the struggle for lucidity

http://librivox.org free podcasts of books in public domain.
http://www.halfbakery.com
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/27565 Joke's on us greenies.

Hey! I still remember my password!

Turns out Google has been around longer than we think. Recently, archivists have discovered an early Google prototype from 1960





Makes me realise how much library work has changed too.

Looks like I'm violent and lustful. (as well as kinda treacherous)

And I thought I wouldn't hurt a fly
Actually when I was ten I used to pull one wing, and all the legs off flies, watch them spin around on the lino like wayward propellors. The test knew!

And even though I'm a "buddhist", I scored very low on heresy. In fact I only just missed out on purgatory. Interesting. Maybe I'm just hedging my bets, like Pascal.

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Seventh Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Library assistants get a raw deal. A patron wants an article from a journal. Publishers like to give journals catchy one-word titles like "discourse" however, is this Discourse, the journal of educational theory, or marxist feminism? No, it is "Discourse: journal for theoretical studies in media and culture" published by Wayne State University.

http://www.ulrichsweb.com/ulrichsweb/Search/fullCitation.asp?navPage=1&tab=1&serial_uid=185539&issn=07301081

The horror.

Note to publishers. Don't waste our time. Check that you''re giving your journals a unique name, you unoriginal morons!

Ahem......

"Installing Replacement Windows: No Pane, No Gain

No matter the season, a window allows you to experience all the wonders of the outside from the inside behind panes of glass to be opened at your whim."

from

http://www.sleekhome.com/articles/v/1212/

found while researching for a short story. I hope you can experience all the wonders of the outside from the inside

What have I been thinking about

In the old days of the music industry, singles were the buisiness - Elvis singles, Bill Hayley singles.
Then, round about Sergeant Pepper's and Pet Sounds and widespread stereo recording ( I think) albums became the main method that pop music was distributed by. Now, it's all mp3 playlists. At the desk I ask patrons (customers) what they are listening to, if they are wearing headphones. "A whole bunch of stuff" So it's the return of the single song as the main mode of pop music, the atom.

Note newly reduced work hours allow time for thought, reflection and posting - Hooray!

Current Mood: chipper

Ever wondered....

What those crystal rock deodorants are made from? ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alum
Domestic uses for lightsabers?.... http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/lightsaber5.htm

Just letting y'all know I'm still alive! Don't know why I don't post anymore. Try me again in a month?

Staring at a library book that had lain by my bed, unread, for weeks - now in the sorting circle among hundreds of books I barely know (if at all). I was struck by the strangeness of the situation. I KNEW this book somehow, even if I hadn't read more than a couple of pages. How can one know a book without reading it?

Perhaps by knowing those moments when one almost reads it. One begins to open the cover, and is distracted by a forgotten task or a phone call. Nonetheless, I know the feeling of INTENDING to read it, in a way one cannot intend to read any of these other books, that I hardly touched.

Of course, one also can roughly guage its nature by the specific ways an moments I intended NOT to read it. The depth of my antipathy is telling.

Ever wanted to click and drag old George W through a cruel and unusual landscape? here's your chance! (stolen from signature103)

And finally...


Your Soulmate is Lisa Simpson

Am I the only one who just wants to play
hopscotch and bake cookies and watch the
McLaughlin Group?


Which Citizen of Springfield Is Your Soulmate?
brought to you by Quizilla

Well..... sort of.

Try the test, it's easy.

Your Daddy Is George Clinton

What You Call Him: Pa Why You Love Him: He's the Mack Daddy

Yeah, it's true.

You Are 40% Weird

Normal enough to know that you're weird... But too damn weird to do anything about it!

I'm excited about reading Jared Diamond's new book. Until then. I will content myself with recounting the following conversation occurred in a library foyer. A friend said he 'wondered how long we have got". I had to ask "until what?"

It seems that many of my friends are entranced with the idea of a sudden crash. Do civilisations crash? maybe? but do species crash? They crash because of predation, definitely, and because of habitat destruction - We have few predators, who will probably exit the stage much before us. And habitat destruction? I have faith in our ability to adapt to changing conditions - this is how our species spread from the artic circle to tierra del fuego. All we need is for several of the macroscopic species including some producers (r-selected, like rats) to remain with us, and we will have an ecosystem. Not a terribly interesting one, but hey, it's better than annhiliation.

Being an employee around half my waking hours has seemed to affected me. I realised today that at work, one has two choices: one is to constantly reasses why one is typing strange symbols into a computer for a lot of the day, at regular intervals. The other is to accept this as just the way the world is. Surrender to a sort of work-logic. Of course I will email these people I don't know and, inform them about the status of their information.

Such a surrender undoubtedly has an interesting affect on the psyche outside of work. Surrendering to work-logic leaves one flighty and somewhat nochalant on one's time off. I don't give a fuck about much, in a way. Small things, the way my vogels toast with margarine tastes. That is important. The murambatvista? Only somewhat important.

I'm not complaining just noticing.

I have also just had a couple of thoughts about philosophy. Naess thinks that

'Descartes reduced the world to machines, but left a tiny retreat for God and Free will"

I'm not sure if modern physics does any less. Reduce the world to a field of complex systems, or vibrating super-strings, and you still have to carve a retreat in it for GOd and Free will. They don't come with the meal.

It's like a version of Hume's Fork - either the world is highly determined, and we can't change shit, or the world is higly indetermined - and we still are ruled by indeterminsim as much as we would be ruled if the world was totally mechanistic.

I wonder how much of this, these words, are themselves determined by my early teachers of philosophy, Cheyne, Musgrave, Mulgan, Dyke, Pigden???

Whatever the case... one of the interesting things about philosophy is that we don't have anywhere to rest, because we ask the sort of questions that tend turn debates into a sot of silence match. So I'm talking about my interests, or something, and someone says, well, where do you end and the world begins, anyway? There's no way I can, from my frame of reference, somehow reach out and console that mind with any kind of information.

And if we can turn to no corpus of knowledge, or accepted method when these questions come up, the only thing we can do is test them internally, to approach our ideas from as many angles of attack as we can. It is only with this rigour that we, as philosphers should be trusted with any sort of credibility about such important issues as the basis of morality (if there is one) The essence of the self, or the nature of reason. If we slacken off and succumb to a too easy conclusion, without considering counter-arguments carefully, we have comitted as great an intellectual sin as a scientist who fudges his data or a theorist who passes off another's idea as her own.

"If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research" - Einstein

I've been thinking about market value and market failure and market market market market.
It lead me to the question: 'what goods are capable of having market value?' I reckon there are several qualities. For a good to have market value it must be:

a) either quantifiable or transferable from individual to individual. internal states - contentment, happiness, joy, hope, cannot be either, and so cannot be directly exchanged on the market.

b) actually able to be property. The fact that many goods cannot be subject to private property leads to the 'tragedies of the commons' so familiar to modern environmentalists - The ozone never had, and will probably never have, market value. The reason it is no longer being depleted is, basically authoritarian intervention. I doubt anyone would deny this is a bad thing.

Can anyone add to this list? leave a comment.

(Real estate on the moon is apparently being sold, this may never have real value however: the claims probably will never be realised. When people buy it, they are either gambling on the fact that the moon wil become property (and those selling will somehow have a legitimate stake in it) or taking part in a joke or symbolic transaction - it is the transaction that has value, in this case, not the "goods" involved.

Afterthought: And what about services? Is the goods/services distinction even worthwile?

When we work, we enter into a contract to be sane. (well, relatively sane, I do work at a library) Paying attention to the slippery shadows of shame, guilt, elation, creativity and mysticism during work time can be problematic. Do you want a random thought with that? Most people don't. They want harmless people issuing their books. And our life would be strange if every service employee wanted to talk about life's intrinsic value (or the lack of it while issuing books).

There's another type of insanity. Once on desk the other day I was just, you know, processing issues as fast as I could. I handed the books to the patron, all done, and looked at him and said "hi". I didn't mean to, and it's when I ussually say "thanks" (subtext, get out of here) but it was sort of apt, because it was the first time I actually engaged with him as a person, not as a carrier of items to be checked out. If I was speaking Hindu or Hebrew I would have got away with it too. Shalom. Namaste.

I will vote today. Our little silent conspiracy...

So this is the life of a 9 to fiver... It's not bad this time round... one just has to prioritise, and this journal is low on the list at the moment. What's above it?

A new draft of 'gathering clouds'
Research into the nature of poverty and growth and the environment (as usual)
Spending time with old friends. aaahh... like an armchair worn to the body

Savouring spring! with magnolia blossoms and the celebration of birds.

I am an information bloodhound. I am highly sensitive to dodgy citations, mis-spelt or abbreviated journal titles or spurious accounts of incapacitated patrons that cannot come to closed reserve. There are rules to the flow of information.

I am working at a library now, enjoying it. today I had disscussions with someone on desk about the nature of economic growth, someone else about Elizabethan Tragedy (apparently the Alchemist, or the duchess of Malfi are great) and yet another on fractional reserve of banks. I think I'm in the right place.

A thought. Herman Daly suggests the way a steady state (non-growing) economy can aid Niger and Bolivia is through income redistribution and population control. A few social factors come into play here as well. Steady state will probably entail work-time reduction. With a better work/life balance, more time can be spent on charitable work, and democratic participation. If I'm working 50 hrs a week it is hard to contribute to Amnesty International in any other way then financially, and this is not as rewarding as the actual volunteer work. I heard also that the sectors that give most to charity are paid the least.

Reducing work time also makes people more self-sufficient. With a lower income and more time, people might return to cooking for themselves and have the personal energy to do with less. This means work-time-reduction makes people more willing to try volunteering for organisations such as VSA , focusing on skills transfer to less developed countries. Why? more self-sufficiency leads to an adaptable response in novel societies. To top it all off, reducing our living standards lowers the bar that countries such as China are perhaps misguidedly aiming for.

In other news... I am Edward Scissorhands, apparently. Let's hope I don't get driven out of town by an angry mob

You Are Edward From "Edward Scissorhands." You are very shy and often misunderstood. Innocent, sweet, and artistic, you like to pass your days by daydreaming and expressing yourself through the arts. You are a truly unique individual. Unfortunately, you are quite lonely, and few people truly understand you.

Take The Johnny Depp Quiz!

Current Mood: determined