Carthage layout. Salammbo‘s description of the harbor at Carthage:

His eyes rose higher still into the great pure sky; in a harsh voice he called out an order to his sailors; the trireme leaped forward; it grazed the idol put up on the corner of the mole to prevent storms; and in the commercial harbor, full of refuse, chips of wood, and fruit peel, it overran and split open the other ships moored to stakes and with crocodile jaws at their ends. The people ran up, some of them plunged in to swim. Already the ship was at the far end, before the gate bristling with nails. The gate was raised, and the trireme disappeared beneath the deep vault.

The Military Harbour was completely separated from the city; when ambassadors arrived, they had to pass between two walls, into a corridor which came out on the left, in front of Khamon’s temple. This large basin, round as a cup, was lined with quays on which were built shelters for the boats. In front of each of them rose two columns, with the horns of Ammon on their capitals, making a continuous range of porticoes all round the basin. In the middle, on an island, stood a house for the Marine Suffette.

I pick up with my wet hands the dirty stack and I clean the dirty stack… Haruspicator of Sinks and Plates

Days as Paper Towel Roll… Day as a giant paper towel that covers the spill of substances and carries them away as appearances into the night. (The new Greek myth: each day a new sheet is torn from the dowel. Solar eclipses equal that Titan must quest to the marketplace of the gods, carrying his reusable Bag of the Universe.)

The idea of calling the human race Gender. The idea that the human race is comprised of just one gender. The question of, if that’s a sort of gender neutral way of saying that we’re all ‘brothers and sisters’? The question of, if humans were indeed understood to be of one gender, what would be the fate of sexual attraction. The idea I was walking around yesterday, in the unnatural warmth, and periodically a cool breeze would hit one like an intimation of how the weather had once been, pockets of the past floating about, the old nature, the old winter, with its old scents. (We are often stuck in the Sargasso Sea of the new nature, it will seem.)

Meanwhile, frantic activity in the afternoon of the suburban neighborhood, hammers, leafblowers, ladders, saws, trucks, the ripped out interiors of perfectly liveable, perfectly nice dwellings on the curbsides, as if a recently destroyed area were being rebuilt, as if the war, the category 5 hurricane, had only recently been declared over. However, this was an area perfectly intact; indeed, an impartial observer might see very little need for any construction or maintenance at all at this time.

… The idea that Climate Change is not a “Man against Nature” issue but a person against person issue — (an “income inequality” issue.)

“I had recourse to the expedient of letting myself go completely in order to live in the world of my choice.” Spring and All, William Carlos Williams.

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“Already it has moved us, toward and away from each other, farther than we expected: the everyday glamour of a ‘personal life,,’ keeping a diary and so forth, is the outward sign of this progression that is built into us like the chain of breathing.” (John Ashbery, New Spirit.)

These are some mostly off-the-wall ideas occasioned by Kevin Drum’s article in Mother Jones last October, here. He has a more recent post on this topic here.

— Technology arises out of spiritual failure –our failure to concentrate– and must grow more complicated as our distractedness increases. (It also increases our distractedness.)

— “To be dominated by artificial intelligence is the same as to be dominated by thoughts of the future.” (Artificial intelligence is an embodied incapacity to live without forethought. Prometheus not only unbound, but boundless.)

— Question. If “being in the moment” is in some sense the spiritual goal (or anyway, a desirable state) which is a greater impediment to its attainment: dissipation or technology?

— True or false: “If we were all good Christians and Muslims and Buddhists there would be a steady decline in the use of technology.” (If we were all good scientists…?) (If we were all bad Muslims and Buddhists and Christians?)

— Robots are the Ideal It’s said that we can’t arrest technology’s advance because we’re “all human” (we can’t help wanting the convenience and advantage technology provides so we couldn’t go backward in that respect if we tried). But perhaps it’s actually because we’re all, in our essence, robots that we’re really so drawn to technology? That robots are for us, not a necessity, but an ideal?

(To say it otherwise, human beings are the first robots, the first artificial intelligences, and are now in the process, as it were, of spinning these attributes off.)

— The arts. Even if a computer could create Sly Stone (or his music) would it ever have an incentive to do so? One can certainly imagine a computer having both the capacity and incentive to create a Jar-Jar Binks. But (as it seems to me) there is no demand for Sly Stone until he has happened — one wouldn’t know to make him.

(This is to say: maybe artificial technology will have the same constraints as commercial radio, being without the incentive to create anything very lasting or unique. Supposing it could make a Sly Stone, would it have the incentive to make his music widely available?)

–Although I suppose artists to be as replaceable as anyone else by A.I., if not more so, I wonder if there would be a shift noticeable between pre-and post AI music that might be found, in the long run, to be undesirable; and that this too could extend toward other occupations.

Artificial intelligence, artificial knowledge? In reflecting on the possibility of a computer which is, from our point of view, all intelligent, all knowledgeable, it might be constructive to reconsider the limits of knowledge and intelligence. What do these do and not do for existence? Perhaps in some sense humanity’s lack of intelligence that is responsible for its evolutionary success? Perhaps un-intelligence makes existence seem worthwhile?

–How will A.I control human understanding of human history? Will the story of human history become — how it came to develop A.I?

Videogame idea: combining several video games “worlds” into one protean everchanging game. Mario Brother plus Missile Command plus Asteroid. SuperMario climbs up one of the missile attacks, as if it were rope, begins tumbling in space, fits into the Asteroids space ship then comes out, knocks his head against the asteroids, gradually turns into a ball, then we’re in Pong, then the Pong ball is a missile attack with a Mario face trying to hit one of the cities… trying to “win” at a game which never remains the same. Now we’re in Frogger but which way do we go when approaching us from the other side of the highway is this terrible centipede whom the cars cause to change direction? (How do we win at Centipede when we’re Frogger? How do we win at Galaga when we’re Mario?)

“In this White House […] Truthful and transparent is great, but we don’t even have a coherent strategy to obfuscate.” [Post]

For some reason impressed with this brief Tennessee Williams description (from Night of the Iguana):

She held out her hand and drew her slender fingers into a chalice that closed.

What is the precise hand gesture that’s been described? I view it as the archetypal Macbeth “is this a dagger I see before me” type hand gesture, the archetypal Italian Capice? type hand gesture… [Or near relative.] Maybe what is interesting is that it calls attention to the suggestive powers of the hand: that it can be a hand at one moment and then represent something (a chalice) the next.

To make one’s fingers into a chalice then to close up the chalice…. This is to show the power of representation [that fingers can make us think of a hard substantial specific thing like a chalice] in one moment, then in the next return to being unrepresentative, to being mere fingers, no longer pretending, having a physical not metaphorical power — chalices cannot, like fingers, close.

Disons-le d’emblée (*) défis: Les principaux défis de notre temps sont la montée des inégalités et le réchauffement climatique.

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Red (alone):

White (alone): “love’s modest snow white weed” [196];

Red and White: “To praise that clear unmatched red and white which triumphed in that sky of his delight” [11-12]; “But beauty, in that white entituled from Venus’ doves, doth challenge that fair field. Then virtue claims from beauty beauty’s red, which virtue gave the golden age to gild their silver cheeks, and called it then their shield, teaching them thus to use it in the fight, when shame assailed, the red should fence the white” [57-63]; “beauty’s red and virtue’s white” [65];

Red things with white things: lilies and roses [71-77]; lily hand, rosy cheeks [386];

Green and white: “on the green coverlet, whose perfect white show’d like an April daisy on the grass” [394];

White and blue: “her breasts like ivory globes circles with blue, a pair of maiden worlds unconquered” [407];

Silver: “silver melting dew” [24]; “silver cheeks” [61]; “silver moon” [371];

Silver white: “when beauty boasted blushes, in despite Virtue would stain that o’er with silver white” [56]

Gold: “golden splendor of the sun” [25]; virtue has given golden age beauty’s red, [60]; Hair like golden threads, [400];

Pale: “and to Collatium bears the lightless fire, which, in pale embers hid, lurks to aspire” [5-6]; “pale with fear” [183];

Black: “blackest sin is cleared with absolution” [354];

Color: [92]; “why hunt I then for color or excuses?” [267];

Ce chant, différent de celui des autres, semblable à tous les siens, où Vinteuil l’avait-il appris, entendu? Chaque artiste semble ainsi comme le citoyen d’une patrie inconnue, oubliée de lui-même, différente de celle d’où viendra, appareillant pour la terre, un autre grand artiste. Tout au plus, de cette patrie Vinteuil, dans ses dernières œuvres, semblait s’être rapproché. [Wikisource: Proust,La Prisonnière, chapter 2, pp 68.)

Scott-Moncrieff’s translation:

This song, different from those of other singers, similar to all his own, where had Vinteuil learned, where had he heard it? Each artist seems thus to be the native of an unknown country, which he himself has forgotten, different from that which will emerge, making for the earth, another great artist. When all is said, Vinteuil, in his latest works, seemed to have drawn nearer to that unknown country.

A century ago, 5 million elephants roamed the plains and forests of Africa. Now fewer than 400,000 remain, devastated by poaching and the destruction of their natural habitats, the AP reported. Rhinos have had a similar fate. Fewer than 30,000 remain in the wild. Post, 2/5/18.

Ionian Islands:

In Ancient Greek the adjective Ionios (Ἰόνιος) was used as an epithet for the sea between Epirus and Italy in which the Ionian Islands are found because Io swam across it. Latin transliteration, as well as Modern Greek pronunciation, may suggest that the Ionian Sea and Islands are somehow related to Ionia, an Anatolian region; in fact the Ionian Sea and Ionian Islands are spelled in Greek with an omicron (Ιόνια), whereas Ionia has an omega (Ιωνία). In Modern Greek this is purely a spelling distinction, but the different pronunciations in Ancient Greek would have eliminated the risk of confusion between the two areas. Furthermore, [they are accented differently and] the proper adjective for Ionia is Ionic, not Ionian.

Quelque soin que l’on prenne de couvrir ses passions par des apparences de piété et d’honneur, elles paraissent toujours au travers de ces voiles.

*

Whatever care we may take to cover our passions through the appearance of piety and honor, they may always be seen beyond these veils.

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