Deserves More

It’s been years

And you should now expect me to be blunt and, to you,

scathing.

if you still love me after all I’ve put you through

please

mark my words patiently.

Drifting away, pretending I’m sailing

I don’t hold to determinism as though it were my worldview. I despise determinism, and my determinist side rears its ugly head when I’m in a bad mood.

 

I’m never deterministic when my head works.

But sometimes I feel that my upbringing and the circumstances of my birth and childhood, circumstances I had and have no control of – are in many ways responsible for what I’m going through.

I’m an average person in many respects. Maybe I have a few talents, here and there, but on the whole, I’m an average person.

I like that. I’m my father’s son. My father is a sweet person, and an ignorant rube, and although I was endowed with enough sentience to be aware that he is an ignorant rube,

I’m an ignorant rube’s sun, and you can only go so far with that kind of upbringing.

 

At least that’s the feeling I get whenever I’m too scared to try my best.

Whenever the idea of excellence scares me, or even the thought of being noted for hard work or superior skills.

The minute someone notices that I’m in the race – the spell is broken,

and I just want my obscurity back.

 

All of that, of course, is utter bullshit.I don’t have to be afraid. I choose to be.

The Deaf Man Came to My House*

*This is a self-styled poem I wrote about my experience as a hearing child of deaf adults, encountering other deaf adults, mostly my parents’ friends and guests.

Descartes is right about something

If all that I know and consider true is false or may be false, and everything is simply a dream, an illusion – the only thing that cannot be wrong, is the fact that I think that certain things are right. Whether or not they are illusory or not is debateable (to Descartes), but I agree with him that no matter what – you cannot negate the fact that the very act of thinking that something is true must exist, otherwise it would be impossible to even consider the possibility that it is false.

 

Not bad, Rene.

“East Jerusalem”? – Yeah, right!

[ H/T to Eyal Niv, original author of Hebrew content and references. The original post can be found here. ]

The “East Jerusalem” we know today was invented by the State of Israel shortly after the Six Days War (of 1967). It was created to allow Israel the annexation of some surrounding areas previously belonging to the West Bank. This military and political sleight of hand had managed to deceive the Israeli government and public at the time, and both the international Media and the Israeli public still accept today the veracity of the counterfeit term “East Jerusalem”. The annexation did not only include “The Old City”. In fact, the invention of “East Jerusalem” came to be only after the Old City was fully annexed to Israel.

Orange and gray signify Jerusalem (divided) prior to 1967, yellow is other parts of the West Bank, under the new moniker of "Jerusalem". Cf. Amirav. Click to enlarge

Some thoughts about cause and effect and science

Reading right now: David Hume’s “Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding”

First off, I can’t help noting how pertinent this book is, even though it was written, what, 300 years ago? The English is not that tough for a regular reader, though some archaic words (“Shew” for “show”, “connexion” for “connection” come to mind) might make a modern English reader furrow his brow a bit.

Hume goes to great lengths when discussing how human beings perceive cause and effect, a subject I always found fascinating, as it is pivotal to all human science and is probably one of the most important concepts human beings deal with.

It’s very easy to embrace the popular opinion about science and blithely regard it as the key to enhancing human knowledge, but I don’t think something so important is to be taken so lightly. To this very moment, I still regard the metaphysical assumptions lying at the foundations of science as tentative, as they always will be. I don’t think it’s otherwise possible. I leave certainty to those who are done asking questions (and receiving answers, at that).

One of the first things you study as a science major is the concept of the scientific method. I’m pretty sure the original concepts I’m going to mention aren’t seen for the first time in Hume’s work, but it’s probably one of the oldest instances in which these concepts are written of in such detail.

Batteries

It is as though everything in our lives must be recharged. Our cars with fuel, our laptops and cell phones with electricity, our stomachs with food and liquids,

our hearts with sorrow and mirth.

Deliberations With a Friendly Bigot

I’m writing this from Antalya, Turkey. I’m currently on vacation with my girlfriend, and it’s safe to say that minus the horrible stomach aches I get in the mornings from eating like a filthy swine and drinking sub-lethal (or almost lethal) amounts of alcohol – we are having an awesome time, thank you very much.

The purpose of this post is not to tell you how much fun I’m having. That, on its own, is not particularly interesting. I wish to write a few paragraphs about a guy called Safa, he’s our Turkish “special guest” (NO, we did not have a threesome). Einat met Safa this one evening while I was otherwise doing my best not to vomit the copious amounts of vodka I consumed earlier on. They had a friendly chat, and we set up a date for us three later on.

The following evening, Safa, girlie and me met at the main bar, ordered a few drinks, and started chatting away. We also proceeded to rendezvous with two of Safa’s friends from Iran (!!). You’re probably thinking right now: “oh, he had ‘deliberated’ with bigots. He met Iranians, hence title of post, enter altercations by angry Jews and Iranians”.  Nope. First of all, it was almost impossible to communicate any meaninful messages to our two Iranian friends, let alone shout at them with righteous indignation. Their English was quite bad, and other than that, they only speak Farsi, which is utter gibberish to me, pretty much the same way Hebrew is to them.

A Unilateral Declaration Will Not End The Occupation / Translation from Eyal Niv’s Blog

See original post in Hebrew here

H/T to Eyal Niv, original author of content and reference list

Yesterday, Ehud Barak released an extraordinary statement: “The time for great political change has come, and we are wholeheartedly committed to the American Initiative”. Interestingly enough it was released as he approved 500 housing units within occupied territories, at the Palestinian people’s expense. So much for the “commitment” to the American Initiative. Barak spins yarns over how sincere our desire for peace is, but on the surface, he actively pursues the “Judaization” of greater Palestine. The US turned a blind eye. Eventually, the “natural growth” (of Jews, of course) bluff will be exposed, and we will have to start selling some other brand of smoke and mirrors. After all, Israel has a long history of unwilling negotiations. In fact, the entire negotiation enterprise is an excuse for maintaining the occupation and preserving the dispossession of the Palestinian people. In fact, you don’t need this new housing project and Barak’s statement to realize what the Israeli agenda is. New settlement projects abound, such as “Eli” and “Baal Hatzor Mizrach”, and the list goes on and on. It’s not just the settlers, state-run construction works are being carried out throughout the occupied territories. The IDF follows suit, and other than the construction of the defense or security fence, it has recently constructed a new Palestinian juvenile court . The IDF continues with the occupation, yet goes to great lengths to conceal its operations from international scrutiny. Nevertheless, the data are there for the world to see, and the international bank and dozens of studies demonstrate that the economical stranglehold continues and that the unlawful pillaging of Palestinian natural resources goes on as well.

Non-Ashkenazis and Right-Wingness

I often reflect on the sterotype attributed to non-Ashkenazi Israeli Jews that lumps them as conservative, right-wing, ethnocentric, underclassed, etc. I say “non-Ashkenazi” because I find the term “Sefardic” a bit confusing. Sefardic is supposed to mean “North-African Jew” (namely, Moroccan, Algerian, Lybian, etc.) – but sometimes I get the term lumped with Iraqi, Lebanese, or basically any non-Ashkenazi Jew other than Ethiopean Jews (there are Jewish communities from other places in the world, but they are freakishly minor in comparison).