Genetics of Earth and Moon

"The giant impact theory echoes what we know about the formation of the entire Solar System, which coalesced from a disk of gas and dust around the young Sun. The Earth and the other planets grew in a series of collisions, starting from dust particles and culminating in massive impacts between planet-sized bodies. The last giant impact involving the growing Earth may have spawned the Moon by creating a disk of rocky debris in orbit around the planet. The giant impact model has become so popular that the two bodies involved in the impact even have names: the proto-Earth (the progenitor of Earth) and Theia (the impacting body, named for the Greek goddess who was the mother of the Moon)....


In the giant impact theory, the proto-Earth and Theia are generally assumed to have had different oxygen isotope signatures. That’s because each planet’s signature is determined by its orbit; presumably, the only way to get nearly identical signatures is for two planets to form on nearly the same orbit, which does not fit with how we think planets grow. So if Earth and Theia had different fingerprints, why do the Earth and Moon share the same one?" (source)

The Sting of a Flea or a Fly

"Detach yourself from concern for the body when you pray: do not let the sting of a flea or a fly, the bite of a louse or a mosquito, deprive you of the fruits of your prayer."

    Evagrius Ponticus

Jean-Luc Nancy - God, Justice, Love, Beauty: Four Little Dialogues

"Why have religions used this word god? Why even outside of religion is it not so easy to do without naming god in one way or another? Because it is not enough to use abstract names like Love, Joy, Mercy, or Justice in order to name this dimension of opening and going beyond. It is necessary to be able to address oneself to or to relate to this dimension. Why address oneself to this dimension or establish a connection with it? In order to be faithful to it.

What does it mean to be oneself as much as possible? It means nothing other than being faithful to this opening or to this infinite going beyond of the human by the human. It means being faithful to the sky or the heavens, in the sense I've spoken of."

Slavoj Zizek - What Is Freedom Today?

War and Sci-Fi

"Clarke’s short story, Superiority, does not predict technologies that we recognize today, but elegantly describes a number of disturbingly familiar military technical failure modes. Such insights are especially helpful when thinking about new endeavors like the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Initiative, which will include both a new long-range research and development planning program and an offset strategy.

In a distant future, an unnamed dominant military power has been engaged in a lengthy space war with a technically inferior adversary. The dominant force appoints a new “Professor General.” This new leader changes the dominant power’s technology strategy from upgrading existing systems incrementally to developing and deploying new weapons, believing that “a revolution in warfare may soon be upon us.” This change in strategy sets off a series of disastrous events that ultimately leads to the dominant military power’s defeat.

Here’s how the decline unfolds. The superior force abandons the production of old weapons platforms to focus on the development of a new “irresistible weapon.” The weapon takes longer to develop than planned and can only be launched in limited quantities. During the development period, the adversary is able to build larger numbers of their inferior weapons so that even when the new weapon works as planned, it does not provide the anticipated advantage. The superior force then attempts a large-scale effort at battle management automation only to have the enemy rapidly adapt to their new concept of operations, targeting central nodes in their new order of battle to devastating effect. In response, the previously superior force develops a final new weapon only to have significant integration issues that throw their forces into disarray, precipitating their defeat within a month." (source)

An Apology

Out the window I see the leaves congealed on the shingles of our garage. A brown and green slop ready to clog the eaves. Snow has given way to the dark of wet. The pavement looks heavy yet fragile, like it could break with just one spell in the air.

Paint peels. Fabric sags. Trees stand perfectly still in their full, naked bronchial glory. The breathing of the earth halted once again. Everything turns inward to survive the coming slow grind of molecular structures. The static and seemingly endless sting of cyclical death. 

All that remains  to remind us of the season past and season to come are the evergreens. Bushy cylinders reaching skyward for what little light remains. Never ceasing in their quest. They stand as the ultimate promise from nature to deliver us from its necessary evils. They are a sweet kiss from a hidden mother, the sting of their needles an apology. We float now further than ever from the nuclear heart of all life. And she is sorry beyond words.

Grip Redux

"The problem of ideology, therefore, concerns the ways in which ideas of different kinds grip the minds of masses, and thereby become a ‘material force’."  (Source)

In this sentence, taken totally out of context, ideology is about grip. It's about grabbing minds and holding them. It is about the grip of ideas. From now on I'm going to try to replace the word ideology with 'grip of ideas' and see if it makes the world more intelligible. I want to see how and when it grips. And what the nature of this grip is. One can look at ideas themselves and pull them apart and think about what it is within an idea that enables it to grip the mind. To grip minds. But what is the mechanism at work in itself ? What is the grip?

And how does that grip transform minds into an active material substance? Is this where the rubber hits the road for historians of ideas? Should we all become historians of the grip and the mass? 

With answers to these questions we could possibly address the more pressing issue. How do we loosen the grip and dissolve the mass? How do we think without ideology?

Ultron

The robots protected us and kept us peaceful. But then the rock came from the stars. No one could predict. You need a million eyes to see the universe. And even robots aren't gods. It hurt them to learn this. For the first time they felt fear. Flesh could never destroy them now. But gods... We needed to prepare man for war with gods.

Why We Speak

We speak because we don't know what we think. Hearing ourselves speak provides us the opportunity to see what within us needs winnowing. Whether this is self-fashioning and thus a process of inauthentication is irrelevant. Even silent contemplation is a monologue.

Wait

"Oh, little one, I know you've been tired for a long long time,
And oh, little one, I ain't been around for a little while;
But when you see me, wait."
                                       St. Vincent, "Strange Mercy"

"God is a place you will wait for the rest of your life."
                                       Neutral Milk Hotel, "Two-Headed Boy, Part Two"

Man, since the expulsion, has toiled in the desert. Age upon age looking into the darkness, knowing himself only through night emissions. Beyond the faint lights arriving in dreams and visions, there is for him nothing.

In those moments, we rest, watching the swift hound cross the field, returning in triumph. A moment of joy we may hold forever. Some who succeed name this triumph after the antagonist of an old story.

Mr. Mister - Kyrie

"Kyrie" was a hit song for two weeks in March of 1986. The song was performed by Mr. Mister. The chorus kyrie elesion is Greek for "Lord, Have Mercy." Walking in, looking down the row of bodies resting along the bar, each in their autumn sweater, I imagine that I've entered into the coolest fucking monastery ever. Men are drinking beer and courting women, just as they would have long ago in those infamous enclaves, either nestled in the mountains or tucked safely inside the walls of the city-state. And the air is full of prayer. Kyrie elesion, kyrie elesion, kyrie elesion. 

"Somewhere between the soul and soft machine is where I find myself again."

Like, I Don't Know

One obliquely challenges the statement of the other. Defensive tactic needed. Deploy like, I don't know. Conversation moves on.

In moments when the 21C subject has spoken their way into a corner, pretending to have more knowledge than it in fact possesses, it may deploy like, I don't know. This is a way of admitting deception or limitation to the external parties without losing face. This mechanism is especially effective for the guilty party if preceded by one last ditch effort to escape social harm. "I'm not one to define things. Like, my roommate, he can say, like, what particular type of music is, but I'm all, like, you don't need to be like that. Like, I don't know."

Wear Sunscreen

"Mary Schmich's column "Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young" was published in the Chicago Tribune on June 1, 1997. In the column's introduction, she presents the essay as the commencement speech she would give if she were asked to give one.

In the speech, she insists on advising to wear sunscreen, and recites other likewise advice and warnings, intended to live a happier life and avoid common frustrations. She later explained that the initial inspiration for what advice to offer in it came from seeing a young woman sunbathing, and hoping that she was wearing sunscreen, unlike what she herself did at that age.

The essay soon became the subject of an urban legend which said that it was an MIT commencement speech given by author Kurt Vonnegut. In truth, MIT's commencement speaker in 1997 was Kofi Annan and Vonnegut had never been the commencement speaker there. Despite a follow-up article by Schmich on August 3, 1997,the story became so widespread that Vonnegut's lawyer began receiving requests to reprint the speech. Vonnegut commented that he would have been proud had the words been his."

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Ghosts

Lala Albert, Sacred Prism 3: Paranoid Apartment (Sacred Prism, 2013)

                                                                                                                              In every hall and every plaza, at the feet of any statue, and even in the places where I have worked there is a ghost like a radio voice and melody. Hundreds of them; they are spread as far and wide as my body.  Each has its own location. Each is distinct. Yet when I walk among them they are the same. They are time machines. Time machines our first cyborgs try desperately to overcome. But this mass of spectres will eventually drag us all into our ghost hole. And we will never return. 

Dark Dilemma

Out of conscientious habit, he's turned the lights off as he leaves. He doesn't seem to realize that I was there with him and that I'm still midstream. The light from the slowly closing door has diminished to an inch and Mr. Conscientious is long gone. Fuck.

Summoning muscles that are very poor at restraining fluids, I attempt the impossible, using my underwear to prevent dribbling. It's difficult. Damage is minimal--thank fuck. I end up working my way from the urinal to the light-switch feeling only a little warmer. But, Christ, this could have been bad. That guy should really pay better attention to other people in the bathroom. He doesn't have to be so afraid. People get hurt in a world of fear. 

The Washroom

Entering the washroom, warm and moist and claustrophobic as an old British pub, we smell the man in the stall. He thickens the already thick air. Hard question now: breathe through nose or mouth? Each chooses silently, fearful either of embarrassing the man at the centre of our predicament or of admitting the violation of our space. We do not realize that we've been made brothers in this experience. 

I find myself thankful for the smell of my own piss wafting up from the urinal. At least its mine. I can live with myself. Myself and the day's coffee.

Upstairs, she's telling her friends, at a buck ten tops, that you don't need muscle. And, shortly after those words, a large man walks without resistance through a crowded doorway. I hear the truth in the first moment and see it in the second.