We live in a country where both sides in most political debates are usually wrong. It baffles me sometimes. It almost seems like the debates that are freely discussed in public are designed to give each side ammunition to discredit the other. Let's take the subject of political films and Michael Moore, for example. His movie "Fahrenheit 911", was designed to show audiences that George W. Bush is an incompetent president and that he demonstrated very weak leadership during the 911 tragedy. All of this was true. But Moore went on to paint a picture of our government, and particularly the Bush family, as being controlled by the rulers of Saudi Arabia. This distortion totally undermined the power of his film and gave conservatives an easy out to dismiss the whole shebang as boneheaded propaganda.
Now we have the Oscar-winning Al Gore, and his movie, "An Inconvenient Truth." As I understand it, the main point of the movie is that, unless we do something very serious, very soon about carbon dioxide emissions, much of Greenland's 630,000 cubic miles of ice is going to fall into the ocean, raising sea levels over twenty feet by the year 2100. The inconvenient truth is that there is not much scientific support for this doomsday scenario.
To be sure, global warming is frightening, but the only thing that can be said about it with accuracy is that we currently don't know how high the environmental price we are paying really is for our consumption of fossil fuels - let alone, specifically, how Greenland will be affected. We are driving down a road heading for a cliff in the fog, and we really have no idea how much farther we have to drive before we reach the cliff. That is scary, but it is a different message than "Stop the car right now, or we are all going to die!"
Gore's movie will ultimately give the morons who deny the reality of global warming weapons against more sober-minded politicians when they attempt to argue the subject with scientific facts. Inevitably there will be a temporary reversal in polar ice melting and those on the other side of the debate will declare victory. I suspect that in the long run, "An Inconvenient Truth" will do more harm than good.
If only the general public would pay money to watch the political documentaries produced by Frontline and Nova. Maybe if they hired Quentin Tarantino. I can see it now, Frontline and Quentin Tarantino present "The Naughty Nurses of Walter Reed Medical Center."
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Return of the Blog
I took four months off from blogging. I didn't plan it that way. I just got out of the habit and the next thing I knew, four months had gone by.
So, I am going to try to get back in the habit.
So here is my synopsis of the last four months:
October: I mainly remember these two kids that came by my house on Halloween and scooped up over half the candy in this big bowl that I held out. They would have taken all of it if I hadn't said "Hey c'mon!" and yanked the bowl back. The parent of these two kids was right there and didn't say anything. The whole thing was frightening beyond belief. Demons really do come out and roam the earth on Halloween.
November: The Democratic Party totally waxed the Republican Party in the November elections. I could not have been happier. Gridlock is good. Also, I ate some turkey somewhere. I can't remember.
December: I celebrated 25 years of continuous sobriety in December. That was cool. I gave this 6-year-old nephew of mine a Spider Man Playstation 2 game for Christmas and he learned how to run the controls in this amazing hyper speed. It was freaky to watch. It was expecially remarkable since the kid can't read the instructions. I guess that kind of concentration comes from not having a lot of other crap bouncing around in your brain. Or maybe the opportunity of pretending you are Spider Man when you are six is more motivating than anything I can imagine at 43. December was also the month I really got to know Gerri, who is now my girlfriend. I think it is cool that when people ask "Who is that couple over there?" and they get told, "Oh that is Chris and Gerri," they won't know which one of us is Chris and which is Gerri.
January: This January will be forever remembered for the beginning of my relationship with Gerri, and for the Ice Storm of 2007. Schools were closed for an entire week because of icey roads. I have never seen that happen before. Meanwhile, I drive a Jeep Wrangler so I drove anywhere I pleased, anytime I pleased. At times I was the only one on the road. I felt like Charlton Heston in Omega Man. I love my Jeep.
So, I am going to try to get back in the habit.
So here is my synopsis of the last four months:
October: I mainly remember these two kids that came by my house on Halloween and scooped up over half the candy in this big bowl that I held out. They would have taken all of it if I hadn't said "Hey c'mon!" and yanked the bowl back. The parent of these two kids was right there and didn't say anything. The whole thing was frightening beyond belief. Demons really do come out and roam the earth on Halloween.
November: The Democratic Party totally waxed the Republican Party in the November elections. I could not have been happier. Gridlock is good. Also, I ate some turkey somewhere. I can't remember.
December: I celebrated 25 years of continuous sobriety in December. That was cool. I gave this 6-year-old nephew of mine a Spider Man Playstation 2 game for Christmas and he learned how to run the controls in this amazing hyper speed. It was freaky to watch. It was expecially remarkable since the kid can't read the instructions. I guess that kind of concentration comes from not having a lot of other crap bouncing around in your brain. Or maybe the opportunity of pretending you are Spider Man when you are six is more motivating than anything I can imagine at 43. December was also the month I really got to know Gerri, who is now my girlfriend. I think it is cool that when people ask "Who is that couple over there?" and they get told, "Oh that is Chris and Gerri," they won't know which one of us is Chris and which is Gerri.
January: This January will be forever remembered for the beginning of my relationship with Gerri, and for the Ice Storm of 2007. Schools were closed for an entire week because of icey roads. I have never seen that happen before. Meanwhile, I drive a Jeep Wrangler so I drove anywhere I pleased, anytime I pleased. At times I was the only one on the road. I felt like Charlton Heston in Omega Man. I love my Jeep.
Friday, September 29, 2006
A Puzzle for Myranda
My lady-friend Lynda has a 7-year-old daughter named Myranda Bahr. Myranda is very precocious and she loves attention. From what I gather, her mom was reading my blog recently and Myranda saw that I was talking about Pokemon, the passion of her older brother. Myranda asked nicely if I would write a blog entry about her. I have a hard time resisting her, so to make it interesting, I decided to give Myranda a puzzle for her to solve: I scrambled the letters of another phrase to come up with this phrase:
Barry and Ham
Myranda Bahr, if you can solve this puzzle, write your answer in a comment.
Barry and Ham
Myranda Bahr, if you can solve this puzzle, write your answer in a comment.
Monday, September 25, 2006
Ernest Becker Part 2
Here are a few more quotes from Denial of Death by Ernest Becker regarding what it means to be neurotic:
"We call a man “neurotic” when his lie begins to show damaging effects on him or on people around him. Otherwise, we call the refusal of reality “normal” because it doesn’t occasion any visible problems. It is really as simple as that. After all, if someone who lives alone wants to get out of bed a half-dozen times to see if the door is really locked, or washes and dries his hands exactly three times every time or uses a half-roll of toilet tissue each time he relieves himself—there is really no human problem involved. These people are earning their safety in the face of the reality of creatureliness in relatively innocuous and untroublesome ways."
"But the whole thing becomes more complex when we see how the lies about reality begin to miscarry. Then we have to apply the label “neurotic.”"
"Generally speaking we call neurotic any life style that begins to constrict too much, that prevents free forward momentum, new choices, and growth that a person may want and need."
"It is one thing to ritually wash one’s hands three times; it is another to wash them until the hands bleed and one is in the bathroom most of the day. Here we see in pure culture, as it were, what is at stake in all human repression: the fear of life and death. Safety in the face of the real terror of creature existence is becoming a real problem for the person. He feels vulnerable—which is the truth! But he reacts too totally, too inflexibly. He fears going out in the street, or up in elevators, or into transportation of any kind. At this extreme it is as though the person says to himself "If I do anything at all…I will die.""
"We can see that the symptom is an attempt to live, an attempt to unblock action and keep the world safe. The fear of life and death is encapsulated in the symptom. If you feel vulnerable it is because you feel bad and inferior, not big or strong enough to face up to the terrors of the universe. You work out your need for perfection (bigness, invulnerability) in the symptom—say, hand washing or the avoidance of sex in marriage. We might say that the symptom represents the locus of the performance of heroism. No wonder that one cannot give it up: that would release all by itself the flood of terror that one is trying to deny and overcome. When you put all of your eggs in one basket you must clutch that basket for dear life. It is though one were to take the whole world and fuse it into a single object or single fear."
"The ironic thing about the narrowing-down of neurosis is that the person seeks to avoid death, but he does it by killing off so much of himself and so large a spectrum of his action-world that he is actually isolating and diminishing himself and becomes as though dead. There is just no way for the living creature to avoid life and death, and it is probably poetic justice that if he tries too hard to do so he destroys himself."
"Another way of looking at it is to say that the more totally one takes in the world as a problem, the more inferior or “bad” one is going to feel inside oneself. He can try to work out this “badness” by striving for perfection, and then the neurotic symptom becomes his “creative” work; or he can try to make himself perfect by means of his partner. But it is obvious to us that the only way to work on perfection is in the form of an objective work that is fully under your control and is perfectible in some real ways. Either you eat up yourself and others around you, trying for perfection; or you objectify that imperfection in a work, on which you then unleash your creative powers. In this sense, some kind of objective creativity is the only answer man has to the problem of life. In this way he satisfies nature, which asks that he live and act objectively as a vital animal plunging into the world; but he satisfies his own distinctive human nature because he plunges in on his own symbolic terms and not as a reflex of the world as given to mere physical sense experience. He takes in the world, makes a total problem out of it, then gives out a fashioned, human answer to that problem."
"From this point of view the difference between the artist and the neurotic seems to boil down largely to a question of talent. If the neurotic feels vulnerable in the face of the world he takes in, he reacts by criticizing himself to excess. He can’t endure himself or the isolation that his individuality plunges him into. On the other hand, he still needs himself to be the hero, still needs to earn immortality on the basis of his unique qualities, which means he still must glorify himself in some ways. But he can glorify himself only in fantasy, as he cannot fashion a creative work that speaks on his behalf by virtue of its objective perfection. He is caught in a vicious circle because he experiences the unreality of fantasied self-glorification. There is really no conviction possible for man unless it comes from others or from outside himself in some way—at least not for long."
"In this sense, what we call a creative gift is merely the social license to be obsessed. And what we call “cultural routine” is a similar license: the proletariat demands the obsession of work in order to keep from going crazy. I used to wonder how people could stand the really demonic activity of working behind those hellish ranges in hotel kitchens, the frantic whirl of waiting on a dozen tables at one time, the madness of the travel agent’s office at the height of the tourist season, or the torture of working with a jack-hammer all day on a hot summer street. The answer is so simple that it eludes us: the craziness of these activities is exactly that of the human condition. They are “right” for us because the alternative is natural desperation. The daily madness of these jobs is a repeated vaccination against the madness of the asylum."
“Psychology narrows the cause for personal unhappiness down to the person himself, and then he is stuck with himself. But we know the universal and general cause for personal badness, guilt, and inferiority is the natural world and the person’s relationship to it as a symbolic animal who must find a secure place in it. All the analysis in the world doesn’t allow the person to find out who he is and why he is here on earth, why he has to die, and how he can make his life a triumph.”
Back to the subject of Penn Gillette and his criticism of A.A. and the twelve steps: When Bill Wilson and Bob Smith started Alcoholics Anonymous, they shared Becker's insights regarding the inability of psychology to address the fundamental problem of alcoholism (or for that matter any other neurosis). Psychologists of that era were deeply frustrated with alcoholics. They understood that self-awareness was ineffective but they lacked the basic insight of Becker that any effective solution must be have a spiritual component or it is doomed to fail. More about this in my next blog entry.
"We call a man “neurotic” when his lie begins to show damaging effects on him or on people around him. Otherwise, we call the refusal of reality “normal” because it doesn’t occasion any visible problems. It is really as simple as that. After all, if someone who lives alone wants to get out of bed a half-dozen times to see if the door is really locked, or washes and dries his hands exactly three times every time or uses a half-roll of toilet tissue each time he relieves himself—there is really no human problem involved. These people are earning their safety in the face of the reality of creatureliness in relatively innocuous and untroublesome ways."
"But the whole thing becomes more complex when we see how the lies about reality begin to miscarry. Then we have to apply the label “neurotic.”"
"Generally speaking we call neurotic any life style that begins to constrict too much, that prevents free forward momentum, new choices, and growth that a person may want and need."
"It is one thing to ritually wash one’s hands three times; it is another to wash them until the hands bleed and one is in the bathroom most of the day. Here we see in pure culture, as it were, what is at stake in all human repression: the fear of life and death. Safety in the face of the real terror of creature existence is becoming a real problem for the person. He feels vulnerable—which is the truth! But he reacts too totally, too inflexibly. He fears going out in the street, or up in elevators, or into transportation of any kind. At this extreme it is as though the person says to himself "If I do anything at all…I will die.""
"We can see that the symptom is an attempt to live, an attempt to unblock action and keep the world safe. The fear of life and death is encapsulated in the symptom. If you feel vulnerable it is because you feel bad and inferior, not big or strong enough to face up to the terrors of the universe. You work out your need for perfection (bigness, invulnerability) in the symptom—say, hand washing or the avoidance of sex in marriage. We might say that the symptom represents the locus of the performance of heroism. No wonder that one cannot give it up: that would release all by itself the flood of terror that one is trying to deny and overcome. When you put all of your eggs in one basket you must clutch that basket for dear life. It is though one were to take the whole world and fuse it into a single object or single fear."
"The ironic thing about the narrowing-down of neurosis is that the person seeks to avoid death, but he does it by killing off so much of himself and so large a spectrum of his action-world that he is actually isolating and diminishing himself and becomes as though dead. There is just no way for the living creature to avoid life and death, and it is probably poetic justice that if he tries too hard to do so he destroys himself."
"Another way of looking at it is to say that the more totally one takes in the world as a problem, the more inferior or “bad” one is going to feel inside oneself. He can try to work out this “badness” by striving for perfection, and then the neurotic symptom becomes his “creative” work; or he can try to make himself perfect by means of his partner. But it is obvious to us that the only way to work on perfection is in the form of an objective work that is fully under your control and is perfectible in some real ways. Either you eat up yourself and others around you, trying for perfection; or you objectify that imperfection in a work, on which you then unleash your creative powers. In this sense, some kind of objective creativity is the only answer man has to the problem of life. In this way he satisfies nature, which asks that he live and act objectively as a vital animal plunging into the world; but he satisfies his own distinctive human nature because he plunges in on his own symbolic terms and not as a reflex of the world as given to mere physical sense experience. He takes in the world, makes a total problem out of it, then gives out a fashioned, human answer to that problem."
"From this point of view the difference between the artist and the neurotic seems to boil down largely to a question of talent. If the neurotic feels vulnerable in the face of the world he takes in, he reacts by criticizing himself to excess. He can’t endure himself or the isolation that his individuality plunges him into. On the other hand, he still needs himself to be the hero, still needs to earn immortality on the basis of his unique qualities, which means he still must glorify himself in some ways. But he can glorify himself only in fantasy, as he cannot fashion a creative work that speaks on his behalf by virtue of its objective perfection. He is caught in a vicious circle because he experiences the unreality of fantasied self-glorification. There is really no conviction possible for man unless it comes from others or from outside himself in some way—at least not for long."
"In this sense, what we call a creative gift is merely the social license to be obsessed. And what we call “cultural routine” is a similar license: the proletariat demands the obsession of work in order to keep from going crazy. I used to wonder how people could stand the really demonic activity of working behind those hellish ranges in hotel kitchens, the frantic whirl of waiting on a dozen tables at one time, the madness of the travel agent’s office at the height of the tourist season, or the torture of working with a jack-hammer all day on a hot summer street. The answer is so simple that it eludes us: the craziness of these activities is exactly that of the human condition. They are “right” for us because the alternative is natural desperation. The daily madness of these jobs is a repeated vaccination against the madness of the asylum."
“Psychology narrows the cause for personal unhappiness down to the person himself, and then he is stuck with himself. But we know the universal and general cause for personal badness, guilt, and inferiority is the natural world and the person’s relationship to it as a symbolic animal who must find a secure place in it. All the analysis in the world doesn’t allow the person to find out who he is and why he is here on earth, why he has to die, and how he can make his life a triumph.”
Back to the subject of Penn Gillette and his criticism of A.A. and the twelve steps: When Bill Wilson and Bob Smith started Alcoholics Anonymous, they shared Becker's insights regarding the inability of psychology to address the fundamental problem of alcoholism (or for that matter any other neurosis). Psychologists of that era were deeply frustrated with alcoholics. They understood that self-awareness was ineffective but they lacked the basic insight of Becker that any effective solution must be have a spiritual component or it is doomed to fail. More about this in my next blog entry.
Ernest Becker Part 1
Last week I caught the tail end of an episode of the cable TV show Bullshit starring Penn & Teller. Penn & Teller are members of the Skeptical Society, an organization that investigates claims of the paranormal and exposes them as, well... bullshit. It is a tradition that goes back to the days of Harry Houdini, when it became very popular to visit "spirit mediums" and chat with your dead relatives. Houdini exposed many of these people as con artists, and in this respect, Penn Gillette is continuing in the Houdini tradition.
The show Bullshit includes subjects like Scientology and UFO abductions, and it can be very entertaining to watch. Last week's show was about A.A. and the Twelve Steps.
Now this subject is near and dear to my heart and to watch it be attacked as irrational and religion-based by Penn Gillette, someone that I generally respect, stirred up a powerful desire in me to respond. There are a lot of things I would say to Penn Gillette in defense of A.A. and the Twelve Steps if I could. For example, there is the free market argument: If another approach was better, then why wouldn't IT be in 97% of the drug and alcohol treatment centers, and why wouldn't people be court-ordered to their meetings instead?
However, I believe the best argument I could make to a rational scientific minded atheist like Penn Gillette would be to introduce him to Ernest Becker. Dr. Becker helped me to see the exquisite rationality behind A.A.'s twelve steps and to my knowledge he never wrote one word on the subject. According to Wikipedia:
"Dr. Ernest Becker (1925-March 6, 1974, Vancouver, British Columbia), a cultural anthropologist and interdisciplinary scientific thinker and writer, came to the recognition that psychological inquiry inevitably comes to a dead end beyond which belief systems must be invoked to satisfy the human psyche. The reach of such a perspective consequently encompasses science and religion...
Because of his breadth of vision and avoidance of social science pigeonholes (given the independence of his thinking in the 1960s), Becker was an academic outcast in the last decade of his life. It was only with the award of the Pulitzer Prize in 1974 for his 1973 book, The Denial of Death (two months after his own death from cancer at the age of 49) that his enormous contributions began to be recognized."
I reread much of "The Denial of Death" over the weekend and I copied down a few quotes that I wish to include in my blog. First here are some choice quotes from Dr. Becker about the nature of the problem, i.e. why we are all crazy:
"...the essence of man is really his paradoxical nature, the fact that he is half animal and half symbolic."
"We might call this existential paradox the condition of individuality with finitude. Man has a symbolic identity that brings him sharply out of nature. He is a symbolic self, a creature with a name, a life history. He is a creator with a mind that soars out to speculate about atoms and infinity, who can place himself imaginatively at a point in space and contemplate bemusedly his own planet. This immense expansion, this dexterity, this ethereality, this self-consciousness gives to man literally the status of a small god in nature, as the Renaissance thinkers knew."
"Yet, at the same time, as the Eastern sages also knew, man is a worm and food for worms. This is the paradox: he is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries gill marks to prove it. His body is a material fleshy casing that is alien to him in many ways—-the strangest and most repugnant way being that it aches and bleeds and will decay and die. Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with."
"I believe that those who speculate that a full apprehension of man’s condition would drive him insane are right, quite literally right..."
"[As Pascal put it] “Men are so necessarily mad that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.” Necessarily because the existential dualism makes an impossible situation, an excruciating dilemma. Mad because, as we shall see, everything that man does in his symbolic world is an attempt to deny and overcome his grotesque fate. He literally drives himself into a blind obliviousness with social games, psychological tricks, personal preoccupations so far removed from the reality of his situation that they are forms of madness—agreed madness, shared madness, disguised and dignified madness, but madness all the same."
"The individual has to protect himself against the world, and he can do this only as any other animal would; by narrowing down the world, shutting off experience, developing an obliviousness to both the terrors of the world and to his own anxieties. Otherwise he would be crippled for action..."
"...to function normally, man has to achieve from the beginning a serious constriction of the world and of himself. We can say that the essence of normality is the refusal of reality. What we call neurosis enters precisely at this point: Some people have more trouble with their lies than others. The world is too much with them, and the techniques that they have developed for holding it at bay and cutting it down to size finally begin to choke the person himself. This is neurosis in a nutshell: the miscarriage of clumsy lies about reality."
"But we can also see at once that there is no line between normal and neurotic, as we all lie and are all bound in some ways by the lies. Neurosis is, then, something we all share; it is universal..."
In my next blog entry I will provide some Becker quotes on what it means to be really neurotic, in other words: neurotic in the eyes of our neurotic society. Alcoholics and drug addicts certainly fall into this category. Then I will provide some Becker quotes about the solution to the problem, and my own thoughts about how the twelve steps of A.A. fit in this picture.
The show Bullshit includes subjects like Scientology and UFO abductions, and it can be very entertaining to watch. Last week's show was about A.A. and the Twelve Steps.
Now this subject is near and dear to my heart and to watch it be attacked as irrational and religion-based by Penn Gillette, someone that I generally respect, stirred up a powerful desire in me to respond. There are a lot of things I would say to Penn Gillette in defense of A.A. and the Twelve Steps if I could. For example, there is the free market argument: If another approach was better, then why wouldn't IT be in 97% of the drug and alcohol treatment centers, and why wouldn't people be court-ordered to their meetings instead?
However, I believe the best argument I could make to a rational scientific minded atheist like Penn Gillette would be to introduce him to Ernest Becker. Dr. Becker helped me to see the exquisite rationality behind A.A.'s twelve steps and to my knowledge he never wrote one word on the subject. According to Wikipedia:
"Dr. Ernest Becker (1925-March 6, 1974, Vancouver, British Columbia), a cultural anthropologist and interdisciplinary scientific thinker and writer, came to the recognition that psychological inquiry inevitably comes to a dead end beyond which belief systems must be invoked to satisfy the human psyche. The reach of such a perspective consequently encompasses science and religion...
Because of his breadth of vision and avoidance of social science pigeonholes (given the independence of his thinking in the 1960s), Becker was an academic outcast in the last decade of his life. It was only with the award of the Pulitzer Prize in 1974 for his 1973 book, The Denial of Death (two months after his own death from cancer at the age of 49) that his enormous contributions began to be recognized."
I reread much of "The Denial of Death" over the weekend and I copied down a few quotes that I wish to include in my blog. First here are some choice quotes from Dr. Becker about the nature of the problem, i.e. why we are all crazy:
"...the essence of man is really his paradoxical nature, the fact that he is half animal and half symbolic."
"We might call this existential paradox the condition of individuality with finitude. Man has a symbolic identity that brings him sharply out of nature. He is a symbolic self, a creature with a name, a life history. He is a creator with a mind that soars out to speculate about atoms and infinity, who can place himself imaginatively at a point in space and contemplate bemusedly his own planet. This immense expansion, this dexterity, this ethereality, this self-consciousness gives to man literally the status of a small god in nature, as the Renaissance thinkers knew."
"Yet, at the same time, as the Eastern sages also knew, man is a worm and food for worms. This is the paradox: he is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries gill marks to prove it. His body is a material fleshy casing that is alien to him in many ways—-the strangest and most repugnant way being that it aches and bleeds and will decay and die. Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with."
"I believe that those who speculate that a full apprehension of man’s condition would drive him insane are right, quite literally right..."
"[As Pascal put it] “Men are so necessarily mad that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.” Necessarily because the existential dualism makes an impossible situation, an excruciating dilemma. Mad because, as we shall see, everything that man does in his symbolic world is an attempt to deny and overcome his grotesque fate. He literally drives himself into a blind obliviousness with social games, psychological tricks, personal preoccupations so far removed from the reality of his situation that they are forms of madness—agreed madness, shared madness, disguised and dignified madness, but madness all the same."
"The individual has to protect himself against the world, and he can do this only as any other animal would; by narrowing down the world, shutting off experience, developing an obliviousness to both the terrors of the world and to his own anxieties. Otherwise he would be crippled for action..."
"...to function normally, man has to achieve from the beginning a serious constriction of the world and of himself. We can say that the essence of normality is the refusal of reality. What we call neurosis enters precisely at this point: Some people have more trouble with their lies than others. The world is too much with them, and the techniques that they have developed for holding it at bay and cutting it down to size finally begin to choke the person himself. This is neurosis in a nutshell: the miscarriage of clumsy lies about reality."
"But we can also see at once that there is no line between normal and neurotic, as we all lie and are all bound in some ways by the lies. Neurosis is, then, something we all share; it is universal..."
In my next blog entry I will provide some Becker quotes on what it means to be really neurotic, in other words: neurotic in the eyes of our neurotic society. Alcoholics and drug addicts certainly fall into this category. Then I will provide some Becker quotes about the solution to the problem, and my own thoughts about how the twelve steps of A.A. fit in this picture.
Monday, September 18, 2006
UFOs at the Zoo
Friday night was a very special night here in Oklahoma City. Our very own Flaming Lips played a magical concert at the Zoo Amphitheater. The Lips also took the opportunity to film their upcoming live DVD during that performance. I had a fantastic time as did everyone I knew that attended. In a prior article on this blog, I mentioned that I had met Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips and that we had several mutual friends. Well, in case you doubted me, here we are hanging out after the show.
More Future Disasters
The editors of Popular Science this month chose to commemorate the first anniversary of Katrina by listing the top 5 disasters that the U.S. can expect in the future. (I guess great minds think alike.) In my earlier article, I missed one completely and it is this:
Glacial melting in Greenland causes a freshwater cap in the North Atlantic. This stalls the circulation of warm water from the South and shifts the climate. All of civilization bordering the North Atlantic would be severely affected. The Eastern half of the U.S. and Canada along with all of Europe would experience a little ice age. Such a shift happened in the period 1550 to 1850. The worst part of this disaster is that if it only lasts 300 years like the last time we'll be lucky.
Also, I mentioned the possiblity of a big Tsunami hitting the U.S., but not mentioning La Palma was my bad. The following two paragraphs are straight from Wikipedia.
"La Palma is not only the steepest island in the world but has also been the most volcanically active of the Canary Isles in the past 500 years. The last few eruptions in the ridge were in 1470, 1585, 1646, 1677, 1712, 1949, and 1971. During the 1949 eruption, a two kilometer-long fracture opened and parts of the western half of the Cumbre Vieja ridge slipped several meters downwards towards the Atlantic Ocean. The fracture can quite easily be seen to this day. It is believed that this process was driven by the pressure caused by the rising magma heating and vaporizing water trapped within the structure of the island.
Scientists warn that in some future eruption within the next few thousand years the western half of the island, approximately 500km3 of land weighing an estimated 500 billion tons, will slide into the ocean -- a so called "lateral collapse". Should that happen, the resulting megatsunami would reach local heights of well over 300 meters and the speed of a jetliner, reaching the African coast in three hours, the coast of England in five, and the eastern seaboard of North America in eight. This could greatly damage if not completely destroy cities along the United States' east coast, such as New York, Boston, Washington, DC, Norfolk, Virginia, and Miami with 25 to 30m high waves."
Now how cool is that?
Finally, I also failed to adequately cover the potential devastation from a hurricane hitting the city of Miami directly. This oversite was natural given that I am a life-long OU football fan and I have an aversion to anything involving Miami Hurricanes.
Glacial melting in Greenland causes a freshwater cap in the North Atlantic. This stalls the circulation of warm water from the South and shifts the climate. All of civilization bordering the North Atlantic would be severely affected. The Eastern half of the U.S. and Canada along with all of Europe would experience a little ice age. Such a shift happened in the period 1550 to 1850. The worst part of this disaster is that if it only lasts 300 years like the last time we'll be lucky.
Also, I mentioned the possiblity of a big Tsunami hitting the U.S., but not mentioning La Palma was my bad. The following two paragraphs are straight from Wikipedia.
"La Palma is not only the steepest island in the world but has also been the most volcanically active of the Canary Isles in the past 500 years. The last few eruptions in the ridge were in 1470, 1585, 1646, 1677, 1712, 1949, and 1971. During the 1949 eruption, a two kilometer-long fracture opened and parts of the western half of the Cumbre Vieja ridge slipped several meters downwards towards the Atlantic Ocean. The fracture can quite easily be seen to this day. It is believed that this process was driven by the pressure caused by the rising magma heating and vaporizing water trapped within the structure of the island.
Scientists warn that in some future eruption within the next few thousand years the western half of the island, approximately 500km3 of land weighing an estimated 500 billion tons, will slide into the ocean -- a so called "lateral collapse". Should that happen, the resulting megatsunami would reach local heights of well over 300 meters and the speed of a jetliner, reaching the African coast in three hours, the coast of England in five, and the eastern seaboard of North America in eight. This could greatly damage if not completely destroy cities along the United States' east coast, such as New York, Boston, Washington, DC, Norfolk, Virginia, and Miami with 25 to 30m high waves."
Now how cool is that?
Finally, I also failed to adequately cover the potential devastation from a hurricane hitting the city of Miami directly. This oversite was natural given that I am a life-long OU football fan and I have an aversion to anything involving Miami Hurricanes.
Monday, September 11, 2006
A Tale of International Business
My girlfriend has a son that is totally into Pokémon. So, when I stumbled across an article about Pokémon at Wikipedia.com, I was curious enough to read it. The most interesting fact I learned about the Nintendo multi-billion dollar media franchise was that even though it is Japanese in origin, the name “Pokémon” is not Japanese, and Pokémon was not the original name under which the product was marketed in the United States. Originally, the name for the game was “Pocket Monsters.”
I think I know why Nintendo chose to change the name. It was to avoid the possible confusion that might result when overhearing this conversation in the back of a grade-school classroom:
“Dude, show Billy your Pocket Monster. I have been telling him how awesome it is ever since you showed it to me yesterday.”
“No way. If the teacher sees me playing with it, she’ll want to hold it until school gets out.”
Can you imagine the conversation about the name change decision in the Nintendo boardroom.
“Tajiri-san, we have to change the name of our Poketto Monsutā product in the English-speaking market. It will cost 30 million yen, and set our marketing plans back 18 months.”
“I don’t understand. Why must we do this?”
“Tajira-san, over 15% of our English-speaking focus group identified the English translation of Pocketto Monsutā as a possible slang term for a penis.”
"Surely, you are joking."
"No sir, I am very serious. The term is not commonly used in America. However, it is close enough to the commonly used penis metaphors: 'pocket rocket' and 'pocket weasel' that the interpretation cannot be avoided. The problem seems to be with the word pocket."
“I will never understand how these barbarians ended up running the planet.”
I think I know why Nintendo chose to change the name. It was to avoid the possible confusion that might result when overhearing this conversation in the back of a grade-school classroom:
“Dude, show Billy your Pocket Monster. I have been telling him how awesome it is ever since you showed it to me yesterday.”
“No way. If the teacher sees me playing with it, she’ll want to hold it until school gets out.”
Can you imagine the conversation about the name change decision in the Nintendo boardroom.
“Tajiri-san, we have to change the name of our Poketto Monsutā product in the English-speaking market. It will cost 30 million yen, and set our marketing plans back 18 months.”
“I don’t understand. Why must we do this?”
“Tajira-san, over 15% of our English-speaking focus group identified the English translation of Pocketto Monsutā as a possible slang term for a penis.”
"Surely, you are joking."
"No sir, I am very serious. The term is not commonly used in America. However, it is close enough to the commonly used penis metaphors: 'pocket rocket' and 'pocket weasel' that the interpretation cannot be avoided. The problem seems to be with the word pocket."
“I will never understand how these barbarians ended up running the planet.”
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Future Disasters
This week marked the anniversary of Katrina, and I thought it would be fun to make a list of all the disasters that I have read about that are certain to happen in the United States of America sometime in the future.
1. A major hurricane hits the City of New Orleans causing it to be flooded and resulting in hundreds of thousands of displaced residents. Done. Could it happen again? Damn straight.
2. Mount Rainier erupts. Rainier is covered with ice and the stability of the volcano is constantly being eroded by subsurface water. So when it erupts, it tends to collapse like Mt. St. Helens in a huge avalanche that flows into the sea. The last really big one was 5,000 years ago. If an eruption like that happened today, the towns of Tacoma, Payallup and Orting would be wiped out by pyroclastic mud flows. South Seattle would also be severely damaged. The good news is that Bill Gates would be likely to experience lengthy power and communications outages proving that there really is such a thing as karma.
3. A major earthquake along the New Madrid seismic zone wipes out the city of Memphis, causes major damage to St. Louis, disrupting telecommunications throughout the country and giving new meaning to the phrase Rocking at Graceland. The good news would be that the staff at the Memphis Holiday Inn Downtown would likely be casualties.
4. I like this one. A massive solar flare hits Earth just right causing the Earth’s magnetosphere to be temporarily disrupted. Satellites get fried. Astronauts in orbit get lethal doses of radiation (so sad). Jet airliners will drop out of the sky like DDT-soaked houseflies because their electronics become crispy-fried, marking the beginning of a new era of high-speed ocean travel. Most of the world is plunged into darkness because power grids are also crispy-fried. And here is the best part, the power outages last for months. The good news is that billions of people will discover for the very first time that there are stars in the sky at night.
5. An asteroid hits the planet. We all know this scenario. Supersonic shockwaves, tremendous heat. Mass extinction. Blah blah blah.
6. A big California quake hits S.F. or L.A. Blah³.
7. A BF rock hits the planet. This happens far more often than most people think. Rocks about 10 meters in size hit the atmosphere and blow up with the force of an atomic bomb blast about once a year. However, they are so high up, that their impact is not even felt on the ground. Much bigger rocks, say 100 meters across, blow up with hydrogen bomb type energies. They wipe out stuff on the ground. It appears to have last happened in Tunguska, Siberia in 1908. If that happened today, it would look to everyone just exactly like a high altitude hydrogen bomb detonation. I don’t think that would be good.
8. Bird flu becomes contagious between humans. Blah etc. etc.
9. Huge underwater landslide causes massive tidal wave to hit US. Most likely this would hit someplace like Tacoma, Washington. So if Mt. Rainier erupted at the exact same time, that would be really cool.
10. Here is another of my favorites: The Super Volcano known as the Yellowstone Caldera erupts causing most of North America to be uninhabitable. There are other super volcanoes and any of them stepping on the throttle would make it bad for all of us, but I prefer to talk about our own little time bomb underneath Yellowstone National Park. It’s last major eruption was 640,000 years ago (give or take). It made Mt. Saint Helens look like one of those little wads of paper you throw on the sidewalk so it pops. It blanketed most of North America with volcanic ash. If this were to happen today, the good news is that the war by the U.S. to annex Mexico, Central and South America should be fairly short.
I am sure I’ll think of a few others. Have a nice day.
1. A major hurricane hits the City of New Orleans causing it to be flooded and resulting in hundreds of thousands of displaced residents. Done. Could it happen again? Damn straight.
2. Mount Rainier erupts. Rainier is covered with ice and the stability of the volcano is constantly being eroded by subsurface water. So when it erupts, it tends to collapse like Mt. St. Helens in a huge avalanche that flows into the sea. The last really big one was 5,000 years ago. If an eruption like that happened today, the towns of Tacoma, Payallup and Orting would be wiped out by pyroclastic mud flows. South Seattle would also be severely damaged. The good news is that Bill Gates would be likely to experience lengthy power and communications outages proving that there really is such a thing as karma.
3. A major earthquake along the New Madrid seismic zone wipes out the city of Memphis, causes major damage to St. Louis, disrupting telecommunications throughout the country and giving new meaning to the phrase Rocking at Graceland. The good news would be that the staff at the Memphis Holiday Inn Downtown would likely be casualties.
4. I like this one. A massive solar flare hits Earth just right causing the Earth’s magnetosphere to be temporarily disrupted. Satellites get fried. Astronauts in orbit get lethal doses of radiation (so sad). Jet airliners will drop out of the sky like DDT-soaked houseflies because their electronics become crispy-fried, marking the beginning of a new era of high-speed ocean travel. Most of the world is plunged into darkness because power grids are also crispy-fried. And here is the best part, the power outages last for months. The good news is that billions of people will discover for the very first time that there are stars in the sky at night.
5. An asteroid hits the planet. We all know this scenario. Supersonic shockwaves, tremendous heat. Mass extinction. Blah blah blah.
6. A big California quake hits S.F. or L.A. Blah³.
7. A BF rock hits the planet. This happens far more often than most people think. Rocks about 10 meters in size hit the atmosphere and blow up with the force of an atomic bomb blast about once a year. However, they are so high up, that their impact is not even felt on the ground. Much bigger rocks, say 100 meters across, blow up with hydrogen bomb type energies. They wipe out stuff on the ground. It appears to have last happened in Tunguska, Siberia in 1908. If that happened today, it would look to everyone just exactly like a high altitude hydrogen bomb detonation. I don’t think that would be good.
8. Bird flu becomes contagious between humans. Blah etc. etc.
9. Huge underwater landslide causes massive tidal wave to hit US. Most likely this would hit someplace like Tacoma, Washington. So if Mt. Rainier erupted at the exact same time, that would be really cool.
10. Here is another of my favorites: The Super Volcano known as the Yellowstone Caldera erupts causing most of North America to be uninhabitable. There are other super volcanoes and any of them stepping on the throttle would make it bad for all of us, but I prefer to talk about our own little time bomb underneath Yellowstone National Park. It’s last major eruption was 640,000 years ago (give or take). It made Mt. Saint Helens look like one of those little wads of paper you throw on the sidewalk so it pops. It blanketed most of North America with volcanic ash. If this were to happen today, the good news is that the war by the U.S. to annex Mexico, Central and South America should be fairly short.
I am sure I’ll think of a few others. Have a nice day.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
