Category: Uncategorized

The benefits of free trade

Do let’s hear more about how wonderful free trade is and what an intrinsic benefit it must be to everyone:

Last year, the U.S. Navy bought 59,000 microchips for use in everything from missiles to transponders and all of them turned out to be counterfeits from China. Wired reports the chips weren’t only low-quality fakes, they had been made with a “back-door” and could have been remotely shut down at any time. If left undiscovered the result could have rendered useless U.S. missiles and killed the signal from aircraft that tells everyone whether it’s friend or foe.

Apparently foreign chip makers are often better at making cheap microchips and U.S. defense contractors are loathe to pass up the better deal.

The important lesson here is that economics are not and cannot be the sole factor taken into consideration when one is contemplating the pros and cons of free trade. The fact that there is no blanket economic justification for free trade is an entirely separate matter.

HT: The Market Ticker

The Burning of Thomas Ball

Dr. Helen writes about the lack of media response to Thomas Ball’s suicide:

There are some pundits and commenters who have said that Ball does not deserve any compassion or that he should hardly be the poster boy for men’s rights because he may or may not have been jerked around by the family court. He did slap his then four-year-old daughter, giving her a cut on the lip, when she refused to obey him after three verbal warnings, etc. This isn’t great, but it doesn’t warrant jail time, arrest, or having one’s children taken away. If it does, there are so many women out there who qualify for the same treatment, I shudder to think about it.

But whether you think Ball is a good man, a bad man, or a crazy man doesn’t really matter. What matters is that Ball’s death — and the reaction to it — should serve as a wake-up call to how men and boys are being treated in a society that devalues their very existence. Males commit suicide at much higher rates than women and no one cares; they are treated unfairly by courts and no one bats an eye. They are abused by the women in their life and people say “tough shit.” So they ratchet up the game a little and start setting themselves on fire to get some attention to their cause and, once again, the media and society react with: “So what?”

Can we really stand by and do nothing about the treatment of men and boys in our society much longer? When I look at the picture of Mr. Ball in flames on the steps of that courthouse, I think the only answer is a resounding: “Hell, no!”

As I previously wrote, I think Ball’s chosen form of suicide was a relatively futile one and I suspect the media would have paid considerably more attention if he had instead set one or more of the many cogs in the family court system on fire. Like every other bureaucratic industry, the abuses of the family court system are not going to be ended by those who presently perpetrate them; there are too many parties with a vested interest in the continuation of the system. Since not only the system, but the law itself has been corrupted, the only possible solutions have to be external. The ideal outcome is the most likely one, which is that the family court system will collapse naturally with the rest of the bureaucratic system when extend-and-pretend finally runs out of new government debt to keep it going.

However, it doesn’t take an expert on the Tamil Tigers or the Sendero Luminoso to note that if a portion of the estimated 5,000 annual divorce-related male suicides ever become murder-suicides, this would likely trigger a sudden and urgent impetus towards revision of the mechanics of the current system.

Ball’s self-immolation illustrates the intrinsic problem with socially engineered injustice. While injustice is always wrong, it can at least be socially stable when directed against minorities or the unproductive. Targeted injustice against the productive majority whose labor is required for social survival is downright madness. Even if we set aside the interests of the unfortunate Mr. Ball, who benefits from his incindiary death? His ex-wife will receive no alimony. His children will receive no child support and will likely grow up with more than their fair share of social pathologies common among the fatherless. The state will receive no more taxes and the economy will no longer benefit from either his labor or his consumption.

And finally, as others have pointed out, if slapping a child somehow justifies burning at the stake, logic dictates that 21st century America will have to burn more women to death than the witch hunters of the 16th and 17th century ever did.

Where is the REAL birth certificate

The electronic document released by the White House is confirmed to be a forgery:

Bitmap text versus antialiasing text: Notice the bitmap X checkbox in question compared to the antialiased X checkbox in question “e” – major inconsistency.

Additionally, the checkboxes are slightly different widths and positioned differently. (Pixels of checkboxes on the bottom right overlap line pixels below, almost as if the boxes were copied and pasted and manually positioned).

Some letter characters are identical, pixel for pixel, almost as if they were copied and pasted and then moved into position. For example, the lowercase “i” in the word Inside is identical to the first “i” in judicial. There are many similar identical instances as there are dissimilar typesetting examples of different fonts – both suggesting compilation of a document digitally.

Irregular typesetting spacing which is not consistent with proportional spacing used by computers or monospacing used by typewriters in 1961 – but is consistent with copy and pasting and moving letters around. Example: The word “Yes,” which has too much space between “Y” and “e” and not enough space between “e” and “s.”

“A normal document scanned and saved as a PDF file would not display these inconsistencies unless the document had been digitally altered,” she said. “A digitally altered document is by definition a manufactured document, or in everyday parlance – a forgery.”

“My guess is that the creator of this document was inexperienced when it comes to a multitude of concepts in using Adobe software,” Zebest said. “Whoever forged the Obama birth certificate might have known enough to be dangerous, but not enough to know how to cover up their tracks.”

I find it remarkable that the White House is releasing forged documents and the mainstream media still has absolutely no interest in the story despite the fact that the release of the document disproved nearly all of their previous defenses of Mr. Obama/Soetoro/Soebarkah’s presidential eligibility. No doubt they’ll all be taken completely by surprise when Obama declines the Democratic nomination for “health reasons” or “to spend more time with his family”.

We don’t have a lapdog media any more, but one that sees its primary role as acting as the federal government’s defense attorney.

Science is inferior to Revelation

If one wishes to compare the relative effectiveness of Science and Revelation, it is first necessary to be sure one is comparing apples with apples and oranges with oranges:

ONE of the great strengths of science is that it can fix its own mistakes. “There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong,” the astrophysicist Carl Sagan once said. “That’s perfectly all right: it’s the aperture to finding out what’s right. Science is a self-correcting process.”

If only it were that simple. Scientists can certainly point with pride to many self-corrections, but science is not like an iPhone; it does not instantly auto-correct. As a series of controversies over the past few months have demonstrated, science fixes its mistakes more slowly, more fitfully and with more difficulty than Sagan’s words would suggest. Science runs forward better than it does backward.

Why? One simple answer is that it takes a lot of time to look back over other scientists’ work and replicate their experiments. Scientists are busy people, scrambling to get grants and tenure. As a result, papers that attract harsh criticism may nonetheless escape the careful scrutiny required if they are to be refuted…..

Even when scientists rerun an experiment, and even when they find that the original result is flawed, they still may have trouble getting their paper published. The reason is surprisingly mundane: journal editors typically prefer to publish groundbreaking new research, not dutiful replications.

In other words, real Science in practice is very different than ideal Science in theory. This is not a surprise. But it inevitably leads to the observation that if we are to compare Science and Revelation at all, we must compare theory with theory and practice with practice. The asserted superiority of Science is based on its supposedly self-correcting nature. But science that is never replicated is not going to be corrected, therefore Science in practice cannot be justified by this non-existent self-correction.

Furthermore, so long as one appeals to this nonexistent self-correction, one is appealing to an ideal Science in theory. But to this, one must compare a similarly ideal Revelation in theory. And, obviously, a direct line of information from the Creator of the Universe is far superior to a mere repetition of a scientific experiment; in this specific case, a literal appeal to legitimate divine authority is no logical fallacy. From the Platonic perspective, it is clear that ideal Science is inferior to ideal Revelation.

The remaining question is if the flawed version of Science as it is actually practiced, without self-correction, is superior to whatever flawed versions of Revelation are practiced, to the extent we can even hope to distinguish between the real and the flawed forms of the latter.

As for the appeal to Carl Sagan’s reasoning, we need merely note that Sagan is know to be either a historical illiterate or a deeply dishonest science propagandist; in either case, one has little choice but to dismiss his judgment with regards to the subject.

The show unicorn

Is anyone still buying into the public Obama being sold by the media?

The conventional wisdom, of course, is that Wall Street has turned its back on Mr. Obama out of frustration with his so-called antibusiness rhetoric and “fat cat” comments about bankers. But Wall Street’s absence may be more about optics — the way things appear— than reality. Behind the scenes, it seems that many bankers are not running away from the president as quickly as some might suspect.

Have you ever noticed how Obama’s defenders always point to his public rhetoric rather than his actions in describing him? We are still supposed to believe that he is an anti-bank Christian opponent of homogamy, yet all of his supporters assume – and his actions more or less support – the idea that he is a secular homophile and the fully owned property of Wall Street… and that’s giving Mr. Soebarkah the benefit of the doubt and ignoring the very real possibility that he is a Muslim on the down low.

If one considers what eventually came out concerning the shenanigans of JFK’s presidency, one has to conclude there will be more than a few serious humdingers once the real story of Obama’s one term finds its way to the public thirty years from now.

Another round of Let’s Play Guess the Race

This round’s news comes from Philadelphia:

A WOMAN’S leg was broken and several other people were injured Saturday night when a large group of teens accosted pedestrians in Spring Garden, police and witnesses said. Philadelphia police responded to two reports of pedestrians being assaulted by a large group of young people along Broad Street about 9:30 p.m….

According to the police report of the incident, Guendelsberger was “jumped” by 30 to 40 men who punched and kicked her numerous times. Police said they checked the area for surveillance but had no luck.

So here’s the question. Were the “young people” involved:

a) White
b) Hispanic
c) Black
d) Asian

Read the article as closely as you like! You won’t find any clues there! For a bonus point, guess the a) number of arrests and b) the race of the “unruly teenagers” at a street fair in Cleveland.

About 40 Cleveland Heights police officers had to control a crowd of unruly teenagers in the last hour of the Coventry Street Arts Fair Sunday, an event hat closes Coventry Road every summer from Mayfield Road to Euclid Heights Boulevard. There were no reports of injuries, but Cleveland Heights police were expected later today to release the number of arrests made Sunday.

One seriously wonders who the morons in the media think they are kidding. As any horror director knows, the monster people imagine is always scarier than the one on screen.

The socialisthistorical end game

VDH notes the historical pattern of corrosive parasitism:

History is not kind to such collective states of mind. Pay an Athenian in the fifth century BC a subsidy to go to the theater; and in the fourth century BC he is demanding such pay to vote in the assembly as well — and there is not to be a third century free democratic polis. Extend to a Roman in the first century BC a small grain dole, and by the late first century AD he cannot live without a big dole, free entertainment in a huge new Coliseum, and disbursements of free coined money. Let the emperor Justinian try cutting back the bloated bureaucracy in sixth century AD Constantinople and he wins the Nika riots that almost destroy a civilization from within even as it is beset by hosts of foreign enemies.

Social Security started out as a few dollars a month to the elderly, in their last two or three years of life, to ensure that they could feed themselves without the indignity of borrowing from their children. It has morphed into someone living well for twenty years on far more money taken than was put in — or a young family with a dyslexic child on “disability” for life. To cut any for the latter would cause far more riot and mayhem than not to have given the former anything in the first place — despite the fact that the 21st century recipient was far less needy and got far more than the early 20th century recipient who needed more and got less.

VDH points out that there isn’t actually anything properly socialist about the nominal socialists who build their careers on transferring wealth from one party to another. And as we’ve seen demonstrated very clearly since 2008, the banks and large corporations are every bit as willing to play the “socialist” game as any labor union. It’s all about utilizing government power to forcibly redistribute tax income, and this is an old, old game that long precedes Marxism or any other form of socialism.

In the end, it is merely a rancid form of political corruption, and one that Aristotle would recognize as readily as Julius Caesar. In fact, Caesar may well have been the original Too Big To Fail, as one technique he used to guarantee continued support from the moneyed class was the gargantuan debts he incurred as he worked his way up the cursus honorum. His creditors knew that if he did not succeed to the Praetorship or the Consulship, they would never see their loans repaid, and so they were forced to remain solidly behind him.

Societies have a life cycle that is as obvious to the educated observer as the difference between a young Sports Illustrated model and a decrepit Social Security recipient. What we’re seeing in the USA and other Western countries isn’t progress, it is straightforward and unmistakable decline.

WND column

Republicans and Demon Debt

Are they completely incompetent, or are they merely Democrats in disguise? That is the question one is forced to ask of Republican politicians on a depressingly regular basis. I tend to incline toward the latter position, since I see the two “parties” as being rival factions of the same bipartisan ruling party, but every now and then, there is evidence that points to the distinct possibility that Republicans are simply stupid. Consider this excerpt that the Fraters Libertas quoted from “Decision Points,” George W. Bush’s book about his presidency.

I adjourned the meeting and walked across the hallway to the Oval Office. Josh Bolten, Counselor Ed Gillespie, and Dana Perion, my talented and effective press secretary, followed me in. Ben’s historical comparison was still echoing in my mind.

“If we’re really looking at another Great Depression,” I said, “you can be damn sure I’m going to be Roosevelt, not Hoover.”

One would have thought – one would have hoped – that both the president of the United States and the chairman of the Federal Reserve would know that Herbert Hoover was not the laissez-faire “liquidationist” that the historically illiterate (or at least those who have heard of him) usually believe the 31st president to have been.

He drank the red Kool-Aid

I had no idea that the Original Cyberpunk was such a Schwarzenegger enthusiast. Or so well-versed on vampires. Although, I have to admit, I’ve never been to a more electrifying movie on opening night than Total Recall. The mood was more like a rock concert than a movie, and when the screen went red, then flashed SCHWARZENEGGER in giant white letters across the screen, the entire crowd just roared. I’ve never seen anything like it before or since. Pity the movie was merely okay.

Umberto Eco on Stephen Hawking

I was thinking about addressing Stephen Hawking’s absurd new book, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to bother even picking it up, let alone reading it. Fortunately, Umberto Eco was willing to do the dirty work for us:

Philosophy is not Star Trek

In “The Republic” of last April 6th, there appeared a preview of the book by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design, introduced with a subtitle that more or less reprised a passage from the text: “Philosophy is dead, only physics can explain the cosmos”. The death of philosophy has been announced on various occasions and therefore the announcement made little impression, but it seemed to me it must be balderdash to have claimed that a genius like Hawking would say such a thing. To be sure that “The Republic” had not erroneously summarized the book, I went and bought it, and the reading confirmed my suspicions.

The book appears to have been written by two hands, although in the case of Hawking the expression is sadly metaphorical because, as we know, his limbs do not respond to the commands of his exceptional brain. However, the book is fundamentally a work of the second author, whose qualifications are described on the cover as having written some episodes of “Star Trek”. In the book, one can see the beautiful illustrations that appear to be conceived for a children’s encyclopedia from a bygone time; they are colorful and engaging, but do not actually explain anything about the complex physical, mathematical, and cosmological theorems they are supposed to illustrate. Perhaps it is not prudent to trust one’s destiny to the philosophy of individuals with rabbit ears.(1)

The work begins with the fixed affirmation that philosophy no longer has anything to say and only physics can explain:

1)How we can comprehend the world in which we find ourselves.
2)The nature of reality.
3)If the universe had need of a creator.
4)Why there is something instead of nothing.
5)Why we exist.
6)Why this particular set of laws exists instead of some other.

As you see these are typical philosophical questions, but it must be admitted that the book demonstrates how physics can, in some ways, serve to answer the last four, which appear to be the most philosophical of all.

The problem is that in order to attempt to answer the last four questions, it is necessary to have answered the first two. It is those questions which, in a large way, are what one requires in order to say that something is real and if we know the real world as it is. Perhaps you will recall from your philosophical studies at school that we understand by attribute what the intellect perceives of a substance,(2) it is something outside of ourselves. (Woody Allen adds: and if so, why are they making all that noise?) Either we are Berkeleyans(3) or, as Putnam said, brains in a vat.

Well then, the fundamental answers that this book puts forward are exquisitely philosophic and without these philosophical answers not even the physicist could say “because he knows” and “what he knows”. In fact, the authors speak of “a realism dependent on the models”, that is, they assume that “other concepts of reality independent of description and theory do not exist”. Therefore “other theories can satisfactorily describe the same phenomenon by means of different conceptual structures” and all that we can perceive, we know, and we say of reality depends on the interaction between our models and that thing which is outside but that we know only due to our perceptive organs and our brain.

The more suspicious among the readers will have already recognized a Kantian phantasm, but it is clear the two authors are proposing that which in philosophy is called “Holisticism” and by others “internal realism”. As you see, it is not a treatise of physical discoveries, but of philosophical assumptions, that stand to sustain and legitimize the research of the physicist – those which, when he is a good physicist, can only address the problem of the philosophical foundations of his own methods. We already knew, we were already familiar with these extraordinary revelations, (evidently due to Mlodinow and to the company of Star Trek), for “in antiquity there was an instinct to attribute the violent actions of nature to an Olympus of displeased or malevolent gods”. By gosh, and then, by golly.(4)

(1) “Orecchie da leprotto”. Literally, “the ears of the hare”. I’m not familiar with this phrase, which could mean anything from implying that the two men are asses (think Pinocchio) to a leafy green vegetable found in salads. Or it may simply be referring to Mlodinow’s background in television. Seeing as it’s Eco, one hesitates to guess. But one thing is certain; it’s not a compliment.
(2) I think this refers to Spinoza’s philosophy of mind. Some school. But do they know how to put condoms on bananas?
(3) Philosopher George Berkeley, who argued against rational materialism and considered the idea of “matter” to be unjustified and self-contradictory.
(4) “Perdinci e poi perbacco”. It’s an Italian expression that doesn’t necessarily translate well, but indicates a lack of surprise. The sense of dismissive sarcasm should be readily apparent.

As my Italian is better described as “conversational” rather than “fluent”, don’t put too much confidence in my translation. The four italicized notes are mine and therefore may be incorrect. Regardless, it should be clear that Eco is describing a material example of how, once more, science has climbed to the summit of another intellectual mountain, only to find the philosophers already there.