Don't let the door hit you on the way out

 I saw news post in Nextdoor "Oakland-level embarrassed: Former mayor warns dangers of losing Spurs."  I was going to add my comment: "Go Spurs Go!  And don't let the door hit you on the way out."

But comments were already full of similar comments and no more were accepted.

American cities are classless and clueless.  From time immemorial, good cities have invested in the arts to improve their citizens and their quality of life.

Instead, in American cities, and San Antonio in particular, we blow billions of taxpayer money (that ends up in the pockets of wealthy owners, developers, and millionaire players) in pointless activities that have no beneficial effect on people's minds or bodies, stuff them full of cancer causing junk food, spoil their sleep and study time, etc.  If anything "positive" comes from this, it's pure tribalism, and that's not positive at all.  We'd be better off with gambling halls and racetracks, which at least develop a kind of numerical literacy. 

Also here in San Antonio we starve the arts, like the former San Antonio Symphony, and likewise it's successor San Antonio Philharmonic which have to pay their own way for awful facilities in awful parts of town with awful parking whose cost accrues to nearby churches.  (Actually, the parking was fine when they were at First Baptist, but now that they are at the Masonic Temple, parking is in the terrible First Presbyterian lot.)

The last Mayor, Ron Nirenberg, who let the San Antonio Symphony fail, and then refused to provide subsidies for it's successor Philharmonic, is forever seared in my mind as one of the worst.  When he was first running, he promised incredible things like mass transit, instead all we got was more billionaire developer giveaways and the initiation of Project Marvel.  No mayor was more in the pocket of developers, which is the pocket all of them are in.

Partner Dance Clubs may Have Issues

I've been wavering over the past few months on the utility of dance clubs in mating.  First I thought they were useless because they did not necessarily match people in the critical Values and Interests areas.  Then largely I started believing they had compensatory advantages such as physical factors matching, and that only in a dance club could you approach the prettiest girl in the club and do something wonderful, nearly like sex, with her, while sensing critical attributes like intelligence, strength and sensitivity.  You might be able to truly connect with someone directly bypassing the usual bullshit and propaganda which mainly divides us--even pretty well matched people.  You could jump to the person of your heart's greatest desire rather than enduring endless religious* bullshit to get there.  It seemed very promising and I wanted to take it as far as it would go.  (*And political clubs are even more hopeless.)

But all of a sudden this week I got the downside in a big way.  I think it's specific to partner dancing (though most people don't think much of square dancing, I'm thinking now it's more pro-social and somewhat more immune to these things, but perhaps slightly less fun, lacking in aesthetics, physical skill development, some kinds of social skills, and forging direct connections).  

The downside of partner dancing clubs is Jealosy and Envy.  I've often seen fights break out in dance bars, but I thought dance clubs would be immune.  Dance clubs might be more immune to violence as such, but Jealousy and Envy can express themselves in other ways .

Nick ("Mick") Johnson demonstrating Charleston steps

It was as a result of these things that I was banned by my club before I could make even the slightest progress in my finding a mate in a dance club project.  I had been coming to the club and dancing for over two years, but the axe fell two months after I actually started to talk to the two women I felt most strongly about in the club.  I wrote this letter to the club afterwards:

On Monday September 29, as I was in my car waiting for the club to open at 6:30, I heard a rapping on my car window by a police officer.  Shaking with fear, I opened the car door, stepped out, and was confronted by Nick Johnson, a tall and wide man with a full beard, with two other ACSR dance instructors in the background.  Nick said to me, "We have learned that you have been making unwelcome advances to members of our club.  You are no longer welcome here.  We ask that you leave immediately.  Do you have any questions?"

I said "No" and immediately got back in my car and left.

I have now recounted the whole story of what happened to several friends, mostly women, and they all say the same thing, "Bullshit!  You did nothing wrong.  Guys in the club are jealous or envious."

In 2.5 years as a club member, I have only made "advances" to two women that I had fallen in love with after dancing with them several times.  I walked up to each woman with a simple offer to determine their availability, rather than spending an hour drilling down into their personal affairs to see if it was appropriate, when there isn't much time available anyway.   I simply made friendly offers, and and I immediately accepted the rejections I received in a friendly way.

I offered marriage to one woman I was virtually certain I'd known many years before in San Diego and I'd heard was recently divorced.  I had been this close to doing that many years before when we got separated.  It turned out, this was not that same woman, and instead she was already married with a grand child often present.

To the second one, I more conservatively offered that we go somewhere and talk so I'd know her better.  

When they told me of their present attachments, which I had not known, I immediately accepted that this meant we'd not be seeing each other outside the club at all.  

But they both said they wanted to talk and dance with me more inside the club.  The second one thought it would be great if I'd ask one question every day to help me "get out of my shell" which she thought would be wonderful for me.  Initially, I was taken aback, but then I realized this is exactly what I need, and it was a wonderful opportunity I'd hope to continue as long as I could.  Sadly there was just one more question before I was banned.  I asked what course she was taking and she said Organic Chemistry, a conversation which took about a minute before someone else asked for help.*

The very last thing I did with each of these women was accept a dance that they offered to me.

Given that I have done nothing seriously wrong, and that I was terminated for personal reasons, and in a perilous and upsetting way, I believe at minimum my ACSR dues should be refunded.

I have had many minor disappointments with ACSR too.  The volunteer instructors pursue a poor, sloppy, and disconnected pedagogy, which makes me feel stuck at the same level, while the more elite who take classes elsewhere pull it all together and do very fancy stuff.  I have had lessons in 10 other partner dance clubs and schools, and none were this poorly conceived.  Nick is the worst.  There are no outside activities, afterparties, retreats, and the like where you can get to know other people in the club better.  The only real opportunity to do so is before the first classes, and hardly anyone but volunteers shows up then.  The music is too loud, and to preserve my hearing I wear earplugs, further making conversation during the social dancing difficult, but I expect that in dance clubs anyway.  

Maybe it is about time I try out other clubs anyway, especially if you are moving so far out.  But I've never enjoyed a club so much for one reason: all the wonderful women in the club.  Nearly all seemed to like me and like dancing with me, many asking me for a dance every night, or even multiple dances.

(*NB: The very smart and pretty woman taking Organic Chemistry is around 27 years old.  She has a bachelor's degree and is now taking prerequisites for going to Medical School. She is the fiancee of the club president, as I learned on the second day of the 3 days we had a few minutes to talk.  The first woman in the narrative is around 70.  Nick Johnson always pronounces his name "Mick."  I'm going by the printed name in the Calendar.  ACSR is the Alamo City Swing Revival, which currently has permanent home in the Alamo City anymore, with the night on which I was banned being the last night in its most recent Alamo City location, and the next night being at test location 10 miles further out at higher prices.  I've wondered if everything, including banning me, is part of a planned implosion.  At this point I hope everyone joins other clubs, as I plan to do.)

It does occur to me that dance clubs could combine square dancing, which is about the most pro-social form of non-partner dancing, with swing or something similar.  I think I have heard of clubs like this.  Also some of the concepts from square dancing could be applied to swing, for example, review of some moves before each dance...and even calling.  Another problem with ACSR is the the middle dance is a Shim Sham that's not even taught in the club.  I think everything 'required' in the club should be taught in the club, and every effort made to ensure everyone is at the highest level possible, and not too divergent either.  Even people who can't do some things should know what they are and what they look like so they can anticipate and deal with them.

Mixed bag of seven things

Lust, Gluttony, Pride, and Sloth are individual tendencies virtuous in moderation.  What they seem to want is a tireless emaciated sexless ninny.  Wrath, Greed, and Envy are the true antisocial tendencies which in practice are ignored or even inflamed among "believers"

Machine Consciousness ?

Consciousness is an illusion, a story we tell ourselves about our thinking after it has already occurred.  This helps in the programming of future thinking, or it basically IS the programming of future thinking.

Since different kinds of things do different kinds of thinking and learning, there will be different kinds of consciousness.   Any adaptive device or organism will have one kind or another.  We should be asking about human consciousness.  AI will never be identical with that since it learns differently.

Consciousness is not some kind of test which proves which things deserve a right to life or not.  It is a ubiquitous property of learning systems ("feedback") which we fail to recognize in it's lower orders.

Machines are tools, and they do not have a right to life.

They do not experience human life or society, therefore they are not human and can't create human decisions or human art.

A robot which DID experience something like human life and society sufficiently could attain something close enough to human consciousness to be considered as such.  But we'd still want to have the last call on whether it's a 'human life' we wish to preserve, as not having been subjected to our billions of years of evolution it could be even more evil.

Yahwism

 The original religion of the Hebrews was Yahwism, a polytheistic religion derived from the earlier Canaanite religion followed by Phoenicians.  The original central god was El, from which the word Israel is derived, but later the creator god Yahweh became central, and then sometimes El and Yahweh were held as the same god.  Elements of monotheism may have appeared in the 8th century BCE, and this was certainly true after the Babylonian Exile (when 42,000 descendants of exiled Israelites returned to the then Persian province of Yehud and were regarded as the original people, and the descendants of the people who had mostly never left and a few others who had moved in were somewhat displaced).  The Persians themselves had become Zoroastrian monotheists centuries earlier, and there are other similarities between Zoroastrianism and Second Temple Judaism.

I've previously blogged that "little was known" about the original Hebrew religion, but now I see it has a name and entry in Wikipedia FWIW.

Jerusalem was named by Canaanites after the Canaanite goddess of dusk and peace, which was certainly ironic for a city that has been reconquered 44 times.

The Phoenicians (who never regarded themselves as a "nation" but as a collection of city states such as Sidon and Tyre which are mentioned over 100 times in the Bible) were notably multicultural, peaceful and rich manufacturers*, traders and merchants.

In contrast, the Hebrews to the south of the Phoenician cities were often fanatical and notably hostile to their surrounding groups, a tendency even more visible in the Second Temple Hasmonean era (in earlier Second Temple societies, Judeans were mere subjects of other empires including Persia and Greece).   After Bar Kochba, for 1700 years Rabbinic (then Talmudic) Judaism recast itself as a universal religion of peace and global healing, and actually was a notably peaceful and pro-multicultural religion, far more so than the other Second Temple offshoot Christianity also proclaiming peace and love and which was also invented by Jews.  Sadly traditional Rabbinic/Talmudic Judaism was mostly supplanted in the 20th century by ethnic supremacist Zionist Judaism--as bad or worse than the bad old Hebrew or Hasmonean days.

Polytheistic societies are generally more tolerant of other cultures, and a prevailing view is that they are most often more peaceful.  The largest wars and empires have followed the rise of monotheism, though that could be coincidental.  Yahwism was somewhere in between--it was initially polytheistic but devolved into monolatry, with the local deity El being theologically merged with Yahweh to become the one god that needed to be worshipped.

(*The famous purple dye that never fades was not merely extracted, but made by Phoenicians (the greek word for "purple people") from sea snails in a complex manufacturing process that has never been duplicated.  And Phoenicians made other luxury goods and trinkets.  They were pioneers in mass production, as well as the phonetic alphabet.  Phoenicians pioneered the global trading business that Jews later took over because Phoenician culture was lost after their cities were defeated. OTHO, Zoroastrian Persians restored Second Temple Judaism, similarly monotheistic.  By 0 BCE, most Jews already lived outside of Judea.)

Boy Crisis

 I thought this article in the NYTimes by two Harvard sociologists was very good and neutral in tone.  However, look at the comments.  It angered many people who prefer to blame particular things, including porn and computer screens.  However there may be additional ideas to the ones suggested.

And I see the NYTimes has another oped denying there is a Boy Crisis, but the writer defines it in different terms.

Honeytraps

There is, actually, considerable evidence that Epstein ran a honeytrap, which takes compromising photos of powerful people doing stuff with prostitutes they might not want the public to know.

This was not an angle the government seriously investigated, which would have been investigating their own intelligence services.  Denials cannot be believed, and evidence from grand jury testimony is not going to explore such angles.

But what's rarely discussed is how this works.  Are rich and powerful people not capable of getting their own prostitutes rather than using a honeytrap operation.  Are rich and powerful people all pedophiles?

What's not understood here is that the honeytrap is not merely for your personal satisfaction.  The honeytrap is a initiation.  Other rich and powerful people are not going to return your phone calls until you have been initiated too.  Only once you have been initiated are you considered safe because you can be controlled.

Then, once you are part of the club, you can keep enjoying the perks.

We more or less know which people were doing that, with Donald Trump, for whom we have more Epstein photos than just about anyone, as one of the top clientele and not surprisingly Epstein was suicided during Trump's first administration.