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The Great "I"

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The Third Age of the World.

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"Rights", The Bad Con

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Just say "no".

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"Anybody wanting a piece of me without my consent can come back tomorrow and go to the end of the line. I gladly accept your requirement to be treated likewise." --jomama

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More ornery blogs John Lopez

Other fine sites Nexialist News

Simmering frogs.

Classic essays etc. Who owns you?

Reasoning for Rational Anarchism

The Granfalloon

Part of a short work of fiction. (See Chaps. 7-12) I won't.

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The Blessed Community.

09.30.04 (8:42 pm) [edit]

"The American Community Survey is conducted under
the authority of Title 13, United States Code,
Sections 141 and 193, and response is mandatory.
According to Section 221, persons who do not
respond shall be fined not more than $100. The
U.S. Census Bureau may use this information only
for statistical purposes. We can assure you that
your confidentiality is protected. Title 13
requires the Census Bureau to keep all
information about you and all other respondents
strictly confidential. Any Census Bureau employee
who violates these provisions is subject to a
fine of up to $250,000 or a prison sentence of up
to five years, or both."

The Divine Comedy continues.

Bwahahahahahahah.

I doubt you're gonna wanna read all this crap.

If you're like me, it'll give you hives.

Making more enemies

09.30.04 (7:45 pm) [edit]

"Militant pro-hunt groups are targeting Labour
MPs and government ministers in a growing
campaign of abuse, threats and intimidation over
the decision to ban hunting...

An MP had a large lump of concrete thrown
through his constituency office window while the
private homes of three MPs have also been
targeted."

The Controllers working hard at making more
enemies.

What's the logical outcome of that?

Full story.

The ever present paradoxes

09.30.04 (9:29 am) [edit]

This just in from my bro, purportedly written by a
man I think highly of....
_________________________ _

"The paradox of our time in history is that we
have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider
freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but
have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger
houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but
less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more
knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more
problems, more medicine, but less wellness.
We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too
recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too
angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too
little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We
have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our
values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate
too often.
We've learned how to make a living, but not a
life. We've added years to life not life to years.
We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have
trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor.
We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've
done larger things, but not better things.
We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul.
We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We
write more, but learn less. We plan more, but
accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to
wait. We build more computers to hold more
information, to produce more copies, but we
communicate less and less.
These are the times of fast foods and slow
digestion, big men and small character, steep profits
and shallow relationships. These are the days of two
incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken
homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable
diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands,
overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from
cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is
much in the showroom window and nothing in the
stockroom. A time when technology can bring this
letter to you, and a time when you can choose either
to share this insight, or to just hit delete.
Remember, spend some time with your loved ones,
because they are not going to be around forever.
Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up
to you in awe, because that little person soon will
grow up and leave your side.
Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to
you, because that is the only treasure you can give
with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent.
Remember, to say, 'I love you' to your partner and
your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and
an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep
inside of you.
Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for
someday that person will not be there again.
Give time to love, give time to speak, and give
time to share the precious thoughts in your mind.

AND ALWAYS REMEMBER:
Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take,
but by the moments that take our breath away.

If you don't send this to at least 8 people....who
cares?"

George Carlin

Universal humiliation.

09.29.04 (7:07 pm) [edit]

Damn. Been goin' all day tryin' to get inspired to
find something for mah blog and I found this...

"Humiliating to human pride as it may be, we must
recognize that the advance and even the
preservation of civilization are dependent upon a
maximum of opportunity for accidents to happen."
-- F.A. Hayek

Could that be because we don't have the mental
capacity to plan squat?

Or could it be that the Universe doesn't allow
planning?

Neither would I expect more than one in a thousand
hyumans to admit to such inadequacy.

But I buy Hayek's idea. Howbouchou?

Next the stars?

09.28.04 (6:42 am) [edit]

Two visionaries, Branson and Rutan, gonna just do
it.

Cheers, guys.

"By the end of the decade, Virgin Galactic - the
most exciting development in the story of modern
space history - is planning to make it possible
for almost anyone to visit the final frontier at
an affordable price."

Check it out.

The Spud Car

09.27.04 (6:52 am) [edit]

"Toyota's latest environmentally friendly concept
car is made from potatoes.

Rear bumpers, trims and mats in the ES3
prototype hatchback are built from a plastic
derived from a natural acid in sweet potatoes.
The organically formed substance is perfectly
biodegradable as well as being as tough as
conventional materials.

A spokesman for the car firm told the Daily
Mirror: "It's proven science and environmentally
kinder. Eco-plastic has enormous potential."

Toyotas made using potatoes are being introduced
in Japan and may soon be launched in the UK." -
Ananova.com

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=29& art_id=iol1096107279397S1 30" title="http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=29& art_id=iol1096107279397S1 30" target="_blank"http://www.iol.co.za/index.ph...

The Ruling Concept

09.26.04 (3:17 pm) [edit]

"In the meantime, one wonders if there is a
modern Joseph Welch among us who can speak truth
to power and, in so doing, restore to us the
sanity that is essential to the health of any
living system. That such a person resides within
each of us is a thought that we too easily
dismiss. We have been too long conditioned to
believe in the rationality and goodness of
political leaders, regarding the shortcomings of
the system as nothing more than a failure of
technique, not of the character of its officials.
In the 1996 words of Arthur Miller:

Few of us can easily surrender our belief
that society must somehow make sense. The thought
that the state has lost its mind is intolerable.
And so the evidence has to be internally denied."

Looks to me like a failure of The Ruling Concept
rather than the characters on stage.

What do you think?

Full essay.

How are you wired?

09.26.04 (8:28 am) [edit]

"Men have been taught that the highest virtue is
not to achieve, but to give. Yet one cannot give
that which has not been created. Creation comes
before distribution- or there will be nothing to
distribute. The need of the creator comes before
the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are
taught to admire the second-hander who dispenses
gifts he has not produced above the man who made
the gifts possible. We praise an act of charity.
We shrug at an act of achievement." -- Ayn Rand

Some people intuitively understand this. Some never
will.

I take issue with the phrase "need of the creator".
That implies at least support in what he's doing.

A creator needs nothing more than to be left alone
to do it.

Tell me this ain't heavy

09.25.04 (3:57 pm) [edit]

"Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps;
for he is the only animal that is struck by the
difference between what things are and what they
might have been." -- William Hazlitt

Yea, this grabs me, bigtime.

Is this our major weakness?

But why not get over it and move on?

Powerful motivators

09.24.04 (4:50 pm) [edit]

"There is a powerful craving in most of us to see
ourselves as instruments in the hands of others
and thus free ourselves from the responsibility
for acts which are prompted by our own
questionable inclinations and impulses. Both the
strong and the weak grasp at this alibi. The
latter hide their malevolence under the virtue of
obedience: they acted dishonorably because they
had to obey orders. The strong, too, claim
absolution by proclaiming themselves the chosen
instrument of a higher power- God, history, fate,
nation or humanity." -- Eric Hoffer

Seen any that fit this description?

The Divine Comedy

09.24.04 (8:38 am) [edit]

I've got a coupla pontificators in the comments
section, tryin' hard to "show me the way, the
truth, and the light" so I'm gonna talk about
fallacies and stupidity again.

First of all, discussing ideas with guys like
Devlin, is, to paraphrase Orwell, like playing
chess with a guy who all of a sudden jumps up and
accuses you of commiting adultery with his wife.

I've said this before:

I don't know shit.

That in itself puts me far ahead of the
pontificators, the Purveyors of The Truth,
whatever the fuck that means to anyone at any
given moment. The truth, the way most of us use
it, is a shape shifter.

Why should you trust what I or anyone else say,
unless it "rings" in your soul? Then try to test
it with deductive logic, if you know how. Most
don't even think of checking the premises of
their logic when they find a contradiction. And
the overwhelming majority of what we hear/read is
opinion, without any reference to a real fact-
based process. Bald assertions with faulty
premises yield faulty conclusions. Faulty premises
alone yield faulty conclusions.

That's the social world we live in. We have
a good start on the technological side due to the
efforts of a few folks with some thinking abilities
and the guts to try new shit.

We all, I'm convinced, act on assumptions
and guesses based on probabilities.

Oh yea, there's truth to be known, but I expect,
as a race, we've got thousands of years more of
our mental evolution to get even a glimpse of it.
The "truth" I'm thinking of here is a firm grasp of
the method of getting along with each other without
resorting to beating someone else over the head or
lying to get it.

Why do I say this?

The Emotionally-Derived Belief System is in play
and has been since about the time God invented
dirt. [Can any o' you Bright Sparks out there tell me
what's contradictory about that sentence?] Do you
see any evidence that The EDBS is about to go
away soon?

Alan Carter appears to have most of it right when
he says there are two kinds of thinking, the
deductive [rule-based] and the intuitive [guess-
based]. He goes on to say that our ability to
accomplish the deductive side of it is rarely
effective. I say that's because we are usually
lousy observers, don't give a shit about rule-
based logic, and don't focus well for anymore
than a few minutes, if at all. And what we do
better than anything is lie to ourselves.

Am I wrong?

So what does this tell us about even attempting
the intuitive thinking if we can't accomplish--
with any accuracy--the deductive part? How do we
then test our guesses?

Do we really live long enough to produce any
more than Divine Comedy?

I used to think we didn't have the genes to even
approach intelligence. A lot of the switches
aren't working I told myself...or were missing.

Now I think it's the lack of longevity, which
may be gene related. A few folks have said we
have 4,000 genetic defects and I doubt any of
those defects cover the mental ones.

Too many questions...too many distractions...not
enough time and a shitpot full of "answers" that
ain't worth the powder to blow 'em up with.

Guess you're just gonna hafta do it
yourself...the thinking part.

And this ain't the whole story here.

Have you ever seen The Whole Story?

Let me know when you have.

And now that I painted this grim picture does
that mean we should give up?

Hell, no. Why not just do something, even if it's
wrong...especially if it's wrong...and be ready to
straighten up the possible mess later.

Isn't that what progress is all about?

I'm just here to provide a few possible clues to
progress.

Why take me or anyone else seriously?

Aren't we all part of the Divine Comedy?

P.S. And when I want a guru to tell me how the
Universe works, how/what I oughta think about
it and fit with it, I'll put out a help wanted ad.

Looking from outside the fishbowl.

09.23.04 (11:02 am) [edit]

"The meaning of economic freedom is this: that
the individual is in a position to choose the way
in which he wants to integrate himself into the
totality of society." -- Ludwig von Mises

Why some decide to be poor and some not.

09.22.04 (2:23 pm) [edit]

From a previous commentary by Devlin...

"The reason most people are poor is because that
is the nature of the rationing systems we've had
over the last 6000 years. Since weath as we think
of it boils down to a claim on the labor of
others, it follows that if some people are rich
then a larger group of people must be poor."
______________________

Anyone that has looked at cellular automata would
see why some simple rules (the essence of cellular
automata) just continue to expand to increasing
complexity, without apparent end...like my
favorite fractal, the logarithmic spiral.

Why?

Who cares, and if I do, what do you think I can
do to bust the trend? And you?...or was yours
just an observation?

And if one of The Poor Lot in your example decides
he wants to move to The Wealthy Lot, he might
put together a plan to sell a number of The
Wealthy Lot a product or service, moving himself
out of The Poor Lot.

The wealthy are still wealthy but one of the poor
has now joined them.

This poor vs. wealthy thing is not a zero sum
game and I suspect we all get what we want on
this planet. It's just that many never think
much about what they really want, particularly
when being poor requires little effort.

And so, they get what someone else wants for them.

Now, don't they still get what they want?

And when someone makes a claim to my labor, many
times I say "no". Other times I say, "yes" if I
like the odds.

So what's the big deal?

Firefox - over 1 million downloads

09.22.04 (9:29 am) [edit]

p2pnet.net News:- "The Mozilla Firefox browser
promo team are feeling well chuffed.

They wanted a million downloads. And by 5:55 pm
Pacific, they'd done it. With six days to go.

Now they're after two million.

'This is the fastest adoption rate we have ever
experienced, higher than every previous Firefox
release,' they say on their web page.

'But it's not time to relax our efforts. How
soon can we break through 2 million?'

It won't be long, the way things are going.

'Bye, IE."

I've used Firefox for quite a while and
Firebird before it.

I'm hooked.

It works with Mac, Linux and Windows.

Try it. I'll bet you'll like it.

http://p2pnet.net/story/2479" title="http://p2pnet.net/story/2479" target="_blank"http://p2pnet.net/story/2479

More media lies.

09.21.04 (8:39 am) [edit]

(CBS/AP) Within the next few days, CBS News
expects to name an independent panel of experts
to scrutinize its reporting of President Bush's
National Guard service after its defenses for
airing the explosive story crumbled.

Full story.

The Royal Decree

09.20.04 (10:32 am) [edit]

"Outta the way! Outta the way!"

" 'The skin gets extremely hot, and people can't
stand the pain, so they have to move - and move
in the way we want them to,' said Col Wade Hall
of the Office of Force Transformation, a body
formed in November 2001 to promote rapid
improvement across all of the American armed
services.

"Improvement" to do what?

Rich Garcia, a spokesman for the Air Force
Research Laboratory in New Mexico, where the
systems were developed, took part in testing the
weapon and was subjected to the microwave beam
which has a range of one kilometre. 'It just
feels like your skin is on fire,' he said. "[But]
when you get out of the path of the beam, or shut
off the beam, everything goes back to normal.
There's no residual pain."

So...if The Controllers don't like where you're
located, they'll just "heat" you up til ya move.

Sounds like a new twist on the ol' cattle prod.

But to every weapon there's a counter weapon.

What are they gonna do with the guys in the tin
foil suits?

Full story.

A word on The Creators.

09.19.04 (11:37 am) [edit]

"Throughout history, poverty is the normal
condition of man. Advances which permit this norm
to be exceeded- here and there, now and then- are
the work of an extremely small minority,
frequently despised, often condemned, and almost
always opposed by all right-thinking people.
Whenever this tiny minority is kept from
creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out
of a society, the people then slip back into
abject poverty.

This is known as 'bad luck.'" --Robert Heinlein

Googling locally.

09.19.04 (7:50 am) [edit]

"Google added a few flourishes of its own last
week to its local search service, which lets
people enter search terms such as 'dentists' or
'vegetarian pizza,' along with a Zip code or city
name, to look up nearby businesses and Web pages.

The search site now automatically plots these
merchants on a map and allows people to zoom
around inside that diagram without having to
reload the Web page -- something dial-up Internet
users may appreciate.

Google Local first launched in trial form in
March. The version released last week also
indexes more Web pages, including personal home
pages, blogs, and review and rating sites."

Go to local.google.com

Try it. You'll like it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3081 6-2004Sep18.html" title="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3081 6-2004Sep18.html" target="_blank"http://www.washingtonpost.com...

The Great "I".

09.19.04 (2:08 am) [edit]

"It is dark here. The flame of the candle stands
still in the air. Nothing moves in this tunnel
save our hand on the paper. We are alone here
under the earth. It is a fearful word, alone. The
laws say that none among men may be alone, ever
and at any time, for this is the great
transgression and the root of all evil. But we
have broken many laws. And now there is nothing
here save our one body, and it is strange to see
only two legs stretched on the ground, and on the
wall before us the shadow of our one head."

The Great "I".

Is cardiology ready for revolution?

09.18.04 (4:20 am) [edit]

Based on what my bro sent me in an email today
I decided to google "Chlamydia pneumoniae" and
I found this.
_________________________ ____

"Recent animal studies reinforce evidence found
in test-tubes during 1997 where different groups
from Canada, USA and Finland have shown that C.
pneumoniae invades arterial tissues.28-31

In these studies researchers infected a dozen
rabbits through the nose and within seven weeks
of contracting the organism, the majority of them
developed arterial plaques. This plaque
formation occurred despite the fact that rabbits
do not normally get atherosclerosis, even when
they are fed high-fat diets."

All the details.

1+1=3

09.17.04 (11:47 am) [edit]

More from the link on the previous blog...
and thanks to Devlin.

The title to this blog was not done as a joke.
After you read the clip below, can you tell
me why I chose it? Maybe I'm being too cryptic,
but I gotta know.

This little piece from the online book at the link
below is nothing more than a minute sample of some
very clear thinking and writing.

I'll be putting the link in the panel on the
left side of my blog.
_________________________ __________

"...we can do two kinds of thinking. One way
follows rules, and is pretty easy to do. The
other way uses guesses based on experience and is
harder to learn. People who do science sometimes
call the rule following way "deductive thinking"
and the guessing way "inductive thinking". All
the good stuff in science comes from people who
have done inductive thinking, for the simple
reason that deductive thinking can never discover
new things. All it can do is rearrange stuff that
we already know. That does not mean that
deductive thinking is unimportant though, because
we would never have got anywhere in science
without it. It's deductive thinking that lets us
grind through what we already know, applying it
is useful ways and finding things that we haven't
yet understood while we are at it. Deductive
thinking also lets us test the guesses that come
from inductive thinking - which can sometimes be
wrong and are no use at all until they have been
tested. That's why really effective people are
usually good at doing both kinds of thinking at
once. When we do both kinds at once, we can find
the holes in our existing understanding, cook up
guesses to fill in the holes, and test the
guesses in a unified kind of fluid thinking that
cannot be put into words until it is done and the
results are available."

Does inductive thinking come from a connection,
a view, or better yet, a feeling of quantum space?

I highly recommend the whole megillah.

The economic and warfare cycle

09.16.04 (4:32 pm) [edit]

"The cycle starts in a state of economic
collapse, where the relatively low level of
ritualised behaviour enables creative and
energetic people to start economic activity and
make progress. As material wealth grows, the
level of ritualism within the society grows with
it. [Institutionalism* is born.] Pretty soon the
population need more ritual than they can get by
repeating productive behaviours, and are drifting
off into a self-aggrandising and delusional state
of mind. So they start having meetings,
administrating themselves, performing rituals
which can be repeated more often than anything
involving the inertia of real material wealth. At
this point the population is in a state very
similar to cocaine addiction. So it's hardly
surprising that as material productivity begins
to reduce, they start fuelling their ritualism
with credit, and taking totalitarian measures to
suppress dissent. [Super Institutionalism.]
Eventually, economic collapse occurs, and
at the peak of their boredom addiction and
introspective inability to deal with reality,
the population find themselves suddenly deprived
of boring rituals. At these times, the population
find a simultaneous outlet for the aggressive
emotions caused by withdrawal and also a source
of comforting ritualised behaviour, by demonising
those who are not exactly like themselves.
They start marching and add war to economic collapse.
It is at these times that the presence of people
who are good at manipulating herds of demented,
semi-conscious humans can do great damage.
[Glorious Leaders of Great Institutions, i.e.
nations, are crowned.] Then the cycle starts again."

As I've said, aren't we hamsters running
round and round in our cages doing the same dumb
shit over and over again?

Why?

*In case you're new here, I define Institutionalism
as 2 or more folks looking for enemies.

http://www.reciprocality.org/thirdage/chapter2.html#adhd" title="http://www.reciprocality.org/thirdage/chapter2.html#adhd" target="_blank"http://www.reciprocality.org/...

Hail to the Chief

09.16.04 (11:16 am) [edit]

Press: Castro conquers Ivan [The actual headline
in the BBC link below]

Yea, and wet streets cause rain and Fidel drove
the beast off...like The Schrub defeated
Iraq...

"In Havana, the close shave that Cuba experienced
as Hurricane Ivan passed by dominates the
country's two daily newspapers."

Hail to the Glorious Saviors, all hell...er,
hail!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3658410.stm" title="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3658410.stm" target="_blank"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/am...

Crank up the party, boys 'n girls. We're goin' out in style.

09.16.04 (8:10 am) [edit]

"These are not sums, but present-value figures,
heavily discounted to show in today's dollars
what it would cost to pay off the debt
immediately. The International Monetary Fund
estimates the gap at $47 trillion, the Brookings
Institution at $60 trillion.

'To give you idea how big the problem is,' said
Laurence Kotlikoff, economics chairman at Boston
University, who has written extensively on the
subject, to close a $51 trillion fiscal gap,
'you'd have to have an immediate and permanent 78
percent hike in the federal income tax.'"

Seems only fitting to sell this politician
created debt at maybe 5 to 10 cents on the dollar
and send them and their minions home to get honest
work.

It'll never happen.

Are you ready for the consequences?

..and this just in...

"WASHINGTON (AP) -- With little debate, House
lawmakers on Tuesday included themselves as part
of a pay raise that all federal employees will
receive next year.

The cost-of-living raise would be the sixth
straight for members of the House and Senate,
boosting the salaries of lawmakers, now $158,100,
by about $4,000 in the new calendar year."

About the debt.

About those who don't give a shit about it.

Bad thoughts

09.16.04 (2:36 am) [edit]

"'The Motive Fallacy is so common in politics
that serious policy debate is almost non-
existent'. The problem is that politicians
probably know exactly what they are doing, but
continue to do it anyway."

Book review

A polite society

09.15.04 (12:02 pm) [edit]

Shouldn't guns be outlawed for people in
´official´ positions, i.e. pols, cops,
military, bureaucrats...anybody on the
taxpayers´ payroll?

Then watch how polite all the above fucks
and everyone else gets.

And whoever else wants to, should be 'packin',
without hindrance of any kind by anybody.

Then watch the terrorism virtually disappear.

An acquaintance once asked his friend, an
ex-Soviet General, why the Soviets never had
a plan to invade the US.

The General said, "Americans had too many guns."

Those pesky flies following you around.

09.15.04 (8:01 am) [edit]

"What amazes me is that they [True Believers]like
to set themselves up as having a slightly finer
sensibility than you or me but in fact they are
completely intellectually irresponsible. They
used to come up with very bad arguments for their
faiths but at least they felt that there was
something they should provide. Now mere
wilfulness has triumphed. This is what I describe
as the egocentric approach to truth. You are no
longer interested in reality because to do that
you have to be pretty rigorous, you have to have
evidence or do some experimentation. Rather,
beliefs are part of your wardrobe. You've got a
style and how dare anybody tell you that your
style isn't right. Ideology is seen as simply a
matter of taste and as it's not right to tell
people that they've got bad taste, so it's not
right to tell them that their opinions are false.
I'm afraid that the cast of mind of most people
is the opposite of scientific."

The full interview.

Blasting to Bliss Eternal

09.15.04 (5:00 am) [edit]

"But after 80 years of putative Enlightenment,
the descendants of John Scopes's tormenters have
concocted a new level of silliness that would
render Mencken speechless: end-times religion for
export by the military force of the United States
Government. According to this vision, sending
cannon fodder to die in heathen Babylon is a good
thing because a spreading Middle East war will
hasten the Apocalypse: whereupon the scapulae of
the faithful will sprout wings lofting them into
Bliss Eternal while infidels will be consumed in
the fiery furnace." --unknown

Jeez.

It ain't my planet.

I'm just passin' thru.

Evolution, Part II

09.14.04 (2:37 pm) [edit]

"The most important institutions in human society
-- language, law, money, and markets -- all
developed spontaneously, without central
direction." --David Boaz

This statement is obvious to anyone who has studied
just a little history.

Let's examine that concept 'without central
direction' for a moment.

The State is a treatise that describes how it theoretically
started...by conquest. The wandering looters decided to 'set
up shop' and save themselves a lotta headache. One
gets to a certain age and says, "There's gotta be
a better way. Hey, guys, why don't we just sit down
here and collect a percentage for protection from
other guys like us rather than this constant travel.
I'm tired of bein' constantly on the move. It really
sucks."

And so started the end of the natural evolution of
law, language, money and markets...but only for
a while.

Now jump ahead quite a few years.

The 'authorities' think they now have control of
all that. They've gone way beyond simple
protection. There was more to get.

Let's look at the evidence that denys it:

1-The Language Police (the Spanish and French)
show no success in their endeavors at control of
'their' languages. That anyone would even bother
is nothing more than hubris.

2-Law is made by anyone that has a mind to.
(see Bush, the judges and lawyers telling
jurors what the law is...doing as they please.)

3-The currency markets are now uncontrollable by
central banks...even in concert...for any period
of time. The currency market (Forex) is the
largest in the world, trading over $1.2 trillion in
digits representing money every day. Forex accounts
for more volume in one day than the NYSE does in
a month. (see http://tinyurl.com/6mv4l)

4-No matter how hard authorities are interesting
in controlling the drug market, they aren't
succeding, for only one example.

Back to evoluton, Part II...without central direction.

Those comforting flies

09.13.04 (11:39 am) [edit]

"Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a
cloud of comforting convictions, which move with
him like flies on a summer day." -- Bertrand Russell

I brush the dead ones off my shoulders periodically.

How about you?

More on accountability.

09.12.04 (11:01 am) [edit]

"It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more
dangerous way of making decisions than by putting
those decisions in the hands of people who pay no
price for being wrong." -- Thomas Sowell

Seen any that fit this description lately?

Let's look at the other side of the coin.

When you make your own decisions, the decisions
that effect only your own life, to whom do you have
to be accountable? And if those decisions affect
others in your life?

Why would you even want to lay those decisions off
on someone else?

Do they know better how to live your life than you
do?

And once you lay off those decisions, how can you
rightfully be pissed off when those decisions are
not made to your liking?

Some are running for office.

09.12.04 (10:43 am) [edit]

A number of pontificators have shown up in the
comments recently. You know, those without some
reasons or examples to back up their statements.

As a friend who taught logic lessons once
said, "It can't be taught. You either have it or
you don't."

I expect he's right.

What's been your experience?

Another paradox for your collection.

09.11.04 (9:37 am) [edit]

"The great crimes of the twentieth century were
committed not by money-grubbing capitalists but
by dedicated idealists. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler
were contemptuous of money. The passage from the
nineteenth to the twentieth century has been a
passage from considerations of money to
considerations of power. How naive the cliche
that money is the root of evil!" -- Eric Hoffer

...and how naive just about everyone is about
it.

The free mind.

09.10.04 (9:31 am) [edit]

"This I believe: that the free, exploring mind of
the individual human is the most valuable thing
in the world. And this I would fight for: the
freedom of the mind to take any direction it
wishes, undirected. And this I must fight
against: any idea, religion, or government which
limits or destroys the individual." -- John Steinbeck

Wolves and sheep.

09.09.04 (3:03 pm) [edit]

"It is useless for sheep to pass resolutions in
favor of vegetarianism while wolves remain of a
different opinion." -- William Ralph Inge

Do you see what he means?

Think about it.

Have you been "federated" yet?

09.09.04 (9:42 am) [edit]

Fortress Big Apple, Revisited

"Of course, in communities of color and poor
neighborhoods, such tactics, and worse, are old
hat -- as my cell-mates behind the arraignment
courtroom were quick to point out. But now the
NYPD is field-testing new tactics and tools to
use against us all. Perhaps most distressing,
they've established a precedent and the tacit
acceptance of the public as well. Most New
Yorkers either left town or failed to vigorously
protest the chilling effect of the growth of the
homeland-security complex.

I heard first hand of seemingly baseless
preemptive arrests and intimidation by federal
agents -- an activist en route to work grabbed
off the street by the feds; another apparently
tailed by a black SUV and shadowed by
plainclothes agents. The question is: Will this
stop now that the RNC has left town or will it
simply become the accepted way of doing things in
New York City and elsewhere around the country?"

The entire story.

The whole planet...at night.

09.08.04 (5:04 pm) [edit]

A look at the world at night...

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Wikipedia 'to make universities obsolete'

09.08.04 (11:21 am) [edit]

"For most web surfers, the Wikipedia is simply an
occasionally useful online resource that needs to
be taken with a huge sackful of salt. For others,
it's a poor excuse for a real encylopedia. But
for its proponents, it's nothing short of
revolutionary! It's Emergent[*], you see.

A column by veteran tech writer Al Fasoldt has
provoked some furious defenses of the site, in a
similar spirit to the ones we received here
recently. What they lack in coherence, they make
up for in passion. And in the absence of decent
Flame of the Week material recently, we hope this
will provide the same vicarious thrills.
Cash`n`Carrion

Taking to his scooter, one young Wiki-fiddler
roars into action.

'Old World is under attack. The authority of the
book, authority of the journalist, authority of
the teacher, is under direct assault by Wikipedia
and other online efforts,' claims the poster,
"Stephen"."

Attacking the purveyors of the conventional and
predictable set--in this case, the 'authority of
the journalist'--will produce smoke eminating from
these 'authorities' ears, huh?

If ya can't baffle 'em with bullshit, drown 'em
in derision...the fear response. This journalist
succeeded well in this.

See the rest of the conventional and predictable
smoke come out of this journalist's ears.

The Big Bang has fizzled.

09.08.04 (10:51 am) [edit]

"1. Static universe models fit observational data
better than expanding universe models. Static
universe models match most observations with no
adjustable parameters. The Big Bang can match
each of the critical observations, but only with
adjustable parameters, one of which (the cosmic
deceleration parameter) requires mutually
exclusive values to match different tests. [2,3]
Without ad hoc theorizing, this point alone
falsifies the Big Bang. Even if the discrepancy
could be explained, Occam’s razor favors the
model with fewer adjustable parameters— the
static universe model."

The other 29 reasons for the fizzle.

What is The Truth?

09.08.04 (8:08 am) [edit]

There's been much talk about "truth" thru the ages
and little discussion about finding and knowing the
difference between it and error.

And unless we get some Divine Revelation--or
somesuch--thrust on you and me, it doesn't look like
much will change.

One of the best ways to judge this mushy concept known
as "truth" is to ask yourself, "Does everyone know it?"
...as Goethe said.
_________________________

"...the truth requires constant repetition because error
is being preached about us all the time and not only
by isolated individuals but by the masses. In
newspapers and encyclopaedias, in schools,
universities; everywhere error rides high and basks in
the consciousness of having the majority on its side."
--Goethe, 1828

Are you a Pobble?

09.07.04 (3:05 am) [edit]

"While the Pobble was in the water some
unidentified creatures came and ate his toes off,
and when he got home his aunt remarked: It's a
fact the whole world knows, That Pobbles are
happier without their toes, which is funny
because it has a meaning, and one might even say
a political significance. For the whole theory of
authoritarian government is summed up in the
statement that Pobbles are happier without their
toes." -- George Orwell

Human advancement

09.06.04 (11:31 am) [edit]

"Human advancement is predicated on the human
mind, its functioning design. Humans have
traveled to the moon, taken a picture of the
Sombrero Galaxy, successfully transplanted
hearts, and have invented electric tooth brushes,
which impresses people who are easily impressed,
but human minds still perceive the utilization of
force as a means to resolve contradictions
despite the flawless proofs of ongoing history
that the use of force resolves no contradictions,
and always creates greater contradictions.
Therein humans routinely use force to maliciously
deny people their otherwise unalienable rights,
deny non-harmful opportunities, bureaucratically
harass them, prevent the asking of questions and
impede the advancement of knowledge, imprison
people, slaughter them in wars, and seize their
assets to pay for more police, prisons, soldiers
and bombs. Obviously the human mind is still as
primitive as the Neanderthals who also could not
figure out how to use the mind's designed ability
to resolve human-caused contradictions."

The whole essay.

A Mad Hatter's tea party.

09.05.04 (9:32 am) [edit]

The Madness of Emperor George

"While 9/11 Commissions conduct their make-
believe investigations and conclude that events
of that day were produced by failures of
intelligence, it is more to the point to suggest
that there is a continuing 'failure of
intelligence' in this country that has nothing to
do with the CIA, FBI, NSA, or the Pentagon. Long
before that deadly day of three years ago, the
minds of most Americans had collapsed into a
preoccupation with irrelevancies, trivia, and a
continuing insistence upon being entertained. The
idea that the intelligence of Americans might be
energized to address problems which the political
establishment prefers not to be recognized, has
long been absent from social discourse. Even the
Democratic and Republican conventions reflected
this flight from thoughtfulness. The William F.
Buckleys and Gore Vidals no longer exchanged
thoughtful observations – and barbs – with one
another as they had decades ago. Boobus electorus
was now treated to the ruminations of Hollywood
performers, rock musicians, country-western
singers, and professional wrestlers!

Politics is a circus. The star performers are
now rabid clowns.

To abandon one’s mind – along with the control
and responsibility for one’s life that follows –
is to collapse into madness. When done by enough
people, the social effect is to turn a country
into a Mad Hatter’s tea party, or worse. One saw
reflections of this collective madness in the
faces of airhead Republicans listening to Arnold
Schwarzenegger, as he crowed from his perch about
the alleged 'virtues' of President Bush, a
'leader who doesn’t flinch, who doesn’t waiver,
who does not back down.' He failed to mention
that such steadfastness was most pronounced when
Bush’s house of lies and deceptions came crashing
down, a quality Schwarzenegger would equate with
'inner strength,' but which could also be taken
as evidence of paranoia."

Emperor Shrub, in a culmination of The Age of
Institution,(2 or more folks looking for enemies)
has sent reason into hiding or hadn't you noticed?
But, hey, he had a lotta helping hands and, of
course, you can lay that off on "the other guy".
No one else will blame you for playing the blame
game. Seems as most everybody plays it nowadays.

It doesn't look good for humans, does it?

Do you hear that screeching in the veldt?

They're calling us back.

Full article.

Ape vs. Man...Volatile DNA?

09.05.04 (5:53 am) [edit]

"Determining the genetic differences between
humans and primates is important for several
reasons, Dugaiczyk said, including advancing
knowledge about how life developed and evolved on
earth. Other benefits include making it easier to
identifying human predisposition to genetic
disease, by comparing humans with other primate
species. A third possible benefit is to underline
the importance of protecting endangered primate
species."

Who's going to protect the endangered human
species?

The rest of the report.

The Chinese finger trap

09.04.04 (11:33 am) [edit]

"Give evil nothing to oppose, and it will disappear
by itself." (Tao Teh King, Chapter 60).

...'round and 'round we go.

09.04.04 (12:04 am) [edit]

"Political history is largely an account of mass
violence and of the expenditure of vast resources
to cope with mythical fears and hopes."
-- Murray Edelman

And yet on we go, like the hamsters whirling around
in their cages.

In Praise of Chaos

09.03.04 (6:56 pm) [edit]

"People are so uncomfortable with chaos, in
fact, that Newtonian science as interpreted by
Laplace and others saw the underlying reality of
the world as deterministic. If you knew the
initial conditions you could predict the future
far in advance. With a steady hand and the right
cue tip, you could run the table in pool. Then
came quantum mechanics, with uncertainty and
indeterminism, which even Einstein refused to
accept, saying 'God doesn't play dice.'
Philosophically, Einstein couldn't believe in a
universe with a sense of whimsy. He was afraid of
the threatened return of chaos, preferring to
believe for every effect there was a cause. A
consequence of this was the notion that if you
could control the cause, you could control the
effect.

There may very well be much 'cause and effect'
lying about. I just don't believe we have the
genes to find it, not even the Einsteins.

Case in point: What is a scientist doing mucking
about with supernatural beings rolling dice?

The modern proponents of law and order don't
stop with the assertion that for every effect,
there is a cause. And they also assert they
'know' the cause. We see this attitude reflected
by social problem solvers, who proclaimed: 'The
cause of famine in Ethiopia is lack of food in
Ethiopia.' So we had rock crusades to feed the
starving Ethiopians and ignored the role of the
Ethiopian government. Other asserted: 'The case
of drug abuse is the presence of drugs,' so they
enacted a war on certain drugs which drove up
their price, drove up the profit margins
available to those who dealt in prohibited drugs,
and created a criminal subclass who benefited
from the prohibition. Psychologists assert: 'The
reason this person is this way is because such-
and-such happened in childhood, with parents, or
siblings, or whatever.' So any evidence of abuse,
trauma, or childhood molestation--which over time
should assume a trivial role in one's life--are
given infinite power by the financial needs of
the psychotherapy business.

You may respond: 'Well, but these were just
misidentified causes; there really is a cause.'
Maybe so, and maybe not. Whatever story you tell
yourself, you can't escape the fact that to you
personally 'the future is a blinding mirage'
(Stephen Vizinczey, The Rules of Chaos).
You can't see the future precisely because you
don't really know what's causing it. The myth of
causality denies the role of Eris. Science
eventually had to acknowledge the demon of
serendipity, but not everyone is happy with that
fact. The political world, in the cause-and-
effect marketing and sales profession, has a
vested interest in denying its existence...

New age views of karma are similar. If you are
bad, as somehow defined, you built up bad karma
(New Age view), or else God later burns you with
fire (fundamentalist Christian view). For good
deeds, you get good karma or treasures in heaven.
It's basically an accountant's view of the world.
Someone's keeping a balance sheet of all your
actions, and toting up debits or credits. Of
course, some religions allow you to wipe the
slate clean in one fell swoop, say by baptism, or
an act of contrition, which is sort of like
declaring bankruptcy and getting relief from all
your creditors. But that's only allowed because
there has already been a blood sacrifice in your
place. Jesus or Mithra or one of the other
Saviors has already paid the price. But even so,
old Santa Claus is up there somewhere checking
who's naughty or nice...

...One may, of course, choose to help the rest of
the world to the extent that one is able,
assuming one knows how. But it is a choice, not an
obligation. Modern political correctness and
prostituted religion have tried to turn all of
what used to be considered virtues into social
obligations. Not that anyone is expected to really
practice what they preach; rather it is intended
they feel guilty for not doing so, and once the
guilt trip is underway, their behavior can be
manipulated for political purposes."

People peddling these obligations might as
well be saying, "Pack your bags you're goin' on
a guilt trip, shithead." And so The Believers go,
blithely, leaving the blind-folds placed there by
their Glorious Leaders.

...shades of Christianity and the Cult of
Original Sin...with a twist, huh?

I eagerly await the Age of Consciousness...

...and wait...

...and wait...

The entire article.

Entropy sucks.

09.03.04 (7:06 am) [edit]

"If the historians are correct in their
assessments of the collapse of previous
civilizations, the continued structuring and
ossification of life for the purpose of
preserving institutional interests may likewise
seal the fate of the American civilization.

Perhaps before our civilization completes its
entropic fall, the information revolution may
awaken our neighbors to the destructive
consequences of allowing their lives to be
structured for the benefit of institutions that
have shown, by their lack of resiliency, to be no
longer capable of producing the values upon which
society depends. Even the most credulous among us
may discover how they have allowed their lives –
and the lives of their children – to be exploited
and consumed on behalf of purposes that nowise
comport with their own."

Do you know what the "values upon which society
depends" are?

Can you name just a few fundamental ones?

Do you care?

All.

Another cover-up thwarted

09.02.04 (1:19 pm) [edit]

The thieves were in their cat box covering
their shit when they were found out...
________________________

"On 22 July 2004, the Justice Dept—via the
Government Printing Office—told libraries to
destroy five documents on asset forfeiture, a
highly controversial practice in which the
authorities take people's property. (Sometimes
the people have been convicted of crimes; other
times they haven't even been charged with a
crime.) [Learnmore] The order said:

Please withdraw these materials immediately
and destroy them by any means to prevent
disclosure of their contents. The Department of
Justice has determined that these materials are
for internal use only.

The Memory Hole has obtained the sensitive
documents that the Justice Dept wanted to
destroy. They've been scanned and posted above."

See the story and see what they wanted to hide.

At the beginning again...

09.02.04 (1:05 pm) [edit]

"It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning
again, knowing almost nothing. People were
talking about the end of physics. Relativity and
quantum mechanics looked as if they were going to
clean out the whole problem between them. A
theory of everything. But they only explained the
very big and the very small. The universe, the
elementary particles. The ordinary-sized stuff
which is our lives, the things people write
poetry about - clouds - daffodils -waterfalls -
... these things are full of mystery, as
mysterious to us as the heavens were to the
Greeks. Because the problem turns out to be
different. We can't even predict the next drop
from a dripping tap when it gets irregular. Each
drip sets up the conditions for the next, the
smallest variation blows prediction apart, and
the weather in unpredictable the same way, will
always be unpredictable. When you push the
numbers through the computer you can see it on
the screen. The future is disorder. A door like
this has cracked open five or six times since we
got up on our hind legs. It's the best possible
time to be alive, when almost everything you
thought you knew is wrong.........."
Arcadia, by Tom Stoppard.
_________________________ ________

So...if we don't even understand the "ordinary-
sized stuff", what are we doing mucking about
elsewhere?

Isn't that like running before you can walk?

And watch closely the professional pontificators,
the politicians and other True Believers who "have
all the answers".

Instead of being "discovered", they now all stand an
excellent chance of being "found out".

Straw Men & Ham Sandwiches

09.02.04 (9:33 am) [edit]

A little surgery here on what most people treat
with a hammer and anvil...
_________________________ __

"The political means to wealth involves the
organized use or threat of violence, whether it's
an overt military action, or the complex network
of intimidation behind taxation, regulation,
licensing laws, and other interventions against
voluntary exchange. By political means, wealth is
never created – only redistributed. It
is, at best, a zero-sum game: for some to win, others
must lose.

The economic means to wealth involves convincing
people to voluntarily part with what you want
more by offering them what they want more. This
is the basis of laissez-faire capitalism: the
peaceful creation of wealth through
exchange. (Most anti-capitalists have probably never
confronted even the possibility of creating great
wealth peacefully.)

The economic capitalist competes with other
economic capitalists to satisfy the wants and
needs of consumers, who are free to take their
business elsewhere.

In contrast, a political capitalist appeals to
the State to privilege his position above his
competition. The victim of political wealth is
both the would-be competition and the consumers
themselves.

This capitalism, political capitalism(which we
pro-capitalists sometimes call mercantilism,
corporatism, state capitalism, crony capitalism,
or even fascism), is something we and the anti-
capitalists can agree on: it is the exploitation
of the productive class by a parasitic class. We
might even surprise them with our sample list of
parasites: defense contractors, the banking
cartel, the steel industry, big agribusiness,
Halliburton ... But our agreement requires common
recognition of the distinction between political
and economic means."

The whole article.

Beware of the Pontificators

09.01.04 (6:01 pm) [edit]

"The wise man doesn't give the right answers, he
poses the right questions." -- Claude Levi-Strauss

How many of these have you seen or talked to lately?

Cold Fusion Back From the Dead

09.01.04 (1:28 pm) [edit]

U.S. Energy Department gives true believers a
new hearing

The call of the wild...free money!

"Other researchers are finally beginning to
explain why the Pons-Fleischmann effect has been
difficult to reproduce. Mike McKubre from SRI
International, in Menlo Park, Calif., a respected
researcher who is influential among those
pursuing cold fusion, says that the effect can be
reliably seen only once the palladium electrodes
are packed with deuterium at ratios of 100
percent—one deuterium atom for every palladium
atom. His work shows that if the ratio drops by
as little as 10 points, to 90 percent, only 2
experimental runs in 12 produce excess heat,
while all runs at a ratio of 100 percent produce
excess heat.

And scientists are beginning to get a better
handle on exactly how the effect occurs.
Stanislaw Szpak and colleagues from the Space and
Naval Warfare Systems Command have taken infrared
video images of palladium electrodes as they
produce excess energy. It turns out that the heat
is not produced continuously over the entire
electrode but only in hot spots that erupt and
then die on the electrode surface. This team also
has evidence of curious mini-explosions on the
surface."

Whole article.

President Flip Flop and Senator Grand Plan.

09.01.04 (10:18 am) [edit]

"Kerry's campaign accused Bush of 'flip-flops'
on fighting terror. 'This president has gone
from mission accomplished to mission
miscalculated to mission impossible on the war on
terror,' Kerry spokesman Phil Singer said in a
statement. 'We need a leader who knows we can
win the war on terror and has a plan to do it.'"

Ok, Senator, going for the top spot. Let's
hear it.

Full story.