Standard assumption
From New Superstitionist, a fascinating and worthy piece of archeology is spoiled by the usual unnecessary assumptions.

A vast site in north-west Saudi Arabia is home to 1000 structures that date back more than 7000 years, making them older than the Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge in the UK.

Named after the Arabic word for rectangle, mustatil structures were first discovered in the 1970s, but received little attention from researchers at the time.

Using helicopters to fly over north-west Saudi Arabia and then following up with ground explorations, the researchers found more than 1000 mustatils across 200,000 square kilometres – twice as many as were previously thought to exist in this area.

That's about 250 by 250 miles in real measure, or roughly a county.

Made from piled-up blocks of sandstone, some of which weighed more than 500 kilograms, mustatils ranged from 20 metres to more than 600 metres in length, but their walls stood only 1.2 metres high. “It’s not designed to keep anything in, but to demarcate the space that is clearly an area that needs to be isolated,” says Thomas.

In a typical mustatil, long walls surround a central courtyard, with a distinctive rubble platform, or “head”, at one end and entryways at the opposite end. Some entrances were blocked by stones, suggesting they could have been decommissioned after use.

Sounds like a market square or mall. An area where traders and butchers and food vendors could set up their stalls. The walls and constrained entrance helped to police the area and avoid raids by gangs. The shape also suggests a loading pen or corral for cattle, perhaps with slaughter in the 'head' chamber.

Excavations at one mustatil showed that the centre of the head contained a chamber within which there were fragments of cattle horns and skulls. The cattle fragments may have been presented as offerings, suggesting mustatils may have been used for rituals.

"Fragments of cattle" suggests food processing, not rituals.

Modern "scientists" are so deeply religious in their own satanic way that they can't imagine TRULY SECULAR people and institutions. Plain old business for profit. Everything must be religion, and all non-Gaian and non-Viran religions are cults.

If scientists would just stick to carefully observing and measuring stuff, they'd be a lot more credible and a LOT LESS GENOCIDAL.


OCKHAM! OCKHAM! OCKHAM!

Labels: Carver, Metrology

  ¶ 10:15 PM

  Random auto thought
From 1950 to 2000, Jeeps were the only cars that didn't look like cars.

Since 2000, Jeeps are the only cars that look like cars. They have headlights, grilles, bumpers and fenders. All other cars are grotesque deep-sea monsters.

= = = = =

Another random auto thought. In 1954 Nash held a 'name this car' contest. They built a custom roadster using the same Austin engine as the Metropolitan, and invited entries to submit names. Did the winner get the car? NO. The car would be given to baseball star Ted Williams. Nash wasn't cheating. The ads for the contest were perfectly clear that the car would go to Williams. It wasn't fine print. But WHY? Why bother to enter a contest to give a prize to a rich dude who can afford anything he wants? Sucker Filter doesn't really fit. Nash wasn't trying to find gullible fools. In the end Williams hated the car and never drove it. He took the endorsement money without giving any value for the endorsement, then sold the car to some other rich dude, making money on both ends. Bastard.

= = = = =

A perfect opposite of Williams: Ricardo Montalban seemed to be just a paid endorser for the Chrysler Cordoba. He was a lot more. According to a stylist writing in Collectible Auto, Montalban took a proprietary interest in the car and visited the studio several times to watch the stylists at work. He wanted to know the car he was endorsing. That's impressive.

= = = = =

Separate random note: The quail are showing up this year, after several years of absence. They're fun to watch and easy to watch. Unlike Default Brown Birds, quail are confident. They don't fly away when they sense that I'm watching. Two of them have been standing on the porch for 15 minutes, just hanging out and observing the world. I've walked past the door several times, and we exchange glances every time.

Next morning, I found this on the porch:

So the quail wasn't standing on the porch, she was laying on the porch.

Undoubtedly an accident, an avian miscarriage. Still, I put it on the grass after picturing it. I don't want to be the one who forced the loss.

= = = = =

Later: The universe took revenge on Williams in a delicious way.

Labels: Asked and unanswerable, Entertainment

  ¶ 4:00 PM

  Law of One Exception
Polistra's Law Of One Exception is obvious at the level of officials. Deepstate is not obliged to allow any exceptions at all, but will sometimes allow EXACTLY ONE heretic in each group. Never more than one. This provides the "appearance" of "fairness" and "democracy" to gullible suckers.

Among Supremes, the One is Clarence Thomas. In the upper house, the One (mild version) is Rand Paul. I can't think of any exceptions in the lower house. Among governors, Noem is the One. Among epidemiologists, Ioannidis is it.

Among world leaders, the heroic martyr Magufuli WAS the One Exception, until Deepstate eliminated him last month.

= = = = =

The Law Of One may also apply on the temporal level to behaviors or utterances. Loyal servants of Satan are allowed to say One thing that could be interpreted as only 99.999999999999999999% orthodox. After this One extremely mild deviation, the loyal servant returns to 100.00000000000000000% perfection.

I noticed this with Demon Woodward, the demon mayor who slaughters Spokane. After chief Public Death Officer Lutz was fired for some insignificant personal reason (NOT for being a murderer), Demon Woodward expressed satisfaction at his firing, in a way that could be interpreted as vague weariness with the whole process. After this One, she returned to 100.00000000000% loyal enthusiastic murder service.

Last week the Wash State Repooflicans, for the first and last time, expressed mild semi-semi-dissatisfaction with the way Superdemon Inslee is holocausting.

Now the Repoofs are immediately back to normal Repoof territory, full-time service to Lord Bezos.

Their latest coward-ass pussy-ass bitch-ass sissy-ass email:

The 2021 Legislative Session just ended and Democrats in Olympia have once again shown that their top priority is taking more of your hard earned money to spend it on big government liberal wish-lists - this session they passed a state income tax, environmental cap and tax provisions, and a low carbon fuel standard with the promise of increasing gas taxes in the near future. To add insult to injury, Democrats even added language intended to block a citizen referendum on the state income tax.

The One is Done. Undoubtedly pussy-ass Heimlich is breathing a sigh of relief that he got the One Fake Thing out of the way. Now he can return to giving Lord Bezos ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX. Nasty vile chickenshit.

Actually I'm more pissed at MYSELF for being gullible enough to believe the One Fake Exception. I should know better.

Now I'm more broadly pissed at MYSELF after looking back through the earlier years of the blog to find the first use of the Exception Law. I was a gullible fool for several of Deepstate's frauds, from "Soviet subversion" to "Islamic terrorism." I didn't recover from those idiocies until I threw away the TV in 2010.

Labels: endless hell, Jackboot stomping forever, Sucker Filter

  ¶ 10:59 PM

  Question worth asking
I've noticed a potential trend in the last few weeks. Probably just confirmation bias, but worth mentioning.

The faces in GIF memes are starting to lose their features. The lower part of the face is often bulgy and vague.

After a year of murder muzzles concealing and strangling the lower part, are we starting to lose our shared image of what a face looks like?

Are the mouth and nose obscene, needing the airbrush?

Labels: asked and worth asking again, endless hell

  ¶ 8:01 AM

  Another thing Zamenhof missed
Random language thought.

I'm back on courseware, trying yet again to make the IMS Common Cartridge work. The Canvas and Brightspace e-learning platforms urp up Scorm packages and ALLEGEDLY swallow Common Cartridge. Last fall I tried to set up CC packages, but had to stop because more urgent specific debugs intervened in the systems that we officially support. (Canvas and Brightspace are not official, so you're 'at your own risk'.)

After a long and needed break, I'm coming at CC from a different angle, which seems much more promising.

Yesterday I wrote in the daily worklog:

Now we're getting somewhere!

Today I made another forward step without any new failures, and I wrote:

Now we're getting morewhere!

= = = = =

Comparatives belong in the family of whats and whos and whens and wheres and hows. Morewhere should be between somewhere and everywhere. Lesswhere should be between somewhere and nowhere.



Zamenhof built a fully orthogonal but clumsy system of wheres and whens and whys and whos in Esperanto, but he didn't include the comparatives. Yet another missed opportunity.

Labels: Asked and not worth asking, Language update

  ¶ 1:59 PM

  Reprint plus update
Reprinting from June 2020:

= = = = = START REPRINT:

This guy, Saifedean Ammous, is more hardass than I am!

Epidemiology is a pseudoscience based on the astonishingly idiotic idea that diseases are programmed to spread & kill according to mathematical curves when there is absolutely no reason to believe this. But epidemiologist morons get paid more if they pretend it's true, so they do.

He's solidly correct that math models are murder. But the profession of public health wasn't totally infected by math until this year. Most public health officials were using real science and real knowledge about viruses and immunity, until around March 1, when all of them switched instantly to mass murder.

Neil Ferguson's exponential nonsense was largely ignored by public health experts until this year, when his wildly wrong fake predictions suddenly became absolute truth and gospel and "SCIENCE".

Ammous later says:

The only deadly pandemic in modern times came at the end of World War I, when most the world didn't have sanitation. No pandemic since has killed more than pneumonia kills every year. But the epidemiologists still get paid to pretend their exponentials bear relation to reality.

Yup. Sanitation was the main difference. Also, the 1918 epidemic was part bacterial pneumonia and part viral influenza. Viruses weren't well understood or visible in 1918, so it's impossible to backdate the real mix; but the scientists in 1918 were seeing a lot of pneumococcus bacteria in the flu cases they examined. So 1918 wasn't necessarily an exception to the general rule.

The big point is simple. As I try to point out every day, NATURE DOESN'T DO EXPONENTIALS. NATURE DOES TANH OR SIN. Negative feedback is everywhere in life. A species that starts growing ALWAYS runs into negative feedback, whether the growing species is a virus or a bird or a human. Other animals compete or eat the overpopulated species, or it runs out of food, or it runs into immune systems in the animals it's trying to attack.

Any "expert" who tries to tell you that anything in nature will go exponential is LYING. You can be 100% certain. When you know how things work you don't need the details.

Exponential curves ONLY exist in pure math or software. Debt and Dow can go exponential now because they are pure math, unconstrained by the limits of real business or resources. The government can print an infinite amount of bonds or currency to sustain those curves.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

Today one of the fact-gatherers noted that even Demon Fauci understood the bacterial nature of the 1918 epidemic, back in 2008 before he turned into a full-time demon.

In essence, the virus landed the first blow while bacteria delivered the knockout punch...

The Martian archeologists will want to know how ALL previously sane scientists SIMULTANEOUSLY turned into holocaustal mass murdering zombies ON THE SAME FUCKING DAY. Did they receive credible death threats, or were they just thinking with their paychecks? If death threats, they're legally (but NOT morally) forgivable. If paychecks, absolutely unforgivable at the Nuremberg level. Torture and execute all of them.

Footnote: Looking again at Saifedean's twitter, he fits an odd pattern I've been noticing lately. The best hardass realists are often pushing the Bitcoin scam. Do these people have a blind spot, or are they intentionally using truth as a gimmick? Mostly blind spot, I think.

Labels: endless hell, Jackboot stomping forever

  ¶ 3:46 PM

  The ultimate scientific SES
Ran across this on Quora just now.

Q: Why does water boil instead of burning?

A: Water is the ash left over from burning hydrogen.

BLAM! SMASH! CRASH! A complete flip of viewpoint in a few words, opening up new vistas. Magnificent. I'd never guess that there was an entirely new way to look at water.

Labels: SES

  ¶ 8:05 AM

  Rational vs irrational prejudice
Spoiler: I'm going to strip off the rational/irrational, but need to start with it.

In 1933 the surviving automakers were desperately working in two directions.

1. The 20s were a time of easy money and no effort. When you can sell more every year without improving the product, you don't improve the product. 1920 cars and 1930 cars were precisely identical. In 1931 the rubber check of Share Value hit the road and bounced. All manufacturers had to start improving FAST.

2. When you can sell more every year, you don't put effort into salesmanship. When the rubber bounced, manufacturers had to focus hard on advertising and publicity, and they had to do it efficiently and effectively, without any waste.

Studebaker was doing both. In '34 it introduced the beautiful and practical Land Cruiser, the first sedan with a usable trunk, and the best use of streamlining. Chrysler's Airflow, far more expensive to develop, made streamlining look horrible, and didn't use the newly created rear space.

Studie was also trying sales and promotion gimmicks. After strong success in many small-scale races, they decided to push their home-state advantage by entering a car in the Indy 500. They also sold custom-made racing engines to other teams that wanted to build their own car with a Studie engine.

The factory team was made up of employees with a passion for racing. They hired Luther Johnson, an experienced champion driver, to head the team.

Here's where the irrational prejudice comes in. Before the race, one of the mechanics let his car-loving girlfriend sit in the race car for a while to share the experience. This was normal and courteous. In real life as opposed to NYC life, men and women share experiences and divide labor naturally.

Whoops! Luther Johnson had an old nautical-style** prejudice that girl cooties jinxed a vehicle. He refused to drive the cootie-infected car, and Studie had to let one of the inexperienced mechanics drive. They lost.

= = = = =

There are two opposite types of IRRATIONAL prejudice. Luther Johnson's cootie is one type, familiar and always named as such. Luther assumed that girls had a special quality or property which doesn't exist in real life, and his ANTIREALISTIC assumption lost the race.

The other type of irrational prejudice is the universal and lethally false assumption that everyone has exactly the SAME qualities and properties, which means that all teams and schools and organizations must consist of the various types in exact proportion to population. The racing team must be 51% female, 12% black, 1% Oriental, 3% homosexual, and so on ad infinitum, even if the forced conscripts have no talent or interest in racing.

RATIONAL prejudice isn't prejudice at all. If you let people accomplish a task without any ANTIREALISTIC THEORIES, they will balance out the assignments, find the best division of labor for the talents in the actual team, and GET SHIT DONE.

What's the ultimate purpose of life? GETTING SHIT DONE. If you want to GET SHIT DONE, whether it's winning the Indy or designing software or cleaning the house or just plain LIVING, you need to abandon both styles of ANTIREALISTIC ASSUMPTIONS and let people balance things on their own. The result will almost always be "discriminatory" by the genocidal standards of "human" "rights", but it will improve life for everyone.

= = = = =

Footnote 1: I've previously described a parallel and simultaneous irrational prejudice at GM, who did a better job of solving their problem.

Footnote 2: The original nautical prejudice makes sense, for the same reason as the equivalent military prejudice. A crew of hardass men trying to get along for several months in a small space are going to have fights. Add one or two women to the mix, and the fights will be uncontrollable. Luther's version doesn't make sense. He wasn't objecting to a woman participating in the crew, he was allergic to the mere memory of a woman touching the car.

Labels: Equipoise, From rights to duties, skill-estate

  ¶ 6:50 AM

  The usual statcounter frustration
One perpetual puzzle about blogging: When I make a positive reference to some location or city, I rarely see any readers in that city reading the item about their city. Nobody is looking for positive words about their own place.

But often I see readers in that city looking at SOMETHING ELSE, which is frustrating. Hey! I just finished saying really good stuff about you! Why don't you want to see good stuff about you?

Recently I praised a literally heavenly singing group based in Chennai, in the Tamil part of India.



Today a reader in Chennai showed up. Are they looking at the item about Chennai? Nope, they're just part of a clickfarm. I've seen this 'are we smarter' item many times as a target of recognizable bots.

Win 10 + latest Chrome + obscure location = clickfarm.

Unlike most of my clickfarm favorites, this one isn't entirely trivial and stupid, but it's only interesting in the specialized realm of plant intelligence. It has no connection with India or current affairs.

Labels: Smarty-plants

  ¶ 12:05 AM

  Super-random sloppy thought chain
Speaking of smartasses having fun, I'm having fun trying to "retrobuild" an analog computer that could have been used by the astrometeorologists. As with all animations, whether for real courseware or 'courseware without a course', a lot of study is needed along the way. I'm learning the symbols and patterns and geometry of astrology.

One of the small pleasures of reading old library books, whether physically or virtually, is seeing evidence of previous readers. This astrology book was read and notated intensively by one reader. She asked questions and tried to answer them.

Why do I say she? I'm never PC. I know it was she because she made notes in shorthand.



She was easily mixing the astro symbols with the squiggles and curls of shorthand. Humans are miraculous creatures.

Here's where the sloppy thought chain started.

Shorthand reminded me that women in the 20s had special skills from office work. They wrote and read shorthand, typed like an AK-47, and knew the peculiar legalistic boilerplate of business correspondence. Yrs of 14th ult to hand and similar cryptic phrases.

This in turn reminded me that those women used some of the boilerplate as slang. They especially used the legalistic said and same.

This led to an observation.

Same is a reflexive pronoun, and those former flappers used it actively as a reflexive pronoun. Standard English doesn't have a reflexive pronoun. Russian retained the Indo-European se in its full use. Latinate languages retained it but use it ambiguously.

We missed the chance to regain a useful bit of grammatical mechanism.

Footnote: The text visible in the screencaps above is typical of this book. The author classifies all the possible human types by planetary aspect, and all of them are ferociously negative. Only a few types might halfway deserve to live for a while in secure captivity. The exact opposite of the usual newspaper horoscope or fortune-teller who gives out vague and pleasant descriptions that could apply to anyone.

Labels: Language update, se-lu, skill-estate

  ¶ 8:55 AM

  How to treat science
In the era when the Fairness Doctrine controlled radio, entertainers had to be fair. It really worked, and it applied to science and scholarship as well as politics.

Here's a nice example from the eminently fair-minded and empathetic MacHarrie. He dramatizes a 1928 incident in Eastland, Texas. The city was tearing down an old courthouse to build a new one. When the old cornerstone was opened, a dead horny toad was found inside. After exposure to air and light, the toad started to come back to life. He was named Old Rip, and was exhibited with proper Texas-size hoopla, even making a visit to the White House.

MacHarrie quotes several Scientific Experts who arrogantly harrumphed: ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE! NO ANIMAL CAN LIVE WITHOUT OXYGEN!

Well, reality is far more fucking complicated, and above all life is far more fucking ALIVE.

In fact horny toads, like many other reptiles and amphibians, hibernate in the winter. They dig deep underground and shift into a mode of suspended animation with minimal breathing and heartbeat.

Could a horny toad stay that way for 31 years? Unlikely but not impossible.

This Texas history website tells the rest of the story in typical big Texas style. Key point: Charlie Woods, an electrician who helped build the 1897 courthouse, contributed Old Rip to the cornerstone. Charlie was also there in 1928 when the cornerstone was opened.

Did he pull a switcheroo? Unknown but not impossible.

So the incident and the science are equally ambiguous, with two possible explanations and no way to decide.

MacHarrie treats both the incident and the science appropriately.

Science is entertainment.

Science is what smartasses do for fun, in the same way that other types of asses play golf or have bar fights. Big Science is a lot more like bar fights than golf, and we should treat it as such.

Labels: Entertainment

  ¶ 6:12 AM

  Yet more on Gallup and church attendance
Following on this and this and this.

Another similar view:

Yet we cannot think that even these diversions are the sole causes for the growing non-church attendance. There seems to be something back of it all that has changed, to a great extent, the old idea of worship and church reverence, and given the idea that a minister is only wanted at a funeral or a marriage.

We are told that “there is no religion west of the Missouri and no God west of the Rocky Mountains,” and that the church “is now only a retreat for imbeciles, women and children.” That it has had its day, is now dominated by weak minds and mental dwarfs; that it has lost its sympathy and charity for the masses and has been converted into “mutual admiration societies and closed corporations for the rich.” That God has left the church in disgust; that men to enter the church must leave their minds behind; that to get a favor or a job you must not go to the church people; or, having either, you must be a hypocrite to escape the venom of their bigotry, and all such.

To the observant this means something. Indeed it means much, for only a short time back it was thought that only Thomas Paine and Col. Ingersoll would make such remarks. Today the unorthodox speak to crowded houses, and what they write finds immense and ready sales. And, whether right or wrong, good or bad, they appear to have been more successful in conversions than do the churches.

At least something, or a combination of things, has put the public to reading and thinking, and in just this proportion do they seem to be seeking other places and amusements to the neglect of the churches.

Not only this, but many of the old Bible stories, at least in their literalities, are emphatically denied. The old-fashioned hell is now scoffed; the Jonah story is jested with; the school boy is openly told, as a choice between the teachings of his teachers at Sunday school and those of science and the high school, of the story of creation, to accept the latter; while the churches have about agreed that creeds are of human origin and limitations, and not those of the spirit or Deity.

From Metaphysical Magazine, 1899.

Labels: NOT alternate universe

  ¶ 2:57 PM

  Strong SES
An extremely strong prediction from one of Wolf's commenters, pivoting on Wolf's latest discussion of the utterly bizarre SPACs, and ETFs betting on SPACs, and indexes betting on a basket of ETFs betting on NFTs betting on SPACs, which are nothing more than a money-laundering machine.

It’s structurally broken. On the levels of what the Roman Empire was after Constantine, etc. Not going back to Julius Caesar. Going to a new era.

That’s what we’re doing now: creating the underpinnings for a new era. Quite unsure what it’ll look like, how fast it’ll come. Stuff always changes, like the river (Heraclitus). It seems we’re wrapping up the Enlightenment rather quickly nowadays…

Rome is trite, but the rest is powerful. Wrapping up the Enlightenment is the ultimate terse description.

Every single piece of the Enlightenment, from secular Science to "rights" to "laws" to "constitutions", has been pulled out to its INTENDED goal and purpose.

Everyone can see now what the Enlightenment was MEANT TO DO. Time to wrap it up and return to a previous mode.

If I had the choice I'd nominate Sharia Law in 1200 AD, but I don't have the choice. It looks like we're returning instead to Europe in 1200 AD, with a mosaic of inbred imbecilic incestuous demonic aristocrats grinding up peasants to satisfy their sexual pleasure.

.... In other words, we're back to the exact literal situation that actually followed the fall of Rome. So Rome wasn't trite after all.


We didn't need any of this revelation. The French Revolution IMMEDIATELY showed us the full panorama of horror that was inherent in the Enlightenment, but we went ahead and applied it anyway. It took longer to unroll here.

Labels: 2000=1000, From rights to duties, NOW I SEE, SES

  ¶ 8:50 AM

  IOTK syndrome
This is the stupidest article ever written on the subject of gambling and casinos. The math itself is valid, but everything else is fantastically removed from human reality.

Casinos don't need to know any of the illogical "facts" provided in this article. Casinos already know everything relevant to the subject, and have been testing and refining it experimentally for 200 years.

Yet another case of If Only They Knew Syndrome.
  ¶ 1:19 AM

  Random Quora-type question
Bored and tired. Spending too much time on Quora this week.

Here's a Quora-style question that I haven't seen there.

We're familiar with the vegetable crops that were brought from the Americas back to Europe, and quickly became universal there. Tomatoes, potatoes, corn, chili peppers, tobacco.

What about livestock? Why aren't there any equivalent meat products?

Probably because the only unique livestock are small. The big animals in this hemisphere are llamas and bison. Llamas are similar to horses. Bison are similar to oxen. Not nearly as unique and irreplaceable as tomatoes or potatoes or tobacco.

The truly unique animals in the Americas are edible but never became commercially popular even here. Possums, coatimundis, capybaras, armadillos.

After writing the above I went back to Quora to see if it reflected my writing as usual. It didn't exactly, but it did remind me that squash was also among the unique crops.

Later: It's a little surprising that English "cuisine" didn't pick up on those small animals. Traditional English "cuisine" is all organ meat, using a wide variety of obscure organs from small birds and mammals. Possum pancreas or armadillo aorta would fit right into a classic fry-up.

Labels: Asked and not worth asking

  ¶ 2:19 PM

  Odd spam, beyond Sucker Filter
In the last couple weeks I've been getting occasional email messages from groups.io, which was a replacement for Yahoo Groups.

I was in a few assorted Yahoo Groups until it closed, maybe 2016? I might have looked at the successors in groups.io, but never joined.

These messages aren't obvious spam. They're just snips from the middle of various uninteresting discussions.

Example:

A well done dopefish fic can be a lot of fun - BUT that is the problem right there. Most of them aren't well done.

I've never discussed or made or read fanfics, and never heard of dopefish.

One of the discussions could be vaguely related to courseware, but otherwise the whole thing is totally disconnected. Nothing to click, nothing that seems to be an invitation or enticement. No Sucker Filter.

I tried to unsubscribe, and the auto message from groups.io said that the group itself was gone. Maybe the unsubscribe was the targeted clickpoint?

= = = = =

Speaking of spammy stuff... Academia.edu, after teasing me for several years with ambiguous "mentions" of my name in various journal articles, finally presented me with a specific list of a dozen articles that I had actually authored or co-authored. For each one it asked "Is this you?" and I was able to proudly click Yes for each one. Feels good to get some credit for real science, especially in the current "situation" where real science is being slaughtered along with millions of real people.

Labels: Sucker Filter

  ¶ 1:56 PM

  Proving his own point
This article by Timothy Dalrymple discusses the polarizing of evangelicals. He runs through the nature of belief and trust, showing how we move toward one set of beliefs without fully realizing the movement. He maintains an admirable level of balance and objectivity, but then gives away his own 'belief window' without realizing it.

Objectivity and empathy:

Claims that once seemed impossible to contemplate came to appear conceivable, then plausible, then reasonable, and finally self-evident. Of course conservatives would sacrifice thousands of innocent lives to justify a “war for oil” because conservatives are greedy and that’s what conservatives do. Of course liberals would sacrifices thousands of children in order to advance their own health and power because liberals are perverse and that’s what liberals do.

Revealing his own belief window:

Evangelicals find themselves torn between social media platforms and legacy media sources that openly advocate progressive causes and cancel conservative voices and far-right sources that traffic in paranoia and misinformation.

NOW I SEE.

Labels: Leth, NOW I SEE

  ¶ 1:46 AM

  Surprisingly useful lesson
I like to watch '50s cop shows before bedtime. A nice escapist dose of actual justice, which was rare in real life then and totally extinct now.

This episode of 'The Detectives' just popped up on Youtube.

At first it looks like the usual Arthur Miller / Shirley Jackson shit, making thinly veiled references to Joe McCarthy and the Deplorables of the era. You expect the heroes to shame the Deplorables into total submission to Freud and Meritocracy. At the end the retarded superstitious Deplorables are warbling falsetto hymns of praise to Almighty Lady Edgar.

Nope. This episode sharply departs from the standard nonsense, with a useful lesson at the end. The writers recognize that healing is an important natural function, often accomplished through religious or superstitious methods. The writers also recognize that even Deplorables deserve to hear an honest picture of reality.

In neurological terms, placebo works even when you know it's placebo. Trust and confidence are the main ingredients of health and immunity.
  ¶ 6:12 AM

  Random thought about editors and selectors
In recent years I've belatedly grasped the importance and value of editors and selectors. Whether the subject is car design or software or published writing, the editor/selector is always more important than the designer or programmer or author.

I've seen this from both angles, most strongly in the editors dealing with my courseware. A good editor doesn't need to know the details; she can smell poor writing or poor coding, and can guide me to improve the output.

Previous item on Tyson's idiocy is a fresh example of the value of editors. I had seen some reflections of the dispute but didn't know what it was about until Elizabeth Whately curated it.

Here's another angle. I like to check Whitney Webb's reporting now and then, because she manages to pick up sources that aren't easily available. She is hard to read because she doesn't have an editor. She tells long stories with lots of characters and personalities, and the important facts are somewhere in the dialog, not emphasized or outlined. I've bitched about this a few times, but finally realized that the unfiltered details are value worth paying for.

In "news" media, the paid editors are evil. They all serve "one" "side" or the "other" "side" of Deepstate. Unedited raw details are best. It's worth doing my own internal editing to sort the meaningful from the trivial. Like buying fresh vegetables instead of TV dinners.


Later: TV dinners? I'm old! When was the last time that phrase was used?



Surprisingly it was most common in the '80s, not the '50s. The 1986 peak is sharp. A political slogan? The phrase remains about as common now as it was in the '50s. TV dinners never had any connection with TV, unless maybe the marketers were implying that Mom could spend more time watching TV with the family if she didn't have to prepare real food.

Labels: Editors

  ¶ 6:59 AM

  Burning stakes vs burning steaks
EvolutionNews calls attention to a mysterious but meaningful Tweetfight between orthodox Big Science Fuckhead Tyson and an account belonging to a real brand of steaks.

I had caught a dim echo of the fight on Quora but didn't know what was going on. The argument itself is clear and wonderfully straightforward. Tyson, like all corrupt high priests, wants us to trust the high priests because they are SCIENCE.

Tyson first wrote:

The good thing about Science is that it’s true, whether or not you believe in it.

This is violently and holocaustally false. Science is never true. Scientific findings are never true.

Reality is true, whether you believe in it or not.

A few scientific findings, verified by LONG EXPERIENCE, have turned out to be USEFUL PARTIAL REPRESENTATIONS of reality. Most scientific findings, even before the total genocide of recent decades, were just trivial and useless.

Other findings from dreams or work experience or superstition or religion or random shit can also be useful partial representations of reality. Science is nothing special in this department.

The SCIENCE that Tyson represents is demonically superfalse, determined at every stage to OBLITERATE ALL OF REALITY, and to OBLITERATE ALL TRUE REPRESENTATIONS OF REALITY.

= = = = =

The mysterious Steak-Umm account got off some pretty decent responses to Holocauster Tyson, and a few other people in the fight also put in solid responses.

the irony of neil’s tweet is that by framing science itself as “true” he’s influencing people to be more skeptical of it in a time of unprecedented misinformation. science is an ever refining process to find truth, not a dogma. no matter his intent, this message isn’t helpful

Most of the stuff in the thread is the usual proSCIENCE junk or off-topic. So I thank the Evo News author for picking up and filtering out the important argument!

I'm especially encouraged to see a corporation, though not a large one, publicly taking the side of reality and truth. Another first. A few corporations wisely remained silent about both the riots and the "virus", which is good normal business practice. The vast majority screeched SATANIC EVIL on both topics, which used to be considered atrocious business practice.

Labels: Editors, Entertainment

  ¶ 4:39 AM

  AIER misses one point
AIER has republished a detailed FACTUAL STATEMENT about muzzles, originally published in a standard medical journal, and written by an unusually credentialed author. He works at the VA, the same place that started the lockdowns.

The author hits all the important points, including recirculation of microbes ruining immunity, which (ahem) some people noticed a long fucking time ago.

The author hits the mental and emotional toll of muzzles heavily, as he should. Emotional destruction is the PURPOSE of ballgags. Oddly he misses one important perceptual problem.

Muzzles cut off the lower third of your visual field.

You can't see what you're doing or where you're going. So far I've managed to avoid tripping over things or falling in the ballgag-forced satanic zones, but there have been many close calls, especially when boarding a bus from an icy sidewalk.

It's pretty clear that Biden was suffering from the same problem when he fell while going up the airplane stairs. Emersonian justice is satisfying, but the lesson should be the same regardless of karma.

Before 2020, one family gagging its kids or grandparents to avoid witchcraft would have been singled out and imprisoned and nationally shamed for a year on all the media. The FBI would raid and obliterate all "compounds" of all relatives and acquaintances, and every religious and political connection of the horrible family would be mercilessly "contact traced" and bombed down to bedrock.

Now we're imprisoned and shamed for NOT committing child abuse and elder abuse.

Labels: Emersonian justice, endless hell, Jackboot stomping forever, Jail mode

  ¶ 3:06 PM

  HMR BCP/BCPO TRPM8
If there was still a purpose in doing the Ig-Nobel thing under current holocaustal circumstances when all science is genocide, this study would qualify. It's a perfectly serious description of a perfectly funny natural phenomenon.

Attraction to feces in wild mammalian species is extremely rare. Here we introduce the horse manure rolling (HMR) behavior of wild giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca). Pandas not only frequently sniffed and wallowed in fresh horse manure, but also actively rubbed the fecal matter all over their bodies. The frequency of HMR events was highly correlated with an ambient temperature lower than 15 °C. BCP/BCPO (beta-caryophyllene/caryophyllene oxide) in fresh horse manure was found to drive HMR behavior and attenuated the cold sensitivity of mice by directly targeting and inhibiting transient receptor potential melastatin 8 (TRPM8), an archetypical cold-activated ion channel of mammals. Therefore, horse manure containing BCP/BCPO likely bestows the wild giant pandas with cold tolerance at low ambient temperatures. Together, our study described an unusual behavior, identified BCP/BCPO as chemical inhibitors of TRPM8 ion channel, and provided a plausible chemistry-auxiliary mechanism, in which animals might actively seek and utilize potential chemical resources from their habitat for temperature acclimatization.

Rolling in shit is ENTERTAINING, no matter how precise and Krautistic the description. It's especially funny when funny critters like pandas do it. Dense jargon and sober acronyms only make it funnier.

There's also an ID corollary. Pandas eat nothing but bamboo, which implies that the two must have developed simultaneously. Now we know that pandas roll in horseshit, and dab it all over their fur, which also implies simultaneous development and reliable simultaneous presence in the same place.

Labels: Entertainment, Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 8:24 AM

  Microguts better than zeroguts
Speaking of the devil.... Demon Inslee is playing the old psychopath game, changing the rules after a reprieve. He writes constantly changing "rules" for his Phases and Subphases. This week he decided to shove several counties backward on the Phase hierarchy to keep his dick hard.



Amazingly, the Wash State Repooflicans have FINALLY started showing a tiny microgram of microguts. For the FIRST TIME EVER, they express a serious dislike for Inslee's demonic mass murder.

From this morning's email:

This is unacceptable, no one person should wield this much power over citizens and small business owners, who just want to go about their daily lives without the government dictating their every move. Watch our most recent video calling for the State Legislature to reform the Emergency Powers Act, so we can stop Inslee from having unlimited, unchecked power.

This is their FIRST MENTION EVER, after a year of bashing Inslee for raising the car license fee. I donated to them for the FIRST TIME EVER. Pay for value.

Labels: Equipoise, Jackboot stomping forever

  ¶ 10:07 AM

  Reprint from one year ago
I want to reprint this item from April 10, 2020 to reinforce the proper and specific definition of a psychopath.

The word is used loosely.

Sociopaths are not psychopaths. Sociopaths get their way by persuasion and charm, which isn't necessarily evil. They are often selling a scam or fraud, but they make effective salesmen for good purposes as well.

Control freaks are not psychopaths. Control freaks (aka OCD, micromanagers, Karens) are happily doing the dirty work for the psychopaths because the holocaust uses their particular talents fully. But they can be made to work for good or neutral purposes. They are a human type, not an alien demon.

The reprinted piece cites a 1960 British spy show that illustrates better than anything else how a specific psychopath works. Demons need to dominate and humiliate and damage and destroy ALL THE TIME. They need to CHANGE THE RULES. Psychopaths must keep the victim off balance every second. Github, Room 101, Comrade O'Brien.

= = = = = START REPRINT:

Charles V, head of the Holy Roman Empire in the 1500s, was a classic neocon psychopath, the direct ancestor of all modern rulers. His own mind was the only mind in the universe. Other things (including human things) existed solely for his amusement and destruction. Like a cat pretending to lick its paw, Charles especially enjoyed giving human things a fake "opportunity" or "reprieve", only to snatch it away.

Condensed from this historical timeline.

In Wittenberg, Luther publicly burns the papal bull threatening him with excommunication.

Pope Leo X excommunicates Luther.

Charles V receives Luther's appeal to Caesar and tears it up and tramples on it. Within weeks, however, concerned with the reaction of the German people if Luther were to be condemned without a hearing, he reconsiders his decision.

The emperor sends an invitation to Luther to come to the Diet meeting at Worms within twenty-one days to "answer with regard to your books and your teaching."

Luther appears before the Diet of Worms, a general assembly of the estates of the Holy Roman Empire, with Charles V presiding. Luther is to be asked by the Archbishop of Trier about the content of his books and his 95 Theses, and whether he stands by all of what he said. He asks for time to consider his response.

At his second hearing, Luther distinguishes between his books, allowing him to make a statement. On key points, however, he stands firm. He says, "My conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen."

A committee of electors privately meets with Luther and tries to reach a compromise, accepting some of his attacks as warranted by gaining Luther's revocation on other of his points. The committee is unsuccessful in its efforts.

Luther departs Worms. A week later, after a staged kidnaping, Luther is taken to Wartburg.

Charles V presents the final draft of the Edict that declares Luther an outlaw, authorizes his arrest, and bans his literature. The Edict makes it a crime to shelter Luther and permits anyone to kill Luther without risk of punishment.

Frederick the Wise devises a plan (involving a staged abduction by armed horsemen) to allow Luther to escape arrest. He finds temporary refuge at Wartburg Castle.

Luther bravely returns to Wittenberg and begins a series of important lectures on core Christian values.

I've emphasized the kidnapping and counter-kidnapping. Deepstate hasn't changed in 2000 years, but the opponents of Deepstate have been pacified and neutered by centuries of fake "laws" and "constitutions" and "elections". The 1500 independents KNEW HOW THINGS WORK. They answered crime with crime. Modern independents stupidly insist on "suing" and "voting", even after repeated and consistent proofs that "laws" and "constitutions" and "elections" do not exist.

Did anyone ever "hold Charles accountable", another idiot delusion of modern independents? No, he retired rich and powerful.

A fable, told in many books, pretends that Charles repented. Physically impossible. Psychopaths never repent. Still, the fable has a modern resonance.

Few monarchs have had the ingenuousness of Charles V. to confess his error, or the wisdom to profit by his example. The emperor after a reign remarkable for his rigorous and tyrannical efforts to make his own creed of faith universally followed in his dominions, was accustomed amongst other occupations in his retirement to amuse himself by an attempt to make several watches follow up their mechanical purposes without the least variation from each other. At length convinced of the fruitlessness of his task, and perceiving its analogy to the chief policy of his government, he exclaimed, “What a fool have I been to have endeavored for so many years to force millions of minds to conform to my standard of opinion, when I cannot even for a minute make a few watches keep time together.”

In the fable, Charles sees that even metallic objects can't be treated the way he treated meat objects. It would be nice if modern rulers learned from the fictional example, but they can't and won't.

Frederick the Wise offers a USEFUL example.

= = = = =

Semi-relevant footnote: The '60s spy series 'Danger Man' is typical of the genre in most ways, but atypically the writers KNOW HOW THINGS WORK. Like Frederick the Wise, the hero never wastes time on "legal" or "elective" methods. He goes straight to blackmail and kidnapping every time. This episode has a perfect psychopath character, vaguely identified as the head of an international corporation. Like Charles or Soros, his mind is the ONLY mind. His decision must prevail in EVERY transaction no matter how insignificant, and after you submit he changes the rules and forces you to submit again, then changes the rules again and forces you to submit again. Exponentially Insatiable. Room 101^{^2^2^2^2^2^2^2}....

= = = = = END REPRINT.

Labels: Jackboot stomping forever, Jail mode

  ¶ 9:22 AM

  Random skill-estate thought
I'm studying the old science of astro-meteorology in my usual way, by trying to animate a machine that performed the function. There are several clear books about the various systems, differing in details and agreeing in broad outline.

As I start to understand the systems and their experimental basis, I'm starting to imagine the analog computer that would have implemented them.

It turns out that I 'built' a similar machine a few months ago as a branch of the bridges and balances theme, but didn't use it in those blogposts. It didn't quite fit the theme.

Lesson, which isn't surprising by now: Never discard a more or less finished idea or product. Keep it around, and keep enough documentation so you can return to it with some understanding.

This is the skill-estate version of STORAGE.

The modern psychopaths, the Innovative Disruptors, consider 'sunk cost' to be absolute anathema. They tell us to pull away from every experimentally proven skill or workflow or thought or device or invention. Amortization is a mortal sin.

EXPERIENCE SURVIVES. THEORY KILLS.

Labels: Natural law = Sharia law, Natural law = Soviet law, skill-estate, storage

  ¶ 11:44 PM

  Wolf hits the nail as usual
Speaking of the ECONOMIC TARGET of the holocaust, Wolf has come through with the LOUDEST GRAPH IN THE WORLD.

See the first graph in this article.

In 2008 the Federal satan started cranking out "money" and feeding it SOLELY to NYC. Since then the net worth of the top 1% has gone from 5 million to 12 million, while the net worth of the bottom 90% is unchanged.

90% of the population hasn't gained anything at all in 12 years. NYC has doubled its wealth.

The fastest increase for the monsters has happened during the holocaust.

Wolf pulls apart types of assets to show how precise the targeting is:

So when the Fed inflates the housing market, most people in the bottom 50% don’t benefit because they don’t own a home. But they have to pay more to rent, and they get further locked out from buying a home.

The second largest category at the bottom 50% is durable goods of $8,899 per person, such as appliances, cars, and cellphones (green line). That amount ticked up over the last three quarters as folks used their stimmies from the government (not the Fed) to buy some durable goods.

Stocks and mutual funds, the smallest category of the assets, account for only $1,131 per person (red line). So when the Fed inflates the stock market, the bottom 50% don’t benefit at all. That’s reserved for the top 10%.

Note especially 'the bottom 50% don't own a home'.

Go back to my detailed look at the 1940 Census in Enid. I was comparing a white working-class neighborhood with the black part of town.

In both of those areas 60% of people owned their homes.

Maybe Enid was atypical, but it's still a dramatic difference. In 80 years the lower half went from majority owners to very few owners.
  ¶ 2:51 PM

  Good consequence SO FAR
One strange and unexpected consequence of the holocaust is a resurgence of real federalism. From 1960 to 2010, all states had the same laws. They had different tax rates and different speed limits and weight limits, which made life interesting for bookkeepers and truck drivers, but otherwise no meaningful difference. If X was legal in your state, you could be sure X was legal in all states. If X was illegal in your state, you could be sure X was illegal in all states.

Around 2010 marijuana and immigration started to create real differences. Sanctuary cities refused to enforce federal immigration laws, and the states didn't stop them. This question was publicly presented as D vs R, but it was really much more confused and tangled.

Sanctuary cities were just virtue signals. They didn't have jobs for Mexicans, and didn't have a comfortable culture for Mexicans. The states that were actually inviting and EMPLOYING Mexicans, like Kansas and Iowa, were not playing the sanctuary game.

Traditionally D obeyed the unions, and was stricter on immigration. Traditionally R welcomed cheap wages to disemploy Americans. In practice the tradition was maintained. Obama was actually stricter than Bush or Trump, but the public noise was reversed.

Now the holocaust has created a perfect and unconfused divide. R states and D states are perfectly and totally different. Trump didn't do anything to stop the holocausting states, and SO FAR Biden hasn't done anything to stop the free states. Biden and Trump made the predictable noises, but the divide formed under Trump and continues under Biden.

Labels: Constants and Variables

  ¶ 6:25 AM

  Why the focus?
Calibrating: Why am I focusing so much on the Roman church? I've never been a member, so its internal doings are really none of my business.

Rome is uniquely positioned to oppose tyranny. Despite decades of decline it's still rich and tightly hierarchical, and it's a global empire that crosses national boundaries. It thus has the same quality of power as Amazon and Google, including the power skills of secrecy and blackmail.

In this holocaust, many of the harshest and most brutal nations are Catholic, so the church would be especially vital in those nations. Instead, the church eagerly collaborates in its own destruction, along with the mass murder of the people.

= = = = =

In non-Roman places the best opposer should have been small businesses, organized in a union across national boundaries. Small business is the ECONOMIC TARGET of the holocausters everywhere. Amazon and other giants are benefitting massively from the lockdowns, and the lockdowns are most persistent in places where Amazon and Apple control the government. Many small and medium businesses, formerly competing with Amazon, have been killed. The skills of their employees are now lost.

A hundred years ago, farmers had a national organization that served their interests. The Grange was a Mutual Benefit Association with 'lodges' in every small town. Small businesses have never had a Grange-like MBA. Some of them have lobbying groups, but the lobbyists are part of the DC establishment and thus serve DC first. O'Sullivan.

Speaking of the power of Google... Immediately after writing the above I got bored and checked Quora. First question on top:



Note the time. Somebody or something must have generated this question "for me" as soon as I wrote about the Grange.

Labels: skill-estate, Trinity House

  ¶ 11:22 PM

  More Leila
Since I praised Catholic writer Leila Miller, I should null the balance by noting when she's wrong. Her latest column calls on Catholic men to stand up against the collaborating hierarchy.

This is a fallacy, parallel to politicians blaming the voters for bad government.

In both cases the people who are still INSIDE the institution have been selected as collaborators. The people who might have been able to oppose evil have stopped voting and stopped attending a long time ago.

One commenter gave an illuminating inside view. Heterosexual men left the church for obvious reasons. Churches are mostly women, and the women in the Roman church are a specific type. They're Karens. (See 'scrupulosity'.) So the bishops and priests are simply going with the flow when they collaborate with the holocaust.

I don't have an inside view, but this agrees with what I used to hear on EWTN. The callers to their talk shows were Karens, citing every section and subsection of the rulebook verbatim, snitching on the priest for every mispronounced syllable or misfolded vestment or misplaced gesture.

Leila also called the weak men effeminate. This is both inaccurate and counterproductive, and the inaccuracy is immediately relevant. The young Hispanic priest who Leila praised for his courageous apology is physically delicate and high-voiced. He would be called effeminate by the schoolyard bullies who like to use the word. He turned out to have more GUTS than the beefy cigar-puffing priests who easily go with the evil flow.

What we need is GUTS, no matter what kind of package contains the GUTS.

Labels: Equipoise

  ¶ 12:01 AM

  Increasingly infamous?
The controversy over the Em Drive continues.

I don't have a dog in the fight. Not convinced either way. I do think we'll eventually admit that an ether exists, that there is an absolute baseline or ground point for waves. Michelson-Morley didn't disprove an absolute baseline, it only disproved the idea that light waves are a distortion OF the ether in the same way that sound waves are motions OF air molecules. If there is an absolute baseline, devices like the Em Drive might be able to push against it.

The latest "final cancellation" of the Em Drive:

Just four days after headlines announced that a team from Germany’s Dresden University led by researcher Martin Tajmar had seemingly proven once and for all that the increasingly infamous EmDrive fails to produce any measurable thrust, it’s inventor Robert Shawyer, took the stage at a virtual propulsion conference to not only refute those test results, but indicated that he told the team undertaking those tests years earlier that their flawed designs would guarantee failure.

This idea of thrust without an emitted propellant not only violates Newton’s 2nd and 3rd laws of motion governing the conservation of momentum, say skeptics, but would pretty much upend a century of mathematics and science that all seem to support those laws.

“The idea not only violates Newton’s third law of motion,” wrote Rochester Institute of Technology astrophysicist Brian Koberlein in a May 2017 Forbes piece, “it violates special relativity, general relativity, and Noether’s theorem. Since these are each well-tested theories that form the basis of countless other theories, their violation would completely overturn all of modern physics.”

Increasingly infamous is political language, not scientific language.

I thought the whole point of science was to upend existing theories. Mostly a myth, but in areas like atomic subparticles, the big grants do support attempts to upend those same theories. Upending Einstein is cool when the right people do it. I guess Shawyer isn't the right people.

Status is innate and permanent. Everything in the world, including science, is solely about status. Cool people win everything. Uncool people lose everything.
  ¶ 6:55 AM

  Salute to Benjn Pike Jr part 3: Spectacles
[Following from part 1 and part 2.]



Benjⁿ Pike J^r was mainly an optical manufacturer. In this section I'll focus on the optical side of his 1848 catalog, which contained spectacles with sliding parts and spectacles with sliding parts.

= = = = =

First the product you expect from an optician: eyeglasses. These had sliding bows, common at that time, so you could adjust each side for comfort or focus.

A lost feature. Why was it lost? Deskilling. Offshoring. Every branch of medicine and life has been yanking functions and skills away from normal people and reserving the functions for specialists or foreigners. Only professional opticians are allowed to adjust glasses, and after adjustment there are no user-serviceable parts.



= = = = =

The other type of spectacle with sliding parts shows the interface of science AND education AND entertainment.

The Magic Lantern.

I had thought the magic lantern was just a slide projector with light furnished by flame instead of electricity. The machine was partly similar, but the ACTUAL USE of the magic lantern before 1900 was interactive and animated, unlike both slides and cinema.

The key to a good magic lantern spectacle was in the slideRs, which were NOT the same thing as slides.

Closeup view of a lantern with a typical slideR mechanism:



The lamp (alcohol or whale oil) was focused by the mirror in back. The tiny cranks drove a miniature conveyor belt, making it possible to move one slider back and forth, or move one smaller slider across a bigger one.

Here the fixed slider is Polistra's home, and the movable slider is HappySun moving across the horizon.



Another way of animating was the dissolver, a pair of lanterns with a mechanism to gradually hide one and display the other. I'm trying to do a ticking pendulum here, but the dissolver doesn't work well in the Poser digital setup because Poser doesn't have real lenses and doesn't merge the images properly.



Sliding and dissolving animations were highly developed in 1850. Many other variations were available, including miniature silhouette figures that danced when you turned the crank. These were about 3 inches high, packing a lot of mechanism into a small space.



Some were intended solely for amusement:



We know what French means, don't we? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

Others were more educational:



Cinema later redeveloped similar techniques, BUT they weren't interactive, weren't user-serviceable. Hollywood editors performed the dissolves and animation, then packaged them as unchangeable and uncontrollable sequences. In the 1950s every school had a slide projector for stiff unchanging slides, and a filmstrip projector with a similar rack-type mechanism used only for advancing to the next rigid picture.



The mechanism was the same, only the techniques and the magic were gone.

A similar process of centralization and deskilling happened in the digital era. The early PCs, especially Amiga, had plenty of DIY animation available. Windows EXEs could perform similar tricks, and I used those tricks in my early courseware to create interactive experiments. After everything moved online, the tricks were much harder to accomplish. I had to remake my "live" interactive animations as uncontrollable sequences of frames, just like the change from slideRs to slides.

In fairness, slider and dissolver techniques are available in SVG controlled by JS, but they're not used for animation. Dissolvers are only used by paywalls to show you a fading-out version of the page before you pay. User-controlled sliders remain in one specialized vestigial situation: Then vs Now pictures of cityscapes.

= = = = =

The Scientific Lantern is the real interface point of magic and entertainment and science. Magic shows and science shows were the same thing. Serious scientists like Faraday enjoyed creating stage spectacles to illustrate the devices and principles they were developing.

This Scientific Lantern has the lamp as above, but instead of sliders it has a big space between lamp and lens where you could mount various kinds of experiments and displays.



Here the target is a conductivity cell, which would be part of a full experimental setup like this:



The bubbles and reactions in the cell would be visible to the audience.

The platform in the Scientific Lantern could also hold an aquarium or terrarium with critters, preferably transparent or translucent critters.



= = = = =

Along with the loss of interactivity, there's a MUCH BIGGER moral to this story. When science was a form of entertainment, everyone could see and ENJOY the actual process of observation and experimentation. When science had user-serviceable parts, everyone could participate in science.

In 1946 science merged with Deepstate and became a tool of surveillance and genocide. We are no longer allowed to see how science works. We no longer get to hear or participate in open descriptions and discussions. Nothing leaks out, nothing is ever displayed or revealed.

We only get to experience the massively evil and demonic ACTIONS of science when it imprisons and binds and gags and kills us by the millions.

ENTERTAINMENT IS THE OPPOSITE OF SECRETS.

ENTERTAINMENT IS THE OPPOSITE OF GENOCIDE.

LAUGHTER IS THE OPPOSITE OF DEATH.

Labels: Entertainment, Parkinson, skill-estate

  ¶ 12:15 AM

  Delayed aptronym alert
Thinking about architecture and astrology and Philip dying at 99, converged to Grandma, who maintained her NYC lifestyle in Oklahoma, and lived to 99 by spiritualism and astrology.

She adhered to Mary Baker Eddy's "Christian Science" and consulted a seer or prophetess. I often heard stories about the predictions given by this seer, but until right now I never noticed the NAME of the prophetess.

Mrs Early.

LATE EARLY APTRONYM ALERT!

Labels: Aptronym Alert

  ¶ 10:11 PM

  RIP Philip
Apparently Prince Philip has died at 99. A significant loss to Britain. Philip was the last unchanging beacon of real ENGLISH culture, and the last unstoppable truth-teller in the British government. His truth didn't have any influence on the real rulers, but nevertheless he kept saying true things, kept reminding people of the truth.

Elizabeth lost her beacon status about 10 years ago when she started saying fashionable things instead of true things.

Charles is a mixed bag. He goes with fashion on some big issues like "global warming", but he sticks with truth on cultural matters. His behavior is a non-verbal beacon, performing the classic function of an aristocratic MAN. A double-ought copper ground rod.

The grandsons are useless. Pure fashion.

We need beacons. The old ones are dying and being murdered. New beacons aren't being created or born.

Later: Even in the snide columns of online forums, the memories of Philip are uniformly positive and PERSONAL. A wide variety of people had personal contact with him in a wide variety of situations, from polo games to charity conferences to military maneuvers. In all of those situations he did surprising and unexpected good deeds and told surprising and unexpected truths.
  ¶ 7:17 AM

  Good old 1946
Noticed a chance mention in an article by one of the fact-gatherers.

Central Death Command (CDC) was founded in 1946.

I hadn't bothered to think about its history before.

Now it fits into the bigger picture. Central Death Command was NEVER intended to be about Public Health. The federal and state governments already had public health agencies, performing real public health with real science. A new agency wasn't needed.

But in 1946 we "needed" new agencies for EVERYTHING. Deepstate had been constrained for 12 years, and it vowed that NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN would any politician be able to control it.

Labels: NOW I SEE

  ¶ 3:11 PM

  Subtracting from knowledge about subtraction
Another game-theory "study" on a well-known and important topic.

When trying to solve a problem or fix a machine, people tend to add more bells and whistles instead of removing pieces. It's a definite tendency, and it takes serious discipline to reverse the tendency.

I have to slap myself upside the head when I'm debugging a program. SIMPLIFY, SIMPLIFY, SIMPLIFY!!! It's always "easy" to add a conditional or a try/except pair that solves the APPARENT problem in a hard-wired way. This solution is nearly always wrong, and nearly always creates more bugs.

[Example: You see x=0 sometimes in a situation where it should be physically impossible for x to reach 0. The add-on "solution" is something like this: If x=0, set x=0.001. Instead, you should dig in and figure out why the physically impossible situation is showing up.]

The article quotes one observer who understands the tendency clearly:

But curbing our love of excess will take more than nudges and a clear mind, says Hal Arkes, a judgement and decision-making researcher at Ohio State University who was not involved with the study. Organizational and political leaders, especially, abhor cutting the fat. “If you add more people and more dollars, you won’t make any enemies, you’ll just make friends,” Arkes says. “Subtraction has serious downsides.”

Parkinson. Bureaucracies ALWAYS grow. Spending ALWAYS increases, even after the "problem" has entirely disappeared.

BUT:

The article misses one important category of bureaucratic problems where subtraction is PREFERRED. When we're thinking about cleaning a room or an environment, we sternly resist adding something. Chemical pollution of air and water is often EASILY fixed by adding a plant or a bacterium or a reactant or an absorbent powder, but agencies refuse to adopt solutions in that direction. They insist that the usable solution must be purely subtractive.

So this study subtracts from existing knowledge about subtraction.

Labels: Parkinson

  ¶ 8:51 AM

  Wrong vector
The usual pointless argument about free will vs determinism is looking at the wrong end of the timeline. There's absolutely no way to discuss what happened before. All arguments are perfectly circular.

Looking in the other direction, toward PURPOSE AND ACCOMPLISHMENT, is not circular at all. The FACTS are clear.


When you know your fate is permanent and innate, you have more real freedom.


Meritocracy is a vicious trap. When you think you can do anything, you end up wasting your life trying to do impossible shit. When you know you can do SOMETHING, and you know exactly what the SOMETHING is, you are free to do it. You no longer feel obliged to improve your popularity or raise your status or please assholes who will never be pleased. You're free to do PURPOSEFUL THINGS that are WITHIN YOUR CAPABILITY.

Labels: Answered better than asked

  ¶ 7:51 AM

  Gangsters and Ford V8s
The linkage started in '32 with the Barkers and Dillingers. When French yoots in the '80s copied gang styles from West Side Story, they were still driving and hotrodding Ford V8s.

(The French version, that is.)

The unique rhythm of a V8 is well defined. It can't be smooth by mechanical definition. V8s must strike an innate resonance in the human ear and vestibule, perhaps ringing a specific brainwave pattern that fits with serious driving. Maybe it matches a galloping horse. Ford wasn't the fastest affordable car in '32, so the gangsters weren't simply seeking speed.

The Simcas in these pictures used a smaller V8 that was designed under Henry in the '30s, originally intended as an economical option. It was tried for a year or two but didn't sell. Henry finally yielded to numerological doom** and allowed his company to make a six. The smaller V8 was sent to Europe, where it thrived for 30 years.

** I'm going with the legend here for a better story, but later historians have found that Henry started developing a six at the same time as the smaller V8, and encouraged both projects. The smaller V8 reached production first.

Labels: NOT alternate universe

  ¶ 5:21 AM

  More Michelet
The latest videos from the Inquisition have the same pattern as previous clips of similar encounters.

The Public Death Officers are always led by a drab middle-aged "female" zombie, which chants its magic incantations constantly, reading the demonic catechism to the combustible heretic. Droning on and on behind the witch-protector muzzle, while the heretic either recants or drives out the zombies.

The zombies are inanimate objects. They move slowly and smoothly in unison like rocks in a mudslide, inexorably pushing pushing pushing, unstoppably chanting chanting chanting, unless they encounter serious resistance. After it's clear that the heretic will not recant, the zombies slowly and smoothly pull back and regroup for a more effective and violent charge next time.

Michelet described the earlier version:

To understand this better, read the accursed Registers still extant of the Inquisition, not in the extracts compiled by Llorente, Lamotte-Langon, etc., but in what is extant of the original Registers of Toulouse. Read them in their vapid sameness, their dismal aridity, their shocking unconscious savagery.

A few pages, and you are cold at heart, a cruel chill strikes home to the vitals. Death, death, always death, you feel it in every page. You are already in the tomb, or immured in a little chamber of stone with damp-stained walls. The happiest gate is death. The dreadful thing is the in pace. One word recurs continually, like a bell of horror tolled, and tolled again, to drive the dead in life into despair, — always the same word, Immured.

Dread apparatus for crushing and annihilating souls, cruel press for breaking hearts. The screw turns, and turns, till breath fails and the very bones crack.

Cold at heart. A cruel chill. Dread apparatus. The screw turns and turns.

= = = = =

As seen by the heretics:



As seen by the Public Death Officers:

Labels: endless hell, Jackboot stomping forever, Jail mode

  ¶ 12:52 AM

  Microsoft understands evolution by subtraction!
Via RealClearScience:

We will soon be ending support for the Cortana app on Android and iOS, as Cortana continues its evolution as a productivity assistant.

As of March 31, 2021, the Cortana content you created—such as reminders and lists—will no longer function in the Cortana mobile app, but can still be accessed through Cortana in Windows. Also, Cortana reminders, lists, and tasks are automatically synced to the Microsoft To Do app, which you can download to your phone for free.

After March 31, 2021, the Cortana mobile app on your phone will no longer be supported.

Of course the understanding is accidental, just a corporate buzzword, but still correct.

A genome or an invention or a language starts out with all important features, then loses them.

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 12:06 AM

  Non-point-missing on declining churches
For a nice comparison with previous item, here's an article on the Gallup religion poll that DOESN'T miss the important points. Robert Shedinger is mainly talking about education, not churches. He's telling us what he hears from his own actual college students. EXPERIENCE, not theory.

Many students come to this class with a real curiosity about how scientific and religious thought might intertwine. And this curiosity betrays a spiritual hunger just looking to be filled. These students may not be involved in church, synagogue, or mosque, but they are suspicious of materialism and become very open to the suggestion of an intelligence at work in the cosmos. Cosmological fine-tuning arguments tend to fascinate them. Trying to account for the origin of life from non-life by materialist processes flummoxes them. The evidence of intelligent design in living organisms fills them with awe. The idea of reducing mind and consciousness to chemistry and physics seems utterly ridiculous to them. The fact that they have never encountered these ideas in their science and psychology classes frustrates them to no end.

On the dot, and beautifully written.
  ¶ 11:21 PM

  More point-missing on declining churches
Evolution News picks up the Pew survey on declining churches. (Is that the Pew-Dying-Pew Survey?)

Americans’ membership in houses of worship continued to decline last year, dropping below 50% for the first time in Gallup’s eight-decade trend. In 2020, 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque, down from 50% in 2018 and 70% in 1999.

No one can say what this will mean in a country whose foundations have leaned so heavily on Christian faith. It can’t mean anything good. So Stephen Meyer’s new book, Return of the God Hypothesis, could not be more timely.

Oops, it's Gallup, not Pew. There goes my pun.

This particular point-missing is forgivable, since they're using it for good commercial purposes. Still, there's a crucial difference between churches and belief. The problem isn't belief. The problem is churches.

And the solution is simple. Churches are ALSO a commercial endeavor. A church is offering products and services, and asking customers to pay in money and time and effort for the products and services.

A business declines when the product doesn't meet the desires or needs of the customers. The need is still there. Everyone has some kind of faith, and everyone needs a community with a deeper core than Facebook.

Most other businesses have intentionally repelled their own customers and removed their own employees, preferring to operate solely in the abstract ethereal realm of Share Value. The rich 'mainline' churches have done this in EXACTLY the same way. They make it MURDEROUSLY CLEAR that real Christians and poor people are LITERALLY ANATHEMA, not just unwelcome.

These point-missers are also hitting the ethereal and missing the concrete, whether intentionally or not. They're focusing on the abstractions of theology and belief, not the bad products and services.

(Other point-missers on the same survey.)

= = = = =

Later: Meyer himself is breaking out of the usual boxes in an interesting way. He's appearing tonight on the Art Bell late-night show, ready to take on all comers. The usual discussions are pointless, just repeating all the standard official talking points on the "two" official "sides". Meyer might hear some non-standard questions from the Art Bell crowd, and might give some non-standard responses. I've turned my radio off for the duration of the holocaust, after trying just once and receiving a BLAST OF SATAN. I might turn it on again for this show, at least briefly.

= = = = =

Briefly for fucking sure. I turned on the radio, and the good old seven second rule worked perfectly.

CLICK! Radio on.

One, two, three, "... Mask up!"

SNAP! Radio off, and stays off.

Polistra's seven-second rule: When you tune into a radio program, you know what it's about in seven seconds. You don't need to go beyond seven. Repooflican radio: Seven seconds to ZERO_TAX. Dem radio: Seven seconds to RUSSIAN_MEDDLING. BBC: Seven seconds to CLIMATE_CHANGE. NPR: Seven seconds to LGBTQQ2A.

Now all media are the same UNISON SATANIC BLAST.

Seven seconds to MASK_UP!
  ¶ 11:05 PM

  Where did the Carter Family go?
Chennai, that's where.



These folks are amazing. Their harmony is pure HARD Appalachian, no autotune wiggles. The same channel has a whole bunch of old American and English hymns, done with the same perfection that is LOST in America and England.

Especially apt for RIGHT FUCKING NOW:



= = = = =

Vaguely related sidenote about India. Only a few MDs and virologist types have dared to defend real science against the holocaust's total reversal of all logic and facts and science. MOST of those heroes have Indian names. This is true in US and Canada and Britain and Germany. I haven't been following other countries but wouldn't be surprised if it's the same there. I don't know what causes this correlation, but it's a STRONG correlation. Were scientists from India left out of the demonic circle of secrets and blackmail? Distrusted by Deepstate, or just forgotten?

Labels: infinite GOOD

  ¶ 3:25 PM

  Aimee GOT IT.
Looking back through a chain of links, bumped into this. I had originally used this clip in a superficial way to illustrate that Aimee Semple MacPherson was a VERY DIFFERENT type of female cult leader. I hadn't listened to the whole piece before. The whole piece is eminently worth hearing RIGHT FUCKING NOW. (And not just because it happens to be Easter again.)



THEY KNOW IT'S A HOAX BECAUSE THEY CREATED THE HOAX.

Labels: NOT alternate universe

  ¶ 11:54 AM

  Good advice from an obscure source
Around 1920, "Social" "science" split away from the original goal of analyzing and perfecting techniques of persuasion. The academic side got in bed with Deepstate and began serving the tyrannical forms of persuasion, designing and staffing torture chambers, and planning genocides.

The real craft and science of non-violent persuasion stayed on the commercial side, in the skills of advertising and marketing.

Here's some REAL SOCIAL SCIENCE from an obscure source found (naturally) at American Radio History Library. This 1944 book of hints and templates for commercial writers was written by Marynelle Williams, an expert commercial writer, who clearly understood and EMPATHIZED with both the writers and the customers.

General advice about attention:

A listener has TWO ears . . . he only listens with half of ONE! Maybe it's because commercials are directed to a twelve-year-old mind. You can't sell somebody something when you begin wounding his intellect! It's a vicious cycle. Or, more probably, he pays little attention to the commercial because it doesn't DEMAND attention . . . it isn't CLEVER enough . . . it doesn't FLATTER the listener into listening, because it doesn't appeal to his intelligence.

Arthur Brisbane said "I have written a good editorial when the reader says "that is just what I would have written myself." And you can accomplish the same thing if you tackle commercial radio copy delicately, but with common sense and truthfulness.

In reality, there is only ONE selling point in any advertising business . . . the imaginative mind must state it untold numbers of ways. It is this: People can be persuaded to try a product ONCE, but only GENUINE SATISFACTION will make them CONTINUE to buy it, day-in, day-out . . . year-in, year-out.

In other words, only EXPERIENCE changes minds, but if you're respectful and truthful and empathetic, you might be able to start an EXPERIENCE with a sample.

From a section aimed at stations in rural areas:

A farmer deals with the soil, and you can't fool him with golden-voiced oratory and clever phrases. You approach him on his own terms . . . putting yourself in his position, whatever you're selling him. He knows that a state-tested flock of chickens are a better gamble than more inexpensive, unselected ones . . . he knows the advisability of buying seed, feed and fertilizer by brand name. Therefore, he'll listen to your story, and, in his unhurried, reasonable way, he'll come around to your way of thinking if you talk in commonsense, down-to-earth . . . but NOT PATRONIZING language. Remember that a farmer is subconsciously en garde where city slickers are concerned anyway, and you've got to be sincere in what you write.

People who work with Nature can't be fooled.

I guess in some ways it's good that our persuaders have forgotten this advice. Arrogant bigoted EXTREME CONDESCENSION has led to a healthy counter-reaction, and healthy independent thought.

... And maybe I shouldn't be reminding anyone of the better way to persuade.

Labels: engineer-guillotine, skill-estate

  ¶ 11:01 AM

  More from Leila Miller
Via Leila Miller, one priest has apologized for his passive participation in the holocaust.

The worst thing is that I cannot assure you that such a thing will not happen again, because as far as I know, I have not heard anyone express regret for what happened. What I can promise you is that I will never again be a party to something similar, and that if obedience places me in such a situation again, I will withdraw so as not to be a responsible and guilty party to something that, even today, weighs on my conscience, as the act of which I am most ashamed in my entire life.

He understands reality. He doesn't try to offer any fake hope or optimism. Hope is poison in hell.

This is the FIRST public apology by any of the active or passive participants in the holocaust.

I know with 100% certainty that none of the active mass murderers (presidents, governors, mayors, Public Death Officers, Doctors) will apologize, because they are pure supernazi demons who will never rest until all Deplorables are EXTERMINATED.

Will we see more contrition from the passive low-level courtiers? I wouldn't bet either way at the moment. Deepstate allows exactly one exception to its rules for a limited time, but the exception always has a pull-date. See Magufuli, who was pulled after exactly one year.

Labels: endless hell

  ¶ 7:34 AM

  Platonic houses?
I enjoy spotting the automatic assumptions made by writers of various eras. When a fact or connection is unstated, or stated oddly, it gives you a clue about what the audience KNEW without thinking.

Here's a failed tautology from an episode of Ignorant:

Which room is a dining room table found in?

The obvious answer wasn't generally true, especially for the New Yorkers who wrote the show and provided the live studio audience. Most apartments didn't have dining rooms. Many people lived in furnished hotel rooms. The better class of houses and apts had separate dining rooms. A typical Midwestern bungalow had a long living room, and the dining table was in the part of the living room near the kitchen.

A more peculiar assumption showed up in the Dick Tracy radio show, mainly aimed at kids and sponsored by Quaker Oats.

If you don't have a box of Puffed Rice in your pantry, ask Mother to get some.

Pantries were extremely rare. Only the best houses had separate pantries, and most people had never SEEN a real pantry. Yet the writers assumed that everyone had a pantry and knew what was in it.

These rooms must have been part of a shared Platonic house, an image that was mapped onto the reality of each physical house. You knew which area of the kitchen or living room was the Platonic dining room, and you knew which cabinet in the kitchen was the Platonic pantry.

= = = = =

The first generation of mass-produced FHA houses after the war often had separate dining rooms which were too small to hold a table and chairs.



You had to slither around the furniture to reach the kitchen. This generation also had a utility closet with storage cabinets (a pantry) just off the kitchen. After 15 years of hell, people wanted to implement the Platonic house, even if it was less practical than the spacious rooms of an "obsolete" bungalow. The second generation around 1955 returned to bigger multi-purpose rooms, more like the bungalow.

= = = = = =

Continuing just for fun.

Here's a house that fits the Platonic ideal perfectly, and has a couple other ideal characteristics. The kitchen has a serious pantry and a breakfast nook, the dining room is separate and large, and the bedrooms are upstairs. The floor plan is elegant, with easy passage in every direction. No bottlenecks. The house is ideal in a more important way, based on EXPERIENCE. The roof combines the best qualities of Cape Cod and Bungalow. Steep slant and warm occupied attic prevent snow from sticking, so no snow load or ice dams. Wide overhang on all sides, and deep porch, prevent both sun and rain from hitting the walls. Much cooler in summer, and no need to close windows when it rains. Also keeps water away from the foundation, decreasing the chance of flooding and termites.

One non-Platonic feature on this house was nevertheless part of the better class of house from 1890 to 1930. The ice door, pointed by the blue arrow.

The house below is a classic pure Bungalow. The ice door happens to be on the side, so the picture shows how it looked to the ice man.



The ice man had a hard job. This door was about shoulder height, so he had to put down the ice block, open the outer door, open the inner door on the icebox itself, lift the 50 lb block to shoulder height, and shove it in.

Ice delivery was a peculiar business, technically unnecessary for most of its existence. Mechanical refrigerators were well-developed in 1880. Slow adoption of electric power made household refrigerators rare until 1920, and the habit of iceboxes continued through the '40s in most places.

The lower house also has a grade entry, one of the desirable features in the '20s, which has turned out to be desirable again for partly different reasons.

Labels: epistemology

  ¶ 11:13 PM

  Reprint on auts and krauts
Mentioning autists and Krautists in previous item reminded me of this 2019 defense of a "woke" math movement.

= = = = = START REPRINT:

This academic movement is more important and more valid than it sounds.

First, how it sounds:

Since apartheid ended in 1994, South Africa’s universities have struggled to transform themselves, leading to escalating student protests over the last three years — including the toppling of a prominent statue of Cecil Rhodes, an infamous colonizer who donated the land on which the University of Cape Town now stands. And as students and academics accelerate the process of decolonization across South African universities, the spotlight has fallen onto mathematics.

Exactly what decolonizing math would entail isn’t entirely clear: Curriculum revisions that promote non-Western contributions to the field, new teaching methods rooted in indigenous cultures, and greater openness to ideas outside the academic mainstream are all under discussion. Some want to go further, challenging the philosophical foundations** of mathematics itself.

Sounds like the usual SJW crap.

But the actual leader of the movement is onto something entirely different and hugely more important.

In his evening classes, meanwhile, Chinyoka hopes to broaden students’ understanding of what they can do with the mathematics they are presented with in lectures — from engineering to academia to law. He believes that South African mathematics should be reframed around the challenges faced by South Africa, as well as other developing countries.

In fact Chinyoka is not going far enough in the correct direction. He's treating the real life problems as a supplement after the theory. This is somewhat better than the normal math class which PROHIBITS any mention of the real world. The CORRECT method is to train students in real job-related or household-related solving, and let math come in naturally as a supplement. You're starting to cook a meal for your family. You set out the pans and read the recipe. The recipe is for 4 people but your family is 6 people. Now we have a problem that needs to be solved, and math provides a way to solve it.



After you solve the problem, you can eat the solution.

Back to Chinyoka:

“We still have this more Westernized view: You sit in a mathematics class on topology or abstract algebra, with zero idea about which context it applies to,” he says. Pointing to the current water and energy crises in South Africa, he argues that math should be taught with concrete applications in mind, rather than purely theoretically, which is a luxury afforded only by the West.

Not really a Westernized view, more precisely a Krautized view. Before we surrendered to the Krauts, US math and science teaching often had "concrete applications in mind". Around 1910 we went full Kraut. Theory in the morning, theory in the evening, theory at suppertime, concrete applications verboten all the time.

Soviet math and science teaching recovered from Krautism, focusing PROPERLY on real-life problem solving. That's why they beat us with Sputnik. As always we learned backwards. Fucking idiots.

Chinyoka is on the right track. His approach is better for ALL kids except autists and Krautists.

Western math is SOLELY for autists and Krautists. The EXPLICITLY STATED PURPOSE of math class in elementary and secondary school is to FRUSTRATE AND REPEL non-autists, so only the most precise and bizarre and reality-free wackos will end up with PhDs.

Unfortunately the movement toward USEFUL APPLICATIONS is confused and conflated with silly DieVersitarian nonsense. Many of the participants are more concerned with measuring Identity than measuring rice yield or baking temperatures or generator output. They are simply replacing one set of useless theories with another set of useless theories.

= = = = =

** Footnote: there's no point in challenging the philosophical foundations of math because they don't exist. A real foundation goes in FIRST, and the rest of the building depends on the strength of the foundation. Math developed in all sorts of useful and interesting directions for 5000 years WITHOUT explicit foundations. Around 1880 the Kraut fetish for thoroughness demanded a "logical" foundation, and Krauts shoved in some logic stuff under the massive structure that obviously didn't need the logic stuff. Soon thereafter, a Kraut named Gödel detemined, using the rules of the Kraut logic stuff, that the logic stuff was internally contradictory and thus pointless.

So: If you believe that math has philosophical foundations, you must also believe that math can't have philosophical foundations. If you find math to be a wonderfully useful tool for real life problems, you don't need to think about the foundation question. Just use math.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

I can't immediately find any more recent writings by Tiri Chinyoka, except for an applied math research paper that isn't about education.

Labels: Carver, Experiential education, Real World Math

  ¶ 2:58 PM