Hello.
Welcome to my blog. I am here to write on a variety of topics. The title of the site 'Fractal Journal' reflects the way I see the world and wish to explore it. I believe that everything is interconnected and the best way to understand it is through studying perspective.
I suppose some may find it pompous but I view what I do as,
'Perspective Journalism.'
There will be recurring themes throughout. For instance there may be long spells in which I will write about a single topic from many angles. One such topic will be water, the natural resource about which I am currently writing a book.
If you find that you enjoy what I do, please subscribe.
Ah, the rain…it was after all a rain-forest. Though we were careful to embark during a season that was dry relatively speaking…the problem was that we were speaking relatively.
We were coping… swimmingly.
That is we were in essence swimming. Though everything was waterproofed in a spectacular fashion…I kept waiting for something to give out. It was of course a relief from the heat…but hardly that either. The decrease of hell was but a scant degree and a half if that.
There were times that we’d have to cut through bush, and times that we could walk freely between massive trunks, shrouded in a dark misty shower.
No wonder the Indians walked about nude. Hey…maybe they were the first people to evolve…hairlessness would certainly be an advantage here…
“What’s got you so perplexed?” Dr. Cook inquired as he fell into step beside me.
“Oh just thinking about ultimate origins. This place sort of makes it inevitable. That and what a spectacle we must be. We are an utter invasion.”
Cook laughed.
“We are but a germ’s germ here. Even if we took the whole population of Brazil. Even with the deforestation…”
This was not a comforting thought.
“So do you believe what that anthropologist at Kuikuros village told us?”
Cook stared at his footfalls for a bit.
“Believe him in what way?”
“That the cities were simply a larger scale version of those massive grass huts? That the conquistadors were being too European in their imaginings. That cultural nearsightedness was the cause of their failures. They were looking for stones, causeways, roads – and this was wrong…”
“Oh well certainly yes as regards the Kuikoros. You yourself saw the ditches and depressions for the palisades the remananats of the plaza. However…our friend is a bit too enthralled with a certain glib neosketpticism. It’s an odd thing common in academics my age…they want to reform ‘Western Conceptions’ so much that once something fit for that purpose is found…they cease inquiring.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean they’re in love with the noble savage myth. I am too…to an extent….but there is a reason the Kuikuros and many others are fascinated and frightened by their own myths about the ‘people of the cloud’ that live somewhere beyond their borders. There were ample reasons for the early explorers to lie. Grants…glory…etc…but that does not mean that they lied. Nor does it mean that they lied to themselves mistaking boulders for bricks.”
“What makes you so certain? Is it Hoyt’s map?”
“Pffft…well, it certainly buttresses the case for alternative history. But, that history frankly stands well enough on its own.”
“O?” I said as I smacked the billionth demon from my cheek. It was remarkable how they braved the rain for blood.
“Well, yes…I have shown you Gobekli Tepe…you yourself saw the ‘Brazilian Stonehenge,’ and Stonehenge itself. Certainly certain clever physics may have been applied…and perhaps many a thing has the accustomed mundane explanation…but when one takes all these things together…and when one see the explosions of high culture…the surprising spread and syncretism.”
“Syncretism….So what you’re telling me is that if someone was seeking to create a new faith…a global faith…it would in fact be an old faith?”
Cook and I trudged along in silence for a great long while before he spoke again.
“Yes.”
I began to see Thornton’s prodding in a different light. He was not a G-man who wished to use psychological and chemical tricks for martial purposes. He did not simply want to gain compliance through memetic warfare. He was a sorcerer…a high priest in some mystery religion I was only beginning to understand. And we were all his unwitting altar boys…o good.
And I began to feel a very strong urge to deny the doctor.
“Yea…but come on…what could be out here…that we haven’t seen…you yourself have been studying the area for forty years you say…and you have not yet found a single thing resembling El Dorado or whatever…”
Cook laughed again.
“I have already told you…we are a germ’s germ here…much there is unseen beneath the canopy…and much more beneath…the soil beneath the canopy…and you and I hold a clue to original elevations, to a four hundred year old topography in the map of your strange friend there…” he said as he pointed to Graham hiking a few bodies ahead. “You yourself have seen the strange stones that we’ve been passing the odd dispersal of trees where they should be thick…no my friend…you are going to see something far more ancient and impressive than a thatched roof New York.”
We were again silent for a great length.
“Babylon ex nihilo?” I inquired incredulously.
Cook simply shook his head.
“Babylon is simply a fragment…and nothing arises ex nihilo…all physic things have a metaphysic origin.”
“You’re beginning to sound like Thornton.”
“So be it.”
“So you are basically proposing the stoned ape theory?”
Cook smiled broadly. “That’s an oversimplified version of an aspect of what I’m saying but what I’m saying can’t really be said. It like theoretical physics or any complex systems can only be understood through rigorous study. But…it can also be seen. And I aim on seeing it.”
And after having mangled, and torn, and completely stripped the two brothers, the mob dragged their naked and bloody bodies to an extemporised gibbet, where amateur executioners hung them up by the feet.
Then came the most dastardly scoundrels of all, who not having dared to strike the living flesh, cut the dead in pieces, and then went about the town selling small slices of the bodies of John and Cornelius at ten sous a piece.
Those unfamiliar with the Journal may wonder why a Russian with a Scottish surname has such a weird kink for Germany. Well, there’s Bach..and then there’s Schnitzel…!
Jaeger Schnitzel which moments from this photo was garnished with cheese, red cabbage, and Sauerkraut. Great way to recover from a 2 am shift! Perhaps the best.
A good friend of mine finally reopened the Stammtisch he owns and operates with his mother. It has been around for thirty years if not more. I don’t have a picture of its first iteration but here is the second…with which I am most familiar:
It was basically a converted trainstation or motel right behind a newly built strip mall featuring giants like Whole Foods and other yuppie delights. Considering this I’d definitely call it a hidden gem. Very Gemütlichkeit!
I’ve helped out at the place before and loved it well…so it’s sad that the location and memories are now just history. But not too sad considering this:
Julia’s German Stammtisch not only sports a swank new look but now offers several excellent German beers on tap! Today I enjoyed a Warsteiner lager and a Franziskaner Hefe-Weisbier Dunkel. This was their opening day and the lunch hours so I may have well had the first if not one of the first sips out of the keg!
There’s the bastard in all its foamy glory.
So if you are ever near the Midlands and need something that sticks to your ribs look up Julia’s German Stammtisch.
You may even run into a certain goateed fop having jam sessions and brews with the music loving restauranteur!
Here’s my cringetastic reporting on a local bit of news from last year.
And….here’s how it turned out…
I plan to do a bit more of this sort of on the ground stuff in the coming year. Subjects will vary but I’m thinking will primarily be environmental in nature. Thanks for stopping by and stay tuned.
O dear, it seems it’s time for some conceptual play….
Apparently these days the scouts aren’t the only people obsessed with merit. There’s a whole phalanx of YouTube luminaries and pundits waxing poetic about the merits of meritocracy.
I’m rather confused by this term or by the suggestion that we’ve ever had anything approaching a purely merit based system outside of sports.
The reason that I’m writing about it is because it has a similar contour to something else that grates my hipster stuble. It’s the idea of the marketplace…that everything is some kind of weird bazaar where we exchange ideas in a way that somehow mirrors the exchange of money for goods in the real world. This concept is often touted by folks who espouse and claim to be steeped in the classics. Which is odd if anyone is familiar with the esteem that ancient Greek intellectuals held merchants and tradesman…o but the philosophers met in marketplaces and forums to have discussions…so its alluding to that…
Yea I’m aware of basic history there eagle scout. That however is not the way you’re presenting the argument O hypothetical e-scholar. You SEEM to believe that there is something akin to a quantitive scale based on the qualities of ideas. That the DEMOS employs this and thus any given idea is subject to fair trade.
This view however collapse upon the briefest examination of the world of ideas. Just like in marketing the loudest, flashiest, or most familiar ideas win.(Memes work.) This is why rhetoric is more effective than long balanced analyses. If you’re thinking about ideas in terms of sales…I think you should examine what it is to play intellectual.
The marketplace of ideas in order to be a fair trade sort of thing needs to have strict rules that are understood and adhered to by the participants. This is patently not the case. There is no Roberts rules of Order for the world of ideas outside of academia. And the academics playbook doesn’t IMO provide very much outside of hyper-specialized goop. (See – Gay Chicano Studies – I think that gay Chicanos deserve more dignity than being the plaything of Aderall addicted P.h.D. hopefuls.)
Yes, but ok but we’re talking more about it like a contest where the best man wins. Again a contest requires rules understood and adhered to by the participants thereof. I do not see this.
Well, it’s more of an answer to the culture of gimmeedats, and millennials, and participation trophies, and and and and and….
I really feel it strange that grown men sit about gloating over their moral superiority to a kid who got a cheap plastic trinket cause their teacher was a hippy. I really doubt that this affects kids quiet as much as these windbags imagine. Sure, there are a lot of unimpressive brats clogging up the freeways. Their lacklusterness has far less to do with cheap plastic trinkets and far more to do with commercializing philosophy itself. Think about it…does a culture that values revenue over art produce more middle managers or Michelangelos?
No! You’re not getting it…you see less qualified people are being given unfair advantages because of institutions.
Hmm…institutional bias…where have I heard that before…
But ok, I too am annoyed when my managers know just as much if not less about the job than I do.
I too am annoyed at Asian students being excluded from programs that they are often immensely qualified for because things have to be ‘fair.’
That argument is unfortunately completely separate from the Weltanschauung that you’re painting. The pretty tidy portrait where a darwinian laissez fair machine exists to reward merit.
O but you oversimplify and that’s too sharp a picture and you are strawmanning and and and…
And is there anything remotely resembling merit in the concept of seniority? Is there anything remotely resembling an equal exchange of ideas before minds equally capable of grasping it? Or is it all just really weird fractally kaleidoscopic anarchy?
I submit that Oprah outsells Damasio and likely Dostoevsky.
Is a man without legs capable of purchasing boots by whose straps he’ll haul himself up? Is he really competing with Shaquille O Neal?
NO YOU TWAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT HOW THE BEST MAN SHOULD WIN!
The Fractal Journal 