I Dream Awake

IMG_0311, originally uploaded by jakedobkin.

Damn. I want that on a shirt.

katsu1, originally uploaded by jakedobkin.

Amazing shot.

Sticker Vent, originally uploaded by Atomische • Tom Giebel.

Love it.

It was from Alonzo Church that many years ago I took a course in mathematical logic for which I was unprepared — unprepared, that is, for the discipline of mathematics, unprepared for the demands of argument, and unprepared for Church’s glacial and remote style. Church was an enormously distinguished mathematician. The material was very difficult, so difficult that someone had occasion once to complain about the complexity of a proof.
Church rotated his large torso away from the blackboard and toward the ten or so of us in the lecture room. “Any idiot,” he said calmly but with immense conviction, “can learn anything in mathematics. It requires only patience.” He seemed curiously moved; a film came over his eyes. “Now to create something,” he said, “that is another matter.” In that queer moment of insight occasionally vouchsafed the very young, I understood instantly that Church was not reveling in his own accomplishments, but, with his own eyes fixed on the unattained goals to which he had aspired, was confessing obliquely to us, an audience of impossibly callow young men, that when it cam to mathematics he, too, belonged in the company of humanity’s idiots.
As do we all.

~ David Berlinski, A Tour of the Calculus p.281

Vacaciones en el mar!, originally uploaded by Rötör.

Whew…

If by god we speak the impetus and function of life, then — nothing more. Why do you say “Do you believe…”? You are alive. How can it be so, to believe or not in what you are? Do you do yourself well by your doubt? If you hate it so, then why is it chosen? And why the shock when self-contempt breeds contempt, more, again?

I do not believe because I see no question. I am alive. It is plain and self-evidently so. Let me not hesitate to live, or through worship of some other power, concept, or persuasive show, be less so. Blessed if I can be, dedicated to this life itself, in all of its forms, and nothing more.

And there it is: Life, self, existence, and that drive which makes us as we make ourselves.

What is this god you insist upon? And what need of this word for your thoughts?

So you feel life within your living, so you examine and are mindful, so you rise with vigor and inspiration, so you call them divine, so you recognize such a thing as value, so you see as nothing stops the living from claiming significance for it, so you have known abundance and scarcity and the seasons of the world, and know yet still that there is forever more beyond your own experience thus far…. so why do you beseech: “Oh, God!”?

What, you ask, do I have against this expression of yours? Sloppy vocabulary.

In self, as in life,

	...and that is enough. 

And sometimes this little string in my back gets tugged on and I go on… as I tend to go on:

What we know about choice and determinism in human development is very hard to differentiate from what we only think we know. The players are pretty clear: Genetic inheritance, response to environmental factors, group trends in response to sexual selection pressures, and individual choice all compete within us and around us to shape who we are and our small portion of the world. To say those among us that identify as gay are “born that way” or “it’s all a choice” is an oversimplification to the point of being totally uninformative and essentially useless.

Human beings are neuro-plastic — neither fluid or rigid in brain function and repair. We are incredibly adaptive to our environments biologically and cognitively. We are subject to a compounding effect on our choices, the choices of those around us, our genetic pre-dispositions, and every other agent within the markets that make us. We are each an economy unto ourselves, with more than one single driving force dominant, and a multitude recessive factors to go with them. What’s most interesting is that while we are very much the sum of what has come before us there is forever something new that enters into our incomplete systems. No matter how much we think we perfect ourselves, the process is never over, the players are never settled, and the deck reshuffles both in seeming order and at random.

I think the only good answer to what makes a person gay is “What does it matter?”. Even if there were a much simpler answer than our experiences and our science hint at, why would we decide how to treat each other based on whether one was born gay or chooses to be? I’d much rather ask if someone is a good person, and why they are so. Are they a good parent, a good teacher, a good business person, or politician (ok that one is a stretch)… and what is it about what they do and who they are that inspires respect or appreciation for their values in the rest of us.

Just one of my pet issues….

First snow, originally uploaded by Kirill Tryaskin.

I wish there were that much snow outside my window… Hasn’t felt very cold out at all the last few days.

Light Trails, originally uploaded by vanshnookenraggen.

I’ll have to try this myself sometime…

Debate word cloud, originally uploaded by Ann Althouse.

Via Ann Althouse on Flickr.

My losses are no longer character building. They are in the Willy Loman realm, and I am starting to have dark doubts about the benign nature of American capitalism…..An awful lot of modern life, and not just finance, is based on a Ponzi scheme. If, as sometimes happens, you have an asthma attack and join fifty other acute asthmatics in the ER, you have a good chance of not being intubated in time. If most investors think that the market will go belly up, the market will go belly up. The most fundamental of fundamentals is that people have to believe in the worth of their currency, the liquidity of their bank and money market deposits, and the viability of the markets. If these basic beliefs are violated, then no one wishes to be the last man out of a pyramid scheme… The wise men are going to knock heads together this week-end and re-engineer the American economy. What could possibly go wrong?……Over the past two hundred years, particularly in the anglosphere, capitalism has drastically improved life on earth. There have been frequent panics and crises but in my lifetime they have occurred with less frequency and severity. Still, there’s always that last sabre toothed tiger in the woods.

Someone in the comments section on an Ann Althouse entry.

How do we chart a course out of this? How do we create when severly limited in our resources, abilities, and even in our own certainty of what we are doing? Innovate (create something from nothing — hint: use math). Start small (micro-finance). Build value with every interaction (social capital). Build strong ties with a wide network of people with diverse skills and interests (social networking is loose connectivity — what is strong?). Maintain sound monetary and fiscal discipline (once an an investment in work has become an income stream, secure it through paying ahead towards savings, investments, further education, and physical assets)(or on the national scale strengthen the dollar, reduce budgetary spending, reduce taxes, reward innovation, inspire entrepreneurship, and reduce debt).

The problem is that it’s much easier said than done. Many of us have ideas. Many follow through with all we can to work to make those ideas a reality… But it’s still very tough going when everywhere you turn it’s tight, tight, tight. We all need liquidity again, just as we all need discipline in building products with actual value.

Zog Victorious, originally uploaded by dlanham.

Climbing up hill. Feeling better about it the further I go.

., originally uploaded by ?mark?.

I’m… busy as all hell. Will try to make better use of this space. Maybe invent a way to trick and fold time in my spare seconds of it.

An amazingly well done site design for a fascinating website. I wish I had done that.

http://www.simplebits.com/css/simplebits-master.css

“Summation of every Jewish holiday: they tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat.”

Karol @ Alarming News

Insta linked the Fox News video Alex KP did about the drinking age. Very favorably, in fact:

…the Federal government should get out of the business of trying to regulate state drinking ages, a subject of no legitimate federal concern whatsoever. it’s also telling that MADD wouldn’t even appear on camera to argue the other side.

Glenn Reynolds, Seven States Thinking of Lowering Drinking Age

Just finished The Man Who Loved Only Numbers by Paul Hoffman. It was fantastic. Emotional and stimulating, difficult and easy to read… both in the right ways. Part biography of Paul Erdös, part introduction to the mathematics he did so much of. Very much worth the all too short read.

…return to first principles:

And it came to pass that the great Rebbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, Master of the Good Name, known for his powers in heaven as well as on earth, decided to try once more to force his Creator’s hand.

He had tried many times before—and failed. Burning with impatience, he wanted to end the ordeals of exile forcibly; and this time he was but one step away from success. The gates were ajar; the Messiah was about to appear and console the children and old men awaiting him, awaiting no one else but him. The Diaspora had lasted long enough; now men everywhere would gather and rejoice.

The heavens were in an uproar. The angels were dancing. Red with anger, outraged, Satan demanded an audience with God. Brought before Him, he protested, invoking laws and precedents, history and reason. Look at man’s impudence, he said, how dare he take things in his own hands? Does the world deserve redemption? And the conditions to warrant the Messiah’s coming, have they been met?

God listened. And had to recognize the validity of Satan’s arguments: Lo ikhshar dara, the Rebbe’s gesture was judged premature; his generation was not yet ready for a miracle of such magnitude. Moreover, since the order of creation may not be disturbed with impunity, he and his faithful scribe Reb Tzvi-Hersh Soifer were deported to a distant uncharted island. Where they were promptly taken prisoners by a band of pirates.

Never has the Master been so submissive, so resigned.

“Master,” the scribe pleaded, “do something, say something!”

“I can’t,” said the Baal Shem Tov, “my powers are gone.”

“What about your secret knowledge, your divine gifts: your yikhuddim? What happened to them?”

“Forgotten,” said the Master. “Disappeared, vanished. All my knowledge has been taken away; I remember nothing.”

But when he saw Hersh Soifer’s despair, he was moved to pity. “Don’t give up,” he said, “we still have one chance. You are here, and that is good. For you can save us. There must be one thing I taught you that you remember. Anything—a parable, a prayer. Anything will do.”

Unfortunately, the scribe too had forgotten everything. Like his Master, he was a man without memory.

“You really remember nothing,” the Master asked again, “nothing at all?”

“Nothing, Master. Except…”

“…except what?”

“…the aleph, beith.”

“Then what are you waiting for?” Shouted the Master, suddenly excited. “Start reciting! Right now!”

Obedient as always, the scribe proceeded to recite slowly, painfully, the first of the sacred letters which together contain all of the mysteries of the entire universe: “Aleph, beith, gimmel, daleth…”

And the Master, impatiently, repeated after him: “Aleph, beith, gimmel, daleth…”

Then they started all over again, from the beginning. And their voices became stronger and clearer: aleph, beith, gimmel, daleth… until the Baal Shem became so entranced that he forgot who and where he was. When the Baal Shem was in such ecstacy, nothing could resist him, that is well known. Oblivious to the world, he transcended the laws of time and geography. He broke the chains and revoked the curse: Master and scribe found themselves back home, unharmed, richer, wiser and more nostalgic than ever before.

The Messiah had not come.

Souls on Fire, by Elie Wiesel.

In fact, there’s more than one… First off, at least this year, we have the start of Passover. While that alone would be plenty good for most days’ claim to holiday fame, 4.19 isn’t content to leave it at that. No, this day is ambitious. A young upward mover. A from the bootstraps striver… Ok, I’m getting too into this. I blame Coming Anarchy. See, it turns out today is also Primrose Day:

Today is Primrose Day in the United Kingdom, an uncelebrated memorial day marking the death of former Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, Britain’s only Jewish head of government…

But that’s not all… 4.19 is also Patriots Day:

Patriots Day may be the least known American holiday, and the day most deserving of our recognition. Observed in Massachusetts and Maine only. Don’t know it? It marks the day, April 19, 1775, on which Americans took up arms against their king, and bled, at the crack of terrible dawn.

And of course, for a certain group of people, the most important holiday of all those marked today is the widely celebrated (if accompanied by a slight whiff of illegality) 420-eve.

As Jimmy Carter plans to meet with Hamas, this Hamas MP explains that it is an Islamic imperative to subjugate the world “thorough da’wa and military conquests.”

As the EU President insists that there is no link between Islam and terrorism, this Islamic cleric explains that the conquests he dreams of are “Islamic,” and that Muslims need to be prepared to carry out these conquests “by means of the mosques and the Koran books, and the history of our Prophets.”

Has the world ever before witnessed cognitive dissonance on this grand a scale?

Islamic cleric: We will conquer Rome, and then Eastern Europe and the Americas

It’s all just a big misunderstanding, right Jimmy?