Jesus Wept

“In my experience going in to Hindu temples, Buddhist temples and etc. I have realized that Christians must be intolerant of other religions. Buddhism and Shintoism and all other religions that don't teach that Jesus is THE only way are lies from Satan. I understand that we sound close-minded and intolerant, but we have to be. There are too many people around the world that are going to hell because we are trying to be too sensitive.”

"Gonzales Said He Would Quit"

And the downside of this would be?

May Evening

     

When In Doubt

Black holes present a very interesting dilemma to physicists. On the inside is matter of some sort which must be in some configuration, but because gravity is so strong we cannot glean any information about the internal state. However, this also presents a couple of problems: If a black hole has no internal states, then dropping a box of gas into the black hole should result in a net decrease in the entropy of the universe—violating the second law of thermodynamics. If the black hole does have internal states and thus entropy, these cannot be seen from the outside since general relativity demands that the horizon be smooth. Yet we also know that black holes glow (called Hawking radiation) due to particles being produced in pairs at the event horizon. One particle with negative energy falls into the hole, the other with positive energy is radiated away from the hole. Thus the amount of matter in the hole goes down and energy is conserved. These particles are entangled (i.e., their quantum states are inextricably linked) yet as the black hole decays away to nothing the radiation is, in the end, entangled with ... nothing. This, combined with the smooth event horizon is paradoxical since we know that quantum mechanics conserves information, yet here information appears to be destroyed. Whenever paradoxes arise in physics it indicates we don't know something, and in this case that is probably quantum gravity. The reason Hawking and others have been able to predict so much about black holes is that everything happens on the event horizon, where the curvature of space is small and quantum gravity is expected to be irrelevant.

Enter string theory, which tells us that the scale for which quantum gravity becomes important increases with the number of interacting quanta (quanta in this case can be thought of as energy per particle in the black hole). Since the number of particles and their energy is all quite large, then we might expect quantum gravity to be extremely relevant at the event horizon. If quantum gravity is important, it can no longer be assumed that the prediction of a smooth event horizon will hold. Thus the event horizon should reflect the inner structure of the black hole becoming a sort of fuzzy ball. The entropy problem is also solved since strings can take on many more different conformations given an extra dollop of energy.

So what is the significance of this? Firstly, the detailed calculations of the radiation emitted by a black hole using string theory, which relies on the internal structure of the black hole, agree with the classical result predicted by Hawking. Secondly it points to a way to resolve the information paradox and perhaps a way to measure the internal properties of black holes (to see beyond the event horizon so to speak).

If you say so—but I really don't think so. I can see any number of holes in these mesmerizing paragraphs through which giant elephants might walk, and with ease. Yet in order to find this or any other subject interesting, it seems that we must incessantly grant. We must go about the internet and through the papers we read extending the benefit of the doubt, suspending disbelief, at least for a time. This fellow seems to know what he's talking about, he's on Ars (so the backchatter goes) ... and I wonder if this isn't the real exhaustion of information overload, these constant little decisions that for most of us, thank god, lie well beneath the surface of everyday thought.

For granting is not an activity of the intellect, but falls instead under the greater heading of intuition. The vast mind beyond that with which we actively think, and for which we are, or ought to be, eternally grateful. There must be thousands such transactions, in a day, an hour; it's exhausting just to contemplate. Two things then follow: not only are we saved from inundation by the trivial, this mind that sees all, absorbs all, doesn't miss a trick—and interacts with the world far more than we can ever know— is a greater intelligence within us, a more reliable body of knowledge, and that is more than most can bear. Unless you've experimented with your intuition, or been forced to rely upon it. Not but what it happens to everyone, but the experience is most oft shoved aside, suppressed in favor of that holy grail, the rational mind: I must be in control.

Which is of course why the general run of person can be so boring, but I digress. To find the world interesting, I am proposing, is a matter of risk. The willingness to suspend judgement whilst at the same time exercising high-level discernment—you're right, these are opposing tensions. It is interesting to think about the ways the two aspects of mind—the controlling, rational, cautious, conservative mind, and the other, more open, more suggestible, embracing and interactive mind—reflect, in a general way, the differences between the male and female thinking, male and female mind. Paradigmatic differences, which is to say, I know I am from Venus, so you have fucking got to be from Mars.

Paradigms which cut right to the heart of the moment-to-moment, largely unexamined assumptions on which we base our lives. I hope I need not spell out which frame of mind is more apt to result in unhappy turns in the lives of others. There's no big mystery why the gender that mothers the offspring has a brain that's been biologically stocked with estrogen and the propensity to produce oxytocin at the drop of a hat. Which is to say, the qualities of estrogen-mind are those which favor the thriving of the species, as well as providing a richer, more amusing stream of experience for its owner.

Next I will be saying that women, as intuitive people, are smarter than men—which, in the global sense, we are. It is also no surprise that the kind of intelligence which narrows down, provides drive and uber focus, is the gender that not only must win but conceives (no pun intended) in the first place of life as contest, and that there are only two human positions: lose or win. A more loosely held, wider, deeper, receptive intelligence, doesn't have time, frankly, for dwelling on the pissy; the complexity of being sensitive to the needs of the young without also losing one's sense of self, of having a separate existence, is a horribly unchoreographed dance that each woman must invent anew. Nor may she stop the dance, for years to come. Who could possibly raise a healthy child who had not some vital measure of this discipline, this supple grace?

No wonder many women would prefer to work, to have a career. Being a mindful parent is, bar none, the toughest thing you'll ever do, there are no distinct lines between you and your child; the two of you must make them—and only one of you gets to pitch fits and be adorable despite. A man, I think, makes up his identity in ways—well, in ways I can't imagine. One hopes his ego is also tossed about, and that he comes out of fatherhood a better man. But is he called upon to remake himself, many times, and from scratch? And would his zero-sum thinking be of any help?

I tend to believe every other accomplishment stinks, if you've got fucked up kids; that it is a sorrow and a nuisance and a reflection of who you are that never goes away. No wonder some people cut off contact with their children. How often, after all, does the sinner want to live with the evidence of his or her sins. Failure is a stinging thing, the only way to survive it is to use the information to grow ... but I digress again.

Such a weak, feminine mind: I can't make a rational, scholarly, linear case for a goddamn thing. What I am supposed to suffer, and in silence (yeah, right) is that in nearly every single case, I am more intelligent than the guy in charge. Okay, not a big stretch, but still. Nor am I alone in this.

If the alternative, however, is that women become more like men—which is one way to view the progress of the past thirty years, since we first dreamt our tiny feminist dreams—I don't know, looks like just one more maladaptation, another in the long list of ways women cripple themselves in order to compete. Speaking of Jimmy Choo's. But who's counting.

I expect we don't know what to do with our power, with all that we have. I, for one, contain so many fuckin' multitudes it ain't funny. Where's the help for girls with that? It's terribly hard to quantify the floating intelligence of the right brained, global, intuiting mind, never mind make a case for the space and time it needs to learn itself, to do its thing, never mind gain respect. It's like trying to put grace in a box. Package it and sell it.

So talk to me about the elephants. Hey, it's a Quantum Electro Dynamic world. Drop on by.

I Am The STEVE your CEO

And the Steve spake unto Ari and Hyatt ... saying unto them,

Speak unto the children of Apple, saying, These are the browsers which ye shall use among all the software that are on the earth.

Whatsoever implementeth the tabs, and render the text, and render the CSS, among the browsers, that shall ye use.

Nevertheless these shall ye not use of them that render the text, or of them that implement the tab: as the Lynx, because he render the text, but implementeth not the tabs, nor render the CSS; he is unclean unto you.

And the Internet Explorer, because he render the text, but implementeth not the tab, and render not the CSS; he is unclean unto you.

And the iCab, because he render the text, but implementeth not the tab, and render not the CSS; he is unclean unto you.

And the Opera, though he implement the tab, and render the text, yet he render not the CSS and he creepeth on the page loading; he is unclean to you.

Of their code shall ye not use, and their executable shall ye not touch; they are unclean to you.

These also shall be unclean unto you among the creeping things that creep upon the page loading; the Netscape, and the OmniWeb, and the WebDesktop after his kind.

And upon whatsoever any of them, when they crash, doth fall, it shall be unclean; whether it be any disk, or CD, or server, or tape, whatsoever storage it be, wherein any work is done, it must be erased, and it shall be unclean until the even; so it shall be cleansed.

And if any browser, of which ye may use: blink; he that toucheth the executable thereof shall be unclean until the even.

For I am the STEVE your CEO: ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy: neither shall ye defile yourselves with any manner of creeping browser that creepeth upon the page loading.

For I am the STEVE that bringeth you up out of the land of Windows, to be your CEO: ye shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.

This is the law of the browsers, and of the software, and of every application that runneth on the client, and of every application that loadeth upon the server:

To make a difference between the unclean and the clean, and between the browser that may be used and the browser that may not be used.

Comments:
Would you please address the issue of shellfish? I know they have not scales and neither have they fins, and they liveth in the seas and in the rivers, but it seems to me that calling them 'abominations' is a wee bit harsh.

Also, why am I allowed to eat beetles but not ferrets?

Well, apparently my fond babies have gone, slipped away in the night, at some point in the last, oh, three or four years, so that I feel called upon to post and thereby mount for all eternity this page, from perversiontracker.com, and if ever there were a dot and a com ... my god, what raw talent. And the commenter! Who shall gather up these treasures. Oh, all fucking right, the Wayback Machine ... but since my authorial stance demands that this persona called Zo shall stand at the center of the universe, hey.

You really have to know and love Apple to appreciate the way in which put on and reality weave their way through this Morris Dance of a post, a spirit that Cringely, among others, has caught and does so well ... the worse Microsoft does, the better Cringely gets ... I was once married to someone like that, but in the least positive sense; the lower I got, the zestier his outlook (zestier? I don't know if I even want to make up that one.) Whereas Cringely has taste, and manners. Okay, class. Okay, more class than me, are you happy now? I still now and then recite to myself, for the sheer pleasure of it, “And Microsoft? Microsoft doesn't have a dog in this fight.”

Which captured the spirit of the moment with such perfection, it was as if I could see Gates standing on the sidelines, with the same entertained-yet-clueless expression with which some of us are so familiar, whilst Apple and Google get to do all the interesting things. Like live in and deal with the present. You Microsoft shareholders are fuckin' lucky that the software infiltrated business, but I do wonder what you're going to do when they come for you, I mean, when the operating system crumbles like ancient, ill-made papier mache. I care.

So there will be shit flung at this post, on account of this post, because, have you noticed, any sort of reverence, even a play upon reverence, a gentle making fun of ... is unbearable to those embedded in lives of nastiness of their own making. Ooooh, they hate anyone having a good time. Oooooh, they hate any fun that smacks of love.

This or That

“When you look another man in the eye it means one of two things.”

He waited for a reply.

I was ready with the answer.

“I want to fuck you or I want to kill you,” I said. Everyone turned to look at me.

“Exactly,” said Paul. “I want to fuck you or I want to kill you.”

Oh tis such a cheery thing, to be a male. So ... interesting, so complex, multi-layered ...

Not. Oh God so not.

link: Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey into Manhood and Back by Nora Vincent