Chapter Seven: QUETZACOATL
Chapter Seven: QUETZACOATLDon Alonso was unlike any of her previous masters. True she had never been abused or raped either by her Xicalanca captors or the rulers of Pontochan. But Don Alonso exhibited a courtesy to her, treated her with a dignity, that the others had not. Was it because he recognized her royal birth, or did he and the other Spaniards treat women differently in general?To her Pontochan masters, she didn’t really exist in a certain way. She had been invisible to them - an invisibility Malinali strove consciously to maintain. She did all she could to hide her beauty, for example. She didn’t walk straight, tall, and proudly - she compressed herself and slunk around the palace doing her chores.She decided to abandon this shrunken invisibility with the Spaniards. She no longer wore her cloak over her head. Her bountiful long black hair was now free to glisten in the sun. She carried herself as her father taught, tall and proud, head high. She was never insolent and obediently did as she was asked without resentment. She could do this because Don Alonso always made requests of her, not dismissive demands. He treated her as an individual person, not an invisible non-entity.Now being so clearly visible, Don Alonso could not help noticing Malinali’s beauty.
CLEANING OUT N’AWLINS
What’s the difference between a disaster and an election in New Orleans?The buses run during an election.Why isn’t New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin worried about all the dead people being found in Katrina’s aftermath?Because they’ll keep right on voting anyway.Tasteless? Here’s what really tasteless: Cleaning up New Orleans physically without cleaning it up politically. Not draining New Orleans’ political cesspool of organized crime and corruption. Not evacuating Mayor Ray Nagin and every city official and police officer on the take before they get their greasy hands on all those billions of taxpayer dollars to rebuild the place.
THE DOOMED CITIES
As we mourn New Orleans, let us also celebrate it, as New Orleanians famously celebrate their own dead. The city has long been admired for its literary creativity, its exceptional food, its wonderful music, and deplored because of its legendary corruption and degradation. The possibility of its destruction no doubt played a role in the character of its people, and it is no accident that an annual bacchanal took place there, in the riotous celebrations of Mardi Gras. Death has always been omnipresent in the consciousness of the city; dancing in defiance of death was the city's trademark, and the spirited music that defined New Orleans for much of the world was played at the happiest occasions, and at the most famous funerals.New Orleans is one of a handful of cities that are defined in large part by the recognition that it can all come to an end most any day. Joel Lockhart Dyer wrote that “New Orleans is North America's Venice; both cities are living on borrowed time.”
GOING WIRELESS
WiFi has turned out to be a hacker's paradise; unlike with wired networks, you don't need to be connected by wire to a computer, directly or indirectly, in order to "invade" a system. With wireless, a determined hacker could tap into the radio signals as your computer collects them. A "radio hacker," for example, can't change the record playing in the studio and can't remotely change the station on your radio - but they can listen to the same station you're listening to on their own radio. Same thing here; the data on the server is (hopefully) protected, and the data on your hard drive is protected by your firewall or other security system. But while you're downloading your data from the Internet wirelessly, you're vulnerable.
NO BLAME
One of the many markers distinguishing civilized from primitive and traditional societies is that the former possess the concept of luck, both good and bad, while the latter do not.There is no word for luck in the language of many American Indian tribes such as the Navaho, African tribes such as the Azande, Amazon tribes such as the Yanomamo, or New Guinea tribes such as the Dobu. The concept is absent, literally inconceivable, in their thinking about the way the world works.How could something, anything, happen out of sheer blind chance? Whatever happens to anybody, good or bad, it was caused by spirits placated to be benevolent or goaded to be malevolent. Man is always the toy of demons. That’s a primitive mind at work.Thus the primitive compulsion to find someone to blame for misfortune. Since there really is no such thing as sheer misfortune, tragedies must always be someone’s fault, the someone who incurred the anger of the spirits and brought down their punishment suffered by all.So the primitive mentalities of leftist intellectuals and politicians within hours of the horror of Katrina began a chorus of blame, pointing their spiteful superstitious fingers at President Bush.
MARX AND MOHAMMED
It matters not a whit whether Marx was an atheist, for that only meant he wanted to supplant other religions with his own. Or whether Mohammed believed in a god named Allah, for Allah was only the name of the voice he heard in his head dictating a Recitation (thats what Koran means in Arabic). Allah is just as much a figment of Mohammeds imagination as the New Socialist Man (the different species of humanity that will come into being with the triumph of The Proletarian Revolution) was of Marxs. Both are delusions of tyranny.Marx and Mohammed are ideological brothers. More than that, Marx and Mohammed are metaphysical brothers. They share the same view on the nature of reality. Their fundamental bond is a denial of the Law of Non-Contradiction.
Chapter Six: DOÑA MARINA
“My third set of masters,” Malinali thought to herself. These people, these “Spaniards” were different from any others she had known or even imagined. They seemed to her to almost be not of this earth. Perhaps they were from the stars, she thought.
“Are you afraid of them, Little Miss Dry Grass?” she asked herself, summoning her courage, her sense of humor, and the memory of her father all at once. Yes, a part of her was afraid, of course. Who wouldn’t be? Then she heard her father’s counsel: “What reason do you have to be afraid? Have these strangers shown themselves to be cruel and unmerciful, or kind and forgiving? They are impossibly fierce in battle, yet impossibly generous in victory. Use your intelligence, learn how to gain the respect of these Spaniards. Never forget, Malinali, you are a still a Queen! Never show any fear!”
Her thoughts were interrupted by the words of the stranger who spoke Mayan. He addressed them all assembled on the floor of this great floating home.
WHICH SIDE OF THE WAR ON TERRORISM IS THE NEW YORK TIMES ON?
Colonel Thomas Spoehr is annoyed with New York Times reporter Michael Moss,for what I think is a good reason. Spoehr is the director of materiel for the Army staff. He had a good news story to tell Moss, which Moss converted into a bad news story. Here is the story as Spoehr tells it:
THE PRESIDENT CAN DO BETTER
From the moment President Bush set his war policy after the 9-11 attacks, our country has been divided into two factions. The first faction supports the President because it believes he’s doing the right thing, while the second faction opposes the President because it believes he’s doing the wrong thing. Now a third faction has emerged, comprised of those who believe the President is doing the right thing - but that he isn’t doing it very well.
THE MAP OF THE MIDDLE EAST’S FUTURE
There’s been a lot of talk recently predicting the break-up of Iraq back into its constituent pieces. The country was glued together by the British after World War I from three vilyets or provinces of the dismantled Ottoman Empire: Kurdish Mosul, Shia Basra, and Sunni Baghdad. Now it’s seems on the verge of becoming unglued. Last week in The Persian Ratchet , we discussed how the break-up of Iraq would shatter Iran. Let’s talk now how an Iraq break-up would rearrange borders across the entire Middle East. Like how it would precipitate the break-up of Saudi Arabia.