I was watching a rerun of the MATRIX, and thought how interesting the original concept was...paranoia mixed with philosophy 101. We've discovered Plato's Cave---and it's overrun with murderous machines!

Speaking of puzzles of existence...

A friend showed me this article. Interesting, but doesn't really explain the religious impulse...any more than describing the visual center of the brain debunks the beauty or existence of, say, the Mona Lisa or the pre-raphaelites. Just because you might be able to describe religious ecstacy in the brain doesn't mean it doesn't reflect something real.

And of course, it doesn't answer the most interesting questions. I believe that often religious ecstacy and feelings are misled---I'd have to, or believe every religion is true, an obvious absurdity...but it doesn't answer scientific questions like the anthropic coincidences, or moral questions---like, why is Hitler wrong and myself right about the value of the life of the mentally handicapped? (If there's no ultimate moral authority, it's just an opinion.)

Interesting, and I encourage such research. But it disproves nothing. (And my friend didn't think it did---just thought it would ---rightly---interest me.)

Edges of existence:

What we're doing and have done to Iraq is a crime; things are worse, not better, than under Saddam; guerilla movements are moving in force, and Iraq has become a sinkhole attracting all the worst anti-American movements in the Middle East. The average Iraqi is not better off right now.

Do I advocate the wholesale withdrawal from Iraq?

No.

I think the whole venture was a mistake, but now that we've created a power vacuum, we will make it worse, not better, if we do a quick and perhaps politically expedient withdrawal. The least we can do, after knocking off the old regime, is put a new one in place that can actually maintain the peace.

It's criminal negligence to do anything else.

Too bad, however, they didn't give more thought to winning a peace to winning a war...

Existence as absurdity:

Al Sharpton's going to do Saturday Night Live? Works for me. Out of a bland Democratic pack, he's the most interesting, if the one least likely to actually win....

Not that anyone's really going to win against Bush. Despite his miscalculations in Iraq, the economy's coming back. True, it's a jobless economy, but still the 401k plans will be doing well...so we'll re-elect him...

I wish I could say differently, but a president in wartime practically has a lock on that sort of thing.

Ends of Existence:

Hal Clement, one of the best sf writers out there, and maker of the most complete worlds anywhere, died the other day.

He'll be missed.

I look at the current crop of sf writers, and shake my head a little. Only a few, like Orson Scott Carr or John Varley, will I miss when they're gone.

Sad, but true.