introverts our under utilized resource, winter western snow wallpaper, title sequence girl with the dragon tattoo

This brings up one of my long cherished armchair beliefs that cultural and political power leans a certain way because of certain types of personalities and how society rewards those types – The Power of Introverts: A Manifesto for Quiet Brilliance

Do you enjoy having time to yourself, but always feel a little guilty about it? Then Susan Cain’s “Quiet : The Power of Introverts” is for you. It’s part book, part manifesto. We live in a nation that values its extroverts – the outgoing, the lovers of crowds – but not the quiet types who change the world. She recently answered questions from Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook.

[  ]…Cook: How does this cultural inclination affect introverts?

Cain: Many introverts feel there’s something wrong with them, and try to pass as extroverts. But whenever you try to pass as something you’re not, you lose a part of yourself along the way. You especially lose a sense of how to spend your time. Introverts are constantly going to parties and such when they’d really prefer to be home reading, studying, inventing, meditating, designing, thinking, cooking…or any number of other quiet and worthwhile activities.

According to the latest research, one third to one half of us are introverts – that’s one out of every two or three people you know. But you’d never guess that, right? That’s because introverts learn from an early age to act like pretend-extroverts.

Cook: Is this just a problem for introverts, or do you feel it hurts the country as a whole?

Cain: It’s never a good idea to organize society in a way that depletes the energy of half the population. We discovered this with women decades ago, and now it’s time to realize it with introverts.

This also leads to a lot of wrongheaded notions that affect introverts and extroverts alike. Here’s just one example: Most schools and workplaces now organize workers and students into groups, believing that creativity and productivity comes from a gregarious place. This is nonsense, of course. From Darwin to Picasso to Dr. Seuss, our greatest thinkers have often worked in solitude, and in my book I examine lots of research on the pitfalls of groupwork.

Generally when we think about history and great upheavals, revolutions, great shifts in culture we blame fascism, anarchism, monarchical rule, communism, some political theory. Let’s pretend for a moment those political labels do not exist. We get down to the human capacity behind them. All those movements and their iterations were generally driven by personalities. They had to have some support at crucial stages to succeed even if temporarily. That support has been, in modern times especially, called the cult of personality. What did the personalities that lead the movements, swayed so many people, generally cause considerable loss of life and economic calamity have in common. They were all narcissistic extroverts ( to be fair to extroverts, obviously not all extroverted personalities become zealots). I’m most familiar with politics in the U.S. so U.S. politicians make the best example for me. Very few are introverts ( being an introvert does not automatically equal virtuous just as extroverted personalities are always bad) are in U.S. politics. Off the top of my head the only example I can think of by name is Bernie Sanders(I-VT). I’ve seen some Congressional representatives that seem somewhere in the middle. Maybe not our culture so much because so many writers – novelists, script writers for movies and television, artists, poets, song writers, but our politics seem lacking in the front line participation of introverts. In the article they make a distinction between shy and introverted, though acknowledge they are frequently related. So other than voting, now do we get more introverts – the thoughtful creative, insightful, outside the box minds to participate in how public policy is directed. I do have this perhaps over sunny view that there are Darwins, Dr. Seusses, David Foster Wallaces, Mary Shelleys and Barbara McClintocks out there that want nothing to do with the circus that is American politics. All the examples seemed to have participated as average citizens do. I doubt any of them could be elected to public office in the U.S. Not so much because of what they stood for, but because if they could have been convinced to run they would have run on their ideas not how folksy they could be on TV. While many introverts are more than capable of the memorable quip, that is different from selling yourself with bumper sticker style soundbites. As I am writing I am thinking that there are many introverts behind the scenes in campaigns – some political consultants and speech writers tends towards introversion. So my coffee-house theory admittedly has lots of holes. Though I am thinking not just about front line leadership, introverts would be good for the nation in terms of backing away from the dominance of the loud and angry narrative perpetuated by Hate pundits on AM radio and Fox. I get the impression from talking to and reading introverts they have lots of good ideas but those ideas get drowned out in a political culture where he who yells the loudest wins.

the power of introverts. will anyone get the visual irony.

 

Good example in the latest science news of what I was talking about in trying to see over hills at the future of physics – Physicists Squeeze X-Ray Laser Light Out of Atoms

The new atomic x-ray laser won’t replace the LCLS and other accelerator-based systems. In fact, to make the atomic laser work, researchers blasted neon atoms with x-rays from the LCLS itself. Still, the results mark a conceptual triumph, fulfilling a 45-year-old prediction that such an atomic x-ray laser is possible. “Nobody had done this before, and everybody knew that somebody had to go out and do this,” says Philip Bucksbaum, director of SLAC’s PULSE Institute for Ultrafast Energy Science in Menlo Park, California, who was not involved in the work. “So this is great.”

winter western snow wallpaper

@SteveMartinToGo Steve Martin
Uploaded photo of myself in Speedo to comply with Google’s new privacy policy.

Rescue Etiquette from Mark Twain

 In assisting at a fire in a boarding house, the true gentleman will always save the young ladies first—making no distinction in favor of personal attractions, or social eminence, or pecuniary predominance—but taking them as they come, and firing them out with as much celerity as shall be consistent with decorum. There are exceptions, of course, to all rules; the exceptions to this one are:

Partiality, in the matter of rescue, to be shown to:

1. Fiancées.
2. Persons toward whom the operator feels a tender sentiment, but has not yet declared himself.
3. Sisters.
4. Stepsisters.
5. Nieces.
6. First cousins.
7. Cripples.
8. Second cousins.
9. Invalids.
10. Young-lady relations by marriage.
11. Third cousins, and young-lady friends of the family.
12. The Unclassified.

There is a second half entitled   Other material in boarding house is to be rescued in the following order: which you’ll have to click over for so I don’t steal all that blogger’s thunder. If you don’t appreciate dark or ironic humor just skip it.

 

Whether or not you liked the books or movie version this title sequence is astounding: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Done by this special video effects company called Blur.

charles dickens’ secret love, science and the philosophy of consciousness, ron paul and reparations for slave owners

Dickens’ Secret Affair – Biographer Claire Tomalin’s literary sleuthing revealed the untold story of the famed author’s “invisible woman”

Ternan met Dickens in 1857, when she, her mother and sisters were actors in a play he was producing. Dickens was 45; Ternan was 18. Anxious to preserve his image as a pillar of Victorian morality, Dickens purchased a house for her near London, where he visited her secretly. Dickens seemed both to revel in and regret the affair.

Dickens and Ternan apparently destroyed all correspondence between them. The “lack of the letters was heartbreaking,” Tomalin says, but “there was plenty of material,” including details about Ternan in missives by Dickens’ children: Both his son Henry and daughter Katey, for example, “confirmed that [the couple] had a child, and it died.” Tomalin believes that Nelly and the child, said to be a boy who did not survive infancy, had been sequestered in France.

Ellen “Nelly” Ternan

Claire Tomalin says that Dickens’ felt guilty about the affair partly because he felt he would ruin his reputation as a champion of the people. I don’t think it does especially diminish the depth of his ideals. The age difference, Dickens was 45 and Ternan was 18 when they meet was not all that shocking in the reality of 1857. Upper class gentleman having affairs was fairly common. Visits to prostitutes ( there was an estimated 80,000 in London during the Victorian era)  among the titled elite was a given. The revelation of Dickens’ adultery would have meet with the similar hypocrisy with which society views such news today. The big difference in 1857 is that Dickens would have come out of it relatively unscathed whereas Ternan would have been viewed as the fallen woman, the temptress that preyed on the great man.

black and white rain drops on waxy leaves

 

The subject of neruoscince and eovlutionary pyschology versus the philsophy of mind is, as one might expect complicated. This is the second post in the last week in which I tend toward a mixed view. I have not decided to stake out some middle ground as some kind of consulatory jesture in either case ( the other was physic versus philsophy). It seems that hard science and phiolsophy can and do complement each other. To stake out hard lines in the sand on either side seems counterproductive if your goal is being able to grasp and have a deeper understanding of, in today’s case, what constitutes the thinking conscience mind. One of the things that bothers me about the neuroscience versus philosophy issue is similar to what bothers me about the physics versus philosophy issue – to take some gaps in scientific knowledge and fill them, especially in the case of neuroscience – with the near if not mythical beliefs in some ill defined “specialness”. There is a difference between thinking human conscientiousness is an amazing phenomenon, thus special in the sense that tress do not seem to possess that quality yet have lived for millions of years – long before large brained mammals came along. It is not special in the way that say the NYT’s David Brooks sees special, like some softly glowing special effect from a movie depiction of conscientious rising out of the body and floating towards the heavens. When philosophers start even hinting at that kind of mysticism it bothers me. It means they are ignoring modern analytical logic. Which might not prove the pure science right, but shoots holes through mythic based arguments. Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity by Raymond Tallis

In the case of neurology, he attacks several types of exaggerated claim: for example, those surrounding fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) scans. He points out that these only show relative levels of blood flow or oxygen consumption in different areas of the brain. They do not spell out exactly what the areas of higher activity are doing, nor do they preclude the possibility that the areas of lower consumption are still doing something related and important. Therefore studies which use this technique show much weaker evidence for the localised (or modularised) models of brain function than is usually assumed by the media.

Science is not there yet in terms of these MRI scanning data. They still need to get down to the proteins, how they are folded and than the macromolecules. How are these forms of matter created and related to consciousness or unconscious thought. Its going to be tough, but that does not mean finding a localized spot of the brain where certain activity takes place is a wothless pursuit. Mr. Tallis is correct in being suspicious of the neurosciencentist ( it is perplexing that Tallis used to be a scientist and does not follow a better train of logic) he cites as having the final answer today. An analogy of the story of inherited traits might work to explin where we are in studying the mind ( not just the brain). First someone had to suspect that biological traits were passed from one generation to the next or they were not. Gregor Mendel discovered that general principle. He did not know exactly how those traits were distributed between generations of pea plants, but he knew they were. He could bred for them. Just as farmers had been unscientifically experimenting with and breeding dogs and cattle. It would be almost a century – a century, before someone would discover the DNA double helix. We’re somewhere around the Mendel stage in neuroscience and understanding the mind. So certainly there are going to be lots of gaps in knowledge. By all means critique the hell out of experiments that show that square millimeter of the brain is deciding whether green or rust are someone’s favorite colors. They still might be on to the integral biochemical factor involved in those kinds of preferences. And yes those chemicals can be influenced by the environment. That means something might be complicated, not absolutely on the wrong track. The investigation into the brain and featuring out consciousness is not an esoteric pursuit. Along the way it might help figure out neurologically caused blindness or speech impairments or why we have sociopaths.

I’ve already written more than I planned. Tallis makes some good points about overly simplistic reductionism. For that alone it is worth a read.

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Libertarians and conservatives, thanks to Ron Paul, have been on a tear lately trying to make the argument the Civil War could have easily been prevented if the Abolitionists had simply offered to reimburse white slave owners.. Ta-Nehisi Coates takes a look at the math and the general ridiculousness of that argument - Compensation

Ron Paul’s argument is essentially that it would have been better for the government to bail out slave-holders by effecting a mass purchase of blacks. This would have saved a lot of money, as well as the lives and limbs of a lot of white people. I do not believe that saving lives and limbs of any people–white or black–to be a disreputable goal. But I refuse to lose sight of the fact that slavery was, itself, war. And the lives and limbs of black people were perpetually at stake for centuries. From 1860 to 1865 the rest of the country received a concentrated dose of that medicine which black people had been made to quaff for over two and a half centuries. It is now a century and a half later, but still in some corners of white America it is fashionable to remain embittered.

Nevertheless, the saving of people is, indeed, a noble goal, and Paul is not without at least the rudiments of a case. Enslaved black people were constructed into an interest representing $3 billion. ($70-75 billion in 21st century money.) But including expenditures, loss of property, loss of life (human capital,) the war, according to Ransom, costs $6.6 billion.

The numbers are clear–the South’s decision to raise an army, encourage sedition among its neighbors, and fire on federal property, was an economic disaster for white America. Moreover, the loss of 600,000 lives, in a war launched to erect an empire on the cornerstone of white supremacy and African slavery, was a great moral disaster for all corners of America.

If one assumes that white slave owners would have given up slavery entirely and settled for one lump sum payment than Ron Paul and his sycophants are also arguing that the U.S. would have had to rise revenue that exceeded the GDP of the early 1860s. So small government folks would greatly expanded government,  have passed the largest tax increase in our history to that date, which would have taken three or more generations to pay off. What tangled arguments they weave.

Tim Burton’s The World of Stainboy: Watch the Complete Animated Series. I’m just posting the first chapter in the series. You can catch some of the others here and read some more on the background of the film and how the story came about.

In his 1997 book of drawings and verse, The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories, Tim Burton imagines a bizarre menagerie of misfits with names like Toxic Boy, Junk Girl, the Pin Cushion Queen and the Boy with Nails in his Eyes.

“Inspired by such childhood heroes as Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl,” writes James Ryan in the New York Times, “Mr. Burton’s slim volume exquisitely conveys the pain of an adolescent outsider. Like his movies, the work manages to be both childlike and sophisticated, blending the innocent with the macabre.”

row boats lake dock wallpaper, arguments guided by rules of philosophy are great if everyone plays by the rules, get to know the working poor – conservatives pretend they do not exist

Interesting read from a philosopher even if you find conservative arguments frequently dishonest and disingenuous - How to Argue About Politics

As a philosophy professor, I spend much of my time thinking about the arguments put forward by professional philosophers. As a citizen (and an occasional columnist for The Stone), I also spend lots of time thinking about the arguments put forward by Democrats and Republicans on currently disputed political issues. Of course, there are differences in logical sophistication and complexity between the philosophical and the political arguments. But, allowing that popular political arguments require shortcuts from full academic rigor, there is not, I think, that much difference between the logical acumen of politicians and philosophers.

Envisioning a ‘charitable’ but rigorous approach to political debate.

But there is one respect in which philosophers’ arguments are far superior to those of politicians. To be taken seriously, a philosophical argument has to begin from a thorough understanding of an opponent’s’ position and formulate the position so that it is as plausible and attractive as possible. Politicians, by contrast, typically load the dice by attacking the weakest versions of their opponents’ views they can find.

Its a rule in debating and the philsophy of logic to assume that your opponent is honest about their arguments. Mr. Gutting proceeds with that old rule in mind. He lays out what the conservative argument is. Assumes their veracity and notes ways to argue with some of the foundational aspects of conservatism. That is fine as far as it goes and something that people who oppose conservatism should learn. That said conservatives are almost always dishonest. Sometimes they believe what they, but just because someone truly believes the earth is fat does not make it so. Sometimes they simply lie. They know they’re lying and thus the weakness in having a rational discourse in the tradition of philosophy. For exampel conservatives honestly belive they stand for a free market economy which rewards hard work and innovation, or both. Just stand back and let it work they claim and everything will be fine. The Great Recession and other economic setbacks say the are wrong. Wrong in glowing blinding neon-sign wrong. Just ignore the billions they spend on lobbying and other forms of political influence to get legislation that serves the needs of a few at the price of the many. The ridiculous belief that those at the top of the income pyramid got there and stay there because they are the most productive. It is the mid and low-level workers in the pyramid that are the producers. The wealthy simply benefit from their work. Slaving over a mahogany desk with a spread sheet hardly counts for producing much value in terms of capital. They simply move capital around. Lots of people – some naive, some good-hearted, some overly idealistic – think you can have rational debates with a conservative or communist or rightie libertarian. You’re wrong. Look around at the crap they push out in their daily propaganda - Huckabee Wants To Know If Obama Got College Loans “As A Foreign Student”. Huckbaee is a grown man with an education and he is spreading an urban myth.  Its something like that everyday. How did Newt come from behind in South Carolina. It was not from speaking the truth it was catering to the deep ethnocentrism and cultural backwardness of the conservative base. I’ll walk back a little of the never, I would grant that arguing the facts is the only tool at the nonconservative’s disposal and they can make a difference around the edges in terms of push back. And sometimes, this also not accounted for in the rulebook, being a pain in the ass to conservative pundits and those who troll internet forums ruins their day. Conservatives may not be convinced by the facts, but the facts sure piss them off.

Sarah van Gelder is much more optimistic than I am - Corporate Rule Is Not Inevitable. 7 signs the corporatocracy is losing its legitimacy … and 7 populist tools to help shut it down.

day glow painted hand

This is the kind of phenomenon that just will not penetrate right-wing conservative tin-foil, Working and Poor in the USA

“Our nation, so richly endowed with natural resources and with a capable and industrious population, should be able to devise ways and means of insuring to all our able-bodied men and women, a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1937

Millions of people in the US work and are still poor. Here are eight points that show why the US needs to dedicate itself to making work pay.

One. How many people work and are still poor?

In 2011, the US Department of Labor reported at least 10 million people worked and were still below the unrealistic official US poverty line, an increase of 1.5 million more than the last time they checked. The US poverty line is $18,530 for a mom and two kids. Since 2007 the numbers of working poor have been increasing. About 7 percent of all workers and 4 percent of all full-time workers earn wages that leave them below the poverty line.

Two. What kinds of jobs do the working poor have?

One third of the working poor, over 3 million people, work in the service industry. Workers in other occupations are also poor: 16 percent of those in farming; 11 percent in construction; and 11 percent in sales.

Three. Which workers are most likely to be working and still poor?

Women workers are more likely to be poor than men. African-American and Hispanic workers are about twice as likely to be poor as whites. College graduates have a 2 percent poverty rate while workers without a high school diploma have a poverty rate 10 times higher at 20 percent.

row boats lake dock wallpaper

 

A slide show from the NYT about a dying profession – ‘Wall Dogs’ With Paint

Sign painters — a k a billboard artists or wall dogs — have almost disappeared, their trade strangled by the advent of vinyl sheets. But there is still call for their artistry, skill and pluck, especially in historic districts and on buildings whose oddly shaped facades will not easily be draped in huge sheets.

Trailer for Here Comes The Neighborhood

HERE COMES THE NEIGHBORHOOD is a Short-Form Docuseries exploring the power of Public Art and innovation to uplift and revitalize urban communities. The Pilot Season revolves around the Arts District of Wynwood Miami, featuring an array of internationally acclaimed and locally respected Street Artists, Graffiti Writers and Muralists.

In 2009, Urban Visionary and Placemaker Tony Goldman partnered with Jeffrey Deitch (Deitch Projects Soho and now director of MoCa Los Angeles) to create the Wynwood Walls.What began with a series of parking lots, loading docks, and drab rundown factory buildings, became a curation of high caliber murals from Futura, Shepard Fairey, OS Gemeos, Kenny Scharf and others. The Walls opened for Art Basel 2009, and now two years later the collection has expanded to include over thirty artists from around the world, becoming a “Town Center” in a district that has grown into one of the largest concentrations of commissioned murals in the World.

If you’re into art, photography and reviving neighborhoods this is an amazing video. There are multiple parts available and some of them should come up as links to play at the end of this video.

america could bring back tech manufacturing if we had the political and business will, new deep sea telescope to help understand the universe

In terms of internet attention spans this is a long read. In real terms it is rather short, yet contains a lot of information to mull over. If anyone stills mulls. How U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work

But while Apple is far from alone, it offers a window into why the success of some prominent companies has not translated into large numbers of domestic jobs. What’s more, the company’s decisions pose broader questions about what corporate America owes Americans as the global and national economies are increasingly intertwined.

“Companies once felt an obligation to support American workers, even when it wasn’t the best financial choice,” said Betsey Stevenson, the chief economist at the Labor Department until last September. “That’s disappeared. Profits and efficiency have trumped generosity.”

Companies and other economists say that notion is naïve. Though Americans are among the most educated workers in the world, the nation has stopped training enough people in the mid-level skills that factories need, executives say.

To thrive, companies argue they need to move work where it can generate enough profits to keep paying for innovation. Doing otherwise risks losing even more American jobs over time, as evidenced by the legions of once-proud domestic manufacturers — including G.M. and others — that have shrunk as nimble competitors have emerged.

The article does kill the conservative meme that unions or the minimum wage are responsible for so much of our electronic manufacturing moving overseas. As the article notes it is not labor costs that compelled Apple or other tech firms to move their manufacturing overseas.

It does not come out and say it, one has to put a couple easy pieces together to understand that it is not excessive regulation. Apple did manufacture the MAC here until as recently as 2004. If you went by what the conservative trolls in the comments say it is as if they had not read the article at all. They just made sure they got their talking points posted, facts be damned.

They might be right about needing some kind of mid-level education attainment for American workers – something like a one or two-year degree in modern factory technology. In the sense that we have the facilities and capacity, but we do not have the financial or educational commitment to having that kind of degree. We do have the physical infrastructure. Even small towns have a community college. There are two near me and they both have multiple branches. The universities have night and weekend classes. As in every state they have had budget cutbacks. If American business and government wanted to team up and create the kind of education and training that Chinese factory workers get, that is well within America’s ability.

The article also notes that the Chinese government partners with industry. Factories can go up within weeks because businesses in China have the government to lean on in terms of risks and initial finance support. I wonder about how much difference there really is. If you’ve ever lived near a city or town, or state which a large company was considering locating you’re familiar with how trying to get that business to locate in your area is an embarrassing profile in obsequious behavior by local politicians. They promise the world, tax incentives, tax deferments that last for years, stream-lining any building permits or demolition permits and often ignoring or making only the most cursory environmental studies. So these attempts to attract business also becomes a game of low-level corruption. The south is littered with old textile factories that could be made into a modern factory – Your sheets and towels are most likely made somewhere in Asia or the Marshall Islands as well as your iPad. Detroit has shuttered factories that are good to go in terms of zoning and permitting. One of my cousin lives in a city where three old factories have been closed and vacant for several years. I tend to think that we could match the Chinese, South Korea and other Asian countries if there was a business sector and government will to make it so. We had the Manhattan Project and the Apollo program to make certain national goals a priority. Those are just two of many examples that show we could create jobs for factory workers, various mid-level engineers and mid-level supervisors if we made it a national goal.

Foxconn Technology has dozens of facilities in Asia and Eastern Europe, and in Mexico and Brazil, and it assembles an estimated 40 percent of the world’s consumer electronics for customers like Amazon, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, Nintendo, Nokia, Samsung and Sony.

“They could hire 3,000 people overnight,” said Jennifer Rigoni, who was Apple’s worldwide supply demand manager until 2010, but declined to discuss specifics of her work. “What U.S. plant can find 3,000 people overnight and convince them to live in dorms?”

American workers could probably be convinced to adopt such a lifestyle, but doesn’t that aspect of it sound like some science fiction dystopia ( really, WordPress and Firefox spell check doesn’t know the word dystopia). Much of America’s vacant manufacturing centers are right next to suburban communities and cities. In the age of smart phones, getting people to come in for an extra shift shouldn’t be that difficult. In the article several people in the tech industry seem to actually believe that America does not and cannot match the kind of flexibility and speed required to compete. Have you ever seem Americans react to a flood disaster or hurricane. We tend to get things done very quickly when motivated. There seems to be some lazy thinking in the business sector. Everyone and everything is getting done in Asia now. As they often do, American business jumps on the next new boat and stays there until there is a paradigm shift. What will push business to have an epiphany about American made technology and the all too obvious long-term benefits. It is not about costs, unions, regulation or the environment. It is about the will to do what needs doing.

bernice, switchboard operator. mid 20th century

 

Telescope to be built in depths of Mediterranean sea

The £210 million deep sea observatory will detect elusive particles known as neutrinos as they bombard the Earth from outer space.

Usually these high-energy particles pass straight through our planet unnoticed, but scientists hope that the new telescope will allow them to pick up traces the particles leave and use them to view the universe in an entirely new way.

The EU funded project, which has just been selected as a key priority in a review of European astrophysics infrastructure, promises to reveal new details about some of the most powerful events in our universe, including supernova and even the Big Bang.

The telescope, known as the Multi-Cubic Kilometre Neutrino Telescope or KM3NeT, is also expected to reveal entirely new phenomena that still remain undiscovered as they are undetectable using conventional methods for viewing the sky.

“It is really going to open a new window on our universe,” said Dr Lee Thompson, a reader in neutrino physics at the University of Sheffield who is working on the KM3NeT project.

A giant 'telescope' more than half a mile in length is to be built two miles beneath the surface of the Mediterranean Sea

When one thinks of a telescope the first thing that comes to mind is those big observatory telescopes. This one breaks the mold. It will be constructed out of 12,000 beachball-sized sensors which will be deployed underwater over a cubic mile. Since it is known that neutrinos  are thought to emanate from the remains of old exploding stars known as supernovas or from supermassive black holes they react minimally with other matter. Measuring them might provide some insight into parts of the universe where light does not reach from earth, such as supernovae and black holes. We’re bombarded with neutrinos all the time, but if scientists can put some massive amounts of sea water between the neutrino and the telescope they hope that will increase the chances they collide with an atom rather than pass through the earth as they usually do.

 

H/T to RD for this video – 30 Renowned Writers Speaking About God. Just for posting this I’ll lose another round of readers. Sometimes it, if not frequently, it can be interesting to listen to thoughtful people talk about things that – at least in most of the U.S. is a forbidden topic in everyday conversation.

Speakers in order of appearance:

Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Science Fiction Writer
Nadine Gordimer, Nobel Laureate in Literature
Professor Isaac Asimov, Author and Biochemist
Arthur Miller, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Playwright
Wole Soyinka, Nobel Laureate in Literature
Gore Vidal, Award-Winning Novelist and Political Activist
Douglas Adams, Best-Selling Science Fiction Writer
Professor Germaine Greer, Writer and Feminist
Iain Banks, Best-Selling Fiction Writer
José Saramago, Nobel Laureate in Literature
Sir Terry Pratchett, NYT Best-Selling Novelist
Ken Follett, NYT Best-Selling Author
Ian McEwan, Man Booker Prize-Winning Novelist
Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate (1999-2009)
Professor Martin Amis, Award-Winning Novelist
Michel Houellebecq, Goncourt Prize-Winning French Novelist
Philip Roth, Man Booker Prize-Winning Novelist
Margaret Atwood, Booker Prize-Winning Author and Poet
Sir Salman Rushdie, Booker Prize-Winning Novelist
Norman MacCaig, Renowned Scottish Poet
Phillip Pullman, Best-Selling British Author
Dr Matt Ridley, Award-Winning Science Writer
Harold Pinter, Nobel Laureate in Literature
Howard Brenton, Award-Winning English Playwright
Tariq Ali, Award-Winning Writer and Filmmaker
Theodore Dalrymple, English Writer and Psychiatrist
Roddy Doyle, Booker Prize-Winning Novelist
Redmond O’Hanlon FRSL, British Writer and Scholar
Diana Athill, Award-Winning Author and Literary Editor
Christopher Hitchens, Best-Selling Author, Award-Winning Columnist

ralph waldo emerson early advocate of the 99%, slow down you think too fast

Did you know the great American  essayist, lecturer, poet and transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson started the 99% movement?

It cannot be wondered at that this general inquest into abuses should arise in the bosom of society, when one considers the practical impediments that stand in the way of virtuous young men. The young man, on entering life, finds the way to lucrative employments blocked with abuses. The ways of trade are grown selfish to the borders of theft, and supple to the borders (if not beyond the borders) of fraud. The employments of commerce are not intrinsically unfit for a man, or less genial to his faculties, but these are now in their general course so vitiated by derelictions and abuses at which all connive, that it requires more vigor and resources than can be expected of every young man to right himself in them; he is lost in them; he cannot move hand or foot in them. Has he genius and virtue? the less does he find them fit for him to grown in; and if he would thrive in them, he must sacrifice all the brilliant dreams of boyhood and youth as dreams, he must forget the prayers of his childhood, and must take on him the harness of routine and obsequiousness. If not so minded, nothing is left him but to begin the world anew, as he does who puts the spade into the ground for food. We are all implicated, of course, in this charge; it is only necessary to ask a few questions as to the progress of the articles of commerce from the fields where they grew, to our houses, to become aware that we eat and drink and wear perjury and fraud in a hundred commodities. How many articles of daily consumption are furnished us from the West Indies; yet it is said that in the Spanish islands the venality of the officers of the government has passed into usage, and that no article passes into our ships which has not been fraudulently cheapened. In the Spanish islands, every agent or factor of the Americans, unless he be a consul, has taken oath that he is a Catholic, or has caused a priest to make that declaration for him. The abolitionist has shown us our dreadful debt to the Southern negro. In the island of Cuba, in addition to the ordinary abominations of slavery, it appears only men are bought for the plantations, and one dies in ten every year, of these miserable bachelors, to yield us sugar. I leave for those who have the knowledge the part of sifting the oaths of our custom-houses; I will not inquire into the oppression of the sailors; I will not pry into the usages of our retail trade. I content myself with the fact that the general system of our trade (apart from the blacker traits, which, I hope, are exceptions denounced and unshared by all reputable men) is a system of selfishness, is not dictated by the high sentiments of human nature, is not measured by the exact law of reciprocity, much less by the sentiments of love and heroism; but is a system of distrust, of concealment, of superior keenness, not of giving but of taking advantage. It is not that which a man delights to unlock to a noble friend, which he meditates on with joy and self-approval in his hour of love and aspiration; but rather what he then puts out of sight, only showing the brilliant result, and atoning for the manner of acquiring by the manner of expending it.

A Lecture Read before the Mechanics Apprentices’ Library Association, Boston, January 25, 1841. By Ralph Waldo Emerson. (1803–1882).  Essays and English Traits. The Harvard Classics.  1909–14.

american labor – winch workers – early 20th century

They have a very short season, but the new BBC version of Sherlock Holmes has been a solid consolation while I waited for the return of Justified and wait for the return of Madmen. A nice critical preview of the new season of Justified here. I watched the first episode and they’re off to a solid start.

Slow Down, You Think Too Fast by psychologist Daniel Kaheman

Kaheman has that kind of reassuring, almost stereotypical wise old uncle, personality that makes you feel a little better even if you might be a little cynical about his point of view.

I tend to have my doubts that about over using the internet black-out as a way to fight issues. One of those things I could well be wrong about, A Day of Darkness to Prevent an Age of Darkness. A SOPA style day to get Congress to take action on global warming.

Another example of cinematography meets photography: time slows down, every step takes on meaning: Adam Magyar – STAINLESS Intro

I have been working on a photographic series entitled Stainless since 2009. I took photographs of moving trains, but owing to the technique I used, you just cannot see this. I made this slow motion video as an illustration. It is between the speed the train is pulling into the station and the still images you see on my prints. This is how people in the subway trains could see the platform and the people waiting there if the human brain could process what my camera can.

modern theater wallpaper

This may come in handy, or not – How to Tag a 3,700-Pound Walrus

This site is in French but the pictures are easy to understand, Mariko Sakaguchi

The Japanese artist Mariko Sakaguchi had the crazy idea to take pictures in the bath, but in scenes of everyday life. Between the workplace, a living room or a meeting room, the result is intriguing and interesting.

I just find the strange juxtapositions of a bather in the middle of other people going about their business interesting.

the philosopher versus the physicist, black and white stones wallpaper, jesus and the plutocrats

Stephen Hawking in a recent talk he gave at Google’s Zeitgeist Conference said that philosophy was dead and he did write in The Grand Design, “Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics.” Philosophy is dead might be a bridge too far, it still has much to offer in terms of applied morality and consequences. Often times, to the vexation of the hard core dogmatists, philosophy fills in that gulf that is supposed to exist if you do not believe you live in a little cosmic doll house manipulated by invisible hands that you will have some ‘plain’n to do after death. Has philosophy kept up with physics. Probably not. Though kudos to some philosophers for taking up the challenge. I tend to see the problem of seeing into the future as problems in both fields of inquiry. Every generation is at a disadvantageous. We have the knowledge we have and then we quickly move into trying to see around corners. In terms of hard science, which group is probably best equipped to do that? Given my bias towards facts I would give physicists the advantage.  What Happened Before the Big Bang? The New Philosophy of Cosmology

Then there are problems that are fairly specific to cosmology. Standard cosmology, or what was considered standard cosmology twenty years ago, led people to the conclude that the universe that we see around us began in a big bang, or put another way, in some very hot, very dense state. And if you think about the characteristics of that state, in order to explain the evolution of the universe, that state had to be a very low entropy state, and there’s a line of thought that says that anything that is very low entropy is in some sense very improbable or unlikely. And if you carry that line of thought forward, you then say “Well gee, you’re telling me the universe began in some extremely unlikely or improbable state” and you wonder is there any explanation for that. Is there any principle that you can use to account for the big bang state? ( philosopher who specializes in physics Tim Maudlin of New York University)

Maudlin has some very smart, let’s say issues, with how the universe formed and the mathematics we use to describe what we know about the universe, the Big Bang in particular. Though it seems to me – and I am judging by this long though not exhaustive interview – that Tim is making a basic logic error in saying that since the current state of physics is such that we do not have the math proofs to describe some things yet is proof of the limits of physics and a gap which philosophy will fill in. So we’re at  seeing around corners or over the hill into the future some people – Orwell, Darwin, Arthur C. Clark, Ray Bradbury, Vonnegut, William Gibson – and many other thinkers have had some remarkable powers of prescience. Those predictions of the future were ultimately the result of imagination, intelligence and luck. Usually what we get is wrong. We make our best guesses about the future with the tools we have now. We don’t have the perfect math for quantum mechanics now. based on the history of math and physics there is every reason to think those disciplines will continue to make breakthroughs. If Tim or anyone else wants to make the case that humankind has reached its knowledge limits in the sciences I will be happy to read that paper.

Now let me say one more thing about fine tuning. I talk to physicists a lot, and none of the physicists I talk to want to rely on the fine tuning argument to argue for a cosmology that has lots of bubble universes, or lots of worlds. What they want to argue is that this arises naturally from an analysis of the fundamental physics, that the fundamental physics, quite apart from any cosmological considerations, will give you a mechanism by which these worlds will be produced, and a mechanism by which different worlds will have different constants, or different laws, and so on.  If that’s true, then if there are enough of these worlds, it will be likely that some of them have the right combination of constants to permit life. But their arguments tend not to be “we have to believe in these many worlds to solve the fine tuning problem,” they tend to be “these many worlds are generated by physics we have other reasons for believing in.”

If we give up on that, and it turns out there aren’t these many worlds, that physics is unable to generate them, then it’s not that the only option is that there was some intelligent designer. It would be a terrible mistake to think that those are the only two ways things could go. You would have to again think hard about what you mean by probability, and about what sorts of explanations there might be. Part of the problem is that right now there are just way too many freely adjustable parameters in physics.

Maudlin also says earlier in that interview he says about Hawkings, “I think he just doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I mean there’s no reason why he should. Why should he spend a lot of time reading the philosophy of physics? I’m sure it’s very difficult for him to do. But I think he’s just . . . uninformed.” I think Maudlin is great at asking questions, finding holes in some problems in physics. The world needs people who can do that. Philosophers such as him can also parse out the possible meanings of things for people. What are the personal, ethical or economic consequences of this knowledge. In the end Maudlin is nowhere without the knowledge. Hawkings or minds such as his have to find the anti-matter equations, the universe that might exists in waves outside of this one -  Radiation Rings Hint Universe Was Recycled Over and Over -  before Tim can even get out of his philosophical bed in terms of what we know and how we know it. I sense an unnecessary combativeness and pretentiousness on Maudlin’s part and a tendency on Hawkings part to be too dismissive of  the role of philosphy in finding the holes in knowledge and the moral consequnces of new findings in science.

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How America’s plutocrats used and subverted Jesus to make greed a virtue and humane capitalism evil

Realizing that they needed to rely on others, these businessmen took a new tack: using generous financing to enlist sympathetic clergymen as their champions. After all, according to one tycoon, polls showed that, “of all the groups in America, ministers had more to do with molding public opinion” than any other.

The Rev. James W. Fifield, pastor of the elite First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, led the way in championing a new union of faith and free enterprise. “The blessings of capitalism come from God,” he wrote. “A system that provides so much for the common good and happiness must flourish under the favor of the Almighty.”

My rewritten title is most of my commentary on this remarkable short editorial. There continues the general tendency to have this national debate in terms of the supposedly pro capitalists – the purists and absolutists – versus the prognosticators of  the slippery slope to socialism. For me the argument is more subtle – thus we will not be having that national discourse; capitalism can be, in the hands of the Romneys, plutocrats, right-wing libertarians almost as tyrannical as other forms of authoritarianism. A FDR capitalism, a humane capitalism or a progressive liberal capitalism is the route to salvation, not a slippery slope to anything except perhaps rediscovering our humanity.

Happy Birthday to Edith Wharton who would have been 150 today, who wrote Ethan Frome – a novella loved by me and 276 English Lit majors. And so long to Singer Etta James , dead at 73 of Leukemia Complications.

Etta James – I’d Rather Go Blind

listen to our hearts but also be aware of the possibility that we may be deceiving ourselves, libertarian illusions, Bluebird animation based on Charles Bukowski’s poem

Plato identified prudence as one of the great facilities of man and ascribed prudence as symbolizing rulers and justice. Bertrand Russel found that at least sometimes prudence was suffocating; ” By self-interest, Man has become gregarious, but in instinct he has remained to a great extent solitary; hence the need of religion and morality to reinforce self-interest. But the habit of foregoing present satisfactions for the sake of the future advantages is irksome, and when passions are roused and prudent restraints of social behavior become difficult to endure. Those who, at such times, throw them off, acquire a new energy and sense of power from cessation of inner conflict, and, though they may come to disaster in the end, enjoy meanwhile a sense of God-like exaltation which, though known to the great mystics, can never be experienced by a merely pedestrian virtue.” When it came to war Russell thought the lack of prudence in politics was “evil”. Like everything other idea, prudence has its trends. It might be time for a revival or maybe not. Something to consider, Charles Foster on Living Prudently

Precisely. In that sense we’re all prisoners of [18th century French philosopher Jean-Jacques] Rousseau. We are all living a dream that our hearts are pure tuning forks, and we simply have to tune out the noises around us and listen to the pure vibration coming from our hearts, and then – beyond all concern for evidence or the reality of the way things work – we will know what to do.

Even Hitler, another child of Romanticism, was a proponent of this romantic attitude. The Nazis were incredibly romantic. Hitler said: “I follow my course with the precision and security of a sleepwalker.” Meaning he trusted himself in the same way that a naive and romantic 21st century person will trust his or her heart to know what’s right. We know this often leads to terrible decisions but God forbid we should be calculating! So we continue to go forth blindly.

Is it especially hard to achieve prudence in today’s society and culture?

It’s always been hard to sift through the fog of possibilities and false whispers that flood us within and without. But it’s especially hard today in the face of an anti-prudence ideology. In action movies, there is a hero and a villain. The hero is usually a good-hearted but rather impulsive person. He trusts his instincts and goes by his heart. You always know the villain because he’s the most thinky character in the movie. He’s the one who plots, strategises and uses cunning. So we are caught in a culturally constructed contradiction between thought and the heart. By being thoughtful, we think we are being calculating and therefore at risk of being manipulating, deceitful and false. We don’t like that image of ourselves. We like the hero who is pure of heart, trusts his gut, flies forward and deals with whatever comes at him.

Instead, what we should be aiming at is a full awareness that when we’re faced with a decision – from what to do about my marriage, or my job or where I’m going to live – we have to listen to our hearts but also be aware of the possibility that we may be deceiving ourselves. We are too often creatures of attitude. The deepest truth of our hearts is often an attitude that we have picked up from groupthink or the culture around us, or it’s some past decision that we have an unthinking allegiance to.

The recent book I’ve worked on [with Mira Kirshenbaum] is I Love You But I Don’t Trust You. When there’s been a betrayal in a relationship, you’re deeply hurt and terrified. The dilemma we face is that we’re often torn between imprudent alternatives. If you’ve been terribly hurt, you can be a prisoner of past decisions, of attitude, of other people’s expectations or of fear. Until you go through a process of challenging your fears and feelings against what’s possible and what’s real, you’re not making the most prudent choice. So much of my work [as a therapist] has been about rescuing people from imprudence – the imprudence of their current situation, where they’re on the verge of making bad choices, or the destructive cost of past imprudence.

grimm winter forest wallpaper

 

I still think Paul makes a good protest candidate to focus some attention on certain issues and I still think he is a loon, Libertarian Illusions

Yet the error of libertarianism lies not in championing liberty, but in championing liberty to the exclusion of all other values. Libertarians hold that individual liberty should never be sacrificed in the pursuit of other values or causes. Compassion, justice, civic responsibility, honesty, decency, humility, respect, and even survival of the poor, weak, and vulnerable — all are to take a back seat.

[  ]…By taking an extreme view — that liberty alone is to be defended among all of society’s values — libertarians reach extreme conclusions. Suppose a rich man has a surfeit of food and a poor man living next door is starving to death. The libertarian says that the government has no moral right or political claim to tax the rich person in order to save the poor person. Perhaps the rich person should be generous and give charity to the neighbor, the libertarian might say (or might not), but there is nothing that the government should do. The moral value of saving the poor person’s life simply does not register when compared with the liberty of the rich person.

This weird and deeply immoral view of freedom was very apparent in the now infamous debate in which the conservative-libertarian crowd cheered at the hypothetical death of a man without health insurance. In answer to the question does your freedom to hold on to a few pennies outweigh the value of a life, libertarians answered, death.

Yet political libertarianism is not much of a guide to real-world politics. Modern history has shown that activist democratic governments, ones that provide public goods and help for the poor, do not really threaten liberty. In Scandinavia, for example, where the governments are much more activist than in the United States, democracy is very vibrant and far less corrupt than in the U.S. In fact, by keeping mega-income under control, the Scandinavian countries have avoided the kind of plutocracy — government by the rich — that has engulfed Washington.

retro train travel poster

Food Stamp President? The Science of Why Gingrich’s Race-Tinged Label Sticks

The candidate’s comments reflect a race-tinged framing strategy that appeals not only to a base of conservatives but other white voters as well. First, Gingrich implies by his comments that Americans receiving food stamps are unemployed, playing on a common misperception held by voters.  The reality is that many food stamp recipients are low wage workers. The great majority of low wage jobs lack benefits such as health insurance or retirement accounts and provide little or no chance for career advancement.

Second, Gingrich’s comments reflect a race-related strategy that echoes those used by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and Gingrich himself in advocating for welfare reform in the 1990s. As South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, who is black, told NPR yesterday, it is no longer the “welfare queen,” a line oft-touted by Reagan, but “king of the food stamps.” As he noted: “I guess a lot of people see it as, if Ronald Reagan can do it and be so lionized by conservatives, then I ought to be able to do it.”

During the 1990s, there was a significant amount of research conducted in political science, communication, and sociology on the factors that shape public opinion and media coverage of poverty-related issues such as food stamps. While this past research mainly focused on attitudes or news coverage specifically about welfare reform, multiple strands of evidence demonstrate that the same general principles still apply today, despite changes in the political and media environment.

This is part of a very long and wonky piece that includes history, social science , statistics and charts. Gingrich plays to some base beliefs held by some people who seem impenetrable to facts and reason. Even if we kept the argument to value based ethics and public policy, you come out with people who recent someone spending some food stamps on potato chips, but have no problem with the millions Mitt Romney made off the unemployment of thousands of workers. Romney is not a producer, he and his like are the leechers who make their money from the productivity of workers. I suspect that most of the people who cheer his vulture capitalism have the same upside down view of how the economy works.

Confused about what SOPA or PIPA mean to you? Twenty years in prison for not deleting a post fast enough?

Bluebird animation based on Charles Bukowski’s poem

Bluebird
by Charles Bukowski
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pur whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he’s
in there

From what I know about Bukowski he could be cruel and shallow. At least he seemed to know that. Why he chose not to change is a mystery.