From The Philosophy of Right (1821):

The principle of family life is dependence on the soil, on land, "terra
firma". Similarly, the natural element for industry, animating its outward movement, is the sea.

For me, rocks are invisible. All I can and want to see are the mountains. The molecules of water bore me to no end; I'm only moved by the great lakes and oceans. To understand capitalism and history? Not as a matter of individuals and coins but of major bodies of water. Pre-capitalism corresponds with the Mediterranean. Modern capitalism corresponds with the Atlantic. Postmodern capitalism, with the Pacific. The first is linked with theology; the second, with philosophy; the third, with political economy. The first, is linked with humanism; the second, modernity; the third, globalization.

The image is from ngader.

The other day at the Henry—where several shows are currently kicking ass, from the Mapplethorpe Polaroids to achingly honest (and noble) photos of a timber town—somebody was saying the word "uncouth" didn't used to mean rude. "Uncouth" used to mean unfamiliar. That somebody was right:

uncouth

O.E. uncuð "unknown, uncertain, unfamiliar," from un- (1) "not" + cuð "known, well-known," pp. of cunnan "to know" (see can (v.)). Meaning "strange, crude, clumsy" is first recorded 1513. The compound (and the thing it describes) widespread in IE languages, cf. L. ignorantem,, O.N. ukuðr, Goth. unkunþs, Skt. ajnatah, Armenian ancanaut', Gk. agnotos, O.Ir. ingnad "unknown."

So many foreign languages—Old English, Old Norse, Latin, Goths, Sanskrit, Old Irish, Greek, Armenians—whose words for "foreign" were so closely related. Can you imagine some Goths and some Romans, or some ancient Indians and some ancient Irish meeting on a road somewhere? Each group sizes up the other, recognizes the weirdness, then turns into itself and mutters "uncouth"—using very close words to describe the distance between the people.

(I feel like I should be in a college dorm room with a bong or something: "Language, maaaaaan.")

Thomas L. Friedman clumsily connects a victory for freedom with an attack on freedom:

A few weeks ago, Americans “observed” the eighth anniversary of 9/11 — that day in 2001 when the Twin Towers were brought down by Al Qaeda. In a few weeks, Germans will “celebrate” the 20th anniversary of 11/9 — that day in 1989 when the Berlin Wall was brought down by one of the greatest manifestations of people power ever seen.

To middle with: The fall of the Berlin Wall is far more significant than the set of spectacular terrorist actions that happened on American soil. The first event closes the short 20th century (to use the language of Eric Hobsbawm—though he ends the 20th century in 1991) and opens the 21st century. The terrorist actions only intensified the 21 century, or closer yet, accelerated it, in the way Hiroshima accelerated but did not inaugurate, the 20th century—which began with the end of World War I and began the ideological contest between what LKJ called "Di Eagle An' di Bear."

To end with: The 21st century will not terminate in the land of the eagle, or the bear, but the panda bear.

Here's the beginning of an "In Event of Moon Disaster" speech imagining Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin dying on the moon:

Awesome work, Gawker.

From Capital:

A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.

Let's not waste anymore time; let's begin with this insect, the honey bee:
What catches our attention (the attention of a Marxist) is not this insect's happy dancing business, nor the way it builds its complicated hive, but this dark and deadly practice:

The queen is normally the only egg producer in the colony and this condition is maintained by a pheromonal 'feed back' system, whereby worker ovary development is inhibited. The queen and the brood both produce pheromones that inhibit worker ovary development, which prevents individual workers from exploiting the system.

...When populations are large and the nest is physically widespread, the distribution of pheromones reduces at the outer edges, simply because of distance from the queen and brood as well as the larger area of the outer periphery of the nest. this gives rise to a condition of reduced suppression of ovary production... [And this gives] rise to an increase in worker laid eggs, but the numbers of drones arising from them is a very small fraction of those that are laid. 'Worker policing' is the mechanism that causes adult workers to eat 'worker laid' eggs, which are identified by other workers. It is speculated that normal queen laid eggs are marked with a pheromone that is produced by the queen, which is coated on the eggs as they pass over the sting sheath. Worker laid eggs are thought to lack this pheromone and are thus identified as such and eaten by the workers.

It has been suggested that aggression towards workers with activated ovaries is another potential mechanism of worker policing, but I am unsure whether this applies to workers being hoisted out of cells as they attempt to lay an egg or whether the aggression goes further and results it the fertile worker being damaged or stung.

But it is ridiculous for us to think about human policing without considering worker bee policing. To see some of the reasons for one form of policing, will help us see some of the reasons for the other. Also, we have to read the queen's "pheromonal 'feed back' system" in the way Althusser read the ISA, the Ideological State Apparatus. When this mechanism of oppression and control (the Church, the media, the education system) fails to produce the desired behavior (or subjects), then it is replaced by direct police action: "Hey you!"

The next post will look at paper wasps.

I walked by this van and...I could not stop thinking.

[In 1977,] I went into Star Wars a Christian and walked out of it an atheist. Before seeing the movie, I understood the war of Good against Evil to be an entirely Christian one: God vs. Satan. The war happened on the ground, in the sky above, and the immense dark space beyond the moon. The universe was ordered by heaven and hell. So imagine the shock of seeing on the screen a whole different order, a whole different war between the forces of Good and the forces of Evil; a war, furthermore, that made no mention of Jesus, or Lucifer, or the star of Bethlehem, the Romans, the beasts in “The Book of Revelations,” the Last Supper. Yet, in the absolute absence of Christian codes of goodness, I still sided with these other codes and acts of goodness taking place in a faraway galaxy.

In the bright afternoon light of that day, I realized that God was limited, and what was infinite was the Good itself, and that the Good could take on different shapes (Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi, John, Luke Skywalker, Jesus, Princess Leia, Mary).

Similarly, I can attribute my (brand of) Marxism directly to the way James Cameron's Aliens opened my eyes one afternoon in a cineplex in downtown Harare:

For reasons that need no explanation, this film, Blade Runner, is the source of my cosmopolitanism/urbanism:

As for the space left empty by the death of God, it was filled by the TV show Cosmos. Where once there was Jesus Christ, there was now Carl Sagan:

69, 69, 69, 69, 69, 69, and a beautiful sunset:

Jonanthan Raban writes:

There must be a cause for these sunsets: The scattering effect of salt particles from the Pacific Ocean in the air and the reflective properties of the Olympic snow fields seem the most likely candidates. Whatever their physics, the spectacular ultramontane sunsets are an important part of Seattle's claim to be "a flower of geography" — as Henry James called the city in 1907, placing it in the company of Cape Town, Rio de Janeiro, Naples, Sydney, and San Francisco.

The image, which is taken from our photo pool, is by Justin Kraemer.

(Guardian) After Barack Obama and Tony Blair, Muhammad Ali today became the latest world celebrity to reclaim his Irish origins.

The boxing legend became the first man to be given the freedom of Ennis, County Clare, for 600 years.

Ali visited the town, in the west of Ireland, to pay homage at the home of his Irish great-grandfather, Abe Grady.

Thousands turned out to honour him as he received the civic accolade.

The former world heavyweight champion also met four of his distant cousins during the closed ceremony, which was broadcast live on a giant screen into the middle of the town.

Ali, 67, then drove through Ennis, taking in the Turnpike Road area from which his great-grandfather came.

He attended a charitable function at Dromoland Castle before flying back to his home in Kentucky.

My father took this bad photo (the Mudede clan has yet to produce a decent photographer) from the balcony of his bedroom. The captured time is somewhere in the middle of the 80s. The house is still there in Chisipite, but we are all gone—one to London, two to Seattle, one to the grave.

I came across the photo this morning. I also came across this article, which was about the violent events that made it possible for a happy African boy to dive (badly, very badly—the Mudede clan has yet to produce a decent diver) into a swimming pool in a nice neighborhood.

The black population of Rhodesia has been conspicuously silent since 1965, when the territory's white-minority government unilaterally decided to break away from British rule. Last week the blacks—whom Rhodesia's Prime Minister Ian Smith has called "the happiest Africans in the world"—went on a rampage. For three consecutive nights more than 8,000 angry Africans rioted in Gwelo, Rhodesia's fourth largest city, burning buildings and hurling stones at white-owned cars. The trouble spread to Salisbury's Harare township and to Bulawayo, Fort Victoria and Umtali, where eight blacks were killed by police gunfire. By week's end 18 persons were dead (including two white helicopter crewmen) and at least 80 wounded.

Forty years ago today, man first walked upon the moon—or did he??

What is your take on the 40-years-ago-today moon walk?

Photo courtesy of NASA, or so they claim.