Writer

I'm a writer. I write. That's what I'm doing right now. Writing changes and evolves, as do people. I can't remember the last time I saw something I wrote on paper. I have some vague, nebulous kinda-sorta understanding that some of the thoughts that form in my brain are directed down my arms to my fingers and, mixed with vision and co-ordination the fingers touch the right keys which cause electrical contacts to send digital versions of alphanumeric characters to a processor which decodes the information and displays it on a screen I can see. I know it's an applied scientific process which some people fully understand and are capable of creating...otherwise I could do what I'm doing. But it's almost close enough to magic to make it seem so.

Thomas Jefferson was a smart guy and he wrote a lot of things. But every bit of his writing was done (I think) with the end of bird's feather repeatedly dipped into a small container of ink, then applied to paper. The only way he could get others to see his writing was to take or send that paper to someone. I think our biggest improvement so far is that we don't have to carry our screen around to show to people we want to see our words. There are billions of screens now and we can, almost magically, send our words to huge numbers of them. I sure wouldn't write very much if Mr. Jefferson's feather, ink and paper were the only way I had to do it, in part, simply because the process is hugely time consuming and laborious, compared to this. Sometimes I wonder what's next. When a time comes in which writers look back at this period and say, "all that messing about with tapping physical "keys" and things called "mice"...shudder, how did anyone ever get anything written?" Will there still be such things as "writers" then and how will they do it?

There are some "voice recognition" programs now which can instantly convert your spoken words into visual text on a screen. I don't see that as much of an improvement. Judging by how much "texting" people do with phones, as opposed to talking, many agree. Of course, there is another thing about most writers...they wish to involve others. How many writers would write anything at all if they were reasonably certain that not a single human other than themselves would ever see and read the words? I think of writer as social...but it's a kind of what I call a "projected" sociability. They intend their words for some future audience. Writers write for a myriad of reasons but I view most as the passive aggressive intruder sort. The aggression is wanting to intrude their thoughts into your head. It only works if you agree and allow it (that's the passive part)...so far. :)

But there surely has to be an easier and faster way. Some draw analogies between individual cells making up your body and individual persons making up humanity. Maybe this is still only in the crude and primitive stage. Suppose humanity eventually becomes a "creature". A global mind composed of billions and billions of single brains, supplemented with still more billions or trillions of "artifical" devices. Could we learn to adapt to such an environment? Would we still be "humans"? Would it be good or bad if we were not?

I've written hundreds, maybe thousands of books. Not a single one has ever appeared on screens or on paper. All of them have appeared in my "mind's eye", fleetingly and never fully formed...I think of them as miscarriages. The best and most extensive have contained a few paragraphs or pages that might possibly be discernable to another mind - if the technology existed yet to do that. All these books, Julia Loui-Dreyfus finishes for me with "yada, yada, yada". I understand them without the tedium of having to form complete thoughts and words and sequences of events, etc., but no one else would.

This kind of communicating with other brains is exhausting. Even when you supposedly speak and understand the same language, a great deal can be lost (and inserted) in "interpretation". If a whole different language is involved, well, hang it up. I might say I'd like some jussipussi with my supper and folk could get the wrong idea. See?

TRB

Beliefs

The title of this one is "Belief" and I hope to address that and a few more things, but will try to keep it reasonably short.

Proposition: Choosing to believe (or not to believe) any given piece of data, purely as an act of one's "will", is not a capacity the human brain possesses. If you would defend the notion that "people can believe whatever they want", I would appreciate a step-by-step explanation of how one can accomplish this feat. If you agree that people cannot believe whatever they want, I would hope that you would point that out whenever appropriate and possible.

The young feller in this short (only 2 minutes) video puts it well.

I'm sure there are many atheists who think belief is a choice too, though it is most common to hear that from believers. As he says, part of it may be a mental "justification" for a given believers' sense of superiority for having "made the right choice". But this whole notion of "Free Will" that is typically preached from Christian pulpits (and some other places) can be proven wrong by very simple thought experiments, and will hopefully soon be so proven empirically with neurological scans. This notion is also at the root of a great deal of general trouble in our society. Its nefarious effects go well beyond whether one believes any religious claims, but to any and all other claims as well. Such as one's sexual orientation, for starters.

The way that anyone at all can prove to themselves, right now, right where they are (sounds a little like a televangelist don't it), is simply to bring to mind something - anything at all - that you believe strongly. Then, as an act of your will or choice, choose, just for a couple of minutes, to believe the exact opposite of that. Surely you will see that this is impossible. If you are an intellectually honest person, will you seriously tell all and sundry here that whatever your beliefs might be about a given thing, they are so because you choose them to be the way they are?

I was a devout Christian for more than thirty years. One day I was an atheist. This scared the shit out of me. That alone is irrational partly because, upon serious thought, it makes no sense whatever to have any fear of God punishing you to an eternity in Hell, if you have just come to believe there is no such thing as a God. But all that kind of thought came more gradually and later. I had barely heard of atheists before that and certainly nothing good. I had to set about looking around to find out what an atheists does and doesn't do, what kind of people they were; for all I knew I might have to go underground or something. I was lucky enough to very shortly thereafter find Pat Cleveland at Lake Hypatia, long before there was such a thing as Lake Hypatia, when they were having meetings in the library at Birmingham.

Some things, such as sexuality, are a continuum and all people are not firmly locked into one thing or another. But in general, the ends of the spectrum seem to be purely heterosexual at one end and purely homosexual at the other. Other people recognize the fallacy of "choice" most starkly in relation to sexuality. Many people have said, "Just when did YOU decide to be gay - or straight?" Surely thinking people can apply the same reasoning to other things. Just when did YOU decide to be... a liberal, a Libertarian ... a serial killer, a pedophile?

If I am a devout Christian, which I was, I am quite content, happy, satisfied with my life and my beliefs. Everyone knows there is a God, even if many people don't behave well. Everyone knows you will spend eternity somewhere...heaven, hell....purgatory...the Outer Limits? If I feel so happy and content with my life, what possible motivation could I have to DECIDE, just like that, that I'm not going to have the beliefs that I have? And if I did decide that, how would I do it?

There are many factors that go into a person believing the things that they believe at any given point. I doubt there is anyone here over 20 or so who believe and feel and think exactly as they did when they were ten. Brains continually evolve, different hormones and other chemicals come into play, sometimes emotions produce them, sometimes the genetic programming of certain changes happening at roughly certain times in growth; sometimes external events can change how one thinks about "X", sometime can even actually change a person's genes. Neurons die away, new ones form, different sets of connections between neurons and neuronal groups happen; various things may strengthen or weaken these connections. But no mater what you think or feel about "X" at any given moment, it is so because your brain is as it is at that moment. With many things it will change. Sometimes the very major things. You are never told about any of these plans to change. You are not sent a memo or a questionnaire asking how "you" feel about the proposed changes. Stuff happens inside your brain, things change; then and ONLY then are "you" made aware that things are different now and, it appears, the easiest thing to do is say, "I changed my mind", because it helps your brain maintain the illusion that "you" are in control.

To Bill, from previous blog: I thank you good sir, for your apology about being so harsh. It is genuinely admired and appreciated. I will also apologize about my saying "working" for pay is immoral. I can see how one might be rather insulted by that. I can only say that I had no intention to refer to you specifically, or any specific person, as being immoral...I meant only that it is my position that the current system in which we are all embedded, like it or not, is immoral. I also realized my temper was beginning to have more influence than I wanted, which is why I took a little break.

At the risk of producing yet another "tl;dr" tome, I also want to mention this... my previous short blog was about a man who decided to rob a bank for one dollar in order to get the medical treatment he knew he could get in jail, because he had no money or insurance. We start to hear, more and more often, in the media that "health care is a basic human right, not a privilege". Wonder why that is ... that this thought seems to be becoming more common? Where was that thought in our society twenty years ago? Ten? If most caring people would agree that food is a fundamental human right (some wouldn't...some say, 'if he don't work he don't eat')... and now some are thinking medical care is too...what other things might be fundamental human rights? How long might it take for such ideas to gain any traction in society?

One more thing... in honor of Columbo... check out wikipedia's charts just on the different flavors of Christianity. How does it make any more sense to wonder which of these is "right" than it does to wonder which of the various outrageous claims of schizophrenic folks is "right"?

TRB

The Secret of Oz and Soylent Green

Most libraries are reasonably neat and organized places. Try to imagine what one might look like if 50 5-year-olds were allowed to play in it for a week. That is a bit like my brain now...I think. I like random stuff too. And by the way, why is the Random House Dictionary as orderly as all the others?

I got defriended on the Face because I "liked" Alex Jones. It got real quiet at my page when I posted a link from prisonplanet dot com to a Glenn Beck show about the Federal Reserve. I asked, since most liberals hate the idea of privatizing such things as police, prisons, fire departments, etc., why would they like the idea of a private banking cartel running the country (and the world) rather than the US Government issuing and printing its own money. Only one response I think. Is that because people know nothing about the Fed? Because people find it boring and say, "Who cares"? Because people think if you would post something Alex Jones or Glenn Beck said you have gone to the Dark Side?

"In the year 2022, the population has grown to forty million people in New York City alone...". From the wiki entry about the movie Soylent Green. The actual projection by the Department of City Planning is "For the year 2020, we project the city's population
at 8.7 million, and at 9.1 million for 2030." Source. And no mention of Soylent Green. Looks like they missed it. BUT. The Japanese are coming through with meat made from poo. Source. Hopefully, the production price will drop drastically. Surely all of us who hate the idea of factory farms will applaud this effort? Oh... sorry, I should not have used a Fox News link for that. Is Yahoo News better?

When L. Frank Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, did he intend it only as a children's story...or was he doing a commentary on the economics and politics of his time? Or, is that just a stupid 'conspiracy theory'? Does it matter that Dorothy had silver, not Ruby, slippers in the book, before the movies were made? Watch this video and see what you think. The Secret of Oz.

TRB

Dead and Transcendent

I have done a blog previously about the death of my mother. I decided, for no particular reason, to do another.

Almost twelve years ago, in 1999, my mom died of a heart attack in a nursing home in Cedartown, GA. I went to the funeral home which was handling her "arrangements". My cousin Jimmy and his young son were the only other people there. Jimmy was always close to his "Aunt Bessie" too.

I looked at her dead body lying in the casket. She looked like ma, only too white. I touched her face and it felt exactly like a wooden mannequin. She was wearing a very pretty dress, which kind of pissed me off, since she could never afford to wear nice dresses in life. It was always what she called "housecoats" and mumu, tent type dresses, mostly of several years vintage. Jimmy cried.

I knew ma for just over 40 years. To me, she was the finest example of being a human that I have ever known. She was short and dumpy, not very attractive as women go. She was not really bright, only got to the fourth grade in school. She was very kind and enjoyed laughing. I saw her genuinely angry maybe five or six times in those forty years. You could tell when she was really mad because she would likely say something like, "I'm about ready to spit red and cuss dammit!" I never saw her with teeth. She always called black people niggers but that was what they had been to her all her life. There as no malice or disklike and certainly no hatred, it was simply a descriptive word. She had worked with black folks all her life too...far as I know she never hated a single person ever, for anything.

That day in the funeral home, I sat in a chair in the front row of chairs next to ma's casket. It was as though everything around me just melted away, and the only thing existing were snapshots and clips of my ma, playing in my head, hearing her laugh, feeling her love...and knowing it was all gone forever. I screamed, mostly silently, though probably a couple of loud moans escaped me too.

As the only child, the funeral and arrangements fell to me. I thought about this, about the southern funerals I have attended, many of them. I knew what was expected, what was wanted, maybe needed by most of her relatives. Only about two years earlier, I had been to the funeral of my half sister Marie (Jimmy's ma). I loved her dearly too and felt the pain of her absence, even though it had taken many years for me to get old enough to relate to her on an adult level. I knew she had come to see me as brother, not just little kid, when she confided in me that none of her children were fathered by her husband.

I sat in the front row at her funeral and it required all the strength I had to force myself to remain sitting quietly throughout the ordeal. The lies...coming one after the other, slamming into my head like being assaulted with stones, yet embraced by most others there as soothing balm. It genuinely made me nauseous. I highly doubted my ability to sit through such, involving my own mother. I made the decision that I had seen my ma for the last time, had said my goodbyes, had felt the world drop from beneath my feet and float in the endless void alone, until my brain could regain some equilibrium. I would not subject myself to the lies. It might well be disastrous.

My intentions were to give the other relatives their chance to play in la-la land as they wished, but to avoid the muck myself. So it was that after that goodbye in the funeral home, I would have nothing further to do with any funeral or arrangements. Her nieces could do whatever they wanted in that regard. Apparently they did, though I still remain ignorant of what that was.

Twelve years later, two in-person visits to that funeral home, phone calls, letters, emails, to them, to the newspapers, online searches, visits to all the cemeteries in the surrounding area...and I have no clue where my ma is buried...or, for that matter, IF she was buried. It is not a huge deal for me, I don't lie awake wondering. It just crosses my mind sometimes, my own personal little mystery that I doubt I will ever have answered. I do wonder why... did some of the relatives who were aware that I had become atheist so hate and/or fear me that they gave orders to the funeral home to not divulge information to me about my ma's burial? Did some of them think I might go dig her up and do unspeakable things to her remains, because I was atheist? Quite possibly, I just don't know.

Also makes me think of the fact that, if Melinda dies before me, I can't think of more than maybe three people in the world who would have the slightest care where my remains might be. I find it a little depressing to have so little importance. Then again, one rotting chunk of meat is pretty much like another. Funerals...the one time in life where you should be totally free to be completely honest about the dead person; zero fear of any recriminations from them, that they might be pissed about something you said, etc. Yet it's strangely the one time when most people go to extraordinary lengths to avoid any truths they might find unpleasant.

Why do people always say, "they live on, in our memories, in the works they may have left behind"? Why is it so hard to say they do not live on, period? There is no small ma running about in my head. I have mental images of her that my brain still sometimes reproduces. I do not have a single photograph of her. Frank Lloyd Wright does not live on in his buildings or designs. He is just as dead as anyone else who has died. Elvis does not live on in his music. Woody Allen said, "I don't want to "live on" through my work...I want to live on through not dying." Some might say that my ma "lives on" in the genes she passed on to me. Does Plato live on because some atom that was once a part of his body may now be part of one of us? But this is not true either. If she does not live on as the conscious entity I knew as ma, then she does not live on. Nor will you or I. Whether or not we may like or approve of this, is quite a different matter from the truthfulness of this.

It is not life per se that has any real meaning in a human sense, but consciousness. Many living things live shorter time spans than humans. Some live only a day. Others live far longer... a Bristlecone Pine might watch the centuries pass as we watch months pass...if it could watch anything. It is alive. But it has no more conscious awareness than the rock beside it.

The dog is much more alive than the Pine, is it not? It is both abundantly obvious and proven by science that the dog experiences the same kinds of physical sensations that humans do, and also experiences emotions such as joy, anger and fear. The dog's brain does not have the capacity for it to philosophically contemplate it's existence in the world, relative to elephants or ants or humans. Does the fact that we can do this make us more alive than the dog? Suppose that someone, somewhere in the universe, thinks thoughts as far "above" humans as ours are above dogs? Suppose that we met them...what could we understand about them?

Perhaps Ray Kurzweil's Singularity is the beginning of what will eventually be Pierre de Chardin's and Frank Tipler's Omega Point? Perhaps I'll see you there. Near the end of Kurzweil's movie Transcendent Man, he says, "Does God exist? No...not yet". Perhaps whatever evolves from humans will one day truthfully say, "I am the Alpha and the Omega".

TRB

Boobies

Why is it that women are said to be "topless" if they wear nothing above the waist, yet men are not "topless", they just don't have on a shirt? I know it's really early still but this is one of my favorite "holidays" and I hope you will mark yer calendar and not forget. Sunday, August 21 is National Go-Topless Day. Is it legal?

According to an email from the NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Public information, Paul Browne:

"The state's highest court established long ago that women have the same right as men to appear topless in public...." Source.

Apparently it is legal in the state of New York, but please check your local listings. Also, please be good enough to take and share photos and videos if you participate in this exercise to call attention to gender disparity in America. It also might offer an interesting flavor if all guys wore only a bikini top from the waist up on that day.

Go Topless Dot Org

Note: It doesn't matter if you agree with the Raelians...especially if you're topless.

TRB

Are We There Yet?

So, here's where we are... American citizens can go to prison simply for not paying a bill. But you can also be arrested when you DO pay your bill using legal American currency.

American citizens can be targeted for killing by the President of the United States.

"...in Barack Obama's America, the way guilt is determined for American citizens -- and a death penalty imposed -- is that the President, like the King he thinks he is, secretly decrees someone's guilt as a Terrorist." Source.

"That Obama was compiling a hit list of American citizens was first revealed in January of last year when The Washington Post's Dana Priest mentioned in passing at the end of along article that at least four American citizens had been approved for assassinations;..." Source.

There are "free speech zones" in America (what happened to the quaint notion of the whole country being a free speech zone?).

The police in America can arrest and jail you merely for using a camera in a public place, especially if you are taking pictures of them.

Example 1:

"Consider the case of Anthony Graber, a knucklehead from Baltimore who was speeding on his motorcycle on Interstate 95 in March, popping wheelies and doing other dumb and reckless things, according to an editorial in the USA Today. He's facing 16 years in prison but not for reckless driving. No, the horrendous felony Baltimore cops and prosecutors want to imprison Graber for is a video of his arrest made via a helmet camera and posted on YouTube." Source.

Example 2:

A good blog on thenecessity of filming police which includes four videos and the note that "In Britain there is a new law that restricts photographs/videos of police by the public."

Example 3: Even if you are mainstream media...

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has ruled that corporation ARE persons.
"The corporate rights movement has reached its extreme conclusion in today's Supreme Court ruling," says Jeffrey Clements, general counsel to www.freespeechforpeople.org and a consultant to Voter Action. "In recent years, corporations have misused the First Amendment to evade and invalidate democratically-enacted reforms, from elections to healthcare, from financial reform to climate change and environmental protection, and more. Today's ruling, reversing longstanding precedent which prohibits corporate expenditures in elections, now requires a constitutional amendment response to protect our democracy." Source.

Guantanomo Bay and other places, some even worse (and much less known), exist in which people can be held in prison for the rest of their lives without ever so much as being charged with anything, much less having a trial.

The popular media is all over a "story" about Representative Weiner sending a pic of his weiner, as though this had some relevance to national political policy, while mostly ignoring these other issues. A president was impeached (but not convicted) for getting a blowjob and lying out it. Why do these people not simply tell the public and the media "no comment" on sexual matters that do not involve criminal activity or matters of public policy?

But...there are REASONS why it's called the "popular media". Consider why it is popular. What might make it unpopular? The American electorate in general is a woefully misinformed and downright stupid herd...and damn proud of it! Evidence of the truth of this assertion is that both the political left and political right agree with it, lol.

Culture Wars:
A CNN poll asked about how much federal funding goes to NPR. The average estimate from citizens asked was that $178 billion went to NPR. The actual figure? "The CPB received about $420 million last year from the federal government, making it roughly one one-hundredth of one percent, of the overall budget. That means that the median response was about 424 times higher than the actual amount of federal funding that went to public broadcasting last year." Source. Wonder why they would think that?

The right says there should be no government funding for Planned Parenthood because they use it to kill babies. "Planned Parenthood performs abortions on a massive scale: 332,278 abortions in 2009, more than one-quarter of all abortions nationwide." Source. Planned Parenthood says they provide a broad range of health care services for everyone, with abortions being a small percentage of the services provided. Source. Who's right?

We have a GLOBAL monetary system that is designed to make completely certain there can never be any such thing as "economic equality", either within or among countries. In America, we have the Federal Reserve System, which is neither federal nor has any reserves. It is NOT any part of the government...uh, well what the public is TOLD is the government. It actually IS the real government because, as Mr. Rothschild said, "Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812), founder of the House of Rothschild. Who cares? The point here is not that Rothchilds control all the money; rather, that WHOEVER controls the money controls all else (as in Allen Greenspan, former Fed Chairman and Ayn Rand devotee¢). It's the Golden Rule for the rich, ie, "He who has the gold makes the rules."

Forgive me fellers, if I can't work up a full head of steam about them alien amphibians, 'specially since you ain't proved such a critter exists...we seem to have a full load of fully human slimy critters to try to wiggle out from under.

Now to something important...will Facebook exist in five years? Ten?

TRB

Public Prayer

No matter who you are, what you think or believe, if the majority around you agree with you, it usually makes you feel good; you feel pride, strength, power. If you know that you can stand up publicly and say (_____) and you will hear cheers in response, you feel these things and confidence, and you do not doubt or question at all whether what you have said, or what you think, is true or untrue, it hardly matters. You know you are on the right side; all those people could not be wrong, and YOU certainly could not be wrong. This takes no courage, no self reflection, no concern with whether truth is prevailing or not.

If you know that if you stood up publicly and said (_____) you would be, at best, ignored, or more likely ridiculed, shouted down, threatened, maybe even physically attacked, would you still stand and say it? If you know this is the likely result of your comments, would you not "think twice"; would you not consider whether or not what you are saying is really the truth? Or perhaps you think "the truth" is, by definition, what most people believe?

We, in the West, especially in America, with our supposed great pride in our pluralistic societies, where "everyone has a right to their own opinion" have whatever degree of stability that we have only by general silent assent that there is no truth, that all opinion is equally valid, that a "live and let live" attitude and being "respectful of other people's beliefs" is all we need to get us through. There is precious little in the way of "courage of your convictions" in these societies. It helps to maintain the status quo to not rock the boat, not to mention lessening the possibility of a rock or bottle to your head or being imprisoned.

I don't call upon you to endanger yourself, to risk ridicule or worse in the service of truth. I ask only that you honestly try to grip and feel the burden of it within your own mind; whether or not it is ever outwardly manifested. Please watch this video, it's just over 7 minutes. Try to picture yourself as an atheist student at this school. What would you do? If you are a "believer", can you spot things that are not correct or not right about the positions of the believing folk in the video?

Is it about "free speech"? Is it about the atheist student's "Constitutional rights" over riding what the majority wants? What about Matthew 6:5-6?

TRB