et alia

It's a (mostly) friends-only LiveJournal, duh. But rather than the rantings of a spoiled middle-middle/upper-middle class teen, it's the rantings of a spoiled middle-aged middle-middle/upper-middle class American man with Social Democratic leanings, and no political party he trusts (can you blame him? Without descending to sophistries and stupidities, I mean.)

And all those ‘middles’—really, it's just a way of signifying mediocrity without actually copping to it. Wouldn't you?

I'm sure I've written another blog post with that title, but I don't want to be bothered with finding it now. I am fatigued, and I am disgusted, and I may not post for a while. That doesn't mean I have given up blogging writing; I write but am not and have no interest in being a writer. Fish in the morning, hunt in the afternoon, criticize in the evening, while not being a fisher, hunter, or writer—remember that? As an ideal, it's not been forgotten, it's been repudiated. Another symptom of what's wrong with our culture: the professionalization (and therefore segregation/alienation) of basic creative and cognitive functions.

...a student at of the University of Washington:

I note with puzzlement that three of my daffiest and wackiest detractors—Kirby Olson, Dr. Jacques Albert, and “et alia”—all did their graduate work in literary study at the University of Washington. Something in the water out there?

Michael Bérubé, “Till We Meet Again.”

Not only that, but I have done no graduate work in literature. My highest academic credential is a Bachelor's of Science with a major in Mathematics. I did study traditional harmony at the beginning of my college years in the vain hope of becoming a composer. Also, after 15 years as a software developer in private industry, I almost fulfilled a long standing ambition of learning ancient Greek, but crumbled under the weight of having to translate more than 100 lines of Homer a week and kiss my clueless boss' butt.

These were all at public colleges and universities within a two hour drive of New York.

I am, in sum, a middle-aged dilletante given to explosions of anger in what I thought was an obscure corner of the internet. I would be flattered at being confused with someone with an advanced degree, but maybe those who look up to Professor Bérubé who are also members of hiring commities will look askance at candidates from the University of Washington—could this one, sitting in front of us now, be that wack job? In other words, the misidentification could be deliberate, and the Professor of Danger Studies intends to make somebody in particular pay.

While you dwell on that, here's a updated version of my fractured Christmas carol for the year. It is the unedited rehersal tape of the Lobachsville Community Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Humphrey Ebolamann, Jr. Mr Ebolamann is one of the most underrated community orchestra directors around, and the Lobachsville brass and percussion sections could hold their own with those of many major orchestras. He displays considerable expertise in (finally) drawing a good performance from an extremely disspirited group. Listen and enjoy.

Another year, and another ensemble whose heart really isn't into playing Christmas music. This year, it's a brass quartet of trumpet, french horn, and two trombones with moral support from a marimba, tympani, and harp. They try to play “Saint Louis,” (they American tune for “O Little Town of Bethlehem”), but run out of steam just as they get started. Then they tune up, try to get the holiday hate out of their system with a passage that recalls “Mars, the Bringer of War” from Holst's The Planets, this time to retreat into something out of the slow movement of Beethoven's piano sonata Op. 106 (the so-called Hammerklavier and about as far from holiday merriment as you can get.) After a moment, they decide to toss plans to play the Christmas carol, and instead offer a spirited version of that anti-holiday favorite, “Leaving Town for the Holidays.” (For those who aren't familiar with this ditty, the lyrics can be found here.)

First:

update comments 
set    comment_content = substring (comment_content, 
           instr (comment_content, '</h3>') + 5) 
where  comment_content like '<h3>%</h3>%';

update comments 
set    comment_content = replace (comment_content, '&quot;', '"') 
where  comment_content like '%href="%';

But then:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my $real_author = "";
my $post_title  = "";
my $in_comment = 0;
my $content_tag_text = "";

open (WXR, "< wordpress.2006-11-29.xml");

while (<WXR>)
{
    if (/^<dc:creator>/)
    {
        $real_author = $_;
        chomp $real_author;
        $real_author =~ s/<[^>]+>//g;
        $real_author =~ s/.$//;
        s/$real_author/blogowner/;
    }
    elsif (/^<content:encoded><!\[CDATA\[/)
    {
        if ($real_author ne "")
        {
            s/^<content:encoded><!\[CDATA\[/
$&<br\/><i>Original Author: $real_author<\/i><br\/><br\/>/;
        }
        else
        {
            s/^<content:encoded><!\[CDATA\[/
$&<br\/><i>Original Author information unavailable<\/i><br\/><br\/>/;
        }
    }
    elsif (/^<wp:comment_content>/)
    {
        $in_comment = 1;
    }
    elsif (/^<\/wp:comment_content>/)
    {
        $in_comment = 0;
    }

    if ($in_comment)
    {
       if (/&#34;/)
       {
           s/&#34;/\"/g;
       }
    }

    print ;
}

This must be what a prostitute feels like when she charms the evil dictator into bed, only to cut his throat and liberate the people...or maybe not. That's pretty damn grandiose, and besides, prostitution is respectable physical labor, unlike what I did for years.

...is back on line after prolonged technical problems. Pointing your browser at http://ufobreakfast.com should redirect to http://ufobreakfast.wordpress.com/, where all UFOB's bloggy goodness of yore is available once again, and new goodness will soon appear. I'm proud to say I did some of the tech part of the migration, which was actually fun—you don't look at SQL for over a year and discover you still know how to write an UPDATE statement, it shows you don't have senile dementia.

Yet.

Context.


Note that the shoes are honest, not innocent. Innocent shoes, like the lady in the play Hamlet puts before his mother and step-father, doth protest too much. They would show wear and be ill-made. The defendant wouldn't have a chance; it would be like wearing a hair-shirt to court.

These shoes, on the other hand, were never stylish but carry their years of use with grace, for they were well made. The firm that makes them has perhaps gone out of business, but there's someone in town who can still repair them.

Finally, they were made in America. Nothing shreiks guilt and hubris like Italian loafers.

Trying to think through the current political situation in America is a bit like trying to swim through a flood of molasses: you'll probably be sucked under and drowned before you make any headway. Something terrible has happened, and you can't even run with it, much less try to change it or hold it back; best to wait for it to pass, and take steps to ensure no catastrophe like it happens again. Any and all sane policies and projects are excluded from the realm of possibility before the discussion gets underway—universal health coverage, withdrawl from Iraq, re-examination of the US/Israel relationship, progressive taxation . . . shall I go on? For any given problem we face, if you want to know ahead of time what won't happen, just try to think of whatever might be just and reasonable, and you're done. Trust me on this.

I realize there's a difference of opinion on what constitutes what's just and what isn't: for example, there are people who think that denying health care to the sick on the basis of their ability to pay or conform to certain corporate cultures is a just way to allocate health care. There are also people who persist in beliving the earth is flat, but their rantings don't get much credence from sensible people, much less published in reputable scientific journals. Flat-earth and geocentric theories are simply shunned because even to entertain their possibility is destructive to a scientific mindset. And so it should be with all the toxic bits of moral idiocy that, ours being a nation in decline, are taken seriously: market-based solutions for social problems, the sine qua non of freedom being the right of its enemies to speak against it, war as a perogative of power, etc. At this point in my life, I have no interest more interest in trying to convince such people as these that their positions are vile than I would in trying to convince a serial rapist of the error of his ways—and I have every confidence that in time Social Darwinism and laissez-faire approaches to the general welfare will be properly regarded as the equivalent of mass rape and worse. No dialogue with moral degenerates.

As Turbulent Velvet said some time ago, there are layers to giving up hope. I've found that past a certain point, I've actually become more sanguine. Partly it's from being less emotionally involved in the current political process, but it's also from feeling freer to imagine what a humane, decent society would be like—not ‘the world we want,’ of those helplessly bound to structures and institutions that are part of the infrastructure of immorality, but the products of reflection undisturbed by hostile assholes with an insider mentality. Thus, the question: what precepts will we have to build on once the cretins choke on their own bile? Not even a list but a few random thoughts towards such a list:

• The welfare of society is not opposed to the welfare of the individual, and vice versa. The Rawlsian original position/veil of ignorance thought experiment shows pretty dramatically how this is so. The opposition of liberties (negative freedoms) and entitlements (positive freedoms) is a doctrine that has no basis in fact or reason and belongs in the trashcan of history right above the divine right of Kings.
• Capital is a social good and should be treated as such. Although I don't talk to moral degenerates, there are plenty of people with sound morals who are victims of propaganda (and 70+ years of insanity in the Eastern bloc) and who therefore think this means their meagre personal property will be at risk. Let me reassure these people: your house and personal property are not means of production. Large shareholders in utilities, manufacturing concerns, etc., and the overpaid upper management of such firms had better be prepared to justify their stewardship, however.
  • Yes, I am talking about expropriation and redistribution, but I'm not an absolute egalitarian. In Theory of Justice, Rawls proposes what I think is an excellent “smell test” for material inequality (or personal accumulation over and above the norm): does a person's production benefit all society, especially those most disadvantaged? I don't know if this made it into Justice as Fairness unscathed, but I have to confess I don't lose sleep over it.
• Our political leaders would be subject to the rule of law. Clinton or Bush the lesser in the dock for capital crimes would be sufficient to encourage the others.
• A subject for a later post: brain-toxic behaviors would be felonies and no different from physical assault.

I don't expect to see any of these in place in my lifetime, but that doesn't matter. I hope to see myself and others who share these modern mores to associate, expand on them, try to create real cultural/institutional support to transmit them. Turbulent Velvet again:

What's at stake is liberal complicity in the destruction of a lifeworld that would produce qualities of character that would make sustenance and resistance possible, not just for the next electoral brouhaha but for generations to come, and not just in news-junkie blog discussions but in all the rockbottom ethical domains in which we get by from day to day...I'm not arguing "strategy." I'm arguing "how must we then live," for the long duration, down here in the nonwonk nonacademic lifeworld--maybe with a bit of traison des clercs thrown in, a finger given to those I think got us here now that there's nothing we can do about it. We're going to need a lot of courage and a lot of ground-level integrity for what's coming precisely because it now can't be stopped and because there will be no reward for doing the right thing.
“Response to Scruggs,” 19 Feb 2006

For the time being—and this time will be measured in decades and generations—we must accept that we are off the reservation, and the most and most important things we can do are provide material and institutional support for these ideas. Right now, nothing is more important that speaking openly and with an eye to action among ourselves. Towns and locales where in some modest way these notions have taken hold—become part of the “lifeworld”—will be very important, as will be practices to defend them.

And as for the fall elections? I'm not going to insist that people vote Green or 3rd party; in fact, for those who share these ideals but for whom not voting Democrat induces deep cognitive dissonance, I'd say vote the way you always have, and then keep an eye on the successful candidates you've supported. Are they doing anything to assist / maintain / sustain the way of life you want? Meanwhile, there are other things to be done.

—OK, now we need to talk about the, hrm, project for R—, and especially one of the, hrm, sorry, requirements that the branch slipped into the contract.

—Again?

—I swear, those jerks writing checks with their mouths that their asses can't cash...

—Yeah, it's one of, hrm, those situations again. But I just want to, hrm, discuss the, hrm, feasibility of one requirement in particular. I mean, you guys are the tech people so I'd, hrm, figure I'd at least run it past you to see if this was something we could actually do.

—Why are we even talking about this? I swear, it doesn't matter if it's trivial to do, it's the goddamn principle of the thing—

—Shhhh! You're here to provide the engineering perspective, OK.

—OK, but I swear, I don't know why you guys can't discuss the other stuff without me...

—Hrm, as I was saying, R— contracted with us to fabricate a ball of shit that doesn't stink and glows in the dark—

—What? That's an off-the-shelf component, what's the big deal? I swear—

—OK, OK, I know you're chomping at the bit to, hrm, talk about the technical details there, but, hrm—

—But there are no technical details—this is straight out of the catalogue—

—Well, hrm, it's not actually the same as the SBNSG product because...well, the details are in the contract and since the branch handled it, it was written in Frisian, so we had to have it translated, and...OK, here it is—why don't you look at that and tell me if we can, hrm, do that item that's highlighted there.

—...accelerate when dropped...greater than 15 meters per second squared?!?! No, of course we can't do it! I swear, this is nonsense—

—Hold on, don't be so negative—

—No, that's OK, we wanted, hrm, I wanted the engineering perspective on this and, hrm, so you're saying that it'd require some pretty extensive research and development work before we could put it in production and we'd have some trouble meeting the delivery date, right?

—No! I'm saying it's impossible! I swear—

—OK, hrm, I mean, you're saying we'd have to get some outside expertise or fabrication equipment we, hrm, don't currently have?

—Yes, I think that's what he means—

—No, it's not what I mean! I mean it's impossible, plain and simple.

—OK, so I'm hearing that, hrm, on top of everything else, there'd be some regulatory hurdles then?

—I don't see what the problem is there. If it's for export, we can get a waiver.

—I swear, are you guys listening to me? I said it's impossible and that's what I mean: it's impossible, period, end of story. It can't be done. We can't do it, nobody can do it.

—Look, you can't say ‘we can't do it!’ This is R— we're talking about, they're a big customer, and there's been enough ups and downs with the account recently.

—I have to second that although, hrm, I wanted you in here for the engineering, hrm, view on this. I can appreciate, hrm, that this may end up costing us more than the revenue it'll generate and we certainly, hrm, don't want to get into a situation like that, but we have to make a business case why R— doesn't want this.

—You don't have to make a business case! It's impossible to do! I swear, didn't you guys take physics?

—Hell, I was always the last guy picked for volleyball in high school, but come spring, did the same guys pick me first for the baseball team!

—Ha ha, hrm, same here, but it was football in the fall...just couldn't stand being cooped up in the gym and having to rotate around...

—Yeah, such a pointless sport...but these girls they have playing competition volleyball on the beach, damn!

—Did I, hrm, tell you we're getting a sponsorship deal with...hrm, what's her name again? She's going to be wearing a cap with the materials division logo on it...but, let's, hrm, get back to the subject. So there are plenty of engineering roadblocks that'll make this a losing proposition for us...

—Actually—

—And we don't want to go down that road and that's, hrm, fine, and I want to thank you for your input so we, hrm, could avoid getting ourselves into another money pit. But I need a business reason to give R— as to why they, hrm, I mean why they themselves don't want this feature, right?

—Look, it's not that they don't want it, it's that you just can't make anything accelerate faster than 10 meters per second squared as it falls.

—Why not?

—Why not? Because! Because it's a physical fact that objects dropped accelerate at 9.8 meters per second squared, period! I swear—

—What if we added some extra ballast to the ball of shit?

—No, that's, hrm, that's a no-go because of the new cost guidelines for all the SB product lines...

—It doesn't matter if you make the shit ball weigh more! The rate at which something accelerates has nothing to do with weight—

—Oh, come on—see this piece of paper? Now I let it go...I don't need a high speed camera and digital analysis to see that's not accelerating at 10 meters per second, it's a lot slower than that—

—Meters per second squared, I swear...

—And I mean, it weighs less so it falls more slowly—

—They're talking about the acceleration as it falls, not the velocity—

—Hey, don't interrupt, OK? So if something fall more slowly because it weighs less, then something that weighs more must fall faster—

—No, no, he's got a point about adding ballast, hrm, just can't do it with the new cost guidelines, and, heh, funny thing is we drew those up after R— was complaining about other cost overruns on another project, so basically, they can't have it because of their own rules, Ha ha!

—Typical customer thinking. What were the guys in at the field office thinking?

—Look, it doesn't matter even if you did put more ballast in, I swear...

—Well, I'm glad we're able to close out this, hrm, issue. I tell you, I can't wait for the conference call, hrm, because I want to tell them myself that their own guidelines prevent them from the ball of shit having this extra feature. Hrm, wish I could see their faces...

—But it's not that, I swear—

—Shhhh! Look, you got what you wanted, right? Let him translate it into the business-speak, OK?