Scary Thought

It is a truism that journalists are over-emphasizing Hillary's chances in the primary, thereby creating dramatic tension that economically benefits their parent companies, but are they deliberately hobbling Obama as an investment in the general election season, to keep boost revenue through November?

If we accept the Economist's recent theory on the foundation of religiosity -- namely, that many people have an evolutionarily useful genetic propensity to believe that that they are being observed even with no human observer present, and that the religious leap of faith is not a leap of faith in positing an observer, but rather in identifying the percieved observer as a loving/vengeful/demonic entity -- then it quickly follows that the patronizing condescension of a Bible-based Christian is a violation of the Kantian categorical imperative, and that one effect of our large scale society is that people have an easier time finding genetic matches for breeding, and random genetic diversity in the general population is replaced by diverse genetically similar subpopulations. This is often cited as a factor in the increase of autism, but it is an equal factor in the "culture wars", and the fact that the different sides of the science versus religion debate are genetically different clans.

Five days of authenticity are better than five years of sleep

When Cancer patients say that cancer opened their eyes to the beauty of life, and that cancer was the best thing that ever happened to them, their statements almost read as a commentary on "Sein und Zeit".

Nietzshe and Wolfram

I no longer think the "eternal recurrance" takes place in an entropic universe. The real meaning of the eternal recurrance is a self-organizing personal psychology that gives behavior has the characteristic of "destiny" rather than "chance".

Foreign Policy as Moral Catharsis, Part II

Many religious communities begin as collections of individuals who flee other religious sects, to share a deep intellectual inquiry into the nature of the universe and the good life. As conclusions ossify into dogmas, intellectual enthusiasm is replaced by the traditional anthropological symptoms of group identification: dietary taboos, linguistic taboos, empty ritualistic behaviors, and articles of faith.

People say that the liberal left doesn't "get" American religiosity, but, in truth, they offer a competing faith. Eating organic is certainly harder than eating kosher; meticulously sorting recycleables into blue bags which are then thrown out with the trash is the epitome of religio-neurotic behavior; and global climate change has become a touchstone of common values, just as belief in the bodily resurrection once was.

Is it a coincidence that Obama's reputation as an orator rests on having introduced the cadences of an African American preacher to the banalities of European-American liberalism?

A Mole in our midst?

From her recent contribution to the news cycle, one has to raise the possibility that Arianna Huffington never abandonned her conservative beliefs, but rather realized she could do more damage to the American left from within...

A pet peeve

People who treat aesthetic experiences like stamp collections. It is not whether they were thrilled by a movie, play or concert, but rather merely whether they saw it. When talking with these people, they cycle from subject to subject until arriving at something that you haven't experienced, and, at that moment, they become animated, and are even willing to venture an opinion.

Obama mistakes look like successes!

Did the Obama campaign intentionally leak the story of the background conversation between the Canadian Consul and Obama's economist? It certainly made it much easier for center-right people to accept that Obama's statist socialist rhetoric was just a diverting pop song to keep the kids interested rather than a wave of change that would sweep and cleanse the nation... But wouldn't it be nice if the leaked story about the Consular interview was classic disinformation, to help Obama's progressive candidacy sneak into the white house?

Follow the lack of money

It's interesting how the bloggers are simultaneously asserting that McCain, surrounded by ex-lobbyists, would be a corporate puppet, while gloating over the fact that Obama has raised more than three times as much money from corporate executives than McCain did.