This morning I'm bouncing around the house realizing I've
again misplaced the black hat, beaver felt, by Paul Kaufman.
My name's in the lining and I'm the only Kirby Urner. Last
time this happened, a bright engineer who had a longing
for hats, knew Kaufman by reputation, found mine and
chose to return it. He made a ceremony out of it, where
I bought him beers and we played 20 questions. Turned
out we both counted Princeton an alma mater, knew some
of the same people. Will I see the hat again this time?
Who knows (no one).
So what is Kimberly Cornish saying again? I've written
two posts thus far. I inherited access to 'Jew of Linz' in
receiving a generous donation of worldly goods from
someone interesting in walking his talk of simplicity,
under the tutelage of one Satya, Buddhist monk and
character about town, written up in WW last Xmas season:
"""
STREET MONK: Satya Vayu (right) serves food he’s collected
and prepared at a Food Not Bombs gathering at Colonel Summers Park.
IMAGE: leahnash.com
Satya Vayu and I are sitting across from each
other on floor pillows in the sparse living room
of the house where he’s staying in Southeast
Portland. His legs are crossed and his feet are
bare, the bottoms calloused and dirty from
walking around shoeless outside.
"""
and prepared at a Food Not Bombs gathering at Colonel Summers Park.
IMAGE: leahnash.com
Satya Vayu and I are sitting across from each
other on floor pillows in the sparse living room
of the house where he’s staying in Southeast
Portland. His legs are crossed and his feet are
bare, the bottoms calloused and dirty from
walking around shoeless outside.
"""
Alex, his mom a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, has gone
off into Nietzsche more for the time being, also Borges.
Last we met at TaborSpace, he was inclining towards
fiction. We talked about Pynchon.
So I'm catching up on my Wittgenstein reading, when
I come up for air from the day job teaching logic, mentioned
below.
After frantically bouncing around the house for my black
Quaker hat this morning, which hat has given me much
mileage in Photostream, including at Pycon, I adjourned
to the Linus Pauling House, long ago a rooming house
ran by Pauling's mother, after his father died, and whom
the network TV show said was mentally unstable thanks
to a simple vitamin B deficiency.
That fits in the the orthomolecular interests of the late
Pauling, x2 Nobel Prize winner, and the feature of Monday
night's 'Oregon Experience', a TV show on Oregon Public
Broadcasting (OPB). He'd cured himself of life-threatening
kidney problems through diet, much as our visiting scholar
from Savannah is doing, through the chemistry of raw vegan
(lots of krauting, pro-biotics, almost no sugar or carbs).
As a matter of routine, I meet with my friends in said
Linus Pauling's boyhood home, just a few blocks hence,
like on alternating Wednesday mornings. The lecture
series (ISEPP.org) for which George Lakoff was in town
(recent chatter), is connected with this house. Quite
a few Cal Tech alums, like Steve Mastin, who was there
today. The house doubles as a headquarters for
CraigMore Creations, which, like Dark Horse Comics,
is part of the ToonTown scene (Oregon is known for
its contributions to tooning, not least through Davenport
of Silverton).
Kimberly thinks Wittgenstein deviated from his Jewish
roots by tapping into a cultic Aryan religion, basically the
secret to their past success (like in India), having that
kind of mystical understanding which might transmit to
impressionable young Hitler. Of course Hitler had other
sources, such as Wagner, and most importantly
Schopenhauer (their source in common). So yeah,
Adolph and Ludwig were boyhood rivals, the evidence
builds, with the latter having a lot of social advantages,
but also appearing unworthy of adulation in many ways
(highly teasable, fair game).
OK, so then LW grew up to match his destiny as the great
philosopher of his day, and, Cornish avers, likely the secret
to Soviet success in stealing whatever UKer crown jewels
he thinks he knows about (all quite murky, Special Branch
mentioned). He links to LeCarre and some obsession
with a secret recruiter, like how could all these bright
boys at OxBridge come off sounding like Marxists for
gosh sakes, never mind it was the parlor talk of that
day, the philosophy to embrace or decry. Gotta finger
somebody evil, and LW fits the bill, in being a believer
in the same neo-Aryan powers as Hitler does, but
exercising them more discretely, to say the least. Not
saying I'm buying the hypothesis, just writing about
what I've read (yes, it's a book report, like they assign
you in high school).
As a veteran viewer of the Laughing Horse Books
collection here in Portland, one of the better video
archives out there, thanks to Dominic & Co., I'm
reminded of some of these wild stories coming from
Webster Tarpley and like those. These are respectable
intellectuals, no question, with Tarpley a frequent guest
on RT (Russia Today). But their grand vistas of
history are somewhat one-of-a-kind. You'll be able
to cross-check some of the facts, but a lot of it hangs
together in a less cross-checkable manner. Lyndon
LaRouche, David Ickle... As a ranking member of
Esozone.com nay Laughing Horse, I'm familiar with
unique versions of history, and find them fascinating.
(Trevor, creator of Struggle! magazine covers:
)
Sometimes you know you're reading speculation, sometimes
sheer speculation. Bucky Fuller, a well known transcendentalist,
is up front about being speculative in his 'Critical Path'
(Kuromiya as adjuvant), where he like walks in from stage
left, peg leg and parrot, eye patch, and starts spieling out
these yarns that are either outright lunacy or some secret code
to some esoteric maritime sisterhood, a witches brew of
impossible metaphysics and bioeconomics, a nonsense
stew that's both unbelievable and somewhat savory and
mytho-poetic (at least in my experience).
The prose settles down after awhile and by 'Grunch of Giants'
(the sequel) it's somewhat smooth and clearly satire. One
of my favorite in all American literature. His mythography
switches over to 'Tetrascroll', which is right off the bat called
a 'fairy tale' (as if we needed to be told -- some do in our
literalist age).
So Kimberly's somewhat tabloid treatment comes across as
somewhat familiar and Fox Newsy, i.e. as sensationalist. It'd
make for lots of fun movies. The characters are rendered in
a spectacular manner, and their Machiavellian triangles are
amazing, such as the one between Wagner's significant other
and Princess Wittgenstein, mistress of Liszt the itinerant virtuoso.
The Wittgenstein family later adopts Joseph Joachim, the violin
virtuoso and grooms him to be the best of the best. He's
soon out of favor in the Wagner camp, almost by computation
(Montagues vs. Capulets) . So much culture in such a small
space! An amazingly dense packing job, like a Russian novel.
Tolstoy (Wittgenstein's hero) even has a role, albeit not a big
one (a good storyteller knows how to keep focus). No mention
of H.S.M. Coxeter (another Wittgenstein associate), so
important to the stories I circulate. Gotta draw the line
somewhere.
For its nutritious density alone it's a worthwhile book and I've
been encouraging including it in the syllabus, for its biographical
contents if nothing else. Also the movie 'Wittgenstein' with
Nabil Shaban as the Martian, is worth more literary criticism.
Much more good writing could be done, not saying by yours truly,
as I'm off in the wars helping Global U students build logic muscles.
I call myself a "logic coach, mechanized devision", which got
me some flak from seasoned military (Glenn / NSA), as computers
are not really "machines" when you get right down to it, hardly
any moving parts. Maybe the hard drive? SQL engines aren't
really "engines" either now are they, whatever "software engineers"
might be thinking. We need Wittgenstein-to-the-rescue here,
some kind of deus ex machina, to explain about language games
again, about namespaces.
I'll take a picture of the book cover, for those not seeing it before
(of course the cover is available through Amazon, other sources).
Then a couple pictures of the TimeCapsule, in its current state.
For the hat, we'd have to go back (thinking of Sartre, and what
it's like to miss someone in a coffee shop -- the absence is
palpable (Alex misses his dog Bear)).
(the book on my desk)
(TimeCapsule, June 2011)
I talked with my mom this morning by cell. She's in North Carolina
working with WILPF, one of Ava Pauling's causes (they didn't know
one another). We drove her to the airport last night, Tara joining so
she could learn about the UN declaration of human rights, the
consequent treaties, ratified and not, with a lot of the history
(Eleanor Roosevelt crucial). This is factual background feeding in
to her cases. She's before judges in Dallas in a couple weeks,
arguing a just government theory. By then she'll be 17.
Kirby
Send Email