What is a lie to a pragmatist? (Cont. retrofit).


Pragmatists, idealists (at least some), mystics, and postmodernists generally assert that truth is not a matter of confirming some alleged facts, "out there", in an objective, empirically-knowable world. There are various differences between these groups, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to suggest that they uphold some version of William James' concept of pragmatism: that truth always has some relation to usefulness, whether that truth relates to the sciences, social sciences, humanities, etc. The pragmatist indeed prides himself on his ability to see "truth" as somewhat provisional.


Old-fashioned Truth


(However, the "is" means inclusion--class membership---and not equality (which would be bi-conditional) nor cause. I.e, "All prime numbers are included in the set of natural numbers." So it's a conditional, really (as Frege translated it, I believe). Moreover Aristotle's Square works dandy with modern predicate-logic as well, ala universal and existential quantifiers, or with summation signs for the I and O). The "syllogistic" then outlines the rules of inference for various forms created from this template. )

The Cash Value of Truth model has of course been criticized, and not without reason. While in some contexts--say medicine--utility would seem to be critical (--testing the functionality of a pharmaceutical, say)--in others, whether history or law, or various social sciences, any modifications of the actual facts to fit some ideology might conceivably result in highly unethical situations. Some naive AGW advocates, to take a contemporary instance, argue that while Gore's eco-movie, An Inconvenient Truth, may not be completely correct in terms of the science, good--or "awareness"-- will come out of the movie and Gore's celebrity Green status. GW Skeptics, including professional scientists, on the other hand allege that Gore not only manipulated and exaggerated the dangers, but in some cases made flat-out errors, as with the "hockey stick" chart of supposed rising temperatures.

(Traditional pragmatists such as James or Peirce would have unlikely agreed to that sort of deception, anyway: proceeding via Jamesian terms, the authentic pragmatist (or pragmaticist) would require experimental evidence (i.e. chem. lab) of CO2 substantially increasing radiation (heat) before giving his assent to the AGW hypothesis, and would probably not agree to mere GW "models" based on shaky inferential evidence regarding temperatures.)

Bertrand Russell noted a few potential problems entailed by "utopian pragmatism" in regards to John Dewey's philosophy of education. If the pragmatist's goal is to create a harmonious community, or even harmonious classroom, or "well-integrated self,"---or hip ecotopia--- then it would seem the pragmatist might "shape" facts (say historical, scientific, or economic facts, or even literary narratives) to fit his pedagogy--making the students see the world through rose-tinted glasses, more or less (or perhaps green-, or red tinted glasses, in green or marxist indoctrination centers). Various theologically-oriented pragmatists might do the same with religious texts: Paddy McMuffin might grant that he cannot verify Scripture, but he insists it's good for you, regardless.

Assuming the that "fact-shaping-process" (mendacity, in old-fashioned terms) resulted in a harmonious community and well-balanced individuals (or even a supremely efficient proletarian State), then pragmatists would grant, it would seem, that the right thing had been done. And other sorts of similar absurdities, possibly Orwellian, resulting from pragmatism (or any ideology where truth is solely a matter of functionality) across the board could be realized. The documented crimes against humanity of stalinism or fascism could be eliminated from history curriculums because they are too negative; or some eco-bureaucrats suppress scientific evidence disproving a politically-correct model of global warming because it's considered too threatening to their own eco-political vision. AS Russell realized, politics should never override historical or scientific facts, regardless of the visions of bureaucrat-pragmatists.

Fear ye the Pandybat...............

"""""The soutane sleeve swished again as the pandybat was lifted and a loud crashing sound and a fierce maddening...pain made his hand shrink together..."""" (POTAAAYM, J.J.)

"""""Pendebat in cruce, / He was hanging on the cross...." (Augustine)

Consensus Science: the Al Gore Truth-process


Just as a show of hands in a high-school classroom (how many think Answer A is right??) will not necessarily establish the right answer to an algebra problem, the truth of Global warming will not be decided by a poll. Science is NOT done via consensus: it’s a matter of confirming a given hypothesis via experimental proof. (No shit, perhaps you are thinking--say it to Big Al).

Einstein himself wrote on this topic when his first papers on the experimental confirmation of relativity were not accepted by "peer reviewed" scientific journals. Obviously, that a majority of experts might mostly agree on the global warming hypothesis does not itself confirm the hypothesis (except maybe to Al Jr., who managed a D+ in "Physics for Dixiecrats" at Haw-vard).

Contrarian views do quite often prevail in science: most victorians held to Screeptural views and considered Darwinian evolution the most horrid, blasphemous idea in the world, and Darwin's theory was not accepted for many years, either among society or scientists (and still is not with many biblethumpers--or koran-thumpers). Newtonian mechanics, accepted as truth for 2+ centuries, was substantially modified by special and general relativity, though Einstein's theories were considered odd at the time (contrarian or "fringe" in blogspeak).

Of course GW is not close to Newtonian mechanics: the theory has not really been established (i.e. the basic claim that increases in anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere leads to global warming has not been conclusively established--that is, assuming that present and historical temperature data itself is accurate! Gore of course doesn't know margin of error from the margin on his NASDAQ stock). A consensus does not even exist among global warming "experts" to the degree that Gore suggested, and a consensus of climate modellers does not equal a consensus of atmospheric scientists. GW experts merely offer probabilities and estimations, not certainties or truths (though YES, the IPCC research should be seriously considered): though that did not prevent Al Jr. from presenting GW as established, and "true" theory. See this site for some effective debunking of Gore/AIT (which is not the same as the IPCC report anyway):

Edelman/AIT

How to lie and be PC: the New Worlds way.



Nearly as amusing as Al Jr.'s green buffoon-act are his defenders when challenged---not only challenged via Crichton or the rightists (some of the rightists are as bad as Gore), but from sober rationalists and scientific researchers. Merely to question the dogma causes nervous breakdowns among many of the Gorean faithful. Additionally, even if some IPCC claims turned out to be accurate, Al ain't the person to be selling those claims. Let's have Dr. Hug and Rancourt debate the IPCC climate-modeling "experts".

For instance, look at this thread, led by a Wordpress cyber-liar, McMax of New Worlds:

Gore/Peaceprize

Note that the mere mention of Crichton and GW skeptics causes....palpitations!..... among the faithful. ID politics, pure and simple. Just call Crichton a neo-con, or nazi, or suggest it, and his arguments have been dismissed. Here's a typical little NewWorlder liar, one INS-o-motya, in action:

""""My reaction when I read Krugman's column this morning was, I'm pretty confident that the Michael Crighton-hugging right-wingers were crazy enough before Gore showed up to drive them even further over the edge."""

Yes, Dr. Crichton, a real Harvard graduate and with far more scientific credibility than Goreco, is crazy and rightwing as are his followers, and Al Gore, flunkie, hawk, scientifically incompetent dixiecrat should be considered correct. Nearly stalinist in terms of efficiency and deception--or perhaps like Mormon (and New Worlds has a distinct Mormonal flavor--search for O.S.Card and, like, BerthaRon). Skeptics of GW: they are wrong because they ....don't pay homage to St. Gore! Pathetic. What did WB Yeats say about middle-class peasants incapable of reason? "Base born products of base beds............."

Al ain’t exactly Einstein

Big Al, peacemaker, managed like a few D+s in “natural science” back when his rich redneck daddy paid for his beer-drinking at Haw-vawd:

“”"”"at Nonpartisan Half Sigma digs up an old story on Gore’s grades at Harvard and feels robbed: “Gore…had a D+ average in his two ‘Natural Sciences’ classes (which seem pretty bogus to me, kind of like ‘rocks for jocks’). Half Sigma has Bs or B+s in two semesters of Chemistry and two semesters of Physics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (before he transferred to an Ivy League undergraduate school). What does this mean? It means Half Sigma is more qualified to talk about gases in the atmosphere than Al Gore. Someone should give me a Nobel Prize.”"”"”

Phuck, even we here at Contingencies, humble computer geeks and logico-ontologists, out-GPA and out-science Big Al the Green Dinosaur. Maybe Al should have to run through Avagadro's Number problems: then see how he does, and if can't pass it, return the Prize................

Al/Slate

Alex C. on Al G.

"Al Gore's Peace Prize"
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

""""It's As Ridiculous As If They'd Given Goebbels One in 1938""""

"""""Put this one up on the shelf of shame, right next to Henry Kissinger's, or the peace prize they gave to Kofi Annan and the entire UN in 2001, sandwiched between the UN's okay for the bombing of Serbia, the killing of untold numbers of Iraqis, many of them babies and children in the years of sanctions, and its greenlight for the bombing of Baghdad in 2003. In 1998 the Nobel crowd gave the prize to Medecins Sans Frontieres, whose co-founder Bernard Kouchner is now France's foreign secretary urging the bombing of Iran. Like Gore, Kouchner was a rabid advocate of the dismemberment of the former Yugoslavia and onslaughts on Serbia.""""

We are not worthy. Cockburn realizes that Gore, like Hillary, is "Them." Perhaps Gore no longer has as much "Them" as a Dick Cheney's Them, but Them nonetheless. Clinton/Gore phucked up. That's the Res Ipsa Loquitur of Democratic politics of the last 15 years. They could have done great things, implemented reforms, taken on the corporate and financial oligarchies. Instead, Bill-Al decided to play it safe, accomodate, move to the right, while increasing bureaucracy (though in some cases, Clinton/Gore cut needed infrastructure--Gore in fact slashed funding for environmental research). Gore's the role model for like liberal protestant-stoners everywhere who think if software executives and IT barons just start to recycle and eat tofu everything will be kosher.


Gore's new greenish turn is more or less calculated and corporate as well. Global warming rates as a pseudo-issue compared to peak oil, to war, to nuclear weapons problems, to theocracy. The Inconvenient Truth was more corporate-sponsored liberalism. What's more, Al fails to mention all the decent arguments why CO2 is not the culprit.

""""The most often cited reconstructed global average temperature curves (themselves somewhat tenuous, see below) show increases in global mean temperature of approximately 0.5-1 C in the last 100 years. Let us compare this to the extremes of temperature to which humans routinely adapt. Humans have thrived in every possible ecological niche on the planet, from deserts to tropical forests to the North Polar Regions, since well before present technological advances. These environments show mean temperature differences of as much as 50 C or more. Many of these environments also show day to night and seasonal differences of as much as 20-50 C. A sudden 0.5-1 C increase in mean annual temperature (not spread over 100 years) would be imperceptible to any human and indeed could barely be detected using all of the methods of the modern scientific enterprise."""""

Rancourt

And that's no Freeper: but a Canadian scientist, and green showing the BS of Gore's pseudo-environmentalism. The temperature curves themselves are problematic: the margin of error could possibly be sufficient to show that the supposed rises in temperature due to CO2 (natural or anthropic, Al?) are negligible. Phuck Al Gore, that phony corporate lackey.

Teddy A. in da House.

Adorno: old-school marxist who detested both western capitalism and stalinist bureaucracy. A classically-trained musician (violinist, ah believe) Adorno also wrote some interesting things on the "culture industry", and how popular entertainment de-sensitizes consumers all over the globe. TA was a proverbial snob, though one still interested in socialist reform. His writings are often rather speculative, and Karl Popper was not entirely mistaken in criticizing Adorno (and most of the "structural" marxists) for his somewhat hasty conclusions and generalizations: i.e. many european scholars are not too keen on empiricial evidence, and verification. At the same time the Frankfurt marxists called the Popperians and positivists on their lack of any meaningful politics, their innate skepticism, and their subservience to the monarchy of Capital.

""""""The frame of mind to which popular music originally appealed, on which it feeds, and which it perpetually reinforces, is simultaneously one of distraction and inattention. Listeners are distracted from the demands of reality by entertainment which does not demand attention either.

THE NATIONAL ANTHEM!



The notion of distraction can be properly understood only within its social setting and not in self-subsistent terms of individual psychology. Distraction is bound to the present mode of production, to the rationalized and mechanized process of labor to which, directly or indirectly, masses are subject. This mode of production, which engenders fears and anxiety about unemployment, loss of income, war, has its "non-productive" correlate in entertainment; that is, relaxation which does not involve the effort of concentration at all. People want to have fun. A fully concentrated and conscious experience of art is possible only to those whose lives do not put such a strain on them that in their spare time they want relief from both boredom and effort simultaneously. The whole sphere of cheap commercial entertainment reflects this dual desire. It induces relaxation because it is patterned and pre-digested. Its being patterned and pre-digested serves within the psychological household of the masses to spare them the effort of that participation (even in listening or observation) without which there can be no receptivity to art. On the other hand, the stimuli they provide permit an escape from the boredom of mechanized labor.""""""



Full O'Sound and Fury, dewd

TheListener/Adorno

"""""The emotional listener listens to everything in terms of late romanticism and of the musical commodities derived from it which are already fashioned to fit the needs of emotional listening. They consume music in order to be allowed to weep. They are taken in by the musical expression of frustration rather than by that of happiness. The influence of the standard Slavic melancholy typified by Tchaikovsky and Dvorak is by far greater than that of the most "fulfilled" moments of Mozart or of the young Beethoven. The so-called releasing element of music is simply the opportunity to feel something. But the actual content of this emotion can only be frustration. Emotional music has become the image of the mother who says, "Come and weep, my child." It is catharsis for the masses, but catharsis which keeps them all the more firmly in line. One who weeps does not resist any more than one who marches. Music that permits its listeners the confession of their unhappiness reconciles them, by means of this "release", to their social dependence."""""


This seems quite rich and suggestive: ""Emotional music has become the image of the mother who says, "Come and weep, my child." It is catharsis for the masses, but catharsis which keeps them all the more firmly in line."""

The emotional catharsis of schmaltzy sad music then sort of reinforces the consumer's own misery--their own status as losers. Yass Teddy. However, there is kitschy melancholy (like Tchaikovsky, as TA notes, or all sorts of pop "gothic" music), and there is authentic melancholy--late Scriabin, Chopin, Bach organ concertos, a bit of Satie, Bill Evans playing Autumn Leaves. In terms of narratives, there are soap operas, mafioso dramas, tearjerkers; rather more powerful and perennial are Macbeth and Othello, or EA Poe, Shelley, etc. The authentic melancholy concerns not only one individual or one family's tragedy, but a nation's tragedy, a continent's tragedy---a corpse-strewn battlefield, and rats taking lunch break.

Nietzsche reflects on his one time pal, Wagner.

".......Wagner represents a great corruption of music. He has guessed that it is a means to excite weary nerves,—and with that he has made music sick. His inventiveness is not inconsiderable in the art of goading again those who are weariest, calling back into life those who are half-dead. He is a master of hypnotic tricks, he manages to throw down the strongest like bulls. Wagner's success—his success with nerves and consequently with women—has turned the whole world of ambitious musicians into disciples of his secret art. And not only the ambitious, the clever, too ... Only sick music makes money today; our big theaters subsist on Wagner...."

Das stimmt. And Fritz was at least as decent an ivory-tickler as RW. Wagner's far more Xtian than pagan; rather, Xtianity, filtered through norse myths. Heroics, the militarism, anti-semitism. Nietzsche realized what a bombastic, pompous, bourgeois, loud bore RW could be. Most modern germans detest that crap, and would prefer Satie. The American hicks who flock to Wagner shows in the Gay Area or El Lay are mostly just opportunists, sort of scots or irish mafiosos. Conspicuous consumption, as Veblen called it: they generally know nothing about German kultur or musick.

Wagner's mostly the Beer Barrel Polka with some ornamentations. Advanced Oom pah pah …..Be assured Bach and Beethoven laugh at Fieldmarshall Wagner somewhere beyond–as do all the great russian and french composers.


Mark Twain was no fan of the Wagnerian spectacle:


""""I have witnessed and greatly enjoyed the first act of everything which Wagner created, but the effect on me has always been so powerful that one act was quite sufficient; whenever I have witnessed two acts I have gone away physically exhausted; and whenever I have ventured an entire opera the result has been the next thing to suicide."""""""


Heh heh.

The case for mocking religion/Hitchens

This is an oldie of Hitchens, but in some sense the essay hasn't received the recognition it deserved. Anyone who values certain cultural practices of Western democracy--movies, music, wine or liquor, or Sausage McMuffins--should be aware that the Prophet's code forbids nearly all forms of entertainment (as well as the booze that you and a significant other might imbibe while enjoying Debussy...... or the Grateful Dead).

"......Islam makes very large claims for itself. In its art, there is a prejudice against representing the human form at all. The prohibition on picturing the prophet—who was only another male mammal—is apparently absolute. So is the prohibition on pork or alcohol or, in some Muslim societies, music or dancing. Very well then, let a good Muslim abstain rigorously from all these. But if he claims the right to make me abstain as well, he offers the clearest possible warning and proof of an aggressive intent. This current uneasy coexistence is only an interlude, he seems to say. For the moment, all I can do is claim to possess absolute truth and demand absolute immunity from criticism. But in the future, you will do what I say and you will do it on pain of death.

I refuse to be spoken to in that tone of voice, which as it happens I chance to find "offensive." ( By the way, hasn't the word "offensive" become really offensive lately?) The innate human revulsion against desecration is much older than any monotheism: Its most powerful expression is in the Antigone of Sophocles. It belongs to civilization. I am not asking for the right to slaughter a pig in a synagogue or mosque or to relieve myself on a "holy" book. But I will not be told I can't eat pork, and I will not respect those who burn books on a regular basis. I, too, have strong convictions and beliefs and value the Enlightenment above any priesthood or any sacred fetish-object. It is revolting to me to breathe the same air as wafts from the exhalations of the madrasahs, or the reeking fumes of the suicide-murderers, or the sermons of Billy Graham and Joseph Ratzinger. But these same principles of mine also prevent me from wreaking random violence on the nearest church, or kidnapping a Muslim at random and holding him hostage, or violating diplomatic immunity by attacking the embassy or the envoys of even the most despotic Islamic state, or making a moronic spectacle of myself threatening blood and fire to faraway individuals who may have hurt my feelings. The babyish rumor-fueled tantrums that erupt all the time, especially in the Islamic world, show yet again that faith belongs to the spoiled and selfish childhood of our species.""""""

Hail Eris! (google for mo')

Movin' like a shadow above

"How then do you become Napoleon? There is always one escape: into wickedness. Always do the thing that will shock and wound people. At five, throw a little boy off a bridge, strike an old doctor and break his spectacles -- or, anyway, dream about doing these things. Along those lines you can always feel yourself original. And after all, it pays! It is much less dangerous than crime."

(George Orwell offers some insights into the politics of surrealism and Dalí).

Johnny the Recanter.

Edwards said, about 2 years ago, he was wrong on the Iraq war:

"Almost three years ago we went into Iraq to remove what we were told -- and what many of us believed and argued -- was a threat to America. But in fact we now know that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction when our forces invaded Iraq in 2003. The intelligence was deeply flawed and, in some cases, manipulated to fit a political agenda.

It was a mistake to vote for this war in 2002. I take responsibility for that mistake"

Edwards deserves some credit for admitting his "mistake" (if a mistake it was). On the other hand, when you think about it, the implications of that mistake are staggering. If Bushco manipulated intelligence to the degree that some of the "recanters" suggest, or created false pretenses for large-scale war, Bush and his cabinet should be facing trial for very serious crimes. Murder for one. It's entirely reasonable to put the leading US Dems on trial as well for collusion of some sort.

Additionally, while we here at Contingencies respect Edwards for his recanting, we recognize a certain shoddy BS quality to it. That's a great faux-pas, obviously, that cost the lives of thousands, and billions of dollars. (that's not to say the allegations of misrepresentation have been proven to be true--though millions of people seem to think they are true). The admission of guilt on the Iraq war then appears nearly confessional, a type of political atonement--Johnny Recanter comes clean! A self-effacing quality plays well in the liberal Simulacra--Edwards enters the cosmic Rehab, is healed, forgiven, and Moves On. Justice not really a concern, and indeed "square", man.

Notwithstanding the atonement hustles (and subtle ad populus, really), politicians like Edwards are not ordinary citizens. The Dems would have known much more about this than Jane Q. Pubic does: they would have been briefed by the military, intelligence, CIA, etc. So it's not like they get a 15 minute run-down on the situation and say thumbs up or not to an invasion (if that's it, they definitely should be on trial).

The democratic politicians were involved in the process leading up to war for months. Edwards may have recanted; on the other hand, that recanting might be more like, "I recant" ("but really know much more about this then I let on").
Dems could have voted against IWR (some did, like Boxer). They could have raised a stink, filibustered, etc. Then, having learned there was deception, pressed much harder for investigations--and legal action ( some World Court--or Russell Tribunal---sort of panel). Assuming that Bushco used deception, false pretenses, misrepresention to justify the Iraqi war effort, the pro-war Democrats are, I believe, party to that deception. So voting for Hillary, or even Edwards, arguably, implies voting for a war criminal.

----------- -------------

Click for ~Gott

He is risen



St. BZ.

Luther: Der Luegenmeister.

"Aus einem verzagten Arsch kommt kein fröhlicher Furz!" (Martin Luther)


""""[Luther's] dialectical style was translated into the famous doctrine of the "two swords" dealing with authority in society. Luther argued that the authority of the Church ("the sword of doctrine") extended only to "spiritual" matters and that the Church should never interfere with the running of the state ("the sword of the princes"). In fact Luther taught that the princes could do whatever they needed to do to maintain order without regard to moral concerns. After all, justification was by faith, not by works and only dealt with one's eternal standing before God, not with one's temporal standing in the world. This was the first use of dialectical morality in Christian European history and was used to justify the brutalization, torture, rape and murder of peasants, Jews, Catholics, Anabaptists, and anyone else who threatened the absolute authority of the princes in their realms. Needless to say, this made Luther very popular with the more rapacious German nobles.""""

Luther/Errors

Arguments---sound arguments--- could be made that Luther and Lutheranism in some sense resulted in German nationalism, and the rise of the nazis. And if one recalls that Hegelian dialectic --Hegel was a devoted Lutheran at the end of his life, and rightist-militarist--- not only influenced German rightists, but Marx and the left , one could argue Luther, via Hegel ushered in Stalinism as well. Lutheran-Hegelian Apocalypse, dankeschoen.....Bertrand Russell sort of thought along those lines.

Luther rejected Aristotelian logic, and thus the law of contradiction (rather important to classical mathematics as well--try a reductio ad absurdum sans the law of contradiction), and most of the catholic theology (and in a sense greek rationalism): there is some mystical dualism instead, where Christ is both sinful man and god. That is one reason the catholics hated him (and burnt some of his translations of Screeepture), and still do. Luther's irrationalism then, according to this reading, had a great influence on Hegelian dialectic and marxism, which is also contra-Aristotelian logic (instead of objecting to contradiction as falsity, the protestants, and Hegelian-postmodernists in some sense embrace it).

That's not "necessary" in a sense (for one, methinks Hegel did respect the greeks to some extent--as did Kant), but some scholars argue in that fashion--I wager Gottlieb Frege, the father of modern logic and mathematical analysis, thought something like that (along with Russell, a Fregean such as Quine, writing on presumed challenges to the law of contradiction [a few supposed anomalies of quantum physics, or Browerian "intuitionism," etc.], also rejects the anti-rationalist, i.e. anti-logicist position). That's not to suggest that catholics are superior, or a more authentic tradition; merely that protestantism begins with a certain anti-rationalist position (Nietzsche also in that tradition to some degree, but FN, well-aware of the power of scientific empiricism--from Copernicus to Darwin--, simply rejects the theological BS---such as the dualism, either protestant/Hegelian or platonic-catholic--).


Therefore, we here at Contingencies interpret Luther's little anti-despair fart-rant, as sort of a "keep a smile on, firm-handshake, Win-Win situation" protestant-salesman BS: Reagan-like nearly. (Calvin himself also thought in those terms). I wager Luther was probably some big beer-swilling, pork-eating, saxon thug: recall his "sin strongly, but keep your faith" BS. In other words, keep your eye on the sparrow, und Gott im Himmel, as your Panzer division enters Poland.

Queequeg's bad dream



extrem großer Megalodon-Zahn


"""""Unappalled by the massacre made upon them during the night, the sharks now freshly and more keenly allured by the before pent blood which began to flow from the carcase - the rabid creatures swarmed round it like bees in a beehive.

And right in among those sharks was Queequeg; who often pushed them aside with his foundering feet. A thing altogether incredible were it not that attracted by such prey as a dead whale, the otherwise miscellaneously carnivorous shark will seldom touch a man."""""

(from Melville's Moby Dick)

A Punk named Eli

„‚Gott‘, ‚Unsterblichkeit der Seele‘, ‚Erlösung‘, ‚Jenseits‘ lauter Begriffe, denen ich keine Aufmerksamkeit, auch keine Zeit geschenkt habe, selbst als Kind nicht, – ich war vielleicht nie kindlich genug dazu? – Ich kenne den Atheismus durchaus nicht als Ergebniss, noch weniger als Ereigniss: er versteht sich bei mir aus Instinkt. Ich bin zu neugierig, zu fragwürdig, zu übermüthig, um mir eine faustgrobe Antwort gefallen zu lassen. Gott ist eine faustgrobe Antwort, eine Undelicatesse gegen uns Denker –, im Grunde sogar bloss ein faustgrobes Verbot an uns: ihr sollt nicht denken! …“

(Nietzsche)



Move On is whacked, crypto-marxist, regardless of their database of "signatures" (and any Jeffersonian--und, a fortiori, Nietzschean-- should ALWAYS be wary of people who say "we have 500,000+ signatures, aren't we right??"). Billionaire leftist Soros throws millions of shekels to MoveOn each year.



Gen. Petraeus is a 101 Airborne vet, quite respected by his peers (MoveOn-o-Cheks should pray to St. Marx that the 101 boys--or even Rudy Guiliani-- don't get a hold of that list of signatures). Even Hillary Clinton likes him. Eli Pariser on the other hand is a little Vermonty-pacifist punk: his satire wasn't even amusing. MoveOn. Inc. lied about Petraeus's record, and also insinuated that Petraeus himself had lied during his testimony to Congress (probably a defamation case as well). Then the silly "betray-us' jive. Not even amusing.



Phuck dat punk: and the punks who sign on to MoveOn's bitch list.

Genealogy, n.

"An account of one's descent from a man who did not particularly care to trace his own."

(Ambrose Bierce). Ambrose knew the score: the typical American middle-class idiot generally invokes his ancestral name (or what is assumed to be an ancestral name) when some lucrative opportuni-tay presents itself. MormBots and other pious frauds are especially fond of the genealogy hustle (and the clans that don't quite pay their respects to the LDS elders are awarded black marks next to their family tree (or weed as it were)).

Reality



Crude went from $25 to $80+ bucks a barrel, in five years (that's how Rothschilds are born). The Federal reserve boys, realizing that oil prices have a direct relationship to the US economy as a whole (such as mortgages, credit, bonds, etc.), more or less adjust interest rates accordingly (though they were off until 2003 or so).

Trading units in crude oil are 1000 barrels each. Most shekelmeisters start with at least 10 contracts: 10,000 barrels (a big-time baron like Gates or Ellison probably has millions tied up in the crude casino). So starting--modestly, in capitalist terms---with 10,000 @ $25, you had $250,000 (minus the fees for brokers and other whores). Less than 4 years later, you got $800,000 in value (add another 0 or two for how the deep pockets boys in NY or Chi-town play)--actually with leverage, it could be more. That ain't working.

The "Loyal Opposition."



In Chinese, "We'll destroy old world and build a new one." Maoist art from the early Cultural Revolution (1966): note that the Worker crushes the crucifix, Buddha and classical chinese texts with his hammer.

The Candide Lemma (Steven Pinker on Design)

Pinker is a psychology professor at Harvard University, and best-selling author and linguist.

""....Our own bodies are riddled with quirks that no competent engineer would have planned but that disclose a history of trial-and-error tinkering: a retina installed backward, a seminal duct that hooks over the ureter like a garden hose snagged on a tree, goose bumps that uselessly try to warm us by fluffing up long-gone fur.

The moral design of nature is as bungled as its engineering design. What twisted sadist would have invented a parasite that blinds millions of people or a gene that covers babies with excruciating blisters? To adapt a Yiddish expression about God: If an intelligent designer lived on Earth, people would break His windows.

The theory of natural selection explains life as we find it, with all its quirks and tragedies. We can prove mathematically that it is capable of producing adaptive life forms and track it in computer simulations, lab experiments and real ecosystems. It doesn't pretend to solve one mystery (the origin of complex life) by slipping in another (the origin of a complex designer).

Many people who accept evolution still feel that a belief in God is necessary to give life meaning and to justify morality. But that is exactly backward. In practice, religion has given us stonings, inquisitions and 9/11. Morality comes from a commitment to treat others as we wish to be treated, which follows from the realization that none of us is the sole occupant of the universe. Like physical evolution, it does not require a white-coated technician in the sky.""""

Pinker, unlike many of the neo-Darwinists (Dawkins hints at the issue, but does not really develop it) points out a central problem of any putative "Design arguments": a Designer would by definition have knowingly designed the bacteria that caused the black plague (--and all other nasty organisms, whether viruses, or T. Rex). However obvious that point is (it was obvious to Voltaire, the Marquis Of Arouet, and really to the more skeptical of the Founding Fathers such as Franklin and Jefferson (who kept a bust of Voltaire in his study)), it remains a rather powerful counterargument to theological "naturalism"--and really to any religious claims. For Voltaire, the Lisbon quake of his time (and the tidal wave which resulted in the deaths of 10,000 people) offered ample evidence of a lack of a perfect Designer--and the Indonesian tsunami of 12/2004 Lisbon x 30. Yet neither tsunamis nor plagues (nor world wars) phase the modern fundie: each sunday he marches into his chapel and gives thanks to his volcano "God".

"""""Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.""""""

H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Secularism for the Peoples! (Hitchens on the road, sans God)

""""May 3, New York City: To the Lou Dobbs show, on CNN—Mr. Middle America at prime time. Mr. Dobbs displays a satirical paragraph from my book, about the number of virgin births that all religions have always claimed. He tells me off-air that he quit Sunday school as a very small boy, and that he's raised all his children without religion. He lets me bang on a lot. At the end, he refers to my new American citizenship, the oath of which I swore at the Jefferson Memorial on April 13 (Mr. Jefferson's birthday, and mine). I get to try out my latest slogan, echoing what Jefferson said about the "wall of separation" between church and state: "Mr. Jefferson—build up that wall!" Mr. Dobbs leans over and, on-camera, pins an American flag to my lapel. Patriotism and secularism in the same breath, on middle-class TV. It can be done. As I leave, Dobbs says wryly that he'll now have to deal with all the e-mails. I promise him that they will be in his favor and ask to have them forwarded. The mailbag eventually breaks about 70-30 in support, though one woman does say that she'll never tune in to CNN again."""

Hitchens/VanityFair


Dawkins may do the Darwin schtick more effectively, but few journalists can match Hitchens' gusto. Ah how Americun yokels (even putative "liberals") detest Brits---especially witty drunken ones telling them there is no God...............

Norman Clyde Hour on Contingencies Cali-Gold.

WheellockOn Clyde

911 Conspiracy claims: Bogus with a capital B.


I strongly doubt most of the 911 conspiro-nuts have bothered reading even the intro. to the NIST (which is hundreds of pages long now) assembled by top university physicists and engineers. The scientists are nearly in complete agreement that there were NO before-the-fact plantings of explosives or some prep job on the part of the US Govt. like some tin-foil hat wearing DNC-o-crats and crypto-stalinists still seem to believe ( some whackier conservatives also uphold 911 conspiracy claims--911 now sort of the contemporary "grassy knoll" of Conspiracy.com).

The ConspiroCrats also tend to lie about some supposed consensus of scientists who uphold conspiracy claims, when it is precisely the opposite. Indeed there are some arguing that the sort of libellous BS spewed by ConspiroCrats should be viewed as what it is: sedition.

Dr. Manuel Garcia, Princeton PhD , and Lawrence-Livermore physicist, has written two technical refutations of any and all conspiracy claims (and he generally agrees with NIST)---including the lies and BS regarding the WTC 7. They are on Counterpunch---even some brighter leftists have had it with the sort of hysterical idiocy typical of DUsters (we here at Contingencies do not agree with all the opinions expressed on Counterpunch, old Alex Cockburn's marxist-green site, but he does provide useful info. on occasion). But the usual DU'ster could unlikely make it through even the easier derivatives in Dr. Garcia's report (here we even googled it for you, McN-gahs).

Physicsof911


Dr. Garcia:

"The WTC towers collapsed at speeds approaching that of free fall because:

1. The dynamic force created out of the gravitational potential energy within the space of just one level spacing was far in excess of the static force the framing was designed to support, and

2. Elastic waves launched from the collapse front quickly filled the building --both lower structure and upper block --with large dynamic stresses, which weakened and ruptured joints well in advance of that material entering the collapse front.

The towers shattered, and the pieces fell to the ground."""

Muy bien.

R.E.Lee



Not a Biblethumper

"Talkers of the first order": L-Ron Hubbard and R.A.Heinlein (the Politics of Sci-Fi continued)

HISTORY, n. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools. (A.Bierce)

Numerous scribes have pointed out the friendship of Hubbard and Heinlein. Both were navy men, and had some scientific and engineering expertise (though in Heinlein's case, that ended after a semester at UCLA---). In the late 40s and 50s both were fairly popular (though not yet wealthy) and prolific writers associated with the hack sci-fi publisher John Campbell--Campbell's publishing house was, more or less, a Brill Building of early science fiction. What's not as well known are the connections of both L-Ron and Heinlein to Jack Parsons--founding member of the JPL, and pal of Werner Von Braun--and to Aleister Crowley. Though the Church of Scientology now denies any connection between Hubbard and Crowley or to the occult, Hubbard did, like his one-time pal Parsons (Parsons later killed himself in a rather mysterious explosion at his Pasadena residence) communicate with Crowley a few times (in the 40s before Uncle Al's death), and allegedly dabbled in matters diabolical, as did Heinlein himself on occasion (see Mike Davis' "City of Quartz" for some background on COS and early sci-fi business, and google a bit on anti-Scientology sites).


Chairman L-Ron.


Ample documentation exists showing that Heinlein and Hubbard were close friends; and it's fairly evident that Hubbard greatly respected Heinlein and his ideas, whether in regards to writing science-fiction or "religion as business". That may not have been completely reciprocated ( Heinlein most likely realized that L-Ron and his growing "church" were considered Quackery with a capital Q. by many, and thus thought it sound business to disassociate himself from his former pal). RAH was close to Hubbard for years, however:

"RAH and LRH had one or more discussions during 1944 and or 1945 when they were both in Philadelphia, and RAH pointed out to LRH that religions had an inordinate amount of legal latitude in the U.S. and that churches could engage in a great many activities otherwise thought of as secular, under the tax and other protection churches enjoy. He had already explored these ideas in some of his stories and was to revisit these notions in their original form in Stranger. It is possible that this conversation or series of conversations took place as late as December 1945 or early 1946 and in Los Angeles."



The Master, RAH

Heinlein seems quite the entrepreneur according to these reports, and like L-Ron--and Ayn Rand--interested in creating some type of ersatz, "scientific religion" (take a few bits of engineering and astronomical tech.speak (O Holy Integral!), Von Braun-like rocket-jazz, some Spencer and Darwin for the "ethics", a bit of Nietzsche for style: VOI-phucking--LA) which would, when sold to American consumer 'bots--whether via fiction or actual Church activities---rake in a great deal of money for the religion's creators (and Harlan Ellison has confirmed many of these reports as well---and reportedly referred to Heinlein as fascist on occasion): sort of a PT Barnum of the space opera biz. Given his relationship with Hubbard, Heinlein (secrets there are a plenty regarding the soirees at old Jack Parson's pad as well) should, it seems fairly safe to suggest, therefore be credited with assisting in the foundation of that great American swindle, the Church of Scientology. Hail Xenu............




Whoa! A Thetan, maybe.

Arianna actually writes something nearly interesting.


(and guar-an-teeeed to upset many a liberal or marxist cyber-moralist)



In the Age of Terror, Isn't Busting Toe-Tappers an Insane Use of Our Law Enforcement Resources?

by Arianna Huffington

""""""In the consensus judgment of America's 16 intelligence agencies, the terrorist threat to our homeland is "persistent and evolving," placing our country in "a heightened threat environment."

Given that chilling assessment, isn't it the height of madness to use America's finite law enforcement resources to seek out and arrest people for tapping the foot of a cute undercover officer in a restroom?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not wild about walking into a public restroom and seeing a couple using the a stall for something other than, as Sgt. Dave Karsnia, the arresting officer in the Craig case put it, "its intended use."

But that is not what Larry Craig did. If he had, someone in the restroom could have done what most people do when they see a law being broken: go get a cop.

And as it happens, since Craig was arrested in an airport, presumably there were plenty of law enforcement officers nearby looking for, you know, real threats -- like explosives or folks on a Watch List. Assuming, that is, they weren't all hunkered down in other bathrooms across the airport, protecting the public against people who might be thinking about having sex.

Let me be clear: I'm no fan of Larry Craig. Indeed, I disagree with almost everything he stands for. And I'd much rather he not be in the United States Senate. But I'd also rather have had his exit be the result of his constituents voting on his ideas and policies, instead of a ridiculous sting operation in an airport bathroom......"""""""""

Bravo.

J-Mac.

J.M. has a blog, and he permits a few cronies to post there. Though he proclaims himself a "progressive," he controls registration and comments, and does not allow the public to post. In effect, J.M.'s blog is a VPN. So, J.M., like many "liberal" bloggers, falls in the class of Hypocrites (yes, the H-word is overused, but rather appropriate when the H-ness has reached the proportions of J.M.): for progressivism generally relates to "freedom" and his blog is anything but free. Progressive freedom in regards to writing, even blogging, implies the freedom to dissent (as does the 1st Amendment, arguably), even when that dissent offends someone's political or religious or psychological biases. (Even a rather f-ed up leftist such as Chomsky realizes that).

J.M. also likes to play skeptic or even atheist on occasion, while allowing born-again xtians (protestants, of course) to post on his site (and censoring other skeptics). He even listens to his born-again pals when they have some pathetic moralistic outburst to share (and moralists are to be found on both sides of political spectrum). Indeed progressivism (if J.M knew anything about it) actually opposes religious and theological thinking, while perhaps respecting Biblical ethics to some degree---say the Beatitudes--- in principle. But J.M. doesn't quite believe that, just as he can't quite rid himself of his presbyterian past. Indeed, like his unnameable, robot-like associate B_______, he doesn't know jack about the message of the New Testament either. More of his rather profound hypocrisy.

Along with the hypocrisy, J.M.'s site offers boo-coo bad surrealism (of course, the NW goys don't know Breton from their Bon Jovi albums) and low-grade Monty Python imitations: sort of the Starbucks liberal's favorite kultural pastime. NW: about the equivalent to talent nite at Bethel Baptist. It's unlikely any one of them ever read even a book by Kurt Vonnegut, a somewhat talented American surrealist. In fact, J.M. formerly associated with Deadheads. As did Contingencies, to a lesser extent. J.M.'s own anti-libertarian actions and his association with xtians, however, all might be read as a betrayal of the Grateful Dead code, which, while leftist to some degree, was never synonymous with, say, marxism, or even the DNC. Those who are not privy to the code of the Dead might not realize when that code has itself been betrayed. Suffice it to say that when Mormon writers and Heinlein are praised along with GoreCo. and the soccer-mommy marxists of KOS--and Dead manga or Vonnegut or cyberpunks are nowhere to be found---the code's been tossed away like the wrapper to a tofu and sprout tamale.

J.M. also allows his gangster-like associates to lie, and to offer great generalizations as truth. And allows them to depend on low-grade appeals to pathos, defamation, and logical fallacies. Most of the writing is premised on ad hominem ("don't f-n listen to Hitchens, that sickfuck neo-con" yada yada......), and ad populus, if not various simple-minded tautologies. To J.M., Bush and the GOP and War Effort are wrong because they are evil, and evil because they are wrong. Indeed most of the writing on NW rarely rises above that level. J.M. alas never quite realized that his own stated secular progressivism implies that values are not absolute (--especially when the jihadist opponents of the USA believe their own values are absolute). Pragmatism never appears on his blog: how could it? That would demand a far more nuanced type of thinking which he is incapable of. The only demons in the world are in the GOP, according to his unstable mind. And J.M. and his cronies never allude to the demons of the DNC (like Feinstein) who actually agreed to the GOP war project, in toto.

J.M., after censoring people, lying about them, libelling them, misconstruing their writings, also has the audacity to accuse his adversaries of mental instability. That is rather amusing: about like some KGB men who after a few years of revolution, decided the real marxists (even like Zinoniev) were actually a hindrance to the stalinist liquidation plans, and more or less concocted some BS charges , put them on show trials (with the "Peoples'" support), and sent them off to gulags. No, NW has not quite reached that level of malevolence, but in miniature, that is what many of these frat-boy leftist blogs have become: sort of mini-KGBs.

We here at Contingencies simply say this to J.M and his psychotic baptist-stalinist palsie: Essen sie Scheisse.

The extreme position of Islam (Christopher Hitchens)


".....Islamic belief, however simply or modestly it may be stated, is an extreme position to begin with. No human being can possibly claim to know that there is a God at all, or that there are, or were, any other gods to be repudiated. And when these ontological claims have collided, as they must, with their logical limits, it is even further beyond the cognitive capacity of any person to claim without embarrassment that the lord of creation spoke his ultimate words to an unlettered merchant in seventh-century Arabia. Those who utter such fantastic braggings, however many times a day they do so, can by definition have no idea what they are talking about. (I hasten to add that those who boast of knowing about Moses parting the Red Sea, or about a virgin with a huge tummy, are in exactly the same position.) Finally, it turns out to be impossible to determine whether jihad means more alms-giving or yet more zealous massacre of, say, Shiite Muslims.""""


Unlike most milquetoast liberals (or over-accomodating GOPers), Hitchens at least recognizes the threat posed to Western democracy by Islamic theocracy (and theocracy of all types). Any authentic American (i.e. one who values Madisonian-Jeffersonian principles over dogma, or over the political philosophy of Al Capone), has reason to object to Muslim encroachments on civil liberties (and sharia is already creeping across Europe). Alas, most of the Bukharin-wannabes who frequent the liberal poliburo.coms (KOS, DU, Talking points, Schmendricks.com, etc. etc.) only value democractic principles (Due Process, habeas corpus, yada yada yada) when needed to defend terrorists.

Ol' G.: Tamerlane

Tamerlane, or Timur the Lame, describes his par-tay at Delhi (just one of many):

""""""In a short space of time all the people in the [New Delhi] fort were put to the sword, and in the course of one hour the heads of 10,000 infidels were cut off. The sword of Islam was washed in the blood of the infidels, and all the goods and effects, the treasure and the grain which for many a long year had been stored in the fort became the spoil of my soldiers. They set fire to the houses and reduced them to ashes, and they razed the buildings and the fort to the ground....All these infidel Hindus were slain, their women and children, and their property and goods became the spoil of the victors. I proclaimed throughout the camp that every man who had infidel prisoners should put them to death, and whoever neglected to do so should himself be executed and his property given to the informer. When this order became known to the ghazis of Islam, they drew their swords and put their prisoners to death.

One hundred thousand infidels, impious idolators, were on that day slain. Maulana Nasiruddin Umar, a counselor and man of learning, who, in all his life, had never killed a sparrow, now, in execution of my order, slew with his sword fifteen idolatrous Hindus, who were his captives....on the great day of battle these 100,000 prisoners could not be left with the baggage, and that it would be entirely opposed to the rules of war to set these idolaters and enemies of Islam at liberty...no other course remained but that of making them all food for the sword. [18]""""

Ah those whacky Mohammedans.

from "The Vindication of Nietzsche"

(by Aleister Crowley)


""""Is there any man who still shuts his eyes to the plain fact that homo sapiens is but a primate, cousin of the gorilla, with a brain over-developed to think abominations, and a larynx evolved to aid their execution, a creature whose prime pangs are hunger, lust, and hate, and his fundamental solaces rape, robbery, and murder? I laughed with open throat at the "atrocity" Press Campaigns in the Balkan War. "The half-civilized peoples of the Near East!" Is the present war any less prolific of such stories when the compatriots of Tolstoi, and Gorky, and Goethe, and Anatole France, and Shelley are at war? And are the stories true? True of false in detail, I knew them true in essence, and I knew also that the primmest old maid in Dorchester whose palsied hands dropped her knitting as she read of them was horrified because, although she did not know it, and could never be brought to know it, those atrocities were in her blood from everlasting. "There, but for the Grace of God, goes Charles Baxter" was the wisest remark that ever came from a fool's lips. And it is because we have persuaded ourselves bitterly and obstinately, against the deeper knowledge that is instinct in every organism, that these things cannot happen, that we have lost the manhood that could have prevented them. Some there are so priggishly purblind that fact itself, naked and bleeding at their thresholds, battering on the gates of their ears with the Ram of actuality, fails to force those waxed-up tympana. When the nations were already at each other's throats, when men had seen their brothers blown to atoms before their eyes, drilled through with nickel and lead, slashed and gashed with steel, ridden down beneath the hoofs of the horses1, we heard that President Wilson had offered to arbitrate! To arbitrate, when the diplomatic and economic pressure of a decade, and the consciousness of ineradicable race- hatred since time began, and clan tore clan with flint, had forced the Boar of Germany to turn at last upon the Borzoi and the Bulldog, to lash out with tusk and hoof at the invisible pack of hounds that closed upon him.

And we are still babbling of the Cause of Liberty, and the Banner of the Democracies, and the Truth, and the Righteousness, and the Justice, and the Equity, and the Humanity, and the Progress, when every man that is not stultified beyond the surgery of war by his own hypocracies, knows well that the battle is a battle of over-population, the haemorrage of a plethora, and that its terms are merely "My life or yours!" -- "The hammer or the anvil?"


The Chinese (till Europe infected them) murdered all but a few selected female infants, and consequently lived in peace and prosperity for two thousand years. Civilization and the arts flourished; famine has been rare, and floods and plague welcomed as a purge.2 Our squeamishness has forbidden us to take this elementary precaution, this restraint imposed on prosperity by wisdom; and where are our civilization, our prosperity, our liberty, our Progress? In fifty years will there remain so many monuments of what we were two months ago as Egypt has of its Pharaohs, Greece of its Republics, Rome of its Caesars? We have used bricks and iron for stone and brass, pulp for papyrus and palm-leaf, rhetoric for fact, pharisaism for publicansim, and our era will perish ere our own bones rot!3


We have pretended4 that there was no such thing as sex, no such thing as venereal disease, that our publicists were True Believers in Christianity, that our women were pure and our men brave; we have howled down every man who dared to hint the truth: we have sowed the wind of pious phrases, and we must reap the whirlwind of war.
It has been the same in every drawer of our cupboard -- and now the skeleton is out. Swinburne's prophecy has come true; we must amend him to read:

"They are past, and their places are taken,
The gods and the priests that are pure."

We have had a credit system which when analysed meant that we were all pretending to be rich, a social system in which we all pretended to be esquires at the least. We had Dukes who never led, Marquesses with no marches to ward, Knights who could barely sit on a donkey; we called our slattern slaveys lady helps, our prostitutes soiled doves, our grumbling mumbling fumbling politicians statesmen.
And it is gone like a ghost -- and an unclean spirit sure it was that haunted us.

And if I write for England, who will read?
As if, when moons of Ramazan recede,
Some fatuous angel-porter should deposit
His perfect wine within the privy closet!
"What do they know, who only England know?"
Only what England paints its face to show.
Love mummied and relabelled "chaste affection,"
And lust excused as "natural selection."
. . . . . . . .

........ ............. (CENSORED!)

"""I wish I could quote the whole poem;5 but it may need another six months before prudery has a final "seizure."6

It is this prudery which has fought Nietzsche. In its last ditch it is still pretending that Nietzsche, who hated the Germans, was a German. "The Anglo-Nietzschean War!" True it is, the Germans were the only people who had the common sense, the clear sight, the ability to face, grasp, and use the facts which Nietzsche thundered to the planet. Had England done so, she would have had two million men always under arms, and Germany must have surrendered without a blow, could never have dared even this desperate dash, this madness which comes of pushing sanity to the wall, and bidding it fight for its life. Nor could I write that the British army

has been
is being annihilated.
is about to be

Are we fighting to preserve peace, to hold the balance of power, to save civilization, to relieve the burden of armaments, to smash the tyranny of militarism, to sentinel liberty?
Then we should have had an army equal to Germany's, and our fleet should have destroyed hers while we were three to one. You must fight fire with fire. Shelley's "Laon and Cythna" and his "Masque of Anarchy," Tolstoi and the whole school of non-resistance, where are they now? The "big blonde beast" who visits women with a whip under his arm has not been impressed with the moral superiority of the conquered. He has robbed them and enslaved them and murdered them, he has ravished their women and tossed their children on his bayonets, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, Amen. Thus spake Zarathustra.

(Censored!)

Is not Earth purged? Is not the Pillar established in the Void? , ! Thou art arisen! Is there not an end of the anaemia of the Humanitarian, and the hysteria of the Suffragist, and the stark sunning lunacy of the Cubist-Futurist-Vorticist-Parallelipipedist-Feminist, and all the onanism of the Knut and the Flapper?
Will not man arise again, and hunt and fight and master his mate, and will not woman return to her cooking and her housewifery and the breeding of lusty children to her man? And if Nietzsche be the dawn-star, shall there be no son of man to be a Sun of men? Had we no prophet? Had we no poet, O all ye weary criticasters of the prostitute-prude Press? Was there not one to put into the mouth of his king-priest-magus, baffled by fate in the hour of the birth of Christianity, this prophecy of the Antichrist --7

Listen!

.....

Nietzsche/Crowley


Unlike his many demon-hick acolytes, Crowley (as in Crow-lee) could write a bit (no slouch as linguist, Al translated from French, Latin, some Greek, as far as I know--probably Hebrew and Germanic tongues as well). Crowley also played chess at grandmaster level, climbed in the Himalaya (and Hindu Kush--including a rather unpleasant attempt at K2), and dabbled in the sciences (his occultish shit remains interesting, if redolent with a few hints of charlatanry).

Crowley knew his literary and ideological masters well, and paid them their respects: Shelley, Nietzsche, Sir Richard Burton (not the thezpian), Swinburne, etc. Though Crowley's writing generally tends towards irony he appears rather anti-pacifist in this piece, penned apparently at the conclusion of WWI: a bit more Nietzschean than Shelleyan. Indeed Crowley granted Nietzsche saint status in his gnostic-freemason pantheon (then Crowley granted it to hisself as well).

RealPolitik, ala Matt and Trey.

"Matt Stone sums it up, "I hate conservatives, but I really fucking hate liberals.""

Right the F. on, man.

P.E.T.A., continued (Peoples Eating Tasty Animals).

"......the errors of the greatest philosophers usually have their point of departure in a false explanation of certain human actions and sensations; ...a false ethics is erected, religion and mythological monsters are then in turn called to buttress it, and the shadow of these dismal spirits in the end falls even across physics and the entire perception of the world."""""

(from Nietzsche's Human, All too Human)


Some phunn Veg-Bot abuse from "Meat Kicks Ass"

""""Vegan/Nazi: This type of vegetarian not only doesn't eat meat, but he or she will try to impose their beliefs onto you with propaganda on TV and radio stations. Vegetarians of this type are commonly afflicted with accute bitching syndrome, or ABS. This is a mental disease not unlike feminism. It causes the victim to bitch about people who choose to eat meat. All animal products are boycotted by this group of fascists.

Anti-Meat Vegetarian/Dumbass: This is the most common type of vegetarian. A vegetarian of this type will not eat any beef, poultry, or fish products (less cheese and milk because they're irrational). The ones that keep to themselves aren't a major problem, as they're usually stupid, close minded, and fragile because all of that "organic health food" bullshit has made them weak. On a side note, these types of vegetarians are very fun to tease. Occasionally, you'll find a vegetarian who has backed him or herself into mental corner, so afraid to hurt or kill something that they'll even try to avoid stepping on bugs-- because bugs are living things, and they have feelings too... right? Bwahaha. Worthless."""

Yes, MKA, the usual spineless granola and yogurt-sucking Veg-bot often confuses his dimwitted, new-age "ethics" with something like a political program. Of course ask one of these mystical idiots to actually provide a compelling argument for obligation or duty or "rights" and they start to melt (or are seized with ABS). That said, we here at Contingencies (vegetarians we are not: neither was RA Wilson, another meat-eating, gun-toting, drug-using Phreedom fighter, opposed to idiots of links oder rechts) do take issue with the corporate cattle and pork biz, yet that is more a far more complex matter regarding the efficient use of resources and energy, and even "consumerism" as a whole. But the usual McMoondoggie vegetarian twit isn't concerned with discussing the specific problems of the meat industry, or the cattle commodity-market, but in chanting her "Meat means murder, man" talent-nite anthem; she couldn't distinguish a commodity from her collection of Karma-dharma (yet McMoondoggie then allows his Romney-supporting, right-wing
xtian pals to post their drivel next to his mystic-liberal-lite spam. All part of the Neo-Irrationalist agenda).

Dante for Kix (Contingencies re-run).

Dante, Europe's sort of official Tour Guide of Hell (Nietzsche cared not for him: calling him a hyena or something), placed the greek philosophers--and scientists, such as Archimedes---in Elysium. Elysium is not Hell, but similar to Purgatory, where it's sort of gloomy, but the light of Reason was always observable. Yet the pagans never escape from Elysium--so that is a bit different than the case for sinners in the traditional Purgatory, who have a shot at redemption after a few eons. Purgatory is really not a bad idea--remember that Professor that gave you a B when you definitely earned an A? Perhaps after 5000 years or so, when her spiritual errors are purged, she crawls out of her hole of excrement and is allowed admittance into the bottom rings of Heaven. Thus, the Dantean afterworld "code" (and based not only on Aquinas and the Vulgate, but Platonism) seems to suggest that humans--even skeptic or pagan idolators-- who live a fairly ethical and rational life are eventually rewarded, sort of like being admitted to the cosmic fraternity, and join the "elect"--Alpha Beta Epsilon, or whatever.

Virtuous pagans and skeptics, say Thomas Jefferson, Einstein or Bertrand Russell, thus could be conceivably admitted into some spiritual land of the blessed, regardless of their doubts of Scripture; whereas moronic violent believers (say Falwell) are not. A Newton, whose constants and equations, for the most part, still accurately map the mechanics of planetary motion, would be presumably ranked much higher than irrationalists and equivocators such as Derrida and the post-modernists, who may be hard-pressed to gain entrance into Purgatory. Or perhaps there are heavens and hells for everyone, of all religious or non-religious creeds, a sort of pantheistic play of forces, where in one realm, a Derrida or a William Burroughs is near some linguistic paradise, and in another they are being looked over by jackal-faced demons characteristic of the egyptian underworld (maybe instead the Darwinist posse holds (however mundane) and we're jus' sophisticated primates and future worm food (when yr dead, yr dead, as some old fop-filosophe said to me once: tho' Dante places Epicurus, sort of an ancient Darwinian materialist, in a rather unpleasant section in Inferno), and the afterworld meme-metaphor functions in some biological or genetic manner, not quite understood.....).

As an aside, I must say I find Dante's Inferno quite entertaining. I especially enjoy contemplating the lower levels, the Malebolge (something like "piss pocket" according to my bad italiano), where the Hypocrites and Betrayers are located, quite a bit lower than those guilty of mere sins of the flesh (whores and sodomites, etc.). Signior Dante obviously felt that those who had betrayed their country, their countrymen, and/or children were near the bottom of Hell. There seem to be quite a few corrupt Catholic clergymen and noblemen, assassins and murderers as well. The Prophet Mohammed is down there, as are numerous other heretics (including a legendary Ho, Thais), Ulysses (think Capn' Kirk) and his sarge Diomedes (Diomedes not quite Spock--more like, say, Schwarzenegger, tho' the other great warrior Achilles quite a few rings above 'em), as well as corrupt judges such as Caiaphas. In the icy center of the hell-lake Cocytus, Brutus, the rather stoical and methodical assassin of Julius Caesar, and his cohort Cassius (alas, quite a witty wise guy in Shakespeare's play) are being gnawed on by Lucifer, their heads out; Judas Iscariot of course is being swallowed eternally head-first by the massive Lucifer, who, in a mockery of the Trinity, has 3 mouths.

Colonise Or Be Colonised

TheEndofWesternCiv.

"""""The simple truth that different cultures are irreconcilable, and one must dominate the others, means the now impotent cultures of Western Civilization will be overrun. How a particular culture dominates, or attempts to dominate, other cultures, naturally reflects the character of that culture. The fact that the Americans refrain from killing their enemies does not mean that their enemies will refrain from killing them, as America was recently reminded. On September 11, 2001, around 3,000 people were murdered in a barbarian raid upon the USA, when the fanatical followers of an Islamic sect deliberately crashed hi-jacked passenger planes into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.

The Barbarians Are Coming—With A New Dark Age
The World Trade Centre attack is confirmation of Arnold Toynbee's claim that the decline of a civilization means the appearance of Barbarian war-bands. And it is clear that, in one way or another, it is only a matter of time before the increasing senility of the countries that make up the Western world, will see them succumb to invaders. The result will be the final extinction of Western Civilization, along with its wealth and power, and a return to the Dark Ages: a time when there is no human community anywhere that is sane."""

A bit harsh, but not so far from the truth, in terms of "Realpolitik." DNC-o-crats who think illegal immigration, globalism, and multiculturalism are all inherently PC or "good" things should perhaps spend a few years in Mexico City, or Johannesburg, or for that matter, some Compton 'jects. Toynbee in fact offers quite a few interesting, anti-marxist bon mots worth remembering (tho' to most yokel "liberals" (the usual tasteless loud-mouthed bitch from KOS-hack, etc.), anything that speaks of tradition or European civilization (""ah "bon mot"--dat's from those nasty phroggies"") has now become suspect). The yokel DNC-o-crat, which is to say, yahoo, like his redneck GOPer cuz, generally views with suspicion any idea (whether Toynbee or Trotsky) that was not a part of American pop-kultur of the last 25 years or so. American politics: pretty much dominated by calvinist dolts, links oder rechts.

James Ellroy

Fiction is a lie; novelists, great pretenders and conjurers, and the Lit. Biz functions essentially as a deception, another manifestation of liberal-consumer culture. A character, say in a sci-fi novel might allude to a scientific theory or data, etc. but that is not the raison d'etre of fictional narratives. The fictioneer's rhetoric might be eloquent or feature interesting metaphors, etc. but nonetheless literary narratives are not genuine descriptions of reality, though they are often mistaken for such.

Literary businessmen and women would seemingly replace accounts of WWI--of the blood sport of Verdun or the Somme-- with Ulysses or the Wasteland; William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (a popular work, but it will suffice for illustrative purposes) with any number of works of fiction; objective analyses of the Depression with Dreiser, etc.; the science of Einstein with science-fiction. The lit. biz has, over the last 50 years, indeed mostly succeeded in replacing fact with fiction, however trite that sounds. Most American lit. consumers are more interested in the Wasteland and Bloomsbury melodrama than in WWI or WWII battles or russian history or the Bolsheviks, and most Americans generally know far more about Shakespeare than they do about Tudorian history, and may quote scenes verbatim from Moby Dick and not recall one civil war engagement or major figure. And the lightweight "historicism" of a few Lit. snobs barely begins to address the effects of literary deception.

The authentic progressive--or even old-school Trotskyite--retains a certain ideological opposition to the realm of belle-lettres and to bureaucratic prose of all types. The play Hamlet functions about like the Bible or Koran does; but then so does Marx's writing or that of most liberal Panglosses du jour. One hates to refer to it as dogma, but there are people lower in the Malebolge than Karl Popper.

I make exceptions for a few Greats: Joseph Conrad. Steven Crane. Dostoyevsky (Crime and Pun. a Noir epic, in a sense). A few old-school French realists and Voltaire. Hermie Melville, tho was I believe quite f-n mad. EA Poe's manga amuses, but he was perhaps also mad. (Hawthorne was not mad, but maybe too sane and "kultured"). The Victorian shrews, and most Americuns of the last 50 years or so were mad. Joyce es muy loco, regardless of his clerical and priestly acumen (better a decent history of WWI than a wheelbarrow full of "Ulysses"--). The "Noir" school of writers may be mad, but there is a definite method--related to a detective-like deduction, perhaps-- to their madness (not to be perceived in say the madman's tale of Moby Dick); and EA Poe's best stories also are characterized by that sort of deductive power. Noir in fact has an impact quite more forceful than most traditional literature or the dayglo space-operas of science fiction (though there are a few definite sci-fi greats--PK Dick, JG Ballard, cyberpunks).

Similar to his noir daddy Hammett, James Ellroy may be one of the few authentic pulp visionaries (Tarentino not included in the Club Hammett), and his visions reveal LA for the insane, corrupt dystopia it is. Black Dahlia and LA Con are certainly works of art, comparable, to, say, Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49 (which has a few pulpish hints as well). With White Jazz, still a decent read, he may have got a bit carried away with the chaos and corruption, similiarly with the sort of Truman Capote meets Kafka writing of American Tabloid. I haven't read his most recent, Cold Six Thousand. He's still a bit of a macho cop lover--tho' willing to acknowledge that there are plenty of Dudley Smiths around (and still are).




Ellroy is a name in the Wood, as well: Ho-wood. Chandler was processed through the Ho-wood machine decades ago and is, at least from the consumer's POV, not far from Mickey Spillane pulp. Chandler was, after all, an Englishman, and Marlow is still a bit of a British gent. So it's a bit contrived, but then so was Sherlock Holmes. Hammett's Sam Spade, more worldly, cynical, runs closer to the street, but at the same time he seems sort of confused, ineffectual (that may be intended--Hammett's more of a relativist than Chandler) and not nearly as fleshed out as Marlow in Farewell My Lovely or the Long Goodbye. Ellroy, like Hammett, aims for a true-crime, photojournalist-like realism and while I admire that (yet sometimes I find the obscenity a bit gratuitous), I think Chandler was attempting to produce an FS Fitzgerald-like prose as well as noir: he was not only about a sort of photographic realism.



We wouldn't exactly refer to Marlow as phony but perhaps a bit metaphorical in conception; he's not the iconic Holmes of course (tho' with Marlow's chess-playing and so forth, there is still bit of the English detective to him), but he's not an alcoholic, ho-mongering member of the LAPD, as so many of Ellroy's heroes (and anti-heroes are). Chandler's writing and his Marlow-knights are perhaps a bit outdated, but Ellroy-pulp sometimes reads like it was pasted in from sheriff's reports if not True Detective. That's not to say I don't enjoy the pulp aspect: I do--especially Black Dahlia and LA Con. The recent bust of the coke-whiffing Burbank mayor who was shacking up with her Vineland Boys mobster- boytoy right off the pages of Ellroy.


Early Dash--Falcon-, pre-Red, pre-whatever that broad's name was--moves along nicely, but Ray Chandler still outplays him: perhaps that posh and jazzy side of Chandler irritates Our Guy Ellroy, but I think there is more Chandler than Dash in Ellroy manga, and that is part of the maximalist appeal--as in White Jazz--Chandler meets, well, the beats sorta. Later Red-Hammett--the Thin Man stuff--reads rather obscene. It's amusing but a bit unsavory.



As far as Ellroy's cop-rogues go, Jack Vincennes ranks pretty high--tho I think White Jazz as a whole could have used editing--

Ellroy supposedly disavowed Chandler as a forefather, however. Pourquoi? I perceive a distinct Chandler-like sensibility to Ellroy's LA fiction--maybe Chandler too conservative? Hammett wrote with a nice crisp style, but he was quite simplistic in ways. I think Chandler was a better writer in terms of prose, scenes, plotting etc. Posh. Chandler like Ellington to Hammett's Count Basie. Dash's politics also quite leftist if not outright red; Ellroy too a bit of a leftist perhaps--the expose of LAPD corruption (not fleshed out enough in the LA Con flick), the hatred for mafiosos, but riding with Dash and the marxists? Hard to believe.


Ellroy/LA

And given Ellroy's proclaimed conservative inclinations, his fondness for Hammett is a bit odd, tho' hopefully had Hammett known the real history of Stalinism he would have renounced and denounced those jackals.

Jimmy E. got a bit lazy or something, however: pricey dames maybe, booze, who knows. And more macho too--the de rigeur noirish shift from idealist hater of corruption to a bit more cynical conservative: White Jazz could have been penned by some aging LAPD goon on a meth binge, ya know Studio City bungalow with a tasty Weekly gal (I wager "jade") making some gin and tonics, Stan Kenton cranked up in the back. Nonetheless we'll peruse C. 6000 in near future.

Snitch-Ron marches on.


"""A brief reminder on TCP""""

"""""A TCP connection between two hosts (which will be called respectively
"client" and "server" in the rest of the paper) can be identified by a tuple
[client-IP, server-IP, client-port, server-port]. While the server port is
well known, the client port is usually in the range 1024-5000, and
automatically assigned by the operating system. (Exemple: the connection
from some guy to freenode may be represented by [ppp289.someISP.com,
irc.freenode.net, 1207, 6667]).

When communication occurs on a TCP connexion, the exchanged TCP packet
headers are containing these informations (actually, the IP header contains
the source/destination IP, and the TCP header contains the
source/destination port). Each TCP packet header also contains fields for a
sequence number (SEQ), and an acknowledgement number (ACK).

Each of the two hosts involved in the connection computes a 32bits SEQ
number randomly at the establishment of the connection. This initial SEQ
number is called the ISN. Then, each time an host sends some packet with
N bytes of data, it adds N to the SEQ number.
The sender put his current SEQ in the SEQ field of each outgoing TCP packet.
The ACK field is filled with the next *expected* SEQ number from the other
host. Each host will maintain his own next sequence number (called
SND.NEXT), and next expected SEQ number from the other host (called
RCV.NEXT)."""""




STFU, Snitch-Ron. No one gives a shit about your pathetic wannabe-hacker snitch-Speak. It was dated 15 years ago. You don't know encryption from egyptian, or protocols from pot farming.

Christopher Hitchens: or the Iraqi War Effort for Dummies
".......For anyone with eyes to see, there was only one other state that combined the latent and the blatant definitions of both "rogue" and "failed." This state--Saddam's ruined and tortured and collapsing Iraq--had also met all the conditions under which a country may be deemed to have sacrificed its own legal sovereignty. To recapitulate: It had invaded its neighbors, committed genocide on its own soil, harbored and nurtured international thugs and killers, and flouted every provision of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The United Nations, in this crisis, faced with regular insult to its own resolutions and its own character, had managed to set up a system of sanctions-based mutual corruption. In May 2003, had things gone on as they had been going, Saddam Hussein would have been due to fill Iraq's slot as chair of the U.N. Conference on Disarmament. Meanwhile, every species of gangster from the hero of the Achille Lauro hijacking to Abu Musab al Zarqawi was finding hospitality under Saddam's crumbling roof.

One might have thought, therefore, that Bush and Blair's decision to put an end at last to this intolerable state of affairs would be hailed, not just as a belated vindication of long-ignored U.N. resolutions but as some corrective to the decade of shame and inaction that had just passed in Bosnia and Rwanda. But such is not the case. An apparent consensus exists, among millions of people in Europe and America, that the whole operation for the demilitarization of Iraq, and the salvage of its traumatized society, was at best a false pretense and at worst an unprovoked aggression....."

Hear, hear, Hitch. Most Dove-o-crats not only fail to acknowledge the brutalities of the Hussein/Baathist regime, they fail to acknowledge that their own bosses (ie. Hillarity, Di-Fi, Edwards, et al) in fact supported the war effort themselves. Agreeing in part with the Hitchens' sort of justification for the War Effort, however, does not imply one agrees to, say, the political and economic agenda of the Republican party, nor with BushCo's handling of the war (Hitchens might have addressed the tragic deaths of iraqi civilians a bit more in depth), or the "neo-cons." ("neo-con" now part of the DailyKOS-hack's neo-Doublespeak lexicon, sort of equivalent to what "petit-bourgeois jackal" was a few years ago. At least the marxists were a bit more honest than the new school of Byatch-o-crats).

Hitchens/WartoBeProudOf

From Russell's Mysticism and Logic

"""""The possibility of this universal love and joy in all
that exists is of supreme importance for the conduct and
happiness of life, and gives inestimable value to the
mystic emotion, apart from any creeds which may be
built upon it. But if we are not to be led into false
beliefs, it is necessary to realise exactly what the mystic
emotion reveals. It reveals a possibility of human nature--
a possibility of a nobler, happier, freer life than any
that can be otherwise achieved. But it does not reveal
anything about the non-human, or about the nature of
the universe in general. Good and bad, and even the
higher good that mysticism finds everywhere, are the
reflections of our own emotions on other things, not part
of the substance of things as they are in themselves.
And therefore an impartial contemplation, freed from all
pre-occupation with Self, will not judge things good or
bad, although it is very easily combined with that feeling
of universal love which leads the mystic to say that the
whole world is good. """""


As Russell notes the Mystic (or his unsavory cousin, the occultist) in effect imposes his own narcissistic, "pre-occupation with Self" onto reality, and thus mistakes his own perceptions of Reality for the ding-an-sich: he continually fails to realize that "the reflections of our own emotions on other things [are not] part
of the substance of things as they are in themselves". The individual mind (i.e. the "mind" as a product of biochemical, neural processes in the brain) does not interpenetrate nature; McMoondoggie has no special, hidden connection to the granite or pines or other natural phenomena that he gazes at in wonder--indeed, as anyone who ever bothered to read Melville's Moby Dick realizes, any such nature mysticism would be far more horrorific and terrifying than the pastoral dreams of any Wordsworth-like New Agers, even ones who memorized their "Quantum physics for Bad Poets" 101 texts (we here at Contingencies generally prefer Russellian like skepticism to literary visions, but make exceptions for Melville--Mel. was spinning Road Songs 100 years before the Beats. Ishmael hisself resembles a Kantian skeptic to some degree). Queequeg's shark-demon pantheism, or Ahab's rage against the Whale, puts most Lovecraft pulp to shame (and Lovecraft's occultic stories--eloquent at times--- generally function as a type of sublimated racism--).



Nature mysticism is a rather typical affliction of lapsed-protestant do-gooders, or of aging college party boys (nazis of course were rather fond of nature mysticism as well, and occultism--"mysticism" then being a sort of pretense for, most likely, some Goering-like decadence). What's more the specific supernatural claims associated with mysticism are hogwash: the Amazing Randi (however quaint and rustic he seems, Randi debunks countless frauds) still offers 1 million dollars to any occultist or mystic or "psychic" who can demonstrate some paranormal event to a crowd of witnesses in an objective setting.

ah yeahh : ol' Aurora borealis

Coward, n.

"One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs."

Ambrose Bierce

Shuttle Tees, from Orbit-Ron



Dewd--I am so with those guys. That hole in the belly of their ship! Yikes. I wager they are saying a few Ave Marias. Speaking of wagers, Pascal's Wager is one of the most famous--an early example of a decision matrix. Here it is in brief:

You live as though God exists.
If God exists, you go to heaven: your gain is infinite.
If God does not exist, you gain nothing & lose nothing.

You live as though God does not exist.
If God exists, you go to hell: your loss is infinite.
If God does not exist, you gain nothing & lose nothing.

Many Xtians, of course, don't have a problem with being greedy, self-serving opportunists, supporting US Total War Incorporated (or NASA), lying, breaking any number of supposed Scriptural principles. Pascal suggests that the blasphemer (even ones who march to Sunday School each week) in effect has the most to lose, IF God exists (in other words, the wager does NOT offer a proof of "God"--merely what will be the case given a traditional theological account. Though the use of "infinite" is rather questionable, as is the assumption that "God" does reward the "pious." ).

Auf-veeder-zehn

"The only fascist science fiction writer in America": RA Heinlein

(The Politics of Sci-fi, Redux)


From Libertarian Forum, 1969 or so:

"""""According to a February issue of National Review magazine, Robert Heinlein is one of 270 signers of a jingoist petition circulated in the U. S. Author's Guild by the facile William Buckley and his spiritual cohort Frank S. Meyer. The petition, a belated retort to an earlier anti-Vietnam war roster of authors (which was eminently successful), calls for "the vigorous prosecution of the Vietnam war to an honorable conclusion." Deep contemplation is not necessary to comprehend the statist, authoritarian implications of such New Right weasel words and the concomitant beliefs of men who would endorse it.""""""

Apparently even a few Libertarians thought Heinlein a bit too whacked and rightist (to the real Precious-Bodily-Fluids sort of Hawk, Nixon was "soft"). Heinlein appears to be the favorite scribbler and ideological guru of New Worlds. Excepting JC, of course, and perhaps Hog HulkRon(one of the loudest of DU Blog-Martyrs: loudness being inversely proportional to like rationality.......). Perhaps HulkRon--homophobe, congenital liar, white trash protestant, misogynist, and lover of all things Heroic and Heinleinian---might leave his WWF Today alone for a few days and read up on his ideological guru's pal Bill Buckley (At least Buckley wielded some nice Ivy League prose: more than pulpmeister RAHeinlein, or poor Hulk-Ron, another Caliban who fancies hisself Shakespeare, could say).



Heinlein/Buckley

Dem's the Facts (and there's more to come for the Corpse Cocka-roacha).