May 2nd, 2007 | Excerpts, Science & Natural History
1935, Whole
Since the Unitary Theory explains the structure of the entire Cosmos, from bottom to top, using only the sane rational methods employed by a mechanic in a machine shop, why debase our reason by attempting to explain cosmic construction by mystic flubdub? Suppose we did not understand terrestrial mechanics, but did perfectly comprehend all the outside Cosmos. Would it no then be absurd to assume our earth mechanics were unique, contrary to all outside phenomena, a mushy mystic miasma?
Well, then, in reverse, why guess idiotically about the Outside when we know the Inside? Should it not be all alike? A mathematician has no doubt about the universality of mathematics. But the mystic physicist, who sees it all spread out at his feet, in his eyes and hands, dreams that a lunatic eddingsteinian bedlam of erratic disorder prevails beyond our Sun, tho at the same time he demands that his light come straight thru all the grotesqueries of curveting “empty space,” ether with its “permanent waves,” parallel lines which criss-cross at infinity, reflect and return in reversed parallel, bricks made from buildings, light traveling faster than its own subconstituent units like a train running faster than its diner’s fans thru space; colors with equal speeds because Algol’s winks reach us, at our great distance, as gray in stead of prismatic; gravitation (which “can’t be seen and therefore can’t exist”), but a fairy tale scene shifter in the farce called Regional Geometry (tho a corkscrew on earth shows us how gravity really works); “space eating mass,” the Universe is “running down, expanding and exploding;” space has from four to fifty odd extra (fairy tale) dimensions beyond geometry’s limit of three–length, breadth, depth; gravity nonchalantly and capriciously rolls down warps, ruts and tilting bowling alleys of an uncurvable nothingness, dubbed “curved space,” along its “easiest way,” like a wanton scornful of interfering reactions.
And many other equally wild lunacies, such as the skeery mysteries of the “awful depths” of “empty space” (which should be equally scared of the “awful distant us”); “vast distant nebulae,” fleeing in panic from the ever fixed centric Man-Devil (sizzling thru space at 23 miles per second), at speeds causing light to blush, with a red faced spectrum; tho their light reaches us–they claim–in regular schedule time. Mass spends velocity as a spendthrift spends money–the faster it goes the “shorter” it becomes. All the above is contrary to fact. Nightmares of Mystic Mental Cholic. And if you will only believe all the foregoing, “they will tell you some more.” Allright. Swallow this:
Their pet mascot, Man’s all-cosmic champion light unit, is the sole unique Outlaw and Gangster, privileged to break the universal Cosmic Law of Action and Reaction, of Cause and Effect, of all-impartial Orderliness. It reflects and refracts, to be sure; but only because it desires to do so of its own free will. But it arrogantly refuses to accept velocity reactions from other mass as all other mass units are compelled to do. Man’s light defies the Cosmos–UNLESS–the Mysticks are only Mistooks and you can safely bet your last dollar against them on almost any bet they offer. And they are our leaders? Nerts!
These Mystic Vaudevillians for twenty years have been putting over the greatest Farce in Science. It is time “they got a laugh.” One Great World Roar! Surely the audience has not taken these showmen seriously! They are just having a lot of fun at our expense and, meanwhile, gathering in huge royalties while spoofing us. Readers! Is it not about time we “cleaned house” in Science and swept these goofy mystics out into the backyard? Have you not enough plain common-sense to take their measure, to see what they really are? Well, turn on the Hose of Reason, swab the Ground Floor of Science, draing them down the Sewer to Oblivion, to sink beneath the Sea of Sane Thought–the Ocean of Truth.
An orthod-ox will not believe anything is what it is unless it happens to be just what “he was told” he “must believe” it to be. All of which boils down to the alleged definition by a precocious English child: “Faith is believing what you know is not so.”
Real scientists never believe even a demonstrated fact fanatically. They are ever ready to repair a tentative acceptance to harmonize with later evidence. Fanaticism cannot flourish on Truth, it must feed on Fantasy, where it takes a real effort to “believe” and so should earn a reward for concession and share in its emoluments. It is a “racket.” The truth seeker is never a fanatic. He has no fantasies to be fanatic about So he is serene and humane, civilized. He does not strive to force his opinions on others, since he may soon change them himself. “Live and let live” is his motto. In short, he is “for man.”
“Vast distant stars,” “remote depths of space” and “gigantic nebulae” are but relativities. They exist evertywhere, up and down, around and within us. They are but points of view and everything which ever happens within, to or from, them occurs in replica in all planes of size. Our Home Cosmic Circus is a complete and every bit as good as those distant awful mygodhowwonderful ones. If you feel awed be honest enough to realize you but feel ignorant. Awe means only, “aw! I don’t understand.” Eliminate awe as you would dust from a telescope’s lens or, self-blinded you will never see.
****
The Cosmos is one infinite theatre, with stages in every plane of size, each stage ever presenting the same play, plot and scenes. The play is continuous, eternal. The actors come and go. Each actor thinks himself a permanent star, but he is only a temporary “super” in a “one-night” stand. Ho, Hum!
****
Now read the Entire Cosmic Play–in the Rational Non-Mystical Cosmos. One act, one actor, one trick–reaction. Duplicated infinetly, endlessly.
GEORGE F. GILLETTE.
New York City (1935).
(From an addendum to Orthod Oxen of Science: Synoptic conspectus of author’s Unitary Theory. Published by George F. Gillette, Author of Unity of Universe, Cycle of Power, Rational Non-Mystical Cosmos at the Blackstone Publishers, New York City, 1936.)
The title page continues:
Utterly new and different basis for cosmology, replacing present orthodoxenic fairy tales.
Bristling with new axioms (originated by Unitary Theory) as basic as Newton’s. The Rational Cosmos also originated scores of new axioms.
Gillette solves basic cosmic secrets: Re-creation, electricity, heat, light, ether, inertia, gravitation, polarity, conductivity, radiation, color, perpetual motion, internal structure of mass, complete unification of diversity in terms of a single principle, reaction — single law of Nature, and many others.
COSMICS — ALLPLANE PHYSICS
A RATIONAL SYSTEM OF THE COSMOS IN ITS ENTIRETY
NO “HI-DE-HI” MATHEMATICS
And the verso:
Copyrighted by G. F. Gillette
Boston, 1929
New York, 1930
New York, 1933
New York, 1936
Copyright waived for foreign (Non-English) languages.
I looked to see if this work had been renewed. It’s not in the renewal database, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t. This is a book, that if I was into stealing books from the library, I would have. The copy I’m working from was presented to the library by the author and has his hand-written corrections in it. The guy’s psychoceramic, but in an occasionally bon-mot way. “Mystic physicist” sounds like a great blog name, for instance, and “mushy mystic miasma” just seems to trip from the tongue. And I, personally, will try to use “Nerts!” at least once a day.
April 19th, 2007 | Excerpts
1652, DP, Poetry, Whole
Doctors lay by your Irksome Books
And all ye Petty-Fogging Rookes
Leave Quacking; and Enucleate
The vertues of our Chocolate.
Let th’ Universall Medicine
(Made up of Dead-mens Bones and Skin,)
Be henceforth Illegitimate,
And yeild to Soveraigne-Chocolate.
Let Bawdy-Baths be us’d no more;
Nor Smoaky-Stoves but by the whore
Of Babilon: since Happy-Fate
Hath Blessed us with Chocolate.
Let old Punctæus Greaze his shooes
With his Mock-Balsome: and Abuse
No more the World: But Meditate
The Excellence of Chocolate.
Let Doctor Trigg (who so Excells)
No longer Trudge to Westwood-Wells:
For though that water Expurgate,
’Tis but the Dreggs of Chocolate.
Let all the Paracelsian Crew
Who can Extract Christian from Jew;
Or out of Monarchy, A State,
Breake àll their Stills for Chocolate.
Tell us no more of Weapon-Salve,
But rather Doome us to a Grave:
For sure our wounds will Ulcerate,
Unlesse they’re wash’d with Chocolate.
The Thriving Saint, who will not come
Within a Sack-Shop’s Bowzing-Roome
(His Spirit to Exhilerate)
Drinkes Bowles (at home) of Chocolate.
His Spouse when she (Brimfull of Sense)
Doth want her due Benevolence,
And Babes of Grace would Propagate,
Is alwayes Sipping Chocolate.
The Roaring-Crew of Gallant-Ones
Whose Marrow Rotts within their Bones:
Their Bodyes quickly Regulate,
If once but Sous’d in Chocolate.
Young Heires that have more Land then Wit,
When once they doe but Tast of it,
Will rather spend their whole Estate,
Then weaned be from Chonolate.
The Nut-Browne-Lasses of the Land
Whom Nature vayl’d in Face and Hand,
Are quickly Beauties of High-Rate,
By one small Draught of Chocolate.
Besides, it saves the Moneys lost
Each day in Patches, which did cost
Them deare, untill of Late
They found this Heavenly Chocolate.
Nor need the Women longer grieve
Who spend their Oyle, yet not conceive,
For ’tis a Helpe-Immediate,
If such but Lick of Chocolate.
Consumptions too (be well assur’d)
Are no lesse soone then soundly cur’d:
(Excepting such as doe Relate
Unto the Purse) by Chocolate.
Nay more: It’s vertue is so much,
That if a Lady get a Touch,
Her griefe it will Extenuate,
If she but smell of Chocolate.
The Feeble-Man, whom Nature Tyes
To doe his Mistresse’s Drudgeries;
O how it will his minde Elate,
If shee allow him Chocolate!
’Twill make Old women Young and Fresh;
Create New-Motions of the Flesh,
And cause them long for you know what,
If they but Tast of Chocolate.
There’s ne’re a Common Counsell-Man,
Whose Life would Reach unto a Span,
Should he not Well-Affect the State,
And First and Last Drinke Chocolate.
Nor e’re a Citizen’s Chast wife,
That ever shall prolong her Life,
(Whilst open stands Her Posterne-Gate)
Unlesse she drinke of Chocolate.
Nor dost the Levite any Harme,
It keepeth his Devotion warme,
And eke the Hayre upon his Pate,
So long as he drinkes Chocolate.
Both High and Low, both Rich and Poore
My Lord, my Lady, and his —-
With all the Folkes at Billingsgate,
Bow, Bow your Hamms to Chocolate.
By Don Diego de Vadesforte, a.k.a. Capt. James Wadsworth, in Chocolate: or, An Indian Drinke.
March 5th, 2007 | Excerpts
1880, DP, Whole
Jervas, who affected to be a Free-thinker, was one day talking very irreverently of the Bible. Dr. Arbuthnot maintained to him that he was not only a speculative, but a practical believer. Jervas denied it. Arbuthnot said that he would prove it: “You strictly observe the second commandment;” said the Doctor, “for in your pictures you ‘make not the likeness of anything that is in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth’”!
From Shearjashub Spooner: Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, Volume 2. 1880.
January 15th, 2007 | Excerpts
1906, DP, Whole
Gerald Stanley Lee
I have an old friend who lives just around the corner from one of the main lines of travel in New England, and whenever I am passing near by and the railroads let me, I drop in on him awhile and quarrel about art. It’s a good old-fashioned comfortable, disorderly conversation we have generally, the kind people used to have more than they do now–sketchy and not too wise–the kind that makes one think of things one wishes one had said, afterward.
We always drift a little at first, as if of course we could talk about other things if we wanted to, but we both know, and know every time, that in a few minutes we shall be deep in a discussion of the Things That Are Beautiful and the Things That Are Not.
Brim thinks that I have picked out more things to be beautiful than I have a right to, or than any man has, and he is trying to put a stop to it. He thinks that there are enough beautiful things in this world that have been beautiful a long while, without having people–well, people like me, for instance, poking blindly around among all these modern brand-new things hoping that in spite of appearances there is something one can do with them that will make them beautiful enough to go with the rest. I’m afraid Brim gets a little personal in talking with me at times and I might as well say that, while disagreeing in a conversation with Brim does not lead to calling names it does seem to lead logically to one’s going away, and trying to find afterwards, some thing that is the matter with him.
“The trouble with you, my dear Brim, is,” I say (on paper, afterwards, as the train speeds away), “that you have a false-classic or Stucco-Greek mind. The Greeks, the real Greeks, would have liked all these things–trolley cars, cables, locomotives,–seen the beautiful in them, if they had to do their living with them every day, the way we do. You would say you were more Greek than I am, but when one thinks of it, you are just going around liking the things the Greeks liked 3000 years ago, and I am around liking the things a Greek would like now, that is, as well as I can. I don’t flatter myself I begin to enjoy the wireless telegraph to-day the way Plato would if he had the chance, and Alcibiades in an automobile would get a great deal more out of it, I suspect, than anyone I have seen in one, so far; and I suspect that if Socrates could take Bliss Carman and, say, William Watson around with him on a tour of the General Electric Works in Schenectady they wouldn’t either of them write sonnets about anything else for the rest of their natural lives.”
I can only speak for one and I do not begin to see the poetry in the machines that a Greek would see, as yet.
But I have seen enough.
I have seen engineers go by, pounding on this planet, making it small enough, welding the nations together before my eyes.
I have seen inventors, still men by lamps at midnight with a whirl of visions, with a whirl of thoughts, putting in new drivewheels on the world.
I have seen (in Schenectady,) all those men–the five thousand of them–the grime on their faces and the great caldrons of melted railroad swinging above their heads. I have stood and watched them there with lightning and with flame hammering out the wills of cities, putting in the underpinnings of nations, and it seemed to me me that Bliss Carman and William Watson would not be ashamed of them … brother-artists every one … in the glory … in the dark … Vulcan-Tennysons, blacksmiths to a planet, with dredges, skyscrapers, steam shovels and wireless telegraphs, hewing away on the heavens and the earth.
I think of Lee’s writing like it’s “Difficult Music” — it has flashes of brilliance and often seems profound, but then something happens and I just don’t get it.
I am rather fond of “you are just going around liking the things the Greeks liked 3000 years ago” however.
October 17th, 2006 | Excerpts
1887, DP, October, Poetry, Whole
The teacher a lesson he taught;
The preacher a lesson he praught;
The stealer, he stole;
The healer, he hole;
And the screecher, he awfully scraught.
The long-winded speaker, he spoke;
The poor office seeker, he soke;
The runner, he ran;
The dunner, he dan;
And the shrieker, he horribly shroke.
The flyer to Canada flew;
The buyer, on credit he bew;
The doer, he did;
The suer, he sid;
And the liar (a fisherman) lew.
The writer, this nonsense he wrote;
The fighter (an editor) fote;
The swimmer, he swam;
The skimmer, he skam;
And the biter was hungry and bote.
H. C. Dodge, reported in Buchanan’s Journal of Man, October 1887
October 13th, 2006 | Excerpts
1844, DP, February, Poetry, Whole
BY HARRY FRANCO.
‘The sea, the sea, the o—pen sea, the blue, the fresh;’ but here we halt;
Mr. Cornwall knew very little about the sea, or he would have written SALT.
‘The whales they whistled, the porpoise rolled,
And the dolphins bared their backs of gold;’
Worse and worse; more blunders than words, and such a jumble!
Whales spout, but never whistle; dolphins’ backs are silver; and porpoises never roll, but tumble.
‘It plays with the clouds, it mocks the skies,
And like a cradled creature lies,’ and squalls,
He should have added; but to avoid brawls
With the poet’s friends I’ll quote no more; but entre nous,
Those who write correctly about the sea are exceeding few.
Young Dana with us, and Marryat over the water,
Are all the writers that I know of, who appear to have brought a
Discerning eye to bear on that peculiar state of existence,
An ocean life, which looks so romantic at a distance.
To succeed where every body else fails, would be an uncommon glory,
While to fail would be no disgrace; so I am resolved to try my hand upon a sea-story.
In naming sea-authors, I omitted Cooper, Chamier, Sue, and many others,
Because they appear to have gone to sea without asking leave of their mothers:
For those good ladies never could have consented that their boys should dwell on
An element that Nature never fitted them to excel on.
Their descriptions are so fine, and their tars so exceedingly flowery,
They appear to have gathered their ideas from some naval spectacle at the ‘Bowery;’
And in fact I have serious doubts whether either of them ever saw blue water,
Or ever had the felicity of saluting the ‘gunner’s daughter.’
Continue reading →
September 4th, 2006 | Excerpts
1865, DP, Whole
Dr. Aldrich, of convivial memory, said there were five reasons for drinking:–
“Good wine, a friend, or being dry,
Or lest you should be by and by,
Or any other reason why.”
Number MCXVII in The Jest Book by Mark Lemon. Only DXCIV to go…
September 3rd, 2006 | Excerpts
1865, DP, Poetry, Whole
To make this condiment your poet begs
The pounded yellow of two hard boiled eggs;
Two boiled potatoes, passed through kitchen-sieve,
Smoothness and softness to the salad give;
Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl,
And, half-suspected, animate the whole.
Of mordant mustard add a single spoon,
Distrust the condiment that bites too soon;
But deem it not, thou man of herbs, a fault,
To add a double quantity of salt.
And, lastly, o’er the flavored compound toss
A magic soup-spoon of anchovy sauce.
O green and glorious!–O herbaceous treat!
’Twould tempt the dying anchorite to eat;
Back to the world he’d turn his fleeting soul,
And plunge his fingers in the salad-bowl!
Serenely full, the epicure would say,
“Fate cannot harm me, I have dined to-day!”
More from The Jest Book, by Mark Lemon. He lost me at anchovy sauce.