Of Human Axolotls & Such...

This guy has an intriguing explanation for the phenomenon of P.C.:  'psychological neoteny’ whereby intelligent modern people (including scientists) decline to grow-up and instead remain in a state of perpetual novelty-seeking adolescence.

Talk About Overkill!

Though no peacenik by any means (I believe in the right of self-defense), I also don’t believe that most wars are necessary or justified.  This reinforces that belief for me: 

For each insurgent killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, 250,000 shots are fired that hit absolutely nothing.  (source)

Watch Your Mailbox!

Just wanted to let you know - today I received my 2012 Social Security Stimulus Package.

It contained two tomato seeds, cornbread mix, a prayer rug, a machine to blow smoke up my ass [LMTO], 2 discount coupons to KFC, an "Obama Hope & Change" bumper sticker, and a "Blame it on Bush" poster for the front yard. The directions were in Spanish.

Watch for yours soon.

[from an email I got]

Of Principals and Parts

Someone needs to lay down the law about the use of "lie" vs. "lay."  But therein lies the rub:  folks never learn the principal parts of verbs in school anymore (though in my own case, I picked up the right usage of verbs simply from reading and from parents who were grammar sticklers; I never encountered a "principle part" till I started Latin my junior year of high school).  So, for quick reference:

Lie, lay, lain (intransitive, i.e. it can not take an object)

lay, laid, laid (transitive, i.e. MUST, MUST, MUST take an object!!!!)

(I suppose a Marxist instructor might resort to scurrilous examples here to enhance pupils' attention, but I will refrain---if only because I scorn Marxist pedagogy, having been subject to way too much of it myself, viz. "There IZZZZZ no such thing as 'correct grammar'!"  A not surprising attitude:  once you chuck absolutes in morals and ethics, then tossing out grammar is a footnote.)

So, here are some examples:

1.  I usually don't lie in the sun, but yesterday, I lay there for a few minutes in a vain attempt to bronze a bit.  I have never lain in the sun for hours and hours---I lay great stress [this is the object] on not looking like Geronimo in old age...even if wrinkles supposedly make guys look more distinguished.  (And no, I do not "lay me down to sleep" in the sun, either.  [Notice that "me" there functions as the object, so it's grammatically fine, even if  stylistically archaic.])

2.  Lay down your weapons [object], fiend!

3.  Lie down, Fido!

4.  Where are my keys?  I laid them [object] down on the table a few minutes ago!  I'm in the habit of laying them down there, after all.  But now they're not lying there anymore, darn it!

5.  That rusty old wagon wheel has lain/been lying around here since my grandpa's time.

6.  Marxists have never laid much stress [object] on grammar.  They lay [present tense] more emphasis [object] on "getting laid."  It will be a day for rejoicing when they all lie in their graves, every last one of them.  (Hopefully soon, since for decades they've pushed contraception and foetus slaughter---no doubt a logical agenda when your whole life revolves around getting "laid".)

NOTE:  Do not confuse the 2 uses of "lay":  simple past tense of "lie" vs. present tense meaning "to put down" (transitive).  Same word, different functions.

Where Have All The Wordsters Gone?

Aka the editors, the dental hygienists of worddom.  I don't expect much from highschoolers (or for that matter, nowadays, from college students {snort}), but professional writers...well, come on, guys, get some braces for your grammar!

Sound:

A musical instrument cannot sound "well," it can only sound good or bad (unless you'd like to convince me that musical instruments can get sick {tut tut}).  But, "judging by your croaky voice, you don't sound well; you sound downright ill."  An instrumental group can sound good or bad.

Look:  You look good in black, but that redhead over there looks bad in black.  Makes her look downright ill.

Feel:  It feels good to relax.  I feel well after a week of R & R.  I feel good about having done that.  He feels bad about having had to fire his employee.

Smell:  That honeysuckle smells good.  (Theoretically, if you have a keen schnoz, you could claim that your nose smells well, altho it's an infelicitous phrasing; "I have a keen sense of smell" would be better.)  Those sweaty sneakers smell bad.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you start with "one," stay with it; don't shift to "he" or "she" or "we," etc.  "If one wants to excel, one has to work hard."  "If one votes for an Obama, one shouldn't be surprised if one ends up a slave."

Uncomfortable Constraints

I just read this in a blog:  "As long as people look to a top down structure for harmony, at least in the ways we now imagine, I don't believe peace will result."


From a very early age, I've always balked at authority.  Contrary to my mother's litany of my being "rebellious" (in other words, a moral failing on my part), it's actually a part of my temperament type (all of us MasterMinds scorn titles, degrees, etc. as some sort of Holy Order; we only render earned respect).  When I became a teen, it kept me from following the herd; as an adult, it kept me from making idiotic choices that I'd regret for the rest of my life.


But I've long been studying this question of hierarchy:  like it or not, pecking order seems to be built into the fabric of the universe, viz. even amongst the animals, it exists.  Barring some sort of total "reformatting" of man's nature, there will perforce have to be some sort of structure, which of course implies hierarchy.  Just take a simple example:  on a ship, if there's a catastrophe, somebody has to be in control, and since the situation is multifaceted, there have to be varieties of "rank."  Life is like a ship that way.


As a footnote, I also don't believe all men are equal:  you may be good at physics and math, while I'm a total dope in that area.  I may be ambitious and industrious, whereas you may be a slacker.  The only "equality" I see in man is biological (human DNA) and moral (all of us are capable of evil in varying degrees).  I do believe it's a chimera to pump billions of dollars into a certain group when that group as a whole is historically incapable of functioning on the level of a group that produced, say, Western Civilization.

Oh, "Modern" Man, How Manifold Are Thy Gadgets In All The Earth!

[Note:  the specificity in this li'l text is essential to understanding the nature of the intruder.]

An old cowboy named Dick, was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in Colorado, when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him.

The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, RayBan sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the old cowboy, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, Will you give me a calf?"

Dick looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure, Why not?"

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.

The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg , Germany

Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says, 'You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.'
'That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,' says the old cowboy.

He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then Dick says to the young man, 'Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?'

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, 'Okay, why not?'

'You're a Congressman for the U.S Government', says Dick.

'Wow! That's correct,' says the yuppie, 'but how did you guess that?'

'No guessing required.' answered the old cowboy. 'You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter you are than I am, and yet, you don't know a thing about cows...this is a herd of sheep. .

Now give me back my dog.

[Source:  an email a friend sent me]

Paradoxical Elitism

aka How Marxists Are Still Snobs, and Not At All The Egalitarians They Claim To Be  (Or as the French say, "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.")

Many people who are, in their own minds, opposed to consumerism nevertheless actively participate in the sort of behaviour that drives it. Consider Naomi Klein. She starts out No Logo by decrying the recent conversion of factory buildings in her Toronto neighbourhood into “loft living” condominiums. She makes it absolutely clear to the reader that her place is the real deal, a genuine factory loft, steeped in working-class authenticity, yet throbbing with urban street culture and a “rock-video aesthetic.”

Now of course anyone who has a feel for how social class in this country works knows that, at the time Klein was writing, a genuine factory loft in the King-Spadina area was possibly the single most exclusive and desirable piece of real estate in Canada. Unlike merely expensive neighbourhoods in Toronto, like Rosedale and Forest Hill, where it is possible to buy your way in, genuine lofts could only be acquired by people with superior social connections. This is because they contravened zoning regulations and could not be bought on the open market. Only the most exclusive segment of the cultural
elite could get access to them.

Unfortunately for Klein, zoning changes in Toronto (changes that were part of a very enlightened and successful strategy to slow urban sprawl) allowed yuppies to buy their way into her neighbourhood. This led to an erosion of her social status. Her complaints about commercialization are nothing but an expression of this loss of distinction. What she fails to observe is that this distinction is precisely what drives the real estate market, what creates the value in these dwellings. People buy these lofts because they want a piece of Klein’s social status. Naturally, she is not amused. They are, after all, her inferiors—an inferiority that they demonstrate through their
willingness to accept mass-produced, commercialized facsimiles of the “genuine” article.

Klein claims these newcomers bring “a painful new self-consciousness” to the neighbourhood. But as the rest of her introduction demonstrates, she is also conscious—painfully so—of her surroundings. Her neighbourhood is one where “in the twenties and thirties Russian and Polish immigrants darted back and forth on these streets, ducking into delis to argue about Trotsky and the leadership of the international ladies’ garment workers’ union.” Emma Goldman, we are told, “the famed anarchist and labour organizer,” lived on her street! How exciting for Klein! What a tremendous source of distinction that must be.

Klein suggests that she may be forced to move out of her loft when the landlord decides to convert the building to condominiums. But wait a minute. If that happens, why doesn’t she just buy her loft? The problem, of course, is that a loft-living condominium doesn’t have quite the cachet of a “genuine” loft. It becomes, as Klein puts it, merely an apartment with “exceptionally high ceilings.” It is not her landlord, but her fear of losing social status that threatens to drive Klein from her neighbourhood.

(from http://this.org/magazine/2002/11/01/the-rebel-sell/)

Thereby Hangs A Tail

Today I stopped by a dog shelter in hopes of taking a dog for a walk.  When I stepped in the door, nobody was at the reception desk.  Straight ahead, behind the double half-doors, 3 dogs stood looking at me with big questioning eyes:  "Will you take us home?"  Then, I heard scuffling from underneath the reception counter:  looked over the top and saw several dogs there, and immediately, the big brown one started giving me the word.  

"Oh, so you're the boss?"  This unleashed canine mayhem in the form of loud protests to the contrary.  But 2 over by "the boss" kept still.  The earsplitting barking went on for about 3 min. straight.

"Aha, I get it:  you guys're their 4-legged doorbell." (It's a big facility.)

 Finally, from the back somewhere, a female voice growled "QUIET!!!!"  All the barkers ceased, but immediately the 2 quiet ones started barking.  Go figure.

Confucious Say

Enraged at having been duped his entire life by mica, the fool derides all diamonds as dross.