Below are the most recent 6 friends' journal entries.

Thursday, June 26th, 2008
fare	9:04a	Wishing For Peace (dream) In another dream on that same night, I imagined my sister sighing and wishing that every one would be pacific. I replied to her that wishing it wasn't very useful, especially emitting the wish around other pacific people from whom an obvious approbation is expected. Making the wish as a request to inimical fanatics wouldn't be useful either -- yet they are precisely the ones who need to be pacified. Why don't pacifists go to the bad guys to tell them about peace? No, they go tell about it to good guys who resist the bad guys' violence with greater force. What the pacifists oppose is precisely that force that protects them from the aggressors. Yet what would bring peace is not yielding to the aggressors' violence, but precisely increasing the use of force by the defenders of peace to crush those enemies of peace once and for all. The very opposite of what the professed pacifists claim. Professed "pacifists" are enemies of peace, just like "socialists" are enemies of society, and "ecologists" are enemies of nature. Their one-sided sanctification of what they claim to defend is just a trick to avoid rational debate as they seek the political power to impose their superstitions, or rather spread these superstitions to achieve political power. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 25th, 2008
fare	11:57p	Dalrymple only gets better with time I love Theodore Dalrymple's essays, and recently I've read "The Starving Criminal" followed by "Don't Legalize Drugs" and was pleased that based on similar observations, he has moved from authoritarian recommendations to more libertarian ones. In both cases, he finds that immoral and criminal, self-destructive and anti-social behaviour is ultimately rooted in the actor's own psychology and preferences in the midst of plenty of opportunity to behave better at a cheaper cost to his wallet and health, and with higher benefits for himself. But while in the earlier article, Dalrymple proposes authoritarian control to impose the correct behaviour by forceful prohibitions and regulations on the supply, in the latter article, he understands that political forceful prohibitions and regulations on the supply is vain, and only contributes to the destruction of psychological sense of responsibility, which is the main cause of the demand, the real problem. And so I will propose to the problem of drug abuse the same solution that he latter proposes to the problem of criminality: do not try to solve the problem by trying to protect the self-abusing people from themselves, but by making people fully responsible of their abuse. Cancel, at the taxpayer's benefit, the welfare programs that create a class of parasites without any sense of responsibility for themselves. Do not maintain them in artificial welfare, do not tolerate abuse in public, charge them through the nose for any damage they cause to life and property, or for any detoxication effort done upon them. Do not subsidize these spendings with low-interest rate financing plans. Remove from society, at their own charge, the more unsavory characters who cannot live peacefully. Note: I was Googling for an article the name of which I had forgotten "Uses of Corruption" and was pleased to find it on Brian Micklethwait's blog, which also linked to the above essays. On the interaction between social system and citizens' psychology, do not miss the fourth essay Brian mentions, "How to Read a Society". (Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 24th, 2008
fare	1:10a	L'être et le néant / A Being and a Nothing Two radically opposed comic books: on the one hand, "City of Glass" (1994) by Paul Auster, masterfully adapted into a graphical novel by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli. On the other hand, "Siberia" (2006), by Nikolai Maslov, an amateur artist (originally published in French in 2004 as "Une Jeunesse Soviétique"). The first author is a renowned new-yorker, born in ease, made rich by success, a goodthinking member of the intellectual establishment. In a flippant book that means to be the ultimate stylistic exploration of confusion between levels of discourse, he wanders without goal and all the technical virtuosity of this grandiloquent quest for meaning finally leads but to crass nihilism. The other author is an unknown Russian drawer, born in poverty in Siberia, a mere pawn processed by the soviet soul-crushing machine, a dissident by heart without being an intellectual, who has been denied any education. In a graphical autobiography, he tells the story of a simple man who aspires to escape the material, intellectual and moral misery imposed by communism; in the end of a chaotic journey under the claws of the regime, he finds meaning to live in personal accomplishment through thick and thin, with humility. The first one has everything yet his abject depravity leads him in a huge waste to reduce this everything down to nothing. The other one has nothing yet by his moral strength manages to overcome not only the worst of oppressions but also and most importantly his own mistakes. "City of Glass": 0. "Siberia": 10.   Deux bandes dessinées, antithèses l'une de l'autre: d'un côté, "City of Glass" (1994) de Paul Auster, magistralement adapté en BD par Paul Karasik et David Mazzucchelli. de l'autre, "Une Jeunesse Soviétique" (2004), de Nikolai Maslov, dessinateur amateur (aussi publié en anglais en 2006 sous le titre "Siberia"). L'un est auteur chic niouyorquais, né dans l'aisance, enrichi par le succès, bienpensant membre de l'establishment intellectuel. Dans un livre fantaisiste qui se veut un exercice de style ultime dans le genre de la confusion entre niveaux de discours, il erre sans but et tout la virtuosité technique de cette grandiloquente quête de sens n'accouche finalement que d'un nihilisme crasse. L'autre est un russe inconnu, né dans le dénuement en Sibérie, simple pion pris dans la machine soviétique à broyer les âmes, dissident de coeur sans être un intellectuel, s'étant vu refuser toute éducation. Dans une autobiographie graphique, il raconte l'histoire d'un homme simple aspirant à sortir de la misère matérielle, intellectuelle et morale imposée par le communisme; à l'issue d'un son parcours chaotique à travers les griffes du régime, il trouve sens à la vie dans une réalisation de soi contre vents et marées, en toute humilité. L'un a tout mais son abjecte dépravation le conduit en un immense gâchis à réduire ce tout à rien. L'autre n'a rien, mais par sa force morale, arrive à surpasser non seulement la pire des oppressions mais aussi et surtout ses propres erreurs. "City of Glass": 0. "Une Jeunesse Soviétique": 10. Current Music: Vladimir Vysotsky - V dorogu zhivo ili v grob lozhis'... (Comment on this)
Monday, June 23rd, 2008
fare	7:40a	Our Memory Architecture (dream) In one dream a few months ago, I was holding a salon about how our memory is organized. People mostly do not have conscious memories of their childhood before the age of about 2 years and a half; this is about when their ability to speak coherently starts to appear. I was thus hypothetizing that after we learn how to speak, we tend to organize all our conscious memory around words, and that earlier memories are then left unindexed: whichever sensations through which we used to trigger them, we do not exercise anymore, we are not used to exercising, are not our main means of retrieving information. The memories themselves slowly fade away as we fail to cultivate them. Of course, in the development of a child's mind several such "memorial revolutions" may happen, and layers of earlier memories are thus obsoleted by better organized ones. I then wondered if people who learn massive memoization techniques based on using various sensations as keys could access memories deeper in their childhood. After I woke up, L. told me that some people learn to speak in sign language at an early age before speech is possible. Does that allow them to keep memories from an earlier age than most? (Comment on this)
Sunday, June 22nd, 2008
fare	10:51a	Proof of No Discrimination As I was positively amazed by the stars who proudly wore T-shirts with the inscription Celtics to the highest place, I was asked whether I thought there was any anti-white discrimination against players. My answer was an emphatic No. Why? Because in major league sports, money matters a lot. And any indiscriminate discrimination on anything but performance means that you're losing money to those who discriminate better. Case in point: Billy Beane or Jim Larranaga. ( Read more... ) Current Music: Bernard Lavilliers - If (Comment on this)
Saturday, June 21st, 2008
fare	3:29a	The Gladiator (dream) Gladiator slave. Champion, but wounded. Next season, becomes coach of the team. Team wins the championship, despite many casualties. He becomes famous. Instead of staying in a life of security and relative leasure, he escapes to live free but a fugitive. He goes live on an island. Captured by enslavers who think he's just a strong peasant. At the camp, put to work on the fields. Falls in love. Finds an improvised weapon, kills his enslavers, escapes with the girl. Lives free. Joins a small community of peasants. Has kids. A few years pass. His village in fire. He runs to it. Falls into a trap. Is wounded and subdued before he can put up a fight. The same enslavers found him again. His family is not amongst the prisoners. Were they killed or did they survive? but he doesn't dare ask for details, for fear of unleashing the monsters upon any possible survivor. He'll never know. They take him to their camp. He's going to be publicly maimed and blinded, as an exemplary punishment. A visiting customer learns the story and recognizes the great gladiator. He is bought and brought back to Rome, sold to his former owner. He agrees to train a gladiator team again. Before the final, he wagers with Cesar that if the other team is exterminated without any of his men being wounded, Cesar will pay to free them, and if not, he should die with all of them. Then while his gladiators remain chained and incapable of fighting, he proceeds to slaughter alone the opposite team. He is severely wounded but none of his men is. Cesar won't renege his word, and frees his men, but has him killed for mocking him. He dies, but not in vain - He couldn't stand the idea of anyone under his responsibility to be enslaved or murdered, ever again. Current Music: Sweet Lorraine (Comment on this)