History, Evolution, and the Darwin Debate
Plant’s Light Switch Could Be Used to Control CellsScienceDaily (Oct. 31, 2010) — Chandra Tucker shines a blue light on yeast and mammalian cells in her Duke University lab and the edges of them start to glow. The effect is the result of a light-activated switch from a plant that has been inserted into the cell.
Revolutions Per Second: The Rebirth of Democracy
The legacy of the French Revolution is so confusing that it can become one of the obstacles on the way to a progressive/revolutionary change.
It represents the birth of the liberal class (although one should argue that this really occurred in the seventeenth century), in a sense, and there’s the rub, an issue talked to death by the left, and by Marxists, still without any final conclusion.
Since the passage cited is in WHEE, about the eonic effect, it is important to consider the issue in that context: revolution appears in correlation with the eonic series, and almost nowhere else.
That means we have still not learned the lesson of radical change, and that, all at once, suddenly becomes obvious.
After taking up Hedges’s book today….
I am a bit baffled by the Tea Partiers. Such a constellation of total idiots, with, nonetheless, a moderate degree of success, leaves a question in its wake.
These people, I am forced to say it, are so confused and infected with false consciousness, to the point they can no longer understand their own self-interest, that I find it counterintuitive anyone would take them seriously.
The obvious answer is that they are barely functional puppets of invisible influences, whose strategy is a clever way of debunking the idea of revolt, and creating a lightening rod for dissent. So, behind the stupidity we can feel the influence of some clever Machiavellians.
It is interesting that the Sansculottes were also controversial, in their own way, street people with some bloodthirsty instincts, but they understood, what the Tea Partiers are too far gone to grasp, that a revolution is a revolution, and achieved one, while the Tea Partiers are complete phonies, and having picked up a fumbled football are showing that rare confusion whereby the runner starts running downfield in the wrong direction. If you wish to be revolutionary, be my guest, but twitches from couch potatoes no longer able to function degrades the basic beef against the problem with ‘government’. The Tea Partiers have been programmed to fail, and create a ridiculous parody of revolt. How degrading.
Hypothesis: Americans watch too much television, and have degenerated since its appearance in the fifties to the point where they cannot properly grasp cultural subjects any more. The tide of unconscious hollywood plus advertisement has made the population as a whole stupidoes by an order of magnitude…
Death of the Liberal Class
Chris Hedges
Looking at Hedges’ book on the problematic of liberalism. I think that the book’s eloquent thesis is left halting slightly by the inability to actual come and propose revolution.
I think the analysis falls short in a few ways: the death of the liberal class is hardly news. Marx/Engels complained of such in the revs of 1848.
Still, the basic point Hedges is making is so obvious, and needs someone with the nerve to say it.
I fear the reality is worse. The death of the liberal class isn’t much of a worry, it is the death of the revolutionary class that made the liberal class dance to a six shooter that got results.
But we are pretty far gone at this point: is it not true that the CIA and intelligence replaced revolution with a coup d’etat of their own? What about the JFK case, and the rest up to 9/11?
The left’s inability to deal with what is going on has indeed left them moribund, out of it completely.
I need to finish the book, but it is obviously an important consideration, now at the point where we don’t have mass media anymore, where CNN zombies are considered ‘left’, to ask if there is any chance left at all.
Tracking Evidence of ‘The Great Dying’ScienceDaily (Oct. 29, 2010) — More than 251 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, Earth almost became a lifeless planet. Around 90 percent of all living species disappeared then, in what scientists have called “The Great Dying.”
Paradise Lost — And Found: Researchers Unearth Ancient Water Secrets at Royal Garden Dig
ScienceDaily (Oct. 30, 2010) — Ancient gardens are the stuff of legend, from the Garden of Eden to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Now researchers at Tel Aviv University, in collaboration with Heidelberg University in Germany, have uncovered an ancient royal garden at the site of Ramat Rachel near Jerusalem, and are leading the first full-scale excavation of this type of archaeological site anywhere in the pre-Hellenistic Levant.
Advance Could Change Modern Electronics
ScienceDaily (Oct. 31, 2010) — Researchers at Oregon State University have solved a quest in fundamental material science that has eluded scientists since the 1960s, and could form the basis of a new approach to electronics.
Narwhals diving nearly 2 kilometres below the surface have revealed that the cold water beneath the winter pack ice in Baffin Bay is getting warmer …
Published on Saturday, October 30, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Road to Corporate Serfdom
by Ralph Nader
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/10/30
It was Bill Clinton’s campaign strategist, James Carville, who in 1992 created the election slogan: “It’s the Economy, Stupid.” For the 2010 Congressional campaigns, the slogan should have been: “It’s Corporate Crime and Control, Stupid.”
Published on Sunday, October 31, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
If You Want More Debt Vote Republican
by Robert Freeman
One of the most successful deceits of the past thirty years is that Republicans are the party of “fiscal discipline.” In fact, Republicans are the party of fiscal wreckage. Simply put, Republicans love deficits and debt. They have buried the country with them. They expand them with orgiastic fervor every time they get the chance. Until we come to grips with this simple truth we will never gain control of our fiscal destiny.
Published on Sunday, October 31, 2010 by New America Media
Poverty of Ideas: Despite Economy, Right Still Blames Poor for Being Poor
by Marjorie Valbrun
RG mail
By understanding that money is simply credit, we unleash it as a powerful
tool for our communities
by Ellen Brown
YES! Magazine (October 28 2010)
countercurrents.org (October 29 2010)
The reason our financial system has routinely gotten into trouble, with
periodic waves of depression like the one we’re battling now, may be due
to a flawed perception not just of the roles of banking and credit but of
the nature of money itself. In our economic adolescence, we have regarded
money as a “thing” – something independent of the relationship it
facilitates. But today there is no gold or silver backing our money.
Instead, it’s created by banks when they make loans (that includes Federal
Reserve Notes or dollar bills, which are created by the Federal Reserve, a
privately-owned banking corporation, and lent into the economy). Virtually
all money today originates as credit, or debt, which is simply a legal
agreement to pay in the future.
http://www.countercurrents.org/brown291010.htm
RG mail
http://www.alanhart.net/is-rupert-murdoch-ignorant-or-an-agent-of-zionist-deception/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AlanHart+%28AlanHart+%28Recent+Posts%29%29&hl=en
October 30, 2010 Is Rupert Murdoch ignorant or an agent of Zionist
deception?*By Alan Hart*
In a recent speech at an ADL (Anti-Defamation League) dinner, Rupert
Murdoch, arguably the most influential mainstream media chief on Planet
Earth, made some extraordinary statements which must be challenged. But
first it’s necessary for us all to be clear about what ADL’s role is.
Its proclaimed objective is to “fight anti-Semitism”. In reality its main
purpose under the leadership of Abe Foxman is to smear, harass, silence and
preferably destroy those of all faiths and none who are critical of Zionism
in action – critical of Israel’s policies in general and its contempt for
international law in particular; and critical of the awesome power of the
Zionist lobby, in America especially.
RG mail
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/pt301010.html
Death Squads in Honduras
by David Pérez and Daniel Trujillo
Anyone who thinks that social and political instability in Honduras ended with the election of Porfirio Lobo as the president of the republic is mistaken, according to the Committee of Families of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH).
Human rights violations, political persecution, and selective political murders continue to be the order of the day, which indicates that the 28 June 2009 military coup is continuing.
RG mail
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10683710
New Zealand Herald
Oct 28, 2010
The Hobbit law – what does it mean for workers?
The Employment Relations Act 2000 is set to undergo changes with respect to
the status of film industry workers. The amending legislation, the
Employment Relations (Film Production Work) Amendment Bill, was introduced
to Parliament today under urgency as part of a deal between Warner Bros and
Government ministers to keep *The Hobbit* film production in New Zealand.
The Bill seeks to make film industry workers independent contractors by
default, avoiding the definition in current employment legislation of what
constitutes an “employee”.
Evolutionary theory actually decline with Wallace/Darwin
1000 Genomes Project completes first map of human genetic variation
Thousands of human genomes are being used to catalogue the full diversity of human DNA in the 1000 Genomes Project with a view to improving our understanding of disease
David Sirota: Free-market fundamentalism ignores growing inequality
By: David Sirota
Examiner Columnist
October 29, 2010 Redistributionist — as epithets go, the moniker is so mild, so … 2008. Today, we’re hammered by screeds against Democrats’ alleged socialism and President Obama’s supposed Marxism.
The class war is clearly on — the paranoids and royalists of the world have united, seizing the means of propaganda production in these waning days of this year’s election campaign.
The onslaught, of course, is predictable. After all, this is an election season — which inevitably evokes redbaiting crusades by the plutocrats. Less predictable is this crusade’s traction. As Wall Street executives make bank off bailouts, as millions of Americans see paychecks slashed and as our economic Darwinism sends more wealth up the income ladder — it’s surprising that appeals to capitalist piggery carry more electoral agency than ever.
Read more at the San Francisco Examiner: http://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Free-market-fundamentalism-ignores-growing-inequality-1376383-106331248.html#ixzz13rj6Er2r
Did Neanderthals Make Jewellery After All?
ScienceDaily (Oct. 26, 2010) — The theory that later Neanderthals might have been sufficiently advanced to fashion jewellery and tools similar to those of incoming modern humans has suffered a setback. A new radiocarbon dating study, led by Oxford University, has found that an archaeological site that uniquely links Neanderthal remains to sophisticated tools and jewellery may be partially mixed.
Raising Giant Insects to Unravel Ancient Oxygen
ScienceDaily (Oct. 29, 2010) — The giant dragonflies of ancient Earth with wingspans of up to 70 centimeters (28 inches) are generally attributed to higher oxygen atmospheric levels in the atmosphere in the past. New experiments in raising modern insects in various oxygen-enriched atmospheres have confirmed that dragonflies grow bigger with more oxygen, or hyperoxia.
Newly Discovered Gene Enables Fish to ‘Disappear’
ScienceDaily (Oct. 29, 2010) — Researchers led by Vanderbilt’s Roger Cone, Ph.D., have discovered a new member of a gene family that has powerful influences on pigmentation and the regulation of body weight.
Is the Shape of a Genome as Important as Its Content?
ScienceDaily (Oct. 29, 2010) — If there is one thing that recent advances in genomics have revealed, it is that our genes are interrelated, “chattering” to each other across separate chromosomes and vast stretches of DNA. According to researchers at The Wistar Institute, many of these complex associations may be explained in part by the three-dimensional structure of the entire genome.
mxmail
A little more than a year ago, I posted a note using football as a
metaphor for the futility of effective regulation.
http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com/2009/09/13/the-futility-of-financial-regulation-lessons-from-science-and-professional-football/
Some people dismissed the football metaphor. The Wall Street Journal
today has a story about how people design new psychotropic drugs to get
around regulation. It may be that these new drugs are more dangerous
than banned drugs. In all likelihood, they can design these drugs
faster than the government can make regulations.
How in the world can regulators get ahead of financial industry or tax
lawyers, even if the lobbyists were not writing the regulations or the
tax codes.
Whalen, Jeanne. 2010. “In Quest for ‘Legal High,’ Chemists Outfox Law.”
Wall Street Journal (30 October).
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704763904575550200845267526.html?mod=WSJ_World_LeadStory
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-10-28/valerie-plame-and-joe-wilson-criticize-barack-obama/p/
Bush’s Biggest Critics Gun for Obama
by Lloyd Grove
October 28, 2010 | 11:46pm
Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson became famous for denouncing the Bush
administration. But as they tell Lloyd Grove, they’re not so happy with
Obama, either.
Liberal foreign-policy icons Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson—the real-life
heroes of the film Fair Game, in which Naomi Watts and Sean Penn
dramatize the couple’s ordeal at the hands of vindictive Bush
administration officials—are predictably down on George W. Bush and his
use of fake intelligence to wage war on Iraq.
But they’re also pretty rough on President Obama.