Satori

“One morning Socrates was thinking about something which he could not resolve; he would not give it up, but continued thinking from early dawn until noon – there he stood fixed in thought; and at noon attention was drawn to him, and the rumor ran through the wondering crowd that Socrates had been standing and thinking about something since the break of day. At last, in the evening after supper, some Ionians out of curiosity (I should explain that this was not in winter but in summer), brought out their mats and slept in the open air that they might watch him and see whether he would stand all night. There he stood until following morning; and with the return of light he offered up a prayer for the sun, and went his way.” —Plato, Symposium

I was thinking about Socrates at Potidaea and Nietzsche’s famous nervous breakdown while walking a Pomeranian today. In college I had been taught Nietzsche saw a carriage horse being brutally beaten in the street from his window, and rushed out to the carriage driver beating him. He’s said to have thrown his arms around the horse (to protect it? in sympathy?) before sinking to the ground, being led away and then institutionalized, dying years later.

I believed that story most of my adult life, but it appears it’s untrue. And who is to believe Plato’s account of Socrates? Most of what we know about Socrates, who philosophized en plein air, comes from Plato. Weak. We want to believe these things though, like (all?) religious stories, so they persist.

Why?

Adventures of a Dentist (USSR 1965)

Пoхoждения зубногo врача

☭:  7/10

This movie is a dark comedy with abstract musical elements and an occasional drifting quality. Director Klimov describes it as “”The story of a man who reveals an extraordinary talent, and whom everyone tramples in the most friendly Soviet way.” The titular dentist Chesnokov (“garlic”) is played by Andrey Myagkov in his first role on the big screen: a dentist who can pull teeth without inflicting pain. He was the actor from the subsequent Soviet New Year classic Ironiya Sudbiy (The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!) and the still later adorable Sluzhebnyy roman (Office Romance). In these three films he specializes in endearing haplessness.

The Soviet musical tendency, which East Side Story contends comes from an aping of Hollywood and Broadway, makes an appearance through the rather abstract folk guitar and singing of Masha. I thought the songs less interesting than her facial expressions and quirky smoldering intensity.

“Get used to the fact that everyone knows everything in our town,” Chesnokov is told when he starts, and the story that unfolds seems like a cautionary illustration of Janteloven (Jante Law), the Scandinavian group tendency to belittle, criticize or discourage individual success—particularly in a small town milieu. ”Janteloven” was coined by Dano-Norwegian author Aksel Sandemose, and though I know of no equivalent in Russian culture, it’s interesting that neighboring countries with distinct cultures have a concept of it, and you’d think it would obtain in the collectivism of the Soviet Union. Functionaries’ justice and masses’ wisdom alike are muddied by Klimov’s portrayal, so the world is lucky this is on YouTube. Thanks to censors’ damning evaluation, it’s almost certain more will see it today than did in its time.

ROK Manual Espressomaker Review

Something a little more bobo than usual:

I was given a ROK manual espressomaker for Christmas, and have used it daily since to give an accurate characterization. One of the small amenities I sorely missed during the 13 days of cold blackout after Hurricane Sandy was morning espresso. (We made Turkish coffee on the gas stove.) With the ROK, as long as we still have natural gas and running municipal water, I will be able to drink espresso.

I have a solid background with consumer espresso machines. I broke a Saeco trying to clean the group head (the retaining screw stripped – the end) after 3 years; I burnt out the thermostat on a Francis! Francis! after 5 years and swapped its boiler parts into a 1980s Espresso Cialda after finding the latter in a basement with the filter basket missing.  All those machines developed thermostat problems: after a couple of years they couldn’t regulate boiler temperature, overheating the water until the espresso was a thin, scorching brew.

Overall, the ROK makes an excellent espresso. It is a little more work than an electric pump-driven machine, but the quality and kinetic experience is worth it. But there are a couple of qualifications to my praise.

Materials
I used Doulton-filtered water and grounds from a Braun burr grinder. I had to use Starbucks espresso beans because that’s all I could get locally after trying illy (disgusting, thin, sour) and Gevalia (sour, thin, revolting) and Fairway’s bulk beans (artificial flavor fumes lingering). For years I bought the darkest roast I could get in bulk at Costco, but they stopped carrying anything above a medium Colombian Supremo. I must start ordering online.

Tamping the grounds
You will note that the included spoon has an ergonomic divot for pressing with your thumb while tamping the grounds. This is because a firmer pack than used with electric machines yields better taste and crema.

Water temperature
The ROK, into which you must pour boiling water and then press it out with an action like that of a wing corkscrew, won’t suffer thermostat failure. But its body is an alloy that loses heat quickly, and requires preheating of everything to get a passable brew. You must fill it to top with boiling water, let it sit a moment, then flush it through the empty basket, preheat the cup with kettle water (not the flush water which has already gotten much cooler), then half-fill the ROK with water for your espresso all in a short period of time. If you do that the espresso will come through warm, but never quite hot. Given the predictable failures of machines that cost up to twice as much, that’s not a big deal.

Crema
A review I found complained about the ROK’s crema, and it’s true: crema’s not easy to get. I found it works best when you make the cup, then add ~tablespoon more of boiling water from the kettle and press it through the grounds. The higher ratio of air to water in that second press almost always lends itself to a ready froth.

Galvanic corrosion around the joint.

Construction
Generally, the construction of the ROK is solid and ingenious. But its finish will not stay perfect. This is because steam rises from the chamber where you pour the boiling water. The steam acts on the joint where the aluminum wings are pinned by a bolt that is probably stainless steel, causing galvanic corrosion. The finish of the ROK is highly polished and probably anodized, so where this corrosion happens the anodized layer cracks and aluminum oxidation (rust) happens in the cracks. It won’t affect its function but as you can see, aesthetic fetishists will be bummed.

Another flaw, this one more serious, is the choice of ridiculous rubber feet that stick to the bottom.  As a metalworker, I can tell you that anodized aluminum is an amazing material. Almost anything (paint, adhesives etc.) will stick to it, much better than it would to raw aluminum. After anodizing and painting aluminum, it can be sealed to prevent anything sticking. So if the base were aluminum, I would have anodized it, stuck the feet on, then sealed it.

But the base must be corrosion-resistant because standing water and coffee residues will sit on it. You can see a seam where it is bolted to the main body. As such it is almost certainly a chrome-plated zinc alloy (which makes me wonder if the entire body is not that, maybe that zinc-aluminum-magnesium-copper alloy I’ve seen used in jewelry…but the finish-cracking around the joint mentioned above suggests aluminum). The very chroming that strengthened the base’s finish made it too sheer a surface for sticker-feet to cling to, and one popped off this morning. Since the user presses down with equal force on the two arms, effective use requires that the unit be skid-proof. Eventually all four feet will come off and you’ll need to apply a full-bottom adhesive rubber base, covering the “designed in London, made in P.R.C.” language—nothing lost.

Croatia Arming Syrian Rebels?

Thanks to Tom Watson for helping to bring this to the world’s attention. He had this bad translation of an article about Croatia arming Syrian rebels up on his site. A friend of mine is Croatian, and she voluntarily re-translated his Google translation because, well, you know how those can be. I’ve been traveling in Turkey so it’s been generally tough to post, but I don’t want this to get stale. I’ll probably link it or post in comments on his site later.

Zagreb became an international center for arms shipments to the Syrian rebels

In the period from the beginning of November last year [2012] until February of this year [2013], a total of 75 civilian cargo planes took off from the Zagreb airport, carrying weapons to Syrian rebels, diplomatic sources told Jutarnji list. The planes were carrying, aside from Croatian weapons, weapons supplied by other European countries, the collection of which was organized by the United States.

According to our sources, the first two to three shipments had been carried out by a Turkish airline, Turkish Cargo, owned by Turkish Airlines, [the subsequent shipments] were then taken over by a Jordanian company, Jordanian International Air Cargo.

Until recently, it was believed—and The New York Times reported– that a Croatian high official had been negotiating, with his U.S. colleagues, to transport Croatia’s excess weapons and arms to the Syrian rebels. However, according to reliable diplomatic sources, the arming of Syrian rebels was part of a much broader plan.

[According to the same sources], the American officials enlisted their partners – Croatia, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey, in the operation of arming the resistance of the Syrian regime. The United States organized the collection of arms, Saudi Arabia was financing it, and Jordan and Turkey were transporting arms from the Jordanian territory into Syria.

Croatia’s role was twofold. It collected the excess of its own weapons—M79 grenade launchers, RPG-22 grenade launchers, RBG-6 multiple grenade launchers and M-60 no-recoil canons– from [Croatian] army warehouses. An unknown quantity of those arms left from Zagreb airport Pleso for Syria, in Turkish A310 aircraft, in early November of last year. However, the United States also organized transport of arms to the Zagreb airport Pleso from several other European countries—Great Britain among them—which was then transported in Jordanian International Cargo planes first to Jordan and then to Syria.

We could say that Zagreb airport Pleso served as an international hub for transport of arms to Syrian rebels. The aircraft used for this transport were A310 and Iljušin 76MF, which leads us to conclude that the 75 flights transported about 3000 tons of various types of weapons and ammunition.

YouTube videos confirm that weapons are being delivered to the Syrian rebels in great quantities. In the videos, rebels show off the new types of weapons they now possess. According to Western media, the transport of those weapons [to Syria] was organized by the United States and Turkey.

Our sources claim that the security of the whole operation of weapons transport from Zagreb’s Pleso became compromised when the air traffic control of Bosnia and Herzegovina started inquiring about the sudden increase of Jordanian airline’s flights from Zagreb. The sudden increase in frequency of incoming Jordanian cargo planes did not go unnoticed in Pleso either. According to our sources, it is unknown how many of the weapons that were shipped ended up in the hands of the Free Syrian Army, backed by the West, and how many in the hands of various militant jihadist movements. According to some estimates, there are several dozen militant jihadist groups also fighting the Syrian regime.

Judging by the videos recently posted on YouTube, a portion of the arms, believed to have originated in Croatian army warehouses, ended up in the hands of the jihadist movement Ahram al-Sham. This was confirmed by their spokesperson when he said that they [Ahram al-Sham] share their weapons with the Free Syrian Army.

According to some information, the weapons that arrived to Syria through Zagreb, ended up in the hands of the Martyrs of Yarmouk, who, two days ago, kidnapped 20 Filipino members of the U.S. peacekeeping force in Golan Heights. The fact that weapons might end up in the hands of militant groups is what frightens Western politicians the most; which is why the majority of the countries insists that the weapons embargo on Syria remain in force. Croatia supported that embargo; and formally it never broke it by engaging in this operation, because it sold the weapons to Jordan.

Croatia proved itself a reliable partner of the U.S. in this whole story. Washington played a crucial role in Croatia’s accession, first to NATO, and now to the European Union. Furthermore, the U.S. Department of Defense has been greatly aiding the Croatian Army in Afghanistan and securing free transport of our soldiers to the ISAF mission. Therefore, it is perfectly clear that Croatia, as a faithful ally, accepted the American request to participate in the operation of weapons transport to Syria.

Treble Army—Lullabomb (w/ lyrics)

I can’t believe these brothers were based in Arizona. I know how that place can make you this het up.

The album version of this tune does not include audio of these creepy vids that only enhance the impact of this colonial critique. I’ll appreciate help with lyrics I couldn’t decipher in the comments.

Sese’s flow is breakneck, choppy and freely accordions between languid and deep-sea compressed. Yet he chuckles in this interview with True Skool Radio that on TA’s new album Amierdaca, he has better control of his flow than in previous efforts. Yao.

My city never sleeps
In the distance do I hear soprano sax or drone attacks?
My distance sensor beeps
Target pipelines for profits, phosphorus bombs, carnage is common
Helicopters like I’m walking in ‘Nam
New widows every week
In the mirror it’s civilian casualty collateral damage or enemy combatant
No choice but carry munitions (I’m forced to) Yankee resistance
There’s bullets spraying on less-than-extraordinary-rendition
In prison Guantanamo Bay sensory deprivation swimming and waterboarding
Innocents slaughtered all with minimum media coverage
Pillage and rape the people B-52 bombers foreplay
Dreams relative skeletons weapons discharge their stomachs
Open my eyes Obama increased Defense Department budget
They said freedom democracy that’s when the nightmares came
Shock & awe the Iraq version of Disney’s Electric Light Parade

Lullaby, lullabomb hear the cry of the young new insurgent tossin turnin Kabul burnin
Insomnia is certain, shoot first mom Uncle Tom wants two surges

Babies born deformed experiments gone wrong
Accordin to warlords their cause is right
Lethal chemicals breathed by fetal specimens
Each and every pregnancy be goin wrong tonight
Bodies twisted like penmanships calligraphy
Voiceless victims of violence cos limbs are where they lips should be
Oil rigs become proper mercenaries’ majority
Torture prisons are taking pictures of inmate stripper teams
Your country tis of thee FT
Liberty let’s see
If my missile heat headrush feels like your M-16
You left it on an uninvolved civilian: moustache, brown skin, terror-causing children
Yellow stream is real terrorist evil equals intent to kill
But like the CEO elites that you’ll never meet at the grill
Feral cats and poor people ain’t seen a meal
Since your last Congressional seal, bullets are sleeping pills!

Lullaby, lullabomb…

I see the black & brown soldiers how they treat em awful
Gang raped and mutilated, like LaVena Johnson
The Spanish speakers fight for citizenship
While the black folks think that whitefolks is interested they enlist
Poverty get recruit, laugh at blacks in armor
Brown is bulletproof, Afro-cannonfodder
How they make it to the front line of gun deployments
Same way they make it to the front lines of the unemployments
Sergeant cutting corners think we won’t take POWs
Recruit among the colors like the Viet Cong or _______
To convince them we got common cause and Uncle Sam’s inaudible
We allies in this struggle, suffocate commanding officers
Our war memorials need a poet laureate to write its freedom fightin ____ daughter son
Cause it’s notorious empire strikes are goryless
The red white and blue’s in the sights of new Afghani warriors

Divide and conquer won’t work this time.
This is a language that they can’t understand
Divide and conquer won’t work this time.
Tell peaceful protests keep the terrorists off my land!

This is a terror story from occupied territories
_________ homicide _________________
This is a terror story from occupied territories
Hamas and Lebanon surprise America and Israel a genocide w/ single side only

“Strike” by Gioconda Belli

I want a strike where we can all go out
A strike of shoulders, legs, hair,
a strike born in every body.
I want a strike of workers, of drivers, of technicians, of doctors, of doves, of flowers, of children, of women
I want a big strike that includes even love.
A strike where everything is shut down:
the watch, the factories, the nursery, the schools, the bus, the highway, the hospitals, the harbors
A strike of eyes, hands, and kisses.
A strike where breathing is banned, a strike where silence is born in order to hear the departing footsteps of the tyrant.

A Funny Thing About Waste

Waste is more often a market function than an absolute. Dirty motor oil is wasted unless you’re trying to heat a bus depot or melt metal, like I do. Taxpayers’ money is wasted on wars defending the interests of companies that pay no taxes, but which are bound not to waste a penny of shareholders’ investments. Up to half of the world’s food goes to waste, probably while the world’s other half is starving. Madness!

At the scrapyard today, I found probably the only Leica I will ever own. It’s tripod that can stand as high as 10’. Made in Switzerland with incredible precision, it’s in heavily-used but still very functional condition. I knew from the color and design that it’s a geosurvey tripod, and it has a shoulder strap so it’s easy to carry even if you are a sluggish government worker glutted on wasteful union wages.* Not that it’s very heavy—engineered in fiberglass with aluminum hardware, it’s lighter than my camera tripod despite being over twice its size.

I couldn’t figure out why it was in the dumpster, and the scaleman gave it to me because the materials have no resale value by weight. It made my day, but I spent the car ride home puzzling over why it was binned. When I was unloading it at home, I saw that it has a hairline crack spiraling around one of its supports.

It’s possible that such a crack would impact its precision, throwing it off by a nanounit of a degree so that a road surveyor would annotate a map directing an interstate to pass through a mall, costing taxpayers thousands of man hours to correct. Or maybe it was just cheaper to throw out, since it probably left the Swiss factory untouched by human hands but perfect. If anyone alive could fix it, they would cost more per year than the machine that replaced them fourscore quarters ago. In all events it’s cheaper to buy another one, but you’d think it could find an aftermarket among clowns photographing children at birthday parties.

_________________________
*Not my actual opinion.