NSA

The Telegraph-- NSA 'tracked 60 million phone calls in Spain in a month'

Adding to Edward Snowden's intelligence reports, El Mundo published an article about widespread telephone surveillance in Spain. Data seems cloudy at this point, published from sources in question, but America's NSA is receiving a lot of accusations.

The Huffington Post-- NSA Phone Records Lawsuit Filed By Parents Of Killed Navy SEAL

Rand Paul is trying to take a lawsuit agains privacy infringements to the Supreme Court, and "get 10 million Americans saying we don’t want our phone records looked at, [so that] maybe someone will wake up and something will change in Washington."

The National Review-- NSA Privacy Breaches: The Bad and the Good

Apparently our new surveillance skills come with a potential technological security against accidental and intentional illegal disclosure of information. But the NSA is still covering up. It's hard to know the intentions, especially when the important legal infringements are buried under infringements based on "typos". Still, there is "the bad and the good", certainly.

Annually, the College Board renews its threats on cancelling exams. Students must suffer the fear that their scores may be cancelled because of suspicious activity. There have been a lot of news stories about AP cheating scandals, or surrogate test-taking. But what about those who did not cheat and have to suffer along with those who did?

Aspiring lawyers at the University of Tasmania suffered that penalty this year. In these few efforts to stop the advance of cheating, we often delay a majority of honest people. This is another side to the cheating problem. Not only does its ubiquity cause our leaders to be dishonest, it also discourages the honest aspirations of many.

I would say that any meddling might worsen the problem, that allowing both the cheaters and the hard-workers to prosper would allow things to balance out a bit, but that is an extreme and a too hopeful view. I don't actually think that the re-take exams that students must sometimes take discourages our ambitious youths so completely. It is a rare enough thing, and the true leaders would certainly persevere. Additionally, if the cheaters prosper in school, what will stop them from continuing to prosper through the same methods as leaders?

Why Should We Complain?

I believe the unwillingness to dispel our dissatisfaction comes not only from a fear of authority, but from an unwillingness to disturb ourselves. Certainly, if one were sitting and sweating in a room, and all he had to do was rise and turn down the heater, even if the sole entity in the room, he may not take it upon himself to move. It isn't just fear that arrests us, but a heightened laziness. There have been times, for instance, in which I was too warm by a bit and had complete control over my predicament-- all I had to do was take off a sweatshirt-- but some mysterious unwillingness to move implored me to exchange the annoyance of an hour for of a moment's inconvenience. Similarly, if I needed to hydrate or relieve myself, I may hold off until I finish this chapter or this episode or whatever, rather than do so immediately. To do so would be an inconvenient exertion the lack of which brings about a perturbation I would rather suffer.

Along with the laziness is an element of apathy. Perhaps the specific annoyance isn't a big deal, so you don't deal with it. If we were to comb ourselves for every minor dissatisfaction, we would be relentlessly adjusting our corporeal position, or constantly itching our shins, or undergoing whatever other satisfactions. Such a procedure would be more annoying than any cottonmouth.

So, we put off or ignore things that don't matter much. It's a from of apathy, but not a necessarily bad one. I'm sure a lot of Buckley's buddies in the movie theatre either didn't care or didn't think it mattered much that the focus was a little bit off. Buckley doesn't have the only sound attitude concerning the "Why Don't We Complain?" idea. It isn't just about hoping someone else will do the job. I mean, what about Buckley's newspaper-reading seatmate, who did not seem at all disturbed with the temperature, but rather was annoyed by Buckley's "sibilant intrusion". Perhaps most of our apathy goes too far, but it remains as a deterrent to our complaints.

Prompt Frustration

I've written one of my essay prompts for the UC system, but the other is still pending... instead of writing a real response for the second essay, this is the only thing I've come up with so far, and I'd be an idiot to send it in.

Describe the world you come from — for example, your family, community or school — and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations.

Aren't sweaty essays just awful? 

This topic is incredibly stupid. You couldn't sound worse when asking about our surroundings and backgrounds than calling it "the world [we] come from". Aren't we all from the same world? You make it sound like we are all floating around on our own planets, watching each other apathetically across the expanding void. 

And why would you ask about our "dreams and aspirations"? You're just bound to receive all kinds of sappy and affected essays from kids who really don't know what their plans are but feel they need to say they have them. Honestly, don't the admissions readers suffer enough? Are you trying to heighten suicide rates this quarter (or semester, as the case may be)? I don't think you want to know about the kid who wants to "heighten his already acute sense of interpersonal skills in order to reform ineffective world systems" or the psychology major who's "just so ready to go to the school and learn and help people!" or the idiot who tries to analyze the prompt and write something clever, ultimately off topic, and dangerous enough to piss a lot of people off. 

After all, the UC system is a big deal. If you have that much power, who wants to be told that their essay prompts suck? Who would even send an essay like that? They'd be screaming, "don't accept me to any of your schools!" The officers would be annoyed and say, "this tells us nothing about his background and is completely off topic". But seriously, personal statement prompts are the worst. They're always doomed too fail. Goofy prompts like "tell us about the relationship between you and your arch-nemesis" beget goofy essays. And if you want some on-track, good essays (along with a dumpster-load of terrible ones); you write a prompt like the one I'm not following. And-- well, I've never seen a good personal statement prompt before, but I'm guessing if one was written, the universe would explode and be replaced with something more complex.

I suppose, no matter the prompt, no one can really reveal themselves completely through an essay. So, from a certain perspective, it doesn't matter what prompt is written. The reciprocation will be flawed and often terrible, regardless. It is the applicant's job to make do, defy probability and write something good, instead of wasting everyone's time and disregarding his duty.

Deep Throat?

Yes, mistrust is a "protective mechanism". I like this description-- it connotes the sort of automatic response that mistrust is. It is mechanized, automatic. And although it protects us and can help us, like all machines, it will malfunction.
Too much mistrust eats away at us, makes our cogs rust and corrode, and ends up hurting us more than it would have helped. We can get caught, and feel the infinite pain from a disappointed brother or mother; or we can strain under the heaviness of mistrust, the inability to relax and just trust.
But mistrust isn't wholly bad. There is an accepted amount of cynicism (we know from our own actions that human beings cannot be completely trusted at all times). There are reasons to mistrust-- it is that protective mechanism, an assurance against harm.
But can we trust ourselves even? If we trust no one else, don't we fail as well? Trust is something that we dispense carefully and sparingly. We need to find more occasion to trust in the things that immediately require it-- relationships, the workplace, the school system--, and to change those institutions which we cannot trust (government).
However, I don't think we will ever reach the wanted level of trust. Humans cannot all collectively decide to trust in themselves with such a predisposition to mistrust. It is instead an individual decision, made with individual discretion, to trust.




There is a certain attraction to those characters who trust no one. Whether it is the lone ranger with a hood over his oily hair, sitting alone, in the corner of a bar; or the government agent who works in the x-files department; we enjoy these characters...
But they each have those they trusted: Mulder has Scully, and Strider has Gandalf.

"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour."

"An often trivial, diplomatic or well-intentioned untruth."-- definition of a white lie

Not all lies must be bad. Consider the interrogated patriot or the polite man. The measure of a bad lie is by how much harm is done by its deception. In distorting another's reality, do we eventually hurt them or ourselves? Does all our good intent culminate into something terrible? Examine for example someone who lies and says their check is in the mail. Might they, by withholding the check, contributed to some larger bureaucratic mess? And won't the postmark prove that they have only delayed an inevitable late fee? The positive intent doesn't matter if the effect is still destructive. If we cultivate discord unintentionally, we are still the cultivator. It grows into a disease. The chaotic yield would be far more relevant than the untraceable white lies which fertilized the field; no one would look to stop the virus but would cure the symptoms instead.

But this might stray into the realm of karma or the butterfly effect. It seems ridiculous to think that white lies might eventually confuse our lives significantly. But too many small distortions will eventually warp a thing out of shape. We need to give reality occasional relief so it can be itself, or we would be mislead into oblivion. We bend truth for ourselves as well. Lies are the immediate relief from reality, which must be often maintained by truth. Too many lies, and everything disintegrates. 

"Faith, here's an equivocator that could swear in both the scales against either scale, who committed treason enough for God's sake yet could not equivocate to heaven."-- a Porter

Doublespeak and oath-breaking are the types of lies which seem most harmful and unjustifiable. They immediately occur to mind as a direct offense against the neighbor.

I'm unsure if we should measure a lie's poison by its immediate effects. I don't know if I should always trust a white lie's purity, especially if I don't know what exactly a black lie is. I would say we should avoid lying altogether, but this would be impossible and tedious. We cannot rid ourselves of the lie as long as everything else is so bad.

This is a 1950's ad. It is a rare case of conscious opposition to cooking stereotypes. Here, however, it is not switching the roles, saying men can cook and women can't. It is saying women should cook but this one can't. Although the man seems to be comforting the woman, she is portrayed as overly emotional and he as condescending. It's a joke, but it purports the worthlessness of this woman. She didn't burn the beer, because it was the only thing she didn't cook. The intent is primarily to stick the brand, Schlitz, in the consumers mind; it seems not to be marketed to a specific gender (perhaps it was intended to be for women). Though it seems at first a light-hearted twist on gender roles, the tone toward women is destructive.

We are unsure of the man's intentions. Is his action sarcasm, or is he graciously turning the situation with humor? Either way, his comment takes away her power.

Hell!

"Hell" is a widespread concept, a word in ridiculous usage. That "ridiculous usage" refers to both the amount and the strange conceptual usages: "hot as hell", "cold as hell", "hella chill", "hella anything". It's one of those almost-anything kind of words, like many of our dirtiest expletives, an exclamation overused and become commonplace as a word of emphasis. All such words (shocking or routine, depending on the company) must have come from a background of serious oaths, or they would not be used in the manner they are today.

And it isn't just in America that this development occurred, I'm sure. In just about any religion, there is a concept of afterlife (Buddhism is some kind of exception, but there were plenty of nearby religions to fill the culture's empty shoes), and an idea of a penal and painful destination was part of this concept. I don't think its sole American practice to use this foundation of terror in forceful language. However, it does seem weird to us to hear a threat of, let's say, "an endless cycle of reincarnation", or perhaps, "dying without a weapon in one's hand". It would be strange for us to here shouts like, "go down to the deepest grave!" or "may Hades take you". We can only understand the intended intensity in our own culture. "Go to hell!" has plenty of force to it, although it has come to be used in a wide array of occasions, tones, and meanings.

Over time, some of this widespread usage must have corrupted the original image of Hell and the authorial intent of its mentioners. Today, we are confronted by the incredible influences of folk theology: the red faced devil with goat horns and a pitchfork, the Dantean physicality, the idea of Satan's lordship over the sinister realm, or almost any other detail someone could think of. From my admittedly deficient study of the Bible, Hell isn't detailed. There are the Hebrew manuscripts, which refer to "the grave"-- a darkness and absence, as well as the Greek portions-- the "Hades" which smells like sulfur, has that signature blazing torment, and is equally devoid of the deity.

I'm not sure what is meant by the "smells like sulfur" bit. Sulfur, I've heard, smells like a match being lit; it has a musty burning smell. It does not refer to hydrogen sulfide, which would have made "my fresh hell" smell like rotten eggs, nor does it refer to the sulfur compound mustard gas, used in World War Two to incapacitate soldiers. I think the "sulfur" that was meant was just supposed to refer to volcanoes or brimstone or just heat in general ("it smells like a place that burns"), but I can't stop thinking that those other two associations do help describe hell. It is a rotten place of incapacitation. It is an eternality cut off from a rejected presence, a place where we can no longer function, a place rotting from lack of life.

Playing Niccolò Apathiavelli

Of course we're not born without empathy, but it makes sense that empathy levels would go up and down. However, I believe there are innate appearances of empathy. Empathy levels have been linked to neurological disorders like autism and Asperger syndrome in ideas like the empathizing-systematizing theory. Strangely, there is an Empathy Quotient.

Of course, if empathy levels are a major factor in determining the presence of autism, then less extreme levels must be effecting (or not affecting) us constantly. Empathy is the basis of how humans interact. But while empathy levels increase in those with autism, the levels in our youth are collectively going down.

This seems to me like something out of science fiction: “Empathy Levels”. How can we really measure empathy? These levels can only be derived when we analyze how people interact; they cannot be measured by a meter stick. Empathy is the mysterious force behind human socialization. This mysterious aspect makes empathy a disconcerting subject to think about. I feel it’s similar to human contemplation of infinity. Empathy seems an impossible thing to understand completely, yet we are seeing signs of its presence or deficiency. We see its effects, but we cannot master it. This is a frightening thing.

Without empathy, we can no longer be a friendly society. We will harm others because we cannot imagine ourselves as someone else. Ironically, our direct self-focus would eventually harm ourselves.

There is a trend in not caring today, and perhaps emulation of popular figures and principles (e.g., Sherlock, the Honey Badger echoes) has attributed directly to this attitude, but no one is heartless, no matter how much they act. It's true that the actions matter most, not small inner contradictions, but let us not say that people lack empathy. A person may not act on his empathy, or he may pretend he has no feelings, but he is just acting, or being inactive.

I don't believe that collective humanity can be destructively low in empathy. At some point apathetic youths begin to understand other people's feelings, or they don't function well as adults. There is honorable sacrifice to outweigh the selfishness, but we could use some more.

Ascher and Kozol

The essays we read last night addressed awareness of homelessness (Ascher's) or illiteracy (Kozol's): two similar human conditions in that they both deprive their sufferers of common advantages (or, as some might emphasize, necessities). In the process we learned about two distinct types of examples. Ascher, with her law-trained brevity, used her own experiences as examples, applying images in her memory to her consideration of compassion. Kozol used less personal examples (although he includes individual accounts from illiterates, these are not his accounts) to illustrate this humanity of illiteracy. Here follow some of his examples: he opens with a caution label on a can of Drano, mentions menu-reading in multiple instances, and expresses the illiterate's struggle as a parent. For the most part, Kozol expresses generalities but often uses present-tense and specifics, making these examples animate narratives which seem to come directly from distressed individuals.

Although Ascher's essay is more immediate, both have the effect of striking the reader's emotions with detail. Often these details seem irrelevant to the purpose, yet their presence intensifies perception and makes everything in the essay more palpable. Buttery croissants, the moody French woman, the stained blanket; handsome cowboys lighting cigarettes, "a child choking"-- these are some of the specific images which we remember best. These are examples, memorized unconsciously, which link our minds to less internalized understandings.

Kozol is not as subjective, but "Illiterate Society" affects us to compassion with its examples. Ascher does not do so to the same degree. Instead, we are made to ultimately examine our feelings of compassion rather than be captivated by them. Already burdened with the oddities of metacognition, Ascher goes on to contrast the life of the homeless with a Greek play: both teach us compassion if we will watch, yet the homeless "players" can't go home. The play never ends, because these people of misfortune perpetually exist. But Ascher expresses fear of being unaware of this play or the "rags with voices" and the "inarticulate rage". Defending ourselves from these images may be natural, but it is a dangerous irresponsibility. Kozol carries what Ascher hints at into direct cognizance: we need to use compassion to correct the problem.

Most striking is Kozol's dream, expressing the otherworldly feeling of being surrounded by a strange language. Indeed, these illiterates and homeless live in an alien land. It is our duty to help them to a comfortable home.

Before the Shipwreck

The day was blue when he walked out. The shroud of fog had dissipated from the day before, lifted to reveal that there was space outside of those fringes from before. It was clear now; it lifted the mind back to normality. The sun shone, but it was early and the air had a chill to it which woke the mind and freed the limbs. It was quiet; because of the lack of life on the island there were no singing birds. The other people were inside the tower, perhaps still sleeping, perhaps preparing breakfast or cleaning fireplace, making beds. There was no sound here, but the waves crashed and carried up their sound to him through air without resistance. He walked.

There was something which led him down to the water, but there was such a desultory air to the morning that he didn't inspect the source of the feeling. He just walked, devoid of thought, through the wild life, through the barren brown, over the rock slopes. He looked out to sea.

There was a wooden ship, anchored out a distance from the stone plateau which was the endpoint of the rope bridge which led up to the cliffs. It didn't surprise him; he walked to the bridge. It was a caravel. When he came to the plateau, a rowboat came out to him. There within, was a man in a red cloak who gestured for the young lord to join him. He stepped over the side of the boat and within. He didn't slip, even though the rock and boat were coated in water.

They went back to the caravel and he met them all.

Lunacy

In this there is an essence, a vein of thought which when mined yields the mystical complexities to examination. It comes upon us desultorily without cause, and when we are conscious of it, it falls from us. These are the lost things, the images which mean more than experience, the passing dreams of a less physical mind. These are the expansions of black, the starry infinite sky, the dreary sands overlooked by cloaked men. They are thoughts tinged with red and black, but they are felt with innocent and calm cognizance. 

Here's the place before the start from the dream, the cloudy rooftop before the flailing fall. It has no tangibility, yet all of us experience its beauty and easy existence. It is a place where we throw our brains about and contemplate infinity. Yet it is a place we cannot search for; we fall in and fall without time. Here, there is truth in a place of false happenings. This is The Farlight Lone.

This has as much to do with anything as the universe is geocentric.

Yesterday, I was at the fishmonger reading words, words, words, on the caking shores of lunacy. This is Ptolomy's dome and earth is a star. I feel like an instrument of fate.

This Blog is an Essay

I'm going to try this.

Our world is ambiguous, paradoxical, and large. It is difficult to represent the world because of this and because we are part of the world. It's not possible for us to step away from our world, look it over slowly and methodically, nod our heads and say, "OK. Got it."

It's impossible for us to represent anything correctly or completely.

Ironically, we naturally want to organize things and use methods. But we probably can't do so well, and we certainly can't do so perfectly. And it causes vertigo when we think that our world is represented through us incompletely and experienced by us incompletely and it changes incessantly as time flings it along while we try to change with it and that although each of us has personal subjectivities that come to us through unreliable eyes, we are each part of the same general place and represent the same general thing; we look at the world through a rippling reflective pool while others look at the world in us through an old, foggy mirror; and through all this ridiculous lack of wholeness we putter along and try to say one thing or the other is completely certain or that something is simple and another is simply unexplainable; and most of the time we forget all this and forget to think. Vaguely, I want to laugh.

But I won't say it's all pointless, because then there would be nothing to do, and life would be boring or depressing. When we do think and consciously try to represent something, we are doing something admirable. When we put it in writing, we are creating an essay.

"Essay" has received a bad connotation by now, probably due to all the time writing has had to develop. Naturally, some things have been tainted over time. Essays have been assigned and not been completed as true assays, people have been inauthentic and mindless and passionless, and "essay" has become synonymous with torture in the western world.

"Blog" takes away these rough associations and allows us to start over and look at short writing attempts from a different perspective. It is an instant publication with rapid feedback, and it allows us to more easily remain collaborative when we think; it is the new-essay. That said, I could also call it newfangled. I'm scared of the big Internet with its readers that trespass onto my page and read my words and can immediately criticize them negatively. It's hard to think... umm... "successfully" when typing on a screen than it is when writing words with pen and paper. There's an urge to be lacking in discretion. There are so many blogs by so many people. Average blogs lack worth. Who would seriously look at a blog and an ancient manuscript with equal consideration? In short, blogging is overwhelming.

I think that if we can do a bit of writing and a bit of blogging, and represent our thoughts authentically, then we can avoid some of our problems and begin to come closer to a better representation of the world.

But articulation is so hard...

 

Annotation/Me/Composition/Thanks

This is an annotation. It is not an edit. I am aware that art often changes: buildings and paintings fade, performance becomes a mist in memory, history smudges the drawings and creations of mankind. Even text, in its ancient persistence, is erased by decomposition, re-transcription, and fires; art is erased and created by the same species which documents and destroys.

But the Internet seems to stare this rule in the face and oppose it. Information is ensured here; art is maintained; the Internet protects our creations from fading. The Internet leaves a trail which can be hard to completely reverse. In its most basic sense, this trail is a curse. People are embarrassed, hurt and destroyed by this trail because it documents failure and shame.

However, the trail is something we can look to in awe. It is a documentation of documentation, showing the art which inspires art. The Internet represents every user's own growth. It swells, lives, and connects; it is a fun-house mirror in which we can view ourselves, or step to the side and view others. It is the overlord of genres, the nebulous of infinite space where all forms of art can be admired through its haze.

I intend to use this nouveau paper trail to its fullest abilities and I declare henceforth that all entries, once posted under full faculty and operation of my mind and body, and devoid of silly or amateur grammatical mistakes, will remain. I, the learning dilettante, am bound to make such mistakes, but they will be limited and inconsequential. The substance of the post, the essence of art and its progress, will always remain. Humans change and their views and preferences change. People often cringe when viewing the traces of previous instances. But I will not hide the evidence of development, no matter the cringing involved. The me of the future will deal with such changes in prose palinodes. Recantation does not imply desecration. I will not deface art, as did the maddened men in history. That is why this is not an edit. It is an annotation.


As I recreate my birth into the new world of the web, I must speak again about myself. I was born into the first new world to the faces of an unusual amount of family: mother, father, great-grandmother and father, grandmother and father, and brother (all of which were surprisingly satisfied with being present for my birth at some ridiculous hour of the night). This congregation perhaps foreshadows my family's involvement in my life.

In the first month of the springtime of my life, I was athletic and never still. Then I donned glasses, and became academic. Since then, both modes of life I have enthusiastically pursued, but have been more unsuccessful in the pursuit of athleticism due to a lack of good coordination. Otherwise, the pursuits of the mind are fairly well fulfilled.

But I always seek to learn more and discover truth, unsatisfied.


Let me end by saying that "composition" is the best way to broadly term "creation", and is perhaps my favorite term. Besides its emphasis on the parts involved in the making of things, it connotes musical images. I think maybe I can understand the old and beautiful things, like a piece of classical music or an ancient Anglo-Saxon text. I feel that, in taking a composition class, I can investigate the beginnings of creation, the particles of art, and the transmutation of ideas and forms.


Thank you to whoever reads this for suffering through the incomplete and inadequate description of myself, who must remain anonymous, yet be compelling. Thank you to the creators who and creations which have recently affected and influenced me (here, here, here, here, here, and here).

In Mike Milosh's words, "...time...time is...time is tight".

O, Brave New World

Hello Web World,
In the spirit of remaining somewhat anonymous, I must reveal myself without divulging such compromising secrets as my attributed geography, name, educational status, vocational involvement, physical form and certain other oddities or identifications. As such, I am faced with problems of self-description and definition; I am forced to show you some general and limited revelation about myself, without wishing to do so, and I am expected to make it entertaining and sort of brief. I'm probably not off to a good start.
World! Behold!
In my youth, life was not so exciting. I collected turtle figurines for some time, played with cats, read Magic Tree House, etc. It still isn't so exciting: the town is safe, the drama is scarce, and I involve myself largely in academia or sport. I feel secluded, detached from the main world, a world which I can glimpse through my world or see in the foggy mirror of the Internet. The world I experience is subjective and distorted; it is not so real as the world through all perspectives, or the right perspective. I struggle to see what is truth, utilizing a limited form and an impaired mind.
Lest I be berated for being pedantic or off-thesis, let me again point to myself and stop talking about purity of perspective. Writing is hard (especially writing regarding myself), but words are fun.
I went to Disneyland and dressed up as Mickey Mouse, trick-or-treating in the hotel there. This is one of my most vivid memories from youth; I don't remember much. Look here and here and you may know me better, you may know the modern me.
I'm ending this, even if it's not representative or complete.
-The Slightly Anonymous Me