Of Mouse and Eagle...

( this little ditty from a few years back, a tasty tidbit overlooked in the archives)

It was a favorite poster of my childhood, the hopelessly overmatched little mouse flipping off the bird of prey about to make a meal of him.  And the title was, of course, defiance. 

A few years later came a second edition, also dear to my heart.  Again the bird of prey with talons outstretched, and again the little mouse with his middle finger extended.  But this time the mouse's other hand is concealed behind his back holding a chrome automag, the pistol of all pistols.  Never mind such a weapon would outweigh the little mouse a hundred to one, or that the recoil would convert the tiny hero to strawberry jam… setting all this aside our mouse among mice has determined to stand his ground and with his final act make sure that damnable bird doesn't make it home either.  Defiance, second generation.

It has been many years since I have seen my mousy heroes.  But I see their philosophical offspring every day in the news, and I wonder what manner of mouse is preparing to take the field next in defense of a few crumbs and seeds for his offspring.  It is a pressing subject as I watch fate thrust so many back into the role of struggling for simple survival in a world dominated by the eagle's arrogant mass consumption.   

Mice do not eat meat, but they become meat to those who do. What hope has the mouse, forever certain of his place in a food chain where he is always the provider?  And those who eat meat consider this proper, and why should they not?  They were raised from hatchlings to know they are the elite, predators, the highest order of existence.  Just ask them.  The eagle knows no fear, no want.  There has never been a shortage of mice and rabbits and doves for it to eat.  But for the mouse there is never a shortage of threats:  the cat, the eagle, the snake, they are all about, silent, deadly, harboring an implacable and unexplained hatred for all creatures who do no belong to their kind.  The mouse suffers and survives only by stealth and procreation, litter after litter enduring poverty and fear hoping two from every litter of ten will live long enough to breed and continue the species. It is a rough world for the mouse.

The callous dismiss this as the balance of nature, and turn away.  They do not, they dare not, they cannot tolerate what emerges when these symbols are applied to the societies of the world… the results are terrifying beyond their courage to face.

It is, of course, the mouse with the pistol of whom I speak.  He was institution raised on dreams of dignity, he has struggled all his life to become smarter and stronger (for a mouse) in the hope of winning that prize of prizes.  For him it is such a shattering revelation to realize what he dreamed served no purpose beyond inducing him to become a tastier meal for the eagles of his world.  It is his despair that has driven the mouse to take arms, causes him to ignore the fact his weapon will be just as lethal to he himself.  C'mon, who ever heard of a mouse who could defend himself, wield any pistol, much less a magnum?  Ridiculous. 

But like all stories there is another side.  With the mouse's first and last shot for the first time death invaded the eagles world as it has always been known to the mouse.  He was just picking up a mouse to feed  to the chicks, and bang, he was killed.  Unforgivable.  No eagle should know fear, give second thought to his own safety when he hunts… it is his birthright to harvest without concern.  The eagles numbers are diminished by one, but far worse the innocence of the eagles consummate arrogance has been destroyed.

Does this little parable sound familiar?  It should.  It is how the United States has been behaving ever since the attack of  9/11, acting like eagles who have suddenly learned the hard way even a mouse can now do the mighty eagle mortal harm.  The eagles, of course, take little solace in the fact our mousy gunner was indeed turned into strawberry jam by the recoil, after all, he was only a mouse, and they don't count.

I must challenge you now: look at the news for a week or two and count how many mice are mentioned.  Some are groups, others individuals, some are nations, but all share in the mouse's world.  They all live in fear, and they all feel preyed on by creatures whose very existence is predicated on inflicting the suffering the mouse and his kindred have endured for time beyond memory.  Events say far to many feel a dignified death in battle a better choice than a life without even the hope of dignity in the eyes of the world.

Our world is full of eagles and mice, divided out not by religion or race or gender, no, the dividing line is the self righteous attitude all things are allowed the predator, the bloody heritage of one of histories great lies, the lie that might makes right, that war can make peace… a lie newly found by the mice.

Ours is a much smaller world than it was, and the very things that caused it to shrink have brought weapons capable of terrible destruction within the reach of even the smallest. The forces of science and technology have shifted the balances.  The eagle would do well to learn respect for this fact,  for victory on the field of battle can only assure him famine, the mouse has no such constraint. The eagle would do well to learn compassion as well, for when the competition is in endurance the mouse has the advantage, his culture has been honed by millennium of evolution to the task of surviving massive loss of life and continuing on.

Eagles, beware, for if you do not heed this lesson it will be the vultures who take your place.

Grinch’s Reprieve…

The clock crawled up to midnight, on the stroke of midnight the noise faded from painful to merely loud.  Not that you could hear the noise in the cockpit, the cockpit was soundproof.  Soundproof, and currently lit by more red and yellow telltales than green.  The board actually looked like the Christmas tree it was named after.  The pilot surveyed his world, spoke to his second in a tired voice.

“We got enough left to get this thing back in the barn under it’s own power?”

His second, as weary as he, didn’t need to read his panels to answer.  “Yea, barely, if we cut Hawaii off early.  Three and eight are still at rated nominal, I can coax sixty percent out of two and eleven for a little while.”

The pilot shook his head.  A three month run and they had two and two halves left out of twelve.  What more could they want from this contraption?  “Then I say pull the freaking plug and let’s go home.  Call the barn, tell ‘em we’re on the way.”

“I’m totally down with that idea.” 

He reached up, yanked a large red handle.  Outside the night went almost silent, almost dark, almost peaceful.  Almost.  The only thing disturbing the peace was the hiss of laboring hydraulics as the far end of Madison Avenue lifted three stories into the air, the road beneath settling down six more leaving a gaping hole in the heart of the city.  Two deep clunks resonated and for a long moment the night was startlingly silent. 

After a bit the normal noises of the city returned, a bit after that they were augmented by a long wail of clacking clanging grinding groaning sounds that echoed like the gates of hell being used for some macabre jungle gym.  The sounds traversed the night becoming softer as they went, softer and yet somehow more poignant for those who knew what they heard.  Most of the city dwellers only paid attention to them for a little bit, they’d been heard before.  Shortly afterwards again the hiss was heard and the deep clunks echoed, but everyone ignored those.  It was over.

In the cockpit the pilot took his hands off the control yoke, patted his console in salute.  “Damn, I didn’t think you could do it but you made it home all on your own ya’ old whore,” he said.  He said something similar pretty much once a year.

From behind him his second chuckled.  “Yea, by the skin of our teeth.  Number three locked up twenty seconds ago.”  The pilot shook his head, yanked a lever by the side of his seat.  A pressure hatch swished open, the pilot and engineer rode the drop plate to the concrete four stories below. 

Stepping off the drop plate a shiny flash of light where it didn’t belong attracted the pilots attention.  Four strides later he bent and lifted the tiny talisman, held it up for inspection backlit by the lurid neon fogs settling to the floor from the Mighty Merchandising Machine's greed and jealousy generators as they cooled.

“Sweetheart, how in the world did you end up here of all places?” he said, speaking to the mother and child pressed into the little foil nativity scene.

“Say what?” his second asked, pulling up beside him.

The pilot handed over the trinket, his second inspected it as he had.  “No shit.  This is entirely the wrong place for you guys.  Think I’ll take you home with me, see if I can’t find you a better place to raise your child.”  He slipped the trinket into the breast pocket of his jump suit.

For a moment the two men shared a smile as they shook hands.

“Merry Christmas Bob.”

“Merry Christmas Dan.”

***   ***   ***

Dedicated to WillieBob and DanDaMan... two of the most genuine Christians I've ever had the honor to know.

A Simple Truth...

Digging Out

Originally published April 2012

 ===bumped to the top in hopes one particular person will read it ===

I really love the works of M.C. Escher, I love the precision and the symmetry of them, the way he folds space without making it obvious.  But I like his work trapped on a page, where it is just something to look at.  I hate it whenever I find myself trapped within such spaces in a dream.  I never liked it when a dream would leave me in Escherville, that town belonged to my subconscious.  In the days when I'd practice lucid dreaming Escherville was the scene of many and a many a fight, usually my waking self aware within the dream in the same tactical position as Neo and Morpheus operating in the Matrix where The Agent can be anything, or anyone, where space itself can betray the laws of reality and turn against you. 

There was only one objective in Escherville, to survive and escape.  There was only one feeling in Escherville: a sense of dread and threat, the omnipresent eyes of the enemy.  It was never a peaceful place, even when it seemed absolutely idyllic that sense of dread clung to every contour, every shape.  No corner ever led to the road out of town, no door would open onto what you'd expect by what could be seen approaching.  Anything could be on the far side of any door, and anything often was.  I've seen Medusa's reflection behind some of those doors, I've stepped through to have the floor dissolve under my feet and show me eternity falling away below me.  I've stepped through to be greeted by beautiful nude sirens singing the terror of self will seduced away into nothingness.  I've stepped through to find myself in the court of the Vampire King, and shuddered in fear for my immortal soul to realize there were fangs in my mouth as well.  I don't think there is one perversion of the sexual that didn't manifest itself at one time or another, behind one door or the next.  Some revolted, others aroused, and all were dismissed... I knew early on better than to even think of indulging. 

So many times the stairs carried the sign saying Exit Above, so many times  the stairs become a trap, the ceiling solid, blood stained, the steps becoming smaller and smaller, compressing themselves into that ceiling and impossible to descend. I have no idea how many times I died in Escherville, awakened reincarnated weary and sweat soaked in the world of real life.  No idea.  Many, many times over the years.  But with the years the dying times came to be fewer and fewer, although it seemed as the count of my deaths decreased the terror of each enlarged in proportion. 

I've fought in Escherville: assault rifle, pistol, sword, grenades and molotov cocktails... each weapon had to be mastered to use against the unreal. None behaved as they do in real life.  Space is funny in Escherville, you don't always aim at the thing you want to hit.  Eventually I think the enemy came to respect me, it stopped sending violence against me, for the most part.  I had left a great many of it's monsters smoldering heaps of carnage on a street corner, reloaded and moved on.  They usually stayed dead.  Usually.

The image above is from one of my last tours in Escherville.  It was a summer afternoon, one of the deceptive tranquil afternoons that town is infamous for.  I conjured my favorite weapons, set my guards on psyche and soul, and strolled.  Of course no line stayed strait, of course turning no corner returned you to where you'd began, but that was nothing new.  The town was deserted, only the sense of those eyes watching. 

I came upon a track hoe, a large and powerful machine.  Apparently in Escherville like everywhere else if you want something underground you need to dig a ditch.  It was out of place, that machine.  Things out of place needed challenging, unchallenged they might reappear later as a threat.  I mounted the machine, the controls were familiar.  It sounded strong on start up, that perfect rumble of a powerful Diesel engine, the smooth surge of good hydraulics.  I started to dig.  And I dug, and I dug.  It turned into a tunnel soon enough, soon enough it was a problem keeping enough swinging room to empty the bucket behind me.  Soon enough the machine began to labor, I could feel the effort as the ground became harder, turned to rock.  Still I dug on, I was trapped in a tomb of my own making at that point. It was dig or die yet again.  The engine began to overheat, you could smell it, the air barely breathable, the O2 content almost to low for combustion.  The oil was boiling in the hydraulic circuits, the controls no longer smooth, the levers would kick back against your hands with enough force to bruise.  The tunnel began to climb, the ground became a bit softer, it was easier to make headway.  But the machine had spent it's strength, I knew if it stopped it would never start again. Where the bearings had been the crank was spinning on molten metal, the crank itself only a few degrees from melting.  It was the old terror come again.

But I had the victory, I did.  We broke through to the surface, the destroyed machine and I, still in the dream, still in Escherville just as the engine exploded into flames.  I leaped from the cab, not so surprised to find myself only a few blocks from where I'd gone below.  But I was very surprised when I shouldered my weapons again and walked away.  I could tell the roads would run straight this time, that I'd made Escherville conform to the laws of reality.  I've been back to Escherville a few times in the years since, but that isn't a problem, not anymore.  These days Escherville is my town. I own it.

Mars and Eros

=== originally published 2/13/2012===

The Beautiful Nikky Case
from one of her many Met-Art
photo shoots. 

Why Nikky? Why her, here on this post?  Because Nikky is a beautiful woman, and there is a sparkle in her eye that makes me hope she wouldn't mind me borrowing a bit of the beauty she's shared with the world to get this post in front of a few more eyes.  What's in this post is something I'm betting Nikky would understand, most beautiful women do understand it, in their heart even more than in their mind. 

This little ditty is an attempt to present how I see the world when I'm at my day job as a working philosopher trying to figure out why the world we see is in the sad state it is.  But rather than try and put this in pseudo-intellectual text I’m going to try a bit of a different tack and present the ideas in the form of a conversation. 

To those reading this I ask you set aside convention and conventional assumptions concerning society, hear these voices as the essence of the driving forces behind the contradictions and the irrationalities of the modern world condensed, personified, into single individuals who speak for their respective influences on those who live at our level of life, the individual human being.  They are collective entities, in truth they live one dimension higher on evolution’s chain of creation, but for now hear them as if they lived at the same level we do, we who are to them as the cells of our bodies are to us.  The first voice you hear will be ceMars, who will be answered by ceEros, to name them as might have the thinkers of antiquity.

+ + + + + + + + + + + +

No, I don’t give a damn what you say.  Birth control isn’t going to do it Eros, no way.  Gaia is carrying nearly seven billion now, she’s at limit.  And if she goes down so do we.

You’re right Mars, if Gaia goes down so do we.  But you know just as well as I that warfare will take technology down a long time before Gaia hits her knees, and  besides, everything you’re doing is just adding to the risk of a mass enlightenment.  Are you willing to risk that?  Risk going comatose again, living century by century again instead of second by second? Or risk the humans recognizing us for what we are?  Think about it Mars, think hard.  Are you sure you want to risk answering to them?

Mass enlightenment.  Don’t feed me that crap, that legend has been around forever.  It’s not going to happen.  Just look at them.  They’re hardwire programmed against it.  They can’t understand themselves, none of them can.  Anyway they try it I am me goes circular on them, cuts the bottom right out from underneath everything they use to define themselves to themselves.  Are you willing to risk that?  Living mounted on a population that’s stumbling insane?  Mass enlightenment is no friend of ours, and that’s a fact.

Yes Mars, we’ve argued this a million times.  No one of them can, but two of them can.  Not only do you know that you’re scared of it.  The differential perspective from the whole gender thing is plenty of parallax for them to establish a self confirming identity once they’re bonded in love.  I’ve seen it, and so have you.

He he he... yea, I’ve seen it.  Did you really think I wouldn’t notice what you were up to with the whole sixties flower power thing?  Did you really think I was going to let you reduce me to an occasional fistfight?  Some puppet living on a football field or a boxing ring?  No way buddy, I haven’t been around this long to fall to a forgotten minor status to nothing more than that.  Give it up Eros, both cePornography and ceReligion are working with me buddy, we’re allies in this, and they’ve got you solidly flanked on both sides.  They have just as much to lose as I do if you pull off some sexually based path to enlightenment in any major percentage of the humans.

Ah, Mars.  Arrogant as always.  I wouldn’t put to much stock in ceReligion if I was you.  They’d still have a solid base in an enlightened population working with ceCulture, in some ways more solid than working with you.  The Dahli Lama is already chipping around the edges of your alliance, and all it would take is one Pope to realize the truth of the matter and they’d flip sides.  Where would you be then?

I’d be fucked, that’s where I’d be.  But I’m not worried.  If, even if, just how do you propose to arrange pairing enough of them up in compatible love-bond?  Don’t feed me any idealistic bullshit, I mean starting from the totally ignorant and confused state they’re in now?  I don’t think you could do it, I don’t think they could become self defining near quick enough to keep you alive, I think you’d be playing checkers with ceCommunism in some dusty corner of a university library before half of ‘em made it, and my crew, me and mine, I think we’d be right back where we are now.  So answer me that, and you might get my full and undivided attention.

That’s the question, isn’t it.  Just how to go about pairing them off so they have a chance of outgrowing you.  Damn good question Mars.  I’ll get back to you on that one.

Ah, Tevye…

…it is a crazy world we live in, no?  The Czar has moved to America, and in America? In America they are building robots. Robots, Tevye, mechanical men. Soon no one will have to work so very hard, soon maybe we will all be rich men, eh?

===originally published 8/6/17=== [[brought forward as a consequence of noticing that every time someone publishes an article critical of technology (social media, specifically) that the comment threads are barren... not one tenth the commentary as on other articles. Looks to me like pretty solid evidence of a major CE (ceSocialMedia) defending itself with an implanted avoidance/repression mechanism of some sort... but... that's just me and I'm a long way from the middle of the curve]]

I love Tevye. Like Forest Gump he’s one of the strongest and gentlest of creatures possible to imagine, which probably explains why both of them are fictional. Still, look with eyes that can see and it isn’t hard to see bits and pieces of both men in many people.  There is even yet a great deal of nobility in the world. Not as much as there used to be, but still a good amount.

One of the many things I’m watching in relation to the supply of nobility are those robots. Well, not as much the robots as the onset of the “artificial intelligences” dear Dr. Strangefuck wants to have running them. I’m watching them because of what they’re going to do to humanity by ways and means unrecognized by most. Allowing for a couple of other things not recognized by very many people I’m afraid it’s not going to be pretty. But, probably better to start at the beginning.

Face it, the nerds of the world are in celebration. Their dreams are coming true. AI robotics and the rise of the benign techno-tyrants and hey, the nerds get their turn at the top of the food chain. Fair enough, every dog gets to have his day when the over decorated, sophisticate kinky, round healed horny soashwhore thinks he’s the one she wants for her toy. Enjoy her while it lasts kid, she’s very high maintenance. No, the rise of the techno nerd is not the focus of my concern.

The focus of my concern is akin to the income gap thing, how the rich just keep getting richer making the poor look even poorer by comparison. Money doesn’t play much if any part in my concern, although the competence and productivity that are the foundation of money’s value most certainly do. Both of those are at risk, of course they are, but even more than that is poised to fall into the abyss as a consequence of AI.

Societies have this odd habit of migrating in the general direction of what’s needed to maintain the internal delusions and self deceptions a society uses to define itself. If you’re looking for where a society is headed next this is a good thing to bear in mind. One of the most major players on the modern stage of social definition by self deception is partisan politics, and the onset of AI driven industry is going to have a massive, a huge impact on what they have to work with.

The collective entity cePartisanPolitical has two daughters, ceLiberal and ceConservative. Very binary, very us and them, and very-very saleable. One reason it is so easily sold is that both polarities facilitate something that no one will admit to and most people will secretly do: pick an attitude that lets them support their own ego by looking distinctly down on the remainder of their world. The daughters offer their faithful a radically different platform, rationalization, in support of this secret agenda, of course they do. But the net effect is the same which is how their mother keeps tabs on her daughters’ playtime and maintains her  position in the mix.

The conservatives? They’re very sporting folk, the ones who call themselves winners on the big playground of life regardless of their bank balance.  In large degree they’re the ones still trapped in the false doctrine of God favoring the righteous (read compulsive  traditional) with financial success, it shapes their attitudes about a great many things.  They’re not really a large portion of this concern.

Why? Because there’s only so far down you can push the floor of ceConservative’s world. Broke is broke, destitute is destitute. If you try and push that floor any lower, if you even push to many down onto that floor? People have a bad habit of protesting that with this little thing called a revolution. Those get bloody, and they’re terrible for business. They’ll be stone faced defiant in public, but all of those within ceConservative’s sphere of influence are aware of this, scared of it, ceConservative has always been a prime sponsor of the spy vs spy surveillance security thing so she can keep a close eye on that line, she pretty well has to.

No, where AI is concerned it’s ceLiberal that worries me.  You see, the way ceLiberal sells her version of  live looking down a long nose is by using socially sanctioned pity to pump up her hosts in comparison to those less fortunate. The rationalization she offers, and it’s a good one solidly founded in causal reasoning, is that of course you have to look down on them if you’re going to see those who need your help.

The demand of ceLiberal is that if you want to claim her  name you must make an apology for any success of your own by living to help those who didn’t climb as far up ceConservative’s ladder of success as you did. It goes without saying that ceLiberal is the younger daughter, her tactic is a superbly sanctimonious counter-attack against what ceConservative has been hustling for quite a few centuries.

It’s not a totally ignoble tactic, but of course it’s self defeating in the long run. If you truly help someone then there comes a time when that someone doesn’t need any more help. If you hang around trying to “help” after that point you’re not helping, you’re at best a nuisance, at worst an enabler. If you’re true to your life definition of living to “help” you have to go find someone else unfortunate enough to endure your pity in exchange for a hand up.

If there were only a small percentage of liberals this wouldn’t be much of a problem. No minor fraction is going to run the world out of people who genuinely need help. But when ceLiberal is hosted on a fairly high percentage of a fixed population? Under those circumstances running out of people victimized by unjust discrimination is a very real problem. 

When ceLiberal began challenging ceConservative on the political scene the unifying focus were groups comprising twenty, twenty-five, thirty percent of the population suffering legitimate injustices. Seventy five years later they’re down to groups of one percent, half a percent, tiny groups of people where the eccentricities of personality, sexuality, that put them in such a small group in the first place are going to attract unhappy attention regardless of the society they live in.

The standard answer for this has been for ceLiberal to periodically spend a cycle convincing the world that what wasn’t a problem  yesterday is a terrible pressing problem now. All their yammer and bully publicity tactics are focused for a time selling the idea that what was considered the normal consequences of some life choice yesterday are actually a foul and unjust discrimination today. That’s where ceLiberal is today… short a new demographic to pity. Sadly, over the years ceLiberal has shown a terrible habit of manufacturing her own basestock for the pity parties that unify her hosts.

The problem with introducing AI into this situation is that AI will in short order defeat one of the naturally occurring safety factors  on  the power of collective entities such as ceLiberal. Collective entities are mounted on human lives, the lifespan of the collective is tied hard and fast to state of the human lives that host it. One mitigating factor on that power is that regardless of how the humans orient  and arrange themselves and their attitudes to establish “this is me, I’m part of us, that is the them that I am not a part of” the sum competence of the species had to remain adequate to support life. Hungry people, cold people very quickly dump all social definitions (and a great deal beyond just those definitions!) to arrange a full belly and a warm place to sleep. Fact of life.

With AI in the game the constraint of survival is gone. The humans are free to define themselves by descending to depths of despair and depravity never before imagined without needing to worry about remaining sufficiently sane to keep the race alive, AI is in charge of that. With the physical removed from the picture what is left? Maturity, rationality, anything to resemble the ethical?  Of course. All those things which supported the sanity required to stay alive are no longer needed, disposable, each and every one will erode away into history as AI renders them obsolete.

Given ceLiberal’s panache for redefining  rational life into artificial pathos it’s transparent how AI could easily be ceLiberal’s Messiah and the Waterloo of her hated sister ceConservative. There has never been any bottom beneath ceLiberal’s need for something more pathetic to unify her hosts in ego supporting pity, with AI in the game finding something more emotionally pathetic will no longer be a problem.

In the long run this is the most dangerous scenario that has ever darkened my thought. A century after AI becomes a genuine power player I can easily see God Almighty changing the sign over the Gate of Souls from “Earth” to “Hell” and directing his attention elsewhere. There will be nothing noble left in the human race.

Looking Outside the Hull...

Number 58 in the series... Witch of the Deep.
All true spacers know her.

Easily Amused...

Bored outa my gourd... this be number 54 in the series.

Tomahawk and Tiger

== Originally Published March 2011==

Curtis P40E
wearing the colors of the AVG 

There is a story from just before the United States entered the second world war, a story that carries a very, very pertinent moral for our times, our political times. The story comes out of China, a China at war both with itself and with Japanese invaders. It is a story that involves Americans, both sides of America, the conventional and the astute, and the story goes like this.

You might remember the name Flying Tigers... remember the red shark mouth painted around the radiator cowling of the fighters, the shark eyes on the nose. Those fighters, both the aircraft and the men who flew them, were American mercenaries hired by the Chinese government to provide some attempt at defending their skies from the Japanese who in that day thought nothing of bombing their designated target and then shooting up every round of ammunition on the way home strafing civilians in the streets, in open air markets, in the fields. These mercenary defenders were under the command of a renegade American officer by the name of Claire Chenault, a brilliant aerial tactician who was out of favor with higher ranking officers for promoting strategies beyond his superior's comprehension. The American government and army alike were quite willing to let the renegade officer attempt to prove his theories of aerial combat in someone else's war and so it was with the tacit approval of the American government he was allowed to form the AVG, American Volunteer Group, the Flying Tigers to help defend our paper allies the Chinese. As a matter of pragmatic combat testing, since the aircraft would be under the control of American mercenary pilots, the Chinese were allowed to buy America's front line fighter of the day, the Curtis built P-40 upon which the famous shark mouth fit so well.

Claire Chenault was fully vindicated: his tactics scored the highest kill to loss ratio ever achieved, and did so so facing literally hundred to one odds. Likewise, the steed that carried his warriors into battle was equally proven superior. The sturdy P-40 could endure nearly thirty seconds within an enemy's cone of fire, because of massively superior firepower the lifespan of its' enemy within the P-40's cone of fire measured as only three or four seconds. So effective was the combination of Chenault's tactics and the P-40 that many came to doubt his reports. Within the military establishment his reports were squelched and hidden, likely costing many hundreds of lives later, but the Curtis corporation who built the fighter had no such politically based limitations… they wanted to see just how their product was holding up in what was obviously heavy, heavy combat. To this end they dispatched a senior engineer to visit China to personally validate the reports they were receiving.

The engineer made his way to China, arrived safely at a forward airfield home to an active squadron of the AVG. He was led out onto the field to where one of the P-40's was resting, a tired and battered machine awaiting the mechanics to heal it's wounds before returning to the fray. Leaning against the trailing edge of a wing was the twenty two year old hot-shot mercenary pilot whose mount it was. The engineer circled the aircraft, wide eyed astounded at the degree of damage it had sustained, pointing at the multitude of bullet holes and instructing his assistant to take notes: "put more armor there, and there, and there," he said, pointing out each place where the aircraft had been riddled by enemy fire. When this had gone on for several minutes the pilot, who was chewing himself a wad of tobacco, shook his head and spit on the engineers shoes.

"You goddamn fool," he exclaimed. "Put the fricken' armor where the bullet holes ain't! This one brought me home! "

The young pilot's wisdom was sound, so sound. In these days we are finding out just how battered, just how shot up the United States of America really is, just how much damage the magnificent work of our founding father's sustained turning back an assault on our freedoms, an assault on the peace of the world, an assault on the dignity and integrity of the United States.

We would be fools indeed to do as the amazed and befuddled engineer almost did: add more armor to what has already proven equal to turn back the enemies worst. The truly evil men who mounted this assault on the country they claim to love, these men are evil but they are not fools, and they will be back. We need to put more armor where the bullet holes are not, understand and analyze their motives and goals so we can strengthen those parts of our nation they'll attack next time. And doubt it not, there will be a next time in this conflict, just as there was a next time for the AVG when they were drafted as a unit into the United States Army after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

***   ***   ***

And... they are back with a horn section fanfare, no mistaking it.

The bird pictured might be a bit of a later variant than an "E" model, but memory serves it is wearing the colors of "Old Exterminator" (a rather celebrated hero of the Flying Tigers) and so I'll leave the caption as is to portray the character. You have to be a true student of military history to appreciate this one: as soon as the parts arrive to fix the water machine the "Tardation of:" series will continue.

Sunday Morning, Over Easy...

I stole the title. That's what the local rock 'n roll station where I used to live called their early Sunday morning show.  That's been a couple of decades back, I'm sure they won't mind. I'm equally sure they weren't really talking about how you wanted your eggs cooked, but... *grin* that's an entirely different subject.

No, this is just a Hearts of Space* free write ramble with news of my world.

I now live in a house with a white picket fence. A yellow house, with a white picket fence in bad need of a wire brush massage and a fresh coat of white paint. All in due time. The house sits on a third of an acre in a neighborhood of large lot homes. The view out the dining room window is snow capped Mount Blanca, look the other direction and the mountains are lower on the horizon, you're pointed in the general direction of the immortalized-in-song Wolf Creek pass. The mountains dominate the skyline in any direction you look.

There are now fifty some bales of straw in the back yard, arranged in rows and sucking down water as the first step in converting them into a vegetable garden. Soon enough they'll get dosed with fertilizers and covered with a layer of dirt, the dirt home to a bought-from-the-store jug of bacterials and buggies that turn dead straw and deader dirt back into workable garden soil.

Strange, but it's how the locals go about it. I'd never had reason, until now, to differentiate between dirt and soil. Synonyms in my head, but not here. Here what they call dirt is an overwhelming majority, what will actually grow something is called soil and it's a slow to build and highly prized minority of the landscape. Long and short of it? It's not my garden, this is one of Omega's long held dreams coming to reality. I'm just providing a bit of muscle, playing in the dirt to the intent of creating soil.

Needless to say, the garbage disposal in the sink is fond of this state of affairs, it isn't seeing a third the work it used to.

Here in the next few days a slingshot run down the mountain to the old place is on the agenda, waiting at the bottom is Omega's little Chevy truck, one of the toughest trucks I've ever met in a lifetime of working with such machines, currently resting in the competent care of my brother who took on the work of restoring it after two years of heavy, heavy service with essentially no maintenance at all. Duncan (the truck, named after the true hero of the Dune series of novels, Duncan Idaho) will be coming back up the mountain with a light load of things useful in the current setting... I have very much missed my chop-saw and table-saw, and the roto-tiller will be invaluable come fall when the harvest is over and the straw garden gets tilled in with the compost pile so the buggies can continue their work of turning dirt into soil for next year's garden.

The garden isn't the only thing being built. Omega, totally fed up with the local school's line of hooey, has pulled Beam out to home-school him. Even though it means having to establish a sanity ration of time away from the house I'm in support of the decision. The only thing the kid was learning from the public offering was that all he had to do to get the grown-ups to jump out their ass complying with his demands was do something stupid. Spoiled rotten, in point of fact, and the vast majority of it complements of the public schools. He'll have plenty of resources, both grandmothers are certified teachers, one a veteran of the specials who is filling out the paperwork to be Colorado certified as teacher of record (funny, how the most kick ass warriors in the land and the teachers who work with the most challenged running out to hopeless of the kids share that word... special).

I've been drafted to teach a unit on sailing ships... spinning off into geography and world trade and the mechanics/physics of how the ships work in the first place. Out of the assembled crew I'm the most competent in the technologies and the trades, the matters of fire and steel where the humanities have little traction. Beam's education will be unit based which means teach anything and everything that can be rationally associated with whatever it was caught the young one's interest. So yea, the Cutty Sark is a work of maritime art, but what was going on back in her day that got her built in the first place? How what why was this British Maritime Empire thing? That sort of education.

It is funny, in a fatalistic sort of way... I've fallen into my favorite quote from Albert: "For my total contempt of all forms of authority the fates have punished me by causing me to become one."  Oh, well.

Like I said a bit earlier, with Beam home 24/7 sanity time away from the house will be mandatory. So... I'm back in search of a congenial coffee shop where I can go back to being the character-in-residence regular to do the majority of my writing. No biggy, I always was more productive when my writing was the counterbalance for something else.

I think, I think I can be happy in this place... and that is a new idea for me. For me happy has always been somewhere over one horizon or the other, it's been as scarce in my life as soil is in this barren desert valley. For me happy has always been something I've promised myself is waiting at the end of the ride (think Frankie Lane, that classic country song Rawhide immortalizing the trail herd cowboys) . It's almost, hell, almost? It's scary to think that ride may be over.

Thinker's Watch

===originally published 9/14/14========

We thinkers are a mongrel lot, we come from all over, every beginning imaginable and some that most folks can't imagine.

What we all share in common is a watch, some period of time we set ourselves separate from our fellow man, back away from the conventions and comforts of our society to observe and perceive that thing we left behind, sometimes left behind hoping for a chance to return, other times left behind hoping it will never overtake our flight, but in all cases left behind that it not have the ability to unduly  influence our thoughts with trivial matters of immediacy.

Often enough we find ourselves as the painting shows: walking a high ridge by night, far above the warm valley of society, walking where the clouds kiss against the crystal cold air flowing over the mountains and the moon is searchlight bright against the vapors.  From time to time the clouds will open, light will fall through to paint the valley with moving shadow, from time to time the play of light and shadow will make naked the motives and the means, the reasons and the rationales of those who live in the valley.  It is those moments that justify the risk of walking such paths.

We thinkers are a strange crew indeed, but for myself I'd not have it any other way. The floor of the valley is to small and to well known for me. I must have the high places and the moonlight, the fog and the fear if I'm to keep my soul alive.

The Miranda Syndrome... or...

...we did it to ourselves.  I'm speaking about the ever increasing realization that a great many things that came into the common reality with the best of intentions have turned out to be subtle demons plaguing the human condition.

Miranda... she won't kill you,
not right away anyhow...*

A great many folks, myself one of them as often as not, hear some new panic tainted doomsday rant and dismiss the thought as just another group of californicated fruit-loops trying to make a name for themselves. C'mon, really. There's already fifty thousand possible ways for our world to come to a very bad end, do we really need another?

The answer is no, and yes, all in the same breath. No, we don't need any more panic mongering, we don't need anymore fragmentation, we don't need anymore "superiority-by-reason-of-avoidance" types deforming  all of reality trying to twist some single point into an explanation for all the world's woes. What we do need is a much better understanding of our  environment regardless if that environment is the one nature arranged or the one we arranged for starting from what nature provided.

The panic mongers often sabotage not only their own case but the case for human survival by painting everything in single point perspectives. No single point of anything is responsible for everything, not if it was of human origin or otherwise. As a matter of historical fact it is very difficult to say "this single point caused this deformation" because it is exceedingly rare for any single point to be the only new factor entering the environment at any given point in time. As history and science co-operate to provide a measure of truth it often turns out these alterations to the environment tend to counteract each other. Not that they are good things, nor even acceptable things, far from it, but rather that the badness they introduce is oriented in different manners such that the one tends to limit the impact of the other.

For a fairly simple example of this? Consider the conundrum of burning fossil fuels. It took over a century, but the relationship is clear: the so-called "greenhouse" gases are indeed an insulating factor on the environment, shifting weather patterns, warming the ocean waters that spawn the huge storms, elevating sea levels even while melting ice packs dilute the ocean's salt waters and threaten the foundations of the planetary food chain. Yet, having set this chain in motion a hundred some years ago, another fact presents: where the greenhouse gases are an insulator the soot and smoke particles produced in the same combustion tend to reflect sunlight and reduce the energy reaching the surface of the earth. Do they reflect enough to bring the energy system to balance? No, of course not, but without them the consequences of the insulation would have gone full critical well before the relationship was ever perceived. The soot rains out in fairly short order, a couple of years, but the CO2 is there until we figure out how to get it back. If we stop burning the coal and diesel before we figure out a way to actually reduce the greenhouse gasses we've just made the situation worse.

The point is that the contamination of our environment MUST be reversed in essentially the same order it was polluted in the first place if the effort is to succeed. Otherwise we're solidly trapped in the second order consequences that might well be just as detrimental if not even more damaging, second and third order consequences where we have only the most marginal of understandings. And gentle reader? This is a (relatively) simple example.

How is this a simple example? It is simple because it only deals with the physical environment, the environment external to the human creature itself. What of the contaminants which impact on the internal environment of the human? What of those which have the potential to fundamentally change humanity itself?

Such contaminants do exist, you know. Consider a semi-balancing pair of contaminants that have been around long enough for history and science to have produced  decent resolution concerning their consequences: the offsetting pair of tetra-ethyl lead and fluoridated drinking water.

The former, tetra-ethyl lead from days of high octane leaded motor fuels, was a valve lubricant introduced to allow the early automobile engines a marketable degree of longevity. The metallurgy in the early days just was not up to making exhaust valves that lasted much over 10,000 miles, the evaporating lead carried away enough heat for them to go 75 to 100,000 miles before they had to be replaced. By the time the science of metallurgy caught up to the application economics took over: why spend the money to change what is obviously working?

Back then no one noticed that the increase of aggressive and  violent behavior mirrored the increased concentrations of lead in the air: highest in the cities where the pollution was the worst, less in the countryside where the levels never reached the truly dangerous concentrations seen in the cities. Back then everyone blamed the violence on everything from overcrowding to a communist plot, the environmental factor of leaded air just wasn't on anyone's horizon. It wasn't until several decades after the auto and petroleum industries had mastered the challenge of producing high endurance mobile power-plants that didn't depend on a leaded fuel that someone noticed damn! look at that: the degree of urban violence is falling in exact proportion to the reduction of vaporized lead in the atmosphere! Who knew? No one.

Now, had it not been for the other element in play the socio-political situation of the 1960's might have been exponentially worse than it was. The revolution might have really gotten going big time resulting in the destruction of the United States as a free society.

Say what??!!??

It was in 1945 the first major city began fluoridating their municipal water supply to promote healthy teeth. The experiment produced outstanding results, a decade later fluoridated drinking water was the defacto national standard. The per-capita rise of those drinking fluoridated water was a very close match for the rise of lead in the air, and again, most concentrated in the big cities. Ok, so how did healthy teeth minimize urban violence leading to society destroying revolution?

It took science another thirty years to reveal the mechanism in play. As it turns out that while fluoridated drinking water does wonderful things for preventing tooth decay it equally does horrible things for brain health, in particular the health of the totally critical pineal gland (the brain's primary power regulator, the thermostat if you will influencing everything from memory to the efficiency of cognitive processes). Fluoridation promotes the accumulation of calcium (fluorine's natural enemy) in the pineal gland, and as the gland becomes more calcified it loses its' ability to efficiently control the internal functioning of the brain.

Net result? People become slower, duller, more susceptible to irrational suggestions, ever more unsure of uncertain memories. Not to mention shedding IQ points like autumn leaves in the first freeze. They have great teeth, and pretty much all they're inclined to do is watch (fill in your least favorite totally brain dead TV propaganda show-- I'd say FOX news, but that's just me) while.using those teeth to chew potato chips. They just flat do not have enough mental energy to be all that aggressive, much less stage a viable revolution without some  degree of lead in their ass (to bastardize an old saying favored by the country boys).

When you pull back far enough to put the big picture in one frame what you find is the net effect of those two totally separate and otherwise unrelated environmental factors from history make a perfect example of how mitigating one factor, without considering how it might be balancing another and equally dangerous second factor, creates second level consequences just as dangerous to the health of society as the first scenario.

To bring this ramble into the present day? Leaded gasoline went away in the 1970's, gone by 1980. But fluoridating drinking water is still in major play in the United States (but not in modern Europe... hmmmm) and still debilitating the mental capacity of the American people.

What changes observed as the one faded and the other continued might shed light on the full scope of the situation? Might the explosion of mental health issues be related to an ever more complex society hosting ever less competent individuals? Might that be an area to investigate?  Might the addictive and propaganda laden properties of the social media attempting to control the public mindset be harvesting benefit from the dulling of America, and effectively destroying a functional democracy in the process be a good place to look? Is the overall and undeniable drop of objective academic competence seen across the last four decades of American history perhaps a warning tell-tale flashing red in some obscure corner of some hypothetical dashboard?

I'll leave you to form your own opinions, but I will assert that these are the sort of observations leading to questions leading to full scientific investigation that must, MUST be mounted as the effort to restore our environment goes forward lest we, with all well meaning ignorance, finally and fully light the fuses of Armageddon in the United States.

Oh, and why is this little essay titled "The Miranda Syndrome?" The title comes from the sci-fi movie "Serenity" where "Miranda" was the name of the planet where they tried for a perfect utopia via better living through chemistry, and only succeeded in producing the ultimate human villain's to be found: the Reavers. If you know the Firefly universe I need say no more. Thank you for your time, and thank you for thinking about the situation while still we have time to think.

*(I never post any photo to the internet I didn't find on the internet... if you recognize your work and would like it removed just drop a note in the comment box... thanks)

A Contra-Social Soul....

Time and time again I feel this persona... the wanderer, the wayward, the displaced alien... as my last line of a desperate defense. Ask me why and I'll say I don't know, but I'm lying. I do know. The world, the world I see? I want to remain a stranger to that world. I don't want to be part of it, I don't want to be corrupted by it. I don't want what they call success, what they call fame.  I'd much rather remain me and go to my God the man I am than face eternity the gauche and gross collection of rationalized compromises the modern demands as proof of sanity. No. I do not want what they offer.

Half a hundred...

LaMH_50 The Birth of the Butlerian

Were I now a younger man
...astride the rising flood
Of sentiment set social cue
...contrive'd meme, bovine cudd..
I think that I should dress a blade
...and bless each lethal round
To serve the cause of freedoms cry
Where beings human hold their ground.

==originally published 2/27/17===

Of Dorps and Derps and Mystical Twerps …

…and things that go bump in the night.  Well, sometimes they go bump, but only when they’re not watching where they walk. Not like they’re the only ones who don’t watch where they walk and bump into things, including each other. Perhaps more on that later. I’m speaking, of course, about those who seek mystical council delivered via  the internet.

Why would that subject come to the front at this point in time? Because I’m currently watching a crew of mystically attired councilors work, watching them work the same way I used to watch a crew of quite nude erotic models work trying to teach the emotional components of sex-ed to the lonely hearts. Amazing, really, how much their tactics (the mystics and the models) really do have in common. Not so surprising though, really, when you consider that the first and largest thing they have in common is an attribute, an attitude, shared at deep levels by their clientele.

The thing their respective clientele share in common involves a deformation of a thought I’ve been spinning around for several months now. Which thought? The role of the self  having authority within the life.

It is a fact that rank, one’s position within the machine of society, is a thing awarded by those above while authority, the genuine authority that allows one to meet the demands and responsibilities of rank, is a thing granted by those of lesser station (within the machine) as reward for proven competence at providing the common good. This fact, seldom mentioned, is the point of my focus. Sadly, I’m ever more of a mind to believe there were those who not only internalized this thought but also exploited it for ignoble motive.

I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion perhaps the single most devastating attack on the American way of life involved an external force operating pan-social to degrade individual’s ability to be their own authority… in matters regarding where authority is granted for good and rational cause.

Consider the conundrum of those who’ve been deprived of enough internal authority-of-self to make a decision concerning granting authority externally. Think about how that lacking inflicts perpetual doubt and perpetual vulnerability to being manipulated by a totally undefinable fear of unnamed and unnameable consequences residing where the missing authority-of-self should be.

Think about that, but do it carefully. The entire subject is one giant psychological minefield to compare with the north end of South Korea. But, on the other hand, in such a context the efforts of the counselors in mystic garb make total sense. Of course it does, they’re the only ones who can operate in such an environment.

Why? Because when authority-of-self is short circuited any and every other form of mortal authority is transformed from a choice into an inflicted force of external compulsion sure to be resented, secretly denied, secretly resisted even at the price of personal well being. When the mortal has been rendered impotent what is left?

The immortal, of course: the Gods and Goddesses, the myths and mythos’ mankind preserves to counterbalance the power of the society. The authority of Grandmother Earth, as one of my favorite of these counselors calls her, is an authority which can granted without fear of repercussion from the mortal realms. After all, She is undeniably bigger than they are no matter who they claim to be. With her blessing the process of reclaiming enough internal authority to actually decide who should be an authority isn’t nearly so terrifying.

Except, of course, to those who need that terror to be maintained for political reasons, but that’s a subject for another ramble at a later date. 

Tales from a Road Rerun…

Time Machine... a photoManip expression of my state-of-mind.

I’m not sure the proper title of this shouldn’t be “concerning burning barns,” or some psycho-babble bullshit like “habituated repetition of former lifestyle,” which of course refers to the same syndrome. I did make it out, took a good long break and came to the conclusion I didn’t have anything better to do. So? Back in I am.

I’m talking about raising kids. I’ve done the art thing, done the writer thing, done the factory thing, done the mechanic-yard hand-delivery driver-handyman thing, over the years I’ve done a lot of things to keep a few coins in my pocket. But those things were never really self justifying, in one way or another they were all dedicated to A) keeping the family fed, or B) keeping me sane while feeding said family. Long and short of the matter? I’ve discovered that all of the creative things have faded without the counterbalance effort involved with kids. Strange, no? But apparently true where I’m concerned.

I counted it all up, and went damn… if I hammer this keyboard an hour or so a day for the next five years I might actually finish what I’ve got started. Time will tell if told we are. Catch ya’all later.