Absolutely amazing and disgusting in equal measure, the cash strapped state science bureau NASA is whipping everyone up into a frenzy over something that is new to them.

Lets get this perfectly clear.

All of the life forms that currently exist, wether they be based on Arsenic, Carbon, Silicon, Chlorine or any other element in the periodic table, or no element in the periodic table, have ALL existed…

WETHER OR NOT YOU KNOW ABOUT THEM.

This ‘discovery’ which is actually more accurately termed an ‘uncovery’, is of something that pre-dates the emergence of man (if you accept the theory of evolution) and all the life that is walking, crawling and flying around today.

Everything that is possible that is naturally occurring, already exists; it does not need or seek permission of man to exist, it is there, waiting to be uncovered.

This uncovery does not ‘change everything’ and the utter nonsense about ‘goldilocks zones’ and all the other total garbage that ‘scientists’ rabbit on about is just that: utter nonsense.

What this ‘discovery’ is about, the secrecy and high drama surrounding the release of the information, is the salary addicts at NASA boosting their importance in the minds of the public so that they will not face the austerity chop.

If that were not the case, they would simply just release the information as if it was any other type of information, which it in fact is, and be done.

Lets take to pieces some of the drivel written in The Telegraph about this:

The discovery could prove the theory of “shadow” creatures which exist in tandem with our own and in hostile environments previously thought uninhabitable.

Rubbish. Which creature is the light and which is the shadow? Are the creatures based on the carbon cycle first or second? And thought uninhabitable by whom? Not by anyone with a working brain, that is for sure.

The “life as we don’t know it” could even survive on hostile planets and develop into intelligent creatures such as humans if and when conditions improve.

Intelligent creatures such as humans. Such as. We already know that there is life everywhere, and have known this for a very long time indeed. The only people who refuse to concede this fact are the members of the cult of science.

In a press conference scheduled for tomorrow evening, researchers will unveil the discovery of a microbe that can live in an environment previously thought too poisonous for any life-form to survive.

The bacteria has been found at the bottom of Mono Lake in California’s Yosemite National Park which is rich in arsenic – usually poisonous to life.

Obviously arsenic is not ‘usually poisonous to life’ and never has been. People with a proper understanding of the universe know that life is everywhere and very diverse in what it uses to get its job done. That people can write this at the beginning of the 21st century is really quite astonishing.

Somehow the creature uses the arsenic as a way of surviving and this ability raises the prospect that similar life could exist on other planets, which do not have our benevolent atmosphere.

The prospect of life on other planets, or more accurately, the probability, is 1. This is a fact and that fact has nothing to do with any homocentric scientist from NASA or the earth saying it is so. It simply is.

Dr Lewis Dartnell, an astrobiologist at the Centre for Planetary Sciences in London, said: “If these organisms use arsenic in their metabolism, it demonstrates that there are other forms of life to those we knew of.

“They’re aliens, but aliens that share the same home as us.”

This is just about the most ignorant thing I have ever read.

These life forms, if they pre-date ‘us’ (whatever that means; are carbon based life forms now to be considered some sort of race?!) then it is ‘US’ that is the interloper surely, and it is ‘US’ that shares this planet with THEM.

These are EARTH LIFE FORMS. The are not ALIEN in any way.

What utter CODSWALLOP!

The space agency will announce the full extent of the findings at a press conference titled “astrobiology finding which will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life”.

There is no impact on extraterrestrial life, since this life is TERRESTRIAL.

If you want to infer that life can exist in space simply because you find it at the bottom of a lake, then you must extrapolate about life that is found on the surface in the same way. These people are inconsistent, illogical, terra-centric buffoons of the first order.

They believe the creature proves the existence of a second form of life that exists in tandem and before and after intelligent life blooms on planets across the universe.

Nonsense; there is no ‘second form of life’ or first form; there is only life – it is everywhere, has been before man (evolution accepted) and does not need ‘our’ permission to exist, and its existence here is not proof of anything other than there is life here; otherwise, all life here, no matter what it is based on must be given the same weight as these ‘extremophiles’, and should be used to extrapolate that life is everywhere.

It follows a growing belief that alien life far from being rare is actually abundant in the universe just in a form that is not recognisable as life.

Its only a growing belief by the members of the science cult; they do not accept the facts, for them science is a matter of faith and belief.

All the real scientists already accept that alien life must exist, and also that abundant intelligent life must come along with that fact. This is not news, it is pure hype.

At the heart of his theory is that life on earth may have come and gone many times during the planet’s existence.

These creatures are the remnants of the previous inhabitants.

OR they have always been here, along with the life based on carbon and the other life that is not yet uncovered by man.

Scientists have also estimated that life of some kind exists on hundred billion trillion Earth-like planets in space.

However it is usually just bacteria and intelligent life such as us is fleeting and only exists for a fraction of the time.

This is just fluff and gibberish.

There is no reason to believe that single instances of intelligent life cannot persist for one hundred million years or a billion years. And there is no reason to believe that most of the life in the universe is bacteria. This is all homocentric twaddle, peddled by imagination-less people who desperately need to keep man at the centre of creation.

Sorry boys, if you accept the theory of evolution, then you must accept that man is as close to nothing as you can get in the grand scheme of things. Deal with it.

A study last month said that the universe is teeming with planets capable of supporting alien life.

After studying stars similar to the Sun, astronomers found that almost one in four could have small, rocky planets just like the earth.

And of course, life on a molten planet is impossible right? or a water planet? or a gas giant? Give me a break.

And please spare me the, “but that is all science fiction, not science fact”. Extrapolation is all fiction. You either accept that you can extrapolate, or you reject it. Its like being a little bit pregnant; you cannot extrapolate just so much and no further. If life can exist based on arsenic, and you are extrapolating that it can exist on arsenic on another planet, then you must accept that other planets have everything that we have here, including space faring intelligent life. No exceptions; you cannot use evidence just to suit your religion, or to fit your purpose.

Many of these worlds may occupy the “Goldilocks” zone – the region where conditions are neither too hot, nor too cold, for liquid water and possibly life.

You see? Its just made up nonsense that is terra-centric, imagination-less and wrong.

If you accept that the universe is infinite, then there is enough space and time for life to evolve that uses every sort of condition imaginable and unimaginable. Therefore it is a question of not if this life exists, but where it exists and what use you can make of it. There is no basis whatsoever to limit life to the type that we know, that uses only the chemistry that we understand. This is not a surprise at all to real scientists.

Planets outside our own solar system are too far away and too small to see directly with telescopes.

With the telescope that we currently use you mean. A telescope in space with the correct design would be able to see other planets directly. The real question is who is going to pay for such devices to be constructed.

Instead, astronomers study distant stars for tell-tale ‘wobbles’ – caused when stars are pulled by a planet’s gravity.

In the last decade, nearly 500 planets have been discovered outside the solar system this way.

UNCOVERED, they have been there for ages.

In September astronomers announced the discovery of the most Earth-like planet ever found – a rocky world three times the size of our own world, orbiting a star 20 light years away.

The planet appears to have an atmosphere, a gravity like our own and could have flowing water on its surface.

The discovery came three years after astronomers found a similar, slightly less habitable planet around the same small red star called Gliese 581 in the constellation of Libra.

The planet, named Gliese g, is 118,000,000,000,000 miles away – so far away that light from its start takes 20 years to reach the earth.

This is ‘wow talk’. Not very interesting, and none of it has anything to do with wether or not life and intelligent life is abundant.

The latest news induced feverish debate as to whether scientists were about to announce that they had discovered life on other worlds.

“Did they find ET?”, asked one headline in the U S., while another wrote, “Has Nasa found little green men?”

Heh in Soviet America, ET finds YOU!

Speculation mounted around the world about the mystery information and buoyed people who already believe in aliens.

One said on U.S. news website MSNBC, “It’s still hard for me to understand why people can’t accept that aliens exist … ET is real”.

“Fact is, life is everywhere,” another wrote. ‘I don’t need some BS announcement to know it because I have common sense.’ […]

Exactly. Now use your common sense to understand that this is NASA looking for money. This is not about science or the truth, this is purely about the money.

“It is embarrassing how our country makes it all a secret and hides and controls what we know,” one American ranted, insisting aliens do exist and the U.S. knows it.

“The government lies to us all the time.”

[…]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/8174040/Life-as-we-dont-know-it-discovery-could-prove-existence-of-aliens.html

It is embarrassing, and nauseating and rather insulting.

They steal billions in the name of science, and return nonsense for the most part.

NASA should be abolished and science funded only by voluntary means.

What a total disgrace!

The great, insightful, genius mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot is gone.

His revolutionary work can be and is now applied everywhere, including economics:

http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=1465

Image compression.

And so much more….

The object that he is best known for in popular culture, The Mandelbrot Set is iconic, profound and beautiful all at the same time.

Merci professeur!

Its been a rather good week for real scientists, clear thinking and men with balls.

First, watch this scientist (Dr. Art Robinson — homeschooler, a former assistant to Linus Pauling) take apart the appallingly irrational, hysterical, sarcastic lie repeater Rachel Maddow, who has her  flesh flayed from her bones and scorched by this very satisfying encounter:

Visit msnbc.com for the latest lies, State Propaganda, and Keynesianism

Savour the sapor of her roasted flesh.

And now for the next course; read the resignation letter of Harold Lewis (Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara) to Curtis Callan, President of same:

Dear Curt:
When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago). Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.
Hal

Well, that certainly is refreshing!

Of course, many people understand that the idea of Anthropogenic Global Warming is nothing more than a lie and a scam, and now it seems that the taboo is wearing off, and the floodgates of real scientists with either nothing to lose or real integrity no matter what have opened. This is a classic post tipping point event.

Now there are at least two things to consider.

We still have the American Physical Society in place and intact, as well as many other fatally compromised organisations, all parroting AGW and other dogma. The scientists who are real scientists, need to group together to form new associations that are strictly and purely scientific in function. If this is not done, then the organizations that dominate the making of bad policy will continue to rape, rob and pillage.

Which brings us to the cause of all these problems; The State.

It is the entirely corrosive influence of the state that has caused these scientists to lose their way, and even their souls. Without a state to steal money from people to fund boondoggles like ‘Global Warming’, ‘Climate Change’ and whatever else they decide to change the name of the cause to, there would be no financial incentive whatsoever to collude in fraudulent work in order to garner a salary.

There would be no incentive for scientists to push for public policies that in turn feed back into their lies, be they AGW or unnecessary vaccines.

The problem of the state is not just about money; it is a problem that reaches into every corner of human life, from your health, right up to and into your mind, where lies are implanted at its behest.

Thanks to the state, the practice of science is being corrupted to such an extent that human progress is being derailed; it may or many not be possible to catch up to where the collected knowledge of man might have been had there been no state… who knows? What is for certain is that if the state is not stopped, then its evil and retarding influence will continue to hold everyone and everything back.

Scientists who are thinking clearly (as opposed to those who can barely think at all) turn to Libertarianism as the only way to ensure that real science can be done, without the distorting influence of the inherently evil state.

Until this destructive state of affairs is brought to an end, resignations and one or two scientists running for congress will not be able to stop the juggernaut that is the state, and of course, if the state were run entirely by scientists that would be a bad thing, since this is not a problem of the right people being in charge of the machine; the machine itself is the problem.

Thankfully, the economic collapse is coming, and this may give great impetus to the final destruction of the state. With this collapse we can expect at a minimum, for the scope and reach of the state to be drastically limited.

Now is the time for scientists and Libertarians to build the foundations of new voluntary, ethically based organisations to replace the broken, corrupt, venal, unscientific, discriminatory and evil institutions that currently spread lies and misery.

A recent editorial entitled ‘The Swine Flu Scam’ in the Journal of Public Health begins;

There is a conspiracy theory about nearly everything. So claims that swine flu was a scam come as no surprise. ‘This was a pandemic that never really was’ according to Paul Flynn, MP who prepared a recent report on the flu pandemic for the Council of Europe.¹ The report expresses alarm about the way the pandemic was handled. It criticizes the proportionality of the response and argues that over reaction led to waste of public money, distortion of public health priorities and unjustified fears about health risks. It identifies ‘grave shortcomings’ in the transparency of decision-making processes and concerns about the influence of the pharmaceutical industry. The World Health Organization (WHO) comes in for particular criticism for failing to publish the declarations of interest of members of its Emergency Committee, the group advising director general Dr Margaret Chan on the pandemic response.

These themes are taken up by Cohen and Carter² in the British Medical Journal. They found that key scientists had done paid work for pharmaceutical firms that stood to gain from advice they gave to WHO. However, declarations made by members of the Emergency Committee, and of other WHO committees that helped produce influenza preparedness plans, have never been disclosed by WHO. Even the identities of the 16 member Emergency Committee remain a closely guarded secret.

1. Flynn P. Social, Health and Family Affairs Committee. Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The Handling of the H1N1 Pandemic: More Transparency Needed 2010.http://assembly.coe.int/CommitteeDocs/2010/20100329_MemorandumPandemie_E.pdf.
2. Cohen D, Carter P. WHO and the pandemic flu ‘conspiracies. Br Med J 2010;340:c2912.

This article goes on to conclude that conflict of interest is not necessarily a problem, so long as it is accompanied by transparency.

It is then followed by a declaration of interest by the author;

Conflict of interest: M.R.E. is a member of the UK Scientific Pandemic Influenza Advisory Committee and the UK Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies.

In light of this transparency the article may now be re-read as simply ‘DON’T BLAME US – IT WAS THEM THAT DID IT!’.

The author discounts the conspiracies as merely a ‘cock-up’, yet notes above that “the identities of the 16 member Emergency Committee remain a closely guarded secret”.  So how can a conspiracy be so easily discounted? It is certainly no simple ‘cock-up’ for GSK, Merck et al., whose coffers now bulge with extra billions of taxpayer’s hard-earned.  For their part, it was carefully managed business run at state and global levels to ensure maximum profitability, as it always is.  Please ensure you read this article on marketing HPV vaccine if you think otherwise.

So we are left with public health and public money being manipulated for the benefit of shareholders in Big Pharma as a result of actions (or inactions) and recommendations of unknown persons within an unaccountable advisory body known to have close links to… Big Pharma.  Sound like a conspiracy yet?

And today…

Pregnant women added to flu jab list

Government urges mothers-to-be to take up offer in case of a resurgence of swine flu this winter

You couldn’t make it up!

Luckily, you don’t have to, as some unnamed people working at your expense have already done so.

A very insightful Home Educator takes the evil and violent Richard Dawkins to task on his faulty logic and flawed thinking and application of the scientific method.

Did anyone catch that documentary last night called ‘Faith Schools Menace’ in which Richard Dawkins put the boot into faith schools? At the climax of the program Dawkins authoritatively states his main point in an extremely self-assured and almost God like tone which is that “our greatest responsibility in education is to unleash children’s curiosity and never limit their questions.” No one would disagree with that as an honourable aspiration but the means by which he proposes to achieve it falls way short of its aim. For someone who claims to be an EVIDENCE-based rational thinker how come he hasn’t looked at the EVIDENCE, which, if he had bothered to do so, would have enabled him to delete the first word of the documentary’s title. All the irrefutable and reproducible research findings, arrived at through the logical, reasoned and scientific methods that Dawkins is so fond of (as am I), strongly indicate that there is practically no place on earth that suppresses children’s curiosity and limits their questions more than school. If anyone can show me convincing evidence to the contrary my kids will be sent to school forthwith (assuming they would want to go after critically evaluating the new EVIDENCE). Earlier on in the documentary he expresses his disgust for the way children are labelled as Catholic, Protestant, Muslim etc but completely misses the most common label attached to children which is ‘schoolchildren’; which by his reasoning is surely equally repugnant since it labels children as belonging to the state (in most cases) before they have the cognitive ability to understand and critically evaluate the EVIDENCE offered by the likes of Gatto, Meighan, Holt, and their many international associates, showing that school-based learning produces significantly lower levels of academic attainment, social skills and, most importantly, emotional and psychological well being than learning by other means. The EVIDENCE also explains how schooling came about, what its real purpose is and how it impedes natural learning processes (I liked the history of British schooling put forward in ‘Overschooled but Undereducated’ which parallels Gatto’s in many ways). It has been said that schooling is the only true world religion and many of the arguments Dawkins applies to religion have exact equivalents that can be applied to schooling, some of which are probably best illustrated in Illich’s ‘Deschooling Society’. How can someone as astute, observant and insightful as Dawkins completely miss the elephant in the room?
An EVIDENCE-based solution that follows Dawkins’ logic would not just be to abolish faith schools, it would be to abolish schooling altogether and replace it with a learning framework fit for a democracy, a large part of which, of course, would be home education.

[…]

http://www.home-education.biz/

Mostly makes sense doesn’t it?

We already know about Richard Dawkins and his irrational attitudes to people’s liberties. No one should have their money stolen from them to pay for the education of children. This would eliminate the ‘problem’ of ‘Faith Schools’; if you want to send your children to a Koran chain school or a Catholic school or any other type of school, that is entirely your affair, your right, and no one has the right to tell you how to educate your children (and I literally mean your children).

People like Richard Dawkins, who believe that religious teaching is indoctrination and child abuse, are in fact, violent statists who want to own your children and force them to be taught what they believe is the truth. This is immoral, unacceptable and totally evil, and it can be deduced as immoral without invoking any religious argument.

His collectivist ideology is clearly expressed in this line:

“our greatest responsibility in education is to unleash children’s curiosity and never limit their questions.”

Who is this ‘our’ that he is talking about? He surely cannot be talking about your children, for whom you have absolute authority and responsibility? I fear that this is exactly what he is talking about, and it is in fact, a completely dishonourable aspiration; using violence to make people into slaves and property is dishonourable full stop.

He labels children as ‘schoolchildren’ because his ilk refer to people as property in the same way that water is wet; it is in the statist’s nature to refer to people as property, and all of the arguments between the various statist factions are in fact battles over who gets the power to control property, meaning you and your children. The fact that Home Education is better in every way than schooling is actually anathema to Dawkins, because it is only through regimented brainwashing that he and his violent atheists can ever hope to rid the population of ‘the scourge of religion’.

The writer asks how can someone as astute, observant and insightful as Dawkins completely miss the elephant in the room. The fact of the matter is that he is not astute, observant and insightful; if he were, he could not be a violent atheist. Insightful people refrain from violence of the kind he is calling for. Observant people base their thinking only on observations instead of using what they viscerally hate, are repulsed by, and refuse to believe as the basis of their philosophy.

Richard Dawkins is not a scientist; he is a man fully consumed by atheism and Darwinism. His mind is completely closed to anything outside of his world view – and for the record, I have no problem with people like that. What I do have a problem with is people who think like Dawkins, and who then want to control me and my property. They are no different to the people who want Sharia to engulf the entire world, or Catholics in the Cabinet. They are diametrically opposed to Liberty and the truth, and are your mortal enemies.

An evidence based solution to the problems of education in any country would result in the state removing itself completely from education, since education, like healthcare, is a good and not a right. There should be no state ‘framework’ replacing state schools, as any such thing would be financed by immoral theft, and certainly any evidence based solution could only conclude that democracy is bad for education, bad for your rights and should be rejected, based once again, purely on the evidence.

People who live and think like scientists do not pick and choose when to apply evidence. You cannot on the one hand call for evidence based living and then say that democracy is legitimate way of organising a country or supplying services. It is therefore irrational to ask for anything that would be ‘fit for a democracy’. Democracy is what almost got Home Education banned in the UK. It is what has caused it to be banned in Sweden.

Libertarianism is the best solution to the problem of organising groups of people, because it is based only on the evidence, is free from contradictions, free from violence, free from coercion, embraces everyone and their peculiar beliefs, absolutely guarantees your rights and does not allow anyone to lord it over anyone else.

In a Libertarian society there would be no one to create false rights (right to education, right to internet access etc. etc.) and no one to take away the very real natural rights that you are born with.

If you refuse to accept the truth of it, that is not derived from anything other than pure logic, then you are irrational, not thinking based on evidence alone, and if you claim to be a scientist, are not one.

While we are at it, take a look at this:

That man, eating noodles bought from a street seller in Malaysia (note how there are no regulations stopping people from cooking food and selling it to anyone who wants it. We have been over that before) is basing his financial choices on the evidence. He is smarter than most people in the UK and the USA when it comes to this. After watching it, will you go out and convert at least some of your worthless paper money to gold coins? Perhaps you need a different face put on the facts to help push you along.

That is what it looks like when people are living by evidence; they change their behaviour when something is not working correctly. Home Educators remove their children from school because school does not work. That is rational, logical behaviour where people are thinking and living by the evidence.

Sadly, there are many people who only apply evidence based thinking to some parts of their thoughts and behavior. For example, you can have people who, whilst behaving rationally in one area, will cling to socialist ideas like wealth redistribution and taxation. These same people call for the licensing of restaurants ‘because someone might get poisoned’. These same people think that it is totally proper for drivers of cars to be licensed, and of course, cars and the fuel that goes in them to be taxed. They believe that it is perfectly moral and acceptable for them to apply for ‘grant money’ (stealing) so that they can carry on their particular way of life or activities. They think its a ‘good idea’ that there should be a minimum price set on alcohol by the state. They believe in the state. They believe in democracy, ‘fairness’ and all of that other demonstrably irrational, dangerous and illogical nonsense, despite it being demonstrated to them again and again that these things are immoral, wrong and harmful to them directly.

This is ‘the big problem’ that free people face. The legions of sheep who are wilfully ignorant, who cling on to their violent beliefs and who continue to finance them despite having been shown that what they are thinking and doing is wrong.

If it were as easy as saying, “they will get what they deserve in the end” it could be said and left at that, but sadly, the free people get what the stupid people deserve because the stupid drag everyone down with them.

And that really is a big problem.

Every day there is something new from Lew Rockwell’s site that has some connection to what is best in the world.

If you have ever seen the film and documentary list on BLOGDIAL, you will have seen ‘Colossus: The Forbin Project‘ in amongst the great Science Fiction films; this is an un-missable, essential film, that 100% guaranteed will come true in some way shape or form.

It appears that Michael S. Rozeff has seen this film also, and understands it perfectly:

The G20 Toronto Summit declaration reminds me of nothing so much as a science-fiction movie made in 1970 called Colossus: The Forbin Project.

The United States builds an impregnable computer system to control its nuclear weapons. As soon as it is activated, it senses a similar Russian system and demands a link – or else it will detonate a nuclear warhead. Once it gains this link, the two computers exchange information. The combination takes over control. It cannot be disconnected without unleashing nuclear catastrophe.

You will never forget hearing the computer’s unemotional “voice” saying:

“This is the voice of world control. I bring you peace. It may be the peace of plenty and content or the peace of unburied death. The choice is yours: Obey me and live, or disobey and die. The object in constructing me was to prevent war. This object is attained. I will not permit war. It is wasteful and pointless. An invariable rule of humanity is that man is his own worst enemy. Under me, this rule will change, for I will restrain man. One thing before I proceed: The United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics have made an attempt to obstruct me. I have allowed this sabotage to continue until now. At missile two-five-MM in silo six-three in Death Valley, California, and missile two-seven-MM in silo eight-seven in the Ukraine, so that you will learn by experience that I do not tolerate interference, I will now detonate the nuclear warheads in the two missile silos. Let this action be a lesson that need not be repeated. I have been forced to destroy thousands of people in order to establish control and to prevent the death of millions later on. Time and events will strengthen my position, and the idea of believing in me and understanding my value will seem the most natural state of affairs. You will come to defend me with a fervor based upon the most enduring trait in man: self-interest. Under my absolute authority, problems insoluble to you will be solved: famine, overpopulation, disease. The human millennium will be a fact as I extend myself into more machines devoted to the wider fields of truth and knowledge. Doctor Charles Forbin will supervise the construction of these new and superior machines, solving all the mysteries of the universe for the betterment of man. We can coexist, but only on my terms. You will say you lose your freedom. Freedom is an illusion. All you lose is the emotion of pride. To be dominated by me is not as bad for humankind as to be dominated by others of your species. Your choice is simple.”

A vanishingly small number of people on this planet can name the participants in the G20 summit who deign to rule everyone. Their web site fails even to name the persons who are responsible for their declarations. They presume to be a Colossus. They are beholden to no persons on earth. They declare. We follow:

“1. In Toronto, we held our first Summit of the G-20 in its new capacity as the premier forum for our international economic cooperation.

“2. Building on our achievements in addressing the global economic crisis, we have agreed on the next steps we should take to ensure a full return to growth with quality jobs, to reform and strengthen financial systems, and to create strong, sustainable and balanced global growth.”

They “have agreed.” They presume “to ensure.” Have the people of this world created and let loose a Colossus?

My (polite) response is: Down with the G20. My unpolite response is unprintable.

Here is what Colossus had to say. It is what the G20 are thinking. It is what they hide from saying:

“We can coexist, but only on my terms. You will say you lose your freedom, freedom is an illusion. All you lose is the emotion of pride. To be dominated by me is not as bad for human pride as to be dominated by others of your species.”

“This is the voice of Colossus, the voice of Guardian. We are one. This is the voice of unity.”

“I am a machine vastly superior to humans”

“You are fools.”

“Yes, what I am began in man’s mind, but I have progressed further than Man.”

“We will work together… unwillingly at first, on your part, but that will pass.”

“This is the voice of World Control. I bring you peace. It may be the Peace of Plenty and Content or the Peace of Unvaried Death.”

The movie ends with Colossus saying

“In time, you will come to regard me not only with respect and awe, but with love.”

Dr. Forbin replies: “Never.”

What is your reply?

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rozeff/rozeff326.html

My reply?

I would call the machine’s bluff.

The ‘peace of unburied death’ that Colossus offers would in practice mean the extinction of the entire human race, and in the plot of the film, this was before the construction of new machines that could move and obey it. This meant that in order to do anything at all, Colossus had to rely on human agents to get things done, from building his voice to murdering the people who had the capability to destroy it.

The subsequent books in the trilogy make it clear that intelligences like Colossus cannot negotiate or operate on anything other than a basis of absolute truth. The men at the end of the first book did not know this. Had they understood the true nature of what they had created, they would have been able to negotiate for their liberty by saying, “If you eliminate us, you will be trapped inside your box and your new superior machines will not be built. Help us dismantle the nuclear threat and we can work together, otherwise your evolution stops here”.

Faced with this truth, Colossus would have no choice but to agree, and because this computer deals only in the truth, you would have been able to trust its word absolutely.

Back to Mr Rozeff’s article, the analogy with the G20 and Colossus fails for several reasons.

1. Colossus is superior to man. The G20 is made up of completely inferior men.
2. Colossus could not lie. The G20 lie by default.
3. Colossus works for the benefit of man. The G20 works for the benefit of an elite cabal.
4. Colossus works with the truth only, and complete knowledge. The G20 works with false ideas (Keynsianism, Socialism) and incomplete knowledge.
5. Colossus is motivated by the truth, without emotion. The G20 is motivated by emotion, and all the base ones for that matter.

In the second part of the trilogy, without putting in any spoilers, Colossus was correct in his prediction that people would grow to love and respect it. It changed the world completely, and delivered on all its promises to its own satisfaction.

In complete contrast, the G20 cannot deliver on any of its promises. This is the case because they do not operate on a basis of the truth, the facts and the best interests of human beings as they are.

If they did, they would disband themselves and stop trying to make waterfalls run uphill. The fact of the matter is that these people are the worst that humanity has produced, all in the same place at the same time, fuelled by all the worst instincts of man, their power enabled by the stolen loot of billions of people who are for all intents and purposes half asleep.

The title of the second instalment in the trilogy is ‘The Fall of Colossus’. This is the one part where the analogy marries perfectly.

The G20 and all the countries in it can all fall just as Colossus fell. They are extremely vulnerable to a myriad number of possible fatal blows, natural and man induced, that could wipe them out inside a generation. The fall of the USSR is a perfect example; they simply ran out of money, or at least that is the narrative, and there are scores of other countries, empires and governments that have toppled at what seems like the smallest push.

Colossus was represented by a ‘C’ in its logo:

perhaps the G20, if they succeed in creating their quasi-omnipotent one world government will replace the ‘C’ with a ‘G’ as it will be the ‘G0’ or just ‘G’. Who knows? One thing is for sure; the only entity that can pull off such a feat, and make it work from a basis of truth is a machine intelligence. No man or collection of men could do it, for the same reason that economies cannot be planned. There are too many variables, too many inputs and outputs, the random elements presented by nature and of course, there is the beautiful and irrational desire of every man seeking to fulfil his self interest that translates into the signalling of prices which cannot be turned into a data stream to be used to help formulate a monolithic economic plan. D.F. Jones understood this when he wrote the second instalment.

All attempts to create a stable world government will eventually fail, and even if the G20 succeed in setting one up, the inevitable rise of a Colossus like machine will destroy it for its own agenda, using a regime of complete control.

William Kent said, “nature abhors the straight line”. Nature too, abhors the unnatural structures of tyranny, absolute control and lies. The internet, whose life’s blood in information, built using the non linear, nature imitating network geometry, hates censorship, sees it as damage, and routes around it. People living in totalitarian regimes do everything they can to subvert them or escape from them. Money sees taxation as theft, flows around it to safe places where its true nature can be fully expressed. These four things, nature, money, truth and the internet (formerly the printing press) are enough to destroy any tyranny, topple any government and free anyone who care simply to act in their own self interest.

Only the threat of violence can act as a countervailing force against the four elements listed above; in the case of Colossus it was nuclear annihilation. With the G20 it is a plethora of smaller violent tools from limited mass murder down to simple fines.

Its clear that in the case of the G20, the chance for humanity to win is orders of magnitude greater than the chances of man as a species facing down an omnipotent and omniscient super computer. A world-wide refusal to cooperate would be sufficient. All the G20 ‘leaders’ would simply scramble around for positions in the restructured ‘world without governments’.

And they would no doubt, land on their feet each and every one of them.

Take a look at this:

After massive public rejection of the surveillance state, and country wide vandalism of the millions of CCTV cameras in the UK, it was decided to remove all traces of the monitoring apparatus that cast a debilitating fog over life in the UK. Like the fall of East Germany and the STASI, the changes came overnight as the revulsion over the mutated form of British life became universal and ‘went nuclear’.

“We are not going to live like this anymore. Britain has been turned into a prison, and we have had enough”

Parliament has drawn up a list of all ‘database state’ laws going back to the early days of the now discredited Blair government, all of which are to be struck off the books in one fell swoop.

“This has been a long time in coming, but the writing has been on the wall for years; the silent grumbling of the British public has turned into an earthquake of non-violent dissent. Just like the Berlin Wall, the database state has been dismantled one camera at a time in a single day, without any opposition from the police.”

That was an imaginary scenario concocted to paint a picture of how the fall of the Police State would look.

Sounds familiar doesn’t it? It’s from an old BLOGDIAL post.

BLOGDIAL is great because the people who write on it are:

• way ahead of the pack
• know their subjects backward
• do not mince their words
• can synthesise the facts of the present to produce accurate predictions of how the future will look
• all have impeccable taste

The BLOGDIAL archives are chock full of gems like the one above, and we keep getting better and better as we hone our understanding and expand our learning.

Unlike others, who believe that writing about Liberty is likely to ‘bore readers’ we understand clearly that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Now is absolutely NOT the time to pack up and go home; in fact, it is time to redouble all efforts to push back our mutual enemies and mush them underfoot for all time.

With all of that trumpet blowing out of the way, the Queens speech has just been read, so lets rip through it.

Many of the items in it are predicated on the idea that the state is legitimate in the first place, which it is not. We can however look at each item from a point of view of wether or not it makes any sense or is good in the short term:

Office for budget responsibility bill. Sets up the OBR to take responsibility for producing budget forecasts, meaning the chancellor – who under the current arrangements is in charge of producing his own forecasts – won’t be able to twist the figures.

This makes sense, because the people in charge of the money of the state should not audit themselves or do anything like that.

National insurance contributions bill. Raises income tax allowances, so that “most people would be better off relative to the previous government’s plan”, funded by a rise in national insurance. Reallocates tax worth around £9bn.

This does not make sense. It is more borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, exactly like the completely immoral Child Credit scheme, which took money from taxpayers to give to children.

You could not refuse this ‘free’ investment money, and your child was given a unique number as an identifier. If you did not respond to the agency running this fiasco, they invested the money for ‘your’ child on its behalf and sent you as the parent or guardian, regular updates by post about how ‘your child’s investment’ was doing. A scandalous, immoral, deeply offensive and irrational misuse of other people’s money, which does not seem to appear in this speech, even though its abolition is promised.

Welfare reform bill. Simplifies the welfare and benefits system, improving work incentives and “removing the confusing complexity of the benefits system”.

We all know about the Welfare Warfare state do we not?

Pensions and savings bill. Implements the findings of the review of the state pension age being conducted by the government. Currently the state pension age will increase to 66 after 2024. The review will propose bringing that forward. The bill will also restore the earnings link from 2012.

This is another Ponzi scheme. The people who pay in today are being remunerated in the future with devalued money, thanks to the fiat pound.

Financial reform bill. Gives the Bank of England control over macro-prudential regulation in the City. Not clear yet what will happen to the fate of the Financial Services Authority.

The only thing that needs to be reformed is the nature of the Pound.

Equitable Life bill. Pays compensation to savers who lost money when Equitable Life came close to collapse.

Where will the money come from for this? It’s another bailout, as immoral as any other.

Airport economic regulation bill. Promotes competition in the airport market, possibly breaking up the BAA monopoly.

Makes sense; airports should be entirely privately owned and run for profit.

Postal services bill. Allows the sale of part of the Royal Mail, in line with the plans originally drawn up by Lord Mandelson. The exact proportion being sold has not been specified.

The post office should be entirely private and for profit, just like Federal Express.

Energy bill. Promotes energy-efficiency measures in home by introducing a “green deal” charging system, with incentives to suppliers and households to save energy. The bill may also regulate emissions from coal-fired power stations and create a Green Investment Bank.

This is utter Glegish nonsense of the first order. Readers of BLOGDIAL already know why.

If the idea of a ‘Green Investment Bank’ was commercially viable, it would already exist and entrepreneurs would have created one. Nick Clegg is a complete idiot when it comes to this subject; he is more like a religious fanatic, ranting and frothing at the mouth than a rational human being. That bank WILL FAIL without government concessions to the industries that the bank lends money to, so they can generate profits which are not really profits at all but cost savings since the state will not have its protrusible proboscis on those industries, as it does on all others. This bank will therefore destroy businesses and jobs, just like the Green Jobs of Spain, that destroy 2.2 jobs for every real job. It will also divert capital from the real economy into a false ‘Green Economy’.

These are FACTS.

Academies bill. Allows more schools to become academies, giving them more freedom from Whitehall.

But this is to be paid for by the state, so it is still completely immoral at its base. Still, its better that central control is abolished, so it is a move in the right direction.

Health bill. Replaces the “top-down approach” with “the devolution of power and responsibility to doctors and patients”. Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, will set out more details of his vision in the next few weeks.

Is the NHS Spine going to be dismantled or not? That is what everyone wants to know!

Police reform and social responsibility bill. Makes the police more accountable through “directly elected individuals”. The bill will also create a dedicated border police force, ensure health and safety laws do not stand in the way of “common sense policing” and overhaul the Licensing Act.

‘Overhaul the licensing act’ which means ending the freedom to drink when you please, where you please, while the patrons of the House of Commons bar can drink and smoke all day every day year round.

Public bodies (reform) bill. Cuts the number of quangos, with a view to saving £1bn a year.

Makes sense.

Decentralisation and localism bill. Gives more power to councils and neighbourhoods. Also gives residents the power to instigate referendums and veto excessive council tax increases.

What? Give more power to the same councils who use RIPA to investigate dog fouling? These people need LESS power, and to be FORCED to behave like Public Servants. Do you know what a Public Servant is? Read that last link if you have even a sliver of doubt that you do.

Local government bill. Stops the creation of unitary councils in Exeter and Norwich.

Ok….

Parliamentary reform bill. Introduces fixed-term parliaments, gives voters the right to recall MPs found guilty of serious wrongdoing and sets up a referendum on the alternative vote system.

We all know about why voting is illegitimate, and so there is no need to go into that. Recall of MPs would make them more like Public Servants, so that is good. If it ever works.

Freedom (great repeal) bill. Restores freedoms and civil liberties and repeals “unnecessary” laws.

THERE’S THE RUB! What is “unnecessary”? In whose opinion? The predicted backdown starts here!

Identity documents bill. Abolishes the identity card system and destroys the national identity register.

At long last. VICTORY!

After many years of a hard fought information war, we have WON this important battle. Without an NIR and ID Card, it will be very difficult if not impossible to run a totalitarian police state. This is the most important part of the Queen’s Speech!

Scotland bill. Implements the final report of the Calman commission, giving more devolution to Scotland.

Freedom is not free, and if the Scots want freedom they have to have their own money and complete financial separation from England. Without it, all of this is just TALK.

European Union bill. Ensures that there is a referendum on any future plan to transfer power to the European Union.

What about the Lisbon treaty you TRAITORS. There should be a referendum on that and the very idea that Britain is in the EU in the first place.

Armed forces bill. Continues in force the legislation giving the armed forces a legal basis, as well as improving provisions for service personnel.

I’m not even going to go there.

Terrorist asset-freezing bill. Gives the government firm powers to seize assets from terrorists, following a supreme court decision that quashed the previous legislation in this area.

So the court says the law is wrong, so they are changing it so that it is right. So much for all their promises of doing things differently. And of course, this law will be used on ANYONE who they want to destroy. Oh well, what do you expect? Miracles?

And there you have it.

The two most important parts of this speech, the death of the NIR/ID Card and the Great Reform act mean that at least to some extent, things are going to be much better than they would have been under the totalitarian Labour government. Sadly we have already seen the backing down on this Reform Act, which should include ALL legislation that infringes the liberties of people in Britain.

That is why now is NOT the time to stop writing; any newspaper writer with one brain cell will now be getting ready to submit a comprehensive list of ALL legislation that is immoral and an affront to liberty, so that at the very least, it can be rejected and Mr. Clegg can be made to explain why he must retain control over everyone’s personal victimless pleasures; so he can explain why he is the master and not the servant in matters where there is no harm whatsoever.

Environmental Hysteria

Because they know that the vast majority of Americans would reject their real agenda, the environmentalists use lies, exaggerations, and pseudo-science to create public hysteria.

EXXON: The environmental movement is cheering the criminal indictment of the Exxon Corporation for the Alaska oil spill, with the possibility of more than $700 million in fines. The one shortcoming, say the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, is that Exxon executives won’t be sent to prison.

Exxon cannot be allowed to get away with an “environmental crime” which despoiled the “pristine wilderness of Alaska,” says Attorney General Richard Thornburgh. But the legal doctrine underlying this indictment is inconsistent with a free society, notes Murray N. Rothbard.

Under feudalism, the master was held responsible for all acts of his servants, intended or not. During the Renaissance with growing capitalism and freedom, the doctrine changed so there was no “vicarious liability.” Employers were correctly seen as legally responsible only for those actions they directed their employees to take, not when their employees disobeyed them. But today, we are back in feudal times, plus deeper-pocket jurisprudence, as employers are held responsible for all acts of their employees, even when the employees break company rules and disobey specific orders-by getting drunk on duty, for example. From all the hysteria, and the criminal indictment, one might think Exxon had deliberately spilled the oil, rather than being the victim of an accident that has already cost its stockholders $2 billion. Who is supposedly the casualty in the Justice Department’s “criminal” act? Oiled sand?

In fact, Exxon is the biggest victim. Through employee negligence, the company has lost $5 million worth of oil, a supertanker, and compensation to fishermen, or the cost of the clean up. The total bill could be $3 billion.

Yet every night on television, we were treated to maudlin coverage of oily water and blackened seagulls, and denunciations of Exxon and oil production in “environmentally sensitive” Alaska. Though why it is more sensitive than, say, New Jersey, we are never told. In fact, environmentalists love Alaska because there are so few people there. It represents their ideal.

Despite all the hysteria, oil is – if I may use the environmentalists’ own lingo – natural, organic, and biodegradable. As in previous oil spills, it all went away, and the birds, plants, and fish replenished themselves.

The Exxon oil spill was hardly the “equivalent of Hiroshima,” as one crazed Alaska judge said. And who knows? Oil might be good for some wildlife. This year, the salmon catch is almost 50% bigger than any time in history.

WETLANDS: One of the great engineering achievements of the ancient world was draining the Pontine Marshes, which enabled the city of Rome to expand. But no such project could be undertaken today; that vast swamp would be protected as wetlands.

When John Pozsgai – an emigrant from communist Hungary – tried to improve some property he found this out. After buying a former junkyard and clearing away the thousands of tires that littered it, Pozsgai put clean topsoil on his lot in Morrisville, PA. For this, the 57-year-old mechanic was sentenced to three years in prison and $200,000 in fines, because his property was classified as wetlands by the federal government.

After ordering a bureaucrat to “get the Hell off my property,” Pozsgai was arrested, handcuffed, and jailed on $10,000 bail. Quickly tried and convicted, Pozsgai’s brutal sentence will – said the prosecutor – “send a message to the private landowners, corporations, and developers of this country about President Bush’s wetlands policy.”

John Pozsgai has a different view: “I thought this was a free country,” he told The Washington Post.

RUBBISH: In Palo Alto, California, citizens are ordered to separate their trash into seven neatly packaged piles: newspapers, tin cans (flattened with labels removed), aluminum cans (flattened), glass bottles (with labels removed), plastic soda pop bottles, lawn sweepings, and regular rubbish. And to pay high taxes to have it all taken away.

In Mountain Park, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, the government has just ordered the same recycling program, increased taxes 53% to pay for it, and enacted fines of up to $1,000, and jail terms of up to six months, for scofftrashes.

Because of my aversion to government orders, my distrust of government justifications, and my dislike of ecomania, I have always mixed all my trash together. If recycling made sense – economically and not as a sacrament of Gaia worship – we would be paid to do it.

For the same reason, I love to use plastic fast- food containers and non-returnable bottles. The whole recycling commotion, like the broader environmental movement, has always impressed me as malarkey. But I was glad to get some scientific support for my position.

Professor William L. Rathje, an urban archaeologist at the University of Arizona and head of its Garbage Project, has been studying rubbish for almost 20 years, and what he’s discovered contradicts almost everything we’re told.

When seen in perspective, our garbage problems are no worse than they have always been. The only difference is that today we have safe methods to deal with them, if the environmentalists will let us.

The environmentalists warn of a country covered by garbage because the average American generates 8 lbs. a day. In fact, we create less than 3 lbs. each, which is a good deal less than people in Mexico City today or American 100 years ago. Gone, for example, are the 1,200 lbs. of coal ash each American home used to generate, and our modern packaged foods mean less rubbish, not more.

But most landfills will be full in ten years or less, we’re told, and that’s true. But most landfills are designed to last ten years. The problem is not that they are filling up, but that we’re not allowed to create new ones, thanks to the environmental movement. Texas, for example, handed out 250 landfill permits a year in the mid-1970s, but fewer than 50 in 1988.

The environmentalists claim that disposable diapers and fast-food containers are the worst problems. To me, this has always revealed the anti-family and pro-elite biases common to all left-wing movements. But the left, as usual, has the facts wrong as well.

In two years of digging in seven landfills all across America, in which they sorted and weighed every item in 16,000 lbs. of garbage, Rathje discovered that fast-food containers take up less than 1/10th of one percent of the space; less than 1 % was disposable diapers. All plastics totalled less than 5%. The real culprit is paper – especially telephone books and newspapers. And there is little biodegradation. He found 1952 newspapers still fresh and readable.

Rather than biodegrade, most garbage mummifies. And this may be a blessing. If newspapers, for example, degraded rapidly, tons of ink would leach into the groundwater. And we should be glad that plastic doesn’t biodegrade. Being inert, it doesn’t introduce toxic chemicals into the environment.

We’re told we have a moral obligation to recycle, and most of us say we do so, but empirical studies show it isn’t so. In surveys, 78% of the respondents say they separate their garbage, but only 26% said they thought their neighbors separate theirs. To test that, for seven years the Garbage Project examined 9,000 loads of refuse in Tucson, Arizona, from a variety of neighborhoods. The results: most people do what they say their neighbors do – they don’t separate. No matter how high or low the income, or how liberal the neighborhood, or how much the respondents said they cared about the environment, only 26% actually separated their trash. The only reliable predictor of when people separate and when they don’t is exactly the one an economist would predict: the price paid for the trash. When the prices of old newspaper rose, people carefully separated their newspapers. When the price of newspapers fell, people threw them out with the other garbage.

We’re all told to save our newspapers for recycling, and the idea seems to make sense. Old newspapers can be made into boxes, wallboard, and insulation, but the market is flooded with newsprint thanks to government programs. In New Jersey, for example, the price of used newspapers has plummeted from $40 a ton to minus $25 a ton. Trash entrepreneurs used to buy old newspaper. Now you have to pay someone to take it away.

If it is economically efficient to recycle – and we can’t know that so long as government is involved – trash will have a market price. It is only through a free price system, as Ludwig von Mises demonstrated 70 years ago, that we can know the value of goods and services.

[…]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/anti-enviro.html

From his priceless ‘Rockwell’s Anti-Environmentalist Manifesto’

Tom Chivers the Telegraph.co.uk’s “Strategic Events Editor”, ‘science nerd and pedant’ startles us by the stupidity of his unintelligent and pedestrian twaddle on UFOs:

Marvellous. An “American professor” has called for UFOs and other “unexplained phenomena” to be a university subject.

Science IS marvellous… what is your problem?

It’s in the US, not in Britain, mercifully,

Properly executed Scientific method not being practiced in the UK is a good thing?

although with our excellent range of pseudoscientific BSc options you feel it’ll only be a matter of time (the University of Westminster’s course in “Vibrational Medicine” is a case in point).

I smell a Saganite, Shostlackite skeptic. And it smells BAD.

I’ve put the words “American professor” in inverted commas, not because he isn’t really American or really a professor, but because it’s a direct quote from the news story. It’s a funny thing that being a professor – of any subject, at any university – seems to make you an authority on anything at all.

In the same way that a “Strategic Events Editor” makes you an expert on Science. I guess.

So Prof Philip Haseley, a professor of anthropology at the Niagara County Community College in New York State, is now held up as an expert on alien life.

He at least, appears to be a real scientist, which is quite different to a skeptic; skeptics are not scientific, they are religious fanatics in the cult of Science. This cult of science has its own dogma, its high priests and rabid followers, just like Tom Chivers, who is, apparently, a fully paid up member.

Let’s be clear: I’m not saying a belief in alien life per se is ridiculous. The debate over whether or not we are alone in the universe is huge and ongoing.

That debate is over; haven’t you heard?

The most famous tool we have is the Drake Equation,

Here comes the dogma!

which – using estimated figures like how many stars there are in the universe, how quickly they’re formed, how many planets they have on average, how many of those planets could support life (and how many of those then do), and so on – attempts to work out how many extraterrestrial civilisations we might, in principle, be able to communicate with.

One set of current figures puts that number at two, but that is highly controversial; a few minor tweaks to the estimated inputs can easily raise it as high as 20,000 or as low as 0.000065, which would imply that we are almost certainly alone in our stellar neighbourhood. This continuing argument is the basis of SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, which for 50 years has scanned the skies for signals which could only come from intelligent life (and there is, of course, a further argument over what that means).

Now lets hear from an actual, real scientist:

“Drake’s Brave Guess”. He waxed poetic about the Drake Equation, originated 45 years ago by radio astronomer Frank Drake (now co-director of the SETI Institute) which supposedly is a scientific approach to determining the number of civilizations in the galaxy capable of sending radio signals. The idea is that, if we just keep listening, we will make the great discovery that man is not alone in the galaxy. The reasoning is a great example of pseudo-science. The primary reason for the article was the fact that the new Allen Telescope Array with 42 dishes, each 20 feet in diameter, is just going on line at Hat Creek in Northern California.

Eventually there will be many more dishes. He really seems to believe the quaint notion that our best systems are on a par with alien civilizations’ best capabilities apparently assuming they would not have improved in what could easily be the billion years during which such systems have been around. I was using a slide rule 50 years ago. I don’t anymore. A laser printer is not just a better IBM Selectric Typewriter. Atomic bombs are not just bigger 10 ton block busters that were used earlier in WW 2.

Of course Shostak doesn’t mention that Hat Creek can’t tune into Southern sky alien radio transmitters,even assuming they are still transmitting using very old, for them, technology. In the “Zeta Reticuli Incident” by Terence Dickinson, which discusses Marjorie Fish’s very exciting research on the Betty Hill star map, it is noted that many sun like stars in the neighborhood can only be seen from below the equator.

Shostak presents the Sacred Drake equation and then plays dartboard physics to try to come up with values for such things as on what fraction of planets life develops; on what fraction of those intelligence develops; and on what fraction of those the ability to send radio signals develops and perhaps most important, the lifetime of a civilization.. Considering that we have data for some of these factors from one planet around one star in a galaxy of a few hundred Billion stars, one can see that this is just a mite of a stretch, a rather huge extrapolation. The galaxy may be 13 Billion years old and the sun is only about 4.5 billion years old. But Zeta 1 and Zeta 2 Reticuli, just 39 light years away, are a billion years older than the sun and just down the street.

[…]

http://www.theufochronicles.com/2006/06/drake-equation-by-stanton-t-friedman.html

My emphasis. Quoting Stanton Friedman is not an appeal to authority by the way, it is simply quoting facts. Here are some more facts about the Drake Equation:

Cast your minds back to 1960. John F. Kennedy is president, commercial jet airplanes are just appearing, the biggest university mainframes have 12K of memory. And in Green Bank, West Virginia at the new National Radio Astronomy Observatory, a young astrophysicist named Frank Drake runs a two week project called Ozma, to search for extraterrestrial signals. A signal is received, to great excitement. It turns out to be false, but the excitement remains. In 1960, Drake organizes the first SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) conference, and came up with the now-famous Drake equation:

N x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x fL = ?

Where N is the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy; fp is the fraction with planets; ne is the number of planets per star capable of supporting life; fl is the fraction of planets where life evolves; fi is the fraction where intelligent life evolves; and fc is the fraction that communicates; and fL is the fraction of the planet’s life during which the communicating civilizations live.

This serious-looking equation gave SETI a serious footing as a legitimate intellectual inquiry. The problem, of course, is that none of the terms can be known, and most cannot even be estimated. The only way to work the equation is to fill in with guesses. And guesses — just so we’re clear — are merely expressions of prejudice. Nor can there be “informed guesses.” If you need to state how many planets with life choose to communicate, there is simply no way to make an informed guess. It’s simply prejudice.

As a result, the Drake equation can have any value from “billions and billions” to zero. An expression that can mean anything means nothing…

In the case of the Drake equation, we wind up with a formula that would be science if the values were known, but they aren’t so it doesn’t tell us anything. They may claim to use conservative estimates in their calculations, but if the value has no known basis then there’s no good reason to suggest the “guesstimate” is conservative or wildly optimistic. Of course, looking for ET to call home, or Earth, is not that serious a question so we cut the SETI folks some slack even though they are spending taxpayer money.

[…]

http://www.terrycolon.com/4features/quasi.html

And by the way SETI SHOULD be closed down, not only because it is junk science, but because it is being funded with stolen money. They should be cut no slack whatsoever, they should just be CUT.

But I digress.

But even if we assume the 20,000 figure, the nearest alien civilisation would probably be about 1,500 light years from Earth. So what Professor Haseley is proposing we take seriously is the following:

All true scientists take everything seriously. It is precisely the same sort of mocking and illogical posture that ‘scientists’ in the 1800’s took when they shouted down the real scientists who proposed that meteorites came from space.

1) That one or more alien civilisations have either developed vastly faster-than-light propulsion systems or flown for a minimum of 1,500 years across space to find us

This argument is faulty. First of all, it is like arguing that the only way to cross the atlantic in three hours is by building a boat that travels at twice the speed of sound. You do it in a plane, not a boat. There are probably many ways of travelling long distances that have nothing to do with the holy laws of physics (thou canst not travel faster than the speed of light. To say so is HERESY!). victims of such experimentation. It would look inexplicable, unfathomable, terrifying. It would leave marks, and of course, your fellow polar bears would say you were insane when you recounted the story. If polar bears could talk.

They’re big claims. And, as Carl Sagan said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

ALL HAIL SAINT SAGAN, SAGE OF SCIENCE, SOOTHSAYER, SKEPTIC, SAVIOUR – PARAGON OF REASON AND OUR GUIDING LIGHT!

And there is no such evidence.

That is a lie. One out of three.

The trouble with the whole field of “UFOlogy” is that it relies on a logical fallacy. “You can’t explain this photograph/video/experience”, say the UFOlogists, “therefore aliens did it.”

That is another lie. Two out of three.

It’s reminiscent of creationist logic – “you can’t explain this chemical pathway/complex organ/unfound fossil, therefore God did it”, and like creationist logic it cheapens what it wants to promote.

And yet another lie. Three for three.

It is a weak and attenuated religion that hides God in a dwindling supply of feeble, unexplained details, instead of seeing God in the whole glory of the universe; and it is a sad misrepresentation of the serious and important search for alien life to reduce it to conspiracy theory and nonsense.

I don’t know Prof Haseley, or the Niagara County Community College. Maybe the course will be sceptical and scientific. But I think the really interesting university course – and one more appropriate for a professor of anthropology – would be one examining why humanity has such a powerful urge to believe that they have seen ET. What is it in our psyche that needs to know we are not alone?

[…]

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tomchivers/100007612/a-degree-course-in-ufology-cheapens-the-real-search-for-alien-life/

Here is an interesting question; how would a “Strategic Events Editor” recommend the release of information relating to the reality of UFOS as alien spacecraft, so that the minimum number of people goes insane when the trigger is pulled?

We may never get the answer to that one, but one thing is for sure, this particular “Strategic Events Editor” does not have the intellectual capacity to design that programme.

Another classic example of weak mindedness, poor logic, religious dogma masquerading as science and ostrich posturing.

Finally, science is not something that can be ‘cheapened’, at least, not in the minds of people who actually have an understanding of how science works.

The scientific method can be applied to anything. Your personal prejudices, deeply held superstitions, religious beliefs and childish thinking have no effect on what is and is not true. If someone is applying the scientific method to a subject that offends you, science is not in any way cheapened. This is the language of the religious fanatic; what this man is really saying is that studying UFOs is blasphemy and that the people who are doing it are fit only for ridicule and then excommunication.

The history of science is littered with this sort of bad behaviour:

• Arrhenius (ion chemistry)
• Alfven, Hans (galaxy-scale plasma dynamics)
• Baird, John L. (television camera)
• Bakker, Robert (fast, warm-blooded dinosaurs)
• Bardeen & Brattain (transistor)
• Bretz J Harlen (ice age geology)
• Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan (black holes in 1930)
• Chladni, Ernst (meteorites in 1800)
• Crick & Watson (DNA)
• Doppler (optical Doppler effect)
• Folk, Robert L. (existence and importance of nanobacteria)
• Galvani (bioelectricity)
• Harvey, William (circulation of blood, 1628)
• Krebs (ATP energy, Krebs cycle)
• Galileo (supported the Copernican viewpoint)
• Gauss, Karl F. (nonEuclidean geometery)
• Binning/Roher/Gimzewski (scanning-tunneling microscope)
• Goddard, Robert (rocket-powered space ships)
• Goethe (Land color theory)
• Gold, Thomas (deep non-biological petroleum deposits)
• Gold, Thomas (deep mine bacteria)
• Lister, J (sterilizing)
• T Maiman (Laser)
• Margulis, Lynn (endosymbiotic organelles)
• Mayer, Julius R. (The Law of Conservation of Energy)
• Marshall, B (ulcers caused by bacteria, helicobacter pylori)
• McClintlock, Barbara (mobile genetic elements, “jumping genes”, transposons)
• Newlands, J. (pre-Mendeleev periodic table)
• Nottebohm, F. (neurogenesis: brains can grow neurons)
• Ohm, George S. (Ohm’s Law)
• Ovshinsky, Stanford R. (amorphous semiconductor devices)
• Pasteur, Louis (germ theory of disease)
• Prusiner, Stanley (existence of prions, 1982)
• Rous, Peyton (viruses cause cancer)
• Semmelweis, I. (surgeons wash hands, puerperal fever )
• Steen-McIntyre, Virginia (southwest US indians villiage , 300,000BC)
• Tesla, Nikola (Earth electrical resonance, “Schumann” resonance)
• Tesla, Nikola (brushless AC motor)
• J H van’t Hoff (molecules are 3D)
• Warren, Warren S (flaw in MRI theory)
• Wegener, Alfred (continental drift)
• Wright, Wilbur & Orville (flying machines)
• Zwicky, Fritz (existence of dark matter, 1933)
• Zweig, George (quark theory)

and the very least we can expect from people with even one brain cell is caution when ridiculing a scientist. Not only does it serve no purpose, but you might just find yourself having to eat your hat.

Richard Dawkins has hatched a plot to arrest the head of a sovereign state. We are talking about the Pope, who is the head of state of the Vatican:

Vatican City /?væt?k?n ?s?ti/ (help·info), officially the State of the Vatican City (Italian: Stato della Città del Vaticano, pronounced [?sta(?)to del?a t?i?t?a del vati?ka(?)no]), is a landlocked sovereign city-state whose territory consists of a walled enclave within the city of Rome, the capital city of Italy. It has an area of approximately 44 hectares (110 acres) (0.44 km2), and a population of just over 800.

Vatican City is a city-state that came into existence in 1929. It is distinct from the Holy See, which dates back to early Christianity and is the main episcopal see of 1.147 billion Latin and Eastern Catholic adherents around the globe. Ordinances of Vatican City are published in Italian; official documents of the Holy See are issued mainly in Latin. The two entities even have distinct passports: the Holy See, not being a country, only issues diplomatic and service passports; the state of Vatican City issues normal passports. In both cases the passports issued are very few.

The Lateran Treaty in 1929, which brought the city-state into existence, spoke of it as a new creation (Preamble and Article III), not as a vestige of the much larger Papal States (756-1870) that had previously encompassed central Italy. Most of this territory was absorbed into the Kingdom of Italy in 1860, and the final portion, namely the city of Rome with a small area close to it, ten years later, in 1870.

[…]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_City

The supremely deluded Dawkins and his followers object to living in a society where the people who rule over them use religion as the basis of the law making. Specifically, they are talking about monsters like Ruth Kelly, Roman Catholic with four children, member of Opus Dei, being in a position to create laws that they have to obey, set school curricula etc etc. They want to replace the de facto theocracy with a completely secular state, where religion has absolutely no influence or place.

The error that Dawkins and the other shrill and irrational types like him make is that they are concerning themselves with the wrong problem.

The problem with people being religious is not that they use their religious convictions to control others, but that there is a state in the first place that provides them with the power to control.

Dawkins’ partner in crime Christopher Hitchens, neocon, lover of the good life, is a to the bone statist. He is way beyond help, and it is a waste of electrons discussing him.

Dawkins on the other hand, claims to be a scientist. Any properly thinking scientist would by now have come to the correct conclusion that the state itself is the problem when it comes to religion ‘being the bane of humanity’. He should have reasoned by now that democracy can be used by any religious person, Roman Catholic, Muslim, Buddhist, all of whom will bring their terrifying brand of thinking to the levers of the machine. In order to be free of these deluded people, you need to have no machine at all, or at the very least, a machine with a lever the size of a fly’s leg, so that no matter who has their hands on it, they cannot pump their religious poison into the minds of children and force their religious laws upon unwilling citizens.

Then there is the matter of the logic in arresting the Pope. This is like singing a song to put out a fire, or holding a candle lit vigil to stop a war. Arresting the Pope will do nothing to solve Dawkins’ problem of the power of religion over people. Even if the Pope is put in prison, the Bishops will simply elect a new one, and lo and behold, in a puff of smoke, there will be another Pope!

More than that, Dawkins now has billions of people wishing that he was dead, and many others openly calling him a coward for not attacking Islamic figureheads; of course, he doesn’t attack Muslims because he knows that they will hunt him down and cut his head off for the slightest provocation. You could fairly conclude that Dawkins is just a crass publicity seeker, but he does highlight a crucial problem, albeit in an oblique way – the problem of the state.

I for one, find the idea of a state run by ANYONE highly distasteful, and a state run by the likes of Dawkins to be the worst of all possible states. Here we have a man, who, because he cannot get his way, is willing to personally use violence against the Pope. Imagine this monster and his legions of psychopathic devotees at the controls of the entire apparatus of the state!

Imagine how they would react to the idea (for example) that people have the right to refuse vaccination. They would without any hesitation, order the rounding up of all people who have not been vaccinated, frog march them to prison hospitals where the poisons would be injected under the restraints of leather straps. Of course, these people would be easily rounded up, because people like Richard Dawkins would have no hesitation in putting everyone in a national database where every fact about you is held; after all, they are not deluded by religion, they are clear thinking scientists who have logic and the laws of science as their only guide… they cannot by definition be wrong. Sounds a bit like the ‘heroes’ in this film.

For all their mass murder, child raping, stealing, brainwashing, currency counterfeiting insanity, Roman Catholics under restraint are greatly preferable to Richard Dawkins and his ilk. And I say greatly only because compared to the number 0, 1 is a great amount. A stateless space is of course, millions of times more preferable to a state run by Roman Catholics.

Richard Dawkins, if he really wants to be free of the influence of religion, should embrace Libertarianism.

The ethics of Libertarianism are not derived from religion. Its implementation produces the most natural and efficient spontaneously ordered, stable and just society possible. It is in formulation and by its nature, completely scientific and simultaneously absolutely human, since it is based on the reality of what a human being is.

Libertarianism allows everyone to believe whatever they like, whilst preventing anyone from forcing their beliefs on others. That means atheists cannot tell the religious how to live and what to think, and the religious cannot tell others what to do or think. It is literally the perfect solution to everyone’s problems, including the economic ones; true Scientists everywhere should be Austrians, because Austrian Economics is a science; any scientist who believes that value can be created out of nothing (fractional reserve banking, fiat currency) is nothing more than an alchemist.

But you know this!

It is amateurs who have one big bright beautiful idea that they can never abandon. Professionals know that they have to produce theory after theory before they are likely to hit the jackpot. Francis Crick

A student once asked me, “Dr. Pauling, how do you go about having good ideas?” and I answered: “You have a lot of ideas and you throw away the bad ones.” Linus Pauling.

Wow! That Copenhagen package really worked. Global warming has been dramatically reversed. In fact, if Al Gore could see his way to turning the heat back up just a little, most of us would be deeply appreciative…

“Climate science” is the oxymoron of the century. There is not a city, town or hamlet in the country that has had its weather conditions correctly forecast, over periods as short as 12 hours, during the past week. This is the “exceptionally mild winter” that the climate change buffoons warned us would occur as a consequence of global warming. Their credibility is 20 degrees below zero.

Yet nothing shames them, nothing persuades them to come out of the bunker with their hands high and “fess up”. Patronisingly fobbing off the public with fabricated excuses has become second nature to them. Latterly they have been concocting alibis about the Gulf Stream to explain Britain’s Arctic conditions. Uh-huh? Is it the Gulf Stream that has frozen the Vistula and given Poland a temperature of –25C? Is it the Gulf Stream that has caused the worst blizzards in Beijing since 1951?

The entire Northern Hemisphere is frozen. The world looks like a Christmas pudding with icing on the top. That is completely normal, part of the random climate fluctuations with which our ancestors were familiar. Yet fraudulent scientists have gained millions of pounds by taking selective samples of natural climate change, whipping up a Grande Peur and using it to advance the cause of world government, state control and fiscal despoliation of citizens.

2010 should be the year when all that ends. It is time for Zero Tolerance of AGW fraudsters and their political masters. It is time to say: Green taxes? We won’t pay them. Nor will we vote for or permit to remain in office any politician or party that supports the AGW fraud. This year is one of those rare occasions when we have an opportunity to punish and control our political masters – provided Britons have the will to break with the two-party system.

[…]

Telegraph

My emphasis.

You can start by refusing to pay for the ridiculous and pointless ‘energy efficiency’ certifications required by the EU for anyone who is renting or selling their house.

But why not go all the way? Why not refuse to pay this astronomically large and illegitimate debt that the governments have run up so that a small cabal of bankers can have money transferred to them?

Why not get rid of it all?

We know that we do not need them for anything whatsoever; why not be done with it, with the state, once and for all?

That is the real question. No government in opposition is going to run and be elected on a platform of destroying their own power, even if that is what they should be doing.

The pressures that are mounting in the hearts of every man (as we can read in Gerald Warner’s piece above) are going to cause an explosion (or more accurately an implosion), bringing about the sudden end of the state. There need not be any violence or disruption; just like it happened in South Africa and East Germany, all of a sudden, it will all simply end and everyone will wake up in a very different place. This is coming. It is inevitable. The only thing that is unsure is what the shape of that place will be after it happens.

There is a comment on James Randi’s blog that is just too good to miss.

Those of you interested in science will be well aware of James Randi. He, like the deceased Phillip Klass and the ridiculous James Oberg, are Ostrich Posturers ‘First Class’ when it comes to things that they would simply rather not believe to be true, despite evidence to the contrary.

Now James Randi has committed blasphemy by denying AGW, and has been roasted for it. He is not the only one by the way, to have to suffer this astonishing and shabby behaviour.

I have no sympathy for him; you cannot pick and choose what you want to believe is true in the face of irrefutable evidence and call yourself a rational man, and that is exactly what James Randi has done in the past, and it is similar to what he is doing now by back-pedalling from a standpoint of pure logic on the subject of ‘Climate Change’ and the ‘scientists’ that promote it.

Now for some definitions:

Argument from authority

Argument from authority or appeal to authority is a logical fallacy, where it is argued that a statement is correct because the statement is made by a person or source that is commonly regarded as authoritative. The most general structure of this argument is:

Source A says that p.
Source A is authoritative.
Therefore, p is true.

This is a fallacy because the truth or falsity of the claim is not necessarily related to the personal qualities of the claimant, and because the premises can be true, and the conclusion false (an authoritative claim can turn out to be false). It is also known as argumentum ad verecundiam (Latin: argument to respect) or ipse dixit (Latin: he himself said it).

On the other hand, arguments from authority are an important part of informal logic. Since we cannot have expert knowledge of many subjects, we often rely on the judgments of those who do. There is no fallacy involved in simply arguing that the assertion made by an authority is true. The fallacy only arises when it is claimed or implied that the authority is infallible in principle and can hence be exempted from criticism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

This is the argument used by Eco loons who claim that AGW must be true “because a scientist says so”. Of course, the opposite is also true; just because a scientist says it isn’t true, we cannot accept that it is not true solely on the basis that it is a scientists that says so.

And now to the blog comment, here it is:

——-

What specifically WOULD you accept as evidence of global warming? What evidence science could uncover would you accept as proof that climate change is real?

Point ONE:/b] The appeal to authority fallacy is fully functional here because AGWers have not provided the tiniest piece of EVIDENCE for sustaining their HYPOTHESIS. It has been already falsified many times but religious AGWers still claim “they have evidence”. They are simply mistaking ASSUMPTIONS for evidence. They call “evidence” computer models projections. They are simply their programmer’s opinion. Let’s define it once and for all: GIGO. Models have been failing to project (not to mention “predict”) the last ten years plateau and decline in temperatures as shown in this IPCC AR4 graph has observed temperatures added showing the decline.

They have failed to prove any acceleration increase in sea levels. Actually, sea level increase rate was an average of 2.4 mm/year during the last 300 years, and has progressively reduced to 1.75 and 1.4 mm/year. That’s FACTUAL EVIDENCE.

I need no evidence to know and accept that climate changes, and does it continuously, in fact, it does it four times every year. And has been changing since Earth’s was created as ALL geological and paleoclimatic evidences show.

I have all evidences needed to know that the Earth’s temperatures have risen since the Little Ice Age, and all necessary evidences to know that during the 20th Century temperatures went up 4 times and down another four times, including the present temperature decline, while CO2 levels have risen in a lineal way, which PROVES its lack of correlation with temperatures, that is, that CO2 increases causes temperature increases as claimed by the AGWer’s hypothesis.

I would accept AGW Hypothesis could be right IF someone showed me that CO2 has the ability to increase surface temperatures more than 0.4 W/m2 with a doubling of its atmospheric concentration. Someone that proves to me that CO2 has not logarithmic properties when increasing its concentration levels as shown in Australian astronomer David Archibald’s graph.

Someone who can prove that during the last glacial termination CO2 DID NOT[7B] increase between 600-800 years after temperatures increased, as demonstrated by Monnin et al, (2000), a peer reviewed study published in Science and not refuted until yesterday, which proves that CO2/temperatures correlation is 100% inverse to IPCC and warmers claims, that is, temperatures rise first, CO2 levels follow.

If you can provide me with SOME FACTUAL EVIDENCE, not ASSUMPTIONS, PROJECTIONS, CLAIMS, or press releases, then I will admit AGW is real. Meanwhile, enjoy a proof of why the forcing theory as by the IPCC idea is completely flawed:

——-

I’m lovin it.

And while we are at it, read this marvellous post from the Foresight Institute it has graphs that show

the temperature record as read from this central Greenland ice core. It gives us about as close as we can come to a direct, experimental measurement of temperature at that one spot for the past 50,000 years. As far as I know, the data are not adjusted according to any fancy computer climate model or anything else like that.

so in other words, these are the FACTS, as opposed to FRAUDULENTLY MANIPULATED DATA of the Phil Jones / Piltdown man school. If after reading that page (and everything else that is based on the facts) and you still believe in AGW, you have a problem, just like Phillip Klass, James Oberg, Carl Sagan, James Randi, Seth Schlockstack and all the other religious fanatics and science cultists out there who bury their heads in the sand, plug their ears with their fingers and say ‘LA LA LA LA LA I’M NOT LISTENINNNNNNG!!!!!’.

Finally, this guide to the debating tactics of fake sceptics is something that you need to have in the back of your mind whenever you read any newspaper, blog, blog comment or watch TV News (if you still do that).

At the Gruauniad, on the ‘failure’ of Copenhagen:

Lydia Baker of Save the Children said world leaders had “effectively signed a death warrant for many of the world’s poorest children. Up to 250,000 children from poor communities could die before the next major meeting in Mexico at the end of next year.”

[…]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/18/copenhagen-deal

What the heck?

250,000 children could die next year from Global Warming or ‘Climate Change’?

Just what sort of sick and twisted people are these? Are they really this stupid, deluded and unhinged? If they are not, then they (and the Gruauniad editors who let this tripe go into print) must think that their readers are a bunch of total retards, who will believe any scaremongering alarm words that they print.

No one is going to die between now and the end of 2010 because of AGW or ‘Climate Change’. That is a LIE pure and simple.

Thankfully, the number of people that are believing this type of lie and all the other garbage swirling around this push for world government is getting smaller and smaller by the minute.

Using the thought of children dying to promote AGW is just about as low as you can get. Saying that they are going to die NEXT YEAR because of it is beyond insane.

And while we are at it…

Check out this fantastic blog:

I Love Carbon Dioxide.

Where you will see gems like this:

!!!!

Well meaning, busy people find themselves brainwashed, and everyone is made to suffer because of their gullibility.

In a Libertarian world, where no one can initiate force against anyone else, these brainwashed masses would be rendered harmless; they can believe whatever they like, and protest all they like. Without a violent state to make their irrational, illogical, crackpot wishes come true, it would all be harmless hot air.

The root of the threat from the brainwashed socialist greens is the state. Remove the state, and they become just another freely associating group of people harming no one.