John Bowe

Nobodies:Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy, is the book recently written by John Bowe. Human greed produces a very sordid situation in this country given the immense quantity of poor foreigners that are pouring in illegally through American borders. Once they are here, other Americans enslave them, just like in the middle of the eighteenth century.

Man is the wolf of man.

American society must stop this slavery less it destroys the social contract that keeps the country prosperous.

The Meaning of Life

There are three main stages in man's life. Birth, reproduction, and death. The meaning of life is to go through all three leaving something behind. To do that in adulthood, one has to find resources all the time.

What Do I Understand?

Like everybody else, I try to make sense of events. I believe that I will be better off if I am right. As also everybody knows it is close to impossible to be right most of the time, or maybe more to the point, it is hard to get personal rewards out of right predictions.
Let us consider for instance income. In the movie "The Graduate" forty years ago one can get the advise given to the young graduate, "plastics". Was that prediction right? Yes it was right, the amount of plastic around us is staggering, it is literally choking us to death. Would that young man be well off now following that advise? Very likely yes, he will have a secure financial position. But was that good? Very likely not. A more critical attitude, as in fact was advised in the movie, is better for the benefit of all of us.

How Much Money to Kill a Terrorist?

I am listening to General Joseph Anderson of the US military on C-SPAN. As I understand the successes mentioned are of a few terrorists killed. The Secretary of Defense recently requested on the order of tens of billions of dollars extra from previously requested. Are we to conclude that to kill a few thousands of peole it is required to spent tens of billions of dollars?
It will be better to bribe these terrorists, at least in economic terms. I guess I do not understand war.

Paul Krugman

I first found out about this Princeton Economics Professor reading his book, "The Great Unraveling". Recently he has become clearer, in my opinion, on his views about the Bush administration.
One of two thinks may be happening, either it is just my imagination, or he is changing. If it is the second, the reason could be that the situation is clearer for everybody, including Professor Krugman.
In any case the changes in this administration seem to be for the worse.

Hired Gun Fetish

By PAUL KRUGMANPublished: September 28, 2007Sometimes it seems that the only way to make sense of the Bush administration is to imagine that it’s a vast experiment concocted by mad political scientists ....

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War With Iran?

According to the catastrophe theory of capitalism exposed by Naomi Klein in her book,"The Shock Doctrine"; I believe that the war with Iran planned by Cheney and the Israeli government, as reported in Newsweek this week, has more than a fifty percent chance of happening before Bush leaves office.

I guess some troops will be taken out of Iraq before that. I wonder what businesses, besides plain Rapture, Vice President Cheney has in mind?

NEWSWEEK: The Whispers of War

Oct. 1, 2007 issue - Sam Gardiner plays war for a living. A former Air Force colonel who helped write contingency plans for the U.S. military, Gardiner has spent the 20 years since his retirement staging war-simulation exercises for military and policy wonks within and on the fringes of government (he keeps his client list confidential).

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Alan Greenspan, Naomi Klein, Amy Goodman, and Jeremy Scahill

Today Amy Goodman in Democracy Now interviewed Alan Greenspan. I wished I felt better after I heard Greenspan's own defense. I do not.
Naomi Klein also helped in the interview. Mr. Greenspan sees the issues brought up, I understood, as a matter of opinion. I felt that he does not share my deep concerns about a collapse in chaos produced by his and Milton Friedman's libertarian ideology.
I want to believe them, Friedman and Greenspan as intelligent economists, not as con artists trying to kill most of us by either producing or taking advantage of "useful" disasters.
At the end of the program Mr. Scahill reminded us and illustrated how the mercenaries in Iraq are helping to bring this catastrophe.
What Greenspan sees as populist politics, defined by him as concern in the short term, and not the long term, I see as the right of workers to request just payment. Today the General Motor workers began their first walkout since 1970.
Who is right, libertarians or the rest of us?

Naomi Klein 1

I recently wrote about Naomi Klein,.I have read more into her book.
It is an unsettling read. I feel now that I know how could our Civilization end. Like in the "Children of Men", by the Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón. He even worked in a short with his son, Jonás Cuarón, that accompanied the release of the book last week. A few rich people inside a gated community, like in Baghdad right now, and the rest of us, in our billions, outside been shot at by Blackwater like mercenaries.

This is apocalyptic.

Down Time From Murder

By ROGER COHENPublished: September 24, 2007So now we know where Eva from Mannheim and Angela from Dortmund and Irmgard from Dresden ended up during the war years — jiving in pleated skirts to the strains of an accordion, or gorging themselves on blueberries, or lounging on deck chairs in the shadow of the Auschwitz-Birkenau crematoriums.

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Politics in Black and White

By PAUL KRUGMANPublished: September 24, 2007Last Thursday there was a huge march in Jena, La., to protest the harsh and unequal treatment of six black students arrested in the beating of a white classmate.

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In 'Dark Energy,' Cosmic Humility

The universe is accelerating. A mysterious energy is pushing apart space itself, like a crazed toddler blowing up the cosmic balloon.

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Max Tegmark

Prof. Tegmark from MIT recently wrote an article for the New Scientist Magazine. This is based on the article he wrote and you can read here.
There you can read his:

"The idea that our universe is in some sense mathe-
matical goes back to the Pythagoreans, and has been
extensively discussed in the literature."

At the end of his article Prof. Tegmark writes:

"I know of no other compelling explanation for this trend
other than that the physical world really is mathematical."

The trend he is talking about is the continuos successes of mathematics to describe physical reality. I must confess that I still do not feel in my guts that Tegmark is right.

He goes on to write:

"The most compelling argument against the MUH hinges on such emotional issues: it arguably feels counterintuitive and disturbing. On the other hand, placing humility over vanity has proven a more fruitful approach to physics, as emphasized by Copernicus, Galileo and Darwin. Moreover, if the MUH is true, then it constitutes great news for science, allowing the possibility that an elegant unification of physics, mathematics and computer science will one day allow us humans to understand our reality even more deeply than many dreamed would be possible."

MUH is his Mathematical Universe Hypothesis.

His point is that if we do take away all human "baggage" to our scientific description of reality, maybe the math that remains, that even a computer can understand, is the real thing.

I hope so.

A Tower Fight, but Just What Borough Is This?

MEXICO CITY, Sept. 19 — An influential developer plans an enormous skyscraper at the edge of the city’s giant central park. A celebrity architect is commissioned, and the ambitious mayor unveils the proposal at city hall.

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Student Tasered for Armed Madhouse Question to Kerry

Greg Palast writes about student who was tasered while quoting his book.

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Shock Treatment to Humanity?

Today Robert Fisk publishes the results of an investigation that supports Naomi Klein's thesis of shock treatment. Instead of shocking only Iraq though, it seems that Humanity is been treated this way. First destroy all memory of the beginning of Civilization and then destroy Civilization.

This is very sad.

Bush’s Fake Sheik Whacked: The Surge and the Al Qaeda Bunny

Monday, September 17, 2007- Did you see George all choked up? In his surreal TV talk on Thursday, he got all emotional over the killing by Al Qaeda of Sheik Abu Risha, the leader of the new Sunni alliance with the US against the insurgents in Anbar Province, Iraq.

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Blackwater security firm banned from Iraq

Iraq's Interior Ministry has revoked the license of Blackwater Security Consulting, an American firm whose contractors are blamed for a Sunday gunbattle in Baghdad that left eight civilians dead.

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Naomi Klein

This important journalist presents today her new book, "The Shock Doctrine".

The idea seems true. It does explain Why the democratic Chileans allowed the Dictator Pinochet to rule their country?, Why Americans believed Rumsfeld project to privatize war through mercenaries, like Blackwater?

With the banning of Blackwater in Iraq, and a socialist government in Chile, maybe we can get out of this nightmare nurtured by the Economist Milton Friedman out of the University of Chicago.

Jonás Cuarón

Alfonso Cuarón is a famous Mexican film director. Now his son presents a short film based on the ideas of Naomi Klein, "The Shock Doctrine".

This is an unsettling set of ideas that have the ring of truth. We should be prepared.

Sally Field Censored by Fox

"I would've liked to have said more bleeped-out words, but that's life."

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Peter A. Gersten

This man thinks that something is going to happen on the Winter Solstice of 2012 at 11:11 UT.

Is this a scientific prediction?

If he says what exactly can happen at that moment. Yes, it is scientific. How do we know if it is true? Wait to that moment and check.

I guess it is more important if we understand the basis of his prediction. I have not read the details; therefore at this point I do not know what level of credibility I should give to this prediction.

Mexico Enacts a Tax-Overhaul Bill

MEXICO CITY, Sept. 14 — President Felipe Calderón won his first major legislative victory Friday when the Mexican Congress passed a comprehensive tax bill aimed at one of Mexico’s biggest economic problems: its meager tax take and miserly public spending.

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Mexico’s Congress Considers Proposals to Change Election Laws

MEXICO CITY, Sept. 13 — A year after a closely contested presidential election divided this nation, the Congress is moving to revamp electoral laws to rein in negative campaigns and to keep businesses and individuals from trying to influence elections.

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Earth Might Survive Sun’s Explosion

What happens to planets when their stars age and die? That’s not an academic question. About five billion years from now, astronomers say, the Sun will run out of hydrogen fuel and swell temporarily more than 100 times in diameter into a so-called red giant, swallowing Mercury and Venus and dooming life on Earth, but perhaps not Earth itself.

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Boy Leads Protest Over Deported Mother

WASHINGTON (AP) -- An 8-year-old boy whose mother was deported to Mexico led a chanting crowd of about 150 pro-immigration activists through the halls of Congress on Wednesday. Capitol Police arrested two demonstrators for disorderly conduct.

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Desk Top Fusion

It has been almost twenty years now when it was announced that one could get fusion energy out of low energy processes. One can read in Wikipedia:

"Cold fusion supporter Julian Schwinger said that it is not uncommon to have difficulty in reproducing a new phenomenon that involves ill-understood macroscopic control of a microscopic mechanism. As examples, he gave the onset of microchip studies, and the discovery of high-temperature superconductivity."

Now a group of scientists announced that they were able to produce positronium molecules inside the interstices of a sodium based material.

Maybe this is the real McCoy. Too bad that the great Julian Schwinger is not around to give his expert opinion.

Mirror particles form new matter

Fragile particles rarely seen in our Universe have been merged with ordinary electrons to make a new form of matter.

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Billions over Baghdad: Politics & Power: vanityfair.com

Apparently, U.S. officials didn't want a proper accounting for the billions in cash that we taxpayers sent to Iraq. This lack of accountability gave government contractors (and other players) ample opportunity to build their own personal retirement funds by over-billing the government, theft, and other means.

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Blocking Mexican Trucks

One way the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement was supposed to encourage free and efficient trade was by allowing long-haul trucks from Canada, Mexico and the United States to deliver goods throughout the three countries.

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Explosions Hit Mexican Oil Pipelines

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Several explosions believed to the work of result of sabotage ripped apart pipelines for Mexico's state oil monopoly early Monday, the company said. There were no injuries.

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Traced: The asteroid breakup that wiped out the dinosaurs

The extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago can be traced to a collision between two monster rocks in the asteroid belt nearly 100 million years earlier. The smash drove a giant sliver of rock into Earth's path, eventually causing the climate-changing impact that ended the reign of the dinosaurs and enabled the rise of mammals.

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Short on Labor, Farmers in U.S. Shift to Mexico

CELAYA, Mexico — Steve Scaroni, a farmer from California, looked across a luxuriant field of lettuce here in central Mexico and liked what he saw: full-strength crews of Mexican farm workers with no immigration problems.

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Meaning

Ray Kurzweil defines order with information and purpose. Evolution increases order due to fit. Storing information is not enough, that information has meaning.

In the case of evolution as far as we know the fit is to the Earth biosphere. It is not a universal fit. We cannot walk on the moon without special gear, we are fit for the Earth's atmosphere only.

The meaning of life sometimes is used to bring God to fore.

If string theorists are right and there are 10²⁰⁰ possible universes, I guess a theist will say that God rules over all of them, if that is so, then we are infinitesimal creations of this agent.

Does that give us less meaning?

I prefer to concentrate on this Earth, and judging by Katrina, Felix, and Henriette, we have not proven our fitness. Katrina's displaced people are proof of that. When will the masses of homeless people become US again?

Even these questions may have answers that point to a very small amount of meaning for human life. Nevertheless this human life is all we have.

Shades of Mexican

Mexicans have historically used and manipulated race to improve their social status.

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Immigrants’ Labors Lost

We would see Latinos account for half of America’s population growth. We would turn a hardened eye toward all 44 million Latinos, because 12 million jumped our borders to meet our labor demand.

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Anthropic Principle

I have tried to use this principle and I do not like what I have produced, two useless ideas that do not lead anywhere. Very likely I a do not understand the message behind it if there is any. Now I will try to describe what I think when I think on the principle.

I see that the Earth is Rare. How come I am in a rare Earth?

Only a Rare Earth produces a collection of molecules like me.

This is like the drunk man looking for his lost wallet under a lamp post because that is the only place where he can hope to find anything.

If you want to find a human being, you have to look into a planet like the Earth.

Have we explained anything?

I do not know.