Shorn Again Believers

Missouri Senator, Proud Co-sponsor of “The Protect Life Act” or “Dominate and Kill All the Women Act” | God Discussion

2012-01-23T15:46:00.000-08:00

Missouri Senator, Proud Co-sponsor of “The Protect Life Act” or “Dominate and Kill All the Women Act” | God Discussion

Studies challenge wisdom of GOP candidates' plans - Economy news

2011-10-30T12:55:00.000-07:00

Studies challenge wisdom of GOP candidates' plans - Economy news

Musical Saw

2011-09-12T09:21:00.000-07:00

experiment - can I link the musical saw video here?

Over Time - video puppetry

2011-09-11T10:06:00.000-07:00

Over Time by magicpuppet

Parable of the Party Affiliation - in a balloon...

2011-08-22T16:12:00.000-07:00

Thank you Mark D'Truth

A parable of Party Affiliation:

A woman in a hot air balloon realizes she is lost. Spotting a man in a boat below, she descends to lower altitude and shouts to him, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."

The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, "You're in a hot air balloon approximately 30 feet above a ground elevation of 2346 feet above sea level. You are at latitude 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north and longitude 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west."

She rolled her eyes and said, "You must be a Democrat."

"I am," replied the man. "How did you know?"

"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help to me."

The man smiled and responded, "You must be a Republican."
"I am," replied the balloonist. "How did you know?"

"Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you're going.
You've risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise that you have no idea how to keep, and you expect ME to solve your problem. You're in EXACTLY the same position you were in before we met, but somehow, now, it's MY fault."

Blake's "believer" is a doubter. Don't believe without experiment.

2011-08-01T04:11:00.000-07:00

Can you name three "great" Conservatives? Churchill could not. He named three great Liberals!

2011-07-30T12:36:00.000-07:00

The First of the royal edicts guaranteeing religious freedom was Unitarian.

2011-06-20T08:06:00.000-07:00

"A Unitarian, King John Sigismund of Transylvania -- now known as Romania -- pronounced the first edict of religious freedom in the year 1568. I traveled to Romania several years ago and stood in the church in Torda, where that proclamation was made. This was an almost unimaginable act in an age in which people were being burned at the stake for not getting their theology just right.
Francis David, King Sigismund's spiritual advisor, was the single greatest influence on the king's theological beliefs. After Sigismund's death, David lost favor and was finally arrested for his views. I made a pilgrimage to the town of Deva and walked up a long, dusty hill to the dungeon where he was imprisoned. It was actually a deep hole in the ground into which David was lowered, and there he sickened, and died. His famous words still live with us, though. He said simply, "You need not think alike to love alike." At the center of our faith is not belief, but love." -- Marilyn Sewell, in Huffpost

The type of UN-believer who despises vicious little gods

2011-05-25T07:44:00.000-07:00

I sat next to a Believer. After prodding, and only at the extremity of his relentless insistence, I revealed to him that I was an unrepentant sinner. Indeed, I certified that I was the very worst of the species: I was not only an atheist as to his god, but I positively despised such a god. If his god existed, it should be ashamed of itself and I would not forgive it. If there was a heaven, I would shake its golden dust from my sandals and take my place among the suffering sinners for my eternity.

But I smiled gently into his dismay. I invited him to add the greatest of all jewels to his crown, and "warn" me. I echoed St. Paul's assurance that a Believer has only to warn those who have fallen away, so as to achieve further elevation in the hierarchies of heaven.

"For your own assurance," I said, "Give me a warning". He looked startled.

"Warn me!" I said. "But be specific. Recall that I am a righteous man. I struggle to avoid false pride and hypocrisy, and I treat others as I would be treated. What outcome awaits me that a god worthy of worship has prepared for me?"

The Believer eagerly stepped up to the bait of self-aggrandizement, and warned me of eternal damnation. He assured me, apparently without a hint of the irony, that my destiny would be made unpleasant at the hands of a god willing to torture a righteous man for the sin of refusing to worship at the feet of a torturer.

I like Unions. I dream of 200 stars on the flag.

2011-04-04T10:43:00.000-07:00

There is a pendulum that swings between the fierce fight for independence, usually from the oppression of indifference, and the effort to find common ground and swell with being part of something bigger.

Sometimes the union is really not bigger, just a smaller pie for the parts while Tamerlane or a monopolist is made more imperial. That is a call for fraction, for freedom.

But there is a vector in history. We tend to look for each other and when we find each other we find comforts and amusements. Even with different instruments, we play the same songs. The vector leads to unity.

Now, after a million years of primates wandering over the cooling surfaces of this hot ball, the world really has become unified. Those who want to ignite fears of strangers, or to scape-goat a neighbor, have their own agendas, but their appeals are to a moot matter. The fact is, the world is unified.

The Founders decided to add a star to the flag for each State which joined the Union. The candy-stripes of course, give it away -- it is not a flag of war and conquest. Europe laughed at the party favor which was picked as the design for the American flag. In light of all things, in light of history and its direction, its irony, it is time to add stars.

We are Ibsen's Ghosts. Pitifully afraid of light.

2011-03-13T14:01:00.000-07:00

GHOSTS. Henrik Ibsen wrote in Act 2: "I almost think we're all of us Ghosts. ... It's not only what we have invited from our father and mother that walks in us. It's all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we can't get rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper, I seem to see Ghosts gliding between the lines. There must be Ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sand of the sea. And then we are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light."

Quote: Goethe - words have been exchanged, now take action!

2011-02-16T09:03:00.000-08:00

Der Worte sind genug gewechselt,
lasst mich auch endlich Taten sehn!

The words are exchanged,
now at last show me what you can do! (Goethe, Faust I)

List of Cook Books that are healthy FUN sensual

2011-02-06T15:20:00.000-08:00

OK start the list: [rougher than usual]

1. journalist Michael Pollan, (books by this author) born on Long Island, New York (1955). He's the author of best-selling books about food: The Botany of Desire (2001), The Omnivore's Dilemma (2006), In Defense of Food (2008), and Food Rules (2010). His nutrition philosophy is: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

Politics - not being disheartened

2011-02-04T14:49:00.000-08:00

""The absurdity of politics is not new." Robert Coover.

And Aristotle said it so gracefully, before being murdered by henchmen of his rivals. "Man is a Political Animal".

List of Assassins

2011-01-15T18:57:00.000-08:00

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.

The following is a list of some of the most famous assassinations and assassination attempts. It is not intended to be exhaustive.

Assassin(s)	Year (AD format)	Target	Result	Notes
Ehud	ca. 1200 BC	Moabite king Eglon	Killed	Stabbed to death in his throne room (Judges 3:12-30).
Arda Mulissi	681 BC	Assyrian king Sennacherib	Killed	Stabbed to death while at prayer in a temple, or possibly crushed under a winged bull colossus.^[1]
Jing Ke	227 BC	Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang	Survived	One of the earliest documented attempts.
A strongman hired by Zhang Liang	218 BC	Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang	Survived	Long-distance heavy hammer (30-kg) throwing; the origin of a Chinese idiom 誤中副車 ("mistakenly hit the escort carriage").
Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, and others	44 BC	Roman Dictator Julius Caesar	Killed	Resulted in Civil War and indirectly in the end of the Roman Republic
Fan Jiang, Zhang Da	221	military general of Shu Han Zhang Fei	Killed
Hashshashin	1192	Conrad of Montferrat	Killed
Pazzi Conspiracy	1478	Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici	See notes	Giuliano died, after being stabbed 19 times, but Lorenzo escaped.
Oda Nobunaga	1557	Sengoku period Oda Nobuyuki	Killed
Balthasar Gérard	1584	Dutch Stadtholder William the Silent	Killed	The first assassination carried out with a firearm.
Jacques Clément	1589	King Henry III of France	Killed	Religious-political antagonism.
Guy Fawkes	1605	King James I of England, Parliament of England	Survived	See the Gunpowder Plot.
François Ravaillac	1610	King Henry IV of France	Killed	Religious-political antagonism.
Army officers	1747	King Nader Shah	Killed	He was able to kill two of the assassins before dying.
Jacob Johan Anckarström	1792	King Gustav III of Sweden	Killed	The king was shot at a masquerade ball and died two weeks later from his wounds.
Charlotte Corday	1793	French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat	Killed	Later often seen as a patriotic act.
François-Joseph Carbon	1800	French Emperor, King of italy Napoleon I of France	Survived	Detonated an explosion by the roadside in an attempt to kill Bonaparte, which he narrowly missed. The attempt is referred to as the Plot of the Rue Saint-Nicaise.
John Bellingham	1812	UK Prime Minister Spencer Perceval	Killed	First and only U.K. Prime Minister to be assassinated.
Richard Lawrence	1835	US President Andrew Jackson	Survived	First attempt to kill a US President, Jan. 30. Both guns misfired.
Edward Oxford	1840	Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom	Survived	Oxford fired twice, but both bullets missed.
Unknown	1842	Former Missouri Governor Lilburn Boggs	Survived	Orrin Porter Rockwell, a close associate of the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, Jr., charged but acquitted of all charges.
János Libényi	1853	Austrian Emperor, King of Bohemia Franz Joseph I of Austria	Survived	Attacked with a dagger to the back of the neck. Survived due to the thick collar of his uniform.
John Wilkes Booth	1865	US President Abraham Lincoln	Killed	First assassination of a sitting United States President. See Assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
Patrick J. Whelan	1868	Canadian Member of Parliament Thomas D'Arcy McGee	Killed	Only Canadian victim of assassination at the federal level.
Charles J. Guiteau	1881	US President James Garfield	Killed	Died 80 days following the shooting. See James A. Garfield assassination.
Ignacy Hryniewiecki	1881	Tsar Alexander II of Russia	Killed	Assassination plot concluded with bombs.
Tsuda Sanzo	1891	Tsar Nicholas II of Russia	Survived	The Tsar was attacked with a sabre during a state visit to Japan.
Mirza Reza Kermani	1896	King Naser al-Din Shah Qajar	Killed	Ironically assassinated on the day of his fiftieth kingship ceremony.
Frederick Russell Burnham	1896	Mlimo, the Ndebele religious leader	Killed	Effectively ended the Second Matabele War.
Luigi Lucheni	1898	Empress Elisabeth of Austria	Killed	Lucheni attacked the Empress randomly on the street of Geneva, in a senseless act of violence. Elisabeth was stabbed in the heart once with a sharp needle file. Due to her extremely tight corset, she had no idea she has been wounded and collapsed suddenly two hours later due to slow internal hemorrhaging.
Gaetano Bresci	1900	King Umberto I of Italy	Killed
Leon Czolgosz	1901	US President William McKinley	Killed	See William McKinley assassination.
Eugen Schauman	1904	Governor-General of Finland Nikolai Ivanovich Bobrikov	Killed	Happens on day described in James Joyce's novel Ulysses, is briefly mentioned in the book
An Jung-geun	1909	Prime Minister of Japan Itoh Hirobumi	Killed
John Schrank	1912	former US President Theodore Roosevelt	Survived	Shot at campaign event; Roosevelt continued with his speech.
Alexandros Schinas	1913	King George I of Greece	Killed	Possible conspiracy.
Gavrilo Princip	1914	Austro-Hungarian Archduke Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria	Killed	Considered the start of World War I.
Raoul Villain	1914	French socialist leader Jean Jaurès	Killed	The assassin was tried and acquitted in 1919.
Fritz Joubert Duquesne	1916	Lord Kitchener, British Field Marshal and Secretary of State for War	Killed	Killed on the HMS Hampshire after the cruiser struck a mine; Duquesne falsely claimed to have sabotaged Hampshire.
Fanny Kaplan	1918	Russian communist leader Vladimir Lenin	Survived	Shot on factory meeting, Fanny Kaplan was captured and executed by Bolsheviks. Lenin died 6 years later due to unrelated causes, but within Russian pop culture, Kaplan is still widely considered to have killed him.
Unknown	1922	Michael Collins	Killed	Killed in an ambush firefight near the end of Irish Civil War.
Eligiusz Niewiadomski	1922	First Polish President Gabriel Narutowicz	Killed	Killed five days after his inauguration, while attending the opening of an art exhibit at the Zachęta Gallery in Warsaw.
Giuseppe Zangara	1933	Anton Cermak	Killed	Killed in Miami, Florida during a visit of president-elect of Franklin Roosevelt.
Vlado Chernozemski	1934	Alexander I of Yugoslavia	Killed	Killed in Marseille during a state visit.
Carl Weiss	1935	US Senator Huey Long	Killed	Shot in a Louisiana State Capitol hallway.
Ramón Mercader	1940	Lev Bronstein Trotsky	Killed	Killed by a pick-hit on head.
Vasil Laçi	1941	Victor Emmanuel III	Survived
Jan Kubiš, Jozef Gabčík	1942	SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich	Killed
Claus von Stauffenberg	1944	Chancellor and Führer of Germany Adolf Hitler	Survived	See the July 20 plot.
Nathuram Godse	1948	Political and Spiritual Leader Mahatma Gandhi	Killed
Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola	1950	US President Harry S. Truman	Survived	Attempt to draw attention to the Puerto Rico independence movement, in which both attempted killers were active. See Truman assassination attempt.
Talduwe Somarama	1959	Prime Minister of Sri Lanka Solomon Bandaranaike	Killed	Assassinated by a Buddhist monk as part of a conspiracy.
Otoya Yamaguchi	1960	Inejiro Asanuma	Killed	Asanuma was pierced to assassin's bayonet while making a speech.
Richard Paul Pavlick	1960	US President-elect John F. Kennedy	Survived	Dec. 11 See: John F. Kennedy
Jean Bastien-Thiry and the OAS	1962	French President Charles de Gaulle	Survived
Nguyen Van Cu and Pham Phu Quoc	1962	President of the Republic of Vietnam Ngo Dinh Diem	Survived	See 1962 South Vietnamese Presidential Palace bombing
Byron De La Beckwith	1963	Medgar Evers	Killed	Evers, an African American activist and NAACP leader, was shot by De La Beckwith, a Ku Klux Klan member, who was convicted in 1994.
Generally believed to be Nguyen Van Nhung and Duong Hieu Nghia, on orders from Duong Van Minh	1963	President of the Republic of Vietnam Ngo Dinh Diem	Killed	Part of the 1963 South Vietnamese coup. See Arrest and assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem.
Believed to be Lee Harvey Oswald	1963	US President John F. Kennedy	Killed	For general information on the incident, see John F. Kennedy assassination. The US Government's official report concluded that Oswald acted alone, however a subsequent investigation contradicted the Warren Commission's findings. See: House Select Committee on Assassinations (1979)
Jack Ruby	1963	Lee Harvey Oswald	Killed	First live murder ever seen on US television
Norman 3X Butler, Thomas 15X Johnson, Talmadge Hayer	1965	Activist Malcolm X	Killed	Tensions and departure from the Nation of Islam
Uncertain, believed to be James Earl Ray or Loyd Jowers	1968	Political activist Martin Luther King, Jr.	Killed	Ray was convicted on a guilty plea but later recanted, while a 1999 civil trial convicted Jowers and 'unknown others', while also noting that 'governmental agencies were parties' to the plot. See Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Sirhan Sirhan	1968	US Senator Robert F. Kennedy	Killed	See Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.
Huang Wen-hsiung	1970	Vice Prime Minister of Republic of China Chiang Ching-kuo	Survived
Members of the Front de libération du Québec	1970	Vice Premier of Quebec Pierre Laporte	Killed	Kidnapped and later killed. One of only two political assassinations in Canadian history.
Arthur Bremer	1972	US Presidential candidate George Wallace	Survived	Wallace was paralyzed for life
ETA	1973	President of the Government of Spain Luis Carrero Blanco	Killed	The murder of Luis Carrero Blanco was, according to ETA, then to intensify existing divisions within the Franco regime between the "openness" and "purists".
Samuel Byck	1974	US President Richard Nixon	Survived	Attempted to hijack a commercial jet with the intention of crashing it into the White House.
Prince Faisal bin Musa'id	1975	Saudi King Faisal	Killed
Khondaker Mostaq Ahmad and coup	1975	First Bangladeshi President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman	Killed	The coup was planned by disgruntled Awami League colleagues and military officers who were led by Khondaker Mostaq Ahmad, and they targeted to exterminate his entire family.
Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme	1975	US President Gerald Ford	Survived
Sara Jane Moore	1975	US President Gerald Ford	Survived
Chilean DINA agents	1976	Orlando Letelier	Killed	Killed by a car bomb, September 21, 1976, along with his American assistant, Ronni Moffitt.
Dan White	1978	San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk	Killed	Killed over not reappointing Dan White supervisor. See Moscone–Milk assassinations.
Larry Layton and other members of the Peoples Temple	1978	Leo Ryan, Congressman from California	Killed	Killed in Guyana during an official visit to investigate allegations of abuse of American citizens at the Jonestown compound of the Peoples Temple religious organization. See Leo_Ryan#Jungle_ambush.
Kim Jae-kyu	1979	South Korean President Park Chung-hee	Killed	See Park Chung-hee assassination.
Thomas McMahon	1979	Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma	Killed	Killed along with three others while on a fishing trip with his family by a bomb planted onto his boat by McMahon. McMahon was a member of the Irish Republican Army, who claimed responsibility for the attack.
Mark David Chapman	1980	John Lennon	Killed	Obsession with The Catcher in the Rye. See Assassination of John Lennon.
John Hinckley, Jr.	1981	US President Ronald Reagan	Survived	To impress actress Jodie Foster. See Reagan assassination attempt.
Khalid Islambouli	1981	Egyptian President Anwar Al Sadat	Killed	Rare attack carried out by a group.
Mehmet Ali Ağca	1981	Catholic Pope John Paul II	Survived	See Pope John Paul II assassination attempt.
Group of army officers	1981	Bangladeshi President Ziaur Rahman	Killed	Plotted by a faction of officers of Bangladesh Army led by General Abul Monjur.
Habib Tanious Shartouni	1982	Lebanese President Bachir Gemayel	Killed	Bomb explosion in the Phalange's Beirut headquarters.
Uncertain believed to be Rogelio Moreno instead of Rolando Galman	1983	Philippine Senator Ninoy Aquino	Killed	Believed to have been ordered by then President Ferdinand Marcos.
Satwant Singh and Beant Singh	1984	Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi	Killed	Assassinated by personal bodyguards.
Provisional Irish Republican Army	1984	British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher	Survived	Detonated a bomb at the Grand Hotel during the Conservative Party Conference in Brighton.
Unknown	1986	Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme	Killed	Shot on his way home from a cinema on a street in central Stockholm. See Assassination of Olof Palme.
Dieter Kaufmann	1990	German Federal Minister of the Interior Wolfgang Schäuble	Survived	Shot in back and face after an election campaign event in Oppenau. Has been paralysed and confined to a wheelchair ever since.
Provisional Irish Republican Army	1991	British Prime Minister John Major	Survived	Mortar attack during a meeting at 10 Downing Street
Thenmuli Rajaratnam	1991	Former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi	Killed	Killed in an explosion triggered by a LTTE suicide bomber. See Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.
Janusz Walus	1993	South African Communist Party leader Chris Hani	Killed	Anti-Communist killing
Unknown	1993	Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa	Killed	Attack carried out by an LTTE suicide bomber on May Day parade.
Mario Aburto	1994	Mexican Candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio	Killed
Uncertain; see main article for theories	1994	Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira	Killed	Plane carrying the two leaders shot down by unknown attackers with a surface-to-air missile. The attack was the catalyst for the Rwandan Genocide. See Assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira.
Yigal Amir	1995	Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin	Killed	Attack carried out by Israeli opposed to Oslo Accords. See Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.
Michael Abram	1999	George Harrison	Survived	Abram broke into Harrison's house and repeatedly stabbed him.
ETA	2000	Member of the Basque Parliament Fernando Buesa	Killed	Car bombing
Dipendra	2001	King Birendra of Nepal and other royal family members of same country	Killed	See Nepalese royal massacre.
Volkert van der Graaf	2002	Dutch Election Candidate Pim Fortuyn	Killed	The attack took place in a parking lot outside a radio studio in Hilversum, where Fortuyn had just given an interview.
Maxime Brunerie	2002	French President Jacques Chirac	Survived	Brunerie attempted to shoot the President during the Bastille Day Military Parade.
Mijailo Mijailović	2003	Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh	Killed	Lindh was stabbed while visiting a shopping centre in Stockholm. She died the following morning.
Zvezdan Jovanović	2003	Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić	Killed	Jovanović killed his victim with a sniper rifle (a relatively rare type of assassination); he is suspected to have acted for organized crime backers. See Assassination of Zoran Đinđić.
Chen Yi-hsiung	2004	President of Republic of China Chen Shui-bian	Survived	See 3-19 shooting incident.
Unknown	2005	Former Lebanese Prime Minister and billionaire Rafik Hariri	Killed	Assassination via car bomb in Beirut.
Vladimir Arutyunian	2005	U.S. President George W. Bush and Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili	Survived	Threw a hand grenade at Bush, which failed to detonate.
Unknown; many theories	2006	Journalist Anna Politkovskaya	Killed	Shot in the elevator block of her apartment in Moscow. See Assassination of Anna Politkovskaya.
Unknown, though believed to be figures within the government of Russia	2006	Former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko	Killed	Acute radiation syndrome via ingestion of polonium-210. See Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko.
Unknown, widely believed to be Islamic militants	2007	Former Prime Minister of Pakistan and Pakistan Peoples Party Chair and Opposition Leader Benazir Bhutto	Killed	Killed while entering a vehicle upon leaving a political rally for the Pakistan People's Party in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. See Assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
Soldiers	2009	President of Guinea-Bissau João Bernardo Vieira	Killed	Hacked to death during armed attack on his residence in Bissau.
Karst Tates	2009	Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and royal family	Survived	Attempted to ram the Queen's bus with his car. See 2009 attack on the Dutch Royal Family.
Men under his aide de camp	2009	President of Guinea Moussa Dadis Camara	Survived	Currently in Burkina Faso
Unknown, widely believed to be Mossad agents	2010	Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, senior Hamas military commander	Killed	Exact cause unknown; possibilities include suffocation, strangulation, and electrocution. See Assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.
Casey Brezik	2010	Missouri Governor Jay Nixon	Survived	Mistakenly stabbed a college dean in a hallway by a lectern where Nixon was to speak. Brezik told police that he thought he had stabbed Nixon.
Unknown, believed to be two ranch workers	2010	Eugène Terre'Blanche, founder of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging in South Africa	Killed	He was found hacked and beaten to death at his farm, allegedly killed by two of his workers.
Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri	2011	Salmaan Taseer, 26th Governor of Punjab	Killed
Jared Lee Loughner	2011	Gabrielle Giffords, U.S. Representative from Arizona	Survived	Shot, along with several staffers and U.S. District Judge John Roll (killed), at a constituent event in her district. There were a total of at least 6 deaths and 12 injured.

[edit] References

^ http://www.gatewaystobabylon.com/introduction/murderersennacherib.htm Parpola, Simo, "The Murderer of Sennacherib", from Alster, Bendt (ed.), "Death in Mesopotamia", XXVIème Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Akademisk Forlag, 1980.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assassinations_and_assassination_attempts"

Categories: History-related lists | Assassinations | Lists of assassinations | Attempted assassination survivors

Hidden categories: Dynamic lists

2011-01-15T18:41:00.000-08:00

Constitution Worship: Jill Lepore in The New Yorker

Worth reading is a commentary by critic Jill Lepore in the January 17 issue of The New Yorker entitled The Commandments: the Constitution and its worshippers.
Lepore (pictured right) puts the current highlighting of the Constitution, including its (edited) reading in the House of Representatives, in historical and critical perspective. Lepore writes:

If you haven’t read the Constitution lately, do. Chances are you’ll find that it doesn’t exactly explain itself. Consider Article III, Section 3: “The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.” This is simply put—hats off to the committee of style—but what does it mean? A legal education helps. Lawyers won’t stumble over “attainder,” even if the rest of us will. Part of the problem might appear to be the distance between our locution and theirs. “Corruption of Blood”? The document’s learnedness and the changing meaning of words isn’t the whole problem, though, because the charge that the Constitution is too difficult for ordinary people to understand—not because of its vocabulary but because of the complexity of its ideas—was brought nearly the minute it was made public. Anti-Federalists charged that the Constitution was so difficult to read that it amounted to a conspiracy against the understanding of a plain man, that it was willfully incomprehensible. “The constitution of a wise and free people, ought to be as evident to simple reason, as the letters of our alphabet,” an Anti-Federalist wrote. “A constitution ought to be, like a beacon, held up to the public eye, so as to be understood by every man,” Patrick Henry argued. He believed that what was drafted in Philadelphia was “of such an intricate and complicated nature, that no man on this earth can know its real operation.”

This could be the basis for a great first assignment for the new semester's Constitutional Law class, in law school or as an undergraduate offering, as a way to open a discussion of the Constitutional text and its interpretations.

RR

January 11, 2011 in Current Affairs, Interpretation, Teaching Tips | Permalink

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Comments

What a refreshing look at our sacred bovine of bloviators!
Few documents cry out for clinical and expert modification more than this wonderful creature. Nothing would honor it more than its informed modification, and nothing insures its irrelevance like the almost universal indifference to its currency, which it now suffers.

President Obama as a Constitutional Law Professor:

2011-01-15T18:30:00.000-08:00

President Obama as a Constitutional Law Professor:

Here is one of his Exams - and the outline of suggested answer providing his feedback to students.

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/conlaw/2009/05/obamas-constitutional-law-exam-and-feedback-.html

Excuse the Expressions -- "Science" and "Religion"

2010-12-30T13:17:00.000-08:00

There is no excuse for refusing to honor Science and Religion, and their exceptionalist and universal roles in the life of any creature. Those creatures inhabiting the higher forms of Consciousness are expressing a longing for Truth and Faith, complimentary and opposed indices.

We are given only Scientific Truth and Religious Faith. We are not permitted "Scientific Faith"; we cannot give credence to "Religious Truth".

Consciousness is a vector. On this arrow we know we move to and from. Take our comfort in this Truth. Have Faith, as this is what we have.

"Per Scientiam ad Justitiam" ("through science to justice").

2010-12-19T18:49:00.000-08:00

Do not forget. The Nazi also confiscated the wealth of and attempted to destroy "homosexuals". Without evidence, and slapping the face of science, the Nazi targeted largely unarmed creative and productive people, and seized their property. The thugs funded their rise to power by stealing from hard-working but defenseless and law-abiding people.

Ironically, not only was Hitler part Jewish, but most of his cadre was remarkably repressed and sexually frustrated. Hitler never married and his mistress was sexually unsatisfied. Goering was an infamous cross-dresser and spent hours putting on his lipstick, foundation, and blush. Himmler surrounded himself with homosexuals and was notoriously uncomfortable around healthy people with "normal" relationships. The Nazi did persecute the gay population, but the fictional puffery of the Nazi is a pink swastika.

The brilliant scientist, Magnus Hirschfeld, was both gay and Jewish. His career of scientific and empirical study was destroyed by the Nazi. Hans P. Soetaert & Donald W. McLeod, "Un Lion en hiver: Les Derniers jours de Magnus Hirschfeld à Nice (1934-1935)" in Gérard Koskovich (ed.).

Ironically, another "school" of thought developed in Germany which was offended by science and particularly by the "feminine" side of men.

The other faction was organized by Adolf Brand, publisher of the first homosexual magazine, Der Eigene (The Special). Brand, Benedict Friedlander and Wilhelm Janzen formed the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen (The Community of the Special) in 1902. What divided these groups was their concepts of masculinity. Ulrichs' theory embraced a feminine identity. His, and later Hirschfeld's, followers literally believed they were women trapped in men's bodies.

The followers of Brand, however, were deeply insulted by Ulrichs' theory. They perceived themselves not merely as masculine, but as a breed of men superior in masculine qualities even to heterosexuals. The Community of the Special (CS) asserted that male homosexuality was the foundation of all nation-states and that male homosexuals represented an elite strata of human society. The CS fashioned itself as a modern incarnation of the warrior cults of ancient Greece. Modeling themselves after the military heroes of Sparta, Thebes and Crete, the members of the CS were ultra-masculine, male-supremacist and pederastic (devoted to man/boy sex). Brand said in Der Eigene that he wanted men who "thirst for a revival of Greek times and Hellenic standards of beauty after centuries of Christian barbarism."

One of the keys to understanding both the rise of Nazism and the later persecution of some homosexuals by the Nazis is found in this early history of the German "gay rights" movement. For it was the CS which created and shaped what would become the Nazi persona, and it was the loathing which these "Butches" held for effeminate homosexuals ("Femmes") which led to the internment of some of the latter in slave labor camps in the Third Reich

The point is that not only were the controlling Nazis driven by a sexuality they did not understand, but they were themselves perverted by their own unwillingness or inability to BE who they were. How different the world could have been, had they been able to be gay.

The Middle - the class position on prosperity

2010-12-06T16:50:00.000-08:00

Why is there ONLY ONE "class" whose growth is helpful for everyone? The truth is, the Middle Class is the only class the everyone should cultivate and care about. The rich and the poor we have with us, whether or not we want them or try to grow them. In terms of peace and prosperity, only one class makes any difference. But exactly why is this so?

Our economy relies on strong consumers.

The poor are unable to buy, and rich rarely do -- they have everything they really need, and the rest they have the power to take without buying. Today, wealthy people put their wealth into off-shore accounts and engage in socially useless speculation and non-productive investments. For example, nothing is produced and the infrastructure of society is not enhanced by a "credit default swap" or a debenture or any "creative financial product". The rich and the poor are socially useless burdens, bless their hearts.

Hence, the great and unique economic contribution of the middle -- they have some money, and individually they do not have much power. The only real power they have is as consumers.

The more money consumers have, the more goods and services they buy. As their transactions increase, the need for sensible long-term infrastructure becomes clear. The need for roads, utilities, information, and even health care and schools, becomes obvious and self-fulfilling. Rising prosperity creates expectations and hopes, and as families are raised, the infrastructure takes shape which cultivates more prosperity.

The Middle class is the only class that cares about infrastructure. No one else needs hospitals and schools -- the poor need food and water, without which they would die before they could use health care and books. The rich of course, have their own medical care, and it is a historical fact that very few rich people have any personal interest in education or learning. The rich rarely educate themselves, much less provide information of any real use to anyone else.

The poor people are the first to celebrate their long-sought extinction. We cannot have "too few" who are living hand to mouth, or exposed to the exigencies of nature and trouble. The rich cling to their existence, and devote themselves to the extinction of the Middle Class, as if threatened by its mere existence. The rich classes thrill to the abundance of the poor. The rich appear to be uplifted by masses willing to serve them for pittances or for their forebearances -- for the privilege of not being beaten, or actively oppressed.

The Middle class stands alone, offering accessibility to the poor, and recovery from the rich, for the usurpations of both.

Poem, of something rising

2010-12-04T12:46:00.000-08:00

Oyez! All Beloved who gather here
Listen
   is how the dream began
You striding across the Campo
down by the school-yard
And I opening
   the heavy doors of a dark prism

Oyez! Beloved, it appeared, as if
   the wood horses stopped in their grazing among the trees
being wheeled aside and light fell deep in the knell
to wolf and bear witness, as war burst out
of the belly up to the Bar.

I saw you as if a fragrance of my youth
   had been spilt and splintered
upon the gold and scarlet song of a sunset.

I rode hard and wet upon the galloping emu of my hopes and found you feathers
and all perched and dry high among the rafters of birds winging back and forth
between the mud and the sky

Love comes in a dream to the bridging of us
   to the meet of our desire
where you are this Appaloosa of my eye,
this reigning rein pulling an erasure across
my spotted memory of women who came and went,
   and now is a tower together.

In my dream you were a moon beam
   stuffed with personality like a congress making sausages,
a tube of round light being squeezed together from pig’s lips
and a turkey gobbling a language
   and I dreamt I woke baffled
   in the batter of something
       Rising

What would Children do?

2010-11-22T01:50:00.000-08:00

Is anyone else deeply troubled by the absence of a credible Biblical preacher today? Is there ONE that has not been sucked into the political obsession over abortion (never mentioned by Christ) and homosexuality?

Jesus said: "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matt. 18:3)

Children read Harry Potter books. They can be cruel and petty, but most kids are very sensitive about the many children who are unwanted and not cared for by anyone. And most kids are not at all perturbed by gay parents or diversity in the playground. Most kids think life is wonderful, magical....

And in large numbers, most children seem to have read 7 large books about magicians and spells. Apparently this is how children are. This, not the hatemongering of the Churches, should be the theology to provide the spine for Christians, if any of them are left today.

It is my observation that most of the followers of the teachings of Christ are extinct, and have been so for centuries. The real believers in the teaching of Christ were called Manicheaens by the followers of Helena, the mother of Constantine who had her own take on the Pauline message. Between the Helenists and the Islamicists, the true Christians were annihilated -- they were everyone's favorite heretic because they were prosperous and would turn the other cheek when assaulted.

The point is, there are many wonderful children on the path to salvation, but NONE of the hatemongers obsessed with condemnation and purification are among them. Islamicists and Fundamentalist "Christians" are remarkably similar doctrines. They want to purify everybody but themselves. This is opposite what children are all about. Children are closer to "natural" concerns, and the idea of purity does not even occur to them.

Health Care Reform - with a Public Option (Psst we already have one)

2010-11-21T22:23:00.000-08:00

It is fascinating to see how predators seize upon public subsidies and pass burdens onto tax payers while claiming their right to do "business" and make enormous profits in the name of "capitalism". First of all, the medical insurance industry as we observe it today is not part of "free enterprise", it is simply a means of carving an escalating profit out of sick, ill and helpless people while passing the burden back to tax payers. Who ultimately pays for MediCare, MediCal, and all the poor who go to the Emergency Rooms for treatment?

I asked the most intelligent medical doctor in the country, Doctor Sam Metz, what he observed can be done. Here is his practical, necessary, and cost-effective plan:

You asked this question of the right person or the wrong person, depending on your political bent and time available for an answer. Attached are essays that appeared in the Oregonian and in Anesthesiology News, and a PowerPoint presentation to be given next month. I will condense everything you need to know about health care reform into three questions, with three answers each. Once these points are understood, much else will make sense.

1. Why does this country need health care reform?

Americans pay twice as much per capita as the average industrialized country.

Our public health results (maternal mortality, infant mortality, life expectancy, lives lost to preventable conditions) are among the worst of industrialized countries.

We are the only industrialized country in which non-wealthy citizens lose their homes or lives if they have insufficient money to pay for needed health care.

2. What must legislation achieve to be considered health care reform?

It must provide universal access to primary care regardless of health, wealth, or employment.

It must lower health care costs for everyone, not just the government, the wealthy, or the insurable.

Our national public health must improve.

3. How do all other industrialized countries provide universal health care at lower cost with better results?

All citizens are in a single risk pool with the same set of benefits.

There are no impediments to primary care.

Financing of health care is done by not-for-profit agencies. Profit can be made providing health care, but not financing health care.

If a country follows all these rules (as most every other industrialized country does), universal health care can be achieved at lower cost with better results then we have now. If the country follows all these rules and uses a single not-for-profit financing agency rather than multiple financing agencies, this is called “Single payer health care.”

I favor single payer financing of health care.

However, changing how we finance health care is only the start. The next step is revising which health care providers we pay how much for what services under what conditions for which patients. The incentive for salaried physicians is to undertreat. The incentive for fee-for-service physicians is to overtreat. Under capitated payments, the provider takes the risk if a condition is more expensive to treat than expected. Under salaried or fee-for service payments, the financing agency takes the risk.

That should be fun.

If you still have questions, I am full of answers.

Thanks for asking.

Sam

Family Values and Neo-conservatives - the Idiot's Guide to Hypocrisy

2010-11-16T11:57:00.000-08:00

The so-called Red State Reagan Conservatives associated with Tea Parties and Mega-Churches are not factually aligned with their rhetoric. Examples:

1. DIVORCE. If you live in a red state, you're 27 percent more likely to get divorced than if you live in a blue state. (Source: National Vital Statistics Report, 2003).

2. HOMOSEXUALITY. All of the politicians who have been "outed" as gays in the US Congress were all neo-conservatives. The preachers who were caught with gay prostitutes were neo-conservatives preaching against homosexuality. Neo-conservatives are much more likely than liberals to be secretly gay.

3. FAMILY VALUES. There is no indication that "conservative" parents are raising better children. Many parents have children whose values contradict the values of the parents.

History – Mesopotamia and Persia, preserved by Jews and European Archeology.

2010-11-11T13:01:00.000-08:00

The Empires of Mesopotamia and Persia, which lasted for 3 thousand years, came to an end when a 22 year old Macedonian crossed the Aegean with a small army and proceeded to defeat Darius III. Syncretic Hellenic influences remained long after Alexander’s short life. However, the scribal tradition of three millenia was almost immediately lost in the near and middle east. The indigenous people forgot how to read and write cuneiform texts, and the unity of the people collapsed.

Not until the rise of Judaic Islam did the region once again unite. Unfortunately, Islam completed the annihilation of whatever remained of the intellectual heritage of civilization. The wisdom of Sumer, Assyria, Babylonia, the Hittites, and the Medes and Persians was burned and buried.

Fortuitously, the Hebrews (diaspora during the Babylonian epoch) and Greeks (during their brief Asiatic rule) managed to preserve some of the accumulated wisdom of the ancient civilizations. Indeed, the authenticity of the Jewish and Helenist accounts has been corroborated by the archeological discoveries made by Europeans since the 19th century. The digging has often been dangerous and always over the objections of the Islamic schools. The scholars living under the veils of Islam have been silenced for a thousand years.

The interesting point is that without Jews and Westerners, the Mullahs and Ayatollahs would have almost no information about the greatness of their own people. Islam systematically erased history in order to make it appear that “Islam” was some kind of improvement over the “primitive Arabs” and “fire worshiping pagans” of Persia. The fact is, those pre-Islamic Arabs and Persians built beautiful buildings and gardens, composed music, and wrote literature reflecting the highest sensibilities and soulfulness.

It is no wonder that the Arabs and Persians today are being taught by their religious oligarchs to hate the Jews and the West. Through the scholarship of Jews and Greeks, corroborated recently by European archeologists, the lost heritage of the ancient civilization is preserved. This pre-Islamic heritage contradicts most of the Quran. The spirituality of Mazda/ Zoroastrian teachings is not primitive paganism, but is superior in grace to the current crude hate-mongering of the Ayatollahs and Mullahs.

The ironic point is that the Jews preserved the wisdom of the Persians, which the Persians themselves have now lost in the devotions of their current version of "religion". Using the semitic alphabet on papyrus and parchment scrolls, the Jews kept remembering what the Persians themselves have now forgotten.

In their turn, the Arabs also now forget their history. Ironically, they forget that they are Jews. All Arabs, today, remain Jews both genetically and culturally. Their dialects, diet, sex laws, theocracy, angel-prophet-mediated monotheism, and their us/them community orientation, are identical. Of course, conversely, all Jews also remain Arabs. Nevertheless it is Islam which drives a unilateral wedge of predation between the tribes: Portions of the Quran which appear for the first time almost a century after the death of Mohammad expressly exhort the pillage and slaughter of Jews and Christians.

Islam is a syncretic belief system, cobbled together over several centuries after the death of Mohammad. The primary sources are Aramaic Christian teachings and Hebraic traditions. As Jews, the Arabs had been making the pilgrimage to the covered cubic Kaba in Mecca for centuries before Mohammad. As Christians, the Arabs taught children in schools, and acquired the skills required for building beautiful mosques. Those schools and skills, as well as the importance of humble prostration in daily prayers, are Manichaean contributions which Islam rewarded with annihilation. Now Islam credits the long-dead Mohammad for everything great the people have done. The credit is sadly misplaced.

The Bush-Cheney-Rove Legacy - the gift that keeps giving.

2010-10-15T15:17:00.000-07:00

To the credit of Great Wealth, we are on the eve of a "close" mid-term election. We are also witnessing the end of representative republican democracy (a poor means of conducting government, but which is superior to all alternative forms).

Unprecedented amounts of money (during a depression!) are pouring into this mid-term election. Because of a Supreme Court appointment by the previous administration, by one Judge's vote, we now have a system which permits corporations, and unidentified "persons", to electioneer. We have no idea who is funding the political ads, and MOST of them are factually misleading.

This de-regulation and privatization of public elections will live in infamy along other Bush era catastrophes:

(1) Appointing inexperienced and "political" judges.

(2) Tax cuts to the Super Rich - with ZERO economic benefit for anyone else. The fact that the rich are richer while the middle class has collapsed, is the single achievement of the neo-Conservative take-over.

(3) Changing the laws so that "investment bankers" could destroy banking system. Glass-Steagal Act passed in the 1930's prevented banks from taking savings and putting money into investments with risk. The "new" (actually resurrected 1920's products) mortgage-backed securities, negative default swaps, and fraudulent investment "products" (literally toxic), destroyed the financial system.

(4) Oct 2008 tax payer bail-out for Wall Street -- unprecedented transfer of the risks to the public, providing yet another splurge of billion-dollar commissions to the bankers who had destroyed their institutions.

(5) Selling WMD to Iraq, then ignoring the UN inspection and attacking Iraq without a plan, leaving us with an un-winnable war, and the spectacle of rising religious intolerance and mass migration of refugees.

(6) Ignoring bin Laden in Afghanistan - repeatedly, and in spite of his large family, known relationships, and his control of a network of
(7) Ignoring terrorism until after 9/11,
(8) Ignoring deterioration of infrastructure with results such as the Katrina disaster,
(9) denying Global warming,
(10) destroying the civil justice system,
(11) making our schools the most expensive and least effective among nations,
(12) making our health care the most expensive and least effective among nations.
(13) starting with an income surplus, creating the biggest debt in history.

(14) Creating a hostility to independent journalists: Is it coincidence that in the Bush decade, journalists were increasingly singled out and killed by organized crime? This global rise of tyranny reached its apex in 2009, with the murder of 76 journalists killed in connection with their jobs. Organized crime and right-wing militias became the biggest threats. After Obama took over, the murder rate plummeted. In 2010, the death toll was down 25% to 57. Reporters without Borders, annual report from Paris.

(15) destroying the military - exhausting the Forces, and crippling the National Guard concept by pulling the citizen-soldiers out of their civilian employment for year-long war duty tours.

(16) privatizing the military and support services - Halliburton black no-bid "contracts" which guarantee huge profits to short-term fortunes while soldiers facing more risks have less to gain.

(17) Indifference to infrastructure - what utilities were not "sold" with corrupt discounts to private enterprises which promptly raised rates, were left languishing without maintenance and repair. Bridges, dams, highways, parks, water and power are all collapsing and deteriorating.

For the past couple years, many people have been working on this large hole which the Bush-Cheney-Rove Enron Halliburton cabal placed us into.

Jerusalem - the Manichaean City

2010-10-05T02:57:00.000-07:00

Jerusalem was the largest fortified city in the world during the Republic. However, a within a few decades after the Empire, and in the face of an intense Zionist revolt against the Empire, Rome razed the city. To punish the Zionists, the Roman Emperor decreed that the land would not be called Judah, but "Palestine".

The Roman general, Pompey, destroyed the walls of Jerusalem in 70 a.d., and sold many Jews into slavery, spreading them throughout the world. Josephus claims that hundreds of thousands of Jews were hunted down. There were driven out of Jerusalem. Unlike many other tribes on the losing side, however, the Jews maintained the integrity of their community after forced expulsion, because they had a written language and a "Biblical" reference. They set up trade routes and communities throughout Europe offered protection to them to encourage trade. The fact that the Jews did not spend time and treasure on arms and military training, but devoted themselves to trade and prosperity, was noticed by a Persian holy man. We will mention Mani again.

Prior to the destruction of Jerusalem, but after the first Zionist objection to the authoritarian rules of the Empire (another great story), Jesus Christ began preaching an extraordinary message of Peace. He urged the Zionists to "turn the other cheek". This was not exactly an unheard of technique for any oppressed people. Many wives faced with a bullying husband will survive by being passive and take revenge by raising sons who hate their father. Perhaps Jesus understood the analogy to Rome, which was at its peak of power. It is certain that Zionism was defeated by Roman arms, but by alienating a large literate network, Rome itself became ungovernable. Rome was never again able to franchise the Middle East.

After the destruction of the Walls of Jerusalem, the message of Jesus was taught by Greek-Ptolomaic missionaries traveling throughout the world. The teachings reached Persia. Approximately 200 a.d. a prophet began writing and preaching the Christian message to Zoroastrian congregations. This Prophet, Mani, wrote many books, and he was described as a man to be emulated. He synthesized Buddhist and Zoroastrian teachings with the message of Jesus Christ appended to Judaism. "Manichaeian" became the most dominant religion of its day over a broad region from India to Europe for hundreds of years.

One of the main seats of Manichaean learning was Jerusalem. Unlike the Christians of the day who had abandoned it for Rome and Constantinople, the Manichaeans focused on the importance of Jerusalem to their beliefs. They revered Jesus Christ as holy, and the land where he was born, lived and taught, as important. Unlike the Christians of the day, the Manichaeans continued to believe in the Message of the Messiah, including the response of "turning the other cheek" to persecution.

As the Christians became ascendant (literate Greeks living for the hereafter were hired by Roman lords for their trustworthiness in a time of increasing corruption), they militantly wiped out the Manichaeans in Europe and systematically destroyed their literature -- the many books written by Mani and his followers. The "Catholics" of Rome and the "Orthodox" of Byzantium began fighting each other, but found resistance. Killing Manichaeans, however, was less dangerous, so in the hunt for heretics, the other great Christian sects systematically wiped out the numerically superior Manichaeans, and filled their respective coffers with the rich booty of the Manichaean civilization. This increased the chaos under the disastrous reign of Emperor Phocas.

In Jerusalem (known as Aolia Capitolina by all but the Jews and their Manichaean allies of the day), the Christians built the Church of the Holy Sepulcher on the place of Crucifixion where a Manichaean temple had been built. One of the main reasons for the Council of Nicea in 326 a.d., held in Constantinople, was to rebut the Manichaean "heresy" which did not exclude Jews.

Then the Mohammedans joined the fray. In approximately 570 a.d. Mohammed was born in Mecca. He never set foot out of Arabia and never indicated his intention to start a new religion. Like other Arab chieftains, he was a warrior, law-maker and judge, but unlike all others, he united the Arab tribes, and separated them from the Jews and Manichaeans. According to the contemporary accounts, Mohammad the tribal raider regarded Jews and Christians/Manichaeans as prey, for which he thanked Allah.

After the death of Mohammad in 632 a.d., without any successor to rule the newly-unified Arabia, the unity fractured. Arab historians refer to this period of years as the "Wars of Apostacy". The Persians and Turks in their contest with Rome and each other, saw opportunity. The Turks made a deal with the Meccan warlords (Sunni), and the Iranians made a deal with the Medina warlords (Shia). This remains the unresolvable schism in Islam.

By 638 c.e. the Turkic/Arab Caliphate rapidly expanded and by force of arms supplemented by Jewish troops from Arabia, seized Jerusalem from the Manichaeans. Curiously, Persian forces then occupied Jerusalem, slaughtering its largely Manichaean-Christian occupants and burning the city. Islam became a unifying "religion", although as the conquering armies advanced, no government or unified civic structure was created. Even the Ottomans (Turks) never established unified control, for example, over Spain, Africa, or Persia, even though Islam became required of all the inhabitants.

Manichaean temples in the East were converted into mosques, just as they had been converted into Churches in the West. The Manichaeans became everyone's favorite "infidel" or "heretic", because their persecution created no risk of revenge. Manichaeans were builders of wonderful buildings and their many innovations were usurped. After Christianity dug into Europe, and after Islam dug into the East, the innovations and spirituality of life rapidly ceased. When the pillagers had nothing left to pillage, life went back to daily survival around decentralized "feudal" estates -- with little lords conducting ceaseless feuds in the name of the one Lord, "no God but God".

In 691 c.e., six decades after the death of Mohammad, the Islamic Umayyad Caliph completed the Dome of the Rock. The Manichaean-Christian Church already on the site was destroyed, down to the foundations. The beauty of this inspired structure has not been surpassed to this day. Of Byzantine craftsmanship, it stands asymetrically upon a platform built in Herodian times (1st century c.e.) as the second Jewish Temple, and may have been the site of the first Temple. The Dome surrounds a large native stone supported by two sets of colonnades and an octagonal exterior wall. The central colonnade made of four piers and twelve columns supports a rounded drum that transitions into the two-layered dome, which is more than 20m in diameter. Light enters from grilled windows pierced in the drum and glitters on golden be-jeweled mosaics within.

The purpose of this structure is disputed. It may or may not be a "mosque", but prior to its construction there was no mosque in Jerusalem that Mohammad could have visited on a "Night Journey" carried on the back of a very fast and winged' horse. No contemporary texts, even on the walls, mention such an event until several decades later. Manichaean texts referring idiosyncratically to Jesus are translated into Arabic and quoted on the interior walls.

What is not disputed is that the Dome transects all of monotheism's divisions, is one of the most beautiful structures in the world, and is forbidden for "infidels" to enter. Archeologists are not permitted to excavate any portion in any manner.

It is true that by approximately 900 a.d., the Manichaeans were exterminated. Thousands of libraries with millions of books had been destroyed. The great Manichaean civilization of Central Asia, running along the Silk Route, with some of the most beautiful cities in the world, was completely and systematically destroyed by Islam's armies. We find remnants of learning and arts and science in remote caves as unarguable proof of what was destroyed.

In Europe, some of the temples were saved by "converting" them into Jewish houses of worship. A Manichaean foundation is under many Churches and even Jewish temples in communities which had few Jews. The Jews, for their part, never persecuted the Manichaeans, but aided in hiding them. To some extent, Manichaean influences can be found in the Rabbinic traditions and in the astounding patience the Jews demonstrated in the face of pogroms in Eastern Europe. The divergent Ashkenazi/ Sephardic traditions can be explained by Manichaean influences. Many Turkic Manichaean believers who were not Semitic adopted "Jewish" traditions and became Jews to avoid the persecution by and between Christians. Interestingly, a Persian Jewish/Arab alliance (non-Islamic) captured Jerusalem in 614 c.e. (The Jews and Arabs occupied Arabia for 600 years celebrating the same holidays, prayer five times a day, and the same dietary laws. Most of the inhabitants were either Jews, or followers of Mani or other sect of "monotheists").

Perhaps the last "Manichaean influence", and one of the most remarkable, is the Crusade of 1094. "Out of the blue" from a Christian perspective, a de-centralized and feudal Europe suddenly lit up with the idea of re-capturing Jerusalem. Rome and Constantinople were the only cities deemed worthy of their attention for an entire millenium, but suddenly the liberation of Jerusalem was widely accepted as an important goal. It was the discovery of remaining Manichaean texts in Europe, preserved by Jews, which were quoted from prior to the consignment of the books to flames by Catholic Priests. The holiness of Jerusalem was revivified for these Christians and they hurled themselves into a haphazard Crusade to liberate Jerusalem.

In 1099, the Christian Crusaders fought their way across the Levant and recaptured Jerusalem. The significance here is that the First Crusade was not an aggressive invasion of another country. Rather, it was an attempt to recover a City which had been invaded by a foreign power. The Islamic armies were invaders.

...[In 1187, the brilliant re-taking of Jerusalem by Saladin and the Kurds; Christian Crusaders briefly re-take it back twice. Then 1250 the Muslim Caliph dismantles the walls, and the population dramatically declines; finally in 1538, Seleiman the Magnifent [sic] restores some of the mosques in Jerusalem.]

It us true that all of Arabia and the Levant was ruled by the Ottomans until the end of World War I. Since the turn of the century, after the trial of Dreyfus, Herzl began his effort to find a homeland for the Jews. The Zionists' effort is delayed by the War, for which Jews were also blamed. Zionists begin fleeing from Europe to destinations all over the world, and many go to Jerusalem. Arabs also begin migrating to Jerusalem where new jobs were being created.

In 1917, the British fight the Ottoman Empire, liberate the Arabian Peninsula and Mesopotamia. Jerusalem is captured and for the first time in its history, it is not sacked. The British do not kill all of its inhabitants.

The only significant Arab tribe to rebel against the Ottomans were the Saudis, who were then attacked by the other tribes and the Turks. Ibn Saud led his tribe to victory with the aid of the British.

In 1948, the State of Israel was established. The Jews agree not to make Jerusalem their capital city. The Israelis make a new city -- Tel Aviv.

In 1967, Israel captures the Old city and reunifies the City. Israel now occupies land which had been given to Jordan and Egypt.

Islamic Demographics

2010-10-03T15:46:00.000-07:00

The Veil of Islam has descended over 57 countries. All of them are locked into medieval feuding intensified by the obsession with "purity" which is the gift of Islam. Since women are 2d class citizens, children are effectively raised in a seraglio -- a wife, even if only one wife, is regarded as a concubine since there is always a potential for another wife arriving at the whim of the man. Thus, all the sons are sons of "wives" who are really concubines. Thus, the leadership is always deprived of having legitimacy -- the absence of a Queen/wife.

What the multiple concubines do provide, of course they MUST provide, is babies. By reducing the "choices" for a woman, she is then free to devote herself to reproduction. The bomb of the womb is set, where copulation lights the fertile fuse.

Louisiana Purchase - the impact on the Continent

2010-10-03T15:37:00.000-07:00

My British wife is visiting Louisiana...

The United State purchased the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803 from Napoleon. This transaction rewarded the post-Revolutionary French Government as if it was the successor to the Ancien Regime which had in fact stolen it from the Creek Confederacy, and other Mississippi delta tribes. The funds given to Napoleon, who was a brutal tyrant, enabled him to launch an invasion across Europe to the gates of Moscow. Had Napoleon given more thought to the weather calendar, he would have attacked in the other direction, against Britain.

Intercontinental - beyond international and getting to global

2010-10-03T15:21:00.000-07:00

We have become intercontinental. There are no nations, no races of men. There are no tribes. As for families, they have not existed since Religion took the oxygen, the power, away from parents.

When Louis XIV answered the inquiry of the physiocrat with the irreducible, "l'etat, c'est moi", he revealed naked truth. The "Government" is abstract and to be understood must be filled by a person, who in turn is a symbol. A person who used Government as a means to power.

Yet Government has existed in certain times and places. Now that the US Government has collapsed, now that the California Government has been reduced, we are left feeling insecure. How we long for the security.

The l'etat, c'est trahison / betrayed

Theodore Parker and his monumental manifesto. Influences.

2010-09-30T12:44:00.000-07:00

One of the invocations of Justice with impressive allure is the assertion that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." This phrase keeps cropping up. The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. frequently used it, crediting the Unitarian minister, Theodore Parker:

"I do not pretend to understand the moral universe: the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards Justice."

Parker fought those who sought to justify slavery and oppression from Biblical, or any other, authority. In 1841 he wrote the greatest of the Transcendentalist manifestos, compounding the republicanism of the authors of American Constitution with the liberalism of the true Church. Parker defined democracy, for the first time, as:

"...Government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people."

President Lincoln adopted this phrase in his pithy elimination of the "all", perhaps as a concession to the political reality.

How the Republicans plan to govern: The Same Way

2010-09-24T08:46:00.000-07:00

From John Kerry: Yesterday, the Republicans released their "Pledge" of how they'd govern, and Republican Leader John Boehner let the truth slip out:

"We are not going to be any different than what we've been."

They are the gift that just wants to keep giving -- OUR money.

What remains, at the end of a life spent meaning well?

2010-09-12T17:55:00.000-07:00

To my friend Quyen, who reminds me of Franklin in France, flirting and writing bagatelle's to the ladies as he negotiated the long-range brass naval canon with which the French battered Cornwallis in Yorktown to its surrender. Franklin visited the estate of the great insect philosopher, Claude-Henri Watelet, in the company of his frequent and vivacious companion, Madame Brillon de Jouy. She was, Quyen, one of the hotties among the educated women of Paris.

Franklin concludes an essay, "The Ephemera", in the voice of one of these insects that only lives for a few hours each day:

"To me, after all my eager pursuits, no solid pleasures now remain, but the reflection of a long life spent in meaning well, the sensible conversation of a few good lady ephemerae, and now and then a kind smile and a tune from the ever amiable Brillante."

Victims of Corporate Fraud - a Compensation Fund

2010-09-02T20:27:00.000-07:00

In 2002, after the Halliburton no-bid profiteering in Iraq and the Enron bankruptcy revealed the depths of the Cheney-Lay-Skilling predatory mind-set of CEOs willing to pillage their own companies, AB 55 added a new Section to the California Corporation Code. Section 1502.1 establised the Victims of Corporate Fraud Compensation Fund (VCFCF) in the State Treasury administered by the Secretary of State.

The purpose of the Fund is to provide restitution to the victims of corporate fraud. Once a fraud judgment is obtained, if collection efforts are fruitless, victims can turn to the Fund. Apparently, however, since 2002, no victim has recovered.

Survey - Does the State Bar protect consumers?

2010-08-23T07:09:00.000-07:00

To my astonishment, the State Bar prosecutors' office takes the position that it has no obligation to prosecute the attorneys who have enabled the investment bankers to take down this entire country. I have repeatedly given names to the Prosecutor -- and pointed to Enron and Madoff, as well as other high level white collar predators, all of whom have law firms assisting them.

While few individuals can respond or even protect themselves from large-scale piracy, the State Bar has the power and resources to help. Yet, the State Bar does nothing about the trillion-dollar predation going on in this country. The State Bar is supposed to protect consumers from attorneys who violate the rules and cause harm. Yet not one attorney who ENABLED and IS ENABLING the ongoing financial predation in the country has been disciplined!

Consumers have never been surveyed to respond about whether they feel protected, after this onslaught of high-level white collar predation:

Click here to take survey

What is the effect of Love?

2010-08-22T14:21:00.000-07:00

Love is something
that fills. I am bulging.

It means union can be taken
seriously, even when expressed
improbably
speechlessly
in the yearnings of skin and
braided bone.

Love reaches down the throat and
seizes the heart, grabs, and
pulls hard.

I am inside out.

Blues for a friend - red-eyed loneliness {chord}

2010-08-21T17:50:00.000-07:00

Blues among friends - {singing - or weeping}

I got the red-eyed yellow-lit green-zone blues
I’m not awake and I just can’t sleep.
Got the red-eyed yellow-lit green-zone blues
and I can’t get out ‘cause I’m in so deep.

Side by side like a pair of dice
we roll across the green-zone blues
My number’s up but I’m not done yet
tell the bottle we’re paying our dues.

Tumble me now, tumble me then,
Blues gonna get me so tumble me again.
Side by side another cornering roll
hope you know you got a friend.

The Meaning of Mean; the significance of meanness; the recremental case.

2010-08-18T14:05:00.000-07:00

"I've seen the meanness of humans till I dont know why God aint put out the sun and gone away." From Outer Dark, by Cormac McCarthy

This is from the parable of The Creation. It is not possible for The Creator to be God of THIS creation. Such a "creator" begs the question of what was At the Beginning -- what created The Creator? -- and abandons us at what obviously should be The End of the erstwhile business. We are AT the "gone away" been done.

Believers who cling to this parable are perhaps not coming to terms with the depth, the extent and variety, of the unkind things that have been done among men. The belief that any God worth its station in any pantheon of divinity would stand for THIS "creation", this abomination, can only stand upon idiocy or blindness.

Such a belief is itself a form of indifference, a kind of sin. Like Prussians pretending that the Third Reich was not loading Jews and Gypsies and lawyers into cattle cars assigned and logged into any of 1200 camps built for unpleasant dying. Like Saudi princes pretending that Saudis did not train and fly pirated aircraft into the World Trade Center. Like all of us who try to pretend that innocents have not been tortured on our watch, the tyrants using our money and our indifference.

We try to get rid of evil, expel it. But it is recremental. It is quickly re-absorbed even as we identify it. The Creation is wallowing in its dross.

Regret - remorse, remonstration, reproach, rue,

2010-08-15T14:36:00.000-07:00

Regret is so much better than mere Gret. Remorse, more convincing than Morse. Reproach has better mouth-feel than mere Proach. I listen to the affectations of the Pure, and it sounds like Rue.

Parable of the Shepherd and the Shoemaker

2010-08-14T00:08:00.000-07:00

Parable. There was once a shepherd renting land from an absentee landlord. The land was too salty to raise crops but the shepherd could raise sheep and goats, and he built a house on the land. One day the absentee landlord stopped collecting the rent and the man stopped paying for the land. A few years later, a shoemaker from a faraway land arrives and claims that he bought the land from the absentee landlord.

This shoemaker knows nothing about farming or raising sheep. But he does some engineering and draws water from the nearby shore of an inland sea, and although it is brackish water, he uses it to wash the salts from the soil. The shoemaker is desperately hungry so he buys meat from the shepherd, and then starts planting in his newly-flushed soils. To everyone's surprise, the soil is made fertile again after several thousand years of over-tilling. The shoemaker brings his friends, a candlemaker, and a watchmaker. They all start farming and building new buildings.

Now the shepherd can sell more goat meat to the new arrivals. Also his sons start working in the construction industry. Some more friends of his arrive from distant lands looking for work, and the farmers and goat-herds together raise enough food for everyone. Although the first man had to move out of the first house he had built, he just went and built more houses. Together, the families begin to build graceful cities. People are working and have jobs.

Together, they all built a garden in what had become an infertile desert. Together, they built some of the most beautiful cities in Africa.

Then one day a mob of idiots started making speeches on the radio. They talked about killing "cockroaches" with machetes. They taught hatred in schools. Mothers would raise their sons to hate other tribes they heard described on the radio. One day, at a signal from the idiots, thousands of people who had been shepherds and had immigrated into the garden, began killing tens of thousands of craftsmen who had become gardeners. After a few months of this genocide, there were many broken families and hopes, and destroyed cities.

And although many died, and now we are trying to forgive the killers, and repair the orphans, still, after all the deaths, life did not get better for anyone. It got worse.

It is better, perhaps, instead of leading chants -- "Death!" "Kill!" -- perhaps it is better to just build homes, plant your gardens, raise the goats. What did all the killing and hatred accomplish?

Depression is psychological. So is Recovery. But empty suits are not the answer.

2010-08-11T10:57:00.000-07:00

We do not have a "broke" economy. Our house has been burgled, from inside. All our intelligence, information and good humor remain available to us. We can use what we have to refill the house, looted as it may be.

Remember the "Peace Premium" and the budget surpluses set up after the Carter and Clinton Administrations?

In eight years, Reagan managed to convert the world's largest creditor nation into the world's largest debtor nation, with virtually nothing to show for it. We bought B1 bombers and Space War systems which do not work and cannot be built, and Polaris submarines with nuclear weapons which cannot be used.

In eight years, Bush Jr managed to appoint people who despise "government" and had no experience with large organizations (public or private) into positions of authority, doing nothing. The people in charge of the SEC (under Orange County's politician, Cox!) devoted their entire working days in the entire year of 2008 to collecting pornography. Apparently they believed it was not necessary to glance occasionally at the nonproductive re-tranching of low-risk mortgages into high-risk securities which could be used by predators to bet against in forms of credit default swaps which had been illegal since the Great Depression, but which were made available once again by a Congress owned by the Lending Industry.

Now, the people who own this country--having seized most of its real estate in foreclosure and shipped most of the industrial capacity off-shore--have frozen credit and refuse to make loans. This leaves any possible "recovery" at a stand-still, and they know it. They want to find another empty suit to run as President so they can take back that branch of government which they lost. The surest and really at this point only viable way to pull this off in 2012 is simply continue to refuse to make sensible old-fashioned secured loans to small business, which has always been the fastest, surest, most reliable engine of recovery. The Lenders can put anyone they want up for President, and the voters will vote against all incumbents because "it's the economy".

Is the Lending Industry making loans to the middle class? No. Why not? This is the same group of people who created the financial crisis by making highly leveraged high risk investments in which they lost their shirts, in which the CEOs destroyed the institutions they were managing, only to turn to taxpayers and, during the Bush Administration (we have to remember this little detail), extorted a bail out to the tune of TRILLIONS of dollars. Remember, the Lenders got this bail out with the "promise" they would then loosen up credit and have it to make available to borrowers and business once again. They did not do this, in spite of being GIVEN the money and having made that solemn promise.

So, here we are waiting for the benefit, the loan availability accommodated by the tax payers' cash through the banks...and we are still waiting. It simply looks like the predators, having given themselves additional commissions and billion-dollar bonuses AGAIN as a result of taking tax payer bail-out money, are once AGAIN looting the country.

The good news is that at some point, the middle class, or you or I, or even some civic authority that has not already handed all of its collection to a predator, will set up a new, fresh and actual, "bank". This new bank will loan money to the middle class. The producers will get back to work producing value. And rapidly, and surely -- nothing miraculous or remarkable about it -- the whole country and the world will start to enjoy prosperity and good business.

Of course, bear in mind that the Lending Industry is still huge, and they own everything and they do not want this to happen -- because we have elections coming up, and they badly want to put another tranche of empty suits into Congress and the Executive Branch. The same people who stole our infrastructure also own our media, including the blogosphere and the twittering venues. They overwhelm us with their naysayings and attacks, without offering solutions or even mentioning implementation.

Kotlikoff is simply one of these Voices of Dooooooom. Where was he when the bankers were earning billion-dollar bonuses to perform non-productive conversions of wealth into air? Where was he when banks became bingo parlors, gambling our pension funds into toxic dumps? What possible insight does this obviously blinded and blinkered man have for us now when we need ... real insight?

For that matter, where did Kotlikoff just now get this expertise on "bankruptcy"? Where was he when the Lending Industry fought against bankruptcy reform and left consumers trapped in nondischargeable credit card schemes that treble the cost of purchases? Where was he when the bankers systemmatically went after municipalities and States and drew the entire country down into a spiral of debt? A million towns are now "bankrupt"!

If we stopped paying bankers enormous amounts of money to steal from the public weal, or stopped rewarding CEO's who destroy their own companies -- these are extraordinary times -- the engine of recovery can rapidly turn on.

Within a few months, think "over-nite", people could be hired to rebuild the infrastructure which has been completely ignored for the previous 8 years. We need engineers and designers. We need scientists to engage the stem cell, solar, and toxic clean up industries which are so promising. These would not be the low-wage jobs offered by the lame "tourist" hotels and patronizing "service" industries so eagerly touted by well, Las Vegas style cities.

The solution, in sum: Loans should be made available -- obviously not from the bailed out predator banks -- they simply refuse and will continue to withhold money in order to kill the recovery which they do not want. Go to credit unions and small banks. Start a bank on your own. Loan to small businesses, using traditional collateral. Multiply. Ignore the fact that the headlines continue to scream "Greece" and "distress". In the history of economics, business profits have never been bigger. There is plenty of money. Vast treasures were not actually destroyed. Just...stop giving it to predators. Stop.

And stop electing empty suits into positions of authority. We will prosper. Good health will break out like a pandemic. Intelligent people are much more fun than the hate-mongering little bashers who are confused and baffled by this utterly natural world.

Leaving Religion in the name of God/Allah/Enlightenment

2010-08-10T12:38:00.000-07:00

One of Catholicism's most notable adherents recently announced her withdrawal from the Church, "in the name of Christ". Twelve years after her conversion, and while retaining her belief in God, she renounces the Pope, the Church, the bizarre political agenda: "I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life".

It is significant that it is BECAUSE of her faith, and BECAUSE of her love of the core principles of the teachings of the Christ, that she raises her voice, Je'Refuse!

It was not just one thing; there were many. The Pope went to Africa, where genocidal campaigns continue to break out, where Islam is terrorizing Christians and infidels, and where Africans are facing a widespread AIDS epidemic. His Holiness' big message, his choice of focus, was on same-sex marriage.

And "the very last straw" was when the bishop of Phoenix, Thomas Olmsted, publicly condemned Sister Margaret McBride for authorizing a life-saving abortion to save a dying mother.

It remains significant that there are impulses today which have usurped Religion with an idiosyncratic agenda; the agenda is not Biblical. There is nothing in Paul's letters or in Christ's teaching that supports the Pope's hierarchy, or a virulent position on natural behavior and re-victimization of victims. Would Christ ignore molested children, or the suffering in Darfur and Congo and on the streets of all major cities? How can the leader of the Church be silent in the face of the genocide of Armenians by Islamic Turks, or the extermination of Christians in Ethiopia and Egypt(Copts), Iraq (Chaldeans), and Turkey and Lebanon (Orthodox)?

What distortion of the mind enables one to ignore these facts while devoting oneself to making sure there is clarity and certainty in completing the excommunication of Sister McBride whose heart was entirely charitable. In the name of Christ, has the Pope YET managed to name and condemn the "money-lenders" whose devotion to greed managed to impoverish entire nations?

ShariaPetition.com Welcome.

2010-08-02T12:08:00.000-07:00

ShariaPetition.com Welcome.

Shorn Again Believers: America is waging a war against Islam - Say What?

2010-08-02T11:02:00.000-07:00

Shorn Again Believers: America is waging a war against Islam - Say What?

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/06/pat-condell-on-ground-zero-mosque-is-it-possible-to-be-astonished-but-not-surprised.html

Sadly, the Bush Legacy lives on...BP, Pentagon-gate, overpaid corrupt officials

2010-07-28T11:57:00.000-07:00

Just from a few items reported in the LA Times today...it appears that the Bush Legacy just keeps on giving:

1. PENTAGON ACCOUNTING. The Defense Department has never accounted for billions of dollars given to and entrusted to it. The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction was created in 2004 to oversee $53 billion appropriated by Congress for reconstruction. For the most part, there are no records, and billions have not been accounted for at all.

2. CITY OF BELL. The Mayor, Manager, and Council of a charter city were exposed for giving themselves high salaries and benefits, while cutting back services and depleting municipal resources to do it: $787,637 to Robert Rizzo as City Manager, $457,000 to Randy Adams as Police Chief, etc. Documents show that the employment records go back to 2003 when the wholesale looting began.

3. BLAGOJEVICH. The trial of this former Governor of Illinois is concluding. Among other evidence was the $12,000/month income for his wife who performed no services and had no qualifications for a real estate firm, Rezko.

4. WIKILEAKS re Afghanistan War. New documents have been outed from the secrecy under which they had been wrapped which "offer insight primarily into the war-fighting of the recently departed George W. Bush administration". [A10] The document reveal the deliberate killing of two Reuters journalists in July 2007 , and the absence of any leadership from the Bush administration. Any. Basically the documents reveal the fact that what administrative officials were telling us was pure fabrication. The troops on the ground were not trained for what conditions they found, and the mission was compromised from the beginning.

5. LEVERAGED BUYOUT OF TRIBUNE. The court-appointed examiner in the Chicago Tribune's bankruptcy determined that the 2007 leveraged buy-out was marred by the "dishonesty" of its senior management--to the extent that the $8.2 billion transaction was a fraudulent conveyance [AA2].

UPDATES:

6. ARLINGTON CEMETERY. During the 8 years of Bush appointees "taking charge" of the government which they openly despised, the displacement of remains and records at Arlington occurred. Over 6000 are in disarray. No one is being held accountable, but even worse, it is astonishing to see that the appointees who were paid to be responsible have such little honor that they do not step forward, take responsibility, and devote themselves to correction of this sad state.

7. SPILLED OIL. Not just the spill in the Gulf, but simultaneously, there have been spills in Alaska, and even in the Great Lakes region. The scale of this depredation is significant, but it pales in significance to the scale of the ignorance, incompetence, and mindless denials of the Bush-Cheney-Rowe appointees and the Limbaugh-Breitbart-Fox network of idiologues who continue to rant with such indifference to science, honor, responsibility, and recovery.

Once the Government is dismantled and its positions filled with blind idiots, the predators come out of the bushes and actively destroy what is left. The destruction is far worse than mere entropic neglect -- it is pillage driven by the open invitation for spoil. After 8 years of irresponsible authorities, society now pays the price.

America is waging a war against Islam - Say What?

2010-07-26T10:28:00.000-07:00

Source: Leslie Stahl, 60 Minutes segment, July 25, 2010 (repeat).

By invading Iraq, the West demonstrated that it is in fact in an undeclared War Against Islam, according to The Narrative now being used by the rulers with the resources to distort Religious commitments and hatreds.

The Stahl investigation ventilated the story of a great hero, Majid Nawaz. He has survived torture, listening to torture of others, prison, radicalization, mis-education, and religion itself. In prison, he discovered other "radicals" who had in fact discovered the layered hypocrisy of religious extremists. He has discovered the key factor for peace -- countering the Narrative. The would-be caliph of the world, Osama bin Laden, teaches that Believers must be taught that the West is making War against Islam.

The Narrative is built upon fiction, not facts. But truth is not the test of efficacy for an ideology to function as an incentive to die. The Nazis used a remarkably similar Narrative -- scapegoating unarmed and vulnerable groups to justify attacking them. The Narrative has already been shown to be effective. The fact that it is not supported by facts -- by the archeology, the things, the money, the stuff behind the torrent of words -- is its soft underbelly.

Theodor Herzl and Sayyid Qutb - founders of the Zionist State and Moslem Brotherhood...

2010-06-07T09:48:00.000-07:00

Inbox - tkey@tustinlawcenter.com - Tustin Law Center Mail

Compare the writings of Theodore Herzl and Sayyid Qutb.

At the turn of the 19th century, a German journalist witnessed the persecution of millions of people excluded from participation in education, the legal systems and institutions, and the public life of Europe. He witnessed injustice reaching an invidious height in the Dreyfus prosecution. Herzl's response was to create a place where people could thrive and work for a better life without persecution. He became one of the Founding Fathers of modern Zionism.

In 1949, a wealthy Egyptian educational reformer, came to the United States to study and write. He was given a scholarship. He was invited to participate in social, educational, cultural and institutional life. He saw crassness and materialism, and lust for life which disgusted him. He saw women, none of whom met his standards of subservience. He went on to become the intellectual light of the Moslem Brotherhood.

The similarities and differences between the two "founders" are worthy of study.

Qutb was quite devoted to writing, which he regarded as his art and livelihood, although it was not the source of his income, which derived from his family wealth. His two most important works: a commentary of the Qur'an Fi Zilal al-Qur'an (In the Shade of the Qur'an), and a manifesto of political Islam called Ma'alim fi-l-Tariq (Milestones). These works represent the final form of Qutb's thought, encompassing his radically anti-secular and anti-Western claims based on his interpretations of; the Qur'an, Islamic history, and the social and political problems of Egypt.

Qutb focused on issues that occupied Egypt after Great Britain voluntarily turned the control of the political power over to Egyptians. Gamel Abdel Nasser, a secular dictator seized power in 1952, with the aid of the Moslem Brotherhood. After an assassination attempt on Nasser's life, Qutb was imprisoned for 8 months and then executed in 1966 after a "show trial".

Ironically, Herzl had witnessed one such "show trial" himself, although not as a defendant. The defendant was Theodore Dreyfus, a Jew. The trial demonstrated that all Jews in Europe were subject to such "trials".

Working Paper in progress...

Religious Fundamentalism falls from inside itself; it is entropic enhancement.

2010-05-08T10:10:00.000-07:00

Notes on Religious Fundamentalism, and its erosion of itself from within:

1. HEAVEN. The Fundamentalist is seeking to control. He chooses the easiest path -- to suppress others. It is easier to stop things than to permit things to grow, and the hardest of all is to contribute to growth. The Fundamentalist does not desire Heaven, but rather is jealous of it. The jealousy of kite-flying, of music, of dance, of the arts, is not because these activities are not righteous, but because they move us closer to heaven, wholesale. The Fundamentalist is buried in Hell. He wants to charge us for Grace, retail.

2. TIME. The Fundamentalist wants to stop the passage of Time. He seeks to stop everything. For example, it seems inconceivable to forbid the playing of music. One can only wonder that anyone would do such a thing. Yet that is one of the first things a Fundamentalist insists upon. To stop the flow of music is exactly like trying to stop the passage of time. The Fundamentalist forsakes the Past, dispenses with NOW, and lives only for his hope of Vengence in the future.

3. BELIEF. The Fundamentalist appears to be strict in his observances. He claims to believe certain things. however, this is an illusion. He is profligate -- throwing even his own better talents and judgments into the bushel basket of suppression. This can only be understood as a great waste. And his nihilism is revealed to the extent that he seeks to prevent others from flowering as they would. There is no Belief which justifies suppression of others. No real Truth requires suppression of error. The suppression of others' reveals the lack of substance or Truth in the Fundamentalists' beliefs.

4. FEAR. The Fundamentalist is all about fear. All attempts to extinguish or annihilate disbelievers are admissions of the insecurity of the Believer. Religion is the mother of fear. Curiously, the Cave Paintings of Lescaux and Chauvet (and 10,000 other preserved sites) are very revealing about true "fundamentals". There is not a single depiction of a King, a Priest, a God, or even a hierarchy. The works created prior to any of the current "religions" seem designed to inspire many things, but they do not inspire FEAR!

5. CONCLUSIONS. We are left with a few hard conclusions. Let's review. We have heaven and hell, here and now. People who leave others alone, enable others to choose and even create their heaven or hell. The Fundamentalist fights for hell. He wants to stop the passage of time, as if there is no difference between our episodes of eternity. The Fundamentalist does not believe in "fundamental" things, except Fear alone. He believes in nothing, but his many fears. He must suppress others, because he has nothing to offer. Fundamentalism is entropic. A dead end.

God is Moot;

2010-04-02T19:08:00.000-07:00

David Gelernter provides some unique, although ahistorical, insights for all in his book, JUDAISM: A WAY OF BEING (2010). He presents Judaism, with its ranges of beliefs, practices and philosophy, as the "world's first monotheistic religion". Of course, it is not that, and Abraham was not its first practitioner. (Abraham lived and died believing in multiple gods and angels, according to the very words of Genesis). But it does appear that Jews created the idea of congregational worship and "study" of religious texts -- of which they provide the earliest examples. Powerful texts.
While Gelernter's provocative themes of "Separation", "Veil", "Perfect asymmetry", and "Inward pilgrimage" are beautiful but unprovable, I must here preserve two concepts he richly rewards us with:

"The problem of evil is man's problem. The central question is not why God hasn't saved the world, but why YOU haven't." This moots theodicy as well as Belief.

And he draws from the Lamentations: "Make us new again, as we used to be."

Law's futility < Love's Labour's Lost > Act I, scene I

2010-03-27T21:43:00.000-07:00

"These oaths and laws will prove an idle scorn." Lord Biron's soto voce as he is tasked with delivery of Costard the Clown to the keep for his violation of King Ferdinand's proscription against wenching.

King. Sir, I will pronounce your sentence: you shall fast a week with bran and water.
Cost. I had rather pray a month with mutton and porridge.

Dog Person God

2010-03-24T13:46:00.000-07:00

LibraryThing: State of the Thing -- March 2010 - tkey@tustinlawcenter.com - Tustin Law Center Mail

I want to be the person my dog thinks I am. Is it possible to be different from what a knowing-God thinks I am? The very suggestion pierces the inflation of belief. Uncanny certitudes. I bark, therefore...

Desiderius Erasmus Quotes

2010-02-26T21:46:00.000-08:00

Desiderius Erasmus Quotes

Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.
Desiderius Erasmus

Lucille Clifton 1936-2010 gritty optimism thru hardships passing in the night

2010-02-21T17:51:00.000-08:00

From Blessing the Boats:

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back. may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

2010-02-11T10:23:00.000-08:00

Those who prey upon credulity and hope
take away the lives of their victims.
That is to say, fraud is a capital offense,
greater in scale and consequence than
taking bread or things. For prudent persons
can guard their stuff from thieves, but
honesty has no protection from cunning.

Where fraud is permitted, where it has no severe consequences visited by law upon the perpetrator, then honest traders are always undone by knaves. Decency is at a great disadvantage in the face of misrepresentations of fact made by fraudsters who are not punished in any way.

This truth was observed in laissez faire Europe by the dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin in 1726. The good dean wrote GULLIVER's TRAVELS among other great satires and reports. Jonathan Swift lived 1667-1745, tirelessly exposing the graft, corruption, and mendacity of hypocrites. His efforts had little effect upon the morality and laws he sought to uphold, and he was driven insane in his last years.

Theodor Herzl and Wagner - add to collection of Ironies

2010-02-08T18:53:00.000-08:00

In 1895, a modest but highly educated German journalist was sent to Paris by his Editors to report on the "trial of the century". Theodor Herzl duly reported the details of the trial, of which he was an eye-witness. The French Army had imprisoned and then tried the highest ranking Jew in its ranks, convicting him on the facially implausible charge of being a spy for Germany. These legal proceedings were the culmination of the notorious event known as the Dreyfus Affair. The conviction of the Jewish officer was confirmed by the Supreme Court of France, even though there was not a scintilla of "evidence" supporting the charge, and in fact, another man admitted to having served as a spy.

Herzl walked away from the trial with the CERTAINTY that Jews, without a homeland, would not be treated with justice in Europe at that time. Where Captain Dreyfus, a fine officer, with undeniable competence and accomplishment, unsullied by any taint or corruption of any kind, could be blamed for losses in a military campaign in which he was not even involved, and where it was shown to the Supreme Court of France that there was no evidence in support of the charges, which were brought by incompetents who needed a scapegoat, his conviction was upheld on the single ground that he was a Jew. Blaming Jews, a largely unarmed people, had become a successful method for avoiding responsibility on the part of authorities across Europe. Here, it reached an apex.

After filing his reports during the day, Herzl would attend the Opera in the evenings in Paris. By coincidence, the Ring Cycle composed by the German composer, Richard Wagner, was being performed. Herzl was well-aware of the ugly anti-semitism of Wagner, who was a prolific essayist as well as composer. Yet, to his credit, he was able to appreciate the artistry and sublimely beautiful compositions. Even more extraordinary, he was able to take inspiration from the libretto itself.

The operas are loosely drawn from the bardic saga mythology of a Norse people. Wagner obtained copies and outlines and translations of the Poetic Edda, the Volsunga Saga, and the German Nibelungenlied. Like many intellectuals in this period of relative peace (late 1800's), Wagner found "Romantic" inspiration -- profound feelings -- in the epic literature of pagan gods.

Contrasted with his other compositions, Wagner's Ring Cycle is positively sunny and refreshing. Wagner invented most of the plot of the first music drama, the Rhinegold, by combining three unrelated Edda stories, developing a theme of Love versus Greed and Power. In the Valkyrie, the theme is Lover versus Law. In Siegfried, he practically defines Love as Freedom (from law and greed), and in Twilight of the Gods, he develops Love as a redeemer for those who resign themselves to it.

Virtually all of the sagas available to Wagner came out of Iceland, centuries after the isolated island had become Christianized by force. Transmitted with both apologist and euhemerist views, Wagner took the Myths as proto-science (explaining the mysteries) and proto-psychology (explaining ourselves).

Wagner was dead before Hitler was even born. However, Wagner's anti-Semitic views had been published, and he stooped to inventing a character in the Cycle who mimics the public caricature of greedy Jews -- although the character is in fact, a Germanic divinity. The Nazis did not invent anti-Semitism, or much of anything else. Nor do anti-semites, even talented ones, bother with logical consistency or decency. And to be "fair", Wagner did not express any great love for Germans or "Deutschland" -- which was not yet an independent united State, but from its various communities he had to flee on several occasions, and in which his music was banned until 1861.

So, what did Herzl draw from the musical dramas which had been drawn from ancient pagan poetry by a talented "Romantic" German exile?

Herzl was inspired to create Zionism. It was the only, the ONLY, remedy for anti-semitism. His fellow-German's artistry and the bardic ideas about community-building helped shape the concept of a Jewish homeland. Recovery of what was lost. Herzl, the Founding Father of Israel, was a devoted, lifelong Wagnerian.

Bold Action and Big Ideas

2010-02-03T19:03:00.000-08:00

President Obama said, as he took the office he is re-making: "History reminds us that, at every moment of economic upheaval and transformation, this nation has responded with bold action and big ideas."

Somehow, incredibly, there are folks who hear this challenge and think that he meant "bold talk and big government". No. Just not what he said, and not what he is leading us toward. Still, where are the bold and the brave? Who has ideas, large and looming with hope?

Financial Crisis - Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr. and the Cause

2010-02-02T14:33:00.000-08:00

Former Secretary of Treasury Henry M. Paulson, Jr. has written a book entitled ON THE BRINK; Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System. His account is revealing. He clearly had no concept of any oversight function, although he had a background and employment exposure to investment banking opportunities and risks.

Of particular note is that he dealt with the crisis -- as it came to a head in the 48 hours (48 hours!) preceding the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September 13, 2008 -- by seeking to find another lender to cover the obligations which were due. In other words, he was trying to solve a situation created by bad loans (securities tied to defaulting mortgages) by finding a bank willing to chase good money after bad. Knowing the nature of the toxic assets, he looked for a sucker.

When Barclays (President Bob Diamond) was unwilling to make the deal because the British Financial Services Authority (Finance Minister Alistair Darling) did not support it, "we were beside ourselves". To the group of CEO's he had assembled in his lobby, he blurted, "The British screwed us!" I'll bet he used other words. He was "stunned" that Mr. Darling was unwilling to permit him to unload the problem "on the British tax payer".

In the book, Mr. Paulson falls upon his faith (Christian Science). He asks his wife "to pray for me". She immediately quotes Timothy II, 1:7 : "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind".

The problem is that he admits he kept bottles of pills -- sleeping pills -- which is medication prohibited by his invoked religion and contrary to the Scientist belief that he cannot sleep. In addition, exactly WHAT is he fearing? For his failure to find a sucker to be the last one holding the bag of increasingly toxic assets? Does he understand that the only "risks", the only thing at stake, is the collapse of Lehman, and of course, with that, the spiraling problems that would hit the insurer, AIG.

However, the real danger was that the failure of large financial institutions would cause all of his chums to lose their shirts. All of his associations were with investment bankers. (He had been Chairman of Goldman Sachs).

In Spring 2007, Secretary Paulson told an audience at the Shanghai Futures Exchange that "An open, competitive, and liberalized financial market can effectively allocate scarce resources in a manner that promotes stability and prosperity far better than governmental intervention."[19] He actively lobbied to remove all regulatory oversight from the financial industry while at the same time subjecting consumer rights organizations (lawyers, loan modification consultants, etc) to increased and burdensome regulation).

In August 2007, Secretary Paulson explained that U.S. subprime mortgage fallout remained largely contained due to the strongest global economy in decades.[20] The economy was already tanking and was way down from the levels reached during Clinton.

On July 20, 2008, after the failure of Indymac Bank, Paulson reassured the public by saying, “it's a safe banking system, a sound banking system. Our regulators are on top of it. This is a very manageable situation.”[21] He had to know that the people pretending to be "our regulators" were in fact the predators who had already scammed homeowner-borrowers by placing them into inappropriate loans and OptionARMS.

On August 10, 2008, Secretary Paulson told NBC’s Meet the Press that he had no plans to inject any capital into Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.[22] On September 7, 2008, both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went into conservatorship.[23]

Quoted from Wikipedia.

Conflict, and the Effects of hate-mongering

2010-02-02T12:12:00.000-08:00

We can despise the extreme wings of our politics all we want, but we seem to have them: Little mobberies pushed by the lies of tyrants -- perhaps the revenant Marxists, and the eruptive reactionaries, anyone willing to boil the stew. Anyone crying that compromise "makes you look weak"!

We have no better example of the instructively negative consequences of extremism than what can be drawn from the modern epoch's history of France. Of course, it is difficult to avoid the simple allure of the earlier milestones composed by the ancien regime, the Revolution, and Napoleon. None of those events, however, glittering, bloody, and instructive, were "modern".

The tumultuous era from 1830 to 1905 has been narrated by Frederick Brown, author of FOR THE SOUL OF FRANCE (2010). In this period, France ingested four different Constitutions, three dynasties, two republics, three revolutikons, one coup that worked and two that did not, two civil wars, one defeat in war that led to the German occupation of one-third of the country, two major financial scandals (neither of which involved Jews) that destroyed most savings accounts, and of course, the "trial of the century" -- the judicial and military scandal known as the Dreyfus Affair.

Now here is the lesson: What was The Cause of this turmoil? How did a nation that had brilliantly used accomodation and compromise to finally recover from centuries of corrupt oppression (Bourbons), the extremes of ideological terror (Robespierre, Orleans), and loss of almost all of its fighting age men (Napoleon), only to erupt again into chaos? What was the unrelenting driver for this self-destruction?

We know there is almost a genetic tension between Conservative and Liberal. In France, according to Brown, most of the turmoil during this period in France stemmed from battles between the conservative royalty/church clerical camp on the one side and the liberal or communard seculars on the other. And the conflict was painfully self-destructive. Even when the Protestant Prussians invaded in 1870, the two camps failed to reconcile.

Interestingly, the defeats and injuries suffered by France only further inflamed the idiotarian extremes of both these wings. Die-hard reactionaries (notably the L'Ordre Moral, and the pretender to the throne, Count de Chambord) took the defeat as God's punishment for the sin of failing to adopt the papal infallibility of Pope Pius IX. Secularists insisted that the losses were the result of betrayal of the Enlightenment thinkers who had created the Republic. Grace, whether divine or inspired by human creativity, was taken off the table. Again, as before, blood ran down the gutters, coloring the Seine red.

What is striking in this conflict is that as the tide of history rises against the clericals, they resort to more extreme and outlandish behavior, and ultimately, to an unprecedented degree of Hate-Mongering. After the misbegotten coup of 1889 led by the reactionary general, Georges Boulanger, the clericals sought to rally the public by claiming religious affiliation. Ironically, the means they adopted was to launch an anti-Semitic campaign. Thus, the attention of the world was diverted from the crimes, corruption and incompetence of the French rulers and military -- which had NO Jews (except for draftees and a jr. officer, Captain Dreyfus) -- to the fictions and false accusations made against shopkeepers and cobblers, the Jews. The hate-mongering took the forms of false charges against Dreyfus (blaming a Jew for the collapse of the French Army), the virilent fiction of the "Elders of Zion", etc.

The take-away point today is that we see the reactionaries now taking the same course -- in response to the rise of Obama liberals, the conservatives resort to hate-mongering and the scape-goating of blacks and Jews (compare, Dreyfus Affair). The Conservatives -- the true Conservatives -- should not do this. However, it is irresistable to the royal houses trying to stay in power and fearing the anger of the mob should the public ever demand an accounting.

The Sun drinks the Sea, the dark earth drinks the sky-rain

2010-01-18T13:41:00.000-08:00

Unusual for Southern California, our 2d of 4 days of rain. We love it, but do not know what to do. Anacreon, in 500 b.c. under a squal showered on his arid isle (Teos), cried out, in my poor translation of the same quandary:

"Hephaestus, carve me a hollow cup!
The dark earth drinks the rain,
The flowers drink the earth,

The sea drinks the wind,
The sun drinks the sea..." (!)

Shut up. I am drunk in the rain
offering a wet garland of flowers
kissed everywhere by the watered wind
coming and going
tasting everything.

Carve me a hollow cup! Funny how it looks like Anacreon had totally figured out the Water cycle. 500 b.c. We are such SLOW learners, even about things that are right before our eyes, our senses. We taste the rain...It drops from the sky after the sun has drunk it from the sea....

Blanziflor et Hecuba-aa-aaa!

2010-01-16T16:32:00.000-08:00

One of the many emotional peaks in the music-libretto of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, is the invocation of "Blanchiflor et Hecuba"! In the penultimate verse, just before the hearty ending cheer on the scaffold of malevolent destiny-- O Fortuna! The Ave Formoisissima invokes beautiful women as the Light, the Rose of the World.

The names of these two Queen Mothers would presumably be familiar to Europeans familiar with homiletic sagas in the Matter of Britain (King Arthur), France (Charlemagne) and Rome (mythology and Homer), and with Virgil's Aeneid.

Still, when rehearsing, I was always curious that these two specific women were invoked in the lament-filled paean to life-drive und das ewig-weibliche. Both women are expressly elevated to adored Venus stature. But who are they?

Hecuba seems pretty clear. The fertile wife of Priam, mother of Hector, and queen of Troy. As I recall, there are a number of different versions of her fate. Not content with killing her husband and number one hero son, the Aeneans burned her city, hauled her off as a slave, and killed most of her other 19 children. The youngest son, was not killed by the Greeks, but was murdered by a Thracian ally who usurped the Trojan treasure he undertook to guard. Hecumba, having been such a wonderful mother, is pushed over the edge with the news of this last and final infamy. Homer says she started barking like a dog, and howled at the moon. Hence the expression, "went to the dogs". Still, I like to imagine her impulse to bark was a perfectly rational response to what she was experiencing and led to her release from enslavement. With Hecubated breath.

Blanziflor is more difficult. The monks reference familiarity with Grail quests and Icelandic Sagas, in addition to the standard Homer. Blanchefleur is the heroine of an eponymous tale, is the beloved of Percevel (Parsifal), and is also the mother of Lohengrin (as Condiwiramurs). Finally, Blanchefleur is the mother of Tristan in Tristan and Iseult. (Tristan is the knight in Arthur's court, whose mission it is to safely deliver Iseult to his friend and her brethothed. On the way, the two fall for each other, hard.) It is possible the monks wanted to remind themselves of these powerful women.

But I do not think so. None of these "Blanches" seem to be connected with Hecuba, or the Hecuban form of lament -- a beautiful woman who has everything but whose destiny is to lose everything, including sanity. THAT sort of invocation seems to make sense in terms of the Carmina collection. So let's revisit Troy.

Looking closely at the entire text of the collected Carmina, one may be drawn to the conclusion that THIS Blanchiflor is one of the other women invoked by Virgil, in addition tol Hecuba. After all, the monks do seem to be tracing the tragedy of Troy -- the possibility of greatness, the reduction to flames and destruction on the whims of malevelent gods.

Obviously the woman whose fate it is to be most tightly connected to Troy, is Helen. Is "Blanchiflor" connected to "Helen" in any way? Is it possible the poets were alluding to Helen?

Ἕλλην (Hellen) has long been the traditional name Greeks have for themselves. A Greek's Abraham is a woman. The capture of Sparta's queen, and King Menelaus' wife, by Paris was the signature casus belli, purportedly as a repatriation effort.

It is Helen of Troy whose history, and even the etymology of her name, is most connected to the Venus the poets appeal to. It is of course, vanity to search for etymology, ever. Or for that matter, a "golden age" of Sparta -- archeological evidence of Mycenaean palaces have never been found.

Still, we can content ourselves with the foreshadowing themes drawn from Helen and extending to the continental medieval Blanchiflor. For example, the Tristam theme is foreshadowed by the fact that Agamemnon undertook to court and win Helen on behalf of his brother Menelaus.

Why not just sing "Helen and Hecuba-aa"! My thinking is that the poets were drinking. They loved Venus, not by her Greek name Aphrodite, and they loved her through Virgil, the Roman. The Castor-Pollux link between Sparta and Rome was a theme for Virgil. Here the poets are mimicking a famous epithalamium of Catullus, whose work was also put to music by Orff in a separate work. It is sexual love, not motherland and Mom and the happy home which are the starting and ending point of the monks' diversions.

So, it really is Helen, the founder of the cult in Laconia, a hangover of the fertility cult of the caves which never stopped and is invoked even today. The Homeric account (Helen walks around the Horse, mimicking the warrior's wives), gives way to the different stories dramatized by Stesichorus (both Greeks and Trojans stone her), Euripedes (in which Helen never went to Troy), and even Herodotus. In previous iterations, she was a vegetation goddess -- Helen of the Trees, in Rhodes with roots going back to the Minoan, where they had very similar terracotta female figurines.

And there on Rhodes we find the most tragic account of her fate. Having conquered all men with her beauty, and having been queen of the greatest cities, she came to Rhodes. Believing she was enjoying the hospitality of the queen of the island with handmaidens attending her bath, the queen in fact was seeking vengence for the loss of her family. She had her handmaidens disguized as Furies and set upon Helen, hanging her on a tree. Full circle. O Fortuna plango.

Music is not a Language

2010-01-12T11:06:00.000-08:00

Often after playing music, never during, I fairly burst with expression and insight and desperately yearn to "communicate" it. Of course, this may be a side-effect of playing itself. The hunger, the need to express. Words are much more linear, of course, but both conversations and tunes are parsed by Time.

The difficulty is the shift, the translation back to "words". One can feel a knuckle between the word-net of "language" and the ringing-fruit basketry of "sound". We are able to do things with things we little understand -- words and tunes come from somewhere, loaded with skill-sets and feelings, and components which are shared. But most of the expressions are unique to their respective continents. Usually after playing, I literally have nothing to "say".

One of my favorite memories of performers in my youth were the lovable randy couple, Marais and Miranda. They were famous for telling musical stories. Their performance was both words and puns, and sounds sweeping across the arc of arts, with wisdom, flirtation, eyebrows and twinkling, and skillful bowing on vibrating strings. Their songs and sounds were blended, and now I deeply appreciate their skill at beckoning both.

Language can be used to perceive, to extend our perceptions. Music can be used to dip our toes into experiences. Both Words and Music can hit the sweet-spots of the brain and bounce thoughts aloft. Feelings can be lit up. Or smothered. But each is rooted and routed on separate places in the central nervous system. The mysteries of both are not the same.

Music - composition mysteries

2010-01-12T10:52:00.000-08:00

Music is the only true "religion", by any definition of redemption or grace or self-realization. And like Religion, not all can be saved. Some of us will never "get it". Mozart could compose in his head, play in his sleep, and remember what he intended to do later in performance. Yet his peers treated him like a circus curiosity, not the high priest for which office he should have been annointed.

None of us know where music really comes from or what purpose it serves. Where was evolution headed, or where was your Creator going with this? We are lit up by timbre, tempo, meter, pitch and mode. We contend with tunings and tonalities, burning the circle of fifths inside melodies held together in ribbed vertebra of rhythm and rhyme. We feel the textures of sound, held in the suspense of lacunae and progression, modulating to a cadence of a drum we listened to from the womb.

World War II - assessment

2010-01-12T10:29:00.000-08:00

A sufficient time has passed, and enough players with egos at stake have died, so that we can clear the slate and confirm what REALLY happened in the paroxysm of WWII. Here are a few notes:

1. FACTS. Hitler's personal secretary for a decade was an educated eye-witness to his rise to power and conduct of the War. She was never interviewed by anyone -- the military, the academy, the journalists. This single anecdotal fact reveals an enormous disinterest in facts generally, and a huge bias against women, that colors all accounts of the War.

2. ECONOMICS. A British economist spent the post-war decade appraising the value of the real estate and stock of Germany before the war, and comparing the value to the cost of fighting Germany. It cost much much more to wage war than to buy the materials which appear to be at stake.

3. GOLD. We know that the Nazis were pillagers. Like all thugs with guns, as they conquered Europe, they walked into every bank in every city, town and village and removed the gold. The Imperial Japanese Army systematicaly removed the gold from every bank, temple, and estate they could find from Manchuria to Indonesia. Together, the Axis consolidated at least 80% of the world's gold. This bullion has never been fully accounted for. It did not actually disappear -- it was not destroyed. Still, its "story" has never been told or ventilated by the press or by historians. We know the numbers of men at arms in numerous engagements across the globe, and we know the gold is important to thugs. But "military historians" seem to lose interest when "following the money".

4. VICTORY. Not surprising for such a complex event, but surprising considering what was at stake, there are many examples where but for a small and largely overlooked fluke, the AXIS would have won the war.

5. ACTUAL COST. We resist the attempts to assess the actual losses and damage because of the enormity. The losses of Nanking, Nagasaki, Dresden, and the Jews and Gypsies of eastern Europe, are simply not calculable, for even a start.

Stones and Bones

2010-01-12T10:15:00.000-08:00

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CAVE ART Blogged 2009 “Stones and Bones”

Anthropologists have confirmed that homo sapiens was thriving in communities in Africa 500,000 years ago. 30,000 years ago we were painting the walls and ceilings in underground caves. We lived without the physical culture we enjoy today, apparently enjoying each other and the natural wonders of this world...for hundreds of thousands of years. What changed?

Culture has clearly "advanced" -- the stones and bones show improvements and increased specialization coupled with organization. Tools become more efficient. The "fitness" is adjusted. Today we can physically see the changes we describe as neolithic revolutions which in turn led to "civilization" marching through its bronze, iron, and steel iterations.

Still, we look at the Cave Paintings and their absences -- no God, no King, no weapons, no hierarchies of men -- and the predominance of gravidity, of color and wonder. We really have to reconsider the direction we have come. In the recent blink of 10,000 years we seem to have wandered into an obsession with personality cults, superstition and weaponry. Have we wandered into a dead end? What is the real vector? What is going on now, and why is it so difficult to comprehend our actual History? Surely what we did for 100,000 years is significant compared to a few centuries of risings and fallings and futile prayers to pantheons of gods.

The point is, looking at Cave Art (which is only 30,000 years old but which was already "advanced" in the caves ((there is no evidence of slow beginnings which probably began "outside")), we had Art. We had the sciencia of the minerals and pigments. This is what makes the ABSENCES so startling. Cave Art depicts no gods, no weapons, no armies, no hierarchies. But we had Community and we had Art and yes, Science -- for hundreds of thousands of years.

The recent 10,000 year old obsession with superstition and vengeful slaughter of "others" is all very new and unnecessary. No, it was not as if evil did not happen, or Mankind did not suffer. The Ice Age extinguished the Cave culture. But there in our Past, it was still Eden compared with the mass suffering to which we have lately become accustomed at the hands of Kings and Priests.

Consciousness

2010-01-12T01:07:00.000-08:00

Why do we cling to MORE than life? Why do we press for Understanding and self-realization -- my gawd What is that? -- as well!

Yet every night, we surrender to LOSS of consciousness and Will. We fall asleep. We do not "change our mind" easily, and we almost never change our Personality. But gratefully we take to the pillow, and whatever we are, disappears.

Scripture

2010-01-12T00:37:00.000-08:00

Scripture is never clear. There is no bible or spiritual text which is not disputed over life-times of believers, and the dispute is often and always ironic to the death!

The Tanakh, or Old Testament, was written by many authors over a period of 1000 years. This is a book of infinite inspiration and contradiction. It is glossed and tortured and translated in ever "new" ways. While its main purpose was to preserve the power of the priests against the kings, it shares a million minor agendas which continue to entertain and beguile.

Of the 27 books of the New Testament, there is a certain provenance to none of them. Many of the contemporaneous texts were curiously omitted without explanation provided by the anonymous Councilors meeting at Nicea in the fourth century after the Subject of the gospels stopped teaching.

Of the legendary "founders" of the great Religions, not one is alleged to have written a word -- Abraham, Buddha, Jesus -- all silent and absent from stone, papyrus, or clay. Mohammad and Smith appear to have written texts -- on leaves, skins, tablets -- but they each claim that an Angel (the same one, Gabriel), not God or Allah (again the same), dictated the text to them.

We have only recently discovered and authenticated long-lost but referenced "gospels", such as the gospel of Judas, Thomas, and several female writers.

St Paul, of course, is a historical figure and his letters -- actually penned by him -- have been preserved. Accord, the work of St Augustine, with his gospel of grace and invention of a trinity. What is significant is that in subsequent iterations, changes were made to the texts by so-called Believers with the intent to deceive others!

During this formative time Jews and Christians were maintaining graven images in the hearths of their homes, and continued to bury their dead with as many as 30 different deities. Even after the attempt to collate an "official" scripture 300 years after Jesus by order of the Mother of Constantine--that pagan Emperor who died as a non-believer--the copyists continued to use widely varying translations.

Of particular significance is the fact that the myth of inerrant "oral tradition" has been completely exploded. Most "traditions" trace back only a few generations. Most texts are interpolated and falsified, almost none are "copied" accurately verbatim and without new purposes and agendas. Translations are impossible. And memories? They are false.

Scripture is not history. It is fascinating. But it is not Truth.

Bubbles and Pirates

2010-01-11T23:58:00.000-08:00

The largest economy in the world is the Global Economy. No single "country" whatever that means, or even Continent, can claim to be Number One in a vacuum.

The United States has the largest economy among political systems, and by 2007, China became the 2d largest with the highest growth rate, at 9%.

Japan, with no natural resources and half the population of the US, is in 3d place, with the world's largest banks. Remarkably, considering its location exactly between the US and China, it is still in torpor from the real estate crash of Tokyo decades ago.

India has a growth rate that matches China in many ways, but is economically and radically different. The growth is accelerated not by low-wage manufacturing, but by service industries producing well over half the GDP. Both India and China each have a Middle Class larger than either the United States or Europe.

Russia still enjoys the rich bottom lands and bread baskets of the Ukraine, but these are still locked in with transportation difficulties exposed the the predations of Pirates and the spoliation of pollution. Russia, is not, as DeTocqueville predicted, the "country of the future", but it is the great warning to the future of the damage that piracy and pollution can wreak.

The economies of the countries in the Middle East are extremely small. The Oil billionaires look down on everyone--the Bedouin shepard, other billionaires, and especially the Middle Classes, which almost do not exist. This is the curse of Oil -- it creates controllers and dependents. Dubai, with its glittering architecture, looked promising, but then it collapsed economically -- and names the world's tallest building after a neighboring billionaire.

Back to China. This year, a variety of GDP growth rates and projections have been announced. Most of the numbers are astounding, not just because the rest of the world is suffering as a result of a pirate attack on Wall Street. The Chinese Government still "controls" the announcement of the numbers. And the Government is lying. The figures coming out of China are "political". The concept of gathering the facts and reporting them is still completely "foreign".

The publication and projection of false figures will have the accelerating and inevitable effect of creating a large Bubble in the Chinese economy. Prices are increasing for everything faster than wages. As the power drive of Hong Kong continues to roll across China -- all of its cities are in capitalism's thrall-- they compete with each other to pollute the air, water, and farms.

The rulers of China are elderly and short-sighted. They are stuffing their pockets as fast as they can, and are oblivious to long-term investments or the impact of toxic waste, industrialization, and thoughtless change. The Government officials engage in a crude form of competition which consists of banqueting -- they eat and drink to excess, as a form of political demonstration and power-mongering. This is the kind of anecdotal behavior which presages disaster and reveals character, or lack of character, at the top of their society, which is the bottom.

The Bubble that was created in the coastal real estate of the United States in 2008, causing a rise in prices of homes to a level roughly two times what the members of the middle class could purchase with their dual but decreasing earner households, is now forming in China. There are other similarities -- both spouses work, few children, large "middle" class, many opportunities to make money. There are also differences -- regulations, no privatized "Treasury Department", no Wall Street gamers.

However, it should be noted that in China, the pirates are already IN power. They conquered China quickly after WWII. More recently, in Wall Street USA, the pirates had to buy the Pentagon, the Treasury, all the large newspapers, the Congress, the Presidency, and even the Courts. This took more time.

The historical fact is that Pirates and Bubbles go after each other. Pirates have a crude fascination -- its part of their man-child fantasy -- with things that burst. The Chinese bubble is growing larger, rapidly. They have, like the Russians, polluted the land and rivers of China, which once fed the most successful breeding population on the planet. The Pirates are already in charge.

Geodeterminism

2010-01-11T23:23:00.000-08:00

It is a curse, not to forget history, but to remember it.

Geographically, the north American continent is uniquely "bountiful" in terms of resources that human culture requires. The Mississippi-Missouri delta is a many-fingered palm of waterways going all the directions you want to go in a Temperate Zone bread-basket. The mineral wealth comprehensively covers the chart of elements, wanting for nothing. The plagues of locusts in the Great Plains mysteriously disappeared with the feral Bison. Colonies of idiots and convicted felons could come to the region and thrive. Natural population expansion results in larger numbers of descendants of the emigrants in America than in many of their "home countries". More present-day Americans have German ancestry than in Germany, the largest population of Europe. The largest Norwegian country is Minnesota-Wisconsin. We could go on. The 2d largest Polish city in the world is Chicago, etc.

Nothing political in the world is going to change this unique geophysical configuration of rivers and mountains and plains in a Temperate Zone. All the rivers of Russia flow North, where you do not want to go, except for the Volga which flows into a landlocked body of water, the Caspian Sea. Africa has a mighty and a storied river, the Nile, and many fertile places which enable mankind to thrive. But it shares, with South America, a Tropical curse. It is a petri dish for disease, torpor, and excess humidity. It shares with Australia, a plague of insects that distract human culture and compete for food.

It is true that the Middle East began the most successful human cultures in its fertile crescents. However, the soils of the region are exhausted, and the subsoil is cursed with an abundance of Oil controlled by inbred clans. The Egyptians destroyed the Nile with a dam, Saddam Hussein channelized and desertified the Tigris-Euphrates delta, and beyond Israel, the soils of the Levant and much of Persia are exhausted. Israel alone has flushed the salinity and replenishes its soil. Arabia sits on the largest fresh-water aquifer in the world, but ignores it for the oil.

It is true that the sub-continent of China has long supported human needs. The Yangtze flows east-west in a Temperate Zone. The People, the most successful on the planet in terms of numbers, also have the prescience to celebrate that achievement with steps to rein in any further increase. Many observers also take notice of the decision of the Government of China to permit economic freedom, and the participation of China in globalization. However, China destroyed the fisheries of its rivers with power dams and mining, and now has 18 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world.

It is true that geophysical features alone do not exlain all risings and fallings. Japan has few resources and constant earthquaking, and yet they have projected power, doing some of the worst and some of the best things. The centrality of Italy in the Mediterranean does not explain why a minor village formed at a fjord in the Tiber River valley, a cross-roads, would become the Rome that all roads led to. Or why a sinking city in a marsh of 117 islands would survive frequent irruptions to become Venice, a major maritime power during the Middle Ages through its Settecento (17-18th century).

Steven Solomon has recently lent his beltway journalist scholarship to the pride of place historicity of Water issues, in his comprehensive work, WATER the Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power and Civilization (2010). Noting that civilization itself (a mixed blessing) has been mid-wifed by agricultural irrigation, hag-ridden by scarcity, and left to collapse upon indiscretions over water, Solomon updates us all. The recurring patterns of geophysical preeminence are made visible. There is an enduring tension between two forms of political/economic organization which are themselves formed by water usage. The "hydraulic states" (Egypt, Sparta, Soviet) which focused on irrigation and canals run by centralized (authoritarian) governance, and the "sea-faring cultures" (Athens, United Kingdom) which were decidedly more difused and democratic. (We perpetually fight the Peloponnesian War.)

The key fact here is not which form of government is "better", by any measure. But WHAT sources for potable water are available?

We are, as always, facing the hydrological time bomb -- we, the beneficiaries of the immediately previous demographic bomb, enabled by the availability of exploitable Water.

The Meaning of Religion and the ABSENCE of God

2010-01-11T22:39:00.000-08:00

One of the ironies of Religion is that so much of IT has been started by individuals and maintained by people with no Belief in any god.

Abraham, the OT/Tanahk tells us, arose out of Ur "with his gods". He did not start Monotheism, he was polytheistic, like most people trying to explain things they did not understand.

Buddha initiated the 2d great "Religion". 2500 years ago, Buddha denounced the concept of divinity--from Hindu hordes of spirits to the idea of a single omnipotent god. As for the idea of Heaven or Hell, or having a "relationship with God" he taught spirituality without referencing such absurd concepts.

Jesus, whose name is suspiciously Latin, was never worshiped as a god by any of the people who actually "witnessed" him, the Jews and a few Samaritans. After his death, Christianity spread peacefully throughout the collapsing Roman Empire.

Mohammed repeatedly gainsays his own divinity. Yet his followers idolize him and boldly disobey the words of the Allah conveyed in the Quran. Terrorists clearly reject "Islam", which is submission. Virtually all suicide and roadside bombers today purport to act in the name of Islam, but all have failed to show ANY directive from Allah to do what they do. The Quran promises no "virgins" for an assassin's pleasure in Heaven. Allah is described as a creator, including Jews and Gentiles, and that investment is contradicted by the act of murder.

Buddhism grew from a tiny religious community in northern India into a movement that spans the globe. This happened peacefully. When Arabs came into contact with Buddhism, they stopped their initial expansion by the sword. Islam immediately enjoyed a much bigger expansion peacefully--through India and all the way to Indonesia--than it had previously taken by force across the thinly populated desert of northern Africa.

Mormonism, remarkably similar to Islam in its formation and growth pattern, has also grown considerably. From a divinely-inspired but violent origin, its practitioners took up the practical arts and crafts and spread across the globe.

It is as if we come full circle. Abraham unites us all as "lost tribes" with no common language and makes us all one tribe moving to new places. Buddha points us toward serenity and a satisfying life. Other thinkers add the idea of Love (Jesus), peaceful submission (Mohammed), and community building (LDS).

And now we are back to trying to understand each other, from different tribes and different tongues, to find our common tribe. And no one has claimed to have heard from any god, of any ilk, for a hundred years. There are still individuals who invoke Religion and then commit un-saintly acts, none of which are justified by any Scripture. While several Religions have experienced paroxysms of violence, not one of the four great Religions has expanded significantly as a result of violence.

And not one of the deistic cults claims to have any evidence of any recent communication. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all invoke the SAME deity (arguably or intermittently Yahweh/Jehovah/God/Allah/Ishtar). All of their "Scriptures" are presaged by stories written on clay tablets by those people in Ur who worshiped a female trinity symbolized by the thin crescent moon on a green field. This round gently-curved breast symbol is now ironically and alternatively usurped as a symbol of Allah, and the Virgin Mary.

We are all Buddhists. We are all Unitarian Universalists, even if many of us do not know it. We are all the Lost Tribes of Israel, found our way home together even IN THE ABSENCE OF ANY PILLAR OF FIRE! We are the devoted Saints in the presence of each other. We sanctify what we do not destroy.

I urge all Religious Believers to attend: Almost all Belief is contrary to almost all Religious Tradition.

Argument and Agreement

2010-01-11T22:23:00.000-08:00

What possessed the academy to stop teaching rhetoric and reasoning? What possesses those who assert leadership, over air waves and mosques and businesses and thrones, to vilify and silence and label their "enemies"?

Reasoning is dyadic argumentation tested by doubt, which is surpassingly mutual. Even a speaker will suddenly realize an absurdity only after it is expressed.

But how can we make reasoning more effective? Surely this is worth the effort, although I disagree with the school that would pretend that teaching Argumentation would lead to (1) Finding Truth, and (2) Resolving Conflict. While Argumentation is a social, even a cooperative enterprise, the aforesaid (1) and (2) remain demonstrably illusive.

Still, it is dialogue which makes culture possible. And the loss of civility which always arises when Argumentation is voiced from the extreme wings, will cripple culture and inflame idiocy. Political Freedom is layered and is never the result of extremity. Hate-mongering should be discouraged.

The difficulty of Belief Changing

2010-01-02T16:21:00.000-08:00

If we never change our Beliefs, we imply our own un-educability. And even to state a Belief, to declare that we have over-reached the facts and hang by an unsupported limb, is to pronounce the fact that we are inclined to be un-educable. Now, is there any difficulty among men and women greater than the prospect of changing their Beliefs? I have seen people face starvation, death and pestilence, heroically, and with ingenuity. Yet, when face-to-face with the FACT that a central long-held Belief is not true, a Believer will die before changing that Belief.

After a Holiday feast, I was thinking about tryptophan -- the "drowsy Turkey" amino acid humans use as an essential building block in protein biosynthesis, and as a precursor for compounding Serotonin, Niacin, and apoptotically, Auxin (a phytohormone which we share with plants, and which plants use to convert stems into flowers(!).) It is true that the Tryptophan uptake across the blood-brain barrier may increase, and once inside the central nervous system, tryptophan is converted into serotonin which is further metabolized into melatonin, the circadian mother of sleep, in the pineal gland under normal enzymatic pathways. Still, is there a tryptophan trigger? The pineal is not the only source of melatonin. For example, peripheral cells such as bone marrow, and skin produce it, and it can even be ingested directly.

I convinced myself that the marginal tryptophan in the turkey was not likely to be a significant Cause of drowiness, in spite of my Belief that it might be. And after eating the Turkey, there I was nodding off. Was my pineal gland, the size of a grain of rice, triggered into melatonin manufacturing mode? Or was I getting drowzy because I had the naked, unsupported Belief, that turkey would induce drowziness? Sleep slipped into my quandary.

The School of Trees

2009-12-28T13:45:00.000-08:00

I am attracted to plant life. The sight of a restaurant or bar repels me, but the sights of bush or the promises of a nursery, fill me with excitement. And there is more to plants than mere inspiration. Plants respond to threat--often with volatile carbon compounds -- phenols, alkaloids, and terpenes -- entrapping or irritating invaders.

The emitted chemicals are like cries of help, or like roars of intimidation. The volatile chemicals go airborne, and so reveal the dining caterpillar to the female dragon fly sniffing for a fat host to inject with her eggs. Surrounding plants often become more resistant to herbivore assaults, apparently tuning in to the message of the focal victim.

When a cruciform detects the presence of flutterby eggs on its leaves, glued on by benzyl cyanide, the plant detects the additive, and swiftly secretes ovicides, extrudes a carpet of neoplasms to push the eggs off, and issues attractants to wasps who prey upon caterpillars.

However, plants are not all ethical autotrophs wresting food from the sun, while surrounded by us animals who must kill to live. The parasitic dodder, related to morning glory vines, can detect the secretions of its favored host, the tomato. The seedlings grow toward the host, with the intention of encircling the stem and sucking its phloem unto death.

Nor is the iron needle clutch of the chonta palm, or the thorn in the bougainvillea bower and the rose bush, a mere inadvertency. The sting of the nestle, the scarlet scourge of the poison oak, these are not "unintended" -- Plants go to great care to produce "lessons" for other life forms in the environment.

Truth is a Fishwife and Belief is a Bastard

2009-12-23T18:29:00.000-08:00

The "problem" for Belief is Truth; it really DOES matter whether the believed is true.

The "problem" for Truth is Belief; it really DOES matter whether the true thing is believed.

We inhabit the problematic. For the most part, our solutions fail when no one believes they can succeed, or they are in fact impossible solutions because they are based on a falsehood.

2009-12-04T23:52:00.000-08:00

Posted on Tribes » Science & History » Thermodynamics and Entropy » topics »
Uh...Can Time exist without Motion? Maximum Low-entropy
topic posted Sat, June 28, 2008 - 12:27 PM by offline Tom Key

Ever since Georgescu-Roegen introduced -- more, he physiologically implanted it under the skin -- the concept of ENTROPY into economics, we have had to pay attention. Pay and pay. Of course that's entropic -- it is the exaction of existence, the paying and the pain. Entropically, more is taken than is given.

It is not a mystery that everything gets Colder, Slower, Darker, and Older; it is Law. The reality fixed by the structure of thermodynamic existence.

Of course, the key to this one-way vector is the "older" part -- the irreversibility of Time. Time is functioning as the growing medium of Entropy. We can variously make wine and vinegar out of grapes, but we cannot make grapes out of wine.

We have to wonder, however -- observe the rising bread of mystery -- whether Time could exist without motion, at maximum entropy. Mathematically, we have not shown that Time exists independently. Clearly, we have conservation of energy, but not of Time. Even in a low-entropy state, would there be confusion, or even a gradient, between yesterday and tomorrow?

The point here, is What is the point of a Big Bang? Was there a high-entropy state behind the low-entropy origin of our Universe?

And may I suggest, with irony of course, that there is Peace through Entropy. For ALL of us who decry religious wars, is there salvation in Physics? In a world populated with men and women dreaming of a Heaven for themselves and a Hell for the rest of us, if only all aspirant bombers and child-murderers would pause in their endeavors, to explain What God would reward them for destroying what has been "created" in and over such a brief and enduring Time?

Life Death Matter Energy - fractions of Time

2009-11-26T14:16:00.000-08:00

No chemical element or species of energy is peculiar to Living Things which distinguishes them from Dead Things. It is the patterns, not the constitution, of the Living tissues which is distinctive. Observation tells us that this is what is real -- that there is a difference between the Living and the Dead, and the Material and Energetic States. But E=mc2, where Matter and Energy are the SAME, and the difference, although significant, is ONLY Time.

Now it is Time. The work to be done is not to preserve species or diversity or things or fetuses or fuels. That is all 18th to 20th century. The work of the 21st century is to come to terms with the Vector, not merely the Stuff. It is the equilibration of matter, the fractured chronology, the entropical storm going older colder darker slower quieter and...all the Same, to which Science is now inviting us to turn.

Anima Diversion Frail Person

2009-11-16T23:03:00.000-08:00

Accustomed as I am to public humiliation, the arena itself designed for the function, I participate in the lively animadversion of human frailty, as a player, an author, a willing but largely unconscious humunculus of the profession. The effort to mediate disputes is an unrecognizable heuristic.

Time - fracturing, pointingless, relative

2009-11-06T22:05:00.000-08:00

I am trying not to think of Time as a fracturing of reality, the thing that keeps amending, surcharging, shaving, shoving into extremes, from the crepuscular.

Porn Statistics: Highest Revenues - Curiously strong hypocrisy, with more than a hint of idiocy.

2009-10-11T09:55:00.000-07:00

"There are some 13,000 porn films made in the United States a year. According to the Internet Filter Review, worldwide porn revenues, including in-room movies at hotels, sex clubs and the ever-expanding E-sex world, topped $97 billion in 2006. That's more than the revenues of the leading technology companies combined: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, Apple, Netflix and EarthLink. Annual sales in the United States are estimated at $ 10 billion or higher. There is no agency that does precise monitoring of the porn industry. And porn is very lucrative to some of the nation's largest corporations. General Motors, for example, owns DirectTV, which distributes over forty million streams of porn into American homes every month. AT&T Broadband and Comcast Cable are the currently biggest American companies accommodating porn users with The Hot Network, Adult Pay-Per-View and similarly themed services. AT&T and GM rake in approximately 80 percent of all porn dollars spent by consumers."

Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter, is a Senior Fellow at the Nation Institute. He writes a regular column for TruthDig every Monday. His latest book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

Verbs and Loan Modification (not modifying lending)

2009-10-04T15:22:00.000-07:00

I pulled over to think about the month. In mid-September my Office Manager and Department Heads met with me to brain-storm solutions to the fact that the income into our Practice had fallen off a cliff. It occurred to me that we had all become nouns, and we now needed to be verbs. Law Firms can become remarkably complacent.

It is our geography. Lawyers are isolated. We live on an archipelago populated by a fractious and internecine tribe, with its own language which we frankly boast is unintelligible. We are willing to change, to twist a word, so that it has no place at the table, or means the opposite. Contract is a type of breach. Negligence is never accidental. Proof is a mirage. Process is substance to us, our meat.

What our Clients really need, should be obvious. But what is that need when viewed through the lens of the Law?

For example, in Ojibway, many nouns can be turned into verbs. The tongue is filled with the possibility of action. In law, we turn verbs into nouns. We don't really "argue", we make "arguments". Ideas become things.

In 2008, most of the real estate lawyers in Orange County had home loan clients coming to us asking what they could do about the fact that they were faced with loan obligations secured by their homes. Most of the recent loan terms were predatory -- the monthly repayments were triggered to double or even triple, and borrowers could never ever pay off such loans.

The Lenders, not content with placing homeowners into inappropriate obligations, proceeded to offer the mortgages to investors, in layers of securitization. The amount of money seeking investments in the world doubled (Global Money Supply), but the places to invest did not. Bankers sought to service this expanding "market" (for investments) with "new" securities, and mortgages looked attractive. Since Bankers needed more mortgages, with the same number of people, they made the mortgages easier to obtain.

Curiously, however, the Bankers also made the "easier" mortgages impossible to pay off. The Bankers lobbied for laws removing restrictions on Pre-Payment Penalties. (The California Field Code had a provision outlawing penalties in excess of actual costs.) The Financial Industry re-introduced Option-ARM terms and credit default swaps that had been abolished since the 1930s. And to make these new loan forms easier to market, the Banks offered "teaser rates" and promised to "re-finance" the balloon payments. In most States, the Finance Industry eliminated lawyers -- on the consumer's side -- from the loan origination process.

When the Option-ARMS began to trigger -- when the loan repayments doubled or tripled -- the consumer borrowers appeared in lawyers' offices. Lawyers assisted the consumers in seeking "modifications" for the loans. Ideally, this would eliminate the predatory terms, but leave the obligation otherwise intact. The borrowers would be able to keep their homes, and the investment pools (the retirement plans, etc.) would still have cash flow from the income.

However, the Banks are not content with having sold loans to consumers who will never ever be able to pay them off. Nor are Banks content with having sold mortgage securities to investors in forms which have no marketable value (toxic). Nor are the large Banks content with taking tax payer bail out money.

Bankers have foreclosed on huge swaths of homes in neighborhoods across the country, and the benefits of home-ownership are compromised. The victimized families are torn by financial stresses. When the consumers to go lawyers, we tell them that the best of all the bad alternatives is to try to "modify" the loans. The Obama Plan provides guidelines and "commissions" to Lenders who modify the predatory loans. HUD and Fannie Mae provide "free" assistance to consumers.

However, the Banks are taking the Obama Plan commissions, and then they are refusing or delaying the Loan Modifications. They place the borrowers in a Twilight Zone of delay. One tactic is to offer the consumers a three-month "trial mod", after which they require another round of documents because the previous financials are "stale dated". More delays.

Almost all "loan modifications" done by homeowners without law firm assistance go into default within six months. The banks are not really modifying their predation. No one is modifying Lending. We only have bail outs and laws written by the Loan Industry, and consumers losing their homes.

How Little we Know.

2009-07-07T19:13:00.000-07:00

Obviously, we are in the post-discovery age. There are few of us casting about for continents to "explore" and claim for king and lord. As if. Now, statistically, most of us are just trying to hang on to jobs and relationships -- as sub-contractors, in serial relationships. The King is dead, the employer is bankrupt, and the lenders are using bail-out money to hire public relations experts to make us feel grateful to them for not giving us loans. It's not like there is a New World out there. The shysters are not even trying to lure us onto ships, or trick and "Shanghai" us to "see the world".

So, today is really NOTHING like the Age of Discovery. When ships unfurled their beautiful sails and ports bustled with new people and things -- and sailors knew how to sing nautical songs and tie knots in hemp ropes, after being trapped into service for three years or so. There were headwaters and new languages to discover, species to name. Great Explorers mounted "expeditions", often suffering severe privations, and visiting their distress upon the "natives" they encountered in the ordeal.

Today, we board aircraft like buses, with SRO. The travel industry is hell-bent to make every location in the world a "tourist destination", with the same hotel, selling the same trinkets, offering the same "comforts" and pillow service, wherever you go. Much of the suffering, risk and danger -- and original discovery -- appears to be gone. Appears.

There really IS a world yet to be discovered....and there are still those severe risks and demands which are made by the struggle to learn and understand.

SOIL. According to the new "Underground Adventure" at the Chicago Field Museum, "one teaspoonful of soil from your own backyard" will yield more than a billion organisms, of which 40% are species unknown and un-named. We barely understand anything about bugs. We are just starting to grasp the importance of fungi in the lives of plants, the chemistry of slime-mold, and the morphology of water bears. And don't get me started about Ants!

WATER. One of the most useful, and it turns out, increasingly scarce comforts of our planet, is fresh water. We continue to find most curious facts about it. Recent studies drawn from lichen, which is one of the few life forms that can thrive with almost no water, indicates that water has a molecular affect on the growth clock of lichen. Living Things evolve faster in the tropics than in the desert...because of water. Crazy. The partnership of fungi and algae enables both to thrive where each would fail alone.

CULTURE. We are still waiting for a theory or explanation for why people have such bad taste. And why people are so wicked. Why you can get people to risk their life on a highway inside a weaponized automobile to drive to work or go shopping, but you cannot get them to stand up for their own basic human rights against dictators, for fear of what? Getting killed/martyred by a dictator? Dying for a great reason, for Freedom, instead of No Reason on the highway driving a car!

DANCERS. Explore this: Why do Dancers and Musicians do so much better at bringing Peace to the world than missles and tanks? And why are the Pentagon and Kremlin and Al Quada dedicating billions to weapons instead of piano and guitar lessons? A thin invalid with a soft voice has united the world -- just by moon-walking!. At almost no cost. Do we need to pay for weapons which will only blow ourselves up? Al Quada killed more Arabs, more Believers, in the 2001 World Trade Center attack than any attack by the West suffered by any Arab nation prior to that date. The Bolshoi has the biggest budget (relatively) of any dance troupe in the world, yet it is miniscule compared to the cost of running a single nuclear submarine carrying nuclear weapons. And compare the effects for the respect and dignity of Russia in the world today.

THE NET. Who will be the first to find a new continent of discovery by unfurling the web over a sea of information. We are just at the beginning of the Singularity. Who will colonize the floating city built in the Pacific Gyre? Who will conquer the new forms of playground equipment provided for children who will never make arrows to hunt in a real forest? Who will populate the islands that are uninhabitable for lack of potable water by introducing desalinization units? Who will translate the algorithmic language learned by the baby robots?

We need to really re-think how completely unknown, unexplored, so much of this world remains today. Wide open opportunity.

Milton's Paradise Lost - how did things go so terribly wrong?

2009-07-07T12:26:00.000-07:00

Notes on Milton’s Paradise Lost and Found.

We are now 401 years after Milton’s birth in 1608. For perspective, note that Shakespeare lived approximately 1564-1616. Eleven volume series of all Milton’s works is come out, edited by Thomas Corns and Gordon Campbell

Paradise Lost, is a dilation on a moment in Genesis, written by a blind man who had fallen into “evil days”, with respectable people saying awful things about him, and calling for his arrest.

He names Satan’s palace Pandemonium – “all the demons”.

In his defense of free speech published earlier –“Areopagitica” – the title alludes to an Attic assembly or court – he compares Truth to the broken body of Osiris. We can never know Truth until the Messiah comes; therefore we must all search in every way we can, each for himself. Compare this to the Arthurian epic Search for the Holy Grail. Censorship can play no role in the Search for Truth.

Milton’s unrelenting optimism runs through all of his writing, even as he faced personal conflict and limns the tragedy of The Fall. With an explosive imagination, and cool statecraft, he marches with martial vigor into the war with Evil, hunting for the jewel in the head of the ugliest toad, and prefiguring the Nietzschean reduction “That which fails to kill me, makes me stronger”. Milton says “That which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary.” This, during a time of terrifying anarchy, the world that also produced Hobbes’ “Leviathan”.

Milton was Unitarian. Did not see the Son of God as the same as God or part of a Trinity. In Paradise Lost, he places the Son at the Creation, as a Son, a competitor of Satan.

The question he poses in Paradise Lost – how did things go so wrong – starts back to the moment that Adam and Eve (“our first parents”) ate the apple and brought “death into the world, all our woe”. Note the way he bring us all in – “our” parents, “our” woe. Then he steps back before Adam and Eve, in the tale within the tale, to the narrative of Lucifer who grows jealous of the promotion of God’s Son to the position of Messiah. Lucifer organizes a revolt, loses, and is “hurled headlong flaming from th’ ethereal sky With hideous ruin and combustion down to bottomless perdition”. Cast into Hell with his many followers.

In Milton’s view, God creates earth with its “images” of Himself, to make up for the angelic absence. Then Satan, hearing of the new toy, determines to take it by cunning for himself and his demon horde. The theme of the plotting failed revolutionaries echoes the bitter irony of Milton’s role as apologist for the Puritans, and his support for the regicide. Place and power is what is “lost” in the personal Paradise.

Satan seems charismatic as a leader of minions, although a tortured soul, slinking away in shame after seducing Eve. Milton’s God is dull, fixed, and sends Gabriel to do his fighting. Gabriel of course, does it badly, and fails to protect Eve and the earth from the demon snare. Gabriel does some trash-talking, threatening Satan, who in turn calls him a “limitary Cherub”. Perhaps our next Milton hankering to explore an unforgivable tragedy should write the epic of Gabriel.

Milton shows great compassion for mankind. Adam and Eve are holding hands in the garden basking in love when we first meet them, and we leave them exiled to a fallen world, again holding hands together. Milton says he set out to justify the ways of God to men, but he ends up defending human dignity to God. The freedom to fail – here Milton rejects mainstream Puritanism (moving directly to the center of Unitarianism) with its predestination.

My mother once listened rather openly to a socio-biological narrative of how individual decision-making is reducible to chemistry. Animal instinct and knee-jerk reactions are locked into the molecular structures of ganglia and brain capacity. The uber-train of “choice” actually runs on a double-helix rail. Once she realized the story led to a kind of determinism, however morphological, she reacted viscerally, strongly rejecting any suggestion that human beings do not have unfettered free choice. When I suggested that her response was a possible predisposition rising from her Miltonian Christianity, not to mention its consistency with her chemistry, she did not see the ironic humor. The idea of choice playing a necessary role in salvation, the idea that choice asserts itself, remains fixed in certain minds, even long after other beliefs have shifted.

This concept of individual freedom is also at the heart of the relationship between Adam and Eve. Adam alone was warned about Satan, and sought to husband Eve by having her near. His very act of trying to protect her – and it is fair to observe she never understood From What? – moved her to seek her own solitude. He will not relent and let her go off by herself until she argues that she must have freedom, even at the risk of harm: “What is faith, love, virtue unassayed?”

Adam praises her logic. They both recognize that she is right about the importance of being exposed to the risks of being wrong. Once alone, Eve is immediately tricked by the snake, and is condemned to die. Adam then chooses to take his bite of the forbidden fruit and fall with her. He would rather die with her than live alone: “To lose thee were to lose myself.”

Milton’s depiction of the Son of God at the Creation, is one of the first attempts to create a coherency between the Hebrew Bible with the New Testament. And we see the nature of evil – a despondent Devil having no hope of a happy home, devoting himself to destroying the lives of others.

Milton died still revising Paradise Lost in 1674. Hounded by calumny and accusation to the end, and facing poverty, the plague, intellectual isolation, loneliness, and his own demons. But he left us with the greatest work of epic verse in the English tongue. And it rings with hope and imagination.

Things go terribly wrong. It's not just YOU, your life. The planet. The universe. The "broken-ness" of the Osiris body. The lack of Judgment or Justice. So... celebrate! There is not a moment to lose!

Michael Jackson - the legacy of dance and music

2009-06-27T10:03:00.000-07:00

Michael Jackson died (June 25, 2009) at age 50, having been a “star” most of his life, with a gift for singing, dancing, and putting himself completely into the pose. His talent was original, it was the steam of consciousness, the part of being that wants to be and do the best image, the top of fashion, the most expressed expression.

He was one of the dancers who changed the world. Couple the moves with the music, and he changed how we think of ourselves, on a rainbow global scale. A black man whose talent was accepted by white people, and in his later years -- one hesitates to say "mature" -- as a white man who was accepted by people of color.

The debts of his estate are rumored to be $400 million. Clearly he was taken advantage of by those closest to him. He must have been completely isolated. Entirely alone, with the added certainty of having been betrayed, again and again.

Great dancers and musicians are more likely to change the world for the better, than any other occupational skill set. We seem to weaponize science, religion, law. But the arts, remain unifiers. Even when they are subversively invasive, they elevate the culture they invade. Even when they explode and pop, they do not destroy.

Sweeteners

2009-06-16T00:26:00.000-07:00

We do crave sugar. Why? We crave energy.

That craving, however natural, is not necessarily a healthy habit to feed. The sugar molecule is extremely sharp-pointed and mauls the walls of the tiny capillaries of the eye and toes as the red blood cell buckets bounce their way through the narrows. Diabetics go blind and lose their limbs to gangrene.

No fix for heart problems, high blood pressure, cholesterol, and weight is as good as dropping the excess sugar we consume. Excess sugar is linked to diabetes and cancer. I used it to control ants -- they find it irresistible, but sugar simply does not provide a basis for growth and expansion, even for family Myrmex...!

The Eating Plan should include reducing sugar. The "problem" is that poisonous SUGAR SUBSTITUTES have invaded the marketplace. Other sweeteners MAY help reduce sugar intake, but the "industry" preying upon our healthy desire to reduce sugar is now poisoning us. Huge fortunes have been made selling poisons to people who rely upon the false representations and deliberate deception of marketeers.

The following is my effort to sort through the facts, past the hysteria and the marketing, to evaluate the wonders of this molecule we crave:

SUCROSE - natural organic disaccharide derived from glucose and fructose, known as "table sugar", or saccharose. It is a complicated molecule with a single isomer (exists in forms having different arrangements of atoms but the same molecular weight). These forms are "spiky" and sharp edged. Like other carbohydrates, sucrose combusts into carbon dioxide and water--it is a fuel. It is water soluble and hydrolysis breaks the glycosidic bond, converting to glucose and fructose, which are then absorbed into the blood stream by the microvilli lining the duodenum. It is a suitable preservative

ASPARTAME - (Nutrasweet, Equal, Canderel) - can be used after cooking. Controversial, since excesses are linked to complaints of seizures, blindness. Contains Phenylalinine, Aspartic Acid, and Methanol, and should only use with its natural antidotes, ethanol and pectin, and avoid large or regular quantity. Becomes unstable in aqueous media (drinks). Often combined with dextrose and maltodextrin. (The combination used in Equal.)

PHENYLALININE - Amino acid sometimes used as a mood enhancer. Phenylketonurics containing P are a component of Aspartame.

SACCHARIN - (Sweet'n Low, Sugar Twin) - produced from natural, but not naturally edible substances; excess amounts linked to cancer. Often mixed with cream of tartar (an acid which accelerates the hydrolysis of sucrose into fructose), calcium silicate [anti-caking], and dextrose. (The combination in Sweet'n Low).

ACESULFAME-K - (Ace-K, Sunnette, Sweet & Safe, Sweet One) -

SUCRALOSE - (marketed in Splenda, with dextrose and maltodextrin) artificially weaponized sugar (disaccharide), manipulated to surrender a portion of the hydroxyls and replace them with chlorine atoms, to produce a chlorocarbon, or chloronated sugar. Chlorine is an excitable element used as a biocide and bleaching agent. "Sucralose" is a marketing term for a man-made poison used to replace aspartame, and is now the #1 artificial sweetener in manufactured foods and beverages. I don't think chlorine occurs naturally bound to sugar. It does bind to sodium, but the chlorocarbons are incompatible with healthy metabolism, which is why they are such effective insecticides.

CYCLAMATES

STEVIA (Stevia rebaudiana) - an herb containing NO sugar, used extensively in Japan for 25 years. No known side-effects. Large amounts of steviosol, a stevioside derivative, resulted in smaller and fewer off-spring in female hamsters. May disrupt metabolism of food into energy. Steviol can convert into a mutagenic compound. Sperm production reduced in rats after long period of (involuntary) high dosing.

NATURAL SOURCES: Cane juice, fruit juice, rice syrup, honey, licorce root (small amounts), Fructooligosaccharides (FOS), Amasake, vegetable glycerin, sugar alchohols (xylitol, sorbitol), maple syrup, barley malt.

Compare the chemistry of Sugar as the simplest of the carbohydrates. Unlike indigestible Hydrocarbons, Carbohydrates are soluble in water, with a double bond carbon-oxygen reactive center. To digest, metabolic enzymes must hydrolyse or otherwise break the glycosidic bond.

"-ose" denotes a sugar:

GLUCOSE - monosaccharide, primarily from maize or fruit. A blood glucose test measures the amount of this type of sugar, in your blood. Glucose comes from carbohydrate foods. It is the main source of energy used by the body. Insulin is a hormone that helps your body's cells use the glucose. Insulin is produced in the pancreas and released into the blood when the amount of glucose in the blood rises.

Normally, your blood glucose levels increase slightly after you eat. This increase causes your pancreas to release insulin so that your blood glucose levels do not get too high. Because of the shape of the sugar molecule, blood glucose levels that remain high over time can damage your eyes, kidneys, nerves, because of damage done to the capillaries, the small blood vessels.

FRUCTOSE - monosaccharide found naturally in many fruits. Most soft drinks are now made with "high fructose corn syrup", and glucose. (I see no studies showing that the substitution of sucrose with fructose alleviates the objections raised by the sucrose studies showing obesity, gout, hypoglycemia, and diabetes).

LACTOSE -
GALACTOSE -

SUCROSE - (saccharose) disaccharide found naturally in sugar cane and sugar beet, and along with the monosaccharide fructose, in many fruits. In pineapple and apricot, sucrose is the main sugar. In others, such as grapes and pears, fructose is the main sugar.

DEXTROSE - (main ingredient in Sweet/N Low, along with Saccharin, and in Splenda, along with Sucralose) two stereoisomers of the aldehexose sugars are known as glucose, L-glucose which cannot be metabolized, and D-glucose, which is destrose monohydrate, or "dextrose".

Starch and Glycogen - polysaccharides
Chitin and Cellulose - even more complex, indigestible as fibre.
Compare: plastic - cf. Carbohydrate and Hydrocarbon
The key similarity between Oil/plastic and biopolymers!
Butanol from biomass is an alcohol that is more similar to gasoline than it is to ethanol, and has been demonstrated as a fuel in internal combustion engines without modification of the engines.

AVOID - Splenda (a chorine-based "sucralose"), Equal (aspartame), Sweet'N Low (Saccharin).

"Prayer changes nothing but the pray-er".

2009-05-30T18:45:00.000-07:00

It is obvious that prayer does not change anything. The futility of appeals to any or all gods is proved by the record of the saints and the demons, and all of us in between, who have begged, promised, pled and sacrificed, and were answered with silence and inattention.

Today, however, I heard a man declare that prayer changes ONE thing: The Prayer.

So true! Yes, the act of prayer fixes the pray-er to the message and massages the medium. To the one set of ears which hear the articulation, in the interaction of saying it, hearing it, and "getting it", there is a chance of change.

Of course, most of the time, the praying is formulaic. Iterations of "Bless this food to our bodies" locks us into the sleep likely to prevent the possibility of any "change" at the heart of the praying and prayed for.

Still, it is also obvious that we constantly pray. We do many things that do not really "change" anything, and prayer is one of them. The lack of change does not change, and we are not likely to wean ourselves from our futilities.

Climbing - vocabulary

2009-05-26T08:39:00.000-07:00

Definitions / words to help keep the climb in perspective. Note that climbing or exploring, like culinary activities, is dominated by French words:

Apparel - Outside, a durable, breathable, alpine soft shell with moisture-shedding doubleweave polyester, glued seams and stretch. Inside, wool, with layers of cotton.

Ascension - Ideal term for describing the upward climb. Contrast with "the Fall".

Big Wall - said of climbing a rock face.

Bivouac / bivouacked - temporary pitching of tent, with an intention that it is a place of rest and protection in the course of an ordeal. What is usually abandoned in the "last ditch descent".

Bottleneck - a geological feature that limits passage to a tricky and dangerous passage. On the Abruzzi route on K2, the B. is a 60-degree couloir at 27,100 feet.

British Paratroopers on Mt.McKinley (qv) climb - On June 4, 1998, a 10-man team of British soldiers set out to climb Mt.McKinley. The rangers at Talkeetna recommended the West Buttress (Grade 2), because some team members had no experience with glacier crossings and ice climbing. The rangers also told them to acclimatize for several days at 16,200 feet. The team ignored the outsider advice (see Groupness qv). They chose to climb the West Rib (Grade 4), and attempted to summit after only one day, and split the group 7 times in rescues required in attempting a highly technical finish. Found themselves on the mountain for three weeks, partially exposed in wet bivouc bags during bad weather.

Climber's Elbow - tendinits of the Medial Epicondyle (qv). Can be prevented with stretching and strengthening of the forearm.

Couloir - a deep gorge, where a gorge is a deep gulley. The big drop.

Everest - [None of the local names were established before British scientists named it after one of their own who had himself made every effort to use local names -- but see also Sagarmatha (Nepali: सगरमाथा), Chomolungma or Qomolangma (Tibetan: ཇོ་མོ་གླང་མ) or Zhumulangma (Chinese: 珠穆朗玛峰 Zhūmùlǎngmǎ Fēng)]– the highest mountain on Earth, as measured by the height above sea level of its summit, 8,848 metres (29,029 ft - first established by theodolites, then in 1999 by GPS unit embedded in the rock). The mountain, which is part of the Himalaya range in High Asia, is located on the border between Sagarmatha Zone, Nepal, and Tibet, China. 3,681 aspirants have summitted, with a death toll of 210. Note K2 is 4 times more dangerous -- qv.

Fixed ropes - clip lines and rappels anchored to the rock or with ice screws left in place by previous teams.

Frostbite - with hypothermia, frozen body tissue. Usually to ears, nose, fingers/hands, legs and feet. Appendages may be visibly curled, dysfunctional. Regarding the 2006 David Sharp controversy, although still living, he was climbing solo and already suffering from severe frostbite when first located by other teams ascending Everest.

Groupness - the downfall of many a good corporation and climbing team. Study by MIT Sloan showing relationship between how long a group has been together and how well it communicates with outsiders. New groups perform better than older groups which become insular and technically dysfunctional over time. Example: 1998 British paratroopers set out to climb McKinley, Alaska (qv.)

Hard go - a difficult climb or descent; cf. the euphemism, "highly technical climb".

K2 - 28,250 feet, in Pakistan's Karakoram Range, a much harder and deadlier peak than Everest. August 1, 2008 saw 11 climbers killed on the Abruzzi Ridge. First ascent was in 1954. By 2007, only 284 climbers had summitted, while 66 died trying.

Medial Epicondyle - inside of the elbow. Used to describe flat ridge leading up to a rock face.

Motivator - The dangerous condition on the climb, such as an oncoming storm, or a geological feature such as an overhanging serac above a bottleneck.

Rappel - a descent of a vertical cliff or wall made by using a doubled rope that is fixed to a higher point and fastened to the body.

Road - "A strip of land along which one may pass from where it is too tiresome to be, to where it is futile to go." - A. Bierce.

Prolotherapy Injections - Anti-anti-inflammatory: re-ignites the natural anti-inflammatory response with injection of glucose. Note that anti-inflammatory drugs reduce pain, but impede healing, by stifling the flow of regenerative proteins or even blood supply to damaged areas.

Serac - A pinnacle of ice among the crevasses of a glacier; also, one of the blocks into which a glacier breaks on a steep grade.

Sloughed off -- as when a serac that had hung in place for decades suddenly collapses off the mountain, and may cover the trail with freshly broken impedimenta. May refer to the natural removal of fixed ropes you counted on.

Summit - reach the top.

Technical - euphemism for a climbing difficulty.

Top out - reach the top.

Book: "JESUS; the man who lives" by Malcomb Muggeridge

2009-05-21T19:46:00.000-07:00

This work is a wonderful walk through the biographical portions of the first four Gospels, with full-page Art illustrations. Our "St. Mugg" provides the narrative company of a perpetually skeptical but late to his ardency, Believer. Muggeridge does note that no historical sources outside of the Gospels are available to corroborate anything said or done by Jesus. [To date, the actual existence of Jesus remains uncorroborated by real or direct evidence. He left no artifact or archeology or contemporary record. This lacuna is highlighted by the forged insertion into Josephus' history.]

The three chapters explore His Coming, His Teachings, and His Dying and Living. The Teachings of Jesus should be of interest to everyone, and they are honestly quoted and helpfully explored -- admitting to the obscurities. Jesus presents no theology, no law, nor even a Church.

"The religion Jesus gave the world is an experience, not a body of ideas or principles. It is in being lived that it lives, as it is in loving that the love which it discloses at the heart of all creation become manifest." [71]

The study is as comprehensive as the Gospels themselves. Intense, even comparative across these sources, noting the discrepant versions of events and parables -- for example, the three very different versions of the spikenard episode: "When Jesus was in Bethany with Lazarus, [who he had previously raised from the dead when Martha sent for Jesus to advise him that his beloved had died]... while Martha was preparing supper, Mary took a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and annointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair..." [124].

The emphasis is on what actual sins are, and that sin is rarely what the authorities say it is -- for example, Jesus roundly abuses hypocrisy -- the Pharisees "who say and do not" -- as the worst possible offense.[130]

Those of us not given to power over others or to accumulations of material things, will be gratified by Muggeridge's faithful recitation and explosion of the Beatitudes, and in particular, the bits about the poor and the meek. On the eve of of his crucifiction at Gethesemane -- this must be important -- Jesus told a lawyer to sell everything, give the proceeds to the poor, and "follow me". [114]. Jesus repeats this "distribute unto the poor" admonishment to his close friends, Lazarus, Martha and Mary.[116] If a "Christian" is one who follows the teachings of Jesus Christ, then there cannot, cannot, be more than a few dozen Christians in the world today. What a hypocrite professes makes the point.

A light on St. Mugg's own conversion is shed in the summary of Jesus' teachings provided by Jesus himself:

"Jesus summarized all his teaching for us in two great propositions which have provided Christendom with, as it were, its moral and spiritual axis...: 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and the second, like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.' On these two commandments, he insisted, hang all the law and the prophets. His manner of presenting them indicates their interdependence; unless we love God we cannot love our neighbour, and, correspondingly, unless we love our neighbour we cannot love God. Once again, there has to be a balance...".[130]

"The simple fact is that to be truly loved God has to become a Man without thereby ceasing to be God. Hence Jesus, ... Thus the two commandments become one...". [133]

Here we may have but the core of Muggeridge's conversion to Catholicism late in life.

Of course, he managed at the end to regain his certainty that Faith had no meaning, and died knowing there was no immortality or God. But that is another book, not this one. Much of the grace and gratitude of the religion which St. Mugg did so brilliantly express is so in this one.

Leadership - vision, passion, integrity, adaptive capacity

2009-02-23T10:52:00.000-08:00

Our local County Bar President, Michael G. Yoder, prepared for his post by reviewing studies on LEADERSHIP. Great idea. One of the leading authorities on leadership is Dr. Warren Bennis, the Distinguished Professor of Business Administration and Founding Chairman of the Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California. In his widely recognized classic, On Becoming a Leader, Dr. Bennis isolates four qualities of an effective leader: (1) Vision – a leader must have a clear idea of what he or she wants to accomplish; (2) Passion – A leader must have a distinctive voice that can inspire and move others; (3) Integrity – A leader must stay true to his or her core values in order to earn the trust of others; and (4) Adaptive Capacity – A leader must be able to recognize and respond to change.

What an admirable way to prepare for taking a position of leadership. Is there something "undemocratic" about requiring nominees or candidates to reveal their achievements against the criteria that scholars, as well as the citizens, journalists, and historians will judge them?

New York City

2008-12-27T16:44:00.000-08:00

I spent a year in New York City one month during a summer between classes. In the late 60's I shared an elegant flat with two female scholars and a wealthy Iraqi potter who despised Americans. One afternoon I recall having some time on my hands -- this is a vague feeling I almost always have -- and we all took the ferry to Ellis Island. The others took the immediate return boat back to Manhattan, but I felt I had stepped on the hallowed ground of Liberty and wanted to ascend the Lady. In the next hour, I was seduced by joyful strangers, conversationed by memoirists on their Hajj, and back in Manhattan, assaulted by a quartet of robbers.
The seductions went so far as kissing. Foreplay by two delightful older women who simply understood the richness of soft words. Without explanation, they took me into their company as familiars with New York, spending an hour with an obvious country boy. They were filled with puns and the names of food and places. And their lips wandered up and down my face, gently exploring the places in between emotions, between the gift and the longing of lips. Each of them boldly brought kisses--many of them--directly to my mouth. There was joy and sadness, there was the certainty we would not meet again, and that we would never forget the introduction. I learned that kissing can change one's hole idea of the mouth, of breathing, and eating. There are resuscitations of breath shared in the kindness of kisses offered without a hidden pudenda. As they left me, returning to their cruise, we spoke of remembering, and I do.
Half-way up the Lady-- a bronze spiral staircase, an Indian-file passage of simple intimacy -- the line stopped. Years now, looking back, I cannot remember why the processional was delayed, but I do remember that it was unexplicable at the time and disturbed me. As it happens, the elderly fellow behind me was an affable Hungarian who had married an Irish lady. Perhaps only because I was feeling trapped in a long line going nowhere, I asked this couple how they met. They took the "liberty" to tell me their entire life stories--growing up in the motherland, coming to America, and meeting each other. They were obvious characters. Again, my memory banks were overflowing.
As I boarded the ferry returning to Manhattan Island, two young beautiful Californian girls stood next to me. Being from California myself, we struck up a conversation and next thing you know, more kissing.
Finally, as I was returning to the flat later that night, and having been delayed by my own love of the Statue and the crowds and the kisses and the stories, the streets and neighborhoods did not appear to be "safe". I began singing DIES IRAE to myself, transporting my spirit to a place of midieval comforts:
1
Dies iræ! dies illa
Solvet sæclum in favilla
Teste David cum Sibylla!
{Day of wrath! O day of mourning!
See fulfilled the prophets' warning,
Heaven and earth in ashes burning!
As David bore witness with the Sibyll}

2
Quantus tremor est futurus,
quando judex est venturus,
cuncta stricte discussurus!
{Oh what fear man's bosom rendeth,
when from heaven the Judge descendeth,
on whose sentence all dependeth.}
3
Tuba mirum spargens sonum
per sepulchra regionum,
coget omnes ante thronum.
{Wondrous tone/sound the trumpet sounds/; flingeth;
through earth's sepulchers it rounds/; ringeth;
all before the throne it crowns;/ bringeth.}

My whispered missal probably did not attract the four assailants who come upon me in the half-lit avenue coming up to our flat. However, my slight form and obvious indifference to their profiles was at least an invitation to break the tedium of their lives with predation. The four blocked my way, but I saw no weapons. I nodded to one of them who was speaking, then whirled and fired a fist into the solar plexus of the biggest one standing slightly behind me and broke through their ring. I sprinted away into the middle of the street. Frankly I thought they had a "back up" or a leader hidden somewhere nearby and did not want to run into him. I was pretty certain I could outrun any assailant and did not believe they would shoot me even if they were armed. Or at least not without more provocation.

One or two may have started to give chase, but I was well away, running low and straight, then leaping into high gear. I did not even slow down for six blocks, and then I made two corners, cutting off possible visibility. I ducked into an attended valet station and stood smiling at the car jockeys, panting. They looked at me with amazement and waited for me to catch my breath. They were noticably nervous because I kept looking back from where I had come.

The boys standing at the valet station never asked, and I never told them, what I was running from. I will always be grateful, however, for the feeling of protection they quietly offered.

These memories seem to come to mind now on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the discovery of Manhattan Island by Henry Hudson in 1609. The present inhabitants may not have the specific details, but they share a general sense that NYC is a marvelous and important place in this universe. For some of us, it is simply a crown jewel of tidal estuaries and urbanity, at the deep-water head of a river system that drains from Minnesota, and then merges and quiets the Atlantic, that mariner's road to the rest of the world. There is no more archetypal city on the planet, and none built so quickly. I never knew what "wall street" referred to until I gazed at its walled streets.

I hope that NYC celebrates its 400th. Without more provocation.

Bernard L. Madoff - the SEC failed to investigate repeated defalcations

2008-12-24T12:50:00.000-08:00

Mr. Madoff was a broker-dealer; he held himself out as a sophisticated "genius" at the craft of investing OPM - Other People's Money. The OPM stake was worth billions. It turns out, he simply operated a Ponzi-scheme. He did not craft a brilliant trading strategy, he made no market, and he managed no portfolios in his exclusive floor of a New York skyscraper. He simply took money from people. How smart does anyone have to be to do this?

The SEC had received numerous complaints against Madoff. In spite of documented fraud claims, however, the SEC failed to scrutinize the Madoff securities "market maker" operations which were clearly within its jurisdiction.

The Madoff swindle is in excess of $50 billion. This type of theft at this scale will carve a large hole in the free market, as investors face the fact that hedge fund managers and investment brokers are not "policed" or regulated in any effective way. Thus, we see the debilitation of market entry -- investors now joined with lenders in an unwillingness to place their funds into a "marketplace" overrun by predators. Capital not already in the hands of the pirates, is held hostage or at bay, and no longer available to productive enterprises.

Cat Paradise; with apologies to The Hound of Heaven, by Francis Thompson

2008-11-29T00:49:00.000-08:00

The Pussy-Cat of Paradise

Calling in the night push-push

I chased her, down the stairway of days and up
the veils of night, I chased

until chastened but not caught,
not in my arms;
there was nothing
Only nothing

I searched for her
Listened for the sound of eyelids opening
and for the songs of cats in love
My ear peeled, my keening throughout the house,
creating the house,
I searched.

I pled, I begged like an outlaw caught
with his red hand in a bucket of greed.
I pleaded for the tender mercies, all for me, and
all about me,
everyone everywhere could hear this oyez plea!

For though I knew love, I did not know I knew,
and knew not how
new love would know.

Or having love, I dreaded what else I must have.
For so often
You get what you never saw
And scratched by its paw.

Was searching so,
through a window darkly for the black cat of love,
dressed to the nines of its liquid life
As Love to pursue
the little spotted margay
so troubling the bear at the gateway of the stars
or the jawed jaguar
Wrestling the alligator of our intermittencies
searching for the furred stop, the rejoinder,
with the mystery of its passion,
frisking the feathers of hope with its love of risk.

I searched on full moon nights the pale ports of mystery.
The shut doors of pure unholy ignorance,
gob-smacked down
the empty halls of cold marble
harked to the echo of distant trumpets
Gone smoking astray

I said to Dusk: be quick – to Dawn: be soon;
With the scattered rose find me one tremendous Lover,
heaping with blossoms
Float this veil and sail the carpetings of magic things
to the solid hearth
Where the heart’s content will lay down among its cats.
Their truth, their soi-disant claims to simplicity.

Only I clung to the whistling dark.
There was no answering purred remark.

I said to the world: be still – to its turning: stop.
With the twine of caresses not yet receiving
did I yearn for Love’s redeeming.
Lip to lip, the soft keening breath.
Be still. And yet, it did not stop.
Lucent-weeping yet, it only promised tears are wet.
The wind-walled palace of my hopes
were spiraled out in milky tropes.

All willful seem the clouds to be
how awful the snortings of the sea
And all that’s born and dies
comes face to face with skies
of possibility and doom.
Felt a failure, the search was done;
hoped for all, but found none.
I was heavy with the Even
and surrounded by the lonely blue shadowings
of cathode rays
around the day’s dead sanctity.

Then, BOOM!
You landed as if from the sea.
You mustered my commingling heats
gathered up the fur
the push-push and curling tail, so curing
the human smart.
Now, let Love live, who lives Love.
Cat my paradise.

What lives, hungers.

2008-11-23T22:44:00.000-08:00

What do living things "have in common"? The Hunger. As if in order to live, existance has to curl around a need, the desire to live that moves the prepositional object.

Consumer Protection replaced by Consumerism

2008-11-22T23:38:00.000-08:00

In AlterNet:

How Our Gutless Media Helped Trigger the Credit Crisis

By Trudy Lieberman, Columbia Journalism Review. Posted November 20, 2008.

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/102963

"As Dean Starkman, who runs The Audit on cjr.org, pointed out in this magazine in March ("Red Ink Rising"), American credit-card debt now stands at more than $900 billion, up 9,000 percent from 1968, having risen by a third between 2001 and 2006. Worse, he noted that more than three quarters of the credit industry's profits now come from people who make minimum monthly payments. As he further reported, these industry-wide changes followed a regulatory rollback and were by and large missed by the nation's press."

During the Bush-Cheney-Rove regime, Americans preserved an appearance of prosperity even as they lost it, by dramatically deepening their dependence on rolling credit. The "investment bank" packaging of CDS/Credit Default Swaps with sub-prime mortgages was just the beginning of the financial collapse. The Trillion Dollar credit card debts which underemployed people will never be able to pay back has not yet begun to blight the rapidly eroding "fundamentals".

Ants - why we like them - complex system analysis

2008-11-22T19:50:00.000-08:00

For those of us who really love ants, the Web is wonderful bait. My essay on the thirteen Great Myths About Ants (part of my series on almost everything you believe is just wrong) is already out of date.

One current view and point of research is running the hive as a model for Complex Systems. Ants have no leader, and they get their marching orders from larvae, yet millions of ants -- and the scale is part of this interactive success pattern -- following almost pre-instinctive rules of individual behavior, can build bridges with their bodies and forage for food along vast efficient highways. They farm, cultivate, protect, and have thrived with an almost indifference to evolution, in their present form for 100 million years.

What are the rules these little guys are following? Can we run the model and project it to the next scale?

In complex systems, through local interactions and self-organization, stable or semi-stable patterns emerge at a next level or a higher scale. They project.
They adjust to small changes in the system or initial conditions and re-apply across new conditions. Very promising research models.

....Well, back to the ANTS, here is a short Digg List:

Army Ants Have Defied Evolution For 100 Million Years (May 9, 2003) — Army ants, nature's ultimate coalition task force, strike their prey en masse in a blind, voracious column and pay no attention to the conventional wisdom of evolutionary ... > read more

Clemson Fire Ant Research Uses Biological Approach (Dec. 21, 1998) — In the ongoing war to control fire ants, a new, biological approach is being tested at Clemson University. Entomologists here have introduced a naturally occurring disease into fire ant colonies as a ... > read more

Parasites Prevent Ants From Protecting Coffee Plants (Aug. 8, 2003) — Azteca ants are voracious predators that live on coffee plants and aggressively defend their territories. That’s generally good for the coffee plants, which are protected in the process against ... > read more

Some Tropical Birds Depend Completely On Army Ants To Flush Out Prey (Oct. 17, 2007) — In the jungles of Central and South America, a group of birds has evolved a unique way of finding food -- by following hordes of army ants and letting them do all the work. Some of the birds rely ... > read more

Army Ants Form Living Pothole Plugs For Their Roads (May 28, 2007) — Certain army ants in the rainforests of Central and South America conduct spectacular predatory raids containing up to 200,000 foraging ants. Remarkably, some ants use their bodies to plug potholes ... > read more

Ants Are Experienced Fungus Farmers (Mar. 25, 2008) — It turns out ants, like humans, are true farmers. The difference is that ants are farming fungus. Entomologists are providing new insight into the agricultural abilities of ants and how these ... > read more

Get 'Two Steps' Ahead Of Fire Ants With Organic Control (May 12, 2004) — Red imported fire ants love wet, rainy, cool days like the ones that ushered in spring. That's why so many of their mounds have been popping up all over Texas this year. But help is only two ... > read more

Ability To Capture Large Prey May Be Origin Of Army Ants' Cooperative Behavior (Dec. 15, 2005) — Scientific insights come at the darnedest times. Animal behaviorist Sean O'Donnell was having an afternoon cup of coffee when a giant earthworm exploded out of the leaf litter covering the jungle ... > read more

Spam - the unwanted tide

2008-11-20T15:55:00.000-08:00

The number of unsolicited and unwanted emails transmitted on the Internet exceeds 180 billion per diem. Spam now makes up 90% of the content of email. Curiously, the 10% balance is roughly double the Postmaster's figures for the percentage of personal snail mail. We seem to combine a tolerance for wildly arbitrary commercial assaults with reticence, no matter what form of communication our technology provides.

I am reminded that in 2004, Bill Gates predicted that the distribution of bulk emails spam would be marginalized. Was he not making a serious prediction? Or was he just that wrong?

Clearly, it is "personal life" that is marginalized; persons as such have almost no life. Between being over-run and being bored, or between being a victim of mass media and being one of the spammers, what vitality is left?

CRIMINALITY OF STEALING MONEY / PRIVATE FRAUD REMEDIES

2008-11-15T14:01:00.000-08:00

New laws and regulations are not necessary to "save" the world from thieves. What has been missing for 8 years is a prosecutor, or a "police" agency willing to maintain conventional standards of behavior in the Market place.

It appears that the appointment of a vigorous Prosecutor would resolve both the financial and psychological aspects of the present "crisis" presented to us by the defalcation of President Bush, who appointed an Attorney General who did nothing to protect us. What is The Law for that we do not enforce?

There are also conventional "private" remedies -- civil causes and even class actions. However, these were also compromised by an Executive who was extremely hostile to legal relief for consumers against institutional predators.

If an investor has been damaged by a fund manager, the investor may have a cause of action against the manager. If a pension fund is involved, the fiduciary duty is even higher. The point is, investors can hire private attorneys to sue investment bankers for breach of fiduciary duty, negligence, or fraud. Interestingly, most of the investment bankers have liability insurance policies covering negligence.

The cause of the present financial crisis is that poor credit risk sub-prime loans were deliberately packaged by investment bankers as "high grade structured credit enhanced leverage funds" for sale to our pension funds. In other words, by giving the security a title that makes it appear to be financially "sound", the bankers were able to aggregate sub-prime loans into "derivatives" that created billion-dollar transactions to support their million-dollar bonuses.

BTW, no one even knows WHAT these new securities are, much less how much they are worth. When it is an aggregation of billions of dollars assigned distantly from the initial loan parties, a CDS - “credit default swap”, or a “derivative” is a meaningless description for an unknown gas for which no amount or value can be attached, but which apparently floated huge bonuses to CEOs.

For years, the plaintiffs' Bar has been trying to put a check on this kind of fraud by suing the bankers -- but of course, there were no "damages" while home equity was rising, and nobody asked, "By the way, how much is the collateral actually worth?"

Bankers with almost no information about the borrowers or the collateral, and with no basis for believing they knew what the value of the security was, were trading the paper. By consolidating huge piles of this paper, they increased the paper value -- pulling enormous commissions out on each successive assignment.

But isn't it fraudulent to NAME this consolidated paper a "high grade structured credit enhanced leverage funds" when in fact it was drawn from a loan broker without verification of income or reasonable "collateralization of risk"?

Isn't it a breach of fiduciary duty to put our pension funds into a "high grade structured credit enhanced leverage fund" the managers have not actually collateralized? Calling this a "derivative" may be fraudulent, because up until July of 2008, the word gave the impression that the Seller was financially sophisticated.

We must also note that there is a hybrid Janus-like quality of both foreseeability and "surprise" in the marketing of derivatives. The collapse was not unforeseeable or unforeseen -- many economists and investors (apparently all outside the Bush Administration and Treasury) had warned about the over-valued and fictionally-valued derivatives.

Nothing suddenly happened. The "due dates" for balloon payments, and stock calls, were all known in advance. The investment bankers like Lehman Brothers and insurers like AIG, all knew well in advance what dynamics were in place.

All the more reason to question the tactic of declaring an emergency so as to obtain a government bail out on the eve of a regime change in Washington DC. ALL of the "risk" was anticipated, joked about ( http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/187.html ), and in fact discounted by the securities market already.

The fact that Paulson pressured Congress for funds (which Congress would have to borrow, ahem, from "Lenders") in order to buy worthless and toxic assets FROM LENDERS to keep them in business, and when Congress gave him the billions he asked for HE DID NOT DO WHAT HE SAID HE WOULD DO, raises at least some question about whether he understood what appears to be an entirely fictional "crisis".

Paulson may have a good faith belief that there was a "crisis". ALL of his friends are investment bankers, and many of them were CEO's on whose watch their corporate vessels had run into the unpleasant shoals of "due dates" and money famine. And there is no question that the prosperity of the country depends upon the availability of loans.

However, if "loan availability" is necessary, why not just set up a "bank" (or a central bank that loans to local banks) that makes loans? Why was it necessary to invest in worthless paper or inject bail-out money into sinking ships? Is there any question in anyone's mind that the CEO's who secretly awarded themselves million dollar bonuses on the eve of the crash of their companies cannot be trusted with money?

Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly - incompetent critics

2008-11-11T11:12:00.000-08:00

Criticism is a vital part of the polity. The fact that a position or a decision is evaluated by people not predisposed to it, or "yes men", is what corrects our course. Diversity in the POV (Points of View) is what makes for wisdom, in Crowds and in Kitchen Cabinets.

However, our polity is crippled by the commercial success of idiots who are given voice and attention by mass media which they dominate. How did this happen?

It is a simple process:

(1) NEGATIVE INFORMATION. "Bad news" sells well. Negative information has pretty legs. Elections actually require ventilation of choices and investigations into the lives of the candidates. Hence, even "Swift-boating" -- a campaign of distorting the facts on the eve of an election with a Big Lie -- has almost First Amendment protection, although legal counterattacks for slander may remain viable, and there is a scientific question about whether attack ads "work" or not. Credit Reports pay for derogatory information, and provide almost no positive reportage. The fact is negative information has serious commercial value.

(2) ATTRACTS IDIOTS. Of course, what kind of person is most attracted to the purveying of this commercially valuable negative information? Greedy idiots who are indifferent to truth. And the examples abound in Talk Radio. Nasty little people with shameless motives are instinctively attracted to the money and the content of negative media events.

(3) SUCCESS TURNED ON ITS HEAD. Once the negative purveyors become commercially successful, then their ends continue to justify their destructive means. People who become rich by attacking others with lies, simply take their place in the halls of notorious figures, and begin to blend in with other public figures. For example, there is a qualitative difference between the content of the New York Times and the content of the periodicals known for "yellow journalism". And yet, many of the "yellow" journalists and editors actually make more money than the actual reporters of true news events. Negative and mendacious voices naturally sell more, and ride to success over the heads of the true or positive.

(4) COMPETENCE. The problem for the Polity is that we really NEED criticism; we need to hear the people who disagree with the choices, who see dangers perhaps not clearly recognized by our leaders. And we have to listen to criticism. However, criticism which is dishonest and outright misleading is not helpful. When the criticism is motivated by hatred or greed, it is not even "criticism" -- it moves into pure fabrication and malicious fiction. For example, Talk Radio provides an abundance of criticism, but much of it is simply incompetent noise or hate-mongering -- not helpful.

We need Critics, but we only need "competent" critics. People who tell us the truth, even if it is not what we want to hear. Three leading radio hosts in particular are Great Disappointments in terms of guiding a mature polity:

RUSH LIMBAUGH. This self-serving drug addict claims to have the largest number of listeners at 25 million. In fact, the actual number is closer to 2 million depending on what a "listener" is, and this exaggerated distortion, is just the beginning of his lies, which only get bigger and bigger. Limbaugh's hypocrisy was highlighted without refutation in a book by the notorious Al Franken.

Recently, and I mean three months before Obama had ever set foot in the Oval Office, Limbaugh announced that "the Obama recession is in full swing". Apparently the fraudulent packaging of subprime loans as high-grade securities by investment bankers, the collapse of the automobile industry, and the tripling of oil prices have less impact on economics than the arrival of a campaigner who could motivate millions of people to join an effort to bring hope back to America. We all know how the stock market reacts to Hope...wait, doesn't optimism tend to increase participation? The eagerness to assign blame to people who are not responsible, and the inability to research the objective facts of causation, is the watermark of a Nazi.

SEAN HANNITY. This Fox News anchor is angry and eager to assign blame to "liberals", using that word in a manner he would like everyone to misunderstand. Hannity describes Obama as "an extreme liberal", and excoriated Obama for choosing "one of the hardest left-wing radicals on the left", Rahm Emanuel, as his chief of staff.

Somehow Hannity overlooked the fact that Emanuel's record and history reveals a Clintonesque Centrist, described by McCain's ally, the South Carolina Republican Senator, Lindsey Graham, as "a wise choice". Graham spent years working with Emanuel and described him as "honest, direct and candid...willing to work to find common ground".

The use of an inflammatory label as a conclusion, "hardest left-wing radical", without bothering to substantiate a basis for the conclusion, is the watermark of an idiologue.

BILL O'REILLY. The creator of "the No-spin Zone" in the highest rated news network, this former attorney and creator of news, a "news entrepreneur", is as intensely ideological as any: He constantly spins. He is unique from other media personalities in his claim that he is NOT ideological. His hypocrisy is highlighted in painful detail on the website, www.oreilly-sucks.com. O'Reilly is perhaps the most wealthy of the bullies in the sandbox, and he apologized for failing to give close oversight over the Bush Administration and its defalcations with respect to the "massive corruption" forces which have destroyed America. He apologized! During the campaigns, in an interview with Guiliani, O'Reilly recommended that McCain appoint Guiliani as Attorney General and Romney as Secretary of Treasury -- with both of them empowered to interrogate "and punish every banker" involved in the financial collapse. This is an example of a "solution" that is barely more than self-promotion, and makes no practical sense. To his further credit, O'Reilly did acknowledge that Wall Street was taken over by "gangsters". But appointing one of them, Romney, as a "go to guy" to PUNISH investment bankers, would solve nothing.

The Polity really needs commentary, recommendations, and hearings. We need the jury poll, the forum, the marketplace of ideas. We just do NOT need hate-mongerers appealing to our fears. We do not need people who got rich by spouting ignorance all over our public airwaves. We need people who will address the urgencies and gravities of our days and our nights, as we fall deeper into this impoverishment of opportunities. We need critics of policy who are competent to investigate facts.

Extinctions - blood-suckers, flesh-borers, meat wasps...

2008-11-11T10:20:00.000-08:00

Why is the polity so tolerant of pestilence, and at the same time so willing to see wonderful forms of life disappear right before our eyes?

MOSQUITOES. As fascinating as this tribe is, they are not an essential part of a food chain (could be replaced by other creatures), and their hemotaphagous dirty needles spread immense suffering: The Culiseta family is the most dangerous disease vector known. WHO estimates about 250 million people are infected by malaria, and mosquitoes also spread West Nile virus, four forms of encephalitis, yellow fever, dengue fever, rift valley fever, meningitis, and other diseases. Not to mention they also cause sleepless nights and ruin fishing trips and the crepuscular magic of the tropics. Who could possibly miss them? Ironically, I still find people KILLING the "mosquito hawk", Toxorhynchites, in paroxysms of bug-ophobia. This giant of the mosquitoes actually cannibalizes its nasty little brethren. It should always be protected and released.

MEAT BEES ("yellowjackets"). I value creatures whose lifestyle includes eating the other undesireables in my neighborhood. It is my understanding that most of the Vespidae Family, and the Vespula Genus in particular, eat an assortment of insect pests. Our local picnic area and watering hole is often made tricky to use by invasions of aggressive flies which mimic wasps, and a few wasps. Although the sting, usually repeated, of a wasp is painful, and an altercation with a large hive can be fatal, I recommend letting them "be", so to speak. When the occasional paper wasp nest or hornet hole is found too close to my work in the garden, of course, I remove it.

{further list}

The Pollsters did a very good job of predicting the outcome...

2008-11-06T16:49:00.000-08:00

My favorite Poll-master - at Electoral-vote.com, has analyzed the relative success of polsters against actual voting results. Looks like ARG, Insider Advantage, and
Quinnipiac U. were on the money at 100% accuracy/correspondence to reality.
Mason-Dixon and Rasmussen were relatively inferior, missing the close calls, although even they came in favoring Obama in overall outcome.

"In Colorado, for example, the scaled poll predicted an Obama vote of 52.7% and a McCain vote of 45.9%. The candidates got 52.5% and 45.9%, respectively. Thus the polls were remarkably close to the actual vote and there is not a hint of Obama polling well but doing badly on election day.

Now look at the eight other swing states. In Florida the pollsters were right on the money. In Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia they were off by a maximum of 1.2% for Obama. In the other two states, Nevada and New Mexico, the polls for Obama were off by 4.1%, which is within the margin of error. In both cases Obama did better than predicted, so clearly there is no Bradley effect here. If nothing else, any future discussions of the "Bradley effect" can be quickly ended with the statement: "It didn't exist in 2008."
Comparison of the Pollsters

There are various ways to compare the pollsters. Professional statisticians look to see if the actual results were within the bracketed range predicted by the pollster. For example, if a pollster predicted Obama 51% and McCain 49% with a 3% margin of error and the final result was McCain 51% and Obama 49%, the pollster would claim to have gotten it right because Obama fell within the predicted range of 48% to 54% and McCain fell into the predicted range of 46% to 52%. Laymen would probably say the pollster got it wrong--because they don't understand what the prediction really is. To keep it simple, let us use the second approach and see which pollsters predicted which states right. Here are the data.
Pollster CO FL IN MO NV NM NC OH VA Rt/Tot Pct
ARG Yes Yes Tie Tie - - Yes Yes Yes 5/5 100%
Insider Advantage Yes Yes - Yes Tie - Tie Yes - 4/4 100%
Quinnipiac U. Yes Yes - - - - - Yes - 3/3 100%
Opinion Research Yes Yes No Yes Yes - Yes Yes Yes 7/8 88%
SurveyUSA - Yes Tie - - Yes No Yes Yes 4/5 80%
Research 2000 - Yes Yes No Yes - Yes - - 4/5 80%
Mason-Dixon Yes Yes - - Yes - No No Yes 4/6 67%
Rasmussen Yes No No - Yes Yes No - Yes 4/7 43%

In some cases the pollster predicted a tie, that is, said it was too close to call. Let us remove those from the sample. In that case the scores for these pollsters are given in the last two columns. If you want to play with the data yourself, here they are .csv format."

Politics - the legacy of joy and profundity has begun

2008-11-04T23:15:00.000-08:00

With the huge turnout and participation of The People in this election, we demonstrate a love of the "State" in the true sense of patriotism. The one in which l'etat c'est moi, and moi has a dog in the race. A wonderful dog. We are our best friend. Suddenly we have a future again. Time to get over the obstacle of outrage and shame.

Remarkable - John Cusack has expressed the Reality

2008-11-04T16:02:00.000-08:00

The actor, John Cusack, provides a wonderful description of predator economics and the Bush Legacy. He provides a wonderful description of both history and present reality, both of which are necessary for understanding the Set Stage which we must now take as Opportunity. What is remarkable is that he does not hold back the recrimination, but does not permit the outrage to impediment a sense of great opportunity: The economics of grace, true Grace.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-cusack/no-currency-left-to-buy-t_b_140250.html