Self-reference, page 28: "He could go downstairs and look for one of the books he has read the first thiry pages of" (the reader might stop reading this book after 28 or 30 pages...)

Core of Islam, page 39:

"Did the Imam ever suggest," he asks, letting the chair's recoil lean him confidentially across the desk, "that a bright boy like you, in a diverse and tolerant society like this one, needs to confront a variety of viewpoints?"

"No," Ahmad says with surprising abruptness, his soft lips bunching in a point of defiance. "Shaikh Rashid did not suggest that, sir. He feels that such a relativistic approach trivializes religion, implying that it doesn't much matter. You believe this, I believe that, we all get along - that's the American way."

"Right. And he doesn't like the American way?"

"He hates it."

Jack Levy, still sitting forward, braces his elbows on his desktop and his chin thoughtfully on his intertwined fingers. "And you, Mr. Mulloy? You hate it?"

The boy shyly casts his eyes down again. "I of course do not hate all Americans. But the American way is the way of infidels. It is headed for a terrible doom."

He does not say, "America wants to take away my God."

How does tolerating a variety of different viewpoints take away Ahmad's God? He can still have his God, but he can't force it on others. That is not taking away his God, because he can practice his religion unmolested, which means he has no reason to be violent, since even his prophet says that the lesser jihad of violence should only be used when unbelievers are taking your homes.

Page 76:

This past week the imam showed a short temper with his pupil in a discussion of a verse from the third sura: "Let not the infidels deem that the length of days we give them is good for them! We only give them length of days that they may increase their sins! and a shameful chastisement shall be their lot." Ahmad dared ask his teacher if there wasn't something sadistic in the taunt, and in the many verses like it. He ventured, "Shouldn't God's purpose, as enunciated by the Prophet, be to convert the infidels? In any case, shouldn't He show them mercy, not gloat over their pain?"

The imam presented half a face, the lower half being hidden by a trimmed beard flecked with gray. His nose was thin and high-arched and the skin of his cheeks pale, but not pale as Anglo-Saxons or Irish were, freckled and quick to blush, like Ahmad's mother (a tendency the boy has regrettably inherited), but pale in a waxy, even, impervious Yemeni way. Within his beard, his violet lips twitched. He asked, "The cockroaches that slither out from the baseboard and from beneath the sink - do you pity them? The flies that buzz around the food on the table, walking on it with the dirty feet that have just danced on feces and carrion - do you pity them?"

Ahmad did, in truth, pity them, being fascinated by the vast insect population teeming at the feet of godlike men, but, knowing that any qualifications or signs of further argument would anger his teacher, responded, "No."

"No," Shaikh Rashid agreed with satisfaction, as a delicate hand tugged lightly at his beard. "You want to destroy them. They are vexing you with their uncleanness. They would take over your table, your kitchen; they will settle into the very food as it passes into your mouth if you do not destroy them. They have no feelings. They are manifestations of Satan, and God will destroy them without mercy on the day of final reckoning. God will rejoice at their suffering. Do thou likewise, Ahmad. To imagine that cockroaches deserve mercy is to place yourself above ar-Rahim, to presume to be more merciful than the Merciful."

It seemed to Ahmad that, as with the facts of Paradise, his teacher resorted to metaphor as a shield against reality. Joryleen, though an unbeliever, did have feelings; they were there in how she sang, and how the other unbelievers responded to the singing. But it was not Ahmad's role to argue; it was his to learn, to submit to his own place in Islam's vast structure, visible and invisible.

Contrast Jainism, which holds that everything has a soul that should not be interfered with on its path towards enlightenment.

Even by the words of Islamic scripture, man does not appear to be justified in foreshadowing the "chastisement" that God will perform. The Imam in saying Ahmad should not "presume to be more merciful", does not by that statement alone prove that he should kill the creatures. Isn't that God's job? Where does God say that a man should do the "chastisement"?

---

Page 108:

"[...] read for me, please, verse fourteen from the sixty-fourth sura, 'Mutual Deceit.'"

Ahmad fumblingly finds the page in his dog-eared copy of the Qur'an, and makes his way aloud through "ya ayyuha 'lladhina amanu inna min azwajikum wa awladikum 'aduw-wan lakum fa 'hdharuhum, wa in ta'fu wa tasfahu wa taghfiru fa-inna 'llaha ghafurun rahim."

"Good. I mean, good enough. We must work harder, of course, on your accent. Can you tell me, Ahmad, quickly, what it means?"

"Uh, it says that in your wives and children you have an enemy. Beware of them. But if you, uh, forgive and pardon and are lenient, God is forgiving and merciful."

"But your wives and children! What is 'enemy' about them? Why would they need forgiveness?"

"Well, maybe because they distract you from jihad, from the struggle to become holy and closer to God."

"Perfect! What a beautiful tutee you are, Ahmad! I could not have put it better myself. 'ta'fu wa tasfahu wa taghfiru' - 'afa' and 'safaha', abstain and turn away! Do without these women of non-Heavenly flesh, this earthy baggage, these unclean hostages to fortune! Travel light, straight into Paradise! [...]"

---

Page 142:

It was Islam, Shaikh Rashid had more than once explained, that had preserved the science and simple mechanisms of the Greeks when all Christian Europe had in its barbarism forgotten such things. In today's world, the heroes of Islamic resistance to the Great Satan were former doctors and engineers, adepts in the use of such machines as computers and airplanes and roadside bombs. Islam, unlike Christianity, has no fear of scientific truth. Allah had formed the physical world, and all its devices when put to holy use were holy.

Compare Adbullah in Stranger to History:

"[...] it is not so easy to say that technology is OK. [...] we have to discuss the camera itself. Good or bad? [...] 'It's something Western civilization made. We have to discuss that camera. What does it represent?"

Apparently original Islam had no problem with Western technology, and modern terrorists have no compunction about using Western technology to further their goals, but some Muslims, such as Adbullah, want to condemn at least some technology because it's from the West.

---

Page 148:

"I seek to walk the Straight Path," Ahmad admits. "In this country, it is not easy. There are too many paths, too much selling of many useless things. They brag of freedom, but freedom to no purpose becomes a kind of prison."

That is for each individual to decide!

---

Page 167:

His mother is, he sees now, looking back, a typical American, lacking strong convictions and the courage and comfort they bring. She is a victim of the American religion of freedom, freedom above all, though freedom to do what and to what purpose is left up in the air.

Yes, that is the point of freedom.

---

Page 168:

Ahmad sometimes has to suppress a suspicion that his teacher inhabits a semi-real world of pure words and most loves the Holy Qur'an for its language, a shell of violent shorthand whose content is its syllables, the ecstatic flow of "l"s and "a"s and guttural catches in the throat, savoring of the cries and the gallantry of mounted robed warriors under the cloudless sky of Arabia Deserta.

"semi-real world of pure words" - yeah, that's where I like to live too :) Not islamic words, but words nonetheless...

---

Pages 187-188:

"[...] George W. Bush is innocent, a simple reformed drunk from Texas who loves his nice wife and naughty daughters. Yet, out of all this innocence, somehow evil emerges. The Western powers steal our oil, they take our land--"

"They take our God," Ahmad says eagerly, interrupting his mentor.

Charlie stares for a second, then agrees slowly, as if this had not occurred to him. "Yes. I guess so. They take from Muslims their traditions and a sense of themselves, the pride in themselves that all men are entitled to."

This is not quite what Ahmad said, and sounds a bit false, a bit forced and far removed from the concrete living God who stands beside Ahmad as close as the sunshine warming the skin of his neck.

How does American society take away God from Muslims? Only if that God conflicts with the unalienable rights enshrined in our Declaration of Independence and the enumerated rights in the Constitution. The rights to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, free speech, etc. trump Islam; if Muslims cannot accept those rights in others, they are free to speak out. If they use violence, they should be imprisoned.

If Western powers take Muslims' land, that is one possibility where it is understandable if they fight. But it will be ultimately useless, because American freedom creates the technology to defeat them on the battlefield. It is much better for them to use nonviolent means of persuasion.

---

Pages 198-199:

"They believe," Charlie carefully restates, "in action. They believe that something can be done. That the Muslim peasant in Mindanao need not starve, that the Bangladeshi child need not drown, that the Egyptian villager need not go blind with schistosomiasis, that the Palestinians need not be strafed by Israeli helicopters, that the faithful need not eat the sand and camel dung of the world while the Great Satan grows fat on sugar and pork and underpriced petroleum. They believe that a billion followers of Islam need not have their eyes and ears and souls corrupted by the poisonous entertainments of Hollywood and a ruthless economic imperialism whose Christian-Jewish God is a decrepit idol, a mere mask concealing the despair of atheists."

Technology can solve the problem of starving Muslim (or any other kind of) peasants, by providing them with food from the vast surpluses produced. The Bangladeshi child can be rescued, the floods can be controlled, or the Bangladeshis relocated. The Egyptian villager can receive the best medical care we available, through telemedicine for example. The Palestinians, if they use nonviolent noncooperation, will defeat the Israelis as Gandhi defeated the British in India. We must create resources for everyone in the world, liberate ourselves from scarcity through aggressive investment and pursuit of advancement in knowledge and technology. Those who do not want to be subjected to poisonous entertainers can turn off the TV, use other technological filters to block them out. Economics can be revised so that governments create money and give it directly to people, freeing them from "economic imperialism".

---

Page 201:

"The lines of battle [are clear]. The armies of Satan versus those of God. As the Book affirms, 'Idolatry is worse than carnage.'"

Unalienable rights precede the Qur'an. And there are many interpretations of the Qur'an that allow it to exist peacefully within the US.

---

Page 224:

Listen: the deal is you can fuck me, but not grill me.

"grill" meaning to quiz, interrogate. Seems like anachronistic slang. The first thing I thought of when I saw "grill" was teeth...

---

Page 247:

This bone-white truck savors of such poverty, such pathetic attempts to keep up in America, to join the easy seventy-miles-per-hour mainstream. His mother's maroon Subaru, with its Bondo-patched fender and its red enamel abraded by years of acid New Jersey air, was another pathetic attempt.

There's another way of looking at this: you can drive a battered old car in America, without wanting to join the mainstream. You can be poor and drive on the same roads as the rich and say up yours! You are free in America to be unapologetically poor in the face of all the opulence, to be yourself, to be an individual, to reject the message of materialism preached in TV commercials. Why doesn't Ahmad consider this other point of view?

---

Page 249:

The other unidentified man adds, "Cairo, too." He smiles that engaging smile of square, spaced, tobacco-stained teeth and strikes his chest with his fist and tells Ahmad, "Egyptian."

"So was my father!" Ahmad exclaims, yet in exploration of the bond can only think to ask, "How do you like Mubarak?"

The smile fades. "Tool of America."

Prophetic?

---

Page 258:

"My trouble is," the Secretary blurts, helpless in turn, "I love this damn country so much I can't imagine why anybody would want to bring it down. What do these people have to offer instead? More Taliban - more oppression of women, more blowing up satues of Buddha. The mullahs in northern Nigeria are telling people not to let their children be given polio vaccine, and then the kids are brought in paralyzed to the health-aid clinic! They wait until they're totally paralyzed to bring them in, after they've gone all the way with the local mumbo-jumbo."

"They fear losing something, something precious to them," Hermione says, trembling on the edge of a new degree (the degrees are subtle, and are negotiated within the strict proprieties of a thoroughly Republican and Christian administration) of intimacy. "So precious they will sacrifice their own children to it. It happens in this country, too. The marginal sects, where some charismatic leader seals them off from common sense. The children die, and then the parents cry in court and are acquitted - they're children themselves. It's frightening, the power of abuse adults have over their children. It makes me glad, frankly, I never had any."

There's a lot in this passage dealing with the interpersonal relationship between the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and his aide, a lot of extraneous stuff indicating the intrusiveness of the human element in any governemntal activity; but the core issue I want to focus on is, "Why is there terrorism?" What is it terrorists fear losing? It seems they fear losing their ability to dominate others, for example (as talked about in the quoted passage) their children. Ideally, the unalienable rights to life and liberty should extend to children and they should be able to decide for themselves whether to get vaccines or not. If the terrorists can't accept those unalienable rights, if they want to alienate them, they are contrary to the principles enshrined in the Constitution, and should be prosecutable.

---

Page 273:

But God,speaking in His magnificent third-person plural, brushes their perplexity aside: "Will they not look up to the heavens above them, and consider how We have reared it and decked it forth, and that there are no flaws therein?"

Surely, Updike meant first-person, not third-person plural?

---

Page 286:

The jihad and the Revolution waged the same kind of war, Charlie explained - the desparate and vicious war of the underdog, the imperial overdog claiming fouls by the rules he has devised for his own benefit.

I empathize with this sentiment a lot.

He punches the radio off again. In this devilish society there is nothing fit for a man in his last hour to hear. Silence is better. Silence is God's music.

I would have tried to find some jazz...Ahmad is not interested much in music. Music represents another way out of the "devilishness" of western materialism that Ahmad ignores.

---

Pages 287-288:

It's Mr. Levy, wearing a brown suit coat that doesn't match his gray pants. He's dressed for school on this Monday but instead is standing outdoors a mile south of Central High.

The unexpected sight stymies Ahmad. He fights to clear his racing mind. Perhaps Mr. Levy has a message from Charlie, though he didn't think they knew each other; the guidance counselor had never liked his getting the CDL and driving a truck. Or an urgent message from his mother, who for a while this summer would mention Mr. Levy a little too often, in that tone of voice that meant she was embarrassing herself again. Ahmad will not stop, no more than he would for one of those writhing, importuning monsters, made from plastic tubes blowing air, that bewitch consumers into turning off a thoroughfare.

However, the light at the corner changes and the traffic slows and the truck has to halt. Mr. Levy, moving faster than Ahmad knew he could, dodges through the lanes of stopped traffic and reaches up and raps commandingly on the passenger's window. Confused, conditioned not to show a teacher disrespect, Ahmad reaches over and pushes the unlock button. Better have him inside next to him, the boy hastily reasons, than outside where he can raise an alarm.

This is where the book takes an unbelievable turn, for me. When he let Mr. Levy in, he basically decided not to go through with the bombing.

---

Page 291:

Ahmad is being tailgated by a midnight-blue Mercedes driven by an impatient man too young to have earned a Mercedes, unless it was in stock manipulation at the expense of the less fortunate. Such men live expensively in the so-called bedroom towns of New Jersey and jumped from the towers when God brought them down. Ahmad feels superior to this Mercedes driver, and indifferent to his tooting and swerving back and forth as he seeks to dramatize his wish that the white truck were moving less sedately in the middle lane.

I feel superior to such ppl too. But it was men, not God, who brought down the towers. In resorting to violence, the terrorists usurp the role of God, assume that they know his will. My way of fighting the stock manipulators is with words, and by example. I refuse to acknowledge their power :) I try to use words wherever I can, on the internet, wherever, to bring down their houses of cards and confront their overbearing egos with the erosive force of water :)

---

Page 294:

"Who says unbelief is innocent? Unbelievers say that. God says, in the Qur'an, "Be ruthless to unbelievers." Burn them, crush them, because they have forgotten God. They think to be themselves is sufficient. They love this present life more than the next."

You can be ruthless to unbelievers in nonviolent ways. If you are physically violent, you violate inalienable rights, and are therefore subject to prosecution.

---

Page 306:

In the fifty-sixth sura, the Prophet speaks of "the moment when the soul of a dying man shall come up into his throat." That moment is here. The journey, the "miraj," Buraq is ready, his shining white wings rustling, unfolding. Yet in the same sura, "The Event," God asks, "We created you: will you not credit us? Behold the semen you discharge: did you create it, or We?" God does not want to destroy: it was He who made the world.

[...]

This was the will of the Beneficent, the Merciful, ar-Rahman and ar_Rahim, the Living, the Patient, the Generous, the Perfect, the Light, the Guide. He does not want us to desecrate His creation by willing death. He wills life.

To fight terrorism most effectively, we need to study Islamic texts and use their words while engaging Muslims in debate.

---

What will happen to Ahmad after he turns himself in? I think this is another reason he would have gone through with it. Realistically, the authorities would not forgive him as Mr. Levy says. He would expect being sent to Gitmo or tortured or worse. The failure of Updike to mention these likely possibilities is second point where the book becomes unbelievable to me.

I have climbed up a rope ladder to a narrow peak over a hundred feet above railroad tracks. The ladder is suspended by a wire or wires from an unseen point above me. The ladder narrows at the top. The ladder twists in the breeze, and as I move around on it. My hands are at the top of the ladder; I now want to transfer myself to another ladder that reaches to the same upper point, but is rotated 90 degrees to my right (the two ladders are like two adjacent sides of a pyramid). The second ladder is narrower than the one I'm on, and widens as it descends but is significantly narrower at each point than the corresponding point on the first ladder. Both ladders are unstable and move around on their guide wires as I shift my feet or hands.

I am scared. I don't want to look down at the tracks below. I have a strong fear of falling. My heart is in my mouth. Tracie, who has already climbed the ladder I'm on, made the transition to the smaller side ladder, and made the descent flawlessly to the ground, encourages me. I want to remain frozen. This is too hard! I think. I start to move my right hand, unclasping the rope on the right side of the ladder I'm on, reaching for the other ladder. I'm not thinking which part of that ladder I should reach for, I just want to make contact with any rope on the other ladder - for a moment I'm flailing, my heart palpitates quickly, then I grab something. Now I must move my right leg. I pull my foot away from the rope rung it's in, the ladder twists in reaction, I carefully move my leg to the right and tentatively search for a rung to put it on; finally I find one. Now I have to move my left hand...

I make the transfer to the other ladder. Now I still must descend. This ladder is noticeably narrower and it moves around more as I shift my weight on it. There is a breeze which makes it flap back and forth. I don't want to look down to find the lower rungs because I'm afraid of heights. I move one foot, my right, down, searching for the next-lowest rung. I find it and place my foot on it as securely as I can. Now to move my right hand down ... For a brief instant I imagine what it would be like if I fell, then I put it out of my mind. I proceed down the ladder ... It's not that hard, I'm going to make it, I'm almost two-thirds of the way down ... then I wake up.

---

Tracie was a key figure in this dream. Before the ladders, she had been showing me an apartment, which at first she told me she was going to rent out for $750. It was a studio; it had a closet-like door to a bathroom that reminded me of a room in the house in Paris I spent part of my childhood in; I had stayed in that room in that house for a while. Then Tracie told me she would rent the room we were looking at to me if I wanted, for $500 or $400 or something. I was ecstatic. She told me a bus stopped right outside the door; it was the 240, the same one whose other terminus is outside my Mom's house.

Tracie showed me a shortcut to get across the railroad tracks, but it involved climbing the narrow rope ladders. She went ahead of me and climbed up, making the transfer to the narrower one at right angles to the first, and descending confidently, without fear or hesitation. Then it was my turn ...

---

"Day residue": I had seen a French guest on Colbert the night before, perhaps that was why I thought of the house in Paris. I'd been talking to my therapist about renting a room for $500.

"Unless you do your homework, you can't go out"

A guy in #philosophy wanted to interpret this as an equivalence relation, or bidirectional implication. I wanted to interpret it as simple implication. Then it struck me, the sentence could be part of two truth tables:

Let A = "do homework"
Let B = "go out"

A.........B.........->
---------------------------
T.........T.........T
T.........F.........F
F.........T.........T
F.........F.........T

not-A..not-B....->
------------------------------
T.........T.........T
T.........F.........F
F.........T.........T
F.........F.........T

The sentence "Unless you do your homework, you can't go out" could be either the last line in the first truth table, or the first line in the second truth table.

To determine which one it is, you can ask: If you do your homework and can't go out, then you're in the second truth table.
If you don't do your homework but can go out, then you're using the first truth table.

To make a bidirectional relation, you could change "can't go out" to "don't have the possibility of going out". Then both of the middle lines become false and the statement is only true if you do your homework and have the possibility of going out, or if you don't do your homework and don't have the possibility of going out.

I was reminded of this book by a story about toilets with microchips in them.

While looking up the book, I came across this excerpt, which describes memetics as sex with ideas:

We'll begin with words, words only. Imagine you're in a library walking through stacks of books. Let's say you're in the Library of Congress, walking in a pressure suit through the helium-filled chambers, between miles of shelves, just staring at the millions upon billions of publications, periodicals, books, cubes...every single one of those books begins, of course, with an act of sex. Are you offended by the old sexual words? Then use the euphemisms. Men and women, getting together - and exchanging ideas.

Sex is often confused with reproduction. But bacteria engage in sex for the sheer desperate necessary joy of it - sex is their visit to the community library, the communal cookbook. They wriggle themselves through seas of recipes, little circular bits of DNA called plasmids. When they absorb a plasmid they don't necessarily reproduce, buy they still swap genetic material, and that's what bacteriologists call sex. Unlike us, however, bacterial sex - this kind of swap - can even occur between totally different kinds, what we once regarded as different species. But there are no true species in bacteria. We know now that bacteria are not grouped into species, as such, but evanescent communities we call microgens or even, more currently, ecobacters.

The plasmids contain helpful hints on how to survive, how to make this or that new defense against an antibiotic, how to rise up as a community against tailored phages flooding in to eradicate.

In the very beginning, for bacteria, this was sex. This was how sex began, as a visit to the great extended library. I call this data sex. No bacterium can exist for long without touching base with its colleagues, its peers. So how do we differ from bacteria?

Not much. You come to this group, you exchange greetings, arrange meetings, sometimes you exchange recipes. Sometimes we - and here I don't mean the members of this club, necessarily - get together, conjugate, to exchange genetic material, either in a pleasant social jest or joust with biology, or sometimes in earnest, because it's really time to reproduce.

[...]

In the Library of Congress, every single book, every item, began with an act of reproductive sex, allowing the author to get born and eventually to write a book. That book now acts as a kind of plasmid, reaching into your mind to alter your memory, which is the con-template -- my word: the template, through cognition , of behavior. The medium of course is language. Sex is language, and language is sex, whatever form it takes. Changes in anatomy and behavior are the ultimate results -and sometimes, coincidentally, reproduction.

[...]

The shape of our society relies on spoken and written language, the language of signs, the next level of language above the molecular. Some insert another level between these two, that of instinctual behavior, but I believe that's really just another kind of language of signs.

Culture from very early times was as much a factor in human survival as biology, and today, culture has subsumed biology. The language of signs inherent in science and mathematics has co-opted the power of molecular language. We begin with molecules and molecular instructions, but now the instructions feed back upon themselves, and we govern the molecules.

Working on the Liar's paradox. I've done some work on it before. Reading Beyond AI, I decided to try it again with a slightly different approach: adding "modus ponens", so that I can say (to give a simple example): "if A is true, then B is true" and "A is true" and the program will automatically add "B is true" to its database of stored factoids.

What I want to do is tell my program:

A is "B is false"
B is "A is true"

then deduce from that that both A and B are both true and false.

Since the statements are self-referential, it is a real challenge to get my programs to deal with them without going into infinite loops.

The main problem I'm having right now is asking "is A true?" I can get the responses I want if I delineate "A" and "true", as in: 'is "A" "true"?'
But I can't yet get it to respond correctly when I drop the quotation marks...

My latest attempt (I'm getting tired, I'm going to leave it here and come back to it tomorrow, or sometime :):

---

C:\trane\liar>startliar

C:\trane\liar>cd logicagent

C:\trane\liar\logicagent>start ruby logicbotd.rb

C:\trane\liar\logicagent>cd ..

C:\trane\liar>cd ifagent

C:\trane\liar\ifagent>start ruby ifbotd.rb

C:\trane\liar\ifagent>cd ..

C:\trane\liar>ruby controlbot.rb

Reading remember.txt...

Hello
Reading rules.txt...
Dir = C:/trane/liar

> A is "B is false"

Okay, A is B is false.

> B is "A is true"

Okay, B is A is true.

> if "B is false", then "A is true" is false

Okay, B is false -> A is true is false.

> if "A is true" is false, then A is false

Okay, A is true is false -> A is false.

> if A is false, then "B is false" is false

Okay, A is false -> B is false is false.

> if "B is false" is false, then B is true

Okay, B is false is false -> B is true.

> is A true?

> logicagent: turn on debug mode

I have turned on debug output.

> is A true?

> is B true?

> logicagent: print graph

b is false is false
if b is false is false, then b is true
a is b is false
a is false
b is a is true
b is false
if a is false, then b is false is false
if b is false, then "a is true is false
if a is true is false, then a is false
a is true is false

> A is true

> B is false

> is A true?

> is "A" "true"?

Yes, A is true.

> is "B" "true"?

I have no knowledge that B is true.

> is B false?

Yes, B is false.

> is A false?

Yes, A is false.

> B is false

> is "B" "false"?

Yes, B is false.

>

Sitting around a table, a formal business dinner. A finance expert sitting across from me and one place to my left. the atmosphere is very tense, no one is talking except to ask others to pass things. The food is kept warm under silver platters. The tablecloth is bright white.

Suddenly out of the blue? I say, "I don't like you people." The finance expert across the table and one seat to my left bends his head forward slightly and puts his hand to its balding surface. He is wearing glasses.

There is a woman to my left.

There is an uproar? I feel good because I have spoken the truth. They are in commotion, upset.

---

(Text within square brackets, "[]", is analysis added after writing the dream down.)

Tracie and I at a hotel room. We go outside to meet some friend of hers. I feel manipulated into it, I want no part of meeting the guy but somehow Tracie maneuvers me into accompanying her; I feel like I have to help her.

I'm waiting for her on a corner. A guy calls to me. It's the guy she was talking about, some kind of finance guy. He is thin, with thinning brown hair. A little like Earl from "My Name is Earl", but without the mustache. He is confident. We talk, I feel okay. He asks about Tracie, makes smalltalk easily. I feel confident. It is like back in my druggie days when I felt "cool" to have dropped out of mainstream society.

Gradually he brings the conversation around to finances. He casually brings out an envelope and gives it to me. It is addressed to me, from Texaco. It is a bill for a charge card that I don't remember getting. The bill is for several hundred dollars. There is one item for a $5 charge for getting the card itself.

[How did he get the bill? Through Tracie? Did Tracie get the card in my name without telling me?]

I am taken aback; suddenly I don't feel so confident and cool anymore. When did I get this card? Why haven't I paid it?

[It's as if my confidence was based on not being responsible for anything, but here was evidence that I was responsible for this debt. This charge made me less cool, less confident. So - if Tracie had gotten the card through fraud, then SHE had made me less confident!]

The guy is acting a little condescending towards me. I don't feel so good anymore., He is still polite, kind, but it is patronizing, the kindness you show someone whom you know to be much worse off than you are. He gives me something, folded paper towels or napkins; when I unfold them there is part of a chocolate pastry, which I eat thankfully.

We part. I go back to the hotel room. I'm in the bathroom looking down into a green marble sink. The tap extends to the bottom of the sink. Part of the tap's length must be a hose, must be flexible, because I turn the bottom part upwards to look down into it. It is metal, rigid, with bolts or something sticking out on each side as I look down into it.

[The man is a hustler, a trickster, someone very well aware of applied psychology and applying it to me to destroy the happiness I have, for what reason I can only guess because I don't understand it. He uses finances to get to me because he knows that I want society's approval and society values those who are not deadbeats who don't pay their debts. He himself might be a thief who owes money but he is able to distance himself from society's approval in a way I can't, so he takes advantage of owing money to bring me down, without it affecting him even though he's in the same position as (or a worse position than) I am...]

[Is the tap, the hose, a symbol? Phallic? But the picture I retain as I looked down into it in the dream is one of a clearly metal, unnatural, hollow pipe, with two clearly manufactured appendages like bolts attached an the outside and in a perfect line. Am I looking down into my unconscious or something...]

Every so often in my life, I've come across internet forums where absolute freedom rings, where anyone can say anything. In the BBS days, there was Chat! Chat! Chat!. On AOL there was the Programming chat room, where I learned a lot. Branford Marsalis had a forum for a while that was like storyville, anything was permitted. And freenode #politics had a no ban policy for a couple years.

I enjoyed those forums where I was able to say whatever was on my mind, to rail unmolested against the ills society was perpetrating on me, to speak in my own voice without having to make any concessions to arbitrary social rules. It was like being a kid, no responsibillities, no consequences. The discussions would often get very emotionally intense, leaving me laughing, crying, sitting there tingling all over, as we insulted each other, delved deep into each other's psyches, explored all manner of political, social, psychological, sexual, etc. issues with no censorship ...

Occasionally it was dangerous since hackers could knock you offline or even exploit your computer...so it wasn't completely without consequences. But the consequences were (for the most part) not officially sanctioned by anyone running the room...there were emotional consequences, but (mostly) you couldn't get banned.

Now occasionally I run into a room that reminds me of those forums, and the old juices begin to flow, and I start feeling good again :) For example ##economics on freenode, I ran into some of the people from the old #politics and the same spirit triumphed for a while and I felt right at home and started letting myself go ... then, of course, some guy comes around and wants to ban me.

And it all came crashing down and I realized that I wasn't in those old forums and that this forum had ban rules in effect and I was probably about to activate them. And an upwelling of emotion took me over, anger and frustration and a desire to be gone. So I bid my goodbye and left the room ...

My body was tense and tingling all over, because I had once again confronted what I see as unreasonable, arbitrary authority, and my only response is to get away from it. And I miss the free, unfettered chat so much ...

In hierarchical situations, I get so tense and nervous that I can no longer perform, I just want to leave. Over and over again throughout my life this pattern has been repeated ... grad school, the business world, the underworld, friendships, online forums ...

How can I deal with this sense of loss in me, that hinders my intellectual and career advancement, prevents me from thriving? How can I stop cutting my nose to spite my face?

Dream about Raquel

She's the same, beautiful waif. We're driving around the country. We stop in a store, she buys sheets that are attached at the end, like a sleeping bag but just connected along one side and partly across the bottom and with no zipper. They have frilly edges, like little squares attached with ribbons, along the bottom.

She goes to a doctor to get medications for her teeth.

We're not having sex but I'm okay with that, not anxious. Also I'm not smoking crack (she is). I just drive, maybe I read. I'm calm, unconcerned.

Scene in a motel or bed'n'breakfast of some kind. We go in, she talks to the proprietors as I wait, I don't see them. I'm calm, devoid of desire.

She appears, we go through a passage into a back room, past the entrance to the proprietors' quarters, but I don't see them. I'm a little surprised we're so close to them, but don't feel ruffled.

Our room is very long and bigger than I expected. A couch-bed, sort of a wide cot made up to function as a sofa with cushions to lean on, is against the wall on one side.

We are tired from driving. I begin to make up the bed, pulling off the covering and removing the cushions.

We spread the sheets she bought, which are connected at the bottom, with frills. I'm not nervous, not thinking about sex. She's talking to me, sitting up at the head of the bed. She isn't flirtatious just matter-of-fact, normal. Talking about her teeth, her medication. I'm happy, in love, not addicted. Does she smoke crack? I watch, no desire to do it myself. We are going to settle inside the sheets...

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Maybe that's the way it should have been? Oh well, raquel!

John Reifel, 1967-2010

(started 2010-09-19)

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His death is an argument for drug legalization. If drugs had been legal, 1) he wouldn't have been as attracted to the "forbidden fruit", 2) he would have had knowledge of the quantity and quality of the substances, giving him more control over his doses, 3) I could have been doing them with him, serving as a check on his usage, or getting him to hospital sooner! When he was with me he didn't need as many drugs because his real high came from manipulating me psychologically...

He was a talented, but lazy, musician who didn't pursue music because it wasn't financially rewarding, even though he didn't need to work for a living. Still, he took temp jobs because he felt he fit in better that way.

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Memories:

John looking at me with an expression of real sympathy on his face as I told him how difficult it was for me to live in the mess that Tracie's apartment was...

John and I at a Branford Marsalis concert, we headed to the exit before the encore and so were standing at the back when the band came back on, I hid behind him and danced a little as they played "It don't mean a thing"

John driving, me in the passenger seat, both high as fuck. He says something and I experience a leap of thought, jumping from what he said to an inference, then to another, and another, with lightning speed, until I come to a conclusion that I present to him. He hasn't followed the inferences though and is sure in his doubt of my conclusion. Defeated by his confidence, I don't even try to explain the chain of inferences I had traversed so quickly, and let it go...

Him stealing money from his Mom's purse, then I'd buy the drugs. The high began when he'd call and say "I got $60" or whatever.

Renting a motel room and buying several hundred dollars' worth of crack. Him asking me to leave for 20 minutes so he could masturbate.

The Lusty Lady...

John putting music on Tracie's Ipod, because I didn't know how. "I can't believe you don't know how to do this!" he says in surprise to me. But he was the expert, always collecting music from the library and burning CDs for me.

Second-last time I saw him we went to a jazz show, Jay Thomas and a big band, downtown on 2nd Avenue, right where I used to buy crack. The band was good, he told me the name of a tune he knew because he'd played it: Moten's Swing. He hummed along with the signature trombone riff of the song ... I left a $20 to pay for my coffee, he was shocked! "How can you leave such a big tip?" But I used to waste $20s by the handful when I was buying crack right outside the door so I didn't care. But that was John, always trying to make me think of how I was poor and needed to save money - at least, that's my interpretation :)

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In my opinion, John didn't have a strong-enough purpose to his life; his main purpose seemed to be trying to fit in with his Mom's view of society, to feel like he was one of the "in" group when he was walking around Bellevue. He wanted the approval of my Mom: for example, once when he came over and was introduced to her friend, my Mom said "he's a handsome boy"; his purpose in life seemed to be to fulfill that role defined for him by the old women in the neighborhood, whose "divine right" to social power he chose not to question.

Society creates an environment of competition where none need exist, where food and resources are plentiful because of technology but artificially restricted by old women and their puppets, who believe it is their job to weed out the weak; they use psychological manipulation to exert mental pressure on ppl like John, subtly constraining him, making him think he has to work to fit in when his parents are millionaires and could easily let him pursue music instead of construction clean-up. Then when he dies from the strain, they write him off as a "misfit" anyway!

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Instead of the life that society choose for him, I would have chosen for John to be free to do what he wanted without thinking about what others thought of his choices. Maybe then we could have played together more.

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Memory: Driving around Bellevue with John, he tells me how his Dad drives these days, so slowly, leaving his turn signals on, etc. John says he looks at his Dad and thinks, "That's how I'll drive one day", as if it's inevitable, he can't escape it! He sounds disapproving, as if he doesn't want to end up that way, it's a bad thing, the weakness of age and all that, but there's nothing he can do to stop it. His tone contains all these inferences, the emotion in it is so expressive of the negative judgment on old people driving around with their turn signals on, and yet also expressive of the powerlessness of preventing it happening to him. I want to say No! You can avoid it! You can be anything you want, you don't have to follow right along in others' footsteps! But I can't somehow, the emotion in his voice has exhausted me, I can't summon the emotion in my voice necessary to counteract his...

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2010-11-22

Dear John,

I went to Robinswood Park today and thought about you. We went there once, not long before you died. I got high, you didn't. I thought about that day today as I tramped around the same trails we'd been on...

It was snowing. There weren't very many people there. I ran on some of the trails, it felt good and got me warm. I stopped by a pond with ducks on it and said Namokar Mantra while standing in the kayotsarga pose (straight, legs just slightly apart, hands hanging down at the sides, trying to keep all muscles relaxed and breathing deeply and slowly). There was a duck with a lot of white feathers who quacked as I came up, then put its head in its back but kept looking at me for the whole time I stood there. I slowly closed my eyes at him to indicate calmness and friendship.

I thought about when we were there, how nervous I always was in your presence, how I never would have felt I could just stop and meditate by a pond; you would have acted nervous and made me nervous and I would have deferred to you. You had a way of saying things sharply with a tone that seemed to deflate whatever emotions I was trying to experience, instead making me feel small and deferential to you. I was always thinking that you were with me out of some act of kindness, if I didn't please you you wouldn't want to go anywhere with me next time, and that would be a bad thing, would make me depressed. But today I was alone and felt exhilerated, great, sticking my tongue out to catch snowflakes, running on the paths, whistling, stopping to observe and listen to and talk with all kinds of birds ... I don't think I would have been able to do any of those things if you had been there ...

I remember when we were there I did one rep of 10 pullups, and you were gracious enough to watch me and ask with a tone I took to be approval "was that 10?" after I'd finished. (It was.) Today I was thinking of that as I did 3 reps of 10 :)

I'm thankful we went there and that i was able to return there today; I'm sorry and a little sad that I'll never go there with you again. But even if you were still alive, would I have felt comfortable calling you if I was headed there? Probably not, I would have been too afraid that you would blow me off, say "Nah" in a derisive tone and wound me psychologically for having put myself in a position to be rejected by asking you.

I didn't smoke any pot today. The feeling of being free from that habit got me as high as the drug!

Returning a porno. A Cobain song playing on the boom box behind the counter.

"He's... the one, who likes all our pretty songs, and he likes to sing along, and he likes to shoot his gun, but he don't know what it means..."

  Should I get another? I walk over to the magazine rack, still interested in the song. And I stood there half-pretending to look at the girls, but focusing attention on the music. The drum breaks, with a heavy swing component (punk has always had a strong underpinning of swing). Cobain's ageless voice, so rough, vibrato-less, authentic - truly, he lived his lyrics!

"...and I say..."

What does he say? What's his message to me, standing there on my XXth birthday in a dingy old porn shop? The words "and I say" are followed by a riff, strong, portentious, deliberate, considered. What are those notes, those chords, I wonder? They sound close together, almost chromatic; my ear is still not good enough to pick out the intervals, but my guess is that the first two are something close to a third, going downwards, then it drops another third? second? and comes back up something that sounds like a minor third? I won't be able to test my hypothesis until I get to a piano ...

"Na...ture is...a whore..." Haha, ironic, I look at the covers in front of me and smile inwardly :) Damn I love nature, earlier that day I was tramping around in the trees, following a dry stream bed, climbing over logs ... talking to the birds ... but it's all about procreation, messy biology, spider webs sticking to my hair and skin, tree sap staining my fingers and clothes. Ultimately, I want to be free of nature too ...

Guitar solo. Count through it, keep him honest? Hmm, that's an interesting SOUND, like he's swinging his guitar as he plays, really bending those waves, trying to tap into something way beyond himself that I can't (yet) describe, but feel...8 bars of solo, then back into the song's chorus. (The rhythmic characteristics of the song I'll have to explore further at another time.)

I make a decision; no more porn today. I need to get back to the ancient Jain technique of brahmacharya. Song'll be ending soon. I can feel the guy at the counter's eyes on me, I'm nervous; I try to stand in the kayotsarga pose (kayotsarga means abandonment of the body): spine upright, arms hanging beside the torso, legs slightly apart, every muscle as relaxed as possible, breathing as slow as I can. I'm excited though, I can feel others' attention turned towards me (a weird old guy standing in a porn shop not looking at the merchandise!), so my breathing is not as controlled as I can get it when I'm meditating. But I do my best.

Oh, it'll be cool if I time it so I walk out the door just as the song ends. I start walking, slowly, trying to step with the beats of the song. I know this song, this is the last chorus. Left foot ... right foot ... and push the handle! Just as the final guitar riff whines to a close :)

My logic agent can handle "is" and "has" relations but I have to add others manually by writing new methods in the code file. I want to generalize this procedure, as it seems fairly mechanical.

Basically I want to be able to tell the bot: add pattern /(.*) loves (.*)/. Then the bot will create the methods that I'm now writing manually (mostly copy and paste then some substitutions) and write them to the code file (as well as introducing them into the class at runtime so I don't need to restart).

The problems I'm running into are: the verb "loves" can have different forms, i.e. I love, he loves, I loved, I am loving, etc. Also, when I add the pattern, it often needs to be moved up above more general patterns in the logicagent-api.yaml file.

For the second problem, I think I can search for the method name in logicagent-api.yaml and add the new pattern before the first occurrence. That seems to be the method I'm using as I do it manually.

For the second problem, I think I have to use different methods for verbs like "hit" and relations like "is greater than". For example:

> add pattern /(.*) (hit) (.*)/, generic_a_r_b
Okay I have added pattern....

> John hit Bill.
Okay, John hit Bill.

> did John hit Bill?
Yes, John hit Bill.

needs a different method from:

> add pattern /(.*) (is heavier than) (.*)/, generic_a_r_b2
Okay I have added that pattern....

> 10g is heavier than 5g.
Okay, 10g is heavier than 5g.

> is 10g heavier than 5g?
Yes, 10g is heavier than 5g.

The reason I need two methods is to ask a question for a verb like hit, I use the auxiliary verb "did", but to ask a question for a relation like "is heavier than", I use "is".

I post a comment I think is good and it gets modded down. So I post as AC comments I'm afraid to post because I think it will get modded down, and it gets modded up. I guess I should just not worry about it!

In freenode ##physics, a guy was asking about dimensions. Is 0 dimensions a point, etc. Another guy says: "This is a 0 dimensional set: {0}." So this piques my curiosity: how would you represent more than one dimension with a set? I ask, "Is a 4 dimension set {(0,0,0,0)}?" Then sqrt2 replies: "No. And this isn't the place to talk about elementary linear algebra."

Why would he say that? He creates an atmosphere where genuine inquiry is discouraged. It's like being in class and being afraid to ask a question because the teacher will call it stupid. That kind of attitude does not foster learning!

Why do we put up with that kind of attitude? Where does it come from, why does it persist?

My hypothesis is that such mean-spiritedness, such narrow-minded focus on blind adherence to a limited topic, will eventually disappear due to evolutionary pressures - places where such individuals do not rule and hold power (sqrt2 holds the position of operator, with the power to kick and ban) will become more popular because they are more fun, ppl can learn more in such non-restrictive places, and therefore they will contribute more to the advance of knowledge and technological innovation.

St Louis Boogie by Count Basie and his Orchestra

This is an up-tempo tune.

The first chorus is an intro by the rhythm section.

The second chorus (0:19) has the "theme" stated by the band. The bass is playing a standard boogie-woogie pattern, but in quarter notes. Basie provides right-hand fills.

The third chorus (0:34) - Basie's left hand starts a boogie-woogie pattern with an eighth-note feel. Very simple, short, two-note phrase repeated unchanged by the band over the entire chorus. Basie seems to flub a little bit in the ninth bar.

Fourth chorus (0:49) - Band plays the standard boogie-woogie riff in the first three bars (the last bar is cut to just the first note), then they lay out when the change to the subdominant comes, then come back in on the turnaround. When the band lays out Basie's left hand is left to play the riff alone, with complementary right-hand heavily-syncopated fills.

Fifth chorus (1:03) - Band plays a "building" pattern, holding one note for an entire bar four times, then on the turnaround executing a strongly-syncopated riff that leads in perfectly to the trumpet solo.

Sixth chorus (1:18) - Climax of the swing occurs when the trumpet hits the one. You can faintly hear someone groan or growl at the 1:19 or so point. Drums are loud and swinging. Basie's back to the full boogie-woogie in his left hand. His right hand is silent.

Seventh chorus (1:33) - Sax solo. Basie abandons his boogie-woogie left hand in favor of comping. The swing intensity starts to come down.

Eighth chorus (1:48) - 16 bars of the root chord. The volume is brought down.

Ninth chorus (2:09) - Just the rhythm section. Piano is very quiet and spare. Bass is still playing in quarter notes, mostly, but with a "twang" that gives it sort of an eighth-note boogie-woogie feel.

Tenth chorus (2:24) - Same. Bass is carrying the swing, trying to get back to the level in the sixth chorus...this time at much lower volume.

I'm in the middle of reading "Snow Crash".

Impressions so far:

Why do you have to spend time commuting in the Metaverse? Why not just have instant teleportation? Stephenson's Metaverse is too similar to reality, I think part of the appeal of cyberspace to me is its differences from physical reality.

The powers of two limitations built into the Metaverse (128 ports on the tramway for instance) are silly.

The little demons carrying away bits of hacked up avatar is hokey.

The "pay to play" philosophy of the Metaverse is not the predominant philosophy on the World Wide Web, at least not yet. For example: In the book they have to buy plots for their Metaverse houses; we pay a yearly fee for domain name registration. There's a difference of philosophy there.

In software matters, the Open Source/Free Software movement is completely ignored.

Things I liked:

The way he tries to apply the theory of memetics to real and hypothetical phenomena, i.e.: laying out the "religion as virus" hypothesis.

The Librarian AI - but why can't he handle analogies? This article indicates we now have that capability.

The widely varied writing styles - "Deliverator"-style action sequences to stream-of-consciousness of a 15-year old girl to informative, speculative discussions of history, biology, computer science, virtual reality.

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The (physical) society described by Stephenson would likely result if we gave Libertarianism free reign. Vote accordingly...