Newtown Anniversary Evokes fear that "They're Coming to Get Our Guns"

On the day that Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot point blank in the head, and 19 people were shot and 6 died, the ThinkTank-ocracy's rapid response spin team laid groundwork for the three years that have followed, of preemptive strikes against anyone who might claim any connection between guns and killing. I observed some of this rapid response brainstorming myself.

The Mystery of Electricity, according to a Home-schooling Textbook.

Something that showed up on my facebook page. I'm just sort of getting the hang of this facebook stuff.

The 1,300 Page Bill that Nobody Has Read (i.e. Immigrant Reform or s744)

I've been reading, and listening to "The 1,300 Page Bill that Nobody Has Read".  As you may have heard, this is how House Speaker John Boehner referred to the Immigrant reform bill.  I'd like to briefly point out a few things, and provide a link to a downloadable audio version of the bill you could listen to in your car in about 16 hours.  Time doesn't permit me to do nearly as polished a job as I'd like, and I'm very late in the news cycle as it is, but over the weekend I hope to make substantial improvements

Jefferson said "we the people" must know enough to govern ourselves - or be unfree

Someone will accumulate enough power to dominate our lives unless we constantly seek to prevent that.  Even it this sounds impossible - we have to select and persuade people smarter and more competent than most of us to work to keep us all free and, yes, to work for the general welfare (as noted in the Constitution).

"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."

--Thomas Jefferson to W. Jarvis, 1820.

Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile, Black Swans, etc.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb has written a trilogy of books about the sort of human tendencies (and/or tendencies of our culture) that helped  bring about the financial meltdown and the current recession.

Feel free to order from these links. Doing so will help support Truthology 101 / Practical Epistemology

The kernel of truth in postmodernism

The kernel of truth in postmodernism, with its obsession with the modern "gaze" and "master narratives" is, if you look at the world from a Gods-eye point of view (as the universal observer as opposed to just you - in whatever weak position you happen to be in) -- whatever solutions you may think of to the worlds problems will tend to start with "STEP 1: Get control of everything".  Step 2 may be "Nationalize all wealth", or it may be "Reduce government to the functions of preventing crime and enforcing contracts", but you will never get to step 2, but be stuck making a mess of step 1 forever.

On Smart Division of Labour in a Propaganda Enterprise

 Here is an email I wrote to a historian friend in February 2012 concerning the current (back then) "last nail in the coffin of the AGW Hoax"

I've never seen a time when so many normal seeming people readily swallow so much totally unjustified and worthless nonsense.  My mother showed me a letter to the editor of her newspaper which started out characterizing Obama as a Marxist ex-street hustler and was telling me it had some good points, and not blinking at the crazy characterization.

I had one insight the other day when my wife passed me an article which seemed to say that a credible climatologist had shown there was no increase in carbon dioxide in the last 150 years.  Ever heard of this? At the time, it was hard to miss in popular "conservative" blogs, where the followup discussions were full of language like "final nail in the coffin of climategate".