As I was saying about the Roman Pantheon and Prince Phillip

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

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

On the Other Hand, A Fine Discovery

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

These Fellows Will Be a Monkey's Uncle

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

Setting the Record Straight on the Real Life Edgar Allan Poe

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

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

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

For the Benefit of Dr Tarpley

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

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

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

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

Complete Randomness Comes A Courting

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


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

Theoretical Fusion Advancement?

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

Inside a Tokamak. Image credit: Lawrence Berkeley Labs 

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

Obama's Bout of Apoplexy

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

Socrates or Jesus?

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

How Wonderfuly Quaint The Emir of Qatar Is

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

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

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

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

JP Morgan Chase and the Wages of Poverty

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

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

A Sort of Riddle: An Empire of Ugliness

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

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

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

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

Nicholas of Cusa: Unacknowledged Father of Modern Science

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

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

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

Newton's "Pendent"

"Who put the names on the moon? by thonyc

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

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

Secretly Serviced Scandal: A Tale with a Moral to It

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

MIT on Overpopulation More Frogpondian Pseudoscience

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

Guenter Grass: New Forbidden Verses?

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

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

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

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

Tremendous Breakthrough in Biological Research of the Circadian System

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

What is Truly Faster than the Speed of Light?

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

Astrophysicists Make Donkeys of Themselves

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

Wherein the Solution to the Collapsed Economy is Advanced

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

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

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

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

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

Scientific Masters of the Obvious

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

Curiouser and Curiouser

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

Saudi Humanitarians or Terrorist Financiers?

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

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

Lords and Lady Luddites

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

The Planet under Pressure Board of Patrons includes:

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