Intergalactic-Memo
To: Interested parties
Fr: W. Leavitt
Re: The non-existent pogrom on religion
There is an interesting article in the London Telegraph this morning. The headline reads:
Words associated with Christianity and British history taken out of children's dictionary
It seems that a venerable British children’s dictionary has been systematically deleting words that have anything to do with England’s Christian heritage, as well as it’s ancient past. They are replacing the “old, outdated words” with word which reflect Britain’s role in the twenty-first century.
Oxford University Press has removed words like "aisle", "bishop", "chapel", "empire" and "monarch" from its Junior Dictionary and replaced them with words like "blog", "broadband" and "celebrity". Dozens of words related to the countryside have also been culled.
According to some unnamed nitwit, the changes are being made to reflect the fact that England is a “modern, multicultural, multi-faith society.” Which is true, but the implication in his remarks is that by virtue of their contemporary identity, England’s historical identity is somehow irrelevant, which is, of course, nonsense. One wonders why the editors would not add new words and expand the dictionary, rather than delete perfectly good words relevant to England’s rich, and famously cookoo history.
Lisa Sanders, a concerned mother and therefore no one important or qualified, has done an exhaustive comparison of old and new editions of the dictionary and is “horrified” at the number and quality of words deleted. She says it is clear that England’s Christian heritage is being eradicated. More importantly, a rich collection of descriptive words like “buttercup”, “heather” and “sycamore”, as well as “bishop”, “Chapel”, “Empire” and “Monarch” are being purged from the English language.
It’s sad. The human mind is capable of inputting and storing an infinite supply of words. (my own personal theory). Language is everything. It provides us with civilization, culture, and all the wonderful ideas theories and discoveries by which we grow and progress. To simply delete a portion of it is criminal. Certainly words fall out of favor, and die natural deaths bases on the “evolution” of cultures and movements, but that is different, unless the deaths are the result of Political Correctness, which is as artificial and mindlessly bigoted as this current debacle in England. In fact, one could argue that the deletion program currently underway on the Children’s Dictionary is part and parcel with the worst instincts of our own childish attempt to remake the world based on an irrational fantasy of utopian nonsense.
To my mind, words cannot become useless. To believe so is tantamount to believing that humans can be useless. This is a concept that seems to be gaining favor in some circles, and one which I categorically reject.
Perhaps someone is making the argument that the deletions are merely a matter of necessary expediency—that it is simply too expensive to continue to add words and their definitions forever. That one I get. But it’s still a shame. And it’s still curious that the majority of words being disappeared are religious (Christian) in nature. Oh, and having to do with the Monarchy. I have no interest in Monarchies at all. But The language they engendered is often beautiful. I’d hate to lose the rich variety and colorful, descriptive lexicon just because there isn’t room, or it costs to much, or someone considers them inappropriate in today’s “society”.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
IGM Ted Turner
Inter-galactic Memo
TO: Interested parties
FR: W. Leavitt, Crypto-Analyst
Re: Ted Turner
Over the weekend Ted Turner made a few interesting comments on “Meet The Press” or “Face the Nation” or one of those pundit shows. Tom Brokaw was interviewing Mister Turner about a few things, one of which (the one I heard) was a revisit of Turner’s original remarks concerning Vladimir Putin. They met when Putin was an assistant to the Mayor of St. Petersburg.
Now, I have nothing against Ted. He seems like a pretty harmless blowhard most of the time, with an inflated sense of his own importance, based, I’m sure, on some pretty spectacular achievements, like winning the America’s Cup, Founding CNN (which used to be an excellent news-gathering organization), building cable television into the giant it is today and establishing TCM (Turner Classic Movies) which runs great films 24-7 for free, without commercials. Oh, and famously donating One billion dollars to the UN.
That being said, it is clear he is not the sharpest tool in the shed. He married Jane, after all. But what he said in his interview with Brokaw speaks to that wacky sense of out-of-touchness we’ve come to expect from a certain faction of our elite power-brokers. Brokaw mentioned that now, several years after his initially meeting Putin, many people find the man frightening. (Ted originally described Putin as having “Soulful eyes” and being someone he could trust and do business with.) Brokaw countered that many people now see “shark’s eyes” [my words] that say nothing more than K-G-B, and asked Ted to talk about that, in relation to our own FBI, say, or CIA. Turner could have said a lot of things, several of which would have been acceptable. Instead, he jumped all over the chance to lend moral equivalence to one of the most notorious and violent organized syndicates in modern history. “Well, the KGB is just like the FBI isn’t it?” Ted asked. “It’s just people doing their jobs, honorable work. The KGB has an honorable tradition. Putin should be proud that he worked for the KGB (actually he ran it) just like an FBI agent should be proud.
H-m-m-m-m-m . . . .let’s see . . . . unwarranted arrests, government-sanctioned torture, falsifying evidence, trials with no jury, imprisonment without representation or notification, the Gulags of course, international espionage, terrorism, and regime-control, mind-control experiments, covert microwave beaming at foreign embassies, a still-unexplained attempt to overthrow Afghanistan, well, you get the idea, right?
Now, I will admit there might be some similarities to our own CIA (except when the CIA does those kinds of things they are the exception rather than the rule), and the KGB activities can always be excused as normal behavior for government agencies, but comparing what they do (did) to what the FBI does is just ignorant. Someone of Turner’s stature should really know better than that. It’s like Sarah Palin not knowing Africa is a continent, right? Oh, wait, that turned out to be a completely false story leaked by McCain people.
Ted tried to convince us that the KGB can somehow be accepted into that great mish-mash of “doing business” by which all organizations and governments operate by claiming moral equivalence. All these group do the same kinds of things, which somehow makes the means by which they function honorable across the board. I could do a relevant and accurate contrast between our CIA and the KGB, but I won’t because too many people would be outraged by my making unflattering comparisons, and would argue about how evil the CIA is and how benevolent the KGB is. Everybody’s a critic. Let me just say that the FBI is nothing like the KGB. Their mandates are not even similar, and despite occasional lapses into over-zealousness, (Waco, Ruby Ridge) the FBI is a positive force in the world, while the KGB (was) a purely negative force. The FBI isn’t even a law-enforcement agency, it is an investigative branch of the Treasury Department which “borrows” it’s authority to make arrests from the US marshals. For Ted to make such a faux pas on national television is, unfortunately, par for the course. I mean, he is the guy who gave a billion dollars to the UN, arguably the most corrupt and ineffective organization in history. But to excuse Putin as just one of the boys, doing his patriotic duty, is like excusing Cain because “everybody was doing it.” Putin is a despot. He is a power-hungry, world-domineering wanna-be emperor who feels nothing but disdain for the standards and values of the West. And someone needs to remind people like Ted that this is the case. Except he won’t take my calls.
TO: Interested parties
FR: W. Leavitt, Crypto-Analyst
Re: Ted Turner
Over the weekend Ted Turner made a few interesting comments on “Meet The Press” or “Face the Nation” or one of those pundit shows. Tom Brokaw was interviewing Mister Turner about a few things, one of which (the one I heard) was a revisit of Turner’s original remarks concerning Vladimir Putin. They met when Putin was an assistant to the Mayor of St. Petersburg.
Now, I have nothing against Ted. He seems like a pretty harmless blowhard most of the time, with an inflated sense of his own importance, based, I’m sure, on some pretty spectacular achievements, like winning the America’s Cup, Founding CNN (which used to be an excellent news-gathering organization), building cable television into the giant it is today and establishing TCM (Turner Classic Movies) which runs great films 24-7 for free, without commercials. Oh, and famously donating One billion dollars to the UN.
That being said, it is clear he is not the sharpest tool in the shed. He married Jane, after all. But what he said in his interview with Brokaw speaks to that wacky sense of out-of-touchness we’ve come to expect from a certain faction of our elite power-brokers. Brokaw mentioned that now, several years after his initially meeting Putin, many people find the man frightening. (Ted originally described Putin as having “Soulful eyes” and being someone he could trust and do business with.) Brokaw countered that many people now see “shark’s eyes” [my words] that say nothing more than K-G-B, and asked Ted to talk about that, in relation to our own FBI, say, or CIA. Turner could have said a lot of things, several of which would have been acceptable. Instead, he jumped all over the chance to lend moral equivalence to one of the most notorious and violent organized syndicates in modern history. “Well, the KGB is just like the FBI isn’t it?” Ted asked. “It’s just people doing their jobs, honorable work. The KGB has an honorable tradition. Putin should be proud that he worked for the KGB (actually he ran it) just like an FBI agent should be proud.
H-m-m-m-m-m . . . .let’s see . . . . unwarranted arrests, government-sanctioned torture, falsifying evidence, trials with no jury, imprisonment without representation or notification, the Gulags of course, international espionage, terrorism, and regime-control, mind-control experiments, covert microwave beaming at foreign embassies, a still-unexplained attempt to overthrow Afghanistan, well, you get the idea, right?
Now, I will admit there might be some similarities to our own CIA (except when the CIA does those kinds of things they are the exception rather than the rule), and the KGB activities can always be excused as normal behavior for government agencies, but comparing what they do (did) to what the FBI does is just ignorant. Someone of Turner’s stature should really know better than that. It’s like Sarah Palin not knowing Africa is a continent, right? Oh, wait, that turned out to be a completely false story leaked by McCain people.
Ted tried to convince us that the KGB can somehow be accepted into that great mish-mash of “doing business” by which all organizations and governments operate by claiming moral equivalence. All these group do the same kinds of things, which somehow makes the means by which they function honorable across the board. I could do a relevant and accurate contrast between our CIA and the KGB, but I won’t because too many people would be outraged by my making unflattering comparisons, and would argue about how evil the CIA is and how benevolent the KGB is. Everybody’s a critic. Let me just say that the FBI is nothing like the KGB. Their mandates are not even similar, and despite occasional lapses into over-zealousness, (Waco, Ruby Ridge) the FBI is a positive force in the world, while the KGB (was) a purely negative force. The FBI isn’t even a law-enforcement agency, it is an investigative branch of the Treasury Department which “borrows” it’s authority to make arrests from the US marshals. For Ted to make such a faux pas on national television is, unfortunately, par for the course. I mean, he is the guy who gave a billion dollars to the UN, arguably the most corrupt and ineffective organization in history. But to excuse Putin as just one of the boys, doing his patriotic duty, is like excusing Cain because “everybody was doing it.” Putin is a despot. He is a power-hungry, world-domineering wanna-be emperor who feels nothing but disdain for the standards and values of the West. And someone needs to remind people like Ted that this is the case. Except he won’t take my calls.
Monday, November 3, 2008
IGM Human Sexuality
Inter-Galactic Memo
FR: W. Leavitt—famed Human Sexuality Expert
To: Everyone who isn’t a famous HSE
RE: Human Sexuality . . . duh
Before we start, let me list my credentials and assure my reading public that as always, I will treat this subject with the utmost care, respect and appropriate circumspectness. Assuming that’s an actual word.
Credentials: I have been a licensed professional since 1970, which is when Nita and I married. For 38+ years I have maintained that status without having my license revoked or having to renew. I have read Masters and Johnson’s ground-breaking works; Human Sexuality and Human Sexual Response, the Kinsey Report, Shere Hite’s Hite Report: A National Study of Female Sexuality, and The Hite Report on Male Sexuality, The Kama Sutra, Nancy Friday’s Secret Garden, The joy of Sex by Alex Comfort, and several issues of Penthouse Variations. I have also written a substantial number of essay’s and opinions as part of my own on-going, not-for-publication series on sexual behavior.
Now then. Two stories only a day apart have come to my attention. The first is a report on a new study which indicates that 40% of adult women confess to sexual problems, mostly to do with libido. The second, found this morning in Google News, suggests a link between the burgeoning access to sexual images and behavior on television and teen pregnancy. I suppose everyone needs a hobby, and creating research projects and national polls about self-evident phenomenon is as good as any.
The first item, sexual problems for females, seems to have little merit. Unless the report reaches the other 60% who can then admit, in a fit of sisterly solidarity, that they too face challenges as part of being a human being. This would of course, be a wholly unexpected and explosive revelation.
We need to keep in mind in situations like these, that polls really don’t mean much. The major result of any poll is the gathering of information about people who are willing to participate in polls, without any criteria at all as to what might be true and accurate, or false and inaccurate. I know it may come as a shock to many of you layperson’s out there, (did you get that sly innuendo?) but people have been known to actually make things up when responding to polls.
In that spirit, let’s take a poll. Everyone for whom this 40% reporting problems is a surprise, raise your hands. See what I mean?
Womens bodies are endlessly complex (and endlessly fascinating). This complexity centers around child-bearing and all the changes which occur during the many phases from conception to breast feeding. Add the stresses of contemporary life, and it is a miracle so many of them avoid being institutionalized. Naturally, their main problem, around which all others revolve, is men. If I were a woman, and had to deal with me as a mate, I’d have problems too. Oops, have I said too much?
Most of the complaints –or concerns—have to do with lack of libido, lack of time, lack if interest and lack of strength. Many of these can be easily solved with increases of drugs and alcohol. The last one is easily fixed by engaging in more—and more strenuous—sex. And most men aren’t offended at all if women fake it. Really, we don’t mind.
Men, it is well known, are simpler creatures. They only have one problem, by and large (at least to which they will openly confess) and that is women. If women would just solve their main problem, men would have no complaints at all. Alas, things are never so simple.
The other report, that teenage pregnancy is affected by rampant scenes of outlandish sexual behavior which is passed-off as culturally acceptable, rises to a new level of “who didn’t know that?” Verification is a wonderful thing, but really . . . do we need to verify the rising sun each morning? (unless it doesn’t, and then what’s the point?)
We need to report as well that the poll was conducted over the phone and the pollsters spoke directly to teenagers. H-m-m-m, let’s see now, phones . . . teenagers . . . phones. Anyone detecting a polling anomaly here? Adolescents are evolutionarily –predisposed to do anything to stay on a phone. They will lie, cheat, steal, and lie again in order to never hang-up. Are pollsters really so gullible as to think they can discern anything from teenage responses?
Pollster: “Do sexy TV shows make you want to have sex and get pregnant?”
Teenage girl: “Yes! Totally! Is that the right answer? And, Janie, my girlfriend? She watches “Sex in the City” and she has sex all the time. Plus they have those cute costumes on “Dancing With the Stars”, and some of the dances are pretty hot, you know, and most of my friends have already had a baby from watching that show, and my boyfriend, Ron? He keeps asking me to watch “One Tree Hill” with him, while we drink some wine and take X which sounds so grown-up, don’t you think? Anyway . . .”
Pollster: “Never mind . . . .”
In conclusion, I think we have done some really great brainstorming on solving many of women’s sexual problems, as well as determining that polls are run by gullible idiots.
FR: W. Leavitt—famed Human Sexuality Expert
To: Everyone who isn’t a famous HSE
RE: Human Sexuality . . . duh
Before we start, let me list my credentials and assure my reading public that as always, I will treat this subject with the utmost care, respect and appropriate circumspectness. Assuming that’s an actual word.
Credentials: I have been a licensed professional since 1970, which is when Nita and I married. For 38+ years I have maintained that status without having my license revoked or having to renew. I have read Masters and Johnson’s ground-breaking works; Human Sexuality and Human Sexual Response, the Kinsey Report, Shere Hite’s Hite Report: A National Study of Female Sexuality, and The Hite Report on Male Sexuality, The Kama Sutra, Nancy Friday’s Secret Garden, The joy of Sex by Alex Comfort, and several issues of Penthouse Variations. I have also written a substantial number of essay’s and opinions as part of my own on-going, not-for-publication series on sexual behavior.
Now then. Two stories only a day apart have come to my attention. The first is a report on a new study which indicates that 40% of adult women confess to sexual problems, mostly to do with libido. The second, found this morning in Google News, suggests a link between the burgeoning access to sexual images and behavior on television and teen pregnancy. I suppose everyone needs a hobby, and creating research projects and national polls about self-evident phenomenon is as good as any.
The first item, sexual problems for females, seems to have little merit. Unless the report reaches the other 60% who can then admit, in a fit of sisterly solidarity, that they too face challenges as part of being a human being. This would of course, be a wholly unexpected and explosive revelation.
We need to keep in mind in situations like these, that polls really don’t mean much. The major result of any poll is the gathering of information about people who are willing to participate in polls, without any criteria at all as to what might be true and accurate, or false and inaccurate. I know it may come as a shock to many of you layperson’s out there, (did you get that sly innuendo?) but people have been known to actually make things up when responding to polls.
In that spirit, let’s take a poll. Everyone for whom this 40% reporting problems is a surprise, raise your hands. See what I mean?
Womens bodies are endlessly complex (and endlessly fascinating). This complexity centers around child-bearing and all the changes which occur during the many phases from conception to breast feeding. Add the stresses of contemporary life, and it is a miracle so many of them avoid being institutionalized. Naturally, their main problem, around which all others revolve, is men. If I were a woman, and had to deal with me as a mate, I’d have problems too. Oops, have I said too much?
Most of the complaints –or concerns—have to do with lack of libido, lack of time, lack if interest and lack of strength. Many of these can be easily solved with increases of drugs and alcohol. The last one is easily fixed by engaging in more—and more strenuous—sex. And most men aren’t offended at all if women fake it. Really, we don’t mind.
Men, it is well known, are simpler creatures. They only have one problem, by and large (at least to which they will openly confess) and that is women. If women would just solve their main problem, men would have no complaints at all. Alas, things are never so simple.
The other report, that teenage pregnancy is affected by rampant scenes of outlandish sexual behavior which is passed-off as culturally acceptable, rises to a new level of “who didn’t know that?” Verification is a wonderful thing, but really . . . do we need to verify the rising sun each morning? (unless it doesn’t, and then what’s the point?)
We need to report as well that the poll was conducted over the phone and the pollsters spoke directly to teenagers. H-m-m-m, let’s see now, phones . . . teenagers . . . phones. Anyone detecting a polling anomaly here? Adolescents are evolutionarily –predisposed to do anything to stay on a phone. They will lie, cheat, steal, and lie again in order to never hang-up. Are pollsters really so gullible as to think they can discern anything from teenage responses?
Pollster: “Do sexy TV shows make you want to have sex and get pregnant?”
Teenage girl: “Yes! Totally! Is that the right answer? And, Janie, my girlfriend? She watches “Sex in the City” and she has sex all the time. Plus they have those cute costumes on “Dancing With the Stars”, and some of the dances are pretty hot, you know, and most of my friends have already had a baby from watching that show, and my boyfriend, Ron? He keeps asking me to watch “One Tree Hill” with him, while we drink some wine and take X which sounds so grown-up, don’t you think? Anyway . . .”
Pollster: “Never mind . . . .”
In conclusion, I think we have done some really great brainstorming on solving many of women’s sexual problems, as well as determining that polls are run by gullible idiots.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
IGM Special Edition
Inter-Galactic Memo
Special Edition
Fr: W. Leavitt Crypto-Paleo-geologist
To: All interested parties
Re: New, superior theory
The Treadmill Theory of Geological Relocation: A creative extrapolation of the Plate Tectonic Theory©
Abstract:
In 1973 Dr Stefan Peiterson of the Danish Polytechnic Institute for Geological Research introduced a radical and provocative new theory to explain not only the movement of continental plates, but the mysterious archeological evidence of displaced artifacts of an Atlantean culture found in the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico.
Famed Amateur Archeologist, William Hidden, Associate Professor of Franchise-Commerce at the University of New Mexico, had stunned the world with his discovery of ruins and artifacts outside of Wickenburg Arizona which hinted at a coastal, sea-faring race, fifty thousand years before the advent of Native American cultures. Hidden, universally reviled for his discoveries and spectacular interpretation of the evidence, endured a life of professional persecution and ridicule until Dr Peiterson announced his Theory of Geological Relocation, sometimes referred to as the “What goes around comes around” theory.
The theory explains the true nature of plate-dynamics as well as the existence of Hidden’s artifacts thousands of miles from the Atlantic Ocean, which is the traditional location of all Atlantean theories.
The basic aspects of the theory are these: Plates turn back on themselves, similar to the ubiquitous treadmills in health clubs, thus allowing every point of longitude on a given continent to be revisited by a given piece of land, and at a given (estimatable) sequence of repeatable times based on geological eras.
It is commonly believed that continental plates are able to move about on the mantle, rubbing against each other, often one plate sliding or being forced (subduction) under another, causing seismic events, volcanoes, and other phenomena. According to Dr. Peiterson’s brilliant conclusions the plates not only rub against each other, but because of the treadmill effect, with a lubricating interior of magma and large, mountain-sized naturally forming ball bearings of primordial stone, [see attached diagram] the crustal plate is turned on itself, dives deep into the mantle where it continues moving in the opposite direction until it reemerges right where it was a million years ago, give or take. As an example, in a million years, Charlotte, North Carolina will have moved to approximately where Albuquerque New Mexico is today, while Albuquerque will be deep in the interior of the earth, upside down, as it were, moving back to the east coast. Thus we see that the area around Wickenburg AZ was once on the east coast of the North American continent and in a position to have been populated by colonists from the mother country of Atlantis.
For further details on this and other matters relating to the Wickenburg Phenomenon, look for the up-coming book by W.A. Leavitt and D.P. Langholf, tentatively titled The Wickenburg Triangle Exposed.
Also: The Wickenburg Phenomenon Research Society of Holbrook Arizona, The Flint Michigan Golden Years Winnebago Travel Club Newsletter, the Michelin Truckers Guide to the Southwest, and the Firestone Tire and Rubber Co. special edition: Medicine Wheels, Then and Now, The College of Hamburger Knowledge, and The Journal of the Criminally Insane, a scholarly journal published by the Miskitonic Institute of Providence Rhode Island.
Sorry, I could not figure out how to put the diagram in.
Special Edition
Fr: W. Leavitt Crypto-Paleo-geologist
To: All interested parties
Re: New, superior theory
The Treadmill Theory of Geological Relocation: A creative extrapolation of the Plate Tectonic Theory©
Abstract:
In 1973 Dr Stefan Peiterson of the Danish Polytechnic Institute for Geological Research introduced a radical and provocative new theory to explain not only the movement of continental plates, but the mysterious archeological evidence of displaced artifacts of an Atlantean culture found in the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico.
Famed Amateur Archeologist, William Hidden, Associate Professor of Franchise-Commerce at the University of New Mexico, had stunned the world with his discovery of ruins and artifacts outside of Wickenburg Arizona which hinted at a coastal, sea-faring race, fifty thousand years before the advent of Native American cultures. Hidden, universally reviled for his discoveries and spectacular interpretation of the evidence, endured a life of professional persecution and ridicule until Dr Peiterson announced his Theory of Geological Relocation, sometimes referred to as the “What goes around comes around” theory.
The theory explains the true nature of plate-dynamics as well as the existence of Hidden’s artifacts thousands of miles from the Atlantic Ocean, which is the traditional location of all Atlantean theories.
The basic aspects of the theory are these: Plates turn back on themselves, similar to the ubiquitous treadmills in health clubs, thus allowing every point of longitude on a given continent to be revisited by a given piece of land, and at a given (estimatable) sequence of repeatable times based on geological eras.
It is commonly believed that continental plates are able to move about on the mantle, rubbing against each other, often one plate sliding or being forced (subduction) under another, causing seismic events, volcanoes, and other phenomena. According to Dr. Peiterson’s brilliant conclusions the plates not only rub against each other, but because of the treadmill effect, with a lubricating interior of magma and large, mountain-sized naturally forming ball bearings of primordial stone, [see attached diagram] the crustal plate is turned on itself, dives deep into the mantle where it continues moving in the opposite direction until it reemerges right where it was a million years ago, give or take. As an example, in a million years, Charlotte, North Carolina will have moved to approximately where Albuquerque New Mexico is today, while Albuquerque will be deep in the interior of the earth, upside down, as it were, moving back to the east coast. Thus we see that the area around Wickenburg AZ was once on the east coast of the North American continent and in a position to have been populated by colonists from the mother country of Atlantis.
For further details on this and other matters relating to the Wickenburg Phenomenon, look for the up-coming book by W.A. Leavitt and D.P. Langholf, tentatively titled The Wickenburg Triangle Exposed.
Also: The Wickenburg Phenomenon Research Society of Holbrook Arizona, The Flint Michigan Golden Years Winnebago Travel Club Newsletter, the Michelin Truckers Guide to the Southwest, and the Firestone Tire and Rubber Co. special edition: Medicine Wheels, Then and Now, The College of Hamburger Knowledge, and The Journal of the Criminally Insane, a scholarly journal published by the Miskitonic Institute of Providence Rhode Island.
Sorry, I could not figure out how to put the diagram in.
IGM Giant Snakes
Inter-Galactic Memo
FR: W. Leavitt, Crypto-Zoologist
TO: Everyone who has the misfortune of not being me
RE: Sweet vindication
In science news this morning we have a report from Columbia. The partial remains of a fossilized serpent were found in a coal mine there. The remains indicate a distant relative of the Boa Constrictor and scientists believe the specimen was at least forty feet long, perhaps longer. They estimate it weighed in excess of one ton. This is great news. I’m sure we have all seen those wonderful movies about giant snakes, like Anaconda, not to mention the seven or eight sequels. The Sci-Fi channel airs at least one movie a month about a giant snake (probably because the CGI is already in place which makes the movie cheaper to film.)
Those of us who have dedicated our lives to investigating imaginary flora and fauna are greatly relieved to finally have proof of the giant snake. This prehistoric creature was big enough to swallow a full grown human, which right away makes it cooler than lots of other things. It is unfortunate that the snake appears to have not been poisonous, but we can’t have everything.
Most giant snake movies take place in the Amazon basin, where the Anaconda lives, because it is the biggest snake alive today. We have always been sure there are larger examples living in the deepest recesses of the swampy jungle and now we have demonstrably speculative evidence of that very thing. So the next time you see a movie with giant, man-eating snakes, don’t pass it off as sophomoric nonsense. We now have absolute proof that it is possible that there are giant snakes living in the sewers of New York City.
FR: W. Leavitt, Crypto-Zoologist
TO: Everyone who has the misfortune of not being me
RE: Sweet vindication
In science news this morning we have a report from Columbia. The partial remains of a fossilized serpent were found in a coal mine there. The remains indicate a distant relative of the Boa Constrictor and scientists believe the specimen was at least forty feet long, perhaps longer. They estimate it weighed in excess of one ton. This is great news. I’m sure we have all seen those wonderful movies about giant snakes, like Anaconda, not to mention the seven or eight sequels. The Sci-Fi channel airs at least one movie a month about a giant snake (probably because the CGI is already in place which makes the movie cheaper to film.)
Those of us who have dedicated our lives to investigating imaginary flora and fauna are greatly relieved to finally have proof of the giant snake. This prehistoric creature was big enough to swallow a full grown human, which right away makes it cooler than lots of other things. It is unfortunate that the snake appears to have not been poisonous, but we can’t have everything.
Most giant snake movies take place in the Amazon basin, where the Anaconda lives, because it is the biggest snake alive today. We have always been sure there are larger examples living in the deepest recesses of the swampy jungle and now we have demonstrably speculative evidence of that very thing. So the next time you see a movie with giant, man-eating snakes, don’t pass it off as sophomoric nonsense. We now have absolute proof that it is possible that there are giant snakes living in the sewers of New York City.
IGM X-rays
Inter-Galactic Memo
Fr: W. Leavitt
To: Interested parties
Re: New source of X-rays
This is such a great story. Dateline: Physorg.com. A team of scientists from UCLA have accidentally discovered a new source of X-Rays. Are you ready? It’s Scotch Tape™. To quote Dave Berry, “I’m not making this up.”
Peeling tape from a roll of Scotch releases tiny bursts of X-rays that are powerful enough to take images of bones in fingers and hands, researchers have found.
Best of all, they have no idea why. The story is that years ago Russian scientists noticed an unusual effect when pulling sticky tape at just the right speed—it releases radiation.
The UCLA boys and girls tried it a few times and actually got images of their finger bones. So they set up an experiment and peeled the tape (at 1.18 inches per second) in a vacuum and were able to measure the amount of radiation. It was indeed enough to create images. Boy, those science guys . . . I’ll bet they had more fun engineering a device that peels tape at precisely 1.18 ips than they did having sex that one time.
There is a theory, which is called triboluminescence, which occurs when two contacting surfaces move relative to each other.
The impact of this will be, of course, devastating to the public, especially school teachers, who pull miles of scotch tape per year. Who knew we were irradiating ourselves on a daily basis? Pretty cool, huh?
But not to worry. There is a little known and often ridiculed phenomenon called Hormesis. This idea suggests that, since we evolved in a radioactive environment (everybody knows that right? Much more radioactive in the past than now), a small amount of naturally occurring background radiation is necessary for our overall health. Hormesis is real, and can be experimentally verified on plants as well as mice and Liberals. So don’t worry when you peel that tape (Scotch Magic tape doesn’t work) and get a dose—it’s good for what ails you. And at a time interval of a billionth of a second per burst, at 100 milliwatts, it would take several thousand miles of tugs to do any damage, which, even then, would only be statistical.
"It is a discharge process," said Camara. "It is not clear exactly what mechanism is taking place, but electrons are plainly flying from one side to the other at very high speed and when they hit the other side and they stop, X-rays are emitted.
Someday, this may lead to cheaper and safer X-ray machines. But don’t hold your breath.
Fr: W. Leavitt
To: Interested parties
Re: New source of X-rays
This is such a great story. Dateline: Physorg.com. A team of scientists from UCLA have accidentally discovered a new source of X-Rays. Are you ready? It’s Scotch Tape™. To quote Dave Berry, “I’m not making this up.”
Peeling tape from a roll of Scotch releases tiny bursts of X-rays that are powerful enough to take images of bones in fingers and hands, researchers have found.
Best of all, they have no idea why. The story is that years ago Russian scientists noticed an unusual effect when pulling sticky tape at just the right speed—it releases radiation.
The UCLA boys and girls tried it a few times and actually got images of their finger bones. So they set up an experiment and peeled the tape (at 1.18 inches per second) in a vacuum and were able to measure the amount of radiation. It was indeed enough to create images. Boy, those science guys . . . I’ll bet they had more fun engineering a device that peels tape at precisely 1.18 ips than they did having sex that one time.
There is a theory, which is called triboluminescence, which occurs when two contacting surfaces move relative to each other.
The impact of this will be, of course, devastating to the public, especially school teachers, who pull miles of scotch tape per year. Who knew we were irradiating ourselves on a daily basis? Pretty cool, huh?
But not to worry. There is a little known and often ridiculed phenomenon called Hormesis. This idea suggests that, since we evolved in a radioactive environment (everybody knows that right? Much more radioactive in the past than now), a small amount of naturally occurring background radiation is necessary for our overall health. Hormesis is real, and can be experimentally verified on plants as well as mice and Liberals. So don’t worry when you peel that tape (Scotch Magic tape doesn’t work) and get a dose—it’s good for what ails you. And at a time interval of a billionth of a second per burst, at 100 milliwatts, it would take several thousand miles of tugs to do any damage, which, even then, would only be statistical.
"It is a discharge process," said Camara. "It is not clear exactly what mechanism is taking place, but electrons are plainly flying from one side to the other at very high speed and when they hit the other side and they stop, X-rays are emitted.
Someday, this may lead to cheaper and safer X-ray machines. But don’t hold your breath.
Friday, October 3, 2008
IGM The Next Big Bail-out
Intergalactic Memo
To: All thinking creatures
Fr: W. Leavitt
Re: The next big bailout
I was watching Glen Beck interviewing Ted Nugent earlier, which is one of my favorite things to do, when one of those 30 second news breaks came on with the commercials.
The bodiless voice told us that Governor Schwarzenegger has asked the Feds for a 7 Billion dollar emergency loan. He says its necessary to meet payroll—especially teachers—and if they don’t get it the state will be out of cash in a month. Schools will close. Public Safety (police and fire) will be put on emergency minimum shifts, etc.
It occurred to me—because, you know, I think about this stuff—that this was an admission of some kind. But it is not really a mystery. Here’s why:
When it comes to levying and collecting taxes, California is one of the top three states. They take in more money every year than 90% of the countries on earth. Look it up. Their budget is in the hundreds of billions, possibly over a trillion by now. You can look that up too if you want, but I’m not going to.
So, if they take in more money than France or Germany or Italy or Greece or Norway or Sweden, etc, etc, where did all the money go? How could they possibly not have enough to even meet payroll? I thought about it for a few seconds and the answer came to me as a voice from somewhere above me. Well, a little above, and to the left and behind me, like, over my shoulder from somewhere in the kitchen, but it was there, I swear it.
It is two-fold. I will expose them Socratically. First, how does California collect so much money? From where does it come? They collect it in the form of one of the most egregious, outrageously anti-capitalistic, anti-liberty and independence tax systems in the history of the world. They are sucking dry the teat that feeds them. Which is for-profit business. The private sector.
The people who work for business are being killed as well, but not to the extent businesses are. The money goes directly into that huge bureaucratic dumpster affectionately called entitlements. Welfare. Social programs. Special Ed, No Child Left Behind (which Congress neglected to fund, leaving it up to the states), Head Start, Lunch Programs, Section 8 Housing, and on and on. Notice that not one of these items I mentioned sounds in any way wrong, or mean-spirited, or unnecessary. But California can’t afford it all. And that is always the problem with well-meaning but hopelessly clueless, emotionally-driven people. (You know—liberals.) They insist on biting off more than the rest of us can chew. They refuse to set limits, preferring to live in a dream world where the money will always come from somewhere. But the money comes from people’s pockets. People who hire millions of other people. And eventually, the ones who believe—erroneously—that taxing profit out of existence is a good thing, manage to do it. Then the business closes, the jobs vanish, the tax revenues dry up, and California finds itself bankrupt. Again.
Which brings us to the second reason. At some point, the people who generate most of the revenue that goes for all the entitlements, decide they’ve had enough. They close their business and move to another state, or country, or go to work as an employee, still paying taxes, but not quite as much. We experienced this a few years ago when thousands of business relocated to Nevada from California, and hundreds of thousands of people moved along with them, which artificially inflated the real estate, which made it necessary for Congress to force the banks to loan money to everybody, which . . . well, you get my point. All that money California thought they had, and would always be there, vanished. I would have told them it would happen for a lousy million. Tax-free obviously.
California literally brought this on themselves. And they have to be bailed out. And it will come out of your (our) pockets . . . as always. And the next time some moron proposes a feel-good government program, we will forget all about not having enough to pay for everything, and do it all again. Oh wait—they just did.
To: All thinking creatures
Fr: W. Leavitt
Re: The next big bailout
I was watching Glen Beck interviewing Ted Nugent earlier, which is one of my favorite things to do, when one of those 30 second news breaks came on with the commercials.
The bodiless voice told us that Governor Schwarzenegger has asked the Feds for a 7 Billion dollar emergency loan. He says its necessary to meet payroll—especially teachers—and if they don’t get it the state will be out of cash in a month. Schools will close. Public Safety (police and fire) will be put on emergency minimum shifts, etc.
It occurred to me—because, you know, I think about this stuff—that this was an admission of some kind. But it is not really a mystery. Here’s why:
When it comes to levying and collecting taxes, California is one of the top three states. They take in more money every year than 90% of the countries on earth. Look it up. Their budget is in the hundreds of billions, possibly over a trillion by now. You can look that up too if you want, but I’m not going to.
So, if they take in more money than France or Germany or Italy or Greece or Norway or Sweden, etc, etc, where did all the money go? How could they possibly not have enough to even meet payroll? I thought about it for a few seconds and the answer came to me as a voice from somewhere above me. Well, a little above, and to the left and behind me, like, over my shoulder from somewhere in the kitchen, but it was there, I swear it.
It is two-fold. I will expose them Socratically. First, how does California collect so much money? From where does it come? They collect it in the form of one of the most egregious, outrageously anti-capitalistic, anti-liberty and independence tax systems in the history of the world. They are sucking dry the teat that feeds them. Which is for-profit business. The private sector.
The people who work for business are being killed as well, but not to the extent businesses are. The money goes directly into that huge bureaucratic dumpster affectionately called entitlements. Welfare. Social programs. Special Ed, No Child Left Behind (which Congress neglected to fund, leaving it up to the states), Head Start, Lunch Programs, Section 8 Housing, and on and on. Notice that not one of these items I mentioned sounds in any way wrong, or mean-spirited, or unnecessary. But California can’t afford it all. And that is always the problem with well-meaning but hopelessly clueless, emotionally-driven people. (You know—liberals.) They insist on biting off more than the rest of us can chew. They refuse to set limits, preferring to live in a dream world where the money will always come from somewhere. But the money comes from people’s pockets. People who hire millions of other people. And eventually, the ones who believe—erroneously—that taxing profit out of existence is a good thing, manage to do it. Then the business closes, the jobs vanish, the tax revenues dry up, and California finds itself bankrupt. Again.
Which brings us to the second reason. At some point, the people who generate most of the revenue that goes for all the entitlements, decide they’ve had enough. They close their business and move to another state, or country, or go to work as an employee, still paying taxes, but not quite as much. We experienced this a few years ago when thousands of business relocated to Nevada from California, and hundreds of thousands of people moved along with them, which artificially inflated the real estate, which made it necessary for Congress to force the banks to loan money to everybody, which . . . well, you get my point. All that money California thought they had, and would always be there, vanished. I would have told them it would happen for a lousy million. Tax-free obviously.
California literally brought this on themselves. And they have to be bailed out. And it will come out of your (our) pockets . . . as always. And the next time some moron proposes a feel-good government program, we will forget all about not having enough to pay for everything, and do it all again. Oh wait—they just did.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
IGM Nebraska Law
Inter-Galactic Memo
Fr: W. Leavitt
To: The usual suspects
Re: Nebraska’s new law
Last July, Nebraska lawmakers tried to address a growing problem. They passed a law allowing parents to take a “child” to any hospital and abandon it. No questions asked, no legal repercussions. The law was intended to protect newborns and infants, who might otherwise end up dead and tossed in a dumpster—something which happens all too often.
This piece of legislation was well-intentioned, and I applaud the sentiment, but it was not well-considered. It is poorly worded, using the terms ‘child’ and ‘children’ instead of infant and/or newborn, and set the age limit at under 19. Since it went into law, at least 16 kids have been dropped-off, some of them teenagers.
We (and by we, I mean anyone who has been a parent longer than ten minutes) all know how difficult, challenging and stressful it can be to raise one or more children. Sometimes we just want to . . . drop them off somewhere, change our names and move away. But we don’t. There is no responsibility in all of human existence more sacred, profound and important that being a mom or dad. Most of us know this, and do whatever it takes to stick it out. It’s almost always worth it eventually, but there are no guarantees.
sometimes a parent finds themselves in an untenable situation. Lost, alone, at the end of their rope, with nothing left to give, to do, to believe. And sometimes kids accidentally have kids of their own and don’t know what to do. Which makes the hospital drop-off a wonderful idea.
But the law isn’t working the way it was supposed to. Government seems to be a continuing exercise in unintended consequences.
One man recently dropped all nine of his children off, ages 1 to 17. Sounds terrible doesn’t it? But his wife had died a few months previous, and he had to quit his job to take care of the kids, and one thing led to another. Talk about being at your wits end. It’s easy to pass judgment on something like this, but we all have different strengths and weaknesses, and varying levels of tolerance and expertise. The poor guy didn’t know what else to do, and there was the new law. At least the kids will be taken care of, I’m sure he was thinking, at least they will be fed and clothed and go to school. My heart goes out to the guy. But I have to ask myself, where was his support? Where was his family, his church, his friends? Maybe there weren’t any—who knows? Even though Nita and I are past all that—empty nesters—it is good to look back and know that we would never have had to face such a decision. Our extended family would have done whatever was necessary to see to it that our family stayed together. And, God forbid, if something should happen to one of our children, we would be right there to take over—as would the other sets of grandparents.
The problem with this scenario in Nebraska is not obvious. It isn’t people who can’t take care of their kids, it’s who should step in when they can’t—or won’t. In this case, government stepped in, which is almost always a mistake in these kinds of situations. We are losing the most important infrastructure of all—the network of family and friends, especially those with whom we attend religious services, and other private organizations designed to help in these kinds of circumstances. Over the decades we have been slowly inculcated with this idea that government will be there, that it is “their” job to take care of everything. And slowly, we have been sucked into that lie. It is this lie that was at the heart of the disaster in New Orleans during Katrina. It wasn’t the Governor or Mayor, and it wasn’t President Bush and his FEMA people (although it could have been handled better) it was this pervasive and crippling idea that government will always be there, can solve any problem—which they have been telling us now for far too long. This idea is why thousands of people sat and did nothing while the water rose and the dikes broke. They had been trained to do just that. And we see it elsewhere as well. In fires, earthquakes, floods, and in economic implosions. The government will take care of it, don’t worry.
Maybe we should rethink this trend. Maybe we should take care of it. A few people do. They drop what they are doing and go to where they are needed and stay until its fixed. Most of us don’t—can’t, to be realistic. But not because it’s impossible. We don’t or can’t because the system has been altered. Once upon a time it was done differently. I think the change began when President Roosevelt gave us the New Deal. I could be wrong. But FDR would have liked this new law— bring your unwanted children to a hospital, and we will take care of everything. It is humane, kind, and obviously comes from a place of compassion. But it is wrong. Not wrong as in immoral, but wrong as in a mistake. We have become a nation addicted to government at every level. And we need to kick the habit.
Fr: W. Leavitt
To: The usual suspects
Re: Nebraska’s new law
Last July, Nebraska lawmakers tried to address a growing problem. They passed a law allowing parents to take a “child” to any hospital and abandon it. No questions asked, no legal repercussions. The law was intended to protect newborns and infants, who might otherwise end up dead and tossed in a dumpster—something which happens all too often.
This piece of legislation was well-intentioned, and I applaud the sentiment, but it was not well-considered. It is poorly worded, using the terms ‘child’ and ‘children’ instead of infant and/or newborn, and set the age limit at under 19. Since it went into law, at least 16 kids have been dropped-off, some of them teenagers.
We (and by we, I mean anyone who has been a parent longer than ten minutes) all know how difficult, challenging and stressful it can be to raise one or more children. Sometimes we just want to . . . drop them off somewhere, change our names and move away. But we don’t. There is no responsibility in all of human existence more sacred, profound and important that being a mom or dad. Most of us know this, and do whatever it takes to stick it out. It’s almost always worth it eventually, but there are no guarantees.
sometimes a parent finds themselves in an untenable situation. Lost, alone, at the end of their rope, with nothing left to give, to do, to believe. And sometimes kids accidentally have kids of their own and don’t know what to do. Which makes the hospital drop-off a wonderful idea.
But the law isn’t working the way it was supposed to. Government seems to be a continuing exercise in unintended consequences.
One man recently dropped all nine of his children off, ages 1 to 17. Sounds terrible doesn’t it? But his wife had died a few months previous, and he had to quit his job to take care of the kids, and one thing led to another. Talk about being at your wits end. It’s easy to pass judgment on something like this, but we all have different strengths and weaknesses, and varying levels of tolerance and expertise. The poor guy didn’t know what else to do, and there was the new law. At least the kids will be taken care of, I’m sure he was thinking, at least they will be fed and clothed and go to school. My heart goes out to the guy. But I have to ask myself, where was his support? Where was his family, his church, his friends? Maybe there weren’t any—who knows? Even though Nita and I are past all that—empty nesters—it is good to look back and know that we would never have had to face such a decision. Our extended family would have done whatever was necessary to see to it that our family stayed together. And, God forbid, if something should happen to one of our children, we would be right there to take over—as would the other sets of grandparents.
The problem with this scenario in Nebraska is not obvious. It isn’t people who can’t take care of their kids, it’s who should step in when they can’t—or won’t. In this case, government stepped in, which is almost always a mistake in these kinds of situations. We are losing the most important infrastructure of all—the network of family and friends, especially those with whom we attend religious services, and other private organizations designed to help in these kinds of circumstances. Over the decades we have been slowly inculcated with this idea that government will be there, that it is “their” job to take care of everything. And slowly, we have been sucked into that lie. It is this lie that was at the heart of the disaster in New Orleans during Katrina. It wasn’t the Governor or Mayor, and it wasn’t President Bush and his FEMA people (although it could have been handled better) it was this pervasive and crippling idea that government will always be there, can solve any problem—which they have been telling us now for far too long. This idea is why thousands of people sat and did nothing while the water rose and the dikes broke. They had been trained to do just that. And we see it elsewhere as well. In fires, earthquakes, floods, and in economic implosions. The government will take care of it, don’t worry.
Maybe we should rethink this trend. Maybe we should take care of it. A few people do. They drop what they are doing and go to where they are needed and stay until its fixed. Most of us don’t—can’t, to be realistic. But not because it’s impossible. We don’t or can’t because the system has been altered. Once upon a time it was done differently. I think the change began when President Roosevelt gave us the New Deal. I could be wrong. But FDR would have liked this new law— bring your unwanted children to a hospital, and we will take care of everything. It is humane, kind, and obviously comes from a place of compassion. But it is wrong. Not wrong as in immoral, but wrong as in a mistake. We have become a nation addicted to government at every level. And we need to kick the habit.
IGM PETA and breast milk
IGM
This is about PETA and therefore does not deserve the usual heading and memo format. I have already blocked the source of this, although my brother might have sent a link with the story.
PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, has released an official proclamation asking (at least I think they asked, but they do a good deal of strident demanding, whining, begging, coercing and confrontational harassing) Ben And Jerry (Of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream—my second favorite kind) to switch from cow’s milk to breast milk. That’s human breast milk.
I assume that in their deluded little world of “Planet Death to Humans” PETA thinks that milking cows is cruel and unusual. True, we are the only creature I know of which continues drinking milk past infancy, and uses the milk of another animal, and I can see some room for a lively debate on those points, but despite those caveats, how is it possible that a group of presumably sane people can come to such a desperately unsane conclusion?
I am familiar with the process of milking a cow. Not intimately, but I have tried it, and been around it off and on. Both my parents did a lot of it in their youth. I’ve never seen a cow behave as if it objected to the milking. Sometimes they kick or bolt, but that is usually because someone had cold hands, or squeezed where they shouldn’t have, or startled the animal. PETA will counter with the argument that commercial dairies lock the cow in a metal cage when they are hooked up to the automatic milking machine. I will counter the counter by saying “are you people complete morons?” They put them in the cages so they don’t wander off halfway through—that might be painful. So they are protecting them, not abusing them. Notice the cows don’t protest the process.
Now, let’s move on to the breast milk part of the proposal. Ben and Jerry’s is headquartered in Vermont. There are about 750,000 people in Vermont. (Yes, I looked it up) I can just picture every lactating female pumping her breasts every day to sell to an ice cream company. (To hell with the kid, we need the money.) I’m sure Ben and Jerry would be willing to pay for such a service. Considering the inconvenience, the stigma, and the tiny amount of milk from each session, I put the wholesale price of breast milk at around $100 an ounce. Probably more. Which would what—triple?—the price of their product. But even if every legal-age female adult in the state regularly sold their milk, (Which is possible, but that’s another story) they would be around a million gallons short. Now the price of breast milk rises to several thousand an ounce. But what woman would do it? Not even the members of PETA. Although Pamela Anderson could make serious bank if she did, and videotaped it.
Ben and Jerry’s response was precious. They essentially said, “What a wonderful and creative idea, but no thanks.”
So why the letter? Two reasons, which are always the same with PETA. The first is political agitation. The second is attention. PETA is, at its heart, a collection of people who believe they are sincere about their cause, but are really just a bunch of sad, pathetic, personality-challenged, socially-inept . . .
No, that’s not fair. They are well-intentioned. But ontologically misinformed. PETA can only happen in the screwed-up, humanist, Godless culture of Hubris Inc. Otherwise known as America, circa right now.
They weren’t serious about the breast milk. They were trying to make a point. As usual the point was ridiculous. Animals have no inherent rights. Which sort of puts the entire reason for PETA’s existence to rest. Only creatures with the ability to cognitively realize the concept of “rights” can have rights. Cogito Ergo sum. Whatever that means.
This is about PETA and therefore does not deserve the usual heading and memo format. I have already blocked the source of this, although my brother might have sent a link with the story.
PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, has released an official proclamation asking (at least I think they asked, but they do a good deal of strident demanding, whining, begging, coercing and confrontational harassing) Ben And Jerry (Of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream—my second favorite kind) to switch from cow’s milk to breast milk. That’s human breast milk.
I assume that in their deluded little world of “Planet Death to Humans” PETA thinks that milking cows is cruel and unusual. True, we are the only creature I know of which continues drinking milk past infancy, and uses the milk of another animal, and I can see some room for a lively debate on those points, but despite those caveats, how is it possible that a group of presumably sane people can come to such a desperately unsane conclusion?
I am familiar with the process of milking a cow. Not intimately, but I have tried it, and been around it off and on. Both my parents did a lot of it in their youth. I’ve never seen a cow behave as if it objected to the milking. Sometimes they kick or bolt, but that is usually because someone had cold hands, or squeezed where they shouldn’t have, or startled the animal. PETA will counter with the argument that commercial dairies lock the cow in a metal cage when they are hooked up to the automatic milking machine. I will counter the counter by saying “are you people complete morons?” They put them in the cages so they don’t wander off halfway through—that might be painful. So they are protecting them, not abusing them. Notice the cows don’t protest the process.
Now, let’s move on to the breast milk part of the proposal. Ben and Jerry’s is headquartered in Vermont. There are about 750,000 people in Vermont. (Yes, I looked it up) I can just picture every lactating female pumping her breasts every day to sell to an ice cream company. (To hell with the kid, we need the money.) I’m sure Ben and Jerry would be willing to pay for such a service. Considering the inconvenience, the stigma, and the tiny amount of milk from each session, I put the wholesale price of breast milk at around $100 an ounce. Probably more. Which would what—triple?—the price of their product. But even if every legal-age female adult in the state regularly sold their milk, (Which is possible, but that’s another story) they would be around a million gallons short. Now the price of breast milk rises to several thousand an ounce. But what woman would do it? Not even the members of PETA. Although Pamela Anderson could make serious bank if she did, and videotaped it.
Ben and Jerry’s response was precious. They essentially said, “What a wonderful and creative idea, but no thanks.”
So why the letter? Two reasons, which are always the same with PETA. The first is political agitation. The second is attention. PETA is, at its heart, a collection of people who believe they are sincere about their cause, but are really just a bunch of sad, pathetic, personality-challenged, socially-inept . . .
No, that’s not fair. They are well-intentioned. But ontologically misinformed. PETA can only happen in the screwed-up, humanist, Godless culture of Hubris Inc. Otherwise known as America, circa right now.
They weren’t serious about the breast milk. They were trying to make a point. As usual the point was ridiculous. Animals have no inherent rights. Which sort of puts the entire reason for PETA’s existence to rest. Only creatures with the ability to cognitively realize the concept of “rights” can have rights. Cogito Ergo sum. Whatever that means.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
IGM Conflicting Theories
Inter-Galactic Memo
To: People with nothing better to do
Fr: W. Leavitt (who had nothing better to do)
Re: Scientists with nothing better to do . . . . .
There are two semi-fascinating articles on Physorg.com today. One, coming to us from Oxford, that ancient repository of theoretical brilliance and degenerate buggery, claims that Dark Matter (remember that? We’ve talked about it before) does not exist. It had to happen, right?
In order to explain the phenomenon they’ve been seeing, the boys (and girls I assume) at Oxford say that it is more likely we (the earth, Milky Way, local group) just happen to be in an area of the universe that is “a huge void where the density of matter is particularly low.” Well, that makes sense. Occam comes to the rescue again.
In other words, I guess, instead of there being a hundred times more matter than we see out there, we live in a place that is unusually low in matter. The rest of the universe has lots more, which accounts for the motion of galaxies, etc.
Just two doors down from that article is another from NASA. Scientists there have found a new, very small motion in distant galactic clusters. Not individual galaxies mind you—not enough mass in just one—but in clusters of hundreds of galaxies that are gravitationally connected. They have decided ( I imagine them voting on napkins in the break room) that "The clusters show a small but measurable velocity that is independent of the universe's expansion and does not change as distances increase." In other words, there is apparently something beyond the known (visible) universe. A great deal more mass, which is exerting its own, independent influence on the visible universe as a whole.
What's more, this motion is constant out to at least a billion light-years. "Because the dark flow already extends so far, it likely extends across the visible universe," Kashlinsky says.
The finding flies in the face of predictions from standard cosmological models, which describe such motions as decreasing at ever greater distances.
Now, that’s interesting. In order to make such an effect constant over a billion light years, there would have to be a lot of matter out there beyond what we can see. Much more than in that part of the universe we can see. And how would the effect of that matter not decrease over distance? They don’t know. Neither do I, but I have a theory.
So on the one hand, and at the same time, we have a group of very capable, educated people claiming Dark Matter may not exist after all, that we just live in a relative empty region of space, (which would make the Copernican concept of the universe in error) and on the other hand we have a similar group claiming that not only does Dark Matter exist, but that even more of it must be beyond our ability to detect it, beyond the known universe. Actually, the stuff we can’t see—which has to be much more massive than the entire visible universe—could be regular matter, like dirt and pet dander. Nobody knows. Unlike dark matter which we can’t see because its invisible, and currently undetectable, we can’t see that other stuff because it’s just too far away.
So now we have people suggesting that the big bang might not have happened, that the universe is infinite, and that matter and energy are therefore infinite. Hey, that sounds a lot like a religious claim. Specifically, the Christian concept of the universe. “No beginning, no end, stars without number,” all that stuff. See? Science and religion can live together after all.
To: People with nothing better to do
Fr: W. Leavitt (who had nothing better to do)
Re: Scientists with nothing better to do . . . . .
There are two semi-fascinating articles on Physorg.com today. One, coming to us from Oxford, that ancient repository of theoretical brilliance and degenerate buggery, claims that Dark Matter (remember that? We’ve talked about it before) does not exist. It had to happen, right?
In order to explain the phenomenon they’ve been seeing, the boys (and girls I assume) at Oxford say that it is more likely we (the earth, Milky Way, local group) just happen to be in an area of the universe that is “a huge void where the density of matter is particularly low.” Well, that makes sense. Occam comes to the rescue again.
In other words, I guess, instead of there being a hundred times more matter than we see out there, we live in a place that is unusually low in matter. The rest of the universe has lots more, which accounts for the motion of galaxies, etc.
Just two doors down from that article is another from NASA. Scientists there have found a new, very small motion in distant galactic clusters. Not individual galaxies mind you—not enough mass in just one—but in clusters of hundreds of galaxies that are gravitationally connected. They have decided ( I imagine them voting on napkins in the break room) that "The clusters show a small but measurable velocity that is independent of the universe's expansion and does not change as distances increase." In other words, there is apparently something beyond the known (visible) universe. A great deal more mass, which is exerting its own, independent influence on the visible universe as a whole.
What's more, this motion is constant out to at least a billion light-years. "Because the dark flow already extends so far, it likely extends across the visible universe," Kashlinsky says.
The finding flies in the face of predictions from standard cosmological models, which describe such motions as decreasing at ever greater distances.
Now, that’s interesting. In order to make such an effect constant over a billion light years, there would have to be a lot of matter out there beyond what we can see. Much more than in that part of the universe we can see. And how would the effect of that matter not decrease over distance? They don’t know. Neither do I, but I have a theory.
So on the one hand, and at the same time, we have a group of very capable, educated people claiming Dark Matter may not exist after all, that we just live in a relative empty region of space, (which would make the Copernican concept of the universe in error) and on the other hand we have a similar group claiming that not only does Dark Matter exist, but that even more of it must be beyond our ability to detect it, beyond the known universe. Actually, the stuff we can’t see—which has to be much more massive than the entire visible universe—could be regular matter, like dirt and pet dander. Nobody knows. Unlike dark matter which we can’t see because its invisible, and currently undetectable, we can’t see that other stuff because it’s just too far away.
So now we have people suggesting that the big bang might not have happened, that the universe is infinite, and that matter and energy are therefore infinite. Hey, that sounds a lot like a religious claim. Specifically, the Christian concept of the universe. “No beginning, no end, stars without number,” all that stuff. See? Science and religion can live together after all.
Monday, September 22, 2008
IGM Cold War close call
Inter-Galactic Memo
To: The known universe
Fr: W. Leavitt
Re: An old and spooky story
I was watching something on the History Channel tonight, about engineering disasters, and they mentioned a few close calls during the cold war, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, and it jogged a memory.
My father told me this story years ago. It happened circa 1963. This was the one year we actually lived in Las Vegas, even though I was born here. (Until we moved here to teach.) As far as I know it is still highly classified, but dad is gone, so who cares? Dad had been stationed to Thule Air Force Base, in Thule Greenland, well above the Arctic Circle, as chief of security. He was OSI back then. Thule was part of the new Early Warning System being built as a deterrent against a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union.
When he arrived, the military was installing a new radar system, state of the art—experimental in fact, that was supposed to increase our warning time by at least ten minutes. I guess someone back then thought ten minutes made a difference. The antenna for this system was a slightly curved rectangular web of steel about the size of a football field, and they had two or three of them. As dad tells it, he was awakened one morning around two AM with the news that they had a double-secret, class-one, gold-star emergency. (Okay, I made that part up). At that point protocol took over and dad arrived at the nerve center of the operation, a beyond-top secret control center for the radar installation. As OSI station chief, he was in charge of locking down the base and making sure no one was leaking information. (who you gonna tell four hundred miles north of the arctic circle, an Eskimo?)
The scientists were testing the new radar, a full-power run-up prior to going on-line, when they began to receive multiple signals coming over the north pole. Needless to say, it put them in a panic. There were dozens of signals. The eggheads told the commander the signatures of the signals were strikingly similar to those of an ICBM. But since they were still calibrating the installation, they could not be sure what was happening. Dad recalled that you could have cut the tension with a knife. People were shouting, running, doing everything they could to interpret the signals. Back then we had between 20 and 30 minutes before the nukes began to hit their targets. Everyone in the room was desperately trying to figure out what was going on, how many missiles? where were they coming from? and how long did they have before it was “too late”.
I can’t imagine what it must have felt like. Dad told me that with about three minutes left before we had to launch our own missiles, some of the engineers figured out the mystery. The new radar system was more powerful than they had calculated, by an exponential factor. What they were seeing on their screen was the moon, rising over the ice of Greenland’s interior. For some reason that I’m sure Mister Sammons would know, the moon was coming in as multiple signals.
They called off the alert, re-calibrated the array, and everyone went to the Officers Club and got wasted. Except dad, because he was Mormon. By the way, at the officers club you could choose ice cubes dating from last week to 100,000 years ago, pulled from core samples in the ice.
If there is a point to this story, which as far as I know has never been made public, it is that we have no idea what is happening out there, on any given day. The world is nothing like what we hope, or believe, or dream it is.
To: The known universe
Fr: W. Leavitt
Re: An old and spooky story
I was watching something on the History Channel tonight, about engineering disasters, and they mentioned a few close calls during the cold war, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, and it jogged a memory.
My father told me this story years ago. It happened circa 1963. This was the one year we actually lived in Las Vegas, even though I was born here. (Until we moved here to teach.) As far as I know it is still highly classified, but dad is gone, so who cares? Dad had been stationed to Thule Air Force Base, in Thule Greenland, well above the Arctic Circle, as chief of security. He was OSI back then. Thule was part of the new Early Warning System being built as a deterrent against a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union.
When he arrived, the military was installing a new radar system, state of the art—experimental in fact, that was supposed to increase our warning time by at least ten minutes. I guess someone back then thought ten minutes made a difference. The antenna for this system was a slightly curved rectangular web of steel about the size of a football field, and they had two or three of them. As dad tells it, he was awakened one morning around two AM with the news that they had a double-secret, class-one, gold-star emergency. (Okay, I made that part up). At that point protocol took over and dad arrived at the nerve center of the operation, a beyond-top secret control center for the radar installation. As OSI station chief, he was in charge of locking down the base and making sure no one was leaking information. (who you gonna tell four hundred miles north of the arctic circle, an Eskimo?)
The scientists were testing the new radar, a full-power run-up prior to going on-line, when they began to receive multiple signals coming over the north pole. Needless to say, it put them in a panic. There were dozens of signals. The eggheads told the commander the signatures of the signals were strikingly similar to those of an ICBM. But since they were still calibrating the installation, they could not be sure what was happening. Dad recalled that you could have cut the tension with a knife. People were shouting, running, doing everything they could to interpret the signals. Back then we had between 20 and 30 minutes before the nukes began to hit their targets. Everyone in the room was desperately trying to figure out what was going on, how many missiles? where were they coming from? and how long did they have before it was “too late”.
I can’t imagine what it must have felt like. Dad told me that with about three minutes left before we had to launch our own missiles, some of the engineers figured out the mystery. The new radar system was more powerful than they had calculated, by an exponential factor. What they were seeing on their screen was the moon, rising over the ice of Greenland’s interior. For some reason that I’m sure Mister Sammons would know, the moon was coming in as multiple signals.
They called off the alert, re-calibrated the array, and everyone went to the Officers Club and got wasted. Except dad, because he was Mormon. By the way, at the officers club you could choose ice cubes dating from last week to 100,000 years ago, pulled from core samples in the ice.
If there is a point to this story, which as far as I know has never been made public, it is that we have no idea what is happening out there, on any given day. The world is nothing like what we hope, or believe, or dream it is.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
IGM Obama in Iraq
Inter-Galactic Memo
To: Those interested in the current political landscape
Fr: Leavitt
Re: Troubling situation with Iraq
Following this memo is the actual article from the New York Post. I figured a lot of you won’t want to take the time to read it, but I didn’t want anyone thinking I was making this up.
The gist of it is this: According to quotes from the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, Senator Obama lobbied the Iraqi government to delay troop-withdrawal negotiations until after the election. This while publicly demanding immediate troop withdrawals for months. Apparently—and I’m going out on a limb here—this was in an effort to make it appear as if Obama’s new administration stepped in and saved the day—after the election. Obama also insisted that the delay be undertaken in order to allow congress to be involved in the status of US troops.
"However, as an Iraqi, I prefer to have a security agreement that regulates the activities of foreign troops, rather than keeping the matter open." Zebari says.
Congress has nothing to do with the prosecution of a foreign war. They can vote to fund it or not and that is all. I’m at a loss as to why Obama thinks Congress should be involved. The only possible reason for this is again, to delay the negotiations until Bush is out.
Obama has been claiming for years that the presence of troops in Iraq is illegal. While in Iraq he suggested that rather than let the “weakened Bush administration” reach an accord, we should seek an extension of the UN Mandate, thus admitting that the US is in Iraq under the formally recognized and legal UN mandate and sanctions against Iraq. He suddenly remembered the UN. Now that’s its in his best interest, the war is no longer “illegal”. (For those of us with only a remedial understanding of things; the war was never illegal. We went under the auspices of the UN Mandate.) Obama even tried to get the military to delay the withdrawals. They declined.
Obama has been pushing for troops to be taken out of Iraq and placed in Afghanistan for months, claiming that was always “where the real war was”. Now he is trying to convince Petraeus to delay that very transfer. Things that make you go h-m-m-m-m-m.
Mark Levin mentioned on his radio show that Obama has violated the Logan Act. This Act, first put into effect in 1799, forbids any unauthorized citizen from negotiating with a foreign government. Unless authorized by the Executive Branch, Senators have no such authority—that’s why we have Ambassadors. Said violation is a felony. No one has ever been prosecuted for this, which is why Jimmy Carter is not in prison.
Senator Obama is pretty confident. In fact, he believes he’s already in the White House. The arrogance is stunning. He rivals my brother.
Now, we all know nothing is going to happen because of any of this. The media will ignore it, Obama’s people will deny it anyway, and we will all blithely believe him. After all, it is Barack Obama—the anointed one. And I’m the last person to demand an investigation or prosecution. I just don’t think this recent faux pas warrants the fuss. But it does speak to the man’s personality, and honor. What he did is clearly dishonorable, if only technically illegal, and if McCain had done it, I would be every bit as amused and disappointed. And you would be hearing about it from every media outlet on the planet.
New York Post: 9-15-08
WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.
According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.
"He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said in an interview.
Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops - and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its "state of weakness and political confusion."
"However, as an Iraqi, I prefer to have a security agreement that regulates the activities of foreign troops, rather than keeping the matter open." Zebari says.
Though Obama claims the US presence is "illegal," he suddenly remembered that Americans troops were in Iraq within the legal framework of a UN mandate. His advice was that, rather than reach an accord with the "weakened Bush administration," Iraq should seek an extension of the UN mandate.
While in Iraq, Obama also tried to persuade the US commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus, to suggest a "realistic withdrawal date." They declined.
Obama has made many contradictory statements with regard to Iraq. His latest position is that US combat troops should be out by 2010. Yet his effort to delay an agreement would make that withdrawal deadline impossible to meet.
Supposing he wins, Obama's administration wouldn't be fully operational before February - and naming a new ambassador to Baghdad and forming a new negotiation team might take longer still.
By then, Iraq will be in the throes of its own campaign season. Judging by the past two elections, forming a new coalition government may then take three months. So the Iraqi negotiating team might not be in place until next June.
Then, judging by how long the current talks have taken, restarting the process from scratch would leave the two sides needing at least six months to come up with a draft accord. That puts us at May 2010 for when the draft might be submitted to the Iraqi parliament - which might well need another six months to pass it into law.
Thus, the 2010 deadline fixed by Obama is a meaningless concept, thrown in as a sop to his anti-war base.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the Bush administration have a more flexible timetable in mind.
According to Zebari, the envisaged time span is two or three years - departure in 2011 or 2012. That would let Iraq hold its next general election, the third since liberation, and resolve a number of domestic political issues.
Even then, the dates mentioned are only "notional," making the timing and the cadence of withdrawal conditional on realities on the ground as appreciated by both sides.
Iraqi leaders are divided over the US election. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani (whose party is a member of the Socialist International) sees Obama as "a man of the Left" - who, once elected, might change his opposition to Iraq's liberation. Indeed, say Talabani's advisers, a President Obama might be tempted to appropriate the victory that America has already won in Iraq by claiming that his intervention transformed failure into success.
Maliki's advisers have persuaded him that Obama will win - but the prime minister worries about the senator's "political debt to the anti-war lobby" - which is determined to transform Iraq into a disaster to prove that toppling Saddam Hussein was "the biggest strategic blunder in US history."
Other prominent Iraqi leaders, such as Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi and Kurdish regional President Massoud Barzani, believe that Sen. John McCain would show "a more realistic approach to Iraqi issues."
Obama has given Iraqis the impression that he doesn't want Iraq to appear anything like a success, let alone a victory, for America. The reason? He fears that the perception of US victory there might revive the Bush Doctrine of "pre-emptive" war - that is, removing a threat before it strikes at America.
Despite some usual equivocations on the subject, Obama rejects pre-emption as a legitimate form of self -defense. To be credible, his foreign-policy philosophy requires Iraq to be seen as a failure, a disaster, a quagmire, a pig with lipstick or any of the other apocalyptic adjectives used by the American defeat industry in the past five years.
Yet Iraq is doing much better than its friends hoped and its enemies feared. The UN mandate will be extended in December, and we may yet get an agreement on the status of forces before President Bush leaves the White House in January.
To: Those interested in the current political landscape
Fr: Leavitt
Re: Troubling situation with Iraq
Following this memo is the actual article from the New York Post. I figured a lot of you won’t want to take the time to read it, but I didn’t want anyone thinking I was making this up.
The gist of it is this: According to quotes from the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, Senator Obama lobbied the Iraqi government to delay troop-withdrawal negotiations until after the election. This while publicly demanding immediate troop withdrawals for months. Apparently—and I’m going out on a limb here—this was in an effort to make it appear as if Obama’s new administration stepped in and saved the day—after the election. Obama also insisted that the delay be undertaken in order to allow congress to be involved in the status of US troops.
"However, as an Iraqi, I prefer to have a security agreement that regulates the activities of foreign troops, rather than keeping the matter open." Zebari says.
Congress has nothing to do with the prosecution of a foreign war. They can vote to fund it or not and that is all. I’m at a loss as to why Obama thinks Congress should be involved. The only possible reason for this is again, to delay the negotiations until Bush is out.
Obama has been claiming for years that the presence of troops in Iraq is illegal. While in Iraq he suggested that rather than let the “weakened Bush administration” reach an accord, we should seek an extension of the UN Mandate, thus admitting that the US is in Iraq under the formally recognized and legal UN mandate and sanctions against Iraq. He suddenly remembered the UN. Now that’s its in his best interest, the war is no longer “illegal”. (For those of us with only a remedial understanding of things; the war was never illegal. We went under the auspices of the UN Mandate.) Obama even tried to get the military to delay the withdrawals. They declined.
Obama has been pushing for troops to be taken out of Iraq and placed in Afghanistan for months, claiming that was always “where the real war was”. Now he is trying to convince Petraeus to delay that very transfer. Things that make you go h-m-m-m-m-m.
Mark Levin mentioned on his radio show that Obama has violated the Logan Act. This Act, first put into effect in 1799, forbids any unauthorized citizen from negotiating with a foreign government. Unless authorized by the Executive Branch, Senators have no such authority—that’s why we have Ambassadors. Said violation is a felony. No one has ever been prosecuted for this, which is why Jimmy Carter is not in prison.
Senator Obama is pretty confident. In fact, he believes he’s already in the White House. The arrogance is stunning. He rivals my brother.
Now, we all know nothing is going to happen because of any of this. The media will ignore it, Obama’s people will deny it anyway, and we will all blithely believe him. After all, it is Barack Obama—the anointed one. And I’m the last person to demand an investigation or prosecution. I just don’t think this recent faux pas warrants the fuss. But it does speak to the man’s personality, and honor. What he did is clearly dishonorable, if only technically illegal, and if McCain had done it, I would be every bit as amused and disappointed. And you would be hearing about it from every media outlet on the planet.
New York Post: 9-15-08
WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.
According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.
"He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said in an interview.
Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops - and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its "state of weakness and political confusion."
"However, as an Iraqi, I prefer to have a security agreement that regulates the activities of foreign troops, rather than keeping the matter open." Zebari says.
Though Obama claims the US presence is "illegal," he suddenly remembered that Americans troops were in Iraq within the legal framework of a UN mandate. His advice was that, rather than reach an accord with the "weakened Bush administration," Iraq should seek an extension of the UN mandate.
While in Iraq, Obama also tried to persuade the US commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus, to suggest a "realistic withdrawal date." They declined.
Obama has made many contradictory statements with regard to Iraq. His latest position is that US combat troops should be out by 2010. Yet his effort to delay an agreement would make that withdrawal deadline impossible to meet.
Supposing he wins, Obama's administration wouldn't be fully operational before February - and naming a new ambassador to Baghdad and forming a new negotiation team might take longer still.
By then, Iraq will be in the throes of its own campaign season. Judging by the past two elections, forming a new coalition government may then take three months. So the Iraqi negotiating team might not be in place until next June.
Then, judging by how long the current talks have taken, restarting the process from scratch would leave the two sides needing at least six months to come up with a draft accord. That puts us at May 2010 for when the draft might be submitted to the Iraqi parliament - which might well need another six months to pass it into law.
Thus, the 2010 deadline fixed by Obama is a meaningless concept, thrown in as a sop to his anti-war base.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the Bush administration have a more flexible timetable in mind.
According to Zebari, the envisaged time span is two or three years - departure in 2011 or 2012. That would let Iraq hold its next general election, the third since liberation, and resolve a number of domestic political issues.
Even then, the dates mentioned are only "notional," making the timing and the cadence of withdrawal conditional on realities on the ground as appreciated by both sides.
Iraqi leaders are divided over the US election. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani (whose party is a member of the Socialist International) sees Obama as "a man of the Left" - who, once elected, might change his opposition to Iraq's liberation. Indeed, say Talabani's advisers, a President Obama might be tempted to appropriate the victory that America has already won in Iraq by claiming that his intervention transformed failure into success.
Maliki's advisers have persuaded him that Obama will win - but the prime minister worries about the senator's "political debt to the anti-war lobby" - which is determined to transform Iraq into a disaster to prove that toppling Saddam Hussein was "the biggest strategic blunder in US history."
Other prominent Iraqi leaders, such as Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi and Kurdish regional President Massoud Barzani, believe that Sen. John McCain would show "a more realistic approach to Iraqi issues."
Obama has given Iraqis the impression that he doesn't want Iraq to appear anything like a success, let alone a victory, for America. The reason? He fears that the perception of US victory there might revive the Bush Doctrine of "pre-emptive" war - that is, removing a threat before it strikes at America.
Despite some usual equivocations on the subject, Obama rejects pre-emption as a legitimate form of self -defense. To be credible, his foreign-policy philosophy requires Iraq to be seen as a failure, a disaster, a quagmire, a pig with lipstick or any of the other apocalyptic adjectives used by the American defeat industry in the past five years.
Yet Iraq is doing much better than its friends hoped and its enemies feared. The UN mandate will be extended in December, and we may yet get an agreement on the status of forces before President Bush leaves the White House in January.
Abortion Revisited
Inter-Galactic Memo
To: The usual
Fr: Leavitt
Re: Roe V Wade, redux
I apologize at the outset. It is not my intent to offend anyone. This debate is never going to go away, but some of us just can’t leave it alone. I am sincere when I ask for someone else’s viewpoint. If you consider yourself to be a “radical” feminist, you might want to pass this one by. I assure you, it’s nothing personal.
I’ve been reading a lot of stuff on Moveon.org recently, hoping to find some insightful information, opinions, or ideas contrary to my own—or at least new to me. I was reading a list of “Ten Things you need to know about John McCain”. In this bulleted list, they label Senator McCain as opposing a woman’s right to choose, which is accurate, but disingenuous. McCain has stated that he unequivocally opposes Roe v Wade and believes it should be overturned. At Moveon, no one ever says someone is pro-life. They say a person is anti-choice, painting the Senator as a Neolithic throw-back to patriarchal chauvinism.
This is knowingly skewing what pro-life people are about. We call that Spin. John McCain does not oppose a woman’s right to choose and neither do I. What we oppose is abortion. But the liberal left has done a good job of making people believe we hate women, want to make them chattel again and deprive them of their unalienable rights.
Any woman should have the right to choose an abortion if she is that selfish, weak, afraid, lazy, ambivalent, depressed, terrified, strong, independent, arrogant, or indifferent to life. That isn’t the issue. The issue is this: The fact that a woman may choose to abort her unborn offspring (see how I’m doing some spinning of my own here? I could have just said fetus and changed the whole tone of my point) does not obligate the government to facilitate that choice. Period. This is the difference between “Rights” and “Entitlement.” A woman has the right to chose, and to seek assistance. The government has no obligation to ensure that assistance; but only to see that the choice is not trifled with. A doctor has the right to assist or not to assist. The government’s job is not to facilitate the practical exploitation of rights. Its job is to see to it that those rights are not denied, and that the application of those rights is equitable, and that’s all. In other words, to stay out of the way.
Reversing Roe v Wade would have no affect on a woman’s right to choose. None. (Unless abortion was made illegal again, which I do not believe is likely or necessary.) That idea, inculcated by the more strident Feminists and the liberal left, is specious. Such a reversal might affect the convenience of getting an abortion, and the cost, but not the choice to have one. The two are not the same. The choice is the purview of government; the procedure is up to the individual and her physician. Abortion, as ugly and inhumane as it is, should not be illegal (at least not until we grow up as a people and see the error of our ways). But it should certainly not be guaranteed and funded by government. Such a position is outrageous and detrimental to the orderly continuation of society. If such were the case, there would be plenty of doctors willing to do the procedure, for a fee. Limited access to the procedure in no way inhibits the right to chose, as long as access is legally available. And let’s not even talk about the supposed “unfair advantage” this places on women, or the “unfair disadvantage.” The fact that an individual woman might not be able to afford the procedure and might have to go ahead and have her baby has nothing to do with anything. She should literally have thought about that before she had sex. Sex isn’t a right either, by the way, in case someone was under the erroneous impression that such was the case. We are guaranteed the “pursuit of happiness,” not happiness itself. Now that I think of it, we are guaranteed “life” as well. It seems a reasonable and practical matter that the life of an unborn fetus would fall under that guarantee.
The real issue here is a woman’s choice. And many of us are determined to keep that choice pure and unfettered, even at the cost of sacrificing another life. But I have never understood why this particular choice is so important to women. Seriously. What is it about it that makes the entire subject so intense, the debate so passionate? I understand the “we have the right to make decisions about our own bodies” argument, and I agree. But at the cost of another life? Really? I would love it if someone—preferably a reasonable someone—would email me and explain the fundamental aspects of this—the way it really is. The why. What’s at stake.
Sometimes I feel like Roe v Wade is the result of an inferiority complex; that women were kept in thrall for so long that they reacted without really thinking this through and realizing all the ramifications. I could be wrong . . . Maybe as a male I just don’t get it. Apparently some men do, right? Or at least agree with the principle. But I would never try to limit or restrict a woman’s right to choose. And that declaration is in no way incompatible with finding Roe v Wade a poor decision.
And of course, as I have claimed before, the real choice a woman makes (and a man) is to engage in that activity by which a human female becomes pregnant. That is where the actual morality of the situation lies. Once she (and he) have elected to have sex, it is clearly incumbent on them to accept responsibility for the (biologically inevitable) outcome.
The position of the Bloogers at Moveon, and the morally-bankrupt feminist movement is strictly political. They purposefully ignore the existence of the fetus, making the entire debate about the woman and her “rights”. But having access to government-funded abortions is an entitlement, not a right. And I haven’t said a word about the rights of the fetus, while clearly running logical rings around my opponents.
To: The usual
Fr: Leavitt
Re: Roe V Wade, redux
I apologize at the outset. It is not my intent to offend anyone. This debate is never going to go away, but some of us just can’t leave it alone. I am sincere when I ask for someone else’s viewpoint. If you consider yourself to be a “radical” feminist, you might want to pass this one by. I assure you, it’s nothing personal.
I’ve been reading a lot of stuff on Moveon.org recently, hoping to find some insightful information, opinions, or ideas contrary to my own—or at least new to me. I was reading a list of “Ten Things you need to know about John McCain”. In this bulleted list, they label Senator McCain as opposing a woman’s right to choose, which is accurate, but disingenuous. McCain has stated that he unequivocally opposes Roe v Wade and believes it should be overturned. At Moveon, no one ever says someone is pro-life. They say a person is anti-choice, painting the Senator as a Neolithic throw-back to patriarchal chauvinism.
This is knowingly skewing what pro-life people are about. We call that Spin. John McCain does not oppose a woman’s right to choose and neither do I. What we oppose is abortion. But the liberal left has done a good job of making people believe we hate women, want to make them chattel again and deprive them of their unalienable rights.
Any woman should have the right to choose an abortion if she is that selfish, weak, afraid, lazy, ambivalent, depressed, terrified, strong, independent, arrogant, or indifferent to life. That isn’t the issue. The issue is this: The fact that a woman may choose to abort her unborn offspring (see how I’m doing some spinning of my own here? I could have just said fetus and changed the whole tone of my point) does not obligate the government to facilitate that choice. Period. This is the difference between “Rights” and “Entitlement.” A woman has the right to chose, and to seek assistance. The government has no obligation to ensure that assistance; but only to see that the choice is not trifled with. A doctor has the right to assist or not to assist. The government’s job is not to facilitate the practical exploitation of rights. Its job is to see to it that those rights are not denied, and that the application of those rights is equitable, and that’s all. In other words, to stay out of the way.
Reversing Roe v Wade would have no affect on a woman’s right to choose. None. (Unless abortion was made illegal again, which I do not believe is likely or necessary.) That idea, inculcated by the more strident Feminists and the liberal left, is specious. Such a reversal might affect the convenience of getting an abortion, and the cost, but not the choice to have one. The two are not the same. The choice is the purview of government; the procedure is up to the individual and her physician. Abortion, as ugly and inhumane as it is, should not be illegal (at least not until we grow up as a people and see the error of our ways). But it should certainly not be guaranteed and funded by government. Such a position is outrageous and detrimental to the orderly continuation of society. If such were the case, there would be plenty of doctors willing to do the procedure, for a fee. Limited access to the procedure in no way inhibits the right to chose, as long as access is legally available. And let’s not even talk about the supposed “unfair advantage” this places on women, or the “unfair disadvantage.” The fact that an individual woman might not be able to afford the procedure and might have to go ahead and have her baby has nothing to do with anything. She should literally have thought about that before she had sex. Sex isn’t a right either, by the way, in case someone was under the erroneous impression that such was the case. We are guaranteed the “pursuit of happiness,” not happiness itself. Now that I think of it, we are guaranteed “life” as well. It seems a reasonable and practical matter that the life of an unborn fetus would fall under that guarantee.
The real issue here is a woman’s choice. And many of us are determined to keep that choice pure and unfettered, even at the cost of sacrificing another life. But I have never understood why this particular choice is so important to women. Seriously. What is it about it that makes the entire subject so intense, the debate so passionate? I understand the “we have the right to make decisions about our own bodies” argument, and I agree. But at the cost of another life? Really? I would love it if someone—preferably a reasonable someone—would email me and explain the fundamental aspects of this—the way it really is. The why. What’s at stake.
Sometimes I feel like Roe v Wade is the result of an inferiority complex; that women were kept in thrall for so long that they reacted without really thinking this through and realizing all the ramifications. I could be wrong . . . Maybe as a male I just don’t get it. Apparently some men do, right? Or at least agree with the principle. But I would never try to limit or restrict a woman’s right to choose. And that declaration is in no way incompatible with finding Roe v Wade a poor decision.
And of course, as I have claimed before, the real choice a woman makes (and a man) is to engage in that activity by which a human female becomes pregnant. That is where the actual morality of the situation lies. Once she (and he) have elected to have sex, it is clearly incumbent on them to accept responsibility for the (biologically inevitable) outcome.
The position of the Bloogers at Moveon, and the morally-bankrupt feminist movement is strictly political. They purposefully ignore the existence of the fetus, making the entire debate about the woman and her “rights”. But having access to government-funded abortions is an entitlement, not a right. And I haven’t said a word about the rights of the fetus, while clearly running logical rings around my opponents.
Friday, September 12, 2008
IGM Religious Research
Inter-Galactic Memo
To: whomever
Fr: Leavitt
Re: Religious research
An article in ScienceDaily.com has me wondering who’s in charge around here. Apparently anthropologists have been stymied from studying religious behavior properly because of the nature of religious behavior. To quote:
ScienceDaily (Sep. 10, 2008) — without a way to measure religious beliefs, anthropologists have had difficulty studying religion. Now, two anthropologists from the University of Missouri and Arizona State University have developed a new approach to study religion by focusing on verbal communication, an identifiable behavior, instead of speculating about alleged beliefs in the supernatural that cannot actually be identified.
Maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t this completely defeat the purpose of research into religious belief/behavior? It’s like saying “we know that nine-tenths of an iceberg is underwater, but we can’t see that part, so were going to study this little floating shard right here.
Isn’t religion about the heart and the spirit? Neither of which (in any empirical sense) have ever been quantified. Even the great religionists like Aquinas, Augustine, Calvin, Smith, Wesley, Ansalm, etc., have a hard time even describing their experiences, much less defining and analyzing them.
Here’s a good example; St. Ansalm once described God as “That than which no greater can be conceived.” Which means nothing, essentially. He’s saying that God is beyond our ability to imagine, to comprehend in any way. Whatever we can’t conceive—that’s God. And he’s a Saint!
So here come some upstart boys from the University system deciding to circumvent this annoying problem by coming up with the idea to study the way religious people talk to one another. As if the vocal part of that communication will have anything relevant thing to say about the religious experience. Okay, I know—it will say something. But what? Any information or insight garnered from such a study is doomed to insignificance, to superficiality. but these guys will take whatever they get, and turn it into a major study, because that’s how academics get paid—by winning funding from grants. Never mind the relevance of the research.
Maybe I’m just a pessimist. I don’t understand my own belief. Nor do I pretend to understand some of the spiritual experiences I’ve had—but no one can tell me I didn’t have them or that they weren’t genuine. So good luck to Craig T. Palmer and Lyle B. Steadman. I hope they figure it all out. But I won’t be investing in the program.
To: whomever
Fr: Leavitt
Re: Religious research
An article in ScienceDaily.com has me wondering who’s in charge around here. Apparently anthropologists have been stymied from studying religious behavior properly because of the nature of religious behavior. To quote:
ScienceDaily (Sep. 10, 2008) — without a way to measure religious beliefs, anthropologists have had difficulty studying religion. Now, two anthropologists from the University of Missouri and Arizona State University have developed a new approach to study religion by focusing on verbal communication, an identifiable behavior, instead of speculating about alleged beliefs in the supernatural that cannot actually be identified.
Maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t this completely defeat the purpose of research into religious belief/behavior? It’s like saying “we know that nine-tenths of an iceberg is underwater, but we can’t see that part, so were going to study this little floating shard right here.
Isn’t religion about the heart and the spirit? Neither of which (in any empirical sense) have ever been quantified. Even the great religionists like Aquinas, Augustine, Calvin, Smith, Wesley, Ansalm, etc., have a hard time even describing their experiences, much less defining and analyzing them.
Here’s a good example; St. Ansalm once described God as “That than which no greater can be conceived.” Which means nothing, essentially. He’s saying that God is beyond our ability to imagine, to comprehend in any way. Whatever we can’t conceive—that’s God. And he’s a Saint!
So here come some upstart boys from the University system deciding to circumvent this annoying problem by coming up with the idea to study the way religious people talk to one another. As if the vocal part of that communication will have anything relevant thing to say about the religious experience. Okay, I know—it will say something. But what? Any information or insight garnered from such a study is doomed to insignificance, to superficiality. but these guys will take whatever they get, and turn it into a major study, because that’s how academics get paid—by winning funding from grants. Never mind the relevance of the research.
Maybe I’m just a pessimist. I don’t understand my own belief. Nor do I pretend to understand some of the spiritual experiences I’ve had—but no one can tell me I didn’t have them or that they weren’t genuine. So good luck to Craig T. Palmer and Lyle B. Steadman. I hope they figure it all out. But I won’t be investing in the program.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Obama's real agenda
Inter-Galactic Memo
To: Anybody willing to listen
Fr: W. Leavitt
Re: Troubling revelation
You know how life goes along apace, nothing really happening, and then suddenly, from out of nowhere, you hear or read or see something that forces you to reevaluate, make hard decisions, despite wanting to just turn away and go back to the way it was? I hate it when that happens. But it does, and yesterday, it happened again.
I heard some very disturbing, potentially devastating news. A radio talk show host began to quote a story out of the current Investor’s Business Daily, a well-respected financial magazine.
The host began by asking a few callers if they had heard about “Trooper-gate”, the flap over Governor Palin’s involvement in the firing of an Alaska State Trooper. Which she was. The Trooper was Palin’s brother-in-law until recently. He was physically abuse to his ex-wife. Palin fired the guy who was over the Troopers because he was blocking her investigation. That guy said, and I quote;
“Let's be clear. Governor Palin has done nothing wrong and is an open book in this process.”
The callers knew all about it. The host was making a point. That being that no one had heard the other story concerning Senator and Mrs. Obama, which broke in a major financial publication and instantly went nowhere. The paper told us that Barak and Michelle Obama were involved in an organization called “Public Allies”, a social activism outfit in Chicago. Barak was a founder, and Michelle was the Executive Director. They have branches in about ten cities, but plan, when they get to the White House, to make this a nationwide movement of volunteer training and service. Sounds great. Naturally, they will pay for it with tax payers money to the tune of as much as 500 billion a year.
But that’s not the troubling part. Remember when Obama said, speaking to the America public, he would “never let us sit idly by again, never allow us to be unengaged”? This is what he meant. Public Allies is intended to be a “Universal, voluntary Public Service.” Let’s see . . . universal, that means everybody, and voluntary, that means . . . well, everybody again I guess. (Now that I think of it, that’s a great description of our income tax system; a universal, voluntary public service. Check the instructions in your tax form. It’s voluntary.)
According to some recent disaffected graduates from the program, here is what they learned in the training seminars from Public Allies:
A graduate of the 2005 Los Angeles class, Nelly Nieblas, says “it's just a lot of talk about race. It's a lot of talk about sexism, a lot of talk about homophobia, a lot of talk about isms and phobias.”
Some of the activities the volunteers will be involved in will be, rallying and protesting for “Justice and Equality”, handing out condoms, bailing criminals out of jail, and helping illegal aliens and the homeless obtain food stamps and other welfare programs. While there is no doubt they do some good work in communities, and that many of the individuals are sincere about their service, a lot of them don’t like the indoctrination atmosphere in the seminars and mandatory retreats where the recruits are told that “individual salvation depends on collective salvation”. "Don't go into corporate America, work for the community, be social workers, shun the money culture."
Now comes the part that drew a line I will not cross.
A Public Allies training seminar in Chicago describes heterosexism as a negative byproduct of capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy and male dominated privilege.
Someone is going to attempt to make your children believe that heterosexuality is an ism. The ugly specter of politicizing sexuality raises its head once again. First of all, two seconds of idle reflection will reveal the outrageous (and purposeful) flaw in such a statement. The people making these incendiary statements are humanists, by and large, who believe that we are organisms like any other living thing on the planet. What happened to 100 million years of evolution? If one is a Darwinist, one accepts that we evolved to become what we are. Heterosexuality is our method of reproduction, which according to their own propaganda, is our only reason for existence—to reproduce! But here comes the Public Allies—remember, Barak is a founder and Michelle the Executive Director—telling us that heterosexism is a product of Capitalism? White Supremacy? Male dominated privilege? Are you paying attention to this? If that’s the case—and it clearly isn’t—then what does that say about homosexism? Which has nothing to do with reproduction. I’m sure someone will want to declare that I’m misreading their pamphlet, that heterosexuality and heterosexism are two different things. They will claim that heterosexism is a learned bias towards heterosexuality, which they will equate with homophobia. But we can’t have it both ways. Is our reproductive system learned or natural? This should mean that homosexuality, by their own logic ,must be a product of something as well, rather than the natural result of genetics we have been lead to believe. Does this mean that if cultures were something other than “Patriarchal” we would not have reproduced? This is nonsense. This is the worst kind of dialectic, and it sounds familiar. This kind of rhetoric comes straight out of radical Marxism.
We have seen this before—when people conspire to alter the landscape by speaking from both sides of their mouth, saying one thing, while meaning another. That is the definition of “Dialectic Materialism”, the system Marx used to indoctrinate the proletariat. It is the same kind of duplicitous dreck the Nazi’s used to bamboozle Chamberlain, who famously came back to England crowing about “peace in our time” while Hitler invaded Poland.
Okay, I know many of you don’t believe a word of this. I’ve probably offended the sensibilities of a few people, and I apologize. But ladies and gentlemen, I am not wrong. Vote for this man at your own peril. As for me, I am not going to be on the wrong side of this. I am not going to have to sit there when I’m eighty and have my grandchildren stick their fingers in my face and scream at me “you knew back then! And you did NOTHING!” Because that sounds familiar as well.
I do not know Barak Obama. I do not—cannot—know his heart. But I don’t think he is evil or conspiring. I think he has an agenda, as does every politician, that he wants to lead the country in a specific direction based on what he has leaned and internalized—his values and standards, his ideology, his core beliefs. I believe the same of John McCain. But I believe (and this has been reinforced by the Public Allies story) that Obama is essentially a socialist, which I have claimed before. I don’t believe espousing socialism, or communism, makes a person evil, or bad. But I do strongly disagree with the tenets of both. I believe that anyone in this country is welcome to think of themselves as a socialist or a communist, a Nazi, a Utopian, a Bokonanist, an atheist, a religionist, a pagan . . . pretty much whatever they choose if it isn’t illegal or immoral, and I don’t see socialism as either. However, in this country, our system of government is based on the idea of a Republic, a limited form of democracy, the idea that the individual is sacrosanct, that the state exists for the benefit of the individual, that a free market, unfettered by state control, will lead to better lives and livelihoods. These ideals are the antithesis of socialism. It makes no sense for someone to try and change our heritage, our legacy, our Endowment, to the opposite of what it is. If someone insists on living a socialist life where wealth is distributed according to the interests of the state, should they not go found their own country? Their own government? Or immigrate to a country already set up to mirror their beliefs? If a person wants universal health care and the redistribution of wealth and the absolute acceptance of every lifestyle on an purely egalitarian basis, should they not relocate the Canada or Sweden or France? Why the strident insistence that we change this country? What is the purpose of this desperate attempt to remake America in the image of the former Soviet Union? Does Obama still believe—despite solid evidence to the contrary—that his system is superior? Can anyone possibly be that naive? Or selfish? Or is it simply that no one believes these accusations? The truth is, everyone who votes for Obama this November, will be voting for a socialist state and the death of America as we know it. Whether that will actually happen is another issue, because a lot of people won’t want to let it happen once they finally understand what’s happening. And we still have Congress and the Judicial to act as a balance to whatever the executive branch tries to do. I’m just astounded at the number of people who either do not get this, or are on board with it. Obama only has your best interest at heart if you actually want your freedom and independence to be restricted, actually want your money to be taken away and given to someone else, and actually want your country to be handed over to the globalists, it’s sovereignty diminished, it’s power stripped, and it’s Constitution rewritten to reflect the Communist Manifesto. I guess a lot of people want to be taken care of. Well, I do too, but not by the state.
Now ask yourselves, why did no one pick up this Alliance story? They can’t have missed it. Where’s NBC on this? Or Keith Olberman? Or anybody? But we know all about Bristol Palin’s indiscretion, don’t we.
Lastly, I have said several times how unhappy I am with the choices this election. I am not a McCain guy. I have been vacillating between not voting at all or writing someone in. But this latest revelation has galvanized me. I will vote for John. At this point I am not willing to gamble with Obama’s ideas of change. So yes, if it means four more years of the same old thing, I will settle for that. But I don’t think it will be the same. I think it will be interesting. And at least I can be confident that I will still have an America when McCain is finished.
To: Anybody willing to listen
Fr: W. Leavitt
Re: Troubling revelation
You know how life goes along apace, nothing really happening, and then suddenly, from out of nowhere, you hear or read or see something that forces you to reevaluate, make hard decisions, despite wanting to just turn away and go back to the way it was? I hate it when that happens. But it does, and yesterday, it happened again.
I heard some very disturbing, potentially devastating news. A radio talk show host began to quote a story out of the current Investor’s Business Daily, a well-respected financial magazine.
The host began by asking a few callers if they had heard about “Trooper-gate”, the flap over Governor Palin’s involvement in the firing of an Alaska State Trooper. Which she was. The Trooper was Palin’s brother-in-law until recently. He was physically abuse to his ex-wife. Palin fired the guy who was over the Troopers because he was blocking her investigation. That guy said, and I quote;
“Let's be clear. Governor Palin has done nothing wrong and is an open book in this process.”
The callers knew all about it. The host was making a point. That being that no one had heard the other story concerning Senator and Mrs. Obama, which broke in a major financial publication and instantly went nowhere. The paper told us that Barak and Michelle Obama were involved in an organization called “Public Allies”, a social activism outfit in Chicago. Barak was a founder, and Michelle was the Executive Director. They have branches in about ten cities, but plan, when they get to the White House, to make this a nationwide movement of volunteer training and service. Sounds great. Naturally, they will pay for it with tax payers money to the tune of as much as 500 billion a year.
But that’s not the troubling part. Remember when Obama said, speaking to the America public, he would “never let us sit idly by again, never allow us to be unengaged”? This is what he meant. Public Allies is intended to be a “Universal, voluntary Public Service.” Let’s see . . . universal, that means everybody, and voluntary, that means . . . well, everybody again I guess. (Now that I think of it, that’s a great description of our income tax system; a universal, voluntary public service. Check the instructions in your tax form. It’s voluntary.)
According to some recent disaffected graduates from the program, here is what they learned in the training seminars from Public Allies:
A graduate of the 2005 Los Angeles class, Nelly Nieblas, says “it's just a lot of talk about race. It's a lot of talk about sexism, a lot of talk about homophobia, a lot of talk about isms and phobias.”
Some of the activities the volunteers will be involved in will be, rallying and protesting for “Justice and Equality”, handing out condoms, bailing criminals out of jail, and helping illegal aliens and the homeless obtain food stamps and other welfare programs. While there is no doubt they do some good work in communities, and that many of the individuals are sincere about their service, a lot of them don’t like the indoctrination atmosphere in the seminars and mandatory retreats where the recruits are told that “individual salvation depends on collective salvation”. "Don't go into corporate America, work for the community, be social workers, shun the money culture."
Now comes the part that drew a line I will not cross.
A Public Allies training seminar in Chicago describes heterosexism as a negative byproduct of capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy and male dominated privilege.
Someone is going to attempt to make your children believe that heterosexuality is an ism. The ugly specter of politicizing sexuality raises its head once again. First of all, two seconds of idle reflection will reveal the outrageous (and purposeful) flaw in such a statement. The people making these incendiary statements are humanists, by and large, who believe that we are organisms like any other living thing on the planet. What happened to 100 million years of evolution? If one is a Darwinist, one accepts that we evolved to become what we are. Heterosexuality is our method of reproduction, which according to their own propaganda, is our only reason for existence—to reproduce! But here comes the Public Allies—remember, Barak is a founder and Michelle the Executive Director—telling us that heterosexism is a product of Capitalism? White Supremacy? Male dominated privilege? Are you paying attention to this? If that’s the case—and it clearly isn’t—then what does that say about homosexism? Which has nothing to do with reproduction. I’m sure someone will want to declare that I’m misreading their pamphlet, that heterosexuality and heterosexism are two different things. They will claim that heterosexism is a learned bias towards heterosexuality, which they will equate with homophobia. But we can’t have it both ways. Is our reproductive system learned or natural? This should mean that homosexuality, by their own logic ,must be a product of something as well, rather than the natural result of genetics we have been lead to believe. Does this mean that if cultures were something other than “Patriarchal” we would not have reproduced? This is nonsense. This is the worst kind of dialectic, and it sounds familiar. This kind of rhetoric comes straight out of radical Marxism.
We have seen this before—when people conspire to alter the landscape by speaking from both sides of their mouth, saying one thing, while meaning another. That is the definition of “Dialectic Materialism”, the system Marx used to indoctrinate the proletariat. It is the same kind of duplicitous dreck the Nazi’s used to bamboozle Chamberlain, who famously came back to England crowing about “peace in our time” while Hitler invaded Poland.
Okay, I know many of you don’t believe a word of this. I’ve probably offended the sensibilities of a few people, and I apologize. But ladies and gentlemen, I am not wrong. Vote for this man at your own peril. As for me, I am not going to be on the wrong side of this. I am not going to have to sit there when I’m eighty and have my grandchildren stick their fingers in my face and scream at me “you knew back then! And you did NOTHING!” Because that sounds familiar as well.
I do not know Barak Obama. I do not—cannot—know his heart. But I don’t think he is evil or conspiring. I think he has an agenda, as does every politician, that he wants to lead the country in a specific direction based on what he has leaned and internalized—his values and standards, his ideology, his core beliefs. I believe the same of John McCain. But I believe (and this has been reinforced by the Public Allies story) that Obama is essentially a socialist, which I have claimed before. I don’t believe espousing socialism, or communism, makes a person evil, or bad. But I do strongly disagree with the tenets of both. I believe that anyone in this country is welcome to think of themselves as a socialist or a communist, a Nazi, a Utopian, a Bokonanist, an atheist, a religionist, a pagan . . . pretty much whatever they choose if it isn’t illegal or immoral, and I don’t see socialism as either. However, in this country, our system of government is based on the idea of a Republic, a limited form of democracy, the idea that the individual is sacrosanct, that the state exists for the benefit of the individual, that a free market, unfettered by state control, will lead to better lives and livelihoods. These ideals are the antithesis of socialism. It makes no sense for someone to try and change our heritage, our legacy, our Endowment, to the opposite of what it is. If someone insists on living a socialist life where wealth is distributed according to the interests of the state, should they not go found their own country? Their own government? Or immigrate to a country already set up to mirror their beliefs? If a person wants universal health care and the redistribution of wealth and the absolute acceptance of every lifestyle on an purely egalitarian basis, should they not relocate the Canada or Sweden or France? Why the strident insistence that we change this country? What is the purpose of this desperate attempt to remake America in the image of the former Soviet Union? Does Obama still believe—despite solid evidence to the contrary—that his system is superior? Can anyone possibly be that naive? Or selfish? Or is it simply that no one believes these accusations? The truth is, everyone who votes for Obama this November, will be voting for a socialist state and the death of America as we know it. Whether that will actually happen is another issue, because a lot of people won’t want to let it happen once they finally understand what’s happening. And we still have Congress and the Judicial to act as a balance to whatever the executive branch tries to do. I’m just astounded at the number of people who either do not get this, or are on board with it. Obama only has your best interest at heart if you actually want your freedom and independence to be restricted, actually want your money to be taken away and given to someone else, and actually want your country to be handed over to the globalists, it’s sovereignty diminished, it’s power stripped, and it’s Constitution rewritten to reflect the Communist Manifesto. I guess a lot of people want to be taken care of. Well, I do too, but not by the state.
Now ask yourselves, why did no one pick up this Alliance story? They can’t have missed it. Where’s NBC on this? Or Keith Olberman? Or anybody? But we know all about Bristol Palin’s indiscretion, don’t we.
Lastly, I have said several times how unhappy I am with the choices this election. I am not a McCain guy. I have been vacillating between not voting at all or writing someone in. But this latest revelation has galvanized me. I will vote for John. At this point I am not willing to gamble with Obama’s ideas of change. So yes, if it means four more years of the same old thing, I will settle for that. But I don’t think it will be the same. I think it will be interesting. And at least I can be confident that I will still have an America when McCain is finished.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
The Big Eruption
Inter-Galactic Memo
To: All humans everywhere
Fr: W. Leavitt
Re: Big Bang
I had an epiphany recently, and thought I would share it with the seven people who semi-regularly read my memos.
Actually, the idea came to me as I was working on my latest epic sci-fi novel, entitled Fusion, but I’ve been thinking about it and have decided it isn’t just a bunch of technical gibberish, but a viable theory concerning the origins of the universe. (And no, it isn’t 42).
A brief review of the Big Bang theory: According to cosmologists around the world, the original singularity was a point of infinite density and was infinitely small. This description is a literal one, rather than metaphoric, necessary in order to explain the existence of all this matter and energy. You, for example. At some point, this became too much for the singularity, and it exploded, releasing whatever was in there, which, as it expanded and cooled, became matter and energy. Or, as Douglas Adams put it; “first there was nothing; then even that exploded.” Here is my epiphany: If the singularity contained infinite density, how could it have stopped? In other words, once it began, in cannot end. It was (is) an eruption, not an explosion. It continues to this day. We have solved several thorny problems in one fell swoop. First, the inexplicable acceleration of the expansion of the universe, currently explained by “dark matter” of which there is no physical evidence whatsoever. More matter is no longer needed to explain the expansion. The continued eruption of the primordial plasma is pushing the universe further and further out at all times.
This explains the shape and rotation of galaxies as well. The continued eruption allows for infinitely more matter and energy than was previously calculated. We do away with the predicted heat death of the universe, which was always a kind of pessimistic prediction anyway.
“Well why can’t we see it if it’s still erupting?” You might ask. Excellent question. The universe is calculated to be around 15 billion years old (since the Big Eruption began.) As we know, light travels in a vacuum at 300,000 KPS. (186,000 MPS) This means the singularity, wherever it is, must be approximately 15 billion light years away. We do not have any instrumentation that is able to see, or sense, at such a distance.
Further, if the singularity still exists (which it does, spewing exotic plasma), then the universe has a center—something scientists have been denying for years. This is assuming the eruption was more or less equal at all points and formed a sphere as it expanded.
Another thought occurred to me as I was hallucinate—I mean pondering these things. There is quite a controversy over the shape of the universe. Some think this, some think that, Einstein thought it was saddle-shaped. I believer the universe can have no shape. Here’s why. As we all know, shape is “the quality of a distinct object or body in having an external surface or outline of specific form or figure”. But how do we perceive an external surface without referents? A positive shape must be perceived as the obverse of a negative shape. Space and time are created by the Big Eruption, which means there is nothing outside of it. No negative space. Consequently, there is no referent by which we would be able to determine a shape for the universe. It just is. Some will say “no, gravity pulls the mass of the universe into a definable shape.” But I will counter, compared to what? Where is the negative space by which the positive space of the universe can be recognized?
I’m sure that all of you are, as am I, greatly relieved to have all of this finally put to rest. I have run this by Mr. Sammons, who (surprisingly) gave it his stamp of approval as, and I quote; “as viable as any other theory”.
All of this is, of course, predicated on the belief that the Big Bang ever happened at all, which, as you know, I categorically reject as a possibility.
To: All humans everywhere
Fr: W. Leavitt
Re: Big Bang
I had an epiphany recently, and thought I would share it with the seven people who semi-regularly read my memos.
Actually, the idea came to me as I was working on my latest epic sci-fi novel, entitled Fusion, but I’ve been thinking about it and have decided it isn’t just a bunch of technical gibberish, but a viable theory concerning the origins of the universe. (And no, it isn’t 42).
A brief review of the Big Bang theory: According to cosmologists around the world, the original singularity was a point of infinite density and was infinitely small. This description is a literal one, rather than metaphoric, necessary in order to explain the existence of all this matter and energy. You, for example. At some point, this became too much for the singularity, and it exploded, releasing whatever was in there, which, as it expanded and cooled, became matter and energy. Or, as Douglas Adams put it; “first there was nothing; then even that exploded.” Here is my epiphany: If the singularity contained infinite density, how could it have stopped? In other words, once it began, in cannot end. It was (is) an eruption, not an explosion. It continues to this day. We have solved several thorny problems in one fell swoop. First, the inexplicable acceleration of the expansion of the universe, currently explained by “dark matter” of which there is no physical evidence whatsoever. More matter is no longer needed to explain the expansion. The continued eruption of the primordial plasma is pushing the universe further and further out at all times.
This explains the shape and rotation of galaxies as well. The continued eruption allows for infinitely more matter and energy than was previously calculated. We do away with the predicted heat death of the universe, which was always a kind of pessimistic prediction anyway.
“Well why can’t we see it if it’s still erupting?” You might ask. Excellent question. The universe is calculated to be around 15 billion years old (since the Big Eruption began.) As we know, light travels in a vacuum at 300,000 KPS. (186,000 MPS) This means the singularity, wherever it is, must be approximately 15 billion light years away. We do not have any instrumentation that is able to see, or sense, at such a distance.
Further, if the singularity still exists (which it does, spewing exotic plasma), then the universe has a center—something scientists have been denying for years. This is assuming the eruption was more or less equal at all points and formed a sphere as it expanded.
Another thought occurred to me as I was hallucinate—I mean pondering these things. There is quite a controversy over the shape of the universe. Some think this, some think that, Einstein thought it was saddle-shaped. I believer the universe can have no shape. Here’s why. As we all know, shape is “the quality of a distinct object or body in having an external surface or outline of specific form or figure”. But how do we perceive an external surface without referents? A positive shape must be perceived as the obverse of a negative shape. Space and time are created by the Big Eruption, which means there is nothing outside of it. No negative space. Consequently, there is no referent by which we would be able to determine a shape for the universe. It just is. Some will say “no, gravity pulls the mass of the universe into a definable shape.” But I will counter, compared to what? Where is the negative space by which the positive space of the universe can be recognized?
I’m sure that all of you are, as am I, greatly relieved to have all of this finally put to rest. I have run this by Mr. Sammons, who (surprisingly) gave it his stamp of approval as, and I quote; “as viable as any other theory”.
All of this is, of course, predicated on the belief that the Big Bang ever happened at all, which, as you know, I categorically reject as a possibility.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
An Anti-Christ?
Last fall—I don’t remember when—I mentioned to my wife, while watching a pundit extol the virtues of Barak Obama, that he had all the major characteristics of the fabled Anti-Christ mentioned prominently in the Bible— mostly in the book of Revelations. I was being facetious, tongue-in-cheek, having a little fun with the guy because I found him a bit of a popinjay, and she asked me what I meant.
Well, I said, he came out of nowhere, is a bit of a mystery, he has at least a twenty for charisma—people love him and don’t know why—and he’s taking the country by storm. He is seen as a savior by many, as America’s last, great hope. And no one knows anything about him. Or something like that. She gave it a moment’s thought, said I see what you mean, gave me her approving, that’s-a-good-boy smile, and went back to something or other. Dishes probably.
Since then, I have heard and read several other people make the same comparison, although with a little more serious intent than my own good-natured jab. I didn’t for a moment think Obama might be that infamous scion of doom, and I still don’t. I think he’s just another power-grabbing Marxist feeding an elegant line of bull to gullible people who desperately want someone to run their lives for them. He doesn’t measure up to the Anti-Christ. But it got me thinking.
The notion, silly as it may be, is out there now, in the multiverse, the blogosphere, where people often take such notions seriously. This means that a good number of people are aware of the idea, and whether or not anyone believes it (and you can bet many a conspiracy dooms-dayer does), apparently we’ve all accepted the idea and gone on with our lives. And therein lies the problem. An Anti-Christ is a pretty big deal—in the abstract at least. Armageddon, Gog and Magog, end of the world, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, all that end-of-everything kind of stuff, and we seem to be willing to accept it without a second thought. I doubt anyone, even the ones who believe this kind of horse-pucky, gave it any serious thought. “Really? Anti-Christ? My goodness, I’d better go buy some more milk!”
And isn’t this the way it seems to go? (to quote Jim Croce) Evil, world-altering events, war mongers, despots, greedy, duplicitous, conspiring monsters, come along, and wherever they are, the people believe them and love them, over and over again. And even those who don’t, who see through it all, just shake their heads in disapproval and go about their lives, glad to not be one of the “gullible ones”. While the monster plots and plans and lies and eventually causes a reign of blood and horror, subjugating entire peoples, stealing unalienable rights as if they were stale bread, and creating misery, mayhem, and hopelessness. I wonder why we do that. Is it just a matter of “oh for heaven’s sake, he’s (she’s) not that bad?” Or do we just fall prey to the cheap, pretty words and ignore the malevolent intent behind them? And of course there’s the “he might be a little extreme, but he’s got some good ideas, he makes sense.” It’s the frog-in-the-pot syndrome, again and again.
And finally, there are all those people who don’t believe a word of that religious mumbo-jumbo, and laugh at the very mention of an Anti-Christ and at all those poor, deluded Christians. We’ll see who has the last laugh I guess. But forget the actual A-C, concentrate on all the actual devils we’ve allowed to come to power. Shall we have a roll call? Can’t, not enough paper in my printer, but we might mention a few all-stars. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Hugo Chavez, Akminadejad (and yes I know that is spelled wrong, and no, I don’t care) ad nauseum. History and I consider all these guys evil. There were others. Even more numerous are the ones who did not rise to the level of evil, but managed to ruin lives and make things worse with the best of intentions. We can argue all night about who these are, but it wouldn’t get us anywhere. I’d say Chamberlain and you’d say Churchill, I’d say Carter and you’d say Regan. It never ends. (By ‘you’ I have no idea who I mean).
The point is we let it happen, again and again. I wonder why we do that. But how would we stop it? Half of us accept every one of them, while the other half rejects them, but does nothing to stop them. It wouldn’t be ‘civilized’, and we might be wrong. Then it reverses and the other half accepts while the other, other half rejects. Only after the fact do we ever know if we were right or wrong. And some people go their entire lives in denial, believing their monster was a good guy. Everybody has their apologists.
So when the Real Deal comes along—and again, I don’t think Barak is it—we’ll let it happen. We will sit in the pot of water and let him turn the heat up a little at a time until we’re good and cooked, food for the beast.
I wish we could all discern the intent of a person’s heart. But that would mean nobody would like me I guess . . . .
Well, I said, he came out of nowhere, is a bit of a mystery, he has at least a twenty for charisma—people love him and don’t know why—and he’s taking the country by storm. He is seen as a savior by many, as America’s last, great hope. And no one knows anything about him. Or something like that. She gave it a moment’s thought, said I see what you mean, gave me her approving, that’s-a-good-boy smile, and went back to something or other. Dishes probably.
Since then, I have heard and read several other people make the same comparison, although with a little more serious intent than my own good-natured jab. I didn’t for a moment think Obama might be that infamous scion of doom, and I still don’t. I think he’s just another power-grabbing Marxist feeding an elegant line of bull to gullible people who desperately want someone to run their lives for them. He doesn’t measure up to the Anti-Christ. But it got me thinking.
The notion, silly as it may be, is out there now, in the multiverse, the blogosphere, where people often take such notions seriously. This means that a good number of people are aware of the idea, and whether or not anyone believes it (and you can bet many a conspiracy dooms-dayer does), apparently we’ve all accepted the idea and gone on with our lives. And therein lies the problem. An Anti-Christ is a pretty big deal—in the abstract at least. Armageddon, Gog and Magog, end of the world, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, all that end-of-everything kind of stuff, and we seem to be willing to accept it without a second thought. I doubt anyone, even the ones who believe this kind of horse-pucky, gave it any serious thought. “Really? Anti-Christ? My goodness, I’d better go buy some more milk!”
And isn’t this the way it seems to go? (to quote Jim Croce) Evil, world-altering events, war mongers, despots, greedy, duplicitous, conspiring monsters, come along, and wherever they are, the people believe them and love them, over and over again. And even those who don’t, who see through it all, just shake their heads in disapproval and go about their lives, glad to not be one of the “gullible ones”. While the monster plots and plans and lies and eventually causes a reign of blood and horror, subjugating entire peoples, stealing unalienable rights as if they were stale bread, and creating misery, mayhem, and hopelessness. I wonder why we do that. Is it just a matter of “oh for heaven’s sake, he’s (she’s) not that bad?” Or do we just fall prey to the cheap, pretty words and ignore the malevolent intent behind them? And of course there’s the “he might be a little extreme, but he’s got some good ideas, he makes sense.” It’s the frog-in-the-pot syndrome, again and again.
And finally, there are all those people who don’t believe a word of that religious mumbo-jumbo, and laugh at the very mention of an Anti-Christ and at all those poor, deluded Christians. We’ll see who has the last laugh I guess. But forget the actual A-C, concentrate on all the actual devils we’ve allowed to come to power. Shall we have a roll call? Can’t, not enough paper in my printer, but we might mention a few all-stars. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Hugo Chavez, Akminadejad (and yes I know that is spelled wrong, and no, I don’t care) ad nauseum. History and I consider all these guys evil. There were others. Even more numerous are the ones who did not rise to the level of evil, but managed to ruin lives and make things worse with the best of intentions. We can argue all night about who these are, but it wouldn’t get us anywhere. I’d say Chamberlain and you’d say Churchill, I’d say Carter and you’d say Regan. It never ends. (By ‘you’ I have no idea who I mean).
The point is we let it happen, again and again. I wonder why we do that. But how would we stop it? Half of us accept every one of them, while the other half rejects them, but does nothing to stop them. It wouldn’t be ‘civilized’, and we might be wrong. Then it reverses and the other half accepts while the other, other half rejects. Only after the fact do we ever know if we were right or wrong. And some people go their entire lives in denial, believing their monster was a good guy. Everybody has their apologists.
So when the Real Deal comes along—and again, I don’t think Barak is it—we’ll let it happen. We will sit in the pot of water and let him turn the heat up a little at a time until we’re good and cooked, food for the beast.
I wish we could all discern the intent of a person’s heart. But that would mean nobody would like me I guess . . . .
Saturday, April 19, 2008
An article at Physorg.com has me thinking. My son sent it to me before I found it myself. It has to do with the Big Bang and what might have existed, if anything before that auspicious event. In the scientific community this is big news. Cosmologists and theoretical physicists had carefully avoided asking that very question for decades, claiming that pre-big-bang speculation is pointless, or at the very least belongs to the more whimsical mind-set of the philosophers.
Recently, however, some of them may be having a change of heart. Several Smart People from prestigious universities are working on esoteric mathematical landscapes which may offer some insight into whatever was before everything was, if you get my drift. I savor the irony of this burgeoning paradigm shift because for my entire lifetime these top-notch thinkers (and I mean that sincerely) have stubbornly demanded that nothing existed prior to the Singularity which suddenly, for an unknown reason, expanded and created the known universe.
Now, we teachers know that when writing a true or false test question, making bold, declarative statements involving words and phrases like, “nothing”, “every time”, “in all cases”, “never”, “always”, etc., will make the answer to any question false about 90% of the time. There are almost always exceptions. I have always been mildly amused when the scientific community uses absolute declarations like these—and the Big Bang is a perfect example—and then get all huffy when religionists do it. Absolutism is the calling card of religion while skepticism and eternal suspicion are the hallmarks of science. Yet they use these kinds of terms as often as any prophet.
“I tell you there was nothing before the big bang! It would have been absolutely impossible!”
“The Milky Way makes up the known universe—there can be no doubt about that.”
“Any speed faster than 60 MPH must prove fatal to any human being!”
And so on. But it’s hard to stay mad at them. They’re such madcap guys and gals. So new calculations delving into what I’m sure is black magic masquerading as mathematics are giving certain scientists the idea that something might have existed before the Big Bang after all—this after fifty years of renowned thinkers spending their entire professional careers contemplating the time sequence between one femto-second after the Big Bang initiated, to about three seconds after. A few of them took the bull by the horns and went so far as to speculate hours, even years after the sudden, apparently random birth of our reality. The topic will continue to be hotly debated, I’m sure, until the end of time—or at least the end of government grants—and will doubtless never be resolved until we, to quote Stephen Hawking, “Know the mind of God.”
But here’s the real juicy part. The “evidence” now suggest (Remember, this is from peer-reviewed publications) that there might have been a universe exactly like ours prior to ours. Which is just another, terribly unscientific way of saying “the universe existed before the universe came into existence.” They are claiming now that if we were to look at that old universe at the same age as this one now (131/2- 15 billion years) it would be indistinguishable from our own. Wow. So let’s see . . . old universe, new universe, exactly alike . . . some kind of bizarre compression in between, then a sudden expansion . . . almost makes it sound like various natural phases of the same universe, doesn’t it? Which is what religion has been saying all along. Except for that one which says nothing is real. Oh, and that other one which insists the universe is infinite, and has no beginning and no end. But that quack-basket is Christianity and everybody knows that particular religion is not only completely out of fashion, but politically unacceptable as well. Darn, and I thought we’d stumbled onto something here.
“Aha!” A skeptic might say, “you’ve forgotten about entropy! Everybody knows the universe can’t be eternal because energy is constantly being lost, the whole thing is winding down to the inevitable heat death at the restaurant at the end of the universe! Why, in another ten billion years or so, all the stars will be cool cinders, there will be no life, no warmth, no atomic movement. That’s a pretty pessimistic outlook, but okay, let’s look at it. I’ve always wondered where the law of conservation of energy fits into the death of the universe. If neither matter nor energy can be created nor destroyed (an idea I am willing to accept for the time being), then where is all the energy going for the next ten billion years? Is it being turned into matter? Do electrons finally just get tired of spinning their frantic lives and die? If so, where did their energy go? (I’m confident there are answers to those questions, I just don’t know what they are.) And what about the notion that life is a universe-wide anti-entropic phenomenon, taking energy and using it to create ever-increasing levels of order and organization? Humans being the penultimate example of that “natural process”. We create order. We change things. Life does the same. Look at the chaotic nature of the energy being emitted by the sun; useless for anything other than heat and light right? But it gets to earth and is absorbed by OMG! Living things, which turn it into all kinds of highly complex processes, new chemical compounds, and energy producing systems. What if life is sufficiently ubiquitous that it acts as a balance—universally—against entropy? Now where’s your ‘heat death’ Carl Sagan? (I love[ed] Carl Sagan.)
I have always believed in an infinite and eternal universe for two reasons. One, mom and dad did (and I’ve never known anyone smarter or wiser), and two, it is easier for me to imagine a universe without a beginning or an end than it is to imagine a finite universe springing from nothing. I have a really hard time with any kind of spontaneous generation concept. But that’s just me.
Eventually, they are going to discover that the Big Bang never happened at all, and the universe has always been here. They will discover another explanation for the famous ‘background radiation’ that ‘proves’ the big band happened. I’m patient, I’ll wait. And if it turns out I’m wrong, I will be sure to post a retraction where everyone can see it. You know, like all those scientists and politicians do.
Recently, however, some of them may be having a change of heart. Several Smart People from prestigious universities are working on esoteric mathematical landscapes which may offer some insight into whatever was before everything was, if you get my drift. I savor the irony of this burgeoning paradigm shift because for my entire lifetime these top-notch thinkers (and I mean that sincerely) have stubbornly demanded that nothing existed prior to the Singularity which suddenly, for an unknown reason, expanded and created the known universe.
Now, we teachers know that when writing a true or false test question, making bold, declarative statements involving words and phrases like, “nothing”, “every time”, “in all cases”, “never”, “always”, etc., will make the answer to any question false about 90% of the time. There are almost always exceptions. I have always been mildly amused when the scientific community uses absolute declarations like these—and the Big Bang is a perfect example—and then get all huffy when religionists do it. Absolutism is the calling card of religion while skepticism and eternal suspicion are the hallmarks of science. Yet they use these kinds of terms as often as any prophet.
“I tell you there was nothing before the big bang! It would have been absolutely impossible!”
“The Milky Way makes up the known universe—there can be no doubt about that.”
“Any speed faster than 60 MPH must prove fatal to any human being!”
And so on. But it’s hard to stay mad at them. They’re such madcap guys and gals. So new calculations delving into what I’m sure is black magic masquerading as mathematics are giving certain scientists the idea that something might have existed before the Big Bang after all—this after fifty years of renowned thinkers spending their entire professional careers contemplating the time sequence between one femto-second after the Big Bang initiated, to about three seconds after. A few of them took the bull by the horns and went so far as to speculate hours, even years after the sudden, apparently random birth of our reality. The topic will continue to be hotly debated, I’m sure, until the end of time—or at least the end of government grants—and will doubtless never be resolved until we, to quote Stephen Hawking, “Know the mind of God.”
But here’s the real juicy part. The “evidence” now suggest (Remember, this is from peer-reviewed publications) that there might have been a universe exactly like ours prior to ours. Which is just another, terribly unscientific way of saying “the universe existed before the universe came into existence.” They are claiming now that if we were to look at that old universe at the same age as this one now (131/2- 15 billion years) it would be indistinguishable from our own. Wow. So let’s see . . . old universe, new universe, exactly alike . . . some kind of bizarre compression in between, then a sudden expansion . . . almost makes it sound like various natural phases of the same universe, doesn’t it? Which is what religion has been saying all along. Except for that one which says nothing is real. Oh, and that other one which insists the universe is infinite, and has no beginning and no end. But that quack-basket is Christianity and everybody knows that particular religion is not only completely out of fashion, but politically unacceptable as well. Darn, and I thought we’d stumbled onto something here.
“Aha!” A skeptic might say, “you’ve forgotten about entropy! Everybody knows the universe can’t be eternal because energy is constantly being lost, the whole thing is winding down to the inevitable heat death at the restaurant at the end of the universe! Why, in another ten billion years or so, all the stars will be cool cinders, there will be no life, no warmth, no atomic movement. That’s a pretty pessimistic outlook, but okay, let’s look at it. I’ve always wondered where the law of conservation of energy fits into the death of the universe. If neither matter nor energy can be created nor destroyed (an idea I am willing to accept for the time being), then where is all the energy going for the next ten billion years? Is it being turned into matter? Do electrons finally just get tired of spinning their frantic lives and die? If so, where did their energy go? (I’m confident there are answers to those questions, I just don’t know what they are.) And what about the notion that life is a universe-wide anti-entropic phenomenon, taking energy and using it to create ever-increasing levels of order and organization? Humans being the penultimate example of that “natural process”. We create order. We change things. Life does the same. Look at the chaotic nature of the energy being emitted by the sun; useless for anything other than heat and light right? But it gets to earth and is absorbed by OMG! Living things, which turn it into all kinds of highly complex processes, new chemical compounds, and energy producing systems. What if life is sufficiently ubiquitous that it acts as a balance—universally—against entropy? Now where’s your ‘heat death’ Carl Sagan? (I love[ed] Carl Sagan.)
I have always believed in an infinite and eternal universe for two reasons. One, mom and dad did (and I’ve never known anyone smarter or wiser), and two, it is easier for me to imagine a universe without a beginning or an end than it is to imagine a finite universe springing from nothing. I have a really hard time with any kind of spontaneous generation concept. But that’s just me.
Eventually, they are going to discover that the Big Bang never happened at all, and the universe has always been here. They will discover another explanation for the famous ‘background radiation’ that ‘proves’ the big band happened. I’m patient, I’ll wait. And if it turns out I’m wrong, I will be sure to post a retraction where everyone can see it. You know, like all those scientists and politicians do.
Monday, March 24, 2008
IGM The Higgs Boson
Well, we’re all pretty excited around here. The Large Hadron Collider is essentially finished and about to go online. As I’m sure you know, CERN has been building the device in France and Switzerland for 8 or 9 years now and pay-off is just around the corner. The scientists will be doing all kinds of experiments, but the Big Fish is the Higgs Boson, a stealthy little thing also known as the “God Particle”.
I’m not sure why it’s important, but scientists all over the world are producing record amounts of saliva as they slobber over the possibilities. The Higgs Boson is a theoretical particle predicted by the Standard Model of physics—in fact the last missing particle in the Model—and it may be the thing that imparts mass to other particles, which, despite being completely counter-intuitive, is why they are looking for it.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve lost track of all the “elementary” particles they’ve found over the last 80 years or so. It started with atoms, then neutrons, protons and electrons, and now it’s like somebody left the barn door open. They’re everywhere; quarks of all kinds, leptons, WIMPS, photons, bosons, neutrinos, W and Z particles and on and on. Isn’t it fascinating how they can predict a particle mathematically, or based on the behavior of other particles, and then design an experiment to find it?
Years ago, my friend Brad Hill (who was taking a double major in Theoretical Mathematics and Celestial Mechanics) held the opinion (firmly tongue-in-cheek) that physicists create particles when they extrapolate them. Essentially, his theory was; “they make up a particle which doesn’t exist, then design an experiment to find it, which “calls” the particle into existence from the virtual world. We had more than a few laughs over that now and then. But now, I find myself taking the idea seriously. Science has come a long way since the early 70’s. Or maybe I have, who knows? Anyway, now we have Quantum Mechanics, in which virtual particles are real, and the Uncertainty Principle, which allows for things like made-up realities—which includes elementary particles.
So maybe the Higgs Boson doesn’t exist at all. But now that the theorists need it to complete the Standard Model, the Large Hadron Collider will not so much “find it” as call it into existence. There is some precedent after all. The concept could explain all kinds of things, like disco, pet rocks, Hillary Clinton and Sasquatch, to name a few.
So let’s lift a glass to the LHC and all those boys and girls who will be running it, looking for another particle that doesn’t exist, but very well may in the next few years. It’s an exciting time to be alive, isn’t it?
I’m not sure why it’s important, but scientists all over the world are producing record amounts of saliva as they slobber over the possibilities. The Higgs Boson is a theoretical particle predicted by the Standard Model of physics—in fact the last missing particle in the Model—and it may be the thing that imparts mass to other particles, which, despite being completely counter-intuitive, is why they are looking for it.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve lost track of all the “elementary” particles they’ve found over the last 80 years or so. It started with atoms, then neutrons, protons and electrons, and now it’s like somebody left the barn door open. They’re everywhere; quarks of all kinds, leptons, WIMPS, photons, bosons, neutrinos, W and Z particles and on and on. Isn’t it fascinating how they can predict a particle mathematically, or based on the behavior of other particles, and then design an experiment to find it?
Years ago, my friend Brad Hill (who was taking a double major in Theoretical Mathematics and Celestial Mechanics) held the opinion (firmly tongue-in-cheek) that physicists create particles when they extrapolate them. Essentially, his theory was; “they make up a particle which doesn’t exist, then design an experiment to find it, which “calls” the particle into existence from the virtual world. We had more than a few laughs over that now and then. But now, I find myself taking the idea seriously. Science has come a long way since the early 70’s. Or maybe I have, who knows? Anyway, now we have Quantum Mechanics, in which virtual particles are real, and the Uncertainty Principle, which allows for things like made-up realities—which includes elementary particles.
So maybe the Higgs Boson doesn’t exist at all. But now that the theorists need it to complete the Standard Model, the Large Hadron Collider will not so much “find it” as call it into existence. There is some precedent after all. The concept could explain all kinds of things, like disco, pet rocks, Hillary Clinton and Sasquatch, to name a few.
So let’s lift a glass to the LHC and all those boys and girls who will be running it, looking for another particle that doesn’t exist, but very well may in the next few years. It’s an exciting time to be alive, isn’t it?
Thursday, March 20, 2008
IGM THE TAX MYTH
INTERGALACTIC MEMO
The tax myth
I was up half the night writing and rewriting another Intergalactic Memo in my head. What set me off was some hack running for president talking about taking care of the American worker, cutting taxes for the middle and lower class worker, and raising taxes on the wealthy. All of them are spouting the same tired mantra—“protect the workers, relieve the burden on the productive members of society” etc., ad nauseam.
In the Review Journal this morning I noticed a quote in an article by John Edwards. I didn’t read the article, I just saw the quote in a bigger font and read it. Here’s what it says:
I will pay for it by repealing President Bush’s income tax cuts for Americans who make more than $2oo,ooo per year.
I don’t even care what he’s planning to pay for. This kind of wrong-headed thinking is ludicrous. Where do these ideas come from? The Communist Manifesto? Mein Kampf? A pamphlet from the Socialist Workers Party? I swear, this kind of muddle-headed, emotion-driven, irrational, ideological drivel grates on my nerves like sandpaper eyelids folding back and scraping on the brain! We have Bolsheviks trying to run the country!
It’s as if liberals (and far too many Republicans are closet liberals) believe that anyone who earns over some arbitrary amount of money—$200,000 will do nicely for the moment—doesn’t work. What? Only people earning a wage are “workers”? Wealthy people don’t earn their money? That’s right out of Karl Marx. What is anything he had to say doing in an American political debate? Are there really people out there who think the country is thick with trust fund babies, the idle rich, the indolent, self-absorbed social elite? Because it isn’t true. They exist, certainly, but our media seems to have given the false impression that they are legion. The truth is less than one half of one percent of our citizens are wealthy by inheritance. (People like Paris Hilton, who, based on what we know of her thus far, is a complete waste of protoplasm). It is also true that the wealthiest 5% of the country pays over 50% of all taxes. Do people just not believe that? Then read this:
The latest data show that a big portion of the federal income tax burden is shoul¬dered by a small group of the very richest Americans. The wealthiest 1 percent of the population earn 19 per¬cent of the income but pay 37 percent of the income tax. The top 10 percent pay 68 percent of the tab. Meanwhile, the bottom 50 percent—those below the median income level—now earn 13 percent of the income but pay just 3 percent of the taxes. These are proportions of the income tax alone and don’t include payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare. (The American, Nov-Dec 2007, Stephen Moore, author)
Rich people pay taxes. It is a myth that they don’t. Corporations often get around paying, but that’s another issue altogether, which has to do with capital gains, writing off losses, and all kinds of other complicated stuff.
The idea that the rich don’t pay their fair share is just plain wrong. Like the rest of us, they take advantage of every deduction and exemption and exception they can legally find. A very few people—like George Soros—hire a phalanx of attorneys and accountants to keep from paying, but that is rare—and unethical. But for the most part they pay the lion’s share of taxes.
These politicians constantly pick on the working rich as if they are a separate class, which is tantamount to inciting class discrimination. It is the working rich who drive our economy, who pay the most in taxes and licensing fees and regulatory expenses, as well as mandated insurance, workers comp, social security and so on. They are not a separate class, they are not different from us—they just make more money—and pay lots more in taxes.
How many jobs has Steve Wynn created in Las Vegas? Tens of thousands at least—and all those employees pay taxes as well, but nowhere near as much as Mr. Wynn, who is the one who took the chances, had the dream (over and over again) found funding, created, and made his vision reality. I don’t know Steve. My guess is he and I wouldn’t get on very well. But I respect what he does. How about the Maloof brothers? I do not like their style at all. They were obnoxious rich boys in high school, spoiled and conceited. (I played ball with them on Wednesday nights back in the day). I think the Palms reperesents the worst of Las Vegas, the seedy, the crass and lascivious, but they too took their fathers seed money, started businesses, grew them, expanded, bought professional sports teams and came to Vegas and built a successful mega-resort. How many people do they employ? Thousands. And the Maloofs, like all the resort owners, pay local, state, and federal taxes. Regulatory fees, etc. We tax the snot out of them. And now we want to hit them again so they can pay for education. If we keep taxing the rich, keep picking on them and treating them like powerful chattel, they will eventually give up and go away. We’ll get just what we wanted and no one will have a job. Read Atlas Shrugged. It could happen.
And think about the sports franchises. Huge stadiums, even larger salaries for the players. But without A-Rod and his millions the peanut and beer guy would have no jobs. The grounds keepers would be doing something else, the security people and ushers and kiosk workers and memorabilia hawkers would be out of work and paying no taxes—and sucking up federal aid. Every stadium employs hundreds of people, every team hundreds more. Professional athletes may be idiots as a general rule, but they work hard. Their careers are short and often end in permanent, crippling injuries. Most of us have no idea what kind of commitment and determination it takes, starting as a kid, to make it to the pros. The sacrifice is tremendous. And because they are “wealthy”, hundreds of thousands of people have jobs. In what sense do pro athletes not work? And yeah, I think most of them are ignorant, spoiled brats too.
In what sense does my buddy Bryan not work? He owns a successful pool plastering business, employs 40 or 50 people and makes a good living. (I have no idea how much but it’s more than $200,000 a year). He works eighty, ninety hours a week—more than any of his employees. Explain to me why he should pay a higher percentage of taxes. I’ve talked to him; if he could get out from under the debilitating crush of taxation, he could expand, hire more people, purchase better equipment. He’d have more work, have to hire more people. And all those employees would pay more actual tax dollars to the government.
Let’s look at an unnamed hotelier. My cousin happens to be married to the guy. He’s worth billions, and he employs tens of thousands of people, pays all kinds of taxes, corporate and personal—millions and millions every year. He’s one of the majority of rich people who pay their fair share. They understand what taxes are for, why they are necessary. Most of us don’t. And most of the working rich spend even more on charities than they do on taxes. But when the politicians decide they have the right to spend other people’s money, and that some people should be forced to pay more by virtue of their success, all that philanthropy will dry up. It happens time and again, and still most people don’t get it. They don’t see the rich as being victims of unfair treatment, they just see the free money vanish and pronounce the rich selfish.
Now let’s talk about all those nice people who work at Wal-Mart (the ones who represent all those working in low-paying jobs.) We look at them and see their struggles, trying to make ends meet, and our knee-jerk reaction is to blame the rich and legislate another draconian tax to suck them dry. But there is no connection between Sam Walton’s billions and the fact that his cashiers make 12 dollars an hour—or 8, or whatever it is, other than the fact that Wal-Mart employs hundreds of thousands of people, all of whom pay taxes. But Walton personally kept less than one percent of his company’s earnings. He just knew how to make money. Most retail jobs don’t pay a lot because they don’t demand a lot of education or skill or experience. Those are low-skill jobs. Most of the people who have them don’t want to work full time. How many of them are retired and want extra income? How many are lacking in schooling and training? Those jobs are not meant to provide a living wage. And the argument that without those workers, the faithful employee, Wal-Mart wouldn’t exist, is fallacious. Because without Wal-Mart none of their jobs would exist either. Look at the minimum wage. It is meant for part-timers, the retired, teen-agers and those just entering the job market. The assumption has always been that employers who pay minimum wage are going to spend a lot of time training their people in entry-level skills. It’s not meant to be a living wage. The fact that so many people settle for those jobs and try to live on them, is not the employers problem and certainly not the governments problem!
This posturing about the evil rich is nothing more than a disingenuous ploy on the part of politicians to set one group of people against another for the sole purpose of collecting votes and re-election funds. And yet, every four years millions of people fall for it hook, line, and sinker.
And how can it not be obvious to everyone that the only two methods of taxation which even approach equity are a flat tax or a federal sales tax—without loopholes and exceptions. Our current income tax is illegal anyway. And don’t start yelling about the 16th amendment:
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
(This is a direct contradiction to the original amendment, which required apportionment, and all those other things I mention in the next few sentences.) And there is credible evidence that the 16th amendment has never been properly ratified.
According to the constitution (remember that document?), and the Supreme court, an “income tax” can only be collected from corporations since income is defined as “corporate profit”. A tax on wages originally came with very specific and limiting parameters. The tax must be for a specific and publically stated purpose, the length of time it is to be collected must be set, the amount collected must be pre-determined, and the various states must be apportioned according to population with a set amount for each state based on the latest census. Does that sound like the IRS? And does the 16th amendment sound like something the Founding Fathers would approve of? Read it again. It is carte blanche; the congress wrote themselves a law that says they can take as much money from us as they want. No limits. Yep, that sounds like socialism all right.
To review: raising taxes on wage earners, regardless of their income, is never the right thing to do. (It is occasionally acceptable to exempt some people from paying taxes altogether). Lowering taxes, especially on the working rich, always increases overall tax revenues. Always. It stimulates the economy, increases employment, and rebuilds infrastructure. It is better for everyone. This is fact. It can be proven. It is historical. And yet, again and again, the liberals deny it, claim it isn’t true. One might ask oneself why they would do that. What is their motive for such duplicity? If any of them would just come out and publically announce they subscribed to a socialist agenda, that would be fine. I would have no problem accepting their position and would be content to let the voters decide. But they never make such an admission. Why not? The entire democratic platform these days is based on socialist ideology, global government, global economy and the surrender of National sovereignty to some nebulous, ill-defined, intrinsically ineffective and naturally corruptible form of bureaucratic nightmare. What are they afraid of? What is it they will not speak? How do they really see the world and humanity in general? Because what they are saying is not what they are thinking.
Other than that, I’m pretty happy with the way things are going. How about you?
The tax myth
I was up half the night writing and rewriting another Intergalactic Memo in my head. What set me off was some hack running for president talking about taking care of the American worker, cutting taxes for the middle and lower class worker, and raising taxes on the wealthy. All of them are spouting the same tired mantra—“protect the workers, relieve the burden on the productive members of society” etc., ad nauseam.
In the Review Journal this morning I noticed a quote in an article by John Edwards. I didn’t read the article, I just saw the quote in a bigger font and read it. Here’s what it says:
I will pay for it by repealing President Bush’s income tax cuts for Americans who make more than $2oo,ooo per year.
I don’t even care what he’s planning to pay for. This kind of wrong-headed thinking is ludicrous. Where do these ideas come from? The Communist Manifesto? Mein Kampf? A pamphlet from the Socialist Workers Party? I swear, this kind of muddle-headed, emotion-driven, irrational, ideological drivel grates on my nerves like sandpaper eyelids folding back and scraping on the brain! We have Bolsheviks trying to run the country!
It’s as if liberals (and far too many Republicans are closet liberals) believe that anyone who earns over some arbitrary amount of money—$200,000 will do nicely for the moment—doesn’t work. What? Only people earning a wage are “workers”? Wealthy people don’t earn their money? That’s right out of Karl Marx. What is anything he had to say doing in an American political debate? Are there really people out there who think the country is thick with trust fund babies, the idle rich, the indolent, self-absorbed social elite? Because it isn’t true. They exist, certainly, but our media seems to have given the false impression that they are legion. The truth is less than one half of one percent of our citizens are wealthy by inheritance. (People like Paris Hilton, who, based on what we know of her thus far, is a complete waste of protoplasm). It is also true that the wealthiest 5% of the country pays over 50% of all taxes. Do people just not believe that? Then read this:
The latest data show that a big portion of the federal income tax burden is shoul¬dered by a small group of the very richest Americans. The wealthiest 1 percent of the population earn 19 per¬cent of the income but pay 37 percent of the income tax. The top 10 percent pay 68 percent of the tab. Meanwhile, the bottom 50 percent—those below the median income level—now earn 13 percent of the income but pay just 3 percent of the taxes. These are proportions of the income tax alone and don’t include payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare. (The American, Nov-Dec 2007, Stephen Moore, author)
Rich people pay taxes. It is a myth that they don’t. Corporations often get around paying, but that’s another issue altogether, which has to do with capital gains, writing off losses, and all kinds of other complicated stuff.
The idea that the rich don’t pay their fair share is just plain wrong. Like the rest of us, they take advantage of every deduction and exemption and exception they can legally find. A very few people—like George Soros—hire a phalanx of attorneys and accountants to keep from paying, but that is rare—and unethical. But for the most part they pay the lion’s share of taxes.
These politicians constantly pick on the working rich as if they are a separate class, which is tantamount to inciting class discrimination. It is the working rich who drive our economy, who pay the most in taxes and licensing fees and regulatory expenses, as well as mandated insurance, workers comp, social security and so on. They are not a separate class, they are not different from us—they just make more money—and pay lots more in taxes.
How many jobs has Steve Wynn created in Las Vegas? Tens of thousands at least—and all those employees pay taxes as well, but nowhere near as much as Mr. Wynn, who is the one who took the chances, had the dream (over and over again) found funding, created, and made his vision reality. I don’t know Steve. My guess is he and I wouldn’t get on very well. But I respect what he does. How about the Maloof brothers? I do not like their style at all. They were obnoxious rich boys in high school, spoiled and conceited. (I played ball with them on Wednesday nights back in the day). I think the Palms reperesents the worst of Las Vegas, the seedy, the crass and lascivious, but they too took their fathers seed money, started businesses, grew them, expanded, bought professional sports teams and came to Vegas and built a successful mega-resort. How many people do they employ? Thousands. And the Maloofs, like all the resort owners, pay local, state, and federal taxes. Regulatory fees, etc. We tax the snot out of them. And now we want to hit them again so they can pay for education. If we keep taxing the rich, keep picking on them and treating them like powerful chattel, they will eventually give up and go away. We’ll get just what we wanted and no one will have a job. Read Atlas Shrugged. It could happen.
And think about the sports franchises. Huge stadiums, even larger salaries for the players. But without A-Rod and his millions the peanut and beer guy would have no jobs. The grounds keepers would be doing something else, the security people and ushers and kiosk workers and memorabilia hawkers would be out of work and paying no taxes—and sucking up federal aid. Every stadium employs hundreds of people, every team hundreds more. Professional athletes may be idiots as a general rule, but they work hard. Their careers are short and often end in permanent, crippling injuries. Most of us have no idea what kind of commitment and determination it takes, starting as a kid, to make it to the pros. The sacrifice is tremendous. And because they are “wealthy”, hundreds of thousands of people have jobs. In what sense do pro athletes not work? And yeah, I think most of them are ignorant, spoiled brats too.
In what sense does my buddy Bryan not work? He owns a successful pool plastering business, employs 40 or 50 people and makes a good living. (I have no idea how much but it’s more than $200,000 a year). He works eighty, ninety hours a week—more than any of his employees. Explain to me why he should pay a higher percentage of taxes. I’ve talked to him; if he could get out from under the debilitating crush of taxation, he could expand, hire more people, purchase better equipment. He’d have more work, have to hire more people. And all those employees would pay more actual tax dollars to the government.
Let’s look at an unnamed hotelier. My cousin happens to be married to the guy. He’s worth billions, and he employs tens of thousands of people, pays all kinds of taxes, corporate and personal—millions and millions every year. He’s one of the majority of rich people who pay their fair share. They understand what taxes are for, why they are necessary. Most of us don’t. And most of the working rich spend even more on charities than they do on taxes. But when the politicians decide they have the right to spend other people’s money, and that some people should be forced to pay more by virtue of their success, all that philanthropy will dry up. It happens time and again, and still most people don’t get it. They don’t see the rich as being victims of unfair treatment, they just see the free money vanish and pronounce the rich selfish.
Now let’s talk about all those nice people who work at Wal-Mart (the ones who represent all those working in low-paying jobs.) We look at them and see their struggles, trying to make ends meet, and our knee-jerk reaction is to blame the rich and legislate another draconian tax to suck them dry. But there is no connection between Sam Walton’s billions and the fact that his cashiers make 12 dollars an hour—or 8, or whatever it is, other than the fact that Wal-Mart employs hundreds of thousands of people, all of whom pay taxes. But Walton personally kept less than one percent of his company’s earnings. He just knew how to make money. Most retail jobs don’t pay a lot because they don’t demand a lot of education or skill or experience. Those are low-skill jobs. Most of the people who have them don’t want to work full time. How many of them are retired and want extra income? How many are lacking in schooling and training? Those jobs are not meant to provide a living wage. And the argument that without those workers, the faithful employee, Wal-Mart wouldn’t exist, is fallacious. Because without Wal-Mart none of their jobs would exist either. Look at the minimum wage. It is meant for part-timers, the retired, teen-agers and those just entering the job market. The assumption has always been that employers who pay minimum wage are going to spend a lot of time training their people in entry-level skills. It’s not meant to be a living wage. The fact that so many people settle for those jobs and try to live on them, is not the employers problem and certainly not the governments problem!
This posturing about the evil rich is nothing more than a disingenuous ploy on the part of politicians to set one group of people against another for the sole purpose of collecting votes and re-election funds. And yet, every four years millions of people fall for it hook, line, and sinker.
And how can it not be obvious to everyone that the only two methods of taxation which even approach equity are a flat tax or a federal sales tax—without loopholes and exceptions. Our current income tax is illegal anyway. And don’t start yelling about the 16th amendment:
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
(This is a direct contradiction to the original amendment, which required apportionment, and all those other things I mention in the next few sentences.) And there is credible evidence that the 16th amendment has never been properly ratified.
According to the constitution (remember that document?), and the Supreme court, an “income tax” can only be collected from corporations since income is defined as “corporate profit”. A tax on wages originally came with very specific and limiting parameters. The tax must be for a specific and publically stated purpose, the length of time it is to be collected must be set, the amount collected must be pre-determined, and the various states must be apportioned according to population with a set amount for each state based on the latest census. Does that sound like the IRS? And does the 16th amendment sound like something the Founding Fathers would approve of? Read it again. It is carte blanche; the congress wrote themselves a law that says they can take as much money from us as they want. No limits. Yep, that sounds like socialism all right.
To review: raising taxes on wage earners, regardless of their income, is never the right thing to do. (It is occasionally acceptable to exempt some people from paying taxes altogether). Lowering taxes, especially on the working rich, always increases overall tax revenues. Always. It stimulates the economy, increases employment, and rebuilds infrastructure. It is better for everyone. This is fact. It can be proven. It is historical. And yet, again and again, the liberals deny it, claim it isn’t true. One might ask oneself why they would do that. What is their motive for such duplicity? If any of them would just come out and publically announce they subscribed to a socialist agenda, that would be fine. I would have no problem accepting their position and would be content to let the voters decide. But they never make such an admission. Why not? The entire democratic platform these days is based on socialist ideology, global government, global economy and the surrender of National sovereignty to some nebulous, ill-defined, intrinsically ineffective and naturally corruptible form of bureaucratic nightmare. What are they afraid of? What is it they will not speak? How do they really see the world and humanity in general? Because what they are saying is not what they are thinking.
Other than that, I’m pretty happy with the way things are going. How about you?
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