Without Lifting A Finger

The old man said, “You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.” “That’s all you can tell me?” Rick said.

Solemnly, and with ceremony, the vote was taken. “We stay here,” Irmgard said, with firmness. “In this apartment, in this building.” Roy Baty said, “I vote we kill Mr. Isidore and hide somewhere else.” He and his wife—and John Isidore—now turned tautly toward Pris. In a low voice Pris said, “I vote we make our stand here.” She added, more loudly, “I think J. R.’s value to us outweighs his danger, that of his knowing. Obviously we can’t live among humans without being discovered; that’s what killed Polokov and Garland and Luba and Anders. That’s what killed all of them.” “Maybe they did just what we’re doing,” Roy Baty said. “Confided in, trusted, one given human being who they believed was different. As you said, special.” “We don’t know that,” Irmgard said. “That’s only a conjecture. I think they, they—” She gestured. “Walked around. Sang from a stage like Luba. We trust—I’ll tell you what we trust that fouls us up, Roy; it’s our goddamn superior intelligence!” She glared at her h...

Put Arendt aside (for a bit?) to delve into Dick. I'm not usually a sci-fi person (except for being a Tarkovsky and Blade Runner fan), so I decided to start with Electric Sheep. Have always loved the title. Enjoying it so far. Might even get myself an Empathy Box. *  Excerpt: He thought, too, about his need for a real animal; within him an actual hatred once more manifested itself toward his electric sheep, which he had to tend, had to care about, as if it lived. The tyranny of an object, he thought. It doesn’t know I exist. Like the androids, it had no ability to appreciate the existence of another. He had never thought of this before, the similarity between an electric animal and an andy. The electric animal, he pondered, could be considered a subform of the other, a kind of vastly inferior robot. Or, conversely, the android could be regarded as a highly developed, evolved version of the ersatz animal. Both viewpoints repelled him.

Peet's on 2nd shut down at the end of January -- too bad. There was a faithful following but, of course, it didn't get the draw like the Bucks on the opposite side of the street. I had been exploring the new PHILZ when I heard the news. Last time I was at Peet's was a week or two before it closed, because I went to PHILZ late in the morning and there wasn't a seat in the house. * A competitive shopping street: 2nd. Coffee shops come and go. A shame. Peet's had let a few things slide, but they were trying to fit in. They even recently converted the Boys' and Girls' Rooms to All Gender. Oh, well. * What's coming to that corner next? I remember Chipotle before Peet's and Johnny Rockets before that, but all that shops-come-and-go-biz was ages ago. *

The case of the conscience of Adolf Eichmann, which is admittedly complicated but is by no means unique, is scarcely comparable to the case of the German generals, one of whom, when asked at Nuremberg, “How was it possible that all you honorable generals could continue to serve a murderer with such unquestioning loyalty?,” replied that it was “not the task of a soldier to act as judge over his supreme commander. Let history do that or God in heaven.” (Thus General Alfred Jodl, hanged at Nuremberg.)

PHILZ & Arendt. My new weekend route that takes me down to the Belmont Pier. Caught a little rain and stepped in more than one of Nature's makeshift rivulets. ***

Wherever Jews lived, there were recognized Jewish leaders, and this leadership, almost without exception, cooperated in one way or another, for one reason or another, with the Nazis. The whole truth was that if the Jewish people had really been unorganized and leaderless, there would have been chaos and plenty of misery but the total number of victims would hardly have been between four and a half and six million people. (According to Freudiger’s calculations about half of them could have saved themselves if they had not followed the instructions of the Jewish Councils. This is of course a mere estimate, which, however, oddly jibes with the rather reliable figures we have from Holland and which I owe to Dr. L. de Jong, the head of the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation. In Holland, where the Joodsche Raad like all the Dutch authorities very quickly became an “instrument of the Nazis,” 103,000 Jews were deported to the death camps and some five thousand to Theresienst...

If you like Pina Coladas, ... ***