The fairest of them all...

I just want to put this here as I came across it. I'll refine some things and comment on it later.

THROUGHOUT history people have been in awe of blonde hair. In Medieval Europe, for example, men were intoxicated with its sexual allure and supposed supernatural powers. In Thirties Germany, on the other hand, the blond Nazi stormtrooper became a symbol of Aryan superiority. Blondness was projected as the epitome of male beauty even as, paradoxically, it became associated with some of the most grotesque, racially motivated barbarism ever perpetrated......

[Blonde] has become a blazing signal in code, part of a value system laden with moral, social and historical connotations that has rooted itself in the human subconscious of the West and increasingly across the rest of the world.

Its story begins in Ancient Greece [Wrong.] where Aphrodite, the goddess of love and fertility, had golden-blonde hair of such legendary sexual potency that she inspired ambitious imitations among the dark-haired courtesans of the country. She set the tone for a certain type of blonde who has stirred the fantasies of men and fed the aspirations of women ever since.

But the history of the blonde is not as simple as that. Its bounty is inexhaustible. Every age has restyled blonde hair in its own image and with its own preoccupations. Blondeness became a prejudice in the Dark Ages, an obsession in the Renaissance, a mystique in Elizabethan England, a mythical fear in the 19th century, an ideology in the Thirties, a sexual invitation in the Fifties and a doctrine of faith by the end of the 20th century. Its distinctive imagery of youth, vitality and wealth, built up over thousands of years, has woven itself into the most popular materials of the imagination.

....In every popular forum of our age - film, television, fashion, pop music, politics - many of the most powerful players are blonde. But there is something strange about all these blondes. Very few are genuine. Only one in 20 white American adults is naturally blonde, and roughly the same ratio applies to white northern Europeans. But you would never think it, walking down a crowded street in the urban West. Here, virtually one in three white adult female heads is dyed a shade of blonde, be it honey, platinum, ash or any other colour from our rich lexicon of blonde shades. To achieve it, women have gone to extraordinary lengths. In Ancient Rome, the most ruthless beauties used pigeon dung; in Renaissance Venice they resorted to horse urine. Today, women spend hundreds of pounds sitting for hours in hairdressing salons having their hair lightened.

WHY DO we do it? A key reason is youth. At its most basic people associate blonde hair with youth. The rationale is perfectly logical: babies tend to have paler and more delicate hair and skin than their parents. Some children retain the blondeness of their infancy but most lose it once puberty sets in. To emphasise the equation with youth, women find that after their first pregnancy their hair and skin darken permanently. The result is that the paler the hair and skin, the younger a person appears. Blonde hair in women might originally have evolved, along with other childish traits such as a high-pitched voice and fine body hair, as part of a package of sexual attraction, an evolutionary adaptation for attracting a mate.

Just as adults find babies attractive, men were attracted to women with such signs of youth. Blonde hair, although not intrinsically more beautiful than dark, became associated, through these long evolved mechanisms in the male brain,with youthful fertility - a kind of visual certificate of reproductive success.

These biological processes of sexual selection have gradually transformed over thousands of years into aesthetic and cultural preferences. Blonde hair has become linked to femininity and beauty. [...]

(Sunday Express
February 23, 2003
FEATURES; Pg. 53
HEADLINE: REVIEW -; ALL YOU EVER
WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT BLONDES
(AND A FEW THINGS YOU DIDN'T . . ! )
BYLINE: JOANNA PITMAN)

I guess I missed out on the supposed evolution of that meme because I don't feel that way about blondes.

I would glean some things to philosophize about in a different way from that article. I do think there is a point of blonde being associated with youth but it has little to do with "evolution" and the sort of drivel typical to evolutionary psychologists. Perhaps some blondes begin to fit a cultural script in which they are "blonde babes" based on its association with youth. That would be a choice. Everyone wants to fit in, you know, this has little to do with survival of the "fittest."

Some seem to like, choose it, like. It's all like, like something. Because as a blonde babe language is not refined and defined enough to say exactly what it is....but it sure is like, like something! If you're just a babe it is hard find a metaphor because you hardly understand the literal.

It's ashame that some people may fit into a cultural script which makes them be stupid. But that is what some people do. I would not dehumanize people in the same way that those who believe in philosophic naturalism do. Instead, I would say that there is the stereotype or cultural script and then those who begin to "fit" in, fit into it. I think there is at least some element of choice there. But once you are a certain type of person and things are habitual, maybe you don't have much of a choice by then.

That article is factually wrong in places because it did not go far enough into ancient history as far as the prejudices about light/fair/angelic and dark/evil. I do not agree that this prejudice "evolved" over thousands of years and the historical evidence shows that it almost begins at the beginning of history itself. Instead, it seems to have been there from the beginning of recorded history in many a mythology. Biblically it is written, "Let there be light."

The Parable of the Biologists...

Once upon a time on a far distant planet there were some alien biologists. On their planet there were writings and legends about an ancient civilization of powerful beings who had come down from the sky and created life there. There were also some legends about such beings being active at certain points in the history of the aliens.

But as happens with many stories, some groups of aliens began to change and re-write the story because of the cultural and political importance that origins has for any type of civilization. If they knew or admitted to how the powerful beings had made them, then they might have to try to live by and seek the truth of ancient legends.

There came to be a wide variety of stories about their origins, depending on what a group of creatures wanted to do and what their own preferences were. For instance, some had a god of gold and riches because that is what they liked while others had a god of fertility or sex because that is what they liked.

So given time, there came to be a very wide proliferation of various types of gods and godesses. Generally they were confined to each tribe as they developed their own tribal preferences. Then the creatures eventually realized that there was a wide proliferation of gods as their civilization and knowledge advanced and tribalism receded.

Because of that, more came to the point of believing that there were not any beings who created them in the first place, not really. Instead, that was all just a legend and it was a matter of tribe or creature comfort and creature preference as to what legend a creature believed. So the creatures would say to each other, "That god is good for you, but not for me." By that point most did not believe that there was any higher type of being than their own type of being, not really. How could there be, since there were so many different stories about gods of all sorts? They figured that because there were so many different stories that none were true. So they began to make some new stories based on the planet itself and the designed capacity for self-replication that they and other creatures had been made with by the beings who created them. So the creatures had begun to say that they created themselves.

There were some biologists caught up in the context of the alien culture. They knew of the old legends of an ancient civilization coming to their planet from the sky and creating life as they knew it. But since there were so many stories by the time they came to study things they figured that none were true. Ironically, the only reason that these studious studiers came to study was because some philosophical aliens based their philosophy on an ancient legend. Not the legends of gods of gold and wealth, gods of merry making or other things based on creature comfort but instead on the legend of the beings who came from the sky and created life.

The biologists had lost that perspective that had been the genesis and foundation of their field. Most of them figured that since the gods of gold were obviously superstitions that the creative beings must be too. But as they studied, the evidence began to go against their idea that the design of the alien's self-replicating capabilities and adaptive capacity could create and design itself. In fact, it was based on a complex code that was far beyond their own meager civilization. Yet by this point there were so many alien biologists who believed that all the stories of creative beings were superstition that they had made up some little rules about the way they studied. So at any mention of the creative beings all the lil' aliens would run around screaming about things such as, "That's not alien biology!" "Horrible things have been done based on legend and in the name of the creative beings!" "We only allow one type of explanation, our own!" And so on.

It really had nothing to do with what the truth was. It was odd that the alien biologists went around admitting that their explanation had nothing to do with the truth but was just the only type of explanation that they would allow. The odd thing about that was that they would then act like their stories were the truth anyway and would lecture about all the facts they knew and how lil' aliens must be taught their explanation, lest the civilization fall apart. That was also odd, since they could not understand their own civilization without trying to understand the civilization of powerful beings that created them.

In the course of alien history there came to be a nation in which the stories of the biologists there were taken to be true. Internally, it began to fall apart as a civilization. There was one group of aliens who all knew had a special place in the ancient legend about the creative beings of light, from the sky. That nation tried to kill them all to be rid of them and their story. Its leader wanted to be as the creative beings and to make the aliens into the ancient creative beings of light. Again, the aliens had the urge to try to be their own creators. So those aliens who carried the true story and had some involvement in it as a nation had to be killed.

Enough aliens recognized the truth and put a stop to that nation. Yet, the biologists did not stop telling their kind of stories for the same reasons as before. Instead, they just changed them a little.

In the course of alien history their persistent denial of the foundation of the study of life again undermined civilization and turned life into death. When all hope for civilization seemed lost, just as the creative beings had said it would be through ancient texts and legend, the beings once again came down from the sky.

As some lil' alien biologists looked up at the sky and saw some type of huge being of light that was of a sort never seen before coming down to their planet, a thought occured to them.
It was this, "Oopsy!"

A word, there's a thought.

"I have drawn from the well of language many a thought which I do not have and which I could not put into words."
(Karl Kraus, Half-Truths
and One-and-a-Half-Truths :68)

You might not think so, but drawing from language can put your thought into words. So perhaps after drawing, you can think so after all. For the mind to truly use the symbols, signs and lines of words instead of being used by others, it must be willing to draw the line. Those who try to write without being right will blur and destroy language. Their lack of judgment lies in only being willing to judge, judgment. And that is quite a lie to lie in. Who will lie with those who do?

Despite lies, everyone thinks they are quite right as they write. So Kraus "....insisted that we recognize the word as a weapon, which might be used for aggression, self-defense, or suicide; in other words, he knew that language was rhetorical, and that this has profound practical consequences for human affairs."
(Anti-Freud: Karl Kraus's Criticism
of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry
By Thomas Szasz :63)

A Wonder of the World, Intelligence...

It is something that those who want to exchange insight for sight often lack.

"98. Intelligence is a Hard Fact

The mistake of the materialist is to assume that intelligence is something observable in the same sense and at the same level as molecules and fields and to conclude that it’s non-existent if non observable. Everyone agrees that the activities of quantum fields cause changes that trickle up to the macroscopic level. But how is it that there is such a relationship between subatomic and atomic realms? How is it that there are different levels in the structure of material beings? How is it that there are different proper ties at each succeeding level? How is it that new properties start appearing in the world? Intelligence is a hard fact of living things and Nature as a whole, that is, if you think the laws of nature, the purposiveness of replication and the grandeur of energy, to name just three examples, count for anything. When you see a painting, by all means admire the polymers and pigments, but don’t remain at the ground level. It’s like saying that Macbeth is really just black marks on white paper or a collage of costumes, sets and people saying certain words from memory. This is not to see what the play really is. It is to entirely miss the play."
(The Wonder of the World:
A Journey From Modern Science to the Mind of God
By Roy Abraham Varghese :424)

Here is a small windsurfing video, taken after this picture. (Size: 6.11 MB)

The Herd...

"When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one."
--Friedrich Nietzsche

The pagan chant grows louder....

....

Recall that the National Socialist movement was trying to take over the schools and any independent organizations for youth too, thus their attacks on the Catholics. Many older people remained Christian, yet the Church was very weak. Among Protestants there was a schism in it between the mainstream German Christians and the minority fundamentalist Confessional Church.

It seems that there was the Catholic remnant, then there was the Protestant to a lesser degree. On the other side there were the German Christians (emphasis on German more than Christian) and then the outright pagans who would revert to tribalism.

(The Nordic Pagan Chant Grows Louder
By Albion Rossberlin
The New York Times, Aug 4, 1935; pg. 3-4)

At first the visitor bas the impression that he is entering some sort of Boy Scout encampment. Then be finds that the fire is no ordinary bonfire but a great pile of logs sending high into the night sky a wavering tongue of flame.

He is approaching, as a matter of fact, not an encampment or a jollification but a religious ceremony as ancient perhaps as any Christian festival. He finds gathered about this great flame in a meadow, on a hilltop, or in a cleared space in some grove a very earnest circle of people. Most of them are young people.
........

One gathers that they are in search of something that they have not found, that they are somewhat uncertain, and that they are above all intensely nationalistic. The “flame oration” ends the ceremony.

The boys, girls and adults break up into groups and disappear along woodland path leading back to the city.

It is hard to explain what the neopagans....believe. They do not know themselves. Their movement is a part of the new nationalism and of a peculiar National Socialist mysticism. It has no articles of faith and it parades its lack of dogma. All of the various types of neopagans are agreed only in one thing-their rejection of Christianity and the established churches and their conviction that there must be some way of make their religion more 'heroic' and 'Germanic' than Christianity.
........

Everyone realized that Alfred Rosenberg's violently anti-Christian teachings had been recognized by the Hitler regime through his appointment as Cultural Director of the National Socialist party and all of its subordinate organizations.

Then came the National Socialist party’s and the State’s attack on both the Catholic and Protestant clergy for refusing to recognize Hitler’s absolute and unlimited power. Priests and pastors were referred to in speeches to youthful audiences as "quarreling ape clergy." Finally, the German Faith Movement was permitted to hold a mass assembly in the Sport Palace in Berlin at a time when the established churches were forbidden to hold any public gatherings outside their church buildings. To cap it all the highest officials in the hierarchy of the Third Reich, with the exception of Hitler, attended Summer solstice festivals staged in a thoroughly neopagan atmosphere.

_______________________________________

A few things about the American Republic compared to the Weimar: Calling people apes is often the sort of imagery invoked against creationists. A "tolerance" towards everything but Christianity while getting pretentious about a lack of dogma is a similar pattern. The form that separation of church and state begins to take is the State beginning to seek an extirpation of religion from public life, in favor of whatever "just happens" to flow in to replace it. The State can become an ally with religions that agree with forms of philosophic naturalism, such as paganism or Marxism. But as for Christianity as an adherence to the philosophy of Christ it can never be a corrupt State's ally. That goes back through Christ to the Jewish prophets, the first to condemn their own State/King/god based on a higher principle. The principle is reiterated as the same Spirit comes through as the Christ in an agreement with his own prophets on the principle of separation of church and state.

That is the form the Founders would tend to talk about, the one in Christianity itself. That is not the form of separation that tribalistic pagans or other Nature based religions and philosophies are talking about. In their deformation of separation there will begin to be some Nature based earth days or what have you supported by the State. That is the type of thing that will happen, as a symptom of what is already done.

Some people try to make a virtue out of not making their mind up. Sometimes one has to wonder if they are just too stupid to make their mind up. But stupid or not, those who will not make their mind up sometimes have it made up for them through emotional conditioning in the "cult"ure.

Sometimes to have a mind, you have to make your mind up.

Gun Control...

I never have much liked guns myself. Yet they often come up in political argument and the American Founders had a strong view on them. Also, I wonder if the Jews had had more guns in Nazi Germany what may have happened there. I guess control of the guns is something to look into there sometime.

As far as I know, the facts go against the Left on this. Yet they cling to the issue in various irrational ways. Michael Moore in Bowling For Colombine finds the evidence that Canadians own guns, yet gun homicides are not as high. So it is logical to conclude that guns have nothing to do with crimes comitted with guns. Yet, Moore stages some theatrics with K-Mart for the sake of gun control. Why? Maybe it was not for the sake of gun control at all but instead was about the moral vanity and cheap theatrics typical to the Left and more than a few artists. It gives people a good feeling in their good lil' hearts. Then, happy with themselves, they go home. Then their house is burglarized by a criminal with a gun he did not buy at the local K-Mart. (But at least now, all the gun hobbyists can no longer buy their ammunition at K-Mart.)

This is what it is like on issue after issue with Leftists. It seems to be all about their own feeelings. Eventually, you realize there is a pattern to their feelings. They don't hate guns because guns "cause" crime and violence. So disproving that with a sound logical and factual argument will not dissuade them. Instead they seem to hate guns from the same neurotic feelings that they hate wealth, the military, etc.

I.e., because they hate fatherhood. In contrast to Leftist's feelings about things, some of the general facts, logic and evidence on the issue,
"There are large differences between Americans and the populations of foreign countries, even English-speaking countries with many superficial similarities. American rates of non-firearms homicide are far higher than homicide rates from all causes in England and Japan, a circumstance that supports the inference that murder rates in the United States would be many times higher than English or Japanese rates even if every civilian firearm in this country suddenly vanished in a puff of smoke. The United States records more non-firearms murders than there are murders from all causes in Western Europe and Japan combined, territories more than half again as populous as the United States.[.....]

There is a poor correlation between firearms numerosity and diffusion and homicide rates. This observation appears in several guises. Gary Kleck reports, on the basis of as-yet unpublished data, that homicide and gun homicide compared to (legal) gun ownership figures from thirty-six nations shows no correlation: lower rates of legal firearm ownership did not coincide with lower rates of homicide or gun homicide; neither did higher legal ownership rates coincide with higher rates of homicide.The same null correlation appears, incidentally, from a time series study based on records of (legal) English firearm ownership and crime from 1870 to date: lower rates of (legal) firearmownership did not coincide with lower rates of homicide or other violent crime; neither did higher legal ownership rates coincide with higher crime. If these findings are right, the instrumentality [more guns = more crime] model is wrong.

Consistently in England, Canada, and the United States, areas with the greatest legal gun ownership have the lowest rates of violent crime compared to other areas of the same nation having lower gun ownership. This is "a curious fact if firearms stimulate aggression" (as some versions of instrumentality theorywould suggest), according to criminologists Hans Toch and AlanLizotte. Addressing the issue as to American statistics alone, they conclude "that guns do not elicit aggression in any meaningful way." Quite the contrary, these findings suggest that high saturations of guns in places, or something correlated with that condition, inhibit illegal aggression."
(CAUSES AND CORRELATES OF LETHAL
VIOLENCE IN AMERICA; AMERICAN
HOMICIDE EXCEPTIONALISM
By Daniel D. Polsby & Don B. Kates, Jr.
Colorado Law Review Fall, 1998 69 )

Again, I do not really like guns. I do not like war either. I would prefer a windsurfing utopia. Yet I cannot go off into la, la land with Leftists and prissy Christians. In this world there is Good and Evil, justice and injustice. A state of war is in it already. It is no use trying to live in denial.

(As to the prissy Christians, the philosophy of Christ does not call for a denial of that fact.)

Tolerance...it is tolerable.

Tolerance is treated as the highest virtue by those who have none.

A Separation of Church and State....

MUNICH, Germany, Feb. 13.

The struggle between the German National Socialist State and the Catholic Church may be described at present as being in that preliminary stage in which the leaders are still negotiating to avoid a conflict which neither side courts but in which the rival armies already are manoeuvring for position and making occasional forays into their opponents’ ranks to test the strength of the rival position. In this preliminary struggle the Nazis with their new totalitarian State, obviously are the aggressors; to change the old order is the purpose of their existence.
......
The official position of the Church was stated by Cardinal Eugenia Pacelli, the Vatican Secretary at State, in an address to pilgrims of the German Young Men’s League in December, when he said: "The church renders unto the State what is the State’s. As long as measures of the State do not hinder the church in effectively carrying out the God-ordained mission of salvation and as long as the State observes the God-ordained harmony of the two highest powers, or at least assures free and undisturbed activity an the part of the church, it will meet as resistance fram the church. The church loves peace more than war. But it loves truth and God-given freedom more than the false peace of untruth and subjection."
......
The attitude of Catholic leaders in Germany ranges from that of Archbishop Conrad Groebar or Freiburg, who put him self “unreservedly” behind the new government to that of Cardinal Michael van Faulhaber of Munich, who proclaimed that the spread of “paganism” means civil war. Cardinal nan Faulhaber, long Nazism’s greatest opponent, is credited with having turned the scale against the Hitler putsch of 1923.
.......
Divorce From Politics Welcomed.

Many good Catholics-and this includes many priests, this correspondent has ascertained-welcome the church’s divorce from politics; these always deplored the connection, even in self-defense. Others honestly hold it is the duty of every good German to ‘go into the State in order to help stabilize and save it from extremists.’ Many others still believe the Nazi promises…..
Finally, there is a goodly number to whom the brown uniform is a part of business, especially since opposition to it spells economic suicide.

There are few Catholics, therefore who are fighting at present for a restoration of ecclesiastical political power. Even the arrests of priests for indiscreet utterances against the Nazi State as a rule have aroused little opposition, a perfectly good Catholic might be heard to remark, ‘Well, we’ve got to be quiet and so can they.’
……
Significantly, the mass of the populace here has never even heard of the Neopagans who have caused such havoc in the ranks of the Protestants in the North.

If, therefore, the church should be compelled to fight it must select an issue which will put the struggle on a strictly religious basis….. The Nazis, however, with the clever tactics of ‘elastic’ attack and war of attrition have dodged the issue so far, which is their biggest success.
……
Many Catholics believed the Nazi sterilization law such an issue because it is wholly contrary to church doctrine. But wiser heads of the church soon realized this issue could scarcely be discussed in public and not at all in church and school. [The context was faithful Christianity vs. pacifist prissy Christianity and the Neopaganism of the German Christians, those corrupted mainstream Protestants who had their own schism of the faithful in the Confessional Church.] Therefore a compromise was reached: the church obtained exemption of Catholics from active participation in administration of the law, but not from passive sufferance under the law. Catholic physicians and nurses in hospitals do not need to assist in sterilization operations but sterilization subjects, even when Catholics, must submit to temporal power….

A provision introduced into the penal code permitting euthanasia [mercy killings] under certain circumstances likewise is contrary to Catholic doctrine but not a decisive issue.

The closest approach to open conflict is the struggle over schools and youth organizations. The school conflict just beginning is still not clear as to its ultimate ramifications.
…..

(Nazis and Church Groping for Issue
The New York Times, Feb. 14, 1934, pg. 4
By Otto D. Tolischus)

Note what happened in the 1930s on the issue of the youth movement,

Later in the 1930s, the régime levelled similar accusations against the army Chief of Staff, Werner von Fritsch, who would not comply with nazi policies, against Catholic clerics in order to bring the Church into disrepute so that its influence in education and the youth movement would be reduced, and against branches of the independent youth movement. The pragmatic position of certain nazis in power seems evident from the fact that Röhm was not the only homosexual in the nazi movement, and that before his liquidation homosexuality seems to have been tacitly tolerated in the SA and the Hitler Youth.

......the nazi movement may have attracted some homosexual men because of its....anti-bourgeois doctrines, the male comradeship in an organization like the SA, and the glorification of masculinity, youth and physical prowess and beauty. According to some leaders of the German homosexual emancipation movement, several homosexuals supported nazism for these reasons and some were even affiliated with the Nazi Party, especially the SA and the Hitler Youth. Especially prior to, but also after 1934, nazi policy [on the criminality of homosexuality] was indeed characterized by inconsistency, probably due to a lack of consensus among the nazi leadership.

(Medicine, Male Bonding and Homosexuality in Nazi Germany
By Harry Oosterhuis
Journal of Contemporary History,
Vol. 32, No. 2. (Apr., 1997), :187-205)

It is possible to further delve into history on these issues. I did so some already here. It is projection or as Christ would put it, logs and specks.

"They judge, lest they be judged." --Karl Kraus

Some notes from Shirer in his magnum opus on the pattern of conflict between those who place the Body before Conscience. In that inversion, the Body politic will be placed before the Conscience of a nation, its Church. For the Body is born that way, so how could it be otherwise?

On July 25.... the German government promulgated a sterilization law, which particularly offended the Catholic Church. Five days later the first steps were taken to dissolve the Catholic Youth League. During the next years thousands of Catholic priests, nuns and lay leaders were arrested, many of them on trumped-up charges of 'immorality' or of 'smuggling foreign currency.' Erich Klausner, leader of Catholic Action, was, as we have seen, murdered in the June 30, 1934, purge. Scores of Catholic publications were suppressed, and even the sanctity of the confessional was violated by Gestapo agents. By the spring of 1937 the Catholic hierarchy of Germany, which, like most of the Protestant clergy, had at first tried to co-operate with the new regimes was thorougly disillusioned. On March 14, 1937, Pope Pius XI issued an encyclical, "Mit Brennender Sorge" (With Burning Sorrow), charging the Nazi government with 'evasion' and 'violation' of the concordat [The socialist version of "separation of church and state" is not the same as the Founders.] and accusing it of sowing 'the tares of suspicion, discord, hatred, calumny, of secret and open fundamental hostility to Christ and His Church.' On 'the horizon of Germany' the Pope saw 'the threatening storm clouds of destructive religious wars....which have no other aim than....of extermination.

(The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich:
A History of Nazi Germany
By William L. Shirer. (Simon and Schuster) 1990 :234-35)

A little prophecy there...I'm reminded of Karl Kraus saying that the "progress" so venerated by progressives will "...make purses of human skin." Or, perhaps lampshades and the like...

Pius also said that National Socialism was "...the arrogant apostasty from Jesus Christ, the denial of His doctrine and of His work of redemption, the cult of violence, the idolatry of race and blood, the overthrow of human liberty and dignity." --Pope Pius XII Ib.

Some argue that the Church did not do enough. They are correct. Yet who else did anything at all? The professors were Hitler's professors or weak, the scientists, the same....but surely the journalists would generally be the defenders of Liberty? No.

"The Press created National Socialism." --Karl Kraus

Einstein noted,

Having always been an ardent partisan of freedom, I turned to the Universities, as soon as the revolution broke out in Germany, to find the Universities took refuge in silence. I then turned to the editors of powerful newspapers, who, but lately in flowing articles, had claimed to be champions of liberty. These men, as well as the Universities, were reduced to silence in a few weeks. I then addressed myself to the authors individually, to those who passed themselves off as the intellectual guides of Germany, and among whom many had frequently discussed the question of freedom and its place in modern life. They are in their turn very dumb.

Only the Church opposed the fight which Hitler was waging against liberty. Till then I had no interest in the Church, but now I feel great admiration and am truly attracted to the Church which had the persistent courage to fight for spiritual truth and moral freedom. I feel obliged to confess that I now admire what I used to consider of little value.

--Albert Einstein
(quoted in Ernst Christian Helmreich,
The German Churches Under Hitler: Backround,
Struggle, and Epilogue (Detriot:Wayne State Univ. Press, 1979) :345)

The problem is, the elites begin to tend to share the same foundation as the socialists and their heretical branch, the fascists. That foundation is some form of anti-spirit form of Naturalism. In modern times this has taken the form of Social Darwinism and in the wake of fascism, NeoDarwinism.

The Hideous Vice

The final proceedings in the trail of Dr. Michael Wolff, for abortion, took place in the Court of General Sessions, yesterday, before Judge Bedford. The case, which commenced on Tuesday, was brought to a close with commendable dispatch.

First came the charge of Judge Bedford, which excited favorable comment on the account of its fairness and cogency. Then followed the conviction of Wolff by the jury, and the trial was finally completed by the prompt rendering of the much dreaded sentence by Judge Bedford. The verdict and sentence created a lively feeling of gratification on account of the terrible warning which they gave to professional abortionists, whose hideous vice, which is nothing less than ante-natal murder, has hitherto escaped punishment. They have openly carried on their infamous practice in this City to a frightful extent, and have laughed at the defeat of respectable citizens who have vainly attempted to prosecute them.

.....He was again alone with the deceased, remained but a few minutes, and left. About two hours after the prisoner left the sister perceived an awful odor in the bedroom. When she had occasion to make up the bed, she also found that the bed clothes and the clothes of the deceased were covered in blood of a whitish color, as if blood were mixed with water. The sister then tells us that she called on the prisoner and asked him what was the matter with the deceased, and also inquired into the cause of the terrible odor. The prisoner, in answer to these inquiries said: '.....to take very good care of her, to let her rest quiet in the bed, and she would be all right.' The sister further tells us that the deceased died on the 12th day of June-some days after the prisoner's second visit. The next witness called by the District-Attorney is Dr. C. C. Terry. He tells us that he assisted Dr. Beach, the Deputy Coroner, at the post-mortem examination, and that the deceased was a pregnant woman; that there were evidences of an abortion, causing inflammation, which resulted in death. Dr. Beach is called, and tells us that the child must have been between five and six months old at the time of the abortion.

....Judge Bedford proceeded to deliver the sentence as follows:

Wolff, you are a well-known abortionist. .....The people may rest assured that the District-Attorney, Recorder and myself will give, on all proper occasions, every assistance to crush out this monstrous crime, and to banish from our midst these traffickers in human life. In one word the authorities have declared war to the bitter end against the fraternity which you, today, so guiltily represent. Let every professional abortionist....in this City take warning, for on conviction their fate shall be the same as yours, namely confinement in the State Prison for the period of seven years, the longest term allowed under the statute.

(The Hideous Vice
New York Times 1857; Jan 27,1871; pg.3)

Half-Truths and One-and-a-Half Truths...

There are many nitwits and half-wits these days, to wit, most are twits. There are few one-and-half wits.

"As long as there is a women’s rights movement, men should at least regard themselves as duty-bound to discontinue chivalry. Nowadays one can’t even take a chance and offer a woman a seat on the streetcar, for one can never be sure that one won’t be insulting her and abridging her right to an equal share of the inconveniences of life.

On the other hand, one ought to get into the habit of being chivalrous and accommodating toward the feminists in every way."
(Karl Kraus, Half-Truths and
One-and-a-Half-Truths :104)

"'Women's rights are men's duties."
(:105)

"When someone has behaved like an animal, he says: 'I'm only human!' But when he is treated like an animal he says: 'I'm human too!'"
(:108)

"The bigger the bull, the bigger the bull market."
(:121)

"The development of technology will leave only one problem: the infirmity of human nature."
(:123)

The problem left on the Left are the nitwits who deny the spirit of the writ. They are human, all too human, almost just humus. They are those who know not the spirit of the writ, until the verse that brings their hearse.

"To be human is erroneous."
(:124)

"The superman is a premature ideal, one that presupposes man."
(:107)

"Lord, forgive them, for they know not what they do!"
(:124)

Normal Windsurfing...

(Windsurfing, July 2004, Volume 23 Issue 5 :47)

The backdrop is Tahiti. I've never sailed an ocean like that. But the picture gives you a little perspective on why ocean sailing is fun. It's a lot different than surfing, where you are for the most part down in the water and at the whim of the waves most of the time. Of course, if you fall in and your sail goes in, then you might be at the whim of the waves. Your sail might blow apart too, especially if it isn't meant for the ocean. (Note the mesh in the sail in the picture.)

Record Speed Set, 53.88 MPH

(Windsurfing, Feb/March 2005, Volume 24 Issue 1 :49)

He is wearing a weight jacket to add weight. Windsurfers may notice the skinny board and a missing half to his boom. But there are those who set speed records with more normal equipment. The weight jacket is for speed and to prevent being blown off the water. The records are set at the French Trench in 50kt plus winds. It is a canal and they try to sail up close to one side of it for the smooth water there. On whatever side the wind blows to on a body of water there start to be waves or whitecaps. It sounds like a challenge. If you are blown up out of the water then it is trouble. You can get sling-shot when hooked in.

Beaufort Wind Scale
Windspeed in MPH
Description - Visible Condition
0
Calm smoke rises vertically
1 - 4
Light air direction of wind shown by smoke but not by wind vanes
4 - 7
Light breeze wind felt on face; leaves rustle; ordinary wind vane moved by wind
8 - 12
Gentle breeze leaves and small twigs in constant motion; wind extends light flag
13 - 18
Moderate breeze raises dust and loose paper; small branches are moved
19 - 24
Fresh breeze small trees in leaf begin to sway; crested wavelets form on inland water
25 - 31
Strong breeze large branches in motion; telephone wires whistle; umbrellas used with difficulty
32 - 38
Moderate gale whole trees in motion; inconvenience in walking against wind
39 - 46
Fresh gale breaks twigs off trees; generally impedes progress
47 - 54
Strong gale slight structural damage occurs; chimney pots and slates removed
55 - 63
Whole gale trees uprooted; considerable structural damage occurs
64 - 72
Storm very rarely experienced; accompanied by widespread damage
73+
Hurricane devastation occurs

One of those posts....

....that's done for an archive. But someone might find it interesting anyway.

Denton notes some imperfections in the fossil record, as you do.

But:
"On the other hand, the fact that, when estimates are made of the percentage of living forms found as fossils, the percentage turns out to be surprisingly high, suggesting that the fossil record may not be as bad as is often maintained. Of the 329 living families of terrestrial vertebrates 261 or 79.1% have been found as fossils and, when birds (which are poorly fossilized) are excluded, the percentage rises to 87.8% (see Figure 8.5).

G. G. Simpson recently estimated the percentage of living species recovered as fossils in one region of North America and concluded that, at least for larger terrestrial forms, the record may be almost complete! In another approach he compared the number of living genera of various categories such as insectivores, carnivores, etc in a particular region with the numbers of fossil genera of the same categories in a region of similar ecological make-up in the past. Two such ecological regions are recent Portuguese East Africa and Middle Oligocene Dakota. After comparing the composition of these two faunas, Simpson concludes:

These comparisons and some other considerations suggest that surely half and probably two-thirds or more of the Middle Oligocene genera are known and that those not yet known are mainly carnivores (indi vidually much less abundant than herbivores) and very small mammals (with less recoverability than large mammals by previous collecting methods).

According to an article by Wyatt Durham in the Journal of Palaeontology, as many as two percent of all marine invertebrate species with hard skeletal components that have ever existed may be known as fossils. Assuming ten to twenty species per genus, this means that for certain groups, such as molluscs which are ideal fossil material, the percentage of genera known could be as high as fifty percent. There are, therefore, grounds for believing that in the case of some groups appealing to the imperfection of the fossil record as an explanation for the gaps is not a particularly convincing strategy.

It is significant in this respect that many professional paleontologists, those actually familiar with the facts, have always regarded the appeal to imperfection as a way of explaining away the absence of transitional forms with a good deal of skepticism."
(Evolution: A Theory In Crisis
By Michael Denton :189-190)

There is the Darwinism of the gaps, many a naturalistic mythological narrative can be hidden in the gaps. Yet in some cases, the gaps are not there to hide in. Recall that Darwin said that if there was one form that could not be accounted for by a gradualistic type of mythological narrative of naturalism then his entire theory would "absolutely break down." There are many, many forms that do not fit such a narrative/hypothesis.

You argue that the reptilian form "turned" into an avian form. So write a narrative and let's see it. Is it the Tree Down Theory? I.e., "Once upon a time, some lizards were jumping around in trees, they had some feathers already for insulation. Somehow, their scales had turned to feathers already. So there they were, jumping around in trees. Some of them fell out of the tree and died because they didn't jump quite far enough. Others lived because they could. So their lil' arms began to get a web under it. But this was different than a reptilian web under the arm, this time. And their lungs, they began to change from reptilian to avian too. Their bone structure switched, switched on around and their lil' arms began to grow up out their back more, with the web and the feathers, remember...."

And so on. Or if we can attribute the notion of selection to things, "Once upon a time there was a group of lizards jumping around in trees. They jumped out and killed themselves enough times until one day, their group grew wings and feathers so they could fly on up, up and away! Another group of lizards on the ground looked up and felt in their little lizard heads, 'Man, I wish we had jumped out of trees and killed ourselves enough to grow wings." But Nature had not selected them any wings by its natural selection, naturally. So they felt sad, not glad! The other lizards look down from the sky and felt, "What a neat lizard am I. I mean bird...yes, me birdie now."

Instead of some vague handwaving towards the National Geographic, why don't you write a scientific narrative of how things happened? You must know quite clearly, after all. Since it is what is taught in State schools, while all contrary evidence is censored. Or, if it is mentioned at all it is for the sake of Leftist indoctrination through associative argument and emotional conditioning using the buzzwords "science" and "religion."

Random philosophizing....

...in thinking along the lines of if philosophic naturalism was really true. I use the terms philosophic naturalism a lot because it is a common philosophy in modern times. The best summary of it is probably Sagan's, "The Cosmos is all that is, was, or ever will be." The Christian view of Nature is that it is just a book to be written on or written by God. And the science and technology that developed in Christian cultures of the West bears out this type of thinking. Darwinism seems to be the deification of Nature, "random" mutation is the creator and Nature "selects" by natural selection. There you have creation, intelligence and design attributed all to Nature. Of course, Darwinists do not live by this and believe that their own creative acts, intelligence, ideas and designs are attributable to their own minds. Their own ontological state of being. I hope that's a little explanation of philosophic naturalism, as well as its fallacy.

But what if it was really true? Of course there would be a lot more evidence for sequence in Nature, rather than typology, missing links would not be missing, etc..

But some other notes, it seems that we cannot destroy matter or create it. In the thought experiment that assumes naturalism is actually true, Nature is eternal. If that is so, given an eternity of time would not patterns repeat? Would your arrangement of matter come about again in time and your consciousness emerge from it? Perhaps it would not, if one said that Nature is a one time event that came from nothing. (That is a philosophically unsound position. But then, this whole thought experiment is unsound. Observation shows that you don't get something for nothing.)

Another note, there would most likely be extraterrestrial life, as there are millions of places in the Cosmos where life might develop. Life may bring with it technology. If one is on a planet like ours which is situated in its galaxy just so, to see out to the heavens, one ought to be able to see the evidence. How so? Well there are billions of stars and so on, millions of places for possible life and technology. In one of those places, technology may have existed for millions of years. How high can it go? What is physically possible? (Nothing shall be impossible for them.) Once one of the races in the race had figured out technology on a massive scale, an exponentially increasing technology, they would be moving stars around, controlling light as the ultimate source of energy. They would be time-travelling and the like. All of this would leave a trail of evidence and would be the type of thing you would expect to see.

That is, given philosophic naturalism. (It begins to sound like Star Trek to me. All of this is the modernist mythology based on a new form of religion. It is internally consistent, in some ways. Anyhow, enough with the thought experiment....)

Stephen Hawking notes that no one has or ever will figure out time-travel, or we would have met them already.

Given the Christian mythos, a God who creates time, can time travel. So how could anything not go the way God would have it go? It seems an obvious point that one who can time-travel can always go back and do it over. Yet if someone is limited by their character or nature so that it is just not in their nature to do something, then they will not do it. But enough, I will stop random philosophizing at this point. Perhaps it is just in my nature to do so.

Could you snivel, any more?

_______
"I am going to be standing there having this imposed on me," Newdow told the court by phone on Thursday. "They will be telling me I'm an outsider at that particular moment."

Newdow also argued that taxpayer-financed inaugural ceremonies cannot be a platform for "the coercive imposition of religious dogma," adding that the president intended to "use the machinery of the state to advocate his religious beliefs."

Bates questioned both sides vigorously at Thursday's two-hour hearing, but said he doubted a court could order the president not to include a prayer when he takes the oath of office.
"Is it really in the public interest for the federal courts to step in and enjoin prayer at the president's inauguration?" Bates asked.
Court Rejects Challenge to Inaugural Prayer

_______

In some sense, one has to be fascinated by the extreme nature of atheist's victimization complex and phobias. They are victimized, by prayer? There are tsunami victims, etc., yet atheists waste their time and money because of the supposed victimization of prayer. Those who pray, so prey upon them! Pray for your enemies, because if they are evil they'll feel like something is preying on them.

"I am going to be standing there having this imposed on me...."

Everyone else is going to be standing there with his stupidity imposed on them. Perhaps they are tolerant of stupid people.

"They will be telling me I'm an outsider at that particular moment."

What free-thinkers atheists are! I think this fella has the urge to merge to the inside....probably some form of Cosmic Oedipal complex. The father will take him outside the motherly realm. Then he would be separated, outside, an outsider! Run away, run from Father God to Mother Earth....for that's an issue that must be skirted. Then the little fella looks out from inside the skirts, fearfully.

Are these the "free-thinkers"? It is almost always the same pattern, sounds like a research project, to compile a list of poorly fathered or fatherless atheists, that faith of the fatherless.

That wretched sect,
"All their monstrous systems have so visible and necessary a dependence on [materialism] that, when this cornerstone is once removed, the whole fabric cannot choose but fall to the ground, insomuch that it is no longer worthwhile to bestow a particular consideration on the absurdities of every wretched sect of Atheists."
(A TREATISE CONCERNING THE
PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
1710
by George Berkeley)

An example of the censorship practiced against abolitionists...

(The Anti-Slavery Enterprise
The New York Daily Times
New York, N.Y.: May 10, 1855. p. 1)

Excerpt from a speech by Charles Sumner on the victory of the abolitionists against censorship, etc., note the mention of William Lloyd Garrison.

(Slavery
The New York Daily Times
New York, N.Y.: Oct 10, 1851. p. 1)

I will use a few excerpts to illustrate how a debate about Good and Evil goes. (You can save it as an image to take a look at all of it if you want. Some of it is illegible.)

First, you have the intolerant zealots who say what everyone already knows. Good and Evil exist, there is the knowledge of Good and Evil by words. The reply is this: "Did God really say? Is it really so? That might be so. But is it so....necessarily? That sounds absolute, dogmatic! Maybe it is not so, not really. Well, it is not as if everyone agrees. So how can it be so?"

Example,
"Abolitionists, as a class, hold that to have slaves is necessarily doing a sinful thing; that the relation of master and slave is always an atrocity in morals; that every slaveholder, just as the adulterer is bound to renounce his sinful indulgence, is morally bound to set free his slaves without regard to consequences or to the character of slaves; and that every State or community ought on the instant, to make freemen of the slaves, clothing them with all the rights and privileges of citizenship. This has always been the dogma of pure abolitionism, the utter sinfulness of slavery and the imperative duty of prompt emancipation. Not one twentieth part of the population at the North, found in Northern churches, has at any time embraced this dogma and pushed it to its legitimate consequences.
As a body, the religious community of the North, comprising the great Christian sects, have never been prepared or inclined to side with Abolitionists, and affirm that slaveholding is necessarily sinful; the few that have espoused this sentiment in any Church, and sought rigorously to carry it out in practice, and bind it upon the consciences of other men, have been partisans and agents of disorder; have proved themselves the disorganizing spirits of the communions to which they pertained, and as such have sometimes been thrown out and rejected by their respective churches.
……
The behavior of slaveholders, man by man, candid minds will look at, before pronouncing judgment upon their character. Besides, in point of fact, it is abundantly on evidence that slaveholders do manifest the peculiar virtues of the Christian religion, and some of them in a high degree, having, for example, sacrificed many times more in the shape of money and labor than their accusers, to promote the well being of the slave."

Then there is that argument, "Well, I know a nice person who does that. I know someone nice, like me, the nicety of me! Do you know someone nice? Well, if you weren't so narrowminded then you would know how nice all people are. Why are you so judgmental?"

These are the general pattern of the arguments when someone knows they are compromising with or being evil. Shift, then some positive conditioning, slither, then some negative conditioning.....etc. and at all costs, avoid the objective conceptual issue as you engage in emotional conditioning.

That article represents the voice of Northern moderates. It is not obviously depraved or morally degenerate. It just seeks a compromise with evil to go along, to get along. And when a person is doing that, they tend to create a pattern of arguments that is quite ancient.

An interesting parallel,
DOUBLE STANDARDS: THE SUPPRESSION OF ABORTION PROTESTERS' FREE SPEECH RIGHTS
By Christopher P. Keleher
2002 51 DePaul L. Rev. 825
Excerpt:

It was not until the approach of the Civil War that the scope of First Amendment protection again became an issue. During this time, there were widespread efforts by slavery supporters to suppress the free speech of abolitionists. Both in the South and in the North, members of the abolitionist movement were often silenced by the court system, public mobs, and police arrests.

Most of the southern states' legislatures were also involved in the suppression of speech. For example, the Georgia legislature passed an act awarding five thousand dollars to anyone who arrested the editor of the abolitionist newspaper, The Boston Liberator. Further, grand juries in many states also played a role in suppressing abolitionist speech by indicting publishers of abolitionist newspapers,ministers who spoke out against slavery, and anyone else opposed to their point of view.

(The article draws various accurate parallels, so where is the ACLU regarding the supression of speech there? I suppose they are off defending pornographers.)

It's interesting. I have noticed that the first impulse of those who know they are being evil is to censorship. You see, if only people couldn't say/judge it to be so, then it would not be so. If only the Gestapo could arrest all those who disagree and eliminate the "ethical code worship of the Jews"!

A Delawarean on Creationism...

Creationism doesn't respond to evidence

"A letter writer argued that scientists view the theories of creationists with disdain. While I don't know about this, it is true that creationism is not science for several very good reasons.

First, creationism cannot predict -- or rather it predicts anything and everything that is observed in nature."

False, science came out of a Christian culture because Nature was assumed to be invented and built by what the American Founders called the Architect. (George Washington) Therefore, it was assumed that humans ought to be able to "crack the Cosmic code." (Paul Davies ) In science and technology things are created, designed and invented and written down as blue-prints, this is all based on intelligent design. Many historians have noted that in other cultures science was still-born and did not progress. Perhaps if you adhere to philosophic naturalism you are too busy writing the mythological narratives of naturalism or worshipping Nature, instead of doing science on it.

"Evolution, on the other hand, has made many predictions concerning such things as species characteristics, predator-prey dynamics, and originary locations which later proved true, an essential quality of any scientific theory."

Creationism predicts the whole typological view of Nature by which things can be classified. The very reason that a bone fragment can be reconstructed is because it "fits" a certain type in the typology.

"Evolution" does not predict predator-prey dynamics, that is false. That dynamic is an argument against Darwin's constant struggle and survival of the fittest. What happens is, predators eat and reproduce to such an extent that a natural harmony comes to be. Only humans just keep on eating more and more, etc. Why this sort of natural harmony exists and the irony of predators not just running "wild" is a weakness of Darwinism, not a strength.

"Science starts with a hypothesis and works to prove it true, rejecting it if evidence cannot be found. Creationism starts with "truth" and works backward to defend it, but does not reject the initial assumption, regardless of the lack of evidence. For this reason, creationism is theology, not science."

There is nothing specifically wrong with beginning with the truth of the Bible. Given that the Bible is often validated, a meaning derived from it may well be true. So there are those who just stick with it and place it first. That does not mean they are wrong. That does not even mean that they are not doing science. It might mean that that belief, specifically, is not science, just as he says. It is not as if science is necessarily true or necessarily leads to truth. Those who place the Bible before science would say that it take precedence. That is not an unreasonable position, given that science is providing evidence that it actually can't provide some answers. That is its answer, in some sense, that sometimes it can't provide the answer. So it may be that if you really believe in science, you don't believe that science has all the answers.

But putting the Bible first is a difference between creationists and intelligent design. It seems that this letter writer might disagree with everything supernatural or transphysical, though.

"The car analogy misses the point. There are far more dissimilarities than similarities between cars and life. Plus, complexity alone does not prove an intelligent design. If it did, we would have to conclude that spiders are intelligent because of the complexity of the webs they spin."

There is some irony in an apparent Darwinist quibbling over the distinction between the animate and inanimate. They were those who tried to break that distinction down by arguing that Life can come from non-life, as in abiogenesis in some primordial pool. That simply is not true. All the evidence demonstrates it. That is a big reason why a life-long atheist philosopher is having doubts.

He does not seem to understand ID theory. I'll write some more into this reply on that later.

But moving on,
"Finally, proponents of intelligent design fail to acknowledge that even if their arguments are correct, they don't point to an omnipotent Christian God, as they intend."

That's true. Despite all the attempts to call ID traditional creationism, there is a disctinction between ID and creationism. I would not be so quick to write biblically centered creationism off, although I used to a bit. As to the plain scientific facts like Life, i.e. the cell, it is the same design for every living thing. DNA, mRNA, etc. DNA is the blueprint and then messenger RNA carries the message, it is transcribed and so on. The cell is very, very complex and apparently specified to be so. It is no simple cob-web.

"If creationism is ever accepted as science, it will be because of the influence of politicians, not scientists."

Moderns have an inflated view of scientists thanks to technology, they seem to assume that scientists are responsible for technology and so, their high standard of life. So then science is good and must be verified as true through and through because all the good things of technology verify science and prove science. Wrong, neither science nor technology rely on mere data recording based on philosophic naturalism.

Technology relies on the economy, ingenuity, being creative(an element of creationism), design and invention(elements of ID), etc., not "random" things happening as per random mutation or Naure "selecting" things naturally as per natural selection, the very core of Darwinism. The mythological narrativs of Darwinism have little to nothing to do with technology.

"If that comes to pass (if I may speak ironically), God help the progress of real science."

Most likely, he is ignorant of history, philosophy and the history of ideas. He'd have to read a whole bibliography of books to correct his modernist view of "science" and "progress." But at least he wrote a serious minded letter. From what I've read, that's more than can be said for most Delawareans.

What, no mythological narrative?

Mythological narratives of naturalism are typical to Darwinists. Actually, there is a lot missing, a lot that can be deconstructed. That's why it is fun to get one into some writing.

But perhaps I can help them out on this by writing some naturalistic mythological narratives for them.

An interesting example of where one is missing,
"The living world is full of innumerable other systems, particularly among the insects and invertebrates, for which gradual evolutionary explanations have never been provided. A particularly fascinating case is the mating flight of the dragonfly. The male flies ahead of the female and grips her head with terminal claspers. The female then bends her abdomen forward and receives the sperm from a special copulatory organ which is situated toward the front on the under surface of the abdomen of the male dragonfly and which he fills with semen from the true reproductive aperture before the start of the mating flight. This strange manoeuvre, which seems a curiously round about way to bring sperm to egg, depends on the unique and complex machinery which forms the male copulatory organ. Although in its detailed structure it varies enormously in different species, the fundamental design of this extraordinary complex organ is essentially the same in all species of dragonfly. No other insect possesses anything remotely like it, nor is it led up to gradually by a sequence of simpler transitional structures.

As Tillyard remarked:

The copulatory apparatus of the male Dragonfly is one of the most remarkable structures in the Animal Kingdom. The “palpal organ” on the pedipaip of the male Spider, and the hectocotylous arm of the Cephalopod Mollusc, extraordinary as they are, do not defy all explanation, since in each case they are modifications of an appendage already present. But the apparatus of the male Dragonfly is not homologous with any known organ in the Animal Kingdom; it is not derived from any pre-existing organ; and its origin, therefore, is as complete a mystery as it well could be.

An interesting example of a very widespread invertebrate phenomenon, the origin of which is in most cases difficult to account for in gradualistic evolutionary terms, is that of metamorphosis. Many invertebrates undergo a dramatic metamorphosis between the egg and adult form. As described in Chapter Seven, in the case of certain types of insect such as butterflies, beetles, bees and ants, which undergo what is termed complete metamorphosis during a quiescent pupation stage, the transformation involves virtually the complete dissolution of all the organ systems of the larva and their reconstitution de novo from small masses of undifferentiated embryonic cells called the imaginal discs. In other words, one type of fully functional organism is broken down into what amounts to a nutrient broth from which an utterly different type of organism emerges."
(Evolution: A Theory In Crisis
By Michael Denton :219-220)

I kept going beyond the mating flight of the dragonfly a little because it is interesting, that metamorphosis of being born again. Dust you are, to dust you must return....yet another symbol written into Nature?

There is more that is interesting but I guess you'll have to buy the book.

So about the mating flight of the dragonfly, there is no mythological narrative of naturalism for that? Yet another one, missing.....well then, perhaps I can write one.

Once upoon a time, there was a group of dragonfly ancestors. I suppose the technical term for this group would be, proto-wannabedragonflyus. Now the problem with this group of ancestors was that they lacked a good copulatory organ. So the male dragonflies were buzzing around after the females, and few survived. Sometimes they would buzz after a female and bump into each other. Then in their lil' proto-dragonfly heads they would think, "Hey man, can't you see I'm trying to evolve a good copulatory organ here, now out of my way!" But these poor proto-dragonflies still just did not have a good one. But one day, one thought, "Man, I bet if I flew ahead of her and gripped on with these terminal claspers thingies, this would work better!"

And he did. It was a success, so all the lil' dragonfly babies began to look like the daddy dragonfly, who just happened to figure out his lil' terminal claspers.

So all the dragonflies lived happily ever after.

Alfred Kinsey...

(The New York Times Dec 31, 1949. p. 26)

Kinsey....and would you just look at the science of that? That is the sort of science that journalists are typically more than happy to report and for leftist judges to cite in their decisions.

Note the mention of Guttmacher, he and religious hedonists like Kinsey never have had much use for sound science. Kinsey used pseudo-science, taking surveys of people in prison and then pretending that his sample was the average American so that his results could be taken to represent them in general, etc.

That is the sort of thing which ignorant journalists dutifully report to the public, without looking into it. They are not exactly critical thinkers, for many reasons. They're just writers. Like Karl Kraus said, they write although they have nothing to say and have something to say because they write. (There is a movie out about Kinsey now. I have not seen it. I wonder if it is accurate. By the review, it seems to be.)
_______________________

Update, one example of Kinsey's methods.

"The author lists (p. 39) "many hundred" persons who brought in "delinquent groups: male prostitutes,female prostitutes, bootleggers, gamblers, pimps, prison inmates, thieves and hold-up men. These, presumably, would have brought in others of their kind, but in what numbers they did so we are not told." Terman also notes "a dozen prison populations" included "a state school for feeble-minded, two children's homes, and two homes for unmarried mothers, plus "more than 1,200 persons who have been convicted of sex offenses."
(Kinsey's "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male:
Some Comments and Criticisms,"
Lewis Terman, Sexual Behavior in American
Society: An Appraisal of the First Two Kinsey Reports,
NYC: W.W. Norton & Co.,1955, :447)

Kinsey's fraudulent 10% homosexual number was around for a long time. In fact, it is still around and used by gay activists. It is not as if the NYT reported the scholarly refutation of Kinsey's various frauds. At least, not that I can find. Apparently all they did was report some Catholic Bishop's rather meager protestation.

_________________

In recognition of his work, the National Headliners Club, composed of newspapermen throughout the county, in 1938, awarded to him a silver plaque for the finest piece of news reporting in the United States.

It was his editorial achievement that raised the hue and cry throughout the nation for a Congressional investigation of subversive movements and un-American activities. In the face of these repercussions, the Department of Justice, through its Federal Bureau of Investigation, ordered a series of probes of the Nazi movement and its findings substantiated Mr. Metcalfe's revelations.

________________

It's an interesting contrast, because the Old Press can hardly wear a lapel pin with an American flag on it now, let alone do an exposé on radical Islamists in the American University and elsewhere in America. For the intolerance of that! (Although Bill O'Reilly and others in the New Press have done so a little.)

The Old Press seems to feel that the more like inanimate objects they are, the more "objective" they are as mere data recorders. That's simply not the case, instead, the objective is something worth fighting for and investigating.

....one of the highest authorities on the human brain....finds that while it bears a similarity to the brain-cases of Gibraltar and La Quina, both paleolithic and supposedly feminine, the Piltdown brain-case is smaller and more primitive in form than these. The most striking feature is the “pronounced gorilla-like drooping of the temporal region, due to the extreme narrowing of its posterior part, which causes a deep excavation of its under surface.” This feeble development of that portion of the brain which is known to control the power of articulate speech is most significant. To Professor Smith the association of a simian jaw with a cranium more distinctly human is not surprising. The evolution of the human brain from the simian type involves a tripling of the superficial area of the cerebral cortex; and “this expansion was not like the mere growth of a muscle with exercise, but the gradual building-up of the most complex mechanism in existence. The growth of the brain preceded the refinement of the features and the somatic characters in general.”

(Ancestor Hunting: The Significance of the Piltdown Skull
By George Grant MacCurdy
American Anthropologist, New Series,
Vol. 15, No. 2. (Apr. - Jun., 1913), pp. 248-256)

Why is this actually significant? Note the amount of speculation and mythological narratives of naturalism you can get out of a bone fragment, not to mention a fraud. (The skull was actually a human skull.) Also, it is important to remember that people modified their philosophy and theology based on this and other frauds, just as they still do. And it is important to take whatever opportunities there are to check up on the testy testers that write the mythological narratives of naturalism, as well, in order to see what their mythological narratives can be based on.

A maverick geologist (like the maverick biologist Michael Denton) notes the usual testy testers, their typical censorship and some of the examples where their mythological narratives can be tested.

"ONE DAY, MORE THAN TWENTY YEARS AGO, I picked up an apparently dull geology textbook and found my attention arrested by a single sentence. The book was called Pre history and Earth Models and was by the professor of metallurgy at Utah University, Dr. Melvin Cook. Cook, a physical chemist now in his eighties, is a world expert on high explosives and his textbook on explosives for mining is still a classic work of reference. Professors of metallurgy do not usually stir up trouble in the academic world, but what I had read in his geology book was more explosive than any text on TNT.

In his preface Cook wrote: “An attempt to publish a manuscript giving direct evidence for the short-time chronometry of the atmosphere and oceans entitled ‘Anomalous Chronometry in the Atmosphere and Hydrosphere,’ not unexpectedly nor without some cause, met with considerable opposition and was not published.”

Who on earth had prevented Dr. Cook from publishing his paper? I wondered. And what could a metallurgy professor have to say that was so heretical that someone wanted to prevent its publication? I found that his book contained scientific evidence and reasoned argument which showed that something was terribly wrong with the orthodox scientific view of methods of dating. The most widely used methods, such as uranium-lead and potassium-argon, had been found to be seriously flawed, not merely in practice but in principle. In addition, the methods yielded dates so discordant as to make them unreliable.

Cook showed for example that if you used the uranium-decay method on the rocks of the crust you got the conventionally ac cepted age of over four thousand million years. But if you used the selfsame method on the atmosphere, you got an age of only a few hundred thousand years. He also showed that the entire amount of “radiogenic” lead in the world’s two largest uranium deposits could be entirely modern. Clearly something was wrong.

When I dug deeper, I found that Cook was not a lone voice. Other papers by scientists in reputable scientific journals expressed similar doubts and findings. Funkhouser and Naughton at the Ha waiian Institute of Geophysics used the potassium-argon method to date volcanic rocks from Mount Kilauea and got ages of up to 3 thousand million years—when the rocks are known to have been formed in a modern eruption in 1801. McDougall at the Austra lian National University found ages of up to 465,000 years for lava in New Zealand that is independently known to be less than 1,000 years old.

I eventually came to the alarming realization that although ra dioactive decay is the most stable source of chronometry we have today, it is badly compromised as a historical timekeeper, because it is not the rate of decay that is being measured but the amount of decay products left. For this reason, all radioactive methods of geochronometry are deeply flawed and cannot be relied on with any real confidence in this application.

At the end of the last chapter, I asked, How could science have gone so far wrong? The answer turns out to be that it is not science which has gone wrong, merely those scientists seeking to defend a single idea—Darwinian evolution. Science has proposed many methods of geochronometry—measuring the Earth’s age— all of which are subject to some uncertainties, for reasons I shall describe in a moment. But of these many methods, only one technique—that of the radioactive decay of uranium and similar elements—yields an age for the Earth of billions of years. And it is this one method that has been enthusiastically promoted by Darwinists and uniformitarian geologists, while all other methods have been neglected."
(Shattering the Myths of Darwinism
By Richard Milton :37-38)

Neither Milton or Denton, who I sometimes cite here, seem to be Christians. Denton is an agnostic and Milton does not seem to be Christian. This really makes no difference to me. I look at text, logic and evidence for truth, not the person. I just note that for Leftist bigots, those who feeeel the need to run around screaming when they hear the word "religion" and that sort of thing. It's to help such ignorant and stupid people know that regardless "religion," the mythological narratives of Darwinism go to absurdity and beyond, beyond "possibility" to impossibility. They try to tell a narrative using the standard of, "Well, it's possible. And at least that is a naturalisic narrative, unlike religion!" But the narrative is actually impossible when confronted with a sound analysis of probability.

It would be better, as in more probable, to believe that time-travelling aliens created life as we know it than to believe in the narratives typical to Darwinism.

(Although that actually runs into patterns of Christianity and its mythos. Which seems to be what some people, especially on the Left, are quite phobic and bigoted about.)

Extra things....

....I'm using Right2Left to prevent things from scrolling too quickly here. I'll probably put something about the whole flat earth notion and modern story telling based on the notion on there later tonight. And maybe other things too, I'll just let things scroll fast there. Those who want to keep up, keep up.

Later....

(The New York Times; Dec 20, 1912, pg. 6)
__

LONDON. Dec.19.
Extraordinary interest has been aroused among anthropologists by Dr. A. S. Woodward's paper on the Piltdown skull read at a meeting of the Geological Society yesterday. No other event in the annals of the society has created such a profound sensation among the members.
_
In some quarters it is even believed that the skull, from certain apelike
characteristics may prove the existence of the "missing link" or the most
important of several missing links in the chain of the evolution man.

_____________________________________________________________

It's important to remember that people of the day altered their theology and philosophy around one of the frauds of Darwinism celebrated by journalists and scientists. For the hoity-toity science of that! It appeals to the vanity of moderns to feel that ancients are know nothings, primitives at best. .

So Darwinism was sweeping through even the most brilliant intellectuals of the times (e.g. Nietzsche), then came the Nazis who finally applied it. They were not the only ones. (E.g., the American eugenics movement, Margaret Sanger, etc.) I've pointed them out before as an example of history and will again....and again. I do so because the same pattern of fascist ideas is still around in the American University, the ideas of the German philosophers are still being promoted as Alan Bloom notes. So there are the same ideas there, waiting to be applied.

Our whole cultural life for decades has been more or less under the influence of biological thinking, as it was begun particularly around the middle of the last century, by the teachings of Darwin, Mendel, and Galton and afterwards has been advanced by the studies of Ploetz, Schallmeyer, Correns, de Vries, Tschermak, Baur, Riidin, Fischer,Lenz, and others. Though it took decades before the courage was found, on the basis of the initial findings ofthe natural sciences, to carry on a systematic study of heredity, the progress of the teaching and its application to man could not be delayed any more.

(Hitler's Professors: The Part of Scholarship in
Germany's Crimes Against the Jewish People
By Max Weinreich
(New York:The Yiddish Scientific Institute, 1946) :33)

The term fascist is so blurred and overused by the modern socialists that a historically accurate understanding of it is being done away with. It is little wonder. That suits socialist academics, for a historically accurate understanding of the term goes against the foundation of their ideas. It is a foundation that they share with fascists, i.e. philosophic naturalism. The main mythological narrative of naturalism has to be Darwinism or some narrative very like it. Therefore, socialists and the heretical branch (i.e. more Nietzschean or masculine than effete socialists, at least as public front) of socialism both rely on Darwinism as a foundation. If you undermine that foundation, they have nothing. If they have it, they have almost all they need to begin to try to bring about their utopias of "heaven on earth," which look a lot more like hell on earth.

I am not saying that because the Nazis believed in Darwinism, therefore Darwinists are wrong. I am saying, because Darwinism is based on frauds, deceits and the like, it is wrong.

(Science and Discovery; WHY THE APE-LIKE PROGENITOR OF MAN MUST HAVE WALKED INSTEAD OF CLIMBING TREES
Current Opinion (1913-1925). New York: Nov 1913. Vol. VOL. LV., Iss. No. 5)

A FIND
As originally restored by Dr. A. Smith-Woodward: the jaw of Eoanthropus Dawsonii--is two thirds natural size. The missing teeth are shown by the dotted outlines. . Readers of The Illustrated London News which we follow here will remember that there has been much argument as to what manner of man owned that part of a jaw and portion of a skull which were found not long ago in a gravel deposit near Piltdown Common. It was not long before keen controversy arose between Dr. A. Smith-Woodward, keeper of the geological department of the British Museum, and Professor Arthur Keith, conservator of the museam of the Royal College of Surgeons. Both these gentlemen made reconstructions. Dr. Smith. Woodward’s showed that the Piltdown man (or woman) was half man, half ape; Professor Keith’s that he was a man with a brain as big as that of modem man. So it came that at South Kentsington the fragments of bones were made the basis of what a layman would call a “missing link” “Eoantbropus Dawsonii” with a brain capacity of 1,070 cubic centimeters; while at the Royal College of Surgeons they were made the basis of a large, well-modeled skull with a brain- capacity of 1,500 cubic centimeters. This was labeled 'Homo Piltdownensis.'

That was all a fraud. That jaw bone was just an ape jaw bone with some teeth filed down on it. And so on. Yet, you can trace this "scientific fact" of the day all through the peer reviewed literature of the day, from the "Evolution of the Chin" to "Discovery of Human Remains, Four Hundred Thousand Years Old."

It's interesting what people will believe. Especially those who believe that they do not believe anything or take something on "faith." They do not question what they keep not "believing," for it is not as if they actually have faith in it. They are those who try to adhere to the faith of the faithless.

But they do come to believe plenty. There are still plenty of mythological narratives of Naturalism around, and plenty of people stupid and ignorant enough to have faith in them. The National Geographic still publishes claims based on known frauds, along with other stupid and ignorant ideas.

That is the sort of thing my satire of the detectives below is based on. It is the material of satire.

The Detectives.....

Once upon a time there was a group of twelve detectives who were called to a complicated crime scene. There were some different groups of witnesses to the crime, as well as some forensic evidence. There were also two suspects, one guilty and one innocent.

Two detectives immediately went and began trying to assemble the basic story of what happened from the different groups of witnesses.

One of the other ten said, "We can't go by eye-witness testimony at all. It's notoriously unreliable. We should not even talk with the witnesses, lest our forensic analysis be slanted by that. We're detectives. Let's just look at the facts!" Another murmured, "Detectives....yes, the detection of us!"

Another replied, "Yes, observation and facts. That's science. Science is good, so science has to have the answers." So one picked up a bit of dirt on the scene and studied it carefully. Then he tasted a little of it and said, "I do detect...that this tastes like.....dirt!"

Another detective scribbled down, "The dirt tastes like....dirt." One of the detectives peered over his shoulder as he wrote.

The writer looked up at him and said, "Why are you peering at me?"

"I'm not, I'm peering at what you are writing."

"Oh, I think we should call that peer review! I think I shall go report on what we detectives have detected here, especially now that you have peered at it."

So those two detectives left to go publish their findings.

The first two detectives came back to the others and one said, "I think we have the general story down and the facts here do not contradict it. In fact, they support it. Look at those footprints, they are the first suspect's size."

The other detectives replied, "What? You're not real detecting detectives, as we are. Just look at what we can detect!" One picked up a piece of grass and studied it carefully. Then he sniffed it and said, "This smells like....grass!" Another wrote that down as a detective peered over his shoulder.

Then the group looked at the footprints in the grass and dirt that the other two detectives had pointed them to. One said, "I detect....grass and dirt! That's all we real detectives have detected and written about. So that's all that real detecting detectives like us should be allowed to look for or see! You two aren't real detectives, like we are. Just look at the science of us!"

Fortunately, the crowd generally believed the two detectives who had made an effort to assemble the whole story. Those who pursued the truth and not the group driven by their vanity about being detectives. For if the detectives more interested in their own detections than the truth had been listened to, an innocent man would have been condemned and the guilty set free.

The two detectives who got to the truth never were called "real" detectives like the group, but they got to the truth and told the people about it.

That was all that mattered to them.

Signs I can't read.

Currently on Carl's blog (my pal!) there is some discussion about the symbols and signs on the dollar bill.

In a recent comment on reptilian symbols I began thinking about the Founder's use of that and other symbols in America. I may do some research and see what patterns match, if any. It's tricky with the Free Masons. But for now, if someone wants to help out, they could research the symbols of the dollar bill.

Or maybe you already know and could help spread some knowledge around here. For I am just a simple fellow.

Later...

An update on the changing minds of atheists....

The leading atheist who changed his mind apparently changed it back again. I may get the details on that story later today, if it is so. I think the story illustrates the weakness of the modern atheistic mind. They have begun to define atheism into agnosticism because of their weakness. I wonder if atheism may be on the way out.

And a few posts....

...over at Right2Leftists.

I'm going to use that blog for an archive and an answer to any blog from the left I come across.

(Perhaps there is an old blog from the left that should be answered, I have not been keeping up with it.)

Some comments....

There are some under Freud's Plague. And there are some under the post about people commenting here and there.

There are some others, but those are the only lengthy ones.

Once blogger adds a recent comment bar I won't have to do that.

An interesting quote...and the symbolism that people use.

Hitler seems to be a demoniac, so it is interesting to see what he says and how he says it. So the demoniac Hitler says,
"I'll make these damned parsons feel the power of the state in a way they would have never believed possible. For the moment, I am just keeping my eye upon them: if I ever have the slightest suspicion that they are getting dangerous, I will shoot the lot of them. This filthy reptile raises its head whenever there is a sign of weakness in the State, and therefore it must be stamped on. We have no sort of use for a fairy story invented by the Jews."
(quoted from Hitler's 'Table Talks' in
A. Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny)

He is invoking the reptiles, etc., an ancient prejudice. That symbol is the reason I bring this quote up.

It is interesting to note that Jesus actually compares himself to a reptile, at least in a certain way. "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up...." John 3:14 It seems odd to have that symbol there, since it was symbolic of evil. I think it is a way of saying that he became evil for his gardeners. That is what is being said by the symbol to those he loves, those he will save. Perhaps as a man will kill to protect his wife from being raped, so must evil be used against Evil, and then it is Good. It is good that he kills the rapist or that the Messiah crushes the head of Evil. These are just symbols or analogies for Cosmic issues or some paradoxes between Good and Evil. For how can it be good to kill and destroy, etc.? The prissy Christian does not seem to believe that it can be, not even in the words. Speak the truth in love, etc....and then begin to hide behind loooove in all things.

Yet there is the symbol of the reptile invoked even to Christians, saying that they must be wise as serpents. "Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves." Matthew 10:16

The dove is a symbol of peace and it is pretty clear that it is feminine. Jesus never does compare himself to a dove, although one does come down from they sky after his baptism, like one Noah sends out after the waters break, as well. Once the waters break, like at the Red Sea, a new day is born.....or born again.

Jesus does make a whip and beat up some dove sellers and he mentions the unforgivable sin. The intolerance of that! The ones who try to speak love into truth will want to avoid such. The symbolism continues with baptism by the Holy Ghost. And so on. So that's a bit of that symbolism. But back to the reptile as a symbol,
"On one hand there was the creative sun, light, beauty, gold; the gods, white garments, happiness, perfume, nectar and ambrosia; and right, good, and truth. On the other was darkness, clouds, filth, evil, wrong, falsehood, noxious odors, and reptiles."
(The Mythology of Dark and Fair: Psychiatric Use of Folklore
By Eric Berne
The Journal of American Folklore,Vol. 72,
No. 283. (Jan. - Mar., 1959), pp. 1-13)

One hand is right and the other is what is left. I'm joking around, a little. The problem with joking around with things that contain truth or basic intuitions is that you can't back off as if the truth is not true. The Left fairly consistently wants to see things from "the other side," etc. Yep, if only they could see things from the right side. Hehe, that's always fun....but back to the reptile as symbol again,

Jesus also calls some people a "brood of vipers," because it is, on the whole, a negative symbol. The only way it is good and not evil is by redemption. Redemption by transcendence is like the exact opposite of Sadean philosophy, in which there is no redeeming transcendence at all. (Ironically, I remember one movie reviewer saying that the Passion of the Christ was "sadistic." In fact, it is the polar opposite. They might disagree with it but calling it specifically sadistic demonstrates a high level of ignorance as to the philosophy of Sade and Christ.)

It would probably be interesting to look at how the Founding Fathers used ancient symbolism.