'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.