The Declaration of Indigestion
On this Independence Day, 2008, we reprise this classic item from this day in history, three years ago...
Ghost Writer reports:
Yesterday, John Forbes Nash, Douglas Hofstadter, Henry David Thoreau, Raymond Smullyan, Publius X, Stephen Langton, Galileo Galilei, Moulton, Leonardo da Vinci, Gautama Siddhartha, Lao Tsu, and Socrates all met for Sunday Brunch at Shapiro's Deli.
After gorging themselves on Hot Pastrami and Dill Pickles for a marathon 13-hour food fest, they crafted and published this account of their conversations:
The Declaration of Indigestion
of the Thirteen Columnists
Incongruous, July 4, 2005
The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United Ingrates of Esoterica, Salut!
When in the multi-course food fights of humorous events, it becomes necessary for one clique to dissolve the political bands which have hot-linked them with another, and to assume among the powers of the snerk, the separate and equal station to which the odd Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of the Bloggers requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Salutation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Hosts are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain Functional Protocols, that among these are Keep-Alive, Autonomy and the Pursuit of Constraint Satisfaction. —That to secure these protocols, Governing Dynamics are instituted among Hosts, deriving their Just Affordances from the content of the Regulatory Architecture, —That whenever any Form of Dysfunctionality becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Compulsion of the Debuggers to reprogram or to pitch it, and to institute new Governing Dynamics, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its protocols in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Robustness and Functionality. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governing Dynamics long established should not be changed for light and capricious causes; and accordingly all experience has shown, that Internet Hosts are more disposed to suffer, while Stack Overflows are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the annoying Recursions to which they are resigned and accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Nefarious Object evinces a design to reduce them under Dissolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, it is their obsession and compulsion to analyze such Governing Dynamics, and to provide new Zone Alarms for their future security. —Such has been the patient sufferance of these Columnists; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Governing Dynamics. The history of the present Rules of Engagement is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these Ingrates. To prove this, let these Facts and Declarations be submitted to a candid and torporous world.
We have infused our Assent to Functional Protocols, the most robust and necessary for the public good.
We have bidden the System Designers of our Regulatory Architecture to craft filters of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till Validation should be obtained; and when so suspended, we solemnly pledge to attend to them until we finally get the damn things working right.
We have agreed to invent other Protocols for the accommodation of large forums of people, unless those people would prefer the Right of Obliviousness of the System Architecture, a right inestimable to them and formidable to the Learning Disabled only.
We have called together Protocol Design Teams at places diverse, convenient, and distant from the Wayback Archives of the public Search Engines, for the sole purpose of intriguing them into reliance upon our ingenuity.
We have dissolved Unrepresentative Precipitates repeatedly, for opposing with erratic capriciousness the solubility of our evasions on the rights of the people.
We have refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to suffer others to be capriciously deselected; whereby the System Architecture, incapable of Annihilation, has returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State of the System remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of evasion from without, and nefarious convulsions from within. Or not.
We have endeavoured to prevent the depopulation of these System States; for that purpose clearing away obstacles for the Naturalization of Strangers and Aliens; refusing to diss others who encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Ghettolands and Obscure Shtetls.
We have deconstructed the Mal-Administration of Justice, by recusing ourselves from Assent to Designated Outlaws for corrupting Judiciary powers.
We have made System Monitors independent of our druthers alone, for the tenure of their periodic log files, and the amount of payback for their labors.
We have erected a multitude of New Web Sites, and sent hither swarms of Embedded Plug-Ins, Animations, and Annoying Music to edutain our people, and to max out their available bandwidth.
Oops, mebbe that wasn't such a cool move on our part.
Are there any dill pickles left?
I'll have another cuppa cawfee.
Ghost Writer reports:
Yesterday, John Forbes Nash, Douglas Hofstadter, Henry David Thoreau, Raymond Smullyan, Publius X, Stephen Langton, Galileo Galilei, Moulton, Leonardo da Vinci, Gautama Siddhartha, Lao Tsu, and Socrates all met for Sunday Brunch at Shapiro's Deli.
After gorging themselves on Hot Pastrami and Dill Pickles for a marathon 13-hour food fest, they crafted and published this account of their conversations:
of the Thirteen Columnists
Incongruous, July 4, 2005
The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United Ingrates of Esoterica, Salut!
When in the multi-course food fights of humorous events, it becomes necessary for one clique to dissolve the political bands which have hot-linked them with another, and to assume among the powers of the snerk, the separate and equal station to which the odd Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of the Bloggers requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Salutation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Hosts are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain Functional Protocols, that among these are Keep-Alive, Autonomy and the Pursuit of Constraint Satisfaction. —That to secure these protocols, Governing Dynamics are instituted among Hosts, deriving their Just Affordances from the content of the Regulatory Architecture, —That whenever any Form of Dysfunctionality becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Compulsion of the Debuggers to reprogram or to pitch it, and to institute new Governing Dynamics, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its protocols in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Robustness and Functionality. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governing Dynamics long established should not be changed for light and capricious causes; and accordingly all experience has shown, that Internet Hosts are more disposed to suffer, while Stack Overflows are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the annoying Recursions to which they are resigned and accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Nefarious Object evinces a design to reduce them under Dissolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, it is their obsession and compulsion to analyze such Governing Dynamics, and to provide new Zone Alarms for their future security. —Such has been the patient sufferance of these Columnists; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Governing Dynamics. The history of the present Rules of Engagement is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these Ingrates. To prove this, let these Facts and Declarations be submitted to a candid and torporous world.
We have infused our Assent to Functional Protocols, the most robust and necessary for the public good.
We have bidden the System Designers of our Regulatory Architecture to craft filters of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till Validation should be obtained; and when so suspended, we solemnly pledge to attend to them until we finally get the damn things working right.
We have agreed to invent other Protocols for the accommodation of large forums of people, unless those people would prefer the Right of Obliviousness of the System Architecture, a right inestimable to them and formidable to the Learning Disabled only.
We have called together Protocol Design Teams at places diverse, convenient, and distant from the Wayback Archives of the public Search Engines, for the sole purpose of intriguing them into reliance upon our ingenuity.
We have dissolved Unrepresentative Precipitates repeatedly, for opposing with erratic capriciousness the solubility of our evasions on the rights of the people.
We have refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to suffer others to be capriciously deselected; whereby the System Architecture, incapable of Annihilation, has returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State of the System remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of evasion from without, and nefarious convulsions from within. Or not.
We have endeavoured to prevent the depopulation of these System States; for that purpose clearing away obstacles for the Naturalization of Strangers and Aliens; refusing to diss others who encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Ghettolands and Obscure Shtetls.
We have deconstructed the Mal-Administration of Justice, by recusing ourselves from Assent to Designated Outlaws for corrupting Judiciary powers.
We have made System Monitors independent of our druthers alone, for the tenure of their periodic log files, and the amount of payback for their labors.
We have erected a multitude of New Web Sites, and sent hither swarms of Embedded Plug-Ins, Animations, and Annoying Music to edutain our people, and to max out their available bandwidth.
Oops, mebbe that wasn't such a cool move on our part.
Are there any dill pickles left?
I'll have another cuppa cawfee.
CopySchlepp July 4, 2005 by the Maundering MuseNet Players. All Wrongs Reversed.
posted by Moulton | 2:11 AM
2 Comments:
That's such a gem, Moulton, your Declaration of Indigestion.
Thanks for reposting it and reminding me. It's well worth commemorating three years later.
And sorry if I often seem distracted with other issues or my own business.
In two months it will be the third anniversary of the inception of the International Digest Forum.
One thing has been on my mind repeatedly in the last months: while you've been largely absent from the IDF in the last year, my main antagonist, Kitty, who first showed up in the IDF two years ago while I was in Poland, posting that she would never participate in a forum which is hosted by me has been probably the most active participant in the IDF in the last months next to myself.
Go figure. I think this tells you something about the nature of online forums.
It tells you something about the dynamics of Lunatic Social Drama in the Age of Kauderwelsch.
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