The Good News is Rock and Roll

Last weekend, Sarah and I went to the Caribbean Festival at the local community college. The first tent we came up to was a prayer tent. That's weird and not very Caribbean I thought. The next tent had people donating and picking up clothes. In the large, tent after that people were picking up free hamburgers. Then, another prayer tent.

Turns out we went to the I Love the Church of Whatever Festival across the street by mistake. You know what finally tipped me off? Rock music. To be more specific, Christian Rock Music.

The term Christian Rock has become redundant since rock ceased to be a part of popular music a long time ago. All new rock is Christian Rock. Leave it to churches to consistently remain at least 20 years behind the musical mainstream. I guess all popular musical styles from classical to folk to rock can expect a late boom in the Christian music scene. One of the days, we'll get to enjoy Chrisp Hop and Christian Indie.

Free Drug Trade

Scholars of the British Empire tend to display simple amnesia: the systematic omission of subjects that are impossible to square with the idea of "liberal imperialism." For example, both Niall Ferguson and the Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire skip lightly over the fact that the empire operated the world's largest and most successful drug cartel. During the nineteenth century, Britain fought two wars of choice with China to force it to import opium. The Australian scholar Carl A. Trocki concludes that, given the huge profits from the sale of opium, "without the drug there probably would have been no British empire."

That's a quote/paraphrase from Chalmers Johnson's Nemesis, a highly recommended read.

I remember being very confused about the Opium Wars in high school. This was during the height of America's so called drug war. I found it hard to accept that Britain fought wars in order to force people to buy drugs. It's like something out of a bad Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. In the final fight scene, Van Damme does the splits and punches a snickering mustachioed Britain in the balls.



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Carl A. Trocki - Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy

Niall Ferguson - Empire

The Truth Can't Set You Free

Reification is the fallacy committed by ascribing physical or human characteristics to abstract entities. "Love is gonna getcha" is one example. Love, being just a concept, can't "get" anything and especially not me as I am rather fast and love is rather slow. "The world is going crazy" would be another example.

Now, before you run about wielding reification like a cudgel to rhetorically bludgeon your peers pointing and screaming FALLACY at every poet you meet, let me tell you about my whole problem with it. In order for reification to work as a fallacy, you need to accept that there are uniquely physical or human characteristics which abstract entities are incapable of having. But how would you prove that gravity isn't a harsh mistress? Even some people can't prove that they're capable of love and other human characteristics. You know the ones I mean (said in the voice of hedonism bot). The two ways to make the fallacy valid are: hand waving and insisting on the strictest of definitions.

In the end, it isn't much more than a way of promoting concrete thinking over more metaphorical modes of thought.

Math Angel

When Renee Descartes was 21, he was visited by an angel (or had a vision in which he was visited by an angel, if you want to be a doubter). The angel confirmed all of his hopes saying that the world is fundamentally mathematical in nature. Descartes went on to lay the foundation for the scientific world view that reality is mathematical and objective.

For some reason, science hasn't accepted the angel as one of its founding myths the way it accepted the persecution of Galileo and the falling apple of Newton.

(Simone Cantarini Saint Matthew and the Angel via ARC)

Clean Sleep

Last night, I dreamt I took a shower in my pajamas.

That was the entire dream.

Point of Origin

Weapons from Iran are showing up in the hands of Iraqi insurgents? Well, weapons from the US are showing up in the hands of Turkish insurgents.

If the parallels weren't close enough, this quote comes from terrorism expert Professor Ihsan Bal, "quite a number of [Turkish] people are ready to believe that America might have directly [given these] weapons to the terrorist organization."


UPDATE!

I'm not accusing the US of purposely supplying weapons to insurgents (They are and some weird stuff is happening around it but that's another issue). I don't think the mere fact that US weapons turned up in Turkey means that the US purposely planted them there. Yet, the US military claims that Iran is planting weapons in Iraq and uses the mere fact Iranian weapons are found as evidence.

I'm really interested in is how the perceptions of populations create the need for more or less evidence backing up an accusation. When US weapons show up in Turkey, the Turks blame the US and the US blames the Iraqi police. When Iranian weapons show up in Iraq, the US blames Iran and visa versa. Americans don't need evidence to suspect Iran and the Turks don't need evidence to suspect the US.

The parallel quote from media expert Professor So and So would be, "quite a number of Americans are ready to believe that Iran might have directly given these weapons to the terrorist organization."

Nazi Pigs in Space

While some conspiracy theories should be taken seriously, most are low on substance but high on imagination and entertainment value. Here's one of my favorite. They pulled together the Nazis, aliens, the illuminati, the Masons all into an fun if somewhat confusing tale.

The New Barney Miller

I just finished watching one of my favorite tv shows. The Wire. Kudos to the whole show. It's well researched well written, well cast and often well acted. Definitely, the most real and engaging show on television. I don't know how many more seasons they can keep it up at this level but I'll bet they have at least one more in them.

Word is that all of Baltimore shuts down when this show is on.

(Photo is "Birds on wire, evening, Manzanar Relocation Center" by Ansel Adams via the Library of Congress)

As Above so Below

In my dream, it is night and I climb up the side of a long embankment the size of a mountain. I get to the top and look out over a lake greenish and deep like Crater Lake in Oregon. The only sources of light are thousands shimmering yellow and white stars. I walk out on a long perch over the lake and look cautiously over the edge to see large dark moving shapes in the water far below me. I feel small.



I can't get a sense of depth beneath the water so it's difficult to tell exactly how large the circling shapes are. As I look down, I turn my attention to the lake's rolling surface and notice small points shifting back and forth with the waves. I look closer and realize that the points are yellow and white flowers catching the dim light of the stars. Then, I see the reflection of the stars in the water too. The stars and the flowers are sometimes distinct and at other times blend and transform into one another. It kind of looks like this video I took of the reflection of Christmas lights off a canal in Delft.

I get the sense that I'm supposed to jump. Part of me is to scared and walks back off away from the edge but another part dives. As I fall towards the surface of the water, I see my reflection rising up at me from the depths. When I hit the water, I go under and my reflection jumps out.

LSD Edumacation

Honestly, what did she expect the answer to her question was going to be?

"Yes Beth, people are being uptight about those freaky chromosomes."

I'm amazed the teacher didn't walk over and punch her in her smart hippy mouth.

For more on LSD, and the terrifying world of "bummers", check out part 2.