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Nov. 19th, 2004
Seven Day Keep Away
Nov. 19th, 2004 08:07 amIt is once again the early morning and I am of course still awake from the night before. I am fully converted to third shift and I'm doing it right this time. Last time I did third shift, I was also working two jobs, going to school full time and taking a yoga class. Do some math and you'll realize that I wasn't sleeping at all. Even when I did sleep, my friends would come over and say, "Jeremy, you need some sleep! You look like SHIT!" And I would respond, "Shit, I just woke up."
The Book is now back in my possession and I am in deep-edit mode. I've read through it once and I really like the major changes that have been made. There are some smaller changes that I was iffy about, but I'll see what I think when I get that far in this editing pass. I'm taking a heavy red pen to this version and I'm really working to make every sentence sound like a perfect gem all on it's own. Especially concentrating on the first chapter since that's what has to drag everyone in. I've put down so many books and never picked them back up again because they couldn't catch my interest in the first three pages. I'm so obscenely excited to be working on this, but the Book is now almost complete. This is probably it's final real edit, so it's almost grown up and ready to leave the nest. Unfortunately, this means that it is like an unruly teenager who can't wait to turn 18 so it can move out. What am I going to do? Send it to bed without dinner? Ground it?
This weekend is going to be pretty busy compared to my usual hermit-dom.
I am meeting Anna on Saturday sometime in Madison to just spend some quality time outside of work. We've been keeping a journal at work and have been writing three to six page letters to each other almost every day, but we work no overlapping shifts, so there's no face-time in this friendship right now. We have also been formulating ideas for a book, so Saturday, I feel, is going to be a huge brainstorming session and we should really try to work out a schedule or plan for doing the writing. The ideas we've exchanged so far sound like a fun literary experiment, so, needless to say, I'm damn curious to see how this turns out.
On Sunday, *N* is coming over and I'm going to initiate her into the wonder that is Aztalan. What is Aztalan, you ask? Well, it's a three-tier pyramid about fifteen minutes from my house, which may date back as far as the Bronze Age or before, which means like 3000 - 4000 B.C. The Aztalan peoples also built stone pyramids which are in the bottom or Rock Lake, just down the river from the Aztalan site. The Aztalan people used to mine copper ingot and float it down the Mississippi to the Gulf and then take it across the ocean to Europe and the Middle East. Also, cocaine has been found in Egyptian mummies, and the large Egyptian reed boats have been discovered to be ocean-faring vessels, so these bits of evidence are building up to be a very solid case for trade across the Atlantic at a much earlier time frame than originally supposed. So anyway, the main three-tier pyramid was the religious temple of the time, and for me, it's like the Navel of the Earth. It's very "powerful" there and gorgeous to boot, so I'm sure *N* will enjoy it.
I noticed that I hadn't posted a real journal entry in a week, so I forced myself too. Sometimes, I'm just not in the mood to write, and this has been one of those weeks. I think all my writing power is being siphoned by the Book. So, here I leave you until next time: J7E*R7E*M7Y
The Book is now back in my possession and I am in deep-edit mode. I've read through it once and I really like the major changes that have been made. There are some smaller changes that I was iffy about, but I'll see what I think when I get that far in this editing pass. I'm taking a heavy red pen to this version and I'm really working to make every sentence sound like a perfect gem all on it's own. Especially concentrating on the first chapter since that's what has to drag everyone in. I've put down so many books and never picked them back up again because they couldn't catch my interest in the first three pages. I'm so obscenely excited to be working on this, but the Book is now almost complete. This is probably it's final real edit, so it's almost grown up and ready to leave the nest. Unfortunately, this means that it is like an unruly teenager who can't wait to turn 18 so it can move out. What am I going to do? Send it to bed without dinner? Ground it?
This weekend is going to be pretty busy compared to my usual hermit-dom.
I am meeting Anna on Saturday sometime in Madison to just spend some quality time outside of work. We've been keeping a journal at work and have been writing three to six page letters to each other almost every day, but we work no overlapping shifts, so there's no face-time in this friendship right now. We have also been formulating ideas for a book, so Saturday, I feel, is going to be a huge brainstorming session and we should really try to work out a schedule or plan for doing the writing. The ideas we've exchanged so far sound like a fun literary experiment, so, needless to say, I'm damn curious to see how this turns out.
On Sunday, *N* is coming over and I'm going to initiate her into the wonder that is Aztalan. What is Aztalan, you ask? Well, it's a three-tier pyramid about fifteen minutes from my house, which may date back as far as the Bronze Age or before, which means like 3000 - 4000 B.C. The Aztalan peoples also built stone pyramids which are in the bottom or Rock Lake, just down the river from the Aztalan site. The Aztalan people used to mine copper ingot and float it down the Mississippi to the Gulf and then take it across the ocean to Europe and the Middle East. Also, cocaine has been found in Egyptian mummies, and the large Egyptian reed boats have been discovered to be ocean-faring vessels, so these bits of evidence are building up to be a very solid case for trade across the Atlantic at a much earlier time frame than originally supposed. So anyway, the main three-tier pyramid was the religious temple of the time, and for me, it's like the Navel of the Earth. It's very "powerful" there and gorgeous to boot, so I'm sure *N* will enjoy it.
I noticed that I hadn't posted a real journal entry in a week, so I forced myself too. Sometimes, I'm just not in the mood to write, and this has been one of those weeks. I think all my writing power is being siphoned by the Book. So, here I leave you until next time: J7E*R7E*M7Y
I DO NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING.
Nov. 19th, 2004 02:11 pmI DO NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING.
This remark was made, in these very words, by John Gribbin, physics editor of New Scientist magazine, in a BBC-TV debate with Malcolm Muggeridge, and it provoked incredulity on the part of most viewers. It seems to be a hangover of the medieval Catholic era that causes most people, even the educated, to think that everybody must "believe" something or other, that if one is not a theist, one must be a dogmatic atheist, and if one does not think Capitalism is perfect, one must believe fervently in Socialism, and if one does not have blind faith in X, one must alternatively have blind faith in not-X or the reverse of X.
My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence. The more certitude one assumes, the less there is left to think about, and a person sure of everything would never have any need to think about anything and might be considered clinically dead under current medical standards, where the absence of brain activity is taken to mean that life has ended.
My attitude is identical to that of Dr. Gribbin and the majority of physicists today, and is known in physics as "the Copenhagen Interpretation," because it was formulated in Copenhagen by Dr. Niels Bohr and his co-workers c. 1926-28. The Copenhagen Interpretation is sometimes called "model agnosticism" and holds that any grid we use to organize our experience of the world is a model of the world and should not be confused with the world itself. Alfred Korzybski, the semanticist, tried to popularize this outside physics with the slogan, "The map is not the territory." Alan Watts, a talented exegete of Oriental philosophy, restated it more vividly as "The menu is not the meal."
Beliefs in the traditional sense, or certitude, or dogma, amounts to the grandiose delusion, "My current model" -- or grid, or map, or reality-tunnel -- "contains the whole universe and will never need to be revised." In terms of the history of science and of knowledge in general, this appears absurd and arrogant to me, and I am perpetually astonished that so many people still manage to live with such a medieval attitude.
--Robert Anton Wilson
Preface to Cosmic Trigger
This remark was made, in these very words, by John Gribbin, physics editor of New Scientist magazine, in a BBC-TV debate with Malcolm Muggeridge, and it provoked incredulity on the part of most viewers. It seems to be a hangover of the medieval Catholic era that causes most people, even the educated, to think that everybody must "believe" something or other, that if one is not a theist, one must be a dogmatic atheist, and if one does not think Capitalism is perfect, one must believe fervently in Socialism, and if one does not have blind faith in X, one must alternatively have blind faith in not-X or the reverse of X.
My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence. The more certitude one assumes, the less there is left to think about, and a person sure of everything would never have any need to think about anything and might be considered clinically dead under current medical standards, where the absence of brain activity is taken to mean that life has ended.
My attitude is identical to that of Dr. Gribbin and the majority of physicists today, and is known in physics as "the Copenhagen Interpretation," because it was formulated in Copenhagen by Dr. Niels Bohr and his co-workers c. 1926-28. The Copenhagen Interpretation is sometimes called "model agnosticism" and holds that any grid we use to organize our experience of the world is a model of the world and should not be confused with the world itself. Alfred Korzybski, the semanticist, tried to popularize this outside physics with the slogan, "The map is not the territory." Alan Watts, a talented exegete of Oriental philosophy, restated it more vividly as "The menu is not the meal."
Beliefs in the traditional sense, or certitude, or dogma, amounts to the grandiose delusion, "My current model" -- or grid, or map, or reality-tunnel -- "contains the whole universe and will never need to be revised." In terms of the history of science and of knowledge in general, this appears absurd and arrogant to me, and I am perpetually astonished that so many people still manage to live with such a medieval attitude.
--Robert Anton Wilson
Preface to Cosmic Trigger
It's all about ME!
Nov. 19th, 2004 10:49 pm(A) First, recommend to me:
1. a movie:
2. a book:
3. a musical artist, song, or album:
(B) I want everyone who reads this to ask me five questions, no more, no less. Ask me anything you want.
(C) Then I want you to go to your journal, copy and paste this allowing your friends to ask you anything.
Courtesy of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
abbydabby
1. a movie:
2. a book:
3. a musical artist, song, or album:
(B) I want everyone who reads this to ask me five questions, no more, no less. Ask me anything you want.
(C) Then I want you to go to your journal, copy and paste this allowing your friends to ask you anything.
Courtesy of
abbydabby