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A Story About Truth, Tradition, Dialog, and Groovology
17 JunThe following is a presentation of the Truth and Traditions Theatre of Polymorphic Politics, Jumper the Frog and Kong the Gorilla, proprietors. Since the adults are not getting the message, it’s in language suitable for five-year olds.
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Moby Dick Redux: It’s about the oil
29 AprThat’s right, Moby Dick, the 19th century novel by Herman Melville, one of the great novels. Of course we’re beyond it, it was published in 1851. Whales were hunted for their oil, which was used for lubrication, and, above all, lighting. Though whaling began to die out a decade after Moby Dick was published—oil was discovered in Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859—it was big business when Moby Dick was published, and America’s whaling fleet was the largest in the world.
Rather than continuing on with my own observations, however, I thought I give you a Martian interpretation of the book. Well, not real Martians, a fictional ones, a pair invented by Margaret Atwood and plopped into a New York Times op-ed:
“‘Moby-Dick’ is about the oil industry,” they said. “And the Ship of American State. The owners of the Pequod are rapacious and stingy religious hypocrites. The ship’s business is to butcher whales and turn them into an industrial energy product. The mates are the middle management. The harpooners, who are from races colonized by America one way or another, are supplying the expert tech labor. Elijah the prophet — from the American artist caste — foretells the Pequod’s doom, which comes about because the chief executive, Ahab, is a megalomaniac who wants to annihilate nature.
“Nature is symbolized by a big white whale, which has interfered with Ahab’s personal freedom by biting off his leg and refusing to be slaughtered and boiled. The narrator, Ishmael, represents journalists; his job is to warn America that it’s controlled by psychotics who will destroy it, because they hate the natural world and don’t grasp the fact that without it they will die. That’s enough literature for now. Can we have popcorn?”
Seems about right.
In Praise of Nooks and Crannies
23 Feb
“I am against bigness and greatness in all their forms, and with the invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, stealing in through the crannies of the world like so many soft rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, and yet rending the hardest monuments of mans pride, if you give them time. The bigger the unit you deal with, the hollower, the more brutal, the more mendacious is the life displayed. So I am against all big organizations as such, national ones first and foremost; against all big successes and big results; and in favor of the eternal forces of truth which always work in the individual and immediately unsuccessful way, under-dogs always, till history comes, after they are long dead, and puts them on top. You need take no notice of these ebullitions of spleen, which are probably quite unintelligible to anyone but myself.”
William James, letter to Mrs. Henry Whitman, June 7, 1899. The Letters of William James, ed. Henry James, vol. 2, p. 90.
Peace Symbol: Nuclear Disarmament
21 Feb
The peace symbol is one of the most widely known symbols in the world. It was created in 1958 by Gerald Holtom as a symbol for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). The symbol combines the semaphor (signal flag) symbols for “N” and “D” (nuclear disarmament). In the “N” the flags are held pointing diagonally toward the ground and, for the “D” one points up and one down, forming a vertical line.
The symbol was used in first anti-nuclear march in London (to Aldermaston, where nuclear weapons were manufactured) in 1958. One of Martin Luther King’s associates, Bayard Rustin, attended that march and brought the symbol back to the US. It was adopted by anti-war movement and has since become a universal symbol of peace.
Note that the symbol has not been copyrighted. The CND explains:
Although specifically designed for the anti-nuclear movement it has quite deliberately never been copyrighted. No one has to pay or to seek permission before they use it. A symbol of freedom, it is free for all. This of course sometimes leads to its use, or misuse, in circumstances that CND and the peace movement find distasteful. It is also often exploited for commercial, advertising or generally fashion purposes. We can’t stop this happening and have no intention of copyrighting it. All we can do is to ask commercial users if they would like to make a donation. Any money received is used for CND’s peace education and information work.
Truth and Traditions 