"Is it me that is stupid? Or are there others not so stupid?"

As Albert Einstein once said, "If you so rich, why ain't you smart"?*

We've had our latest example of the rich and stupid saying and doing things that any right thinking person would regret later (and hoping to chalk it off to inebriation or temporary mental imbalance and thus explain it away), but they just double down on the stupid. Amazing.

The rich are stupid. Or, at least, capable of stupid things. The problem is, like automating a mistake, their wealth compounds the stupidity into something of grotesquely monumental proportions.

So, maybe they aren't stupid. Or maybe, we should stop equating success with smarts. Or rather, perhaps this is a case of not being the fastest runner, but merely being a faster runner than your neighbor when being chased by a rhino. Or a giant running cave bear. Or a giant running cave bear with chainsaws for teeth.

Chuang Tse mentioned (and his quote is the title of this essay) that skepticism is required when evaluating our way of life. If we are in a fortunate circumstance, we are tempted to regard our way of life as better than the ways of others, and thus, perhaps that we are somehow better.

We cannot deny inequality of ability, but still, are we truly superior?

We might be superior. We might even be right about it. But we must recognize that we might accidentally be right. Or at least recognize that a superior way of life may be superior on functionally similar grounds. But you know, the minute the ground shifts under your feet and that functionality is no longer as efficacious as it was... See, that's the fallacy of survival of the fittest, fit for current conditions. And if you are dumb enough to think that the fitness landscape is an unchanging fitness landscape instead of a seascape, well...

In any case, once evidence is out there that your semi-divine heroes are not so super, once that master of the universe is not so adroit or magisterial, once that doubt is planted, once that avenue of inquiry is open, one has to ask, who else is stupid?

Are smart people stupid? I think so. I know so. I've certainly met more than my fair share of compartmentally stupid people. And public intellectuals and pundits certainly have more than their fair share of clueless douchebags.

What about... the Founding Fathers?

They said to themselves, we are the elite, we are the educated, we are the rich, we are the leisured class. Since we are rich, we are not corruptible.
Since we are educated, we are wise.
Since we are elite, we are incapable of error.
And since we are leisurely, we have plenty enough time to devote to good governance.

Oh, wow. Really?

looking back, they worried about the wrong thing, didn't they? Products of the Enlightenment, favored to be educated in classics, they looked to Rome. Big fucking mistake.

By fixating on Rome, they wasted a lot of time worrying about the threat of the standing army, the police and military. But soldiers and police are not the problem, are they? They can be made to be the problem through dumb policy decisions. So let's blame politicians. But politicians are not the problem either, are they? Why are you getting mad at the chess pieces?

So, it's the power players that are the problem? But let's be egalitarian, and suggest that, though a lot of them meant well (and ooh, the lessons of history suggest there's a big problem) and thus, like the idiot with the hammer that sees all the world as a nail, there are many introspective enough to recognize they are there by differing parts cleverness, effort, position, and a huge portion of luck, and so, perhaps there are other alternatives to their way or the highway.

But then there are plenty who are parasitic assholes. Alright, so maybe only some of them are parasitic assholes. So, are parasitic assholes the problem? It is the evolutionary asshole niche that is populated by the stupid that is the problem.

Isn't it?

...maybe I'm being stupid about this.

*No, he never said that, but stupid people love short, false attributions. As Thomas Jefferson once said, "Stop putting shit in my mouth I never said!"

Junius and Albert's Adventures in the Confederacy: A Book Report

First off, before I get started, a new approach towards Tesla's dream is out there, and I hope it all works out. Okay, that said...

"Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité" is, for me, a valid and logical sentiment. Much of the contest of wills - as I see it -  in the US of A comes down to liberals stressing the equality part of the motto, whilst conservatives favor the liberty part. Both fail to give enough attention or support to the fraternity part. 

Junius and Albert's Adventures in the Confederacy: A Civil War Odyssey by Perter Carlson is a likeable and readable book - so likeable and readable that I got his previous K Blows Top from the library.  (It's in the pipe, as I am in the process of reading the lovely Karen Lord's Best of All Possible Worlds and then Redemption in Indigo, and I still have to get to Black Empire...). 

Junius Browne and Albert Richardson are war correspondents for the New York Tribune. Captured at Vicksburg, paroled for return to the Union, they are instead imprisoned for twenty months (no doubt for being Yankee scribblers employed by Horace Greeley's hated abolitionist newspaper, a near lynching offense). They are shuttled in jails, first incarcerated at the relatively benign Libby Prison in Richmond, then the notorious Castle Rock prison, and then finally the death camp of Salisbury Prison in North Carolina. 

I should be quick to point out that neither side in the war had a monopoly on cruelty and brutality. The Confederates had Andersonville, Belle Isle, and Salisbury, to name a few, the Union had Ft. Delaware, Rock Island, and Elmira. All took in relatively healthy men, and spat out wretched, starving, skeletonized, vermin-ridden creatures who barely resembled men. We tend to forget that the horrors of war are not a modern creation.

Serving as hospital attendants, and living in relative comfort thanks to a corrupt warden, Browne and Richardson eventually escape by simply walking out the gate of Salisbury Prison. They spend a hard two month journey through winter Appalachia, making it to the Union camp in eastern Tennessee, helped by an assortment of interesting characters.

It's a well-told tale, with larger than life characters, but there is the one flaw, in that one tends to forget how fundamentally sad it all is. Perhaps it's not a flaw, for the sadness is there, but wrapped up in an adventure yarn.

There were times that gave me pause. We tend to think of that war as black and white, good versus evil, and then are told a more sophisticated outlook is shades of grey. But grey is composed of little tiny fractal pieces of black and white, and this distinction of sophistication really comes to nothing when confronted with the vilest and most despicable - and most noble and gracious giving - behaviors of the actors in this play.

One can't help to take pause when reading something like:

Ten minutes later, they came upon another slave cabin. When the old man who lived there heard they were Yankees, he said he'd be happy to feed them. He invited them into the cabin, and introduced them to his wife and daughter. Then he went outside and killed two chickens. He stayed outside, on guard, while the women cooked the birds and the Yankees huddled near the fire, their wet clothes steaming... When the Yankees had devoured the chicken and hot cornbread, Richardson took out the bag of tea he'd smuggled out of prison. The women had never seen tea before, so he showed them how to brew it, and then the slaves and escaped prisoners sat down to an odd little tea party. Revived by the food and the tea, the Yankees thanked their host and hostesses and got up to leave. "May God bless you" the old woman said with tears in her eyes. Her husband noticed that Browne had no hat to wear on the long, cold journey, so he pulled off his own and handed it to Junius. The hat was humble - an ancient, shapeless, sweat-soaked woolen sock - but the gesture was grand. Here was a man who owned almost nothing - he did not even own himself - but he was willing to give his hat to a stranger he'd probably never see again".

When I think of Silicon Valley and Wall Street billionaires comparing themselves to Jews persecuted by Nazis, who feel they are not being properly respected, who don't have the first fucking clue what charity is, and I compare them to these grand human beings, I want to bend the rich spoiled brats over my knee and give them such a spanking as they've never had in their lives.

I can't help but think that The Confederacy is one the vilest and most evil human excretions ever exuded. I can't hate the people, though. I can hate some of the people, and mainly the rich merchants who wished to maintain the liberty of owning other people as chattel property. Far too many people of the South were either actively opposed, or involuntarily entrained, in that horrid and wholly undemocratic festering enterprise.

Appalachians, for example, viewed it as a "rich man's war, poor man's fight" (and how often has that sentiment rung down through time?).

"In the South's vast flatlands, society was dominated by rich men who owned large plantations and many slaves, and who considered themselves aristocrats. In the mountains, where the land was unsuited for plantation agriculture, few people owned slaves and most families scratched a living growing corn, raising hogs, and shooting deer. The flatland aristocrats controlled the state governments and mocked the mountaineers as ignorant, uncultured hillbillies. Proud and a bit prickly, the mountaineers detested the aristocrats as haughty, greedy, and arrogant. William G. "Parson" Brownlow, the acid-tongued Methodist preacher who edited the Knoxville Whig, summed up the mountaineers' attitude: 'We have always despised, in our heart of hearts, a hateful aristocracy in this country, based on the ownership of a few ashy Negroes, and arrogating to themselves all the decency, all the talents, and all the respectability of the social circle'. The flatland aristocrats reacted to Abraham Lincoln's election by demanding their states secede from the Union, but most mountaineers didn't see Lincoln as threat to their way of life. In the wave of secession conventions in 1861, most delegates from mountain counties in Georgia, Alabama, Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee voted against secession".

It is the worst form of historical irony how those who opposed the Confederacy have, over time been rewarded. Some of the poorest and endemically poverty-stricken areas are those mountain counties,  and let's not forget the plight of the enslaved and their descendents. Multiply this by the comfortable and prosperous lives so many of Secessia enjoyed after the war, and still do to this day. It is a stain this nation will never blot out.

The war never did end, did it? The North may of won the war, but the South won the peace. We are still struggling with the inequities and injustices, and the sentiment I voiced before still awaits fulfillment, ""Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité". 

Did I say fraternity? Hardly, it really should be "sororité". The inescapable fact throughout the book, and history, is that, it may be men who are the breadwinners and fighters most of the time, but always, always, it is the women who are bone and sinew of our society. There is the beautiful Melvina Stephens, who guides escaped prisoners past Rebel encampments. A chapter is devoted to her, but really, not enough mention is made to the heroines in this book. But they are there, holding society together. I pay these redoubtable and truly courageous creatures too short a shrift. They deserve more. 

The escaped prisoners come to a cabin inhabited by Mrs. Welborn and her daughters. Keep in mind they are little better than tramps, their clothes in tatters, filthy and lice-ridden:

"It was a large cabin, divided into three rooms, with white curtains on the windows and pictures cut from newspapers decorating the walls. The girls gave up their beds so the visitors could sleep in comfort. In the morning, Mrs. Welborn made a breakfast while her two youngest daughters, aged four and six, stood guard outside, watching for anybody coming up the road that passed by the cabin. When a local woman of dubious loyalties wandered up the road, Mrs. Welborn and one of her daughters casually stood in the doorway, blocking the view into the cabin while the Yankees scrambled to hide. After breakfast, the girls reported a squad of Confederate cavalry was riding up the road. Mrs. Welborn motioned to her visitors to hide under the beds. Then she walked out to the porch and casually bantered with the horsemen for several minutes, feigning nonchalance, until they rode off. 'All is safe, boys' she announced." 

 In all, as I said, it's a fundamentally sad book posing as an adventure tale, and a buddy story, but you'll get the idea if you read it.

Almost, not quite, pretty close, to done with "The Stockmen"

Today, I chased defects. (Chasing is the term used for taking small tool steel tools that have all sorts of different surfaces and shapes on the end, and using them to hammer down or chisel off blisters, zits, scabs, pieces of foil, or any other thing minute thing on the surface of the bronze that shouldn't be there.

Then, I used an oxidizer to patina the bronze to a darker hue. Then I used steel wool to burnish back a lot of the dark oxidized surface. Then I waxed it all down and polished it with a cloth.

And then I took preliminary photos with an improvised backdrop. Real photos to take place next week.

Here are the "dailies", one under florescent lighting and one under incandescent:

At the beginning of the year, I made a half-serious resolution that I would try to entertain myself with my own content. Clearly, that's not entirely possible. I do go to movies. I do go to the library. I do watch some TV. I listen to other people's music.

And it's important to do that. I once had a former English teacher of mine, a good friend of my mom's, berate me for not reading any fiction. I asked why I should, and she told me that it is important to entertain perspectives and worldviews other than one's own. That's.... that was a good answer.

Reading, like travel, broadens one's own experiences and is a good innoculation against bigotry and small-mindedness.

So, I will continue to read and absorb and experience other people's stuff, but I feel I need to start really fleshing out my own internal worlds with narratives and stories and rationalizations and justifications, at least so that there is a coherence to the kind of art I am making. Just so that I've got, for lack of a better term, a ground floor of sanity for all this weirdness.

Doesn't mean I'm going to give you the stories behind these things. That's YOUR job!

Almost Done with "The Stockmen"

And what a headache I have. I know what it's from, it's from forcing myself to get this shit done and out out of the way. I feel like I'm about two miles below sea level, but now I'm depressurizing and the good thing is I have all next week to tinker and fix and fudge and get the pictures right.

I've got surface work to do. Not a problem. I changed the structure some. Originally, the pulling guy was to the side, and that looked crowded and energy stifled. So, I moved pulling guy out to be opposite pushing guy, and I think the flow of the narrative is better. They actually look like they are manhandling this stubborn robot beast.

From a practical standpoint, pulling guy would have been welded to the lazy bee/cow body with just a thin tentacle of metal holding together the heavy (20lb) pulling guy, and the the heavy (10 lb) body. That rod of bronze would have bent or broken. So, I decided not to weld the tentacle cap to the rest of the body.

There is a slight gap, but I seem to be the only one that notices. In any case, I'm glad and sad it's done, or will be done. I guess I better make more.

In case you were wondering....

....what's going on in sculptureland.

Right now, I have a headache, so I am taking a break and documenting.

Tuesday evening, we (my student aide and I) poured bronze parts for the giant Lazy Bee/Cow. (No pictures of that, sorry, but you seen one molten metal pour, you pretty much get the idea. Unless there is a steam explosion). I hammered off the shell and found only a heat-tear on the tentacles, which is when the metal cools and shrinks, but the ceramic shell investment does not, and shears the metal. I chased and cleaned the figures of surface defects and blisters and zits and oxide shit. Sandblasted all the parts and called it quits about 11pm.

What's today? Right, Wednesday. Did I mention all this grinding and such outside in the patio area? Classes were in session.

Temp was about 15-16F most of the day. About 3pm classes got done and I moved into the wood shop.

I took over a table in the wood shop

That was nice, coming in from the cold, but I got to tell you, that arctic air sure is sweet smelling and fresh. Anyway, I repaired the heat-tears on the tentacles by welding them and  grinding down the welds. Finished surface cleaning on the figures. 

Stuff laid out in parts to be welded tomorrow

To give you an idea of the junk I use...

Air die-grinders for finesse work.

I welded the pushing man's hat on, and ground down the weld with a right angle grinder.

Pushing man needs just the hat worked on

Weld ground down and you can see some spatter on the hat

 Welded the Lazy Bee/Cow's cowl onto it's body, and ground down the weld spots. I will use the air die grinders to clean up all the spatter and make the surfaces seamless.

Cowl welded to body and welds ground down

I have to weld pulling guy and the tentacle onto the tentacle part of Lazy Bee/Cow. Naturally, they did not fit, so I hammered and bent parts on everything until they did fit together.

Lazy Bee/Cow in parts.

Pulling guy needs a few more adjustments, and then I will weld those together.

Pulling guy ready to have hat welded on.

I still have a headache. I'm going to go home and drink ice water. More work tomorrow after sculpture class is done at noon.

Friday Progress

Burned out the shells last evening. Inspected the ceramic shell and found two that had hairline cracks. Some furnace cement and will let them cure over the weekend and cast them next week. Cast the figures today. Between the two of them, they used 40 pounds of metal. I did not have sufficient metal left in the crucible for the other two molds. I decided not to get greedy and do another heat. Will cast those two with the repaired shells next week.

Here are the figures.

Pushing Guy

Pulling Guy

Pushing Guy mostly decanted

Pulling Guy partially decanted

Tentacles on both came out great

Two hours on after the pour, and the metal figures are still uncomfortably hot to the touch.

I still, after ten years, have a lot to learn about rigging.

I'm getting casting defects that would not be there had I rigged the pieces properly. Both pieces suffer from shrink porosities, where the cooling metal collapses as there is no replacement feed from the rigging. Shrink bobs - large masses on the runner near the gate to the piece - would have ameliorated this defect somewhat. As it is, both of their asses looked like they got chewed up badly.

Either shrink bobs, or I need to add more runners. I hesitate to do this as it means more work removing them and cleaning up the surface where they were attached. But the amount of welding and grinding I will do to fix the defects turns out to be the same amount of work of removing the extra runners. I just have to get used to sacrificing the piece to make the sculpture, like killing the book to make the movie.

The other problem is I rushed dipping the pieces before the slurry was completely mixed. As a result, there were millimeter-sized bubbles like little zits that are now on the surface. I've dealt with this before. They are easy to remove, but waiting an extra six hours would have eliminated this problem, and I still would have been able to cast them today.

I really should keep notes on all this.

Epigenesis may now be my (un)official religion

I've been on twitter since the kickstarter project in May. I was told I needed to use every social media tool at my command. What I found out was social media tools only work if you are already famous.

I have shaved back on my twitter output after reading some of my tweets and realizing I come across as a drunken asshole. That might be because whenever I posted a text message, I was drunk.

I'm also starting to realize that most people on twitter aren't all that shiny to begin with. I had an opportunity to engage in a (I kid you not) "twitter fight club" event. Twitter fight club is an oxymoron. It sounds like annoying little birdies pooping and cheeping in mid-air, little pin feathers flying about - something that pretty much begs for a shotgun intervention.

Honestly, how can you have any kind of a worthwhile discussion in an SMS format, when the internet can barely provide one through the more expressive bulletin board system?

In any case, after checking out the profiles of the participants, I realized they were all unpleasant, miserable assholes. Which is to say, the very flower of public intellectualism and academia. So, no, pass, and, in words the twits may be more likely to comprehend: "Fuck off".

I am just going to use twitter for pictures and announcements, which is the intended use, right?

Actually, I think George Clooney is correct that famous people that use twitter are morons.  They should let their publicists do twitter for them.

Plus, the twitter app was making my already unstable HTC POS phone even more unstable. I've had to factory reset it twice. If it weren't free, I'd be annoyed.

Come to think of it, I probably come across as a drunken asshole on blogger as well. Thing is, on blogger I've always been sober, so I'm not quite sure how to deal with that realization.

Thing is, in the philosophical contest between epigenesis and preformationism, I've come down firmly in the epigenesis camp. Meaning, in practice, or at least as an informal unwritten rule, I will never do anything more than a first draft in my essays. In other words, any order that unfolds will have to unfold in the unfolding. That was kind of the unspoken ground rule in choosing a random walk theme. If it happens, it's gravy.

Epigenesis has distinct disadvantages. Without a solid plan, things can go pear-shaped quite rapidly. Drains can be circled. Thorny paths plunged down. Take my fiction writing. It suffers from being (partially revised) first draft stuff. And, since I am basically quite lazy, very few risks are taken in the narrative, because messy situations require thought to contrive and resolve. Rereading the stuff, it's all quite boring.

Still, working from just the kernel of a plan is exciting. If only I put more effort into it. Speaking of which, things are going swimmingly with the bronze figures. I've managed, at breaks in the studio schedule, to sneak in and invest the wax pieces in ceramic shell.

Seventh Dip and Stucco Investment

Seventh Dip and Stucco Investment

At this rate, I'l burn them out tonight, which is ahead of schedule. There are still contingencies and complications which can hose up the plan, but that's epigenesis for you! That's why it makes a great religion.

Thursday night update: Shells are burnt out and I may cast metal tomorrow. My camera does not handle heat well.

Without flash (kiln temp 1245F)

With flash (same temp)