> on 04/09/2001 22:07, PNFPNF@aol.com at PNFPNF@aol.com wrote:
[..]
> What I do think we need to look at, though--to let in as a serious piece of
> this argument--is that, as I understand it, many or most of the Israeli West
> Bank settlers are poorer Jews effectively unable to survive in the more
> desireable areas of the country. I just wish we could--as numerous Arabs and
> Israelis I've known do--recognize the class issues here and start to
> transcend the ethnic ones.
> Best, Paula
My complements!
Half of what complicates the 'race issue' in america IS the ongoing effort
to hide 'class issues'. Nothing more amusing to me personally than watching
the "News Shows" 'allowing' the debate over affirmative action to be
conducted by two african-american members of the middle class arguing
whether members of their ethnic-class group should have preference over
other ethnic-class groups, because of the 'slavery issue'.....
When the Bakke Case went up to the US Supreme Court it was undersupported
because of course, this was a discussion about 'white male rights' - this
time around we get to review the new and improved case, as it winds its
way through the courts - of a 'single parent white female' and her lack of
collecting the correct 'victims points' to compensate for the fact that
she had enough 'academic points' to attend the law school...
Amongst the questions I keep wondering about is the ugly problem that we are
not all created 'equal' in a metaphysical sense - knock off my glasses and I
am as blind as a bat.... But if you stand back long enough for me to 'crush
the problem into an algebra...' you will be able to have a reasonable
'roadmap to a solution' - a part of the 'mental illness' that has infected
me since the first series of applications of mathematics to current
problems.... For reasons that escapes me, some people can do this, some can
not. In the 'computer field' - serious geeks understand that as I lose my
prepositions, adverbs and adjatives - and decay into a simple 'noun-verb'
phraseology - this is merely an 'I/O bind' problem - and that they should
merely hang a flag on the 'w-chan' and wait for me to come 'out of kernel
space' - as my UnterStumpenFumbler was ever so polite as to note:
"here is your hat, your bag, your cup of coffee,
call me when you come back...."
And I did. He has had to go through the chaos of understanding, late in
life, both G. Spencer Brown's "Law of Forms" - as well as the reality that
the 'church-turing hypothesis' is merely a unique and interesting subset
of the general "godel's incompleteness theorum" - and that I was not joking
over the last decade that 'I will have to leave the 19th century where I
found it....' since the mythico-religious commitment to the pure
formalization of the system that will 'allow the computers to take over'
is not at all possible. Great Stuff for Sci-Fi and Neo-Technoir-Luddites,
but not at all likely.
The downside of which is that idiots in 'management and marketting' will
continue to write performance requirements that 'mandate' that we try to
solve the 'church-turing hypothesis' - even though we know that is not
likely to be solved at all. The upside is that we will be 'selling' them
'product upgrades' to continually improve the approximation of a solution
right up to the moment the sun goes NOVA!!!!
{ assuming that we have not been able to move our software house off world
to some safe place.... }
For me it is clearly a great improvement in society that "THEY" have stopped
trying to burn my type at the stake for 'witchcraft' - and in the main,
rather than institutionalizing us in 'mental wards' - have found it more
cost effective to 'institutionalize' my type amongst other geeks in CubeLand
where we can create Dilbert Fodder.....
Clearly the genetic defects that I have passed along to my children are in
some way 'racial' - My son has begun to manifest the same 'genus
mathimaticus' and will probably be a 'mutant' as well. That he will arrive
in the 'modern world' with the subliminal message that his mother was the
toughest sailor on the block, will clearly confuse him as to gender politics
and the correct implementation of his class status as a warrior.... But then
again in the 'consumerist society' that is america - few of them were all
that hip to dharma to begin with....
What if the real problem is that 'race' and 'class' are merely political
marketting speak - full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?
ciao
drieux
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Apr 14 2001 - 19:27:52 EDT