The Butler And The Book

I have been thinking about how to effectively explain the difference between the way that professional creationists approach reality and the way that the same is approached by a rationalist. Having a certain taste for BBC murder mysteries, I think the best way would be to look at the careers of two chief inspectors.

Let us begin with Chief Inspector Creationist.  On his first day in his new position, the sergeant assigned to assist him enters and declares, “Here’s our first case, sir. A man has been found murdered.  Forensics has just arrived at the scene. We can be there in a few minutes to gather evidence.”

Chief  Inspector Creationist: No need. It’s obvious who committed the crime.

Sergeant: Excuse me me sir?  You don’t even know the victim’s name. How could you possibly solve the crime?

Chief  Inspector Creationist: There is only one possible answer, Sergeant. The butler did it.

Sergeant: But we don’t even know if there is a butler, sir!

Chief  Inspector Creationist: Of course there is. The butler always commits the murder.

Sergeant:  How could you know that sir?

Chief  Inspector Creationist: The Book, Sergeant. Haven’t you ever read the Book? It has all the answers to everything.

Sergeant:  Don’t you think we should at least go take a look at the scene?

Chief  Inspector Creationist: (Exasperated) If you must, do so. But I shall not waste my time, for the crime has been solved...by the Book.

Later that day the sergeant returns. The conversation resumes.

Sergeant:  Well, sir, it’s quite an interesting case. We do know however, that the butler could not possibly have committed the crime because there was no butler.

Chief  Inspector Creationist:  Don’t be foolish, man!  If there was no butler, he cannot have committed the crime.

Sergeant: Well, yes. That’s exactly my point. The family was on the dole. They were quite poor. They live in a very small flat. They could not possibly afford a part time cleaning lady, much less a butler! 

Chief  Inspector Creationist: Sergeant, I really wonder how you possibly could have attained your rank. Simply ignoring the facts is no way to conduct an investigation!

Sergeant: But these are the facts, sir.

Chief  Inspector Creationist: Is it really necessary for me to repeat myself? The Book says the butler did it. Therefore the butler did it. The Book is infallible, inerrant, and literal. 

The only possible conclusion is that there was a butler and that he is the guilty party.

Which leads to another question. How could a poor family afford a butler? Obviously, they couldn’t. Therefore they were somehow forcing the man to be their servant. And now we have a motive!

Sergeant:  Sir?

Chief  Inspector Creationist: Don’t you see it, man? The only way they could force a butler to serve them without pay is blackmail. They were blackmailing the butler to be their servant.  Finally fed up with it, he turned to murder in order to gain his freedom and revenge.

Sergeant: However, sir, the wife has already admitted that she couldn’t stand the victim’s snoring and smothered him to death in his sleep.

Chief  Inspector Creationist: So she’s covering for the butler. Perhaps he’s blackmailing her. Unless she is his lover...

As the investigation proceeds, Chief  Inspector Creationist closes all ports of entry and sets officers watching every bus station, train station, and other method of transportation searching for the butler.  When the murdering manservant is still not captured, he issues an international alert to Interpol. The butler must be found!

Years later, at his retirement party,  Chief  Inspector Creationist bemoans the fact that he spent his entire career hunting for that wicked man and never found him. In fact, he never took another case, having devoted all his efforts to solving the first and only crime ever presented for his investigation.  But he does not feel that he has failed in his duty, after all, he did defend the Book.

As for Chief Inspector Rationalist; on his first case, he went to the crime scene. He examined the forensic reports. He checked out the alibis and motives of every suspect.  He developed numerous hypotheses as to who was in fact guilty, discarding them when the evidence contradicted his conclusions.. In the end, a suspect confessed in the face of overwhelming evidence. Chief Inspector Rationalist and his sergeant moved on to solve many cases.

(A few of them even involved a butler.)

Offended? Sorry To Disappoint You, But No

From Facebook

S posted this from R:

I pledge allegiance to the flag

If United States of America

And to the republic for which it stands

One nation under God

With liberty and justice for all

...My generation grew up saying this every morning in school with my hand on my heart. They no longer do this for fear of offending someone.

Let’s see how many Americans will repost this and not care about offending someone!

E:  Don't  know what state you live in but it is required  by the education code in California. Check it out yourself.  Page 1386 article 2

S:  Arizona.

D:  "With liberty and justice for all"

...as long as people are hearing, understanding and practicing the words that they are saying, I'm all for it.

M:  I just don't say the "under god" part.  I believe in separation of church and state.  I don't believe there is a "god", and I am fully aware that the addition of those two words were done during a particularly dark period in our nation's policies and politics during the las century.  They weren't in the original.

Me:  M,  I’m with you.  The whole controversial problem was easily solved back when it was a huge issue. Let those who believe they should say under God,  say under God and those who don’t believe they should say under God, not say under God. Problem not merely solved, problem ceases to exist. Don’t see why anyone was ever offended by this.

If the conversation continues, I’ll add anything worth repeating here in my blog comments.   I want to add that I find it interesting that the incredibly fragile, endlessly offended conservative Republicans are always accusing liberals and others who are not of their tribe of being offended all the time.  Odd, isn’t it?

I’m afraid I offend them by not being offended by them.  After all, I wouldn’t want to be offensive, especially not with someone who is so obsessed with offending other people.

Where Have All The Teachers Gone?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/604702/

This article is somewhat interesting. However, what I find most compelling is a segment of the introductory comments, > In 1988, a teacher most commonly had 15 years of experience. Less than three decades later, that number had fallen to just three years leading a classroom. <

This is a serious problem. One of the finest benefits of the former situation was that young teachers were surrounded by colleagues who were able to help and support them in learning to be better teachers. When you have a staff composed almost entirely of the inexperienced, you lose that resource. The next question, the most important question, is why aren’t there more experienced teachers in our education system?

My own belief is it the American educational system is driving them out.   Good teachers want to teach, not train children to take standardized tests. Yet training children to take standardized tests is exactly what teachers are required to do under today’s structures created by educational “experts” who have never actually taught a child in the classroom, much less a classroom full of children.

Strong on credentials, mighty in theory, appallingly ignorant of reality, and firmly grounded in political ideology; these individuals have guaranteed that a good education is a distant memory in the United States.

Bloodletters Unite!

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/nataliewexler/2019/12/28/the-end-of-education-reform-or-a-new-beginning/amp/

I don’t agree with every point in this article but I do agree with most. It was obvious the moment the great “reforms” were proposed that they would fail miserably and only make things worse. So why did all the experts think the plan was so great? In fact, why are many of them still praising them? Because so many of the experts have never taught a child anything in a classroom. They display high degrees and endless hours of studying about how to do things which they have never actually done. Imagine if, in World War II, instead of pulling our aces out of combat and taking them back to train new pilots we had those recruits trained by experts had never actually flown a plane but had studied and studied how to do so and knew all the theories of how to do it right.

I’m on record as saying and I will repeat again, these modern educational experts with their endless testing and competition theories are the exact equivalent of you going to a doctor with the flu and he declares, “Thyne humors art in imbalance. I shall bleed thee!”

Scream, Shriek, Curse, Spit...Oh, You're Innocent

I posted : After two years of lies, smears, and hysterical shrieks of "coverup" instead of doing anything useful for America, the Republicans finally are forced to admit that they were the liars. --GOP panel on Benghazi finds no Obama administration wrongdoing--

Dan responded: This thing got so ridiculous that it finally felt to me like a matter of racial hatred or fear. Not just from Congress but from a vast number of Americans. One of the reasons Democrats lost so badly in the midterms, I'm honestly afraid.

I responded: I sincerely wish that I could disagree with you, Dan. Unfortunately, I cannot. From the first arrival of Europeans, even when they were clearly a tiny minority, this was regarded as a White Man's Nation. The historical evidence leaves no doubt. I see three subdivisions of this basic issue:

1. Blatant racism. When Obama was running for president my grandson, who is in law-enforcement, and I had a lengthy and interesting series of discussions on what effect this would have on racist hate groups. We were in agreement that we would see a rise in the number and influence of such groups. Sadly, we were correct.

2. The simple fear of change. In spite of the realities, as I noted above, this nation was regarded as a White Man's Nation since Europeans first set foot on the continent. Now this is clearly changing. The demographics cannot be denied. We will be a nation of nothing but minorities in the near future. That means Whites will be a minority, albeit, the largest one, just like all the other groups in America. A new America is being born, and it is very different from the America of the past. To a generation that grew up in the oh so White 1950s, this is terrifying.

3. And finally we get to another issue. Minorities have traditionally been treated very badly in America. When has this not been true? Whites are going to be one minority among others. I have no doubt that many in this particular group are afraid they will be treated the same way. Now that's really terrifying!

I wonder, considering the two years of smears, lies and false accusations, if we can expect an apology from Fox Lies or the GOP?

Commence Unrestricted Free Enterprise

In response to a friend and colleague's post on Bush getting big donations in return for tax cuts for the wealthy, I responded:

Okay Jeff. I'll bite. Step one: the Republican Party has become a wholly owned subsidiary of big oil and other mega corporations. The Democrats are certainly not a terribly moral party, but at least they remain a party with multiple sources of support rather than a single master (extreme wealth).

As far as capitalism goes, there's nothing wrong with a free enterprise system. The problem is, we don't have one in America today. The government gives massive tax breaks and massive kickbacks to various huge corporations, and thus totally destroys the concept of a free market. America today is an economy controlled by the central government.

The facts show that a great many corporations pay zero taxes. This includes General Electric which actually makes a profit off the US government. In what way is this competition? The answer is it is competition only in the sense of who can get the most corporate welfare from the US government.

Entitlements ARE a big problem, but not the entitlements given to individual US citizens. The real entitlement problem in America, one which destroys our budgetary stability, is the entitlements of huge corporations; the vast subsidies paid to them by the US government no matter how incompetently they run their businesses.

Corporations constantly scream and yell about the high US corporate tax rate, but they know that is only on paper. In reality we have a tax system so beneficial to those corporations that we not only have the lowest effective corporate taxes in the developed world, we actually have a negative tax rate in which we pay out to the corporations. Remember, during our economic boomtimes, the 1950's, the tax rate exceeded 90%!

What we have today is the equivalent of unrestricted submarine warfare. We have unrestricted free enterprise, in which wealth can destroy the functionality of the free enterprise system by granting itself endless bonuses and endless benefits.

If we were to return to a well regulated system such as we had in the economic glory days of the 1950s, when United States dominated the world in all economic areas, partly as a result of the disaster of World War II, but also as a result of a superior economic system, We could restore many of those past benefits.

Note that the individual entitlement system under the G.I. Bill was huge then compared to now. This was an economic engine that drove economic development, not the drain that ideological conservatives and fantasists would have it to be. Facts matter. Fantasies matter only to those who hold the fantasies and to those who suffer the consequences of their delusion.

The United States today has become a government of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations. Mere human beings are no longer considered to be full, first class citizens.


Lots more at:
http://el-naranjal-del-desierto.blogspot.com/?m=1

Fear Is The Mind Killer

I shared the comment below. In response to friends' comments, I added:

Republican Maine state Representative Lawrence Lockman said in 1995, “If a woman has (the right to an abortion), why shouldn’t a man be free to use his superior strength to force himself on a woman? At least the rapist’s pursuit of sexual freedom doesn’t (in most cases) result in anyone’s death.”

Once a group, perhaps especially a political party, becomes dedicated to the tactics of hate and fear they find themselves carried along by their own self generated avalanche. An endless barrage of new, ever more shocking declarations are required to maintain their movement's energy.

Apparently this individual has already apologized for his statements, but the mere fact that he felt not only free but even obligated to make them means that no apology is sufficient. Worse, he doesn't seem to repudiate it. He's just sorry he said it and it got reported. Every parent knows this one. "I'm really sorry I got caught. I'm not sorry I did it, only that you caught me."

My question is, why do any women vote Republican? Why are there still Log Cabin Republicans? Even allowing for gerrymandered districts, how can any Republican be elected to anything?

Much of the answer lies in taking a closer look at a phrase from the cult classic Dune. "Fear is the mind killer," say the Bene Gesert Witches. Partly correct. Any truly powerful emotion is the mind killer. Fear and hatred, currently all that the Republican Party has to offer, can very quickly destroy the already limited capacity of the human mind to think in a rational manner.

Note: I have long thought someone should rewrite the novel and call it Prune. The Benihana witches are seeking the ultimate household appliance, the Cuisinart Hat Rack... There's lots more but there's no point in going on because either you like Dune and don't appreciate my trying to spoof it or you don't really know what the hell I'm talking about, so I'll just hush up.

Heil, Stalin! Aka, Vodka vs Bourbon

Watching C-SPAN's book TV, as I do every weekend, I found an interesting presentation by a man named Ronald Radosh. I had never heard of him before, but found his presentation amusing and interesting. He was talking about his new book, "Commie". His presentation, in a bright and witty fashion, demolished the bizarre, idiotic and even insane pretensions of the radical left. I knew as I listened to him that I would need to report on this in my blog because he so deeply reflects why I have nothing but contempt for extreme liberals and will not call myself even a moderate liberal.

I found little or nothing to which I could object in regard to any of the points he made, in fact I find them exactly in agreement with the points I make about the radical left. However, being a skeptic born, I found myself wondering if, since he was presenting himself as a reformed addict, he was actually reformed, or if he had instead, as I so greatly feared, merely substituted an equally poisonous, equally mindless, equally bigoted, right-wing extremism.

It didn't take long during the question-and-answer period to determine that he had done exactly that. Mister Radosh, who is so proud of having finally freed himself from the poisonous ideology of extreme left-wing liberalism in which he was raised, has merely substituted the almost identical poisonous ideology of extreme right-wing conservatism.

To put it succinctly, he is so incredibly proud that he is now a reformed vodka drinking alcoholic, but somehow misses the fact that all he has accomplished is to change into an active bourbon drinking alcoholic.

In other words, he has only exchanged one addiction for another. He is just as mindless, just as bigoted, just as determined to refuse to face any facts or realities which contradict him as he ever was. There really is no difference in his condition. He remains as sick as ever. He is the same person he always was. He is a sad, unfortunate, and helpless man. What he is helpless to do is to think clearly. What he is helpless to resist is his own mindless, extremist way of thinking. He is a slave to his own hysterical emotions. He poisons his own intellect.

To use a different analogy, let us go to extreme focus. There was a time in European and American history when people were presented with a forced choice/false dichotomy. Either you were a Nazi because you were anti-Stalinist or you were a Stalinist because you were anti-Nazi. Obviously, there was actually a huge middle ground between these two extremes, but many refused to see it. It has been noted many times by historians there is little difference between a Stalinist and a Nazi in terms of how they treat their citizens or run their countries. The only difference is in the ideologies which provide the justification for their brutal, extremist actions.

It is so sad to see what is clearly a brilliant mind poisoned by ideology. However, I also find this to be quite normal. We find ultra liberals who say they have freed themselves from ultra conservatism as often as vice versa. The real problem never lay in the ideology which this person once believed was so true. The flaw lay in the fact that they were always what Hoffer referred to as True Believers. That is, deeply flawed personality types that are incapable of facing reality and prefer to live in their warped dystopian fantasies.

Perhaps Hoffer should have referred to them as true followers. Although many of them have the intellectual capacity to lead, all too often they lack the emotional security and confidence which is required to understand and think independently. They prefer to surround themselves with the mass of their fellow apes in the troop. Let someone else be the leader. They are only content to follow, securely surrounded by their fellow travelers.

Lessons From St. Ronald of Reagan

A Day in the Life of a Rugged American Individualist

We shall open our story with a reading from the Gospels.  "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" -- The Gospel according to Saint Ronald of Reagan, Chapter 2842 verse 79

1:33 PM:  A gang of crazed members of the local teachers union breaks into Rugged Individualist's home to take away his guns.  A neighbor calls the police. When they arrive, shots are being exchanged. The officer in charge shouts out, "This is the police. We are from the government and we're here to help."

Rugged Individualist screams out in terror, "No! Go away! I'll take care of this by myself!"

2:47 PM: As he dies, the last insane member of the local teachers union sets off an incendiary device, committing suicide.  The home is almost instantly a mass of flames.  A fire truck rolls up, the captain jumps out and shouts "This is the fire department!  We are from the government and we're here to help."

Rugged Individualist screams out in terror, "No! Go away! I'll take care of this by myself!"

4:13 PM:  The house lies in smoldering ruins. In the front yard lies Rugged Individualist.  He is also in smoldering ruins. An ambulance from the fire department pulls up next to him. An EMT jumps out and says, "This is the paramedics!  We are from the government and we're here to help."

Rugged Individualist screams out in terror...well, actually he gasps out in terror, "No! Go away! I'll take care of this by myself!"

4:47 PM:  A hearse from the county medical examiner's office pulls up.  An attendant steps out of it. He says, "I am an attendant. I am from the government and I'm here to help."

Rugged Individualist does not reply.  The attendant asks, "Do you object to my helping you?"

When there is no response he says to his assistants, "OK, boys, there's no objection, so zip him up in the bodybag and let's get him to the morgue."

And thus ends a day in the life of an American rugged individualist.

Even a Broken Clock is Right Twice a Day

Paul Krugman, Nobel prize-winning economist, recently stated, "If you came into this for years ago with a Keynesian point of view, you said things that were regarded as outrageous in this town. You said government borrowing won't send interest rates skyrocketing. The Fed printing money won't cause inflation. And by the way, austerity policies will tank the economies that adopt them.  And all of that has come true.  So, you know, you have a theory that works ."

Hayekian predictions include the belief that Clinton's raising of taxes on the rich would destroy the economy. Note:  That's the economy which bloomed. The European Union, under the leadership of Germany, has adopted Hayekian principles and they're doing very poorly compared to us. We adopted a mild Keynesian stimulus and we have gained a mild recovery.

Even the Wall Street Journal reported that United Kingdom's austerity policy produced a second recession.  Krugman points out that when Cameron came into power, Conservatives in America were delighted. They knew that he would adopt the correct procedures to end to all economic problems in Britain. Well, he did take all those correct procedures, at least correct according to the Conservatives.  They were excited because they were certain his austerity programs would show how effectively austerity programs work. Instead, Britain has experienced a second recession.   We should take notice that that the Keynesian economists in America said that Cameron's policies would cause a second recession, as it did.

Krugman also pointed out that Sweden, arguably the greatest welfare state in the world, has done quite well during this time. This is the exact opposite of the Conservative Hayekian predictions of the fate of socialist economies.

Finally, Krugman points out that Iceland, where much of this economic crisis originated, was expected to completely self-destruct, especially because they adopted very Keynesian policies with a lot of government controls as a temporary measure to fix the problem. Actual result:  Right now they're doing better than we are.

This leads only one possible conclusion.  The reason American and European Conservatives  continue to believe in the economic theories of Hayek is that they are convinced that since no man can be perfect and since Hayek has a record of being perfectly wrong, he's overdue to be right. At least they hope so.

Donkeys and the GOP

Breaking news from the right wing. The blogosphere, reaching all the way to at least one English newspaper, has declared an attempted desecration by Obama. What is he going to desecrate?

The facts: The University of Chicago is planning on demolishing an old apartment building in which Ronald Reagan, as a child, lived for less than one year. They're doing this to increase their student parking space. That's it. Those are the facts.

So what has the right wing screaming atrocity? Well, it turns out that the University of Chicago might be considered as one of the places where Obama could possibly build his library sometime in the unknown future.

If this is the site chosen, and if someone comes to visit that library, and if that person parks in this particular parking space which is normally reserved for students, then the University could conceivably be interpreted as having demolished Ronald Reagan's childhood home to create a parking lot for Obama's library. Could be so interpreted. If you're a real dumbass.

(Panic not, that's ass as in donkey.)

Let's be clear, even if the University of Chicago site is chosen for Obama's future library, the library will have its own parking lots. This will not be a parking lot for the library. It would just be a parking lot in which someone was visiting the library might choose to park. And then again, it is more likely they would park in the parking lot for the library which would be close to the library. Still, maybe someone wants a lot of exercise and prefers to park farther away and then walk to the library.

Please forgive the simplicity of the paragraphs above with their many word repetitions, but it is apparently necessary to make things clear to those experiencing a panic attack about this non-event.

It occurs to me that if Republicans could just learn to laugh at themselves then they wouldn't make such fools of themselves all the time. I suppose that's just asking too much.

I see why Bobby Jindal refers to his own party as, "the stupid party".

Conservatives against the Radical Republicans

THURSDAY, MAY 3, 2012

From the Huffington Post:

-- This week, two esteemed conservative thinkers published a must-read op-ed in The Washington Post entitled, "Let's Just Say It: The Republicans Are the Problem." Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote: The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. 

Mann and Ornstein are no lightweight centrists; they are the Republicans of the Republicans. If they see fault in their party's lurch to the far right, then you know things have gotten out of hand. --

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/heather-taylormiesle/when-politics-becomes-the_b_1475294.html

Note that these two men are, and have been for decades, conservative Republicans.  They are not liberals. They are not independents.  They are conservative Republicans. I had to repeat that because the Radical Republican response to all criticism is to insist that it is all a liberal lie.  These two men are members of the Brookings Institute, a respected moderate conservative think tank, and of the much more right wing American Enterprise Institute.  They point out that Democrats are not innocent, but add that at least the Dems are trying to govern and compromise while the Republicans have become rigid and intolerant.

When conservative Republicans declare their party to be the problem in American politics, isn't it obvious that it is past time for a change in that party?  Oh, that's right, the Radical Republicans don't believe in facts or reality. I'll say it anyway.  This country needs two strong parties.  One center left and one center right.  One with many moderate liberals, some conservatives, and some very liberal members. The other with many moderate conservatives, some liberals, and some very conservative members. We do not need any party composed of extremist fanatics who will make no compromise, who demonize their opponents, and who are reality challenged.  

Altruism, an adaptive trait

From an interview with E. O. Wilson by Charlie Rose, quoting from the New Yorker magazine:  "Wilson's larger point is that, to the extent that altruism exists, it isn't an illusion. Instead, goodness might actually be an adaptive trait, allowing more cooperative groups to outcompete their conniving cousins. In a field defined by the cool logic of natural selection, group selection appears to be the rare hint of virtue, the one biological force pushing back against the obvious advantages of greed and deceit."

From Science News, April 7, 2012:  Cheney relays the story of Ruby, a young, low ranking but gregarious baboon who lost all her kin in a leopard attack.  Because kin are the lifeblood of social support in female baboon society, a low-ranker such as Ruby night might be left with little access to food and other resources.
 Despite lacking the skills to set up a Twitter account, likable Ruby managed to build a network of followers by taking advantage of the social opportunities.  She spent hours grooming one particular high-ranking baboon, Sylvia, and managed to climb up the hierarchical latter, gaining access to the best food in the most desirable resting places.

More and more proof of the natural, evolutionary nature of altruism and cooperation is being uncovered by biologists, geneticists, neurologists, and other scientists.  Yet the Radical Republicans continue to insist that science and Christian belief are wrong.  They declare that all humans are naturally and completely selfish.  Only the Social Darwinism of Ayn Rand and the most extreme beliefs of Friedrich Hayek can be trusted.  Ideology trumps reality every time.  

 

Rat Cooperation

Science News December 31, 2011 reports that rats presented with an empty cage will make some effort to open it, but they're not very good at it. If a friend of theirs is locked in the cage they do much better at opening it.  Even more interesting, when presented with two cages one of which has chocolate inside and another one which contains their friend, half of the time the rats let their friend go before seeking  the chocolate! And the cherry on top? The savior rat often shares the chocolate with his friend. I wonder how people would do on a similar test.  Let's say, a friend in jail or a big pile of money in the jail cell next to him.

I suspect that we would do poorly compared to rats. We can think of excuses for not cooperating. It would be really interesting to see if Democrats were more socially responsible than Republicans. This forced choice would put ideology to the test.