Was the software worth buying?

Absolutely! I may not be very adept at interpreting these events, but I think resonance is taking place on all kinds of levels. I've been talking a lot about the French revolution lately, and last week, the "King" of pop died, the "King" of infomercials died--and Farah Fawcett died--can we say that she was the queen of pinup girls? The president of Honduras was sent packing--the cap and trade act was passed by the House--almost on the sly as everybody was worrying about healthcare reform, and then California says it's going to issue IOUs because it's out of money.
Bizarre things are happening faster than we can even account for them. If we're NOT embedded in a fractal of increasing novelty, I would like somebody to explain to me how all this stuff just cascades into being every week. How are the rational people interpreting this?

I can't imagine what's going to happen when the other shoe drops on North Korea and Iran. I have a hard time thinking that cooler heads will prevail, and everything will just fade into the woodwork.

Novelty Report, June 27-July 4th

Last week we moved through a kind of plateau of novelty, resonating with the summer and fall of 1789 when the French Revolution was in its early “moderate phase.” Beginning today, we will see a plunge into novelty, ending on the 30th of June. This resonates with December 1789 to May 1790, the months when the French national Assembly issued new government notes (assignats) as national tender (China calling for a new world currency?) Feudalism and the aristocratic class was abolished by the National Assembly (the end of the old entrepreneurial middle class with Cap and Trade ???).
We will then see a U-turn on the 30th and very STEEP increase in habit/entropy until July 3rd. This corresponds to May 1790 until December 1790, which saw the National Assembly forcing priests to take an oath of loyalty to the state in the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. The government of France renounced “wars of aggression,” hmmm, only a year before sending conquering armies all over Europe. Well, our president has often compared himself to FDR and Lincoln—aside from other differences too numerous to mention, he hasn’t had a cataclysmic war yet; like cataclysmic wartime president Lincoln he opens his administration with high hopes for unity—like cataclysmic wartime presidents FDR and Woodrow Wilson, whom he actually does resemble, he opens his administration with lots of talk about peace.We'll see what happens.
On the 3rd of July, we’ll have a mini-dip into novelty, which will change directions on the 4th. This will take us into February 1791, which saw the “Night of Daggers." On this night the Marquis de Lafayette (an aristocrat) order the arrests of 400 aristocrats resisting the new regime. Great democratic hero or traitor to his class?
It's strange to see such a radical dip and then even more radical increase in novelty in such a short time--my non-prediction, but maybe-guess (based on the way these things tend to look in other years) is that there will be a significant rhetorical fallout to the recent cap and trade vote--which will strongly energize talk in this country of resistance, secession, etc., Meanwhile Iran will heat up again, and, heaven forbid, there will be a military attack or severe martial law imposed somewhere on the 30th of June. And then it will be a week later.

Feast Day of St. Thomas More (1478-1535)

Another powerful Saint to take inspiration from in these strange days. St. Thomas More, patron of lawyers and EXEMPLAR of PUBLIC SERVICE. He was the Chancellor of England under Henry VIII, and wound up being beheaded for his failure to recognize the king as the Supreme Head of the Church of England.

The following prayer was composed by More while he was in the Tower awaiting execution

A Meditation on Detachment, 1534

Give me the grace, Lord

To set the world at naught;

To set my mind upon Thee

And not to hang upon the blast of men's mouths

To be content to be solitary,

Not to long for worldly company,

Little by little, to utterly cast off the world,

And rid my mind of the business thereof

To think my greatest enemies my best friends;

For the brethren of Joseph could never have done him so much good with their love and favor as they did him with their malice and hatred.

These attitudes are more to be desired of every man than all the treasure of all the princes and kings,

Christian and heathen, were it gathered and laid together

All upon one heap

The Abolition of Man, Ch. 2 "The Way:" the source of values

The practical basis for all values is not instinct, but is, rather, the eternal Tao. Concepts such as universal brotherly love, the Golden Rule, and the need to preserve life are objectively real and axiomatic. They are, as Lewis says "so obviously reasonable that they neither demand nor admit proof (40)." But the good scientific Innovator needs rational proof before he or she can believe anything. This is where the Innovator fools him or herself, not recognizing that all value is sentimental, and that some sentiments are objectively real--they have to be, or else there would be no values of any kind, and this, again is something that neither demands nor admits proof.

"If nothing is self-evident," writes Lewis, "nothing can be proved (40)." By that token, "if nothing is obligatory for its own sake, nothing is obligatory at all (40)."

Remembering St. Aloysius of Gonzaga

June 21st, aside from being Father's Day was also the Feast of the great saint Aloysius (Luigi) of Gonzaga (1568-1591), the patron of youth, and my workplace, Gonzaga University. He was a young nobleman of heroic virtue who died while assisting plague victims in Rome while he was a Jesuit seminarian there. St. Aloysius, pray for us!

Novelty Report 22-29 June 2009

This week in 2009 resonates with the entire, pivotal year of 1789 through the spring of 1790. I am provisionally willing to accept the demonstrations in Iran as "the" novel event of the 19th of June that the timewave tentatively "predicted," although I have no bets to make as to what it will lead to--but--the 22nd of June will experience a strong increase of novelty. This day resonates with the period of January to April 1789. On the 24th of January, 1789, the Estates General of France met for the first time since 1614--this was the event that would lead to the undoing of the Ancien Regime, politically. In April, the food riots in Paris took place--it was a tumultuous four months that could be a tumutuous day or two for us. A certain "flattening" of novelty occurs until the 26th of June, '09 at which point it rises until the 27th, then plunges deeper than ever between the 27th and the 30th.
In France, the flattening takes us from April 1789 until September 1789--a wild negotiation between novelty and "business as usual" in which the Third Estate attempted to assert its rights to a per capita vote (rather than by estate), and then simply declares itself a "National Assembly" only to have the king lock them out of their meeting place (June '89). This was followed by the revolutionary "oath of the Tennis Court" in which the Third Estate pledged not to disband until France had a constitution. Much of the Catholic clergy joined the Third estate with enthusiasm, the First (nobility) and remainder of the Second (Church) estates were then ordered by the King to join the National assembly too.
July saw Bastille Day, and the beginning of the Peasant revolt against the nobility, as well as urban rioting (the "Great Fear").
August brought the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
(Monday could be a busy day)
The "rise of habit" on the 27th (which takes us to December 1789) sees the National Assembly setting in as the government of France, beginning to nationalize Church property, and deciding who in France has the right to vote (it will be those who have money).
Finally, the radical plunge into novelty between the 27th and 30th (December 1789-May and June 1790 saw open conflict between the National Assembly and the Catholic Church, as well as the abolition of the nobility by the Assembly.
If resonance holds true, it's going to be a very, very eventful week that will bring class and religious division to......Iran?

Another thought on Iran

It would be novel indeed if the protests in Iran would lead to anything like real democratic change there, although the impetus for that was strongly present in 1979. A lot of Liberal Iranians were stunned when the Ayatollah took control of the revolution after the shah's abdication.
If Iran were to have its version of the French Revolution, we would still see some of the features that the timewave suggests will happen--mainly the reduction of the power of religious elites. Just as the Civil Constitution of the Clergy hollowed out Church power in France, a civil Iranian constitution would surely reduce the power of the imams. It should then lead to a hostile reaction of some kind from other Muslim states against Iran, as in the War of the First Coalition, the end result of which would be a counter-reaction, followed by an exportation of Iranian "modernity" into Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, etc.
It could be, then, that Iran's "revolution" may be a fractal piece of the French Revolution--if the direction of the gradient is to be believed at all, now is not a great time for the prospects of "powers that be."