So that concludes the Inferno. I plan to do a similar thing with the Purgatorio and the Paradiso.#

There is a section in the Appendix of the Inferno that describes what the Universe was believed to be like during Dante's time. Dorothy makes a very interesting point in this excerpt,#

``Although, of course, the "machinery" of the rotating spheres with their deferents and epicycles bears no close relation to objective fact than do models of the atom made of little rotating balls, yet, as seen from the Earth, the movements of the heavenly bodies do trace precisely such patterns as medieval astronomers described. We find it more convenient to take an imaginary stand at some point outside the Solar System and describe the motions from there, so that we can see the whole arrangement laid out as on a pole. For many practical purpose, however, we still use the Ptolemaic vocabulary, turning on our car-lights half an hour after "sunset", and not after "solar horizon-rise", and orientating ourselves at night by that "heavenly pole" which is only the reflection of the Earth's pole and by no means the central pole of the cosmos, if it has one. The Ptolemaic universe is the universe we recognize, as we recognize a photograph or picture of the house in which we live. It is inferior to the Copernican in that its mathematics, even when correct by modern knowledge, would be too complicated for ready calculation; but *it is superior as a description of what the Heavens have to show us, because it is a direct transcript of the observed phenomena.*'' (pg. 295)

In this final Canto, the Poets see Dis (Satan) at the centre of the Abyss. He is devouring the souls of Judas, Brutus, and Cassius. #

``Each mouth devoured a sinner clenched within,
Frayed by the fangs like flax beneath a brake;
Three at a time he tortured them for sin.'' (ll. 55-57)

Obviously, Dis has three faces to devour each of the three sinners,#

``The three faces, red, yellow, and black, are thought to suggest Satan's dominion over the three races of the world: the red, the European (the race of Japhet); the yellow, the Asiatic (the race of Shem); the black, the African (the race of Ham). But they are also, undoubtedly, a blasphemous anti-type of the Blessed Trinity: Hatred, Ignorance, Impotence as against Love, Wisdom, Power.'' (pg. 290)

The Poets climb down Satan's legs and through the centre of the Earth to reach the Southern Hemisphere where they will begin to ascend Mount Purgatory...#

``He first, I following; till my straining sense
Glimpsed the bright burden of the heavenly cars
Through a round hole; by this we climbed, and thence

Came fourth, to look once more upons the stars.'' (ll. 136-139)

Dante talks to a pair of souls who share their Sin together. This relates to the idea that this Circle is about the absence of Grace from the soul. Dorothy explains...#

``Ugolin and Roger are the last of those pairs of shades who image partnership in sin. In each case, only one of them speaks. Francesca speaks of the sharing of the sin, and offers excuses for Paolo along with herself. Ulysses ignores Diomede (partnership is lost). Ugolin justifies himself at Roger's expense (treachery can share nothing but mutual hatred). There is a deliberate parallel between the Paolo-Francesca pair and the Ugolin-Roger pair: in both cases the lines that introduce their respective stories are drawn from the same passage of Virgil, and there are other, minor, correspondences. This is Dante's way of indicating that here in the ice of Cocytus we have the last state of the corruption of love; that every devouring passion, sexual or otherwise, that sets itself against the order of God and the City, bears in itself the seeds of treachery and a devouring passion of destruction'' (pg. 282)

"The Tenth Circle is the frozen Lake of Cocytus, which fills the bottom of the Pit, and holds the souls of the Traitors." (pg. 271) Dante is worried about traveling across the lake,#

``I heard it said: "Take heed how thou dost go,
For fear they feet should trample as they pass
On the heads of the weary brotherhood of woe." '' (ll. 19-21)

It's interesting to remember that Hell is full to the brim with Sinners and you often have to watch your step!#

Dorothy explains the significance of the frozen lake,#

``Beneath the clamour, beneath the monotonous circlings, beneath the fires of hell, here at the centre of the lost soul and the lost city, lie the silence and the rigidity and the eternal frozen cold. It is perhaps the greatest image in the whole Inferno. "Dante," says Charles Williams, "scatters phrases on the difference of the place. It is treachery, but it is also ... cruelty; the traitor is cruel" (The Figure of Beatrice, p. 143) A cold and cruel egotism, gradually stricking inward till even the lingering passions of hatred and destruction are frozen into immobility - that is the final state of sin. The conception is, I think, Dante's own; although the Apocalypse of Paul mentions a number of cold torments, these are indiscriminately mingled with the torments by fire, and their placing has no structural significance. (It is interesting, however, that in the seventeenth century, the witches who claimed to have had to do with Satan sometimes reported that he was ice-cold.)'' (pg. 275)

Something that I think about when I think of the freezing cold of the last Circle of Hell, is that as the final state of Sin this represents a soul without anything but Sin. Thus, it is the "grace" (if that is to be the opposite of Sin) of a good life that gives us life and warmth. Grace furnishes love and cherishing while Sin corrupts life and is a spiral to rigid nothingness and torment.#

Dante and Virgil are nearing the Ninth Circle, the Well at the bottom of the abyss, where the Giants stand around. Dante comments on the terrible problems the Giant once caused...#

``For where the instrument of thinking mind
Is joined to strength and malice, man's defence
Cannot avail to meet those powers combined.'' (ll. 55-57)

I think one thing this is trying to say is that "Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely" - A man ("the instrument of thinking mind"), when strength is at his disposal, is tipped off to some unscrupulous use of said power, then it is often more than his defense can manage to resist it. The Giants are the malevolent strength personified.#

Dorothy also discusses the Giants,#

``From the point of view of the story, it is easy to see that Dante placed the Giants here, nor merely to furnish a means of transport from Malbowges to the depth of the Well, but, artistically, to provide a little light relief between the sickening horrors of the last bowges of Fraud Simple and the still greater, but wholly different, horrors of the pit of Treachery. But allegorically, what do they signify? In one sense they are images of Pride; the Giants who rebelled against Jove typify the pride of Satan who rebelled against God. But they may also, I think, be taken as the images of the blind forces which remain in the soul, and in society, when the "general bond of love" is dissolved and the "good of the intellect" wholly withdrawn, and when nothing remains but blocks of primitive mass-emotion, fit to be the "executives of Mars" and the tools of treachery. Nimrod is a braggart stupidity; Ephialtes, a senseless rage; Antaeus, a brainless vanity: *one may call them the doom of nonsense, violence, and triviality, overtaking a civilization in which the whole natural order is abrogated.'' (pg. 269)

Dante is still in the Tenth Bowge of Malbowges and now he is listening to an argument between Adam of Brescia and Sinon of Troy. Virgil is disappointed in Dante for his interest in the fight.#

Part of the argument sticks out as clever and poetic,#

`` "If I spoke false, thy coins were false as well;
I uttered but one lie," quoth Sinon, "thou
Hast uttered more than any fiend in hell/" '' (ll. 115-117)

And after Dante apologies to Virgil for his transgression, Virgil eases him and advises...#

`` "Less shame would wash away a greater crime
Than thine has been"; so said my gentle guide;
"Think no more of it; but another time,

Imagine I'm still standing at thy side
Whenever Fortune, in thy wayfaring,
Brings thee where people wrangle thus and chide;

It's vulgar to enjoy that kind of thing." '' (ll. 142-148)

This is criticism of the journalistic pattern of turning everything into a fight between giants as a way to get attention. "It is vulgar to enjoy" a fight between two who seek to hurt the other for their own selfish ends.#

Danto is now in the tenth, and last, bowge of the Eighth Circle, "where the Falsifiers lie stricken with hideous diseases. Dante talks with an old friend, Capocchio." (pg. 252) Dorothy explains the significance of this "Valley of Disease"...#

``For the allegory, this is at one level the image of the corrupt heart which acknowledges no obligation to keep faith with its fellow-man; at another, it is the image of a diseased society in the last stages of its mortal sickness and already necrosing. *Every value it has is false; it alternates between deadly lethargy and a raving insanity.* Malbowges began with the safe of the sexual relationship, and went on to the sale of Church and State; now, the very money is itself corrupted, every affirmation has become perjury, and every identity a lie; no medium of exchange remains, and the "general bound of love and nature's tie" (Canto XI. 56) is utterly dissolved.''

Is this a vision of Hell or a prophecy of Earth?#

In the Ninth Bowge, Dante looks upon the Sower of Discord, who are "continually smitten asunder by a Demon with a sword" (pg. 246) - Dante describes the fright of the scene...#

``Who, though with words unshackled from the rhymes,
Could yet tell full the tale of wounds and blood
Now shown me, let him try ten thousand times?

Truly all tongues would fail, for neither could
The mind avail, nor any speech be found
For things not to be named nor understood'' (ll. 1-6)

I find it baffling that Dante finds his words to be insufficient to describe his vision because they seem so succinct and suitable to spearhead the story of Satan's spite. On the other hand, I concede that this is an indication of the history of the idea that words are imperfect medium for thought transfer and experience explanation. While they are good, there is no way to explain the truth because it exists outside the system of Semiotics (thanks Peter!), and Dante thinks this way by exclaiming that the explanation of his experience is effused with inefficiencies and ineffectual epigrams.

Dante is later talking to a shade of this section, who says...#

``This outcast quenced the doubt in Caesar's heart:
'To men prepared delays are dangerous';
Thus he gave sign for civil strife to start.'' (ll. 97-99)

An interesting note that the man with out plans cannot be let down or delayed. Is some "pure" about human life lost in the busy-ness created by technology, "business", and money?

Still in Eighth Bowge, "The Spirit of Guido da Montefeltro asks for news of Romagna, and, being answered, tells his story." (pg. 240)#

In life he advised those who committed fraud and talks about the hypocrisy of his contrition...#

``Absolved uncontrite means no absolution;
Nor can one will at once sin and contrition,
The contradiction bars the false conclusion.'' (ll. 118-120)

Dorothy tries to make it clear: "Contrition is necessary if the absolution is to be valid; but a man cannot be contrite for a sin at the same time that he is intending to commit it, since this involves a contradiction in logic (i.e. one cannot both will and not-will the same thing at the same time); therefore the absolution obtained in these circumstances is invalid" (pg. 245)

This is interesting because it another one of the instances when Dante will point out that those who appear to be sin free in life may be sorely mistaken in the afterlife. A lie can contain no truth, even if you manage to convince yourself of it.#

Dante crosses the bridge to the next bowge with the following poem...#

``And we went on, my guide and I, to cross
The bridge that o'er the following chasm lies,
Where those who make division and purchase thus

A load of guilt, receive their merchandise.'' (ll. 133-136)

As Dante and Virgil near the Eighth Bowge of the Eighth Circle, Dante reproaches Florence (his hometown) in a very hostile way...#

``Florence, rejoice, because thy soaring fame
Beats it broad wings across both land and sea,
And all the deep of Hell rings with thy name!

Five of thy noble townsman did I see
Among the thieves; which makes me blush anew,
And mighty light honour it does to thee'' (ll. 1-6)

I enjoy the imagery hear, the soaring fame of Florence reminds of a soaring _flame_ with the connotations of dragons ("Beats it broad wings") and fire ("deep of Hell".)#

In this bowge are the "Counsellors of Fraud", those who aided in the fraud of another. One shade is that of Ulysses who tells the story of his aiding the Fraud against the Trojans...#

``In fire they mourn the trickery of the horse,
That opened up the gates through which the high
Seed of the Romans issued forth perforce'' (ll. 58-60)

This Canto contains a very beautiful telling of the Voyage of Ulysses that Dorothy notes, "derives from no classical source, and appears to be Dante's own invention. It may have been suggested to him by the Celtic voyages of Maelduin and St. Brendan. It influenced Tasso and furnished Tennyson with the theme for his poem Ulysses." (pgs. 238-239)#

Patrick Logan writes about "Offshore IT"...#

``More importantly in my opinion is this: when you choose to move some jobs to a lower cost market, or for that matter, when you choose to buy a product, "offshore" to cheaper labor, in some sense you are making a value statement of another kind. You are saying you don't care that the labor conditions "over there" are worse than they are "here".

What's that? We're talking about IT. How are labor conditions worse for IT workers? Well, for example, I am diabetic. Diabetic care in the US is great* but in lower cost labor markets even well off IT workers suffer from less advanced and available diabetic care. This is just one example that hits home for me.

So employers who move jobs "offshore" without providing equivalent benefits are very much saying they value their workers less. Maybe this is to simply stay competive with everyone else, maybe its to satisfy stockholders who demand growth or as much as possible in a down market. But this is still a value decision that should not be ignored for Adam Smith's sake. ''

Godless at Gene Expression writes about his political position...#

``This is the sort of enlightened, alliance-building multilateralism that was crucial to the conduct of American foreign policy during the Cold War. Yes, we overthrew governments when we deemed it necessary. But we concentrated on crafting alliances like NATO and SEATO, on turning China into an enemy of the Soviet Union, on rebuilding Japan and Germany as trading partners and potential allies in a hot war, and on similar mutually beneficial measures. As Clark puts it, our very first action after 9/11 should have been to declare bin Laden a war criminal and to define terrorism on our terms :

"Bin Laden, War Criminal The Kosovo campaign suggests alternatives in waging and winning the struggle against terrorism: greater reliance on diplomacy and law and relatively less on the military alone. Soon after September 11, without surrendering our right of self defense, we should have helped the United Nations create an International Criminal Tribunal on International Terrorism. We could have taken advantage of the outpourings of shock, grief, and sympathy to forge a legal definition of terrorism and obtain the indictment of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban as war criminals charged with crimes against humanity. Had we done so, I believe we would have had greater legitimacy and won stronger support in the Islamic world. We could have used the increased legitimacy to raise pressure on Saudi Arabia and other Arab states to cut off fully the moral, religious, intellectual, and financial support to terrorism. We could have used such legitimacy to strengthen the international coalition against Saddam Hussein. Or to encourage our European allies and others to condemn more strongly the use of terror against Israel and bring peace to that region. Reliance on a compelling U.N. indictment might have given us the edge in legitimacy throughout much of the Islamic world that no amount of "strategic information" and spin control can provide. On a purely practical level, we might have avoided the embarrassing arguments during the encirclement of Kandahar in early December 2001, when the appointed Afghan leader wanted to offer the Taliban leader amnesty, asking what law he had broken, while the United States insisted that none should be granted. We might have avoided the continuing difficulties of maintaining hundreds of prisoners in a legal no-man's land at Guantanamo Bay, which has undercut U.S. legitimacy in the eyes of much of the world." ''

Razib makes some comments about "The Kiss"...#

``Britney should not sing right before Christina unleashes her voice

Christina should not shake her ass after Britney has done her divine wiggling

Madonna has a better voice than Britney (who doesn't) & can dance better than Christina

Britney & Christina are plausible modifications of Madonna's genome-but they would indicate that talent is a zero-sum equation, what Britney lacks in vocals she makes up for in riotous rump-shaking & while Christina lacks the rhythmic movement on display in the form of Ms. Spears and Ms. Ciccone, she is possessed of a megaphone for a voice and a Madonnically sluttish demeanour

Christina's looks seems to have peaked during her clean-cut Genie-in-a-Bottle phase, while Britney has augmented her more modest physique over the years, at some point, the two functions intersected

I did not object to the kissing, though it seems plausible that Christina & Madonna swapping spit might give rise to lethal hybrid super-slut viruses. Watch out Guy Richie and all the men backstage on the Justin & Christina tour!''

Doug Miller has advice for AOL users...#

``If you're an AOL user, here's how to correct the problems with your service: First, go to the garage and get the biggest hammer you can find. If you can't find a hammer, get a big wrench or something. Anything suitably heavy will do. Next, go to your computer, and make sure it's turned on. Third, use the hammer to smash the computer into the smallest pieces you can. Don't stop until there aren't any pieces larger than a quarter. Finally, go back and sit on the couch and watch Jerry Springer or whatever other mindless TV program you enjoy. Whatever else you do, never go near a computer again. If you're dumb enough to be a habitual AOL user, you aren't smart enough to really use a computer, anyway.''

The New York Times has an article, As '04 Nears, Bush Campaign Works on a Central Theme -#

``Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative group, said the main reason the campaign would back such a high-stakes plan would be to allow the president to claim a mandate if re-elected. That, Mr. Norquist said, would help Mr. Bush avoid the problem President Ronald Reagan faced when he won a second term in 1984 without campaigning on specific initiatives.

"You can't just run on what you've done," Mr. Norquist said. "Either things are not going as well as you'd like, in which case you're open to criticism that you haven't done enough, or everything is going swell, and you have no agenda that the American people have signed up to support. In 1984 Reagan said, `Vote for me, I've been swell.' His lack of agenda is one reason he had a rough time in his second term."''

New York Times, Punishment to Fit the Crime -#

``A respected plague expert from Texas Tech University is scheduled to go on trial this fall on charges of violating federal security statutes. The underlying question is whether federal officials are simply being diligent in enforcing rules for handling infectious agents or are instead inflating minor violations into a major federal case.

[...]

Now Dr. Butler faces a maximum sentence of 74 years in prison and a fine of more than $3.5 million if found guilty on all 15 counts. He is reported to have spent more than $400,000 on legal fees thus far. Colleagues in the scientific community express outrage that what they consider technical violations of the law have been blown out of proportion, and supporters portray him as an old-school researcher who had brought back specimens for years and paid little attention to the new biosecurity regulations. Still, no scientist can unilaterally declare himself above laws that are designed to keep dangerous materials under close control. If Dr. Butler is found guilty, the trick will be to find a punishment that makes that point without destroying a man whose research, ironically, is of potentially great value in the fight against bioterrorism.''

Craig Kilborn wrote an opinion for the New York Times about the FCC Equal Time Law...#

``Last Wednesday night, 10 minutes before we were to go on the air, a group of CBS lawyers demanded that we cut that night's comedy segment — a satire of a speech by Gov. Gray Davis, Arnold Schwarzenegger's first political advertisement and the campaign of the porn actress (she's been downgraded from porn star) Mary Carey, all of which included images of the candidates.

[...]

If we're forced to show all the candidates, equal time would simply mean equal humiliation. In fact I offered to do just this — skewer any candidate demanding equal time — but CBS said no. This means that when Mr. Schwarzenegger pronounces the word California as "cauliflower," or Larry Flynt gleefully refers to himself as a "smut peddler who cares" (which he has), we can't show it. (We can post such footage on our Web site, but that's not as satisfying as the wonderful sound of 11 or 12 people laughing at once.)''

Joseph Kahn wrote an NYT article about North Korea.#

`` ``If our reasonable proposal is turned aside, we will judge that the U.S. does not intend to give up its attempt to stifle the D.P.R.K. by force,'' the agency said, referring to the formal name for North Korea, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. ``In this case the D.P.R.K. cannot dismantle its nuclear deterrent force but will have no option but to increase it.'' ''

This reminds me of that saying, the more democratic sounding a name, the less democratic the country.

Peter Lindberg points out a quote from a Semiotics book about how frameworks and mediums should be transparent to the user. Like every tool, they should allow someone to solve a problem, not create another problem for them to solve.#

Michael Feldman writes about his stint as a International Terrorism Expert...#

``Thomas J. Friedman argues in the New York Times that we are in fact fighting "The Big One" in that the war on terrorism is the defining struggle of our times. He asks some provocative questions:

In the wake of the bombing of the U.N. office in Baghdad, some "terrorism experts" (By the way, how do you get to be a terrorism expert? Can you get a B.A. in terrorism or do you just have to appear on Fox News?) have argued that the U.S. invasion of Iraq is a failure because all it's doing is attracting terrorists to Iraq and generating more hatred toward America.

At last, a question by an eminent New York Times columnist which I am qualified to answer! At least in my case, the easy way to become a terrorism expert is to get kidnapped by a terrorist group. This happened to me in 1990, when I helped arrange a small conference at the National University in Trujillo, Peru, where I taught for many years, by bringing down four colleagues from Harvard, none of whom had ever been to Peru before.''

Piers Cawley reviews a Christopher Alexander book and talks about his influence in the programming realm...#

``So, it's a war story from a failed project, why should you part with the thick end of £30 to read about that? And what does all this have to do with programming? Here's why: Christopher Alexander is the most influential bricks and mortar architect that the world of computer programming has ever known, if only for his work on Pattern Languages and 'The Quality Without a Name' . As a literary form, the design pattern and the larger pattern language are fabulously useful (and egregiously abused) ways of describing how to solve many of the problems we need to solve as programmers.

However, what is often overlooked about Alexander's work is that an awful lot of what he advocates about the process of generating a room, building or town foreshadows the processes advocated by the Extreme Programming people. You will not be surprised to learn that Kent Beck, author of the seminal book on XP, was also one of the earliest writers to use design patterns as a way of addressing programming issues.''

What's with Blogs without RSS feeds?#

Via Elizabeth Lane Lawley is Edward L. Ayers writing an essay about what professors "do"...#

``What's the common denominator, then, in what professors do all day? Translation. We translate from a field of knowledge to people who want to know about it. In my case, I translate between the people of today and the people from the past of the United States. Other professors translate physics, or business, or languages, or other cultures. We all live in at least two worlds. One of those worlds is a world of ideas, of print and numbers, a world almost limitless and impossible to master, growing every time we turn our backs.

The other world is the immediate and human world of classes, committees, office hours, deadlines, budgets, advising. Without being a citizen of both worlds, an active participant in both worlds, we are diminished, our ability to teach diminished. The dichotomy between teaching and research is no dichotomy at all if we understand that a professor journeys back and forth between two worlds, translating among many people. All in all, it's not as embarrassing or boring as you might think, especially when your students see fit to give you an award for doing what you love doing all day anyway.''

The Bitch Girls point to articles that criticize William M. Bulger, the president of the UMass system, who is leaving that position on Tuesday. All the faculty of UMass I've talked to, including the person who founded the UMass Lowell computer science department 30 years ago, have said that the University has never been better and are upset about Bulger's leave.#