abuddhas memes - February 2005

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February's Fitful Finery

28/2/05

Having completed my move to flatland I am now embraced by space. Walking Her Royal Dogness with a friend's Labradors-in-training (bitches are certainly appropriately named), the snowy-bald endless prairie is a stark contrast to my familiar Yukon boreal mountainness.

I won't prattle on about my moving adventure except to say that flying within Canada is great - polite yet thorough security, +on time+, cool jets, fantastic views, and Aurora was treated like the royalty she is. Kudos to Air North for letting me trade in my new but rather snug cage for a large one, and giving me a break on the overweight charges.

Moving along to the pragmatic realm of blogdom, I am one deeply embarrassed Canuck to learn that the Royal Bank (RBC) is complicit with the most nastily nefarious corporations. Taking on Dow, Coke and the Royal Bank

"If the Royal Bank continues to want to be associated with these two companies and the disasters they've been involved in then go right ahead and keep Reinhard on the board," he says. "But it means, quite simply, that the Royal Bank is going to be continuously implicated in the activities of these two corporations."

Also from Rabble.ca is a musing by Rick Salutin that for obvious reason caught my eye. My strange, insecure dream

"Here's a dream I had this week. I am at the airport going to a conference on security in Texas. I am pulled out of line by security. It seems random. I am taken to a room where there's more security. It turns out they know who I am and are well-organized. Then they leave. I am alone in the room and, when I go out, the airport is empty. So there is no way to get to the conference on security. There's security, but there's no security. They set up a huge apparatus, then leave you alone.

Let me not-so-freely associate:..."

Somewhat appropos to the recent self-destruction of Hunter S. Thompson is FMH's pointer to a Slate review of Sloshed in America; or Sideways, a road movie about wine addiction.

"As for the alcohol question, it's left hanging. Sideways doesn't spell out the message that Miles and Jack have to get a handle on themselves and stop disappearing sideways into their respective addictions. But that message hangs in the air—the faintest soupçon of rot in an otherwise wondrous bouquet."

15/2/05

Obfuscation as manna. Whadd'ya think, we're all freakin' stupid?

Plausible probability is the positive proton to the fluidly dispersed electrons of plausible deniability.

Our only hope Left is to project sense and calmitude, absorb inanity and propaganda as such, and naturally flow with the river that erodes ever deeper into the bedrock of political intransigence.

The deeper that sensibility can dig into the essence of our human souls (hey, all is politics) the closer we can come to our ideal of being a community of communities.

Oh yeah, Mediated obfuscation is our cultural manna. We are lost yet I am here.

10/2/05

Excuse my long absences - I am in geographical transition and should be back to full blogbore (erk) in early March.

Prompted by the Guardian article Religious right fights science for the heart of America, bird on the moon asks a couple of questions that are cutural-logically basic.

Has this country become so small that there is no longer room for independent thought? To which I answer with a large yes and small no. Yes, mega-media informs the knowledge base of a majority of Americans and so precludes alternate attention-prods. No, many academics and otherwise widely attentive people are quite capable of independant thought, but are increasingly incapable of stating those insights without censure.

Must we stunt the analytical minds of children for the zealotry of the parents? This second question has one possible answer upon reflection, and that is an unequivocal yes. The adoption of isms and adherance to ists stunts development of free cognitive association, an essential and distinguishing attribute of creativity. This damns our children to double-bind confusion in all but the most concrete of understandings and efforts and, once set, only the most jackhammer-ish (zen) re-perception can break the mold. Even children of the freest minds will be subject to the dominant Mediated paradigms at some level and so harbor an inner dis-unity that will manifest in some way.

Now, analytically, Is our future hopeless?

"In the present example, the posterior probability of Doom Soon will be very close to one. You can with near certainty rule out Doom Late."

Transhumanism:
The World's Most Dangerous Idea?

"(Fukuyama's) argument thus depends on three assumptions: (1) there is a unique "human essence"; (2) only those individuals who have this mysterious essence can have intrinsic value and deserve equal rights; and (3) the enhancements that transhumanists advocate would eliminate this essence."

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