The deeper your search for truth, the more seamless it seems. As the light and the heat of the flame composes the fire, the transfixing truth is one thing for all its attributes.
The farther back in time we trace the human awakening, the more our religion and our science appear to be the same fire. Our notion of sin in pre-Galileo vessels was not confined to social condemnation, it was not in a thought-box entered one day out of the week, it was not neutered, or considered impractical for business. Private faith was tied to social duty. It still is.
Of course, there have always been false prophets, hypocritical preachers, and careless scientists. The Cheney of graft and war profiteering is paleolithic. The Bush of hypocrisy and fraud is burned into many of our texts -- it is actually the plot line of most of our stories and warning Gospels. The Rovian pretentions to statistics and authenticity are nothing new. Evil always acts under color of law and authority when possible. And this is where the idea of "sin" operates as the dragon at the margins, policing even a wrathful, wasteful, proud and envious god.
Pope Gregory (the Great) catalogued the Seven Deadly sins, which were put into theoretical and literary paces by Thomas Aquinas and Dante. One draws a bracing excitement from reciting the list: Pride, gluttony, sloth, lust, greed, envy and anger. For 15 centuries the Church decreed these to be sufficient to explain the misfortunes of mankind. For example, violence is derivative of anger, waste from gluttony, theft from greed, and all manner of tragedy from pride. None of these "sins" separate Man from God, as all of them are carefully attributed to the Gods -- in the Bible, the Popovul, the Olympiad, the Book of the Dead, the Book of Mormon. What is useful, of course, is the fact that "sin", unlike folly or crime, contains the spiritual hint of redemption.
Mohandas Gandhi was one of our first leaders to re-visit the list. His version of the seven deadliest sins: "Wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, politics without principle, commerce without morality, worship without sacrifice, selfishness without responsibility."
Ghandi clearly addressed the falling gap between "spiritual" and practical morality, once again placing sin into the scientifically valid tool kit. We have always needed a practical measure not only of acts but of attitudes. The mens rea is not just problemmatic for Believers (after-life gamblers). It is also a concern for specialists in all human realms -- legal, social sciences, corporate enterprises, individual responsibility. The sin which begins in the heart, and the hope of salvation, is universal.
What is keeping us from grace? Clearly stealing, coveting. But also polluting, withholding evidence, and becoming rich at the expense of the gullible. There is authenticity and scientific method behind the usages of Sin. The world can be "saved", in every sense, if we understood that the condemnation is not just "spiritually" appropriate. It is apparent that survival requires us to recognize the acts and attitudes which are separating us from grace.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Monday, August 18, 2008
The attempted "swift-boating" of Obama
A book attacking a Presidential candidate with false allegations has surfaced in this election cycle. Negative advertising works. I know of no "effective" means to counter it, in light of the time-sensitivity of elections, and the perversity of humankind.
Recall the previous work of Jerome R. Corsi, a professional hate-mongerer. He coauthored UNFIT FOR COMMAND: SWIFT BOAT VETERANS SPEAK OUT AGAINST JOHN KERRY. That raft of speculation and falsity was launched against a Viet Nam War veteran, and it was condemned by John McCain in the 2004 election cycle for what it was: Pure slime.
Corsi has now published THE OBAMA NATION: LEFTIST POLITICS AND THE CULT OF PERSONALITY. Ironically, this attack by the same author, using the same methods, for the same political purpose (to defeat a candidate), has not (yet?) been condemned by McCain. However, he should. Although he may benefit from the same purpose and may share motives with Corsi, the means and methods of the two books are identical: To slime the candidate using profoundly hot-button conclusions based on fictional "evidence" which appeal to the prejudices of the public most likely to distort their good judgment. McCain has already clearly condemned the strategy.
The text of OBAMA NATION can be summarized: Obama is a jihadist drug user who is lying about his religion and his plan to impose a black supremacist communist state as soon as he seizes the reins of power.
The allegations in Corsi's latest book, to the extent that they advert to any "facts", are rebutted point-by-point on Obama's website. ALL of Corsi's conclusions are shown to be based on outright fictions. But the real point here, is that this publication is not part of political discourse. This is not "Oops we misstated" something, or "reasonable men may disagree". The repeated misquotations and mistakes cannot be excused. This book, and this repeated form of negative press, is a deliberate tool of deception designed to "win" an election by using fraud. Once again, Corsi is manipulating the gullibilities of the voters.
Who is Jerome R. Corsi? First, he is not a "conservative". He does not advocate ANY form of government, nor does he lay out any positive program or institutions in his books and articles. He is a professional attacker. Why bother building a bridge, if you can make millions blowing up the country?
His current work is a website in which he writes "stories" about how President George W. Bush has been conspiring to eliminate the border between the United States and Mexico. He has been working on an expose' of the secrets about 9/11 which the present administration has been withholding from the public.
Other books and articles by Corsi use racist epithets to inflame a hate-mongering fear of whatever is foreign, unifying, inclusive, or somehow "tainted" by color. He is being interviewed on "pro-white" radio, endorsing a confused ideology of State secession by the "Christian" nations. All government is a conspiracy.
"Corsi" himself, is of Sicilian extraction - that island first inhabited by Africans, then colonized by semitic phoenicians, and whose people enjoy to this day the interconnectedness of the Mediterranean. The Corsi's have long enjoyed the benefits of the mixed race, foreign exchange, and freedoms he now condemns.
It appears clear that Corsi can write. He cannot quote Obama or Scripture accurately, but he can write. The OBAMA NATION is now "number 1" on the Sunday New York Times' bestseller list. In other words, in spite of the fabrication of extremely hurtful personal defamation, in spite of logical incoherence, and hypocrisy you can measure on the Richter Scale, a publisher has decided there is money to be made in slime politics. Publish it and people who want to believe it will buy it.
History will duly note that OBAMA NATION is published by Simon & Schuster, which hired the Bush-Rove political operative, Mary Matalin, to edit the imprint. A network of book clubs and radio shows is in place to generate "buzz" for this slime.
The financially stressed publishing industry does not intend to lose money betting on the gullibility of the voting public.
Interestingly, my good Christian friends in the National Guard have been sending me email attachments containing breathless announcements of how important it is to buy the OBAMA NATION. Abomination, get it? And Obama is the anti-christ....etc.
These poor remnant soldier-citizens! Economically capsized more than most after eight years of Bush-Cheney-Rove, and continuing to bear the burden of a fight none of them asked for or knew anything about, and that so-called "conservatives" want to continue. They are the mainstay of the mixed-race Army, invoking the Love-Gospel Jesus of the Resurrection. And in this crazy world, they are making Corsi rich, and they want to drive a great leader from public office.
Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do.
Recall the previous work of Jerome R. Corsi, a professional hate-mongerer. He coauthored UNFIT FOR COMMAND: SWIFT BOAT VETERANS SPEAK OUT AGAINST JOHN KERRY. That raft of speculation and falsity was launched against a Viet Nam War veteran, and it was condemned by John McCain in the 2004 election cycle for what it was: Pure slime.
Corsi has now published THE OBAMA NATION: LEFTIST POLITICS AND THE CULT OF PERSONALITY. Ironically, this attack by the same author, using the same methods, for the same political purpose (to defeat a candidate), has not (yet?) been condemned by McCain. However, he should. Although he may benefit from the same purpose and may share motives with Corsi, the means and methods of the two books are identical: To slime the candidate using profoundly hot-button conclusions based on fictional "evidence" which appeal to the prejudices of the public most likely to distort their good judgment. McCain has already clearly condemned the strategy.
The text of OBAMA NATION can be summarized: Obama is a jihadist drug user who is lying about his religion and his plan to impose a black supremacist communist state as soon as he seizes the reins of power.
The allegations in Corsi's latest book, to the extent that they advert to any "facts", are rebutted point-by-point on Obama's website. ALL of Corsi's conclusions are shown to be based on outright fictions. But the real point here, is that this publication is not part of political discourse. This is not "Oops we misstated" something, or "reasonable men may disagree". The repeated misquotations and mistakes cannot be excused. This book, and this repeated form of negative press, is a deliberate tool of deception designed to "win" an election by using fraud. Once again, Corsi is manipulating the gullibilities of the voters.
Who is Jerome R. Corsi? First, he is not a "conservative". He does not advocate ANY form of government, nor does he lay out any positive program or institutions in his books and articles. He is a professional attacker. Why bother building a bridge, if you can make millions blowing up the country?
His current work is a website in which he writes "stories" about how President George W. Bush has been conspiring to eliminate the border between the United States and Mexico. He has been working on an expose' of the secrets about 9/11 which the present administration has been withholding from the public.
Other books and articles by Corsi use racist epithets to inflame a hate-mongering fear of whatever is foreign, unifying, inclusive, or somehow "tainted" by color. He is being interviewed on "pro-white" radio, endorsing a confused ideology of State secession by the "Christian" nations. All government is a conspiracy.
"Corsi" himself, is of Sicilian extraction - that island first inhabited by Africans, then colonized by semitic phoenicians, and whose people enjoy to this day the interconnectedness of the Mediterranean. The Corsi's have long enjoyed the benefits of the mixed race, foreign exchange, and freedoms he now condemns.
It appears clear that Corsi can write. He cannot quote Obama or Scripture accurately, but he can write. The OBAMA NATION is now "number 1" on the Sunday New York Times' bestseller list. In other words, in spite of the fabrication of extremely hurtful personal defamation, in spite of logical incoherence, and hypocrisy you can measure on the Richter Scale, a publisher has decided there is money to be made in slime politics. Publish it and people who want to believe it will buy it.
History will duly note that OBAMA NATION is published by Simon & Schuster, which hired the Bush-Rove political operative, Mary Matalin, to edit the imprint. A network of book clubs and radio shows is in place to generate "buzz" for this slime.
The financially stressed publishing industry does not intend to lose money betting on the gullibility of the voting public.
Interestingly, my good Christian friends in the National Guard have been sending me email attachments containing breathless announcements of how important it is to buy the OBAMA NATION. Abomination, get it? And Obama is the anti-christ....etc.
These poor remnant soldier-citizens! Economically capsized more than most after eight years of Bush-Cheney-Rove, and continuing to bear the burden of a fight none of them asked for or knew anything about, and that so-called "conservatives" want to continue. They are the mainstay of the mixed-race Army, invoking the Love-Gospel Jesus of the Resurrection. And in this crazy world, they are making Corsi rich, and they want to drive a great leader from public office.
Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
What do we know about The Tribes?
Racism is wrong--it is an economic, moral, and scientific error. In addition, the "traditions" of The Tribe suffers the same deficiencies. And yet, the invocation and "public policy" of race orientation continues.
Any invocation of loyalty to The Tribe should be scrutinized carefully. It is certain to be either rank naivete, or more likely, a cynical attempt by someone to gain power over others by using some means other than merit.
People have always been under the sway of Tribalism. We will never eliminate either "the poor" or "the aristocracy"; it's been tried. The poor have little to cling to, and The Tribe offers at least the illusion of a raft. The rich may find it easier or more convenient to demand loyalty to an abstration they control, than to earn respect, which is their remaining need. Hence, Tribalism is likely to remain an under-tow in the tide of humankind.
Today, we are looking at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. I was almost stunned by how many different racial characteristics were evident in the participants just in the contestants from China. Although I am fairly certain that China has not implemented a policy of diversity -- many minority tribal groups are completely locked out (Uighurs, Tibetans) -- the diversity of the continent was reflected in the faces and bones of their Olympians.
In 1932, Jim Thorpe proved the metal of American Indian genes. The 1938 Olympics in Berlin show-cased the superiority of many non-Aryans over "Aryans" during the Guilt-en Age of Race Theory. Irish, Jewish, Hispanic and American Indians, and several African Americans (including Jesse Owens with 5 gold medals) competitively and fairly crushed the best that the Nazi ideologues of Aryan persuasions had to offer. The 1948-1956 victories of Emil Zatopek (Czek) showed the emptiness of tribalisms even within the realms of the Fatherland. Still, in spite of these individual performances, Race Theory did not die. It flourishes yet among the rich and the poor, and it is taught in text books throughout the Arab world, for example.
These 2008 Olympics offer some hope. Because of the scale of its manifestation, this laboratory proof leaves all Race Theory in the dust. It is not just a matter of individuals who are possible "exceptions" -- like Thorpe, Zaharias, Owens, etc.
The Finns (5 million), Norwegians (5 million), Ethiopians (50 million), South Koreans (49 million) and Australians (20 million) are racking up medals way out of proportion to their respective tribal pools. Clearly, the "races", if they exist, are irrelevant even if they were somehow defineable, which they are not. We do not know what "race" the ubiquitous "English" are -- Basques? Celts? Germans? -- or even how many of them there are.
The Arabs who are now spending the most money on teaching race theory to school children throughout Africa and the Middle East, ironically have the most serious problems with even defining race, much less proving it is in any way significant. For example, half the black Nilotic tribes of Ethiopia speak Semitic languages, and the Sabra "Jews" who are villified ("Death! Death!" shouted in Mosques) are genetically indistinguishable from the Bedouin tribes.
So, the Olympic lesson, once again. Perhaps it makes no difference when billions are spent on text-books that are indifferent to science, morals, or economics. Still, there are those golden victories. The Chinese team, the American team, the participation of 204 countries, and no single "race" being dominant. Not one. The Arab nations are represented by brave and beautiful athletes, but they are not examples of superiority over Jews -- in spite of the text books.
And there is that four-man team that won the 400-meter relay -- over all the boasts and bluster and threats of refusing to enter waters tainted by the sweat of Jews and "slaves" -- you have the victory of "Phelps", a mongrel English name, an African American, and two Jews.
Any invocation of loyalty to The Tribe should be scrutinized carefully. It is certain to be either rank naivete, or more likely, a cynical attempt by someone to gain power over others by using some means other than merit.
People have always been under the sway of Tribalism. We will never eliminate either "the poor" or "the aristocracy"; it's been tried. The poor have little to cling to, and The Tribe offers at least the illusion of a raft. The rich may find it easier or more convenient to demand loyalty to an abstration they control, than to earn respect, which is their remaining need. Hence, Tribalism is likely to remain an under-tow in the tide of humankind.
Today, we are looking at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. I was almost stunned by how many different racial characteristics were evident in the participants just in the contestants from China. Although I am fairly certain that China has not implemented a policy of diversity -- many minority tribal groups are completely locked out (Uighurs, Tibetans) -- the diversity of the continent was reflected in the faces and bones of their Olympians.
In 1932, Jim Thorpe proved the metal of American Indian genes. The 1938 Olympics in Berlin show-cased the superiority of many non-Aryans over "Aryans" during the Guilt-en Age of Race Theory. Irish, Jewish, Hispanic and American Indians, and several African Americans (including Jesse Owens with 5 gold medals) competitively and fairly crushed the best that the Nazi ideologues of Aryan persuasions had to offer. The 1948-1956 victories of Emil Zatopek (Czek) showed the emptiness of tribalisms even within the realms of the Fatherland. Still, in spite of these individual performances, Race Theory did not die. It flourishes yet among the rich and the poor, and it is taught in text books throughout the Arab world, for example.
These 2008 Olympics offer some hope. Because of the scale of its manifestation, this laboratory proof leaves all Race Theory in the dust. It is not just a matter of individuals who are possible "exceptions" -- like Thorpe, Zaharias, Owens, etc.
The Finns (5 million), Norwegians (5 million), Ethiopians (50 million), South Koreans (49 million) and Australians (20 million) are racking up medals way out of proportion to their respective tribal pools. Clearly, the "races", if they exist, are irrelevant even if they were somehow defineable, which they are not. We do not know what "race" the ubiquitous "English" are -- Basques? Celts? Germans? -- or even how many of them there are.
The Arabs who are now spending the most money on teaching race theory to school children throughout Africa and the Middle East, ironically have the most serious problems with even defining race, much less proving it is in any way significant. For example, half the black Nilotic tribes of Ethiopia speak Semitic languages, and the Sabra "Jews" who are villified ("Death! Death!" shouted in Mosques) are genetically indistinguishable from the Bedouin tribes.
So, the Olympic lesson, once again. Perhaps it makes no difference when billions are spent on text-books that are indifferent to science, morals, or economics. Still, there are those golden victories. The Chinese team, the American team, the participation of 204 countries, and no single "race" being dominant. Not one. The Arab nations are represented by brave and beautiful athletes, but they are not examples of superiority over Jews -- in spite of the text books.
And there is that four-man team that won the 400-meter relay -- over all the boasts and bluster and threats of refusing to enter waters tainted by the sweat of Jews and "slaves" -- you have the victory of "Phelps", a mongrel English name, an African American, and two Jews.
Tolerance
Collection of materials on a core "Belief": TOLERANCE.
1. Amy Chua, a Yale law professor, has developed the idea of tolerance as the key to the rise of civilization as drawn from selected and curious historical examples. In DAY OF EMPIRE (2008), she describes the superpowers, and concludes that they arise by "attracting the best and the brightest from all over the world". Purges and exclusions have always triggered backlash and decline. She details the examples of Rome, the Tang Dynasty, the Dutch Republic, and even Genghis Khan (declared religious tolerance). And come to think of it she is exactly right -- the U.S. won the race for the atomic bomb by becoming a haven for persecuted scientists from Nazi Europe.
1. Amy Chua, a Yale law professor, has developed the idea of tolerance as the key to the rise of civilization as drawn from selected and curious historical examples. In DAY OF EMPIRE (2008), she describes the superpowers, and concludes that they arise by "attracting the best and the brightest from all over the world". Purges and exclusions have always triggered backlash and decline. She details the examples of Rome, the Tang Dynasty, the Dutch Republic, and even Genghis Khan (declared religious tolerance). And come to think of it she is exactly right -- the U.S. won the race for the atomic bomb by becoming a haven for persecuted scientists from Nazi Europe.
The Scale of the Living
I was thinking about things I thought I knew something about...and realized that I really cannot even comprehend the huge scale of the smallest things!
For example, I know a lot about mosquitoes. I grew up with them, not exactly as pets, but I could identify ten different species, with special attention to Anopheles oswaldoi, which carried the malaria in our area. But of course, there are over 3,500 species of mosquitoes! And many of them look alike, and in my forgetting, I don't think I could distinguish fruitarians from blood-suckers now.
I got to thinking that this SCALE of life forms is wildly beyond the comprehension of any of us. I checked the Smithsonian collections -- over 30 million insects, 7 million fish, 5 million plant specimens. These numbers are wild.
No one can keep track of the way life has expanded and diversified. I was pleased to see that the Smithsonian has bar coded the collections, although most field ecologists are not out there with portable barcorders. None of these forms of life are labeled or coded....
Except, what about their DNA? We bar code DNA, and all living creatures have DNA. You don't have to kill the creature to collect its sample. DNA could even distinguish species that look identical, such as some of the mosquitoes.
For example, I know a lot about mosquitoes. I grew up with them, not exactly as pets, but I could identify ten different species, with special attention to Anopheles oswaldoi, which carried the malaria in our area. But of course, there are over 3,500 species of mosquitoes! And many of them look alike, and in my forgetting, I don't think I could distinguish fruitarians from blood-suckers now.
I got to thinking that this SCALE of life forms is wildly beyond the comprehension of any of us. I checked the Smithsonian collections -- over 30 million insects, 7 million fish, 5 million plant specimens. These numbers are wild.
No one can keep track of the way life has expanded and diversified. I was pleased to see that the Smithsonian has bar coded the collections, although most field ecologists are not out there with portable barcorders. None of these forms of life are labeled or coded....
Except, what about their DNA? We bar code DNA, and all living creatures have DNA. You don't have to kill the creature to collect its sample. DNA could even distinguish species that look identical, such as some of the mosquitoes.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
And the People fled their homes....
When families flee their homes, this is the bottom, the last loss. It is not just job loss, or the destruction of seed corn. It is not just chaos and loss of family members. It is everything. Maybe the last bit of life, hanging on.
In the history of migration, often it is native inhabitants fleeing their villages in the face of an onslaught of immigrants.
In modern times, often technologically superior groups flee from "laws", the extortion exerted by force upon legitimacy. The Karelians were not displaced by a sudden influx of Soviets, but 300,000 of them fled the USSR seizure of their jurisdiction. Millions of Jewish people were forced from their homes by public policies and laws of various European States -- although organized pogroms, and Crystalnacht, followed the legalization of the ethnic persecution. The point is that Law led the coersion.
Curiously, the Hutu-controlled government took the trouble to project a "public policy" which at least pretended a justification for slaughtering unarmed Tutsi in their homes and churches. In 1994, ethnic fighting in Rwanda led to the massacre of at least half a million Tutsis and sent more than a million Hutus fleeing to Zaire, Tanzania, and Burundi.
The Darfurians are subjected to the most primitive form of persecution. The tribal Arabs are simply attacking them -- killing and burning. The government of Sudan does not even bother to project a public policy or "legal" authority for the persecution. Arab racist sophistication is devoted to blaming Israel, denying reality, and preventing investigation, or resolution. Three of the minority ethnic groups in Darfur--the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa--are being attacked by armed forces, the Janjaweed militias, and the entire government apparatus. Over 2.7 million have fled their homes.
In Kenya, after the December 2007 "election" was compromised by violence (President Mwai Kibaki claimed to have defeated Raila Odinga by 230,000 votes out of 10 million cast), thousands of people were killed in the streets, and more than 300,000 fled their homes.
The Palestinian Arabs also fled their homes during the first war between Israel and the combined nations on its border. However, no government had declared a public policy of extermination against Arabs, and no organized pogroms had destroyed their communities before they fled. It is true that many of them fled out of fear, but it is fair to say that it was the fear of war, not targeted persecution. It is also true that many Arab "villages", not all of which were entirely abandoned, were destroyed by the Israeli Army. (The number of destroyed "villages" is controversial as it is difficult to define the abandoned dwellings and propagandists have made it impossible. There is no such discrepant calculation in counting the villages in Darfur.)
In modern Kurdistan, the Kurds who once conquered the Middle East, are now persecuted by Arabs and Turks. Over one million Kurds fled and lost their homes at the hand of Saddam Hussein in the last decade of his rule.
Why is there any controversy at all? ANY essentially involuntary movement of people from their homes on any scale, reflects upon the leadership and comfort of all.
In the history of migration, often it is native inhabitants fleeing their villages in the face of an onslaught of immigrants.
In modern times, often technologically superior groups flee from "laws", the extortion exerted by force upon legitimacy. The Karelians were not displaced by a sudden influx of Soviets, but 300,000 of them fled the USSR seizure of their jurisdiction. Millions of Jewish people were forced from their homes by public policies and laws of various European States -- although organized pogroms, and Crystalnacht, followed the legalization of the ethnic persecution. The point is that Law led the coersion.
Curiously, the Hutu-controlled government took the trouble to project a "public policy" which at least pretended a justification for slaughtering unarmed Tutsi in their homes and churches. In 1994, ethnic fighting in Rwanda led to the massacre of at least half a million Tutsis and sent more than a million Hutus fleeing to Zaire, Tanzania, and Burundi.
The Darfurians are subjected to the most primitive form of persecution. The tribal Arabs are simply attacking them -- killing and burning. The government of Sudan does not even bother to project a public policy or "legal" authority for the persecution. Arab racist sophistication is devoted to blaming Israel, denying reality, and preventing investigation, or resolution. Three of the minority ethnic groups in Darfur--the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa--are being attacked by armed forces, the Janjaweed militias, and the entire government apparatus. Over 2.7 million have fled their homes.
In Kenya, after the December 2007 "election" was compromised by violence (President Mwai Kibaki claimed to have defeated Raila Odinga by 230,000 votes out of 10 million cast), thousands of people were killed in the streets, and more than 300,000 fled their homes.
The Palestinian Arabs also fled their homes during the first war between Israel and the combined nations on its border. However, no government had declared a public policy of extermination against Arabs, and no organized pogroms had destroyed their communities before they fled. It is true that many of them fled out of fear, but it is fair to say that it was the fear of war, not targeted persecution. It is also true that many Arab "villages", not all of which were entirely abandoned, were destroyed by the Israeli Army. (The number of destroyed "villages" is controversial as it is difficult to define the abandoned dwellings and propagandists have made it impossible. There is no such discrepant calculation in counting the villages in Darfur.)
In modern Kurdistan, the Kurds who once conquered the Middle East, are now persecuted by Arabs and Turks. Over one million Kurds fled and lost their homes at the hand of Saddam Hussein in the last decade of his rule.
Why is there any controversy at all? ANY essentially involuntary movement of people from their homes on any scale, reflects upon the leadership and comfort of all.
Who will lead us as we face Natural Foreseeable and Certain Disasters ("NFCD")
In assessing a "belief" system, or the ability of an ideologically-driven candidate to lead, it would seem practical to put them up against Natural Foreseeable and Certain Disasters ("NFCD"). How will your "Beliefs" steel your response? How will the candidate perform in the face of Disaster?
All ideological obsessions--such as judgments on the rectitude of abortions and the rights of gay persons to exist -- pale compared to NFCDs. Let's take an example: Harmful algal blooms (or HABs). These toxic blooms are commonly called "Red Tides", although they are not tide-driven and are not always red.
HABs present one of the most scientifically complex and economically significant coastal management issues facing the nations today. The micro-organisms are ancient, adaptive, and roguish. In the past, only a few regions were affected by these harmful algal blooms, but now all U.S. coastal regions, and vast areas across the globe, have reported major toxic algal blooms.
The Harmful Algae Page was started 9 years ago by Donald Anderson of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. His gallery of killers is alarming, diverse, and rich. For example, the dinoflagellate Alexandrium tamarense is among the most efficient poisoners. A Chaetoceros species stabs fish to death by plunging serrated spines into their gils. Over five kinds of human illnesses from seafood poisoning are directly caused by HABs, all of them potentially deadly.
How will your Beliefs help? Will we have a Leader with enough intelligence to understand how much we depend on leadership in the face of real dangers? Will our Leaders devote resources to mitigate the HAB attacks? For eight years, HAB attacks have increased while our leaders ignored them or even encouraged economic activities that have made them worse. All indications are that pollution run-off from human activity has increased the distribution and scale of the HAB attacks.
All ideological obsessions--such as judgments on the rectitude of abortions and the rights of gay persons to exist -- pale compared to NFCDs. Let's take an example: Harmful algal blooms (or HABs). These toxic blooms are commonly called "Red Tides", although they are not tide-driven and are not always red.
HABs present one of the most scientifically complex and economically significant coastal management issues facing the nations today. The micro-organisms are ancient, adaptive, and roguish. In the past, only a few regions were affected by these harmful algal blooms, but now all U.S. coastal regions, and vast areas across the globe, have reported major toxic algal blooms.
The Harmful Algae Page was started 9 years ago by Donald Anderson of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. His gallery of killers is alarming, diverse, and rich. For example, the dinoflagellate Alexandrium tamarense is among the most efficient poisoners. A Chaetoceros species stabs fish to death by plunging serrated spines into their gils. Over five kinds of human illnesses from seafood poisoning are directly caused by HABs, all of them potentially deadly.
How will your Beliefs help? Will we have a Leader with enough intelligence to understand how much we depend on leadership in the face of real dangers? Will our Leaders devote resources to mitigate the HAB attacks? For eight years, HAB attacks have increased while our leaders ignored them or even encouraged economic activities that have made them worse. All indications are that pollution run-off from human activity has increased the distribution and scale of the HAB attacks.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
The importance of Religion
The comedic documentary, RELIGULOUS, is scheduled to be out in October 3. The director is Larry Charles, who did "Borat", and the interviews are conducted by the acolyte of George Carlin, Bill Maher. http://www.latimes.com/thebigpicture
Clearly the pre-opening announcement of this "documentary" -- interviews with real "believers" -- is part of a marketing plan, a ROI motive behind the mirror of comedy and the spin of entertainment. Still, since it promises to be a comedic exposure of the predators who continue to benefit themselves at the expense of "believers", I want to add to the pre-opening "buzz".
At the same time, it may be necessary for those of us in the "science" community to distinguish our positions from those who merely want to make fools of Believers.
The True Believers are already made fools of by the predators; I do not wish to add to their burdens, or even to their doubts. Religion is a powerful reality, and it is morally neutral, neither "good" nor "bad". Sam Harris' THE END OF FAITH does not make sense scientifically. There is faith, and it continues; it IS. Even if Harris refers to faith as a "neurological disorder", he misses the point: It is neurological. It is IN our brain. We are hard-wired -- send us your tired cliches -- for prayer, hope, belief, "spirituality", "not bread alone-ness".
In fact, the role of religion in the great suffering and pain inflicted by humans on others, should be looked at carefully. We seem to have suffered far more at the hand of Non-Believers: Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, and the pillagers of the Tutsi congregations in the churches. With this history, I'll take my chances with the Believers every time. Every time. Especially, because there is no god.... and Believers clearly are looking for redemption, which makes them gullible victims to predators.
I hope this film mocks the predation, and not the congregant victims. "Kill the monarchy, but not the King." -- Thomas Paine.
Clearly the pre-opening announcement of this "documentary" -- interviews with real "believers" -- is part of a marketing plan, a ROI motive behind the mirror of comedy and the spin of entertainment. Still, since it promises to be a comedic exposure of the predators who continue to benefit themselves at the expense of "believers", I want to add to the pre-opening "buzz".
At the same time, it may be necessary for those of us in the "science" community to distinguish our positions from those who merely want to make fools of Believers.
The True Believers are already made fools of by the predators; I do not wish to add to their burdens, or even to their doubts. Religion is a powerful reality, and it is morally neutral, neither "good" nor "bad". Sam Harris' THE END OF FAITH does not make sense scientifically. There is faith, and it continues; it IS. Even if Harris refers to faith as a "neurological disorder", he misses the point: It is neurological. It is IN our brain. We are hard-wired -- send us your tired cliches -- for prayer, hope, belief, "spirituality", "not bread alone-ness".
In fact, the role of religion in the great suffering and pain inflicted by humans on others, should be looked at carefully. We seem to have suffered far more at the hand of Non-Believers: Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, and the pillagers of the Tutsi congregations in the churches. With this history, I'll take my chances with the Believers every time. Every time. Especially, because there is no god.... and Believers clearly are looking for redemption, which makes them gullible victims to predators.
I hope this film mocks the predation, and not the congregant victims. "Kill the monarchy, but not the King." -- Thomas Paine.
Cars, as weaponized transportation.
I am not one of those people who are lured to the highway by the hope of speed and envy which an automobile embodies. Nothing ruins a good walk more than the fact that so many others have chosen to drive--it is drivers and their motorways and means that makes walking a poor choice.
I confess that I was once injured when I fell off an ox-cart. I have been bucked off a calf twice, and a horse, maybe ten times. Damn, it was the same horse. But I never felt SERIOUSLY injured. Just shaken and stirred.
Between 1997 and 2001, I was in four traffic accidents -- three rear-enders and a T-bone at a controlled intersection. It changed my life. The injuries were life-threatening and severe.
So, by way of disclosure, I have a personal understanding that anything that goes faster than a horse can gallop, is "dangerous". It is not potentially dangerous, it IS dangerous. And to get so many people to engage in a dangerous activity, you probably have to trick them, lie to them, conceal the dangers, and eliminate alternatives they would otherwise rationally choose if they had any choice.
Vehicle "accidents" cause more than 40,000 deaths every year in the United States. The non-terminal casualties, ranging from whiplash sufficient to be reported (and claimed to insurance companies who are motivated to deny their significance), to every condition short of death, are ten times that number.
Tom Vanderbilt just authored a book titled "TRAFFIC", with the promising subtitle, "Why we drive the way we do (and What it says about us)". He does a pretty good job of showing that out on the highways, nothing is as it appears. He explores the appearance of chaos on the roads of India, the congestion fees in London, the frailties of urban planning, attempts at hard-shell traffic engineering, and driver behavior/ optical theory.
We live in an increasingly mobile world, but not really. We are increasingly "virtual" in our travels, and our traffic is bursting on cables. Energy costs are increasing. This is a great opportunity to get off the "driving anything beats walking" beat. In spite of the promises made by car manufacturers and engineering linguistics -- modal bias, dilemma zone, motion parallax, induced travel, traffic thrombosis -- traffic on our unwalkable and undrivable streets, just gets worse and worse.
Anything that travels faster than a horse can gallop, is considered, by a human body, to be a weapon. It is not a utility, a tool, or an extension of the body. It is going to kill. That speed is its only reality, the rest is illusion, and the speed is not compatible with human life on impact.
Of course, the fight against "cars" -- and the mythology created around them -- is marginalized. However, acceptance of the reality of a weapon in our midst is not an "extreme" position. It is simple realism. It faces the reality of slaughter.
The myth Believer gets into a car and drives to work or to the store for food, ignoring the fact that they are risking their life or their livelihood (injured people invariably lose or diminish their careers). The myth Believer is tricked by the reality of great comfort sitting in a car, into believing that this comfort is safe when launched on the street at speed.
I confess that I was once injured when I fell off an ox-cart. I have been bucked off a calf twice, and a horse, maybe ten times. Damn, it was the same horse. But I never felt SERIOUSLY injured. Just shaken and stirred.
Between 1997 and 2001, I was in four traffic accidents -- three rear-enders and a T-bone at a controlled intersection. It changed my life. The injuries were life-threatening and severe.
So, by way of disclosure, I have a personal understanding that anything that goes faster than a horse can gallop, is "dangerous". It is not potentially dangerous, it IS dangerous. And to get so many people to engage in a dangerous activity, you probably have to trick them, lie to them, conceal the dangers, and eliminate alternatives they would otherwise rationally choose if they had any choice.
Vehicle "accidents" cause more than 40,000 deaths every year in the United States. The non-terminal casualties, ranging from whiplash sufficient to be reported (and claimed to insurance companies who are motivated to deny their significance), to every condition short of death, are ten times that number.
Tom Vanderbilt just authored a book titled "TRAFFIC", with the promising subtitle, "Why we drive the way we do (and What it says about us)". He does a pretty good job of showing that out on the highways, nothing is as it appears. He explores the appearance of chaos on the roads of India, the congestion fees in London, the frailties of urban planning, attempts at hard-shell traffic engineering, and driver behavior/ optical theory.
We live in an increasingly mobile world, but not really. We are increasingly "virtual" in our travels, and our traffic is bursting on cables. Energy costs are increasing. This is a great opportunity to get off the "driving anything beats walking" beat. In spite of the promises made by car manufacturers and engineering linguistics -- modal bias, dilemma zone, motion parallax, induced travel, traffic thrombosis -- traffic on our unwalkable and undrivable streets, just gets worse and worse.
Anything that travels faster than a horse can gallop, is considered, by a human body, to be a weapon. It is not a utility, a tool, or an extension of the body. It is going to kill. That speed is its only reality, the rest is illusion, and the speed is not compatible with human life on impact.
Of course, the fight against "cars" -- and the mythology created around them -- is marginalized. However, acceptance of the reality of a weapon in our midst is not an "extreme" position. It is simple realism. It faces the reality of slaughter.
The myth Believer gets into a car and drives to work or to the store for food, ignoring the fact that they are risking their life or their livelihood (injured people invariably lose or diminish their careers). The myth Believer is tricked by the reality of great comfort sitting in a car, into believing that this comfort is safe when launched on the street at speed.
The Business of Crime
On August 9, 2008, Edison International announced that its NET income nearly TRIPLED, from its publicly-announced second-quarter earnings of one year ago. Edison's President, Theodore Craver Jr., who added the CEO title a week ago, said that this eye-brow raising "success" is the result of "being able to realize our substantial growth potential".
Actually, Mr. Craver, it boils down to being able to be a criminal. You are realizing substantial criminal growth potential, and you are doing it under color of "doing business". Let's look at what Edison is actually achieving:
-- Edison is an "international" entity; it is "off-shore". It is taking money from rate-paying citizens who are always domestic, wherever they are.
-- The rate-payer paying for a utility owned by Edison, and which has No Competition at its point of purchase. The rate-payer is under Edison's monopoly.
-- Edison bought the Congress, and wrote its own laws concerning its "utility" services, building a monopoly for itself into the legal infrastructure. Under Reagan, and then perfected under a series of "conservative" administrations, this public utility proceeded to DE-REGULATE itself, while maintaining its market monopoly. We now have, literally, regulated and restricted Statism for the rate-payer (just TRY generating your own power onto the grid), and un-restricted un-regulated monopolist profiteering by Edison.
-- In the same quarter that Edison announced unprecedented gross profits, and NET profit increases, the price of oil had also increased. In other words, even though the cost to generate electricity increased-- Edison had to pay a lot more for their own fuel costs -- they made even more profit.
-- This same profit increase does not even include a claim made by the IRS (which remains the ONLY "regulator" or government intrusion on Edison's practices) concerning a (wait for it) for ONE AND ONE HALF BILLION in unpaid taxes, involving a "complex lease arrangement" made with a wholly unregulated subsidiary company, and with which Edison's lawyers intend to shield Edison further from tax exposures in the future.
-- This profit increase does not include any purchases of pollution allowances -- even though these costs were supposed to be incurred as part of their own pollution reduction compliance plan. For example, their own Edison Mission Group was required to post $48 million to the program. They clearly signal that won't happen. By setting up unregulated subsidiaries, such as Edison Capital, which supposedly invests in energy and infrastructure, Edison International intends to evade the pollution allowances. They see pollution reduction as an "impairment" to their profits.
-- Edison makes no claim that the profit increase is the result of increased efficiency, a better product or service, a new technology, or a market expansion.
-- Edison also announced its intention to increase rates for 2009, 2010, and 2011. It is almost breath-taking to see their interest in their future profit-taking....
-- The bottom line is that Edison has increased its profits by taking more money from consumers in local arenas served by its monopoly on power delivery, while avoiding the taxes and pollution regulations which would be imposed by the respective public agencies. Proposed rate hikes are based on extortion. There is no free market here. The "hidden hand" is not a free and informed market setting the price, it is Edison's off-shore and unregulated subsidiaries taking the benefits while shifting all the costs and burdens back to ratepayers and tax payers.
This is not Capitalism. This is predation. What ENRON got away with, is what Edison is getting away with: Money, taken under the false pretenses of "business". This profiteering enterprise will collapse because it is predation, it is not actually "business". They produce nothing. There is no informed exchange involved in this "profit".
Where you see the profits increase, in the absence of ANY improved product, service, technology or market expansion, you have to ask just what "business" is Edison in?
Actually, Mr. Craver, it boils down to being able to be a criminal. You are realizing substantial criminal growth potential, and you are doing it under color of "doing business". Let's look at what Edison is actually achieving:
-- Edison is an "international" entity; it is "off-shore". It is taking money from rate-paying citizens who are always domestic, wherever they are.
-- The rate-payer paying for a utility owned by Edison, and which has No Competition at its point of purchase. The rate-payer is under Edison's monopoly.
-- Edison bought the Congress, and wrote its own laws concerning its "utility" services, building a monopoly for itself into the legal infrastructure. Under Reagan, and then perfected under a series of "conservative" administrations, this public utility proceeded to DE-REGULATE itself, while maintaining its market monopoly. We now have, literally, regulated and restricted Statism for the rate-payer (just TRY generating your own power onto the grid), and un-restricted un-regulated monopolist profiteering by Edison.
-- In the same quarter that Edison announced unprecedented gross profits, and NET profit increases, the price of oil had also increased. In other words, even though the cost to generate electricity increased-- Edison had to pay a lot more for their own fuel costs -- they made even more profit.
-- This same profit increase does not even include a claim made by the IRS (which remains the ONLY "regulator" or government intrusion on Edison's practices) concerning a (wait for it) for ONE AND ONE HALF BILLION in unpaid taxes, involving a "complex lease arrangement" made with a wholly unregulated subsidiary company, and with which Edison's lawyers intend to shield Edison further from tax exposures in the future.
-- This profit increase does not include any purchases of pollution allowances -- even though these costs were supposed to be incurred as part of their own pollution reduction compliance plan. For example, their own Edison Mission Group was required to post $48 million to the program. They clearly signal that won't happen. By setting up unregulated subsidiaries, such as Edison Capital, which supposedly invests in energy and infrastructure, Edison International intends to evade the pollution allowances. They see pollution reduction as an "impairment" to their profits.
-- Edison makes no claim that the profit increase is the result of increased efficiency, a better product or service, a new technology, or a market expansion.
-- Edison also announced its intention to increase rates for 2009, 2010, and 2011. It is almost breath-taking to see their interest in their future profit-taking....
-- The bottom line is that Edison has increased its profits by taking more money from consumers in local arenas served by its monopoly on power delivery, while avoiding the taxes and pollution regulations which would be imposed by the respective public agencies. Proposed rate hikes are based on extortion. There is no free market here. The "hidden hand" is not a free and informed market setting the price, it is Edison's off-shore and unregulated subsidiaries taking the benefits while shifting all the costs and burdens back to ratepayers and tax payers.
This is not Capitalism. This is predation. What ENRON got away with, is what Edison is getting away with: Money, taken under the false pretenses of "business". This profiteering enterprise will collapse because it is predation, it is not actually "business". They produce nothing. There is no informed exchange involved in this "profit".
Where you see the profits increase, in the absence of ANY improved product, service, technology or market expansion, you have to ask just what "business" is Edison in?
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Competence vs Ideological Purity - the FBI Anthrax Investigation
THE ANTHRAX INVESTIGATION. The real mystery of this investigation is not so much WHO attacked America using Anthrax immediately after the 9/11/01 attack on New York City, but why the investigation was conducted with such misdirection from the top.
1. The Global Search. The FBI was tasked with the investigation. A competent detective, and there are many in the FBI, would at least consider a perpetrator from an American laboratory. It was widely reported in the press at the time that the quality of the material (armament grade) as well as the technology of its delivery system (a fine powder) could only have been produced in a few places and most of those places are here in the USA. And yet, the FBI launched itself into a global search. Global. Looking everywhere but here.
2. President Bush appointed the FBI Director and the Attorney General. The Bush-Cheney-Rove cabal appointed personnel based on ideology rather than competence or even common sense. They searched abroad, not because that is where the evidence pointed, but because of what it would "look like" politically to fix blame on an American. Our leadership spent millions on an investigation all over the world, getting nowhere. The perpetrator turns out to have been Bruce Ivins -- a life-long Republican, a donor to Bush-Cheney-Rove campaigns, and a "religious patriot". A Believer. As the long-delayed seven year investigation finally, finally turned in his direction, he committed suicide. After seven years, no charges have ever been brought against any person responsible for one of the most savage attacks on America.
3. How long will our society be paying for the consequences, and robust salaries, of the Bush-Cheney-Rove appointees? People have been appointed to public service positions of great importance, who once again have shown themselves to be incapable of performing service for anyone other than themselves. Folks, this is not what we need to expect. We need leaders who are competent, who surround themselves with competent advisors, and who make appointments of competent people.
4. Save us from the ideologues. The sooner we restore public offices to people of ability, the better. And simple Justice requires that those who are responsible for damage and harm, should pay compensation. The Justice Department now stands up trying to take credit for accumulating a vast amount of evidence against Mr. Ivins, now that he is deceased. Yet, they also announced that they are closing the investigation! Are the victims compensated? Are the people responsible for the Post Office deaths, and for the bungled investigation, accountable to the tax payers who paid their salaries? This is a clueless Justice Department. Where is the Justice? Going on seven years.
1. The Global Search. The FBI was tasked with the investigation. A competent detective, and there are many in the FBI, would at least consider a perpetrator from an American laboratory. It was widely reported in the press at the time that the quality of the material (armament grade) as well as the technology of its delivery system (a fine powder) could only have been produced in a few places and most of those places are here in the USA. And yet, the FBI launched itself into a global search. Global. Looking everywhere but here.
2. President Bush appointed the FBI Director and the Attorney General. The Bush-Cheney-Rove cabal appointed personnel based on ideology rather than competence or even common sense. They searched abroad, not because that is where the evidence pointed, but because of what it would "look like" politically to fix blame on an American. Our leadership spent millions on an investigation all over the world, getting nowhere. The perpetrator turns out to have been Bruce Ivins -- a life-long Republican, a donor to Bush-Cheney-Rove campaigns, and a "religious patriot". A Believer. As the long-delayed seven year investigation finally, finally turned in his direction, he committed suicide. After seven years, no charges have ever been brought against any person responsible for one of the most savage attacks on America.
3. How long will our society be paying for the consequences, and robust salaries, of the Bush-Cheney-Rove appointees? People have been appointed to public service positions of great importance, who once again have shown themselves to be incapable of performing service for anyone other than themselves. Folks, this is not what we need to expect. We need leaders who are competent, who surround themselves with competent advisors, and who make appointments of competent people.
4. Save us from the ideologues. The sooner we restore public offices to people of ability, the better. And simple Justice requires that those who are responsible for damage and harm, should pay compensation. The Justice Department now stands up trying to take credit for accumulating a vast amount of evidence against Mr. Ivins, now that he is deceased. Yet, they also announced that they are closing the investigation! Are the victims compensated? Are the people responsible for the Post Office deaths, and for the bungled investigation, accountable to the tax payers who paid their salaries? This is a clueless Justice Department. Where is the Justice? Going on seven years.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Entertainment - the cheap exploited bridge we mistrust
“Yet entertainment – as I define it, pleasure and all – remains the only sure means we have of bridging, or at least of feeling as if we have bridged, the gulf of consciousness that separates each of us from everybody else. The best response to those who would cheapen and exploit it is not to disparage or repudiate but to reclaim entertainment as a job fit for artists and for audiences, a two-way exchange of attention, experience and the universal hunger for connection.”
– Michael Chabon, LAT Bk Review April 27, 2008
– Michael Chabon, LAT Bk Review April 27, 2008
Monday, July 21, 2008
Trial Perspective: Chance, Story, Theory, Data, Chance
PERSPECTIVE: As consciousness emerges, it seeks perspective. The Being is never content with itself, but must Do something about it, in the same sense that guilt accompanies the Big Bang of awareness, and the infinite dance of evasion begins to spin outwards. Do Be Do Be Doo....
CHANCE. We see in the cave paintings of 30,000 years ago (Chauvet), the alphabet being made. And there is no Round Table, no Ring-cycle, no Word, no God, no King-cipher, no ideology. There is only the spiraling out of seasons, the enumeration of gravid moons, the chance of salmon, the hunting hopes pinned on the mystery of birth. And behind the observed, there was only the guarantee of surprise, of waiting for an uncertain tomorrow. We were dealing with pure chance.
STORY. In the cave paintings of 20,000 years ago (Lescaux, N. Africa), we see the alphabet telling a story. We see events being recalled, and told in the re-echoing chambers of the caves to the hundreds of children who left their footprints in the hemp-lit darkness. This story gave us a bearing, a mirror, a generational link beyond the mystery of the birth canal, to the tribe.
MYTH. With the rise of agriculture, the control of land became important. The controllers added hierarchic imperatives to the story as a tool for connecting us not only to the tribe, but to the controllers. Not a coincidence that Homer was blind, he was the first story-teller to lead us out of the darkness of the cave, into a rich geography of mythology. We began to depict Gods and their pretenders, the Kings. The story elaborated into a theology based on an Adam-and-Even Mother.
THEORY. Theology always degenerates into a theory of everything, a Summa. Thomas Aquinas only compiled what his generation of believers were forced to reckon with -- a Summa Theologica -- ironically published in the very year Galileo looked through a telescope. A God of Everything in a closed system, a Unified Field, the goal of all theory. To understand this machine, Newton generated calculus, and we use the algorithm method to analyze the mystery of the birth-patterns of Relativity.
DATA. Theories are overthrown by facts. The data are indifferent to the organization we require for our own understanding. The brain itself is data, in a sunset of "consciousness" falling like a subjectivity tree in an forest of inputs from proprioceptive devices with hopelessly mixed metaphors. The arbitrariness of birth is highlighted by the mystery of Google rankings across PetaBytes of information. There is still "content", but the content is entertainment. The search for patterns in an incomprehensible surplus, in effect, a flood of chaos choked with Chance.
CHANCE. The patterns in the data become more meaningful than the content of the information. No distinction is made between the baby and the bath-water, one molecule at a time, spiraling into the Black Holes in the center of every galaxy. We are back in the cave, trying to come to terms with the darker older colder slower. The perspective of a riparian creature observing motions which can be understood only by emerging wet drying onto the kitchen midden beach to gather grapes and mushrooms. We try to think up stories to tell. Submerged, we look for the floating Ark nobody built. Somewhere, there is a golden engagement ring-cycle.
CHANCE. We see in the cave paintings of 30,000 years ago (Chauvet), the alphabet being made. And there is no Round Table, no Ring-cycle, no Word, no God, no King-cipher, no ideology. There is only the spiraling out of seasons, the enumeration of gravid moons, the chance of salmon, the hunting hopes pinned on the mystery of birth. And behind the observed, there was only the guarantee of surprise, of waiting for an uncertain tomorrow. We were dealing with pure chance.
STORY. In the cave paintings of 20,000 years ago (Lescaux, N. Africa), we see the alphabet telling a story. We see events being recalled, and told in the re-echoing chambers of the caves to the hundreds of children who left their footprints in the hemp-lit darkness. This story gave us a bearing, a mirror, a generational link beyond the mystery of the birth canal, to the tribe.
MYTH. With the rise of agriculture, the control of land became important. The controllers added hierarchic imperatives to the story as a tool for connecting us not only to the tribe, but to the controllers. Not a coincidence that Homer was blind, he was the first story-teller to lead us out of the darkness of the cave, into a rich geography of mythology. We began to depict Gods and their pretenders, the Kings. The story elaborated into a theology based on an Adam-and-Even Mother.
THEORY. Theology always degenerates into a theory of everything, a Summa. Thomas Aquinas only compiled what his generation of believers were forced to reckon with -- a Summa Theologica -- ironically published in the very year Galileo looked through a telescope. A God of Everything in a closed system, a Unified Field, the goal of all theory. To understand this machine, Newton generated calculus, and we use the algorithm method to analyze the mystery of the birth-patterns of Relativity.
DATA. Theories are overthrown by facts. The data are indifferent to the organization we require for our own understanding. The brain itself is data, in a sunset of "consciousness" falling like a subjectivity tree in an forest of inputs from proprioceptive devices with hopelessly mixed metaphors. The arbitrariness of birth is highlighted by the mystery of Google rankings across PetaBytes of information. There is still "content", but the content is entertainment. The search for patterns in an incomprehensible surplus, in effect, a flood of chaos choked with Chance.
CHANCE. The patterns in the data become more meaningful than the content of the information. No distinction is made between the baby and the bath-water, one molecule at a time, spiraling into the Black Holes in the center of every galaxy. We are back in the cave, trying to come to terms with the darker older colder slower. The perspective of a riparian creature observing motions which can be understood only by emerging wet drying onto the kitchen midden beach to gather grapes and mushrooms. We try to think up stories to tell. Submerged, we look for the floating Ark nobody built. Somewhere, there is a golden engagement ring-cycle.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Entropy and Hawking Radiation.
As I get older, I increasingly "get" the fact that I DON'T "get it". Nothing brings this more home to me than the dissipation of energy from Black Holes, or what is known now as Hawking Radiation. Named for the conjecture made in the 1970's by the "theoretical physicist", Stephen Hawking (Cambridge).
What concerns me here is the Black Holes themselves; they appear to be entirely too significant. Virtually every thing we see in space is oriented around these huge sucking places. Black Holes are gobbling everything up. Where they go, there goes the universe, literally, and nothing "theoretical" about this Physics.
How can galaxies--ALL of them--ever, or in the spitting instant of the Big Bang, or in an eternity, ever be "built" around places that gobble up stuff?
It gets worse. This concept of "evaporation", or the escape of heat, from the Black Hole horizon. As an object descends, orbits, into the Black Hole, it clearly reaches a point, the invisible "horizon" from which there is no return. From the descending object, the other stars will appear frozen.
There may be a similar "horizon" of time and light as a result of the accelerating expansion of the universe. The light from the most distant galaxies will be receding at light speed, and will not reach us. The distant objects will appear "frozen".
And worse. A central principle of Physics, and certainly quantum mechanics, is that energy is conserved. The information does not just "evaporate" or radiate off to become lost in some way like steam from a boiling pot of water. Within the collapse of an dense Black Hole, there is heat that is getting shredded and scrambled, but it is not "lost". The information falling into the Hole must exist, perhaps as a coating of the Black Hole's horizon.
What is the peculiar nature of the singularity at the small revenant center of a Black Hole? Is the principle of conservation of energy operating here? Or is Entropy itself destroyed in the infinitely dense. At that point, in the center of the Black Hole, as stuff collapses to a point, the concepts of large and small, heavy or light, macro and quantum, old and new, are all transformed.
I just cannot "get it". The foundations of our Physics are apparently at stake, right? Everything getting older, colder, darker, slower, and collapsing into Black Holes -- now that makes perfect sense, but then this What? These things "radiate"? We need more than Susskind's 10-dimensional strings projected in holographic horizons to cobble our universe together.
What concerns me here is the Black Holes themselves; they appear to be entirely too significant. Virtually every thing we see in space is oriented around these huge sucking places. Black Holes are gobbling everything up. Where they go, there goes the universe, literally, and nothing "theoretical" about this Physics.
How can galaxies--ALL of them--ever, or in the spitting instant of the Big Bang, or in an eternity, ever be "built" around places that gobble up stuff?
It gets worse. This concept of "evaporation", or the escape of heat, from the Black Hole horizon. As an object descends, orbits, into the Black Hole, it clearly reaches a point, the invisible "horizon" from which there is no return. From the descending object, the other stars will appear frozen.
There may be a similar "horizon" of time and light as a result of the accelerating expansion of the universe. The light from the most distant galaxies will be receding at light speed, and will not reach us. The distant objects will appear "frozen".
And worse. A central principle of Physics, and certainly quantum mechanics, is that energy is conserved. The information does not just "evaporate" or radiate off to become lost in some way like steam from a boiling pot of water. Within the collapse of an dense Black Hole, there is heat that is getting shredded and scrambled, but it is not "lost". The information falling into the Hole must exist, perhaps as a coating of the Black Hole's horizon.
What is the peculiar nature of the singularity at the small revenant center of a Black Hole? Is the principle of conservation of energy operating here? Or is Entropy itself destroyed in the infinitely dense. At that point, in the center of the Black Hole, as stuff collapses to a point, the concepts of large and small, heavy or light, macro and quantum, old and new, are all transformed.
I just cannot "get it". The foundations of our Physics are apparently at stake, right? Everything getting older, colder, darker, slower, and collapsing into Black Holes -- now that makes perfect sense, but then this What? These things "radiate"? We need more than Susskind's 10-dimensional strings projected in holographic horizons to cobble our universe together.
Scots mythology; family lore (on the white side)
This is the Great Story of my kin, on the Scots portion of the white side, which Aunt Winifred swore by. She told it to myself as her audience while standing in her trophy room, decanting a fresh myth to give it some air....
The Keys, a sept of the Mackay clan, were pressed to the most remote rock of the land's end North, and only 12 warriors left after centuries of feud and thuggery. As the MacLeods circled in for the kill, the final extinction, the Keys resolved to dispatch the remaining apostolic number South to appeal to the English for salvation. In passing through the MacLeod lines, four warriors sacrificed themselves so that eight remaining got through.
To the English, their appeal went something like this: "You are boatmen, and we are but poor shepherds on a cold and desolate rock at Land's End north. As an act of charity, send us but one of your ships and transport us to some other desolate rock where we can raise sheep. In return, while we have no treasure in exchange for our lives, we can offer you the loyalty of a Scots clan to the English people who trade in wool we can provide."
The warriors sought to return to their highland homeland. As they crept through the lines guarded by the MacLeods, again they were given no choice, but that another four had again to sacrifice themselves against the broadswords of their enemies to enable the last four warriors to get through. And then they gathered the women, the children and the sheep and hid among the stones of the beach and waited.
The sight of an English bottom raised them from their final desolate hour. Of course, having no boats themselves, the hideout was without a landing wharf. Undeterred, the Keys flung themselves into the beating tide and swam the freezing sea to the ships.
The women of the clan tied their children to their necks, and used the galls and bladders of slaughtered sheep for floats. The men tied their remaining and un-shorn sheep to their necks. They praised their Presbyterian God the sheep were buoyant with lanolin-oil wool. In this manner all pressed out to the waiting ship, and the English, who turned out to be fishermen, netted them like flotsam from the sea.
With the entire remaining Scottish Keys, the British bottom simply headed South West, away from the feuding Highlands. It stopped at the first desolate landfall it found. This happened to be Northern Ireland. It was cold, wet, storm-run and rocky. But sheep be raised, it was not inhabited.
Far to the South, it was known that there were a farming people. The Irish were another Celtic group, but they had no use for sheep, and could never farm the rocks. They traded nothing with the English who had their own farms. The Scots in Northern Ireland multiplied their sheep and rapidly offered the wool in trade. Thus began the English mariner's tradition -- first started by importing wool from Northern Ireland. The first great diversification of the Bristol fishing fleet.
And Scots continued to board British bottoms, even colonizing as they were brought to successive landfalls stowed by British merchant mariners. Centuries passed and instead of extinction, the Keys went on the colonize other islands and continents across the globe. In America, the Keys burst upon the New World to the dismay of the Powhattan and the Iroquois Confederacies, the Cherokee nation, and the leagues of many other tribes engaged with the Spaniards and French who really never sought to unload surplus populations on them. Within a few generations, the Scots asserted the favors of the trading English over the Spanish sword and closed even the great delta of the Mississippi to France.
In the South, the indentured Scots served their English "masters" as slave-drivers, foremen, living closely with the workers on the plantations. This exposure, and the extremities of plantation life, resulted in children whose mothers were African. The half-Scot/Negro generation of Keys led the charge of runaway slaves into the wilderness to further mix with the Creek, Seminole, Sauk, and other tribes. The black Keys were already in Texas before Austin arrived with his patent from Mexico.
In the War of 1812, Francis Scot Key served as a diplomat for the "United States", and American entity the English King did not recognize. It was his loyalty to the English, although not to the Crown, which enabled him to diplomatize the shooting. There is no better explanation for how the War of 1812 ended; the Scots could fight, and they preferred fighting FOR the boon of trade rather than against the British whose mariners they had long been accustomed to welcome.
In sum, history is largely untold. Is there some truth to the story that the last revenant Keys were delivered to Northern Ireland by the English as an act of pure charity? Is it written upon the hearts of the Keys? All the fighting and breeding members of their grateful descendants -- my great Aunt makes a point of this -- are remarkably loyal to those who show mercy generally, and to the English merchandisers specifically.
Now today, of course, back in Ireland a thousand years after that soi-disant landfall, and we reflect that there were "the troubles" that came upon Ireland. For reasons few can understand, counting among the mystified those participants in the conflict themselves, the Irish of the South and the Scots-Irish of the North took up centuries of feuding. People have their reasons. Perhaps the lore of one minor sept of a clan which was on the edge of extinction, helps explain the loyalty of the Northern rock inhabitants to the British.
Of course, the English often failed to be merciful, their trade was not always redemptive, and foreign transport is not a solution to every petition by a people facing extinction.
The Keys, a sept of the Mackay clan, were pressed to the most remote rock of the land's end North, and only 12 warriors left after centuries of feud and thuggery. As the MacLeods circled in for the kill, the final extinction, the Keys resolved to dispatch the remaining apostolic number South to appeal to the English for salvation. In passing through the MacLeod lines, four warriors sacrificed themselves so that eight remaining got through.
To the English, their appeal went something like this: "You are boatmen, and we are but poor shepherds on a cold and desolate rock at Land's End north. As an act of charity, send us but one of your ships and transport us to some other desolate rock where we can raise sheep. In return, while we have no treasure in exchange for our lives, we can offer you the loyalty of a Scots clan to the English people who trade in wool we can provide."
The warriors sought to return to their highland homeland. As they crept through the lines guarded by the MacLeods, again they were given no choice, but that another four had again to sacrifice themselves against the broadswords of their enemies to enable the last four warriors to get through. And then they gathered the women, the children and the sheep and hid among the stones of the beach and waited.
The sight of an English bottom raised them from their final desolate hour. Of course, having no boats themselves, the hideout was without a landing wharf. Undeterred, the Keys flung themselves into the beating tide and swam the freezing sea to the ships.
The women of the clan tied their children to their necks, and used the galls and bladders of slaughtered sheep for floats. The men tied their remaining and un-shorn sheep to their necks. They praised their Presbyterian God the sheep were buoyant with lanolin-oil wool. In this manner all pressed out to the waiting ship, and the English, who turned out to be fishermen, netted them like flotsam from the sea.
With the entire remaining Scottish Keys, the British bottom simply headed South West, away from the feuding Highlands. It stopped at the first desolate landfall it found. This happened to be Northern Ireland. It was cold, wet, storm-run and rocky. But sheep be raised, it was not inhabited.
Far to the South, it was known that there were a farming people. The Irish were another Celtic group, but they had no use for sheep, and could never farm the rocks. They traded nothing with the English who had their own farms. The Scots in Northern Ireland multiplied their sheep and rapidly offered the wool in trade. Thus began the English mariner's tradition -- first started by importing wool from Northern Ireland. The first great diversification of the Bristol fishing fleet.
And Scots continued to board British bottoms, even colonizing as they were brought to successive landfalls stowed by British merchant mariners. Centuries passed and instead of extinction, the Keys went on the colonize other islands and continents across the globe. In America, the Keys burst upon the New World to the dismay of the Powhattan and the Iroquois Confederacies, the Cherokee nation, and the leagues of many other tribes engaged with the Spaniards and French who really never sought to unload surplus populations on them. Within a few generations, the Scots asserted the favors of the trading English over the Spanish sword and closed even the great delta of the Mississippi to France.
In the South, the indentured Scots served their English "masters" as slave-drivers, foremen, living closely with the workers on the plantations. This exposure, and the extremities of plantation life, resulted in children whose mothers were African. The half-Scot/Negro generation of Keys led the charge of runaway slaves into the wilderness to further mix with the Creek, Seminole, Sauk, and other tribes. The black Keys were already in Texas before Austin arrived with his patent from Mexico.
In the War of 1812, Francis Scot Key served as a diplomat for the "United States", and American entity the English King did not recognize. It was his loyalty to the English, although not to the Crown, which enabled him to diplomatize the shooting. There is no better explanation for how the War of 1812 ended; the Scots could fight, and they preferred fighting FOR the boon of trade rather than against the British whose mariners they had long been accustomed to welcome.
In sum, history is largely untold. Is there some truth to the story that the last revenant Keys were delivered to Northern Ireland by the English as an act of pure charity? Is it written upon the hearts of the Keys? All the fighting and breeding members of their grateful descendants -- my great Aunt makes a point of this -- are remarkably loyal to those who show mercy generally, and to the English merchandisers specifically.
Now today, of course, back in Ireland a thousand years after that soi-disant landfall, and we reflect that there were "the troubles" that came upon Ireland. For reasons few can understand, counting among the mystified those participants in the conflict themselves, the Irish of the South and the Scots-Irish of the North took up centuries of feuding. People have their reasons. Perhaps the lore of one minor sept of a clan which was on the edge of extinction, helps explain the loyalty of the Northern rock inhabitants to the British.
Of course, the English often failed to be merciful, their trade was not always redemptive, and foreign transport is not a solution to every petition by a people facing extinction.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Maria Sibylla Merian - renaissance woman 1647-1717
Just back from an exhibition of Maria Sibylla Merian's paintings and notebooks, presented at The Getty. Merian was born in Germany in 1647, and lived a quiet 70 years. She was one of the great women of science and art, who surpassed her peers, but was forgotten -- was and is actively obliterated -- by the publishing charade which pretends to be "history".
SCIENCE. Merian studied the natural world, completely changing our views of our own gardens as well as introducing specimens of tropical flora and fauna from Surinam to Europe. She was perhaps the first serious Entomologist, making meticulous observations illustrated with accurate images. She studied insects, in a period when many bugs were considered Satanic, and no one else was bothering.
ART. Merian's favorite subjects were the caterpillars. Her accurate images of their complete life cycle transformations are stunning for their scale, dimensionality, shadowing and color. These are portraits of kings and queens, who happen to be worms.
The Exhibition traces her life and art, and notes her contributions to science in the most understated manner possible. If any one of these paintings had been found in the notebooks of a man, historians would have credited the author with having anticipated the theory of evolution.
When I taught History of Science, I actually challenged students with what I thought was an observation of fact: Why are there so few great women of science and art? Now it seems so clear to me. What I was observing was their supression, not their absence.
SCIENCE. Merian studied the natural world, completely changing our views of our own gardens as well as introducing specimens of tropical flora and fauna from Surinam to Europe. She was perhaps the first serious Entomologist, making meticulous observations illustrated with accurate images. She studied insects, in a period when many bugs were considered Satanic, and no one else was bothering.
ART. Merian's favorite subjects were the caterpillars. Her accurate images of their complete life cycle transformations are stunning for their scale, dimensionality, shadowing and color. These are portraits of kings and queens, who happen to be worms.
The Exhibition traces her life and art, and notes her contributions to science in the most understated manner possible. If any one of these paintings had been found in the notebooks of a man, historians would have credited the author with having anticipated the theory of evolution.
When I taught History of Science, I actually challenged students with what I thought was an observation of fact: Why are there so few great women of science and art? Now it seems so clear to me. What I was observing was their supression, not their absence.
Parable of the Sultan with an ugly wife
A very long story in one parable:
In order to become Sultan, a young prince was forced to marry the daughter of a rich caravaner. The young wife was widely believed to be ugly because she was so skinny. In those days the Sultan then commanded that all women in the village be covered in public. In this way, he would not have to look at the beautiful fat wives of the other important men, and no one would be able to see that his wife was thin.
Even today, when you visit this village, the Sultan with the ugly wife will kill any woman who is not covered with cloth, head to foot. It is said that the ugly wife had many ugly daughters, all of them so thin and tall that they walk swaying and tinkling bells like camels. And they all married and had many children. Of course, no one knows how ugly they are, because they are never seen.
The men with beautiful wives beat their foreheads with frustration: No one knows how lucky they are. No one knows how lucky any man is, when he is with a woman no one can ever see.
In order to become Sultan, a young prince was forced to marry the daughter of a rich caravaner. The young wife was widely believed to be ugly because she was so skinny. In those days the Sultan then commanded that all women in the village be covered in public. In this way, he would not have to look at the beautiful fat wives of the other important men, and no one would be able to see that his wife was thin.
Even today, when you visit this village, the Sultan with the ugly wife will kill any woman who is not covered with cloth, head to foot. It is said that the ugly wife had many ugly daughters, all of them so thin and tall that they walk swaying and tinkling bells like camels. And they all married and had many children. Of course, no one knows how ugly they are, because they are never seen.
The men with beautiful wives beat their foreheads with frustration: No one knows how lucky they are. No one knows how lucky any man is, when he is with a woman no one can ever see.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Faith and Justice
What is the relationship between Faith and Justice? Both are universal ideals. Both require and result in belief. Both explore and demand examination of intention. Cicero wrote that "The foundation of justice is good faith".
When the judges ignore good faith, justice is uprooted. When an Attorney General disobeys the law, justice is denied.
Bruce Einhorn served as a prosecutor in the Justice Department, and later as a federal judge appointed by President H.W. Bush. In an editorial printed 6/28/2008 in Opinion, LAT, he summarizes a report issued this week by the Department's inspector general. He notes that while serving as Attorneys General, JOHN ASHCROFT, and ALBERTO GONZALES, set up screening committees for career positions in the Department based on ideological rather than merit-based factors. They politicized the hiring and promotion, in violation of the law. Reference: title 28, Section 42.1(a), US Code of Regulations. Compare also, the Civil Service Reform Act specifically prohibits discrimination based on political affiliation.
This injection of illegal bad faith has poisoned the Justice Department.
When the judges ignore good faith, justice is uprooted. When an Attorney General disobeys the law, justice is denied.
Bruce Einhorn served as a prosecutor in the Justice Department, and later as a federal judge appointed by President H.W. Bush. In an editorial printed 6/28/2008 in Opinion, LAT, he summarizes a report issued this week by the Department's inspector general. He notes that while serving as Attorneys General, JOHN ASHCROFT, and ALBERTO GONZALES, set up screening committees for career positions in the Department based on ideological rather than merit-based factors. They politicized the hiring and promotion, in violation of the law. Reference: title 28, Section 42.1(a), US Code of Regulations. Compare also, the Civil Service Reform Act specifically prohibits discrimination based on political affiliation.
This injection of illegal bad faith has poisoned the Justice Department.
How to conduct ourselves...top down.
Accounts of Alexander the Great's attempts to conjure Rules of War, appear to be historically accurate. Curious. The lists themselves, however, are more disputed than the Ten Commandments. Still, for a dead on guideline, no matter the author, can this be beat?
LET US CONDUCT OURSELVES IN SUCH A FASHION THAT ALL NATIONS WISH TO BE OUR FRIENDS AND ALL FEAR TO BE OUR ENEMIES.
The next step is to have no enemies who know who They are.
LET US CONDUCT OURSELVES IN SUCH A FASHION THAT ALL NATIONS WISH TO BE OUR FRIENDS AND ALL FEAR TO BE OUR ENEMIES.
The next step is to have no enemies who know who They are.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Nothing is Entropic; Peace is Inevitable
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 attention. Of course that's entropic -- it is the exaction of existence, the paying and the pain. The Entropic more is extracted 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?
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?
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
The crab sitting on the horse
The interconnectedness of things is underlined by the living. The spinal chord is but the tail of the shelled crab of the brain which sits atop the great horse of the body. What was once the gill of the floating fish is now the voice-box, pulsing the laryngeal linguistics of gloating expression. It was the trees that taught the brachiating primate the advantages of an opposed thumb. And the elegant earthworm continues to crawl over all the bones of the world.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Frederick Turner and "natural classicism" - the BASIS for giving Hope a Chance
The Culture of Hope; a New Birth of the Classical Spirit, by Frederick Turner (1995), English born son of Anthropologists. The book blurb says: ..."Its highly controversial positions have been attacked by both the right and the left; the right because of its foundational use of evolutionary theory and its defense of liberal freedoms, the left because it systematically refutes the logical and evidentiary underpinnings of much contemporary academic feminist, multiculturalist, environmentalist, and deconstructionist social theory. It welcomes a new era of evolutionary hope."
http://benturner.com/genesis/book_culture.html
Another scholar working outside the narrow confines of academia and politics, and contributes to the recognition of the ideas of EMERSON, the contributions to a nascent American Renaissance revival.
Unlike the current and late Nazis, and the hatemongering ilk of any day, and to the extent that Obama is expressing a philosophy of Hope, Obama has a scientifically valid and culturally authentic BASIS for his oratorical presentation. When Hitler pounded the podia, the tables, the air...he invoked feelings,, "You know in your heart this is true; you feel its correctness!" Yet, although he asserted power and sought to conquer everyone, and although many SS PhDs were awarded for teutonic studies, there is not a page of scientific vindication of his race-theory, and not a sentence of "cultural" authenticity. There has never been a "pure" culture, much less a "white" culture. ALL culture is semitic...and white, black, brown, yellow, red and blue and green. The intermixing is HOW "it" became culture.
We see this in NATURE. Emerson, for example, decades before Darwin, and a century before the sociobiologists, observed that "from any one object the parts and properties of any other may be predicted", because each part contains the "code" of the whole reality. There is no "other". No "there" here.
Now 200 years after Emerson, we are indebted to the author of The Culture of Hope (1995) for reminding us of the enormous depth of validity and authentication behind the message of Hope resurrected by Senator Obama in his political campaign.
http://benturner.com/genesis/book_culture.html
Another scholar working outside the narrow confines of academia and politics, and contributes to the recognition of the ideas of EMERSON, the contributions to a nascent American Renaissance revival.
Unlike the current and late Nazis, and the hatemongering ilk of any day, and to the extent that Obama is expressing a philosophy of Hope, Obama has a scientifically valid and culturally authentic BASIS for his oratorical presentation. When Hitler pounded the podia, the tables, the air...he invoked feelings,, "You know in your heart this is true; you feel its correctness!" Yet, although he asserted power and sought to conquer everyone, and although many SS PhDs were awarded for teutonic studies, there is not a page of scientific vindication of his race-theory, and not a sentence of "cultural" authenticity. There has never been a "pure" culture, much less a "white" culture. ALL culture is semitic...and white, black, brown, yellow, red and blue and green. The intermixing is HOW "it" became culture.
We see this in NATURE. Emerson, for example, decades before Darwin, and a century before the sociobiologists, observed that "from any one object the parts and properties of any other may be predicted", because each part contains the "code" of the whole reality. There is no "other". No "there" here.
Now 200 years after Emerson, we are indebted to the author of The Culture of Hope (1995) for reminding us of the enormous depth of validity and authentication behind the message of Hope resurrected by Senator Obama in his political campaign.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Western Bluebirds in Orange County
As I was emerging from one of my morning Hesychasms, I heard a bird call that I believe is a Western Bluebird: Churr churr chuck cheer lee! I have had only one sighting....
After an extemely stressful week, and feeling the brush of those "other" wings not worn by a small thrush, the soft foreshadowings signaled by two traffic accidents, elevated cholesterol markers, confirmed high blood pressure, and the reported sudden deaths of several famous 58 year olds (Journalist Russert, Pastor Vandyken), I was overcome with gratitude that the decades of pain would certainly end.
After an extemely stressful week, and feeling the brush of those "other" wings not worn by a small thrush, the soft foreshadowings signaled by two traffic accidents, elevated cholesterol markers, confirmed high blood pressure, and the reported sudden deaths of several famous 58 year olds (Journalist Russert, Pastor Vandyken), I was overcome with gratitude that the decades of pain would certainly end.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Selected for Prosecution: Spitzer, Scruggs, Lerach - Conspiracy and Coincidence
After the shock of Dickie Scruggs' guilty plea for bribery, Eliot Spitzer's call-girl denoument, and the sentencing of Bill Lerach to prison for what was essentially capping, it is necessary to evaluate the implications. Is it coincidence that all three of these lawyers were "consumer advocates"? All three have caused real pain to the Fortune 500 billionaire CEO oligarchs. Now, they have been rendered harmless. Coincidence?
Half-way through the year 2008, as the Bush-Cheney-Rove term is expiring, we see the results of 7 years of prosecutorial efforts by the Executive Department coming to surface. They are now celebrating a trifecta in their twist on "tort reform".
You recall the Bush-Cheney-Rove appointment of foxes to guard the henhouse gates, the latitude given to the Lays and their Enrons (and other stratospherically-salaried CEOs), the purging of the Federal Attorneys General, the refusal to protect consumers, the failure to enforce environmental standards. Now add the selected prosecutions of Eliot Spitzer, Dickie Scruggs, and Bill Lerach which have all come to flower in the last year. Of course, all three of these successful advocates for public interests really did commit wrongdoing. But there is a quality of bogus-ness to the raft of "charges" they faced.
My instincts are to give little weight to Conspiracy theories, and to chalk up many events, without condemnation, to the arbitrary eruption of Coincidence. Is it just coincidence that three of our most powerful consumer attorneys are now neutralized?
There are three reasons to re-visit this question.
THE TOBACCO CASES. I am one who studied the "conspiracy" of Tobacco. I documented the "sweet heart" suits in 9 States in which Tobacco Companies paid a drunk incompetent lawyer (nine of them!) to sue themselves and obtain victories appealed to the Supreme Court of each State so that they would have "precedence" against any plaintiff.
THE JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY. I also documented 20 years of publications by the John Birch Society accurately reporting the misfeasance of selected Negro men and Jews, while failing to report any of their achievements. This is racism hiding behind a veil of "truth", and it shows the invidiousness of this form of hatred.
STATE BAR PROSECUTIONS. I am also reminded of the prosecutions against me. While the State Bar has yet to disbar any attorney who counseled the pirates of Enron in pillaging the consumers of billions of dollars, the State Bar has yet to prosecute any attorney representing a criminal CEO whose depradations were enabled by hordes of lawyers who set up the off-shore shell corporations. The State Bar has gone after dozens of naive and impoverished Sole Practitioners, while ignoring the stench of the dead horse of corporate malfeasance in the profession. When I was a hungry and poor attorney just starting out, the State Bar came after me. Their "complaining witness" actually stated in Deposition that "the attorney did nothing wrong" and "I have no complaint with him". I gave the State Bar transcripts which showed that a rich attorney, Wolf Stern, had perjured himself in court. I gave the State Bar records which showed rich attorneys had joined their clients and enabled criminal CEO's to pillage the public and shareholders. The State Bar elected not to prosecute.
The point is that the Prosecutor (State Bar, or Attorney General of any State or Federal Agency) has DISCRETION for who they go after and which laws they enforce.
When Bush-Cheney-Rove hijacked the Republican Party and stole the Presidency, one of their goals was to remove the exposure of the rich to law suits brought by the victims of their Big Business concept of "opportunity". They called this effort to close the court house door, "tort reform". Not content with merely appointing unqualified judges who shared their ideology, the cabal went after the leaders of the plaintiff's bar.
I realize Spitzer, Scruggs and Lerach were all culpable. When the State Bar prosecutor went after me, after 21 hearings, financially exhausted, I gave up and compromised with them. By contrast, when Big Business went after Ralph Nader -- with prostitutes, hush-money, offers to persuade the jury with bribes -- Ralph Nader spurned their efforts. He passed that test of being a righteous man and did not compromise with the nastiness and insinuations. Many others, they really DO take the low road, they fall and deserve their fall. And I fell, because I was naive and weak.
Still, there is some significance here. It is not coincidence that the corrupted Big Business targeted the top, the most successful, the billionaire attorneys of the plaintiffs' Bar. The robber barons at the US Chamber of Commerce who were in bed with Enron, WorldCom, and Philip Morris, must be thrilled. But it is more than that. They must be seeing the return on their investment in "tort reform" -- the program of Bush in going after the people who were fighting for the rights of the oppressed.
Half-way through the year 2008, as the Bush-Cheney-Rove term is expiring, we see the results of 7 years of prosecutorial efforts by the Executive Department coming to surface. They are now celebrating a trifecta in their twist on "tort reform".
You recall the Bush-Cheney-Rove appointment of foxes to guard the henhouse gates, the latitude given to the Lays and their Enrons (and other stratospherically-salaried CEOs), the purging of the Federal Attorneys General, the refusal to protect consumers, the failure to enforce environmental standards. Now add the selected prosecutions of Eliot Spitzer, Dickie Scruggs, and Bill Lerach which have all come to flower in the last year. Of course, all three of these successful advocates for public interests really did commit wrongdoing. But there is a quality of bogus-ness to the raft of "charges" they faced.
My instincts are to give little weight to Conspiracy theories, and to chalk up many events, without condemnation, to the arbitrary eruption of Coincidence. Is it just coincidence that three of our most powerful consumer attorneys are now neutralized?
There are three reasons to re-visit this question.
THE TOBACCO CASES. I am one who studied the "conspiracy" of Tobacco. I documented the "sweet heart" suits in 9 States in which Tobacco Companies paid a drunk incompetent lawyer (nine of them!) to sue themselves and obtain victories appealed to the Supreme Court of each State so that they would have "precedence" against any plaintiff.
THE JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY. I also documented 20 years of publications by the John Birch Society accurately reporting the misfeasance of selected Negro men and Jews, while failing to report any of their achievements. This is racism hiding behind a veil of "truth", and it shows the invidiousness of this form of hatred.
STATE BAR PROSECUTIONS. I am also reminded of the prosecutions against me. While the State Bar has yet to disbar any attorney who counseled the pirates of Enron in pillaging the consumers of billions of dollars, the State Bar has yet to prosecute any attorney representing a criminal CEO whose depradations were enabled by hordes of lawyers who set up the off-shore shell corporations. The State Bar has gone after dozens of naive and impoverished Sole Practitioners, while ignoring the stench of the dead horse of corporate malfeasance in the profession. When I was a hungry and poor attorney just starting out, the State Bar came after me. Their "complaining witness" actually stated in Deposition that "the attorney did nothing wrong" and "I have no complaint with him". I gave the State Bar transcripts which showed that a rich attorney, Wolf Stern, had perjured himself in court. I gave the State Bar records which showed rich attorneys had joined their clients and enabled criminal CEO's to pillage the public and shareholders. The State Bar elected not to prosecute.
The point is that the Prosecutor (State Bar, or Attorney General of any State or Federal Agency) has DISCRETION for who they go after and which laws they enforce.
When Bush-Cheney-Rove hijacked the Republican Party and stole the Presidency, one of their goals was to remove the exposure of the rich to law suits brought by the victims of their Big Business concept of "opportunity". They called this effort to close the court house door, "tort reform". Not content with merely appointing unqualified judges who shared their ideology, the cabal went after the leaders of the plaintiff's bar.
I realize Spitzer, Scruggs and Lerach were all culpable. When the State Bar prosecutor went after me, after 21 hearings, financially exhausted, I gave up and compromised with them. By contrast, when Big Business went after Ralph Nader -- with prostitutes, hush-money, offers to persuade the jury with bribes -- Ralph Nader spurned their efforts. He passed that test of being a righteous man and did not compromise with the nastiness and insinuations. Many others, they really DO take the low road, they fall and deserve their fall. And I fell, because I was naive and weak.
Still, there is some significance here. It is not coincidence that the corrupted Big Business targeted the top, the most successful, the billionaire attorneys of the plaintiffs' Bar. The robber barons at the US Chamber of Commerce who were in bed with Enron, WorldCom, and Philip Morris, must be thrilled. But it is more than that. They must be seeing the return on their investment in "tort reform" -- the program of Bush in going after the people who were fighting for the rights of the oppressed.
Prokaryotic microbes 1 mile beneath the sea bed
Life seems to flourish even in unlikely places.
Canadian and French scientists have discovered prokaryotic microbes in searing hot sediments over one mile under the seabed off Newfoundland. This is twice as deep as the previous depth record of 2,760 feet.
Canadian and French scientists have discovered prokaryotic microbes in searing hot sediments over one mile under the seabed off Newfoundland. This is twice as deep as the previous depth record of 2,760 feet.
y-Larvae - mystery of the "young"/ missing adults
We have puzzled over the identity of a tiny marine organism which is clearly a larval or immature form of an "adult" form which has never been found. The curious thing is that although smaller than a period, they appear in every ocean, and may play an important role, just from their sheer numbers.
As for the "adult" form, none has been found. Nobody knows what these babies become.
For more than one hundred years, we have resorted to classifying these creatures as "y-larvae". All attempts to raise them to adult forms have failed. Known as shrimp-like "facetotectans", they are the only crustacean with a taxonomy based solely on its larval stage, of which more than 40 varieties have been collected. What sort of abundant creature "disappears" completely when it grows up?
Biologist Henrik Glenner, University of Copenhagen, acting on a hunch, exposed the larvae to a hormone that causes other crustacean parasites to metamorph into juvenile adult forms. The result was that eyeless, limbless, juveniles lacking digestive tracts, wiggled out of their larval carapaces. It appears probable that the "adult" lives as a parasite inside the digestive tract of its host. That host has yet to be found.
We find yet another "niche" in which Life somehow manages to flourish. Life in the guts of other forms of life.
As for the "adult" form, none has been found. Nobody knows what these babies become.
For more than one hundred years, we have resorted to classifying these creatures as "y-larvae". All attempts to raise them to adult forms have failed. Known as shrimp-like "facetotectans", they are the only crustacean with a taxonomy based solely on its larval stage, of which more than 40 varieties have been collected. What sort of abundant creature "disappears" completely when it grows up?
Biologist Henrik Glenner, University of Copenhagen, acting on a hunch, exposed the larvae to a hormone that causes other crustacean parasites to metamorph into juvenile adult forms. The result was that eyeless, limbless, juveniles lacking digestive tracts, wiggled out of their larval carapaces. It appears probable that the "adult" lives as a parasite inside the digestive tract of its host. That host has yet to be found.
We find yet another "niche" in which Life somehow manages to flourish. Life in the guts of other forms of life.
Saturday, June 07, 2008
Love...Harmony...Peace...Gratitude -- these are the Taught Values
The CORE of what we call Christianity today was summarized in a variety of letters composed by the Roman Paul of Tarsus during his efforts to build a community of believers. In his letter to the Colossians [chapter 3], a large community of Christians who lived in what is now Turkey, he wrote:
"Above all, clothe yourselves with Love which binds everything together
in perfect harmony...and let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts...
and be thankful."
The Church Fathers ever since have recognized this letter as a true and inspired grasp of the message of Jesus Christ, who is referred to by name. It spells out what Christ taught people to DO, and BE, and How.
It is only left to us to recognize that the authentic "Religious Fundamentalist" must be one who acts to achieve harmony out of Love and gratitude. Nowhere, did Christ teach us to deceive, defraud, cheat and steal. Nowhere, did Paul construe any teaching point or rule of Christ, so as to justify misleading anyone, or in any way burdening others to the benefit of yourself.
Those who benefit themselves at the expense of others IN THE NAME OF CHRIST are NOT "Fundamentalists" in any sense of the word. They are the Hypocrites, the false leaders, the miscreants who who been consistently excoriated in detail since the days of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Amos, and Jesus Christ. One simply cannot injure, disenfranchise or insult others AS A CHRISTIAN.
Just as we must recognize "liberal" for what it is and always has been, we must also recognize what "fundamentalist" is and always has been. And do not forgive or forget the crimes committed by those who have distorted the meanings of these words for their own mean-spirited ends. The days of spin-politics are numbered, simply by the reckoning brought on by the collapse of the Bush-Cheney-Rove take-over of the Republican Party.
"Above all, clothe yourselves with Love which binds everything together
in perfect harmony...and let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts...
and be thankful."
The Church Fathers ever since have recognized this letter as a true and inspired grasp of the message of Jesus Christ, who is referred to by name. It spells out what Christ taught people to DO, and BE, and How.
It is only left to us to recognize that the authentic "Religious Fundamentalist" must be one who acts to achieve harmony out of Love and gratitude. Nowhere, did Christ teach us to deceive, defraud, cheat and steal. Nowhere, did Paul construe any teaching point or rule of Christ, so as to justify misleading anyone, or in any way burdening others to the benefit of yourself.
Those who benefit themselves at the expense of others IN THE NAME OF CHRIST are NOT "Fundamentalists" in any sense of the word. They are the Hypocrites, the false leaders, the miscreants who who been consistently excoriated in detail since the days of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Amos, and Jesus Christ. One simply cannot injure, disenfranchise or insult others AS A CHRISTIAN.
Just as we must recognize "liberal" for what it is and always has been, we must also recognize what "fundamentalist" is and always has been. And do not forgive or forget the crimes committed by those who have distorted the meanings of these words for their own mean-spirited ends. The days of spin-politics are numbered, simply by the reckoning brought on by the collapse of the Bush-Cheney-Rove take-over of the Republican Party.
Friday, June 06, 2008
Blaming Bush-Cheney-Rove
Make a note to just "get over" seeing the guilty hand of Bush-Cheney-Rove in every disaster civilization now faces. Just because they usurped the office in which we otherwise would have had someone helping us, rather than weakening us....is no reason to step into that BOX, the enclosure, in which blame resides.
Even the most ignorant and vicious cabal must be forgiven. Not because they deserve forgiveness. Few do. But because we who must live with consequences must see clearly, must move to action in the face of real disasters, foreign and entropic. The impulse to blame is almost never helpful.
For example, we huddle in the bilge of a ridiculously small boat, most of the oarlocks broke and the paddles lost. Huge waves rock the world, and sheets of wind-fisted rain conspire with the sea itself to drown out our last hoarse voices. Perhaps the remorseless hunger of a Leviathan has keened its predatory eye upon us. Our fellow oarsmen are in shock, or clinging to themselves, or foolishly falling upon the weak to drink their fatal blood. Now, now, does it do ANY good to rail against the pirates who captained away the ship and set us adrift?
No.
Look to the remaining oars! Shelter the weak, and let everyone bail who can cup disaster in his hand, or sluice it away! Secure the remaining stores. And above all, turn to the last young men and women of vision, speak to them of science and hope, and put all your love and confidence into their shoulders.
Of course, if we survive the Troubles, we do not rest until Justice is done.
Even the most ignorant and vicious cabal must be forgiven. Not because they deserve forgiveness. Few do. But because we who must live with consequences must see clearly, must move to action in the face of real disasters, foreign and entropic. The impulse to blame is almost never helpful.
For example, we huddle in the bilge of a ridiculously small boat, most of the oarlocks broke and the paddles lost. Huge waves rock the world, and sheets of wind-fisted rain conspire with the sea itself to drown out our last hoarse voices. Perhaps the remorseless hunger of a Leviathan has keened its predatory eye upon us. Our fellow oarsmen are in shock, or clinging to themselves, or foolishly falling upon the weak to drink their fatal blood. Now, now, does it do ANY good to rail against the pirates who captained away the ship and set us adrift?
No.
Look to the remaining oars! Shelter the weak, and let everyone bail who can cup disaster in his hand, or sluice it away! Secure the remaining stores. And above all, turn to the last young men and women of vision, speak to them of science and hope, and put all your love and confidence into their shoulders.
Of course, if we survive the Troubles, we do not rest until Justice is done.
Burning Man
Build a fire for a man, and he'll be warm for an evening. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Another Bush Defector: Scott McClellan
...These are the same people who were screaming 10 years ago that we should impeach a President if he is A LIAR....
On the occasion of the publication of a book by Bush's former Press Secretary, Scott McClellan, the Times Staff Writer, Tim Rutten, introduces his review: "The evidence seems to suggest that you'd have to go back to the Borgia court to find anything close to the miasma of feral self-interest that must hang in the air during one of this administration's staff or cabinet meetings. If you worked for this crew, you'd want to wear a Kevlar undershirt to the office."
McClellan did not publish this monument lightly. His book, WHAT HAPPENED; Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception (2008), clearly and repeatedly documents examples of LIES and deceit as a practiced lifestyle of this Administration.
McClellan has worked with Bush since Texas. In his confessional, he notes that Bush spent almost no time investigating actual crises, and was devoted to a kind of "permanent political campaign" of distortion. The following points appear undisputable -- fully and long-ventilated, with uncontested public domain documentation:
* The War. The President KNEW that each reason given for going to war against Saddam Hussein was pure fabrication -- there was no evidence of links to international terrorism or weapons of mass destruction (except for the poison gas that Cheney/Halliburton cynically sold to Saddam 20 years earlier).
* Karl Rove and Cheney's Chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, lied to McClellan about their roles in leaking false information in the Valerie Plame affair. In turn, McClellan ADMITS that he lied to the public and the media.
* Karl Rove's influence led Bush to play power politics even in the face of and in spite of other priorities such as national security, natural disasters (Hurricane Katrina), or moral imperatives.
* Vice President Dick Cheney raised the VP office to unprecedented levels of secrecy, expense, and arrogance, either with delusion, lies, or both. He seized unprecedented power, demanded unprecedented secrecy, and ran rough-shod over the concept of balancing power with separation of Powers ("checks and balances").
* The two campaigns in the national elections were filled with fraud. The slogans were designed to deceive. For example, "no child left behind" while stealing from education budget, betrayal of the "Christian coalition", lies ("Swift Boating"), distortion (Reaganomics, tort reform), criminal influence (Secretary of State of Florida announcing result before counting ballots). At bottom, Bush was not actually elected on either occasion. The office was stolen.
Perhaps history would have wanted to be kind to a President who will claim to have been elected, twice, by the American People. This book should put that possibility to rest. These are the same gentlemen who were screaming, screaming, "IMPEACH!!!" when Clinton denied "having sex" with Monica Lewinsky and the accuser's attorneys defined "having sex" as penile-vaginal intercourse. Semen stains in the breast area of the infamous blue dress is actually PROOF that Clinton did NOT lie.
On the occasion of the publication of a book by Bush's former Press Secretary, Scott McClellan, the Times Staff Writer, Tim Rutten, introduces his review: "The evidence seems to suggest that you'd have to go back to the Borgia court to find anything close to the miasma of feral self-interest that must hang in the air during one of this administration's staff or cabinet meetings. If you worked for this crew, you'd want to wear a Kevlar undershirt to the office."
McClellan did not publish this monument lightly. His book, WHAT HAPPENED; Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception (2008), clearly and repeatedly documents examples of LIES and deceit as a practiced lifestyle of this Administration.
McClellan has worked with Bush since Texas. In his confessional, he notes that Bush spent almost no time investigating actual crises, and was devoted to a kind of "permanent political campaign" of distortion. The following points appear undisputable -- fully and long-ventilated, with uncontested public domain documentation:
* The War. The President KNEW that each reason given for going to war against Saddam Hussein was pure fabrication -- there was no evidence of links to international terrorism or weapons of mass destruction (except for the poison gas that Cheney/Halliburton cynically sold to Saddam 20 years earlier).
* Karl Rove and Cheney's Chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, lied to McClellan about their roles in leaking false information in the Valerie Plame affair. In turn, McClellan ADMITS that he lied to the public and the media.
* Karl Rove's influence led Bush to play power politics even in the face of and in spite of other priorities such as national security, natural disasters (Hurricane Katrina), or moral imperatives.
* Vice President Dick Cheney raised the VP office to unprecedented levels of secrecy, expense, and arrogance, either with delusion, lies, or both. He seized unprecedented power, demanded unprecedented secrecy, and ran rough-shod over the concept of balancing power with separation of Powers ("checks and balances").
* The two campaigns in the national elections were filled with fraud. The slogans were designed to deceive. For example, "no child left behind" while stealing from education budget, betrayal of the "Christian coalition", lies ("Swift Boating"), distortion (Reaganomics, tort reform), criminal influence (Secretary of State of Florida announcing result before counting ballots). At bottom, Bush was not actually elected on either occasion. The office was stolen.
Perhaps history would have wanted to be kind to a President who will claim to have been elected, twice, by the American People. This book should put that possibility to rest. These are the same gentlemen who were screaming, screaming, "IMPEACH!!!" when Clinton denied "having sex" with Monica Lewinsky and the accuser's attorneys defined "having sex" as penile-vaginal intercourse. Semen stains in the breast area of the infamous blue dress is actually PROOF that Clinton did NOT lie.
Pollution, the heavy price to pay for Business
Is there a lobby for victims of pollution?
Once again, we find another price that we (and future generations) will be paying for the irresponsibility of the Bush Administration. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was one of the first Federal agencies to be eviscerated by Bush-Cheney-Rowe. The EPA has yet to complete studies on lead paint, mercury, or even Dioxin, which were ordered by Congress many years ago.
After control was captured by pirates, the Republican Party has beaten a drum, constantly, about how environmental regulations drive jobs and industry out of business. Do we ever hear about the cost -- in jobs and money -- of pollution?
POISONING. Regardless of socioeconomic factors, children exposed to lead dust or particles, develop smaller brains, and are more likely to suffer ADD, and learning disabilities. The higher the concentration of lead in the blood, the more likely a child will commit crime as an adult. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that 310,000 preschool-age children in Los Angeles have levels of lead that exceed the minimal Federal guidelines. 80% of the homes they live in were built while lead paint was still in use.
The public does not want to hear about what it will end up paying for having polluted the brains of the children.
Once again, we find another price that we (and future generations) will be paying for the irresponsibility of the Bush Administration. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was one of the first Federal agencies to be eviscerated by Bush-Cheney-Rowe. The EPA has yet to complete studies on lead paint, mercury, or even Dioxin, which were ordered by Congress many years ago.
After control was captured by pirates, the Republican Party has beaten a drum, constantly, about how environmental regulations drive jobs and industry out of business. Do we ever hear about the cost -- in jobs and money -- of pollution?
POISONING. Regardless of socioeconomic factors, children exposed to lead dust or particles, develop smaller brains, and are more likely to suffer ADD, and learning disabilities. The higher the concentration of lead in the blood, the more likely a child will commit crime as an adult. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that 310,000 preschool-age children in Los Angeles have levels of lead that exceed the minimal Federal guidelines. 80% of the homes they live in were built while lead paint was still in use.
The public does not want to hear about what it will end up paying for having polluted the brains of the children.
Teaching
How did that work for you?
I loved learning, and was always grateful for the kindness and stout-hearted courage of teachers committed to a task which can only be Sisyphean at best.
Half of all the new teachers recruited by Teach for America leave the profession within five years, usually emotionally drained.
As for school Administration, the Bush Administration has put into place a Testing regime which punishes the Principals of schools that do badly on the tests, with the predictable result that NO ONE WANTS TO BE THE PRINCIPAL in those schools, resulting in high turn-over and even worse school administration.
And although there is no law that requires the Tests be administered without making each Taking event itself a "learning" event, that remains how the Tests are administered -- diagnostic, punishing, each student in isolation, removed from any pretense that the "answers" are interesting, worthy of study, or can trigger the curiosity in any way. The student learns that Tests are bad. Sickening.
I loved learning, and was always grateful for the kindness and stout-hearted courage of teachers committed to a task which can only be Sisyphean at best.
Half of all the new teachers recruited by Teach for America leave the profession within five years, usually emotionally drained.
As for school Administration, the Bush Administration has put into place a Testing regime which punishes the Principals of schools that do badly on the tests, with the predictable result that NO ONE WANTS TO BE THE PRINCIPAL in those schools, resulting in high turn-over and even worse school administration.
And although there is no law that requires the Tests be administered without making each Taking event itself a "learning" event, that remains how the Tests are administered -- diagnostic, punishing, each student in isolation, removed from any pretense that the "answers" are interesting, worthy of study, or can trigger the curiosity in any way. The student learns that Tests are bad. Sickening.
The Gleaners of Faith in the Fields of No God
It cannot be said any simpler: Without Faith, we are not Human. But of course, there is No God. There is only the abundance of Nothing to have Faith In.
In a letter written one year before his death, Einstein wrote: "The word 'God' is for me nothing more than the expression and produce of human weaknesses...". That letter, curiously sold at auction in London on May 15, 2008 for $404,000. Somehow this controversy, and this price, further reflects upon our wont for "childish superstition". We gladly and continue to pay dearly for it.
Turning to another milestone in Faith, the Templeton Foundation published the responses to its call: "Does science make belief in God obsolete?" Most of the respondents did not fall upon the sword of their Yes. The more we indulge Science, the more we find ourselves Believers. Ecce Homo. Of course, Science has left no place at all for even a remnant of "the God of our Fathers". That part of what we once took to be real is gone.
Finally, it is clearly wrong to claim that "God cares" or "Science is neutral". There is no tenable position which either supports or finds use for a "divinity" which is moral, or a science which is "immoral". The reality is that "God" is demonstrably indifferent, and that Science has overwhelming moral valence.
Increasingly, we look to Physics, or the science of Volition, for guidance in what is right and wrong. History and Archeology are filled with blind alleys into which our forebears thronged in attempts to "follow" a revenant ghost with a promise of righteousness. That was clearly the wrong track. No moral precepts have survived the practitioners of religion.
There is, and always has been, a rationale for "listening to one's conscience" -- one's body/mind, the sine qua non, the interactive social connectivity of our lips and our cities, our eyes and our judgment, our walk in space and time. Moral fiber is not molded from Olympian spit. The steel of a man, the eagerness of a woman, the bold curiosity of child, the wonder of wisdom across cultures and generations, are all artifacts of being human.
In a letter written one year before his death, Einstein wrote: "The word 'God' is for me nothing more than the expression and produce of human weaknesses...". That letter, curiously sold at auction in London on May 15, 2008 for $404,000. Somehow this controversy, and this price, further reflects upon our wont for "childish superstition". We gladly and continue to pay dearly for it.
Turning to another milestone in Faith, the Templeton Foundation published the responses to its call: "Does science make belief in God obsolete?" Most of the respondents did not fall upon the sword of their Yes. The more we indulge Science, the more we find ourselves Believers. Ecce Homo. Of course, Science has left no place at all for even a remnant of "the God of our Fathers". That part of what we once took to be real is gone.
Finally, it is clearly wrong to claim that "God cares" or "Science is neutral". There is no tenable position which either supports or finds use for a "divinity" which is moral, or a science which is "immoral". The reality is that "God" is demonstrably indifferent, and that Science has overwhelming moral valence.
Increasingly, we look to Physics, or the science of Volition, for guidance in what is right and wrong. History and Archeology are filled with blind alleys into which our forebears thronged in attempts to "follow" a revenant ghost with a promise of righteousness. That was clearly the wrong track. No moral precepts have survived the practitioners of religion.
There is, and always has been, a rationale for "listening to one's conscience" -- one's body/mind, the sine qua non, the interactive social connectivity of our lips and our cities, our eyes and our judgment, our walk in space and time. Moral fiber is not molded from Olympian spit. The steel of a man, the eagerness of a woman, the bold curiosity of child, the wonder of wisdom across cultures and generations, are all artifacts of being human.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
The Walls of the Present
I remain in the generation of my Generation. We are all "here" and "now" in different places and times -- everywhere at all times. When I see someone being here and now, I have to suppress laughter: a human being fools no one pretending to have no history or hopes.
Edmund Wilson (b. 1895), that Red Bank critic born of an attorney who went insane and a mother who went deaf, provides a succinct explanation for Why:
When describing the impact of Yeats, Proust, and Joyce -- his selection of authors was somewhat arbitrary but served the immediate context of his review at that moment -- he wrote that they "break down the walls of the present and wake us to the hope and exaltation of the untried, unsuspected possibilities of human thought and art."
Wake us. Exalt the trying. Open the infinity of art. Think of origins, middles, and never-endings.
Edmund Wilson (b. 1895), that Red Bank critic born of an attorney who went insane and a mother who went deaf, provides a succinct explanation for Why:
When describing the impact of Yeats, Proust, and Joyce -- his selection of authors was somewhat arbitrary but served the immediate context of his review at that moment -- he wrote that they "break down the walls of the present and wake us to the hope and exaltation of the untried, unsuspected possibilities of human thought and art."
Wake us. Exalt the trying. Open the infinity of art. Think of origins, middles, and never-endings.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Compare the Branch Davidians and the Yearning for Zion Ranch in ElDorado Texas
In early April 2008, prosecutors for the State of Texas announced a raid on the Yearning for Zion Ranch. The State took "legal custody" of 401 children who had been raised in the 1,700 acre double-gated locked "19th century prairie" compound. By the second week a third person was arrested, Leroy Steed joining Levi Jeffs, and Warren Jeffs the founder, in jail.
It is interesting to recall the action taken by one of the finest Federal Attorneys General in the history of the United States, Janet Reno, in attempting to liberate a few dozen children in Waco, Texas, from a heavily-armed cult of Branch Davidians. The right-wing was screaming invectives at Ms Reno for each step taken in a slow transparent attempt to disarm the Davidian leaders. Now, after a wholesale raid and the taking of custody of 400 children from their community, not a peep of complaint from the right-wing.
The Federal Government, of course, is not involved. The Government has been deaf and witless in the face of the known and accumulating dangers with which civilization is faced. The Bush administration is not interested in the welfare of 400 children. Well, it is NOW time to scream. Who is taking care of these children? The children have been taken from the 19th century (weaving their own clothes), and from their homes.
It is not possible to forgive those who savaged the administration of Janet Reno, a prosecutor who at least addressed the dangers. Her critics are now hypocritically silent. They show no concern for an even worse and much much larger "cult" endangering the lives of even more children. Why is our Right Wing taken over by ideological hypocrites? Since extreme idiologues took over, we can no longer count on the wisdom of the Right Wing.
Finally, the news coming out seems to share the same tone and perspective which the FLDS Founders espouse: Males are important and females are reproductive drudges. Behind those "important" males are very significant females. We have not heard from any of them in any capacity. Apparently the State of Texas -- violating its tradition of having had five female governors and equal and independent citizens -- has been too much infected with the Bush legacy.
It is interesting to recall the action taken by one of the finest Federal Attorneys General in the history of the United States, Janet Reno, in attempting to liberate a few dozen children in Waco, Texas, from a heavily-armed cult of Branch Davidians. The right-wing was screaming invectives at Ms Reno for each step taken in a slow transparent attempt to disarm the Davidian leaders. Now, after a wholesale raid and the taking of custody of 400 children from their community, not a peep of complaint from the right-wing.
The Federal Government, of course, is not involved. The Government has been deaf and witless in the face of the known and accumulating dangers with which civilization is faced. The Bush administration is not interested in the welfare of 400 children. Well, it is NOW time to scream. Who is taking care of these children? The children have been taken from the 19th century (weaving their own clothes), and from their homes.
It is not possible to forgive those who savaged the administration of Janet Reno, a prosecutor who at least addressed the dangers. Her critics are now hypocritically silent. They show no concern for an even worse and much much larger "cult" endangering the lives of even more children. Why is our Right Wing taken over by ideological hypocrites? Since extreme idiologues took over, we can no longer count on the wisdom of the Right Wing.
Finally, the news coming out seems to share the same tone and perspective which the FLDS Founders espouse: Males are important and females are reproductive drudges. Behind those "important" males are very significant females. We have not heard from any of them in any capacity. Apparently the State of Texas -- violating its tradition of having had five female governors and equal and independent citizens -- has been too much infected with the Bush legacy.
Friday, April 04, 2008
Looking for Hope on all the wrong faces
Once upon a time, an old warrior was wounded falling upon his own trope after a battle of no significance at a place I do not care to recall. All about him were heroes trying to get the credit for wringing the most blood out of the turnip of their own fear. But he tried to remain anonymous, falling back after the tide of the attack was receded, and as others delayed from the vanguard in its heat, suddenly advanced to plant their stanchions over the fallen. The old warrior knew there was no possible Hope -- not because the dead die in vain, but because the living only achieve metonymy. This is what you see in the eyes: The veteran of the battle never looks ahead. The opportunist of the battle, never looks behind.
Thursday, April 03, 2008
There was no Torah, no Gospel, no Q'uran, no Holy Writ
OK, the gloves have to come off.
The Believers get my unending deference and respect. I grew up with the finest people in the world living "Christian" lives of great kindness and principle; they were worthy of their Lord, Jesus Christ.
Furthermore, I will be an apologist for the Religious every time, having studied the Atheists who seized power -- Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Castro. These non-believers have killed more and ruined more lives single-handedly than any historical identifable group of Rabbis, Priests, Preachers, Mullahs or Monks did collectively.
Of course, there is that minor detail: There is no actual God.
There is no historical evidence of a "spiritual" existence. No "chosen people", no Thunder God transmitting Ten Commandments to any Moses, no Christ redeeming anyone, no Prophet predicting anything, no vibration, no transmutation of no soul, no re-birth in another Lama.
Why mention this now?
Because the Fundamentalists are telling us they want to kill everyone. It is simply WHAT they are all saying. The Christian Fundamentalists have been talking this way for many years: Armageddon, the Rapture, Apocalypse. Fortunately, after the Huns and Vikings and Janissaries calmed down, the over-reading and over-reaching of the Church Militant also took a rest. And the whole Renaissance and New World opportunity provided venues for Science and Artistic endeavors. Believers stopped killing eachother for their beliefs. It stopped being "OK" to make other people die for their beliefs. It became OK not to kill everyone.
Now, Fundamentalism has once again emerged, dripping with blood. Islam is being used by those who claim to be its adherents as a means of stealing from the weak or uninformed.
Curiously, there is not a single publicly recognized Religion thriving today which was founded by a person who ever required his or her apostles to kill Non-Believers. For starters, Moses (an Egyptian married to an Arab woman) did require Joshua to kill Philistines (other Semites), but not because they were Non-believers. And the abundant and relatively recent archeology of Egypt and Judea clearly shows no evidence of erstwhile slaves rising out of Egypt and slaughtering Canaanites. Most of the origin legends developed by the world's tribes just never happened.
Jesus Christ taught and embodied kindness, the exact opposite of slaughter and militance. There is no physical or documentary evidence such a man or god-man existed. His cult first began teaching universal love approximately 100 to 200 years after all of his "disciples" were dead. No "original" Gospels or Letters of St Paul have ever been found. Note: "The God Who Wasn't There", puts the facts about the figure of Christ into perspective: http://www.thegodmovie.com/trailer.php.
There is no physical evidence that a man named "Buddha" ever existed. There is no School where he taught, no house in which he lived, no text he ever wrote.
Mohamed is one of the few "historical" figures now associated with a Religion. However, like Socrates, Jesus, and Buddha, he wrote nothing and was probably illiterate. The earliest copies of the Koran are clearly Arabic translations of Syriac/Chaldean Christian teaching texts. Mohamed never mentioned starting a Religion.
Another great and genuine historical religious figure is the Founder of the Church of Latter Day Saints, Joseph Smith. While Smith clearly existed, and is clearly the source of the Book of Mormon, for its part, the Book is not a "history". It is not what it claims to be -- dictated by an angel, translated by two rocks, composing a history of the lost tribes of Israel. There is no historical evidence of the "tribes" described in the Book.
Again, we are fortunate to live in a period of time when the Believers have generally calmed down. Yet, the exceptions are significant. There are trends. A cadre of pirates took over America and pillaged its treasure and sent 4000 of its finest warriors to their deaths, IN THE NAME OF RELIGION. The cost of THREE TRILLION is not insignificant. The election of Bush-Cheney was not a harmless swing to the "right". It was a wholesale rout of the treasury and resources which would otherwise have been available to enable free citizens to defend themselves and insure the survival of civilization, a matter now in doubt.
The other great danger is Islam. The last great expansion of Islam was the largely peaceful sweep through Indonesia all the way to the Philipines. Learning nothing from this historical success, the present expansionists of this most graceful of Religions, ardently demand bloodshed. Unarmed men, women, and children are the almost exclusive targets of this form of Fundamentalism. Ironically, most of the people being killed by Islam's Martyrs are other Islamic "believers".
Islam today is not "expanding" at all. The "ideas" of the Koran are not taught in schools, since as a text it is completely confusing -- the most learned scholars disagree about what it means. No one can "convert" to Islam since it is impossible to agree on its principles. No one can claim to understand the Koran in any language. It was first written in Syriac, a language now extinct. Scholars do not actually agree on WHAT the Koran should be -- various texts having been compiled from the teaching workbooks of Chaldean Christians and from collected battle lore inscribed on pieces of bark about 200 years after Mohammed, and ALL of his wives and apostles, were dead.
It is of course true that Arabs are reproducing. Inhabitants of desert regions are raising large families as a result of wholesale adoption of "Western" medicine coupled with prosperity accrued from oil extraction. Since their desert homelands cannot support large populations, these desert people are leaving their homelands.
Islamic religious practices are appearing in the West because Arabs, desert peoples, and Turks are appearing in Europe; they simply bring their Beliefs with them. These great people are the migrators of the 21st century -- enabled by oil wealth and an infant survival rate not previously enjoyed by their Bedouin grandparents.
In the Sudan, and in other large regions of Africa from the Horn to the Gold Coast, the expanding Arabs are slaughtering other tribes who occupy land they want. The fact that the murdered villagers also practice Islam does not give pause to the invaders. Thus, it is not Islam which is expanding, it is the over-populated Arabs who have chosen to leave their homelands to take over the homes of other tribes.
It is time to stop giving religious fanatics a free pass. Stop calling killers "religious". They cannot, cannot, can not, be "martyrs" in any sense.
And stop honoring those who enable murderers and thieves to claim a Religion.
No one is "religious" who fails to separate themselves from thieves and murderers. There is no hijab, no religious artifact, with any sanctity which survives the stain of blood. There is no "modesty" among those who kill others for their property.
No one can kill another human being in the Name of Islam. Call it what it really is: Murder, Theft. There are people who want to plunder what little other people have, and they do it in the name of the Holy. Such pillage is of course, utter blasphemy: It is proof of the non-existence of Allah, that a Mullah would be permitted to exhort one of Allah's creations to murder any other of Allah's creations.
Who kills what Allah has enlivened?
Who usurps what Allah gave to another?
These are not questions. What appear to be two simple questions, are indictments against murderers and thieves. They are explosives. These words are the road-side bombs that accompany every murdering mullah and martyr to the Heaven that is Not There, and the Hell that is.
The Believers get my unending deference and respect. I grew up with the finest people in the world living "Christian" lives of great kindness and principle; they were worthy of their Lord, Jesus Christ.
Furthermore, I will be an apologist for the Religious every time, having studied the Atheists who seized power -- Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Castro. These non-believers have killed more and ruined more lives single-handedly than any historical identifable group of Rabbis, Priests, Preachers, Mullahs or Monks did collectively.
Of course, there is that minor detail: There is no actual God.
There is no historical evidence of a "spiritual" existence. No "chosen people", no Thunder God transmitting Ten Commandments to any Moses, no Christ redeeming anyone, no Prophet predicting anything, no vibration, no transmutation of no soul, no re-birth in another Lama.
Why mention this now?
Because the Fundamentalists are telling us they want to kill everyone. It is simply WHAT they are all saying. The Christian Fundamentalists have been talking this way for many years: Armageddon, the Rapture, Apocalypse. Fortunately, after the Huns and Vikings and Janissaries calmed down, the over-reading and over-reaching of the Church Militant also took a rest. And the whole Renaissance and New World opportunity provided venues for Science and Artistic endeavors. Believers stopped killing eachother for their beliefs. It stopped being "OK" to make other people die for their beliefs. It became OK not to kill everyone.
Now, Fundamentalism has once again emerged, dripping with blood. Islam is being used by those who claim to be its adherents as a means of stealing from the weak or uninformed.
Curiously, there is not a single publicly recognized Religion thriving today which was founded by a person who ever required his or her apostles to kill Non-Believers. For starters, Moses (an Egyptian married to an Arab woman) did require Joshua to kill Philistines (other Semites), but not because they were Non-believers. And the abundant and relatively recent archeology of Egypt and Judea clearly shows no evidence of erstwhile slaves rising out of Egypt and slaughtering Canaanites. Most of the origin legends developed by the world's tribes just never happened.
Jesus Christ taught and embodied kindness, the exact opposite of slaughter and militance. There is no physical or documentary evidence such a man or god-man existed. His cult first began teaching universal love approximately 100 to 200 years after all of his "disciples" were dead. No "original" Gospels or Letters of St Paul have ever been found. Note: "The God Who Wasn't There", puts the facts about the figure of Christ into perspective: http://www.thegodmovie.com/trailer.php.
There is no physical evidence that a man named "Buddha" ever existed. There is no School where he taught, no house in which he lived, no text he ever wrote.
Mohamed is one of the few "historical" figures now associated with a Religion. However, like Socrates, Jesus, and Buddha, he wrote nothing and was probably illiterate. The earliest copies of the Koran are clearly Arabic translations of Syriac/Chaldean Christian teaching texts. Mohamed never mentioned starting a Religion.
Another great and genuine historical religious figure is the Founder of the Church of Latter Day Saints, Joseph Smith. While Smith clearly existed, and is clearly the source of the Book of Mormon, for its part, the Book is not a "history". It is not what it claims to be -- dictated by an angel, translated by two rocks, composing a history of the lost tribes of Israel. There is no historical evidence of the "tribes" described in the Book.
Again, we are fortunate to live in a period of time when the Believers have generally calmed down. Yet, the exceptions are significant. There are trends. A cadre of pirates took over America and pillaged its treasure and sent 4000 of its finest warriors to their deaths, IN THE NAME OF RELIGION. The cost of THREE TRILLION is not insignificant. The election of Bush-Cheney was not a harmless swing to the "right". It was a wholesale rout of the treasury and resources which would otherwise have been available to enable free citizens to defend themselves and insure the survival of civilization, a matter now in doubt.
The other great danger is Islam. The last great expansion of Islam was the largely peaceful sweep through Indonesia all the way to the Philipines. Learning nothing from this historical success, the present expansionists of this most graceful of Religions, ardently demand bloodshed. Unarmed men, women, and children are the almost exclusive targets of this form of Fundamentalism. Ironically, most of the people being killed by Islam's Martyrs are other Islamic "believers".
Islam today is not "expanding" at all. The "ideas" of the Koran are not taught in schools, since as a text it is completely confusing -- the most learned scholars disagree about what it means. No one can "convert" to Islam since it is impossible to agree on its principles. No one can claim to understand the Koran in any language. It was first written in Syriac, a language now extinct. Scholars do not actually agree on WHAT the Koran should be -- various texts having been compiled from the teaching workbooks of Chaldean Christians and from collected battle lore inscribed on pieces of bark about 200 years after Mohammed, and ALL of his wives and apostles, were dead.
It is of course true that Arabs are reproducing. Inhabitants of desert regions are raising large families as a result of wholesale adoption of "Western" medicine coupled with prosperity accrued from oil extraction. Since their desert homelands cannot support large populations, these desert people are leaving their homelands.
Islamic religious practices are appearing in the West because Arabs, desert peoples, and Turks are appearing in Europe; they simply bring their Beliefs with them. These great people are the migrators of the 21st century -- enabled by oil wealth and an infant survival rate not previously enjoyed by their Bedouin grandparents.
In the Sudan, and in other large regions of Africa from the Horn to the Gold Coast, the expanding Arabs are slaughtering other tribes who occupy land they want. The fact that the murdered villagers also practice Islam does not give pause to the invaders. Thus, it is not Islam which is expanding, it is the over-populated Arabs who have chosen to leave their homelands to take over the homes of other tribes.
It is time to stop giving religious fanatics a free pass. Stop calling killers "religious". They cannot, cannot, can not, be "martyrs" in any sense.
And stop honoring those who enable murderers and thieves to claim a Religion.
No one is "religious" who fails to separate themselves from thieves and murderers. There is no hijab, no religious artifact, with any sanctity which survives the stain of blood. There is no "modesty" among those who kill others for their property.
No one can kill another human being in the Name of Islam. Call it what it really is: Murder, Theft. There are people who want to plunder what little other people have, and they do it in the name of the Holy. Such pillage is of course, utter blasphemy: It is proof of the non-existence of Allah, that a Mullah would be permitted to exhort one of Allah's creations to murder any other of Allah's creations.
Who kills what Allah has enlivened?
Who usurps what Allah gave to another?
These are not questions. What appear to be two simple questions, are indictments against murderers and thieves. They are explosives. These words are the road-side bombs that accompany every murdering mullah and martyr to the Heaven that is Not There, and the Hell that is.
Death in the Family, and the living Word undone
In the troubling history of our troubled peoples, many of the dead would return to speak to the living. We were not wanting for mediums and priests to describe the presciptions of the dead for our comforts and fears.
For whatever reason, with the advent of science the heretofore voluble dead fell silent; none speak. The faith-based mediums replaced by befuddling media. As if by strange coincidence, as the means of recording and verifying became available, all messages and voices across the barrier of death became unavailable.
Death now seals the lips of the dead. One suspects that this has always been the case. Yet there is the ancient residue left by tradition. And we long to hear what the dead have to say, perhaps with far more patience than we have for the words of the living.
For whatever reason, with the advent of science the heretofore voluble dead fell silent; none speak. The faith-based mediums replaced by befuddling media. As if by strange coincidence, as the means of recording and verifying became available, all messages and voices across the barrier of death became unavailable.
Death now seals the lips of the dead. One suspects that this has always been the case. Yet there is the ancient residue left by tradition. And we long to hear what the dead have to say, perhaps with far more patience than we have for the words of the living.
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Historiography - the balancing between academic work and popular audience
The Purpose of the Past; Reflections on the Uses of History, (2008)
by Gordon S. Wood
At last, a recognized authority calls for hostilities to cease between the pompous academics (deliberately writing for other professors bulked up with quantitative social science data and theory) and the trendy popularizers. For our generation, Wood is the prize-winning dean of American historiography. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (1969) won the Bancroft Prize. The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1991) won the Pulitzer.
Collection of long-form praise and criticism of works by American historians published by Wood in NY Review of Books and New Republic, to each of which Wood has added an afterword, analyzing the significance of the subjects in hindsight, and reviewing his own reviews.
Wood seems to admire: Charles Royster, “The Fabulous History of the Dismal Swamp Company”; David Hackett Fischer, “Albion’s Seed”. He champions historians who have not earned advanced degrees but who communicate the story, such as David McCullough, Stacy Schiff, and Barbara W. Tuchman.
Wood is critical of those whose modern political views infect their work: Simon Schama, John Patrick Diggins, Richard K. Matthews. He is not as dismissive as other academics are of the “popularizers” such as Ron Chernow, Walter Isaacson and again, David McCullough.
Wood decries the academic “hyper-specialization” which turns off the public and deprives them of what would be a “sense of where we have come from and how we have become what we are”. The social science trend, for example, his brought historians closer to the sciences, but while enrollment in higher education was booming from 1970 through the 1980's, history majors declined by almost two-thirds.
As academic historians embraced theories of “deconstruction”, “textuality”, and “essentialism”, and incorporated compilations of quantitative data and technological tools of analysis, they communicated only to other tenured faculty. The university presses became obsessed with Derrida techniques and the structuralism of Michel Foucault. The academics lost the Story.
Ironically perhaps in light of the title and subtitle, Wood is critical of the attempt, especially by popularizers (Tuchman, McCullough), to make history “useful”. The Story is not for spinning. He seems to be an umpire of political shifts, calling ideologues out, but doing all he can to bring more people to the game.
by Gordon S. Wood
At last, a recognized authority calls for hostilities to cease between the pompous academics (deliberately writing for other professors bulked up with quantitative social science data and theory) and the trendy popularizers. For our generation, Wood is the prize-winning dean of American historiography. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (1969) won the Bancroft Prize. The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1991) won the Pulitzer.
Collection of long-form praise and criticism of works by American historians published by Wood in NY Review of Books and New Republic, to each of which Wood has added an afterword, analyzing the significance of the subjects in hindsight, and reviewing his own reviews.
Wood seems to admire: Charles Royster, “The Fabulous History of the Dismal Swamp Company”; David Hackett Fischer, “Albion’s Seed”. He champions historians who have not earned advanced degrees but who communicate the story, such as David McCullough, Stacy Schiff, and Barbara W. Tuchman.
Wood is critical of those whose modern political views infect their work: Simon Schama, John Patrick Diggins, Richard K. Matthews. He is not as dismissive as other academics are of the “popularizers” such as Ron Chernow, Walter Isaacson and again, David McCullough.
Wood decries the academic “hyper-specialization” which turns off the public and deprives them of what would be a “sense of where we have come from and how we have become what we are”. The social science trend, for example, his brought historians closer to the sciences, but while enrollment in higher education was booming from 1970 through the 1980's, history majors declined by almost two-thirds.
As academic historians embraced theories of “deconstruction”, “textuality”, and “essentialism”, and incorporated compilations of quantitative data and technological tools of analysis, they communicated only to other tenured faculty. The university presses became obsessed with Derrida techniques and the structuralism of Michel Foucault. The academics lost the Story.
Ironically perhaps in light of the title and subtitle, Wood is critical of the attempt, especially by popularizers (Tuchman, McCullough), to make history “useful”. The Story is not for spinning. He seems to be an umpire of political shifts, calling ideologues out, but doing all he can to bring more people to the game.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Renewal of the Mind - Romans 12:2
"And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind...".
Paul of Tarsus, Letters to the Romans 12:2
What will it take for Christians to understand that their hopes and fears have been betrayed? The Cheney-Bush-Rowe crowd, crowing over the billions of dollars they have appropriated to themselves, are not merely traitors to the United States whose coffers they emptied.
They are not merely hypocrites, claiming to act in the name of the Christ while violating virtually every precept of Christ ever uttered.
There are not merely criminals, acting under color of the Law and the Constitution which they have sought to re-write and ignore, in order to engage in public plunder.
I ask every day, what MORE could the triumvirate do to destroy the Dream of America and the hope of prosperity and peace in this vale of tears? Surely the landscape is exhausted. There is not an institution, a cultural or political power left which they have not corrupted and destroyed. They took the legislature, the Courts, and the Presidency. They destroyed corporate America. They took the schools, converting them to content-free test-taking factories. The Churches, a moral wasteland after their pilfering and immorality.
Still, it seems that every day, they find a new icon to compromise, to steal from. Today it was announced that Bush is going to "restructure" the financial institutions, which, just last month, he had declared to be "structurally sound".
No longer content with stealing all the money, now he is going after the Credit. He is stealing from tomorrow. When the Nazis realized they were losing Berlin and the War, they ordered their generals to destroy everything. Just so, Cheney-Bush-Rowe are resigned to losing Power, and not content with destroying the Republican Party, they want to make the next Presidency impossible. An irrelevancy.
I am only hoping for a small renewal of mind.
Paul of Tarsus, Letters to the Romans 12:2
What will it take for Christians to understand that their hopes and fears have been betrayed? The Cheney-Bush-Rowe crowd, crowing over the billions of dollars they have appropriated to themselves, are not merely traitors to the United States whose coffers they emptied.
They are not merely hypocrites, claiming to act in the name of the Christ while violating virtually every precept of Christ ever uttered.
There are not merely criminals, acting under color of the Law and the Constitution which they have sought to re-write and ignore, in order to engage in public plunder.
I ask every day, what MORE could the triumvirate do to destroy the Dream of America and the hope of prosperity and peace in this vale of tears? Surely the landscape is exhausted. There is not an institution, a cultural or political power left which they have not corrupted and destroyed. They took the legislature, the Courts, and the Presidency. They destroyed corporate America. They took the schools, converting them to content-free test-taking factories. The Churches, a moral wasteland after their pilfering and immorality.
Still, it seems that every day, they find a new icon to compromise, to steal from. Today it was announced that Bush is going to "restructure" the financial institutions, which, just last month, he had declared to be "structurally sound".
No longer content with stealing all the money, now he is going after the Credit. He is stealing from tomorrow. When the Nazis realized they were losing Berlin and the War, they ordered their generals to destroy everything. Just so, Cheney-Bush-Rowe are resigned to losing Power, and not content with destroying the Republican Party, they want to make the next Presidency impossible. An irrelevancy.
I am only hoping for a small renewal of mind.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Your Point is a Rough Draft
People act upon their beliefs.
They believe they act in their own self-interest.
Most of their beliefs are wrong.
I am a rough draft.
They believe they act in their own self-interest.
Most of their beliefs are wrong.
I am a rough draft.
Almost all beliefs are false. And your point is...?
Almost everything we believe is false, but we are Believers....
1. RELIGION. Religion is a continent in the landscape of credulity, and all of its content depends on the existence of Divinity. Yet, the only Truth about the Divine is that Any God is un-name-ably beyond vocabulary, is Not a He, and is nowhere or everywhere.
The threshold question is why this or that Any God is so spectacularly indifferent to the prayers of even the Most Pure Most Suffering Saints, not to mention the daily supplications of yours and mine.
The next question is why we believe it is necessary or even possible to “believe in” such an indifferent Creature (as it is “created” for us as an artifact of every culture).
No one ever examines the existence of God any more. While this was the Huge Inquiry before Galileo-Newton-Darwin and our understanding of Physics, the proof lies in the pudding already cooled in the wake-up window: God serves only Fund-raisers who need to buy something else for themselves. And the Fund-raisers themselves do not raise the question – even for evangelism and jihad, the existence of God and Hell and Heaven and the 74 Virgins is moot. The divines are the Last to bring up the Subject, seeking only the subjection of the Believers, who of course, are immune to proof.
2. SUBSISTENCE. One would think that people would place a robust premium on correct information about What They Eat. In fact, almost no one knows what they are eating or where it came from.
Who would recognize a sesame seed in the wild? Who would eat a strawberry that no insect will touch because it has been poisoned?
Who could imagine that Salmon caught in Norway, is frozen and shipped to Qingdae in China for removal of the pin bones with tweezers wielded by low-paid women in cold rooms, and then distributed to Supermarkets in Europe and America.
What parent would serve their children at home the food that both public and private schools provide daily to their students, and with no choice, filled with sugar and trans-fats? How many eaters know the calories in a Big Mac (600c)? A sugar-drink?
3. HEROES. One would think that those we admire are worthy of admiration – the Great Ones of history, the leaders of our respective communities. In fact, however, our “role models” are either complete fictions or we are entirely ignorant of the facts of their lives.
Islamic Youth from the barrios of Spain through Morocco to Egypt report the following three heroes atop their pantheon: (1) Soccer star Ronaldinho, (2) Osama bin Laden, (3) Arnold Scharzenegger “the Terminator”, and in that order. 99.9% of these adherents know absolutely no facts about the personal life of these three living icons.
How about American icons? Most of us sensible educated people now deeply appreciate ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Among his peers, however, he was widely reviled and not more than a few even in his family thought he was a Great Man while he lived. Lincoln was a lawyer. He first ran for political office, knowing he had little chance of victory, just to get a name for himself. He began making speeches publicly, simply because so many of the Judges thought he was a simpleton.
4. THE IMPORTANCE OF MONEY? One would suppose that Money matters to people. Apparently, however, it doesn’t. Examples: Gambling, Foreign Aid, WWII plundered gold, oil revenues, Iraq:
Gambling. Given a chance to gamble it away – to hand it over to a complete stranger who has 100% control of the risk and pay-out – most people will roll dice or stupifyingly pull the handle on a box of spinning baubles. Billions of dollars are handed over to dictators, to privatized utilities, without accountings or evidence of how they spend the money.
Gold. After the thugs of Nazi Germany and the Imperial Japanese seized 80% of the world’s known gold reserves to themselves, their control was shattered and their conquests were rolled back. Books about WWII abound, and we know the maneuvers of every Division, and most of the Companies engaged in the combat. However, the gold has never been publicly accounted for. Where is it? Simple question.
Haliburton. Libyans live in poverty while oil revenues pour into the coffers of Khadafi through the entrenched constructions of a Texas-based company named Haliburton. Billions were distributed to Pakistan through Haliburton operatives, with no visible difference in the lives of Pakistanis or the security of the world.
War Spending. Two Trillion dollars have been spent so far on a War in Iraq, and you can count on one hand the members of the US Congress who seem inclined to think someone should account for some of it.
No accounting. Clearly, people do not really believe that money is important. The IRS cannot account for its collections -- it has never balanced its books. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, with a fiduciary duty to act in the interests of very dependent and poor people, has never been able to account for its income and expenditures. It is rare that any citizen, journalist, lawyer, or even a paid investigator “Follows the Money” trail. They all stop. No one has ever obtained a real "accounting". Money must not be important?!
5. DRUGS. Speaking of money, the top-selling drugs in America are “mood enhancers” – cocaine and crack (un-prescribed), and Valium and Prozac (prescribed).
Curiously the drug companies claim to be curing AIDS and cancer, but in fact they devote their resources to the development of copy-cats of Thorazine, a selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor (SSRI). Thorazine had been shelved as an ineffective allergen remedy until French scientists tried it on psychiatric patients and found it to be efficacious.
The biggest agricultural producer is California and its biggest crop is Marijuana. Marijuana is the largest crop exported from California -- beating out rice, fruit, etc.
Americans spend more on money on “recreational drugs” and mood-enhancers than all other medications combined. This expenditure has made billionaires out of scofflaws, and neuro-pharmaceuticals suck the academic and financial resources out of our medical schools and laboratories.
Americans believe they get good medical care. They don’t. What they get is what the pharmaceutical industry and poppy-growers produce. In the 1990's the most profitable industry in the world was pharmaceuticals, and antidepressants were the most profitable of the most profitable. For over a hundred years, a Mexican farmer above the age of 8 has had a longer life expectancy than an American-born man being “treated” with block-buster copy-cat pharmaceuticals. Valium was the top-selling drug in the 1970's, and Prozac is now the top-selling drug in history.
With industrial medicine, Doctors are required to see a new patient every 8 minutes – and any actual “treatment” is monitored by drug salesmen and insurance protocols. Phen-Fen and Vioxx were marketed like candy to millions of people, most of whom suffered and many of whom died of known side-effects.
Government and Corporate Medicine have divested themselves of almost all “care” facilities, and neighborhood clinics were wiped out by HMO’s. When I was a teenager in Orange County, there was literally a medical clinic on every block of the towns that had a "downtown". The clinics are completely gone. The monthly cost of “medical care” for a household is as high as the inflated mortgage payments, and no one is “treating” patients in America. The meaning of "treatment" has been hollowed out by Prescription. Doctors dispense the drugs that industrial pharmaceutical companies "prescribe"; that's it.
6. ENERGY. What do people believe about “energy resources”? Surely they understand that prosperity depends upon access to energy. But how many people actually contribute to producing or adding value to things and services?
Most people would be surprised how spare the producing percentage of the population is. Farmers are now less than 3% of the population, and almost all “industry” and labor is either off-shore or performed by subcontractors who hire illegal aliens.
The “security industry” – which includes soldiers and sailors as well as police and watchmen – does not produce anything and it is the big growth sector in employment. The wealthiest and most robust unions in the country are the Prison Guards.
Enron was the fastest growing and one of the largest companies in America when President Bush took office. Enron drew billions of dollars out of the economy as a “energy” company, but it did not produce energy and did not make anything. It bought power from utilities, manipulated the price, and sold it back to the same utilities who were producing it. The cost of electrical power has decimated since the utilities were de-regulated, but no new sources of Power and no new Power infrastructure has been built.
Most people understand that Oil is a depleting resource. Do people believe that somewhere, a great leader is setting aside a portion of petrol profits for the development of “alternatives”? The biggest energy companies in the world have just enjoyed 7 years of the biggest profits in their history. Is there any plan? What do people, or the billionaire energy executives, believe will happen as the price of Oil products continues to escalate?
1. RELIGION. Religion is a continent in the landscape of credulity, and all of its content depends on the existence of Divinity. Yet, the only Truth about the Divine is that Any God is un-name-ably beyond vocabulary, is Not a He, and is nowhere or everywhere.
The threshold question is why this or that Any God is so spectacularly indifferent to the prayers of even the Most Pure Most Suffering Saints, not to mention the daily supplications of yours and mine.
The next question is why we believe it is necessary or even possible to “believe in” such an indifferent Creature (as it is “created” for us as an artifact of every culture).
No one ever examines the existence of God any more. While this was the Huge Inquiry before Galileo-Newton-Darwin and our understanding of Physics, the proof lies in the pudding already cooled in the wake-up window: God serves only Fund-raisers who need to buy something else for themselves. And the Fund-raisers themselves do not raise the question – even for evangelism and jihad, the existence of God and Hell and Heaven and the 74 Virgins is moot. The divines are the Last to bring up the Subject, seeking only the subjection of the Believers, who of course, are immune to proof.
2. SUBSISTENCE. One would think that people would place a robust premium on correct information about What They Eat. In fact, almost no one knows what they are eating or where it came from.
Who would recognize a sesame seed in the wild? Who would eat a strawberry that no insect will touch because it has been poisoned?
Who could imagine that Salmon caught in Norway, is frozen and shipped to Qingdae in China for removal of the pin bones with tweezers wielded by low-paid women in cold rooms, and then distributed to Supermarkets in Europe and America.
What parent would serve their children at home the food that both public and private schools provide daily to their students, and with no choice, filled with sugar and trans-fats? How many eaters know the calories in a Big Mac (600c)? A sugar-drink?
3. HEROES. One would think that those we admire are worthy of admiration – the Great Ones of history, the leaders of our respective communities. In fact, however, our “role models” are either complete fictions or we are entirely ignorant of the facts of their lives.
Islamic Youth from the barrios of Spain through Morocco to Egypt report the following three heroes atop their pantheon: (1) Soccer star Ronaldinho, (2) Osama bin Laden, (3) Arnold Scharzenegger “the Terminator”, and in that order. 99.9% of these adherents know absolutely no facts about the personal life of these three living icons.
How about American icons? Most of us sensible educated people now deeply appreciate ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Among his peers, however, he was widely reviled and not more than a few even in his family thought he was a Great Man while he lived. Lincoln was a lawyer. He first ran for political office, knowing he had little chance of victory, just to get a name for himself. He began making speeches publicly, simply because so many of the Judges thought he was a simpleton.
4. THE IMPORTANCE OF MONEY? One would suppose that Money matters to people. Apparently, however, it doesn’t. Examples: Gambling, Foreign Aid, WWII plundered gold, oil revenues, Iraq:
Gambling. Given a chance to gamble it away – to hand it over to a complete stranger who has 100% control of the risk and pay-out – most people will roll dice or stupifyingly pull the handle on a box of spinning baubles. Billions of dollars are handed over to dictators, to privatized utilities, without accountings or evidence of how they spend the money.
Gold. After the thugs of Nazi Germany and the Imperial Japanese seized 80% of the world’s known gold reserves to themselves, their control was shattered and their conquests were rolled back. Books about WWII abound, and we know the maneuvers of every Division, and most of the Companies engaged in the combat. However, the gold has never been publicly accounted for. Where is it? Simple question.
Haliburton. Libyans live in poverty while oil revenues pour into the coffers of Khadafi through the entrenched constructions of a Texas-based company named Haliburton. Billions were distributed to Pakistan through Haliburton operatives, with no visible difference in the lives of Pakistanis or the security of the world.
War Spending. Two Trillion dollars have been spent so far on a War in Iraq, and you can count on one hand the members of the US Congress who seem inclined to think someone should account for some of it.
No accounting. Clearly, people do not really believe that money is important. The IRS cannot account for its collections -- it has never balanced its books. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, with a fiduciary duty to act in the interests of very dependent and poor people, has never been able to account for its income and expenditures. It is rare that any citizen, journalist, lawyer, or even a paid investigator “Follows the Money” trail. They all stop. No one has ever obtained a real "accounting". Money must not be important?!
5. DRUGS. Speaking of money, the top-selling drugs in America are “mood enhancers” – cocaine and crack (un-prescribed), and Valium and Prozac (prescribed).
Curiously the drug companies claim to be curing AIDS and cancer, but in fact they devote their resources to the development of copy-cats of Thorazine, a selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor (SSRI). Thorazine had been shelved as an ineffective allergen remedy until French scientists tried it on psychiatric patients and found it to be efficacious.
The biggest agricultural producer is California and its biggest crop is Marijuana. Marijuana is the largest crop exported from California -- beating out rice, fruit, etc.
Americans spend more on money on “recreational drugs” and mood-enhancers than all other medications combined. This expenditure has made billionaires out of scofflaws, and neuro-pharmaceuticals suck the academic and financial resources out of our medical schools and laboratories.
Americans believe they get good medical care. They don’t. What they get is what the pharmaceutical industry and poppy-growers produce. In the 1990's the most profitable industry in the world was pharmaceuticals, and antidepressants were the most profitable of the most profitable. For over a hundred years, a Mexican farmer above the age of 8 has had a longer life expectancy than an American-born man being “treated” with block-buster copy-cat pharmaceuticals. Valium was the top-selling drug in the 1970's, and Prozac is now the top-selling drug in history.
With industrial medicine, Doctors are required to see a new patient every 8 minutes – and any actual “treatment” is monitored by drug salesmen and insurance protocols. Phen-Fen and Vioxx were marketed like candy to millions of people, most of whom suffered and many of whom died of known side-effects.
Government and Corporate Medicine have divested themselves of almost all “care” facilities, and neighborhood clinics were wiped out by HMO’s. When I was a teenager in Orange County, there was literally a medical clinic on every block of the towns that had a "downtown". The clinics are completely gone. The monthly cost of “medical care” for a household is as high as the inflated mortgage payments, and no one is “treating” patients in America. The meaning of "treatment" has been hollowed out by Prescription. Doctors dispense the drugs that industrial pharmaceutical companies "prescribe"; that's it.
6. ENERGY. What do people believe about “energy resources”? Surely they understand that prosperity depends upon access to energy. But how many people actually contribute to producing or adding value to things and services?
Most people would be surprised how spare the producing percentage of the population is. Farmers are now less than 3% of the population, and almost all “industry” and labor is either off-shore or performed by subcontractors who hire illegal aliens.
The “security industry” – which includes soldiers and sailors as well as police and watchmen – does not produce anything and it is the big growth sector in employment. The wealthiest and most robust unions in the country are the Prison Guards.
Enron was the fastest growing and one of the largest companies in America when President Bush took office. Enron drew billions of dollars out of the economy as a “energy” company, but it did not produce energy and did not make anything. It bought power from utilities, manipulated the price, and sold it back to the same utilities who were producing it. The cost of electrical power has decimated since the utilities were de-regulated, but no new sources of Power and no new Power infrastructure has been built.
Most people understand that Oil is a depleting resource. Do people believe that somewhere, a great leader is setting aside a portion of petrol profits for the development of “alternatives”? The biggest energy companies in the world have just enjoyed 7 years of the biggest profits in their history. Is there any plan? What do people, or the billionaire energy executives, believe will happen as the price of Oil products continues to escalate?
Sunday, March 02, 2008
Gasoline from waste
Great Idea "#43". Biogeneticists in Emeryville (Amyris) and San Carlos (LS9), California, are developing bacteria which produce OIL. The modified bacteria actually excrete hydrocarbons. http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?ch=specialsections&sc=biofuels&id=19128&a=.
Let's be clear: It is scientifically possible and economically sensible to gather Human Waste from sewers and feed it to our industrial bacteria who will convert it into hundreds of different types of hyrdocarbon molecules we can use for everything from jet fuel to roof tar to plastic.
The technology is already several years old. Apparently we are strung out on the "politics": The crisis-profiteering, the power-mongering, these things just have to get worked out. The "fix" from Science, with a bit of help from our old friends, the e coli, is IN.
Soon, we will be treasuring our population centers (old folks homes, schools, skyscrapers) for their PRODUCTION of the necessary raw material!
Let's be clear: It is scientifically possible and economically sensible to gather Human Waste from sewers and feed it to our industrial bacteria who will convert it into hundreds of different types of hyrdocarbon molecules we can use for everything from jet fuel to roof tar to plastic.
The technology is already several years old. Apparently we are strung out on the "politics": The crisis-profiteering, the power-mongering, these things just have to get worked out. The "fix" from Science, with a bit of help from our old friends, the e coli, is IN.
Soon, we will be treasuring our population centers (old folks homes, schools, skyscrapers) for their PRODUCTION of the necessary raw material!
Monday, February 18, 2008
Starting Over. Never.
You realize that someone close to you has no respect for you. They have a complete mis-impression of your career, capped with a certainty that you have never worked and are not "good" with money. You are horrified, not only because these allegations are simply false. But by the fact that it is your own failure to have communicated your successes, your steady and energetic work. Thus, it is not your detractor's fault that she believes completely false things, but yours, for having failed to share the details of your life with those around you. And now it is too late. It is too complicated. There is water under the bridge. Huge.
How often is it too late? When is "starting" just completely over?
How often is it too late? When is "starting" just completely over?
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