Almost Lucid

I'm driving through a green valley that has industrial buildings in it, and I think I'm in Seattle, and the factories are the Boeing plant. Overhead, strung up on supports over the road, is a model of the International Space Station, which has been built a lot bigger than I remember it having been, with lots and lots of solar panels.

Then, in one of those dream transitions, I'm in the space station, in orbit around the Earth. It's part of some government program to build support of the space program by sending ordinary people into space. I've just gotten onto the station, having been brought up on a shuttle. I'm feeling slightly queasy, and I'm wondering whether I will have trouble adjusting to zero-gee conditions. I notice with curiousity that the doors between compartments look like ordinary doors in buildings on the ground. I think that I would have expected that they would be different. My nausea is staying with me: not growing, but not going away either, and I'm starting to become concerned about it.

Another dream-transition, and I'm standing in a cafeteria. I notice that I'm standing, with weight on my feet, and think that this means I'm not on the space station any more. Did I dream being there? Am I still there, but dreaming now?

Across the room, I see my friend Elise Matthesen. I wave to get her attention, and go over to talk to her. "Are we on the space station or not?" I ask her. "Are we dreaming or not?"

"Well," she says, "we're definitely feeling weight, so we're not in space." As a final confirmation of this, I take my cell phone out of my pouch and let it go. It falls into my other hand. We're definitely on the ground.

"As for dreaming, you know you can tell if you are dreaming if you look at a clock and you can't read the numbers." I recognize this as being a detail from the movie Waking Life. There isn't any clock visible, but by now I've come to the conclusion that I am dreaming. But the thread of the dream slips away into deeper sleep at that point, and I remember no more.

Wang Dang Doodle

Inspired by the CD to which I'm listening, I remembered this old Usenet post of mine:

I was fifteen years old, spending the summer with my parents in a trailer in Kwajelein between sessions of boarding school in Hawaii. My parents were away at some party or other, and I was sitting up late at night, reading and listening to the local AFRS radio station.

It was after midnight, and the DJ decided to be cute with the songs he played. The first one was, of course, "After Midnight", followed by others in the same vein.

And then this song came on, about something bad and bloody about to go down, involving people toting knives and razors. The singer was bragging about it, looking forward to it. "All night long!" went the refrain. "All night long!"

Scary.

Years later, I learned me to play the guitar and got a serious jones for the blues, and bought a bunch of CDs, including collections and retrospectives. And on one of them, The Great Tomato Blues Package (Tomato, R2 70386) had Koko Taylor singing "Wang Dang Doodle", written by Willie Dixon. (He wrote everything, don't you know.) The same song I remembered from twenty-five years before.

That's Dixon singing harmony in the chorus, giving Taylor's performance that extra degree of spooky menace.

Scary.

The Paradoxical Business of Spiritual Growth

Scott Marley is troubled by what he describes as the whole messy paradoxical business of spiritual growth:

Is it wise to cut ourselves off more from the world and seek enlightenment on our own? How can it be, when the whole point is that all humanity is in reality one great indivisible being, and the divisions and separations and distinctions between one person and another are only illusions? Isn't there something self-contradictory about the idea of pursuing enlightenment in isolation from other people?

And yet of course the world is a very noisy place with a great many distractions and not well suited for the pursuit of enlightenment, a lot of which has to do with quieting your mind and your desires enough that you can begin to perceive what is divine inside yourself.

Does the person of spirit withdraw from the world, or engage with it? This is one of the big questions.

I have been either blessed or burdened with a world-class education in materialism and rationalism, and this posed a substantial obstacle to my own spiritual development. I come down pretty solidly on the side of engagement of the world, perhaps because of my materialist bias. And it is through engagement with the world that have come the experiences that have been the seeds of my own spiritual growth.

I have occasionally tested the waters of various religions. When I looked at Buddhism, I found myself dissatisfied with something that seemed to me essential to Buddhist metaphysics: a sense that enlightenment consists of turning inward, away from the world. My own spirituality is inspired by the world and the wonders in it; to turn away from this feels to me like betraying something important.

At the same time, modern everyday civilized experience seems itself to function as insulation between oneself and the actual world. The experience of my computer monitor and keyboard; or of radio and television; cars, buses, and trains; living rooms and bedrooms; and the artificialities of modern life are a far cry from the wind, the rain, ocean surf, the dirt beneath my feet, green, growing things, and the starry night sky. To find the real real world involves a certain kind of turning away from immediate distractions.

I can't accept that the wind, sea, or stars are Maya — illusion that distracts from matters of importance — but CNN, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Electrolite are. And at the same time, they, too, are aspects of reality, important in their own ways.

In the end, I think there are times to turn away from society and focus on the real world, and there there are times to turn away from the world and look within oneself. But there are also times to reengage with the world, and with society, and with the Blogoverse and television and the newspapers. One needs the quiet and stillness to find that inner spark of divinity, but having found it perhaps one should kindle and feed it so that it burns brighter and stronger, and share its warmth and light with others, perhaps even to help them kindle their own. The traffic along Hollis Street during morning rush hour carries the same divine essence ("Buddha-nature" perhaps) as a sunrise or a perfect rose.

And yet (always "and yet"!), Scott continues, the pursuit of enlightenment itself is only vanity. What arrogance to think that our individual efforts matter! Humanity as a great galumphing whole will take its own sweet time getting to enlightenment at whatever laggardly pace suits it, and there's not a whole lot any of us can do to speed up the process. ...

To respond, I can only quote Rabbi Tarfon: "You are not required to complete the task, yet you are not free to withdraw from it." (Pirkei Avot 2:21) (I am in no way a Talmudic scholar; but I'm pretty good with Google.) Rabbi Tarfon spoke of study of the Torah, but his words are also frequently applied to tikkun olam, the healing of the world.

This is a huge task, far beyond any one person. The best anybody can do to improve some of the parts of the world that are closest to them.

In the Buddhist viewpoint, also, "completing" the task in one lifetime is irrelevant. All one needs to do is leave the path of life just a little bit cleaner than one found it, and over many lifetimes the improvements add up.

We Live in the Future

Patrick Nielsen Hayden points us to this picture of an Iraqi in Basra handing a flower to a British soldier. The picture is as heartwarming as it is transgressive. Did you ever think you would live to see the day?

Grab Bag o' Dreams

4-3-2003: Three union posters, viewed in succession.

The first shows a picket line of workers, on strike for higher wages. Written above and across the image, the caption "Protecting ... Our Livelihood!"

The second shows the shop steward standing up to an abusive foreman. The caption reads, "Protecting ... Our Self-Respect!"

The final poster shows a worker kneeling as he works on an open machine. He's wearing kneepads. The caption: "Protecting ... Our Knees!"

The ironic contrast between livelihood and self-respect on one hand and knees on the other seemed to be at least part of the point of the dream.

4-6-2003: Nice hand, sir

I'm playing a hand of eight-or-better seven card stud (that's a high-low split game, with an eight qualifier for the low). I've got a four and a deuce down and an ace for my door card; my fourth-street card is a six. My opponent shows the deuce and four of spades. My hand is high, I act first. I bet, and he calls.

Fifth street brings him an offsuit five, and a trey for me. I now have a 64 — "number two" — the second nut low hand. I bet, and my opponent calls. I think that my hand is goddamn good, and that if he had a wheel he would certainly raise me; I conclude that my low hand is a lock.

Sixth street gives me a nine (a blank, basically) and my opponent the jack of spades. I bet my hand, he calls. I get another blank as my last card, dealt face-down. My opponent has three chips left (we're playing 2-4). If he's made a wheel, I have to call him anyway, and if he hasn't then I'm getting my money back; and he can't raise me. I bet one more time, and he calls all-in.

We turn our hands over. My opponent has a wheel and an ace-high flush in spades, scooping. He'd made the wheel on fifth street and the flush on sixth, and he passively called my bets.

(My thought in the dream was that my opponent had misplayed his hand, but upon waking reflection I think that this was not the case. Usually, when a player does this to me in real life, I think that he or she has played the hand badly, by not raising me and taking control of the betting. I have a hand that I basically have to take to the river at whatever price I'm getting. I should have lost a lot more chips than I actually did ... except that my opponent was short-stacked. He won as many chips from me as he possibly could, and if I had happened to have slackened in my betting, he could take it up and bet at any point, and earned exactly the same amount as he did.)

4-8-2003: Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar

I'm in the Oval Office, in front of the desk of President Bush. On his desk is an ornamental cigar holder, presenting a fan of cigars in a shape like a peacock's tail. I take one of the cigars. The President isn't pleased at this, but it would be rude for him to stop me. I take the cigar home with me.

(I remember having a cigar box in my room at home, containing cigar butts and ends, broken, torn or half-smoked; but the cigar I've just brought home is whole.)

I trim the ends of the cigar, light it, and smoke it in my bedroom, savoring its taste. Then I realize that my roommate, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, will be very annoyed by the reek of cigar smoke filling the apartment. But it's too late, the house is already filled with smoke, so I finish the cigar, not putting it out until it is done.

(Awake, journaling this dream, I remember the sense that the apartment was my apartment in Pasadena in 1987, where I was concerned not with the smoke not of cigars but cigarettes, and my roommate was Mike Lewis, a chemistry grad student. I haven't been Patrick's roommate since 1980.)

4-9-2003: Abducted by aliens!

We've been abducted by aliens! In their space ship, orbiting far above the Earth's surface, we are subjected to rude and unpleasant experiments and probings. Something is growing in the belly of one of the other abductees, a young woman. It seems she is about to give birth to something, and she is placed in an alien maternity harness. This is a tight coil of rope or cable, and someone must be wound up with her, holding her spoon-fashion from behind, while she goes through labor. That someone is me, and the cabling is wound tightly around us. With a groan and a shudder, the woman expells the thing inside her: a dark sphere with a rough and mottled surface, covered with slime. The aliens take this thing away, prizing it highly.

Police Fire Rubber Bullets at Demonstrators in Oakland

Late-breaking story from SFGate:

Police fire rubber bullets at anti-war protest at port in Oakland; nearby longshoremen injured

(04-07) 08:58 PDT OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) --

Police open fired Monday morning with rubber bullets at an anti-war protest at the Port of Oakland, injuring several longshoremen standing nearby.

Police were trying to clear protesters from an entrance to the docks when they opened fire and the longshoremen apparently were caught in the crossfire.

Six longshoremen were treated by paramedics and at least one was expected to be taken to a hospital. It was unclear if any of the protesters was injured.

Fifteen Minutes of Fame

I had just picked up from the $20-limit lowball game at the Oaks Club, and was waiting for the next time light to come on so that Debbie would get up from the $4-$8 stud game in which she was playing. While I waited, I leafed through the April 11 issue of Card Player, and found Michael "Q" Wiesenberg's column, "The Low Rollers:"

An interesting situation arose in the lowball game of a Bay Area cardroom that generated a lot of e-mail traffic on the Bay Area Poker mailing list. I won’t identify any of the posters nor use their own words. I’ll just describe the situation, because it’s one that is typical of lowball, and one in which an inexperienced player could easily make a mistake. Nor will I use real names for the participants.

Wait a minute, I thought, the only serious lowball talk I can recall on the ba-poker list recently was started by a question of mine. Sure enough, Q went on to write:

The under-the-gun player folded. From the next position, Jim, a solid player, opened. The next player folded, and Erik, the prop, raised. Andy, a player whose specialties are seven-card stud and Omaha, but who sometimes jumps into a lowball game while waiting for another game, was next with, as he posted to the mailing list, a pat 8-5. He wasn’t sure of what to do, so just called. The remaining players folded to Lucy in the big blind, a fairly loose player, who called. Jim also called the raise.

Yes, it was indeed the hand I had described in a posting to ba-poker last January:

Subject: [ba-poker] Lowball Hand: Pat 85 in a Raised Pot

It's the Oaks' 20-limit lowball game, with a good lineup — [name withheld] the Prop who plays a lot of lowball, one or two other solid players, and a bunch of optimists who will open and draw two under the gun.

UTG folds and Solid #1 opens. Two folds, and [name withheld] the Prop raises. This means either a very good draw or a pat nine or better. My own hand is a pat 8-5.

What's my play here: cold-call the raise, or reraise?

Assuming that Solid #1 is along for the ride either way, how should I draw, and how should I play after the draw?

The broad consensus on ba-poker, supported by Q, Dave "Quick" Horwitz, and Bill Chen, was that I should indeed have reraised the raise I faced. (The sole dissent was good old reliable Beth Even, who asked why I didn't consider folding in this spot.)

Q's column isn't about my play of the hand; it is about "Erik's." Q has been writing lately about what to do with nines in lowball, and "Erik's" hand, when it was shown down, proved to be a nine, and my eight-five held up to win the pot. Q rakes "Erik" over the coals for his play of the hand: The loose player in the big blind drew two cards, the solid player drew one, "Erik" stood pat, and I stood pat after him. After the draw, the solid player checked, "Erik" bet, and I called him down. Why did Erik bet? Q writes. His play made no sense with the hand that he held, basically because his hand doesn't make money if it's good, because no one calls him, but if he gets a caller with his nine he's very likely beat.

Q's column contains some invention, however, perhaps as invented details to protect the guilty: I play a lot of seven-card stud, but Omaha is definitely not one of my specialties. And I don't sit down in the lowball game only occasionally while waiting for a seat in another game. I'm playing a lot of lowball now because there's no jackpot drop in the Oaks' lowball game. And the Oaks' $20-limit game is soft and sweet; while there are some exceptions I usually walk away winners from that game. (I'm still learning lowball, though, and I'm not terribly good by objective standards: I've played in the $60-limit game once, and the other players mopped the floor with me.)

What's in a Name?

The star of the Oakland Athletics' opening-night 5-0 rout over the Seattle Mariners was beyond any doubt the new designated hitter Erubiel Durazo.

Durazo batted in all five of the A's runs of the night, the first two when he hit a home run with a runner on second base in the second inning, and the other three when the bases were loaded in the fifth inning — Durazo fired off a double off the wall in center field, and all the runners on base made it home.

It was the most impressive debut for an Athletic since Matt Stairs, fresh from the farm team in Edmonton, hit a grand slam on his very first at-bat.

Even before he took his first pitch, though, when the announcer called his name, I knew that Durazo filled a vital role on the team. Not since Geronimo Berroa was traded away have the Athletics had a player whose name could raise a cheer in the stands simply from the relish with which the announcer would say it, rolling those wonderful Rs.

Miguel Tejada, Terence Long, Eric Chavez, yeah, yeah, yeah, people cheer them on when they come to bat. But those cheers won't be so loud if they slump.

But the very sound of the announcement, "Now batting, number forty-four, designated hitter Errrrrrrubiel Durrrrazooo!" will bring joy to even the flintiest hearts of A's fans. I've missed Berroa; and I'm really glad we now have Durazo. This man was meant to be an Athletic.

PayPal Violated PATRIOT Act, Says Prosecutor

James Kittock passes on this news item from Reuters' Internet Report:

PALO ALTO, Calif. (Reuters) - A federal prosecutor has alleged eBay Inc. (Nasdaq:EBAY - news) unit PayPal violated a 2001 anti-terror law aimed at fighting money laundering when it provided payment services to online gambling companies, the Web auctioneer said in its annual report filed on Monday.

Silicon Valley-based eBay said it received a letter on Friday in which the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri accused PayPal of violating a provision of the USA Patriot Act.

The provision prohibits the transmission of funds that are known to have been derived from a criminal offense, or are intended to be used to promote or support unlawful activity.

PayPal has gotten out of the business of funds transferral for online gaming (except where it hasn't — see below). But the question of whether transferring funds for online gaming is prosecutable under the PATRIOT act strikes very close to home. Chances are high that if you are reading this someone you know is liable for prosecution as a terrorist.

The Secret Life of Harry Warner

Patrick Nielsen Hayden has just blogged a new expanded obituary for Harry Warner, Jr., appearing in the Herald-Mail of Hagerstown, Maryland. The story highlights Warner's activities in science-fiction fandom, and quotes Charlie Brown and Joe Siclari. Apparently, Warner kept his fanac and the reknown it garnered him a secret from his neighbors and co-workers. The story also praises Warner's old-school journalistic chops.