2) Choices, when examined from a collective perspective as opposed to an individual perspective, exist as a chaotic system (if you plot choice, you can find topological mixing and dense periodic orbits).

3) Chaotic systems are sensitive to initial conditions. This isn’t to say a chaotic choice system is deterministic. That is to say, a chaotic choice system doesn’t exclude free will, but also doesn’t exclude predestination.

4) God determines initial conditions. God created the universe and breathed his breath into the first man. He set the system in motion and as such determined its initial conditions.

5) Your choices are (at very least) strongly influenced by God.

This is a terribly deist way of looking at things and probably abuses the idea of chaotic systems past its breaking point. But it’s at least some cool sophistry, right?

Your Choices Determine Your Destiny originally appeared on Elsewhere in Dreams on 2010-03-15.

I’m tempted to
borrow tragedy;
the red wall,
the long fall.

The long haul &
the don’t look back
are needle to the
plow to the groove:

peculiar music
of the pastoral
neatly tailored
plot I chose.

Plot originally appeared on Elsewhere in Dreams on 2010-03-08.

Haloes when you grin,
there’s no denial.
Two worlds define the
edges of your smile.

Smile originally appeared on Elsewhere in Dreams on 2010-03-04.

The beam bursting from your head
is a particle, is a wave;
you are the collapsing form
I cannot unsee;
the antibody lives on:
unapproachable parallel.

Bird originally appeared on Elsewhere in Dreams on 2010-03-04.

This is how everything is. No shoulder for the pack; the pack is anyhow carried. Passive voice. Active voice. Does it matter? Maybe. Or not. Lack of pronouns. The actors are frozen in place; the board is set. Not playing but being played. Brief bursts of energy. Movement. Choice. Illusion?

Look to windward. Stand still. Wind moves. Or wind stands still. Who moves? Invisible hands; so many.

Hands, Windward originally appeared on Elsewhere in Dreams on 2010-02-23.

Missing originally appeared on Elsewhere in Dreams on 2010-02-08.

Are you bursting with day
suddenly from grey on grey half-life?
Tell me how this will and that will
not steal you.

Ballast & Theft originally appeared on Elsewhere in Dreams on 2010-01-26.

Of course, when you’re on the internet, your bullshit detector is set to full. You don’t believe everything you read. It’s just a bunch of people talking. You don’t believe everything a random collection of people say, and that’s true of the web.

Plus, when someone you recognise is constantly wrong, you can correct them in the comments–the internet likes to pretend to be interactive in at least the most perfunctory manner–or just ignore them completely.

This is one area traditional media can’t compete. In fact when you’re used to the internet way, the traditional media model seems not just obsolete but downright silly. These people positioned as guards at the gateway of information: Who are they? Who appointed them? Why do they get to be there? (Sidebar: The further inside the media establishment you look, the less you’ll respect it. There are few institutions that deserve the position of gatekeeper.)

For instance, you know something about technology. Yet you read an article in the newspaper about some technological artefact and you realise neither the reporter nor the editor understands it. They don’t get the most basic stuff about it. So you dismiss the article and turn the page and read someone going on about politics and never think that if they can’t understand something as simple as technology, how in the world could they understand something so complex as politics?

We all have this sort of blindness, a kind of amnesia. When you read Wikipedia, the editors are ruthless. If a statement is unsourced, they delete it or add a [citation needed] tag. Either way you know that the phrase is suspect. There’s also a strict rule against weasel words and things like that. Yet reading a newspaper is an exercise in find a phrase with a citation, or finding an article without weasel words. Traditional journalism is pathetic. You practically have to read between the lines to get an accurate idea of what’s actually happening.

Internet news sites get down to business. Items can’t be long, for both attention deficit and bandwidth reasons. If something is complete bullshit, someone will say something. Probably lots of people. Some are saying? Well… who? Links help build context. If you really need context–if you’ve come out of a coma recently–you can follow the links or quickly google the subject at hand.

So why do we treat internet news sources as inferior to traditional new sources? Why do we assume a higher standard of truth–after all, journalistic convention is about better truth, right? I can’t see many downsides here. And I think traditional news media are scared of the internet not simply because it’s a different medium. The news media adjusted well enough to radio and television, after all. It’s because it’s a totally different way of interacting with news. I don’t need a 500 word article that contains context, quotes, and supposedly neutral blather. I need a basic summary, some links, and a well-thought-out commenting forum.

That’s going to be a shock for most short and long form journalists, and their editors. There will always be a place for investigative journalism and long human interest stories. But news? Nah.

2010 and the News originally appeared on Elsewhere in Dreams on 2010-01-09.

Compact Discs, No Particular Order originally appeared on Elsewhere in Dreams on 2010-01-01.

The cataclysm came much quicker that I’d ever thought.
A question split the cord, confession twisted in knots.
From your metalic tears I mind the iron for a battleship,
but you didn’t fight. You’d already left me behind.

And in a week on Hilton Head, the water taught me how
salt water can cleanse, or it can break a building down.
In the morning light I eyed the shore to find the ediface,
but I couldn’t find a single spire left behind.

Like newborn day, like epitaph.
Like a dream forgotten, how it passed.
These better angels welcome home,
from empty tombs, oh how they’ve flown.

Still, sometimes I forget the words reversed and upside down.
A child so badly written you can’t help but help it drown.
But from those jumbled letters I’ve assembled something wonderful.
Something all mine that I can’t leave behind.

Apologies To The Queen originally appeared on Elsewhere in Dreams on 2009-12-28.

You told me that you loved me; I knew what you meant,
but I can’t help imagining what might have been,
if only I had told you I was on the edge.
But I don’t dare say it, cause you’re the kind of girl
I could fall in love with.

I’d take away your pain if you’d ease my regret,
with some whisky in a bottle and some cigarettes.
We could laugh about nothing. That’s as good as it gets.
But I don’t dare repeat it, cause you’re the kind of girl
I could fall in love with.

I know that this is crazy, but I’ll toe the line,
in order to feel something, and to pass the time.
Keep telling me “never”. I don’t mind.
I just can’t believe it. You’re the kind of girl
I could fall in love with.

The Kind of Girl originally appeared on Elsewhere in Dreams on 2009-12-28.

Let’s spend time talking
about something or nothing.
It doesn’t matter
what we say.

All the sentences I use,
they’re perfect when you’re
smiling at me.

originally appeared on Elsewhere in Dreams on 2009-12-28.

Will you remember all of this,
apalling fall, the tender kiss
of flame and pain and bliss
of being spread over the wall?
The red wall, the red wall, the red wall.

Was it your first breath,
or was it your last breath?
In amneosis, screaming
to let them know
that you have arrive here.
Oh, why are you crying?
You’re supposed to be happy,
you’re supposed to be happy here.

Is this all you remember,
is this all you remember,
is this all you remember,
the red wall?

The Red Wall originally appeared on Elsewhere in Dreams on 2009-12-28.

1. Scientists don’t adjust the age of the earth to fit their theories, exactly. Their theories are built on evidence of how old the earth actually is. To represent this as if every time some scientist takes a long hot shower and has a great idea he’ll malevolently adjust the age of the earth on a whim? That’s the height of disingenuity. Come on, even creationists have had to say that the earth looks really, really old (and come up with great reasons why God would make an old-looking earth to trick the heathen scientists into being a little more heathen).
2. It’s called the scientific method, stupid! That little process whereby we understand at least to some degree the basic structure of the universe? The process upon which all modern technology stands? Yeah, that one. Let’s not act like adjusting theories to fit evidence (and then adjusting the age of the earth to fit the theory based on the evidence) is some strange new innovation that no-one’s heard of yet.
3. You call trying to understand complexity “stumbling” over it? Okay! If we must play word games, then creationists stumble over the imperfections in design that a perfect Creator apparently caused. There are some stunningly stupid things about the human body that creationism just overlooks. Sure, there’s complexity that is easily solved by the addition of a Six-Day Creator into the mix, but there’s also a lot of bio-sloppiness going that makes that same Creator look just a bit daft. So which one is it? You can’t have both.

Bullet Points for a Wednesday Morning [Snowpocalypse Edition] originally appeared on Elsewhere in Dreams on 2009-12-09.

There she goes,
a sudden rippling
unfolding of
wings.

She can’t stay
in the cradle
forever.

Dream Song originally appeared on Elsewhere in Dreams on 2009-12-05.

Value originally appeared on Elsewhere in Dreams on 2009-12-05.

Toddle on and we’ll find our sea feet
to the rise and swell of brine and stomach:
this retreating continent where I first voided
her saltwater kisses into a shallow trough.

Saunter on and we’ll cross swords and whiskey
shots across the bow like ships in the night:
the stern warning blinking dashboard red,
the iceberg, and the imminent disaster.

Titan originally appeared on Elsewhere in Dreams on 2009-11-30.

I was so small. An infinite circle, but so small.
A perfect circle, an artifice, an unnatural symmetry.

If I outgrew the circle or if it shrank within me,
I don’t know. It is a tiny, significant, imperfect memory.

I remember stars like eyes askance circling overhead
while I stalked my claim. How I struggled to bring it down!

I remember the jaws closing round my neck.
I remember the tubes and vessels full of vacuum.

I remember feeling so small while the vice tightened.
The circle right around my few remaining waking moments.

I remember being blind and deaf and sleepless for a while,
but also I remember the knives. I remembering being cured.

And I am so small, the happiest infinite smallness.
Joy at being found dead and wanting death.

I remember the first time I realised it,
and how I fell into it and disappeared.

Circle originally appeared on Elsewhere in Dreams on 2009-11-27.

I’m sure. Petty theft, I have stolen
the day we met, added a semicolon

and squirreled it away. Another occasion,
another chance to complete the equation.

Meanwhile, I’ve examined the debt
and it’s interesting. Not due yet,

but soon. Perhaps. Diagrams and charts.
Games of chess, of pool, of darts.

Time turns many slights to wounds.
Bastard child, not due yet, but soon.

To Have And To Hold originally appeared on Elsewhere in Dreams on 2009-11-25.

You’re an imaginary person
now a figment, a
small, dark fruit
of the past.

You’re the monument
reposed in restless
unexpected
erudition.

Mime the gap–
arms spread like
wings. This far–
no, further.

White Witch originally appeared on Elsewhere in Dreams on 2009-11-25.