened and reassembled to ensure that it is as easy as possible to gulp down. The way Kessler describes it, our diets are baby food in Technicolor. That burger, that cookie (Kessler himself is a sucker for cookies, he confesses), those fries and that drink are culinary crack, and we are addicts. The result is that we can’t stop shovelling the stuff down our necks.

I'm inclined to agree with Kessler and appaled at Lyon's lazy review.

Lyons main argument against Kessler's position is that if we believe people lack autonomy when it comes to food, then we have a degraded view of human nature. According to Lyons, Kessler should be more positive about human nature because its good to be nice.

Here, Lyons confuses a moral point with an empirical point. Lyons doesn't try to show that people have more autonomy or he doesn't try to show that a less degrading picture of humanity is justified. He just feels we should have more pleasant thoughts about humanity in regards to freedom of choice and food. Evidence be damned.

In contrast, Lyons preffered culprit in the fat blame game is our culture's shizophrenic view of food. We shouldn't desire and value thinness, if we want to gorge on sweets. By blaming culture, we don't have to blame anyone except the Man. One can imainge Lyon thinking that no one would be fat if one could be given a hug and told that they should love themselves. But, this, in turn, is schizophrenic as everyone knows the best hugs are given by the obese.

True, our society has a schizophrenic view of food. But, schizophreneia doesn't make people fat, calories do. And, if there is no analysis at the level of caloric intake, then there is no firm scientific basis on which to launch a cultural change (if one is even necessary).

Lyons is probably a sociologist or took a sociology course somewhere and Kessler is a scientist. So, if Lyons has to write a book review about a scientific topic it is probably easier to just put forth a sociological thesis then engage with the actual scientific material. After all, that could involve a trip to the library.

Schools in sucker.

Historical Figures are my Friends

Historians have the habit of being gay for whoever they are studying. In, and of itself, this may not be a bad thing and it may fuel the type of intelllectual love that creates the best works of scholarship. But, it occasionally leads historians to gloss over the truth and romantacize those from days of yore who were just bastards.

Case in point: Jefferson Gray's article http://www.historynet.com/holy-terror-the-rise-of-the-order-of-assassins.htm/1f-the-order-of-assassins.htm/1 on The Order of Assassins. The Order were 11th century Persian holy warriors following a frigging awesome offshot of Shiiteism. They killed those who had previously targeted them. In this article, Gray says

There is little doubt they would have viewed the tactics employed by modern Middle Eastern terrorist groups—particularly their targeting of unarmed civilians—with incomprehension and disdain.

Here is a case where we have something contemporary and therefore easily hateable like suicide bombers being distanced from other historical and therefore more intellectually interesting terrorists like The Order of Assasins. In other parts of his article, Gray reveals that

Whenever possible, The Order won over other fortified places through missionary activity called "propaganda." But The Order was equally prepared to resort to coups or direct assault, to "slaughter, ravishment, pillage, bloodshed, and war," reported Juvaini, the 13th-century Persian historian who participated in the Mongol destruction of Alamut in 1256, "and wherever he found a suitable rock he built a castle upon it.

Its difficult to take a positive spin on slaughter, ravishment and pillage that The Order participated in. Are we to believe they only performed these actions on armed soldiers? Did members of the order never kill innocent people? If that is the case, then pillage is certainly the wrong word. Pillaging holds a lot of nasty connotations. In this case, Gray doesn't seem interested in exploring them.

Looking back historically does funny things to our sense of right and wrong. It has done great things for Genghis Khan's PR for one. And, the guy who commisioned the builiding of the Taj Mahal is remembered as a sweet old romantic for building a masoleum for his wife; not a Kim Jong Il-like psycho who plucked out the eyes of the building's chief engineer.

Of course, people say things were different then. Really? Was having your arm lopped off by Richard the Lion Heart while he engaged on a rollicking adventure for treasure and glory any less painful then getting your arm lopped off by child-soldiers in today's Africa. Perhaps. I would say its less painful today, though. We have better drugs.

I have no qualms about condemning suicide bombers or other terrorists. Equally, I have no qualms with romanticizing swashbuckling assasinary groups from the past (Romanticizing makes for the best reading). But to twist history to try to use violent groups from the past as moral exemplars and equally violent groups of now as moral heins seems wrong. And disingenious.

Possible Equations:

Tyranny + Violence + Letting Centuries Pass + No Violations of Politcal Correctness (Slavery is Still Culpable except if you are building a Great Pyramid)= Moral Absolution in Modern Eyes

Violence + Tyranny + Now = Moral Condemnation

Misguided Evolution

Some animals evolve cool camoflauge, claws, fangs, the ability to soar high above, really sharp eyesight or the ability to grind and then mass manufacture eyeglasses.

Some species are not so lucky. Through some weird genetic turn of events, they just get born in a dark area with a light bulb in their stomache. Like a lit-up cheap highway eatery on a hungry dark night, it is an open invitation to diners. Why his frog ancestors ever thought it was a good idea to keep this genetic development is beyond me? If I ever saw anything with a translucent red light glowing from its abdomen, I would mock or run relative to size. I certainly would not mate with it in the hope of mixing its genes with mine. But taste is subjective regardless of species, and that is how we get the glowing Cuban Tree Frog. Way to go douchebag.

Smiling Makes You Live Longer, Frowning Turns Your Kids Gay

From the Globe and Mail:

He who laughs, lasts
“It has long been thought that a happy disposition can [have an] impact on life expectancy, and the recent study by experts at Wayne State University in Michigan seems to back this,” The Daily Telegraph reports. “They came to their conclusions by studying 230 pictures of major-league baseball players printed in the 1952 baseball register. … Researchers then ranked the players according to their smiles and laughter lines. … Of the 184 players who had since died, those in the ‘no smile’ section lived an average of 72.9 years while the ‘partial smile’ group lived to around the age of 75. Those with the widest grins lived an average of 79.9 years – a full seven more years than their glum colleagues. The study also found that putting on a false smile did not work, as only those who looked genuinely happy had the extra life expectancy.”

Smiling leads to health. This is just good news and a word of warning to those who go through life with a gnarled world view. On the flipside, smiling is also a sign of naivete. I always thought naiveousiousness was an underated disposition. In a society where knowledge = power, naivete has always been discouraged. Those engaging in it got what they deserved. Now we know that naivete might be a long term survival tactic on an evolutionary scale.

Ponderance: The opposite of naivete is shrewdness. Shrewdness has value in its own right. If you are shrewd and can see the 'true nature of things'; you are likely not to get tricked by street-wise con men in a game of chance for example. The naive man is likely to lose it all (while smiling before, during and after). But at the same time, the shrewd man is likely to die early. So, perhaps, it is meta-shrewd to actually be naive because it allows one to achieve arguably the over-arching goal of life - longevity.

Perhaps, the health benefits of naivete also explain the benefits of faith-based religions. Faith, by its very nature, draws lines in the sand where the questioning stops, and reason no longer has credence. It encourages a naivete. And, we all know that faith can be comforting. And, now, apparently, healthy.

Possible Equations:

Naiveness + smiling = some hardship in life through being duped + an additional 5 years on your life vs. avg. life span

Shrewdness + a sharp eye = ability to read social actions - .9 years off average life span

Hot Hands and Random Chance

Rationalists tend to believe that the notion of 'hot hands' in sport are foolish notions that result from the average sports fan's failure to think rationally and to understand the true nature of probability. According to them, a hot (athletically, not sexually) basketball player who has hit his last 5 shots should be no more likely to the next one than his average shotting percentage would indicate. For such a rationalist or skeptical view see http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/10-04-07/#feature

The skeptics are incorrect.

I agree that probabalistically a hot player would be no more likely to hit the next shot - But this is the result of probability theory's inability to account for any behavior that falls outside the study of averages. Proabability theory is impovershed in this way, and a poor predictor of any events involving phenomena that falls outside its controlled experiments. This problem is componunded by its many of its advocates inability to properly understand the theory itself.
According to probability theorists, a player will hit an accuracy streak through chance alone. If I flip a coin enough times then odds are that eventually I will flip 'heads' 7 times in a row. This will look like a hot hand if I intend to hit 'heads'. But in reality, its just probable and will sort its itself out to 50/50 in time. There is no magic hand.

But, this ignores that shooting is a skill. There are better and worse ways to take shots. When someone is in the zone or has the magic hand his body is remembering accurately the best and minute details of the best physical position(or motion) to be in. When he hits many in a row, this position is constantly being reinforced and is thus easier for his body to remember and falls naturally and (often) unconsciously into place. That is, after all, why we practice - so our bodies will do the correct things naturally in reflexive situations.

When someone is in a cold streak, his body has forgotten the better motion. Physical memory is fleeting. Linguistic memory is more permanent as we can write things down and look back at it later. No such thing is possible with the body. At times, we either remember (or relearn it) or don't have it. Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument makes a similar point to this. He said there can be no non-social language that only one person could understand because there would be no way to know you are recursively referring to the same thing more than once. With private language also goes non0cncious body language.

Further, body motion during hot streaks is often non-conscious. Tennis players have no time to compute a serve being directed at them at professional level speeds. Not that it would really help them to think about it. Rather, their movement is all pre-reflexive habit born out of endless practice. Players who do hit cold streaks often complain about over thinking their game.

So, yes, hot hands do exist, and yes, I would bet on the player on a streak. All it takes is understanding that sports are skill-based and quite unlike coin tosses. I shouldn't really even have to point this out.

Rationalists are a proud lot and like to show average people the error in thinking about superstitious magic hands and streaks. Its part of what being an asshole is all about. But, if you are going to be arrogant, its best to be correct and undertstand the phenomena you are investigating.

Certainly Post-Modern but Bad?

This is a new Art Museum in Metz, France. Its hard to tell if its an eyesore or fascinating. At the outset, it certainly seems stupid. The inspiration for the roof was on old straw hat bought by the architect years ago at a flea market.

Architecture is, in the main, supposed to blend in with the surroundings. If the area is traditional, it should with some exceptions fit in with that motif. Many municipal construction codes reflect this hope. But there is also beauty in variety and it is often pleasurable to walk around a neighbourhood where you can feast eyes on different style buildings that clash but never dominate one another. And, there is something almost inherently liberal about the idea.

It should come as no surprise that the architect to this building is Japanese. The Japanese have been building riduculous, overly thought, unlivable structures since the early 60's. The Pruitt-Igoe housing project is the scarriest example of note. In Pruiit- Igoe's case, it was modernity rum amok, with thought only to rationality and efficiency; which people have never really cared for when constructing dwellings. In the Metz museum's case above, it is post-modernity run amok, with all thought to play and none to the people who have to drive by a concrete hat with paintings inside everyday. Though the notion is vague, livability must come first in any architectural considerations. Play and efficiency only after.

In contrast, look at this kick-ass building from Bilbao, Spain. No hat, no matter how stunning or beautiful could ever inspire the builiding of this work of art. This shits all the fuck over any old weirdo straw hat.

The Emergence of a City

Why do cities emerge in some places but not others? This isn't a hidden fact, rather its something we learn in Grade 8 Social Studies. But its easily forgotten, and lost with time.

We know that Detroit is a city built by the automobile ... but why Detroit at all? Apparently, Detroit is close to ore deposits which help build cars somehow.

One thing that seems to clearly to the emergence of a city is a bay. A bay is an area of water mostly surrounded or otherwise demarcated by land. Bays generally have calmer waters than the surrounding sea, due to the surrounding land blocking some waves and often reducing winds. Lack of winds and waves can be quite conducive to commerce and are also nice to look at.

Not so long ago, the sea was the most obvious (and, sometimes only) choice for transport of goods. In some ways, it still is. It just doesn't make sense to get your imported canned peas flown in. We are capable of patience. With the importance of shipping routes goes bays (or rivers, at least).

Will our concept of urban center ever escape from the notion of natal proximity? Probably not. It should be one of those few constants that define the anthromorphic condition of living on this hot and salty planet.

There are some exceptions. Phoenix (the city not the mythical bird) is not near any major water source suitable for the shipment of goods but is now a major city. But, this should remain an exception. (FYI: Residents of Phoenix= Phoenicians.... That's Fucked!) In this vein, there will be no major cities in Kazakstan or anywhere on the Asian plain. Likewise, Saskatchewan shall remain Saskatchewan, never to be NYC.

And, don't tell me about trucking. The heyday of trucking has passed due to rising fuel costs - and, in its time, could not solely maintain a signifigant city of great population density without aid of harbour, river or bay. Boats needn't ever worry about fuel. Everyone knows that boats are fueled by their respective captains love of the sea.

Possible Equation(s)

(Proximity to) Natural Resource multiplied by (Proximity to) Bay or Harbour + Established Rule of Law (necessary for flourishment eg. see Africa) = Emergence of City

(Proximity to) minor River + Emergence of Air Conditioning + Old People who like Dry Air = Phoenix

Mushrooms and Science

When I was young, there was a homeless man in the park who started to think he was an orange after indulging in too many psycheledelics. It was a cautionary story. We all knew that overindulgence could lead to the average person quitting Pink Floyd at the first beckoning of fame and then retreating to the British countryside to chew your hand and live with your mom. That was all a fate we all wanted to avoid.

Nevertheless, you knew something was up with mushrooms. They were just far too strong and powerful. For all the industrial waste churned out like tie-dye and Timothy Leary; there had to be something scientists could do to make it respectable, cold, bureaucratic but useful. And perhaps they have ...

Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In Again
By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: April 11, 2010
As a retired clinical psychologist, Clark Martin was well acquainted with traditional treatments for depression, but his own case seemed untreatable as he struggled through chemotherapy and other grueling regimens for kidney cancer. Counseling seemed futile to him. So did the antidepressant pills he tried.
Nothing had any lasting effect until, at the age of 65, he had his first psychedelic experience. He left his home in Vancouver, Wash., to take part in an experiment at Johns Hopkins medical school involving psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient found in certain mushrooms.
Scientists are taking a new look at hallucinogens, which became taboo among regulators after enthusiasts like Timothy Leary promoted them in the 1960s with the slogan “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” Now, using rigorous protocols and safeguards, scientists have won permission to study once again the drugs’ potential for treating mental problems and illuminating the nature of consciousness.
After taking the hallucinogen, Dr. Martin put on an eye mask and headphones, and lay on a couch listening to classical music as he contemplated the universe.
“All of a sudden, everything familiar started evaporating,” he recalled. “Imagine you fall off a boat out in the open ocean, and you turn around, and the boat is gone. And then the water’s gone. And then you’re gone.”
Today, more than a year later, Dr. Martin credits that six-hour experience with helping him overcome his depression and profoundly transforming his relationships with his daughter and friends. He ranks it among the most meaningful events of his life, which makes him a fairly typical member of a growing club of experimental subjects.
Scientists are especially intrigued by the similarities between hallucinogenic experiences and the life-changing revelations reported throughout history by religious mystics and those who meditate. These similarities have been identified in neural imaging studies conducted by Swiss researchers and in experiments led by Roland Griffiths, a professor of behavioral biology at Johns Hopkins.
In one of Dr. Griffiths’s first studies, involving 36 people with no serious physical or emotional problems, he and colleagues found that psilocybin could induce what the experimental subjects described as a profound spiritual experience with lasting positive effects for most of them. None had had any previous experience with hallucinogens, and none were even sure what drug was being administered. The monitors sometimes had to console people through periods of anxiety, but these were generally short-lived, and none of the people reported any serious negative effects. In a survey conducted two months later, the people who received psilocybin reported significantly more improvements in their general feelings and behavior than did the members of the control group.
After 14 months, most of the psilocybin subjects once again expressed more satisfaction with their lives and rated the experience as one of the five most meaningful events of their lives.
Dr. Martin’s experience is fairly typical, an improved outlook on life after an experience in which the boundaries between the self and others disappear.
Dr. Martin and other subjects described their egos and bodies vanishing as they felt part of some larger state of consciousness in which their personal worries and insecurities vanished. They found themselves reviewing past relationships with lovers and relatives with a new sense of empathy.
“It was a whole personality shift for me,” Dr. Martin said. “I wasn’t any longer attached to my performance and trying to control things. I could see that the really good things in life will happen if you just show up and share your natural enthusiasms with people. You have a feeling of attunement with other people.”
The subjects’ reports mirrored so closely the accounts of religious mystical experiences, Dr. Griffiths said, that it seems likely the human brain is wired to undergo these “unitive” experiences, perhaps because of some evolutionary advantage.
““There’s this coming together of science and spirituality,” said Rick Doblin, the executive director of MAPS. “We’re hoping that the mainstream and the psychedelic community can meet in the middle and avoid another culture war. Thanks to changes over the last 40 years in the social acceptance of the hospice movement and yoga and meditation, our culture is much more receptive now, and we’re showing that these drugs can provide benefits that current treatments can’t.”
Researchers are reporting preliminary success in using psilocybin to ease the anxiety of patients with terminal illnesses. Dr. Charles S. Grob, a psychiatrist who is involved in an experiment at U.C.L.A., describes it as “existential medicine” that helps dying people overcome fear, panic and depression.
“Under the influences of hallucinogens,” Dr. Grob writes, “individuals transcend their primary identification with their bodies and experience ego-free states before the time of their actual physical demise, and return with a new perspective and profound acceptance of the life constant: change.”

Possible Equation(s):

Psychedelics + Mature age + Depression + Controlled Bureaucratic Circumstance - minus California = Happiness

Psychedelics + California + Jesus Freaks - Maturity (or Job) divided by the number of times you halucinate without psychedelics X multiplied by the amount of New Riders of the Purple Sage Concerts (NRPoS) attended = Joining the Manson Family Becoming An Orange

Two Possible Results:

Psychedelics are wasted on the young.

Timothy Leary and his pseudoscience were the actual worst possible things for the expansion of the use of psychedelics.

Working Hard or Hardly Working?

Apparently, all kinds of shit in daily life 100 years ago wasn't experienced in monochrome. Apparently, black and white was a view only we have of those times based on a limitation present in the technology of photography at that point and not a reality faced by those living within those times. Tea picking was one of the joys early century folk experienced in color. This takes place in Russia 1905.

Here's another ...

Also Russia 1910

Apt Observatoration: Experiencing the world in color hardly seems worthwhile if you have to spend all glamourous day at a gravel pit. The woman on the left is obviously not wearing a bra.





Working Hard or Hardly Working? ...

Old People and Social Wisdom

From Social Studies, Globe and Mail

It turns out grandma was right: Listen to your elders,” Randolph Schmid reports for Associated Press. “New research indicates they are indeed wiser – in knowing how to deal with conflicts and accepting life’s uncertainties and change. It isn’t a question of how many facts someone knows, or being able to operate a TV remote, but rather how to handle disagreements – social wisdom. And researchers led by Richard Nisbett of the University of Michigan found that older people were more likely than younger or middle-aged ones to recognize that values differ, to acknowledge uncertainties, to accept that things change over time and to acknowledge others’ points of view. ‘Age effects on wisdom hold at every level of social class, education and IQ,’ they report in … Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

This strikes me as counter-intuitive: old people being more open minded about others opinions. For me, old people tend to like ethnic jokes in a manner that belies a deep felt suspicion of the subjects of said jokes. Also, they give the stink eye to kids who ride dirtbikes down the street.

Perhaps, the age-tolerance connection is true but in a very local way. I don't think of the elderly as being greatly receptive to new large scale social trends or hair styles, but perhaps they can see the validity in the viewpoints of those around them - grandchildren, neighbours, family. They are certainly kinder to grandchildren than parents are.

The connection between social wisdom and tolerance of different view points is interesting if not necessary. If the old get social wisdom, then what does youth get? Probably passion. Passion for Belief X usually belies intolerance about Belief -X. How can one be passionate about a belief whilst acknowledging that the contrary viewpoint to said belief has a pretty good chance of being correct. For example, people passionate about ending racism are not likely going to have a great appreciation for the viewpoint of racists (nor, perhaps, should they). Older people, perhaps, may try to be more conciliatory to those viewpoints even if they personally abhor them. They may seem them as inevfitabilites of human nature that need to be worked with rather than eradicated outright.

Youth seems to beget drive. Artistic and intellectual achievement tend to be a largely young man's game. Drive is connected to passion, which may be connected with a certain narrow mindedness of intolerance.

Possible Equations:

Intolerance + Ideology + view of Change as Possible - your age from 65 = Passion

Passion = Creativity (eg. early Kinks)

Tolerance + Recognition of Inevitabilty of Differing Opinions (experience of meeting douches multiplied by # of years lived) + calcium deficiency + hip replacement surgery= Pragmatism and Balance

but ... (the Negative Remainder)

Pragmatism and Balance = shitty works of art (musicians over 35)