Category: Uncategorized

I don’t know why this amuses me so much, but it does:

One of science’s most puzzling mysteries – the disappearance of the Neanderthals – may have been solved. Modern humans ate them, says a leading fossil expert. The controversial suggestion follows publication of a study in the Journal of Anthropological Sciences about a Neanderthal jawbone apparently butchered by modern humans. Now the leader of the research team says he believes the flesh had been eaten by humans, while its teeth may have been used to make a necklace.

Now that I think about it, it’s probably because it tends to destroy Rousseau’s concept of the Noble Savage while simultaneously illustrating the way scientists are reluctant to follow the evidence when it doesn’t support their preconceived notions. I rather enjoyed the one scientist’s theory that maybe someone just found the jawbone and turned it into jewelry for some inexplicable reason, although it would have been much more amusing if he’d theorized a series of shaving accidents instead. Neanderthals were rather hairy, after all.

It strikes me that I really do rather better science than the average scientist. After all, how many scientists can claim to be as demonstrably multi-disciplined as the Japanese scientist who developed Dark Vapor Theory in astrophysics while concocting Evolutionary Stable Strategies in biology in the same year? When you’re an Internet Superintelligence, every year is an Anno Mirabilis.

The Flaw in the Ointment

According to the modern Friedman-Keynes synthesis, there are two tools in the hands of most national authorities that permit them to attempt fine-tuning the economy. The first tool, monetary policy, is the bailiwick of the central bank, which in the United States is known as the Federal Reserve. It has great influence over interest rates, which represent the price of money. Increasing the interest rate is supposed to force the economy to contract, while lowering it is believed to encourage the economy to grow.

“There is the possibility, for the reasons discussed above, that, after the rate of interest has fallen to a certain level, liquidity preference may become virtually absolute in the sense that almost everyone prefers cash to holding a debt which yields so low a rate of interest. In this event the monetary authority would have lost effective control over the rate of interest. But whilst this limiting case might become practically important in future, I know of no example of it hitherto.”

– John Maynard Keynes, “The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money”

In which I consider the possibility of extending the reboot concept to SF/F literature:

There has been a lot of discussion, understandably, about the new Star Trek movie. Let me admit, first off, that I have seen very little Star Trek and what little I have seen I pretty much loathed and despised. (NB: I’m neither judging nor prosecuting here, merely expressing a personal opinion. Live long and prosper.) That being said, the talk about the so-called “rebooting” has me wondering why television and film are so prone to remakes while there appears to be no similar practice in literature.

I should be glad to hear of your candidates for rebooting. As for why I loathe Star Trek, it’s hard to know where to start. But I suppose the smug incoherence of a saga about a warship charged with peacefully enforcing the supremacy of its “tolerant” culture at laser point would be as good a place to start as any. I used to watch re-runs of the original series as a kid, but was deeply disappointed with TNG when it was launched.

Pravda criticizes American Marxism:

Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK’s Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our “wise” Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.

Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper…but a “freeman” whimper…. The proud American will go down into his slavery without a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.

It’s absolutely true. When I left more than 10 years ago, one of the first things I noticed was that despite the assumptions and surface appearances, one was actually more free in many European countries than in the United States. Even in corrupt Italy, one need not fear having one’s money arrested, for example, while US corporate tax rates are among the highest in the world these days. And the gulf between perception and reality has only widened in the intervening decade.

Jim Oliver repeatedly attempts to spam the comments with the following:

Score: Vox Popoli 1 Free Speech 0

Former Rules: you come in here slinging insults and acting disrespectfully, you will be treated with a contemptuous and derisive disdain.

As I said, how this blog deals with WBC will evidence much…

One of the regular posters on this site, WBC, so loves innocent children, that he is cruelly intending (anonymously) to cause 2 little girls lifelong pain as the grieve for there recently deceased Father. See WBCs post about Feminism. How this blog deals with this person will evidence much.

A very gentle man, with 2 lovely daughters hanged himself in the Virgin Islands a few weeks ago. Here’s a news story:

Francis was a blogger. Here is his profile: Francis left behind, among others, 2 lovely daughters. Here arei Francis’ comments on them, with their pics:

A blogger on this site WBC, and who lists this site on his blogger page wrote this undeniably revolting comment on Francis’ blog intending Francis’ family and young daughters would read it. After all, one intends the logical consequences of one’s actions. I post this referncing your rules: If you come in here slinging insults and acting disrespectfully, you will be treated with a contemptuous and derisive disdain …

Well, WBC ireferences this blog on his page:

Here are WBC’s anonymous comments on Francis’ blog, and my response.

WBC said…
Well, Francis, you did it. You somehow talked yourself into taking your own life. Quite frankly, I was stunned. For a day or so I refused to believe it, but as the facts became known, I began to understand a number of things:

1. You really weren’t that intelligent – merely clever;
2. You were very good at false bravado;
3. You were disgustingly self absorbed;
4. You reduced self-pity to an art form; and
5. Your intellectual dishonesty caught up with you – you finally bought your own bullshit.

I’m sorry Francis – I really am. I am working on forgiving you, with modest success. And I am praying earnestly for the repose of your soul – something you insisted you didn’t have. But it is difficult to maintain a sense of respect for your intellect. Whatever abyss you were staring into was of your own construction – you dug it consciously and systematically. For some reason you chose nihilism as a way to view the world. And after choosing to believe there was no truth, you killed yourself because you wanted truth to exist.

What foolish, shallow, ignorant, crap!!!!

So what do you think now? Were you hoping for oblivion? Did you think you were making some sort of a statement? Did you think it was noble? Did it never occur to you that you were demonstrating a selfish, gutless stupidity?

I earnestly pray that the Lord has prepared a means for your salvation – the alternative is too horrible to contemplate. The tragedy is that the Lord revealed Himself to you during your lifetime and you not only chose to reject this truth, you chose to scorn and ridicule anyone who saw and believed.

Still laughing? Still sneering?

12:02 PM
Jazzbeaux said…
Anonymous WBC – I spent several hours last week trying to get Francis’ Mother and Father to read his blog. I wanted them to be reminded of Francis’ humor, his kindness, and his love.

Now they get to read you.

Anonymous WBC; Francis never needed your approval; Francis’ does not need your forgiveness; and Francis does not need your prayers.

You criticize Francis, apparently in the name of “Christ,” as “foolish, shallow, ignorant…selfish, gutless stupid…”

Anonymous WBC, when you wrote these words (on Francis’ blog, not yours) you intended that those who love Francis, including his daughters Thea and Nina, would read them.

Anonymous WBC, in so doing you have proven two quite remarkable things:

1) that, even with the ultimate last word, Anonymous WBC actually loses his last debate with Francis; and

2) that Francis, a self-described athiest, yet full of grace, will be welcomed by any God in Heaven; while you, apparently a self-defined “Christian” will be (I believe the current phrase is) “left behind.”

Anonymous WBC, we all die.

Francis, bless his heart, merely chose when.

After this, Anonymous WBC, you should try to emulate our friend Francis; as, should you not, it appears very likely that you will be the only person at your funeral.

Yours Publicly,
Jim Oliver

Let me get this straight. Mr. Oliver is so hopelessly clueless that he doesn’t realize that the rules of this blog have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with what other people might happen to do elsewhere on the Internet. I am not responsible for my readers, I have no idea who most of them are, and to be blunt, I don’t care how they may happen to behave in the publicity of other people’s blogs. It’s how they behave here that matters, and Mr. Oliver has demonstrated that while he may have read the rules, he clearly doesn’t understand them. A few points:

1. None of this has anything to do with me, Vox Popoli or free speech. There is no free speech here, there is only speech that I tolerate. I do happen to tolerate a broader spectrum of speech than the vast majority of blogs, but I don’t permit strange and obsessed people to span the comments. Knock it off. The main reason I posted this was to point out the copious flaws in your reasoning.

2. It seems to have escaped Mr. Oliver that WBC can’t possibly cause those two young girls anywhere nearly as much pain their supposedly “gentle father” did. Since I grew up on the same street as a family where the older son committed suicide, I suspect their views of their father’s choice of when to die will run rather closer to WBC’s than yours.

3. WBC sounds a lot more like someone who knew the dead atheist and is angry at him for selfishly killing himself than a sadist who wishes to obliquely torment anyone, let alone the suicide’s family.

4. Your conception of the dead man’s fate bears absolutely no resemblance to any actual theology. How, one wonders, could an anonymous comment on a dead man’s web site possibly prove anything about who will, or who will not, enter into the kingdom of Heaven? There are many gods, the Christian God among them, who make it very clear that they will not welcome one who has rejected them, and rejected the very gift of life itself, into their presence.

5. If you’re an atheist and you kill yourself, you should probably expect people to conclude that your action is evidence that atheists are unhappy, angry, nihilistic individuals. This is certainly not true of all atheists, given that most of them appear to be capable of living out their days without offing themselves, but the astute observer will probably notice that a statistical predilection for suicide tends to fly in the face of the Atheists are Happy! propaganda put out by American Atheists. So, atheists, if you want to score a point against those stupid Christians, don’t kill yourself!

6. If the auto-deceased was correct, he was merely a specific collection of atoms. He arranged to disperse those atoms into different patterns. Why should this dispersal be of any concern to WBC, the related atom collections or anyone else? I, for one, can testify that it doesn’t trouble me in the slightest.

7. Learn to HTML link. And spell.

8. This blog has no problem whatsoever with WBC. Whoever he is. It do
es have a problem with you at the moment. Keep this discussion here on this thread and it won’t.

In summary, Mr. Oliver, you appear to be a rather stupid and socially autistic individual whose reading comprehension and logical capacities are as deficient as your theology. I won’t pretend to be able to clock down slow enough to understand what your point in spamming the comments here was supposed to be, but on the slim chance that doing so might see some sense slapped into you by the regulars here, I have permitted you an unedited platform. Any comments you might have on the matter belong here and nowhere else on this blog.

The expert economists think Germany is being punished for its failure to stimulate:

Germany’s economy shrank by 3.8pc in the first three months of the year – a record contraction that is almost double the fall of Britain’s gross domestic product in the first quarter. The figures sparked attacks on Germany’s government, which has repeatedly shown reluctance to bail out either its economy or financial system. In figures described by economists as “disastrous”, Eurostat also reported that Italy shrank by 2.4pc, Austria and the Netherlands by 2.8pc, Spain by 1.8pc and France by 1.2pc. The statistics underline the fact that although Britain’s financial system was badly hit in the early months of the crisis, the UK’s economy has not fared as badly as its continental rivals, contracting by 1.9pc in the first quarter….

Economists said that the country’s reluctance to move quickly to cut taxes and raise spending was largely to blame.

Now, let’s take a little look at what the experts very recently said was taking place in the Eurozone.

-1.3 percent: Q4-2008 Expected
-1.5 percent: Q4-2008 Actual
-1.6 percent: Q4-2008 Revised

-2.0 percent: Q1-2009 Expected
-2.5 percent: Q1-2009 Actual

-0.6 percent: Q2-2009 Expected

Keep in mind that the Europeans report their numbers on a quarter-by-quarter basis rather than an annual one, so that 3.8 percent contraction in Germany is what would be reported in the USA as a -6.9 percent annual growth rate. In other words, being off by half a percent is actually a larger error than it looks. Based on what I’ve heard, Q2 will end up being worse than Q1, which leads one to wonder: if the experts can’t even tell if things are improving or getting substantially worse, why should political leaders follow their policy prescriptions?

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn’t seen it).Frankly, I’m shocked that such a gay-friendly movie was marketed to impressionable young children in the late 70’s. Courtesy of Dr. Read, who, as is his wont, sees it in the context of an ambient supersaturation spectrum. Which, to me, really sounds as if it should be the name of a complete digital collection of The Orb.

It’s not just Derb and me saying that college is a huge scam, even college advisors are beginning to admit it:

I’m an academic advisor in natural sciences at a 4-year state school; day after weary day I advise students with bad grades who have unrealistic expectations and cannot accept the fact that — contrary to what they’ve been told all of their lives — they cannot be a dentist or doctor. Virtually every day I advise one or more students with “D” averages in math, chemistry, and biology who persist in the belief that they will get into medical school; all the while accumulating debt and wasting time. I don’t even really have the hope that one day they will wake up; I forget who said that “most people can’t stand too much reality.”

I also see student after student who has finished one expensive degree and immediately started on another — often requiring 60+ hours to finish. Also, a great many — indeed, most — have no idea what they will do with the degree; indeed, the utility of the degree is a secondary consideration to having the degree itself…. Other than engineering and business degrees, most college BSs and BAs are worthless.

Actually, I’d say that business degrees are worthless too. Nursing and technical two-year degrees, on the other hand, tend to be a lot more worthwhile. Regarding the usual defense that the purpose of college is learning how to learn, a conversation with just about any college student will demonstrate the complete spuriousness of that argument. Over the last seven years, the most pig-ignorant, clueless, and illogical critics from whom I have heard have usually been college students. And the very worst of them are graduate students, whose complete ignorance of the real world is only exceeded by their blind faith in their “education”.

I understand that the HR departments of the world often require an education ticket. But that doesn’t mean that the sheepskin-sellers aren’t scam artists, it just means that the great college scam enjoys external support.

This article might help explain why financial coverage of economic events is so atrocious:

If there was anybody who should have avoided the mortgage catastrophe, it was I. As an economics reporter for The New York Times, I have been the paper’s chief eyes and ears on the Federal Reserve for the past six years. I watched Alan Greenspan and his successor, Ben S. Bernanke, at close range. I wrote several early-warning articles in 2004 about the spike in go-go mortgages. Before that, I had a hand in covering the Asian financial crisis of 1997, the Russia meltdown in 1998 and the dot-com collapse in 2000. I know a lot about the curveballs that the economy can throw at us.

Obviously, this ace New York Times journalist didn’t learn a thing about economics in covering those events. It’s also a salient lesson in the entitlement mentality that afflicts so much of the American upper middle class.

Yet another argument for breaking the government monopoly on delivering the mail:

Postal workers are refusing to deliver British National Party election leaflets because they object to its “right-wing rubbish”. About 100 workers in the West Country have told union leaders that they will not carry the leaflets, which bear an anti-immigration message.

These postal workers should be fired immediately for attempting to exert political control over the mail. First, the idea of a “conscience clause” when it comes to mail delivery is absurd. They’re being asked to deliver the freaking mail, not commit murder. If they don’t deliver the mail, they are without value and merit no pay. This is political correctness run completely amok; if permitted it could completely destroy the remnants of the British parliamentary system. What are they doing reading the bloody mail in the first place anyhow? Should prudish postal employees also have the right to refuse to deliver love letters of which they don’t approve?

Also, as Daniel Hannan and others have pointed out, the British National Party cannot reasonably be describe as right-wing rubbish. Its sensible attitude towards immigration and the EU notwithstanding, its platform is mostly LEFT-WING rubbish.