Independence Weekend
Sunday, July 7th, 2002 11:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flwydWent up to our cabin for a couple days. Our family does this with chronic lateness; we usually leave our house between 2:30 and 5 in the afternoon, arriving at the cabin a little less than an hour later. We didn't get there until about half past midnight, a new record. We did manage to beat all the 4th of July traffic going up, though :-)
Realizing we've been taking a very limited number of hikes for the past 22 years, I set out on a six hour hike which lead me past some YMCA cabins with satellite dishes ('cause spending lots of money and driving a thousand miles to watch TV surrounded by trees and a few miles from breathtaking mountains makes so much sense) and some estates, across the highway and down by a stream, back up through the Y camp where I got hassled by a security employee who'd received a couple complaints (perhaps because I look like a terrorist) and alternated between telling me I was on private property (the Y camp rides horses up our private road, natch) and threatening me that the direction I was headed (roughly back to our cabin) was bear country. (Bears can reach the other direction I took just as easily.) He didn't believe me when I said I knew how to handle myself in the woods and around bears -- he's probably used to dealing with fat flatlanders who come up to watch TV in the middle of the woods. My wandering through the forest lead me to another place I'd never been, the shortest high cone around. Cool view, hot day. Lovely 5th of July.
Dreamt that my mom dropped me off on the 6th level from the top of a really big structure where I went from table to table taking needed steps to sign up for the army. Cord Brundage was also there, wearing a purple T-shirt with a dark picture on the front. He said to me "They gave me a cool shirt, so I decided to join." (For those of you who haven't had the, uh, pleasure of seeing Cord, he's built about like Danny DeVito, but 6' tall. The image of Cord in basic training is thus fairly humorous.) I'm not sure why, but I got rejected at one of the tables. Which suits me fine -- I've always said "I don't want to be in the military, and the military doesn't want me either." The rest of the dream consisted of trying to find my mom's car again, going up and down elevators and stairs in what seemed to be a parking structure converted to a mall or something.
The other dream I had consisted of hiking a little over some mixed rocks and snow to an observation point on Mount Everest and looking around. I realized it wasn't the summit, but it was 28,500' or something. This dream had been brought on by the National Geographic map I was reading the previous evening which noted that 182 people reached the summit in 2001 and sherpas removed 2 tons of tent poles, discarded gear, and various trash from the mountain. It is thus hardly the solitary isolated ultimate challenge which drew climbers in the first place.
Read a few articles in my Libertarian Reader about spontaneous order. Annoyingly, the articles argued for spontaneous order using purely qualitative arguments (and with less than rigorous logic). I was hoping to see quantitative investigations, or at least a discussion of mathematical principles involved (like information theory). It's quite possible that such ideas are presented elsewhere in the authors' books (F. A. Hayek and Michael Polanyi) and the lack of what I was hoping for is due to the decisions of the editor. Polanyi pointed out that in a civil society, there is no goal which each agent works to pursue, unlike societies like companies, foundations, sports teams, etc. This is perhaps the best argument against authoritarianism -- if intelligence is goal-directed problem solving, authoritarianism can only be intelligent if its decisions are based on the goals of some set of parties. The set in question is usually the ruler, but it's not logically impossible to have a central planning agent which takes proposals from all parties and makes decisions for everyone. The argument for spontaneous order must then be a quantitative engineering one -- does the efficiency of perfect information make up for the inefficiencies of information transfer? In some cases, such as mediation, the answer can be yes. Empirical evidence suggests that when the society is a large number of people (such as a nation) and the central planning unit is several orders of magnitude fewer people, efficiency is on the side of decentralization. It's also important to keep in mind, which libertarians often have trouble doing, that a wisely constructed society does more than maximize economic use. There must also be a nurturative capacity -- maximal economy is fairly worthless if basic physical and psychological needs are unmet. Also absent in a free market of rationally self-interested individuals is any motive to preserve resources beyond the lifespan of all living members. (Also absent in a society consisting of purely rational self-interest is reproduction, so preservation may be unnecessary.) Also, insistance upon liberty and insistance upon free market capitalism can be in stark conflict. Libertarians should be the first to support a group of people who voluntarily create and maintain a communalist, Marxist, or even Maoist society. A truly free market global system would have competing economic and social orders, and consumers could choose what sort of economy they wish to live in. The demand for global capitalism is thus at odds with the demand for global liberty. Anyway, I'll have a lot more libertarian undermination in the future.
On Sunday I was invited to go rock hounding with some friends. After a wrong turn on the way to Jamestown (I remembered to turn at Old Stage and Lefthand, I just forgot which direction you had to be going to need to turn. It gave us a cool drive, though) we think we followed the directions to the right spot, but there was no sign of a tailings pile. So we poked around in the lovely 10-degrees-cooler-than-Boulder forest for a while, grabbed a few interesting-looking stones (catch the meta action there?) and then ended up at what passes for a park in Jamestown. For all the time I've spent in Boulder, I've spent hardly any time in and around our county's small mountain towns. I ought to rectify this. Anyone want to go camping?
We returned to Boulder to drink smoothies, barbecue burgers, smoothe some stones, and drink some of Heather's wonderful home made "Summerthyme" mead. Mmmm. Mead. We went swimming in Boulder Creek, but as I didn't bring swimming trunks and didn't want to soak my k-baggy skater pants and figured the family of young latinos might get offended if I was swimming in tighty whities, I just got my legs wet, jeans-rolled-way-up style. I wonder what it'd be like growing up in the South, near the Mississippi. The ability to toss oneself into a huge river on a hot and sticky day. Of course, I also wonder what it's like to be in the South at all, and probably don't properly comprehend "hot and sticky."
I capped the evening off at the IFS watching Double Indemnity and Sunset Blvd. in the second installment of their Billy Wilder tribute. Yay film noir! My life needs a male tenor voice over. Given that the films are both on IMDb's Top 100, I was expecting the black and white cinematographic genius of The Third Man combined with intrigue as intriguing as L.A. Confidential. Double Indemnity was kind of disappointing in this regard. Characters weren't that gripping, the plot wasn't really suspenseful, and there weren't enough shots that played with shadow (or staircases). It was certainly a fine exemplar of film noir, which I'll take over today's fine exemplars of action-adventure. Sunset Blvd., on the other hand, was marvelous. It's fairly unusual film noir in several respects. The murder mostly provides resolution, rather than being the focus of action. The leading man isn't seducing the leading lady (somewhat the reverse, in fact), and the leading man isn't very good at what he does. But Sunset Blvd. doesn't succeed by being a perfect film noir, but rather through marvelous acting in a perfectly constructed setting. The premise is that Norma Desmond, forgotten star of the silent era, kidnaps a B movie writer (with his permission, more or less) to help her return to the silver screen. Gloria Swanson, with the help of Billy Wilder and all of the behind-the-scenes people, conveys the mannerisms, ego, lifestyle, and wilfull ignorance of a 1920s star, Erich von Stroheim absolutely nails his role as her faithful servant, and William Holden does a great job as an anti-hero. The interior of Norma Desmond's mansion was perfectly decorated. No detail was out of place anywhere in the film. No part was poorly played. This is a rare film to which I give a perfect rating purely on its craft, not because it gave me that post-awesome-movie buzz. I also realized that Mulholland Dr. may have been titled that to parallel Sunset Blvd. - the former is about young aspiring actresses meeting the harsh reality of unsuccess; the latter is about old stars trying not to meet the harsh reality of faded glory.
I ought to put together a silent film marathon night. (A film noir marathon too.) Anyone want to come? I've never seen a Rudy Valentino film (though my dad recorded the music that appears on the DVD of Blood and Sand), a D.W. Griffith film, or several other important silent films. I have seen more than one silent film with a live film orchestra, though. Most folks in my generation can't say that.
Realizing we've been taking a very limited number of hikes for the past 22 years, I set out on a six hour hike which lead me past some YMCA cabins with satellite dishes ('cause spending lots of money and driving a thousand miles to watch TV surrounded by trees and a few miles from breathtaking mountains makes so much sense) and some estates, across the highway and down by a stream, back up through the Y camp where I got hassled by a security employee who'd received a couple complaints (perhaps because I look like a terrorist) and alternated between telling me I was on private property (the Y camp rides horses up our private road, natch) and threatening me that the direction I was headed (roughly back to our cabin) was bear country. (Bears can reach the other direction I took just as easily.) He didn't believe me when I said I knew how to handle myself in the woods and around bears -- he's probably used to dealing with fat flatlanders who come up to watch TV in the middle of the woods. My wandering through the forest lead me to another place I'd never been, the shortest high cone around. Cool view, hot day. Lovely 5th of July.
Dreamt that my mom dropped me off on the 6th level from the top of a really big structure where I went from table to table taking needed steps to sign up for the army. Cord Brundage was also there, wearing a purple T-shirt with a dark picture on the front. He said to me "They gave me a cool shirt, so I decided to join." (For those of you who haven't had the, uh, pleasure of seeing Cord, he's built about like Danny DeVito, but 6' tall. The image of Cord in basic training is thus fairly humorous.) I'm not sure why, but I got rejected at one of the tables. Which suits me fine -- I've always said "I don't want to be in the military, and the military doesn't want me either." The rest of the dream consisted of trying to find my mom's car again, going up and down elevators and stairs in what seemed to be a parking structure converted to a mall or something.
The other dream I had consisted of hiking a little over some mixed rocks and snow to an observation point on Mount Everest and looking around. I realized it wasn't the summit, but it was 28,500' or something. This dream had been brought on by the National Geographic map I was reading the previous evening which noted that 182 people reached the summit in 2001 and sherpas removed 2 tons of tent poles, discarded gear, and various trash from the mountain. It is thus hardly the solitary isolated ultimate challenge which drew climbers in the first place.
Read a few articles in my Libertarian Reader about spontaneous order. Annoyingly, the articles argued for spontaneous order using purely qualitative arguments (and with less than rigorous logic). I was hoping to see quantitative investigations, or at least a discussion of mathematical principles involved (like information theory). It's quite possible that such ideas are presented elsewhere in the authors' books (F. A. Hayek and Michael Polanyi) and the lack of what I was hoping for is due to the decisions of the editor. Polanyi pointed out that in a civil society, there is no goal which each agent works to pursue, unlike societies like companies, foundations, sports teams, etc. This is perhaps the best argument against authoritarianism -- if intelligence is goal-directed problem solving, authoritarianism can only be intelligent if its decisions are based on the goals of some set of parties. The set in question is usually the ruler, but it's not logically impossible to have a central planning agent which takes proposals from all parties and makes decisions for everyone. The argument for spontaneous order must then be a quantitative engineering one -- does the efficiency of perfect information make up for the inefficiencies of information transfer? In some cases, such as mediation, the answer can be yes. Empirical evidence suggests that when the society is a large number of people (such as a nation) and the central planning unit is several orders of magnitude fewer people, efficiency is on the side of decentralization. It's also important to keep in mind, which libertarians often have trouble doing, that a wisely constructed society does more than maximize economic use. There must also be a nurturative capacity -- maximal economy is fairly worthless if basic physical and psychological needs are unmet. Also absent in a free market of rationally self-interested individuals is any motive to preserve resources beyond the lifespan of all living members. (Also absent in a society consisting of purely rational self-interest is reproduction, so preservation may be unnecessary.) Also, insistance upon liberty and insistance upon free market capitalism can be in stark conflict. Libertarians should be the first to support a group of people who voluntarily create and maintain a communalist, Marxist, or even Maoist society. A truly free market global system would have competing economic and social orders, and consumers could choose what sort of economy they wish to live in. The demand for global capitalism is thus at odds with the demand for global liberty. Anyway, I'll have a lot more libertarian undermination in the future.
On Sunday I was invited to go rock hounding with some friends. After a wrong turn on the way to Jamestown (I remembered to turn at Old Stage and Lefthand, I just forgot which direction you had to be going to need to turn. It gave us a cool drive, though) we think we followed the directions to the right spot, but there was no sign of a tailings pile. So we poked around in the lovely 10-degrees-cooler-than-Boulder forest for a while, grabbed a few interesting-looking stones (catch the meta action there?) and then ended up at what passes for a park in Jamestown. For all the time I've spent in Boulder, I've spent hardly any time in and around our county's small mountain towns. I ought to rectify this. Anyone want to go camping?
We returned to Boulder to drink smoothies, barbecue burgers, smoothe some stones, and drink some of Heather's wonderful home made "Summerthyme" mead. Mmmm. Mead. We went swimming in Boulder Creek, but as I didn't bring swimming trunks and didn't want to soak my k-baggy skater pants and figured the family of young latinos might get offended if I was swimming in tighty whities, I just got my legs wet, jeans-rolled-way-up style. I wonder what it'd be like growing up in the South, near the Mississippi. The ability to toss oneself into a huge river on a hot and sticky day. Of course, I also wonder what it's like to be in the South at all, and probably don't properly comprehend "hot and sticky."
I capped the evening off at the IFS watching Double Indemnity and Sunset Blvd. in the second installment of their Billy Wilder tribute. Yay film noir! My life needs a male tenor voice over. Given that the films are both on IMDb's Top 100, I was expecting the black and white cinematographic genius of The Third Man combined with intrigue as intriguing as L.A. Confidential. Double Indemnity was kind of disappointing in this regard. Characters weren't that gripping, the plot wasn't really suspenseful, and there weren't enough shots that played with shadow (or staircases). It was certainly a fine exemplar of film noir, which I'll take over today's fine exemplars of action-adventure. Sunset Blvd., on the other hand, was marvelous. It's fairly unusual film noir in several respects. The murder mostly provides resolution, rather than being the focus of action. The leading man isn't seducing the leading lady (somewhat the reverse, in fact), and the leading man isn't very good at what he does. But Sunset Blvd. doesn't succeed by being a perfect film noir, but rather through marvelous acting in a perfectly constructed setting. The premise is that Norma Desmond, forgotten star of the silent era, kidnaps a B movie writer (with his permission, more or less) to help her return to the silver screen. Gloria Swanson, with the help of Billy Wilder and all of the behind-the-scenes people, conveys the mannerisms, ego, lifestyle, and wilfull ignorance of a 1920s star, Erich von Stroheim absolutely nails his role as her faithful servant, and William Holden does a great job as an anti-hero. The interior of Norma Desmond's mansion was perfectly decorated. No detail was out of place anywhere in the film. No part was poorly played. This is a rare film to which I give a perfect rating purely on its craft, not because it gave me that post-awesome-movie buzz. I also realized that Mulholland Dr. may have been titled that to parallel Sunset Blvd. - the former is about young aspiring actresses meeting the harsh reality of unsuccess; the latter is about old stars trying not to meet the harsh reality of faded glory.
I ought to put together a silent film marathon night. (A film noir marathon too.) Anyone want to come? I've never seen a Rudy Valentino film (though my dad recorded the music that appears on the DVD of Blood and Sand), a D.W. Griffith film, or several other important silent films. I have seen more than one silent film with a live film orchestra, though. Most folks in my generation can't say that.
