Wednesday, August 24, 2022

You Can Check Out Anytime You Like But Can You Ever Leave?


This meme got me kicked off 2 platfoms despite an effort explain we are not made in anyone's image - our DNA proves this to be true. We are not a RE-productions, just look in your mirror and you will see the letters are backwards.

Tuesday, August 23, 2022

Repo Men (2010) - Review

Not to be mistaken for the 80s flick, Repo Man - this is a revealing tale [dystopian noir in look and feel] about some gentlemen in the organ reposession profession. Like many [lesser?] movies, there’s some visual comparisons that can be made to Blade Runner and the organ repossession, though varied from client to client, seem to act as a direct reference to the placenta, as one broken person after the next line up to be lured into signing up for the company’s offer. The organs are replacements for various vital [and elective] upgrades and financed by “The Union” and when the bill cannot be repaid borrowers are subject to being visited and their replacement organs are taken back with force by the company’s repo-men. A difficult and dirty job taken by aggressive and highly trained agents offered little time to sit and contemplate a less-edgy and demanding lifestyle. Breaking away to find alternate employment is discouraged and isn’t an easy option, not unlike the corporate world that already exists today - or at least that’s the feeling I got watching this progression. A theme that runs parallel to the protagonist’s narration, as he [you] chooses to author his [your] way to pulling his [your] thoughts together in a memoir, Jude Law’s character must come to untangle a haunting riddle of how one can both exist alive as well as dead. [Is he fully accounted for from the beginning, fertilization, until his final expired breath?] The means to his escape is given to him as a birthday gift, which he “initially” rejects. His contemplation of the value of the typewriter renders him more accepting. [It is the concept of legal fictions that he had to wake up to see and is now readily apparent.] 

 It is at this point in the hero’s journey when see how he puts away his belief he had shared with his partner that “a job is a job,” even when it means being expected to breach natural boundaries when called upon.  Selling out future generations to support his attachment to material safety suddenly is part of his past - but since his partner remains attached to his employer and this creates some problems.

 




When things begin to really fall apart for our protagonist he finally sets out on a path to overcome the odds and correct a system gone completely mental with bloodthirsty psychopaths.  Their main concern is to pay bills and to pass the promise to other insiders to enjoy the lusts of life they enjoy.  Future generations [outsiders] be damned.

 Vultures begin to circle and we see another inspiring vision unfold despite deception, doubt and loss along the way.  It’s not until the vision is crystalized that the path opens and real change appears within reach.  A risky gambit he knows is worth going for despite the odds.  But attempts of “wiping the record clean” is anticipated with yet another system - which does require an end-user’s participation.

 There’s a sea-change in our protagonist that plays itself out in his non-fictional realm.  He decides to go in the direction which he finds has meaning and virtue.  The moment reality sets in the change is that easy to make when you pull back the curtain to see how things are designed, and the domino effect fulfilling each opportunity for commission has on those lives.  Escaping the system then isn’t easy when its tentacles have reached around most aspects of your life.  Such change is demonized by those who still trust the system and its offerings, while double timing as a nuclear bomb in your personal life.  Suddenly faced with the decision to participate or not, it feels like a life or death situation - it’s all or nothing.   Wiping the record clean is not possible if it was never yours to begin with, ok, but if the error of the record is never addressed, as the twisted ending of Repo Men interestingly reveals, are you damned to live eternally within it's ugly grips?  Did his memoir free the unnamed protagonist?

 Finally, the final scene reminds me a lot of the final scene in the movie Trading Places - but I think I've given enough of this movie away.

Come Into Knowledge - Ramp (1977)

Thursday, August 11, 2022

Harry S. Truman: What's in a Middle Name?


From Truman Library:

"In recent years the question of whether to use a period after the "S" in Harry S. Truman's name has become a subject of controversy, especially among editors. The evidence provided by Mr. Truman's own practice argues strongly for the use of the period. While, as many people do, Mr. Truman often ran the letters in his signature together in a single stroke, the archives of the Harry S. Truman Library have numerous examples of the signature written at various times throughout Mr. Truman's lifetime where his use of a period after the "S" is very obvious.

Image
Harry S. Truman's Signature

Mr. Truman apparently initiated the "period" controversy in 1962 when, perhaps in jest, he told newspapermen that the period should be omitted. In explanation he said that the "S" did not stand for any name but was a compromise between the names of his grandfathers, Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young. He was later heard to say that the use of the period dated after 1962 as well as before.

Several widely recognized style manuals provide guidance in favor of using the period. According to The Chicago Manual of Style all initials given with a name should "for convenience and consistency" be followed by a period even if they are not abbreviations of names. The U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual states that the period should be used after the "S" in Harry S. Truman's name.

Most published works using the name Harry S. Truman employ the period. Authors choosing to omit the period in their texts must still use it when citing the names of organizations that employ the period in their legal titles (e.g. Harry S. Truman Library) thus seeming to contradict themselves. Authoritative publications produced by the Government Printing Office consistently use the period in Mr. Truman's name, notably the Department of State's documentary series Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers, the Department of the Army's United States Army in World War II and two major publications of the Office of the Federal Register, Public Papers of the President - Harry S. Truman and the United States Government Organization Manual."

 

Wednesday, August 10, 2022

Heard of the Republic of Letters

 When the "intellectuals" and "scholars" of it's day decided on a way to disburse information and knowledge to the rest of the privileged class...

From Wiki:

The Republic of Letters (Respublica literaria) is the long-distance intellectual community in the late 17th and 18th centuries in Europe and the Americas. It fostered communication among the intellectuals of the Age of Enlightenment, or philosophes as they were called in France. The Republic of Letters emerged in the 17th century as a self-proclaimed community of scholars and literary figures that stretched across national boundaries but respected differences in language and culture.[1] These communities that transcended national boundaries formed the basis of a metaphysical Republic. Because of societal constraints on women, the Republic of Letters consisted mostly of men. As such, many scholars use "Republic of Letters" and "men of letters" interchangeably.[citation needed]

The circulation of handwritten letters was necessary for its function because it enabled intellectuals to correspond with each other from great distances. All citizens of the 17th-century Republic of Letters corresponded by letter, exchanged published papers and pamphlets, and considered it their duty to bring others into the Republic through the expansion of correspondence.[2]

The first known occurrence of the term in its Latin form (Respublica literaria) is in a letter by Francesco Barbaro to Poggio Bracciolini dated July 6, 1417;[3] it was used increasingly in the 16th and 17th, so that by the end of that century it featured in the titles of several important journals.[4] Currently, the consensus is that Pierre Bayle first translated the term in his journal Nouvelles de la République des Lettres in 1684. But there are some historians who disagree and some have gone so far as to say that its origin dates back to Plato's Republic.[5] Part of the difficulty in determining its origin is that, unlike an academy or literary society, it existed only in the minds of its members.[4]

Historians are presently debating the importance of the Republic of Letters in influencing the Enlightenment.[6] Today, most Anglo-American historians, whatever their point of entry to debate, occupy a common ground: the Republic of Letters and the Enlightenment were distinct.[7]

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