Peculiar:

Don't know when you'll get this post, since it sounded like you were heading right back out again, but I agree with most of what you said. I may have come down hard on the plot since, for me, that's the easiest element to analyse.

But Mozart's music is, once more for me, too smart. I'm led everywhere, without room to manuever. The emotions I'm to feel, the insights I'm to have, all are arranged neatly for me and presented on a platter. I find it more satisfying to struggle with the music, insofar as my frailties in that arena will allow it.

'Per pieta' is the exception here; the sense of spiralling away from simplicity is physically disorienting as one listens. SFO's Fiordiligi went off-tone enough that I could hear it towards the end, which didn't help (recorded versus live is a conversation for another time), but I still found it astonishingly lovely and affecting, while much of the rest of the music was affected.

But you're absolutely right about the operatic outlook of the characters, and that the music is perfect for them. Unfortunately, on the surface the characters remind me of, well, the people in The Anniversary Party, with the exceptions of Fiordiligi and Ferrando. They both seem sincere, and I kept hoping through their duet that they would end up together. Alas, not to be, for the da Pontian gods of convenience decree that all must end wrapped tightly and bound with a neat bow of good humor. This may be regret of this contrivance that led me to ascribe emptiness to their moments together, which is certainly da Ponte's invention. Indeed, all of the characters are deeper in the music than anywhere else, something which is true of all Mozart's operas I've encountered. It may simply have been too much work for any librettist to keep up with this appalling gifted genius.

Great to hear from you! If you get a chance (and I know you're out nearly all the time, but still), send me any links you'd like for your section, and categories, etc. for them. Or just put them up yourself, I suppose.

Odious has finally baited me into surfacing to respond briefly to his Cosi fan tutte post (sorry about the bad orthography, but I don’t have an html reference here in Frogtown, Utah). I agree with many of his statements, but I place the blame for the opera’s weaknesses squarely on da Ponte; Mozart develops the characters musically well eyond the degree one would think possible from the libretto. In my view, the principle interest in the opera is in the interplay between music and psychology in characters who possess a fundamentally operatic outlook on life and love. "Come scoglio" and "Un’ aura amorosa" are prime examples of operatic grandstanding and musical affectation, but that does not mean the emotions behind them are necessarily empty or unreal. The far more convincing "Per pieta, ben mio, perdona" begins with a seemingly earnest simplicity, but at the repetition of the first stanza Fiordiligi cannot resist her singer’s temptation to ornament the melody, and thereafter she gets carried away until the end of the aria is full of the wide intervals, trills, and arpeggios which characterize her role in general and "Come scoglio" in particular. She and Ferrando have a propensity, like so many of us, to get caught up in the tempo and key signature of a dramatic moment; and at last they cannot resist the temptations of a duet in "Fra gli amplessi". But such moments are not necessarily empty or meaningless; we mostly tend to ascribe emptiness only to those of them which we later come to regret.

The opera’s great weakness is certainly the Act II finale, which I have never found anywhere near as exciting, moving, or fun as the finale of the first act. I agree with the common critical view that the libretto to Cosi was unworthy of Mozart. All the complexity and awkwardness of the characters’ relationships are strait-jacketed back into the status quo, and the composer’s genius is denied any opportunity to seek musical answers to the questions of musical emotion which have been raised. One must remember that Mozart was quite in need of quick money in 1789, and that in the late 18th century composers and librettists did not typically engage in the close collaborations which produced some of the greatest works of the 19th. Despite its flaws Cosi fan tutte contains some of Mozart’s best music, and its many ensembles and relatively few arias give it a dazzle and momentum which is lacking in much of Figaro and Don Giovanni, which for all their superior psychological insight contain some awfully plodding sections.

Anyhow, the rivers are still running and I’m still on them. Up in Idaho, a local firefighter from Salmon was sadly killed in a fire which I floated through the next day. On the Middle Fork of the Salmon we had a quite frightening evacuation of a guide, who had a very peculiar and scary set of internal symptoms; she came out all right, but is still looking for a more satisfactory explanation of her condition than she received in the Missoula, MT emergency room. I just ran Desolation and Gray canyons on the Green here in eastern Utah, and tomorrow I’m driving back north for another Middle Fork and two more Main Salmon trips. Good stuff from Odious lately, and it’s awfully odd to know that a blogging heroine like Ms. Solent occasionally finds us worth a glance.

Please observe the lovely new perma-links. No one linked has been informed, since I'm not expecting to drive significant traffic their way. No, this is simply part of my on-going plan to transfer as much of my memory on-line as possible, so scientists--from The Future--can someday recreate me from my posts. G-d help us all.

To the unfortunate who came here looking for Swinburne's limericks: it wasn't this one:

There was a young girl of Aberystwyth,
Who took grain to the mill to make grist with.
The Miller's son Jack,
Laid her on her back,
And united the organs they pissed with.

But good luck! You poor bastard.

And that's all the smut you'll get from this blog.

Oh, I want to mention that I finally figured out what's wrong with Hegel, and can now put the damned book down.

I shall see Madame Mao on Friday. Expect a review fogged by plum wine and apathy.

So Samizadata thinks that this theory of time is interesting. So do I. As Humpty Dumpty said, I'd like to see it worked out on paper, but I do have one initial thought.

Let's assume that the uncertainty of a particle's position in space and momentum when measured simultaneously in space-like dimensions also applies in time-like ones. I know that momentum already has a time value, and the concept of simultaneity needs a bit of redefinition, but so what? Deal with it. If I am to believe in "electron clouds" in which the particle is spread over a bell-curve of probability, in all places at once, I have little difficulty believing that a particle may be similarly spread through time, rather than existing in an 'instant'. An instant seems to me to be an unsupportable idea in quantum mechanics.

Indeed, it seems to me that the increase in energy as the particle increases in speed may correspond to an increase in energy as the particle increases in speed in the time-like dimension, with effects much like those described by General Relativity. Most particles were given a space-like momentum with the Big Bang, and have only local intereference to alter it. Why not a similar time-like momentum given simultaneously (as simultaneously as things get without a time-like dimension), and interefered with locally. If time is as tiny as I believe String Theory suggests, the available local alterations would be similarly tiny.

Of course, how would we see such a particle, accelerating through time? We are ourselves the measure of time, and would see...more rapid alteration, a predictable shortening and increased density. It would look a great deal like acceleration in space, I suppose.

I should be more careful with my parallels; I've no cause for thinking that the time-like dimension admits of something like momentum. Ah well. Caveat lector.

UPDATE: Lynds' theory sure doesn't solve Zeno's paradox, though. At least if we're associating the uncertainty principle with his lack of instants. The paper seems more philosophical than anything else. Didn't Newton take care of all this for us?

A Biased and Ignorant Dawkins of a Review of Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte, as Performed by the Santa Fe Opera Company

I enjoyed it.

There's not much more to say. It was...nice. Ineffectual, pleasant, with lovely music and a competent cast. Nice. The plot places in squarely in the camp of Whiffle-ball opera, in which nothing serious ever happens. Even when Ferrando learns that Dorabella has betrayed him, and sings of his wretchedness, or when Fiordiligi despairs of her weakness, one is never worried that something bad might happen. The music won't allow it; it's too accomplished to make one consider that the lives of our actors might be less strictly organized.

The scenery consisted mainly of mirrored surfaces, playing on the obvious symmetries (and brief, shallow, assymmetries) of the two couples. Costumes were lovely, with Dorabella's skirt seemed to be designed to fly up at the slightest torque. My main complaint is not with the performance, but the opera.

In the hands of a Shakespeare, the uncertainty of love and fidelity becomes both comic and deeply disturbing. Midsummer Night's Dream has lovers declare their feelings undying, drink a potion, and promptly switch teams. While it's amusing, the idea that our loves and hates can be so easily constructed and destroyed is uncomfortable. What credence can the lovers give the declarations of their beloveds, when they've seen how little it takes for them to alter? Mozart, instead, and some blame probably rests with da Ponte, gives us fluff in which feelings are never shown to be strong in the first place. The boys take the bet far too quickly; one suspects they have their own doubts. Instead of a world in which deep feeling exist, but are terribly mutable, such feelings are ruled out from the first.

The idea of symmetry, and its failure, is also left unexplored. In the hands of a Chaucer, in the Knight's Tale, we get a glimpse at the differences between the two heroes, and their motives in struggling for Emily. Different reasons have led them to the same actions. Peculiar wrote a prize paper on much this subject. In Cosi, the couples differ only slightly. Dorabella is more easily won than Fiordiligi...or is it that Ferrando is less winning than Guglielmo? It doesn't matter; in the end, both women give in, and both men forgive them (more or less).

Properly told, the plot could have been the source of a great deal of creepiness. For Mozart and da Ponte, it was just an excuse for amazing music and some hours' entertainment, easily told and easily forgotten.

As an example, I've spent a lot more time recently listening to the Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and thinking about it than I can bring myself to spend on Cosi. In fact, I've just reached the title track now....

So, well, then.

We never made it to Carlsbad. On our way, we stopped in White Sands National Park, which is an astounding site. For hundreds of square miles gypsum sands stretch, perfectly white except in the places where cryptobiotic soil has grown, anchoring larger plants like yucca, which struggle year by year to keep themselves out of the drifts, lifting themselves higher on lengthening trunks. In the middle of the dunes I cannot imagine navigating, unless one were well acquainted with the stars. The dunes become an infinite expanse of white, the sun near blinding, just as it is in snow-covered fields.

After a certain amount of horseplay and sunburn, we returned to our car, unpacked the cooler, and ate quickly at one of the alien picnic benches. the benches are covered by a single piece of sheet metal, which is fastened vertically on the south side of the bench and curves over the top of it. Seeing a group of them, one thinks of a fleet of tiny sailing ships, designed only for this place, and about to release their hold on the ground and be carried off over the dunes.

Coming ashore from our table, we boarded our car, the driver turned the key and was rewarded with...a gentle fizzing noise. "Hmm," we thought, collectively, like Leibnizian monads, "perhaps the battery is dead, or there is a loose connection." After some focused peering beneath the hood, we found that, indeed, a connection was loose, and the only tools we had (a good-bye present from the lovely folks at Jiffy Lube. They wanted them to be a surprise, so they hid them under the hood, and didn't tell us about them. Thank you, Jiffy Lube!) were an useless pair of pliers and a strange wire ending in an unpleasant hook at the end, which looked like the product of Torquemada's dreams after a long night of absinthe.

Fortunately, someone had had the brains to apply for AAA membership, and left with two other companions to get a tow-truck. I and another girl were left to occupy ourselves and make sure that the car was not stolen. We played gin. We played rummy. We played Speed, and near the end I was desperate enough to teach her to play War, the worst game ever devised. As the water supply and the sun steadily lowered, I began to concoct paranoid fantasies. They had left us forever, and were sitting in a swimming pool, in Dairy Queen, eating ice cream and being waited on by friendly penguins. The treacherous birds' natural coloring makes them perfect for the job. While we sat here, in the pit of Sarlak, playing half-witted card games, and turning a pleasant shade which Crayola calls "Boiled Lobster".

I was about to suggest that my companion and I bury ourselves in the sand and wait, before leaping on the next passers-by like trapdoor spiders, when our friends came back with a tow-truck. A twist of the ratchet and a jump later, we were on our way.

A mile down the highway, the driver made the mistake of hitting the brake. The car died. We pulled over. Our companions raced to a store and bought jumper cables. Power was restored. We drover further. The brake was pressed, the car was killed. This time, we had it towed to a mechanic's in scenic Alamogordo, who would be open in just a day and a half.

Alamogordo, as a base of operations, leaves several things to be desired. On the pro side weighs the Space Museum, one of the most enjoyable museums I've ever attended. Anyone who can go through it and not emerge teary-eyed has no soul. The men and women who took those great leaps for mankind shall never be forgotten. And have you ever wanted to land the shuttle? Here's your chance.

However, the restaurant we chose served my second beer at room temperature. Definite con.

I'm tired, so here's the pith: we're back, safely, and with a very nice poster of the solar system. Heaven our destination, indeed. I will post further on that tomorrow.

I'm off to Carlsbad for the week-end, so you'll just have to wait for my review of Cosi Fan Tutte. Hint: some nice fanservice from Dorabella.

I've often said that if one can't express one's philosophy on a t-shirt, it's not worth holding.

And I thought that the 'metal bar into a barn problem' was trouble.

Mars lives! Maybe. But we're all planning to catch the perihelic opposition, right? And look for water in the trenches?

Interesting article on the future of humanity.

Some changes to men I understand and accept; after all, they're just rectifications--no cancer, no genetic pathologies, strength, control, dominion...scratch that last one, maybe. They are not alterations so much as completions of an ideal. But to alter oneself fundamentally is rather odd.

Let's make two assumptions for the moment. One: morality is simply an evolutionary tactic to increase the chance of one's genes surviving. Two: therefore, morality is uniquely designed for men, more or less as they stand now. It depends of human weakness and dependence on others, and has no intrinsic value, but receives value as a reproductive strategy.

Now, when we go to change ourselves, the question is, as Sheri Tepper succinctly put it, "What shall we become, now that we are no longer men?" And by what goals shall we be governed? What morality, if our morality is part and parcel with our form, shall we adopt when we leave that form behind? By what criteria shall we men judge these after-creatures, who are superior (I imagine) in mental and physical ways, perhaps immortal, perhaps near godly? Our morality cannot judge beyond itself; we have no guidelines for these super-men (yes, in the Nietzschean sense) who are beyond it. How can we then create them? Are we to be governed by necessity, or will-to-power, or aesthetics, for it cannot be morality. We have left all that behind. To say that a change is "for the better" is quite meaningless.

I cannot imagine myself as physically immortal; to achieve that would seem to me as traumatic as losing one of my senses. I even know which one: my proprioception. I would, morally, need to constantly watch my actions, having lost the easy guide upon which I so often rely. I would stumble frequently, and be unaware of it until I found my perceptions askew.

But I would guess that we will alter ourselves, early and often and deeply. We will give ourselves the traits that so many of us dreamed of having as we read science fiction. Perhaps we will become Slan, as it were. But we should remember that those stories only made sense in the context of a greater humanity. When that reference is gone, to what shall these creatures compare themselves? They will, according to our assumptions, govern themselves by a different Game Theory. They can afford to alienate; with enough power, they can afford to destroy recklessly. I mention this not to create fear of our offspring, but to see if anyone can, by the previous assumptions, accuse them of wrongdoing. If morality exists only to help us survive, they will be no more wrong to destroy those useless to them than we were not to destroy such people, who were not so useless to us. They do not, after all, require our presence, and gratitude has little enough value when no more such gifts are to be given. If, however, there are eternal truths and absolutes, they will be just as wrong to destroy us as we would be to destroy the most insignificant person.

Naturally we will be able to, eventually, hardwire either belief in our children. And, naturally, if they truly have reason, they can overcome such hardwiring. To hardwire a sort of immutable Kantian system in them might preserve us, and thus be moral under the assumptions, but they would not be descendants of the human race if they did not possess the ability to alter themselves according to their reason. After all, we altered them before their birth, according to ours.

If we leave ourselves as men, we keep our morality, but lose the chance to find whether morality is universal. If we risk changing ourselves beyond recognition, we leave our morality behind (perhaps! but only perhaps!) and find ourselves adrift, without the tropes that guided us so successfully. If we set morality upon them as a safeguard, we protect ourselves but destroy them as Beings. Our only moral option may be to create the race that will supersede us, and hope that they don't.

Bang, bang, bang. You've sure got life figured out, Cymbal Banging Monkey
--Bender

In martial arts, one sometimes hears the phrase "stealing the techniques". There's some confusion about it; it is often used derogatorily, of an artist who 'dips' into a school for a few techniques to augment their own style, rather than learning deeply from the teacher. But it can also be used positively, of someone who can learn quickly through observation of the moves.

In most schools, teaching goes through three phases. First, the technique is described: the motion, the line of attack, the motive force, and the intended result are gone over and broken apart. This is a far cry from earlier martial arts schools in which, in part due to a language barrier between Oriental masters and Western students, often the only advice given was, "Do like this."

Next, the technique is demonstrated. This stage is where the skill of stealing the technique comes in handy. It can be difficult to break down the move, without performing it along with the teacher and thus getting immediate feedback, to its essential components. The technique is too large to hold in one's mind completely. Instead, as Picasso has done with this vulture, one must concentrate on the important elements. Is that hand position incidental or the that-for-the-sake-of-which? What is the angle of the hip, and why? As one advances in the art, one learns on what to concentrate. Instead of trying to capture each nuance of the demonstrator, one focuses on the important ones. Previously learned techniques inform the attempt to learn another.

Finally, the student must make the technique his own. Practicing alone or in a group, he has in his bones the knowledge of what the technique should be. He may not perform it correctly each time, but he has awareness of his body and can notice his mistakes, and, through practice, correct them.

Is the theory, anyway. Often times the student has a false or misled interpretation of the technique, and all his practice serves only to cement his errors. One often spends more time paring away from one's moves than adding to them.

I'm posting this because I realized that I've been performing my side-kick with a slight but non-trivial error each time. Now I've got years of practice to forget. Hmmph.

Bruce Campbell road trip!

Never will man penetrate deeper into error than when he is continuing on a road that has led him to great success.
F. A. Hayek, The Counter-Revolution of Science

I spent the day loading boxes onto pallets for two increasingly irritable publishers, and having conversations along the lines of, "How many cloth Euclid on number one?"
"Three. No, two, with one soft Apollonius."

On the plus side, the second rule of philosophizing was invoked to save us having to check the boxes hidden behind others.

This String Theory site will go on the sidebar, as soon as I get around to having one. Got a couple of hours to waste?

The Diamond Age gets closer.

Or, one might simply decide that dark matter is a stupid idea.

All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
--John Donne

Earth crowded cries, "Too many men,"—
My counsel is, Kill nine in ten
--R. W. Emerson

I have found by actual experience...that conversancy with [Hegel] tends to deprave one's intellect.
--John Stuart Mill

I watched the first two cantos of Die Nibelungen tonight. I was struck, afterwards, by how immersed in the film I became. Part of the cause is that Fritz Lang is a genius, but I think another part, perhaps more important, was that the film was silent and black & white. The difference of the film from reality allowed me to turn off my inner censor, who comments on, say, Jar Jar Binks as unbelievable. The lack of color and speech established that this was a fantasy, where the rules were different and I would be wrong to apply those of day-to-day life.

When the dragon first appeared, its artificiality ('though it was very well done) let me view it as a symbol, and therefore to endow it with the qualities of dragons: ferocity, power, etc. myself. I didn't need it to breathe great blasts of fire; the smoke coming from its mouth as it fought Siegfried was enough to establish that.

I think films have, in the end, two choices: special effects must be perfect, or symbolic. I don't mean to imply any poverty of taste in the second category. Take Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, for example. The flying scenes put a number of my acquaintances off the movie; they considered them silly. I took the flight as a symbol, of physical mastery, and this allowed me to enjoy both the beauty of the scenes (like ballet, wire-work, only instead of trying to stay in the air, one struggles to stay on the ground) and the imformation the flying conveyed, like: Jen Lung flies much better than Shu Lien does. I think it's because martial arts come so easily to her (she outpaces Jade Fox so quickly it frightens her), while Shu Lien has earned her skills through hard work. Watch how Jen easily out flies her, but Shu Lien outwits Jen in exchange. On the ground, away from all that nonsense, Shu Lien is far the better fighter. Even when Jen has the Green Destiny, Shu Lien can, through her brains (she's far the smartest in the film; watch her deal with Jen after the sword is stolen, the first time trying to be subtle, the second time rather straightforwardly) defeat Jen--without using her favored weapon. Hmm. Long side note. Anyway:

On the other end of the spectrum are perfect special effects. I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean recently, and the pirate army doesn't jar in any way. They just are skeletal pirates cursed by Aztec gold (this is not a spoiler, people, and anyway, if you can't predict the entirety of the film from the previews, you're not paying attention. Not that that ruins the film; there are, after all, skeletal pirates and Johnny Depp doing a mean Keith Richards/Pepe Le Pew impression), and because they move so perfectly, one accepts them as part of the movie.

I'm not sure, though, that even perfect special effects would work in a more serious movie. If I wanted to frighten someone with skeletal pirates, even flawless computer graphics would still be computer graphics, and in a more serious setting, disbelief is harder to suspend (think of a little kid, telling himself that it's not real. Even he, with a slightly less developed Weltanschauung, knows in his head that skeletal pirates aren't really out there). The best one can hope for is that the audience will play along, and have a "good scare": one they walk away from with a little adrenaline rush. This is why one should never, ever, show the monster in a horror movie.

But with symbolic special effects, it could work. There's nothing terrifying about shadowy corners and strange camera angles, but add some violins (and I think the music is as important as the visuals, in Die Nibelungen and elsewhere) and people will jump when a cat wanders on screen (the origin of the term "cat scare"!).

I've babbled enough for one night, I think. But I got the word Weltanschauung in, which is always a bonus.

Oh! I know! The difference between perfect and symbolic is like the difference between, say, a Petrarchian sonnet, and a Sappho fragment. A Petrarchian sonnet is nice, and I'm sure Laura would have loved it, but it doesn't affect me the way "I desire not the honey nor the bee" does. Or "to the girl with hair the yellow of a pine-pitch fire". Not to diss Petrarch. Anyone against the Aristotelians is a friend of mine.

This post has to end before I start muttering about 'brights' or something ('smugs' is very nice. I like Dawkins; he's taught me almost everything I know about evolutionary biology, but man! How junior high is this meme?). Maybe I'll post my thoughts on divinely inspired migraines and Hildegard von Bingen next. That should drive off all accidental traffic.

"Of the many wicked deeds attributed to pirates, there is one which has a secure foundation, and that is the marooning of victims on desert islands."
--David Cordingly, Under the Black Flag

Looks like some traditions never die:

Hijacked tug "Bintan 1200" and barge "Bintan Golden 2301"
Bintan 1200 was towing the barge from Jambi to Kijang, Tanjung Pinang, Indonesia. On 10.07.2003 near Dabo Sinkep, Sinkep island, Indonesia, a fast speed boat came alongside and a group of armed men boarded the tug. Crew were blind folded and tied up and subsequently landed at a nearby island. On 12.07.2003 they were rescued by fishermen. The tug and barge are still missing.

From last week's Piracy Report

UPDATE: That's two days, not months, those of you who wrote. But horrible either way, yes.

I've been meaning to post a link to Miss Kate, through whom I am enjoying a vicarious European vacation.

I haven't had much time for anything except work, sleep, and more work-related nightmares (last night my tables were arranged on the inner surface of a giant sphere (those of you who have played Serious Sam will know what I'm talking about) and I had to run around and around trying to get to all of them), so blogging has been, shall we say, light. I stop by only because I have excellent news: Pamela Dean's Secret Country books are being reissued. Also, she's working on a new book. No word whether it's the same as mentioned in her interview with Strange Horizons.

My nightmare last night: I was working at a Mexican Restaurant with a dinosaur theme, and at every table I had to say, "Hi, my name is [Odious], and I'm a fully certified server-saurus! Would you care for a Margarita Rex this evening?"

When [the impulse to serve posterity] is strong...I suppose I shall obey it. When it is weak I shall put my money into cheese.
--C.S. Lewis

I've been following the "Bright" debate among the blogs from a distance, but I thought I'd link to Pejman Yousefzadeh's rather splenetic response to an editorial in the New York Times by Daniel Dennett.

I wonder if this idea that certain beliefs are only held because the believers are too weak-willed to face 'things as they are' isn't Nietzsche's. If we judge by what theists say of themselves, the main reason they believe in a Supreme Being is the excellent design of the Universe. While this argument has been around for quite a while, and has often come under fire from various positions, it is at least a rational argument.

Moreover, to claim that people find comfort in religion is true but incomplete and misleading. It is, to use modern cant, ethnocentric. The Christian faith, the Buddhist, and the wishy-washy spiritualism now common, all provide a kind of comfort. The Aztec religion did not. The Greeks found their gods disturbing at times: willful, inscrutable, and malevolent. The Hindoo tradition of the juggernaut is not a pleasant one (although those who have visions of Kali, with her necklace of skulls and entrails, describe her as "motherly"). The sacrifices of the pagans, the monstrosities the Egyptians worshipped, the hideous flautists of Azazoth: none particularly nice.

The disciples of Nietzsche have split into two opposing camps. One of them, whom I'll lump as "post-modernists", have (presumably) passed 'Beyond Good and Evil', and found the truth: there is no truth. There is only the will-to-power expressing itself. And so, one view is no more or less valid than another. They're self-refuting enough to be ignored.

The others have such will-to-power as cannot be satisfied by such a cowardly decision: it leaves them without a battleground to defend or attack, which is the only way their will can be fulfilled. They pass beyond good and evil into absolutes; and for them, the finaly absolute is Nature. Things as they are, in all their confusion, complexity, amorality, and mortality, are the touchstone of this second group, as the only thing near enough to eternal (and, of course, once that's gone, who'll be around to know?) to be worth struggling to know, overcome, and utilize.

Naturally, both groups being predicated on the will-to-power, they view those who will not accept their conclusions as weaker than they, less able to 'steer their craft', as Nietzsche puts it. For those of us who take another view, not that the ideas we hold are decided by our capacity, but by our education, our reason, and our predelictions, this is rather irritating.

Events are not warranting anything, but I thought I'd send a link to the Arcata Eye Police Log, which is almost always worth a read.

I'm back from the wilds of Minnesota, with few injuries but a good deal of hair burned off (this is true). Further bulletins as events warrant, I suppose.

When I found we'd been linked by Natalie Solent, I performed an indescribable dance of happiness which sent the cats into hiding for several hours and ended with a badly stubbed toe.

Our satisfactory cat Horseflesh approached me this morning and asked, "Why is Vermin [our other, less-than-satisfactory cat] refusing to play 'Let's Thump Vermin About'? I jump on her and all she does is stick her bottom at me." (It should be understood that Horseflesh does not actually speak, but is quite capable of conveying his meaning through other means.)

"Well," I said, "Vermin's going through some changes. She's becoming a young woman...err...cat. To be brief, she's getting interested in toms."

Horseflesh considered. "Is that why she was yowling all night long at the front door, until you threw that towel at her?"

"Yes."

"Why haven't I gotten interested in females?"

"Well, Horseflesh, when you were little we took you on a nice vacation to the veterinarian...."

Some time later, Horseflesh said, "Huh. Well, I think you should talk to Vermin before you take her on a nice vacation. I'll be napping in the dryer, so remember not to turn it on."

I found Vermin rubbing her bottom against the bedroom carpet. "Vermin," I began.

"Here's my bottom!" she said. "Look!"

"Vermin, we need to have a talk about the changes you're going through."

"Here it is again! My bottom!"

"Yes, very nice. Now, tomorrow we're going on a trip...."

"My BOTTOM!"

"Vermin, have you ever wondered why we call you the 'less-than-satisfactory cat'?"

"Bottom bottom bottom bottom. Bottom."

All of which is to say, I'm going to Minnesota for five days, and since I plan to spend as much time as possible submerged, blogging will be light. I hope to become a big pink prune. Ta!

A friend of mine called me today, a former teacher and someone I respect though we've damaged our relationship a number of times. It's mostly scar tissue now, which isn't pretty but certainly is strong. We met at the college gym. In summer it's empty, except for the not unpleasant smell of sweat and a sullen student assigned to watch the door. "Bring your sticks," he'd said, referring to the short rataan sticks of escrima. When he saw me, he raised his over his head in greeting, and we went down onto the deserted basketball court.

We began with the simplest of siniwalis, the patterns of stick practice. The noise of the sticks echoed off the walls and ceiling, and as the pattern sped up the smell of smoking rataan reached me. Over the clatter of our attacks and defenses we began to talk, first of old classes, then old writers, then books read and to-be-read.

As I struggled to keep my breathing even and in time with my strikes, the pattern changed, anapests to the previous spondees. With this alteration in rhythm came a lightening of tone, and we began to trade limericks back and forth, ending with a truly lewd creation of Swinburne's. After an hour, coated in sweat, we bowed, hugged, and went back to our jobs.

And people ask us why we practice martial arts.

In case you were wondering: yes.

Further on the 'interesting things I find on Eurekalert but know nothing about myself' subject: the Catawba Indians.

Curse you, Higgs boson! I'll get you next time! Next time....

Thinking things over, I've decided that from now on, anything written by someone on a subject wildly outside their area of expertise will be called a "dawkins". As in, "Anything Odious writes about music is always a dawkins." This meme thing goes both ways.