Wednesday, July 23, 2003

Being Pascal Sauvage Pascal "Voil� ce que je sais par une longue expérience de toutes sortes de livres et de personnes. Et sur cela je fais le même jugement de ceux qui disent que les géomètres ne leur donnent rien de nouveau par ces règles, parce qu' ils les avaient en effet, mais confondues parmi une multitude d' autres inutiles ou fausses dont ils ne pouvaient pas les discerner, que de ceux qui cherchant un diamant de grand prix Diamant parmi un grand nombre de faux, mais qu' ils n' en sauraient pas distinguer, se vanteraient, en les tenant tous ensemble, de posséder le véritable aussi bien que celui qui, sans s' arrêter � ce vil amas, porte la main sur la pierre choisie que l' on recherche, et pour laquelle on ne jetait pas tout le reste." -- Blaise Pascal, De l'Esprit Géométrique La Pensée Sauvage "....the crowning image of the kaleido­scope, lavishly analogized to the mythwork in a three-hundred-word iconic apotheosis that served to put the wraps on the sustained personification of “la pensée sauvage” in the figure of the bricoleur, in an argument developed across two chapters and some twenty pages in his [Claude Lévi-Strauss's] most famous book...." -- Robert de Marrais in Catastrophes, Kaleidoscopes, String Quartets: Deploying the Glass Bead Game Pascal Sauvage Chiasmus For more on pensée sauvage, see "Claude Lévi-Strauss, Chiasmus and the Ethnographic Journey." 4:17 pm Comments on this post: ‘J’ai toujours écrit pour dire que j’aimais. Dans mes cahiers [...] dans mes lettres, tous mes petits textes, mes romans... Au point de ne plus très bien savoir si j’écris pour mieux aimer, ou si j’aime pour mieux écrire’ Yeah.  So there. Posted 7/23/2003 at 4:16 pm by oOMisfitOo Erm . . . I have no idea what I said, but it felt good.  Posted 7/23/2003 at 4:16 pm by oOMisfitOo

Tuesday, July 22, 2003

Xmas in July John Doe his mark: Today is the feast of St. Mary Magdalene and the birthday of Willem Dafoe. 12:24 am Comments on this post: Da Foe. The Enemy?  The antichrist!  He IS the Foe!  He is! But only if you apply Ebonics. Technically, it would be, "Yes Foe".  Which is probably some kind of sauce. ~ ~ ~ I'm still chuckling over here ... in the beginning there was the Word. And who is to say that it didn't start with an "F"? Posted 7/22/2003 at 3:49 am by oOMisfitOo Um.  Just curious as to why the Last Temptation pic link takes us to chocolate kisses?  Something to do with Easter Egg candy?  Christmas stocking goodies?  Posted 7/22/2003 at 3:52 am by oOMisfitOo Hint... Who played Mary Magdalene? Posted 7/22/2003 at 4:17 am by m759 Ahhhh ... yeah ... Hershey. Her. She. Heh. Omigoodness ... the innuendo goes on and on ... Posted 7/22/2003 at 4:22 am by oOMisfitOo

Monday, July 21, 2003

Journalism 101: Meet D. B. Norton In this touching sequel to the 1941 Frank Capra classic "Meet John Doe," the late, great Edward Arnold is replaced by media magnate Rupert Murdoch, publisher of Sun News. Synopsis: Thousands of "D. B. Norton" clubs have sprung up around the world, inspired by the genius of D. B. Norton (Murdoch) in combining socialist appeals to "the people," cunningly orchestrated by Labour Party head Tony Blair, with capitalist know-how, skillfully organized by U. S. President George Bush. Threatening the success of the Norton clubs is troublemaker "John Doe," a nobody who must be dealt with before a new day can dawn for humanity, with Murdoch leading both the masses of the East and the investors of the West into the glorious future. Required reading: The Beijing Version, for the Masses The Tony Blair Version, for the Investors The Jayson Blair Version, for Aspiring Journalists The Troublemaker's "Weapons of Mass Distraction" Version, for those few who prefer truth Compare and contrast. 11:22 pm

Monday, July 21, 2003

For Hemingway's Birthday: The Hong Kong Candidate   "Blair, on his first trip to China in five years, expressed his belief that the strengthened relationship between Britain and China would, beyond any doubt, continue to develop..." -- People's Daily, Beijing, July 21, 2003 "Now he's poppin' the piano just to raise the price of a ticket to the land of the free...." -- "Hong Kong Blues,"  sung by Hoagy Carmichael in "To Have and Have Not," a film based on a Hemingway novel. "The U.S. government repatriated on Monday 15 migrants from a Cuban government vessel that was taken illegally from Cuba.... The island's communist government said the ship was hijacked and demanded the return of the occupants and the boat." -- Reuters, Miami, July 21, 2003, 1:08 PM ET As a review at Amazon.com notes, "The movie concerns a brave fishing-boat captain in World War II-era Martinique who aids the French Resistance, battles the Nazis, and gets the girl in the end. The novel concerns a broke fishing-boat captain who agrees to carry contraband between Cuba and Florida in order to feed his wife and daughters. Of the two, the novel is by far the darker, more complex work." 2:40 pm

Monday, July 21, 2003

Janet Reno's Birthday: It's Not Just the Republicans Waco, April 19, 1993 Miami, April 22, 2000 Years before the above actions, Janet Reno's legal style was already formed. See Janet Reno's Child Abuse. None of the above seems to have made any impression on students at UC Berkeley, who invited Reno in 2001 to be a commencement speaker. From an April 2001 UC Berkeley press release: "Reno was among the most requested keynote speakers for Commencement Convocation in a survey taken last summer of more than 9,000 UC Berkeley students eligible to be seniors in fall 2001, said UC Berkeley senior Humaira Merchant. Merchant cited Reno's 'liberal and progressive policies.' " Your kind of love drives a man insane. Political-birthday postscript of 4:15 AM: The New Yorker magazine, in its issue dated July 28, has caught up with a quote in my July 16 entry ("The Tailor of Washington," for Rubén Blades's birthday) on "faith-based policy."  See "Faith-Based Intelligence," by David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker. 2:46 am Comments on this post: liberal and progressive my ass.  one read through votescam ought to convince anyone otherwise (can you say in bed with Scalia?).  Ugh. Posted 7/21/2003 at 10:38 am by BabalonTheBride Proof that Penthouse is not on the Berkeley student reader list. After reading the evidence ... what the hell is up with these people?  Who is abusing who? If one were to presume that these children had NOT been molested before, they did in fact, lose their innocence during the questioning. I'd love to see them sue the real perps.  That would be true justice.  Unfortunately, we both know that won't happen. Evidently, Janet is ugly, inside and out.  Posted 7/22/2003 at 12:24 pm by oOMisfitOo

Friday, July 18, 2003

Weapons of Mass Distraction "Ironically, the Bush strategy seems to mimic the most recent James Bond flick...." -- The Straits Times, Singapore, July 19 Whereas the Blair strategy... 7:14 pm Comments on this post: Well at least I know I was smart enough not to fall for the B-S, it all comes out in the wash or the light of day doesn't it! Posted 7/18/2003 at 9:49 pm by NickyJett Uh ... only if one does the wash.  Me thinks someone forgot the rinse cycle any way ... Posted 7/19/2003 at 2:05 am by oOMisfitOo

Friday, July 18, 2003

x 5:56 pm

Friday, July 18, 2003

Hideous Strength On a Report from London: Assuming rather prematurely that the body found in Oxfordshire today is that of David Kelly, Ministry of Defence germ-warfare expert and alleged leaker of information to the press, the Financial Times has the following: "Mr Kelly's death has stunned all the players involved in this drama, resembling as it does a fictitious political thriller." -- Financial Times, July 18,    2003, 19:06 London time I feel it resembles rather a fictitious religious thriller... Namely, That Hideous Strength, by C. S. Lewis.  The use of the word "idea" in my entries' headlines yesterday was not accidental.  It is related to an occurrence of the word in Understanding: On Death and Truth, a set of journal entries from May 9-12.  The relevant passage on "ideas" is quoted there, within commentary by an Oberlin professor: "That the truth we understand must be a truth we stand under is brought out nicely in C. S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength when Mark Studdock gradually learns what an 'Idea' is. While Frost attempts to give Mark a 'training in objectivity' that will destroy in him any natural moral sense, and while Mark tries desperately to find a way out of the moral void into which he is being drawn, he discovers what it means to under-stand. 'He had never before known what an Idea meant: he had always thought till now that they were things inside one's own head. But now, when his head was continually attacked and often completely filled with the clinging corruption of the training, this Idea towered up above him-something which obviously existed quite independently of himself and had hard rock surfaces which would not give, surfaces he could cling to.' This too, I fear, is seldom communicated in the classroom, where opinion reigns supreme. But it has important implications for the way we understand argument." -- "On Bringing One's Life to a Point," by Gilbert Meilaender, First Things,  November 1994 The old philosophical conflict between realism and nominalism can, it seems, have life-and-death consequences.  I prefer Plato's realism, with its "ideas," such as the idea of seven-ness.  A reductio ad absurdum of nominalism may be found in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy under Realism: "A certain kind of nominalist rejects the existence claim which the platonic realist makes: there are no abstract objects, so sentences such as ‘7 is prime’ are false...." The claim that 7 is not prime is, regardless of its motives, dangerously stupid... A quality shared, it seems, by many in power these days. 4:09 pm

Thursday, July 17, 2003

British Intelligence: http://www.guardian.co.uk/ Iraq/Story/0,2763,999737,00.html "The British intelligence that we had, we believe is genuine. We stand by that intelligence." -- Tony Blair -- Reuters, July 17, 2003, 6:12 PM ET The ad at left, from reuters.com, links to a website titled Building an Intelligent Organisation. The ad at right, from cullinane.com, links to a website titled cullinane: create communicate connect. Note the four C's. 7:07 pm

Thursday, July 17, 2003

A Constant Idea: 759 From Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 1919: NUMBER: 759 AUTHOR: William Shakespeare (1564–1616) QUOTATION: I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad. ATTRIBUTION: As You Like It. Act iv. Sc. 1. [text] "Plato has told you a truth; but Plato is dead. Shakespeare has startled you with an image; but Shakespeare will not startle you with any more. But imagine what it would be to live with such men still living, to know that Plato might break out with an original lecture tomorrow, or that at any moment Shakespeare might shatter everything with a single song. The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare tomorrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before." — G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy  The number 759 is courtesy of Plato; the quotation 759 above is courtesy of Shakespeare.  The song that Shakespeare suggests is "A Day in the Life of a Fool." 7:59 am

Thursday, July 17, 2003

A Constant Idea "From this I reach what I might call a philosophy; at any rate it is a constant idea of mine; that behind the cotton wool [of daily life] is hidden a pattern; that we — I mean all human beings — are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art. 'Hamlet' or a Beethoven quartet is the truth about this vast mass that we call the world. But there is no Shakespeare, there is no Beethoven; certainly and emphatically there is no God; we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself." — Virginia Woolf, "A Sketch of the Past," 1939-40, in Moments of Being 6:23 am

Thursday, July 17, 2003

Rocket Billie "Don't threaten me with love, baby. Let's just go walking in the rain." -- Billie Holiday, who died at 3:20 AM on July 17, 1959. For more on death, summer, and Lady Day, see the film Rocket Gibraltar. 3:20 am

Wednesday, July 16, 2003

For Rubén Blades on his birthday: The Tailor of Washington From a review of The Tailor of Panama: "Pendel believes in the imaginary world he has created and pretty soon, it becomes a reality to him." Bush and former chief speechwriter Mike Gerson in TIME magazine, issue dated July 21, 2003.  From Nashville City Paper, July 16, 2003: "It is more and more clear, as former senior State Department official Greg Thielmann stated this week, that the Bush administration had a 'faith-based policy' on Iraq. They 'believed' Saddam was tied to bin Laden and still had weapons of mass destruction, so they manipulated or simply misstated the available evidence in order to make their case." — Bill Press "Where is Evelyn Waugh when you need him?" — Roger Kimball   5:04 am