Finally We Understand!

Sometimes a Lede Is Enough

I occasionally run posts starting with “Sometimes a Blurb is Enough” usually focused upon online book pitches, but the same applied to articles in “magazines.” This is from Today’s The Guardian.

Gosh, I wonder why a feminist voice stating “I Hate Men” would not be welcome among men? Is great puzzlement.

And the “right” to not like men? WTF? One’s likes and dislikes hardly constitute a basis for a right. How about, “I demand the right to not like vanilla ice cream!” or “I demand the right to prefer Fords over Chevies!” It seems that one neither has a right to like or dislike anything. Nor is anything opposing these likes and dislikes.

Publishing or broadcasting your likes and dislikes, however, can have consequences. Recently a blogger lost her job for public condemning the company she worked for in her blog. Others have lost their jobs from posts about their racial likes and dislikes. They were fired for bringing disrepute upon the company they worked for.

Everyone can harbor what most of us would consider abhorrent likes and dislikes if they just keep their mouths shut about them. People who really like child pornography can have normal lives if they do not manifest that into a law violation. All one would have to do is keep that ‘like” within the privacy of their own mind.

You also do not have a right to spew anything that comes to mind, however, and I give the tried and true example of screaming “Fire!” in a crowded theater.

And how would I ever know if someone I was talking to didn’t like men? I don’t like idiots per se, but I do tolerate them and respect their right to exist and even speak their minds. So. maybe people who don’t like men should have a tee shirt or something to identify their “dislike” and so not keep us in the dark.

Trickle Down Economics . . . and What to Do About It

I begin with an interesting quote:

Williams Jennings Bryan said: “There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it.”

He said this in 1896. Eighteen effing ninety-six!

Trickle down economics was not a new invention during the Reagan presidency, it is the tried and true instrument of the rich to retain and expand their wealth and also, they believe, their status in society.

We are in yet another Gilded Age of wealth accumulation. The filthy rich have bought the courts, the governments, and the news media and now those instruments of our society only bleat what they are told to bleat. And what they bleat is support for the position of the plutocrats, the wealthy elites.

Those elites have sold the idea that how much wealth you have is a measure of your social status, your worth as a person, so much so that religions have cropped up to support just that, e.g. featuring prosperity gospel preachers of the like of Joel Osteen and the perfectly named Creflo Dollar.

If we are to ever have a chance at real democracy, on in which “you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it,” then we need to take action. One thing under our control is to socially ostracize the very wealthy.

Is there any good reason that Jeff Bezos should have $200+ billion dollars of wealth? Could that degree of wealth be accumulated without the rules being bent to allow it? Think about this. If Mr. Bezos were to give you one billion dollars . . . if . . . if you could spend it in one calendar year, do you think you could do it? To do this, you would have to spend an average amount per hour of every eight-hour day, five days a week, fifty weeks in that year. (You’d get two weeks vacation, after all what good is being rich if you don’t get to enjoy it?) Do you know what that amount would be? It is $532,000 per hour! Think about how hard you’d have to work to spend just $532,000! Sure, you could go out and buy a house. So, now you have a house and you need to spend 532,000 more dollars in the next hour, and the next, and the next.

And Mr. Bezos has accumulated over two hundred billion dollars for himself.

Do you think Mr. Bezos thinks this is enough, that from now on he will take whatever he earns and share it with all of the Amazon workers who work so hard under trying conditions? Gratitude is important, right? Plus Mr. Bezos could spend $532,000 per hour of every working day for the next 200 years and not spend all of his accumulated wealth . . . not making one more penny.

Do you think he thinks enough is enough? No?

I do not, either.

Start the shame campaign. Impugn the patriotism of the uber-rich. Impugn their commitment to democracy. Shame them for their Greed. Unleash the Lash of the Mortal Sin of Greed upon their backsides.

Being wealthy is fine. Being filthy rich no longer is. Stop looking up to them, admiring them. Stop thinking of the Mitt Romneys and Donald Trumps of the world as “self-made men” when their fathers gave them millions of dollars of seed money. (I worked almost forty years as a college professor and earned about two million dollars of salary. Donald Trump was given five million dollars to “get started.”)

Repeat after me: Boo! Hiss! Every time one of the uber-rich appears in public, let them know their true social status: as greedy bastards who will grind armies of ordinary people under their heels to make themselves richer than Croesus.

Need Ammunition?
So, Bill Gates is a nice guy, right? Personally I think this is correct. Professionally not so much. Consider all of the lawsuits over shady business practices that Microsoft lost. The Internet Explorer scandals. The European anti-trust prosecutions, in essence, etc.

Jeff Bezos created and owns a large part of Amazon.com and all of its spin-offs. Amazon has been running commercials lately, highlighting employees who think working for Amazon is just swell. Have you seen these?

Have you seen similar commercials for Costco? No? That’s because they don’t exist. All you need to know what working for Costco is like you can see on the badges of its workers. many say “Employee since 1997,” others show 10 and five years served. People don’t stay with an employer unless they are treated . . . and paid . . . fairly. Costco has a reputation of being a good, even a very good employer. People stay with them. (And no, they are not perfect, just good.)

Amazon runs commercials to offset the bad press they have gotten from mal-treated and disgruntled employees. You, know, for canceling the health insurance of part-time employees at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, things like that. The amount of money saved doing that to be put in Jeff Bezo’s pocket wouldn’t make a rounding error in his net worth. That’s how Mr. Bezos thinks wealth is created.

Do your research. Every time you feel yourself slipping into admiration for a very wealthy plutocrat, do some research and find out how they got all of that money. If they appear on a radio show, call in and tell them what you really think. If they appear on a TV show, change channels, so their ratings will go down. If a local news program shows a gushing puff piece for one of these bastards, call in and give them a piece of your mind.

I hope that booking an uber-rich asshole in the future will be about as popular as booking an avowed racist is now. Make ‘em bleed.

How Big?

This sounds like the beginning of a fisherman’s joke but actually I want to impress upon you the vast size of the universe.

* * *

There are about 6,000 or so stars that are visible with the naked eye, and the vast majority of them are within about 1,000 light-years of the Sun. Stars dim quickly with distance; from even 60 light-years away, the Sun would fade to invisibility.

In the extreme, that is in the very darkest conditions, the human eye can see stars at magnitude 6.5 or greater. Which works about to about 9,000 individual stars. Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, is 8.6 light years distant. The most distant bright star, Deneb, is about 1500 light years away from Earth.

Now consider that our galaxy, the Milky Way is about 106,000 light years across, so what we can see rpresents a disk only about 1.5% of the diameter and therefore about 0.02% of the area of the “disk” which is our galaxy.

Now consider this. The image below is the first Hubble Deep Field image that was cobbled together from 342 separate exposures. In it over 3000 galaxies are able to be counted. That is cool, but more importantly you need to consider how much of the night sky this image represents.

Several hundred never before seen galaxies are visible in this ‘deepest-ever’ view of the universe, called the Hubble Deep Field (HDF), made with the Hubble Space Telescope. Besides the classical spiral and elliptical shaped galaxies, there is a bewildering variety of other galaxy shapes and colors that are important clues to understanding the evolution of the universe. Some of the galaxies may have formed less that one billion years after the Big Bang.

Imagine, if you would, a circle in the sky around the Earth. Divide that circle into 360 degrees as we are wont to do. Make another circle at right angles to that circle and divide it the same way. Right at one of those circles, you can now make little squares that are “one degree by one degree” in size. This is not a small area in the night sky. Consider that the full Moon occupies only a little over one half of a degree (the Sun, too). So, as we are also wont to do, we break down each degree into minutes, 60 minutes = 1 degree (and we go farther to break each minute down into seconds, but we don’t have to go there now). So, the widths of the Moon and Sun take up a little over 30 “arcminutes” of space in the sky.

So, how big was the “field of view” of the first Hubble Deep Field Image?

It covers an area of 2.55 x 2.57 arcminutes.

If you do the math, we now believe that there are trillions of galaxies in the universe, each with billions of stars and more planets than stars.

Because the universe has been expanding during its entire existence, it is not just it’s age in light years in radius (14.8 billion years of time would create a universe 14.8 billion light years in radius if space were not expanding). According to current estimates, the “visible” universe is actually about 46 light years in radius, again due to the ongoing expansion of the universe. Beyond that we cannot see. So, the unobservable universe may have even more stuff or even different stuff or even no stuff in it. We cannot tell, but possibly we can make some inferences, we are still new to this game. Remember that about 100 years ago, we thought that the Milky Way galaxy was the entire universe!

When people talk about what else there is in the universe, other than what we can see from our back porches, consider how much of this we have actually studied.

This view of nearly 10,000 galaxies is called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The snapshot includes galaxies of various ages, sizes, shapes, and colors. The smallest, reddest galaxies, about 100, may be among the most distant known, existing when the universe was just 800 million years old. The nearest galaxies – the larger, brighter, well-defined spirals and ellipticals – thrived about 1 billion years ago, when the cosmos was 13 billion years old. The image required 800 exposures taken over the course of 400 Hubble orbits around Earth. The total amount of exposure time was 11.3 days, taken between Sept. 24, 2003 and Jan. 16, 2004.

The Ten Convenient Commandments (How to Correctly Interpret These in a Modern Sense)

1 You shall have no other gods before me.

Okay, this does not apply to Trump worshipers. God will just have to take second place for a while. Oh, money, too. “No money, no life,” am I right?

2 You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

This doesn’t include all of the religious statuary in the Vatican or any of the paintings either. None of them statues and paintings in all of the local churches either, including those as stained glass windows. And those people who wear a crucifix pendant around their neck, that’s just good Christian behavior.

And while TV shows show a great many images “in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below” we just consider those as being special effects and besides, they go away when we turn the TV off, right?

3 You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

Jesus, of course not!

4 Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

This doesn’t apply to the wife who has to make the sandwiches and chili and serve the beer for the gang watching the NFL game. Those people on TV are all working on the Sabbath and we watch them do so with great glee, so they aren’t covered by this, otherwise they wouldn’t be allowed to do it.

5 Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.

I hope they both got Social Security because I ain’t supporting them in their old age. Fuck that. I barely make enough as it is.

6 You shall not murder.

Okay, this is usually convenient so we can live with this one.

7 You shall not commit adultery.

Uh, mostly this should be obeyed, but geez, when the opportunity is hot, it is really inconvenient, so this is a “maybe yes, maybe no commandment.”

8 You shall not steal.

Obviously this doesn’t apply to filling in our tax forms. Cheating the federal government out of its legally dictated tax revenue is not like stealing from a real person. And taking a few things home from the office is not like stealing. We have put in extra hours that were not paid, so this is just payment for those hours, right?

9 You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.

Of course not. That lying son of a bitch, however, never plays by the rules. I think he is a Scientologist and we all know how criminal those Scientologists are.

10 You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Heck, if it weren’t for neighbor envy, none of us would struggle to get ahead in the rat race, am I right? Jeez, if I had a Mercedes like my neighbor has, I wouldn’t be jealous of him at all.

 

 

The God Feature of Omnipresence

In a recent post I wrote “We claim that this (Christian) god hears our prayers and may act upon them right away. We also claim that this god is omnipresent, that he is always observing you and listening to you speak. Is this really necessary? It involves a human foible, that of someone needing to be within “ear shot” to witness what you say . . . and within line of sight to see what you do. Is this “power” necessary for this particular god? Absolutely not. If he is all-knowing, he already knows all that you have said and will say and do. He doesn’t need to be “there” to witness your prayer or your actions.” The reason is simple: because he already has.

God has perfect memory of the past . . . and the future. Whereas we “think back” to recall a memory, this god can “think forward” to recall an event that hasn’t yet happened, but will.

My conclusion in that previous post was that “omnipresence” is an unnecessary claim for any god which is all-knowing. It is an indicator that this god is made up because it contains human frailties coded into it, a being which supposedly has no human frailties.

So, why do theists insist that the Christian god is omnipresent? I think it has to do with human nature also. Imagine a Christian confronting a friend contemplating some sort of sinful behavior. Which, do you think, will be the more effective argument? Telling them that “God” will be there seeing and hearing what they do? or telling them “God” already knows what you will do and he will punish you. Human nature says, “well if I am to be punished I might as well get my money’s worth.” (Anyone who has raised a teenager has encountered this attitude.)

So, Christians have transformed their god into a Voyeur God to make it a more effective weapon in controlling the behavior of others. Having a god who watches you when you are voiding your bowels or bladder hardly seems attractive. I guess if it matters which hand you use, there will have to be some oversight. And, sex of course. God watches all of that kinky stuff and takes mental notes or possible they are automatically recorded in big books that will be consulted when you are at the pearly gates being judged (or whenever a cherubim is feeling horny and needs some help getting off).

Something is definitely sick here, and I don’t think it is this god. Being imaginary makes so many of its actions second hand, don’t you think?

See the Pattern?

Here are two accounts from recent news stories:

Tahir Ahmad Naseem – who his daughter remembers as the kindest and most gentle of parents – was on trial in Pakistan for blasphemy when he was shot dead last month in a high-security courtroom. The teenager who pulled the trigger, Faisal Khan, was arrested after the shooting and charged with murder. But he was also feted as a “holy warrior”.

Meanwhile in Kenosha, Wisconsin, US of A . . .

But a white teenager, Kyle Rittenhouse, could walk down a public street in that same city during a chaotic protest — in violation of a curfew — with a military style semi-automatic long gun strapped over his shoulder, and police officers didn’t stop him. Instead, they tossed him a bottle of water and thanked him for his help. According to news reports, protesters actually shouted to police officers riding in armored trucks that the 17-year-old Rittenhouse had shot someone. Yet not one officer grabbed hold of him. Not one officer used a Taser. Not one officer drew a weapon.

On Friday, Daniel Miskinis, Kenosha’s police chief, told reporters, “There was nothing to suggest [Rittenhouse] was involved in any criminal behavior.”

See the pattern?

How does a man toting a gun walk into a “high security courtroom” . . . with a gun. Gosh do you think that man represented the dominant culture and that was one of his privileges?

How could a young man walk down a public street during a raucous protest, with a rifle looped around his neck, with people shouting at the police that the kid had just killed two protesters, and the police did nothing? Could it be that young man represented the dominant culture and that was one of his privileges?

Do you see the pattern?

The Free Market Debate (sic)

I am sure you have heard of this debate before, so I won’t be explaining just what it is. But I do have a question: what in your opinion is the biggest roadblock to having free markets? I am going to step out on a ledge and claim that you immediately thought of government intervention. It is the intervention of governments into free markets that messes them up and prevents them from doing what they do so well.

Am I right?

If I am, I think you now have proof of the manipulation of a public debate.

Think back to any financial crash you want. All the way back to 1929. Maybe the Savings and Loan Debacle. Or the Great Recession of 2008. Or the several times the Stock Market went haywire and we had a mini-crisis lasting just a few days. Were any of those caused by government oversight or government intervention? Any? Hmm, that’s interesting. If government intervention doesn’t cause financial panics or crashes, then what does? Let’s see, in 1929 it was runaway speculation by people playing the market to make easy money. In 2008, a major cause was the selling of bogus “financial instruments,” bundling lousy mortgages together and calling them Triple-A investments. Also, lenders were scheduling iffy housing loans based upon those faulty financial instruments.  There was an element of governmental controls during the S&L crisis as those regulations put many S&Ls into a box.

But, by and large, most of the financial crises have occurred because of market manipulation by market participants, not by government intervention.

For example, it was not long ago that corporations were not allowed to buy their own stock. It was thought that that would lead to stock price manipulation. But in the Clinton administration the business sector offered “campaign donations” to one and all if they would accept the reforms they thought were needed. One of those was to allow corporations to buy their own stock. At the same time regulations were passed to encourage corporations to pay their executives in stock options, rather than cash, to “give them a stake in the company.” You will have noticed that the majority of American corporations took their Trump administration tax cuts and used then to . . . create jobs, modernize their infrastructure, develop new products . . . uh, no, just kidding; they bought stock with the money, often their own stock. By executives deciding to buy their own stock, they drove up the price of their own stock, which made their shareholders happy, and made their salary payment in stock more remunerative for themselves. Do the right thing for their employees and society at large? Not on the agenda.

The “free market debate” isn’t a debate, it is a false dichotomy. The people promoting that this as an actual debate want there to be just two sides: one where the government messes things up, which it rarely does and one in which free markets, without any manipulation work like miracles. Somehow they always seem to leave out the markets as they really are: markets manipulated up the yin-yang by participants in the markets themselves.

Oh, and the days in which government dreamt up regulations on its own are long past. All new regulations are proposed by the industries being regulated themselves and is it any wonder those regulations seem to favor certain things?