Island of the Hypothetical

"""Imagine an island with a hundred inhabitants. A demon comes and offers them the choice of each suffering one day of agonizing explosive diarrhoea, or one of them, little Billy, suffering a hundred days of equally bad runs. Consequentalism is silent, whereas contractualism accords with our intuition that it is more fair to suffer one day of the trots each, as little Billy could very reasonably reject the idea of him having a burning ring of fire for over three months to save what would be, for each individual, a relatively short-lived disturbance to his movements. What if, however, the demon demanded either 80 days of loose stools from all but little Billy or 90 days from little Billy and none from the rest? Contractualism, with its fierce rejection of aggregation, still takes little Billy’s side. Nobody could reasonably justify to little Billy the idea that he should take 90 days of Montezuma’s revenge rather than them suffering 80 days. The fact that there are 99 others who also stand to suffer the same fate should not factor in: total harm is unimportant, what matters is respecting each individual as a person, and no individual stands to suffer a worse case of the shits than little Billy, so he could always reasonably reject the idea of him taking one for the team, although it would of course be admirable if he would supererogate and save the rest of them from the Aztec two-step.

This emphasis on processes over outcomes on ethics is a result of contractualism’s founding idea of ethics as an essentially interpersonal matter, and an insistence that the objects of an action must be unable to reasonably reject it for this action to be right. As stated, this is descended from Kant’s ideas of respect for the individual as an end, rather than a means to the greater good. I believe this is a worthy offspring of the Kantian tradition, fulfilling the potential power of these ideas in a readily applicable framework that makes concrete predictions for the real world in a way that accounts for the value of persons. However, the value of persons, ethics as an interpersonal affair, and the idea of justifiability as the arbiter of right and wrong are by no means the only key ideas in ethics. Other ethical theories place commensurate importance on other basic ideas, and it is important that contractualism be able to address these ideas.""""

毛泽东

What does this summary of Contractualism really imply? Something like, "those who uphold the so-called Divine Right of Kings should be counted as heretics, and will be merely fertilizer in the hereafter...."" That said, being supportive of something like a fair distribution of goods and resources (one might even say a just division of labor) does not mean one approves of maoism. Doctors outrank nurses; teachers are entitled to more than are custodians (and their compensation should reflect that). Those wealthy doctors or engineers or professors on Prosperity Lane usually live next door to wealthy shysterslawyers, brokers, insurance or real estate sharks, salesmen, and panderers and bureaucrats of various sorts. That's sharkocracy, not to be confused with democracy.

Regardless of what some paranoid-right Randian sorts may claim, Kant's kingdom of ends (or Rawls' rationalist update of Kant) does not equal communism. An egalitarian, contractualist model might not jibe with statism, hegelian, marxist or otherwise. Rights still apply under contractual models--at least to rational citizens-- but they are not the complete liberty dreamt of by libertarian whack-jobs and bad Lockeans. Yet...the market economy itself does bear some relation to the above island analogy: in the lotto game of modern capitalism, many humans are little Billy's--burdered with menial labor and drudgery, while a few reap the benefits of that labor and dirty work. That a few benefit from the lotto game does not make the game fair: just say no to MegWhitmanism.

Karen Armstrong vs. the Dawkinsistas

Armstrong/ForeignPolicy

"""So-called new atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens have denounced religious belief as not only retrograde but evil; they regard themselves as the vanguard of a campaign to expunge it from human consciousness. Religion, they claim, creates divisions, strife, and warfare; it imprisons women and brainwashes children; its doctrines are primitive, unscientific, and irrational, essentially the preserve of the unsophisticated and gullible.

These writers are wrong -- not only about religion, but also about politics -- because they are wrong about human nature. Homo sapiens is also Homo religiosus. As soon as we became recognizably human, men and women started to create religions. We are meaning-seeking creatures. While dogs, as far as we know, do not worry about the canine condition or agonize about their mortality, humans fall very easily into despair if we don’t find some significance in our lives. Theological ideas come and go, but the quest for meaning continues. So God isn’t going anywhere. And when we treat religion as something to be derided, dismissed, or destroyed, we risk amplifying its worst faults. Whether we like it or not, God is here to stay, and it’s time we found a way to live with him in a balanced, compassionate manner."""

________________________
Armstrong may not pay sufficient attention to the type of hysteria which some neo-atheists rightly object to, yet she raises an important point re the neo-atheist's cold, reductionist view of human nature. A Dawkins reduces religion merely to a search for proof. We can't see an ancient, bearded gent in the skies, or in our telescopes, or microscopes; therefore, He doesn't bloody exist, claim the Dawkinistas.

A rational agnostic should protest most of Dawkins' naive empiricist tactics. A religious Being, or realm might not be an object, as say a person, or planet is an object. Is our concept of Justice identifiable via a microscope? Yet many if not most humans would agree they have such a concept. We imagine a Stalin, Hitler, or Idi Amin stuffed in hell, along with small-town perps and panderers, or corrupt judges, politicians, or newspaper editors who fabricate a person's guilt to appeal to some yokels (yokels are multicultural these days). Modern science routinely operates on the assumption that objects (like subatomic particles) exist which cannot be detected by human sight, but merely inferred. At least, the question is not strictly inductive, as in we can't verify God (as in point to him, like one might point to a black swan), but whether religious inferences might be allowed, or plausible in a sense.

That's not to say that one should assume that religion equals traditional monotheism, i.e. an Abrahamic religion--, though the Bible itself remains a source of wisdom, at least when read by rational people. (thankfully, Dawkins, unlike the wackier Harris, does not approve of the mystical occult BS characteristic of many of the neo-atheist gang)--however most eastern religions do uphold some form of mystical/supernatural beliefs (ie, reincarnation, or the various deities of hinduism). Dawkins' insistence on empirical confirmation applies to Hinduism, as much as it would to baptists.


Armstrong's point regarding humans' quest for meaning also should be considered. An afterlife, however implausible to a bottlewasher, makes sense to some people, not only the usual sort of biblethumping WASP. A catholic mother who prays for her sons and daughters serving in the military in a distant country engages in an significant act; she's not merely reiterating some superstitious ritual (tho' admittedly some believers rely too heavily on prayer--and alleged miracles). The Dawkins-esque bottlewasher waves his hand or scoffs, but a mother's prayer means something in a religious realm--a heartfelt prayer has significance (that doesn't mean that one necessarily blesses the priests or preachers who require it...). A prayer of any sort means little or nothing in a naturalist, Darwinist world.

40 years to Death

The execution of Raymond Jennings, continued

"""An Iraqi war veteran was sentenced Thursday to 40 years to life in state prison for the murder of an 18-year-old college coed nearly a decade ago in a Palmdale park-and-ride lot where he worked as a security guard.

Lancaster Superior Court Judge Lisa M. Chung imposed the term on Raymond Lee Jennings, who was convicted Dec. 18 of second-degree murder for the Feb. 22, 2000, slaying of Antelope Valley College student Michelle O'Keefe.

The Lancaster jury that found Jennings guilty was the third panel to hear the case against the 35-year-old defendant, who had served in the Iraq war during a stint with the National Guard.

The first two juries deadlocked -- with the first split 9-3 in April 2008 in favor of guilt and the second panel split 11-1 in February 2009, with the majority voting in favor of convicting him. Both of those trials were held in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom.""""

Though they had little or no evidence, no reasonable motive, and no witnesses, the LA legal machine got the right vigilantes in place and reached a verdict: guilty-by-reason of superior shekels. Now they have sentenced Sgt. Jennings to death. One of the O'Keefes said something cute, like, don't you feel remorse for this crime? (the usual evangelical-bonehead assumes that a courtroom always produces Truth and Justice--at least when the conviction is in their favor).
Jennings stated that said he felt no remorse, since he did not kill her, "and that's a sin I shall not be judged for"--thus revealing more religious sensibility in one sentence than 200 pages of the prosecutor's pompous rhetoric and jury-manipulation.

Given that many of the vigilantes have resorted to the bible quotes, perhaps they might recall that both the Old and New Testaments specifically criticize perjury: "Thou shalt not bear false witness." The church fathers up to and including Aquinas denounced "Mendacio", even when it might please some (like the residents of ...Benthamville!); and Jennings, whatever one thinks of his "character" (so he may not be the sharpest tool in the shed) was not proven to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt--he's innocent beyond a reasonable doubt. We might also recall the Founding fathers warnings against wrongful conviction. Jefferson claimed "Better one hundred guilty men go free than one innocent man be condemned."

Jennings may have a slight shot at an appeal, that is, assuming the aerospace-bots/evangelicals supporting the O'Keefes and their pals in ParrisCo haven't already arranged things with the Black Robe posse on some SoCal fairway. The CA appeal rejection rate averages about 90% denial.

Brautigan High

Billy Collins re Richard Brautigan/NPR

""Mr. BILLY COLLINS (Author, Poet Laureate): Thank you. It's good to be with you.

CORNISH: So in your introduction you talk about traveling in the same circles as Richard Brautigan back in San Francisco. Tell us about him. What was he like?

Mr. COLLINS: Well, I never met him personally. There were various spottings of him. He was very easy to spot, and I describe him in the introduction as being a very tall fellow who combined hippie dress, colorful shirts and beads with 19 century pioneer clothes, including a waistcoat and boots, all topped by an enormous beat-up Western hat. He looked like a man who had just stepped out of the same pre-industrial America, whose passing he lamented in his fiction -post beatnik and pre-hippie.

He was thought of as a rather mysterious figure; a man that didnt say much but was doing something very peculiar in his writing.

CORNISH: He's been described as a little bit Beat generation, a little bit hippie generation, or a sort of bridge writer. And I'm wondering if you can give us a sense of what that meant?

Mr. COLLINS: I think he just fell between the generations. And I know from reading a book by his daughter, Ianthe, that he really didnt want to be identified with either. But he did give off a sense of being a guy from another time and I think in "Trout Fishing in America," one of the under songs in the book is a kind of lament for the passing of a 19 century, or even earlier pastoral America and its replacement by an industrial America.

CORNISH: Can you read that passage from the book?

Mr. COLLINS: Yeah. One of the features of the book is very peculiar metaphors. And in this little chapter in the beginning is basically a long comparison of trout to the American steel industry. I'll just read a paragraph here.

As a child, when did I first hear about trout fishing in America? From whom? I guess it was a stepfather of mine. Summer of 1942. The old drunk told me about trout fishing. When he could talk, he had a way of describing trout as if they were a precious and intelligent metal. Silver is not a good adjective to describe what I felt when he told me about trout fishing. I'd like to get it right. Maybe trout steel. Steel made from trout. The clear snow-filled river acting as foundry and heat. Imagine Pittsburgh. A steel that comes from trout, used to make buildings, trains and tunnels. The Andrew Carnegie of Trout! Explanation point."""""

Now, kah-lass, be sure to turn in your book report on the Andrew Carnegie of Trout on Stunday.... Of course Brautigan's mad, bad literary trip would be far too much for most 'Merican edu-crats. The US education biz has little to do with fostering real creativity, whether in terms of writing, research, or even the sciences. Edu-crats essentially want their students (and teachers) to obey. Schools prepare the modern student for the corporate world, or for bureaucracy of various types (including the public education bureaucracy). "Creatives" of any type are suspect (as are foreign languages, excepting spanglish, perhaps); Jr. works on his algebra or maybe he works on his free throws. Or his parents or schoolmasters order him to read his Good Book (the anglo-calvinist version, anyway)

Most educational administrators crave reductionism, and don't care for conceptual thinking. Jr. solves problems, and learns to follows routines, but he's not asked to ...reflect on issues or problems or important events. The edu-ocracy does not want too much Reflection--whether on the events of World War Two, or a novel. Modern students need math/science skills, of course--and, let's agree they probably don't need On the Road in high school-- but they also probably don't need the usual public school's bootcamp pedagogy, or the endless jock aggression (besides, great generals learn more from trig, history, or even chess playing, than from Babe Ruth). Students often have decent math skills, can point and click their way across the Net, or hit home runs, but they know little or nothing about History. They don't know Sein from Zeit, or Ishmael from Ahab.

T. for Texass Textbooks

NYTimes/Russell Shorto

Following the appeals from the public, the members of what is the most influential state board of education in the country, and one of the most politically conservative, submitted their own proposed changes to the new social-studies curriculum guidelines, whose adoption was the subject of all the attention — guidelines that will affect students around the country, from kindergarten to 12th grade, for the next 10 years. Gail Lowe — who publishes a twice-a-week newspaper when she is not grappling with divisive education issues — is the official chairwoman, but the meeting was dominated by another member. Don McLeroy, a small, vigorous man with a shiny pate and bristling mustache, proposed amendment after amendment on social issues to the document that teams of professional educators had drawn up over 12 months, in what would have to be described as a single-handed display of archconservative political strong-arming.

McLeroy moved that Margaret Sanger, the birth-control pioneer, be included because she “and her followers promoted eugenics,” that language be inserted about Ronald Reagan’s “leadership in restoring national confidence” following Jimmy Carter’s presidency and that students be instructed to “describe the causes and key organizations and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.” The injection of partisan politics into education went so far that at one point another Republican board member burst out in seemingly embarrassed exasperation, “Guys, you’re rewriting history now!” Nevertheless, most of McLeroy’s proposed amendments passed by a show of hands.

Finally, the board considered an amendment to require students to evaluate the contributions of significant Americans. The names proposed included Thurgood Marshall, Billy Graham, Newt Gingrich, William F. Buckley Jr., Hillary Rodham Clinton and Edward Kennedy. All passed muster except Kennedy, who was voted down.

This is how history is made — or rather, how the hue and cry of the present and near past gets lodged into the long-term cultural memory or else is allowed to quietly fade into an inaudible whisper. Public education has always been a battleground between cultural forces; one reason that Texas’ school-board members find themselves at the very center of the battlefield is, not surprisingly, money. The state’s $22 billion education fund is among the largest educational endowments in the country. Texas uses some of that money to buy or distribute a staggering 48 million textbooks annually — which rather strongly inclines educational publishers to tailor their products to fit the standards dictated by the Lone Star State. California is the largest textbook market, but besides being bankrupt, it tends to be so specific about what kinds of information its students should learn that few other states follow its lead. Texas, on the other hand, was one of the first states to adopt statewide curriculum guidelines, back in 1998, and the guidelines it came up with (which are referred to as TEKS — pronounced “teaks” — for Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) were clear, broad and inclusive enough that many other states used them as a model in devising their own. And while technology is changing things, textbooks — printed or online —are still the backbone of education.

The Gospel According to Ronald Reagan. Jeee-zuss spoke...American! A men.

How mutilated, see, is Mahomet

"""A cask by losing centre-piece or cant
Was never shattered so, as I saw one
Rent from the chin to where one breaketh wind.

Between his legs were hanging down his entrails;
His heart was visible, and the dismal sack
That maketh excrement of what is eaten.

While I was all absorbed in seeing him,
He looked at me, and opened with his hands
His bosom, saying: "See now how I rend me;

How mutilated, see, is Mahomet;
In front of me doth Ali weeping go,
Cleft in the face from forelock unto chin;

And all the others whom thou here beholdest,
Disseminators of scandal and of schism
While living were, and therefore are cleft thus.

A devil is behind here, who doth cleave us
Thus cruelly, unto the falchion's edge
Putting again each one of all this ream,

When we have gone around the doleful road;
By reason that our wounds are closed again
Ere any one in front of him repass."""

- Dante's Inferno, Canto 28



[Mohammed, Dali]

Dante may have placed Mohammed, ""seminator di scandalo e di scisma,""
in a fairly nasty section of Hell (though only two doors away from crafty Ulysses and his muscle-man assistant Diomedes...masters of fraud), yet, interestingly enough, Dante envisions Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and Averroes (Ibn Rushd) in merely the first circle of the inferno (aka Limbo, though also interpreted as something like Elysium). Thus the great muslim clerics, like Aristotle ["the Philosopher" in medieval times], still may perceive the light of Reason, and while they have not joined the blessed in Los Cielos, they have it fairly easy, in terms of the afterlife, compared to the Prophet, Ulysses, or, Osiris Forbid, Caiaphas, or the rebels in Lucifer's gaping mouth.

However spooky or supernatural Dante's visions seem, the circles of Hell ("giros", or for Yeats, gyres, usually depicted as a vortex) do not lack a certain rational structure. Humans distinguish between levels of crime, for an obvious instance. A pickpocket or prostitute is not a Pol pot (..bapticks or Kalvinicks say otherwise). When some university philosophaster alludes to supervenience, or set theory, think...gyres; though the ancients (at least the more platonic sorts--) considered Justice an abstract entity, along with mathematical and logical entities. Pi, or a perfect circle, or pythagorean theorem do not grow on trees, then neither does the categorical imperative---those who scoff, and prefer to chant naturalism via the whole sick crew--e.g. Darwin, or Marx, Nietzsche, Willard Quine, etc.--- may toss the speculative metaphysics on the bonfire at their own risk (that said, we agree with Bertrand Russell that Aristotle's system, while perhaps useful to natural sciences, mostly befuddled the supreme clarity of the platonic Idea. Dante was more neo-platonist that Ari). .....

Dante probably follows Aquinas in his moderate treatment of the muslim clerics. Averroes, for one, was a scholar, and early scientist and translated Aristotle's logic and other words into Arabic. Avicenna also was influenced by the greek philosophers. Aquinas and other catholic figures of his era attempted to convert muslims (who he refers to as gentiles) to Christianity--(protestantism of course does not appear until 1500 or so). In this post-Darwinian, post-Freudian age, most modern humans probably consider Dante's Inferno an old wives' tale, or merely stale metaphor--if they consider it at all-- yet there was a method to the madness of the scribes. Hell might be a "possible world" (especially given all the talk of separate dimensions, quantum parallelism, etc).

Aquinas on Mohammedism (from the Summa contra Gentiles): """On the other hand, those who founded sects committed to erroneous doctrines proceeded in a way that is opposite to this, The point is clear in the case of Muhammad. He seduced the people by promises of carnal pleasure to which the concupiscence of the flesh goads us. His teaching also contained precepts that were in conformity with his promises, and he gave free rein to carnal pleasure. In all this, as is not unexpected, he was obeyed by carnal men. As for proofs of the truth of his doctrine, he brought forward only such as could be grasped by the natural ability of anyone with a very modest wisdom. Indeed, the truths that he taught he mingled with many fables and with doctrines of the greatest falsity. He did not bring forth any signs produced in a supernatural way, which alone fittingly gives witness to divine inspiration; for a visible action that can be only divine reveals an invisibly inspired teacher of truth. On the contrary, Muhammad said that he was sent in the power of his arms—which are signs not lacking even to robbers and tyrants. What is more, no wise men, men trained in things divine and human, believed in him from the beginning, Those who believed in him were brutal men and desert wanderers, utterly ignorant of all divine teaching, through whose numbers Muhammad forced others to become his followers by the violence of his arms. Nor do divine pronouncements on the part of preceding prophets offer him any witness. On the contrary, he perverts almost all the testimonies of the Old and New Testaments by making them into fabrications of his own, as can be. seen by anyone who examines his law. It was, therefore, a shrewd decision on his part to forbid his followers to read the Old and New Testaments, lest these books convict him of falsity. It is thus clear that those who place any faith in his words believe foolishly."""

Ouch.

~(Fundies)

[Harvey Wasserman]

"God made the idiot for practice, and then He made the school board."--Mark Twain

""""Tomorrow's New York Times Sunday Magazine highlights yet another mob of extremists using the Texas School Board to baptize our children's textbooks.

This endless, ever-angry escalating assault on our Constitution by crusading theocrats could be obliterated with the effective incantation of two names: Benjamin Franklin, and Deganawidah.

But first, let's do some history:

1) Actual Founder-Presidents #2 through #6 -- John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe and John Quincy Adams -- were all freethinking Deists and Unitarians; what Christian precepts they embraced were moderate, tolerant and open-minded.

2) Actual Founder-President #1, George Washington, became an Anglican as required for original military service under the British, and occasionally quoted scripture. But he vehemently opposed any church-state union. In a 1790 letter to the Jews of Truro, he wrote: The "Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistances, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens." A 1796 treaty he signed says "the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." Washington rarely went to church and by some accounts refused last religious rites.

3) Washington was also the nation's leading brewer, and since most Americans drank much beer (water could be lethal in the cities) they regularly trembled before the keg, not the altar. Like Washington, Jefferson and Madison, virtually all American farmers raised hemp and its variations.

4) Jefferson produced a personal Bible from which he edited out all reference to the "miraculous" from the life of Jesus, whom he considered both an activist and a mortal.

5) Tom Paine's COMMON SENSE sparked the Revolution with nary a mention of Jesus or Christianity. His Deist Creator established the laws of Nature, endowed humans with Free Will, then left.

6) The Constitution never mentions the words "Christian" or "Jesus" or "Christ."


BILLY SUNDAY?


7) Revolutionary America was filled with Christians whose commitment to toleration and diversity was completely adverse to the violent, racist, misogynist, anti-sex theocratic Puritans whose "City on the Hill" meant a totalitarian state. Inspirational preachers like Rhode Island's Roger Williams and religious groups like the Quakers envisioned a nation built on tolerance and love for all.

8) The US was founded less on Judeo-Christian beliefs than on the Greco-Roman love for dialog and reason. There are no contemporary portraits of any Founder wearing a crucifix or church garb. But Washington was famously painted half-naked in the buff toga of the Roman Republic, which continues to inspire much of our official architecture.

9) The great guerilla fighter (and furniture maker) Ethan Allen was an aggressive atheist; his beliefs were common among the farmers, sailors and artisans who were the backbone of Revolutionary America.

10) America's most influential statesman, thinker, writer, agitator, publisher, citizen-scientist and proud liberal libertine was -- and remains -- Benjamin Franklin. He was at the heart of the Declaration, Constitution and Treaty of Paris ending the Revolution. The ultimate Enlightenment icon, Franklin's Deism embraced a pragmatic love of diversity. As early America's dominant publisher he, Paine and Jefferson printed the intellectual soul of the new nation.

11) Franklin deeply admired the Ho-de-no-sau-nee (Iroquois) Confederacy of what's now upstate New York. Inspired by the legendary peacemaker Deganawidah, this democratic congress of five tribes had worked "better than the British Parliament" for more than two centuries. It gave us the model for our federal structure and the images of freedom and equality that inspired both the French and American Revolutions.

It's no accident today's fundamentalist crusaders and media bloviators (Rev. Limbaugh, St. Beck) seek to purge our children's texts of all native images except as they are being forceably converted or killed.

Today's fundamentalists would have DESPISED the actual Founders. Franklin's joyous, amply reciprocated love of women would evoke their limitless rage. Jefferson's paternities with his slave mistress Sally Hemings, Paine's attacks on the priesthood, Hamilton's bastardly philandering, the grassroots scorn for organized religion -- all would draw howls of righteous right-wing rage.

Which may be why theocratic fundamentalists are so desperate to sanitize and fictionalize what's real about our history.

God forbid our children should know of American Christians who embraced the Sermon on the Mount and renounced the Book of Revelations...or natives who established democracy on American soil long before they saw the first European...or actual Founders who got drunk, high and laid on their way to writing the Constitution.

Faith-based tyranny is anti-American. So are dishonest textbooks. It's time to fight them both.""""

harveywasserman.com

Old news to some; never-understood news to others. Sedate a monotheist for...Jee-zuss

The Politics of Temperature

Temps nearly flat since late 90s

"""Solomon et al. begin their article stating “Over the past century, global average surface temperatures have warmed by about 0.75°C. Much of the warming occurred in the last half century, over which the average decadal rate of change was about 0.13°C, largely due to anthropogenic increases in well-mixed greenhouse gases. However, the trend in global surface temperatures has been nearly flat since the late 1990s despite continuing increases in the forcing due to the sum of the well-mixed greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4, halocarbons, and N2O), raising questions regarding the understanding of forced climate change, its drivers, the parameters that define natural internal variability, and how fully these terms are represented in climate models.”

Admitting that the trend in global temperatures has been flat over the past decade will not win any awards for this team, so we once again applaud their honesty. The team suggests that part of the reason for the flatness deals with the amount of water high-up in the upper troposphere, the tropopause, and the lower stratosphere. They clearly state “Water vapor is a highly variable gas. Tropospheric water vapor increases in close association with warming and this represents a major climate feedback that is well simulated in global climate models. In sharp contrast, current global models are limited in their representations of key processes that control the distribution and variability of water within the stratosphere”. Furthermore they note “Current global climate models simulate lower stratospheric temperature trends poorly and even up-to-date stratospheric chemistry-climate models do not consistently reproduce tropical tropopause minimum temperatures or recently observed changes in stratospheric water vapor.”

Those who have some doubts about the IPCC/Gore AGW models do not thereby necessarily affirm FoxCo-style climate "denialism". While temperatures did rise slightly over 80s and 90s, the last decade, 2000-2010, reveals a cooling trend. (Dr. Solomon, for one, is rather more qualified to speak on AGW than is Doc Rachel Maddow).

Climate modellers and most AGW researchers are not actual atmospheric physicists. They model certain scenarios, given certain assumptions --e.g. increases in man-made CO2 results in higher temps. The CO2 to warming assumption has little or no empirical/lab support. Some evidence suggests AGW; some doesn't (check online for Dr. Hug's studies). Timelags and "thresholds" complicate the problem, as do other GHGs and water vapor (solar activity another possible factor).

The AGW claim has not been adequately verified. GIGO, however trite, would apply. Researchers have forced large quantities of CO2 (such as 10+ times present conditions) into a simulated earth atmosphere, and have not produced significant increase in temps (any lurkers have a study refuting Hug, and other real chemists? link, or cite, etc.). It's not merely wrong, but obscene to proceed on the basis of a few simulations to spend millions (if not more) to prevent a crisis that may not even exist, or is not nearly as severe as imagined. Besides, worst case scenarios, oceans rise a few feet, and merely wash Malibu condos and chateaus out to sea.

More on the villain water vapor

Police state, American style

P.C. Roberts

"""As our Founding Fathers and a long list of scholars warned, once civil liberties are breached, they are breached for all. Soon U.S. citizens were being held indefinitely in violation of their habeas corpus rights. Dr. Aafia Siddiqui an American citizen of Pakistani origin might have been the first.

Dr. Siddiqui, a scientist educated at MIT and Brandeis University, was seized in Pakistan for no known reason, sent to Afghanistan, and was held secretly for five years in the U.S. military’s notorious Bagram prison in Afghanistan. Her three young children were with her at the time she was abducted, one an eight-month old baby. She has no idea what has become of her two youngest children. Her oldest child, 7 years old, was also incarcerated in Bagram and subjected to similar abuse and horrors.

Siddiqui has never been charged with any terrorism-related offense. A British journalist, hearing her piercing screams as she was being tortured, disclosed her presence. An embarrassed U.S. government responded to the disclosure by sending Siddiqui to the U.S. for trial on the trumped-up charge that while a captive, she grabbed a U.S. soldier’s rifle and fired two shots attempting to shoot him. The charge apparently originated as a U.S. soldier’s excuse for shooting Dr. Siddiqui twice in the stomach resulting in her near death.

On February 4, Dr. Siddiqui was convicted by a New York jury for attempted murder. The only evidence presented against her was the charge itself and an unsubstantiated claim that she had once taken a pistol-firing course at an American firing range. No evidence was presented of her fingerprints on the rifle that this frail and broken 100-pound woman had allegedly seized from an American soldier. No evidence was presented that a weapon was fired, no bullets, no shell casings, no bullet holes. Just an accusation."""

Might as well trust mafia dons as trust the ...Black Robe posse (in fact, hardly indistinguishable most of the time)

A Psychosis Darkly

(PKD continued):

from "Neuropsychology and Psychosis in 'A Scanner Darkly'":

"""For its insight into altered states, Philip K. Dick's writing is especially noteworthy however; he was highly knowledgeable about mental illness, not only from his own experience - he regularly saw a psychiatrist for most of his life - but also through his acquaintance with key texts in psychology and psychiatry (Carrère, 2004). Consequently, it would be easy to read A Scanner Darkly as a rehash of radical theories of mental illness, particularly those of R.D. Laing and Aaron Esterson (Laing and Esterson, 1964), who viewed madness as an attempt to reconcile roles that have become irreconcilable in modern life. However, Dick was not content with simply repeating the fashionable anti-establishment views of the time and attempted an explanation based on an understanding of neuropsychology."""

******
The Mindhack most likely errors in his hasty dismissal of the influence of RD Laing and other anti-psychology/psychiatry writers of the 60s. I am not sure whether Dick had read RD Laing or Esterson, but A Scanner Darkly does not exactly bless the psychology business. In the novel the cops subject Arctor/Fred to routine psychological examinations/observations. Doesn't PK Dick thereby suggest the psychology business has become synonymous with the police business (or, police state)?

It's easy enough to read PKD books as explorations of altered consciousness, or drug-related adventures (though, granted, Substance D does sound a great deal like meth), yet many PKD readers tend to psychedelic-ize psychologize when they should ...politicize, or perhaps, politicize the institution of psychology. Given the phenomena of Walmarts, Wall Streets, fundamentalist idiots, and ICBMs, psychosis of various degrees may in some sense be a reasonable choice--if not a result of the Pathocracy, however trite that sounds to the cognoscenti; the Noumenal, even a somewhat crazy, neuro-psychological Noumenal often may be preferable to the Phenomenal (especially for those living in poverty, or war-zones, including those of SoCal).

Like PK Dick, Laing did not approve of a cop-state, whether run by rightist-behaviorists or hip, Lacan-quoting psychoanalysts: both send troublemakers--whether perps or the non-PC--to the Dept's of Behavior Therapy--be good, or....we'll make you good, via dope or a bit of reinforcement--. Laing may have gone a bit too far in his detestation of clinical psych. --certainly some people, including functioning, apparently "normal", are mentally ill, and behavior modification may be successful at times, administered correctly (Skinner was not the most sinister of human beings, regardless of what Laing, Chomsky or other leftists insisted). Regardless, Laing's been relegated to the dustbin of the counterculture, but his criticisms of the mental health bureaucracy still seem relevant to Dick's works, and however cliche, society at large (to be continued).

PK Dick scans SoCal

Scott Timberg of the LA Times reflects on PK Dick's last days in O.C.:

“In Southern California,” he wrote in the novel “A Scanner Darkly,” “it didn’t make any difference anyhow where you went; there was always the same McDonaldburger place over and over, like a circular strip that turned past you as you pretended to go somewhere.”

Cool, though I am not sure I agree with Mr. Timberg's assessment of Dick's later writing, which he considers continuous with Dick's earlier work. A Scanner Darkly flows from a weirder and darker place than, say, Man in the High Castle, UBIK, or "Do Androids dream..." (the novel which led to Blade Runner). Scanner's a bad trip, man, where cops, perps and druggies engage entropically in the bland dystopia of the SoCal 'burbs, the Disneyland of the mind, home to JOHN WAYNE AIRPORT. No space opera heroes nor Deckard like anti-heroes populate ASD. ASD does not seem quite as Kantian--or quantum-mystico--as some PKD, though Dickian characters often deal with a basic metaphysical problem: the relation of the perception of reality to...Reality itself, and really in philo-speak, the conditions of those perceptions, ie experiential knowledge, such as time and space (That said, PKD was not a postmodernist type. Subjective idealism does not imply, at least necessarily, that reason and science are merely fictions. )

Along with the philosophizing or, perhaps....anti-philosophizing, A Scanner Darkly reveals a hint of Hammett like detective pulp--a good thing, except to academics or east coast snobs. (Detectives often deal with a sort of primitive metaphysics, really, related to determining the facts... or chain of events) The OC hive revolves in a microdotted kaleidoscope, post-Nixon, Mao, and 'Nam. Stoners and gangsters turn narc (with the best eavesdropping snitch gear available), Jane Doe's become Ho's, and even cops turn out to be correct at times. Really, "Scanner" verges on madness at the end, like some metal-band jam gone awry, random, pathological as a friday night on the I-5.

More PKD

Tea-baggerism

Chomsky/z

The relevant passages:

""""So take right now, for example, there is a right-wing populist uprising. It's very common, even on the left, to just ridicule them, but that's not the right reaction. If you look at those people and listen to them on talk radio, these are people with real grievances. I listen to talk radio a lot and it's kind of interesting. If you can sort of suspend your knowledge of the world and just enter into the world of the people who are calling in, you can understand them. I've never seen a study, but my sense is that these are people who feel really aggrieved. These people think, "I've done everything right all my life, I'm a god-fearing Christian, I'm white, I'm male, I've worked hard, and I carry a gun. I do everything I'm supposed to do. And I'm getting shafted." And in fact they are getting shafted. For 30 years their wages have stagnated or declined, the social conditions have worsened, the children are going crazy, there are no schools, there's nothing, so somebody must be doing something to them, and they want to know who it is. Well Rush Limbaugh has answered - it's the rich liberals who own the banks and run the government, and of course run the media, and they don't care about you—-they just want to give everything away to illegal immigrants and gays and communists and so on.

Well, you know, the reaction we should be having to them is not ridicule, but rather self-criticism. Why aren't we organizing them? I mean, we are the ones that ought to be organizing them, not Rush Limbaugh. There are historical analogs, which are not exact, of course, but are close enough to be worrisome. This is a whiff of early Nazi Germany. Hitler was appealing to groups with similar grievances, and giving them crazy answers, but at least they were answers; these groups weren't getting them anywhere else. It was the Jews and the Bolsheviks [that were the problem].



Sal Dali and his pet Ocelot


I mean, the liberal democrats aren't going to tell the average American, "Yeah, you're being shafted because of the policies that we've established over the years that we're maintaining now." That's not going to be an answer. And they're not getting answers from the left. So, there's an internal coherence and logic to what they get from Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and the rest of these guys. And they sound very convincing, they're very self-confident, and they have an answer to everything—a crazy answer, but it's an answer. And it's our fault if that goes on. So one thing to be done is don't ridicule these people, join them, and talk about their real grievances and give them a sensible answer, like, "Take over your factories."""""

Prof. Chomsky may be a bit too optimistic, but there's another reason his analyses tend to bother the frat boy or sorority gal liberal democrats, or the postmodernist left (not to say Ditto-heads, and Glenn Beck-Fox bots): he discusses the ......L-word, aka Labor. The frat-boy vichyliberal democrat generally has little or no interest in, nor understanding of labor, or work-related issues, or the plight of the working class--including the caucasian working class. Problems related to the division of labor--a common theme in political and economic discussions of the 19th century--don't generally concern cyber-crats (or the academic leftist). The typical liberal Demo. no longer punches the clock in factory or field. She works for management, in office jobs, or belongs to the schoolmarmies or cop union. Unionists may still be found in the urban areas (not that trade unions are always correct), but the college-educated suburbanites and "professionals" outnumber them.

Burbs-o-crats don't know what the IWW was (is that some horrid Dylan tune or Steinbeck story or something?....dreadful). They have not read Bakunin, or even Bertie Russell; perhaps a few burbs-o-crats read Orwell, or even Pynchon, but the political implications of TP novels have been barely addressed in Lit-land. Allude to any marxist jargon to burbs-o-crats and they think Stalin (or Hitler, or worldwide zionist conspiracy, gays, Rosie O, whatever)--or reach for their revolvers, or favorite Aynnie Rand Twatboiler. Chomsky's sort of quasi-Bakunin abstractions--and rationality--are too much for them. The teabaggers listening to ReichMommy Palin, or FoxCo, the neo-cons AND the leftists who hate them agree on one common machiavellian principle, however: just win, bay-be.

Stupor Bowl

Top 10 Reasons to Hate the Super Bowl

This year's SB Halftime show features the...Who! Meet the new corporate boss, same as the old corporate boss...

Mo' on GridironCo

The Rise of Capitalism

Your semi-annual e-Barthelme update:

""The first thing I did was make a mistake. I thought I had understood capitalism, but what I had done was assume an attitude -- melancholy sadness -- toward it. This attitude is not correct. Fortunately your letter came, at that instant. "Dear Rupert, I love you every day. You are the world, which is life. I love you I adore you I am crazy about you. Love, Marta." Reading between the lines, I understood your critique of my attitude toward capitalism. Always mindful that the critic must "studiare da un punto di vista formalistico e semiologico il rapporto fra lingua di un testo e codificazione di un -- " But here a big thumb smudges the text -- the thumb of capitalism, which we are all under. Darkness falls. My neighbor continues to commit suicide, once a fortnight. I have this suicides geared into my schedule because my role is to save him; once I was late and he spent two days unconscious on the floor. But now that I have understood that I have not understood capitalism, perhaps a less equivocal position toward it can be "hammered out." My daughter demands more Mr. Bubble for her bath. The shrimp boats lower their nets. A book called Humorists of the 18th Century is published."""

Bark like the petite-bourgeois hyena you izz.

The........iRag

More tales from the Apple MacSweatshop--

"""The 'genius' of Jobs is to take other people's work, brand it Apple then market the crap out of it to the mainstream (read: those oblivious of the Industry) as a new creation. This clearly works for them (8.7Million iphones last quarter) and shows the mainstream are made of really dumb people.

- The name 'iPad' is a trademark of Fujitsu Global, so look out for that war in the coming weeks. (Apple has absolutely no respect for other people's Intellectual property... remember the Cisco iPhone battle and the Creative iPod design battle to name a few?)

- The iBooks platform is Amazon's work.... RIP Amazon Kindle

- The device looks like a mixture of the Hanvon slate and the Crunchpad/JooJoo but not as good as either.

- Arm processor, no multitasking, no camera, 9.7-inch LED backlit display and only 10-hours max?

- Non-user changeable battery

- For USD800+ you get a non-multitasking sub-netbook (I never thought there would be such a category) with a capacitive touch screen, an arm processor and no keyboard, car kit, desk stand, case, dock etc as standard and included with only 64GB SSD and and unknown amount of RAM (512MB~1GB I suspect)...

- No Flash support (even though HTML5 is the future... more sites use Flash than HTML5, so shouldn't a web tablet support the 'more sites'?)

- No Camera

- No Built-in card readers (I mean it's 2010... why should I have to pay extra for a card reader)

- Unlocked 3G radio but uses Micro Sim card so you still don't have the freedom to choose your carrier

IMHO, anyone who needs a device in this genre and plunks good cash down for this iTampon over the x86 based JooJoo or other arm based tablets is a fool!

The battery is built in and in a device this size, there is plenty of room for more cells since there is no 'cartridge' system for a removable battery... apple seems to have opted for this as a way to keep production costs down, rather than a way to allow more battery life. I predict 3~5 hours of battery life with wifi on and couch surfing (which should be 10hours given how much space there is in a device this size with LED backlighting for more cells given it's a foil-packed built-in battery), and 2~3 hours with 3G on and mobile surfing.

Additionally, if you thought the glass screen on the ipod touch or iphone broke easily... drop, twist or squeeze the ipad once and see your money burn (more)... this is not Gorilla Glass that you'd find in well built consumer electronics, but cheaper regular glass (fitting of an over-hyped, poor quality, sweatshop manufactured Apple product)... again, that keeps the manufacturing costs down.

This Apple product is the furthest Apple has gone as far robbing the consumer blind is concerned... so it begs the question: Where does Apple draw the the line between good business and a complete lack of ethics?""""""

At least in terms of battery life, Kindle outperforms the iRag: like a week, compared to like 3 or 4 hours on the iRag. And Kindles, while still a scam (do reasonable people need an e-reader to enjoy Phoebe-Zeit-Geist, or their favorite B-Traven potboiler? Hell no), cost about half or less than the MacHeist--tho' the iPad does at least have net/wifi hook-up, unlike the Kindle (tho' they are light, and portable). With a Crapple, that means you get like 386 speed for only a grand or so. Then why not a laptop, anyway, since the iPad's are about as heavy.

However corrupt and venal Microsoft may be, the gear's cheap and it works, and GatesCo does kick down millions of shekels to charity (and poor 3rd world nations).

Tax-o-nomix

AlexCockburn/Counterpunch

""Neither bankers specifically nor corporations generally are popular right now. On Tuesday voters in Oregon , in the Pacific Northwest, voted to raise taxes on corporations and the rich. The measures romped through 54 percent to 46 percent, hiking taxes on households with taxable income above $250,000, and setting higher minimum taxes on corporations, with increased tax rates on upper-level profits. In Oregon, there hasn’t been this kind of popularly–sanctioned tax bite out of the backsides of the rich since the 1930s.

This sets the political stage for the November mid-term elections, and every politician sniffs the popular mood. Hence Obama’s belated dash to head the populist jacquerie. But there’s virtually no chance of any serious financial reform transpiring. Already, in dead of night, Wall Street lobbyists in December -- as reported by Andrew Cockburn here on this site -- crushed legislative language in a financial reform bill to ban Wall Street’s “dark markets” trading in over-the-counter derivatives such as credit default swaps. These were what impelled the financial crisis in 2008.

The bankers will resign themselves to a glancing blow like Obama’s proposed $30 billion levy. But they will surely fight off Paul Volcker, for months languishing in obscurity as head of Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, until mustered last week to the president’s side to preside over the White House’s Great Leap Sideways into economic populism. He’s been assigned the task of promoting legislation that will haul the banks back into the Glass-Steagall era when the paltry sums in one’s checking account weren’t immediately securitized and packaged into a CDO squared. Already the Los Angeles Times – normally in Obama’s corner – has editorially savaged Volcker’s plan, as have the Washington Post and, needless to say, the Wall Street Journal."""

Peruse historical data on US tax rates: Bill Clinton slightly adjusted Reagan's slashes (back to like 40% or so), yet Clinton did not hike the rates on upper brackets back to even Nixon's level of 60+%.

Judge-o-cracy

Supremely Swindled

DiMaggio/Counterpunch

"""The Supreme Court took a big step this week in extending corporate power in the electoral arena. In a 5-4 decision, the court struck down limits on interest groups wishing to directly fund campaign ads in the run-up to national elections. Previous rules – including the 2002 bi-partisan campaign reform act – prohibited corporations from directly funding campaign ads in Congressional races, either in favor of, or against individual candidates. Those rules have been struck down in this new decision. Previously, rules regulating spending merely required that corporate interests channel their money through formal mediums; corporations were required to filter spending through political action committees (PACs), and were still able to spend unlimited amounts on “issue ads,” although not on ads attacking specific candidates. In this sense, the Supreme Court’s ruling should not be seen as a milestone so much as one of many recent rulings seeking to strengthen corporate power. Buckley v. Valeo (1976) represents one of the earlier efforts to expand the voice of corporations, as the Supreme Court ruled that spending money on campaign contributions was a constitutionally protected form of free speech. The Supreme Court also struck down a portion of the 2002 bi-partisan campaign reform act in 2007, which prohibited corporations and unions from financing political ads during the two months before general elections and the month before primaries.

The rationale for easing campaign finance laws was provided in a majority opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, proclaiming that “speech is an essential mechanism of democracy, for it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people…Political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it, whether by design or inadvertently.” Undergirding the court’s rationale is the assumption that money does not pervert the electoral process, but is in fact vital to it. Philosophically, campaign spending is seen as nothing more than a form of political expression – to be wielded by any group or individual who wishes to lobby for or against candidates running for office.

There are good reasons to reject the notion that campaign money is a form of free speech that nurtures democracy. One particular danger from the Supreme Court’s actions is the increased probability that businesses will stifle progressive change. Officials who enthusiastically support corporate power may be rewarded by massive increases in spending on issue and candidate ads that benefit them during re-election, while candidates who support progressive reform will be the subject of an organized business onslaught that is without financial restrictions.""""

* * * * *
Pops Kennedy, scholar of the classics and top-ranking judicial mind in the USA, has a profound insight to share with the plebes of the USA: "money talks." Alas, Kennedy, one of the current papist majority on SCOTUS, didn't quite master the finer points of Aristotle's Politics. The Stagirite opposed despotism, at least in principle, including the financial sort. As does catholic tradition--at least in principle, though Padres might make exceptions when a powerful papist judge has a few million pesos to donate to his favorite catholic charity--yo, Nuestra Señora de Usura Perpetua...

This decision may seem trivial, meaningless, or boring as a Beatles medley at a Ramada on I-80. When the CA gubernational battle heats up, it may not seem so meaningless. Maybe they should post campaign financing bids on e-bay.

Courtier's Credibility

Greenwald/SCOTUS

"""What's most disturbing here is the increasing trend of right-wing Justices inserting themselves ever more aggressively into overtly political disputes in a way that seriously undermines their claims of apolitical objectivity. Antonin Scalia goes hunting with Dick Cheney, dubiously refuses to recuse himself from a lawsuit challenging the legality of Cheney's actions, and then rules in Cheney's favor. Scalia has an increasing tendency to make highly politicized comments about purely political conflicts, most recently defending torture in an interview with 60 Minutes. As part of Clarence Thomas' promotional efforts to sell his book, he spent substantial time building his conservative icon status with the furthest right-wing media elements -- even parading himself around on Rush Limbaugh's radio program -- and turned himself into the food fight of the week between Democrats and Republicans."""

Greenwald's name does not rank too high on our list of linkable e-pundits, but Greenwald raises an important point on the politicizing of the Supreme Court. Nearly all of the current crop of conservative judges have made blatantly political statements. Il Duce Scalia's probably the worst, as with his proclamation a year or so ago that Bush/Gore Florida 2000 was a done deal and Americans didn't need to worry their pretty heads about it anymore since the Big Daddies of SCOTUS had taken care of it, and declared the Truth of the matter, notwithstanding the numerous independent researchers and newspapers (including the WSJ) who concluded that tampering had occurred. Scalia, reputedly a conservative catholic, seems fairly unaware of St. Augustine's thoughts De Mendacio (not to say Old and New Testaments):

Greenwald covers the problems fairly well, but he doesn't really discuss judicial review itself, and the related issue of judicial and prosecutorial immunity. That would like require a bit of reflection if not ...analysis, however dull it might seem to the Snarkosphere. Really, the issue revolves around the old regress of the law which the Founders discussed at length. However un-hip, un-PC, or un-read Jefferson may be, he seems to have understood the potential for a Scalia-like quasi-monarchist court:

"[How] to check these unconstitutional invasions of... rights by the Federal judiciary? Not by impeachment in the first instance, but by a strong protestation of both houses of Congress that such and such doctrines advanced by the Supreme Court are contrary to the Constitution; and if afterwards they relapse into the same heresies, impeach and set the whole adrift. For what was the government divided into three branches, but that each should watch over the others and oppose their usurpations?" --Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Macon, 1821.

Dull dreary legalese---but a fairly serious issue, Rube. Is the state safer with a judiciary beholden to no one except itself, or by having the court subject to the Congress and Senate? (many Mericans don't realize that SCOTUS was not part of the original Constitution). Jefferson knew enough about British and French ancien regime history to realize that liberty was NOT to be entrusted to a panel of magistrates (as Locke had asserted as well); most of the anti-federalists were in agreement on this issue, but Adams and his judge-henchman John Marshall prevailed. The jacobins of 1792, of course, had other, somewhat extreme solutions for magistrates, part of "le deuxieme état".

Ballard-mongers

Hitchens/JG Ballard--

"...Ballard is arguably best-known to a wide audience because of his relatively “straight” novel, Empire of the Sun, and the resulting movie by Steven Spielberg. Some of his devotees were depressed by the literalness of the subject matter, which is a quasi-autobiographical account of being 13 years old and an inmate in a Japanese internment camp in Shanghai. It’s not possible to read that book, however, and fail to see the germinal effect that experience had on Ballard the man. To see a once-thriving city reduced to beggary and emptiness, to live one day at a time in point of food and medicine, to see an old European order brutally and efficiently overturned, to notice the utterly casual way in which human life can be snuffed out, and to see war machines wheeling and diving in the overcast sky: such an education! Don’t forget, either, that young Ballard was ecstatic at the news of the atomic obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an emotion that makes him practically unique among postwar literati. Included in this collection is a very strong 1977 story, “The Dead Time,” a sort of curtain-raiser to Empire—Ballard’s own preferred name for his book—in which a young man released from Japanese captivity drives a truckload of cadavers across a stricken landscape and ends up feeding a scrap of his own torn flesh to a ravenous child.

Readers of Ballard’s memoir, Miracles of Life (a book with a slightly but not entirely misleading title) will soon enough discern that he built on his wartime Shanghai traumas in three related ways. As a teenager in post-war England he came across first Freud, and second the surrealists. He describes the two encounters as devastating in that they taught him what he already knew: religion is abject nonsense, human beings positively enjoy inflicting cruelty, and our species is prone to, and can coexist with, the most grotesque absurdities. What could have been more natural, then, than that Ballard the student should devote himself to classes in anatomy, spending quality time with corpses, some of whom, in life, had been dedicated professors in the department. An astonishing number of his shorter works follow the inspiration of Crash, also filmed, this time by David Cronenberg, in morbid and almost loving accounts of “wound profiles,” gashes, fractures, and other inflictions on the flesh and bones. Fascinated by the possibility of death in traffic, and rather riveted by the murder of John Kennedy, Ballard produced a themed series titled The Atrocity Exhibition, here partially collected, where collisions and ejaculations and celebrities are brought together in a vigorously stirred mix of Eros and Thanatos. His antic use of this never-failing formula got him briefly disowned by his American publisher and was claimed by Ballard as “pornographic science fiction,” but if you can read “The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered As a Downhill Motor Race” or “Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan” in search of sexual gratification, you must be jaded by disorders undreamed-of by this reviewer. Both stories, however, succeed in being deadpan funny."""

When Hitchens is not waving his flag for one cause or another, he's a fairly entertaining scribe, tho' not quite the eloquent connoisseur of chaos that was Master Ballard--as with Crash, a wild ride into auto-dystopia, tho' perhaps a bit British for most 'Mericans (at least the book worked. The movie was not bad. Or, shall we say, Rosanna A--topless, or in casts and bandages...pain-tastic! Jimmy Spader apparently didn't quite it make through Stanislavski 101, alas).

Class, today we will be covering “The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered As a Downhill Motor Race”, and please be so good as as to turn to page 187 in your Ballard Reader. Be sure to make a note for next week's sed-joo-wull: Vermillion Sands, mescaline, and aria-singing Orchids.

Casino-closer

(May-day Maiden, Evergreen Review, 1967)

HuffPo commentary on Obama's Bank-Tax

“”"That bank-tax reported yesterday looks like it will be
broader and tougher than initially reported.

The Huffington Post quotes a senior administration official saying that Obama will institute a tax not only to recoup taxpayer losses on the bailouts but also to penalize too-big-to-fail institutions and get back some of the taxpayer subsidy inherent in guaranteeing these firms’ survival.

That tax, if it’s steep enough, will incentivize banks to get smaller. It will be interesting to see how it’s structured—at what size the levy kicks in.

And this is also important and new: It appears the administration, even if it’s not going to call for the reinstatement of a Glass-Steagall split between trading and banking, is going to slap penalties on casino-like activities”

The neo-liberals (and of course the neo-Nixonian GOP-nutbags) don't seem too enthralled about this move, but it appears to be a fairly sound regulatory policy--though probably a bad sign for scabs and shysters, whether Stevie Jobs, or Stevie Forbes, or McJobs-Forbes-wannabes, like Byronia and the mormon-subluxation biz.

Communication 101: Prof. Hammett

Say it ain't so, sunshine: Dash H. dared to diss the paupers and panderers of Parnassus, aka the poetry profession.

Poetry and the P.I., it would seem, are as incompatible as a chili dog and a just-pressed shirt. Exhibit A: Red Harvest from 1929, in which the Continental Op is hired to clean up Personville, a town so corrupt that most people know it as Poisonville. Seems that Personville's original gangsta—Old Elihu Willsson, who owns the bank, newspapers, a senator and the governor—is losing ground in his old age. The Op is reluctant to stick around and do the dirty work, so Old Elihu appeals to the Op's manhood. "I'll talk you your sense," he says. "I want a man to clean this pig-sty of a
Poisonville for me, to smoke out the rats, little and big. Its a man's job. Are
you a man?"

But the Op retorts:

What's the use of getting poetic about it? If you've got a fairly honest piece of work to be done in my line, and you want to pay a decent price, maybe I'll take it on. But a lot of
foolishness about smoking rats and pig-pens doesn't mean anything to me.

In the Op's calculus, the values of money and honesty overlap with clear
speaking; foolishness, rats, and pig-pens, on the other hand, line up with
poetry. """

Any real detective (private, or ...puerco...:) ) knows when to cut out the small talk and the stale metaphors and face the facts, as far as they may be ascertained...Though, admittedly, most sane men hearing the real story of Butte city (aka Poisonville) might prefer dreams, poetic, papaverian, pudenda-riffic or otherwise...

IS

Frege distinguishes between the following meanings of 'is':


(1) the 'is' of identity (e.g., Phosphorus is Hesperus; a=b),

(2) the 'is' of predication, i.e., the copula (e.g., 'Plato is blond'; P(a)) ( Haaparanta may have errored: that would be B(p). If not a definite description--"the philosopher known as Plato"". Not your pet ferret named "Plato")

(3) the 'is' of existence,

(i) expressed by means of the existential quantifier and the symbol for identity (e.g., 'God is'; (∃ x) (G=x)) (also debatable...is "G*d" even treatable as an object?? unlikely),

or

(ii) expressed by means of the existential quantifier and the symbol for predication (e.g., 'There are human beings' / 'There is at least one human being'; (∃ x) H (x)),

and



(4) the 'is' of class-inclusion, i.e., generic implication (e.g., 'A horse is a four-legged animal'; (x) (P(x) → Q(x)))."

(From: Leila Haaparanta - Frege's doctrine of Being - Helsinki, Acta Philosophica Fennica, vol. 39, 1985 pp. 13-14).

So, start over.

___________

Frege's point, however obvious it might seem (at least to those who can remove their ideological spectacles for a few nano-seconds), has broad applications --not only to academics pondering the Klassix in their tax-payer funded ivory towers, but to writers of any type. Poor writers continually conflate the universal with the particular. And perhaps recall the poetical who yawped, "No ideas but in things"?? In a way a call for the particular, instead of the universal (or, bogus universal--integrals might be universals, not sure about egos...).

Another issue with predication (#2) and inclusion (#4): they often seem about the same. Blondness seems quite different than, say, mammal-ness, or triangle-ness, but in many cases the logical form would be the same, that is, if you grant adjectives, or "adjectival classes" exist... "The bike for sale is a Harley" (falls in class of motorcycles aka Harleys) seems quite different than predication: "Harleys are best" (and f**K the rest). Primary/secondary qualities? Metaphysical realism? Or eliminate modifiers from the language.....

Mistaking the particular for the universal may be merely a fallacy of generalization, but it's often sort of a formal error as well: mixing up the universal of class inclusion with the existential gen . A naive leftist might claim (with some justification), that "All Republicans are Oppressors," or, say, "All Mormons are Chesters", and like many, thereby unwittingly offer a quantified universal claim in the Modus Ponens form (ie (x) (M(x)->Ch(x)). But certainly there are some, at least a few mormons, who are ~Chesters (which also shows that premise construction, at least with any observable object/situation/event (apart from the tautologies of logic and mathematics), depends on......verification of some sort, and alas Herr Doktor Frege must deal with Mr. Carnap--er, or really physics and natural science as a whole). So the proper symbolization would be (∃ x) (M(x) & Ch(x)), i.e. "There are Mormon Chesters," which could be confirmed. Of course the class of Chesterness also includes many non-mormons.

Politics, Black Robe Posse-style

Hasen/Slate

"""Today Justice Kennedy wrote for a court majority of the five conservative justices. He effectively wiped out a key provision of Congress' 2002 campaign finance reform. He also did indeed strike down Austin and parts of McConnell. To Justice Kennedy, any limits on the independent spending of money in elections smack of government censorship. The limits Congress enacted in 2002 remind him of old English laws requiring licensing for speech. He talked about the byzantine sets of federal laws and regulations involved—genuinely confusing, it's true—and said that none of it was permissible under the First Amendment. He talked of the rise of the Internet and blogs and how the government could soon come in and start regulating political blogging if the court did not step in.

Though the decision deals with federal elections, expect state and local corporate and union spending limits to be challenged, and to fall, throughout the country. There are many responses to Justice Kennedy's reasoning. He wrongly assumes that corporations or unions can throw money at public officials without corrupting them. Could a candidate for judicial office, for example, be swayed to rule in favor of a contributor who donated $3 million to an independent campaign to get the candidate elected to the state supreme court? Justice Kennedy himself thought so in last year's Caperton case. And yet he runs away from that decision in today's ruling. Justice Kennedy acknowledges that with the "soft money" limits on political parties still in place, third-party groups (which tend to run more negative and irresponsible ads) will increase in strength relative to political parties. And that possibility raises the real chance Congress will repeal the "soft money" limits, thereby increasing the risks of quid pro quo corruption.""""

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Wow---NEW NARC WORLDs marches on, with BushCo supporter Andy Sullivan. Racist frat boys of the Log-cabin think alike. With some Meg Whitman campaigning coming up soon! Ahyeah.

Brownland

Alex Cockburn on the No on Coakley

""""Coakley, a former prosecutor and attorney general of Massachusetts, ran a dumb, complacent campaign, allowing Brown, a state senator, to charge that she seemed to believe she had an inherent right to the seat. Coakley ladled out platitudes; Brown, pelting about the Commonwealth in a manly GMC truck, made the Democrats' health reform bill his prime issue, which was scarcely rocket science, since people of moderate income accurately believe that "reform" is going to cost them money, with zero improvement in overall service.

A year after his inauguration Obama has disappointed so many constituencies that a rebuke by the voters was inevitable. Yesterday it came in Massachusetts, often categorized as the most liberal in the union. This is entirely untrue. It's a disgusting sinkhole of racism and vulgar prejudice, as five minutes in any taxi in the state, listening to Talk Radio or reading the local newspaper, will attest.

Brown's achievement is not novel. His type of Republican has been elected governor in Massachusetts three or four times in the last 18 years by the real "majority party" --which is the "unenrolled" independents who are 1 and 1/2 times the size of Democrats in number among registered voters and tower over the Republicans of whom less than 12 per cent are registered as such.

CounterPuncher Steve Early, a labor organizer in the state wrote to us on Monday that Brown is in the mould of two recent Republican governors of Massachusetts, William Weld , and Paul Celluci, the latter two actually being backed by later Change to Win local affiliates like HERE Local 26 and the Teamsters. These were genial, likeable, clean-cut jocks, presenting themselves to independent voters as a much needed public rebuke to "an increasingly corrupt, arrogant or personally screwed up Beacon Hill clique of Democrats (see recent spate of House and Senate member/leader indictments, jailings, and/or resignations pending trial). A lot of folks, at the moment, are again just plain pissed about the self-serving political class of Democratic Donkeys who run our one-party state, including the now unpopular Obama pre-cursor, Deval Patrick."

.......

"""A final note on Coakley. She rose to political prominence by peculiarly vicious grandstanding as a prosecutor, winning a conviction of 19-year old child minder Louise Woodward for shaking a baby to death. An outraged judge later freed Woodward, reducing her sentence to less than a year of time served. Then Coakley went after headlines in child abuse cases. Innocent people are still rotting in prison as a consequence of Coakley's misuse of her office. For this alone, regardless of the setback the Democrats richly deserved, I rejoice in her humiliation.""""

Heh heh. Most of the spineless cretins out in Demo-land (retards there are who consider chi-chi libertarian-flat taxer crybaby Andy Sullivan, fan of Cheney until like a month ago or so, a ...real leftist) don't quite grasp Cockburn's wit, so a few seconds of explication are in order. The victory of Brown--another GOP pretty boy- Mitt Romney twit (tho' just WASP, and not WASM) promising to slash taxes--should not be viewed as a positive, but it is an indicator of sorts. The Democrats have not come through, notwithstanding majorities in the House and Senate. Obama turned out to be a moderate (as some predicted), though the Mass. GOP-bots probably feel they are sending some important message to BHO and the Demos (hardly any more profound than the message of the latest Clint Eastwood, angry white-moron flick).

Coakley may not deserve humiliation, but given her luke-warm campaigning and her occasional faux-pas (i.e. claiming catholics have no business working in hospitals, insinuating that Brown was a misogynist, nazi, oppressor, etc), she may have deserved to lose. So who to blame? Start with like Locke, who sold the American rebels on the idea of the popular vote.

Nihilism....Industrial Strength

Dr. LF Destouches' Anti-semitism/NYTROB

"""Louis-Ferdinand Destouches met Cillie Pam in Paris, at the Café de la Paix, in September 1932. Destouches was a physician who worked at a public clinic in Clichy treating poor and working-class patients; Pam was a twenty-seven-year-old Viennese gymnastics instructor eleven years his junior on a visit to the city. Destouches suggested a stroll in the Bois de Boulogne, took Pam to dinner later that night, and afterward took her home. Two weeks together began, after which Pam returned to her work and life in Vienna. Over the next seven years, they saw each other infrequently but corresponded regularly. Pam, who was Jewish, married and had a son. Destouches, who wrote in his free time, became famous shortly after their brief affair, his first novel, Voyage au bout de la nuit, published at the end of 1932 under the pseudonym "Céline" (his maternal grandmother's first name), proving an enormous success. In February 1939, Destouches received word that Pam had lost her husband: he had been seized, sent to Dachau, and killed. On February 21, Destouches wrote to Pam, who had fled abroad:

Dear Cillie,
What awful news! At least you're far away, on the other side of the world. Were you able to take a little money with you? Obviously, you're going to start a new life over there. How will you work? Where will Europe be by the time you receive this letter? We're living over a volcano.
On my side, my little dramas are nothing compared to yours (for the moment), but tragedy looms nonetheless....
Because of my anti-Semitic stance I've lost all my jobs (Clichy, etc.) and I'm going to court on March 8. You see, Jews can persecute too.""""

Guar-annn-teed to have an Andy Sullivan-Demopublican quiverin' like a bowl of warm jello (at least those who can read the NYT). Actually, Contingencies, while granting Celine's greatness as black humorist and skill at charting the madness of the 20th century (as with Mort a Credit), agrees with Mr. Mason's assessment (or implied assessment) of Celine's pamphlets as pathological, deviant, even criminal in a sense. Celine did par-tay with some of the boys of the Waffen SS, during WWII and afterwards (the French govt. were after him immediately, and he barely escaped execution). Perhaps some jewish people would have grounds for calling him a war criminal though he was not technically a nazi or german citizen, and did not participate in the putsches, or in any military actions of the nazis/Wehrmacht, or with the nightmares of the camps.




Yikes, Yappimoto!

Prior to WWII Dr. Destouches (aka Celine) did apparently denounce Hitler (actually, he seemed to imply Der Fuhrer was himself...perhaps misschling.) Yet Mr. Mason tends to read Celine with the usual....bourgeois-moralist spectacles on. Mason merely reacts; he does not even make an attempt to understand Celine, either as man or ...monster. Nietzsche predicted--accurately, really--that the 20th century would be the time of the assassins. Celine is a creature of the the time of the assassins.

MLK on Socrates, the First Amendment, the Old Testament, and civil disobedience:

"""There are some instances when a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I was arrested Friday on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong with an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade, but when the ordinance is used to preserve segregation and to deny citizens the First Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and peaceful protest, then it becomes unjust.

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was seen sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar because a higher moral law was involved. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks before submitting to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience.""""

How Booj-wah (from Letter from the Birm. Jail)

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DONNY OSMONDIUS???? Holy Sacred Subluxation of the Nephites, Batman. DonnyRon's here to....rock, old-school Yummy in the Tummy style.

CalvinCo (continued)

To some out in Consumerland this is old news, perhaps bor-reeng. To countless others, indoctrinated with sunday schoolism it's mandatory reading (and Californians should realize, apres-Prop 8, that fundamentalists and mormons still retain a great deal of power over Golden state politics, especially in towns and cities away from the phunn zones of LA and SF, or silicon valley).

""""Jefferson consistently denounced the "blasphemous absurdity of the five points of Calvin." Three years before his death he wrote the following to John Adams:

"His [Calvin's] religion was demonism. If ever man worshiped a false God, he did. The being described in his five points is ... a demon of malignant spirit. It would be more pardonable to believe in no God at all, than to blaspheme him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin" (Works, Vol. iv., p. 363).

"It is hard to say observes Bancroft, "which surpassed the other in boiling hatred of Calvinism, Jefferson or John Adams."

To Dr. Cooper, November 2, 1822, Jefferson writes:

"I had no idea, however, that in Pennsylvania, the cradle of toleration and freedom of religion, it [fanaticism] could have arisen to the height you describe. This must be owing to the growth of Presbyterianism. The blasphemy of the five points of Calvin, and the impossibility of defending them, render their advocates impatient of reasoning, irritable, and prone to denunciation" (Works, Vol. iv, p. 358).

In the same letter, after mentioning the fact that in Virginia where he resides, the Christians being divided into different sects, including the Presbyterian, are more tolerant, he continues:

"It is not so in the districts where Presbyterianism prevails undividedly. Their ambition and tyranny would tolerate no rival if they had power. Systematical in grasping at an ascendancy over all other sects, they aim, like the Jesuits, at engrossing the education of the country, are hostile to every institution they do not direct, and jealous at seeing others begin to attend at all to that object."

In the following significant passage we have Jefferson's opinion of the Christian religion as a whole:

"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity] one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded upon fables and mythologies" (Letter to Dr. Woods).

Could a more emphatic declaration of disbelief in Christianity be framed than this?



In his "Notes on Virginia," the following caustic allusion to Christianity occurs:

"Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one-half the world fools and the other half hypocrites."

In his letter to Dr. Cooper, prayer meetings and revivals receive this cruel thrust from his pen:

"In our Richmond there is much fanaticism, but chiefly among the women. They have their night meetings and praying parties, where, attended by their priests, and sometimes by a henpecked husband, they pour forth the effusions of their love to Jesus in terms as amatory and carnal as their modesty would permit to a merely earthly lover" (Works, Vol. iv., p. 358).

A short time before his death, Jefferson, in a letter to John Adams, after commending the morals of Jesus, wrote as follows concerning his philosophical belief:

"It is not to be understood that I am with him [Jesus] in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist."

In support of his Materialistic creed, he argues as follows:

"On the basis of sensation we may erect the fabric of all the certainties we can have or need. ....... When once we quit the basis of sensation, all is in the wind. To talk of immaterial existences, is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, God, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no God, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise. But I believe that I am supported in my creed of Materialism by the Lockes, the Tracys, and the Stewarts."

Infidels

Brown Act Excitement

CAFirstAmendmentCoalition.

"""""Q: If 3 out of 5 school board members meet at a restaurant with a teacher or administrator for a few minutes until they noticed that I was also at the restaurant with my wife, have they violated Brown’s Act?

A: Depending on exactly what transpired, the episode you describe could be a violation the Brown Act. The Brown Act “serves to facilitate public participation in all phases of local government decision-making and to curb misuse of the democratic process by secret legislation of public bodies.” Epstein v. Hollywood Entertainment Dist. II Business Improvement Dist., 87 Cal.App.4th 862, 868 (2001).

The main purpose of the Brown Act is therefore to require the local governing bodies to conduct their deliberations and make their decisions in public, as well as give the public notice of any such meetings. Cal. Gov’t Code section 54950, 54954.2(a). The Act covers “legislative bodies,” which include commissions, committees, boards or other bodies of a local agency, “whether permanent or temporary, decision-making or advisory, created by charter, ordinance, resolution, or formal action of a legislative body.” Gov’t Code section 54952(b). Public school boards are covered by the Brown Act, so the question is whether there has been any gathering of the members of the school board that constitutes a “meeting” that is subject to the Brown Act.

Under the Brown Act, a “meeting” includes any congregation of a majority of the members of a legislative body at the same time and place to hear, discuss or deliberate upon any item that is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the legislative body or the local agency to which it pertains. Gov’t Code section 54952.2(a). Therefore, if a majority of school board members met (at a restaurant or elsewhere) to discuss school business, and did not properly notice the meeting (72 hours in advance of a regular meeting, 24 hours in advance of a “special” meeting, Gov’t Code section 54954.2(a), 54956), then that meeting was held in violation of the Brown Act. On the other hand, there is nothing that would prevent school board members from meeting at a restaurant to simply have a nice meal together, so long as no school board business is discussed......."

However mundane or bureaucratic the Brown Act, Prop 59, and similar open government regs may appear to some in Consumerland, the Brown Act upholds transparency at an institutional level and thereby affirms rational democracy, even of a progressive or Rawlsian sort. Enforcing the BA however remains an issue. Brown Act violations go down every day around El Lay--not only at the level of elected politicians, but at school districts, court chambers, police stations. What a Judge or DA or sheriff says in chambers about someone you know being charged with a serious crime should also be on record. Were it applied correctly and consistently, the B.A. could conceivably prevent misdoings and shady deals closed by the proverbial "secret handshake"--no wonder it's hated by Demopublican insiders, whether those of the GOP-Nixonian rat sort, or PC-Demo unionist appaRatchik.

Art Clokey, RIP

'Gumby' creator and Los Osos resident Art Clokey dies

""""Art Clokey, whose iconic Gumby entertained generations of children, died Friday morning.

Gumby – the slender, green clay character partly modeled after Clokey’s father – was a fixture on television through the decades, starting with an appearance on the “Howdy Doody” show in 1956. Through the years, the stop motion star made several comebacks, including a new show in the 80s, after a “Saturday Night Live” skit with actor Eddie Murphy made the character popular again. Throughout Gumby’s long run, Gumby toys – most notably, the bendable – have been a staple of toy stores everywhere."""""

Ave Atque Vale
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Donate/Haiti


An opportune time to review the Evidential Problem of Evil.
Let's not forget that any monotheist (i.e. one who belongs to an Abrahamic faith--christianity, islam, or judaism--) would be obliged to agree that an omnipotent G*d controls all natural phenomena, and physical laws--including tectonic plates and faults. Ergo, according to the theist's own definition, G*d allows/creates earthquakes. Yet monotheists also claim their G*d is Just (Bubba certainly would not attend sunday school with his phamily to worship an amoral, or malevolent Being, would he).

So, Houston, we have a problem, the Problem of Eevil--a classic of literature, and philosophy, and religious thinking (as the Book of Job shows--or Voltaire's Candide, or Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov), just in terms of the natural world, even without resorting to the POE as it applies to human events (ie wars, poverty, crime, etc), and the issue of free will so-called. Modern writers might avoid the normative implications of Eevil, and term it the problem of unmerited suffering (though any Being who would permit untold thousands to die during natural disasters or plagues would seem to be Evil). Either way, there does not appear to be a simple way for the orthodox believer to resolve the problem except by altering the traditional definitions of G*d: perhaps He's not omnipotent? Yet that suggests...imperfection, if not paganism (polydeism?? manicheanism??). Or, conversely, He's not Just (which suggests something even more..unsavory--gnosticism, perhaps). Or, rather, He doesn't exist.

Now, enough of the phony indignation, and back to the Mail Order Fraud, Bubba