Machete doesn't text. Machete improvises. And Machete fsckin' ROCKS.
Be warned, however, this is Tom-Savini-bloody. I didn't notice if ol' Tom was doing makeup, but he had a credited part as an actor. And it was that bloody. Whuff.
And, say what you will, Danny Trejo is nothing short of beauty.
Who am I doing this for? Since even with the best bells and whistles on the grooviest "blogware" my readership is in the low single-digits, I must be doing it for me. And stupid as it sounds, I like doing it in vim. I like the way it looks.
I'll be the first to admit, it's a purely idiosyncratic, purely irrational, purely aesthetic choice. But, especially in the context of my other domains, where I do have "proper" blogs, this project is increasingly about personal satisfaction. I still haven't found a sweet spot with any of this. I still worry about being honest and transparent but being professional and developing that terribly atrophied side of my persona. So there's conflict. Having carved out this odd place between private journalling and public writing I seem unable to completely divest of it. Perhaps that's a weakness in me. I can't say what it will cost me in the end. I've often thought I would do well to make the netlaw blog my first order of business each day, to set the day on the right tone. But I have been resisting that for some reason.
"Some reason"? Pressure. The netlaw blog calls for my best. I have not yet reached a point where I know how to be my best, first thing in the morning, every day. But having said so, I realize that is the only real task worth working on. Not that any of the squirrely Oblio's Cap stuff needs to go away, just that I need to keep building my capacity for proper, powerful, effective action that actually promotes my well being rather than simply dissipating my angst through cathartic self-exposure.
Some captures from my daytimer.
Undated:
Minimizing Cost
is not
Maximizing Gain
invertedMonday, May 10, 2010
Le ton beau, pg 71, p0, s1
"...rule bound..."Godel != "thought ! rule bound"
= "any explicated ruleset will be inadequate
= "map != territory"
= "sometimes handwaving is the only answer", i.e., extension v intension100406: Rapoport 2 person Game Theory, pg57, "dominant strategy"
PD ~ dominant?
where opponent has dominant can predict/rely per GT
"respect for an opponent's percipacity"If we analyze for Gme 5, looking first @ Castor w/ "biggest win criterion" (CaP1)
but
if look first at Pollux, loop!pg 62: Poker as "perfect info"
finite # of "shuffled starts, ea. w/ "odds".
Much as I love the last post, I'm tired of having that asshole staring at me whenever I open my browser (which, for some crazy reason, is set to my home page). So here's an old poem I was thinking about the other day, a real favorite. I should mention that it works better when read out loud (assuming you noticed the variations in the tags...)
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text
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<CONTEXT>
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text!
</CONTEXT></CONTEXT></CONTEXT>
</CONTEXT>
</CONTEXT>
</CONTEXT>
</CONTEXT>
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</CONTEXT>
<context>
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TEXT
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A sign by which we can know one another. I can barely decide who should get the link for this gem. Ultimately I went with a high google rank and seemingly robust conversational community.
An acquaintance writes,
Which is the "I" that you think of when you talk about "yourself?"
My answer?
Pointless symbol manipulation at its worst. A finger flipping off a finger flipping off the moon. I am not. Neither are you. That our language is bereft of mechanisms for discussing the phenomena in question without recourse to this fallacious "I" or "You" is a flaw of the language, not a proof of the thing named.
But even if I'm right, I'm not making any friends this way.
Lots and lots of backup and file cleaning work, been putting it all off for months. Thought you should know.
It's important to remind myself, one of the reasons things were better those last couple of weeks before the test is I didn't try to pretend I had much of a social life. It's easy to get caught up in this or that on line diversion and treat it as if it were a real, human connection, but often as not it's just one step removed from the worst kind of masturbatory jourinaling (sic). Better to revel in my near social isolation and get a little work done. If not paid work then practice work or study or preparation or just doing things around the house.
How is it things get to seem so important?
An otherwise well-respected member of an online group to which I belong writes, in context of her opposition to the "Mosque Near Ground Zero", describes Islam as
...the religion that obliterated the WTC...
This, of course, is beyond puerile. Islam didn't take down the buildings. If we're going to hold an entire religion to blame for the bad acts of individuals claiming to adhere to that religion, then one must equally credit the good acts of individuals similarly claiming to adhere to that religion, and also to apply the same standards to all other faiths (including atheism and agnosticism).
The best retort I've heard on the "Mosque at Ground Zero" nonsense is that if we don't hold to our principles of religious freedom then "the terrorists win again".
Gabriela is on round one of a six disc binge of the released-to-dvd Harry Potter films. I am reveling in "Don't" by the Jester. (Yes, that's a sly allusion to Don McClean.)
Of course, even better than emailing me your response would be to email me with the address of your blog post responding to this little thing of mine. What? You've never heard of "blogger"? Heck, I even know folks who get their blogs posted with their friends. You know whom you are...
Mondays are so hard. I miss having a job most on Mondays. Without a day job it's just hard to get back in the groove on Monday mornings. Whatever I was doing Friday seems so remote; last week is ancient history. Like a painter intimidated by a blank canvass, a writer sweating blood at the sight of a blank page, Monday mornings have become a recurring nightmare for me.
No, it's not just automation and anonymous posters. There's also plain-old vandalism and lack of community and inability of the non-community to sanction disruptive behavior. I established that pretty clearly back during the height of my time on Balkinization. Because a vandal could always abandon a thread when backed into a corner, because there was always a new post to crap all over, there was really no way to dissuade vandals from having their way in the comments fields, short of actually banning them. But bloggers are generally loathe to ban even the most egregious of vandals, and the more high-profile the blogger the greater this reluctance. Absent, then, any reasonable means of influencing the behavior of the vandals attracted to the free and responsibility-free publishing vehicle of a blog comment system, the value of those comment systems become compromised beyond repair.
Even in a robust online community with dedicated moderators and where participants build relationships with each other over time, the problem of keeping the unruly in line is a hard one. But it's the complete lack of ability to reign in commenters at blogs that makes opening up a comments area a losing game.
The problem is with automated and or anonymous posting; that's what kills comments systems or trackbacks or other efforts to connect bloggers with readers. The second it becomes automated some jerk will figure out a way to spam it; same for anonymous. So however much we want blogging to be the best of both a community of users like a discussion board or mailing list and a privately owned outpost on the web, the reality is the opportunity costs of comments systems generally outweigh the benefits.
It sucks, truly. I was thinking how one could create a kind of opt in tracking system, where bloggers subscribed to a mutual notice board, so instead of leaving comments at each others blogs, they would ping the notice board. I don't know.
In the end it all probably comes down to wanting to have our cake and eat it too. Things that worked in the golden age before spammers and vandals messed things up simply can't be reverted to a pre-discovery condition. Entropy increases. And all to often we forget that what we like best about something new might just be that it hasn't yet been invaded by the barbarian hordes.
Chris posted this, and I agree, it's hella cool...but it's not really quite accurate, at least not any time you feel a pain. ;)
Watching Harold and Maude. First time since I saw it at the Art Theater in Long Beach, probably 1980. Gabby is singing along with Cat Stevens as Ruth Gordon is dying in the hospital.
Do we ever know the people we love?
I have not actually got to that reading yet. I guess I'm letting other things get in the way. But I'm enjoying a couple of good conversations about it elsewhere.
If you choose to respond to this in private email, then you've chosen to take the conversation to a private venue. If you reply on your blog, then you've made the conversation public. If you do both, then both.
Tomorrow's reading assignment: The 136 page decision repealing Prop. 8. Tonight, just smiling and enjoying the warm feeling.
Finally looking at Two Puzzles of Transformative Use In the Context of Fair Use Exceptions to Copyright. The carry-away for me is I need to read Perfect 10 v Google.
New post up at the IP blog: Wired Infers From FOIA Request. Drop on by.
My good friend and number one tech maven, Chris Lott, laments the closure of comments on one of his favorite blogs.
I'm sad to see two of the most vital and interesting conversation spaces in the world of poetry disappear. I'm sad to see two of the most influential poetry sites become one-way publications, faithfully recapitulating the insufficient model of traditional print venues. I'm sad and frustrated at the abrupt loss of connection to so many other people willing to talk about poetry...Sure, I can post responses here, but who will find them?
I share this frustration. I went through similar pangs when my favorite political blog, Balkinization severely curtailed comments. But it overstates the case to say that this is a return to the one-way model of print. As the signal:noise in various comment channels drops, it only makes sense to close those channels. True, fewer people will see this response to Chris than if I posted it at his blog. But the people who do see it are more likely to be interested parties than spammers and comment-vandals. The instant gratification, the ego stimulation, of being able to comment directly, publish freely using someone else's resources, these things have arguably lead to a severe decline in the quality of discourse.
In the end there's probably a bit of elitism at work. Disabling comments disables participation by those to lazy or too busy to run their own site and manually connect by sending email notices to the folks mentioned in their posts. However, that's really not much of a barrier. Anyone can get a free blog site, so there's really no reason in the world for me to publish someone else's thoughts using my resources. Want to comment? Send me an email or speak your mind in your own space.
I did make some friends in the Balkinization comments community, way back when. I also wasted an unbelievable amount of time arguing with, or skipping over posts by, people with whom I really had no reason to interact, save for the odd itch provided by the structure of the medium.
The real question, to my mind, is, "How will people find me?" I've certainly asked myself that since unplugging wordpress here at Oblio's Cap. I don't know that there is a good answer to the question, but what comes to mind is that the issue is no longer one of being found but of being found by the right people. I can go on facebook or twitter and gratuitously follow and friend everyone I see, making me visible to them. But that is not, in the end, conducive to anything like actual in depth conversation. It's pretty much the opposite.
So, as I say, I don't know that there is a good answer. But I do know that writing my comments at my own blog is much more like writing my comments in someone's comment stream than it is like writing a letter to the editor of the New Yorker and hoping it gets published.
Sleep schedule completely fubar. Actually, entire schedule completely fubar. In the wake of the pressure of prepping for the test, now suddenly bereft of that structure, I don't know if I'm coming or going. I'm up after about six hours of sleep, which is probably adequate, but even so, it will make for a long day, especially as I am booked solid starting at 8:30 this morning running until about 2 this afternoon.
If you haven't noticed, the time-stamps on these entries are EDT, which is to say, about three hours off of local time. So where, for example, this one says "05:36:12" that translates to about two-thirty a.m. local.
Hah. "You". I know who "you" is, at least one of you. "No RSS. No SEO." means even fewer visitors, fewer readers. There's no competing with the instant gratification of instant publishing like in a blog comment or, better still, on facebook. I suppose I could always log on there if I wanted to actually interact with people. But the truth is I am trying to curtail my gratuitous social networking. It doesn't bring out the best in me and there's almost always something better I should/could be doing with my time. This blog has really become an artifact of old habits that should probably be extinguished completely.
Was particularly frustrated yesterday, in that the five plus hours I spent doing research essentially came to naught save the advice that my client look to some other theory than the one she was having me research. I don't like having nothing but bad news to give people.
Talk about nursing a grudge. Well, maybe not nursing it. But I often describe my abortive pre-law experience at Cal. State Dominguez Hills as having failed on the strength of my effectively telling my adviser to piss up a rope after a) refusing to let me prep our team for a presentation, then b) when the team made a terrible performance saying I should have better prepped them.
But that's only part of the story, an opening salvo. What really ended my career at CSUDH was the Stanley Mosk Moot Court Competition.
It was clear I was the only person in the running with the kind of speaking background or analytic skills I brought to the event. No one else was even close. And after a semester of being assured attendance wasn't at issue because out-of-class work was being credited, I found out I was disqualified from the final competition because I had missed too many classes.
Why should this come to mind today? Read a case with Justice Mosk as the judge.
Sure, I should have taken it in stride. Sure, it's long since done. But it's an important factor in what otherwise turned out to be the first in a string of terrible decision in the mid-90s. I'm not sure what to make of it at the moment...
Got in a mile run, second day in a row. Sad that it should feel like such an accomplishment. But, there it is. I'm 30+ pounds over my running weight, haven't managed 7 miles in a single week in probably two years. So if I get a mile a day for seven days in a row, yeah, that'll be an accomplishment.
Also, did in fact change text to lime instead of green. Much better.
More research tomorrow, which rocks. Other work trickling in as well. Sending out resumes here and there, and need to get myself in to see some temp agencies this week as well. I've actually got a fairly full dance card for a few days, which is nice. It's good to be busy.
Pasadena library, doing legal research. It is COLD here, but I am dressed for the sunny day that exists outside. Brrr.
One thing about this style of blogging: It's not nearly as disruptive as other "social media" diversions.
Did not in fact change text. No matter.
Not sure why I feel the need to write at all, save that there seems still some part of my internal thought processing that relies on the keyboard, and the notion of being in this semi-public space (public because most anyone can see it but private because so very few do) does create a context that in turn influences what I write and how I write it.
So much throat clearing. So 2002.
Still trying to come to grips with a system for tracking time and thought, especially as I do more freelance work. I've created a small directory tree, I call it "locker" which I can rsync between machines and a usb drive, this has been pretty helpful with making me flexible in terms of keeping track of current, active projects and files. But my overall file system is a mess. I think keeping a "days" directory in "locker" is probably the best bet.
Why did I need to "say" that here? Why did I need to write it at all? Why am I soft in the middle...
I know it's quite contrarian of me to have gone with a simple html file for my blog, to have divested of the bells and whistles, rss, comments, etc. I'll gladly stipulate it represents some mental or emotional failing. I am not yet free of all such. Meanwhile, the vast majority of all such interaction has gone to facebook, so I don't know that it will make a tremendous difference. I do appreciate comments folks have made along the way in the past, and apologize for any inconvenience this causes.
Another part of the decision is that I need to make my netlaw page my first focus. This is for a couple of reasons. First, context. If my first electronic communication of the day is on that page, then I am more likely to summon something resembling maturity and professionalism for the day. I need to develop that site into a worthy and credible resource, as part of my long range career plans. I am hoping that will help shape and focus my otherwise uneven manner and mode of presentation into something less embarrassing for me and my friends.
I have said before that this project, Oblio's Cap, was in large part aimed at making sure I remembered who I am, that I've a messy past with skeletons galore, and to keep those bones a'bleachin' in the sun on the front porch rather than festering and molding in a closet somewhere in the middle of the house. I have begun to consider, however, that this metaphor can be taken too far, that one needn't always lead with one's left foot, that one needn't be forever held hostage to the worst days of one's life. So in a way the changes here represent an effort to find some balance on that score. I do in fact still need and want to keep a circuit open to the chap I was when I first reserved this domain. But I also need, very much, to move beyond him in many ways.
An email saying you dropped by would be a great kindness.
Changing text to bright green. Ain't life grand?
I like it better already. Probably convert semanticrestructuring.com to wordpress before long, and have already decided netlaw.robertlink.org is where I really should be putting my energy.