Bunched Panties: "You're Not Gonna Read It, So I Might As Well Say It"

[benorbeen]

Wow. Neat.

Saddam turns 68 on Thursday. His defense team, which is based in Jordan, still considers him the legal president of Iraq.

I like these Saddam paradoxes. Can he be tried for breaking a law in a country that did not exist when he broke the said laws? That is, can laws have retroactivity to a time when they didn't exist? Could the U.S. change its government and suddenly create laws that make law-abiders in the prior government out to have committed offenses? Can we convict Native Americans, cavemen, dinosaurs, and the Singularity?

I've not understood how this new government could convict Saddam Hussein, or even give him a "fair" trial. As far as I can think, the trial is symbolic. There is no room for throwing out the charges, getting out of them on a technicality, etc. I mean, there might be, but I can't see how any defense would be able to win anything other than basic human rights for him in incarceration.

It also makes me wonder: What's better, to look healthy when you're in jail, or to look sickly? Because if you're up for the firing squad, I would think it more unjust to shoot a suffering sickly person who is indefensible than to shoot someone whose health is very good. Killing the sick seems to make a culture look wrong and evil.

Just some thoughts on my mind.

 

[benorbeen]

Like

It came to me yesterday. People who so frequently say "like" in some sense talk like general-semanticists.

General-semanticists observe that given the existence of space-time, no two 'things' have exact sameness in all respects because at the very least, they occupy different points in space and/or time.

We cannot say 'things' have absolute sameness and make an irrefutably truthful statement. Instead, we can more truthfully say that they have likenesses. In other words, the two 'things' we compare have structural similarities. We cannot truthfully say "Light is a wave" but we can say "Light is like a wave."

"He said, like, 'No you can't,' and I was like 'Fuck you! Yes I can' and he was like so pissed, he said 'Fuck yourself! It's my car' and I was like 'What Ever.'"

By saying "like" in these examples, the person seems to recognize that she can't recall verbatim what the other person said during the argument, so instead she uses "like" to suggest what "essentially" the other person said. In other words, she uses statements that sounded structurally similar to what the other person said.

This semantic distinction between absolute sameness and structural likeness may seem pedantic, yet it sometimes cuts to the core of why two people find themselves disagreeing. Sometimes a person will affirm that "This is that," while the other person affirms, "No, this isn't that." The first person sees structural sameness between this-and-that, whereas the counterpositional person sees obvious differences that naturally exists. Likely, if the first person restated his argument to "This is like that," the second person would have less room to disagree for similarity lies in the eye of the beholder.

I believe I rediscovered the thought at the general-semantics colloquium I attended this past weekend. I don't know if the people there somehow reminded me of the technique or if I came on it again quite by accident in my own writing. I know that I changed a sentence in my book from having "is" to having "is like" and, quite miraculously, I understood better what I attempted to say in the passage.

But better understanding the valley-girl flavoring word "like" excites me even more. That motherfucker puzzled me for a while.

Written in E-Prime,
Ben

 

[benorbeen]

Your Ability To Call People "Dumb"

Your ability to call people "dumb" does not reflect your deft ability to evaluate others, but instead reflects your ability to tune other people out. Those who cheer your efforts admire you for your ability to tune others out. You find that you build a pocket of admirers who dissociate themselves from others and regard themselves as "better," while others get classified as "problemed." It is through this mechanism you lose track of your own personal problems, and as those "problemed" people outside your group recognize their problems and seek solution, you flouder surrounded by the darkness of your own self-ignorance.

 

[benorbeen]

The Universe Does Not Judge...

... but humans do. It is all the same to the universe.

With the zero-sum attitude, a person sees the game he's in as a win-lose, friends-enemies game. With the nonzero-sum attitude, a person sees the game he's in a pretty much as a win-win, friends-friends game, with enemies along the way clearly establishing themselves.

There are far less enemies than friends, for if there were more enemies, buildings would collapse the moment they were built, bees would sting with ferocity every morning before you woke, and at the subatomic level nothing would ever work out.

When I say "zero-sum attitude," that's what I mean by a competitive attitude. And by "nonzero-sum attitude," that's the cooperative attitude that I talk about. These attitudes are how you look at the game you're in.

The context is the reality. The context serves as the game. There are wants constantly bathing you. So you're constantly gaming with those wants, even when you're not conscious of those wants. Atoms and cells inside your body are gaming as well and not telling you about their gaming, at least not in a way you recognize.

Anyway, the universe does not judge winners and losers. As far as the universe is concerned, you're all losers. Or all winners. So it's more a nonzero-sum game than zero-sum.

 

[benorbeen]

The Toys

The toys I play with are ...

... not. :bleagh:

 

[benorbeen]

Dropping Bombs Like TiDDies

It seems to me that insistence on labeling people or their ideas as "dumb" is an effort to make the speaker sound smart, in-the-know, knowing-what's-actually-intelligent.

But it also seems to me at times a mask for one's feeling inadequate, unintelligent, stupid, etc.

Calling another person "dumb" does little but "trick" other people into thinking you're smart. But the true smart person in any context avoids labeling people as "smart" or "dumb." Instead, she tries to hear what people are trying to say, what perspectives they're trying to voice, what information they know or think they know. Instead of judging, the true smart person listens.

 

[benorbeen]

Experiment

See nothing as a positive.

There's irony in that saying.

 

[benorbeen]

Order

How exactly does one create order amongst wanting people or wanting characters?

You look at them for what they want, you try to give them what they want, and they relax.

They may want more than just food and water (material things). They may just want respect, comfort, action (immaterial things).

Give them what they want. But you must 'see' the wants first.

The creation of order starts with the humanation of chaos.

 

[benorbeen]

Intelligent Design

Here's a question for you:

If we 'have to' include instruction about Intelligent Design with our Evolution curriculum, 'must' we also include a lovely argument for Idiotic Design?

That is, who's to say that the entity that apparently designed us by this theory was "intelligent"? What if our creation was but a stupid woodworking sufficient for disposal compared to other creations that have been set to work in other 'worlds'? What if we were created by a doofus, a poopyhead, or a numbnut?

I wish I were in one of these classes being taught this. I might bring up all of the human flaws as reason for Unintelligent Design. We don't have factory-installed airbags for our bodies. What kind of design flaw is that, Intelligent Designer??

 

[benorbeen]

Happy Birthday To Me

To: benorbeen
Subject: Happy Birthday from Improv Message Boards
From: "Improv Message Boards Forums" <mullaney>
Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2005 00:01:12 -0400

Hello benorbeen,

We at Improv Message Boards would like to wish you a happy birthday
today!

 

[benorbeen]

"I cannot believe that God would choose to play dice with the universe."

That's Einstein.

The proposition I'm tumbling over in my mind is one for which I am curious whether scientists have popularly explored: "The universe does not operate probabilistically, but instead, predictably, though there are human and mechanical limitations to our ability to predict."

At the quantum level, probabilities, with a large degree of accuracy, describe the positions of particles. What I think is that particles don't run around probabilisitically, but instead, very understandably ... and if only we were to get down on that level and communicate with those particles, we'd be better able to predict their positions.

Take you and me. We talk about where to meet for dinner. We talk about the 'exact' location where we wish to meet. I can generally predict where you will be standing when I arrive; however, I can't specifically predict where you'll be standing when I arrive, unless I get inside your head or communicate with you on the specific coordinates.

Now, take an interloper listening to our conversation on where to meet for dinner, and have this interloper unable to discern the language with which we communicate. He may pick out the name of the restaurant from our communication, but he is likely unable to pick out the specific directions we give ourselves on where exactly to stand when we arrive.

So, he can only predict a larger field of arrival--"in front of X restaurant"--while you and I are much more able to predict the field of arrival--"in front of X restaurant, on the left of the potted plant, leaning against it by 10 degrees." If the interloper could unscramble our language and read our wants, he'd overcome his probability and say with much more certainty where we'd arrive. Without that key understanding, he's left to dealing with only small pieces of communication, making for a much blurrier picture.

At the quantum level, apparently it's chaotic. I can't help but think that that's just because we're emotionally dissociated from it and not humanating. It's more ordered than we think, I should think. It is a very finely tuned network of honed communications with only some "random" and upsetting forces affecting it. It's a symphony rather than crash. Our misunderstanding of its workings is why we treat it as "chaotic." If we saw it more like ourselves, it would make a lot more sense.

 

[benorbeen]

Is Life Fair?

Well, what do you mean by "life"?

If you mean the acting profession, no.

If you mean the conditions for life on Earth over the last gobs of thousands of years, I might say yes.

We seek that for which we aim.

We must also learn to seek that for which we don't aim, to compare their frequencies and decide which is more prevalent.

And it's just a decision: For we can't know if there lies outside our abilities to sense, different frequencies. Our dumb luck, what we experience is but a flint of michigan. The rest of the bagel is really tibet.

Truth or Consequences? New mexico.

 

[benorbeen]

DSM-IV: Hair-Induced Dysthymia

The solution to some of my more continual problems may have lain in the trimming of my sideburns.

I do not like long sideburns. They are like pubic hair for heads.

My hair stylist in the years I've had him has left me with longer sideburns than I am used to. I kept them this way, thinking that these must be "cooler" or "more mature." This left me feeling vaguely like a sweaty '70's porn star with a venereal disease.

On set last week, I was subjected to a light trimming of my sideburns, to make me look more like a 1960's Princeton student. The trim was really a return to the length of burns that I sported most of my life before going to my NYC hair stylist.

O what a change in mood it makes.

I am quite familiar with the relationship my hair has to my mood. When I feel shaggy, especially when I have humidity-curled hair or growth burgeoning over my ears, I tend to feel bad about my appearance. I mean, I feel very frumpy and unattractive. And after I get a haircut, those feelings go away and remarkably I feel better.

It doesn't feel to good, understandably then, having a growth of pubes on your face. So I resolve to see how keeping these sideburns trimmed higher than my hair stylist desires affects my moods.

I guess I still tend toward clean-cut. Trucker-look is not something my body really espouses.

 

[benorbeen]

Precirocity

When it comes down to it, it's a concern about abuse, right? The overall human value is against abuse, right? Unless we've been abused ourselves ... Then, we DO value abuse. Right? I mean, we justify torture when we've been wronged. We attack potential suitors because potential suitors have wounded us. In relationships we attack our significant ones because in relationships significant ones have attacked us. Right?

And if not, if we've escaped such abuses, we perform abuses on others not because we've been abused but because we've LEARNED that "this is THE WAY to behave, THIS is right, THIS is what you do ... YOU ABUSE." From whom did we learn this? I would surmise we learned this from someone who was abused himself or herself. And if s/he was not, then s/he learned it from someone who was abused ... somewhere down the line.

I don't think that's unfair to say. We instill our ways of seeing the world onto others; we get them to see the world through our eyes so they DO see the world through our eyes, confirm our opinions, and justify our approaches. Even if those approaches are antithetical to human nature, human values.

We play naturally, so why do we sometimes require pay to play? Why do we require others to be subjected to our abuses before we allow them to play? Perhaps it's because the ability to stand despite abuse tells us something about that person's ability to stick with us as we continue a quest to subject ourselves to abuse. MAKE IT STOP. Paying to play makes as much sense to me as requiring a Good Samaritan be subject to abuse to allow her to do what she wants to benevolently do. Not all people are reactive; there are proactive folks in this world.

 

[benorbeen]

...And Benorbeen Reviews All The Great Spam Subject Lines

Episode 1

Sent by: jitsuro
Subject Line: Does your wife think that banana is harder than your penis?

What is nice about this subject line is that it's a question. It makes you think.

Sent by: Citi Litter
Subject Line: Toilet Train Your Cat - Help Stop Kitty Litter

The juxtaposition of the name of the sender and the cause it is trying to fight confuses me. I can't tell if this email has something to do with human waste management or feline waste management.

Sent by: Criminal-Justice-University
Subject Line: benorbeen, want to be a FBI agent, or a police officer?

This subject line, though attractive in its use of my name, shows a lack of confidence in the program it is trying to promote. The FBI agent program is admitted to be subpar. Criminal-Justice-University must be a police officer school that wants to be an FBI agent school.

Sent by: Hoodia Diet Patch
Subject Line: Oprah says 'Hoodia Diet Works'- get a sample today

I learned recently given a friend in Texas's admission that she reads Oprah's magazine that Oprah must in some parts of the U.S. be to construed if not as a biochemist, then as a soothsayer of esteem higher than God. I would not trust Oprah's medicinal claims, though I would trust the medicinal claims of Tom Cruise.

Sent by: Santa Mail
Subject Line: Guess Who Is Coming to Town

I'm going to take a guess and say it's Santa. Let me check the email by clicking. {click!} It's from SentbySanta.com. Apparently Leeza Gibbons has something to do with this email. Perhaps she is coming to town.

 

[benorbeen]

Meta-Blogging

Starting your blog in the comments section of someone's blog entry.

I've hereby invented the artform.

You're welcome.

Meta-blogs are like nuggets of pure gold hidden inside gaudy jewelry.

 

[benorbeen]

For Shame, Tomb

Headline on Yahoo! at the moment:

"Tomb pre-dating Rome found under Forum"

If it wasn't enough to scold sex before marriage, it seems that the issue now is sex before dating.

 

[benorbeen]

Lowercase

What is the psychology behind using lowercase exclusively in email correspondence? Why can't some of these people use capital letters?

I can't speak for everyone, of course, but I was struck with the thought that maybe for some people it's an unconscious attempt to get pity (because they telegraph a smallness and lack of confidence by their disuse of capitals). In which case, it could also be a passive-aggressive way of influencing the recipient. I.e., when you have the person's pity, you can get him to do what you want.

I remember the funny time liking a girl who used all lowercase. At the time, I felt awkward "standing so tall" with capital letters, so I adopted her practice. All the while, I felt I was compromising myself. After that time ended, I went back to my former practice, which I respected much more. On top of that, I resolved that I would no longer do something as "stupid" as compromise my writing style to increase the chances a person would like me.

I don't have many regrets, yet I have done things I haven't liked, that make me feel sometimes uncomfortable for their naiveté and "wrong" approach. That linguistic shift would be one of them.

 

[benorbeen]

El Presidente

In what year will a presidential candidate's blogging as an 14-year old become political fodder against him?

Potentially, information that has been typed on the internet by children may still be around when the children are mature adults.

Will there ever be enacted legislation against companies using the internet to research their potential employees? Could the use of prior cyberdentities against a person constitute discriminatory practices? People may change, but their postings probably won't. And who knows if prior postings stored in databases would be free from terrorism? I would think that someone who wanted to could access internet records and alter them in a way that might suggest something about one's internet past that is untrue. We have formally discounted the "authority" of Wikipedia. Might we come to a time when we formally discount the "authority" of the Internet Time Machine?

 

[benorbeen]

Postulational Thinking

Reading more Keyser. In particular, his small little book entitled Thinking about Thinking. Come page 73, I started to wonder,

Have I created a postulate wherever I've used the form "x is a kind of y"?​

I say that improv is a kind of theater. Biologists say that humans are a kind of animal. These kinds of postulates tend toward the formulation of various theorems implied by the postulates.

Korzybski points out that the seeing of man as an animal is problematic. He instead sees man as a time-binder. That is, plants are energy-binders, animals are space-binders, and humans are more than energy-binders and space-binders, but also time-binders, and the others are not time-binders. In this vain, humans are a class to themselves deserving a different kind of study. They are the z-axis wheras the others are but x- and y-axes.

If I said that improv is a kind of comedy, my theorems would tend one way. If I said that improv is a kind of toilet training, my theorems would tend another. If I said that improv is a kind of religion, of course, another direction for theorems would emerge. And if I said that improv is a kind of game, then still other theorems would emerge.

The point seems to be ...​

Listen for postulates people operate by. That is, listen for their assumptions. The postulates imply their theorems, and if you disagree with their postulates--that is, if you disagree with or invalidate their assumptions--you arrive at different conclusions than they do, perhaps even showing that their conclusions are false because their postulates are as well.