Category: General

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King Matrix

On the release of a new poster showing the faces of the heroes of the Matrix looking DEAD SERIOUS and DEEP and VERY,  VERY COOL.

After seeing those expressions one too many times I am beginning to find the characters– and the whole movie– a bit ridiculous. A lot of posturing, looking terminally cool, inflating one good plot device into some kind of weird totem that seems far more sophisticated than it really is. Those expressions! The idea that we should fantasize about “the one” … how different is that from wanting a king or a dictator or a daddy, to take away all our responsibilities and make life simple and make ourselves gloriously subservient?

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Pro Life

An anti-abortion activist wrote, “I will kill every Democrat in the world so we never more have to have our babies brutally murdered by you absolute terrorists.”

This is what the so-called pro-life position has come to.  I will kill you all to prove that I believe life is sacred, given by an all-powerful God who will reward me for my virtuous thoughts.

It has been resounding clear for many years that most people in America who pronounce themselves to be “pro-life” are not.  Politically, they support a strong military, the nuclear deterrent (founded on the premise that we would rather have everyone die than allow you to defeat us), capital punishment, and guns.  There is nothing remotely about these positions– wrong or right, from a practical point of view– that can be considered reflective of a value you could call “pro” life.  The hypocrisy is so obvious that it hardly needs to be stated.

So why do so many people, especially evangelical Christians, go around pounding their chests and declaring themselves “pro” life when they are not?   Because what they are really is anti-sex.  Because what they want, really, is to control women’s bodies.  And what makes them really angry is the thought that you or I might be enjoying something that they think obsessively about and which they have denied to themselves.  Sex sex sex.

An unwanted pregnancy is their revenge on the women who defy their views on social order.  You can almost visualize them sneering at the unfortunate teenager whose life is now ruined.  You deserve it.

They do not care about the six-week-old fetus.  They do not care about old people in nursing homes.  They do not care about the Iraqi mothers and children who were slaughtered in George Bush’s invasion.  They only care about making you pay for the sheer arrogance of your condescension towards their credulous views on morality and God.

 

 

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I Knew I Would Regret Switching to WordPress Sooner or Later

And here it is.

Suppose you were a young, healthy man or woman.  Suppose someone entered your life and fell in love with you and invited you to move in with them.  Suppose they got you everything: every meal, every snack, every drink.  Suppose they urged you to stay on the couch, relax, eat more, relax more, sleep in, sit down, lay down, take the car to the corner grocery store instead of walking.

Eventually, you will not know how to cook.  You will not be able to walk.  You will grow fat and sedentary and stupid.

You are now the ideal customer for Microsoft, and Apple, Google, and Facebook, and WordPress.

I initially signed on to WordPress because it was free and it was convenient.  And because I had to know it because part of my job was to provide technical support to other people who were using it to update websites for the organization I work for.

Yes, I fell for it: the fatty food on a tray in front of the TV.  But I didn’t mind it too much because it still required some work to actually create content, and format it the way you like.

But the other day, I was reading some of my older posts in HTML and thinking, gee, I like the look of that.  It’s more real, more raw, less slick, and has more character than the stupid standard WordPress fonts and formatting.  I had already decided to go back to my html editor and my rather primitive looking but content-focused webpages.

And then, the update to WordPress came, and I wasn’t paying close attention, and suddenly this stupid fucking new “Gutenberg” editor appear out of nowhere, with no option to turn it off.  And suddenly my editing screen was a kludge of stupid options I had no interest in, blocking me from actually putting in the content I wanted to put in.

Gutenberg is an addition to the WordPress platform that will transform the way websites and content is displayed through a series of customizable blocks. This will allow users the flexibility to control the way their content appears on the page and create an easier building experience for anyone looking to create a website.  Some credulous tech blogger somewhere

WordPress, joining Microsoft in it’s perverse and pernicious determination to make everybody as absolutely stupid as possible, has removed the normal editor from current editions of WordPress and replaced it with an idiotic contraption intended to make it easy for idiots to drag and drop multi-media crap into their own webpages so that they have glorious content without actually providing any glorious content.  Just steal it.  Just let WordPress automatically format everything so that you lose any ability to control what your page looks like.  Your page is going to look like a million other pages.

The new editor also allows for developers to create guard rails so to speak that will guide content editors to their intended goals. Imagine that it is similar to the bumpers that are used to improve your performance when bowling.  The same credulous tech blogger.

The ability to actually see and make changes to your blog on the go – or even post a blog with custom features from your phone is just one of the many updates Gutenberg will bring to WordPress. Text pasted from Word or Google Docs will get cleaned up and converted to blocks automatically and instantly.

Seriously?  The blogger is suggesting that bumper pads at a bowling alley are what we all need.

Can anything worth reading be written on a cell phone?  Seriously?  Are you going to dictate it to “hey Google” and let the master geniuses at Google clean up your text (and censor it)?  You want the NSA to be able to scan your blogs before you even upload them?  (I know that sounds “paranoid”: the idea that such a thing sounds “paranoid” is the U.S. intelligence gathering community’s best friend).

Yes, let’s all go bowling.  There are your bumper pads.  Enjoy yourself.

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The Lion Dick

A pity that in the attempt to give the definitive untold history of “The Lion King,” the film’s actual creator, the man who wrote the treatment for $5,000 as “work for hire,” gets no mention.

Writer and poet Tom Disch had sold a property, “The Brave Little Toaster,” to Disney at John Lassiter’s instigation. The story of Toaster was to be Disney’s big entry into computer animation, but the film company balked at the cost until Lassiter convinced them otherwise. By that time “Toaster” had been subcontracted to be produced at a Korean animation studio as a normal cel animation. Lassiter changed the story of “Toaster” slightly, substituting toys for office accessories, and so, “Toy Story,” was born.

Essentially, both “Toy Story” (and it’s sequels), along with “The Lion King,” came from the mind of one man. Mr. Disch did grow bitter at seeing his work without even attribution making billions of dollars, while his career and personal life were growing increasingly difficult.

Tom committed suicide on Independence Day, 2008.

Ny Times, Letters, 2019-07-18

Of all the complaints, for god’s sake, did nobody notice how it promotes an entitled ruling class, inheriting power and position through primogeniture? Here is your “rightful” king. Are you kidding me?  Just who appointed this “rightful” king?  What makes a predator’s assumption of dictatorial power “rightful”?  And why the apparently unquestioning obedience from his potential dinners?

Simba, of course, can answer: God did.  And if you don’t respect God’s appointment, you will burn in hell.  Isn’t that right, Father Hyena and Brother Jackal?

And as for those reverent creatures of forest– delighted to be killed and eaten by your “rightful” king, are they?

Some say children found the first film too scary? It wasn’t scary enough: we really needed to see a scene of the rightful king having dinner to make people understand exactly what it is about royalty– kings, and princes, and Disney princesses– they admire so much.  And what it is about Disney that consistently glamorizes kings and princesses and other dictatorial forms of government.   

What they did to “Robin Hood” and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”.

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Sharepoint, Sharepunt

Here’s what astounds me: Sharepoint is Microsoft’s fasting (sic) growing business ever. Faster than windows or office. It’s also a source of 1 bil+ revenue a year. YET, comments from 40+ educated people who know technology very well cannot explain its purpose or real value.   From Here

So what is it you do here?

If you have seen the movie “Office Space”, you will immediately recognize the query from a pair of consultants– the “two Bobs”–  hired to optimize the business operations of some hi-tech company that writes banking software (consequentially using only two digits for the dates).    They interview all of the staff and are sometimes perplexed at the role played by a particular individual.  They look at him, indulgent, perhaps, and open-minded, at least at first, and ask: what is it, exactly, that you do here?  One employee, desperately trying to justify his position, gets angrier and angrier as he explains that he takes the specifications from the customer and brings them to the development team.  The consultants repeat:  Yes… but what is it you do?

The truth is that “Office Space” is one of those movies that I like in spite of the fact that it really isn’t very good, on any artistic level.  The acting, script, and direction are pedestrian at best.  But it hit on an area of human life neglected by Hollywood: work.  And it’s amateurishness works in its favor there in the way it tries to show you something about working relationships that you won’t see elsewhere.  Like:  “PC Load Letter?!  What the fuck does that mean?”

In this case, the employee, Tom Smykowski, could have given an answer more in line with “I develop strategies for customer relationship development to enhance corporate branding” or something like that.  What he says instead is that he brings the specifications from the customer to the developer.  He “deals with” customers, which is actually more of a real job than what most managerial employees do.

So, in trying to inform myself about Sharepoint– what is it exactly that you do? — I found this guy.  Oh good, I thought.  He doesn’t look too corporate.  He’s sitting in a car.  Maybe, at last, I can get a real explanation of what Sharepoint does exactly.  So I watched.  He blathered on about how great it is, how fabulous, how foundational, and how it …. it….  it….

All right.   In spite of the car setting and the lack of a suit, he sounds like a shill for a consultancy group that sells Microsoft services and support.  When we need collaboration, when we need workflow… communications: few to many…  the many to many conversations crossing teams… applications … granular security… think Sharepoint.  And there’s teams: teams is where we’re doing things because we converse and we’re working on different things… where we meet and share files and the other aspects of what we do as a team…   Enhance employee engagement….  Yammer are those large  topic-focused typically self-serviced type conversational groups… teams!  Teams are where I do my work and get it done. …   They actually work together in a synergistic fashion and usage will vary from org to org depending on their own requirements.

Yes, but what is it you do?

That last line– my God!  You really hit on something there!   “Synergistic fashion”.  Something so profound and specific it will make the hairs on the backs of the necks of every high-priced consultant in North America tingle.

But what is it you do?

I think of Sharepoint, at this stage, like the layer of management just below the CEO at most organizations.  There are people who do real work at any organization, institution, or company.   When an organization starts out, that’s all anybody does, though there are always people with real power among them: the owners or appointed positions with the authority attached to them by the owners (it’s really always the owners who have the real power).  Then the organization grows and gets more money.  The appointed leaders promote themselves.  The last thing they really want to do every day is real work, so they crate new categories of “work”: management.   But even management can involve real work, like supervision, scheduling, processing time sheets, coordination, and so on.  So, as the organization gets bigger and bigger, they appoint other people to do the real management while they attend training seminars, retreats, and leadership conferences.  Eventually, they stop working altogether: their entire job consists of coming up with phrases like “synergistic fashion” and “topic-focused typically self-serviced type conversational groups” and “enhance employee engagement” to justify paying themselves more than the people who actually produce things of value for the organization.  Way more.

It provides you with an “intuitive” experience, so he says.  That’s not what “intuitive” means, really.  The experience is what you get to.  The skills required to navigate to this result are not intuitive, and real-world experience shows over and over again that Microsoft does a very poor job of making interfaces that allow users to “intuit” how to do something, like set up an international meeting via the internet with white board, powerpoint presentations, and video-conferencing.

“Your employees can create sites to share documents and information with colleagues, partners, and customers”.  Yes, it sounds like the internet.

Or listen to this (from here, an otherwise fine article):

Yammer the startup had a vision. It was to make the world of work more transparent and connected, to break open the rigid structures in corporations and to let information travel freely for the good of more collaboration, innovation and responsiveness. Yammer the platform was the conduit, the trojan-horse so to speak, to achieve such an ambitious social change agenda.

Is there any world in which you can imagine that any of this can take place without the actual work of collaboration being performed by smart, engaged, well-compensated employees?  Now, is there any world in which you can imagine that all these good things would not have happened anyway, without the expensive technological framework being sold to you by Microsoft?  There’s not a thing that Office 365 does that could not be done by Groupwise, Thunderbird, ExpressionWeb, WhatsApp, or Google.  The biggest obstacle this this process is not addressed by any software: stupid leaders who are more afraid of being exposed as the useless appendages that they are than they care about productivity and efficiency and rational management strategies.

 

 

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Willful Idiots

When you join an evangelical church in the United States, you get this:

It was the kind of community that Ms. Bragg, who was not raised in the church, wanted for her children. They signed the church’s Membership Covenant, an agreement stating they would submit to the Bible and to the authority and spiritual discipline of church leaders. Members promise to “practice complete chastity” unless in a heterosexual marriage, to “refrain from illegal drug use, drunkenness, gossip,” and to “diligently strive for unity and peace within the church.” Leaders promise “to lovingly exercise discipline when necessary.”

From here.

This is not a church of course. You say, yes it is. It is “The Village Church” in Hurst, Texas. I say, it is not a church. It is a cult. It requires members to submit to the “authority and spiritual discipline of church leaders”. Since no church leader has any real authority to give spiritual direction of any kind, they are asked to submit to the authority of a personality who happens to have manipulated a group of people in bestowing upon him some kind of arbitrary title.

This is not all that complicated: God does not talk to the pastors of “The Village Church”. He never did and never will. He does not “talk” to anyone. If He did, the first thing he would say is, STOP GIVING YOUR HARD-EARNED MONEY TO THESE CHARLATANS!

The leaders of this church will say He did because most church leaders actually believe that the majestic voice inside their heads is not their egos: it is the Lord, guiding them to guide others, to bring spiritual fulfillment to the ignorant masses. And they better be ignorant– nobody who is not ignorant would buy this bunk.

Why would any person with any kind of intellectual integrity agree to such a bizarre, obscene obligation? Why would you surrender your right, as an adult, to define for yourself what is moral and what is not, what you are allowed to do and what you are not allowed to do? And why on earth would you surrender to a group of grasping, self-serving “leaders” the power “to exercise discipline” over you?

I am always struck by the number of Americans who will proudly, insolently insist that they would never allow the government to tell them what to do, but will do what their church tells them to do.

Does this same church ask its members to give generously, without regard to their own personal benefit, because that’s what Christ asks of a member of his church? Yet the church protects itself with the fake “MinistrySafe” deceit, and it’s “covenant”. Trust us, but we don’t trust you.

Why would you believe that the people who created this “covenant” are inspired by Jesus, when it is absolutely obvious that the “covenant” serves their own interests alone? It is a franchise, the buildings and organization are a monument to Chandler’s ego. Nothing in this business seems even remotely related to the teachings or example of Christ. In fact, the close you look at the structures and constitutions of these organizations, the more obvious it is that they serve the financial and egotistical interests of the founders.

Mr. Chandler is raising money to build a new campus that is likely to cost more than $70 million.

Okay– now it’s different. It’s even worse. Now you idiots are co-conspirators with Mr. Chandler: you are actually paying for him to put you, and others, into an abusive relationship.

That Said

That said, I find the allegations nebulous. The Bragg’s daughter clearly has issues and has received therapy. Many therapists fervently believe that most emotional disturbances in young girls are caused by sexual abuse, even if it isn’t remembered. They will frequently “encourage” these young women to ransack their memories for possible incidents. She “remembers” an incident that occurred while she was in bed, and had been, or was asleep.

Was there something else that led the police to charge Mr. Tonne? From the article, the daughter could not identify the man she alleges abused her. There were no witnesses of any sort (to the incident, or to the man entering the room, or leaving). Did Mr. Tonne confess, perhaps, to one of the church leaders, who chose not to disclose to the Braggs?

Finally, the inevitable:

Boz Tchividjian and Mitch Little, lawyers representing the Braggs’ daughter, who is now an adult, said their client planned to move forward with formal litigation in order to hold the Village “accountable for the sexual trauma inflicted upon her as a child by an adult employee.”

Oh my!

Of course! The money!

Even after signing the onerous “covenant”, the Braggs are suing. The Braggs now have a financial interest in prosecuting Mr. Tonne. That doesn’t automatically mean the allegations are false but it introduces a corrupting influence. The Braggs will have no difficulty finding an “expert” psychologist who will testify that all of their daughter’s psychological issues stem from this incident of abuse. No psychologist who would testify otherwise could survive the withering hostility of the general public, and the church would never dare to produce one in it’s defense.

They will try to settle out of court for some of the millions they have from their generous, credulous sheep.

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The Beauty and the Shlep

Why do so many Hollywood movies present the trope of the shleppy, tasteless cretin, recently played often by Seth Rogan, who wins the beautiful, smart, rich girl, who, in real life, is obviously way out of his league.  Like Charlize Theron.

It’s simple: in a nutshell, it appeals to crucial fantasies of both genders in the audience.  The shleppy guy, who in real life is dumb, sloppy, obsessed with sports and guns–  thinks that beautiful, smart, rich women only pretend to fall for smart, good-looking, athletic men– as they do in real life.  But in their heart of hearts, they really prefer ME!  Because I am so hot and desirable.  I am real man.  I grunt and sweat and fart on the couch.  But I’m real.  And, in a pinch, I can kill people.

For women, they see the positive aspects of a relationship with a man whom they can easily manipulate to death, out-maneuver, nag, and exploit.

Done.

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The Trolls

This article describes how an allegedly respectable biographer of Martin Luther King Jr. has uncovered evidence that he may have conducted inappropriate activities while leading the civil rights movement in the 1960’s.

Sex.

We are supposed to be shocked, I suppose, that Martin Luther King strayed from his marriage vows (actually, you’d have to have been hiding under a rock for 30 years to not know that). And we are entitled to knowledge of King’s offenses because Martin Luther King Jr. is respected and celebrated and widely known. So journalists have an obligation to find any dirt on him they can and splash it across as many front pages as possible so we may all come to regard the formerly admired hero as a disgusting example of perversity and sin. We may now go out and tear down the statues. Repeal the laws he caused to be passed. Restore the attitudes he changed.

Mr. Garrow, the author, will defend himself, because you know he will be savaged by a lot of people who feel that smearing Martin Luther King Jr. is not an admirable activity, regardless of whether he participated in an orgy or not. And he’ll have to respond to this question: what is the point? Is there any interest, other than your own, that is served by repackaging the fact that Mr. King had sex with some women?

[Some might object to my use of the word “smear”, which is usually associated with the act of relating false, pejorative information about someone in order to destroy their reputation. I would argue that publishing true information which the publisher would know would destroy someone’s reputation with the general public even though it may not, on it’s own, be directly relevant to the issues for which a person is famous, is also a smear. Think about it this way: what if a “journalist” set out with a list of 25 randomly selected politicians and artists and decided to try to find “dirt” on all of them, and was willing to accept information of dubious veracity coming from bodies known to have an interest in discrediting the person? And what if that person was deceased and unable to offer a defense or explanation? Easy target.]

Did someone out there stake the claim that people of significant accomplishments never do anything naughty? And what do we mean by bad? The sex, of course, grabs the headlines, partly because of the perversity in all of us— mostly because of the perversity in all of us. We immediately read the story not because we are interested in social justice and the law and women’s rights: we read it because deep in our own very dirty minds we want to know more about the sex. It appeals to our desire for sex. It tickles are fantasies about having sex. It makes us feel good to condemn other people for having sex because we are ashamed of our own perverse desires and condemning others is a way of deflecting suspicion. It makes us feel like we have inside information that others don’t have: you admire Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.? But I happen to know that he had sex with women in hotel rooms.

David Garrow probably knows this. He also knows he will make a lot more money from a book about Martin Luther King having sex than he would from a book on how little has changed in terms of segregated schools in the past fifty years. He knows that perfectly, but will never admit it, because that would implicate you for wanting to read about Martin Luther King having sex. He needs to provide you with cover, for your prurient interest in sex. You need to be able to say, “I was reading about the important civil rights leader” because you don’t want to have to say, “I saw the word ‘sex’ in the title and immediately felt an overwhelming desire to read the article, because I have a dirty mind.”

How different, really, is Garrow from the FBI agents who secretly tapped King’s phones and bugged his hotel rooms and recorded his SEX and then tried to persuade him to commit suicide? The FBI– certainly, J. Edgar– think that you should be shocked by the sex. He had sex. He had sex with women. He had sex, sex, sex. You could read this all day and all night and never be satisfied that you have read enough about Martin Luther King Jr. having sex. You participate in the attempt to make him commit suicide because you join the FBI in the belief that a perfectly monogamous relationship is the only kind of sex anyone should ever know about.

The greatest defense against this attitude– maybe the most contemptible motive there is– is to come to the realization that the sex is not a big deal. He shouldn’t cheat on his wife, but it’s not that big of a deal. It was wrong, but it’s not that big of deal. It’s not the end of the world. We all have the need and the urge. Many of us fantasize about it but excuse ourselves because we only fantasized about it, though if we could, we would.

It is nowhere near as wrong as trying to persuade him to commit suicide by splashing these details all over the press.  Where are the names of the FBI agents and administrators who tried to do this?  We know one of them– J. Edgar Hoover.  Someone made a film about him and he got what he deserved:  he was portrayed by the most mediocre name actor in Hollywood:  Leonardo DiCaprio.

 

 

 

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Why Not the Guillotine?

Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes, interviewing Ninth Circuit Appeals Court Judge Alex Kozinski about methods of execution for criminals who have been sentenced to death, was appalled.  “The guillotine!?”  She was shocked.

How rude of Judge Kozinski.

The United States, the only developed nation that still has a capital punishment, has a big problem.  Hanging is messy and unreliable.  The electric chair is messy and unreliable.  Firing squads are messy and unreliable.  Cyanide is reliable, but messy.  The gas chamber– apparently– is horrifyingly messy and inefficient.  All the methods are imperfect.   The solution seemed to be drugs.  One to sedate.  One to paralyze.   And then one to stop the heart.   No muss, no fuss.  The death penalty is saved!

The problem is that the drug used to paralyze the victim may have give the deceptive impression that the victim was not suffering.  It has been learned that, in fact, the patient may be suffering tremendously, but we can’t know it because the body has been paralyzed.  There have been patients who were administered this drug for an operation who remained conscious but unable to move or speak during the surgery.  They described the experience as excruciating.

So what Stahl objected to, clearly, was the messiness of it; the repugnance of a murder that looks like murder.  This is precisely the mentality that has led to the disaster of capital punishment in the U.S.  Let’s do it in a tidy, antiseptic way that that doesn’t offend those who like to pretend they are virtuous, decent, morally upright persons but still want to kill.

Let’s find a picturesque way to murder.

Yes, drugs: he will just fall asleep, forever.

 

 

 

 

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Trump’s Place in History

This article explores the meaning of Trump’s presidency in terms of a historical cycle of ideologies and their deaths.

Mike Spence tells students at Liberty University that they face oppression and “shunning” because of their Christian beliefs:  you poor privileged white middle-class babies!

He is right about one thing there: smart, educated people will not have much respect for people who willfully embrace a fantasy about the nature of the world, about our physical reality, about angels and demons and evil spirits and floods and miracles.   Yes, he is right.  I am one of those condescending people he is talking about.  I think that if you believe the leaders of the evangelical church in America when they tell you that there are witches and evil spirits and that science is a lie and that Adam and Eve were real, singular human beings who lived 5,000 years ago and ate an apple from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, then, yes, I don’t have much respect for your intelligence.

How do you understand this kind of language from the Republicans?

Imagine yourself sitting in your living room with your spouse. You look up from your iPhone and say, “honey, I just want you to know that I fully expect that you’re going to cheat on me. Probably steal my money. You’ve probably already cheated and lied to me. But that’s okay, because I’m pretty happy with who I am. I’m worth it.” And the wife, who has never cheated or lied even once, looks over and thinks, “I think I need to leave this relationship… now.” Because she is pretty sure that he’s laying the ground work for something and it won’t be nice. And he looks over and says, “I’ll bet you’re even thinking about it now, aren’t you?” And she says, “yeah, I kind of am.”

In other words, he is being disingenuous.  He would feel better if she did cheat on him, because his estimation of his own value, his own virtue, depends on his condescending attitude towards his wife.  In the same way, that Mike Pence feels he is a better human being, even though he’s not being mocked for his “virtue”, but for his credulousness.