Zeta Oph and Seeking Out Hidden Truths

Each morning for quite some time now I go to the often quite spectacular APOD website. Today's entry on Zeta Oph (below) struck me and provoked the following train of thought.


As the astronomer states: "Zeta Oph is 65,000 times more luminous than the Sun and would be one of the brighter stars in the sky if it weren't surrounded by obscuring dust....Its strong stellar wind precedes it, compressing and heating the dusty interstellar material and shaping the curved shock front."

A number of ideas immediately leapt to mind. They were, not necessarily in this precise order, Riemann's seminal paper on the propagation of shockwaves and my extrapolation of its principle as a driver of human history; a passage from Augustine's City of God on why the truths in Christianity must be searched for; and the "Olbers paradox” (which it turns out was actually formulated first by Johannes Kepler and that Poe in his Eureka also grappled with as well.)

Augustine was, of course, combating a form of mystery religion called Manichaenism, akin to today's followers of the statistical mathematics chaos theory known as "quants" on Wall Street. First, it must be said that the fallacious supposition of the soi disant Neo-Platonists that Socrates or Plato had some sort of secret divinations revealed only to inner elites is pure garbage. Much like the principle of the purloined letter, what is truly "hidden" from the overwhelming bulk of humanity is solely due to their terrified reluctance (and in many cases downright greed) to admit to themselves the otherwise plain truth that they are deluded by a superstitious "faith" in the inviolability of the "powers that be." This is the reason that the Republic's timeless metaphor of the cave will endure "for ever and anon."

Cotton Mather: Father of Astrobiology?

Below is an excerpt from the introduction of Cotton Mather's heretofore unpublished "Biblia Americana." Benjamin Franklin's historic achievements avowedly draw their inspiration from Mather's guiding principle that society must be so organized as to accomplish and perpetuate the most good. Among my ongoing themes within these pages has been to debunk the theoreticians of mere statistical a-causality. Upon reading Mather's treatment of the same, I am awestruck by his foresight, writing three centuries ago of what today is called the field of astrobiology. Just last week a neighboring planetary system, twelve light years distant in our galaxy was found to be in the habitable zone. It is no accident. but rather part of our very (mostly unheeded) constitution as citizens of this unique experiment in government, that we have before us such a stark set of choices. To invoke the great Augustine, evil is not and could never be equivalent to good: it is merely the deliberately willful choice to not participate in the ongoing lawful universal development of our species' unique power to discover the beauty and the good.

"The concentric Revolutions of the Planets about the Sun, proceed from a Compound Motion; a Gravitation towards the Sun, which is a constant Energy infused into Matter, by the Author of all Things; and a Projected, Transverse Impulse, in Tangents to their several Orbs, that was also Imprinted at first by the Divine Arm upon them, & will carry them around, until the End of all Things. Now, admitting, that Gravity may bee essential to Matter; and that a Transverse Impulse might likewise bee acquired by Natural Causes; yett, for all the Planets to move about the Sun, in Circular Orbs, there must bee given to each, a Determinate Impulse, & these present particular Degrees of Velocity, which they now have, in Proportion to their Distances from the Sun, & to the quantity of the Solar Matter. For, had the Velocities of the several Planets, been greater or smaller than they are, at the same Distances from the Sun, or, had their Distance from the Sun, or the quantity of the Suns Matter, & consequently his Attractive Power, been greater or smaller than they are; now with the same Velocities; They would not have Revolved in Concentric Circles, as they do, but have moved in Hyperbola’s or Parabola’s, or in Ellipses very Eccentric. And what wee thus assert about the Primary Planets, may also bee applyed unto the Secondary. Now, that all these Distances, and Motions, and Quantities of Matter, should bee so accurately & Harmoniously adjusted, in this great Variety of our System, it is above the Fortuitous Hitts, of meer, blind, material Causes; it must certainly flow, from the Disposals of that infinitely Wise and Good Being, who, as Plato saies, αεί γεωµετρει, j alwayes acts geometrically. If the Planets had moved in such Lines, as wee have described, sometimes they would have approached the Sun, as near as the Orb of Mercury, and sometimes have exorbitate{d} beyond the Distance of Saturn, & some of them, would have quite left the Sun, with{out} ever seeing him any more. Now, the very Constitution of a Planet, would have been Corrupted, & Ruined, by such a Change of Interval, between It, and the Sun; and no Animals could ever have endured such Excesses of Heat and Cold.

"Furthermore, The Æthereal Spaces are perfect{ly} Fluid; they neither do assist, nor, do they retard, the Revolutions of the Planets, which rowl thro’ those Regions, as unresisted, as if they moved in a Vacuum. They might, any of them have moved in Courses opposite unto the present, and in Planes crossing the Planes of the Ecliptic, in any kind of Angles. Now if the System had been fortuitously framed by the convening Matter of a Chaos, how should all the Planets, as well the primary as the secondary, move the Same Way, from the West to the East, & in the Same Plane too, without any considerable Variation? Here would bee Millions of Millions of Odds to an Unit, in such a Cast of a Chance; and therefore, tis to some Divine Conduct, that such a Regular Harmony must bee ascribed. Especially, if wee consid{er,} that the smallest Planets, are scituated nearest the Sun, & each other; whereas Jupiter and Saturn, that are vastly greater than the rest, & have many Satell{ites} about them, are happily placed at the extreme Regions of the System, and Immensely Distant. At so wide a Distance, they do in their Conjunctions, a little Disturb one another, by their Gravitating Powers; but if such huge Masses of Matter had been scituated much nearer to the Sun, or to one another, the Disturban{ce} in the World, must have been consider{able.}

"To pass on; Our Ear{th par}ticularly, is placed so conveniently, {that} the Creatures which inhabit it, live and {thrive} in their Habitation. The Distance fro{m}{the Sun as it now turns, most likely is} Better, than any greater or smaller Distance would have been. Tis mathematically certain, That the Heat of the Sun, is, according to the Density of the Sun-beams, and is Reciprocally Proportional to the Square of the Distance, from the Body of the Sun. By this Calculation, if the Earth should now Revolve, suppose, in the Orbit of Mercury, the whole Ocean would boil with Extremity of Heat, & bee exhal’d into Vapours, and all that growes upon the Dry Land, would bee consumed as in a Fiery Furnace. But suppose the Earth should bee carried as far off as the Orbit of Saturn; There the whole Globe would bee one Frigid Zone, the deepest Seas under the very Equator, would bee frozen to the bottom, and there would bee nothing of Animation, or Germination in these forlorn Regions of the Universe. Place the Earth yett at any other Distance, and still you alter it for the worse, proportionally to the Alteration. Tis then in a Place, which an infinitely Intelligent, & Voluntary Agent hath assign’d unto it. But if any one think, How then can any thing live in Mercury, or in Saturn? Lett him also think, That the Matter of each Planet, may have a Texture very Different, which will dispose the same to bee acted on, by greater or smaller Degrees of Heat, according to their several Scituations, & that the Lawes of Life, and Vegetation & Propagation, are the Arbitrary Pleasure of God, and may vary in every Planet, as Hee pleases, to us Incomprehensibly. Tis enough, that the Texture of Ours, is inconsistent with any other Scituation: Wee could not wear Flesh and Blood, any where else.

"Moreover; The Earth Revolves with a Double Motion: while tis carried round the Sun, in the Orbis Magnus once a Year, it perpetually wheels about its own Axis, once in a Day, in every twenty four Hours, turning all the Parts of the Equinoctial to the Rayes of the Sun. Conspicuous are the Uses of this Vertiginous Motion; this tis that successively gives Day and Night, over the Face of the whole Earth, and makes it all over Habitable; Without this Diurnal Rotation, one Hæmisphære would ly Dead, in perpetual Darkness, Frost, and Cold, and the best Part of the other, wasted with a permanent Heat wherein it must ly basking without Intermission. The Vicissitudes made by the Earths Moving about its own Center, are better, than an Exposing of the same Side alwayes unto the Sun.

"But whence came these Vicissitudes? The Earth might Annually have compassed the Sun, without such a daily Turn; as wee see the Moon ever showes the same Face unto us. Indeed, Shee does in her menstrual Orb, turn all her Globe to the Sun, and enjoy Dayes and Nights, alternately Fourteen Times as long as ours. But should the Earth bee deprived of its Diurnal Motion, one half of it, must never see any Dayes at all. Behold, that Glory of Him, that made Things, as now they are Besides; Compare the Diurnal and the An{nu}al Revolutions of the Earth, which have a {ve}ry Different Degree of Velocitie. In {ev}ery Natural Day, all Parts of the Equator {h}ave some thing more than Three of the Earths Diameters, which makes about Eleven Hundred in the Space of a Year. But within the same Space, the Center of the Earth is carried more than fifty times as far, once round the Orbis Magnus, whose Wideness wee now assume to bee Twenty Thousand Terrestrial Diameters. The Annual Motion therefore is more than Fifty Times swifter than the Diurnal. But it must bee acknowledged, That since the Earth Revolves not upon a Material, but a Geometrical Plane, their Proportions may bee varied in Innumerable Degrees, any of which might have happened as easily as the present. What was it then that præscribed this particular Proportion and Celerity to each Motion? Tis certain, That there is a Meliority in the present Constitution. Suppose the Annual Motion of the Earth, were now performed in Six Months rather than Twelve; The Seasons then, would bee Twice as short as they are, and the cold Winters would overtake us before any of our Fruits could bee Ripe. Were the Motion Retarded, the Mischief would on the other Side be as fatal; for most Countreyes would bee so parched & effæte, by the Draught of the Summers, that they could never have an Harvest of a Store sufficient for the Consumption of a Double Year.

"And then, for the Diurnal Motion of the Earth; suppose it made only Twelve Circuits in a Year; Then every Day & Night, would bee Thirty Times as long as they are Now, and not at all suited unto any Humane Affayrs. But on the other Hand, suppose it wheeled a Thousand Times about its own Center, while the Center describes one Circle about the Sun; Then an Equinoctial Day would bee but Four Hours; and such Hasty Returns of Evening would sadly confound, all our Labours, and our Journeyes, & our other Affayrs.

"Yett further; Lett the Mode of the Earths Diurnal Motion bee considered. Conceive an Imaginary Plane, which passing thro’ the Centers of the Sun, & of the Earth, extends itself on all Sides as far as the Firmament; This Plane is called, The Ecliptic; and in this, the Center of the Earth is carried without any Deviation. But then the Axis of the Earth, about which its Diurnal Rotation is made, is not erect, unto the Plane of this Ecliptic, but Inclines towards it, from the Perpendiculum, in an Angle of Twenty Three Degrees, and an Half. Now, why is the Axis of the Earth, in this Particular Posture, and not in any other? Was this, by Chance, or from Choice? Wee all know, that this Inclined Position of the Axis, which keeps alwayes the same Direction, and to construct Parallelism to itself, is the sole Cause of those grateful, and needful Vicissitudes, of the Four Seasons of the Year, and the Variation in the Length of Dayes. If wee take away the Inclination, it would absolutely undo our Northern Nations; the Sun would never come nearer us, than hee doth now, on the Tenth of March, or the Twelfth of September. But would wee rather part with the Parallelism? Suppose then, that the Axis of the Earth, keeps alwayes the same Inclination towards the Body of the Sun. This would cause indeed a Varietie of Dayes, and Nights, and Seasons, on the Earth, but then every particular Countrey, would have alwayes the same Diversity of Day and Night, and the same Constitution of Season, without any Alternation; some would alwayes have Long Nights and Short Dayes: others again perpetually Long Dayes and Short Nights: one Climate would bee sweltered with everlasting Dog-Dayes, while an eternal December blasted another. But shall the Axis rather observe no constant Inclination to any thing, but vary and waver in all Manner of Uncertainty? Truly, there could bee no Health, no Life, no Subsistence in such an Irregular System: by the surprizing Nods of the Pole, wee might bee tossed backward or forward, from January to June, yea, possibly from the January of Greenland, to the June of Abyssinia. Certainly, the present Constitution, is more Beneficial for us, than any other. Some have Imagined, that if the Poles had been erect unto the Plane of Ecliptic, all Mankind had enjoy’d a Perpetual Spring, & a very Paradise upon Earth, with all the Comforts, in the utmost Measures of Longævity. But this perpetual, and universal Spring, is a meer Poetical Fancy; & bating the Equalitie of Dayes and Nights, in all other Points tis an Impossible Imagination. To the People, who dwell near the Equator, the Spring, so much admired, would bee an Insupportable Summer: and as for the Countreyes nearer the Pole, tis not a Spring that would answer their Necessities; they must have nearer Approaches of the Sun, with longer Dayes, & a less Obliquity of his Rayes, a Summer, & an Harvest, for the Ripening of their Fruits, or else bid an eternal adieu to the very best of their Sustenance. An equal Distribution of the same yearly Heat, would no more bring our Fruits unto Maturity, than such a quantity of Fuel, gradually & successively lighted, would make Water to boil, which being all kindled at once, will do it immediately. A perpetual Equinox would render the best Parts of the Globe, no other than perpetually Desolate. And the Expectation of a Constant Serenity, from such a Position of the Sphære, this also, is but precarious: For the affections of the Atmosphære, do not proceed only from the Course of the Sun, but also from the Scituations and Exhalations of the Earth, & many other uncertain Causes. Nor are the Equinoxes of our Year, upon Experience found, more free from Tempestuous Exorbitances, than any of the other Seasons, which also dismisses the Fond Hopes of Longævity, from such a Spring, as these do talk of: Longævity, can’t bee prov’d, the Effect of meer Calm; and the Inhabitants of the Torrid Zone, are generally, both shorter-lived than other People, & inferiour to them in Strength, Stature, & courage, as well as Intellectual Capacities."

Leonardo: Salvator Mundi

Social Media: The Tyranny of Democracy

Today's worship of rock stars (and of course it goes without saying, the debauched "British" royalty) are the modern day equivalent of what Socrates was rightly accused of defaming and enticing youth to question the legitimacy of. The "democratic majority" would, I am certain, if there were the possibility of a  vote on  the Internet today, on the fate on a latter day Socrates likewise endorse a death sentence. Thus does the spirit of irrationality enforce its own timely demise. This is why it was lawful that the vaunted democracy of Athens was engulfed in the graveyard of history. Will the United States of America also be brought down and with it the aspirations of scientific and artistic wonders of societies yet undreamt of?

HSBC: A Study in the Wages of Sin

The Hong Kong Shanghai Bank Corporation cut its teeth on financing the forced imposition of the opium trade into China, which trade the Chinese fought the Opium Wars to end. The fallout of the cover-ups of the assassinations of JFK and RFK enabled Eisenhower's "military industrial complex" to engage in a never ending series of senseless geopolitical wars starting with Viet Nam. As a result the population has become increasingly culturally pessimistic in its outlook. (Kennedy's stirring outlook for NASA's mission is now a dim memory, for example.) This has been the perfect laboratory for the promotion of the drop-out, tune-in, turn-on malaise foisted upon us via the corporate entertainment media starting with the baby boomer generation. It is of quite lawful that the very same oligarchic financial interests emanating out of the City of London are repeating their timeworn strategy to this very day.


These same interests today through their practice of manipulation of farcical partisan politics have induced a majority of our "dazed and confused" population to submit to their bestial outlook. However, these latter day plutocrats cannot avoid the wages of their own debased plots. They cannot but be destroyed for their slavish violation of natural law. The only real issue is whether any of our posterity will emerge to outlive this notorious episode of the death throes of their monetary "empire."

Balaam and His Ass  Rembrandt

IMF Urges "Final Solution"

A mere two days after drug pushing oligarch George Soros' darling Obama has een re-installed, Christine LaGarde's IMF splashes spectacular headlines worldwide trumpeting the need for a "permanent solution" to the fiscal cliff. In Greece there is 60% unemployment among young adults. Pharmacies are with life saving medicines. Heating oil companies are folding due to the vicious austerity already imposed by the technocrats of the financial oligarchy.

Trillions of dollars and Euros are being printed to shore up the illiquid books of banks like HSBC, that have been making multi-billions in easy money laundering the blood money of the drug cartels.

The drum beat will grow louder daily now from the confines of these "elite" real life monsters for the end of any pretense of mercy to the most defenseless among us. I, for one will continue to announce a resistance to this utter and mind numbing evil. May God help us.

Why Simply Measuring the Unemployment Rate is a Farce

All of this subterfuge from what should be called simply the bureau of statistics is totally beside the point. After Thomas Jefferson retired from the White House, he set up an execrable slave nail manufacture where 10 year old boys were whipped by brutal overseers if they couldn’t or wouldn’t keep up. This was “full employment” writ large.


Today our nations’ physical infrastructure is literally crumbling. We have a so called post industrial/information age/consumer economy of glamorous gadgets to wile away our hours in vacuous amusement so that we won’t dwell too much upon the decay. The percentage of the work force in prison is disgraceful.


We have allowed ourselves to be systematically looted by an irrational oligarchy. They worship the power that control over the financial system gives them. They have step by step removed the barriers of their tools in trade: the ability to create new instruments of chicanery. Glass-Steagall and Bretton Woods had to be abolished for this looting to proceed. So Arthur Burns instructed Nixon to end the mechanism of settling the imbalance of trade by removing the gold reserve from the dollar. Thus leading to currency arbitrage de-linked from our nations’ trade in physical goods. Gramm-Leach-Bliley ended the separation of depository institutions and speculative financial/insurance houses. Thus began the creation multi trillion dollars of esoteric “financial products” which in reality were nothing more than a replay of last century’s “bucket shops.” We are now nearing the fag end of this process. The speculative oligarchy’s real agenda has come to the fore. For instance, listen to their steadfast insistence on imposition of “IMF conditionalities” on Greece, et al. This, while there is an increasing crisis of spreading scarcity already of life saving medicines. This is the logic of forcing the paying off of uncollectible gambling debt known as derivative securities created out of thin air.


What is required is an orderly process of bankruptcy of the so called investment banks and an end to the illusion that we can honor their insane instruments of speculation. Banks must be brought back as depository institutions under a renewed Glass-Steagall. Further, we must establish sovereign control over credit issuance to both rebuild the wrecked physical economy and promote the development of large scale water projects here and internationally under a renewed Bretton Woods. Finally. we must return to the vision of the era of JFK’s space mission in financing manned space exploration and massively upgrading nuclear fusion research as an inexhaustible source of energy and resources through application of magneto-hydro-dynamics processing. Only with such reforms will employment numbers have any real meaning.

Kepler's Method Relevant Over Centuries

The recent NASA model regarding the asteroid belt and preconditions for life prompts us to reexamine Kepler's marvelous scientific prescience. For it was uniquely his discovery of an underlying  harmonic design for the solar system that first correctly showed that the asteroid belt was located at an an-harmonic orbital interval comparable in the musical domain with the so-called Devil's Interval. Furthermore it is entirely lawful that for the composition of physical reality to engender the conditions of continuing biophysical and noetical evolution, this type of incongruity would be a "built in" feature of the cosmos across all scales. This is precisely the contribution that Leibniz built onto Kepler's work with his concept of pre-established harmonic ordering and his polemical attack on the Newtonian's foolhardy belief in a Deus Ex Machina or God the Clockwinder.

The principle that humanity will always have the avenue to alter its behavior to conform with this ongoing process of perfectibility is the only truth for our species survival that exhibits sufficient reason in absolutely differentiating ourselves exclusively as in the domain of the Noosphere.

This illustration shows three possible scenarios for the evolution of asteroid belts. In the top panel, a Jupiter-size planet migrates through the asteroid belt, scattering material and inhibiting the formation of life on planets. The second scenario shows our solar-system model: a Jupiter-size planet that moves slightly inward but is just outside the asteroid belt. In the third illustration, a large planet does not migrate at all, creating a massive asteroid belt. Material from the hefty asteroid belt would bombard planets, possibly preventing life from evolving. 
(Credit: NASA/ESA/A. Feild, STScI)

Debate Night or Fright Night?

The stench from both parties is so overwhelming that anyone picking sides shows themselves to be either a gullible dupe or a slimy opportunist.

It was if we were being asked: "Dear voter, whose vision of hell is more persuasive? Obama's or Romney's?" The devil I know vs the one I don't? Satan love 'em both...

Bankers to voters: which do you prefer? Electric chair or gas chamber? The choice is yours. Please vote for your favorite party.

In keeping with the choices the American people have this year for President, I propose election day be moved to Halloween. (Mothers please keep your children indoors!)

Witches' Sabbath (The Great He-Goat)    Goya

The Fable of Christine Largarde and Crocodiles

When the dollar was removed from the gold reserve status (not gold standard) by the advice of Nixon's Arthur Burns in 1971, the metric that Bretton Woods had created for settling the imbalance of trade among nations ended. This created a burgeoning market in frenzied speculation (carry trade) in currencies or arbitrage. The next step toward the nightmare of control over the economy came with the repeal of the law which had reigned in speculators from controlling the whole of banking Glass-Steagall. The lunacy of decoupling currencies from real physical production reached its zenith with the spectacular blowout of derivative securities that the world continues to reel from to this day. These derivatives are in essence no different than what were once known as "bucket shops," which were judiciously outlawed.

The problem is the literally mentally ill belief that wealth is equivalent to money. Unfortunately, the vast majority of humanity is afflicted with just that very belief. If you start from the premise that what is required is an economic policy that establishes an increasing standard of living for citizens of sovereign nations as opposed to a dictatorship of a financial aristocracy then you have taken the first step along the road to sanity.

The sad truth is that the IMF (and World Bank) from its inception has been nothing but an instrument of enforcement of the ukases of speculative financial houses based in the City of London and secondarily New York. So, I fear, that for Ms. Largarde to bemoan austerity brings to mind nothing so much as the tears of a crocodile.

New Opinion Poll: Who Is Uglier?

Given the mass media's apparently insatiable appetite for instant opinion polls these days, yours truly has come up with a doozy that I believe would even out-perplex Buridan's Ass and out-riddle the legendary Sphinx. To wit: in all senses of the word both physical and metaphysical, high and low--Who is more ugly Alan Simpson or Henry Kissinger?

The Stupendously Ugly Simpson Bowles Commission Crawls Out from Under a Rock

Well folks--you knew this was coming. That hideous, reptilian visage of Alan Simpson suddenly is befouling television screens everywhere daily now. (As Goya has so piquantly remarked some people's faces belong behind their trousers.) It is quite telling that he is the anointed darling of our financial and hence media establishment. (I respectfully decline to sully these pages with that personage's image out of respect for the delicate feelings of the fairer sex. Be forewarned.)

This brings to mind the debate between Abba Lerner and Lyndon LaRouche wherein the oh so very liberal Lerner opined that if Germany had carried out the austerity of Hjalmar Schacht then "Hitler would not have been necessary." You see, giving the devil his due, so to speak, is quite clearly the equivalent to insanely attempting to collect on the worthless "gambling debts" of the City of London and Wall Street so quaintly called derivative securities at the expense of killing off the "useless eaters" and igniting WWIII.... Isn't it?

The Ignominious Nobel Peace Prize

Let us pause to quietly reflect a bit dear readers. First those fine connoisseurs of peace in Sweden give their prize to Barack Obama, who forthwith unleashes a rampage of indiscriminate terror against innocent civilians via drone bombings. Now they award their vaunted prize to the European Union which even now is forcing the sick, poor, and elderly to go without medicine in Greece in order to bail out the gambling debts of the City of London.

One would only hope that once and for all these fine gentlemen would show their true colors for all and sundry to behold in the light of day and award the next peace prize posthumously to Adolf  Hitler.

Broadcasting "Hate Speech" to Aliens?

The quixotic project of beaming tweets with the hashtag #tweetsinspace to the planetary system GJ667Cc later today apparently will be censoring what the designers call "hate speech" from their broadcast.

I quote: “It all goes,” says Kildall, the new media exhibit developer for the Exploratorium. “Even political positions I don’t agree with: ‘Vote for Romney,’ ‘Vote for Obama.’” (All except hate speech, he added. We might not want to betray our baser nature to the ETs.)

However, I would assert that urging anyone to vote for either of the evil tweedle-dee/tweedle-dum twins  Obama/Romney is indeed equivalent to "hate speech." What a polluted abomination we will be broadcasting toward these perhaps innocent life forms. I fear it will be tantamount to proof positive to any sentient aliens out there that there is no intelligent life on this planet. Alas...

The Message of the Grand Mufti of Egypt is to be Applauded

I applaud this much needed message from the Grand Mufti. It is in the spirit of the great work of ecumenical harmony of Nicholas of Cusa De Pacei Fidei. This same Cusa was instrumental in promoting the voyage of Christopher Columbus that led to the founding of the United States which enshrouds in its Constitution that very same principle.

This same spirit today cries out for a new concordance among nations and faiths in order to get on with the mission that humanity so urgently requires. This mission is the human right to meaningful work that supplies the security of food, shelter, healthcare and ultimately provides the individual an opportunity to participate in the ongoing perfection of mankind's continuing mastery over nature. This purpose being striven for by us then will give reality to the truth that we are all created in the image of the living God.---

By Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa

With the publication of yet another set of insulting cartoons against the Prophet of Islam, it is becoming increasingly obvious that we are living through dangerous times, in which the world has becoming alarmingly polarized and obstinate. The current crisis has been precipitated by a number of factors. There is no one single cause to which we can point, in the hopes that eradicating it will magically solve our problems. Rather, this is a complex matter, involving the inability of each side to understand the worldviews and commitments of the other. The particulars of the events of the past week are known to all, but the underlying causes are deeper and more intractable, and cannot simply be wished away.

To properly understand them necessarily means taking seriously the politics that obtain between Islam and the West at this point in history. It is naive to simply point to individual films, cartoons, or writings which explicitly seek to provoke and insult Muslims as the motivating cause of these conflagrations. Rather, one must keep in mind the many points of conflict between Muslims and Westerners that obtain all over the world today. One need only scratch the surface to uncover grave violations associated with the war on Iraq, regular drone attacks in Yemen and Pakistan, the treatment of often innocent Muslims in Guantanamo, the demonization of Muslims by far-right European parties and the banning of their symbols by European legislatures, and the conflict that has persisted for decades in Palestine. To turn a blind eye to these serious and enduring conflicts is to remain wilfully oblivious to the underlying factors which make coexistence and rapprochement between Islam and the West so difficult.

In such a context, to then insist on igniting these simmering tensions by publishing hurtful and insulting material in a foolhardy attempt at bravado – asserting the superiority of Western freedoms over alleged Muslim closed-mindedness – verges on incitement. Of all Muslim symbols, there is perhaps none more sacred than the Prophet Muhammad himself. Muslims can barely utter his name before their conscience obliges them to pray for God to bless him and grant him peace. Hundreds of millions of Muslims revere not only the Prophet, but the very city of Medina which he made his home, and ardently aspire to visit it at their first opportunity. It is no exaggeration to say that Muslims love the Prophet more dearly than their own selves, as the Qur’an characterizes them. To imagine then, crude representations of a man so dear to them is unbearable to the vast majority of Muslims.

None of this is to condone violence of any sort. Indeed, the example of the Prophet and his Companions – the greatest sources of Muslim normativity – bear witness to their enduring the worst insults from the non-believers of his time. Not only was his message routinely rejected, but he was often chased out of town, cursed at, and physically assaulted on numerous occasions. But his example was always to endure all personal insults and attacks without retaliation of any sort. There is no doubt that, since the Prophet is our greatest example in this life, this should also be the reaction of all Muslims. As the Qur’an instrucus, “Be patient, as were the great prophets.”

The call of all Muslim leaders must be to protest these instances of hate speech in only the most peaceful manner. Violence of any sort must be condemned outright. Here it is equally important to point out that some self-appointed religious leaders have failed to act responsibly. In the tense environment that currently prevails in the Muslim world, to display these provocations and to speculate on the supposed conspiracies behind them is to act recklessly. Unfortunately, the proliferation of satellite channels and other media have opened the door to all sorts of people who have only the advancement of their own interests and popularity in mind, and not the well being of the Muslim nation, the Middle East, or the world at large.

Yet, there is room for hope, and our actions should spring from the optimism that the world’s religions –Islam no less than any other – are ultimately interested in achieving harmony between peoples and peace on earth. I have, throughout my tenure as Mufti of Egypt, called for strengthening the bonds between the world’s great faiths, as well as the civilizational cultures which currently divide us as much if not more than religious affiliations. In this context, I have been involved in a number of forums devoted to dialogue across what seem to be chasms of suspicion, building across them bridges of understanding. The great virtue of these forums are that the quickly allow each side to appreciate the other’s positions, and tensions soon evaporate amongst the goodwill on display, even if agreement takes more effort and discussion. This is a model that applies to not only religious leaders, who have been at the forefront of such initiatives. Political leaders, too, must look beyond their short-term benefits and adversarial attitudes, and media outlets must broaden their horizons and take seriously their responsibility to the outside world, not just their accountability to profit margins and the bottom line.

The Legacy of Political Parties and America's Destruction

In 1799 Aaron Burr set up a fund to build a clean water delivery system in New York City. He did this as a ruse to create a bank by inserting a clause for the incorporation of the Manhattan Company in the eleventh hour in the state assembly where he served at the time. Burr played upon the good intentions of Alexander Hamilton to deliver clean water to the city suffering from perpetual outbreaks of cholera. In a young nation that was founded upon Benjamin Franklin's impulse to carry out Cotton Mather's vision of a "society to do good," Burr had an easy go of such ruthless subterfuge. The water project was a shill to set up what is now known as the "too big to fail" JP Morgan Chase Manhattan mega conglomerate monstrosity.

Later when he was Vice President, Burr finished off his greatest nemesis Alexander Hamilton in a duel that was completely one-sided since Hamilton refused to fire. Under indictment for murder in New Jersey, Burr arrived in Washington to be feted by the enemy of Hamilton's National Bank, President Thomas Jefferson. That bank created by Hamilton to finance material improvements and manufactures was the raison d'etre of the survival of the United States. This was an ongoing object of hatred that culminated in several financial panics when its opponents gained the upper hand to crush its functioning. For example, it was the protege of Burr, Martin Van Buren of Tammany Hall who induced that exemplar of  "democracy" Andrew Jackson in tearing down the Second National Bank.

In 1837 a panic resulted as the sequelae of the Jacksonians creation of speculative land banks. Edgar Allan Poe's satiric burlesques King Pest and The Devil in the Belfry aimed at Jackson and Van Buren's treachery  were understood by his readers as salvos in a political war. The Bostonian and New York "literati" were nothing more than fronts in cultish democratic experiments for the Boston Brahmins opium running Clipper Ship magnates and the Wall St speculators. Poe and Cooper, inter alia, took on these interests in their writings and were scurrilously hounded by them as a result.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt had managed to break the control of JP Morgan, et al., in instituting the Glass-Steagall law that prevented the use of bank deposits to be used for gambling in spurious "bucket shop" type schemes and by setting up Bretton Woods gold back reserve system to settle the imbalance of trade in order to secure stable currencies.

Nixon took the advice of Wall Street's Arthur Burns to end the gold reserve Bretton Woods system in 1971. This led to so-called arbitrage in international currencies thereby creating a bubble of speculation. The likes of JP Morgan were salivating for more speculative loot however. They got that when Glass-Steagall was abolished by their control over both parties in Congress and the White House in 1999.

Today, we are confronted by a crazed attempt by the Federal Reserve's Ben Bernanke to prop up the collapsed worthless trillions of dollars of speculative "derivative securities" that were the outcome of Gramm-Leach-Bliley take down of Glass-Steagall. This is nothing more that history repeating itself.

But there is a twist now. For what is being played out on the stage of the world by the Kissingerian geopolitical interests behind these sordid would-be oligarchs of high finance is far more destructive than merely a bank collapse. The world has been at a crossroads in terms of the potential threat of nuclear war. Never more so than now with the looming countdown of the launching of an Israeli strike against Iran. Meanwhile Obama and Romney parade around in pettifogging political attacks and ludicrous grovelling to curry favor with these very moneyed interests that have seen fit to step by step destroy the very principle of Hamilton's successful rescue of the nation.

Why Atheism in Science is a Belief in Magic

My dog believes in magic. When I take her for a walk in the morning her brain associates that walk with her owner's desire for her to politely defecate out of doors. When she has eaten a breakfast prior to the walk, she saunters at a leisurely pace. When she has yet to gobble up her food that morning, she hurriedly and unceremoniously poops post haste.

Now this behavior is a form of a belief in our domestic pets which is the equivalent of what Johannes Kepler so astutely derided as the algebraic method. In a world where our mentality is governed by the false belief that things happen randomly we wish that we may use a formula to predict the future. If we know the value of points in a random "space" then as things go bump in the night we can know how things will wind up down the road a piece. Because you see we started here and next to here is another here. So x + y will always equal z. We are truly dogged in our belief in this concatenation of things...

But how on earth then did we emerge out of this random soup you ask? We scientists are working on that. (Squaring the circle and alchemy were the precursors of today's chaos and string theories.) Kepler said that he was hypothesizing how the Composer continuously creates an ongoing perfection with mankind uniquely qualified to comprehend that creation. Newton infamously said Hypothesis Non Fingo. Magister Newton also said through his magical biblical eschatology that the world will end in 2060. So too the nominalist logical positivist followers of Bertrand, Lord Russell declare that the second law of thermodynamics is all there is. Progress, you see in their mystical worldview is all for naught, no matter how many lifeless dimensions there are in the "landscape," all cows are infinitesimal black dark matter nothings...

How James Fenimore Cooper Foresaw the Twin Nightmares of Obama and Romney

From Cooper's novel Home as Found, which was panned by reviewers as too caustic a political manifesto and not mere entertainment, we have the following pertinent philippic from one of its protagonists:

 '' ...I allude to the very general disposition to confine political discussions to political men. Thus, the private citizen, who should presume to discuss a political question, would be deemed fair game for all who thought differently from himself. He would be injured in his pocket, reputation, domestic happiness, if possible; for, in this respect, America is much the most intolerant nation I have ever visited. In all other countries, in which discussion is permitted at all, there is at least the appearance of fair play, whatever may be done covertly; but here, it seems to be sufficient to justify falsehood, frauds, nay, barefaced rascality, to establish that the injured party has had the audacity to meddle with public questions, not being what the public chooses to call a public man. It is scarcely necessary to say that, when such an opinion gets to be effective, it must entirely defeat the real intentions of a popular government. (...) Instances are to be seen as often as a man is found freeman enough to have an opinion independent of party. It is not for connecting himself with party that a man is denounced in this country, but for daring to connect himself with truth. Party will bear with party, but party will not bear with truth." (My emphasis added)

 Now, dear reader you might have noticed how true these very words still ring especially today. Today, when we have the wretched display nightly of a Hollywood pornographic caricature of an election (and electorate.)

For who, in their right mind, would not be able to see through the charade that both parties are "only in it for the money?" No matter with what obsequious and pious  platitudes their bald face phony rhetoric attempts to woo the gullible Internet or television watching marks with so called biblical morality on one side or women's rights on the other. The game, you see, is all of a piece.

And the game of this political sideshow, dear reader, is to fleece not only the sick and elderly, as if that were not bad enough. The game is to kowtow to the looting depredations of the cabal of high finance that rigs the economy only in its favor. What we very simply have is an illicit creation of speculative debt by an oligarchy. The power behind the creation of  that debt is more sacrosanct to both parties than the very future of our nation (and humanity.) For in reality, both damnable parties agree that pay that illicit debt we must no matter what. And so they squabble furiously in the political muck and mire devouring each other while America burns.

So, had Cooper's America actually heeded what he had accurately limned in his day, we would not be in the pickle we have been in for these many years. At the time, the popular press scolded him for his politics with the hue and cry that the public only wanted pleasure from its novelists. Yes, give the people what it wants cries our latter day would be P.T. Barnums. Ah, but that's entertainment...What you see is what you get.

On Biophysical Cyclical Unity

Today I came across a rather thought provoking theoretical piece entitled "Can Resonant Oscillations of the Earth Ionosphere Influence the Human Brain Biorhythm?"

Riemann's exploration of various biophysical cycles and their interdependence in his vastly under-published philosophical "fragments" immediately suggests itself as a model here. His injunction that the normal sense certainty of soi disant common sense breaks down at the level of the very large and very small is instructive in this regard as well. For in what usual and ordinary way of thinking would connect cellular waves at the level of DNA and cosmic ones? Recently LaRouche brought attention to the remarkable weakness of the organ known as the brain when compared to actually creative human thought. 

Thus, the universe acts upon itself, by way of human endeavor, in such a way as to create a mission orientation. For we are entering into an era of cosmic ray intensification on the Andromeda side of our galaxy.

Why Pessimism Is So Very Ugly

The other day I came across an interview on the Internet that I had the good fortune not to have chosen to watch. It was on the comical question of why the genre of science fiction has become so singularly "grungy." Think the incongruity of marvelously advanced technology coupled with a culture that is quite barbaric. (Sound familiar?) What is the message?

"Back in the day" (oh how I hate that phrase) of cold war the object of the "intelligentsia" was to prevent at all costs the rising tide of scientific optimism in the post war population. (Iron curtain "meme" and all that, you see.) So, what better way to proceed than by the newly re-minted method of doublespeak. So the CIA/MI6 project (perhaps better denominated as an excretion) called the Congress of Cultural Freedom was hatched. Freedom, you see, was the freedom of the irrational will. (Nietzsche had been given a bum rap by that "ruffian" Hitler. His philosophy needs must be rehabilitated.) Thus was modern "art" and all its ugly and pessimistic sequelae in so-called popular culture, including "science fiction" oh so "democratically" complotted against the very purpose of the experiment of the founding of the United States.

Thus we have had nearly a century's worth of a surfeit of pestilential ugliness, when what is needed is a "surcease of sorrow." I believe it is well past time to get back to the future of truthful optimism, and stand with the spirit of Beethoven's "Nicht Diese Töne," dear reader. Don't you?

The Riddle of the Inexplicable Lunacy of Religious Warfare

Now, were we (in the royal sense of "we," you understand)  to abjure as insane the practitioner of some assorted and senseless mayhem upon humanity,  then we were to be applauded as quite reasonable. Howsoever, if we were to opine that a hoary, long standing, time honored and venerable religion were guilty of the same then we were quite out of season.

How comes this, you ask?

Unfortunately, that question is out of order. It is simply tradition and may not be questioned. To do so is indicative of a rather nasty bit of bad manners in the questioner, don't you know. It were tantamount to the pulling of one's pants down and defecating in public, for instance. (Sorry for the frank language. But it needs must be said.)

So, thus, we glibly ignore the hecatombs of human immiseration and death continuously piling up ever and anon at the altars of religious fervor. And what is the object of worship of  this immemorial legacy of such inhumane insanity?

Must you ask? It is, of course, the love and worship of Money! The which, is merely a charade, a chimerical invention-- like the zero. Yet, we are enslaved and in mental fetters, as it were, and still, to this day, ready to kill or be killed at the drop of a hat, if anyone, in authority,  were to pronounce that money no longer had any value.

Alas, this is the sorry and sad state of affairs in which humanity, even at this late stage of its existence, continues to find itself. Will we ever outgrow this delusion?

That is the question.

Mind Control Research is Prima Facie Evil

"New brain research refutes results of earlier studies that cast doubts on free will August 7, 2012 by Bob Yirka in Neuroscience (Medical Xpress) -- When people find themselves having to make a decision, the assumption is that the thoughts, or voice that is the conscious mind at work, deliberate, come to a decision, and then act. This is because for most people, that’s how the whole process feels. But back in the early 1980’s, an experiment conducted by Benjamin Libet, a neuroscientist with the University of California, cast doubt on this idea."

I think the appropriate question about this entire line of "research" is what would motivate anyone in attempting to prove that humanity is without free will? I cannot imagine anything other than a rather dark and sinister explanation for such a compulsion.

The Science of Interpreting Dreams

Do angels truly visit us in that sleeping state of semi-consciousness when we awaken to vivid recollection of what we were sure just moments before was as real as daylight? If we dare to imagine that there is but one unresolved waking nightmare facing humanity then interpretation of these dreams is all of a piece. This is the essence of how monotheism as far back as the Temple of Amon staked its claim as a universal lawgiver through its most famous pupil Moses.

Then, as today, it was necessary that the escape from slavery led mankind away from that most foul of beliefs. The abject belief that mere irrationality in the affairs of men shall forever immutably hold sway. So it was that our lawgiver Abraham Lincoln intoned the sentiment of the ages that a house divided against itself cannot stand.

Today, the slavery that confronts us is palpable. It is that miserable, moldering tale that there are those families who are born to inherit the rule over the fate of nations. These are today's equivalent of the pagan would be gods. We must appease them, of course, because the unthinkable collapse of their monetary system sends a shiver of irrational fear up our spineless zombielike state of fecklessness. Or so we are told. This is supposed to be our collective conscience (the which makes cowards of us all) given to us as if from a heavenly choir. We must worship at its altar. The Queen is after all so charming in her way! (Even the rock stars-- those fairest children of stage-- have been knighted!) Ah--tradition!

Thus we have our innermost psyche transfixed as if by the Gorgon herself. So are our dreams being manipulated by the basest fear to submit to the attendant ills of austerity and unending wars over dwindling fixed resources. All for naught. It does not have to be this way. For we have better selves that can resolve these ills. Look to that better self dear reader... It is lurking there, even in your most fanciful of dreams.

A Vision of a Future Sans Oligarchy

The near term discovery of the means to control aging coupled with matter/anti-matter power resources enabling the peopling of outer space will provide a point of discontinuity for humanity. The millennial combat against the families that have maintained a false superiority through manipulation of human frailty will end. And yet a new enemy will confront us.

For it is certain that as we leave behind the limiting mental shackles that have plagued our species up til now, the unfolding course of universal development will perforce continue to challenge our noetic powers. This will create a new quality of thought that will be shared as common property among humanity. Since the sting of death will be eliminated, the development of scientific and artistic genius will be sought as popular culture.

It would be a mistake to dismiss this vision as a quixotic fantasy, for in truth it is the only least action pathway that our successful journey beckons us all to boldly embrace. It is what Plato urged as the meaning of comedy. For only by leaving this planet will we finally begin the adult phase of society and come home to our truer selves.

Thus does hope spring eternal.

Comment Upon Reading Julius Caesar During the Late and Prolonged Power Outage

It seems to me undeniable that we have lost to a considerable degree the vigor and passion of the English language in a utilitarian purge as a sort of reward for "good behavior" in our too comfortable mental prisons. (The nadir of this practice is fulsomely displayed in the inane practice carried over from computer coding in abbreviating concepts by their first initials. This is tantamount to the authoritarian cultural imposition of the errant and ludicrous formulation of artificial intelligence by these seemingly feckless nerds.)

For instance, in Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar Calphurnia says: "O Caesar these things are beyond all use, and I fear them." Now "beyond all use" for us today, as a mere (and tame) audience of supposed English users, we interpose the commonplace term "unusual" here. We very seldom would stop to reflect how "usual" is formed from "use." Thus we have lost a connection with meaning in this way, the which Shakespeare's dialogue would have us remember. Much as Socrates demonstrates the mnemonic power in Meno. A power inherent in the striving after the substantial reality that Leibniz referred to as sufficient reason in a sometimes unheard internal dialogue going on behind the curtain-- will we, nil we.

Thus today, when we ever so tamely refuse to impute a bestial motive to the economics of austerity and appeasement of the financial oligarchy does "conscience does make cowards of us all." For we err and sin against the sacred mission in the scholastically named General Welfare clause of our Constitution when we forget or better yet refuse to ask this lurking question. So we lull ourselves rather than looking within. And we lose the urgent need of holding up to ourselves the keen mirror provided by master Shakespeare.

Reply to John Dee-ism

An oligarchic empire via control of the seas through accurate navigation, algebra as numerological magic, crystal balls to speak to angels…The spymaster Dee who signed with the magic number 007 was quite a new Merlin for Elizabeth!

But in my book, he was certainly outdone by the hero of this (The Rennaisance Mathematicus) blog: Sir Isaac Newton. Why, Newton’s startling forecast of the end of the world in 2060 from esoteric Biblical numerology certainly shows that he did indeed believe as Leibniz properly charged that Newton’s God was just a clock winder in the end.

'Sdeath

So the "Supreme Court" has ruled that we "citizens" can be taxed to have the privilege of having ourselves pronounced worthy of life saving medical treatment or not by a faceless board of budget cutters. This is truly a most Unnatural Law from a truly most Unsupreme Court. Not surprising that the debt collectors are having their pounds as they so often have.

China Takes Up The Mantle of Civilization

It is with a profound mixture of hope and disgust that any American worthy of the name must view the news of China's successful docking of three astronauts with their space station.-- Hope that we may be on the threshold of a new era of sovereign nations cooperating to undertake the necessary step of space colonization. -- Disgust that the people of the United States have been bamboozled by a latter day sordid burlesque of  a Hollywood version of Emperor Nero's Rome.

Why James Fenimore Cooper's Politics Made Him a Marked Man

Cooper's novel Homeward Bound describes how the Federalism of Alexander Hamilton was subverted by the pro British factions' interests in Boston Yankee Clipper ships and New York speculators:

America was then much too young in her independence, and too insignificant in all eyes but her own, to reason and act for herself, except on points that pressed too obviously on her immediate concerns to be overlooked; but the great social principles,--or it might be better to say, the great social interests,--that then distracted Europe, produced quite as much sensation in that distant country, as at all comported with a state of things that had so little practical connexion with the result, The Effingham family had started Federalists, in the true meaning of the term; for their education, native sense and principles, had a leaning to order, good government, and the dignity of the country; but as factions became fiercer, and names got to be confounded and contradictory, the landed branch settled down into what they thought were American, and the commercial branch into what might properly be termed English Federalists. We do not mean that the father of John intended to be untrue to his native land; but by following up the dogmas of party he had reasoned himself into a set of maxims which, if they meant anything, meant everything but that which had been solemnly adopted as the governing principles of his own country, and many of which were diametrically opposed to both its interests and its honour.

Today, of course, the media and most of our venial politicians and "elites" wax grandiloquent in their fulsome praise of our "oldest and closest ally." What rot!

The only pathway out of the onrushing plunge of the world into a new dark age is the re-invigoration of the mostly forgotten mission of the founding of this republic. The creation of a world of perfectly sovereign nations in which the existence of "empire" is once for all extinguished root and branch. Most of what is taught as history is the equivalent of a Malaysian monkey trap for conditioning minds by providing false alternatives that leave the very same empire intact.

Least Action Principle Awaits Innumerable Discoveries

The anti-empiricism "continental" Leibnizian universal principle of least action continues to spur on breakthroughs in all branches of science. The latest is a fascinating study of how heart muscle fibers are organized in a minimal surface called a generalized helicoid. The beauty of this organization is that it allows for the ultimate strength as the tissue expands and contacts with the blood flow. Thus, contrary to the misanthrope Voltaire's attack on Leibniz: the pre-established harmonic ordering across all biological domains really does make this the "best of all possible worlds."

Uprooting Our Mostly Misleading Assumptions

Habits can make us captive of oppressive opinions, in much the way that conscience makes us cowards. Such a habit is the lack of scrutiny about why we say what we do. Every so often, almost out of the corner of our eye we have an inkling of this. For instance, I just read this passage in Cooper's Homeward Bound:

Reflections something like these passed through the mind of Eve Effingham, as she examined the mixed crowd, in which some were busy in receiving stores from boats; others in holding party conferences with friends, in which a few were weeping; here and there a group was drowning reflection in the parting cup; while wondering children looked up with anxiety into the well-known faces, as if fearful they might lose the countenances they loved, and the charities on which they habitually relied, in such a mêlée.

Cooper's use of the word stores struck me; and I realized at once that I have never before stopped to ask why I go to what I call the grocery store. Now I suppose that the naming of the very thing which I use as a necessity in the end could matter very little if I had forever remained in blissful ignorance of the wherefore of its name. It seems so very trivial a thing. And of course if one were to try to tease out all such linguistic connections, then you would end up spinning your wheels like the Red Queen.

Thus Leibniz declared that memorizing names of things was futile. You need them the same way you need street signs: to get somewhere. For that matter, DeGaulle said that political parties are like taxis.

Descartes set out to carry the illusion that names are equivalent to substance to its ultima ratio. If I create an algebra where a grid can locate a point no matter where it might try to hide itself, I can always create a formula that will name that very same point. But why do we believe that doing so we have somehow captured reality? Is it because we have been oh so clever in interpreting the shadows on the wall of the metaphorical cave that our senses are so certain of?

And why when we have the enormous binary filing system that is the Internet do we erroneously believe that that is somehow the equivalent of human creativity? How often, dear reader, have you paused in silent awe to ask "why do I believe what I just thought to myself?"

DARPA Seeks to Automate Garment Industry: The Moral of the Story

This is on its face a worthy endeavor. Only Luddites would argue otherwise. It does beg the question, however, of the quality if job creation that is required for our exit out of the nightmarish post industrial/derivative securities based financial system that is so evidently collapsing around the planet.

We need plenty of cheap energy for robotics and a lot of other things. We need plenty of fresh water for agriculture, industry and human consumption. Massive water projects like NAWAPA for North America have been on the books for decades. We need massive upgrades in nuclear fusion research and the manned space program.

Instead of this, our so called leaders in both parties are scrambling to bail out speculative gambling casino too big to fail financiers as they stuff their pockets with their filthy lucre. This cannot stand for long.

Nature is Noble...Or Maybe Not So Much

The long standing mythology of the apologists for the cynical neo-feudalism that pristine nature is pure and glorious and must be preserved at the cost of keeping the so called third world in a perpetual state of immiseration, is coming unglued at the seams. Not so very long ago, you may recall dear reader, Jane Goodall confessed that her ape friends were (gasp!) practicing cannibalism.

Now we hear reports that there has been are long standing obfuscation from the bowels of her very own Majesty's Royal (screw up) Society that penguins are in fact sexual deviants. Oh, lack-a-day! For the love of Jean Jacques Rousseau and Teddy Roosevelt! Oh, Canada! Mon dieu! Scheiß ins Bett daß' kracht; gute Nacht!

Oh, Albion! Cover your wretched face in shame! What a world we weave ...

Massacre in Houla: Something is Very, Very Rotten

As the scandal deepens that the bloody shirt being held aloft in Syria to enable military intervention is the doing of the "good guys," the media ought to be held accountable for what they really are--.two bit prostitutes (at best.)

It would seem from our quaint ever-loving geo-politicians are somewhat overeager to redraw the map of the region. If their surrogate Sunni human rights activists are are caught carrying out massacres, then it is back to the drawing board, I'm afraid. When you get Israeli hawks in bed with Salafist fanatics the UN and NATO all for the purpose of a new cold (or perhaps hot) war not much good can come from such an unwholesome witches brew...

Tabletop X-Ray Laser and Piero's Risen Christ

The announcement of a successful x-ray laser is almost unnoticed by the dis-infotainment claptrap news media. It puts me in mind of this wonderful metaphor in the painting of Piero Della Francesca:

Behaviorists Still Behaving Badly (Of Course)

On my blog the highest number of "hits" by far is from the brief item entitled Behaviorists Behaving Badly. I simply state the case that their worldview prohibits them from acknowledging that which fundamentally distinguishes human creative powers of mind from all other biological forms of life. We alone for better or worse can discover a higher ordering in physical reality that allows us to utilize energy in ever more efficient and dense ways to increase our well being.

All animals are utterly fixed in this regard, although they may exhibit certain qualities on the surface which are congruent or imitative with aspects of human behavior.

Of course, these truths will forever elude those who would hysterically deny them...

More Obama Graffitti on the Wall Creates an Eyesore for the World

As that braggart and would-be macho-man Barack Obama lets the cat out of the bag that he ordered the Stuxnet computer virus attack on Iran, certain questions are necessarily brought to the fore...For instance: so now if the sovereignty of the US is likewise violated by any nation or group of nations the rationale will be that Obama gave them the green light to do so.  Once again, the writing is on- the wall.

Eurodammerung, Greek Erinyes, and Spanish Tragedy

While your treatment of the symptoms of the pending Eurodammerung can't be quibbled with, the causes are what need to be identified if there be any hope of emergence from a literal hell on earth. The crisis is the sequelae  of the end of Bretton Woods. This happened as the US shifted away from a production technologically progressive commitment to the post industrial junkheap of today. Taking the world's largest economy and anchor off the gold reserve ratio opened up currency arbitrage. This led in turn to more and more worthless speculation. Further damage was done with the repeal of Glass-Steagal creating the "bucket  shop" lunacy of derivative securities. Either we bankrupt out the financiers who created these insane markets and return to the sanity that FDR represented or the erinyes of Greek tragedy await us all.

Obama's Brain on Marijuana

Much brouhaha has been ginned up as of late regarding the President's youthful embrace of marijuana and cocaine. Many who clamor for pot legislation are raising the hue and cry of calling him hypocrite. But taking into consideration that Obama's number goal is his extremely narcissistic financial aggrandizement, this is no surprise. I am all but certain if he perceived that there would be a big payback for him, he would be all over legalization. (As was the case in his recent epiphany on gay marriage.)

Besides which, his Justice Department is doing their utmost to put a lid on the HSBC  (Hong Kong Shanghai Bank Corporation) multi-billion dollar dope money laundering situation. And then there is the stonewalling on the ATF gun giveaway program.

To further prove my point now Obama is having our government be the guarantor of the insane practice of derivatives trading.

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...