The trouble with the Internet

"South Park did a decent job encapsulating a skeptics view of the Joseph Smith story, but in the main I would take Tacitus over South Park for historical accuracy, and South Park over Tacitus for poop jokes.

It's funny if you read The Annals (heh heh) of Tacitus that he's largely objective about events and other cultures, and saves all his mouth foaming for Christians. I guess Paul must have been as popular in Rome as he was with the Jerusalem church."

This is a quote taken from a rather popular Internet forum that acts as a sendup of dozens of contemporary news items. The first paragraph may be taken as strict opinion, and not subject to any meaningful comment.
The second paragraph is more interesting. The first sentence presents an opinion of Tacitus, a complete unknown to more one half of one percent of persons currently alive. It then states that Tactus is somehow historically accurate about "events and other cultures," and only irrational about Christians.
Well, someone reading this might then go and read a translation of Tacitus, or read some hideous scholarly article about Tacitus, but by and large that sentence will sit in their memory like some tiny, poisonous toad, unquestioned. In fact, Tacitus was a historian in the sense that what he said was accepted up into modern times as "historical," but some of what he says is factual, and some is just risible. In between, we have such things as his commentary on the Germans, who Tacitus chose to present as a moral model to contrast with the Rome of his own time, which he despised for its decadence and corruption.
The Germans were described as strong, simple, sturdy folk with good bedrock moral values and great integrity…in fact, superior in just about every way Tacitus could think of, except, of course, that they were barbarians.
This presentation of the Germanic tribes was taken out of its Taciturn context and was a standard reading in classrooms throughout Germany well into modern times. German youth were presented with an opinion (what was, in fact, simply whole cloth from some Roman who had never been near Germany or the Germans, except perhaps some he had run into in Rome) as if it were demonstrable historical fact.
Generations of German youth were persuaded to accept Tacitus' account as the basis for the superiority of the Germans and German culture, which was part of the foundation on which the Hohenzollern Empire built its theory that Germany was entitled to its "place in the sun," and on which the Nazis built their theories of race and world conquest.
So much for objectivity.

Science is in Intensive Care

Attempts to popularize Science and rationality as it was purveyed 30 or 40 years ago was invariably done by someone with credentials, and who approached it in a systematic manner (Martin Gardner comes to mind), and where what you learned invariably made sense in one's further readings*.
Now.....the best way to put it is that we are screwed. The popularization of Science has been taken over by movies, TV and the mass media, and there is so much that is twisted, rampantly Procrustean, or just plain wrong that there is literally nowhere to begin.
It may be that Mass Man never had any real chance of integrating Science with spirituality and a balanced view of the world, but we'll likely never find out.

*My citations here should in no way be construed as to apply any label of atheist or rationalist to me. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Taking the Pulse of the Patient

As far as the inability of the COOTWH* to govern, this Newsweek article by Mickey Kaus makes some excellent points. An appeal to common sense, and that leadership must actually involve some.......leading.

*Current Occupant Of The White House

How Can I Interpret This?

The following was recounted to me, and did not happen to me personally; I should feel myself having suffered temporary insanity if it had.

The interlocutor of the person relating the story was talking about a boy who grew up with parents who were both deaf.

He remarked, "Isn't that a wonderful way to grow up?"

Does this carry the probable meaning, that in the case of this particular boy, growing up with deaf parents enabled him to better relate to the disabled (however arguable the point), or

...does it imply that all persons would be better off being raised by parents with disabilities?

I think the first is questionable, the second preposterous, and yet I cannot escape the feeling (knowing this person only slightly) that he really believes the more global proposition to be true.

We live in a marvelous age, wandering around in our tiny hermetic worlds.

Rallies, then & now

"Do you believe, as do the many, that certain young men are corrupted by sophists, and that there are certain sophists who in a private capacity corrupt to an extent worth mentioning? Isn't it rather the very men who say this who are the biggest sophists, who educate most perfectly and who turn out young and old, men and women, just the way they want them to be?"

"But when do they do that?" he asked.

"When," I said, "many gathered together sit down in assemblies, courts, theaters, army camps, or any other common meeting of a multitude, and, with a great deal of uproar, blame some of the things said or done, and praise others, both in excess, shouting and clapping, and, besides, the rocks and the very place surrounding them echo and redouble the uproar of blame and praise. Now in such circumstances, as the saying goes, what do you suppose is the state of the young man's heart? Or what kind of private education will hold out for him and not be swept away by such blame and praise and go, borne by the flood, wherever it tends so that he'll say the same things are noble and base as they do, practice what they practice, and be such as they are?"

(Republic, 491e - 492b), translated by Allan Bloom

Is American information dead?

President Obama held a "town hall meeting" yesterday. While not inquiring as to how many people find the name ludicrous, I would be interested to know the percentage of people who believe that any -any- such things are not as staged and scripted as a movie. Does anyone believe that some 30 year old law graduate seriously and earnestly asked the President "Is the American dream dead?"

This is all quite preposterous, but the most difficult thing for me to believe is that a graduate of Princeton and some equally prestigious sounding law school (Indiana, I believe) would be enough of a dupe to participate in such a charade. Since I can't believe someone of his putative intelligence would do such a thing, I can only assume that he was performing from a memorized script.

Watching these things is more a waste of time than staring at the wall; the latter is more likely to produce thought.

A Fable for our Time

I can't really call this fantasy, because it isn't. Except for the last part (which apparently DID happen).

An obscure fanatic from a small town makes wild assertions and threatens to burn books.

His rhetoric is taken up by the news media and given national and international coverage.

He is given lavish attention by important government officials and agencies, thereby raising him from obscurity to notoriety overnight.

Attention is so acute that incipient hysteria and paranoia spill over and result in the chief executive of a nation of millions of people making a personal appeal to this individual.

A member of a major news organization wonders whether or not the media handling of the whole affair "-might have been reckless."

D'ya think?

Bibliography: See Adolf Hitler, rise of National Socialism, Beer Cellar Putsch, Hitler treason trial, etc., etc. You may end with the burning of the Reichstag if you wish....

At my limit

I'll tell you one thing blogs are good for- solipsistic rants, that's what! (Cue laugh track)

I received a telephone call last night from a young lady conducting a survey. The following is my best attempt to reconstruct the sense, if not the word-for-word, of this amazing experience.

She: "We're looking for people's opinions of Illinois politicians in the upcoming elections."

Me: "Go ahead."

She: "First, I'll read a list of names, and you tell me whether you feel positive, somewhat positive (insert remainder of array of choices to ....'negative')."

Me: "These are all politicians?"

She: "Yes."

Me: "Put me down for all negative."

She: "I can't do that; I have to ask each one separately."

Me: "OK"

She reads list of names, I respond

She: "Do you intend to vote in November?"

Me: "Absolutely."

She reads lists of candidates, I tell who I'd vote for.

She: "Now, I want to read two statements about Boody Jar Moblinga (name of well-known Illinois political hack changed to protect the guilty, referred to hereinafter as 'BJM'), and you tell me which one you agree with the most."

Me: "Read away."

She: "First, do you agree that BJM is wonderful, can walk across Lake Michigan on her bare feet, shines at night with her own golden aura, and deserves to be escorted to Springfield by a thousand trumpeting cherubim and a full twelve dozen winged mantics?"

"OR"

"Do you agree that BJM is a domestic terrorist who seeks to overthrow the Constitution of the United States, that the very grass and flowers die wherever she walks, that birds fall dead from trees wherever her shadow is cast, and that she is numbered among the legions of Satan?"

[The previous questions may have been somewhat different, but for purposes of this illustration, you may regard them as valid]

Me: "I can't believe you've attempted to insult my intelligence with those questions. This interview is over."

(I hang up)

This episode requires no explication or analysis; it has served to convince me that we are living in a political comic strip...a very dark, dark comic strip.

Discovering the Path

While I could find things in this valedictory speech to disagree with, I post it in its entirety because it's important to have eighteen-year-olds who not only are capable of this kind of self-discovery, but who are capable of getting up (and no doubt discarding the prepared speech) and say this. I can only say that if a valedictorian had started this speech at the high school where I taught, they never would have been allowed to finish it. The speech was delivered June 2010 by Erica Goldson, graduating as valedictorian of Coxsackie-Athens High School.

Here I stand

There is a story of a young, but earnest Zen student who approached his teacher, and asked the Master, "If I work very hard and diligently, how long will it take for me to find Zen? The Master thought about this, then replied, "Ten years . ." The student then said, "But what if I work very, very hard and really apply myself to learn fast -- How long then?" Replied the Master, "Well, twenty years." "But, if I really, really work at it, how long then?" asked the student. "Thirty years," replied the Master. "But, I do not understand," said the disappointed student. "At each time that I say I will work harder, you say it will take me longer. Why do you say that?" Replied the Master, "When you have one eye on the goal, you only have one eye on the path."

This is the dilemma I've faced within the American education system. We are so focused on a goal, whether it be passing a test, or graduating as first in the class. However, in this way, we do not really learn. We do whatever it takes to achieve our original objective.

Some of you may be thinking, "Well, if you pass a test, or become valedictorian, didn't you learn something? Well, yes, you learned something, but not all that you could have. Perhaps, you only learned how to memorize names, places, and dates to later on forget in order to clear your mind for the next test. School is not all that it can be. Right now, it is a place for most people to determine that their goal is to get out as soon as possible.

I am now accomplishing that goal. I am graduating. I should look at this as a positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. However, in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. Yet, here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this period of indoctrination. I will leave in the fall to go on to the next phase expected of me, in order to receive a paper document that certifies that I am capable of work. But I contest that I am a human being, a thinker, an adventurer - not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition - a slave of the system set up before him. But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave. I did what I was told to the extreme. While others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-taker. While others would come to class without their homework done because they were reading about an interest of theirs, I never missed an assignment. While others were creating music and writing lyrics, I decided to do extra credit, even though I never needed it. So, I wonder, why did I even want this position? Sure, I earned it, but what will come of it? When I leave educational institutionalism, will I be successful or forever lost? I have no clue about what I want to do with my life; I have no interests because I saw every subject of study as work, and I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now I'm scared.

John Taylor Gatto, a retired school teacher and activist critical of compulsory schooling, asserts, "We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness - curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight simply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids into truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then. But we don't do that." Between these cinderblock walls, we are all expected to be the same. We are trained to ace every standardized test, and those who deviate and see light through a different lens are worthless to the scheme of public education, and therefore viewed with contempt.

H. L. Mencken wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not "to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. ... Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim ... is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States."

To illustrate this idea, doesn't it perturb you to learn about the idea of "critical thinking." Is there really such a thing as "uncritically thinking?" To think is to process information in order to form an opinion. But if we are not critical when processing this information, are we really thinking? Or are we mindlessly accepting other opinions as truth?

This was happening to me, and if it wasn't for the rare occurrence of an avant-garde tenth grade English teacher, Donna Bryan, who allowed me to open my mind and ask questions before accepting textbook doctrine, I would have been doomed. I am now enlightened, but my mind still feels disabled. I must retrain myself and constantly remember how insane this ostensibly sane place really is.

And now here I am in a world guided by fear, a world suppressing the uniqueness that lies inside each of us, a world where we can either acquiesce to the inhuman nonsense of corporatism and materialism or insist on change. We are not enlivened by an educational system that clandestinely sets us up for jobs that could be automated, for work that need not be done, for enslavement without fervency for meaningful achievement. We have no choices in life when money is our motivational force. Our motivational force ought to be passion, but this is lost from the moment we step into a system that trains us, rather than inspires us.

We are more than robotic bookshelves, conditioned to blurt out facts we were taught in school. We are all very special, every human on this planet is so special, so aren't we all deserving of something better, of using our minds for innovation, rather than memorization, for creativity, rather than futile activity, for rumination rather than stagnation? We are not here to get a degree, to then get a job, so we can consume industry-approved placation after placation. There is more, and more still.

The saddest part is that the majority of students don't have the opportunity to reflect as I did. The majority of students are put through the same brainwashing techniques in order to create a complacent labor force working in the interests of large corporations and secretive government, and worst of all, they are completely unaware of it. I will never be able to turn back these 18 years. I can't run away to another country with an education system meant to enlighten rather than condition. This part of my life is over, and I want to make sure that no other child will have his or her potential suppressed by powers meant to exploit and control. We are human beings. We are thinkers, dreamers, explorers, artists, writers, engineers. We are anything we want to be - but only if we have an educational system that supports us rather than holds us down. A tree can grow, but only if its roots are given a healthy foundation.

For those of you out there that must continue to sit in desks and yield to the authoritarian ideologies of instructors, do not be disheartened. You still have the opportunity to stand up, ask questions, be critical, and create your own perspective. Demand a setting that will provide you with intellectual capabilities that allow you to expand your mind instead of directing it. Demand that you be interested in class. Demand that the excuse, "You have to learn this for the test" is not good enough for you. Education is an excellent tool, if used properly, but focus more on learning rather than getting good grades.

For those of you that work within the system that I am condemning, I do not mean to insult; I intend to motivate. You have the power to change the incompetencies of this system. I know that you did not become a teacher or administrator to see your students bored. You cannot accept the authority of the governing bodies that tell you what to teach, how to teach it, and that you will be punished if you do not comply. Our potential is at stake.

For those of you that are now leaving this establishment, I say, do not forget what went on in these classrooms. Do not abandon those that come after you. We are the new future and we are not going to let tradition stand. We will break down the walls of corruption to let a garden of knowledge grow throughout America. Once educated properly, we will have the power to do anything, and best of all, we will only use that power for good, for we will be cultivated and wise. We will not accept anything at face value. We will ask questions, and we will demand truth.

So, here I stand. I am not standing here as valedictorian by myself. I was molded by my environment, by all of my peers who are sitting here watching me. I couldn't have accomplished this without all of you. It was all of you who truly made me the person I am today. It was all of you who were my competition, yet my backbone. In that way, we are all valedictorians.

I am now supposed to say farewell to this institution, those who maintain it, and those who stand with me and behind me, but I hope this farewell is more of a "see you later" when we are all working together to rear a pedagogic movement. But first, let's go get those pieces of paper that tell us that we're smart enough to do so!

Put another way.....

"One should never forbid what one lacks the power to prevent. "

-Napoleon Bonaparte

.....or, never pass a law that cannot be enforced or for which the political will is lacking. We fall deeper and deeper into this chasm.

Surviving Brilliance

I was regaled this morning by someone on a cable news channel informing me of the brilliance of the present nominee for SCOTUS . Anyone who's a candidate for any government position above Toilet Brush Inventory Supervisor seems to automatically merit the title of "brilliant" these days. Not sure we'll survive too many more of those....

No Changes

And then there was the people who once stood for progress and anticipation that the future would be better, and was somehow transformed into the Society of No Changes. Then comes the paradox of everyone engaged in the change of their choice, and paranoid / aggressive of any criticism thereof, and viewing the activities of others as disastrous and conspiratorial.
Every society ends as a book, then that book is reduced to a chapter in a later book, then to a subsequent paragraph, and finally just to a meme. "No Changes" is pretty sorry.

Wakefield's Legacy

Despite the fact that Andrew Wakefield's findings correlating autism and vaccination have been completely disproven, he retains supporters, shamefully including celebrities who should be better informed and do public retractions of their advocacy of this nonsense.


This reinforces my belief that there is no stronger force in the universe, including the black hole at the center of our galaxy, than the human will to belief in the face of all evidence to the contrary. Man is not the rational animal, he is the rationalizing animal.

And what is Wakefield's legacy? Dead children.

Well, that's reassuring

In his introductory remarks to his SCOTUS nomination today , the COOTWH stated that she represents what we need, less of the dry dead old law on paper, and more concern for people in their everyday lives. I thought I already had somebody like that......my Representative.

I cannot for a moment believe that a law professor / factotum, sans judicial experience, is even going to be able to be concerned about the everyday lives of people, let alone conceive that that is her job. The Constitution gives broad legislative powers to Congress, and the 435 districts into which the House of Representatives is divided is crafted and specifically intended to see to my "needs."

Yet another example of rhetoric that is either simply BAD, or which has intentions which are far more than questionable, given that we are presently visited with far, far too much legislation by judicial fiat.

This Will Not End Well

The History Channel has finally done what no one has attempted since the 1970's- to produce a comprehensive history of the United States. As with so many things these days, I'll read the reviews before I even consider watching any of it. Given current trends, not only on the Hysteria / History / Catastrophe Channel, I suspect that the series will be fatally flawed. I predict that the essence of it will be "Cover everything and attempt to please everyone, but explain nothing and satisfy no one."

The last series to attempt to tell the story of the United States was Alistair Cooke's America: A Personal History. It even appears as though THC has attempted to "borrow from" the title. However, there is a vast difference between what some may consider the same sort of program, and one need go no further than the respective titles to see it.

The strength of Cooke's America lay in the twofold nature of it being a personal viewpoint (and Cooke never claimed otherwise), and in Cooke being a transplanted Englishman (became a U.S. citizen in 1941, six days before Pearl Harbor), which gives the author an almost essential detachment from hewing to a particular native viewpoint or politics. In this, Cooke may be seen as a legitimate heir of Alexis de Tocqueville, still the most famous foreigner to write of this country in Democracy in America, (1835 / 1840), and in so doing, having written what many still consider the best analysis of this country.

The History Channel has entitled its opus America: The Story of Us, which I'm sure it will be. I'm sure it will be supremely earnest, with all sorts of "docu-dramatic" vignettes that purport to be historical, that technology will be portrayed as a deus ex machina, and that every effort will be made to place Abigail Adams on the same plane as John, and Harriets Tubman and Beecher Stowe on the same level of importance as Abe Lincoln. It will be very, very egalitarian, and very, very inclusive, irrespective of the degree to which it is very, very far removed from what may have happened. My prediction could be wrong, and I sincerely hope that it is.....but I'm sticking to it.

I will conclude with my favorite quote from Cooke's America (Episode 3, Making a Revolution) :

"That, too, is history- not what happened, but what people convinced themselves must have happened."

Moynihan Lives

The fuss over the misbehavior of a variety of pro sports athletes is merely in microcosm of what Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote about, writ large:

"There is one unmistakable lesson in American history: a community that allows a large number of young men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future -- that community asks for and gets chaos... And it is richly deserved."

-- Daniel P. Moynihan, Family and Nation [1965]

And, as he wrote before he died, what applied largely to the black community in 1965 has spread to include all sectors of society. The manifestation of this in irresponsible and brutal men has become an equal opportunity employer.....

Beer again

As I started my third season of homebrewing Monday, I was given to reflect on both the frustration and the satisfaction of getting into a rather complex seasonal habit. Brewing out-of-doors has necessitated an hiatus in my brewing during the cold weather, so it's a matter of trying to recall all the knacks and kinks once Spring arrives and I resume my malted grain activities.

Tomorrow: either deferred gratification or a project to enable year-round brewing.

A little bit louder and a little bit worse...

I was treated to another of those glimpses of the COOTWH* yesterday, which, as usual these days, comes about while I'm working out at the gym. While I listen to music on the iPod, I watch one, or several of the large TVs, and in this case was able to see the dialog on the streamer below. Later, I was treated to the audio on the radio while driving home.

Without dialogue, the scene was something right out of Ronald Reagan, except that Mr. Obama was just in shirt & tie. He and the interlocutor (in a polo shirt) were walking down a path among some trees, very folksy, nice and casual. The attempt at simulating a casual conversation between two people was reinforced by the almost apologetic tone of the reporter and the low-key responses of Obama. Very nice until I recalled much of what bemused us when we were first treated to this type of interview when Ronnie came into office, and before it became obvious that the whole thing was completely staged and scripted.

The content was predictable in its absence. Mr. Obama: "We should be able to disagree without being disagreeable." Ignoring the hypocritical and mendacious things that are continually said any time Obama's opinions and policies are questioned, this was ostensibly a serious assertion, made over the debate surrounding the Health Care Bill. The only problem is that the statement ignores human nature. We have had disagreeable things said of presidents since John Adams (this would be 1796), such tone an inevitable consequence of the contentiousness built in to human nature. Surely Mr. Obama cannot be so naive as to believe he will be exempt. Conclusion: he is being deliberately disingenuous.

Another random statement (in paraphrase): "All the evidence indicates Iran is interested in developing nuclear weapons." This enables Mr. Obama to employ a double whammy in "avoidance grammar." He is now in a position to employ "I was misled" and "blame the evidence," as his predecessor did with Iraq, and to doubly deny that he said Iran was developing nuclear weapons, since he used the word "interested." As well for me to say "I'm interested in whether or not there are leprechauns in the bottom of my garden." I have thereby avoided asserting that there might actually be leprechauns out there, and having people question my grasp of reality.

Every time I see or hear anything about government or politics, it merely reinforces my determination to avoid it until the next time I'm accidentally exposed to it. Sort of like the flu.

*Current Occupant Of The White House

Notes on Tragedy

Contrary to the common use of the term in our degraded times, where every stubbed toe is a "tragedy," the essence of tragedy lies in its inevitability. It may be that the inherent tragedy in representative government is that the representatives must lie repeatedly to their constituencies, making promises they cannot keep in order to be elected and re-elected.

The real damage is that the false promises comprise a secular Slough of Despond, in which any common regard for society is lost.......

"He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions."

- Thomas Jefferson

Talking About Things

We need to talk about things, make lists of things. Adjectives were a useful device for describing those things, back when our word-hoard of the most extreme of those parts of speech were not loosed within 30 seconds of talking about anything.

Tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, end of days, zombie apocalypse -to name a few, but not to exclude wrecks, collisions, collapses, (multiple) shootings all now instantly provoke a list of all extant adjectives that can possibly pertain to (X).

Exciting, terrifying, horrifying, devastating, amazing......as with most types of words, English provides an abundant, but not unlimited, array of synonyms. Now they are immediately gone, employed as a compulsory litany whenever a qualifying event occurs. And the bar is set very, very low.

Thus, an F1 tornado that disassembles a trailer in an Oklahoma mobile home park is placed at the same level as a Chilean earthquake that kills 800 and moves a city ten feet, or an Indonesian tsunami that kills as many people as Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

It is as if some thoughtless egalitarian impulse is at work here, that in the end denies us what adjectives are supposed to provide- a sense of degree.

I propose a ten year moratorium on adjectives, a prescription which I will doubtless violate....with extreme prejudice.

Vital Data and Postscript

VITAL DATA

"There are two restaurants here and a tearoom, two bars, one bank, three barbers, one with a green shade with which he blinds his window, two groceries, a dealer in Fords, one drug, one hardware, and one appliance store. several that sell feed, grain, and farm equipment. an antique shop. a poolroom. a laundromat. three doctors. a dentist, a plumber. a vet. a funeral home in elegant repair the color of a buttercup. numerous beauty parlors which open and shut like night-blooming plants. a tiny dime and department store of no width but several floors. a hutch, homemade, where you can order, after lying down or squirming in, furniture that's been fashioned from bent lengths of stainless steel tubing, glowing plastic, metallic thread, and clear shellac. an American Legion Post and a root beer stand. little agencies for this and that: cosmetics, brushes, insurance, greeting cards and garden produce -anything - sample shoes - which do their business out of hats and satchels, over coffee cups and dissolving sugar. a factory for making paper sacks and pasteboard boxes that's lodged in an old brick building bearing the legend OPERA HOUSE, still faintly golden, on its roof. a library given by Carnegie. a post office. a school. a railroad station. fire station. lumberyard. telephone company. welding shop...and spotted through the town from one end to the other in a line along the highway, gas stations to the number five."

- William H. Gass, In the Heart of the Heart of the Country (1968)

.....and from the same author, in only a slightly different place: "Things have changed since then, but in none of the respects mentioned."

....and I would add: "Except- less of everything described, none of some, and the only addition, which is of questionable merit, of two meth labs."

Leverage this....

This post does a pretty good job, and in acceptable English, in explaining the origin of the shitrain that has fallen on the economy in the last two years. Interestingly enough, the terminology used here can be directly substituted for text like "buying on margin," "margin calls," etc., which were employed 80 years ago, when the stock market collapsed in October 1929 following years of speculation.

The object of our current malaise is real estate, of course, rather than stock certificates. Lots of people assumed it couldn't happen with real estate, because the collapse that resulted in the Great Depression of the 1930's was based on "paper profits" that resulted in worthless stock certificates, and the current imbroglio has tangible material assets behind it. Yep, but there was supposedly "real" assets behind RCA stock in 1929, too, but those assets were impossibly overvalued. Rather like some termite-riddled shack in Southern California being valued at an absurdly inflation million bucks before the bottom fell out this time. Some animated corpse in a suit once said that "An item is worth exactly what someone is willing to pay," or something to that effect.

Up to a certain time, the willingness of people who are ignorant of history, or the context of their own times, or just plain ignorant will persuade them to pay hugely inflated prices for something. Suddenly one morning it all looks like fantasy. Consult the great Dutch tulip bubble of the 17th century; it's only different because the subject was tulips, instead of stocks, real estate, gold, or baseball cards, or the armshells of the Trobriand Islands.

But this will simply recur as long as the human race exists, because it is based on what people want to believe.

It's All Right There.....

....in the media following the murders at UAH.

The relentless Monday-morning quarterbacks (even though they mention the fallacy) imply that something ought to have been done back in the day when the woman killed her brother. This, flying in the face of a lack of any details, and that every official (the officials whose job it is) declined to pursue charges in the case. Somehow, the enormity of what this person has done last week appears to mean she should be retroactively charged with her brother's murder....and the fallacy involved in this is not discussed further, of course.

Some elderly official, maybe the DA or sheriff, is interviewed and pressured to say he thinks "-maybe it should have been followed up more." Did he think so at the time? Interview doesn't ask that question. Why does he think so now? Ditto. This trails off into a series of nulls.

Now an assault case from the interim has been unearthed, in which our UAH shooter pled guilty to a simple assault (Note: no shooting or murder involved here!), and which immediately segues into the presumed failure (and thus presumption of a liablity) of UAH in not pursuing a detailed background search on the woman.

Even more interesting is the talking heads nibbling around the edges of the notion that this individual's whole life formed a pattern. What kind of pattern? We can only assume that the discovery of her previous life would have kept her out of UAH, so that she never would have gunned down her tenure committee.

But what if she were condemned by her record to wiping merchandise across a laser at Dollar General? What if, one day, being unable to get 40 hours and benefits, she brings in a box of poison donuts and feeds them to her coworkers? Presumably the death of people with only high school diplomas would not be as devastating a loss to society as the profs at UAH. Backward reasoning is called "backward" for a reason.

It can be taken even further. Such a pattern is clearly grounds for segregating this individual from society. Think of the children, for God's sake!

The media has already stirred up enough nonsense in this case that I'll allow only a 50% chance that she'll get the needle, even though it's in Alabama, and it's what her actions merit. A judgment of non compos mentis or some other mental disability, hauled from the turgid pages of DSMV-IV-TR, is much more likely. Then the blame can always be placed on some shrink for not diagnosing her, or for her not going to a shrink in the first place.....

An Honest Politician?

Setting aside my great reluctance to post the name of a politician, hats off to Senator Evan Bayh for jumping ship. I don't even know which party he's affiliated with, but he knows the system is broken.

Can politicians who just quit (Bayh had never been defeated in an election, and was considered the choice for re-election) force reform? In my opinion, no, because it's the career-obsessed that remain who will have to vote it in. Stalemate.

Comics as the new communication

As I was reading this comic, it occurred to me that it was going to be the second time in three posts that I would be employing the medium. On the other hand, it contains the best brief explanation of cancer I've read, along with the rationale for why research will continue.....

Define "Prescient"

Well, this is one definition, written in 1978. Nineteen seventy-eight:

Lipidleggin' by Paul F. Wilson

And here's another, probably better known:

Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut

This is where we're going, but it's hard to say exactly why. Since we have a representative government, I am forced to assume that in some fashion we've actually chosen to live out this nightmare, but that doesn't mean I understand it.

Why I Don't Watch News

This is worth viewing, even more so if you just generalize a lot of it as applying not just to science, but to ANY reporting.

This Country is Going Nuts

This is a compulsory blog, and I'll cut right to the chase: The United States of America is developing some sort of mass psychosis, which was moved into high gear by the events of 9/11, and manifests itself every time there is some -perceived- security incident.

It is very, very clear in the events surrounding the recent "airliner en route to Hawaii turns back" story.

Either there is something in this story that has not been reported, or we are going batshit as a nation.

"Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule."

- Friederich Nietzsche