Genesis 51

1-The LORD saw this and he was pleased.
2-Unto the brothers of Joseph He thus spake. "Your days have been difficult, yet your people have persisted."
3-"You seem to have the hang of this, more or less. I've got some other projects I've been working on so I'll be going now."
4-And the brothers lamented, "O Father! What are we do to without you?"
And in return the LORD replied, "Don't sweat it, fellas. You'll be fine. It's a big world with lots of people. You just do what you think is best with it."
5-But they feared responsibility the LORD thus endowed and so they pleaded, "Stay with us, O Father! O King and creator of all! We will build great temples to Thee and pay homage and sacrifice!"
6-The LORD found their offers endearing and did pity them. "Indeed I have created all by my will, and as king of creation I only give one command:
7-That ye be, and make use of the creation I hath wrought."
8-The command of the LORD did stir the meek men's hearts. But their minds were unresponsive to sorting it out just what they were to do about it. And so they cried again unto the LORD.
9-"We will honor your command, O Father, O Lord, and it will be law!" And the brothers murmured to themselves for a bit before asking, "Could you maybe, though, be a little more specific?"
10-Now the LORD was becoming a bit irritated. The LORD double checked the LORD's notes to make sure that he had, in fact, instilled in his creation of human kind the ingredient of free will.
11-And lo! It was so! Right there, check-marked, day 6, sure enough...
12-"I have made you in My image," endeavored the LORD, "So really... you can figure this out for yourselves. It's quite simple, as I previously stated in verse 7. I must be going now, take care!"
13-And then the LORD left the Earth, though he continued to observe His creation since it did please him ever still. But the brothers of Joseph remained vexed and frightened.
14-"What are we to do!" they cried to eachother as they gnashed their teeth and tore at their hair. "We must have the intervention of the LORD to know what is right, or else others who do not believe as we may run amok!"
15-And the brothers agreed and they took council and decided on just what they were pretty sure the laws of the LORD might well have been had he taken the time to spell every detail out.
16-And hither forth in the rest of the books of this text is an account of the fruits of their labors.

Uncle Enzo, Coda

Uncle Enzo sat in the study of his well-protected mansion. He hated that he was mostly immobile, but the stab wounds were healing "better than expected." The study was once used for book reading, but now Uncle Enzo just came to focus on the portrait of his father.

Uncle Enzo's father, Tony, was a second generation American, back when the U.S. existed. Tony's father was a meat packer, and he came home from work everyday dog-tired. Tony vowed that he would never work so much that it would take him away from his family. So, he started a pizza business in Little Italy, New York, New York.

It was a simple business of making pizza based on his mother's recipes, and they became quite popular. He emulated the Asians over in Little China and hired delivery boys to run it over to whomever ordered the pizza. Rather than pay upon delivery, many customers would come in the next day to pay for last night's meal, and for Tony that was just fine.

Uncle Enzo's favorite thing about his father's old business, one that had grown into the pizza place in North America under Uncle Enzo's guidance, was the promise of a hot pizza in half an hour. Of course, when you are only delivering to people you personally know in Little Italy it was a little simpler. If one of Tony's pizzas came after half an hour, Tony invited the customer over to his house for a personally prepared full Italian meal.

Now it was different. The fucking customers won a veritable lottery if a pizza was delivered over half an hour, and then people had to be fired, accounts had to be re-evaluated, and the media ate up the story like starving dogs. But that was the price to pay for destroying all the other pizza companies. Uncle Enzo finished his drink with a salute to the painting, and left the study to go read the daily report on North American pizza delivery times.

Side Effects May Include (pt 1)

So what is consciousness? Self-awareness? Sapience? We sure as hell don’t have the scientific definition down for this/these things. Were’ not even in the neighborhood because we can’t even come up with a practical (practice) definition. One that just gets the gist of what it is that we’re trying to figure out.

“Self Awareness” might be about the best term to explore. After all it was the particularly cited fulcrum on which human history was turned by SkyNet on Aug 29th 1997.

Is self-awareness what separates us from animals, vegetables, and minerals? I’ve recently come across a couple hypotheses on this quintessential conundrum that really struck me as profoundly plausible.

The first comes from Steven Johnson in his short, enlightening, natural exploration Emergence.

One portion contemplates our pattern recognition and inductive abilities with regards to estimating the behavior of our fellow human creatures. We use our ability to read and interpret body language and facial expressions, the verbal language itself, and our own personal knowledge of the world to determine what other people are thinking, what they’re going to do about it, and what they will expect US to do about it. This is an amazingly helpful survival ability! And I’ve personally never experienced it being discussed much at all. It facilitates us engaging in productive behavior since it gives us more information about the situation and it especially facilitates both collaborative and competitive behavior with our fellows. Of course… Together Everyone Achieves More! We’re not the only animals that do this. Dogs and wolves do this famously and to great effect, apes and dolphins as well of course.

It’s not he blind, dumb (but effective) cooperation of an ant colony or a flock of starlings. It’s higher order and cognitive and arguably it’s what we’re best at. After all, we’ve taken it beyond simply family or pack dynamics and built whole cities and nations in a deliberate act of special collaboration.

We did it deliberately but did we necessarily do it consciously? Were we ourselves aware of what we were doing? Well we didn’t see all ends when we started but it’d say the answer’s still a definite “yes”. So why don’t dogs and apes have cities? The dogs might have the opposable thumb excuse but the apes don’t. So, oh yes, let’s do remember that there is still a difference between man and animal. We are self-aware. Is this come divine quantum leave of consciousness between the species? At first gland of course it seems so. But yet inspection of our powerful pattern recognition abilities and our great capability to create a working model of each other creature we meet in our own minds, it becomes easy (as Mr. Johnson, suggests) to view our own self-aware consciousness as a logical evolution of this highly developed skill.

Book Review: House of Leaves

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (brother of songwriter Poe) wrote an excellent book that can cause extreme headaches, but as with any type sado-masochism, it is well worth the pain. The book can be seen as horror, but the creepiness is not as apparent as something by Stephen King or John Carpenter.

The book is a written "doctoral" thesis of a very intelligent man, Zampano. Zampano writes about a documentary that never existed, The Navidson Record. The other "author" is a junky named Johnny Truant who tells you his story throughout the footnotes. Finally the "editors" fix mistakes, etc. also in the footnotes.

The Navidson Record does not exist in our world as a documentary, nor does it exist in the world of the book. However, when Zampano discusses the documentary in his thesis he cites reviews about the it, discourses on it, interviews from the people documented, etc. In other words, it feels like Zampano is creating the documentary as he writes (and the horror to go along with it). This is not giving away anything as the prologue explicitly states this fact. However, it disturbingly adds to the realism when you read the footnotes and you desparetely want to read (or watch) some of the material that is cited.

The Navidson Record is about a legendary filmmaker who buys a house that has more space on the inside of the house than the exterior should allow. In other words, on the inside it measures X feet long, but on the outside it measures Y feet long where X is greater than Y. After living there a few months a hallway appears. This hallway does not connect to any other part of the house, and instead leads off to a space that should not exist. Zampano likens it to the Labyrinth. The documentary is so unreal and the horror so fundamental that the thesis that is created from it sucks you right in as if you were watching the documentary.

The Dan Z. also adds another interesting effect to his book (on top of the experimental writing style). Every time "house" is written it is blue. Anything written about a Labyrinth or Minotaur is in red and struck-out (sorry I can't figure out how to strikeout text). This is perfectly catches you. You will search for the word house in a sentence and even re-read it to make sure it is blue, and the text in red seems all the more important. The book also has a few warping effects where there will only be three words on a page or the text is upside down, etc. Sometimes this effect really took the theme and mood home, other times it was annoying.

Other reviewers have commented that Dan Z. uses a writing style that mocks the current doctoral paper system. The thesis is written with an air of pugnancy and Zampano cites so many things (some real) that it gets to the point of ridiculousness. Some of his string cites are 5 pages long. Because of this writing style, you will find yourself skipping large sections discussing tangents that really make no sense. I think this was the point, i.e., the section was written in hopes that the reader would skip it because it makes it all the more real.

I highly recommend the book but beware that it does take some measure to read. The pain received from it is well worth it, and when you walk away you might have a slightly different view of things.