by Meg Curtis, PhD
The president can assess Daniel Suarez's qualifications as a consultant by viewing his TED talk here: http://www.keynotes.org/speaker/danielsuarez. Obama can gift himself with one of Suarez's novels, as a late Christmas present, to bring him up to date on the necessity of integrating challenges to the health, well-being, security, and freedom of the American citizenry.
Obama can also read this summary on Suarez's book jackets: "Daniel Suarez is an independent systems consultant to Fortune 1000 companies. He has designed and developed enterprise software for the defense, finance, and entertainment industries." This author functions on the cutting edge of Information Technology. He assesses the mentality of gamers, high tech workers, governments, and independent creators of robotics systems.
To listen to Suarez is to step, along with him, into the implications of technology for democracy. He illustrates his TED talk with graphics portraying how analysts can view data in groups so as to identify communications hubs, thus allowing analysts to facilitate community organization, or destroy each hub and communities along with the hubs. He can imagine where we are going from where are are--and how we keep the US safe from daemons.
This consultant opens his book Daemons with these prophetic words in the frontispiece:
"daemon...A computer program that runs continuously in the background and performs specified operations at predetermined times or in response to certain events.
Condensed from '"Disk and Execution MONitor.'".
Is this concept not the hub of a functioning health care system? The patient about to undergo heart surgery may not have days to spend trying to contact his insurance provider before the anaesthesiologist grabs him. New parents need to keep their attention where it belongs: on new members of their families. And the US cannot afford any health care system which does not offer both computer expertise and respect for vital human beings.
Saturday, January 4, 2014
The Zombification of Language -- A New Rolling Eyes Column! ((0) (0))
by Meg Curtis, PhD
The use of language as a club offers the first sign that zombies have invaded America.
Consider current phrases involving "there."
1. "There's no there there.": Even a neuroscientist could not translate this sentence into a meaningful statement. First, repetition creates a tautology, which repeats the subject in the predicate. In such circular logic, the speaker whips listeners' heads around in a verbal tornado so fast that they forget to scream: "You aren't saying anything! You're short-circuiting my brain!" This is a classic case of violence committed on a literate audience.
The same example serves to illustrate how language can be used to distract, instead of reveal, meaning. No speaker uttering these words can accuse anyone of obfuscation or propaganda because that speaker is violating the most basic principles of honest communication. To check the speaker, just proceed to http://hotair.com/archives/2013/05/13/obama-on-benghazi-there-is-no-there-there/ to catch the press conference on May 13, 2013.
Researchers may be surprised to discover that this sentence was not original to the speaker that day. Gertrude Stein uttered it first, as this website records: http://www.bartleby.com/73/148.html/. So, are elitist speakers in American now quoting even more elitist American authors to confuse the American public? Gertrude Stein is famous, of course, for saying: "A rose is a rose is a rose." Write that on a valentine, and see what happens.
2. "S/he was always there for me": This common claim illustrates the trickle down effect of both economics and language. No listener will ever be able to determine where "there" is from this sentence. Was this anonymous "she" waiting outside the speaker's bedroom with a hot towel and nuts, like an airline hostess? Was "she" the one who turned up to provide bail money after the speaker was charged with DUI? Meaningless tributes praise no one.
George Orwell spoke these words bravely: " It [the English language] becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts." His famous essay on this subject, "Politics and the English Language," is online at https://www.mtholyoke. edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm. Consider Orwell's warnings carefully. He fights zombification where it begins: in the brain.
The use of language as a club offers the first sign that zombies have invaded America.
Consider current phrases involving "there."
1. "There's no there there.": Even a neuroscientist could not translate this sentence into a meaningful statement. First, repetition creates a tautology, which repeats the subject in the predicate. In such circular logic, the speaker whips listeners' heads around in a verbal tornado so fast that they forget to scream: "You aren't saying anything! You're short-circuiting my brain!" This is a classic case of violence committed on a literate audience.
The same example serves to illustrate how language can be used to distract, instead of reveal, meaning. No speaker uttering these words can accuse anyone of obfuscation or propaganda because that speaker is violating the most basic principles of honest communication. To check the speaker, just proceed to http://hotair.com/archives/2013/05/13/obama-on-benghazi-there-is-no-there-there/ to catch the press conference on May 13, 2013.
Researchers may be surprised to discover that this sentence was not original to the speaker that day. Gertrude Stein uttered it first, as this website records: http://www.bartleby.com/73/148.html/. So, are elitist speakers in American now quoting even more elitist American authors to confuse the American public? Gertrude Stein is famous, of course, for saying: "A rose is a rose is a rose." Write that on a valentine, and see what happens.
2. "S/he was always there for me": This common claim illustrates the trickle down effect of both economics and language. No listener will ever be able to determine where "there" is from this sentence. Was this anonymous "she" waiting outside the speaker's bedroom with a hot towel and nuts, like an airline hostess? Was "she" the one who turned up to provide bail money after the speaker was charged with DUI? Meaningless tributes praise no one.
George Orwell spoke these words bravely: " It [the English language] becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts." His famous essay on this subject, "Politics and the English Language," is online at https://www.mtholyoke. edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm. Consider Orwell's warnings carefully. He fights zombification where it begins: in the brain.
Sunday, December 29, 2013
Camille Paglia and Hallmark America
by Meg Sonata
Support for Camille Paglia's maverick views on feminism comes from an odd source during this holiday season. While she decries the emasculation of the American male in speeches and articles, the Hallmark channel has been presenting a series of movies which depicts Christmas as the quest for traditional romance between the sexes.
Typically, the plots of these films portray women struggling for independence while simultaneously seeking a life-mate to join them in celebrating the difference between the sexes, too. Synchronicity between these forces would not be so startling--except Paglia has championed her lesbian cause for years, while Hallmark could have dramatized the difficult road to Bethlehem, but didn't.
When polarized forces reverse course together, is a cultural movement afoot in America? Will women strengthen by championing men to stand up and be strong defenders of the women in their lives? Sounds like a good plot to explore in the New Year!
Check out http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2530741/Theres-no-room-MANLY-Controversial-feminist-writer-Camille-Paglia-speaks-against-loss-masculine-virtues-negative-impact-society.html
Support for Camille Paglia's maverick views on feminism comes from an odd source during this holiday season. While she decries the emasculation of the American male in speeches and articles, the Hallmark channel has been presenting a series of movies which depicts Christmas as the quest for traditional romance between the sexes.
Typically, the plots of these films portray women struggling for independence while simultaneously seeking a life-mate to join them in celebrating the difference between the sexes, too. Synchronicity between these forces would not be so startling--except Paglia has championed her lesbian cause for years, while Hallmark could have dramatized the difficult road to Bethlehem, but didn't.
When polarized forces reverse course together, is a cultural movement afoot in America? Will women strengthen by championing men to stand up and be strong defenders of the women in their lives? Sounds like a good plot to explore in the New Year!
Check out http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2530741/Theres-no-room-MANLY-Controversial-feminist-writer-Camille-Paglia-speaks-against-loss-masculine-virtues-negative-impact-society.html
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Meet John Doe: The American Dream in the Media Age
by Meg Sonata
This famous film leaps across decades to explain America to itself. The hero, a stalwart Gary Cooper, plays a nonexistent character in a media drama. The heroine, the beguiling Barbara Stanwyck, discovers the secret to creating a media sensation. Politicians hide behind the curtain of good intentions, fiddling with the cords of manipulation. Like the Wizard of Oz, Meet John Doe rips away the facade of ideals, leaving an expose in their place.
How do perfectly honest souls end up conspiring to fool their fellow citizens? This question reverberates through every scene of this troubling movie, which begets quandaries faster than a hunting dog can find fleas. Cooper's face becomes the icon it already is here. Stanwyck's face, too, bespeaks eternal adoration. So, an innocent public falls for anything their idols say. But what kind of plot is this, when the stars set out to imitate John Q Public?
Released in 1941, the plot tracks the transformation of a Mr. Nobody into a character who unwittingly launches thousands to do his bidding. From start to finish, the John Doe played by Gary Cooper never manages to know exactly who he is, for he progresses toward the realization of a columnist's memory. Her father gave her the words which she places in John Doe's/Gary Cooper's mouth, to fantastical effect. Voila! Daddy rises from the grave!
Yet who is really the reporter's father in this film? His words endorse a Good Neighbor policy, domestically practiced in the USA. In the background of memory, however, lurks that biblical indictment: Just who is my neighbor? Is he the criminal hanging on the cross next to Christ's? Or is she the beautiful scoundrel whose face launches ships for a hellacious war? Do my neighbors include pally pols who would do anything but die for my vote?
The film's famous director, Frank Capra, pivots the action toward a single choice: Gary Cooper must become the fictional character he has pretended to be, in order to win mass acclaim. Finally, he must decide if he is up for committing suicide on Christmas Eve, the threat written into the plot handed to him by his own personal Eve. For dramatic tension, this film is hard to beat. What does it mean to say: "Never say die"? See the movie, and see!
This famous film leaps across decades to explain America to itself. The hero, a stalwart Gary Cooper, plays a nonexistent character in a media drama. The heroine, the beguiling Barbara Stanwyck, discovers the secret to creating a media sensation. Politicians hide behind the curtain of good intentions, fiddling with the cords of manipulation. Like the Wizard of Oz, Meet John Doe rips away the facade of ideals, leaving an expose in their place.
How do perfectly honest souls end up conspiring to fool their fellow citizens? This question reverberates through every scene of this troubling movie, which begets quandaries faster than a hunting dog can find fleas. Cooper's face becomes the icon it already is here. Stanwyck's face, too, bespeaks eternal adoration. So, an innocent public falls for anything their idols say. But what kind of plot is this, when the stars set out to imitate John Q Public?
Released in 1941, the plot tracks the transformation of a Mr. Nobody into a character who unwittingly launches thousands to do his bidding. From start to finish, the John Doe played by Gary Cooper never manages to know exactly who he is, for he progresses toward the realization of a columnist's memory. Her father gave her the words which she places in John Doe's/Gary Cooper's mouth, to fantastical effect. Voila! Daddy rises from the grave!
Yet who is really the reporter's father in this film? His words endorse a Good Neighbor policy, domestically practiced in the USA. In the background of memory, however, lurks that biblical indictment: Just who is my neighbor? Is he the criminal hanging on the cross next to Christ's? Or is she the beautiful scoundrel whose face launches ships for a hellacious war? Do my neighbors include pally pols who would do anything but die for my vote?
The film's famous director, Frank Capra, pivots the action toward a single choice: Gary Cooper must become the fictional character he has pretended to be, in order to win mass acclaim. Finally, he must decide if he is up for committing suicide on Christmas Eve, the threat written into the plot handed to him by his own personal Eve. For dramatic tension, this film is hard to beat. What does it mean to say: "Never say die"? See the movie, and see!
Saturday, December 7, 2013
Edward Snowden's Neighbor: Spying in America
by Meg Sonata
When I was a teenager living in Cassadaga, NY, a tiny village in Western New York State, I experienced the same oversight described in Der Spiegel today. The title of their lead article shows the same editorial restraint which characterizes this detailed expose. It might have been sensationally labeled "Paranoia and Xenophobia in America." Instead, it quietly introduces "Woman at the Window: Judging Edward Snowden from Next Door."
The woman of the title is Joyce Kinsey, whose occupation appears to be unemployed hairdresser in Der Spiegel's expose, but should be recorded as "spying on her neighbors." With a clear sense of entitlement to know her neighbors' every move and intention, Mrs. Kinsey innocently lays out for the author, Alexander Osang, a recipe for fascism which will leave Germans screaming after their WWII experience with neighbors reporting suspicious activity to Hitler's faithful followers, especially his storm troopers with the death's head on their helmets, the dreaded SS.
Osang doesn't need to state that this woman doesn't watch the History Channel or read Der Spiegel. There,
regular features appear addressing Germans' prolonged attempt to come to terms with loyal citizens sending
their fellow human beings straight to the gas chambers and mass murder pits. Her world view derives strictly
from the American mass media, along with the proclamations and suspicions of her relatives, according to her own statements in Osang's numerous direct quotations.
The more one reads of Osang's litany of Kinsey's complaints against Snowden, the more horrific her isolation becomes. She is propelled into the spotlight only due to a whistle-blower's determination to examine US surveillance practices. Thus, she unconsciously reveals the ignorance of a popular base supporting spying on everyone and his mother worldwide, without a single consideration for the consequences of mindless nosiness. Nathaniel Hawthorne had Kinsey's number in The Scarlet Letter, but how many Americans have read that expose recently, too?
This writer has read that masterpiece, as well as Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and Shakespeare's Macbeth, where ancient women stir the pot of trouble whenever they can. Her own case of neighborly surveillance defied that stereotype, since a lone man spread the blinds in the house next door every time she came home from a date. He very obviously, too, shut the blinds when she entered her house. God knows the latest employment figures in the US don't begin to assess the need for worthwhile jobs in the United States of America.
by Meg Sonata
When I was a teenager living in Cassadaga, NY, a tiny village in Western New York State, I experienced the same oversight described in Der Spiegel today. The title of their lead article shows the same editorial restraint which characterizes this detailed expose. It might have been sensationally labeled "Paranoia and Xenophobia in America." Instead, it quietly introduces "Woman at the Window: Judging Edward Snowden from Next Door."
The woman of the title is Joyce Kinsey, whose occupation appears to be unemployed hairdresser in Der Spiegel's expose, but should be recorded as "spying on her neighbors." With a clear sense of entitlement to know her neighbors' every move and intention, Mrs. Kinsey innocently lays out for the author, Alexander Osang, a recipe for fascism which will leave Germans screaming after their WWII experience with neighbors reporting suspicious activity to Hitler's faithful followers, especially his storm troopers with the death's head on their helmets, the dreaded SS.
Osang doesn't need to state that this woman doesn't watch the History Channel or read Der Spiegel. There,
regular features appear addressing Germans' prolonged attempt to come to terms with loyal citizens sending
their fellow human beings straight to the gas chambers and mass murder pits. Her world view derives strictly
from the American mass media, along with the proclamations and suspicions of her relatives, according to her own statements in Osang's numerous direct quotations.
The more one reads of Osang's litany of Kinsey's complaints against Snowden, the more horrific her isolation becomes. She is propelled into the spotlight only due to a whistle-blower's determination to examine US surveillance practices. Thus, she unconsciously reveals the ignorance of a popular base supporting spying on everyone and his mother worldwide, without a single consideration for the consequences of mindless nosiness. Nathaniel Hawthorne had Kinsey's number in The Scarlet Letter, but how many Americans have read that expose recently, too?
This writer has read that masterpiece, as well as Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and Shakespeare's Macbeth, where ancient women stir the pot of trouble whenever they can. Her own case of neighborly surveillance defied that stereotype, since a lone man spread the blinds in the house next door every time she came home from a date. He very obviously, too, shut the blinds when she entered her house. God knows the latest employment figures in the US don't begin to assess the need for worthwhile jobs in the United States of America.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
DC Drama: Have We Seen This Plot Before?
If
the US budget fiasco were a TV crime show, what would happen? Law and
Order, NCIS, and the Mentalist line up as the likeliest suspects.
First, Law and Order would make a lot of noise about "compassion
for victims." NCIS would feature a diverse cast racing against
the clock to snag the bad guy. The Mentalist, of course, would find
some poor schlep to hypnotize.
In
every case, though, tension must ratchet up until the very last
minute—to keep the audience from switching the channel. A ratings
war is always waiting in the wings to undermine popular shows'
standing. The stars always are negotiating their—not our—job
contracts. The writers have a lot on their minds, too, so an old plot
revamped is cheaper than a new one.
How
many times do we have to watch this drama before we say: Enough
already! Give DC its own TV show, and let America get on with
producing something besides a plot so hackneyed that H. L. Mencken
would say again:
"The
whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed --
and hence clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an
endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
For
more scandalous thoughts from H. L. Mencken, please see:
http://whale.to/a/mencken.html
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Maybe DC Watches Too Much TV?
Drama Queens dominate the budget
scandal in Washington, DC. Just as a solution from the House emerges,
the Senate has to shoot it down. Does anyone remember how the US got
into the budget mess? Weren't those famous last words concerning the
Affordable Care Act "Just pass it. You can read it later"?
Now, any high school graduate knows
very well the cardinal rule before signing any document: "Read
it first. Ask questions NOW, not later. Be sure you understand every
single word before adding your signature." May we assume that
every member of the Obama administration and Congress, too, had those
words poured into them long before they attended law school?
May we assume that they also reviewed
this rule like the bible in the law schools they attended? How is it
then these legal geniuses disobeyed this rule from the get-go with
the Affordable Care Act? Do these lawyers now need their own lawyers
to explain how to protect themselves, as well as their clients, the
American people, from charges of legal malpractice?
But, if they had obeyed this cardinal
rule, what opportunities they would have missed! The leaders of both
chambers would have had no reason to pontificate before the country.
They would not have scored acting points with Hollywood for
demonstrating outrage, worry, bafflement, loyalty, and every other
emotion meant to charge the country's batteries for the 2014 and 2016
elections.
And Obama, the star of Hollywood's
parties, would not have been able to demonstrate his highly mobile
face, grimacing with indignation, raising his eyes in hope, and
channeling the fury he hopes to whoop-up in his lobby groups. The
solution for Number 1 and all his kin is to be sent to their rooms
with no TV until they stop acting like spoiled TV stars and begin
performing their duties.
Maybe with no TV on their schedules,
they will have time to read legislation before they pass it?
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