Anyone who thinks the first person to say "fascist" loses after watching the past month and more of Republican rule under the current Congress and Pretender Trump is a fatheaded quisling. The Republican Party today, from the phony "moderate" Susan Collins to the most entirely degenerate member of a state legislature or county or local government and even lower to the internet trolls is a full-blown fascist party which is in the process of consolidating fascist rule in the United States, right now, in full view of the allegedly free press.
Only the press is free, as in every fascist regime, from Marxist-fascist to Nazi-fascist, the media has always been free to lie on behalf of those in power and our media created Trump and promoted the neo-confederate party allied with Mad Men corporatism which is installed in power, now.
Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Mike Pence and the entire ship of Republican-fascist thugs are in the process of destroying equality and with it egalitarian democracy. None of this is news - its not news to most of our media because they decide what is news and they're not putting those inconvenient truths into the news anywhere near as much as it needs to be there.
I pointed out yesterday that the moronic Greens under the Republican enabling and obviously innumerate Dr. Jill Stein are still working their little corner of the racket, pretending to be the left when there's no left left, roping in enough rubes who, with the number of hard lessons given them in the hard school of the Bush II and now Trump regimes have to be considered ineducable. The Greens are and have been enablers of installing the two entirely illegitimate Republican presidents given to us by their voter suppression, election rigging and the anti-democratic features embedded like poison needles in the Constitution. Mix in the idiocies of such allegedly liberal reforms of the late 20th century such as easy ballot access by candidates who will never win an election but will be useful to Republicans in almost every case, and we have what brought us here today. The opponents of fascism must destroy the Green Party which has enabled those two installations of a horrible and now a terrifying regime as the executive of the United States.
We are well on our way to a police state, with his assembly of the kind of fascist thugs that get elected to be sheriff in way too many places and his casual remark that he would destroy a state senator who one of the thugs complained was threatening their legalized theft under civil forfeiture was not Putinesque. Putin would do it without saying he would. which might count as class among murderous dictators. It's Stalinesque. Luckily, the sheriff must have realized the political consequences of him naming the guy he whined about could be bad for him, he didn't name him. Or maybe some vestigial moral impulses kicked in at that point and he didn't want the guys blood on him. One thing we can be certain of, there are Trump youth and volunteer brownshirts who are an actual concern, who can be expected to actually target and kill people at worst, terrorize them and their families, certainly.
I think the first person I heard say "The first person to say 'fascist' loses" was on NPR it was one of the clever things that one of their old time regulars from the early days used to say to feel au courant in the milieu of the DC establishment they were part of. I can remember thinking how convenient that would be for actual fascists, no doubt it was what the smart set were saying. It would have been sometime in the 70s or early 80s as I stopped listening to All Things Considered after that.
Thursday, February 9, 2017
Wednesday, February 8, 2017
No Better Time Than Now To Kill The Republican-Enabling Greens
I don't follow Twitter because Twitter promotes inattention and stupidity ... and speaking of that, someone sent me a link to Jill Stein's Twitter account which I don't believe I ever looked at before. If you want to see why Democrats should move now to destroy the Republican-enabling, serial-spoiler campaign running, best friend of Republican-fascism Green Party look at this.
Apparently Dr. Stein can't count to 51.
The Green Party deserves to die and it won't die without being killed and they've given Democrats more than enough reason to kill it. Democrats should switch their party affiliation for the purposes of taking it over and shutting it down once and for all.
Dr. Jill Stein
My 2012 running mate @CheriHonkala won't let anyone go homeless or get deported. Help her win a Pennsylvania seat! http://cheri197.com
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Green Party US @GreenPartyUS 23h23 hours ago
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Don't wait around for the Democrats to grow a spine. The Greens are the real opposition to Trump, join us: http://www.gp.org/volunteer ✊🏾🤜🏼🤛🏿✌️
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Why would we have a tie on such an egregious nominee? Because Democrats serve corporate interests.
In The Past Year I've Come To Understand This Is The Real Alternative To Corporate-Consumer Fascism
“Breaking the Silence”. We live in a world in which market forces and the socio-political structures they create present themselves as the only viable system, silencing all alternative conversations. Dr. Brueggemann analyzes how the prophets broke through the domineering structures of their day to bring a message of judgment and hope. Dr. Brueggemann applies the lessons of the prophets to the challenges of our day.
My Fellow Mainers Make Susan Collins Eat This
Senator Elizabeth Warren was shut down by the racist Mitch McConnell and his racist fellow Republicans when she sought to read a letter written by Coretta Scott King to the Judiciary Committee when they were considering the flagrantly racist Jeff Sessions to be a federal judge.
Silenced by the Republicans in the Senate for the most obviously illegitimate reasons she went outside the Senate Chamber and read it.
Susan Collins, phony "moderate" Republican has said she intends to vote for the flagrantly racist Jeff Sessions, which isn't a surprise as she endorsed the flagrantly racist Paul LePage when he ran for governor of Maine, becoming the Shame of Maine.
Collins disgraceful two-step on such things is regularly covered up by the Maine media, most of which is owned or controlled by Republicans. We need to let her know we don't buy her song and dance, anymore.
Update: This letter in today's Portland Press Herald lays out how Susan Collins has pretended to be an opponent of extremism while acting to move it forward.
Your Feb. 1 headline and story claiming that Sen. Susan Collins will not support Betsy DeVos as the nominee for secretary of education is terribly misleading and perpetuates the nonsense that Ms. Collins is somehow independent.
The facts are that, on Jan. 31, Susan Collins, as a member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, voted to allow the DeVos nomination to go forward.
Had Sen. Collins voted “no” while the matter was before the committee, the nomination would have stopped. Sen. Collins voted “yes” at the committee level, knowing that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would let her and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, vote “no” on the nomination on the Senate floor to allow them to continue on with their misleading impression of “independence” because he already had the votes to ensure passage of the nomination.
As is so often the case with Sen. Collins – when it made a difference, Sen. Collins didn’t make a difference.
John Lambert
Silenced by the Republicans in the Senate for the most obviously illegitimate reasons she went outside the Senate Chamber and read it.
Susan Collins, phony "moderate" Republican has said she intends to vote for the flagrantly racist Jeff Sessions, which isn't a surprise as she endorsed the flagrantly racist Paul LePage when he ran for governor of Maine, becoming the Shame of Maine.
Collins disgraceful two-step on such things is regularly covered up by the Maine media, most of which is owned or controlled by Republicans. We need to let her know we don't buy her song and dance, anymore.
Update: This letter in today's Portland Press Herald lays out how Susan Collins has pretended to be an opponent of extremism while acting to move it forward.
Your Feb. 1 headline and story claiming that Sen. Susan Collins will not support Betsy DeVos as the nominee for secretary of education is terribly misleading and perpetuates the nonsense that Ms. Collins is somehow independent.
The facts are that, on Jan. 31, Susan Collins, as a member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, voted to allow the DeVos nomination to go forward.
Had Sen. Collins voted “no” while the matter was before the committee, the nomination would have stopped. Sen. Collins voted “yes” at the committee level, knowing that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would let her and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, vote “no” on the nomination on the Senate floor to allow them to continue on with their misleading impression of “independence” because he already had the votes to ensure passage of the nomination.
As is so often the case with Sen. Collins – when it made a difference, Sen. Collins didn’t make a difference.
John Lambert
IT IS RADIO, AFTER ALL!
Susan Stamberg aka the woman who can't open her mouth without a cliché coming out of it has one of her reports about famous art by famous artists on the Radio as I start to type this. I wish there were some way to test to see if someone who had never seen anything by the artist she reported on [I decided to not name the painter to make my point] had any idea what his pictures were like from her kulcha vulcha reporting but her descriptions of his pictures wouldn't lead me to think they'd have any idea of them. Here's what he said:
[The artist has] plenty of joyous pictures left to paint. He still sees the world in the colors of Oz — hues so vibrant and alive that they look back-lit
Inside [a book of his pictures] you'll see..., palm trees, flowers, his dachshunds, the Grand Canyon, portraits of rich and not rich friends, landscapes in the U.S. and Yorkshire, designs for opera sets. He won't linger over any of them and doesn't pause to answer questions. He keeps turning, leafing through a life's worth of works in vivid blues, greens, oranges and fuchsias.
If you'd never seen the artists work you wouldn't have any idea what his pictures look like - IT IS RADIO, AFTER ALL - I think, since I removed one dead giveaway subject from that description, even someone familiar with their work would have trouble figuring out who she was talking about from just her description of his art. ON THE RADIO, for Pete's sake.
Considering that everything she says is a cliché, it could lead them to think it's like the art of someone else whose pictures are described in exactly the same terms. From what she said I can think of many a painting on black velvet or as seen reproduced at the dollar store or on a drug store calendar that would fit those descriptions. I don't agree with her qualitative description of it, I don't find his work "joyous" at all. I think he's an iconographer of banality whose method seems to be to remove meaning and significance from whatever he paints, often choosing to paint banal subjects and to make them more banal by choice. In that I don't remember having ever seen one of his pictures without feeling more depressed. But, maybe I expect more of the emotion of joy than she does.
The radio piece was full of Susan Stamberg's signature celebrity name-dropping both movie and kulcha stars and locations. Why they even put them on the radio is about the most interesting thing about her stuff and that's not interesting, either. What a waste of air.
Update: Looking at a range of his pictures as seen on Google Images, I don't see a single one that looks like he used back-lighting effects, those with enough depth to discern the direction of light. Lots of them look dead flat. I think she might have mixed that up with another scribbler's description of another artist.
Update: Looking at a range of his pictures as seen on Google Images, I don't see a single one that looks like he used back-lighting effects, those with enough depth to discern the direction of light. Lots of them look dead flat. I think she might have mixed that up with another scribbler's description of another artist.
There Is A Direct Line From The Permissive Relativizing Of Lies To Trumpian Fascism
For crying out loud, what is the Trump regime getting power except a massive, real life demonstration that there is a complete difference between lies and the truth, that lies often win through deception - the entire purpose of telling lies is to deceive - and that when a society has degenerated morally to the point where even the friggin' Supreme Court pretends that difference isn't consequential and that in most practical cases it is entirely possible to discern the difference the results are terrible. And that the society that buys lies will NOT BE FREE. Such stuff is obviously what they teach you at elite law schools since that's where those black-robed moral relativists come from. Is it any wonder that their relativism favors their own class, as such pretense generally does.
Even the liars can't rely on each other, as Jack Holmes pointed out, Trump's professional master liar, Kellyanne Conway, in her career of lying for which the press is just beginning to call her on, she can't be certain that her lying boss won't undercut her at any time. And that, at this point, her job is just to tell her own lies.
None of what Conway said was a defense of the president's position, because she is never really sure what the president's position is—or will be 10 minutes from now. None of his surrogates know. He might tweet tomorrow that the murder rate is the highest it's been since the Civil War. He might say there were 10 million illegal votes.
The real question is, if Conway is not speaking on behalf of the president and Trump might just as easily contradict what she says in words and action, what is the purpose of having Conway on TV? As it is, she's just sitting there spinning—or creating falsehoods of her own.
Only everyone should stop calling what they're doing "falsehoods" WHEN IT'S THE MOST POWERFUL OFFICE IN THE COUNTRY IF NOT THE WORLD, THEY SHOULD NEVER BE ALLOWED TO HIDE BEHIND THE DICTIONARY, A LIE TOLD BY A PRESIDENT AND HIS PEOPLE SHOULD ALWAYS BE ASSUMED TO BE A LIE BECAUSE THEY HAVE NO RIGHT TO NOT KNOW THE FACTS. AND THEIR POWER MAKES GIVING THEM THE BENEFIT OF THE DICTIONARY DOUBT EXTREMELY DANGEROUS.
Jake Tapper is doing a far better job of calling Kellyanne Conway on her transparent, run-the-clock-out method of non-stop lying than virtually all of the the electronic media has in years. It might be useful as long as her lies are pointed out for a while, after a while there isn't any reason to have the liar on except to note that she has the credibility of Baghdad Bob, Axis Annie and Lord Haw Haw. But the real focus should be her lying boss and the lying Republican-fascist party which is the primary vehicle of lying and beneficiary of lies in this Age of Lies.
I don't have any faith that the media will find its moral center without force being applied to it but until that can be done, anything to make the liars pay for their lies is good. But the lying, stream of consciousness of Kellyanne Conway was brought through the decision of the Supreme Court to privilege lies over the truth. The pose of even-handedness of judges in the contest between lies and the truth FAVORS LIES WHICH CAN TAKE ANY FORM THE LIAR CHOOSES. Telling the truth doesn't permit the freedom to distort it into a form for quick and easy sale. We can't rely on cabloid-talk-radio or even broadcast news operations to be any more responsible than the editors of the New York Times, who have printed some of the lies most congenial to getting the political results we live with now.
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
McCoy Tyner Quintet 1983: Habana Sol
JOE FORD, tenor sax
John Blake, violin
McCoy Tyner, piano
AVERY SHARPE, bass
RONNIE BURRAGE, drums
I Think You've Had Entirely Too Much Whine Already So This Is My Final Word For Now
The exemption from considerations of morality granted to themselves by scientists may point out one of the more unfortunate aspects of a specialization in science among English language scientists in the post-war period. That so many of today's scientists, unlike those of the past, are totally deficient in the disciplines of the parent of science, philosophy and the once queen of the sciences, theology, is obvious. The list of arrogant, conceited scientists who have mocked and disregarded the need for philosophy now that they've got the golden key to knowledge is long and rather shocking.*
More shocking is that the claim that science can be separated from considerations of morality even of absolute standards of morality such that even philosophy have largely ceded to theology. Considering that the entire enterprise of science relies, absolutely on such morality, the claim is stunningly clueless.
Science, itself, relies absolutely, its status as a reliable method of finding the truth about what it studies, ultimately and completely on the honesty of scientists, on the moral integrity of those credentialed and paid to be scientists. Science is only as reliable as it is rigorous in enforcing the moral stand that it is a sin to tell a lie and that lies must be rooted out and habitual liars distanced from science or science, itself, fails and its reputation for reliability must, therefore, suffer. The ultimate reputation of science relies on the moral integrity of its priesthood as much as any religious denomination does. It, having a later development, has yet to fully suffer the consequences of that failure in so many cases with the body of scientists exacting consequences from those who violate that morality, in so many cases. Given its structure, it is more likely that religion will be able to punish violators than scientists whose violations are often profitable for equally amoral businessmen, the military and governments. The likelihood that such violators will be exposed and punished effectively by their colleagues so as to result in a great reformation of science is proving to be not likely at all.
When scientists violate the moral stand NOT CONTAINED IN SCIENCE that they must tell the truth and not lie, they, rightly, bring the entire thing down. They might rely on the habit of people holding science and scientists in high regard, they might, even more so, rely on the credulous belief of the public, the vast majority of who have to take scientists word for things because even other scientists have to do that** but, eventually, the reputation of science and peoples' belief in it will rightly fail when scientists, themselves, take advantage of the exemption from morality that they have made for themselves. And if there is one thing that is obvious, the willingness of amoral people with science degrees and holding positions of scientists is at a crisis level of failure now. You can read the results in Retraction Watch, in blogs and other sites that monitor both the petty failures in honesty and the outright fraud which science contains to an alarming degree now. The biggest question is if that much of it is discovered and exposed, how much of the rest of it is reliable. Much of that fraud was in place as science, being used and cited by other scientists, taught as science on the undergraduate and high-school levels and distributed through popular science journalism and the adulatory mechanisms of sci-blogs.
Scientists who insist that science has no room or need to consider the morality of what they do find the results of that exemption very comfortable and useful and convenient when someone like me brings this topic up but they are so clueless of the philosophical and moral basis of how science exists at all that they should be the subject of complete skepticism instead of being given the benefit of the doubt on which virtually all public understanding of science ultimately rests. Only in a few cases are the consequences made uncomfortable for the offender. If nothing else, the flexible, convenient and ultimately discrediting norms of academic freedom will protect them. They probably won't lose tenure and may gain emeritus status when they stop publishing and teaching.
* I strongly suspect this is due primarily to the British positivist dictatorship that has held sway in the culture of science for some time now, especially as adopted by scientists around New York, Cambridge Mass. and LA in the pre-war and post-war periods. It has gotten so bad that atheist philosophers, hankering after the repute of science have been junking the standards of their own field to claim a Darwinian or other sciency authority for their publications.
** Anticipating your next bottled whine, here's one of the most honest statements ever made about the reality that even scientists must rely on the honesty and rigorous practice of their own colleagues, bolding and underlining are mine.
"Third, it is said that there is no place for an argument from authority in science. The community of science is constantly self-critical, as evidenced by the experience of university colloquia "in which the speaker has hardly gotten 30 seconds into the talk before there are devastating questions and comments from the audience." If Sagan really wants to hear serious disputation about the nature of the universe, he should leave the academic precincts in Ithaca and spend a few minutes in an Orthodox study house in Brooklyn. It is certainly true that within each narrowly defined scientific field there is a constant challenge to new technical claims and to old wisdom. In what my wife calls the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral Syndrome, young scientists on the make will challenge a graybeard, and this adversarial atmosphere for the most part serves the truth. But when scientists transgress the bounds of their own specialty they have no choice but to accept the claims of authority, even though they do not know how solid the grounds of those claims may be. Who am I to believe about quantum physics if not Steven Weinberg, or about the solar system if not Carl Sagan? What worries me is that they may believe what Dawkins and Wilson tell them about evolution."
Richard Lewontin: Billions and Billions of Demons
He went even farther than that earlier in the essay in exposing the extent to which even the most eminent of science professionals have to take things on faith within their own field.
"First, no one can know and understand everything. Even individual scientists are ignorant about most of the body of scientific knowledge, and it is not simply that biologists do not understand quantum mechanics. If I were to ask my colleagues in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard to explain the evolutionary importance of RNA editing in trypanosomes, they would be just as mystified by the question as the typical well-educated reader of this review."
Update: Now you're claiming what you've been claiming isn't an article of faith among the scientistic, materialist atheists, especially of the English speaking peoples. I had one of you whining at me when I pointed out that not only not much is understandable through reductionist practices such as work, to a very limited extent in physics and chemistry, but even that methodology doesn't go far.
I've pointed to this quote on the rapid decrease in effectiveness of the reductionist method par excellence as admitted by some eminent scientists such as the French mathematician René Thom.
The excellent beginning made by quantum mechanics with the hydrogen atom peters out slowly in the sands of approximations in as much as we move toward more complex situations…. This decline in the efficiency of mathematical algorithms accelerates when we go into chemistry. The interactions between two molecules of any degree of complexity evades precise mathematical description … In biology, if we make exceptions of the theory of population and of formal genetics, the use of mathematics is confined to modeling a few local situations (transmission of nerve impulses, blood flow in the arteries, etc.) of slight theoretical interest and limited practical value… The relatively rapid degeneration of the possible use of mathematics when one moves from physics to biology is certainly known among specialists, but there is a reluctance to reveal it to the public at large … The feeling of security given by the reductionist approach is in fact illusory.
It is exactly that claim made far past the point where it can actually be effectively used in the biological sciences, even the merely physical part of those, nevermind in the far more attenuated alleged science dealing with unseeable mental processes and the impossibility of the rigorous observation, description and quantification of "behaviors". When it is proposed to do that in the unrecorded past, the claim reaches its ultimate absurdity. And with that failure, the dishonesty of those claiming to apply reductionistic methods and finding truth rises, perhaps even exponentially, though that magnitude can't be honestly measured. We can have some faith that it would be a very large number if that were possible.
More shocking is that the claim that science can be separated from considerations of morality even of absolute standards of morality such that even philosophy have largely ceded to theology. Considering that the entire enterprise of science relies, absolutely on such morality, the claim is stunningly clueless.
Science, itself, relies absolutely, its status as a reliable method of finding the truth about what it studies, ultimately and completely on the honesty of scientists, on the moral integrity of those credentialed and paid to be scientists. Science is only as reliable as it is rigorous in enforcing the moral stand that it is a sin to tell a lie and that lies must be rooted out and habitual liars distanced from science or science, itself, fails and its reputation for reliability must, therefore, suffer. The ultimate reputation of science relies on the moral integrity of its priesthood as much as any religious denomination does. It, having a later development, has yet to fully suffer the consequences of that failure in so many cases with the body of scientists exacting consequences from those who violate that morality, in so many cases. Given its structure, it is more likely that religion will be able to punish violators than scientists whose violations are often profitable for equally amoral businessmen, the military and governments. The likelihood that such violators will be exposed and punished effectively by their colleagues so as to result in a great reformation of science is proving to be not likely at all.
When scientists violate the moral stand NOT CONTAINED IN SCIENCE that they must tell the truth and not lie, they, rightly, bring the entire thing down. They might rely on the habit of people holding science and scientists in high regard, they might, even more so, rely on the credulous belief of the public, the vast majority of who have to take scientists word for things because even other scientists have to do that** but, eventually, the reputation of science and peoples' belief in it will rightly fail when scientists, themselves, take advantage of the exemption from morality that they have made for themselves. And if there is one thing that is obvious, the willingness of amoral people with science degrees and holding positions of scientists is at a crisis level of failure now. You can read the results in Retraction Watch, in blogs and other sites that monitor both the petty failures in honesty and the outright fraud which science contains to an alarming degree now. The biggest question is if that much of it is discovered and exposed, how much of the rest of it is reliable. Much of that fraud was in place as science, being used and cited by other scientists, taught as science on the undergraduate and high-school levels and distributed through popular science journalism and the adulatory mechanisms of sci-blogs.
Scientists who insist that science has no room or need to consider the morality of what they do find the results of that exemption very comfortable and useful and convenient when someone like me brings this topic up but they are so clueless of the philosophical and moral basis of how science exists at all that they should be the subject of complete skepticism instead of being given the benefit of the doubt on which virtually all public understanding of science ultimately rests. Only in a few cases are the consequences made uncomfortable for the offender. If nothing else, the flexible, convenient and ultimately discrediting norms of academic freedom will protect them. They probably won't lose tenure and may gain emeritus status when they stop publishing and teaching.
* I strongly suspect this is due primarily to the British positivist dictatorship that has held sway in the culture of science for some time now, especially as adopted by scientists around New York, Cambridge Mass. and LA in the pre-war and post-war periods. It has gotten so bad that atheist philosophers, hankering after the repute of science have been junking the standards of their own field to claim a Darwinian or other sciency authority for their publications.
** Anticipating your next bottled whine, here's one of the most honest statements ever made about the reality that even scientists must rely on the honesty and rigorous practice of their own colleagues, bolding and underlining are mine.
"Third, it is said that there is no place for an argument from authority in science. The community of science is constantly self-critical, as evidenced by the experience of university colloquia "in which the speaker has hardly gotten 30 seconds into the talk before there are devastating questions and comments from the audience." If Sagan really wants to hear serious disputation about the nature of the universe, he should leave the academic precincts in Ithaca and spend a few minutes in an Orthodox study house in Brooklyn. It is certainly true that within each narrowly defined scientific field there is a constant challenge to new technical claims and to old wisdom. In what my wife calls the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral Syndrome, young scientists on the make will challenge a graybeard, and this adversarial atmosphere for the most part serves the truth. But when scientists transgress the bounds of their own specialty they have no choice but to accept the claims of authority, even though they do not know how solid the grounds of those claims may be. Who am I to believe about quantum physics if not Steven Weinberg, or about the solar system if not Carl Sagan? What worries me is that they may believe what Dawkins and Wilson tell them about evolution."
Richard Lewontin: Billions and Billions of Demons
He went even farther than that earlier in the essay in exposing the extent to which even the most eminent of science professionals have to take things on faith within their own field.
"First, no one can know and understand everything. Even individual scientists are ignorant about most of the body of scientific knowledge, and it is not simply that biologists do not understand quantum mechanics. If I were to ask my colleagues in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard to explain the evolutionary importance of RNA editing in trypanosomes, they would be just as mystified by the question as the typical well-educated reader of this review."
Update: Now you're claiming what you've been claiming isn't an article of faith among the scientistic, materialist atheists, especially of the English speaking peoples. I had one of you whining at me when I pointed out that not only not much is understandable through reductionist practices such as work, to a very limited extent in physics and chemistry, but even that methodology doesn't go far.
I've pointed to this quote on the rapid decrease in effectiveness of the reductionist method par excellence as admitted by some eminent scientists such as the French mathematician René Thom.
The excellent beginning made by quantum mechanics with the hydrogen atom peters out slowly in the sands of approximations in as much as we move toward more complex situations…. This decline in the efficiency of mathematical algorithms accelerates when we go into chemistry. The interactions between two molecules of any degree of complexity evades precise mathematical description … In biology, if we make exceptions of the theory of population and of formal genetics, the use of mathematics is confined to modeling a few local situations (transmission of nerve impulses, blood flow in the arteries, etc.) of slight theoretical interest and limited practical value… The relatively rapid degeneration of the possible use of mathematics when one moves from physics to biology is certainly known among specialists, but there is a reluctance to reveal it to the public at large … The feeling of security given by the reductionist approach is in fact illusory.
It is exactly that claim made far past the point where it can actually be effectively used in the biological sciences, even the merely physical part of those, nevermind in the far more attenuated alleged science dealing with unseeable mental processes and the impossibility of the rigorous observation, description and quantification of "behaviors". When it is proposed to do that in the unrecorded past, the claim reaches its ultimate absurdity. And with that failure, the dishonesty of those claiming to apply reductionistic methods and finding truth rises, perhaps even exponentially, though that magnitude can't be honestly measured. We can have some faith that it would be a very large number if that were possible.
Monday, February 6, 2017
Hate Mail
Why would you think I'd feel anything but smug about some Eschatot displaying the hypocrisy of Duncan making money off of the Amazon slave labor plantation?
And, yeah, Frank Sinatra was such a notable authority on things moral, wasn't he. I mean
Update: See Also:
And, yeah, Frank Sinatra was such a notable authority on things moral, wasn't he. I mean
Update: See Also:
With the great moral authority, Frank Sinatra are Tommy 'Fatso' Marson, Don Carlo Gambino 'The Godfather', and Jimmy 'The Weasel' Fratianno
You Reality Guys Really Can't Face Reality, Can You
On the contrary, I can give you an example where the deadly results of scientific amorality are in the news and of concern to even the most ga-ga of science worshiping atheists. The scandals in the science establishment involved in drug, food and product testing for safety, the fraudulent results which allow the political establishment to license their marketing of extremely, even deadly drugs and products which, when people die, is as much science as anything else that gets that name. And it is generally done with the full knowledge and intention of scientists whose greatest concern is their own well paid work, their position in the company or in the profession which is about as reliable at policing itself as any other profession. Which is not reliable, at all. The scientists who do that work have degrees granted by the most secular of science departments at the most secular of universities, you can't possibly get out of it by claiming the are "pseudo-scientists" doing "pseudo-science" as it is the one and only entity which defines what is science and what isn't, the peer-review and alleged peer-review of their fellow scientists which has the power to make that distinction. Bad science, accepted as science by scientists is science as much as bad religion, accepted as religion, can be rightly blamed on religion. Only religion, not being in any sense monolithic, is more likely to include the criticism and rejection of those things than science does. Much really bad science goes on to be applied in the real world for years or decades before any real review of it is done.
I think the pushing of GMO foods by the atheist-pseudo-skeptics cult in the United States and other English language countries is likely an example where someone is getting their palms greased to push untested science which is worth billions to some of our worst corporations. That's something in which the objection is against the alleged methodology of science in real replication and review of claims, which the GMO pushers pooh-pooh as not needed because the order of scientists have given it their imprimatur already.
I think the pushing of GMO foods by the atheist-pseudo-skeptics cult in the United States and other English language countries is likely an example where someone is getting their palms greased to push untested science which is worth billions to some of our worst corporations. That's something in which the objection is against the alleged methodology of science in real replication and review of claims, which the GMO pushers pooh-pooh as not needed because the order of scientists have given it their imprimatur already.
The Enormous Stupidity of Giving Invented gods Impunity From Morality
"Science isn't about morals"That was the crux of a tantrum that someone sent me in response to what I said yesterday. Given the tone of it I should have put it in caps with six or seven exclamation points after it.
And that declaration is supposed to exempt scientists and science from any kind of moral criticism of the kind that is universally used to slam religion when it fails to uniformly convince people to, at the very least, not do evil. And that means that their failure to do what Duncan Black slammed religion for is A #1, OK.
The idea that there is some thing, "science," that is apart from the people who get credentials to call themselves scientists and who get their research and, in many cases, alleged research published in the journals that comprise the literature that is science is nonsense on its face. Science exists only through the invention of science by people.
Science is not something apart from people, it is the invention of people, it is something which is defined by people and the scope of which is defined by people. That definition is a formalistic artifice, it would be quite possible for those who define it to include the consideration of moral consequences flowing from the activities of science, for convenience, out of ideology and, I would contend most of all, for monetary profit, moral considerations are ignored and that refusal to consider them is an intentional act by scientists because, as in all aspects of life, taking moral consequences seriously quite often impinges on the accumulation of wealth for the powerful and their untrammeled enjoyment of it at the cost to other people, to other animals and the environment. The decision to exempt scientists from the full consideration of the moral consequences of their action is really not different from the exemption granted to do the same thing to businessmen, bankers, industrialists, etc. And those exemptions are largely given for the same reason. The exemption is not different from that given to emperors and kings in the previous political-economics of the medieval and classical period, it's just granted to other people manning other establishments.
In the case of science, that exemption from the consequential consideration of the morality of their results is especially stupid as science is often quite potent in its results. Science is a means of accessing natural power to magnify human intentions, intentions not different, in many of the most morally exigent cases, at all different from the whims and greed of ancient emperors. And even when the science isn't exactly science and is likely a pile of crap, as so often in the social sciences and in such artificial entities as natural selection, the repute that science is held in can lead to the most horrific of consequences. Discrimination, oppression and genocidal murder.
So, the artificial exemption granted to scientists and their professional personification of their work "science" from considerations of morality aren't an example of great intelligence and wisdom, given the powers scientists have discovered and tapped, it might be among the stupidest things that people with university degrees have ever done. You can put it alongside the equally stupid exemption granted to businessmen, bankers and those who apply science and technology in that category, I don't think those two exemptions from moral consideration of consequences, given at roughly the same time as part of the "enlightenment" are unrelated nor do I believe they are separable from the program of secularism which, though necessary for egalitarian democracy, was also damaged by the same intellectual movement of materialists.
And that declaration is supposed to exempt scientists and science from any kind of moral criticism of the kind that is universally used to slam religion when it fails to uniformly convince people to, at the very least, not do evil. And that means that their failure to do what Duncan Black slammed religion for is A #1, OK.
The idea that there is some thing, "science," that is apart from the people who get credentials to call themselves scientists and who get their research and, in many cases, alleged research published in the journals that comprise the literature that is science is nonsense on its face. Science exists only through the invention of science by people.
Science is not something apart from people, it is the invention of people, it is something which is defined by people and the scope of which is defined by people. That definition is a formalistic artifice, it would be quite possible for those who define it to include the consideration of moral consequences flowing from the activities of science, for convenience, out of ideology and, I would contend most of all, for monetary profit, moral considerations are ignored and that refusal to consider them is an intentional act by scientists because, as in all aspects of life, taking moral consequences seriously quite often impinges on the accumulation of wealth for the powerful and their untrammeled enjoyment of it at the cost to other people, to other animals and the environment. The decision to exempt scientists from the full consideration of the moral consequences of their action is really not different from the exemption granted to do the same thing to businessmen, bankers, industrialists, etc. And those exemptions are largely given for the same reason. The exemption is not different from that given to emperors and kings in the previous political-economics of the medieval and classical period, it's just granted to other people manning other establishments.
In the case of science, that exemption from the consequential consideration of the morality of their results is especially stupid as science is often quite potent in its results. Science is a means of accessing natural power to magnify human intentions, intentions not different, in many of the most morally exigent cases, at all different from the whims and greed of ancient emperors. And even when the science isn't exactly science and is likely a pile of crap, as so often in the social sciences and in such artificial entities as natural selection, the repute that science is held in can lead to the most horrific of consequences. Discrimination, oppression and genocidal murder.
So, the artificial exemption granted to scientists and their professional personification of their work "science" from considerations of morality aren't an example of great intelligence and wisdom, given the powers scientists have discovered and tapped, it might be among the stupidest things that people with university degrees have ever done. You can put it alongside the equally stupid exemption granted to businessmen, bankers and those who apply science and technology in that category, I don't think those two exemptions from moral consideration of consequences, given at roughly the same time as part of the "enlightenment" are unrelated nor do I believe they are separable from the program of secularism which, though necessary for egalitarian democracy, was also damaged by the same intellectual movement of materialists.
Sunday, February 5, 2017
Really "Brain Trust" You Should All Chip In And Buy One Of Those Old Kits To Improve Reading Comprehension - Stupid Mail
My piece this morning was not about the corporate-consumer, American imperial state's high-holy day, Superbowl, the word "Superbowl" doesn't appear in it, no reference to that event appears in it and it isn't alluded to in the course of the piece. I'm not even sure that when I wrote it at four in the morning I was aware that event happened today. I'm not a fan, after all and live alone. American football isn't even the subject of the piece, it is one of four or five examples given in the piece, the subject of which is identified in the piece, it wasn't even the topic which the objection I was answering in the piece mentioned.
The clue for the stupid member in standing in Duncan's self-identified "brain trust" was this:
I bring that up as another example of Duncan Black's accusation against Christianity that it is guilty of giving "people a magical cloak to hide how horrible they are".
The piece was motivated by someone who whined and complained about me saying in a piece, yesterday,
The piece was motivated by someone who whined and complained about me saying in a piece, yesterday,
Well, yeah, but what entity in human culture does all those things. Ideology? Political identity, orientation, party? The Humanities, the so-called-social-sciences? Science proper? Drinking Liberally? Which of those "NECESSARILY steers people away from horrible moral and political beliefs".
The whiny response I got was whining that I'd been so impious as to include science in that list, which is why I included several examples of such science that obviously does not necessarily steer people away from horrible moral and political beliefs and which have, in fact, led people into them. Eugenics of the past and such "ethics" as Peter Singers and his "ethicist" colleagues have been duly authorized by universities of the English speaking world taking up the same line of extreme eugenics the Nazis began their campaign of industrialized mass murder during the post-war period shows that advocacy for the most extremely horrific of moral and political beliefs will get you university professorships at some of the world's most prestigious academic institutions, onto a-list talk shows and published in influential journals published for both academic and popular audiences.
My point WHICH WAS PLAINLY STATED is that entirely secular institutions abound with such entities and so does American and British secular piety about such things as sports.
I know the TV addled class of college-educated Americans contains a large percentage of those whose reading comprehension has been damaged by lack of intellectual exercise but I can't constantly refrain from making points just because such idiots with degrees and the massive arrogance that isn't cured by our system of academic credentialing sells degrees to people who can't reason their way through a seven hundred word essay and understand what the explicitly stated topic of it is. Or that something which doesn't appear in it is NOT the topic of the piece.
Update: The mentally defective Brain Trusters are apparently repeating that the piece is about the Superbowl even after they've been made aware of this piece. Really, Duncan, you've got the stupidest "brain trust" on the pseudo-left blogs.
Update: The mentally defective Brain Trusters are apparently repeating that the piece is about the Superbowl even after they've been made aware of this piece. Really, Duncan, you've got the stupidest "brain trust" on the pseudo-left blogs.
I Prefer To Limit My Worship To The Real God Not The Myriad Of Those Set Up By Secularism
As you know, I loathe American football and absolutely endorse Walter Brueggemann's statement that with its glorification of violence, sex and money and, so tellingly, with its slogan "We own Sunday" it is the liturgy of corporate-consumer culture. I don't know if Brueggemann would go as far as I would in saying it is the gladiatorial sacrament of American fascism but, there, I said it.
As bad as it is in reality, the industry of American football and sports journalism have cloaked the violence, sex and money of it ESPECIALLY THE MONEY OF IT, in the most revolting of sentimentalized, pseudo-moralistic, goopily romantic, soft veiled, artificial autumnal lighting effect sentimentality. Football is sold with all of the revolting, manipulative cinematic insincerity of a made for Lifetime movie. And don't forget the flag waving, quasi-militaristic nationalism involved.
The claim that it builds moral fiber and character in the typically and notably conceited, notably sexist, notably violent, bullying, drunken, debauched, serially adulterous often raping players and coaching staff that spills over into crime reporting with alarming regularity is the biggest load of bull shit that is regularly fed to TV-addled Americans. In that it takes the same kind of crap invented about "sport" in Britland in the 19th century, its usefulness in teaching the values necessary for training the class that would carry out their imperial colonial oppression and brings it into the electronic media age in the dying American imperial period.
I bring that up as an other example of Duncan Black's accusation against Christianity that it is guilty of giving "people a magical cloak to hide how horrible they are". It being American football, they have corrupted Christianity into the mix and the results are far worse, discrediting the idea of following the Gospel of Jesus than it is for the industry of football which hijacks the images and idea of that to its own ends. That, like the hijacking of Christianity for political purposes other than egalitarian democracy, everything that Jesus said has to be scrapped to claim it for that use.
It was mightily objected to when I noted that science also "gives people a magical cloak to hide how horrible they are" which, for anyone who has followed my many posts shooting holes into the giant plaster St. Charles Darwin image of science will understand. Eugenics, in all of its forms from genocide through sterilization to genocide by murder, was sold as right through the sanctification of science and the ideal of scientifically producing a master race, which was hardly exclusive to the Nazis. You can read how the eugenicists said so in virtually everything they wrote from Charles Darwin, Francis Galton .... to today's eugenicists. Today's eugenicists sell even proposals for infanticide up to an unspecified age that way. I find thinking about how Peter Singer and his fellow, university based "ethicists" turn the very idea of morality upside down that way and it's not respectable for the academic-liberalish type to say it.
And, lest you forget, it was the equally sanctified high-priesthood of theoretical and applied physics and chemistry who gave us the nuclear nightmare that has hung over humanity and which, with Trump in power, is of renewed anxiety. That one might end up killing us all.
You can take virtually every institution of secular, modern culture and see that it also functions in the way that Duncan Black accused Christianity of . Listen to virtually any of the reporters who cover the Supreme Court as their beat, listen to the lawyers on the Senate Judiciary Committee, look at the popular literature and theatrical productions dealing with the Supreme Court and famous Supreme Court Justices of the past. If you're honestly familiar with the actual character of that Court and its members over its existence the lying, hypocritical sanctimony concerning it is entirely in keeping with a false and romanticized view of Christianity as peopled by mere mortals. Only, you're allowed in polite, secularized, academic and journalistic life to say it about Christianity, you're not allowed to say it about the Court, or science and scientists or about American football.
Update: You can hear what I said in the putrid NPR selling of the far-right ideologue and almost entirely safe Republican-fascist vote on the Court, Neil Gorsuch this morning. I've gradually grown to loathe Nina Totenberg's reporting. She's a long, long way from when she reported Clarence Thomas's sexual harassment.
Update 2: When I read comments like that my first thought is somewhere there's a horse without an ass.
As bad as it is in reality, the industry of American football and sports journalism have cloaked the violence, sex and money of it ESPECIALLY THE MONEY OF IT, in the most revolting of sentimentalized, pseudo-moralistic, goopily romantic, soft veiled, artificial autumnal lighting effect sentimentality. Football is sold with all of the revolting, manipulative cinematic insincerity of a made for Lifetime movie. And don't forget the flag waving, quasi-militaristic nationalism involved.
The claim that it builds moral fiber and character in the typically and notably conceited, notably sexist, notably violent, bullying, drunken, debauched, serially adulterous often raping players and coaching staff that spills over into crime reporting with alarming regularity is the biggest load of bull shit that is regularly fed to TV-addled Americans. In that it takes the same kind of crap invented about "sport" in Britland in the 19th century, its usefulness in teaching the values necessary for training the class that would carry out their imperial colonial oppression and brings it into the electronic media age in the dying American imperial period.
I bring that up as an other example of Duncan Black's accusation against Christianity that it is guilty of giving "people a magical cloak to hide how horrible they are". It being American football, they have corrupted Christianity into the mix and the results are far worse, discrediting the idea of following the Gospel of Jesus than it is for the industry of football which hijacks the images and idea of that to its own ends. That, like the hijacking of Christianity for political purposes other than egalitarian democracy, everything that Jesus said has to be scrapped to claim it for that use.
It was mightily objected to when I noted that science also "gives people a magical cloak to hide how horrible they are" which, for anyone who has followed my many posts shooting holes into the giant plaster St. Charles Darwin image of science will understand. Eugenics, in all of its forms from genocide through sterilization to genocide by murder, was sold as right through the sanctification of science and the ideal of scientifically producing a master race, which was hardly exclusive to the Nazis. You can read how the eugenicists said so in virtually everything they wrote from Charles Darwin, Francis Galton .... to today's eugenicists. Today's eugenicists sell even proposals for infanticide up to an unspecified age that way. I find thinking about how Peter Singer and his fellow, university based "ethicists" turn the very idea of morality upside down that way and it's not respectable for the academic-liberalish type to say it.
And, lest you forget, it was the equally sanctified high-priesthood of theoretical and applied physics and chemistry who gave us the nuclear nightmare that has hung over humanity and which, with Trump in power, is of renewed anxiety. That one might end up killing us all.
You can take virtually every institution of secular, modern culture and see that it also functions in the way that Duncan Black accused Christianity of . Listen to virtually any of the reporters who cover the Supreme Court as their beat, listen to the lawyers on the Senate Judiciary Committee, look at the popular literature and theatrical productions dealing with the Supreme Court and famous Supreme Court Justices of the past. If you're honestly familiar with the actual character of that Court and its members over its existence the lying, hypocritical sanctimony concerning it is entirely in keeping with a false and romanticized view of Christianity as peopled by mere mortals. Only, you're allowed in polite, secularized, academic and journalistic life to say it about Christianity, you're not allowed to say it about the Court, or science and scientists or about American football.
Update: You can hear what I said in the putrid NPR selling of the far-right ideologue and almost entirely safe Republican-fascist vote on the Court, Neil Gorsuch this morning. I've gradually grown to loathe Nina Totenberg's reporting. She's a long, long way from when she reported Clarence Thomas's sexual harassment.
Update 2: When I read comments like that my first thought is somewhere there's a horse without an ass.
Oh, I Upset One of Tommy's Fan Boys
It was being generous when I said that some of Thomas Jefferson's writing was done under the influence of alcohol, which would account for the bizarre quality of so much of it. In the corpus of his correspondence, as published, you'll find very lucid, very clear, very moderate and rational letters and some which sound like he was pie-eyed and ranting. If all of it were like those letters, he'd be rightly considered a nut case. But, being the "Sage of Monticello" we're supposed to genuflect and pretend we don't see that he's making no sense and needed to dry out.
We do know that, like many 18th century and, even more so, 19th century men he drank a lot, every day. He said in a letter to Dr. Utley Vine,
..... I double however, the Doctor's glass and a half of wine, and even treble it with a friend; but halve its effects by drinking the weak wines only. The ardent wines I cannot drink, nor do I use ardent spirits in any form. Malt liquors and cider are my table drinks,
Someone who drinks that much every day is probably justifiably considered an alcoholic. Or, to put it plainly, a drunk. Especially considering the possible alcohol content of ale, beer and cider as made on his plantation would possibly have a higher alcohol content than what's sold commercially, today. I also guess by "weak wines" he meant wine of typical strength which wasn't fortified like sherry or port. If it had too little alcohol in it, with 18th century methods of preservation, it wouldn't be wine, it would be vinegar.
Lots of the founding fathers were more like potted patriots who were mere mortals, not the demi-gods whose every word should guide us today that the federalist fascists have sold them as being. You'll hear lots of the neo-confederate, federalist-fascist bull shit like that during the Gorsuch hearings. All that founders junk pretty well came from the white supremacist backlash against the Civil Rights movement. I'm happy to mock it and diss it and show people they don't have to buy it every chance I get. Those rotted corpses have no right to strangle our right to equal justice today.
We do know that, like many 18th century and, even more so, 19th century men he drank a lot, every day. He said in a letter to Dr. Utley Vine,
..... I double however, the Doctor's glass and a half of wine, and even treble it with a friend; but halve its effects by drinking the weak wines only. The ardent wines I cannot drink, nor do I use ardent spirits in any form. Malt liquors and cider are my table drinks,
Someone who drinks that much every day is probably justifiably considered an alcoholic. Or, to put it plainly, a drunk. Especially considering the possible alcohol content of ale, beer and cider as made on his plantation would possibly have a higher alcohol content than what's sold commercially, today. I also guess by "weak wines" he meant wine of typical strength which wasn't fortified like sherry or port. If it had too little alcohol in it, with 18th century methods of preservation, it wouldn't be wine, it would be vinegar.
Lots of the founding fathers were more like potted patriots who were mere mortals, not the demi-gods whose every word should guide us today that the federalist fascists have sold them as being. You'll hear lots of the neo-confederate, federalist-fascist bull shit like that during the Gorsuch hearings. All that founders junk pretty well came from the white supremacist backlash against the Civil Rights movement. I'm happy to mock it and diss it and show people they don't have to buy it every chance I get. Those rotted corpses have no right to strangle our right to equal justice today.
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