The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of paraheliotropic trees

The Unknown Known

Psychoanalytic philosopher Slavoj Zizek extrapolates from these three categories a fourth, the unknown known, that which we don’t know or intentionally refuse to acknowledge that we know:^[4]

“

If Rumsfeld thinks that the main dangers in the confrontation with Iraq were the “unknown unknowns,” that is, the threats from Saddam whose nature we cannot even suspect, then the Abu Ghraib scandal shows that the main dangers lie in the “unknown knowns” – the disavowed beliefs, suppositions and obscene practices we pretend not to known about, even though they form the background of our public values.

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May 4, 2009

there is nothing more predictable than randomness

“there is nothing more predictable than randomness”

an aphorism when unpacked degenerates in tautology? though I would take exception to “predictable;” how is it being used?

Though we can (generally) predict that randomness will occur, can we predict when it will occur and can we predict the content of the random walk? Sometimes >> but if we can, is it truly random, or does it then become just variable? doesn’t randomness include implicit in its definition unpredictability, both as to time and to content? To be aware that randomness is a feature of the universe (and what kind of randomness? is the imprecision of electron position random or is it merely imprecise?) is not the same thing to render it predictable. To predict that randomness will occur is no prediction at all, since being early is the same as being wrong. A weatherman who said “one day it will rain” would be unlikely to get the words “some weatherman” spun above his domicile.

An anecdote:

re: Nasser Taleb, The Black Swan — the Black Swan is of course the concept that large unpredictable events are unpredictable and consequently no one will predict them, and that because of several cognitive biases, being unpredictable will mean that will not be prepared for or even considered; ironically, I bought and read this book in the spring of 2007, before law school, before Europe, while the Dow was still humming along nicely.

Nevertheless, the housing market still burst, only Goldman got out in time, and we call came tumbling after. In August 2005, when I began working at B21, I predicted to Bill Hatton that the housing market had about a year left in it. I’m not sure I got it right, but I was close — but did I predict randomness? That wasn’t so much randomness as the chickens coming home to roost anyway —

What’s really random? Barack Obama. I like to think about how in 2000, while everyone was up in arms about recounts and Chad, nobody even knew who this guy was. How many other hidden heroes are out there in America, in the world, appearing to slumber even while they plan? Is someone like Barack Obama predictable? Not while he remains random, I would argue.

I would counter then, Old Father, All Father, that there is nothing predictable about randomness, which is the true tautology, since randomness = impossible to predict. To the extent that information becomes forecastable, it is no longer random.

Finally, then, we are confronted with the conundrum. What to do with all this randomness. Taleb, not knowing when or how randomness will occur, nevertheless was able to craft an investment strategy that loses money in normal years but makes outsized gains in extreme ones. How does this work? How can we apply this lesson to our own lives?

I believe people dismiss randomness because it makes them uncomfortable. How do we live and prepare and save money in a world where there is a nontrivial risk of sudden death at every moment? Well, the first step may be to lose the angst. The fact that I might die at 30 gave me great pause for many years — until I realized what the effect on my life would be if I operated as if I’d die at 30 but instead lived until 100. Not too much money for shoes in my extremity, I surmised.

Randomness was not lessened, and when deciding to go to Law School, I neglected to include a sufficient discount rate on my future earnings to actually make the proper analysis. But nevertheless, I found some path to action. By controlling what I can control.

We cannot pinpoint the position of an electron, yet we’re still able to turn on lightbulbs. The sky has fallen yet we live. To live in and admidst uncertainty is foreign to the human mind. It is why we invent Gods and Laws and Metaphysics, which serve to reduce the random to only those things that are necessarily random. When we walk out on the street, we could randomly get stabbed by people — but that’s something within our power to control, and control it we do — not because we can predict randomness, but because we can see a path of control.

Perhaps the answer is traps? But then again, is a randomness foreseen truly random? A corrollary to the Black Swan is that once it appears, it ceases to be black; i.e., it is no longer truly random, it will become foreseen, and fooled, forecasters will begin to think that because it is visible in hindsight, the next Black Swan will be visible with foresight — which misses the point. The Black Swan is the one you don’t see coming.

What’s the strategy then? To be quick like mercury, so that when the Black Swan comes you can hitch a ride? To build your house as well as you can, and when the tornado knocks it down, to rebuild it as well as you can? To live frugally and cheap, to keep yourself close to yourself so that it is easier to clean up when the mess does get made?

My suggestion is that you cannot predict randomness — any randomness you can predict is not random. But perhaps you can prepare for it — and once the random reveals itself, it does possess a wholesome certainty about it — is is now the world, and no matter who tangled the knot that appears, it is now amenable to the tuggings of men and women.

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May 3, 2009

Paper Planes / Pirate Jenny

Paper Planes, M.I.A.

I fly like paper, get high like planes
If you catch me at the border, I got visas in my name
If you come around here, I make ’em all day
I get one down in a second if you wait

Sometimes I feel sitting on trains
Every stop I get to, I’m clocking that game
Everyone’s a winner, we’re making the fame
Bona fide hustler making my name

Sometimes I feel sitting on trains
Every stop I get to, I’m clocking that game
Everyone’s a winner now we’re making the fame
Bona fide hustler making my name

All I wanna do is
And a, and take your money
All I wanna do is
And a, and take your money

Pirate skulls and bones
Sticks and stones and weed and bombs
Running when we hit ’em
Lethal poison through their system

No one on the corner has swagger like us
Hit me on my burner, prepaid wireless
We pack and deliver like UPS trucks
Already going hell, just pumping that gas

All I wanna do is
And a, and take your money
All I wanna do is
And a, and take your money

M.I.A., third world democracy
Yeah, I got more records than the KGB
So, uh, no funny business, are you already?

Some, some, some I, some I murder
Some I, some I let go
Some, some, some I, some I murder
Some I, some I let go

All I wanna do is
And a, and take your money
All I wanna do is
And a, and take your money

Pirate Jenny, by Kurt Weill

Ahh you people can watch while i’m scrubbing these floors
And i’m scrubbing these floors while you’re gawking
Maybe once you tip me and it makes you feel swell
In this crummy southern town
In this pit of hotel
But you’ll never guess to who you’re talking
No
You’ll never guess to who you’re talking

Then one night there’s a scream in the night
And you wonder: ‘who could that have been ?’
And you see me kind of grinning while i’m scrubbing
And you say ‘what she got to grin ?’
I’ll tell ya
There’s a ship
The black freighter
With a skull on it’s mast-head
Will be coming in

You gentlemen say: ‘hey gal, finish them floors
What’s wrong with you ? earn your keep here’
You toss me your tips and look to the ships
But i’m counting your heads as i’m making the beds
’cause there’s nobody gonna sleep here tonight
No
Nobody
No-one
No-one

Then one night there’s a scream in the night
And you say: ‘who’s that kicking up a row?’
And you see me kinda staring out the window
And you say: ‘what she got to stare at now ?’
I’ll tell ya
There’s a ship
The black freighter
Turns around in the harbour
Shooting guns from her bow

Well you gentlemen can wipe those smiles off your face
’cause every building in town is a flat one
This whole frigging place will be down to the ground
Only this cheap hotel standing up, safe and sound
And you yell: ‘why do they spare that one ?
‘why?
‘why the hell do they spare that one ?’

All the night through with the noise and to do
And you wonder: ‘who is that person that lives up there ?’
And you see me stepping out in the morning
Looking fine with a ribbon in my hair
Well just look at me now
And a ship
The black freighter
Runs a flag up it’s mast-head
And a cheer rings the air. hey!

My ??? on the dock is a swarming with men
Coming out from the ghostly freighter
They’re moving in the shadows where no-one can see
And they’re chaining up people
And delivering ’em to me
Asking me: ‘kill them now or later ?’
Asking me: ‘kill them now or later ?’

Noon by the clock and so still at the dock
You can hear a fog horn miles away
And in that quiet of death i’ll say:
‘right now !’
‘right now !’
And they pile up the bodies
And i’ll say: ‘that’ll learn you.
That’ll learn you.’

And the ship
The black freighter
Disappears out to sea
And
On
It
Is
Me !

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May 1, 2009

The Four Sights

At the birth of Prince Siddhartha, his father, the Great King Suddhodhana summoned eight brahmins to the palace to read the signs of probability for the new-born prince.

Seven were unsure, claiming he would be either a Buddha or a Great King. The eight was sure he would renounce the world, and become a Buddha.

Suddodhana was determined that his son should be a king, and decided to surround him in a life of beauty and every luxury, and in so doing, conceal the realities of life from him.

Years later, at the age of 29, Siddhartha left his father’s palace for the first time, with his charioteer Channa.

On this journey, the first sight he saw was an old man. Channa told him that aging happens to all men.

The second sight he saw was a sick man suffering from disease. Again, Channa told him that all men are subject to sickness and pain.

The third sight was a corpse. After learning of death, Siddhartha was despondent.

However, the fourth sight was that of an ascetic, who had devoted himself to understanding the cause of human suffering. Siddhartha resolved to follow the ascetic’s example.

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May 1, 2009

God Bless God, Who Put Death at the End of Life instead of at the Beginning.

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May 1, 2009

Important Legal Quotes

“We will not hold that a court abused its discretion where it reached the correct result even if it did so for the wrong reason.”
United States v. Duran Samniego, 345 F.3d 1280 (11th Cir. 2003)

“To pull one misshapen stone out of the grotesque structure is more likely simply to upset its present balance between adverse interessts than to establish a rational edifice”
Michelson v. United States, 335 U.S. 469 (1948)

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April 30, 2009

Classical vs. Ultramodern

I seem to have taken a classical turn of late, epitomized by Keat’s Ode, I suppose; let’s not forget that the purpose of electric light on heliotropic trees is to explore the effect of the ultramodern on the human soul, not to sink into the comforting memory of safe and easy Apollonian art, Yeats’ gold Byzantium. Cacaphony, the riots at the Rite of Spring, Spring Theory, and Deep Time and History, the Screams of Car Accidents outside my New York window, the High Definition Apocalypses contained and controlled by the 25-hour TV/Internet newscycle, the coming obsolence of newsprint, digital ink and digital paper, dine and dash mentalities, the New Socialism, the New President, Generation Y growing up and taking our seat on the crazy water ride, water slide, Hunter S. Thompson and David Foster Wallace with a solipsist gun in their mouth, Nihilism and Optimism, Walt Whitman Old and New, the End of Discourse, the Twist of Rhetoric, out-of-work lawyers, fierce beggars, venereal disease, electronic dance music, headphone parties, studio apartments, teenagers sending naked pictures of themselves with their ubiquitous high resolution cell phone cameras, the iphone and the Xbox, headstands and summersaults, psychadelic mushrooms, the 2nd largest city in Vermont, nationalized singing talent show, fat and endless bandwith, three word poems, the new haiku, automatic wordcounts, waterboarding with the American flag, Chrysler is bankrupt, Pig Flu, many lives, heat death of the universe, canceling the moonbase, the speed of light, the relativity of time, brane cosmology, brain surgery, positive and negative externalities, death and taxes, consumer space travel, bankruptcies and great recessions, 2nd act repeats, Karl Marx’s comeback, culture industry collapsing back on itself, a million chittering cells organize and then disorganize, organism then individual, what is law, what is the law, break the law, and scofflaw, information wants to be free, who said that, says Time Warner, a hacker you idiot, the Whole Earth Catalog, and he was right and you were wrong, charge what you want, toll-roads and advertising, the colonization of the human mind, a new kind of fascism, the freedom to starve, absolute poverty, disease, a warming planet, antarctica is melting, polar bears are drowning, trees are getting greener, and the city’s getting hotter and the worm is winding tighter, there are snakes on the plane, Lost is the island of Atlantis, the Garden of Eden is in Bahrain, every fall I put on my Jewhat and go sing in Sumerian, I know where we come from, I don’t know where we’re going, but maybe caves, 30 million Chinese people still do it, if I’m one in a million that means there’s a thousand of me in China, twist and shout, new souls — Before Sunrise and Before Sunset — and don’t trust anyone over thirty unless they’re already dead (Death makes one reliable) and you can’t change the future because the future is what will happen and and and conjunction junction what’s your function — putting words together and that’s my function and television is ubiquitious and computer screens are ubiquitous and cell phones and coffee shops and restaurants and Walmart and the fear of stinking death is ubiquitous – my father had a dog once he was called Ubi, he was the Ubiquitous Dog, because he kept showing up, what’s that supposed to be, profound or something, does the writer in my head make me a schizoid paranoiac? No, I doubt they’re after me, the Black Helicopter Police have bigger fish to fry than me, those Right Wing Crazies, Those Fascist Yahoos, lock up your children the homosexuals are coming, God hates butt-sex, but how does he feel about tit-sex? Unclear. Blowjobs? Blowjobs are ok if the person giving them has a vagina? Why? What does a vagina have to do with a blowjob? An interesting argument, I have there, Young Lawyer. Oh, go, there is studying to do, and more handstands and tumblesaults and summersalts and airplane rides and yogurt. Go, go, go, go, keep going, Ponyboy, stay yellow, Chicken, where we’re going we don’t need roads — oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh.

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April 30, 2009

Walpurgis Night

Ancient childhood memories of seducing fear.

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April 29, 2009

Ode on A Grecian Urn, by Keats

John Keats

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed leged haunts about thy shape
Of dieties or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirits ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the tries, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor even can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal– yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou has not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,
For ever panting, and for ever young,
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowfuland cloy’d,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
TO what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
will silent be; and not a soul, to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.

O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest brances and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation wase,
Thou salt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’sts,
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,–that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’

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April 29, 2009

Anecdote of the Jar, by Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens (lawyer)

I placed a jar In Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion every where.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

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