A HISTORY OF THE INFINITE ~ A PHILOSOPHICAL AUDIO DOCUMENTARY

Sometimes I come across interesting stuff in my online travels, and even though it has nothing to do with politics, or conspiracy theories, or my own personal projects, I still want to share it with y'all. This is one of those times. I've always been fascinated by the concept of infinity, and this audio doc series (all presented in a single YouTube video) is the beek's knees. I hope you get as much out of it as I did! - Yer Old Pal Jerky

MUST-READ ARTICLES OF JULY 28, 2018

In a profoundly disturbing think piece first published at the Paths and Bridges philosophy blog titled "Notes on Syria and the Coming Global Thanatocracy", author Jules Etjim (get it?) has produced an essay of such stunningly high quality that, in my current exhausted state, I couldn't possibly praise with the level of enthusiasm and stunned humility it deserves. So I'll leave it to some excerpts from the first third...

The Coldest Monster 

In Thus Spake Zarathusta, Nietzsche called the state the coldest monster and we might add there is no state as cold as a thanatocracy. At present few genuine thanatocratic regimes actually exist but even using the most stringent definition (we use the loosest here), Syria unambiguously qualifies. Syria is a thanatocratic state whose kleptocratic ruling elite have tried to maintain their rule by freely resorting to genocide, systematically torturing and killing people on an industrial scale while using death, directly and indirectly to husband the populace in an escalation of governmental strategies to winnow targeted demographics and destroy those social ecologies felt to nourish rebellion. The genocidal destruction or disaggregation of some social groups by the thanatocratic state is accompanied by efforts to hothouse other demographics seen as compatible with the one overriding imperative: survival of the ruling elite. ...

Thomas Hobbes in Damascus 

... The Syrian revolution (and the ‘Arab Spring’) is the most important historical event since the collapse of the Soviet Union but has received little of the attention it deserves. This is perhaps because the ‘Arab Spring’ whose ground zero was Tunisia, encountered powerful headwinds after the early period of rising struggle between 2010-11. The Egyptian revolution was fatally thrown back when the country’s first democratically elected President, Mohamed Morsi was removed after only a year in office, in a counter-revolutionary coup d’etat staged by Egypt’s military. Another reason for the Syrian revolution’s neglect is the failure of the global left, especially in Europe and North America, to build a solidarity movement in its support. Rather insofar as solidarity was extended to any party in Syria, Assad’s thanatocracy has been the main beneficiary. The global left has been largely indifferent to the crimes of a regime where life is subordinated to death and biological precarity is the rule – with physical, social and cultural death imposed on incomprehensible numbers of people. 

Despite the suffering of its people, Syria is commonly observed through the prism of post-truth and nihilistic scepsis. Much of the global left has joined the burgeoning ranks of cranks on social media peddling conspiracy theories promoting the demonstrably false view that Assad’s murderous regime was the target of attempted US regime change while viewing Assad’s revolutionary opponents through the spectacles of orientalism and Islamophobia. This diabolical consensus omnium parroted Assadist propaganda portraying Assad as an embattled secularist fighting opposition dominated by Salafist jihadis. In seven years of Assad’s brutal struggle to smash the ‘Syrian Spring’, few have tried to acquaint themselves with what is actually happening in Syria or listened to the voices of ordinary Syrian’s – people who despite their suffering are literally either invisible or ciphers for the paranoid fears and anxieties of the global North’s citizens. 

In an arresting appropriation Yassin al-Haj Saleh invoked the seventeenth century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes to grasp the danger that faced the Syrian revolution, the morbid signs it was descending into a “primordial” ‘state of nature’ because of the brutal counter-revolution of Assad’s ‘neo-Sultanic’ state (as Saleh later characterised the Baathist state). Ominously, Saleh believed the revolution had begun to mirror the counter-revolution in the course of defending itself. Adversity engendered a struggle dominated by the “politics of survival” while the ‘state of nature’ was in principle antithetical to reason – the foundation of any politics. The fall into the ‘state of nature’ foreshadowed the destruction of politics and politics was the lifeblood of any revolutionary struggle as it embodied the autonomy and self-determination of the people. 

Descent into the ‘state of nature’ indicated society was “losing its self-control” and the crystallisation of a social trend present in the revolution itself. Within months the open, “civic minded” nature of the revolution’s early days apparent in the role of a variety of civil society groups, the visible activism of women and so on, started to erode as the people fought Assad’s “brutal power.” Saleh argued the degeneration was apparent in the readiness to resort to arms for self-defence and the growth of religious influence that saw inherited identities displace more inclusive, secular identities within the anti-Assad camp. Inevitably there was a transition from slogans repudiating Salafism while underlining the democratic aspirations of the revolt to slogans with more traditional Islamic or religious connotations. In the revolution’s early weeks, the street protests were “civil, emancipatory, and humanist” but quite rapidly the revolution’s “public face” began to speak the “language of Islam”. 

In subsequent years Saleh revisited the changing role of violence in Syrian society – the atomisation of the populace brought about by Assad’s ‘torture state’ and the problems the revolutionary camp faced as violence as self-defence became more indiscriminate and threatened to demoralise and undermine the revolution itself with the transition to “ultraviolence” or “militant nihilism” as Saleh would characterise it, in particular connecting the latter to the millenarian goals of religious fundamentalism in his own evolving evaluation of the political role of Salafism. 

Reflecting on Assad’s “killing machine” Saleh pointed to the impact of earlier military and civil conflicts in the region, the civil conflict in Lebanon and the coalition invasion and occupation of Iraq, to illustrate the elective affinity between civil war and sectarian war or what Thomas Hobbes called the ‘war of all against all’ – the ‘state of nature’ where hatred fed hatred and killing led to more killing in a mimetic cycle similar to the cycle of violence and bloodletting Rene Girard thought defined the periodic sacrificial crisis that visited any society. ... 

This is deep, dark, thinky, heady stuff, folks. Definitely not the stuff of lullabies and sweet dreams. But if you think you know anything about the Syrian crisis and/or the odd global paralysis that allows it to metastasize unabated, then you owe it to yourself to digest this essay and grapple with its theses and observations. Because it seems obvious to me that this dead-eyed raptor is coming home to roost...

*** 

Did you hear the one about the semi-pro online alt-right troll who thought everyone who didn't worship Trump was a pedophile and stabbed his father to death after an argument (even though his parents paid for the roof over his head and everything else for the entire 33 worthless, do-nothing years of his "life" up until that point)? No? Well, here's Joseph Bernstein, everyone's favorite son-of-a-Nazi-hunter Buzzfeed contributor (which is no longer the embarrassing CV entry that it once might have been) to give you the full rundown in his comprehensive article, Lane Davis' Civil War. After a suitably cinematic set-up, the article begins:

I knew Lane. I knew him as a guy who kicked around some of the pro-Trump, anti–social justice internet communities that I’ve reported on since 2014. Like a lot of people in those volatile spaces, Lane bore grudges, which made him useful as an occasional source. Unlike a lot of people in those spaces, and despite being a fabulist, Lane understood how to weaponize information, which made him even more useful, and a little scary. From early 2016 to summer 2017, we emailed regularly and talked occasionally. As with most sources, Lane had some tips that were good and some that weren’t. But even if nothing he told me ever led to a blockbuster story, he was smart and he understood his world well — talking to him was never a waste of time. I thought I understood him about as well as I needed to.

Last October, a conservative blogger discovered a local news story about Chuck Davis’s killing. He spread the word on Twitter, including another shocking detail: Before stabbing his father to death, Lane had loudly accused his parents of being “leftist pedophiles.” 

There’s a whole universe in those two words, one that Americans unfamiliar with the rhetoric of the internet culture wars might not recognize. 

The right-wing media has long tried to discredit identity politics by claiming the concept is a slippery slope that ends in the recognition of inherently ridiculous groups. A few years ago, though, a new class of social media bomb-throwers started to seize on pedophilia as a particularly inflammatory identity. On Twitter and in places like 4chan's /pol/ board, they began to claim that acceptance of pedophilia was the true, secret goal of liberal politics, the hellish endpoint to Black Lives Matter and transgender bathroom laws. This line of attack became frighteningly literal in 2016, when a man with a gun showed up at a Washington, DC, pizza parlor that online conspiracy theorists claimed was the hub of a massive pedophilia ring — run by Democratic Party officials. A month later, another man showed up at a nearby pizzeria claiming he was there to “save the kids” and “finish what the other guy didn't.” 

That’s the language Lane reportedly summoned as he was about to stab his father. A spate of articles quickly followed, thick with a “murder by internet” subtext.

Joseph is a skilled writer and journalist, as most of his big stories show. After reading the rest of the above article, you can find and follow him on Twitter.

***

"Can you fucking believe these clowns?!"

And finally today, for anyone who'd forgotten what a REAL witch-hunt looks like, Congressional Republicans were more than happy to remind us during their ludicrous, Stalinesque interrogation of former FBI agent Peter Strzok. As usual, Esquire's Charles P. Pierce has the most... 'colorful' analysis of that pathetic debacle available anywhere. Somewhere close to the end of his essay (but not quite), he writes:

There’s no real point in recapping the highlights. The videos are going to be in regular rotation for quite a while now. It was, as it was called at various points in the hearing, a kangaroo court, a show trial, and a travesty of a sham of a mockery of a sham of two mockeries. But it was designed to be that. It was a performance piece. It was not a very well-cast one, and several of the lead actors fell into the orchestra pit, but it managed to run from curtain-up to curtain-down. 

And there’s still the basic fact out there that the president* of the United States needed money to shore up his failing businesses, and he went to Russian oligarchs in league with a KGB goon at the head of an authoritarian nation to get it, and that we don’t know what he owes, and to whom, and what he’s willing to do to settle his debts.

But really, you should read the whole thing, even if only for the terrific zingers and hilarious nick-names Pierce gives the Republican morons who disgraced themselves so thoroughly in this exercise.

CLIP AND SAVE!

Check out the story below for more links and details!

CONTRAPOINTS ON THE FUTILITY OF "DEBATING" FASCISTS

Yer old pal Jerky confesses to having something of a semi-Platonic man-crush (or is it a trans-crush?) on rising Youtube anti-anti-SJW video producer ContraPoints, whose videos are becoming so aesthetically pleasing and artistically complex that they're bound to bust out of the confines of Youtube, which has become nothing less than a full-blown alt-right propaganda platform in recent years. Contra is too good for those fuckers--like Sargoon of Arcade and his vile ilk--is what I'm saying.

SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ OCTOBER 14, 2016

1. The Anti-Trump Master List is a mind-boggling compilation put together by the Quantum-Displacement Tumblr that every American of voting age should be forced to read from top to bottom - then quizzed on - before being allowed to pull a lever (or smudge a touch-screen) on election day. A few choice examples (all of which are extensively sourced) include:

- North Korean Dictator Kim Jong-Un endorses Donald Trump.
- Russian leader with history of human rights abuses Vladimir Putin endorses Trump.
- Imam of known Islamic Terrorist (Omar Mateen) endorses Trump.
- K.K.K endorses Trump.
- Convicted Neo-Nazi Terrorist Don Black endorses Trump.
- Chinese Communist Party endorses Trump.
- Serbian War Criminal Vojislav Seselj endorses Trump.
- Greek Neo-Nazi leader Ilias Panagiotaros endorses Trump.
- White supremacist cult leader August Kreis III endorses Trump during sentencing hearing after he is found guilty of child molestation.
- Russian Fascist Aleksandr Dugin endorses Trump.
- Trump brags about endorsement from convicted murderer and repeatedly accused fraudster Don King.
- Trump praises Iraqi Dictator Saddam Hussein.
- Trump retweets quote from Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini.
- Trump uses picture of Nazi soldiers in official campaign poster.
- Legal Experts find dozens of Trump policy propositions that would violate the constitution. “Trump is threat to rule of law.”
- Law Scholars agree, in order to enact plans Trump would have to violate First Amendment, Fifth Amendment, Bill of Rights, 14th Amendment, due process, equal protection, and the doctrine of enumerated and limited executive powers.
- The ACLU made a list of all of Trumps unconstitutional propositions. (It’s 28 pages long.)
- Trumps Immigration plan unconstitutional.
- Trumps Muslim plan unconstitutional.
- Trump pledges to open up Libel Laws on Newspapers in order to curb Freedom of the Press.
- Trump promises to ban porn if elected president.

Just a reminder, the above constitutes the absolute remotest tip of a rather substantial and formidable iceberg... an iceberg composed of frozen, radioactive sewage. Folks, the Rubicon is in the rear view mirror at this point. The disaster cannot be averted, because it is currently ongoing. All that can be done at this point is mitigation. Hop to it.

2. Just in case you hadn't already heard, everybody's favorite real-world analog to Tony "Iron Man" Stark has staked out an... interesting philosophical position:

Elon Musk has said that there is only a “one in billions” chance that we’re not living in a computer simulation. 

Our lives are almost certainly being conducted within an artificial world powered by AI and highly-powered computers, like in The Matrix, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO suggested at a tech conference in California. 

Mr Musk, who has donated huge amounts of money to research into the dangers of artificial intelligence, said that he hopes his prediction is true because otherwise it means the world will end.

Cheerful, ain't he? Personally, although yer old pal Jerky enjoys a good late-night, Epistemology 101 mind-fuck as much as the next phenomenologically suspect manifestation of Being-in-the-World, I suspect that solipsism on this unprecedentedly epic scale might only occur under a very specific set if circumstances, among which could be included: taking part in one too many cocaine-and-research-chemical-fueled brainstorming retreats with all your techno-fetishist Transhumanist pals; having one too many of your harebrained bullshit hunches prove to be billion-dollar market disruptors; being surrounded by a few too many brown-nosing, sycophantic corporate Yes Men; landing somewhere just shy of "institutionalization recommended" on the Autism Spectrum... you know, that kind of thing. On the other hand, maybe Musk is just experiencing some difficulty coming to terms with the prospect of his own inevitable mortality, and he is failing to take into account the incredibly terrifying implications of an existence in which instead of simply dying, he re-spawns again, and again, and again, and again... ad infinitum. I'll let you guys be the judge.

3. It has been one hell of a long time since I mentioned anything about Rush Fucking Limbaugh in any venue and/or context, both online and off, but once you listen to the above segment from his radio show, I think you'll agree that it totally deserves to be spread far and wide. It really is staggering, the lack of self-awareness on display as he serves up a heaping helping of conservative sexual morality for his dwindling audience of ditto-head dead-enders. Just in case you can't stand the sound of his oxycontin-crusted vocal chords, here is a transcription:

You know what the magic word, the only thing that matters in American sexual mores today is? One thing. You can do anything, the left will promote and understand and tolerate anything, as long as there is one element. Do you know what it is? Consent. If there is consent on both or all three or all four, however many are involved in the sex act, it's perfectly fine. Whatever it is. But if the left ever senses and smells that there's no consent in part of the equation then here come the rape police. But consent is the magic key to the left.

So we've come to it at last. In his haste to disavow and defame all things liberal, Limbaugh has had to come out against the concept of consent being an important part of sexual morality. Now if only someone would inform him that liberals are totally against trying to breathe underwater, and hate the taste of razor blades, then we might really get to something good.

SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ SEPTEMBER 20, 2016

1. Decreasingly right-wing gay Catholic media gadfly Andrew Sullivan has penned a thoughtful, engaging piece for New York Magazine going over some of the darker aspects of his experiences with social media over the years. I found it sufficiently reminiscent of my own experiences to be troubled by it, and to want to share it with you, the few dozen people who read this blog on a regular basis, because I think y'all might get something out of it. Sullivan begins:

I was sitting in a large meditation hall in a converted novitiate in central Massachusetts when I reached into my pocket for my iPhone. A woman in the front of the room gamely held a basket in front of her, beaming beneficently, like a priest with a collection plate. I duly surrendered my little device, only to feel a sudden pang of panic on my way back to my seat. If it hadn’t been for everyone staring at me, I might have turned around immediately and asked for it back. But I didn’t. I knew why I’d come here. 

A year before, like many addicts, I had sensed a personal crash coming. For a decade and a half, I’d been a web obsessive, publishing blog posts multiple times a day, seven days a week, and ultimately corralling a team that curated the web every 20 minutes during peak hours. Each morning began with a full immersion in the stream of internet consciousness and news, jumping from site to site, tweet to tweet, breaking news story to hottest take, scanning countless images and videos, catching up with multiple memes. Throughout the day, I’d cough up an insight or an argument or a joke about what had just occurred or what was happening right now. And at times, as events took over, I’d spend weeks manically grabbing every tiny scrap of a developing story in order to fuse them into a narrative in real time. I was in an unending dialogue with readers who were caviling, praising, booing, correcting. My brain had never been so occupied so insistently by so many different subjects and in so public a way for so long. 

I was, in other words, a very early adopter of what we might now call living-in-the-web. And as the years went by, I realized I was no longer alone. Facebook soon gave everyone the equivalent of their own blog and their own audience. More and more people got a smartphone — connecting them instantly to a deluge of febrile content, forcing them to cull and absorb and assimilate the online torrent as relentlessly as I had once. Twitter emerged as a form of instant blogging of microthoughts. Users were as addicted to the feedback as I had long been — and even more prolific. Then the apps descended, like the rain, to inundate what was left of our free time. It was ubiquitous now, this virtual living, this never-stopping, this always-updating. I remember when I decided to raise the ante on my blog in 2007 and update every half-hour or so, and my editor looked at me as if I were insane. But the insanity was now banality; the once-unimaginable pace of the professional blogger was now the default for everyone. 

If the internet killed you, I used to joke, then I would be the first to find out. Years later, the joke was running thin. In the last year of my blogging life, my health began to give out. Four bronchial infections in 12 months had become progressively harder to kick. Vacations, such as they were, had become mere opportunities for sleep. My dreams were filled with the snippets of code I used each day to update the site. My friendships had atrophied as my time away from the web dwindled. My doctor, dispensing one more course of antibiotics, finally laid it on the line: “Did you really survive HIV to die of the web?”

Continue reading at New York Magazine.

2. Let's go ahead and give this edition of the Daily Dirt Diaspora's Suggested Reading List a decidedly schizophrenic bent by having our second offering highlight something absolutely wonderful about new media and the internet: namely that we live at a time when wisdom such as that which Terence McKenna had to offer can be shared freely with whoever wants to hear it. Listen to this substantial, substantive podcast in order to hear one of the great teachers of our beleaguered age tell you such things as:

What psychedelics are about is deconditioning all of these culturally induced, sensory biases and ideological biases, basically it reshuffles the intellectual and sensory deck. And it’s a wonderful, salutary thing to come along for Western culture at this moment because we’re basically running out of intellectual steam. Technology is moving ahead lickety split without looking over its shoulder, but our social systems, our religious ontologies, our theories of polity, city planning, community, resource sharing, all of this is 19th Century at best. And so, really whether we live or perish as a species probably has to do with how much consciousness we can raise from any source available.

And this:

If consciousness is not part of our future then what kind of future can it be?

And this:

Culture is an intelligence test.

And also this:

I like to think that the psychedelic community has always been a source of visionary common sense because the psychedelic community, generally speaking, has not generated ideology.

And, finally, a bit of hope at this horrifying time in our history:

I think primates are most interesting when cornered.

Let's hope he's right about that. Listen to the podcast for tons more provocative, enlightening statements and interactions with his live studio audience. Then go out and listen to more McKenna podcasts, watch his videos, and read his goddamn books. He was a real treasure, and we lost him far too soon.

3. Guess who's back? Yes friends, that's right... outspoken liberal rage-monster Keith Olbermann has returned from exile after being fired from the ostensibly "liberal" MSNBC while at the top of that organ's ratings - the same fate that befell fellow progressive Phil Donahue, interestingly enough - this time, as a "special correspondent" for GQ Magazine's online multi-media platform. And his debut video is a fuckin' doozy. I sure dug it, in all its overblown, semi-exaggerated, and yet still all-too-horrifyingly-true glory, and I imagine most of you will appreciate it, too.

SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ MAY 31, 2016

1. For the most part, if I link to an article or an essay here in the DDD's semi-regular "Suggested Reading List" column, it means that I either endorse it or have otherwise enjoyed it. Greg Hatcher's essay for Comic Book Resources, entitled The Day Captain America Betrayed Me, ostensibly about last week's public outcry over the revelation that Steve "Captain America" Rogers has secretly been working for the Nazi-affiliated HYDRA organization all along, is a rare exception. 

Not that it's poorly written (with the possible exception of the lazy bait-and-switch title), or aggressively annoying, or anything like that. I even quite enjoyed the first part, where he describes his youthful trauma at a much earlier "shocking" comic book revelation. Mostly, my issue with this essay stems from Hatcher's somewhat condescending and superior tone, such as in when he informs his readers:  

Guys, this is how ongoing adventure serials WORK. They’re TRYING to shake you up and get you invested. It’s what you do when you have long-running serial adventure characters.

Agreed, Greg. But in your haste to belittle all those angry comic book readers who have taken to the Internets to vent spleen over this storyline, you seem to forget that public fanboy freakouts are just as big a part of "what makes ongoing adventure serials work"!  Why pooh-pooh people for reacting passionately when a passionate reaction is obviously what the creators were after? It's all part of the fun, isn't it?

Before moving on to our second and third entries, I would just like to say that, yes, I am aware that my argument could very easily be turned against my own lambasting of Greg's lambasting of those who are currently lambasting Marvel. I know that. Also, I would like to thank Greg for publicly responding to the comment I left at his site, which you can see at the above link.

2. Put on your Deep Thinking helmets, folks, because the Oxford University Press blog is asking us to contemplate the "Realism of Social and Cultural Origins". Before exploring the widespread but rarely acknowledged influence of commercial and engineering interests on the sciences, essay author Aitor Anduaga details the philosophical foundations of scientific realism:

Until now, the most known type of realism in science has been the operational one. The Stanford School philosophers, Ian Hacking and Nancy Cartwright, held that scientists are justified in believing in the existence of theoretical entities only when they’re able to use them to produce effects. They called this fact “operational realism.” Thus, the existence of an entity, such as an electron, can be established only through manipulation and experiment. What convinces scientists that they’re seeing electrons is no empirical adequacy of theory, but the fact that they can manipulate in a direct and tangible way to achieve certain results. In fact, Hacking’s most famous motto says: “if you can spray them, then they’re real” — that is, an entity is real if we can manipulate it; so, manipulability is evidence of existence.

The philosophical implications of this "operational realism", particularly in regards to psychiatry and political science (which in some ways is a form of mass psychiatry), are pretty astonishing, particularly when viewed through the lens of paracultural and parapolitical historical analysis. I'll leave it to you, dear reader, to stumble into your own epiphanies about how Hacking and Cartwright's fundamentalist positivism connects to historical technocratic/cybernetic efforts to quantify the ineffable, such as MKUltra and the like.

3. This is a very revealing and educational ten minute look at the ideological roots and the racial underpinning of the insidiously propaganda-manufactured "conservative" longing for a return to America's mythical, pre-Civil Rights "Golden Age". Watch and share, as 2000 hits is far too few for a video presentation of this quality and caliber.

THE ESSENCE OF WITTGENSTEIN'S TRACTATUS LOGICO-PHILOSOPHICUS

One of the most ambitious and influential philosophical works of the 20th century is Ludwig Wittgenstein's monumental (though relatively short) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which set out to do nothing less than "identify the relationship between language and reality" and "define the limits of science". 

One of the things I personally appreciate about this work is its elegant structure. Instead of tangling the reader's brain in syllogistic knots - or confounding it with epic bursts of neo-logorrhea - Wittgenstein chooses to present his seven basic propositions clearly and succinctly, elaborating upon them only sparingly, and only when absolutely necessary. He even presents his famous seventh proposition without any further clarification at all, which, considering what it states, is a perfect choice.

Back in the late 1980's, when I was a philosophy student at Mount Allison University, Professor Gordon Treash once suggested to us that any philosopher who couldn't summarize his work on the back of a napkin was not worth studying. I present to you now a very handy summary of Wittgenstein's Tractatus that was handed down to me some time ago, and it uses a non-standard translation of some of the phrases that I think help give a certain edge to his thought, particularly when perused as comparison to and in contrast with the more popular, standard translations. 

Using a fine felt tipped pen on a fully unfolded napkin, you should just about be able to pull it off.

1 ~ The world is everything that is the case.
2 ~ What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts.
3 ~ The logical picture of the facts is the thought.
4 ~ The thought is the significant of the proposition.
5 ~ Propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions. (An elementary proposition is a truth-function of itself)
5.6 ~ The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
6 ~ The general form of truth function is: [underp, underE, N(underE)]
This is the general form of proposition.
6.1 ~ The propositions of logic are tautologies.
6.2 ~ Mathematics is a logical method. The propositions of mathematics are equations, and therefore pseudo-propositions.
6.22 ~ The logic of the world which the propositions of logic show are tautologies, mathematics shows in equations.
6.4 ~ All propositions are of equal value.
6.42 ~ Hence also there can be no ethical propositions. Propositions together cannot express anything higher.
6.421 ~ It is clear that ethics cannot be expressed. Ethics are transcendental. (Ethics and aesthetics are one).
6.5 ~ For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed. The riddle does not exist. If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.
7 ~ Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.

TWO EXCELLENT VIDEOS

The Overview Effect is a 20 minute short film that examines the aesthetic and philosophical implications that arise when one gets the chance to peer at one's home planet - in this case, Earth - from an outer space vantage point. Filled with beautiful images and beautiful thoughts spoken by beautiful human beings, The Overview Effect is the very definition of "soul food". Get your daily recommended dose of awe today by making time to give this film your undivided attention.

OVERVIEW from Planetary Collective on Vimeo.

The next video I want to share with y'all is awesome, but for much different reasons. It's called Sleeve, and it's a retelling via puppets of one of the central stories of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos cycle of stories, all presented while a rather excellent progressive rock tune by British band Thumpermonkey. As far as I can tell, the song has nothing to do with the visuals being presented, but it rocks out with syncopated, odd time signature-soaked cacaphonic glee, which means it certainly doesn't hurt!

***

By the way, don't forget our PARACULTURAL CALENDAR entries over at our sister-site, UselessEaterBlog! The May 1 edition is an absolute doozy, covering everything from Preznit Dubya's "Mission Accomplished" battleship romp to the birth of the dreaded ILLUMINATI! Oh, and there's an in-depth exploration of the history of May Day, to boot! The May 2 edition covers everything from thye initiation of the Saxe-Coburg Gotha bloodline to the totally-above-board-and-not-fishy-at-all takedown of Osama bin Laden by Seal Team Six! Click these links to get your friggen LEARN on, people!

PARAPOLITICAL CALENDAR - MAY 5

Napoleon in Egypt

On this day in 1260, the cunning Kublai Khan seizes control of the vast Mongol Empire, which extends from the Black Sea all the way to the Pacific coast, including most of China, half the Middle East and all of Central Asia. And yet he still made time to be a good host to explorer Marco Polo... for over seventeen years!

Two of the most influential philosophers of all time are born on this day. First, in 1813, Christian existentialist Soren Kierkegaard is born in Denmark. The father of communism, Karl Marx, is born in Germany, five years later in 1818.

On this day in 1821, Emperor Napoleon I dies in exile on the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic. To this day, he remains one of the most influential World Historic figures of all time, leaving behind a legal, social, military and cultural legacy that simply cannot be over-stated. To teach one's self about the life of Napoleon Bonaparte is to teach one's self the foundational history of the Modern world.

On this day in 1920, police arrest Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti for allegedly murdering two men during a botched bank robbery in Braintree, Massachusetts. Their subsequent trials, appeals and executions are the focal-point of one of the biggest justice-related brou-ha-ha's in the history of the USA. I'm talking scores-of-people-dying-in-revenge-bombings big. It made the reaction to the Rodney King verdict look tame by comparison.

On this day in 1925, biology teacher John Scopes is arrested for teaching evolutionary theory to his students in Dayton, Tennessee. This leads to the Scopes Monkey Trial, widely considered one of the most controversial and impactful judicial exhibitions (if not decisions) of the 20th century. What few people know is that the whole thing was a set-up from the start.

On this day in 1981, Irish activist Bobby Sands dies in the Long Kesh prison hospital after a 66 day  hunger-strike. He was 27 years old.

The videogame Wolfenstein 3D, the first-ever "first-person shooter", is released on this day in 1992, leading inexorably to all kinds of craziness.