The R Word

Jaroslav Hašek (1883-1923)

  The few may disagree with my contented roll into the phrase "impossible It" as a substitute for the little diddums idea of a ruling singularity where everything makes sense under the watchful eye of a creator. This adoption of an  all knowing unknown is an aspect of mental surrender to supply and demand curves as substitutes for peer review is so heinous in my view it genuinely deserves an "R" word. 

 Here, I think it worth exploring a sociolinguistic phenomenon known as a 'euphemism treadmill.'  To do that I'll paraphrase the Special Education Guide: 

  The word - Retard - originates with the Latin retardare, meaning to slow down or hinder, as in "Retardare that Train!" In the late 19th and mid-20th centuries, bushy tailed psychologists introduced the concept of mental retardation as a neutral, clinical diagnostic term. It was actually created to replace older and perfectly respectable terms like idiot, moron, and imbecile. These words had originally been serious medical classifications but thanks to our beloved euphemism treadmill the word "retard" quickly warped into a childish, both puerile and cretinous, taunt. Over the decades, the word "retard" suffered the exact same fate reserved for idiot, moron and imbecile as cheerfully the unwashed adopted this refreshing medical term "retard" as a newly rehearsed, well designed and legitimized explanation of stupid or foolish or useless jackass.

 The Good Soldier Švejk, a character from Jaroslav Hašek's collection of satirical stories, had been categorized by the Austro-Hungarian  Empire's conscription service as a Congenital Idiot. Švejk, especially when he ran foul of a non-commissioned office or an officer took every opportunity to introduce himself as a Congenital Idiot. Coming as it did from high authority, Švejk, surrounded as he was by the incomprehensible world of a private soldier in Hašek's First World War, had no issue with the category Congenital Idiot. It was a title that suited him, he was proud of it, it was one of the few things that made sense to him.

 

 

  

Domestication, taint tanning and the so called "farmers."

Tick Trefoil

  Once upon a time, and this might be hard to believe, The  Impossible It, became math, adding, subtracting, the square on the hippopotamus cankle and on into a set of symbolic interactions which were the polar opposite to the symbolic interactions of language.

 The two faiths have clashed, number has retreated to the home of the white coats, and language has been dressed up, given a dead rat authenticity by Grammarians as theater went to die in what are loosely referred to as musicals, usually with dancing before dance became a glorified version of death by violence with plenty of blood as a simplistic visual alternative to the spilling of passion.

 Give me a surrey with a fringe on top just so long as the sheepdog dies in slow motion so we can all have a good cry  As for Civilization it all went wrong in the very late Stone Ages, early Bronze Ages when the materialists of agriculture successfully turned people, animals and plants into soulless objects.

  Go ahead, blame the boys, I will, thick as frogs on the new girl, it was their time to shine, as the ultimate chick magnet became twenty acres, a winter's worth of wheat, barley, maybe a goat to milk and a something dashing in metal that cut meat and killed other boys who tried to take your sourdough starter.

  For those interested this current homoerotic fashion for communal taint tanning found in the less attractive corners of what in the USA is still referred to as the GOP, may harken back to the Neolithic collapse of diversity in the human Y chromosome roughly six thousand years ago. 

  So what might the moral be?

  Don't blame the several million years of Paleolithic Nomadic Excellence for the decline of our species, blame the damage done to the sense of place granted us by the endless creaking of farmers.

  

Titans aren't that bright

Gravel Truck Stuck

  Martin Luther died in the February of 1546. He was 62 years old. In 16th Century Europe while the average age was something between 30 and 35 years old, if you made it through your childhood and teenage years you had a very good chance of reaching your 50's or 60's or even your 70's. Michelangelo was 88 when he died in the February of 1564. Back then, teens, tweens and kiddywinks dropped like flies.

  Probabilities comrade! The security of the average if you prefer. The impossibility of trusting a Black Swan to grace your kitchen floor, and yet we all wish, hope and indulge those sort of symbolic expressions that make money for casinos. 

  The understanding of miracles as real includes a faith in the idea that hope and wishing make things real. Thoughts and prayers, if you prefer. It runs the gauntlet that permits evil to be real, an existing something or other that allows for good to be real. 

  A dilemma for AI in a world that sacrifices so much and regularly to the improbable is for AI an existence solely within probabilities. Only an impossible it that knows all, can ever be correct.  

"Such is the pathway to the stars."

Newish Bovver Boots

  The written symbol 'career' means something like this : "A long term, rosy cheeked, professional journey through a succession of employment opportunities within a particular industry or field."

  Good luck with that Nancy because the symbol 'career' sounds like : "Make me safe, give me purpose, light my life and I'll role over play dead and do anything for you." As a result, over the generations, we people have tried to create a symbol for 'Help' which as a written form looks something like this : "Chapter One - Morality."

  These vague utterances are not blessed by the precision Russell yearned for in language, but close enough to the game theory our Patron Saint Wittgenstein proffered as his rule of thumb when examining how meaning is exchanged between hominid minds. I've always felt sorry for the innocent, open heartedness of Wittgenstein's lesson planning following his decision, after the second world war, to return to teaching the Cambridge elite. Not only was Wittgenstein a Jew in England with a thick Austrian accent, he'd long ago surrendered his wealth to his search for truth and he'd once tried to explain to his super brilliant, fantastically intelligent, upper crusty next generation of leaders and oligarchs that if the lion could speak English they'd understand no better what the lion was saying.

 Our issue of course has far less to do with a purity of thought that dreams beautiful in its reach for a per ardua ad astra - sic itur ad astra, if you're Canadian - and much more to do with the ten to twenty five years of training a splendidly flexible hominid mind endures as it fits itself into this or that power structure that lies within a set of cultural beliefs that will always work best when totally unsupported by facts.

  Yes indeed - "Give me a red Corvette!"

  The "in the beginning" of faith has the charm of myth, only recently has it included the old testament certainties of "in the beginning was the Chicago School of Economics," what Paul Krugman has referred to as a product of the Dark Ages.

  So why not "Give me a Data Center" and let's open a new chapter in Hell.