A Journal for Walking Over Fallen Fences

Visiting Massillon Ohio. Population 30,000. A rundown steel town surrounded by farmlands, Amish communities, and new suburban sprawl. Football was born here: The Massillon Tigers (with the Mckinley Bulldogs) boasts the longest high school football rivalry in the world.

My brother Ryan was driving up state highway 21. His car broke down. While waiting for a pick up, he stood atop his car and bellowed a folk song about the legend of John Henry. Cars sped past him on the state highway. Most were silent, but a few were compelled to honk.

The police came and asked “What are you doing? We’ve received calls about you. You’re freaking people out.”

“I’m singing John Henry,” Ryan replied.

The police made him stop.

John Henry was a southern slave who grew to be 6 feet tall and 200 pounds, a giant in those days. After the Civil War, he worked the C&O Railroad, and could drive the steel faster than anyone alive. He wielded a gigantic 14 pound hammer.

One day, a salesman came and boasted that his steam-powered drill could beat any man. John Henry took the challenge of man versus machine. John Henry won, driving 14 feet to the drill’s 9, but died shortly thereafter from exhaustion. So the legend goes.

Ryan’s act is a revolution. It is equivalent to Japanese monks walking slowly through busy traffic, disrupting it, ringing a haunting bell. It is a civil disobedience eager to spread. The madness moves through us, processing us. It is time to stand atop the machinery. It is time to be a cog in the wheels of habit. My readers, pull off the highway. Stand on top of your cars. Sing the legend of John Henry. Come on, everybody now!

John Henry said to his Captain,
“A man ain’t nothin’ but a man,
And before I’ll let your steam drill beat me down,
Die with the hammer in my hand,
Die with the hammer in my hand.”

John Henry - The Steel Driving Man: http://www.ibiblio.org/john_henry

(There are many versions of the John Henry folk song. My brother sang the version from Alan Lomax’s Prison Song series, Volume 2.)

Last night my partner, Susan E. Kim, premiered her experimental film Letter Beginning with Zero (2006, 20 min).

The film creates a personal mythology out of a grandmother’s story of disappearance and an adapted Korean folktale. It is a story about seeing and origins.

In the film, Susan’s grandmother tells of how the Japanese took her husband during World War II. The Japanese military had a practice of conscripting Koreans to help with the war (Korea was formally under Japanese rule from 1910-1945).

Before he disappeared forever, he would write love letters to his wife in Korea. They changed his name from a Korean name to a Japanese one, and the letters were signed in this manner.

The letters were obscured to conceal the date from when they were sent. Everything came from “0 Month 0 Day 0 Time.”

I’m reminded of all that begins with 0.

Claude Shannon (1916 - ) is the founding father of the electronic communications age.

Among many other interests, Shannon studied the relationship between information and entropy. Shannon was the first to show that entropy (the measure of disorder within a system) is inherent in all systems of communication. Redundancy–yes, redundancy–reduces entropy, and is necessary to clearly communicate in a “noisy” environment. However, when the noise is low, the redundancy can be eliminated, and the message can be highly compressed.

Zen Buddhists, for example, write using highly condensed koans (e.g. What is the sound of one hand clapping?); whereas a long-winded philosopher must repeat the same thing in different ways to ensure the message is communicated clearly.

It follows that Shannon studied word pairs. In a given text, some words tend to appear together, whereas others do not. He demonstrated that you can generate random words in a way that sounds like meaningful English, provided that each random word is paired with a word that it is often paired with. Meaningful-sounding gibberish works even better when using word triplets.

The Shannonizer is a computer application that generates such random words. It compares a text you provide against a template. Although the results are random, they are structured within the same word pair probability as its template. Since James Joyce tends to favor different word pairs than Britney Spears, running Shannonizer using a James Joyce template will yield different results than a Britney Spears template.

For example, I went to an online Shannonizer, and ran the previous paragraph against a “God” template and a “Hunter S. Thompson” template. Here are the results:

God:
The Shannonizer is thy dead. Although the same word pairs than a wife for my brother’s keeper? And the manslayer shall surely be put to favor different results than a thread of the LORD: Alas, they may be smitten down before me. Now therefore thy lips are random words against a wife for the same word pair probability as its template will yield different results are in thy temples are in vain; then the LORD came mightily upon him guiltless.

Hunter S. Thompson:
The Shannonizer is a suitcase full of cops. They’ll creep right into your bedroom window and sliced it couldn’t last much longer? How much longer? No! Don’t try it in any direction, running Shannonizer is a template. I’ll have to favor different word pair probability as its template will yield different results are random, they buy a maniac would roam around Vegas wearing one black glove?

Links:
Online Shannonizer: http://www.nightgarden.com/shannon.htm

NYU Linguistics Bio: http://www.nyu.edu/pages/linguistics/courses/v610003/shan.html

Disease Watch!

When you sit or lie down, do you have a strong desire to move your legs? Does moving your legs make you feel better? If so, you may be suffering from Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS). According to the RLS Foundation, “Up to 8% of the U.S. population may have RLS. Many people have a mild form of the disorder, but RLS severely affects the lives of millions of individuals.”

The RLS Foundation is a third-party educational foundation focused on spreading as much awareness about RLS as possible. It is funded by pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline and Boehringer Ingelheim, both of whom manufacture RLS medications.

The trend in pharmaceutical companies is to make a pill, see what it does, then invent a disease or hype-up a condition whose symptoms the pill can cure. Medical companies sell the disease directly to the consumer (if a country’s laws allow this), or through non-profit and educational foundations (giving a non-partisan illusion). They are often backed by doctors looking to increase payroll, or academics looking to pioneer a name for themselves in an exciting new field.

There are now prescription pills for Social Phobia Disorder (shyness) and Motivational Deficiency Disorder (laziness), both of which are raging through the sons and daughters of Generation Xers across the world. Also, you better update yourself: Viagra is not just for erectile dysfunctions (a condition sold as a disease not so long ago), but is now branded as a “lifestyle enhancer” for anyone to use.

So how does a medical problem exist in the first place? Why are certain things problems anyway? Am I not allowed to feel sad or shy? Am I not allowed to have bad sex sometimes? Can I not lie in the park for an afternoon and do nothing?

Of course I am allowed to. Most psychiatrists will tell you that a condition only becomes a problem when it socially inhibits you in a way that exceeds your comfort levels, or is destructive to either you or others.

If you feel uncomfortable in a room of Nazis, do you have Nazi Phobia Disorder (NPD)? The answer is YES if you are trying to fit into the Nazi peer group, or if the Nazis had won the war and took over the world.

The question becomes: What kind of society is so full of diseases that one needs to take a cocktail of pills in order to feel comfortable in it? A high society indeed.

Links:
RLS Foundation: http://www.rls.org
Requip (ropinirole HCL) TV Commercial: http://www.requip.com/tv_commercial.html
Over-hyping Diseases to Boost Sales Article:
http://www.anxiety-and-depression-solutions.com/articles/news/041206drugmarketing.php

Yesterday I listed the CIA World Factbook as Site of the Day. Seems today the NSA wants to be preferred site.

Disturbingly, the USA Today reports that the National Security Agency has made a database that stores every telephone call made inside the US. AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth have been secretly sharing this data.

The database organizes calls for easy access. If a particular phone number is of interest, for whatever unwarranted reason, the NSA can access a web of contacts and contacts of contacts surrounding that number. The program is supposed to analyze only call patterns and not actually listen to or record conversations; however, no warrants are needed to spy, and all NSA activities are classified. Who is to say how it is actually used.

Well, Bush is to say. “The privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities,” he told reporters in a reactive damage-control press hearing. “We’re not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans. Our efforts are focused on links to al-Qaeda and their known affiliates. So far, we’ve been very successful in preventing another attack on our soil.”

US intelligence has failed to prevent innumerous off-soil attacks against US civilians, troops, and embassies. But they have managed to arrest one person–and only one–for on-soil post-911 activities. That person was Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, who was caught because a flight attendant saw him trying to light his shoe on fire while the plane was in mid-air.

I went to the NSA’s website to learn more, and found that their site was mostly dedicated to the special children’s page. Cartoons and kids are harmless, right? Best to associate with the innocence of children. Sort of like oil and automobile companies advertising how environmentally friendly they are, or sweatshops and Republicans associating with workers’ rights.

Just because technology can let you do something, does not mean you should do it.

The repercussions of the NSA’s spy programs will certainly encourage ill-will. When the rich get richer, and the poor stay poor, and those who are privileged start spying on the poor… a new terrorist is born.

A wonderful life? Every time a cell rings a terrorist gets its wings.

NSA: http://www.nsa.gov
USA Today Article:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm

Did you know that the Dominican Republic spends nothing on military?

Did you know that Grenada and the Faroe Islands have the lowest male-to-female ratio at birth (with an even 1:1), whereas Armenia has the highest (1.17 males to females)?

The CIA World Factbook allows you to:

• View flags and maps of the world.
• Lookup international abbreviations, organizations, and groups.
• Learn about each country, covering geography, people, government, economy, communications, transportation, military, and current transnational issues.
• Rank countries by debt, HIV infection, airports, oil production, and more.
• Review the CIA’s 10-Year plan and learn which countries will be overthrown next (coming soon).

The data is wrapped in a retro-futuristic control panel, with an “intelligent-looking” silver and blue design:

Visit their URL to take a look:

https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/

The roof of the Hindu temple is based on a square grid with each square belonging to a deity. The square in the center represents the temple deity, and the outer squares cover gods of lower rank. The temple is a mandala modeling the cosmos, offering paths of transcendence for those who enter its doors.

5000 years ago, in Vedic India, forms of sexuality such as polygamy, prostitution, sexually explicit art, and courtesans were prevalent. Homosexuality was recognized as a separate and third nature (tritiya-prakriti). Third-gender citizens were incorporated into society, especially within artisan and monastic communities. Millennia later, the teachings of Tantra and Kamasutra matured a discourse of sexual flexibility… literally.

By the 10th century, all forms of sexual depiction, ranging from erotic attitudes of men, women, gods, goddesses, and aristocracy, to the ascetics of group sexuality and bestiality, were boldly displayed on the exteriors and in the interiors of their holy temples. A lack of sexual openness were symptoms of the blind and misguided.

Gradually, the influences of ritualistic priests, puritanical Islamic elements, and the Victorian English placed taboos and an emphasis of privacy upon sex. Sex became closeted, a moral duty in a long term marriage relationship, and a base desire that hindered spiritual congress.

The 1960s and 1970s marked a resurgence in sexual liberalism, free love, and neo-Tantric attitudes, but later met the same conservative backlash and fear of AIDS as seen in the West. Today elements in modern Indian society may impose restrictive moral codes on people, and in some areas corrupt police departments try to get bribes by fining couples simply for holding hands.

Now as religious followers enter the temples, they shield their embarrassed eyes from the lewd deities surrounding them.

Photo Credits:
Outside - Official temple photographers
Inside Close up - Jukka Jarvinen

Influences and Further Reading:
* History of Sex in India: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sex_in_India
* GALVA’s Take: http://www.galva108.org/Indias_Descent.html
* Erotic Ironies: http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1607/16070760.htm

1) Nearing middle-age, successful, she wondered like a child.

2) She overdosed on speed while eating the finest homeopathic meals.

3) Long ago, surgeons had inserted a giant steel rod through her spine due to scoliosis. She wiggled through the night, dancing, electric, eventually falling from an elevated platform. Her back was ok.

4) A bubble extended 30 feet from her center. The bubble sealed around those within her range.