the n y times is infinite in its wisdom

some of what can only be charaterized as the miniscule readership of this screed may have noticed i have been blogging extensively about what i call gardening and events in my back yard and basement...today the n y times is repete with their ideas about what what i should be wearing/utilizing as i work out there...

i am aging so i already have gloves and kneepads...no brainers those...the rest is superflouous and i am especially repulsed by the birkenstock...what would you call them? overgrown flipflops? one wonders if the shills at the "wirecuter" newsletter get a "small commission" from any sales generated from the nyt website...the times knows what i should think and how i should proceed with what is left of my life...they are, of course, horrible people and should stay out of my back yard...i don't need their advice.

you've been warned

the former secretary of state and failed presidential candidate ( "there is a special place in hell for women who don't help each other"...we will be getting to the embittered source of that howler in a bit ) hillary clinton...

whom i can only charaterize as being every bit as venal and corrupt as any other whore politician in the country...

has penned a paean to maddy albright's virulent american exceptionalism in today's new york times..."we honor her memory by heeding her wisdom" which was basically "we think the price was worth it" on collateral damage to iraqis from economic sanctions imposed on saddam's regime after he transgressed the empire's prerogatives with a grab for kuwaiti oil ( and we all know where that transgression landed the once valiant ally fighting a proxy war against the evil iranians...pragmatic naturalism and john dewey in american foreign policy...no permanent friends...no permenent enemies [ why we get furniture from vietnam now]...

only permanent interests )...the ukrainians should ponder that as we rush to aid them )...thery lie, cheat, steal, and legislate their corruption into "the national interest"...and the times is the mouthpiece/cheer leader...

and last, but a long way from least, another paean to an elitist whore...and paranoid kgb stalin wannabe...the resemblance in behaviors is startling.

civil government

"civil government, in so far as it is instituted for the securing of property is, in reality, instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all." adam smith__________________smith was contemporary with the american "war for independence" ( the consensus right holds no truck with "revolution"...unless, of course, it is their own...then it is "freedom" ) and i cannot help but view that staement as a critique of john locke and his "not too numerous a democracy"...smith seemed more egalitarian with his view that labor should be as free to move in search of higher wages as capital was to seek profit and that government should aid this...he would not have looked favorably on closed borders and border walls...he would likely have seen the concept of an "armed lifeboat" of sealed borders repelling immagrants and refugees as an extreme example of "the defense of the rich against the poor"...and yet one supposes that is precisely where we are headed as the world's climatic conditions deteriorate ( and they will...deniers aside )...there may be some success in repelling "the poor" however that won't preclude what will happen inside the lifeboat...you may stop immigrants but the internally displaced would already be on the boat...one reflects on the 1930s dust bowl and the reception the okies received on their internal migrations...

i'm thinking that as the country's climatic situation deteriorates ( further ) in the west those migrations will occur in a reverse okie order as people move towards water and those in possession of it resist the influx in varying degrees...what constitutes wealth, or what will constitute wealth as conditions change and how "civil" will a government that secures it be? for that matter, if things degenerate enough, what will constitute "government"? a hobbesian "war of all against all"? centralized bureaucratic authoritarianism? dictators love a crisis that scares the bejesus out of people...ramps up the herd menatlity...groupthink and torchlight parades...counting on rational discourse seems pollyanna to me...how "civil" is political discourse now?

time for abstraction

the plants in my back yard and the several beds i work in community gardens run on "event time"...their seasons have approximate lengths ( say ninety or one hundred twenty days for potatoes )...they take as long as they take to do what they do...conversely humans appear to run on "clock time" and i wonder if that isn't a mechanistic abstraction imposed on life...there are scientific and navigational reasons for measuring time exactly but how exact is it? no doubt increments of time can be delineated exactly in a laboratory...then again, "clock time" needs a leap second added every year and a half or so...exact in the micro, changable in the macro...even the calendar needs a "leap day" every four years...time seems inexact...what does "clock time" mean for the bulk of humans who are subject to it? mostly some form of control...time to be at work...time to be at school, to sleep ( that might be a natural rhythm that is disrupted by the previous two items ),"time!" at the end of an exam, time to do the laundry...it means limits, obligations...an abstraction...time zones, in this country, were instituted with the advent of railroads...making the schedules less chaotic...or, moreover, synchronizing the people who used them...and time zones seem fluid...the two northwetern counties of the state of indiana are on central time while the rest of the state is on eastern timre...why? because they are more satellites of chicago than indianapolis...the geographic nature of time zones is inexact...just like the "clock time" they represent...the international date line is an abstraction that runs through the pacific ocean...zig-zagging around contenents and islands...so date seems as arbitrary as time settings...and tomorrow we arrive at daylight savings time again...that twenty-five and twenty-three hour day twice a year abstraction...originally sold as an energy saving device, interests that pandered to the consumer saw it as an extra hour of daylight at the end of the work day in which to consume golf or beer...the uniform time act of 1966 set it at six months of the year...that was changed to seven months when dutch reagan rode high in the saddle on pennsylvaina avenue and to eight months in 2005...one senses a subtle manipulation here...it should come as no surprise that the u.s. chamber of commerce is all for "year round daylight savings time"...so you can have a dark commute to work for more of the year while purveyors of food, drink, and "a good walk ruined" can get more of what you earn for doing that dark commute...i, for one, would rather just keep my hour ( even if the twenty-five and twenty-three hour days are complete abstractions ) and if i cannot because the hegemons decree otherwise ( concerned over my having too much latitude in governing my time..they take after thomas more's utopia in this respect ) i will refusae to be a consumer during that last hour of daylight simply on principle

self actualization

"what changes everything is that in bad faith it is from myself that i am concealing the truth." being and nothingness p.90__________________"consider the cafe waiter. his movements are animated and intent, a bit too precise, a bit too quick, he approaches customers with a bit too much animation, he leans forward a bit too attentively, his voice and his eyes expressing an interest in the customer's order that is a bit too solicitous.finaly, here he is, on his way back, and attenpting in his attitued to imitate the inflexible exactitude of some sort of automaton while carrying his tray with the recklessness characteristic of a tightrope walker, holding it in a constantly unstable and constantly disrupted equilibrium which he constantly restores with a light movement of his arm and his hand. his behavior strikes us as an act...one does not need to watch him for long to realize he is playing at being a cafe waiter." being and nothingness pp 103-4________________if the waiter was playing at being a waiter, paulie sartre was playing at being a philosopher, and playing at one with little understanding of what the waiter was up to...paulie maintains that," the cafe waiter plays with his condition in order to actualize it. this obligation is imposed on all shopkeepers. their condition is entirely ceremonial and the public demands them to actualize it as a ceremony."...so paulie says they are playing a role conferred on them by social sanction and lying to themselves about what it is they are actually doing...bad faith...the attentiveness of the waiter ( "a bit too solicitous" ) and his adeptness at carrying his tray ( i notice paulie did not mention any spills resulting from tray disequilibrium which the waiter "constantly restores"...perhaps skill is a part of the act )...so sartre, seemingly, in this string of subjective judgements about the waiter's actions and interior life doesn't stop to think that, perhaps, being a waiter isn't "play", but an act of sustenance whose proceeds may be a vehicle to an expression of who the waiter truly is...say a gardener or a writer...we all need to earn a living to subsist and we all need to be who we are...after all spinoza was a lens grinder who philosophized in his off-duty hours...and what about paulie? after he abandoned teaching he convenently made his living writing and philosophizing with his armchair "turned towards history"...so was he "playing" at the social ceremonies conferred on thinkers and philosphers while denying his true self in bad faith and using corydran to keep the words flowing? "caught in his own celebrity, playing a double role, civil and obliging in public, harassed and disillusioned in private, far from adhereing to the impeccable facade he offered to the eyes of the world he was in greater and greater need of turning in upon himself..."[sartre. cohen-solal p.404] who was palying their part more assiduously...paulie or the waiter?