Happy 238th, Ludwig!

My musical playlist suggestion?

Here in the States, where much of country is hit by winter weather today, the Choral Fantasy. Sprightly vocal music without Christmas connections.

Then, to honor "a great man," the funeral march from the 12th Piano Sonata. Then, all of "Moonlight." Add a late-era quartet, perhaps the C-sharp minor or the Serioso.

YOU TOUCH, YOU BREAK, YOU BUY

The last time I was in Starbucks,
I saw a quite curvaceous woman.
Judging by the degree of her shapeliness,
The neighborhood of Dallas we were in,
And some other, lesser signs.
I guessed her shapeliness had been shaped
With some sort of professional, plasticene help.
I immediately thought of Colin Powell
And his famous “Pottery Barn rule”:
“You touch, you break, you buy.”
Touch those breasts and break — what?
As I write these words, I reflect on that.
Break, or brake, an illusion? A dream? A fantasy?
And whose? Hers? Mine? A generic male’s?
Perhaps all, simmering together in a stew
Of mutual self-deceit —
Her illusion of what the surgery does for her.
My illusion of what her breasts could do for me.
Male generality’s illusion about her attractiveness.
I get to the counter; the barista takes my order.
I steal a last sideways glance while awaiting my half-caf.
The usual. No illusions about Starbucks coffee.
Or about me being all that much less plasticene
Than two D-cups briefly seen while window shopping Silicone Barn.
What’s broken?

Only in Sweden, eh? – virtual reality body-swaps

No sir, or madam, I kid you not. Using closed-circuit TV and well-known psychological and physical illusions, Swedish researchers have shown it is possible to make people like you and me think we’re in another body, even a body of the opposite sex.

Pumpkin bread – cooking, Gadfly-style

5.5 cups whole wheat flour
1.5 cups multigrain whole-grain flour (Good local health grocery has this here; it’s a mix of whole wheat, whole oat, brown rice, barley, rye, triticale flour, flaxseed flour and soy flour; it adds the additional protein profile of soy flour and flaxseed flour, too)
(If you insist on using white flour, I can’t be responsible! ....)
1/3 cup pecan meal
1/4 cup flaxseed meal (non-essential)
6 tablespoons wheat gluten (used extra here than I normally do, with the pumpkin)
2 packs rapid-rise dry yeast
1/4 tsp sea salt
3 tbsp cinnamon
2 tbsp ground cloves
1 tbsp cardamom
1/2 sugar (turbinado plus conventional brown here)

Liquid ingredients
1/3 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup margarine, melted
1/2 cup fat-free half-and-half
1 egg plus one extra white
1/8 cup honey

Mix all the dry stuff together while yeast is in warm water to start
rise. Add in liquid ingredients.

Add in one can of canned pumpkin.

Finish kneading. (I do NOT use a bread machine!)

After first rise, separate into loaves.

After second rise, bake!

400F, about 55 minutes.

It’s rich, with the butter plus half-and-half, even if fat-free, but tasty. It’s on the mild side as far as spiciness; add another tbsp. each of cinnamon and clove, plus an extra half teaspoon of cardamom, or half a teaspoon of ginger, for more flavor.

Stuart Kauffman erects anti-reductionistic straw man

Kauffman, the former long-term scholar at the Santa Fe Institute, says we need spirituality to exorcise the demons of reductionism from science.

Here’s one example:

To take one example, I argue that the evolutionary emergence of the human heart cannot be deduced from physics. That doesn't mean it breaks any laws of physics. But there's no way of getting from physics to the emergence of hearts in the evolution of the biosphere.

Contrary to Kauffman playing pin-the-reductionistic-tail on Steve Weinberg, though, no mainstream scientist has tried to get evolutionary biology deduced from quantum physics. That’s what Dan Dennett calls “greedy reductionism,” not reductionism.

Then, Kauffman goes well beyond that nonsense to the major leagues of creating straw men. He claims that, in essence, we can’t appreciate value, can’t have a sense of aesthetics or awe at the world, etc., with a reductionistic stance.

This is the typical canard repeated, nay thrust at, atheists by theists. Coming out of the mouth of a professed atheist like Kaufmann, it’s disconcerting at the least and off-putting at the most. Even more than that, is his insistence that we should use the word “God” to discuss this non-reductionistic aesthetics or, as I will call it …

Stuart Kauffman’s metaphysics. Proof?

Kauffman goes Paul Tillich at the end of the interview:

Not that there's a supernatural god. I think that there’s something else. I think the creativity in nature is so stunning and so overwhelming that it's God enough for me, and I think it’s God enough for many of us if we think about it.

Ridiculous. But not the first time I’ve heard such stuff out of the mouth of a professed philosopher.

LOVE BEAUTY SEX

LOVE BEAUTY SEX



Love is not beauty.
Love is not sex.
Beauty is formed in the eye of a loving beholder.
But itself cannot create love instead of lust.
Love is more than sex, and extends and exists beyond it;
And even better without it at times.



Beauty is not sex.
Beauty is not love.
Many people, at swingers’ parties and clubs
Have engaged in sex when not beautiful, or with those not beautiful
And many beautiful people either cannot or will not
Find or give love.



Sex is not love.
Sex is not beauty.
As John Holmes said, without love
Sex is but mutual masturbation.
And we have plenty of mutual masturbators, as well as solo ones,
In our world.
And sex doesn’t make me, or a partner
Any more beautiful in and of itself.

— Nov. 10, 2008

TEMPUS FUGIT, DIES IRAE

The sun set
An hour earlier today
Than yesterday.
The leaves turned redder,
Or browner in this dry year,
And my hike ended at late dusk.
The time that flees is mine
More than the thirst-unquenched oak’s.
But the wrath that could be mine
At passed days and lost opportunities —
As the change of time reminds me
Of the change of life —
Is not, on many days, is not.
An emotional detachment often plays
In the pensively introspective
Key of B minor.
Tempus fugit, dies irae.