Leaving Earth

Happy St Paddy's Day!

The Evil House Elves

We are the Evil House Elves
With heads as hard as rocks
We live to leave the toilet lid up
And hide your matching socks
We drink your milk right from the jug
And flash our silky smiles
We torment Mother's with our tricks
Leaving underwear in piles.

We may look just like your children
So innocent and free
But while you’re cleaning up the mess
We’re making more with glee
There’s nothing we can’t take apart
No heirloom we won’t break
We use superglue for toothpaste
And your hairbrush for a rake.

We bathed the puppy in perfume
Two Hundred Dollars an ounce!
We put the cat in the mailbox
And waited for her to pounce
Made kite tails out of your evening dress
Because we like the shine
Filled the sink with melted wax
And poured in all the wine.

The shaving cream that formed the ring
Around the foyer wall
As permanent as wainscotting
Extending down the hall
Into the kitchen pantry
Behind the krispy snacks
Into your last godiva chocolates
Half eaten in their sacks.

Oh woe is you, tired Mother
Astride domestic bliss
While you clutch your broom
With the glare of doom
That even an elf can’t miss
Remember the promises you made
For better or for worse
The law won’t let you wring our necks
Without a note from the nurse.

len bullard
03/03/11

Francis Ford Coppola

ABC GMA says that Francis Ford Coppola is being honored this week for a lifetime of work. I say.. ++1. I have some particularly fond and private memories of seeing his work at the last of the drive in movies up the road before those were shuttered. For that and the movies, a simple thanks to an American original who reminded us what it means to be an immigrant, what it means to be a teen ager, and why war is never the first choice.

And apparently how to make a good bottle of wine. Best to you yours from the back seat of a Fiat 600 that now only exists in my memory!

The Speech I Wish Sarah Palin Would Give

The Holiday Effect: Using Social Networks and Cultural Amplifiers to Drive Download Intensity

If you're promoting your act on social networks, a chestnut to recruit is the holiday effect. Simply: people buy on the holidays. Market to the season. Sort of a marketing cosmic d'oh but it's fun to prove the merely obvious. Here are some Insight stats from YouTube. The first the overall downloads for the site.



The tall spikes are release times. Releasing often to keep these high is important, but a measure of amplitude range (think of it as how far a speaker cone travels to make a sound) whereas the peak clustering is the measure of intensity or hits across all properties in the channel. To create intensity, you want multiple properties. However, burstyness is a sign of coupling among the properties and the market: to wit, the Christmas cluster of products will create bursty download behaviors.

Notice the almost flatline performance until a year ago when the social network couplers kick in. The big boil at the end is the result of the Christmas Carol and Ave Maria productions getting the seasonal hits. You can use the video bar on this page to see these videos.



The second shows the Ave Maria download stats in isolation. As with all releases to a network I've observed so far, there is a big spike from the close network (eg, Facebook) followed by the secondary networks and revisits. If you look closely, you see the spike at Dec 24/25 and January 10/11 with low points at the day after Christmas and New Years. You can actually watch this pattern in the video.

You can see the cultural preferences in the diaspora of the downloads.



Holiday effect is an example of cultural product clustering, eg, Christmas records, keyed to the season when the money is spent and the themes of the people spending the money freely. Mercantile it is, but the effect on the download intensity is easy to see and these bursty effects are key to inciting the emergence of the act into the attention of the network spanning functions. or.. mo'like gets mo'betterand mo'noticed and mo' is mo'.

Safe In Your Arms

With all that is happening in the world, it is harder to imagine or remember simple intimacy and the joy of being safe. Love who you love with all your strength.

The Report

There is an art to screwing up and covering up.

Collateral Damage

Oopsie.

Deploying Assets

Evil is drab.

Eating Charlotte

The bears have a plan and a menu.

The Contract

In a web where nothing but money matters, it's easy to hire a posse of bounty hunters.

Ave Maria - Schubert

This is my Christmas card to all of my friends. I produced a version of Ave Maria by Franz Schubert.

Merry Christmas!

Virtuality Uber Alles

The hubris of the machines... and the meat that programs them. All Hail Virtuality! Resistance is... pointless.

Do You Want To Be President, Sarah?

These are a blast to make.

So when will someone finally build something this much fun and this easy to do with
X3D? We created HumanML precisely for that. Now...

AROMA Party: American Choices

Beautiful Boo

My wonderful ever beautiful daughter, Kelly Rene.

AROMA Party: Famous Modern Witches

Because our Constitution both separates church and state and protects freedom of religious expression, the AROMA Party must support the practice of witchcraft. However, an uninformed party is a party of ignorance as has been proven by past and current administrations; therefore, it is required that a study of examples of modern witchcraft be conducted.

Given there are many varying witchcraft sects just as there are sects of every modern religion, we feel it necessary to obtain authenticity, this being the hallmark of modern studies and much pop culture. So we go to the Devil, the original object of this religion to inquire as to the basic tenets. The Devil was happy to quote from a prayer he says states the ultimate goal or witchcraft:

The Devil: "... give us the power to trample the remnants of Christianity that are left in this world."

With this as our test, we present quotes from alledged practicing witches based on their own public remarks to determine which actually are practicing or have turned pro.

	Christine O'Donnell: “Yes, I have my personal beliefs, and these questions come from statements I made over fifteen years ago. I was in my twenties, and very excited and passionate about my new-found faith. But I assure you my faith has matured, and when I go to Washington, D.C., it’ll be the Constitution on which I base all of my decisions, not my personal beliefs.” Editor's Note: It seems her cheekbones have matured as well.
	Bill Maher: “Let's face it; God has a big ego problem. Why do we always have to worship him?” The Bible looks like it started out as a game of Mad Libs.” Editor's Note: News reports that Bill Maher is blackmailing Ms. O'Donnell to appear on his television program lend credence to the reports that a civil war has broken out in hell.
	Richard Dawkins: “A thorough reading and understanding of the Bible is the surest path to atheism. Of all religions, Christianity is without a doubt the one that should inspire tolerance most, although, up to now, the Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.” Editor's Note: Apparently it doesn't occur to Professor Dawkins that women might be Christians. It is a meme that escaped his Oxford education.
	Emma Watson: “I feel like a voodoo doll. It's grim. It's gross.” Editor's Note: The uncanny resemblance of Dawkins and Watson is well noted and may be used as evidence of the need to protect their basic right to self-adulation.

It's worth noting at this point that the concretely polarized thinking that leads one to post photos like that is not really fun, not really constructive politics, and is what leads to lunacy. We'd do well to take it seriously and consider just how fast and destructive a bon fire burns dry tinder before lighting it to drive the "base' to the polls.

1. Religions loosely termed witchcraft DO run the gamut from pantheism to Satanism. All of them are protected under the Constitution.


2. Critics of religion such as Dawkins, a man who give a TED talk asking for financial backing for his activist atheism do not broadly critique religions but target Christianity. They do this likely because of the politicization of Christianity by the Bush-era political operatives who used evangelical Christianity to drive voters to the polls.


3. Even humorists from Bill Maher to Jon Stewart are in the same camp as Rush Limbaugh when it comes to attempting to label political demogoguery as entertainment and promote their end of the political spectrum. While some are mild and some are extreme, the corrosive effect is the same.

For almost four decades political operations have been using the politics of rage in America cynically and divisively in pursuit of political power. In doing this American politics have become polarized and incoherent in the SAME ways that we often criticize countries in the Middle East. Religion is becoming a weapon and in a country where separation of church and state is a fundamental structural choice that enables the most freedom possible, this is destructive.

We do well to consider those that are doing this as unworthy of our political choices. We have serious problems and while we can treat them with a humorous perspective, we should beware of using that perspective to advance the agendas of those for whom such freedoms are personally intolerable. That way lies chaos and failure to govern wisely in accordance with the traditions of tolerance and respect that make America a great nation and a world leader.

AROMA Party: Religious Bounty Hunters

Maybe we should give religion a rest and talk about sharing the spice before we end up as worm food!

Join the AROMA Party! A good nose doesn't need a media rebreather.

AROMA Party: Economic Platform

The National Headquarters received the following from the AROMA Party Florida Chair regarding our economic platform:

Point of disorder, motion on the floor: I propose that the Economic Program of the Aroma Party be called by its Right True Name:

“Futilitarianism.”

Resistance is optional, but will be terminal.
Submitted on Sept 7, 2010 in the month of the Plucked Virgo. JTMc - AROMA Party Florida Delegation Chair

After some not so cogent but distracted discussion, the motion from the Florida Chair is inanimously adopted. To wit:

Principles of Futilitarianism

1. Given the economics of integerless investment where we can reckon the value of the gleam in the eye of the investor and derive unprincipled value from this, savings are futile, so the sensible act is to spend it all as fast as you get it. This is summarized by the phrase: Get It While You Can.


2. Investors in the current economic structures of fractional currencies where the more we spend, the less we have and the more we make the more we need shall be called by their philosophically correct term: Slaves.


3. Hope in a better future is contrary to the goals of Futilitarians. Since the eventual end of all things at any scale is entropy, cold dishwater on the barnacles of human existence, Futilitarianism captures the essence of the last declaration of the major philosophy of Futility: Why Bother?

Goals of Futilitarians

• If our party comes to power, we will immediately spend resources to create a world wide web of despair, gloom and dissolution. This shall be known as The Futility Grid.



• Futility Grid subscribers will be provided with free accounts but will be required to donate to the party any and all intellectual properties which they have in their possession. This ensures no good idea will be realized that reduces the overall value of the Grid. This is in accordance with the Why Bother Principle (See Above).

This list of principles and goals shall be expanded as received from AROMA Party members unless such principles and goals conflict with the lists above.

AROMA Party: Interview with the Devil Part 3

News Anchor: Tonight, we broadcast our final segment of Angelica Fulsome’s interview with the Devil. Tonight we hear why things are the way they are from the point of view of the most evil intelligence in the universe.

(in a comfortable chair, dressed in a low-cut short dress, perfectly styled, Angelica confronts The Devil dressed in fire and The Gap).


Angelica: I see you came dressed for a show

The Devil: I see you did the same.

Angelica: I dress professionally for the occasion.

The Devil: So do I.

Angelica: But you are the Devil. Do you just make up an appearance depending on the show? More precisely for the church? Are you different for different churches?

The Devil: Yes. But isn’t religion just theater, a show of lights, ritual, pomp and circumstance?

Angelica: Surely it has more value than that.

The Devil: Does it? How many wars are spiritual wars fought in the name of religion? Isn’t the very spirit of this time one of conflict among religious people?

Angelica: I don’t think so. I think people believe differently and fight about that, but we should respect all religions.

The Devil: How can you do that and not contradict yourself? Can they all be true?

Angelica: That isn’t reality.

The Devil: Isn’t reality a show? Is this image you see in front of you real or unreal? (Devil produces a Five dollar bill). Is this real?

Angelica: Of course. That’s a five dollar bill.

The Devil: What is it good for? Can you eat it?

Angelica: Well, no. But I can buy something to eat with it.

The Devil: I’m like money. I’m created out of nothing and have no value. Nothing buys a lot of evil.

Angelica: How?

The Devil: Nothing from nothing gets nothing. With debt. Make enough of them and evil is certain. Gaps.

Angelica: But I have to work for money.

The Devil: Do you? I think you work for debt. You work to service debt. Debt rises as more money is created. Interest increases it more. You have to work more to pay more and if you don’t, the bank will take back what you bought and mistakenly think you own. There is always more debt than principal. The bank always provides more debt and the biggest bank prints more money. It is only real in the books. It is a book of gaps. Only the creator can create ex nihilo, excuse me, from nothing. If you service the gaps, you serve… Me. You are my slave. Well, practically speaking, I’m nothing. You work for my minions.

Angelica: Minions?

The Devil: The other golfers. They are my administration. My managers. And practically, your owners.

Angelica: Why them?

The Devil: I corrupted them with power, property and more than that with the belief that the values they are raised with, given as children, are inherently right, worth dieing for, worth conquering others to perpetuate. But even that was not possible if they had not been gap-filled. Where one would find concern for others, they substitute money and tell themselves they will use that to help others. Then they go play golf and trade the money among themselves, small bets on their businesses, on the game. They have that fatal flaw your philosophers call hubris: that they can behave as gods. They can only imitate them and in doing that, they create more gaps, a bigger lie. They behave like me.

Angelica: How does this continue?

The Devil: They convince you that it is in your best interests to buy those shoes, a half size too small. They convince you that if you buy those shoes they will pay you more and you can buy more shoes, all a half size too small.

Angelica: And if I choose not to buy a half size too small?

The Devil: (Laughter). Miss Fulsome, look around you. You are surrounded by competitors happy to buy them and my minions will see to it they get your job. You will mess up your health to improve your social status. You will accept any painful act to make it to the top. You will humiliate yourselves even deny yourselves the most wonderful ecstacies. Look at the conservatives of any religion you can name. The first thing they do is convince you good sex is evil but bad sex is necessary to procreate. Then you have to teach your children the same warped stuff except they figure it out and for a few years, have a good time. Then they become ambitious to get ahead in life and that requires them to be guilty about their pleasures so they will fit in. So they forget about good sex in the marriage and begin to cheat to have it. Good is bad. Bad is good. How can anything I make up be more evil than that? No wonder you like war so much. If I were you I'd want to kill you too. Religion is the conveyor belt of emotional hang ups.

Angelica: Yet you support religion.

The Devil: Oh, yes.

Angelica: Any in particular?

The Devil: All of them.

Angelica: Are some more you nemesis than others? Certainly some are not corrupted by your… minions.

The Devil: None. Don’t confuse religion with spirituality. Religion is a show, a parade of lights, sets, songs, sayings and so forth. Religion is coercion. It is how doctrine is infused into the young and old, how what is presented becomes what is believed.

Angelica: So the bigger the show, the greater the corruption?

The Devil: No, not at all. To each according to their needs and from each according to their gifts, isn’t that the saying? You think it is religion vs evil. It is good vs evil and evil is very lazy. In fact, I distribute minions proportionally according to the rooms. Statistically.

Angelica: So if there are ten worshippers, three are devils?

The Devil: Well, not exactly, but something like that. The job is not to crush the good. The job is to corrupt the good. Do you remember the movie, “Becket”?

Angelica: I think so.

The Devil: The advice Becket gives describes it … perfectly: "A good occupational force must never crush. It must corrupt" Evil isn’t something one religion has and the other doesn’t. Evil is like buttered bread; best served when spread from edge to edge. I can corrupt with an idea as easily as money as long as that idea does not serve your best interest and the interests of those close to you. I can corrupt your beliefs with your beliefs if your goal is to preserve those beliefs when they no longer or even ever were in your best interests. Religion can be good or evil like law. It is really a question of good vs evil.

Angelica: Why is it if you are so powerful with so many minions you haven’t crushed goodness altogether?

The Devil: An excellent question: an empty vessal is aware of its emptiness or it cannot be a vessal. Even if there is no there there, there is there. That is the power of locale. The closer you get the more there you are and where you are matters more than where you are not.

Angelica: How is that possible?

The Devil: Who cleans my house?

Angelica: You said, “Brownian motion.”

The Devil: And Brownian motion is?

Angelica: I looked it up. Brownian motion is the random movement of particles suspended in a fluid. Dust?

The Devil: Dust ‘in motion’. As long as it is moving, it is changing and as long as there is change there is the possibility of order emerging from the randomness.

Angelica: And you wish to stop that motion.

The Devil: Wish it? Maybe sometimes. Others of course not. The power of locale also enables elites to take control of resources and stop change. It's all just coercion. If you are coerced to do something against your best interests to belong to a group like a religion, then good for evil. If you are coerced to do something in your best interests, then good for good. As for me, I am nothing and how does nothing stop something in motion. No, the best I can do is to make you unaware of it, to distract you with shoes a half size too small so you will be perpetually uncomfortable, to be in pain. I make you suffer and that distracts you enough so that even if you occasionally consider the spiritual, you dismiss it quickly because well, it doesn’t get you new shoes and without new shoes, someone else will get your job. Then where will you be?

Angelica: Barefoot?

The Devil: And hungry. But potentially spiritual. So I see to it you have enough to be distracted, and always hungry for more.

Angelica: And if I am satisfied?

The Devil: You aren’t thinking of voting for Gene Simmons are you?

Angelica: No. I’m told that is just a rumor.

The Devil: Alrighty then, let’s see to it that it remains only a rumor. A distraction. If you ever consider that you can affect that random motion, then it can be ordered. You can make that change.

Angelica: Not God?

The Devil: You have to pick the change. You have to desire it.

Angelica: And that desire?

The Devil: Is spirit. This is what I and my minions work to keep you from realizing: awareness is spirit, it is the motion of the universe, the engine of change from which comes… order.

Angelica: What causes the motion? Light?

The Devil: No. Light enables you to be aware of the motion. The motion begins with the very smallest things that you cannot see and builds up as the small gathers into the large until you can see it. As long as things are divided instead of whole, there are gaps and the gaps become imbalance. The very tiniest gap causes the very tiniest thing to move in the direction of the gap. Very small motions move ever larger things.

Angelica: Then light is not spirit?

The Devil: No. Light enables spirit to be aware of itself.

Angelica: How is this possible?

The Devil: I don’t know. God gave rock n roll to you?

Angelica: A gap then in the knowledge of evil?

The Devil: A gap in evil’s knowledge of good.

Angelica: And where there is no motion?

The Devil: The dancers fall down? (smiles) There is only cold. I am very much a fan of cold.

Angelica: (Sneeze!)

The Devil: Bless you!

Angelica: You are…

The Devil: Am polite. Politics. I invented politics. I am the perpetual candidate. If politics is the art of getting funded to preserve the status quo, then it is the game where you trade-off information for money. As the campaign contributor, I give you money to keep you comfortably uninformed. Think of it as DementiaCraft. I know it makes you mad. The madder you get, the more demented you act.

Angelica: I don’t get that. You will run for office?

The Devil: No. I don’t have to. All of the parties run against me. Pick any party. Eventually they demonize their opponent. Their consultants tell them they have to to win.

Angelica: And the consultants…

The Devil: Are mine. Body, soul and Beamer. And to get the money…

Angelica: They play golf.

The Devil: (Smiles) In tight shoes.

Angelica: So you always win.

The Devil: Sadly for me, no. I lose more than I win.

Angelica: I don’t see.

The Devil: Well at least you see that. If I always won this planet would be a frozen ball of ice like Mars. I won there. Here, no, look around you. Isn’t this a perfectly beautiful day? Are you hungry or cold? Are your friends well? Are your pets fat? No I don’t always win.

Angelica: Why not? You play all the games, you control money, you control the people who have the power. Why can’t you just blow it all up? You’re the Devil.

The Devil: Because you keep filling the gaps. Sometimes with mortar; sometimes with brick; sometimes with learning, with imagination, with laughter, with love. Community, communion, common union. Love.

Angelica: So eventually, it will be alright?

The Devil: No. There is no eventually. There is now. Here. Cold or warm. You think of good and evil in pure local terms as if you still believed the Earth is the center of the universe of the entire realms of existence. Yet you look into the sky and see thousands of stars and you know it isn’t so. Your scientists can look even further and haven’t found the end or the beginning of it. Do you think those are not also realms of good and evil? Of warmth and cold.

Angelica: I don’t think about it.

The Devil: You should sometimes. It will give you perspective. Let me give you a thought: if you were able and you knew your Sun were going to explode in say, a thousand years, what would you do? Party or begin to work on a way to leave Earth?

Angelica: Where would we go?

The Devil: Somewhere else. You might not know but would you try?

Angelica: I suppose.

The Devil: Every night your scientists look at the sky with powerful telescopes, they record an exploding star. Every night. Do you think perhaps one of those a year has a civilization like yours with people who want to live, who will risk the darkness and the cold to find another home?

Angelica: Perhaps.

The Devil: Now, there are uncountable numbers of stars and galaxies. Where are they going?

Angelica: Where it’s warm?

The Devil: Are you cold yet?

Angelica: No.

The Devil: Live then. Enjoy the warmth. You never know.

Angelica: Do you have a final word of advice for our viewers?

The Devil: Good advice?

Angelica: How would we know the difference? You’re the Devil.

The Devil: (laughs lustily) Quite. That I Am. Try this: if a man has a monopoly on the solution to a problem, he will defend the problem.