An excellent line reading

In Clueless, there is a moment which I love as Cher (Alicia Silverstone) tells her father she negotiated from Cs to As, and asks 'Aren't you proud of me?'

Her father responds 'I couldn't be prouder than if these were based on actual grades.'  The actor (Dan Hedaya) speaks this with inflections suggesting to Cher (and to the audience) that he means 'I couldn't be prouder if these were based on actual grades.'  But he's a litigator - he doesn't put a redundant 'than' in the sentence - its doing something.  I think he's saying 'It would be inappropriate to be prouder of this achievement than As.  I'm proud of you, but less than As would have made me.'  But, its a phatic judgment, because he knew Cher would not be getting As and he doesn't want her to think he's at all disappointed.

I've made a huge mistake

I have been sweating the espresso machine options for a while and an apparently 6-month old Boema (Australian made commercial machines) was on sale in Victoria for $1000.  And it was the day before work started and it seemed to me that I needed to take action.  My wife too, was wearying of my esprotic (?) advances, because she said 'fine, see if I care.' And so I said 'Maybe I will!' And since the auction was ending in about twenty minutes I pressed to bid, and then watched in horror as I won.  It is pictured here installed in our already crowded laundry, because it needs to be plumbed in.  So you've spent $1000 on a young machine - but it doesn't work.  So you take it to a service guy (coffeemachinist.com.au - excellent guy) and pay for a new solenoid and two hours of work.  $300.  Then you take it home to fit the new filter ($80).  To get it connected has taken a lot of hassle and expense and a pressure reducing valve ($75), with a lot of different fittings leaking until I spent my way free of trouble, culminating in today's purchase of a 3/4in f-f flexible hose for $53.  I would say I have spent $1600 altogether. Much, much more than I thought it would cost.  But cafe coffee at home starts tomorrow morning, and I can't wait.

Christmas Expropriation

Long time, no reflect.

We are members of a locale-based facebook group where people buy and sell, and sometimes share news.  Several have reported 'prowlers' and a few have been burgled.

We were burgled once.  I never felt much of the sense of violation that others report - for once the anxious depressive stance fitted the times, instead of being a strange cloud.  My main thought was that someone was willing to treat me as an object - that my friendship was worth less to them than my carcase.

Christmas time is a great season for burglary, a great season for layoffs, for less shifts for casuals, and for the difficulty of finding presents for the children (or meth, I guess) to be overwhelming.  If I want to be a friend to a (potential) burglar, I reckon the way to do it (which I am quite a bit too crappy to actually do) would be to put a PS4 on the doorstep with 'for the undeserving poor' on it.  

It's important to remember that this is only nice gesture, and the gulf between me and a would-be burglar is pretty wide: I have not transformed him or his further burglary and made them more damnable. There is a temptation when you have reached out a little way, to blame all the failure on the other. The ATO, for example, provides a lot of support - but precisely proportional to the support to get it right, is the intense prosecution of wrongdoing.

Memorial to past EBay auctions lost

I opted not to bid on a Bo-ema single group coffee machine this weekend - it was listed and sold for $400, and I think the purchaser got a great bargain, a very serious dual-boiler machine suit a small cafe or home with many tired people.

Another time there was a fully expanded Nord G2 Engine, a virtual modular synthesis engine that can emulate any synthesizer. Although they are not easy to program, and USB support for them is always getting bent out of shape by Windows 'progress', it would be a prize addition to my little home audio studio.  Usually that would sell for $900 (if selling with restrictions like 'buyer must pick up from bendigo') up to $1200 for a really open market. For no obvious reason, the seller got only about $650 for that one.

So, salutes to those brave purchasers.  You have done well.

Strange dream

Saturday night I dreamt that I was in an abandoned city, something like detroit.  A man called Andrew was living in a well-appointed house that he needed to leave.  I was to tell him.  I needed a helper, and for some reason in the dream I chose Slate.com's film critic, Dana Stevens, because we were going to be communicating with Andrew via the sniper rifle we had with us.  Dana showed me how to stay in cover - apparently it was good practice to avoid making a silhouette for fear someone might shoot at it, and Dana Stevens really knew how to survive (and work as a sniper).  I never found out how the rifle was to be used - I remember wondering if we were going to shoot lettering into the wall, and thinking we didn't have enough shells to finish a message.  I also remember knowing somehow that Andrew was sentenced to thirty years in the house, and after twenty years still felt obliged to stay another ten.

Free Speech

I was recently putting a case rather forcefully on Facebook that it was wrong to think vilification laws were a universally good idea because:
1. People's experience differs and people build prejudices on their experience.  Someone might say 'All men are bastards' and we might look at their life, their social circle (Cabinet?) and conclude they were making a fair enough point rather clumsily.
2.  The law is a slow and blunt instrument; and trying to legislate on behalf of every group who might identify themselves in a pejorative adjective is infeasible.

But, I thought to myself later, is there not progress of political ideas?  This was partly informed by my thinking about secularism, legitimacy and genuineness.  At some point, western societies began to give up on 'legitimacy' and be satisfied with 'genuineness' - a real Quaker is accepted as better than a fake Anglican.

If WWII taught us anything (and let's hope it did) surely the lessons were: 'give refuge', and 'in fighting and dying, all are equal.' Out of those lessons come the UN conventions on refugees, human rights and so on, and within states, you get the fulfillment of the new deal, the national health and the economic liberality of the fifties trying to respect the sacrifices of the troops.  Mussolini was elected on a platform of fascist racism.  That was what his brochure said about him.  Now, that sounds absurd. (National socialism sounds a lot better...)

Is it wrong to codify these lessons in law? Do we really have to win the argument again and again?

The Prime Minister of Australia persists in describing asylum seekers as illegals, the Treasurer wants to talk about the 50% of our lives in which we are too young, too old, too unskilled or physically disabled as being a leaner, a shirker, a rorter.  The labels are pejorative and wrong.

Mediation

I think I have heard it argued from Hegel, that idealism brought to bear on real-world events develops with a logic of Terror (named for the French revolution Terror). When  a fixed ideal of human being, expressed completely in concepts, the result for real exhaustible humans is terror; to meet the ideal we must subtract whatever most obviously does not conform - with the guillotine or the progrom or the camp.

This reading is quite applicable to religions - many atrocious crimes can be attributed to some zealous attempt to bring heaven to earth right now, and can be justified by the criminals based on ideas and often, by texts. I think 'Islamic' Terrorism can be read this way: it is too easy to say that no terrorist is a true muslim and no true muslim is a terrorist. Islam does not have secularism in its foundation, and it has a lot of text expressing ideals for human being.

I have misgivings about Christians who want Christianity to be bible-based.  As a distinction from other Christianities it may be useful, but as a distinctive from the world it is destructive and leads to the kind of 'terroristic' confrontation described above. Christianity is a man-centered religion, the God-man in particular. In the bible and by the Holy Spirit, one can get a pointer to that man.  But its like sailing to the North pole.

If I want to get to the North Pole, but will have some easting or westing in whatever straight-ahead line I choose, I must continually recheck.  Standing on the equator and heading North-west will take me in a great circle around the earth to where I started.  I need to go and then find the local North-west that will correct my drift away to the south. What the bible says to you will evolve as you move North.  Who it points you to will not.