What's it all about?

Cindy Sheehan, who celebritized the demonization of President Bush, has called it quits. She had insinuated herself into a celebrity niche by appealing to the cum laude graduates of the school for the perpetually perplexed. So what is my excuse for wasting time on a one-trick celebrity whose 15 minutes of blame have expired? It contributes to my daily quota of disdain for inanity.

It's a free country, contrary to Ms. Sheehan's bizarre claim that our country " ... is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think." If that were really so, then we must conclude that Ms. Sheehan is a spokeswoman for that very same war machine. The computational analog of such circuitous logic is an infinite loop. A typical example of such a loop is the labeled FORTRAN statement, viz.

100 go to 100

Notice the following attributes: brevity; symmetry; uselessness. But the most powerful computer on earth will succumb to its relentless grip. Only a sensible human operator can abort such senseless waste of resources.

The Sheehans of this world are the enablers of an enormous waste of creative potential. They celebritize, and thereby leverage, the universal antagonism of entropy's chaotic destruction of resources to gravity's evolutionary creation of life worth living.

Though creative use of resources has its thoughtful adherents, the sheer number of inanity's devotees renders the ultimate outcome of civilization's agon problematic. Creativity is rare and therefore brief; inanity is useless and enduring. Indications are that the universal agon will be a symmetric draw. Perhaps that's what it's all about.

Remembrance in Spacetime: Liberty

The displaced persons had boarded the General J. H. McRae (AP-149), an American Army transport, in early October 1949 at Bremerhaven on the north coast of General Eisenhower's American Occupation Zone. The North Atlantic was stormy that October, and its crossing took about two weeks. It was a nightmare.

At the end of the second week of the hellish crossing, the mother scored a jackpot. Though she was a seasick, kerchief-wearing refugee she was, nevertheless, a pretty young woman, and she charmed a ship's officer into giving her a single tablet of Dramamine. She shared it with her son on the deck of the General McRae. The father, as usual, bore his misery stoically. After swallowing the half-tablet, the child's queasiness lifted, as did the morning haze.

And there she was. With torch held high, she beckoned to the ship's human cargo as the General McRae steamed into New York Harbor. She was beautiful, just as they had imagined she would be.

It was United Nations Day in America: October 24, 1949. But it might as well have been the Fourth of July. For the immigrant survivors, it was, as we continued to celebrate it annually, our Day of Liberty.

Remembrance in Spacetime: Vanquished

It was a typical winter day --- safe but very cold. Temperatures occasionally reached the point at which Fahrenheit and Celsius become indistinguishable. On the other side of the mountains, the invincible horde had been met by an indomitable will. At the end of the monumental battle, a quarter million invincibles surrendered. It marked the end of the pathogenic explosion. Its implosive eradication had begun.

A mother was rushing, with toddler in tow, to the wartime mall, the black market, where the people bartered for necessities. She had dressed her son warmly: long woolly underwear; pants; shirt and sweater; an overcoat with mittens; a hat with ear flaps; and little boots made of felt. The felt was effective because it was too cold for snow to melt and wet it. His father had recently demonstrated the fascinating way in which saliva turned to ice before it reached the ground with a clink.

The little boy stopped walking to complain about some minor discomfort. The mother's hasty effort in dressing him for her important errand had been less than his fastidiousness required. In her agitation, she started spanking him, an unusual response from her. But suddenly she stopped.

Advancing towards them was a disorganized column of misery guarded by army troops. The prisoners-of-war were shivering in the remnants of their warm-weather uniforms. Their heads down, icicles hung from the nostrils of the vanquished invaders. Mother stared at the despised detritus shuffling past.

"That nation of swine" she exclaimed, as frozen spit punctuated the ground.