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Best of Spirits

A degrees of separation thing

In Miracle on 34th Street (1947),
Susan & Santa the judge was played by Eugene Lockhart.

  1. Eugene Lockhart
    Gene is the father of June Lockhart.
  2. June Lockhart
    June played the mother on Lassie.
  3. The theme on Lassie
    Lassie & Timmy had whistling. (WAV)
  4. Another TV show theme that had whistling
    Goober Sings LP was The Andy Griffith Show.
    • MIDI version of the Andy Griffith theme.
    • Lyrics, never aired to the Andy Griffith theme.
    • Andy Griffith, itself a spin-off from The Danny Thomas Show, gave birth to numerous spin-offs, including Gomer Pyle USMC, Petticoat Junction, and Green Acres.
  5. On The Andy Griffith Show,
    Andy & Opie the boy who played Andy's son was Ron Howard.
  6. Ron Howard
    Opie later played Richie Cunningham on Happy Days.
    • Before Andy Griffith, Ron Howard sang a solo in the movie The Music Man
    • After Happy Days, he became an acclaimed director
    • Happy Days directly or indirectly spun off several shows, including
      • Lavene and Shirley from which spun off
      • Lenny & Squiggy (early version of Dumb & Dumber… mercifully short-lived or urban legend?)
  7. In one episode of Happy Days, Richie Cunningham
    Richie was the target for an earthling-napping alien named Mork from Ork, played by Robin Williams.
  8. Mork from Ork
    Mork got his own spin-off series the next season, Mork and Mindy. Nanoo Nanoo.
  9. In the third season of Mork and Mindy,
    Mork & Mindy their baby was played by Jonathan Winters.
  10. Jonathan Winters
    Winters had one scene in the movie Penelope (1966) starring Natalie Wood.
  11. Natalie Wood
    Wood played the little girl, Susan, in Miracle on 34th Street (1947).
  12. In Miracle on 34th Street (1947),
    Susan & Santa the judge was played by Eugene Lockhart.



Radical Incline
America has actually been emphatically un-imperial. Rather than making nations our serfs, we would have them as our friends.
Cruising the web led me to "Freedom through force" by Alex Massie, reviewing The Dominion of War by Fred Anderson and Andrew Cayton[*]. I have not read the book, but very much enjoyed the review. Pivotal in the reviewer's analysis of the United States, from this Oklahoman's view, is this: "the ideas of the American Revolution were and remain as revolutionary as they are universal." The reviewer understands that in one sense America is just another government among humans, with human evils, yet that Federalism is confronted constantly by the "Spirit of '76." The reviewer mentions a Scottish historian's view that "the Americans have built an empire while avoiding the 'e' word pretty consistently, and that's always disastrous. There have been successes, but if you look at all the countries in which the US has intervened, the majority have not been success stories." Or, another possible way of looking at the sometimes "failure" of American foreign policy has been that America has actually been emphatically un-imperial. Rather than making nations our serfs, we would have them as our friends. If the idea is that free countries are defending ourselves by "exporting liberty and democracy," then to be a bit simplistic about it, only when the overwhelming majority of disparate peoples place the modern and necessary principles of universal equality above primitive tribal and sectarian divisiveness will they (not we) "succeed." People don't change like that overnight, although they may in as little as a generation.



Best of Spirits

People turn to God in their hour of need. But what do they do when they get answered?

Classically, generally, people turn to God in their hour of need. Right? I mean, it may not be ABSOLUTELY true that "there are no atheists in foxholes," but you can say NEED (as a person perceives it at the time, regardless of its validity) brings out the religious in people.

Of course GREEDY and THOUGHTLESS "NEED" tends to bring out the superstitious more than the highly spiritual, because people frequently get themselves into things and then expect God to bail them out. God's evolution toward that glorious age of light and life appears to require a fair amount of culling from the gene pool those who fail to appreciate God's will, as expressed in nature. Gravity, for example. Around our house we have the saying, the best time to ask God for advice is before you jump off the cliff. Asking God to repeal gravity, undo the carefully-crafted universe of the space-time continuum, simply because you forgot to wear a parachute, isn't exactly fair. There's an afterlife for sorting those things out.

And besides, quite often the real "need" is not at all what the person is asking about, but rather the true need is a profound metamorphosis of the world view of the person praying. Serious answers to utterly selfish prayers aren't really possible -- when there's not even a crumb that could have vague translation to the values level! Of those these them yea verily was it most truly bespoken, "Sometimes the answer is no."

The best of mortals, meanwhile, can sometimes through no fault of lust or sin, and despite the most sincere efforts, find themselves in powerful need. We have been assured by God's many good voices that the faithful can turn to God in the hour of real need. There's some rules. Exhaust every human resource, pray with wisdom and humility and faith and all that good stuff. You live in a universe of Others, all requiring your acknowledgement of their spiritual equality, and all clamoring for God's gifts and all looking for that divine Love the same as you. Understand there's an encyclopedia of things to be said about how the answer might not be what you expect, or could be long delayed, or might not come even in this life, and blah dee dee blah, which you have to keep in mind while still praying whole-heartedly and without despair and oh yeah remember to keep that fundamentally joyous faith thing going.

Whew!

So, let's say you do all that. And maybe your request for reasons of the universal good actually qualifies for the fast-track reply. We're talking that whizbang miracle-from-outside thing here, not one of those personal internal attitudinal metamorphowhozises.

Funny thing about getting our prayers answered in this life. Seems like God rarely puts on his George Burns skin, says, "Hi, I'm God!," hands you a big bag of money (with a big green "$" on the side) and solves all your problems with a bewitching nose twitching. Sure God can change water to wine (good wine, too, and in party quantities) anytime it seems appropriate. As a general rule, though, the showy miracles tend not to uplift the spirit of the individual and the universe, so even when we get answers, they seem to come from "within the system."

Over three decades as students of health & nutrition, Mary Jo and I've often seen simple natural remedies perform remarkable healing. Sometimes we (I say we but Mary Jo is the far better student) have been called upon as counselors (non-professionally) to our fellow mortals. Quite simply, quite often, folks get better. It's personally satisfying to have helped steer them to healing. A simple vitamin deficiency correction can seem like a miracle, especially to the one who had been ailing. So, now and then, someone will try what we're pretty sure is the right solution, but will report back to us that the "medicine" (whatever treatment) "didn't do anything… the condition just went away on its own." Right. We see that "going away on its own" a lot. If fact, since what we study is what you might call natural remedies, then natural healing, if any, is all we ever see. If a person doesn't understand this, that's okay. The fundamental purpose, healing, is achieved.

So, the parallel: When God answers you, it's not (usually these days anyway) via the bolt from the blue, charioteers from the sky, or the dramatic angelic rescue... not as often as it is a seemingly natural confluence of fortuitous events. See, here's the trick, and here's why I'm sucking up the bandwidth with these words. Sometimes the answer you get can be exactly what you asked for. But it can be so subtle you didn't even know you got it, or the answer came so quietly you didn't even realize it was the solution to your screaming dilemma.

Since we frequently are asking for something bad NOT to happen to us, it's not always clear when the threat has passed; maybe there wasn't a big "whew! we're okay now" moment; or, time just passed and the dreaded didn't develop. So, at some point, you might realize, your wishes were answered, but maybe... maybe you don't think back to those prayers. Things just worked out, or you got busy because you got the job, or it turned out not to be cancer, or Billy came home safe, or the IRS said they owed YOU money... and life goes on... and the next crisis occurs, and you get busy with that... but one way or another... you don't realize your appeal to the Almighty actually was answered, and timely, and well, and even perfectly, and you got just what you asked for and completely MISSED IT!

God is always busy right now answering your very own personal deepest, most heartfelt prayers, perfectly answering every single one of them (note rules above), whether you realize it or not. I was raised that if you get something nice, you ought to say thanks. I've never been very good at writing those thank-you notes, and that's not my mom's fault; she tried to teach me. However, an attitude of gratitude not only seems in order, but helps keep the system healthy.

Thoughts to the world from a warm spring day in Oklahoma,
:)




Second Life of Radd Dadd

Learning's more fun with a bird-brained virtual pet!

Chick 'n' Egg
Developed by RaddDadd Upshaw

Chick 'n' Egg are virtual avian-looking characters created for my studies of object manipulation in Second Life. Also, to answer the age-old question, "Which came first?"

 

Life begins at rez, with an egg. Once rezzed, the egg just sits there for an embryonic delay. Then the head and tail and, er, wheel begin to emerge. The hatchling begins to peck and pivot and wander about within a Corral. What was egg becomes a chick for a period, then matures into the adult hen. Once during its lifespan, the hen produces an egg. At the end of its life cycle, the hen stops its behaviors, and fades away.

The Corral is a fixed radius around the bird's Center. When rezzed, the position of origin is the bird's Center; the bird then looks for a nearby object named "Henyard," and, if found, the center of the hen yard becomes the Center for the bird's corral. (If no Henyard is found, the point of origin is remembered as the bird's Center.)

 
The idea of a wheeled bird comes from a cartoon character which I did as a child, "Charlie the Speedster," in look a rip-off of WB's Roadrunner, in powers much like DC's Flash. The Roadrunner's legs look like a circular blur when he's running. Charlie's affliction was that his feet never stopped, always looking like a circle. Using a wheel as the root prim made calculations simpler than if I'd tried to use legs. Easier to draw then; easier to script now!

Eight prims comprise the Chick 'n' Egg. The bottommost and root prim is a vertical torus. The Second prim is the body, a spheroid which initially serves as the eggshell. A tapered, flexible box serves as a tail. The fourth prim is a cylindrical neck. The head, right eye, and left eye are all spheroids. Eighth and last, a comical conical beak. In the beginning, all the other parts are tucked inside the body-egg. (Therefore, this experiment only begs the question of which came first.)

The object is solid but not physical. In the root prim's inventory are, first, the birdbrains -- the Chick 'n' Egg script, running -- and second, a copy of the egg, which has running birdbrains in its inventory. When the egg within is rezzed by the hen, a copy of the egg is given to the newborn's inventory.

 
Gallery
Click for larger pic
Flock
Wizard RaddDadd with brood, 2008-Jun
Wizard RaddDadd with brood, 2008-Jun
Green marbled hen, laying
Pink Hen Pecking, with Egg
Purple bird with chick
Red-White-and-Blue bird #1
Wizard RaddDadd with early brood

Completed:
Egg-to-Expiration script timing & state sequences.
Wandering, Pecking, and Pivoting behaviors
Adjustment of root and child prim properties through all stages of growth.
Maturation from chick to hen, with according resizing and repositioning of prims, and adoption of adult colors and textures
Rotation adjustment of beak, head, neck, and tail when moving between standing & resting positions
Reproduction
Fading out & dying

Accomplished, but not currently active:
Pivot in direction of movement
Pooping (optional)

Planned:
Keep outside the bounding box of all nearby objects
Veer toward nearest other chicken in area ("flock together" behavior)
Voice commands like "here" and "shoo" cause birds to veer toward and away from owner at a much greater rate
Various bells & whistles.
An unrevealed ultimate destiny.

 



Radical Incline

We need a revolution of legal and social appreciation for human liberty, for the Human Right in all its facets.

Email sent to: lettertoed@thestar.ca[*]

I write to the Toronto Star, whose website carried "an excerpt of an editorial from the Calgary Herald." I tried to access the Herald online to read the original editorial in its entirety, but (Star publishers please note) the Herald requires "registration," an unfortunate but increasingly common reader-losing practice among online periodicals, which tedious and invasive practice I refuse to encourage.

I write from Oklahoma, smack dab in the middle of the USA. Please excuse me if in the following, in the occasional tendency of my countrymen, I sometimes seem to universalize my country's culture or otherwise smudge national and cultural borders.

Regarding the editorial, href="http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1087251010097&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795" target="_blank">Taxing marijuana compounds problem[*]:

Pragmatism v Principle

The editorialist is correct to point out the flaw in the pragmatic argument for legalization of pot, or likewise other substances. Contrasting the material gain argument with transgressions like shoplifting is the correct way to point out a logical error of the argument from pragmatism. Many of the arguments for repeal of modern vice prohibitions are similarly logically flawed: emotionally appealing, rhetorically propagandistic, or sometimes even to some degree disingenuous, like the back-door hemp-product or medical approaches to cannabis legalization. (I don't mean to suggest that those supporting hemp or medical uses are insincere potheads; but those supporting these movements, if they are thoughtful, would acknowledge their efforts — duh! — innately, inherently, and inevitably weaken recreational criminalization.) Humans being frequently less than entirely reasonable, legalization propaganda is frequently just as flawed as Prohibitionists' paralogisms.

In comparing pot use with shoplifting, however, the editorialist unintentionally compares apples with handguns, so to speak. Shoplifting, theft, threat, murder, force, fraud, these are true transgressions, and just cause for society to govern the transgressors. Gambling, beer-drinking, smoking one plant or another, and other so-called vices, these are personal (for good or ill) actions, not inherently interpersonally transgressive. Society may rightly govern public intoxication, public motor-vehicle operational impairment, public lewdness, public second-hand smoke, public littering of syringes, the poisonous meth lab next door, whatever the public and social consequences of people who can't hold their whatever or really threaten or harm others.

But what could possibly give Society just cause to govern the private bet, the private beer, the personal joint?

Prohibitionism = tyranny

The editorialist rightly notes that "Unless the government is willing to legalize all drugs, the effect on organized crime [of marijuana legalization alone] would be minute." This sad fact of vice laws underpins the very way modern USA pot and drug repression got started, with former alcohol prohibition agents like Anslinger callously trying to keep their jobs by getting new prohibitions passed with racist and cultural scare tactics.

The editorialist is further correct to lament the hypocrisy and ironic self-defeating nature of disincentive taxation that arises wherever vice is legalized. (As if when pot were legal and the profit motive of bootlegging were removed the government could still collect black-market level prices as taxes.) A black market in otherwise legal items, like cigarettes, arises just as surely as completely prohibited items, because under exhorbitant taxes, especially combined with relatively open borders and the matter's elsewhere general legality, a smuggler's profit-to-risk ratio is still high. The punitive tax "to dissuade use" or punish or "pay for social consequences" is just the same taboo-minded Taliban-like thinking upon which outright prohibitionism is based. The very tyrannical thinking behind dissuasive taxes and Prohibitionism in all its forms is the real social problem, the scourge, which must be addressed.

The Puritan and Taliban give us similar religion-based taboo-law culture. To be fair, such religious extremists are also to be associated with Godliness, devotion, and duty. The Puritan Work Ethic is still something to be admired and emulated. But such cultures leave us also with a heritage of taboos regarding personal appearance, behavior, and lifestyle and practices. Often today, these taboos are no longer so much religious as cultural. Dancing after midnight? "We just don't do that." But in all cases, the codification of taboo is an aberration, a cancer even, of governments which otherwise Constitutionally protect liberty.

The idea of Prohibitionism inevitably justifiies any tyranny. The Prohibitionist, logically, must control not just alcohol, drugs, gambling and prostitution, but also tobacco and marijuana, and we may soon throw in those minor villains caffeine, sugar, and taken to its logical extremes, even carbohydrates, or alternative herbal or homeopathic medicines... and what if dancing is medically proven to be dangerous for old people? Better prohibit that. Beard length, women's attire, private bedroom behavior of married heterosexual couples, there is historically and logically no barrier to the idea of Prohibitionism, taken to its logical extremes. However, the futility of prohibitionism is best illustrated with Alcohol. The deadliest and most abused drug of all time and all cultures should logically always be the Prohibitionist's first target, yet the most resounding historic disproof of the path of Prohibitionism is the USA's 21st Amendment repealing Prohibition.

Liberty & Responsibility

In extreme contrast, true ideals of liberty inevitably drive one to complete repeal of blue laws, vice laws, and all those barbaric taboos which do not concern true transgressions. Society, plainly, is unready for pursuing the ideals of liberty. Concern about the "consequences of sin" is generally reasonable, but we don't have to be scared of real freedom — where legal and well-governed, vices lose much of both their inflated gangster-attracting profitability and their socially corrupting illicit allure. People who turn to prohibitionism generally lack faith — expecting to eradicate the degradation and self-destruction of individuals through generalized social oppression, when these goals can only really be accomplished when strong, self-regarding, devout families and communities abound.

Some public regulation is entirely just. We can't have the rotgut or the cancer sticks out near where the kiddiess can grab it, and so on. We may allow titty clubs (pardon the expression but the new one that opened up in our town has added this to my current lexicon), but we no more have to permit them in plain sight of our schools than we need permit choking factories to go up next door to our residences.

Abandoning our heritage of taboo enforcement for truly free government is not the same as permitting transgression nor any more a sign of social endorsement of general debauchery than is legal booze. General repeal would actually mean exorcising a great devil in the purposes of government. The pragmatic arguments are not only ultimately correct in material terms, but also accord with the ideals of liberty: We are better off today treating alcoholism and the dangers of alcohol openly than we were under the gangsterism and corruption of American Prohibition. We don't punish one beer drinker for the transgressions of another person who gets drunk. We have stores stocked with a world-wide selection of beers and fine wines, not speakeasies serving bathtub-brewed poison. Without Prohibitionism, those who have problems with substances or habits, we will deal with as we deal with the alcoholic or tobacco fiend or others with debilitating dependencies. Logically, Prohibitionism taken to its conclusion, unless you absolutely eradicate virtually all taboo-breakers from society, interdiction and repression is futile. In practice, with prohibition, control becomes actually less possible — kids can get pot and ecstasy easier than they can get alcohol or cigarettes. Our prisons groan under the strain of encaged non-transgressive taboo-breakers yet drugs flood across the border daily. The war on users of some substances was eviscerating Constitutional protections long before the war on terrorism and its Orwellian Patriot Acts. Much of the major woes of drug source countries derive from the inflated black-market profits due to drug taboos. Worldwide, those resources which we currently vainly employ in interdiction, criminalization of harmless users, and cheap scare-tactics would be far more effectively spent on serious education and personal intervention efforts… but all the practical benefits of liberty are just the inevitable result of correcting a great pattern of terribly tyranny and injustice throughout humanity. Prohibitionism itself must be ended, looked upon as surely as we now look upon slavery.

Rather than the tyranny of the taboo, rather than the flawed logic of rationalists or the tedious machinations of the incrementalists, we need a revolution of legal and social appreciation for human liberty, for the Human Right in all its facets.

Above all, government which is consistent in its principles of liberty and just in its enforcement of only the social contract will be most highly regarded by the populace. Law must govern transgression, not taboo. In the contest between individual right and majority opinion, non-transgressive behaviors of all sorts must be Constitutionally protected, just as surely and importantly as the rights of speech, press, and worship, of person, property, and security, or of any right of non-transgressing artistic, political, and religious practice or expression.




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