Physics Needs Strong Philosophy More Than Ever: Scandal of the 5%!

And it has to do with the rule of the 1%! 

Philosophy is often dominated by weaklings. Sometimes, centuries of weaklings. Let’s avert our eyes from the Nazi Heidegger: fools love Heidegger, because fools love Nazi style of thinking. So does those who favor the rule of the few, because Nazi style thinking has to do with fascist thinking, thinking according to a few ideas and a few men (“Jesus”, Constantine, Saint Augustine, Muhammad, etc.)

Perhaps the most prominent example mixing barbarity, philosophy and stupidity is the Christianized Middle Ages: Epicurus wrote 300 books. All were meticulously destroyed by Christians. Only three letters of Epicurus survived… What was Epicurus writing about, why did Christians hated him so much? Atomic theory. The Greeks considered it highly probable, they thought they had experimental proof. They also had mechanical computers and very advanced elements of mathematics and physics which the Christians also eradicated. It requires some effort to go back to barbarity!

The Christians hated atomic theory, which denied the whole transmutation of bread and wine into body and blood of Christ: Christians “thinkers” wrote millions of pages on the divine transmutation, using Plato and Aristotle’s fishy onanistic theories of the universe. (For Plato that there was a realm of pure “forms”, nothing real, and for Aristotle that there were ten categories, including “essence”; Middle Age philosophers used those heavily… ironically my own SQPR re-institute Dark Matter as essence: my DM interacts with matter some, by causing “spontaneous collapse”… but let’s not deviate from the subject at hand…)

The first thing a decadent civilization does, is to spite philosophy, spite the lovers of wisdom: decadence springs from brute force, not wisdom.

Real, deepest physicists were, and are all philosophers:

Inventing new ideas enables to discover the intricate logic of the world. Invention starts with being a friend of wisdom: why is it that I think, what is it that they think they know and take for granted, and why? Is there a more precise, better informed way?

Anti-philosophy of pop scientists is partly a consequence of the success thus domination of the “shut up & calculate” school. Top physicist Feynman, despised the philosophers he knew. But he, himself, was a philosopher, and it showed up even in what he considered a valid reasoning to be (Feynman had a peculiar way of reasoning; same with Einstein, De Broglie, etc.) Feynman’s son became a philosopher. Physics describes no more than 5% world, it needs strong philosophy!

The other reason why pop philosophers and pop scientists are also anti-philosophy? Because their masters, those who pay them and advance their careers, are themselves in the employ of plutocrats and their organizations, who hate wisdom… as it would be lethal to them, and their organizations…

And physics needs stronger, more subtle logic!

It has always been clear to me that, on a cosmic scale, Quantum Theory makes no sense: basically physics as we affect to know it, is local. However, Quantum Theory speaks as it the world was global. This leads to a contradiction, which has surfaced in the prestigious journal Nature for all to see: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06749-8

“Nature News 18 SEPTEMBER 2018
Reimagining of Schrödinger’s cat breaks quantum mechanics — and stumps physicists
In a multi-‘cat’ experiment, the textbook interpretation of quantum theory seems to lead to contradictory pictures of reality, physicists claim.”

Logic is ever more subtle. Consider the following cartoon from “Philosophy Matters“, a consortium of US academic philosophers (which at some point told me my smarts made me insufferably obnoxious, or words to this effect):

Cute, first order correct, but subtly wrong!

Actually, if people are already dead, they can’t die anymore. People who don’t breathe could be already dead, thus can’t die. Because one doesn’t die again. Hence the second cartoon should read: people who stop breathing, die. Context: not everything, but most of the thing!

The same goes for partisanship: people love the frenzy of the herd they belong to, and the simplistic logic it leads to.

Actually Trump has ordered the FBI to make a full inquiry. But an investigation, except for the grossest things (crime against humanity), can’t be made correctly 36 years later… Defense is automatically at a disadvantage against false memories. (BTW, Republican Senator Flake, a blonde, after been cornered in an elevator by irate women, called for the FBI inquiry, saying he would vote against Kavanaugh otherwise.)

Cute cartoon. Indeed, Justice has got to be a blonde with pink skin: always was, always will. However cute, not the whole truth, which is much more tragic. Namely it’s far from being only the so-called “Republicans” who smother justice. “Partisanship” is not the solution. The entire legislative system needs a re-think. Towards direct democracy.

“Donald J. Trump‏
Verified account
@realDonaldTrump
NBC News incorrectly reported (as usual) that I was limiting the FBI investigation of Judge Kavanaugh, and witnesses, only to certain people. Actually, I want them to interview whoever they deem appropriate, at their discretion. Please correct your reporting!”

Right. Let’s seriously investigate the fashion, and age old tradition, in the USA, of getting drunk, especially among young people, damaging their brains, and using alcoholism to get away with the basest behaviors, and habits. This goes both for the accuser and the accused here! (By the way, frazzled by his elder brother dying of alcoholism, Donald Trump does not do drugs, including alcohol.)

One can’t have the better, and progressive civilization needed for planetary survival, when too many brains of the leadership are damaged by drugs. It’s not just a question that their performances are inferior to have they could be, or should be. The mood that drug addiction gives a sense to life brings forth the tendency, the overall mentality, that the mind should be overwhelmed by out-of-this-world modes of operations, which enable the brain to forget reality as it is. And what are the greatest out-of-this-world neurohormonal regimes? All these having to do with violence, fight or flight, and will to power.

OK, those can be correct to use, but only if one knows what one is playing around, and in the full knowledge of the associated causations. And what of those 5%? They relate to the proverbial 1% who own the world. Both are able to do so because common people are tolerant of theories which explain very little, and are impossible to understand: why is gigantic economic equality necessary, how can it be deemed to be compatible with democracy? Well, look at physics: there a theory is called Theory Of Everything, and it explains not even 5%. Similarly modern economics sustains mostly 1% and is just as impossible to understand. They are made to each other, sustain the same mood of mystification!

In the Middle Ages, persons with lots of character, knew all too well that many of the official (Christian) theories were wrong: Beranger de Tour, a church authority, held that reason was god, and thus that the church should obey to reason. The pope was not amused, councils were organized to castigate Berenger, excommunicate him and deprive him of authority. But Berenger held his ground, in spite of the fact heresy could bring the death penalty, until the natural end of his life, in no small part because he was discreetly supported by the ultra powerful Duke of Normandy, a superman in more ways than one.

William the Conqueror was known to hold that the Earth turned around the sun, and mention it during banquets. Heliocentrism, even with the empirical science of the time, was pretty obvious (the small thing, the Earth should turn around the big thing, the Sun, plus, obviously, the Sun didn’t turn around the Moon, thus the Earth-Moon system; the ancient Greeks knew how to measure those distances, using shadows…) William was not afraid to mention it: once, in combat, he vanquished 15 knights. Alone. Mental courage and physical courage are two faces of the same coin.

We need stronger philosophy, the medicine of civilization. Failure of enough of a meta-critical mentality allowed the rule of ideologies which brought us the 1%, thanks to modern economics, and the 5%, thanks to the “shut up and calculate” ideology in physics. “Shut up and calculate” is exactly the ideology defended by Barack Obama in his pseudo-autobiographies, in the service of what he called “navigation” (or how to get to the top). 

Just as genes can go across species, moods can go across fields of mental activity. The overall mood of Ionian and Greater Greece and Athens before they got broken by the Peloponnesian War, was one of inquiry, that means, maximum criticism. After that, and while, and because the great fascist regimes of Rome, Carthage and Macedonia grew in power, the spirit of inquiry shrank: Greek mathematics forgot about NON-Euclidean geometry, and concentrated upon Euclidean geometry, which is much more fascist (it has stronger axioms… restricting mental freedom). Amazingly, although Pytheas of Marseilles had computed (accurately!) the size of the Earth, 23 centuries ago, after the great fascism of Macedonia and then Christianized Rome, arose, the very possibility of spherical geometry became a scientific impossibility, so intellectually fascist the minds became, for 2,000 years…

The Aztecs were defeated because, instead of being legalistic like Qin China. they were into mass cannibalism, and Cortes’ 450 men found hundreds of thousands of local allies who were strongly motivated by their desire to escape barbecues. When the Qin empire collapsed, the Han took over, and repeated Qin mentality in detail, this time to last centuries as a giant empire. And much of Qin mentality survives to this day. (All too much, come to think of it… And yes, amazingly, this essay will be read in China’s People Republic… Qin famously practiced censorship of bad philosophy, ordering the destruction of the “100 schools” (it failed), but spared what was viewed as scientifically, legally and historically significant…)

Each civilization has one mood, it pervades all. It evolves in time, not always for the best.

Patrice Ayme

Aphorisms, 11/11/2017

Montaigne invented the genre he called “Essays”, from “essayer”, to try. His essays are all over the place. So is his logic, or logic in general. And knowledge. And species. All over.

We are nothing, if we are not rich in mental possibilities.

“Essay”, the way Montaigne had it, was a new usage. “Pseudosopher” is outright a neologism (from Greek“pseudein”, deceive, cheat by lies). It’s more elegant than “fake philosopher”.

***

Differently from pseudosophers, real philosophers don’t need friends.

One way Camus resisted to the “Absurd” he perceived all too readily, all over, was by having plenty of various groups of friends. Nights with Sartre, when they were still friends, sometimes ended at 4am. After Camus published the “Revolted man” (mistranslated in English as “The Rebel”; “rebel” in French is “rebelle”), Camus discovered that his critique of fascism a la Stalin and (death) camps, Soviet style, exposed him to loathing from friends… who had never been truly friends, he observed, dejectedly.

Now, of course, friends are not necessary, to us philosophers: we have the Internet, where critter annihilation is one click away. 

More than ever, physics is rich in metaphor, and even methods, which enrich our global wisdom: we have progressed a lot in knowing the world for certain, since Montaigne

***  

Want Plutocratization? Start with Stupidification!

Foucault wanted to explore unusual mental states. So he tried (thus he pretends) drugs and “eroticism”. However, Nietzsche did it better: he climbed mountains, solo. The latter activity, full entanglement with nature, with bare hands, and bare mind, reveals what the human mind is fully capable of. Sex and drugs are just crutches for minds handicapped by the perspective of nature itself, and how to endure it.

Tellingly, even the pathetic Foucault was much more entangled with life than the pretend phantoms of “linguistic” and Anglo-Saxon pseudosophy.

Camille Paglia had total contempt for Foucault: he was a liar, she screamed (correctly). Foucault was in more way than one, a noble predecessor of the likes of Tariq Ramadan. Part and parcel of the general stupidification program. Not to say he said was stupid. Far from it.

***.

Oxford Preaches Abuse of Women:

Tariq Ramadan had prestigious teaching positions in more than half a dozen universities. He is adviser to the British government. He has been all over French TV for decades. He had two “don” position at Oxford (one in “Oriental Studies” the other in Islam).

Ramadan has been accused of violence against women, for many years. Never mind: he was proclaimed, again and again one of the planet’s top thinkers. Apparently, it requires top thinking to justify the stoning of women (as Ramadan does). As the weasel Ramada is, he long presented abuse and violences against women as a sort of provisional state..

Mr Ramadan, a well-known figure who has been affiliated with Oxford university since 2005, was seen “walking and laughing in the halls as if nothing had happened”, the Oxford student newspaper Cherwell reported. Even though more than 2,000 had signed a petition to have the propagandist of abuse removed, after it surfaced many women accused him explicitly of violence (some of these women are Jihadists). The rape evidence have long been in police labs, but Ramadan is sacred, after all, he is an islamist, so no judicial examination was started, even in France, especially in France.   

The term “Don” derives from the latin “Dominus” (Lord, used in the late empire starting around 300 CE to qualify the emperor). Because priests got called that way, what became universities in England used to be ecclesiastical.

For decades, Ramadan has gone around the world, being asked point blank, yet never condemning the stoning of women for behaviors which were already not criminal in the Roman Republic 2,100 years ago. Instead Ramadan has always called stoning “unimplementable”.

The only thing which can be implemented is Islam fanatics preaching in the top universities, to make us all stupid. When Darwin and Lyell were young, they had to go to Edinburgh to learn evolution theory (Lamarck’s theory). Evolution was not taught in England, because it contradicted the cult of God/Allah. In a similar vein, Ramadan was an adviser to the British government (one of several he so advise). How to rape women and get away with it?

***

Plutocratic Magazine The Economist fires another broadside “cover story” at Trump, loaded with boiled carrots:

The Economist is led by a 50 year old woman, Zanny Minton Beddoes, who was apparently given the task of keeping Trump Derangement Syndrome up and running (“America’s global influence has dwindled under Donald Trump… America hurt itself and the world by turning inward”). I replied:

Many facile viewpoints are in the silly, silly category. All what is, is not what meets the eye, or the ear.

1) Trans Pacific Partnership Treaty was monstrous: it proposed to override democracies. The excuse for it was that it was an alliance AGAINST China. Trump destroyed that anti-democratic plot. Even Clinton had turned against it. (And of course Sanders!)

2) Trump didn’t pull the US out of the Paris Climate Treaty: he just said he did. In truth it can’t happen before 2020. Meanwhile, last Saturday, the US government produced the most alarming climate warming alert ever, saying 2.1 Celsius rise was guaranteed by 2100. And the rise could be as much as 4.7 Celsius (= apocalypse: poles melting, 70 meter sea rise, world hypoxia). Obama posed as an enemy of coal and pipelines: he did both, massively, stealthily. Trump poses as the opposite. Pay attention to what he does. By letting his scientists predict that the climate situation is going actually to become hyper catastrophic, Trump is working deep on the climate skeptics…

3) Obama named as ambassadors his hyper wealthy friends. Trump fired them on day one, while Obama was still in the air carried by Air Force One (relabelled!) to visit in Palm Springs the billionaire he had named ambassador to Spain.

Machiavellism consists in doing what one is doing in such a way others feel it is the opposite. Trump surrounded himself with experienced generals. Obama surrounded himself with experienced gold diggers… While doing to the letter the exact program concocted by Goldman Sachs under Bush. When Obama left the presidency, inequality had never been higher in the history of the USA.   

Meanwhile the monopoly system set-up under Clinton-Bush-Obama starts to get noticed. Obama did, in the average, one “fund raiser” (= conspiring with the world’s wealthiest people, in exchange for money) per WEEK, during his 8 years of presidency. That’s around 420 fundraisers. One of the pillars of that corruption was Alwalid Bin Talal Al Saud, grandson of the founder of Saudi Arabia, now under arrest, and the controller of Citigroup… It’s entirely possible that the can of wiggling worms is finally going to be open…

Obama was the best friend of global plutocratic monopolies. This era could come to an end, as enemies of Trump such as Al Talal are exposed. It could indeed happen that the arrangements behind the scenes to help those plutocrats made by Obama and his minders, come to the light. Is this what the Trump Derangement Syndrome organizers are afraid of?

Michael Jackson used to babysit Trump’s children (!): as this is increasingly known, the accusations of racism against Trump have become less prominent. Other facile accusations should also be discontinued.

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2017/11/07/radical-queen-of-england-a-loan-shark-plutocratization-proceeds-disinformation-blossoms/

Trump Derangement Syndrome victims will find a racist angle, as maniacs  have answers to all. Trump kneeling to his friend’s greatness

***

Jacques Attali, Verified account @jattali #signesdufutur: il faudra bien,d’une façon ou une autre, mettre un terme à la divergence entre l’économie allemande et celles des autres pays européens, qui la financent par leurs importations de produits allemands https://twitter.com/atlantico_fr/status/928867343752626176 …[“One will have, ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, to terminate the divergence between the German economy and that of other European countries, which finance this divergence by their imports of German products“, says Attali, correctly!]

Atlantico on Twitter: “Les 5 sages de l’économie allemande alertent sur “sa surchauffe” et mettent involontairement le doigt sur…

Patrice Ayme added: The US economy, with 3% GDP growth (second quarter in a row) is not “overheating”. What Berlin wants is supremacy. A prolongation of the present German economic & political supremacy. Germans should be reminded that’s uncomfortably close to a dreadful past, persistently engaged, ever since Prussia thought that, thanks to British financing, it could afford racism and exploitation of Jews, Poles and others. That mentality lasted from mid Eighteenth Century until May 8, 1945. What we observe now is a full resurgence thereof. Let’s cut the crap.  

Abuse is abuse, a form of sustainable violence. Sustainable violence can only be broken by wisdom triumphant, or greater violence, irresistible.  In any case abuse is the seed for a storm, mental, or otherwise.

November 11: Time to remember again what the Germans did in 1914, and 1939. The time for excuses is over. The time for explanations is needed.  To avoid the time of another replication.

Patrice Ayme’

Aphorisms 10/26/16: Populism, ITC, Syria, Hormones, Hillary

I wrote to some “friends” who called me a liar, in public on the Internet (for saying that inequality grew under Bill Clinton). I rolled out graphs from FRED (Federal REserve Data). They replied that they just felt that I was a liar, and that was good enough. It’s all about how one feels. Thus they did not need to read anything I wrote, ever, never did, never will. Nor did they need to look at any graph I presented: so much stuff on the Internet, you know, complete with interviews of little green men. I pointed out that Obama had a “supermajority” many times over a 100 weeks period, he could have passed progressive legislation. They rolled out links saying the same exact thing inside (but not in their blaring titles), and then called me a liar again, by claiming that Obama had a supermajority at some point, although they had just proven my own point, which contradicted theirs. We live in the age of the 140 characters minds.

So maybe long essays, going deep, are inappropriate in the Internet age. And the “aphorism” approach needs to be revisited. Better to say everything in a few shocking lines than nothing new in a long book. (Nietzsche said roughly the same.)

Where Populism Comes From:

Since Bill Clinton abrogated FDR’s Banking Act of 1933, the part of GDP going to the richest has grown by 40% relative to the part of GDP going to We The People. Thank you Bill!

The alternative theory promoted by the servants and profiteers of the established order, is that populism comes from the undeniable allegations that Trump touched once the arm of a porno actress., and was like an “octopus” once in a plane, thirty-five years ago, let alone would have called an attempted murderess and Miss Universe “Ms Housekeeping”, in a private conversation. Thank you, Hillary, for going high, like Michelle Obama suggested. Is imagination higher than high? Imagination is higher than the reality that was, and create a new one, by its mere existence (this is what Quantum Theory says). Here for some imagination in action. If you think you can get away with presenting the empress, as if she had no clothes, you will be deleted by the plutocratic organizations Obama promoted:

Don’t Insult the World President! Instagram accounts with up to 107,000 followers were deleted without warning when the preceding art, in Melbourne, Australia, was shown (it is to be noticed that this is is not Hillary Clinton as the latter seems to have an anatomy much more ready to resist famine). Humor Is Disappearing, Terror Expanding.

[Facebook owns Instagram; Facebook considers female chests to be obscene, an object of well-educated revulsion, and thus a potential excuse for deletion of disrespectful, irreverent activity unbecoming a servant of the established order; and servants of that order, we are all implicitly considered to be; the alternative is deletion.)

***

Africans Are Criminals Says International Tribunal:

The International Tribunal Court (ITC; CPI in French) is a branch of the United Nations. The USA and Russia, apparently worried about their own future war crimes, have refused to become members. They did not need to worry. Since its creation in 2003, the ITC has opened ten inquiries, nine of them in Africa.

During the third week of October 2016, three African countries, Burundi, then South Africa, and now Gambia, have announced their withdrawal of the ITC. Gambia is an ill-disguised dictatorship (the president is running for his fifth mandate in December). However, the Gambian “Information minister, Sheriff Bojang, who is as black as a beautiful piece of coal, told the truth when he said that: “… Although one calls it an “International Tribunal”, the ITC is an international court of  whites who prosecutes and humiliates people of color, especially Africans”.  

As I said, Gambia is a dictatorship. However, Even dictators tell the truth sometimes. Every truth is precious, whatever its source, as any newborn is precious, even if born from hell.

***

Anything which compromises US supremacy is unfair:

Such as making Apple pay more than 1% tax in Ireland.The Obama doctrine, new paint, same old same old.

Mike Griffith, a fanatical Hillary Clinton supporter, and friend of mine, answering the preceding: “Why give up power?

It is revealing that Clinton partisans are actually rapacious, and power obsessed. Well what Obama did was to give an excess of power to hellish corporations (names unsaid, for obvious reasons) or poster boys (like the musky boy). This, by the way, was the core of Mussolini’s “fascismo” (a notion pushed by professor Gentile). Make corporations powerful, thanks to deals with the state. It failed. Why?

There are many types of power. Raw military power contradicts intellectual power. A balance of power makes the best power for the advancement of civilization.

***

If the Empress has no clothes, it does not matter who observed it:

The Economist accused Putin to have revealed some lies and manipulations of the Clinton machine. As if there was a Putin behind every US email. As if revealing a crime was more criminal than the crime. What is wrong about revealing manipulations of the US elections by American manipulators? Revealing the little plots of some Clinton helpers helps the democratic process. So, supposing Putin helped reveal the emails, he did not write them! Keep your cool, you the Clinton sycophants and servants, and learn to distinguish.

What I wrote should not be construed as support for Putin, and, or his activities, many of which I condemn. However I also condemn the fact that Clintonistas are talking obsessively about Putin when their own mess, manipulating illegally the US electoral process, is pointed out.

***

Hormonally Determined? Yes and No:

If one makes an Internet search for images on any subject, after a while, one seems to fall on pictures of women in various state of undress.

To this Kathleen Hawes Watkins answered: “Revealing the male perceptual preference for image over words. (I imagine a completely male-centric media would be all images with very few, if any words). Language is predominant in females, visual cortex predominates in males.”

Patrice Ayme I guess that makes me female, as I talk a lot… Notice too, that, historically, most of the important talking was made by men (from sexism, in part; unavoidable gender roles too). Does that make these men, who created civilization, into women? What is the real science behind that? And even if there is how do we know differences did not arise from sexism, which is already blatant in pre K?

It is true that there are sexual differences in depression (women get twice more depressed than males, presumably killing their enemies rather than crying about it). This seems to be actually traceable to real physiological differences at the cellular levels (studies in rats show). It makes all evolutionary sense, as females should be more cautious, and males more aggressive. Both behaviors improving the chances of future generations.

***

Virtuous Circle, Washington Way:

US defense contractors got 70 billion dollars of contracts, through military “help” to the Afghan army alone.

Afghan Taliban is indoctrinated in Islam schools in Pakistan. Who is the big ally of Pakistan? The USA. Who profits?  US “defense” contractors

The war in Afghanistan has thus contributed in making the  wealthiest in the US richer. One may ask whether that was not the aim all along (fostering Bin Laden, etc.). And, in a way, it has been a Machiavellian play, not at all what it looked..

US intervened in Afghanistan fully by July 3, 1979. (fostering Bin Laden, etc.). And, in a way, it has been a Machiavellian play, not at all what it looked.

***

“WE” Hillary I, And Us, the plutocrats, look down at you, low lives down there:

Hillary about low lives who want to change the world, when she was talking at Goldman-Sachs, for more than $200,000 a pop: “…we all should be really understanding… & we should try to do the best we can not to be a wet blanket on idealism.” Who is “we”?

A friend, Mr. Gartland wondered: “The royal we?” I have a more sinister  interpretation: it’s not just the royal “WE”, more probably, it’s:“We The Plutocrats”. Hillary identified with her audience during that speech, which was made of Goldman-Sachs partners. Hillary’s too many candle light dinners with Goldman-Sachs CEOs did that to her. Hillary will generalize, once most people understand exactly what it means. As a top banker told me recently: it’s a criminal organization. A criminal organization which does not just organize governments, but society and minds.

Patrice Ayme’

Common Wisdom, Common Errors

An essay from an “Old Lamplighter” from Arizona, John Hurlburt, Midnight in Wildcat Canyon is reproduced by my friend Paul Handover. The essay is worth reading. Some of the wisdom therein is actually, from my point of view, valuable. Yet, some other, not so much… Although all too common for comfort (You know I am uncommonly grumpy, and I was going to growl about some issue i diligently unearthed.) Thus criticizing “Common Wisdom”, especially of the seemingly elevated sort, is both uncommon… and valuable. Studying intelligence by studying error is a bit like studying intelligence by studying Aplysia Californica (a swimming slug with a modest 600 neurons; studying its mind, the way it learned, provided Eric Kandel with the Nobel in medicine).

So “Old Lamplighter’s” essay on the Midnight revelation is nice. It maintains myths such as believing that voting will make a difference. As if the devil we know is so much better, for sure, than the devil we don’t know. Especially when both devils used to be best friends.

Reality is ever more complex, the more we analyze it. Ignoring those details, where evil lurks, is evil. Is reality a “wave”, breaking on a beach soon enough, or the tsunami to end all tsunamis? Of course the latter. These are times never seen before, “Keep calm and carry on” will not carry the day, let alone the century.

The American West Knows Thousands of Such Places: Excruciatingly Beautiful, Empty of Humanity. For Now. Such places, I have run through, and got a feeling for the universe no city, or library could ever give.

I have known terror in such canyons. Or, at least, let’s say, most productive panic: cold, insufficiently dressed, at night, no food, no drink, faltering light, lost, exhausted, wondering where the path was. And with the unwelcome company of the occasional bear or lion. Such moments are of course cherished in retrospect, and most instructive.

Nature, biological nature, does not always win. Evidence is that life got started on millions of planets… And got extinguished soon after… on millions of planets.

The very notion of nature is… not natural. What is more artificial than biological nature? It was engineered with too much chance and intelligence, not to be viewed, as a miracle (divine, or not).

The “Old Lampfighter” cannot figure out whether we are important, or not. Of course we are! After all, we created the world as we perceive it!Here he goes:

“It’s difficult to understand why we’re fussing and fuming as though we owned the earth, the moon, the sun, and the stars. There’s consensus on the body of scientific fact that supports a holistic understanding of our relative insignificance and our corresponding responsibilities as a consciously aware biological species which is presently the dominate life form on a remote garden planet.”

***

We certainly own the Earth and, soon enough, the Moon, at this point. So are we important, or we are not? “Science” says nothing about our “relative insignificance”. We could well be the most intelligent species in the local group of galaxies, and that would make us very significant indeed. That angle is supported by some science:

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2013/11/06/40-billion-earths-yes-no/

It is pretty clear that, at this point, only massive, deliberate, smart, decisively willful human intervention will save the Earth’s biosphere from a catastrophe the human species itself brought. That makes us important, just as Satan and the Good Lord are. Both. Together. Yes, Satan and the Good Lord are of our own invention: our inventions matter.

“Einstein’s theories prove that the cosmos turns inside out without breaking.” Most of the work assigned to Einstein by Common Wisdom is not from Einstein, and Common Wisdom does not know it, anyway. “Einstein’s” theories are also metric, not topological. So they say nothing about “inside out”.  Whether the universe is breaking, breaks, or could break, “Einstein theories” says nothing about, and it does not matter, when we try to determine, who, or what, matters in this universe. Einstein gravity is Newton’s gravity, with a few details fixed. That does not prove Newton gravity, even inside a galaxy (that’s the problem of “Dark Matter”).

Whether Newton-Einstein holds, or not, at a galactic scale, does not tell us whether we should have gone to war in Syria (we should; or, at least, Europeans should have, because the refugee crisis, and now dictatorship in Turkey, matter for EU basic security, let alone that of dozens of millions in the Middle East!)

We are who created our understanding of the world, what we call, the world. Viewed that way, we are the most important species: the one who made the world. So we are responsible for it, in more way than one.

But our present political system is a way to escape our responsibilities. We elect “representatives” who are, intrinsically forced to lie their way to seduction, so that they can manipulate us, and the great powers they crave for. By voting, we vote for corruption. But have we a choice? No. We have to make it a real choice, by showing a different way. And making that new way as well-known as the proverbial “Einstein”.

“Common Wisdom” needs now what is unfortunately still uncommon, uncommon veracity. Dropping Einstein in a conversation does not make it right nor elevated. Quite the opposite. Veracity now should include imagining all the possibilities, as they could become real, all too readily. The possible is certainly more true, and of more importance, than our lying politicians, and all of yesterday’s little truths, even nicely packaged with grandiose red herrings.  

It’s not enough to say smart stuff, or avoid doing “stupid stuff” (to quote Obama) to be good and true. One has to know enough, enough relevant details, and have the courage to say it bluntly enough, that a debate can be engaged and start biting. Fussing, fuming, even screaming, have their indispensable uses, to bring forth the passions, without which we would stay stuck, at the bottom of canyons, be they mental, or physical.

Aphorisms June 2014

Which Price the Market?

Market fanatics claim the markets give the best price. They don’t like taxes, nor government intervention in the “market”. They don’t even understand that it is the government that creates the market, that there is no market without government.

Externalities are incentives with a minus sign. The fossil fuel industry, overall, is destroying the biosphere. How much is that worth?

***

Bhutan has a national happiness policy:

If one is unhappy with it, one gets kicked out. You see there are ethnic groups in Bhutan, for example Bhutan born citizens of Nepalese ethnicity (Nepal being next door, although not exactly contiguous). They make Bhutanese authorities unhappy.

“Citizen” is not exactly the word, as non-Buddhist, non-Gzonkha  speakers are not viewed as Bhutanese (even if their ancestors had lived in Bhutan for centuries). 100,000 refugees out of Bhutan from a total population of 700,000.

Morality: Buddha was just a man. Only Human Rights provide a religion for all men.

Having A Strong Currency Means Being Independent:

Financial crisis (European or not): People such as Paul Krugman have not achieved yet the understanding that the European currency did not cause the 2008 financial crisis. It is irresponsible to accuse the Euro. What was even more irresponsible was to bail-out all the bad actors, using and abusing, average taxpayers, who had been themselves victims of the crisis.

It is this bailing-out of the bad actor, without retribution, that caused the European sovereign debt crisis.

As in Bhutan, a deliberately bad analysis of what constitute happiness in the USA (king dollar) results in an aggressive mien towards innocent Europeans. It’s a policy at the New York Times, as a thoroughly negative article on Lithuania joining the Eurozone shows. (Now all the Baltic republic ex-Soviet occupied, have joined Finland, itself partly annexed by Stalin, in the Eurozone.)

***

Reflection Without Inclination Is No Option

Once I met a huge wolf in the wild, from 3 meters away. I had interrupted his hunt by accident. Where he expected the fleeing chamois, a primate ran into him. I will never forget it. He had complete capability to look at me in the eye, and he indulged in it thoroughly. He was immensely intelligent, more like a baboon than like a dog. We read each other’s eyes. Complete understanding of the situation at hand was achieved on both sides, silently, and efficiently.

So I do think that what is deficient in the wolf is not the capability, to look in a human eye (as some researchers have claimed recently). Instead, wolves do not have the inclination to look in human eyes, in normal circumstances.

In the situation the wolf found himself in with me, he was highly motivated to try to understand why, so late in the day, far above timberline, somehow the antelope he was chasing (who had just passed by me, close enough to touch) had transformed itself in the apex predator.

So I am careful with the concept of “socialization” in wolves, and other animals. The behavior space of wolves is much bigger than that of dogs. Thus they are less inclined to look to men as gods as dogs are. But that does not mean that, if properly motivated, they cannot throw a hard, analytic look at humans.

A wolf will never become as “familiar” with humans as a dog is. It’s, basically, below the dignity of the wolf. He has better things to think about.

The same sort of differences appears when comparing dogs and cats, or in general, when comparing intellectual performances of variegated species. A chimp can perform much less well than a border collie, on some tests. Because the latter is anxious to please, and the other has different things to do, plus very bad character, if demeaned, and the ability to destroy any unarmed human in seconds.

Tamarinds monkeys, submitted to experiments on fairness, got so angry with the experimenters, that they refused to go on with the experiments, opting instead to throw projectiles to their tormenters.

Pure intellectual performance does not exist. Nor does pure emotional performance. They are always entangled.

Patrice Aymé

Aphorisms March 2014: Putin, Plutos, Malta, Math, Brain

Whip Stops Baffled Bear Momentarily:

Wonderful! Dictator Putin suggests he won’t invade anything today, if a number of changes are made to Ukraine’s constitution, friends, hopes.

Specifically, Putin let it be known that he wants demonstrations in Ukraine, which, says Putin, have been disrupting him for six months, to come to a stop. Demonstrations are a bad example to Russians: too many demonstrations make the kleptocrats flee. There was actually 50,000 people demonstrating against Putin, in Moscow, because he had annexed Crimea.

Speaking of stopping, Putin will stop, if, and only if, he is persuaded that horrendous consequences are coming his way, otherwise. It’s not going to be easy, considering that some German minister said this week that Europe could not do without Russian gas, for the foreseeable future.

And considering that Londongrad is a mighty ally of Putin… In a West ruled by plutocrats. So this is not just about Putin going crazy, it’s about him realizing he is confronting weak and divided democracies, rotten from inside.

Thus, as in the 1930s, plutocrats are playing both sides, hoping for the best. Just as in 1930s, the dictator (Hitler then, Putin now) feels in command of enough plutocratic power in the West to get what he wants, without a world war. Hitler was astounded, on September 1, 1939, when the French Republic and Britain gave him an ultimatum. He had come to believe what his Anglo-American plutocratic friends had told him, that it would never happen, because they, the plutocrats, controlled everything.

***

I Bank Therefore I Tank:

How come Putin has momentarily come to his senses? Sanctions. By closing Rossiya, a bank close to Putin, at a distance, the USA left 495,000 Russian clients without a bank. And that was just a warning shot. Visa, MasterCard and company control the essentiality of Russian banking. Also banks need some international cooperation, and that was going down too.

It goes without saying that the USA, under corrupt president Roosevelt not only did nothing of the sort, but the exact opposite. As France and Britain were in total world war against Nazism, and 45 French division tried to crash through the Siegfried Line, the USA was busy aiding and abetting Hitler’s fascist dictatorship. In a crucial way (lead tetraethyl story).

Not only were Hitler and his followers encouraged, but the German generals who wanted to arrest the Nazis, got very confused: was the USA allied to the Guide, or not?

This time, the early, swift opposition of the president of the USA to tank-born fascism, is not just the most important thing Obama did, but the most important thing any government of the USA did, in generations.

***

Heavens For Sale:

Malta has put for sale 1,800 passports and nationality. First condition: pay 650,000 Euros for the head of the family, at least 250,000 Euros of investment on top of that, plus more per family member. The stratagem is expected to bring in more than one billion Euros. Reassuringly, Malta announced that it did not expect the new Maltese citizens to spend the year there (they will be free to roam the European Union).

Malta is notorious for refusing Maltese nationality, even for those who have resided there more than twenty years, and the EC is not happy about that.

***

Your Pain Is Our Ecstasy:

The main problem of the socio-economy is plutocracy, though. Plutocracy wants the starvation of the People’s economic activity. That allows to increase the gap between the haves and have-nots, which is the plutocracy’s raison d’être, and ultimate value.

Hence the obsession fabricated by the Main Stream Media against deficits, without saying they are directly related to the plutocracy not been taxed enough. Or the insistence that the People has no skill (thus, presumably ought to be starved in all ways, including access to public education).

Referring to: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/29/the-skills-zombie/

***

Food Madness:

2.4% population growth in the 1960s. That was the excuse for the creation of massive food exportation machinery then. In the 1980s, that over-production was massively exported to poor countries and frozen European chicken destroyed local food production in poor countries.

Population growth is only 1.3% now. That’s still about 100 million added, a year.

That does not mean that shocks to the world food system are not coming. They are, thanks to the global warming and weirding.

***

Mathematics = Physics

Many modern thinkers have wondered at the remarkable efficiency of mathematics in physics. Galileo said physics was written in mathematics, Plato viewed knowing math as a prerequisite to advanced thinking.

The latter point of view is the correct one. Better: thinking, advanced or not, is, intrinsically, mathematical. Neurology is math.

Mathematics is just a more abstract physics. So if physics is hard, so can mathematics be too. The best avenue to explore what these abstract thoughts mean, is the history of Euclidean geometry. One physical simplistic simplification that Euclid made was flatness. When mathematicians realized that flatness did not have to be, Riemann soon got the idea that geodesic distanciation was equivalent to force (vulgar physicists believe Einstein got the idea).

Euclid also made many other simplifying assumptions about the nature of continuity and … And Quantum Physics violate them, starting with the notion of points.

Patrice Aymé

Aphorisms 1/11/13

Weep Because Germany Is Too Competitive?

Krugman‘s “More Notes On Germany“: …“about Germany’s trade surplus and the US report saying, correctly, that it’s harmful to the world economy.

The worst thing, if you ask me, in the Spiegel report on the controversy is the statement by Germany’s Economics Ministry that Germany’s surplus is a sign of the competitiveness of the German economy and global demand for quality products from Germany.

Economists everywhere should read this and weep. It is a basic accounting identity that:

Current account = Savings – Investment

Any story about the determination of the current account balance must take this identity into account.”

Krugman talks, but he is unawares of the details, thus the devil. Innocently, like the sheep frolicking, he contentedly bleats, and points at the big bad Germans.

Germany has 20% more population than France, but one third fewer young people. So a lot of its psychological problems have to do with aging. Merkel, for example, unfortunately not just for her, had no children.

Germany’s economic outlook is viewed, by many European economic experts as the worst in Europe. Yes, it’s surprising, and little known, but this dire prediction is something those who steer the German economy are perfectly aware of. So they cling desperately to the competitivity thing.

As I said in a comment not published by the NYT, as I am not trusted, the German population is old (relative to the French one, say). And it is smaller than thought, even a year ago.

Germany needs to import people, even before stuff. As there is more work in Germany, Germany was able to “import” more than one million qualified workers, from the rest of the EU, in just one year.

So the German competitivity is a way to compensate for terrible demographics, and a not so good educational system (great for apprentices, not so much for creative engineers; France beats Germany on that score).

The interpretation in France is not that Germany is bad, but that France is uncompetitive. Solution? Not whine about Germany. Nobody serious is whining about Germany in France.

Instead, some German methods are now imported to France with gusto. One is to have representatives of the unions sitting on the board of companies. To replace strife and strikes by concertation, as done in Germany.

***

Some take a public oath to write 50,000 words in November.

Call that the anti-German method. Once Einstein met Valery in Paris. “What’s the little book for?” enquired Albert. “So I can write my fresh ideas, dear Albert!” Einstein was baffled:“But ideas are very rare. I could never forget the few I ever had.”

The giant mathematician Gauss had the motto:“Pauca, Sed Matura.” (Few, but mature.)

Verbal diarrhea ought not to be confused with what’s needed. Yet studies have shown that, the more blogs publish, the more popular they are. Thus demonstrating how uneducated the public is, and how much it wants to pet a cat. All the time, everyday.

***

10,000-Year Study Finds Oceans Warming Fast, But… From a Cool Baseline.

Notice that there is always a “But“. That looks fair and balanced, but it destroys the primary message.

In truth global warming is proceeding, not just unabated, but accelerating. The much advertized “pause” in global atmospheric warming over the last decade is nearly irrelevant.

I suggested first that the pause was due to the “sun cooling” in 2009: https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2009/05/31/sun-cooling-ice-melting/

… followed by NASA’s Hansen and al. 2 years later: Hansen, J., Sato, M., Kharecha, P. & von Schuckmann, K. Earth’s energy imbalance and implications. Atmos. Chem. Phys. 11, 13421–13449 (2011).

 Now the atmospheric pause is mostly explained as absorption of heat by the oceans. Guemas and coworkers in Nature Climate Change in April 2013 “attribute the onset of this slowdown to an increase in ocean heat uptake… Most of this excess energy was absorbed in the top 700 m of the ocean at the onset of the warming pause, 65% of it in the tropical Pacific and Atlantic oceans… The ability to predict retrospectively this slowdown not only strengthens our confidence in the robustness of our climate models, but also enhances the socio-economic relevance of operational decadal climate predictions”.

The average ocean depth is 4,000 meters. The pressure from the atmosphere is equal to that from ten meters of water. hence one can say that the ocean has potentially 400 times (total mass ocean) two-thirds (surface earth covered by ocean), that is 250 times the heat storage capability of the atmosphere.

In truth, the heat capacity of the ocean is more like 500 times, because half of the atmosphere is above 5,500 meters and warming up there mostly reflects into space (to the point the stratosphere is actually cooling, as it loses warmth from all the infrareds blocked by the greenhouse below! This is an experimental fact that has been known for 20 years, by the way…)

It’s highly likely that some ocean currents have gained force to augment convection, carrying heat away with them (proof: much and much Pacific El Nino style imbalances).

The Earth energy system has many degrees of freedom. As the heating of the atmosphere momentarily maxed out, other systems got in gear, allowing more efficient transport of heat to the oceanic depths.

An example is melting: as ice melts, or sublimates, temperature stays constant. Does not require much brain to realize this is happening in the Arctic. Especially with an absolutely gigantic permafrost briskly melting (and an even greater larger heat capacity). 

This deep ocean warming spells catastrophe, as it could quickly lead to release of methane hydrates and melting of the high latitude under water frozen basins in East Antarctica.

***

New York Pravda?

To cover-up the “debacle” (dixit Obama’s HHS secretary, Sebellius) of “Obamacare”, the New York Times has instituted a severe censorship system.

“Trusted Commenters” are published immediately (as they would be in the Wall Street Journal, except, there, everybody is trusted until proven otherwise!) Most of my comments, on anything, have been censored in October.

For example Krugman published essays on the French economy in the 1920s to try to disprove contradiction from his enemies. This is a subject I know well, and I could see that Krugman had missed the elephant in the bedroom. So I sent a very detailed and explicit analyses demonstrating that Krugman’s pontificating about France was fraught with fundamental flaws. It was all very scholarly. The New York Times censored all of it.

Brain recognition, not just speech recognition, is a problem at the NYT. So now comments from brainy people are not published by the New York Times in a timely manner… Because they are not “trusted”! I have had a full subscription to the New York Times for more than three decades, so I can read comments from “Rima Rigas”? And see mine not published?

“Rima Rigas” claims to be a down on her luck, dirt poor, adrenal gland cancer riddled [sic]. Still she has the time to send 30 comments to the New York Times, each day, some very long. All supporting insipid talking points of the caviar branch of the democratic party…. which obviously pays her, and a few of her ilk.

Other “trusted commenters” are obviously insurance industry shills (when the issue of private insurance and Obamacare arise, and only then, they are out there with ten trusted comments recommended instantaneously by 100 people. They have identified me as a problem, so they call me a “liar” (just because I know Europe a bit better than they do). A similar problem happens with greenhouse warming subjects; obviously paid characters show up, instantaneously recommended by dozens. 

It reminds me of the Iraq war, when none of my anti-war comments was published for 6 months. I love contradiction by clever people. Nothing is worse than confusing the bleating of the sheep with something brainy. Especially when they are obviously paid.

***

Patrice Ayme

Dysfunction Chronicles I

Abstract: Connections between financial and health care pirates, Obamian stasis, and the necessity of (good!) empire.

Krugman in Shorting Out The Wiring: Bush was treated as a highly effective leader who knew what he was doing right up to Katrina, while Clinton — now viewed with such respect — was treated as a bungling interloper for much of his presidency.

Tyranosopher: Clinton “now viewed with such respect”. Why to proffer such an absurdity? Just because Clinton is filthy rich, now that he has cashed in? Viewed with respect by whom? Big time plutocrats?

Clinton brought the reign of Goldman Sachs, Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Sheryl Sandberg (lover and pet of the preceding one), and Geithner. Seriously:

1) Bill Clinton dismantled the separation of money creation (large deposit banks) and “investment” banks (Wall Street private-public casino). That separation (Banking Act of 1933) was Roosevelt’s greatest reform. So, domestically speaking, Clinton was the anti-Roosevelt. A sort of anti-democrat, a demonstrative demon emphatic for the people as the spider to the fly. (And now big time advising his boy Obama to hang tough.)

2) Bill Clinton allowed the expansion of financial and commodity derivative trading to the point of complete dementia (up to $750 trillion for financial derivatives trades, $50 trillion for real economy trades, worldwide)

Yes derivatives are an order of magnitude greater than world GDP. People do not understand what it means. It means that the WORLD’s money creation machine has been highjacked by a few pirates, the largest “banks”… that the Public is still financing through Quantitative Easing.

None of this has to do with the free market, capitalism, whatever. It’s about a gang having captured the economic and social flying deck of the planet, and Bill Clinton gave them the keys. Thus now viewed with such respect.

All this tanks to Clinton’s minder Rubin and his pet Summers (that would make multi-billionairess Sandberg the pet of a pet).

Why is Krugman uttering plutocratic propaganda (pro-plutocratic decisions are now viewed with such respect)? Is Krugman conscious, or simply saying something because people around him are saying it, and that’s how to get a modicum of respect?

Krugman: Hitting the Ceiling: Disastrous or Utterly Disastrous?

Tyranosopher: How far do you want the Machiavellian analysis to go (I know that you know that I know that you know, etc…)?

People on the supposed left should have long seen it coming. The blockage of Obamacare was all highly predictable. By differing health reform implementation for 5 years, Obama invited this.

Medicare For All would have taken one minute, on the first hour of his presidency, and could have been implemented right away (by allowing Medicare to negotiate prices with providers, and that could be done by executive decision).

When he was elected president, Obama could do anything he wanted. He had a majority in Congress, a super majority in the Senate.

Newly elected executives controlling the legislative can do a lot. The newly elected Prime Minister of Australia, as soon as elected, launched a campaign to outlaw Australia’s Carbon Tax. Tony Abbott declared: “Today is not just a ceremonial day, it’s an action day,” the 55-year-old said in a statement. …”people expect us to get straight down to business, and that’s exactly what this government will do. We hope to be judged by what we have done, rather than by what we have said we would do.”

However Abbott’s party controls only 33 of the Australian Senate’s 76 seats. That’s not an easy position to be in. It’s very different from the total control Obama had.

Instead, once elected, Obama celebrated his blackness, as if he were a narcissist, and proceeded with Bush’s policies, as far as the eye can see, . That allowed him not to focus on what he could do to help people with health care.  It is as if Obama had been elected President of the Tea Party (OK, there was no Tea Party yet, my point entirely). 

But what Obama said is that he wanted to become bisexual bipartisan. Why? What did becoming bisexual bipartisan had to do with implementing reforms? What’s the difference between bisexualism, and bipartisanship? In the end, two years later, he did not get one single Republican vote (Republicans do not want to pose as bisexual bipartisan, apparently.) Anyway all this bi-something killed lots of time, as intended.

Having celebrated his blackness has proven highly profitable for Obama; I was listening to some European based talking head who was going black in the face screaming that it was all a racist plot against the “black” president. Whatever “it” was.

Krugman: The aim of Obamacare is to give coverage to the poor.

Apparently, except for Alaska, with subsidies, the cost will be $100 dollar a month for the colored plan (“bronze”; the cheapest). Top demoncrats are so disconnected with reality they don’t know that:

1) basic health care is free in other advanced countries.

2) the 50 millions of the USA underclass cannot afford durably $100 a month.

What could have helped people was to lower the COST of health care (about double that of any other country per GDP/capita).

But lowering the cost of health spending would have been a disaster for health care plutocrats.

Indeed, Medicare for All would have served Buffet not (Obama was going around calling Buffet “my friend”, when he was working on Obamacare; Buffet personally made billions from health care gouging). All what history will remember, from all this, is that Obama’s presidency was a disaster, and it got so from pseudo liberal sycophants filling up their pockets (Summers, Geithner and countless others are examples).

Krugman: Down with the Euro!

Tyranosopher: Well, yes, now that the dollar is not the only world reserve currency, nobody cares as much as they used to about a USA default. For reference, the EU has no debt. Nada. The USA has more debt than its GDP ($16.7 trillion, although Krugman, alone in the world, loves to say less than 10, by making specious distinctions…)

Europe is indeed a terrible place. At least 300 dead from just one boat trying to make it to European soil. Not only does Europe kills, but it kills by attracting people like flies, like one of these carnivorous flowers. What to do? Right now, the boats are confiscated, with the hope international crime syndicates doing the boating will run out of boats.

Not easy to control, those borders: Romania has 2,000 kilometers of borders to control, to prevent entry of the great unwashed inside the European Union. The American/Israeli solution is to build a wall (and actually, to enter the EU, Poland had to build such a wall!) But walls are expensive.

This being said, Europe has a demographic, not just democratic deficit…

So what to do? Go imperial, of course. If Europe is so good, it needs to be defended. In an age when major human vehicles weighing as much as an ancient Greek trireme can cover 8,000 kilometers in 15 minutes, the empire of the Republic extends worldwide. Whatever pseudo-leftist whiners will say, to satisfy their moronic holier-than-thou auto-celebration.

What does that mean? What does empire mean? “Imperare” means to order (well, imperially). Imperators were top Roman generals, with pretty much right of life and death over anybody in their way So imperators had rights similar to those of Consuls and Proconsuls (ex-Consuls mandated anew by Consuls). Under the pure Republic.

In this spirit, the USA just struck with two targeted raids in Libya and Somalia, to neutralize two terrorists chiefs. It seems to have been well done in Libya (live capture, differently from the somewhat lamentable Osama bin Laden raid). Capture them and make them talk (and remember as was discovered in the Middle Ages, that torture is counterproductive).

However, the raid on the Somalian coast, although not as bungled as the French one, deep in the interior, a few months ago, was not the sort of success one would more readily get, if, for example, the French and the Americans cooperated.

Having a worldwide empire is the only way out. But it has to be a good empire. A very good empire. Not a very evil empire where authorities are hunting those who reveal important malversations (Manning, Snowden), while earning respect by financing the richest (as Clinton did), or confusing wealth care exchanges for the richest with health care for the People.

By showing that he has some of what it takes, by striking terrorists, Obama may be able to earn back some of the respect he clearly needs in Washington…

***

Patrice Ayme

Truth, Celebritism, Fusion Geoengineering 23/10/12

TRUTH A LIE, CELEBRITISM VULGAR, GEOENGINEERING PER FORCE, THERMONUCLEAR.

***

The First Thing About Truth; Digital Truth Is Relative, Quantum Truth, Absolute:

There are theories of truth all over. But the first thing about truth, ought to be, that it is described in a discourse. Yet all and any digital discourse and digital context is incomplete, thus a lie. Why incomplete? Because it’s a finite set of symbols.

Berbers Are Not Arabs, Their Civilization Is Much Older

Can we describe an ocean with five rocks? Of course not.

Can there be truth described by something more general than a digital discourse? The truth of love? The truth of a picture? Yes. Do they boil down to just one principle?

You see, ultimately, the Quantum computes all over, according to the picture. The picture of what is available (to matter wave penetration). That’s precisely why we can’t describe the Quantum right now, well enough. We communicate our thoughts digitally, finitely. Way out? First forget about a monolithic discourse, and about coherence. Quantum says coherence is partial, and when expressed, localized, it decoheres.

***

Celebrity Leadership: Omnipresent, Vulgar.

We are in a world led by… celebrities. The politicians are celebrities, the Nobels are celebrities, the writers, the musicians…

CEOs in the USA are much taller than in Europe (even when comparing to countries where the average size of the Europeans is actually greater). This means the appearance of greatness (as measured in inches) is a more dominant criterion in the USA. That fact extends to most American politicians.

An important part of the leadership of the USA is determined by what beautiful trophies they make, just like prized fish. They are all lined up like dead fish on a plutocrat’s deck.

So how does a celebrity think? A celebrity is crowd founded. A celebrity will tend to think according to what will make him or her thrive, as a celebrity. That means according with what is looking favorably upon by the masses. In other words, “the common people, multitude, crowd, throng”. In Latin: the vulgus.

That means that celebrity thinking is intrinsically vulgar.

***

Celebritism Is A Form Of Fascism:

And it shows! Ultimately, celebretism appeals to the fascist instinct. The crowd follows the leader, and surrenders its mind to the mind of the leader. In a prehistoric troop, that means 50 people thinking according to the one.

In other words, 1/50 of normal human intelligence is in charge: war can be engaged.

Nowadays, that can mean 1,300,000,000 people thinking according to the one.

In other words, 1/1,300,000,000 normal human intelligence is in charge: the most grotesque war can be engaged (see Hitler and his Germans who engaged a war, just because they were sure to lose it!)

This adoration of celebrities is enforced by metaprinciples pervading culture and society. For example the Brits are vassals of some plutocrats they venerate, the so called “Royals”. In particular, they do not have allodial  control of real estate property (they don’t know what it means, so they feel OK). In particular, when obvious abuse occur, such as Tony Blair making 50 million in a year (an obvious payback by plutocrats), they just shrug. Or Tony Blair doing exactly what godfather Murdoch told him to do about Iraq (they had complicated personal relationship) is also resolved by shrugging.

It shows up in a personal way. A famous celebrity at the BBC was abusing children (at least 20 and counting). But he met heads of states, the Pope, was knighted, revered… A 14 year girl meets him, in BBC set-up. Within seconds he sexually abuses her. Now a mature adult, she  said she could not do a thing, because he was a celebrity, and she was nothing.

Celebrities such as Carter, Clinton, Summers, Buffet, have abused entire nations. And then there are those families or institutions which are famous, when they should be infamous. The Royals, the Bushes, Esso, IBM, Thyssen… They hide in plain sight, naked in their gross obscenity of immense riches acquired with filth galore. But, if one is in the West, one can say this only about Putin (and the KGB, which used to be the NKVD, and is now the FSB, Just as Standard OIl of New Jersey, after being one of many Hitler’s best friends, became Esso,and now Exxon…).

The problem is celebritism itself, a form of intellectual fascism, enable by the fact that thinking by oneself requires lots of energy. And that the passions that allow to resist Crowd Founding are taught, systematically, as those shall be resisted. Starting with anger. And pride. And resisting herding and goose stepping.  

Just as people become celebrities, some ideas become celebrities too.

In many European countries, people will tell you, one ids more free, childless. But it’s a bit like claiming one is more free as a mussel. True in a sense, but…

***

In Defense Of Procreation:

Some people who have no children say they want to stay free, keep on pleasing themselves with such passions as travelling (more of a European thing: Americans tend to not take vacations before retirement).

And yet, is there a better pleasure than enjoying parenting a good child? Is there a more mind opening travel?

What childless people who have no studied the situation exhaustively do not know is that having a child makes one travels in hormonal dimensions one did not have before. It’s not just about seeing a new landscape, just like a thousand landscape before. It’s not just about landing on a new planet.

It’s about experiencing a new universe, unimagined before.

When life extension becomes a reality, having children will more rare, and thus become much more of a luxury.

***

No Civilization, But Civilization:

Some have talked about the clash of civilizations. But, in the grander scheme of things, there is only one civilization.

In particular, attempts at cutting the Indo-European area in two pieces are not wrong but ignorant. The distinction between “Orient” and “Occident” was something Rome invented, and Rome used, and Rome rejected. Those who think very independent of the west to use are just aping the Romans, unbeknownst to themselves…

I represented the Tifinagh alphabet in the beginning. It’s basically twice older than Arabic (which was also derived from the Phoenician alphabet). North African genes were analyzed. They were found to be mostly the same as those found in (the rest of)… Europe.

We count in 60 minutes hours, because base 60 was useful for the tremendous astronomical computations in Mesopotamia to determine the seasons, planting, and the floods of the great rivers. that at least a millennium before Rome.

There is an astounding prolongation of systems of thought throughout the ages. actually, for about 10,000 years, civilization has proven to be a continual construction, an initial condition onto itself (in the differential equation sense).

One can argue that aside from the central, Middle World civilization, there were three other centers: China, Black Africa, and the Americas. The only one that was truly independent of the rest was the American civilization, and it was devastated.

***

Demand What?

Economists love to talk about “demand“, as if it were a well defined concept.

However, what are we supposed to demand? More Korean cars? More Korean TVs? More smart phones made in China? If we talk about demanding more health care, or more education, the process is more complicated. And can we demand less investment and stimulus in financial derivatives, and less hopeless spending in Afghanistan?

In a world where choice is, in an important geophysical and biological sense shrinking, demand has to be made more demanding. 

We have to demand an inhabitable planet, with the creature comforts it used to have, even very recently.

***

Gloo Gloo And Geoengineering Will Not Work Without Thermonuclear Reactors:

As the planet is shocked into a high CO2 world, strange things are happening. For example Antarctic sea ice has been spreading, which is counter-intuitive (since Arctic ice is shrinking so fast, it’s imaginable there will be none within five summers!)

Antarctica sea ice has spread due to higher winds caused by warming. That (part of) Antarctica is cooling is not true in my opinion. Snowfall is augmenting, as it is in the Himalaya, but that is to be expected from warming.

Antarctica is already melting, and, ultimately, sea level will rise 70 meters, drowning the capitals of finance supreme, a sort of justice.

Because of non linear effects it all could go very fast. And no geoengineering short of thermonuclear reactors (to freeze the CO2), or a nuclear winter (soon to be fetched), will change anything… If one keeps on refusing putting giant taxes on burning fossils…

What I am saying is that other suggested “geo-engineering” will not work.

And think about it: geo-engineering on Mars looks insurmountable, with present technology. So why should it be easier on Earth?

The analogy is smarter than it looks: the total mass of the medium to be changed on Mars is a tenuous atmosphere. The equivalent system on earth is made of the Earth’s atmosphere, plus its oceans. This is roughly 60 earth atmosphere. However the atmosphere of Mars is 25 teratonnes. The atmosphere of Earth is 5,148 teratonnes, 200 times more. So, multiplying this by 60, or, at least fifty (if one restricts to the volume affected by Earth’s greatest sea currents), one sees that influencing the terrestrial atmosphere-thalassosphere requires an effort 10,000 greater on Earth than Mars.  

So there is no way out, but mitigation. That is, conservation.

Why thermonuclear reactors? Because controlled thermonuclear fusion will provide us with giant amounts of energy, very cheaply (once it’s fully mastered, which will take a while, even after the first generations of civilian thermonuclear reactors come on line, as they will use primitive, not super clean fusion. Whatever we do with geoengineering, it will require giant amounts of energy.

For Mars, it will help to crash comets (they are full of solid water) onto the planet. A few comets crashed into the icecaps (my idea) would release much water, and much CO2. More bang for the buck. Those soft (H2O + CO2 ice is elastic) collisions would warm and humidify the planet quickly, through non linear amplification (95% 0f Mars’ air is CO2 so the planet enjoys a strong greenhouse, which is much greater when it’s inclined 40 degrees on the elliptic, as happens sometimes).

Deviating comets in large numbers will require significant energy. That’s an energy that we absolutely do not have now: for the impacts to work best, they will have to come over the icecaps at shallow angle and low speed. that can be done, only after deviating the comets considerably. We are talking nuclear tugs here.

  For Earth, what I am thinking of is that condensating the CO2 out of the air will require giant refrigeration (or massive industrial weathering of special rocks), but, meanwhile, we could separate the heating of atmosphere and oceans from the melting of the icecaps by protecting them. That would allow to separate the heating problem from much of the rising seas problem.  Whatever we do in the way of geoengineering, even covering ice with reflecting substances, all over Greenland and Antarctica, will require huge energy. And that energy will have to be cheap for the thing to be feasible.

And that, my friends, is enough of the truth to see that we need much more advanced technology, if we demand survival for the young ones we happen to know, and the positive values we hold dear…  

***

Patrice Ayme

Aphorisms June 2012

Dinosaurs Warmed Blooded After All?

Some have argued that dinosaurs had hearts like birds. Now some Spanish researchers have confirmed older studies on dinosaur bones. However the best evidence for warm blooded dinosaurs may simply be that birds evolved from bird like dinosaurs.

That latter observation is typical of the philosophical approach, in this case, using an economy of thought: since the birds, present in the last 80 million years of the dinosaurs’ reign, were warm blooded (right from the start, as flying requires lots of energy), it stretches the imagination that they would have grown wings, feathers, and become warm blooded simultaneously .

To quote the San Francisco Chronicle: …”in his conclusive argument in Nature that accompanied the report, titled “A bone for all seasons,” Kevin Padian of the UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology noted that microscopic features of dinosaur bones show precisely the same lines of arrested development as the bones that Köhler and her colleagues studied in modern animals, which live in all the world’s climates.

“The bone growth patterns of dinosaurs establishes that they grew just like large mammals do, and at comparable rates,” Padian said in an e-mail Wednesday. “So their physiology could not have been like lizards and crocodiles, which grow much more slowly and whose bones look very different inside.”

Padian has long argued that warm-blooded and cold-blooded animals have formed a “continuum” in evolution.

***

…But Are Many Thinkers Cold Blooded?

“Actually there never was any evidence that dinosaurs were ectotherms,” Padian said Wednesday. “It was just sort of like, well, dinosaurs are reptiles, and living reptiles are cold-blooded, so dinosaurs were cold-blooded too.”

The last part that I emphasized is fascinating. You see, scientists are supposed to be temples of reason. But, actually, they are not. Just like most of the commoners, scientists are careful to toe the line. Scientific revolutions are rarely engineered by anybody else but outcasts, or extremely fierce personalities.

All to often, in science physical or human, and also in philosophy, or even literature, reasoning by induction means to follow the flow of common wisdom, or common emotionality. Nothing more. The herd is safe, and the herd is thrilling, when it stampedes.

***

Crazy Does It:

The big lessons from modern logic, starting with Russel, and then Goedel. Logic comes with context. Moreover, logic wants to grow out of the context that gave birth to it. But it cannot. Except when we take a (by definition not rational in the sense of the old logic) decision about what the new context will do. Thus, not only the heart has its reason that reason does not, but reason needs reasons that it does not have.

***

World War Two Resistants Tell You: Behind It All, The Same Mass Criminality As In 1939:

Manolis Glezos is a 89 years old Greek. He was a European MP, and was a candidate for the radical left, against the austerity plan. For him, there is no doubt: global finance is the enemy. same as in WWII.

Some say: how do you dare assimilate what is going now with what happened with Nazism? Some even claim that what happened with Hitler is incommensurate with anything, before and after.

William Randolph Hearst, the American press magnate, was paid by Hitler, from German taxpayer money. In 2009 a visiting Jewish tourist to the “Hearst Castle” in California, recognized family paintings which had been stolen by the Nazis. Hitler gave them to Hearst in… 1935. (A lot of the Nazi economic miracle had to do with stealing opponents, and redistributing the stolen riches to supporters.) The paintings were returned by the National Park Service.

As I have long argued, it is the same (sort of) people, the same organizations who financed, and organized Nazism. The banker JP Morgan was in the lead, when Hitler was still in primary school.

That idea has also been put forward by Stephane Hessel, 94 years old, and an authentic hero of the resistance and the free French in WWII (although he was an “Israelite”, so one would think he would have laid low, but most French Jews actually were in the forefront of the armed struggle. them and the old right wing French aristocrats).

Mr. Glezos is famous in Greece. In 1941, he climbed up the Acropolis, and stole the Nazi flag that was floating there. his brother was caught, and shot, with another 700 other Greeks, that day, that hour, in that place..

***

Serfdom: On Its Way Back In The USA?

I explained many times that Obama’s ironically labeled “Affordable Health Care Act” was unconstitutional. But Roberts, Chief Justice, a Bush right wing appointee, found it constitutional. Am I an idiot?

No: Chief Justice Roberts just decided the obligation of getting into a private contract with a private health insurance company was a “tax“. That I did not expect. It is of course incorrect in a res-publica, because, in a republic, taxation is only paid to the government.

The naïve on the left applaud: they do not see that Obamacare was right wing. Now Roberts has gone further right. Makes sense.

Indeed, is there a precedent? Assuredly, private taxation was deemed to be correct when the Frankish authorities established the feudal system. (Private taxation culminated with the “Fermiers Generaux“, who were decapitated in the French revolution.)

However, the Franks had kept some republican decency. The Franks knew that it made no sense to force commoners into contracts with private parties (in this case the Lords), in a republic. The Roman empire they had reconstituted, the Imperium Romanorum, was, after 800 CE, as in its preceding version, based in Rome and Constantinople, viewed as a sort of republic. After all the Frankish kings were -supposedly- elected!

Thus Frankish law made a principle that serfs were in a contract with the lords, because the lords provided services. When those services were discontinued (say because the serfs fled), this contract was broken (that it was broken by the serf was irrelevant). Thus the serf was relieved of this contract. Hence, if a serf ‘escaped’ for 30 days, he was a plain, normal Frank, that is, he, or she, was free. Many of the newly freed went to the cities. Cities did not depend upon lords (except for the rather theoretical oversight of the imperial government, that is, in France, or England, the king).

No such opportunity in the present USA.

I spent last weekend with a health care professional, a top notch doctor, who told me how to rack up the medical bills by 100%, for the benefit of the doctor signing such bills. In several ways. I will not give any details at this point, because it was rather confidential.

Taxpayer money irrigating uncontrolled corruption reeks of plutocratic perversion. Obamacare will change that not. However, the American left’s tenors are officially happy: more taxpayer money to be sent to plutocrats, so that they take care of the commoners. An American creed is that to be rich is good, and one proof is that the rich are good (that’s why they are called “philanthropists“).

Chairs have been re-arranged on the Titanic, the commoners are happy, the orchestra is still playing, the sea is calm: what could go wrong on SS USA?

***

When Confusion Is A Weapon:

A trick was found, long ago: playing dumb, allowing to do evil, as if by accident.

The idea is to confuse the issue of deliberate evil behind the smokescreen of, well, complete confusion. There is no magic, but there are people doing as if they believed in it, and their alleged idiocy allows them to hide their Dark Side. Various superstitions and religions have been used that way too.

Ultimately the principle is always the same: excusing one’s evil behind a thick cloud of playing dumb.

The Iraq invasion was propelled by total evil: on Fox News, luminaries were claiming that the invasion would pay for itself. A minimal aim was achieved: to demolish Iraq as an independent force. Iraqi oil is pretty much shut down at this point, and that allowed the USA to switch to fracking, while, of course, Iraq was prevented to trade in euros…

Now Americans are coming up, explaining to us all that they just confused reason and magic. But, when Obama targets families for assassination (as the New York Times recently claimed), it’s not because Obama believes in magic. It’s because he believes in evil.

***

Athens Had Direct Democracy, We Have Kings;

Representative democracy, clearly, does not work. Ancient Athens used a form of direct democracy (the ecclesia, the popular assembly, had 43,000 members). Even the Populus of republican Rome kept, for many centuries, a very tight leash on elected officials (Consul were elected for a year, but the powers rotated between the two Consuls on a monthly basis).

Right now we elect kings with more powers than kings of passed ages ever had. Then we pretend the People rules. But if it walks like a king, speaks like a king, rules like a king, and even order assassinations in full view, as Obama does, it is a king.

In a first reform, one should adopt a Swiss like system, where a seven member Federal Council rules, rather than one person (although there is a president, elected for a year within the council). In Europe, parliament could elect the Commission, or something like that.

 ***

 Something Economists Don’t Understand: The Economy Is Not Fundamentally About Money:

Economy is, ultimately, what the state decides to do, some of which it calls “the market”. For example, in the USA, the military-industrial complex is (still) strong.
When the state decides nothing, and, instead, let the unelected bankers, and other plutocrats run amok, we don’t lose just democracy, but even the economy. This is what we observe presently.

Two heads of the Camerkozy are still alive and biting the destitute, by the way…

Being a full human being is an indispensable way for making one’s thoughts better, and deeper.  Greed is not enough that way. Yet, thinking is man’s most productive work. To overlook this is a major flaw of conventional socio-economic thinking.

The Internet is a storm in which minds get easily spread about to the four winds, for the best, and the worst. An advantage, and a threat.

***

 How To Save Rhinoceroses:

Just harvest their horns in official programs. After the horn has been cut, the rhinoceros loses its financial value. Yet, the horn regrows. Thus rhinoceroses’ horns can be harvested. Domesticated rhinos don’t mind. They use their horns in combat. But, on a farm, they don’t have to fight (actually horns have been cut by rangers on wild rhinos from particularly threatened sub species!)

Rhino horn material is worth several times gold, by weight. Something about China. So farming rhinos for their horns could pay for much nature conservation… Besides saving entire rhino species.

Making the profit motive a friend of conservation, an ally to the biosphere: that’s not re-arranging the chairs on the Titanic, while playing democratic music. The sea is not calm. The sea is rising, faster and faster. Planet Earth is sinking.  We can do better than re-arranging chairs and playing irrelevant music.

A way to achieve serious relief, would be with a carbon tax. After all, carbon burning has already killed hundreds of times more than nuclear (even including Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which is not fair). But have Obama and company the sort of brains, and guts needed to impose a carbon tax? Not, so far (even though it would solve the Taxgameddon problem).

***

Patrice Ayme