05.28.09
Sun belt
Concentrated solar power could generate ‘quarter of world’s energy’Industry groups call for solar thermal technology to expand in ‘sun belt’ around world as Spain leads the field
To Brink of Extinction
Published on Thursday, May 28, 2009 by The Guardian/UK
Oil Firms and Loggers ‘Push Indigenous People to Brink of Extinction’
‘Uncontacted’ tribes forced to flee armed gangs and bulldozers in forests of Peru, Brazil and Paraguay, says Survival International
West Bank Settlements
Published on Thursday, May 28, 2009 by The Times Online/UK
Israel Rebuffs Hillary Clinton’s Call for Halt in West Bank Settlements
by James Hider in Jerusalem
Israel’s new right-wing government was set for its first stand-off with the Obama Administration today, after it openly rebuffed a call from Washington to a total freeze on all Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
Corporate Frankensteins
The Final Conquest
Corporate Frankensteins
By RALPH NADER
Once upon a time early in the 19th century, corporations came into existence by state legislatures approving charters, which were granted for a limited period of time and for limited purposes. These corporations – producing textiles and other products in New England – raised capital in part because their investors had limited liability. That meant they could not lose any more than their investment if things went wrong.
Since corporations were artificial legal entities and not human, these lawmakers feared that without some strong leashes, they could be creating Frankensteins.
Over the following two hundred years, these ever larger corporations and their attorneys have been driving relentlessly, dynamically to erect systems of privileges and immunities that give the corporations themselves limited liability.
Bleak harvest
RG mail
by Asif Mehdi, development practitioner
Al Jazeera (May 19 2009)
As the world staggers from one economic crisis to another, it seems easy
to forget the global food crisis that occupied centre stage in 2008.
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/globalrecession/2009/05/20095161253214553.html
Tales From the Dark Side
Tales From the Dark Side
Torture and the American Conscience
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Torture is a violation of US and international law. Yet, president George W. Bush and vice president Dick Cheney, on the basis of legally incompetent memos prepared by Justice Department officials, gave the OK to interrogators to violate US and international law.
The new Obama administration shows no inclination to uphold the rule of law by prosecuting those who abused their offices and broke the law.
Cheney claims, absurdly, that torture was necessary in order to save American cities from nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists. Many Americans have bought the argument that torture is morally justified in order to make terrorists reveal where ticking nuclear bombs are before they explode.
However, there were no hidden ticking nuclear bombs. Hypothetical scenarios were used to justify torture for other purposes.
We now know that the reason the Bush regime tortured its captives was to coerce false testimony that linked Iraq and Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda and September 11. Without this “evidence,” the US invasion of Iraq remains a war crime under the Nuremberg standard.
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts05282009.html
U.S. Afghan raid killed 97 civilians, 2 Taliban — rights group
Rg mail
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSISL484432
Reuters May 26, 2009
U.S. raid killed 97 civilians – Afghan rights group
By Sayed Salahuddin
Kabul – A U.S. air strike in western Afghanistan early this month was a disproportionate use of force that killed 97 civilians and no more than two Taliban fighters, an Afghan rights watchdog said in a report on Tuesday.
Alternative to neoliberalism
RG mail
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/world/europe/26spain.html
New York Times May 26, 2009
A Job and No Mortgage for All in a Spanish Town
By VICTORIA BURNETT
MARINALEDA, Spain — The people of this small Andalusian town have never been shy about their political convictions. Since they occupied the estate of a local aristocrat in the 1980s, they and their fiery mayor, Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo, have been synonymous in Spain with a dogged struggle for the rural poor.
Marketskeptics.com: hyperinflation
RG mail
by Eric deCarbonnel
marketskeptics.com (April 21 2009)
The encyclopedia (Farlex) explains hyperinflation:
Hyperinflation
Rapid and uncontrolled inflation, or increases in prices, usually
associated with political and/or social instability, as in Germany in
the 1920s.
http://www.marketskeptics.com/2009/04/key-points-about-hyperinflation.html
05.27.09
Keats, the Romantic era, and the Great Divide
Keats’s Afterlife
By Christopher Ricks
Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography
by Stanley Plumly
Norton, 392 pp., $27.95
Today’s discussion of Snow’s two cultures, and the essays on the histories of evolution and positivism bring to mind the Romantic era, which almost never enters the consciousness of those who chitchat about science and its ‘triumph’. The Romantics are of interest to our study of history and evolution because, next to German Classical Philosophy (which in part spawned the Romantic period), they show that mysterious perfect timing we see in the correlations of the eonic effect: The Great Divide.
The enigmatic logic of the eonic sequence leaves this beautiful effect in its wake, and the point here is the tremendous balance in the Enlightenment, whose definition has been so narrowed that we have lost the sense of the era in which it occurred, and its immediate successor. In fact, the Romantic era not the successor to anything: it was a part of the Enlightenment period, and its dynamic.
Rome, November 30, 1820. John Keats, who at the age of twenty-five has less than three months to live, is writing to his friend Charles Brown in England:
I have an habitual feeling of my real life having past, and that I am leading a posthumous existence. God knows how it would have been—but it appears to me—however, I will not speak of that subject.
The word that rotates, “but,” is rounded upon, in its turn, by the word “however.” Keats, with a courage that is something better than unflinching (for the unflinching may be not so much courageous as foolhardy), declines to speculate on what might have been his prospects in love and in art, and on what those prospects now are, here and hereafter. He makes deeply real, within real life, a line of thought that has become the shallowest of modern injunctions: Let’s not go there. His unwavering decision, painful and pained, is to treat his friend with the utmost, the uttermost, decorum.He was leading a posthumous existence as he lay dying of consumption. It was proving to be “a long day’s dying to augment our pain” (Adam’s vision in Paradise Lost of what lay in store for mankind after the Fall). Our pain as well as his. A posthumous existence was a paradoxical thought at the time that Keats voiced it; it would soon (not, given his agony, all too soon) become no longer a paradox but a plain truth, when he entered upon the only kind of afterlife that he could continue to believe in. His belief contained an acknowledgment of the dark doubts about art’s worth that many great artists have found themselves suffering.
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Moreover, for Keats, his had long been a hope at once firm and tentative: “I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death.” For it is I think that gives the asseveration such grace and dignity, so that a small but not insignificant wrong is done when (on a couple of occasions in Posthumous Keats) his precisely guarded hope is indurated into “his statement to his brother George, in 1818, that he would be among the English poets after his death,” within “a future that meant to place him ‘among the English poets.’”
Stanley Plumly’s profoundly humane evocation of Keats’s life and his immediate afterlife is better than magisterial, for it is masterly. Characteristic of the attentive powers is his pausing upon Keats’s word past: “my real life having past.” The last word does double duty and more than duty, this having passed into the past. The book is supremely well informed, by means not only of sheer information but of the larger—the Keatsian—sense of what it is to inform. Here is imaginative realization, with width as well as depth of sympathies. Even while Plumly knows that there is no substitute for knowledge, he knows that this is because there is no substitute for anything: for, say, conviction, sensibility, intelligence, honesty, curiosity such as does not kill but gives life, and love. While this “personal biography” never relinquishes its confidence that there are crucial assurances that can be both given and taken, it succeeds in holding such assurances in respectful balance with Keats’s complementary concept and precept, ” Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.”
Birth of the Darwin meme
Today’s discussion of C.P.Snow might make more sense to some if the real histories of evolution, and then positivism, were told. There is a lot of literature here, but few read it.
The Evolution Of Evolution
The Triumph Of Positivism
It is impossible for Darwinists, it seems, to grasp the way the idea of evolution got hijacked by Wallace/Darwin. In fact, Wallace transcended his original thinking, but Darwin was stuck for life, and gave birth to the Darwin meme.
Booknotes: end of darwinism
The End of Darwinism (Hardcover)
by Eugene G. Windchy
Just in: review copy of a new Darwin critique. Will report.
C.P. Snow was a science lickspittle
The Two Cultures and The Abacus And The Rose
This month marks the 50th anniversary of C.P. Snow’s famous Rede Lecture, “The Two Cultures And The Scientific Revolution.” A half-century later, the term “two cultures” is still well remembered, but many of the details, both of the history and of the philosophical foundations of the dispute—and the contributions of my hero, the scientist, philosopher, and future television celebrity Jacob Bronowski—have largely been forgotten.
I read Snow years ago, and was greatly influenced by it at a young age, and driven to a lot of science study for which I am grateful.
But in retrospect I can see that his perspective was falsely framed. Haranguing humanities majors for not getting the second law of thermodynamics right was a bit off (as one Scienceblogger pointed out, almost no scientists can get it right) but, ok, par for the course.
But the issue was not studying science vs reading a bunch of antique novels and poetry. That missed the point by being right about something else: going through college and studying humanities is often a bad educational deal, for reasons having nothing to do with the debate over science and…humanities? That’s not the debate which in Snow’s version is a decayed version of the classic Naturwissenschaften/Geisteswissenschaften debate of the nineteenth century.
Snow’s very limited version of that is relevant in its own way (see the post cited), and I certainly think ‘humanists’ should study more science, but in a Darwin-dominated science culture, actually, well, face it, it helps to keep the divide active! That ‘added science’ education is going to be crap from scientism, not a thought-engaging encounter that might help provincialism in humanists.
Scientists are so far gone they don’t even know they have a problem, one that reading more literature isn’t going to help. Since Snow wrote his book, we have had a generation of Dawkins mania, and a whole new culture of truly idiot science jocks, arrogant loudmouths and know-nothings, who now are so addlepated that they wish to foundationalize atheism with Darwin’s theory. It is time for some humanists to simply spit in the face of scientists peddling this arrogance, which is about to destroy modernity as the geek squad jerks off over and over again over the endless techological spree that is not actually real science, but hard-on science fiction science, still stuck in the nineteenth century. Culture is suffering from this regime of compliant humanists (who still haven’t done their Snow homework and are hence paralyzed at the prospect of science critique). Meanwhile we get buried in articles about the god gene, enough to give any humanist shattered nerves.
The solution to the problem is not tinkering with course reading among scientists and humanists in college, but a real engagement with the original form of the debate, especially visible in the writings of Kant. We can see how he predicted the problem we are seeing with Darwinism, one that science types are incapable of grasping. Humanists are mostly goofs who get through a limited BA and then evacuate to some tricky way to earn a living. Not much to be expected there. I was an unemployed student of Greek with a major in being broke, so I had plenty of time roaming the country to study science in the public libraries of the new towns I visited in my roamings. The other humanists probably went on to advertising careers, not much help.
Taking Snow’s advice might have helped if more scientists had taken it. But you can’t cram much real humanities knowledge like grain into a college goose intent on specialization. Too bad Snow’s thinking fell on deaf ears. I think Snow’s diagnosis, despite being right on the bibliographical plane, missed the point. It is absolutely vital for scientists to bridge the divide, not the humanists, who aren’t going to get much from the ‘Physics for Poets’ idiocy that is supposed to ‘fix’ their thinking. But as we see from the Darwin debate those specialists are not doing what is needed, witness the really incompetent thinking going into the New Atheism debate.
In any case, Snow was too browbeaten by science to have really gotten the point. It is a watered down version of the kind of critique pioneered by Kant, whose work provided a prophecy of what has happened to science. We need a new kind of education for scientists and humanists both, but it seems unlikely to happen at this point. Instead of science for poets, we could go over the valid historical reasons why humanists sometimes sneer at science jocks.
We will have to see if Horgan is proved right: the diagnosis is, hold your breath, the end of science.
ID and the Enlightenment
ID’s Anglo-American Enlightenment Roots
This fails to consider that the Enlightenment is also the source of anti-ID thinking, and this list of thinkers disincludes Kant who raised the stakes by giving ID every consideration even as he undermined it.
EI update
_______________________________
UPDATE FROM THE
ELECTRONIC INTIFADA
http://electronicIntifada.net
_______________________ Read the rest of this entry »
Evolution Of Hot Springs Microbe
Geographic Isolation Drives Evolution Of Hot Springs Microbe
ScienceDaily (May 27, 2009) — Sulfolobus islandicus, a microbe that can live in boiling acid, is offering up its secrets to researchers hardy enough to capture it from the volcanic hot springs where it thrives. In a new study, researchers report that populations of S. islandicus are more diverse than previously thought, and that their diversity is driven largely by geographic isolation.
Darwin Exhibit Warps Christianity
Darwin Exhibit Warps Christianityto Disprove Bible
As I lined up with hundreds of others to get inside London’s famed Natural History Museum to visit its new Darwin exhibition (England is celebrating Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday this year), I couldn’t help but wonder: was this going to be some kind of attempt at mind control? After I went through the exhibition, there was no doubt!
“Can I possibly believe in Darwinism?”
Can I Possibly Believe in Darwinism?
By W. Edward Murphy
The reason I keep coming back to this subject is because it is a belief system that tends to diminish morality and respect for human life. Darwinism pretends to give the origin of life, no simple matter, yet proposes no standards, no moral code, no commandments to guide public conduct. It makes Atheism an attractive choice.
Though not all Darwinists are tyrannical, a startling fact is that all tyrants (since Darwin’s time) have been Darwinists.
A gentleman said to me a couple weeks ago, “You are wrong, wrong, wrong”! He said that I was wrong in criticizing Darwinism in this column.
When I asked him if he believed human life originated with the first simple cell as proposed by Darwin, he said, “Of course!” When I asked him about a micro-biologist named Michael Behe, he discounted Dr. Behe. That surprised me, because Dr. Behe, is a renowned scientist, one of those who determined that the “simple” cell could never have existed. The human cell, is in fact, comprised of hundreds upon hundreds of intricate machines, the DNA so much in the news today.
Though Dr. Behe says he is still an Atheist, he maintains that Darwin’s theory about the simple cell is impossible, that the intricacy of the human cell speaks of an Intelligent Design.
Left, right and alien life
Left, Right disagree on extraterrestrial life
Posted by Bruce Ramsey
It’s fascinating how our political opinions line up with thoughts on other things. The Rasmussen poll says 40 percent of liberals but only 20 percent of conservatives believe intelligent life on other planets is “very likely,”
Microfossils & snowball Earth glaciations
Microfossils Challenge Prevailing Views Of ‘Snowball Earth’ Glaciations On Life
ScienceDaily (May 27, 2009) — New fossil findings discovered by scientists at UC Santa Barbara challenge prevailing views about the effects of “Snowball Earth” glaciations on life, according to an article in the June issue of the journal Nature Geoscience.
How Brain Processes Speech
Scientists Reaching Consensus On How Brain Processes Speech
ScienceDaily (May 27, 2009) — Neuroscientists feel they are much closer to an accepted unified theory about how the brain processes speech and language, according to a scientist at Georgetown University Medical Center who first laid the concepts a decade ago and who has now published a review article confirming the theory.
Cod: evolutionary collapse
Did The North Atlantic Fisheries Collapse Due To Fisheries-induced Evolution?
ScienceDaily (May 26, 2009) — The Atlantic cod has, for many centuries, sustained major fisheries on both sides of the Atlantic. However, the North American fisheries have now largely collapsed. A new article from scientists at the University of Iceland and Marine Research Institute in Reykjavik provides insights into possible mechanisms of the collapse of fisheries, due to fisheries-induced evolution.
Thought in control
Virtual Smart Home Controlled By Your Thoughts
ScienceDaily (May 26, 2009) — Light switches, TV remote controls and even house keys could become a thing of the past thanks to brain-computer interface (BCI) technology being developed in Europe that lets users perform everyday tasks with thoughts alone.
Deep-water coral
Spectacular Deep-water Coral Province Discovered Off Ireland’s West Coast
ScienceDaily (May 26, 2009) — NUI Galway researchers, during a recent deep-water expedition, have confirmed the existence of a major new coral reef province on the southern end of the Porcupine Bank off the west coast of Ireland. The province covers an area of some 200 sq. km and contains in the order of 40 coral reef covered carbonate mounds. These underwater hills rise as high as 100m above the seafloor.
True Cost of Oil
Published on Wednesday, May 27, 2009 by TruthDig.com
Chevron, Shell and the True Cost of Oil
by Amy Goodman
The economy is a shambles, unemployment is soaring, the auto industry is collapsing. But profits are higher than ever at oil companies Chevron and Shell.
As long as a decade
Published on Wednesday, May 27, 2009 by The Telegraph/UK
US Army Prepared to Stay in Iraq for a Decade
The Pentagon is prepared to remain in Iraq for as long as a decade despite an agreement between Washington and Baghdad that would bring all American troops home by 2012, according to the US army chief of staff.
Accolades from the right
Tinkering With the Bush Model
Military Commissions, Round Three
By JOANNE MARINER
Politicians normally like to be praised, but I have to wonder how President Obama feels having gotten accolades from such unaccustomed sources as Ari Fleischer, John McCain and the Wall Street Journal.
As a presidential candidate, Obama rightly called the military commissions at Guantanamo “an enormous failure.” On his second day in office, he suspended the commissions for 120 days and announced plans to close the detention center at Guantanamo within a year.
But this month, the Obama administration announced that it would resume trials of Guantanamo detainees by military commissions, albeit under new rules that would offer defendants greater legal protections. The additional rules prohibit the introduction of evidence obtained through cruel treatment, tighten the rules on hearsay evidence, and allow detainees greater choice in selecting defense lawyers. While the revised commissions improve somewhat on the model used by the Bush administration, they still fall far short of providing the due process guarantees found in U.S. federal courts.
Unsurprisingly, Republicans are jubilant. Portraying Obama’s reversal as a belated embrace of the Bush administration’s war on terror, their tone is unabashedly triumphant.
Warehousing
mxmail
Netanyahu Chooses Warehousing
by Jeff Halper
Would Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu say the magic words “two states” after his meeting with President Obama? All Israel held its breath. (He didn’t). The gap between the two is wider than those words could ever have bridged, however. Obama, I believe, sincerely — perhaps urgently — seeks a resolution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, a pre-condition, he understands, to getting on with larger, more pressing Middle Eastern issues. Netanyahu, who rejects even the notion of a Palestinian mini-state as grudgingly accepted by Barak, Sharon and Olmert, is seeking a permanent state of “warehousing” in which the Palestinians live forever in a limbo of “autonomy” delineated by an Israel that otherwise encompasses them. The danger, to which we all should be attuned, is that the two sides might compromise on apartheid — the establishment of a Palestinian Bantustan that has neither genuine sovereignty nor economic viability.
Hyperinflation?
mxmail
U.S. Inflation to Approach Zimbabwe Level, Faber Says
By Chen Shiyin and Bernard Lo
Bloomberg News
May 27 2009
May 27 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. economy will enter “hyperinflation”
approaching the levels in Zimbabwe because the Federal Reserve will be
reluctant to raise interest rates, investor Marc Faber said.
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