The Queen of England may be the oldest surviving member of
the House of Windsor, but she’s still basically a figurehead with power
residing in the House of Commons and Lords and with the Prime Minister who's currently Theresa May. But another dynasty is reigning in North Korea started by
Kim Il Sung, carried on by his son Kim Jong-Il and recently handed over to his
grandson Kim Jong-un. The Korean royal family are not like those in England,
Spain or say Denmark. They are where the power resides and they rule with
ruthless authority. The government of North Korea is definitely a family affair (minus member Kim Jong-nam who was recently assassinated in Malaysia) and now we have another dynasty emerging on the world stage and that’s the
Trump family led by Donald, with a good deal of responsibility taken over by his sons Eric and Donald Jr, his daughter Ivanka and his son-in-law Jared
Kushner who has emerged as an influential White House advisor. Trump has
supposedly recused himself from his business interests which will be run by his
children, but these self-same family members regularly attend important
decision making meetings in the Oval Office and serious questions of ethical
lapses are already arising within the first weeks of the new administration.
Blood is thicker than water goes the old saw and Dynasty was the name of a
television series. However, the current configuration of family members in the Trump
dynasty may lay the foundations for America's first real dynasty, Will the House of Trump perpetuate itself like its predecessor in North Korea and go on ruling for generations to come?
Tuesday, February 28, 2017
Monday, February 27, 2017
The Internet of Everything and Buddha Mind
photo: I, Tevaprapas |
Modern man lives in a multi-tasking paradise whose existence is
fortified by the presence of ever more advanced electronic equipment that
seems to have a mind of its own. Your average android will talk back to you
with its Siri component while also demonstrating its talents for voice
recognition like a precocious adolescent. The internet of everything is the
term that’s applied to the interconnected world that awaits your delectation.
Of course, there’s always pushback by those who fear that the objects of man’s
creation will begin to take the wheel. Driverless cars are not even a novelty
anymore. But those who navigate
the Henry Hudson Parkway in Manhattan have had a rude awakening. There are no
more toll booths and everything is automated which means that the humans
manning toll booths who barely noticed anything but the money being proffered
have been replaced by high speed sensors which detect not only E-Z passes but
everything else about an automobile, including things like unpaid tickets. Patrol cars
manned by State Troopers, who formerly never ventured into Manhattan, now are
stationed near the site of former toll booths. Big Brother indeed, but that’s no longer the
end of the story. Our cars have themselves become living sources of information
and the dream of freedom and independence on the open road will even be further
lost when vehicles become like planes whose automated arrivals and
departures are all run by way of computer, leaving little room for human choice
or error. Ironically the hegemony of the data byte will eventually end up with human
consciousness occupying the lowest rung of the food chain. So many things will
be going on of their own accord that the result will be a cybernetic volitional
state that will be as successful in defeating human ego as a Buddha.
Friday, February 24, 2017
What Do Cars and People Have in Common?
What kind of person is the equivalent of a Cadillac Escalade? |
Thursday, February 23, 2017
The Final Solution: The History of the World Part III, The End
Do you remember the threats following the release of The Interview, the comic film about Kim
Jong-un and how theater chains quickly took the film out of circulation?
Remember how Kazakhstan threatened Sacha Baron Cohen with a legal suit over Borat until they realized the film was helping their tourist industry? Been there done that might have
been the response say if you were a poet and novelist like Boris Pasternak who
was trying to write about what was going on during the time of Stalin. But what
happened to The Interview, in particular, seemed
outlandish in America where the First Amendment is cherished. How could
North Korea be determining what could or could not be shown in our theater
chains? But imagine what will happen if and when Donald Trump becomes the subject of such a spoof. Trump
has neither been happy with his treatment by the “dishonest press,” nor
specifically by SNL, which has created its own Trump doppleganger in the form
of Alec Baldwin, whose hairdo actually brings back the transformation Tony Perkins created in
Psycho. But what will transpire when
liberal Hollywood takes aim at the president on a mass scale with a blockbuster
project. Meryl Streep went after him at the Golden Globes. But let’s imagine
what will happen when Hollywood’s finest, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Billy
Crystal, Steve Martin, Chris Rock, Dan Aykroyd all get together to take on
Steven Bannon, Rience Priebus, Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway? Imagine A History of the World Part III: The End. When
The Interview came out Kim Jong-un,
whose title is the Supreme Leader, suddenly became the world’s foremost film
critic. Instead of Siskel &Ebert, look forward to seeing a show on PBS called Kim & Don which evaluates films and makes sure the ones they don't like stay out of theaters.
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Quantum Idealists
One marvels at the following letter to The New York Review of Books, from one Clinton C. James of
Sylvania, Georgia in response to a piece by the N.Y.U. Law School professor and
philosopher Thomas Nagel. The letter from James and Nagel’s response appear
under the title, “Quantum Idealism?” in the 1/19/17 issue of the journal. James writes, “Thomas Nagel suggests, perhaps inadvertently, in his
review of Anthony Gottlieb’s The Dream of
Enlightenment (NYR, September 29,
2016) that modern physics, specifically quantum mechanics, can only be
interpreted as a theory of materialistic Hobbesian naturalism. Certainly
professor Nagel is aware that the ontological status of quantum mechanics, the
supposed theory of physical reality, is far from settled among physicists.” You might want to have your dictionary at hand, but you don’t have to understand
anything about physics or philosophy to realize the brilliance of the
formulation. The “key words” here are “materialism” and “ontology.” Materialism
of course refers to what one can see and feel, the meat and potatoes of life.
When you think about Newton’s formula for gravity and the anecdote of the
apple, you’re thinking about a scientific theory based on the observation of
physical reality. But matters in the quantum world of tiny particles are not
always so visible and also do not participate in such easy to parse
conceptions. For instance the notion an electron can be at two locations simultaneously is counterintuitive. Here quantum matters verge on the
ontological, to the extent that they question the nature of being. Is this what
Mr. James is getting at? Maybe not.
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