Finally read through Sam and Chomsky’s exchange. Being a Sam Harris partisan I thought that Chomsky came off like a condescending, grouchy, cantankerous asshole. However, he raised a really interesting idea I’d never considered:

Monsters like Clinton, who e.g. refuse to sign landmine ban treaties, are in fact worse than mass-murderers who slaughter thousands in the name of doing God’s will and bringing about everlasting peace on earth.

Of course, this says nothing about the degree to which western citizens should be genuinely concerned about the earthly aspirations of divinely inspired madmen. But it may shed some light on their relative moral standing.

Acabo de ver "Despicable Me" anoche por primera vez. He went from wanting to exploit children for profit to being a protective dad unrealistically quickly, but OK. It definitely tugged at the ol’ heartstrings. It was tough watching him flush his dreams. He could have been one of the most famous men in history; instead he’s just another stupid consumer trying to raise kids that don’t talk in a movie theatre. The best you can hope for, then, is that they’ll realize all the dreams you failed… all the fucking dreams you gave up to raise a kid.

Why couldn't I make Boss Lady and her daughter a priority? Why did Latin and Wikipedia seem so important? Are they really? Is being happy? I don’t think so, but making them is.

We want the beautiful cut of filet mignon, but we’re too busy eyeing the mediocre buffet, because choice. Because choice. Our choices are killing us. We think choice means something. We think opportunity is good. We think the more chances we have, the better. But, it makes everything watered-down. Never mind actually feeling satisfied, we don’t even understand what satisfaction looks like, sounds like, feels like.

Dreamt about Boss Lady last night. She was at some bookstore in a second or so floor in the Castro and she was taking a broadcasting (?) class with this older, non-romantically-linked dude - not like she was taking it with him, but he was in her class - and I was reading her textbook about transmitting and frequencies and stuff and I was smitten all over again.

How did somebody make you apologize? Did they literally hit you on your body? Let them be upset. It’s not the worst thing in the world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/arts/for-louis-c-k-the-jokes-on-him.html

I got used to your body

and now it’s gone.

Citizen Pulls Over Police Officer

The guy is a Libertarian nutjob, but this is fucking awesome.

Found a new site

Frankly I have ceased to care what devout Muslims mean by un-Islamic. The phrase no longer means anything at all. It is absurd beyond absurdity. In many Islamic countries, the imams and mullahs use it when they talk about the education of women; liberal Muslims use it when they disagree with extremists, American and European Muslims when they are trying to establish their liberal “democratic” credentials over and against the patterns of the Islamic world. “Un-Islamic” means what the last charismatic preacher says it means, what the imam with a sixth grade education tells you it means, what a professor at SOAS tells you it means when he tries to discredit the imam with a sixth grade education.

Morning dream where I ended up finding/being introduced to her and JD was there and he was, I think, a LaRouchie or something similar, saying it was a sin to "mathematically vibrate your face in reverse at the frequencies of Rebecca" something-or-other, but now I can't remember if that was before or after I kinda-sorta-accidentally took LSD, and I was a temp projectionist, and I was running from La Migra and there were gunshots but I'm not sure if they were real and maybe not because they slowed like a movie and someone tried to watch it on their Disney channel playback device but it was blocked for age restrictions and there was a big ship and she ended up having fucked up teeth and being shy and having been in an accident, but I still wanted to find out/give it a shot anyway.

Kicking myself for not reading the nametag.

I don't know what to say. Thinking about the girl/woman from the wedding. Me desperté como a las 5 después de dormir 3 horas sin poder dejar de pensar en ella, al fin me levanté. I ended up hanging out with Café after work last night and it kind of almost ended up being a date, but I couldn't enjoy it as much as I should have because I was still hung up on the wedding girl—in fact I was thinking of trying to post the MC ad from my phone while we played on the playground.

She offered to give me a ride home, and I really didn't want to impose, but on the off chance she actually wanted to spend time with me, I said what the hell and tried to graciously accept. After she dropped off the other rider she said, "OK, well, here are our options - I can take you home, we can go slack lining, or we can get a drink." Was a bit amazed, opted for slack lining because even though it seemed like a stupid white people thing, I thought it would be fun and I'd never done it. I ended up short stopping us at a playground, going on the slides, longboarding; we walked over to Tosa Fest for ice cream at Baskin-Robbins but they were closed. Met her friend from the trainride, talked for a while and tried canvassing her hard to go to Wal-Mart and read Dr. Seussbut she was tired. Brought her back to the house for ice cream, she declined and had water, let her hold the cat, which took a swipe. Got a hug and she said she'd see me soon.

Still thinking about some mousy nerd at a stranger's wedding more than a ridiculously beautiful girl.

Dreamt that Lefty had come out as gay; of course in the dream there was nothing between when we stopped talking and now—I mean that is to say he’d never gotten married. I didn’t really love his new boyfriend that much—both of them seemed very straight, and he smoked. I think they lived in some house that was like near outdoors, a creek, like Cameron’s FBDO house or something. We talked about Kate Bush.

Love this:

[M]aybe even Neruda got exhausted sometimes from the great pressure to be original and not cursi–after a long day of racking his brain for inspired, fresh symbols of love for his poems, perhaps the most he could muster up for Matilde was a little teddy bear he’d pick up at a nearby store.

Each set of lovers forms their own language and lexicon composed of their significant symbols and code words

Te extraño, snugglepumpkin.

Another therria dream

Not exactly a chat, not exactly e-mail, leaving messages for her like in the sentence correction interface. I said something to her first and she was nothing but nasty to me, but I figured if she was giving me withering replies, she still wanted me to try to get her back.

Another therria dream. This time likely prompted by wondering if she saw my pic. We kind of made up; she held my hand, and it was very good. I got her tickets to Stanhope. She had changed; we all have.

Another thing I’ve been saying forever

[Corporations] are amoral. They're driven purely by their constitutional requirement to turn as large a profit as possible for their shareholders. People can be good or evil, ambitious or lazy, angry or fearful – plcs are none of these things. They unthinkingly, unswervingly, pursue money – that is their programming.

…I really don't think this amorality is a problem, as long as it's understood. If you walk into the lion's enclosure at a zoo and the lion eats you, it's your fault. When we expect large companies to act out of motives other than financial self-interest, we only have ourselves to blame.

Another therria dream

although it almost doesn’t count

And be sure that the scientific method is an invention as much as anything else, as much as any steam engine or chemical process. It wasn't done centuries ago, it had to be developed and invented.

—Lewis Dartnell

See also: Georgia Guidestones

The scientific revolution was different from the science that had been achieved in the Oriental world in a number of crucial ways, the most important being that through the experimental method, it gave men control over nature in a way that had not been possible before. Example, Benjamin Robin’s extraordinary application of Newtonian physics to ballistics. Once you do that, your artillery becomes accurate.

—Niall Ferguson¹

This man wanted to know where his cannonballs would land.

—Neil DeGrasse Tyson

¹ Rebuttal (via) (He does go on to say that developing nations adopting capitalism and “private property rights” “achieve what the West achieved after 1500, only faster”—it’s not really clear whether or not this is taken as laudatory or a warning.
Also, his account of “the average American” and “the average Chinese” involves a lot of hand-waving.)

(I think it’s also quite possible the Europeans were just a lot more bloody-minded and thusly got there first.)

It really made me wonder if I’ve been so starved for genuinely stimulating conversation lately or I’m just like that—that no matter what I have in my life I’ll always be greedy for more, always be wanting to see what else is out there.

So I had a gig yesterday. Ended spending almost the entire shift—as much as I could, anyway—talking to this Mexican girl from Acapulco—she was super-rad, talking about neuroscience and studying psychology and teaching… When she mentioned going to school while working weekends I had to make sure I was understanding her correctly—it turns out she’s a junior in high school (though is technically senior-aged) (I had obviously not pegged her as that young). Also after a while she mentioned a novio that is?/did? go to UNAM. So it didn’t matter that her mum seemed to like me. That didn’t stop her from being someone I’d like to know better, yes, platonically. Kept waiting till our shift was about to end so I could act somewhat nonchalant, like, “Oh! by the way, let me get your e-mail address so I can send you those Sam Harris &c. links.” Or give her mine. But I was too nonchalant—I was called to work on another task while the girls who worked there were clocking out; I should have just pounced but really didn't want to seem like a overeager/DOM, and of course I had no idea it would be so difficult to casually mention something as I was saying goodbye. Holy shit it just occurred to me she purposely slipped out so she could avoid that? God, I hope not. She was just really smart + fun to talk to although she’s probably like that with everyone by virtue of being smart + upbeat and also I might have once accidentally sort of flecked spittle conspicuously in her direction while speaking animatedly. Yeah, OK, I guess that could be a dealbreaker. Oh, and also I nicked myself shaving and after the shift when I looked in a mirror I realized I’d had a hardened, blackened blood bubble on the edge of my nostril the whole day. Alright, I know, I’m disqualified. I’ll shut up now.
(Still really secretly hoping I run into her again somehow; pushing away thoughts of “accidentally” running into her again outside of her place of employment, omg too stalkerish.)
Also there was this other girl, who I have no idea if she worked there or with us, who I quickly picked out as the cutest girl in the place and kind of wanted to holler at, she had that je ne sais quoi that said, like, we’d get along, I’m cool, you know? But they assigned her to work a totally different floor and I barely got to say two words to her. Leaving at the end of the day without knowing anything about her + having no sense of whether or not Acapulco would have liked to continue the conversation left me feeling really frustrated and un-centred, still today.

Also planning on going back and finishing my conversation with Target girl, possibly/hopefully continuing it after she gets off work.