'The Samurai Creed' - English, Spanish, German, & Dutch
Current mood: determined
Category: Religion and Philosophy

Bushido – "Warrior Creed" in Japanese, English, Spanish, German, & Dutch:

Currently reading : THE NONBORN KING (May, Julian. , Saga of Pliocene Exile, V. 3.) By Julian May Release date: 12 February, 1984

6:57 PM - 2 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

IF YOU’RE GONNA RUN FROM THE COPS: Do it without pants…
Current mood: amused
Category: News and Politics

If you have your heart set on a little felony evasion, why not do it without pants?

Since you are going to get caught either way, at least without pants, you ensure you will make the news, and be remembered by the police who have to tackle you, and the inmates you end up in prison with:

Driver Arrested After Wild Police Chase (http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/6773102/detail.html?subid=22100484&qs=1;bp=t)

4:35 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA: Great Lines
Current mood: geeky
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

Some favorite lines from "The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0307109/):

Dr. Roger Fleming: Ranger Brad, I'm a scientist, I don't believe in anything.

Dr. Paul Armstrong: Betty, you know what this meteor could mean to science. It could mean actual advances in the field of science.

Skeleton(telepathically): You must find the atmosphereum.
Animala: Amish Terrarium. Must find Amish terrarium.
Dr. Paul Armstrong: I don't understand. Why does she need an Amish terrarium?
Betty Armstrong: Don't the Amish live in open air, like us?
Dr. Paul Armstrong: Of course, Betty, it's absurd. Putting the Amish in glass cases would be inhumane.

Dr. Paul Armstrong: Huh?! What the... Huh?!

Dr. Roger Fleming: Even when I was a child, I was hated by skeletons!

Ranger Brad: Well again I didn't mean to throw a damper. Believe me that's the last thing I'd like to throw. I don't want to throw anything at all really. But when folks are horribly mutilated, I feel it's my job to tell others. We take our horrible mutilations seriously up in these parts.

Animala: Rowr!

Dr. Paul Armstrong: From now on, I'll stick to science, and leave the hunting alien mutants to the experts!

3:33 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

THE PRISONER'S DILEMMA, WHY I TEND TO BE A HERMIT, THE THIRD REICH, AND WHY BUSH BLOWS
Current mood: contemplative
Category: Religion and Philosophy

I have been contemplating why it is I am so wary of people, and have been thinking back on a few articles we read by Jonathan Blumen on 'The Prisoner's Dilemma' for some of our Game Theory undergrad requirements for the Political Science department.  I decided to look them up, and see if they existed online, sure enough they do.

Part of my frustration I think, using the metaphors from the parable of the 'Frog and the Scorpion', is that I really do not want to let go of my ideals, and become a Scorpion in order 'to win', yet I am just bright enough to realize that this stance will put me in the perpetual role of the stupid altruist to get stung to death, so I have an incentive to view pretty much everyone else as a Scorpion.

This is frustrating, because I like people, and my excessive drive to insulate myself from contact with all of the potential Scorpions, since I am not willing to become part of the problem and Sting preemptively, simply makes my self-perceived conundrum worse.  I have been stung one time too many, but am not willing to start stinging first and asking questions later, nor do I wish to be stung any further.

In reading this, and thinking about its personal relevance, I was also reminded of course of parallels to extremists in foreign policy, and the problem of deteriorating aggressive policy precedents.  [When enough Scorpions are in office in various countries, we all lose]  In particular this is relevant to the current Bush administration, Bin Laden's various organizations, and the policies of the Third Reich: Extremists push preemptive attacks in the name of defending their respective country thereby ensuring peace is impossible and everything degenerates at an increasing rate.

The Scorpion

Please note that the story does not portray a prisoner's dilemma. The frog has absolutely nothing to gain by carrying the scorpion across, and is therefore a foolish altruist, proving the truth of the adage, "No good deed goes unpunished." But it is not hard to turn the story into a prisoner's dilemma, as follows.

The frog desires to cross the stream but is afraid of a stork on the other side. The scorpion has no means to cross the stream but is capable of scaring the stork. If the frog carries the scorpion across, the scorpion will reciprocate by frightening away the stork; the scorpion will have crossed the stream and the frog will be safe. The apparent sucker's payoff for the frog is that the scorpion will slip away without scaring the stork once the frog has gone to all the trouble of carrying him across. There is no apparent sucker's payoff for the scorpion--the frog's major opportunity for defection is not to carry the scorpion, but, since the scorpion will not yet have had the opportunity to extend its cooperation it will not have lost anything (the moves are not simultaneous). Perhaps the frog's defection may consist of eating the scorpion, once it has scared off the stork.

In any event, the scorpion's unexpected and selfdestructive defection raises the issue of how to counter a player who defects first, and defects in a way that prevents you from retaliating on the next move (your life has ended in the meantime.) All assassins and terrorists play the game this way. Because they are willing to die--it is their nature--the future has no shadow for them. This madness is not unique to humans--the bee that stings to defend the hive, then dies, is a suicidal defector in nature.

Gandhi succeeded in his variation on the prisoner's dilemma because the British were not willing to resort to the ultimate defection. A player, like the Nazis, willing to stop at nothing, creates an illogical loop much like the one that results when two players play a series for a known number of moves. Since, on the last move, the future has no shadow, I might as well defect. Since the other player will certainly be smart enough to defect on that move as well, I may as well defect on the move before, when he may still be cooperating. But, since he is smart enough to reason this through the way I did, he will probably defect on that move too. So again I will consider defecting a move earlier. But so will he. The result: we both defect on the first move and each move afterwards.

Because the scorpion will kill you as soon as it is given a chance, you must find a way to defect earlier than the scorpion, and decisively. But the scorpion will study the situation, looking for a way to defect earlier than you can; so you must assume he will do so, and seek to defect earlier still. Like gunfighters in a Western movie who run down the street at each other, howling and shooting as soon as they catch sight of each other, the prisoner's dilemma escalates into an immediate duel to the death. The concept of a pre-emptive strike expresses nothing other than a strategy based on defecting early and decisively. Tarquinian's symbolic cutting of the tops from the tallest flowers, or the massacre of opponents after any coup d'etat in history, are other examples.

It is the scorpion that pulls humanity down. If you are not yourself a scorpion, you still are unable to play every move of every game in the cooperation zone, because sooner or later you will meet a scorpion. Not every scorpion is a suicide bomber; the law partner who made a successful motion to cut my draw, forcing my resignation from a law firm, suffered the symbolic fate of the scorpion when the firm's biggest client (the one I alone knew how to service) left as a result, and the firm folded. Yeats' judgment that "things fall apart, the center cannot hold", because "the worst are full of passionate intensity" is a recognition of the fact that there are scorpions.

Scorpions may know the consequences, and not care, like the suicide bomber, or may, through vanity and denial, refuse to see the consequences, like my ex-partner. In any event, the effect is the same: a player defects when there is no reason to, and something--a life, an enterprise--ends as a result.

Game theory does not really take scorpions into account. It holds that people will defect because that is in their best interest--because the future has no shadow. Game theory fails as a tool when we are dealing with sociopathology or extreme denial. The human dilemma is that all progress ultimately fails or at least slides back, that anything once proven must be proven again a myriad of times, that there is nothing so well established that a fundamentalist (of any religion or stripe) cannot be found to deny it, and suffer the consequences, and then deny that he suffered the consequences.

All rivers begin in the human heart and, as I said recently in my Auschwitz essay, the human heart is infirm. The saddest saying I ever heard, "trees never grow into heaven", will be true for so long as we have scorpions.

Text copyright Jonathan Blumen 1995, except as otherwise specified.

Email: jblumen@spectacle.org

1:45 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

SOME NUT SHOT WERNER HERZOG DURING AN INTERVIEW: but he is ok, and continued with the interview
Current mood: impressed
Category: News and Politics

Wow, I did not know Werner Herzog was such an iron man.  Why do nutzoid fans keep shooting or harming the celebrities they admire!?  Stupid!  Argh!  Stupid people should be permanently disarmed.

It is really cool he is ok.

HOLLYWOOD - German director Werner Herzog was shot by a crazed fan during a recent interview with the BBC.

1:14 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

ROADRAGE: Why humans want to create needless misery for one another?
Current mood: irritated
Category: Religion and Philosophy

I've been wondering why it is that people really want to screw each other over pointlessly it's been on my mind.

The recent case of crazy roadrage that was captured on camera, forum, and blog here:Spacing, Toronto: ROADRAGE -> confrontation between an aggressive car-owner and a cyclist

The thing about this, is I have of course noticed a division in 'blame assessment' among my friends, acquaintances, and associates on the basis of their American Left-vs.-Right -wing political leanings. Since I don't really have the stomach for the American one dimensional political gradient, and its effect on perceptions, I instead feel frustrated at both parties in this type of dispute, as the whole bloody thing was needless.

Here is an edited version of what I wrote my friend Cody about a week ago when I first read this story:

People liking to be mean to each other is one of the things that makes me fantasize about becoming a Grizzly Adams style hermit. I used to see many of these type of scenarios happen on 13th street.

The guy who hosts this added an Update by the female courier, which puts me more firmly on her side. In general though, I would prefer to see people not needlessly escalate poop-flinging type behavior into something dangerous. I prefer the possibility of harmony, even if people tend to want to make fights. She seems guilty of some misdemeanors, and he of many of those and potential felonies.

I think, excluding the complete ape-shit crazy he went when it looks like even the passers by were not enough to hold him back - I think I would have been on his side as a civil witness for damage to his paint job, which was needless - and I would have been on her side as a civil witness for damages to the bicycle, and any medical bills, plus I would be on her side in any criminal proceedings against him. Sounds like his behavior was needless, crazy, and dangerous.

Had I been on hand, I probably would have felt obliged to punch him out, just to put an end to the melee as quickly as possible at the point where multiple people could not hold him back, or calm him from continuing to grapple with the courier's helmet - then I guess I and he are lucky I was not there, as with my luck, I'm sure I would end up being the only one charged with anything.

I have made his berserk face, when people are trying to hold him back, my new desktop wallpaper at work. My co-workers like it. :-) I feel the bad for the woman, who I think is his female companion from the vehicle, shown in one of the last detailed pictures.

My old idea of chivalry in the past would have always left me on the side of the female in a physical conflict, but I have become more cynical about the female ..'have the cake and eat it too..' protected but equal status in recent years - but I am still always on the side of the non-combatant when it comes to someone perpetrating a one-sided fight...

"UPDATE: The courier in question posted the accurate version of the story. It is pasted below:

Although..I am a courier, I was WALKING my bike up Augusta when the incident took..nplace. He was driving and opened his door (while driving) and yelling..nprofanities he threw his beef patty on a bun out of his door. I walked..nover to his car, and right or wrong, I opened the door and "gave" him..nback his food (which he MUST have dropped by accident!) He then lost..nit, and jumped out of his car and threw 2 large Timmies at meand then..ngrabbed me by my helmet and tried to toss me around a bit.It was at..nthat point that my bike lock key (that I wear on a bracelet around my..nwrist) scratched his car. I have read all the postings about people..nsympathetic to the car driver due to the expense of repairing the..nscratch but sorry folks, i doubt that it will cost him anything to repair as it was a 1.2cm mark in the clearcoat only(did not damage the..npaint) but regardless a scratch none the less. Then with some.. "encouraging" from some helpfull bystanders he got in his car and drove..away or so I thought! People were comming up to me and saying that I should have him charged but at that point I just figured I had made my..nanti-littering point and and eye for and eye with the coffee shower, I..nmean I did throw that patty right. But just as I was getting on my bike..nto ride home he came running back and thats when the photos start. He..nhad driven half a block and decided that the scratch was worthy of a..nmore thorough beating I guess.
..And as for the police charging him. He took off in his car as soon as..nhe heard the sirens.they chased him down but it is not a crime to..nleave the scene. They were going to charge him with a variety of things..nincluding assult with a weapon x2, mischief x2, aggravated assault,..netc, but the police informed me that if I went ahead and placed those..ncharges then they would have to charge me with mischeif for the scratch."

I wish the courier had been willing to take her mischief charge, as I think the fellow displays a dangerous lack of self-control and regard for fellow humans - and if he does not get this on his record now, and some anger-management, the next time he goes dangerously apeshit may be worse...
 And as for the police charging him.... He took off in his car as soon as he heard the sirens....t hey chased him down but it is not a crime to leave the scene. They were going to charge him with a variety of things including assult with a weapon x2, mischief x2, aggravated assault, etc, but the police informed me that if I went ahead and placed those charges then they would have to charge me with mischeif for the scratch."

8:19 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment