Sunday, September 19, 2010
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Show That Man Some Respect
*
*
*
*
*
Show That Man Some Respect
for C.M. in N.C
You need to show that man some respect.
Otherwise, you can expect some
resistance. For instance, listen
well before you disagree, for if you
do, you may well see he's right,
as he's been known to be.
He's very smart and very wise:
there is a difference. Look
at his eyes. Read what he's written.
He keeps things in, and he may not
tell you you've been rude.
So I thought I'd let you know--
for your sake, mine, and his, that is.
Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom
*
*
*
*
Show That Man Some Respect
for C.M. in N.C
You need to show that man some respect.
Otherwise, you can expect some
resistance. For instance, listen
well before you disagree, for if you
do, you may well see he's right,
as he's been known to be.
He's very smart and very wise:
there is a difference. Look
at his eyes. Read what he's written.
He keeps things in, and he may not
tell you you've been rude.
So I thought I'd let you know--
for your sake, mine, and his, that is.
Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom
New Dance Craze
*
*
*
*
*
Do the Paradigm Shift!
You put your hands in the air.
You put both feet out. You
fall through space, and
you try to shout--
oh, yeah--can you feel the lift?
Now you're doing the Paradigm Shift!
Oh yeah, do the Paradigm Shift.
Uh-huh, do the Paradigm Shift.
It's the latest craze, and it's
a dubious gift!
Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom
*
*
*
*
Do the Paradigm Shift!
You put your hands in the air.
You put both feet out. You
fall through space, and
you try to shout--
oh, yeah--can you feel the lift?
Now you're doing the Paradigm Shift!
Oh yeah, do the Paradigm Shift.
Uh-huh, do the Paradigm Shift.
It's the latest craze, and it's
a dubious gift!
Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom
Menu
*
*
*
*
Menu
The special today is sunshine soup
topped with a dollop of cloud. It
is accompanied in a minor key
by roasted regrets in a reduction
sauce. A choir of angels may visit
your table, coming after you,
coming for to carry you home.
A gratuity is expected after their song.
Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom
*
*
*
Menu
The special today is sunshine soup
topped with a dollop of cloud. It
is accompanied in a minor key
by roasted regrets in a reduction
sauce. A choir of angels may visit
your table, coming after you,
coming for to carry you home.
A gratuity is expected after their song.
Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom
We're The Ghosts
*
*
*
*
We're the Ghosts
We're the ghosts,
who seem to ourselves
and each other to be alive,
substantial, here, important.
Look closely. Wherever you are
now, imagine how quickly every
body there will vanish, be
in effect replaced, how fast
the place itself will alter,
how other people feeling real
will inhabit the space and not
know they don't know a thing
about you and me and us.
And not know how soon they'll go,
ghosts.
Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom
*
*
*
We're the Ghosts
We're the ghosts,
who seem to ourselves
and each other to be alive,
substantial, here, important.
Look closely. Wherever you are
now, imagine how quickly every
body there will vanish, be
in effect replaced, how fast
the place itself will alter,
how other people feeling real
will inhabit the space and not
know they don't know a thing
about you and me and us.
And not know how soon they'll go,
ghosts.
Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom
Freight Train
*
*
*
*
*
Freight Train
They say a freight train lets out that blast
to warn those near the tracks to get away
as it rolls heavy through a city.
I say it's a beckoning to hobos in our souls
who tell us we have done about all we're
going to do--not much and not what
anybody wanted anyhow. So why not go,
why not grab steel, ride the freighting
beast down the coast to the last boast
you'll ever make before you shake
oblivion's hand and go back to being
particles commonly found in the universe?
A train's wail is a tune from that
incalcuable space. A train's machine-cry
makes you want to chase the train,
a chain of iron cars, a creature born
of burned out stars. Your life says,
"That train is just blind freight--
stay here, under covers, go to sleep."
Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom
*
*
*
*
Freight Train
They say a freight train lets out that blast
to warn those near the tracks to get away
as it rolls heavy through a city.
I say it's a beckoning to hobos in our souls
who tell us we have done about all we're
going to do--not much and not what
anybody wanted anyhow. So why not go,
why not grab steel, ride the freighting
beast down the coast to the last boast
you'll ever make before you shake
oblivion's hand and go back to being
particles commonly found in the universe?
A train's wail is a tune from that
incalcuable space. A train's machine-cry
makes you want to chase the train,
a chain of iron cars, a creature born
of burned out stars. Your life says,
"That train is just blind freight--
stay here, under covers, go to sleep."
Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom
A Lovely Woman's Nose
*
*
ling to portrait
*
*
*
A Lovely Woman's Nose
There are many things to say
about a lovely woman's nose,
which always points in the correct
direction and holds its place
amongst the beauty of the face.
We shall not say these many things
today but shall hold them in our
minds just beyond these words--
covert but close by. They will be
like the shapes, angles, and shades
that serve as defining context of
the lovely woman's nose--yes,
the lovely woman's nose: consider it.
Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom
*
ling to portrait
*
*
*
A Lovely Woman's Nose
There are many things to say
about a lovely woman's nose,
which always points in the correct
direction and holds its place
amongst the beauty of the face.
We shall not say these many things
today but shall hold them in our
minds just beyond these words--
covert but close by. They will be
like the shapes, angles, and shades
that serve as defining context of
the lovely woman's nose--yes,
the lovely woman's nose: consider it.
Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom
Tom O'Bedlam on Intelligence
Here are some interesting words on the topic of intelligence, and on related topics, from Tom O'Bedlam, who operates the marvelous Spoken Verse channel on Youtube--a link to which you'll see just to the right:
"There's no real advantage in intelligence to a man trying to make a conventional living. Like Isaac Newton, I had to invent a use for it. Literature is one possible use and it satisfied me until I found electronics which proved far more profitable.
When I'm asked what intelligence is I sometimes say "The likelihood of being right" and leave it at that if I want to be annoying. Otherwise I soften it by adding, "if there are no other factors involved, such as learning, experience, altruism and discernment". It's obvious that IQ tests measure the ability to give the correct responses to self-contained questions that have only one answer. The problem for the intelligent man is that he can often find reasons why they're not self-contained and have no single clear answer.
Sometimes I say something like "It's the ability to form internal Mental Models of the real world which can be interrogated for predictions, inferences and conclusions which, in turn, can be observed, measured and verified in the real world". In fact it's the ability to do a few parlour tricks that, when demonstrated, leave people no more impressed or envious than they would be by any other kind of incomprehensible magic.
Richard Feynman said something like "There are some people who are unteachable, who accept nothing on authority, who take in no piece of information unless they have verified it by conscious analysis, who tediously construct their own world from raw data and concepts - and it is on these people science depends" That's a wild paraphrase. I like Bernard Shaw's syllogism from The Revolutionist's Handbook "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man attempts to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on unreasonable men".
It takes a long while for technical innovation to make its changes to the world. We're still suffering from the effects of the industrial revolution, particularly on the effect of digging up and reintroducing to the environment all the elements, heavy metals and hydrocarbons, that bacteria and other early lifeforms spend a bilion years burying before human life was even possible. The effect of reintroducing these elements into the environment may, within a century or two, make human life impossible.
We're still adapying to the effect of eating starch, which wasn't possible until the technical innovation of cooking, and the major effects such as obesity and diabetes are still a scourge. However the other side effects, such as increased perception and relief from the perpetual need for hunting and gathering, made civilisation possible.
How the hive-mind made possible by free worldwide information sharing will affect humanity as a whole is harder to predict. Religion won't submit without a struggle to the death: it has more emotion to drive it than rational atheism. Even Dawkins and Hitchens are h=just as fervent in their belief in atheism - it seems that the propensity for fervent belief is an inherited trait, like the ability to learn a language. I'd go for selling the opposite of Pascal's Wager - that one should live as though there were no recompense in heaven - to stop peple from sacrificing their one-and-only lives.
Perhaps intelligence is coming into its own at last and, as you say, will supercede professionalism. Society has been dominated by professionals who educate their children to become professionals in their place thus maintaining the status quo and opposing change and progress. Another Bernard Shaw quote - "All professions are a conspiracy against the layman".
"There's no real advantage in intelligence to a man trying to make a conventional living. Like Isaac Newton, I had to invent a use for it. Literature is one possible use and it satisfied me until I found electronics which proved far more profitable.
When I'm asked what intelligence is I sometimes say "The likelihood of being right" and leave it at that if I want to be annoying. Otherwise I soften it by adding, "if there are no other factors involved, such as learning, experience, altruism and discernment". It's obvious that IQ tests measure the ability to give the correct responses to self-contained questions that have only one answer. The problem for the intelligent man is that he can often find reasons why they're not self-contained and have no single clear answer.
Sometimes I say something like "It's the ability to form internal Mental Models of the real world which can be interrogated for predictions, inferences and conclusions which, in turn, can be observed, measured and verified in the real world". In fact it's the ability to do a few parlour tricks that, when demonstrated, leave people no more impressed or envious than they would be by any other kind of incomprehensible magic.
Richard Feynman said something like "There are some people who are unteachable, who accept nothing on authority, who take in no piece of information unless they have verified it by conscious analysis, who tediously construct their own world from raw data and concepts - and it is on these people science depends" That's a wild paraphrase. I like Bernard Shaw's syllogism from The Revolutionist's Handbook "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man attempts to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on unreasonable men".
It takes a long while for technical innovation to make its changes to the world. We're still suffering from the effects of the industrial revolution, particularly on the effect of digging up and reintroducing to the environment all the elements, heavy metals and hydrocarbons, that bacteria and other early lifeforms spend a bilion years burying before human life was even possible. The effect of reintroducing these elements into the environment may, within a century or two, make human life impossible.
We're still adapying to the effect of eating starch, which wasn't possible until the technical innovation of cooking, and the major effects such as obesity and diabetes are still a scourge. However the other side effects, such as increased perception and relief from the perpetual need for hunting and gathering, made civilisation possible.
How the hive-mind made possible by free worldwide information sharing will affect humanity as a whole is harder to predict. Religion won't submit without a struggle to the death: it has more emotion to drive it than rational atheism. Even Dawkins and Hitchens are h=just as fervent in their belief in atheism - it seems that the propensity for fervent belief is an inherited trait, like the ability to learn a language. I'd go for selling the opposite of Pascal's Wager - that one should live as though there were no recompense in heaven - to stop peple from sacrificing their one-and-only lives.
Perhaps intelligence is coming into its own at last and, as you say, will supercede professionalism. Society has been dominated by professionals who educate their children to become professionals in their place thus maintaining the status quo and opposing change and progress. Another Bernard Shaw quote - "All professions are a conspiracy against the layman".
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)