Star Gazing

We map the universe by looking through the past as light travels to our neighborhood. But the interesting question is, given what we know of likely scenarios of its potential evolvability, what does the map of the known universe in its entirety look like in the here and now? Because perhaps approaching the issue in this way may lead to thinking of universal structural and functional interrelatedness in new and useful ways.

Political Skulduggery

In the bowels of Dante Alighieri's Inferno, Count Ugolino, the traitor, gnaws upon the skull of the corpse of his former political ally Ruggieri. Isn't this an apt metaphor for both today's Democratic and Republican parties currying the favor of high finance to impose brutal austerity to collect debt. But which party is the better at it? Of course, "debts must be paid by someone," intones the devil. Who will perform the best as his beloved minion? He or she will have the honor to reside there in the pit of hell next to Satan. Gnawing away for eternity...

Global Warming.Cui Bono?

Mathusianism. Whence comes it? An oligarchical hatred of humanity. Prince Phillip's stated desire, for example, that he would like to be reincarnated as a deadly virus to reduce the world's population. This hatred persists over millennia. It is old as mud. It is the hatred of the pagan would-be gods for discoveries that lift humanity out of the muck and mire. Thus the myth of Zeus' torture of Prometheus the bringer of fire.

More Goldman Sachs Bedtime Stories

Today's NY Times reports that Goldman did everything in its power to bring down the mortgage backed derivative securities market to put the squeeze on AIG to pay off its gamble that the mortgage valuations would collapse. Of course, anyone not drunk on the hype that mortgage values never collapse, foresaw that exactly what Goldman bet on was in fact inevitable.

Therefore the contents of this article completely gives the lie to the oft repeated line by a supine media "that no one could have known that the markets would crash." In actual fact, Goldman not only knew but did everything to make that happen, including inducing its partner in crime Paulson to grovel for more loot, on bended knee, crocodile tears and all, before a scarified congress. What a sordid, shameful con game these "honorable men" have foisted upon us rubes.

Jail All The Bankers First!

"Goldman Sachs Group Inc., trying to show it is responsive to public pressure over its pay, said Chairman and Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein would get a $9 million bonus for 2009, a fraction of the $68.5 million payout he got in 2007."

The discriminating reader will, of course, be amused by this foregoing sentence. In actual fact, it were meet that Messer Blankfein find himself in the hoosegow, alongside his brethren in crime Messers Paulson, Geithner, and Summers. Surely, John Dillinger and Baby Faced Nelson are rolling over in their graves with envy at Mr Blankfein's hubris.

(A thousand pardons dear reader. I foolishly left off Messer Bernanke from my list.)

Is the World's Oldest Profession Economics?

From today's headlines:

Economy Sheds 20,000 Jobs But Rate Drops to 9.7 Percent

While a sharp increase in the number of people giving up looking for work helped to depress the jobless rate, some details of the employment report were encouraging. The number of "discouraged job seekers" rose to 1.1 million in January from 734,000 a year ago.

Hmm. Very interesting. Shouldn't we encourage the Labor Department for the sake of full disclosure to label these "discouraged workers" as "desaparecidos" a la Argentina or perhaps they might prefer the Stalinist "Damnatio Memoriae" method of photographic erasure. I guess the statisticians will do anything to provide the illusion that there is a "recovery" even though the corpse of the economy rots apace.

The Current Essential Difference Between Democrats and Republicans

In order to adduce the distinction between the Democratic and Republican parties in the United States today, first one must recognize that the only appropriate arena within which to make an unbiased judgment, ab initio, is the province of animal psychology.
The careful reader may object that I have heretofore shown only disdain for any claim that behaviorism is to be accorded the label of the science of the human psychology. This is indeed quite true. No such strictures imposed by a supposed science that limits the scope of humanity's capacity to a fixed set of behavioral patterns could ever account for the creative problem solving evinced in our species' nature time and again. Therefore behaviorism deserves only opprobrium. However, in this instance, you must bear in mind that we are dealing with the degeneration of humanity into these bestial parties which adamantly refuse to partake of precisely that truly unique human quality of problem solving.
Moreover, it is the characteristic behavior of that particular animal from time immemorial referred to as man's best friend with which we must compare the subjects of our inquiry. Every dog has its day. One party is up now, only to be toppled by a disgruntled and betrayed populace. They both serve the interests of their lords in their own way though. They serve as shills like the proverbial dog and pony show keeping one's attention on the circus while one's pocket is picked. This is all the current debate about budget cutting signifies. Nothing more. The Democratic dogs and Republican dogs snarl and yelp, meanwhile ladies and gentleman our future is being stolen by the pickpockets of the financiers that control the show from beginning to end.

What Leibniz Did Not Imply

When Leibniz wrote that music is the pleasure the mind derives from counting without being aware of the act of counting, he foreshadowed the continuous development of music up to the summit of Beethoven's late string quartets. However, he would sorely disapprove of any aesthetics that would try to impose counting or any of its mathematical extensions as the essence of what he called the pleasure of the mind. This is what Beethoven himself so publicly parodied in that vulgar mechanician Maelzel. This is what Furtwaengler execrated in the conducting of Tuscanini. And it is where Goethe went off the rails in his theory of color.Likewise in Felix Klein's dubious study of curvature and statuary.

"Why the mirror lies: Individuals with body dysmorphic disorder see their own faces differently "

Conversely, according to Leonardo da Vinci from his notebook writings, the opposite can be true. That is, that one's notion of facial beauty may be unduly influenced by narcissism. However, Hieronymous Bosch appears to have had a variation of this problem. He has been reported to have uttered that he only let his children out at night because they were so ugly.

Headlines We'd Like to See

JFK 1962: "We shall go to the moon." Obama 2010: "We shall not go to the moon. (We shall go to hell, however.)"

"Fish Oil May Prevent Psychosis"

Then I say this--force feed cod liver oil to all our representatives and the media--NOW!

Idea for New Direction for Obama

Use the MASH theme song from now on: "Suicide is painless-- it brings on many changes"