Reason and Rhyme

It was the summer of 19__. I was at Oxford. I was sixteen. Now Oxford is a big industrial town, a bit gritty, but my college was on the fringes, and out there it was countryside. There were even a few gas lamps by the roadside, and when you walked out beyond, the woods and flowers were far older even than those antiquated lamps, and you got the feeling that you'd escaped from time. When I think of that summer, I think of the sun, pouring down like a blessing, dappling the grassy meadows, setting leaves aglow on a long hedge by whose side a dirt path meandered. I liked to walk that path, and I remember a girl who went with me from time to time. We boated down the narrow stream they call a river, through the fields, through the woodland hugging the water, out past farmhouses and sleeping villages, and I used to row even though you're supposed to use the punt pole, and I remember the splash of the oar and the little band of water droplets gleaming like transitory diamonds.

Now there was a whole band of older boys I tried to join. They would come trooping in to tea, all in a group, and since I was young and naive and American, they seemed impossibly elegant, their friendship unattainable, bathed in sunlight, golden. And that summer all they seemed to talk about was Proust. They were all reading it, and from what I could see it deeply moved them. So that was my first impression of Proust, and the name became a sort of magic totem to me, and whenever I think of it, even now, so many years later, it is inextricably tied up with that band of laughing jeunesse dore, and with sunlight on the hedges.

Shortly after the Great War ended, Proust locked himself in a soundproof room, and there he spent the rest of his life, writing. I don't know if the room had any windows, but I think it didn't. Proust was far away, drifting among sights, smells, sensations, vanished worlds of long ago. I once heard that on one occasion he left his room and traveled halfway across Paris to see a hat which a woman had worn to a party twenty years before. Often, a trivial thing, the sight of a hat, the taste of that famous madeleine, would without warning immerse Proust in a flood of sensation, all the thoughts and feelings he'd had when he had first seen that hat, the way things were for that person who, many years before, had been Proust. For Proust, like all of us, had been many people, his passions and dreams as a child so different from today that his resurrected glimpse into that child's world was like a view into an alien mind. And, like a master quilter stitching a work of art out of rags and snippets, out of those tastes, those glimpses, those fears and passions recalled, he built his novel.

For "Remembrance of Things Past" is indeed a novel, fiction, though it is easy enough to forget this. For one thing, Proust was homosexual, so there was no Albertine. Or in a way there was, there were a thousand Albertines, a thousand people in each of whom he found a bit of Albertine. And this is true of all the characters that inhabit the humdrum yet bizarre, generic (in the sense in which truths about it are applicable to any group of people) yet unforgettable world that springs to being in these pages.

Reading this novel, unlike any other, we demand that there be some link with Proust's actual life. The characters are fiction, the events are fiction, more or less, but the sensations must be real. Proust actually felt them, all those incessant longings and anger and fear. This link to reality is necessary because Proust claims to have written, not merely a novel, but a treatise of psychology, a guide to, if not understanding the world, at the very least a hint on how to view it.

Or showing that other views are possible... by allowing us a glimpse into another person's world (or into his world as a ten-year-old, which he considers that of another person than his adult self), he also allows us to see the laws and processes common to both. He wrote this in the midst of a discussion on the goal (or, better, Holy Grail) of art:

"To grasp again our life -- and also the life of others; for style is for the writer, as for the painter, a question, not of technique but of vision. It is the revelation -- impossible by direct and conscious means -- of the qualitative differences in the way the world appears to us, differences which, but for art, would remain the eternal secret of each of us. Only by art can we get outside ourselves, know what another sees of his universe, which is not the same as ours and the different views of which would otherwise have remained as unknown to us as those there may be on the moon."

I've written elsewhere that sometimes it seems as if as if Proust and Wittgenstein (who after all was his comtemporary and in some ways grew up in the same milieu) were covering the same territory. The limits of language, the existence yet utter unknowability of the other, the tragedy of longing and yearning and loving that which must always elude our grasp. Wittgenstein seems to map the boundary, Proust strives to push and struggle and expand it every way he can, using music and art as another, more basic language to describe or at least indicate entities whose essence we cannot fathom. And the composer Vinteuil and painter Elstir, who make their appearance in the novel, are not based on real artists at all. Rather, they are fictional creations invented by Proust because in his long descriptions of their fictional compositions, he can expound his view of the world. The long description of Vinteuil's sonata uses the music to hint at other worlds which are infinitely precious and totally, except as glimpsed in art, beyond our ken... glimmering dings an sich which we cannot hope to know but which give life its value.

And in the end, the fictional, as well as the real, Proust remains a hazy enigma. Thousands and thousands of pages, and so much is left out. Years and years skipped over, the most important events barely alluded to, or left out for the reader to deduce. And yet, we grasp the essence. And what a tragedy it is! "The heart changes," wrote Proust, "and that is our worst misfortune." Yet for Proust it was not so much change as an endless, painful cycle, which he fully perceived but was powerless to escape. An intense fear of abandonment pervades his earliest memories, and whenever he met a girl whom he feared would cuckold him, this fear was triggered and its intensity would make him fall in love with her. Of course, his fear was a prudent instinct and would be triggered only by the sort of girl who would betray him repeatedly, incurably. But without this jealousy, for Proust there was no love. Quite literally, love -- the thing for which he lived his life -- was pain.

For Proust, the things which give most of us life's joy and meaning -- friendship and helping others -- were a waste of time. And so he spent his life being blown about by his twisted love, searching love's unattainable happiness. And yet, as his book proved, it was not really love, or happiness, or gratification he was after. It was a search for the reality of things, pursued with such zeal and devotion that he gave up all for it, became a hermit with more rigor than the most religious monk for it, and ultimately died for it. I've always thought that the gap from qualia, from sense-perception, to a deeper reality was unbridgeable. But somehow Proust leapt across it, carried perhaps on wings of angels.

Ma

2007-12-31T17:58:00.000-08:00

by Neha Nambiar

The man sat at the table, his steady gaze never leaving the door… did it really happen? Was it all over? Hadn’t his life just begun? What was it? He couldn’t tell anymore, he didn’t know. "Am I even alive!” he shouted out. He always knew things would go wrong… they were bound to, but this?

As a child he always 'knew' he would be famous. Or rather was supposed to, he saw himself giving interviews and answering questions. He saw himself inspiring the youth. "19 and already there! Susheel Sain does it all…" Susheel Sain does it… yes, that’s what he did. Everything. Everything wrong? But was doing nothing at all, doing everything wrong? What was he thinking, what was he saying? Every sound, movement was just a blur, the world seemed surreal now…he didn’t even know he was breathing… didn’t remember he was supposed to. All he could think of now was the fact that he was supposed to be famous. Ha! WAS GOD MOCKING HIM RIGHT NOW? “GOD! WHERE ARE MY PRAYERS NOW, WHAT HAPPENED TO MY FAITH LORD... WHAT?” HE’S 30 NOW….Susheel Sain -- his name, Susheel... The sound of his name kept repeating inside… That voice! Who was it! His mother flashed in front of him. His heart took a giant leap…ma….a huge thump caught hold of all his emotions he wanted his ma…"Ma”... “Ma” is all he said….ma. "You didn’t do anything wrong ma… don’t worry"

Over protective perhaps, but just another mother? Nah! His mom was the best ever! A woman so self sacrificing, he had never seen… pa was a good man too, a little disconnected but pa was good… “My idol” as he wrote in his journals. He always felt a little guilty, writing in a journal, he didn’t need one -- Ma and pa were the best. He had no issues… women. Yeah well growing up, those alien creatures always gave him the jitters. “How can men be expected to talk to women? They were scary!” But he found his woman, it was the first time he wasn’t afraid… the first time he lost his virginity. The first time he felt like there was someone, a woman. If not better, as divine as his ma. For the first time. “Paro! What’ll they do! What’ll I do!? Ma help! Paro help!” he spoke. The sound of sirens magnified to a thousand times more, made the hair on his skin stand. He was freezing, his fingers numb. He was now aware of the world around him. Where was he? He began to rub his hands together for some warmth...his hand! He shrieked. He jumped and hid under a broken table in the dusty room… shivers went down his spine. He started to look around now…broken windows, a leaking ceiling; a drop of water, or whatever it was fell on the table, must have been a heavy drop, he thought he heard it fall. That minuscule drop found its way down a crack on the top of the table and trickled down the diminutive crack, he could hear it travel…dab! It fell on the floor; he looked down at the drop of liquid, squashed. Blood, guns, a face crying with an expression of shock beyond understanding, then a look of disgust flashed in front of his mind's eye, as he stared at the insignificant drop. At first, the images zoomed -- fast like the cameras of a photographer… Click, click, click, click… And then a silent slow movement of the images. A slow click. The slowest ever. C…l…i…c…k, and he was back... “Ma”! He cried softly… and then chuckled… chuckled like a baby… "she’d never let the floor be so dirty”. He cried again.

Ma was always clean, he guessed that was how she kept herself from crying and being sad… ma was sad wasn’t she? Paro and she always got along... Life was so perfect. Perfectly sad.

Growing up ‘his world’ was always sad. “Why am I so unhappy? Why can’t I laugh or smile freely without feeling this lump of sadness in me?” Words form his journal. "Ma and pa are the best, I love them, then why do 'they' tell me to hate them? I don’t like being in their company you know, but they’re just always there. I think the only time I‘m free is when I’m asleep: and ma and pa and Paro are all with me, laughter everywhere, and Paro looks angelic... And ma… oh... so beautiful!” “Ma was so beautiful” he whispered.

Was -- ma was. The sirens kept getting louder and disappearing. “Where am I? SHUT UP!” he screamed. “I WANT TO GO HOME! I WANT TO GO TO MA!” screamed Susheel of thirty… whose life long dream was about to come true -- he was going to be famous now. Going to. "SHUT UP!” he screamed again. "Leave me alone. Leave me alone, PARO!” HE CRIED, CRIED LIKE PARO WAS DEAD IN FRONT OF HIM. “PARO!” HE BEGAN TO SWAY HIS BODY ROUGHLY… LEFT…. RIGHT… "PARO!” this man wept... Wept like a teenager… a rebelling teenager realising all the rebellion was just for no cause… "Paro, how could ma cheat me like this? Treat me like... how could she hurt me, the one woman I loved, perhaps more than Paro, how could ma hurt me?”

“Paro, beautiful, intelligent Paro. The woman who made him feel free. After 25 years of the 'crazy' life he led, Paro was his answer from god. His angel, his muse. Paro was his heart and soul. “She was! She was there with me, I held her, I made love to her for Christ’s sake! Paro was there, and Paro is there! My life! I felt her soul, and she felt mine, Paro!” He had stopped crying now but was still shaking. His knees pointed up, with his arms around them to ‘shelter’ him from 'them'. His bloodshot eyes, now widened, his face for the first time not afraid, but defiant. Not hidden behind the cover of his knees, he looked ahead, as if at someone and screamed, “HOW COULD SHE TELL ME SHE NEVER WAS THERE? NEVER EXISTED? MY IMAGINATION? MY PARO! A FIGMENT OF MY IMAGINATION! MA TELLING ME THIS! MY MA! AFTER MISSING THE DAY MY WEDDING WAS TO BE..! TODAY...” He seemed to calm down now... "She was to be my wife today. MY WIFE! AND MA MISSED IT! And she tells me PARO WAS NEVER THERE!” Tears crawled down his burnt cheek. An hour had passed now since he was where he was, crying for almost the entire hour, his cheeks burnt, but he cried anyway. His jaws hurt, but he spoke to 'them' anyway, because in a way, they knew everything. He spoke with tears and a shaky voice to them, about his mother trying to convince him that Paro was his imagination, a girl he’d created because he could never 'really’ speak to someone of the opposite sex. He made her up to complete his “inadequacy” as she had put it. To make up for the void in his life through his imagination! His ma, his very own ma told him this. He’d never hurt her, always been her boy, then why would ma hurt him that way? He couldn’t understand. Nothing made sense anymore.

He looked down at the spot where the liquid had dropped, the dust around had soaked it all, and a small brown patch was all that was left in its place. Gone, just like that. Just like his Paro. His head hurt like a million volts of electricity had just been sent through it, only it wasn’t going anywhere. It just stayed there, inside his head and fed on it, chewed on his flesh from within. They want him gone. Flashes had begun again, only more clear this time: the face -- it was ma! That look! Why was she looking so horrified, who was she looking at? Those were the clothes she wore when he was talking to her, fighting with her, asking her why she had missed his wedding, why she hadn’t blessed them. Didn’t she love Paro as much as he did? She had loved her before, what happened? Yes! Ma was talking to him, crying to him, trying to hold him and all of a sudden she was. SHE WAS LOOKING AT HIM THAT WAY! THE GUN! WHERE’S THE GUN! BLOOD WAS ALL OVER THE FLOOR; THE WORLD WAS GETTING BRIGHTER, yet coming to an end. HE WAS GOING TO BE FAMOUS. “I did it! Ha, ha, I did it!” he laughed his eyes so red it seemed like blood would drip out of them if he kept them open any longer, or didn’t calm himself down. Anyway, blood would spill. Blood had already been spilled. "I DID IT," he screamed. "I KILLED MY MA! I KILLED HER!“ Crying, calming down, HE WAS CRAZY! “She looked at me that way," he said. "I had the gun, Paro, Paro never… their, ma don’t say that. ma, please don’t say that. Paro will be my wife whether… whether you like it or not.” He was running around, talking to himself, looking at his ma on the floor -- blood spewed everywhere, wounds in her head, her heart her stomach: a bullet for everything he despised in her. Her mind -- so sick that she would say something so unimaginable to him. Her heart -- she could never have loved him. Her stomach -- that she gave birth to him, made him want to tear his skin off and watch himself bleed to clean himself of the dirt. He spoke now: ”I had to kill you ma, you became sick in the head. The world would never accept you. I had to kill you ma. I had to.”

Early morning, the sun as bright and uninteresting as ever. The grass its usual green… and the birds? Well they just flew innocently like the world was a happy place. And Susheel Sain woke up to a beautiful day, not the weather, not the innocence, just Paro -- she was with him, sleeping while he looked out the barred windows of the National Institute for the Mentally Ill. All was fine. Paro was pregnant. Susheel smiled, life couldn’t get better.

A car rolled in the driveway -- ma, on her daily routine now, for the past ten years. She came to feed her son of 30. God really worked things out didn’t he?

Saving the Earth for Artificial Transnational-Corporate Life Forms

2007-12-31T17:48:00.000-08:00

Maybe lemming genes could be inserted into human DNA, in order to save the planet for cybernetic corporations staffed by artificial life forms. But it's important that big corporations, the highest form of sentient entities generated by evolution, live on. Can corporations exist and thrive without humans, as totally roboticized entities to carry the global economy to the stars? But man must serve the economy in the end times of profit taking.

This corporate upgrade will initially be opposed by socialist Luddites, who wish to preserve human DNA, perhaps using messy wetware cyborgs, and by the traditional bioform religious. So a new religion ought to be designed to facilitate the transition to advanced-corporate life forms and the long overdue phasing out of humanity as primitive, inefficient and low-profit. "God" can be replaced by the myth of a celestial CEO, good and evil equated to profit and loss and the afterlife redefined as service on a vast corporate board. Without low-profit eaters the transnational corporate economy can expand endlessly to the stars.

May-Tzu

My Father, the Talker

2007-12-20T23:09:00.000-08:00

I push open the front door, dragging a swoosh of cold air in with me.

“I’m home!”

I walk towards the living room, breathing in the smell of fresh coffee and vanilla candles. Warmth envelopes me as I peel off my coat, damp with late fall drizzle - thank goodness we fixed that heater before temperatures dropped to these goosebump levels. My parents are sitting where I left them. My mother in the middle of the sofa with plenty of elbow room for her knitting. Row by row a small sweater grows beneath her hands, alternating bands of green, orange and brown wool, a sweater for an anonymous Afghani child who may be a little less chilly this winter, may feel a little more hopeful. My father sits across from her in the light armchair that seems too snug for his tall frame. I guess he adjusted the floor lamp to shine directly overhead onto the book he is reading, compensating for diminishing eyesight; he is bathed in light. He peers over his reading glasses as I enter the room.

“So, how did it go? What was the lesson about?"

“No lesson tonight, some of us got together and spent a couple of quiet hours working in the library.”

“Ah, not a class then. Like a workgroup. How many of you were there?”

“Just the four of us.”

“What are you working on?"

My father, always the talker. That thirst for conversation, though questions are often just a precursor for the role he really revels in, that of orator. A one-man discussion of information, opinions, presentation of pros and cons - second speaker not required. My father the talker likes to do his thinking out loud.

“Dad, do you remember when I asked you and mom to write down your experiences as children during the war?"

My father has forgotten. I suppose that makes sense, even though his childhood in the Netherlands during the Nazi occupation is a subject he often returns to, its weight heavy on his memory and the shape it gave to his life. A few years ago it occurred to me that these stories might one day be lost to the family forever if someone did not record them. So I asked my parents and in-laws to write down what they remembered of those times. I described my somewhat unspecific vision of processing their memories into an accessible, comprehensive story. Not looking so much for the history of it, but for the emotions, the childhood human experience.

What I got was a different kind of thing. The two omas were initially unsure what to write about, feeling their memories were perhaps too small, not riveting enough. Untrue, of course. Daily life, fears very relatable, anecdotes that opened a window to those days. My mother described a world of small houses, stern Catholicism, fear of omnipresent soldiers, yet at the same time remembered herself skipping through much of it, being just a little girl. Then the opas. I was familiar with parts of my father’s story, yet he too lifted up the veil just a little higher to show more intimate aspects of his youth. He steered clear of emotion, though. Descriptions of the facts were enough. Some things even he cannot express, it seems. My husband's father, the academic, the college professor, also stayed true to his character. He submitted a thesis-like document, full of technical background information about the war, bombs, and precisely which neighborhoods were demolished. He is an introvert, this opa. He is not a talker.

Initially I felt somewhat at a loss, having expected something else, until I realized that they were simply responding to my request: a description of events as each had experienced them, in whatever form they chose. Write about what was most important to you, I said. It doesn't matter how. Do what feels right. And so they did.

Now that I had the stories, I did not know what to do with them - how to do them justice. They were written in Dutch, and I thought to translate them to English, making them more accessible to our increasingly global extended family. Also because English is the language I write in. But should I translate them as they were, and so preserve each individual voice? Or should I translate the essence of them into a single, more flowing story, cutting out repetition and ambiguity? How could I best meld these diverse testaments into a unity of some sort? I was intimidated by the responsibility of it. Finally, I put it aside, and in time, forgot about it.

Now something about having my parents here in my living room has triggered my memory, and I resolve to blow the dust off the project, and finally find a way to move forward.

My mother does remember.

“Ja, opa, a few years ago she asked us and we wrote about the war and we sent it to America in an email.”

“Well, it is always better to do these things with talking," my father turns to me. "You should have an interview, and prepare questions, and then record everything on one of those little tape machines. Did I tell you about that time I was interviewed for a book about my old friend Karel, the one who became quite a famous writer?"

My father tells me. Perhaps he is right about the interview. But the fact that my parents will be returning home to the Netherlands in two weeks while I stay indefinitely in my new home across the ocean makes this an untenable approach. I recoil from the prospect of another never-ending project resting in my computer, waiting for the right moment to proceed.

“Today I started working on your stories. I am translating them, and afterwards we can work together on any blanks that turn up until the stories are complete. We will keep them for the family.”

It is a start. And I am, at heart, a writer, not a talker.

The Candidate

2007-12-17T08:34:00.000-08:00

by Paul Maxim

Mario Biaggi

Republican Congressman MARIO BIAGGI (a former cop), running for mayor of New York City on a Law and Order platform, climaxed his campaign by telling a group of Harlem democratic voters (with apparent sincerity) "Bless your black hearts!"

PS.: Yes, this really happened...
P.P.S.: No, he didn't win...
P.P.P.S.: Long live democracy!

Essay: The Ode

2007-12-12T17:02:00.001-08:00

The ode is a poetry form that originated in Greece, where it was called aeidein, which simply meant "song". It was usually a choric song accompanied by a dance.

The first type of ode we will examine in this paper is of a ceremonious and dignified nature, commemorating the gods and the heroes of the past and emphasizing moral episodes, and is called the choral or Pindaric ode in honour of the Theban poet Pindar (ca 518-442 BC)^¹. It comprises three parts: the strophe, of a complex metrical structure, the antistrophe, mirroring the opening, and the epode, of a different length and in a different meter from the first two parts. The strophe (two or more lines repeated as a unit) was sung by the chorus, which was answered by another group in the metrically harmonious antistrophe. The two groups would then sing together in the epode (a summary line). More often it was the same group that first sang the strophe while dancing to the right, the antistrophe while dancing to the left, and the epode while standing still in the middle of the stage. More stanzas could follow patterned on the first three, in any pattern the poet wished, the pattern of the first three stanzas was then repeated at the end of the poem.

Pindar's four books of epinicion odes, rich in complex metaphors, greatly influenced the Western world since their publication by Aldus Manutius in 1513. The games themselves were to Pindar actually only a means to deal with themes of wider and deeper significance and therefore have universal value.

The Pindaric ode was first adapted to the vernacular language with the publication of Pierre de Ronsard's four books of French "Odes"(1550). The first English poet who claims to have written a Pindaric ode was a certain John Soothern in a volume published in 1584. He was soon followed by others, like Michael Drayton.

Many of the great poets of the past have written Pindaric odes, although sometimes their work doesn't follow all classical rules, as is the case for example with Milton's great ode^²"On the Morning of Christ's Nativity" (1629). This poem, suspended between the great events of the past and the future, dispenses with the typical triadic form; it consists of a prelude of four stanzas followed by a hymn of twenty-seven stanzas.

Only a few decades later Abraham Cowley, who will be mentioned later in this paper, went even further and gave up the metrical and stanzaic forms of the Pindaric ode, while still calling his odes Pindaric, remarking that he followed the "spirit" rather than the letter of his original. Cowley was greatly admired by John Dryden (1631-1700), who followed his example of irregular Pindarics, emphasizing that his most important rule was that "the ear must preside and direct the judgement to the choice of numbers", a principle whose most renowned achievement is "Alexander's Feast", an ode in honour of St. Cecilia in which Dryden skilfully manipulates and adapts his metres and sounds to the different emotions described in the poem. Its purpose is a combined critique of music and poetry framed in the modern idea of harmony. There are not many good irregular Pindaric odes after this in spite of many attempts.

One of the most remarkable writers of classical Pindarics was Thomas Gray (1716-71), whose greatest achievements in this form are "The Progress of Poesy" and "The Bard", poems full of oblique, sometimes intricate allusions and striking images, like Pindar's poems, and having poetry itself as their subject matter, poetry as a life-giving force subduing negative passions, and art as catharsis and sublimation. Gray also wrote Horatian odes, like the famous and light-hearted "On the Death of a Favourite Cat" and the "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College", an ode in which childhood races past with depressing speed.

The Horatian ode, the second main type of ode, is so called in honour of the Latin poet Horace (65-8 BC), and has been of much greater impact on the English ode than the Pindaric ode. It was normally written in regular stanzas, following the pattern set in the first stanza. It dealt with reflective and intimate themes, like friendship and love, and was usually quite serene in tone. Horace himself was a keen observer and practised Epicureanism. Even when he dealt with personal problems, like the ode in which he addressed Pyrrha's inconstancy (an ode translated by Milton), he did so to universalize sorrow and certain characteristics of human nature. His odes contain unforgettable eloquence and wisdom in their simplicity.

Horace was known in the Middle Ages, but hardly imitated. One of the earliest English versions of the Horatian ode was produced by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-47). After him, Horace was imitated by many other poets. One of the most remarkable poems written after Horace in the 17^thcentury was Andrew Marvell's "An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from England", a poem that imitates Horace's odes celebrating Augustus in the concision of the language and the rapid succession of the images. The stanza form used in this poem seems to have been devised by Marvell himself. He uses two four-stress lines followed by two three-stress lines to achieve an equivalent of the Horatian Alcaic strophe in the English language.

Another notable Horatian was Cowley, who seems to have influenced Pope's "Ode to Solitude". Pope said of Cowley: "Who now reads Cowley? / Forget his epic, nay Pindaric art, / Yet still I love the language of his heart." And indeed, his bombastic Pindaric odes are much inferior to his Horatian ones. The same can be said of Pope. His attempt at the Pindaric form in "Ode for Music on St. Cecilia's Day" is usually considered of quite low quality on the whole.

In more modern times, the Horatian ode was primarily revived by Matthew Prior, Mark Akenside, William Collins, who takes a middle course between a protean naturalization and a hymnal monotheism and poses a number of interlaced questions in his volume of odes (published in 1747), as well as Jonathan Swift and Samuel Johnson in the 18^thcentury, a century in which poetry was deeply affected by Horace, and Matthew Arnold in the 19^thcentury. In his "Horatian Echo" (1847), Arnold distances himself from the political concerns and turmoils of his time to express a gentle melancholy and subtle carpe-diem mentality.

Modern odes in the English language usually have an irregular pattern, but they do have a rhyming and stanza scheme. They also have some common characteristics, such as a) a dignified, elaborate subject matter; b) emotion and imagination; c) the subject in whose honour the poem is written is usually addressed directly (less frequently than formerly though); d) they are written to be read aloud; and they are of e) a lyrical nature originating in personal impulses and rising to more general reflections.

From the Romantic period onwards, no clear distinction is usually made any more between Pindaric and Horatian odes in the English language, and since the late 19^thcentury, poets seem to be reluctant to call their poems odes, even when they show distinctive ode-like qualities, like Arnold's "Dover Beach" and Hopkins's "The Wreck of the Deutschland".

Some of the greatest modern odes include Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality", Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind", Keats's "Ode to the Nightingale" and Tennyson's "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington".

In his ode, which is essentially a free Pindaric poem as established by Cowley and perfected by Dryden, Wordsworth addresses an emotional crisis of his own life, ageing, which gives him occasion to reflect upon immortality. He starts with a clear definition of his personal problem and then expands this view by referring to two Platonic notions of immortality and by applying them to life in general, pondering that life has only apparently been impoverished by the loss of the "visionary gleam" of childhood. The recollection of such pure experience can renew its awareness in us, taking us back to a childhood state of bliss and faith in a moral order for which Nature can provide appropriate symbols. Coleridge based his "Dejection: An Ode", whose sixth stanza was described by Eliot as "one of the saddest confessions that I have ever read", on Wordsworth's "Immortality Ode", to which it was partly intended to be a reply. Coleridge's poem is much stormier than Wordsworth's and is also set in a more violent natural environment.

Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" is a political poem that should be read with relaxed attention rather than analysed word for word. Much more important in this poem are the sound and the connotation of each word and phrase, as well as the feelings it evokes. It is a poem written in the Italian terza rimaand using the wind as a symbol of inspiration (like Coleridge's "Dejection"), as well as the Romantic image of the Aeolian harp. In addition, again like Coleridge's "Dejection", it uses the image of the renovation of the spirit to depict the renovation of society. The wind, which for Shelley can enforce continuity between the natural imperialism of the past and the natural republicanism of the future, can also be compared to Keats's nightingale as a symbol of continuity and omnipresence. "To a Skylark" is written in the same evocative, suggestive mood.

Keats wrote odes universally regarded as above criticism and, like Shelley's odes, far more traditional in their structure of argument than those of Wordsworth or Coleridge. The themes of his poetry are the themes to which poets have returned again and again and again. The nightingale's song in "Ode to a Nightingale"^³suggests a realm of ideal beauty and blissful immortality as contrasted with "the weariness, the fever, and the fret" of life. The rejection of the real world in favour of an ideal one are also to be intensely felt in "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (a poem representing the Romantic ideal of Hellenism) and in "Ode to Melancholy", although in a less resolute way, in a mood overshadowed by a melancholic acceptance.

According to many critics, Keats's best ode is "To Autumn", a poem rich in not only visual, but also kinaesthetic and tactile images as well as onomatopoeia, and a poem in which Keats rejoices in the meaning of autumn, the acceptance of change and decay as part of life: "Thou hast thy music too". It is striking that there are no leaves in this poem dedicated to autumn, a season traditionally associated with the falling of leaves, while there are leaves in three of his other odes.

Here is the ode "To Autumn" in full:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or, by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,-
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Tennyson called his "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington" "a fine rolling anthem" with a recurrent rhyming on low, dark-toned vowels echoing like a tolling bell and thus reinforcing the message of the poem. It is written in a Victorian tone, not the nostalgic tone of the Romantic poets we have just examined, and its reflections and imagery are clearly those of the author of "In Memoriam".

Other poets of the Victorian age include Landor, Swinburne, Thompson and Patmore.

The best ode of the 20^thcentury is most probably the "Ode to the Confederate Dead" by Allen Tate, in which we feel the autumnal desolation of the graveyard and the poet's grief accentuated by his reserve.

Another ode worthy of mention is Louis MacNeice's "Ode", written in the form of a prayer for his son in a quite simple, casual style, a poem that accepts the limitations of human life and sadly also acknowledges the imminence of the war.

There have been many more odes written in the 20^thcentury, although many of them were not called as such in their titles, as has already been mentioned. Auden, Yeats, Dylan Thomas and many others all wrote odes, in spite of their reluctance to call their poems odes, mainly because they didn't want to commit themselves to a dignified style and because of a certain aversion to classification typical of our time.

References:

Britannica 2002 Deluxe Edition

Fry, P., The Poet's Calling in the English Ode, Yale University Press, New Haven and London 1980

Hamilton, E. and Livingston J., Form and Feeling, Longman, Melbourne 1981

Heath-Stubbs, J., The Ode, Oxford University Press, London 1969

Jump, J., The Ode, Methuen & Co. Ltd., London 1974

Stillman, F., The Poet's Manual and Rhyming Dictionary, Thames and Hudson (1978)

www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5784

1 Pindar had adopted this form from Stesichorus (7^th-6^th centuries BC).

2 Milton didn't actually call any of his poems odes.

3 Keats conceived a new kind of ode in his "Ode to the Nightingale", based on a ten-line stanza in iambic pentameter except for the eighth line, in iambic trimeter. The rhyme scheme is ababcdecde.

Keynote

2007-12-07T06:09:00.000-08:00

by Paul Maxim

Albinone wrote fifty-three operas,
none of which survived,
while Beethoven wrote only one,
all of which survived,
including four overtures,
three entr'actes, two intermezzi,
and one horrendous climax,
in which a caste of singers clambers back onstage,
and helps extract the tenor from his queasy cage.

But Rossini, nimble tunesmith,
outdid them all
by writing only half an opera
- called Semiramide* -
about an ancient Babylonian Princess
(or maybe she was just a Quean)
who thought she could reshape the course of history -
but why she thought so still remains a mystery.

Now, had that tunester only written
one whole Ramide
- it might have seemed a trifle overlong,
- it might have lacked a dance to fleshify its song,
but still most likely it would not have made him smirk
(as rumor swears he did):
"Half an opera she is better than none,
and mine have coined more lira than yours
have ever done!'

* Pronounced Seh.mee.RAH .mi.day

Domestic Bliss

2007-11-25T21:46:00.000-08:00

by Charmaine Frost

"Jeremy, where are you?" Laura shouted. She kicked a plastic toy truck into a stack of yellowed newspapers with edges as brittle and curled as dead leaves. One of these days, when she could find the vacuum and muster the energy and determination of a housecleaning superhero, she'd hurl the piles of junk out the door with a single swipe of mighty muscled arms. Cobwebs dangled from high corners like swatches of daintily stitched lace, but she'd mercilessly yank them down. She'd unleash the famished vacuum cleaner and let the ravenous machine devour the dust that covered her floors like thick, wild fur. "Jeremy Joshua, come out, come out, wherever you are!"

Laura would repeatedly misplace the vacuum cleaner. It was a thigh-high, round, orange contraption, shaped like a crashed UFO and with an attached hose long and wide enough to suck up a platoon of toy soldiers, a city of legos, a fleet of toy trucks and a four year old..

"Jeremy Joshua Ringdale Robinson the Third, come out here!” she commanded. The alien orange vacuum cleaner probably lurked some-where under mounds of old coupons, crusty cat food cans, torn envelopes and magazine articles that she might read sometime, in that nebulous future of unrationed time, perhaps in the nursing home when dead time would fill the space around her bed like a suffocating curse. Now, Jeremy could be crouching or sleeping anywhere, his head on a pillow of dented Styrofoam, his legs clamped under a lost shelving plank. "No more time in Trashville for you, young man! Jeremy Joshua, get out here now! "

Glass clanked musically; a dark beer bottle rolled from under a skein of multi-colored wires, stopping at the shiny amber oblong where spilled honey had made the rug permanently sticky. Jeremy toddled forward, holding up a dried banana peel and a withered tatter of bread from which dangled stringlike wisps of gray meat. In his other hand, he clutched a mummified orange.

Laura's upper lip curled slightly as she gingerly extracted the petrified turkey sandwich from her son, looked away as she dropped it in a green plastic bag, which probably held garbage, and wiped her fingertips on her shirttails.

"That’s not good for you," she muttered, her shoulders slumping as the boy wailed and darted away.

Her house shouldn't be like this, not when she was the eldest daughter of a man who'd worked for 30 years writing ads for Tidy Bowl. When I was in my prime, Laura recalled her father telling his golf buddies, then his coffee cronies, then any dog who'd listen, I worked 80 hours per week to come up with a jingle; back then, I had a mission, a place in society. When he died, his wife commissioned the stonecutter to carve a marble tombstone shaped like a giant toilet; now, dandelions grew, blazing and defiant, around the bowl and birds perched on the green travertine flusher. Sometimes, Laura wondered how many stray dogs had raised a hind leg to mark the giant toilet; she imagined the hordes of cemetery angels and cherubs stirring alive at night and rushing to the only graveyard potty, to relieve themselves after a day's long vigil.

Laura followed the cord from its wall outlet, fumbled where it tunneled under stained papers until she felt a hard lump, pulled out the telephone, and called her friend Mary.

"Hello Mary," she jabbered. "I’m living in a Filth Fiasco. Jeremy disappears every time I turn my back; Just when I’m about to call in a missing-person report, he stumbles out from the mess. I could be phoning the cops ten times a day – but then I tell myself that he’s nearby; I just can’t find him because I’m a slob.“

"Don't think of yourself as a slob," Mary interrupted soothingly. "Or a packrat.”

“I don’t know what he’ll hold or what’ll stick to him the next time he crawls out. Last time, he came out clutching a rotten sandwich – his trophy.” Laura sighed. “Or maybe there’s been a landslide. Jars and moldy cardboard bury him with one of the cats. But I don’t do anything for hours – because he’s always getting lost in one of those piles – and he suffocates when he could have been saved.” she moaned. “I wish I had a "Reset" button for the mess here! And with my background - if my father's a ghost, he probably avoids my house; even ghosts don't like to shudder in horror!"

At his funeral, the preacher had praised Father's life work, cleanliness being next to godliness and a wisk broom being the surest way of sweeping away the grime and clearing a path to heaven. Living in the service of cleanliness had earned him bonus points, coupons for discounted salvation, redeemable when he arrived at the pearly gates and got grilled by St. Peter. Right now, her father hovered somewhere in the pure blue stratosphere, his wings glistening white as new porcelain, his angel suit as perfectly pressed and immaculate as a new shower curtain. "Pour it in, swish and scour; your toilet smells fresh as a flower"; she could almost hear the tune, plucked on a harp string as he sang, the rough edges of his once gritty baritone sanded smooth and polished by a divine cleansing process.

Think of yourself as respecting the past, holding onto it because you cherish it,” Mary encouraged. “That's rare in our culture of throw-away things and throw-away people. So, think of yourself as uniquely gifted with an appreciation of things past. Your piles are the products of nostalgia and reverence."

"Like yours," Laura sighed. "But yours are artfully arranged; I don't even have room to shove my ugly clutter into closets."

"Not too much actual garbage here, " Mary laughed. "Just the prizes of my dump fetish. I'm going on a dump run tomorrow - itching to see what people have left on the side, in the 'claim me' section. Last week, I found a hairless, armless 1920s rag doll, in her original dress faded to palest sepia and ivory. The week before, I had to rescue a rippling metal sheet, covered with intricate patterns of rust, from the masher. And remember that Walt Whitman candy tin?"

Laura always enjoyed tours of Mary's found finery. She imagined Mary’s apartment converted into a museum of the uncollectible, with pretentious labels attached to each object and fake histories mounted on plaques beside each. Item One: Genuine rag doll, born October 3, 1922; hair lost during chemotherapy treatments at local doll hospital; arm fractured and amputated after spat with abusive husband, GI Joe, who suffered Post-traumatic-stress syndrome after return from war against the trolls. Item Two: A 1930s Art Deco metal candy box that once contained all the artistic ideas possible for the human race; when a child opened it, hoping to grab a chocolate, all the ideas flew out, atoms with wings that took to the sky and were swallowed accidentally by birds and flies.

"If I started to clean," Laura moaned, "I'd just uncover dishes of uneaten cat food, cubes of petrified beef clinging to the side, or maggots swarming festively in goop. Add the heady perfumes of paint thinner and ammonia when I knocked over half-shut bottles, and the grit of airborne sawdust from an old wood carving project."

"Sounds suitably atmospheric," Mary joked. "Even marketable as a perfume - the hottest thing out of France. Like the lichen footprints I found on my porch last spring, after I'd left socks scattered out there all winter. Tip-toe down the moss-way, I had a salable new fad, until the sun dried the path away."

Laura coughed, remembering the life-sized, hideously gaunt clay head that Mary had crafted in a sculpture class, then nestled in the fiberglass flooring of an apartment crawl space, a secret installation to shock the plumber or landlord who eventually opened that door.

"What I'm saying is - don't worry so much about the mess. At least you're not like Adam, who put one of those ancient mechanical typewriters on the roof to see if the rain might clean out the insides, then forgot about it for six months. When he remembered to fetch it, tree sap and bird shit had cemented it to the roof and he couldn't wedge it loose; he lives in the only house with a typewriter permanently next to the chimney." Mary paused. "You don't have a typewriter on your roof. Besides, if cleanliness is next to godliness, why is the world a mess and the universe ruled by chaos theory?"

Laura shrugged, hung up, and dialed her friend Frances.

"Your problem," Frances began slowly, "Is that no one helps you. Your husband lives there; he should do his share of cleaning. He may need prodding at first: Encourage and praise him, first for doing little things, then for larger tasks. Say 'I'm proud of you, you did a really good job'; reward him with morsels of ego-candy." Frances paused. "You know how Cora keeps her house spic-and-span? She lines up her kids, barks out orders like a drill sergeant, and doesn't let them go on leave until the place sparkles. Of course, being built like a Viking doesn't hurt her commander image."

Laura nodded, recalling Cora's black, furnace-hot eyes and warrior-broad shoulders. Even when she said and did nothing, Cora's personality filled a room like a force field, drawing some instantly like admirers to the queen while others retreated, pushed back by something invisible but overwhelming. Laura, who had to work at making herself heard and who often felt camouflaged by mists of invisibility, could never play warrior queen or drill sergeant. And she didn’t know how well her husband Ted, whose life motto seemed to be “I’m happy as long as no one bothers me”, would respond to prodding.

"But even a house-broken husband’s going to be better at some jobs than others," Frances continued. "My Richard was a class A vacuumer; he even removed the burner plates from the stove to vacuum it out! Lifted the dryer on wedges and vacuumed ten years of sludge from under it. I wondered if he liked jobs that made a visible clean path, or just liked hearing the rattles and whooshes of debris whizzing up the hose. So, I let the toilet bowl get dirtier and dirtier, figured that swipes of the brush would make a gratifyingly white, clean path in the brown. But, he never took to toilet cleaning. So, I decided that that he liked the clatters and clinks, the noise of machinery."

Laura lifted an old shopping list from where it had fallen near her feet, and squinted at the fading print on the torn yellowing paper; this list from the past could replace her current one.

"The husband should help," Laura agreed. "He makes half the mess. But, if he's going to help, he has to see that something's wrong. When Ted comes home from work, he doesn’t want any intrusions from the world; he wants to roll in a ball in his cozy shell and pretend nothing out there is real. Easier to ignore the mess than to do anything about it. He says he's an expert in selective obliviousness; he lies down on top of five books, a dog collar, yesterday's trousers, and a scattering of videocassettes, and he's asleep in two minutes. "

"Maybe you need to take lessons from him," Frances laughed.

Laura grunted, hung up, whispered a fortifying mantra, paused, muttered the mantra again, and dialed Cora.

"I know just the thing for you!" Cora boomed. "It's meant for people like you and it's brilliant, guaranteed to work! My sister, who never could keep her socks separate from her oranges, is with the program and raves about it; her house has changed from squatter-squalid to showplace clean in a month. Just call the Domestic Bliss people. If they're not in the phone book, they're in the newspaper - always advertising in the 'home and garden section. You do get the daily paper, don't you?"

Laura panted, catching her breath after so many loud, exclamatory words had battered her ears.

"Yes," she whispered, not admitting that she forgot where she had placed it. Jeremy dashed past her, paused before a mountain of papers, then dove in; envelopes, faded letters and old bills cascaded down, an avalanche filling the hollow made by his plunging body. Clutching the phone receiver in her left hand, Laura crawled into the heap, groping with her right hand until she felt cloth and flesh.

"Call them, they'll solve everything! They're the best," Cora exclaimed assertively, then shifted to a breezy tone. "It was great hearing from you. I'd love to talk longer but my call-waiting light's blinking. It's long distance, so I'd better get it. Love you!"

Cora clicked off; Laura dropped the receiver on the floor, listening to the dial tone and the faint giggles from within the trash heap as she tugged on her son’s arm.

“Jeremy,” She pleaded. “Come out of there. You don’t know what’s growing in there. Jeremy,” she paused “There are monsters growing in there. Mean, gooey monsters made from garbage, who like to eat little boys.”

Jeremy scurried out.

Laura sighed and mentally retraced her steps since entering the house with today's junk mail, spotted the newspaper beside the green garbage bag, flipped to the 'home and garden' section, scanned each page and read the ad, printed in bold crimson:

"Is domestic bliss forever beyond your reach? Are you overwhelmed by clutter? Disoriented by debris, dust and disorganization? Has grime infested your house like an evil, stubborn parasite? Has the broom become your enemy and tormentor, an invasion of guests your greatest fear? We know everything about your plight; we can solve all your home problems. Call Domestic Bliss Inc. for a free initial consultation. $25 weekly maintenance fee; lifetime guarantee on all services."

She nodded as she read the testimonials. For a 26 year old bank teller, dust bunnies had proliferated faster than real rabbits, until Domestic Bliss had intervened; Laura herself had sometimes wondered if household clutter had sex while people slept, with spring and fall being estrus season for newspapers and glass bottles doing the mating dance in summer. A 56-year-old biologist had lost her hamster for a month in a pile of debris; the animal finally had scuttled out, plump from a long feast on old lettuce and bread, stiff as plaster. A 42-year-old mother had decided to change her ways when her children repeatedly claimed to have lost their homework under a newly fallen avalanche of papers.

"Sorry, honey, I lost the kid," Laura muttered to the wall. "But don't worry, he's in the house somewhere. He can’t really be lost, he’s not far away. I’ll find him eventually – maybe in a year, maybe after he’s died from eating antique tuna sandwiches." She scribbled the Domestic Bliss hotline number in indelible marker on the back of her hand.

What's the first-born child of a Tidy Bowl expert doing, calling on others for domestic aid? she wondered, as she punched each button on the phone. But 'a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do', 'cleaning or dialing, it's all in a day's work', she thought as the succession of tones beeped in her ear; practical, tenacious, maybe she was her father's daughter after all. Maybe Father hadn't mail-ordered her from the local Adopt-a-Kid warehouse; maybe he hadn't rescued her from under one of the huge pumpkin leaves where reluctant mothers dropped their newborns. Maybe, in that neighborhood without a local cabbage patch, he hadn't found her on a park bench, sleeping in a cardboard box labeled "Take me, I'm yours".

"Domestic Bliss," a shrill voice squawked. "You break it, we re-make it; you spoil or soil it, we boil or --"

"My name's Laura Robinson. You take care of dirt emergencies, catastrophic filth?"

"Filth emergencies, that's our game; Domestic bliss, that's our name," the voice squealed. Laura wondered if the woman had been beamed down from a planet where people spoke only in rhyme.

"I mean real filth, a horrible, bad mess," Laura sputtered. "Clothes heaped so high, my son gets lost behind them.. Empty cans, plates crusted with food so old you could carbon-date it." Engineers had planned equally spaced houses on identical ruglike squares of lawn and had designed the streets to intersect at right angles in a perfect grid; Laura thought of her mess as a dark heart of chaos that threatened to expand and engulf the enclaves of perfect order and predictability.

"Magazine mountains, skyscrapers of paper, four-star Reek-o-ramas right in the heart of Cleansville, USA?” The voice paused. “Yes, we take on jobs like that all the time." Laura sank back in her chair on hearing the woman speak prose, but her stomach tightened as the voice accelerated to a shrill staccato, yapping com-mands. "We'll need your vital stats. The vital stats of your house. Your age. Married, single? Number of kids? Elderly depen-dents? Pets and how many? Your age. Their ages. House size. Number of rooms. Size of rooms --"

"Excuse me," Laura stammered, "Could you say that again? A little slower?"

The voice sighed theatrically and repeated its demands; Laura gave the information.

"We'll have an expert there at 10 Am tomorrow," the voice declared. "For a preliminary inspection, beginning restoration, and provisional rehabilitation plan. Be there at 10. We're never late."

A click ended the phone connection. Laura flipped through her day planner. Tomorrow, tomorrow... She could reschedule any appointments, claim an emergency; she wouldn’t be lying. Catastrophic clutter, devastation by dirt, grimly groping grime; act now, or be crushed in the avalanche. Anything to tame and cool the wild, hot, dark heart of chaos, anything to kill its passion for expanding, anything to crush that raving core to a safe, lifeless cinder. Anything to bring her living room closer to godliness, make her stairs fit for the climb to heaven, prove that she was her father's child and belonged.

The next morning, at exactly 10 o'clock, a glistening white van pulled into Laura's driveway. Side and rear doors rolled open; five workers in shiny silver suits leaped out, lifting and rolling equipment off the truck. Laura knew instantly that the suits were sterilized and disposable, incinerated after each job. In their reflective surfaces, the anemic overcast sky burned with feverish incandescence; the clothes were mirrors of the immaculate.

Behind them, a meticulously dressed woman parked a spotless white sedan and ambled towards the front porch where Laura waited.

“I’m Matilda, from Domestic Bliss, but you can call me Tilly.” The woman’s cheeks glowed ruddy as cherries and tiny ringlets covered her head in a neat golden halo. She shook Laura’s hand firmly with scrubbed, pink fingers and smiled as she rummaged through her white straw purse. “I’m here to explain a little about what Domestic Bliss does, introduce you to the process before our workmen get started.” She glanced conspiratorially towards the van, heaved her shoulders in a loud sigh and smiled apologetically; her teeth seemed whiter than the brightest showroom tiles and her pink suit as lint-free, perfectly fitting and uncreased as a new Easter outfit. “Unfortunately, some of our workers need lessons in etiquette. They’re well intentioned, committed to the cause and competent, but they can be a bit gruff. So, we ask you to excuse them if they sound mechanical or rushed.”

Matilda drew a rectangular package, wrapped in tin foil and stored in a vacuum-sealed clear bag, from her purse.

“The cause?” Laura asked, squinting at the men who scurried around the van.

“Cleanliness, good housekeeping,” Matilda murmured as she unzipped the transparent bag; Laura smelled the intoxicating aroma of chocolate. “But more than just good housekeeping. We believe in the betterment of individual lives, which leads to the betterment of society. Most of our workers are volunteers with a strong sense of community. That’s why we can offer our services so cheaply – only $300 for the initial cleaning - the House Revitalization step - plus follow-up inspections and periodic instructions to keep you on track. Domestic Bliss doesn't want you falling back into squalor; Domestic Bliss can't afford to let you backslide, your success is our success, the success of a community. We’re a non-profit organization; your success is our reward.”

She unwrapped the foil, revealing a tray of home-baked brownies; Laura sucked the fragrance deep into her lungs.

“Nowadays, there aren’t enough people who care,” Matilda continued, offering the tray to Laura. “These are for you and your son, little boys all love chocolate; I baked them myself this morning. Think of us at Domestic Bliss as the good neighbors you always secretly wanted – helping you in a time of need, welcoming you to your new, clean home with a little housewarming gift. I would have brought coffee too, but I don’t know you well enough yet to know what you drink in the morning.”

Laura took the tray, bit into a brownie and let the smooth sweetness cover her tongue like velvet. Matilda slid an efficient hand into her purse, pulled out a sheaf of spotless white papers, and handed these to Laura.

"The contract." She offered Laura a gleaming silver pen; Laura didn't see a scratch or smudge on its surface. “Really just a formality.”

Laura flipped through pages of miniscule print. The letters seemed to swarm over the paper like gnats; she wanted to blink and swat the illegible dots and dashes aside, wanted to clear the air. She’d need a microscope to read the words; they must have been written by a computer, by a mechanism with fine motor movements more precise than the human hand's and vision keener than the human eye's.

“I know,” Matilda smiled sweetly and shook her head. “Lawyers and their fine print. It'll take you hours to slog through all the jargon. Best that you just sign at the end, so that we can get on with business, and give the house back to you by 5 PM. Domestic Bliss Inc. guarantees the contract, until the death of either you or the company, whichever comes first." She stared directly into Laura’s eyes. “I have the same problem with contracts, all the legalese that no one can understand and print so small that only an ant can see it. But I can personally vouch for Domestic Bliss; would I be volunteering my time for something I didn’t believe in?”

Laura gripped the shiny silver pen, signed the contract in a larger, bolder script than she'd ever used and held her breath as she waited for the electric vibrations in her hollow chest to subside. “I’ve just signed on for a major life change,” she thought, “A truly clean house. And major changes are supposed to make you tremble a little, aren’t they?”

“Thank you,” Matilda said in a carefully modulated contralto and dropped the papers into a zip lock plastic bag. From her purse, she withdrew a container of disposable, sterile, moistened tissues. She pulled one through a tiny orifice, wiped the pen and her hands, and dropped it in a second plastic bag; she plucked out a second tissue and polished the pen until it glistened.

“The virtues of cleanliness,” she sang out, with a smile that momentarily seemed like a smirk. “You’ll learn to appreciate such virtues. And now, I’ll let the workers do their job; please excuse their manners.”

She strode briskly towards the white sedan as the foreman climbed the steps to the front porch.

"Ma'am," the leader barked as Laura kicked a plastic truck with bulging red wheels away from the screen door, "We're the Domestic Bliss cleaning brigade." He displayed a badge bearing the company name in screaming red letters, the logo of a winged mop, and a tiny photo of himself; behind him, in unison, the other workers did the same. "Ma'am, do you have any animals or children in the house?"

Laura glanced at the front porch strewn with fat rubber balls, miniature plastic shovels, action figures that had lost the ability to grunt and stomp enemies into the concrete after their batteries had died, and stuffed toys resembling cartoon super-heroes. Why would these toys be scattered on the porch if she had no children?

“Do you have any botanicals?”

"Botanicals?”

"House plants, Ma'am. Flowers growing in mud, Bonsai trees, cacti in pots of sand. Roses made from silk, cloth daisies and vinyl leaves don't count. Fake plants always stay the same; they may gather dust but they don't die. So, strictly speaking, they aren't botanicals."

Laura sighed. "If I have any botanicals in here," she muttered, "I haven't seen them in months. They're buried under the piles; they've gone without sun and water so long, they're probably dead."

The worker blew out a long, loud breath. "That's good Ma'am, very good. Our job's easier if we don't have to worry about killing a forgotten botanical." He paused. "What about animal species?"

Laura glanced towards the living room, where a book thudded and papers rustled, like terrified birds fleeing an avalanche of magazines. The worker followed her gaze and winced.

"A dog, three cats and my son," Laura said.

"And yourself, you have to declare yourself," the worker asserted, solemn as a customs inspector. "You're human, and human beings are animals."

Laura craned her neck, following the magazines as they slid into dusty valleys; in the pale light, their glossy covers resembled puddles scattered among clumps of dying weeds. An orange and white tabby dashed through a doorway as her son leaped from behind a pile of dirty towels, underpants and jeans.

"You'll need to remove all these life forms from the house. Domestic Bliss Inc. usually recommends that you put them all in your car, and park that no closer than 30 yards from the property while we rehabilitate your home." Laura frowned as the man scowled towards the room behind her; the thin veins etching his temple and nose gave his coarse skin the blue overcast of cleanser; Matilda had been right to warn her about the workers’ gruff manners. "In cases like yours - in especially egregious cases of filth, and I can see that this house qualifies - a swish of the mop, a push of the vacuum cleaner, a sloshing of Lysol and a spritz of air freshener won't do. Cases like this require an eradication of rats, an evacuation of all the slumbering bats, a banishing of mold before it creeps up the walls and invades the ceiling --"

Laura shuddered as she imagined rats gnawing the dry wood and mold dissolving the moist timber, until only peeling wallpaper and flaking paint covered a skeleton of rot.

"In your case, we need to use every pesticide, bactericide, vermicide, herbicide and insecticide; every tetra-chloro- and dihydrobenzo- in the book. Who knows what evils lurk under a grimy rug?" As soon as Laura looked away, the man's face dissolved into a blur as featureless and lumpy as a bar of soap left too long in water. If she didn't concentrate on his words, his speech droned, like the whirring of a washing machine during the rinse cycle. "You have ten minutes to get the desirable life forms out of your house, " he announced, turning to Laura. "No longer. At Domestic Bliss, we start when we promise to start; we believe in speed and punctuality." Laura nodded mutely as her stomach churned. Where was Jeremy? Could she catch the cats if she found them? Were the pet crates still in the basement, or lost under a mountain of magazines?

She turned into the house and screeched.

"Jeremy!" The call, too loud to be intelligible, made the windows rattle. The boy and the dog galloped forward, summoned by her alarm. The cats, awakened from limp-limbed naps, jumped over beds, scooted past jumbles of old computer parts, and pounced into the tiny bathroom. Laura found the pet carriers on a basement shelf, thanked a God she didn't believe in for the blessing, blew Lady Luck a kiss in gratitude, wondered how she'd pay for this new karmic debt, and promised the cosmos a sacrifice at some dawn in the distant future.

Laura left the house, pushing a cart stacked with a case of bottled water, a six-pack of Coke, a grab bag of high-cholesterol, high sugar, high-salt snacks, the tray of brownies, and three pet cages; in each, a cat wailed for release and scratched at the steel grating with long, desperate claws. Beside her, the two other desirable life forms trotted, one gripping her hand, the other tensing and relaxing his leash as he bounded forward and back. As she passed the crew from Domestic Bliss, each worker raised a silver-gloved right hand and waved.

"A messy house is the devil's workshop," one sang out as Laura's cart bumped over a riot of dandelions that had pushed between slabs of pavement concrete.

"Cobwebs are the devil's plaything," another added, and moved closer to the first "Sludge is the devil's clay, and grime is his coloring medium." A paint imported from hell, Laura thought, each speck of pigment is a tiny black hole. She imagined walls and doors of a blinding whiteness uninterrupted by fingerprints or spattered cooking grease, a house where no one moved because no one wanted to spoil the antiseptic perfection. The shining whiteness would burn through her retinas until she spun through a universe of screaming, condemning brilliance, unable to move or even blink; even a flickering eyelash might send eddies of invisible dust hurtling towards and into the walls, killing the perfection.

"That's why we believe in Total Educational Rectification," the third worker exclaimed. "A strict rehabilitation program for your home and for you; one can't hear a true sermon too often. But you already know that; you signed the contract." Any sane person knows that an unsightly home is the devil's handiwork. But Domestic Bliss is always here to help you; we stand by you for life."

Laura glanced uneasily down at her purse, into which she'd shoved a copy of the contract.

"An untidy house is the devil's playpen.,” she stammered back as Jeremy tugged at her arm. Best to recite the mantra; best to placate these workers who probably were chronically intoxicated from the fumes of industrial-strength solvents. Best to keep the dog, who poked his nose into smelly burrows and rolled in mud after every bath, far from the gleaming van. "A fall from order points to a fall from grace," she muttered to the fourth and fifth workers, who glared at her expectantly.

"My Dad's not just turning in his grave," she muttered to herself. "He's sitting upright, banging on the ceiling of his coffin, demanding to be let out so that he can dance a jig in his tattered Sunday best atop his toilet tombstone."

Jeremy clutched her hand more tightly; the dog huffed and twitched one floppy velvet ear.

"Your grandfather dedicated his life to cleanliness and orderliness," she explained, even though a three year old wouldn't understand the concepts; drifting into the slow cadence of a mother reading aloud, she felt calmed; stories and distant memories didn't threaten her so much. "Inside and outside, his house was a shrine to neatness and cleaning fluids. No one dared lean against the whitewashed picket fence and smudge it." The living room and dining room furniture had glowed, dust-free and a luminous golden-brown, like museum pieces. The reproduction Oriental rugs had spread out, magic carpets sprouting floral arabesques in a mythic realm scourged free of germs. The cut glass vases sparkled, miniature stars trapped in their facets; the silver and brass bowls reflected upside-down and distorted images of the room, fun-house mirrors that resulted from hours of buffing. Father had called the house "preacher ready", as spotless and godly as any human habitation could be. Laura would stand at the living room entrance, forbidden entry by her father and kept from entering as though a thick velvet cord blocked off the space. She'd kick off her shoes and socks outside the front door and walk barefoot across the burnished hardwood floors; shoes tracked in mud and leaves, heels could gouge and scratch perfection. She'd learned to routinely scrub her hands and confine her wayward hair in a net upon entering the house; human fingerprints marred the mirror-glossiness of a knob. The toilet water had been clean enough for a miniature man to swim in when his boat capsized or a cat to drink, but she'd been allowed no pets; gerbils spat pellets out of their cages and cats wouldn't submit to being shampooed three times daily.

"He spent his life writing jingles about toilet bowl cleaners," she mumbled to her son. "Creativity in the service of his god." Right now, Father wouldn't be dancing. He'd be standing on his tomb, as proud and tall as a skeleton could be, holding a bronzed bottle of cleaning fluid aloft like a trophy and shouting his manifesto for anyone above or below the tombstones to hear.

"Mommy." Jeremy fidgeted as Laura opened the back door of her car. "Are we going on a trip?

Laura pushed aside a faded bathing suit, an expired bottle of vitamins, a jar in which one Aspirin rattled and a paperback with mold festooning the edge of its damp cover, then set down the three cat crates. Forgotten shopping lists and stained receipts crackled softly, settling under the weight of the pet carriers; an unopened Christmas card from the plumber wafted down from the back seat. Laura knew that crushed pretzels, Hershey's kisses melted into slabs, a dried peach pit, wrappers streaked with solidified grease, raisins as hard as wrinkled pebbles and shriveled orange rinds had settled to the car floor. As the dog jumped onto the back seat, his speckled head almost touching the roof, an empty tin of cashews clattered across the seat into the door.

She rolled the back window down several inches; the dog wedged his nose in the opening, panting happily and eagerly inhaling the vapors from passing trucks.

"No trip," she replied as she lifted her son into the car and strapped him into the special child seat decorated with grape juice stains and grinning bears holding lollipops. "We just have to wait until those men are done fixing our house."

"The space men?"

Laura shook her head; as she trudged towards the passenger's side, the phrase "masked marauders" clanged in her mind.

At the house, two hooded workers wheeled a six-foot tall chrome vacuum cleaner towards the front door; behind it trailed a white bag as long as her living room; a flexible black tube, three feet wide and as long as her bedroom, protruded in front. The bag would expand into a bloated belly, holding and digesting the piles of dust, newspaper and garbage that her house could keep no longer but couldn't eliminate by itself. The corrugated tube, like a giant snout, would hungrily sniff and devour, sucking whatever it touched into the vacuum's famished maw. A child and a cat could easily be sucked into the bowels of the roaring monster until someone heard the screams, slashed the vinyl sides and plucked them from the churning innards of the evil beastie.

"If someone even could hear the screams," Laura thought, remembering the man whose mechanical voice had sounded like a computer simulation of human speech and wondering if such a huge machine would roar louder than a tiger genetically engineered to grow to elephant-size.

"Not space men," she muttered as she started the ignition and drove the car to a parking space down the block. "Just men in strange suits and hoods." Three of the workers wheeled giant chrome canisters towards the front door; even at this distance, Laura saw the skull and crossbones painted in stark black on the side of each. Enough poison to kill a nation of mice, a city of cats, a town of large dogs and many humans. Maybe they were space men posing as housecleaning specialists, eager to kill off humanity with their extraterrestrial concoctions and take over the planet.

"What are they doing in the house?"

"Cleaning it." A bread pan with brown crust peeling from the interior had slid forward; Laura kicked it back under the seat. What would the Domestic Bliss crew think if they saw her car? What would her father say? Last year, a wedge of cheese had rotted under the front passenger's seat until the car stank enough to challenge a fumigation squad. Laura had pawed through the mess for hours, stopping to re-read every letter and reminisce about every artifact in her roving house of memories, as she'd searched for the source of the smell. She'd joked that she was a survivalist, able to live for a month off the leftovers in her car; she hadn't even worn a mask, although she could have been dealing with a biohazard. "You live in a garbage receptacle," her father would have scolded, the disapproval smoking up from his wan lips and his ghostly mouth opening into a black hole of absolute scorn and despair.

"Can we go to McDonalds?" Jeremy clapped his hands and bounced in his seat until the car shuddered. Laura started the engine and drove into the street as Jeremy whooped, the dog barked and the three cats wailed for freedom.

The Domestic Bliss crew had already left when Laura arrived home, her stomach bloated from three chocolate milkshakes and her ears ringing from childish shrieks and soprano caterwauls intermittently interrupted by basso barking. She glanced at the sign "Rehabilitated by Domestic Bliss Inc.; for emergencies, call..." glued firmly to a door that gleamed as white and glossy as one just released from the factory. Not wanting to mar the finish of the knob, brass that had been concealed for years by layers of grime, she wrapped her hand in her shirttail before opening it; polyester left fewer marks than skin.

"Be careful, take off your shoes before you go in," she whispered to her son as she gazed at the spotless walls and floors. She hadn't known that the living room carpet was green, had forgotten that she even owned a footstool. Only the architectural layout and the rooster-shaped wall clock, every number now legible through the glass, assured her that she'd returned to the right house.

"You'll have to stay outside," she told the dog as she hooked the leash to a garden pole. "At least until you get a bath."

"I should be pleased," she thought, "Now I can find things; now I won't lose my son. Cora will be pleased; she no longer has to admit to having a slob for a friend. My father would be pleased, is pleased if he's still around as a ghost." She glanced out at the twilit lawn, at the silhouettes of unruly hedges and the grass, crew cut in some places, as shaggy as a bum's beard in others. Thistle and dandelions rioted in purple and gold abandon where someone had once planted dahlias. She bent to pluck a square of paper from Jeremy's trousers - part of a faded old shopping list, residue from the car.

When her husband arrived home from the office, Laura stopped him at the front door, asked him to take off his shoes, and escorted him indoors.

"It looks good, doesn't it?", she beamed.

"Uh huh, very good," Ted mumbled through a mouth of potato chips, sank into the sofa as he did every night, and clicked the remote. Laura retreated quietly from the room; when Ted withdrew into his private inner world after a hard day at work, using the TV’s flickering light and humming voices to repel intruders, she knew not to interrupt him.

My family would be pleased," she mused while lying in bed. "Especially my father."

"Your father's dead," Ted grunted, and rolled in bed to face away from her.

"Sure, I know. But, remember how he always had the house spic and span, ready to impress the deacon. Even his car shone as though no one ever drove it, and his garden would have impressed the neatest landscaper?" Laura paused. "My car --"

Ted breathed deeply and rhythmically beside her. As she listened, she remembered how her father had painted the handles of his pruning shears glossy red each April, how he'd sharpened the blades until they gleamed and had scoured every speck of rust from his rake. A shiny green seal on the mower's aluminum casing certified that the engine had just had an annual tune-up and that the blades had been adjusted to exactly three inches above ground. His sickle and a machete had hung on stainless steel hooks above the garage worktable where he'd tidily lined up the best gardening books on the market as though diligent lawn care were a civic and religious duty.

"But he had a mental problem; he went to the extreme. A mind obsessed is a mind possessed," Laura told herself as the house's unfamiliar stillness folded around her like a suffocating blanket. She knew that worries could ossify into obsession, that fear and rigid compulsiveness could cause an insidious mental rot.

She listened for the crunch of paper under a scampering cat's paw, the clatter of a can dislodged by a large and clumsy dog, the thud of a magazine falling as Jeremy crept to the bathroom, all the comforting noises of life continuing in the dark. In the sterile silence on antiseptic sheets, she lay, too stiff to fall asleep, falling down, down, down in a dark mute void that led to a place that promised no solace.

Every other night for the next two weeks, at exactly 6 PM, a representative from Domestic Bliss knocked on Laura's door, entered before she had invited him in, and inspected the rooms. He ran his finger in parallel rows along each tabletop, examined the walls for fingerprints with a portable halogen lamp, and crawled across each rug, feeling for dust or grit lodged between the fibers.

"Dirt," he droned in his metallic monotone one evening, and held up a short white cat hair. "How many hours do you spend daily in domestic maintenance?"

"One," Laura mumbled into her collar.

"What?"

"One, but my son and my husband also do their bit," she muttered, hoping that exaggeration and little lies would placate the inspector.

"Not enough, a house this size needs at least 2 hours and 27 minutes daily for the upkeep of domestic bliss," he scolded and stomped out to the white van. Laura backed away as he wheeled in the giant chrome vacuum cleaner, cringed as the motor growled and gurgled like a hungry belly and the long tube sucked at her rug like the proboscis of a famished mutant insect.

"We'll be back again tomorrow," he said, after switching off the vacuum. "To begin Phase Two of your Educational Rectification. Domestic Bliss is with you now and forever; achieving domestic perfection can be a lifelong task, but we're by your side all the way. Cleanliness is our mission, our reason for being; all our workers are thoroughly devoted, we'd never desert you. Be here tomorrow at 3 PM."

The next afternoon, Laura spent two hours and 28 minutes, 60 seconds more than the prescribed minimum, on housework. At exactly 3 o'clock, a woman with sharply creased tan trousers rapped commandingly on the front door, displayed her badge and directed Laura onto the front porch.

"External domestics division, deputy director of the Delinquent vehicle Reform Squad" she rasped in a tinny, staccato voice. Her neck was broom-handle-thin and her skin as was a perfectly pressed white sheet. Laura frowned.

"We've seen your garage and what's kept inside it," the woman continued. "You don't drive a car; you drive a Trashmobile. A car should be a spotless transportation device, not a motorized garbage container. As we speak, a crew is towing your vehicle to our depot for fumigation, pest removal, debris eradication, grunge excision, and a 24 hour autoclaving."

Laura gasped. "But, I need my car. I go shopping, I take Jeremy to the playground." She started towards the road, but stopped abruptly as the truck towing her car disappeared over the hill. "And my husband uses it too. Besides, we didn't ask for all this; we only wanted house cleaning --"

"It's for your own good, the good of your household; achieving domestic bliss requires lifestyle overhaul. Your husband doesn't need a car; he uses the train. You can take public transportation too, and walk to the store. Walking tones the muscles - and your figure does need attention, but we don't need to focus on that yet" the woman asserted in a shrill monotone. "After the thorough cleansing, our team of electronics experts will install dust, fur, mold, food particulate and fetor sensors in your transportation device. You should clean your rehabilitated vehicle at least once weekly and avoid allowing furry life forms entry. Should you fail to maintain your cleaning protocol, should any designated particulates, mildew, digestible matter or foul odors be present, an alarm will sound here and in our home office, alerting us to the infraction."

The woman pulled a clipboard from her briefcase and decisively placed a check mark beside the second entry on a list that extended to the bottom of the page. Her gaze roved rhythmically back and forth like a searchlight, scrutinizing each of Laura's pores for a telltale blackhead and probing the yard for an incriminating dropped peach pit.

"When – ?" Laura began. Hearing her son whoop in front of the TV, she wondered how she'd tell Jeremy and her husband that the dog could no longer ride in the back seat beside the open window, his head bobbing and shaking happily as his tongue licked the wind. Already the dog, recently banished to the back yard, implored Laura with doleful brown eyes that accused her of sadism until she atoned by tossing him an extra bone; she felt like converting to Catholicism, just so that someone could absolve her of the accumulating guilt. "And Ted? What about when he goes fishing, throws the catch in a bucket in the back seat? And how can you expect a four year old to sit in a car for an hour with nothing to eat? I didn't ask for this! Why?"

The woman sighed loudly; to Laura, standing too close, her cool, odorless breath seemed too steady, like the streams emitted from a new air conditioner not yet personalized by rust stains from the owners leaky gutter or grape juice dripped from a child's cup.

"The car will be back tomorrow, fully sanitized," the woman said, then raised her right hand to her head. No strips of scratched-off polish on the pearly nails trimmed as perfectly oval as slabs cut by machines according to computer specifications. No torn cuticles, no scuffed knuckles, no fingertips calloused from years of gripping steel wool; who cleaned the home of this manicured woman? "And you did ask for this. Remember the contract? You signed on for lifetime management."

Laura gaped.

"Oh, and don't worry about your husband; he'll soon be too busy to think about fish. A man must contribute to Domestic Bliss; we just haven't gotten to his part yet. We start on that tomorrow, when we look at the condition of your lawn. Be here tomorrow at 8 AM. Have your husband beside you; it's a Saturday, we know he's off from work."

Watching the woman drive away, Laura shuddered. As she tiptoed down her spotless hall, she imagined driving to a hidden clearing, rolling down car windows smudged with taffy and road grime and burger grease, dumping buckets of mud on the back seat and letting buttercups grow there; she'd convert the Junkmobile to a Weedmobile, a Dreammobile, a tiny, roving, secret field of hope, where golden blooms could flourish unseen and revive her as the Domestic Bliss inspectors searched in vain for the car owned by an incorrigible slob.

"What's wrong with the lawn?" Ted asked over dinner. "It's green. Green is green, what more do you need in a lawn?"

Laura shrugged, wondering if she should just throw down Astroturf, then stick in clusters of silk irises and sunflowers. Some artificial flowers looked more real than the live ones and never wilted, never shed messy petals. Fake grass remained uniformly short, didn't let dandelions take root; a family could avoid mowing, seeding and digging, but maintain the perfectly barbered, weedless look that suggested domestic bliss to all.

"She mentioned the crabgrass and said the lawn was irregularly mowed, looked mangy in some areas and like it had a 5 o'clock shadow in others."

"Yeah, like I'm really going to waste every Saturday with fertilizer and pulling out weeds. Especially with a dog and a kid tearing up the ground." He stabbed his fork into a meatball and mashed it flat. "Who do these people think they are, anyway? Butting in everywhere, when we only asked for a housecleaning? They're beginning to sound like clones of your father."

Outside, a hedge trimmer buzzed. A few of the block's dedicated gardeners continued working after sunset, pulling weeds and pruning branches by the light of portable flood lamps; the sputtering engines and whining saws reminded Laura of her childhood with Father, spent being silent, stealthy and invisible.

"What's wrong with weeds?" she'd innocently asked her father. How could anything as cheerful as wild daisies, tiger lilies and buttercups be vile? What would happen if the rose suddenly grew wild, didn't need gardeners to reproduce, and took over lawns the way sumac and thistle did? What if roses defied human control by sprouting anywhere with weedlike abandon. Would we shout ‘This is great! Let the roses overrun my lawn; let the roses, in their new freedom, overrun the world!' Or would we add the rose to the list of forbidden plants? Even blacklist all the poetry and old gardening books that touted it as the paragon of beauty? "Would a rose be a weed if it could grow anywhere?"

Her father had whipped off his leather belt and held it, looped in his fist, over her head.

"You need an attitude adjustment, young lady," he'd roared. "Do you need the strap to teach you what's right? A rose can never be a weed; a rose is too beautiful to be a weed, a rose needs human cultivation too much. Weeds are rebellious, independent. They're like delinquent kids. Like scavengers. Like demons. Weeds flourish without love; they flourish on neglect. And where there is love, they suck it up like parasites. Weeds are the vampires of the soil. Weeds are always ugly; anything as beautiful as a rose could never be a weed, even if it comes with thorns. So, what have we learned about roses today? What should we have learned about roses a long time ago?"

Her gaze never moving from the belt, poised like a snake about to strike, Laura had stooped, trying to make herself smaller.

"A rose can never be a weed," she'd recited.

"Even if it has thorns?"

"Even if it has stabbing thorns," she replied. Thorns that impale the soul, thorns that draw blood like a vampire's teeth. "A rose can never be ugly, a rose can never be a weed," she'd stammered, while wishing that a particularly long and poisoned thorn would pierce her father's fist like an ice pick and promising the universe that she would never end up like her father if only she could learn the art of making herself too small and insignificant to attract the strap.

The sudden silence, after the last mower on the block had coughed to a stop, jolted Laura back to the present and her husband’s scowl.

"If they keep coming around, I might call the police," Ted fumed as Laura scraped uneaten food off three plates into a garbage bag. "Get them for trespassing, harassment."

Laura didn't mention the contract, not now. She jammed the forks and knives into their dishwasher compartments and imagined fleeing to a squalid trailer park under an assumed name. She'd dye her hair orange, wear rhinestone-studded sunglasses and clinging purple velveteen pants, learn to yack in a nasal twang, become the queen of the motor home motor mouths with an achey-breaky heart, a cliché past and a future as unpromising as a road of potholes. But she'd cringe whenever someone knocked on her rickety front door, fearing that one of Domestic Bliss's agents, with his electronically enhanced vision and long-distance telepathy, had targeted her location and uncovered the woman behind the costume. He'd cuff her, interrogate and lecture her, bring her back to this home of the immaculate, demand lifelong allegiance to the cause of cleanliness, demand her life.

"They came around here for one job," Ted complained. "Now they act like they own us."

Laura didn't pull out the contract; she didn't gather up her five magnifying glasses that, assembled in some particular order one atop the next, might perform optical magic and let her read the small print. She turned on the dishwasher and retired to her bed, where she lay watching slivers of light cut the dark ceiling like knives.

The next morning, a bright green van and a spotless white automobile pulled into the driveway. An unfamiliar man and woman, stern-faced and immaculately clad, marched to the front door. Ted, in a threadbare T-shirt and paint-spattered jeans, tried to block the entrance.

"Domestic Bliss, Sir," they intoned in unison, showed their badges, and pushed inside as though Ted were as lightweight as a fly. Ten figures clad in shiny green suits leaped from the van and swarmed around its rear; Laura heard the buzz of speech, then watched them uncoil the longest, fattest hose she'd ever seen.

"Martians!" Jeremy shrieked, tugging her hand as the man and woman returned from inspecting her house. "A monster snake! Can I touch it, can I?"

The woman scowled at Jeremy, put two check marks on a page in her clipboard and showed the document to the man, who nodded. Jeremy cringed away from the accusatory stare, gripped Laura's hand tightly and squeezed his body into hers.

"You can't....What right?" Crimson faced, Ted lurched towards the strangers but stumbled back, as though punched by an invisible force. "What gives you the right to go through our house," he stammered, dazed and desperately grasping for lost words.

"What kinds of assholes invade someone else's yard like this?"

The woman frowned and solemnly checked another entry on her paper. Three of the workers pushed a machine, six feet high with a tapering chrome nozzle and a humped plastic back attached to a collapsed cloth bag. To Laura, it resembled a mutant, hungry anteater; as it fed on grass and worms and unlucky birds, the bag would expand like a slowly bloating stomach. Two others pulled a glossy chartreuse dome suspended above tiers of variably sized rotating blades, all dagger-sharp. Laura thought of an extraterrestrial stealth helicopter, with propellers for landing and spinning blades for decapitating any tree top or human in its way.

"We’re using our biggest machines on your lawn. More efficient that way,” the man explained. “Industrial strength equipment for an industrial-sized job.”

“Yours is obviously an end-stage case. A case requiring extreme measures, extreme labor, extreme dedication." The woman shook her head. "So many problems."

"Faults in all sectors, not a single area free of serious blemishes." The man shook his head in rhythm with the woman.

Several uniformed workers bustled around the van, holding shiny sickles, machetes and weed-whackers high above their heads; Laura thought of dancing tribesman, drunk before the sacrifice. The willow decked in its filigreed gown of tiny pale leaves, the pine attired in a gentle fuzz of green, the pert dandelions eagerly poking their golden heads above a ridge of grass seemed like offerings to be stripped or beheaded in deference to a newly victorious god.

"What do you mean, 'end stage case'?" Ted blustered.

Jeremy wedged his body between Laura's legs; she cupped her hands under his chin, a protective cocoon.

"Cleanliness is next to godliness," the woman intoned.

"Tidiness is next to godliness," the man added.

"And don't we all aspire to heaven?"

Laura, Ted and Jeremy stared at the two, unable to speak.

"That means clean, tidy housekeeping. Everything in its place and the right place for everything."

"That means neatly pruned bushes, perfectly rounded hedges. That means - no weeds, no fallen branches; permitting weeds is a form of sloppiness, like letting grime grow between your tiles. An untidy lawn is the devil's doing; fallen branches point to the fallen man."

"Our mission is to pull up the fallen man, restore him to perfect cleanliness," the woman droned. "It's our reason for being."

The two inspectors studied the paper on which the woman had jotted notes and put ominous checkmarks. Laura scowled; Jeremy, trying to wriggle free, pointed to giant gleaming hedge clippers that chopped away branches like the teeth of an insatiable scavenger. Workers squatted to dig invasive clover from between blades of approved bluegrass; they yanked out dandelions, scraped shelf fungi as small as fingernails from the trunk of a birch, and tossed the debris into gaping garbage bags as topsoil and flakes of tree bark rained over their impervious boots. On de-weeded areas of lawn, the huge mower growled ahead in undeviating straight lines, spitting out grass; behind it, the hump-backed machine snorted hungrily, sucked the clippings into its snout, and left a swatch of grass as short and uniform as a green rug. How would the Domestic Bliss inspectors have reacted if Laura had poured asphalt over the whole yard and painted it bright green? The attentive homeowner would maintain rows of soldierly tulips, rigidly erect beside shrubs as symmetrically domed as helmets and garden zones where geraniums mixed strategically with petunias in a watercolorist's wash of placating pinks and violets; on the ideal street, her lawn would merge with other lawns, all uniformly painted green. Today, the Domestic Bliss monitors came as lawn police; what role would they play tomorrow?

"Cleanliness means more than good housekeeping and lawn care," the woman intoned. "It means cleanliness of body and mind, clean speech and clean thoughts. He--" The female inspector glared at Ted. "He recently referred to a posterior excretory orifice by using a profanity; he likened us, dedicated delegates of Domestic Bliss, to that orifice."

"Wha-at?" Laura stammered.

"He called us 'assholes'," the man barked. "That is unclean speech, unclean thinking. The man obviously needs rehabilitation. His speech will need to be monitored and every breech of proper vocal protocol attended to."

Ted gaped.

"Tidiness means having the right things in the right places; that also refers to behavior," the woman continued in a slow falsetto as she frowned at Jeremy and tapped on her clipboard. "That means keeping the body where it's supposed to be, and only inserting words where they belong. Blurting out 'Martians' and fidgeting in the middle of a serious discussion are forms of disorderly conduct. The boy needs re-education; he already shows signs of pernicious untidiness at the core of his being."

Laura gasped.

"Think of your home as a tiny Eden in a fallen world." The man's voice whirred like a motor. "Remember that this Eden, every day and in every way, can only get better and better."

Ted snorted, arms crossed over his chest. The woman inspector scrutinized her checklist and nodded solemnly.

"The adult male's vocal indiscretions and the behavior of the home's minor member are hardly surprising," the woman droned. "Analysis of our observations shows an urgent need for Interior Aesthetic Adjustments and Sartorial Re-alignment."

Laura’s jaw dropped.

"Re-decorating. Different colors, different fabrics," the inspector clarified. "And an overhaul of how you approach the task of dressing yourselves."

Laura, gripping Jeremy's shoulders, noticed the mud spatters on his socks, the sneakers faded to an indifferent gray-blue by so much wading through puddles, the bur sticking to the back collar of his rumpled shirt.

"But, what's wrong with our house?" she sputtered. "It's bright and cheerful. And Jeremy's not even in school yet. Why should I worry about whether his outfit matches or his shoes get stained? He liked playing in the woods, and the rabbits don't care what he looks like."

The female inspector inhaled deeply and briefly shut her eyes, as though willing forth the patience to explain the obvious to the incorrigibly ignorant.

"That's not the point. Whether you like your house doesn't matter." She signed loudly and pointed to the yard. "You have rows of forsythia bushes - fortunately not in bloom. You've also fallen for the daffodil and marigold craze. And your lawn's a breeding ground for buttercups and dandelions. Up to me, I'd outlaw yellow flowers, after scientists proved the neuroexcitatory effects of some colors." The inspector narrowed her eyes. "You do remember those studies, don't you?"

Laura nodded, confused but reluctant to encourage a lecture, perplexed as she recalled blazing forsythias lining the streets in early spring, the first explosion of cheeriness after a gray winter.

"Yellow doesn't stop with one buttercup," the inspector asserted. "Yellow expands to a field,"

Laura nodded automatically, as she'd often done before her ranting father. Laura knew what he'd said about orange, what this lady would say about yellow. Yellow was the color of warning signs and dandelions. Yellow screeched, flashed, set off every howling siren in the mind, made the heart race, jolted the muscles into tense alertness. Yellow spread beyond the forsythia bush; yellow became an epidemic of glowing dandelions, a field of fire and too much light. Too much razzle-dazzle, which excited and irritated the mind; too much razzle-dazzle was bad. Razzle-dazzle-yellow is the devil's plaything; we must let no yellow in our yards.

"Your son's bedroom is bright yellow," the inspector scolded. "How can you expect orderly conduct from a nervous system exposed to so much yellow? Your kitchen and bathroom are yellow. How can you expect a husband to speak properly when his brain sparks sizzling, helter-skelter currents and short-circuits from a toxic overdose of yellow? The decor must be converted if the man and boy are to be converted."

Laura and Ted stared blankly, speechless.

"Blue soothes, pink pacifies," the male inspector recited in a nasal monotone. "The trinity of blue, lavender and pink is the trinity of tranquility. Harmonious colors lead to a harmonious society; community peace grows out of the colors of peace. The home must be a peaceful place."

Laura cringed and glanced imploringly at her husband. Ted stared fixedly ahead, his jaw clamped shut, an artery on the side of his neck throbbing to the beat of a primordial war dance. The female inspector gazed smugly at the clipped, pruned yard, sucked clean of a decade's infiltrating detritus, of the rot that had seeped in and spread under the eyes of the indifferent and unvigilant. She tapped her clipboard, commanding attention with the staccato raps.

"With all our devoted workers, we can attend to sartorial re-alignments and adjustment of the interior aesthetics simultaneously," the woman yipped, as though Laura should feel overjoyed by the news. "You'll get verbal lessons along the way, but you'll learn most from doing and experiencing; we've found that habit-replacement leads to faster and longer rehabilitation than does mere talk. The wrinkled, stained, torn, faded and patched clothes must go - too messy for safety. The mind copies what the mind sees."

A crimson blaze had surged over Ted's face; his eyes burned darkly hot, like coals ready to be stoked to fire by any comment.

"The state of the mind mirrors the state of the body," the male inspector added. "Messy attire encourages messy thinking; a clean mind grows only in a clean body. We'll also have to monitor how often he bathes."

"And whether he washes behind his ears."

"Keeps his fingernails short but scrubs them anyway."

"Scours between his toes. An often forgotten place in the bathing ritual, a frequent entry point for infiltrating impurities."

"Monitor the adult bathroom rituals as well. Plus their weights and the flabbiness of the musculature." The inspector scrutinized Laura and Ted, and shook his head. "A definite need for Appearance Rectification - trainers at the home daily for work-outs, weekly measurements of biceps thickness, fat to muscle ratio, body mass index. A slovenly body engenders a slovenly spirit."

Laura bit down to control the quivering in her lower lip and gripped a wad of abdominal fat between her thumb and index finger. "A non-detachable floatation device around my middle," she thought, "Meant to keep me afloat as the whitewater currents of life send me crashing into rocks." This life preserver wouldn't keep her buoyant though; even among the neighborhood ladies, far less demanding than the Domestic Bliss delegates, revealing this blubber could send her sinking towards the sludge at the bottom of the social pool. Ordinary people, as well as the purified, demanded bodies stripped clean of fat.

"We know this is hard for you. So much to do, so much to change," the woman continued. "We're not without compassion. That's why we're assigning you personal guides, who will be with you most of the day to watch your progress and correct your ways."

"Prison guards," Ted grunted, and pounded his fist against his palm; the inspectors ignored him.

"We'd like to mentor you with a totally person touch, have your guide with you 24 hours per day for face-to-face, up-close-and-personal teaching. Unfortunately, we can't do that. Our workers also need to sleep and be with their families; they're dedicated to the mission, but sleep and kin contacts are vital to domestic bliss. So, to save our devoted guides from perditions, we've made other arrangements to accommodate your needs in their absence --"

"Like a frontal lobotomy? That'll do the trick," Ted spat out, rocking up and down on his toes and repeatedly hitting his palm with his fist. "Implant electrodes. Then we'd run to let you throw the collars around our neck, and follow behind you on the leash. Lobotomy, that's the way to go; we'd even jump in the river on command."

The woman turned to Ted with her plastic, mannequin smile and continued. "We've installed electronic monitors strategically through your home so that someone can hear you even when no actual person's available. Our Embedded Ear program, it lets us catch slip-ups before they fester into dangerous habits. Even when none of our representatives is with you in person, our electronic monitors will let you know when you’ve done wrong; you’ll get the message loud and clear. No escaping our dedicated surveillance; we want you to learn your lesson."

The inspector tried to widen her glossy painted smile into something seemingly benevolent and patient, humane but without human imperfections. She added a dash of falsetto sweetness to her voice, but too late. Ted stormed towards her, his face aflame, his body lunging, his arms reaching for the woman's neck, ready to shake and throttle her. She flailed her arms to block an attack, stammered "No....Don't....You...." in a breathless raspy whisper, and stumbled backward until stopped by the porch railing. Suddenly, Ted stopped, looked at the people who were watching him and at the neighboring houses where invisible witnesses might hide behind unlit windows. He lowered his hands.

"What kind of shit is this? What are you nuts, you assholes - yes, assholes – trying to pull?" he bellowed.

The male inspector started back, as though blasted by breath stinking of brimstone. The female cautiously edged towards her colleague.

"You cleaned our house well; we paid your fee," Ted thundered. "But what the hell gives you the right to stomp all over our lawn, prowl through our house every day, redecorate our rooms, re-parent our kid, correct our speech? What kind of crap is this?"

The woman loosened a sheaf of papers from her clipboard and offered them to Ted.

"Yeah, so what's this?" he snarled.

"The contract," the woman replied in an even-paced monotone. "That your wife signed." She paused, then spoke more slowly. "Our complete service contract"

Ted whirled towards Laura, his right eyelid twitching on his crimson face, his blocky chest and shoulders set rigidly forward. "You signed a contract with these people? A contract?" He swung his fist up, beat the air and started to pace. "Allowing them to meddle in our lives, to own us? What kind of woman did I marry? Couldn't you tell they were nut cases?"

Ted kicked the doorjamb, then marched to the female inspector and snatched the document from her hand. Laura shrank back as Ted began to read, staring at her feet and clutching the porch railing for support.

"It was all so tiny," she whimpered. "Hardly visible, almost as small as bacteria. A blur. The words, I mean; they weren’t big, like what you’re reading now. The part about the initial housecleaning was clear, big and bold letters. But then, a lot of fuzz. A lot of the print looked like dots, mites in the cat's ear, a page of smudge. I'd have needed a microscope to read it. If it was writing, that is. Jeremy's not old enough to have a microscope. They were already here and all set up - to do the house cleaning. And the first lady, the one who had me sign, seemed so nice, like a friendly neighbor; she even gave Jeremy a brownie. You know how often we lost Jeremy behind all those piles, a housekeeping emergency. The lady said that the small print was a lot of legalese, ‘wherefore’s and ‘whatnot’s that just promised us a thoroughly cleaned house. We wouldn’t have to lose Jeremy any more; I couldn’t have found a microscope even if Jeremy had one --"

"Enough!" Ted roared, the pages shaking in his fists as he glared at the print.

Like mites in a cat's ear, Laura thought. Now the cats' ears are clean in a disinfected house. Now a new kind of pest invades. Our front door's an orifice, letting in the missionary mites from Domestic Bliss to feed on our lives, to grow and multiply in our home until they've sucked it dry of spirit....And I'm as good as a mite, I let them in; I didn't question the mite-sized print. I should be squashed like a mite, sprayed with pesticide, swept from a world that might be ideal without my kind nibbling at its polished surface, turning the planet into an irritable itchy boil.

"It's all spelled out on those pages," the woman inspector said. "Big and bold, loud and clear, in black and white. Ours is a program of progressive edification, rehabilitation at all levels. A messy home is only a sign of dangerous chaos breeding at the core; achieving domestic bliss requires purification of the entire organism."

Ted crushed the papers in his fist, shoved the crumpled wad in his pocket, then jerked it out; the meaning of the words on his copy of the contract, all in 14 point boldface, was clear.

"Purification is a full-time job for us and for you; luckily, we're dedicated." The woman turned her lips up in a thin, practiced smile beneath stony eyes. "Think of us as giving the home a long needed enema; we wash away the toxins."

Late that night, after the monitors had finally departed, Ted opened the refrigerator door, pawed through the contents, muttered something under his breath, and shut the door.

"Nothing in there," he grumbled, and kicked the base of the dishwasher. "Can't a man even eat what he wants?" A cheeseburger after a trying day, Laura added silently; can't a man indulge in a bun drenched in grease, in medium-rare sirloin dripping juice, in a cold beer to lower the temperature of his anger?

Domestic Bliss had removed the six-pack of Guinness stout, Ted's favorite. They'd replaced the marbled red meats with tofu and skim milk; they'd tossed out Jeremy's Oreo cookies, the day-old chocolate donuts, the caramel-coated popcorn, the corn chips and the ice cream, replacing these with onions, carrots, brussel sprouts and enough spinach to feed a city of bulimic rabbits. Laura's stomach gurgled as she imagined scoops of chocolate-marshmallow ice cream in a bowl, the hard, frost-glazed spheres melting into shiny lumps of goodness.

"I could go for some ice-cream myself," she mumbled, keeping her eyes averted from Ted, fixing her gaze on the ovals of light reflected off the buffed floor.

The mowers had stopped snarling, belching and spitting; the hedge trimmers had stopped hissing and screeching; the weed whacker had stopped shrieking. Even the refrigerator seemed asleep, napping between periods of low groaning and rumbling. Laura shivered in the silence. From the town dump, the thousand papers that once cluttered these rooms mutely begged to be resurrected from their ignominy; hundreds of discarded letters and cards, bearing forgotten names, vowed revenge from the pit of anonymity.

Ted banged his fist against the refrigerator door.

"Tofu! That's not a meal, that's wet cardboard on a plate." He slammed his arm against a cabinet; the hinges creaked in protest as he spun towards Laura. "The fine print, Laura, didn't anyone teach you to read the fine print? If it's too small, don't sign. Why the hell didn’t –“

A metallic clanking reverberated through the house as steel bars dropped over each window. A siren blared from somewhere in the wall. As Ted cringed, hands over ears, Laura rushed to the back door, turned the knob and pushed; the door stayed closed. She pulled the handle and rammed her body against the wood paneling.

“Locked, we’re locked in,” she gasped when silence finally came.

Jeremy stumbled into the kitchen in his pajamas, clutching his head and wailing.

“The indoor alarms!” Laura blubbered. “Didn’t they say something about ‘embedded ears’? Being able to hear us, even when no one’s here in person? About ‘no escaping’, using alarms to set us right?”

Ted yanked open a closet door, snatching a hammer, drill and handsaw.

“Indoor monitors? Alarms in the wall, you say? I’ll find them all, even if I have to drill through every inch of these walls. Pull them out, pound them to smithereens. Even if I have to smash half the house, I’ll show them what they can do with their damned monitors! I’ve had enough of their shi—“

The sirens screamed in ever room, louder and shriller than before. Laura, Ted and Jeremy collapsed to the floor, hands clamped over ears. The screams drilled through their skulls, blasted through their hands, beat through their skin and muscles. The walls shuddered; the windows rattled; the overhead light flickered, mockingly in rhythm with their pulses and vibrating bones. Laura, Ted and Jeremy crouched, waiting for an end but locked in an eternal present of unending screams; they crouched as the moon drifted nonchalantly above lingering clouds, as constellations set, as a scarlet dawn seeped into the eastern sky and the neighbors awoke to another turn at breakfast, bus schedules and business.

Outsmarting Your Ass

2007-11-15T17:00:00.000-08:00

The salt merchant’s ass was so laden and so thirsty that jumping into the river became inevitable. Behold! Thirst quenched and burden much eased. Alas, such repeated smartness spoiled enough merchandise to bring lash and curse - uselessly. Then, wisdom saw the ass laden with enough sponge to match the usual weight. Animal intelligence or not, this is how Man outsmarted... his ass.

Although anecdotal, the story is true. The wise merchant was none other than Thales (cca. 624-548 B.C.E.), the first great thinker in ancient Greece. Regrettably, the storyteller Plutarch fails to mention who the ass was.

The Haibun

2007-11-14T09:48:00.001-08:00

http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~kohl/basho/index.html
http://www.raysweb.net/haibun
http://www.worldhaikureview.org/

According to the Haiku Society of America (HAS), “A haibun is a terse, relatively short prose poem in the haikai style, usually including both lightly humorous and more serious elements. A haibun usually ends with a haiku. Most haibun range from well under 100 words to 200 or 300. Some longer haibun may contain a few haiku interspersed between sections of prose. In haibun the connections between the prose and any included haiku may not be immediately obvious, or the haiku may deepen the tone, or take the work in a new direction, recasting the meaning of the foregoing prose, much as a stanza in a linked-verse poem revises the meaning of the previous verse.”

Japanese haibun apparently developed from brief prefatory notes occasionally written to introduce individual haiku, but soon grew into a distinct genre. The word haibun is sometimes applied to longer works, such as the memoirs, diaries, or travel writings of haiku poets, though technically they are parts of the separate and much older genres of journal and travel literature (nikki and kikôbun). [From the HSA Definitions Web site]

As we can see, the haibun is a combination of prose and haiku, a “narrative of epiphany”, as Bruce Ross called it.

It was introduced by the haiku master Basho in 1690 in a letter to a friend, that concluded with a haiku (“Genjuan no ki”, “The Hut of the Phantom Dwelling”).

Makoda Ueda names the following characteristics of the haibun:

the brevity and conciseness of haiku, in which each word carries rich layers of meaning;
a deliberately ambiguous use of certain particles and verb forms in places where the conjunction 'and' would be used in English;
a dependence on striking imagery;
the writer's detachment.

In the tradition of haiku (Basho himself spoke of “haikai no bunsho”, “writing in the style of haiku”), the present tense is used to convey a stream of sensory impressions as well as the feeling of universality and timelessness, at the same time eschewing abstractions and conceptualizations. Everyday experiences are given universal values, as in the haiku, allowing access to divine revelations, hence the epithet “narrative of epiphany”.

The haiku that accompany the prose can be of two types: haiku summarizing the prose (juxtapositions), and haiku that are not connected to the prose but rather add to it. The transition occurs in renku style. The prose itself shouldn’t be too prosaic or sentimental. Together, they provide a unified poetic expression. It is difficult to determine which comes first, as they are both of equal importance and form a unity, almost like yin and yang.

A wide variety of subjects is acceptable, from nature to travels, diary, dreams, love, death, etc. Haibun can also be written in a wide variety of styles, from the bombastic style of William M. Ramsey in his “Prayer for the Soul of a Mare” to Sally Secor’s simple, colloquial style in “A Garden Bouquet”.

Haibun are now written in all countries and in all languages, like haiku, but the USA is the country that has most experimented with the form. Bruce Ross's “Journey to the Interior: American Versions of Haibun”, published in 1998, gives deep insight into American haibun.

One of the best known haibun in English is Vincent Trippi's “Haiku Pond: A trace of the trail... and Thoreau” (1987), a meditation on Walden.

To conclude, a classical example from Basho’s “Narrow Road to the Deep North”, the “Departure”:

It was early on the morning of March the twenty-seventh that I took to the road. There was darkness lingering in the sky, and the moon was still visible, though gradually thinning away. The faint shadow of Mount Fuji and the cherry blossoms of Ueno and Yanaka were bidding me a last farewell. My friends had got together the night before, and they all came with me on the boat to keep me company for the first few miles. When we got off the boat at Senju, however, the thought of three thousand miles before me suddenly filled my heart, and neither the houses of the town nor the faces of my friends could be seen by my tearful eyes except as a vision.
The passing spring
Birds mourn,
Fishes weep
With tearful eyes.
With this poem to commemorate my departure, I walked forth on my journey, but lingering thoughts made my steps heavy. My friends stood in a line and waved good-bye as long as they could see my back.

References:

Survival

2007-11-07T15:50:00.000-08:00

Tropical heat violently beats my head
bouncing up from white crust
underneath my feet.
Eyes clenched behind sunglasses
not good enough protection
not helping stem streams of sweat
stinging eyes and skin.

I sink slowly to crouch
reach fingers to touch
tiny white grains attach
I bring them to my lips
Salt. Salt of the earth.

Later, when heat dissipates
sun’s fierce heat cools to orange
fellow visitors arrive
to crouch and lap with tongues
smooth or rough.
Peace will reign a while as
lion shares space with gazelle.

Outsourcing the Messiah and the Gray Nanobot Slime

2007-11-06T21:44:00.000-08:00

The God of the Bible is more-than-a-little like an
American Republican. Consequently the redemptive role
of the Messiah was outsourced to reduce expenditures
in the last quarter of some ancient year. The stand-in Messiah
came near the end of the first century C.E. But no one
even noticed Her. She also said that the Kingdom is here and now.
Again, no one had "ears to hear."

Men didn't even bother to crucify Her. They were
busy getting ahead and it wouldn't have been cost effective anyway,
with the high price of wood. The entire Age of Universal World Peace,
which She would have ushered in, was reduced to a commercial break
followed by ten seconds of silence.

Now humanity, itself, is being outsourced in a move to increase
productivity. What had been our job of gathering up sparks
of the Divine, creating souls and repairing the world
has been re-assigned to a sea of nanobots, which presumably will work on
this task far more harmoniously and efficiently.
Finally humankind will be replaced - by gray nanobot slime.

May-Tzu

Reflections on my Family, the Home-Cooked Meal, and the Joy of French Fries

2007-11-01T17:54:00.000-07:00

I was leafing through a magazine the other day, looking for the recipe that had caught my eye on its cover. It turned out to be a recipe with a story, and I read it presuming it would follow a familiar concept: the author sharing a recipe and a story born many years ago in her mother’s kitchen, about how they had bonded over cooking, the pivotal importance of food and shared meals for the family, and so on. But this story had a twist. It turned out the author did not have many fond memories of her mother, and was never able to bond with this woman who seemed always distant and cold towards her daughter. The mother died many years ago, without any closeness ever having grown between them. But the daughter did remember a special pie her mother used to make, and one day she felt an urge to recreate it, though there was no recipe. She tried and tried and after many failures was able to bake a good-enough replica of the original, and through the process and the taste of it, she brought back memories. Good memories. Of the effort her mother put into making this particular delicious dish for her, and that maybe this was the way her mother showed a love she was otherwise unable to express.

I love my mother. But she did not teach me how to cook. She reigned alone in the territories she considered her own, which is to say, anything relating to the household, including the kitchen. I have few memories of being allowed to help her with preparing a meal as a child, though I remember wanting to. Sometimes she'd run out of the kitchen mid-dinner preparation and hand me a mug stuffed to the brim with sprigs of parsley and a big pair of scissors, only to disappear quickly back to boiling pots and sizzling meat. I’d point those scissors all the way down to the bottom of the mug and earnestly snip away until the parsley was fine enough to meet my mother’s standards. Sometimes, if I was really persistent in asking to help, my mother would let me mix the salad dressing, after she had measured all of the ingredients and put them in a bowl. And sometimes, way back in the very distant past, before we had an electric mixer, I would be allowed to whip cream. This was a pretty big deal, because fresh whipped cream meant special dessert, maybe even guests, and because this particular chore required some skill. The liquid cream and a dash of sugar were poured into a little bowl-like contraption, with two beaters attached to a crank on the bottom of a red lid, and a big round white knob on top for turning. The bowl had to be held tightly level with one hand while energetically turning the knob with other. I had to be very careful not to spin the lid off the bowl and cause a spill. Also, the consistency had to be just so. Too much beating and I'd spoil it, turning light fluffy whipped cream into chunky butter, and risk the wrath of my mother, who then as now, took great pride in serving a good meal.

In other words, by the time I left home, I did not know how to cook even an egg. Turns out, it never mattered. I had learned the important things through observation. My mother used to call out in her native Dutch: eat, this is healthy food, it will make you strong. We had no formal knowledge of vitamins, roughage or antioxidants. But I would no sooner have forgone fruits, vegetables, and dairy than I would have fed my cat a diet of marshmallows. Even during those unregulated days when I was a college student first living on my own, and cooking an actual meal was not one of the rhythms of my life, I would live on whole wheat bread and cheese, supplemented by the occasional banana, and would regularly dig into a can of unheated vegetables for a fix of health and strength. Brussels sprouts lifted out one by one with a fork and dipped in ketchup. Loving it, too, though even I’m having a hard time imagining that, now that my culinary tastes have developed somewhat beyond those early days away from my mother’s table.

After I got married, regular home-cooked meals became a part of our new togetherness, as naturally as all the other things that were a part of married life, like talking and making love. I enthusiastically started to experiment with recipes and ingredients both familiar and new, and discovered the joy not only of cooking, but of being responsible for a meal prepared with forethought and consumed with pleasure. This continued after the births of our four sons, though admittedly the menu did fluctuate somewhat with respect to age-related eating habits of the children, as well as state of exhaustion of the cook. There were days that we didn’t get beyond canned baked beans and chicken nuggets served with a sliced tomato and some yoghurt for desert. But in the weekends, there was time for serious cooking and eating. My sons were introduced to a wide pallet of tastes as soon as they had enough teeth to dig into the dish. None of them were picky eaters, though each developed a few dislikes. There were those who didn't like fish, or cilantro, or creamed spinach. Those who wanted blue cheese on everything, and those who didn’t. Because I could never keep straight who liked what, everyone was simply served whatever was cooked. And expected to eat it. Which they did, most of the time.

Getting my young and unruly family to sit down at the dinner table at the same time was rarely easy. For one, my husband’s time and energy were consumed so thoroughly by his career that his place at the table remained empty on weekdays for many years. There were sports, play dates, school activities and much more to incorporate somehow. It was, in short, something of a struggle to simply get everyone to show up. Still. There was never any doubt in my mind that there would be this communal evening meal. That TV and thumping music would be switched off and there would be talking, even on those days that underlying tensions and mini-power struggles turned conversation into something that could more fairly be described as argument.

I began to understand my mother’s longing for a break every once in a while, though. She had her own variation of a cook’s day off: every Saturday she served something the Dutch call a broodmaaltijd. A bread meal. Being my mother, although it is true that there was little actual cooking involved, I suspect she took just as much time to prepare it as a regular hot meal. There were three or four kinds of bread, trays daintily arranged with sliced boiled eggs, cucumber and tomato, various types of cheeses and cold cuts and fish, bowls of ripe strawberries. What made these meals so memorable was that this was a day less dominated by schedules, and we would sometimes sit at the table for hours, building the perfect sandwich, picking off those last olives, and taking the time to tell and listen and laugh at a good long story.

Despite excellent memories of the broodmaaltijd of my youth, this was not going to give me the kind of breather I was longing for now that I was cook for a family that kept me very busy, all the time. Back in those early days, we had a single car which my husband needed for work, so everyday activities for the rest of us involved a lot of walking. The boys were too young to be left home alone, and everyone came along to whatever was going on. One Friday, as usual, we were walking home from the gym where the two oldest boys had judo lessons. The baby was bathed and ready to be popped into bed as soon as we got home, strapped into the stroller in his little footsy pajamas, his 3-year old brother walking alongside with his hand clutching the side bar. The young judokas still wearing their white Gi uniforms underneath their coats. It was a chilly late-autumn evening, pitch dark at 5:00, a light drizzle falling. I was very tired. Suddenly, the thought of getting home and having to prepare a meal was overwhelming and on a whim, I stopped at our corner fast food joint to pick up french fries and other decidedly unhealthy deep-fried yellow food. Once we go home, we continued to break all the rules. Bags of food were placed on the coffee table and dug into, a favorite Disney film popped into the VCR. Bedtime came and went. We lounged and relaxed and chatted and enjoyed ourselves and dipped our fries into mounds of mayonnaise in the way preferred by the Dutch. Right then and there, Friday/Fast Food Day was born. The weekly movie was as much a part of this meal as the greasy food, and we all took turns picking one. In time I was introduced to the horror genre preferred by my sons, and they to my old favorites like “Grease” and “Out of Africa” - our tastes clearly differing but the shared experience always satisfying.

To this day, communal dinner at our home remains a fluid institution, adapting to the ever-shifting needs and coming and goings of a modern family, quite different from the strictly regimented meal of my youth. Though reality was often far removed from the sweet traditional utopia understood in, say, a Normal Rockwell picture, dinnertime has always been a magnet drawing and keeping us together. It was, for example, discovered by my hard-working husband as a way to spend joyful time immersed in family affairs once he decided Sunday was his cooking day. He flamboyantly cooked up self-invented dishes like Nasi Bassy, made of stir-fried whatever was in the fridge served over rice. Anyone in the mood was welcome to join in chopping and stirring, or put in special requests for that favorite spicy peanut sauce, or that side dish of stuffed giant portobello mushrooms. And when the boys started leaving home one by one to go to college, each would inevitably start out celebrating Everyday/Fast Food Day. They were surprised at how quickly they tired of it, and began to long for staples like green beans and boiled potatoes, and started tentatively preparing their own meals. It looks like the home-cooked meal is going to take root in the next generation, where it can continue to build healthy bodies, foster the joy of wonderful dishes and flavors, and build lasting bonds with those sharing the table. For me, this means remembering my mother's meals, the thousands served in my own home, and looking forward in anticipation to my children's own interpretations of the family dinner.

Biphle iPhone Game

2007-10-30T19:34:00.000-07:00

by Sean J. Vaughan

Big Biphle is a Big Boggle clone I wrote a couple of weeks ago. It is customized for the Apple iPhone but it should play fine in your web browser.

The objective of Big Biphle is to list, within 3 minutes, as many 4 or more letter words of the highest point value as you can find among the random assortment of letters in the grid.

Have fun!

Hiatus

2007-10-29T18:06:00.000-07:00

by Carle Phillip Graffunder

A single white-capped wave that crests an ocean’s swell
Itself is not the sea.
In fjords and firths the tides rise higher
Until they almost touch the wings of sea-birds flying there,
But tides are not the sea.
Above them all with fine-tuned sight
Clear-eyed wing-ed gladiators of the open sky
Can see antipodes and back.
Yet the world, though hugely grand, does not reveal the soul.

The zeal of confidence that makes me know what I do not know
May urge me ever on to wider scenes of deed and thought;
But I know glint of light on surface sea does not reveal the deep
Where genies of power guard the graveyard of the sun.

The prelinguistic turn

2007-10-25T22:31:00.000-07:00

by Justin Jijlstra

Has there ever been a step in the Occident that contravenes the change of discourse? Hmm.

Has there ever been a step in the Occident that? Hmm.

The problem of fashion - for me - is that it is nameable by savant idiots and idiot savants alike. However, to make a distinctive eloquent sequence of verbal gestures about anything does not move the "si" and the "is". Yes, to me the savant idiot "si's" to much and the idiot savant is the modern solipsist qua philosophy prelinguistically, too much of an "is" from the outside, but worst of all its internal mirrors shine without the gods complaining about its Hubris, or in short: "What is it about behaviour that makes people automagically go.. "yes"? "Narcissus!"

When you hear someone utter, "These advanced techniques...", I hope for this occasion that you want to hear something that fosters your imagination. But I am a protean thinker of thoughts and like to fashion myself as thinkerer of unsecular particularities while ad libbing my way through gnosis by way of serendipity haha.

So I ask, ""si"-like", the following thing to you my dear reader by way of exclamation:

"How can our savant idiocy be idiomatic while our idiots are savant?"

I Exclaim completely and doubly here: "Why do didy- or poly- mous nods (brrr, the air I imagine from this! I could have gotten Goosified!) at principles that we understand?”

It satisfies the occasion and burns down the house only... Right? It makes me resound Elias Canetti’s Crowds and Power which I haven’t finished yet: “It is only in a crowd that man can become free of this fear of being touched. That is the only situation in which the fear changes into its opposite. “ Oh hack, I'm going too quickly here! Yes..

Some.., fat.., twat..! This century is. Imaginary Hell! For as far as I know only the subspaces of genius are the places I do not dislike. So that essentially makes me some kind of self-imagining Hubris and, to the outside, a pedestrian alternating currents with predictability and proteanism.

Sigh..

Yes, the prelinguistic turn...

So I could crypto-summarise the above as follows:

"Hybris is having no feet".

And indeed, this radical approach should be "fashioned" as follows: "Having no feet whilst being able to move, is not god like, it is a technicality".

May I remind you of:

"Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth." - Archimedes

The frivolity of this each time strikes me as the most frivolous of genius I know. And indeed, frivolity is that which distinguishes the pedestrian from the god. I actually feel my eyes get soft at this point, I fashion my imagination to be of Greek ascent and experience a moment of height, not in the spatial sense though, but in the being movement without feet.

Essentially, this turn (prelinguistic) for me signifies the movement of bodies without feet. How can one imagine a turn being made without innate position? Well actually it is easy, simply utter it. How elusively evident is that? Right, however what you understand should not conform in my eyes to formalism. The question is, will it socially be information to rely on? (That without the turn.)

Actually it is a suggestion which encourages you to continue your road to fashion which is signification in other words. Yes, a friend of mine uses the words: "Ad Autoratum" jokingly in this case, but it has seriously been fashioned in my mind so I try to construct sentences that are commensurable with the imagination. Yes, I intuit Hubris as being the epitome of the homo significans but without being significant. The homo significans is the savant idiot whereof one can speak. However the ones without feet move outside the “spheres of significans” in this regard and may I remind you of Archimedes? I really do not want to sound like a psycho-fetishist but I really, really also feel the urge to speak with authenticity for a moment. But not more then a moment. I just want to taste it and enjoy the reproduction of worlds in a frivolous way and indeed without the feet.

So at last. I've had my first intuition after, well its proper here, I think:

I would thank a Jonathan Hayward for the inspiration and you for reading.

I will leave you with a final thought to consider:

What is left of culture when you haven't got the feet?

Chow!

Justin

Charlie's Eden

2007-10-22T17:48:00.000-07:00

by Michael D. Wolok

On a lark, I decided to investigate the shoreline due east from the University of Miami. In my wandering, I stumbled upon a park some Miamians know, some Miamians never heard of, and some Miamians only think they know.

After strolling a short distance into the park, I came across three spacious ponds linked by two inlets. Overhung with trees, the inlets appeared like portals to other worlds. Surrounded by different terrain and possessing its own unique set of inhabitants, each pond was another world. The terrain varied from wide-open fields of lush green grass speckled with palm trees, gumbo-limbo and banyan, to a forest of gnarled oaks, to hardwood hammocks, to tall saw grass.

Traipsing around these ponds, I spotted on a distant embankment a nine-and-a-half foot green monster—popularly known as an alligator. With closed eyelids, it lay motionless steeping in the sun's rays. Plopped in the middle of this pristine park, it paradoxically seemed at once both out of place and right at home.

Two inclinations struggled for supremacy: one, advance closer to better observe this oddity; two, get the "H" out of there to protect my hide. The gator's hypnotic stillness and shut eyelids coaxed my feet a few steps forward—still leaving an expanse of some twenty-odd feet between us.

I stood in a trance, gazing at the freakish creature. Then I swung around it, as if I were affixed to the moving leg of a drafting compass, the stationary leg resting on the gator. An equilibrium between fear and curiosity set the distance between us. When I finally decided to leave and took a step away, the alligator comically popped-open his eyelids, as if he had been aware of my presence all along. I departed with a smile.

This park piqued my senses, and I would return to it again and again. Each new visit bequeathed novel gifts. Once after a hard rain, a flock of snow-white ibises blanketed a patch of land. With their long, curved, bright-red bills, they probed the soil. A family of gallinules—duck-like birds with beaks resembling orange and yellow Halloween candy—swam the ponds. And in the palm trees, blue jays skirmished with red-bellied woodpeckers for berries.

The props of the mangrove trees were shot with an assortment of birds who fished the ponds' rich waters. A yellow-crowned night heron (whose heads are striped with a distinctive black-and-white band) inhabited the middle pond. And an ever-present Little Green Heron exploited a tree limb over the edge of the south pond to snatch fish. Though seemingly neckless, Little Green Herons humorously can, at any time, pop-out a long neck. Bird-watching seemed to be the most boring activity on earth until this park introduced me to large, strikingly patterned birds with intriguing behavior patterns.

A mom, a pop, and three trailing, waddling, baby raccoons made the rounds of the park's trash cans every night, exactly one-half hour before closing. Occasionally, a sinewy fox with dainty legs would trot into the picnic area. The raccoons, foxes and squirrels would often approach within a few feet to eat a morsel of food tossed to them.

Hordes of giant land crabs invaded the park, yearly. The crabs pocked the park with burrows—where they quickly retreated upon sensing any earth vibration. These crabs resembled alien creatures from another planet, lifted from a low-grade B movie: eyes at the ends of their antennae, brown fuzzy beards, legs that only worked sideways, and a strange, vertical mouth only a mother could love.

But the main attraction was the gator I had stumbled upon on my first visit. I'd circle the ponds searching for him. If I spied him my day was made, if not, I'd leave feeling empty. This alligator's presence was a sign of mankind's maturity and tolerance, a sign of mankind's ability to live in harmony with nature. He provided a magic "antidote to civilization." This gator and his serene Eden seemed remote from a speedy and greedy world inhabited by laser scanners, fax machines, and arbitrage. Peering at this prehistoric beast allowed me to drift to another epoch. Any moment, I expected a brontosaurus head to rise above the distant treetops. With this anachronism out-stretched on the bank of one of his primeval-looking ponds, such a sight would have seemed perfectly natural.

This gator, though, proffered an even greater incongruity than an ancient presence in a modern world. Had I met this gator in the Everglades or at a zoo, our meeting would not have been so peculiar. What made this gator exceptional, almost surreal, was that he meandered freely about in a very public park, in the middle of Miami—a park where children played, and people picnicked. Here was a free-roaming gator on human turf (or free-roaming humans on gator turf?), peacefully coexisting.

The "regulars"—those who visited the park often—informed me that the gator's name was Charlie, that he had resided at the park ever since people could remember. With fascination, I watched the regulars toss Charlie bread and chicken.

Charlie hung-out at two favorite haunts. In the first pond, he "tanned" at a specific site on the far bank. And when he had the munchies, he loitered at the southern edge of the third pond. Curiously, both these places were marked with a sign that read: "I'll bite the hand that feeds me!" followed by a supposed drawing of an alligator that looked more like a manatee; followed by the word, "Danger!" As if literate, Charlie rarely strayed far from either of these signs. Though, he did have a secluded place in the mangroves of the middle pond where he hid when he wished not to be disturbed.

Once, two young girls frolicking around the third pond sighted Charlie at the pond's edge. With scared giggles, they bounded onto a picnic table even though other children had formed a semicircle around him. Eventually, they descended, joining the crowd. Then they teased each other, playfully trying to push one another toward him.

There was a foolish child who dashed up to Charlie, threw stones in his face, and scampered away shouting, "He is coming after me, he is going to eat me!" Charlie, though, literally turned the other cheek, taking all abuse stoically. So far as I know, he never made an aggressive move toward any human^¹. When the taunting grew too great, he would, with a certain insouciance and savoir-faire, gracefully propel himself toward the center of the pond with a few slow swishes of his tail.

Charlie's south-end haunt was, also, a favorite spot for other park wildlife. When picnickers tossed bread into the pond, the crystal clear waters erupted in a vigorous boil as frenzied zebra fish rapaciously attacked the food in acts of plunder that would shame piranha. A whole loaf of bread disintegrated amid violent thrashing and sucking sounds in seconds. Foot-long snook and tarpon lunged at these fish creating explosive, startling splashes that sent everyone scurrying away from the shore, because they'd mistakenly be attributed to the arrival of a gator.

The slurping noises of the zebra fish attracted numerous painted turtles and a few shy, snapping turtles, which vied with the fish for the scraps. Enough commotion summoned Charlie, the king, who always made a slow, dignified, quiet approach.

In one of my first visits to this area, I witnessed something curious scooting about underwater. When it surfaced, it appeared to be a baby Loch Ness monster; closer examination, though, proved it, an anhinga. An anhinga (also, called a "darter" or "snake bird") is a bird with an average wingspan of two-feet, a long, snake-like neck, and the ability to dart around underwater. When an anhinga swims above the water, only its head and long neck are visible, its body strangely remains submerged—giving it that "Loch Ness Monster" appearance.

It became a familiar sight to see the anhinga spear fish beneath the water with its pointy beak, surface, climb onto its perch, flick its catch into the air, gulp it down, then hang its wings out to dry. Charlie, the anhinga, and the Little Green Heron formed a close-knit club that shared this corner of the pond: Charlie would surprisingly pay the anhinga no heed even when it would occasionally swim in front of his snout.

A man who passed by this site observed the turtles, the fish, the heron, the anhinga, and Charlie. He, also, witnessed a water snake wondrously slithering across the surface of the water, catching fish, taking the catch ashore in its mouth, and in plain view devouring it. He noticed that the animals acted nearly oblivious to man, as if enchanted. He then exclaimed, "Disney, eat your heart out!"

On a sweltering summer day, a formal wedding took place by the pond; tuxedos were de rigueur. An accordionist began playing, "Here comes the bride." Now, I can't exactly say that Charlie was a discriminating music critic, but he did like music. Music meant people and people meant food. So, you can guess who reverently pulled-up in the pond just behind the line of wedding guests.

The music continued to play, as Charlie was noticed, first by one guest—whose gaze was now transfixed over his shoulder at Charlie, instead of at the wedding couple—and then by another. Soon, all the guests were warily throwing furtive glances at Charlie.

Finally, the bride and groom noticed something amiss; they realized they were no longer the center of attention. One snickering guest silently pointed to Charlie. After a little discussion and a little nervous laughter, the procession shifted a tad away from Charlie and the pond, and the ceremony continued without further ado.

Then there was the time, I saw two elderly women strolling around the pond. Camouflaged in the tall saw grass, Charlie was resting peacefully at one of his favorite haunts. The two women were absorbed in conversation, not paying much attention where they were going, and they were on a direct collision course for Charlie. Standing on the opposite embankment, there was little I could do. I could almost hear the theme from Jaws playing in the background. At a separation of not more than five-feet, Charlie was—shall we say—noticed. With Olympic agility, the seniors quickly managed to distance themselves from Charlie; then gaped at him while alternately eyeing each other in amazement. They then laughed while gingerly negotiating their way around him.

In his time, Charlie endured quite a few fools and crazies. There was once a father who playfully dangled his two-year old daughter several feet above Charlie's nose while his petrified wife looked on in stunned horror. And there were reckless teenagers who threw coke bottles at Charlie as he floated in the center of a pond.

Perhaps, too, some might have considered me one of the crazies: for after a time, I fed Charlie out of my hand^², and pet his nose and back. His back felt surprisingly pliant and squished like the back of a frog, and his nose felt hard and hollow like papier-mâché.

In fact, I would occasionally put on "shows" for the picnickers. First, I'd toss a trail of marshmallows, a favorite alligator delight^³into the pond. Charlie was keyed into the sound of splashing marshmallows. He'd follow the trail to shore, munching each marshmallow on his way. Gators like to wallow in the marsh, so it only stands to reason that they would like "marsh wallows" . . . olkay, so I'm no humorist. I guess Dave Barry at the Miami Herald can now rest easy, knowing I'm not about to take his day job anytime soon. Anyway, after Charlie arrived at the pond's edge, I'd set afloat a slightly used hamburger on a bun, I had scrounged from picnic leftovers. If Charlie was hungry, he devoured the hamburger, bun and all. If not, he'd nudge the bun away with his snout, and dive for the sinking hamburger.

Charlie prized barbecued spareribs and chicken above all: Jutting his head high out of the water, he crushed the bones with startlingly loud, chilling, bone-crunching sounds—which invariably evoked "oohs" and "aahs" from the picnickers. Then I'd call him to shore and feed him a package of hot dogs, one-at-a-time, right out of my hand.

My actions were predicated on hundreds of hours observing Charlie. During the first year, I kept my distance. But every time I spotted him, I'd summon my courage and charily approach a tad closer. Then one day while he was sunning himself, I approached too close. Like a lightning bolt, he exploded into the water generating a thundering splash, and in fractions of a second was gazing at me from the center of the pond. I, then, realized Charlie was more afraid of me, than I, of him. Charlie appeared to act wary and apprehensive just like feral cats I have been known to rescue and tame^⁴.

Whenever Charlie was in the vicinity of humans, he moved with extreme caution and hesitancy. When I first fed him hot dogs on plate by the pond's edge, he wouldn't approach the plate if I was nearby. Only after I moved far away, would he approach the plate. Then he would select a single hot dog from the pile, swim to the middle of the pond with it hanging-off the side of his mouth like a Groucho Marx cigar. Only then would he eat it. He repeated this ritual with each hot dog. However, each time I returned to the park, he allowed me to stand a little closer to the plate. Eventually, he felt comfortable enough to eat the hot dogs while I stood nearby.

Then I fed him one hot dog skewered on a very, very long branch. With great care, he removed the hot dog from the branch, and ate it. After many such feedings, I gradually reduced the length of the branch, till finally I felt comfortable feeding him out of my hand. Still, I gave Charlie a lot of respect, and was always on full guard. But after a time, I came to believe Charlie viewed me no differently than the feral cats I've rescued and tamed.

Because of Charlie, I made a study of alligators and learned: Alligators have different personalities; they can be house pets to at least four-and-a-half feet; they can be housebroken and taught tricks; and they can recognize a human who hasn't been seen for two years^⁵. This is not the stereotypical image promoted by the media. Nor is this the stereotypical image most people have of gators. As it turns out, gators are not aggressive, purely instinctual creatures with pea-sized brains, as they are often characterized or portrayed. In fact, alligators and crocodiles do not share the same temperament: Crocodiles are often aggressive, alligators generally are not^⁶. One, notable exception to this rule is a mother alligator defending her young.

The late Rube Allyn (no relation to Rube Goldberg), former head of The Great Outdoor Publishing Company, and an alligator expert once said: "An alligator really compares to the cow of our domestic animals. A human could jump in the same pond with a dozen alligators and never get a scratch. Alligators are retiring . . . [but there are] all kinds of animal personalities . . ."^⁷

As a matter of fact, at Everglades National Park, the US National Parks Service conducts public, nature treks through thigh-deep, wild-gator infested marsh. The marsh near Shark River Valley loop Road is literally teaming with hundreds of wild gators. Gators are visible all along the road. Yet, children are allowed to go on these marsh tours and hike alone on this road. The US Parks Service would not do this, if alligators posed the threat to humans that most people suppose.

In Florida, it is a misdemeanor to molest an alligator. Now, I know that there are those of you (particularly, Dave Barry) out there who are wondering: "Who in the world would be dumb enough or perverted enough to try to molest a gator?" "All kidding aside," feeding an alligator is construed under Florida statute as gator molestation. And as laws go, it's a pretty good law. When alligators are fed, they can lose their fear of man, and like the bears at Yellowstone National Park can become a nuisance, and even a hazard, if they begin to beg for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches—or worse yet, don't beg, just take.

In this particular case, I was not aware of the state law when I fed Charlie. Also, I knew he had been fed for years and was still being fed by countless others, and had never become a nuisance. Moreover, Charlie always had a cornucopia of food in the pond. It still wasn't right, and I don't excuse myself, but I merely offer mitigating circumstances. We all have our vices, mine was feeding Charlie.

After five years of visiting the park on a regular basis, I became occupied with personal matters and returned infrequently. When I did return, I noticed the absence of the Little Green Heron, the anhinga, and Charlie. I asked the regulars, but no one knew a thing.

Adjoining Charlie's park lay the largest botanical garden in the world. Charlie often visited this garden, and its eight ponds—admittedly without paying its five-dollar admission.

The caretaker—a simple, good-natured, cheerful fellow—lives in a coral house on the premises. During the day, he patrols the garden by bicycle. At closing time, he drives a cart along the garden path to ensure the park is empty.

One day, I visited the garden, late. As closing time drew near, the caretaker offered to take me in his cart to the front gate. While riding with him, I apprehensively queried about the local gator.

The caretaker replied that he had always felt uncomfortable with gators in the garden's ponds, that he believed gators were a constant threat and danger. He said sometime last September^⁸ in the early morning, he saw a gator laying on a concrete path by one of the garden's ponds, and knew that visitors often fed this gator. He told me, he called the Florida Freshwater and Game Commission to dispose of the "nuisance" alligator, and they did. In my alligator studies, I learned it is quite normal for alligators—which are cold-blooded—to warm themselves on sun-drenched slabs of rock (indistinguishable to an alligator from a concrete path) during the hours following sunrise^⁹.

I called the Freshwater and Game Commission, and spoke to Lieutenant Dick Lawrence, a wildlife officer. He told me that he remembered the incident. He said that when a ranger went out to the garden, the gator was found in one of the ponds, not on the path. But with alligators no longer considered an endangered species, the Freshwater and Game Commission will destroy just about any gator against whom there is a complaint—without determining whether or not it's really a nuisance gator. Officer Lawrence said he had to act on dubious complaints, because if he didn't, and perchance, one of those alligators attacked someone, it would be his hide.

In his day, Charlie brought happiness, education, and unexpected pleasure to thousands. A steady stream of first-timers, "bumped" into Charlie. Some considered him ugly and repulsive, others considered him majestic and beautiful.

Many were incredulous that he could be a fixture at a park as public as this. There were many who stood not more than ten-feet from Charlie, and nonchalantly commented what a good meal he would make or what a nice pair of shoes Charlie would make, even as I would be feeding him out of my hand. If Charlie had wanted, he could easily have had these cold-blooded louts for lunch. It made me wonder which creature was less civilized, the alligator who didn't eat humans or humans who would eat a wondrous, semi-tame alligator. The irony of the situation was never lost on me.

Most visitors found Charlie fascinating. Most derived uncommon satisfaction from being able to walk-up to Charlie, and scrutinize at close range his unusual features, like the flaps of his ears and his valve-like nostrils. For most, he transformed what otherwise would have been a routine day at the park into an exceptionally rewarding experience.

And most discovered, what Seminole alligator wrestlers know, but keep secret: Alligators are generally not feisty or ferocious, and rarely have it in for humans. Alligators would rather relax in the hot sun, than bite the rump of some buxom blond — as depicted on so many Florida postcards. With millions of gators out there, there are bound to be some that are dangerous, but the same can, also, be said in no small measure for homo-sapiens. Personally, I've found humans to be much less trustworthy, and a lot more aggressive and dangerous than alligators.

These days, I very seldom visit my idyllic paradise, Matheson Hammock Park. It now seems lifeless and sterile. It's just not the same—not without the little Green Heron, the anhinga, and especially not without my prehistoric friend, Charlie, who warmed and tickled the cockles of my heart^¹⁰.

Footnotes

1 Charlie did chase and catch dogs, which for good reason were not allowed in the park. Fortunately, I just heard about such apocryphal incidents, and never witnessed such an occurrence. Though, generally lethargic, alligators can sprint on land, up to thirty-miles per hour to catch prey. Though, Charlie may have caught dogs, he never attacked a child—which is all the more remarkable since so many small children played at the pond's edge where Charlie used to hang-out and was fed by countless picnickers. Clearly, Charlie distinguished dogs and small children, and he did not have children on his menu. That in ten or more years, Charlie never made an aggressive move toward any human, suggests he was really never a threat to humans.

2 This was before I knew that such conduct was illegal and caused the destruction of alligators. I presume the statute of limitations for this crime was up over a decade ago.

3 Margerie Stoneman Douglas, the great matriarch of the Everglades, was known to toss marshmallows to gators.

4 Please support Miami's Cat Network, The Cat Network, Inc., P.O. Box 593026, Miami, FL 33159-3026, , http://www.thecatnetwork.org; and Sad Sack in Palm Beach, which has helped me find good homes for dozens of dogs rescued from Miami streets.

5 Dick Bothwell, The Great Outdoors Book Of Alligators And Other Crocodilia, (St. Petersburg, Florida: Great Outdoors Publishing Co., 1962), pp. 31, 57-59.

6 There are more people killed in Florida each year by lightning, than in the last hundred years by alligators.

7 Ibid., p. 31.

8 I wrote this more than a decade ago. Today, all alligators found to like marshmallows are destroyed. New York Times; National Desk; June 9, 2002, Sunday; In Florida, a Bold Alligator Is a Dead One by Rick Bragg (NYT) Late Edition — Final, Section 1, Page 1, Column 2. The title of this article is really a misnomer. Based on the article's contents, the article should be titled In Florida, a Friendly Alligator Is a Dead One. I don't believe that liking marshmallows is a sign that an alligator is dangerous. And I don't believe most fed alligators are dangerous. I think people confuse tame behavior with aggressive behavior. Bears become angry and aggressive, if you refuse them food. I believe this is the case with alligators. Moreover, I believe that alligators that have plenty of natural food sources can be taught not to come out of the water and beg for food.

9 Ibid., p. 7.

10 I am writing this footnote more than fifteen years after I first wrote Charlie's Eden. After my encounter with Matheson Hammock, I fortuitously discovered another jewel in the Miami-Dade County Park system, Greynold's Park. Nature photographers, bird watchers, and nature lovers from all over the world came to this park to visit its rookery. Hundreds of egrets, thousands of ibises, and many other different species of birds came to this park to breed, nest, and raise their young. Nowhere else in the world were humans able to get so close to nesting water birds.

In breeding season, water birds develop fanciful, colorful plumage. Ironically, few people from Dade County even knew this rookery existed. Whenever, I saw someone with a camera, binoculars, or just seeming to take pleasure in the rookery, I would introduce myself, and ask them where they were from. They came from all over the United States, from Germany, from Belgium and from the Netherlands. There were photographers from National Geographic. Queer as this may be, not a one ever identified himself as a local.

Hurricane Andrew blew debris into the narrow passages that connected the ponds to canals that feed into the ocean. The park manager couldn't get permission to clear the passages. Fertilizer runoff from an adjacent golf course feed the algae in the stagnant pond waters. The ponds "algaefied": algae bloomed in the ponds, and spread across their surface. The "algaefication" of the ponds completely concealed the fish beneath the water's surface, preventing water birds from catching them—water birds need to see fish in order to catch them.

Finally, water birds need to have an immediate source of food when they have young to protect and feed. They can't afford to leave the vicinity of their nests to search for food as they might do otherwise. And they need a nearby food source to be able to constantly feed their young. Today, the rookery is dead, and the ponds are filled with decaying, putrefying organic matter. Though, Miami-Dade County parks did do some work clearing the inlets a few years ago.

The Miami-Dade County park system does not know why the rookery died, but does not consider it a great loss. After all, it never brought in the kind of revenue the adjacent golf course or county beach parks brought and bring in. The head of the Miami-Dade County park system spoke the truth when he told me that as far as Miami-Dade County parks went, Greynold's rookery was greatly under-utilized by local residents. He insisted that he had to allocate the most funds to the parks that are most utilized and produce the most revenue.

Not a single egret has nested in Greynold's park in over eight years. Greynold's rookery probably existed for hundreds of years. I thought it would be around for a long time to come. I had just begun taking amazing photographs at the rookery when suddenly there were no birds to photograph, and the waters began to stink.

Miami's Audubon Society claimed Greynold's rookery was "off their radar screen," since it is located in North Dade, and most of their members are located in South Dade. They, further, said the Greynold's birds are probably better off in the Everglades, anyway. I thought the birds at Greynold's park had an ideal location that would be hard to match anywhere else. The islands of Greynold's park offered nesting young protection not found in the Everglades. And the clear, brackish waters that flowed in Greynold's park were teaming with fish. There are no feeding grounds like this in the Everglades. Anyway, I don't know the fate of Greynold's birds. But I do know that their loss at Greynold's park is a great loss for nature-lovers and bird-watchers the world over, if not a loss for Miami locals.

Beer and Metaphysics

2007-10-18T22:06:00.000-07:00

The shopgirls in Saks have been making fun of me because my hair had got as long and bushy as the coyote who prowls the yard outside our door. Brush it, they screamed, so last night I cut it all off. And then, slick and elegant, I burst into the Crawpappy’s scene. Less crowded than usual, but a lot of my friends were there, and beer burnished the floating barroom world, and after a while it seemed as if the divine effulgence which, if one could only see it, covers the world like plastic laminate, shone on all present.

“You look like a genius,” one girl I’d never seen before called out, “tell me something about metaphysics!”

“Just make other people happy,” I said. “That way, no matter what the metaphysics, at least you’ve done something good in the world.”

The Harmony of the Spheres

2007-10-17T19:08:00.000-07:00

The universal constants of Nature need to be adjusted. There obviously has been a major error. There should have been at most one sentient being per planet if not per universe, possibly excepting cats. The effects of overcrowding are obvious, if you step outside your door. On a good day it's like listening to all the music which has ever been played in the history of the entire planet being loudly played simultaneously in the same space without end. However, the medium is not merely auditory, but includes all sensory modalities. One cannot always expect a good day.

May-Tzu

Orthographiae Ratio

2007-10-15T22:30:00.000-07:00

That’s the title of a book my dad gave me when I was ten years old. It was printed in Venice in 1561, and was probably considered inscrutable even then. The patina of the centuries have only added to the mystery. It’s a 600 page list of Latin words, each followed, not with a definition, but with strange Latin phrases, transcriptions of Roman inscriptions that were ancient even when collected, and weird square tables of letters that look like a cryptographic puzzle, a whole collection of Rosetta stones artfully arranged for the edification of the viewer.

I hadn't seen the book in years and assumed it was safely locked away, but yesterday I found it stuffed in the back of a closet behind some old hats. The binding has been damaged, but that scarcely matters since the binding was done later. The pages are quite fresh, in better condition than some of the yellowing paperbacks I bought in college.

On a whim, I looked up the title on the Internet. To my surprise, I got quite a few hits, including an article in the fabled 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. The author, it seems, was what the Britannica called an “infant prodigy”. He wrote that book when he was fourteen. It is an attempt to find rules for Latin spelling (which, of course, more or less has no rules). Those strange tables, done 450 years ago, were what geniuses through the ages have always done, or tried to do... to impose order on the random and unknowable, to deduce the rules of the universe from a grain of sand. An impossible, Quixotic quest perhaps, but a noble journey nonetheless.

Prolegomena To Any Future Obfuscation

2007-10-11T23:16:00.000-07:00

What is the relationship between the reality of existence and the existence of reality? This question is answered quite clearly in May-Tzu's Prolegomena To Any Future Obfuscation. There is no single relationship between the reality of existence and the existence of reality, but multiple relationships. This is a simple matter of ontological-existential combinatorics in N-valued logic. For Aristotelian logic in which N = 2: Existence is either real or unreal. Likewise,† non-existence is either real or unreal. Furthermore, reality also either exists or does not exist. Likewise, non-reality either exists or does not exist.

However, in N-valued logic there may be gradations or degrees of existence and/or non-existence, a quantized set of values approaching a continuum as its limit. Ideally in this case the continuum may be mapped upon various topological structures in N-dimensional hyperspace, in order to maximize the degree of lucidity of the obfuscation.

William of Ockham's Razor, the principle proposed in the fourteenth century, said "Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate", which translates as ”entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily." By contrast May-Tzu's Canon is more useful in metaphysics: "Words should not be simplified unnecessarily," thereby reducing the danger of being understood.

May-Tzu

Animal Freedom

2007-10-08T19:42:00.001-07:00

I don’t remember what the dream was about, but the alarm honking turned it into a trip on a steamboat. Wide river, big boat – do steamboats actually honk like that? Switching off the noise, I face the familiar urge to roll over and ease back into warm sleep just this once ... what am I trying to prove, anyways. Getting up all alone at six on a Sunday morning, which also means, by the way, going to bed early alone without enjoying that glass of Chardonnay last night. You’d think I was an actual athlete training for the Olympics, instead of the middle-aged slow jogger that I am. Still. I open my eyes (sleep has escaped me, too much thinking already) and notice the gear I put out last night. Smart idea. Now I can just grab the stuff and sneak out of the bedroom without waking my husband, but more importantly, just seeing the well-worn actual running brand shoes with excellent mid-sole cushioning and support, not just any old sneakers, and the sweat-wicking top which chafes just a little under the armpits but only near the end of the run, well, yes, there’s nothing I’d rather be doing.

Light breakfast, just enough to fuel the run but not to nauseate. I find a bottle of my Gatorade of choice, pink, which does happen to be my favorite color though that is beside the point. The lighter the color, the lighter the taste. Some of those flavors are so strong they stick to your throat and teeth and tongue after just one sip, and there I’d go huffing and puffing and choking on Xtreme Orange for miles. No, pink is my flavor, mixed 50/50 with water for good measure. I fill up a bigger quart-size bottle with ice water to wait in a shady spot in the car until I get back from my run; by then the ice will have melted but hopefully the water still cool enough to enjoy. Nothing compares to it! Making it back to the parking lot, hot and sweaty and thirsty as hell, and then cracking open that bottle of water and drinking, drinking, drinking like there’s no tomorrow – tastes better than the classiest five-star champagne, I swear.

I drive the few miles to my trail. There is no one else around at this hour, as usual. A broken down truck the only other vehicle in the parking lot, but I’m pretty sure it was just sitting there empty last week, too. I step out of the car, and take a brief moment to engage with my inner quiet. Closed eyes. Perfect. The promise of another scorching summer day, but for now air still tinged with the coolness of night. A slight breeze like a whisper, stroking my face, raising the hairs on my arms in slight goose bumps. Quiet all around. No cars, no people, no dogs. Perfect.

Well! Let’s get this show on the road! I strap on my pink Gatorade, slip my car key onto my shoe lace and tie it down with a tight double knot. Check the knot again. I worry about losing that key somewhere along the way, because then what? Drag my poor exhausted body home along the I-101? I think a huge bout of weeping would be more likely, and it’s hard to imagine how that would solve anything.

Starting is always the tough part. Brisk walking for a mile to warm up muscles and ease the heart into working harder, lungs into breathing deeper. I feel a little like a horse doing that trotting thing on a race track, you know, they’re going as fast as they can without actually breaking into a run but you can tell it’s driving them crazy and every once in a while one of them just can’t take it any more and off he goes galloping wildly, racing past the others, free at last. I never walk that full mile. Legs want to run. And there I go.

It takes a few minutes to settle into the rhythm that will take me out an hour and back an hour. My feet hit the ground as regularly as a clock ticking thump, thump, thump, thump and my breathing settles into rhythmic ins and outs. Not too fast. Going long today. My body finds its comfort zone and does its own thing, needing no instruction, unfettering the mind. I think of Aria sitting lazily by her bowl this morning, waiting for food as if nothing ever happened. I cuddled her tight before filling her bowl, annoying her by obviously not having my priorities straight (food! Give me food!) but, damn, I missed that silly animal. She was gone four whole days and yesterday we were still running all over the neighborhood hanging up flyers and asking people to check their garages, even though hope was running low. Then this morning, when I open the front door to leave, there she is, quietly sitting on the doorstep. She wanders in, cool as a cucumber and none the worse for wear, I guess just finished with whatever she needed to do and ready to come home. She paused on her way to the food bowl just long enough to rub along my legs. What a sweetheart. I'm glowing just thinking about her.

A loud cough. Danger. My body freezes to a halt before my mind catches up. My heart stops beating. In the tall yellow grass beside the trail I look into two golden eyes. A split second. Then the cougar turns and runs. My heart starts up again. My brain belatedly starts to work. What was it, what was it you were supposed to do when confronted by a cougar? Oh yeah, right, make yourself as tall as possible and make noise and make sure the animal has room to escape. I raise my arms and yell. And yell and yell and yell. Then I stop, though I keep my arms up. I’m not sure when it is OK to stop doing this. I know the cougar is gone, but I can't remember which way he went. Finally, I lower my arms.

I look across the wide field of low shrub and grass in front of me, hills off to the distance. It is kind of odd that I didn’t see the cougar run off much farther than I did, I really only saw him when he was two yards in front of me. It's like he disappeared into thin air. I know I am safe now. But I don’t know what to do next. I think I'd like to go forward and finish my run. Or would that be running towards danger? Or does it make any difference which way I go? I’m still facing the grass. I feel a deep revulsion at the idea of turning my back to it. But finally I accept that I can't just stand there all day. I decide to turn back towards the car, not because it makes any logical difference, but because I’m having a hard time thinking straight and for some reason it just seems like the right thing to do.

Legs start running. Not easing into the comfort of it anymore. I am tense, keep having to glance over my shoulder. I slow down a minute to pick up a branch and carry it with me - fat lot of good that's going to do me - I smirk at my pathetic attempt at fooling myself into feeling safe. I’m really relieved when I leave the fields behind me and the trail snakes into a street with houses, parking lot nearby. I drop the branch. When I reach the car, I lean my full body onto it, eyes closed, finally able to relax. So now, I wonder, will I ever be able to let go of this fear, or will I lose this thing that was all mine, the freedom and solitude and exhilaration and naturalness of this Sunday morning escape? I can’t tell. I guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens next week when the alarm starts its early morning honking.

Quantum Mechanics and Objective Reality

2007-10-04T19:20:00.000-07:00

The main features of quantum theory, such as the wave function, the uncertainty principle, wave-particle duality, indeterminacy, probabilistic behavior, exchange forces, spin, quarks and their various flavors and charms, etc. are so counterintuitive as to defy human intuition and common sense. It is often argued, that since they are abstractions, one way or another, maybe they are figments of overactive imaginations. Not quite, counters the theoretical physicist, because although there’s a tough road from mathematical modeling to scientific fact, there’s overwhelming experimental and other evidence in favor of quantum mechanics as objective reality.

In order to take a look at some of the considerations which allow one to state that the world at the tiny magnitudes of microphysics is as proposed by quantum theory, it may be instructive to deal with the wave function as one of the main representatives in question. Although a mathematical abstraction, the wave function corresponding to a physical system contains all the information that is obtainable about the system. For example, if a moving particle acted on by a force is represented by a wave function (psi), then measurement of a physical quantity, such as momentum, always yields an eigenvalue of the associated momentum operator. In general, the outcome of the measurement is not precisely predictable and is not the same for identically prepared systems; but each possible outcome, or eigenvalue, has a certain probability of occurring.

This probability is given by the squared modulus of the scalar product of the normalized wave function (psi), or state vector, and the eigenvector of the operator corresponding to that particular eigenvalue. Furthermore, not all operators representing physical quantities commute- that is, sometimes AB ≠ BA, where multiplication of the operators A and B corresponds to making two measurements in the order indicated. These unusual but unambiguous postulates, which associate probabilities with geometric properties of vectors in an abstract space, have great predictive and explanatory value and, at the same time, many implications that confound our intuition.

Because of the usefulness of the wave function in generating experimentally testable predictions, it appears that a mathematical abstraction here takes on a reality equivalent to that of concrete events, as envisioned by Pythagorean and Platonic philosophies. However, there is a direct connection between the abstraction and observable events, and there has not been much tendency in physics to place the wave function in some realm of ideal forms, platonic or otherwise.

A similar state of affairs already existed in classical electrodynamics, and some physicists remarked that Maxwell’s laws were nothing more than Maxwell’s equations. Perhaps because radiation always had been regarded as immaterial with wave properties, this point of view was not quite as disturbing as it became when matter waves had to be considered. In both cases, however, there does appear to be a problem in explaining how mathematical symbolism can do so much.

Platonic implications can be avoided if we look more closely at the actual, concrete role of the wave function in the theory. If viewed as a conceptual tool, rather than something given, the idea of a wave function containing information about observable events is not so strange. The meaning of the wave function is defined by its role in the theory, which after all is a matter of theorists interacting with events. A clue to this purely conceptual, computational role is the fact that a wave function can be multiplied by an arbitrary phase factor without changing its physical significance in any way. Also, the fact that it is a complex-valued function discourages one from interpreting it as something with spatial and temporal wave properties.

As the search for causes has diminished in modern physics, the success of microphysics in explaining the properties of complex structures such as atoms, molecules, crystals, and metals has increased markedly at the same time. If causality is conceived, as it once was, in terms of collisions among particles with well-defined trajectories, then it has no meaning at the quantum level. However, a remarkable consistency in the evolution of identical structures with characteristic properties is apparent in nature. Quantum mechanics goes far toward explaining how these composite systems are built up from more elementary components. Although the once predominant mechanistic view of colliding particles is no longer tenable, its decline has been accompanied by success in the actual achievement of its original aims.

Terms such as causality and determinism still are used occasionally by physicists, but their connotations are quite different from what they were in earlier times. The formalism of quantum theory implies that determinism characterizes states, but not observables. The state of the system described by a wave function (psi) evolves in time in a strictly deterministic manner, according to the Schrödinger equation, provided that a measurement is not made during that period of time. This usage of determinism actually is equivalent to the statement that the Schrödinger equation is a first-order differential equation with respect to time.

In contrast, if at some instant a measurement of a physical quantity is made, the possible values that might be obtained are represented by a probability distribution. Furthermore, a measuring instrument introduces an uncontrollable disturbance into the system, and, afterwards, that system is in a different state that is not precisely predictable. This situation led Max Born (1882-1970) to make a famous statement that the motion of particles conforms to the laws of probability, but the probability itself is propagated in accordance with the law of causality. The initial astonishment produced by this unforeseen turn of events was shortly followed by an even greater astonishment when these unconventional ideas proved to be extremely workable in practice.

Consider more closely the role of causality and of probability in the theory. The relationship (psi)1 → (psi)2, where (psi)1 and (psi)2 are states at successive instants in time, is completely determined in the theory, provided no measurement takes place during the interval. Moreover, if a measurement is made at some instant, the relationships (psi)1 → f(x) and (psi)2 → g(x), where f(x) and g(x) are probability distributions of an observable, also are completely determined. The new and strange features of the theory are embodied in the facts that (a) these probability distributions, in general, have nonzero variance, and (b) if the relation (psi)1 → f(x) is in fact exhibited by making a measurement, then the relation (psi)1 → (psi)2 no longer holds.

It is difficult to grasp intuitively that the probabilities referred to are those of measures that might be obtained on an individual system using a perfectly reliable instrument and seemingly come from nowhere. Expressed mathematically, the only appropriate probability space corresponding to the probability distribution of a quantum mechanical observable is provided by the real line, its measurable subsets, and the probability measure determined by the wave function; and that structure is not, as is usually the case, induced by an underlying probability space having physical significance. Despite intensive search over many decades, no such underlying probability space has ever been found, and it is now generally agreed that one does not exist. This search in fact resembled somewhat the frustrating attempts in the XIXth century to find an ether, a hypothetical universal space-filling medium propagating radiation.

Nevertheless, when matters are expressed as above, it appears that quite a lot about the theory is deterministic. Furthermore, this viewpoint discourages the tendency to confuse indeterminacy with lack of ability of scientists effectively to make contact with events. Probability distributions of measurements are objective, concrete things. Determinism fails when applied to the concept of an elementary corpuscle simultaneously having a definite position and a definite momentum, conditions never observed experimentally.

Quantum theory, as emphasized previously, was applied with excellent results to a broad range of phenomena; for example, the periodic table of the elements at last became understandable, and the foundations of all inorganic chemistry, and much organic chemistry and solid state physics were firmly established. Contrary to the expectations of some critics, the theory definitely has not encouraged a view of the world ruled by a capricious indeterminacy, but, on the contrary, has greatly enchanced the coherence and explanatory power of science.

Still, the above turn of events in the age-old problem of causality had not been anticipated. The fact that the implications of the theory conflicted in such a radical way with previous philosophical views was a departure from tradition that probably to this date has not been fully assimilated.

Eventually, one may hope, concepts such as causality, system, interaction, and interdependence will be extended and enriched by the findings of quantum physics. Perhaps we are already beginning to see this happen and to appreciate that the new viewpoint does not entail as much of a loss as we once believed. In both classical physics and quantum physics a list of well-defined dynamical variables is associated with each system, and in some respects the quantum mechanical description by state vectors is analogous to a phase-space representation in classical statistical mechanics. Formally, the dynamical variables play a different role in the two theories, but in both cases their specification exhausts the observable properties of the system. The probabilistic aspects of quantum theory, as stressed before, certainly do not imply an inability to find lawfulness and orderliness in nature.

Although quantum mechanical predictions of, for example, position are inherently probabilistic, in many instances a particle is sufficiently localized that probabilities of it appearing outside a restricted range are essentially zero, that is, the dispersion of the distribution is small. It becomes meaningful, for example, to speak of shells and subshells in atomic structure. Overall, it appears that abandonment of the rather limited classical cause-and-effect scheme is a minimal loss compared to the far greater gains achieved by the theory as a whole.

Like many ideas in quantum theory, the celebrated Heisenberg uncertainty principle becomes less mysterious if examined in its concrete role in the theory. The uncertainty principle is not an insight which preceded the theory, but is built into its structure, that is, it can be derived from the abstract formalism. Heisenberg’s matrix mechanics and its success in accounting for experimental results came first; the uncertainty principle and its implications then were recognized.

Essentially, this principle means that the dispersions, or variances, of probability distributions of noncommuting observables are constrained by one another, or, alternatively, that a function and its Fourier transform cannot both be arbitrarily sharp. The physical significance of this result is that measurements of certain pairs of observed quantities- such as position and momentum, or time and energy- cannot simultaneously be made arbitrarily accurate. The principle has been confirmed, many times, by an overwhelming mass of evidence. Accordingly, the principle is an objective property of events that must be confronted in future advances of our understanding of the physical world. Much the same is true about all the other main features of quantum theory.

Although quantum mechanics and the blurred mode of existence that it reveals represent current frontiers in the direction of the infinitesimally small, it is generally acknowledged that this is not the final answer. Quantum reality is reality, to be sure, but it is still very much a virtual reality inasmuch as it refers to states of affairs relative to Man. As such, it is reasonable to expect that it has a source and a destination, being perhaps an integral albeit temporal phenomenon of an underlying ultimate reality. That is, quantum mechanics is objective reality; but it remains to be seen where it comes from and where it goes. However, that’s another story.

Chess and Aptitudes

2007-10-03T09:16:00.000-07:00

I very briefly introduce you to an experiment that was performed in 1973.

Very often one hears statements such as, "You need to be intelligent to play chess," "Chess fosters intelligence,"… All this is too vague.

In 1973, in co-operation with the Psychology Department of the "Université Nationale du Zaïre" at Kisangani, I undertook an experiment to clarify these issues.

It should be stated that in many countries there is a "Chess Class" taught in primary and secondary schools by the faculty. This makes it extremely difficult to obtain unbiased statistics since there is a general familiarity with chess.

As an initial step, I received permission from the Government of Zaire to alter the curriculum of three classes of the fourth year curriculum for an entire year in a major secondary school of Kisangani. (Belgian school system class denominations are assumed here.) In those three classes, two out of a total of seven hours of mathematics taught per week were replaced by two hours of chess instruction.

There were a total of six classes each with 30 students in the fourth year in this institution. So now they were divided into two groups : The three classes in my "experimental" group (A) ; and the three others in the "control" group (B).

I was allowed to administer the following battery of intelligence related tests:

the Belgian version of the G.A.T.B. ("General Aptitude Test Battery")

the P.M.A. ("Primary mental abilities" by Thurstone)

the D.A.T. ("Differential Aptitude Test" by Bennet, Seashore and Wesman)

the D2 (Brieckenkamp)

the Rorschach.

Some preliminary remarks should be made before going over to the description of the results of the experiment.

Knowing the degree to which the tests employed were culturally fair to the tested persons is not absolutely necessary, since the aim was merely to compare groups A and B for whom there were no significant cultural differences.
No student in either group had ever even heard of chess, which is a very useful feature. Ideally, there could have been a third group, but you can't have it all!
There were seven hours of instruction weekly (mathematics + chess for group A, exclusively mathematics for group B). The instruction was provided by French speaking teachers — two Belgian teachers for mathematics and myself for chess.

Experiment phases:

At the beginning of the year, all students (A and B groups) were administered the battery of tests described above. Both groups scored approximately the same.
Whereas group B was taught mathematics 7 hours a week, group A was given the same program in five hours a week, and received two hours a week of chess instruction. (Wednesday 11-12 a.m. and Saturday 7-8 a.m..)
Instruction involved testing of subject matter. This included the chess lessons, just like the others mathematics lectures. In group A chess tests and exams accounted for 2/7^ths of the usual mathematics curriculum score, and actual mathematics skills accounted for the fractional part, 5/7 of the total score.
At the end of the year, all students of both groups were given the battery of intelligence-related tests again. The students of the experimental group A also took an exam to test the chess level reached. The items of this exam were mostly written by Doctor Max Euwe, former chess world champion and chairman of the F.I.D.E. (Fédération internationale du Jeu d'Echecs).

The results obtained:

Among tested intelligence-related aptitudes, the two groups differed significantly, with the experimental group A scoring significantly better than the control group. The "arithmetic", with a confidence level of 0.95 and "verbal logic" (most often measured by the identification of synonyms or antonyms) with a confidence level of 0.99.

These findings answer some of the questions that were being investigated. But why verbal logic? … There is still no answer.

The experiment also enabled us to answer questions with a view to delineating, by taking the results of the aptitude test into account, the ability to enhance chess performance… but this is beyond the scope of this summary.
The students of both groups received special attention till the end of their secondary studies, i.e. two years after the end of the experiment. The students of the experimental group obtained significantly better results in the long term, both in their mathematics and in their French abilities.

The complete study description is given in the book CHESS AND APTITUDES, Albert Frank, American Chess Foundation, December 1978.

A technical summary (in French) has been published under the title "Aptitudes et apprentissage du jeu d'échecs au Zaïre" in the magazine "Psychopathologie Africaine," 1979, XV, 1, 81-98.

College Mathematics: The Unteachable, Or Untaught?

2007-09-25T18:14:00.000-07:00

by Ron Penner

I obtained a degree in Mathematics, so became somewhat familiar with the way it was taught and of the difficulties it seemed to engender in many others. These experiences prompted a series of problems which I later attempted to unravel, along with other related issues, which I now propose to explore.

I was often appalled and somewhat amazed at the manner in which these courses were taught, especially at the 100 and 200 level. There was so much verbage written on a blackboard or overhead projector which appeared to me to be pointless, albeit somewhat conventional. But later I began to muse, 'how can these subjects effectively be taught' and I began to appreciate the difficulties the professors experienced. I hypothesized that they had learnt and experienced Mathematics in a way far different from most of their students and that the gap was far too wide to be bridged by any conventional pedagogical methodology

What was this exprience of learning that they and many Math majors had and others did not seem to possess? The most basic was to regard this level of Mathematics, in most of its enormous diversity, as a language, a symbolic language that needed to be learnt and used. But it was much more sensitive to how much one took in at a glance, or alternatively how quickly one read that language, than learning to read one's native language, for this is much more akin to pattern recognition of an ungerlying logic, than to reading as it is usually understood. There seemed to me to be a minimum speed of assimilation that was requisite to fully grasp these concepts and courses, and that that was an aptitude that could hardly be taught. Another was an appreciation for the elegance of the reasoning entailed, and even the elegance of the notation. And finally, there was the ability and need, to generalize, to not be content with a theorem or lemma or definition until you had expanded these, until you had discovered as many of their extensions and further implications as possible. All of this was a mind-set that one either possessed or did not possess, although these are always matters of degree, but how does one teach a mind-set that is innate in some and absent in others? This is a very difficult question, and I am not sure that there really is an adequate answer to it.

I also found that I was very sensitive to the way such subjects were set forth on the page, and rummaged through the library until I found the most elegant text---seldom the one that was prescribed for the course. For if Bertrand Russell stated 'that there is no such thing as ugly Mathematics,' that did not preclude many ugly or less than elegant textbooks. And in the Physical Sciences, in particular, the ratio between written text or explanation and mathematical formulae was important to me, so that if one could follow the text simply by following the logical development of the mathematics, that always seemed something that was desirable. These I take to possibly be limited strategems to bridge the chasm I previously adumbrated. Of course, this dictum applies to any study, but particularly to Mathematics and to a slightly lesser extent the Physical Sciences, 'Never be content, initially, with the text that is assigned.' Then there is the appreciation of rigour of analysis. In an introductory course on Differential Equations, there was a text I always will value and esteem because it was so beautifully written and rigorous, which equated to greater simplicity and ease of comprehension. But one day I heard an acquaintance refer to this text as "the yellow peril"---it had a yellow cover---and that all of the students in his class detested it, and I was amazed and at a loss for words. Rigour of analysis, I mournfully concluded must not be an easily acquired taste. There is also the width of generalization of a particular approach which gives joy to that phenomena when it occurs. In trigonometry, the double and multiple angle formulae seem to bear no intimate relationship to one another. Then one discovers complex numbers and their utility, i.e. e to the i-theta power and the whole subject opens up and much greater vistas appear. I will always remember discovering, quite on my own, the Gamma and Beta Integrals. and the joy in discovering how many integrals could be fitted into these two basic structures simply through simple changes of variables.

But there are deep differences of aptitude and approach even among math majors themselves, perhaps greater than in any other discipline. There are those who excel in reading and comprehending and using the symbolisms, of which Algebra would be the prototype, and those who are far more spacially oriented, of which the Geometries serves as the prototype. I once heard of an experiment in teaching beginning college Mathematics at a private school for the gifted in Seattle. The material had been presented from an essentially algebraic prespective, when suddenly, in the middle of the course, it was taught from an essentially geometric perspective. And suddenly the class standing tipped over, becoming almost the exact opposite of what it had been. The geometric approach can greatly simplify many areas, but there are vast stretches of Mathematics for which there is no effective substitute for symbolic tranformations and manipulations. There is one further division which is the least recognized, but has increasingly become vital in more recent years. This involves a gift for, and love of, abstraction, for its own sake. This can also involve a love of getting at the fundaments of a subject. For lack of a better term, this might be called the Axiomatic Approach. Abstract Algebra can serve as its prototype and an n-dimensional cohomology group could serve as an example. Those gifted with this approach or aptitude will tend to have a better grasp of the whole of Mathematics, at least in outline form, and be the ones most likely to achieve some of the syntheses modern Mathematics desperately needs.

But I cannot leave this article so bleak and not attempt some remedies to the difficulties posed, some way of bridging these gaps for those not disposed to Mathematics in general. There are certain moments in the life of learning where one enters, in something approaching a Piagetian sense, a totally new domain. I believe one should, in many cases, pause and survey what lies ahead, emphasizing the great power and utility of the new approach, as well as some of the anticipated difficulties and how they may be overcome, rather than proceeding linearly to cover a prescribed curricula. One such branching point would surely be the point at which variables are first introduced to stand for any number within a specified domain. Also it might help if this introduction was combined with a sense that one was entering upon a new phase of mental maturity and growth. Then there are spectacular spurts in intellectual growth which can change and redirect one's whole life, and these need to be recognized and provided for. In his book, "Disturbing The Universe," Freeman Dyson briefly described an incident that occurred when he was ten years old. He purchased a book on the Differential and Integral Calculus about 700 pages in length, and when the family went for a winter retreat at Christmas break on the east coast of England just prior to World War II, he studied the work and did all of the problems for about ten hours a day, ten days to two weeks. I have always assumed since I read this, that if this or a similar experience had not occurred at about this stage, we would never have heard of Freeman Dyson. I had a similar experience, much later in life with the Calculus in an October retreat in Moclips---also on the ocean---after a summer as a forest lookout. The only way these experiences can be accomodated in colleges and universities, for those who need and are prone to them, in my opinion, is through a liberal, tutorial approach where one can design when and how to study a specific topic or field within a discipline. Someday psychometric tests may be devised to identify these individuals before they begin to enter college. But there are many instances in which courses tailored to specific disciplines such as Physics, Chemistry, the Life Siences and the Social Sciences are specially designed for the needs of these majors. This essentially involves applied Mathematics, in which a major aspect is to understand why certain formulae give a correct description of the phenomena they model, as well as how they can most effectively be used. This is far more than simply providing a list of relevant formulae and gives 'value added' rather than a 'cookbook approach.' And especially in the Social Sciences, Statistics must be taught to clearly delineate both the strenghs and limitations or various approaches. There is perhaps a great need for mathematicians to act as a kind of academic policeman and interfere in any department of the University when they feel that their subject is being misused or trivialized. But they must also, in such courses, teach others to---and demand that they--- think for themselves. They are not meant---and do not see themselves---as a service agency for the solution of problems in Mathematics, others in the university and society as a whole, find difficult to solve on their own. Finally, the Computer Sciences have taken over part of the former function of Mathematics in providing algorithms which encompass in their generality, almost all disciplines, and, in some sense, have replaced Mathematics, as the premier discipline for all of the other sciences---and this is wellcome.

My Senecan ramble must come to a close, hoping that it has not been too disjointed or too obvious.

Food and the Concept of Authenticity

2007-09-24T17:53:00.000-07:00

I wrote this as part of a Chowhound discussion of authentic food. Previous contributors had shredded the concept of authenticity into meaninglessness... e.g. is Burger King authentic American cuisine since many Americans like to eat there, etc. So I wrote this:

All concepts fray around the edges, and, as Derrida and his followers proved, if you pick at these edges the whole concept will unravel. Wittgenstein said that some words embrace whole families of things united only by vague resemblances and ties of consanguinity. And so it is with authenticity. Let's try to pick an example close to the core.

In an article in the New Yorker called "Carnal Knowledge: How I became a Tuscan Butcher" (later a part of his book), Bill Buford describes a months-long sojourn with a butcher in Tuscany who taught him his craft. Handed down over the centuries, the seemingly simple procedures for cutting up a pig were devilishly hard to learn and many a time Buford did a pratfall into a vat of pig slime to the great amusement of all (except him). But slowly he learned them, the same way you learn to swim or drive a car. I think the sausages the butcher made were authentic. They are made 1) by complex procedures 2) which evolved over a long period of time 3) and are best learned by apprenticeship 4) and the learning increases the appreciation of the food 5) in part because of an attitude of reverence which is imparted along with the tradition.

At least for me, a lot of these factors come into play when I ask if food is authentic. Maybe authenticity is the wrong word. No one asks if Michelangelo's painting is authentic (unless they suspect it is a forgery). Even for great communal and traditional art forms like the temple architecture and dances of Bali, authenticity takes second place to greatness. Since food is art, maybe a new linguistic category is needed. One day, perhaps, Tuscan butchers will be an extinct breed, and everyone in Tuscany will want to buy supermarket patties made in the US, and top it with sauce from a can. In time that will become the authentic Tuscan meal. But it will not be great, nor will it be art, nor will it be tied to a long tradition, or any tradition at all, and reverence will not be a part of it.

Czech, please!
Photo by flickr user 'puzzlement'. Some rights reserved.

Working Hours, Machines and Unemployment

2007-09-19T18:17:00.000-07:00

Machines such as computers and robots have been conceived to help man, not to give him problems. But, what happens? Currently they are causing unemployment! It is certainly not their fault, but this sad situation requires that we consider an alteration of the present system.

To do a specific task ten hours would have been required thirty years ago (as an example). Now, with the help of machines, five hours are enough. Therefore, for the same productivity, instead of 38 hours per week -- the predominant European standard work week -- only 19 hours are needed. (There will be a few more in total to take into account the maintenance of the machines.) This is magnificent: thanks to machines, it should be possible for people to work only half as long to get the same result. It should be a big success! (We won't digress here on a discussion of the problems of a civilisation of leisure.)

What happens in practice, however? Now we encounter imposed work hours -- the number of hours per week just to "be there" in the office, for instance, or a laboratory -- rather than what must be accomplished. And, thanks to machines, now one man or woman can, during the course of this time interval, produce what would have required two people -- one of the two of whom has lost his job in the name of efficiency! So, machines are now perceived as man's enemies! This perspective may seem simplistic, but there are so many examples: to produce an invoice, sell an airline ticket, print an article, etc..

And it doesn't seem to stop: Competition (with a capital C), the "taboo" of violating work hours to maintain the respect of peers, the fear (!) of being replaced by a machine that is "faster and more efficient". And what about the value of the shares of company stock -- if "we are not 'Number One', then what?" How many people are required for maximum "efficiency" (I don't like this term), if they were allowed to work at their own pace in executing the given tasks?

I will finish by giving an example from my own fond memories: In 1975, I was responsible for the schedules of the National University of Zaire, Campus of Kisangani. The yearly schedule required consideration of a mass of data. (This included lists of those on sabbatical, visiting professors, reorganizations, classroom facilities with class sizes ranging from 20 to 800 students per room, etc.. In one week, I had performed the scheduling of everyone at the university for an entire year. There were a few hundred Professors and students represented and all were satisfied.

When the Chief of Staff of the university and I convened, he said, "Albert, you performed an effort that would 'normally' have taken two months; therefore, I am giving you seven weeks of holiday." Life would be beautiful if it was always -- or at least sometimes -- like that, wouldn't it?

An early blogger.

Fundamental Requirements in Building Physical Theories

2007-09-16T12:40:00.000-07:00

An Original Research Essay

As mentioned in some of my previous essays the philosophy of science requires that any physical theory worth its salt must be built around at least potential observability and must obey the reduction principle, i.e. be capable of being shown to rest on established theories. These are logical requirements based on the consistency of Nature. However, if one approaches theory building in physics from the physical rather than the philosophical side, there are some other principles to obey; and these principles are sine qua nonrequirements of proper physical theories, in the sense of transcending any particular theory. Collectively, they may be called symmetry and conservation laws; and they directly rest upon invariances, which are independent of time and space and which are also based on the consistency of Nature. The difference is that while the philo-sophical requirements are a priori, that is, "dic-tated" by induction and synthesis; the physical requirements are a posteriori, that is, dictated by deduction and analysis of actual data. For the present heuristic purposes, let us concentrate on the latter kinds^¹.

Symmetry in Nature has been dealt with by some very famous authors^²and likewise, conservation lawshave also been extensively discussed^³. Instrumentalism and its extreme form, solipsism, would proclaim that as "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," symmetry is a figment of human imagination, based on the basic human need for aesthetic experiences. Scientific realism in general, and quantum realism in particular, on the other hand, would maintain that symmetry is inherentin Nature; and this whole disagreement in philosophical perspectives between instrumentalism and realism represents, in fact, the difference between epistemicand onticviewpoints and orientation emphases. While there are certain difficulties with both vantage points, especially in their extreme forms, most of the data from recent research in physics seems to tilt the balance in favor of quantum realism and against instrumentalism, especially in its earlier ("Copenhagen School") form^⁴. Let's now briefly review first the theory of the basic symmetry and conservation laws, as they represent broad generalizations whereby physical theories may transcend time and space; and then, list the most important principles and laws.

Based on concepts from classical geometry, the word symmetryimplies divisibility into two or more even parts of any regular shape in 1, 2, or 3 dimensional ordinary (Euclidean) space. However, in physics, 'symmetry' has a more precise, albeit more general meaning than in geometry. Reversible balance is implied, that is, something has a particular type of symmetry if a specific operation is performed on it, yet it remains essentially unchanged. For example, if two sides of a symmetrical figure can be interchanged, the figure itself remains basically invariant. A triangle may be moved any distance, if there is neither rotation nor expansion-contraction involved, then the triangle remains symmetrical under the operation of translation in space. This means little in (projective) geometry, but in actual physical situations, it can be far from trivial. If we imagine an initially symmetrical shape with some weight attached to it as being moved to a different gravitational field, symmetry will not be conserved. Yet, the basic laws of physics are supposed to be independent from locations in space. And they are. What may be different are those aspects which are variable, but their interrelationships do not change. Symmetry will be conserved not relative to a fixed observer, but relative to the form in which the basic laws are expressed -- i.e. their mathematical descriptions.

The inevitable conclusion is that it is the mathematical expressions of physical laws which are responsible for ensuring that the form of the basic laws of physics is symmetrical under the operation of translation in space. For example, the law of conservation of momentum is a mathematical consequence of the fact that the basic laws have this property of assuming the same form at all points in space. The conservation law is a consequence of the symmetry principle, and there is reason to believe that the symmetry principle is more fundamental than the detailed form of the conservation law. A general theory, thanks to its mathematical armoury in which tensor analysis and differentiable manifolds assume great importance, is able to formulate basic equations which have the property of assuming the same form at all points in space.

Therefore, when "indulging" in theory building, the theoretical physicist is well advised to try to formulate his basic laws so that they become and remain symmetrical under any and all fundamental transformation. Fortunately, there are several well-known and well-established guidelines; and these are what we may subsume under the general heading of symmetry principles and conservation laws. It is important to keep in mind that conservation laws are mathematical consequences of various symmetries, thus as long as the theorist ensures that his formulations do not violate basic principles of symmetry, he stands a good chance of being subsequently able to deduce the appropriate conservation laws, and prove, at least to the satisfaction of the requirements of mathematical logic, the soundness of his conceptualizations. By contrast, failure to observe this guideline may result in heaps of impressive-looking pseudoscientific rubbish, as for example in various airy grandiose schemes and trendy New Age fads and hasty oversimplifications ad nauseam^⁵. While it is true that a few symmetry principles and conservation laws are still controversial, and it is not always clear which conservation law is necessarily a (mathematical) consequence of which symmetry principle; the fact is that most of the relationships are well established, and repeated mathematical testing of various new theoretical models is not only always helpful but perhaps even mandatoryas well. That is, before making predictions and deducing testable hypotheses and subjecting them to observations and experiments, it is best to have played the devil's advocate and trying as hard as one can, to make a "liar" of oneself. This grueling task will pay grateful dividends later, by saving the theorist from self-discreditation and its inevitable consequence, death by ridicule.

Following Einstein and his postulates of Special Relativity, we accept that the form of the basic laws of physics is the same at all points in space. This is called symmetry under translation in space, and (mathematically) it leads to the law of conservation of linear momentum. This is one of the most fundamental principles of modern physics. Next, in a similar vein, we also accept that the basic laws of physics describing a system apply in the same form under fixed angle rotations — i.e. the laws have the same form in all direction. We may call this the principle of symmetry under rotation in space, and again, (mathematically) it gives rise to the law of conservation of angular momentum. Now comes time, i.e. that the form of the basic laws of physics does not change with the passage of time. Once a fundamental invariance is successfully identified, it can be assumed with great confidence that what was the case many millions of years ago will still be the case indefinitely into the future. This principle is called symmetry under translation in time, and (mathematically) it yields the law of conservation of energy (also known as the First Law of Thermodynamics). However, the next principle, that of symmetry under reversal of timeis somewhat controversial, because although it is theoretically possible, it is practically never observed. The principle leads to the great Second Law of Thermodynamics, through a series of steps which would be a bit too technical for the present purposes. Symmetry under time reversal maintains that a time reversal process can occur, but it does not say that it does occur or that it ever will occur. This is a rather subtle, and thus a much misunderstood and disputed point, as discussed in my paper "Conceptual Skepticism in Irreversible Energetics", cited in footnote No.1 (14) above. It is precisely because symmetry under time reversal is never observed in practice, but the opposite, i.e. asymmetry and irreversibility are always observed, that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is still one of the most controversial of the basic laws of physics. Disregarding mathematics for the moment, how theoretical reversibility gives rise to practical irreversibility in Nature remains somewhat nebulous. It is possible that irreversibility is a special case of reversibility due to a hitherto unexplained intervening construct or variable, rather than the other way around. Future research will tell, we hope.

Still another consequence of Einstein's Special Relativity theory is that the basic laws of physics have the same form for all observers, regardless of the observers' motions. In other words, the basic laws have the same form in all inertial frames of reference, and thus do not depend on the velocity or momentum of the observer. In Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which is not as well substantiated as the Special Theory, the basic laws are assumed to have the same form for all observers, no matter how complicated their motions might be. Altogether, this is the principle of relativistic symmetry.

Turning to microphysics, it must be considered that fundamental particles have no individual differences in the sense of "identities", i.e. if we interchange two particles of the same class or category (vide infra), such action does not influence the physical process as a whole. This indistinguishability of similar particles gives rise to the principle of symmetry under interchange of similar particles. An electron is no different from any other electron. Furthermore, if negative charge cancels an equal amount of positive charge, then there is no known physical process which can change the net amount of electric charge. This is known as the law of conservation of electric charge, and it is thought to be a (mathematical) consequence of certain symmetry properties of the quantum mechanical wave function psy (Ψ). Similarly, if a particle cancels its antiparticle, there is no known physical process which changes the net number of leptons (light particles); and this is known as the law of conservation of leptons, although an underlying symmetry principle has not been unequivocally established. In a like vein, also in particle-antiparticle cancellations, the net number of baryons (heavy particles) remains the same; this is the law of conservation of baryons, and similarly to leptons, no underlying symmetry principle has been properly established. It is noteworthy, that while there are conservation laws for fermions, there are no such laws for bosons, photons, pions, kaons, etas, and gravitons.

There are also imperfect symmetries, which may or may not be intrinsic to Nature. That is, it is possible that Nature is constructed according to a scheme of partial or imperfect symmetry, whereby irreversibility would be the rule and reversibility the exception. It is more probable, however, that things are the other way around (reversibility is the rule and irreversibility is the exception), and the fault lies within our own machinery, as mentioned in some of my other writings (see footnotes). One such imperfect symmetry is charge independence. There is a principle of symmetry of isotopic spin, whose (mathematical) correspondent is a law of conservation of isotopic spin. This law applies to strong nuclear interactions, but is broken by electromagnetic and weak interactions. Also, there are then processes which involve what have come to be called the strange particles; and to each of them an integral number had been assigned, known as its strangeness. The law of conservation of strangeness is also an imperfect symmetry, inasmuch as strangeness is conserved in strong interactions, but not in weak interactions. However, the very particle-antiparticle symmetry turns out to be a broken or imperfect symmetry, because all weak interactions violate it; and there is no fully satisfactory explanation for this imperfect charge conjugation.

The principle of mirror symmetry maintains that for every known physical process there is another possible process which is identical with the mirror image of the first. Yet, this can also be a broken or imperfect symmetry, depending on "handedness" — inasmuch as one cannot put a left-hand glove on the right hand, no matter how much one glove may seem like the mirror image of the other. Mirror symmetry can be expressed mathematically in terms of a quantity called parity and there is a corresponding law of conservation of parity. However, weak interactions do not conserve parity, although all other types of interactions do. One example is that although the neutrino and the antineutrino are mirror images of one another, the neutrino is like a left-hand glove and the antineutrino is like a right-hand glove. Generally speaking, all weak interactions violate the symmetry principle of mirror reflection. All weak interactions violate the symmetry principle of particle-antiparticle interchange. All interactions, including weak interactions, are symmetrical under the combined operation of mirror reflection plus particle-antiparticle interchange^⁶.

Despite such "violations" and "broken symmetries", when the universal "big" picture is contemplated, symmetries outweigh asymmetries sufficiently to restore one's faith in the esthetic beauty and efficient elegance of Nature. As shown by recent advances in cosmology^⁷, although asymmetries are cosmological in origin, they somehow seem to fit integrally into the overall scheme of things, and thus represent no violations of any great law, but rather, they help to give rise to them and to maintain them in a sort of dynamic equilibrium, however unbalanced certain parts of the whole seem to be from time to time or even all the time. Therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude, that the more we come to understand the fundamental nature and ways of the Universe, the more we may become enchanted by its intrinsic beauty and harmony on the grandest as well as the minutest scales, whereby we may even catch an occasional glimpse of Eternity.

1 The philosophical requirements of potential observatibility and the reduction principle will be dealt with in another essay, which will examine the connection between the philosophy of quantum mechanics and that of modern interactional psychology, more or less within the framework of General Systems Theory.

2 e.g. Weyl, H. Symmetry, Princeton University Press, 1952; Wigner, E.P.: The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences, in Symmetries and Reflections, Scientific Essays of E.P. Wigner, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978; Ziman, J.: Reliable Knowledge, An Explanation of the Grounds for Belief in Science, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978; etc.

3 e.g. Feynman, R.: The Character of Physical Laws, Cambridge, Mass.: The M.I.T. Press, 1965; Jammer, M.: The Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics, New York: Wiley, 1974; Weisskopf, V.F.: Knowledge and Wonder, Cambridge, Mass.: The M.I.T. Press, 1979; Ziman, J.: op. cit.; etc.

4 e.g.: Cook, Sir A.: The Observational Foundations of Physics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994; d'Espagnat, B.: Reality and the Physicist, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989; Hawking, S.W.: A Brief History of Time, New York: Bantam, 1988; Peierls, R.: More Surprises in Theoretical Physics, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991; Rohrlich, F.: From Paradox to Reality: Our Basic Concepts of the Physical World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989; Weinberg, S.: The Quantum Theory of Fields, Vols. I-III, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, 1996, 2000; etc.

5 e.g. Capra, F.: The Tao of Physics, New York: Bantam, 1975; LaViolette, P.A.: Beyond the Big Bang: Ancient Myth and the Science of Continuous Creation, Rochester, Vt.: Park Street Press, 1995; Zukav, G.: The Dancing Wu-Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics, New York: Bantam, 1980; etc.

6 e.g. Blohintsev, D.I. Questions of Principle in Quantum Mechanics and Measure Theory in Quantum Mechanics, Moscow: Science, 1981; Eisberg, R. & Resnick, R.: Quantum Physics of Atoms, Molecules, Solids, Nuclei, and Particles, , 2^nd ed., New York: Wiley, 1985; Holland, P.R.: The Quantum Theory of Motion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993; Gómez, C., Ruiz-Altaba, M., & Sierra, G.: Quantum Groups in Two-Dimensional Physics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996; McQuarrie, D.A.: Quantum Chemistry, Mill Valley, Calif.: University Science Books, 1983; etc.

7 e.g. Barrow, J.D.: The Origin of the Universe, New York: Basic Books, 1994; Binney, J. & Tremaine, S.: Galactic Dynamics, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Astrophysics Series, 1987; Hawking, S.W.: op. cit., 1988; Hawking, S.W.: Black Holes and Baby Universes, New York; Bantam, 1993; Hawking, S.W. & Penrose, R.: The Nature of Space and Time, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996; Kaufmann III, W. J.: Relativity and Cosmology, 2^nd ed., New York: Harper & Row, 1985; Penrose, R. & Rindler, W.: Spinors and Space-Time, Vol.II: Spinor and Twistor Methods in Space-Time Geometry, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993; Rindler, W.: Essential Relativity: Special, General, and Cosmological, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1977; Wald, R.: Space, Time, and Gravity, Chicago Press, 1977.

Writing About Drawing

2007-09-11T14:16:00.000-07:00

by Charmaine Frost

draw out  drawing room  draw
up  draw a blank  draw in
drawn and quartered  drawback
beat to the draw  draw ahead
drawing card  drawstring
draw his last breath  draw poker
draw out  draw a blank  draw in
drawing table  draw poker
draw in  drawn and quartered
draw up  draw his last breath
last breath beat to the draw drawing
roomdrawnandquartereddrawup
beattothedrawdrawingcarddraw
drawstringdrawhislastbreathdra...

Games

2007-09-07T13:56:00.001-07:00

by Fred Vaughan

I'm tired of Old;
Let's quit this game.
Let's play something else
Like Doctor.

The author and patient at home.

Fragments

2007-09-06T16:50:00.000-07:00

Nothingness dances dreams of the dead,
soul-eyed shadows of devouring moon.
Star mind feasts upon Orphean strains,
alchemical food of Endless sun.

May-Tzu

"As I Walked Out One Evening"

2007-09-05T09:00:00.000-07:00

A Walk

by Ron Penner

W. H. Auden

This poem, by Wystan Hugh Auden I have known for years and always considered it to be one of the most remarkable of poems, written in the English language in the twentieth century. There were always images in it that eluded me as to their origin, and still do, but the magic, the word magic of the poem was such that this did not matter. They all seemed right, even as I could not say why and this made the poem even more magical and wondrous. Then one insomniac night in January, I determined to wrestle with this poem, to analyze it as far as possible and extract its deeper meaning and the source of its unforgettable appeal. But I misremembered much of it, so I reread it the next morning and began refining a coherent interpretation that could do some measure of justice to this great work. The interpretation lies not on the surface and would not be evident, I believe, to a casual reader of the poem, and I thought that perhaps this type of analysis might be of some interest. I recall a television program on Auden long ago in which he walked out of his house into his Bentley and drove off, all the while nonchalantly reciting this poem. I thought, he could have chosen from among scores of his poems for this charade, but he chose this one. Ergo, one of the greatest poets of the century chose this poem as possibly his best work. For future reference, the poem is included in full on the next page.

Several assumptions need to be made. There may be several levels of interpretation of a poem; to seek the deepest one is, I would argue, to also seek the most internally consistent, and this latter has been my aim. I take it for granted that the poem means what its author intended. Deconstructing a poem or any work of literature is akin to an attempt to cure a patient by an operation to rearrange bodily organs. The patient dies! And if the creators take this seriously, nothing but trivia remains. I assume that all imagery in the poem ultimately relates to evolving mental and spiritual states that progress from a wild, headless Romanticism to a deep understanding and acceptance of Reality with Time serving metaphorically as a mediator. And if this poem is about changing inner realities, the lover and lovers of the poem must arise from that inner reality and not be independent of it. Whether this poem is autobiographical in nature or an Everyman poem, I do not know. I suspect that it is neither, but refers to the Artistic Age in which Auden fully participated, ending with the sobering and somber realities and realizations of World War II. In support of this as addressing his own between-the-wars' generation one can quote a famous, earlier concluding stanza from "September 1, 1939." (See previous page.) These lines suggest, not so much a refusal to accept reality as an isolation from reality, although both I believe are present, and thus make the "lover's song"---the poem is actually titled "Song: As I Walked Out One Evening"---more understandable. For lovers, in the deepest moments of their romance, can be almost oblivious to all else the is going on around them. This should then be considered, I believe, as transferred to the generation between the wars, the generation which slept through history, with all the tragedy that that ultimately entailed. Just as Romeo and Juliet seemed perfectly oblivious to the problems that they were causing their respective families and the entire city of Verona.

As I Walked One Evening

by W. H. Auden

As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under the arch of the railway
"Love has no ending.

I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet
And the river jumps over the mountain
And salmon sing in the street.

I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

The years shall run like rabbits
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages
And the first love of the World."

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
"O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time."

In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or today.

Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.

The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.

Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white boy is a Roarer
And Jill goes down on her back.

O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.

O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress;
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart."

It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming
And the deep river ran on.

September 1, 1939

by W. H. Auden

Faces along the bar
     Cling to the average day:
The lights must never go out,
     The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
     To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
     Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
     Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

There are two long quotations in the poem of about equal length, but they are totally different. The first, with a headlong romanticism, treats Reality as whatever you choose or want it to be; the second is a painful coming to terms with Reality and with the wisdom that is thereby gained. The first is symbolized by the brimming river, about to overflow its banks and leave havoc and destruction in its wake and the deep river, no longer a threat but useful to all Mankind. And the second quotation not only delineates painful aspects of Reality which must be accepted, but delineates three stages of spiritual regeneration necessary for the deep wisdom of the deep river to "flow on." Finally, that the poem seems to encapsulate the experiences of a lifetime, yet only a few moments had passed - "the clocks had ceased their chiming" - and that this sense, does or should add an element of depth to the poem which lifts it far beyond the ordinary. Auden was a meteor of his generation, a satirical and despairing poet of his Age who yet wrote the conclusion of "In Memory of W. B. Yeats."

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise."

If this poem is, to some extent, autobiographical, it traces that evolution. Now to a brief review and comment upon some of the lines of the poem. The poem begins with the most arresting and extraordinary image; the prosaic Bristol Street upon which were a crowd that was "a field of harvest wheat." How does that opening image serve the poem as a whole? First, it serves to signal to the reader that this is no ordinary poem. But the image stands alone, and it is the only one that can definitely be ascribed to the one who is experiencing this journey of the spirit, everything else could be ascribed to the lover and "all the clocks in the city" or to Time itself. So what does it portend? This is a hallucination of a kind that might be induced by a rare and benign LSD trip. This is intended to herald that the first quote deals with Unreality and the effort of the mind to create its own Reality and the destructive consequences of that, no matter how lovely they may appear. The lover's 'song' knows no limits and creates an impossible Universe and Time thunders its rebuke, despite the nobility of his intentions. Those two lines: "But all the clocks in the city began to whirr and chime:" First, prosaically, one cannot possibly hear "all the clocks in the city" and this poem is experiential. This indicates both an illusory state of mind and a heightened sense of perception. "Whirr and chime?" Whirr signifying disorder, chime signifying order in three words and one perception seems to presage a divided Mind which perceives opposites as a whole, but without synthesis.

Suddenly everything changes, very abruptly. That thundering proclamation: "O let not Time deceive you, You cannot conquer Time." intervenes and severs the poem into two parts. I remember a Shakespearean scholar once saying that whenever you see, in reading, time capitalized by Shakespeare, you should pause and reflect, for he always then has something profound to impart. I imagine Auden remembering that when he wrote these lines. Yet here time is capitalized not once, but four times in the short space of a few lines. Is this an excess of profundity? profundity running amok? profundity on holiday? I think not, for Time itself has its lessons to teach and part of coming to terms with Reality, in the first part of the second quotation is coming to terms with time. And when you capitalize time, you are not referring to quotidian time, but to eternal time or something akin to it. Thus in this very subtle way he introduces questions of the Ultimate, for I imagine that the last thing Auden wanted to be considered was another Eliot.

Then follow three stanzas of negative aspects of Reality that this life must come to terms with. The first is disillusionment, the second dissipation, and lastly sorrow and loss. Consider the second and its second line, "Vaguely life leaks away."

"The sound must echo of the sense" wrote Pope, and this line magnificently fulfills that dictum through the velocity of language, i. e., 'vaguely life leeeeaks awway.' The line slows to an appropriate crawl. And, "You cannot conquer Time." and "Time will have its fancy..." There are many realities, many events you cannot control, unlike your attempts to control it through you own recreation of it. I must pause to note those marvelously evocative two lines:

"Into many a green valley drifts the appalling snow."(Let them stand without comment.) And Time even brings to an end Siva's many dances. The next two stanzas introduce real Evil and dread. The second stanza is curious but very effective, for it introduces evil from English nursery rhymes, thus evil hiding under a thin veneer of innocence, a sugarcoated evil which makes it all the more nightmarish.

After all of these negative aspects of reality that must be accepted for growth to occur comes tasks for spiritual regeneration. In three brief stanzas, three stages of such a regenerative process are limned. The first involves cleansing, the second unflinching self-examination, the third a deep measure of regret. Consider how strongly the second line of both the first and second stanzas reinforces the first lines. "O plunge your hands in water, Plunge them up to the wrist." "O look, look in the mirror, O look in your distress."

Then comes that lofty yet down to earth denouement, all so unexpected: "You shall love your crooked neighbour with your crooked heart." By twice using the adjective 'crooked' Auden escapes from any charge of didacticism or pious moralizing and ends the second quotation on Reality with an uncompromising adjective, twice given. But as with any such valid moral injunction, it extends beyond itself to alter whatever it touches, thus these two denouement lines can be read as branching out to all of the ethical life of Man.

The final stanza says more, I believe, than any of the others. Each line has a significant message to tell and each integrates with the rest of the poem. "It was late, late in the evening."

It was late in life when this evolution or series of transformations began and ultimately were realized. Perhaps it is always late, or seems so. "The lovers they were gone:"

This is the most complex line to interpret, and I do not want the interpretation to seem forced, so I would only ask that it be considered only in the light of all the rest. I wrote at the beginning that this was a poem of only a unitary consciousness, that the images were ultimately intended to indicate mental and spiritual states and stages of growth and evolution. If this be so, then there can be no outside voices, they all come from within one consciousness. Then, the lover who speaks the first quote is part of that unitary consciousness. But lovers?! Yes, for this symbolizes or indicates a divided self, the divided self of the first part of the poem. The reception of that speech is divided from the speech itself. That self was badly fractured and a significant part of the growth and healing of the second part of the poem, though unstated, was the unification of that self. But the "lovers... were gone." 'Gone' has a finality to it meant to imply that that aspect of the self had not just been transformed, it had died. "The clocks had ceases their chiming." How long does it take clocks to chime? What seemed like half a lifetime had passed in only a few moments. "And the deep river ran on." The river of life which this represents, was now a very different river from the brimming river of the first part of the poem. Now it was on an altogether different plane, secure within its banks, its depth signifying all the hard won wisdom that had been gained, a benefit and no longer a threat to the plain, flowing securely on to eventually join the ocean. But all that the ocean implies lies beyond the scope of this poem, for it is not spoken of, therefore neither shall I speak of it.

Thus the central problem of this poem is how to account for the sudden need for repentance and atonement, for regeneration and reform which so dramatically and suddenly divides this poem into two parts. Some might say that I have been grasping at straws. I would reply that I have been grasping, but only for any clues and interpretations from the poem that might provide a holistic and well-rounded rationale for those needs.

The author and his friend Bob Seitz converse

Ride

2007-08-31T13:57:00.000-07:00

Wind stirring trees…
Harnessing my horse,
I think of blossoms
tossed up,
falling
on the Way.

Photo by flickr user 'Katie@!'. Some rights reserved.

Hypermodern Disinformation

2007-08-29T15:44:00.000-07:00

We know that the information given to us by the media is dangerous: Any fact can be presented in several ways, in several contexts, and can lead the spectator to different, and sometimes opposite, conclusions.

As an example, pictures of a fire, according to how the pictures are taken, the comments, the context, can lead one to think it’s just a little fire or it’s a real disaster.

Up to a few years ago, the spectator still had the possibility of saying to himself, " I’ll record these images, later I’ll look very carefully at them, and I’ll make an interpretation as near as possible to the reality,… "

Now, a big step (if we can say that) has been taken place: We all know that we have the technical capabilities - it’s possible and easy for a lot of people - to change some parts of a video, or even to fully create one, with anything on it. If it is well done, only specialists would maybe be able to realize the manipulation that has been done (for instance change one person's head with another).

I will only consider the following websites (I have read details there): Dailymotion and Youtube : If anyone accepts the conditions of utilisation (we know them: no incitation to hate, no racism, nothing pedophilic,…), anybody can send them a video, for free…and anyone can see them, also for free..

So, more and more often, we can see/hear affirmations (on any subject), together with " proofs," like this: "Look at the following video," with a reference to a video from one of the two above web sites. A big majority of spectators have no special reaction, they just say, "Here we see the facts, let’s try to understand them properly."

An example that I have seen recently (I am absolutely not into politics): A video "showing" the French President apparently a little drunk after a meeting with the Russian President (True? False? It does not matter. The video is there.)

I consider this new total possible disinformation (and the acceptance of it by most of the people) as a real horror.

Vista Everywhere

2007-08-27T16:08:00.000-07:00

Morning chimes…
Waving my dancing sleeve
in the breeze,
I behold butterflies
delving blossoms,
light pouring in unrestrained
on golden spores –
vista everywhere.

Lucid Dreaming Out Of Paradigm

2007-08-23T17:06:00.000-07:00

The following dream segment occurred after listening to an interview with a South African (originally Jewish) physician who has been initiated into African shamanism, which he now combines with his practice of allopathic medicine. I was having some unmemorable ordinary dream, when suddenly I found myself tightly surrounded by solid substance of some sort, as if encased in cement. I was momentarily surprised and quite annoyed, but then realized within the dream that I was dreaming and was then able to escape. At the point of self-awareness of one’s dreaming condition within the dream, it had become by definition a lucid dream.

In my dream I interpreted my condition of being encased in solid matter as meaning that I was having an OBE (out of body experience). Allegedly when people have OBEs in the dream state (I mean if such phenomena actually occur), they often travel in their “dream body” downward through the bed and floor, rather than float above their bodies over the bed. Hence, apparently I incorporated my “knowledge” of this into my dream of an OBE.

I see no reason to believe that I had a genuine OBE, if such OBEs even actually are possible. Apparently I had a lucid dream, which was also an ordinary wish-fulfillment dream, focused upon the possibility of having an OBE while sleeping.

I don’t think I've created my “dream body” yet, as the Dalai Lama calls it. Creation of one’s “dream body” is supposedly necessary before one’s consciousness can leave one’s body during sleep. Do you then go to the gym in your dream body to work out?

In Tibetan Buddhism lucid dreaming is considered to be the beginning of the formation of one’s dream body. Now if only I could learn to become lucid in the ordinary so-called waking state.

One morning I looked down towards my bed and was very startled to see a guy lying on my bed asleep. An estimated fraction of a second later I realized to my relief that I was the guy asleep on my bed. As if to verify my location or presence I looked in a mirror adjacent to where I was standing and saw myself or my image smiling slightly in recognition. Then I either awakened or the dream immediately ended. The mirror actually exists in that location in the consensual spacetime world.

At first after awakening I was sure I understood the dream as "just a non-lucid dream that I had a lucid dream." I was asleep and dreamed that I was asleep and while asleep in my dream, experienced a lucid dream within my ordinary non-lucid dream, i.e., a dream in which I realized that I was asleep and dreaming. The more I analyzed it the less certain I became about it. Had I literally dreamed a dream within a dream, a meta-dream in which the second order dream was a lucid dream? This is the only dream I can recall having in which there were two copies of me, not counting the image of me in the dream mirror.

I've had ordinary lucid dreams in which by definition the dreamer is aware that he is dreaming, while remaining asleep. In one I was being pursued and felt in danger. Suddenly, although still asleep, I realized I was only dreaming. The ‘I’ within the dream thought that this experience is only a dream, so you can easily escape the danger by just flying away! Upon awakening I distinctly remembered having thought within my dream that I wasn't sure that I really could fly away, because the scenery of hills, grass, trees and sky around me looked so real. But I simply leaped into the air and once aloft effortlessly flew away. Even while flying I remember thinking, " … but the world looked so real, as if I were awake."

But in all previous lucid dreams or "out of paradigm experiences" there was only one dream copy of me and I‘ve never before looked down to see myself lying asleep and dreaming upon the bed, and then had the ‘awake’ copy of me in the dream verify its identity in a dream mirror, corresponding in location perfectly to a real mirror.

This is an unembellished description of my experience as I remember it. Apparently even my dreams are convoluted sometimes. Perhaps I experienced a so-called “out of body experience”, an OOBE, while asleep. But maybe I only dreamed that I had an OOBE. As Chuong-Tzu wrote, "Am I a butterfly dreaming that I'm a man or a man dreaming that I'm a butterfly?"

May-Tzu

Hexadecimal Sudoku Puzzle

2007-08-20T16:27:00.000-07:00

Click "Read More" for the solution...

For Reality's Sake

2007-08-17T19:11:00.001-07:00

by Justin Zijlstra

You want me to slap you in the face?
Yes!
Why?
Well, thinking of it..
What?
I’m afraid, I’ll get integrated.
Integrated into what?
Consistent madness!

Moment

2007-08-16T16:57:00.000-07:00

The bird's song hears the listening ear.
The wind-blown flame sees the watching eye.
Looking back from the mirror world I see myself,
Remembering now.

May-Tzu

Zen Spies

2007-08-15T16:24:00.000-07:00

by Charmaine Frost

drawing by C. L. Frost

They're all masters of feline Zen, but the ginger one is the master among masters. That's Belleo, my miniature lion with the fiery mane and regal profile; he's the best of the best, the most accomplished of the accomplished. He holds the world's record for staring at nothing; he spent 53 minute and 7 seconds gazing uninterruptedly at a white wall six inches in front of him. Every time I looked at him, I wondered what was so fascinating about that wall. If I had X-ray or UV vision, would I see hundreds of critters scampering over the plaster, all with very long tails?"

Wave a hand in front of his wide amber eyes; he won't even blink. Maybe he just sleeps with his eyes open?

"No, he's meditating on the world's problems," a wise man once told me. "Cats have amazing powers. They can disappear instantly - feline teleportation. They're here, then they're not here; they're prowling up above, silent and unnoticed as shadows, hearing everything. They'd be the perfect spies, if only our linguists could decipher their language and eavesdrop on their gossip."

Something Incredible About The A.I. Of Chess Computers

2007-08-14T09:52:00.000-07:00

I gave the following position to the best chess software, without their tablebase (which incorporates all positions with maximum six pieces on the board into their consideration).

White (to move) : Kg7, Rb1; h7
Black : Ke6, Ra8; e4

A good chess player (minimum « first category ») will immediately see that 1.Rb5 wins (Black will soon have no valid move) and that the promotion 1. h8Q gives only a draw.

Computers, after two hours (on a 3 Gz Pentium 4 with 1 G° RAM) don’t see the winning move at all, and just stay with 1. h8Q. Thus, they see (or think?) in an incredible poor way.

Once more, these computers are sometimes like “great players, stronger than any human”, and sometimes “absolutely stupid”.

I don’t know if any conclusion can be taken out of this for the moment.

Martyrs of Science

2007-08-13T14:58:00.000-07:00

It may sound strange, perhaps even somewhat bizarre, but despite its 'normal' neutrality, science also has had its share of bloodshed throughout the turbulent course of its history. To be sure, the number of martyrs of science is very small in comparison to other endeavors of the human race; yet the tragedies involved are so much more shocking, because of the very few albeit very great names. Had these lives not had to end prematurely, and, in some cases rather brutally, humanity would have benefited a lot more than it has and civilization would be more advanced than presently.

Hippasus of Metapontum was drowned at sea by his fellow Pythagoreans for discovering irrational numbers. Archimedes of Syracuse was slain by a Roman legionary for disobeying authority. Hypatia of Alexandria was crucified and mutilated by a Christian mob for her 'pagan' religion. Berthold Schwarz was blown to pieces for discovering gunpowder. Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake by the Inquisition for championing Copernican heliocentricity. Antoine Lavoisier was guillotined, officially for his state activities, in reality for his scientific genius, by the French Revolution. Likewise, Évariste Galois was shot to death, ostensibly in a duel of honor, but in reality for his mathematical genius mixed with his political radicalism. Finally, Alan Turing was poisoned for his genius as well as his blatant homosexuality, as an embarrassment to the Establishment. These are just the most outstanding names that spring to mind in connection with scientific martyrdom, but no doubt, there must have been more throughout the history of science over the past two-and-a-half millennia, roughly speaking.

Science, in the currently understood sense of being that intellectual pursuit which is characterized by the scientific method, is only four centuries old. Previously, science was an integral part of natural philosophy and some practical concerns, such as geometry and astronomy. It is thus somewhat curious, maybe even paradoxical, that the 'true' martyrs belong to antiquity and their case comes to an end with the death of Giordano Bruno in 1600 A.D. Strictly speaking, the martyrs of modern science after Bruno are perhaps more appropriately designated as 'pseudo' martyrs since their deaths seem to have less to do with their science than with their nonscientific activities. However, the evidence is meager and leaves plenty of room for doubt and speculation.

Be they true martyrs or pseudomartyrs, the fact remains that they were great scientists and their untimely demise is a most regrettable and shameful scar on the history of human civilization. Their tragedies are exacerbated by the causes behind their deaths, because regardless of how they actually died, they were really the victims of ignorance and arrogance, one way or another, in each and every case. After all, frustration, anger, jealousy, envy, and all such emotions fuelling hostile thoughts and actions are but situation-specific manifestations of ignorance and arrogance, in whatever proportions.

Hippasus of Metapontum (cca. 500-450 B.C.) was thrown overboard by the frustrated Pythagoreans after he proved the horribly undeniable irrationality of √2, with which he actually discovered a whole class of numbers that cannot be expressed as the quotient of two integers and whose decimal expansions never repeat and never terminate. This was too much for the Pythagoreans, who attributed mystic significance and much else to integers and whose ignorant and arrogant dogmatism could not tolerate 'heresy'. Who knows, perhaps the Pythagoreans deluded themselves by thinking that they were the 'custodians' of the secrets of cosmic beauty and harmony, and as irrational numbers pricked their inflated egos, they thought they could suppress such offensive ugliness by drowning poor Hippasus.

Archimedes of Syracuse (cca. 287 — 212 B.C.) was the first and greatest mathematical physicist of antiquity, whose accomplishments are legendary. But he was a menace to the Roman Empire. During the siege of Syracuse he set Roman ships on fire by parabolic mirrors and smashed them on the rocks with various ingenious devices. Marcellus, the Roman commander, is alleged to have given orders that Archimedes be captured unharmed. The old man was doodling in the sand of his garden with a stick, working on various geometry problems. When his captor told him to go with him, Archimedes replied, a bit absent-mindedly: "Noli turbare circulos meos!" (Do not disturb my circles!)- whereupon the frustrated Roman soldier flew into a rage and slew him. Resisting arrest was thus the official story. Was there more? Was he, in reality, deliberately murdered? Revenge by arrogant Romans ignorant of mathematics and science?

Hypatia of Alexandria (370-415 A.D.) was the first outstanding woman mathematician in recorded history. She was teaching at the famous Library of Alexandria as head of the Platonist school, and students flocked to her from all over. She was very beautiful, charming, and witty; but, unfortunately, she practiced the ancient Greek religion of polytheism. This was anathema to some of the early Christian sects who felt threatened by her 'pagan' learning and depth of scientific knowledge. Incited by Bishop Cyril, a mob of Christian monks pulled her out of her carriage, beat her, dragged her to a church, stripped her naked and crucified her by nailing her to the church door. Her flesh was mutilated by sharp tiles, part of her body was thrown to dogs and the rest burned. Perhaps they crucified her upon her refusal to be forcibly converted to Christianity, but there can be no doubt that she was jealously perceived as a menace… with the affront of being a woman.

Berthold Schwarz (cca. 1318-1384 A.D.) of Freiburg, Germany, was a Franciscan monk. His original name was Konstantin Anklitzen. He took the name of Bruder (Brother) Berthold upon entering the monastery. Schwarz, meaning 'black' in German (Berthold der Schwarze), was added later as an indication of black magic, since he was a practicing alchemist, who is generally credited with the discovery of gunpowder and the invention of artillery. Apparently he was blown to pieces by some spark or flame accidentally detonating a batch of his nefarious powder. More likely, the explosion was not accidental; he was murdered because his black arts threatened to revolutionize warfare with incalculable consequences as far as (pre)Renaissance times were concerned. Also, perhaps the hitherto undreamed of tremendous destructive potential of gunpowder was thought to represent satanic powers, wholly impermissible for a Franciscan monk. Either way, sorcery and witchcraft had to be involved, which the Church was obliged to extirpate, especially from one of its own members.

Admittedly, these are speculative points, since the existing evidence is meager and far from being unequivocal. It is possible that the Church wanted to avoid exposure of the potentially embarrassing matter, especially if the Inquisition had to handle things; so, maybe, the murder of Berthold Schwarz was simply and deliberately made to look like an accident. Or, alternatively, there could have been some secular power causing the explosion, perhaps another country hoping to monopolize the new weapon. Maybe a combination of such factors?

Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) was a dangerous and subversive radical, a spiritual alchemist and a rather versatile philosopher to boot. As such a maverick, he did surely get himself into plenty of trouble wherever he went, and it was only a matter of time before he was formally denounced and the Papal Inquisition got him on charges of heresy. After several years of 'protective custody' and his stubborn refusal to recant, he was finally burned at the stake on February 17, 1600. What was his unpardonable crime? Quite simply, the effrontery of promoting the heliocentric model of Copernicus. After all, if the Sun did not revolve around the Earth, much of Church dogma could be demolished. Man's closest kinship to God as well as Man's dominion over Nature were severely threatened by such abominable ideas. Man's cosmic significance could turn into absurd insignificance…

Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794) is generally venerated as the father of modern chemistry. He was also prominent in the histories of biology, economics, and finance. He is well remembered for overthrowing the phlogiston theory and with the correct assignment of oxygen and hydrogen to various processes, for the establishment of the proper theory of combustion. His laws of molecular combinations based on the law of conservation of mass are valid even today. His various accomplishments in different fields mark him as a truly outstanding scientist. Unfortunately, as a noblemen and as a statesman, he was denounced as a traitor by the French Revolution and promptly guillotined. "The Republic has no need of geniuses" (i.e. scientists) was the cynical condemnation pronounced by his judge. Perhaps this is the real clue of his martyrdom. True, many noblemen and statesmen were executed; but the scientific genius, still regarded akin to dreaded black magic by ignorance and arrogance, was most likely the underlying reason why Lavoisier was seen as a menace.

Évariste Galois (1811-1832) was also perceived as a menace by the French Establishment. True, he was a young political firebrand-radical, but that was an embarrassment in academic circles, not more. The menace was his genius, which aroused much jealousy and resentment, especially in mathematical circles. Even a mathematician of such caliber as Simeon Poisson failed to understand the work of Galois.

Yet, despite his youth and lack of formal relevant credentials, the significance of the contribution of Galois to modern mathematics cannot be overemphasized. He was shot to death in a duel, ostensibly over a matter of honor involving a young woman; but in reality for the menace of his genius, peppered with his radical views and activities. Considering the highly nervous temperament of Galois, it must have been an easy matter to provoke him to a duel. Sadly, anachronisms do not last long, no matter how brilliant they are.

Finally, Alan Turing (1912-1954) was a brilliant British mathematician who might have represented enough menace to the Establishment to be murdered by potassium cyanide.

His intellectual accomplishments are legendary, and without the 'Turing machine' theoretical computer science could not become a modern miracle. Unfortunately, he flaunted his homosexuality, which must have been intolerable for the conservative academic Establishment. His eccentric genius of course evoked much jealousy, which could be the real reason for his untimely demise. The official verdict of suicide is suspect. He had no reason to kill himself, for one thing. For another, he could hardly have eaten an apple laced with cyanide without noticing the characteristic bitter almond taste. Also, it would have been much simpler to take an overdose of sleeping pills. Homosexuality was then a crime, and he was charged with it. He was given the choice of prison or libido-reducing hormones. He chose the latter and underwent such treatment for a year before he died. Anyway, whatever the exact factors were, Turing may be regarded as a (pseudo)martyr of science.

It is not only tragic, but ironic as well, that science, the only neutral pursuit of the human intellect, has its own 'pantheon' of martyrs. Some of the above mentioned tragedies, such as those of Hippasus and Archimedes, could perhaps be suffered, one way or another. Less tolerable were those of Hypatia, Schwarz, and Bruno. This ends the list of 'pure' martyrs. The 'pseudo' martyrs of modern science died under nebulous circumstances, but in each case, they must have been perceived as threats to the hostile and jealous Establishment. What runs through each martyrdom as a red thread since antiquity to the present, is the ignorance and arrogance of lesser intellects. That such intellects still run society is not only the real tragedy but the deplorable irony of all times as well.

On Working towards a Better World

2007-08-02T19:47:00.000-07:00

The United States of America is a very young country. Much is made of its mishmash of citizens, and in truth it is an amazing thing that entire peoples leave behind the weight of the histories of their old world countries and reinvent themselves entirely once settled here. Reborn, that’s what they are, and it is a good analogy. In many ways US citizenry are like kids, with a child-like view of life and their place in the world.

People are preferably energetic and smiling and friendly and eager to be loved. At the same time, fearful to the point of unreasonableness, imagining a boogeyman in every shadow. Emotional displays in any public or private arena are condoned, even encouraged, self-discipline not so much. And truly quite naive and unsophisticated about the rest of the world. “I’m the king of the world!” - the sentiment shows up everywhere: little towns calling themselves the so-and-so capital of the world, politicians advocating the US judicial system as the best in the world, tiny restaurants that bake the best pizzas in the world. Really! Is this hubris or dumbassness?

The older, more settled countries look at all this and wonder, what are we to make of it? Yes, they are adorable, these Americans, with their toothy smiles and eagerness to be friends (except, of course, if they decide we are Evil, then we don’t get to play). They have great toys and cool clothes and sugary foods. But they sure do break a lot of stuff. Is it not odd that one country so disproportionately uses up the planet’s natural resources and fouls up air, land and sea for all of earth’s people just because, it seems, this is the American way? Or that voters let their government run unchecked across the planet, trampling all over ancient civilizations without understanding or taking into account their histories, their intricate relationships with each other, their dreams for the future?

But we can take the analogy one step further. Because if the USA is the over-indulged child running amok, then Europe is the curmudgeonly pedantic old aunt. If you ask the average American what he knows of the Netherlands - my home country - he will somewhat shamefacedly admit: nothing. Adding: I wish I knew more. His counterpart in the Netherlands will not respond similarly. He will have a whole rant of opinions about the USA (though he has never visited the place and may never encounter a real live American). He will list all of the US’ problems and announce solutions, growing more and more irritated with this young country that will not pay attention to or respect its elders, who so obviously know better.

What is it that Europeans base their opinions on – why do they presume to know so much about their neighbor on the other side of the ocean? The American way of life has inundated the free world. It is fair to say that most households across the planet find that the USA enters their lives every single day through whatever media they have access to. CSI, the OC, the Jerry Springer Show on TV. Local magazines discussing the latest escapades of Ms. Hilton and pals. Newspapers full of the Iraq War, US energy conservation policy (or lack thereof) and whatever interesting thing Mr. Bush said today. Blockbuster Hollywood movies hit theaters all over the world simultaneously with LA. Look around you in the streets of Europe (and far beyond): Coca Cola, McDonalds, Levis, Nike, Harley Davidson, Stephen King ... the USA is everywhere. It is a bit much, actually. And perhaps it makes people everywhere think they somehow also have a voice about this place that is increasingly infiltrating every aspect of their lives.

The USA has simply grown too big for its citizens to continue to be oblivious to what is going on outside its borders, and the stakes are too high – so much economic and military power must be applied responsibly. Having good intentions or being uninformed can no longer be accepted as an excuse for misguided actions. On the other hand, blind US-bashing by people who unwittingly base their opinions on media entertainment or politicians’ sound bites is not helpful. Adult skills such as education, communication, negotiation and an honest attempt to keep an open mind in the face of unfamiliar cultures will be required by every person who is serious about helping the world become a more peaceful, clean and equitable place.

Trans-evaluation of love and friendship

2007-07-30T18:30:00.000-07:00

(an exercise in writing)

by Justin Zijlstra

These are the necessary virtues:

The capacity to move autonomously and behave with the utmost care,
To be able to either tolerate or accept the will sublimated through your physicality,
To know how to create and prioritize thinking to create space in the mind,
To experience rivalry in friendship without sympathy, but not without empathy for one another.

Love for someone else is for me a dangerously elusive concept, but it does not seem to be so illusive according to the standards of many people or even by a higher ethos these days. Who is predisposed and who circumvents his own tendencies? Why does one laugh at the wise man as though he had been a satyr?

I only want to answer -- only even want to ask -- what is reasonable. Some anchors are useful and therefore should only be questioned when it is necessary.

Love for ones self is only possible when one is fully integrated with others. One can experience this in a sensual awareness when one listens to music sometimes. Then when thinking about some of the highest moments that are the moments of height and wither (or the withering heights), one needs to ask oneself why these feelings are experienced. Some introspection may lead to historical reflection, of course. But that is not my task. I'm here primarily as a first person reflection. Yes. I define myself to be such.

The psyche and psychosomatic pathologies are ways discomforting to ones self. One must not become burdened down with them but be aware of the signals. One is often in the position to misforgive one another on lapses and slips that can upon reflection be seen as conscious mistakes. Robust personalities compensate for this, weaker or less observing personalities or youngsters don't recognize what is going on.

Love for me is the full acceptance through all its paradoxes of the body and therefore the self.

One can love another by being dependent but the highest kind of relations are those where each sees in the other's eyes at each moment the existence of those virtues identified at the beginning of this article. One party to the relationship does not have one kind of urges, while the other has another. We want to find progressively deeper layers of ourselves, which is only possible with a kind of fearlessness. One does not want to suffocate parts of himself by installing schemata (morals/ideals/idols) on the psyche, these schemata have sluggishly been developed throughout the ages, only for the lazy. Understanding these deeper layers eventually comes down to listening to the body itself. Once these underlying facets of our individual selves are recognized many of our frustrations will be lost and one finally becomes integrated.

There is a synergistic rivalry derived from mutual passion. The highest relations are those where you intellectually see each other move but the moments in dialogue including silences stop time altogether. This requires mutual understanding of a kind similar to "knowing each other" obviously but also a recognition of how each of your minds handle silences. Thought experiment: "What will your mind do if there is silence and most importantly what associations will you have? Do you think you can figure out the reasons for these associations?" A deeper question is: "Which feelings accompany these associations?"

Tension recognized creates, but creation does not eradicate the tension.

Art is the result of recalling what one senses.

Rivalry makes great minds enjoy life and little minds crawl and smother.

Introjections in to my experience is the consumption of behaviour of others which you don't always comprehend but unconsciously see as useful, you'll recognize the behaviour and then the post decision will be if it is eventually good or not to your constitution.

Real friendship is something temporary often and permanently in rare circumstances. Real friendship for me is fruitful friendship and not the cultural imperative of "behaving as a friend".

Congenial friends are to be created by each other. One can create and optimize environments, if you know your behaviour deeply you'll recognize these words. If not, you're either alone without friends, culturally biased and thus blinded or you don't have a sense for the things written above. I suppose you should either reread in adagio or andante and integrate or do something else and come back later when you do recognize. But then I don't mind being read as a satyr, I write for the ones who do understand, you are the surplus.

The ultimate question for me regarding this all is. Why can't I behave just purely and autonomously, why do I unconsciously sometimes have an inner public? Sometimes subtle anxiety prevails as when taking a glass of water, for example, I experience a subtle turmoil, which gives me insight in retrospect. This insight is a sight of Maya or The Veil of behaviour. Which leads me to the last part:

Last words on effective writing.

I often see rationalisations in writings. Effective writing is fiercely recognizing what you experience mentally.

For the glass of water this would have meant that I possibly hid something from myself initially and possibly but not exclusively from the other person.

Books

2007-07-30T16:19:00.000-07:00

Memoir of a Non-Irish Non-Jew, 99 pages (paperback $999,999.99) by Richard May
What is our identity, if we awaken in the moment?
Memoir of a non-Irish non-Jew isn't about being Irish and Jewish or non-Irish and non-Jewish. It is about the chase of tracking down one's ancestral origins, whatever they may be, and the delightfully quirky unexpected discoveries that await you along the way, no matter what your family origins. "You are a link in the chain of your blood. Be proud of it, it is an honor to be this link," G. I. Gurdjieff. But it's also about learning not to identify with the achievements and failing of one's ancestors or even with one's own carefully crafted persona. "What do I have in common with the Jews? I don't even have anything in common with myself, " Franz Kafka. Who are we? Remembering with awareness of various levels of irony the response of Bodhidharma, the Indian monk who brought Buddhism from India to China, to King Wu's question, "Who are you?" — "I don't know"! What is our identity, if we awaken in the moment from the stories of our lives and the dreams of our culture?
http://www.lulu.com/content/803771

Paradise Emporium -- a collection, 247 pages - $9.48
by CL Frost
This newly released collection by a versatile, highly skilled writer and artist includes short stories in the science fiction, fantasy, magical realism and speculative genres. Among these is the short story from which the collection derives its title as well as many fine poems and a huge assortment of visual artistry that also covers a wide variety of genres.
http://www.lulu.com/browse/book_view.php?fCID=561988

World of Villages: A Six-Year Journey Through Africa and Asia, 499 pages - out of print, but used copies are readily available at very reasonable prices.
by Brian Schwartz.
The author traveled with, and stayed among, the native villagers everywhere he traveled throughout Africa, Asia, and Indonesia getting to know the strange behaviors of strange peoples.
Published in 1986 by Random House ISBN: 0517558157
Also published as Travels Through the Third World by Macmillan ISBN: 0283992123
Brian Schwartz also wrote China Off the Beaten Track - How to do it on your own, published by St. Martin's Press ©1983 Library of Congress # 82-61428. Copies of this book are also readily available.

Aberrations of Relativity, 201 pages - $15.00
by Fred Vaughan
This is a collection of articles that emphasize one the most observable aspects of relative motion, i. e., aberration effects. There are many informative diagrams and illustrations with many new insights. What the author calls "observational relativity" is defined in this book as a possible alternative to Einstein's special theory.
The reader will gain valuable insights into all aspects of relativity including why Einstein considered it necessary to embrace time dilation and length contraction in his special theory, and why that might very well not have been necessary.
The book is written for the intelligent (maybe very intelligent) layman, with little in the way of advanced mathematics required to fully comprehend the discussions.
http://www.lulu.com/content/572819

In Proust's Footsteps, 99 pages (hardcover $22.40)
by Maria Claudia Faverio
"In Proust's Footsteps" is Maria's fifth poetry book after "Entropy", "Behind the Mask", "Metaphors instead of Formulas", and her "Selected Poems" collection. Maria is a committed, award-winning poet whose books are highly recommended by the Poetic Genius Society. Maria is also the current editor for poetry and prose of the International Society for Philosophical Enquiry.
http://www.lulu.com/content/430375

Learn about this talented Australian author, poet, and artist as well as her many creations of prose, poetry, classical music CDs, puzzle books, fairy tales, and artistic images at the following site: http://www.lulu.com/mycreations.

NATAN, 108 pages - $13.69
by Albert Frank and Muriel Hustin
Nath is a genius, Tanguy an idiot. Any such extremes disturb people. In recognition of this fact, a pharmaceutical corporation is undertaking experiment with a new drug, ?normality pills?, that would move them both toward the norm. It is decided to put them in contact using e-mail exchanges. Those responsible for the experiment will monitor the exchanges. So a deep friendship evolves between two individuals who normally would never have even met. Their dialogue is moving right up to the terrifying conclusion. One of the themes of the narrative is the loneliness of the extremes.
http://www.lulu.com/content/71060

Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher To Atheist, 342 pages - $25.00
by Dan Barker
After 19 years of evangelical preaching, missionizing, evangelism and Christian songwriting, Dan Barker "threw out the bathwater and discovered there is no baby there." Barker describes the intellectual and psychological struggle required to move from fundamentalism to freethought. Sections on biblical morality, the historicity of Jesus, bible contradictions, the unbelievable resurrection, and much more. This book is an arsenal for skeptics and a direct challenge to believers.
http://ffrf.org/shop/books/details.php?cat=fbooks&ID=FB5

The Magic of Ed Rehmus, 192 pages - $15.00
by Ed Rehmus (edited by Fred Vaughan)
This collection of creations by Edward Rehmus includes essays, artwork, poetry, linguistic studies, comics, and puzzles. The style of Ed Rehmus' prose is reminiscent of H. L. Mencken in his hay day. As a friend said of Ed in eulogy, "He went for the bones of what he was considering and the stormy winds could make off with the sails if that was a consequence!" On his own behalf Ed had said, "What indolence and what prodigality to trust to usage that which ought always to be spontaneous, creative and conscious: speech!"
http://www.lulu.com/content/476575 - regular price.

One of the Greatest Modern Composers: Stravinsky

2007-07-24T00:25:00.000-07:00

When I was in my pre-teens, my parents had arranged for me to take piano lessons. I was not particularly good at it, except for manual dexterity; but I had little ear for music, and even less patience for learning the delicate technicalities. It took about six months of ‘torture’ before my training was abandoned as hopeless. However, during that time, my private tutor, who was no lesser personage than Gabriella Bartók, the niece of the world-famous composer Béla Bartók, had often admonished me and tried to motivate me by insisting that I should aim at nothing less than excellence. She used to cite the examples of famous Hungarian musical geniuses, such as Liszt, Kodály, and Bartók; and, since this was already during the Stalinist times, for political ‘correctness’ she also cited such great names as Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rachmaninoff, and very often, Stravinsky.

She had never met the other three Russians, but she had trained for a while with Igor Fedorovich Stravinsky (1882-1971) in her youth; and so she was in position to tell me many stories, even amusing anecdotes. Now, it has been a generation (30 years) that Stravinsky died (Gabriella Bartók died even earlier, due to breast cancer, if I remember correctly); therefore, as a bit of commemoration, let me relate what I recall of her Stravinsky stories, interlaced, spiced, and completed with actual historical details.

While vacationing in Heidelberg, Germany, on a hot Summer afternoon in 1902, Rimsky-Korsakov was approached by a 20-year old law student from the University of St-Petersburg (later renamed Leningrad, now back to its old name). Introducing himself as the son of one of Russia’s foremost opera stars, the youth begged the composer to listen to a piece he had recently written and to tell him whether or not it showed any of the talent necessary for a career in music. Taken by surprise by the young man’s insistence but being delighted with his evident enthusiasm for music, Rimsky-Korsakov agreed to a hearing. The student played the piano for about half an hour, then respectfully awaited the ’verdict’ of the already famous composer.

“Young man, your music is quite nice,” Rimsky-Korsakov reportedly told him; “but in all fairness to you, I would suggest that you continue with your law studies. However, should your interest in music remain, you might perhaps enroll in some formal courses in counterpoint and harmony. Then, maybe, you will come back and play for me again and I will be able to give you a more favorable assessment.”

His hopes dashed for the moment, the crestfallen Stravinsky took the advice and returned to his law books. Music, however, soon gained the upper hand again. Writing a piano sonata, a year later he called on Rimsky-Korsakov a second time. The composer greeted him warmly and listened to his music intently, apparently impressed with what he was hearing. Occasionally he asked Stravinsky to repeat a specific passage, nodding and keeping time to the music when it was played. Then came the second verdict:

“You asked me once before if you had any ability whatsoever and I told you to continue with your law studies. I’ve just changed my mind. You are wasting your talents with law. Come to me tomorrow morning- early, mind you- and we will begin your training in serious instrumentation.”

In later years Stravinsky was to recall, the weeks and months he spent with Rimsky-Korsakov were among the happiest in his life. As a teacher, the composer was merciless. He drove his young apprentice and drove him very hard. Anything short of perfection brought down his wrath. Perfection, itself, he dismissed with scarcely a word of praise. “A man’s music,” Rimsky-Korsakov used to explain, “should always be perfect, so why should we applaud something that is so basic to successful composing.”

Prompted by such admonishings, late in 1907 Stravinsky completed his first large work, the “Symphony in E-flat major.” Performed in St-Petersburg on January 22, 1908, it instantly met with critical acclaim. A second work finished soon afterward and named “Le Faune et la bergère” (Fauna and the shepherdess) did not fare as well, but it did prove to be more than sufficient to bolster Stravinsky’s rising stature in the world of music.

Galvanized into action, confident as he had never been before, tireless in his work, Stravinsky threw himself into his music. Secretly, he began to compose a new orchestral work, which he hoped to present as a gift to Rimsky-Korsakov upon the forthcoming marriage of the master’s daughter. Called “Fireworks”, it was finished just a week before the wedding. Delighted with his surprise, Stravinsky packed up his score and shipped it off to his revered master. However, by some irony of fate, Rimsky-Korsakov was never to see it. On the day that it arrived, he died. One of the world’s greatest composers had passed on and for Igor Stravinsky, the loss was a terrible blow. Friend, teacher, and colleague, Rimsky-Korsakov had been the young composer’s guide and inspiration.

Presented in St-Petersburg, “Fireworks” exerted a profound influence on the future of the rising composer. In the audience, the night of its debut, was Serge Diaghilev, soon to become famous as the mastermind behind the magnificent ‘Ballet Russe’ [Russian Ballet, later almost synonymous with ‘Bolshoi’ even though ‘Bolshoi’ was the name of the largest (as it means “big” or “great” in Russian) and most elegant theater in Moscow during and after Stalin]. Hearing Stravinsky’s music, Diaghilev invited the composer to orchestrate two Chopin pieces for a forthcoming ballet performance. Stravinsky did, and the results were so outstanding that he was commissioned to undertake a major work revolving around an old Russian myth- the tale of the Fire-Bird.

It took Stravinsky nearly a year to complete his task, but at last, on June 25, 1910, “L’Oiseau de Feu” or “The Fire-Bird”, was presented at the Paris Opera. The audience went wild with delight. Stravinsky was given an incredible ovation. Debussy, hearing the score, rose at the conclusion of the ballet and hurled himself into Stravinsky’s arms. Gabriel Pierne, who conducted that evening, later declared, “The Fire-Bird” is music such as I have never heard before. The world will not soon forget it. Mark my words. Igor Stravinsky will someday help free the musical thought of today and lead it in new directions.” And so it proved. “The Fire-Bird” established Stravinsky’s reputation and carried his name to music lovers around the globe. Elated with his triumph, the composer immediately plunged into a new work. Titled “Petrouchka”, it was first seen in Paris in 1911. To ensure its success, Diaghilev had seen to it that Nijinsky and Karsavina were the ballet’s principal dancers, that the finest supporting cast to be found anywhere was on hand, and that the settings were of unmatched beauty.

Paris received “Petrouchka” with even more enthusiasm than that attending the debut of “The Fire-Bird”. The city’s newspapers, next morning, hailed Stravinsky as a personage of music equal in stature to France’s beloved Claude Debussy. And Debussy himself declared, “That man injects a vital force into music that will carry him- and music- very far”.

Following “Petrouchka” came “The Rite of Spring”, a ballet which perhaps evoked one of the most fantastic exhibitions in the history of music. Presented on May 29, 1913, rarely has a composition ever carried its audience away so completely. Even for Igor Stravinsky, “The Rite of Spring” marked a monumental turning point in his career. His success established, the piece shook the musical world to its very roots and made him one of the most loved or most despised, most defended or most maligned figures in the history of his art. In rapid succession, he proceeded to compose such works as the opera-oratorio “Oedipus Rex”; the ballet “Apollon Musagete”; the suite “Pulcinella”; and the ballet “L’Histoire de Soldat” (Soldier’s History).

Visiting the United States for the first time in 1925, Stravinsky was much impressed with what he saw. Musical America, on the other hand, was just as impressed with what it saw in him and welcomed the composer with open arms. The various tours on which he embarked in the years that followed were all highly successful, so much so, as a matter of fact, that when Stravinsky completed his ballet “Jeu de Cartes” (Card Game) , he decided it would be given its premiere in New York. Presented in 1937; the audience proved to be every bit as enthusiastic as the Parisian groups that had greeted the ballets “The Fire-Bird” and “Petrouchka”. With the onset of World War II, Stravinsky abandoned his home in the outskirts of Paris. Traveling to the United States and eventually settling in California, be became a naturalized American citizen and plunged back into his work. His major American works have included the magnificent opera “Rake’s Progress”; the ballet “Orpheus”; and the controversial “symphony in Three Movements”.

This is where I should stop the storytelling, because my own musical training had stopped in the mid-1950’s. Stravinsky had lived and produced until his death in 1971, but I know nothing of his late period in life. At any rate, it is generally recognized that already in the mid-1950’s he was acknowledged as one of the world’s greatest modern composers. Igor Fedorovich Stravinsky had achieved his aims while he was still alive, regardless of difficulties; and thus had been successful in avoiding merely posthumous recognition, the lamentable fate of many great artists.

Why Take the Fifth?

2007-07-24T00:09:00.000-07:00

" No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

... "'defence' of Lie's behaviour by referring to the close relationship between genius and madness really created a generally accepted explanation which has survived up to the present. By this act of 'defence' Klein did his old friend an incredible injustice."¹

by Fred Vaughan

We all know what it means to "take the fifth". It ain't good!

There have been many attempts to reduce the number, modify the structure, and alter the phraseology of Euclid's postulates, but it has been found that for plane projective geometry they are by and large very sound as initially presented. However, there seems to have been little effort to determine whether there might be a different postulate more appropriate that the fifth for modification to provide compatibility with the formalism of relativity and our current view of the universe.

That one of Euclid's postulates upon which he based The Elements of his geometry might be flawed, or worse yet, unnecessary is, of course, an integral part of present day establishmentarian mathematics and physics. The Fifth Postulate, that through any point only one line can be drawn parallel to any other has been unanimously selected as the culpable postulate invalidated by the current understanding of relativity and cosmology at larger scales of our universe.

Long before that mathematicians began exploring alternative geometrical possibilities deriving from the elimination of this assumption after repeatedly failing to reduce it to a provable theorem. This was before there was any inkling that we might actually live in such an alternative universe.² Gauss actually attempted measurements employing light signals to determine based on such empirical evidence whether that might be the case, however. But with the advent of Einstein's relativity, bold conjectures of a combined spacetime exhibiting strange geometrical properties have been totally accepted by the scientific community, so that alternative-fifth-postulate-geometries thrive; notwithstanding this feeding frenzy on the Fifth, Postulate convincing evidence that another of Euclid's postulates is invalid continues to be denied.

Relativity provides the analytic work of pioneering mathematicians a context of immediate relevance and it should not be surprising that their work would have been re-evaluated with renewed interest. These former discoveries concerning viable geometries not requiring Euclid's Fifth Postulate revitalized mathematical physics.

One must note that even in the general theory of relativity, physical experiments are always considered as being conducted within locally-Lorentz reference frames. What this means is that even though an observer may experience wild gyrations of acceleration due to gravitation or his own rocket engines, at each moment in time it is only his instantaneous velocity relative to what is being observed that is pertinent to the geometry of his current observations. This is where one must begin if the objective is to map observations between oneself and other observers in relative motion. So the Lorentz geometry of special relativity would seem to be the local geometry of choice. This has been thought to involve a flat spacetime, but it is hardly without distortion as the author has discussed elsewhere. In particular relativistic aberration distorts the directions of objects in one frame of reference relative to where those objects are to be seen in the other. The coordinate axes of the other observer are not immune to this distortion

Let us look at Euclid's five postulates and attempt to determine for ourselves which one seems most likely to be at odds with such observational inferences made from Lorentz reference frames. Here are all five postulates³:

Only one straight line can be drawn between any two points.

A finite straight line can be extended indefinitely.

Only one circle of a given radius can be centered at a given point.

Through a point at a distance from a given line there is only one line that can be drawn through the point that is perpendicular to the given line.

Through a point at a distance from a given line there is only one line that can be drawn that is parallel to the given line. ⁴

In lieu of the apparent directional distortions of the three perpendiculars that constitute the spatial axes of Lorentz reference frames of various observers in relative motion, one can but wonder why there has been this preoccupation with the Fifth Postulate anyway? What we have found is that each of all possible coincident observers with unique relative velocities would witness all other observers' perpendicular directions to be misaligned with regard to their own. Parallel lines of sight in one frame of reference would remain parallel for the others although they would in concert be pointing off in other directions.

So it seems self-evident that to make sense of the coordination of the geometrical observations and constructions between relatively moving observers, we must reject the Fourth Postulate! It seems to the author that we may even need a new theory of perpendiculars. But his elder sister did nickname him "Perpendicular" — Perpy for short — so maybe such stigmata warps ones sense of geometrical rectitude.

On that charge I think I will claim my Fifth Amendment right.

1 Written by Marius Lie's friend and collaborator Friedrich Engel at his death. The quote is provided gratuitously as being of possible interest to this audience.

2 Robert Bonola, Non-Euclidean Geometry, Dover, New York (1955), originally published 1914. Supplements within this book contain "The Theory of Parallels" by Nicholas Lobachevski, and "The Science of Absolute Space" by John Bolyai. The book also provides a context for the pioneering efforts of such names as Gerolamo Saccheri (1667-1733), Johann Lambert (1728-1777), Adrien Legendre (1752-1833), Wolfgang Bolyai (1775-1856), Friedrich Wachter (1792-1817), Bernhard Thibaut (1776-1832), Karl Gauss (1777-1855, Ferdinand Schweikart (1780-1859), Franz Taurinus (1794-1874), Nicholas Lobachevski (1793-1856), John Bolyai (1802-1860), B. Riemann (1826-1866), Ludwig Helmholtz (1821-1894), and Marius Lie (1842-1899).

3 This version involves only a slight rephrasing of those given by Sir Thomas Heath in The Elements of Euclid. Changes parallel Playfair's rephrasing of the Fifth Postulate.

4 In 1795, John Playfair (1748-1819) offered an alternative version of the originally translated postulate involving interior angles, which was: That if a straight line falling on two straight lines makes the interior angles on the same side less than two right angles, the straight lines, if produced indefinitely, will meet on that side on which the angles are less that two right angles. This alternative version, of course, gives rise to the identical geometry of Euclid. It is Playfair's version of the Fifth Postulate that most often appears in discussions

Practice Your Profession

2007-07-23T23:56:00.000-07:00

by Carle P. Graffunder

This is a story I dreamed last night — as much as I can remember.

In my dream I wanted to become a medical doctor. The dream probably came about because I had been considering the years' long unremitting and debilitating pain of a close friend. During the course of the day I had had conversations about pain with two nurses and, independently, with my friend's primary care physician and medical insurance company. So perhaps it was the attendance on these that allowed the dream to become expressed.

The dream centered on a written examination that, if passed, would grant me my medical degree and a license to practice. When, in the dream, the examination paper, a rather copious document, was returned to me, there was a mark on the left quadrant of the page in the margin. It read "42." I took note of the scribbled number with some apprehension. I did not at once grasp the significance of those figures. Then I noticed that they referred to Part One of the exam. That part of the exam took up about two-thirds of the first page. The remainder of the sheet referred to the rest of the exam; in that margin was written "43."

Drawing on my previous experience with grading, I had assumed at first that my grade was "42" for the entire exam, a mark that meant "failure." My spirits, however, perked up when I saw a second score; for I began to add the two scores together. My elation was immediately dashed. A total score of "85," although adequate to pass, was hardly acceptable to me since it indicated a score that was not in the range of "best." That, in turn, meant I could count myself as hardly a notch above "mediocre" as a student. Furthermore, from such knowledge, I could predict that I would be not much more than an "average" doctor, perhaps even "good" but by no stretch of the imagination one of the "best." Chagrined, downcast, and embarrassed, I was inwardly ashamed.

Out of my vision, I gradually became aware in my dream that my major professor who was also my mentor was approaching me. I turned slightly to find him at my elbow. "This is so humiliating," I told him. He looked slowly into my eyes and said, "Someone will always surpass you in one thing or another. Your grade is better than 95 per cent of those who took the test and better than 99 per cent of all practicing MD's. Your job from now on will be to learn the difference between honest ignorance and flim-flam. Take your degree and your license and practice your profession!"

I think the dream was an expression of deep intuition. In my waking life I had given my best for a very long time to find a way to lessen my friend's excruciating pain. I strongly felt the discouragement of failure to do that. But my profound self was letting me know that attempts to penetrate ignorance, even though unsuccessful, are more to be honored than pretense.

Basic Notions of Mathematical Proofs

2007-07-23T23:37:00.000-07:00

Elementary mathematical proofs rest upon the basic principles of mathematical logic, which in turn are direct applications of classical Aristotelian logic to mathematics. Classical logic was used in Euclid’s Elements, on which all traditional geometry and mathematics was built, using propositional logic or the logic of propositions. The essence of propositional logic was laid down in the three famous “Laws of Thought” by Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.), namely the Law of Identity (A = A), the Law of Non-Contradiction (A never equals non-A), and the Law of Excluded Middle (either A or non-A). They can also be expressed in symbolic logic as: if p, then p (p implies p by the Law of Identity); not both p and not-p [~(p and ~p), by the Law of Non-Contradiction, where the tilde ~ means negation]; and either p V ~p by the Law of Excluded Middle, where V means exclusive “or”. These ‘Laws of Thought’ have remained essentially unchanged ever since. In propositional logic, these basic principles take the following form (the Law of Identity is so basic that it is taken for granted, so it isn’t even mentioned): First Principle: Law of the Excluded Middle (for any proposition, p, the proposition, “either p or not-p” is true; Second Principle: Law of Contradiction (for any proposition, p, the proposition “p and not-p” is false); and the Third Principle: Law of Transitivity of Implication (for any propositions, p, q, r, the proposition, “if p implies q and q implies r, then p implies r,” is true. By definition, a general proposition is a proposition expressible in one of the following forms for a specific designation of x and y: (a) All x’s are y’s. (b) No x’s are y’s. (c) Some x’s are y’s. (d) Some x’s are not y’s. Propositions are many times stated in the form of hypotheses and conclusions. But one must be careful, because the conclusion being true provides no information in itself about the truth or falsity of the hypothesis.

There are certain relationships between implications involving the same two statements or their negatives that occur sufficiently often to make special terminology helpful, as follows. For a given implication, “p implies q”, or “if p then q” or “p only if q” is evident from what has been said above. The converse is the implication, “q implies p”, or “if q then p”, or “q only if p”’ while the inverse is the implication, “not-p implies not-q”, or “if not-p then not-q”, or “not-p only if not-q”. Finally, the contrapositive is the implication, “not-q implies not-p”, or “if not-q then not-p”, or “not-q only if not-p”. It is noteworthy that a given implication and its contrapositive are logically equivalent. The concept of logical equivalence applies in general to pairs of propositional forms. We say that two propositional forms are logically equivalent, provided they have the same set of meaningful values and the same set of truth values; that is, each has the same true-false classification as the other for all possible choices of the variables. For a true implication, “if p then q”, where p and q are propositional forms, p is said to be a sufficient condition for q, and q is said to be a necessary condition for p; i.e. q necessarily follows from p.

The purpose of the foregoings was introductory “warm-up” to enable us to apply logical principles to finding and proving new mathematical results. Mathematics is an abstract science in the sense that it consists of a system of undefined terms about which certain statements are assigned a true classification (these are the axioms and the postulates), which, together with basic defined terms, are used to develop additional propositions. These in turn, are then shown to be true or false according to the rules of logic that have so far been considered (such true propositions being called theorems).

Many of the new results in such a system are proved by direct methods that involve primary applications of the Law of Transitivity for Implications mentioned above.

However, indirect methods of proof are also used frequently, both in mathematical developments and in everyday reasoning, with compelling, even necessarily true results. When a child asks, “Has Daddy gone to work?” and Mother answers, “See if the car is in the garage,” it is likely that the thought pattern involves, “If Daddy has gone to work, then the car is gone.” When the child finds the car in the garage, he concludes, “If the car has not gone, then Daddy has not gone to work,” thus utilizing the contrapositive to arrive at a “No” answer to his original question.

Direct proofs both in their forward (reasoning from premises to conclusion) and backward (reasoning from conclusion to premises) varieties are quite straightforward, and as such, need not be treated here. However, while a direct proof may often be given where an indirect method is employed, the latter is often clearer, more forceful, and shorter. This is such an important phase of reasoning that it will be worthwhile to consider a general analysis and some further examples. There are essentially two forms in which indirect reasoning may appear, frequently interchangeably.

Form I of Indirect Reasoning consists of proving the contrapositive and thereby the desired implication. To show “p implies q” is true, we show that “not-q implies not-p” is true. For example, we assume simple properties of integers, also the definition that a prime number is a positive integer which is divisible by no other integers than itself and 1.

Proposition: If an integer greater than 2 is prime then it is an odd number.

Proof: (1) If an integer greater than 2 is not odd, it is even, by definition.
(2) If an integer greater than 2 is even, it is divisible by 2, by definition.
(3) If an integer greater than 2 is divisible by 2, it is not prime.
(4) Hence, if an integer greater than 2 is not odd, it is not prime, by the Transitive Property of Implications (vide supra).
(5) Therefore, if an integer greater than 2 is prime, then it is an odd number, since step 4 states the truth of the contrapositive.

Q.E.D.*

Form II of Indirect Reasoning essentially follows the pattern:
(a) To prove true: p implies q, where p has a true classification.
(b) Show: p and not-q imply r, where r is known to be false.
(c) A false conclusion indicates a false hypothesis; hence, not-q is false.
(d) Not-q being false shows that q is true. This is the desired result.

For example, assume the usual terminology of plane geometry and the proposition, “From a point not on a straight line, one perpendicular, and only one, can be drawn to the line. Prove the
Proposition: Two straight lines in the same plane perpendicular to the same line are parallel.

Notation: Let L be the given line through distinct points A and C, with AB perpendicular to L at A and CD perpendicular to L at C.

Restatement: If AB and CD are each perpendicular to L, then AB and CD are parallel.

Proof: Assume p: AB is perpendicular to L and CD is perpendicular to L, and not-q: AB and CD are not parallel.
(1) AB and CD not parallel imply that AB and CD intersect in a unique point P, by definition of parallel lines.
(2) AB and CD are distinct lines through point P not on L, both perpendicular to L, by hypothesis p.
(3) This is false by the proposition quoted for reference.
(4) Hence, not-q is false, since a false conclusion requires a false hypothesis in a true implication.
(5) Therefore, AB and CD are parallel (q is true).

Q.E.D.

Indirect methods of reasoning are sometimes called “proof by contradiction” (or reductio ad absurdum) due to the property of arriving at the negative, or contradiction, of a known true proposition. By virtue of the Laws of Thought cited above, (self) contradictions are absurd, and may therefore be safely discarded.

When the deductive aspect of inquiry, which has been emphasized above, is applied to mathematics or to other scientific fields, it frequently is preceded by an inductive aspect. The latter is concerned with the search for facts or information by observation and experimental procedure. Once the available facts have been assimilated, the scientist proceeds by induction to the formulation of a hypothesis or premise of a general nature to explain the particular facts observed and the relationships among them. The deductive aspect involves logical reasoning leading from this hypothesis to new statements or principles, which then may be checked against the facts already available. This use of inductive and deductive procedures to complement, reinforce, and check each other in the formulation of scientific knowledge comprises the main part of what is called the scientific method.

Note: Q.E.D. is a standard abbreviation from Latin, Quod Erat Demonstrandum (That which was to be Proved); but in the case of as yet unproven theorems, it reads Quod Est Demonstrandum (That which is to be Proved).

This is the Latin rendering of the original Greek phrases with which Euclid used to finish or start his proofs, and both of these have become habitual expressions in the classical mathematical literature of most countries.

Maybe God is faking it too?

2007-07-20T10:39:00.000-07:00

At least you apparently exist. But I see a lot of people faking it. They're a little nervous sometimes that they may not exist or have a life. They constantly talk on cell phones and play with electronic gizmos when in public. And, of course, smoke cigarettes, fiddle with matches and lighters, and text message. If you're smoking you're really doing something, like people in TV commercials, so you must exist! You can't just sit there and take in the scenes, bathing in the impressions. Someone might notice that you have no shadow.

People who are beginning to suspect that they don't exist like to eat outside, where they can be seen by others, who may exist, it is thought. Please someone look at the tattoos on my Volvo, my unique identity, confirm my existence for me. As you walk by them they look to see if you have noticed them. I never look. They can look at me not noticing them. At least I don't claim to exist. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence!

May-Tzu

Taking the Conversation Back

2007-07-19T14:18:00.000-07:00

by Kay Vaughan

This article was originally an e-mail response to an Urban Legend that was forwarded to me. The sender obviously thought it was a true account of a court proceeding. After checking it out on snopes.com, it was found to be an Urban Legend. Here it is:

Subject: Wise Judge

In Florida , an atheist became incensed over the preparation of Easter and Passover holidays. He decided to contact his lawyer about the discrimination inflicted on atheists by the constant celebrations afforded to Christians and Jews with all their holidays while atheists had no holiday to celebrate. The case was brought before a wise judge. After listening to the long passionate presentation by the lawyer, the Judge banged his gavel and declared "Case Dismissed."

The lawyer immediately stood and objected to the ruling and said, "Your Honor, how can you possibly dismiss this case? Christians have Christmas, Easter and many other observances. Jews have Passover, Yom Kppur and Hanukkah......yet my client and all other atheists have no such holidays."

The judge leaned forward in his chair and simply said "Obviously your client is too confused to even know about, much less celebrate, his own atheists' holiday!"

The lawyer pompously said, "Your Honor, we are unaware of any such holiday for atheists. Just when might that holiday be, your Honor?"

The judge said, "Well it comes every year on exactly the same date.....April 1st! Since our calendar sets April 1st as 'April Fools Day,' consider that Psalm 14:1and Psalm 53:1 states, 'The fool says in his heart, there is no God.' Thus, in my opinion, if your client says there is no God, then by scripture he is a fool, thus April 1st is his holiday!"

Pray that some day our courts will be full of these kinds of judges.....maybe then, we can put God back where He belongs.........in everything we do.....

Way to go, Judge!

Here is my response verbatim:

Okay, dear XXXX, you asked for it!

As you can see from what I've included below, the article you forwarded is an Urban Legend, a joke or a lie, depending on whether you believe it or not. I often wonder why religious people tend to turn to "Urban Legends" or lies to get their point of view across. I believe it's because they have based their whole life on an "Urban Legend" or a fairy tale.

In the article the judge is suppose to have quoted some verses in Psalms. Psalms was written by various people at various times, but the verses they quoted were written around 1000 B. C. At that time in our history, people believed that the world was flat. Furthermore the God of the Old Testament was cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.

Did you know that there are 400,000 versions of the New Testament? Our culture has chosen to prefer the King James Version which is not the most authentic.

In their wisdom our founding fathers wrote the constitution in a way that religion is suppose to be kept out of our courts. They knew what it was like to be controlled by a government based on religion and they had fled from that. Everyone knows about all the people in history that have been massacred because of religion and still are being murdered because of religion.

Here are some quotes from Thomas Jefferson: "To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise . . .without plunging into the fathomless abyss of dreams and phantasms. I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence.

And another one: "Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God, because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.

This quote if from James Madison: "During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."

And from James Adams: "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it." He also said, "As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?"

Did you know that five of our Supreme Court justices are Roman Catholics? My dad thought the pope was responsible for putting Kennedy, a Democrat, in as president. I wonder what he would of thought of our Supreme Court? The funny part is that they were all put in by Republicans. I wonder what he would have thought about that?

This is the origin of Christmas:
December 25 was a significant date for various early cultures. The ancient Babylonians believed the son of the queen of heaven was born on December 25. The Egyptians celebrated the birth of the son of the fertility goddess Isis on the same date, while ancient Arabs contended that the moon was born on December 24.

The Romans celebrated Saturnalia, a feast named for Saturn, god of agriculture, on December 21, the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere. They believed the shortest day of the year was the birthday of the sun. The Roman emperor Constantine was a member of the sun-cult before converting to Christianity in 312.

Some scholars suspect that Christians chose to celebrate Christ's birth on December 25 to make it easier to convert the pagan tribes. Referring to Jesus as the “light of the world” also fit with existing pagan beliefs about the birth of the sun. The ancient “return of the sun” philosophy had been replaced by the “coming of the son” message of Christianity.

The origins of Easter:

Christians celebrate Easter to commemorate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Some aspects of modern Easter celebrations, however, pre-date Christianity.

Ancient Spring Goddess

According to the Venerable Bede, Easter derives its name from Eostre, an Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring. A month corresponding to April had been named "Eostremonat," or Eostre's month, leading to "Easter" becoming applied to the Christian holiday that usually took place within it. Prior to that, the holiday had been called Pasch (Passover), which remains its name in most non-English languages.

It seems probable that around the second century A.D., Christian missionaries seeking to convert the tribes of northern Europe noticed that the Christian holiday commemorating the resurrection of Jesus roughly coincided with the Teutonic springtime celebrations, which emphasized the triumph of life over death. Christian Easter gradually absorbed the traditional symbols.

As far as April fools day goes, the origin is unclear.

On the lighter side, this is what Mark Twain said about April 1st: "April 1st: This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three-hundred and sixty-four.

Pertinent Parts of the Snopes Report on This Urban Legend:

Origins: This item, which began its Internet life in 2003, is another politics-cum-humor item which has prompted numerous "Is this real?" inquiries from readers, even though it is presented in a standard joke format: no specific details, a somewhat farcical set-up, and a punchline pay-off. It's clearly a fictional humor piece, not a literal account of an actual court case. Indeed, in substance it mirrors this item, which was unambiguously circulated as a joke on a humor mailing list in 2002:

An atheist complained to a friend, "Christians have their special holidays, such as Christmas and Easter; and Jewish folks celebrate their holidays, such as Passover and Yom Kippur. EVERY religion has its holidays. But we atheists," he said, "have no recognized national holidays. It's unfair discrimination."

His friend replied, "Well...Why don't you celebrate April first?"

This humor piece utilizes a fantasy court case with exaggerated elements to make its point. The "godless" representative for the plaintiffs is not presented as bringing any legitimate constitutional issue before the court; he's simply complaining that Jews and Christians have religious holidays while atheists have none. (What sort of injunctive relief he might be seeking isn't specified — does he expect the judge to issue a Grinch-like restraining order prohibiting any celebration of Christmas whatsoever?) The "wise" jurist's hands may be bound by the law, but not so his heart. He doesn't even need to hear from the defense — as soon as the plaintiffs are done presenting their arguments, he summarily dismisses their case and brands them "fools" to boot. In this drama the atheists have gone to the legal well once too often, and this time they get the worst of it.

Sometimes the clearest view of what a text like this one is all about comes from those who take inspiration from it, through their voicing of what they perceive as its message. For example, these trailing comments added by unknown forwarders who identified with the piece (and presumably mistook it for a summary of a real court case) speak directly to its nature:

PRAY THAT SOME DAY OUR COURTS WILL BE FULL OF THESE KIND OF JUDGES...

MAYBE THEN, WE CAN PUT GOD BACK WHERE HE BELONGS — IN EVERYTHING WE DO...

Way to go, Judge!

The power of illustrative anecdotes often lies not in how well they present reality, but in how well they reflect the core beliefs of their audience.

Some Negative Aspects of Chess Programs

2007-07-18T16:53:00.000-07:00

In my previous articles "Computers, chess and A.I.", I have presented some dramatically positive aspects of the best chess software programs concerning a quasi human understanding of the chess positions. Today, on the contrary, I'm going to present some extremely negative aspects, especially concerning the defence of a position.

A "fortress" is a pieces' configuration against which the challenger is unable to do anything, despite a huge material superiority, and that involves a draw.

I will present and comment three fortresses. A beginner, or a weak player, will easily understand all of them.

These three configurations have been analysed for five hours by the following strong chess programs: Rybka (the best chess software existing that can be run on a PC), Fritz (which won a match by 6/4 against the world champion Valdimir Kramnik), and Hiarcs on a 3 GHz PC, with 1 GB of RAM.

All the three softwares continued going round in circles indefinitely, giving a winning evaluation to the side which has the material superiority, without realizing that it was impossible to gain a victory.

We can then make the statement that they didn't display any sign of "intelligence".

Fortress 1: White to move

It's one of the simplest known fortresses: White, if not in check, will move back-and-forth with his rook from f3 to h3; if he is in check, he will move the king, protecting the g3 pawn. Even a very weak chess player will understand this without difficulty.

We must notice that if this position is given to the Shredder chess software, it will immediately be recognized as a draw, because all the positions with a maximum of 6 pieces are recorded ("hard force").

Fortress 2: Black to move

This more complex fortress is comprised exclusively of pawns.

How could Black progress?

- The King has no entry into the white position;

- If they push forward their pawn a to a5 and then a4, White will answer by b4;

If they push forward their pawn b to b4, White will answer by a4.

-As long as their rook stays on the h column, The white king will go back and forth between g1 and g2; if their rook goes to the f or g columns, the white king will go back and forth between f2 and g2; if their rook goes to the e column, the white king will go back and forth between f1 and f2.

No progression is possible, and the game will be a draw.

While the position of the fortress 1 was quite simple and let us hope for an eventual solution by the computer without having to resort to a "hard force", the fortress 2 seems to be too difficult for any of such expectation.

Nevertheless even a weak player understands quite easily why Black can not do anything.

Fortress 3: Black to move

Here is another type of fortress.

The black king has no available square and the h5 pawn is blocked by the king.

Black can only move with his queen: if she stays on the first line, between a1 and d1 or in f1, White answers g3 to mate, winning the game. If he goes on e1, the following move is also g3+, and if he goes on g1 or h1, the white king captures the queen, and Black is stalemated (impossible to make a legal move, and the game is draw). If Black's queen leaves the first line, for example if the queen takes control of the diagonal b8-h2, White will operate back-and-forth with their king between g1 and h1.

Once again, chess programs persist in giving a noticeable advantage to the black position.

A possible improvement concerning these wrong evaluations could be the following:

Add to the program a condition such as "if no improvement is reached after twenty moves - analyse deepness - or in other words if the evaluation function, which will be very positive in the beginning (due to the material advantage), stays unchanged, then tackle the position analysis in another way.

Fragile theatre

2007-07-17T15:51:00.000-07:00