SEEING IN THE DARK

Seeing in the Dark, and from the Dark

Human beings are not cats,
They don’t see as well in the dark.
Still they do see in dark.
In the dark, new shapes appear.
I giant scree slope I know well,
Looked at in the dark, seemed to flow as a glacier,

Glistening below Mars and Jupiter,

Swooping around a mountain.

I was amazed how clear it was.
And you know what?
That may well be what it is:
A rock glacier, as they are called,
Rock flowing on top of an ice mix.

In the dark, we see things we could not see in the light.

In the dark,
What was never seen before becomes luminous.
What was seen, but not observed,
Suddenly because completely different,
And calls for attention, description, explanation.
We can change angles on things
To bring forth different aspects,
Or we change luminosity we bring to bear.
How come?
Lowering luminosity, intensity,
Enables to forget the details,
Which fogged the mind.
Explode the light, to see the dark.

To see anew,

New ways.
Patrice Ayme’

We The Neanderthals

Strange rings crafted from stalagmites, 176,000 years old, were found extremely deep within a cave in France. Scientists reported the findings in Nature recently. They are the work of Neanderthals, our ancient human relatives.

Once again, Neanderthals are proving to be much more “human” than anticipated by the Common Wisdom we were afflicted with previously. Over the years, we were told, in absence of all evidence, how inferior Neanderthals were: they were ape-men, hunched over, with bowed legs, disgraced by sloped, barely existing foreheads, Neanderthals could not conduct abstract thought, the nerves going to their tongues were too thin for speech, their larynx was such they could not make human sounds, they were inbred, wrecked with defective genes (that’s the latest from the racist brigade!), etc.

What was the objective evidence? Neanderthals had invented many technologies, including that of burning fossil fuels (lignite coal, 80,000 years ago, in France). Neanderthals also extinguished Cave Bears, and apparently domesticated dogs. Thus much of the culture we inherited, and makes us all the so human, is… Neanderthal. We The Neanderthals.

It also seemed that Neanderthal brains were more than 15% larger. 

Deep Within Bruniquel Cave, Super Bright Enlightenment, 200,000 years Ago.

How come Common Wisdom is revealed, time and time again to be erring on the side of finding everybody else inhuman? That’s the tribal instinct at its best: exclude the others by making them shameful, inferior, pitiful, imperfectly human, etc.. .

“Until now, Neanderthals were presumed by the scientific community not to have ventured far underground, nor to have mastered such sophisticated use of lighting and fire, let alone to have built such elaborate constructions,” wrote the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS).

“This discovery provides clear evidence that Neanderthals had fully human capabilities in the planning and the construction of ‘stone’ structures, and that some of them penetrated deep into caves, where artificial lighting would have been essential,” says paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London.

Some of our contemporaries have been all over the Media, stupidly asking why Neanderthals invented artificial lighting, or why they ventured. Well, for the exact same reason as we send probes beyond the Solar System: because we want to know all there is to know, and just because we can.

The human brain is build, just because it can fetch discoveries, anywhere possible.

Such caves have been routinely sealed by collapses. Since the Pleistocene, Bruniquel Cave, located in southwest France, a limestone region rife with decorated Paleolithic caves. In 1990, spelunkers excavated its entrance, squeezed through, and found remnants of long-vanished cave bears and other extinct megafauna just inside.

The cave’s most striking treasure laid in a damp chamber more than 330 meters from the entrance. There, deep in the dark, several large, layered ring-like structures protruded from the cave floor, the craftwork of human builders.

“All visitors have noticed the presence of these structures, from the first speleologists,” says Jacques Jaubert of the University of Bordeaux, a coauthor of the study referenced above.

It took decades for scientists to begin deciphering the enigmatic circles, an endeavor slowed by restricted access to the cave and the untimely death of the archaeologist who began work on the site in the 1990s. In 2013, Jaubert and his team were finally able to bring Bruniquel’s secrets into the daylight.

“The cave was very well preserved, with very few visits, almost none.  The structures are spectacular and have virtually no equivalent for that period, and even for more recent periods.” Thus humanity in its full humanity is no recent feat. The access of all paleontological sites is severely regulated by the French government, complete with armored doors, encryption protected.

The structures are built from 400 stalagmites, rock formation built from dripping, dissolved limestone. They weigh nearly three tons, and have a total a length of 112 meters.

Radioactive datation came as a big surprise: 176,000 years old. And there is no doubt, considering the rock cloak deposited over time. Imagine the technology needed to penetrate a cave more than 1,100 feet, armed only with (presumably) oil lamps!

Anti-Neanderthals racists in the US pontificated that the circles were made by Cave Bears… something rather unlikely, considering the total absence of photons, that far inside! Besides, Cave Bears are not known for making fire, and burning bones. Soot marks and heat fractures had been analyzed earlier through Carbon 14 datation to 50,000 years old, the maximum limit of the C14 method.  Evidence is that the circles held fire pits.

Full Neanderthals had semicircular canals and a distinctive inner ear shape compared to modern humans. The differences are comparable, say some specialists, to those separating ape species. However, we clearly inherited from Neanderthals more than just a few genes.

Homo Erectus (“Homo Ergaster”) colonized Eurasia at least all the way to the Caucasus, and probably much further, as early as 2 million years ago. That required the technology of clothing (the famous animal skins of ancient graphic novels). A million and a half years after that, archaic Homo Sapiens, evolving in cold Europe, gave rise to human species who, in turn, evolved into Neanderthals.

One unsaid argument for believing in the superiority of Homo Sapiens Sapiens, relative to any other species comes from the fact that Homo Sapiens Sapiens survived, and Neanderthals did not. That’s entirely correct for the Hobbit species of humans. However, it’s silly for Neanderthals: all pointers point out that Neanderthals were rather superior. An obvious mechanism exists to explain the disappearance of their features, from a sheer difference of mass, and useless genetic baggage during recoveries after near-extinctions. Expanding technology (from Neanderthals and Sapiens Sapiens discoveries) would have made Neanderthal cold adaptations moot. The mysterious stalagmites circles were made during a cold episode, by the way.

Staying alive in Europe required a lot of technology for the genus Homo. Archeologists François Rouzaud discovered the Bruniquel cave. He and Philippe Morel, were pioneers of the Chauvet cave. They both died rather young, while leading archeological expeditions underground in Aveyron and the Berner Oberland (Rouzaud died at 51, and that delayed the exploration of Bruniquel).

When we want to settle Mars, of fight aging, the ultimate disease, we partake of the same spirit: going where the gods themselves have not ventured before. Inheriting variant of genes is less important, among us humans, than inheriting the right ideas, and the moods which survive best. Many of these came from our beloved ancestors, the Neanderthals. We are Neanderthals, or Denisovans, only a little in genes, but a lot in spirit, as they went where no high tech primate could have ever gone. Ideas are more precious than alleles.

Patrice Ayme’

Tribal Preferences Everywhere

Even In Science, Tribal Effects Dominate:

Human beings are tribal animals. A tribe is a small group of individuals, helping each other, cemented by deep emotions. Don’t say it’s over. A recent study demonstrates what some have guessed all along, namely that it flourished in science.

Max Planck — the Nobel Prize–winning physicist who launched quantum theory by discovering that energy radiation was quantized  — once made the cynical observation that science progressed “one funeral at a time”. Said he:

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

(When Hitler started to devastate Germany, Planck visited the madman, and told that imbecile that his institute and university had been destroyed by Hitler’s racial policies. Hitler later had Planck’s son killed.)

Researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) released a working paper — titled, “Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time?” Yes it does:

Even In Science Baboons Follow The Leader Profitably

Mining citations in the PubMed database, the researchers found evidence that when a prominent researcher suddenly dies in an academic subfield, a blooming of new ideas and innovation follow. They identified 12,935 “elite” scientists — based on the amount of funding they received, how many times they’ve published, how many patents they invented, or whether they were members of elite groups, such as the National Academies of Sciences or the Institute of Medicine. They found 452 of these elite researchers died before retirement. As science leaves a dense trail of citations, publish dates, and authors’ hierarchies, it’s possible to track changes in publishing patterns after the permanent eclipse of a prominent star.

After the death of a rock-star scientist, their frequent collaborators and tag-alongs — the junior researchers who authored papers with them, often enslaved to them — suddenly see a drop in publications. At the same time, there is a marked increase in published work by other newcomers to the field.

Verily, a PhD is mostly a tribal rite. (Warning: Elites will scream!)

***

So Why Should Nations, Those Super-Tribes Of Europe, Vanish Under A Flood Of Invaders?

Plutocrats all over loudly clamoring that Syrian refugees should get preference over Natives so destitutes, they can’t even reproduce: contemplate Germany, with the world’s worst reproduction rate, and now one million mostly Muslim refugees admitted in eleven months (the European Union accepted hundreds of thousands more, including three whose calling was to kill as many people in Paris as they could).

It seems only natural that Natives would get preferential treatment above Non-Natives.

Some claim that open borders, the open society, welcoming invaders, is so superior in all ways, that it should be embraced at all costs. The argument was rolled out first by Pericles. However, within 30 years, half of the Athenian population was dead, the city occupied, and only Sparta saved Athens for eradication.

Opening up a country to the max works, as a complement. But, throughout the West, we observe decay, to the point the Natives cannot afford to reproduce. Instead, it is proposed to generously import millions of Middle Easterners… Many armed with a version of a religion which hates the West (9/11, the Paris and San Bernardino massacres were fully, or partly organized by such imports).

Who wins from importing invaders and weakening the Natives? International plutocracy, as above local laws as it is above decency, and the nations it crushes. Unsurprisingly, the same international plutocracy owns the Main Stream Media of the West. A tycoon such as Murdoch could move from Australia, colonize Britain, and then take over the USA (where he owns plenty, including Fox News and the WSJ…) And then the MSM tells the little people, and persuade them that, the worse their condition gets, the better, as long as they are generous to strangers from far-away lands (such as the aforesaid plutocrats).

The more the fate of the Natives of the West looks ominous, the more they will revolt against their oppressors. Hopefully.

And those oppressors are those who have molded minds in the West. Thus the minds of the people have to fight themselves.

This is why a site about cuddly kittens will get thousands of “likes” a day, and an enormous readership, whereas a serious site such as this one has generally to make do with none. Let the force be with you, and direct it first towards those poisonous moods and thoughts which have brought your stealthy demise.

Well, it could be worse: you could believe, as the Pope’s government does, that Mother Teresa cured cancer, because someone’s cancer supposedly went away after touching a medal of Teresa. (After that, you may want to chop off head of Shiites, should you be a Saudi prince! Because if one miracle can happen, so could any.)

Teresa was somebody who accused tens of millions of women to be murderesses, among other exploits:

Christian Morality: Cruel & Demented Sado-Masochism, All Too Often

Following the leader materially helps, but can be entirely nefarious, morally speaking. By condoning the Catholic Church often monstrous morality, and the exploitation of women, the Catholic church has found another diabolical leader to make a saint of.

Mother Teresa was mostly a self-interested ambition sucker, anxious to make Pope John-Paul II feel good about himself (she was hanging around the Pope’s ear in the Vatican, a plushy place if there is any!). But she is a saint says the same tribal organization which promptly made “Saint” Louis (IX), who wrote that nothing would please him more than torturing to death “unbelievers” and Jews.

What’s the main reason for tribes? Death. Giving death, avoiding death. Just study Saint Louis. Just study Teresa, and her pain and death obsessions. And tribal effect can cause death to new ideas, not just people, all over, not just science.

Plutocracy is its own tribe, and its survival depends upon free markets, open borders, tini tiny local laws which big plutocrats can fly over, and the general world order the 99% suffer from in the West.

Planck and the economic researchers we quoted above push us towards the following conclusion. You want innovation, and a blooming of art, thought, ideas, and justice, and a young world? Please help visit upon plutocracy an early demise!

Patrice Ayme’

Art As Devil Currency, & Clinton’s Fading Worth

Why Clinton Won’t Be President Again, And Why Art Is Tax Evasion:

“If you live long enough, you’ll make mistakes. But if you learn from them, you’ll be a better person. It’s how you handle adversity, not how it affects you. The main thing is never quit, never quit, never quit.” [― William J. Clinton.]

This is typical of the sound-good idiocies we have to learn not to take as below our dignity to lash out after. Sophisticated thinking is of no help if the worst thinking is left unmolested, free to grow, corrupt, and rule, most minds

Neither G. W. Bush, nor Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, or Mao Tse Tung, or the Khmer Rouges, or Louis XIV, or Philip II of Spain, or Antipater of Macedonia, ever quit, but it would have been better if they had. And as the Romans had it: “Perseverare Diabolicum”.

Learning from mistakes can go both ways: to profit humanity at large, or profit the learning individual. The latter may, or may not profit the humanity at large.

If one never quits, just to embrace the Dark Side, ever more, methinks matters are not improving for humanity, at large. That Bill Clinton thinks learning made him a better person, automatically, is only the sort of self-indulgence he is famous for, and which will probably cost his wife the presidency.

Dark Currency: Such A Beauty Cannot Be Taxed Or Detected

[That painting was sold at auction for more than 170 million dollars… to a “former taxi cab driver turned billionaire art collector”… I will be even more interested to know his connections to the Triads, the multi-century old Chinese crime organizations. It’s already known that the entire gambling industry on Asia is connected to sophisticated money laundering.]

And why no Clinton again? The sheeple is not that dumb, that it cannot smell something is amiss. The Clinton presidency was as devastating for the (world) middle class as that of G. W. Bush. A difference: Clinton was part of the pre-condition for G. W. Bush.

It’s not just that Clinton deregulated, thus unleashed the financial sharks onto the world (thus making possible the economic crash which followed 2008). It’s not just  that Clinton got away with it. It is that the crushing success of propaganda was blatant: because Clinton was a “Democrat”, he could only be doing good.

Hence Clinton, by succeeding to make the meek, weak proverbial little guys feel that finance unchained was good for them, showed that there were no limits to what propaganda could achieve. The lies of Blair and Bush were just a further little step away.

This is why Quantitative Easing (giving ever more money to banks who had caused the crisis) has been glorified as the way out of the 2008 crisis.

Now there is a new twist. A twist within the twist, after the “Twist” (the Federal Reserve of the USA actually set-up a bank helping scheme it had the effrontery to call… “The Twist”).

The twist has been this: the banks have been slowly squeezed under “Dodd-Frank”… While, discreetly, “Dark Money” in “Dark Pools” or not, has been unleashed, more than ever.

Hence the on-going rise in the price of “art”. “Art is  parallel currency: it’s often not taxed (even in France!). It goes across borders, get stored in other countries, and change hand to hand, without having to be declared to the authorities.  Meanwhile the little guys one thousand dollars (let alone euros!) transactions are scrutinized, and meticulously registered. The currency of the wealthiest people on Earth is a Dark Currency, so dark authorities themselves can’t see, let alone understand it. Why would you want to understand your masters, except to please them?

So what of the Commons in all this? The Commons smell a rat. A rotting rat, and Clinton reminds them of that smell.

So does, by the way Jebb Bush, the latest model from that (Hitler sprung) dynasty. This is why (pseudo) anti-establishment candidates have been running strong.

Yet, the Devil lurks in the ugly, most obscure, worst smelling corners. As long as the Commons are not willing to quit their comfort zone, to relish exploring those disgusting places (as I obviously do), their understanding, thus their action, will not disrupt the oligarchy’s mental order enough to unsettle it.

Patrice Ayme’