=jr0511a FOLLOWS =jr05x17 JOURNAL, STARTING 10 Nov '05 ------------------------------------------------------------------ Read an honest sci-fi potboiler, 'Dilation Effect' -- 'potboiler' is USA slang, ca. 1940's -- seomthing to read while waiting for the pot to boil, as_it_is_said (Proverb, England and/or USA), "A watchec pot never boils" -- by Doublas R. Mason, if that really is his name -- I mean, Chaimie Saperstein won't quite do on a paperback -- Ballantine Books, New York, 1971 -- cover price 95 cents, but only CHF 5 at the used bookstore, 34 years later -- So here's my Review of it: Good guys, bad guys, and naked women; who needs more. A good clean read, no mucking about in the yuck, like so much sci_fi -- short stories anyhow, and I don't suppose anyone even pretends to write sic_fi books anymore. How I miss the inventive whimsy of multiple universes, paradoxical time_travel, and just free_form fantasy. Somehow horror_stories hitch_hiked onto the sci_fi genre. Of course very little sci_fi has anything to do with science, much less extrapolations from present science. The best is parables of inner space, presented as fantasies of outer space. Then there are the usual 'the end of the world is coming' warnings. The new genre of high fantasy -- wizards and sorcers and all that -- is also parables of the Inner Quest, and so it is essentially religious. I'm starting to read a Playboy anthology, and what a dark underside of Eisenhower Era it reveals -- behind those saturine Saturday Evening Post covers, I used to read accounts of Death Row San Quentin, and of Lobotomies -- and this in the sunlit parlour of our downstairs neighborhor, a descendent of the Currier's -- as wholesome a Garden of Eden as one could have hoped for, amazing that our parents produced it for our upbrining -- my father an MIT Instructor, earning scarcely more thant two thousand a year -- Well anyhow, The Saturday Evening Post was the snake , and I'm sure no_one knew it. All my life I have sometimes had dreams that I was about to be executed. Maybe that was why. I must have been between 8 and 10 years old at the time, entranced with whatever I happened to read. I did read Asimov at about that time, from the public library. One passage, from 'The Stars like Dust', his first book I suppose, struck me at the time -- one character speaks of the 'The Horsehead Nebluae' and the other character, both about my age, to my mind, says, 'I always thought it was called that because Horace Head was the first to sail through it' -- Asimov had a genius for taking a fanttastic supposition -- here, that humankind was now living on remote galaxies -- and then imagining how people would be likely to think in such a situation. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Correction: "Diamond in the sky" is not a phrase by Issac Asimov, he wrote "Pebble in the Sky", the first science_fiction book I read, in the late 1940's I suppose. "Diamond in the sky" is of course from the nursery rhyme: Twinkle twinkle little star how I wonder what you are up above the world so high like a diamond in the sky" R. Shlomo once said in a talk at Yakar which I think I input, getting peace from the Oslo agreements is like the hosid who found a gold coin in the privy. He said, 'LORD, if you want to give it to me, that's OK, but please to give it to me here.' So too, that one brilliant line amidst doggerel, no offense intended to dogs. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Correction -- Rosa did climb to the top of the volcanoe on the Spanish island of Teneriff, but got tired at over 3700 meters above sea_level. --------------------------------------------------------------- Further notes on the headscarf case. The end does not justify the means. Two wrongs don't make a right. You can't do a mitzva by an avera. To rule on that basis is, precisely, to 'legislate from the bench'. That is, it is to make an ostensibly legal ruling, not on a legal and/or conceptual basis (philosophy of law), but on the basis of anticipated consequences of that ruling. That was the basis on which Rehnquist et al. ordered a halt to the Florida recount before it was completed -- not that the recount was illegal per se, but that if they did not rule until after it had been completed, and if they thin ruled that it had been illegal, and if the recount had shown Gore the victor (as apparently it did, though it was a long time -- maybe half a year, after doing many recounts -- before the press acknowleged that, and then did so as inconspicuously as possible -- then hoi polloi might believe, incredible as it seems to anyone with a place in Western Civilization, that the Court's decision had been motivated by political bias, Cows Defend Us -- and then the Court might come into disrepute. So Rehnquist pretended to have made a blatantly political ruling only to protect the reputation of the Court. And again, I must now remind you of an excellent investment opportunity, involving possible acquisition of a majority interest in an historical single_span suspension bridge, celebrated by the great American poet Hart Crane, may he never stop swimming and the Gulf Stream carry him nourished on plankton to a boutique hotel. So OK: Then recently Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts -- and there's a joke for you, we would have done better with Calvin & Hobbes -- ruled against an Oregon law allowing assisted suicide for the terminally ill -- or was it the medical use of marijuana -- there used to be a bumper sticker, Arrive Stoned -- well, this is 'Go out Stoned' -- Huxley is said to have called for LSD on his deathbed -- so Roberts did not rule on the constiutional merits of the case -- I mean "all rights not specifically delegated to the federal government are reserved to the people of the states, and through them to their state governments" -- I don't have a U.S. Constitution at hand and I'm sitting in a shack behind a rock so there's no chance of Wi-Fi -- would surely include the 'right to die' in a manner of one's choosing. But Roberts did not consider that, he denied the right of a state to allow its residents -- or state citizens, or both -- the right to end their lives without further pain and humiliation -- on the grounds that if he were to allow that right to stand, this might curtail the power of the federal government to restrict the distribution of drugs that are acknowleged -- at least by the federal government -- to be dangerous. So that too was 'legislation from the bench'. It was a political decision, presented as judicial decision. And so similar, as noted in the previous =jr05x17.txt , with the European Court of Human Rights refusal to over_rule the Turkish goernment's ban on women wearing headscarves at a public university. That is obviously an instance of the human right to freedom of religious expression. ( It is also included in rights to personal privacy -- surely one has the right to dress as one chooses -- but then why is nudity not allowed -- you might argue that it offends against universal norms of human decorum, but that excludes not merely the naked sadhus of India -- who after all do not expect to encounter that many elderly women who just stepped out of the house to buy few things at the supermarket, but absent_mindly took a wrong turn and wound up om the jungle -- but also us hippies. Well, you can say, even us hippies don't do it in the supermarket. Though I did once drive out there with Susie, well stoned especially me, loaded up the shopping cart with whatever we needed and then with whatever I found irresistable, reflected briefly on the aggregate of my choices as I waited before the checkout stand -- the cart was heaped to overflowing --- and then left the cart there, walked out, and drove home. Or maybe she drove. I hope. That was in Santa Barbara, with our downstairs neighbors' sports car. I can't imagine why they let us borrow it. The European Union Court of Human Rights did not rule on the merits of the case -- tho I can't imagine what merit it might hae had -- but on the political ground, as I noted in =jr05x17.txt , that if they overruled the ban, then this would empower the fundamentalist movement, which might then gain control of the government of Turkey, and might then require everyone do do all sorts of ostensibly religious things, maybe including wearing headscarves everywhere but to and/or within the shower, and that would curtail the rights -- well, some sort of right, if not precisely the right to religious expression -- of everyone who did not want to wear a headscarf. Presumably the Court would have upheld the right of men to wear headscarves, since that is ridiculous and hence is not a demonstration of religious allegiance. I do not know if they would have allowed women to wear kippot. Because women do so in inentional emulation of the custom that men do so, and men are empowered and women are not in religious Judaism. Therefore women who wear kippot don't do so just because it's chic -- with the exception of the Hollywood crowd, of course -- in which case it would be allowable --- but with the intentional of asserting an expression of religion (to which some would say they are not entitled,but that's an issue within Judaism, not an issue imposed upon it.= Cha-cha Cha The fallacy of making political rulings from the judicial bench is part of any argument against idealism -- eg against taking a pacifistic approach to problems -- it is that would cannot NOT rely on a miracle -- that is, that one cannot preculde the possiblity of Divine Grace. That is, one cannot asusme that a moral end justifies an immoral means -- or in this case, a judicial decision not in accord with judicial principles -- because ne has presupposed the certainty a probable but simplistic causal chain. Politicians must do that, those who adhere to the ethos or at least to the nomos -- to moral values, or at least to the lawss of their society -- are not free to do so. "One cannot rely on a miracle" (Talmudic principle) because that is an abdication of human freedom, which is given to mankind by Heaven. Hence to rely on a miracle is irreligious, to the point of blasphemy, for it is refuisng to accept what Heaven gives us. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Notebook notes<: I have a 400 MHz processor and 128 Mb RAM -- Nico, who must have a cutting_edge system, has about 2.5 GHz Processor, and 523 Mb RAM --------------------------------------------------------------- The frumie who wrote 'The Complete Idiot's Guide to The Talmud' -- Rabbi Aaron Parry, from Young Israel, Ohr Sameyach, and Aish HaTorah -- the modern orthodox, non_Zionist, and ZIonist ultra_orthodox flagships -- has indeed written just that -- a Compleat (compleat, not 'complete' tho it's the same thing -- a perfected Idiot, perfected in the closed conceptual world, not universe, of orthodoxy -- brings out many good points, and makes many bad ones. He seems inclined to defend cloning, tho only to create stem cells and the like -- but he does not address the problematic spirituality of using cloning to create a living being, especially a human being. He points out that cloning is implanting someone else's genetic material in an ovum. The basic of principle of Catholicism is -- stick with the Tao, don't muck it up. Cloning is that -- if Heaven intended Schmendrik to sire Schmendrik Junior, It would have enabled him to do so in the traditional manner. And the same applies to Spritzela the Lesbian -- if she can't bear to go to bed with a man , let her live childless, or adopt a child born by someone else. As for 'death with dignity' -- as R. Parry considers, but not fully acknowlege, that issue is very muddled now by so_called 'heroic' medical technlogy. The Talmud is set of course in an era of natural, and very primitive, medicine. Only the frumies hold that one must reach contemporary conclusions by extrapolating from rulings made in the context of 6th century Babylonia. I want to say: if what is prolonged is not live, then it shoiuld not be prolonged, especially not by artificial means. PVK was asked that once at the Abode and he answered, as I recall -- if you're absolutely sure that there is nothing more you can do in life, then you can take your life, but not otherwise. That would seem to apply to someone facing execution but again -- one must not give up hope in a miracle. The classic case there is Walter Benjamin, who took his own life before facing the border control when he was fleeing the Nazi's, for fear of being stopped and sent to be tortured to death -- which is generally what occurred at those 'extermination camps' -- people were not merely murdered, very many were tortured to death. As it turned out, it appears that Walter Benjamin could have escaped. So that surely applies to keeping somoene in a terminal coma alive -- the Terry Scaipo case, where she was correctly judted to have been brain_dead. The 'presistent vegetative state'. The USA reactionary right is ruled by a bathetic sentimentality. They deny poor single mothers the Food Stamps to bear and raise healthy children of good mind and spirit, but deny them the right to abort a child unlikely for socio_economic reasons, and even psychologic reasons -- eg, the mother must raise the child knowing it was a product of rape, or of incest -- not to mention physical reasons, to grown into a good person. Well, I don't like that line at all, for there too, it evades the possibility, even liklihood, of Divine Grace. Many women raped inte Yugoslavia war found that they loved the child they bore nonetheless. And many fine people have transcended the most impoverished and oppressed upbrining. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Orthodox Judaism is very much a regional religion -- it fits fine in the land of Israel, and is viable in other warm lands, but can't entirely hold in cold lands. In cold lands, orthodox Judaism becomes merely a hothouse flower. One can apply it only to an artificial life, not to a natural one. I've stopped washing my hands before breaking bread, ever since the prevailing temperature got down to about freezing. You are not required to so if icicles are likely to form on your fingertips on your way back from the water trough to the kitchen, because then if you eat cheese with the bread the icicles might punch holes in, and then a frumie might stop by hitch_hiking over the mountain on his way back to the frumie camp in the next canton, and think that you were eating the cheese of the goyim ’(Cows Defend Us!), and the Name of Heaven -- frumie Heaven, to be precise -- would be profaned. (And that was a riff off Tia Esterson's quip: Why is it forbidden to have sex standing up at Moshav Mevo Modi'in? -- Because it might lead to mixed dancing.) And that -- building fences around the law, and fences around the fences, only because though not yet needed they someday might be - - is the sort of 'legislating from the bbench' that I critize in preceeding notes. Assisted suicide again -- if you see someone dying, and he begs you to hasten his demise, can you not do so -- is this not 'Thou shalt not stand idly by the blood of they neighbor' -- Well, the first question to ask is, is it true -- is he really dying, and did he really beg youl 'really dying' means -- is there positively no hope of even a temporary reprieve, and is he really no longer able to do any of the things that only a living being can do -- eg, enjoy the sunset, share his wisdom or kindness with others, etc. 'really beg you' means -- does he make the request that you help him to die in full possession of his faculties -- usually that would mean, did he create a 'living will' for such a contigency when he was in the full possession of his faculties -- although that too is problematic, for what we imagine before the event may be overtaken by a more authentic realization when the event overtakes us -- I often think of killing any number of my fellow_campers if I see them again, but if I did, I would not doubt offer them a cup of tea instead -- It's a darned good thing that there's ain't yet a death_ray key on the Email keyboard -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Bought a used copy of WLT, A Radio Romance, by Garrison Keeler, some currently fashionalble USA nostalgia schlocker, at the Lugano used book store -- one of the few Internet shops in Switzerland where you can do up and down loads. Cost me SF 2, which is almost the price of a cup of espresso -- a real coffee costs about 3.50 - - ł I went to the Old Howard Burlesque Theatre in Scolly Square once or twice -- maybe I was 16 at the time -- that was where I went the first time I wanted to buy condoms -- never did figure out how you can avoid trying to put them on upside down -- Well, Garrison Keeler seems to be the first Dirty Old Man of Americana Nostalgia -- so that reminds me of this joke, the only one I recall, except for 'You could drive a Mac Truck into my wife', which is no doubt the human condition but not a nice thing to say -- it's never fair to mock anyone for something they can't fix -- So: "I bought a pair of pants at Filene's, and wore them to this Dance at the Copley Plaza Ballroom, but the tailor didn't do the alternations right." "The Copley Plaza? They have no Ballroom." "That's what I mean." (That was my rewrite, except for the punchline and the timing.) ---------------------------------------------------------------- To IHT, not yet sent: On 2 Nov '05 5he Baseler Zeitung noted that from 4 Nov '05, 'flu vacine would be availabe in Switzerland only to persons in at_risk groups. (In fact, it is not clear that it available even to non_citizens in at_risk groups.) The IHT, the journal_of_record at least for USa expatriates, particularly in Switzerland, should have reported and discussed this apparently sudden and rather problematic apparent government policy. ------------------------------------------------------------------ I don't say its croweded in may shack, but sometimes things disappear in the clutter for two or three months. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Notebook: qv NySpace.com xanga.com LiveJournal.com Brahms 4th: B--G / E--A ------------------------------------------------------------- Variation on Zuleika setting of a saying by Rabia: I am eating the bread of this world and doing the work of that world and eating the bread of that world and doing the world of this world. Variation on setting of translation of text by Martin Luther to Bach's Wacht auf, ruft uns de Stimme Therefore with joy our song shall soar to praise the LORD for evermore. -------------------------------------------------------------- DOS sits under MIcroSoft like a deaddog, never improving. TYPE does not even allow a /p Syntax is given as TYPE [ unita ] percorso] nomefile I don't know what unita and percorso are I do not know why Windows does not allow multi_language prompts. Other programs do, eg Partition Magic. ---------------------------------------------------------------- My donkey gets older and starts making noise sometimes. I tell him just sit over there and don't bother me, I have work to do. -------------------------------------------------- Built a sukah by the rubbish bins out of 2 old ski_racks upended and a few parking barriers for walls, then left it to take a night ride down to Lugano to bentsch lulav on Hoshana Raba at the Dan Hotel (3_star), After a week of greyout the Milky Way was bright that night and Mars red and large. Got to Lugano off the damned Freeway by making smalltalk in French to keep the driver awake with 20 francs of Swiss nickle and 20 million bytes of mystic upload in my pockets amd fpimd am im”pcled crapper on the 3rd try with 3 seconds to spare. How thin the shifting line between grace and disgrace. Hit Shaharit but nobody offered me a lulav until after the willows beat the earth and I suppose in Good Old Days that always are the lulav too. -------------------------------------------------------------- HIK: "Be no more to anyone than you are expected to be." And also, be no more than you are supposed to be. --------------------------------------------------------------- Of course we whirl clockwiese, and walk around the tipi clockwise too. So does the earth. Apparently someone or some spirit once tempted PVK to whilr counter_clockwise, during a Zenith class. He tried it, and then said, No, it doesn't work. And that is why clocks turn clockwise, too. They didn't have to. --------------------------------------------------------------- Shams Tabriz found Mr. Rumi inexplicably gloomy. Though the derivsh, 'What the hell, let's throw his opus in the well, so he did and said 'don't cry' I'll throw it up again quite dry.' All the pupils made a stink to think they'd drink the Master's ink but Rumi said, 'There let it end I really wanted just a friend' to which the pupils said said 'Oh dear, our Leader's fallen for a queer,' and in conclusion, sad to tell they threw the dervish down the well. Rumi, not a social drinker, never found the little stinker but as he whirled looked in the stars to find his friend, for many years. (Lugano, motzi Simchat Torah) ---------------------------------------------------------------- Once about every 25 years I find someont to talk to but a husband or wife or mother pops up and says, You can't have it, it's mine. -------------------------------------------------------------- "May we not be tested ..." Siddur Or better, more literally, may we not fall into the grip of a 'test'. That means -- may we not be tempted to try of 'pretend' to a position for which we are not qualified. It does not mean -- may we not try new challenges. Only if one takes on a challenge that one was unqualified to attempt does one fall into disgrace if one fails. Almost every athletic event is open only to those with proper qualification -- often just a matter of starting it with the proper safety equipment. Eg, Avraham at the Akedah -- or Adam_'n_Eve with the apple. You shouldn't shecht your child -- that was why the pagans were vomitted out of the Holy Land. (So ok, even the Spartans did with a dash of intfanticide -- as population control measures go, it's a lot more humane than abortion. I mean, let us not discriminate agains the technogically disadvantaged. And anyhow, does a baby go through that much more physical and emotional and spiritual agony that a fetus. I mean, we all gotta go sometime, and a quick night out on the mountantop is a lot better than a lot of other ways to go.) Abraham should have said, I'm afraid you've knocked on the wrong door, just follow coast up north past Rosh HaNikra, turn right, ask anyone for the nearest Temple of Ba'al, and tell it to the first Phonecian you see, they dig that crap. That was his test, and he shouldn't have needed an angel to tell him so -- I mean, do you know what angels bill per hour. Heck, Avraham just did a little epistemological double_check, and it cost it 220 years at hard labour in Mitzrayim. Can you imagine what we must have paid for that Akedah. (That's Genesis, 'the covenant of the pieces'.) So anyhow, 'the snake was the craftiest of beings' -- 'You will be like gods' -- keep your TV's and DVD's and Quiche Lorraine white fizzy white wine -- Knowlege was the one thing I always wanted. Stupidest choice I ever made, but that's another story. I mean knowlege is just what you get when you can't have a woman any more. Try selling that in the Agora. Even Faust wouldn't take it. Bullshit, as_it_is_said, 'Ki l_Olam Chesed_o'. [ I don't recall now how I got to that point. Maybe it's that revelation, too, comes only as grace. And that revelation includes all real knowlege. You get older, you see more the things. The less good it does you, the more you see. As Joni Mitchell says, "Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've to 'till its gone. Pave Paradise, put up a parking lot." Even Wittgenstein, that poor sad fool, said, 'Streich Gelt von Jeder Fehler.' And PVK says, you always have to take the first step yourself, as one of Kierkegaard's leap_of_faith 's -- poor old Kierkegaard thant hunchback, he never had the nerve to ask that chick to marry him, and promise to support her as country parson -- so he never learned that 'the reward of a mitzva is the opportunity to do another mitzva' -- or as HIK says, one's purpose in life is like the horizon, once one undertakes to travel to it, one finds it is forever receeding. That of course is why I can't bear to read Kierkegaard, he goes interminably around in circles. It's -- again -- precisely that, a choice between the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowlege. You can live, participate in the existential dimension, never knowing for sure that what you're doing is right, or is your best choice -- or you can abdicate from your purpose in life, your reason for having incarnated, and quit the game and watch all the plays in perfect detail from the sidelines -- with nobody to talk to, not even yourself. But to fail at a real test is no disgrace; one learns one's weak points from it, "by trial and error" -- precisely so, it was a trial -- as the Christian Gospel song says, "You must to and stand your trial / you've got to stand it by yourself / Oh, nobody else can stand it for you / You've got to stand it by yourself" -- and when we take trials, we do make errors, and to make erros is not failure -- as_it_is_said, "To err is human, to forgive, Divine" -- -- it is simply part of what nowadays thhey call "the learning curve". So from a trial one learns one's weak pints, does one's best to fix them, and tries again. Every athlete knows that. The End. ----------------------------------------------------------------- CIAgate again . They say, or did before Fitzgerald indicted Libby for lying when he said that he learned from a reporter, not from Cheney, that Wilson's wife was a CIA agent -- I mean a reporter with a scoop publishes or withholds it, but he does not call up the VP's Chief of Staff for a little chat -- so they tried to say, all those hacks that flack for the Bushies, How could one prove that they knew she was an undercover agent. Bullshit. Like I say, and like we see wheneer there's another Presidential scandal -- Nixon's Watergate (and Waterloo), Clinton's blowjob -- and thats what cost us Gore and Kerry, who might have saved the world, because it really is teetering on the brink, and 'twill be a long and messy fall -- 'Epistemology is the last defense of a scoundrel. '' Except that Bill Clinton tried to add theory of meaning to it -- 'It depends what you mean by 'mean' '' -- or whatever he said -- I'm spekaing of Fallibilistc Epistemology, which should have gone out with Lord Russell when he toddled off with his toddy to bed -- that is, interjecting a doubt at every logical joint that is not nailed in place by a Euclidean deduction -- and what a cross_breed of formal logic with common sense that is -- for it is properly common sense that epistemology should explicate, that was what Moore saw but arituclated with less sophistication than a caveman -- Wittgenstein, "Moore doing philosophyy is like an elephant trying to dance" -- so it was left to Wittgenstein to give it the conceptual structure that Kant did so clumsily with his metaphyiscal Teutonic archechtoic -- Hiertiptoploftical, as it is said in Finnegan's Wake. One dos not aordianry expect to find a CIA agent with a nametag saying, 'Hi, I'm CIA.' Even the Newsboy popping bubble gum assumes that Agents are Secret Agents. When Watergate Libby, or was it G. Gorden Hunt, was arraigned -- I mean, those were some pretty high_class burgulars -- he gave his occupatin is 'CIA'. That proved it was a set_up to bring down Nixon -- a double_cross with CIA contributing the fall_guys. And that looks like what Scooter Libby did -- a plot to bring down Cheny. The IHT -- a distillation of the NY Times, and Dave McReyolds said of the NY Times, 'You have to read between the lines, but at least there a lines to read between ' -- that was ca. 1964 that he said it -- notes that Scooter Libgy told his staff, never take notes, yet it took and kept a note, and somehow allowed it to fall into the hands of the Special Prosecutor, that Cheney had told him that Valerie Wilson was CIA. Good grief. That's not the sort of thing most of us would be apt to forget. Oh yes, the Vice President did tell me the name of a CIA agent the other day, but the same morning my wife had told me what to get a supermarket, just as I was half_way out the door, and I didn't jot it down, so I figured I'd better make a note that the VP told me her name, and jot down the name too -- never know when you might need a CIA agent and can't find the Rollodex because the cat likes to play with it -- The IHT reprots that 'Scooter' Libby got his nickname because his fasther said as an infant he used to scoot around the floor. Of course -- just the sort of thing you tell the guys on your fisst day on the job as a White House intern. The Jerusalem Post once reported that Rafi Edri, who ran and betrayed Pollard -- "on the Embassy Greens, Pollard was collared" (sa) -- that is, the Israel Embassy took him in but then kicked him out when the US discovered and demanded it -- they could not have seen him enter, for then they would have arrested him before he got to the door -- so they said, he got the name, Rafi the Shtinker -- Shtinker, not Stinker -- because in the army he didn't wash his socks. The Post had also reported, a few days prior, that 'Shtiker' is Yiddish slang for 'informant'. I do not know if the Post then ran a Correction. Of course the law was badly written. The law says, it is a crime to KNOWINGLY reveal the identity of an undercover CIA Agent. But it is to UNKNOWINGLY reveal a CIA Agent's name that would be the exception, and require a long -- and funny -- story to contextualize. That is, it can reasonably be assumed that anyone who reveals the identity of a CIA Agent does so knowingly. The story would of necessity -- and I mean logical necessity, not social or some such -- be funny, not beause us orginaray langauge analysts are so witty -- incidentally, we don't analyze ordinary language, it don't need analysis, because it's ordinary -- like, how much can you say about a 'Plain Girl', even if Arthur Miller did write a fine novelette with taht title -- what we do is analyze philosphic problems by reminding them opportunistic tendentious sophists of well_chosen examp0es of how we -- and not they -- ordinarily use language. So like I say, our contextualizations are funny, not because we're such wits and madcaps, but because exceptional situations are funny per se -- the unusual, the extraorindaary, not the commonplace, is what's funny. Bullshit is matter of picking a clown off the street and introducing him as Joe Q. Public -- the paradigmatic ordinary man. Everyman, as they used to say. It is a matter of taking a simple ordinary situation -- eg betraying the name of a spy, which is not something that takes much brains, only an exceptional absence of guts -- and pretending it fits into an extraordinary context. So what we do then is display some of those extraorinday contexts, in which the remark would fit -- that's 'contextualizing the remark' -- and let the reader see how unlike those extraordianry contexts are to the context in question. The example I just gave, was Libby's making a note that Cheney had told him that Valerie Wilson was a CIA agent. That is the sort of thing that one would put down in a notebook only under extraordinary circumstances -- so extraordinary that they would be comical, as I tried to show. And because no such situation prevailed, one must suppose that Libby had an ulterior motive -- maybe to betray Cheney -- for writing it down. Oy, where was I. So OK, these examples are necessarily funny, not becuase us ordinary language anlysts are so witty, but because exceptional situations are funny per se -- the unusual, the extraoridnar, not the commonplace, is what's funny. All we need is the imagination and literacy -- neither common traits in akademia -- to delineate such a situation. As I've noted in previous =jr*.txt 's, in other contexts I assume, that is Satre's short story, 'The Wall '' 'Le Mur' -- the protagonist unknowingly betrays the hiding place of a comrade in the anti_Franco Resistance -- he is sure that Juan Gris has fled the country, and so he tells the Facists that he is hiding in the cemetary, and it turns out that he had changed his plans at the last minute and hid there. So if Valerie Wilson used to work at the front desk in the CIA Press Bureau, and Cheney told Libby, oh, if you need someone to go on 60 Minutes ask Valerie Wilson, she's CIA, and if meanwhile Valerie Wilson had gotten bored and did a bit of moonlighting with the Iraqui delegation to the UN, posing as hooker, and passing out business cards saying 'Valerie Wilson -- High_class Hooker' -- and if Cheney and Libby happened to be standing in the UN Lobby at the time -- that would be a reaonably clear example of having UNKOWINGLY revealed the identity of a CIA Agent. Otherise, of course, Cheney should be impeached, convicted, and jailed. Libby is just being a Good Soldier, lying to defend his boss for as long as possible. And Cheney too is being a good soldier, letting Libby go the wall so that he Cheney can rip off as much as possible from this country for his buddies, until they cart him away too. It really is an American Facist conspiracy. 'The Vulcans'. Apocalyptic idiots and rip_off artists, but very disciplined and self_sacrificing. In that sense the Iraq War is just a tip of the iceberg. The Bushies are on top of the iceberg, and the rest of us are on that Ship of Fools (Katherine Ann Porter's title ), the Titanic.- So one could undermine and pre_empt that defense iwth an ordinary_language__analyis. One would hsow that exmaples of unintentionally revealing an agent's identity are so bizarre. that the Valeri Wilson case -- "Oh by the way, he was perusaded to go to Nigeria by his wife, who works for the CIA -- No no no, I did not know she was an undercover agent, I mistook her for the woman who sits at that Recruiting Booth in Times Square under the sign that says 'Fly Me -- I'm CIA' -- and that one night she tuurned to him in bed and said, 'Honey, you're too pale, it turns me off in this flourescnet light, we can't afford candles so you really should get a sun tan -- I hear there's a great package deal with the Nigeria Hilton ' -- And he said, well, I know you're a Liicensed Cosmetician by trade, so I'll take your advice because "only her hairdresser knows for sure' -- using 'her' in a gender_neutral sense of course -- what makes a man sexy. Like, his wife is secretly an Afro_American, that's why she wants him to get a sun_tan. So Scooter Libby, who gossips like one of the girls -- something else that we reveal only most reluctrantly, to exonerate him of wrongdoing -- knows that JudithMiller, who spent so much time in Harlem that she thiks the's black, had been making the same complaint about her husband, and that's why Scooter Libby told Judith Miller what Valerie Wilson said. Scooter herad her say that at the Washington Gridiron Club Hairdressing Salon, where hes a volunteer trainee on his days off. And that is an illustration of a context in which it would be reasonable to say that Libby revealed the identity of a CIA agent unknowingly -- or unintentionally, I'm losing the threads of my analysis. And that is a preposterous scenario, and so we see it takes a preposterous scenario to fit -- to make sense of -- Libby's claim that he revealed the identity of a CIA agent unknowlingly. And that scenario is preposterously unlike the range of plausible actual occurrences, we can reasonably conclude that he revealed the identity of the CIA agent knowingly and intentionally. OK, this was all from IHT, 26 Oct '05 (Johnson, Stevenson, Jehi, if I read my notes right. The End. --------------------------------------------------------------- Mr. MacClean "for a shiny smile" is a Rodef Shalom. I guess sthat's some guy running after the dove of peace with a Scimitar. Notes: Eliyahu McClean Famous Peacemaker was given the rather odd honorific, 'Rodef Shalom' by R. Zalman Schachter. A 'rodef' is one who -- and this is apparently pre_Biblical -- to avenge the family honor, persues one who, unintentionally -- ie, as manslaughter -- has killed a family member. It is to counteract that practice, which might otherwise lead to interminable and even terminal clan vendetta's, that the Bible requires the creation of 'Cites of refuge', in which one fleeing from a rodef may take refuge. The term 'rodef' then occurs , presumably at a much later cultural era, in the Pslams -- "seek (rodef ) peace and persue it. Thus R. Zalman has turned that verb back into a noun. There is a MacClean's Toothpaste, made in Canada if I recall. For all I know this dude might have got his money from that. He keeps jaunting off to Iraq, and you probably can't do that and stay alive on my pasta_and_Chianti income. ---------------------------------------------------------------- At the Lugano Wine Bar the elegantly dresssed waiter gives me barely a good day but at the Lugano Lakeside I am most honorably attended by swans, ducks, and several seagulls. (Isru Hag, Simchat Torah ) -------------------------------------------------------------- It's quantum theory fits my purse -- it's either there or ain't. Those particles are like a wave which I can neither hold nor save. ------------------------------------------------------------- Variations on the USA folk song -- She'll be coming 'round the mountain when the comes. [ This referred to a new railroad, in Colorado mining country I think ] She'll be riding six white horses when she comes She'll be riding six white horses which is quite a lot of forces She'll be wearing silk pyjamas when she comes [ So far that's a folk variant ] She'll be wearing silk pyjamas either hers or else her mama's And we'll all go down to meet her when she comes And we'll all go down to meet her; we will beat our meat to greet her ----------------------------------------------------------------- Grew up singing, 'A mighty fortress is our G_d ... " Translation of Martin Luther's setting to Bach's 'Ein Fester Berg ist unser Gott ' -- But that translaes, 'A steadfast mountain is ....' etc. -------------------------------------------------------------- The Supreme Court has ruled that putting the motto 'In G_d we Trust' on the lintel of a public building does not violate the assumed Constitutional requirment of 'separation of Church and State' -- though it's not clear that this is entailed by the simple Consitutional Ammendment ("Bill of Rights") that 'Congress hall make no law regarding an estaglishment of eligion' -- does not violate it, the Court ruled, because Congress enacted that at the official motto of the USA. Eg, if Congress had instead enacted as the official motto, 'Don't take any Wooden Nickels' , on could not object to that being carved on the lintel of a Courthouse. But the whole question, which the Court evaded considering, is, was it unConstitutional for Congress to enact as the national motto, 'In G_d we Trust'. ------------------------------------------------------------------ As far as I know, the best one could say of Rabin is that he was an inept nonentity. He first appears on the shore of Tel Aviv, shooting at Begin when the latter comes onto the bridge of the beached Altalena. He is then seen failing to break into the Old City of Jerusalem. At the apex of his career, he is photographed walking through Lions' Gate with a glazed expression after Weizmann won the 1967 War for him. His assassination remains a public mystery. It is incomprehsible that someone with no official position was able to walk right up to him, unless that had been intended as a staged incident to give Rabin a pretext for declaring marital law and then giving away the Golan. The land he lived in is arguably a better, safter place today with him 6 feet under it. It is only a shame than an idealistic young man had to sacrifice his life to "put him in his place" ’(as Rabin said after dismissing Yossi Beillin as Peres' Poodle.) ----------------------------------------------------------------- What a tedious bore Shlomo Riskin is. Scarcely worth picking apart. He's been writing the weekly Dvar Tora in the Jerualem Post since Pinchas Peli died, and that was more than a decade ago. The Jerusalem Report has a different writer each week, which is a much better policy. Riskin is also a bit of a dirty old man, masking that as candor. His ethics are good, and his politics are proper Israel establishment modern orthodox, though as cautious as possible -- Zionist, of course . But he has no noticeable spiritual insight, and reasons very weakly. ---------------------------------------------------------------- The Swiss piss -- oh no, I see, they 'pee' on the Brie and I don't know why: I'd rather eat eat old yellow cheese_rind made of dried cow_pies and chew on my socks. ----------------------------------------------------------------- an inexpensive French Bordeaux but worth its weight though only in sodium sorbate. ---------------------------------------------------------------- I don't say its cold here and it ain't that I don't keep neat but whenever I change my T_shirt I often find a long_lost sweater or two. Campra, 17 Nov '05 -------------------------------------------------------------- No more sun for 3 more months now. Electricity just cut off. Getting so cold in my shack that the Playboy Playmates prefer I don't open the cover. Campra, 17 Nov '05 ----------------------------------------------------------------- "'So you take the high road and I'll take the low' It's much better for us, it's much better so." Rosemary Clooney and Benny Goodman, in one of his last records, ca. 1955. An entire melodrama, if not quite tragedy, in a single quoted phrase. --------------------------------------------------------------- Times ain't tough but if the grocery store don't give me credit I'll have to learn to live on photosynthesis if the sone comes out. (Olivone, 17 Nov '05 ) ------------------------------------------------------------------ CIA_gate was a razlle dazlel double reverse , just like in football -- or anyhow, football board games -- Cheney tells Woodward, but on condition that Woodward does NOT print it. And he does not tell Libby. Then its set up that Woodward tells Libby<, and Libby tells Judith Miller. Judith Miller does NOT print it, and she's a Bushie Lapdog,loyal to the death -- she sticks out 90 days in prsion for them -- so maybe it's a triple revese, because somehow it gets to Novak, and its Novak who outs the agent. And when the shit hits the fan, everyone stonewalls for as long as they can, most likely hoping to drags things out for the rest of this administrtion, and then maybe hoping to deal for a pardon from the next one. So they all are soldiers, tough and brave in the service of their casuse -- deteermined to do as much harm to the USA as possible, regardless of the personal cost. Ideologies. not the sort of ever_rat_for himself of the Nixon gang. And it still looks like the CIA sacrificed several of its top players to bring down Nixon with a double_cross. Nixon wants a little burglary, and the CIA is told to do it, but instead of hiring a few burglars to do a quick quiet job, the CIA stends in a team of its top ops, including Hunt and Gordon Libby, with orders to get themselves caught and take the fall. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Fragment for an unimagined poem: hit_or_miss clitoris ---------------------------------------------------------------- "loose shoes, tight pussy, and a warm place to shit" (U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson, remarking, over airborne cocktails, upon the aspirations of Afro_Americans, approximately 3 days befoe he was fired) "two out of three ain't bad" if, this morning, the flies in the potty don't want to go ice_skating (Campra, 21 Nov '05) ----------------------------------------------------------------- As I had lately acquired a modest but sufficient emmoillieument, the proprietor of St. George's Whorehouse greeted me as a prefered customer, remarking, upon his latest acqisitions, "You've go have Faith, Hope, and Charity." [ Incidentally, the reason that 'the position of St. George' is called that should be quite apparent to anyone who has seen the traditional Greek orthodox icon -- I do not know if the Russian orthodox icon is the same -- of St. George. ] ---------------------------------------------------------------- The entire International Herald Tribune is comic pages, featuring the daily inept adventures of Georgie Bush. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 21 Nov '05 (Pfanner) "'Hurry up please, it's time.'" (quoted by T.S. Eliot in 'The Waste Land') I read that Britain, having ended the 11 PM closing time for bars, is now, in its perpetual effort to institute the Aristotelian Golden Mean, preparing to fine for disorderly conduct anyone who, on the way home, pisses against a wall. It would have been more civilized to build more public pissoirs, well only espresso after 11 PM in bars, or refuse to sell beer to geezers in the evening. Reportedly, the law was originally intended to ensure that factory workers did not start the job half_drunk; but of course nowadays, for white_collar workers, it makes no noticeable difference, does no harm, and my even be an improvement. In Israel, where one is forced by the summer heat to drink water continually, it was socially tolerable if not quite acceptable for a gentleman to piss in public; though that seems to have ended with the rampant Americanization of the 1990's. ----------------------------------------------------------------- OK, I bet Peretz is the next Prime Minister -- that Labour wins the largst block of MK's -- and that Sharon's party gets no more than 7 seats. Also, that Peretz will not make more territorial concessions. ---------------------------------------------------------------- The rising sun touched the glacier.