October 4, 2006 by faizoro.

Oct. 2.  I found out that in an Amish community somewhere in Pen. couple hours previous- there was another school shooting.
At that time I’m at Blimpies catching a salad and this is on TV.  Immediately I am thinking how poignant it is that even the Amish with the pains they are taking- cannot escape from the sewage issuing through the long gutters of this country.

The news has some expert discussing the profile of the dude who committed the crime.  As often is the case with news- I am catching it in the middle- not knowing what I might have missed.

Hearing this expert - you’d think the news was a week old and they knew everything about the perp that could be learned.  He makes a bunch of inditements about the Amish society while deftly throwing in some Alkaida comparisons.  He says that what happens is people in communities like that cry out for some way to gain control of their own life.  Alkeida recruits from within situations just like that where young men are lacking a sense of identity and feeling hopeless about life.  Then he says. “and then ironically enough- a community like that lacks the kind of security a modern public school would have.”

The reporter asks what kind of gun might have been used.  He goes in to an expert explanation of how the Amish might use a shotgun or a long range riffle for hunting and that one of these was likely the weapon.

Then I’m thinking, “Jeez - how much do they know about this guy” when the reporter asks “do you think there is any chance the assailant was not Amish?”.

Jeez - they know nothing about the dude- naturally because it only happened a couple hours prior as they stated.  Now I’m thinking, what kind of an expert is this fascist guy who has gone and condemned an entire culture on anecdotes, his imagination, and on an incident which to any idiot seems more the creature of his our society than of the pacifistic and community centric Amish.

I glance at the corner of the screen.  Low- and behold- it’s Fox and though I don’t have basically never had cable and watch very little TV ever what I was seeing tended to confirm what I hear about Fox’s journalistic standards.  Unbelievable.

An hour later I read (at the fox website) not surprisingly- that the dude who did it was a 32 year-old truck driver.  I was unable to find anything indicating the guy had ever been a member of the Amish community or a student at that school- I’m thinking maybe he wasn’t.

- turns out the guy indeed was NOT Amish.  Figures.  Heres some conjecture to add to what the expert offered.  Perhaps this expert hates the Amish because 1. Amish are un-likely to vote for Bush, and 2. they generally do not consume fossil fuels rendering the Amish forthwith un-American x 2.

Among the insights I came away with all-told, was a renewed sense of gratefulness that I don’t have cable, and a heightened sense of appreciation for what the Amish have done.  The Amish of those communities would be spared by their abstinence - the like of the news as rendered by the likes of Fox.  Altogether, it seems that as odd as my predilections seem to others, I am more and more, satisfied consuming less and less each day of what society has to offer in an effort to build a different community from the uncarved block of my original household.  Now I am not recommending one way or another concerning the Amish way of life.  I am neither Amish nor Christian, but I smile on what they are doing, and feel aligned with and inspired by the sober and abstinent focus on community life.

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September 11, 2006 by faizoro.

I’ll include a dream I had last night- it being September 11th, and the dream leading me down quite a train of though- I don’t mind being quite grim today.

I dreamed las night that I was explaining an insight over dinner at a restaurant where my mom was present along with some other relatives and or friends.

My mom kept interrupting before I could make my point. I ended up sort of battling her for the right to complete my thought explaining that if I could just quickly get the complete thought out we could discuss it. She quickly grew offended but ultimately after much effort I was able to explain it.

The insight was this: (I have had no such “insight” before outside of the dream by the way)

America has not recovered from it’s recession some six years ago (beginning 2000) despite the suggestion of some of our indices.

Specifically minorities especially the blacks have not recovered from it’s sociological effects. The poor and minority demographics have suffered a tremendous blow which will have untold and deep implications upon community and family life.

At that point we did discuss this a little further. My mother agreed with the assessment and I mentioned that five years ago when I suggested America would not recover from the recession I had been exactly half right. Though there has generally been a full GDP and stock market recovery- the fallout has devastated the poor, spread and embittered urban blight, incarceration rates, “career unemployment” (oxymoron- I realise), and drug abuse (perhaps crystal-meth addition escalation should be sited) and many consequential social ailments such as child neglect, community degeneration and dissenfranchisement.

That’s the end of the dream. Truth be told- I don’t know if I’d had the original conversation sited in the dream projecting the economy’s failure to recover. Also I am not sure how well such an insight matches up with actual data. It does however highlight and value the relationship between an economy (measured qualitatively) with it’s subject communities and domestic as well as foreign societies. For instance, aside from the size, activity and worth or power of an economy, what is it’s shape and color; and how does this ’shape’ effect it’s subjects?

By contemporary measurements the slave economies of the pre-civil war Southern States and of some ancient successful Egyptian periods were probably steller. I last year heard it argued that “Hitler did a lot of good for the German economy. He sure did something about the immigrants too!”- I guess that depends on your definition of “good” and how far you think means (extermination, sterilization, relocation, enslavement and exile) may justify an ends (solving immigration problems).

By humanistic standards, such economic engines would fall abysmally short and as far as I am aware, we really don’t have sufficient national or even academic concern with respect to measuring the influence of our economy in far-reaching and humanistic terms. Certainly, we aught to if we on the one hand we believe that virtue is not automatic to capitalism, or if on the other we are able to understand economic linkages between dismal and plummeting national and global humanitarian and environmental conditions on the whole.

It seems present humanitarian norms are determined increasingly by the corporation, and by the multinational-”conglomerate” whose level of organization and political and legal influence reach increasingly into realms approaching national and international immunity.

Such norms seem to define three increasingly distinct classes:

1. The very wealthy and powerful ruling class which obviously includes the wealthy and powerful, but which should include the stock market its’ self and stockholders categorically as “wealthy and powerful ruling” though individual stockholders might include anyone who may not be wealthy or powerful at all individually.

2. The Middle class (think blue and white collar America)

3. The Exploited class - Slums; slavish consumerism as a category to the extent that debt interest payment begins to account for the expenditure of a persons pay check; the second and third world economies providing the brunt of our slave labor, and receiving the primary heritage of our externalized environmental degradation and industrial pollution.

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August 8, 2006 by faizoro.

In the dream, I said to my friend Ryan that I feel more and more that I just don’t need anything these days. He responded by asking me if it wasn’t excessively frugal not to have at least a good laptop being that I was a geek by profession. (note I own a desktop and a laptop- both quite long in the tooth- especially the laptop)

I explained truthfully that I have no time these days to use a computer at home or anywhere except at work, and that also- modern computers really do not any- meet my criterion for a good laptop.

The criterion?

1.  Ease of use in Wi-Fi (Linux wifi plugnplay as well as config is still too complicated)

The standard here should basically be that a any person should be able to use the wi-fi without any difficulty - the connection and the access should be secure and obvious. Besides this, the connection should really never drop. Nuf Said.

2.  All the proprietary stuff needs to just die a quick death. DVD, MP3, MP4, - any file format or protocal you name be it media or document needs to have an open source, non-drm protected alternative which is widely enouph used, and high enouph quality to compete. (I understand that many will dissaggree with this idea- but this is a dream I had and I was just being my candid self- utterly unwilling to compromise on matters of frustration for the average computer user. That said- in the dream, punative measures to control things like piracy should 1. require a definition of piracy which in no-way extends in to territories of users copying, converting and modifying something they have perchased only for their own enjoyment; 2. should trust the user enouph to honor such a definition enouph not to wish to prevent them from doing stuff to something they purchase if it doesn’t involve distributing, lying about attribution, or profetting; and finally 3. in ballance, may punnish more severely and evenly the breaking of such a reasonable definition and the laws that would flow from it).

3.  standardization of peripherial and device interfaces such that an IPod for example, or a sony Digital Video recorder, or a cell phone for that matter should plug into any computer regardless of the OS, via USB or else Firewife (and no other proprietary method such as those weird Sony cables) without recourse to so much as a driver CD and be able to deal with the device without any questions or trouble. This is actually extremely possible technically speaking- but would require a great deal of industry cooperation to work on standardization of directory structures, driver and interface access, and other issues. (note Linux has largely been able to acheive this via reverse engineering their own simpler and more efficient drivers which work more universally and cooperatively despite a lack of industry collaboration).

Yes - I know- it is rediculously detailed for a dream. Wierd huh?

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August 7, 2006 by faizoro.

Not that anybody reads my blog.

I chanced upon a place in Genesis where it talks about Giants in the earth. It occurs to me that there is a strong coincidence in the respective descriptions rendered by science and by the bible here, of one sort of ‘pre-historic man’. When I say prehistoric- I mean, well the Bible here speaks about a time before document- that is, Genesis we suppose is a revealed account or an oral account- not for instance the remains of notes actually written by the hands of witnesses beginning with Adam for goodness’ sake.

Also- here I am not saying that the Bible is true or that it isn’t. Establish that opinion for yourself without my aid. I have a question though. For the sake of argument- couldn’t Genesis’ “giants” have been Neanderthal- the largest of the prehistoric men?

Concerning Neanderthal, the sum of my reading in various encyclopedias (wikipedia, Encarta and Britannica) yields the following related items:

Neanderthal was probably smarter than the other humans. Neanderthal was fewer in number. Though they were under six foot tall and shortish by today’s standards- at the time, though would have been taller and considerably more massive then the other humans. He likely interacted with Cro-magnon and possibly others. He likely was partially bred out of existence and partially may just not have been able to compete with the other humans or else adapt to the warming climate.

Here’s what we find in Genesis:

Gen:6[4] “There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”

A stretch? Perhaps. Just curious what others thought about this.

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July 21, 2006 by faizoro.

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July 21, 2006 by faizoro.

response to artical on 15% tarrif proposal to bag manufacturing in China

The question needs to be asked: will the proposed 15% tariff reduce work opportunities for the population (in other words, will this margin of difference mean the loss of significant market-share in the intnl. plastic bag industry) or are we really talking about the business interests of companies who simply want to pay as little as possible and will use any sophistry necessary to further that end.

By definition any politician beholden to a business interest (read: most all politicians) and any business person beholden to stock-holders (read: most all business-persons) are likely to argue against tariffs in such a case.

The other question to be asked: if by adding the tariffs, China really looses it’s competitive edge in this area of the market- is there some reason China should be given such an edge as a boon and to the detriment of the environment? I can’t think of none- but then I really don’t have all the facts- I just ask the questions.

I mean- there are people that need jobs everywhere in the world and many of them would as soon produce plastic bags. I don’t suppose China has the monopoly on people willing to manufacture bags in order to avoid starvation.

I am troubled by the prospect of corporate interests masquerading as proletarian interests. I am concerned that this may be what we are dealing with in this case…

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July 19, 2006 by faizoro.

Here is an excerpt from an email a friend of mine sent to me:

[What is the deal with all these people that are saying global warming isn’t real? Is it all just the usual partisan b***_***t? Is all this crud just people that don’t like Al Gore and so they are insanely rejecting the whole idea of global warming???? How stupid is that?
I know the science is a little bit sketchy but as it turns out that is only because of the limitations of science itself, not because it’s not us causing it. That’s another one I keep hearing… that it’s all a purely natural phenomenon. Of course none of that comes from climatologists or anything as far as I know. What do you think? Did you see the Al Gore flick? Did you read the book?]

Here is my (spell-checked and somewhat polished) response:

Haven’t seen it. Have heard of it of course.
Usual partisan BS? Yes, definitely- but never take my word for anything- not on it’s own.

Here’s what I have learned about it.
Global warming science is theoretical- yes. Notice however that so is the law of gravity called the “theory” of gravity. That gravity exists would be a fact- so would much of what we know about it’s behavior be factual- not theoretical. The reason it is dubbed ‘theory’ is because there are things about it we do not fully understand yet including some aspects of behavior and cause. It’s status as a theory owes much to the humility of the scientific discipline and little to any dubious quality of the underpinning science. In many respects global warming theory is the similar. The process of global warming and much else about it is actually well established. Many of the details- less so.
Note also that one of the things nay-sayers seem to frequently miss understand is the scientific distinction between theory and hypothesis. This is perhaps largely due to an inability to deal with truth or inquiry in non-absolute terms. The idea that a person might know something with quite a reliable degree of certainty and yet there be details of that knowledge which he/she might NOT be certain about; is abhorrent to them- or (to be perfectly candid) even worse- just too subtle for them to comprehend. Never the less- if a theory is deemed dubious- really it gets demoted to “hypothesis”. This is important to understand.
You might notice that some notable minds have some very crude and laughable points of view on science, as well as some of it’s subtopics such as ‘evolution/creation’. All I can say is: I too am amazed at the ability for some considerable numbers of people to attain high degrees of learnedness, and yet that knowledge be of such a myopic scope that they are able to be incredibly foolish and careless in one area of thinking, and highly precise in another. It boggles the mind.

There are many details to consider, whether we discuss ‘environmentalism’ (so dubbed) from the most basic and obvious axioms involved, right down to the minute, and more theoretical details. But to begin with- it is no great leap of faith to conclude that an economy such as the world has established, whose primary permanent, and predominant business and end product lies in the exploitation and compromise of the very house it lives in (by ‘house’ I mean ‘the planet’) - can only sustain it’s self until either it’s business is concluded and a critical mass of the house is destroyed; or else other accommodations can be made (Mars anyone?). So the questions such as “should we drill in the Anwar” should really naturally give rise to a much more fundamental question: “how much time do we have before nature balances the destruction we have created by beginning to destroy us?” whatever form that will take. For it is certain that sooner or later, nature is capable of balancing every force and every system within it’s influence. This is no theory. Are we a creature of nature like any other or are we somehow exempt from it’s influence?
The answer to that larger question is (and it is un-nessesary to believe in Global worming to conclude this)- the destruction has already begun. Thankfully- it won’t be something that occurs all at once. We destroy ourselves slowly enough that on the one hand, we largely fail to even notice it; but on the other hand, we have at least some time to respond.

More and more agrarian societies face the “starve or industrialize” crisis every year- and the momentum of that trend just builds as more and more airable land is depleted. This is one obvious problem. Another is one we learned to live with without fully grasping how sad it is: the extinction of natural treasures we used to take for granted, including anything from pristine natural landscapes, to entire species we have managed to annihilate from the face of the earth- right down to the once maindain assumption of safe, clean drinking water or even ponds and lakes clean enouph to swim in. How could we give so much up without feeling sad about it? Sure- some do feel sad or worried- but how do we manage not to be more concerned than we by en-large are about these losses? It’s like leaving debt to your children instead of an inheritance- it’s a shame and a burden- further- it’s not fair.

By nature yielding and submitting to us more and more, we should never be so naive as to think that in the long run we have won. It is one thing to beat the breast that feeds you and try to attain ascendency and control over it- it is another to poison the mother.

Now- we do know (or find me a scientist involved in anything other then a politically funded think tank who believes otherwise) that global warming is taking place, and that human activity is predominantly responsible. That claim leaves a lot un-answered. To what degree is human activity responsible? How long will a terrible process take to conclude? Would it warm without our help? Could we stop it? Could we reverse the effects? To what degree is the damage already inevitable (a principle we may call “slackening”?- in which, we may as yet not seen the consequences of a destruction we have already sewn). There are more questions.

Also while I no-longer consider myself a democrat (nor certainly- a republican)- I must point out that republicans with respect to this and other similar issues are fond of stray-haring arguments. Here is one good example which I heard on republican radio the other day:
It was pointed out that scientists are detecting annual temperature escalations of only a fraction of a degree on average per year. Upon this premise was spuriously argued the notion that therefor it doesn’t matter that we are polluting- or that it doesn’t matter “very much”.

Of course, what is missed is that this fraction of a degree- spread over the climate of the entire planet [whose surface area you will agree- is large] represents a veritable inferno were you to concentrate it at all into a smaller area. In other words, another important measurement is the total moles of heat per year the earth retains compared with prior years. That increase is considerable- and importantly figures in glacial recession, and oceanic elevation metrics. We see real changes to the actual topography bio-diversity of the planet which are mapped directly to this warming. In addition- while the earth’s climate has changed throughout millions of years- for the climate change to artificially increase creates an evolutionary pull in which animal life is destroyed faster than it can evolve.

Another argument I have heard made is that since there are many areas which have actually gotten colder, “global warming theory is ultimately untenable”- again pure non-sense. This kind of argument is so infantile (and yet so common) it would be like a Child telling a physicist that it is impossible for him to know that hydrogen is the thing that is exploding inside the sun since the child himself can’t actually see inside the sun. There is no way for a scientist to answer on the infantile terms they which are often demanded. All we can say is that- apparently science “seems to work” as demonstrated every time you turn on the mysterious light-switch, or drive that magic car to work. Whether you comprehend the engine or not- apparently someone comprehended enough about the related sciences to be able to design that engine- and in fact, the engine does what it is designed to do.

This is as close to a “proof” of the tenability of theoretical science as we can come to, short of a tour of the inside of the sun, or time-traveling into the future to find out whether global warming is real or imagined. Based on the past achievements of science, we can afford to put some stock in it’s conclusions whether or not non-scientists as individuals have the knowledge necessary to cross-examine the work. That’s as much as can be said about that.

That said- we don’t blindly trust science- we trust science with our eyes wide open. This is why we have a scientific method. This is why we have scientific journals and a culture of international peer review. If a theory is surviving this much rigor we should not contemptuously disregard it for political or religious reasons- it isn’t rational to do that. We have to let the theory survive or fail on it’s own merits- and so far it isn’t the scientists who are trying to kill the theory- it’s the politicians and perhaps the religionists. Firstly- such people are not qualified to kill a scientific theory- and second of all- I am not being cynical I don’t think if I can’t help but question their motivations. Of course I have read up on the issue. That’s just it- for anyone who is concerned about this- there is no shortage of information which will help illuminate where things seem to stand and why- in researching it though- try to stay away from the political blogs. That’s only reasonable. Likewise- read this one with a grain of salt. Find out what reputable scientists believe.

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July 18, 2006 by faizoro.

to see dad.

First leg- about 8 hours to Texarkana.
The main thing to remember there is just that I take 40 w all the way beyond Memphis to Littlerock and at that point take 30 w until I reach Texarkana. Stay in Hotel one night.

Second leg- about 8 hours to Round Mtn. TX
I take 30 west for almost 200 miles- then it gets crazy.

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