November 30, 2010 archive

like minds roll call

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Cypher: I know what you’re thinking, ’cause right now I’m thinking the same thing. Actually, I’ve been thinking it ever since I got here: Why oh why didn’t I take the BLUE pill?

Fracking A! New York

This has got to be the best political news I’ve read in a long time. A little before 1:00 a.m. last night, by a vote of 94-44, the New York State Assembly passed the moratorium on hydraulic fracture drilling.

Well it may only be state legislature and the governor still need to sign but apparently this moratorium to protect our drinking water is a first. It’s not top down and the Working Families Party humbly takes some of the credit for more than 52,000 New Yorkers signing the petition urging the Assembly to act.

Go ahead: get up from your chair. Do a little dance, pump your fist, or do whatever you do to celebrate a victory of grassroots action over corporate power.

I just received a letter form the WFP and I was doing just that.  

Open Octavia Butler

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Jacob Freeze Exposes Phony Christians at Wall Street Journal

Brian Clegg has posted a review of Martin Bojowald’s new book about loop quantum gravity at the Wall Street Journal, but Mr. Clegg might have just as well spared himself the trouble of writing an intelligent summary of a very difficult book for Rupert Murdoch’s ultra-right-wing rag, because almost all the readers’ comments came from dim-witted creationists whose only interest in anything about science is denouncing Charles Darwin.

You cannot prove by any means that the central concept of one living God is untrue. Stop trying.

But why did reader Charles Sullins post this touching declaration on a thread about loop quantum gravity? God only knows, and it quickly got worse, as the pseudo-Christian spokesperson Keith Beveridge initiated a general attack on “secular Darwinism.”

By definition a world view should be balanced, practical, not too simple, not too complex, and match up fairly well with the world at large. Secular Darwinism fails on many of these accounts, most notably in my opinion in its self referential claim to truth in the face of its fundamental claim that there really is no truth, just molecules in motion.

And then it was God this and God that, for more than 100 comments on an article about loop quantum gravity!

But since you can read any number of articles and comments on those articles about almost any other subject except science in the WSJ without ever encountering the word “God” in any of them, I decided to ask Rupert Murdoch’s pseudo-Christian readership a couple of salient questions.

 

Docudharma Times Tuesday November 30




Tuesday’s Headlines:

Rifts mar Cancun climate conference

USA

U.S. and South Korea Reject Talks With North

NJ must pay $271M to feds for killing tunnel to NY

Europe

Bailout fails to calm markets as costs rise in Spain and Portugal

271 Picasso paintings discovered in Paris

Middle East

Israel accused over ‘cruel’ Gaza blockade

Now we know. America really doesn’t care about injustice in the Middle East.

Asia

WikiLeaks: China weary of North Korea behaving like ‘spoiled child’

Teetering Asian dominoes test Obama

Africa

Mogadishu: Life on the front line in a city laid bare by war

Africa rejects joint stand with EU on climate

Latin America

Haggling with Allies over New Homes for Detainees

Estimate of TARP losses falls to $25 billion

The projected cost of the $700-billion financial bailout fund drops sharply, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

By Jim Puzzanghera, Los Angeles Times

November 30, 2010


Reporting from Washington –

The projected cost of the $700-billion financial bailout fund – initially feared to be a huge hit to taxpayers – continues to drop, with the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimating Monday that losses would amount to just $25 billion.

That’s a sharp drop from the CBO’s last estimate, in August, of a $66-billion loss for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, known as TARP. Going back to March, the budget office estimated that the program would cost taxpayers $109 billion.

Muse in the Morning

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Muse in the Morning

Time for a break from poetry…in order to create some art.

If you don’t control your mind, someone else will.

–John Allston



Ornamental 7

A brief memo to Booman re: Assange

Strike everything I said before, and just consider this: When one reaches consensus with David Fucking Brooks, perhaps it’s a sign that one’s affinities are misplaced, or that one’s reasoning is less than rigorous.  Just perhaps.

Sincerely,

Compound F

Dick Cheney “suspected of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion.”

Oh, no.  That would be Julian Assange, who’s done nothing truly horrible, except try to tell us what our godforsaken governments are doing.  Squeeze me.  Baking powder.

Breaking news to Booman: Assange isn’t American, and no longer am I, or you, for that matter.

Being an American once felt vaguely comforting, even righteous, because legally, it stood for some things, specifically, Modern Liberalism writ large.  Individual autonomy, individual civil rights, freedom from diktat, all men are created equal, equality before the law, blah, blah, blah, and, uh, free markets.  

Implicit, at least, in all of this, was transparency, freedom of information that allowed individuals to make informed, individual decisions, free of Church and State propaganda.  America never lived up to those ideals, but it would be wrong to say it never strived.  We no longer live in that place.  

Today, America is acutely discomforting, on all counts, as in hard, diamond-like edges impinging on our non-diamond-like mammalian outer surfaces and neocortical napkin-folds.  “America,” the idea, is fucking Deader than Fuck.  These facts hit me like a diamond bullet, a diamond bullet shot through the forehead.  The genius.

Booman is worried about the diplomatic fallout over how news of fucked-up facials wreck American diplomatic efforts.  America, these days, is, almost by definition, a slough of shit about things we don’t need or want to know.  Responding to any revelations in this regard is like balking at buying groceries when you find out in check-out that Elvis was an alien ass-baby.   I’d be more worried about my new infant’s longevity in a world dominated by utterly opaque backroom deals of murderous gangster scum and their primordial instincts to kill.  

Big ticket items, Booman, Big Ticket Items!

It’s not even remotely clear why you side with the bad guys, i.e., ourselves.  (Yes, it’s always clear from an evolutionary point of view why an individual sides with itself.  That’s not the question tho’, is it?)

Let me spell it out: this is a case of who owns private information versus public information, publicly paid for information, information, e.g., regarding vast criminality, that has been created through public wealth.  Are public officials allowed to conduct crimes against you on your dime?

Late Night Karaoke

Wendell Potter is the Daniel Ellsberg of the Health Insurance Industry

In their interview a few days ago on Keith Olberman’s show, Michael Moore called Wendell Potter the Daniel Ellsberg of the Health Care Insurance Industry and lauded him for his courage in standing up for the truth as a whistleblower and sacrificing his high paid job as a senior executive of Cigna Health Insurance.  There are several key moments in the interview:

I agree with Michael.  Wendell Potter is truly an American hero.

Seeking Republican Patriots: How Reining in Anonymous Attack Ads Can Help Save Our Democracy

Does Olympia Snowe really want to be the target of waves of anonymous attack ads in support of some conservative primary challenger? Wouldn’t a retiring George Voinovich prefer to leave some shards of our democracy off-limits to being sold to the highest bidder? Could John McCain remember why McCain-Feingold was once of his proudest legacies and acknowledge how profoundly the Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United decision damaged everything he was trying to do to safeguard American democracy?  

Energy Release

When a dam breaks it releases the energy of the water which is behind the dam.

In the next clip the smoke sequence is speed up by a factor of two.  Is it just my alternative worldview self who can see all of the faces in the smoke, many not outlined in the drawings or should I fashion a better tin foil hat.

146th Anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre of Nov. 29th, 1864


Chief Black Kettle:

I want you to give all these chiefs of the soldiers here to understand that we are for peace, and that we have made peace, that we may not be mistaken by them for enemies.