Anthony_McCarthy • a day ago
This is about as close to being a deal breaker for me as it comes. I have yet to understand why she did it.
Chris Farley Anthony_McCarthy • 21 hours ago
Do you follow her historical actions? If so, this is not new at all.
Anthony_McCarthy Chris Farley • 20 hours ago
A measure of hypocrisy and dishonesty is almost guaranteed in politics. We aren't choosing among saints but among which of the rotters is the least rotten. That is reality, if you don't try for the less rotten you are bound to get the more rotten.In an ideal world I'd be choosing between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren but this isn't an ideal world.
Chris Farley Anthony_McCarthy • 20 hours ago
Nice. But accepting the lesser of two evils for decades has gotten us to the place we are now. If you were hiring a new employee, would you use the same least of two turds, or would you find a good canidate?
Anthony_McCarthy Chris Farley • 19 hours ago
Choosing the worst of two evils would not have gotten us to a better place.On the other hand, I am confident that if Hubert Humphrey had won in 1968 things would be a lot better than they are now.
Chris Farley Anthony_McCarthy • 19 hours ago
Reality. If you own a company, and you are hiring a new CEO. Do you settle, or demand the best? I think if you settle, you end up struggling, like our country has been for a few decades.
Anthony_McCarthy Chris Farley • 3 minutes ago
The country is not a business. To ignore that even if there was a functional left in the United States that could elect a real liberal as president, on occasion, it wouldn't have the choice of choosing the president by itself is the beginning of a common delusion on the left. We don't get to get who we would want in an ideal world, we get to make the best choice from the possible candidates who will, really, take the office the next January. Getting "the best" is not a real possible alternative of us "demanding the best" in the real world we live in. We will get either of the lesser of two evils provided by the nominating system we have , not "the best". We can only come closer to it instead of farther from it. It's high time that the left grew up and faced reality instead of the idiots such as the Greens and the others who refuse to face reality.It's a complex problem, for the left. But another big part of the delusion is that the fad for free speech absolutism, which has been adopted by the fascist wing of the Supreme Court to corrupt our politics just as it has the corporate media to sell itself as a propaganda arm for the far right, among other things, destroying better possible candidates during the nomination process. Howard Dean, Tom Harkin, Mo Udall... were all vetoed by the media who concentrated on weaker more centrist candidates, who, even when they manage to win, govern to the right of Dwight Eisenhower. They don't have any choice because the media begins to attack them as soon as they have the nomination and even if they win. It accounts for a good part of the Obama and Bill Clinton administrations. They destroyed Jimmy Carter's administration and subsequent Democratic presidents drew the lesson that they had better not try to do anything in the agenda of real Democrats or they will be similarly attacked.Media deregulation, removing the Fairness Doctrine, and, especially granting them a permit to lie under the Sullivan decision, all supported by the most foolish people on the left, is what produced our corrupt political system after a short period when it was somewhat better.
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
No Time To Write Today So Here's A Recent Exchange
This began with a comment at Mother Jones about Hillary Cinton's praise for the at-large criminal, Henry Kissinger.
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Such A Little Thing But Such A Big Problem for Pop-Atheism
Well, it would seem I struck a nerve.
If bacteria changing the motion of their flagella in response to light is possible without consciousness of the light being there, how does it happen?
How would you know any alternative you pretend to come up with was what it was instead of consciousness?
I will assert that there is no experiment you could do to determine the presence of any alternative which can dispose of the far simpler and more comprehensible identification of what is happening as being a demonstration of consciousness. How would you describe such a state of non-consciousness that accounts for a demonstrable awareness of light like that, leading to purposeful behavior? Even if such a state exists, I doubt it is comprehensible to people and could never enter into science. And what experiment could dispose of the explanation that the bacterium is conscious?Unlike you, I admit that science can't answer questions about such entities and we will most likely never have generally held answers to them.
But it is possible to say, definitively, that this is a huge problem for your "brain only" dogma, that the phenomena we observe in such bacteria reasonably leads to the conclusion that bacteria are conscious of light and act with intention in response to it, just as we do.
It is MORE REASONABLE to conclude that that is consciousness than to conclude it isn't and, so, it is ENTIRELY MORE REASONABLE to conclude that your theory of consciousness as a product of the evolution of the brain is baseless on the evidence as seen in nature.
The further problem that, if you can't identify the physical location of consciousness in one-celled organisms that it is reasonable to conclude that consciousness may not be a physical entity and so isn't bound by the restrictions that are an intrinsic aspect of physical objects.
That isn't a scientific question since science couldn't deal with it on that basis. It is subject to conclusions drawn from evidence, however and there is nothing you can do if people freely choose to come to their own conclusions on those questions.
If bacteria changing the motion of their flagella in response to light is possible without consciousness of the light being there, how does it happen?
How would you know any alternative you pretend to come up with was what it was instead of consciousness?
I will assert that there is no experiment you could do to determine the presence of any alternative which can dispose of the far simpler and more comprehensible identification of what is happening as being a demonstration of consciousness. How would you describe such a state of non-consciousness that accounts for a demonstrable awareness of light like that, leading to purposeful behavior? Even if such a state exists, I doubt it is comprehensible to people and could never enter into science. And what experiment could dispose of the explanation that the bacterium is conscious?Unlike you, I admit that science can't answer questions about such entities and we will most likely never have generally held answers to them.
But it is possible to say, definitively, that this is a huge problem for your "brain only" dogma, that the phenomena we observe in such bacteria reasonably leads to the conclusion that bacteria are conscious of light and act with intention in response to it, just as we do.
It is MORE REASONABLE to conclude that that is consciousness than to conclude it isn't and, so, it is ENTIRELY MORE REASONABLE to conclude that your theory of consciousness as a product of the evolution of the brain is baseless on the evidence as seen in nature.
The further problem that, if you can't identify the physical location of consciousness in one-celled organisms that it is reasonable to conclude that consciousness may not be a physical entity and so isn't bound by the restrictions that are an intrinsic aspect of physical objects.
That isn't a scientific question since science couldn't deal with it on that basis. It is subject to conclusions drawn from evidence, however and there is nothing you can do if people freely choose to come to their own conclusions on those questions.
Monday, September 8, 2014
It's All About The Music: Noah Baerman, Dorothy Taubman and Edna Golandsky
Noah Baerman
The Medicated Hum
The first I ever heard of Noah Baerman was when he was on Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz program. I really liked his playing especially his harmonic language and voicing. Perhaps I remembered them discussing the genetic disease that made it remarkable that he could play at all but the thing I remember the most was his playing, the warm to hot harmonies and the great improvising.
I bought his jazz piano method and went through the first volume of it, though other things intervened and I have yet to finish going through it. Now that I'm trying to rebuild my playing from a bad, though far less damaging injury, I'm going back to looking at his strategies for handling problems and am thinking of trying a bit more improvising. Baerman shows that no matter what else is happening, it's the music that is the point.
====
Also, I'm looking at the work of Dorothy Taubman, who was famous for helping pianists correct even decades standing problems with their playing and working around physical problems without resorting to surgery (which has such a bad record of not working). I regretted never being able to work with Taubman or one of her students - if I won the lottery, you now know what I'd be doing - but am finding the online work of one of them, Edna Golandsky, to be inspiring. I'm listening to her many videos and will be applying them to appropriate material, starting with five-finger pieces and exercises. Here are two of those that can help anyone from absolute beginners to the most accomplished musicians.
Playing Scales
All About the Thumb
When I first read about Dorothy Taubman I was also impressed at how she always emphasized how her technical studies were developed to serve the music, not to come up with The Taubman Technique. That was what led me to think she was probably on to something. Another thing was that she discouraged people from having surgery for physical problems, advocating trying to analyze problems and solving them without cutting. I've known too many people who had bad results from surgery for those kinds of things.
The Medicated Hum
The first I ever heard of Noah Baerman was when he was on Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz program. I really liked his playing especially his harmonic language and voicing. Perhaps I remembered them discussing the genetic disease that made it remarkable that he could play at all but the thing I remember the most was his playing, the warm to hot harmonies and the great improvising.
I bought his jazz piano method and went through the first volume of it, though other things intervened and I have yet to finish going through it. Now that I'm trying to rebuild my playing from a bad, though far less damaging injury, I'm going back to looking at his strategies for handling problems and am thinking of trying a bit more improvising. Baerman shows that no matter what else is happening, it's the music that is the point.
====
Also, I'm looking at the work of Dorothy Taubman, who was famous for helping pianists correct even decades standing problems with their playing and working around physical problems without resorting to surgery (which has such a bad record of not working). I regretted never being able to work with Taubman or one of her students - if I won the lottery, you now know what I'd be doing - but am finding the online work of one of them, Edna Golandsky, to be inspiring. I'm listening to her many videos and will be applying them to appropriate material, starting with five-finger pieces and exercises. Here are two of those that can help anyone from absolute beginners to the most accomplished musicians.
Playing Scales
All About the Thumb
When I first read about Dorothy Taubman I was also impressed at how she always emphasized how her technical studies were developed to serve the music, not to come up with The Taubman Technique. That was what led me to think she was probably on to something. Another thing was that she discouraged people from having surgery for physical problems, advocating trying to analyze problems and solving them without cutting. I've known too many people who had bad results from surgery for those kinds of things.
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