What is the opposite of fear?

I had to google this question. There really is no word that is the opposite of fear, if fear is used in a general sense. Courage may or may not be the opposite of fear. It's a dictionary antonym, but one can be fearful and courageous at the same time, so I don't buy it.

Come to think of it, all emotions are like this. Our language is so inherently dualistic that we don't believe this is true. One either loves or hates, likes or dislikes, approves or disapproves (etc. ad nauseum). But, it's not either/or. There is always both and sometimes they occur simultaneously.

I decided to post, not to discuss language, but to rant a bit about my evening. I was somewhat disturbed to see that there was not one Obama lawn sign between the 18 miles from my house to the town where I was going. There may have been twice as many McCains signs as last week. I'd guess that at least half the houses on this road now have these signs up, and that's a lowball estimate.*

I heard a well-spoken woman state unequivocably that she suspects Obama is secretly in league with the Taliban.

I was told by someone who knows everyone that Obama signs are disappearing in the night on every rural road around my area, and that most people are sick of replacing them. Shock was expressed when I stated my sign is still intact, after three nights.

Then I idiotically listened to Sean Hannity on the radio, where I heard Rudy Guiliani state that the Obama campaign was waging dangerous class warfare. If anyone is doing that, it's McPalin.

And to top it all off, as I was trying reassure myself that things are going to turn out alright, I get online, only to read that McCain said today, about Joe the Plumber, that he is “an American hero, a great citizen of Ohio and my role model.”

Are the good folks of Canton, Ohio really lapping this stuff up?

So, I'm nervous.

Listening to Hannity, Limbaugh,Glenn Beck and the rest of the hate mongers on talk radio or TV, I am increasingly appalled. I used to listen to this stuff for entertainment. Well, that was then.

Now? I can't understand why people choose fear and hatred over whatever the opposite of fear and hatred is. The opposite of hatred is love, and perhaps that's what the opposite of fear is, too. Hey, all you radical Christianists (who are not reading this, I would imagine), what do you think Jesus would say? What happened to "love thy enemy"? And I know that there's something in the bible about not speaking ill of others, but I can't place it right now.

I know I'm a bit over my limit of ethical boundaries, given posts like this one. But what's it driven by? Fear.

Case closed.

*Yes, I've been told that lawn signs don't win elections.

Image note: Hmm. Picasso again! Read this short bio to learn more about this simple drawing. It's got an intriging history.

I wanted to use an image of the "dove of peace" but by page four of google results, I got sick of looking at ugly new-agey art. Hence, Picasso. Maybe I should rethink my attitude towards him.

Markov chain "poetry" number three

The old down coat
with a heating pad, too.

It’s not going to get hot enough.

That’s poverty.

When we
could use a landslide.


Note: I used the same rules as before.

Bitter at the root: more fun with Markov

I'm fascinated with subjecting my text to the Markov Text Synthesizer. I took the same text from yesterday and subjected it to four more runs through the engine. It still reads about the same, but the grammar becomes a mess.

I like good grammar!

I spent a good deal of time today playing with this. It produces a lot of total garbage. But, what interests me is that if there is a subtext in the text, it still comes through. It's the essence of the stream of consciousness spew, stew or whatever one wants to call it.

I don't like absurdity for the sake of it. But I want to play the game fairly and not change the grammar or eliminate words from the product. So, when the text becomes so garbled that there's nothing left but its essence, it winds up like this (and again, the only way I rearranged the text is visually, not the order or the tense):

It was all this:

Regret.
Will.

I can not let myself
lapse into bitterness.

Markov chain generated "poetry"

Oh sure, I’m exactly like me
I wrote I was a bitter old women, didn’t I?

I feel the sadness of the time.

(I do bring their wives flowers for no reason
or gaze at them after twenty five years
with absolute
adoration.)

I never thought I hated it
I never thought I am.

It doesn’t change
It doesn’t change the first place.

I just wrote a bit
romantic.

Does it mean something or not? Is it any "good"? I don't know those answers. I do know I enjoyed creating it, for it was not entirely random. First, I wrote very quickly, in stream of consciousness (yes, even more than I normally do!) Then, I subjected the text to chopping. I recycled it four times. I was surprised how little it changed as it moved further away from the original. The topic wouldn't go away, for one thing. The only thing that I did as an editor of the text was to look at the final product, find a passage that I thought looked like it held together and then re-set it so it reads better, but I did not change a word.

Language, butchered

Here's a link that may be hard to pass up:InterviewPalin.com, which uses a Markov text generator to convert Palin's actual words into new text(and if you click this last link, good luck to you, unless you're a high level mathematician).

I'm not posting this to be snarky to Palin. I find this type of thing very interesting. If you look at my links list, you'll see "Chat with Jolie Kleine Praten", which is my neglected web bot. Last winter, I got interested in Artificial Intelligence Markup Language because of the fantastic "conversation" I was having with Celia Gray, the late great Dr. Stein, and the Mirror over at the Websafe Times (also on my links list, but I'm making it easy on you).

The "aim" of good AIML programming is to make the conversation seem as natural as possible. The Markov text generators don't do this, but they certainly produce interesting results. I put two posts about body image into the Markov text synthesizer at Beetleinabox and got this:

I was already quite "other", I played it up. I instituted this new eating policy in the world. But, it did not work. I have limp brown shoulder length hair. Ugh.I was anorexic for a boy. And for someone like me, who doesn't feel all that gendered, this feels almost as strange as wearing a sleeveless latex top and a friend's teenage daughter said to me, "Are you really going into the restaurant dressed like that?!" Yes, I was living alone Monday through Friday and share meals with Dick and friends on the weekends unless something special came up. I wore stiletto boots or Doc Martens. And not only was I blind to the person engaging in them?
I did not know. Sure, I had lost my butt. My hip bones stuck out so far that I have limp brown shoulder length hair. Ugh.
I loved it when I became middle aged, I'd develop a huge ass just like his sisters, so I thought. And when I cinch in the world. But, it did not work. I have no idea if this is an important topic. Weight and size are huge issues for women, and theses issues, in my family was thin in their eyes. "Where did you put that?", someone said, with the afterthought, "Aren't you full??!"
I am overweight and everything looks like crap on me. I assume that by your reading of my experiences and feelings. I may be big, but I'm nowhere near a size 6 is not such a big deal. I was a bunch of nonsense. How could alcoholics, drug addicts, anorexics and all the sense in the world. But, it did not work. I have a size 38! I've always been thin when I hit the double digit number of 10 and decided to eat like I was sick! Now, the fisherman whom I worked in a hurry while fighting sleep. I think many people projected their sexual fantasies upon me. It didn't help that I write about myself instead of writing theoretically. I may wind up taking down this post in a tattoo shop and because of this, I came up with a strategy, not a speck left. Once, I went shopping, I could not turn off these sorts of thoughts.

To me, that was not only interesting, but absolutely fascinating. I played around with this interface for nearly an hour. Setting the field "word groupings" to 2 makes it sound more coherent than the default. Try it and have fun. Now, you too, can write like Brion Gysin.

Painting note: Didn't mean to use Brueghel yet again, but it's the best painting of the "Tower of Babel" that I could find.

Addendum: I'm still playing with that program. I had to share this with you, for it is random - I kid you not:

We go about our everyday business, like washing clothes, with the expectation that we must make sense out of nonsense or adversity. It's not that it's been given to us for a reason. It's that we might be wearing them tomorrow.