Determinism

Came across this the other day, and it made me smile.  How I miss "Choose your own adventure" books.

Depression's Upside

A friend directed my attention to this article several months ago, which I found extremely interesting to read, and so I figure I should spread the joy around with you guys. Enjoy! ... hopefully the necessary attention span does not sadden you (as the article will explain).

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/magazine/28depression-t.html?pagewanted=1

I always thought fourteen was one of the good ones

    So in case you haven't heard, there are these immigrants with heavy tans coming into this country and plopping out anchor babies because due to the fourteenth amendment, these bastards--or I so assume given that their fathers are most likely off drinking and who knows what in a Mexican whore house--are given citizenship. Now these babies work as anchors because the damn illegals use them to benefit off of our programs and un-socialized medicine. One has to wonder how dumb can they be? Take a ferry to Europe, keep going till you get across the border of the Canuks, but this isn't even the biggest problem because Mexican babies can be cute, I mean look at my nephew who I guess you could say is like a half-anchor baby:

    What if ol' oSAMa and his cronies get to thinking and they start plopping out little terrorist anchors beneath those black berkas, we wouldn't even know that they're there.  I think a kid could grow to twelve, maybe sixteen if he's malnourished--at least till he's strong enough to strap a bomb to his chest--beneath his mother's berka.  We wouldn't even notice the growth of the mother, we'd probably think she was becoming more American the more obese she looked, all the while a little terrorist anchor is growing between her legs.
    We have to repeal this whole fourteenth, and a whole slew of other things would be fixed in one fell swoop.  For starters the honor of our great-great-grand-daddies would be restored, taken from them after the war of northern aggression.  Civil rights, Dread Scott, Brown v. board of education, done and dusted.  And I may have my facts wrong here, but no longer would those damn liberal training grounds of California and New York get all the damn electoral votes or congressmen based on population.  Finally, those two thousand or so real Americans who live in places like Kansas or Wyoming would get a fair shake.  And probably the best one of all, no longer would we have to get the real birth certificate, but we could take that half-anchor-ass O-bam-a and send him back to Kenya or wherever the hell he's from.  Finally all the real Americans could be safe again.  By the way did I mention it took two days to drive through Kansas and about five days in total to make it through the entire mid-west both ways.  Anyway, what do you guys think?

All Hail Paul Romer heir to Henry the Lion

Back around the 12th century a Germanic Prince Henry the Lion desperately wanted to bring merchants to the crazy Beserker, Viking plundered coast of the Baltic Sea. Henry fought off many invaders, pirates, and Slavic hoards. After a while he finally seized upon a small village called Lubek[technically spelled with two little dots over the "u"]. As first order of business, he beheaded the notorious pirate Niclot the Obotrite. So things were off to a smashing start, he then set about making Lubek the seat of a diocese of merchant villages. To attract merchants to this lawless land, he setup what is called today a set of "most honorable civic rights." Basically, the city was setup outside of the feudal system, a council of local merchants governed the town, trade restrictions were relaxed, and any of the merchants who settled there were exempt from paying duties or taxes. Henry ended up creating an economic alliance of over 200 cities.
Now in present day, there is an economist from Stanford, Paul Romer, who would like to implement similar ideas for developing countries. Create an international city were trade and business practices are relaxed, in the first wave money flies in from foreign investors, in the second wave as people settle and develop the area businesses begin flowing into the country who charters the city. One such example of this is the city of Hong Kong. During its time apart from China, Britain developed a large business mecca. When Hong Kong returned to China, the Chinese government decided to allow Hong Kong to continue with the same lack of regulations and free trade they had experienced up to that point. Now, China uses Hong Kong as a template to develop other cities across its country, and in many ways has become a much more liberal country in terms of business. They still have some problems with human rights but hey. Middle Eastern countries like Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Dubai, and Oman have also begun to create cities like this with much success.
The idea that Romer offers is to create charter cities like this all over the world, especially in developing nations. However, he points out that in some places cities like this on U.S. soil could jump start the American economy as well. One example for something the U.S. has which is in some ways similar is Las Vegas. Many laws are relaxed in Las Vegas, and the city itself generates millions of revenue for the state as well as providing millions of jobs, not just in the city, but in the surrounding area for the purpose of supplies, housing, and infrastructure. Personally, you may know, I think Las Vegas is a hell hole, but perhaps if a few states were allowed to create similar hell holes, like international cities, where more so than Vegas, the cities would be freer in their trade and restrictions, then the country would prosper financially.
Now, I really don't know that much about economics, but I did find the idea interesting. Merely, in terms of the way in which cities such as Lubek and Hong Kong have influenced entire regions politically and economically in their given times. I should mention that though Paul Romer is highly respected, there are many people out there who call him a nut. I began to investigate some of this stuff from an article in the Atlantic Monthly if you're interested. My first paragraph is pretty much a paraphrase of the first half of the article, my points expanded off of several of its bullet points as well.

Vomit Assault

Click here

Inmmates Totes Have the Right to Sue

Apparently some bookish and litigious inmates at a Va. prison have been denied access to a certain book that specifically details how to go about suing the prison where one currently resides (see link below). Civil rights outfits are not digging it, to say the least, citing first amendment rights and whatnot. Squalid cell conditions are just completely unacceptable for any and all Americans, and so too is it every American's right to sue whoever they please... even if those Americans are exempt from participating in society.

Hey lawyer, lawyer... SUE!

GARY SHTEYNGART!!

Very funny guy, this guy... Yes, insightful, too! I read one of his books a few years back... "Absurdistan"... Typically, I'm obscure-adverse, but in spite this extreme misgiving of never having heard of him I gave the book a go, it being a birthday gift and all, and, after I finished it I smiled, satisfied and impressed, for what I had imagined would be as boring and slow as a dirge, the book turned out to be as strange and oddly pleasurable as the pleasure one receives from being sung the happy birthday song on your birthday by someone you kind of actually don't really like.

ONLY DISCONNECT

AND FINALLY, THE WHEELBARROW, S.#8

Recall the old story about a worker suspected of stealing: every evening, when he was leaving the factory, the wheel-barrow he was rolling in front of him was carefully inspected, but the guards could not find anything, it was always empty – till, finally, they got the point: what the worker was stealing were the wheel-barrows themselves. This reflexive twist pertains to communication as such: one should not forget to include into the content of an act of communication this act itself, since the meaning of each act of communication is also to reflexively assert that it is an act of communication. This is the first thing to bear in mind about the way the unconscious operates: it is not hidden in the wheel-barrow, it is the wheel-barrow itself.

WESTERN TOILETS, SHIT, AND THE 3RD REICH, S.#7

The unsurpassed master of such analysis [utility functioning as a reflective notion, in that it always involves the assertion of utility as meaning; an example: to wear stone-washed jeans is to signal a certain attitude to life] was Claude Levi-Strauss, for whom food also serves as “food for thought”. The three main modes of food preparation (raw, baked, boiled) function as a semiotic triangle: we use them to symbolize the basic opposition of (“raw”) nature and (“baked”) culture, as well as the mediation between the two opposites (in the procedure of boiling). There is a memorable scene in Louis Bunuel’s Fantom of Freedom in which relations between eating and excreting are inverted: people sit at their toilets around the table, pleasantly talking, and when they want to eat, they silently ask the housekeeper “Where is that place, you know?” and sneak away to a small room in the back. As a supplement to Lévi-Strauss, one is tempted to propose that shit can also serve as a “stuff for thought”: the three basic types of toilet-design in the West form a kind of excremental counterpoint to the Lévi-Straussian triangle of cooking. In a traditional German toilet, the hole in which shit disappears after we flush water, is way in front, so that shit is first laid out for us to sniff at and inspect for traces of some illness; in the typical French toilet the hole is far to the back, so that shit is supposed to disappear as soon as possible; finally, the American toilet presents a kind of synthesis, a mediation between these two opposed poles – the toilet basin is full of water, so that the shit floats in it, visible, but not to be inspected. No wonder that, in the famous discussion of different European toilets at the beginning of her half-forgotten Fear of Flying, Erica Jong mockingly claims that “German toilets are really the key to the horrors of the Third Reich. People who can build toilets like this are capable of anything.” It is clear that none of these versions can be accounted for in purely utilitarian terms: a certain ideological perception of how the subject should relate to the unpleasant excrement which comes from within our body, is clearly discernible in it.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN TACITLY AGREED UPON LOVE AFFAIRS ARE VOCALIZED, S.#6

This declarative dimension of symbolic interaction can be exemplified by means of a delicate situation in human relationships. Imagine a couple with a tacit agreement that they can lead discreet extra-marital affairs. If, all of a sudden, the husband openly tells his wife about an ongoing affair, she will have good reasons to be in panic: “If it is just an affair, why are you telling me this? It must be something more!” The act of publicly reporting on something is never neutral, it affects the reported content itself and although the partners learn nothing knew by means of it, it changes everything. There is also a big difference between the partner simply not talking about the secret adventures and explicitly stating that s/he will not talk about them (”You know, I think I have the right not to tell you about all my contacts, there is a part of my life which is of no concern to you!”). In the second case, when the silent pact is rendered explicit, this statement itself cannot but deliver an additional aggressive message.

THE LANGUAGE OF THE SOCIOPATH, S.#5

The notion of the social link established through empty gestures enables us to define in a precise way the figure of sociopath: what is beyond the sociopath’s grasp is the fact that “many human acts are performed … for the sake of the interaction itself.” In other words, the sociopath’s use of language paradoxically fits perfectly the standard commonsense notion of language as purely instrumental means of communication, as signs that transmit meanings. He uses language, he is not caught into it, and he is insensitive to the performative dimension. This determines a sociopath’s attitude towards morality: while he is able to discern moral rules that regulate social interaction, and even to act morally insofar as he establishes that it fits his interests, he lacks the “gut feeling” of right and wrong, the notion that one just cannot do some things, independently of the external social rules. In short, a sociopath truly practices the notion of morality developed by utilitarianism, according to which, morality designates a behavior we adopt by way of intelligently calculating our interests (in the long run, it profits us all if we try to contribute to the pleasure of the greatest possible number of people): for him, morality is a theory one learns and follows, not something one substantially identifies with. Doing evil is a mistake in calculation, not guilt.

EMPTY GESTURES AND PERFORMATIVES, S.#4

Zizek explains that the big Other operates on a symbolic level. He expounds on what this symbolic order is composed of: we when speak or listen (communicate) we don't think about the rules of grammar or syntax. If I were to bear these rules in mind at all times my speech would essentially break down. So, we never merely interact with others. Our speech activity is grounded on our accepting and relying on a complex network of rules and other kinds presuppositions. In the background of an act of communication is the active participation in the same so-called “life-world” that enables me and my partner in conversation to understand each other. Now Zizek is ready call this symbolic level on which the big Other operates “symbolic space,” and this symbolic space acts like a yardstick against which I can measure myself. This is why the big Other can be personified or “reified” in a single agent, e.g. God, or, a Cause. The following is an excerpt:

THE PROMOTION AND THE NOTION OF A FREE CHOICE

The most elementary level of symbolic exchange is a so-called “empty gesture,” an offer made or meant to be rejected. Brecht gave a poignant expression to this feature in his play Jasager. in which the young boy is asked to accord freely with what will in any case be his fate (to be thrown into the valley); as his teacher explains it to him, it is customary to ask the victim if he agrees with his fate, but it is also customary for the victim to say yes. Belonging to a society involves a paradoxical point at which each of us is ordered to embrace freely, as the result of our choice, what is anyway imposed on us (we all must love our country or our parents). This paradox of willing (choosing freely) what is in any case necessary, of pretending (maintaining the appearance) that there is a free choice although effectively there isn’t one, is strictly codependent with the notion of an empty symbolic gesture, a gesture – an offer – which is meant to be rejected.

Something similar is part of our everyday mores. When, after being engaged in a fierce competition for a job promotion with my closest friend, I win, the proper thing to do is to offer to retract, so that he will get the promotion, and the proper thing for him to do is to reject my offer – this way, perhaps, our friendship can be saved. What we have here is symbolic exchange at its purest: a gesture made to be rejected. The magic of symbolic exchange is that, although at the end we are where we were at the beginning, there is a distinct gain for both parties in their pact of solidarity. Of course, the problem is: what if the person to whom the offer to be rejected is made actually accepts it? What if, upon being beaten in the competition, I accept my friend’s offer to get the promotion instead of him? A situation like this is properly catastrophic: it causes the disintegration of the semblance (of freedom) that pertains to social order, which equals the disintegration of the social substance itself, the dissolution of the social link.

THE UNSENT LETTER: BIG OTHER, VAGUELY EXPLAINED BY LACAN, S.#3

It is because of the virtual character of the big Other that, as Lacan put it at the very end of his “Seminar on the Purloined Letter,” a letter always arrives at its destination. One can even say that the only letter that fully and effectively arrives at its destination is the unsent letter – its true addressee is not flesh-and-blood others, but the big Other itself:

“The preservation of the unsent letter is its arresting feature. Neither the writing not the sending is remarkable (we often make drafts of letters and discard them), but the gesture of keeping the message when we have no intention of sending it. By saving the letter, we are in some sense 'sending' it after all. We are not relinquishing our idea or dismissing it as foolish or unworthy (as we do when we tear up a letter); on the contrary, we are giving it an extra vote of confidence. We are, in effect, saying that our idea is too precious to be entrusted to the actual addressee, who may not grasp its worth, so we 'send' it to his equivalent in fantasy, on whom we can absolutely count for an understanding and appreciative reading.”

Addendum: Again, Lacan in his own words:

"And why the Other with a capital O? For a no doubt mad reason, in the same way as it is madness every time we are obliged to bring in signs supplementary to those given by language. Here the mad reason is the following. You are my wife – after all, what do you know about it? You are my master – in reality, are you so sure of that? What creates the founding value of those words is that what is aimed at in the message, as well as what is manifest in the pretence, is that the other is there qua absolute Other. Absolute, that is to say he is recognized, but is not known. In the same way, what constitutes pretence is that, in the end, you don’t know whether it’s a pretence or not. Essentially it is this unknown element in the alterity of the other which characterizes the speech relation on the level on which it is spoken to the other."

Just food for thought:

Chomsky on Lacan: "amusing and perfectly self-conscious charlatan" (he also admits that his early works are worth analyzing). In another post I can longer find the link to, Chomsky concedes he does not actually understand many of Lacan's writings.
http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/chomsky-on-postmodernism.html

For a rather harsh criticism of the book you are outlining:
http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol5-2001/n17oneill

"In the absence of any detectable method, a dizzying array of wildly entertaining and often quite maddening rhetorical strategies are deployed in order to beguile, browbeat, dumbfound, dazzle, confuse, mislead, overwhelm, and generally subdue the reader into acceptance. Example after example is supplied, but the principle that makes them examples is not itself given. Appeals are implicitly made to Lacan's authority but the source of that authority is never mentioned. The truth of Lacan's theories is urged by showing how other people's theories support that truth but without explaining why these theories have the same object. One concept is defined in terms of another, which is then defined in the same way, ad infinitum. What's being explained is mixed in with what's doing the explaining in a circular fashion so striking that it may well count as both a novelty and a technical innovation in the practice of interpretation. Concepts are 'applied' without any boundaries on either the concepts or the scope of their application. Arguments and interpretations are hastily summarized rather than being patiently outlined. Finally, sheer rhetorical force substitutes for argument."

http://www.uchicago.edu/research/jnl-crit-inq/issues/v29/v29n3.harpham1.html
"The effect is that of a stream of nonconsecutive units arranged in arbitrary sequences that solicit a sporadic and discontinuous attention. Zizek does not seem to believe that books should be about something; he reproduces his central themes compulsively regardless of the ostensible subject."

MEXICAN SOAPS AND THE THREE LEVELS FOR LACAN, S.#2

Mexican soap operas are shot in such a fast rhythm (every single day a 25-minute episode) that the actors do not even get the script to learn their lines in advance; they have tiny receivers in their ears which tell them what to do, and they learn to enact directly what they hear (“Now slap him and tell him you hate him! Then embrace him!…”). This strange procedure provides us with an image of what, according to the common perception, Lacan means by "the big Other.” The symbolic order is the second nature of every speaking being: it is here, directing and controlling my acts; I, as it were, swim in it, but it nonetheless remains ultimately impenetrable and I cannot ever put it in front of me and fully grasp it. It is as if we, subjects of language, talk and interact like puppets, our speech and gestures dictated by some anonymous all-pervasive agency. Does this mean that, for Lacan, we, human individuals, are mere epiphenomena, shadows with no real power of our own, that our self-perception as autonomous free agents is a kind of user’s illusion blinding us for the fact that we are tools in the hands of the big Other which, hidden behind the screen, pulls the strings?

There are, however, many features of the “big Other” which get lost in this simplified notion. For Lacan, the reality of human beings is constituted by three mutually entangled levels: the Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real. This triad can be nicely illustrated by the game of chess. The rules one has to follow in order to play it are its symbolic dimension: from the purely formal symbolic standpoint, “knight” is defined only by the moves this figure can make. This level is clearly different from the imaginary one, namely the way different pieces are shaped and characterized by their names (king, queen, knight), and it is easy to envision a game with the same rules, but with a different imaginary, in which this figure would be called “messenger” or “runner” or whatever. Finally, real is the entire complex set of contingent circumstances which affect the course of the game: the intelligence of the players, the unpredictable intrusions that may disconcert one of the players or directly cut the game short.

GETTING AT THE BIG OTHER: THAT ELUSIVE, INDESCRIBABLE... THING, S.#1

The first of eight posts committed to a not-so-brief outline of the first chapter of How to Read Lacan, by Slavoj Zizek. This first post will highlight a few key points and phrases in re: Lacan's concern for language (the self-reflexivity, for instance, of an act of communication) and the role of the big Other in our lives (of what impels or dissuades one to do something). Now, I don't claim to to fully understand half of this complicated nonsense, but, nonetheless, here's a little taste of what's to come.

KEY POINTS

• In spite of all its grounding power, the big Other is fragile, insubstantial, practically virtual, in the sense that its status is that of a subjective presupposition.

• The big Other exists insofar as subjects act as if it exits.

• It is the substance of the individuals who recognize themselves in it, the ground of their whole existence, the point of reference that provides the ultimate horizon of meaning, something for which these individuals are ready to give their lives, yet the only thing that really exists are these individuals and their activity, so this substance is actual only insofar as individuals believe in it and act accordingly.

• This virtual character of the big Other means that the symbolic order is not a kind of spiritual substance existing independently of individuals, but something that is sustained through their continuous activity.

• Human communication is characterized by an irreducible reflexivity: every act of communication simultaneously symbolizes the fact of communication.

• Consciousness is opposed to mere knowledge of an object: Knowledge is external to the known object, while consciousness is in itself “practical,” an act that changes its very object.

• Once a worker “considers himself to belong to the ranks of the proletariat,” this changes his very reality: he acts differently.

• When one does something, one counts oneself as (declares oneself) the one who did it, and, on the base of this declaration, one does something new – the proper moment of subjective transformation occurs at the moment of declaration, not at the moment of the act.

• This reflexive moment of declaration means that every utterance not only transmits some content, but, simultaneously, conveys the way the subject relates to this content.

• The question to be raised is: What more doe this statement contain, that has caused you to make it?

• The act of not mentioning or concealing something can create additional meaning.

• One should not forget to include in the content of an act of communication the act itself, since the meaning of each act of communication is also to reflexively assert that it is an act of communication.

A "btw," by Anthony Brown

Wtf is up with the "loved but didn't read"? I mean, is not a man having his penis lopped off, sauteed, and then offered to him as a snack interesting? I agree that the review itself was boring (much as this sentence will become) and rather uninformative regarding any conclusive content tying all of these real-life grotesques together, coherently, that is. Anywhozzle, who's ever to blame, or at fault for this option, Fess Up!! Come clean, you fucking dirty monkey! Ok, clearly this lavender iced-tea isn't calming down shit...

The Psychology of Bliss

[Opening paragraph from a review of the new book "How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like."]

"In 2003, a German computer expert named Armin Meiwes advertised online for someone to kill and then eat. Incredibly, 200 people replied, and Meiwes chose a man named Bernd Brandes. One night, in Meiwes’s farmhouse, Brandes took some sleeping pills and drank some schnapps and was still awake when Meiwes cut off his penis, fried it in olive oil and offered him some to eat. Brandes then retreated to the bathtub, bleeding profusely. Meiwes stabbed him in the neck, chopped him up and stored him in the freezer. Over the next several weeks, he defrosted and sautéed 44 pounds of Brandes, eating him by candlelight with his best cutlery."

Candidate May Have Lied About Heroic Death In Vietnam

http://www.theonion.com/articles/candidate-may-have-lied-about-heroic-death-in-viet%2C17600/

Touchdown Jesus

Link

The Path of Man

Incited by my recent readings of Iron John by Robert Bly, and some discussion from the other day. I thought it might be interesting to make a post about different rites of passage from around the world.
First I'd like to briefly explain what Bly discusses as the three aspects of a male's rite of passage

Separation: During this phase an initiate is separated in some way from his former life. In modern example, when a man has just enlisted in the military, he is sent away to boot camp. His former possessions are put aside, his head is shaved, and he is given a uniform to wear. During the separation phase, part of the old self is extinguished as the initiate prepares to create a new identity.

Transition: During this phase, the initiate is between worlds-no longer part of his old life but not yet fully inducted into his new one. He is taught the knowledge needed to become a full-fledged member of that group. And he is called upon to pass tests that show he is ready for the leap. In tribal societies, the elders would impart to the initiate what it meant to be a man and how the boy was to conduct himself once he had become one. The initiate would then participate in ritual ceremonies which often involved pain and endurance. In the case of the new soldier, he is yelled at, prodded, exercised, and disciplined to prepare him to receive a rank and title.

Re-incorporation. In this phase, the initiate, having passed the tests necessary and proving himself worthy, is re-introduced into his community, which recognizes and honors his new status within the group. For tribal societies, this meant a village-wide feast and celebration. The boy would now be recognized by all tribe members as a man and allowed to participate in the activities and responsibilities that status conferred. For the soldier, his boot camp experience would come to an end and both his superiors and his family would join in a ceremony to recognize his new status as a full-fledged member of the military.

During all phases of the process, the men who have gone through the ritual themselves guide the young initiate on his journey. By controlling the rite of passage, the men decide when a boy becomes a man.

As we discussed the other day, this is normal in most cultures, however the men in our country grow without this passage being enacted by anyone unless he engages in something like the military. So I thought it might interesting in subsequent comments to discuss different rituals from the world-over.

The big 'Other'

While talking, I am never merely a "small other" (individual) interacting with other "small others": the big Other must always be there. This inherent reference to the Other is the topic of a low-grade joke about a poor peasant who, having suffered a shipwreck, finds himself marooned on an island with, say, Cindy Crawford. After having sex with him, she asks how it was; his answer is, great, but he still has one small request to complete his satisfaction -- could she dress herself up as his best friend, put on trousers and paint a mustache on her face? He reassures her that he is not a secret pervert, as she will see once she has granted the request. When she does, he approaches her, gives her a dig in the ribs, and tells her with the leer of male complicity: "You know what happened to me? I just had sex with Cindy Crawford!" This Third, which is always present as the witness, belies the possibility of an unspoiled innocent private pleasure. Sex is always minimally exhibitionist and relies on another's gaze.

-- Slavoj Zizek: How to Read Lacan

Cornel West

This notion that we had it all, or ever will have it all, that's got to go, you got to push it to the side. And once you push all that to the side then it tends to evacuate the language of disappointment and the language of failure. And then you say ok, Well how much have we done, how've we been able to do it, can we do more? In certain situations you can't do more. It's like trying to break dance at 75: you can't do it anymore. You were a master at 16, it's over! You can't make love at 80 the way you did when you were 20... So what? Shit... time is real.

The Walrus and the Carpenter

"Work?! The time has come," the Walrus said
"To talk of other things
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax
Of cabbages and kings
And why the sea is boiling hot
And whether pigs have wings
Calloo-Callay
No work today!
We're cabbages and kings"

Ah to be Russian and in the Soviet hay-day

Last week, famed Russian poet Andrei Voznesensky passed away and with him a lineage of Russian poets under Khrushchev who were the true rock stars even under Soviet rule. Maybe dictatorships have their perks. Also memorable quote “Bad literature is its own form of treason.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/books/03poets.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

The Contrarian

Brief, and I'm sure heavily edited, interview with Hitchens in which he quite casually reveals something about himself.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/magazine/06fob-q4-t.html?ref=books

Why Women Aren't Funny

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2007/01/hitchens200701

Now, This is Fucking Crazy

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/310026/june-02-2010/craziest-f--ing-thing-i-ve-ever-heard---gored-bullfighter

How It Is: A La Morgan Freeman

Morgan was interviewed this week on the Daily Show. He has a new show coming out on the Science Channel called "Through the 'Motherfucking' Wormhole, 'Motherfuckers', with Morgan 'Motherfucking' Freeman."

Jon asks: "Do scientists now know, do they have a sense of where we came from?"

Morgan: "There are scientists who have a very clear sense of where we came from, and there are other scientists who feel that the scientists who have a very clear idea don't know what they're talking about, because we don't have a very clear sense of where we come from."

Then, Jon asks after dark matter, how, apparently, dark matter and dark energy take up about five times more space in the universe than actual matter.

Jon: "What the hell does that mean?"

Morgan: "Exactly."

Jon: "And they say it's holding us together?"

Morgan: "How?"

Jon: "Right!"

Morgan: "Well, these are the questions that I like to ask also..."

Jon: "What do they tell you?"

Morgan: "This is where we get into the G-d part of it. Whatever scientists don't know, becomes a G-d factor."

Anyhow, apologies for the transcript. It's a good interview so might as well watch it: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-june-2-2010/morgan-freeman

Myriad:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/myriad

Read it and weep T-Bag.

"Recent criticism of the use of myriad as a noun, both in the plural form myriads and in the phrase a myriad of, seems to reflect a mistaken belief that the word was originally and is still properly only an adjective. As the entries here show, however, the noun is in fact the older form, dating to the 16th century. The noun myriad has appeared in the works of such writers as Milton (plural myriads) and Thoreau (a myriad of), and it continues to occur frequently in reputable English. There is no reason to avoid it."

Lest the Morning Mist Beguile You!

Sure you could argue against drinking. It damages a society from the inside out, it can lead to immoral acts, rend apart a family, drunk driving, it kills people, and so on. Yes, there's plenty good arguments against drinking. But, sir, have you ever been drunk?

Symposium, explain yourself!

[Latin, drinking party, from Greek sumposion : sun-, syn- + posis , drinking.]