My high school 40 year reunion was this past weekend and what a success it was! Every person gave me a deep impression, and all of them, to a man or woman, seemed ten times the persons they were in high school.

One high point was talking with the man who was the first purchaser of English transformation art from this blog. It was that purchase which enabled me to attend the reunion. We had a great conversation, and he exhorted me to write my memoirs, which, thanks to him, I plan to do.

Another attendee has said she wants to purchase an artwork, so I am feeling golden just about now.

Olympic bid of Chicago

I heartily encourage all Chicagoans to do their personal part in convincing the International Olympic Committee to vote for our bid as host city for the 2026 Summer Games.

Play Bingo with my HP33S/HP35S Shuffle program!

I have placed on scribd.com a template for a Bingo checksheet to check off numbers as they are called randomly using my HP33S/HP35S Shuffle program. This is a much easier way to call Bingo numbers than the old cage and balls method, and there are no balls to lose, too!

See the sidebar, just above the Shuffle program Paypal button, for details. The Bingo checksheet template is available here.

Why H. sapiens struggles without knowing why

The central reason H. sapiens struggles without knowing why is that he thinks others see everything he thinks he is when he speaks. Over time he becomes more convinced he has a certain identity whereas actually what he has is an expanding collection of permissions to set aside facts. The unknowingness this produces can be discovered fairly easily and long ago women did so and applied it to their sexual ambitions. This is the origin of glamor.

It is possible that Mohammad made this discovery. Islam's defenses against women developing glamor may be motivated by it. The militancy of these defenses indicates the workings of an informed directorate. However, Islam has not solved the central problem, which is the spread of the spoken of error into the population.

On How I Attained My Standing

I have attained standing because faced with hardship I rallied into larger personal investment. It is pointless to speculate whether another fate could also have led to standing. I have brought my fate here without borrowing from one world to buy into others, something I practiced blindly like most everyone else until hardship appeared with metal frame.

Date with Crystal to N.U.'s Dearborn Observatory

Friday nights at Northwestern University's Dearborn Observatory are free public events and this past Friday I took Crystal.

We waited two hours standing in the dark in line to climb the stairs to look in the eyepiece of the telescope. It was worth it, especially for me, and Crystal said afterwards she had a good time. The object viewed was Jupiter, and you could see two moons very brightly.

I realized after I did a drawing in colored pencil Sunday morning (see previous post) that it was reminiscent of Jupiter.

Crystal and I are going to the Shedd Aquarium this coming Tuesday.

More traditional art now on sidebar.

Today I have placed on the sidebar, just below the section on English transformation art, two recent works of mine which are more traditional in nature. The medium is colored pencil and the color choices were augmented by a calculator with a program I wrote to shuffle items randomly. Below these pictures and the commentary is a Paypal button to purchase a copy of the program.

To facilitate the random color choice, I constructed a rack out of heavy paper with eighteen coves, numbered three ways, 1) 1-18; 2) 1-9, two sets, and 3) 1-6, three sets. This permits me to keep separate sets of related colors on my "easel," either two sets or three sets, and have them all numbered from one to permit use of the calculator to shuffle them.

You can judge for yourself the effects that can be gotten with this program by looking at the pictures there in the sidebar.

Pairs of competing texts for English transformation art

I saw on a video at Google once a lecture on how to use the feedback Google provides for its targeted ads for specific search terms by creating an ad in two forms with two different key terms. This yielded immediate information on the relative business generated by the two different terms, where they were the only reason for any difference in clicks on the ads. Then by keeping the term that did better, and pairing it in another test with another prospective term, and doing this successively with more and more terms all of which would be considered good possibilities, one can arrive at the best single term for generating click-throughs and business.

So apply this technique to making suggestions of words to clients to be made into English transformation art. I don't have the feedback coming in, but I can still suggest some comparisons that will arouse a preference in the prospective client. See what you think...

Here are some pairs:

freedom/america
awesome/way cool
champion/winner
blush/intrigue
slam dunk/home run
contemporary art/modern art
hunk/doll
insight/determination
wit/scholarship
the chase/battle of the sexes
heartthrob/my crush
recondite/obscure
rags to riches/second effort
bonus/perk
ceo/president
vacation/weekend
ambition/good taste
cordon bleu/filet mignon
pumping iron/no pain no gain
heavyweight/big biceps
riviera/california
planet earth/solar energy
denim/corduroy
silk/nylon
strength/courage

Which of these choices would you select, if you were going to buy English transformation art?

iPoint product endorsement

I would like to endorse the iPoint pencil sharpener, made by Westcott. I have never owned an electric pencil sharpener before and I am very glad I have one now. I believe my artwork has been severely handicapped by the anguish caused by not being able to rely on a good point on my pencils at all times, without hasstle. I never bought one before because I felt I couldn't afford it. The iPoint was about ten dollars, a reasonable amount. It is run by batteries.

There are two features of this device I like. One is that the whole sharpening operation is visible, which gives me confidence in the reliability of the machine since I can see how things are going.

The other is that it is vertically loaded with the pencil--you push down on the pencil to turn it on. This eliminates the problem, whether actual or just perceived, of the sharpener moving out of your one-handed grip as you sharpen.

This is a fine device, attractively shaped, effectively engineered, and affordable, and I recommend it to any artist.

Endorsement of Chase Bank

I am pleased to endorse Chase Bank, with whom I have been banking for a couple of years or so. Their professional courtesy has been more than I could have imagined in my meager beginnings, and the reasons I am in meager later stages rather than prosperous ones have nothing to do with them. I feel as though the bankers at Chase are partners. Their advice is well considered. Their cordiality is matched only by their efficiency. A trip to the branch is reason to celebrate. It is with great assurance that I recommend Chase Bank to anyone of great or modest means.

My branch is the Bryn Mawr Avenue branch, in Chicago, Illinois, USA.

Markets and Relevance

A good, i.e. relevance, made of synergies of irrelevance, when inspected in detail will convey irrelevant values. A good made of relevant values can only convey relevant values.

Markets

What you are looking for is in the neighborhood.
Relevance constituents.

Ashrams

Irrelevance constituents.
Outposts where congregate those who couldn't find what they were looking for in the neighborhood.

Writing a book it can be assumed one has traveled outside the neighborhood.

A book cannot be written with only relevance. Colloquial speech is a neighborhood device. Relevance always decays into colloquial speech because demand for it is everywhere greater than supply. It never collects into a book.

Technology's ultimate reference is historical where neighborhoods were transcended.

Corporations are built by systematization of travel out of the neighborhood, and preservation of relevance despite it.

Irrelevance is the logical result of growth block, throughout evolution. It is not a corporate venture, since those assume speech.

Commentary on an argument can be either relevant and valuable, the usual case, or irrelevant and valuable, which can become relevant in the same manner a product of synergies can do this.

Yale's Branford College common room memories

One of the most memorable visual places at Yale University as an undergraduate was the Branford Residential College common room. I would sit in there on one of the, to me, expensive leather chairs surrounded by wood paneling and muted lighting, and let my mind wander through my recent exploits on campus, commingling with the students and finding unusual places and things to see everywhere. The common room was a place for me to connect with the hundreds of years of history at Yale. I could sit and imagine all the comfort that these past students were accustomed to, something new for me. It affected my self-identity.

my social interaction: what a kingmaker would want to know

As an employee, my fate is determined by local politics. As a business, my fate is determined by kingmakers.

A kingmaker will want to know a little about me, how I act socially.

I am very concerned, in my social interactions, with the different education levels and how people react to each other from that point of view. I have given some thought to how to relate to people based on their level of education, and how to determine what that is with a minimum of words. Once I get some idea of a person's education level I can choose my agenda with them, if you'll pardon the expression. For a relatively uneducated person I might ask him, in as discrete a manner as I can, whether he ever uses the word, "agenda". This gives me a great deal of information on which to build a conversation, and how this person might fit into the set of relationships I have built already. If I succeed in getting a thoughtful conversation going, no matter what the level of education, I try to work in a suggestion that we put agenda on the agenda. This gives the person some idea of how I handle a whole range of topics, and creates a large volume of space in which to view each other's ability to adjust to each other's deeply felt positions on matters they consider fair game for discussion.

Sense of humor is very important. I like to relate to people, once we have gotten some of the more serious issues out of the way, with a good deal of frivolity. It widens the basis of our meeting, and solidifies what we have said to each other in earnest.

With the mentally ill in particular, and these are the people who are my living companions, it is possible to make ground by approaching them with general all-aroundedness, if I can put it that way, in the sense of where I am coming from in the conversational setting. The mentally ill suffer from what I call a "coordinated distraction." Events in the fixed place in space where they view them from come at them without a firm anchor in a consolidated world view up to the moment. Somehow they have been knocked out of this anchored condition and as a result they are the objects of distractions that occur within the existing coordinates of space which normal people build on from moment to moment and day to day. It is important, in coming at them with general all-roundedness, to be fair and to be truly universal in viewpoint, not being normative in the way that the mental health industry does. The mental health industry takes the approach of being generous in its judgment of the mentally ill, but it does not go looking for professional good practice among their numbers. As a result, when I crack open the formidable sheer surface of mental illness's veneer, and discover merriment in a very normal sense, fully professional, it is immediately interpreted by the mental health industry, in its adjacency to my dealings, as a violation of conduct standards, because the mentally ill are not acknowledged to have a potential for truly normal behavior. So that, in one recent case, I engage in a whimsical monologue in the presence of some of my comrades, and use the appropriate level of amplitude of my voice, staff runs to see what "the disturbance is" and I have to retreat from the social position I have created with great pains, in order to deflate the threat of being disciplined by staff for what in a different setting, among normal people, would be considered normal behavior serving to put everyone at ease to see such merriment. The stark compromise between the setting where this behavior "pus everyone at ease" and the setting where it "causes a disciplining threat" is extremely dissociative to the human mind. It is an obstacle to progress on my agenda for the mentally ill that this potential is a constant, omnipresent danger.

Infinite irrelevant value--the appearance of scarcity

The transition from an undenomenated commodity to a denomenated commodity, for both relevant values, such as gold, and irrelevant values, such as altruism, requires the discovery of unsuppliable demand, that is, scarcity, which, because it has a value of infinity, and this can be shown to imply that finite quantities also exist, enables the formation of markets.

Thus, for irrelevant values, someone manages to establish himself as a provider of such a demanded irrelvant commodity, demanded because he has been careful to keep his sums of this value separated into bins characterized by consistency, and thus they do not add, but do multiply, and in multiplication the square root of minus one value in the enumeration multiplies with itself, the irrelevance disappears and a negative value appears, but doing this with another pair of irrelevant values, giving another negative relevant value, and multiplying these, gives a positive relevant value where before this there were four irrelevant values, that this demanded irrelevant commodity is part of a vein of infinite value, because it is absolutely scarce.

An irrelevant commodity that does not fail to supply all demand, but that does supply all demand, is not a scarce commodity. Thus, a poor prophet who cannot find anyone who understands the whole impact of his philosophy will be forced to produce superlative irrelevant behavior at every turn, because that's what he has made of himself and he has no other way to interact. If he is especially diplomatic as well as irrelevant, he can accumulate a following of persons willing to buy his irrelevant books or donate all their wealth in order to live with him. Neither of these is a scarce commodity, implying infinite value. But they are irrelevant.

What differentiates infinite from undenomenated irrelevant value is rigor. I believe I have stated the outlines of a description of this exact rigor above. The product which I have assembled from four irrelevant values is the art in the sidebar, English Transformation Art, which has sold here one piece to date. No altruism or other irrelevant value is necessary to appreciate its value. It is accessible in strictly commercial terms. Yet its constituents are completely irrelevant values. These I will not divulge as they constitute a trade secret. I suppose speculation could determine some of it, but purchase is so much easier. It is now a business, and it will take normal business practices to build. My discussion of irrelevance goes to global understanding. It would be better not to have to do it, but in today's world of open sources, one has to do some of it just to be part of the action.

An interesting video about art.

Here is a link to a very interesting video on the subject of art. Click here.

Is English Transformation Art really art?

Let me ask my readers, do you view English Transformation Art, such as the example here on my sidebar, to be art?

If you would, please comment to this post.

On the process of English Transformation Art

Conversation between myself and my English Transformation Art clients is itself part of the art process, in a sense. It is my task as artist to move the client, to assist, with as little assistance as possible, him in perceiving the difference between the really important things in his world from the less so, even if what is important to him is being silly. You may be silly about life, but you must also know what it is about silliness that makes you feel good, and know it at least well enough that you can see it in real terms, as a word or two.

It is my feeling that this is a process that will grow with each commission. Every client will bring a different world view to the table. It will be part of the process also to create better and better ways to record here in the blog the process, insofar as this meets with the approval of the client. This is a delicate matter. I enter the client's domain perhaps as no other artist does, making tangible his own view of his world, or some part of it, enabling him to create in his home or office a highlight exactly to his own specifications, something to share with those who visit him in home or office, and to keep hidden from those who he does not want in his home or office, if that is his design. I as artist must travel the road with him, engaging in conversation before creation of the work to decide what word or words it will say, hearing his musings and approach to the concept of this art, and his expressions of enthusiasm about it. What I say in the blog could be very much of this process, or very little, according to what the client either expressly states to me about it, or by my own judgment and taste about how I can enhance the experience for the client by setting it in the context of my own approach to the work, as the originator of the genre.

I have related here after successfully transporting the first sale to its author and buyer (the person is indeed an author!) a quote from his email acknowledging receipt of the work. This is a suitably understated approach to this groundbreaking step in the process. Better to let him express his response, in simple terms in this case, than have me begin with narrative about my impressions of his experience. I trust he will endorse this way of looking at it.

Cooperation with Afghans is new U.S. aim.

News I just read of the U.S. deciding it needs to work on cooperation with Afghan civilians more than on killing insurgents is good news to hear. It strengthens my commitment to endorsement of the U.S. objective of democratizing Afghanistan. Here is a link to the ABC story I read.

more on the blackball

Sometime in 1984, 85, or 86, when I was a resident at the Parker Street Shelter in the State Services Building in Boston, MA, I was told by a woman named Patricia, who was the girlfriend of my friend Irving Kinsley, a former U.S. military officer, "Someone who didn't know did something terrible." The look on her face when she said that was serious and dumbfounded. I didn't reply and that was all she said.

Previously, she had said to me, "Who is the leader I heard about around here?" or words to that effect. I replied, "What more of a leader do you need than me?"

The morning of Christmas eve, 1985, at Parker Street, Irving said to me that he saw me on tv the previous night. The only videotape I had ever made had been in 1983 at the New York University Catholic Center adjacent to Washington Square Park in Manhattan, New York City, NY.

"Something terrible" would correspond with a blackball.

blackball suspect

There definitely is a corporate body blackballing me. Mental illness is a nonvectorial condition. A blackball has a target.

I therefore issue a directive that there be an investigation of the prime suspect I have, namely, a girl who was a resident in Harvey House, Crown College, the University of California at Santa Cruz, at the time I also was a resident there. I don't remember her name. She was spoken of as being rich. She was about 5 feet 1 inch tall, dark hair. Her roommate was about 5 feet 8 inches tall, blond, and quiet.

I was a resident in Harvey House during the spring term of 1979. UCSC has a semester system. I resided in Gauss House for the fall and spring terms of 1979-80. Those were my last terms of residence at UCSC.

There is no reason to entertain the reasons this suspect would have for the blackball. That would have been for the time before the blackball was instituted. A blackball is not a judicial or social process. It is done without the attention of society or the law. It is an underworld affair. Therefore it needs to be met with an underworld response. I have no information to add to what I have given here, which is all I know about the suspect.

Comments of the first purchaser of English Transformation Art

The first purchaser of English Transformation Art from my blog has received the work and says, "I like it very much. Nice job. I'll be having it framed soon."

A problem in my paternal family line

I think there is something being handed down in my paternal family line that is throwing me off.

My father's father was a real success. He only completed the eighth grade and yet he became chief engineer of a large hospital. But my father never really understood his father. My father's own success, as a ladies' hairdresser, was financially secure but not as respectable as his father's was. He talked of his father very familiarly. I don't think he respected his father's work. He never talked of it.

Because of this difference between my father and his father, I looked up to my father's father as my male image, and not to my father at all. I was always very attentive whenever he spoke.

Why didn't my father respect his father? Why was he so cocky? His mother must have had something to do with it.

So now here I am not respecting my father. Is it because he didn't respect his? I don't believe this is the case. My father didn't respect his father's father. He never spoke of him at all.

For the record, my father's father's name was James Jacob Batek, my father's name was Kenneth James Batek, and my father's mother's name was Marie Smach Batek.

English transformation art: a conversation between artist and client

The enterprise of English Transformation Art is by its nature a conversation between the artist and the client. All the words shared between those two participants go toward establishing an agreement about the fundamental principle of the art that just one word has the power to move and inspire, and that one's use of all words is affected by this principle.

The graphical instrument of the art is a different scene of action for words than is the form of the letters. Reading is not the object. It is more about occupying space.

Is Batek Binary a searchable entity?

It occurs to me there is a puzzle regarding my binary code for English, Batek Binary. How will it be treated by search engines?

Let's take an example.

|| | || ||| ||| | || ||| || ||| | || || ||| |||

I will not give the word this represents in English. That would make possible a search for the English version and I don't want to allow that.

I could also give the ASCII code for a word. That too is a puzzle. But Batek Binary is a different puzzle. It is arguably a self-evident representation of a word. Does the formula for Batek Binary constitute a searchable text?

Now obviously, since Batek Binary is not a popular concept in the limit of not being popular, the system is not going to appear in any search engine's computations, and words represented that way have no possible way of occurring in a search result. This is even true of art using the code. But is there something pathological about this omission?

ASCII, it can be argued, is not a colloquial construction. It occurs in computer applications on the inside end, not a part of public language traffic on the outside end.

But Batek Binary occurs on the outside end, at the very least as art, even though it is currently unpopular. For this reason I would argue that excluding it from search engines is pathological.

If I could type into a search window the code I created in the above example, and the search engine returned this blog entry, I would call that a healthy process. I suppose there is a chance this could happen just because of string identity.

Let's see. I'll publish this post now and after a while, when it has been scanned by the engines, I'll do such a search and see what happens. I'll use quotes around the code.