A Man I can Understand

I tend to avoid parties because I can't think of any small talk to make.

-Richard Rorty-

Obama's Plan

Subject: Failsafe Plan

Let me get this straight.

We're going to pass a health care plan written by a committee whose

head says he doesn't understand it,

passed by a Congress that hasn't read it but exempts themselves from it,

signed by a president that also hasn't read it and who smokes,

with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes,

overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and

financed by a country that's nearly broke.

What could possibly go wrong?

interaction most basic

We have only one Orangutan family at our very small zoo: Father, Mother and (male) Child. When we arrived at the Orangutan exhibit of the Greenville Zoo one lovely Saturday afternoon, the family was dispersed and busy looking for food and grubs in the grass. Child alternated between foraging, yanking on its penis, and looking furtively at Dad. He had complete access to Mom; but Dad was the one he was truly interested in, whether to play with or to challenge. Eventually Child approached Dad, who then charged, picked him up, and to me, looked as if he is going to tear him apart. At this point Mom slapped Dad and took Child away. They resumed foraging; and I wondered what this interaction would have looked like had Child been female though I know all too well how that goes.

Child will grow to be a big male Orangutan soon. Interchanges between (male) Child and Father will no longer seem so quaint. And Child will have to be moved to go start his own family in some other human built environment where he too will have to stand up to his own son.

The Problem with the Obama Health Plan...

...is that Obama has no plan and is leaving it up to that cabal we call a Congress to come up with one... we be fucked.

back to school time in america (-;

blast it :

no such thing as choice (?)

shit,

are even our color choices

hardwired?

or is it just

In the Philosophy half Isle one mo' again

Yesterday I found myself in the philosophy section of the Barnes and Noble once more. Having found Rorty and his Critics last time, this time I was looking for Danto and his Critics with no hope of doing so since Danto sometimes falls into a weird category between art and philosophy; and the philosophy section of the Barnes and Noble, although rich, is not that comprehensive.

The Philosophy section of the store shares the isle with the New Age section, in which two women stood talking. And no matter how concentrated one is in their search for a book, the layout of the place does not allow for one not to hear what the people standing in a shared isle are saying. So I heard, and I listened; and I did so until what I heard made me give up on my search entirely.

The woman with the heavy southern accent was expounding on that already disproved myth that one can teach fetuses in the womb about Beethoven just by putting the womb close to a speaker from whence such music emanates. At that point I wondered if she even had a Beethoven CD in order to do that with her womb or if she was in the store to buy one. And then I fantasized about her buying a version of Beethoven's 5th with Von Karajan conducting; and wondered if that would turn her child into a Nazi? heh heh.

The woman went on to tell her friend about the tiny child she saw playing piano on Oprah's show and how his mother made him listen to Beethoven while he was in the womb. ... And I wondered what Beethoven's mother had to do for Beethoven to turn out as he did in an era without stereos. Did she travel around Austria to stick her stomach out at musicians? ...And why is poor Beethoven always the example for these crazy schemes? Why not David Bowie; he's way richer and far happier than Beethoven was. Or FDR's fireside chats, so that the fetus might one day grow to be elected president 4 times. Would a mother not rather have that for her child?...

The woman with a heavy southern accent concluded with, "That's what I want to do with my daughter, I want her to be a genius”. And here I was depressed about the state of our schools and the general lack of interest in education when the solution to the problem has been staring me in the face all these years. We just have to expose the wombs to culture!

I left thinking, “Why does the B&N philosophy section, which keeps shrinking, have to be sandwiched between the fucking New Age shit, and the seven isles of Christian crap!”. Ugh.

turn it up loud

He actually made disco seem ok.

...and then he tried to do art, and not everybody wanted to follow...

all the wrong incentives

Costs in all the wrong places; all the wrong people being rewarded by all the rest of us through the use of one more stupid government program.

Why is it that America just can't do government right? There are models out there of the right thing to do; we don't even have to invent anything!