Johanna Faust, a mixed race Jew, prefers to publish pseudonymously. She is committed: first, to preventing war, ecological disaster, and nuclear apocalypse; last to not only fighting for personal privacy & the freedom of information, but, by representing herself as a soldier in that fight, to exhorting others to do the same. She is a poet, always. All these efforts find representation here: "ah, Mephistophelis" is so named after the last line of Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, whose heretical success flouted the censor for a time. 













































































































































          

        

          

        










Some Important Questions Not Being Asked




























Recently a colleague posed an interesting question, above, on Twitter.




Thinking I would jot down a few answers, and found myself typing furiously for quite a long time.  Very interesting.  My answer to his question is below.  Leave your own in the comments, or follow and reply on Twitter.







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Questions numbered for ease of reference and discussion only.  To ensure that their order is immaterial, the questions have been submitted to a professional randomization service.







  


      




    

  1. Why is health care in America so royally fucked up — doesn’t anyone realize people are dying? 
    2. 

  2. Why is there war? 
    3. 

  3. Why isn’t housing food and medical provided as a baseline to all even though it would be way less expensive to do so probably than prisons, and certainly less expensive than the military industrial complex? 
    4. 

  4. Why are people still monogamous? 
    5. 

  5. Why do the teachers torture kids? 
    6. 

  6. Why don’t we force rich people to spend a month being homeless? 
    7. 

  7. Why don’t we do away with bloated parasitic middlemen like the academic publishing houses or the record companies? 
    8. 

  8. Why are podcasts treated as if they are not MP3s? 
    9. 

  9. What is the relationship between the many worlds (Copenhagen) hypothesis and dark matter? 
    10. 

  10. Why the fuck aren’t we searching the skies with all the manpower we have for objects on a collision course with us? 
    11. 

  11. Why is the Catholic Church still around, priests still trusted alone with children, given its crimes? 
    12. 

  12. Why are people still using pesticides? 
    13. 

  13. How do you have sex intermediated by a computer, anyway? 
    14. 

  14. How do I tell the climate deniers that they have been bamboozled like the brownshirts? 
    15. 

  15. Why are people so upset about Iran getting nuclear weapons even though it clearly is not enriching to that extent and never has been (so far), but hardly a peep when one of the most autocratic and bloodthirsty, primitive regimes, Saudi Arabia, is obviously seeking nuclear weapons capability, and so far has been completely unwilling to be transparent about its activities? 
    16. 

  16. Why do people insist on saying they are monogamous even in the face of evidence that makes it obvious that they are not? 
    17. 

  17. How do we address climate change whether our leaders want to or not? 
    18. 

  18. Why don’t we scrub the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and methane? 
    19. 

  19. Why is there inequality? 
    20. 

  20. Why do people allow themselves – choose – to believe what they know are lies if told by a love object? 
    21. 

  21. Why don't people just check the sources on what they read and decide whether something is fake news for themselves? 
    22. 

  22. Isn't Fukushima much much more radioactive than it was expected to be? 
    23. 

  23. How do we stop or slow the extiction of species, particularly insects? 
    24. 

  24. Why don’t we force everyone to deal with the actual science and prove to themselves beyond the shadow of a doubt that climate change is real, stop arguing about who is responsible, and get to fucking fixing it before we go extinct? 
    25. 

  25. Why are there bullies in the schoolyard? 
    26. 

  26. Why aren't people scared shitless? 
    27. 

  27. Has anyone trained a computer as one would a child? 
    28. 

  28. Why don’t we teach all sciences openly without regard for guilds or shibboleths or copyright so human beings can have the maximum benefit of the advancement of their peers? 
    29. 

  29. Does anyone remember that it was Michael Flynn who, after 9/11, went around scaring the bejesus out of members of Congress about the threat posed by anthrax? 
    30. 

  30. Does anyone remember Operation Endgame, back in 2003, that scheduled 2012 to 2020 for the ‘removal of all removable aliens’? 
    31. 

  31. How do we offset all the unemployment that will (really soon now) be caused by robots, AI, and automation? 
    32. 

  32. Why do we vote for personalities instead of on the issues? 
    33. 

  33. Why do we think unemployment is a bad thing, instead of being grateful for — and awarded with — the time to pursue our ideas? 
    34. 

  34. Why is negative conditioning even used? 
    35. 

  35. Why don't we have vat grown meat? 
    36. 

  36. Why wasn’t there more of an inquiry into the deaths of Ilya Zhitomirskiy, Aaron Schwartz, or Josh Greenberg ? 
    37. 

  37. If there was no Russian Collusion, then what was going on that they were being so secretive about? 
    38. 

  38. Why don’t we have direct elections already? 
    39. 

  39. Why are the powers that be obsessed with surveillance and torture and ads even though trust and rewards and true fair honest search would net them more actual profits than the few clicks they get? 
    40. 

  40. Does anybody remember those detention centers built under George W. Bush, that were for large influxes of immigrants or ‘any other purpose’? 
    41. 

  41. Why is online media treated as if it is not downloadable? 
    42. 

  42. Why doesn't society want to unlock the potential inherent in every human? 
    43. 

  43. Why do people still think power is sexy even though if you force someone to love you you will never know if they would have loved you anyway and you will have an inconsolable hungry loneliness ever seeking solace and ever concealing the fact of its seeking? 
    44. 

  44. Why do we put up with bullshit? 
    45. 

  45. Why do people choose to be in denial, even over evidence right in front of them? 
    46. 

  46. Why do people want to trust their news sources blindly?
    47. 

  47. Why do we let society, particularly technology, lull us into comfortable ignorant isolated paralysis when what we need instead is encouragement at practicing, learning, and doing things – and doing them together – instead of letting them be done for us until we are utterly dependent? Isn't that a dangerous thing for us as a species?
    48. 







    










Randomization service provided by Random.org.





















Be seeing you.











put here for your consideration by



on this









































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