The apple of discord in Richard Powers' 'The Overstory'

I just finished reading The Overstory, the new novel about trees by Richard Powers. I'm a big fan of Powers' novels; ever since I read The Gold Bug Variations I've been following him. His new one is one of his best.

I was surprised, on page 162 to see a reference to the apple of discord:

Here's the thing about an apple: It sticks in the throat. It's a package deal: Lust and understanding. Immortality and death. Sweet pulp with cyanide seeds. It's a bang on the head which births up whole sciences. A golden delicious discord, the kind of gift chucked into a wedding feast that leads to endless war. It's the fruit that keeps the gods alive. The first, worst crime, but fortunate windfall. Blessed be the time that apple taken was. 

That's Powers for you: Isaac Newton, the goddess Eris and more, all in one short paragraph.

Lost Atlantis found — In Oui magazine!

Oui magazine, a men's magazine in the U.S. published for awhile by Playboy, featured several Robert Anton Wilson articles, including "Atlantis: 20,000 Theories Under the Sea" by RAW, which ran in the January 1977 issue.

Martin Wagner has now made this article available for everyone to read, and note that it's yet another article that is not available at rawilsonfans.org.

Daisy Campbell adds tour dates

Daisy Eris Campbell has added some new London dates (July 11-14) to her "Pigspurt's Daughter" solo tour. According to her new email, the performances feature "*daemonic goading* *Cathars* *JAMs* *gastromantical invasion* and *ripped off Ken Campbell routines*"

Current tour dates (more to be added)

June 15th, 7.30pm - Ebenezer Presents, Aller, Somerset
June 23rd, 7.30pm - Kunst Gallery, Belper, Derbyshire
July 11th - 14th, 7.30pm - Hampstead Theatre, London
August 31st, 7pm - The British Library, London
September 9th, 5pm - The Hub, Leeds

More information here on tickets, etc.

Full Catch 23 lineup listed

The flyer I've posted here is the full lineup for the 14-hour Catch 23 festival on July 7 in Sheffield in the United Kingdom.  Ticket information here. 

More RAW on the Internet

Another interesting discovery from Martin Wagner: You can search for "Robert Anton Wilson" at Independent Voices ("An Open Access Collection of an Alternative Press) and come up with a lot of RAW material. It will be useful, sometime, to see what doesn't overlap with http://rawilsonfans.org/, and to add to the links there. Includes stuff from Berkeley Barb, The Realist, City Miner and more. Thanks, Martin!

'Simon Moon" writes in!

Martin Wagner, still hard at work in Austria, has put up a new page which has the text for many letters to the Playboy magazine forum that were apparently written by Robert Anton Wilson, under various pseudonyms. Martin notes that in Cosmic Trigger 3, RAW wrote, "Mostly, in the Playboy Forum, we followed the ACLU’s positions, but often we pushed a bit further and sneaked in some anarcho-pacifist propaganda – never in Playboy’s voice, of course, but as the voice of a reader."

The "Playboy" cover, above, is from the issue that features a letter to the editor from "Simon Moon" of Chicago, Ill., explaining the difference between (1) Legitimate laws that protect people, (2) Laws from the "one half of one percent" meant to rig the system and (3) Laws punishing victimless crimes. The image is for the magazine in which Mr. Moon's letter appeared.

A meeting of two authors RAW admired

Arthur C. Clarke in 1965 (Creative Commons photo)

An anecdote from Michael Moorcock about his friend Arthur C. Clarke:

Many years after our first meeting I gave a party where I introduced Arthur to William Burroughs, the Beat author of Naked Lunch. No one expected them to have a lot in common, but they spent the next few hours together, sipping orange juice, occasionally asking for the music to be turned down because it was spoiling their conversation.

Lots of other good stories in the piece, available here. 

Hat tip. Supergee.

Bonus: Michael Moorcock on Ray Bradbury. 

Scott Alexander on basic income vs.a guaranteed job

Recently, a number of Democratic politicians have been talking about a government program to guarantee that everyone will have a job.

At the Slate Star Codex blog, Scott Alexander discusses a basic income guarantee vs. a jobs guarantee, and argues that basic income seems to be a much better idea.  It's a long post, and you should read all of it, but here is just a little bit:

I have a friend who was stuck on a dead-end career path. His job paid a decent amount, he just didn’t really like where it was going. So he saved up enough money to live on for a year, spent a year teaching himself coding, applied to a programming job, got it, and felt a lot more comfortable with his financial situation.

And I had a patient in a similar situation. Hated her job, really wanted to leave it, didn’t have enough skills to get anything else. So she went to night school, and – she found she couldn’t do it. After working 8 to 6 every day, her ability to go straight from a long day’s work to a long night’s studying just wasn’t in the cards. And her income didn’t give her the same opportunity to save up some money and take a year off. So she gave up and she still works at the job she hates. The end.

Basic income would give everyone who wants to work the same opportunity as my friend – the ability to take a year off, cultivate yourself, learn stuff, go to school, build your resume – without it being a financial disaster.

Basic jobs would leave everyone in the same position as my patient – forced to work 40+ hours a week, commute however many hours a week, good luck finding time to earn yourself a ticket out of that lifestyle while still staying sane.

I think Scott makes a pretty good case.

Jesse Walker discusses basic income

Jesse Walker (Facebook photo)

An article on the basic income guarantee, an idea that intrigued Robert Anton Wilson:

"The Indestructible Idea of the Basic Income," was published in July 2017 in "Reason" magazine by Jesse Walker; Jesse has just learned that his piece is up for a Southern California Journalism Award, in the National Political/Government Reporting category.

This part of the article sounds like a description of Robert Anton Wilson: "There is a current of thought that's deeply skeptical of both the statist forms of socialism and the monopolistic forms of capitalism, and which often fixates on quirky policy ideas—George's land tax, Douglas' monetary scheme—that aim to tame concentrated economic power without concentrating power in the government instead. The basic income fits snugly in that tradition, especially when the payments are presented not as a form of relief but as dividends to the owners of society's resources." (He's referring to Henry George, the land tax advocate, and C.H. Douglas, advocate of a "national dividend.")

Jesse also talks about Milton Friedman's negative income tax. For RAW's interest in all of these ideas, see his essay "Left and Right: A Non-Euclidean Perspective," reprinted in Email to the Universe.

There's also this reference in Jesse's article about a guy who influenced RAW's own thinking: "When the LSD evangelist Timothy Leary ran for governor of California in 1969, he declared that the state 'should be run like a successful business enterprise. Instead of extorting taxes from the citizens a well-run state should return a profit. Anyone smart enough to live in California should be paid a dividend'." Leary's idea may sound far out, but Alaska has a form of it, as Walker explains.

The Philip Jose Farmer story Jesse references briefly in his piece is "Rider of the Purple Wage," which also references James Joyce and won a Hugo Award. It's one of my favorite stories; Farmer and RAW were on good terms and liked each other's work. Jesse often writes about basic income for "Reason," but this may be the definitive piece. 

(I blogged briefly about the article in an earlier post; re-reading Jesse's piece convinced me it deserved a longer take.)

Thursday links [UPDATED]

Latest Daisy Eris Campbell show going well.  See also the reviews from others that Daisy retweeted.

Here are current official tour dates for her shows (now renamed "Pigspurt's Daughter"):

June 15th, 7.30pm - Ebenezer Presents, Aller, Somerset.
June 23rd, 7.30pm - Kunst Gallery, Belper, Derbyshire.
August 31st, 7.30pm - The British Library, London.
September 9th, 5pm - The Hub, Leeds.

Liverpool dates and further London dates to be announced soon.

Sale on Steve "Fly Agaric" Pratt's discography. 

More "war on some drugs" news. Jacob Sullum does great work, please pay attention to him.

New wiki for Ada Palmer's "Terra Ignota" series. 

Free book on Buddhism. 

A work of art I like

I've seen other eye-in-pyramid images before, of course, but I thought this work of art, Tweeted out by Chris Kalis, was particularly beautiful, so I asked about it.

"Its a book cover for ALCHEMY: THE GREAT WORK by Cherry Gilchrist (Weiser Books)," Kalis explained. The artist is Graham Lester.

Kalis, by the way , is an interesting musician, filmmaker and graphic designer whom I follow in Twitter. I like his synth music band, Chandliers. More on the Chandeliers and the band's interest in RAW and Discordianism.  Chandeliers are available on Spotify and Freegal Music, among other places.

More on RAW social media

Since my posting the other day about "Robert Anton Wilson fans who try to be open and thoughtful as a rule" it has been called to my attention that there are other RAW groups on Facebook which also try to offer a quality experience.

@skelethon23 on Twitter wrote to me, "FYI there's another RAW group on Facebook we (I) created called Robert Anton Wilson Legacy, got fed up with all the extreme political posting, it's a good group, if you're interested, or haven't heard of it already, then there's :Keep The Ravioli in Orbit" and another one called "Robert Anton Wilson Fan Club" and Robert Anton Wilson Group" obviously.  here's the link to the legacy group if you're interested ..." I was and I joined. Link here. 

There's also a "Robert Anton Wilson Discussion Group" on Facebook.

I had followed @skelethon23 for awhile on Twitter. "My other accounts here include  @GathererOfData, @Lokimap, @GaianNavigator, @EldritchCleaver, and @ChoiceOfParadoxthis is a kind of fluff-oriented one, most of them are (i have more) anyway cheers!" @skelethon23 reports.

I've long been a member of "Robert Anton Wilson Fans" and "Discordian Libertarians" on Facebook. (The former was founded by Dan Clore, while the latter was established by Jake Shannon.) I've now joined "Robert Anton Wilson fans who try to be open and thoughtful as a rule" and "Robert Anton Wilson Legacy." To join the latter two, you'll have to answer a couple of questions.

If you are on Twitter, follow @RAWilson23, maintained by Bobby Campbell, and go from there. I hesitate to list more accounts, for fear of the folks I'd leave out. I am @jacksontom.

I actually spend more time on Twitter than on Facebook, and I follow many RAW-related Twitter accounts. But please understand that the time I spend on social media is limited. If you put up a really brilliant posting and I missed it, please do not take it personally.

Bobby Campbell announces new art show

Artist, writer and comic book publisher Bobby Campbell has announced a new art show for 2018, available exclusively in only two events, one in the U.S. and one in the United Kingdom.

Bobby has done new illustrations for the new editions of Robert Anton Wilson's three "Historical Iluminatus" books, The Earth Will Shake, The Widow's Son and Nature's God. That art will be displayed in an art show, "Towards the One," to be exhibited July 7-8 at Catch 23, and July 27-29 at the Confluence science fiction convention in Pittsburgh. The books should be out soon from Hilaritas Press, the publishing imprint of the Robert Anton Wilson Trust. 

The second wave of talent for Catch 23 has just been announced; it includes Greg Wilson and Daisy Eris Campbell. Meanwhile, other RAW programming is planned at Confluence; see the latest update.