Musing on muses

I contracted a muse today, or possibly earlier this year. This in an effort to propel my writing through the National Novel Writer's Month. We shall see if I have the ability or the energy.

Being who I am, I cannot avoid analyzing words and phrases for their full meaning.

Consider "contracting a muse."

Taking the last sub-phrase "a muse" first, this is simple. To wit:

• (in Greek and Roman mythology) each of nine goddesses, the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, who preside over the arts and sciences.
• a woman, or a force personified as a woman, who is the source of inspiration for a creative artist.

I think that is pretty clear. Of course, I could compress the sub-phrase "a muse" into "amuse", but that would take us down unnecessary tangents.

The first word "contract" is altogether more tricksy though:

noun

• 1. a written or spoken agreement, especially one concerning employment, sales, or tenancy, that is intended to be enforceable by law.
• informal: an arrangement for someone to be killed by a hired assassin.
• BRIDGE: the declarer's undertaking to win the number of tricks bid with a stated suit as trumps.
• dated: a formal agreement to  marry.

verb

• 1. decrease in size, number, or range
• 2. enter into a formal and legally binding agreement.
• 3. catch or develop (a disease or infectious agent).
• 4. become liable to pay (a debt).

Such a plethora of meaning wrapped into a single word.

Of course one could argue from a modern romantic sense that all the above are meant to apply to modern relationship, but I would disagree.

The point I was trying to make though is that I have now contracted (entered into an agreement with) a muse that I am fortunate enough to have previously contracted (been infected by).

Hopefully I will not be contracted [liable to pay (emotionally  or otherwise)] to, or contracted  [decreased in size, number, or range] by, said muse. I doubt it, I have heard she is lazy with the karmic paperwork.

So go the thoughts that hum through my head on a Tuesday evening.

Quick thoughts: Honey and 1066

Hammering out long complex philosophical thoughts is something I do as well as beavers build freeways.

So let me try something simple.

I was "helping" my daughter with her project on bees this evening (due tomorrow, some things never change) when I came across this wonderfully familiar fact:

Origins of words:

Bee: Old English bēo, of Germanic origin

Hive: Old English hȳf, of Germanic origin.

Honey: Old English hunig, of Germanic origin

What does this have to do with 1066?
For hundreds of years, England was conquered by Celts, Franks, Romans, Vikings, and, most importantly for this story, German speaking Anglo-Saxons in 450 AD. Then they stopped being conquered for a bit and a language called Old English was created, mostly from German with some words from the languages of the previous conquerors.
In 1066 a French guy called William conquered England and gave all the important positions in the kingdom to his French buddies.
Over the centuries these foreigners introduced all of their fancy foreign words into English to create a new language called middle English. Being fancy folk with foreign ways, those words only described the kind of things they bothered with.

This eventually developed into modern English which was created by everyone being really lazy with pronunciation. Then about 100 years ago someone created a language called American which was even lazier, if you can believe it.
Eventually my children's generation created something which is allegedly language which I can't even.

So now we have an English language where most of the hard working bits come from German and all the fancy stuff comes from French. The really dumb bits come from Miley Cyrus and Stephen Hawking.

For example:
Work: from the German "Werk"
Managing Director: from Latin "manage" & [Anglo-Norman] French "directour"
Sheep: from the German "Schaf"
Civilian (Human sheep): from Old French "civilien"
Football: German
Tennis: French
Boss: from Dutch "baas" [via South Africa]
Apartheid: from Afrikaans [via South Africa]

BFF: Origin unknown

String theory: Two words that each make sense but taken together start talking about "one dimension[al] objects"... OK, boy bands and I really, really can't even.

So I am writing in a language that has three parts.

A German part which I use if I want to get work done.

A French part which one should certainly use to seduce the mademoiselles.

And a modern part which make you hip to the jive of the new lingo, y'all.

Comprende?

On Truth Diggers and Trolls

A few interesting ideas in my head today made me want to write about the truth-diggers and trolls in our world.
For the sake of convenience and so as not to refer to them specifically again, trolls are everything from hate posters to ISIS decapitators to colonial war mongers to Nazis. The difference between them is merely a question of degrees, after all. Shitty shit shits.

Let me define more carefully what I mean by truth-diggers. These are people who believe that THE TRUTH is important.
Yes, I know: about 93.2% of you are already adding qualifications to that statement in your minds. All those ifs and buts just mean you are not the people I am referring to. You, like me, fit into that interstitial group of "normals."

Truth-diggers are not "truthers" or conspiracy theorists. A truth-digger will call you out for factual inaccuracies, logical fallacies and grammatical errors even when you are trying to support them.

Truth-diggers are not attention whores. They will write an essay in defense of a simple point of decency and then ignore an ad hominem attack as if it never happened.

Truth-diggers are batshit crazy. Hope that you are never ruled by one.

BUT

Truth diggers are the conscience of our society. And they are winning.

Before I get into that winning, let me first list some of the ideas that provoked these thoughts:

• A heart-rending post from Kathy Sierra (aka SeriousPony) about trolls and women. Read it. Seriously, forget the rest of this post and read it. It is thoughtful, honest, shocking. For me it was emphasized by the hosts of This Week in Google talking about their, and their families, suffering from harassment. The life of an even nominally well known woman on the internet is so much different and more awful to mine. This was complicated for me because Kathy's main antagonist wrote an empathetic post that I 100% agreed with about a hero of mine, Richard Stallman. Life is complicated.
• Jennifer Lawrence "refusing to apologize" for the naked selfies, instead saying: "'you should cower with shame' for viewing my nudes." I haven't viewed your nudes Jennifer, tempted as I may be. (Hat-tip to Georgie) 
• An instructive twitter conversation with two of my favorite tweeps about the solution to trolls. I, of course, am in favor of a Roman solution. Let's force everyone to share everything they ever write with their mothers. They questioned me. Yeah it creeps me out too, but it's the only way.
• A fleeting fancy of creating a female social media persona for myself (40-something soccer mom, married [sorry guys], into yoga and blogging) so as to experience the hatred first hand.
• A private conversation with a truth-digger (a hat-tip to you too) and
• As always, a discussion with my wife. Touching on Ada Lovelace, Jean Jennings-Bartik and Frances Bilas et al; my eldest daughter; trolls; said private conversation; and psychology. [Is the oxford semi-colon a thing?]

So why do I think think the truth-diggers are winning?

Stephen Pinker wrote a book called "The bettter angels of our nature: Why violence has declined."  showing that we are living in the most peaceful era of human history. He measures this by the decline in pro-rata violent deaths over the centuries. He does not declare victory for peace or suggest that we should stop peacing for final victory. But he does say that the numbers are in.

WWI, II, Korea, Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, Vietnam, Congo,  Ethiopia, Lebbanon, Rwanda, Liberia, Sudan, Iraq 1 & 2, Afghanistan 103, 104 & 105, Syria, killer cops, Marikana, drone strikes, etc, etc, etc aside, we are living in the most peaceful era of human history.

How can that be? It sure doesn't feel like it. How do we reconcile our immediate experience with that idea.

Let me propose some possibilities.

• Most cynically, people have found better ways of killing each other. I am not sure if Biafra, Somalia, the Chinese famines, the Western Sarhara and other acts of starvation-as-genocide feature in Mr Pinker's calculations of violent death. I would hope so. [I really should read that book before basing an entire blogpost on it, shouldn't I?]
• Inequality of excess. The nastiness of this world is not distributed as evenly as it was in the past. The European savages could wipe out more of the world [pro-rata] in a decade that ISIS could manage in a century but ISIS is operating in a smaller area. Deaths from the Israeli occupation of Gaza is small potatoes compared to the Irish famine of the 19th century perpetrated on a similarly sized area. (Godawful and nasty pun, I know.)
• Good fun as war. As uncomfortable as this may be, we have to acknowledge that many of the young men who would have served in the Roman legions, Sassanid cataphracts or Turkish bombardiers are now shuttered in their parents basements. The evil they sometimes do is still evil, but we do not count it as "spoils of war." Is it impossible to imagine that the young male still calls out for blood, be he ever so far from the rape and pillage of the battlefield?
• Better communications. The world is in my face like an anteaters tongue in an ant's antechamber right now. From St. Louis shenanigans to Hong Kong Gung Ho [it didn't mean what you think it meant], I cannot turn on Twitter without learning of some terrible tragedy or lamentable last stand. Where are the walls that should protect me from the horror? They are gone, shelled and shattered in the wastelands of the Somme, Verdun, Auschwitz, Stalingrad, Srebrenitsa, Somaliland, St Louis. Peepholes have been pried in the ruins with Facebook and Google. We are too much with the world. "We are the world," is an ominous threat.
• More wealth equals more caring. Compassion is a luxury. Telling a homeless man about the travails in the Ukraine or Syrian refugees is callous. His personal concerns about the next 24 hours are far more important than anything, anywhere, ever. You have to have a certain amount of security and possibly insouciance to really care. Of course there are those of you who don't and still do and that is why you hurt yourselves so bad.
• Because capitalism or communism. Nah, just kidding. Those tired old ideas mean nothing.

So the world may be less violent and deadly than it was in the past but there is still much evil around. The trolls are not only still with us, but they are now unionized. They have their fellowship of the interrupt-ring. Terrible things, personal and public, still happen every day.

This is because the war is not won and may never be. But the truth-diggers, the bleeding hearts and artists, the decent folk, are on the ascent. One battle at a time. One word at a time. One hug, one cent, one cure, one peace deal at a time.

It will not be yours to see a final victory, but only to know that you stood your ground.

Melancholy happiness really.

Belief in a time of saneness

"To the student, a plea for philosophy" - First year philosophy preface

To disabuse a person of a belief is a an act of violence. It is a violation of the soul, a rape of the heart. However stupid, bigoted, irrational or illogical that belief is does not matter. To destroy belief is to destroy a part of a being.
Sometimes that violence is appropriate and necessary. Paul, the apostle, said "... when I became a man, I put away childish things..." (1 Corinthians 13:11) What he really meant was "my mother explained that fairies weren't real (on this planet in this universe)" or, possibly, "my daddy told me what he had to do to mommy to get me." We hope that when we can do this violence gently and with compassion, tearing the plaster of protection from the wounds of reality with the minimum pain. Of course we all know that the best way to do this is by allowing the patient to remove the plaster themselves. More on that later, maybe.

It would be useful here to discern between true beliefs and meta-belief or, as Mark Twain called the latter, "believing what you know ain't so." We all profess beliefs that are really the funereal suits of social cohesion. It may be a meta-belief in honesty, or the equality of all men and women, etc, etc, etc, ad nausium. Modernity has equipped us with a full wardrobe of these fripperies. We can dismiss them easily and walk through the rest of this narrative intellectually naked.

I am talking about true belief, embedded belief. The kind of belief that makes us inviolable to a world of counter-factuals .Our belief in rightness and wrongness, in the sanctity of hard work Your belief in an omniscient and omnipotent G-d. A belief in a cause or country. Belief in ourselves. In  short, the beliefs, the truths, that raise us up and press us down in a visceral way.

They are all bullshit too, obviously, but we must believe them. Not to do so would be to walk the short urban garden path to insanity.
Therein lies the paradox. How does one, knowing the true arbitrary nature of existence, construct something on which to believe? How does one proceed through life without destroying the beliefs of others while still living an honest existence? No. That is too complex. How does one exist with any meaning?

Shall we trust in the cult of science? Can 1 in 1000 the putative readers reliably identify (without Google) to the nearest 1000 TeV what energy the Higgs-boson was discovered at? Or what it is? Can you explain what science has done to eliminate the trade in women in Western Africa? Can the reader kindly define euclidean geometry and why the two additions (an negative sign for time and sqrt -1) make it useful for general relativity?
Can anyone explain why that last paragraph was inane trickery?

If you cannot answer at least one of these questions and still believe in science, your faith is as childlike as Carthaginian faith in child sacrifice.

Can the engineers tell us what they have done while humane civilization burns? Those mechanical men (and a few women) with their mega-brains are MIA.

Can anyone give this correspondent something on which to believe?

And now for something completely (in)different.
The successful therapist is the consummate seductress. She will cut away the clothing of your soul, inch by inch. All you will experience is the malleable comfort of the session room until the moment you stand spiritually naked in front of the existential mirror. And then you will do it again. It is not enough to see the corpse of psyche. You will dig down until you find the skeleton. Then you will shred it and suck on the very marrow of your existence. And, having fed to satiety, you will do it again.
And again.
We used to call them priests. Shamans, druids, sangomas.
We used to trust them.

mi morte, mia maxima morte (My death is the greatest reward of death)

I came across this title though serendipity. Through screwing around with Latin, basically. I have a passion for dead languages and peoples.


Living people? Not so much.
So first I must offer an apology. Last weekend I was a total dick to some people. I cannot argue my cause on this. I offer you each 5 karma coins from my diminishing reserves. (Please wash hands after handling.)

Next I should offer condolences to my fellow living dead. #Soz and #whatevs you guys. #luvs ;)

Okay, admin taken care of, let us progress to the meat of the matter:

A poem (first in a while)
by a [former, not quite] [buffalo] soldier
(trying to rip off Elliot)

"We'll no longer yearn
To be brothers in arms" -Dire Straits

"Repent" he said,
"Transform" said she
These sallow wraiths of real world
Trying to cluster-fuck me
into normality

I saw my dead comrade
and crying captain
un-men in impotence
in the bush,

This is my time of crisis, blood!
I see the band of brethren distant,
my nostrils flare in an instant
Blood. Blood, blud.

He is perfect, perfectly still
He is dead, so be thy will
I reach behind his head
matted hair and blood, be still


Drag the corpse towards the vehicle
Horror! Do you think he will?
"Inside", I say.
On top, they pray. Voices shrill.

His last ride is atop a Ratel
So off to the awful morgue we go
Where body bag entombs friend-foe
Exposed, inured, immortal

Metallic blood, I taste you.

Relationship status

Abraham, Ebrahim, father of nations, friend of G-d
Father of two first-borns
Took his child to Moriah and said
“God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my [daughter].”

The world waits until we are ready,
Until we embrace the unknown unknown
Until we befriend the void that is with us
And is us.

Look to the mirror, friend
Look to the scars and lines of your time.
Look to the face and the place of the known unknown,
Look to your kindred kind,
Ken ye?

Ken ye?
Doest thou know the known?
Canst thou embrace the unknown?
Ken ye?

Sit with me in sadness, stranger
We have walked this short mile together
We have eaten salt together
We have supped and visited the graves of our ancestors, together

To the Sanhedrin and Pharisees, I say:
"Who is thy neighbour?"
Who walks the road to Jericho?
Who is mugged on the highway of life?

And now to the topic
To the current muse and views of the temporal I
Focus, draw in the moment and the read words that stirred
this un-rhyme

Relationship status?
Almost!
Exegesis attempted a slip from my fingers
Actuarial disinterest nearly existed

The lead pressed ceiling of a darkened room
Counting the patterns of nothing
I am not of this world
The angel[']s sang[froid]

Sallow wraith of me
Crept out of bed
Clutching at corners to define a time and place
for my vapid soul to inhabit

Horror stalked me, shadows found me
Brushing my hair in the autumn dark
Clean-shaven legs or clean-cut face
The mirror reflects a hollow space

I, this I, will go forth
Pretence shall prevail
This I is I
It has been foreseen, foreshadowed

...

She destroys me perfectly
Sarah, wife of Ebrahim
She whose name means "princess"
or "commander" of the horde

Who will love my monsters?
Who will breed and feed
and kill them in turn
Who will transmute the ram to the lamb?

My questions about MH370: A visit to Occam's barbershop

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." - Hanlon's Razor
 
This is not my normal blog post. It may be moot at any time, but it is a relevant question anyway.

The disappearance of Flight MH370 has led to wild speculation by the media based on little or no evidence. I believe there are some basic questions that have not been answered:

• Why did the ELT fail to activate? Why were there no distress calls from the aircraft?
• What happened to the pings to Inmarsat between 1:07  and 08:11?
• Why is the arc for the location of MH370 truncated between Vietnam and Indonesia? What makes this area exceptional?
• What is the time it takes a 777 flying at normal cruising speed to turn 300°?
• Was the "unknown aircraft" that we assume to be MH370 really it? Were there any other "unknown aircraft" in the sky that night?
• What is the maximum limits of the radar observations of the "unknown aircraft?" Does it terminate in the Malacca straits? On the Andaman islands? Beyond?
• In the court of Occam's razor, do eyewitnesses count for anything?
• Do eyewitness accounts tie in with the known facts?
• What would cause radar echoes to be intermittent?

I ask these questions as a layman, I have no special knowledge or skills. In doing so I am going to apply Occam's razor (i.e. Make no more assumptions than is necessary).
I will use the word "allegedly" a few times in this post. This word means 'I have no corroboration' for the facts stated. It does not mean "I am suspicious."

Here are the sequence of known, relevant events:

• On 8 March at 00:30, MH370, a Boeing 777,  departed Kuala Lampur with 227 passengers and 12 staff on board. The weather was normal.
• Two of the passengers on board were travelling under false passports. They have allegedly since been cleared.
• At 1:07 the last ACARS transmission is made. The next transmission is expected in either 30 minutes or 1 hour. It is unclear from the reporting whether the satellite or plane initiates this request.
• At 01:19 MH370 sent it's last transmission to Malaysia Air traffic control saying "All right, good night." This is the last intelligible vocal communication.
• At 01:21 MH370 disappeared from radar. This is the last known radar contact with MH370.
• At 01:28 Thai radar picked up an unknown aircraft flying in the opposite direction to MH370 in the same vicinity as MH370. This aircraft's signal was intermittent.
• Malaysian radar also picked up an unidentified aircraft in the same vicinity, although times are not given.
• This aircraft is assumed to be MH370.
• At "just after 01:30" the pilot of another aircraft makes contact with MH370. He hears static and "mumbles". This is the last known verbal contact with MH370.
• While on this course, the unidentified aircraft allegedly makes a series of erratic altitude changes. It goes up to 45000ft (above the safe operating limit for MH370) down to 23000ft (below normal cruising altitude for MH370) and then down to 5000ft.
• This aircraft travels south west into the Malacca Strait. Based on some reporting the aircraft followed commercial airline waypoints.
• The narratives now diverge:
• According to Malaysian authorities the aircraft follows a complex set of navigation points to eventually take a route that would lead it to Europe, crossing the Andaman Islands.
• According to Thai reports the aircraft turns left into the Malacca strait and then makes a right turn towards Butterworth, Malaysia.
• At 08:11, Inmarsat reports a "ping" response from MH370, response times indicate a possible arc of the current location. No intervening pings are given. The centre of the arc defined by this ping is excluded as possible locations, even though it intersects the original flight path of MH370. Reports differ as to whether the plane needed to be in the air for this ping to occur.
• The Emergency Location Transmitter (ELT) did not activate. At 01:19, 08:11 or at any time in between. 
• No mayday signal was sent by the crew.

Corroborating eyewitness accounts:
The most convincing eyewitness account I have seen is from Mike McKay. His observations are detailed in every way except that he did not quote a time. Other than that, Mike would be my primary source. His account was early, precise and detailed. Tie that to an aircraft flying at 45000ft instead of 30000ft and the numbers start to add up.

Other eyewitness accounts:

• Fishermen in the Malacca straits find a life raft with the word "boarding" on it.
• Fishermen report seeing an aircraft fall in the Malacca straits. Wrong date, wrong time. However, the description is seems to mesh with a catastrophic failure.
• Fishermen off the coast of Andhra Pradesh report "bits of something." I admire the reserve.
• Reported sighting over the Maldives, flying North to South East at 06:15 local time. These guys were definitely hungover (or the US guys at Deigo Garcia were messing with them.) The numbers do not compute.

Occcam's barbershop:
Theory 1: MH370 suffered a catastrophic failure between 01:21 and 01:28. To purport that a commercial aircraft can lose all signal in 7 minutes due to human intervention is reaching.

Theory 2: MH370 crashed somewhere off the coast of Vietnam due to theory 1. If the Inmarsat beacon somehow stayed alive, it would explain the ongoing responses.

Theory 3: MH 370 crashed somewhere between the Andaman Straits and the Indian coast. This would assume that the Anmarsat responses were not absolute, but would explain three of the eyewitness accounts. I dedicate this theory to Courtney Love with no irony whatsoever.

Theory 4: The aircraft crashed somewhere between the Malacca straits and the Indian coast. This would explain two eyewitness accounts and match the last assumed direction of the unidentified aircraft. It would question the Inmarsat locations.

Theory 5: The aircraft continued flying and crashed or landed somewhere else on the Inmarsat arc or 30 minutes beyond. This calls into question all of the known facts except the Inmarsat pings.

Theory 6: Whatever the truth is discovered to be.

As much as this is a curious mental exercise, I do acknowledge that real people are involved. The missing, their families, the bleeding hearts and artists. Ordinary people. I do care, in my way.

Lastly I want to say to all the media: Your ugliness has been noted.