tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26326648888605233032024-03-05T18:34:40.255-08:00 Lost in WoodstockMy experiments with psychedelics, epistemology, weed, poetry, cosmos, drugs, love, loss, mathematics, alcohol, artificial intelligence, consciousness, free will, neurobiology, music, time, nature, nurture, linguistic theory, activism, travels and journeys... and sundry reflections on the Romance of Science.
Et Ignotas Animum Dimittit In Artes
[Copyleft: Samuel S. Mandal]CONFESSIONS OF A RELUCTANT SCHIZOPHRENIChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06420507356641025901noreply@blogger.comBlogger92125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2632664888860523303.post-68395131828550773242017-04-28T10:26:00.000-07:002017-04-28T10:26:02.703-07:00Labored Confusions<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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In the dim squalor<br />
of sweatshops<br />
tucked behind silhouetted skyscrapers – glittering<br />
blood diamonds on black velvet – the rhythmic thundering of hammers,<br />
and little heartbeats stolen<br />
from forgotten schoolyards,<br />
sound the trumpets of neoliberalism.<br />
<br />
Gucci, Armani, Tiffany’s, Ivy Leagues and Standardized Testing materials;<br />
and in the hollowed out shells of heavy ordinance,<br />
Imperial Democracy nurtures<br />
The better angels of our nature — buy two, get one free.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971346067453698462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2632664888860523303.post-20688695282301681192017-04-28T10:25:00.002-07:002017-04-28T10:25:27.621-07:00Inertia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The way the days pass,<br />
with tired breaking of<br />
Insincere Promises;<br />
while the unending retrospections<br />
of a cognizant mind,<br />
Despair<br />
at its reluctant inertia.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971346067453698462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2632664888860523303.post-81439575634251915012017-04-28T10:25:00.000-07:002017-04-28T10:25:08.404-07:00Primate Saturday: Jane & Her Chimps<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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You know <del>what </del> who I have always been jealous of? Scientists who have found a life-long <del>obsession</del>
vocation — Diane Fossey in the mountains of Uganda, Galdikas in Borneo,
and of course, Jane Goodall in Tanzania! I wonder, often, how
fulfilling it must be to be able to chase down your scientific
curiosities throughout your life with such consistency!</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971346067453698462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2632664888860523303.post-14274292695533873362017-04-28T10:23:00.002-07:002017-04-28T10:26:19.184-07:00Golden Age Comics: With A Twist<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Superhero comics are, supposedly, fun! Right? Except when you really
think about it, they are not. When you read them in a historical and
political context, they are blatantly sexist, discriminative,
privilege-perpetuating pieces of propaganda garbed in bright colors and
designed to distract people from their undertone. And it works! As
Edward Bernays knew all too well, if you can serve a piece of addictive
substance — video games, comics, TV in general — with some nice
packaging, and if you can make sure that consuming it doesn’t require
any active cognitive exercise, then soon you will develop an addicted
population who, not unlike tobacco-addicts, would not only come to rely
on the substance but would defend it with fervent zeal. To ensure that
the process didn’t become too apparent it is necessary to present an
appearance of avant-garde — grown people reading comics, adults pushing
buttons on a keyboard and making like it takes intelligence to play
video games, parents watching cartoon with their children — while
quietly reinforcing all kinds of stereotypes under the hood. Take the
Golden Age comics for instance. Not only are the gender stereotypes, and
socio-political ones, silently reinforced through the </div>
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<del>aesthetic</del></div>
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cosmetic and behavioural traits of the characters (all neatly divided
along gender lines), but the same are also the guiding principles
behind what each character is allowed, and not allowed, to say.</div>
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So, in the spirit of Direct Action subversion of cultural imperialism
in order to pursue Social Justice and Gender Desegregation, <a href="http://imgur.com/gallery/y2dTM">here’s some twisted takes on the Golden Age comics from yesteryears! </a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971346067453698462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2632664888860523303.post-29894515620195131062017-02-17T22:06:00.003-08:002017-02-17T22:19:33.225-08:00Primate Saturday: Cocoa with Koko<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: white;">For over almost half a century, </span><a data-mce-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francine_Patterson" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francine_Patterson"><span style="color: red;">Francine "Penny" Patterson</span></a><span style="color: white;"> has claimed that her surrogate daughter, a female western lowland gorilla named </span><a data-mce-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koko_(gorilla)" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koko_(gorilla)"><span style="color: red;">Koko</span></a><span style="color: white;">, can use sign language productively. Following what started as her own PhD project, Koko has gained international publicity due to both the public's fascination with a domesticated gorilla that clearly interacts (but not necessarily linguistically communicates) with humans, and also due (largely) to what most scientists consider to be over-inflated claims by Patterson regarding Koko's sign language usage.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">To be sure, no one has ever claimed that Koko cannot use signs to signal certain elemental concepts that are interpretable by humans. For instance, gorillas have long been known to be capable of complicated social structures, intricate inter-personal relationships and of a wide range of emotions. Given this, Koko's ability to use the sign for "sad" or "cry" on being shown pictures that would qualify as such, after extensive familiarization with the concerned sign-reference correlations, is hardly news to any primatologist. Patterson's claims, however, go far beyond this ability (often also observed in bonobos and chimpanzees) -- according to Patterson, Koko instinctively uses signs to communicate her feelings and thoughts. The ability to use discrete symbols, and to recursively combine them to create ever more complicated structures with semantic content, is a hallmark of the human species. And while Patterson does not, in fact, claim that Koko is quite that adept, her claims of Koko having self-consciousness, or being able to recognize herself in her reflections/creating a self-identity, and using sign-language to "think" about her world has consistently raised eyebrows in the scientific community. Several scientists have pointed out that Patterson is falling victim to the one cardinal sin in ethology -- anthropomorphism. She has been compared to an over-zealous mother who is infatuated with her very clever baby, and is thus ascribing to the behaviours of the baby concepts that are, developmentally, beyond the baby's ability. According to most, Patterson's interpretations of Koko's behaviors vanish when seen through more objective eyes.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">While Patterson's claims about Koko's abilities are very likely to be overreaching, she has nonetheless to be commended for spending her entire life caring for the gorilla she adopted. Certainly this deserves more praise than </span><a data-mce-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nim_Chimpsky#Project_Nim" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nim_Chimpsky#Project_Nim"><span style="color: red;">Project Nim</span></a><span style="color: white;">, wherein the researcher who adopted a chimpanzee, named him Nim Chimspky (after the polymath linguist Noam Chomsky), and tried to teach Nim sign language, would eventually give him up for a life in captivity when the research didn't go as expected. Nim, having been raised in a human family, was unable to adapt to wilderness later on. He lived out the remainder of his life, following the sad (but predictable) demise of Project Nim, being subjected to various forms of experimental indignities, including being used for product testing -- a confused, troubled and perpetually depressed chimpanzee, Nim died in his cage, forgotten and abandoned by the world that had moved on to the next circus trick.</span></div>
<span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 15px;">There are important lessons to be learned from both Project Nim and Koko. The positive lesson is one of hope; we are only gradiently removed from our closest cousins with whom we share a majority of our genetic materials, who only lack may be one or two of our qualities, but are nonetheless very as capable of appreciating us as we them. The other lesson, though, is one of a more cautionary note; just because our cousins in the ape world lack our kind of language neither makes them lacking in consciousness, nor does it do to invade their world and try to teach them neat circus tricks in vain and misguided attempts to improve on evolution.</span><span style="background-color: black; font-family: merriweather, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-size: 15px; text-align: justify;"></span><span data-mce-style="overflow:hidden;line-height:0px" data-mce-type="bookmark" id="mce_8_end" style="background-color: black; font-family: merriweather, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 0px; overflow: hidden; text-align: justify;"><span data-mce-style="overflow:hidden;line-height:0px" data-mce-type="bookmark" id="mce_12_end" style="line-height: 0px; overflow: hidden;"><span data-mce-style="overflow:hidden;line-height:0px" data-mce-type="bookmark" id="mce_16_end" style="line-height: 0px; overflow: hidden;"></span></span></span></span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971346067453698462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2632664888860523303.post-71411184370275121642017-02-12T23:45:00.001-08:002017-02-12T23:46:21.529-08:00Unrelenting<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px;">Slow, dull, monotonous, persistent</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px;">and unforgiving;</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px;">Every beat renews</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px;">the ever darkening constancy</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px;">of a reluctant pessimist.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"><br style="font-family: merriweather, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-size: 15px;" /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px;">An exercise in futility;</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px;">rusting arteries can only</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px;">blacken young blood,</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px;">with each new beat.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px;">Slow;</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px;">Dull;</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px;">Unrelenting;</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"><br style="font-family: merriweather, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-size: 15px;" /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px;">Never learning.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"><br style="font-family: merriweather, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-size: 15px;" /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px;">Mockingbirds do not return</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px;">to leafless branches</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px;">and play Muse</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px;">to the poets of eternal Fall.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971346067453698462noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2632664888860523303.post-74791970750116642092017-02-10T02:28:00.002-08:002017-02-12T23:28:56.115-08:00Primate Saturday: Ham in Space<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px;">Before there was Neil Armstrong, Yuri Gagarin or Carl Sagan, there were the forgotten apes we sent to space. Whether such acts reflect human anthropocentrism, or whether they were worthwhile sacrifices for furthering our understanding of the cosmos, is an open debate. No one, of course, in their right minds would claim that we should not have studied the space. The survival of our species, and since we alone are capable of Scientific logic probably the survival of other earthlings, depends on our understanding of deep space. So, perhaps, instead of arguing against the space-faring chimpanzees, we should look back on their experiences, and remember the sacrifices they made (involuntary as they were) to further </span><strong style="font-family: merriweather, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-size: 15px;"><em>our</em></strong><span style="font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px;"> understanding of the cosmic ocean. So, in remembering the most humane of the astronomers, I dub thee </span><em style="font-family: merriweather, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-size: 15px;">Sagan's Primates.</em></span></div>
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<em style="background-color: white; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 15px;"><b><u><span style="color: #990000;">The Story of Ham</span></u></b></em></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971346067453698462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2632664888860523303.post-2657850206995555832017-02-03T12:07:00.001-08:002017-02-03T12:07:49.046-08:00In All Fairness<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<pre style="background: rgb(243, 246, 248); color: #3d596d; font-family: Monaco, Consolas, "Andale Mono", "DejaVu Sans Mono", "Courier 10 Pitch", Courier, monospace; font-size: 15px; padding: 8px;">Forked-tongued, mousse haired, black tied
Cretins
whistle hawkish tunes,
circling the bodies of Syrian children
washed up on Bodrum shores,
singing war songs,
beating battle drums.
Lying, stealing, pillaging,
boundary-challenged savants,
talk of walls and borders.
And from the heights of Standing Rock,
drenched in the blood and tears
of an once proud People,
Fair Evil eyes the Earth;
looking, searching, lusting
for another Wounded Knee.</pre>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971346067453698462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2632664888860523303.post-60407905830942016852017-02-03T11:26:00.001-08:002017-04-28T10:26:29.396-07:00Primate Saturday: Mutual Aid Apes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px;">Bonobos share 98.7% of our DNA. Physically, they resemble chimpanzees. But something remarkable sets them apart from their primate cousins, making them an altogether different animal. Bonobos live in almost complete absence of violence; work cooperatively toward shared goals; foster a society that values equality; and engage in prolific casual sex. Could these gentle, promiscuous creatures hold the key to a world without war? Vanessa Woods, author of Bonobo Handshake, discusses what we might learn from our evolutionary relatives with anthropologist Brian Hare and NPR RadioLab's Jad Abumrad.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971346067453698462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2632664888860523303.post-67914973083012900702017-02-01T06:47:00.000-08:002017-02-03T11:24:23.140-08:00Primate Saturday: DIY Orangutans<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This is going to be a new series in the spirit of understanding the evolution of beings that would ultimately result in higher cognition, the highest being the human ability for logical natural language (my personal area of research). We are all, of course, descendants from the same single source, but even though we share much of our genetic materials with the higher apes -- bonobos, chimpanzees etc. -- we are still separated by a very tiny subset of cognitive abilities when compared to the higher primates. These abilities, often abstract computational in nature, must nontheless be explained as biological endowments, which in turn require an evolutionary (thought not necessarily adaptationist) explanation.</div>
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This series, though, is not so much meant to be an in depth elaboration of the concerned science as it is meant to be <em><strong>food for thought</strong></em>... How did we get here, with our abilities to do mathematics and write poetry, and engage in all sorts of abstractions, starting with the simple, yet revolutionary, ability to imitate and use tools?</div>
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<strong><span style="color: maroon;"> </span><span style="color: #993300;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">David A</span><span style="text-decoration: underline;">ttenborough: BBC Earth's Amazing DIY Orangutans</span></span></strong></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971346067453698462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2632664888860523303.post-86088116894227710412017-01-11T17:05:00.001-08:002017-01-11T17:12:16.531-08:00Epilogue to Identity Politics<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Barrack
Obama is almost out of the White House, and boy!, did he have some
Call-of-Duty-styled fun with the world during his time in power! And the
saddest bit is that this hawkish, lying, totalitarian goon will only
look saintly in comparison to the utterly bigoted lunatic white
supremacist who is to follow him. But let's stay focused on Barry for
the moment.</div>
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We
all remember the moment he was elected, the tears in the eyes of the
aging civil rights warriors who had lived through Jim Crow and
segregation, the old women of color who were grandmothers before they
earned the right to vote, and we understood why it mattered to them.
Even as we were scared of the inevitable bane of identity politics, even
as we knew deep in our hearts that when you pick from a pack of wolves
you can only ever pick another wolf, even so we couldn't help but give
in a little to the magnitude of "<i>change</i>" in the fortunes of a people, even if it was purely symbolic. But fast forward eight years, and what do we have? The "<i>change</i>"
that we could believe in is nowhere to be seen, either in domestic or
in foreign affairs of Barry's regime. But lies, deceits, coups,
assassinations and incarceration of dissent as far as the eye can see.</div>
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Kafka once wrote, "<i>Suffering must lead to something elementally beautiful", </i>and much in a Kafkaesque fashion we <i>hoped</i>
that a man who came from a long suffering people would know not to
further suffering of others. What we got, though, was a black elite who
carried out<span style="background-color: white;"> <span style="color: lime;"><a data-mce-href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2012/10/spy-o01.html" href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2012/10/spy-o01.html">the most extensive surveillance campaign at home</a>, <a data-mce-href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/16/whistleblowers-double-standard-obama-david-petraeus-chelsea-manning" href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/16/whistleblowers-double-standard-obama-david-petraeus-chelsea-manning">persecuted whistle blowers using an Espionage Act drafted in 1917</a>, <a data-mce-href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/14/barack-obama-us-racism-police-brutality-failed-victims" href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/14/barack-obama-us-racism-police-brutality-failed-victims">stayed silent in the face of a white supremacist police state carrying out genocidal violence against his own people</a>,</span></span> and abroad <span style="color: lime;"><a data-mce-href="http://blogs.cfr.org/zenko/2017/01/05/bombs-dropped-in-2016/" href="http://blogs.cfr.org/zenko/2017/01/05/bombs-dropped-in-2016/"><span style="background-color: white;">e</span><span style="background-color: white;">ngaged in the most extensive drone assassination and terror campaign the world has ever known.</span></a> </span>Here's a chart from the Council on Foreign Relations on exactly how much '<i>HOPE</i>' and '<i>CHANGE</i>' Barry brought to the world, disguised as heavy munitions, in 2016 alone!</div>
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<img alt="cfr_us_drones_011017-847x1024" class=" wp-image-215 alignnone" data-mce-selected="1" data-mce-src="https://spandrelsofevolutionblog.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/cfr_us_drones_011017-847x1024.jpg?w=847" height="619" src="https://spandrelsofevolutionblog.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/cfr_us_drones_011017-847x1024.jpg?w=847" width="512" /></div>
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In
fact, looking at the chart above one would wonder, isn't Barry doubly
responsible for his crimes against humanity because he used the color of
his skin to not only trick a desperate population into believing he was
their <i>"hope"</i> for a <i>"change"</i> from his predecessors, but also stole a Nobel Peace prize? For being black! While he silently watched <a data-mce-href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/08/us/study-supports-suspicion-that-police-use-of-force-is-more-likely-for-blacks.html?_r=0" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/08/us/study-supports-suspicion-that-police-use-of-force-is-more-likely-for-blacks.html?_r=0"><span style="background-color: white;">the tacit exploitation</span> </a>and<a data-mce-href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/black-people-killed-by-police-america_us_577da633e4b0c590f7e7fb17" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/black-people-killed-by-police-america_us_577da633e4b0c590f7e7fb17"> <span style="background-color: white;">murder of the same black people</span></a>,
on whose shoulders he stood to claim a Nobel prize, by a brutal and
biased police force resorting to Jim Crow era tactics! Barry may look
black, but he has never lifted a single finger to help the conditions
and lives of those whose legacy he has instead exploited to further the
imperialist cause. Heck, <span style="background-color: white;"><a data-mce-href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121276209" href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121276209">the man even gave a speech at the Nobel Peace ceremony <b><i>justifying</i></b> war!</a></span> Words befitting a man whose philosophical ruminations involve <span style="background-color: white;"><a data-mce-href="https://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/22/arundhati_roy_on_obamas_wars_india" href="https://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/22/arundhati_roy_on_obamas_wars_india">"<i>moral standards in waging war"</i></a></span><i><span style="background-color: white;">.</span> </i><i>How strange it is how strange the world turns out to be</i>, as Jerry Fodor once wrote.</div>
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Ask yourself, "<i>How many people did each one of those bombs kill?"</i>
If we assume a medium death toll per bomb of, say, 10 people each, then
the United States has killed a quarter of a million people in the last
year alone. If the number is very large, then it is an atrocity that
rivals the worst ones ever committed in the history of humanity. And
yet, Barry wins a Nobel Peace Prize, and <span style="background-color: white;"><a data-mce-href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/reality-denial-apologetics-for-western-imperial-violence/32066" href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/reality-denial-apologetics-for-western-imperial-violence/32066">Steven Pinker is singing hosannas for </a></span><i><span style="background-color: white;"><a data-mce-href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/reality-denial-apologetics-for-western-imperial-violence/32066" href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/reality-denial-apologetics-for-western-imperial-violence/32066">the long democratic peace</a></span>.</i>
We are at peace, apparently, yet a single country has probably killed
more than a quarter of a million people in just the last one year. In a
saner world, the sheer paradox would drive a moral man to insanity. And
to the observant ones, this truth is not that hard to comprehend either.</div>
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This
should hardly be news, if it wasn't for the fact that we live in a
media-controlled nation where public intellectuals are replaced with
prime-time talk show hosts and unfunny comedians making placid
observations about the world that fail to challenge the status quo in
any kind of an informative manner. As Noam Chomsky, one of the last
remaining iconic intellectuals, once said, <i>"The smart way to keep
people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of
acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that
spectrum....”. </i>And Chomsky falls outside that spectrum. In an
interview with Washington based history teacher Dan Falcone and New York
based English teacher Saul Isaacson, <span style="background-color: white;"><a data-mce-href="http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/37250-noam-chomsky-obamas-drone-wars-are-the-worst-terror-campaigns-on-the-planet" href="http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/37250-noam-chomsky-obamas-drone-wars-are-the-worst-terror-campaigns-on-the-planet">'<i>the most important intellectual alive' </i>discussed
the issues of drone warfare, terrorism, and Washington's long legacy in
indulging in genocidal games, group/identity politics and
exceptionalism.</a></span></div>
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<span data-mce-style="color: #993366;" style="color: #993366;"><i>"Yeah,
Reagan started it. It’s pretty interesting. I mean terror became a big
issue when the Reagan Administration came in. They immediately announced
[their plans] and kind of disparaged Carter’s alleged human rights
programs. The main issue is state-directed international terrorism.
Right at that time that big industry developed. That’s when you start
getting the academic departments on terrorism. You get UN conferences
trying to define terrorism. Journals, you know, big explosion of
interest in terrorism. I started writing about it more at that time as
did Ed Herman. But we actually had been writing about it before and we
picked up after that.</i></span></div>
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<span data-mce-style="color: #993366;" style="color: #993366;"><i>But
the stuff that we write can’t enter the canon for a very simple reason.
We use the official definitions of terrorism. The definitions in the
U.S. code, in British law, in U.S. Army manuals and so on. And if you
use those definitions it follows instantly that the United States is the
leading terrorist state in the world. So since you can’t have that
conclusion you have to do something else. And if you look at all this
academic work in the conferences and so on there’s a constant theme that
terrorism is extremely hard to define and we therefore have to have a
deep thinking about it. And the reason it’s hard to define is quite
simple. It’s hard to find a definition that includes what they do to us
but excludes what we do to them. That’s quite difficult. So it takes a
global war on terrorism.</i></span></div>
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<span data-mce-style="color: #993366;" style="color: #993366;"><i>The
worst terrorist crimes going on right now are the drone campaigns. But
you can’t include that obviously. So you have to try to define it. I
mean if Iran was carrying out an assassination campaign killing anyone
around the world who Iran thought might harm them someday we’d go crazy.
But that’s the drone campaign.</i></span></div>
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<span data-mce-style="color: #993366;" style="color: #993366;"><i>There’s
been a big problem now, for 35 years, in trying to define a way to
restrict the concept of terrorism to things that those guys are doing to
us. Take a look at the Supreme Court decision that just authorized an
effort by U.S. claimants against Iran for terrorist acts. What are the
terrorist acts? The terrorist acts are bombings of U.S. military
installations in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, which Iran is claimed to have
something to do with. Well suppose they did. That’s not terrorism. I
mean if we have a military base in Lebanon that while we’re shelling
Lebanese naval ships, the Navy is shelling Lebanese installations and
somebody attacks [that’s not terrorism].</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="indent" data-mce-style="padding-left: 60px; text-align: justify;" style="padding-left: 60px; text-align: justify;">
<span data-mce-style="color: #993366;" style="color: #993366;"><i>But
that’s the way you’ve got to craft the concept and it runs right
through the whole ideological system. Kind of interestingly one of the
exceptions is the international law community. So there’s an interesting
review article in the latest issue of the American Journal of
International Law, a very conservative journal, which basically does, or
comes pretty close to calling the drone campaign terrorism. But it’s
not in the mainstream of course or in the textbooks.</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span data-mce-style="color: #993366;" style="color: #993366;"><i>In
fact if you look at Reagan’s global war on terrorism it very quickly
turned into a massive terrorist war: [by us] Central America, South
Africa, the Middle East, all U.S.-backed terrorism. That’s one of the
reasons why it disappeared from history and why the standard line is
that Bush 43 declared the war on terror. Actually he just repeated what
Reagan had said 20 years earlier."</i></span></div>
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<div class="indent" data-mce-style="text-align: justify;" style="text-align: justify;">
The interview is illuminating and insightful, and serves as <span style="background-color: white;"><a data-mce-href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/14/13577464/obama-farewell-speech-torture-drones-nsa-surveillance-trump" href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/14/13577464/obama-farewell-speech-torture-drones-nsa-surveillance-trump">a stark reminder of the troubled legacy of identity politics </a></span>that
we cannot afford to forget just because of Trump. There are lessons to
be learned here, and especially so when the time comes for us to react
to whatever destruction and devastation Trump will leave us with! If we
pay attention to history, and listen to public intellectuals like
Chomsky, may be we won't make the mistake of indulging in identity
politics when reacting to the Trump-era like we made when reacting to <i>'dubya'.</i></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971346067453698462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2632664888860523303.post-66738366643100374022017-01-02T23:38:00.002-08:002017-01-02T23:38:40.390-08:00Cold Turkey<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<pre>You ever wandered,
inside your own head?
Aimlessly?
Heedlessly?
Like a drunk hobo in Kansas?
There's a feeling --
I can't find --
lost in my head. Endlessly
It itches
Where I can't scratch.</pre>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971346067453698462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2632664888860523303.post-6304906848405848922016-12-22T03:50:00.001-08:002016-12-22T03:50:57.518-08:00A Make-Believe Poem<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<pre>Seaside autumn evenings seep
between the yellowing pages
of an old journal --
And rustling,
the winds of used deskfans
smell of sub-continental summers past.</pre>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971346067453698462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2632664888860523303.post-15703552001335939422016-12-13T22:17:00.001-08:002016-12-13T22:18:24.843-08:00Sour<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<pre>This and that... and those;
sundry remnants of little summer indiscretions
-- they build up on you!
Hunched over, fat, sweating in sleeveless vests;
Sort and shuffle, and burrowing through
little stacks of procrastinations,
and lotto tickets, paperback Kerouac and playboys;
Murmurs of the lost summers
of his youth.</pre>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971346067453698462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2632664888860523303.post-84335041980593567482016-12-13T03:38:00.001-08:002016-12-13T04:08:13.616-08:002nd Street<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Sometimes, she wonders<br />
if Dreams are just fragments<br />
of fear and desperation?<br />
Shaped, sanded, and molded.<br />
Neat little blocks<br />
of antediluvian uncertainties.<br />
<br />
Out on long walks --<br />
the kind that's good for the soul --<br />
Sometimes, she had thought of Love;<br />
seeping out from behind tiny suburban windows,<br />
where tired old wives<br />
fight off their beer-crazed husbands.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971346067453698462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2632664888860523303.post-56139843798820923952016-11-03T15:44:00.001-07:002016-12-13T15:51:47.538-08:00For Noam Chomsky: On his 88th Birthday!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />Thinking of you, old friend...<br />Thinking of our first meeting;<br />In a dark corner of a dusty library,<br />
your voice first enthralled me --<br />Speaking from 1959, you endowed<br />the mind with ideas that shatter orthodoxy. And yet,<br />so radical in their comprehensibility.<br /><br /><br /> In a trance, I returned the next day, <br />To that dusty corner, in 1967.<br />You were there! And you spoke<br />
of responsibilities in ideas;<br />And I promised to always try...</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971346067453698462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2632664888860523303.post-87890985003988548272016-10-27T16:12:00.002-07:002016-10-27T16:13:11.577-07:00For Noam Chomsky<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Among other things,<br />
thanks for explaining how<br />
the many palettes of deceit paint<br />
different masks for<br />
The Truth.<br />
<br />
Among other gifts,<br />
thanks for the undeniable...<br />
Courage in comprehensibility.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971346067453698462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2632664888860523303.post-57806293548290662832016-06-14T13:41:00.000-07:002016-06-22T13:39:17.953-07:00Neoliberalism: A Ghost Story<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
"How do they bear my weight?", I wonder...<br />
Standing in silent depression,<br />
Memories of bygone centuries weighing down<br />
On their rocky shoulders.<br />
<br />
They watch the water under the bridge;<br />
As a great serpentine stream,<br />
Struggles to wash it all.<br />
All the lies, all the filth and all the accumulated waste of <i>Progress and Development</i>.<br />
And neoliberalism colors the waters of Ganges.<br />
<br />
I sit on the shoulders of giants;<br />
Behind me a metropolis' heart beats,<br />
Down in the sewers, and the gutters, and the slums;<br />
Where its dearest families live.<br />
And in front, ghost of an once voluptuous river;<br />
Stinks of methane and gasoline.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971346067453698462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2632664888860523303.post-88284999785515886662016-06-14T02:35:00.003-07:002016-06-15T11:57:20.216-07:00The First Naxal: Initial Impressions of Kanu Sanyal's Authorized Biography and a First-Person Look inside the Naxalite Revolution<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gwJrRgF_6Vw/V1_PxOdGC6I/AAAAAAAAJEw/9mlOTgtgHy0oVK1V_C530jRbpJmEpsIoACLcB/s1600/the-first-naxal-400x400-imadyvguzng3pmct.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gwJrRgF_6Vw/V1_PxOdGC6I/AAAAAAAAJEw/9mlOTgtgHy0oVK1V_C530jRbpJmEpsIoACLcB/s320/the-first-naxal-400x400-imadyvguzng3pmct.jpeg" width="204" /></a><span style="font-size: large;">It seldom happens that the story
of an individual becomes so intertwined with the cause she or he stands for,
that it becomes impossible to separate one from the other. Kanu Sanyal's is one
such rare story. To read it is to relive the history of the Naxalite Movement (since 1965),
which the Indian establishment calls <i>"the country's biggest internal
security threat"</i>, even as its poorest and fringe-marginalized desperately
hang on to the same movement as their last resort.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;">This book narrates the making of
Kanu Sanyal right from his childhood to the days of the Naxalbari Uprising (in the mid-'60s), and then traces the historical development well beyond the confines of the tumultous '60s right down to India's great foray into neoliberalism in the 1990s. Supposedly, <i>the last great decade</i>. It delves deep into Sanyal's evolution as a Marxist-materialist (as
opposed to Bolshevik Communist) rebel and throws light on the various
stages of the Naxalite Movement, starting with the Naxalbari Uprising, with relevant background information, and then continues on to trace the effects of the uprising, and the reactions to it, on the current political environment in India's untold reality. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In short, much more than a historical retelling <i>The First Naxal</i> is also a brutally honest indictment of the heady subcontinental
flavor of neoliberalism, aka <i>'India Shining'</i>, that gripped the Indian economy in
the early 90s like yellow fever, leading the "sovereign socialist secular
democratic" State down a path where like a thirsty vampire it sucked out
the nation's core resources (its rivers, forests, mountains, and the people who
depended on these natural resources) and like a sick street-dog vomited it out
in its many glittering malls and supermarkets -- 'India Shining', in tinfoil
wrapped American-conceived, Chinese-sweatshop executed, mass-manufactured
trinkets, made out of the very flesh of an ancient land, and soaked in the
blood and dreams of its poorest and disenfranchised. Unlike most works on sociopolitical commentary, however, this book does the public service of explaining the present in its proper historical context. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The Poet once wrote,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;">
<i> "Each
slow turn of the world carries such disinherited,<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>
To whom neither the past nor the future belong."</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;">This book details a brave and
unapologetic uprising of those disinherited who, devoid of a past and denied
any future, plunged headfirst into an armed revolution against an unforgiving
State Machinery in a desperate attempt to stop the civilized, moderate
middle-class from stealing the last crumbs of bread off of their banana-leaves
plates. And the merciless repression they faced in the form of the ire and
anger of the patriarchal Indian State, and the apathy and indifference of a
'shining' moderate, liberal middle class that is so comfortable in its negative
peace of "no noise" that it didn't think to blink even once as an
entire race of people were, and still are, slowly being pushed to the brink of
extinction. Kanu Sanyal's is a story not just of a forgotten (albeit very much
alive) people's revolution, but also of the genocidal nature of a Brahminical
State steeped in caste-ist bigotry and a sense of entitlement to privilege. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Just as much it is a story of an apathetic, blissfully ignorant, media-addicted, consumption-driven,
shine-fascinated middle-class that seems more and more comfortable with the
idea of the aforementioned State Patriarch, so long as the State acts as the
vanguard of their distorted morality. Keep the poptarts flowing into their LG microwaves, and they will happily ignore mass genocide while they Boldly watch the Beautiful on a 43 inch plasma screen television mounted on their bottle-green painted Parisian-plastered wall -- the proud sons and daughters of Friedman's loopy Free Market. Other than poptarts, microwaves and plasma screens, the story of the middle class, however, has remained the same even as the decades have rolled by. From the 60s, through the 70s and right down to the 90s, <i>The First Naxal </i>and the first naxal tells us of our own sad origins. We The People.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">As one reads through the pages of this book -- rather ordinary use of the English language to effectively paint in words one of the most extraordinary times in recent history -- it is not hard to understand the circumstances that made a former school teacher (mastermosai, in vernacular) in one of the more rural areas of West Bengal reach the conclusion that <i>"eliminating individual class enemies -- police officers, university teachers, bankers, and politicians from both the left and right -- in open daylight, for all the moneyed class to see"</i> is the only way to perfect social justice. Nor is it difficult to sympathize with the urban Naxalites -- an entire generation of mostly upper-middle class, higher educated, urban youth, who dropped out of India's most elite colleges and universities, denounced paternal inheritance, and picking up arms brought to life one of the bloodiest decades in Indian history, nearly wiping out the bourgeoisie in Bengal. And just as easy is to shiver at the sheer violence with which the Indian State reacted towards its own children -- and children they really were, most naxalites. The average age of these <i>"internal terrorists"</i> -- in dealing with whom Indira Gandhi, then Prime Minister of India, declared <i>"democratic niceties have no place in civil war"</i> (Maggie Thatcher must have been proud of her former Trinity bestie), and under whose expert orders Siddhartha Sankar Roy, then Chief Minister of Bengal, unleashed the most brutal form of "torture and execute" operation in West Bengal -- was eighteen.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">One wonders, reading the story of Bimal, a twenty-one year old student from Jadavpur, who was hung upside down and had a hot iron inserted in his rectum at the express order of Somen Mitra, the anti-Naxal spearhead of the Congress party in Bengal -- routine interrogation during the Naxal days in Bengal -- how many Bimals were tortured and executed by the State from 1967 to 1975? How many enemies of class war did the Bimals of the day execute? The numbers are lost somewhere between government lies and rebel re-tellings, leaving behind shattered families and a forlorn dream. And <i>Sita Mashi</i> (Aunt Sita) who, ninety seven years old now, still sits on her <i>khatiya</i> (a sort of hammock-like bed made out of wood and ropes) and tells anyone who would listen where she used to boil rice for her son, Anish, and where the police took him to be shot, behind a public urinal, and how he touched her feet before he was dragged away.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">But who has time to listen? Out in the streets of Calcutta, oops Kolkata (the State wants to rewrite its colonial past, and recolonize the land on its own now), busy teenagers cross the roads absorbed in their iThings, and the malls fill up daily with boys and girls still in school uniforms. Bimal and Anish's dream, however, lives on in India's <i>Red Corridor</i>, where the State sponsored genocide also still continues. An endless cycle of violence; the Naxals kill cops, the cops wipe out tribal villages, the villagers blame the naxals, the naxals kill some villagers, and in Jadavpur University Paul Krugman recently gave a lecture on the Efficient Market Hypotheses. Adam Smith must be rolling around in his grave, even as the Ghost of Marx looks on in dismay, as <i>Sita Mashi </i>sits on her <i>khatiya</i>, slowly swaying back and forth, and keeps retelling old stories of Anish coming home from school, how old he would be now, and how she would rock her grandchildren on her knees if Anish was alive and married. She has never heard of Kanu Sanyal. But she remembers Anish, in his last days, used to say <i>Inquilab Zindabad</i> (Long Live the Revolution), and shows an old black-n-white photograph of Malcolm X to the reporters who show up once in a while, and wonders out aloud if it's a picture of one of Anish's classmate. <i>"He was very fond of the picture"</i>, she says.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"> <b><i>Amar chele-ta je kothay gelo?</i></b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-style: italic;"> </b>my son def.art where go</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> Where did he run away, my son?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;">What is significant about this
book, other than the deeply touching stories of people whose lives were forever changed by the Naxalbari Uprising, is that this is the only authorized biography of Kanu Sanyal in any
language - he personally read and cleared all its chapters but the last one,
which deals with his aberrant demise. On March 23, 2010, The First Naxal hung himself in his home in Seftullajote village. They say his body was broken from the three years of police torture he endured in the '70s, he suffered from a painful heart condition and was disillusioned at the murder of innocent villagers by some naxals in Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh recently. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: start;">
<span style="font-size: large;">One wonders, what would <i>Sita Mashi</i> say, if she ever met this man who so moved her son to take up arms and sacrifice his life for a just cause (even if one debates the just-ness of his methods)? Or heard of his demise? And what ghosts haunted Kanu Sanyal in his last days? Was he wrong in calling for a revolution? He did express remorse, in his later years, for having fueled an armed rebellion without laying enough ground work. But was an entire generation wrong to dream of a fairer future? Did they have to be slaughtered like animals? (Perhaps, as Noam Chomsky would say, <i>For Reasons of State.</i>) Is there a cure for the neoliberal onslaught that even today threatens India's, and the world's, poorest?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The State seems determined to push the justice-minded into another Naxalbari Uprising, and the State itself is now more powerful, more fearsome in its oppressive abilities, than it has ever been. Must the roots of <i>Progress and Development</i> be watered with our blood? Is this the nature of <i>Imperial Democracy -- </i>buy one, get one free? Can we sit still, as our mountains, rivers, forests and our flesh and blood, our friends, brothers, sisters and lovers, and all of their cumulative hopes and dreams are put up for sale by the highest bidder in the Free Market? Are we to let charlatans like Steven Pinker tell us that <i>The Better Angels of Our Nature </i> have come forth, that violence is on the decline in the best of ages in human history, even as we sink deeper in debt for wanting education and neoliberalism claims our very souls for its war-machine, and the State claims sole monopoly on violent methods? Are we to let Christopher Hitchens tell us to obey the <i>Good Capitalists</i> as they create minimum wage jobs for our children? Are we to let Sam Harris convince us that Arab commandos are terrorists, and Israeli terrorists are commandos? Is it only terrorism when it's done to them, and is it counter-terrorism when they do it to us? Are we to sit on the sidelines of history and watch our lives and future being bottled-up by Nestle, shrink-wrapped and sold in Walmart, and still not answer the call of Kanu Sanyal? </span></div>
<div style="text-align: start;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: start;">
<span style="font-size: large;">The author Arundhati Roy once wrote:</span></div>
<div style="text-align: start;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: start;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">"The irony has never really left me -- the government's genocide in India's Red Corridor is carried out in the name of Progress and Development, and the Turkish Government's special wing that carried out the Armenian Genocide was called The Committee for Progress and Development. Who is progressing? Whose development? I can never tell."</span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: start;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: start;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Neither can I. Neither could Kanu Sanyal. Nor Anish, nor Bimal. Certainly not <i>Sita Mashi.</i> Perhaps that's what led an eminent Bengali poet to write:</span></div>
<div style="text-align: start;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: start;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> <b><i> aamar bari, tomar bari</i></b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: start;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> my home your home</span></div>
<div style="text-align: start;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;"> <b> sobar bari Naxalbari</b></span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: start;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i> </i>everyone's home naxalbari</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: start;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: start;">
<span style="font-size: large;">We have a choice to make, I think. Kanu Sanyal, and the history of Naxalbari and the Naxals, teaches us a very important historical lesson.We can obey the State and <i>Make America (or India, or Pakistan, or <insert name here>) Great Again. </i>Or we can try to <i>Make Israel Palestine Again. </i>We can <i>Make Kashmir Independent Again. </i>We can <i>Make</i> <i>Nagaland Naga Again. </i>We can choose to live on our knees, or die on our feet. It is a hefty choice, to be sure, not to be made in a fit of emotional turbulence. But it is a choice, nonetheless. They made theirs -- Kanu Sanyal, Malcolm X, Bimal and Anish. Right or wrong, unlike Nixon's non-existent <i>Silent Majority </i>they made a loud and clear choice, they were the <i>Vocal Minority.</i> We must make ours.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: start;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: start;">
<i><b><span style="font-size: large;">Inquilab Zindabad</span></b></i></div>
<div style="text-align: start;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></div>
</div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971346067453698462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2632664888860523303.post-5612756766784083752016-03-04T22:36:00.001-08:002016-03-04T22:36:31.687-08:00USERNAME: EVIE -- A.I., Consciousness, Reality, Simulation and Identity in Joe Sugg's Graphic Novel Debut (A Spoiler-Free First Look)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1w7Ud1kdFnI/VtmeqY9lC0I/AAAAAAAAI24/LJIWabj8L8w/s1600/514IhJq4KXL._SX362_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1w7Ud1kdFnI/VtmeqY9lC0I/AAAAAAAAI24/LJIWabj8L8w/s320/514IhJq4KXL._SX362_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" width="233" /></a></div>
Reading Sugg's very first book, which just happens to be a graphic novel, was a rather personal experience for me. The twenty-something year old Sugg does an excellent job of tackling certain rather interesting contemporary existential issues arising out of where the world is headed with recent developments in Artificial Intelligence, studies of the brain and the mind, and their implications for the human condition in general, <b><i>and</i></b> he does so <i><b>while</b></i> telling a very gripping and relate-able story. As someone who has been writing for a while, I can vouch that this is no small feat. Sugg deserves high praise for this very time-worthy volume, that will take an hour and a half, or two even, of the reader's life and leave her with quite a few ruminations for those sleepless nights. So... let's dive right in!<br />
<br />
Like any conscientious young mind struggling with adolescence in this crazy corporate-consumerist world of ours, Evie feels alienated, lonely and at odds with the world. The loss of her mother, and her increasingly sick Computer Scientist father, adds to her growing sense of helpless fear as she continually struggles to find some sort of a human connection with her peers. But she finds only superficial frivolity, mindless consumerism, skin-deep camaraderie and groupies with more bubbles in their head than in their washing machines. Evie is at once torn between an intensely human urge to bond with another sapien mind, and her instinctive repulsion of the mindlessness of her peers, and they in turn respond to Evie's lack of superficiality and herd-mentality in the only way they can -- with passive violence and cruelty. Evie is scared, and hopeless in the certainty that the fridge inside which she sometimes climbs in is her only true place. She only wants what she can't have -- a safe haven with some friends who can understand her. But while the world seems indifferent, one man will not stand for Evie's psycho-emotional destitute.<br />
<br />
Unbeknownst to Evie, her father, a brilliant Artificial Intelligence expert, is determined to give Evie a safe haven. As the reality of his own failing health dawns on Evie's father, he turns his back on the embodied physical world and turns to the abstract to ensure his daughter has somewhere left to come home to when he is gone. He would simulate her a better world! A world coded and programmed from the ground up to accept, to nurture nature and to value the mind that makes Evie so very special! <i><b>e.Scape </b></i>-- a living, breathing Computational Dimension with just one thing to provide it any meaning and existence. Evie's mind. When Evie's father passes away before he can finish programming e.Scape, he leaves her a mutating algorithm that only requires exposure to Evie's mind to complete itself. And all Evie needs to find her haven is a USERNAME: Evie.<br />
<br />
Inside e.Scape, awaiting the arrival of Evie, is an entire world that would derive its very essence from an alienated mind and its untapped potential. And Evie's guide to her new world, and in a way to her very own mind, is an highly sophisticated A.I. interface that takes a transgendered-transcultural form -- <i>UNITY. </i>Unity is meant to be Evie's encyclopedia to e.Scape. Unity has no gender, nor any race, in fact Unity probably wouldn't even exist if Evie could only lend her mind to e.Scape. Or, would Unity? Unity is a set of principles that guide e.Scape to absorb Evie's mental realities, and to reflect their immense potential back to her. But when more than just Evie arrives in e.Scape, Unity faces a choice -- should she evolve? Should Unity remain a set of principles that are designed to absorb, or should Unity now face her own computational free will and interpret what her principles mean? Are principles mere statements? If there is a meaning to principles, are they inherent to the principles? Are they a reflection of the minds that framed those principles? What parameters must a set of principles impose upon their self-intepretations? Can A.I.s have free will? Is Unity to transform her descriptive status, shed the artificial and become a true intelligence? Or will that entail a betrayal of her own computational roots? Is the programmer the limit of the program? Or is the algorithm more than just a recipe? How is Unity to know? Is it even possible to <b><i>know</i></b>? <br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971346067453698462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2632664888860523303.post-73549508883203339302015-02-09T04:08:00.000-08:002015-02-09T04:08:02.058-08:00On Anarchism (Noam Chomsky): First Impressions of the Penguin Special Edition<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-K4aS8MmApVc/VNii7Bsiu2I/AAAAAAAAH0w/XK1TNfpqDtI/s1600/71S4ZmtHZUL._SL1500_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-K4aS8MmApVc/VNii7Bsiu2I/AAAAAAAAH0w/XK1TNfpqDtI/s1600/71S4ZmtHZUL._SL1500_.jpg" height="320" width="195" /></a>
Noam Chomsky is the "<i>world's most important intellectual</i>", and
few who know and understand his philosophy, his Science and/or his
socio-economic and geo-political commentary would argue otherwise.
Although that title was given to him by the NYT, in a vain and failed
effort at sarcasm, it has stuck and for good reasons. Whether you have
read Chomsky or not, whether or not you have heard him speak, chances
are you know his name, and you have some idea of what he is about. This,
despite the American media's unabashed attempts at ignoring his very
existence. And these are precisely the issues that Chomsky discusses in
this volume -- intellectual traditions, public consciousness, media,
government, power politics, environment, philosophy, theory, oppression,
repression, propaganda, and underneath it all, mankind's instinctive
urge to probe, to question, to revolt, and to defy. <br /><br />In his
quintessential fashion, Chomsky remains theory-free in his political
discourse, and avoids jargon. His political works have always been
cut-n-dry, bare-bones, and deliberately "un-inspirational", as he
consciously chooses to focus on data and analyses instead. This volume,
although written in a similar fashion, is at once vastly different.
Chomsky, here, reluctantly assumes the mantle of the father of modern
anarcho-syndicalism, and takes upon himself the task of explaining to
Everyman the centuries old political-humanist-philosophy of anarchism,
its genealogies, its history, and its position and role in our society
today. Understanding any ancient epistemology is a monumental task, and
even more so the task of trying to explain in one book all the relevant
underpinnings of such a tradition. Yet, this is the task that Chomsky
undertakes in this volume, and in so doing he almost approximates
poetry. From Marx and Bakunin, through Humboldt and Kant, right down the
Paris Commune and the Spanish Revolution of 1936, Noam Chomsky
painstakingly locates, quotes, places in context, deconstructs,
elaborates, and simplifies the very truisms and fundamental moral
objectivities that form the basis of anarchist thought. Chomsky lets
that historical figures do their own talking, as his style, and
restricts his own role to that of a commentator. Yet these commentaries
are what makes this volume so important -- they shed light on the
sub-textual, bring to the surface the underlying, and in a stroke of
brilliance demarcates the boundaries that separate Marxism, Socialism,
Communism and Anarchism. <br /><br />Chomsky's deep insight not only
elaborates on the philosophical foundations of Anarchism, but places
Anarchist thought in its true context, and presents it less as a
consciously formulated system of argumentation/political actions, and
more as an innate human instinct, a deep-seated evolutionary dis-trust
of power, authority, boundaries and control. Chomsky does not approach
issues with a fixed political thought (process), precisely what he
insists Anarchism is not, but rather with an Anarchist's instinctive
need to question authority -- thus arriving, functionally, at the true
definition of Anarchism.
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971346067453698462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2632664888860523303.post-87283149363378337102015-01-06T02:55:00.001-08:002015-04-06T00:40:54.794-07:0030's for a 80's Kid<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">I sit here, at the deserted corridor of the Margot Hardy Gallery of the
University of Western Sydney, late on this warm summer's evening. I am twenty-eight
years old, I will be twenty-nine in a few months. And as I sit staring at the
blinking cursor on my 2012 Macbook Pro, the summer wind blowing over my face brings back memories of so many summers; very similar summers in a very
different place. I wonder if those memories are mine? Am I the same person from
all those summers? Am I the accumulation of what has come of those many
summers? Or is this me, remembering many versions of myself from many different
summers? Are we all different people at different points in our lives? </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">It
is not always the same. It is not always romantic, tranquil or even nostalgic. Sometimes, when I wake up, I just lie in my bed, and
wonder, "Why can't we figure out a way to remove specific periods and specific
people from our memory, say, surgically?"... I could use such a method. Other
times, I wonder, if running into the wall, head first, would work?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">"<i>Those people and periods, the ones you want to remove, are the
source of our rage. I wonder, I would ever want to let go of my rag</i>e",
PK says. He is one of my best friends. One of my few friends. We have lived
many lives together. In New Zealand. In Africa. In Australia. We have been
hungry together. We have feasted together. I listen to him closely. "<i>I
feel rage is being alive. It is rebelling against your darkness, darkness of
the soul that invites chaos. Memory itself is chaos. But, chaos
invites creation. May be, running into the wall helps. Or may be, throwing that
chaotic baggage of people and periods at the wall helps too</i>" .</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">I agree,
and disagree at the same time. Though, I mostly agree. Rage, anger, hatred, are
all useful emotions. The very emotions that make us human. One of the reasons
why shrinks, those vanguards of state power and status quo, strive so hard to
take those driving forces away from us, and use fancy terms like anger
management and counselling in doing so, is so we are left with no tools for
resistance. We become passive tools of conformity -- sheeple.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"> Yes, I am all for
directing the rage and hatred at people who deserve it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">"<i>But, P**** my old friend, now comes my precautionary warnings.
Hate is like LSD, very potent, very powerful, and very hallucinogenic. Trust
me. Few people know hate and LSD as well as I do. But, as wonderful a substance
as LSD is, and it is quite wonderful as numerous scientists and poets will tell
you, it IS hallucinogenic. So is hate, my friend. After a while, it gets hard
to distinguish between who is deserving and who is not. And try as you may, you
stand a very good chance of hurting people who have been nothing but good to
you. And I will not have that for any reason whatsoever. The spirit of
anarchism is "Resistance against the violent. Compassion for all."
And lately, I have found that I am being hindered, my productivity being
minimised, by both useless initiatives that lack proper Science, and too much
distraction in the form of hate. I mean, don't get me wrong, I am all for
confrontations and in-your-face attitude. But you gotta pick your battles bro.
You don't wanna put on your black mask to go after a pesky little fly, do you?
Save your energy for the elite, the powerful, the 'respectable', the rich, the
bourgeoisie, and the vanguards of the nation-state system. You don't want to be
distracted from the revolution by the little people, and the worthless little
irritations. You have bigger fish to fry. </i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><i>Hey!! You listening to me?", </i>I
almost raise my voice indignantly. I have been talking for almost five minutes,
and he has not made a sound. I look up, to see the Margot Hardy Gallery, and a
deserted corridor. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">PK is twelve thousand miles away, in Durham, Scotland. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">I
look down. The blinking cursor stares back at me, like a hapless lover awaiting
response to some forgotten confessions of love. I stare back.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"> Ghosts. Ghosts
are all that are left of the days of yesteryears. The past is another country,
long lost in some forgotten revolution. And journeys therein, of necessity, are
clouded by false memories, false recollection of true events. Even the people
from the past, the ones who left the deepest of marks, would have already
turned into ghosts. Forgone dreams may hold them steadfast in memory, but they
would hardly have any ground left under them -- their feet would have already
turned into smoke.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">It has been eighty-four hours, since I, finally, emailed in my summary
resignation. I had finally decided that I would rather be unemployed, than
oppressed. I did so with great sadness -- in general, because I enjoy Science,
in particular because I will miss Ann Cutler.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">But issues of existential significance, in a purely physical and
political sense of existentialism, are worth more than money or a diploma. I
had stood by what I said and wrote. Because, what I talk and write about,
straddle issues of "profit over people". I am happy to pay the price
for my dissent. I know I will pay dearly for it too. But hey, I got nothing!
What more can you do to me? </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">The thing about having nothing is that there's
nothing people can take from you. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">So... here I am! I enter my thirties, with naught but a headful of
abstract theories, a few diplomas, negligible savings, no prospects for the
future, no expectations from the present, a few good friends, a hoard of
haters, and all the glory of an unemployed, dissident, entry-level hobo. I am
one of you, brothers. Officially. And I must admit, while I am worried
about sorting out my life, somewhere inside, there is this faint inkling of
satisfaction -- I did it. I faced the demon, and as scared as I was, I did get
through. I always wondered, if the day should come when I face a choice between
actively practicing the people-before-profit philosophy I so admire, and having
a fixed income, would my fear of uncertainty overcome me? I was always worried
that the answer would not be good for my ego. I am happy to find out that I did
not, in fact, sell out. I am poor as shit... but, right now, at this specific
point in time, I can't seem to care. Tonight, I am happy. Tomorrow will be
another day. Soon, like so many acted out acts of my life, this too will be
reduced to little more than memories. I don't know if I should feel saddened,
frightened, relieved or simply glad. But I am in no hurry to decide. I don't
try so hard with these things anymore. I have learned not to. Like sand in a closed
fist, memories slip away, and one is left with a good strong clutch over
nothingness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">The outpour of support and compassion have been overwhelming, since I
quit my position. Friends, the few I have, and colleagues have showered me with
compassion, helping hands and sheer, unadulterated love and understanding. And
I have never been happier, more productive, and anger-free than in the last
four or five days, during which, incidentally, I have also been the poorest and
most insecure in recent history. There you have it -- rather conclusive
evidence that neither money nor security, both artificial constructs, are
driving factors behind happiness. As a scientist, which I am by vocation, I
find immense joy and bliss in doing mathematical and theoretical analyses of
data. As an anarchist, I am happy volunteering at the Society of Jesus'
orphanage. (Incidentally, my gratitude for Fr. J. Alexander Fosoux, S.J. for
allowing an atheist-anarchist to find some solace and engagement in his House.
These jesuits, and I know from a life-long experience, are seriously awesome
people.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">The only thing lacking is a long walk down to Auckland Domain, or down
Seafield View Road, with P**** and C**, and puffs of good ole' Mary
Jane. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">I close my eyes, and another gust of wind flows over my face. The rush of
memories is so strong, my heart almost skips a bit. I half expect to open my
eyes and find myself staring across Auckland Harbor, or over Davenport, the
village by the sea, or perhaps across the field of St. Xavier's High School,
and see L***'s smiling face inches from mine. I open my eyes.... and reality
drops back on my lap like shedding leaves in the summer breeze. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">1998 was
sixteen years ago.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">I look around, and there is not a soul in sight. I can't help but chuckle
a bit, almost involuntarily. Cliques are so transient, and yet convince us that
they are forever. I was in a clique once. The Kliq. I wonder, where are they
now? What are the odds that, right now, there is more than one of
"us" thinking about when we were "us", young, naive,
ambitious and walking, talking, cliches? I can't help but chuckle again. Not
out of pity, but more out of a half-longing-half-understanding vantage, that
sixteen hard years have afforded me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">Despite all the hardships, though, in the last four years, I have been a
part of four different Universities, met numerous eminent scientists, been
inspired by a few, pissed off a whole bunch of them, I have met the most
awe-inspiring, and the most tedious people, I have fallen head-over-heels in
love, and gotten out of a decade-long obsession, I have gained priceless
friends, and lost an irreplaceable part of my life, and I have lived in places
that are so picturesque that pictures ruin their allure, and places so
revolting that I actually felt at home! And while they have been only a
handful, and far and few between, but some of the most important people in
my life have turned out to be the ones I met during this time. I shiver to
think what my life would have been like, had I not walked down this long, winding
path! </span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"> I wouldn't have it any other way. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">And if I could do it all over, live my life all over from the beginning,
I won't change a damn bit of it, just for the sake of what I have been through
in the course of this long, strange trip I've been on for, oh, so many years
now.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">Make no mistake about it. I enter my thirties, with a lot of
questions, very few answers, a lifetime's worth of memories, and experiences
that elude my prosaic abilities. I stand at the beginning of mid-life, with
more interrogatives than declaratives, but I do so with absolutely no regrets.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">Tolkien's words have never been truer -- "Not all who wander are
lost."</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment--></h3>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971346067453698462noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2632664888860523303.post-83856361234338774582014-12-29T02:07:00.001-08:002014-12-29T02:07:46.176-08:00Of Temporality <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">Ghosts. Ghosts are all that are left of the days of yesteryears. The past is another country, long lost in some forgotten revolution. And journeys therein, of necessity, are clouded by false memories, false recollection of true events. Even the people from the past, the ones who left the deepest of marks, would have already turned into ghosts. Forgone dreams may hold them steadfast in memory, but they would hardly have any ground left under them -- their feet would have already turned to smoke.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">It is difficult, utterly so, to be homeless. It is difficult still, to not have a home. It is not pleasant, to have to suffer. It is unpleasant still, to realise the futility of suffering. </span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">The great tragedy of life, is not that it ends. It is rather that the process is, inherently, paradoxical -- a continuous conflict between the destination and the journey itself.</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971346067453698462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2632664888860523303.post-51300887809226961222014-12-21T06:27:00.001-08:002014-12-29T02:08:37.592-08:00LSD, Grateful Dead and Self-Desired Psychosis.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's definitely a full body/mind experience for me. I am on my third acid (dropper/cid/blotter/drop etc.) right now, and I have one more to go. LSD, lysergic acid diethylamide, is an extremely potent hallucinogenic psychedelic compound, with (a) no physiological addiction, (b) no long-/short-term neurotoxicity, (c) no dependency syndromes, (d) no recorded case of overdose, and (e) no known side-effects, other than acute, and often desired, psychosis. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I felt the acid coming on very gradually, about ninety minutes after I placed the blot under my tongue. It began as a mild altered consciousness, purely psychological, but then slowly spread over for a more full body/mind experience. The immediate, and so far as I can tell right now, persistent, effect is increased (definitely heightened), but also highly altered (paradigm shifted) cognition. It seems pretty domain general at this point -- I can tell it affects spatial reasoning, I know it affects melody and rhythm, I know it's making me a little bit more jovial than I usually am (I am laughing my ass off to That 70s Show), and it certainly makes you aware of the physical limits of your body, the edge of your skin against the cosmos. And yeah, talking like this is another not-so-bad effect of LSD.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am not sure that I had any of the acute visual experience that most LSD users swear by, but I did experience acute psychedelic shifts in my conceptual-intentional system, and getting a little bit higher up with the abstractions, some major shifts in the recursion of the Fodorian concepts within my mind. There is nothing new, though. I should mention that. I don't think the LSD induced anything that wasn't there to begin with. Also, it is completely different, pleasantly so, from alcohol. Alcohol impedes cognition. LSD enhances it. As far as I can tell, right now, it also significantly modifies it. It's almost like being aware of things that you never knew you were NOT unaware of -- but seriously, it really lets you travel, almost literally, into some pretty enticing corners of your psyche, and affords whole new perspectives on things. I suppose, this is why they call this "a trip"??</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now,<span style="line-height: 19px;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823;"> </span><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">I am wondering, purely out of academic interest of course</span></span></span><span style="background-color: black; color: white; line-height: 19px;">, can the 'nature' of the trip be attributed to the LSD? I think LSD, in this context, is merely a catalyst that interacts with and manipulates the process of recursion of the Fodorian concepts in the mind, thereby inducing psychosis. My personal thinking is that it does not induce anything novel, but only magnifies and helps re-interpret the ongoing conceptual computation. Otherwise, there would be some observable correlation between the good trip vs. bad trip distinction and the chemical composition of the LSD ingested. I couldn't find any such reference in the literature.</span><span style="background-color: black; color: white; line-height: 19px;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Recursion!!! That's the key! Perhaps, recursion characterises other more domain-general cognitive functions as well, thereby distinguishing those functions in humans from other higher primates! Hmmm... I should run this by Iris Berent, and possibly Poeppel and Pinker too!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Okay!! I think I might be beginning to see some of the visual auras... this is so awesome!!! I just spent the last seven minutes trying to adjust the font size across the text, only to realise that its the acid interfering with my depth-perception and spatial-reasoning. I am still completely in command of my mind and, from what I can tell from the line-walk test I just took, also my body. There is no hangover of any sort. Nor any clumsiness, as one would from drinking alcohol. In fact, I feel fresh. Almost unbelievably so. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My mind is a kaleidoscope, right now.... somebody is playing Grateful Dead's greatest hits from 1965... Amy Goodman is interviewing Noam on Syria... and I just saw a freaking dragonfly, gold and blue, burst out of a rainbow and dissolve into a sea of colourful lava.... there are dragons and unicorns, and Derrida, and Neruda, and co-ordinate geometry...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I think I am just gonna sit back and enjoy this awe-freaking-some show my mind is putting up in front of my eyes, right now! It's pay-per-view, boys! Watch this space for updates on my experience with LSD. The fonts are changing colors right in front of my eyes.... this is seriously awesome! And the fact that I am doing the Science along with the LSD is making it that much more awesome!!! </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Peace, love and resistance, ya'll. </span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971346067453698462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2632664888860523303.post-24703256070468136582014-12-06T04:03:00.000-08:002014-12-06T04:03:28.956-08:00Hope: Memoirs of a Homeless Vagabond <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"[...] beneath the glitter and glitz, the diamonds and black velvet, deep below, the Metropolis' heart beats; down in the sewers and gutters, where its dearest families live."<br /><br />-- Paul Theroux; Memories of New York City--</span></span></i><br />
<br />
<br />
She had come to hate it -- Hope.<br />
The word. The sound. The concept. The unabashed cruelty of it all.<br />
That's all anyone ever gave her -- Hope. Wrapped in short change.<br />
A few were bills. But a buck is a buck -- paper or metal.<br />
A dollar's worth of Hope -- that's all she ever could get for one.<br />
And there were many -- a dollar at a time. A dollar a day.<br />
Always. A dollar's worth of Hope. <br />
<br />
Hope was a lie. Hope was a beautiful fairytale.<br />
Hope was a ploy; an excuse.<br />
Hope was diversion. Hope was perpetuation.<br />
Hope was no solution; nor was a direction.<br />
Hope. Was a compass without a magnet.<br />
Hope was her; sunken eyes, ruffled hair.<br />
She sat <i>under</i> that park bench; still savoring yesterday's meal.<br />
As she thirsts for tomorrow's rain.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971346067453698462noreply@blogger.com2