AKMA asks what l the (Matrix) revolution will be. My $5K in Blogshares cash says that Zion is part of the Matrix, or rather, a shell matrix to the Matrix. That’s why Neo can control the squids outside.
But more. My $5K says that the Matrix wasn’t built by AIs to control humans, but by humans to control AIs. That is, Neo and everyone else are AIs.
The race for the Democratic nomination for President is now between Howard Dean and Wesley Clark. I’d be happy with either one.
The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible: The King James Version presented from a skeptic’s point of view.
An interesting affirmation of Henry Nelson Wieman (summary and response).
The report introduces the new term “authoriative communities.” The response suggests “connected communities” instead.” I’d prefer something like “orienting communities.” In any case, as a minimum, they have these characteristics:
Even if it looks like it might have a conservative social bias buried in some of the recommendations, it seems mostly spot on. Are you part of an authoritative community?
In his novella “The Game of Time and Pain” author Samuel Delaney traces the history of his frequent Neveryon character, Gorgik the LIberator. Gorgik is Delaney’s archetypal man, and the outline of his life is as follows:
“Time and Pain” finds Gorgik at the end of his career: the slaves freed, his mission completed. But somehow Gorgik senses a loss of self and purpose, even as he travels to attend his political arch-rival’s state funeral.
To a passing stranger he recounts his discovery of his self while still a teenage mine slave. Some young nobles were passing by and asked for some slaves to amuse themselves with. Amusement for one noble meant sodomy with Gorgik. During the act, both recognized in themselves and in the other their desire for just this sort of fetishistic, role play sex. In that moment of recognition, Gorgik realized himself to be an equal to the aristocrat. And moreover, he desired the aristrocrat’s power, his freedom. Gorgik would spend countless hours trying to recreate this epiphany of recruitment over the course of his adult life.
Click to continue reading “The torn soul as self”
In his farce Towing Jehovah, James Morrow presents us with a troubling problem: God™ is dead. Not metaphorically dead, mind you. Physically dead, floating face up in the Atlantic Ocean, and starting to smell from the rot. (Damn equatorial climate.) So a towboat is employed by an embarassed yet oddly vindicated Vatican to pull the former Deity’s colossal carcass to the Arctic Circle, where his body will be easier to preserve (and explore).
While in tow, the crew of the towboat take it upon themselves to venture inside God’s™ brain. God™ is only recently passed, and there are still some neurons firing away in the divine mind. Along the arm of a dying ganglion they run into a soon-to-be ghost of God’s™ rapidly deteriorating mind: one Augustine of Hippo.
Poor Augustine. He’s troubled. It seems that every sinful, lewd instinct imaginable is floating around in his soul, each competing for his attention. Each in turn gains his full attention. Each in turn causes him terror and regret. Here he sits in the mind of God™, the most tempted man in history, torn apart by sinful desires he fears are more than mere temptations.
Except that this is not the “historical Augustine” at all. This is the ideal Augustine, of whom the historical Augustine is merely a pale imitation. But which is the exaggeration?
