william.scherk

That is what is at issue, it seems, if the gold whorls are parts of the profession of faith (the shahada), if they have whorls that say a variant of the old 'thou shalt have no god but me' or 'Thou shalt have no other gods before me." In classical Koranic Arabic, `la means god, so a better translation of There Is No God But Allah is There is but one god and the only god is named god. In other words, in classic Randian fashion: A(llah) == (A(llah). Yeah, that seems obvious. Either that or he has never tried to get it off, or it is stuck on there since the 1980s. If it is (as assumed by many) a wedding band, the question that occurs to me is who bought it, and where it came from. And of course, how embarrassed the nutters will be when a high-resolution image turns up. But to the ring's sculpted inscription, or the discovery thereof. Could this be an example of the paranoiac-critical method of mental work (which I discovered while looking up a reference to pareidolia at Wikipedia)? Are those loops of golden Satanic Verse just loops of gold that someone has, um, overinterpreted? I did go looking for Shahada ring (for a man) and found more than a few, most of which contained the entire Shahada. They were in metals other than gold. This here is the best image of the Ring of Faith on the big O's finger that I have .found. What do I see in the close-up? Frankly, some gold whorls in a wrapped-gold ring. A nice shiny ring on the 'marriage finger.' That's about all I see ... except for the sinister darker-style skin. Is this the kind of stuff an Objectivist person can sit in a chair and figure out effectively? The younger Orson Welles asks: "Which is more important - his ring, or his 20+ years of afiliation with his mentor [...] Jeremiah Wright? on the basis of longevity (30+ vs 20), the ring on the basis of attachment, obviously the ring -- he threw Wright under the bus, but the ring is stil there on the basis of contemporary politics, judging by Black Horse the Honey Badger's entries of late, the ring

I'm not certain this is a good rule of thumb -- if it means that one can never pass off an NDE report as bullshit evidence of life after death, slowly or quickly. Then perhaps you can expand on your original comment. What is remarkable about the story that it pertains to consciousness? How does it relate to the concerns and questions raised in this thread? All we got with your mention of the book was a label -- 'fascinating.' In the context of consciousness, coma, and the experiences of levels of physical awareness, of minimally conscious states, of the odd flatness and lack of distress in locked-in patients -- even Dr Alexander's story can be interesting, okay. Fascinating perhaps, in that conversion experiences and altered states of consciousness are interesting in themselves, and may shed light on the puzzles of self, mind, brain, will and awareness that bedevil us in this thread. But honestly, as evidence of another realm, a spirit realm? Perhaps you can be more clear about what makes the doctor more fascinating that any other NDE reporter? I got the impression this was being slipped in as 'evidence' of life after death, which it seems to me it is anything but. If you want to argue for a life for the mind beyond death of the body and brain, you will be expected to provide a much much stronger warrant than Alexander, in my opinion. Remember J Neil Schulman's long attempt to convince OLers of the brief incarnation of 'god' inside his body? I am not anxious to walk in the shoes of a coma victim, and definitely not anxious to get an E coli infection in my meninges. The prognosis is not very good for adults. That the doctor came out neurologically undamaged (as far as we know) is a clue that no part of his brain 'died' ... moreover, if you read his lengthy interviews before reading his book, the course of his illness and the story of his recovery, you can see that he at no time consulted a neurologist (let alone a researcher like Damasio) about his recovered 'memory of coma' experiences; he kept them hidden. That coma (not only coma from meningial infection) provides interesting findings about consciousness is one thing, and I am certainly not hostile to examining cases. I am hostile to spiritist wishfullness and life after death longings. It strikes me odd that I might have to defend that stance. In a thread about consciousness, if you introduce a duality between body and mind, with a consciousness of another realm beyond reality, what are we supposed to do with that? Murmur approvingly, hope we get in a coma so we can be credentialled to discuss it one day?

Yikes! So maybe Objectivish thought is compatible with lafe after deeth? Who woulda known? The thing is for me that the Astonishing Testimony from a Neurosurgeon (!) of Loif after dath. We are perhaps supposed to snap our heads up in astonishment that someone has reported an NDE while (he says) he was in a profound coma. As if it had never happened before. As far as I can tell, nothing in the book is Startling and New. It is the same old dreary NDE bullshit as given by anyone else. Light, clouds, peace, blah. Evidence of an afterlife? I think not. Interesting? Well, notable perhaps that Objectivish folk find this persuasive, interesting only to the measure that Objectivish folks actually take it seriously. Here is pretty much all you need to know about the book "Proof of Heaven" and the doctor, his own words: The book that the good doctor is peddling is currently on pre-order (no previews) and is unreviewed. But here a sharp-minded pre-reviewer echoes my sentiments:

Not me, no, the fabulist Lindsay Daffyd Agamemnon Perigo! I scrolled through the usual hysterical nonsense last week at SOLitaryPassion, and saw a bland "Announcement" thread by some grim-faced hireling, to the effect that we anyone on earth could go to Amazon.com and order a BOOK by Lindsay Perigo. I did not link to the startling news at the time, since it was unlikely anyone here would pony up the necessary, and also since readers would have to wade through such gush as this by said grim-faced hireling: Subtitled 'Life, Liberty ... and the Pursuit of Their Enemies' it is salvo after passionate salvo for the advance of liberty and reason. Boldly militant and genuinely caring, like a Mencken or modern-day Voltaire, Perigo challenges the status quo with wit, intelligence and urgency. He clears away cant. He speaks from mind and heart. He wants to change the world. As it turns out this Kindle book (unavailable in any other format) is a compendium of previously published or broadcast articles. Here is a sample, from the introduction:

Ai yai yai, Jerry. Who said, "The best source of info about GMO is Jeffrey Smith"? You. And my question was WHY should we accept that he is the best source of info. That question you do not answer.

Jerry, my friend, look back at your recommendations. These are all from you: Listen to Jeffrey Smith for the whole story. Listen to a Jeffrey Smith video for the whole story. Listen to Jeffrey Smith for the whole story. Listen to Jeffrey Smith for more stories. Jeffrey Smith explains it better than I can. Search "Jeffrey Smith" for more videos and websites. The best source of info about GMO is Jeffrey Smith. Do a search on him and listen to all his lectures and to all his interviews. Inform yourself. My question was WHY? Why should we listen to Jeffrey Smith? Why should we accept that he is 'the best source of info about GMO'? I want information, Jerry, and I want an explanation from you -- why is Jeffrey Smith the authority you trust to be 'the best source of info'? What gives you that confidence in the man's materials? I am asking you why you trust Jeffrey Smith. Is that realy too difficult a question to answer? Well, friend, you have not given any attention in this thread to [smith's] message, you merely accept it and trumpet it. You appear to uncritically accept everything written by Jeffrey Smith on the subject, and also appear not to understand some basics about Bt (one standout bit of ignorance is freaking out about Bt exuded by plants, but not by Bt applied to plants -- as I noted to your apparent stupefactation, Bt has been sprayed on crops since 1920). It seems ironic that you tout Smith relentlessly, but when asked why you tout him as an expert, you go mute or distracted. The irony comes from your dismissal of research depending on its provenance -- as you dismiss any research that comes from 'the gummint' ... as you dismiss the findings of anyone with a credential:, as you dismiss findings while citing them! Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. The Soilandhealth website is not affiliated with any educational institution and is unaffiliated with any government and unaffiliated with anyone but Justin Crawford. I have no idea what criteria you used to reject anything from this site. Incidentally the paper you urged your readers to read (but dismiss!) was published in 1948. This is wonderful, Jerry. You want to know what is in the food you eat. However, when I pointed out that the food you eat is likely treated with Bt toxins ... you replied without noting the fact. Here is the issue, Jerry. That Bt toxins have been part of the human diet since the 1920s you accept. that the Bt toxins put holes in your guts because of Bt, you also accept. Does it not seem alarming that you have no idea if Bt is on the food you consume, that you only seem concerned about Bt inside the food you consume? What is the difference?

I am at sea here. Paul, can you put forward a definition of 'causal thinking'? I am stuck with the Wikipedia entry that goes on about Kant: Is 'causal reasoning' the same thing (in your mind) as 'causal thinking'?

This is stated many times, and I still do not fully understand it. I have asked before if anyone can imagine making a rational decision without emotion, and I noted Damasio's work on emotional deficits (in the consciousness thread). Blackhorse, have you read anything of Damasio's work with 'Elliot'? (first in book form in Descarte's Error) I mention this so that you can find and examine a situation that puts the "not tools of cognition' / 'not tools of rational decision making' to the test. Here is a teaser from a popular article in the Sydney Morning Herald, Feeling our way to decision

What we know about Jeffrey M Smith: He has an MBA from Maharishi Shool of Management in Iowa. He has a blog on Huffington Post. He is a member of the Sierra Club. With his wife Andrea he runs a SwingDance school in Iowa. In 1998 he ran for a seat for the Iowa state house. He recieved 932 votes. He ran for the Natural Law Party of the US. In 1996 he demonstrated Yogic Flying for the press in Chicago. He calls himself an expert in GMO foods. He calls any criticism of his book (Genetic Roulette) a 'smear' He has NEVER responded in detail to the critics of his recent book. So, a dance teacher self-publishes a book via vanity press in 2003. Later, Jerry Story tells us we should listen to this man's videos on the dangers of genetically modified organisms. Why, Jerry? Have you asked yourself what makes this dance teaching Yogic flying master someone whose word you should trust? Here's Jeffrey doing the high-jump: Here's Jeffrey doing the old swing dance with his lovely wife:

What I think? Do you care? Yes, what you think, Jerry -- you, not other people, not Youtube. You. Other people are not here to discuss. What do you yourself think about chemtrails?

Here is Jeffrey Smith speaking at the conference Consciousness Beyond Chemtrails earlier this summer (he was the keynote speaker, but the featured guest was chemtrail expert Rosanne): Speaking of holes in intestines, Jerry -- what do you think about chemtrails?

Says you, the same you that started the thread with a video on potatoes festering our guts. Look at it this way, Jerry: if say humans eat, oh, a hundred pounds of Bt corn a year, and four hundred pounds of Bt potatoes, we should be more concerned about Bt corn? Here is what you say about the poison, expert or not: Jerry, brother, you are wrong to say 'causes the intestinal wall to get thin.' This is not even cited in the list of 65. In other words, nothing you have cited before supports this contention. Now, here is another list for you, Jerry. First, did you know that the 'toxin' produced by the Bacillus thuringiensis was first used as a pesticide in the 1920s? Secondly, did you know that the herbicides containing Bt toxins are in use (approved for) so-called "organic farming." Look up 'Dipel' organic pesticide**, and discover that the evil Bt protein is probably on your brocolli and cabbage right now! __________________

The details are in the actual paper by Ewen and Puzstai: Effect of diets containing genetically modified potatoes expressing Galanthus nivalis lectin on rat small intestine Clue that this was not the end of the matter: Wiki's page on "The Puzstai Affair," cited above.

Jerry Story invites OLers to watch a video of Arpad Pusztai. He also gives us an unattributed list of claims about GMO foods. His epistemological standards are unclear. Does he believe all are 'proven,' or does he believe a back-of-the-envelope calculation of odds? Has he approached each of the 65 listed 'findings' one by one, tested its veracity, examined the source of the contention? We do not know. Brant asked for a reference for Pusztai, but this was a bit too much for our Jerry. The analogy to Rand introduces the unsaid lung cancer/tobacco smoke connection. Apparently she quit smoking on or around the time of her diagnosis. Who wouldn't? What that has to do with 65 shiny baubles of alarm in re GMO we do not know. Further weird-way-to-reason is that Jerry, for all his question mark topics, does not really ask any questions. He beggars the questions that matter. Not 'Do GMO Potatoes put holes in guts?' but 'Do you want holes in your guts?' Not "what does the research say?" but "since this one crackpot on a website says it's true, who am I to question it?" Weird. Just taking some spoken claim without question and moving on. Is this the best we can do with our reason? I think not. However he got to his opinions, by vacuum hose or careful junk-picking, Jerry confidently gives us the goods: Hmmm. Were the animals in Pusztai's research fed Bt corn or lectin-dosed potatoes? Um, Jerry? You know that Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) is completely different from the compound Pusztai tested (snowdrop lectin)?** Who is this Arpad Pusztai, anyway? Do we need to ask any Objectivish questions of him, or do we just apply a rule-of-thumb? -- if he says he found GM potatoes will put holes in your intestines, are there any criteria we have as objective inquirers to test his claim, examine his premises and the work he puts forward? Do we have an alternative to fully accepting Hole In Yer Guts as Jerry does? Questions, questions ... Jerry is no help. He has some oddball criteria that cause him to sometimes scrutinize material and sometimes not. In this case he appears to have no intellectual filters to sort the claimed and the true. Instead of giving us a chance to engage with him in his truth search, he gives up, goes for a data dump. He doesn't (he does!) calculate probabilities. He doesn't (does he?) investigate primary sources or the literature. Peer review seems an alien concept, as do any of the presumptions of rational inquiry -- least of all investigation. It is as if he thinks he cannot know (the degree of and specific nature of) the danger in GMO, so we should err on the side of paranoia, believe the worst, and take the conclusions of some random website instead of doing our own thinking. I think of Jerry as someone in a mental stockade, with few tools to comprehend the world outside the walls. So, Jerry and the GMO potato, item one ... is there a story here, or should we just swallow the contention whole? Carol thinks the Original Topic header is the worst topic tile ever. It may be, but more pertinent is Brant's input: whatever Pusztai is peddling, somewhere is to be found the research he claims to have made, research that can be (and was) examined and critiqued. ________________ ** Sadly, it seems that Jerry answered Brant's challenge to deliver the literature supporting Pusztai's video by misunderstanding and mixing up 'lines of evidence' coming from two entirely different papers. This is what happens when you do not understand the question on the table. Mixing up Pusztai's research is likely not the only basic error made. This is what happens when you do not know what Bt toxin is, or how it is tested ... Fares NH, and El Sayed AK (1998). Fine structural changes in the ileum of mice fed on delta endotoxin-treated potatoes and transgenic potatoes. Ewen SW and Pusztai A (1999). Effect of diets containing genetically modified potatoes expressing Galanthus nivalis lectin on rat small intestine. Lancet 354 :1353-1354. http://en.wikipedia..../Pusztai_affair

I plug this in here, though answering Tony from the other thread on Diana and the Wall of Hypocrisy. I do not fully understand this. Set aside the term 'sub-conscious' and what does this mean -- every emotion came via one's consciousness? If this means that one does not emote when one sleeps, I would disagree**. If it means more or less that an impression of some kind (signal 'incoming' to an emotional centre in the brain) had to have been made on a conscious organism before it could feel emotion, I could partially agree, since I can easily sketch out a situation for the six senses, each one illustrated by a conscious organism having an emotion triggered by something external, or something that impinged upon the brain's awareness. But to say that one was conscious of something, an event or action that impinged and engendered emotion -- does this necessarily imply 'consciousness' in the fully extended gerund in play? It does not imply a fully human consciousness if one can say that a dog or other animal can be triggered into fear. Any manner of mammals exhibit fear, anger ... and can recognize it in a conspecific. So, I can agree with the statement that every emotion came via one's consciousness without accepting a human-only example. I set aside "one's sub-conscious" because I do not know what Tony means exactly. Unconscious brain activity obviously undergirds the conscious stream of thought and perception, but I do not reify this underground to a separate actor. I do not believe in The Unconscious as a personality, so to speak, in any way separable from the brain and personality of the individual. More to the point, if I agree that emotions are felt consciously, and rooted in consciousness, what can I make with that statement? What does it imply as knock-on effects in the world and in the mind? Emotion is one of those 'things' that I do not think Rand worked on sufficiently, did not explore and write enough about. I am unsatisfied with the stock Objectivish notions about emotion.† I agree with the broad strokes of Rand that agree with the findings of cognitive neuroscience, and part with her where her statements are contradicted in fact. Further elaborations of her verbalisms tend to confuse me, as I do not grasp the referents sometimes. For example, think of what conceptual depth is in these three words: cognition, tool, emotion. What do I need to know about cognition, about tools, about emotions, before I can confidently assemble the three into always/ever statements of broad (if not universal) applicability? This is so encouraging. I think of someone without emotion, or with particular emotional deficits. I cited Damasio before, Tony, hoping my readers in this thread had read him or of him. What makes his work interesting is he put the question of the OT at the front of his work as a neurologist. He sought out (like Sacks) the folks with deficits -- in consciousness and in emotion. Here the evidence from Damasio is unequivocal, and contradicts Rand's dicta. Without emotion, how can one make decisions? Without that evaluator automatically operating, giving physical reactions to the data, how can one make fully informed choices? In several striking cases, Damasio has featured the severe cognitive effects of having emotions 'removed.' Tony, can you imagine how crippled cognition might be without the input of emotion, in terms of analysis and judgement? Can you imagine a morality without emotion? I really think there is no more emotional animal than humankind. Hands down. The sketchiness of Objectivish thought on emotion is disappointing sometimes. What we know about emotion from Objectivism, in other words, is not enough to understand emotion in its fullest, and to more fully understand how deeply implicated emotion is in so much of what we call 'cognition.' The more we understand from the sciences about the peculiarities of our faculties, the more we can rationally deal with them. Knock out the ability to feel emotion, and the human becomes incapable of decision-making. A part of the machinery of the human that is absolutely necessary for rational cognition, emotion. ________________ ** of course, one is conscious to a greater or lesser degree during one's dreams and nightmares. The impingement on consciousness that engenders emotion in the dream world is almost always from the stream of consciousness, it could be argued. † Love love love where Boydstun and Marsha Familiaro Enwright get to on emotion. Dissenting with Rand on this issue is not apostasy. What I like is that Rand understood emotion as an evaluative faculty, and stressed that humans can engineer and supervise their own emotions, if not their moods. She also deftly sketched the actors, the organism/evaluator, and the executive, the Ego, and the impingements. Her sketch of an emotion under the executive management of the self is revealing of what she aspired to as a rational human being. I can only stand with this kind of aspiration. It is what I wish for myself and all human beings.

I'll move my comment over to the thread about consciousness, since I find I have nothing fresh to say about Dr Hsieh. I hope she is okay, but we don't hear much from her these days. The wall of hypocrisy is keeping her near-mute, maybe, circumscribed her ability to dominate. I tend to think of her as an intellectual invalid now. I expect no books, no articles in journals, nothing but feedback cult radio forever.

No, he didn't.

Full disclosure: I wrote to Pope upon his first appearance at OL. Here is what I wrote in part: I just got a reply from Pope. I won't give the details, but he asked if I found it 'weird' that I was stalking him. I replied: I am sorry to have caused any distress to Pope. I invite him to put his complaint into perspective, and to think about menace, intimidation, and harassment. I invite Pope to respond here, thus taking the 'stalking' from the shadows.

I did not watch the debate tonight**. I am prepared to hate Elizabeth Warren née Herring, Cherokee slut, because my half-sisters and half-brother ARE Cherokee, galdarnit. Well, their grandma's mom was Cherokee, or so they say. TWICE as much Cherokee as the Whore from Harvard. I am willing to hate her. Did she get a Harvard job over other contenders because of her 1/32 Cherokee heritage? Do we believe her likely story of a family history, a treasured-tale of a Cherokee great plus plus grandma and high-cheeked Grandpapa? I dunno, I accept my three siblings' story, and one sister was called Chink-Face in her early years at school. According to the Cherokee slut herself, her momma and her pawpaw and her nonna and her whatever ladled out lore of Cherokee heritage to the kids. This is perhaps the story as in my family. I accept it in mine as oral history, even if I do not know the details or have the DNA haplotype results. On looking up the details, I find the Pawnee Prostitute listed herself of Cherokee heritage in the annual directory of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) deskbook between 1985-1996. She claims that she did not discuss her heritage with Harvard's selection committee nor in tenure discussions. She could be lying. It could be that she did not ride a whorish half-breed handout via 'affirmative action' -- but it still leaves her earlier jobs. Apparently she was a waitress in Oklahoma, a 'special needs' teacher in Houston, and the wife of a NASA engineer, raising two kids. I hope she discussed her heritage with her hubby, and as for the waitress job, it was in her aunt's diner. Somewhere in there she pullied her 'get out of Oklahoma' card, I figure. Maybe her win as state-wide debate champ at the age of 16, more likely her winning a 'debating' scholarship that got her native-imposter ass through George Washington University. Yet, maybe it was her Oklahoma born Trail of Tears family bullshit that caused her to mark her entry in the law desk-book. But is it any different from the bullshit of tens of thousands of American half-breed families? The Cherokee expulsions led to the same kind of marrying-out (exogamy) as in post-war Japanese Canadians. If I was a half-way good-looking young woman, having marched my way from the Carolinas to Indian Territory, I would be showing my knees to any guy who could ride a horse and get me outa there. Beyond that, if I was more Objectivish, more conventionally conservative, or more Republican, I would hate Warren for acts other than half-breed claims. I would hate that she was an appointed adviser to Congress, that she is some kind of expert on bank regulations, that she writes books about the collapse of middle class incomes. This is not quite enough`though, really, but if we add in tenure at Harvard, TARP, teachng at Rutgers, work on the evil-sounding Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, what more do we need to know to hate? This, all this justifies all the epithets she gets tossed her way, win or lose. Slut or not, whore of Babylon or not, she is in a Senate race, where anything goes. If she wins, she gets a plum assignment, from Them. If she loses, she loses nothing, because she already is of Them. So, go get 'er, that roundheeled doxy, that slut, that whore, give her all the bad bitch names you can delve. Do not let her saddle up for the Senate. Do not let Claire McAskill ride her fat ass back to a seat in DC. Do not let the other leftist lapdancers win either. Hope that Scott Brown gets a ride on Mitt's coattails. ____________ Big audience. DIck Gregory asks the first question about her native heritage and the faculty directory ...and it goes on for the first ten minutes. Full debate video: http://www.c-span.or.../10737434503-2/ Big audience means big applause lines. The free-form format of the debate means that the debate is actually gripping at times. Advantage slut or advantage Brown?

I wondered what the trade-off would be in subjecting myself to forty-seven minutes of Naomi Wolf. Would I learn something? Couldn't I just find her frigging list on Wikipedia (well, yes and no. Sloppy Jerry borrowed his entire list from Wikipedia but forgot to mention or link to the source of his copy/paste. She has even written a book, he also failed to mention. If you do not care to listen you can read here: The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, at Amazon's Look Inside)? If Michael Marotta is just suggesting that an End Times message coming from a non-Wolf might be more palatable to Adam, I tend to agree. Wolf is not the source or the validator of the signs. She has borrowed this baseline list, and then instantiates it with her chosen examples. What Wolf does, as many do, is play epistemological whoopee from that point, but I think Identifying and listing markers of a dictatorship is fine. That is likely not where Adam finds himself in disagreement, if not high dudgeon. So, to the list. What I remark upon is the possibility for whoopee, possibilities not circumsribed by party affiliation or phobia. First, do we buy the list? I vote yeah, on the whole. We can use it to discern the difference between, say, Canada and the DPRK. We can recognized the signs of full-on (Cuba) and incipient (Venezuela). We can even mark a bounce-back from dictatorship by watching signs of dictatorship in retreat, whether historically in the fall of the Soviet system, or in present day, as in Burma, even in North Africa. If you are, let's say, a follower of the cough news presented at Infowars, you may have marked out examples of dictature in America and the world. If a hysterical leftist stenographer, you might also have marked the same signs (though not in exact same fashion) and concluded you live under dictatorship. Doesn't it seem that there are a lot of bells of doom being sounded, in many neighbourhoods? So maybe you two are both right: an asshole like Wolf can be making an argument for 'living dictatorship' that is mirrored by Objectivish opinion. using 'signs.' And Adam, isn't it true that you use Leftishness as a filter to your analyses? I mean, what if the Ten Steps To Dictatorship came from another book ... if not from a CATO-whoopeed list? Naomi Wolf says an American despot can rise in our time, and that we should be aware of The Signs. Isn't this what you have been saying all along yourself, with the despot being The Marxist? Here are those top ten signs again, this time with me mentally adding in examples. I wonder how am I at mind-reading compared to MEM or Commie Carol. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy (Global Capitalism Run Amok) Create secret prisons where torture takes place (Oh, um, FEMA camps, CIA black ops) Develop a thug caste or paramilitary force not answerable to citizens (Obamacorps, Them) Set up an internal surveillance system (Oh, um, hmmm, could they? Not intercept your communications without a warrant, surely?) Harass citizens' groups (Ranch Rescue, Sovereign Citizens, Civil Homeland Defense!) Engage in arbitrary detention and release (National Defense Authorization Act, anyone?) Target key individuals (Rush, Glenn, those turned up in NSA warrantless taps) Control the press (FCC on down by law, local station on up, by influence and pressure) Treat all political dissidents as traitors (in essence, the last threshold to cross before ten. Who is bing targetted for the FEMA camps when the hammer comes down?) Suspend the rule of law (closer and closer. Just what is habeus corpus versus NDAA, NSA, black ops?) Now, here I sit stupefied by socialism in sunny Vancouver, and I am alarmed. Is this seeming equilibrium here in our life and economy and social cohesion a delusion, horribly false, a mutual folly, a folie à plusieurs? Have I missed the signs and missed the soundings of the bells of doom from down south -- is America, is Canada, is this whole elaborate fantasy about to fall? Should I not be even more horribly alarmed by the tolling of the bells when Left and Right unite around The Signs of End Times? Si je me trompe, quels horreurs m'attendraient?

I am more sanguine about stupid voters than Adam or Blackhorse. Television in Canada on basic cable always includes the US major network programming, so we all know the voter with an Obama-phone and a reason to believe was referring to the government programme Lifeline that subsidizes cell phones. We have seen the commercials. Fox news gets to the heart of it: What is surprising to me is that you guys south of the 49th parallel appear to have More Socialism Than Canada. What's going on here, fellas? We don't got no free phones up here as far as I know. We don't have a weird kickback to Sprint and TracPhone to hook up our feeble (and possibly deranged). The safety net is a larger weave up here, maybe.† It makes sense for the private sector to get into bed with government in telecommunications if they get something from providing a service free or nearly free. I haven't found any trade-offs yet (what the companies do besides deliver the social programme by contract; the companies take no risks, it seems). Sprint et al get that business intangible Good Will, and if we are to believe that this lady represents 47% of America, simpleminded and able to be bought off, Obama gets enough votes to tip it his way, from handouts. That the danged phone-subsidy programme for low-income consumers started in 1985 on Reagan's watch is neither here nor there, of course. What was the altruistic point of Lifeline in the first place? ** Asked: "At what point will the black culture embrace reason?" and all I can say is that it can't, 'cause it is black. The same dang culture that gave the world Louis Armstrong and led to Kazakhstani Hip-Hop, reduced to old black ladies who know a good thing when then see it, in re Obamaphone. As to "WHY 90% of blacks vote democrat?" -- haven't you already answered that question: Goodies! Mitt needs to come out firmly against black culture and Obamaphones, maybe. _______________ † The mandarinate in Ottawa and the provinces is different than the USA. Different acronyms, different administrative structure. In truth the Canucki equivalent of the FCC (for which there is no equivalent) mandate extends the same presumptions of the 1996 update to your communication law -- it directs 'equitable service' to the regions, including the Far North, and heavily invests in making schools and libraries universal access points, and also subsidizes high-cost areas otherwise in all telecommunications. The idea is that shitholes in northern Saskatchewan or Nunavut should have the same access as Yonge and Bloor. No crazy blacks with bags full of free phones roaming our cities, however. ** This provides the rationale, such as it is, from the Lifeline website at the FCC: fcc.gov/lifeline: As a universal service program that fulfills Congress’s mandate to ensure the availability of communications to all Americans, Lifeline for the past 25 years has helped tens of millions of low-income Americans afford basic phone service. Access to telephone service is essential for finding a job, connecting with family, or getting help in an emergency, and the percentage of low-income households with phone service has increased from 80% in 1985, when Lifeline began, to nearly 92% last year. [still doesn't answer the question of where the money actually comes from. It is actually collected from the consumer in something (look on your phone bill) Universal Access Fee. This is paid into the Universal Service Fund, which is administered by the Universal Service Administrative Company. All this according to the FCC and to Wikipedia. Everybody pays except black people.] Here are a couple of competing products, from CBS Atlanta and from FoxNews 45. Black folks abound in both reports.

As we wait for Robert's Notes From the Caverns, scholarly Fred Seddon reports from the deep are up at OL's former competitor. In another devious attempt to cover my yawning ignorance, I heartily recommend the first installment, DIMwit - Part I. I like it most because I do not feel I have to read Part 2 immediately**. If you do not like green leafy vegetables, don't order salad. Free appetizer: __________________ Part Two, Three, Four. The original free course offering (that I stupidly turned down) from SOLO October 2006. This approximates my mental image of the planning and equipment necessary for a safe exploration of yon DIM hypothesis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6jOZiGRF9A

Dan Haggerty names an interest group here at OL: those who are not spelunking, who have a phobia of Objectivish caves, who await the return of those who have gone deep and carried strong flashlights. Dan is not yet sure there are legs to the base DM concept. Me too. It has been on folks' lips and in Objectivish discussion for some time, but the deepest way (or most efficient way) to grasp the DM concepts was to pony up the dollars and listen to the full tape set; if I remember correctly, this was something started by Lindsay Perigo. I followed the discussion at the time, but could think of nothing to say. In the back of my mind were a few murky questions: - what makes 'integration' something that can be measured, individually (as with an individual's "score")? What is this thing integration that it can be deduced or inferred from a distance? If a best/most rational/accurate/panoptic integration can be scored individually, how do you take the measure in an aggregate of individuals, how do you measure the weight or prevalence of a society-wide level of effective/defective integration? How do you test your measurements? How is the causal relation traced out -- between Big Bad Misintegrator's foulness and its actual, persistent, measurable effect in the world of les autres? How can a correlation be set aside from a causal assumption? - what is in reality being measured or said to be measured? I just get all messed up when I put these questions into play. Since Peikoff's earlier book of diagnosis was so awful to my mind (not to be dismissed lightly, but to be thrown with great force**), since I do not really credit him with diagnostic acuity, since I am not a fan, I do not know the answers. More basically, I am stumped by this quote taken from the Amazon Look Inside! feature: Do I have this right? Has Dr P diagnosed a sickness? Has he done so convincingly? Are the lights going out? I just haven't got my head around the basics, so I feel incompetent -- and thus await brave Robert Campbell's spelunking report. ___________________ ** Attributed to Dorothy Parker: "This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."

A side-note on Damasio and Sacks. Those who have followed my earlier recommendations on neurology by dipping into the output of these two gents will understand the attention to anomalies that provide insight, defects that give insight to the state of health. Damasio seeks an explanation of the elements of a conscious human. He investigates edge conditions, 'locked-in' folks, or those in the varied states of full paralysis. One women he worked with emerged from a very long 'lock in' and was able to return to full language expression, and give us the result of her introspection -- a report of her 'conscious' experiences. This was a woman who could not even twitch an eyelid, but slept and waked and observed from within. Imagine! Did she feel dread, fear, depression, hopelessness? Was her consciousness of the horror of the situation? Could she feel the range of emotions one would expect of a conscious organism? Surprisingly, no! These quotes are from The Feeling of What Happens, one of Damasio's four great works on consciousness. PDS, if interested, I can direct you to a short summary of Dr D's findings and grand hypotheses. I am presently struggling through Harry Binswanger's elucidation of the problem of consciousness. I may not be back for weeks.

A couple of years back Barbara Branden weighed in on the Rand-Beethoven kerfuffle: