rattus rattus’ blog

Hoax websites are the WWW’s optical illusions. As of today, Wikipedia’s entry on Hoax begins:

A hoax is an attempt to trick an audience into believing that something false is real.

Imagine a liar’s website about a hoax. How do you tell right from wrong? Is this blog a hoax? Yes, in some way it probably is. As there is more to it than its trueness.

We have been featuring the World Jump Day, recently. Here are some more hoaxes:

• Clones-R-Us by Dream Technologies International, the world’s “largest reproductive cloning provider”: Buy your clone child on-line.
• Bonsai Kitten: preserving the long lost art of body modification in housepets (Wikipedia’s entry, Web.archive version)
• Dihydrogen Monoxide Info about controversies surrounding DHMO. “Yes, you [really] should be concerned about DHMO!”
• GenoChoice: “Create your own genetically healthy child online!”
• PetsOrFood: “The best place for pet and food products on the Web!”

The Museum of Hoaxes maintains a weblog about hoax websites.

WORLD JUMP DAY 20 JULY 2006 11:39:13 GMT
This is 20 July 2006 13:39:13 CEST in e.g. Vienna.

Join us in the attempt to drive planet Earth into a new orbit, by letting millions of people jump!

Let’s jump!

Let us trust in the power of the human community.

[R]

Words ought not to be trusted – you can never be sure if they mean what they say.
— Ashleigh Brilliant

Let’s assume that when people say something they generally mean something different. Then, the question “What do you mean?” generally makes no sense at all.

If you think that some people at least sometimes do say what they mean, well, I anyway do understand something different from what they say let alone what they mean.

So, what does it mean when someone says that she or he makes a lot of use of dictionaries and thesauruses searching for word origins? Like Dave Pollard just wrote? Or like half of my own blog?

What does it mean if someone is especially picky about words, if we try to be precise, if we try to avoid obfuscation and ambiguity, and if we moreover foster meaning with references?

Experts of wording driving away from their audience, burying augury of knowledge in wisdom, the paradox of communication, blatant honesty about lying.

Of course, this makes sense to us, anyway.

Concluding my recent praise of Stefan Böschen’s Praise The Paradox I wrote

He was lucky nobody listened to him.

Here are 2 excerpts from the transcription of an audio recording of the conferences final discussion:

To begin with, Stefan fosters his praise of paradox by stating that part and counterpart complement each other. He explains that thinking of any thing means to distinguish the thing from what it is not, its opposite. He then underlines the importance of this concept with a short reference to life’s essential interplay of order and chaos.

The next speaker replies:

What I am still missing is consciousness.

And he continues to tell a story of the demise of corner shops, small groceries and merchants, and how we are all involved.

At a second occasion, Stefan Böschen reinforces his praise of the paradox. He refers to its ambivalence and its inevitability. Finally, he reminds us to be sensitive to unintended side-effects of decisiveness and unambiguity, and that this sensibility should be one of the objectives of any educational system.

The next speaker (by the way, not the same) replies:

This, simply, is not enough.

He says, he misses analysis and perspective. And he concludes with “this will lead us nowhere”, cuts himself, and continues to reply to someone else.

This is about Stefan Böschen, because it is not. I know Stefan because I do not. You know, I am lying about him because I do. And, he does too.

It’s been my pleasure to meet Stefan Böschen at the conference on Future and Ignorance where he gave an interesting talk about politics of knowledge. Stefan is an adept of self-contradiction. Probably, we were naturally attracted by each other and therefore we found ourselves in a sunny morning session playing ping-pong with the paradox of hedonism. In other words, we were laughing our heads off.

At the conference’s concluding discussion, though, Stefan repeatedly said three words: Praise the paradox.

Sincerely. I smiled. This was the essence because it was not. Like when you pursue the paradox its magic is lost. The gospel’s message is the joy of singing.

Praise the paradox.

Because it is one. Stefan said he’d sing it, yet it’s no cant. His utterance is no praise for praise’ sake, no praise of praise. It’s a courageous expression of an insight. Seeing the paradox at the bottom of life’s heart. The frugal philosopher saying No to himself with a content smile. Playful like an innocent dog, the yet unnamed cynic.

Praise the paradox.

Bald words. Raising their voices against themselves, leaving us with bare bones of all of life’s choices. Naked ideas that cannot but provoke which is why they do not.
Says he who still questions their affordability. Still with a smile on his face.

Stefan’s praise of para-dox, this concept that infamously contra-dicts anything and everything within reach, me, you, him- and itself, denies the distinction of Good and Bad, right and wrong, knowledge and ignorance. Praise of paradox denies denial.

In the end, this is responsibility.

God, he was lucky nobody listened to him.
Well, nobody but a liar.

Juliet Ernst suggests to have a ‘before you call’ list at hand that could help us to systematically rule out all the less significant possible causes before [we] panic or descend into real depressive funks.

This is a wonderful idea. So, I put on my list to make a list. Making lists sure is included in many people’s lists. Lists of people who like lists. That’s probably why there are recipes. Because life is complicated (which is a lie), and lists are simple (which is another one).

Like with good recipes we need more lists: Good lists, suitable lists, easy lists, short ones and long ones, comprehensive lists, serious, scientific lists, approved lists, experts’ lists, classifying and diminishing lists, and, of course, lists of lists, such as this one.

Eventually, do not forget to check your list of lists, and your schedules, your categories, registers, criteria, systems of divisions, rules for distinction; your catalogs and inventories; your principles, and
yourself.

When I met Erwin Chargaff in his flat in New York, I felt like entering a new world, yet familiar. In his book “Kritik der Zukunft” he suggests that, for the time being, we declare our resignation from humankind.

Besides the fact that he says he did, I am to follow.
So here I am, outside.