Monday, June 30, 2008

Is the "Revolution" of the oppressed killing their oppressors?

A lot of academic ink has expressed, and orthodoxies of political dissent have rallied around, the immobile poor rising up against those with more. The idea has a ring of justice.

Here is an instance of young, poor, immobile black men killing a successful, UNC student body president, 22 year old woman. The black men entered her apartment, took her to an ATM and got cash ( their are ATM surveillance photos on the web here), and then shot her several times, once in the temple.

This is not just poor doing a criminal act to get money, that can be done easily without killing anyone. This is not about money, this is the immobile poor targeting the wealthier for execution. Take a look at this story and ask yourself if this is a form of dissent you will let stand. Autopsy of UNC student-CNN.

To me, this trend of poor young blacks killing whites, asians, indian grad students, and anyone not immobile and poor is unacceptable. It needs to be named, condemned loudly in the political mainstream, and earnestly fought.

The result if this cannot be spoken about clearly in mainstream media? It stays a silent war and the relatively wealthier will continue to live in non-mixed-income neighborhoods inaccessible to the pedestrian poor. This works fine for those who don't care for urban life. For me economically homogenous suburbs are a bore. I live in an inner-city with a healthy mix of people. The poor who feel justified in killing the more successful are the biggest threat to that healthy mix of people.

Crime Spree 1

Victim: Marjorie Llewellyn, age 72 , white. While visiting the Newnan Wal-Mart the morning of March 7 ,2008, she was attacked by 23-year-old Courtney L. Lockhart. He then told her he was going to rob her, take her car and kill her. LLewellyn managed to resist, and with the intervention of strangers, survived the attack.

Victim: Laura Burke, age 18, white. Lockhart held her at gunpoint on campus, forcing her into his car, driving off with her inside, stealing her bank card and attempting to rape her. When she tried to escape, Lockhart shot her, and fled leaving her to die.

Crime Spree 2

Victim: Eve Marie Carson, age 22, white. Carson's body was found at the intersection of Hillcrest Circle and Hillcrest Drive in Chapel Hill at approximately 5 a.m. on March 5, 2008.Police could not immediately identify the body, but at 9 a.m. on March 6, 2008 police investigators and the office of the medical examiner identified the body as that of Carson. Chapel Hill Police Chief Brian Curran said that Carson's death appeared to be a random act. Police recovered her car more than a mile away from her body after receiving a tip from a local witness. Police also released images from a security video of a person using Carson's ATM card.

The medical examiner said that Carson had not been sexually assaulted. Carson was shot several times, including once in the temple.

Laurence Alvin Lovette Jr. was arrested almost 24 hours after the arrest of a man who, police say, joined him in the murder. Lovette, 17, and Demario James Atwater, 21, were charged on March 11, 2008 with first-degree murder in the crime. Lovette is also now being held in connection with the January murder of 29-year-old Duke University engineering student Abhijit Mahato.


Supplemental Material:
More by me on the same subject.
Lockhart murder spree
Atwarter/Lovette murder spree
Loften murder spree

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Cellephony: The Anti-Hegemony

A globe of humans all able to call one another on a computer-based cellphone destabilizes and can defeat every evil known to mankind.

I was just reading Benjamin Galbraith's English as Technology (E.A.T.), in which he posits that English is the best universal language, and serves to advance all cultures technologically. (Click here to see full document on EAT.)

It prompted me to coin a more general term, Cellephony.

Cellephony, or maybe cellphonication, is the trend or agenda to put mobil phone computer technology in the hands of everyone above 8 years old on Earth.

As an agenda, Cellephony has these intentions or assumptions:

  • Global communication and computation trumps Democracy as a political condition for prosperity, peace and health.

  • Preserving ancient, revered lifestyles/cultures is itself a cruel hegemony, and putting cellphones in the hands of all is intended to end all romantically pure ancient ways.

  • A globe of humans all able to call one another destabilizes and can defeat every evil known to mankind.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Let Artificial Intelligence Fight Crime

Connect a global network of millions of these, and we are set for letting computers fight crime and terrorists. This is progress, this is beautiful.

UK researchers are working on fitting CCTV cameras with artificial intelligence, allowing them to more quickly respond to crimes.

The technology, being developed by University of Portsmouth scientists, would allow cameras to "hear" violent sounds and react, swiveling quickly in the direction of a broken window or somebody shouting abusively for example, before alerting an operator.

The artificial intelligence powering the camera would also be able to respond to visual cues such as fights, or violent behaviour.

Scientists say the aim is to allow the camera to react just as a human might, hearing a scream and then swinging around to find the source with the same speed as a person, which is about 300 milliseconds.

Over time, the scientists claim the AI algorithms would learn, picking up key words and phrases it associates with criminal activity.

"The longer artificial intelligence is in the software the more it learns. Later versions will get cleverer as time goes on," says Dr David Brown, director of the project.

Article: AI could power next-gen CCTV cameras.-PC Pro Magazine

Progressives in the class warfare game

Below is a copy of a post I found on a Seattle area current events website, and fully agree with the post. Progressives are using blacks in their class warfare game. Blacks are reinforced to believe all faults are in anyone not poor and not black. This ideology has contributed to the trend among blacks to target whites and Asians (anyone they see as more wealthy and mobile) for assaults or murder.

Progressives want so desperately to believe in multiculturalism. But the facts on the ground won't square. If you neglect your kids, beat them, don't read to them, plop them in front of the TV, feed them a bad diet, etc. then it's no wonder they end up in contact with government services. Progressives want to hide from the reality that ghetto culture is responsible for ghetto outcomes. It's not because someone has a particular amount of melanin in their skin that they make bad choices. It's because they believe in a foolish ideology and have that consistently reinforced by guilt-ridden Progressive elitists who love to use them as pawns in their class warfare games.

Skin color has nothing to do with anything. It's about bad choices. Speaking to skin color is a slander on all those of any color who simply work hard, play by the rules, and steer clear of defective color obsessed culture.

The racism of the left is so appalling, and it will continue the downward slide for all those who view their behavior as a function of their color or ancestry.

This is simply a false idea. All humans have volitional consciousness and we can all make choices regardless of our skin color. It's not hard for anyone to figure out right from wrong simply by observing the world around them. It is no secret that better choices will lead to success.

Don't let racist Progressives tell you that you are limited by their definitions of you based on arbitrary attributes.

-Posted by: Jeff B. on June 26, 2008 12:49 AM at http://soundpolitics.com/archives/010992.html

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

End of Theory, End of Models, End of the Fuel for Social Justice

I am announcing an end to social critique, at least as the most cutting edge and powerful means of social consciousness. Sure, there will still be millions who spout theories that see colonialism, racism, slavery, and aristocratic privilege as a causal circumstance for current social maladies. But these social theories will be a dialogue for those who can't afford the real analysis, which will be analysis provided by machines uninformed by academic social models. Howard Zinn, Marx, Zerzan, and the KKK are all antiquated preachers selling snake oil explanations of our world.

The person dedicating their life to social justice runs on a fuel of social models and historical interpretation. Social models and historical interpretations are now the backwater. Move the fiery indignation of this Anarchist, and that Marxist, over to the same shelf with the preacher who believes God created all life 4000 years ago. Continue to wave the red and black flags of countercultural dissent, but know your historical coherence is no longer a point of confidence.

All points of confidence come from giant computing processes such as Google. All else is a coherence of lies. The next steps for progress should be the removal of psychologists and social theorists from law enforcement and jurisprudence. Let the machines track the crime [like this], decide the guilty, and assign the sentence. Humans just intervene with their social models and pollute the process. After beta testing in the realm of law enforcement, move on to war and diplomacy.

Below are key concepts and phrases lifted from The End of Theory, and then a link to the article.

  • No semantic or causal analysis is required.

  • All models are wrong, and increasingly you can succeed without them.

  • It calls for an entirely different approach, one that requires us to lose the tether of data as something that can be visualized in its totality. It forces us to view data mathematically first and establish a context for it later.

"This is a world where massive amounts of data and applied mathematics replace every other tool that might be brought to bear. Out with every theory of human behavior, from linguistics to sociology. Forget taxonomy, ontology, and psychology. Who knows why people do what they do? The point is they do it, and we can track and measure it with unprecedented fidelity. With enough data, the numbers speak for themselves."
The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete -Chris Anderson

Friday, June 20, 2008

The Upward Spiral

Maybe there is a ratio of ever increasing concentrations of power and system disruption, for evolution to be continuing. For instance, humans have a higher concentration of power, able to use fabrications such as clothing, and heated buildings to live beyond the environmental bounds imposed on an animal using body heat and maybe a cave/nest. When a human goes to the South Pole or into outer space this exemplifies the higher concentration of power I refer to. In semiotics the written word is a greater concentration of power over oral histories.

The "glory" is not in the particular practitioners or instances, but in the practice. You are not superior because you can read, "literacy" is the superior "way". Ship building is the superior way, not the subgroup of humans who happen to own the most boats. A small group of people hoarding political power is not a concentration of power, but an attempt at reversing the trend of ubiquity. Thirty people on Earth knowing how to read means that writing is less powerful, everyone knowing how to read makes writing more powerful.

This greater concentration of power is the upward spiral in perpetual disequilibrium. But it would not be perpetual disequilibrium if it was absolutely linear, as absolute linear is a form of stasis. There needs to be systemic disruptions and challengers to to the upward spiral. Fads such a Primitivism, in which all concentrations of power are divested, are challenges to the upward spiral, But since anything anti-upward spiral is inherently not a concentration of power, it will lose energy and die. The upward spiral of concentrated power will co-opt and injest the energy of the dying antithetical challenger, and become stronger.

Progress.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Punk/New Wave urban culture versus Muslim Provocateurs

In London a Muslim woman, acting under advisory from anti-nationalist Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir, has successfully created damage to a London hairstyling salon. The salon did not hire the Muslim because of her refusal to not wear a scarf. The salon is currently being fined $7,300. Note the angry, dog faced Muslim woman in the news story photos. She sued the salon because of "hurt feelings". WTF? I thought it was common for ugly people to get feelings hurt. Also, for the style conscious, angry or cold stares are the new stupid.

How I nearly lost my business after refusing to hire a Muslim hair stylist who wouldn't show her hair.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

The Monadic Marketplace of Ideas

Wikipedia/Culture/Culture as Civilization:

From the 19th century onwards, some social critics have accepted this contrast between the highest and lowest culture, but have stressed the refinement and sophistication of high culture as corrupting and unnatural developments that obscure and distort people's essential nature. On this account, folk music (as produced by working-class people) honestly expresses a natural way of life, and classical music seems superficial and decadent. Equally, this view often portrays Indigenous peoples as 'noble savages' living authentic unblemished lives, uncomplicated and uncorrupted by the highly-stratified capitalist systems of the West.

Today most social scientists reject the monadic conception of culture, and the opposition of culture to nature. They recognize non-élites as just as cultured as élites (and non-Westerners as just as civilized) -- simply regarding them as just cultured in a different way.

[ Retrieved from Wikipedia on June 14, 2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture#Culture_as_civilization ]

It is into this pro-monadic and anti-monadic social science debate that I want to inject the concept, phrase, and meme (about memes): "Marketplace of ideas".

"Marketplace of ideas" seems to be an early 20th century label for all or most of what we mean by the newer term "memes".

Here is where I think the anti-monadic social critics get it wrong: there is one corporeal space, and some cultural memes, which upon implementation, displace others. When the displacement happens, the "power-over" occurs, that is a form of social critique in which the displaced, suppressed, or less used meme receives a negative review. This negative appraisal is not within an academic discussion or populist town hall meeting, it is the primordial ultimate ontology called "THE STARK FIST OF REALITY".

( "Stark Fist of Reality" is an old Church of the Subgenius phrase. I was once best friends with Hypercleets and hung out with Sterno. I am mentioned in some of the books on the church. Within this blog posting I am wielding the term with authority and reinvigorated meaning. )

Its should be stressed that this is not prejudice, but rather post-judgement. It is judgement, at its most impartial moment.

What did Lance just say?

Lance just said that the idea of untouched wilderness versus the idea of building Interstate highways were in competition. The idea of Interstates won, because untouched wilderness is not as good of an idea.

Intestates are better, according who?

The mighty god called Reality.

Reality has its moments, and it also has its continuum. These moments of judgement by reality ( in which some ideas get implemented and others are retired to corporeal extinction and relegated to the dictionary of dead things ) are not without review and reappraisal. We can review actions of the past, and take a different course next time. But this iteration is still a competition of memes, and they will be subjected to the same stark fist of reality, and some memes will win.

The anti-monad social critics have been getting away with a perverse meme: they hate the post competition phase, they hate the outcome of reality, they hate the central functionality of the "Marketplace of Ideas". The "Marketplace of Ideas" is a box, into it goes many memes, out the other side emerge less memes. In this the anti-monad social critics see a violent crime, to them the "Marketplace of Ideas" is Auschwitz.

Because most anti-monad social critics are mentally deficient, too weak to engage in dialogue about reality, and above all else too weak to live a life engaging with reality.

What did Lance just say?

Lance just said that New Agers, anarchists, and postmodernists who say "all thoughts are equal", "all things are equal", "its all just energy" are wrong. Wrong enough they should not be allowed to vote.

Now to Piss Off the Right Wingers

One could take what I've said and run with it to make the claim that "whatever has happened, is right and beyond reproach". More meaningfully, one could think I'm taking the side of 18th century cultural academics who thought European civilization was the highest aesthetic achievement on Earth. Or the early 20th century Christian conservative framework of higher excellence in Jerusalem->Rome->London->Philadelphia.

Tokyo, Berlin and Iceland all disprove those conventional lineages of superiority by the old pro-monadists.

The bubbling up of memes from folk music(s) has been great for the world. This is just one example out of many of the benefits of retiring the old elitist ideas about what civilization is. I once owned a classic music theory book written in 1938 that made the claim that black communities do not make music but rather a kind of noise. Reality has thankfully dealt that claim a death blow, with jazz becoming the one of the most respected art forms in the world. But what came to the rescue of black music? The anti-monadist social critics writing papers and lecturing to students? Or the Marketplace of Ideas working inside the heads of both white people and black people, and the songs of Chuck Berry and Jimi Hendrix becoming the monadic cultural standard?

I contend that the old conventions of pro-monadists were off base most or all the time. Not because they were mean spirited or politically incorrect, but rather because too few ideas came onto their table for review. We make a mistake calling them wrong because they were elitists and unfair, we should rather say they were wrong.

A short word needs to be said about "free market" economics. I actually support this kind of economics, which makes me an enemy of socialists/leftists. I just think the way lobbyists have leverage, and courts intervene to protect what society is clearly trying to kill off, are both examples of how far we are from allowing the free market to work its magic. Short of it is, the government needs to let society kill off the bad ideas.

Progressives need to rediscover the Marketplace of Ideas

Hey flat-hierarchists, know why you have no power in Washington DC, or even in your own home? Because if every idea is equally valid then you can't get anything done, which if we all did lived like you, we would die. It is actually much better having George Bush lead us rather than fall in the bottomless hell pit of a Portland hippie consensus community. We've seen the countercultural hippie way from 1968-2008, and it sucks.

Here is where I make the pitch for an innovative evolutionary step. Don't kill all the flat-hierarchy memes! Just go back to the "Marketplace of Ideas" as a box. The flaky, weak, overly sensitive anti-monadists were freaked out at the killing off of memes at the output end of the box. What was missed is the input part of the box. More memes need to go in.

Thats the revolution, baby. Thats the fairer world. Thats the better world.

Don't hate competition and attrition inherent in the "Marketplace of Ideas", don't hate THE STARK FIST OF REALITY. Use them, they will happen anyway. Rather, hate those who cannot stand having their ideas critiqued and not selected, and also hate not having enough ideas at the start of the process.

Progressives need to fall in love with THE STARK FIST OF REALITY. They need to become cops, bank loan managers, Interstate bridge designers, and hardware store owners. Progressives need to continue their anti-elitist identity, but lose their anti-realist stance. THE STARK FIST OF REALITY weeds out those who cannot deal with it.

Deal with it.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Network Consciousness: The Foundation

Through the 20th century discussions on the feasibility of human-superior AI ( HSAI ) was weighed down by two standard axioms:

  • Computers execute commands, and thus are limited to a finite list of commands they are given.
  • What computer consciousness there is, is not embodied, and thus can be lost in eternal loops that have little or no corporeal use.

But what about the database query and/or regular expression operating on a global network? Especially within systems such Google and Amazon?

Sure, the computer(s) still execute a specific action after a conditional statement embedded with the query result. It is in the query that we find the novel. Maybe decades ago the query result set was a less interesting place, with general public network activity so low. Post 1995 Metcalfe's law may make the query result set a much richer place for semantic emergence to occur.

I realize databases or log files have domain specificity built in to the data structures. What is open ended is the endless recombination of these data structures. The novel results of new combinations, fed into more databases structured by the novel data scenario, are then the next source of queries. It is the accumulating layers of novelty recorded, re-mined, and reacted to that is emergent. It should be emphasized that before the cloud computing era, such large novel configurations in corporeal space where sometimes apprehended by conscious beings, but were largely dissipated over time due to no means to record the configuration in strongly bounded language. Historically, the best means was poetry.

Just as animals lack a means to store their cognitions in a strongly bounded language, and retrieve many years after the death of the perceiver, humans have lacked a means to do the same for large social enterprises typical of a global economy. A cloud computing platform with access to a high enough amount of network activity and physical environment sensors can make that evolutionary leap -the cognitive grasp, storage, and reappraisal of global activity.

To turn the tangent of perspective, I'll posit that we already do this to some degree with computers. Financial analysis is but one intuitive example. Across all examples it should be noted the action taken after the analysis is in service to a finite domain of activity -whether financial, crime solving or other. The emergence hits a road block of containment within a government department or private enterprise, the exponential rise of value within the Metcalfe Law hits a terminal point. Terminal points are often death in emergent systems.

A jump start to the Network Consciousness would be a transparent, globally accessible system. Here is the sound of rubber hitting pavement: transparent, globally accessible system with all your purchases and every surveillance camera also. Finally, any computer could mine the data, any person could mine the data. Emergence is back on the table.

It is at this point in my spiel that most people say

"Wow, if there is Network Consciousness, and the Network knows more about what humans are doing than I do, I'd like the Network to be the manager of humans. I think computers would be more fair, and our legal frameworks already do not access human judgement, and are bounded by sequential logic. The Network would probably provide better service than legislatures and courts. I'm for world peace, I'm for the Network ruling humans."

Exactly.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Free Speech and the Long Tail

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose 1919 dissent in Abrams v. United States eventually formed the basis for modern First Amendment law.

"The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market," Holmes wrote. "I think that we should be eternally vigilant," he added, "against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death."

This "competition for acceptance within the marketplace of ideas" sounds like an excellent governor in a more linear hierarchical society, but in a postmodern age this changes to multiple marketplaces. And long tail economics positively blows up the "competition" part of the jurisprudent reasoning.

Welcome to the 21st century, it should be an interesting ride.

An Angry Black Male Murdering Jihad?

Crime Spree 1

Victim: Marjorie Llewellyn, age 72 , white. While visiting the Newnan Wal-Mart the morning of March 7 ,2008, she was attacked by 23-year-old Courtney L. Lockhart. He then told her he was going to rob her, take her car and kill her. LLewellyn managed to resist, and with the intervention of strangers, survived the attack.

Victim: Laura Burke, age 18, white. Lockhart held her at gunpoint on campus, forcing her into his car, driving off with her inside, stealing her bank card and attempting to rape her. When she tried to escape, Lockhart shot her, and fled leaving her to die.

Crime Spree 2

Victim: Eve Marie Carson, age 22, white. Carson's body was found at the intersection of Hillcrest Circle and Hillcrest Drive in Chapel Hill at approximately 5 a.m. on March 5, 2008.Police could not immediately identify the body, but at 9 a.m. on March 6, 2008 police investigators and the office of the medical examiner identified the body as that of Carson. Chapel Hill Police Chief Brian Curran said that Carson's death appeared to be a random act. Police recovered her car more than a mile away from her body after receiving a tip from a local witness. Police also released images from a security video of a person using Carson's ATM card.

The medical examiner said that Carson had not been sexually assaulted. Carson was shot several times, including once in the temple.

Laurence Alvin Lovette Jr. was arrested almost 24 hours after the arrest of a man who, police say, joined him in the murder. Lovette, 17, and Demario James Atwater, 21, were charged on March 11, 2008 with first-degree murder in the crime. Lovette is also now being held in connection with the January murder of 29-year-old Duke University engineering student Abhijit Mahato.

All the above crimes were committed by young black men and the victims were white. To these I should add the story of mother and father ( both white ). Two black men kicked the door in on their home around 7:00 PM one evening, made them kneel and the floor, and held guns on them. My dad talked the men out of killing, and the men stole my mother's car. They were later apprehended and are serving time. My mother tells me she regularly overheard blacks talking loudly in front of their house say "we need to get these whites out of the neighborhood". My mom and dad never spent another day in that house, so I guess the racial cleansing by the blacks was successful.

My sister had the misfortune to see 17 year old, and black, Joshua Leallen Loften blow the head off of Dean Worden. a white man, in front of his wife and children. My sister was at close range and actually saw the man be shot and die. The black killer was beating a 50 year-old white woman because she would not give him her purse. Worden had yelled at Loften to stop beating the lady, and Loften killed him. This was in pleasant shopping area on a Sunday afternoon.

Could we have a secret terrorism on whites in the USA? I contend that we do. Within my immediate family there are two incidents of black males terrorizing or killing whites. Definitely a pattern.

The most major social catastrophe that will result from these murders is the eroding of progressive gains in poorer neighborhoods. The public under threat from this Jihad will do more of the same: move to safer and more exclusive regions. The losers will be poor black neighborhoods, full of hard working regular people and home to a few militantly hostile agents.

It is interesting that all the above cases were solved by viewing surveillance cameras. I believe these cameras are saving us. These men are now behind bars because of the technology.

I would like to see the public gain an awareness of this black murdering of upwardly mobile college students as a pattern, give it a name, and start aggressively combatting it. As a culture we should be able to articulate a solution that pinpoints these militantly angry blacks as worthy of death without saying a general statement about blacks -a progressive offensive posture.


Supplemental Material:
Lockhart murder spree
Atwarter/Lovette murder spree
Loften murder spree

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Asperger's Self-Discovery Chronicles: Cultural Evolution

In previous postings (here) I have grappled with trying to explain myself as dependent on a certain cultural and environmental ambient. Basically I had claimed we are on different evolutionary tracks.

That claim about different evolutionary tracks gets a little more subtle, and loses connection to racism, by adding the ideas put forth in a Kevin Kelly blog posting (here). He brings up a central thesis of Joseph Weizenbaum's book "Computer Power and Human Reason", which basically argues against embracing computer use due to society eventually becoming overly dependent. From the book here is the general form:

"The computer becomes an indispensable component of any structure once it is so thoroughly integrated with the structure, so enmeshed in various vital substructures, that it can no longer be factored out without fatally impairing the whole structure. That is virtually a tautology. The utility of this tautology is that it can reawaken us to the possibility that some human actions, e.g., the introduction of computers into some complex human activities, may constitute an irreversible commitment. . . . The computer was not a prerequisite to the survival of modern society in the post-war period and beyond; its enthusiastic, uncritical embrace by the most "progressive" elements of American government, business, and industry quickly made it a resource essential to society's survival in the form that the computer itself had been instrumental in shaping."
-Computer Power and Human Reason by Joseph Weizenbaum

Kevin Kelly goes on to do a semiotic experiment. In the above text and reasoning process he replaces "computer" with "printing". He then goes on to do the same with "writing" and "the alphabet". What emerges from these word replacements is that societies have committed this act of transformation many times over the last ten thousand years. (Think of the US Constitution, it has "freedom of the press" in its forefront assumptions of human enterprise.)

Now let me place myself in this historical narrative: If I was plucked from this electronically networked, literate, secular, and morally ambiguous society I operate within....I would become of these :

  • dead ( excuse the drama-agitprop )
  • become less effective (which could escalate into less employable or divorced)
  • become politically evil/malicious as a fight response to less positive environment.

No wonder I'm so sensitive about where I live, and when I think back to my earlier years in the Bible Belt south I was a less effective and politically evil person. Since moving to Seattle, with a few years also working in Alaska, I have felt a deep sense of coming home. The city has a default literacy ( highest per capita of bookstores in the US), computer proficiency, secularism , and love of big nature (mountains and ocean) embedded into the cultural ambient. The ubiquity of these defaults works in my favor, and I contend that I was born with some hardcoding that depended on these defaults.

In the last year I've started putting the pieces together to understand my neurological type ( Autistic: Asperger's Syndrome). I am starting to understand why some places, and some ideologies, can make me extremely comfortable and happy or extremely uncomfortable and go on the offensive/defensive.

Starting in 1996 when I was in places ( Antarctica, Seattle, Alaska) that offered the ambient culture/environment for my neurological type to succeed, I did. During my tenure in schools (Evergreen State College and Antioch U) where an anti-intellectual and eco-anarchist Primitivism strongly informed discourse, I became many kinds of unhappy. While I support any type of lifestyle choice, most of the discourse in these schools was embedded with real intent to topple the technologic, rational, intellectual and literate world and replace with something more biologically bounded.

Eliminate me in the process. Eliminate my neurological type in the process. Eugenics.

I remember an experience in class with the instructor, Farouk Seif, pursuing an incremental part of the program to eliminate my neurological type. He demanded that our projects to be turned in for the class reflect a certain criteria for creative process. That process needed to access a pre-intellectual level. A place without language ( thus by implication without logic ), a place totally visual and fluid. I do not have moving images in my head. My memories are totally void of movement. When I remember places I've been, I remember the buildings, hills, trees, streets without people, because people move. I also have a blank in my memory concerning time. I have a diminished sense of sequence or duration (my wife noticed this in how I do not know the last things agreed upon in a group discussion). For me, the use of logical constructs is essential in managing reality. It is also key in being creative, I mix and mash-up things based in logical categorization, without this I am as lost in creating as I am in interpreting reality. My instructor, who had a political agenda in which all this anti-cognitivism served, was trying to turn back the clock on humanity and our technological dependencies, and kill me in the process.

No wonder I wrote a meme designed to kill Primitivists.