Personal Update: general

The week leading up to Christmas week was hectic and I found myself too tired and uninterested in any thing but a break. The last day of that week, Saturday, before Christmas week I had lighting check duty on the airfield and my tool-partner and I found ourselves shoveling snow off of the edge lights on the third runway because the knuckle draggers that run the snow plows left a three foot berm right on the edge light line. So, no rest for the wicked.

Christmas week I have been "off the air" because I wanted to goof off with my family. We also did some marathon movie watching in our cozy house with the snow piled up outside. I received the DVD sets of seasons 1, 2.0, 2.5, & Razor of Battlestar Galactica for a Christmas present so I have been wasting the final hours of my time off with some serious couch potato action. I haven't been as guilty for staring into the vacuous grimoire as much as I ordinarily would as I know that when work starts Monday night it will begin another long period of servitude to the Port (Port of Seattle). When I'm back to work, the only self improvement I tend to have time for is reading through some work of literature for our literary group, the occasional magazine article, and my BSF lessons. Well maybe I'll have a little internet surf time, and I'll try to post a few comments on the piece we are reading. And if the Lord wills, Janie and I may try to take a long weekend at the end of February to celebrate our anniversary (our 18th).

Happy new year!

Social Philosophy: Economics: something to think about

Krugman on FDR and the "Clean" New Deal
Posted by Bill Anderson at December 26, 2008 07:26 AM

It's Friday, and Paul Krugman does not disappoint. Today, we read that the New Deal of FDR not only helped revitalize the economy, but also was an exercise in "clean" government. Yes, you cannot make up this stuff:

F.D.R. managed to navigate these treacherous political waters safely, greatly improving government’s reputation even as he vastly expanded it. As a study recently published by the National Bureau of Economic Research puts it, “Before 1932, the administration of public relief was widely regarded as politically corrupt,” and the New Deal’s huge relief programs “offered an opportunity for corruption unique in the nation’s history.” Yet “by 1940, charges of corruption and political manipulation had diminished considerably.”

How did F.D.R. manage to make big government so clean?

A large part of the answer is that oversight was built into New Deal programs from the beginning. The Works Progress Administration, in particular, had a powerful, independent “division of progress investigation” devoted to investigating complaints of fraud. This division was so diligent that in 1940, when a Congressional subcommittee investigated the W.P.A., it couldn’t find a single serious irregularity that the division had missed.

F.D.R. also made sure that Congress didn’t stuff stimulus legislation with pork: there were no earmarks in the legislation that provided funding for the W.P.A. and other emergency measures.

Last but not least, F.D.R. built an emotional bond with working Americans, which helped carry his administration through the inevitable setbacks and failures that beset its attempts to fix the economy.

Unfortunately for Krugman, there is the book by William Shughart and James Couch, The Political Economy of the New Deal. Their research demonstrates strongly that New Deal public works money went to those areas where votes were most needed, contra Krugman.

For example, the "neediest" region was the South (still recovering from Lincoln's war), but that also was known then as the "Solid South," with the Democratic Party being absolutely supreme. Since FDR did not need to bribe southerners to vote for him, the New Deal money went elsewhere.

I reviewed this book in the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics several years ago, and found that this book, along with with a paper Bob Tollison and others had in the Journal of Political Economy a while back on the New Deal pretty much established that it was government as we always have known it. So, once again we have a Nobel Prize winning "economist" declaring something that absolutely is not true.

A constant theme of Krugman is that government can work wonders as long as those carrying out the program "believe in government." He has excoriated the Bushies for being ideological free marketeers, which means that even when they employ government programs, they are not run by True Believers, which makes their projects fail.

This is what one might call "Faith-Based Government," in which all it takes is belief. Yes, believe in government and all will be well. Only believe.

Boxing Day

Christmas Day

Although not nearly as cold as this picture, we did have a white Christmas this year.

Christmas Eve

Fourth Sunday in Advent

Third Sunday in Advent

Abraham Lincoln on Labor

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital.

Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed.

Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much higher consideration.

Working men are the basis of all governments, for the plain reason that they are more numerous.

To secure to each laborer the whole product of his labor, or as nearly as much as possible, is a worthy object of any good government.

Technos & Social Philosophy: Car 2.0

In the Tacoma News Tribune on December 11, 2008 appeared the following article:

The Car 2.0 Race is America's to Lose:
A business model for cars similar to buying minutes for a cell phone.

As I think about our bailing out Detroit, I can't help but reflect on what, in my view, is the most important rule of business in today's integrated and digitized global market, where knowledge and innovation tools are so widely distributed, It's this: Whatever can be done, will be done. The only question is will it be done by you or to you. Just don't think it won't be done. If you have an idea in Detroit or Tennessee, promise me that you'll pursue it, because someone in Denmark or Tel Aviv will do so a second later.

Why do I bring this up? Because someone in the mobility business in Denmark and Tel Aviv is already developing a real world alternative to Detroit's business model. I don't know if this alternative to gasoline-powered cars will work, but I do know that it can be done - and Detroit isn't doing it. And therefore it will be done, and eventually, I bet, it will be done profitably.

And when it is, our bailout of Detroit will be remembered as the equivalent of pouring billions of dollars of taxpayer money into the mail-order-catalogue business on the eve of the birth of eBay. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into the CD music business on the eve of the birth of the iPod and iTunes. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into a bookstore chain on the eve of the birth of Amazon.com and the Kindle. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into improving typewriters on the eve of the birth of the PC and the Internet.

What business model am I talking about? It is Shai Agassi's electric car network company, called Better Place. Just last week, the company, based in Palo Alto, Calif., announced a partnership with the state of Hawaii to road test its business plan there after already inking similar deals with Israel, Australia, the San Francisco Bay Area and, yes, Denmark.

The Better Place electric car charging system involves generating electrons from as much renewable energy - such as wind and solar - as possible and then feeding those clean electrons into a national electric car charging infrastructure. This consists of electricity charging spots with plug-in outlets - the first pilots were opened in Israel this week - plus battery exchange stations all over the respective country. The whole system is then coordinated by a service control center that integrates and does the billing.

Under the Better Place model, consumers can buy or lease an electric car from the French automaker Renault or Japanese companies like Nissan (General Motors snubbed Agassi) and then buy miles on their electric car batteries from Better Place the way you now buy an Apple cell phone and the minutes from AT&T. That way Better Place, or any car company that partners with it, benefits from each mile you drive. GM sells cars. Better Place is selling mobility miles.

The first Renault and Nissan electric cars are scheduled to hit Denmark and Israel in 2011, when the whole system should be up and running. On Tuesday, Japan's Ministry of Environment invited Better Place to join the first government led electric car project along with Honda, Mitsubishi and Subaru. Better Place was the only foreign company invited to participate, working with Japan's leading auto companies, to build a battery swap station for electric cars in Yokohama, the Detroit of Japan.

What I find exciting about Better Place is that it's building a car company off the new industrial platform of the 21st century, not the one from the 20th - the exact same way that Steve Jobs did to overturn the music business.

What did Apple understand first? One, that today's technology platform would allow anyone with a computer to record music. Two, that the Internet and MP3 players would allow anyone to transfer music in digital form to anyone else. You wouldn't need CDs or record companies anymore. Apple simply took all those innovations and integrated them into a single music-generating, buying and listening system that completely disrupted the music business.

What Agassi, the founder of Better Place, is saying is that there is a new way to generate mobility, not just music, using the same platform. It just takes the right kind of auto battery - the iPod in this story - and the right kind of national plug-in network - the iTunes store - to make the business model work for electric cars at 6 cents a mile. The average American is paying today around 12 cents a mile for gasoline transportation, which also adds to global warming and strengthens petro-dictators.

Do not expect this innovation to come out of Detroit. Remember, in 1908, the Ford Model-T got better mileage - 25 miles per gallon - than many Ford, GM and Chrysler models made in 2008. But don't be surprised when it comes out of somewhere else. It can be done. It will be done. If we miss the chance to win the race for Car 2.0 because we keep mindlessly bailing out Car 1.0, there will be no one to blame more than Detroit's new shareholders: we the taxpayers.

{Thomas L. Friedman is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times.}

This article says some of the same things I’ve been saying, but this article also illustrates why newspapers are losing readers—Wired magazine had an article about Shai Agassi four months ago, and if a newspaper even reports the sort of news that is interesting to the mildly intelligent or better it is usually woefully out of date. Anyway the advent of Car 2.0 is reason enough to let the Big 2.5 US automakers go into bankruptcy. This would cause some disruption in the short term, but in the long term it would allow more innovation and growth.

Daguerreotype: Micro-warp drive test

Trinity College Library in Dublin Ireland

STIFTSBIBLIOTHEK ST. GALLEN

2008 Second Sunday in Advent

Also, don't forget, today is Pearl Harbor Day.

Social Philosophy: Civilization End Game Scenario

In the happy warrior column in National Review, Mark Steyn writes the following:


Quote:

Animal Magnetism

If September 11, 2001, was "the day everything changed," November 4, 2008, was the day everything changed back--at least as far as the rest of the world is concerned. The "global war on terror" was a Bush concept and will expire with his presidency, long past its sell-by date, as far as the "international community" is concerned: Weary Europeans find it unhelpful to the cause of mollifying their own restive Muslim populations, and wealthy Arabs want to get on with buying up the Western world's banks and soccer teams with a somewhat lighter level of scrutiny than they've been subject to these last seven years.

As for President Bush's own citizens, Code Orange is fine if it's just taking your shoes off at the airport, but as a 24/7 mindset it's kind of exhausting. So the United States elected a chief magistrate who talks about health care and job creation and hardly mentions terrorism, except for occasional effusions about invading Pakistan, which one assumes is one of those back-burner midway-through-the second-term things after he's lowered the oceans and healed the planet. Certainly, in the chancelleries of Europe they don't take it too seriously. The Bush fever is assumed to have passed.

Still, there remain a handful of us who think "the war" was not entirely a construct of Rove-Cheney's dark imagination, and valiantly tootle around town with our "FEAR, NOT HOPE" bumper stickers. Brian T. Kennedy of the Claremont Institute had a grim piece in the Wall Street Journal the other day positing an Iranian-directed freighter somewhere off America's shores capable of firing a nuclear-armed Shahab-3 missile that explodes in space over Chicago:

Gamma rays from the explosion, through the Compton Effect, generate three classes of disruptive electromagnetic pulses, which permanently destroy consumer electronics, the electronics in some automobiles and, most importantly, the hundreds of large transformers that distribute power throughout the U.S. All of our lights, refrigerators, water-pumping stations, TVs and radios stop running. We have no communication and no ability to provide food and water to 300 million Americans.

This is what is referred to as an EMP attack, and such an attack would effectively throw America back technologically into the early 19th century.

If Brian Kennedy were to switch it from an Iranian freighter to an Iranian freighter secretly controlled by a Halliburton subsidiary, he might have a scenario he could pitch to Paramount. But he's got a tougher job pitching it to America. This is the Katrina nation: Our inclination is to ignore the warnings, wait for it to happen, and then blame the government for not doing more. That last part will prove a little more difficult after an EMP attack. I doubt there'll be a blue-ribbon EMP Commission for Lee Hamilton to serve on, or much of a mass media for him to be interviewed by Larry King and Diane Sawyer on. "An EMP attack is not one from which America could recover as we did after Pearl Harbor," writes Mr. Kennedy. "Such an attack might mean the end of the United States and most likely the Free World."

Are there really people out there who want to do that? End the entire Free World? The very term sounds faintly cobwebbed. When nukes were confined to five reasonably sane great powers, the Left couldn't get enough of Armageddon: There were movies, novels, plays, even children's books about the day after, and the long nuclear winter. When it was crazies like Reagan and Thatcher with their fingers on the buttons, the liberal imagination feasted on imminent nuclear immolation. Now it's Ahmadinejad and Kim long II and who knows who else with their fingers on the buttons, and nobody cares: What's the big deal?

Well, the Iranians have held at least two tests in the Caspian Sea to launch missiles in the manner necessary to set off an EMP meltdown. And if you were, say, Vladimir Putin and obsessed with restoring Russia's superpower status, you might reasonably conclude that that might be well nigh impossible without diminishing the superpower status of the other fellow. And, while you wouldn't necessarily want your fingerprints on the operation, you wouldn't go to a lot of trouble to dissuade whichever excitable chaps were minded to have a go.

But beyond that is a broader question. In Afghanistan, the young men tying down First World armies have no coherent strategic goals, but they've figured out the Europeans' rules of engagement, and they know they can fire on NATO troops more or less with impunity. So why not do it? On the high seas off the Horn of Attica, the Somali pirates have a more rational motivation: They can extort millions of dollars in ransom by seizing oil tankers. But, as in the Hindu Kush, it's a low-risk occupation. They know that the Western navies that patrol the waters are no longer in the business of killing or even capturing pirates. The Royal Navy that once hanged pirates in the cause of advancing civilization and order is now advised not even to take them into custody lest they claim refugee status in the United Kingdom under its absurd Human Rights Act.

"Weakness is a provocation," Don Rumsfeld famously asserted many years ago. The new barbarians reprimitivizing various corners of the map are doing so because they understand the weakness of what Brian Kennedy quaintly calls "the Free World." One day the forces of old-school reprimitivization will meet up with state-of-the-art technology, and the barbarians will no longer be on the fringes of the map. If that gives you a headache, I'm sure President Obama will have a prescription-drug plan tailored just for you.

End of Quote


In the Nietzschean realpolitik of today's world there is no reason for "HOPE" in the normal course of things--unless it is the will of God to grant us mercy.

High Voltage Antivirus protection

Philosophy, General: Objectivism, part 2

I have been posting condensations of Objectivist thought by Glyn Hughes not in the order of that philosophy's development of it's ideas but in an order that struck me as provocative and important. As a disclaimer, I don't know if I agree 100% with the following article, but there are some things there worth discussing:

RACISM
Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. Racism claims that the content of a man's mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man's convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control. Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock farm version of collectivism.

The respectable family that supports worthless relatives or covers up their crimes to "protect the family name", the bum who boasts that his great-grandfather was an empire-builder, the celebrity who starts his autobiography with a detailed account of his family history - all these are samples of racism, the atavistic manifestations of a doctrine whose full expression is the tribal warfare of prehistorical savages, the wholesale slaughter of Nazi Germany, the atrocities of today's so-called "newly emerging nations."

The theory that holds "good blood" or "bad blood" as a moral-intellectual criterion, can lead to nothing but torrents of blood in practice. Brute force is the only avenue of action open to men who regard themselves as mindless aggregates of chemicals.

Just as there is no such thing as a collective or racial mind, or a collective or racial achievement. There are only individual minds and individual achievement. Even if it were proved - which it is not - that the incidence of men of potentially superior brain power is greater among the members of certain races than others, it would still tell us nothing about any given individual. A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race - and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin. It is hard to say which is the more outrageous injustice: the claim of Southern racists that a Negro genius should be treated as an inferior because his race has "produced" some brutes - or the claim of a German brute to the status of a superior because his race has "produced" Goethe, Schiller and Brahms. To ascribe one's virtues to one's racial origin, is to confess that one has no knowledge of the process by which virtues are acquired and, most often, that one has failed to acquire them.

There is only one antidote to racism: the philosophy of individualism and laissez-faire capitalism. It is not a man's ancestors or relatives or genes or body chemistry that count in a free market, but only one human attribute: productive ability. Racism was always strongest in the more controlled economies, such as Russia and Germany - and weakest in England, the then freest country of Europe.

It is capitalism that gave mankind its first steps toward freedom and a rational way of life. It is capitalism that abolished serfdom and slavery in all the civilized countries of the world. In its great era of capitalism, the United States was the freest country on earth - and the best refutation of racist theories. Men of racial groups that had been slaughtering one another for centuries, learned to live together in harmony and peaceful cooperation. The major victims of such race prejudice as did exist in America were the Negroes. Racial discrimination, imposed and enforced by law, is so blatantly inexcusable an infringement of individual rights that the racist statutes of the South should have been declared unconstitutional long ago.

The Southern racists' claim of "states' rights" is a contradiction in terms: there can be no such thing as the "right" of some men to violate the rights of others. The "conservatives" who claim to be defenders of freedom, of capitalism, of property rights, of the Constitution, yet who advocate racism, do not seem to realize that they are cutting the ground from under their own feet. The "liberals" are guilty of the same contradiction, but in a different form. They advocate the sacrifice of all individual rights to unlimited majority rule - yet posture as defenders of the rights of minorities. But the smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights, cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.

This accumulation of contradictions has now reached its climax in the new demands of the Negro leaders. Instead of fighting for equal rights, they are demanding special race privileges. For instance, since Negroes constitute 25 per cent of the population of New York City, they demand 25 per cent of the jobs.

That absurdly evil policy is destroying the moral base of the Negroes' fight. If they demand the violation of the rights of others, they negate and forfeit their own. For instance, the demand for racial quotas in schools is pure racism. And by the very same principle, the government has no right to violate the right of private property by forbidding discrimination in privately owned establishments. If the individual has all the rights and privileges due him under the laws and the Constitution, we need not worry about groups and masses - those do not, in fact, exist, except as figures of speech.

Philosophy, General: Objectivism, part 1

Glyn Hughes has done an excellent job of condensing the various tenants of Objectivist thought (as first promulgated by Ayn Rand). Here is an excellent critique of socialism:

THE MONUMENT BUILDERS
What had once been an alleged ideal is now a ragged skeleton rattling like a scarecrow in the wind over the whole world, but men lack the courage to glance up and to discover the grinning skull under the bloody rags. That skeleton is socialism.

Fifty (seventy now) years ago, there might have been some excuse (though not justification) for the widespread belief that socialism is a political theory aimed at the achievement of men's well-being. Today, that belief can no longer be regarded as an innocent error. Socialism may be established by force, as in the USSR - or by vote, as in Nazi Germany. The socialization may be total, as in Russia - or partial, as in England. But the results have always been a terrifying failure - terrifying, that is, if one's motive is men's welfare.

England, once the freest and proudest nation of Europe, has been reduced to the status of a second-rate power and is perishing slowly from hemophilia, losing the best of her economic blood: the middle class and the professions. They are escaping from the reign of mediocrity, from the mawkish poorhouse where, having sold their rights in exchange for free dentures.

Socialism is not a movement of the people. It is a movement led and controlled by the intellectuals, out of their stuffy ivory towers into those bloody fields of practice where they unite with their allies and executors: the thugs. What is the motive of such intellectuals? Power-lust - as a manifestation of helplessness, of self-loathing and of the desire for the unearned. "The public interest," "service to the public" are the means. Since there is no such entity as "the public," since the public is merely a number of individuals, any claimed or implied conflict of "the public interest" with private interests means that the interests of some men are to be sacrificed to the interests and wishes of others.

Greatness is achieved by the productive effort of a man's mind in the pursuit of clearly defined, rational goals. But a delusion of grandeur can be served only by the switching, undefinable chimera of a public monument. America's greatness lies in the fact that her monuments are not public. The skyline of New York is a monument of a splendor that no pyramids or palaces will ever equal or approach. And, instead of impoverishing the people, these skyscrapers kept raising the people's standard of living- including the inhabitants of the slums, who lead a life of luxury compared to the life of an ancient Egyptian slave or of a modern Soviet Socialist worker.

When you consider the global devastation perpetrated by socialism, the sea of blood and the millions of victims, remember that they were sacrificed, not for "the good of mankind" nor for any "noble ideal," but for the festering vanity of some scared brute or some pretentious mediocrity who craved a mantle of unearned "greatness" - and that the monument to socialism is a pyramid of public factories, public theaters and public parks, erected on a foundation of human corpses, with the figure of the ruler posturing on top, beating his chest and screaming his plea for "prestige" to the starless void above him.

Social Philosophy: Obamanation: misc. 3

Another example of environmental hypocrisy: article

Madame Pelosi wasn't happy with the small private jet that comes with the Speaker's job, no, Madame Pelosi was aggravated that this little jet had to stop to refuel, so she ordered a Big Fat 200 seat jet that could get her back to California without stopping!

Many, many legislators walked by and grinned with glee as Joe informed everyone that's Nancy's Big Fat Jet costs us, the hard working American tax payers, thousands of gallons of fuel every week.

Since she only works 3 days a week, this gas guzzling jet gets fueled and she flies home to California, cost to the taxpayers of about $60,000, one way!

As Joe put it, 'Unfortunately we have to pay to bring her back on Monday night.' Cost to us another $60,000.

Folks, that is $480,000 per month and that is an annual cost to the taxpayers of $5,760,000. No wonder she complains about the cost of this war, it might cramp her style and she is styling, on my back and yours.

I think of the military families in this country doing without and this woman, who heads up the most do-nothing Congress in the history of this country, keeps fueling that jet while doing nothing. Madame Pelosi wants you and I to conserve our carbon footprint. She wants us to buy smaller cars and Obama wants us to get a bicycle pump and air up our tires.

Social Philosophy: Intellectuals and Economics

Robert Nozick writes in his essay:

Wordsmith intellectuals fare well in capitalist society; there they have great freedom to formulate, encounter, and propagate new ideas, to read and discuss them. Their occupational skills are in demand, their income much above average.

Why then do they disproportionately oppose capitalism?

An attempt to answer this question and consider the ramifications of this factor in society is made in the above linked essay. I think the hypothesis is reasonable.

One possibility is the way that "wordsmith" intellectuals receive their education in the modern west, and that is through age-segregated schools where the ability to communicate via the written and spoken word is the most rewarded skill. As Robert Nozick writes:

Schools became the major institution outside of the family to shape the attitudes of young people, and almost all those who later became intellectuals went through schools. There they were successful. They were judged against others and deemed superior. They were praised and rewarded, the teacher's favorites. How could they fail to see themselves as superior? Daily, they experienced differences in facility with ideas, in quick-wittedness. The schools told them, and showed them, they were better.

All the more reason to homeschool your children to keep them from falling to the temptation to believe in something that is not in their own best interests.

The essay is a bit more comprehensive than what I have represented here, so be sure to read it.

Cosmos: The new daguerreotype: For the Midwest.

Video Overview of Earth

]

Anthropology: The poignancy of lost humanity.

The first thing to know in understanding humanity is Original Sin and mankind's diversion from his journey to heaven. Because our purpose is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, God has put a yearning for something greater and transcendent in our hearts. The following video seems to echo this yearning: Iz sings "Over The Rainbow".

Technos & Social Philosophy: Robotics and the Fear of our replacement

My brother has a interesting report from Japan on robots.
His link. You've got to check out the video. Also, check out the song at his link called "The Humans Are Dead".

and of course my favorite song about a robot from ELO: (check out the video in the link just below)

Yours Truly, 2095

2095, 2095, 2095, 2095
I love you, sincerely
Yours truly, yours truly...

I sent a message to another time
But as the days unwind, this I just can't believe
I sent a note across another plane
Maybe its all a game, but this I just can't conceive.

Can you hear me?

I drive the very latest hovercar
I don't know where you are
But I miss you so much till then
I met someone who looks a lot like you
She does the things you do
But she is an IBM.

2095, 2095, 2095, 2095
I love you, sincerely
Yours truly, yours truly...

She's only programmed to be very nice
But she's as cold as ice
Whenever I get too near
She tells me that she likes me very much
But when I try to touch
She makes it all too clear.

She is the latest in technology
Almost mythology
But she has a heart stone
She has an i.q. of 1001
She has a jumpsuit on
And she's also a telephone.

2095, 2095, 2095, 2095
I love you, sincerely
Yours truly, yours truly...

Chorus:
Is that what you want? (is it what you want? )
Is it what you really want? (is it what you really want? )
Is that what you want? (is it what you want? )
Is it what you really want?

I realize that it must seem so strange
That time has rearranged
But time has the final word
She knows I think of you, she reads my mind
She tries to be unkind
She knows nothing of our world

Although her memory banks overflow
No one would ever know
For all she says: is that what you want?
Maybe one day I'll feel her cold embrace
And kiss her interface
'til then, I'll leave her alone.

I love you, sincerely
Yours truly, yours truly...

Repeat chorus:

Is that what you want?

Song Lyrics & Social Philosophy: Rush's The Trees

"The Trees"

There is unrest in the forest
There is trouble with the trees
For the maples want more sunlight
And the oaks ignore their pleas

The trouble with the maples
(And they're quite convinced they're right)
They say the oaks are just too lofty
And they grab up all the light
But the oaks can't help their feelings
If they like the way they're made
And they wonder why the maples
Can't be happy in their shade

There is trouble in the forest
And the creatures all have fled
As the maples scream 'Oppression!'
And the oaks just shake their heads

So the maples formed a union
And demanded equal rights
'The oaks are just too greedy
We will make them give us light'
Now there's no more oak oppression
For they passed a noble law
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe and saw.

Historical Philosophy: A Problem for Future Historians

The following post by Peter Leithart is too well written to just put up a link to it; I quote here:

When we read that ancient tyrants hired magicians to perform haruspicy with the entrails of dismembered infants, we immediately discount the record as propaganda. We know without needing to investigate that similar accusations against Jews in the Middle Ages had become a topos of anti-religious rhetoric.

I’m not saying we should believe these accounts, but I wonder: Centuries from now, historians will tell about a civilization that tore apart infants in their mothers’ wombs, or burned them in saline solution. Historians will claim that in the early twenty-first century, the leading citizens of the United States could not decide whether or not piercing the brain of a partially-born baby should be legal.

They will argue that scientists grew embryos in laboratories in the hopes that their genetic material could provide miraculous cures for the sick and dying. Economic historians will trace the sources for the billions of dollars gathered by infant-killers, and the billions more devoted to research on murdered babies.

And I wonder: When historians say all this, will anyone believe it?

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, November 27, 2008 at 8:35 am

And on another topic for future historians, it will be wondered why a civilization that, though imperfectly, reached the highest levels of personal liberty and prosperity for it's citizens chose to piss it all away and embrace a failed economic system (socialism) and chose to lose to a barbaric group of thugs (radical Islamo-Fascists) who have no regard for culture, liberty, and equitable prosperity for it's citizens.

Personal Update: Irwin Family, the myth.

Here is a logo from Sam Irwin's Advertising Company, Time Art Productions, TM, INC., GMBH:

Social Philosophy: Obamanation: misc. 2

Courtesy of my mother (who is now safe in Canada--now a less socialist state than the US),

"We cannot expect the Americans to jump from capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of socialism until they suddenly awake to find they have Communism."

- Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev, 1959

And on another note, this bulletin shows how the war on drugs is interfering with the gospel, and thus showing the anti-God nature of the United States government.

Social Philosophy: Obamanation: misc. 1

I hope this entry is among the last I will waste on the current regime change (unless there is some new extreme outrage--a likely possibility).

I have been saying to my friends, relatives, and associates that the new regime in Washington DC will show a level of corruption (unless you mindlessly believe the mainstream media) that will make George Bush's people look like a bunch of kindergartners.

My statement still stands as news came today that President Elect Barack Hussein Obama has appointed Tom Daschle to Secretary of DHHS. You remember Daschle--the one who had dead Native Americans voting for him and who refused to live in his own state.

I think this bunch of Chicago political thugs is even going to make Bill Clinton look like a saint.

It's not pleasant to be alive during the end of your civilization.

Social Philosophy: Malleable truth.

After looking at the following article about how Dr. Hansen has modified scientific evidence to fit his preconceived ideals, I got to thinking about how this is really what so many people in the world do. The fallenness of mankind (see Original Sin) has made our reason subject to our heart or emotions. Here is what D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones has to say:

...Man, in other words, instead of looking at life with his mind, looks at it with with his desires and affections. He prefers darkness; he is controlled by his heart instead of by his head. We must be quite clear about this. This is not to say that man as God made him should not have a heart, and should not feel things. The important thing is that no man should be governed by his emotions and desires. That is the effect of sin. A man should be governed by his mind, his understanding.
This surely is the final answer to all those people who are not Christian, and who say they are not Christian because they think and because they reason. The simple truth about them is that they are governed, not by their minds, but by their hearts and by their prejudices. Their elaborate attempts to justify themselves intellectually is nothing but an attempt to camouflage the godlessness of their hearts. They are trying to justify the kind of life they are living by putting up an intellectual position; but the real trouble is that they are governed by desires and lusts. They do not approach the truth with the mind, they approach it with all these prejudices which come from the heart. As the Psalmist puts it so perfectly: 'The fool has said in his heart, There is no God.' That is what the unbeliever always says, and that is why he says it; and then he tries to find an intellectual reason to justify what his heart wants to say.

Is this not what the scientist today does? When the facts don't fit my preconceived theory, I'll just change them.

Lloyd-Jones goes on to make just that point:

Our Lord here reminds us of this plainly. It is the heart that covets these worldly things, and the heart in sinful man is so powerful that it governs his mind, his understanding and his intellect. Man likes to think of himself as a gigantic intellect. Scientists are often fond of claiming this; but I can assure you that scientists are some times the most prejudiced men you can meet. Some of them are prepared to manipulate facts in order to buttress their theory. They often start their books by saying that a certain idea is but a theory, but a few pages later you find them referring to it as a fact. That is the heart in operation and not the mind. This is one of the greatest tragedies about sin and its effects. In the first instance it upsets the order and the balance; and the greatest and supreme gift becomes subservient to the lesser. 'Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.'

And you see this effect also in journalism as reporters only see aspects of events that fit their view instead of just reporting what happened, or like the guy on CNN who stated publicly that he would do everything he could to make the presidency work (not withstanding that is not his job as a journalist).

One could go on but you get the point.

Technos: My dream car (for my commute)

This car is the Chevy Volt, lets hope that GM is still in business by the time the car comes out. At least this electric car has some style.

Here is a link to article related to the photo: link

Social Philosophy: Economics, part 1 (of 2167?)

To add to the many other avenues of inquiry into the nature of things in God's universe that I am already involved in, I am taking up a study of Economics--true economics, not the Keynesian b.s. that is typically foisted onto the average college student. Part of my motivation is to be able to instruct my son, Samuel (who wants to study business and art), into a better philosophical model of how markets work. I will eventually read all the big names like Hayek, Von Mises, Adam Smith, etc., but right now I ran into an interesting person by the name of Jean-Baptiste Say. Here is a quote from him:

"A hard working laborer, I was told, fancied working by candlelight. He had calculated that, during his vigil, he burned a 4-penny candle, earning 8 pennies by his work. A tax on tallows and another on the manufacture of the candles increased by 5 pennies the cost of his luminary, which became thus more expensive than the value of the product that it could shed light upon. From then on, as soon as night fell, the workman remained idle; he lost the 4 pennies which his work could obtain him, and without the tax service perceiving anything out of this production. Such a loss must be multiplied by the number of the workmen in a city and by the number of the days of the year."

Taxes will never completely go away, but those imposing them need to know the polynomial curve of the relationship between lost production and revenue if the taxes get too high--if this is known by an enlightened leader(s) then taxes can be kept low to encourage the creation of wealth (which is not a static thing as the lefties would have you believe).

Technos: Dirigibles to make comeback?

Dirigible travel in Silicon Valley: is this a beginning of a trend? Personally, it does my heart good to see this and perhaps one day (if the Obamanogs don't steal all my pitiful wealth) I may get to travel in the comfort of a high tech LTA liner.

Social Philosophy: Obamanation: One of the few to stand alone.

This might be redundant to Mark Horne or any Libertarians out there that might stumble across this blog, but this is too well written and perfect economic courage. I can count on my left hand the number of people I know who can think outside the box like this woman:

No He Can't
by Anne Wortham

Fellow Americans,

Please know: I am black; I grew up in the segregated South. I did not vote for Barack Obama; I wrote in Ron Paul’s name as my choice for president. Most importantly, I am not race conscious. I do not require a black president to know that I am a person of worth, and that life is worth living. I do not require a black president to love the ideal of America.

I cannot join you in your celebration. I feel no elation. There is no smile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There are no tears of triumph in my eyes. For such emotions and behavior to come from me, I would have to deny all that I know about the requirements of human flourishing and survival – all that I know about the history of the United States of America, all that I know about American race relations, and all that I know about Barack Obama as a politician. I would have to deny the nature of the "change" that Obama asserts has come to America. Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my certain understanding that you have chosen to sprint down the road to serfdom that we have been on for over a century. I would have to pretend that individual liberty has no value for the success of a human life. I would have to evade your rejection of the slender reed of capitalism on which your success and mine depend. I would have to think it somehow rational that 94 percent of the 12 million blacks in this country voted for a man because he looks like them (that blacks are permitted to play the race card), and that they were joined by self-declared "progressive" whites who voted for him because he doesn’t look like them. I would have to be wipe my mind clean of all that I know about the kind of people who have advised and taught Barack Obama and will fill posts in his administration – political intellectuals like my former colleagues at the Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

I would have to believe that "fairness" is equivalent of justice. I would have to believe that man who asks me to "go forward in a new spirit of service, in a new service of sacrifice" is speaking in my interest. I would have to accept the premise of a man that economic prosperity comes from the "bottom up," and who arrogantly believes that he can will it into existence by the use of government force. I would have to admire a man who thinks the standard of living of the masses can be improved by destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth.

Finally, Americans, I would have to erase from my consciousness the scene of 125,000 screaming, crying, cheering people in Grant Park, Chicago irrationally chanting "Yes We Can!" Finally, I would have to wipe all memory of all the times I have heard politicians, pundits, journalists, editorialists, bloggers and intellectuals declare that capitalism is dead – and no one, including especially Alan Greenspan, objected to their assumption that the particular version of the anti-capitalistic mentality that they want to replace with their own version of anti-capitalism is anything remotely equivalent to capitalism.

So you have made history, Americans. You and your children have elected a black man to the office of the president of the United States, the wounded giant of the world. The battle between John Wayne and Jane Fonda is over – and that Fonda won. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern must be very happy men. Jimmie Carter, too. And the Kennedys have at last gotten their Kennedy look-a-like. The self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having elected a black person. So, toast yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s bourgeois bohemians. Toast yourselves, Black America. Shout your glee Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley. You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to – Do Something! You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. But you have also foolishly traded your freedom and mine – what little there is left – for the chance to feel good. There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness.

November 6, 2008

Anne Wortham is an individualist liberal who happens to be black and American.

Social Philosophy: Obamanista stirs up disunity.

Rather than post a link to Peter Leithart's post I am going to quote it in full below (I linked before and then the link was broken when a post got archived):

Politics: Culture Wars, RIP?

Alan Wolfe, announcing the end of the culture wars with the election of Obama, accuses the South of voting against Obama because Southerners are racists: “The single most disturbing aspect of last night’s election is the transformation of the Republican Party into the party of the Confederacy. Yes, Republicans remain strong in states such as Wyoming and Idaho, and Obama won Virginia and is leading in North Carolina. But both these latter two states flipped to the Democrats because they contain large numbers of white professionals who moved there from other parts of the country and because blacks came out to vote in such force. Long-time Southern whites, by contrast, opposed Obama–those in the Deep South most of all. Despite having lost the Civil War and having been instructed by the laws of the land to treat members of both races equally, large parts of the South resisted–and they continue to resist.”

Alan Wolfe, announcing the end of the culture wars, advises Obama to ignore a significant swath of the country: “Perhaps they will be able to control the Republican Party for the next electoral cycle or two, but the white South has finally lost its privileged position in American political life; Jesse Helms’s Senate seat is now held by Kay Hagan. Like all those who lose their privileges, especially those who never earned them in the first place, they are unlikely to show much grace, despite the effort by John McCain, in his concession speech, to point the way. Obama would do well not to try to win them over but to ignore them. They have for too long been a malignant force in American political life, and we should not miss their passing.”

Alan Wolfe, announcing the end of the culture wars, ignores the fact that over 50 million people voted against Obama - are they all bigots?

Alan Wolfe, announcing the end of the culture wars, does his best to reignite them and to stoke up the flames.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, November 9, 2008 at 8:00 am

This is so ironic in that it was the Republicans that freed the blacks at the time of the Civil War (or War between the States).

Technos: Mini-Nuke Plant

I just had to link to this article also. [Ooh, ooh, I want one!] This would allow electrical grids to completely eliminate all fossil-fuel sources from generation. One could scale up capacity as needed (especially as electric cars reach market), and this would allow us to use domestic coal for petroleum based products (where the electrics aren't feasible) and domestic crude for all our synthetics (like plastics) and other derivatives.

Lets hope the temptation for social control and social welfare (again including corporate welfare) doesn't vaporize all the money to disallow ideas like the above.

With fading hope:

Novo Visum
Neue Ansicht.

Social Philosophy: Gun grab.

I have no specific link yet, but since I do not receive broadcast TV or cable, I am sensitive to underlying news amidst the mindless pablum shoveled into the average viewer's mind. And I noticed that not even a week after the election came the announcement that certain weapon manufacturers will not be making certain automatic weapons anymore (in the US for US markets). If anyone is interested in owning weapons out there, now would be a good time to make some acquisitions before we lose another Amendment right.

Social Philosophy: Mandatory Volunteerism

Oh how beauteous are the messages of The One.

Natural Philosophy/Technos: Shields up Scotty

The concept explored in the following article has been envisioned by Ben Bova (SF author) and others before. I'm glad it's beginning to look more feasible.

Magnetic Bubble

I just hope the coming obsession by the new government with redistributing wealth doesn't short change the space program (kinda of like the Great Society did after president Lyndon Johnson).

Song Lyrics: Pink Floyd's Dogs (or the Politicians)

The following song was originally written as criticism for the capitalist masters but I think it better describes the corrupt politicians who rule our nation (and yes including the One):

Dogs

You gotta be crazy, you gotta have a real need
You gotta sleep on your toes, and when you're on the street
You gotta be able to pick out the easy meat with your eyes closed
And then moving in silently, down wind and out of sight
You gotta strike when the moment is right without thinking.
And after a while, you can work on points for style
Like the club tie, and the firm handshake
A certain look in the eye, and an easy smile
You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to
So that when they turn their backs on you
You'll get the chance to put the knife in.
You gotta keep one eye looking over your shoulder
You know it's going to get harder, and harder, and harder as you get older
And in the end you'll pack up, fly down south
Hide your head in the sand
Just another sad old man
All alone and dying of cancer.
And when you loose control, you'll reap the harvest that you've sown
And as the fear grows, the bad blood slows and turns to stone
And it's too late to loose the weight you used to need to throw around
So have a good drown, as you go down, alone
Dragged down by the stone.

I gotta admit that I'm a little bit confused
Sometimes it seems to me as if I'm just being used
Gotta stay awake, gotta try and shake off this creeping malaise
If I don't stand my own ground, how can I find my way out of this maze?
Deaf, dumb, and blind, you just keep on pretending
That everyone's expendable and no-one has a real friend
And it seems to you the thing to do would be to isolate the winner
And everything's done under the sun
And you believe at heart, everyone's a killer.

Who was born in a house full of pain
Who was trained not to spit in the fan
Who was told what to do by the man
Who was broken by trained personnel
Who was fitted with collar and chain
Who was given a pat on the back
Who was breaking away from the pack
Who was only a stranger at home
Who was ground down in the end
Who was found dead on the phone
Who was dragged down by the stone.

Natural Philosophy & Social Philosophy

From Mark Horne's blog I have this disturbing news:

End of open inquiry in science. Even if you find evidence for a different mechanism (I happen to think that the sunspot cycle has more to do with global temperatures) for global warming and cooling, you will be treasonous because you won't fit the politically correct view. It kind of reminds me of when the church erroneously jumped all over Galileo for daring to advance a different scientific view. Now we have the secular church trying to determine science rather than experimental evidence.

more head shakes

The doom of mankind is to forget the lessons of history.

Social Philosophy: The Obamanation: Misc. Thoughts

Before the Obama's SA shuts down my blog I'll say a few more things about current political developments and then I'll get back to the things that really matter like Philosophy and Literature and Theology and our small lives.

As leftists and Islamo-fascists around the world chortle with glee at the ascension of the One, I recall the words of the True Messiah, Jesus Christ (via the Holy Spirit):

2:1 First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, 2 for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. 3 This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.(1 Timothy 2:1-4,ESV)

I, therefore offer the following prayer:

Heavenly Father, Most Holy God, have mercy on our souls and forgive us our sins.
Lord God hear our prayer!
Lord God, forgive our nation for our wickedness. Grant us grace to accept your judgment on us in the form of the civil government that we deserve.
Lord God, as your scripture says about the heart of the king being turned by your hand I ask that you grant us a just leader and that you would not cause us to lose our liberties. May You save our new president and grant him the wisdom to rule fairly and to remember your commandments and the Great Judgment that will come to us all.
Lord God, grant this sinner grace to live in repentance and forbearance in the coming years.
Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy!

This prayer is my hope but to the above mentioned chortlers, I bring to their attention this from God's word: Psalm 2

May God have mercy on us all and may He grant us tanker loads of Grace.

Social Philosophy: The Obamanation

So, the coward McCain has conceded before the final count of the votes. Too bad Jimmy Carter didn't call for the UN to supervise the vote--oh wait that only applies when the Democrats are in trouble.

All you untermensch get ready to serve the state!

Sieg Heil, The One has ascended!

and the crowd cheers

Sieg Heil

Heil Barack

as everyone making over $30k per year gets out their checkbook to give money to those who didn't work for the money (including corporations)...

Sieg Heil!!!

Social Philosophy: Link to Interesting interview.

While I don't agree to ever vote for a politician with a "D" after their name (Democrat party), I had to agree with much that the interviewee had to say. See below.

Interview

*******

Exceptions and commentary:

About 2/3's through the first part Andrew Bacevich says that Reagan talked of smaller government and tighter spending and yet these things grew. Before all you leftists get all slap-happy, consider that it is primarily Congress that has control of the extent of government and it's spending, and during the Reagan presidency, the Democrats controlled Congress. The reality of politics in a representative democracy is that to get military spending to defeat Communism, deals had to be made to enable this. (As an aside, even Reagan didn't think that policing the Middle East was worth American blood. He refused military adventurism in the ME, but he had other operations going on in the Western hemisphere.)

And on a general note, the advent of cheap consumer goods is not always bad in that it has provided the opportunity for poorer people in this country and the world access to technology for which they might have had to wait another century (until their nation or economic status caught up). There might be some villages now that don’t even have running water, but the headman might have a cell phone and a radio. I advocate a greater opportunity for all peoples of the world, so there is a positive side to cheap goods. (Another downside is the exploitation of the workers—but that’s a topic for another discussion.)

Regarding Jimmy Carter, he may have had some insight to some of the problems besetting our nation, but for me, he has discredited himself by being overly supportive of the various Communist and assorted totalitarian dictators of the world.

Song Lyrics: Warren Zevon's Werewolves of London

Lyrics and Chords


I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand
Walking through the streets of Soho in the rain
He was looking for a place called Lee Ho Fook's
Going to get a big dish of beef chow mein

/ D6D(v) C6C(iii) GGsus4 G / :

{Refrain}
Ah-ooooo, werewolves of London
Ah-ooooo
Ah-ooooo, werewolves of London
Ah-ooooo

If you hear him howling around your kitchen door
You better not let him in
Little old lady got mutilated late last night
Werewolves of London again

{Refrain}

He's the hairy-handed gent who ran amok in Kent
Lately he's been overheard in Mayfair
You better stay away from him
He'll rip your lungs out, jim
Ha, I'd like to meet his tailor

{Refrain}

Well, I saw Lon Chaney walking with the Queen
Doing the werewolves of London
I saw Lon Chaney Jr. walking with the Queen
Doing the werewolves of London
I saw a werewolf drinking a piña colada at Trader Vic's
His hair was perfect

Ah-ooooo, werewolves of London
Ah-ooooo, werewolves of London

Theology (the Prince of the Sciences): Reformation Sunday

The Confession:

Lord God! Eternal and Almighty Father, we acknowledge and confess before your holy majesty, that we are poor sinners, conceived and born in guilt and in corruption, prone to do evil, unable of ourselves to do any good, who, by reason of our depravity, transgress without end your holy commandments. Therefore, we have drawn upon ourselves, by your just sentence, condemnation and death. But, Oh Lord! with heartfelt sorrow we repent and deplore our offenses. We condemn ourselves and our evil ways, with true penitence beseeching that your grace may relieve our distress. Be pleased to have compassion upon us, 0 most gracious God, Father of all mercies, for the sake of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord! And in removing our guilt and our pollution, grant us the daily increase of the grace of your Holy Spirit, that acknowledging from our inmost hearts our own unrighteousness, we may be touched with sorrow that shall work true repentance, and that Your Spirit, mortifying all sin within us, may produce the fruits of holiness and of righteousness well pleasing in your sight. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.


The reassurance:

What does the Scripture say? "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness." The words, "it was credited to him" were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness--for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification. (Romans 4:3, 23-25)

Q&A on the eternal matter at hand:

Q. How are you right with God?

A. Only by the true faith in Jesus Christ. Even though my conscience accuses me of having grievously sinned against all God's commandments and of never having kept any of them, and even though I am still inclined toward all evil, nevertheless, without my deserving it at all, out of sheer grace, God grants and credits to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ, as if I had never sinned nor been a sinner, as if I had been as perfectly obedient as Christ was obedient for me. All I need to do is to accept this gift of God with a believing heart.

Song Lyrics: ELO Mister Kingdom

Daylight comes to those who live
But those who die they never see
The sun come shining through their window pane
They pass away.

Silly girl to be a fool
You didn't play the golden rule
'Cos once you're through with one world
Theres another waiting there

Chorus:
{Help me such a lonely soul
In dreams
To leave behind the world.
Mr. Kingdom help me please
To find the rainbows end}

Looking from this empty room
The corridors of endless gloom
Go crawling through the night
To meet the dawn that's on its way.

Oh to sleep, per-chance to dream.
To live again those joyous scenes.
The laughter and the follies
That are locked inside my head.

Chorus:{}

I can dream of flying high
Above the city's cares and never be
afraid of anyone
'Cos there ain't no one there

Chorus: {}--Two Times

The Sin of Entertainment: Explanation or justification.

In the face of unfilled dreams (the death of the vision) and the disintegration of our once proud civilization, one could justify seeking escape. This idea of escape is often sited as the reason many choose drugs, excessive reading, or [any addictive behavior]. I remember society being 'up in arms' about some of us in school playing role playing games like D&D because we were told that it might cause us to confuse reality with fantasy; perhaps the same rationale was used to criticize comic book reading, etc. But I have always contended that reality sucks too bad to ever be confused with fantasy. But in contrast to seeking escape, my motivation might have included some elements of that but I, like most Americans, have sought entertainment because it was fun and we could get away with it.

I think even the most hardworking among us still have a need for recreation. In some ways this is why God gave us the Sabbath (of course the recreation had to be tempered by worship of God first). Americans probably overdo it in the area of recreation, but we do it because of prosperity. As our prosperity disappears, it will be interesting to see if our levels of entertainment and recreation decrease. Of course those in economics straights will not have any choice but to exist in their grinding poverty. So, we must have guilt and criticism for having the temerity to enjoy entertainment. As one of the greatest sinners, I too have committed the sin of entertainment.

The Sin of Entertainment: The second game of Civ4 in 1.5 years.

The lighter areas are my empire and the cities with either green or pink circles in front of their names are my cities.

Social Philosophy: Only one more example of what we have to look forward to.

Even if you don't agree with the so called right, the truth will get suppressed.

I suppose this is nothing new for the countries of the rest of the world, but for an idealistic former patriot of the USA, it still is bothersome.

Social Philosophy: No S#@t category and misc.

Mark Horne makes this excellent point a few days ago: (and for those that don't want to click away here is the text:)

I’m too tired to find links or videos or anything, so you’ll have to do all the relevant googling yourself. A couple of fixed points: First, I don’t approve of illegal activity involving deception in order to vote more than once in an election. Second, I would prefer that Obama not be our next president.

Outside of those two considerations, however, I can’t really get too worked up over all the voter fraud that is taking place. Voter fraud only matters if voters matter. And they don’t. We just had Congress and the Senate decide to make a big geek our economic dictator with $700 billion and virtually zero accountability (along with $150 billion in pork). This was done over the objections of an overwhelming majority of voters begging them not to. Wall Street had already bought all of those lawmakers. When Congress temporarily acted like responsible people, Wall Street used Wall Street’s media to whip Wall Street’s recalcitrant politicians back into line so that they voted for the law.

So why should I get outraged that lower class radical socialists have found their own way to beat the system? (of course, they probably are working for Wall Street too and just don’t know it; but whatever) The rich people buy votes and the poor fabricate them. I don’t see much point in being outraged.

And on another note, the latest dead tree version of National Review had on their cover a picture of Adam Smith, an economist/philosopher that I happen to include in my favorites for a more consistent view of economic reality.

I'll post the picture later.

The reason I mention Adam Smith is that this magazine, NR, I once admired when Buckley was alive, has allowed it's writers to drink the Neo-con corporatist koolaid. I define a corporatist as someone who thinks that large bureaucratic, monopolistic, anti-competition organizations such as the modern mega-corporation is the way to have capitalism and free trade. It is ironic that NR should place a picture of Adam Smith on their cover as their current position is opposed to what he espoused. The modern corporation is used as a tool to stifle competition and create monopolies; this is a violation of true free enterprise and un-regulated markets.

Another great evil perpetrated on the societies of the world are these trans-national organizations' disregard for the lives of their workers and the lives of the people of the countries they operate in. This form of globalism has created barriers to innovation and opportunity by many, and when they can't get the neo-cons to get things their way, they use international socialism and fascist terror. All ultimately ruled by the world bankers and their henchmen (like the insurance companies).

Just don't look behind the curtain, and we'll only let you be left or right instead of free. Just bloody special!!

I'm sure if they knew, people like Adam Smith, von Mises, and the like would be in high spin in their graves.

Social Philosophy: Change is all you will have left in your pocket.

--The US and maybe the world economy?



I've been busy with work, bible study, home chores, etc. (and for the first time in a year and a half, I played a computer game-I busted off a full game of Civilization 2) and have not been able to post.

But I had to comment on our current social scene. I will be so glad when this election season is over because even with my voluntary "news fast" I am compelled to hear and see lie after lie perpetrated on behalf of some criminal who wants to rule our criminal government.

For a little balance, here is a quick look into 3 former Fannie Mae executives who have brought down Wall Street.

Franklin Raines was a Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Fannie Mae. Raines was forced to retire from his position with Fannie Mae when auditing discovered severe irregularities in Fannie Mae's accounting activities. At the time of his departure The Wall Street Journal noted, " Raines, who long defended the company's accounting despite mounting evidence that it wasn't proper, issued a statement late Tuesday conceding that "mistakes were made" and saying he would assume responsibility as he had earlier promised. News reports indicate the company was under growing pressure from regulators to shake up its management in the wake of findings that the company's books ran afoul of generally accepted accounting principles for four years." Fannie Mae had to reduce its surplus by $9 billion.
Raines left with a "golden parachute valued at $240 Million in benefits. The Government filed suit against Raines when the depth of the accounting scandal became clear. (From http://housingdoom.com/2006/12/18/fannie-charges/). The Government noted, "The 101 charges reveal how the individuals improperly manipulated earnings to maximize their bonuses, while knowingly neglecting accounting systems and internal controls, misapplying over twenty accounting principles and misleading the regulator and the public. The Notice explains how they submitted six years of misleading and inaccurate accounting statements and inaccurate capital reports that enabled them to grow Fannie Mae in an unsafe and unsound manner." These charges were made in 2006. The Court ordered Raines to return $50 Million Dollars he received in bonuses based on the miss-stated Fannie Mae profits.

Net personal windfall . . . $190 million!

Tim Howard was the Chief Financial Officer of Fannie Mae. Howard "was a strong internal proponent of using accounting strategies that would ensure a "stable pattern of earnings" at Fannie. In everyday English - he was cooking the books. The Government Investigation determined that, "Chief Financial Officer, Tim Howard, failed to provide adequate oversight to key control and reporting functions within Fannie Mae,"
On June 16, 2006, Rep. Richard Baker, R-La., asked the Justice Department to investigate his allegations that two former Fannie Mae executives lied to Congress in October 2004 when they denied manipulating the mortgage-finance giant's income statement to achieve management pay bonuses. Investigations by federal regulators and the company's board of directors since concluded that management did manipulate 1998 earnings to trigger bonuses. Raines and Howard resigned under pressure in late 2004.

Howard's Golden Parachute was estimated at $20 Million!

Jim Johnson was a former executive at Lehman Brothers and was later forced from his position as Fannie Mae CEO. A look at the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight's May 2006 report on mismanagement and corruption inside Fannie Mae, and you'll see some interesting things about Johnson. Investigators found that Fannie Mae had hidden a substantial amount of Johnson's 1998 compensation from the public, reporting that it was between $6 million and $7 million when it fact it was $21 million." Johnson is currently under investigation for taking illegal loans from Countrywide while serving as CEO of Fannie Mae.

Johnson's Golden Parachute was estimated at $28 Million.


WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

FRANKLIN RAINES? Raines works for the Obama Campaign as Chief Economic Advisor

TIM HOWARD? Howard is also a Chief Economic Advisor to Obama

JIM JOHNSON? Johnson hired as a Senior Obama Finance Advisor and was selected to run Obama's Vice Presidential Search Committee

IF OBAMA PLANS ON CLEANING UP THE MESS--HIS ADVISORS HAVE THE EXPERTISE - THEY MADE THE MESS IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Would you trust the men who tore Wall Street down to build the New Wall Street?

W: LP: LG: FD: EHOS

EHOS= The Eternal Husband and Other Stories.

We have begun in our literary group to read and discuss a collection of novellas and short stories. The book is ISBN-13: 978-0553214444, a paperback by the same translators of the other works of Fyodor Dostoevsky that we have so far read and thought about.

Since I am not yet an educated man and have not the critical apparatus to write great intellectual essays on the significance of every aspect of a work to the overall field of literature, I am going to quote a passage from the preface of this collection of stories. This passage is about FD's use of dreams, et al, in his writing; everything is well put, check it out:

"Dostoevsky made very wide use of the artistic possibilities of the dream in almost all its variations and nuances. Indeed, in all of European literature there is no writer for whom dreams play such a large and crucial role as Dostoevsky." We must distinguish, however, between the dreamer and the dream, because dreaming takes two main forms in Dostoevsky. The first is the form of a reverie produced by the dreamer, who longs to transform the squalid reality around him inot something nobler, loftier, more beautiful. The dreamer is a fervent idealist, a great reader of German romantic poetry, but his consciousness is isolated and he usually ends badly. Reality triumphs. Yer the dreamer's aspirations receive a backhanded vindication: aesthetically he is right; art and sensibility are exalted in his person above the meanness of the world. The bubble of this sort of romantic dreaming, which Dostoevsky himself indulged in as a young liberal of the 1840's, was definitively pricked in Notes from Underground. There the dreamer becomes a far more complex and contradictory figure; his tone changes from sentimental idealism to bitter sarcasm, much of the sarcasm directed against himself and his own former dreams: "...to tell long stories of how I defaulted on my life through moral corruption in a corner, through an insufficiency of milieu, through unaccustom to what is alive, and through vainglorious spite in the underground--is not interesting, by God; a novel needs a hero, and here there are purposely collected all the features for an anti-hero..." Isolated consciousness has recognized its isolation. This recognition marked all of Dostoevsky's work after Notes.
The second form dreaming takes in Dostoevsky is that of an unexpected and intense vision, which comes to the dreamer in sleep as a gift or a final revelation, a 'living image' that awakens him to a truth he had not suspected or had not understood before. Such are Alyosha's dream of the messianic banquet and Mitya's dream of 'the wee one' in Brothers Karamazov. These are confirming, saving dreams. They have a negative counterpart, ultimately serving the same purpose, in the nightmares of Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov in Crime & Punishment, of Stavrogin in Demons, and finally in Ivan Karamazov's 'hallucination' of the devil.

More to follow as we examine the stories in this collection.

Personal Update: misc.

The academic year is now in full swing and even though I am not yet able to take classes for credit, I am continuing to study and learn. So here are my busy activities:

Religious studies:
Bible Study Fellowship (studying the Life of Moses)--once a week with homework;
Covenant Group (topical study on the nature of living victoriously amidst suffering)--twice a month;
Sunday School (Men's group, topical on how to cultivate a loving relationship with God and seek after holiness)--once a week plus verse memorization;
Personal devotions (exegetical of the Wisdom Literature and general Bible reading)--as time permits.

Towards writing:
Literary Group (currently reading the works of Dostoevsky)--twice per month plus the time to read;
Other Reading Projects:
Mostly recreational reading (mind candy)--currently reading Kerouac, Stephenson, PKD.
Blog entries.
Audible books.

Technical:
Not pursuing formal studies except Continuing Education credits for my electrical license--in October, WAC/WISHA rules and NFPA; in November, 2008 NEC.

For miscellaneous Philosophy: Peter Leithart's Blog

For current events: five minutes snatched here and there to surf the information ocean.

In all of this I must make sure to pay attention to my family and attend to prayer.

May God sustain me!

Social Philosophy: Comments on the US Gov't give-away to the banks & links

I had to make some comment on the breathtaking wrongness of recent events in government & banking in the USA.

It should have gone without saying that it is unconstitutional and morally wrong for the US Government to bail out the banks (who have shown themselves incompetent to be in business), but it must be that the Fascist Oligarchy masquerading as a Republic in the United States no longer feels the need to maintain the fiction of a representative democracy.

Here are links to the texts of the constitution and the bill of rights and amendments. I challenge anyone to justify from these texts where it is the US Government's place to bail out a bunch of banker assholes.

Keep in mind that I do not accept many of the decisions of the Supreme court after 1930. During FDR's administration we saw the advent of revisionism in law and novelty in the courts that were not justified by precedent in the previous 150 years of our Republic.

Let us have a word of prayer over the death of the noble experiment that was that grand republic known as the United States of America. Now it is a matter of time before religious liberty will be abrogated and the Christians will begin to suffer. May God have mercy on our souls.

Natural Philosophy: James Clerk Maxwell

It goes without saying that James Clerk Maxwell was a genius. Because of my study of electricity and electromagnetism (admittedly at only the practical level), I was primarily interested in this scientist because of his mathematical work on electromagnetism. In examining his life and career, I have found that not only was he brilliant in many other aspects of physics, but was also a devout Christian--not something that today's scientists tend to like to acknowledge. I also like that he had an appreciation of poetry.

I don't know when I will be able to write more comprehensively about Maxwell's work, but I hope to examine and write about some of his work in physics at a later time. For now, let me just say that he is on my top ten list of scientists that I greatly admire.

A general statement about Maxwell's equations:

In classical electromagnetism, Maxwell's equations are a set of four partial differential equations that describe the properties of the electric and magnetic fields and relate them to their sources, charge density and current density. These equations are used to show that light is an electromagnetic wave. Individually, the equations are known as Gauss' law, Gauss' law for magnetism, Faraday's law of induction, and Ampère's law with Maxwell's correction.
These four equations, together with the Lorentz force law (derived by Maxwell), are the complete set of laws of classical electromagnetism.

ORP: KW Jeter’s “Noir” part 4: Conclusion

Rather than spoil the plot for the book "Noir", I just want to mention that the story goes on to deal with artificial intelligence and the nature of memory. Some parts of the last 10% of the book reminded me of Bruce Sterling's "Schismatrix" set of stories. Another interesting point made in an aside is that one major aspect of Noir is that betrayal is ubiquitous and self-destructiveness tends to come to many in the morally ambiguous world of noir; I shall have to read some pure noir type stories to test these observations. I notice that the Library of America publisher has issued some of the works of Raymond Chandler, so I have yet another pile of stories to examine.

King Solomon once said, "Of the making of books there is no end." This is great if you are a reader, but a bit difficult for an aspiring writer as everything that can be told has been told in one form or another. One should always continue to try. It seems fairly universal that every human civilization or people-group has a story telling tradition, so at least if you are a good story teller the people won't mind hearing the story again.

Social Philosophy: George Washington gives Farewell Address

Two hundred twelve years ago, our first president gave his
Farewell Address.



Here is George Washington on the danger and imprudence of political parties:

All obstructions to the execution of the Laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels, and modified by mutual interests.

However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterwards the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind, (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight,) the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

It serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.

There other good pieces of advice also regarding adherence to the constitution, not being entangled with the interests of other nations, etc. I invite everyone to read this address; I happen to agree with George Washington.