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dynamic interlinear tensions

This is cut and pasted from this page of Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinal_number

Pillar Babe

How it ends

“Tell me how this ends.” –David Petraeus, March 2003

How does it end?

The dictator dies, shrivelled and demented, in his bed;

he flees the rebels in a private plane;

he is caught hiding in a mountain outpost,

a drainage pipe,

a spider hole.

He is tried. He is not tried.

He is dragged, bloody and dazed, through the streets,

then executed.

The humbling comes in myriad forms, but what is revealed is always the same:

the technologies of paranoia,

the stories of slaughter and fear,

the vaults,

the national economies employed as personal property,

the crazy pets, the prostitutes, the golden fixtures.

Instinctively, when dictators are toppled, we invade their castles

and expose their vanities and luxuries—

Imelda’s shoes,

the Shah’s jewels.

We loot and desecrate, in order to cut them finally, futilely, down to size.

After the fall of Baghdad, I visited the gaudiest of Saddam’s palaces,

examined his tasteless art,

his Cuban cigars,

his private lakes with their specially bred giant fish,

his self-worshipping bronze effigies.

I saw thirty years’ worth of bodies in secret graves,

along with those of Iraqis

bound and shot just hours before liberation.

In Afghanistan, Mullah Omar,

a despot of simpler tastes,

left behind little but plastic flowers,

a few Land Cruisers with CDs of Islamic music,

and an unkempt garden where he had spent hours

petting his favorite cow.

--Jon Lee Anderson November 7, 2011   New Yorker

Head of Man

Western and University

Mass transit

Progress

Walrus

Frank Underwood is Richard III

This is cut and pasted from this site, entire post highly recommended

http://www.shmoop.com/richard-iii/richard-iii.html

The Villain We Love to Hate
Watching Shakespeare's character lie, manipulate, and murder his way to the English throne is a lot like watching the Grinch steal Christmas or Sue Sylvester humiliate the Glee Club: we know we're witnessing the actions of an unapologetic villain, but we just can't help but be enthralled and even amused by it.
...
This is partly because he's smart, suave, and politically savvy. He also has quite a sense of humor. It's a sick sense of humor, sure, but it can be pretty compelling. (When the hired murderers promise to make Clarence suffer, Richard quips "I like you lads".)  More important, Richard also has a habit of confiding in his audience, making us his confidants. This has the effect of drawing us in and making us complicit in his evil schemes.
...
Richard and the "Vice" Figure Tradition
Richard is considered a throwback to the stock character of "Vice," a common figure in medieval morality plays. The "Vice" character is basically a personification of evil and/or an agent of the devil who spends most of his time trying to corrupt mankind. Vice figures would often address the audience directly and would sometimes run around in the audience heckling people. This character can be a lot of fun but is also pretty one-dimensional. Vice doesn't have any psychological motives – he's just pure, concentrated evil, kind of like a Decepticon Transformer.

Obviously Shakespeare had all of this in mind when he created his villain. Richard is unapologetically wicked and is even accused of being an agent of the devil. ... Richard even refers to himself as a "Vice" when he describes his actions:


Thus, like the formal Vice, Iniquity,
I moralize two meanings in one word.

Although Richard definitely has some roots in the Vice tradition, his character is a lot more complex than the flat, stock figure from the old morality plays. Whereas Vice figures have no psychological motives, we can argue that Richard does. In his opening speech, he tells us that he's aware of his physical deformities and feels insecure, inadequate, and isolated. In other words, Richard's got psychological depth from the very beginning of the play.

P.S. Shakespeare's character Iago (Othello) also has some roots in the old Vice figure tradition.

Runner

up there

Einstein on the bulkhead

You Buy Mao

Mystery Door

Quote for the day

More than rich, more than famous, more than happy – I wanted to be great.

Bruce Springsteen

Western Ave under Viaduct 9/29/09

Picture of the Day

Acts

I've been reading Acts of the Apostles. I read somewhere that this is the only source on the first 50 or so years of the Jesus Movement. I use that term because the book itself marks the time and spot where the term “Christian” was coined. Antioch or Corinth, I forget.

One thing I notice is that they take a lot of boats. Every episode begins with someone making landfall, doing stuff, then taking passage someplace else, sometimes one step ahead of an angry mob. These were merchant vessels, of course. I wonder what they were like and what the travel times were. I always wondered where these guys got enough money to support all this travel. I think I figured that out.

The book begins pretty much the day after the Resurrection. In this telling, the Jews killed Jesus. Pilate found no fault in him, after all. Jesus does not do much. he hangs out being Risen and therefore the Messiah, but there are no memorable parables or confrontations. Throughout the book the main point the Jesus people make is “He rose from the dead so he is the Messiah”. That’s the pitch. And they say over and over that he revealed himself to Mankind; Mankind being, well, his followers. They make no claim that anyone outside the movement ever witnessed the risen Jesus.

Now, I have always wondered about the healing ministry of Jesus. That term healing ministry is one I got from a documentary about evangelical faith healers in the US in the 20^th century, “Marjoe”. And, like Oral Roberts and the early Billy Graham and legions of “put you hand on the radio” tinhorn preachers, Jesus was a faith healer. Assuming Jesus existed, its seems the most likely explanation for his after-crucifixion popularity was that he was a really good preacher. These days, by which I mean the last 500 years or so, not a lot is made of Jesus' career as a faith healer, beyond a couple of the more impressive miracles, which are treated as anecdotes.

In the first sections of Acts, we follow Jesus’ protegee, Peter, for a while, and it is plain that Peter has taken over the ministry. He goes around healing people, including raising one person from the dead. Always, just as the faith healers in the modern era, saying he has no special power, it is in Jesus name that people are healed. The healings got Peter big crowds to whom he could deliver the Big Message: Jesus rose, so he is the Messiah and by believing in Jesus your sins can be forgiven, all of this was foretold in scripture, there is an afterlife, and these are the end times. Better get right with God, time is running out.

Entirely absent from the book is any component of Jesus' message: nothing about not casting the first stone, loving enemies, accepting sinners, turning the other cheek, visiting the imprisoned, the meek/mourning/poor in spirit/peacemakers  inheriting anything, or any of the stuff that by my lights make the New Testament worth reading. No virgin birth, no voices from the sky proclaiming fatherhood.  No glowing doves. Nothing against money changers, for sure.

 I think a likely explanation for this is that Acts is the last book of the Bible, but was the first New Testament book to be actually written down. The propagandists had not yet made up all those stories about Jesus. Or maybe more precisely, had not yet re-purposed Greek, Roman and Egyptian legends that were already floating around to the Jesus movement.  Also there are a lot of explicit references to prophecy in the New Testament. For example, Jesus riding an ass into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, refers back to Zechariah 9:9, saith the internet. Much of the action between the Apostles and the various Jewish communities in Acts involves the Apostles wanting to sit down with the scholars and prove their case for Jesus by reference to prophetic scripture. Again, just like evangelists to the present day. Jesus was of the house of David, as foretold, and so on. For the most part they failed to convince the rabbis, and the book is pretty harsh to the Jews as a result. Acts is not all that specific about the references, and the NT fixes this in a way that remained, it seems, unconvincing to the rabbis.

The financing of the Jesus movement is well explained, as it was not in the New Testament. The arrangement was: you get converted, you sell everything you have and lay it at the feet of the apostles (they use that phrase repeatedly) and you join the commune. Not that different from the Rajneeshees. And it makes sense, because Jesus, the Messiah, will be right back, he is just giving the Jews time to get their shit together. The end is near so we do not need land and possessions or money. There is one incident where a particular couple, Ananias and Sapphira, sold everything, but held some back for themselves when they went to lay it at Peter’s feet. Peter gave them a hard stare and they dropped dead on the spot, first one and then later the other.

The Death of Ananias, by Raphael

No indication that he asked himself, “What would Jesus do?”  Except, probably he did think about that. Given that this is how the ministry was conducted right off the bat, it seems likely that this was the blueprint created by Jesus before his death. If Jesus was Billy Graham, Peter was Jim Jones.

The worship services were very tent revival type affairs. The samples of Peter and Paul's oratory are pretty well crafted, and one can just about hear the evangelical cadences ("Ju-ee-zus sa-yez..ah!"). The Holy Spirit would come upon the people, they would be swept up in ecstatic prayer, they would roll about speaking in tongues. Lots of complaints from the neighbors, especially among the Jews. The Gentiles ate it up. Women were plainly full participants in the services, not very Jewish, but very Roman.

So, whether the apostles were honest believers or not, they conducted themselves pretty much exactly like the shitheels of today who bilk vulnerable people out of their life savings with nutty, emotional religious appeals. As proof here is an incontrovertible fact: the world did not end.

Absent also from Acts is the suggestion that Jesus was God. Makes sense, the traditional notion of the Messiah was never that he would be God incarnate, I don’t think. The Holy Spirit makes many appearances, but is never referred to as a deity, or even necessarily as a specific actor like, say, a particular archangel. As I read it the term is more like the Irish  “craic”, the good energy generated by the people in the room. The early Christians had very good craic.

Jesus was, according to Acts the Son of God, but he was not God, the Son. The dominant religion of the day, paganism, had lots and lots of sons of gods, so that was anything but a tough sell. Here's a list.