Sonnet 0.2

OK, I've been lax and a slacker. Let me add some more to this...

The love that I had, the love that I lost,
The love that is customary, the love that is right.
Love is constant, so the Bard said, yet is it irreplaceable?
Without true love, do we die? Or is love far greater, than person, place or thing?
What if love is vast and dynamic, sometimes fleeting, sometimes long and comfortable,
Simple as vivid green in the brilliant sun, curious as Riemann zeta,
Poignant and soothing as a morning dove, foreboding as a supernova.

Pedaling faster, heart a-pounding, forest carving sweat,
A moment of tranquility, my eyes locked with a deer's, time stopped.
Transcendental instant, forward motion, but no movement,
Soundless, thoughtless, drifting through the forest, I still stared,
Total peace and a glimpse of communion,
Before the sound returns,
And the mud flies.

Sonnet 0.1

For some crazy reason, really because of a very together, uber-living friend, I am trying my hand at writing a sonnet. I am going to begin rather unstructured and stream of conscious and hopefully over time start to hone and polish it.

The topic is love, that so many sonnets before have sung about, so without further adieu:

The love that I had, the love that I lost,
The love that is customary, the love that is right.
Love is constant, so the Bard said, yet is it irreplaceable?
Without true love, do we die? Or is love far greater, than person, place or thing?
What if love is vast and dynamic, sometimes fleeting, sometimes long and comfortable,
Simple as vivid green in the brilliant sun, curious as Riemann zeta,
Poignant and soothing as a morning dove, foreboding as a supernova.

OK, that's half or rather half a start!

Crazy Times

One of the craziest things about trying to keep up with my blog is resolving the tension between when I have my thoughts or inspirations and when I am able to publish them. My life is such that if I do not publish near to the time when I think of something, the chances that I publish decrease exponentially. Two inventions that I have thought of, that I have no idea if there is prior art, and have been thinking would be a godsend to my blogging art, are:

• Sports hardened, WIFI capable blogging station for exercise equipment and bicycles. A blogging station for exercise equipment would be easier to tackle. The WIFI or wired connection would be easy to satisfy. There are already decent (or mostly decent) computer add-ons for protection against sweat, moisture, liquid, etc.... A mobile blogging station would be more difficult, especially for a mountain bike, but would be way cool...think about the great thoughts when you are in the middle of nowhere, having hammered across some killer trails...a great epiphany?
  
• Night time, low light bed side blogging device. It would be cool, to wake up in the middle of the night, when I have many thoughts, that at least seem valuable at the time, to reach over to the bed side table, pull over the blogging station arm, with the the gentle back light and capture a few of the twilight synaptic firings.

It is hard to schedule thinking, but that is precisely what is recommended by many experts. I don't know if you can necessarily schedule thinking, but you certainly must schedule the lack of something to enable thinking. Too often, we are over scheduled or at least over busy, such that we cannot effectively think. However, the next question is whether it is better to be productively busy, rather than simply thinking which may be reduced to dreaming. Dreaming is important, but taking the next step is just as important or rather more important. From the dream, we must take the next step to determine what to do with the dream in order to bridge to the gap into reality. Even if that fruition is Degas painting or an heretical Schrödinger equation, we must make our imprint or our dreams become simply the wasted energy of our well endowed cerebrum.

Fits and Starts

I feel like my old snow blower that we resurrected when I was a young teen. My father bought this thing probably in the late 60s,early 70s and it was probably 10 yrs old then. But it was a tank (and a half). You know, my parents divorced when I was young, so once I got old enough, I got the snow blower back from our good friends who were "keeping it" for us. It would always take a while to get the thing going, you'd have to spray starter fluid in it and the whole process was in fits and starts. It would sometimes take probably close to an hour to get the thing cooperative, but once it was going, not even several feet of New England snow would stop the thing.

So the point is, my process now is very much in fits and starts mode. Hopefully, I will get cranking soon!

Try...

I don't know much about Barbara Crafton but thought this was a nice quote by her:

"If we must die, let us die trying, until it makes no sense to try any more. Let us not go knowing we didn't do everything we could. If we fail, let us fail at something and not at nothing. To fail at exactly nothing: that would be the cruelest fate of all."

A Distant Mirror

How long could you look at this view?

Atop the world, the extreme peace, must be intoxicating. .would you just look, and then just say, ok, let's turn around? Would the thoughts of calamity dance through your head as you ponder serenity? or perhaps now that you've seen it all, you can rush back to catch your favorite show, or get in a quick work out at the club....but for once, claiming that you are truly king of the mountain, what would you proclaim?

Six Words

Not Quite What I was Planning is really quite thought provoking and elegant in its simplicity and power. There is an interesting literary heritage to expressing oneself in the tersest terms from Haiku to Hemingway's Six word Story:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

So consider, what would be yours? At four something this morning, I thought:

Dreamed of stars, stayed in Carolina.

In stasis?

Wow, this reminds me of a Star Trek episode where some aliens' life forces was preserved in some technology and they were just waiting for some bodies to come along to live again. I'll have to try to find the actual Star Trek reference. In this culture of instant gratification and the pursuit and attaining of goals, it is hard to fathom hanging out for not quite eternity to live again. It will be a long sleep. I guess it is a good thing, because I need one.

Seems like you can't win...

First I read this article and one would think "Yeah, it's bad, but the problem is mostly limited to Chinese Pharma" but then I read this which shows how truly shocking the state of the pharma industry is. This is like a modern day Upton Sinclair Jungle (read it here). Not that this is an argument for or against, but given the current push toward Universal Health Care, or some semblance of it, I wonder what will happen if prices and thus costs are ever pressed downwards? In the pursuit of cost savings will production be pushed more and more overseas and into factories with qality (sic) processes? The point is not one on Universal Health Care, per se, but that one must consider the system, in toto. Fundamentally, costs at all levels would need to be controlled. but I haven't heard anyone discuss that or how we would maintain or improve quality, while still improving access and costs.

Our Government at Work

In case you thought our government officials didn't care, consider this: Who cares to debate arguably the most burning question today? Well, apparently we only have 3 takers:
http://www.sais-jhu.edu/pubaffairs/media_events/Media_Advisories/MA2007/democratsdebate060107.html
(I don't know if that link will persist). Only Biden, Gravel and Kucinich care to participate in the Democratic debate on Iraq. Perhaps it is too in-depth for the others? Disgusting, pure and simple. The vapidity and outright condescending parsimony is infuriating. When will we demand more?

In case any one is interested in what some dare to debate beyond the 1 minute sound bite:
Video
Click here to view video of Senator Joe Biden's remarks.
Click here to view video of former Senator Mike Gravel's remarks.
Click here to view video of Congressman Dennis Kucinich's remarks.

Audio
Click here to download or listen to audio of Senator Biden's remarks.
Click here to download or listen to audio of former Senator Mike Gravel's remarks.
Click here to download or listen to audio of Congressman Dennis Kucinich's remarks

Regardless if you agree or disagree, in a civil and intelligent society we should debate our ideas.

Why is Growth Good?

Growth is at the basis of life. Organisms grow and organisms die. To persist their genes, organisms must leverage their genes beyond themselves. OK, we all know this and this sounds perhaps a bit grandiose..."So what?" You may ask....Well, if this is at the basis of us, then we may easily conclude that growth is good. Biology concludes this easily, but some thought may bring it into dispute, if controversially.

Beyond the hard ethical debate of when too much population growth is bad, and then what to do about it, there is the ever present, day to day reality that faces many of us - unchecked urban and suburban growth. My county is receiving 100 new people a day. What was once open land, wooded forests and rural roads is giving way to sprawl --- housing developments of ever larger houses on ever shrinking lots, crowded schools that are beyond most rational approaches of management, water restrictions, longer commutes, constant streams of traffic and the smile of the "friend" from the boom towns of the past that ends as quickly the stage coach departs. Try to get away from it all and visit a State park, and you are greeted with Disney World-like crowds. In fact, even admission fees to State parks is rivaling commercial entertainment. So much for our tax dollars at work.

Logically and physically there must be an upper limit on the number of people that this planet will support. More pointedly, there is an upper limit on the number of people that this planet will support with a "high quality of life." Even if technology can overcome many of the resource constraints that we face, at a certain point space limitations will drastically affect us, baring a miniaturization scheme from Slapstick. Then consider what disparate and incompatible cultures living in close proximity will yield....

I wish there were some studies about this or at least some greater public dialogue particularly in how to create an environment that is essentially steady state or optimizes the quality of life for everyone. Even over 150 yrs ago, some wondered what this all will amount to..

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending , we lay waste our powers:

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

Getting and spending , we lay waste our powers:

....

Hopefully we are waking up and not treating this world like our personal playground but rather like good stewards would. Yet, too many, especially those with disproportionate power, seem to believe that the world is theirs to extract as much individual value as they can often at the expense of everyone else, and like the monkey grasping the fruit in the clay pot, their greed will not let them release any "treasure" even if it means their ultimate destruction.

If we are already losing the biodiversity of our planet, what will more population and development growth yield? Is this merely alarmist? Will everything simply work its way out, laissez-faire? It will, but we may not like the resulting state.

Balance or Psychosis

It is hard to maintain balance, to maintain the equilibrium of our lives. We are the product of our upbringing and for many of us, we are the product of an idealistic age. I remember the back of the station wagon, the huge land yacht, facing rear, flashing fellow travelers stuck in traffic the peace sign, and wondering why only the young drivers flashed you back with a smile on their face. An age when MIT graduate students came to our 5th grade class to show their solar car, which while only miniature, sure impressed me. From Star Trek to Star Wars, from Kung Fu to Kimba, from Speed Racer to Run Joe Run, we grew up thinking we could make a difference and that anyone could be President and the limits were truly the stars.

We looked upon the open territory, and felt like Lewis and Clark, if not totally, at least in spirit. And now, as we approach or pass the middle part of our lives (hopefully) we are faced with the dream crashing down upon us. The bright sun, the warm beach, is erased by the wave embracing us, tumbling us effortlessly in the dark, silent power; we are powerless and cannot breathe. We know the air is above us, the life giving oxygen is somewhere near, but we are disembodied, unbalanced. We are at the point, where either we will escape the grasp of the tide and surface, thankful and strong yet somehow unsure, or we will disappear into the expanse of the sea, another bit of life floating through the currents like so much plankton.

Melodramatic you say? I long for the times when I could listen in the dark to interviews with Philip Glass and the performance of Einstein on the Beach on celestial radio no less. Why do I remember this 24 years later and perhaps more importantly what will I remember 24 years from now? (note to reader, I remember this almost verbatim, but I looked it up for accuracy)
...
Two lovers sat on a park bench with their bodies touching each other, holding hands in the moonlight.

There was silence between them. So profound was their love for each other, they needed no words to express it. And so they sat in silence, on a park bench, with their bodies touching, holding hands in the moonlight.

Finally she spoke. "Do you love me, John ?" she asked. "You know I love you. darling," he replied. "I love you more than tongue can tell. You are the light of my life. my sun. moon and stars. You are my everything. Without you I have no reason for being."

Again there was silence as the two lovers sat on a park bench, their bodies touching, holding hands in the moonlight. Once more she spoke. "How much do you love me, John ?" she asked. He answered : "How' much do I love you ? Count the stars in the sky. Measure the waters of the oceans with a teaspoon. Number the grains of sand on the sea shore. Impossible, you say. Yes and it is just as impossible for me to say how much I love you.

"My love for you is higher than the heavens, deeper than Hades, and broader than the earth. It has no limits, no bounds. Everything must have an ending except my love for you."

There was more of silence as the two lovers sat on a park bench with their bodies touching, holding hands in the moonlight.

Once more her voice was heard. "Kiss me, John" she implored. And leaning over, he pressed his lips warmly to hers in fervent osculation...

Sometime, I will tell you about when I met Philip Glass at Duke University. I think he may rather continued his conversation with me about La Mont Young (whom after I had "discovered" in my youth, my mother I told me how she met him at parties in the early '60s in Greenwich Village) but his "hosts" were eager to take him out to dinner and discuss their academic appreciation of him. I digress, and I need to end here and not ponder on the current state of music...BUT if you want to listen to something nice, check out the Metheny Mehldau Quartet

Kempis

I could not (nor even try) to say it better:
http://www.leaderu.com/cyber/books/imitation/imb1c21-25.html#RTFToC61

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers...

How many of the up and comers and already arrived, the power brokers and the window washers, the cooks, the tourists and the by-standers on 9/11, left home early, rushed to work, and forgot to kiss their loved ones good bye?

Sound bite, channel surfing, multi-tasking

Continuing on with this theme and responding again to a discerning and probing reader. While the majority of the media is most definitely left of center, their reporting is more directed by business than bias. However, while the human interest story with the war, with VT plays out in the short term, old news is no news at all. I think the media takes that maxim literally.

While some would perhaps like retrospectives and celebration of lives pieces on the many soldiers who are needlessly being used like the fodder of so many soldiers before them. I would prefer some real thoughtful analysis of the current situation. One balancing the current state, with likely outcomes and possible mitigations. This is not a math problem with clean boundaries and provable solution. It may not even be a single chess game in a multi-game match, but something far more complicated. That is, we need to look at the larger picture, the longer time frame. We must plan our moves far in advance, and take some lessons from Sun Tzu if not Lao Tzu. We cannot continue to risk lives and put our children's mortgage up on the basis of the next election.

It is sad, tragic the many stories that you (I) read about the many casualties behind the current conflicts. Yet the vast majority of people grow tired, and in fact we all grow tired. Why with the constant drumbeat of negative, disturbing news, we see so little about what it all means? Even in the case of the VT students, where is the analysis, the in depth reporting on what the living VT students are going to do differently? What is the lesson the living take away? The dead are gone. Yes it is tragic, yes loved ones are crying...but what is it worth if we do need heed anything from it? Moreover, what does it say about us, if we make promises to live our lives differently, to change our lives because we see how short life truly may be, but summer comes, we relax on the beach, we turn the page.

Life is happy, life is tragic. It has always been that way, and before we became enamored in our ability to cheat death, it was all the more apparent. The quest of man, has always been to create meaning that lasts out of the transient and profane. So what is the meaning we make of our time?

Press Obsession

A kind reader left a comment wondering why there is so much media and public fascination and tributes to the VT victims where we barely hear much of the military victims these days. There are sites dedicated to remembering the fallen soldiers and occasionally the newsprint and other media will run specials on the individuals killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, there are at least a couple factors at play here regarding the differing coverage.

One is the cold hard reality, that despite the media's sometimes holier than thou business attitude, they are, increasing a real business that seeks viewership, ratings and advertisers. They push the sensational, the pieces guaranteed to get big audiences at the expense of the weighty, not easily digested or yesterday's news stories. Unfortunately, for many people in the audience, they turn the channel or page on the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.

The second philosophical factor, is that while you cannot really weigh one tragedy against another, at the fundamental level, one may argue the greater tragedy of the VT students since they were not volunteers putting themselves into harm's way, they did not sign up for a deadly mission, they were like many of us, once living an idyllic college existence. Moreover, from a relational point of view, more people can relate to the college students or even have family members as college students, in comparison to the military.

All tragic, nevertheless.

It Should Be Clear

One point that seems to be lost in the Virginia Tech killings by Cho, is that when one truly does suffer from mental illness, at the point where they crack, they really do lose it. People do crack, and reality because a jumbled mess of illusions and perceptions. If he were under the influence of heavy duty psychoactive drugs, people would have chalked it up to that. Being crazed, without the help of any psychotropic substances, is not much different.

What Does it Mean?

What will the calamity at Virginia Tech amount to? Will it just go down in the history books as the worst mass murder in modern American history? Already it seems to lose some of the impact that we had with Columbine. Perhaps we were more innocent then. Perhaps in the midst of war we are hardened. While we look for meaning, while we look for reasons, what if there really aren't any? Only because of our believed significance do we attribute meanings and reasons to events that happen in our experience. If we do accept an existential existence, then events do indeed happen for no reason, without meaning. People are killed, you get cancer, the "Best and the Brightest" author gets broadsided and killed, a terrorist blows up a bunch of children, and there is no justice. There is no real meaning of any importance. A leaf floats on the wind and falls into the river. The currents take it into the rapids. Another leaf is whisked into the bank and finds refuge. What does it meaning? Nothing.

But is the meaning what we make of it? How we deal with it; how we face the challenges and randomness of life? Is this noise hiding a truer reality? Or is it nothing?

I think it is easier for those living to deal with these tragic events than those who are killed. This may be contrary to conventional wisdom, but actually it is a self-evident fact. The living have an opportunity to deal with it, despite their apparent difficulties. Thus while the living, grieving in their pain, can perhaps find meaning, what of the dead? What do they find? Are they the leaf pulled into the rapids?

Things get more difficult once we assume a non-existential existence. More on that later...

Poverty and Corruption

I've delayed about a month getting this post up, so I apologize, if only to myself.

An interesting article on Why Poor Countries are Poor appears in Reason Magazine. First, realize that while this is coming from a libertarian or at least free market perspective, one of the pernicious behaviors that is rampant in many countries, particularly less developed countries, is institutional corruption. Ultimately and succinctly, the brilliance of a nation of laws, cannot be understated.

Traditionally: Economists used to think wealth came from a combination of man-made resources (roads, factories, telephone systems), human resources (hard work and education), and technological resources (technical know-how, or simply high-tech machinery). Obviously, poor countries grew into rich countries by investing money in physical resources and by improving human and technological resources with education and technology transfer programs.

This is borne out by the examples of China, India, South Korea, Botswana, Mauritius, among others, which have become the fastest growing economies in the World. The return to investors has been tremendous, and thus, there is no shortage of money seeking opportunity in developing countries.

However, this breaks down when we consider acutely and chronically poor countries.

The premise is that in terms of economic growth a stable corrupt dictatorship while worse than a democracy is preferable than sheer instability. While this may be patently obvious, observing the different characteristics of governments in real terms proves illustrative.

A dictator with long term plans, cannot completely rape and pillage his country because then there will be nothing to steal subsequently. In terms of self-interest, a dictator must balance his parasitic greed with the health of his host (his people).

Cameroon is the poster child of the dysfunctional, totally corrupt, condemned country. One would think, following our premise, that the dictator Biya would have to keep the Cameroonian economy functioning in order to keep stealing from it. Yet the country is so totally crippled that apparently Biya is not the all powerful, self-interested dictator, but rather, Cameroon is filled with petty bandits, thieves and despots. As the article argues:

Government banditry, widespread waste, and oppressive regulations are all elements in that missing piece of the puzzle.

The lesson of the story might appear to be that self-interested and ambitious people in power are often the cause of wastefulness in developing countries. But self-interested and ambitious people are in positions of power, great and small, all over the world. In many places, they are restrained by the law, the press, and democratic opposition. Cameroon's tragedy is that there is nothing to hold self-interest in check.

The rot starts with government, but it afflicts the entire society. There's no point investing in a business because the government will not protect you against thieves. (So you might as well become a thief yourself.) There's no point in paying your phone bill because no court can make you pay. (So there's no point being a phone company.) There's no point setting up an import business because the customs officers will be the ones to benefit. (So the customs office is underfunded and looks even harder for bribes.) There's no point getting an education because jobs are not handed out on merit. (And in any case, you can't borrow money for school fees because the bank can't collect on the loan.)

While this article focuses on a clear and egregious example, we see elements of these problems all over the world where we try to bring "democracy" or "freedom" or believe we can "help" these countries into modern enlightenment without the benefit of almost 900 years contemplating the Magna Carta. Without honest institutions, without the "rule of law" and a societal desire of fairness, I am not sure what we can or should do other than carefully avoid.

Strangeness in Paradise

This will be a strange post.



I do not know quite what to say or how to begin.



It is a time far in the past. I must close my eyes to remember. Of course, I cannot remember, but I can reflect. Of a time, in the old country, of dusty roads and crowded spaces. Of warm seas and fresh fruits, a man was measured by the number of olive trees, or was it dates? A minority lived in a foreign land that was theirs a millennium ago. They must assimilate, get along, speak the language, and they did.



A heavy barrel of flour at the bakery floor took four men to load and unload. But "Fat Simon" would heave one up by himself. "Fat Simon", Shishman See-mon, though I wonder if that is the correct translation. Fat is a poor description since while he was wide, it may better described as broad. Somewhat tall for the age, he had forearms the size of fire hoses and a chest like a gorilla. If you saw him from the back, you would see a wall. And a "hard man", described him as a "hard man"...



For a family that you must provide, you work 14 hours a day. A dry good shop, rises from nothing and you feed the children of your self. You provide for your wife, you establish a nice house. Maybe even a vacation to a lakeside house. You work hard. You do not dream. You just work hard, working hard is good. Then an official's son shows up with 2 body guards expecting a tribute, wanting to rape you of your hard earned labors. He tells you you better cooperate if you know what is good for you, and the henchmen lean in...



What would they expect of "Fat Simon"? as the blood boils up in his veins, his thinking processes focus, decision gates shut down and the attack instinct targets. Fat Simon grabs one body guard like a barrel of flour and throws him through the door. Then he takes the other and brings him outside and plants his face in the dirt street. The official's son says you will regret this...



And in this story the weasel has the power, and the weasel ultimately wins.

Variation on a hum

Perhaps there is no time like now, to reflect on Glenn Gould. A good friend of mine recently attended a piano concerto and remarked that she felt calmed, cleansed and refocused. Her mental energies were aligned and sharpened unexpectedly, I might add, since she is not a classical music junkie.



In this crazy time and period of uncertainty, when noise blasts our senses and we squander our values and civilization, we need the eccentricity and brilliance of Glenn Gould. I enjoyed the movie Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould but I think you need an understanding of Glenn Gould in order to fully appreciate it or desire for a glimpse into Gould's genius. For me, Gould combines the technique and art, with genuine inpspiration. The sounds he heard, the bathing of notes he swam in, he interpreted like Jimi Hendrix did for Rock. That is, Glenn transcended the pure or technical musical piece and reached into the metaphysical world where the music began.



Am I too dire, are the walls really crumbling? Do I long for my library, and comfortable chair, while pondering the Quest for Perfection? Once I did care about perfection, I cared or dared to ask "What is Best?" I considered my values and premises. Yet I have to ask, what happened? When Egypt's library burned, what did people do the next day?