Christine Lagarde: The Face of Evil

A practically unspeakable horror of opprobrium has just been emitted Sibyllike from the orifice of the new head, Christine Lagarde, of the International Monetary Fund (which a deceased quondam associate of mine Hulan Jack with good reason called the International Murder Fund.) At the same instant that Greek pensioners are committing suicide in protest over the grinding austerity imposed upon them, and worse yet, the pharmacies there are running out of life saving medicines, Ms. Lagarde pronounces that it is time to pay the piper and that she cares more about dying Africans than dying Greeks. This, after IMF conditionalities for decades have imposed untold immiseration and a hecatomb of death upon those very same Africans Ms. Lagarde sheds copious crocodile tears for now. If anyone hearing this is not repulsed by this overt admission of pure evil, then they have no heart nor mind.

Lately, I have learned that an ancestor of mine was jailed in a town near Salem during the witch trial hysteria as a "mischief maker." It was indeed a black mark upon that most noble of experiments in the Massachussets Bay Charter that Franklin later picked up from Cotton Mather as the basis for the so called establishment clause in our Constitution, the principle of doing good for future generations. However, if ever there were a real life witch in our midst conjuring up poisonous potions to be served to hapless victims it is this soulless woman.

Fredrich Schiller once wrote that Shakespeare's Iago (like Beethoven's Pizarro in his opera Fidelio) was too much a one sided character purely evil and capable of no development to be fit for a dramatic portrayal. But, like her predecessors Hitler or Napoleon, Ms. Lagarde proves that such irredeemable characters are all too real.

Every Time a Light Goes Off New Brain Cells Are Being Born

The culminating proof of an hypothesis that was proffered by what Bernhard Riemann denominated "geistesmassen" or loosely "thought-masses" some 150 years ago is to be applauded. Researchers at the Pasteur Institute have demonstrated that neurogenesis in mice correlates with learning and memory. This has been for readers of these pages been a recurring theme from the first.

But here I want to pause for a moment to reflect on why with what would see to be no empirical evidence Riemann could have foretold this astounding development. The effort to locate some intimate connection between the "soul" and the material goes back to the earliest of thinkers. Leibniz who successfully refuted Descartes' formula for force, posited an harmonic principle of continuous development among differential degrees of substance in his great work the Monadology.

It was a major setback for humanity that Leibniz' bid to become prime minister of England was put down by the Cabal of practitioners of the black arts promoting the crazed Isaac Newton's useless mathematical scribblings. It is to be rued that this anti German prejudice continued to be fueled in the nascent American republic. For example, it was considered slander to label Poe's writings "Germanic." The fact that Schiller's ideas of aesthetics were instrumental in ousting that meglomaniac Napoleon notwithstanding...

But the genius of Franklin's Constitution that hearkens back to Cusa's Universal Concordance principles knows no boundaries religious or dogmatic. And it is the establishment of a government of, by, and for the wise that promotes the improvements in physical wealth that correlates with scientific breakthroughs, that provides the proof of the same principle discovery of the function of neurogenesis writ large. So, it is only lawful that there is a concrete parallelism in the realm of the small, even within the brain of a mouse! For as Leibniz would have it, we are not a blank slate thrown into this world as empty potter's vessels, but rather the willful microcosm of unfolding universal harmonic and continuing development best exemplified most immediately in the Grosse Fugue of Beethoven.

More Forgotten Lore--Masonic Magic, Mormons and The Raven

Last summer my father mentioned that two of my forbears (great great grandfathers, I think) were somehow involved, one as a judge and the other a state legislator, in the trial of the masons for the murder of William Morgan. This was the fellow who wrote a book exposing that the initiation into masonry included an oath that if you divulged their secrets or became disloyal you would have your tongue ripped out and be buried alive at sea. John Quincy Adams played a pivotal role in the anti masonic upsurge shortly thereafter. It is interesting that Adams was associated in publishing with one of my ancestor's literary circle Joseph Dennie.

Now it just so happens that the widow of William Morgan became one of the wives of Joseph Smith the founder of the Mormons. Now this same Smith was very deeply into what he called true and perfect masonry. He even possessed a magic amulet called the Jupiter Table. Isaac Newton was fanatically consumed in the alchemical "study" of the traditional Hermes Trismegistus' Emerald Table. (I think therefore Newton's mind might be proof of a true Tabula Rasa, in my humble opinion.)

Here is a poem exalting Hermes Trismegistus from Edgar Poe's adversary H.W. Longfellow:

"Was he one or many, merging
Name and fame in one,
Like a stream, to which, converging,
Many streamlets run ?

Who shall call his dream fallacious ?
Who has searched or sought
All the unexplored and spacious
Universe of thought ?

Who in his own skill confiding,
Shall with rule and line
Mark the border-land dividing
Human and divine ?

Trismegistus ! Three times greatest !
How thy name sublime
Has descended to this latest
Progeny to time !"

Now Joseph Glanvill's writings, which Poe so thoroughly absorbed, scored the Cabbalist Rosicrucianism in England of Kenelm Digby, et al. An ernormous amount of the mischief that has come about on these shores can be traced back to the creation of this very type of irrationalist superstition. 

And The Raven is a poem that in actuality is just such a polemic (as so much of Shakespeare is likewise) against the occult and most melancholy superstition. And  today many of Poe's most ardent admirers have no clue that he was and still is, in reality laughing at them.

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; -
This it is, and nothing more."

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you"- here I opened wide the door; -
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?"
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" -
Merely this, and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice:
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore -
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; -
'Tis the wind and nothing more."

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door -
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door -
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.
"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore -
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning- little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door -
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as "Nevermore."

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered- not a feather then he fluttered -
Till I scarcely more than muttered, "other friends have flown before -
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."
Then the bird said, "Nevermore."

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore -
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of 'Never - nevermore'."

But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore -
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking "Nevermore."

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamplight gloating o'er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor.
"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee - by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite - respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore:
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! -
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted -
On this home by horror haunted- tell me truly, I implore -
Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil - prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore -
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore -
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Be that word our sign in parting, bird or fiend," I shrieked, upstarting -
"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!- quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!

Is the Good Doctor Leonard Suskind Off His Rocker?

I have had much merriment in this blogosphere for some time now lampooning the absurdities of theoretical physicists. The egregious character of Sheldon Cooper on TV's The Big Bang Theory must seem a stretch to some, however I fear the comedy doesn't quite do justice to real life. We all smile, of course, when we hear about the recondite Aristotelian scholastics who got their knickers in a twist over how many angels can fit on a pinhead. But now I am starting to fear for these fine feathered fellows' sanity when I come across such wild-eyed stuff as this: (But perhaps there be financial method and rewards to their madness...)


Is Eternal Inflation Past-Eternal? And What if It Is?
Leonard Susskind
(Submitted on 3 May 2012)
As a result of discussions with Bousso and Vilenkin I want to return to the question of whether the multiverse is past-eternal or if there was a beginning. Not surprisingly, given three people, there were three answers. However, the discussions have led to some common ground.
The multiverse being past-eternal, or at least extremely old has content and potential phenomenological implications. I will discuss how the oldness of the multiverse is connected with recent speculations of Douglas.

Information "Theory" is Nothing Except Fraud and Mysticism

Here comes a rather self important and "weighty" arXiv paper claiming to clarify the confusion regarding self organizing complex systems. While "cellular automata" are the solitonic type of phenomena which I have emphasized are well worth study, the ridiculous conceit that these types of phenomena can reduced to some network input /output computer model is laughable. Read the synopsis for a chuckle or two, if you please:


Complexity and Information: Measuring Emergence, Self-organization, and Homeostasis at Multiple Scales
Carlos Gershenson, Nelson Fernandez
(Submitted on 9 May 2012)
Concepts used in the scientific study of complex systems have become so widespread that their use and abuse has led to ambiguity and confusion in their meaning. In this paper we use information theory to provide abstract and concise measures of complexity, emergence, self-organization, and homeostasis. The purpose is to clarify the meaning of these concepts with the aid of the proposed formal measures. In a simplified version of the measures (focussing on the information produced by a system), emergence becomes the opposite of self-organization, while complexity represents their balance. We use computational experiments on random Boolean networks and elementary cellular automata to illustrate our measures at multiple scales.

How a Magical Belief in Entropy Makes Us Blind

Life scientists unlock mystery of how 'handedness' arises

May 8, 2012

Enlarge

Colored patches represent parallelogram outlines around pairs of triangles that have formed chiral super-structures. Parallelograms having different "handedness" and orientations are color-coded and superimposed over each other. Credit: Thomas G. Mason and Kun Zhao

The overwhelming majority of proteins and other functional molecules in our bodies display a striking molecular characteristic: They can exist in two distinct forms that are mirror images of each other, like your right hand and left hand. Surprisingly, each of our bodies prefers only one of these molecular forms.

This mirror-image phenomenon -- known as chirality or "handedness" -- has captured the imagination of a UCLA research group led by Thomas G. Mason, a professor of chemistry and physics and a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA.

Mason has been exploring how and why chirality arises, and his newest findings on the physical origins of the phenomenon were published May 1 in the journal Nature Communications.

"Objects like our hands are chiral, while objects like regular triangles are achiral, meaning they don't have a handedness to them," said Mason, the senior author of the study. "Achiral objects can be easily superimposed on top of one another."

Why many of the important functional molecules in our bodies almost always occur in just one chiral form when they could potentially exist in either is a mystery that has confounded researchers for years.

"Our bodies contain important molecules like proteins that overwhelmingly have one type of chirality," Mason said. "The other chiral form is essentially not found. I find that fascinating. We asked, 'Could this biological preference of a particular chirality possibly have a physical origin?'"

In addressing this question, Mason and his team sought to discover how chirality occurs in the first place. Their findings offer new insights into how the phenomenon can arise spontaneously, even with achiral building-blocks.

Mason and his colleagues used a manufacturing technique called lithography, which is the basis for making computer chips, to make millions of microscale particles in the shape of achiral triangles. In the past, Mason has used this technique to "print" particles in a wide variety of shapes, and even in the form of letters of the alphabet.

Using optical microscopy, the researchers then studied very dense systems of these lithographic triangular particles. To their surprise, they discovered that the achiral triangles spontaneously arranged themselves to form two-triangle "super-structures," with each super-structure exhibiting a particular chirality.

In the image that accompanies this article, the colored outlines in the field of triangles indicate chiral super-structures having particular orientations.

So what is causing this phenomenon to occur? Entropy, says Mason. His group has shown for the first time that chiral structures can originate from physical entropic forces acting on uniform achiral particles.

"It's quite bizarre," Mason said. "You're starting with achiral components — triangles — which undergo Brownian motion and you end up with the spontaneous formation of super-structures that have a handedness or chirality. I would never have anticipated that in a million years."

Entropy is usually thought of as a disordering force, but that doesn't capture its subtler aspects. In this case, when the triangular particles are diffusing and interacting at very high densities on a flat surface, each particle can actually maximize its "wiggle room" by becoming partially ordered into a liquid crystal (a phase of matter between a liquid and a solid) made out of chiral super-structures of triangles.

"We discovered that just two physical ingredients — entropy and particle shape — are enough to cause chirality to appear spontaneously in dense systems," Mason said. "In my 25 years of doing research, I never thought that I would see chirality occur in a system of achiral objects driven by entropic forces."

As for the future of this research, "We are very interested to see what happens with other shapes and if we can eventually control the chiral formations that we see occurring here spontaneously," he said.

"To me, it's intriguing, because I think about the chiral preference in biology," Mason added. "How did this chiral preference happen? What are the minimum ingredients for that to occur? We're learning some new physical rules, but the story in biology is far from complete. We have added another chapter to the story, and I'm amazed by these findings."

To learn more, a message board accompanies the publication in Nature Communications, an online journal, as a forum for interactive discussion.

This research was funded by the University of California. Kun Zhao, a postdoctoral researcher in Mason's laboratory, made many key contributions, including fabricating the triangle particles, creating the two-dimensional system of particles, performing the optical microscopy experiments, carrying out extensive particle-tracking analysis and interpreting the results.

Along with Mason, co-author Robijn Bruinsma, a UCLA professor of theoretical physics and a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA, contributed to the understanding of the chiral symmetry breaking and the liquid crystal phases.

If it were simply entropy, how and by what circumstance did the close packing occur? Entropy again?

So what we have here is a recursive reductio ad absurdum species of mathematical supposition which takes entropy as a given that somehow miraculously always leads to less and less disorder. Cannot we see the fallacy of composition in the premises of reasoning here?

In fact, the quality of step function increases in the living processes in the biosphere to both capture and organize energy in increasing density of throughput to ever higher states of evolution is evidence not of entropy but the very opposite.

This evolution culminates in the human species ability to consciously change its mode of capture and organization of energy via creative problem solving expressed in technology. Once again, further devastating evidence that negative entropy is the subsuming potential latent in the universal process of development, not stochasticity or for that matter irrationality...

Winter of Financiers' Discontent

What dark and nasty thoughts must be roiling around in the skulls of the oligarchy today? It must be something to the effect that "democracy must be upended"

" Fiscal austerity cannot ever win elections and must simply be imposed. Oh, if only the people would come to see this simple fact of life, dictatorships would be unnecessary. But no, they never learn. Now we will need to scour the field for strong men to bring the rabble to heel. So be it."

Abraham Lincoln's Assassination, Colley Cibber, Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift

When Lincoln complained about the removal of a pivotal soliloquy from Shakespeare's Richard III "Now is the winter of our discontent, " he perhaps inadvertently took aim at Alexander Pope's "dunce" Colley Cibber. It was Cibber who played fast and loose with the Bard, in his day, giving way to the base peculiarities of popular sentiment for a pretty speech.

Pope, that ally of very same Jonathan Swift who has reached out from the grave, as it were, to indite Prince Phillip and his Malthusian oligarchic ilk in their bestial hatred of the procreation of "useless eaters," with his great satire "A Modest Proposal." Pope and Lincoln were linked in their revulsion against the liberties that Cibber took that mocked the sense of Shakespeare for mere "sound and fury" loved by the mob.

Swift, who did everything in his power to thwart the evil designs of the British Empire against his beloved Ireland through his influence over Queen Anne. And in his exposure in Gulliver of the British colonial method of a war of "each against all," he limned a great lesson for our yet to be Republic.

How tragically à propos was it then that a lunatic conspirator, and product of Colley Cibber's "dumbing down" of Shakespeare, John Wilkes Booth, should be the instrument of such evil? Had Lincoln lived, it is nearly a certainty that he would have taken the war against Britain "carried forthwith into Africa."

The Beautiful Puritan Pansies: Glanvill, Mather, Franklin, Beethoven, Cusa, Toscanelli, Columbus

Edgar Allan Poe's Virgil was to a degree Joseph Glanvill. The title alone of his work "Scepsis scientifica: or, Confest Ignorance the way to science" fairly leaps off the page for any who have read Nicolas of Cusa's Of Learned Ignorance.

It is of no little moment then, that Cotton Mather's whose Essays To Do Good literally were the inspiration of none other than the subject Beethoven's Ode to Joy "Gotterfunken" Benjamin Franklin!

For it was Cusa and Toscanelli that enabled Christopher Columbus to set off for this "New World." And remarkably, the Massachusetts Charter is in this sense an offshoot of that same spirit of learned ignorance. One has but to begin to read Mather's American Bible to comprehend the profound impact of the quest for scientific progress inherent in the purpose of the Revolution.

More Sunday Funnies

Well, well. Once again it has been borne out that the effrontery of the statisticians is without limit. This very risible title, that is for the cognoscenti amongst us, has just found its way across Thingumbob's computer screen:
"No Fundamental Limitation on Studying Living Organisms and Other Complex Systems with Statistical Methods"

What a sense of humor this mathematician must have to publish this. Oh tell me where muse, is the good Reverend Jonathan Swift gone to in our hour of direst need?

The Ugly Truth About Gertrude Stein

Much like the excellent example of Poe's purloined letter, the truth has been there all along. Liberals make the best fascists. They simply cannot help themselves.

It is a not so bewildering fact that must confront most, if not all, sentient baby boomers, that side by side with their protest songs, a rather sleazy love affair in academe was being had all the while for the icons of fascism-- Wagner, Nietsche, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein...No, this wasn't your hardcore right wing Joe McCarthy stuff.

Do what thou wilt! If mass murder a la Charles Manson be thy thing,, so be it! All is groovy...

The Astounding Protein Vectored Topology of Cell Membranes

In Nicholas of Cusa's conception of the ongoing becoming of the microcosm that emulates the macrocosmic, the kernel of Leibniz' monads and Vernadsky's spheres is adumbrated. The recent remarkable discovery of domains of proteins in the organization of the cellular membrane should be understood in the larger context of bearing out the relevance of that tradition. If scientists only understood why the necessary ordering of the biosphere occurs everywhere in this manner of developing progress would proceed with a dizzying speed.

(Phys.org) -- As the interface between the cell and its environment, the cell membrane, which consists of fats and proteins, fulfils a variety of vital functions. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried near Munich have performed the first comprehensive analysis of the molecular structure of this boundary layer, and revealed precisely how it is organised. In yeast cells, the entire membrane is made up of independent domains, each containing just one or a few protein types. If a protein is relocated to an inappropriate domain, it may even fail to function. The study shows that the membrane is a kind of patchwork quilt and should help scientists to gain a better understanding of basic cellular processes.

Leonardo: Artist or Scientist?

These arguments are, in the end, ludicrously childish. Although the straw man argument of Newton's alchemy is amusing...  ((For example, Newton (in juxtaposition to Leibniz) indeed was a quack! A quack who believed, (among other imbecilities) that the text of the Bible foretold the date of the end of the world based upon a hidden secret code therein.)) The idea that reality can be defined via mere words is nominalism. This is wildly irrational. The desire to put a label on the works of Leonardo and catalog him as in a sort of human zoo is nominalism: it signifies nothing..that is, except superstitious ignorance.

Leonardo won a contest performing as a musician, singing and playing the lute in Florence. He was sent as an emissary of sorts by Lorenzo the Magnificent of Florence to the court of Sforza Duke of Milan. To whom, it was reported, Leonardo proffered a magnificent silver lute of his own design. So really, I believe, you fine fellows have it all wrong. He was really a musician...or was it a designer of theatrical displays?

HSBC Laundering Drug Money-Quelle Surprise!

Oh come off it, Reuters! Anyone who has a smattering acquaintance of the history of the Opium Wars knows Jardine Matheson Hong Kong Shanghai Baank was in the middle of the drug trade forever. This was absolutely predictable. The laundering of drug money profits is the City of London's stock in trade time immemorial.

Why do you think that the drug promoting rock and roll icons have all been knighted by "her royal majesty?"

Biology Subdues Randomness

Although these researchers use the mathematics and method of apparent "randomness," the fact is that the organic biosphere at the level of the "infinitesimal" is a vectored process of development in opposition to the limits imposed by the inorganic lithosphere. While the quality of twist induced in the electrostatic field may appear as merely a mechanical epiphenomenon, there exists a type of unique biophysical conatus behind this.

Electric charge disorder: A key to biological order?

Strong attraction that arises between biological objects with random patches of electric charge on an otherwise neutral surface may partly explain pattern recognition in biology

Theoretical physicist Ali Naji from the IPM in Tehran and the University of Cambridge, UK, and his colleagues have shown how small random patches of disordered, frozen electric charges can make a difference when they are scattered on surfaces that are overall neutral. These charges induce a twisting force that is strong enough to be felt as far as nanometers or even micrometers away. These results, about to be published in EPJ E¹, could help to understand phenomena that occurr on surfaces such as those of large biological molecules.

To measure the strength of the twist that acts on a randomly charged surface, the authors used a sphere which was mounted like a spinning top next to a randomly charged flat substrate. Because small amounts of positive and negative charges were spread in a disordered mosaic throughout both surfaces, they induced transient attractive or repulsive twisting forces. This was regardless of the surfaces’ overall electrical neutrality, thus making the sphere spin. Using statistical averaging methods, the authors studied the fluctuations of these forces.

The authors found that the twisting force, created by virtue of the disorder of surface charges, is expected to be much stronger and far-reaching than the remnant forces. The latter are always present, even in the absence of charge disorder, and are due to fluctuations at the atomic and molecular levels.

This could have implications for large randomly charged surfaces such as biological macromolecules, which may be exposed to strong electrostatic forces, inducing attraction and/or repulsion, even if they carry no overall net charge. For instance, this phenomenon could partly explain biological pattern recognition, such as lock and key phenomena. In that context, the twisting force could explain the attraction between biological macromolecules that lead to pre-alignment prior to their interaction.

Simple Question About Chris Christie

Some wag in our midst might be prone to asking this burning (as in indigestion) question: is it possible for that august and venerable American electorate to get our metaphorical collective arms around a Chris Christie run (as if running in itself weren't too much to ask) for Vice President? Let us all chew the fat on this anon...

Obama Romney Bin Laden

Well, I suppose the next step in this tragicfarce mano a mano circus will no doubt be a pledge to use nuclear bombs against Iran. Remarkably breathtaking this rather sordid kind of insanity that grips our so called politics these days!

The Terminally Ill Philosophy

For those poor wights that purchase their servitude to the moneyed powers by assenting to the wretched and forlorn belief that humans are but talking animals, it must seem that life is but a short, maddening and dull flicker of a terminal illness.

However, those few who truly know that the entire mission of the whole history of mankind is uniquely in conformity with immortality's potential. These alone have emerged from the invidious grip of the chains of self delusion.

As I was saying about the Roman Pantheon and Prince Phillip

Apparently, this administrator from the EPA just really, really couldn't control himself. I wonder if his head is now spinning à la The Exorcist?

“It was kind of like how the Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw, and they would crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years,” Armendariz said.
“You make examples out of people who are not complying with the law,” he added.

On the Other Hand, A Fine Discovery

The just reported discovery of magnetic sensing cells in the brains of pigeons is very much more important breakthrough than meets the eye. This type of research deserves to be fully funded. So Obama, of course, will probably cut off its funding...

These Fellows Will Be a Monkey's Uncle

The arxiv paper Cortical Columns for Quick Brains is at once both instructive and amusing. Instructive because it does provide a service in putting to bed a favorite "meme" (blasted word) of the artificial "intelligence" crowd. That is to say, that the neuronal organization may be modeled in re to a sort of super sophisticated computer. (That disgusting notion which has stuck in my craw as far back as I can remember.)
Amusing because true to form and predictably the researchers next set out to adopt the craze of chaos theory to their investigation. Its all fractals, don't you know? Thus nerdom will out again...

Setting the Record Straight on the Real Life Edgar Allan Poe

The problem here of misrepresentations of Poe is the neglect of his politics by all and sundry. I have only come across a smattering of the truth on this most salient point. For instance, The Devil in the Belfry was an open attack on Aaron Burr's apprentice Martin Van Buren. King Pest was obviously Andrew Jackson. When the crash of 1837 halted any opportunity of Poe receiving credit, for his magazine project, it was engineered by these aforementioned creeps by the shutting down of Biddle's Second National Bank. Burr having murdered Hamilton, who created the First National Bank. Poe looked to Biddle for an appointment. Poe had a cousin who was the head of a branch of said bank. Now, Poe's attacks on the Transcendentalists and Immanuel Kant paralleled a remarkably similar literary figure, jurist, popularizer of Beethoven and composer: ETA Hoffman. Had Poe received his appointment and lived there would have been perhaps many more points of coincidence. It is not a matter of plagiarism, but rather the coincidence of "genius." Hoffman fought against the imbecilities of the "Enlightenment."

The biggest enemy of Poe was not Griswold or English, it was Charles Baudelaire and his cohort of ugly "intellectual" epigones. Like Genet, Gide, Lord Dunsany, (or is it Doneinsanity?) HP Lovecraft, inter alia.

Poe, in the prescience of his genius, smote these blackguards in advance in his attack upon the so called shepherd bard, the criminal James Hogg.

For the Benefit of Dr Tarpley

Dr Tarpley, a simple question. Where is the open secret that George Bush's beloved Saudi Royalty financed the 911conspirators in your book? Or is that a false flag also? The mid-eval obscurantist miscreants in the Saudi Royalty, where are they?

Targeting the Chronically Ill...Here We Go Again?

"April 26, 2012, New York, NY—Noting the "unprecedented opportunity" provided under the Affordable Care Act, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, and other recently enacted federal laws, the Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System today unveiled a community-based plan to enhance health and reduce spending by improving care for chronically ill patients and targeting quality improvement efforts to conditions that can yield the greatest benefit in a relatively short time. The Health Improvement Community initiative proposed by the Commission has the potential to help those who most need more coordinated care and save $184 billion in health spending over the next 10 years."

All this, and not even one mention for the necessity of the expense of gas ovens! How very nice! After targeting the chronically ill for savings, why don't they go after the social outcasts and genetically inferior? Quality of life and all that, you see. Could be a lot of savings there...

Complete Randomness Comes A Courting

“This [idea that the wave function represents reality] means that the wave function includes all information that is in principle available about the system, i.e., nothing is missing,” Renner told Phys.org. “Nevertheless, even if we knew the wave function of a system (and therefore reality), its future behavior cannot be predicted with certainty. This means that there is inherent randomness in nature.”


Hmm... If there is "inherent randomness in nature" and these gentlemen are a participants and part of said "nature," then how may we decide whether their pronouncements have any merit at all? They could be the pure equivalent of randomness in the human mind come unhinged. I think that is the most probable explanation of their musings.

Theoretical Fusion Advancement?

I think the approach here is quite promising. For decades plasma physics has been about removing impurities from these machines. This seems to be about utilizing singularities to advantage rather than eliminating them. And this appears very much to be what we see normally occurring in nature.

Inside a Tokamak. Image credit: Lawrence Berkeley Labs 

It should be understood that the whole rationale of the hoary Malthusian worldview of limits to growth will implode when fusion energy becomes a practicality. So we will not have to throw humanity to the wolves in the name of needed austerity as we now so senselessly and piteously are.

Obama's Bout of Apoplexy

"On the GSA issue, he was I think it’s fair to say apoplectic," said David Axelrod
Hmm...Was he gnashing his teeth, beating his chest, tearing out his hair, throwing chairs, practicing fisticuffs on all and sundry in his path, whirling about in imitation of a tasmanian devil, eyes flashing darts, seething and fuming? And is their a video? Can we see it if their is? 'Twould be of monumental historic interest, methinks.

Socrates or Jesus?

Question for the epigones and acolytes of the hated Karl Popper (who is apparently unable to defend himself.) If the virulent hatred of Socrates, which the eminent doctor waxed so grandiloquently on, is replaced by the name of Jesus, would your lordships still spew out your ugly and pestiferous vituperation  as grossly?

How Wonderfuly Quaint The Emir of Qatar Is

Well, well. It appears that the Emir of Qatar Shaikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani has recently purchased the Greek isle of Oxia. (This is the country where an elderly woman recently leaped to her desk when confronted with the monstrous policy of the Euro-zone cutting off of her pension.) 

The said Emir has recently also elaborated on his role in arresting poverty:  "It is essential here that the reform process is based on humanitarian principles that put public interest before personal interest, and fight against greed and gambling with other s money, This [his role in UNCTAD] requires the developed countries to maintain allocating a percentage of their gross domestic product for poor countries as previously agreed upon, and help to open money markets to finance investments in developing countries,"

And now here is a little noticed bit of news:  "According to Al Arabiya TV, a number of high-ranking military officers rose against the Qatari Emir, triggering fierce clashes between some 30 military officers and US-backed royal guards outside the Emir’s palace, the report said on Tuesday."

Why,the imponderable forces of evil seem to be out to get this obviously gifted and trustworthy humanitarian. Lackaday! Woe be unto us.

JP Morgan Chase and the Wages of Poverty

As we all were so lately regaled by the tearful demeanor of our honorable Secretary of the Treasury on bended knee piteously begging for a suffusion of trillions in cash to those august banking institutions he calls too big to fail, it is a rather quaint curiosity to my mind that JP Morgan Chase makes such a killing on the issuance of food stamp debit cards. What gives? Hey presto!

(As Goya observed some peoples faces belong behind their trousers...)

A Sort of Riddle: An Empire of Ugliness

Walking in the springtime with a thousand proofs of the exalted loveliness of the earth's blossoming beauty, it is hard to fathom that humanity has been led by such craven and supremely ugly would-be elites into the current depraved condition it finds itself.

The Opium Boom in Afghanistan and The United States Embroiled in Imperial Warfare

It is a fully predictable and base sort of irony that as the US enters into endless foreign entanglements in emulation of that once vituperated and hated British Empire that we so miraculously escaped from, that the expansion of mind destroying drugs would be a natural consequence thereof.

Viz: we have technology that can hunt down movements of our enemies and wreak havoc on them from pilotless drones and yet we cannot muster any means to detroy the massive boom in poppy production in Afghanistan. To use a favorite British term these days, this is pure rubbish...

Nicholas of Cusa: Unacknowledged Father of Modern Science

When the twentieth century mathematical genius Georg Cantor developed his theory of the transfinite, it was far from accidental that he turned to Nicholas of Cusa's platonic dialogues on the subject of the infinite. The dual Cusanian concepts of learned ignorance and the Non-other taken together as a sort of fugue have just now been once again been proven to have supplied the groundwork (or better Grundlagen) for any possible advancement of true science. (As opposed to some execrable tripe that masquerades as such.)

The recent astrophysical discoveries that were announced this week regarding the lack of evidence of so called dark matter in the solar system's near vicinity and that the overwhelming majority gamma rays cannot be traced as stemming from known cosmic sources emphatically direct our attention to the truth of Riemann's assessment that in the realm of the very large (as well as in the infinitesimally small) the more our technology allows us to understand of phenomena the greater and more vast the paradoxes of what Kepler, following Plato, designated as the mind of the universal composer become.

For Cusa the concept that human intelligence can only ever be in the process of become less ignorant due to the ineluctable unapproachability to the true infinite or non other is truly the basis for all possible scientific progress.

Newton's "Pendent"

"Who put the names on the moon? by thonyc

If you have ever looked at a map of the moon you might have noticed that many of the selenographical features are named after astronomers and you might just have asked yourself how come? At this point several of my readers are probably thinking what in the name of all that is holy is selenographical. Don’t worry my spell checker just asked the same question. Now geography is a Greek word that literally means earth-writing from geo meaning earth and graphos meaning writing. Selenography is moon-writing from Selene the Greek goddess of the moon and graphos. So selenographical features are what someone who is not a pendent like me would probably refer to incorrectly as geographical features of the moon. Now back to the main plot. The person who chose to name the selenographical feature after astronomers was the Jesuit mathematician, astronomer and physicists Giovanni Battista Riccioli who was born 17th April 1598."

Hmm. Interesting article. Even though you pride yourself on a rare degree of acuity in wordsmithing, I notice you denominate yourself as a "pendent." Of course, I assume you meant to write the word "pedant." (Normally a humorous pejorative term.) But unless you might mean that your continual fawning over Newton makes you a pendent of the British "nobility."

Secretly Serviced Scandal: A Tale with a Moral to It

Well, it seems that the President's prostitution to the City of London has somehow rubbed off on his underlings' behavior. To quote the wicked witch "What a world!"

MIT on Overpopulation More Frogpondian Pseudoscience

Overpopulation hype started when Thomas Malthus in 1798 plagiarized Giamarria Ortes false dictum that the population grows geometrically while food grows arithmetically. This MIT study is nothing other than warmed over Malthusian claptrap. It leave out the role of the development of whole new resources (such as nuclear fusion) via technological progress. That is to say, it leaves out of consideration the human mind. So this supposed study by an "Institute of Technology" is nothing but a damnable and vicious fraud.

Guenter Grass: New Forbidden Verses?

It could perhaps be just my over active imagination, but when a British journalist starts his article thus and in bold characters: "To people outside Germany, a furore about a mere poem might be hard to understand." Not only the English spelling, but the choice of a "furor" in Germany can hardly be coincidence. Of course, this charge can be rather handily denied with a simple "tut, tut." But that only serves to heighten my suspicion even more.

Two other insertions by said journalist also caught my eye here. One, the charge that Grass covered up his Waffen SS history-- "But this reputation was dented when it emerged in 2006 that he had kept quiet about his own past as a member of the Waffen-SS (a branch of the military under the direct control of the Nazi party)." Grass' own statement here denouncing mob journalism is instructive. "I am horrified how 30-, 35-, and 40-year-old journalists, who were fortunate enough to grow up in a long period of peace, are judging a man, who was drawn into the Waffen-SS at age 17, who did not do so voluntarily. This comes from a generation which in my opinion does not use enough those rights of freedom that it has today."

The second strange turn of phrase is this: "It is a poem which concentrates on Israeli nuclear weapons as the prime danger in the Middle East." And then two paragraphs later: "It is this one-sided concentration which has brought the fiercest criticism within Germany." A German poem concentrating and causing furor? Hmm, call me a conspiracy nut...but I think these types of subtle word choices enter into the way we make judgments

The fact is that the "elite" technocratic geo-politicians playing nuclear chicken on the world stage these days are not any less mad than the ever so talented whiz kids that gave the world the fatal financial disease known as derivative securities.

Tremendous Breakthrough in Biological Research of the Circadian System

Bravo for discovering the potential to reset at will the biological circadian clock! Congratulations to the team led by Ronald M. Evans at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies! I believe this masterful detective work will have far reaching profound consequences here on earth and importantly in space travel.

What is Truly Faster than the Speed of Light?

Paradoxically, the only "thing" which can travel faster than the speed of light is human thought! And human thought is in no way equivalent to that misguided and risible theory of "information."

Astrophysicists Make Donkeys of Themselves

Wow! Flabbergasting! What a racket these guys have! How far down into the intellectual masturbatory morass have we come since the nonpareil and stunning achievements of Einstein! The fact that they can be apparently well paid for such arrant twaddle is simply, well...breathtaking--with today's technology, I guess there is a sucker born now every femto-second!

Wherein the Solution to the Collapsed Economy is Advanced

Actually, the economy is far, far worse than these mere unemployment numbers portend. Ever since the advent of the so called information age, consumer economy and the break up of Bretton Woods when Nixon pulled the plug on gold reserve ratio, there has been a looting of our nation’s physical economy by the financial speculators. Now I realize that academic (perhaps better quackademic) economists like that genius helicopter Ben Bernanke do not have the sense to give two cents about what kind of employment there is because to them money is money. (That’s why they think printing it is the financial panacea, while in reality diarrhea is more like it.) But due to the economic monetary nostrums of these very same quacks, we have become a virtual junkheap of an economy.

The problem can only be solved by first shutting down the lunatic bucket shop derivative securities speculators like Goldman Sachs and George Soros’ Quantum Fund by separating out their worthless casino chip nominal values and cutting them loose through bankruptcy. That means a return to Glass Steagall and a new Bretton Woods.

Second we need to take down the Federal Reserve which is nothing but an instrument of these very same financial houses like Goldman and Morgan Stanley that have created this execrable mess. We must return to the principle of Alexander Hamilton’s design of a national credit system for the restoration of a physically productive economy. His attack on Adam Smith by name in his Report on Manufactures to the Congress, puts the lie to the myth of so called free enterprise. This means creating a Third National Bank of the United States that is not in the control of today’s international financial oligarchy radiating out of the City of London and Wall Street.

The reason the United States of America was established was to promote the general welfare. Period. Without that commitment, we are but a sorry reality show parody of the rancid Roman Empire’s bread and circuses. Today that means repair and development of long term sustainability of our wrecked physical economy. Credit must be established like Hamilton and later Lincoln did to promote investment in high technology water, power, transportation, and agriculture.

The manned space program, that the crazed Obama administration has just sunk, must be restored and vastly accelerated. We must dump the pseudo science of radical environmentalism and use advanced technologies like thorium nuclear reactors (of which there is enough proven supply to be mined at current rates of usage to last over a thousand years.) We must finance continent scale water projects that would provide fresh water enough to green the deserts like the North American Water and Power Alliance that was idiotically thrown into the dust bin. Nuclear fusion (that the insane Obama clique has just defunded) and matter anti-matter research must be made our top priority. These measures (and all that they entail) alone will restore a functioning physical economy that will promote the nations long term general welfare, anything else is too little too late.

Scientific Masters of the Obvious

This study is, of course, correct as far as it goes. But exactly why one needs empirical validation of the obvious Internet bubble that has been create yet once again is hard to comprehend. It is simply the fact that the printing of trillions of dollars and Euros are ending up fueling this lunatic speculation. Myself, I would rather have shares in those colorful tulips than in Facebook.

Curiouser and Curiouser

"I'm a little teapot" President Barack Obama accused Republicans of clinging to economic policies that preceded the Great Depression and the more recent economic downturn, saying his rivals are showing signs of “madness.” To quote the savant narrator of Don Quixote Cide Hamete Benengeli "Avicenna was won't to remark that the whole world is crazy" ... or some such...

Saudi Humanitarians or Terrorist Financiers?

"On Friday, Clinton discussed with Saudi leaders efforts to send more humanitarian aid to Syria, and support opposition efforts to present a united and inclusive political vision for the future."

The ugly little covered-up fact is that "Saudi leaders" are arming Al Qaeda forces around the globe wherever it suits them. Oh, and they also happen to have financed the 911 hijackers. Real humanitarians, those...

Lords and Lady Luddites

The august board of the "Planet under Pressure" desire a global governance so that the consumption of humanity may be reigned in to comply with their cherished second law of thermodynamics. (Mustn't have those beastly wogs freely procreating...Don't you know.)

The Planet under Pressure Board of Patrons includes:

Joseph Alcamo, Chief Scientist of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
Sir John Beddington, UK Government's Chief Scientific Advisor
Phil Bloomer, Director of Campaigns and Policy, Oxfam 
Keith Clarke CBE, Director of Sustainability, Atkins, UK
Rowan Douglas, Willis-RE, UK
Colin Drummond, Chairman LWEC Business Advisory Board & Chief Executive Viridor
Tim Flannery, Panasonic Professor of Environmental Sustainability at Macquarie University
Peter Kareiva, Chief Scientist and Vice President, The Nature Conservancy
Bo Kjellen, Chair of the 1992 Earth Summit Preparatory Committee
Sir Christopher Llewellyn Smith, Oxford University, UK
Thomas Lovejoy, Heinz Center, USA
Julia Marton-Lefèvre, Director General, International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)
Pascal Mittermaier, Head of Sustainability EMEA, Lend Lease
Sunita Narain, Director, Centre for Science and Environment, India
Rudy Rabbinge, Wageningen University, The Netherlands
Jan-Eric Sundgren, Senior Vice President Public and Environmental Affairs, AB Volvo
Lord Turner, Chairman of the Climate Change Committee, UK
Sir Robert Watson, Defra Chief Scientific Advisor, UK

Birds of a Feather: Atheists and Fundamentalists

Last week there was parade of atheists in Washington. Whatever compels these folks to parade their disbelief in God is certainly an enigma.

But, for my poor understanding, a childish belief in a magical creator who intervenes at our beck and call is the flip side of the coin to the equally childish belief that humanity is somehow the result of a complex yet random process of dead particles bumping together.

The second so-called law of thermodynamics is a foolish hoax. If it were truly a law, you yourself, dear reader, would not be able to read this.

Cultural Depravity and the Anti-Social Media

When the direction of society  plummets toward the abyss, as is ours currently, all sorts of popular amusements become increasingly debased. Thus we are regaled daily by an increasingly ugly all manner of distempered meanness. What has been hyped and heralded as a high technology communications revolution is fast becoming a tool or perhaps better, a weapon for the forces of societal anomie.  The manifold proof of this is so omnipresent to those who would only pause and consider, I will not belabor the obvious. To rephrase a dictum from Friederich Schiller's aesthetics-- you shall know them from their entertainments...

The Crab Nebula Confounds Physicist's Cherished Models

Since astrophysicists admit that "There must be processes behind this that are as yet unknown," how can any of their big bang models and "grand" unification theories be taken for anything other than mere mathematical figments?

In a different light: The illustration shows the Crab Nebula as seen through an optical telescope (left) and an X-ray telescope (middle), with a graphic representation of the pulsars magnetic field (right). The light curve (bottom) shows the regular emission of gamma rays at intervals of 0.0337 seconds, or two pulses per rotation. For clarity two periods are shown. Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Hester, A. Loll, CXC, SAO, F. Seward et al., MAGIC Collaboration

The Washington Post: As Crappy As Ever Roasting in Hell

Today's WAPO runs a pitiful puff piece that stinks to high heaven re a cantankerous yet lovable CIA operative they call "Roger" who is responsible for gearing up the drone wars. I'm sure Katherine Graham would be proud from whatever bolgia she is currently roasting in.

This supposed drone war against Al Qaeda is in fact  itself a nothing but a cover for a geopolitcal rehashing of the British Empire's "great game."  Why has the widely acknowledged trail of the financing of the 911 terrorists by the Saudi "royalty" been left alone by the CIA. Why has the Libyan Al Qaeda operative Belhadj been given support of NATO to fight to topple Assad in Syria. And why does WAPO always act as a doggedly faithful cheerleader for such unsavory and disgraceful machinations as these?

The Financial Oligarchy's Counterfeit Economy

Some very clever mathematicians have just published a paper online that uses quantum algorithms to prevent forgery of currency. In its way, this is laudable I suppose. Yet these fellows and society would be much better served if they could find work in nuclear fusion or anti-matter research...

The problem is that for all the quantum mathematical sophistication in the world, there are very basic economic principles that are being tragically overlooked by academia either willfully or out of ignorance. Our economic potential has been looted over the last 50 years. We have a false or what one might fairly characterize as a counterfeit economy. The problem is that only a very tiny minority of our population has any inkling that there is a world of difference between mere money and a physically productive and progressing economy.

It is a stubborn mental delusion that is of the same precise order that Plato limned in the myth of the cave. In fact, the judicial murder of Socrates was performed because he had the unwavering courage to undermine through his unrelenting questioning exactly the crippling mental chains of his contemporaries in their slavish obeisance to an arbitrary and inhuman rule of an oligarchy modeled upon the disgusting gods of Olympus.

Today, we are at the fag end of an evil financial empire that has inculcated in our citizens a set of false and a irrational pagan beliefs about human society. (This emphatically includes those Bible thumping nominal Christians who in reality worship and pray mightily for that which is Caesar's.) The idea that faceless "technocrats" must enforce upon the world's populations pain and suffering to bring budgets under control is an evil delusion. Budgets and money are only necessary in so far as they serve the future well being of humanity. Economic worth is in the power of the human mind to create scientific breakthroughs that uplift the standard of living both in the here and now and the future.

The human mind alone exhibits this power for achieving ever higher orders of such progress. No fixed mathematical formula no matter how intricate and complex can ever encompass that power. (This puts to rest the nonsensical belief in so-called artificial intelligence.) The reason for this is simply that the assumptions that underlie all mathematical reasoning deal with what Nicholas of Cusa correctly called the "other." That is the finite and limited class of things. But it is the ever evolving nature of perfection that is the "non-other" whence flows the truly creative intelligence. And everything in the government of humanity must serve this ever less imperfect developing principle or society will not persevere but instead will indeed perish.

This quality of understanding is the only basis upon which science or art or any human endeavor worthy of the name will stand or fall--

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all 

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

The Mayan Calendar and WWIII: A Colloquoy

Wouldn't it be truly ironic if history came to an end this year because Israel's imminent bombing of  Iran escalates into a nuclear conflagration? But you ask yourself could the leaders of modern nations be so crazy as to blunder into WWIII? Perhaps viewing the performance of these supposed enlightened "democracies" the better question were how could we expect anything else?

In fact, isn't  history littered with just such miscalculations and manipulations time and again? All the tragic epic poems' choruses cry out the very opposite of "All's well that ends well"...Yet it is rather astounding that still somehow such an ill starred humanity has made it off this planet and walked on the moon.

Could we somehow just grow up out of the grip of a lunatic death wish which is hurtling us toward self destruction, indeed the world would be on a far better trajectory. Those that would rather not entertain such thoughts as these because "life is too short" or some such trite rationalization, may be merely sleep walking through their short stay among the living.

So, in the end, all us rational folks who scoff at the lurid headlines of tabloids predicting the end of the world in 2012 yet may be in for a rather shocking and rude awakening.

A Real Life Greek Tragedy

Who was the Greek god or goddess who ate their own children? A quick Internet search brings up Chronos, Lamia, Aura... (I'm sure if I take time I can find more.) It seems that such horrors were favorite tales of the Helenes about their depraved "gods" of Olympus.

Today's would-be Olympians are now at it again. And not in some far fetched mythological story, but in reality. Friday's London Guardian blog reports that due to the austerity being imposed upon Greece neo-natal testing is being curtailed.

This is the very real evil being imposed by the faceless plutocrats of the European "Community." Technocrats who sacrifice the well being of newborn children's health so some multi-billionaires and hangers-on can comfortably live in their undiminished lavish life styles. And this sort of evil monetarist movable feast is just now beginning. Its relentless appetite for more and more sacrifice will know no bounds. That is until these sordid financial gods are once and for all defeated...

...or perhaps this is feckless leader Obama's idea of science:

Playing With Friends Makes You Better At Video Games

The first analysis of team dynamics in a multiplayer first person shooter reveals that friendship is an important factor in success

KFC 03/14/2012

Barack Obama's Anti-Science "Flat-Earth" Newspeak

Here is a man who cares more about basketball than anything else in the great wide world (next to his own image in the mirror.) Here is a man who ended the US manned space program. A man who ended the fusion research program. Who now has the unmitigated effrontery to claim that his opponents (who I am in no way endorsing) are "flat earthers." A man who promotes the Mathusian anti-science outlook of Prince Phillip's WWF ("I want to be reincarnated as a deadly virus") "appropriate technologies" that will lead to intentional global depopulation.

Once again, Mr. Obama, I ask you to tear yourself away from preening in the looking glass to answer this question: Sir, have you no shame for such miserably and execrably dishonest and treacherous behavior? Or are you so far mentally gone that you know not what you are doing?

Kissinger Defends Putin as 'Russian Patriot'

Thus did Shakespeare's Iago congratulate Othello as a patriot of Venice. 

The Bio-relativity of Time

By the "time" we have conquered matter-antimatter reactions for space travel, "time" will be "bio-relative" because we will have a lifespan that is much greater than our 80 years or so of today. So that all these ideas of what is the length of a reasonable trip to another sector of our universe will have dissolved.

Proxy Revolutions Anyone?

These days 'twould seem that revolutions come and go like so many summer squalls. The state of the world economy is a tinderbox  for sure. But just as sure newborn Castlereaghs and Kissingers erupt into view like so many toads crossing highways. 

This puts me in mind of news stories that are inconvenient reminders of these quaint geopolitical games. Like the one about the Saudi Royal family's financing of the 911 hijackers. That didn't make much of an item, did it? I even heard Joe Scarborough sententiously opine of a morning that it was just one of those things we all don't wish to hear about.

Now there is another little noticed human rights violation sponsored by our friendly dark age Salafist allies we also don't want to hear about in Bahrain-- where the US has a military base...Hmm. "Move along nothing to see here," the infotainment media seem to be telling us.

LSD Conspiracy Theory

Call me a tinfoil hat conspiracy nut if you must, but I do not believe it is mere happenstance that as the world economy continues to spiral downward as if on the back of Dante's Geryon into Dis, that LSD is being promoted as a "cure" for alcoholism. Cui bono? 'Tis plain. The drug money launderers, the very same who have brought us the current economic cataclysm.

Evolve Or Die

We are all born amid a process. A process to which our actions contribute either development for the better or dissolution for the worse. That is the stark ineluctable fact . The mode of functioning of society is governed by certain principles. The foremost among these is the necessity for endowing successor generations with the means to solve whatever problems might conceivably confront them.

This arrangement adheres throughout all orders of phenomena. The reason for this is at base quite simple. Within the boundaries of any functional system, the inevitable change leads to a problem of some sort which must be overcome.

Optimistically embracing this challenge is what constitutes beauty for humanity. Indeed, the productions of such beauty in whatever form are the only lasting things of substance that remain as a legacy when we have left this conscious living state of being.

Today, the crisis that confronts us is defined by the urgent need to end the arbitrary rule of an age old evil financial empire. Either it is tossed aside and replaced or the ongoing experiment in self government will not survive. To believe otherwise, and pretend to be neutral or unaffected is to be like those that Dante depicted in the vestibule of Hell that forever are forced to race behind a banner with no name. Unfortunately, the greater part of humanity appears even at this late date to be inflicted by such irrational delusions.

Through Rembrandt's Eyes

The most spellbinding portraiture to date was surely Rembrandt's. In the following examples, the depiction of the sitter's gaze draws us into a variety of intense silent dialogue.

This gaze is remarkable in its eerie ability to look at directly at the viewer, almost as if "sizing" us up.

This early self portrait is a perfect study of a contemplative "lost in thought" gaze that I have ever witnessed.

And in this, dear reader, the elderly Rembrandt has limned such an intense and gripping melancholy that has been the sublime ideal of aesthetics throughout the ages. This is simply nonpareil drama.