MAGISTERIA SCIENTIA NON VOTUM
(not what you wanted to hear)
GILLICK'S LAWS

ALL HUNGERS GROW WITH FEEDING

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WAR IS A CONVERSATION
-
OUR HIGHEST-ENERGY FORM OF CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION

John Thomas Gillick
1946-2007
(and counting)


FEEDBACK

 

OUR MEMORIAL COMPLEX

ID-IOTS AND ID-IOCY

PLEASE INVITE MAUREEN DOWD TO THE PROM!


COMING SOON
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BLOGORRHOEA

PARSIFICATION

RIMSHOTS

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more
KKK SEAL OF APPROVAL

more
WAR WATCH

more
NEW DIRECTIONS
FOR
NEW DEMOCRATS

more
WAR WATCH

more
IN OUR TIMES:
re Tierney
re Brooks
re "The Ethicist"

more
STUPE OF THE WEEK

more
LITTLE JIMMY

more
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

more
MEMORY HOLE

WAR WATCH 02
07.05.09

HOW FAR WE'VE COME ...


IN CONGRESS,  PHILADELPHIA, PROVINCE OF PENNSYLVANIA
JULY 4, 1776:

“... the history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world ...

“.. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

“.. for Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us ...”


IN JUWAYBA,  ANBAR PROVINCE, IRAQ
MAY 7, 2007:

“Nearly every day, the sheik stops by the villa that was once his home, but is now an American garrison. Sometimes he comes with tips about the insurgency, or with news of political developments in this rural village near the Euphrates River.

“But mostly he comes to ask for his house back ...

“... Sheik Duleimi, 74, has not lived here since January, when marines on a counterinsurgency mission burst in late one night, announced that they were turning his house into a military base and evicted him. He sent his family to a rented apartment in Falluja while he moved into a son’s home just across the road ...”

A SHEIK AND HIS UNINVITED ‘GUESTS’
Kirk Semple fvor The New York Times - May 8, 2007


STUPE OF THE DAY
07.05.04

GAZING INTO THE ABYSS

"Hatred might not salve. But sometimes it cleanses."

And, after all, what else can we expect from such Lesser Breeds Without The Law - right, Marty? (very right, in fact, yes?) Not Joseph G nor Adolph H himself could have said it better, could have expressed himself more clearly.


STUPE OF THE DAY
07.04.18

"I GIVE UP!"
(or, "Hooray For Our Side!")

A firearm in the hands of the wrong person can be deadly. The presidency in the hands of the wrong person can also be deadly. Air travel safety regulations have convinced some of us that a finger-nail clipper in the hands of the wrong person can precipitate a terrorist attack. From these examples, it doesn't make sense to ban either the presidency or manicure devices.

...

"Yeah, I'm one of those progressives who has long since conceded the gun debate. It's not because of the gun lobby's simplistic talking points, it's not because of the hunters who think it's most excellent to kill innocent animals, and it's definitely not due to a lack of thought about the issue. It's primarily about focus. Who or what is really to blame for the shameful level of gun violence in America ..."

Joe Cesca in THE BHUFFINGTON POST - 07.04.18

Okay, Cesca -

Why not save yourself a shitload of screen-space and the rest of us the time and trouble of reading your half-baked, self-serving, self-comforting twaddle. Just state outright - without the tired old clichés of half-educated neo-progressive "human issues in context" self-aggrandizing display of psychology/sociology 101 pseudo-analysis - what you really mean:

“GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE; PEOPLE KILL PEOPLE”

Gee whiz, fella - Aint it one big fuckin' shame that the great unwashed of the United States are so unenlightened as to still go out and around to kill and die in these low-rent, tawdry massacres. And all because they lack the insight and self-control The Wise (such as you) manage to obtain and maintain - which enables you to refrain from popping off (repeatedly) at YOUR friends and neighbors and enemies and strangers and relatives and stray passers-by with some of those hundreds of millions of firearms littering stuffed into closest, basements, dresser drawers, toolboxes, handbags and glove compartments of the nation.

So what to do? Well, according to you, throw our hands up in the Air and let the chips (and the dead) fall where they may. “Those People” (meaning, I assume, anyone who hasn't listen to you) deserve what they get - there’s no saving them. So why bother trying. Let them learn the hard lessons of their folly - be they men, be they women or - as is pretty much the case with contemporary college-age humans - be they children.

"I'm one of those progressives who has long since conceded the gun debate."

No, you’re not.

What you are, Bob, is your average middle-class, view-with-alarm FAUX-progressive. Just another one in a seemingly endless series of self-inflated blatherskites who find it comfortable and convenient to espouse the flavor-of-the month received-wisdom causes and principles of their half-educated class and caste to receptive others of their ilk - and who always find it suddenly UNcomfortable and INconvenient to stick with their supposed principles when the world makes it clear that it has failed to magically have its long-awaited breakthrough moment and announce for all to hear and understand (and applaud) that YOU (and yours) were right all along.

After which, invariably, the party line switches over to the old reliable theme of "a curse on both your houses!" - and an espoused policy ofetting let the unenlighted, undeserving, unwashed go to hell in gtheir Wal-Mart handbasket because they refused to pay sufficient heed to the myriad of voices crying out in the wilderness (the wilderness of the New York Times, The Nation, The New Republic, Harpers', The Atlantic and, yes, The Huffington Post).

Is there anything more tiresome (and, in the long run, more stomach-turning, more disgust-inspiring), then would-be reformers, would be “progressives” who cut and run not only from their practices but from their principles when things get ugly. Your throwing up your hands in despair is meaningless, Bob, when there is no evidence whatsoever that you have ever done anything with those hands - anything productive to your espoused “principles”. People who get out of the game they minute they come to fear there’s a chance they won’t win are people not worth counting.

Be damned to you, Pseudo-Progressive Bob; you’re a millstone around the neck of progress - a dead weight, whose contributions would serve better if you stopped masquerading (for social placement, as what you are pleased to call a “progressive”) and made them to the other side.

Please do.

“You have sat too long for any good you have been doing.
Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go."

KKK SEAL OF APPROVAL 01
07.04.11

NOTED WHITE MEN GNEROUSLY FORGIVE NOTED WHITE MAN FOR NOTED WHITE COMMENT

In a triumph of all-white understanding and acceptance, Rudy and Johnny have taken it upon themselves to forgive Donald “The Stupe” Imus for his blatantly racist characterization of the Rutgers Women’s Basketball Team.

“I would appear on his program again, sure ... I believe he understands he made a very, very big mistake,”

noted panic-mongering “Post-9/11” international political blatherskite-cum-hero for hire and terrorism opportunist Rudy Giuliani declared fearlessly yesterday - while Perennial losing candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination, John McCain took it upon himself to step up to the plate for White Cluelessness and announce that,

“He said that he is deeply sorry. I'm a great believer in redemption. Whether he needs to do more in order to satisfy the concerns of people like the members of that team, that's something that's between him and them.”

In an impressive display of courageous tolerance and support for the long under-appreciated Racist-Americans among us, both candidates left no doubt that regardless of how high the cost to their expected sweep of Black American voters in the upcoming race for the Republican Nomination, they were not going to surrender their principles by condemning the practices of or curtailing their appearances on programs with such deep placement in the White-Right Electorate on whom their hoped-for success depends. If racism is what we all must overcome, no doubt this, for them, is where that overcoming begins - standing strong against irrational demands for rejection of Traditional Imusian Racism.


STUPE OF THE WEEK
07.03.27
... THIS TENDENCY...”
Zbiegnew Brzezinski lamenting the current national hysteria fomented by the Bushites over the threat of "terrorism" - The Washington Post, March 25, 2007

At first glance, Zbiegnew Brzezinski’s "TERRORIZED BY THE 'WAR ON TERROR'" in the Washington Post, March 25th, seems little more than your average Evening News-level compendium of received wisdom on our current deplorable situation. Nothing new is said in it, no analysis is undertaken, no original insight is offered and no real conclusions are draw. And all for what? Nothing more than that sad, lame cri de cour “when will the madness END, oh Lord!” with which it closes.

And, normally, there would really be nothing more to say in dismissing such a commonplace laundry list of Bad News Bearisms as the streaming bowl of Op-Ed hamburger-helper it is.

But suddenly, smack in the middle, we get a laugh line so ridiculous, so outrageous so detached from reality that we have to wonder if Mr. Brzezinski is really offering us a sly parody of contemporary mainstream media’s tendency to always VIEW WITH ALARM while simultaneously avoiding the risk of offering up any substantive analysis. I mean ...

“ ... the calm America that waged the Cold War with quiet persistence ...” ?

Are we really supposed to take dunderheaded twaddle like this seriously?

Because if we are, are we not then compelled to ask: how has Mr. Brzezinski managed - in one fell swoop and in less than one full sentence - to toss down his private (and apparently quite commodious) Memory Hole all of “Who Lost China?!”, the Red Scare, Red Channels, HUAC, Senator McCarthy, the stage-managed coups and adventures in Guatemala (and the Dominican Republic, Iran, Lebanon), the Korean War (yes, a whole war, ZB, you dunce), the arms race, the ongoing atmospheric testing of ever-more powerful fission and fusion weapons and delivery systems, “Better Dead Than Red”, “Duck and Cover”, Kennedy’s “Missile Gap” lies, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the Cuban Missile Crisis, “Mutually Assured Destruction”, The Domino Theory, the war in Vietnam (yes, ZB, you double-dunce, another whole war) ...

But the list of the ongoing UNcalm of it all just goes on and on, doesn’t it.

That a man of his supposed gifts, understanding and high-level government experience (not to mention simple everyday life experience in this country during those years) could say such a thing with a straight face is simply astounding. This represents the mind and thought of someone once National Security Advisor to the President of the United States?

God help us.


WAR WATCH 01
07.03.06


GET YA SCORECARD HERE! CAN'T TELL YA PLAYAHS WITHOUT YA GOT YA SCORECARD!

In SALON, Evan Kohlman of CLOBALTERRORALERT.com answers Kevin berger's IRAQ INSURGENCY 101 questions. Read it, absorb it; spend a little less time going "Who? What? Huh? Him? Them?" as you try and work your way through the latest "in-depth" article in the NY Times.

THE IRAQ INSURGENCY FOR BEGINNERS


NEW DIRECTIONS FOR NEW DEMOCRATS
07.02.11


AN OPEN LETTER TO ELIOT SPITZER, GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK ...

Governor Spitzer:

There can be no real reform of the New York State Legislature and its processes without absolute abolishment of the current Seniority System. For the good of the people of New York, this system must be broken - fully and irrevocably.

To do this, your Attorney general, acting on behalf of your office, needs to bring formal suit against the Legislature to overturn that Seniority System as patently unconstitutional.

Yes, your current approach to reform - confronting the Legislature forcefully and unrelentingly on the issues of accountability, cronyism and subservience to the hierarchy - is both admirable and necessary. And the pros of this approach are obvious. First, at this time you have an overwhelming public mandate; second, reform in Albany is a clear issue, and one that affords you an unparalleled opportunity to seize that mandate and enlist it in a specific, focused public campaign. As a result you are in a position to paint the legislative leadership and its supporters into the villain corner and, most effective of all with elected officials, threaten them with potential de-election (i.e., political death).

But the cons of this “take it to the streets” war with the Legislature outweigh those pros.

For one thing, consider how it is near two years until the next general elections, and that the attention span of the Electorate (and the media) is notoriously short and notoriously fickle. Add to this the fact that an ongoing battle with the Legislature will likely impose considerable drag on necessary government function. First, there will be the loss of time and energy to public fighting (appearances and statements, counter-appurtenances and counter-statements and so on) - and then the delay and potential loss of indispensable legislation, significant executive initiatives, necessary appointments and critical budgetary processes as each is held hostage by one side or the other to the struggle over process and power.

And that struggle is one that will all too quickly get pitched by the media - and perceived by the public - as yet another counter-productive partisan stalemate. Soon enough there will follow a fall-off in public engagement - and perceptual blurring of the real issue. Finally, you'll be faced with an ever-growing media clamor and more and more public pressure for any compromise that “moves things forward”.

This is what you risk in the fight ahead if you pursue your present course - an extended deadlock with an entrenched system, leading to an upwelling of media and public pressure to dilute, diffuse, weaken and, eventually, fatally compromise your campaign for substantive reform.

Better by far to outflank your opponents by striking at the heart of the problem.

The way to do this is through the courts.

The Seniority System common to State legislatures can fall (and eventually will fall) to a well-conceived, well-constructed and well-conducted legal assault. This assault will begin in some state court system in the near future, and, as state legislatures and their leadership fight to the bitter end to protect and preserve their prerogatives of power and privilege at whatever cost to their people and the good governance if their states, will no doubt end in the Federal courts (in all likelihood, of course, in the United States Supreme Court).

The basis for this suit would be that the Seniority System operates in direct violation of the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection clause - particularly as interpreted in the landmark “One Man, One Vote” decisions of the 1960s: Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962); Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1 (1964); and, Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964).

The specific reasoning is this: regardless of any apportionment issues, enhancing the effective in-house power of any member of the legislature - in whatever degree - based on seniority in office, results in a de facto apportionment of greater power to the vote of citizens in the electing district than that afforded the vote of citizens from a district that chooses to change its representation.

This means that the vote of any citizen in a district that elects a challenger over an incumbent is effectively and significantly “debased” (to use Mr. Justice Black's term from the Majority Opinion in Wesberry).

Also, under seniority rules and practices, this malproportionate power grows with each election, further devaluing each vote in districts that change their representatives.

This results in the effective creation of different classes of citizenship in the State of New York: a cumulatively over-empowered class of citizens whose vote is worth more because they choose to re-elect, time after time, the same individuals to represent them in the Legislature; and, a progressively more disenfranchised class of citizens whose vote is worth less because they choose to exercise their right to change one representative for another by free election.

Thus, (again, in the words of Mr. Justice Black in Wesberry) “... in debasing the weight of (citizen)s' votes the State has abridged the right to vote for members of Congress guaranteed them by the United States Constitution ...” and that “... by virtue of the debasement of their votes, (has) denied (them) the equal protection of the laws guaranteed them by the Fourteenth Amendment.”

As to the negative impact of this system on the lives and well-being of the Citizens of the State of New York (such as the selection of an unqualified individual for the post of Controller and the latest roadblock in the way of the refurbishment and retasking of the Foley Post Office along the lines of the old, long-lost, well-beloved Pennsylvania Station) - you need no instruction on these matters from me.

As you consider this proposition, also take into account how initiating such a campaign here can reap benefits for you that extend far beyond the borders and government of New York State. You are in the perfect position to bring this critical issue - democratic government and the answerability of elected representatives - to the national stage. Under your leadership, this State could be in the vanguard of a new and vital movement for more responsible governance in all the legislatures of the United States.

What better place to invest your current political capital; what better way to lift your campaign for reform to a higher level than name-calling and finger-pointing in scattered public forums, barely-covered press-conferences, dismissible public-relations releases and evaporating sound-bites trumped by the latest weather headlines. Bring this battle to ground where the underlying principles will be engaged, where the significance will be clear to all, where matters of personality and personal privilege will be moot - and where your opponents won't be playing on their field by their rules.

Fundamental reform requires a fundamental effort. The time for this fundamental reform has come. The only question is, in what state will the reform begin - and when. And by whom will it be led

Why not here, Mr. Governor - why not now.

Why not you.

Consider this proposal seriously, please.

Respectfully,

John Thomas Gillick
Brooklyn, NY


STUPE OF THE WEEK
07.02.28

...the only functioning democracy in the region is Turkey.”

Senator John McCain explaining the Middle East to David Letterman right after announcing his candidacy for the Republican Presidential nomination on The Late Show, February 28, 2007

So what's Israel now, John ... chopped liver?

FYC
07.02.18

YOUR WOULD-BE MASTERS' VOICE

There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people, There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn't work."

IRVING KRISTOL
noted Platonic Philosopher-King


FYC
07.02.15

ON LAWYERS IN GOVERNMENT

“It is dangerous to entrust the conduct of nations to men who have learned from their profession to consider reason as the instrument of dispute, and to interpret the laws according to the dictates of private interest; and the mischief has been felt, even in countries where the practice of the bar may serve to be considered as a liberal occupation”

Edward Gibbon,
The Declne and Fall of the Roman Empire
Volume 2 (apdx.)


STUPE(S) OF THE WEEK
07.02.11

DUTY - HONOR - TV

"(‘24' has made it) increasingly hard to convince some cadets that America has to respect the rule of law and human rights, even when terrorists do not. ... The kids see it, and say, ‘If torture is wrong, what about '24'?"
Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, Dean, United States Military Academy, West Point, NY
Dear Dean: If your cadets are taking "24" as a guide on behavior in the in the field, maybe you need to pay a little more attention to your screening procedures before you let them into the nation';s premier military school, much less the United States Army's Officer Corp.
MEMORY HOLE 01
68.02.27

THIS IS WALTER CRONKITE. GOOD NIGHT.

We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds. They may be right, that Hanoi's winter-spring offensive has been forced by the Communist realization that they could not win the longer war of attrition, and that the Communists hope that any success in the offensive will improve their position for eventual negotiations. It would improve their position, and it would also require our realization, that we should have had all along, that any negotiations must be that -- negotiations, not the dictation of peace terms. For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. This summer's almost certain standoff will either end in real give-and-take negotiations or terrible escalation; and for every means we have to escalate, the enemy can match us, and that applies to invasion of the North, the use of nuclear weapons, or the mere commitment of one hundred, or two hundred, or three hundred thousand more American troops to the battle. And with each escalation, the world comes closer to the brink of cosmic disaster.

To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy's intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

Walter Cronkite
The CBS Evening News
February 27, 1968

FYC
07.01.19

THE TURING TEST IS NOT A TEST FOR ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

The Turing Test is a test for Human intelligence.

Think about it.

(that's the test)

some links:

[full essay to come]


IN OUR TIMES 01
06.11.03

WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE INVITE MAUREEN DOWD TO THE PROM!

If only so maybe she can finally get past her High School lunchroom obsession with who’s cool and who’s not?

Week after week, column after column, adult readers are flabbergasted as once again, the Dowd shares her views on the great questions of our time - all through the myopic eyes of Carrie Bradshaw Jr., Lifestyles columnist for the JFK Memorial High Clarion.

Apparently there is no subject the Queen of Creampuffery can’t turn into a discourse on who wore what - and how and where and why and what it means. This sort of baltherskiting doesn't belong in a column on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times; it belongs in a note passed under the desk in study-hall.

This week, the burning question seems to be whether Barack Obama will run for class President - or just for Prom King. “Obama’s Project Runway ... would he make a model president?” Wow. What a hip, happening, snarky and insightful pop-culture reference that is. Original too.

Or not. No later than paragraph three, The Dowd outright admits this conceit isn't even her own - she’s lifted it directly from the Washington Post. No, from a fashion reporter at the Washington Post.

What’s going on here? If the Times really feels the need to have their own Candace Bushnell cover national politics on the Op-Ed page, why the hell don't they just go out and hire HER? Or howzabout this - maybe Dowd is Editor Gail Collins’ legacy insurance - a guarantee that no other female opinionater will have a chance at filling Collins’ now-empty adult-size boots on the page.

Over-metaphorization is all very well in opinion pieces, I suppose. If nothing else it’s too commonplace a device to be worth commenting on (usually) - another lazy writers’ way to draw lines of connection they find too difficult to otherwise delineate. But The Dowd’s ongoing obsession with the trimmings of the life political - how people dress (the Iranian President’s disco look) how they walk, how they talk, their physiognomy (Obama’s ears, for instance) and their general deportment - along with her compulsion for analogizing everything in the political world to what appears to be the world of PRETTY IN PINK - has long since gone past the merely cute (or “twee” as the Cousins would say). It’s become out-and-out stomach-turning.

(Try to keep in mind, Maureen, that if you over-use your devices to this degree, in time they become the only reality of your work.)

In her Obama piece of October 21st, what we get is thirteen paragraphs of this twaddle - low-rent fashion commentary, irrelevant analogies, focus on style issues instead of political issues - all to frame one simple question: is Obama a serious presidential possibility or not. This isn't political analysis, this isn't character insight - this is the pot calling the mirror black.

Nowhere in any of this does she address - much less discuss or analyze - what the Senator’s political positions are, or what his program is or might be as he moves towards full contender status. This while she laments all the “buzz about (his) future instead of the country’s”.

What you are pleased to call buzz, Ms. Dowd, is the sixty-cycle hum of the runway spotlights you dream of, not a by-product of the Senator’s work. (Unless of course it is indeed seminated by the Senator’s advisors and handlers - in which case, well, you’ve been played, haven't you?)

Whence come this wave of sob-sister (and sob-brother) columnists who can't seem to find a way to progress past their own adolescent obsessions? And why do they feel compelled to project these inane My Secret Diary musings on their (presumed) adult readers?

The editors and writers of Lifestyle sections and publications (such as that Washington Post fashion reporter The Dowd cites as some sort significant signifier of at the start of her column) can at least claim with some legitimacy that “that’s what our readers want.” But what is this sort of hollow puff doing posing as serious political commentary opposite the Editorials of the new York Times?

What is this paper peddling these days?


FYC
06.11.02

OUR MEMORIAL COMPLEX 01
 

The projected cost of building the World Trade Center memorial complex at ground zero has soared to nearly $1 billion, according to the most authoritative estimate to date

                  ... New York Times, May 5, 2006

And just how long before it's one-and-a-quarter billion?
Orne-and-a-half? (or two, maybe - just ask Boston about THE BIG DIG)?

Unless we suddenly, somehow, miraculously discover in ourselves a previously unsuspected capacity for restraint
And bring it in for something like a mere five hundred million

But, really, at this point why bother at all?
Don't we already have all the memorial we need?
After all, all things considered, what could be more fitting than that big, ugly, purposeless hole in the ground that expresses it all so well:

Loss and sorrow, catastrophe and chaos

And absence ...

   Absence of community
     Absence of hope
       Absnce of confidence
         Absence of purpose
           Absence of leadership
              Absence of vision

And maybe, somehow, somewhere, underneath all that ...

   The absence of those who died when the towers came down

Let their names be written in the dust

(Could any gleaming, glittering, shining, shimmering, heavn-tickling, eye-grabbing, heart-poking, budget-busting tower of political and commercial babble possibly give us a more illuminating memorial to that day? To that event?)

And, since despite all the rich, strong, proud, defiant and, most importantly, self-reassuring declarations that have filled the air since September 11, 2001, nothing pleases all -

   not all the families
     not all survivors
       not all politicians
         not all developers

(and most certainly not all the citizenry)

And, since it’s beginning to seem that nothing that doesn’t please everyone can be erected ...

Let there be nothing at all

   Nothing now
     Nothing to come
       Nothing ever

Except the Nothing already there

  Everyone will understand

     And understanding, maybe remember.

       And remembering, maybe feel it

         maybe as it should be felt.

The Hole is not just what we want, it seems

   It seems The Hole is just what we deserve


FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION
06.05.12

ID-IOCY AND ID-IOTS 01

A new website, ResearchID.org has been recently launched. This site will provide high-quality online resources covering Intelligent Design. As a research website, ResearchID.org is an on-line knowledgebase for theoretically, empirically, and technologically exploring Intelligent Design

IDEA Center PR release, July 23, 2006

Well, as the late Duke of Wellington proclaimed in another context, “Publish and be damned!”

Considering the state of ID "research" to date this little exercise should prove very interesting. Even the home base for the ID movement - The Discovery Institute of Seattle - mounts no scientific research whatsoever, no matter what labels it attaches to its outpourings of propaganda. Rather, it works primarily through PR releases and manuals of argumentation that spin misrepresentation after misrepresentation of current Advanced Evolution Theory (hereinafter “AET").

In every situation where the IDiots have attempted to demonstrate their arguments by actual evidence (as opposed to their more usual tactic  of trying to force the false dichotomy “if AET has error, then Intelligent Design MUST be true” on the debate) they have exposed themselves as fools and/or liars. So, I for one really look forward to the posting of their “research” where it will be openly exposed to the unmediated critical attentions of the scientific community.

At which point it will be torn to pieces.

One wonders why the IDiots have done this - they can't ALL be so obtuse as to completely miss the risk they are running by allowing their fantasies, obfuscations and pseudo-science to be put to real world tests - and put to those tests right out in the open. But on examination it becomes clear that this move is just an extension of their base strategy to date - creating the impression there's a scientific controversy over AET where there really is only a cultural and political) controversy over teaching it in public schools.

Further, every time the IDiots lose a public battle they gain more fuel for their argument - the one that stems from their real purpose - that it's just another case of what they are pleased to label "traditional values” being overthrown or suppressed by a vile, conspiracy of the atheistic, pseudo-Marxist, neo-Freudians who dominate the "godless liberal scientific elite".

Yawn.

In the scientific world itself there is no controversy over the basic elements of AET. Of course there is plenty of controversy over the details. Different schools of thought on many aspects of AET exist and openly and honestly contend with each other with great fervor over such REAL issues as the distinctions, differences and balances between “Punctuated Equilibrium” and a steady micro-evolutionary process - as well as over such matters as the exact manner and exact ramifications of allele variation.

But the “theory of ID” has neither foothold nor place in the legitimate scientific community. Nor has it the capacity to achieve either. Simply put, it just doesn't qualify as a SCIENTIFIC theory, insofar as it is untestable in the real (material) world - the base qualification for ANY scientific theory.

What can be expected from the works posted on this new site are the usual IDiocies. First, there will be a series of attacks on AET built around rhetorical maneuvering and misrepresentations of current AET (attacks usually based on outmoded works from the early 20th and late 19th centuries, for instance). Then, “papers” that are little more than extended argumentation from “common sense” - meaning, in this context, yet another reworking of William Paley’s scientifically and logically fallacious “argument from design”. Finally, there will be rhetoric masking as “research” on the subject of the repeatedly disproven dead horse “Irreducible Complexity”.

Unfortunately for the ID cabal, that last stalking horse is one which even its semi-intelligent designer, Michael Behe, was driven to admit failed as a theory in every laboratory test of the instances he used to support it. For that spectacle (his public flaying) see the transcript of his cross-examination in Kitzmiller v. Dover.

Yes, let there be a site for the posting of ID “research”. As Justice Brandeis said, ““Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” The more light shed on the odious mold of ID now blooming on the corpus of secondary public school education the better. It will not survive.

Post post post away, ye consummate IDiots. Publish AND perish. Make haste - and speed the day you are hoist by your own petard.

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STUPE OF THE WEEK
06.11.03

"I was tempted, but I never used it,"

The Reverend Ted Haggard, denying he repeatedly used the methamphetamine he repeatedly denied he got from Mike Jones, the male prostitute he repatedly denied he repeatedly had sex with during the numerous meetings he repeatedly cdenied took place..

Or, in Clinton-speak, “I never inhaled.”

 

STUPE OF THE WEEK
06.10.31

“They can make the polls say whatever they want ...”

Representative KATHERINE HARRIS, campaigning for U. S. Senate in Florida - quoted in The Washington Post, October 31, 2006

What the polls are saying of late is that Nelson is trampling her in the dust (Quinnipiac: Nelson 55%,Harris 31% a/o 10/31).

Harris herself also says she is writing a tell-all about the many people who have betrayed her - beginning with her own staff, followed by then republican Party “elite”. The Democrats come way behind.

One has to ask - does this particular enemies list by any chance include one Katherine Harris?

Pass the mirror, someone - the mirror mirror on the wall?

For The Washington Post article, see HERE


STUPE OF THE WEEK
06.10.30


“What is it that has made Iraq so hard to pacify, even after a swift and decisive military victory? In one word: diversity.”

Thomas Sowell, The Wall Street Journal, October 30, 2006

Conflating “diversity” (as in the current American concept of “respect for diversity”) with ethnic diversity itself (as in, the existence thereof), Sowell goes on to misconnect the former with the ongoing catastrophes that flowed out of the French and English attempts to reconstruct the de-Ottomanized Middle East by way of creative cartography (Treaty of Versailles, 1919).

And so, in one swell foop, this distinguished Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Intitution demonstrates a mind-boggling ignorance of history, culture, politics, war (ethnic and otherwise) and its causes - and, apparently, of reality itself.

For the full article see HERE


STUPE OF THE WEEK
0
6.10.2
2

“At the core of the letter ... are stories that are being told by priests who have been found guilty of sexually abusing minors”

Edward Cardinal Egan, Archdiocese of New York on the letter from disgruntled priests now circulating through the Diocese, critiquing his management and relations with his clergy.

In which His Grace announces to the world that: a) those who crticize him are child molestors; and, b) they have mounted a conspiracy that runs through his whole Diocese; and, c) he can't control i For the Priests' letter see HERE
For the full text of the Cardinal's response see HERE


STUPE OF THE WEEK
06.10.22

"He leads in a way that the good Lord tells him is best for our country,"

General Peter Pace, USMC - Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff on Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Just what we needed - more proof God is NOT on our side. 

STUPE OF THE WEEK
06.10.01

REPORTER: Congressman Reynolds put out a statement on Saturday saying that he told you in the spring. Do you think he's lying?

HASTERT: No, I'm not saying. I just don't recall him telling me that. If he would have told me that, he would have told me that in the context of maybe a half a dozen or a dozen other things. I don't remember that.

With which, our beloved Speaker gives every Republican up for reelection a perfect alibi for the Foley Scandal - just claim he told the speaker last week, last month, last year, last life ...

I mean, w hat can Hastert do now - start saying he somehow suddenly remembers everyone who DIDN'T tell him?




SING ALONG!
07.02.07

HELLO MULLAH
HELLO FATWAH
(to the tune of Alan Sherman's "Camp Granada")

Hello Mullah, hello Fatwah,
Here I am at Camp Guntana-.
Mo; it's very entertaining -
And they say I'll have great fun when they stop raining

Blows on testes, blows on kidneys;
While I'm begging on my kneesies.
Now I'm bleeding from my anus;
You don't know till you've been hot-wired there what pain is!

Call a pox down Mullah; Fatwah
On their cocks now, Mullah; Fatwah
Them till they lie rotting
There with their dogs and rutting
With their females who are slutting
For all the world to see on digi-camerah!

May the curse of Abu Graibah
On their heads be - that's my Fatwah;
They have sown it, may they reap it!
Preomise FREEDOM tro us? This aint how you keep it.


PEN & PENCIL 01
07.03.23

So, anyway, The New Yorker has been running this cartoon-caption contest [click here to check the contest] for about two years now, and the past few months I’ve been entering it pretty regularly. But for reasons that escape me entirely I have not been winning every week.

Clearly, the fix is in.

But just cause I'm not getting my just due from the higher beings who dwell on Cartoon Parnassus doesnlt mean YOU can't thrill to my insightful, incisive applications of le mot juste to the work of some of today's’ finest comic graphic artists.

Click HERE for my versions



SING ALONG!
07.02.16


GROUND CONTROL
(to the tune of David bowie's "Space Oddity)

Ground control to Crazy Mom
Ground control to Crazy Mom
Grab your mace your wig and put your diaper on

Ground control to Crazy Mom!
Commencing countdown, get it on!
Check obsession and may odd's love be with you

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five,
Four, three, two, one, meltdown

This is ground control to Crazy Mom!
You’ve really lost your grip
And the papers want to know whose Depends you wear
Now it's time to leave the real world if you dare

This is Crazy Mom to ground control
I'm putting on my wig
And I'm acting in a most peculiar way
And this astronaut looks different today

For here
Am I sitting in my car
Far above my mind
And love has made me blue
but there's something I can do

And I drive nine hundred pee-soaked miles
I'm feeling very ill
And I think my spaced brain knows which way to go
Tell my Bill I love him very much he knows

Ground control to Crazy Mom
Your circuit's blown, theres something wrong
Can you hear us, Crazy Mom?
Can you hear us, Crazy Mom?
Can you hear us, Crazy Mom?
Can you....

Here am I floating round my little cell
Far above the floor
This astronaut is blue
And there's nothing she can do.

dedicated to Capt. Nowak, USN, ex-Astronaut



THIS JUST IN
07.01.30

Presidente Fidel Castro still dead at 80.


07.01.23

The triumph of the absence of style over the absence of substance.

George W. Bush's 7th State of the Union Address ...



RANDOM ACCESS 01
07.01.23

LITTLE JIMMY AND THE GIFT OF VISION

Suddenly it was Announcements Season in Perfecttown, and Little Jimmy was going to and fro in the village square on Moonless Midnight and marching up and down in it - with a bright little lantern on his cap and a loud little drum on his hip that he beat and beat and beat with his little sticks.

And then came the all the people of Perfecttown, tumbling from their beds, stumbling out their doors, grumbling into the streets and gathering around Little Jimmy demanding what the hell is wrong what the hell is happening what the hell is all the damn noise about.

I can see in the dark, Little Jimmy announced triumphantly, I can see in the dark!

If you can see in the dark you damn little punk, Exasperated Old Guy demanded while Fat Foot stamped Little Jimmy's little drum flat and Big Mouth broke Little Jimmy's little drumsticks into little pieces and threw them down the sewer, then what in hell is the damn lantern for.

So you blind fools won't bump into me in the dark, Little Jimmy explained politely.

Oh how they beat him; they beat him with sticks.



2006's STUPE OF THE YEAR!
06.01.01 - 06.12.31


YOU!

(as TIME magazine so eloquently put it)

I mean, c'mon, really. Take a look around. Take a look at this ... mess.

Whose fault IS all this?

(this being a democracy after all)

But it isn't that simple, you say? It doesn't work right, you say?  It doesn't work the way it should?.

Alright then ... whose fault is that?

(this being a democracy after all)



RANDOM ACCESS
07.01.25

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE DEFINED

Over the morning coffee and pastry, reading THE ONION AV section's review of CATCH AND RELEASE, trying to follow the unexpressed line of reasoning that takes the reviewer from an honest and legitimate contempt for its plethora of base American romantic comedy film tropes-of-the-day to a not-grudging-enough disingenuously semi-masked underlying admiration (read: unalloyed unexamined comfort-pleasure) for those very same stomach-churning demographic-sucking elements - even as that particular deliberate but thin plane of thought floating on the top of my conscious process starts breaking up like a globally-warmed Ice-Cap by way of a rising current of thought that insists on addressing the question of whether the United States Army Air Forces strategic bombing campaign of 1943-1945 might better have been re-directed to maximum close bombing support of the ground campaigns in western and southern Europe, resulting in a more effective strategy for engaging, defeating and breaking the Third Reich on the Western Front - while at the same time desperately trying to suppress an endless round of “Lero Lero Lillibullero, Lillibullero bullen a la” that has been dancing through my head since I woke up this noon.


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