The Rambo Apple

"According to author David Morrell, the apple provided the name for the hero of his novel, First Blood, which gave rise to the Rambo film franchise. The novelist's wife brought home a supply of the fruit as he was trying to come up with a suitable name for the protagonist.^[6] It is uncertain whether David Morrell's wife brought home Rambos or Summer Rambos. Summer Rambos would have been much more common, but since his wife bought the apples at a roadside stand, either is possible.

James Whitcomb Riley, the Hoosier Poet, sentimentalized the Rambo in his poem, The Rambo-Tree which appeared in his 1902 collection The Book of Joyous Children.^[7] The poem includes the repeating chorus:
For just two truant lads like we,When Autumn shakes the rambo-tree
There's enough for you and enough for me
It's a long, sweet way across the orchard.

A similar sentiment was expressed by "Uncle Silas" in his column for the September 1907 issue of The American Thresherman: "What has become of the good old apples we used to eat in the long ago down on the farm? The Rambo, the best apple that ever grew in an orchard, is fruit vouchsafed only in memory. [In Missouri,] no apple was ever enjoyed like the Rambo.... A boy would go farther to swipe Rambo apples, and subject his pantaloons to greater exposure from ugly dogs than he would for any other kind, and boys know on which tree the best apples grow. A drink of cider without any fixin', made of Rambo apples, will go farther down and awake the molecules of mankind in a greater degree than any other kind of cider. The world is growing wiser, but not in raising Rambo apples."

The claim that the Rambo was the favorite apple of Johnny Appleseed is false. Johnny Appleseed did not grow or sell any grafted varieties, and for the Rambo or any other variety to be perpetuated, it must be grafted. As Michael Pollan indicates in his chapter on the apple in Botany of Desire, John Chapman (1774–1845), for religious reasons related to the doctrines of Emanuel Swedenborg, believed grafting was an unnatural practice. Chapman was given the nickname "Appleseed" pejoratively for his highly unusual practice of planting trees from seed. The apples grown from seed are almost all small and poorly flavored, so with very rare exceptions, his trees would have been good for making hard cider only. Back when the frontier only extended as far west as the state of Indiana, that worked fine for Johnny Appleseed, since cider was a staple and the pioneers didn't have any other choice in suppliers. The apple tree in Nova, Ohio, that is more than 175 years old, can either be the last surviving apple tree that Johnny Appleseed planted or it can be a Rambo tree. It cannot be both, despite any marketing claims."

Intelligence

The smart guys don't know what to do with themselves. They are so smart, they play with the world like a piece of used gum.

I'm happy now that I've concluded I'm only average. I took a test for law school and the result was that I'm OK, but not great.

I then took a test for accounting and the result, statistically shows, again, that I'm OK. But they are nice guys and open the gates.

For me this is great because I tried to do the great Black Diamond ski run of philosophy and it was like a kid in Junior High getting knocked into the stands at an NBA game.

Let those fucked-up philosophers gnaw on each other.

What I learned about other cultures is that the lay-out of the earth is incredibly different. It is a beautiful planet to see and smell. I highly recommend Earth.

Past that, I won't say anything else. See all of Earth when you're alive, if you can. If not, then you get to know the part that the explorer never got to see better than anyone else.

Beer, wine, and cognac along the way.

Cheers.

Kastles

Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and philosopher whose published works mainly belong to the genre of science fiction. Dick explored philosophical, sociological, political, and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments, and altered states of consciousness. In his later works, Dick's thematic focus strongly reflected his personal interest in metaphysics and theology. He often drew upon his life experiences in addressing the nature of drug abuse, paranoia, schizophrenia, and transcendental experiences in novels such as A Scanner Darkly and VALIS.^[1] Later in life, he wrote non-fiction on philosophy, theology, the nature of reality, and science. This material was published posthumously as The Exegesis.

The novel The Man in the High Castle bridged the genres of alternate history and science fiction, earning Dick a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963.^[2] Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, a novel about a celebrity who awakens one day to find that he is unknown, won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel in 1975.^[3] "I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards," Dick wrote of these stories. "In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real."^[4]

In addition to 44 published novels, Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime.^[5] Although Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty,^[6] eleven popular films based on his works have been produced, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Paycheck, Next, Screamers, The Adjustment Bureau and Impostor. In 2005, Time magazine named Ubik one of the hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923.^[7] In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series.^{[8][9][10][11]}

The Great Walk

From Africa.

China, however you want to categorize it, is the oldest civilization, civilization defined broadly as a project of organization and legibility.  Ignore Chinese history, and you are terribly ignorant.

For Western men, claims of ignorance come with feelings of inadequacy, fear, shame, or, if things are going well, excited belligerence. Yet I sit in my favorite spot, and no one is speaking English, they are speaking Chinese, and I am desperately downloading Pimsleur Mandarin.

The Chinese have been through all of this several times for several thousands of years. They were the first ones, from the walk from Africa, to settle down, formulate a standardized language, create government, and build a large fucking wall. Why did the Chinese build a wall?

I have sympathies for other cultures

“Anyone in such torment who has the gift of opening his heart, rather than contracting it, accepts the means of salvation in his heart. Someone who in this way penitently open his heart to God in confession lays it open for other men too. In doing so he loses the dignity that goes with his personal prestige and becomes like a child. That means without official position, dignity or disparity from others. A man can bare himself before others only out of a particular kind of love. A love which acknowledges, as it were, that we are all wicked children.  We could also say: Hate between men comes from cutting ourselves off from each other. Because we don’t want anyone else to look inside us, since it’s not a pretty sight in there. Of course you must continue to feel ashamed of what’s inside you, but not ashamed of yourself before your fellow-men. No greater torment can be experiences than One human being can experience. For if a man feels lost, that is the ultimate torment.” (Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, 46e)

God help me as I struggle to figure out right from wrong. I am taking the CPA, as God wants, but I run into moral issues, as the article I just submitted on global warming. I still have my friends in other countries. I still have my friends in Alaska who are asking why I am not there right now. God of the Universe, please give me wisdom and peace. Please help my friends and my family. I am lost and I pretend to understand things that are beyond my control.

I like this Colombian woman who sings this serious and beautiful song. Maybe Moraline knows about this band?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6h_kHYHBaQ

The way my grandparents saw things

His parents moved from Germany to Indiana and he became a lawyer. Indiana was very rural at that time and in 1872, when Max Ehrmann was born, to be a German immigrant on a farm and going to the country's schools before there was much definition of anything very substantial. He didn't write Being and Time. My grandparents never heard of that book. I doubt Ehrmann did either.

Ehrmann wrote this in 1927 when he was 54:

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

“

”

Max Ehrmann, "Desiderata"

Letters of Marque

Why is it a good idea to be an investment banker, lawyer, or accountant? Because all of them have in some sense a "letter of marque." If you don't have a letter of marque, you are a pirate or a criminal or a privateer, which for the state is often hard to distinguish. There is the observation that the lower class has it bad, that they are treated poorly. What may be at play is that with the world population increasing tremendously with China and India stressing the competition for resources, the significance of having a letter of marque has grown tremendously. A man can try to be a privateer (or corsair or buccaneer), but it comes at great risk. First, he has no support if anything goes wrong. If anything goes wrong and he is without assets, he has no way of rebuilding the assets because he is bereft of a letter of marque. As a privateer, he will be sold to slavery.

Fight bravely, gentlemen, but remember the value of having a letter of marque. Are you good at negotiating with pirates? If so, the value of the letter of marque is not very high. Yet a letter of marque is not perfect armor. Zymen Danseker was on a sponsored mission:

"He resided in Marseilles for a year when French authorities asked him to lead an expedition against the corsairs. Despite rumors of his capture, he returned to France later that same year. In 1615 he was called up by Louis XIII to negotiate the release of French ships being held by Yusuf Dey in Tunis. According to the account of William Lithgow,^[6][7] Dansker was lead ashore in a ruse by Yusuf, captured by janissaires, and beheaded.^[8]"


And there are examples of men who still conduct missions without letters of mark and it leads to tomfoolery:


"Ward and his men sailed to the Mediterranean where he was able to acquire a warship of thirty-two guns which was renamed The Gift^[6] and began attacking merchantmen for the next two years. While at Salé, Morocco in 1605 several English and Dutch sailors, including Richard Bishop and Anthony Johnson, joined Ward's crew and the following year (August, 1606) Ward arranged with Cara Osman^[7] to use Tunis as a base of operations in exchange for which Osman would get first refusal of all goods.^[7] From this base, Jack Ward was easily able to capture several valuable merchant ships, including the 60 ton Reniera e Soderina.
Following his return to Tunis in June 1607, Ward was informed during the winter that the now rotted Reniera e Soderina had begun to sink. With several of his officers, Ward deserted the ship to one of the French prizes he had captured. The Reniera e Soderina later sank off Greece as 400 crew members, of which 250 were Muslim and 150 were English, were lost. Ironically, Ward lost his own ship, as well as two others captured by Venice, several weeks later.
While many in Tunisia were angered by Ward's desertion of the Muslim sailors aboard the Reniera e Soderina, Uthman Bey offered Ward a safe haven.^[3] Ward however asked James I of England for a royal pardon which was refused and he reluctantly returned to Tunis. Uthman Bey kept his word and Ward was granted protection by Tunis.
During the next year ballads and pamphleteers condemned John Ward for turning corsair. He accepted Islam along with his entire crew, changed his name to Yusuf Reis and married an Italian woman while he continued to send money to his English wife. In 1612 a play called A Christian Turn'd Turk was written about his conversion by the English dramatist Robert Daborne.
Ward continued raiding Mediterranean shipping, eventually commanding a whole fleet of corsairs, and whose flagship was a Venetian sixty-gunner. He profited by his piracy, retiring to Tunis to live a life of opulent comfort until 1622, when at the age of 70 he reportedly died from the plague."