Christie on the Brink

I am sure it was heartening to some when Christie tearily blubbered his insecurity on the precipice of declaring for the Presidency, yesterday. It is as the talking media heads are wont to opine, "It showed his human side." As if to intimate that usually we perceive his inhuman side all too readily...Even here though they exude confidence that Christie is a plain speaker who really knows how to tell his constituents the unvarnished truth about budget cuts, for instance. He has no qualms in shouting down the general hoi-poloi with a smirk or two where appropriate to put them in their place. Why! He is a down to earth lout just like the proverbial Joe six pack. In fine, Christie would make a whale of a candidate. 

Ambrose Evans Pritchard: City of London Conspiracy Theorist

Sorry Deutschland. History has conspired against you, again. You must sign away €2 trillion, and debauch your central bank, and accept 5pc inflation, or be blamed for Götterdämmerung. It is not fair but that is what monetary union always meant. Didn't they tell you?

So says the City's Delphic Oracle. He should have added "What Maggie Thatcher and G.H.W.Bush, et al. didn't tell you that their Euro scheme would be your financial downfall that they had planned all along...Pity, that." But, of course that would be overkill, wouldn't it?

Whoa There!

"If proved correct, this exotic particle called neutrino that is 60 nanoseconds quicker than light will establish the fact that humans can travel back in time."

I travel back in time, in my imagination, whenever I read a good book written long ago. Some of them are works of fantasy, just like this reporter's sentence above.

What to Expect If We Elect Christie (Too Horrible for Words!)

A Tub of Lard or a CaTaftstrosphy?

Answer to "The False Dichotomy of Greed"

I notice a fleeting mention of the word infrastructure here. This is perhaps a subconscious acknowledgment that there is a world of difference between the monetary economy and the physical economy. It is quite true that the acolytes of Greenspan such as Phil Gramm and his rather loutish epigone (if that were  possible) Rick Perry like to drone on with their sophistical "horse sense" bilge  about the family budget at the dinner table being just like government.
The problem is that unless you start from the recognition that the role of government, exclusive to the constitutional system of the United States, is "to provide for the general welfare" and work your way back from there, your mentality becomes enmired by the taint of the false belief that somehow monetary values are real. This failing perfectly captures the false reasoning of the likes of Mr Krugman that monetary stimulus is the solution.
Currently, we have a mass of illegitimate debt created out of thin air by so called financial houses. In a bygone era, we outlawed the practice known as "bucket shops." Today, the so-called "shadow economy" of too big to fail speculators is  with their quadrillions of derivative products created by autistic "quants" is nothing but a farcical and tragic repeat of those bucket shops.
(Then there is another childish variation of monetarism, hardly worth mentioning, that holds that gold as a physical substance is the source of wealth.)
The plain truth is that if the education system in this great land of ours were to simply instruct our students how Alexander Hamilton established a First National Bank that successfully rescued us from an untenable morass of debt, we would not be engrossed in such dead end "debates."
Hamilton directly and forcefully refuted Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations in his Report to Congress on the Subject of Manufactures. Smith's rehashing of the Physiocratic dogma that the bounty of nature is wealth with the mantra of 'buy cheap, sell dear" was nothing more than a celebrated apology for the evil of the looting colonial heist known as the East Indies Company.
Where did Hamilton locate in that document the source of wealth? In the ability of mankind to improve upon the "bounty" of nature by applying technological advances to manufacturing useful goods. This was strictly in keeping with Benjamin Franklin's motivation for the development of the use of paper currency, that was taken up by the use of the Pine Tree Shilling by the Massachusetts Bay Charter. Thus, the role of government is to regulate credit to secure improvements that benefit the physical well being of future generations.
Today we must reenact the Glass Steagall regulatory principle of the separation of depository institutions that serve the common good from the marauding investment houses that act to the opposite effect. Next the fictitious derivatives must go the way of the Dodo. Finally, we must use the levers of public credit precisely in the way that Alexander Hamilton did when he almost single-handedly rescued an unique experiment in self government from the brink of ruin. The way forward is to establish government backed credit for multi-generational great projects that will produce such benefits.

First Thoughts on the Neutrino Faster than Light Issue

Thankfully, it is the nature of the universe that we will continuously have an increasing density of anomalies to resolve as we advance in our less imperfect ignorance.  Thus, our understanding will ever stand in its relationship to the infinite at the brink of the inconceivable ongoing potency of creation. That is the essence of the great poetic irony of our mortality.

 The inexplicably energetic Crab Nebula

A huge loss at UBS will make it harder to revive its investment bank

 Poor Dracula-like bankers might not get new blood! What a Shame!

Through a Glass Darkly

As LaRouche has recently emphasized in Bernard Riemann's ground breaking work, The Hypotheses That Underlie  Geometry, there is a stark proviso that in the very large and very small, mathematical models (which are forever hemmed in by our far from perfect senses) must give way to physical investigations. This is why childish imaginings that go by the name of cosmological models are such unqualified failures. A child blows up a balloon and grows up to illustrate on a blackboard at an institution of higher learning a balloon-like "big bang model"---maybe with a few pin prick "black holes" here and there.

But there remains physically measured evidence that radically differs from this model adopted from the sense certainty of  simple vision. It has been given the ponderous name by the physics community of "anisotropy." And in the very large scale of astronomical proportions as well as on the very small infinitesimal it is abundantly evident. There is a sort of preferred directionality for all sorts of physical processes.

Now, the commonly held belief that has been inculcated into our collective subconscious is that there is a universal principle of entropy in all physical, living, and social processes. This and the equally inculcated belief that change or mutations in these systems is produced randomly. Leave out of consideration that if these two "laws" were actually operating 'twere impossible to explain, dear reader, how you or I are even engaging in thinking about these things. (Without resort to a parlor trick, hand-waving explanation of local negative entropy that somehow appears magically.)

How mentally depressing is it that the student must regurgitate a sort of pledge of allegiance to these absurdities in order graduate with a degree? Aye, and there's the rub. The oligarchic rub. But somehow, notwithstanding such outright poppycock, humanity progresses. There have been so far among us enough gadflies like Socrates to provoke us to throw off ideological blinders that would be the cause of our downfall.
And it is those very men and women that represent for humanity its own anisotropy.

(The foregoing reflection was initiated by  consideration of an alternative explanation of dark energy cosmology: Long-wavelength gravitational waves and cosmic acceleration.)

Insanity Revisited: A Foolish Dialog

"We need more money to pay our debts. Then print as much as we need!"  So say the "markets," and we have never known them to be wrong...Except when things fly off the handle. Of course no one would dare deny that we must honor our debts.

Wait a minute. Exactly what are we honoring here? Whence come these debts?

From the venerable banking institutions that we cannot abandon, because if we do then things will get worse.

Wait. Aren't things getting worse anyway?

Yes, but we have stanched the bleeding for now. So we need another round of "quantitative easing" because the financial panic is starting again. This must be calmed now at all costs.

Yes, but doing the same thing all over again? Won't that lead to more of the same and not solve anything?

Yes, but the only alternative would be too horrible to imagine.

What is that?

The end of the system...

But it sounds like the system is a never ending nightmare. Wouldn't ending it be a good thing?

Shut up, fool!

"Look Under the Skin" (If You Dare)

At the ever ghoolish IMF, the new chief, Mme Lagarde insists if we "look under the skin" of the world's economies we will find them to be healthy. I, for one, find that suggestion somewhat appalling...

If, dear reader, you perhaps think that I am being uncharitable to non English speaking native, consider that the policies of the IMF conditionalities have caused the immiseration and early death of millions on this planet. The image of  Michelangelo's carcass of flayed skin in his depiction final judgment rather facilely comes to mind...

Bernanke: End of the Rope?

Perhaps the Federal Reserve's latest plan should be called Operation Twist in the Wind. Are the big boys finally hung out to dry? Or are we in for another round of "quantitative easing?" At any rate, it would seem that the market for dry cleaning soiled trousers on Wall Street is heading for an all time high.

March of Folly Unabated

 "Solyndra Execs to take fifth"

Bill Clinton: “So if you want to save the planet, the best way to rebuke the global warmers is to be able to point to every single solitary community to a specific example where changing the way we produce and consume energy increased, not decreased, employment,”

Bill: have you been hitting that Vegan kickapoo joy juice too hard or what? 'Cause your wonkish self can't have missed the Solyndra right in in front of your eyes can it?

More New Age Doublespeak

The so-called "memes" that are belched forth, as it were, almost daily from the media sewers are quite telling. These sycophants have a slavish way of anticipating what will make their masters wag their tails in paroxysms of delight. Of late, you may have noticed the term "EU debt inspectors" being bandied about. How technocratic! Pray tell: what is the difference between a knuckle dragging mafia capo and these debt inspectors? Maybe a degree or two and a Brooks Brothers suit, as far as I can tell.

In the Category of What You Won't Hear from the Press Gangs*

"UMass researcher points to suppression of evidence on radiation effects by 1946 Nobel Laureate"

Of course, if we were processing our groceries with low level radiation, food borne illnesses would be nearly a thing of the past. But the media invokes images of Frankenstein's monster anytime the word "radiation" is uttered. (Mary Shelley's monster was as much of an attack on her husband's love of discovery as on Ben Franklin, by the way.)

*Press Gangs; Impressment of US sailors by her majesty's fleets that led to the War of 1812, also see quondam book by E A Poe associate Lambert Wilmer: Our press gang; or, A complete exposition of the corruptions and crimes of the American newspapers

Chicago Tribune: "Why Obama should withdraw"

While it is impossible to disagree with this assessment. The problem is waiting til the next election is too long. Obama should retire now...I'm sure he can be fully occupied with pick up basketball somewhere in Chicago or maybe Hawaii.

Cleaver: If Obama wasn't president, we would be ‘marching on the White House’

This is precisely just another reason why Obama is useful to the financier oligarchy. Like tissue paper, Obama comes in handy...for now...

Los Desastres de la Guerra

With the bodies piling up in Libya, the obscene face of low intensity warfare is unveiled more and more. If the US had merely baldly stated that it desired a regime change and control over the Libyan oilfields, and then invaded forthwith, that would have truly spared civilian casualties. Instead, we have another UN "police action" civil war with all the inhuman brutality that entails...The problem here is that we have become desensitized as a people to this. Daily we have a gawking, whorish media smilingly and mawkishly retailing of innocents killed in drive by drug gang warfare here at home. So why should we give pause when we are told of a young girl killed in her backyard in Libya by a stray bullet that one of the rebels shot into the air in celebration. Some party. The deceit of this charade is nothing less than disgusting,  unless, of course, you have been lulled and stupefied like so many among us. Take a gander, if you dare, at Goya's horrors of war etchings, look in the mirror and then ask yourself who is looking back?

Once Again, the Wrong Axioms

The War Against The Young: Warning From Italy and Japan
The war on the young is led “by cadres of elderly men, content to manage decline” and exacerbated by younger generations, who don’t seem to know what’s going on or understand the gravity of the financial situation that will hit them in the future. Luke Johnson, writing in the FT, describes the Italian and Japanese version of this trend.
Neither country has renewed itself because vested interests have failed to take the tough decisions. Their traditional cultures have not caught up with modern lifestyles. The male bureaucrats, policymakers and bankers who run all the important institutions must be forced to take radical steps to unleash the energy and imagination of their young, because in both countries they are very pessimistic. Many cannot obtain the job security and standards of living their parents took for granted. Traditional employees enjoy cast-iron protections, so companies are reluctant to create such positions.  So, only temporary or part-time work is available for most newcomers to the workplace.  Consequently, young Japanese and Italians pursue increasingly cautious lifestyles.  Nearly 80 per cent of unmarried Japanese between the ages of 18 and 35 live with their parents.  The ratio is nearly as high in Italy.Such unadventurous living means people do not grow up, and do not take risks – such as having children or starting a business. Meanwhile, their parents bask in comfortable retirement, busy consuming their considerable savings.Both nations are burdened by weak leadership, over-regulation, feeble productivity growth and a lack of economic dynamism – despite plenty of natural ingenuity and ambition. It appears that the vitality of Italy and Japan is being sucked out of their cultures by deteriorating demographics, high taxes, the burden of caring for elderly relatives and a youthful cohort with a diminished sense of self-confidence or optimism.The war on the young is most intense in countries (and, in the US, industries and states) which have the blue social model deeply embedded in their social institutions. It is an interesting struggle: these days, the young face serious trouble finding employment and will be saddled with debts run up by their elders as they grow up.
The older generations benefited from a kind of escalator system in life.  You step on the escalator after finishing your education and it almost automatically carries you upward in life, with higher pay and higher status until, at retirement, you step off and enjoy a good, level standard of living for the rest of your days.
One of the younger generations’ biggest problems is that many of those escalators don’t work anymore.  In Italy and Japan, companies are reluctant to hire young people on what American universities call “tenure track”; unsure about their future needs and resources they don’t want high cost employees that can’t be fired.  The older workers are too powerful to dislodge — just as in American universities the tenured professors are too powerful to give up tenure.  So younger workers increasingly are hired if at all on temporary contracts, with lower benefits and fewer prospects for promotion.
To succeed today, many young people need to recognize that no job will be waiting for them when they finish studying.  They are going to have to create their own opportunities.  It is a good time for creative entrepreneurs.
The young will not find it easy to strike off on their own, especially as fewer opportunities makes them more risk-averse.  But the examples of Italy and Japan suggest that many young people today face a choice: collective depression about their sorry state of affairs or somehow spurring elder generations to seize and nurture the potential embodied by passionate and hard-working youths everywhere.
Italy and Japan have particularly bad cases of the blues; with relatively small numbers of young people and large ones of older people, the old are not only cunning and entrenched in positions of power: they can still beat the kids in elections.  Politicians reinforce generational privilege rather than acting on the knowledge that, in the end, an economy that doesn’t work for the young is an economy doomed to decline.
What many countries need, and I include the United States, is a real youth movement composed both of younger people and of future oriented oldsters that looks at every political and social question from the standpoint of how does it affect the interests of youth.  This isn’t about convening death panels and cat food commissions for grandma, but it’s about making sure that our institutions and our policies are opening opportunities to the young rather than closing them off.

Why did the author think he must add the bit about cat food commission and death panels? Because he is assuming a zero sum game where there is just so much goodies to be parceled out. The whole article reeks of that type of cultural pessimism. The fact is we have a world  that dearly needs to invest in the real physical economy in order to sustain future generations. Why isn't this happening? Because we kowtow to the lunacy of bailing out the too big to fail financiers' gambling debts. We have lost our collective marbles and sorely need to snap out of it. No one needs to be sacrificed on the altar of Mammon. Not the elderly nor the young. That altar needs to be burned down to the ground. Right now there is a bill in Congress to reinstate Glass-Steagall that would bring back the separation of these financial racketeers from the traditional functions of banking. This is only a preliminary step to extending credit for the type of long term investments that can end the very wrong idea of lifeboat economics.

Open Plea to Obama:

Please, Obama, in the language you may understand "It's time to throw in the towel. Now rather than later. You are in way over your head. Take the money and go retire to a quiet beach in Hawaii. Can't you see the writing on the wall?"

More Solyndra Follies

'Documents show Solyndra sought second government loan guarantee for $469 million'

Solyndra's phase 2, also known as the bottomless pit...Gee! I heard Jim Cramer yesterday and he thinks Obama is doing real good...hmm...makes one wonder though.

MSNBC: "US taxpayers could be on hook for Europe bailout"

Good lord a'mighty. MSNBC be upset 'bout some IMF banker's dictatorship. Why that's real funny! Cozen they be right smack dab in the middle of it for all I know! What is this world a comin' to? Lord have mercy!

Geithner the Fixer

So, Geithner goes to Europe to opine, in his wisdom, on fixing the Euro...What haps cuz? Well it seems Timmy has been humiliated. And this is how it all went down:


“I found it peculiar that, even though the Americans have significantly worse fundamental data than the euro zone, that they tell us what we should do,” Maria Fekter, the finance minister of Austria, said after the meeting Friday morning. “I had expected that, when he tells us how he sees the world, that he would listen to what we have to say.”

Such criticism was echoed by other attendees of the meeting, including the finance minister of Belgium, Didier Reynders, who said Mr. Geithner should listen rather than talk. Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the finance minister group, said European officials did not care to have detailed discussions about expanding their bailout fund “with a nonmember of the euro area.”

Harrumph! Is this tongue lashing what the Savior of the international banking system deserves? Come home at once Mr Geithner and appear on a Sunday morning network broadcast where you are truly appreciated!

Something I Thought I Would Never Utter: Hooray for Hollywood

Disappointed Hollywood Giving Obama Cold Shoulder

The Oligarchy's Human Zoo

If you can watch (without retching) the television commentaries about Presidential politics these days it brings to mind that quaint Desmond Morris title. All candidates, in great animal spirits, are vying for tremendous sums of lucre from the upper crust in all sorts of bemusing ways. Here you have knuckle dragging troglodytes eliciting guffaws from the oh so polished and illuminated gliteratti... Then, there's the darling wannabe middle-of-the-roaders that could be presentable as a guest at any Hollywood soiree that sadly have no chance...Lastly, there are the chosen ones for whom it only falls upon to stay on message and the world is at their feet.

All in all, it is but a dumb show. A put up production. For you see, in the end it matters not to the controllers behind the curtains. They hold steadfast to their tried and true axiomatic belief that simple venality will out. And the modern day oracles of Delphi will rule over all as ever. And even if their rule portends a dark age of destruction the like of which never before imagined be unleashed-- well, what of it? "So be it, it is fated," they murmur deep into their hallucinogenic trance.

An Anti-Darwinian Tale of How Apparently Marginal Potential Evolves

From a recent study of sampling of oceanic bacterial genomes it has emerged that the mitochondrial precursor newly discovered group or clade designated OMAC (Oceanic Mitochondria Affiliated Clade) is less than 1% of all such bacteria. The most abundant group SAR 11, comprising 30 to 40% of bacteria, is also the most successful at cycling carbon and is small with a less complex genome.

Viewing this oceanic mix from the standpoint of evolutionary potential, it coheres with the hypothesis that living forms arise at first as rather marginal singularities in a global process of creation of new higher orders of energy throughput. In this case mitochondrial respiration. This tendency, not of random point-like mutations, but rather of ordered sequences of nonlinear evolution in the useful capture and processing of energy is the alternative to the dogma of the Darwinists, which imposes (mostly subconsciously) a vitiated sociological worldview of struggle over dwindling resources. 


The record of creation of ever higher orders of energy throughput stares these fellows in the face but they fail to see it because they are blinded by a mythical belief in the supposed universal second law of thermodynamics. Their minds have thus "adapted" and therefore represent an evolutionary dead end for mankind. 

Puzzling White House Patois

"The optics of a Solyndra default will be bad," an official from the Office of Management and Budget wrote in a Jan. 31 email to a senior OMB official


What sort of language is this? Optics? Does it mean optical illusion like Obama's tenure?

Risky Business

(Reuters) - A $2 billion rogue trading hit at UBS deals a savage blow to its new chief risk officer, previously head of risk at Lehman Brothers, and undermines claims by the Swiss bank and the industry that such events are a thing of the past.


Well, it would seem that person needs must be an expert at risk then!

New Obama Campaign Theme Song?

Breaking: Rumors of a new 2012 Obama campaign theme song. It's a mashup of two oldies but goldies. It goes like this:

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your heart it will creep
Step out of line, the man come and take you away
...
They're coming to take me away, ha-haaa!!
They're coming to take me away, ho-ho, hee-hee, ha-haaa
To the funny farm. Where life is beautiful all the time and I'll be
happy to see those nice young men in their clean white coats and they're
coming to take me away, ha-haaa!!!
...
You'd better stop now, what's that sound?
Everybody look at what's goin down

Breaking: MSNBC exclusive

Chris Matthews is rumored to have reiterated sometime late last that not only does Obama still create a cheap thrill up and down his leg but he also is of the opinion that Obama could dance the pants off Churchill. (This from a man for whom Churchill is the gold standard.) We promise to bring more updates as things develop, back to you...

Update: report just in: Obama was so elevated by Matthews comments that he has invited him to an exclusive blackshirt and tie soiree in his bunker…

Obama sets up new website: Attack Watch

Overheard in the checkout aisle: "If I make a list of relatives and neighbors who hate Obama, can I get any cash for it? I'm strapped..."

Poll: Obama is still popular abroad

Good, maybe he will renounce his citizenship and run for King of Sweden where he flim-flammed his "Peace Prize," while we are engaged in multiple wars around the world, including the latest one in Libya makes him impeachable. (We could only be so lucky...)

The Lessons of America's Lack of Mission and Loss of Aesthetic Beauty

Washington's farewell, Lincoln's Gettysburg, Eisenhower's warning, and Kennedy's mission statement taken together constitute a kind of continuum of elements of an American poetic principle. For that principle was forged out of the necessity of bringing about a revolution against the evil of the decadence of Europe's royal rot.

What is truly American in literature, music and art cannot be confined merely to what has been produced on these shores alone. In truth, from the perspective of the grand purpose set forth for America as an antidote to the cancer of the oligarchy infesting Europe, Beethoven and Schiller, for example, are heralds of what America must be as a beacon for the world. Keats was attacked mercilessly because his spirit was sensed to be too American by his sycophantic critics.

Contrast, if you will, the soldier carrying the poems of Schiller in the spirit of the sacrifice of William Tell and Jeanne d'Arc to war of liberation against Napoleon with the nightmare of the baby boomer draftee in the jungle of Viet Nam dosed with the acid rock hymns of Jimmy Hendrix or the Rolling Stones as a kind of numbing soporific. Amidst the bloodshed on the field there is another war here is for the soul of humanity...Contrast now how this higher sort of battlefield of the mind begat the pestilence of Nietzsche and Wagner's Hitler.

 What was always at stake? The destruction of the power of the idea of doing the Good for the sake of future generations. So the moral compromise made by one generation turning away from this mission is exploited so long as the power of the purse remains in the hands of the enemies of that founding principle. It is clear that we need uplifting of the soul of beauty even at this late hour. And who shall heed the call?

The Definition of Insanity Revisited

It is well known that Einstein was self evidently correct when he stated that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and again after it has proven to be a failure. Let us extend this principle to the behavior of society at large. Today we are gripped with a fanatical attempt by the powers that be to save the paper value of debt by inflicting brutal austerity on the elderly, ill, and dispossessed citizens of this planet. History is littered with enough such failed attempts to do just this that have always led to tragedy. World War II was the catastrophic result of the latest such bankers' experiment. Yet we are constantly being  told today by the press sewers that we have no choice but to impose the same policies again.

Thus, the magical belief that monetary value is sacrosanct is insanity writ large. It is high time for us to break with the past and enact reforms in the tradition going back as far in the past as the reforms of Solon of Athens and as recently as Alexander Hamilton's creation of the American system of sovereign credit. The unpayable gambling debts created out of thin air by the financial oligarchy must be repudiated and we must set a new course for our economy that is sane: credit for projects that will sustain our people in the here and now and out to the foreseeable future.

Olympians--Petraeus Inamorado

Tarpley writes: "If the US ruling elite should decide to jettison Obama, look for Petraeus’ star to rise at the expense of the “bunch of cranks” populating the current Republican field which is “the weakest since 1940,” in the words of John Weaver of the Huntsman camp."

I could not agree more with this assessment...

Flim Flam Crazy Obama

This from Ms Dowd: "Now Obama offers his own version of the split-personality presidency: Do we get Energizer Barry or Enervating Barry?...It’s still impossible to sum up what Obama’s presidency is about right now, except saving his own job."

As I have so often averred this... er... President is a con man, who cares only for how his image is doing. Nothing more nor less. He will stop at nothing to please those that pay his bills, even if it kills us...

Serious Stuff

This morning I come across something seemingly quite prodigious: The Biological Big Bang: The First Oceans of Primordial Planets at 2-8 Million Years Explain Hoyle/Wickramasinghe Cometary Panspermia

Behold! Let there be light! But there was not much here for me. For my poor reason was confounded. How comes it that all these models start out with a bang and then peter out ever and anon and yet...then mirabile dictu something fantastic haps that makes one rub one's eyes in pure amaze. Life! Zounds! 

So from the run down of the big bang into ever more disorder of space and matter we get...a wholly new never before seen higher order of stuff we call life? What? How? But this seems like some sort of sorcery. Hmm. How to save our oh so scientific law of universal entropy? Maybe we can afford an exception and still save our darling law? Yes. How about that? Maybe it's a lemma...

1. Big bang!

2. Universal entropy

2.2 Regional negative entropy (Panspermia)

2.2.1 Life 

2.2.2 Humans

Oh ho! The fever is over! The illusion called living is over at last! Thanks Maxwell! Thanks Heisenberg! Now I can rest assured. La!

(Apologies to Mr Poe, inter alia)

Game Theory and Oligarchy

It has always been my reading that among the means of suppression of natural human creativity by an oligarchic clique is to in effect bottle it up in a sort of labyrinth of "games." The writing of Pascal on the subject of why the ruler must be amused so that the horror of his own Ozymandian downfall need not be contemplated. It is ironically significant then that Pascal's work on probabilities of game playing led to Leibniz' development of a singularly powerful tool for improving human productivity: the calculus. Today we have Bill Gates, "artificial intelligence," and video games. (Oh, and Obama's quaint fixation on basketball.)

Now, it is not as if there is some "vast conspiracy" out there to capture the mind of man and rob it of a useful application. Rather, it is a worldview that produces a certain type of output. It is through the slavish acceptance of certain "common sense" axioms that we as a society are ensnared.

Such as: "money rules the world." Why? One might ask. But to ask such is to deny the certainties of one's senses. Why, it is the way of all flesh, thou dolt! It would be like denying that you are ruled by the principles of pleasure and pain. Like denying the right of Caesar, or King George, or the George Bushes...
And now dear reader enough folderol. Behold the latest very learned essay on games and artificial intelligence and tremble:

Measuring Intelligence through Games

Tom Schaul, Julian Togelius, Jürgen Schmidhuber

(Submitted on 6 Sep 2011)

Artificial general intelligence (AGI) refers to research aimed at tackling the full problem of artificial intelligence, that is, create truly intelligent agents. This sets it apart from most AI research which aims at solving relatively narrow domains, such as character recognition, motion planning, or increasing player satisfaction in games. But how do we know when an agent is truly intelligent? A common point of reference in the AGI community is Legg and Hutter's formal definition of universal intelligence, which has the appeal of simplicity and generality but is unfortunately incomputable. Games of various kinds are commonly used as benchmarks for "narrow" AI research, as they are considered to have many important properties. We argue that many of these properties carry over to the testing of general intelligence as well. We then sketch how such testing could practically be carried out. The central part of this sketch is an extension of universal intelligence to deal with finite time, and the use of sampling of the space of games expressed in a suitably biased game description language.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Museo_del_Prado_-_Goya_-_Caprichos_-_No._39_-_Asta_su_Abuelo.jpg

My, my...Very learned, indeed...

Thoughts on Joseph Conrad

What really is at the bottom of all worthwhile literature? Take the case of one Polish ex-patriot in the heart of darkness of her majesty's Empire. To put a fine point on it, the literary tradition of combating the evils of the Empire is nowhere so evident for those that read not merely to be entertained than in the writings of Joseph Conrad. Take for instance the creation of the proverbial lone assassin zombie (derivation: see Old Man of the Mountain) in his novel The Secret Agent. Jump to Lee Harvey Oswald's curious declaration before his prearranged demise "I am a patsy." Or read his Nostromo for how an intelligence asset goes off the reservation. Then see Qaddafi's curious career starting at the royal Sandhurst academy. Now we hear of Qaddafi's loyal cooperation in the spooky practice of renditions of al Qaeda operatives. Ah, Perfide Albion.
See The Bravo by James Fenimore Cooper for the Venetian roots of today's City of London wetworks.

The Ineluctable Realities of "Political Economy" Rips Off the Mask Sometimes

So we now hear that German EU commissioner Herr Oettinger is calling for Greece to be governed by technocrats from the EU to enforce austerity. Unspeakable effrontery! Hasn't this happened to Greece a few times before? Maybe just last century?

Deconstructing Obama

In all the hoopla re Obama's jobs speech, I guess the liberal denizens of the media haven't noticed that Obama's payroll tax extension is a backdoor and rather devious attack on Social Security, Hmm? Take a deep breath and think about this for a moment, if you please. Look (grand)ma: no more Social Security!

Why The Muse Eludes Even The Well Intentioned

William Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity displays a rare talent for ferreting out metaphorical irony in Keats, Shakespeare, and especially Shelley, who he fully "got." It is a downright shame though that he swallows whole hog the poppycock that Poe was some sort of peyote eating lunatic a la Aleister Crowley. In fact, Poe spent his literary life exposing just such charlatans. The idea that his verse is mere surface and just so much pretty (or noxious) noise (here Empson cynically shoves The Bells at us as proof) is fallacious.

Poe realized that the Boston Brahmin "frogpondians" were engaged in a mission to betray the purpose of America's founding. This he stated over and again in a myriad of ways throughout his works. (Empson's praise for T.S. Elliot is significant in this regard.) The mystical and mellifluous babble of these would be transcendentalists is nowhere exhibited more perfectly than from the prose of one Amos Bronson Alcott. To wit:

"Nature is quick with spirit. In eternal systole and diastole, the living tides course gladly along, incarnating organ and vessel in their mystic flow. Let her pulsations for a moment pause on their errands, and creation's self ebbs instantly into chaos and invisibility again. The visible world is the extremist wave of that spiritual flood, whose flux is life, whose reflux death, efflux thought, and conflux light. Organization is the confine of incarnation,—body the atomy of God."

Alcott's, like his admirer Thoreau's, Utopian fiascoes were part and parcel of the British sponsored anti-science irrationality imported by way of Calcutta, among other haunts of their opium trade. (Of which the Boston blue blood merchant vessels of the Lowells, et al. enjoyed their fair share as Tory sympathizers.) It is this inane type of twaddle that Poe so artfully excoriates in "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether," for instance. Poe's criticism is continually aimed at routing out and ridiculing this very sort of non sense for the American reading public. This is the same sort of behaviorist and deconstructionist rot that the American Psychological Association's style book of symbolic mysticism imposes on our woe betid students today.

So what was the "hidden metaphor" in poems like Annabelle Lee, that Empson, and his ilk, couldn't appreciate? What but the very soul of beauty under attack here upon these American shores...

PBS Deletes Obama Historical Gaffe from Speech Claiming Lincoln Founded Republican Party

Obama, an illustrious Harvard professor cannot stoop to proof read the material he reads from a teleprompter. T'would be infradig.


Postscript: Mea culpa. It turns out that this may have been an ad lib by our esteemed President. Lack a day! He is loosing it.

Prince Charles Warns of Global Extinction Due to Too Much Human Consumption

Let us American patriots decode what the royal rubbish that balmy Prince Charles is spewing really means: "What we need is a global government to enforce population reduction of  genetically inferior wogs by whatever means necessary so that we of superior bloodlines may procreate as we please."

Thus the prince proves himself a fit successor to her Satanic Majesty's request.

This is the ugly face of why we fought and won the Revolutionary War. Unfortunately, most of my fellow Americans are so besotted by the very same monarchy's sponsorship of the hallucinatory Age of Aquarius that outright and pure evil is heralded as "pop culture" day after day ...

Shadows of Immortality

The poetic muse Calliope ever and anon dwells in the shadowland. Will your wit deserve to live on in writ?  If it serves an immortal purpose adequately, then yes it will. What is that? It is written even in the stones, if you know what question needs asking. Less imperfection is our willful destiny as a species. And we honor that perforce willingly or not...That irony is the soul of wit. Now we that we should be astonished that spacetime has a preferred direction rather than being blown up like a spherical balloon. Perhaps even the oh so learned professors of believing only in childish models in place of the ongoing creation will stop and ponder on higher themes, oh muse of mine.

Keynesians, Neocons, Libertarians...Oh my!

All this palaver over nothing...The problem is that monetarists whether they be neo-liberal Keynesians, free market deregulators, or libertarian followers of Ayn Rand have no inkling whatsoever that there is a science of physical economy.
The fact is that there must be a reckoning with the literally quadrillions of worthless debt that was created by financial houses like Goldman Sachs. The return to the FDR era's Glass-Steagall regulation would allow this nightmare to be reined in. We must pull the plug on the too big to fail financial houses. Without this, all this sound and fury is just a tragicomic farce...

Why I can't let this one go

Normally I take little notice of the grammatical or spelling peccadilloes of contemporaries. But sometimes the outre rears its head and I must take heed. Today's NY Times comment section displays one such case. In it appears a comment by a professed "English PhD." The following sentence is verbatim:

But we found ourselves out of sink with the era of "greed is good." 

Perhaps this is a sine of the end times for our poor, brutalized language.

More Solyndra Funnies

Let's see... According to the Bloomberg article, Taxpayers Rank Behind Solyndra Investors, George Kaiser bundled $50,000 to $100,000 for Obama's election campaign and then Solyndra gets $385 million from Obama, which the  George Kaiser Family Foundation which has a 35.7% stake in. Now that's quite a multiplier effect: 385,000,000 divided by say 75,000 is 513.333...This is even better than Goldman Sachs Mortgage  Backed Securities Ponzi scheme. Too bad that solar energy is a complete and utter fraud (like Obama.) Of course, Mr. Kaiser denies any personal stake in Solyndra...

Even Ms. Snarky Maureen Dowd Is Speaking Some Truths

"On MSNBC, the anchors were wistfully listening to old F.D.R. speeches, wishing that this president had some of that fight. But Obama can’t turn into F.D.R. for the campaign because he aspires to the class that F.D.R. was a traitor to; and he can’t turn into Harry Truman because he lacks the common touch. He has an acquired elitism."


Albeit half truths, for like Harry Truman, Obama is a property of the City of London and Wall Street (although his value is fading fast.)

"Former MI5 Chief Wants America And Britain To Talk With Al-Qaeda, Work Out “Political Settlement”"

That Perfide Albion should act so should surprise no one. Look at the  way the cousin of the Queen, George W. always walked hand in hand with the Salafist Saudis funding Al Qaeda. Look also at the way the funding for the 911 conspirators by the Saudi royalty has been covered up time and again. MI5/6 has closed the books on the spurious and risible grounds of national security on the BAE/al Yamamah arms deal investigation that provided the dough for Prince Bandar who is part and parcel of the same funding apparatus...The 911 commission's finding on the Saudi funding for the terrorists has been withheld. While all commercial flights were ordered to halt after 911 by Bush, the family of Osama bin Laden were given an exception by the self same administration and flown back to Saudi..Qui Bono?

CIA Ghostwriting Qaddafi Anti- WMD Weapons Speech?

One wonders whether by some quirk of fate that the said ghostwriter might not have been the very same individual who penned Obama's Nobel peace prize...It certainly would smack of the typical hypocrisy one might sniff out along the fetid swampy shores of the Potomac these days...

The Paradise of Celestial Visions

In Dante's immortal comedy it is fitting that he adopts the vision of a sort of relativity. For Dante the Creator has no bounds in the universe and thereby man in His image must have none either. So Dante is escorted by Beatrice to the moon and looks back to behold the blue orb of the earth. Here seven centuries later we have the reality in our hands. The paradise of this vision is to fashion humanity's purpose of continuous creative progress to no bounds.The Earth in this panorama from Saturn's eclipse is a seemingly insignificant blue dot. Yet upon that dot is playing out a hopeful comedy whose result is yet unclear. The spirit of Aeschylus would have us free Prometheus. And so we must strive.

Breaking: Qaddafi Worked for MI6 and CIA in Their Renditions of Al Qaeda

So from this we can conclude that Qaddafi believed that he had a sweetheart deal with the MI6 and CIA. After all, he is a graduate of Sandhurst, don't you know, old boy? But then again, I suppose there is no honor among thieves. (Except for W. Look at the way he has always walked hand in hand with the Salafist Saudis funding Al Qaeda. Look also at the way the funding for the 911 conspirators by the Saudi royalty has been covered up time and again. MI5/6 has closed the books on the spurious and risible grounds of national security on the BAE/al Yamamah arms deal that provided the dough for Prince Bandar who is part and parcel of the same funding apparatus...)

Black Unemployment Highest in 27 Years at 16.7%

These black unemployment figures prove that Obama is a closet neocon (unlike Clarence Thomas)... Obama is totally opposed to equal oportunity. His latest scheme the "Georgia Works" fiasco underlines this reality. It is nothing but creeping corporatist neocon crapola...Even the weasely trade union bosses like Trumka can't stomach it.

Why Monetarism Is a Disease

Here is an excerpt from a Der Spiegel interview with historian Hans -Joachim Voth. While the description of the social ills that result from the arbitrary imposition of austerity on a population by the financier oligarchy is correct, the piece also points to the inability of Europeans to break from the assumption that this is just the way things must be. To emphasize, this is why the only take down and replacement of the whole rotting carcass of the derivative securities can only originate from the United States.

SPIEGEL: Why do you think the euro was a dumb idea?

Voth: Because, at its core, it is a bad solution for a nonexistent problem -- a political object of prestige with massive economic disadvantages. Everyone thought the common currency would cause all of the structural differences in the euro-zone countries to automatically disappear. But, after 2000, the low interest rates in the euro zone artificially fuelled growth in the weaker countries and caused real estate prices to skyrocket. This kind of speculative bubble is fun while it lasts. But every party comes to an end eventually. And then comes the rude awakening: Growth slows down, and unemployment rises. Since the banks have given out too many loans, they become a brake on growth. This causes an increase in the structural divergences that were actually supposed to decrease. The euro can't survive for long without having much more redistribution between richer and poorer member countries or much more flexible economies. And neither of those things is politically feasible.

SPIEGEL: Attempts to tackle the crisis with austerity measures have met with social rejection and have triggered political crises. Is that the price that has to be paid for instituting reforms?

Voth: Over the next five years, as long as German taxpayers don't write the bond markets a golden check, there's going to be one cost-cutting program after the other in many European countries. This could be accompanied by increasing social unrest. Austerity and anarchy are closely linked. We've been able to unambiguously establish that with a minor study looking at the period between 1919 and 2009.

SPIEGEL: Are you thinking perhaps of Heinrich Brüning, Germany's chancellor between 1930 and 1932, whose rigid belt-tightening policies drove the country into recession?

Voth: Brüning's cost-cutting programs didn't trigger the global economic crisis, but they did make the effects in Germany massively worse. What we're interested in is the impact on social harmony. Jacopo Ponticelli and I didn't just focus on German history; instead, we looked at the histories of 28 European countries over the last 90 years. It is a fact that savings amounting to just one percentage point of GDP are accompanied by social unrest. And when they reach two or three percentage points, it massively increases.

SPIEGEL: And these kinds of social explosions just exacerbate the economic situation even more.

Voth: Any time a country becomes politically instable as a result of growing economic insecurity, you'll see a sudden drop in growth. This creates a snowballing effect: Pressure from the bond markets causes a reduction in government-provided social services, which leads to street demonstrations. This causes mounting insecurity, and the economy contracts -- and because the economic situation gets more dramatic, the state has to make even more cuts.

The Noxious Solyndra Affair

Solar energy is fine for plants, but for humans it is nothing but a ridiculous boondoggle. It never pays for the energy inputs without subsidies and never will. Also, contrary to the GREENSHIRTS'* baloney, it is very polluting:

"Solar power is not all sunshine. It has a dark side—particularly in developing countries, according to a new study by a University of Tennessee, Knoxville, engineering professor.

"A study by Chris Cherry, assistant professor in civil and environmental engineering, found that solar power heavily reliant on lead batteries has the potential to release more than 2.4 million tons of lead pollution in China and India."

*Greenshirts: same old Eugenics Nazi Malthusian crap in a new window dressing. See Prince Phillip'a ravings about being reincarnated as a deadly virus to kill off the "wogs." Also see his co-thinker (sic) Prince Bernhard's career as a Nazi SS officer.

Jonathan Swift's Floating Isle of Laputa Where Pseudoscience Is Profitable 

Libya: The Humanitarian Mask Comes Off Yet Again

So the new "government" in Libya, made up sycophants of multinational oil interests and Al Qaeda operatives, is now indiscriminately putting blacks in prison. Is this the outcome of our illustrious President's vaunted and much ballyhooed human rights mission? Where is the black congressional caucus' outrage? We already know Obama couldn't give a damn...

Men suspected of being mercenaries for Moammar Gadhafi, are held in a district sports center next to the medina, set up as provisory jail in Tripoli, Libya, Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2011. 

New CNN Poll: 65% give Obama thumbs down on economy

And the remaining 35% are rumored to be clinically insane...

Sound and Fury Signifying Less than Nothing

Obama's speech before Congress on creating jobs had to be delayed...Who cares, except the news media? Americans with the least bit of savvy already know it is just another shovel ready full of the end product of the "post industrial society's" ongoing collapse.