Thursday, February 13, 2014
actually, no. i've never lied to anybody. that interpretation of me is not empirical, but constructed out of your imperfect perceptions. it's always been your mental construction of me, rather than my own interpretation of myself. when your prejudices collapse, you blame your victim? no. don't throw accusations at me for not conforming to your idealizations. realize your own oppression.
there's all these ancient cities around the world that are practically buried. consider antioch, which is now in turkey. it was founded as the capital of a greco-syrian empire that one of alexander the great's generals created, around 300 BCE. it was a really important city in the roman empire for the entire time it controlled the levant, even holding one of the most important bishops (patriarchs) in the christian church. it became arab/muslim for a while, then got attacked in the crusades, and is today just a pile of rubble at the mouth of a river.
i could just imagine wandering into the place, though, in the period between when it was destroyed and when it got buried by geological processes. there would have been places to live there, free of rent or labour. i mean, you'd have to figure out how to plant and water some food, but besides that it's just free living. did people do that? i mean, it obviously couldn't have happened on too great a scale, otherwise the place wouldn't be rubble. but i'm interested in knowing who might have lived in these ruins and what kind of a society they may have had.
i guess a modern parallel would be ghost towns out west. i mean, they're called ghost towns because nobody (supposedly) lives in them. but, how empty are they actually? do people (besides the aboriginal inhabitants, but that's a different kind of ownership) actually own these structures? if i walked into an old house in ghost town, saskatchewan and just started fixing it up, is anybody going to charge me rent or demand i pay taxes?
i know there's this common law idea of gaining ownership over a structure by "improving it", but that's something else.
this is an extreme example, the climate's a little much for my tastes, but there must be literally thousands of abandoned houses here:
Uranium City was a thriving town until 1982, with its population approaching the 5,000 threshold required to achieve city status in the province. The closure of the mines on 30 June 1982 led to economic collapse, with most residents of the town leaving. It was later designated as a northern settlement with about 300 people remaining. The local hospital closed in the spring of 2003. The current population is 201,[1] including a number of Métis and First Nations people.[4]
i mean, a place like that, you can't just scatter seeds in your yard. that's far enough north it might even have permafrost.
then again, the permafrost is melting.
this is a little more reasonable. some of the houses may be unliveable, but smashing the doors down on the church might be something like discovering an empty castle.
there's probably ghost towns in southern ontario.
like i say, i believe the common law on this is if you smash the doors down and fix the place up, you take ownership of it.
like, check this abandoned church out. somebody is obviously maintaining the lawn. it's still an interesting possibility.
i'm stable and happy where i am, but it's an idea that crossed my mind and something i'm going to really contemplate should the shit hit the fan. i'll have to check the common law a little more closely, obviously.
http://www.ghosttowns.com/canada/ontario/wesleyville.html
always liked this song, although you'll need to find a translation if your german is rusty.
i could just imagine wandering into the place, though, in the period between when it was destroyed and when it got buried by geological processes. there would have been places to live there, free of rent or labour. i mean, you'd have to figure out how to plant and water some food, but besides that it's just free living. did people do that? i mean, it obviously couldn't have happened on too great a scale, otherwise the place wouldn't be rubble. but i'm interested in knowing who might have lived in these ruins and what kind of a society they may have had.
i guess a modern parallel would be ghost towns out west. i mean, they're called ghost towns because nobody (supposedly) lives in them. but, how empty are they actually? do people (besides the aboriginal inhabitants, but that's a different kind of ownership) actually own these structures? if i walked into an old house in ghost town, saskatchewan and just started fixing it up, is anybody going to charge me rent or demand i pay taxes?
i know there's this common law idea of gaining ownership over a structure by "improving it", but that's something else.
this is an extreme example, the climate's a little much for my tastes, but there must be literally thousands of abandoned houses here:
Uranium City was a thriving town until 1982, with its population approaching the 5,000 threshold required to achieve city status in the province. The closure of the mines on 30 June 1982 led to economic collapse, with most residents of the town leaving. It was later designated as a northern settlement with about 300 people remaining. The local hospital closed in the spring of 2003. The current population is 201,[1] including a number of Métis and First Nations people.[4]
i mean, a place like that, you can't just scatter seeds in your yard. that's far enough north it might even have permafrost.
then again, the permafrost is melting.
this is a little more reasonable. some of the houses may be unliveable, but smashing the doors down on the church might be something like discovering an empty castle.
there's probably ghost towns in southern ontario.
like i say, i believe the common law on this is if you smash the doors down and fix the place up, you take ownership of it.
like, check this abandoned church out. somebody is obviously maintaining the lawn. it's still an interesting possibility.
i'm stable and happy where i am, but it's an idea that crossed my mind and something i'm going to really contemplate should the shit hit the fan. i'll have to check the common law a little more closely, obviously.
http://www.ghosttowns.com/canada/ontario/wesleyville.html
always liked this song, although you'll need to find a translation if your german is rusty.
...and it actually turns out that burke's text is, itself, a rebuttal to this piece, which i should read and analyze before i analyze burke in an attempt to analyze paine. how far back is this going to go?
http://www.constitution.org/price/price_3.htm
actually, burke's response is not to this text but to a sermon published in 1789. note to self that the editor in the burke text has just discredited himself.
i'm going to go through that text anyways because it's fairly short.
this appears to be the text that was actually rebutted:
http://www.constitution.org/price/price_8.htm
yeah. the text (not the sermon) is a response to a text attributed to a james mcpherson, which is considered a response to the declaration of independence itself.
actually, no, that can't be right, it's anachronistic - if the mcpherson text was written in response to the declaration (and it's in the title, so there's no guesswork), it would be after the declaration, which was after the price text. price quotes the mcpherson text in his preface to the fifth edition, and dates it march, 1776, but this must be a later addition to the text, and an unfortunately placed date. so, i'm not going through with that for right now. i do have a copy of the constitution (written later) on my shelf though and will eventually get to it.
rather, it seems to be that price interpreted the mcpherson text partially as a response to his own, rather than only as a response to the declaration. and the declaration, of course, is not very long, so it makes sense to think that any response to it would seek some other source.
but that's not what i'm doing right now.
in context, i think it's important to realize that the american revolution was a dispute amongst members of the trans-oceanic british upper class, rather than something to do with a popular uprising (indeed, popular uprisings were brutally suppressed in this period, with a level of barbarity that would shock most people). people's histories of the period are valuable, but in a way that supplements rather than deletes the upper class philosophical debates.
i mean, all these people - paine, burke, price - were born in britain. only paine even bothered to visit america.
the "philosopher's circle" that price entertained franklin, jefferson, paine and others in was located in london, not philadelphia. it also included the circle of british liberals that first articulated the collection of ideas know known as anarchism.
that goes back to what i said about paine: you want to root for these people, but you know they're out to lunch on some really fundamental assumptions.
and it also goes back to what i said about understanding the american revolution as an internal restructuring of power within the boundaries of the british empire.
it's kind of like when the center of the roman empire moved from rome to constantinople. we sometimes talk about the "byzantine empire" as though it were something different, but we don't forget that it was fundamentally the "eastern roman empire". there were periods under, say, justinian, when the "eastern roman empire" controlled most of spain, africa and italy, while rome was being pillaged by germans. in these periods, the eastern empire was THE empire - and was merely the *roman* empire. likewise, we should be explicitly speaking of the united states both as the western british empire and as THE british empire, especially after 1945.
in the end, the russians might conquer london. well, they might. but the british empire will carry on from washington.
another sort of interesting comparison is that rome was founded on a weak memory of greece - not ethnically, but culturally. the historical foundations of london are blurry, even today, but exist somewhere in a roman cultural tradition. as athens birthed rome, rome birthed london, which birthed washington: stages of a western empire. likewise, there are stages of an eastern empire: persepolis birthed antioch birthed constantinople birthed kiev birthed moscow. and, so understanding the conflict between london and moscow (and now washington and moscow) can be reduced to the conflict between rome and constantinople, and before that between athens and persepolis. the geography has shifted, but the basic struggle (and a lot of the same themes of republicanism v despotism) has remained constant.
again, that's a lot of stasis.
http://www.constitution.org/price/price_3.htm
actually, burke's response is not to this text but to a sermon published in 1789. note to self that the editor in the burke text has just discredited himself.
i'm going to go through that text anyways because it's fairly short.
this appears to be the text that was actually rebutted:
http://www.constitution.org/price/price_8.htm
yeah. the text (not the sermon) is a response to a text attributed to a james mcpherson, which is considered a response to the declaration of independence itself.
actually, no, that can't be right, it's anachronistic - if the mcpherson text was written in response to the declaration (and it's in the title, so there's no guesswork), it would be after the declaration, which was after the price text. price quotes the mcpherson text in his preface to the fifth edition, and dates it march, 1776, but this must be a later addition to the text, and an unfortunately placed date. so, i'm not going through with that for right now. i do have a copy of the constitution (written later) on my shelf though and will eventually get to it.
rather, it seems to be that price interpreted the mcpherson text partially as a response to his own, rather than only as a response to the declaration. and the declaration, of course, is not very long, so it makes sense to think that any response to it would seek some other source.
but that's not what i'm doing right now.
in context, i think it's important to realize that the american revolution was a dispute amongst members of the trans-oceanic british upper class, rather than something to do with a popular uprising (indeed, popular uprisings were brutally suppressed in this period, with a level of barbarity that would shock most people). people's histories of the period are valuable, but in a way that supplements rather than deletes the upper class philosophical debates.
i mean, all these people - paine, burke, price - were born in britain. only paine even bothered to visit america.
the "philosopher's circle" that price entertained franklin, jefferson, paine and others in was located in london, not philadelphia. it also included the circle of british liberals that first articulated the collection of ideas know known as anarchism.
that goes back to what i said about paine: you want to root for these people, but you know they're out to lunch on some really fundamental assumptions.
and it also goes back to what i said about understanding the american revolution as an internal restructuring of power within the boundaries of the british empire.
it's kind of like when the center of the roman empire moved from rome to constantinople. we sometimes talk about the "byzantine empire" as though it were something different, but we don't forget that it was fundamentally the "eastern roman empire". there were periods under, say, justinian, when the "eastern roman empire" controlled most of spain, africa and italy, while rome was being pillaged by germans. in these periods, the eastern empire was THE empire - and was merely the *roman* empire. likewise, we should be explicitly speaking of the united states both as the western british empire and as THE british empire, especially after 1945.
in the end, the russians might conquer london. well, they might. but the british empire will carry on from washington.
another sort of interesting comparison is that rome was founded on a weak memory of greece - not ethnically, but culturally. the historical foundations of london are blurry, even today, but exist somewhere in a roman cultural tradition. as athens birthed rome, rome birthed london, which birthed washington: stages of a western empire. likewise, there are stages of an eastern empire: persepolis birthed antioch birthed constantinople birthed kiev birthed moscow. and, so understanding the conflict between london and moscow (and now washington and moscow) can be reduced to the conflict between rome and constantinople, and before that between athens and persepolis. the geography has shifted, but the basic struggle (and a lot of the same themes of republicanism v despotism) has remained constant.
again, that's a lot of stasis.
so, i'm coming to the conclusion that burke was basically hired by a clique of aristocrats to represent them in ways they could not represent themselves. that is to say that the aristocrats he represented realized they didn't have the legal knowledge or rhetorical eloquence (and, perhaps, also, the idle time to lay out legal arguments in rhetorically eloquent ways) to advance their causes, so they hired him to act as a front. it's kind of like a michael ignatieff or late hitchens type thing. more generally, the rich still maintain a clique of lawyers to use to get what they want in private life, they just don't see the use in paying for philosophers any more.
when you put it in context, it's hard to even take him seriously. i mean, he's being paid to provide an argument to advance a desired conclusion. he's the guy the aristocrats hired to argue in favour of aristocratic government, to uphold the status quo, which were their own interests. there's no intellectual integrity in that position. it's the definition of charlatanism.
however, it also sort of turns him into a rube who's just arguing for his own job security.
preliminary thoughts that will no doubt evolve through the course of reading this...
i mean, i realize he was sort of a liberal in some ways, but something i'm going to be focusing on is how his brand of liberalism may have actually led to greater benefits for the aristocracy than the bourgeoisie, or more generally how those two classes merged together - specifically in the context of controlling foreign markets. i've never really been comfortable with the way marxists narrate this because i've seen a lot of empirical evidence that suggests a high level of continuity between aristocracy and bourgeoisie. that is to say that as the aristocracy took advantage of religion to advance it's interests (in complex ways that sometimes backfired, or sometimes led to submission), it also took advantage of "free trade" in a way to extend it's influence. that's leaning more to a theory of class *stasis* and class *metamorphosis* than one of class revolution. or, if you want to think about anthropology, it's a continuity hypothesis.
so, to what extent did burke more or less co-opt liberal economics as a tool for the aristocracy to increase their control, particularly in foreign markets?
i think these kinds of "mercantilist" ideas of "free trade" are still with us, are even the dominant form of global organization. they may not be the same when written out, but the general idea of twisting market theory into a tool to prop up an elite is.
i also think there's a comparison to something like fordism, which used quasi-socialist ideas with a similar goal.
but, the question i want to ask is whether burke had the foresight - and i think it is foresight - to realize that the ideas liberals were promoting would actually work in favour of the aristocracy, and if that was the reason he had this liberal streak.
yeah, it's interesting that he seems to have jumped back and forth from being a spokesperson of aristocrats with shipping interests and being a spokesperson for merchants directly, including large family-run shipping interests in the new york colony.
i haven't read the speech and probably won't but the notes here are interesting:
http://www.econlib.org/library/LFBooks/Burke/brkSWv4c1.html
when you put it in context, it's hard to even take him seriously. i mean, he's being paid to provide an argument to advance a desired conclusion. he's the guy the aristocrats hired to argue in favour of aristocratic government, to uphold the status quo, which were their own interests. there's no intellectual integrity in that position. it's the definition of charlatanism.
however, it also sort of turns him into a rube who's just arguing for his own job security.
preliminary thoughts that will no doubt evolve through the course of reading this...
i mean, i realize he was sort of a liberal in some ways, but something i'm going to be focusing on is how his brand of liberalism may have actually led to greater benefits for the aristocracy than the bourgeoisie, or more generally how those two classes merged together - specifically in the context of controlling foreign markets. i've never really been comfortable with the way marxists narrate this because i've seen a lot of empirical evidence that suggests a high level of continuity between aristocracy and bourgeoisie. that is to say that as the aristocracy took advantage of religion to advance it's interests (in complex ways that sometimes backfired, or sometimes led to submission), it also took advantage of "free trade" in a way to extend it's influence. that's leaning more to a theory of class *stasis* and class *metamorphosis* than one of class revolution. or, if you want to think about anthropology, it's a continuity hypothesis.
so, to what extent did burke more or less co-opt liberal economics as a tool for the aristocracy to increase their control, particularly in foreign markets?
i think these kinds of "mercantilist" ideas of "free trade" are still with us, are even the dominant form of global organization. they may not be the same when written out, but the general idea of twisting market theory into a tool to prop up an elite is.
i also think there's a comparison to something like fordism, which used quasi-socialist ideas with a similar goal.
but, the question i want to ask is whether burke had the foresight - and i think it is foresight - to realize that the ideas liberals were promoting would actually work in favour of the aristocracy, and if that was the reason he had this liberal streak.
yeah, it's interesting that he seems to have jumped back and forth from being a spokesperson of aristocrats with shipping interests and being a spokesperson for merchants directly, including large family-run shipping interests in the new york colony.
i haven't read the speech and probably won't but the notes here are interesting:
http://www.econlib.org/library/LFBooks/Burke/brkSWv4c1.html
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
yeah. if i'm going to bother deconstructing the paine, i should
deconstruct the burke first. i knew i picked up something by burke at a
garage sale (i wouldn't expect to connect with burke too deeply, but for
a quarter, you garb something like that), but wasn't sure if it was the
reflections on the revolution. it was. so, that first, then the paine.
in fact, i'm certain i picked the paine & burke up at the same garage sale. somebody must have taken a course...probably 50 years ago.
well, actually, the editions are '87 and '92.
in fact, i'm certain i picked the paine & burke up at the same garage sale. somebody must have taken a course...probably 50 years ago.
well, actually, the editions are '87 and '92.
so, i'm considering setting my clock to cst. i live in the eastern time zone. allow me to explain.
i grew up in ottawa, which is several hundred kilometres east of where i am now, windsor. so, the sun came up earlier there, and set a little earlier as well. yet, i always wanted the sun to come up even earlier, not later. drats. foiled. yet, i feel if i set my clocks to cst, it will overcompensate in the direction i'd prefer.
then i started wondering if maybe everybody was on cst anyways, and it's weird that i'm still on est.
well, you'd have to think that a substantial number of people in the est edge of the midwest live on cst. those boundaries are probably merely a suggestion.
"see, this is why we can't have anarchism - i bet they think they can just pick their own time zones"
i grew up in ottawa, which is several hundred kilometres east of where i am now, windsor. so, the sun came up earlier there, and set a little earlier as well. yet, i always wanted the sun to come up even earlier, not later. drats. foiled. yet, i feel if i set my clocks to cst, it will overcompensate in the direction i'd prefer.
then i started wondering if maybe everybody was on cst anyways, and it's weird that i'm still on est.
well, you'd have to think that a substantial number of people in the est edge of the midwest live on cst. those boundaries are probably merely a suggestion.
"see, this is why we can't have anarchism - i bet they think they can just pick their own time zones"
stuck in the middle of an alley closing in on all sides (bandstand mix) (original upload)
i downloaded bandstand for the drums because the way i wrote the
track required something that would read general midi through track 10.
these are the drums that will be worked into the final mix. it's
basically a way to play old midi files through vst, so i figure it
qualifies as a different card mix.
written in early 2001. initially rendered feb 12, 2014.
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/bandstand-mix
written in early 2001. initially rendered feb 12, 2014.
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/bandstand-mix
you know, i admit i've got it pretty good living in the heart of a white supremacist, colonial empire. but am i supposed to want to exchange it for packaging socks in a factory? movements that place labour at the core of a moral outlook frighten me.\
but i realize it's unfair to dump it off to some other entire universe, under conditions of almost literal slavery. so, automation.
it seems to be that the global economy is distributing resources more fairly than we'd like to realize. we're just looking at a different level of fairness than the economy is, if i can anthropomorphize the economy for a moment. see, when the economy sees wealth distribution, it thinks of it in terms of data collections, which correspond with rules put in place by modern countries, or perhaps trade blocks - or even more precisely blocks within trade blocks. so, it thinks that the level of wealth in spain should be closer to the mean level of wealth, which happens to be a much lower standard of living. meanwhile, conditions are improving very slightly in large, developing economies. so, it's a transfer of wealth from certain more wealthy areas to certain less wealthy areas. that's a more even distribution, in that sense. that process is also happening in more developed economies, but is taking longer to collapse because they're more developed. look at detroit.
of course, profits are being hoarded by an elite, so we speak of inequality - and are correct to. but it obscures the global homogenization of class that an open economy is allowing, making middle and working class conditions (finally) roughly comparable on a global scale. the open economy still has a lot to do in reshaping global wealth distribution to establish that comparison without being trivializing, but it is the trajectory that the global economy is heading in.
the flaw in understanding equality like this is that it conceptually separates control into two classes - a global controlling class and a global consuming class. the consuming class may be homogenized, perhaps even to the benefit of the controlling class, but it must be limited in resources to a fixed percentage, while the controlling class takes...control....of virtually all the resources. we must necessarily fall for people in other countries to rise, because we're budgeted to share a resource allowance.
to get to thinking about solutions that increase global living conditions without impacting living conditions in the empire requires discussing ways to go into the bank accounts of the controllers. i'd openly advocate that in as blunt terms as that.
once the resource allocation has been adjusted to more reasonable levels, a global homogenization of class sounds like an acceptable outcome. so, automation for all, then.
to put it another way, maybe you've seen the memes about rising income inequality in north america. the rising inequality is also a global equalization trend, in terms of how wealth is distributed to consumers.
but i realize it's unfair to dump it off to some other entire universe, under conditions of almost literal slavery. so, automation.
it seems to be that the global economy is distributing resources more fairly than we'd like to realize. we're just looking at a different level of fairness than the economy is, if i can anthropomorphize the economy for a moment. see, when the economy sees wealth distribution, it thinks of it in terms of data collections, which correspond with rules put in place by modern countries, or perhaps trade blocks - or even more precisely blocks within trade blocks. so, it thinks that the level of wealth in spain should be closer to the mean level of wealth, which happens to be a much lower standard of living. meanwhile, conditions are improving very slightly in large, developing economies. so, it's a transfer of wealth from certain more wealthy areas to certain less wealthy areas. that's a more even distribution, in that sense. that process is also happening in more developed economies, but is taking longer to collapse because they're more developed. look at detroit.
of course, profits are being hoarded by an elite, so we speak of inequality - and are correct to. but it obscures the global homogenization of class that an open economy is allowing, making middle and working class conditions (finally) roughly comparable on a global scale. the open economy still has a lot to do in reshaping global wealth distribution to establish that comparison without being trivializing, but it is the trajectory that the global economy is heading in.
the flaw in understanding equality like this is that it conceptually separates control into two classes - a global controlling class and a global consuming class. the consuming class may be homogenized, perhaps even to the benefit of the controlling class, but it must be limited in resources to a fixed percentage, while the controlling class takes...control....of virtually all the resources. we must necessarily fall for people in other countries to rise, because we're budgeted to share a resource allowance.
to get to thinking about solutions that increase global living conditions without impacting living conditions in the empire requires discussing ways to go into the bank accounts of the controllers. i'd openly advocate that in as blunt terms as that.
once the resource allocation has been adjusted to more reasonable levels, a global homogenization of class sounds like an acceptable outcome. so, automation for all, then.
to put it another way, maybe you've seen the memes about rising income inequality in north america. the rising inequality is also a global equalization trend, in terms of how wealth is distributed to consumers.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
three midi mixes of stuck in the middle of an alley closing in on all sides
1) played through winamp on a sb live! and captured in a sound editor.
written in early 2001. initially rendered feb 11, 2014.
2) played through winamp on an m-audio delta and captured in a sound editor.
written in early 2001. initially rendered feb 11, 2014.
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/m-audio-mix
3) played through winamp on a sb live! through directmusic and captured in a sound editor.
written in early 2001. initially rendered feb 11, 2014.
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/directmusic-mix
written in early 2001. initially rendered feb 11, 2014.
2) played through winamp on an m-audio delta and captured in a sound editor.
written in early 2001. initially rendered feb 11, 2014.
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/m-audio-mix
3) played through winamp on a sb live! through directmusic and captured in a sound editor.
written in early 2001. initially rendered feb 11, 2014.
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/directmusic-mix
it's always fun watching viruses fail on my system because i deleted
all the functionality in the operating system that they rely on to do
stuff. i have no use for the code, it's just sitting there waiting to be
exploited.
the first reboot after installing evaluation software will come up with a stream of error messages that will go away on the next reboot: cannot find xxx.dll. that's right. not there. sorry to disappoint you, nefarious script dial, but i just didn't think that file was a good idea to leave sitting there. my foresight is your misfortune.
the first reboot after installing evaluation software will come up with a stream of error messages that will go away on the next reboot: cannot find xxx.dll. that's right. not there. sorry to disappoint you, nefarious script dial, but i just didn't think that file was a good idea to leave sitting there. my foresight is your misfortune.
jessica amber murray
it's funny, you know. i want to talk about the basic respect that's demanded of people to build a voluntary society with equal distribution, and have tried to surround myself with people that i think demonstrate that respect, but how about something as simple as febreezing after you smoke when you live in an apartment, so as not to affect your neighbours? how many people have the presence of mind to think of that?
that's why i'm really of the opinion that anarchism needs to merge more realistically with biology. and it's important that we are talking about anarchism and not authoritarian socialism - let us make that absolutely clear - in merging left-wing ideas with biology. evolution isn't something that should be guided by a vanguard. but, maybe the "shift in consciousness" that the new age weirdos talk about, if analyzed empirically, is a proposed evolutionary event. maybe it's the real preconditions that socialism requires, rather than something about economic growth.
i've noticed there's a dog that walks around the neighbourhood sometimes. it's a little terrier - one of the cute ones. not quite a lap dog, but not much bigger than a decent sized cat. i've noticed it (for i am unaware of it's gender, and don't want to make assumptions - it's interesting how we can talk of a dog abstractly as an 'it', but would be offensive if we spoke of an ambiguously gendered human as an it, and what's really odd about that is that the argument is actually over grammar, it has to do with what category that object falls into - a fully arbitrary classification done by bored monks or something) always takes the sidewalks. that's an interesting observation for a dog, that you wouldn't think would really care about those kinds of social conventions.
the first time i saw it, i thought it was lost. it just came strolling up the sidewalk, looked at me, and kept on turning up the sidewalk around the corner. i looked around, didn't see anybody, figured i should probably take it home and put up posters or something. so, i started calling it. just, "hey dog" - and it turned around. a dog that spends time with humans picks up more language than i think we realize. so, it knew it was a dog, and turned around to look at who was addressing it. i started doing the thigh pounding and the c'mereing, as well as the hand signals, and, sure enough, it followed me. but it only followed a short way, before it turned off into a yard. it had taken my interest as a signal that it was time to go home, but didn't need any help finding the way.
see, that's a creature that can behave in a society in a way that it's ancestors can't. you could not let a wolf walk down the street in a neighbourhood with children, call it over to you when you see it, and then watch it trot off indifferently. there would be eaten people if we did that. it's a highly artificial selection, but it's a measurable level of evolution in social behaviour.
Dave K
the problem with applying that kind of rubric to humans, is that human beings don't make decisions in the same way dogs do
jessica amber murray
well, the dog thing was more an easily understood example of how social evolution can happen. i pointed out it was artificial, and that that's a bad idea with humans. i don't propose that we should be artificially selected by breeders to conform to some idealization of human nature. however, i do think that the biology is relevant in understanding how human societies have organized in the past and may organize in the future.
as to how different it really is? there's certainly some differences, but i think the similarities probably outweigh them. that's less to minimize human intelligence and more to stress dog intelligence.
Dave K
humans tend to draw a lot of influences from culture and intergenerational memory
jessica amber murray
yeah, i think you may actually be trying to suggest that the genetics are different - that artificial selection for behavioural traits doesn't work on humans. i think that's half right. i think that the genetic situation is too complex to control through selective breeding experiments, but that with more sophisticated tools behaviour could in theory be bred. i don't think we *should*. the question isn't whether culture is more important than genetics; i think the key is understanding them within a fluid context. that is to say that they inform each other in complex ways that maybe aren't worth disentangling, but can be studied more rigorously with chemicals than with shards of pottery.
so, relative to the science of about 1960, you're right, and that would have been the wise conclusion. yet, right now it's more ambiguous and, relative to the science of 2050, it will likely be exactly wrong.
i mean, the selective breeding of dogs is a process that has occurred over a very high number of generations, and has included all kinds of inbreeding. i'd bet the dog genome is just disgusting. that couldn't be replicated in human trials over one generation. it's crazy to draw conclusions from that.
Dave K
What we've learned about genetics since the 1960s is that genes turn on and off based on the conditions that a person is living in, which is heavily dependent on the culture of the other human beings around them
jessica amber murray
we still don't know to what extent behavioural disposition (or "nature") is hereditary. it could be that it is in complex ways that are only beginning to be unravelled.
meaning that certain attitudes like altruism may have a genetic basis, and moving to full altruism may be a necessarily genetic process.
more generally, i think we're getting to the point where a lot of social sciences and humanities are becoming applied biology in our terms of understanding them. the development of ethics is now understood as a selective process, for example. that's a massive in terms of naturalist explanations. economics has been slowly taken over by psychology, and should probably find it's final home in population ecology. i think this is a sort of paradigm shift in thinking that anarchists should really jump aboard on.
Kardinal ZG
Well this is rather problematic. If we are to understand morality on the basis of biology we toss out free will. Which is nice and dandy, but free agency is intrinsically tied to the enlightenment project and rationalism. Hence notions such as socialism and left wing politics become empty terms. Sloterdjik proposes something similar, although not appealing directly to biology (for obvious reasons, he lives in Germany), he proposed that in the light of the failure of the humanist project, the human sphere should be run more or less like a zoo or an animal reserve. Got into trouble.
jessica amber murray
i think free will has a lot of problems to begin with, but i don't think that understanding the development of morality as a selective process has much to say about it at all. it just means that different moralities are going to flow out of different conditions. a place where food is plentiful will have different ideas about food distribution than a place where food is scarce. both will enforce those moral rules as a way to distribute resources, fairly or not. both perspectives can flow equally well from reason, but they come with different starting conditions.
insofar as that relates to a secular humanism, i actually interpret it as an application of nihilism rather than an appeal to nature. that is to say that moral rules may be arbitrary, but we arbitrarily choose this one because we like the idea of rational deduction. that's actually a process of becoming self-aware of an evolutionary process and deciding to take agency *over* it.
what that says about us is that our modern conclusions about humans and rights may follow from a relative lack of scarcity.
it's funny, you know. i want to talk about the basic respect that's demanded of people to build a voluntary society with equal distribution, and have tried to surround myself with people that i think demonstrate that respect, but how about something as simple as febreezing after you smoke when you live in an apartment, so as not to affect your neighbours? how many people have the presence of mind to think of that?
that's why i'm really of the opinion that anarchism needs to merge more realistically with biology. and it's important that we are talking about anarchism and not authoritarian socialism - let us make that absolutely clear - in merging left-wing ideas with biology. evolution isn't something that should be guided by a vanguard. but, maybe the "shift in consciousness" that the new age weirdos talk about, if analyzed empirically, is a proposed evolutionary event. maybe it's the real preconditions that socialism requires, rather than something about economic growth.
i've noticed there's a dog that walks around the neighbourhood sometimes. it's a little terrier - one of the cute ones. not quite a lap dog, but not much bigger than a decent sized cat. i've noticed it (for i am unaware of it's gender, and don't want to make assumptions - it's interesting how we can talk of a dog abstractly as an 'it', but would be offensive if we spoke of an ambiguously gendered human as an it, and what's really odd about that is that the argument is actually over grammar, it has to do with what category that object falls into - a fully arbitrary classification done by bored monks or something) always takes the sidewalks. that's an interesting observation for a dog, that you wouldn't think would really care about those kinds of social conventions.
the first time i saw it, i thought it was lost. it just came strolling up the sidewalk, looked at me, and kept on turning up the sidewalk around the corner. i looked around, didn't see anybody, figured i should probably take it home and put up posters or something. so, i started calling it. just, "hey dog" - and it turned around. a dog that spends time with humans picks up more language than i think we realize. so, it knew it was a dog, and turned around to look at who was addressing it. i started doing the thigh pounding and the c'mereing, as well as the hand signals, and, sure enough, it followed me. but it only followed a short way, before it turned off into a yard. it had taken my interest as a signal that it was time to go home, but didn't need any help finding the way.
see, that's a creature that can behave in a society in a way that it's ancestors can't. you could not let a wolf walk down the street in a neighbourhood with children, call it over to you when you see it, and then watch it trot off indifferently. there would be eaten people if we did that. it's a highly artificial selection, but it's a measurable level of evolution in social behaviour.
Dave K
the problem with applying that kind of rubric to humans, is that human beings don't make decisions in the same way dogs do
jessica amber murray
well, the dog thing was more an easily understood example of how social evolution can happen. i pointed out it was artificial, and that that's a bad idea with humans. i don't propose that we should be artificially selected by breeders to conform to some idealization of human nature. however, i do think that the biology is relevant in understanding how human societies have organized in the past and may organize in the future.
as to how different it really is? there's certainly some differences, but i think the similarities probably outweigh them. that's less to minimize human intelligence and more to stress dog intelligence.
Dave K
humans tend to draw a lot of influences from culture and intergenerational memory
jessica amber murray
yeah, i think you may actually be trying to suggest that the genetics are different - that artificial selection for behavioural traits doesn't work on humans. i think that's half right. i think that the genetic situation is too complex to control through selective breeding experiments, but that with more sophisticated tools behaviour could in theory be bred. i don't think we *should*. the question isn't whether culture is more important than genetics; i think the key is understanding them within a fluid context. that is to say that they inform each other in complex ways that maybe aren't worth disentangling, but can be studied more rigorously with chemicals than with shards of pottery.
so, relative to the science of about 1960, you're right, and that would have been the wise conclusion. yet, right now it's more ambiguous and, relative to the science of 2050, it will likely be exactly wrong.
i mean, the selective breeding of dogs is a process that has occurred over a very high number of generations, and has included all kinds of inbreeding. i'd bet the dog genome is just disgusting. that couldn't be replicated in human trials over one generation. it's crazy to draw conclusions from that.
Dave K
What we've learned about genetics since the 1960s is that genes turn on and off based on the conditions that a person is living in, which is heavily dependent on the culture of the other human beings around them
jessica amber murray
we still don't know to what extent behavioural disposition (or "nature") is hereditary. it could be that it is in complex ways that are only beginning to be unravelled.
meaning that certain attitudes like altruism may have a genetic basis, and moving to full altruism may be a necessarily genetic process.
more generally, i think we're getting to the point where a lot of social sciences and humanities are becoming applied biology in our terms of understanding them. the development of ethics is now understood as a selective process, for example. that's a massive in terms of naturalist explanations. economics has been slowly taken over by psychology, and should probably find it's final home in population ecology. i think this is a sort of paradigm shift in thinking that anarchists should really jump aboard on.
Kardinal ZG
Well this is rather problematic. If we are to understand morality on the basis of biology we toss out free will. Which is nice and dandy, but free agency is intrinsically tied to the enlightenment project and rationalism. Hence notions such as socialism and left wing politics become empty terms. Sloterdjik proposes something similar, although not appealing directly to biology (for obvious reasons, he lives in Germany), he proposed that in the light of the failure of the humanist project, the human sphere should be run more or less like a zoo or an animal reserve. Got into trouble.
jessica amber murray
i think free will has a lot of problems to begin with, but i don't think that understanding the development of morality as a selective process has much to say about it at all. it just means that different moralities are going to flow out of different conditions. a place where food is plentiful will have different ideas about food distribution than a place where food is scarce. both will enforce those moral rules as a way to distribute resources, fairly or not. both perspectives can flow equally well from reason, but they come with different starting conditions.
insofar as that relates to a secular humanism, i actually interpret it as an application of nihilism rather than an appeal to nature. that is to say that moral rules may be arbitrary, but we arbitrarily choose this one because we like the idea of rational deduction. that's actually a process of becoming self-aware of an evolutionary process and deciding to take agency *over* it.
what that says about us is that our modern conclusions about humans and rights may follow from a relative lack of scarcity.
Monday, February 10, 2014
i think historical internal squabbles within the anglo-american empire have their place in understanding how the center of empires can shift without the character of the empire changing. that being said, i think i'm going to have a hard time reading this paine thing without rolling my eyes.
i mean, he's a liberal, right. but he's one of those early naive liberals that actually believed in the inherent goodness of humans, and so he's no doubt going to say a lot of things that are going to appeal to the communist in me, even while knowing he's going to ruin it all with a bunch of out to lunch economics. you want to go along with the dream, but your brain knows the idea is doomed from the start. it's still the beginning of a discussion.
so, i'm kind of not sure how i feel about just shredding this to pieces, but i kind of expect he's going to piss me off enough that i'll have to.
i mean, he's a liberal, right. but he's one of those early naive liberals that actually believed in the inherent goodness of humans, and so he's no doubt going to say a lot of things that are going to appeal to the communist in me, even while knowing he's going to ruin it all with a bunch of out to lunch economics. you want to go along with the dream, but your brain knows the idea is doomed from the start. it's still the beginning of a discussion.
so, i'm kind of not sure how i feel about just shredding this to pieces, but i kind of expect he's going to piss me off enough that i'll have to.
"it seeks then in russia the enemy it has lost in france, and appears to say to the world, or to say to itself: if no one will have the complaisance to become my enemy, i shall no longer have any occasion for navy or armies, and shall be forced to diminish my taxes. ... unless i make an enemy of russia, the harvest of wars will be terminated." - thomas paine, 1792
Sunday, February 9, 2014
i very much want to agree with him, and the focus on the people caught between is the right focus, but he continues to (perhaps purposefully, in terms of not wanting to) miss the greater context and why there will not be a peace treaty until one side is victorious in a much larger struggle.
a temporary cease-fire is not impossible, but only under extreme external pressure - popular pressure, perhaps, or maybe the opening of a second front.
i'm not denying that, to syrians, it's about syria. but to the people orchestrating and funding this, it's not about syria at all.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11431
a temporary cease-fire is not impossible, but only under extreme external pressure - popular pressure, perhaps, or maybe the opening of a second front.
i'm not denying that, to syrians, it's about syria. but to the people orchestrating and funding this, it's not about syria at all.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11431
i just read an article about reintroducing lion and tiger species to north america.
like i want to add that to the list of things i have to worry about. are you trying to drive all the schizophrenics into episodes?
but, more seriously, these animals eat people. not opportunistically. we are a part of their natural diets. they kill hundreds or thousands of people a year in some areas.
you want to bring them here? no thanks.
btw, the video is trying to reduce alamarism by talking about "natural prey".
the truth is that's as much us as it is deer. sorry, anthropocentric types. god didn't put us at the top of the food chain everywhere.
like i want to add that to the list of things i have to worry about. are you trying to drive all the schizophrenics into episodes?
but, more seriously, these animals eat people. not opportunistically. we are a part of their natural diets. they kill hundreds or thousands of people a year in some areas.
you want to bring them here? no thanks.
btw, the video is trying to reduce alamarism by talking about "natural prey".
the truth is that's as much us as it is deer. sorry, anthropocentric types. god didn't put us at the top of the food chain everywhere.
if evolutionary biologists wanted to be real scientists, they wouldn't begin with the assumption of natural selection. it really is teleological.
rather, they'd take genetic drift as a null hypothesis and then attempt to build evidence for natural selection on a case-by-case basis.
i'm sure they'd agree with me, in principle. it's just a matter of pointing it out, then making fun of them until it becomes institutionalized.
then, you wouldn't get biologists talking about the difficulties in determining what the "purpose" of an "adaptation" is; rather, you'd be asking them first to rigorously demonstrate that a specific trait is an adaptation in the first place, rather than the result of chance. that's how real science works - you need to demonstrate a relationship, not assume it as a consequence of a philosophical principle.
Kardinal ZG
If by teleological you mean that biological entities strive to maintain themselves alive yea. But even that is marginal. Final causality requires some minimum predictability and necessity.
jessica amber murray
i've noticed there's a kind of cognitive dissonance in their writings. they try and self-regulate themselves. if you press them on it, they'll present the standard line "evolution doesn't have a final cause", but you can tell they tend not to actually believe that - that they're waiting for the day that it can be shown that it's part of a plan. there's libraries of books of them arguing with themselves over this, levelling accusations of "orthogenesis" at each other.
in practice, they look at a trait and assume it has a cause, then try and determine what the cause is. but, i would suggest that most observable traits don't have a cause. two things that just pissed me off were:
1) an article exploring the difficulties in understanding why female spiders eat their mates. there's an assumption this is an adaptation, and has a cause. no. it needs to be determined this is an adaptation rather than genetic drift (or a mutation that may have a negative effect on survival)
2) they found old dna in spain that was lactose intolerant and deduced it couldn't have had to do with sunlight. again, that's jumping to the assumption of natural selection. selection, here, needs to be demonstrated. it's entirely reasonable that the mutation may have developed as an adaptation further north and drifted south. at the least, finding the lack of mutation in the south does not prove it could not have been sunlight dependent.
but if you read biology journals, the idea that every trait is an adaptation with a cause is just engrained. it's a philosophical position that takes priority over evidence, and demands evidence uphold it. whatever the merit, it's not science.
Kardinal ZG
What youre pointing out is not necessarily new. It has often been leveled against biology as a hard science. Heck crackpot creations argue somewhat along that line. But alot of this has to do with the positivist assumption that all science is derived from physics, if not directly, at least in terms of epistemological criteria. Ergo, only efficient and material causality is properly scientific. But of course this is rather gratuitous (can that be explained under its own parameters?) and it led to a bunch of weird shit like phrenology. Evolutionary biology does not fall under the usual criteria of repeatability and mathematisation. Hence efficient causes cannot be isolated. For that to be possible, organic matter would have to function mechanically, that is, within uniform time, not the cumulative time (duration). So this is ingrained in the discipline's world view which, really, is essentially historical. Narratives tend to have some sort of teleological pull. Im ok with that.
jessica amber murray
i know the line of argument you're thinking of, but it's not entirely what i'm saying. i'm just suggesting that they really ought to be more focused on proving relationships that they take for granted, and that they're not reduces to the substitution of a guiding belief system in place of really skeptical science. there's certainly a different set of challenges when working in biology, but i don't think they're incompatible with a general hypothesis testing approach. i mean, to suggest they are is to give up. i'd be shocked to hear a biologist suggest as much. they're certainly doing hypothesis testing, they're just doing it at too weak a level of inquiry.
you can still - i suggest you must - look at a trait and ask the question "is this an adaptation, or merely the result of chance?" in a meaningful sense, by studying all the things around the hypothetical adaptive process and coming up with an argument that this is really the case. they don't actually do that, though. in the best case scenario, they'll grudgingly admit that maybe it might just be chance if they can't figure out the adaptive benefit. but this is really backwards thinking.
where it's a problem is when it leads to wrong conclusions. one of those examples is with the female spiders eating their mates before they mate with them. it's specifically related to a solitary species that only comes into contact with a mate once or maybe twice in a life time. that is, females are eating their male mates before they mate even though the balance of probabilities is that it's the only chance they'll get to mate. this is behaviour that doesn't make any sense in terms of passing on genes. a slow consensus is developing that the spiders just lack impulse control. they see food, they eat it; they lack the faculties to analyze the consequences. it's consequently the result of one type of adaptation (impulsive eating) having a negative effect on a necessary biological function (mating). that's a chaotic development that will harm the long term health of the species, not an adaptation.
yet, leading up to this realization, there were many arguments that the behaviour was an adaptive trait to ensure the proper spread of genes. the female spider somehow determined that the male was a bad mate, and ate it in order to ensure it's genes weren't going to a bad mate. serious people argued this in serious places.
in order to take such an argument seriously, there's a lot of questions that need answers. how? but, it's the procedural approach that was the problem. it's sort of an extreme example; the shift in thinking would be a lot more enlightening with a more subtle example, where it's not so obvious. but this works better to make the argument for that very reason. so, they looked at an organism, they saw a trait and (regardless of it's absurdity) they assumed it was an adaptation for survival - leading to ridiculous conclusions that are being acknowledged as such. yet, if they began with the assumption of random gene flow (as a sort of background process, as noise) leading to random mutations (that may or may not lead to increased chances of survival), and then determined if there's enough evidence to reject that assumption and deduce an adaptation then they would have come to the right answer in the first place.
and, we can debate about what is a better null hypothesis, but beginning with randomness requires less assumptions and is more appealing for that reason.
nor is any biologist actually going to argue with me on the point. they'll gnash their teeth and say "you're right, but we take shortcuts because we're biased towards darwinian thought. if we were to formally study it, we should do it like you're saying". which is just admitting that they're being unscientific. if you look at a microbiologist or a geneticist, they all study more formally. it's only evolutionary biology, which is peculiarly deductive in it's approaches, that doesn't bother.
if they want to be real scientists, they must take the process more seriously and realize that selection is something that must be proven to arise from randomness on a case-by-case basis every single time, not a monolithic force that can be assumed to be working in nature at all times.
to be a little more specific, i'm talking about the third and fourth axioms of the modern evolutionary synthesis, that states that natural selection is the main driver of change and genetic drift is a secondary factor. this is generalizing in too far an extreme. it may be roughly true, but these are statements that require demonstration on a case by case basis, not a general statement that glosses over specific changes. holding to those assumptions has the potential to lead to bad conclusions; methodologically, it's not very scientific.
rather, i would reformulate it to genetic drift is a constant driver of change and selection depends on forces that must be demonstrated to both exist and lead to the resulting changes.
rather, they'd take genetic drift as a null hypothesis and then attempt to build evidence for natural selection on a case-by-case basis.
i'm sure they'd agree with me, in principle. it's just a matter of pointing it out, then making fun of them until it becomes institutionalized.
then, you wouldn't get biologists talking about the difficulties in determining what the "purpose" of an "adaptation" is; rather, you'd be asking them first to rigorously demonstrate that a specific trait is an adaptation in the first place, rather than the result of chance. that's how real science works - you need to demonstrate a relationship, not assume it as a consequence of a philosophical principle.
Kardinal ZG
If by teleological you mean that biological entities strive to maintain themselves alive yea. But even that is marginal. Final causality requires some minimum predictability and necessity.
jessica amber murray
i've noticed there's a kind of cognitive dissonance in their writings. they try and self-regulate themselves. if you press them on it, they'll present the standard line "evolution doesn't have a final cause", but you can tell they tend not to actually believe that - that they're waiting for the day that it can be shown that it's part of a plan. there's libraries of books of them arguing with themselves over this, levelling accusations of "orthogenesis" at each other.
in practice, they look at a trait and assume it has a cause, then try and determine what the cause is. but, i would suggest that most observable traits don't have a cause. two things that just pissed me off were:
1) an article exploring the difficulties in understanding why female spiders eat their mates. there's an assumption this is an adaptation, and has a cause. no. it needs to be determined this is an adaptation rather than genetic drift (or a mutation that may have a negative effect on survival)
2) they found old dna in spain that was lactose intolerant and deduced it couldn't have had to do with sunlight. again, that's jumping to the assumption of natural selection. selection, here, needs to be demonstrated. it's entirely reasonable that the mutation may have developed as an adaptation further north and drifted south. at the least, finding the lack of mutation in the south does not prove it could not have been sunlight dependent.
but if you read biology journals, the idea that every trait is an adaptation with a cause is just engrained. it's a philosophical position that takes priority over evidence, and demands evidence uphold it. whatever the merit, it's not science.
Kardinal ZG
What youre pointing out is not necessarily new. It has often been leveled against biology as a hard science. Heck crackpot creations argue somewhat along that line. But alot of this has to do with the positivist assumption that all science is derived from physics, if not directly, at least in terms of epistemological criteria. Ergo, only efficient and material causality is properly scientific. But of course this is rather gratuitous (can that be explained under its own parameters?) and it led to a bunch of weird shit like phrenology. Evolutionary biology does not fall under the usual criteria of repeatability and mathematisation. Hence efficient causes cannot be isolated. For that to be possible, organic matter would have to function mechanically, that is, within uniform time, not the cumulative time (duration). So this is ingrained in the discipline's world view which, really, is essentially historical. Narratives tend to have some sort of teleological pull. Im ok with that.
jessica amber murray
i know the line of argument you're thinking of, but it's not entirely what i'm saying. i'm just suggesting that they really ought to be more focused on proving relationships that they take for granted, and that they're not reduces to the substitution of a guiding belief system in place of really skeptical science. there's certainly a different set of challenges when working in biology, but i don't think they're incompatible with a general hypothesis testing approach. i mean, to suggest they are is to give up. i'd be shocked to hear a biologist suggest as much. they're certainly doing hypothesis testing, they're just doing it at too weak a level of inquiry.
you can still - i suggest you must - look at a trait and ask the question "is this an adaptation, or merely the result of chance?" in a meaningful sense, by studying all the things around the hypothetical adaptive process and coming up with an argument that this is really the case. they don't actually do that, though. in the best case scenario, they'll grudgingly admit that maybe it might just be chance if they can't figure out the adaptive benefit. but this is really backwards thinking.
where it's a problem is when it leads to wrong conclusions. one of those examples is with the female spiders eating their mates before they mate with them. it's specifically related to a solitary species that only comes into contact with a mate once or maybe twice in a life time. that is, females are eating their male mates before they mate even though the balance of probabilities is that it's the only chance they'll get to mate. this is behaviour that doesn't make any sense in terms of passing on genes. a slow consensus is developing that the spiders just lack impulse control. they see food, they eat it; they lack the faculties to analyze the consequences. it's consequently the result of one type of adaptation (impulsive eating) having a negative effect on a necessary biological function (mating). that's a chaotic development that will harm the long term health of the species, not an adaptation.
yet, leading up to this realization, there were many arguments that the behaviour was an adaptive trait to ensure the proper spread of genes. the female spider somehow determined that the male was a bad mate, and ate it in order to ensure it's genes weren't going to a bad mate. serious people argued this in serious places.
in order to take such an argument seriously, there's a lot of questions that need answers. how? but, it's the procedural approach that was the problem. it's sort of an extreme example; the shift in thinking would be a lot more enlightening with a more subtle example, where it's not so obvious. but this works better to make the argument for that very reason. so, they looked at an organism, they saw a trait and (regardless of it's absurdity) they assumed it was an adaptation for survival - leading to ridiculous conclusions that are being acknowledged as such. yet, if they began with the assumption of random gene flow (as a sort of background process, as noise) leading to random mutations (that may or may not lead to increased chances of survival), and then determined if there's enough evidence to reject that assumption and deduce an adaptation then they would have come to the right answer in the first place.
and, we can debate about what is a better null hypothesis, but beginning with randomness requires less assumptions and is more appealing for that reason.
nor is any biologist actually going to argue with me on the point. they'll gnash their teeth and say "you're right, but we take shortcuts because we're biased towards darwinian thought. if we were to formally study it, we should do it like you're saying". which is just admitting that they're being unscientific. if you look at a microbiologist or a geneticist, they all study more formally. it's only evolutionary biology, which is peculiarly deductive in it's approaches, that doesn't bother.
if they want to be real scientists, they must take the process more seriously and realize that selection is something that must be proven to arise from randomness on a case-by-case basis every single time, not a monolithic force that can be assumed to be working in nature at all times.
to be a little more specific, i'm talking about the third and fourth axioms of the modern evolutionary synthesis, that states that natural selection is the main driver of change and genetic drift is a secondary factor. this is generalizing in too far an extreme. it may be roughly true, but these are statements that require demonstration on a case by case basis, not a general statement that glosses over specific changes. holding to those assumptions has the potential to lead to bad conclusions; methodologically, it's not very scientific.
rather, i would reformulate it to genetic drift is a constant driver of change and selection depends on forces that must be demonstrated to both exist and lead to the resulting changes.
http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/2/5371232/microsoft-research-open-science-announcement
http://phy.so/310638008
http://www.columbiachronicle.com/health_and_tech/article_547630a2-8ae8-11e3-89bd-0017a43b2370.html
http://fron.tiers.in/go/FN4ZNj
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/4600-year-old-step-pyramid-uncovered-in-egypt/?WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook
http://phys.org/news/2014-02-genes-pygmy-history.html
http://plos.io/MZomIs
http://phys.org/news/2014-02-team-limits-famous-quantum-principle.html
http://phy.so/310826741
http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/dogs-love-eating-human-faces
http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2014/02/quarks-know-their-left-their-right
http://phy.so/310834136
http://medx.cc/310828368
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/12012013/article/researchers-investigate-archaic-greek-city-state-in-crete
http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2014/02/schizophrenia-time-flush-meds
http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1003899
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/insect-metamorphosis-evolution/?WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook
http://phys.org/news/2014-02-antitrust-probe-samsung-patents.html
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/07/west-criminal-bloodbath-iraq-media-cover-up
http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/computers_math/mathematics/~3/uYxDHQCxnJE/140207133018.htm
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/materials%E2%80%99-light-tricks-may-soon-extend-doing-math
http://phy.so/310638008
http://www.columbiachronicle.com/health_and_tech/article_547630a2-8ae8-11e3-89bd-0017a43b2370.html
http://fron.tiers.in/go/FN4ZNj
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/4600-year-old-step-pyramid-uncovered-in-egypt/?WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook
http://phys.org/news/2014-02-genes-pygmy-history.html
http://plos.io/MZomIs
http://phys.org/news/2014-02-team-limits-famous-quantum-principle.html
http://phy.so/310826741
http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/dogs-love-eating-human-faces
http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2014/02/quarks-know-their-left-their-right
http://phy.so/310834136
http://medx.cc/310828368
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/12012013/article/researchers-investigate-archaic-greek-city-state-in-crete
http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2014/02/schizophrenia-time-flush-meds
http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1003899
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/insect-metamorphosis-evolution/?WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook
http://phys.org/news/2014-02-antitrust-probe-samsung-patents.html
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/07/west-criminal-bloodbath-iraq-media-cover-up
http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/computers_math/mathematics/~3/uYxDHQCxnJE/140207133018.htm
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/materials%E2%80%99-light-tricks-may-soon-extend-doing-math
the bears will move south and likely hybridize. that might mean no more polar bears for now, but the dna won't die. it's actually an interesting experiment.
http://news.sciencemag.org/climate/2014/02/scienceshot-hungry-polar-bears-turn-seabird-eggs
http://news.sciencemag.org/climate/2014/02/scienceshot-hungry-polar-bears-turn-seabird-eggs
it's long been known that there was some back migration to west africa, but when or how isn't remotely understood. theories range from pre-neolithic migrations to a something along the lines of greeks and romans getting lost in the jungle. another idea is liberia.
i think they have to be careful to ensure it's not just inter-breeding with dutch, english and german settlers.
http://phys.org/news/2014-02-western-eurasian-genes-southern-african.html
i think they have to be careful to ensure it's not just inter-breeding with dutch, english and german settlers.
http://phys.org/news/2014-02-western-eurasian-genes-southern-african.html
Saturday, February 8, 2014
http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2014/01/stellar-trio-could-put-einsteins-theory-gravity-test
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/black-hole-firewalls-confound-theoretical-physicists/?WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook
http://news.sciencemag.org/plants-animals/2014/01/gut-parasite-may-keep-locusts-swarming
now, do a double blind and realize nobody can tell...
http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/01/scienceshot-genetic-test-high-quality-chocolate
http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2014/01/football-fans-communist-regimes-it-doesnt-take-much-form-group
http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/01/why-sexual-mind-control-rare-nature
i'm not keen on adding "getting mauled by lions" to the list of things i have to worry about.
http://news.sciencemag.org/archaeology/2014/01/what-killed-great-beasts-north-america
http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/01/monarch-numbers-mexico-fall-record-low
http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/01/scienceshot-mysterious-underwater-circles-explained
http://news.sciencemag.org/environment/2014/02/great-barrier-reef-become-sludge-repository
http://phys.org/news/2013-12-hard-frosts-tropical-mangroves-north.html
http://phys.org/news/2014-01-apple-denies-backdoor-nsa-access.html
http://phys.org/news/2014-01-internet-poses.html
http://phys.org/news/2014-01-high-molecular-chlorine-arctic-atmosphere.html
http://phy.so/309000196
http://phy.so/309000767
http://phys.org/news/2014-01-black-hole-doesnt-emit-x-rays.html
http://phys.org/news/2014-01-nsa-scoops-millions-text-messages.html
http://phys.org/news/2014-01-anti-protest-law-twitter-users-behavior.html
http://phys.org/news/2014-01-proof-creation-mirror-optical.html
http://phy.so/309707396
http://phys.org/news/2014-01-reveals-methods-musicians-tempo.html
http://phys.org/news/2014-01-embryonic-stem-cells-embryo.html
http://phy.so/310304077
http://phys.org/news/2014-01-alive-scientists-combine-liquid-crystals.html
http://phys.org/news/2014-02-scientists-year-old-footprints-uk.html#ajTabs
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/black-hole-firewalls-confound-theoretical-physicists/?WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook
http://news.sciencemag.org/plants-animals/2014/01/gut-parasite-may-keep-locusts-swarming
now, do a double blind and realize nobody can tell...
http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/01/scienceshot-genetic-test-high-quality-chocolate
http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2014/01/football-fans-communist-regimes-it-doesnt-take-much-form-group
http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/01/why-sexual-mind-control-rare-nature
i'm not keen on adding "getting mauled by lions" to the list of things i have to worry about.
http://news.sciencemag.org/archaeology/2014/01/what-killed-great-beasts-north-america
http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/01/monarch-numbers-mexico-fall-record-low
http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/01/scienceshot-mysterious-underwater-circles-explained
http://news.sciencemag.org/environment/2014/02/great-barrier-reef-become-sludge-repository
http://phys.org/news/2013-12-hard-frosts-tropical-mangroves-north.html
http://phys.org/news/2014-01-apple-denies-backdoor-nsa-access.html
http://phys.org/news/2014-01-internet-poses.html
http://phys.org/news/2014-01-high-molecular-chlorine-arctic-atmosphere.html
http://phy.so/309000196
http://phy.so/309000767
http://phys.org/news/2014-01-black-hole-doesnt-emit-x-rays.html
http://phys.org/news/2014-01-nsa-scoops-millions-text-messages.html
http://phys.org/news/2014-01-anti-protest-law-twitter-users-behavior.html
http://phys.org/news/2014-01-proof-creation-mirror-optical.html
http://phy.so/309707396
http://phys.org/news/2014-01-reveals-methods-musicians-tempo.html
http://phys.org/news/2014-01-embryonic-stem-cells-embryo.html
http://phy.so/310304077
http://phys.org/news/2014-01-alive-scientists-combine-liquid-crystals.html
http://phys.org/news/2014-02-scientists-year-old-footprints-uk.html#ajTabs
this shit's been going on forever. they told einstein not to bother with physics because it was a closed field. ha. and as i'm typing this, most people don't realize that the process we just went through to find the higgs closed a theory we already knew was unworkably wrong.
rather, we're on the cusp of some radical rethinking that will toss a lot of ideas we hold to into the trash bin.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2014/01/17/end-of-science-meme-infects-edge-website-again/?WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook
rather, we're on the cusp of some radical rethinking that will toss a lot of ideas we hold to into the trash bin.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2014/01/17/end-of-science-meme-infects-edge-website-again/?WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook
the quartet's economic plan seems to be to convert the area into a low-wage labour force, probably to export goods primarily to israel. and the concentration camp comparison just got pretty real.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11448
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11448
1) the us objective is written down in the pnac documents. it is to swing areas under the russian sphere to it's own. it's a long term objective that can happen in multiple stages. but in the long run, syria itself is just a piece on a risk board. it has nothing to do with assad, his behaviour or his decisions. it's solely about a struggle against russia for dominance in asia.
2) the chemical weapons weren't really an asset because they can't really be used. the idea that the dictator in it's last throes would gas it's own city is some kind of homeric era romanticism or something. none of these guys want to slaughter their own people. so, as a weapon, they're useless. it's as propaganda that they're valuable. the americans may have won a propaganda coup with it, but they were given away so readily precisely *because* they have no real strategic value. the flip side is that it also indicates a level of naivete (think chamberlain) on behalf of the syrians and russians, as though they really think that concessions will stop this aggression. the americans will not cut this off until moscow has an american flag flying off the kremlin. it would have been smarter to use it as more of a bargaining piece.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11423
2) the chemical weapons weren't really an asset because they can't really be used. the idea that the dictator in it's last throes would gas it's own city is some kind of homeric era romanticism or something. none of these guys want to slaughter their own people. so, as a weapon, they're useless. it's as propaganda that they're valuable. the americans may have won a propaganda coup with it, but they were given away so readily precisely *because* they have no real strategic value. the flip side is that it also indicates a level of naivete (think chamberlain) on behalf of the syrians and russians, as though they really think that concessions will stop this aggression. the americans will not cut this off until moscow has an american flag flying off the kremlin. it would have been smarter to use it as more of a bargaining piece.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11423
it's thought that the common ancestor of bees and ants were solitary insects that used pheromones to attract their mates, and that hives developed out of a process of increasing complexity.
think about how that would have happened. you'd be forced to think of queen bees as practicing a type of witchcraft.
http://news.sciencemag.org/evolution/2014/01/scienceshot-queen-sex
think about how that would have happened. you'd be forced to think of queen bees as practicing a type of witchcraft.
http://news.sciencemag.org/evolution/2014/01/scienceshot-queen-sex
"Although today’s southern Europeans tend to be somewhat darker than their northern counterparts, they are still relatively light-skinned compared with Africans, an adaptation often linked to the need to absorb more sunlight and so produce adequate amounts of vitamin D. "
southern europe has been successfully colonized by many darker-skinned people, from phoenicians and greeks (and maybe egyptians) through to arabs and moors. there have been population movements from the north as well (germans, vikings, celts, slavs). the result is pretty "gray" across the mediterranean. i see no reason to think that the same process of dark-meeting-light (south-meeting-north) wouldn't have been present in the region at the time.
as pointed out elsewhere, i'm pretty sure the blue eye mutation has been identified as a single event and localized to europe. i guess we know the mutation is older than 8500 years now. it doesn't really answer the question of where it came from, though.
"It seems possible that latitude is not the key factor in skin depigmentation, but diet,"
well, i'm glad people are questioning this, anyways.
truth is it's barely even correlated.
i'm still leaning more towards drift
(maybe sexual selection helped with the drift)
"This suggests, Willerslev says, that there might have been “substantial gene flow between east and west” leading to more homogenous populations than previously suspected."
not necessarily. well, i mean the fluidity. we know there was a migration of people from the north to the south after the ice melted.
well, at least we used to know this. did the goddamned hippies erase the evidence because it created too much negative energy?
if so, there's some old models to dust off that provide an easy explanation.
i'll just be brief about this, i'll get into it with something more topical: a lack of archaeological evidence is not something to reject a theory on.
for those that don't know what i'm talking about, there's been this awful hippie movement in archaeology and anthropology that wants to purge pre-history of all human conflict. we were just all god's children playing happily in the garden. then there was capitalism, and then violence. i'm being overly dismissive.
but they've actually been derp enough to stand up and say "well, i know there's this pile of interdisciplinary evidence, but we can't find an archaeological record, so therefore it didn't happen".
the general response is to point out that there's a long list of historically documented events that cannot be corroborated with archaeological evidence, and yet we know happened. it's a logical fallacy, in fact - an inability to prove an event occurred does not imply it never happened. but, the hippies were arguing from ideology in the first place, so it hasn't been an effective way to counter them.
now, we've got all this genetic and other novel evidence coming in that's backing up the interdisciplinary conclusions, and the archaeologists are just terribly confused by it.
some of the younger ones may not even be aware of the older conclusions.
the answers are there, though. you just have to go back to sources that were published before the 90s to find them.
i'd expect this to continue as more dna evidence comes in.
fucking hippies….
http://news.sciencemag.org/archaeology/2014/01/how-farming-reshaped-our-genomes
southern europe has been successfully colonized by many darker-skinned people, from phoenicians and greeks (and maybe egyptians) through to arabs and moors. there have been population movements from the north as well (germans, vikings, celts, slavs). the result is pretty "gray" across the mediterranean. i see no reason to think that the same process of dark-meeting-light (south-meeting-north) wouldn't have been present in the region at the time.
as pointed out elsewhere, i'm pretty sure the blue eye mutation has been identified as a single event and localized to europe. i guess we know the mutation is older than 8500 years now. it doesn't really answer the question of where it came from, though.
"It seems possible that latitude is not the key factor in skin depigmentation, but diet,"
well, i'm glad people are questioning this, anyways.
truth is it's barely even correlated.
i'm still leaning more towards drift
(maybe sexual selection helped with the drift)
"This suggests, Willerslev says, that there might have been “substantial gene flow between east and west” leading to more homogenous populations than previously suspected."
not necessarily. well, i mean the fluidity. we know there was a migration of people from the north to the south after the ice melted.
well, at least we used to know this. did the goddamned hippies erase the evidence because it created too much negative energy?
if so, there's some old models to dust off that provide an easy explanation.
i'll just be brief about this, i'll get into it with something more topical: a lack of archaeological evidence is not something to reject a theory on.
for those that don't know what i'm talking about, there's been this awful hippie movement in archaeology and anthropology that wants to purge pre-history of all human conflict. we were just all god's children playing happily in the garden. then there was capitalism, and then violence. i'm being overly dismissive.
but they've actually been derp enough to stand up and say "well, i know there's this pile of interdisciplinary evidence, but we can't find an archaeological record, so therefore it didn't happen".
the general response is to point out that there's a long list of historically documented events that cannot be corroborated with archaeological evidence, and yet we know happened. it's a logical fallacy, in fact - an inability to prove an event occurred does not imply it never happened. but, the hippies were arguing from ideology in the first place, so it hasn't been an effective way to counter them.
now, we've got all this genetic and other novel evidence coming in that's backing up the interdisciplinary conclusions, and the archaeologists are just terribly confused by it.
some of the younger ones may not even be aware of the older conclusions.
the answers are there, though. you just have to go back to sources that were published before the 90s to find them.
i'd expect this to continue as more dna evidence comes in.
fucking hippies….
http://news.sciencemag.org/archaeology/2014/01/how-farming-reshaped-our-genomes
ugh. again, the answer is that the mutation happened in northern europe and moved south with population displacement.
the error in thinking is deeper, though. it's only a contradiction if you take the ridiculous position that every trait is the result of natural selection.
again: that would be a world that was practically created. if you're going to substitute natural selection for god and ignore chance and randomness, you're not really taking the religion hat off, you're just giving it a different name.
biologists need to get it through their skulls that genetic drift is a valid explanation.
the way they should look at it is to assume genetic drift unless evidence exists to justify natural selection. that is, genetic drift ought to be the null hypothesis, and ought to be only overturned under the presence of sufficient evidence.
*that* is a naturalist position.
his hypothesis, though, is worthwhile. i don't, however, see why it should apply specifically to the south.
http://phys.org/news/2014-01-calcium-absorption-evolution-digestion-europeans.html
the error in thinking is deeper, though. it's only a contradiction if you take the ridiculous position that every trait is the result of natural selection.
again: that would be a world that was practically created. if you're going to substitute natural selection for god and ignore chance and randomness, you're not really taking the religion hat off, you're just giving it a different name.
biologists need to get it through their skulls that genetic drift is a valid explanation.
the way they should look at it is to assume genetic drift unless evidence exists to justify natural selection. that is, genetic drift ought to be the null hypothesis, and ought to be only overturned under the presence of sufficient evidence.
*that* is a naturalist position.
his hypothesis, though, is worthwhile. i don't, however, see why it should apply specifically to the south.
http://phys.org/news/2014-01-calcium-absorption-evolution-digestion-europeans.html
Friday, February 7, 2014
i think the letter is too optimistic, actually. whatever their own plight, they're being used as tools to rile up militaristic hate against russia. when they no longer serve that use, or start asking questions that challenge that narrative, the media will blacklist them as radicals.
i hope they at least got paid.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26067971
i hope they at least got paid.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26067971
ok, but the solution is necessarily structural. there aren't any good pesticides, and we can't grow the amount of food we need without them.
i suppose stricter regulations might help act as an incentive to build more indoor growing sites. but, i'd rather be pro-active. and in fairness this government actually has been pro-active about encouraging indoor growing.
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/02/05/ottawa_agrees_to_review_23_pesticides_after_pressure_from_environmental_group.html
i suppose stricter regulations might help act as an incentive to build more indoor growing sites. but, i'd rather be pro-active. and in fairness this government actually has been pro-active about encouraging indoor growing.
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/02/05/ottawa_agrees_to_review_23_pesticides_after_pressure_from_environmental_group.html
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21593408-publishing-giant-goes-after-authors-its-journals-papers-no-peeking?fsrc=scn%2Ftw_ec%2Fno_peeking
http://blogs.plos.org/publichealth/2014/01/13/worst-sugar/
http://nyti.ms/1cfRYWi
http://plos.io/OAwin
http://plos.io/1hnvgQN
http://plos.io/1filk9U
http://plos.io/1eAqImU
http://blogs.plos.org/biologue/2014/02/03/opening-up-data-access-not-just-articles/
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2014/01/01/the-most-fascinating-human-evolution-discoveries-of-2013/?WT.mc_id=SA_facebook
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-new-method-to-measure-consciousness-discovered&WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook
http://news.sciencemag.org/climate/2014/01/earth-more-sensitive-increasing-greenhouse-gas-thought
http://news.sciencemag.org/environment/2014/01/video-spiders-spin-electric-web
http://blogs.plos.org/publichealth/2014/01/13/worst-sugar/
http://nyti.ms/1cfRYWi
http://plos.io/OAwin
http://plos.io/1hnvgQN
http://plos.io/1filk9U
http://plos.io/1eAqImU
http://blogs.plos.org/biologue/2014/02/03/opening-up-data-access-not-just-articles/
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2014/01/01/the-most-fascinating-human-evolution-discoveries-of-2013/?WT.mc_id=SA_facebook
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-new-method-to-measure-consciousness-discovered&WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook
http://news.sciencemag.org/climate/2014/01/earth-more-sensitive-increasing-greenhouse-gas-thought
http://news.sciencemag.org/environment/2014/01/video-spiders-spin-electric-web
you can't run a case on a hypothetical, unless it's about a right. there's no legal action to prevent a hypothetical tort that's never been attempted (and probably never will be).
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=monsanto-critics-denied-us-supreme&WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=monsanto-critics-denied-us-supreme&WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook
i dunno about the gould idea, conceptually, but it's nice to see some research moving away from ideas of orthogenesis. rather than create a new abstraction and babble on about it, i'd rather interpret the results as evidence for the role of chance in the process.
http://rss.sciam.com/~r/sciam/math/~3/tW6msj4GHQ0/
http://rss.sciam.com/~r/sciam/math/~3/tW6msj4GHQ0/
is this an onion article?
because an abstract idea cannot be quantified, it is therefore flawed? lol.
hey, more empiricism is always better than less empiricism. if you want to understand specific things, studying them through observation is always a better idea than applying abstract ideas. yet, then you want to argue that evolution should be described mathematically? ha! it seems to me that it's the dudes in the article that seem deductively challenged.
but studies are always better than no studies.
my guess is they'll find that the reality is too complicated to model using anything other than game theory.
http://phys.org/news308815368.html
because an abstract idea cannot be quantified, it is therefore flawed? lol.
hey, more empiricism is always better than less empiricism. if you want to understand specific things, studying them through observation is always a better idea than applying abstract ideas. yet, then you want to argue that evolution should be described mathematically? ha! it seems to me that it's the dudes in the article that seem deductively challenged.
but studies are always better than no studies.
my guess is they'll find that the reality is too complicated to model using anything other than game theory.
http://phys.org/news308815368.html
this discourse means absolutely nothing to me.
how about this: it doesn't matter if it's genetic or not (it obviously isn't in most cases) because i ought to have the right to choose which gender i want to be, and people that don't like that can fuck off.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-trans/
how about this: it doesn't matter if it's genetic or not (it obviously isn't in most cases) because i ought to have the right to choose which gender i want to be, and people that don't like that can fuck off.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-trans/
i've always found it odd that skeptics cite this to discredit climate science, rather than cite it to discredit newsweek.
....because we should all believe everything we read in newsweek, right?
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-the-global-cooling-story-came-to-be&WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook
....because we should all believe everything we read in newsweek, right?
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-the-global-cooling-story-came-to-be&WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook
i find this is a much trickier problem than it's usually presented as. i do agree with the need to do something to pressure israel to stop the genocide, but i'm not sure a boycott will work, and i'm not convinced the accusations of anti-semitism are without merit.
that's not to conflate criticism of israel with anti-semitism. they're clearly two different things. but there's also clearly a line where criticism is masking something deeper, and i think it's pretty widespread amongst those who argue otherwise.
i mean, there are certain things a bds campaign could do that would be blatantly racist. they could start putting yellow stars over the office of jewish academics, or force visiting israeli academics to wear yellow stars so everybody knows to boycott them. i'm not saying that anybody is suggesting this, but it would be pretty racist.
what i *am* saying is that it's not hard to hear those attitudes thinly veiled behind more politically correct positions and that it's hard not to conclude that it's a factor in many - not all - of the people calling for boycott. this is actually particularly vile, because it co-opts a legitimate human rights problem.
i'm not saying this because i've been brainwashed by zionism or because i hate bds activists or any other diabolical reason. i'm saying this because i can hear the racist contempt in the tone of voice, and i don't like it.
i don't know what the answer is, but i know the bds movement tends to pull out individuals that i could not consider to be allies.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11432
that's not to conflate criticism of israel with anti-semitism. they're clearly two different things. but there's also clearly a line where criticism is masking something deeper, and i think it's pretty widespread amongst those who argue otherwise.
i mean, there are certain things a bds campaign could do that would be blatantly racist. they could start putting yellow stars over the office of jewish academics, or force visiting israeli academics to wear yellow stars so everybody knows to boycott them. i'm not saying that anybody is suggesting this, but it would be pretty racist.
what i *am* saying is that it's not hard to hear those attitudes thinly veiled behind more politically correct positions and that it's hard not to conclude that it's a factor in many - not all - of the people calling for boycott. this is actually particularly vile, because it co-opts a legitimate human rights problem.
i'm not saying this because i've been brainwashed by zionism or because i hate bds activists or any other diabolical reason. i'm saying this because i can hear the racist contempt in the tone of voice, and i don't like it.
i don't know what the answer is, but i know the bds movement tends to pull out individuals that i could not consider to be allies.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11432
Thursday, February 6, 2014
ugh.
we require only a miniscule fraction of the population to carry out the useful work that is required to make society function. of the population at large, there are more volunteers than there are useful positions. the jobs that people do not volunteer to do are mostly not useful - which is why people don't want to do them. for the few exceptions, we could rotate the labour around to the point where we're working a few hours a *year*. keynes suggested a few hours a week, but the technology is way beyond that point, now. i see no reason to think this reality of volunteers existing to do meaningful and necessary work because they want to will ever change.
what that leaves is millions of people that really have no social value beyond that which we contrive for them. what's the difference, in terms of social value, between working as a server or in a supermarket and living on disability? there isn't one. neither produces anything of any kind of value. while there's no doubt that a retail worker fits the definition of "nothing to sell but labour", they don't belong to the productive class. in terms of actual contribution in terms of producing something valuable, the reality is that they're just as "parasitic" as welfare recipients. a really disturbingly high amount of our workforce exists as an appropriating "middle man" between producers and consumers. the cashier at the grocery store is stealing profit from the farmer that made the food, while the sales person at the clothing store is stealing profit from the workers that made the clothes. so, proletariat by definition, but not proletariat in substance. a union of service workers is a bourgeois union.
when you look at the actual producing class, most of it isn't even on this continent. technological shifts may be in the process of relocalizing production, but it will not create new jobs (unless you count robots as people).
so, there is no longer a concern of the productive v. the unproductive. almost none of us are actually productive. what we need to do is find a way to distribute goods fairly amongst the unproductive, and that's not going to be possible until people come to terms, "en masse", of the uselessness of their daily existence. that is, we will not revolt until we understand how unproductive we really are, and how that makes us all equally entitled to the benefits of technology.
we require only a miniscule fraction of the population to carry out the useful work that is required to make society function. of the population at large, there are more volunteers than there are useful positions. the jobs that people do not volunteer to do are mostly not useful - which is why people don't want to do them. for the few exceptions, we could rotate the labour around to the point where we're working a few hours a *year*. keynes suggested a few hours a week, but the technology is way beyond that point, now. i see no reason to think this reality of volunteers existing to do meaningful and necessary work because they want to will ever change.
what that leaves is millions of people that really have no social value beyond that which we contrive for them. what's the difference, in terms of social value, between working as a server or in a supermarket and living on disability? there isn't one. neither produces anything of any kind of value. while there's no doubt that a retail worker fits the definition of "nothing to sell but labour", they don't belong to the productive class. in terms of actual contribution in terms of producing something valuable, the reality is that they're just as "parasitic" as welfare recipients. a really disturbingly high amount of our workforce exists as an appropriating "middle man" between producers and consumers. the cashier at the grocery store is stealing profit from the farmer that made the food, while the sales person at the clothing store is stealing profit from the workers that made the clothes. so, proletariat by definition, but not proletariat in substance. a union of service workers is a bourgeois union.
when you look at the actual producing class, most of it isn't even on this continent. technological shifts may be in the process of relocalizing production, but it will not create new jobs (unless you count robots as people).
so, there is no longer a concern of the productive v. the unproductive. almost none of us are actually productive. what we need to do is find a way to distribute goods fairly amongst the unproductive, and that's not going to be possible until people come to terms, "en masse", of the uselessness of their daily existence. that is, we will not revolt until we understand how unproductive we really are, and how that makes us all equally entitled to the benefits of technology.
johnny cochran has reappeared to sue nasa for not taking it's own mission seriously.
i think the petitioner kind of has a point.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/01/unconvinced-that-jelly-donut-sized-mars-rock-was-just-a-rock-man-sues-nasa/
i think the petitioner kind of has a point.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/01/unconvinced-that-jelly-donut-sized-mars-rock-was-just-a-rock-man-sues-nasa/
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/12012013/article/ardi-has-human-like-skull-traits-say-researchers
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/12012013/article/new-iron-age-sites-discovered-in-finland
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/12012013/article/archaeologists-discover-rare-ancient-mural-in-belize
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/12012013/article/archaeologists-return-to-ancient-city-of-lachish
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/12012013/article/archaeologists-return-to-neanderthal-site-in-spain
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/12012013/article/paleogenomics-changing-the-face-of-research
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/12012013/article/scientists-discover-cause-of-devastating-plague-of-justinian
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/12012013/article/new-clues-to-neanderthal-modern-human-interbreeding
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/12012013/article/resurrecting-the-pharaohs-solar-boat1
http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/january-2014/first-beam-of-antihydrogen-atoms-produced-at-cern
http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/01/unconvinced-that-jelly-donut-sized-mars-rock-was-just-a-rock-man-sues-nasa/
http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/12/solar-variability-has-a-small-effect-on-climate-change/
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129503.100-gps-satellites-suggest-earth-is-heavy-with-dark-matter.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-seeks-to-build-quantum-computer-that-could-crack-most-types-of-encryption/2014/01/02/8fff297e-7195-11e3-8def-a33011492df2_story.html
http://www.insidescience.org/content/proposed-time-machine-could-also-clone-objects/1533
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2014/jan/24/coming-soon-rydberg-the-movie
http://physics.aps.org/articles/v7/10
http://www.insidescience.org/content/date-particle-supercollider-detects-no-evidence-dark-matter/1545
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24976-first-graphene-radio-broadcast-is-a-wireless-wonder.html
http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2014/01/28/seafloor-carpet-catches-waves-to-harness-energy/
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/12012013/article/new-iron-age-sites-discovered-in-finland
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/12012013/article/archaeologists-discover-rare-ancient-mural-in-belize
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/12012013/article/archaeologists-return-to-ancient-city-of-lachish
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/12012013/article/archaeologists-return-to-neanderthal-site-in-spain
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/12012013/article/paleogenomics-changing-the-face-of-research
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/12012013/article/scientists-discover-cause-of-devastating-plague-of-justinian
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/12012013/article/new-clues-to-neanderthal-modern-human-interbreeding
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/12012013/article/resurrecting-the-pharaohs-solar-boat1
http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/january-2014/first-beam-of-antihydrogen-atoms-produced-at-cern
http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/01/unconvinced-that-jelly-donut-sized-mars-rock-was-just-a-rock-man-sues-nasa/
http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/12/solar-variability-has-a-small-effect-on-climate-change/
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129503.100-gps-satellites-suggest-earth-is-heavy-with-dark-matter.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-seeks-to-build-quantum-computer-that-could-crack-most-types-of-encryption/2014/01/02/8fff297e-7195-11e3-8def-a33011492df2_story.html
http://www.insidescience.org/content/proposed-time-machine-could-also-clone-objects/1533
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2014/jan/24/coming-soon-rydberg-the-movie
http://physics.aps.org/articles/v7/10
http://www.insidescience.org/content/date-particle-supercollider-detects-no-evidence-dark-matter/1545
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24976-first-graphene-radio-broadcast-is-a-wireless-wonder.html
http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2014/01/28/seafloor-carpet-catches-waves-to-harness-energy/
this is precisely wrong. randomness is a model that exists in your head to approximate reality, not a description of reality itself. you cannot "harness the power of probability". that's like saying you can channel the forces of the unknown.
http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/january-2014/physicists-harness-the-power-of-probability
http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/january-2014/physicists-harness-the-power-of-probability
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
"Spontaneous eruption of a canine after marsupialization of..."
that really made me burst out laughing. what? dogs randomly exploding after they've been converted into marsupials? how is that possible? what is this about?
it's a rather boring article about root canals. canine teeth. marsupialization means something to dentists that it doesn't mean to people interested in australian biodiversity.
"first, you turn the dog into a wombat. then, you'd better start running, mate."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20451790
i know it's probably not funny to you humans, but you have such bad senses of humour. on the one hand, you're fun to troll - i'll give you that. but, i wouldn't be surprised if i could get through an entire season of friends without even smiling, let alone laughing. YOUR LAUGH TRACKS ARE NO MATCH FOR MY SELF CONTROL.
no, honestly. it's mutual. really.
that really made me burst out laughing. what? dogs randomly exploding after they've been converted into marsupials? how is that possible? what is this about?
it's a rather boring article about root canals. canine teeth. marsupialization means something to dentists that it doesn't mean to people interested in australian biodiversity.
"first, you turn the dog into a wombat. then, you'd better start running, mate."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20451790
i know it's probably not funny to you humans, but you have such bad senses of humour. on the one hand, you're fun to troll - i'll give you that. but, i wouldn't be surprised if i could get through an entire season of friends without even smiling, let alone laughing. YOUR LAUGH TRACKS ARE NO MATCH FOR MY SELF CONTROL.
no, honestly. it's mutual. really.
http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/01/jumping-genes-linked-schizophrenia
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=our-brains-have-a-map-for-numbers&WT.mc_id=SA_MindFacebook
http://www.nature.com/news/cheap-battery-stores-energy-for-a-rainy-day-1.14486?WT.mc_id=GPL_NatureNews
http://www.nature.com/news/development-time-to-leave-gdp-behind-1.14499?WT.mc_id=FBK_NPG_1401_NatureNews
http://www.nature.com/news/ukrainian-scientists-in-forefront-of-protest-1.14603?WT.mc-id=FBK_NatureNews
http://www.nature.com/news/acid-bath-offers-easy-path-to-stem-cells-1.14600?WT.mc_id=FBK_NPG
http://bit.ly/1nusyxf
http://www.nature.com/news/antioxidants-speed-cancer-in-mice-1.14606?WT.mc-id=FBK_NatureNews
http://www.nature.com/news/elsevier-opens-its-papers-to-text-mining-1.14659?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews
http://www.nature.com/news/history-shut-up-and-calculate-1.14458?WT.mc_id=FBK_NPG
"natural medicine" is often worse than a placebo. it's often not harmless to just try it.
http://bit.ly/1cSstKR
http://youtu.be/fKkzqk3RMLc
http://fron.tiers.in/go/EMEBTH
http://www.nature.com/news/chemical-treatment-could-cut-cost-of-biofuel-1.14545?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews
http://www.nature.com/news/light-from-ancient-quasar-reveals-intergalactic-web-1.14550
http://www.ted.com/talks/svante_paeaebo_dna_clues_to_our_inner_neanderthal.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-04/why-homo-economicus-might-actually-be-an-idiot.html
http://www.nature.com/news/dark-matter-search-considers-exotic-possibilities-1.14459?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews
http://www.nature.com/news/water-risk-as-world-warms-1.14446
http://www.nature.com/news/china-tops-europe-in-rd-intensity-1.14476
http://www.nature.com/news/computer-science-the-learning-machines-1.14481
http://www.nature.com/news/search-for-primordial-black-holes-called-off-1.14551?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews
http://www.nature.com/news/canadian-government-accused-of-destroying-environmental-archives-1.14539?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews
http://www.nature.com/news/el-ni%C3%B1o-monitoring-system-in-failure-mode-1.14582?WT.mc-id=FBK_NatureNews
most consumers don't care. if they did, they would have stopped buying carcinogenic shampoo many years ago.
http://www.nature.com/news/synthetic-biology-firms-shift-focus-1.14602
http://www.nature.com/news/biologists-make-first-mouse-model-for-mers-1.14634?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews
http://www.nature.com/news/beijing-smog-contains-witches-brew-of-microbes-1.14640
http://www.nature.com/news/x-ray-science-the-big-guns-1.14609\
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=our-brains-have-a-map-for-numbers&WT.mc_id=SA_MindFacebook
http://www.nature.com/news/cheap-battery-stores-energy-for-a-rainy-day-1.14486?WT.mc_id=GPL_NatureNews
http://www.nature.com/news/development-time-to-leave-gdp-behind-1.14499?WT.mc_id=FBK_NPG_1401_NatureNews
http://www.nature.com/news/ukrainian-scientists-in-forefront-of-protest-1.14603?WT.mc-id=FBK_NatureNews
http://www.nature.com/news/acid-bath-offers-easy-path-to-stem-cells-1.14600?WT.mc_id=FBK_NPG
http://bit.ly/1nusyxf
http://www.nature.com/news/antioxidants-speed-cancer-in-mice-1.14606?WT.mc-id=FBK_NatureNews
http://www.nature.com/news/elsevier-opens-its-papers-to-text-mining-1.14659?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews
http://www.nature.com/news/history-shut-up-and-calculate-1.14458?WT.mc_id=FBK_NPG
"natural medicine" is often worse than a placebo. it's often not harmless to just try it.
http://bit.ly/1cSstKR
http://youtu.be/fKkzqk3RMLc
http://fron.tiers.in/go/EMEBTH
http://www.nature.com/news/chemical-treatment-could-cut-cost-of-biofuel-1.14545?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews
http://www.nature.com/news/light-from-ancient-quasar-reveals-intergalactic-web-1.14550
http://www.ted.com/talks/svante_paeaebo_dna_clues_to_our_inner_neanderthal.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-04/why-homo-economicus-might-actually-be-an-idiot.html
http://www.nature.com/news/dark-matter-search-considers-exotic-possibilities-1.14459?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews
http://www.nature.com/news/water-risk-as-world-warms-1.14446
http://www.nature.com/news/china-tops-europe-in-rd-intensity-1.14476
http://www.nature.com/news/computer-science-the-learning-machines-1.14481
http://www.nature.com/news/search-for-primordial-black-holes-called-off-1.14551?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews
http://www.nature.com/news/canadian-government-accused-of-destroying-environmental-archives-1.14539?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews
http://www.nature.com/news/el-ni%C3%B1o-monitoring-system-in-failure-mode-1.14582?WT.mc-id=FBK_NatureNews
most consumers don't care. if they did, they would have stopped buying carcinogenic shampoo many years ago.
http://www.nature.com/news/synthetic-biology-firms-shift-focus-1.14602
http://www.nature.com/news/biologists-make-first-mouse-model-for-mers-1.14634?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews
http://www.nature.com/news/beijing-smog-contains-witches-brew-of-microbes-1.14640
http://www.nature.com/news/x-ray-science-the-big-guns-1.14609\
ignoring the mild misrepresentation of the data to make the article more dramatic (warming has not stopped, it's just become linear rather than exponential), variation between 98-02 could be masking the effect of the increase in warfare since 2002. again, i need to ask why nobody has considered that all the bombs dropped in iraq and afghanistan might affect the climate? i mean, we're talking about a lot of very powerful bombs, here. if the second world war is considered to be a cause of the cooling trend after 1940, it's unreasonable to not consider the recent bunch of wars in a similar way. it's certainly at least as valid as chinese pollution. somebody will eventually realize this....
....but, the idea that the ocean is eating the missing heat is not new. it's the dominant narrative, actually. the idea that the sun has had an effect on the general trend is usually not taken seriously (and shouldn't be, despite the sun's possible influence on the recent polar weather).
http://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-the-case-of-the-missing-heat-1.14525
....but, the idea that the ocean is eating the missing heat is not new. it's the dominant narrative, actually. the idea that the sun has had an effect on the general trend is usually not taken seriously (and shouldn't be, despite the sun's possible influence on the recent polar weather).
http://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-the-case-of-the-missing-heat-1.14525
these pay-per-access journals have a limited future. their function was to select the best papers and explain them to the general public. their model has switched to free explanations and paid access to the papers. but, that positions them in a parasitic relationship. what do the scientists gain from this? if they were to revert back to their initial purpose, they'd be pushed out of the market by bloggers. that's what's going to happen.
so, basically, the world has changed and these science magazines don't really have a place in it. they need to go back to their mission statements and ask themselves how they can change their business model to continue to maintain a position of relevance.
http://www.nature.com/news/particle-physics-papers-set-free-1.14473
so, basically, the world has changed and these science magazines don't really have a place in it. they need to go back to their mission statements and ask themselves how they can change their business model to continue to maintain a position of relevance.
http://www.nature.com/news/particle-physics-papers-set-free-1.14473
unless i'm missing something, the "mystery population" can easily be identified with refugees of the ice sheets, who lived in small pockets of melting in the northern hemisphere, hunted mammoths and generally make up the bulk of the cave man stereotype. the population would be ancestral to the kurgan groups that spread the indo-european population around the steppes. existing literature refers to these people as "nordic" and considers the basques, picts and others amongst their possible descendents.
http://www.nature.com/news/ancient-european-genomes-reveal-jumbled-ancestry-1.14456
i mean, i get that they're denying a strict separation, but nobody ever really claimed that separation existed in the first place. and the idea is well-established.
lol. i think maybe nature is avoiding the topic in the fear that ignorant people might label them racists.
the northern nordics were ancestral to the indo-europeans, but were not them. the southern hunter gatherers would have been displaced by the nordics that came in after the ice sheets melted. they themselves would have mostly been displaced by middle eastern farmers. the indo-europeans came after that. aryanism is something different altogether and certainly didn't make it's way into anthropology books written in the 90s. but people have a hard time keeping up...
anyways, unless i'm missing something, the mystery population is easy to identify.
as for eye colour, i've long argued that it's spread is probably not due to natural selection. you'll hear people say things about the angle the sun hits europe. that's weak, to say the least. and is an ability to adjust to sunlight going to overpower other traits? it's such a triviality, that i couldn't see it overpowering anything at all. how can people argue with a straight face that it increases survival?
i've seen a few arguments that suggest that the genes that determine eye colour are also genes that provide heightened immunity, and the eye colour followed as a coincidence of the immunity. i think it was for malaria, actually. that makes more sense to me, and correlates with the above ideas better. but i think this is controversial.
if you look at the spread of the mutation from somewhere in north-central europe, it just strikes me as entirely random. it looks like an ink blot that spread around by chance for no real reason whatsoever.
it's just genetic drift, in other words. but it's a type of variation that doesn't seem to have any kind of actual advantage. meaning, it's just the result of a genetic process that fucked up (genetic processes fucking up being the source of mutations and therefore evolution). there's not a reason it fucked up. there's no benefit to it fucking up. it just fucked up.
skin colour and skull size seem to be more complicated than that, but they're highly plastic. again, the correlation between sunlight and skin colour isn't nearly as strong as some may suggest. and, you really want to tell an african that they're less likely to survive in sweden? i'm not sure i could honestly apply that to an australopithecine. it seems entirely trivial.
so, genetic drift? i think it's a little more complicated if you go backwards a few millennia. in today's world, it's probably all there is to it. the sahara and the himalayas aren't the boundaries they once were. we could talk about systemic racism, but that's not readily biological (maybe the psychology has a biological explanation, but it's not at the level of selection) and it's only of questionable relevance at a reproductive level (consider jefferson for an obvious example). so, the only thing acting on skin colour today is drift, and that will be the foreseeable future unless something catastrophic happens.
http://www.nature.com/news/ancient-european-genomes-reveal-jumbled-ancestry-1.14456
i mean, i get that they're denying a strict separation, but nobody ever really claimed that separation existed in the first place. and the idea is well-established.
lol. i think maybe nature is avoiding the topic in the fear that ignorant people might label them racists.
the northern nordics were ancestral to the indo-europeans, but were not them. the southern hunter gatherers would have been displaced by the nordics that came in after the ice sheets melted. they themselves would have mostly been displaced by middle eastern farmers. the indo-europeans came after that. aryanism is something different altogether and certainly didn't make it's way into anthropology books written in the 90s. but people have a hard time keeping up...
anyways, unless i'm missing something, the mystery population is easy to identify.
as for eye colour, i've long argued that it's spread is probably not due to natural selection. you'll hear people say things about the angle the sun hits europe. that's weak, to say the least. and is an ability to adjust to sunlight going to overpower other traits? it's such a triviality, that i couldn't see it overpowering anything at all. how can people argue with a straight face that it increases survival?
i've seen a few arguments that suggest that the genes that determine eye colour are also genes that provide heightened immunity, and the eye colour followed as a coincidence of the immunity. i think it was for malaria, actually. that makes more sense to me, and correlates with the above ideas better. but i think this is controversial.
if you look at the spread of the mutation from somewhere in north-central europe, it just strikes me as entirely random. it looks like an ink blot that spread around by chance for no real reason whatsoever.
it's just genetic drift, in other words. but it's a type of variation that doesn't seem to have any kind of actual advantage. meaning, it's just the result of a genetic process that fucked up (genetic processes fucking up being the source of mutations and therefore evolution). there's not a reason it fucked up. there's no benefit to it fucking up. it just fucked up.
skin colour and skull size seem to be more complicated than that, but they're highly plastic. again, the correlation between sunlight and skin colour isn't nearly as strong as some may suggest. and, you really want to tell an african that they're less likely to survive in sweden? i'm not sure i could honestly apply that to an australopithecine. it seems entirely trivial.
so, genetic drift? i think it's a little more complicated if you go backwards a few millennia. in today's world, it's probably all there is to it. the sahara and the himalayas aren't the boundaries they once were. we could talk about systemic racism, but that's not readily biological (maybe the psychology has a biological explanation, but it's not at the level of selection) and it's only of questionable relevance at a reproductive level (consider jefferson for an obvious example). so, the only thing acting on skin colour today is drift, and that will be the foreseeable future unless something catastrophic happens.
there's a line of thinking that the soviet union collapsed mostly because people didn't trust the government. that trust became a social problem, so there was glasnost, and it failed and blah blah blah. would it be possible to emulate that in the united states?
well, first: is it the real reason the soviet union collapsed? no.
but, is the phenomenon easily emulated, regardless? i don't think americans have the same kind of intellectual or emotional investment in government. americans don't feel betrayed by a broken utopia, so much as they've resigned themselves to the inevitability of the state. the culture is just too different.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f93_1390833151
a lack of faith in the soviet union was admittedly a serious crisis for the state, due to it's central place in society.
a lack of faith in washington is just called monday morning.
that's not to say that undermining faith in certain systems wouldn't lead to social mayhem. if you could seriously convince the bulk of the population to divest from the markets, there'd be chaos.
but there's as much or more discordant language about government in any random speech by any random establishment republican candidate.
so, i'm calling this as a bad russian tactic that demonstrates a poor understanding of american society.
well, first: is it the real reason the soviet union collapsed? no.
but, is the phenomenon easily emulated, regardless? i don't think americans have the same kind of intellectual or emotional investment in government. americans don't feel betrayed by a broken utopia, so much as they've resigned themselves to the inevitability of the state. the culture is just too different.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f93_1390833151
a lack of faith in the soviet union was admittedly a serious crisis for the state, due to it's central place in society.
a lack of faith in washington is just called monday morning.
that's not to say that undermining faith in certain systems wouldn't lead to social mayhem. if you could seriously convince the bulk of the population to divest from the markets, there'd be chaos.
but there's as much or more discordant language about government in any random speech by any random establishment republican candidate.
so, i'm calling this as a bad russian tactic that demonstrates a poor understanding of american society.
i like to see studies like this that explain evolved traits in terms of how we're imperfectly assembled. fighting against the creationists and intelligent design people is really as easy as pointing to the countless examples of where evolution produced results that seem like horrific mistakes - and would be if "mistake" made any sense in the context of a random, unguided process with no end.
....but biologists have the same problem as the rest of the teleologists. they want everything to have a causal relationship, as though selection is as perfect as a deity would be.
there isn't a brilliant reason. evolution just done fucked up on this one.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sexual-cannibal-spiders-may-have-poor-impulse-control
....but biologists have the same problem as the rest of the teleologists. they want everything to have a causal relationship, as though selection is as perfect as a deity would be.
there isn't a brilliant reason. evolution just done fucked up on this one.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sexual-cannibal-spiders-may-have-poor-impulse-control
see, this is how christianity ruins societies. instead of presenting this as an obvious empirical reality that is debatable to nobody, they have to tip-toe around it by bringing in ancient (and 80% preposterous) philosophy as well as suggestions from foreign cultures.
of course your dog has a consciousness. nobody needs an argument to demonstrate that. universal? well, define that. there's a level of complexity required, and it's a pretty fuzzy idea. if we're going back to debating whether a rock has a soul or not, i'm leaving the room...
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-consciousness-universal&
of course your dog has a consciousness. nobody needs an argument to demonstrate that. universal? well, define that. there's a level of complexity required, and it's a pretty fuzzy idea. if we're going back to debating whether a rock has a soul or not, i'm leaving the room...
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-consciousness-universal&
we think of aging as though it's an irreversible process that's tied to time, as a flow. we age because the clock ticks.
but stating it that bluntly at least presents a causal problem. what does time really have to do with aging? do we just exhaust? is that coherent?
well, it is if you consider something like a suicide cell, but that reduces it to a chemical rather than a temporal process. aging is actually being increasingly understood as a chemical process, conceivably making it treatable with drugs.
i know. that's crazy. except it isn't. what's really crazy is attaching the aging process to the tick of the clock without any kind of intermediary. that's what actually doesn't make any sense. aging as a reversible, chemical process is, in reality, the *only* thing that makes any sense.
that doesn't mean that anti-aging drugs aren't an incredibly complex proposal.
this is a neat read.
http://www.ff.ul.pt/FCT/EXPL/NEU-BEN/0241/2013/19.pdf
but stating it that bluntly at least presents a causal problem. what does time really have to do with aging? do we just exhaust? is that coherent?
well, it is if you consider something like a suicide cell, but that reduces it to a chemical rather than a temporal process. aging is actually being increasingly understood as a chemical process, conceivably making it treatable with drugs.
i know. that's crazy. except it isn't. what's really crazy is attaching the aging process to the tick of the clock without any kind of intermediary. that's what actually doesn't make any sense. aging as a reversible, chemical process is, in reality, the *only* thing that makes any sense.
that doesn't mean that anti-aging drugs aren't an incredibly complex proposal.
this is a neat read.
http://www.ff.ul.pt/FCT/EXPL/NEU-BEN/0241/2013/19.pdf
keep in mind this has to do with pheromones. i'm actually surprised by how simple the difference is.
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(13)01476-1
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(13)01476-1
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
yeah. honestly. listen...
i'm all over this site with snide remarks about this or that. i'll pan anything you give me. i don't give a fuck. but it's about the music.
she may have a better career as an actress, but she legitimately looked mortified. i believe that. and i can only imagine the horrific, stupid bullshit she went through due to this. the bottom line is that people that go on the internet to bully little girls into a low sense of self-esteem deserve to be turned into compost. go throw yourselves off cliffs.
(and, yeah, the song is bad, but it's not measurably worse than any other modern pop music. totally overblown.)
i'm all over this site with snide remarks about this or that. i'll pan anything you give me. i don't give a fuck. but it's about the music.
she may have a better career as an actress, but she legitimately looked mortified. i believe that. and i can only imagine the horrific, stupid bullshit she went through due to this. the bottom line is that people that go on the internet to bully little girls into a low sense of self-esteem deserve to be turned into compost. go throw yourselves off cliffs.
(and, yeah, the song is bad, but it's not measurably worse than any other modern pop music. totally overblown.)
http://www.brit.co/3d-photoshop/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-morningside-post/leave-3d-printing-alone_b_4666660.html
http://www.3dprinterworld.com/article/renishaw-and-empire-cycles-build-3d-printed-bicycle-frame
http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/02/new-laser-printed-material-is-lighter-than-water-as-strong-as-steel/
http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/5912/enormous-aquifer-found-under-greenland-ice-sheet
http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/5923/mapping-amino-acids-to-understand-lifes-origins
http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/5933/neowise-spots-its-first-asteroid
http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/5943/rosetta-spacecraft-waking-up-for-final-leg-of-comet-landing
http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/5966/cracked-sea-ice-stirs-up-arctic-mercury-concern
http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/5974/cooking-up-lifes-origin-the-safer-way
so, it turns out the earth probably shouldn't be modelled as a closed system. how about the universe?
http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/5986/space-dust-carries-water-and-organic-carbon
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-morningside-post/leave-3d-printing-alone_b_4666660.html
http://www.3dprinterworld.com/article/renishaw-and-empire-cycles-build-3d-printed-bicycle-frame
http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/02/new-laser-printed-material-is-lighter-than-water-as-strong-as-steel/
http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/5912/enormous-aquifer-found-under-greenland-ice-sheet
http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/5923/mapping-amino-acids-to-understand-lifes-origins
http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/5933/neowise-spots-its-first-asteroid
http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/5943/rosetta-spacecraft-waking-up-for-final-leg-of-comet-landing
http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/5966/cracked-sea-ice-stirs-up-arctic-mercury-concern
http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/5974/cooking-up-lifes-origin-the-safer-way
so, it turns out the earth probably shouldn't be modelled as a closed system. how about the universe?
http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/5986/space-dust-carries-water-and-organic-carbon
i actually think this provides some insight into the ideas underlying abiogenesis. we think of proteins bunching together, a wall coming up that pushes out the outside world and then evolution within the cell. might it have been more integrated than this, with viruses existing around the earliest life forms and pushing the process?
http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/5968/predatory-organisms-at-depth
http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/5968/predatory-organisms-at-depth
nobody would suspect they would, but i'm not convinced they understood the options properly. disbelief is really hard to suspend. i'm sure what you'll hear is "rather than modify the climate, we should reduce emissions". if confronted on the reality that it's already too late, they'll probably say something about optimism, or maybe even cite a supernatural force. even those religious people that acknowledge the science seem to view catastrophe as a test of their faith. they've been conditioned to expect a happy ending.
if you could actually get people to understand that emissions can't be otherwise reversed, there is no optimism and there is no god? well, i think the results might shift. but, people are going to need to have something affect them personally before they'll get to that point...
http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/5939/public-views-on-climate-engineering
if you could actually get people to understand that emissions can't be otherwise reversed, there is no optimism and there is no god? well, i think the results might shift. but, people are going to need to have something affect them personally before they'll get to that point...
http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/5939/public-views-on-climate-engineering
in theory, local unions in africa or south america might be a good idea, but it's likely to come under a lot of threats from the americans, who would no longer be able to manipulate these events to take down economies in countries that they want to punish.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11421
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11421
geoffrey malaterra - the deeds of count roger of calabria & sicily & of duke robert guiscard his brother
this is a quasi-historical text that both documents and justifies the norman invasion of southern italy. unfortunately, as our sources for this period are not very good, we have no option but to rely on shoddy quasi-mythical histories and deductive logic to build an understanding of these events.
malaterra begins by providing a rational explanation for the migration: some of the twelve sons of tancred d'hauteville looked around their father's realm and decided that it could not be split up in a way that would provide enough land (and slaves, no doubt) for all of them. they decided that it would be in the benefit of all of them to look elsewhere for new land rather than to engage in conflicts with each other. this explanation of the norman migration south is certainly appealing in it's logic, as well as it's biblical simplicity, but does it hold up to careful scrutiny?
malaterra's narrative is actually really not that far removed from the contemporary explanation of the viking migrations and invasions as being driven by a combination of population growth and climate change. yet, why would they feel the need to go as far as italy? if they were truly such powerful warriors, why not subdue the land around them and build a great empire? the text provides an answer, actually: god led them to apulia. yet, i think that modern scholarship requires a better answer than that they were led by god. if we acknowledge the consistency between malaterra's explanation and the contemporary scientific explanation, we still haven't answered the question of "why did the normans go to italy?".
whatever the reasons for them leaving normandy were, they were first accepted into the employ of the prince of capua (pandulf IV), who paid them to attack the prince of salerno (guaimar IV)). in time, the prince of salerno offered a higher wage and the norman mercenaries instead attacked the prince of capua (in 1038).
so, the narrative actually breaks from the fictional background fairly quickly - the normans came to italy not as conquerors looking for land but as invited mercenaries in the employ of local aristocrats. the wealthy italian (lombard in background) princes were probably looking to build up their personal varangian guards to aid in defense and in conquest. having viking mercenaries in one's army was fashionable amongst the mediterranean despots of the period.
so, we can answer the question of "why italy?" with some certainty - because they were lured into a mercenary army by the promise of a steady pay check. it should also be noted that norman mercenary armies were already established in southern italy before any members of the de hauteville family arrived. so much for divine guidance.
the empire, of course, was very sensitive to the existence of large barbarian armies on it's peripheral. in general, it would prefer to avoid that altogether. yet, if these barbarian armies must exist then self-preservation demanded they be played off against each other. see, because barbarians are barbarians, it follows that they are easy to control through appealing to their barbaric nature. this is the fundamental axiom of greek military strategy over two thousand years worth of history. as such, the normans were convinced to attack the saracens in sicily, under the command of the general maniaces.
the diversion was initially successful, but it very quickly backfired. the normans did attack sicily, but they also attacked byzantine italy almost immediately afterwards. malaterra justifies this by arguing that the greek general refused to share the booty from the raid, but this is blatant whitewashing that is not at all consistent with byzantine strategy and makes almost no historical sense. rather, the invasion was called off by maniaces halfway through the conquest. the causes of the called-off invasion seem to be well understood and have to do with byzantine politics; the normans seem to have plundered italy simply because they were brought back there before they got the chance to plunder sicily. in any case, the empire walked out of this episode in barbarian management with no greater control of sicily and a new barbarian headache in southern italy that had to be addressed immediately. several attempts to expel the normans were met not just with failure but with greater losses; the byzantines eventually had to admit defeat, and it was with this defeat that italy was lost to constantinople forever.
the way things worked at the time was that if you didn't want to pledge allegiance to the emperor then you had to pledge allegiance to the pope (or face genocide). so, successfully expelling the byzantines meant inviting a papal invasion. while the normans, under humphrey, are said to have defeated the invading germans, they were also coerced into the roman church's hegemony (and out of constantinople's sphere) by the granting of a fief. see, when you defeat the church in battle that means that it must acknowledge your newfound right to be legally inferior to it. nor is there any debate on the subject - unless, of course, you'd like to pledge allegiance to the emperor. the normans responded to this by expanding their rule in central italy.
while humphrey was conquering the center of the peninsula, robert guiscard was conquering the south of it. when he shifts the narrative to the first of the two main characters of the text, malaterra brings out a truth that may have been lost up to that point - with all the conflict occurring between princes and churches, the italian masses may very well have met the normans as liberators (which is something they had no intent of being). when they rounded up the tax collectors and the wealthiest citizens for torture and plunder, they may very well have been cheered on. in the long run, however, the italian normans proved to be cruel and unpopular leaders that were constantly putting down revolts.
so, a conflict appears to be brewing between humphrey and guiscard. if one happened, the text is silent about it - guiscard is said to have been elected leader after humphrey died of an illness. see the pages on tancred d'hauteville and robert guiscard. the second main character that appears is roger of sicily, initially in an antagonistic role against guiscard, who was probably not actually his brother. malaterra spins a tale about roger being upset that he wasn't being taken seriously, but this isn't worth deconstructing. rather, questions about the nature of humphrey's death are relevant in the context of roger's alliance with geoffrey in their apparent resistance to his rule, as are questions about both the nature of the succession and the extent of guiscard's functional rule. guiscard put down several revolts of various character, often with the aid of roger.
in any case, roger and guiscard then unite in an uneasy alliance to finish the conquest of southern italy (apulia and calabria) from the byzantines, which led to guiscard accepting the title of duke from the pope. interestingly, sicily (then occupied by arabs) was in the area that guiscard was made duke over. what that actually means is that guiscard was given the pope's blessing to invade and conquer the island. this allowed him to eventually (the chronology is disputed) appoint roger as count of sicily.
so, we see that the conquests of these norman warlords consistently brought regions that were then lost to the papal sphere back into it. this would continue into the crusades. while the chroniclers want to present these norman warlords as independent agents, they seem to have been highly manipulated as mercenaries within a three-way (muslim, papal, byzantine) struggle for control of the mediterranean and to have ultimately largely been proxies of the pope. malaterra is careful to point out that the justification for the invasion of sicily was religious, but this is probably only a half-truth. on that note, the high number of norman warriors that were involved in the crusades is worth pointing out. were the crusades partially a pro-active way for the pope to rid himself of these barbarians, while trying to reclaim lost lands in the process?
leading up to the invasion, there was further conflict between roger and robert. malaterra again spins a story that isn't worth deconstructing, but the crux of the problem seemed to be about primacy and roger seems to have been the more popular ruler, despite the church's apparent preference for guiscard (at least at this point). an agreement was reached that gave roger more control over calabria, which gave him a safe base to leave his family and to attack sicily from. by appointing roger count of sicily, however, guiscard may have actually been trying to eliminate a challenger to his own power by sending him overseas. this reading is complicated by the alliance between the two men, which led to the need for roger to continually come back to the mainland to aid robert in putting down revolts. further, robert seems to have accompanied roger on some of the missions in sicily. due to the inefficacy of his brother's rule, roger wasn't able to complete the conquest of sicily until after his death in 1085.
guiscard even went so far as to launch a failed invasion of greece, with the aim of seizing the imperial throne. guiscard had "betrothed" his daughter to marry the son of the emperor but the emperor was deposed before the marriage took place, thereby taking guiscard out of the line of succession, which was no doubt the purpose of the whole arrangement. so, again, personal ambition aligns with papal ambition. the story states that guiscard was winning in greece (and that the war was lost by his soon-to-be disowned son, bohemund) until he had to go back to italy to save the pope from an attack by the german emperor, but the causality in that story is no doubt simplified to present guiscard in a heroic light. rather, guiscard probably abandoned a lesser battle over the title of eastern emperor for a shot at the greater title of western emperor. note that he also had to suppress a revolt by jordan of aversa, who had aligned with the emperor. malaterra immediately follows this with a story of revolt by roger's son, also named jordan, that seems more like a biblical parable than real history. the moral of the story is to obey your elders (or have your eyes gouged out with rusty spears). were there really two jordans that revolted almost simultaneously or is malaterra quietly suggesting that they're the same story? jordan did not live long enough to really distinguish.
the text finishes with a further description of further squabbles that don't strike me as all that important. if i revisit this in the future, i'll update. at this moment, i'm actually not very interested....
overall, this text functions as a church-sponsored founder myth for the italo-norman kingdom that pulled the south of the peninsula firmly into rome's permanent sphere (in inherited form) and lasted right up until the unification of italy. the idea of a "hauteville family" is probably an elaborate fiction. several dozen random, roving pirates fighting for control and plunder were packaged to the citizenry as a divinely inspired aristocracy fighting for it's inheritance to uphold the honour of the church. as it is primarily papal propaganda designed to uphold what would eventually become a feudal aristocracy, it can only be read highly critically. these people were probably not religious at all, unless it suited them politically. generally, however, it did suit them to align with the roman church. that's the key idea to pull out of it: there was a very strong alliance between norman pirates and the roman church to forcefully eliminate arab and byzantine influence in southern italy and realign the area into a papal vassal state.
full text:
http://www.medievalsicily.com/Docs/03_Norman_Conquest/Malaterra%20all%20text%20revised.pdf
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/books/congress/DG/867.24.M3513/index.html
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