=jr050527 JOURNAL STARTING 27 MAY '05 ------------------------------------------------------------------ It's Springtime, Honest George buys flowers for the Restorante: 8 red geraniums in 4 window-boxes -- 2 for each window. --------------------------------------------------------------- Two hundred young athletes are here for a great competition. Two hours after daybreak they are sll still in bed. (29 May '05 -- malkut sh'b' HOD) --------------------------------------------------------------- Four hundred young people were here today to run a race. Now it's evening and none have stayed to see the mountains. (29 May '05) ----------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 31 May '05 (Fisher) The way Cardinal Ratzinger is starting out -- and if he's a Pope I'm Professor -- he'll be lucky if the Italians don't tell the Vatican to pack it up, hire a Greek shipping line, and go back to Cyprus. What business has some old prune of a voluntary celibate in telling women how they cannot procreate. (And if it turns out that Pope John Paul had a child, more honor to him.) As for the Vatican move to "define" life as beginning at conception -- Well, a prescriptive definition is logically possible only of a newly-coined term -- as in mathematics -- or of a term used in a newly created context -- as a contract or law will define, for purposes limited to that legal document, the key terms that it used. Otherwise definitions must be descriptive, and their applicability is limited by the comprehensiveness and precision of that description. Now of course a fertilized ovum is 'alive', in the sense that ic can then reproduce itself. (But so can a cancer cell, and we would not term that 'alive'). But a fertilized egg is not alive in the same sense that a self-created Pope may be, nor even in the sense that a 7-month fetus is. Catholicism has contributed to western civilization a vast complex of nonsensical theology. One can build a great deal on a few simplistic assumptions, like a child with a bit box of building blocks of various primary colours. In this case, if one starts with the dualistic notion that life consists in the union of disjoint body and soul (though that would seem to leave no logical place for 'life after death'), then one can and must logically say that life begins at conception. But it ain't clear what if anything that says about the realworld. Plato seems to have taken this notion, and HIK similarly -- that at some stage or stages the soul somehow descends from a fully conscious existence in heaven, into the fetus. Plato clearly says, albeit in a fable, that the soul loses its self-awareness at birth, and in some sense years throughout its lifetime to recover that awareness. HIK and PVK seem to say something similar. PVK suggests, in a tape I have recently (ie, May '05) input as audio, that in utero the fetus gradually takes on life. This notion is of course compatible with the physiologic description. One really does want a great psychic -- like PVK, and maybe somewhere he said it, and maybe sometime we will recover what he said -- to tell us -- how self-aware is the fetus. Because if it is as self-aware as you and me -- well, me anyhow -- then an abortion would indeed be murder. But if it no more self-aware than a cow, then abortion would be no greater crime than making steaks. Not a very nice thing to do, at leasst from the standpoint of a refined sensibility, but not quite the crime of shooting -- well, some folks might just as well be shot for all the good they're doing and are likely to do to themselves or others -- indeed some folks, and/or the world, would be better off if they were shot now (that's the rationale for euthenasia, including suicide, and, at least in a national with limited penal facilities, eg biblical Israel, for capital punishment) -- but the untimely death of persons with much to give and/or get from life is a tragedy. Then too there is the question of what happens to the soul after a miscarriage or abortion. Was it never there, but just waiting up in heaven for birth, like a prima donna for her cue. Or had it come down at conception, with all its conceptual luggage, prepared for a rather boring 9 month bus ride to the delivery room. Or is there no such thing as a soul, but merely aspects of aliveness, that are attributes of living beings and dissipate with the end of life. Someone one said the Chungyam Trumpa, Rimpoche, once said of abortion: Many souls will be re_born in hell. Well, if that is the case, then abortion surely is a crime. Someone at the Abode said that Taj Inayat Khan, then married (in all but the County Clerk's Ledger) to PVK, once said of miscarriage, that it occurs when the Heavenly Hierachy asks the soul in fetus to return to Heaen for some sort of Heaenly Emergency Job. In that case, miscarriage would be cause for sorrow, but not for grief, for the living soul lives on, unharmed, albeit in heaven not on earth -- and with challenges no less exhilerating. This is a teaching that may be of much comfort to those who have suffered a miscarriage. ------------------------------------------------------------------ On a clear sunny morning after a windy night the waiter comes out on the Terasse and smooths back the tableclothesł resentfully. (Campra, 1 June '05) ------------------------------------------------------------------ I have stolen from Honest George's a set of leaded liquor glasses for a pourboire. It is only fair that at Honest George's Doggie Diner the tip be given by the waiter to the client. ----------------------------------------------------------------- The Swiss build roads on the mountains. The motorcycles ride on the roads very fast. The motorcycles say 'You used to be big, Mountain, but now I can get over you, very fast.' -------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 1 Jun '05 (AP) It is briefly reported that "The [ U.S.] Supreme Court said Tuesday that it would consider reinstating a [ Kansas ] death penalty law [ found unconstitutional by the Kansas Supreme Court ] that requires juries to sentence a defendant to die, rather than serve life in prison, when the evidence for and against imposing death is about equal" First of all, the phrase 'about equal' has in this context three nested levels of ambiguity. In a numeric context, 'about equal' is as meaningless as 'a little bit pregnant' -- either it is or it isn't equal. In other contexts it may have meaning. Nor is it clear how an equivalence, or near_equivalence can be drawn between two conflicting blocs of evidence. An attempt to imagine illustrative examples quickly runs into absurdity: " 6 witnesses claim Jones pulled the trigger in Berlin, but 6 others claim he was at the time at Lilly's Bordello in Saskatchewan." Nor is it clear what evidence "for an against imposing death" can be. 'Evidence' is ordinarily predicated of questions of fact, not questions of value. In medieval France, a man -- it may even have been the poet Villon -- was once sentenced to death on the grouunds that he was "not worthy of life". Nor is it clear how, except in an absolutely totalitarian state, a jury can be directed to convict. A jury may be directed to acquit, that is based on the right of a judge to determine that, regardless of whether or not the accused did the deed, the evidence is insuffcient for a legal conviction. It is a basic principle of human rights, not to mention civil liberty, that, except within an army, no man can be compelled to do harm to another. In Anglo-American jurisprudence, in contrast to the French Code Napolionique, an accused is innocent untl proven guilty, that is, the burden of proof rests upon the prosecution. That entails that, even the evidence is "about equal" -- which entails that the evidence is indecisive -- the accused must be given the benefit of the doubt. The requirement that guilt be proven "beyond a resonable doubt" expresses the principle of western law that the defendant is given the benefit of the doubt, since it is the defendant who risks the greatest degree of suffering. That Kansas law takes the opposite position. --------------------------------------------------------------- COMMON CLICHE: I am driving around in a borrowed car. I don't know whose it is what should be fixed nor when they'll want it back. (Campra, 2 June '05 -- netzach sh'b' YESOD ) ------------------------------------------------------------------ PVK often says, We are tested in our love. But I think better, We are tested in our compassion. One can have compassion for some whom cheerfully one would watch fall off a cliff. ------------------------------------------------------- Today I have some money. This morning I had none. What I can understand is where my poverty has gone. -------------------------------------------------- auto0506 She was wearing a garter belt, and stockings. I was outstanding to at last have met one in person, and quite overwhlemed at fining it framed. ------------------------------------------------------------- RE: IHT 4 Jun '05 Turkey continues to criminalize unauthorized teaching of the Koran. That is of course a violation of the human right to freedom of religion. In Turkey, such violations, as in France, ae made in the name of 'secularism', which is merely a recent , though paradoxical, form of literalist religius bigotry. ------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 4 Jun '05 Yossi Beilin is quite right: the only way to save the 'piece process' -- an incemental exchange for Israeli territory for continually repearted promisies of peace -- is for Israel to sign a treaty quick with Munhammed Abbas, before he removed as Palestinian Figurehead by the terrorist warlords who are the real power in that politically fashionable Authority of Anarchy. Incidentally, Hamas represemts Islamic literalism, and is theocreatic not democratic, but it cannot be termed 'racist' -- the Jewish people are racially homogeneous, nor is any race exclusively Jewish. Nor is Hamas anti_Jewish, except as a by_product of its goal to supplant the government of Israel. ----------------------------------------------------------------- The European Union has been rejected in France and Holland primarily because it is essentially globalist. Globalism benefits primarily very rich capitalists, and secondarily middle-class consumers, by replacing national working classes with foreign unemployed, at below_minimum_wage and sub_standard working conditions. Secondarily, the European Union, as Prince Charles noted, is characterized by am at_best benevolent totalitarian bureaucracy. -------------------------------------------------------------- As I have said, one learns from sailing to remain calm, quiet, polite, and efficient in a crisis. And to keep heading for a mark, despite difficult visibility. One also learns, if one lives for any time in a boat cabin, to accomodate one's lifestyle to minaturized space. The key to that is to do everything slowly, with continual awareness. Living in miniaturized space is also something I learned on Rodos, in whatever sort of semi_legal rakeoff illegal immigrant's holding prison I was detained, just behind Mandraki, adjacent to the real police station. I think some sort of mock_trials went on there, where detainees were given summary sentences of about 3 months, but I'm by no means sure. It was also my impression that quite a bit of very anti_Jewish activity went on there, but I'm by no means sure. I was rather delusional at the time, in large part I suppose from sleep deprivation. Although, in large part from my experience with psychedelics, and a strong and non_untrained mind, I do have some ability to steer through some errors of thought. I should add that most of those with whom I was detained were Arab and/or Islamic, and that they dealt with me with respect, courtesy, and kindness. At one point they protectected me from a retarded psychotic anti_Semite named or called George, who I think was released into the cell where I was detained, and told that there was a Jew or Israeli there, with the intent that he would beat me to death. Which he could have done with about one blow. But the others told his companion -- who was quite mentally alert -- that I was from Australia, and so I wass not touched. I think one of the -- paramilitary, maybe, or maybe just an unoffical facist -- staff was trying to sic him onto me. That occurred the first night I was in detention, as I recall. The incident was not repeated, although on one occasion one of the guards or immigrant police taking me to the airport struck me on the head repeatedly. My beahvior at the time was not of the best, on the other hand, I was handcuffed at the time -- with my hands behind my back, which does seem rather excessive. At no time did anyone amongst those detaining me attempt to talk to me to find out why someone who can not have appeared to be an ordinary derelict had been sleeping on the beach for several years. OK, time to get on with the day, rather than "wallow in the mire" (Jimi Hendrix, "Try to set the night on fire.") ---------------------------------------------------------------- ================================================================= ================================================================== =shtuyot1 Notice of Delegated Power of Paralegal Attorney and Notice of No Trespassing; Disregard only at your own risk -------------------------------------------------------- 1. Leave Moshav Mevo Modi'in, "The Land that Time Forgot" via the Front Gate 2. Stand beside the Highway, Tramping. Note Time (A) 3. Between the time that 10,000 autos have passed and 15 minutes from Time (A), take the first available public transport to Sharon's Folly (aka Metropolis Modi'in) 4. "Walk down to the station" and take the first train to Jerusalem. 5. Walk back to Mishkanot. 6. Remove a tire from any nearby tractor_trailer. 7. Roll the tire to the Mishkanot Windmill and sit on it. 8. At midnight, burn the tire. 9. Under cover of that smokescreen, remove from its glass enclosure the Carriage of Sir Moses Montefiore. 10. Telephone anyone at Kfar Adumim in Isaeli_occupied__Israel, and have them quickly meet you at the Windmill with two fine horses. 11. Hitch the horses and drive the carriage to Moshav Mevo Modi'in, via Rmala. 12. In Ramla, stop at the first open Hardware store and buy several gallons of red paint (quick-drying). Paint the carriage red and proceed to the front gate of Mevo Modi'in. 13. Drive quiely to the home of Eliahu Gal-Or and remove the Dude Shemesh from his roof, being not to wake anyone, including the shomerim. Fill the Dude Shemsh with water, borrow a bell from the nearest Beduin cow, and then drive quickly across the grounds of Doberdane Estates, clanging the bell. The *101 Dalmation will run out and proceed to follow the Carriage, thinking it is her FireTruck. Proceed to the Security Road, rolling off the Dude Shemesh as close to House *101 as possible, so that Gal-Or can install it before everyone is evacuated to Gaza as a precondition of obtaining alternative lodging. Exit the Moshav through any missing section of the Security Fence, return to Jerusalem before dawn, and replace the Carriage. The Dalmation will follow you, and be taken by tourists as part of the Diorama. No one will notice the new paint job. 14. You may then return to Mevo Modi'in and break into #101 in relative safety. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Walking to the Refugio to steƒl two rolls of toilet paper I see the water has an overnight guest with a new whilte 4-door Mercedes. Campra, 6 Jun '05 --------------------------------------------------------------- PVK often speaks of the relativity of opinon -- Plato's doxa, in tonrast to nous (knowlege). The relativity of opinon entails the admonition to not speak loshon hora -- for that is to replicate upon another an injurious and possibly false opinion. The only exception is to forestall risk of injury. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 8 Jun '05 (Wright) The Swiss government is quite right, and the EU Commissioner for external affairs wrong: Switzerland joining an EU passport-free zone (approved by referendum) should not be contingent on Switzerland opening its labor market to the workers from the Eastern European EU nations (referndum pending). The former is an administrative decision, the latter is an economic decision with likely major consequences. The former, as an administrative decision, was not properly subject to referendum, the latter, as an economic decision, is. A EU attempt to link the two does indeed constitute interference in the denocratic process of a neighbor state. ------------------------------------------------------------------ In principle, Christianity refuses to intervene against evil. So that is [ in instance of the Talmudic maxim ] "those who are kind to the cruel will in the end have been cruel to the kind." It is also an instance of an attempt to save one's soul, or rather, one's supposedly finer feelings, at the cost of others lives. A number of pttit bourgeois German Christians had quite a run for their money on this issue a half-century ago, until 'it all went to hell', the proper place for such a society, taking them with it. -------------------------------------------------------------- Rintaya said "'"'Dvora ben Shaul once said, "My father used to say 'I don't know why he's made a me -- I never lent him money.'"'" ------------------------------------------------------------- At 65 I start to see that its a fact that people die --------------------------------------------------------------- Homophobia is reasonabl; it is contagious, pychologically if not physically. Homos degrade friendship between men. Not by what they do -- indeed, attraction may enhance friendship -- but by their mere existence, which constitutes a potentiality. If a chap puts his arm about me as a gesture of encouragement, how do I dare not recoil, it might be the first step in an attempted seduction. Of course I do that all the time in my friendships with women, or used to anyhow. So homos should be constrained to stay in their closets. But then should not Negros, women, and Jews be made to stay away from people whose delicate feelings may be offended by shattering the illusion that they do not exist. I elsewhere argue that one can demand to be shielded only from the physical impositions of othes , primarily active intentional impositions, and not from passive unintended imposition. And so haredeim cannot demand that women seat in the back of the bus -- nor could southern crackers demand that of Negros, yet the USA tolerated such segregatioon for a hundred years after the abolition of the enslavement of Africans. -------------------------------------------------------------- Americans level obstacles; Sufis transcend them. (Of course I mean real Americans, from the US of A , not those blubber_loving taco_licking Canuks and Spics. ) ------------------------------------------------------------- The German and Dutch rejection of the EU is a repudiation of globalism, which is merely the latest mask of capitalism. Globalism rests on using air transport to outsource labour to the cheapest foreign wage pool, regardless of the cost in domestic unemployment. It also restss on increasing investment capital but reducing public welfare expense. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "I've always wanted a scar," I said; she sighed -- my first affair -- long hair, torn clothes, what you will silently to cry I'm not well; my world is ill well, toothlless old age or so I seem will do it too: I'll buy a comb and two new pants but not today; when next the moon. (Lugano, hod sh'b YESOD ) ------------------------------------------------------------- Eulogy for a living: My next-door neighbor's latest Shabat supper guest: He lived in Zfat s udying in yeshiva and eating out of garbage cans then came to Modi'in herding sheep dressed in an Ottoman skirt. They say he beat his boy and then got laid in his grave by one of the cancers of poverty wishing hs life undone. Last time I saw junior human he wanted to make ladies' pretties Perhaps that seemed too swish for such a black-hat fish Mommy Medea got him locked away in a place where they burnt out his brains and then, poor fish, sent him back to swim in the pond slowly his life away. Notes: Shmuel Koussitsky once said, Shlomo, I think this generation is going to turn out so much better than anyone imagines Once in Venice I met someone who looked like him, and had studied with him, and remembered him with warmth and respect. --------------------------------------------------------------- Forecast (after a note in an Email from Judy AvrahamHai) The Gaza pullout will sart a few weeks late, a week befoe Elul. There will be a few shocking incidents, with loss of Israeli life. The government will fall. Sharon may commit suicide after leaks of much greater financial malfeasance. and of blackmail by the USA. The evacuation will be halted shortly after it has started. There will be an extreme Palestinian reaction, aided and formented by foreign Arab nations and secret services. Israel will respond with practically war against the Palestinians. Very large army deployments. There may be an international boycott of Israel, at least to some extent. In short, a good time to be hiking in the Alps or the White Mountains. -------------------------------------------------------------- One should not lie to good people, because then they will help you in ways you do not want. An Email from Home: Postmistress Grandma Pizza Pie arrived last Saturday at the Bet Knesset with a gentleman companion. Both were dressed in white which is what angels wear. He had white pants thin in summer heat through which we could see red underpants which is what devils wear. She maybe needs him to keep her down on earth. ------------------------------------------------------------- The Supreme Court recent ruled, 6-3 (O'Conner, Thomas, and Rehnquiest dissenting, presumably on States Rights grounds) that deaspite State laws allowing in, the federal government could prosecute popele for use of home-grown free marijana. That is, where no commerce, let along interstate commeerce, as involved. There is something quite screwed up about a legal philsophy that must make a patently unjust decision for fear that a just decision would be generalized as a precedent that could be used to draw implications with which one would disgaree. As Godel said, statements may have unintended and/or unanticipated entailments. (I do not know if a true statement may have false consequents.) The resolution is to use these apparnet exceptions to conceptually refine the rule. ----------------------------------------------------------------- =jr0506B1 JOURNAL FROM 11 JUNE '05 ------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 10 Jun '05 It is clear enough that airlines, obliged to provide budget travel, try to make it so unnecessarily miserahle that any traveler who can afford it will upgrade to a level, not of luxury, but of minimal human decency. Budget travelers lack sufficient air, sufficient toilet facilities, and have less free space than a prisoner in a closed mental ward. Budget class passenger ferry service in the Mediterranean shows some of the same infliction -- reclining chairs are made as uncomfortable as possible, with fixed armrests, and usually placed in a budget lounge area where it imposssible to get adequate sleep even for an hour -- but in general do not restrict budget traveler access to decks. ----------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 10 Jun '05 (Ckueb, noting that in 1919 Emma Goldman, "and 248 other accused radicals and Bolsheviks were feverishly deproted to Russia in 191 -- also a time of a domestic terrosim scare." It is clear enough that the USA goes through periodic yahoo fits - - a sort of national hysteria -- over secuurity issues. The ani-Communist Witchhunt of the USA 1950s was the post recent to precede hysteria following the terrorist destruction of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, on 11 Sept '01. ---------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 10 Jun '05 (Frank) Some chap named Dusenbery, retired from economics at Harvard, - I think I went to Belmonet High School wwith one of his sons, who was of couse called "Doozer"-- had, it is reported, a theory that, in passing, suggested that someone who was rich but fell back from that, tends to continue to spend at the same level, because he just can't quite take the shock of it all. The rpoter puts it: Dusenberry argued that families look not only to the living standards of others [ a sociologic drive for upward mobility that is a major motivating force in consumer behavior ] , but also to their own past expereince. The high standard enjoyed by a formerly propserous family thus constitutes a frame of referned that maeks cutbacks diffiuclt, whieh helps explain why consumption levels change little duirng recessions." Well, the Talmud said it first: His son came home and said, You do not need to continue to give tzdaka to so_and_so, old wine is poured for him. 'Oh,' said the sage, 'is he really accustomed to such luxuries' -- and doubled his contribution. The loss of a luxury may hurt more than the lack of it. That is quite a compassionate perception. My Sufi crew would say: But heavaen always sends us just the tests we need to advance spiritually, and in papering it over with tzdaka, you have depreved this guy of the opportunity to progress spiritually by transcenduing his attatchments. Mazaltov, but what if he don't want to progress spiritually. Maybe he'd rather just sit on his duff and take handouts. But maybe also this guy has been so beaten down by life that he no longer has the koach to jump over any more hurdles. So his choice is to sit on his duff and take a handout, or sit on his duff without a handout. And this is that set of stories, in Berachot I'm sure, of one rabbi who finds another rabbi sick. So he doesn't rush right in and heal him, first he asks, do you wish neither the suffering, nro the reward [ for transcending the suffering ] That is, do you wish neither to accept the suffering [ a bit weird, but some folks are into that I guess ] nor to transcend it. The guy who is sick says, No. So then the other guy cures him. You may say, so that day was a wipeout for the Angels. "No one was saved." (Beattles=) But I say back, spirituality is not only a Great Leap Forward to a higher maquam, spirituality is also in the blessing we say after taking a piss. Or, I suppose, though it didn't make siddur press_time, after a toothache goes away afater I pop a few Alcomol Forte, Morty. That's a point of the sort I have lately been trying to make in my notes to my RSC verbatim retypes. --------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT, 11 Jun '05 -- (Rosenthal/Povoledo) In urging the Italian electorate to boycott the referendum on repeallinig Italy's near-ban on fertility treatments, Pope Ratzinger has clearly staked out the position of the Roman Catholic Church amngst the religious yahoos of our time -- including the USA Bushies, and Islamic (but I think, not Jewish) literalists. First of all, the electoral participation required to make the results of a referndum binding, should not be 50%, but rather, the percentage of the electorate which parcipated in the previous election of the legislature. Second, there is a gross and simplistic sentimentality in personifying an embryo. On the other hand, nowadays many prosperous women wish to have children, though not necessarily a husband, as a sort of fashion accessory. In Hollywood its quite the thing for the prosperous lady star who has had severl mansions and husbands. It is tempting but simplistic to say that procreation is and should entirely remain in the hands of heaven But of course it is deemed not merely the right but the obligation of man to intervene in other bodily functions, notably illness. The ethics of Judaism are ostensibly drawn exclusively from the Bible. I do no know where Catholicism gets it guidance, nor how great a role it allows the Bible. Christians, at least the evangelicals amongs them, are continually drawing from are Bible apparent prophecies of the events in theirs. There assumption seems to be -- since we (Jews) take the Old Testamanet literally, even though they don't, then if they can show that our Bible prohecied the events in their Bible, then we must agree that the events in their bible are true. But if course we do to take our Neviim as necessarily ispired, nor as authoratative. And as for pedicting the future, we regard that as the least important of their functions. They were primarily politial nd social commentators. If I recall, it was hescel who made that point. In the Bible, women often overcome infertility by the intervention of heaven. Sometimes, as with Samuel, the child is then pledged to the service of heaven, as a priet. As for fertility treatments, there is the ironic story of Rachel and Leah. Rachel is beautiful, apprently slender, but seems to be barren. Leah is clearly unattractive -- the bible says only, weak eyes, Graves says she was called 'cow-woman'. She seems stocky, and is clearly well-built for having children. One spring day Leah's son Reuven finds mandrakes, believed to enhance fertility. Rachel begs them of him. Leah demands payment. Rachel, who has taken Yakov from Leah, gives him to Leah for one more night. It is Leah who becomes preganant as the result of her son finding the mandrakes; Rachel gets only the mandrakes. -------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------