The Friday saloon

• I keep eclectic company. Arizona's piano-playing, car-clipping-to-hide-canoodling, legal-troubled but ambitious Attorney General Tom Horne has put me on his list. So I get the "Cracking down on polygamist abuses in Colorado City is a Top Priority" email. How this helps him is a mystery to me. Gov. Howard Pyle, who didn't have Mr. Horn-e's, um, issues, ordered the Short Creek Raid in 1953, and it helped cost him the election. I keep thinking about all the children in poorly funded school districts who are stuck for life because of the malpractice of this gentleman and his successors as Superintendent of Public Instruction. But in the post-St. Janet Arizona, they just get promoted.

• Then there's Sal DiCiccio, who represents the largely Anglo and affluent District 6 in Phoenix City Council. He's a Facebook friend. Why this developer, right-wing "friend of the taxpayer" wants to get Homey's screeds is a bit of a mystery. I wish it were like old Arizona, where people of different ideas could be real friends and even compromise for the common good. I'm not sure this is possible with today's GOP, although I do respect Mesa Mayor Scott Smith, with whom I am on cordial terms. Back to Sal. I read a story about how "the 11th-floor at Phoenix City Hall has become a metaphorical revolving door as of late, with numerous City Council aides and staffers announcing their departures." Missing was the why of the "Ws" that old journalists once prized. One must read these stories like a Kremlinologist back in the Cold War. Among the changes, DiCiccio "hired Lisa Gray, an activist and wife of Rep. Rick Gray, R-Sun City, somewhat recently to be his council aide/scheduler." Am I the only one who would like to know what kind of activist this person was, and are Phoenix tax dollars going to pay for an employee who lives in Sun City? I'm sure it's all innocent. Better call Sal, to paraphrase Breaking Bad.

• Speaking of calling, City Hall is replacing human telephone switchboard operators with an automated system on Oct. 1. It will save — wow! — $250,000 by putting the switchboard operators out of work. There's the usual blah-blah-blah about "the way people communicate with the city has changed." But this is just one more way we perpetuate both unemployment and the endless time suck of being stuck in these "please listen to the entire recording because our options have changed" circles of hell. Jim Kunstler had a great rant about this last year.

The saloon is yours. What's going on that isn't being reported?

Comments

[Paul Benjamin]

I got the Tom Horne mail too. On one of my lesser email accounts but this is a new phenomenon. WTF?

[cal Lash]

I remember when the Conservatives hung the last Tom Horne after he did their killing for them. He was about to become an embarrassment.

Kid Curry

[cal Lash]

I meant Tom Horn not Horne.

[Petro]

One must read these stories like a Kremlinologist back in the Cold War.

A simile as entertaining as it is descriptive. :)

[Petro]

I'm liking this - the science of physics is contemplating the Eternal Present:

A Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics

The money quote:

...thinking in terms of space-time was not the right way of going about this.

...

In a sense, we would see that change arises from the structure of the object. But it’s not from the object changing. The object is basically timeless.

[cal Lash]

Thanks Petro, an interesting read. I sent it off to my grandson for interpretation.

Per Petro "A simile as entertaining as it is descriptive. At 73 defecating is as sex.

Jon, Mesa mayor Scott Smith is probably the best hope for the LDS ran world since the Udalls. Plus Mesa has the brilliant Frank Milstead as a Police Chief. His dad was a great human. He saved my life with entry into physical fitness and he taught me racquet ball strategy as did his friend Sam Lewis. Gain the mid court position and defend at all costs.

As soon as Sal gets the new freeway going he will make a move for a bigger legislative seat (thus the Sun City vote).

[cal Lash]

Petro, I know U had to get a job, but do U have time to do a new Deconstructing the Manifest" the last one was great.

[Petro]

Petro, I know U had to get a job, but do U have time to do a new Deconstructing the Manifest"...

*hangs head in shame*

At 73 defecating is as sex.

A simile as revolting as it is descriptive. :)

[cal Lash]

Hey David U understand this simile thing.
Well Hal it's a human thing, like as, is not alien.

Prometheus from Pandora's box.

[cal Lash]

C, there are PI’s out there starving to death, yet I can’t seem to get away from it. Another case rolled into tonite. I got nothing on these other PI’s, there younger and smarter.

I went to the pool for my work out. There was a 65 year old retired meth freak going on 85 and her dog Princess at the pool. Looked a lot like Hugo Chavez. Screwed up my work out.

I made a mistake tonite and turned on the TV. For the third time the "Last Picture Show" was on. I watched the last hour, again. I own the DVD and have not watched it. . I feel like the hawk at the end of "The Peregrine".
I sense the presence of the world but do not care. I search for sleep.

[Disco Mama]

These comments are like a spring of eternal youth making feel young again :)

[morecleanair]

New/old topic: Yarnell fire investigation. Current reading indicates that we may never know the whole truth about errors in how the hotshots were deployed.

The Republic says, "The latest Serious Accident Investigation Guide, revised August, 2013, recommends that two reports be prepared. One, the Factual Report, would be made public, and the other, the Management Evaluation Report, would be kept confidential, intended for internal agency use only. The public report would not include any conclusions or recommendations. This would result in a public report that is much different from many of the reports we have seen in recent years."

This all smacks of how the tragedy will be swept under the rug . . . at lest until a good investigative reporter cracks the case.

[cal Lash]

AZREBEL, U get my Gmail re coffee?

[Rogue Columnist]

http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/09/19/mccain-first-country-last/

[Drifter]

Rogue, Great article link on mad bomber McCain 's rant in Pravda. It appears his rant is directed to American yokels doped under the illusion of American exceptionalism rather than persuading the Russian public on the Syrian crisis.

[cal Lash]

From a friend
"in the end mccain is the guy i remember from my days with him in the summer of 2002, in the end doomed by his short attention span. and now by his fear of being a nobody. he is like a pop personality craving a headline."

And: For your Sunday enjoyment. "listening to duke ellington and louis armstrong, the one album they made together. clearly the two key vocalists who forged the modern style of singing in the twentieth century were armstrong and bing crosby--all the sinatras and billie holidays are their descendents. both potheads together back in the day.
i read once that the first time rudy vallee heard crosby in the late 20s he told his band they all had 18 months at the most. he was right.
armstrong was imply a fucking genius.
the first 12 seconds of this recording by armstrong in 1928 changed music forever:"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W232OsTAMo8
Have a good day as Summer tries to end.

[headless]

Time is not an illusion. It is a relationship between objects -- objects that change with its passage. The eternal present doesn't tell us anything.

"This is not here." John Lennon -- who is no longer here and is once more asleep in the rock of ages from whence all the future comes.

[cal Lash]

Headless did U mean this?
https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20130917-a-jewel-at-the-heart-of-quantum-physics/
or what?

[Emil Pulsifer]

Note: a brief additional reply has been added to the previous thread ("Exceptionalism").

[Petro]

Time is not an illusion. It is a relationship between objects...

I suppose it all hangs on what we mean by "illusion." Some equivalence it with "not real," and I'd say this is an error. We are surrounded by experiential phenomenon that, after further inquiry, turn out to be not what it intuitively seems (some human created - see David Copperfield.) While your comment is poetically "correct," physicists are curious animals and are trying to ken the underlying structure that brings us the experience of "time," which gets very weird at quantum scales, and under the relativistic pressures of motion.

There is also the problem of infinite regression when one is trying to wrap one's head around "beginnings" and "ends," on a cosmic scale. The "jewel" is an interesting model that offers a way out of this conundrum.

We all have to be leery of confirmation bias, however, and as one who is suspicious of "beginnings" and "ends," and is puzzled by the one-way arrow of time, I'm aware that this model is philosophically satisfying to me.

[cal Lash]

I C

[headless]

Lash and Petro -- I'm Just repeating what a history professor at ASU (circa 1970) stated in a class on 'The History of Thought' -- or some such thing. I am not particularly adept at the intricacies, or, as the new theory you guys mentioned holds forth, the lack of intricacy in the space/time continuum.

My question, though, is this: Why, in physics, does it always seem that the 'everything you know is wrong' model always seems to be the order of the day? For instance, if I diligently apply this new knowledge, how will it help me make a better omelet?

What's the payoff?

Here's a conundrum: You cannot describe an 'eternal present' because eternal is a term that presupposes a reference to time.

[headless]

Petro -- "We all have to be leery of confirmation bias, however, and as one who is suspicious of "beginnings" and "ends," and is puzzled by the one-way arrow of time, I'm aware that this model is philosophically satisfying to me."

The same prof that I mentioned before made an arcane reference to the nature of time by introducing his idea by way of sating that light particles appear as waves at some time and as particles at other times -- the idea being that time, also, could be simultaneously a straight arrow and a circle.

The oft repeated saw that those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it, points out in its underlying structure the truth of this.

The exact events will not be replicated, but a similar mistake will lead us down a similar path.

[cal Lash]

The payoff is the hope to shake hands with the "eternal"

[AzRebel R. Perez]

In college, I had recently breezed through Logic 101 and had just entered my first day in Philosophy 101. The professor entered the class room and sat on his desk. He asked the class, "what am I doing?" We answered, "sitting on your desk". He asked, "how can you prove to me that I'm sitting on this desk?"

I got up, walked out of the class and went to play pool at the student union. Three and a half months later I showed up to take the final exam, (blue book essays), got a B and moved on with my life.

I have a feeling many of you on this blog were the students who stayed and attended all the philosophy classes while I was playing pool.

I imagine the professor is dead by now. I imagine he is asking himself, "Am I really in this casket?"

[Emil Pulsifer]

An important aspect of the Syrian situation remains to be discussed. Here's a reply copied over from the "Exceptionalism" thread.

"Muhammed" wrote:

"Emil Pulsifer you write a mean paragraph about the Middle East. Now if you had some substantial on the ground experience in the Middle East, Arabic language skills and experience with a variety of Muslims throughout the Islamic World you might actually know something. But as an academic exercise you probably do well at ASU."

Thanks for the compliment. The qualifications you recommend would be prerequisite to a general survey of Muslim cultures in the Middle East; less so for an examination of the situational logic of U.S. intervention in Syria as judged from an American perspective. I do agree that an understanding of Syrian culture -- religious and social attitudes, political economy and history, and demographics -- is essential in determining just how reasonable a rebel-led government would be; and U.S. support for the rebels depends heavily on such a determination.

The concern that an Al Qaida related faction might hijack the machinery of government in Syria after the victory of a rebel coalition is valid, because even if those extremists are a minority they are a ruthless, well-organized, highly motivated minority, and such groups have been known to take power away from weak coalition governments (e.g., in Bolshevik Russia and in post-Shah revolutionary Iran).

However, the situation requires a concrete analysis specific to Syria, not vague argument by analogy. The Bolsheviks were able to keep power in the face of strong White resistance only because they were able to mobilize a peasant army (the majority masses) by supporting the peasants' dream of land seizure.

The Iranian situation is somewhat different in that there were large numbers of pre-existing religious radicals who formed the basis for the seizure of power via the Revolutionary Guard (including the large auxilliary corps known as the Basij), which still forms the basis of government control of the population.

The Shah's police and military could not be counted on for support and had to be purged; the Revolutionary Guard was in essence a radical militia that took over police and paramilitary functions as well as a political/secret police that organized a block-watch system of informants to oversee the general population and permit early intervention against counterrevolutionary or simply politically deviant individuals and groups, so that they could be arrested and broken up before they could effectively organize. (In some cases it may not have been as important to arrest those actively hostile to the regime as it was to deter the general population by means of highly public examples.) This plus control of the mass media and educational system consolidated the radicals' control of society at a national level.

The question then arises, to what extent would the situation in Syria allow a ruthless, well organized and motivated minority to take power away from a victorious rebel coalition government, not only in isolated towns and areas but nationally? Could a fundamentalist government bribe the general population with promises of economic improvements via seizures of land or other property? Does Syria possess a ready-made sizeable population of fundamentalists ripe for recruitment into a paramilitary/police/informant network that would allow the radicals not merely to seize formal political control from a coalition government but to consolidate societal control on a national level?

If "Muhammed" possesses such knowledge he could at least offer one opinion by sharing it; this, I'm sure, would be far more interesting than uninformed speculations about my personal background.

Contrary to Cal Lash's approving declaration, my writing on the Syrian conflict is no more or less emotional than usual. I am trying to clarify reasoning about an important issue that could have lasting consequences for American foreign policy. Once the movers and shakers reach consensus, the media agitprop to build support for their decision will follow in the usual fashion.

Syrian moderates seeking U.S. intervention or support on their behalf should understand that a propaganda war to win the hearts and minds of the American public, its intellectuals, and its national political leaders, is at least as important as the war on the battlefields of Syria. Expatriates in particular could profitably use their spare time and funds by organizing free informational presentations on university campuses; by getting opinion columns published in newspapers aimed at national intelligentsia (e.g., New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and L.A. Times); and by lobbying efforts aimed at educating key members of Congress (particularly the chairmen of relevant committees) and administration officials.

[Emil Pulsifer]

P.S. If the Assad regime (with or without Assad himself) survives, then the issue of U.S. support for the rebels becomes less pressing to U.S. political leaders. However, if the current Syrian government is doomed to a slow death, as appears to be the case, then U.S. officials had better make damned sure that the coalition government to emerge includes a sufficiently strong moderate faction as to deter a second coup by radical fundamentalists. The longer the war continues, the more traumatized and fractionated the population will be; and the larger the pool of victims of war whose radicalizing experiences make them more easily recruited by fundamentalists.

[headless]

Lash -- Should I say: "How de do!' when this happens?

[headless]

Perez -- Being a slacker is a condition to which I am not unfamiliar. Obviously, the movement of the q-ball was enough to set the tides and times in a direction that was beneficial to your end game.

Only a B? For shame!

[headless]

Emil -- Food for thought. It'll take me a while to digest it.