On the Beauty of Repetition (?)

[Carrol Cox]

I'll be gone for a week; State Farm is having a workshop on "Storage"
(of data) in Orlando, and Jan is going. Since I have a close friend
there, I thought I'd go along. But reading posts by Daniel D, Steve P,
et al on the single-minded pursuit of y & me by certain posters reminded
me of a 50 year old item from the New Yorker, in an article on John
Cage. Cage had given a concert in Carnegie Hall in which he and his
partner played one bar from Brahms 800 times. Cage's comment was
something like "After the 50th repetition, the audience realized we were
serious." There can be an artistic beauty in repetition raised to a
certain height of unbelievability. 

See you all in a week.

Carrol

P.S. I recognize the fragility of the (pseudo?) principle, "The enemy of
my enemy is my friend," but I wonder about the related principles which
some on the list seem to cling to doggedly, "The non-enemy of my enemmy
is my enemy" or "The friend of my enemy is my enemy." How many deaths of
Serbians, Koreans, Iraqi, Afghanistani, Muslim Philippinos, Palestinians
must we celebrate to qualify as acceptable  human beings? Also: is a
nasty person who lacks the capacity to harm "us" still an enemy, and one
who must be pursued to his/her/their ultimate destruction?

P.S.2: I still don't understand in the least how it makes any difference
whatsoever whether a u.s. citizen "supports" or "opposes" this or that
foreign tyrant. Probably there is some other motive, but the motive that
appears on the surface is the desire to feel warm and cozy in one's
moral superiority to the world. That would explain the rantings against
Chomsky's failure to aid in that coziness.