Theoconservative BioEthics

The Stupidity of Dignity - Conservative bioethics' latest, most dangerous ploy - Steven Pinker;

This spring, the President's Council on Bioethics released a 555-page report, titled Human Dignity and Bioethics. The Council, created in 2001 by George W. Bush, is a panel of scholars charged with advising the president and exploring policy issues related to the ethics of biomedical innovation, including drugs that would enhance cognition, genetic manipulation of animals or humans, therapies that could extend the lifespan, and embryonic stem cells and so-called "therapeutic cloning" that could furnish replacements for diseased tissue and organs. Advances like these, if translated into freely undertaken treatments, could make millions of people better off and no one worse off. So what's not to like? The advances do not raise the traditional concerns of bioethics, which focuses on potential harm and coercion of patients or research subjects. What, then, are the ethical concerns that call for a presidential council?[...]

The sickness in theocon bioethics goes beyond imposing a Catholic agenda on a secular democracy and using "dignity" to condemn anything that gives someone the creeps. Ever since the cloning of Dolly the sheep a decade ago, the panic sown by conservative bioethicists, amplified by a sensationalist press, has turned the public discussion of bioethics into a miasma of scientific illiteracy. Brave New World, a work of fiction, is treated as inerrant prophesy. Cloning is confused with resurrecting the dead or mass-producing babies. Longevity becomes "immortality," improvement becomes "perfection," the screening for disease genes becomes "designer babies" or even "reshaping the species." The reality is that biomedical research is a Sisyphean struggle to eke small increments in health from a staggeringly complex, entropy-beset human body. It is not, and probably never will be, a runaway train.

Be that as it may, it's most interesting to observe the staunch prohibitions attempted as against the leading edges of biomedical research and the contrasting theoconservative ethics vis-a-vis cheap energy as an inalienable American right.

Human Rights, Science and the Energy Emergency

Dr. Arthur Robinson at HumanEvents.com

Today, we announce that more than 31,000 U.S. scientists -- over 9,000 of whom hold PhD degrees in relevant scientific fields -- have signed a petition to the U.S. government that states:

The people of the United States find themselves in an economic crisis caused, in large part, by energy shortages and rapidly increasing prices for energy.

Yet, the United Nations and other vocal political interests are urging the U.S. to enact new laws that will sharply reduce U.S. energy production and raise energy prices even higher. These interests claim that continued U.S. use of hydrocarbon fuels -- which account for 85% of U.S. energy supplies -- will destroy the Earth’s climate and cause many environmental catastrophes.

What should the U.S government do in response to this situation? The answer is provided by science, by economics, and by the basic principles of human rights. The inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, in a civilization based upon the achievements of science and technology, include the rights to obtain access to life-giving and life-enhancing technology. This is especially true of the right of access to the most basic of all technologies -- the right of access to energy. This right, we recognize, means we have the right to purchase energy, though the government does not owe us a supply of it. To the contrary, the government owes us an obligation to remove itself as an obstacle to our access to energy unless there is a reason our nation’s security is endangered by it. And there is no such reason.

The so-called “global warming” measures advocated by the UN and others create obstacles, rather than eliminating them.


Our right to access to energy and removal of government obstructions have been significantly abridged.During the past two generations in the U.S., a system of high taxation, extensive regulation, and ubiquitous litigation has arisen that prevents the accumulation of sufficient capital and the exercise of sufficient freedom to build and preserve needed modern technology.

This unfavorable economic environment has caused the transfer of many industries abroad and cessation of growth of many others. Nowhere is this damaging trend more evident than in our energy industries, where lack of industrial progress has left our country dependent upon foreign sources for 30% of the energy required to maintain our current level of prosperity.

etc., etc., and so on and so forth....,

America is a nation of 300 million citizens who consume 25% of the world's daily oil production. In a world populated by 6.7 billion people this means that there are approximately 2 billion who have access to *no* energy at all -- no automobiles, no air conditioners, and very little food.

The Bear Stretches....,

Russia accused of annexing the Arctic for oil reserves by Canada

The battle for "ownership" of the polar oil reserves has accelerated with the disclosure that Russia has sent a fleet of nuclear-powered ice breakers into the Arctic.

It has reinforced fears that Moscow intends to annex "unlawfully" a vast portion of the ice-covered Arctic, beneath which scientists believe up to 10 billion tons of gas and oil could be buried. Russian ambition for control of the Arctic has provoked Canada to double to $40 million (£20.5 million) funding for work to map the Arctic seabed in support its claim over the territory.

The Russian ice breakers patrol huge areas of the frozen ocean for months on end, cutting through ice up to 8ft thick. There are thought to be eight in the region, dwarfing the British and American fleets, neither of which includes nuclear-powered ships.

Canada also plans to open an army training centre for cold-weather fighting at Resolute Bay and a deep-water port on the northern tip of Baffin Island, both of which are close to the disputed region. The country's defence ministry intends to build a special fleet of patrol boats to guard the North West Passage.

"The message from Vladimir Putin is that Russia will no longer be shackled to treaties signed by Yeltsin when he was half drunk or when Russia was on its knees,"

Russia rivals Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil producer and is estimated to have the largest natural gas supplies. Energy earnings are funding a $189 billion (£97 billion) overhaul of its armed forces.

Cold War Oil Politics

The U.S. and the Soviet Union;

Richard Heinberg, a professor from Santa Rosa, California argues that a newly declassified CIA document shows that the U.S. used oil prices as leverage against the economy of the Soviet Union:

"The Memorandum predicts an impending peak in Soviet oil production 'not later than the early 1980s' (the actual peak occurred in 1987 at 12.6 million barrels per day, following a preliminary peak in 1983 of 12.5 Mb/d). 'During the next decade,' the unnamed authors of the document conclude, 'the USSR may well find itself not only unable to supply oil to Eastern Europe and the West on the present scale, but also having to compete for OPEC oil for its own use.' The Memorandum predicts that the oil peak will have important economic impacts: 'When oil production stops growing, and perhaps even before, profound repercussions will be felt on the domestic economy of the USSR and on its international economic relations.'"

"...Soon after assuming office in 1981, the Reagan Administration abandoned the established policy of pursuing détente with the Soviet Union and instead instituted a massive arms buildup; it also fomented proxy wars in areas of Soviet influence, while denying the Soviets desperately needed oil equipment and technology. Then, in the mid-1980s, Washington persuaded Saudi Arabia to flood the world market with cheap oil. Throughout the last decade of its existence, the USSR pumped and sold its oil at the maximum possible rate in order to earn foreign exchange income with which to keep up in the arms race and prosecute its war in Afghanistan. Yet with markets awash with cheap Saudi oil, the Soviets were earning less even as they pumped more. Two years after their oil production peaked, the economy of the USSR crumbled and its government collapsed.

As noted in April - In a radically altered world— where Russia is transformed from battered Cold War loser to arrogant broker of Eurasian energy, and the United States is forced to compete with the emerging “Chindia” juggernaut—the only route to survival on a shrinking planet, lies through international cooperation.

Gurdjieff Movements

The Enneagram - A Lecture by G.I. Gurdjieff

In every man there has been implanted a need of (desire for) knowledge, differing only in its intensity. But the passive human mind, while utilizing every means possible to it of taking in (and working over) impressions, often gets into an impasse in trying to find an answer to the question "Why".

Man's eyes are dazzled by the bright play of the colors of multiformity, and under the glittering surface he does not see the hidden kernel of the one-ness of all that exists. This multiformity is so real that its single modes approach him from all sides - some by way of logical deduction and philosophy, others by way or faith and feeling. From the most ancient times down to our own epoch, throughout the ages of its life, humanity as a whole has been yearning for a knowledge of this one-ness and seeking for it, pouring itself out into various philosophies and religions which remain, as it were, monuments on the path of these searches for the Path, leading to the knowledge of unity. Very extensive lecture here.

Gurdjieff on Influences

ONCE there was a meeting with a large number of people who had not been at our meetings before. One of them asked: “From what does the way start?” The person who asked the question had not heard G.’s description of the four ways and he used the word “way” in the usual religious-mystical sense.

“The chief difficulty in understanding the idea of the way,”‘ said G., “consists in the fact that people usually think that the way” (he emphasized this word) “starts on the same level on which life is going. This is quite wrong. The way begins on another, much higher, level. This is exactly what people usually do not understand. The beginning of the way is thought to be easier or simpler than it is in reality. I will try to explain this in the following way. Full excerpt here.

Conspiracy Theory

Also by Stephan Faris, but in next month's Atlantic Monthly.

As scientific evidence accumulates on the destructive impact of carbon-dioxide emissions, a handful of lawyers are beginning to bring suits against the major contributors to climate change. Their arguments, so far, have not been well received; the courts have been understandably reluctant to hold a specific group of defendants responsible for a problem for which everyone on Earth bears some responsibility. Lawsuits in California, Mississippi, and New York have been dismissed by judges who say a ruling would require them to balance the perils of greenhouse gases against the benefits of fossil fuels—something best handled by legislatures.

But Susman and Berman have been intrigued by the possibilities. Both have added various environmental and energy cases to their portfolios over the years, and Susman recently taught a class on climate-change litigation at the University of Houston Law Center. Over time, the two trial lawyers have become convinced that they have the playbook necessary to win big cases against the country’s largest emitters. It’s the same game plan that brought down Big Tobacco. And in Kivalina—where the link between global warming and material damage is strong—they believe they’ve found the perfect challenger.

Given the inability of the Rockefeller heirs to get ExxonMobil to budge, perhaps mobilization of trial lawyers seeking a major bounty is the only way to crack the adamantine corporatist nut?

Berman and Susman aren’t alone in drawing parallels between the actions of the defendants and those of the tobacco industry. The Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental advocacy group, has accused Exxon­Mobil of adopting the cigarette manufacturers’ strategy of covertly establishing “front” groups, promoting writers who exaggerate uncertainties in the science, and improperly cultivating ties within the government. The oil company, it says, has “funneled approximately $16 million to carefully chosen organizations that promote disinformation on global warming.”

The prospect of catching folks lying conspiratorially makes this interesting and analogous in many regards to the tobacco industry which was successfully assayed by well prepared trial lawyers.

Is Climate the Real Culprit in Darfur?

The fighting in Darfur is usually described as racially motivated, pitting mounted Arabs against black rebels and civilians. But the fault lines have their origins in another distinction, between settled farmers and nomadic herders fighting over failing lands. The aggression of the warlord Musa Hilal can be traced to the fears of his father, and to how climate change shattered a way of life.

Until the rains began to fail, the sheikh’s people lived amicably with the settled farmers. The nomads were welcome passers-through, grazing their camels on the rocky hillsides that separated the fertile plots. The farmers would share their wells, and the herders would feed their stock on the leavings from the harvest. But with the drought, the farmers began to fence off their land—even fallow land—for fear it would be ruined by passing herds. A few tribes drifted elsewhere or took up farming, but the Arab herders stuck to their fraying livelihoods—nomadic herding was central to their cultural identity. (The distinction between “Arab” and “African” in Darfur is defined more by lifestyle than any physical difference: Arabs are generally herders, Africans typically farmers. The two groups are not racially distinct.)

Stephan Faris in last year's April Atlantic Monthly

It's Liquidation Time...

It's approaching three months since we last sampled a little bit of the Hypertiger's wisdom. I tend to dot connect from the periphery of what's available to us in the mainstream if we'll only focus our attention diligently enough to see it.

F'zample, the makings of the Greatest Depression are all readily available for anyone to see. The pernicious gaming of the food supply and gradual conditioning of public awareness to this process is another subject we've covered extensively, and, which other dot-connectors have summarized nicely to our attention.

But at the end-of-the-day - I've only come across a single purveyor of an internally consistent grand unified theory of the end of the world as we know it (TEOTWAWKI) who goes well beyond the popular periphery and deep into historical detail and comes back up and out with simple, readily accessible explanatory summations. I believe it imperative that you go and fully assimilate Hypertiger Wisdom if want to have a comprehensive handle on the current situation - that said, I humbly yield the microphone to the Hypertiger;

A well rested horse is not an exhausted horse. And an exhausted horse is zero.

Top lives off the yield from the bottom. When the yield from the bottom to the top becomes zero...The top goes nowhere. The top needs to find a well rested horse to ride...You can add as many exhausted horses to the equation as you want...You are not going anywhere.

Rich people get all the power they have from the bottom...and when the bottom is exhausted...There is nothing they can do...They have no power other than what you all give them.

And you think when you can no longer pay the top what you owe them that they are going to print up what you owe them...hand it to you and then you hand it back to them to pay them what you owe them...

Sorry...When the bottom is exhausted...It's game over.

No magic printing press or anything else is going to work....The only thing that works is liquidation.

the top needs assets and saves assets...But once the bottom is used up...They are not assets anymore...They are liabilities and either self liquidate or are wiped off the face of the ledger...

Can't feed 6 Billion boot lickers anymore...well...liquidate them until you get to the point that you can.

The above is real economics...Not the wishful thinking fantasy economics you all are devoted to and promote.

Very, very few people realize what we've enbedded in...An absolute capitalist hierarchial food powered make work enterprise...

GDP break down...

Agriculture: 1% The producers of the power...

The consumers of the power. (food powered make work liabilities)

Industry: 20.7%
Services: 78.3%

Sorry but none of you eat Gold and Silver or copper or crude oil, etc. to sustain the continued existence of your bodies...

Total labor force out of the population of 300 Million...150 million.

farming/food production 0.5% or 7.5 million people...

In any evaluation of the actual state of an economy, the intellectual tools of historic comparison are invaluable. When those tools are used today to examine the US economy, what one finds is a massive multi-generational retrogression which has been constant since the mid-1960s. To give just one example of this, today, the US manufacturing base takes up a mere 9.9 percent of total employment.

If the gargantuan and grotesque US military-industrial complex is subtracted, as it ought to be as sheer economic waste, what would remain are those still employed in the US civil and private economy. In reality, genuinely productive employment in the US economy is much lower than 9.9 percent. This is de-industrialisation in broad daylight. Some folks not only haven't a clue about the nature of the beast, they actively promote disinformation which serves to keep other clueless folks distracted from seeking a clue on their own.

Just a Good Ole Boy.......,

Huckabee in Kentucky going for the tee, hee, hee.....,

Project Holocaust

R.K. Moore is a good guy and an interesting thinker whose online musings I've monitored for some years now. Some years ago, for a couple months, I carried on a brief topical correspondence with Mr. Moore. In this article (which you should click to read in its entirety) he attempts a very large-scale orchestrated objective reduction of numerous dots he's connected relating to the food crises and their presentation in the media.

One of the things I’ve noticed about the mass media is that it carries only a few themes at a time. There’s always one main theme – a kind of hypnotic focus point – which right now is the US Democratic Primaries, and in the past has been anything from a hostage crisis to a celebrity murder trial. The main theme can be vacuous in content; it needs only to take up a lot of news airtime, and keep people glued to their sets. And then there are always a few secondary themes being carried as well, with interruptions from time to time for natural disasters.

The secondary themes are highly selective. World-shaking events are going on all the time that mainstream TV never mentions. Things like genocide in East Timor – which went on for decades invisibly, and then suddenly it was in our face just when an intervention required justification. That is to say, secondary themes are selected for a purpose. What they are telling us is less important than why we are being told. We can find the news itself much more reliably in other places, mostly online. When they bring a theme to our mainstream attention, that means it is important to them that we view that scenario in certain ways. In other words, they are preparing us for things to come, getting us to frame our thinking in such a way as to be able to accept what we might not otherwise accept.

“Well Mack the Finger said to Louie the King I got forty red white and blue shoe strings And a thousand telephones that don’t ring Do you know where I can get rid of these things And Louie the King said let me think for a minute son And he said yes I think it can be easily done Just take everything down to Highway 61.”
· Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited

Highway 61 is a rather direct allusion to Highway 66, which is the most famous cross-country US highway. That then leads to a somewhat more comprehensive allusion, to the Madison-Avenue empowered American mass media, which also goes from coast-to-coast, and which can sell anything at all to the masses – not only telephones that don’t ring, but wars that don’t make sense, buildings that collapse at free-fall speed, concentration camps, and torture. Why are they taking global famine down to Highway 61? Why has it become a media theme? What are they selling us this time?

I think it is very clear that we are being prepared for a massive global holocaust, and the evidence I have seen for this is now much stronger than it was five months ago. There are two kinds of evidence. One kind of evidence is about the hunger crisis itself, and the various conditions forcing that crisis. The other kind of evidence comes from the nature of the interventions that are being planned and announced, to alleviate the crisis.

I'm not sure about the extent to which we're being prepared, particularly as the intensity of the Greatest Depression begins to mount and become undeniable in the U.S.. However, there is a sinister logic to the notion that if an out-and-out holocaust is about to unfold in the planet's southern hemispheric countries, that at the very least, a massive great depression and concurrent set of privations would have to be underway in the developed world - if for no other reason than to maintain narrative consistency and the appearance of actual scarcity induced disruption.

Anti-Psychotic Drugs and U.S./UK Kids

At CNN Health; American children take anti-psychotic medicines at about six times the rate of children in the United Kingdom, according to a comparison based on a new U.K. study.

Does it mean U.S. kids are being over-treated? Or that U.K. children are being under-treated?

Experts say that's almost beside the point, because use is rising on both sides of the Atlantic. And with scant long-term safety data, it's likely the drugs are being over-prescribed for both U.S. and U.K. children, research suggests.

Among the most commonly used drugs were those to treat autism and hyperactivity.

In the U.K. study, anti-psychotics were prescribed for 595 children at a rate of less than four per 10,000 children in 1992. By 2005, 2,917 children were prescribed the drugs at a rate of seven per 10,000 -- a near-doubling, said lead author Fariz Rani, a researcher at the University of London's pharmacy school.

The study was released in the May edition of the journal Pediatrics.

UK Strengthens Its Cannabis Law

In BBC Political News; Cannabis is to be reclassified as a class B drug, Jacqui Smith has said. The home secretary said she wanted to reverse Tony Blair's 2004 downgrading of the drug because of "uncertainty" over its impact on mental health.

The move from class C means the maximum prison sentence for possessing cannabis rises from two years to five years.

Her statement to MPs came despite the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs' review - commissioned by Gordon Brown - saying it should stay class C.

Oil Supply vs. Demand

I wonder if much of the debate about the run-up of oil prices could be resolved simply by looking at this graph. The Age of Aquarius at the Association for the Study of Peak Oil.

World Oil Supply & Demand (all liquids) from 2003-
2007 Source: EIA supply and demand data

Chicago Joins the $4.00 Gas Club

My children and I love to play a driving game called "yellow car, lucky day" - I'm sure some of you know it. The goal is to be first to spot and tally up the largest number of yellow motor vehicles. Yellow tractors but not lawnmowers count a half point, purple cars count two points, but they have to be truly purple not oxblood colored, or whatever that ugly deep reddish brownish color sometimes passing itself off as purple is called.

Anyway, I thought we could start our own blogospheric version of the game except the object would be to spot $4.00/gallon gasoline for sale in a locality near you. We'll call this the $4.00 Gas Club. Send a picture with details to subrealistro@gmail.com.

Now don't cheat and use gasbuddy.com and please do send a photo or a link to a photo of the offending purveyor on flicker or other web photo archiving site. Who knows, the $4.00 (and soon $5.00) Gas Club could have stronger legs than the "A Kneegrow Said It" club. Oh yeah, given what I expect to see coming down the political pike, the "A Kneegrow Said It" blogpost category gets its very own contest too. The only rule there is that offending submissions have to have been spotlighted on a mainstream media outlet and used as a sockpuppet proxy for what the showcasing pundit would have loved to say themselves, but can't, and so exploits a willing and expendable proxy. Doubtless James David Manning will be in high demand after his moment of infamy on Limbaugh's boradcast yesterday.

The Trinity of Hell - A Kneegrow Said It

Today I encountered a completely new milestone in my continuing examination of the rorschachian reflections of the collective American psyche evoked by Baraka Obama's presidential candidacy. Rush Limbaugh has been working for some time to push the envelope of permissible, racialized political speech related to the Obama candidacy via proxy. Here to date, he's done this by having his engineer Mr. Snerdley function as his official Obama spokesman. Snerdley has been all too glad to clown for Limbaugh. Today however, Limbaugh took his racialized political strategery to levels never previously experienced by providing a national broadcast showcase for commentary by the exceedingly idiosyncratic James David Manning. Without further ado - the first installment of A Kneegrow Said It. Given the course of the campaign for the presidency, I expect many more such exploratory probes of what's permissible in the American political mainstream;

Shibboleth

Shibboleth (IPA: /ˈʃɪbəlɛθ/[1]) is any language usage indicative of one's social or regional origin, or more broadly, any practice that identifies members of a group. Apparently the shibboleth has become the subject of academic research. Two vintage cultural discussions of this topic predating this study from VisionCircle days come to mind, first a discussion of Roland Fryer's Acting White and second an early discussion with Negrorage aka TheGrayConservative about the cultural phenomenon of Blackness. But before we turn attention to the gist of the study - let me state what should be obvious. The thing we know as culture is comprised of myriad unconscious behaviours and cues (thus the subrealist dimension) which serve to identify one as a member of a given cultural grouping. The term that I've used for some years to describe this phenomenon comes from Alan Carter and is called "microsynchronization of body language". Some of us easily and effortlessly model multiple cultural configurations and can easily segue into and out of cultural milieus at will, and others, not so much. So-called nerds and autistic spectrum individuals seem strongly disinclined to trouble themselves with cultural microsynchronization, thus the stereotypical and nearly universal characterization of the "nerd" type, which largely defies cultural embedding.

While everybody responds to it in varying degrees, once you're aware that this form of comprehensive unconscious signaling takes place - the synchronization of your body language is no more complicated than the synchronization of your language or dialect. It's simple mimicry. A careful student of microsynchronization and practitioner of subtle mimicry can wield exceptional influence in a rich variety of social contexts - here's the abstract in question;

What leads humans to divide the social world into groups, preferring their own group and disfavoring others? Experiments with infants and young children suggest these tendencies are based on predispositions that emerge early in life and depend, in part, on natural language. Young infants prefer to look at a person who previously spoke their native language. Older infants preferentially accept toys from native-language speakers, and preschool children preferentially select native-language speakers as friends. Variations in accent are sufficient to evoke these social preferences, which are observed in infants before they produce or comprehend speech and are exhibited by children even when they comprehend the foreign-accented speech. Early-developing preferences for native-language speakers may serve as a foundation for later-developing preferences and conflicts among social groups.

The term originates from the Hebrew word "shibboleth" (שיבולת), which literally means the part of a plant containing grains, such as an ear of corn or a stalk of grain [2] or, in different contexts, "stream, torrent"[3] [4] It derives from an account in the Hebrew Bible, in which pronunciation of this word was used to distinguish members of a group (the Ephraimites) whose dialect lacked a /ʃ/ sound (as in shoe) from members of a group (the Gileadites) whose dialect did include such a sound.

In the Book of Judges, chapter 12, after the inhabitants of Gilead inflicted a military defeat upon the tribe of Ephraim (around 1370–1070 BC), the surviving Ephraimites tried to cross the Jordan River back into their home territory and the Gileadites secured the river's fords to stop them. In order to identify and kill these disguised refugees, the Gileadites put each refugee to a simple test:

Gilead then cut Ephraim off from the fords of the Jordan, and whenever Ephraimite fugitives said, 'Let me cross,' the men of Gilead would ask, 'Are you an Ephraimite?' If he said, 'No,' they then said, 'Very well, say Shibboleth.' If anyone said, 'Sibboleth', because he could not pronounce it, then they would seize him and kill him by the fords of the Jordan. Forty-two thousand Ephraimites fell on this occasion.

– Judges 12:5-6, NJB

As some of you may have observed in the comments over the weekend, there are some subrealist shibboleths, as well. So called racial realists of any stripe or persuasion are quick to get the gas face and be banished to the murky swamps from whence their beliefs and thinking emanate. Seriously - anybody who pretends that prejudice is universal to an arbitrarily defined group of people, or, that complex behavioural patterns that are obviously culturally determined are rooted in dimly understood genetic wetware - is basically stuck too deep in the mud of stupid to waste cycles trying to extract. As far as I'm concerned, those folks don't even have entertainment value.

Peak Wood

This article provides a simple and highly accessible primer on the cyclical rise and fall of complex civilization. In addition, it actually references the Sumerian god of the forest and its conservation "Humbaba".

I'll never forget the first time I went into a supersized grocery store, in New Hampshire I believe, some twenty-odd years ago. It was easily the most impressive collection of food that I had ever personally witnessed. Dumbstruck, I referred to this for me unprecedented phenomenon as "the mighty Humbaba", and that term has stuck ever since. My children know exactly what I'm talking about when I refer to the now somewhat typical big box store or grocery store as "Humbaba".

Humbaba was the lord of the cedar forest - a giant with a face of coiled intestines. Gilgamesh the Sumerian hero fought and killed him and then cut down his cedar trees. The Epic of Gilgamesh is translated in full here;

The importance of oil is not that it provides energy; energy can be had from anything. The importance of oil is that is provides cheap energy. A society's complexity is not a function of the total energy throughput, but the ERoEI--Enery Returned on Energy Invested, or ROI in pure energy economics terms. Since the general problem (if not the specifics) is such a common one, allow me to explain with an example from our own history: the end of the Bronze Age, the beginning of the Iron Age, and a crisis we might today call, "Peak Wood."[...]

Every civilization eventually falls prey to diminishing returns. The problem of Peak Oil--like "Peak Wood"--is just one dimension of this much larger, intractable problem, inherent to the nature of any complex society. What separates extant civilizations from extinct ones is whether or not a less attractive alternative existed, which could become the basic strategy for a new iteration in the cycle of expansion and exploitation. But eventually, miracles run out. Eventually, the deus ex machina leaves us to sink or swim on our own merit. The crisis of Peak Oil is precisely the kind of crisis that has always collapsed civilizations, and if history is any guide, then it seems very likely that we have finally run out of luck, and the time has finally come to pay back 10,000 years of debt.

In addition to being a good and satisfying read on its own, invoking the sacred name of the great Humbaba, it links to the anthropik blog and website, jeffvail, and some other good resource sites, as well.

Why Organelle?

One of my favorite reference sites is Organelle. Hopefully by now, you will have already availed yourself of this extraordinary resource. If not, no time like the present. Enjoy.

Why are you doing this?
Firstly, it is my experience and understanding that we as a species, and Earth as a planet are facing a variety of unprecedented threats for which both are vastly more unprepared than human beings imagine. For the humans, early (current) results include cataclysmic changes in human health and cognition. For the biosphere, the results vastly exceed what can be briefly discussed. Simply stated, the anciently and arduously conserved biocognitive libraries of Earth are being burned, wholesale. Humans believe this has little to do with them, and, as far as action goes, egregiously ignore these matters. No one finds wholesale atrocity surprising anymore. We accept it as a fact of life, whether it is the physical atrocities of war and ‘research’ or the cognitive and relational atrocities bred in the thriving soup of our human cultures.

I do not believe we can give answer to these challenges without some very new and powerful methods of approach and forms of understanding. It is my sincere belief that Cognitive Activism holds forth promises of new and extremely powerful ways of understanding both the genesis of these matters and their resolutions.

If you want to paint me with a label, for some reason or other, the label transhumanist might be relatively accurate, in that I believe we have not yet glimpsed even the tiniest portion of our real cognitive and relational potentials. However, I am an a-mechanical transhumanist in that I do not really believe that machines and our relations with them ‘enhance’ us. It is not enough for there to be an apparent benefit to some dimension of our activity (i.e. relation with machines); the costs of creation, relation, and protection (maintenance) of machines must necessarily be available for evaluation if we are to decide they are ‘beneficial’. But these costs are neither examined, nor available for examination, since many of them exist in terrains we are but poorly equipped to recognize or evaluate.

Simply stated: machines and organisms compete for the same terrain and resources. This has severe cognitive ramifications for human beings, as well as physical ramifications. Humans are almost miraculously cognitively malleable and are prone to biocognitive emulation of various functions and features of their common relationals. In the case of machines, the more we relate with them, the more we become like them. Yet a machine is not even the shadow of an organism. It is the shadow of some function of an organism. This is not something we want the experience of ‘becoming alike with’ cognitively, physically, emotionally, nor in any other way.

Each person (and organism) possesses kinds and forms of relational ability (intelligence potentials) that would make the sum of our science, religion, and fiction look like a charred matchstick compared to the Sun. Having had a direct experience of some of these potentials and abilities, I believe it is possible for us to rediscover them together, with the aid of some new ways of relating to identity and knowledge.

In essence, I see the potential for a sudden revolution in human relational intelligence, something more dramatic than anything we can currently imagine. If we can remove the elemental obstructions at the roots of our relational intelligence, we have the chance to radically and positively change what it means to be human.

Childish Superstitions

In today's UK Guardian; Einstein's letter makes view of religion relatively clear.

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." So said Albert Einstein, and his famous aphorism has been the source of endless debate between believers and non-believers wanting to claim the greatest scientist of the 20th century as their own.

A little known letter written by him, however, may help to settle the argument - or at least provoke further controversy about his views.

Due to be auctioned this week in London after being in a private collection for more than 50 years, the document leaves no doubt that the theoretical physicist was no supporter of religious beliefs, which he regarded as "childish superstitions".

The Newborn Screening Saves Lives Act of 2007

On Thursday, April 24, 2008, the President signed into law S. 1858, the "Newborn Screening Saves Lives Act of 2007," which authorizes through fiscal year 2012 new and existing programs at the Department of Health and Human Services concerning newborn screening. A detailed analysis of the implications for genetic privacy and consent rights shows how the government plans to treat the DNA of every newborn:

• Establish a national list of genetic conditions for which newborns and children are to be tested.
• Establish protocols for the linking and sharing of genetic test results nationwide.
• Build surveillance systems for tracking the health status and health outcomes of individuals diagnosed at birth with a genetic defect or trait.
• Use the newborn screening program as an opportunity for government agencies to identify, list, and study "secondary conditions" of individuals and their families.
• Subject citizens to genetic research without their knowledge or consent.

Soon, under this bill, the DNA of all citizens will be housed in government genomic biobanks and considered governmental property for government research. The DNA taken at birth from every citizen is essentially owned by the government, and every citizen becomes a potential subject of government-sponsored genetic research.

S. 1858 imposes a federal agenda of genetic data warehousing and population-wide genetic research. It does not require consent and there are no requirements to fully inform parents about the warehousing of their child's DNA for the purpose of genetic research.

Playing the Iraq Oil Card

If anyone had any doubt that Iraq was a lot about oil, they shouldn't after the recent Capitol Hill appearance by our ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker. In a closed House hearing, Crocker put the fear of god in Congress. His message: If we leave Iraq, Iraq will destabilize the Gulf, and a destabilized Gulf equals unstable oil prices.

Nobody really knows, which is just what the Bush Administration is counting on. They got us into this mess in the first place by preying on people's fears, and now they are continuing to do so. And $10 a gallon for gasoline is his equivalent of an economic WMD.

The truth of the matter finally goes mainstream, now was that really so hard?

Patent for a Pig (Pt.1 of 5)?

Patenting living organisms is already settled case law in the U.S.

Thereby paving the way for some VERY BIG business plans indeed.....,

Please read the notes that accompany this youtube video and links to the remainder of the series and related videos.

As with the terminator seeds, it's not just about the organism itself, it's about the organism's offspring, as well. If this is what they'll do to farmers in the U.S., just imagine what they'll try to do with farmers outside the view of the American public?

Seed Police?

Last year, William Engdahl peaked the curiosity of inquiring minds with his text Seeds of Destruction - The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation. Can the development of patented seeds (genetically modified organisms - GMO) for most of the world’s major sustenance crops such as rice, corn, wheat, and feed grains such as soybeans ultimately be used in a horrible form of biological warfare?

The explicit aim of the eugenics lobby funded by wealthy elite families such as Rockefeller, Carnegie, Harriman and others since the 1920’s, has embodied what they termed ‘negative eugenics,’ the systematic killing off of undesired bloodlines.

Comes now Vanity Fair with an investigation of stringent, sweeping, and unsettling intimidation practices by Monsanto in the U.S.;

Most Americans know Monsanto because of what it sells to put on our lawns -- the ubiquitous weed killer Roundup. What they may not know is that the company now profoundly influences -- and one day may virtually control -- what we put on our tables. For most of its history Monsanto was a chemical giant, producing some of the most toxic substances ever created, residues from which have left us with some of the most polluted sites on earth. Yet in a little more than a decade, the company has sought to shed its polluted past and morph into something much different and more far-reaching -- an "agricultural company" dedicated to making the world "a better place for future generations."[...]For centuries—millennia—farmers have saved seeds from season to season: they planted in the spring, harvested in the fall, then reclaimed and cleaned the seeds over the winter for re-planting the next spring. Monsanto has turned this ancient practice on its head.

Monsanto developed G.M. seeds that would resist its own herbicide, Roundup, offering farmers a convenient way to spray fields with weed killer without affecting crops. Monsanto then patented the seeds. For nearly all of its history the United States Patent and Trademark Office had refused to grant patents on seeds, viewing them as life-forms with too many variables to be patented. “It’s not like describing a widget,” says Joseph Mendelson III, the legal director of the Center for Food Safety, which has tracked Monsanto’s activities in rural America for years.Indeed not. But in 1980 the U.S. Supreme Court, in a five-to-four decision, turned seeds into widgets, laying the groundwork for a handful of corporations to begin taking control of the world’s food supply. In its decision, the court extended patent law to cover “a live human-made microorganism.” In this case, the organism wasn’t even a seed. Rather, it was a Pseudomonas bacterium developed by a General Electric scientist to clean up oil spills. But the precedent was set, and Monsanto took advantage of it. Since the 1980s, Monsanto has become the world leader in genetic modification of seeds and has won 674 biotechnology patents, more than any other company, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.

From where I sit, this dot-connecting spade work does far more to bolster Engdahl's contentions than to repudiate them. Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear.

Oh, and while I was at it, I happened upon this earlier article at Greenpeace discussing Monsanto's foray into "life as intellectual property" - Monsanto files patent for new invention: the pig

Green Acres

What will the U.S. government do when prime farmland in Iowa, Indiana, and Illinois is being sold to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE? From the oil-exporting nations' point of view, farmland is a good investment. They already have the fertilizer plants.

One can easily envision armed Chinese troops patrolling farmland in Africa, with a cleared DMZ and minefields to keep the starving locals from "straying" into Chinese-owned farmland; and armed convoys trucking produce to the nearest airfield for shipping back to China.

China looking to buy farmland abroad to stay self sufficient in food

Not Black and White - Rethinking Race and Genes

Late last year, I was compelled to keep my foot planted deep in William Saletan's ignorant, overreaching backside. Saletan was down to the same insidious and habitual stupid human tricks that certain of our visitors seem to be perennially stuck on. Shame. As it turns out, Saletan has finally come around to the errors and omissions plaguing his thinking. While it's at least five months and some years too late to warrant respect (I mean really, only a true simpleton could go down this path in the first place) - at the very least - his epiphany is worth noting;

policy prescriptions based on race are social malpractice. Not because you can't find patterns on tests, but because any biological theory that starts with observed racial patterns has to end with genetic differences that cross racial lines. Race is the stone age of genetics. If you're a researcher looking for effects of heredity on medical or educational outcomes, race is the closest thing you presently have to genetic information about most people. And as a proxy measure, it sucks.

By itself, this problem isn't decisive. After all, racial analysis did lead to the genetic findings about beta blockers. But as the conversation shifts from medicine to social science, and particularly to patterns laden with stereotypes, the moral cost of framing such patterns in racial terms becomes unsupportable. We can't just be "race realists," as believers in biological distinctions among races like to call themselves. We have to be realists about racism. No fact in human history is more pervasive than our tendency to prejudge, fear, despise, persecute, and fight each other based on even the shallowest observable differences. It's simply reckless to feed that fire.

Of course Saletan equivocates waaaaay too much, understandable given that it's humiliating to be found out as intellectually underendowed. That said, at least he's taken the first step toward scientific and intellectual sobriety. He's no longer in complete denial of what's trivially obvious to those of us with the eyes to see. Let's hope everyone is capable of bootstrapping themselve up and out of the psychological stone age.

The Greatest Depression

Overview; (read the whole thing, it's intense)

The U.S. economy is in an intensifying inflationary recession that eventually will evolve into a hyperinflationary great depression. Hyperinflation could be experienced as early as 2010, if not before, and likely no more than a decade down the road. The U.S. government and Federal Reserve already have committed the system to this course through the easy politics of a bottomless pocketbook, the servicing of big-moneyed special interests, and gross mismanagement.

The U.S. has no way of avoiding a financial Armageddon. Bankrupt sovereign states most commonly use the currency printing press as a solution to not having enough money to cover their obligations. The alternative would be for the U.S. to renege on its existing debt and obligations, a solution for modern sovereign states rarely seen outside of governments overthrown in revolution, and a solution with no happier ending than simply printing the needed money. With the creation of massive amounts of new fiat (not backed by gold) dollars will come the eventual complete collapse of the value of the U.S. dollar and related dollar-denominated paper assets.

What lies ahead will be extremely difficult and unhappy times for many. Ralph T. Foster, in his "Fiat Paper Money" (see recommended further reading at the end of this issue), closes his book’s preface with a particularly poignant quote from a 1993 interview of Friedrich Kessler, a law professor at Harvard and University of California Berkeley, who experienced the Weimar Republic hyperinflation:

"It was horrible. Horrible! Like lightning it struck. No one was prepared. You cannot imagine the rapidity with which the whole thing happened. The shelves in the grocery stores were empty. You could buy nothing with your paper money."

This Special Report updates and expands upon the three-part Hyperinflation Series that began with the December 2006 SGS Newsletter, exploring: (1) the causes and background of the evolving hyperinflation and great depression; (2) why circumstances will differ from the deflationary Great Depression of the 1930s; (3) implications for politics and the financial markets; (4) considerations for individuals and businesses.

Fairytale Tellers....,

Ollie North in Townhall.com about Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson's Domestic Energy Production Act of 2008. You almost want to feel sorry for these people, and you have to feel sorry for the people who believe them;

While Washington's political elites in both parties have debated and dithered, the price of crude oil has risen to $123 per barrel -- nearly double what it was at this time last year. The average cost of a gallon of gas at the pump is approaching $4 per gallon. Some analysts now are predicting that the price of a barrel of oil could approach $200 in the next two years -- and that gasoline could be $6 a gallon. An equal amount of diesel may cost truckers as much as $7.50.[...]The newest oil refinery in the United States was built by Marathon in Garyville, La., in 1976. Since then, every effort to construct new facilities has been thwarted by protests and lawsuits from "environmental" groups and government red tape. It has been 12 years since the last nuclear reactor came on line to generate electrical power in the United States.

Time and money are wasting. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas has proposed a realistic solution: the Domestic Energy Production Act of 2008. Her bill would permit exploitation of more than a trillion barrels of U.S. territorial oil and nearly 600 trillion cubic feet of natural gas -- more than the combined hydrocarbon reserves of Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Nigeria, Venezuela, Libya and Iran. The measure also would streamline the process for building new refineries and clean, safe nuclear power plants, as well as funding to develop alternative fuels.

But none of that -- and the consequent reduction in energy costs -- ever will benefit American consumers, unless Congress acts. Until they do, we will have to plan on spending our tax refund checks -- and a whole lot more -- at the pump.

Should have heeded the prescient leadership of Pres. James Earl Carter thirty years ago when there was time enough to do something about what's around that signpost up ahead.

Can you even begin to imagine how shocked and awed the folks who believe chindribble like this townhall.com article are going to be when the stuff really hits the fan in earnest?

Hellury - Segregation Now! Segregation Forever!

"Though my opponent has run a terrific campaign, in primary after primary, I have proven that I am the more electable candidate. I am more electable because I am white.


Barack Obama--Wow!--he's certainly inspired a lot of hope, but as voters in Indiana and North Carolina make up their minds, as the superdelegates make up their minds, they should remember that Barack Obama is black. They should also remember that a whole lot of white working-class Americans are racists. White racists are an important part of the Democratic Party, and time and time again, they've supported me because I am white. I am ready on day one to govern as your white American president."

and there it is BAM!!!!

Baraka Obamamandius IS America's Rorschach Test.

Great Filter - The U.S. Electric Grid?

The U. S. electric grid: will it be our undoing? Quite a few people believe that if there is a decline in oil production, we can make up much of the difference by increasing our use of electricity--more nuclear, wind, solar voltaic, geothermal or even coal. The problem with this model is that it assumes that our electric grid will be working well enough for this to happen. It seems to me that there is substantial doubt that this will be the case.

From what I have learned in researching this topic, I expect that in the years ahead, we in the United States will have more and more problems with our electric grid. This is likely to result in electrical outages of greater and greater durations.

The primary reason for the likely problems is the fact that in the last few decades, the electric power industry has moved from being a regulated monopoly to an industry following more of a free market, competitive model. With this financing model, electricity is transported over long distances, as electricity is bought and sold by different providers. Furthermore, some of the electricity that is bought and sold is variable in supply, like wind and solar voltaic. A substantial upgrade to the electrical grid is needed to support all of these activities, but our existing financing models make it very difficult to fund such an upgrade.

If frequent electrical outages become common, these problems are likely to spill over into the oil and natural gas sectors. One reason this may happen is because electricity is used to move oil and natural gas through the pipelines. In addition, gas stations use electricity when pumping gasoline, and homeowners often have natural gas water heaters and furnaces with electric ignition. These too are likely to be disrupted by electrical power outages.

Seems to me that the $50-100 Trillion infrastructure re-investment needs to be directed toward the power grid. That's a place where the federal government can intervene decisively to establish and enforce advanced, highly efficient digital standards and compliance with the same - which yield profound benefits across every sector of our economy. Bottomline, in order for the hypercar to thrive as leap forward in efficient transportation, then the power grid is going to have to be up to the task of supporting that significant added burden, i.e., folks plugging in their hypercars at night.

Real Energizers

An Electrifying Startup - It is the quickest electric motorcycle in the world. On a popular YouTube video, the black dragster cycle nearly disappears in a cloud of smoke as the driver does a "burn-out," spinning the back wheel to heat it up. As the smoke drifts away, the driver settles into position and hits a switch, and the bike surges forward, accelerating to 60 miles per hour in less than a second. Seven seconds later it crosses the quarter-mile mark at 168 miles per hour--quick enough to compete with gas-powered dragsters.

What powers the "Killacycle" is a novel lithium-ion battery developed by A123 Systems, a startup in Watertown, MA--one of a handful of companies working on similar technology. The company's batteries store more than twice as much energy as nickel-metal hydride batteries, the type used in today's hybrid cars, while delivering the bursts of power necessary for high performance. A radically modified version of the lithium-ion batteries used in portable electronics, the technology could jump-start the long-sputtering electric-vehicle market, which today represents a tiny fraction of 1 percent of vehicle sales in the United States. A123's batteries in particular have attracted the interest of General Motors, which is testing them as a way to power the Volt, an electric car with a gasoline generator; the vehicle is expected to go into mass production as early as 2010.

What is a Hypercar?

So yesterday, I had the privilege of lunch and fairly lengthy conversation with one of my elders, betters, and mentors. This gentleman is a civil engineer and the president of a sizeable professional engineering firm with a strong interest in green design. As automated controls have a central role to play in many green schemes, there is a good synergy here and we look forward to a vibrant cross-disciplinary collaboration.

I was telling him about Matt Simmon's less than sanguine prognosis for the ailing oil industry infrastructure. His response caught me by surprise. He stated that in his opinion, the oil industry is just about precisely where the typewriter industry was at the dawn of personal computing. They're either going to take their massive profits and re-invest some of this in alternative energy, or, they're going to decline and fade to black. He then launched into a discussion of hypercars - which up until that moment - I'd never heard of;

A Hypercar® vehicle is designed to capture the synergies of: ultralight construction; low-drag design; hybrid-electric drive; and, efficient accessories to achieve 3 to 5-fold improvement in fuel economy, equal or better performance, safety, amenity and affordability, compared to today's vehicles.

Hypercar ConceptRocky Mountain Institute's research has shown that the best (possibly, the only) way to achieve this is by building an aerodynamic vehicle body using advanced composite materials and powering it with an efficient hybrid-electric drive-train.

Initially, the hybrid-electric drivetrain in Hypercar® vehicles will probably use a specialized version of the internal combustion engine commonly used in today's cars. To reach their full potential, and virtually eliminate automobile pollution, Hypercar® vehicles will be powered by fuel-cells running on tanks of compressed gaseous hydrogen fuel.

Unlike other efficient vehicles, Hypercar® vehicles don't compromise performance, comfort, or safety. Indeed, by offering extra consumer appeal and manufacturing advantages, they stand a better chance of getting on the road — and forcing old, polluting cars off — in sufficient numbers to make a big difference to the environment. Hypercar® vehicles and their kin could profitably reduce carbon-dioxide emissions (the major contributor to climate change) by two-thirds, partly by greatly accelerating the shift to hydrogen fuel cells.

In 1994 we founded the Hypercar Center® to research and promote this concept. Having proved its technical feasibility through rigorous technical modeling, the Center's staff spent the past several years making Hypercar® technology a commercial reality. Their unconventional approach has been to place the concept in the public domain and share it conspicuously with some two dozen major car companies and new market entrants to maximize competition in capturing its market and manufacturing advantages. The result: billions of dollars' private investment, and rapid movement of Hypercar-like concepts toward the marketplace.

I don't know about the fuel-cells, but the overall scheme makes a lot of sense and looks like it has legs in the marketplace. More about those legs in the next post.