Your Opinions Are Not Your Own

I shall now explain the Gell-Mann amnesia effect.  WARNING: the Gell-Mann amnesia effect will ensure you forget the Gell-Mann amnesia effect.

You watch, listen, or read a news story about a subject you know well.  For me, it has been Pagans and the Law, or JRR Tolkien, or Risks to the Public in Computers.  You realize the journalist has reversed cause and effect, assumed causation instead of correlation, and left out key facts.  You are infuriated not only because the story is wrong, but also because it leaves people stupider than before.  And then you see or hear the next story.  You turn the page.  You click the next link.  And you get amnesia. 

You forget your emotional response to the bogus reporting.  When you consume the next story about politics or foreign affairs or science -- you accept all facts, opinions, and conclusions therein as logical and truthful and trustworthy.  Because otherwise someone would have stopped them from saying it.  Or if someone pointed out errors they'd admit their mistake and publish a follow up setting the record straight.

Or would they?

The mental pressure you're feeling right now is cognitive dissonance.  Your brain is juggling two contradictory beliefs:
1. The media narrative is never accurate in any situation I have personal experience
2. The media narrative is always accurate when I use it to make decisions

The "amnesia" part of the Gell-Mann effect will happen in a few minutes because it's the only way for you to function in modern society.  Every day we choose: who do I associate with; what do I buy; when do I act; where do I go; why do I believe, how do I live.  Our mental health requires we believe our decisions are logical and fact-based, and not duped into making bad decisions because someone lied.  Your brain tosses personal experience (belief #1) down a memory hole, because questioning the media narrative (belief #2) leads down a dark path of paranoia, tin foil hats and conspiracy theories.

While your brain is still reeling in disbelief, ponder two questions:  What do you know, and how do you know it?

Our secular society no longer accepts Revelation on faith.  Instead, there are three fonts of knowledge, three sources authorized to answer the question, "What is Truth?"
* Government Leaders
* Scientists / Academics
* Journalists
But are these three sources reliable?

Information from government sources is easiest to impeach, because the government lies blatantly when it wishes to conduct unpopular foreign policy.  "Iraq has WMDs" is this generation's most notorious lie, but every foreign adventure starts with a false flag: Gulf of Tonkin,  Sinking of the Lusitania, Remember the Maine, Remember the Alamo, 54-40 or Fight.  The government lies to cover up embarrassing mistakes: the attack on the USS Liberty, the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, the many court cases where the State Secrets Privilege has been wrongfully invoked.  Finally, the government lies to favor certain business sectors: the USDA Food Pyramid, the unemployment rate, justifications for special-interest tax policy.

What all government lies have in common is that they allow the people responsible for the lies to engage in acts which would otherwise not be allowed in an open and democratic society.

Information from academic and scientific sources is subject to the Replication Crisis.  The results of far too many scientific studies are impossible to replicate, either by the independent researchers or the original scientists.  This has grave consequences when government policy and individual decision making is based on those studies.

What all academic/scientific lies have in common is that they allow the people responsible for the lies to get a job or make money peddling goods and services.

Information from journalistic sources, the Mainstream Media or "MSM", is under attack from individuals sharing information on the internet.  For every news story containing wrong facts, incorrect assumptions, and misleading conclusions -- there's someone with subject matter expertise raising a hand and saying, "That's not entirely accurate."  At the same time, ownership and control of the media has never been more centralized.  Six companies publish at least 90% of all TV/cable, radio, print, and online news.

What all journalistic lies have in common is that they allow the 0.01% who own and control these companies to prosper.  Which rarely trickles down to the rest of us.

In a perfect world, government leaders, scientists/academics, and journalists would all be free of bias and provide information to serve the public good.  How close are we to living in this world?

The Man Comes Around

by J.R. Cash, 2002

"And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, 'Come and see.'  And I saw, and behold a white horse."
Revelation 6:1-2
---
There's a man goin' 'round takin' names. And he decides who to free and who to blame. Everybody won't be treated all the same. There'll be a golden ladder reachin' down - when the man comes around.

The hairs on your arm will stand up at the terror in each sip and in each sup. Will you partake of that last offered cup, or disappear into the potter's ground - when the man comes around?

Till armageddon no shalam, no shalom. Then the father hen will call his chickens home. The wise man will bow down before the throne and at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns - when the man comes around.

Whoever is unjust let him be unjust still. Whoever is righteous let him be righteous still. Whoever is filthy let him be filthy still. Listen to the words long written down - when the man comes around.

Hear the trumpets hear the pipers! One hundred million angels singin'. Multitudes are marchin' to the big kettledrum. Voices callin', voices cryin', some are born and some are dyin'. It's alpha and omega's kingdom come. And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree, the virgins are all trimming their wicks.

The whirlwind is in the thorn trees.  It's hard for thee to kick against the prick in measured hundredweight and penny pound - when the man comes around.
---
"And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts.  And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was death, and hell followed with him."
Revelation 6:7-8



Videos:
Johnny Cash - American IV: The Man Comes Around, 2002
Johnny Cash (acoustic) - Unearthed, 2003
DevilDriver - Outlaws 'til The End, Vol. 1, 2018

David Potsiadlo - guitar lesson w/ tabs, 2018
Karaoke

Painting:
The Last Judgement by Hieronymus Bosch, crica 1482
For further study:
The Meaning of "The Man Comes Around" by Johnny Cash
The Apocalypse of John and Its Mediators, or Why Johnny Cash Wrote a Better Apocalypse than John of Patmos!

Lady In Black

by Kenneth W.D. Hensley, 1971

She came to me one morning, one lonely Sunday morning, her long hair flowing in the midwinter wind. I know not how she found me, for in darkness I was walking and destruction lay around me from a fight I could not win.

She asked me, "Name thy foe."

Then I said, "The need within some men to fight and kill their brothers without thought of love or God."  And I begged her give me horses to trample down my enemies -- so eager was my passion to devour this waste of life.

But she wouldn't think of battle that reduces men to animals.  So easy to begin and yet impossible to end! For she's the mother of all men who counselled me so wisely then.  I feared to walk alone again and asked if she would stay: "Oh lady lend your hand outright and let me rest here at your side."

"Have faith and trust in peace," she said, and filled my heart with life.  "There's no strength in numbers.  Have no such misconception.  But when you need me, be assured I won't be far away."  Thus having spoke she turned away.  

And though I found no words to say I stood and watched until I saw her black coat disappear.

My labour is no easier but now I know I'm not alone.  I find new heart each time I think upon that windy day.  And if one day she comes to you, drink deeply from her words so wise.  Take courage from her as your prize.... And say hello for me.

Videos:
Uriah Heep (Ken Hensley) - Salisbury, 1971
Hensley Lawton Band - The Return, 2001
Ken Hensley - The Wizard's Diary, 2005
Uriah Heep (Bernie Shaw) - Live, 2014
Karaoke

Painting:
The Madonna in Sorrow by Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato, 17th century

Modern Day Advice for Young People

A young lady of my acquaintance posted to their Facebook feed the following:

Here is the dialog that followed between us.

Decide what kind of person you want to be in a relationship with. 

Think about where they hang out, and go there. 

Determine what character traits they will find attractive, and change accordingly.

What?

What are you asking me to explain?

I do not understand what your comment means, and what it has to do with what I posted

You posted Jacquelyn Michelle's photo, containing advice for girls. 

I replied with my advice. 

Which is gender-neutral.

Why? And why is that your advice. I really don't understand.

Why do I give that advice? 

I expect for the same reason you shared Jacquelyn Michelle's advice. 

To share an opinion with people who follow your facebook feed.  

That is my advice because it's effective.
  

It's not really about life advice in general, it's about empowering girls specifically.

  

What I wrote is not life advice in general, 

it's about how anyone who wishes to be in a relationship should modify themselves.

It's not quite applicable to this situation/ this post.

If a girl follows Jacquelyn Michelle's advice, how will the people around her react?

Well, the post is basically telling girls to disregard that. A lot of how we are taught and expected to act is putting others' comfort ahead of our own, and that's not fair.

I agree that girls are socialized to have poor boundaries

 and that they should not set aside their comfort for boy's egos. 

But I feel that someone would be harmed 

if they adopted all of Jacquelyn Michelle's list of behaviors. 

So I instead provided my advice 

on how to decide what behaviors to show the world.

Thank you for messaging & explaining! I understand what you mean now.

Facebook is somewhat like twitter 

in the amount of content you can provide in the limited bandwidth

I don't expect all of that post's advice to apply in every situation, that would be rude & not practical. But it's nice to promote the idea that it is an option, especially for girls that have been socialized to be polite to the point that it puts them in an unsafe position.

And yeah, the first time I read your comment it came across a little aggravated & I was confused as to why. I only deleted it because I have some particularly aggressive Facebook friends and I'd rather avoid conflict with them and all.

Time for some snark: 

Isn't censoring your facebook page 

because of aggressive friends an example of catering to other people's egos?

Yes, people started liking comments & they tend to think everything is a fight and they all want to get in on it

And it's less catering to them and more catering to myself-- I don't check Facebook/get notifications and I didn't really want to come back to a full out typed argument about something you & I settled reasonably.

Jailbreaking a Samsung Galaxy Core Prime

Note #3: Updated in November 2016 with instructions on how to root and commentary on bootloading.

Note #1: I'm writing this article in March 2016. I estimate it's shelf-life to be about three months. Sometime around mid-summer the rot will set in: links will stop working, Verizon will push an OS update, a better phone will come out, a new exploit discovered...

Note #2: The OS for a phone is specific for each carrier. This post contains information specific to the Verizon SM-360V. If your carrier is T-Mobile, you have a SM-360H (lucky you.)

In order to truly "own" your phone, you need two types of privilege escalation:

• the ability to modify any file in the Operating System (root access)
• the ability to control what happens when turn on the power (bootloader access)

The process of asserting ownership is called "jailbreaking".  This is related to, but different from, unlocking the phone.  Jailbreaking allows you to customize the software running on the phone.  Unlocking the SIM card allows the phone to connect to a new cellphone provider.

Companies that sell you the phone don't want you to have either form of access.  They don't want you to unlock and switch to a competing service provider.  They don't want you to jailbreak and remove all the "bloatware" and advertising they were paid to install on the phone.  But there's this pesky thing called "Open Source", which legally mandates that corporations give you -- the owner of the computer -- these rights if you buy an Android phone (which is based on the Linux OS).

Because that's what you're holding in your hand.  While most people look at it and think "phone", it actually is a computer that happens to be able to make phone calls.  (Likewise, a Tesla is, when you come right down to it, just a computer on wheels with a ginormous battery pack.)  So when I write, "computer", you can think "the silicon chips inside the phone."  (Not to be confused with the silicon chips inside her head.)

Apple works rather hard to stop people from jailbreaking their iHardware, and their OS updates deliberately close exploits.  I expect Microsoft does likewise for their phones.  But there is an extensive developer community hacking the Android ecosystem.  This does not mean that it is easy to jailbreak, but there is a central place to talk about it.  The XDA Forum has a subforum for every phone out there.  If you are at all interested in customizing your phone at the OS level, join up!

A caveat: jailbreaking your phone voids the warranty.  On the other hand, you can usually "un-root" the phone so the carrier will not know.  Except with the newer Samsung phones that allow you to use your phone as a credit card -- most root access hacks will short out a resistor and permanently disable that feature.  Which makes sense, if you consider the implications.

At $160, the Samsung Galaxy Core Prime from Verizon looks like a good deal.  It has all the functionality expected from a low-end smartphone.  I bought an iPad Pro for entertainment (gameplaying, streaming video, anything cpu-intensive), and wanted a phone with a small form-factor.  Thus, I did not need a big touchscreen, a blazingly fast CPU, or a zetapixel camera.

But if you are looking for an Android phone to jailbreak, I do not recommend the SM-360V.  Or any Verizon phone, for that matter.  Verizon has a reputation for excessive bloatware (50% of the internal disk is already filled!), and Verizon does not fulfill their GPL obligations in a timely manner.  They do not directly support the Google Nexus line (which should be your first choice).  There are social engineering methods unlock a Nexus if you absolutely need Verizon's service that you can find via the usual methods.

The rest of this article will describe how I hacked my SM-360V.  

Jailbreaking means that you are editing the computer files that are control how the phone starts up.  If you change what the vendor provided, you run the risk of "bricking" the phone -- of creating a state where the phone's computer will not boot up.  Instead, you get your phone's equivalent of a"Blue Screen Of Death".  At which point, your expensive handheld device is as useful as a brick.  There are ways to unbrick your phone, but they are highly dependent on the vendor, carrier, and OS version.

The best "brick protection" is a NANDroid backup. (A portmanteau of "NAND memory" and "Android").  This is a bit-for-bit copy of the computer's filesystem which is stored in a different part of the phone's memory card.  If you brick the phone, you hold down some buttons while turning it on, and direct the bootloader to restore a previous backup.

In a perfect world, you would take a NANDroid backup before doing any customization of your phone.  But it's not that easy on the SM-360V.  In order to fully install either of the two incompatible NANDroid software applications (CWM, TWRP), you need to jailbreak the bootloader.  Which requires root!  

For Samsung phones, there's another way -- by sideloading a "stock image".  You run a program on your PC (laptop or desktop), plug the cord you usually charge your phone in with into one of the USB ports, and overwrite the phone's disk drive.  A few years ago Odin, a Samsung development program, was leaked into the wild.  And about six months after Verizon released the SM-360V, they fulfilled their GPL obligations by making it possible to acquire a stock image.  Someone from the XDA forums tediously grabbed it and made it available.  (If that link doesn't work for you, check the SM-360V thread there for further information.)

While you're downloading things to your laptop/desktop, you'll need the Samsung USB drivers for the SM-360V.  Once installed, you will see a new folder in Explorer: SAMSUNG-SM-G360V.  This will allow you to browse your phone's disk drive, as well as a second SIM card if you bought one.  This is one way to copy ringtones to the phone, or offload photos.

Another useful tool is DeBloater.  This will allow you to "turn off" packages inside the Android OS, even ones that you cannot drag into the trash in the phone's interface.  I immediately removed all the Amazon bloat, and recovered an entire screen.

Next, grab the official Android Debugging Tools (ADT) that Google has released.    If you understand how to use a Linux command line, you can now fire up a Cygwin shell on your PC and type, "adb shell".  This will remotely log you into your Android phone, where you will see a prompt like:

mylaptop $ adb shell
shell@coreprimeltevzw:/ $

A limited number of Linux commands like ls, cd, df, and so on, are now available.  But you won't be able to do much customization because... you have no root access.  There is no sudo command.  The filesystem is mounted "read-only".  (Mounting it read-write requires bootloader access.)

Installing and running any of the above tools will not void your warranty.  They allow you to customize the phone to the extent that the Verizon allows.  The next step, rooting your phone, will.

What is rooting?  The "root" or superuser in a Linux system is the equivalent of the Windows admin user.  Root access allows you to edit any file.  Since the vendor did not install the Linux program "sudo", you have to get root the same way a black hat cracker does -- by attacking the Linux operating system using known security flaws in the various programs.  As soon as one of them works, you "have root" and can install a sudo program.

Update 11/16: instructions on rooting.
The web site OneClickRoot works really hard at rooting every phone.  Browse that URL from your phone, push the button, and they'll give it a go.  Unfortunately, this does not work for the SM-360V.  What does work is KingRoot, but there are concerns about this app.  (And it is easily confused with Kingoroot, which has an even sketchier reputation.)  KingRoot may or may not send data to China.  It certainly does install adds on your lock screen.

So the next step is to pry open your wallet and pay for Super-Sume Pro.  It will cheerfully remove KingRoot while leaving your phone rooted.  When you think you've rooted your phone, you can install Root Checker (for free) and it will verify for you.

At this point, I could do the following from my PC:

mylaptop $ adb shell

shell@coreprimeltevzw:/ $ su -c /system/bin/sh
root@coreprimeltevzw:/ # id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) context=u:r:init_shell:s0

Up yours, Verizon.

The next step is getting bootloader access.  Unfortunately, no one has yet unlocked the bootloader for the SM-360V.  It has been done for the T-Mobile version SM-360H.  If someone posts to the SM-360V thread how to do it, I might write a future post on my further customization adventures.
Update 11/16: Apparently, Verizon works very hard using strong encryption to ensure that their phones cannot be bootloaded.  If you want to totally control your phone, either use a different carrier or try and "bring your own already-rooted device" to the Verizon network.

Once you've rooted your phone, you have the ability to remove all the Verizon and Amazon bloatware that came on your phone and is sucking up the megabytes.

Gwen, Sept. 20-27, 1989

Gwendolyn Elizabeth Hommel was born quite unexpectedly one afternoon. Babies are supposed to come out head first, while some ornery types come out bottom or feet first. (I was a breech baby, btw.) But, they just can't come out sideways.

Gwen asleep

The doctor tried coaxing Gwen head down, and she obliged. For about 10 minutes. And again, but the heart rate monitor started showing signs of distress. So, we went to the hospital, so hands and soft words could try and convince her while we watched under the ultrasound to stop being quite so transverse.

After another hour, the doctor shrugged, and told us that he wanted to perform an emergency C-section. Immediately. Babies don't come out sideways, leastways not while they are still alive, and the experience is none too good for the mother, either. He didn't want to send us home and risk labor progressing too far before we got back to the hospital. And, she was far enough along that she would not need to stay in a preemie box.

Our childbirth classes had talked about C-sections, in an intellectual sort of way. After all, according to most of the instructors, only pregos who were "failures" had C-sections. Worse, a transverse lie meant that the doctor would use the old-fashioned kind of incision - the sort that it is very difficult to have a VBAC afterward. But, everyone agreed that a live baby and unfulfilled principles was better than a dead baby and stubbornly-adhered-to principles.

The actual operation was very unnerving. I wore a complete set of blues, complete with hair net and shoe covers. There are a zillion people in the operating theatre, and everything is brightly lit, with glistening steel and stark white everywhere. Alana was tied down, and I held her right hand.

Three minutes after the doctor started cutting, I had a very unhappy, slippery baby girl in my hands. She was so small. Carl and Eileen both weighed in at over 10lbs, but Gwen was only 5.5lbs. I wrapped her up, and held her firmly next to my heart, until she settled down. Alana and I were both crying, and Gwen nursed for a short bit, as the doctor finished sewing Alana up.

Mom holding Gwen, with Carl and Eileen mugging for the camera

Note to partners - take the doctor's advice to "not look" at what they are doing, unless you have a strong grip on reality. I found it very disturbing to see this great gaping hole cut open in Alana, where I was used to seeing skin.

The three of us spent 4 wonderful days in the hospital. Carl and Eileen were staying with my parents, and came to visit every day. They loved holding their new sister.

Gwen was quite different from her older siblings. Some of it was those extra five pounds - tiny babies sleep more, nurse more, like snuggling more, and, in general, wiggle less. It was a great struggle to get her to nurse after the edge was off her hunger. But both Alana and I got the impression that something else was different - Gwen was just too perfect.

Gwen never cried, she cooed. Whenever we went to the nursery to pick her up after lunch or a nap, one of nurses was always holding her - which was very unusual behavior for them. "Oh, she's no trouble at all", they would say. "We just want to hold her."

We came home Sunday night. Everything was higgly-piggly, because we hadn't expected to go into the hospital, so none of the baby furniture (changing table, clothes, diaper pail, swing, bouncy chair) was set up where it was supposed to go. Fortunately, we had diapers. Ever since an extremely messy incident 3 years before, I have been paranoid about not having enough diapers. So, for the past 4 months, we had had a two day's supply of newborn diapers.

Daddy holding Gwen

Monday, we all sat around and vegged. Everyone wanted to hold Gwen, and she slept most of the time. I took some photos. Friends and neighbors visited. Around 8:00PM, Alana felt something was wrong. She called up Gwen's doctor, and tried to articulate her uneasiness.

Was Gwen breathing differently? No. Running a fever? No. Was she lethargic? No, not more than usual. Was her muscle tone off? No, not really. Anything else you can describe? No, but something is wrong with my baby. Well, bring her in the morning, and the doctor will take a look.

Tuesday morning, Gwen was dead. So things were different from what we had planned. The events of that morning, and the next few weeks, are another story.

---

A few weeks later, I was walking in the cemetery, and visiting Gwen's grave. I kneeled down, started quietly sobbing, and leaned forward so my forehead was on the headstone.

"Why?", I cried. "Why did my baby have to die?"

And I discovered some words inside me, deep inside where usually, I'm the only one thinking words. I wasn't hearing them, the words were just there, in the same way and place that I think in words. They said, "Don't cry, Daddy. I'll be OK."

And in a place deep inside me, where I usually only have my feelings being felt, I discovered a feeling that I should go make sure that Alana and Carl and Eileen felt better. So I did.

---

About two years later, Llerendel was born. The C-section and the hospital stay gave both Alana and I flashbacks and nightmares. We took turns staying awake in the night that first week home, making sure that Llerendel kept breathing.

One night that week, I woke up with a start, and sat up in bed. Alana had dozed off, with her hand on Llerndel's head. I could hear her wuffling, so I didn't panic. Then, I noticed something on the end table on the other side of the room. I wasn't exactly seeing it, because it wasn't there. But it was there. As I gazed through the bright moonlight, I got the concept that there was a 2yr old girl with long brown hair sitting on the tabletop, swinging her legs through the drawers. She looked at me, and I 'heard' "Hello, Daddy. Go back to sleep.", and went back to staring at Llerendel and Alana.

I lay back down, and fell back asleep.

---

Alana's mother, Betty, was not particularly loved by anyone. But there was a strong Irish tradition of family solidarity, and Gwen's middle name was Elizabeth. After her husband Al died, she spent six summer months in New England with one daughter, and six winter months in Florida. We were exempted from this filial obligation, due to high numbers of children.

Betty, after 15 years of being in and out of hospitals, finally came down with a heart ailment. Until then, her strong heart had gotten her through liver cirrhosis, throat/lung cancer, hepatitis, and several strokes. The children gathered around her deathbed, and her last words, to the skinniest of the daughters, was: "You're too fat."

Yes, that was Betty, all right. At the wake, everyone was joking that she was too mean and ornery for the devil to admit into hell. Most of the family was in shock, but I started catching something out of the corner of my eye. It was bobbing up and down in the corner of the room, above an enormous wreath of roses, above the open casket.

I caught on, and sat down in a quiet corner, and closed my eyes. I started conceptualizing a woman around 25, wearing a nursing uniform. (I later described this to Alana, and she showed me an old picture of her mother from 1944, wearing the special outfit that only nurses working at St. Elizabeth's wore.) I got the impression that the figure was glaring down at the coffin.

Then, a tall, muscular fellow wearing dock worker's coveralls came in, holding a 4yr old girl by the hand. The 'conversation' went something like this:

Betty: "What are you doing here, you old coot? You're dead!"
Al: "And what do you think you are, you old bat!"
Gwen: "Come on, Grandma. Time to go."

And the three of them sorta went away. They didn't go up, they didn't go sideways, they just did one of those 4th dimension things you see as a special effect on Star Trek.
My eyes were jolted open by a loud laugh. The 'friend of the family' priest, who had married Betty and Al, and baptized all their kids, was staring up in that corner, and roaring with laughter. He had a reputation for being pretty senile anyway, no one paid him any mind.

I checked around the room. Alana was looking quizzically up there, but didn't know quite what had gone on. Her older sister had turned white as a sheet, and was facing the other way, and was doing her rosary beads.

I gave Alana a brief summary, and she shook her head, saying, "Ma is gonna be a handful, even for the two of them."

Later on, I sidled over to the priest, and asked if Betty and Al had been like that when they first got married. His eyes twinkled, and he said in a thick brogue, "Now, I can't really answer now, can I, me young lad - but I will say that ye have a verrry fine lassie for a daughter up there."

---

When Llerendel was 2, her brother Francis was born. Carl was overjoyed at having another boy, if only as reinforcements against his two younger sisters. As with Llerendel's homecoming, the first week was a tense time for Alana and I. Alana arranged for an apnea monitor, and Francis wore fairly regularly for the first two months. After that, we figured that our family would survive with yet another live baby.

Then, one morning, Francis was dead. So things were different from what we had planned. The events of that morning, and the next few weeks, are still another story.

We didn't have the heart for a Irish Wake in the funeral home, with all the friends and relatives wandering by and not knowing what to say. (I tell my friends that 'I'm sorry your baby died.', with a handshake, or a hug, while looking the bereaved in the eye, is about the best you can do.) During the Funeral Mass, Gwen showed up, and took her baby brother in tow. He was still wearing his yellow sleeper.

---

For the past four years, I have visualized Gwen as being a four year old. I guess it is old enough to be mobile, to travel short distances away from your parents, but young enough that no one asks or expects much in the way of chores from you.

This morning, while cleaning the grave site of blown leaves and grass straw, I 'saw' a 6yr old following a grasshopper through the fog. I asked Gwen why she was growing up. She said, "Llerendel is 4! She's the little girl, not me!"

I looked on sadly at her running after the blown leaves for a while. They would come down out of the misty white fog, swirl around in the air, and land on the dew. She ran after one, ran back to me, and said, "You're still too sad. Be happy so your new baby will be happy, too."

Taran Nathaniel was born a week early, by C-section on November 26, 1995. He is on a heart/respiration monitor all the time, and is a lively and happy baby.

---

---

Last updated on Sunday, January 7, 1996

Carl Hommel 

Eve LOL-sec roam

Below is my addition to the "after-action report" writeup of an Eve Online roam I went on.  This is comparable to a WoW raid, and took about two hours.  There is... a lot of jargon involved.



This was my first PvP roam. It was a lot of fun, and a great learning experience.

I started by asking for advice in Mumble just prior to the start, about what ship to bring. I was told to bring tackle instead of EWAR for my first time. Because I'd skilled up L4 3/3/3/3 for my PvE alt fleets, I was instantly promoted way above my level of incompetence and made Tackle squad leader. This meant I got a key to the executive washroom, invites to the best parties, and access to the command channels. Where else but E-UNI!

After some quick training, my first official act was to set up a T1-tackle chat channel. Then as Tackle x'ed up, I invited them to my squad and the channel. That was a bit confusing as the Alliance window kept scrolling. I had to go back and manually compare the x list against the fleet window to make sure I got everyone. I asked if anyone else was a newb, but no one admitted it. I gave them the good news that I was making it up as we went along. This was recieved with the good grace you expect from LOL-fleet members. I hope one day to learn how to give pep talks as inspirational as the FC's.

Someone with better skills joined, so I was bumped into the EWAR squad in case someone disconnected and needed an invite. Fortunately this never happened, or I would have had to ask "How do I do that?!?" But I was left in charge of the Tackle anyway. Thanks to The_Rookie's_Guide_To_Fleet_Ops I had a vague notion of what I was supposed to be doing. I also got a fascinating glimpse behind the curtain in the Command chat channel. Since this FC believes in transparency, he addressed most things in Mumble. Chat was mostly intel reports from our far-flung scouts, looking for gud fite targets, and me asking more newb questions.

Setup took about 30min. The FC did an excellent job with the first few jumps explaining fleet commands and why not to break cloak. One of the wiki pages mentioned that someone should be typing in the FC commands into chat (for stragglers or people temporarily distracted), so I did so in my squad chat. A kind soul told me that I didn't need to type in the full system name, and the first three letters would suffice. After a while, I was comfortable enough doing so that I volunteered to do so in the Fleet chat, and tried to carry that out as well.

My first fleet combat was intense. All of a sudden, zillions of brackets! The FC is calling out primary and secondary targets. I start locking them up, kick on my MWD, and go charging across space pushing my point and web function keys. I was slow off the mark and thus was not hit by the initial smartbomb cluster. A Hurricane got range so I pointed and webbed him and kicked off an orbit/500 command. But I'm pretty sure I forgot to turn off my MWD in the heat of the moment. Oops! Alarms going off, red stuff all over my screen. Called for armor reps but was quickly toasted.

I used the podsaver tab to zoom off and bounced around while the battle continued to rage. I eventually calmed down and wondered what to do. Aha! I can get a newb ship by docking up! So I found a station and rejoined the fleet once the shooting had stopped. And reminded other tacklers to do the same.

I asked in squad chat how many tackle frigates survived. Only one. Reported same to command channel. This was only a minor setback, because a number of DD ships had points. Scouts reported "Amamake area is dead", so the FC decided to take us back to Hek so we could reship.

Only... there's this stupid suspect timer for logi ships in lowsec, that would allow anyone is hisec to shoot at them. Is this braindead, or what? What was CCP thinking?!?

So we're slowly working our way back when we jump into a gate where a bunch of blues are fighting a bunch of reds. No one broke cloak. Boy, were they in for a surprise. We could hear the FC thinking out loud... "15 minute timers... the chance to shoot things..." The final decider: "F*ck it, they're blue to us!" and called targets. Since I was in a newb ship with a civilian pop gun, I thought to myself "better part of valor!" and orbited the gate at 500m.

And that's how we spent the rest of the roam. We'd wait out the timer, and someone flashy would jump into our gate camp and die, and we'd get another timer. The Myrm and pod were particularly shiny, and that ship alone was just about half our isk kill.

My thanks to everyone who put up with my newb questions like, "What does OGC mean?" and "What's a punt?" I'll certainly be less nervous next time. And maybe I will bring that Maulus next time...

Harvesting tears in Eve

I started playing Eve Online back in July.  I'm what is known as a "hiSec carebear", in that I mind my own business and do not go out and try and blow up other people's internet spaceships.  Instead I run missions (like WoW quests), and mine resources.  Today I had my first serious interaction with someone meaning to do me harm.

The below transcript will be somewhat confusing to someone unfamiliar with the game mechanics, so I'll try and provide a running commentary.  It started when someone warped into the asteroid belt I was mining.  He locked his weapons on my mining ship (which is the usual way to get someone's attention), and asked to open a conversation.

[20:08:22] Diedre Starchasm > Hello
[20:08:39] Ammiraglio Adamo > are u a mining bot?
[20:08:45] Diedre Starchasm > no
[20:08:50] Diedre Starchasm > I'm just triple boxing
[20:09:19] Diedre Starchasm > pulling about 80m out of this belt
[20:10:20] Ammiraglio Adamo > 50 sec and ur plagio will be mine ;)

This is pretty laughable.  He's flying a Velator, which is the weakest combat ship in the game.  It's given out free when you first roll your character.  Which explains why he was flying it for this particular scam -- he hadn't invested any money in buying it.  In the asteroid belt is my second character flying an Orca (a mining support ship), and a third character flying a Myrmidon (a battlecruiser). 

[20:10:51] Diedre Starchasm > 50 seconds and your rookie ship implodes!

Between my advanced combat drones and my turret guns, 5 seconds would have been more accurate.  But I liked the deadly symmetry. 

[20:11:14] Ammiraglio Adamo > i dont think so
[20:11:32] Ammiraglio Adamo > so now i need a transport
[20:12:16] Ammiraglio Adamo > i have a friend near that can upload ur plagio
[20:12:22] Ammiraglio Adamo > hope he can be free
[20:13:14] Ammiraglio Adamo > thx mate, free isk ;)
  
Hearing that he had allies, I decided to dock my Orca up.  It costs about what I'd make from a week's worth of mining.
 
[20:13:18] Diedre Starchasm > how much are you willing to get concordockened to get 4.4m isk?
[20:13:30] Ammiraglio Adamo > im not concorded
 
If you are mining in high security space and someone fires on you, the Concord police force warps in and blows up the aggressor ("they are Concordokkened").  At this point, I thought that he and a few of his friends were going to blow up my Retriever and then grab the ore that would drop after the explosion.  If the ships that do the ganking are cheap enough, and the cargo drop lucrative enough, then piracy is a reasonable way to make a living.

So I let him know how much my ore was worth.

[20:13:44] Ammiraglio Adamo > when u steal only u can kill me, but u wad afk so now u cant ;)
[20:14:10] Ammiraglio Adamo > oh nice my friend is free
[20:14:11] Ammiraglio Adamo > good
[20:14:46] Ammiraglio Adamo > u cant fire man
[20:14:53] Ammiraglio Adamo > this is a steal war 
[20:15:12] Ammiraglio Adamo > u must fire when i steal, not after, too late ;) 
Ah.  That's a different matter.  He's going to try a different scam, called "can flipping."  This is where the pirate tries to get me to fire on him.  And then I would be wiped out by his friends. 

Unfortunately for the pirate... I wasn't ever going to leave my ore cans lying about.

[20:15:10] Diedre Starchasm > Um... you did notice the orca warping out, didn't you?
[20:15:30] Diedre Starchasm > i'm not leaving jetcans lying around
[20:15:30] Ammiraglio Adamo > yeah, and so?
 
Just to taunt him, I loaded one single piece of ore (worth a really miniscule amount of isk) into a can and jettisoned it.  He took the bait. 

[20:24:00] Ammiraglio Adamo > lol only 1 veldspar
[20:26:21] Diedre Starchasm > I figure you should get something for all the time you're wasting here
[20:26:41] Ammiraglio Adamo > im not wasting time, im doing isk with ur mine
[20:26:52] Diedre Starchasm > Would you feel better if I blew you up and looted it?
[20:27:52] Ammiraglio Adamo > bro i steal ur mine and u cant kill me because my ship is very tanked
[20:27:53] Ammiraglio Adamo > so i win
[20:28:43] Diedre Starchasm > you're flying a rookie ship, and I've got a Battlecruiser and 5 drones...
[20:29:05] Diedre Starchasm > so i'm not sure whether you're an idiot, or you think i am
[20:29:08] Ammiraglio Adamo > lol ok, but i steal ur mining :DDDD
[20:29:37] Diedre Starchasm > while you're here, I'm not going to jetcan anything important.  I'll take the 5 min to fly it back to Amarr.


At this point, he must have realized I wasn't going to fall for his scam.  He changed tactics:

[20:30:44] Ammiraglio Adamo > i love pilots like u because u havant balls to fight for ur mining
[20:30:51] Ammiraglio Adamo > so i steal it =)))
[20:31:19] Diedre Starchasm > Um... you can't steal what I don't jetcan.  Unless you want to blow up my Retriever.
[20:31:56] Diedre Starchasm > So feel free to hang around and get bored.  I'll consider it my good deed for the day, as I'm keeping you from actually ganking someone else
[20:32:07] Ammiraglio Adamo > ohoohooh
[20:32:08] Ammiraglio Adamo > lol
[20:32:19] Ammiraglio Adamo > someone else, im scared
[20:32:21] Ammiraglio Adamo > ahahhahahhaha
[20:33:22] Ammiraglio Adamo > u are so funny
[20:33:27] Ammiraglio Adamo > but u dont know eve mechanics
[20:33:37] Ammiraglio Adamo > u can kill me only when i am red
[20:33:46] Ammiraglio Adamo > and i will red only for 4 minutes
[20:33:53] Ammiraglio Adamo > after that u will not kill me
  
One of the first things that Eve University tells new players to do is set up the default on-screen Overview to clearly show who you can safely fire on in high security space.  He was Red to both of my ships.

[20:33:53] Diedre Starchasm > Which you are.
[20:35:07] Diedre Starchasm > So either you're ignorant, or think I am.  But in any case, the UI will change on Wednesday and make it more clear.

There's a new patch coming on Tuesday which will update the user interface so newbies won't fall for this sort of thing. 

[20:35:35] Ammiraglio Adamo > u are ignorant because u dont fire when u can, so u suck
[20:36:37] Diedre Starchasm > No, I'm griefing you and harvesting your tears.  Your bitter "Waaah, why won't you fire on me!?!" tears
[20:37:03] Diedre Starchasm > Since that's what you want, I'm not giving it to you.  Lest you show up in 5 minutes with kill rights on me with a decent ship
[20:38:05] Ammiraglio Adamo > ahahha ok
[20:38:09] Ammiraglio Adamo > so suck =)
[20:38:26] Ammiraglio Adamo > bye bye
  
As soon as I mentioned "harvesting his bitter tears", he realized that I was saavy enough to not play his game.  It's a meme among the griefer community -- that the reason they gank newbies and scam mercilessly is because they derive satisfaction from the angry responses and ragequits of their victims.

So he departed with a final insult.

The "other other" corner office

What does Success look like?

And what does Success look at, via the not one but two windows gracing his cubicle?

The "other" corner office

After several days of rearranging furniture and trying several configurations of video cables, I've got a setup that supports some serious "work at home" capabilities.  The future is here now!

The 40 hour work week is, if not dead, in need of some serious life support.  My company provides financial services worldwide, and problems involving the European or Far Eastern markets just don't happen between 9 to 5 Eastern Standard Time.  So my online work life will contain two distinct phases:

1. I'm monitoring for incoming issues, responding to work emails and work IMs, and... doing some seriously intense coding, scripting, documenting, or root cause analysis.
2. I'm monitoring for incoming issues, responding to work emails and work IMs, and... doing some seriously intense goofing off.

When I'm working, I like to use a lot of tiled windows, and cut and paste between them, or have multiple mail and browser windows open -- which requires a large monitor.  And gaming is always better on a humongous screen.    Likewise, it's nice to have a second monitor when I'm working with mail and IM open, so when something arrives I can glance over and see if it's something I need to deal with.  And when I'm gaming, I like a second monitor to do research, or read blogs during slow times.  Two monitors for each computer, right?  Um... not without running out of desk space.

Another requirement is that I strictly partition my work computer and my personal computer.  You can only login to the corporate VPN network with the corporate laptop.  And once on the corporate network, you can't use gmail or an AOL IM program.  And you're not supposed to put unapproved software on the company laptop; it annoys the Security Droids. So I can't just load games on the laptop and run everything from there.

So, how did I avoid needing four monitors?  It turns out that the large Dell monitor has not one but *two* digital video ports.  So it has a cable from the company laptop,  and a second cable from my gaming PC.
In both configurations, the leftmost monitor is connected to my laptop.  I login via VPN and fire up Outlook and the company IM program.  The rightmost monitor is always connected to my personal PC. Viola!  With a switch of a button, I can switch from gaming to working!

In configuration #1, the middle monitor extends my laptop's display, and I use it to RDC into my computer at work.  The desktop is large enough to tile 15 xterm windows, or two browser windows and an editor,or a 25x50 cell spreadsheet...

In configuration #2,  I'm still monitoring things at work, but now have the awesome firepower of a fully ARMED and OPERATIONAL battle station, I mean 1920x1200 display, powered by an air-cooled GTX 470.  I cranked up the video settings in World of Warcraft to "ultra-epeen", and gave myself vertigo flying around

There are still some refinements to make.  I currently have two keyboards, and am not sure whether I want to put them on a kvm switch.  I really like the flexibility of my new wireless solar-powered Logitech keyboard and mouse, but I'm not sure about using them for gaming. My PC is hooked up to the old-style Sherwood stereo receiver in the background, but the laptop is only using it's internal speaker.  And my wife wants me to rearrange the power cabling so I can flip a switch at night and power down everything instead of having them use electricity on standby.

Other gadgets in the picture?

• iPad2 running Sonos app to control all the music in the house
• corporate Blackberry, with photon torpedo and light saber sounds for incoming email and IMs

On WRDS, Jan 2, 1992

First published in the Townsend, MA Main Street Trilogy

I had two conversations yesterday. First, a coworker was complaining about her ex-husband. Her two kids hated visiting their father, because they couldn't watch TV, play Nintendo, or play computer games. After I failed to see the downside in that, she added that he didn't provide an alternative, and shooed them outside to a friendless environment the whole day.

That night, a friend phoned me, asking for a good computer game to get for the children of a wannabe girlfriend. I demurred, as he didn't know what kind of computer she was getting, or even what they were interested in.

What leisure time activities do we want for children? Kids tend to spend much more time on a particular game or hobby than most adults consider healthy. In the past, creative pre-adolescents focused on model rockets or railroads, books, baseball cards, sports, soap box cars, or dolls. Now, some favored pastimes are Nintendo, dinosaurs, and skateboarding. While the tendency to go overboard is natural, parents should have input into what the focus is.

It's hard to say in advance which games would appeal to children, so shop at a store with a liberal return policy. Parents should read the rules, try the game, and exercise veto power over concepts and games they disapprove of -- just as they should for TV and movies.

I do not disapprove of computer games; in fact our family play them a great deal. But, make sure that you drag your kids (literally, in the case of my 4-year-old) away from the electronic devices, and engage in some joint parent-child playing. Your child gets a great deal of accomplishment from completing a Nintendo level, or spelling a word. They get a great deal more from gameplaying with you.

On WRDS, Dec 19, 1991

First published in the Townsend, MA Main Street Trilogy

Throughout the ages, Man has striven to create things of enduring value. And, others have stolen and robbed those chattel goods. However, in the last 30 years, a new kind of crime has become possible. Intellectual property theft is a new problem created by our technology.

There are several kinds of intellectual property that can be stolen. Among them are computer software, Cable TV signals, taping of movies, or music, and books and magazine photocopying.

Intellectual property theft is different from conventional crimes in several ways. First it does not prevent the creator or individual owner from benefiting from the fruits of their labors. If I run a copy of someone else's computer game or word processor, they can still run the program. Also, it can be done quietly. Descrambling HBO at home is far more secretive than mugging someone in the dark. Finally, it seems to be a "victimless" crime. Instead of hurting a real person, the bloated film and music industry is ripped off.

Corporations fight back in several different ways. The first, and most obvious way, is to inconvenience the user. Computer companies "copy protect" their programs, so that an illegal copy will not work. Cable is scrambled. VCR tapes with anti-piracy bars are of inferior quality. However, none of these methods deter the professional crooks -- they have the know-how and equipment to evade these barriers. But the normal user cannot make a backup of their expensive software, watch high-quality video, or use their cable-ready TV and VCR.

A second way that information providers attempt to prevent "theft of services" is by legislative action. The music industry has been trying for years to prevent customers from using Digital Audio Tape technology to record CD-quality music, or failing that, to add a surcharge on blank recording tape that would benefit the recording industry.

A third way to deter information thieves is by pressing criminal charges. While I do not know of Nashoba Cable's practices, cable companies in other parts of the US are prosecuting and winning court cases (or settling out of court for large penalties) against cable pirates. Microsoft and Lotus have successfully sued and won large monetary damages against some large corporations that were buying a single copy of their software, and placing it on every IBM PC in their building. And, some university professors have been told to stop the practice of copying whole chapters from textbooks for distribution to their students.

A final way to prevent robbery is to make it unattractive. The most obvious way is to price the information cheaply. If it cost a great deal more to buy hardware to steal cable than the monthly service fee, few people would bother. Another is to provide added value to registered customers. Some software companies provide telephone help. Or, a music tape includes tangible goods like a poster or tee shirt.

Why is information theft wrong? Even though the original owner retains possession of their goods, they have expended time and money to create and distribute their product to paying customers. A cable company has spent a lot of money in satellite dishes, wires on telephone poles, and customer service activity. Software companies must pay programmer's salaries. Authors deserve money for their books.

What should be done? People should be educated that information theft is not victimless. It eventually hurts the most creative individuals in our society, making it harder for them to continue producing the works we love.

Eschatology, Natural Philosophy, and You - How Linear Time and Science Changed What You Eat

Good morning.

Three summers ago, I gave a talk titled, "What's for Dinner?" I laid out an epochal overview of how our species transitioned from a hunter-gatherer paleolithic culture, to an agrarian neolithic society. And how Beer played a part in that.

We also covered how over the past 15000 years, more and more food has been grown by fewer and fewer people. Well, I've continued researching and thinking about this field, and today I'll be focusing on two themes:

The first is how in the Axial Period between 800BCE to 200CE, western culture transitioned from a lifestyle of "cyclical time" to one of "linear time." The second is how this new mode of thinking has had profound repercusions that echoed down the ages, and has affected modern notions of recycling, renewability, and reuse. And strangely enough, about your and my diet this past week.

So, time. What do I mean by cyclical time, and how is it different from linear time?

Cyclical time is symbolized by uroboros, the snake chasing his own tail. In this view of time, the beginning leads back around to the end, and the cycle starts all over again. The Babylonians, Chinese, Aztecs, Mayans, and the Norse had cyclical calendars. Cyclical time is grounded in natural rhythms. Night follows day follows night. Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, followed by Spring. The moon waxes, wanes, and reappears to wax and wane again.

Linear time holds that the universe and humanity had a defining creation moment, and then a linear series of events, a history in fact, in which the Creator is an active observer and in some religions an active participant. Linear time concludes in a final day of judgment when all men will be evaluated justly.

Our opening reading, a responsive reading, is from my favorite version of the Bible, the King James. It is the "alpha moment" for the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.


Responsive Reading: Genesis 1:1
All: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Carl: And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
All: And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
Carl: And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
All: And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

Everyone in this room thinks in "linear time". You have to, in order to fit into our society. Yes, we are influenced by the cycles of life, although many of them end up being spiraling helixes rather than an uroboros, a complete return. Our progress through school is a helix, with a first grader returning to school in September, but as a second grader, and the next year as a third grader, until they finally graduate in a ceremonial transition. Unlike neolithic farmers and pastoralists, we hope that our children will have a better, different, improved life. We consider change to be, if not good, at least an overall positive experience.

So what is life like, when you're living in cyclical time? Close your eyes and think about an unspoiled river valley. Maybe it's the Nile in Egypt, or the Tigris or Euphrates river in Iran, or the Indus in India, or the Yangtze in China. How far back in time? Well, that's a good question, and illustrates one of the differences between our worldview and cyclical time. The whole notion of "history" is a linear concept.

For in cyclical time, change is never an overall positive experience. Change is deadly, change is catastrophic. Change means that the cycle will not return to its origin point. Maybe the river didn't flood this spring, and we'll starve. Or there was a plague, and there are no longer enough people to maintain the irrigation works. Or there was an invasion of outsiders, who killed and burned and raped and pillaged and enslaved. A positive experience in cyclical time is when the river floods and you can plant, harvest, and then plant again. When you grow up and marry and have children and grow old, as you saw your parents and your grandparents, and heard about how their parents and grandparents before them. In your free time between planting and harvest, you don't go to war -- you get together with neighbors and throw a barbeque and build monumental architecture. This is a somewhat Marxist theory about why the early pyramids were built -- to soak up excess labor and prevent it from being appropriated by an elite.

By 6000BCE, Egypt had completed the neolithic revolution, and switched to an agrarian culture. Wild animals and wild plants were domesticated, and pottery, irrigation were in wide use. For the next 7 to 8 thousand years the life if the peasant was unchanged.

Let me repeat that again, because it is nearly incomprehensible to our postmodern world, where our attention span is measured in minutes, not millennia. The life of 97% of the people, of the food growers, was unchanged.

Here's a poem about cyclical life by my favorite Victorian writer, Thomas Hardy. His stories and poetry focused on the disappearance of a cyclical agricultural lifestyle in Southern England between 1800 and 1850.

TO THE MOON
Thomas Hardy

"What have you looked at, Moon,
In your time,
Now long past your prime?"
"O, I have looked at, often looked at
Sweet, sublime,
Sore things, shudderful, night and noon
In my time."

"What have you mused on, Moon,
In your day,
So aloof, so far away?"
"O, I have mused on, often mused on
Growth, decay,
Nations alive, dead, mad, aswoon,
In my day!"

"Have you much wondered, Moon,
On your rounds,
Self-wrapt, beyond Earth's bounds?"
"Yea, I have wondered, often wondered
At the sounds
Reaching me of the human tune
On my rounds."


Here's another story about how a cyclical culture views change. In ancient Egypt, there was no artistic evolution, no competing schools. The goal of a sculptor was to produce a work that was identical to the extant body of work. Individualism was scorned. Think about how we react now to someone who plagarized, or slavishly imitates -- with disapproval or disgust. That was an ancient view towards change.

Which leads to the question -- how did we transition from cyclical time to linear time? My answer can be summed up as, "iron, the Greeks, and the Christians." The transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age came chronologically first, but I'll explain the impact when I talk about the three "Rs" of renew, reuse, and recycle in a bit. And this will eventually get to food, and explain why I'm serving homemade bread.

So, the Greeks.

The pre-Socratic philosophers in Asia Minor and the islands in the Ionian and Aegean Seas began to think about nature in a non-natural way around 700BCE. Or rather, in a logical cause and effect way. Instead of saying that disease was caused by the gods and unknowable and ineffable, they elevated a level.

"The gods may curse you with sickness, yes -- but sickness happens with the four humors in your body go out of balance. And just in case the gods did not will you die, perhaps we can modify your bile, phlegm, and blood proportions and keep you alive. "

Or, "The gods created the earth, but the did so out of earth, air, fire, and water. Which element is the building block on which the others are based?" There was a fascinating debate through the centuries between those who felt air was the primal element, vs those who thought fire was. Each had good arguments. So the stage was set for a more logical, rational, - dare I say, modernist view of the world.

A few hundred years later, Christianity theology completely rejected cyclical time, led by St. Augustine of Hippo. As we read together earlier, Judaism in the Old Testament had a notion of an alpha point the Creation moment. Genesis also describes a single fall from grace. Augustine said that clearly cannot be a cycle returning to the origin for a rerun, for Jesus had been crucified but once. And there would be but one eschatological omega point, one final Revelation and judgement.

In this light, the mass conversion of cyclical cultures by of Christian missionaries makes more sense. It isn't that the natives are embracing belief in doctrinal matters like the divinity of Jesus -- it is that they are pragmatically using Christianity to switching paradigm to a linear world view. Because the linear world view, with firearms, iron ships, canned food, and antibiotics, appears to be more successful.

Embracing linear time elevates humans above nature, half way between to God, and from this lofty place gives license for humans to extract and consume non-renewable resources. Genesis 1:26: "and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."

Dominion means, plants, animals and natural resources are there for us to exploit. Unwinding cyclical time, stretching it out, means you are no longer required to return your environment back to a normative rest state. Instead, you can leave things messy.

This is not to say that cyclical civilizations were ecological utopias -- far from it. The Mesopotamian civilizations collapsed when irrigation caused excessive salination of their fields. But they do so unintentionally. Nothing on the scale of say, ripping the top of a mountain for copper or coal, or pumping petroleum out of the ground.

Here are two readings highlighting the difference between renewable and non-renewable resources. I first read versions of them in "Coevolution Quarterly" magazine, back in 1980, based on a story that Gregory Bateson told Steward Brand.

New College, Oxford, is of rather late foundation, hence the name. It was founded in the late 14th century. It has, like other colleges, a great dining hall with big oak beams across the top -- as large as two feet square and forty-five feet long. Each.

In the mid-1800s, an enterprising entomologist climbed the dining hall with a penknife and poked at the beams, and found that they were full of beetles. This was reported to the College Council, who met in some dismay, because where would they get beams of that caliber nowadays?

One of the Junior Fellows stuck his neck out and suggested that there might be on College lands some oak. These colleges are endowed with pieces of land scattered across the country. So they called the College Forester, who of course had not been near the college itself for some years, and asked him about oaks.

And he pulled his forelock and said, "Well sirs, we was wondering when you'd be askin."

Upon further inquiry it was discovered that when the College was founded, a grove of oaks had been planted to replace the beams in the dining hall when they became beetly, because oak beams always become beetly in the end. This plan had been passed down from one Forester to the next for four hundred years. "You don't cut them oaks. Them's for the College Hall."

And here's the story about non-renewable resources:

The stone which formed the step up to the main door at the dining hall had become worn down after centuries of students of use, and would have to be replaced. Unfortunately, there were hardly any funds available for the replacement. Then someone came up with the bright idea that the replacement could be postponed for many years by simply turning the block of stone over.

They discovered that their great-grandparents had beaten them to it.

These are great stories, and how stories become memes, and memes become myths, and myths are more real than the boring facts is something I may give a summer service on in another three years. But nowadays we have the internet and scopes.com. And I asked myself, did this happen? is this true?

Um, sorta.

The "Long Now" foundation asked the Oxford Historian about this, and she came back with the following report from their archives. The part about a student discovering the beetly beams is reported as happening in 1859.

In 1862, the senior fellow was visiting College estates on `progress', i.e., an annual review of College property, which goes on to this day (performed by the Warden [the head of the College]). Visiting forests in Akeley and Great Horwood, Buckinghamshire (forests which the College had owned since 1441), he had the largest oaks cut down and used to make new beams for the ceiling.

It is not the case that these oaks were kept for the express purpose of replacing the Hall ceiling. It is standard woodland management to grow stands of mixed broadleaf trees e.g., oaks, interplanted with hazel and ash. The hazel and ash are coppiced approximately every 20-25 years to yield poles. The oaks, however, are left to grow on and eventally, after 150 years or more, they yield large pieces for major construction work such as beams, knees etc.

Personally, I think this is an even better story about renewable resources, because it demonstrates that the institution did not "forget" about the oak trees for centuries, and that there wasn't a dedicated stand of oaks vulnerable to drought or lightning.

But I digress.

I'll repeat -- in a "cyclical time" society, the economic basis for your existence must be on renewable resources. In our Egyptian example, the yearly spring flood deposits fertile ground in the form of alluvial silt, and new clay deposits for pots and bricks. Reeds grow for your baskets and roofs. Flax or animals provide yarn for your clothes. What about stone and metals, like silver, gold, copper or bronze? Well, they are used for societal aggrandizement (remember the monumental architecture?), or personal ornamentation, in the form of jewelry.

Or... used for technological machines, or weapons. And weapons are antithetical the scope of a cyclical lifestyle, because war causes change, and change is bad.

Cyclical culture societies fail when one of two things happen: outside invasion, or what they thought were renewable resources run out. One theory about the Mayan collapse in Mexico is that either widespread human-caused deforestation or a climate change destroyed their agricultural base. As you can imagine, this is a sensitive political topic given today's Global Warming debate.

I mentioned silver, gold, copper, and bronze. Not iron. Iron, especially cheap iron, changed the face of warfare and led to a centuries long "dark age" everywhere it came into widespread use.

Here is a hierarchy of materials. Flint weapons are marginally better than heat-treated wood. Obsidian is better, but brittle. Copper is better but is too soft hold an edge for long battles. But bronze... Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin, both materials which are relatively easy to mine. But since tin is so scarce, bronze is scarce, meaning it ends up being restricted to a warrior elite. Think of the Iliad, and descriptions of how a bronze-armored fighter can mow through the unarmored men.

The "Bronze Age" started around 3500BCE, and the cultural impact of the warrior elite took a few hundred years to settle out. But the cyclical time mindset survived, because it was limited.

Now lets compare bronze to iron. The Bronze Age knew about iron, because occasionally the gods would throw down an iron meteorite and the smiths could easily forge the iron/nickel mass into a truly superior weapon. Iron is more flexible, stronger, holds an edge longer, and most importantly, iron ore is plentiful and freely available. There's just one problem -- it is technically complicated and requires sophisticated techniques and management to mine and smelt.

But around 1300BCE, a group of people, somewhere in either the Balkans or Asia Minor, broke out of cyclical time thinking long enough to solve this problem. And the impact was devastating. A warrior leader could give iron weapons to many followers, and their war band has an overwhelming advantage against the bronze warrior elites.

How bad was it? Archeological evidence shows that in just 50 years -- between 1206 and 1150BCE, every major city between Troy and Gaza was burned. It was so bad, Greece lost their written language, Linear B, for 300 years until the alphabet was imported from Phoenicia. No wonder the Greeks in 800BCE said to themselves, "What happened?" and began questioning.

Now I'd like to turn to the foodie portion of my talk, and make use of my visual aids that have been sitting here so tastily. I have a number of items here, both renewable and non-renewable.

I'll start with what I consider one of the most egregious and dare I say, blasphemous examples of modern consumerist overreaching: Fiji Water. On the other side of the world is the largest body of salt water, the Pacific Ocean, and in the middle of them, the Fiji Islands. In one of their volcanic calderas is a fresh water aquifer that has slowly filled over millennia. And there is an industrial factory pumping water out of the fresh water aquifer. Not for the islanders, though. For us.

I'm not making this up. After all, the corporation owned by two American billionaires is providing 3% of Fiji's GNP. Never mind the impact on tourism or the corruption of it's politics. This is progress, right?

The fresh water is only one non-renewable resource being exploited. Diesel fuel runs the bottling factory. Oil is transformed into disposable plastic bottles in China. Fuel oil is burned on ships carrying empty bottles from China to Fiji and then again to carry full bottles from Fiji to the west coast. More Diesel fuel to truck it to the local grocery store. At least I walked from my house to the grocery store, and carried them in reusable bags.

I cannot conceive of the culture that thinks this is ok. Or rather, I can, and here's a story to illustrate that.

In 1972, the leadership at the Coca-Cola company had a retreat and talked about how to raise profits. The best way is to cut costs, which they managed a decade later by replacing cane sugar with high fructose corn syrup. The next best way is to increase sales. So they identified their biggest competitor. When I tell people this story, I ask them to guess who Coke competes with, and most people get it wrong.

Hint: It isn't Pepsi. Any guesses (from people who I haven't had this conversation with.)

It's tap water. Ther's roughly a trillion gallons of liquid consumed world wide each year. The Coca-cola company had an infinitesimal fraction of that. They decided on a goal of 90% - that 90% of the total potable consumption worldwide should be consumed via their company.

I remember growing up. When I was a kid in the 1960s, Coke was for special occasions. Birthday parties. When you got a stomach ache. A treat when you went out to eat. And so Coke started the "I'd like to buy the world a coke" and later the "It's the Real Thing" campaign, and convinced many people that carbonated, caffeinated, calorated beverages should be drunk every day, instead of tap water.

But that wasn't enough. When scientific evidence mounted that people should be drinking more water, Coca-Cola and the other industrial food companies went on another advertising spree. Again when I was growing up, there was Perrier Water, for people who didn't drink alcohol but didn't want to feel left out at parties. Now, we have Fuji Water.

That date, 1972, is important. The 70's was the Decade of the Conglomerate, of mergers, of Bigger is Better, of double digit inflation. Small and medium sized companies that were in the business of harvesting, preparing, and selling food at the grocery store were aquired by bigger companies. The new management said, "We want you to show earnings growth of 10-20% a year." And the food scientists laughed, and said, "Not possible." Now, conglomerate owners don't like hearing that, so they "discussed" it further, and found out that the reason why the food sector of the economy had decades of 2-5% growth is that, um... that's how quickly the population grows. And people tend not to buy more food than they can eat.

And management told the scientists to fix that problem. And given enough incentive, the scientists did -- by changing what people eat, and changing how much people eat. And now it's finally time to talk about food.

I do the majority of the grocery shopping and cooking in my family, and so I've been able to change our eating habits the past year, influenced by the works of Michael Pollan. We've joined a CSA from which we get 10lbs of locally-produced and slaughtered, antibiotic-free, grass fed meat a month. I'm using healthier cooking techniques from the Weightwatchers web site. As a result, Trish has dropped over 40lbs since January, and me about 15.

Here are Michael Pollan's 7 Words: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants."
And a few words about the words.

"Eat Food" means "don't eat edible food-like substances." If you bought it at the same place you filled up your gas tank, or your gret-grandmother wouldn't recognize, its likely not "real food." If it won't "go bad", its not "real food."

I have here a week-old piece of bread that I cooked last Sunday. Bread flour, water, olive oil, salt, yeast. Delicious on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. Somewhat crunchy on Wednesday. Moldy by Thursday. For refreshments today, we'll be having bread I baked yesterday. Yum.

I have here two twinkies. Flour, Niacin, Thiamine Mononitrate Riboflavin Folic Acid, Sugar, Water, Corn Syrup, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable and/or Animal Shortening (contains One or More of: Soybean, Cottonseed or Canola Oil, Beef Fat), Whole Eggs, Dextrose. Modified Corn Starch, Glucose, Leavenings (Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Baking Soda, Monocalcium Phosphate)Sweet Dairy Whey, Soy Protein Isolate, Calcium and Sodium Caseinate, Salt, Mono and Diglycerides, Polysorbate 60, Soy Lecithin, Cornstarch, Corn Flour, Corn Dextrin, Cellulose Gum, Sodium Stearyl Lactylate, Sorbic Acid (to Retain Freshness)FD&C Yellow 5, Red 40.

One bought yesterday, one bought 8 days ago. The shelf life for a Twinkie is 24 days, so it may be as much as a month old. Can you tell the difference? If you can't, are you sure you want to put it in your digestive system?

"Not to much" means that how you eat is just as important as what. I've already noted that 3% of the population grows food for the rest of us. But another fascinating and less well documented statistic is the amount of time that people spend preparing, eating, and cleaning up. The government knows what employment people have, but not so much about how they spend their time during the day. But it's clear that the combination of the microwave and pre-packaged food, rather than unprocessed plant food, means that the average person spends far less time dealing with food. And this is probably not healthy.

Is there a link between obesity and eating until you are full? Between obesity and the amount of time one spends in the kitchen cooking food, and how much time you spend afterwards? Is your health improved when you sit down to eat with other people and enjoy their company? Probably. Is there research about this? Not really.

I did read a fascinating study this week from the Pew Foundation, examining teenagers and their consumption of electronic media. Two thirds of all kids between 8 and 18 live in a house where the TV is on during dinner. But that's another whole talk, and this time I won't digress.

"Mostly Plants" sounds pretty clear -- eat more green stuff. But it also means to avoid eating "fake food" that is created in plants. Industrial plants.

So the first way those whacky scientists improved corporate profits was by the creation of edible food-like substances, and handing them off to the advertising agencies to sell. The second way is by tricking people into eating more food. The canonical example here is "supersizing."

Another personal note -- when I was growing up, people didn't want to be thought of as greedy or piggish. There was a certain societal disapproval towards ordering too much of anything. So, you dialog with their stomach and their wallet and their conscience, and walk up to the fast food counter having already decided that they wanted a medium soda, a medium fries. And then the clerk asks, "Would you like to supersize that? It's only another 20 cents!"

Your brain now starts fighting itself. This question hooks into a primal human characteristic, of wanting to get a great deal. "Only 20 cents! Look at how much more we'll get! 20 cents is tiny! Pay it. Pay it now now now!!!"

And once you've bought it, you're going to eat it, with drastic consequences. There's a large poster on the wall in every fast food joint; I counted calories at Burger King one day. A supersized Triple Whopper with Cheese, supersized french fries, and supersized non-diet drink came to 2400 calories. For those of you not familiar with diet plans, 2000 calories is an entire day's intake for most people. And here with one supersized meal, you're exceeding that by 20%.

If you look into Michael Pollen's other books, he describes how the modern food industry has corrupted the political system, destroyed the ecosystem in the heartland of America, and ruined our public health.


We've reached the linear end of the formal part of my talk. I'll conclude with the "omega moment" from the Bible

Revelations 20:11-14

And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them.
And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.
And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.
And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire.

What happens after the final judgement? The Creator cleans up the floor, turns the lights out, and walks away. But before that happens, I invite you to partake of some homemade bread and tap water. My apologies in advance for people with wheat or gluten allergies. Thank you.