fractalnavel

hey, when i kick off, somebody please remember to rename this blog to “farting corpse”, ok ?  thank you !

yes, i made yet another trip to castle blanc last night.  you know those hoses they use for auto exhaust in garages ?  right.  gotta get me one of those.

got beer too.  noticed that the sam adams cartons are now advertising “brewed in cincinnati”.  wtf ?  i thought it was made in boston.

tried some 9.0 malt liquor.  the taste was actually offensive !  what ?  oh sure, i drank it.  it's beer.  then, after a reminder from craig last week, i tried some steel reserve (8.5) for the first time in years.  yup, good headache brew.  to top this cheap-drunk-breadpop-fest off, i also got some monster ale (11.0).  this works out to the equivalent of about 3 one ounce shots of 86 proof liquor (the standard) per 12 oz. bottle.  let's see, six pack = 18 shots = half liter of whiskey.  whoopee !

yes, this is an appropriate milestone post (100) ;-p

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[arrgghhh - not another cicada post !]

what kind of critters do the birds usually eat ?  there should be a lot more of 'em this year.

i need a digital camera so that i can post the obligatory bug face here.

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jeep belonged to amc who was bought out by chrysler who merged with was bought out by daimler-benz.

hey - i own a mercedez !

(hey, if nextel can do this with the winston cup, i can claim i drive a german car.)

Drive a BMW and score!

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miss congeniality

why am i not surprised that she is west virginia trailer trash ?  and that her family doesn't understand how someone with such a clearly wacked out background could be part of such a thing.

it's also interesting how few people seem to know or care about the import of the results of psychological studies and judicial proceedings relevant to such things over the last century, and how those findings might be applied.  but i'm probably just being impatient; i'm sure the lawyers are waist deep in this stuff already.  it was nice to see that abc's nightline reviewed some of this stuff.

meanwhile, ain't she a cutey ?  i wonder if you can find her on a dating site somewhere.  i bet her high school yearbook didn't even have a “most likely to show up on global front pages with naked men” category.

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thesis:  evolution, and specifically speciation, is assumed to occur through the passive and indirect (and indifferent) competitive influences of natural selection.  but is that really the case ?  it seems that particular species - and proto-species groups - will actively (offensive as distinct from defensive) and systematically attempt to destroy their nearest genetic “competitors“, and that this fight propagates to successively more distant relatives in an effort to continually widen the gap and remove competition for similar resources.  in the human case, “actively and systematically” should not be confused with “consciously”. 

discussion:  that's an interesting way to look at wars and extinctions, especially the way humans are treating the great apes and other large mammals.  the existence of multi-specie groups of fish or birds would seem to provide a counter example, but maybe they are just not that good at detroying their neighbors.  like any other trait, the level of “cousin-cide” present would vary by species.

and the active form does not necessarily take only physical form:  social behaviors can be primarily destructive influences as well, not just harmonious and organizing.  these social influences can lead to either active physical destruction, or to more indirect destructive forces.  they're all intertwined in a complex of competitive behaviors, so attempting to characterize cause and effect would be incorrect.

are we genetically predetermined to have racial/ethnic/tribal/national problems ? (hell, just look at the richness of our vocabulary here !)  and how did this competition through direct active destruction arise ?  an emergent property, to be sure.  such self-organizing effects are first recognizable through the establishment of boundaries, something which makes them distinguishable.  we have also evolved to _perceive_ certain boundaries, the “truth” of which is not really pertinent. 

seems to be a result of existence naturally excluding concurrent co-existence, in the sense that more than one bit of matter cannot occupy the same point in space and time (as in, dimensionality and degrees of freedom are significant).  also in the sense that something cannot be simultaneously a cone and a sphere, the creative destruction of concurrent possibility.

part of the entropy-antientropy balance, one more mechanism for staying on the border between chaos and stagnancy.

for now, i'll just put this in the bag interesting potential phenomena for future reference.

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toqueville, on despotism in democracy:

“it would resemble paternal power if, like that, it had for its object to prepare men for manhood; but on the contrary, it seeks only to keep them fixed irrevocably in childhood; it likes citizens to enjoy themselves provided that they think only of enjoying themselves. . .  it willingly works for their happiness; but it wants to be the unique agent and sole arbiter of that; it provides for their security, foresees and secures their needs, facilitates their pleasures, conducts their principal affairs, directs their industry, regulates their estates, divides their inheritances; can it not take away from them entirely the trouble of thinking and the pain of living ?  ... [this power] extends its arms over society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a path to surpass the crowd; it does not break wills, but softens them, bends them, and directs them; it rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one's acting; it does not destoy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.”

--- as quoted in “lives of the mind”, kimball.

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