The Brachiating Troglodyte

Contrarian Postings

2009-10-07T06:39:00.001-07:00

I'm predicting the rapid onset of a new Ice Age, an economic Double-Depression, and the end of the Tea-Baggers.

Get a lot of space at parties.

Prediction

2009-09-29T21:58:00.000-07:00

October also has its ides
And darkens on Samhain's night
When Dies de Muerto cometh nigh
Shall the world of Commerce die.

Taped to a Flagpole

2009-09-26T17:26:00.000-07:00

I'm amused and delighted to see the story of a drunk who stole property from the VFW and burnt it. The VFW members caught him, and he agreed to be taped to a flagpole for several hours, in lieu of court action.

The property was an American Flag. I hear it's one that was flown in combat.

The flag is not sacred. It was meaningful personal property, and the drunken perpetrator was treated entirely well, some clever justice done.

God save us from the thugs out there, though.

On the Legal Theory of Incarceration.

2009-09-20T06:55:00.001-07:00

The authority of the State and Federal Government to incarcerate is circumscribed by and contained within the Fourteenth Amendment:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The means by which life, liberty or property can be deprived includes that of delineated penalties for criminal acts, which are described before the fact by a legislature, and are levied upon a person by competent judicial action.
A court will describe a deprivation, usually that of liberty.
Deprivation of liberty is an awful thing, and carries with it implicit restrictions and other nuisances. Such a deprivation is so impeding upon the innumerable and various freedoms a person usually enjoys, so as to constitute a sorrowful and burdensome impediment. The effects of the penumbra of being deprived of one's liberty interest constitute the bulk of the punishment for its deprivation.
However, the State's incursion upon a criminal's rights is checked by the Ninth and Tenth Amendments:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Ninth Amendment

James Madison offered the following in description of this principle:

It has been objected also against a Bill of Rights, that, by enumerating particular exceptions to the grant of power, it would disparage those rights which were not placed in that enumeration; and it might follow by implication, that those rights which were not singled out, were intended to be assigned into the hands of the General Government, and were consequently insecure. This is one of the most plausible arguments I have ever heard against the admission of a bill of rights into this system; but, I conceive, that it may be guarded against. I have attempted it, as gentlemen may see by turning to the last clause of the fourth resolution.

Madison

The Tenth Amendment reads:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Tenth Amendment

The principles of sentencing in one particular action of law parallel these principles innately; those principles are drawn from these statements. A person can be deprived of a certain right; they cannot be deprived of rights not listed in the penalties assessed by action of legislature and judicial due process of law.
Liberty may be deprived by due process of law, and a person may be remanded to a certain place for a certain period of time. The place to which remanded may have penological regulations, which act in further durance upon one's otherwise-retained rights. But they cannot substantively encroach upon other retained rights to the degree that they functionally impair rights which are still retained.
One obvious test for retained rights is - could a legislature, or a court, have marked a certain right or liberty interest for impediment - but did not? That is the most obvious case. A penalty not given is to be considered withheld, unless otherwise evident.
The summit is deprivation of life. If a penalty does not deprive a person of life, then any State action which intentionally does so, violates the Fourteenth Amendment.

Brother's monologue, the Lazarus Man, cont'd.

2009-08-23T20:10:00.000-07:00

Brother paused, the rheumy, bruisy whites of his eyes showing a faint yellow, the yellow of Catholic-school bricks. Behind those eyes were the Medusa's hair in torment.

"They only had that night to put the fix on. Peter and Judas, He chose well - two of the bravest men in history. Peter took the physical torment - and Judas took the spiritual. Judas fingered him, and the Romans didn't know any better - and it gave the rest of them time to get away. Peter got sifted back into the story, himself denying the Lord three times - that was added in, to cover Peter's absence in the Big Fix."

"And Judas? He hanged himself on the tree, sure. And his last words - My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me? were immortalized as Jesus's, in tribute to Judas's bravery. But first, he divided his possessions among the disciples."

A teacher in the back of the lounge was quietly sobbing. Brother paused, surveying the absolute quiet with attentive scrutiny, as though testing a machete's blade with his thumb; and then continued.

"His possessions. His notes. Judas - he was Jesus's biographer. He was "Q." All the Gospels, the Synoptic Gospels, were by the hand of Judas, divided among the disciples, copies - sent out, that survived, even survived the great massacre of The Twelve. They just barely survived, through the narrow escape of a very few minor followers, survived by luck and a lot of running.."

"Think! Why were the Four Gospels written by nobodies? Not even members of the Twelve, but lesser disciples? For they were the ones during The Scattering, each writing as though he were the sole survivor, to cover up The Greatest Betrayal Ever. They all only differ in the ending - how much was added after the Night of the Desertion."

"Completed in partial fulfillment of a Ph.D. in Religious Studies, Gregorian Academy, the Vatican. That's what independent thought, and education gets you - that's what you want? It's best when the true intellect of mankind is few and far between. That, I am proud to say - that was my finest hour, when I submitted nine years of work, and was expelled. From there to here, is the rest of the path. And I am proud to bear the title of Student."

He ruffled his paper, went back to the NHL box scores as though he'd just recounted the Flyers game.

A Review of the Movie, "Lazarus Man"

2009-08-23T07:10:00.001-07:00

The award-winning movie "Lazarus Man," starring Barack Obama, typified the American mindset of the early century.

One of the pivotal scenes of the movie is described below.

Teacher's Lounge. Barack Obama is an idealistic young history teacher for Eighth Grade students. He is bewildered by the apathy of the teaching staff, and the absolute, immobile stupidity of the classes. He is speaking with one of the senior teachers.

O>I don't get it. You sit there and read the paper during every class, and give them nothing but thinly-veiled contempt - let them drift in and out of the room, talk, fight. You make no pretense to teach them. Why do they hate me more than they hate you?

It's because you suck as a shepherd, Obama. You bring the sheep out in the meadow, and torture them for your own selfish entertainment. At least get under a tree, get drunk and fall asleep. That's what good shepherds have done through the ages.

O>But I want to DO something - to make a DIFFERENCE in their lives.

Obama - you have come face to face with the soul of your species, and you don't like it. You don't like reality. THEY are reality. All a sheep really cares about is being next to the ass-hole of the nearest sheep. Anything else makes them scared.

O>But I was NOTHING like them when I was in school!

That's because you are a mistake, a genetic aberration. All of this shit about fresh-faced, eager young students looking for knowledge - those are the occasional and rare, the little blips that the race sends out every once in a while, to ask a question. The question is - "ARE WE INTELLIGENT BEINGS?" The answer is "NO." And you won't face reality for long enough to understand that. So you torture the sheep.

Every class has one or two of them, like you, every few years. The other students usually beat the shit out of them, for a good reason. They are dangerous to the herd. They might grow up and be like YOU.

O>I can't stand it. So we're supposed to sit back and produce ANOTHER generation that grows up, becomes miserable, gets drunk, lives for nothing, beats their wives and kids? Like we don't care?

As opposed to what, Barama? You have just described the character of our species - it's no difference than pointing out that sheep live in herds, bees in hives, that lions eat herbivores. That's what we do, by and large. It's the caring part - that's an alien idea, as foreign as though it came from Mars. Ask your class. Go ahead, you got balls? Ask them how to be a better teacher. They'll tell you to read the paper and leave them the fuck alone.

All you really are, Barama, is a spore of a bad idea, a terrible idea - that stuff that we teach right out of Civics 101, that Tom Jefferson horseshit. It's a lot better that they associate him with President's Day Sales Events, and Mount Rushmore, than the crap that you're peddling, that you have in your head.

You serve a useful function to society. You encapsulate those with the potential for bad ideas - your fellow fresh-faced idealists - and protect the herd from them. Think of your "greatest inspiration," your favorite teacher. He or she did society a favor. Look what happened to you. Look where YOU wound up with, you with your best ideas.

O>But I'm here to teach! To give somebody a chance!!

Whatever got you here - it protected the herd. You didn't go to a place where you could cause the greatest damage. People like Lenin and Hitler - they caused some serious damage to the herd. Not you. Thank God.

Every time, some fucker with a vision, some idealistic-minded asshole, gets up there - and usually he's psychopathic enough to snare a shitload of people in his delusion - a Believer. Every time some fucker like you gets into a dangerous position, the species takes a hit.

That's why Jesus walked on the deal. Took a dive. Willingly walked into the Wheel of Karma - more like a sawblade.

You like history, Obama? Here's this for you. All the contemporary Gospel literature was about the return of the Line of David. Jesus came down, and had the choice - go ahead with the plan, or face the reality of what He really created. He took the Dive. He walked on us. The whole rest of Christian literature is all about papering over that fact. He dumped us.

"All the New Jerusalem stuff? Not here, not on this planet, not with this mis-begotten species. It's all right there in the Bible, see? They had to do a little creative revision to get the story out that Jesus still loves us. They spun the Temptation by the Devil, and the story of the Three Tabernacles, out of the Gethsemane story. That's when he walked. The night before. It's all one story. He thought about becoming the New David for all of us - and he said, 'fuck it.'"

Doug French on the Bubble

2009-08-21T05:43:00.000-07:00

It's hard to be blindingly cynical every day. Read Doug French on the Bubble Economy in Mises (see also You Can't Print Prosperity for yux) - he'll carry the water today.

PS: How long do we have? Bill Sardi says until Tuesday. That's the big melt-down for him. I'm still going for October 17th.

Sardi, French, FDIC

On Animadversion

2009-08-18T06:52:00.001-07:00

An excerpt from a letter.

Thank you again for a wonderful essay, "Is There a Natural Anti-Liberty Mindset?" You draw near enough to a certain human skill which intrigues me deeply, that I thought I should share my observations on this common interest with you.

There is a certain capacity of the human mind, a fundamental skill of civilized survival, which I call "animadversion." It's a Latin word which has not been brought into English inaccurately; we use it as a pale shadow of its original meaning. It is the facility of drawing one's attention to an issue of interest for further scrutiny under the full energy of our reason, and all our intellectual skill. This psychological process is a necessary precursor of the application of reason to a particular item worth study.

We hint at it in concepts such as "distraction" and "inattention" and "concentration." I believe that it is a skill which is taught in all fine schools and by all fine teachers; and is generally not refined in American society, but perhaps indeed suppressed.

The principle comprises the finding of something worthy of the application of reason and common sense, and the perseverate ability to see it through until reason is exhausted, and the desired conclusion is discovered.

Ayn Rand was a dogged and fierce advocate of this process, and imbued it with a moral necessity in Atlas Shrugged and in other places. She ties it closely with the moral elements necessary seen in good character.

You refer to a thing called an "anti-liberty mindset," and consider whether it is a manner of thinking which is innate or learned. I would suggest that such things derive from a simple psychological process that is the enemy of animadversion; that is, the ability to halt the process of rational thought upon encountering a certain signal, like a "Stop Command" of a Turing calculating machine - Halt and End, do not proceed in thinking, you are done.

This facility is regrettably an element of many dogmas, and is eagerly trained in American society. If we are careless in a certain matter, is someone likely to be harmed? There are areas in which we permit ourselves persistence of attention, such that we might come to a more clear conclusion, and others in which we stop and go no further. It nears the concept of "denial," but is not exactly so.

Sometimes this occurs from simple intellectual flabbiness, the weakness and inexperience in the skill of following a thought through independently, regardless of consequences or approbation. Sometimes we see it in the other extreme, which is the conscious choice to distract the attention to other matters at hand.

There is something sluttish about this passivity, to be intellectually defiled and deviated with the feeblest of consent, the rational equivalent of "boredom sex." CS Lewis made great use of this characteristic of humans in "The Screwtape Letters," which are fictional examples of correspondence between devils, and using it as a manner of frustrating moral growth. A great, but insanely depressing read.

Our culture has refined intellectual passivity to the point that many people seek intellectual thralldom, disguised as "relief from stress," i.e. the stress of being intellectually alive. We get high, we gamble, we watch the Idiot Box or the InterSewer. We substitute intellectually vacant memes, mantras which we do not even have the character of will to repeat ourselves, preferring to receive them on the broadcast media.

Death Panels, Chandra Levy, Miss California, Tea Parties, Global Warming. These are all things which many people in our culture simply receive as pre-packaged thought bullets to be attended to. We are even encouraged to take these things up and arrive at the pre-directed conclusion which is expected of us, having become incredibly skilled in media nuance.

Michael Vick has a job with the Eagles - good or bad? We search our database, struggling with connotations and nuance. I have a dog, and like dogs, therefore I am supposed to say "BAD!" in an energetic and outraged fashion. Angelina Jolie, and what of her? Good or bad?

This suffices for intellectual life for many members of our civilization, as near to being on life-support as anyone might wish to be. I would have the plug pulled, myself.

I would say that the capacity is perhaps innate - no more foreign to us, than the ability to draw our attention to things of greater urgency that suddenly present itself. A hominid lost in thought during a tiger attack, is a hominid less likely to survive. We have psychological conditions, such as "obsessive-compulsive disorder" where a person's ability to turn their attention this way and that under their own volition, has become impaired.

But it is only a primitive skill, which needs refinement - or expungement, as our society earnestly strives for. Stubborn attention to detail is not a particular hallmark of American civilization, and greatly to its detriment. I recommend reading some of John Taylor Gatto's writing on teaching to see an exploration of the matter; and also "Teaching as a Subversive Activity" by Postman and Weingardner - and old and deeply flawed book, but containing brilliance nonetheless.

You offer the wonderful paragraph:

"Is there a natural anti-liberty mindset? No, there is not. Children want to ask questions, to explore, to experiment, and to think. People truly want charity, or as that word is also understood, kindness and love. In such an environment, liberty flourishes. But there is an artificial anti-liberty mindset promoted incessantly by all things state, and by all things political. It can be rejected, combated, and I hope, destroyed. The first step is to recognize that the anti-liberty mindset is not natural – in spite of the state’s sustained and subtle messages to the contrary."

I'm sure that you understand FAR more than I do the utilitarian purposes of installing these mind-stops into people, well-demonstrated in the military. Humans, left to their own devices, do very human things, such as run away in combat; a tendency which leads to poor outcomes in military things. The Italians and French now bear the banner of this egregious habit, and the military strives to suppress it. Thankfully, the groundwork has been well-laid in the first eighteen years, making the advanced training much easier.

It is perhaps ironic that the very first thing which MUST be learned in military training is how to surrender - completely, abjectly, totally surrender.

The capacity to turn one's mind away without a struggle is the very antithesis of Libertarian understanding of civilization and humanity. Rarely is it clearly spoken of - although Ayn Rand brought it forth at the very start of her writings, and called it "Anti-Life." I think it deserves further discussion, as one of the most profound ideas which have harmed mankind.

Upon the void

2009-08-16T06:57:00.000-07:00

terra autem erat inanis et vacua et tenebrae super faciem abyssi et spiritus Dei ferebatur super aquas.

And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved over the waters.

There is beauty here.

On the Tragedy of American Economic Ignorance.

2009-08-15T15:27:00.001-07:00

Our country is burdened with an understanding of economics at a level of sophistication as that of the Four Humours in physiology.

Dollars go around, from butcher to baker to candlestick maker, and from every transaction of funds some magic sprinkles come forth and drives "the economy." Interesting, this approach suffices for Governmental understanding; every transaction carries for the potential for taxation elicited from every exchange. No real economic sophistication is needed from the Government side - just tax every transaction, and act to maximize the rate of transactions.

There is no concept of an actual value being produced - and again, from a Government revenue standpoint, there is no need to do so. Wasteful spending and useful spending are the same. The FAILURE to spend is a great wrong from the Government's distant vista upon the scene.

The quantity of exchange is equal to the amount of money in motion times the velocity of that money. The quantity of exchange is usually unaffected by the money supply. In the instance that there is insufficient money in circulation, to the degree that it has an impact upon transactions, one would see the slowing of transactions, and the increase in the value of money, that would be, deflation. This is a normal course of the slow improvement in productivity by means of innovation; it is rarely seen in its raw form. In this case, other fungeable assets would be drawn in to act as money; also, the value of credit would increase. When sufficient money exists, the incremental profitability of credit would drop to below zero, and credit would usually be avoided.

In the situation where there is an abundance of money, its velocity is low, although the total exchange number is unchanged. The value of money is low; the value of credit is low, and borrowing is cheap but fruitless. The incremental profitability on borrowing is almost universally negative.

From a Government position, increasing the supply of money acts as "fool's credit" - the longer you hold it, the more you lose. Therefore, the rate of increase of the supply shows an increase in the quantity of exchange, and makes "the economy" appear to improve. That is why Governments claim that economic slowdowns are due to "sluggish business" - savers are saving, supposedly because the supply of money is contracting, and money is itself an investment which accrues value. Simply arresting this process brings one effortlessly out of a depression. A splendid, elegant,wrong and noxious answer.

A Small Essay Endorsing the Killing of Grandma

2009-08-15T08:42:00.001-07:00

In the spirit of Swift, I wish to offer the endorsement of the principle now under earnest debate in the American public and press - the killing of Grandma.

Euthanasia involves the deliberate termination of an innocent life. We use the supposition of "innocence" to distinguish this act from lawful homicide, which is the express provenance of the criminal court system.

Using the principles of "innocent until proven guilty," therefore, one is led to suppose that Grandma's termination is a "mercy killing," not some sort of State administered punishment.

Let us assume, for sake of argument, that Grandma is about seventy years old. She would have been born in the period of the Great Depression I, around 1935-1940 and grew up with three major influences in her young life; the Great Depression (I), World War II, and the Cold War. Grandma knew of matters such as civilization, and its ability to cause and cure suffering.

She was then given as an unmerited gift, great abundance, success and opportunity beyond her wildest dreams. Women of her childhood had little opportunity; she had more than even the children of the wealthy did in her parents' generation. She was educated, dressed, and respected in a manner unheard of in her parents' generation.

And regrettably, it spoiled her. Grandma caught perhaps a glimpse in her youth of a future based upon the pillars of Prosperity, Freedom and Abundance - and then spent the rest of her years of ability spurning the future, and spending it into penury. "I'm Spending My Children's Inheritance!" read her bumper sticker (no longer seen, as it might provoke vandalism.)

She allowed her country to do things and become things which were shameful, shocking and sorrowful in earlier days. She crafted a system for medical care and financial support for her retirement - and then pulled up the gang-plank for later generations, which would be spent into penury by waste and abuse.

She shrieked about "Government involvement" and then cashed her Federal Paycheck.

She raised two generations of snot-faced descendants unschooled in the ways of the Republic, the manners of civilization, and like her, immersed in selfishness and greed.

And now, her uncivilized and irrational crew, illiterate and innumerate, cannot understand anything of the law but what is told to them by lunatics on the radio, such as Father Coughlin, only without even HIS scruples.

And we are asked to argue for Grand-ma's life by those who cannot tell the difference between an Extermination Panel and an end-of-life conversation with a physician?

Mene, mene, tekel, uparsim. You are what you bring forth, grandma. The petard upon which you are hoisted, is your own. If you have now a State which will endorse euthanasia - in a generation which accepts military torture and the killing of civilian noncombatants - you should perhaps fear what you have wrought.

(PS: No Grandmas were actually harmed in the writing of this essay.)

pro-euthanasia

Ovine Thunder

2009-08-14T06:03:00.001-07:00

The loathsome Teabaggers are at it again, pretending that clamans turbae is somehow an element of American government. Remember, the Crowd and its mind and manipulation was one of the stunning tools of Lenin and Hitler, indeed.

Simpering about in petulant premise that yowling pre-purchased slogans constitutes protest, they wander into Town Meetings and such, acting the faithful stooge the same as many Baby Boomers did, when they "protested" in a manner prescribed and underwritten by that leech upon the Left, the Soviets. Bought and paid for then, the signs pre-made for them, the phrases pre-packaged and sold, they pretended that they were acting independently - but as an interchangeable mob.

It is a horrible thing to see, when Americans consider being a stooge to be the summit of their capacity as citizens.

And nearly all the man, every one of them, would trade their protest over "healthcare" to become a functionary on a "neighborhood life panel," which will speak forth The People's Vote on the end-of-life decisions of its citizenry, ne'er mind the doctors or hospitals or family, We! Love! Life! and will spin out the mortal skein past Atropos' grim hand, for the wreck of brain-dead citizens, derelict of soul. It will be The People's Vote! Yes! That way, we keep Government Out Of Healthcare!

As essays before have shown, the Average American has become a herd animal - defined as he who gets nervous if not in full view of the ass-hole of the neighboring herdmate. Packed in to the center, that's the key, that's the safety; out on the edges, that's where the wolves can see you. Hardly the mind of patriots.

It is not necessary to speculate upon a puppetmaster; perhaps it is in the Mind of the Herd itself, the Group Consciousness.

"Controlling Grandma's Life!" HAW! The Great Depression II has only begun, and if Grand-Ma starves to death on a Plains hovel - as happened to thousands during the Dust Bowl - is that a better death? They chase moonbeams, and will not see what is plainly before them.

Such crowds offer the pretense of independence and spontaneity - but rather, they are most closely akin to the "All-Textile Workers' Spontaneous Demonstration of Support for Peasant Soviet Power!" Bullshit, that is.

Not even the bravery of the Light Brigade; more like a stampede of sheep herded by a clever dog.

You had me at "DUH!" When Americans chose stupidity over independent thought, that was the Cardinal Sin of a citizen. It should be our Official American Slogan. DUH.

teabagger

die Errinerungenslied

2009-08-13T21:55:00.000-07:00

Perhaps now is the time.
Seamus Choice, then, pestered me, that walleyed stoat, in his excursy into things of dream and lyric marvel. Maybe the run of Quamalth Av through swerve of shore and Ben Dabaigh, bringth us naigh up to Lake Street, where Monkey Suit Murphy adds his nacent follicle to the Song of Deborah that calleth nach from Aoidē. Such things. Earwicker. Ha. Of the Hullen of Cu, werd id ast vergass, to find at least the cycle of remembrance.

What creatures are we? Neanderthal and Cruans.

2009-08-13T06:10:00.000-07:00

From Correspondence.
I strongly agree with the idea of libertarianism prevailing under evolutionary pressure. Whatever folks might say to fuss about the history of evolution, this is a matter of early anthropology, and it's reasonable to say that the more successful tends to prevail.

I'll go with the "really slow murder rate" still. I think of the issue of aggregates of advanced mammals as "pack vs. herd." Packs collide aggressively for dominance; herds just freely merge and separate. The hypothesis I offer about "Homo sapiens cruans" is that we were pack-type animals, like wolves. We see other tribes as threats, and fight them. This was the mechanism of our separation into what we later called "races." When packs aggressively collide, they would tend to act like little genetic islands.

I imagine that Neanderthals were mostly like herd animals - they were constitutionally blind towards the "us vs. them" concept, which is a big lose when colliding with people who act on the pack structure.

So, the Neanderthals were perhaps more "socialist," as the wildebeest and sheep and other grazing animals are more socialist. They are attuned to move in bulk, and have simple societies. Modern humans were more predisposed to acting in small packs; and for humans, this appears to be a huge evolutionary advantage when leaving Africa and going out into unsettled terrain, as was hypothesized to have occurred 50,000 to 100,000 years ago. Pack animals collide and separate; and when there's a whole Earth to be populated, rapidly "subspeciate" into tribal and racial groups.

When the Earth was carpeted by human settlement, the pack approach continued. The genetic predisposition towards tribalism remained. (The Neanderthals had already long ago got put out of the running.) Perpetual conflict and tribalism gave way to methods of interrelations between tribes, more so in other places. The ability to suppress the tendency to scrap with foreigners gave way to the need to trade with them. Civilization and commerce have always been intertwined.

With good or bad elements, we are left with the ultimate endpoint of tribalism - "the tribe of one," the individual. Many schemes have been put in place to aggregate humans into herds, and move them about as though they were interchangeable. This doesn't work for our species.

You cite some countries which are profoundly non-Socialist; in fact, anti-Socialist - USSR and Cuba, also North Korea - which are (or were) ruled over by absolute Alpha Males, with the power of life and death, terror over the lesser animals.

I offer that tribalism no longer acts to our benefit; and herd socialism is simply not in our animal nature, in the way that the lion cannot lie down with the lamb (or like Woody Allen said, the lamb will not get good sleep.) It is only with a new principle, which does not see us as mere elements of tribe or herd, but unique individuals, that can lead to our advancement and prosperity.

A big yes on this: "As a prediction, if there comes a new species of humans even more bent on commerce, they will eventually replace us." We're trying to prevail over genetic predispositions by intelligent behavior - and if we can hold out long enough, eventually the genetics will succumb, given a few tens of millennia.

Bill Bonner and his ugly truths.

2009-08-12T06:49:00.000-07:00

Bill Bonner writes such awful stuff. The only thing it has going for it, is that it's almost certainly true. Other than that, it's got no value.

Household debt as a percentage of disposable income hit a low of about 2% just at the end of WWII. It’s been going up ever since. By 2005 it nudged against 15% – seven times higher than it had been 60 years earlier. Household debt represents spending that has been taken from the future. But you can’t take an infinite amount from future earnings. You reach a point when the future can’t handle it. As more and more future earnings are absorbed by past consumption, pretty soon there’s not enough left to live on. At some point, so much of earnings are devoted to paying the interest and principle on past borrowings that the poor householder cannot to pay his expenses. And imagine what happens if his disposable income goes down.

I'm turning him in to the Happy Thought Brigade.

Das Großenkreuz der Physik.

2009-08-11T07:33:00.001-07:00

All you ever need to know about classical physics,

is included in this one little expression.

The first is in one dimension, the second is in R3:

This can also be called The Great Chi of

Classical Physics. Absolutely everything in

the "first year physics" course can be so described.

physics, momentum, gradient, energy

How American Healthcare will die.

2009-08-11T06:06:00.000-07:00

The simple assumption underlying America's approach to healthcare is that the market price is wrong. In any market where one adjusts prices for these sorts of reasons, there is either a glut or a deficiency. Here, if the assumption that the market price is too high, one will produce deficiencies.

The underlying assumption, which is not entirely wrong, is that there is a price-fixing cabal which is driving the prices up "faster than inflation." This is an assumption which discards other reasons for price increases - that efficiency is lowered opposite the general trend over time where innovation decreases costs; or that inflation drives prices up artificially. The cabal might well be the government-industry tangle which has been forced upon the healthcare market. This is getting treated with Steroids now, being bulked up.

One element which I believe to be central is that "inflation" and the "healthcare CPI" are one and the same. There are other things in the artificial "CPI index" which cause it to be reported as abnormally LOW. Several economists, such as John Williams on Shadowstats, believe that inflation is actually MUCH higher than reported. Until 2009, the decade's inflation rate has been about 6% - which brings us to about 60% in constant dollars to what we had in 2000.

And efficiency IS lowered - not because healthcare is a free-market commodity, but precisely the opposite. Few people realize that much of physicians' reimbursements are set by Medicare already. The private insurers then negotiate reimbursement as a Percentage of Medicare. Doctors salaries are adjusted politically by measure of the mean state income and "costs" in the various states.

We pretend that lowering price and raising demand will force the innovators to improve quality. The system is seen as burdened by overhead and profit-taking. Overhead cannot be signficantly improved until such things as internal auditing, measuring and "efficiency charting" are reduced. That will not happen.

It takes a certain bit of punitive and harsh attitude to ram changes through at the expense of a certain sector. There is certainly that sort of ire against American healthcare now, and it has been simmering for a long time.

Unfortunately, "punishing healthcare to make it better" is likely to fail.

healthcare, economics

If Fascism is Love, is Mentoring Hatred?

2009-08-09T15:21:00.001-07:00

John T. Gatto has a dreadful impertinence, an intellectual Tourette's syndrome, blurting things like this out:

It is the great triumph of schooling that among even the best of my fellow teachers, and among even the best parents, there is only a small number who can imagine a different way to do things. Yet only a very few lifetimes ago things were different in the United States: originality and variety were common currency; our freedom from regimentation made us the miracle of the world; social class boundaries were relatively easy to cross; our citizenry was marvelously confident, inventive, and able to do many things independently, to think for themselves. We were something, all by ourselves, as individuals.

It only takes about 50 contact hours to transmit basic literacy and math skills well enough that kids can be self-teachers from then on. The cry for "basic skills" practice is a smokescreen behind which schools pre-empt the time of children for twelve years and teach them the six lessons I've just taught you.

We've had a society increasingly under central control in the United States since just before the Civil War: the lives we lead, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, and the green highway signs we drive by from coast to coast are the products of this central control. So, too, I think, are the epidemics of drugs, suicide, divorce, violence, cruelty, and the hardening of class into caste in the U.S., products of the dehumanization of our lives, the lessening of individual and family importance that central control imposes.
Without a fully active role in community life you cannot develop into a complete human being. Aristotle taught that. Surely he was right; look around you or look in the mirror: that is the demonstration.

"School" is an essential support system for a vision of social engineering that condemns most people to be subordinate stones in a pyramid that narrows to a control point as it ascends. "School" is an artifice which makes such a pyramidal social order seem inevitable (although such a premise is a fundamental betrayal of the American Revolution). In colonial days and through the period of the early Republic we had no schools to speak of. And yet the promise of democracy was beginning to be realized. We turned our backs on this promise by bringing to life the ancient dream of Egypt: compulsory training in subordination for everybody.

Compulsory schooling was the secret Plato reluctantly transmitted in the Republic when he laid down the plans for total state control of human life.

The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher, John Taylor Gatto

Perhaps this explains why our society is all so fragile about the risks of sexual predation of children - deferring the issue of intellectual predation.

I've wondered so long about why my education didn't get me further - it wasn't intended to.

The first lesson I teach is: "Stay in the class where you belong."
The second lesson I teach kids is to turn on and off like a light switch.
The third lesson I teach you is to surrender your will to a predestined chain of command.
The fourth lesson I teach is that only I determine what curriculum you will study.
In lesson five I teach that your self-respect should depend on an observer's measure of your worth.
In lesson six I teach children that they are being watched.

Perhaps that is what is so disquieting about President Obama - he was the ultimate achiever within the system, and White folks don't know what blue contacts are for, exactly, nor what an Oreo means - but somehow fear them nonetheless.

What is wrong with these Libertarians?

2009-08-09T08:40:00.001-07:00

They are the oddest of fellows - these libertarians, and the anarchists, the minarchists. Has something gone wrong with their mental biochemistry, that makes them embrace such odd perspectives? Aren't these the sort of radical whackadoodles that Mother warned about?

One can easily forget, now that the public is offered uninterrupted strains of normative and abnormal behavior, all but with subtitles on how to behave - that how people think is exactly that and no more - how people think. We seem to allow whoever wishes to assert authority, the prerogative of confrontation - to demand a person demonstrate that their beliefs are conformist, benign, permissible. Queer beliefs, literally and figuratively, are permitted. but one must accept one's queerness - the ultimate arrogance shown in the Stonewall Riots, when Americans stood up and said - I am who I am, what of it to you?

I swipe several quotes from an essay Personal Choices Under Corporate-State Rule, written by a nutcase who renounced his US citizenship out of free will and sound mind - if that, by definition, is not a paradox:

The State can only survive as long as a majority [of the citizenry] is mentally programmed to believe that theft is not wrong if it is called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping is not wrong if it is called arrest, that mass murder is not wrong if it is called war. ~ Bill St. Clair
It is time for people to understand that governments not only are not necessary, but are harmful and most highly immoral institutions, in which a self-respecting honest man cannot and must not take part, and the advantages of which he cannot and should not enjoy. ~ Leo Tolstoy
He or she who supports a State organized in a military way – whether directly or indirectly – participates in sin. Each man takes part in the sin by contributing to the maintenance of the State by paying taxes. ~ Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

What is wrong with these people?

Wicked, wicked reality & the Guru.

2009-08-08T07:32:00.000-07:00

And wicked, wicked Mogambo Guru for harshing my buzz horribly, with his column, Nixon and Exchanging Dollars for Gold. He's gone and crapped up my average-American moonbuzz that "I'm doing just fine," when actually, the government is pouring the same stuff into the economy as it pours into trade-in clunkers to make them never run again.
He quotes the equally-wicked Bill Downey, who offered the following comparison, of "How Much things cost on Aug 15th, 1971" to what they cost today:

Dow Jones Industrial Average 890 or 25 oz. gold in 1971, versus 9,000 or 10 oz. gold today. 40%
Average Cost of new house $25,250 or 721 oz. gold in 1971, versus 250,000 or 277 oz. gold today. 40%
Average Income per year $10,600 or 302 oz. gold in 1971, versus $70,000 or 77 oz. gold today. 25%
Average Monthly Rent $150 or 4.3 oz. of gold in 1971, versus $824 or 1 oz. of gold today. 23%
Datsun 1200 Sports Coupe $1,866 or 53 oz. gold in 1971, versus $28,400 or 31 oz. gold today. 60%

There's a bunch of reasons why these things can change. Stuff such as houses can be made relatively cheaper per-unit, either by technological improvements in construction (allowing them to be performed by drunk illegals rather than union carpenters,) and also decreasing the quality of the stuff used. Ditto rental units.

The reason that Detroit took the Final Suck, IMHO, is that wages decreased faster than the cost-per-auto. The 'bama's would agree with this, but shooting one's self in the foot is not the solution.

The major reason that the Washington Whorehouse hasn't gone off the rails before - say, during Cap Weinberger's FuckAmerica policy when we deceided that Military Keynesianism was the way to go - was the silent boom in certain areas, including computers and information technology. Were Washington not leeching away the value as fast as technology could improve it, we'd be sitting on a pretty high place, indeed. The Dow might actually be 9,000 but with real money!

Back around 1980, Americans realized that the jig was up on pooled capital investment, and bailed out of bank savings accounts. They were persuaded that Equity Rocks! which it does, when you want to put money at higher risk. Even with thirty years of Government policy of driving capital out of the long-term investment market - like dull old corporate bonds - IT managed to accrue enough capital - by playing with IPO's and such things - to blast into the stratosphere. (If you don't believe me, whip out your old Atari from 1990 and play with your grand-son.)

But we got deluded into thinking that the IPO shenanigans CREATED wealth, not just shuffled it into productivity. The "dot-com-bust" showed that capital could be mal-invested even when the streets were paved with gold. Note that the "dot-com-bust" didn't stop computer technology, did it?

The ONLY thing that vaguely resembled the accumulation of wealth through innovation in manufacture - the computer industry - hasn't shown up its true effect, which was a forty-year boom equivalent to the post-Civil War Industrial Revolution. That's because we've pissed away the productivity into Governmental crap, including military bases on any place that shows up on a satellite map. We burn off 50% of today's crude oil imports in the Department of Defense. What's that do to the price?

Anyhow. When the IT boom matures, we're in for the rolloff-bust of a lifetime. It may nbe a short lifetime. This explains why many societies become comfortable - and then abruptly collapse. They come across some innovations which are cash-cows for financing an increasingly nonproductive society. When the cash cow suddenly expires (or matures), there isn't any money tree any more. Kabam.

You don't believe me? Here's DEPRESSING. The world lost the recipe for making Concrete, for God's sake, between the end of the Roman Empire, and about 1600. Feeble, eh?
PS: The Guru's such a mean grump, I've decided to send him a picture that will turn him into a foolish optimist. Just wait....ah, here it is.

military Keynesianism

More Fountains of Gibberish from the Journal

2009-08-06T09:53:00.000-07:00

Lord, Lord, that human blowsack Karl Rove weighs in at the Wall Street Journal

Americans are now seeing the damage that polls and focus groups can inflict on White House decision-making. President Barack Obama is no longer shaping the public dialogue on health-care reform. Instead, he is losing control of his agenda and resorting to rhetorical tricks and evasions.

What in hell's that supposed to mean? Obama is turning healthcare reform into nonsense by listening to Americans, and Americans should do something about it? In the first paragraph, his own argument bit itself in the ass, and died.

Tax-and-spend liberalism doesn’t work, no matter how pretty its package.

When it's wrapped up like the Bush Administration, even the dog won't play with it, either.

The WSJ also offers the following gloomy graph, shown at the right. It describes the future gap from 2014 until 2029, as though it were are real as "borrowing from our children and grandchildren!"
Don't worry, folks. We'll be mighty well into the Euthanasia Bandwagon by the time 2020 comes around, if that's the picture of "healthcare" after the next few years.
We seem to have a bit of the "second train" paradox. You're tied to the railroad tracks, it's 9:55, and a train comes every hour, on the hour. You absolutely don't need to be concerned about the 11:00 train, nor the noontime express; by then, there is nothing worse that can happen to you.
Assumpsit global warming. By then, what are the chances that our economy, now in ballistic free-fall, will even be able to sustain carbon emissions? Don't worry about it.

Arthur Laffer writes some interesting commentary:

The health-care wedge is an economic term that reflects the difference between what health-care costs the specific provider and what the patient actually pays. When health care is subsidized, no one should be surprised that people demand more of it and that the costs to produce it increase. Mr. Obama’s health-care plan does nothing to address the gap between the price paid and the price received. Instead, it’s like a negative tax: Costs rise and people demand more than they need....
Thus, health-care reform should be based on policies that diminish the health-care wedge rather than increase it. Mr. Obama’s reform principles—a public health-insurance option, mandated minimum coverage, mandated coverage of pre-existing conditions, and required purchase of health insurance—only increase the size of the wedge and thus health-care costs.

What he has to say is regrettably true. Healthcare will follow the path that college loans have taken over the last twenty years - driving college "costs" through the roof.

Rupert's Rag seems to dwell on everything BUT the coming crisis. Most folks - except Laffer - are worrying about the Second Train.

By this fall, nobody will care - the first train's a comin'

Kristos, or Kronos?

2009-08-02T21:31:00.000-07:00

The longer I live, the more that the Little Rabbi amazes me, and that his words have persisted untouched throughout what we consider to be Western Civilization. If the Apocalypse comes, like Jefferson, I fear for my country. For about all we have done is pray to God that he punish and destroy his other children, which makes us no more honorable than Cain, nor virtuous than Kronos, Saturn in the pantheon of evil, painted below left in Goya's bleakest days of painting..
The little Rabbi over and over reminded us that there is nobody, there is nothing too small for His God. In fact, they are the ones most in need of Him, and precious to him.
I show a close-up of the American Girl who suffered. photographed by Dorothea Lange, and shown in the last post. If there is indeed a God, then He knows her name. Does he know the rest of us?
And who is our God - Christ, or Chronos?

Zehn Wöchen davor.

2009-08-02T21:03:00.001-07:00

The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit-and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation.

John Steinbeck

And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

By God, say I, we have forgotten it, all of it, and that which Santayana always prophesied came true. I feel like a fox gone to lair with the danger, ten weeks now until the great depression, die Zauberflaute comes off the horizon like a wrathful God. We cannot run, and neither can we hide. It is terrible, what is to come. I think I have put the basics together, apart from being a survivalist. But it comes.

I feel oddly like die Fastenzeit kommt, times two - forty days in the desert, and then forty more. The second of what may be as many as fourteen economic earthquakes is on the way; we have only seen the first. WE will be serious, only for a little while, on the next crash. In 78 days, 2,106 hours, 126,360 minutes, then we will be a different people.

One lesson learned is that oranges must not be destroyed, nor pigs slaughtered, in front of the hungry. We now, much more clever in such things, hide it nicely in such things as the "Cash for Clunkers" CAR Allowance Rebate System (CARS)

Your vehicle must be less than 25 years old on the trade-in date
Only purchase or lease of new vehicles qualify
Generally, trade-in vehicles must get 18 or less MPG (some very large pick-up trucks and cargo vans have different requirements)
The program requires the scrapping of your eligible trade-in vehicle, and that the dealer disclose to you an estimate of the scrap value of your trade-in. The scrap value, however minimal, will be in addition to the rebate, and not in place of the rebate.

That last part, that's where the pigs are slaughtered. The purpose is to raise the price of vehicles, along with sales, by creating an artificial shortage of used cars.
My friend's car, which burns a quart of oil every 100 miles because the rings are shot, does NOT qualify.
A one-year-old HUMVEE which someone can't make the payments on, DOES.

The goal is to kill all the rolling stock of used vehicles - but quietly slaughtered, must less messily than horses. I pay to relieve the lessee of a car which he cannot afford, the cost of unsaleable pigs, which in modern terms is a Hummer or F-350. I watch the slaughter, which I have paid for.

Zehn Wöchenen davor. My people came here out of the Dust Bowl, suffering. They stayed, and did what they thought they could do, to prevent another great depression, but it came back. It is coming.

They knock at this door. This time?

Land of the Famous, Home of the Handsome.

2009-08-02T10:21:00.000-07:00

One of the reason that this country's on the Express train to hell, driven by the mass of the citizenry, Cons and Libs alike, is the worship of the Nobility. Here in America, it's not Charles and Di, but Brangelina.

A Republic simply flourishes without a pecking order, a social rank. If the President is merely "Mr. President," as that low-brow radical Washington started off the tradition with, and if public servants are, well, public servants, then the Republic is in good stead.

I offer the following from correspondence. The following is in response to an opinion piece on the evils of Socialized Medicine.

You offer a powerful MORAL article about socialism. Consider also the one that makes it more attractive to Americans - the esthetic argument.

We propose to give to the beautiful, by means of theft from the ugly. America is a celebrity-based society, and we worship the beautiful people. This even extends to beautiful things, such as the polar bear, which is in danger of extinction, and the dolphin and the tiger - all aesthetically-selected creatures, not the horsetail and whipworm and sea cucumber, which may well be in the same danger, but are ugly-ass suckers.

The sixteen-hour operation to separate the Siamese Twins, that's one of the greatest mediamedicine shows, costing - somebody? - hundreds of thousands of dollars. If we pool our money, we can pay for these blockbuster shows, at the expense of the rural Alabama kid with Down's Syndrome, and HER need for surgery on an annular pancreas.

The paradox of Socialism is that the "somebody" who pays for it, is usually the powerless. Not the Park Avenue tobacco heiress in her endangered-species furs; no, that's the bait. The switch is to the "citizen." Socialism depends on there being a lowest-rank called "citizen." It's society's loser. In the Soviet Union, you were called "citizen" when you were convicted of a felony - no more "comrade" for you!

It means the sacrifice for the Visible by the Invisible, the Named by the Nameless, the Party Member by the prole. The nobility, in what ever form that society creates it, has a RIGHT to be free of need; and it is the prole who fills that need. Some folks like Jefferson and Madison found that sort of thinking revolting - literally.

And it is always uncouth and Philistine to say - screw the famous! F-off and die, you powerful! Why is it my duty, to care for the rich and famous - why is Katie Couric's brother or Oprah's postman's son more important than my alcoholic brother who lives in the trailer, whom I support?

That's an aesthetic approach to socialism.

All we ever do is change the measure of ranking. Gay men who smoke, in San Francisco, have not changed in their social loathesomness from 1950 to today. Think of that!

We are always proud of our "changes in tolerance," i.e. our shifting of the social order. But few even question the fundamentals of social order itself.

But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

Thomas Jefferson

I can never pass by Jefferson with simply one quote. We now live in tyranny, the Golem our own creation; with the blame upon our selves, and no excuse that we are unwarned.

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.
If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.
Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms (of government) those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

TweakAmerica! The Miracle of the Recovery of 2009

2009-08-02T09:55:00.000-07:00

Hey tweakers! This recovery's for YOU!

Methamphetamine is a slam-dunk beauty of analogy for this here economic recovery.

Let's run through a few facts on both, which are damn useful.
Methamphetamine is a stimulant drug. The body has some natural regulation on its functions and states, and alertness is one of these systems, coordinated by the RAS (reticular activating system) of the brainstem. When your body sends out signals of fatigue at the end of heavy use, you get snoozy, and will go to sleep, no matter what.

The Frontal Lobes, the site of rational analysis, gets pissed-off sometimes at the rest of the brain for bringing out compelling signals which make the frontal lobes feel like they're being bossed around. Even the focus of will cannot shut out the demands of the rest of the brain - ask anyone who's fallen asleep driving, and survived.

The frontal lobes takes on an idea similar to Socialism regarding the rest of the neurons, and figures that it ought to be boss - that there is an entirely RATIONAL approach to body management, which should preponderate over the largely-irrational other parts of the brain, which work mainly on urges.

Thus, the miracle of meth. Just about anyone in good health can work a 16-hour shift, stay up and party all night, and stay awake a good part of the next day, with or without meth. But the tweaker can do some meth along the way, work ANOTHER 16-hour shift AND party the next night, AND wake up again..... for a long god-damn time.

The Reticular Activating system is all fuddy-duddy and conservative about this stuff, and calls for a snooze FAR before the body's run completely out of fuel. It's like topping off the tank every time it reaches 3/4 full, and the frontals luxuriate over their new-found power.

Unfortunately, the Lockeans are just as right on brain chemistry as on politics - power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

What about the overwhelming exhaustion? Later, deal with it later. Methamphetamine is simply life on brain credit. Every day of tweakin' is a day without "depression," the slow-down when nothing much happens. And what you don't maintain, you burn out. The "meth system" of excessive activity was designed as a temporary override during emergencies; meth just locks it on, full-time.

What we're doing to the economy, is actually identical to what the tweaker's brain does with meth.

We pretend that we're smart enough to jam it into overdrive for a while, using credit the same as crystal. When we had our "credit crisis" recently, it was simply the same as the tweaker's going "over the top" into the slide and crash which accompanies the meth binge after a week or two of non-stop power use. The edict "don't save money, spend it!" is just the same as "don't sleep when you can tweak!"

The actual Meth Economy itself is pretty similar to the stimulus, too. On classical terms, meth boosts the economy. People working relatively unwanted jobs - those with crappy pay and low skills, which shows that they are marginal jobs barely adding any product for commercial transaction - create a flurry of activity in the economy, which allows them to work long shifts at the meat plant, at the price of their physical well-being, but f**k it, it's money. The dollars spin around inside or out of the USA, for meth manufacture, rolling hundreds of thousands of dollars through hands which have formerly worked at twice minimum wage. In classical Keynesian terms, the meth economy IS RECOVERY writ large.

However, when one looks at commerce as the bringing of a useful product to market, it sucks. Nothing about meth manufacture, distribution, sales or use puts a warm blanket on a kid, or a hot meal, or a better roof over their heads. That's the measure of "useful" in an economy. Meth simply drains what could have been gainful production, and rolls it into the shitter.

So, what's the fate of the green shoots we're seeing? They're just the product of increased productivity as a result of continued spending of investment capital into malinvestments, caused by an overly optimistic assessment of the economic future. In other words, we just lit off another chunk of meth, and we're READY TO ROCK AGAIN! for the second show. But as for sustainable economic recovery?

Smile when you ask that question, bubba....

On Love and Fascism, Part 2

2009-07-31T08:30:00.001-07:00

I am both impressed by the chops this idea has - and a little edgy and nervous - where were the great thinkers about dystopia and fascism on this? Orwell didn't have a smidge of love in the book, other than by cruel irony, the Ministry. Zamyatin (We) didn't touch on emotion, but rather reason. And Huxley? Don't remember him chatting about it.

And where was Freud, the Grandmaster of Love, when the Nazi's arose? This was all his stuff, they played in HIS stadium. I'll have to look up ol' Siggie, he may have shizzled on this.

In Case You Don't Get It

2009-07-30T07:59:00.001-07:00

The matter of the Arrest of Gates by Crowley dismays me terribly. The privacy issues alone are worth discussion. However, the case shows the absolute inability of the American People at large to detect bullshit whatsoever. Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire is indeed fascism run amok.
But the American people first need to attune themselves to Reality and Reason before they can handle such things as discussion of an arrest. The Real World is inglorious, and the call on the case was made by Gates and Crowley, two pissed-off fellows trying to navigate the world as best they could.
The dangers of fascism do not come from the stoop of a Harvard residence. It runs deeper, and is far more our fault than we wish to admit.

Here is the fundmental linguistic form of fascism.

(subject) should be (qualitative) (characteristic.)

Negroes should be more respectful.
Police should be less racist.

Any time that a missive is entered to THEM, and a subjunctive form of the indirect order is used, then fascism has whispered. Officer Crowley might well indeed have lost control of the spiral by offering such advice, if he did so - Prof. Gates, you should be less agitated.
If Gates heard this (which is speculation) then he probably blew up (overreacted?) and the whole thing got on the Red Line to Hell.

A Letter to the Commissioner

2009-07-30T07:41:00.001-07:00

Dear Mr. Haas:

I write to thank the City of Cambridge Police Department for its mission and duties. Having lived on Prospect Street in Cambridgeport for some years, I am grateful for your service to the community.

Unlike perhaps nearly every other American, I have no opinion on the matter of the arrest of Gates by Crowley. I was not present, I was not involved - therefore, I don't know anything about it. I do, however, apologize that so many other Americans are opinionated jerks and asses, and are arrogant enough to offer their opinion on what they do not know.

Please continue your good work, knowing that it is not the entire world that has gone insane. The 95% of the world who are jerks, make the rest of us look bad.

On the Law of Scarcity

2009-07-29T08:42:00.001-07:00

Being unfamiliar with the formal principle called the "law of scarcity," I have paused for an inadvertent education on the matter. My initial supposition was that with a fixed limit of product, demand which is at least equal to that product will "order the queue" of demand by means of price. One does not need to posit "unlimited" demand; rather, demand in excess of supply will suffice.

But I also learn that the price can be manipulated by threatening one's rights or property; or the alternative, offering an unearned windfall. People will not demand something as much as when they are persuaded that it is "theirs." Also, people who are persuaded that they have stumbled upon a treasure, will pursue it more ardently than if it were just offered in the marketplace without persuasion.

The "Marketing Minute" blog by a Chip Cummings offers:

Can you create a sense of urgency in your marketplace? Limited access to a conference call; only $1.2 million in this particular loan program available; offers only accepted for 7 days; only 38 people allowed access; 10% discount only for the next 72 hours…..

You get the idea - use Scarcity to get your market to act quickly. This works well with customer retention strategies, initial prospects, and special events. There are a couple of rules:

Be sure to FOLLOW THROUGH on your promise! A limit is a limit. By holding your ground, they will respond accordingly NEXT time.
Set clear guidelines and expectations. Be sure to TELL the prospect EXACTLY what to do!

If heathcare is perceived as a fundamental right, than people will ardently pursue its fulfillment. To some degree, they are correct in doing so, because the ultimate measure of fundamental rights derives from the rational basis of the individual. Unfortunately, the "rational" part has left by the roadside in this approach.

Canute has a bad rap these days. I read in Wikpedia the following:

Henry of Huntingdon, the 12th-century chronicler, tells how Cnut set his throne by the sea shore and commanded the tide to halt and not wet his feet and robes; but the tide failed to stop. According to Henry, Cnut leapt backwards and said "Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws." He then hung his gold crown on a crucifix, and never wore it again.

Unlike modern rulers, he got the point on the first try. He's head-and-shoulders a better empiricist (and thus, economist) thank the DC Boys these days.

economics Canute

Thou Shalt Know them By Their Drugs

2009-07-28T06:29:00.001-07:00

Methland, a book I'm ~~writing~~,(reading, sorry - moron moment) shows the true Drug of the Masses, the hopeless Methamphetamine.

Wish to view the End of Society? Seek their Drugs, and see through them.

Meth joins alcoholism, porn and gambling as a way to soak up excess reality.PS: Thankfully, Blogging While Stupid has no criminal charges associated with it.

A letter to Harry Goslin on Inspiration and its Lack.

2009-07-28T06:26:00.001-07:00

In mythological terms, we fucked up.

Unbinding Prometheus for the gift of fire is one thing. Unbinding Narcissus - just because he is so good-looking and fun to hang out with - is a mistake.

I share your sense of frustration. In an era of dreg-scraping for ideas, it's hard to remain inspired. I've taken a bit of a wicked and cynical turn in my writings - generally based upon the head-smacking witlessness which suffices for public discourse.

A preponderance of all species ever in existence are extinct, and long before our species rose, too. And so is the fate of civilization and cultures, which tend to go extinct in an untidy sort of way, but for the same reasons - they could not adapt to Reality. One only needs to not breathe for a day, not eat for a year - and the prosperity afterwards is moot, because you done gone.

America seems earnestly committed to march off the cliff into the sea, I fear. 'Nother one bites the dust. And it's a shame, really - we coulda been a contender.

But we live in a labyrinth of mirrors, and the closer one gets to the center, the less one knows about the world. At the center lies the Minotaur, surrounded by the Beltway. Not wicked, indeed - in fact, quite kind; but unknowing of anything outside the Hall of Power, even where the bathroom is. (And using the bathroom after the Minotaur has to be, well, unpleasant.)

So, if you are also beset by the fog of futility when writing, that's okay - at least for you. It's a sign that your horseshit-detectors are working well, and what's out there shouldn't necessarily draw you out of your cave at the first crack of the stick. Think of the Blair Witch Project.

Psychological depression, of which apathy is a glimmer, is a protective device which now does not help us. I believe that it evolved for human existence during the late winter, a profound loss of interest - don't sleep, don't eat, don't care; at a time when there wasn't much to do, eat or care about. Springtime comes, and the torpor lifts - it always comes.

In Honor of the Five

2009-07-25T22:27:00.001-07:00

In Honor of the Five

Your tales tell you schoolchildren, of the Four Founders who wished to bring their craft and lore together and into order, for the teaching of the young. This came after the Great Breaking, when the Quillen were sundered, and the Quillendal hid from the others, the Quillengoll, who were torturing and burning them.”

“Burning, at the stake. Stop to imagine that. The broiled skin, and melting, fat and stink of hair, while the victim screams. Do you understand the atrocity at Cail Orgun now, perhaps? And the collectors of the bodies, who cut down the shriveled corpses, frozen in screams, carbonized grease over bones – children!"

"And who laughed and capered in the grease-blackened smoke? Theamhann na-Shaitann, the Eater of Souls. When has That ever rested, when suffering is about? Theos kata bolos, Αυτός που ο Θεός έχει πετάξει κάτω, whom God has thrown down. Diabolos."

"But later. Of your school. Four great wizards, four great Houses. Upon the founding of this great school, the Hesperides were asked to send a learned lore-master to teach, to make the Houses Five."

"The House Hesperides did respond. Each of the Houses were confused; some were greatly offended, but others puzzled. House Hesperides would not send a loremaster, for there was little magic which the House admitted to have, worthy of knowledge and teaching. But the House asked the kind permission of the others, to send a single member to work as janitor and watchman ‘in the halls of the blind.’”

Ever since then, though you may not know, a member of the House Hesperides has worked the grounds and fields of your fine school; no day has been without a servant from our land in your great college. Little is said, and few know that it is one of our house. Most of the Quillendall do not understand our commitment, and consider it to be a perpetual insult. It is far from being so.”

And of the Lands.

2009-07-25T09:17:00.000-07:00

The traveler drank some water at the bedside; it was merry and fresh, and tasted of the little forest stream in the Forest of Moon. It was without any flavor, but bore its own magic, and brought back the colors of the room in the Hopital, bearing forth greens and browns in its pure clearness.

“Many do not believe that this land exists. The stories are as different as the searchers who seek it, it seems.

Some have wandered the land, and found it delightful, but desolate as a moor, with no sign of settlement beyond the small village of Flich. Others swear that they see naught but carven stones, Others find megaliths erect or strewn about, set into the most marvelous patterns.
For those who have been to the villages, it is much as it seems – or seemed, in as much as the people are hospitable, but deadly dull. They seem completely unaware of magic, mostly. They are simple farmers and villagers, having little modern conveniences. Most who have met them believe that they are frightfully stupid, not wizards at all, but some sort of troll-like branch of humans.

Some find only deserted sandy dunes or,” he shuddered, “ocean cliffs.”

There are some paradoxes about our land which seem to trouble our visitors,” said the Senechal. “We are open to all who seek us; but so few can find us.

We call the outlanders Quillen – puppies, you might say. But specially, meaning those puppies or small animals that are new-born, before their eyes open. They bumble about, terribly helpless. Our town of Southmarch exists for the purpose, among others, of guiding these delightful little beings about out land, that they do not fall into puddles, or frighten themselves. The Senechal laughed like the patter of sweet May rain.

“Pardon me,” replied the traveler crossly. “This puppy feels abused indeed, what with being strung up above a cliff and all. You people seem more vicious and cruel than kind, says this puppy.”

The Senechal bent forward, eyes closed, deep suffering grey upon her face. She sat quietly for a few moments, unnervingly; it recalled the silence of the Elders before the Trial. "It was hardest for you, wizard, and you are brave among the Quillendal. I shall explain what happened, if you wish; but it will not wipe such things from your memory. I came as quickly as I could, for I was Judge of the Trial.

A shocking desecration has occurred, as not been seen for many years, near the March of this Land. There was a horrible slaughter which took place, and the place is now known as Cail Orgun, and it is haunted and horrible, and none dare go near. You made note of the little stream which comes from that place, and it was strong testimony in your behalf during the trial, that you noticed that the stream still stank, even after many healings had been placed upon it after it exited that awful place.

We understand the ways of the Quillen, although many differ from our practice.” She began to speak haltingly, as though she were thinking in a different language, and translating it into English.

“You need warmth for travel and home, so you take – you collect – fallen branches and kindling, and set these – these dead wood pieces – on fire, you set it afire. And this is right, this is alright, for to keep one warm in the cold is a proper thing.” Her face seemed to struggle with the next things to say.

“And some Quillen take trees respectfully, like you take from the herd, for sustenance and shelter. You lay it aside for a fit and proper amount of time, so that it – I understand green wood does not serve the purpose of these things. And then you put it to good use in the care of one’s self and others, which is truly an honorable practice.”

“We gather wood, and use it. We are prudent, and not wasteful. We gather the harvest, the beasts of the field, and our pasturage. You know this. What is it, the great crime, where? For this you torture and try to kill other humans? For wood?

She sighed. “Wood has life in it, life that outsiders often cannot see, even after it is taken from the wind’s fall, or a tree is killed and set to dry. Some even keep their aliveness long after the physical life passes from them.”

Your wands are living wood. Do you not know, even in your – understandings, that the wand chooses the wizard; how so is that, if there is no life there?

The only wood we burn, is wood which is truly without any vital force, dead wood. We burn it not for useful things, but for respect, and in melancholy.

“We understand that the woodsman is no different than the hunter or herder. But life must be sacrosanct, and be given for further life. “

“What happened in the Cail Orgun was a desecration, in the way that murder is a desecration to all peoples – the wasting of a life. Some malign spirit with power over living wood set forth to murder that forest, to blight it and still the life; not only in each tree and bush, shrub and flower, but the being that encompasses the living of that place – its true name, in a sense.”

“And what is perhaps worse, is that it was done with the consent of murdering wood itself. A wand or twig, something with the wood that lives, was warped in some unspeakable way, that it would turn its hand against its brother.”

“Regrettably, you spoke of starting fire with a wand, with wood burning wood. That called the indictment upon you, innocent as we know now you are. But we have not heard of such things, not for a long age. We cannot risk that a murderer be set forth into our Land.”

“None of this ought you know, traveler, and none of this should you ever have seen. We do, in fact, protect the Quillendal from these harsh things. There are terrible things in our world, as there are in yours; most of these arise from malice. Our roots are deep, profoundly so, and many reach to dark places from which your people never dream. They are protected, in a sense; with an all-encompassing protection or blessing that you likely never imagine. We who know of these bitter things guard you from them, the Quillendal. We do not mock your blindness; it is the evidence of our diligence on the March of the World. For not all guardians protect only this land, but places which you may never see or imagine that they do so.

For instance, your English School.

An Awakening. The Seneschal

2009-07-25T08:59:00.000-07:00

Awake! Open your eyes!

A voice called again, deeply - AWAKE! Unfamiliar.

He was chilled to bone. Only a flicker of warmth lay deep within. Through his eyelids, he could tell that light was here, and his face felt warm like sunlight. He opened his eyes in a merry, sun-bathed room, with the scent of fresh flowers streaming in through the window.

The elders were there, and also the speaker - a golden-cloaked woman with long grey hair and grey sparkling eyes.

You were tested. You survived.

The traveler grimaced. His mouth was full of the taste of blood and ashes. " Let me out of this God-forsaken place. And let me have my wand."

The Drussard smiled, a wan and horrible effort, as though had mouthed a spoonful of sugared vomit, and was trying to seem appreciative. "Well, you've sure been through a thing or two!"

The gold-cloaked woman stared at him, and his sickly face melted like tallow. The Drussard stepped back, and slowly crept towards the door, like a man trying to flee a burning building nonchalantly.

"I am the Senechal. I know you have suffered much."

"Lovely, madam, just. There seems to be a plethora of titles, for some sort of roles held by the idiots and liars who live in this lunatic home. Please come tell me again how gentle you people are to the Quillens. How patient you are. "

"I am deeply, grievously sorry for the suffering you have endured. It is....regrettable. Things are happening, and your suffering was not from your doing; or from ours."

"Well, once again, spiffy. It seems that I'm laid up here like a log in a bin, all respect to - what are you, mate? the Master Pourlebois? Perhaps you might stop glowering and fetch my wand now?

The Master had indeed been staring, with an odd air that he did not regret in the least the suffering of hte traveler. He, too, stepped to the door, and left.

"The Master does not trust you, that is true. But he may have, in fact, come up with the idea which saved your life."

"Jolly good, friends like him, et cetera. You may notice that my life didn't particularly need saving until I came to this rotten borough!?"

"It was the Master's idea to take testimony from your wand. Your wand, in fact, saved your life. Through his wisdom, in this and other ways, you were brought back. You were indeed warned, traveler, that this land was not safe. Lore has it plenty that it is perilous to seek us out, no?"

Cail Orgun

2009-07-25T07:55:00.001-07:00

The room had beome softly quiet, and the traveler paused, to note the elders staring at him, fixedly, unmoving - not even blinking. The room was stopped, still. He looked from one face to the other, and sensed a slow paleness wash over the faces, and then to their whole presences. It tugged at the corners of the room.

A dank chill had come on with a silent crack, and deepened, as though a killing frost. Their eyes had become black windows, and the room was now utterly without color. There was a slow sense of falling away of all that he could see, into uttermost black. He gripped the arms of his chair tightly, and could feel a tingle in his hands. To ask, to speak, was tiresome, and futile; speak to nobody, as it fell away, and a wind came up, first a draft, but swirling and greater, and slapping with icy rain out of the now uttermost blackness. He could see nothing, not even the hands on the arm of his chair. He thought of holding a hand before his face, but lurched with nausea at the thought, for his hands were holding all that was.

Tenebrous clouds mulled vaguely overhead, a black-that-moved over a black that loomed, still, threatening. His eyes slowly drew the vaguest bits of meaning from the world, as the icy slap of sleet caromed across his chill body and numbing lips. The chair swayed or rocked a bit, a most unpleasant instability. Sound came in, a far, far booming over the whistle and slap of the ice-laden wind. He looked over the arm of the chair, and down, for the far-off booming seemed there. A fine, scattered greyish line traced irregularly on the blackness, and the line moved almost imperceptibly. A surf line, far, far below, onto rocks, it stretched now seen on both sides of Below into the unutterable distance. A cliff of solid black, of tremendous height, ran along ahead, and to the horizon; and far below to the ocean. It could be a mile. Gulls crawled over the sea far below, barely moving, several thousand feet below.

All that was, were the two wooden arms of the chair, and that he was seated. With a sickening realization, he felt his toes dangling over the open ocean. The brief and feeble light began to wane, until there was nothing but the sleet and hissing wind out of the blackness.

Southgate

2009-07-25T06:51:00.001-07:00

"This village is Southgate-on-March, we call it. It lies in that part of our lands that were called the Limbus Meridianus, a part of the March. I am its marshal - a mayor of sorts, if you will. We call my office the Drussard. It is a joyful calling, it is, planning the celebration for visitors and friends who return!"
His smile bloomed up to his eyes, and twinkled. A Christmas sparkle filled the room.
"Hospitality is our greatest honor, especially for those who are not of this land. Your presence is an absolute joy to our little town - it is why we exist!

I am the Innkeeper of Southgate. The village is here to welcome our guests, and it is necessary for all visitors to stay here for a night or two before proceeding in from the Marchland.

I am the Mistral, the - oh, I don't know, constable? of this fair land. Constables - they have something to do with crimes or criminals, so that's not at all what I do. I wander about, along Tuvnadailla - the very outer edge of the march - to pace the bounds of our shrievalty, I think you call it."

"A what?"

"Shrievalty - that's not your word? Sorry. It's so hard to keep up with the modern world, and that is why Southgate exists as a special place. It is my responsibility to watch over any of the Quillendal who come to our village. "

Quillendal?

Outlanders - those from outside our land. It's perhaps - the little hounds - a puppy, you call it?

I am the master of the Hôpital Pourlebois, the little building where you left your wand.

"Why are there so many magic wands still there?"

"In some cases, the wizards come to live with us, and do not need a wand in our land. As you notice, we consider them - perhaps dangerous is the word, although not quite right. In most cases, those who leave our land relinquish their wand to the Hall of Wood, as a gift, in a sense."

But they - they leave, and wander about, without a wand? But - is it their choice to do so?

(The Drussard) beamed. There is much to learn here. We have no secrets from any being - but we do have riddles, perhaps. It is not a sport, but perhaps the difference between your land and ours. You are free to come and leave, with our without your magic charms. We welcome also the Quillengoll, the - some call them Muggles? - from your land. Few come, and fewer still these days. But we have friends in Flich-na-failte, our neighbors, who come by on occasion, as their parents, and parents' parents, and so on. Had you stopped there?

I passed through. They seemed cautious, and suspicious. They kept to themselves, as though the village were at land's end.

The Mistral glanced to his fellow elders briefly.

"Hospitality may be hidden, or worn openly. The people of Flich are kind; but they, after all, have - have wizards - as travelers-by. And they may not have our means to welcome the pilgrim, as we do. And not all pilgrims are pleasant, either.

I did not stay in the village - I did not find Flitch hospitable. They directed me, and I camped in the Forest of Moon by a little stream. It was chill and dank, but I made a campfire there, which was most comfortable.

A flicker of pain showed on the face of the master of Pourlebois.

There was a spring in that forest which was wholesome; but the river which joined it stank."

He shuddered ot recall of the smell. Something had died in the water, and rotted there; or perhaps a slaughterhouse had dumped a diseased animal into the water. Putrid.

I passed into the forest and the foulness did not follow me. But of the travelers, how do they camp and make fire without wands? Like Muggles, with tinder and flint, without spells? We use a burning spell, but without a wand.....

Cail Orgun

A Rant of Uncertain Origins

2009-07-24T07:43:00.001-07:00

Before America's brains actually fell out its ass, which has happened progressively and spasmodicaly, in singultations since the beginning of the Republic long dust, before Advertizing got really rolling, there was Twain, and his roundhouse decking of that fop who wrote Leatherstocking Tales, and laid down America's tolerance for bullshit to a new level, that of the Westerner (which in those sad old days meant Oneida and Lake Erie), that jerk the father of Nathaniel Bumppo the Woodsman, and I can't remember his name, ah yess, Cooper. Read how Twain thrashed him, and remember there was actually a time when words mattered, and near-words were not near good enough to the right words, and the old prairie Englishmaster, ever existed (s)he? - insisted that words MEAN something. And now fast-forward to the mad shoveling and backlying about our economy, as we try to uncouple the last few ore-cars from the freight train, would that a half-dozen or so b'dum,b'dum; b'dum,bdum; be avoided, the sound as the wheels roll over our cranial bones, that amelioration of less a dozen will by definition, be a good thing. Less carbon, less warming. Won't spall the granite on our gravestones, those who still will merit them from the living.

Planck's Constant and the State Employee

2009-07-24T07:27:00.001-07:00

I am fortunately privy to the State and its employees, and I have arrived at an amazing quantum ethnological discovery.

The State Employee has discovered Planck's constant long before Planck did.

I see no residuum of the Legrangian scrawled across bathroom walls; no evidence of phase-space diagrammes; no rude Hamiltonians on scraps of litter or cartooned rudely in incisure by those lacking opposable thumbs.

Nevertheless, the principle that h cannot equal zero has been found amongst the blunt instruments whom we call State Employees.

When Lord Kelvin's Measure of temperature drops to zero, odd and special things happen. Once the momentum of an object nears zero, its corresponding location in space cannot be ascertained. The Origin repels objects to a distance of h-bar. Therefore, the slower a state employee is, the more unlikely it is that (s)he can be found in R3 threespace.

This is mind-boggling. State Employment may actually be a form of Bose-Einstein condensate, a new and radical phase of matter in which the various components are indistinguishable and freely exchangeable by operators. non-abelian hotbed of elements. They may not actually, individually, be said to "exist."

The mind reels.

"Spending Money to Make Ends Meet" SAVES OUR ECONOMY AGAIN!

2009-07-24T06:19:00.001-07:00

I am strangely cheered by the Mogambo Guru's quote of our vice-President in his Mogambo Missive, "Spending Money to Make Ends Meet"

“Vice President Joe Biden told people attending an AARP town hall meeting that unless the Democrat-supported health care plan becomes law the nation will go bankrupt and that the only way to avoid that fate is for the government to spend more money.”

Mr. Biden, apparently aware that he sounded ridiculous, subsequently said, “Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’” and he immediately admits, “The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling you.”

Those who are not experienced professional experimental fighter aircraft test-pilots, unlike me (you poor ground-hogs!), might not understand that Mr. Biden's speech is fraught with promise, bleakly glowering with the portents of success. For it is the stench of victory wafting from the Naugahyde™.

Among the complex and subtle maneuvers in test-pilot flying is "the flat spin." For those of you who have not enjoyed this experience, "a spin is an aggravated stall resulting in rotation about the center of gravity wherein the aircraft follows a downward corkscrew path." Traditionalists add the following, somewhat obvious piece of advice - "The idea of recovering from a spin is to make the aircraft fly again."

DUH.

But "flying" is such a subjective term - is the aircraft not "flying," by definition, unless it is "on the ground?"

"(In a) flat spin,..... the plane spins on its belly around the normal axis. The empennage will feel very light and loose." I am unsure what the term "empennage" means; in context, it must mean "bowels." COMMANDER - I JUST EMPTIED MY EMPENNAGE!

One thing to remember during a flat spin - "if the center of lift force is ahead of the center of gravity on longitudinal axis, the real number components of the eigenvalues of the stability matrix exceed zero and the poles of the stability matrix migrate to the positive half of the complex number plane." Now, dammit - if that doesn't sound like economic analysis, I'll eat my Keynesian school notes.

The point is, our economy is in the econo-jock equivalent of a "flat spin." This is a much better maneuver than the "hi-angle-punch-in." (HAPI, pronounced "HAPPY") Almost all fighter pilots wind up six feet under the sod. The challenge is to avoid having this happen all at once, in the absence of a liturgical audience.

One helpful tip is during an unexpected aircraft "maneuver," look straight ahead and slightly upwards. Blue is good, green is bad. If you see a cloud of picnickers racing away like terrified wildebeest, identify a central spot from which they seem to flee. Avoid that spot.

There! I have given you enough aero-tips that you can be Fed Head or Treasury Secretary, assuming that there is a difference.

The most important point is, it's good to be in a flat spin - because that gives you more time than a high-angle punch-in. And if you turn your head to the left quickly, you might actually get the chance to kiss your ass good-bye.

WHEEE! This economy stuff is FUN!

PS: Author is reverse-engineering a pirated Malaysian computer game, "FRIGHT STIMULATOR" to turn it into an econometric Gameboy, "FED SIMULATOR!"

Chapter Four. A Visitor Arrives.

2009-07-23T06:30:00.001-07:00

The path gently rose onto the crest of the long, serpentine hill, and upon it at the very top of the rill stood a doorway in stone, two rude rises capped by a lintel, and all from the uttermost black stone. Beyond lay a valley floor, where the drumlin rolled down unto the plain, all indistinct with mist.

As the traveler approached, a grey-haired woman appeared from behind the left stone of the doorway, and waited patiently as he toiled up the path.....

He crossed the gate into the land of the Hesperides. The mist leapt away, and the valley rang forth with beauty. He felt an overwhelming fatigue, and a sense of success.

"You are upon our lands. Do no magic."

A small branch of the path veered abruptly to the left, Down a bit, and off a few hundred paces, lay a small wooden hut, capped with thatch, with a wide doorway of oak, and beamed also with a great wooden lintel pierced with logs, almost appearing American in its build; but very ancient, not a design, but a solid and primeval air.

She spoke again. "This is the Hopital des Bois, the Travelers' Rest. Enter as a respectful guest, please." Thy strode across the open doorway, and came into a small room awash with yellows and browns of the live woods, a faint greenish, endlessly moving light as in the forest. There were two wrought wooden chairs that almost cried out to be touched; so they sat.

There was a great and slightly untidy pile of wood along the leftmost wall of the cabin, as though for firewood. An enchanting door of wood lie opposite the bare doorway of the entrance. He studied the pile, and saw in it wood that was of many forms and colors; great logs and rotten stumps; finished wood and plank, loose bark and sea driftwood, stream flotsam and leafed branch. A small bird entered with a twig, and lay it atop the pile, and flew away, as though it were a great nest.

With a start, he saw wizarding wands scattered throughout; some shattered, some hale. "Whose wands are those?" he asked with great alarm, reaching under his vest for his own wand.

"Shhh!" she scolded. "This is a sickroom. Have respect." She frowned like an irritated librarian. "Do no magic upon our land. It can only bring you harm. Bring forth thy wand, but give no command!"

"Why?"

"That thy wand might hear, and see." He brought it forth, and it shined and twinkled under the light of the invisible canopy.

"When hast thy wand looked so? When it was new-made?"

He had to admit, it had never looked so fresh, and what's more, it felt alive. It called to his hand, like a faithful hound calling to master.

"What say that twig to you?" as it strained against his hand, docile but insistent, like a well-trained hunter. _may I go master?_ he heard in his mind's hand, and he doubted, clenched for a minute, and then relaxed his grip. The wand flew onto the pile, and he heard a silent cheer and applause, followed by many voices; all in the silence to the human ear.

"Your wand will stay as an honored guest here during your visit to the House Hesperides. Now shall we talk."

"Why the silence and hurry to this house?" He asked.
"The suffering called forth too loudly for us to speak." She answered. "Relief and refreshment must come before all else. This is the obligation of the host.

Hesperides

2009-07-22T06:48:00.001-07:00

Afar, along the wrath-wracked sea,
A wizarding clan there may dwell,
None seems to know. Hesperides, they say.
More ancient than England's eldest line.
They greeted the Cruithne, of the Circinn, Fotla Cait and Ce they will regale;
and built the brochs and crannogs
And tell of the time when the Great Ice left.
They tell of the hunt of Airlann and the taking of the great segh,
And of other things they would tell.

They are perhaps somewhat feared and shunned, although the wizareds of England would not tell so; they are rather dismissed, as a primitive clan, although with magic of great power. There is no attraction to them from outside. Perhaps it is their magic which would have it so.

They send no teachers, but curiously, they send their children who have no magic to work at the universities and schools in England.

To be continued.

wizard

Going Ga-Ga over the Moon, continued.

2009-07-20T04:41:00.000-07:00

Charles Krauthammer is a loony. He wants to go the moon. Your dime.

Yes, we have a financial crisis. No one's asking for a crash Manhattan Project. All we need is sufficient funding from the hundreds of billions being showered from Washington -- "stimulus" monies that, unlike Eisenhower's interstate highway system or Kennedy's Apollo program, will leave behind not a trace on our country or our consciousness -- to build Constellation and get us back to Earth orbit and the moon a half-century after the original landing.
Why do it? It's not for practicality. We didn't go to the moon to spin off cooling suits and freeze-dried fruit. Any technological return is a bonus, not a reason. We go for the wonder and glory of it. Or, to put it less grandly, for its immense possibilities. We choose to do such things, said JFK, "not because they are easy, but because they are hard." And when you do such magnificently hard things -- send sailing a Ferdinand Magellan or a Neil Armstrong -- you open new human possibility in ways utterly unpredictable.

Try something REALLY hard, Chuckie. Leave people's money alone.

Gary North offers, in more sane terms:

The "put a man on the moon in this decade" program was the most spectacular and most beloved peacetime boondoggle in the history of bloated government programs. It achieved nothing of lasting value for the taxpayers – nothing that they would have paid for voluntarily.

The Apollo program was funded by tax money extracted from Americans who would otherwise have spent their money on unmemorable goods and services. These goods and services would have been higher on their list of priorities than the Apollo project. That is why it took coercion to fund the program.
The Apollo project was like a huge fireworks display. It was impressive at the time, but it is long gone. Even the tapes of the event are long gone. NASA erased them. No one knows why. What we see today are enhanced versions of video broadcasts.

To assess the value of the moon program, we should apply Frédéric Bastiat's principle of the fallacy of the thing not seen. Except for those of us at Rushdoony's Bible study, Americans with television sets saw the first moon walk. What no one saw were the products and services that would have been offered for sale from 1961 to 1969, had the government not taxed the public to fund the moon program. What inventions would have been discovered? We cannot know.

I call it the "chilling effect. Nobody sees, for example, the price of warrantless wiretaps, for they do not see the chilling effect on business communicaiton, say. Or the TSA on making air travel more cumbersome.

We pretend that NOTHING has a price - so we can just go ahead and do it. Walk on Mars? Let's.

The "stagflation" of the '70's was due in part to the deficit spending on Vietnam - and yes, NASA. American equity melted - and savings banks could return less than was lost on interest. Thus, the great American middle-class movement into stocks. Now, we see the result.

America has discovered something more noxious than taxation, and that is deficit spending. It is the doom of all governments. It is the promise to produce in the future what cannot be done in the present. There must be a damned good reason for deficit spending. But we don't know what it is.

Apres moi, le deluge.

2009-07-19T07:30:00.000-07:00

The epitaph of the Bush Presidency should be this, for the deluge of dollars awaits us.

Our Washington fools believe that the "credit crisis" came from not enough money, and now add priming to the pump. The credit crisis was merely when the bar bill came due, and the price of continued credit financing outpriced what the wise entrepreneur would pay for it. During good times, one can pay handsome (extortionate) prices for money, for one can return it at the same rate from one's business profits. Now, people realize that they can't. Hence, the "Credit Freeze."

The dollars will flood us, drown us. China and the rest of the world are longing to "return" overseas dollars. Your paltry tens-of-thousands worth of savings will be worth squat, when the price of land in suburbia hits $100,000 per empty lot.

China, now, is expected to re-boom the world by CONSUMPTION as well as production. Ha. Let's see how THAT bubble goes.

Why the pseudo-recovery?

2009-07-18T16:17:00.000-07:00

In about twelve weeks, give or take three or so, the bottom falls out of the economy - again. The "stimulus" was only designed to let those in the know get their assets safely hidden before the big crash.

Why?

How we Became an Empire

2009-07-16T06:41:00.001-07:00

To measure the course in history, the steps by which America became an Empire, one need only consider a few simple tenets of government.

We follow one variant of what we call limited government, but which is not by any means limited.

Some people believe in government which can expand or contract, in the semblance of a living organism, based upon the vicissitudes of the moment. Government in times when all is well may remain small and unobtrusive; but when Great Events call, the Government must transform, in the manner of the children's toys, to meet the threat.

In a sense, we have a kept Republic, a pet form of representative government, that is quietly cared for by the Government. The Senate and House may be thought of in the manner of the Smithsonian's other exhibits - a living museum of actors who go about their business in an orderly manner, to remind us of what government WAS.

The show is suspended, though, when crises of the present moment arise. Extraordinary Government measures are what is necessary when things are afoot. And, as any fan of GI Joe or Rambo knows, there are times when the law just doesn't apply.

We ceased to be a Republic and became an Empire when the planning for Extraordinary Measures took place. Now, the history of empire snaps into focus. The New Deal lead us into it - the time when the slow and ineffective Republic was left behind for the speedy now-now! form of limited totalitarianism. The Bomb cemented it into our nature. Jefferson, Washington, Franklin - who would have been comfortable with the President holding the Weapon of Great Destruction in his solitary hands?

And yet, any American who pushes forth world-wide build-down of nuclear weapons is considered a loon. The concept that nuclear weapons are "radioactive" to limited governments is seen as daffy. "WE" must have them - we being the "Leader." With this ultimate measure of the Leader's trustworthiness, the concentration of power in Government trickles down. Yes, of course, it is reasonable for the Parks Service to have a SWAT team, for after all, "WE" trust Government with nucular weapons, don't we?

The question of what consists of a Governmental State of Emergency long remained inchoate. George W. Bush simply reminded us of the definition: that Government has a State of Emergency whenever the Government says so. Few leaders were rude enough to mention that before; Mr. Bush had no scruples preventing him from doing so.

Limited government ended when the Government acquired its emergency powers; not by the paper Constitution, but by the English manner of Constitution, the unwritten rules which fell into place after the "Glorious Revolution."

In our case, though, our "Glorious Revolution" had the effect not to disempower the King, but to celebrate the coronation thereof.

politics empire

On a Varnish which Imparts the Merriest Finish onto Ordinary Wood

2009-07-16T05:29:00.000-07:00

Even the most ordinary wood may bear a striking and pleasurable finish. Here is a method for hot varnishing which does so.

Onto a Wood which has been thoroughly saturated with raw linseed oil, pour the following admixture. Since it is sparingly soluble, it may be set in the sun to dissolve. Otherwise, the Balsam of Peru will clump unto the Brush, looking like strandy diarrhoea, and appearing brown and nasty - reminiscent of Wanda Sykes.

One part ceresine wax, white.
One part Balsam of Peru
Three parts Terebinthine Oil (gum turpentine)
One part raw linseed oil.

A clothing iron should be obtained and dedicated to the workshop. Add water to it, and set it to the coolest temperature at which it will readily steam. Press the admixture into the wood, adding an occasional spritz of water from a spray bottle if necessary. The surface oil should sizzle merrily in the manner of cooking bacon, but should not discolor.

After the application has ceased, judged by the breadth of spread of the hot varnish, set aside the iron and allow the surface to cool for about one beer's worth of time. There will still be cooled oily liquid on the surface of the wood. Sand through this standing oil with 400 grit sandpaper until the surface is smooth. Wipe the surface with a clean dry cloth.

This will impart a most lovely range of browns, from yellows to deep mahogany, across the wood commensurate with the grain. The Balsam of Peru will impart a pleasant scent, reminiscent of a lovingly-cared-for violin.

(The warnings below also apply to this. Don't come running to me.)

On the Preparation of a Novel Form of Ebonite

2009-07-15T10:22:00.001-07:00

A novel form of ebonite for the coating of wood with a natural, hardy and durable surface, from items readily available to the handy-man.

Over Flowers of Sulphur, pour a quantity of the raw un-heated oil of Linum usitatissimum so as to cover them.
Over this mixture, pour an equal quantity of terebinthine (Gum Turpentine).
Gently agitate so as to stir the mixture.
Allow the Flowers of Sulphur to come into solution as much as they will.

Whilst awaiting the slow solubility of this material, perform the following:

Coat the desired wood with a concentrated water solution of Copperas.
Rinse the wood gently.
Cover the wood with a solution of Lime Sulphur. The Lime Sulphur should immediately turn the wood a deep blac.
Rinse the wood and allow to dry.

Admix a small quantity of Peroxide of Benzoyl into the oil-sulphur mixture.
Upon the dried wood, swiftly paint the oil-sulphur mixture thickly
Allow to dry in the Sun.

Another useful & innovative approach:

Steam an aqueous solution of Copperas unto the wood. 'Ware the fumes.
Iron the Flowers of Sulphur onto the dried wood. The heat should be enough to melt the Sulphur, but not enough to burst it into stinking flame.
Cover the admixture with ozokerite, one that tolerates a high melting temperature.
Hide the ruined Iron from one's spouse.

These techniques, in fact, be merely theory of the Troglodyte, and comes with no surety or recommendations.

Civilization is a Drag, man.

2009-07-14T06:20:00.000-07:00

One of the eternal gifts of the Baby Boomers is the conviction that civilization is a drag. Combined with the perpetual desire never to grow up, the Rousseauvians have gone old and soft in the belly, still convinced of their eternal role of the Chosen Generation. As they stumble into the history books along with every generation, their epitaph grows longer.

WAR, actually, is a thrilling and primitive way to bang the drum and roll in the mud, release one's Inner Hominid and generally having a good time. Some of the other cultures seem to object to this, because war causes people to get real dead.

John Galt was always a drag; John Bradshaw and Iron John, effete; let's go John Wayne. Embrace illusory masculinity. The macho keyboard commando vows - SURRENDER IS NOT AN OPTION! But in fact, during wartime, surrender is everywhere. The only ones who will not run are those who have not gone to fight in the first place.

A little ray of Sunshine.

2009-07-12T07:16:00.000-07:00

There is a lovely and positive site for Filipina women to share their strengths - read it! filipina images, it's called.

When will Atropos cut the thread?

2009-07-12T05:51:00.001-07:00

In classical thought, each person was given a life according to measure, and the Fates executed the due and necessary stages. So too, nations and cultures have their existence for a time. How much longer for America?

During the bubble years (1945–2007), more and more credit produced less and less real prosperity. It was as if you were borrowing more and more, to invest in your business or merely to increase your standard of living, but your income didn’t rise fast enough to keep up with the interest payments.

The Great Credit Contraction Cometh, Bonner

The contraction will continue as long as there is hope.

credit, depression, atropos

On the Passing of Robert McNamara

2009-07-08T07:43:00.000-07:00

It seems disconjugate to condemn primitive thinking, as below, and then launch into Catilinian calumny of Robert McNamara, the former Secretary of Defense of the United States.

Some years ago, an apology would not be needed. Robert McNamara was seen as an awful person a generation ago. But America has perfected the art of Political Redemption which, coupled with the insectile attention span of most citizens, allows us to be benignly puzzled by all the fuss about this old man. As long as we perfect the skill of forgetting wickedness, thus will it give us the gift of repeating it. George Santayana thought that the forgetting was due to mere accident and ignorance; it is not. That which is loathsome may either be cleansed through expiation, or trundled along with, neglected until the Last of Days.

Somewhere in the guilt assuaged by the fixation of magnetic Chinese "SUPPORT THE TROOPS" bumper stickers, is the weight of the burden lain down upon us by the Best and Brightest. Some hideous thing has been stuffed under, mouldering - and we have not done the Last Thing to end it.

Something happened between the Nüremberg trials and the McCarthy hearings that kindled some small spark, that has slowly been nurtured and burst into flame. It consumes one of our greatest treasures - the American Conscience. Were the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to burst forth into fire and be consumed to ashes, in our National Archive, no patriot would long suffer the loss of those parchments - for the parchment is a thing, and the ideals are what matter. But the death of the Conscience? Nobody mourns.

The Examination of Conscience is a due and proper ritual in Catholicism. It is a ritual which ought to persist, even in the separation of the non-Catholic Christian sects, for it is a worthy thing in and of its own right. It is is the element of the Act of Contrition, an action by which one remedies one's discoveries. For those with a more sturdy and energetic pursuit of their Christian faith, there are the Exercises of Loyola, which enable a more thorough spiritual hygeine.

These concepts are absurd in America, as is the fundamental concept of Conscience itself. You win if you get away with it. But the predominance of Will over Conscience will always fail, for it takes an absolute and unbreakable Will to dominate; and in any mortal person, the will can flag. Those without conscience, whom we often refer to as psychopaths, often have such such power of will so as to dominate others. History has catalogued them; they all, eventually fail. Whether there is a fellow with such sapient evil and power of will to carry on an eternal struggle of Will, that is in the province of theology. Suffice it to say that we have chosen Will over Conscience, and we bear the marks of it.

Some have even wandered into the understanding of the group psychology of will, conscience and societal evil. I offer Scott Peck and Lobaczewski as references in the study of ponerology.

With the passing of McNamara, we pretend, so goes this burden of guilt. But the damage runs greater than the few dead in Vietnam, or even the more who were wounded, or the many Vietnam vets who were spat on and despised and homeless. The embarrassment and failure of the Generation of the Baby Boomers derives from his war. This could have been the greatest generation in America. Now, perhaps, it will go down in history as its assassin, America's Brutus, condemned to Dante's Ninth Circle of Hell for those who have destroyed Republics.

Grief and meditation should be foremost in the passing of this awful man; not for him, but for the Republic.

Why Fascism is all about LOVE.

2009-07-07T23:00:00.001-07:00

One critical political fact lay undiscovered by William Shirer and the other brave men who dissected the horrible corpse of Fascism and Nazism, and that is LOVE lay at its heart. Less so with Stalin and the horrific descendants of Lenin, who were far more practical and less moony than the Europeans. Tatars and Georgians and Central Asians tend to deliver their message straight-up, from the bottle, and don't need the mushiness and moon-shine of Goethe and the romatics. A head, that is severed, on a pike - what more is there to say? Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky - honest men. An ice-axe through the head on the other side of the Earth! Now, that's a statement for you!!

But, the Europeans. Truly, Fascism and Nazism could not have come to pass, without love. Hitler had the absolute Midas touch that every gay man, I'm sure, would give his soul for. He could elicit love - yes, tender, passionate love - from heterosexual men. And who can be crueler than a person in love? All one needs, is the beloved - and a threat against him (or her.) Those Jews, then - they would not have been so passionately condemned, were they a threat only to some little politician. But against the Fuehrer, mein Gott! It was no great surprise, I am sure, when the inner circle of the Nazi Party discovered Ernst Roehm's homosexuality - the very leader of the Browshirts, the dreaded bullies of the SA - a homosexual!!? (was it ever not known by the inner circle?) It only became important when the time came for the Night of the Long Knives - and Roehm was expendable, and quickly dispatched.

But it must be love - that deep, passionate love in which the eternal truth rests - that people will do all sorts of moronic things in the power of love. Stupid women become accessories in crimes of their vicious men - because they love them so. Whatever that might mean, it is a force which must be reckoned with.

And it must indeed be deep and profound love - "true love," the kind which sweeps you up on angels wings. This sort of love must be transformative, not only of the magic beloved - but also, in reflection of the Self. It must literally make one's self New Again. The love of Hitler gave transformed the German Empire into the Aryan Reich. What power, that man's love had!

And, that's what's needed to form the triangle - the Beloved, the Threat against the Beloved, and the Transformed Self. I see many Americans mewling around and bitching like estrogen-soaked teenagers, loving love and waiting for the Beloved to come. Those on the right act like jealous, bitchy junior-high-schoolers, wrathful at the evil Bitch Obama that all of the Left seems to think is the Hosanna Savior, they hate his guts for it. Want to find this behavior in literature? Read the Sorrows of the Werther by Goethe - there's enough whininess in there for a dozen TEA parties on Independence Day.

America, somehow, used to be much less European in character, but became more so. THAT was the continent of failed ideas, and newcomers were asked to wash their feet before treading on the doorstep, please. In a place where political parties were suspect, kings and leaders despised, and independence admired, once upon a time - now we have a bunch of mewling cats in heat, looking for L!O!V!E!

The Republicans are especially jilted nowadays, as many of their "possible candidates" look like ass-holes. They certainly are not the Beloved. Passion still holds for Sarah Palin, who may break the Glass Ceiling of Fascism and become am ersten Fuehrerin. She could, too. She's got the chops, and she's crazy enough.

And that's why I think America's too damn good for Americans, these days.
______________
Freudianism is well-criticized these days. One of the chief critiques - which applies to Ayn Rand as well, is that if he were so smart, why did so many morons follow him?

But except for being right frequently, Freud has little to say for himself. The dynamic of European-style Fascism is easily jiggled into the Oedipus configuration - and maybe not so wrongly so. The primitive Loved Object, the primitive Bad Object, and Melanie Klein's off and running.

One's essential Identity derives from the result of the struggle between the Loved Object and the Bad Object, in both Freudian terms, and in the history of Nazism - clearly. Are we Great, or are we Small? Are we not Nordic Aryans? Is it only the Jews that keep us from realizing our Full Potential?

Americans are carefully trained by advertising and the media to remain thoughtless meme-bags. One of the most critical elements is the ability to inspire Love - and that is what the media does in spades. We are in the middle of an outpouring of undeserved love (and undeserved scorn) for a child singer from Gary, Indiana, who became both very rich and very crazy. The Jackson 5 were the first American Idols.

Other mechanical memes with significant life-events are Farrah Fawcett, a Texas model and beauty queen made famous for her abilities; Sarah Palin, another made famous for her lack thereof; a moony South Carolina Governor who lost the struggle between Christianity and tumescence (leaving a rather smudgy lesson for those parents trying to enforce the primacy of the first over the second), a Senator self-confessed of staff-porking; and other movies played upon the screen, with cues to the Chorus how to behave. Drama! Love! That's how we operate.

Gone are the days when we ran our own souls, took in what we honored and discarde what had no merit. Now, forcibly opened to the slush we call media, we pour it in. Do we love Miss California? Do we hate Miss California? What of what she said? Was it right or wrong?

Many years ago, mankind had little to do than watch the scurry of the ants, and perhaps they chose one or the other in some sort of bet - who will return to the anthill first? That's the best they could do for entertainment. And that whips our ass today.

fascism, love

Palin to be Raptured by Space Aliens.

2009-07-07T17:16:00.001-07:00

Breaking news from Roswell, New Mexico
Sarah Palin to be repatriated by space aliens who sent her as a "living probe" of Earth Culture.

July 6, 2009 is PRECISELY 40,000 Earth Days since the Crash at Roswell on July 8, 1947. This appearance of UFO led to increased awareness of Earth life in intergalactic culture.

The Earth Day Iteration factor has never occurred during July since the Roswell Incident, until July 6, 2009 - tomorrow. It is hypothesized that the position of the Earth in Cancer nears the gravitational node of a black-hole gravitational lens, which accidentally allowed for a displaced path of travel in distant galaxies, onto Earth orbit - a "Hamiltonian Bypass", so to speak, with devastating consequences.. In addition, the planetary positions of the Sun's other planets, which affects the fine positioning of the gravitational lens, is EXACTLY identical to that of the Incident in Roswell.

The triad of planetary positioning of Earth in its orbit, gas planet positioning, and earth diurnal phasing, occurs approximately every twenty years or so. There was an occurrence on February 11, 1964. Due to orbital variation, there was no similar event during the 1980's.

SARAH PALIN'S "BIRTHDAY" WAS FEBRUARY 11, 1964

The documentation of her birth by certificate is suspiciously unavailable at the Registrar's office. She was brought here for a forty-year mission. She is about to return.
GOD BLESS YOU, AND SPEAK WELL OF US, SARAH! WE SHALL MISS YOU!
And how did she get away undetected during her 62-year sojourn? "They never picked me up", states perky extraterrestrial. "I was almost blazed on by that Zbornian assassin disguised as InterHack Perez Hilton, but I redirected fire onto Miss California. That was the only close one!" stated chipper galactic voyager.
(ed. note. Zbornians are sapient motile vomit that reside on the planet Ipkak)
****
Bleeson Marfan writes BTrog - "You got the dates all wrong. It's 22,547 days after the Roswell landing, and 16,583 since Sarah Palin's birth." Thanks and go to hell, Bleeson.
Calie Whipple offers - The anagram of Sarah Louise (Heath) Palin is "Hello, Euthanasia Parish!" or "Authorize Sailplane? HAH!" That's right, Liberal, just keep-on keeping-on. Laugh all you want when the Aliens come back for you.

The Cult of Certainty - Global Warming and Intelligent Design.

2009-07-07T07:24:00.000-07:00

Americans don't do well with problems that are difficult to solve. They especially suffer frustration when a problem can be demonstrated as insoluble.

Physicists and mathematicians live quite comfortably in the world where questions are proven to be unanswerable. Most other people do not.

For those who are intrigued by the concept, and wish to learn more about it, it falls under the description of epistemology, the knowability of things, an element of metaphysics. One approach to things which are unknowable is to simply shrug them off as being thus trivial or not worthy of further study. This is referred to as Logical Positivism. It is a respectable branch of philosophy.

There is an interesting paradox in human nature. When a problem cannot be solved by rational means, people often wander into the irrational and superstitious to concoct an answer.

There is an interesting interface between Theology and Science called Intelligent Design. It is posited in two ways. The weaker basis states that if there is clear and convincing evidence, which can be methodically assembled, that a process can be best described by means of sapient planning, then this is a priori evidence that it was planned by a sapient being. Since humans cannot perform this sort of planning and operation, it is taken as evidence of a higher being. The stronger basis states that if there is NO means by which a process can be described using materialistic explanation, that means that there is Intelligent Design. Obviously, the weaker basis will produce more examples than the stronger.

The squabble over intelligent design may originate in the same mistake that got the Catholic Church in trouble with Galileo. Sit ergo ita Deus esse factus est, is the assumption. If it is, therefore God made it to be. The error comes when people elide off the beginning, wear it down by time and tradition, and come up with the stub, GOD MADE IT TO BE THUS. If indeed the planets orbit the Earth, God made it to be so - and Galileo would be unbothered. But when by usage the assumption was worn down to fact, and the error, THE PLANETS ORBIT THE EARTH, was made, and wrongly so.

Paradoxically, one aspect of atheism borrows freely from the assumption of the Intelligent Design folks in their insistence upon the absence of God. Atheism can be divided into two classes regarding the history of religion. One holds the assumption that religion arose sua sponte from the thoughts of people on their world. Another holds that religion itself is a form of INTELLIGENT DESIGN, by those who wished to attain and exploit a position of power. Atheists often unwittingly (I assume that it is unwitting) cleave to the concept of the weaker basis of Intelligent Design - if it can be demonstrated that Religion can and/or has been used as a method of exploitation of people (and that's not a tough one to prove) THEREFORE it is proven that Religion is only a certain type of political manipulation. Ayn Rand was most certainly an advocate of this form of aggressive atheism.

This exhaustive prequel brings me around to the central interest, that of global warming. Some people are willing to take a strict "atheistic" view on Global Warming, and insist that it is a hoax. Gary North, a fine columnist, offers an essay entitled "It's Not Just That Global Warming Is Fake. What Matters Is Why This Fakery Is Being Promoted" You may read it here.

Mr. North cleanly advocates the above argument of atheism, here applied to Global Warming. It is untrue because of fraudulent advocacy. My beef with Mr. North is not about the sincerity or legitimacy of the advocacy, but from the inference that Anthropogenic Global Warming is thus and therefore false.

The problem is worse than that, Gary - so much so, that hardly anyone with an opinion, pro or con, on Global Warming, wants to address the most worrisome reality of the situation.

Here are some solid postulates, which are easily demonstrated:

Global weather systems are strictly and formally chaotic, by means of mathematical proof.
Chaotic systems can demonstrate regions of great order and predictability; and also regions of absolute unpredictability.
The current stage of the Earth is in an interglaciation period of a cycle of ice ages. Examination of recent temperatures shows that we are in a region of unpredictability.
There is no quantity of data which can be assembled today, to predict anything about global temperatures in the future.
The ability to estimate a difference in effect - or the lack thereof - caused by Anthropogenic Global Warming, is DOUBLY unachievable, and will remain so, no matter how much data we can assemble.

Here are further ugly premises about Global Warming:

We cannot affirm nor deny that Anthropogenic Global Warming is occurring.
Assuming the truth of AGW - we cannot reasonably estimate the amount by which we must reduce carbon emissions to make a significant effect. (That would be three orders of randomness!)
We do not therefore have a means by which to calculate the negative effect upon civilization produced by diminishing carbon emission, against the positive effect desired, that of "preventing AGW."

Here are a few more nasty issues:

Life on earth is hardly at risk if global warming occurs. A vast majority of all species have survived a period of global warmth during interglacials, equivalent to the dire period of warming predicted by AGW.
Almost all species have survived a period of ice-free Arctic Ocean already.
The species most at risk for AGW is Homo sapiens.
The risk to Homo sapiens is not to his existence, but to his cultural structures. Right now, Scandinavia is too cold for a long growing season, as is Siberia and Canada. Global warming will enhance the agriculture of the northern regions, at the expense of the southern regions. During periods of hunter-gatherer existence, geographic boundaries were the only elements of note for migration, not political ones. Nowadays, global warming threatens only political structures.
Fears of Global Warming come from an illogically conservative mindset. Anthropogenic Global Warming threatens political change, which ought to be comfortable and intriguing to progressives, and distressing to those who wish no disruption in the order of things. If Canada becomes more prosperous, and the US less so, what will happen if we become their "Mexico" especially regarding emigrants? Those things terrify the conservative soul, which wishes no change.

Clearly, we are not discussing the very hard issues, which center on irresolveable uncertainty. We intend instead to bash each other over the heads with metaphorical clubs.

AGW is a test of human civilization. So far, we're not doing very good on the test.

Palin to be Raptured by Space Aliens.

2009-07-05T20:04:00.001-07:00

Breaking news from Roswell, New Mexico
Sarah Palin to be repatriated by space aliens who sent her as a "living probe" of Earth Culture.

SARAH PALIN'S "BIRTHDAY" WAS FEBRUARY 11, 1964

The documentation of her birth by certificate is suspiciously unavailable at the Registrar's office. She was brought here for a forty-year mission. She is about t o return.
GOD BLESS YOU, AND SPEAK WELL OF US, SARAH! WE SHALL MISS YOU!
****
Bleeson Marfan writes BTrog - "You got the dates all wrong. It's 22,547 days after the Roswell landing, and 16,583 since Sarah Palin's birth." Thanks and go to hell, Bleeson.
Calie Whipple offers - The anagram of Sarah Louise (Heath) Palin is "Hello, Euthanasia Parish!" or "Authorize Sailplane? HAH!" That's right, Liberal, just keep-on keeping-on. Laugh all you want when the Aliens come back for you.

Roswell, palin, humor

America, curb your BRATS!

2009-07-05T09:02:00.001-07:00

Americans lust after fame. It is the coveted position in which one may be gratuitously rude and disrespectful to anyone. Every mean little bureaucrat, in the manner of the defunct Peoples' Republics, lusts after a rubber stamp, by which he or she may lord over others and make them miserable. The concept of using power to cause good things to occur, is largely lost in America, as it was in the Soviet Union days ago.

People are concerned by the amount of handgun violence in America as compared to other countries. Really, I am surprised that it is so low. Social interactions exist for most Americans for the purpose of being horrible to each other.

This brings us to Sarah Palin. She is the Poster Child of the "Common Man," or "Joe Sixpack," or "Joe the Plumber." She came to the forefront of politics by accident, by the dearth of intelligent people with ideas. A well-trained prole, she started putting on airs as soon as the limelight illuminated her.

This is the riddle of American Idol, and the name is not poorly chosen. It is not the capacity to demonstrate powerful and amazing talent from the rank of the lumpen; but rather, to raise up a contestant to the role of "being someone," rather than "being nobody." This lust ensures the success of the miserable State lotteries, as well.

As for Governor Palin she was annoyed that she was treated rudely as a public figure, so she quit her Governor job. Rather than tolerating disappointment over her behavior, she slammed away at those who criticized her - "the liberal media." And the Republican apologists chimed along in song.

No American politician would tolerate for a minute the disdain given the Prime Minister in England. The House is brazenly suspicious and nosy; the people, disdainfully contemptuous and disrespectful. In America, the Senate and House merit you political divinity.

Even Kim Jong-Il has his apologists to explain his incomprehensible actions. But he doesn't seem to get sulky over the criticism - he relishes it.

Neither the Left nor the Right are saintly about this. It is endemic to the US Culture. Sorry. And we do not understand why the world does not shower us in rose petals. Buncha assholes.

The secret to American thought is, there is no such thing as American thought. Americans generally vomit forth memes upon stimulation, in the manner of the stereotypical regurgitation of seagulls when they feed their chicks.
One of the advantage of spewing memes instead of thought is that one's next spoken phrase is pre-determined. Americans love "TV political debate," which consists of exorbitantly rude people shrieking over each other, belching out the meme of the day for the party. This is called a "TALKING POINT." It is a memorized thing which should be issued when talking is called for.
Those who are skilled in this Art of Rudeness are TV Personalities, and thus are Famous.

There has been a most illustrative exchange on one of the Yahoo sites. It asks:

Why do cons who complain about "big government" rarely mention the waste in the military?

The answers were incredibly illuminating and sad:

Oh, and there is also corporate welfare.
It is worth the risk of doing the job.
Because Liberals hate the military.
Better than wasting money on tax cheats like ACORN.
Don't ask when our troops are fighting in the field.
Hey you are anti-American and love big government so don't complain.
Being a vet means your life was on the line the entire time you wore the uniform. Why was their life on the line? Because they were protecting the rights of ignorant imbeciles like you to go out in public and bash them even though they were fighting on your behalf. As far as being an unwed slut that got pregnant, well if you cant see how that is a drain on our economy then you need to crawl back under your rock. If it werent for vets we would still be kissing the feet of some tyrant from another country. Or better yet we might be speaking Japanese or German right now.
Because it is the only thing in government that does what it is supposed to do.
we just don't have the same solution the Libs do,which is basically disarm and possibly disband the Military.

These answers all orbit around the same hypothesis - we don't want to think about it, thanks - we're AMERICANS, dammit!

WHY LEARN THE MATERIAL, WHEN A C+ IS A PASSING GRADE?

People ask why the high school completion rate is so low. Many Americans ask, why bother? Don't try, don't ask, don't fail. So as Americans continue to get stomped by India and China, not because the people work cheap, but also they are willing to DO the unskilled and LEARN the skills so that THEY can be the skilled producers. "Having a problem with that? America's falling behind? Not a problem for me, Jack - I'm a patriot!!"

One small voice of wisdom remains and lingers:

You know, all the hatred being whipped up by the lie merchants of talk radio has me worried. Don't let the lying posters on here define you. We both know what a neocon is, and it describes the base of the Republican Party, once a fine institution of classic conservatism.

Polite discourse is long gone. I'm an old man now, and if any of these neocons try to make good on their threats, I can and will become violent. This new age of irrationalism is worse than when Clinton took office.

I endured 8 years of misgovernance by Bush, which included a friend being blown in half in Mosul. He was so lucky, according to neocon thought, he was able to die while watching his intestines spread across the floor.

I fear for my country, and it's because of the irrational right wing. The late Sen. Barry Goldwater is one of my personal heros. He would be sick to his stomach. Goldwater's maxim was "Disagree without being disagreeable."

Goldwater would be run out of the party today.

How to Just Say No.

2009-07-04T22:23:00.001-07:00

Kissing: How To Avoid Kissing

Was Sarah Palin showing signs of drug abuse during her speech?

2009-07-04T12:59:00.001-07:00

Seriously.
Watch this, please, from YouTube.

All kidding aside - was Sarah Palin tweaking while she gave this presentation? I've seen people get out of cars on COPS! who are more coherent than this lady.
She's twitchy and incoherent - somewhat reminiscent of the 2004 Bush during his re-election speeches.
Has Sarah been messing with Meth? Maybe I'm just a God-Damned Elitist, but I don't have any friends who scramble their brains on illegal substances. All of the tweaky, sprockety jibberish and yammering, with facial tics, sure as hell sound like a speeder to me.
Dick Freaking Nixon had his mud together far better when HE announced his resignation - and he looked like Myocardial Infarction In Progress.

******
OGOD that's it:

Sixty-two years ago. Her people are about to come back for her. The stories about the lizard people from another galaxy - it's all TRUE, ITS TRUE!.

methamphetamine

On to Richmond, in the name of God and Country!

2009-07-04T07:05:00.000-07:00

The spirit of '76 is there - or perhaps, the spirit of '61, when America was awash with righteous indignation, confronting an unjust foe, and ready to loose the forces of righteousness awash with wrath, with God on our side.

In the name of God and Country.

At a time when bravery was cheap, and honor was the thing shouted over beverages to admiring throngs, and blood was the thing seen in the flushed faces, but not clotted about icy rocks, YES!

In the name of God and Country!

All things horrible and desperate begin this way. These brave warriors do not think of Stalingrad, or death from consumption at Valley Forge. They do not know Andersonville, or Gettysburg, or the Hornet's Nest.
ON TO RICHMOND!
The men and women who once shouted this lie long dead in their quiet graves. We know from their words, and from inference about their human decency, that they were long shamed by those words, and hoped never to hear them again; unto the very moment when their last breath passed. And they were the lucky ones.

Yes, we are brave! Yes, we are true - for we know it in our hearts! And righteous wrath shall prevail, in the Name of God!

They carried their Sharps rifles, and were outfitted in the most modern manner for any combat soldier - part Special Forces Ranger, part GI Joe. Even the Armies of the World could not equip a combat soldier in the manner these proud American volunteers were rigged out - a complete contrast from their fore-fathers with their fowling pieces, a ragged commissary sack, and home-made shoes.

And so they died, in the Virginia mud, covering a retreat. For this was war.

During the moments of honor, the words NO RETREAT! NO SURRENDER!! peal from the lips of the brave. No doubt, these words were shouted from the Congressmen's carriages as they trundled down the road to Manassas, to set out for a picnic and jolly good show for a languid July summer's day. Perhaps not a shot will be fired, and the Rebels will run - and we'll chase those rabbits to Richmond, so don't let the horses over-graze and get lazy, for there's a sprint a-coming!

That day, it became a war. For the skeedaddle happened, and it was the skeedaddle of the fortunate, who still had legs, and it was a run towards Home and Mother, because, by God, the Hand of the Lord did not smite the enemy, as the proud fire-breathers promised in the whiskey houses and taverns. This was war.

War sucks. Careful what you say.

Palin for President?

2009-07-03T21:00:00.001-07:00

Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska intends to resign from office. Sarah Palin is running for President.

WASILLA, Alaska - Sarah Palin made a surprise announcement Friday that she will resign as governor of Alaska in a few weeks, saying she will try to "effect positive change" from outside government.

How, in the name of Goodness, is the Republican Party to save itself NOW? She has all of the electability and pizzaz of Rod Blagojevich, for Goodness's sake.

There are several possibilities:

The Republican Party has finally decided that this representative-government shit is a drag, and let's go for the Bolivian-Cuban-Paraguay junta approach.
Sarah flew to Argentina, also, too, 'coz she's the secret soulmate of Terry Sanford.
Somebody's got some fearsome negatives up there in Alaska, up there.

Time will tell. Save yer canned goods, the Apocalypse Boyse are horsing up.
And read the letter right here.
I'm very interested in the quote:

Todd and I are looking at more than half a million dollars in legal bills in order to set the record straight. And what about the people who offer up these silly accusations? It doesn’t cost them a dime so they’re not going to stop draining public resources – spending other peoples’ money in their game.
It’s pretty insane – my staff and I spend most of our day dealing with this instead of progressing our state now. I know I promised no more “politics as usual,” but this isn’t what anyone had in mind for Alaska.
Huh? If she's getting hounded by unsubstantiated legal abuse from the Left - nobody in the lower 49 can kick loose a dime for her Legal Defense fund? Something's smelling awful here.

OR IS SHE PREGNANT AGAIN?
If so, the BTrog Blog predicts the following names:
If it's a boy, it'll be Twink (in honor of Michael Jackson.)
If it's a girl, it'll be Twit. Junior.

A Picture Worth a Thousand Words

2009-07-03T19:45:00.001-07:00

Ben Sargeant offers us a few great thoughts.

The Ghastly Tea Partiers

2009-07-03T11:40:00.001-07:00

Technorati Tags: teabagging
A friend has invited me to the Tea Party set. I am appalled, but may attend. Here in Albuquerque, there are a few scattered freaks who loitered about during tax day whilst the rest of us went about our gainful employment. Screwed up traffic, they did.

A Somewhat Cynical Update on National Politics.

2009-07-03T10:57:00.000-07:00

The good news about Washington is, I believe that there are two politicians who I believe are reasonably intelligent, honest and trustworthy. Barack Obama, and Ron Paul. Yes, take that, you buffoons.
The terribly, terribly bad news is, it's far too late for them to do anything. The USA sustained terminal and fatal damage some years ago, but unlike the Titanic, it is taking many years to sink. But sink it will, it must.

The Republican Party, perhaps one of the causes of death of America which will be found on historical autopsy, is engaging in a shallow and cynical attack on Barack Obama, in order to regain political power, in the manner of Pirates of the Titanic! Yes, go ahead and take over the wheelhouse, and hold the captain hostage. Be my guest. It doesn't matter. The ship is sunk.

Technorati Tags: Cynicism
PS: I have finally added Blog Machinery through Firefox to do various clever things here.

Why We Lust for Socialism in America.

2009-07-03T09:22:00.000-07:00

Americans go about the pretense that we are somehow patriots and lovers of liberty. We resemble the patriots on the Concord Bridge, about as much as the late Michael Jackson and fellow musician Boy George resemble Clint Eastwood and John Wayne.

A living, breathing example - which is rampant in domestic government in that pretense of Liberty that calls itself Orange County, California - is the Homeowners' Association.

TEA PARTY INTERNATIONALE

Finding that they had insufficient Government for their comfort, the people of Orange County invented the Homeowners' Association which, by the merits of it being a private corporation, endowed it with infallibility - or so it appears from their actions.

Since this Government was broadly undefined, the people of Orange County and els where sought to imbue it with the breath of their political character. It was intended to be a common corporation which engaged in actions to beautify the common hold. Very quickly, it became a plush, exorbitantly-funded instrument of local Stalinism. Squealers hold the reins in the Homeowners' Associations across America. Protected by "confidential telephone numbers," they are eager to rat each other out, when a neighbor uses "wheat" colored paint on their house, when only "rust beige" has been approved.

The OC's and others don't seem to cop to their own identities, as for some reason they call themselves "conservatives" and vote Republican. Perhaps that should be a lesson about the character, or lack thereof, of the class of people who identify themselves as Republicans, conservatives and Americans, respectively.

Any pathetic "Tea Party Independence Rallies" which take place tomorrow in places within the little local soviets governed by Homeowners' Associations, should consider themselves up there with Joe Stalin and his Moscow "Peace and Freedom Parades." Suckers.Technorati Tags: teabagging

On the Epistemology of Science.

2009-07-02T06:31:00.000-07:00

I have been enjoying the nearly-universal contempt of all who discuss the great Global Warming and Climate Change bar-fight.

The debate seems evenly split into two parallel camps of ignorance: Those who insist that Anthropogenic Global Warming is a scientifically-proven fact, and those who insist that Anthropogenic Global Warming is a provably false idea.

None seem eager to explore my suggestion - that it is proven to be unknowable. Perhaps it is occurring. Perhaps not. But the question cannot be resolved by analysis, no matter how passionate and willful.

Since few will accept that assumption, few will proceed into the next question - what should we do, faced with a serious but unknowable problem? This possibility frustrates people, and the shooting of the messenger is usually what results.

Finally, the economist's argument - even assuming it is true, how much, how quickly, how far? The "let's do something" crowd seems to proceed down the unstudied assumption that some response is better than none.

The question of Anthropogenic Global Warming is a great test of the rationality of the human species. But we are all C- legacy students, regrettably.

Buyer, Seller, Cop and Thief; Lawyer, Judge and Bureau Chief.

2009-07-01T06:45:00.000-07:00

It has long puzzled me, that civilizations across the globe, no matter how advanced or rudimentary, all seem to invent certain noxious elements of governance. Several possibilities caught my attention. They are:

Government is somehow divinely inspired, and universally offered to mankind by a higher power, who may not necessarily have our best interests at heart.
There is some process by which people share the concept of government by trade and interaction, so as to share the best system of self-rule. And this is what we have produced.
Certain elements in the rise of human civilization tend individually and in each certain instance to give rise to principles common across humanity, which then cause similar methods of governance.
There is some innate defect of character in the human species which gives rise to Government first among other bad habits.

I suggest below that it is a combination of the latter two elements, which inevitably bring us Government, ant never quite to our benefit.

Sicut ergo propositus sit, let it then be proposed, that the marketplace or souk is a primitive human concept dating back to perhaps the time of early human language; before even money was conceived. That a rudimentary theory of common civilization existed to permit the elements of social intercourse.

Found: That the rise of government is an inevitable and detrimental process from the perspective of the marketplace - the source of prosperity.

Demonstrated:

Seller. A person who has item(s) of value, with which he wishes to part in order to attain other items more desired.
Buyer. A person who desires certain items of value, which he will obtain by exchange of other items. (Note here that in a barter economy, the buyer and seller are not clearly delineated, without the use of money equivalents.)
Thief. A thief is an individual who also wishes to obtain items of value by releasing things of less value - but at the extreme. A thief includes those who will abstract things of value, paying nothing for them, from a party in the marketplace. A thief may also include those who will bring items altered to appear as though they have more value than they do; adulterated items or forgeries. A thief is motivated by the same things as Buyer and Seller; however, the thief transgresses an unwritten Rule of the Marketplace, without which it will collapse into tumult. As the desire to obtain much with little effort is innate to human character, so is the idea of crime foreordained.
Police. This, the first agent of Government, is created by payment of Buyer and Seller, in order to thwart the deleterious effects of Thief.
Lawyer. A second noxious profession, but a private one, engaged to impede the first conspiratorial crime, that of collusion. The Police and Thief discover that, no matter how strongly they oppose each other at first, cooperation will yield fruit to both at the expense of the market. The Thief may go about his activities without fear of severe beating or death; the Police, no matter how well paid, will supplement their income from the Thief's bounty. Since the unwritten Rule of the Marketplace is transgressed, there must be ones who can publish certain rules which will be considered necessary to obey. The Lawyer arises synchronously with the
Judge. This individual - another who, it goes without saying, derives his sustenance indirectly from the Marketplace through the invention of taxation, since the simple employment of the Police is now a broader function than merely contract. Lord Judge is the first formal State Employee. Sellers, Buyers, Police and Thieves may all combine in various ways, by excluding one or another party, to enrich themselves by greed, but also by transgressing the Rules. There must be an objective Arbiter of the Rules, who may take over the role of Lawgiver, to oversee the action of the parties, and hear the arguments of the various Lawyers employed by the individual parties feeling wrong.
Bureau Chief. This individual is the first Government Functionary, besides the co-invented Tax Collector, who needs not be mentioned but arises spontaneously with Goverment. The title is arbitrary; the function is ubiquitous. The Bureau Chief is necessary for the inevitable ramification of Law, which breeds like rabbits, to cover every condition of human malfeasance discovered by the Judge in Court. Certain laws must be harshly enforced and others neglected. This decision is too weighty for one judge or another. One may be harsh by nature, another overly compassionate. A Bureau is needed for the recitation of punishments for crimes not yet committed. From the Chieftan comes the King; and from the king comes tyranny.

It goes now without saying that Government is off and running. A system of taxing the marketplace is in place, and a self-sustaining and eternally self-justifying bureaucracy.

All that is needed now is the invention of Black Markets; some of them are criminally-derived, such as a Thieves' Market; others arise spontaneously, as between Buyer and Seller who are indignant over the parasites upon their good business. The final function of Government is to extinguish Black Marketeering as powerfully as possible, making no distinction between unauthorized Free Enterprise, and Thievery; but rather to equate the two.

That brings us nicely to the present model of Governance. QED.

On the Supreme Court and Ricci v. DiStephano

2009-06-30T21:15:00.000-07:00

As is the custom, the people of the United States demand a sanitized, irrelevant summary of the Supreme Court decisions, and the media is delighted to offer them little more.

Ricci v. DiStephano is of especial interest, as it involves a decision from an appeals court from which a Supreme Court Justice may be appointed. The opinion of the Court differed in finding but perhaps not in substance from the leanings of the Appeals court.

The debate offered by the moronic spokespersons, principally on the radio, serves us no purpose. The actual point of contention is minuscule. Here is the meat of the matter, from the opinion:

Under Title VII, before an employer can engage in intentional discrimination for the asserted purpose of avoiding or remedying an unintentional, disparate impact, the employer must have a strong basis in evidence to believe it will be subject to disparate-impact liability if it fails to take the race-conscious, discriminatory action... The question, therefore, is whether the purpose to avoid disparate-impact liability excuses what otherwise would be prohibited disparate-treatment discrimination.

What is the nature of the test for the strong basis in evidence? Previous case law illustrates that

the Court held that certain government actions to remedy past racial discrimination—actions that are themselves based on race—are constitutional only where there is a “strong basis in evidence” that the remedial actions were necessary... It reasoned that “[e]videntiary support for the conclusion that remedial action is warranted becomes crucial when the remedial program is challenged in court by nonminority employees.”...Fear of litigation alone cannot justify the City’s reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations andqualified for promotions. Discarding the test results was impermissible under Title VII, and summary judgment is appropriate for petitioners on their disparate-treatment claim. If, after it certifies the test results, the City faces a disparate-impact suit, then in light of today’s holding the City can avoid disparate-impact liability based onthe strong basis in evidence that, had it not certified the results, it would have been subject to disparate-treatment liability.

Justice Ginsburg objects, joined by the remainder of the minority, about the strong basis in evidence:

In so holding, the Court pretends that “[t]he City rejected the test results solely because the higher scoring candidates were white.” Ante, at 20. That pretension, essential to the Court’s disposition, ignores substantial evidence of multiple flaws in the tests New Haven used. The Court similarly fails to acknowledge thebetter tests used in other cities, which have yielded lessracially skewed outcomes.

Moreover, the Court tore away discretion from the municipality to make its own choices in the selection of the processes, forbidding them to discard the processes if they found them to be substantively inadequate for the City's own purposes. The Federal Standard now offered holds for all of the cities. They have no right to consider whether the disparate impact is due to substantive causes - they must now examine the Court's spoor on the matter, to know if they are permitted to be concerned.

At least Scalia, in concurrence, is honest about the fundamental underpinnings:

Whether, or to what extent, are the disparate-impact provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 consistent with the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection?

Instead of a more rational approach - that a municipality may be able to demonstrate that it acts in good faith in weighing the provisions of disparate impact against that of equal protection - the Court has now yet again added more judicial minutiae - "conservative legislating from the bench" in exerting Federal judicial power over municipality interests - all the while, insulting the premise from which they derive the capacity. Figures.

PS: As an aside, it is a breath of fresh air that the Court does consider and weighs its opinions in spite of the national prejudice. On the same day, the USSC reversed the Massachusetts Supreme Court in MELENDEZ-DIAZ v. MASSACHUSETTS to insist upon a more expansive interpretation of defendants' rights.

Going by the nose-count: SCALIA, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which STEVENS, SOUTER, THOMAS, and GINSBURG, JJ., joined. THOMAS, J., filed a concurring opinion. KENNEDY, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and BREYER and ALITO, JJ., joined. One's prejudice would dictate that this would be a rather "statist," defendent-antagonistic ruling. It is not. This would be the sort of case which the former AG Gonzales would have a cow over. I hope he still does.

This is, most certainly, judicial activism at its finest. As Kennedy grumps in dissent,

It is remarkable that the Court so confidently disregards a century of jurisprudence. We learn now that we have misinterpreted the Confrontation Clause—hardly an arcane or seldom-used provision of the Constitution—for the first 218 years of its existence..Indeed, as JUSTICE THOMAS warned in his opinion in Davis, the Court’s approach has become “disconnected from historyand unnecessary to prevent abuse.”

The chance that a "conservative" commentator might point this out is, in fact, a snowball's chance in hell.

Chimpanzee Autarchy

2009-06-30T20:14:00.000-07:00

Chimpanzees barter.

Economists believe that barter is the ultimate cause of social wealth – and even much of our human culture – yet little is known about the evolution and development of such behavior. It is useful to examine the circumstances under which other species will or will not barter to more fully understand the phenomenon. Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) are an interesting test case as they are an intelligent species, closely related to humans, and known to participate in reciprocal interactions and token economies with humans, yet they have not spontaneously developed costly barter. Although chimpanzees do engage in noncostly barter, in which otherwise valueless tokens are exchanged for food, this lack of risk is not typical of human barter. Thus, we systematically examined barter in chimpanzees to ascertain under what circumstances chimpanzees will engage in costly barter of commodities, that is, trading food items for other food items with a human experimenter.

We found that chimpanzees do barter, relinquishing lower value items to obtain higher value items (and not the reverse). However, they do not trade in all beneficial situations, maintaining possession of less preferred items when the relative gains they stand to make are small.

Two potential explanations for this puzzling behavior are that chimpanzees lack ownership norms, and thus have limited opportunity to benefit from the gains of trade; and that chimpanzees’ risk of defection is sufficiently high that large gains must be imminent to justify the risk. Understanding the conditions that support barter in chimpanzees may increase understanding of situations in which humans, too, do not maximize their gains.

Chimpanzee autarky

Perhaps chimpanzees, too, fear taxes. Pan troglodytes shows us more perhaps than we want to know.

Mediocrity and its Excesses.

2009-06-30T05:58:00.000-07:00

We little recognize that for which we trade our freedoms and abilities, for it is far more evanescent than the concrete benefits. It is easy to define a certain point, by which convergent vectors may be described; but divergent ones, too, point "somewhere." They may not describe a point, but they surely do describe something, indeed.

Consider, for instance, the TSA and the preservation of Homeland Security. We wait for interminable hours in the airports, to be screened and scrutinized. Surely, we can describe why we can do this - but we can only vaguely see why we should not. It is a waste of human time, multiplied by the hundred-thousand. For those who produce little, little is wasted. For those who produce much, a theft of even a few minutes is a theft nonetheless.

In the aggregate, what would the loss be to an economy, if one airline were to eliminate all the screening procedures, operate from its own airports to abstract the risk from the fellow-travelers, and act in the manner of a taxi service? Would it suffer the occasional plane being blown up - and if so, would that be a net financial loss, compared with the thousands of hours of human productivity saved?

That's an extreme example. But how often do we waste excellence in the service of mediocrity, and joyfully so?

Charley Reese Sings to the Mad Gods.

2009-06-30T05:33:00.001-07:00

There are few writers with any sort of comprehension of the world as it stands. Charley Reese is one of them. Regrettably, he has recently retired. I swipe a list from him:

hat follows are a few of the basic premises on which I base my thinking. You might or might not agree with them, but may I suggest that you make a list of your own basic premises. It will help you clarify your thinking.

Government is inherently incompetent, and no matter what task it is assigned, it will do it in the most expensive and inefficient way possible.

The American government is corrupt from top to bottom.

If you rely on the mass media to inform you about your community, state and nation, you will, with rare exceptions, be woefully ignorant of what is really going on.

The universal franchise is a bad idea. The notion that the destiny of the nation should be put in the hands of ignoramuses, parasites, boobs, party hacks and idiots is absurd on its face.

Public education in America is a failure and is so flawed it cannot be reformed.

Not much has changed in the past 5,000 years of human history.

All of that might sound cynical, but it really isn't. True conservatives have argued for years that government, even a benign one, is like a clumsy, retarded giant, and therefore you have to be careful to limit what tasks you assign it.

All this, and now Michael Jackson. It sounds like I have a particular problem with the fellow, but I don't. It's really the mirror he held up to American Society. Here, now, in the middle of a small economic depression which threatens to turn into a huge economic depression, we throw absurd quantities of e-cash into the purchase of 20-year-old recordings of this fellow, who can be heard for free on the Video Appliance, any channel. The only thing holding the Chinese back from stomping us out must be the novel ways we discover to mal-invest. Unemployment insurance, stimulus money, whatever - all floods into the pipeline to pay the creditors who loaned money for the husbandry and upkeep of llamas at this warped boy's estate and ranch, Neverland. Next year, in the soup kitchen line, we can reflect on how much of this capital could have gone, perhaps, towards the means of making of things, rather than feeding our own narcissism, which certainly seems to be regarded in America as Durable Goods. We produced this man-child, and cruelly too, melting even his face like plastic Army Men under the magnifying glass - and then hated what we made, and loved it, too. One of my favorite talk-show hosts has gone nutters over this Tragic Event, comparing it to the last Great Tragedy, the death of Princess Diana. They are merely two examples of the beloved Meme In Our Head who receive daily sacrifices, lares et penates, the house gods of stardom, Jon and Kate, petulant and powerful, living on the shit-Olympus with the Hollywood sign on it. That's what we're all about, America. Gimme a hooyah.

Farting in Hilbert Space

2009-06-30T05:26:00.000-07:00

Each and every someone has a blog, and out there, it's the verbal equivalent of pinging Hilbert's cyberspace. There's no "out-there" out there, inanis et vacua.

On Troglodytes and Their Natural Habits.

2009-06-28T21:39:00.000-07:00

I note with distinct pleasure on Mike Reed's Flame Warrior site, the definition of the Troglodyte, although I would personally take issue with being defined under the concept of "bigoted narcissism." I rather hope for equitable and well-balanced misanthropy.

American Political Movements

2009-06-28T14:18:00.000-07:00

For those unfamiliar with politics in America, I must point out a new phenomenon.

But first an aside. A worthy thing it is, that we have sporting events set aside for persons who, through no fault of their own, but perhaps from birth catastrophes, fetal anoxic distress or chromosomal aneuploidy, are physically fit but mentally infirm.

These competitions are called The Special Olympics. They reward agility, teamwork and health, and are universally delightful to both participants and their loving families. Some of the participants are indeed so impaired that they are unable to distinguish between the Olympics Special and Olympics Regular. Thus, the award on the mantelpiece will be a source of pride, and the coming Vancouver Winter Games in 2010 and the London Summer Games of 2012, will be watched by many "defending champions" with admiration for their "fellow competitors."

For those as decrepit in body as mind, we have Tea Parties. Many of the participants, in fact, believe that they are part of some sort of Political Movement. They will watch the upcoming televised Republican National Convention in a few years bursting with the same sort of pride.

There are, to be sure, just as many dreadfully impaired sorts who are part of the Global Warming Movement - but Global Warming does not offer the shibboleth of abject stupidity as an entrance fee. Indeed, there are many obnoxious dolts who are proponents of Global Warming - but that alone does not suffice for identity with cretinhood.

Tea Partiers, briefly, are those who wish to organize to have everything change, except for the things which they wish to stay the same. That does not suffice for evidence of nincompoopery. The fact that their mathematical skills are so rudimentary as to cast into doubt, say, their ability to make change, is worrisome.

Cut all the taxes. Balance the Budget. Do not touch Defense. Those three tenets are sufficient to create a mathematical univese which cannot be solved.

They also rally around the phrase "No Taxation Without Representation!" which calls into question their ability to parse the sentence. Defend the Constitution and Restore Our Christian Nation, is another paradoxical mandate.

These things are what suffice for American Political Debate. They are not at the complexity of mental gymnatics of the question, say, "Is a slug really a snail, or something different?"

I hope that this suffices as informative for our non-American readership.

The Great American Meme Vacuum

2009-06-28T13:45:00.000-07:00

Media events of recent past are acting like the mental equivalent of the Taco Bell™ Threesome® on the Troglodyte. Every time I think I'm done, I get the urge to come back.

The Video appliance in the parlor offers a multi-channel sluice of memes and stereotypes free for the asking, which is why I turn it off most of the time. What it offers is crude, but excusable. People pay advert money for the right to intersperse the woeful flood of solids, as they call it in the sewage industry, with ads. It's the chumps on the other end that give me the freaks.

Americans have rapt eagerness for stories told at the level of the Fairy Tale. Unlike Hanna Schmitz in The Reader, who was merely functionally illiterate but intellectually adult, the American Audience cannot stand a plot-line more complex than a Grimm's Fairy Tale. People must be told from the outset who is Good and who is Bad, in order to incorporate some projection of their existance unto themselves.

Passionate attestation is made on the various sites and the InterSewer that Michael Jackson was not a child molester, he's not, I KNOW he's not, because I know Michael.

I find this creepy beyond words. Michael Jackson© is an industrial product managed by handlers and shown to the public as a performance. All "celebrities" are so. One should never trust the "reality" of things which require press agents to present them. Hollywood is what Hollywood wishes to show. Again, like the Viedo Appliance and the InterSewer, the scary part is not what issues therefrom, but what is eagerly ladled out of the muck-stream.

Americans cannot handle this degree of complexity. They prefer to pretend that their stories are real. The country is sinking under the weight of its own nonsense, and we, as a people, demand answers - which means, we demand things which gratify our own illusions of ourselves, no matter how twisted and sick they may be. It's like giving John Wayne Gacy creds for self-esteem, and being a people-pleaser. Iwww.

Michael Jackson and Healthcare Reform, Continued.

2009-06-28T13:24:00.000-07:00

We often complain about the swamp, but never bother to drain it.

Members of the Legal Profession have been chatting energetically about the "Mother of All Suits" regarding Jackson's death.

The comment which tugged at MY heartstrings was:

From the point of a medical malpractice suit, does it even matter? Jackson was allegedly in debt to the tune of over $300 million, though I suspect a forensic accounting may take some time.

If we were all insured by Kindly Uncle Sam, then he could pony up for the loss.

Moral of the Story:

fault (n)

(common) Who caused the bad thing to happen? (obsolete)
(legal) Whose ass can you sue for it?

e.g. Whose fault was it that I got in an accident when drunk? It's the Highway Department's fault.

Michael Jackson's Death Points Out the Need for Healthcare Reform

2009-06-28T12:57:00.000-07:00

Michael Jackson's Death Points Out the Need for Healthcare Reform, for sure. It's only the rich and famous who get ready access to prescription drugs of abuse without any fear of the DEA or the cops trailing your car, and not all of us have a Cuban Maid like Rush Limbaugh to send down to the Denny's with a cigar-box-full of $100 to score for us.

And we need someone for the family to sue when we Fuck Up the Dose and get ourselves killed. Back in the olden days, one had to take the rap for mainlining a hot bag and dying on the can somewhere seedy. And we're scared of needles.

Americans, for sure, are going to get what they want. It's the national credo. And drug use isn't all smoking dope and listening to Jethro Tull and getting insight about reality - it's fucking reality that's driving us off the mesa screaming, and we want Delicious Downers to absorb 47x their weight in Excess Reality.

But we're too chickenshit to go down to FunkyTown to score a bag, better to pick it up in the clean, lighted drive-thru pharmacy, and cop a few of Grandma's Demerol for the cancer pain. Grandma can understand. She feels OUR pain.

On the Tragic Death of Michael Jackson

2009-06-28T12:35:00.000-07:00

Michael Jackson is still dead, and the story mandates continuing news coverage of this fact. His original death was not personally noteworthy to bother waking the wife up for. It seems his death involves an ongoing deadness, which the media will keep us up to the minute, about.
To quote the Coroner to the Stars:

As Coroner, I must aver
I thoroughly examined him.
And he's not only merely dead,
He's really, most sincerely dead.

We await a second opinion regarding the question posed from the family, if Michael:

Is morally, ethic'ly
Spiritually, physically
Positively, absolutely
Undeniably and reliably
Dead!

This news can only be a boon to Terry Sanford, although it ruins the celebrity rating of Unnamed Argentine Girlfriend down below the talk-circuit cutoff.

Eugene Robinson wrote a brief and credible epitaph for this fellow, which I found enlightening. I have never been a follower of Mr. Jackson, nor the other members of the now-Jackson-Four, nor have I been struck Medusa-like with the projected image of a sibling's nipple.

America, though, should see the horrible countenance of the pre-dead Michael Jackson as but a mirror into our own being. Michael only wanted to become what we asked him to, Tourettes-like, without the ability to control his own expression. That hideous Roswell alien that he became is only ourselves, mirrored in his own existence.

He was broadly hated as a child-abuser; but what then are we?

On the Joys of Anti-Americanism

2009-06-28T12:11:00.001-07:00

Americans have a primitive terror of false accusations, reminiscent of the ancient tribes who fled from the Camera, as though it may steal their Soul. (Such tribes now have iPods and have leaped ahead of our understanding of the world.)

One of the greatest narcissistic wounds we suffer is when we are accused of Anti-Americanism. This sad little moniker is almost without meaning. It resembles, in significance and impact, the phrase "poopyhead" used in kindergarten. It is the American adult equivalent of that phrase, the original having lost its puñaza, its ability to cripple and kill our fragile egos.

Note that the terror which Americans feel towards false accusations, is not paralleled in the matter of true accusations. One of our pre-eminent Radio Fountains of Traditional Values has been busted for a narcotics violation. This does not seem to bother his ditto-followers in the least, however, because the accusation is true. The camera cannot steal one's soul, if one does not have one.

So, in this blog, I risk the accusation of anti-Americanism. A lot of what is wrong with the country lies at the feet of We The People, no matter how much we try to kick THAT dead raccoon over into the neighbors' yard. We screwed up, we deserve the punishment.

The habit is to throw the problem over into the Liberal/Conservative neighbors' yards, and accuse them of all manner of atrocities and misbehavior. There is great exercise to blame Barack Obama for the cataclysm which has happened, the harbinger of the cataclysm which is to come. He merely came in as a member of the chorus in the Last Act. The play's been set for a long time now.

A Brief Introduction and Justification for this Blog.

2009-06-28T11:54:00.000-07:00

I generally find blogs to be tiresome, useless, and grandiose demonstrations of self-centered meditation with little to back them up. By and large, I despise them, and have sympathy for those who condemn them universally.

Interspace has no shortage of blogs that are nasty, ill-informed and whiny. In many ways, they re-invent these quintessentially American traditions in cyberspace for all to see, for we are often proud of our sulkiness and ill-temper.

The title comes from a concept for a bumpersticker, which enraptured me not enough to print:

I'm a Brachiating Troglodyte - And I Vote!

I felt compelled to create this as an American Diogenes, in search of any fellows online who are not numbskulls or mindless can-do puppets. I am still cynical about the likelihood of finding any.