In the vast wild. Free. To move. Constrained by the hellhound Duty. But unfenced.

Winds blow. Clouds stream. The sounds of travel on hard earth grow so familiar. So right.

Spirits soar with the eagles as shadows evolve with the rotating sun.

Whether hunting. Whether roaming. Striking. Or honing. The journey is the soul quenching part.

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I ride with the spirit of the mountain man. The scout. Pathfinder.

I know the wisdom of Bridger. Scorn the folly of Fetterman and Carson. Carry the map of the land in my world kenning skull. Know how to find the right pasture. How to slip into the night. How to steal enemy horses. To take his courage and pick the best field of foedom.

Crowheart Butte has felt my stealthy print. Robber's roost has my mark on its stony walls. The Great North Wood is my vernal retreat.

Slip into the painted desert and burrow in the sands. It will not avail. The surer strategy is to walk the straight and narrow. For I love the hunt.

Pray not for accidents and misfortunes to befall me. For the sand wraith that comes out of the Empty Quarter will merely have a more crazed eye and soul splitting laugh.

Mountie justice is all you deserve. Mountie justice is all you can expect.
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The universe whirls and expands. It buckles. It heaves. Jets of matter and energy gush this way and that. Light speeds and speeds and speeds trying to cross and recross.

Intense heat in confined regions. Vast coldness. Super densities. Near vacuum with flecks of field residues stretches and stretches.

Laws themselves are bent by powerful forces on great scales. Still greater forces act over the tiniest of distances in as large a reality at many levels of scale down.

Reel contemplating minds! Your pitiful brief existences are nothing to this spectacle!

Yet what is more powerful than the mind that sees all... understands all... and maintains its cool sanity...

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…
Simple harmonic motion. Do you deserve a long treatment? You've certainly got it in the universities.

The consequence of linearity for all things in small perturbation. Most all things.

You are simple and thus handy. To model it all. It makes for clear thinking and false constructs to fall away.

But the tyranny of a torsional oscillator on a lab bench for months... unspeakable evil. Creak creak. Creak creak. Worse than a haunting. Can't be exorcised.

Tick tick tick goes the pendulum driven clock. Useful and reassuring. Or maddening.... depends on your point of view. Everything depends upon your point of view.

Can get you longitude. If it is stable enough. To be sure. The earth can turn under it if you prepare your apparatus well.

You can make an exotic material tic tick tic. And toc in another direction. Change your approach angle and the clock changes. Make the material move and tic...…… tic...……… tic...….. If fast enough.

I dunno. Seems ap poe pro to cleave and vanish …
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Ken kicked his dog when he came home that evening. A horrible thing to do. But he was angry. Frustrated. Frayed. And he didn't have a roommate. Couldn't afford to have one. Would make him less efficient.

He had spent months and months working in lab with the cursed torsional oscillator. Learning every possible thing about their twisting. While his colleagues in other disciplines were playing with all kinds of modern equipment that actually did stuff. Flying around avoiding obstacles. Scooting around under water detecting things.

They were joined up into happy thriving teams that went out to parties afterwards, after some cool demo. They had to record everything they did because they would get so drunk at those celebration parties that they would lose bits and pieces of their memory. Formed into distracting couplings. All of which of course played havoc with their efficiency.

Efficiency. Efficiency, creak creak creak.

Efficiency. Lovely efficiency. creak creak creak

The solitary hooded figure that would grade his efforts would cackle gleefully every time one session with the oscillator was completed. cackle cackle cackle

It was changing him. Morphing him with its relentless motion into something alien... something cold... something... a little... mad maybe.

And then he heard it... creak creak creak from the apartment next door.

Oh my god!

It was just two of his colleagues coupling after a particularly exciting demo. But of course... to his gone mind... it was the torsional oscillator come to get him!

bang! bang bang bang! And the creaking stopped... forever....

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The thread continues... swaying along its way... gathering momentum. On through the darkening night...

… ^ … there is a bump in the road... a box falls out the back...

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There does sometimes appear a need... to stop a pendulum swing. A swing that threatens to move deeply into calamity.

There are times when disparate bodies must unite into a coherent force, applied at just the right time, to sweep away corruption. To reset the apparatus. Adjust the design.

Non-working parts must be changed out. Good, well-made gears meshed together and oiled up. Proper balance and timing restored.

It may not be so easy to stop a long long swing. Those disparate bodies may be shattered and only make for a slight slowing. So it is tempting simply clamp down and get ready for one wild ride.

But simple harmonic motion is so nice. The linear region so fine. The glint and polish of the particular oscillator the result of so much work and care. That creak creak creak such a pleasant sound.
Isn't it worth the chance?

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It is time to stop progress and take a moment. Have a moment of silence.

We forget, in our busy lives, the suffering of some of those around us. As you look at one of your friends or colleagues today, consider that he might be one of those poor souls, who for the sake of love or duty has to pay the daily unimaginable price of being an unwilling listener to ABBA. He may have to listen to the likes of Chicuitita stone sober many times a week. Yeah. It happens.

I was such a sufferer once. So I know the joy that escaping this condition brings. I felt the weight lift off me. Life was immediately fresh and new. Ready for new and better sounds. The start of a new era.

But for others there is no escape. It is the road they must go in life. So please be generous and let them control the tracks a lot when you have the guy's night out. Allow them to have fits of hard core stuff to get the musical bile out of their system. Put a blanket over them and stroke them a little if you find them in the corner going "rawr rawr rawr rawr" some time from an overdose.

Sadly the truly oppressed go straight from a trackless office to a tyrannical household. They never get a chance to purge. It just builds and builds. If they don't have a support group, terrible things can happen, that I won't list here. There is enough sensationalism in this age. Enough fear mongering. I'll just ask for your charity to reach out to any soul that you think may be suffering this fate.

Now please... let's all go back to our lives. Quote

The flute plays in the cold high desert air. Sunset. The notes move out over the wide canyon below, echo, and dissipate. Evening birds move at high speeds low over the rock walls picking insects out of the air. For here the insects can fly all year.

The light is at its most beautiful. The moment sublime. All of existence seems to pause and align. It is an illusion of course. But a very nice one.

Here too there is motion. In the mind of man. Unbidden ideas that are the day remains of dream shards of the night before coalesce into epiphanies that are folded into revised strategies. The campaign rests as the plan dissolves and reforms.

The new age will come. The old will pass forever away. That is not an illusion.

The man in black fled through the desert with the gunslinger trailing him. Meanwhile the world moved on.

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You wanna talk about motion? Neighbor of mine still has his x-mas stuff out. One of those guys who turns the whole house into an animatronics thing. Lights so bright it is like Times Square.

Valentines day. So he has tricked the elves and snowmen into bizarre cupids. Lot's of hearts. Lot's of red.

I know.. I just know he isn't stopping yet. Gonna keep on going. Gotta be Saint Patty's next. Can... he... go.... all... the way.

Maybe... maybe... but it's gonna hafta get pretty creative. There's April. Yeah I can see the plan there already. No problem.

May... yeah ok I see what'll he'll do for that.

June? Wait a minute... Let's see what that pyscho does for June. Maybe the same kinda stretching that went for January.

He hits July he's set again for a while. But is he really gonna stretch over August, September into October. No I think he's got to get creative.

Guy like that changes the neighborhood lemme tell you. I am about to take a walk and I have to pass by there again. Weird thing is I never see him actually working on it. And I go by there every day.

Truth is... I think he may not even be human. I saw him once standing out front watching me go by with his arms folded across his chest and his face screwed up into the strangest look. Yeah I walked faster for sure. Made sure to walk by on the other side of the street next time and every other time after that. And I wear sunglasses and a changing hat to make it harder for him to... you know... get the bead on me.

I've never seen his car. I'll bet he has a pickup truck and its a really strange color. I'll bet he drives it at night, really late, when the streets are quiet. And that's when you see all the stuff he got for his new exhibit.

I may run for city council just to see if I can zone him under control. But whenever it is election year his yard stays somehow clean of signs... just his latest mechanical, electrical creation. So I think the law may bounce off of him like a rubber duck off a trampoline.

Gotta go. It is near lunchtime and I've got to hit my walk by window. I'll eat my lunch in the fast food place and think about what he is scheming... Quote

I'll be damned if I know what to say to you. I'll just take out my guitar and strum a bit. *strum strummie strum *

Of course it is a guitar. Mellow. Intimate. Couldn't really whip out my violin right? Even a flute seems kind of like I'm puckering, kind of risk-aye. Yeah I know. Take me to the word czar.

Geez what a contentious bunch. *strummmmmm strum strum*

"One foot on sea... and one on shore... to one thing constant neeeeeever"

Yeah I return to that. Taking a break from it all and going to that easy place.

"So sigh not soooooo… but let them go. " Not really guitar music I admit. But it is the relaxing, you can almost hear the fountain and feel the warm summer sun...

"And be ye blithe and bonnie... " Ah that's the tell isn't it. Now you are homing in if you've just come in to it all the first time.

"Converting all... your tales of woe. Into hey nonnie nonnie"

In between the wars. Life. Simple sweet. Fragile and transitory. Kinship. Marriage.

A scene. A feeling.

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The antidote to a tyrant is a strong dose of Enlightenment philosophy. It cures the victim and his family, generations upon generations of a potential dynasty, of a vast array of ills. Some of which directly impact their happiness for the rules that bind them, often involving who they may breed with for example, are strange and horrible. Makes their biographies unsettling rather than inspiring. Unchecked yet hobbled. A spectacle for any press too tempting to resist.

However it requires a certain determination, discipline, and dread certainty to apply this treatment... that is hard for an immature society to muster. If they are lulled into inaction, confused by a number of conflicting false passions, bedeviled by a lack of reasonable priorities, ruled by their bellies... well, what can come of this? Oh it gets even more difficult when they must select from a confusing set of approaches of History. They must get up out of their provincial thinking and judge entire movements. Impose the best morality. Cast aside superstitions and home in on what it takes to build their dream society.

It has been said that one cannot ignore politics because it won't ignore you. But this is also true of philosophy. Sadly, while cynicism is a useful arrow in the quiver, it cannot substitute for an idealism, a purpose, a core that motivates after questioning. Again priorities come to the fore. Getting the right balance clearly has played a significant role in the outcomes of various movements. So much so that mere vigor without thought will not produce a desired result at all.

A vote is a sacred thing. You may only get one chance to use it before your life is changed much for the worse. Your mind is a powerful thing. It deserves to be fed with the very best intellectual food you can find for it. Don't settle for inputs that are "right for your class"

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Sophie was a sophist. The real deal.

When she cleared her throat the council chamber grew quiet instantly. Her opponents gritted their teeth. Pricked up their ears.

Yeah weave that word tapestry Sophie. Knock them out of their robes.

Sophie was mad worked up today lemme tell you. She had been tossing and turning all night getting ready for this speech. Because it was complex. It was thorny. It was a 10.0 degree of difficulty and the judges weren't gonna go easy.

Yeah... everybody licked their lips subconsciously as they braced themselves... as her heels stopped clicking on the marble floor and she stood steely eyed before them.

Sophie was a goddamned sophist like no other and she was about to go full Athenian on them!
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Life's a learning process for sure. I know I learned something today. I happened to run into a logician. Just hanging out in the checkout line. What are the odds?

"What is logic anyway?" I asked.

"Well, funny you should ask. I get that a lot. It is a pattern of syllogistic inferential anterior... ah well it is kind of hard to explain. Let me give you an example. "

I encouraged him to go ahead as the checkout guy pretended not to be listening and mechanically checked out each item. The guy didn't need much of an opening.

"I see that you have black cat hair all over you but there is nothing you are buying today for a pet, no food, no toys.. is your arch rival a green eyed feline from hell? "

"Why yes" I stammered out in abject surprise. "That's amazing!"

"Not at all. Not at all. May I continue? "

"Why certainly" (and *whrrrrrrrrrrrrrr ding click whrrrrrrrrr * (from the checkout guy) )

"Since there is a bottle of rum and fixins in your pile of items... I must conclude that you have defeated him, for a time, as you are obviously going to party tonight and can afford to let down your guard for a moment."

My eyes went all shifty as I crouched for a moment thinking this might be the opening line of some new enemy's gambit. But then I relaxed again as the logician merely beamed his triumphant smile of a puzzle full solved.

"Very good. You have taught me well. Good day to you sir."

Well on my way home, carrying my party supplies, I was waylaid by a gang of thugs. They had me dead to rights. Their leader, an ugly little reprobate with a scraggly goatee, flicked his stiletto under my chin and said... "Whatcha gonna do now... copper?"

Normally I would have cast about me with both f1sts, dragging my canoe behind me. But today, today I used logic!

I whipped out my dog whistle and gave some loud toots on it. Soon the alley was crawling with hounds and that gang was beating it as fast as they could. See? It was my cat rival.

Beatniks don't use stilettos!



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There are times when the words flow effortlessly. When the gods press to speak to mankind with urgency. Not necessarily flawlessly, gods don't care about typos and poor grammar.

There are times when a writer feels that these could very well be his last words. For life is precious and fragile. Fate animates but for a moment.

There are times when the make or break nature of an hour or two is so apparent to the mover that the slightest delay may not be tolerated. He presses and presses. His determination smoothing the way.

Somehow we know when the chips are down. When the roll is critical. Sometimes of course it is blatantly obvious. Sometimes it is not but we simply feel the Age coming into being. We feel History's eyes upon us. We feel bathed in that kind of light that makes all shadows recede. The dread fork in the road is in front of us and our next step takes us in a deliberately chosen direction. We know we are not merely being carried along by some unfightable flow.

The ancients knew well, in that sense they had the advantage. Surrounded by Death. Worked hard by the hand of Fate. They prepared long for a fateful choice. Were not so surprised when the day came.

The man who uses the argument of infinity to make life seem so abundant In the universe is susceptible to a simple density argument. Divide by the space involved. Life per unit area. Life per unit time. Make no mistake you are a rare thing and when you have time and energy to take some action, how jealous of your action would be the ghosts of all who came before. Now unable to act.

That said consider how special then must be Green Acres... for it is the product of such beings!
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You can't be so focused on your narrow dreams to miss the mysteries of life...

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We are in motion. The trend may wobble a bit but we are in motion.

I saw an address, for example, of an influential nationalistic socialist to the Oxford Union on 'tube. He had to enter through a demonstration against him and each question after his address seemed to be delivered by a student wearing a scowl. He was a sophist. Did a great job of bobbing and weaving around all attempts to pin him down into a clear admission of the morally untenable nature of his position. Leaving the students I am sure feeling a need to go back and learn some new methods to add to their satchels for such a case. Nothing motivates learning better than pursuit of a scoundrel.

But the scoundrel's position was not the position of decades past. It had evolved for survival into something measurably less virulent. Because of some virtues of our modern societies. Including that of giving him the right to plead the case for his world view.

Don't get me wrong... I don't think that the very best of our orators today could match those for example available near the turn of the 18th into the 19th century. I wish they could. That they were more actively sought after to do so. That they were greater celebrities for this ability. But despite that, our other virtues and hard work over the years has made for progress of this kind. Even after accounting for the fact that some of the bl00diest evils arose nearer to our time. And that we are not immune from making similar mistakes in the future.

The election going on in my country is certainly a roller coaster ride. There are disappointments to the idealist in some aspects for sure. Surprisingly encouraging aspects as well. It is easy to make the argument that the Republic is under threat in more than one way but also to take heart in the enthusiasm and occasional good sense of the electorate. The state of the press appears, depending upon the filter, at times pitiable and at others triumphantly vigorous.

Those impatient to solve all our worldly domestic and political problems followed by our vaulting heroically into space as an enlightened unified federation will have to wait for what looks like centuries at this time. The patchwork quilt of self interested nation states is definitely a going concern. Our technology, though impressive, is for the most part earth bound aside from some cool remote sensing missions to parts of our own solar system.

Yeah living on this planet reminds me of driving on a highway with a really high speed limit and some crazy drivers. Excited about the trip but the grip on the steering wheel and amount of swearing and near misses is gonna make it easy to pull off at the next rest stop, lemee tell ya! Quote