L'art appliqué: Social Intelligent Agents and a distribution of productive means

Let's introduce un object trouvé.

google: black cat 12 die kaempfende katze

A Japanese production brought to my attention by a veoh-video search for 'hart', the dutch translation of heart.

Without overt advertisment, a publisher reaches his public, halfway across the globe, through the use of modern distribution applications, intelligent agents, that try to interact with the social element of the user in order to find his taste.

It itroduces 3 men a girl who have to fight an evil called 'chronos' and 'creed'.

The productive means employed in the creation of this work is not a minor one. Have a look at the first 3 minutes if you want. Most elements are brought with craftmanship, and plenty of skilled labor.

The bread seems to come from product placement, the use of profitable story elements. In this is has an almost baroque flavour. With some Goth influences.

The illustrator is supposed to have drawn lessons from another manga series called 'death note'.


Schumpeter, the man who coined the term creative distruction, suggested that most significant changes in control over productive means happened as the result of fitter technologies or methods. These structural reorganisations formed the underlying fundamentals of human history's qualitative evolutions. Creating both new niches as well as reinventing habitats.

Should one apply his approach to the logistics of information as well as rescources, ancient borders aquire a new depth. In a fashion they were institutions that spanned across ages, created by introduction of practice, living at the grace of their respective incarnations, stakeholders if you will.



Once a pratice disperses, such fiefdoms, become subject to isomorphic competition.

Dogma

Rev 21:7 "He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son."

Anthropologists Develop New Approach To Explain Religious Behavior

ScienceDaily (Sep. 10, 2008) — Without a way to measure religious beliefs, anthropologists have had difficulty studying religion. Now, two anthropologists from the University of Missouri and Arizona State University have developed a new approach to study religion by focusing on verbal communication, an identifiable behavior, instead of speculating about alleged beliefs in the supernatural that cannot actually be identified.

"Instead of studying religion by trying to measure unidentifiable beliefs in the supernatural, we looked at identifiable and observable behavior - the behavior of people communicating acceptance of supernatural claims," said Craig T. Palmer, associate professor of anthropology in the MU College of Arts and Science. "We noticed that communicating acceptance of a supernatural claim tends to promote cooperative social relationships. This communication demonstrates a willingness to accept, without skepticism, the influence of the speaker. In a way similar to a child's acceptance of the influence of a parent."

Palmer and Lyle B. Steadman, emeritus professor of human evolution and social change at Arizona State University, explored the supernatural claims in different forms of religion, including ancestor worship; totemism, the claim of kinship between people and a species or other object that serves as the emblem of a common ancestor; and shamanism, the claim that traditional religious leaders in kinship-based societies could communicate with their dead ancestors. They found that the clearest identifiable effect of religious behavior is the promotion of cooperative family-like social relationships, which include parent/child-like relationships between the individuals making and accepting the supernatural claims and sibling-like relationships among co-acceptors of those claims.



ref youtube 'La Ricotta - Pasolini'

"Almost every religion in the world, including all tribal religions, use family kinship terms such as father, mother, brother, sister and child for fellow members," Steadman said. "They do this to encourage the kind of behavior found normally in families - where the most intense social relationships occur. Once people realize that observing the behavior of people communicating acceptance of supernatural claims is how we actually identify religious behavior and religion, we can then propose explanations and hypotheses to account for why people have engaged in religious behavior in all known cultures."

Palmer and Steadman published their research in The Supernatural and Natural Selection: The Evolution of Religion. The book was published by Paradigm Publishers.

Jan Thorn Prikker, 1896

Wiki NL

Beers of the world, unite

The Democrats' God problem

Salon article
By Walter Shapiro
April 30, 2008

"The single biggest gap in party affiliation among white Americans is ... between those who attend church regularly and those who don't. Democrats, meanwhile, are scrambling to 'get religion,' even as a core segment of our constituency remains stubbornly secular."
-- Barack Obama, from "The Audacity of Hope"

Now Obama may be paying a political price (precise cost estimates will be available only after the May 6 North Carolina and Indiana primaries) for his embrace of wrong-way Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Just last month in his much-heralded race-and-religion address in Philadelphia, Obama, although he rejected Wright's ideological invective, still said of his longtime pastor, "As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding and baptized my children." Only Tuesday, in Winston-Salem, N.C., did Obama finally read Wright out of his political congregation: "I want to use this press conference to make people absolutely clear that obviously whatever relationship I had with Reverend Wright has changed, as a consequence of this. I don't think that he showed much concern for me."

Deciphering Wright's motivations in delivering his recent jeremiads ranks right up there as a daunting psychological exercise with deconstructing Bill Clinton's campaign behavior. But what seems unambiguous is that Obama takes it personally that Wright chose to highlight his admiration for 20th-century hero Louis Farrakhan and to advance his diabolical theories about the origins of AIDS from the pulpit of the National Press Club. There was a wounded quality to Obama's comment: "I don't think he showed much concern for me."

Hillary Clinton has been as pantingly eager as Obama to testify about her religious beliefs in public, although her comments on theology often tend toward the saccharine. Just two weeks ago at a candidates-and-God religious forum broadcast on CNN from the campus of Messiah College in Grantham, Pa., the former first lady confided, "I have ever since I've been a little girl felt the presence of God in my life. And it has been a gift of grace that has for me been incredibly sustaining. But, really, ever since I was a child, I have felt the enveloping support and love of God. And I have had the experiences on many, many occasions where I felt like the holy spirit was there with me as I made a journey."

The point is not Clinton's and Obama's private religious beliefs, but their political calculation in searching for every possible forum to signal to religious voters that Democrats too are devout. The Republicans have long blurred the line between God and GOTV (Get Out the Vote), with Mike Huckabee, the runner-up for the GOP nomination, becoming probably the first major presidential candidate since William Jennings Bryan who unequivocally does not believe in evolution. Until recently -- with the exception of Jimmy Carter's 1976 born-again boasting -- the Democrats in their role as America's secular party have been far more reticent about reveling in religion.

Aside from a ritual "God bless America" as he concluded, Al Gore's only reference to the deity in his 2000 acceptance speech to the Democratic Convention was attacking "bean-counters at HMOs who ... don't have the right to play God." John Kerry, who had been schooled in the way that JFK handled the Catholic issue in 1960, was a reluctant warrior on the battlefields of religious pandering. Accepting the 2004 nomination, Kerry declared, "I don't wear my own faith on my sleeve. But faith has given me values and hope to live by from Vietnam to this very day."

There are dozens of reasons (ranging from the Supreme Court to the inept campaign counsel of strategist Bob Shrum) why Gore and Kerry never made it to the White House. But after the narrow 2004 "why-o, why-o Ohio" defeat, the Democratic consultants -- all singing out of the same hymn book -- decided that the party's fatal mistake was getting whomped by a better than 3-to-1 margin among evangelical Christians. Thus was born the Democratic strategic gospel that the devil take the hindmost because in 2008 God would be in play.

In a sense, the Democrats have been lucky since they are blessed with two candidates who have been walking the pews of religion for decades -- from Obama's lyrical autobiographical account of joining the Trinity United Church of Christ to Clinton's public flirtation with the religiously based "politics of meaning" during her early White House years. But now the Democrats may be dealing with the dread consequences of answered prayers.

The wrath of Wright calls into question not Obama's faith but his judgment, the same quality that he trumpets when it comes to his early opposition to the Iraq war. Clinton, for her part, may currently be feeling like she has been touched by a miracle, but it is difficult to reckon how she has gained votes through her own public religiosity. In short, if the Democrats win back the White House this November, it will be presumably because of earthbound considerations like Iraq, the economy and gasoline prices. But if the Democrats lose -- especially if the Wright-way-to-pray issue haunts Obama -- then the only response from partisans will be an anguished, "Oh, God!"

Angelic laughter

(On two kinds of laughter)
Those who consider the Devil to be a partisan of Evil and angels warriors for Good accept the demagogy of angels. Thigs are clearly more complicated.

Angels are not partisans of Good, but of divine creation. The Devil, on the other hand, denies all rational meaning to God's world.

World domination, as everyone knows, is divided between demons and angels. But the good of the world doe not require the latter to gain precedence over the former (as I thought when I was young); al it needs is a certain equilibrum of power. If there is too much uncontested meaning on earth (the reign of angels), man collapses under the burden; if the world loses all meaning (the reign of demons), life is every bit as impossible.

Things deprived suddenly of their private meaning, the place assigned them in the ostensible order of things (a Moscow-trained Marxist who believes in horoscopes), make us laugh. Initially, therefor, laughter is the province if the Devil. It has a certain malice to it (things have turned out differently from the way they tried to seem), but a certain beneficent relief as well (things are looser than thy seemed, we have greater latitude in living with them, their gracity does not oppress us).

The first time an angel heard the Devil's laughter, he was horrified. It was in the middle of a feast with a lot of people around, and one afther another the joined the Devil's laugther. It was terribly contagious. The angel was all too aware the laugther was aimed at God and the wonder of His works. He knew he had to act fast, but felt weak and defenseless. And unable to fabricate anything of his own, he simply turned his enemy's tactics against him. He opened his mouth and let out a wobbly, breathy sound in the upper reaches of his vocal register (much like the sound Gabrielle and Michelle produced in the streets of the little town one the Riviera) and endowed it withe the opposite meaning. Whereas the Devil's laugther pointed out the meaninglessness of things, the angel's shout rejoiced in how rationally oraganized, well conceived, beautiful, good, and sensible everything was.

There they stood, Devil and angel, face to face, mouths open, both making more or less the same sound, but each expressing himself in a unique timbre - absolute opposites. And seeing the laughing angel, the Devil laughed all the harder, all the louder, all the more openly, beause the laughing angel was infinitely laughable.

Laughable laughter is cataclysmic. And even so, the angels have gained something to it. They have tricked us all with their semantic hoax. Their imitation laughter and its original (the Devil's) have the same name. People nowadays do not even realize that one and the same external phenomenon embrace two completely conctradictory attitudes. There are two kinds of laugther, and we lack the words to distinguish them.

The book of Laughter and forgetting, M.K.
Part Three: The Angels, chapter 4

Computer OCD

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a psychiatric anxiety disorder most commonly characterized by a subject's obsessive, distressing, intrusive thoughts and related compulsions (tasks or "rituals") which attempt to neutralize the obsessions.

Computer addiction is an obsessive addiction to computer use sometimes known as Dependency.

A variation of computer addiction is the proposed Internet addiction disorder, which suggests that people can not only be addicted to an object, such as a computer, but also an environment, i.e. the Internet.

There are easy ways to diagnose the like.

Fot one you can install Visual TimeAnalyzer.



Visual TimeAnalyzer automatically tracks all computer usage and presents detailed, richly illustrated reports.
* Easily log individual users or specific projects, and compile detailed accounts of time spent within each program.
* Track work time, pauses, projects, costs, software and internet use.

There is a 3 week trial, but this period is more than sufficient to get a basic idea of habit and rithm.

Another tool that can be used for the diagnosis is a small applet called PC On/Off Time



This free time tracking tool shows the times your computer has been active during the last 3 weeks, with no previous setup required. The software doesn't need to run in the background, because Windows OS tracks login and logoff times (working hours) by default, and the program analyses it.

If compulsive behaviour is observed, one can take measures.

Timeslot (Dutch) might be an option



You want that the child can use the computer, but within limits. But how do you arrange this without getting into a fight each time?

You do it by installing a simple and free piece of software: Timeslot. It aids the child to conform with the rules concerning the amount one can use the PC.

How does it work?

You can configure how ong a child can use the computer. It's easy to adjust the given time, any time you want. You just log in using the parent login. The programs basic policy is to shut down all programs when one exceeds the allocated time. I found security proper as I was unable to prevent the program from starting up once installed. Software removal is only possible using the parent login. Only backdoor is the date using safe mode.

An alternative is Parental Lock Guard (English)

Parental Lock Guard is a comprehensive application ideal for guarding your PC. With the powerfull defending mechanism, it can NOT be stoped in any usual way (without administrators password) known to the large people population: no close button, usual "X" buttons, no Task Manager "End process" or any "third party" software utility that can shut it down! That is also the biggest difference from the other applicatins with the same contents.

De praktische kant

Hel

Het lege hoofd drijft door mijn haar
De uren een schakel, van het heg
Steeds opnieuw in dezelfde cirkel
Rond en rond, en de maan vaart om

En al het kijken en denken
Gaan alleen daar
Waar geen waar is
En k niet naar de eigen voet Kijk

Doof leven
Woorden zonder klank
En alle stemmen steeds dezelfde zoem

Dat is geen droom
Het is een

Alleen


Hemel

Hier, is de lucht
Hier is, het water
Hier is er, aarde.
En dat groeit
Je zaait
Je plukt
En je bemint de vrucht

Want dat is het licht, dat is de liefde

Amen

Knowing is not enough

Are you speaking the truth? Well, now, after such a confession, I believe that you are sincere and good at heart. If you do not attain happiness, always remember the - right road, and try not to leave it.



Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute. Avoid being scornful, both to others and to yourself.

What seems to you bad within you will grow purer from the very fact of your observing it in yourself. Avoid fear, too, though fear is only the consequence of every sort of falsehood. Never be frightened at your own faint-heartedness in attaining love. Don’t be frightened overmuch even at your evil actions.

I am sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage.

But active love is labour and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science. But I predict that just when you see with horror that in spite of all your efforts you are getting farther from your goal instead of nearer to it — at that very moment I predict that you will reach it.

ebooks.edu

Not by the cover

Choosing Love: Puritanism In The New Russia

The eXile article

Last time, I mentioned how Russia's highly touted stability will come in the form of religious level Puritanism. Well, it's here, and damn, it came faster than I thought.

This year has officially been named the Year of the Family. Last year, as some of you may recall, was Year of the Child. I guess the feds figured that since we've all had babies now, it's time to get married and make it decent. Some cynics might say that this is a reaction to the consequences of incentivizing Russia's birthrate increase. The government has been offering a fairly significant amount of cash for every Russian child. One theory is that people might give birth strictly for the government payout, and then abandon their lucrative children. When you get out into the regions, the payout counts for a lot of dough, more than some people make in a year. Abandoned children on the other hand means more expenditure and stress on the federal system. Sure this all sounds awful, but some of the things that go on in Russia's provinces is pretty freakin' hairy.

Promotions for Russia's family focus are already out there in full force. One of the more visible campaigns on the streets is a series of billboards announcing that 2008 is the Year of the Family. The adverts show a fuzzy, gleeful family, with the slogan "We Choose Love." Some of the ads show a smaller family, others have a larger unit with grandparents, parents, kids and the weird uncle that always creeps you out.

In support of all this is a series of placed content on Russia's major television channels. ORT, the main federal TV channel, has been advertising something called the Wedding Awards 2007 Ceremony. As best as I could tell from the trailers, this is an Oscar-style glamorous event, giving out awards to the best weddings of 2007, whatever that can mean. Obviously nothing more than a staged performance to make getting married seem sexier, the TV bumpers showed a room filled with young wedding gown clad chicks and their goofy looking grooms, throwing bouquets, toasting with champagne and clapping along to the likes of Ivanushki International, Russia's version of Menudo.

Not to be outdone, Channel 3 had been promoting something called Stork Day. Apparently, the channel has invented an entire holiday around this family thing, and have come up with some sort of a variety hour to celebrate. Happy Stork Day, everyone.

The other main outdoor campaign happening right now is one in support of a direct mail program. As mentioned, the feds have introduced some pretty significant bonuses and rewards to incentivize Russian couples to propagate, and they've spelled these incentives out through a series of direct mail informational brochures. In order to ensure that these brochures are read, billboard announcements now dot the city giving folks a heads-up to have a look in their mailboxes for further information.

Folks, this isn't just passive propaganda. This family thing is becoming compulsory. In a place like Russia, there really aren't any rights and freedoms; instead there are permissions and, in this case, obligations. The feds have already set up a commission of psychologists who plan to oblige those units not falling into their model of a family to attend compulsory psychological rehabilitation sessions (http://www.vz.ru/society/2008/1/27/139813.html ).

In the eyes of the Puritans, this program must (and will) go beyond simply a system of rewards and incentives. Instead this is really just a system of punishment for those who don't get on board.

Not too long ago, some friends of mine were out at a park, enjoying a weekend afternoon. There were a total of nine people in the group - singles, couples, and my friends with their newborn. The group was having a few snacks, and some of them were sipping beer. A picnic, of sorts. They were approached by a militia officer patrolling the area. The first thing he wanted to know was which couple were the newborn's parents. After my friends owned up, the officer went on to fine everyone in the group with drinking in public EXCEPT my friends. In the officer's opinion, making babies afforded them greater rights, even at the behest of laws, above those without children.

Another recent development along this line: something's gone missing from Moscow's cash counters. Well, not really missing, but re-directed. Up until the end of last year, many produce shops, fast food joints and supermarkets had donation boxes, collecting money for Russia's orphanages. I'm not sure when this changed, but last week I began to notice that many of these collection boxes have disappeared. In their place are containers collecting money for Russian families who need help supporting three or more children. It seems that the chinovniki don't plan to give up their new Audis to finance their cash-for-tots promises.

In Russia, where instilling a fear of consequences has traditionally been the chosen form of incentivizing people, it seems now that people are being terrorized into choosing love in order to fulfill the state's desire to create more families and more babies. Perhaps someday soon we'll have to carry a sort of document, sort of like a Russian auto technical inspection certificate, one which you have to renew annually and carry with you at all times. A Love License. And if you're with your significant other, and don't have your Love License on you, well, then there's someone who will be getting a bribe that day. Choose love.