If I could doubt more,
I would have to know more.
If I knew more, I might doubt
I’ve found out in time,
because I'm writing this
in The Dark of the Moon.
During the recent campaign,
a simple poster of
Obama’s profile
over
HOPE
hung in triplicate from a window
nr the corner of Cole & Carl
in San Francisco:
HOPE
HOPE
HOPE
You, who are reading this,
do you doubt less now, or
do you have faith in Hope?
(Thanksgiving Day, 27 NOV 08, Santa Clara)
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Sunday, November 23, 2008
High water
Whenever we drink,
we drink terrestrial w@ter
of celestial origin, w@ter
higher than we think.
(20 NOV 08, Santa Clara CA)
we drink terrestrial w@ter
of celestial origin, w@ter
higher than we think.
(20 NOV 08, Santa Clara CA)
Thursday, November 20, 2008
re: Stuart Kauffman
salon.com/env/atoms_eden/2008/11/19/stuart_kauffman/index.html
[Bob Chute]: I'll read the 5 pages of hard copy [above], then, but at a glance: what emerges with consciousness is not purpose, but the capacity to imagine (consider the possibility) of purpose. The possibility to imagine Jesus converting the wine without trickery also emerges.
Re: Kauffman (notes jotted during reading the SALON interview)
Is a world in which anything is conceivable a world in which any conceivable things can exist?
Consciousness as a phenom emergent from language which in turn is emergent from thought? [my contribution to the inexplicable]
Newton was not a reductionist.
Laplace et al: The inability to predict doesn't prove acausality, only the failure of prediction. The sum of possible interactions may exceed the universe's capacity to compute an outcome.
"emergence" an old and standard concept — and useful
"Physics can not talk about values" because values are not the subject of physics, or biology, or statistics, or dog training.
How different is saying "agency is in the universe" from saying agency is an emergent consequence of the universe?
"We can not say how the biosphere will evolve"..big deal! Who thought we could?
"We didn't have the faintest idea what would happen with the invention of writing..." Well, K, we weren't there were we? But someone there might well have said or thought, This Will Lead To.. people do this all the time. Are usually wrong, but occasionally right.
"We are organisms with meaning in our lives..." that is, organisms who must behave as if there is meaning in their lives.
That the universe is chaotic need not mean it is meaningless, not lawless. A chaotic system is one so complex it appears random: the paths of causality are concealed by its complexity. Welcome to chaos.
[Bill Costley]: Tho raised & educated R.C., I've always dismissed Anselm's "Argument from 1st-[causeless] cause", imagining instead that existing things just accumulate from...wherever (Big Bang notwithstanding.) Impressed by what it imagines are revelations of 'perfect' design, mankind persistently projects 'perfection' by someThing Perfect. But many things are imperfect, subject to what we call evolutionary trial & error, etc. Towards what end - if any? Variation is not always improvement.
[Bob Chute]: I'll read the 5 pages of hard copy [above], then, but at a glance: what emerges with consciousness is not purpose, but the capacity to imagine (consider the possibility) of purpose. The possibility to imagine Jesus converting the wine without trickery also emerges.
Re: Kauffman (notes jotted during reading the SALON interview)
Is a world in which anything is conceivable a world in which any conceivable things can exist?
Consciousness as a phenom emergent from language which in turn is emergent from thought? [my contribution to the inexplicable]
Newton was not a reductionist.
Laplace et al: The inability to predict doesn't prove acausality, only the failure of prediction. The sum of possible interactions may exceed the universe's capacity to compute an outcome.
"emergence" an old and standard concept — and useful
"Physics can not talk about values" because values are not the subject of physics, or biology, or statistics, or dog training.
How different is saying "agency is in the universe" from saying agency is an emergent consequence of the universe?
"We can not say how the biosphere will evolve"..big deal! Who thought we could?
"We didn't have the faintest idea what would happen with the invention of writing..." Well, K, we weren't there were we? But someone there might well have said or thought, This Will Lead To.. people do this all the time. Are usually wrong, but occasionally right.
"We are organisms with meaning in our lives..." that is, organisms who must behave as if there is meaning in their lives.
That the universe is chaotic need not mean it is meaningless, not lawless. A chaotic system is one so complex it appears random: the paths of causality are concealed by its complexity. Welcome to chaos.
[Bill Costley]: Tho raised & educated R.C., I've always dismissed Anselm's "Argument from 1st-[causeless] cause", imagining instead that existing things just accumulate from...wherever (Big Bang notwithstanding.) Impressed by what it imagines are revelations of 'perfect' design, mankind persistently projects 'perfection' by someThing Perfect. But many things are imperfect, subject to what we call evolutionary trial & error, etc. Towards what end - if any? Variation is not always improvement.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Obama on the Wall
(Scene: White House Gym)
Obama drops an NBA* basketball,
deciding to climb the wooden wall,
knob-by knob; he tires near the top,
calling out for "Rahm (Emmanuel),
"I need your help! I need your help!”
2 MIB**s rush in to protect Obama:
“I need Rahm’s help,” he says,
"not yours, guys; thanks anyway.”
Rahm suddenly appears in a gym suit,
smiling. “Good test, Obama; the MIBs
seem to have forgotten me.” Obama
smiles: “They're new; Rahm, it’s been
8 years since you were here with Bill.”
Obama shinnies down the knobby wall,
chuckling as he hits the hardwood floor,
popping up & dribbling the basketball
off across the shiny hardwood floor.
*National Basketball Assn.
** Men in Black = U.S. Secret Service
(06 NOV 08, Santa Clara CA) v7
Obama drops an NBA* basketball,
deciding to climb the wooden wall,
knob-by knob; he tires near the top,
calling out for "Rahm (Emmanuel),
"I need your help! I need your help!”
2 MIB**s rush in to protect Obama:
“I need Rahm’s help,” he says,
"not yours, guys; thanks anyway.”
Rahm suddenly appears in a gym suit,
smiling. “Good test, Obama; the MIBs
seem to have forgotten me.” Obama
smiles: “They're new; Rahm, it’s been
8 years since you were here with Bill.”
Obama shinnies down the knobby wall,
chuckling as he hits the hardwood floor,
popping up & dribbling the basketball
off across the shiny hardwood floor.
*National Basketball Assn.
** Men in Black = U.S. Secret Service
(06 NOV 08, Santa Clara CA) v7
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Barak Obama Won
http://www.barackobama.com/index.php
"The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America -- I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you -- we as a people will get there." (Acceptance speech, Chicago IL, 04 NOV 08)
"The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America -- I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you -- we as a people will get there." (Acceptance speech, Chicago IL, 04 NOV 08)
Monday, November 3, 2008
Seeing stubby
In my vitiated mind,
instead of John McCain,
I see a stubby all-white fireplug's
2 stubby arms & sea-cap embossed:
M. Greenberg’s Sons San Francisco,
remembering my stubby uncle Tom
in the subs in WW2 & Korea.
(03 NOV 08, Santa Clara CA)v4
instead of John McCain,
I see a stubby all-white fireplug's
2 stubby arms & sea-cap embossed:
M. Greenberg’s Sons San Francisco,
remembering my stubby uncle Tom
in the subs in WW2 & Korea.
(03 NOV 08, Santa Clara CA)v4
Friday, October 31, 2008
I Voted Yesterday
Yes, I voted yesterday, 30 OCT 08, using a vote-by mail-ballot. To be exact, I marked that ballot, but didn't actually mail it in; instead, I'll hand it in on Tues, 04 NOV 08, here where I live (Valley Village, 310 apts) which has 2 precinct polling places. If that sounds odd, it really isn't here in Northern CA; just about anywhere can be a polling place & so many are. On the actual voting day, I'll 1st go to the hospital (not a polling place as far as I know, but might be), then drop off my sealed mail-in ballot back here at Valley Village, then ride the Caltrain up to S.F. where a friend's house is a local polling place.
So, you can vote at so many places from 8am to 8pm (as well as by mail) that you really have no excuse for not voting unless you're too unwell to mark the ballot, but even then you can get someone to help you who must co-sign that they did: "Due to illness or disability, I am unable to return my ballot in person and hereby authorize the following (circle one) spouse, child, parent, grandparent, grandchild, brother, sister or a person residing in my household." (also in Spanish).
Worku Negash, VP of Mission College,Santa Clara, an Ethiopian by birth, is greatly impressed by the efforts of the U.S.A. to make it possible to vote, compared to many African countries. Abuses, however, abound & the Democratic Party is busily documenting them: e.g., flyers telling Republicans to vote on 04 NOV, but Democrats to vote on 05 NOV, etc. are being circulated by Republican Party operatives who have previously stolen blank ballots, or dumped marked ballots in bodies of water in FL in 2004. Sheer desperation drove them then & still does now.
Last nite on Bill Moyers' Journal (PBS, Sat. eves.) he showed some of the flyers that GOPeratives are currently circulating against Obama: one showed Obama with a piebald (brown & white = bi-racial) pig's head, with a caption about lipstick on a pig (alleging he used that against Sarah Palin) thereby using any excuse to make Obama into an obscene animal, exceeding anything I've alleged in my poems, e.g. my imaginary flyer with a man-sized bunch of over-ripe brown bananas with a naked Obama next to them. I'm obviously too far removed from the target zones to really know what plays among crackuhs. (My reportorial poem "Bubba Redneck" is historically retro.) Apparently cross-breeding 'niggers with pigs' is leading-edge inter-species racial-biotechnology for today's crackuhs.
Appropriately enuf then, I'll be stealthily dressed all in black as a beret-wearing beatnik (with silvered sun-glasses) stalking malfeasing Republicans at a Halloween party here at Valley Village tonite. [PS] Norcal is 70/30 Democrat.
So, you can vote at so many places from 8am to 8pm (as well as by mail) that you really have no excuse for not voting unless you're too unwell to mark the ballot, but even then you can get someone to help you who must co-sign that they did: "Due to illness or disability, I am unable to return my ballot in person and hereby authorize the following (circle one) spouse, child, parent, grandparent, grandchild, brother, sister or a person residing in my household." (also in Spanish).
Worku Negash, VP of Mission College,Santa Clara, an Ethiopian by birth, is greatly impressed by the efforts of the U.S.A. to make it possible to vote, compared to many African countries. Abuses, however, abound & the Democratic Party is busily documenting them: e.g., flyers telling Republicans to vote on 04 NOV, but Democrats to vote on 05 NOV, etc. are being circulated by Republican Party operatives who have previously stolen blank ballots, or dumped marked ballots in bodies of water in FL in 2004. Sheer desperation drove them then & still does now.
Last nite on Bill Moyers' Journal (PBS, Sat. eves.) he showed some of the flyers that GOPeratives are currently circulating against Obama: one showed Obama with a piebald (brown & white = bi-racial) pig's head, with a caption about lipstick on a pig (alleging he used that against Sarah Palin) thereby using any excuse to make Obama into an obscene animal, exceeding anything I've alleged in my poems, e.g. my imaginary flyer with a man-sized bunch of over-ripe brown bananas with a naked Obama next to them. I'm obviously too far removed from the target zones to really know what plays among crackuhs. (My reportorial poem "Bubba Redneck" is historically retro.) Apparently cross-breeding 'niggers with pigs' is leading-edge inter-species racial-biotechnology for today's crackuhs.
Appropriately enuf then, I'll be stealthily dressed all in black as a beret-wearing beatnik (with silvered sun-glasses) stalking malfeasing Republicans at a Halloween party here at Valley Village tonite. [PS] Norcal is 70/30 Democrat.
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