An Atheists God Definition and The Importance of Importance:

This definition is derived from several established and commonly accepted definitions so you won't think I just made it up. it starts with a personal god but extends it to be universal. The biggest problem with god is the definition. Every religious tradition has one that's unique in some way, and I suspect they get that way from millennia of interpretations by people who may or may not understand that god is a derived construct like dollars or kilos, and not intrinsic to the world. God is a standard scale of morality, which sounds all heavy but it's beside the point; being that god is an intellectual construction. But even given that and within a single religion, God has so many contradictory attributes that it easily leads to skepticism of the concept, not to mention wars over who's right.

I propose a definition where god is the most basic learned survival mechanism: be good to yourself and the world will be good too (this all takes place inside your head, call it "Heaven"). This includes influencing surroundings to be supportive (without harming anyone), because the coherency of a persons action comes from their previously conceived plan of what they hope to accomplish. By learning from our parents we assume this is the natural state of affairs for the world. But outside that expectation, that is, the "Real World" (call it Earth), is chaos and conflict. EXCEPT possibly where we communicate with other people and creatures and acknowledge their own survival mechanism that operates the same way. Integrating with god in others makes him/her universal. I know this is going to sound vaguely familiar, but god lives (exists) in heaven and cares for you, without god you really won't survive.

This is a survival mechanism because we tend to die without it. People, especially kids, old, and powerless (unimportant) people die without love (a positive self image) or they become rationalistic psychopaths, but both live in make-believe to be happy enough to survive. Creatures without ego become food, but expressing ego can be problematic. Expressing ego will explain the extreme permissions religions allow their gods so that anything is acceptable if it justifies existence so that any critique is only a hindrance to megalomania. If God's jealous and selfish, it's because he's paranoid that his intellectual creations may turn against him and they often do because his chosen, like god, are also insane having been created in each others image (present company excepted of course).

Now I'll divide this god into good & evil:

the evil part is the same god (aka survival mechanism) seen in other creatures watching out for themselves. I kinda suspect the "God the father" of the Christian holy trinity and the infamous "jealous god" is that same aspect because we have to be obsequious to them to survive, but that might be a result of my own experience. Maybe not, lets see; there are people who are raised predominantly by one parent or the other, it's usually cultural. Most kids depend on their mothers for the first few years of their life so that's where they learn self kindness. Western and Abrahamic religions definitely do. Most male groups are oriented around some kind of competitive or profit making enterprise. That is, a unified defense against that aspect of god. Bad stuff like war, hell, & hungry tigers are just a ceremonial representation of the evil or non-survival mechanism that aggression from others presents. Another way to say it is if you want a paying job, you have to talk to the man, & "none may come to the father but by me" (the good aspect). Or: don't insult/attack/kill your employer (or whoever it is), he's just a guy like you & has to deal w/ the same crap & chaos that you do.

OK I'm running this into the ground because I wanted to give it a little enlargement, but it's just gumbo. the meat is in the first paragraph. Um... but wait, first something important:

The importance of importance is important because it's how a people survive in a group and, as a member of that group, assure that the group will defend them as individuals from trivialization and a slippery slope to contempt, desperation, banishment, and death from exposure. It could still be gumbo but if it's plausible to enough people, then it's important (this blog for example*). An individual with group security is better off than say living in a dumpster (people in dumpsters usually are not too important), whereas the pope (who has a special hat) & Dick Cheney (who has a special sneer) are way important. They positioned themselves so that their influence also secures their personal livelihood. See, you have to convince people that you represent something important, having them by the nuts helps too, as does threatening Imminent Domain in exchange for a donation. Check here if you believe gumbo is important. Better yet, write a long paragraph in the comments. The twist comes when considering that everything we say and do is to make someone take us seriously. Gumbo is ok but unremarkable. It'll keep us alive till The Aliens land, but then we'll need a better line if we want to compete.

* Most of the people who follow this blog are FBI shrinks

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Book review: Guns Germs & Steel

(from Wikipedia: Guns Germs & Steel by Jared Diamond)

The book attempts to explain why Eurasian civilizations (including North Africa) have survived and conquered others, while arguing against the idea that Eurasian hegemony is due to any form of Eurasian intellectual, moral, or inherent genetic superiority. Diamond argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies originate in environmental differences, which are amplified by various positive feedback loops.

The prologue opens with an account of Diamond's conversation with Yali, a New Guinean politician. The conversation turned to the obvious differences in power and technology between Yali's people and the Europeans who dominated the land for 200 years, differences that neither of them considered due to any genetic superiority of Europeans. Yali asked, using the local term "cargo" for inventions and manufactured goods, "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?"

Diamond realized the same question seemed to apply elsewhere: "People of Eurasian origin ... dominate ... the world in wealth and power." Other peoples, after having thrown off colonial domination, still lag in wealth and power. Still others, he says, "have been decimated, subjugated, and in some cases even exterminated by European colonialists."

I think the author is overlooking a primary reason that western culture is successful: we don't assign spiritual value to utilitarian things (usually). Specifically, many if not most indigenous societies destroy a persons possessions when they die, and burn or abandon their house because of potential ghost sickness. Industrialized countries don't ascribe to that as a real thing. So an items utility re-use gives succeeding generations a slight edge over preceding ones in the form of an actual example of the design which is typically updated for re-use, and man-hours saved to build it.

Those man hours might not seem like much, but say it takes 2 days to make a rake. The rake could last for 3 or 4 generations. A wagon could last the same but take a month or more to make. If one breaks down during harvest, a neighbors can fill in because the design isn't proprietary. If not, the family or community looses critical resources. A house may take years to build.

Thus the possessions accrue. Industrialized cultures sometimes name cars and have favorite possessions/clothes/tools, but we don't have a process for communicating with them or ritually killing them or identifying/cleansing them when they pick up bad spirits. I heard there are farms in Japan that use tools 300+ yrs old. Likewise for gun collections, antiques, & scientific instruments, they have "value". We sometimes say a house is haunted but people usually continue to live there, and sometimes even have a friendly relationship with the ghost. I admit we accept the possibility of supernatural but there's no physiological process to access it so we don't actually give it authentication. (except maybe burning incense or calling those guys from TV)

Supernatural stuff is usually based on a biological form (symmetrical, mobile, possessing some kind of will to affect things, thus a mind), whereas "things" in the european industrial context, aren't. Some native people believe things take on the spirit of the maker or owner so the owner's spirit is still present in it after they've actually died and been dead for centuries, even though they never knew the person and have no proof of their nature. The possessions are destroyed out of fear of the unknown. In contrast, people from industrial societies often feel honored that their possessions would be useful to succeeding generations, and those generations acknowledge it as homage to their ancestors.

I wouldn't say that this concept is universal or complete, but it is a contributing factor.

 

Ah Primates ...

PSYCH 101

You start with a cage containing four monkeys and inside the cage, you hang a banana on a string, and then you place a set of stairs under the banana. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and climb toward the banana. You then spray ALL the monkeys with cold water. After a while, another monkey makes an attempt. As soon as he touches the stairs, you spray ALL the monkeys with cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it. Now, put away the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new monkey. The new monkey sees the banana and attempts to climb the stairs. To his shock, ALL of the other monkeys beat the crap out of him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted. Next, remove another of the original four monkeys, replacing it with a new monkey. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment--with enthusiasm--because he is now part of the "team.” Then, replace a third original monkey with a new monkey, followed by the fourth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked. Now the monkeys that are beating him up have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs. Neither do they know why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey. Having replaced all of the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys will have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, not one of the monkeys will try to climb the stairway for the banana.

This is a partial reprint from an email by Peggy Chaves

Think of the possibilities for governmental control if they knew of this technique. Start with a few monkies and keep adding them. then turn them loose in the forest to teach other monkies

The people who never won wars

Here's an argument in favor of religion: HogFather (YouTube). Too bad they ran out of money or something. Parts are really good, others kinda lame.

This nice graph doesn't include any history about non believers: Tree of religions. We conclude from this that non-believers are all the same, like those people who never won wars or wrote history. I wonder if organized religion didn't develop from people wanting to justify wars and history, when they knew they were really just folks. Well of course people who didn't have bragging rights wouldn't have much history to write about anyway, but people who did would have to deal with appearing to be hipsters and posers in the eyes of their frowning followers. Unless they were also a 7 foot tall hormonal freak with weapons. Yeah, so except for that case, they say God did it.

But then, after many victorious campaigns against The Losers, They all drink too much or get stung in the heel by a scorpion or something. Pharaoh Khafre, Alexander, Pacal, Genghis Khan, Hitler, Qin Shi Huang. Bummer, but the legend lives so the state is secure for awhile longer till we can get someone else to do it.
Update 18 Feb 2024: (umm, but not Trump or Putin, ok? We don't need them to do it.)

 

Cretaceous Extinction

The Cretaceous extinction is generally agreed to have been caused over several hundred thousand years by a combination of the Deccan traps volcanism in India and the Chicxulub meteor in Mexico, AKA “the K-P extinction”. This post suggests the possibility that survivors had a high tolerance to CO2. OK evidence is thin but plausible, so here’s what I have:

Birds and dinosaurs share a respiratory system that circulates fresh air constantly moving in the same direction, whereas mammals breathe by inhaling and exhaling. Of the two, the constant circulation method is more efficient (think of how efficent our digestive system would be if we had to regurgitate every meal), because air is completely expelled from birds lungs but not from mammalian lungs which always have a reservoir of un-expelled oxygen depleted air that’s high in CO2. Over millions of years mammals evolved a higher tolerance for CO2 than birds (or Dinosaurs). As evidence, I submit that birds don’t keep caged people as indicators of bad air in their coal mines, probably for that reason.

"A small fraction of the Cretaceous bird species survived the impact, giving rise to today's birds. So far, only a single bird species, which has not been named, has been confidently identified from both above and below the K–Pg boundary (it is present in the Maastrichtian Hell Creek Formation and Danian Fort Union Formation). The only bird group known for certain to have survived the K–Pg boundary is the Neornithines (though one Paleogene species, Qinornis paleocenica, may represent a surviving non-neornithine bird) Neornithines may have been able to survive the extinction as a result of their abilities to dive, swim, or seek shelter in water and marshlands. Many species of neornithines can build burrows, or nest in tree holes or termite nests, all of which provided shelter from the environmental effects at the K–Pg boundary. Long-term survival past the boundary was assured as a result of filling ecological niches left empty by extinction of non-avian dinosaurs." (Wikipedia)

The major survivors of the Cretaceous extinction appear to have been small, subterranean dwellers where, like Naked Mole Rats, they had an even higher tolerance to CO2 than usual. Flight doesn't seem to have been a survival trait in this case.

Many surviving Reptile and Crocodile species also nests in burrows, it’s assumed that extinct species did too. Turtles are adept at living in low oxygen environments (underground and underwater).

A theoretical test might be to raise some birds in a high (but not fatal) CO2 environment to see how their breeding capacity fares over time. It's my hypothesis that restricted oxygen will affect foraging ability, thus brood size. High School Nerds: If you want that science fair prize, this is your chance (& let me know what happens). I suggest Button Quail, vs mice because both are cheap, Canaries and Naked Mole rats are not. Some plan should be employed so their effort to access food is adjustable so as to be measurable in relative terms, and so calories might be estimated. Possibly by placing the feeder so they have to work to get to it but can't hang out there to rest.

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An Atheists argument in favor of organized religion

A lot of the objection to religion stems from it’s supporting beliefs and it’s flat denials of contrary proof. Claiming that faith is a virtue regardless of fact. There might be some truth in the teachings but I’ve never been able to get past the hypocrisy, so I couldn’t tell you for sure what that truth is or isn't. A requirement of Faith in defense of false teaching which defends lies speaks poorly of the whole piece.

Similarities between religion and government are more than coincidental. The grand design of both is to provide a friction free social framework and brokers a base that supports leaders. A friction free environment is, in my opinion, the best anyone could hope for in the way of a greater community, and to this end religion is peerless. In the ideal religious community, everyone agrees on protocol, which comes together for the purpose of being good and nothing else, and where sanity is assumed. Civic and Governmental Legal frameworks don’t begin to approach the same effect, and are often inimical to it.

Likewise organized Abrahamic religions are too vested in the limited interest of their organizers. In the interest of fairness they are unfair, in the interest of truth they are untruthful. “The God of Man” demands that the world revolve around the interpretation of scriptures. If some catastrophe happens, it’s God sending a message that people are doing something wrong, but the scripture is never wrong. That's preposterous.

There’s a Buddhist view that the world is never out of balance but an individual’s perception can easily be incomplete. It would seem odd that Yahweh religions developed the enlightenment, the steam engine, the Higgs Boson, (WW2) etc., instead of a Buddhist society with the objectivity to see that people are part of the whole instead of the whole. But that detachment allows objective assessment of ones relationship to the world, so it just doesn’t automatically mean enough to get caught up in it’s physics. Vested interests are identified and critically reviewed.

Here’s a wikipedia article about Bhagat Singh, who wrote Why I am an Atheist in 1930 while waiting to be executed.

The common thread among any group, religious or not, is the supporting community’s assurance that the cause is worthwhile (meaning “productive”). Bhagat Singh felt it was productive even though he was condemned because the greater good of his people was served, even though he didn’t believe in God. Some kind of Supporting Community is critical for almost any action. Hygor Piaget Melo, a physicist at the Federal University of Ceará in Brazil said “When comparing any two cities, the one with more people will typically have a lower suicide rate”. source

That kind of assurance doesn’t just pop up. Lenin had the Proletariat, The Pope has Catholics. The Moonshine Economy was strong even before the American revolution and probably before Harappa. However, confidence that assurance exists is mostly taken on faith.

The average person uses faith because it’s shorthand for the actual reasons, which are typically vague, complicated, and filled with other peoples opinions. “Sure Columbus discovered America. The people who were there already, grew up there so they didn’t discover it. (heh)”

The contrary force that destroys faith, and the second part of this equation, is the force that makes leaders selfish.

Say someone has a good idea. People like it and acknowledge the inventor. The inventor steps up the social ladder to being an authority. They ask him about similar situations and extrapolate the original plan to cover it. The authority manipulates all the attention to get things done, finding in the process that it’s easier if people don’t ask hard questions so he discourages dissent and declares some kind of cliche icon to represent the basic idea, such as a slogan, flag, or idol. The inventor steps further up the social ladder to become a leader. Now he appoints department heads, advisors, and commissars.

He might be a modest, self effacing nerd, but he’s placed in a position where he has to defend the social structure that placed him and depends on his leadership. Without his community’s support, he’d be at the mercy of the opposition. Like Mussolini, he’s basically a slave-puppet to the people who support him. He’s a leader but he’s not free. That dissonance produces stress and excess cortisone, so like Dick Cheney, he becomes calloused to shut out the worry, his security blanket is self indulgence. His advisors are basically in the same situation.

So the seeds of destruction are inherent in the structure. They grow from social mimicry. Hipsterism. Assuming someone else’s truth to be a universal truth. There’s probably a lot of truth in philosophy and religion, but it’s usually indistinguishable from the presentation of the speaker.

Simply put: if it's not yours, you won't recognize it so you have to assume it’s truth based on rumor.
Less Simply put: Awareness which is not socially relevant is subjective by default, though it occupies the greater usage of ones mental CPU. Social awareness is built on a learned verbal description of what's important, which limits what we allow ourselves to know to mostly things which we can verbally communicate. Those sources (social conventions) require trusting someone else's experience over our own, and though that process is the backbone of both fundamentalism and primate society, those sources may still be in error. (An irrefutable example is the process that elected George Bush II. Twice!). Other examples: Historical Figures in literature (wikipedia)

That's not saying social conventions are false, we depend on them for group cohesion. Without them what would music or humor be like? The problem is they cause us to believe someone else’s world model without actually going there to find out.

What would the structure look like without evil hipsters?. Or, what would the seeds do without the structure?

A guess might be that a description of the structure are already biased towards those 2 options when there could be many answers. For example they might not be evil seeds but rather flaws in conception, perhaps another design wouldn’t collapse in the manner predicted by every civilization and known organism.

Well, not every one: A kind of single celled jellyfish called a Sea Grape, first shows up in the fossil record 560 million years ago and apparently they don’t die. Instead, since they’re single celled, they split in two and revert to a juvenile stage. At least some of them do if they don’t get fossilized. (actually, their tracks get fossilized but Sea Grapes don't since they're 99.9 percent water) They coexist because they don't compete for resources. Their populations are kept in check by predators and random catastrophe, but not cell obsolescence. That’s probably not what Chairman Mao Zedong envisioned for China’s cultural revolution, but he only had the honor of leadership and self perpetrating seeds of destruction to work with.

A classic human social structure based on possessions and property values that would also go along with the Sea Grape plan seems far fetched, but it’s commonplace as long as individuals interests aren't vested in mortality. In fact, death could qualify as an evolutionary trait which forces creatures to come up with more durable alternatives to themselves: a family, “the meaning of it all”, society, seeding the galaxies, “God” by any other name.

It's sometimes harsh being atheist. a problem with artificial intelligence is that it has no innate concept of "spirit". Like when a wild animal looks at you and you recognize something. It's possible to write some code so AI acts right and maybe nobody will notice, but without a bunch of conflicting hormones, it will never conquer fear. It'll never be gratified to live up to a social ideal, and it'll never see itself reflected in the wild.

Update July 2026: Lets give an honest round of applause to Pope Leo for clarifing the churches stand on scientific study (techfixated.com)

The Alpha Male

ok, this one is about resolving mankind's biggest problem: the Alpha Male.

Hormones will be the end of us unless we manage them better. Every war has been for the betterment of the people. Most have only temporarily reduced the competition for supreme ruler (the Alpha Male) by thinning the gene pool of the more gullible. The problem with this evolutionary trend is that it selects for the less gullible, since the more gullible are eliminated through conflict. The survivors are those at the ends of the bell curve that have evolved resistance to manipulation.

Therefore, new governing channels must be developed. One channel takes kids and indoctrinates them before they can absorb their parents distrust of manipulating governance (for example the American Indian schools, Chinese state schools, and Islamic Madrasas). Another channel (and sometimes the same) stipulates that obeisance to the government is equal to obeisance to God, and faith is more valid than reason. That one is called "The Lord's Way", don't question The Lord (he won't answer you anyway unless you accept tenuous associations, like figures on toast).

So Alpha climbs from childhood to a position of power and his competitors kneel. As he comes into contact with more ruthless competition, he raises the stakes to become equally ruthless. They torture, he tortures. They get nukes, he gets nukes. They get the Dead Hand Phage, he gets … wait.. um, well, ok we're all doomed anyway. All it takes is one Alpha Male who's a bit more psychopathic than the rest, to prove he's tops forever. Rumor has it they whacked Kennedy because some other Alpha wannabe's thought his response to the Cuban Missile Crisis was more psychopathic than it should have been. A good excuse to get rid of competition, but maybe they were sane, who knows.

The administration of Heavens Mandate is un-questioned because it's God, what are you gonna do. Traditionally explained because humankind are His dream creation and oh definitely not the reverse.

I propose that God the Creator is pretty much defined that way because he's an icon of intellectual territory. So when some representative of our civilization's finest meets those unwashed people from wherever they come from (hillbillies, hippies, gentiles, heathens, brogans, etc), there's no way they can put a prior claim on the territory by claiming gods grace, because they don't know god, because he's defined as undefinable. One is either already chosen or not as a private arrangement among believers so outsiders need not apply. God-the-undefinable is defined as invisible, immutable, eternal, immortal, un-touchable, all knowing, irreducible, the first and ultimate source of creation, bla-bla-bla, but especially better than what YOU got.

Every cultural has a bunch of these icons, and acts like they're private property. When inheritance is important, they're related through blood (Arron, Moses, David and Fatima). The line of succession is proof of grace because it shows good genes, thus gods favor, thus anything they want or do is valid. When rational and wisdom are the best argument, the icons demonstrate those qualities (Mercury, Saturn, Jupiter, Odin, Ra).

Historian Guy Halsall says "The only common factor in defining ethnicity is belief: in the reality of your group and the difference to others" (Halsall, Guy (2008), Barbarian migrations and the Roman West, 376–568, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-43491-2).

The basic idea is to legitimize the "Mandate of Heaven" so when I find a $20 bill, I don't have to give it back because it's a sign of Gods favor.

Actually though, it's a matter of personal investment in the outcome. When confusion and strife drag on for years, everyone has time to develop blinders that keep them from seeing common humanity. That condition is a result of cognitive dissonance, where ideals are compromised and tired souls are bought and sold. In a whirlpool of conflicting meanings: "Gods Favor" means that $20 is mine.

 

Sandalmaking in Bolivia

              In the late '60s I taught sandal making at the Orphanage of Archbishop Daniel Rivero In Santa Cruz de La Sierra, Bolivia. The local Bishop wanted access to free American teachers through Peace Corps Volunteers, so the Father Superior invited me to teach shoemaking. I blithely said "sure, but I'll need to get some experience first". He said "Fine, class starts in a week".

              So I sat in at a shoe repair shop and Sandalaria to learn the trade. There was/is a huge amount of class distinction in Bolivia (think of France in the 1780's with Che Guevara hiding in the bushes). I found I was fairly immune from upper class prejudice, but not from lower classes. The Kolla (Koylla: Quechua highlander) shoe shop could only see me as a white "Patron", and were somewhat contemptuous, but I got the basics anyway. I traded teaching them some phrases in english for learning to make sandals and the art of 19th century Cobblery using lasts, shoe nails, and double stitching with a boar whiskers for needles. They were kind of frustrated with me because I spent more time asking about shoemaking than teaching english. The phrases were things like "how do you do" and "please buy this", and counting to 10 in english, which they could already do.

              I learned to make leather Abarca sandals with rubber tire soles, eventually selling them to support myself on and off for 20 years till nylon cord reinforced tires were replaced with fiberglass and steel reinforcement, which makes wearing them impractical. The reinforcement is hard to cut and a misplaced step, brushing your opposite foot, could cause a serious cut from the saw-like ends of the metal or fiberglass that protrude from the edge. The most durable sandals ever made are Abarcas constructed entirely from rubber tires. People who wear them swear by them, but in my opinion, compared to leather, they dont break in so much as wear out your feet till you get properly callused, but then they last forever. The camposinos (rural folks = red-necks) actually buy used truck tires from the oil companies and filet the usable part from the reinforcing cords into layers like split grain leather. My own opinion is that by the time you get the right calluses, you could have gone barefoot and achieved the same thing, but the convention of shoes is what distinguishes humans and is not to be trifled by reason (though I admit: hookworms find them impenetrable).

              Fitting into local politics at the Orphanage had a steep learning curve. The Father superior was (to put it clearly), a Stiff-Assed Old Son of a Bitch. Everyone called him El Viejito, "The Little Old Man". He was immensely and acutely condescending and authoritarian. His idea of a cultural treat was (rather than take the kids fishing) to play scratchy 1930's records on the PA system of an unaccompanied Argentine opera singer praising Mother Mary, keeping time slapping her palm with a ruler as she shattered wine glasses with her voice.

              El Viejito had personal issues with everyone there and I was no exception. I'd love to feed the fires under him, but wherever he is now, I'm sure he has enough to worry about. In a way, he succeeded as headmaster because opposition to him was a major unifying force between the brothers, students, workers, and neighbors. He survived because he was the father confessor so he knew where the bodies were buried. Any conversation with him was rife with innuendo and the subtile implication of extortion. But I wasn't Catholic, and had no intention of confessing anything to him, so the lack of leverage must have driven him crazy. Whenever there was some disagreement, someone would make a crack about El Viejito and our meagre problems would seem inconsequential.

              To be fair, the Orphanage was supposed to be self supporting and it often wasn't. Not all of the students were orphans, some came from rural families who couldn't commute (no bus system), so they paid for tuition and housing. Various shops facing the street were rented out in partial trade for teaching students those skills (a printer, shoemaker, cabinetmaker, baker). The parish picked up the slack through tithes, and the Viejito's neck was always on the block to make ends meet.

Orphanage of Archbishop Daniel Rivero

              The teacher I replaced as shoemaking instructor was Mamerto Pedrasa, who's secret identity was a National Hero of the Chaco War, and in fact he was. The Father Superior said Mamerto wasn't coming back and I could clean up his shop and use the tools. Everything had rust, nothing worked, the sewing machines were broken, the knives were dull, and the textbooks were from 1920. Mamerto had paper patterns for shoe designs 20 to 50 years old. Some were incomplete and in tatters, so I tossed them. Then a week later Mamerto came home and wanted his old job back. He was kind of miffed that his patterns had been discarded, but he preferred to blame the Father Superior instead of me. There was some schadenfreude between them, each was posturing righteously and silently telling the other "see what YOU caused".

              Mamerto was pretty cool for being as paranoid as he was. I doubt if he's still alive, he would be about 105 in 2013, so now his story can be told without repercussions: He confided in me one afternoon on a bench in the Plaza while Cicadas screamed in the trees overhead like tiny chainsaws.

              It was his driving belief that Paraguay was out to get him for what he did to them in the 1930's while he was a prisoner of war there. Next to us in the plaza was a war monument built over a mass grave. It had a little window displaying a few bleached bones of the martyrs who defended Santa Cruz. I asked if he knew any of the people in the window. He said maybe a few.

              In the Chaco War, the Bolivian high command were (said to be) pompous bureaucrats while the Paraguayans were mostly Guarani farmers. They completely wiped the Bolivians even though Paraguay was out manned, out gunned, and out financed, because of stubbornly obtuse Good-Ol'-Boy Bolivian generals. But German military officers advised both sides, because Adolph Hitler wanted the rumored Oil under the Gran Chaco that they were fighting over, and Paraguay just offered the best deal. Maybe if you're a historian, you could leave me a comment about that. Bolivian stubbornness could also be explained by national historical resentment of colonizers (including the Peace Corp), after The Incas, then Spanish, then German, English and Americans stripped hundreds of tons of gold and silver from the mines in Potosi without saying thanks. Even today there are working Placer mine moonscapes in the Andean foothills North East of Lake Titicaca. Google S 14.33.31, W 69.35.12 . Placer mines are illegal in most countries because they poison the rivers and wash away topsoil.

              Mamerto's company was stranded in the Gran Chaco during the dry season when the Paraguayans cut the Bolivian supply lines. The air temperature was over 100 degF. His company had to split up to forage and lived on Cacao beans (Saint Johns Bread), insects, and raw Iguanas. The only moisture they could get was from ants and lizard blood, so they all became seriously dehydrated, their piss turned black, and many died of thirst. The CO surrendered to save their lives, but was reviled by armchair hawks in Sucre. As POWs they were taken by train to a concentration camp in Paraguay and put to work in support of the Paraguayan's war effort. Before the war, Mamerto had made finely tooled leather shoes and purses for women, so his camp job was to decorate fancy pistol belts for Paraguayan officers. From this position Mamerto decimated the Paraguayan Officers Corp. which earned him so much credit with the Bolivian Military that he could draw on it for the rest of his life. He was more effective than Sargent York or the Red Baron ever were, and his targets were selectively the most critically influential people in the army.

              His assassination technique was to use leather dye and chemicals stolen from the POW camp pharmacy to make mercury iodide, painted on the inside of his pistol belts where they press over the kidneys. He made between 60 and 80 belts all destined for Generals, Captains, and Lieutenants riding horses and sweating in the hot sun. When heated, the chemicals were absorbed through the clothing over their kidneys, their kidneys failed, and they died. The Army kept promoting new officers, who sometimes inherited the pistol belts, and they died too. They knew something was poisoning officers, but no one made the connection to Mamerto. Army officers on both sides came from the more connected classes, so it was actually not unrealistic to think someone might put a vendetta against him if word got back. I asked the Brothers if that was true and they said it was an exaggeration, actually it was more like around 40 or 50 belts.

              I never went to Mamerto's house. He never invited me, and because he was suspicious of almost everyone, I certainly didn't ask. It's not inconceivable that part of the friction between him and El Viejito was because El Viejito tried to exploit that too. I can imagine his house would have been throughly booby trapped and have enough escape routs to satisfy any drug lord, because I found one of his traps inside the shoe shop classroom. The Brothers of LaSalle wouldn't let him keep a gun at the orphanage, so he booby trapped a tall rickety cabinet used for books and leather. In the back of the top shelf Mamerto kept a 1/2 gallon glass jug of sulfuric acid next to a 5 pound cardboard canister of potassium cyanide. When I asked him about it, he explained it was in case commandos showed up unexpectedly, he would tip the cabinet over and duck out the back door into the chapel. The jug and cardboard canister would smash on the floor and mix to release cyanide gas. I said "Ok fine, but tell me before you tip it". He said "They won't come when you're here, you're my guardian angel", because as a Peace Corps Volunteer working for the government of Gringolandia, it was plausible that I had connections which the Paraguayans wouldn't provoke. Mamerto apparently decided to trust me, partly I think because we shared a contempt for the Viejito's hypocrisy (though most everybody except the kids did too) and because I kept his trap secret and didn't blab. But I did squirt glue into the cabinets loose joints when he wasn't there so it wouldn't sway around so easily, and I put wedges under the front legs so it would lean back more against the wall, but they were gone a few days later.

              As I fit into the schedule at the orphanage, it became apparent that Mamerto didn't do much, he was in fact also a genius at finding ways to not do anything. His job was mostly guaranteed for being a hero, so he could screw off whenever he thought maybe the hit men were closing in. He would be equal to Wally, from Scott Adam's comic strip Dilbert. I really liked the guy, because everyone believed he was loco, but nobody would dare to cross him. The term "Mad as a Hatter", like the one in Alice in Wonderland was because of the effects of Mercury, and Mamerto had used it a lot. His sewing machines had been unusable for years, because the springs were broken, and the parts were obsolete. He worried that he'd have to perform when I replaced them with rubber strips so something in the shop would work. After a few weeks though, Mamerto exerted himself to the position of class instructor. I think partially to reascend from the second place he was forced to take until it became apparent that I didn't know zip about shoemaking and couldn't seriously rock the boat.

              To be useful, I tried to develop their market w/ wallets and "Hand Stitched Trinkets Made By Orphans" that would sell to people w/ money, like tourists. I made a display case and got some of the brothers to wear their white robes to present it to the concessions people at the airport. The brothers liked the case as a "thing" that they could refer to to prove their worthiness. But like giving a Harley to a 4 yr old, the underlying function was beyond their actual need. So nobody bothered to keep it supplied with merchandise, because nobody had a car, taxis were expensive, and if everyone did nothing as a team, the bar for effort would never be raised. Any effort of mine was mostly unnecessary though because my presence had accomplished what the Viejito had set out to do which was to keep the shoe shop running and kick Mamerto's butt back into gear.

              I truly liked Mamerto, I hope he and his girlfriends get a shrine in the Bolivian Hall of Fame. He was probably the most effective operator the Bolivians had in that war. Also, since his secret is out and Chaco War is long over, maybe the Paraguayan government could ask around for any of those pistol belts that might still be kept as family heirlooms. They could still be lethal.

Note: I can't talk about the current structure, but the American Peace Corp no longer functions the way did in the '60s. That's probably a good thing.

              Here's another Peace Corp Story.

Psychosis and weed:

There have been studies (like this one) that cite statistical evidence of a connection between dope and crazy.

One of the defining characteristics of smoking marijuana is getting spaced and enjoying the head trips. It's an easy way to hypothesize outcomes because it's easy to focus and hold ideas or feelings so they can be applied or not depending on the course of the trip. It usually means rationalizing how things are pretty much ok, so that if anything adverse comes up, it can be also seen in that light.

The psychosis part is a result of accepting a plausibility as fact. (the government is behind it) If a person is stoned, plausibility can be assumed to be fact for the development of hypothesis with little emotional stress. Like examining problems from behind a barrier and poking them with a selection of tools. But once an unproven concept is absorbed as fact and acted upon, the resulting behavior can be indistinguishable from psychosis.

However there's a gradient difference between clinical psychosis and weed psychosis. it stems from the motivation to overlook facts. Clinical psychosis can be initiated by some kind of emotional trauma like Batman seeing his folks getting whacked in front of some theater, as opposed to our pothead deciding orange marmalade is tastier than blackberry jam because he likes bright colors.

Psychosis is loosely defined as a break from reality. This feat can be accomplished by deciding to believe that something which is otherwise provably false, is instead true. For example "Jesus is the only begotten son of god, born of a virgin and rose from the dead after 3 days" and "The universe and everything in it was created in 6 days". There I go dumping on the Church again, I don't mean to do that, the Church fills many important social functions that government and other institutions can't begin to approach. But it's just so darn easy and psychotic behavior is one defining aspect of true believers: they gave their souls to Jesus.
People don't usually to do things like that without ulterior motives, it just feels wrong. One way to get around that feeling is through social pressure: "Hipsterism is cool", "Join the Marines", "There is no other God but Allah and Mohamed is his prophet", Join the YMCA because Jesus loves you". Subliminal belief is usually established by assuming that A must be true if B is true, then not addressing the truth of B just because it helps both make sense. That's called delusion.

There are also studies which indicate that self delusion is a common way of coping with evidence that conflicts with previous beliefs. It's simply not believed. The new evidence is doubted without confidence in the source ("since the collapse of the World Trade Center was an inside job, of course the govt would deny it"). Here the credibility of the government is questioned, with doubts supported by associated events. (corruption, questionable voting procedures, dismissive officials in charge of investigations, the Vice President in charge of air control at the time, conflicting oil interests, dust analysis showing the presence of finely ground iron oxide used in thermite explosives, the list is much longer).

Ok, so get a grip, and choose a side if you dare. If you think information is lacking: toke up, the worst that could happen is you'll decide you don't care.

Here: read this too: Pot Addicts .

The latest new age science & stuff

OK Folks, step right up. This is the latest new age science & stuff.

This is a description of how it would be physically possible for planet positions and movements to affect peoples perception of events, which is an underlying premise of astrology.
Given that
1) Gravitational Waves (not Gravity Waves) are scientifically hypothesized and shown to be mathematically plausible, for example Gravitational waves carry energy away from their sources leading to orbital decay which can be measured. However no proof of their existence has yet been demonstrated.
19 June 2014:
Yay, they exist! um ... or maybe not
11 February 2016 YES DEFINITELY, for sure.

Given that
2) one of the most outstanding breeding cues for people, amphibians, & at least a dozen families of marine organisms: is the moon. Police & hospital entries pick up on the full moon. And it can be shown that there actually is an etiological path to our awareness through bacteria, many of which change behavior according to the position of the sun, moon and horizon (aka time of day).

Life on earth has been around for 4 billion years. During that time it evolved ways to recognize cues to optimize life functions, like when to release spores or breed, estivate, migrate, sleep, wake, etc. In doing so, cells and bacteria change their protein arrangement to fit the occasion, for example to become mobile, inert, permeable, toxic & so forth.

The resulting bio-community lives off it's constituents in such a way that one bugs toxin is anothers ambrosia and chemical defense or optimization strategies make World of Warcraft and Pokemon seem feeble in contrast. Each of those strategies affects it's environment somehow or they wouldn't exist, and often as not they have unplanned side effects on other nearby bugs or cells.

Vertebrates (like humans) are about 70% independent and semi-independent bacteria/fungus/viruses, and 30% dedicated host cells. The host cells depend on these symbiotic bacteria and have digestive systems to feed, farm, cull, & harvest them for nutrients. Sometimes bacterial chemical byproducts (for example from Toxoplasma gondii) have effects on the host equivalent to drugs (such as alcohol or strychnine) that induce stress, sleep, craving, hallucination, euphoria, or depression. [1]

This hypothesis suggests

an association between the two, that people are also affected by the chemical response to gravitational stimulus of their parasite organisms. These organisms are locked into their life cycles [2] [3] [4] by responding to solar and lunar cycles. Deep sea organisms respond to the moon, such as the sea anemone Allantactis parasitica (Wikipedia) which synchronises its breeding activity with the phases of the moon even when moonlight doesn't penetrate to those depths, gravitational pull does. Why oysters close on the full moon—and more odd lunar effects on animals (National Geographic magazine), this one (Wired.org) is more specific. Some bacteria and other organisms have 24 hr circadian clocks even though they live deep underground (massivesci.com).

There are many people who have no confidence or reason to believe in gravitational (astrological) influences, possibly because those people don't have a microbiome that responds to them. A google search will show biological breeding cycles occurring on practically any time interval from a few hours to a dozen + years (such as with cicadas), but many of these intervals have evolved from predator pressures which are not dependent on any distinct differences between gravitational waves from various sources, like mars or vespa. Gravitational waves are plausibly used by amphibians and bacteria as a timing mechanism to spawn [2], NOT because they inadvertently coincide with lunar/solar cycles as do human menstrual cycles, but because they depend on them lacking other stimulus. There is a phenomenon called spontaneous synchronization, where several random and not so random cycles become synchronized when one is somehow influenced by the other. Also see Synchronization in higher-order networks (sciencedaily.com). Also called Harmonic Resonance. Diharmonic resonance is the same phenomena except where systems become a-synchronous, such as Cicadas and any predator population.

A reasonable question might be: Why Gravitational perception? The same might be asked though of vision, hearing, or magnetic perception like Loggerhead turtles and some birds possess. The Sun & Moons gravity affects water, and biological organisms are mostly water. The traits survival mechanism would be to time a periodical flood of spawn so as to overwhelm any predators by suddenly presenting more offspring than predators could possibly consume. Thus insuring that some will survive but offering nothing between cycles so as to keep predator populations low.

Given the above, it's possible that intestinal organisms could also differ between individuals depending on the time of year they were first obtained. An experiment by Dr. Richard Blumberg of Harvard Univ. showed that mice who were borne in a sterile environment without bacteria of any kind, lacked immunity to certain infections. "Dr. Blumberg and his colleagues found that they could prevent the mice from becoming ill by giving them bacteria while they were still young. However acquiring a microbiome as an adult did not help the rodents." [1] Thus it's possible that whatever kinds of bacteria acquired when young, would be associated with a particular season. This microbiome is acquired through seasonal pollen, rain, dust, mold or whatever, and remains with a person to influence how they respond to changes in gravitation. Though they could just as well respond to other environmental factors. That kind of influence would have the same effect on people as the Astrological Signs, which are personality patterns also associated with seasons. And the variations of individual responses to gravitation could be explained by the differences in seasonal microbiome communities.

One possible test of this hypothesis might be to find women with irregular menstrual cycles and survey them for having been given antibiotics or some other medicine or food which disrupts intestinal flora as young children, probably before the age of one. I'm not about to do such a survey but if the data was already available, it would be interesting to look into it. Also Missing microbes: Antibiotic resistance at birth (wired.com).

1. Studies of the human microbiome yield new insights (NY Times)
2. Amphibians mate on full moon (bbc)
3. Triggers for Warm Water Coral Spawning "Scientists believe three factors trigger the spawning: water temperature, phase of the moon, and time of sunset. The water temperature in August or early September seems to be conducive to the spawning, although scientists don’t know how coral can sense that water temperature. For that matter, they don’t know how coral know the phase of the moon, although the day of the spawning is clearly related to that as well." It's known that though Cold/Deep Water Coral corals spawn on a neap tide (like warm/shallow corals which take advantage of slowed current to allow spawn to be fertilized before being dispersed). that cause would be moot because Deep sea tides don't move as much as a shore tide.
4. Lunar reproductive cycles (Google)
5. The Moon and Coral reef sound ScienceAlert

ok here's another god definition.

Babies are said to be self aware when they distinguish between things they can manipulate and things they can't. For example movements in a mirror. They care because some actions have potential and some don't, and by extension, abstractions where some scenarios have more potential than others. A rat in a tank of water with no way out will drown long before it's muscles expire, it gives up because it sees no potential. Distinguishing potential is the basis for scientific procedure because true things tend to have more potential and the scientific procedure is codification of that discovery process.

I guess the reason for this bog & why I care about the God problem is that 30 years ago I heard a voice tell me that something I needed was in a place I'd never been and didn't believe, but I looked out of curiosity and it was true. I didn't and still don't think it was any deity, and anyone who says otherwise couldn't possibly know because their evidence and definition are both at least second hand. The authority to advise on those things would have to be someone like Pat Robertson, who's completely full of shit, IMHO.

My brother has become interested in the way brains work because his daughter is autistic. He subtly suggests that I'm kidding myself without admitting it (self delusion), like "sometimes we make up stories to explain things we do in such a way that our actions appear to be more socially acceptable, and we won't have to think of ourselves as a bad guy". I'm sure, (Like maybe that time I won the lottery for saving a busload of teenage cheerleader nuns with puppies. So whoever did the Brinks job, machine gunning everyone in sight was just coincidental news). I seriously doubt that because I fully admit taking the tools. So I'm not whitewashing theft, but the circumstances that put me there made think it was something that was "supposed to happen". (still, it only happened because I did it)

Now maybe I subconsciously set that up so that it only appeared to ME to be a "gift" (using a totally outlandish scenario involving disembodied voices and precognition instead of one where somebody just gave me the tools when they recognized my plight. Sure, that's it! They stopped & asked, it seems plausible ... Except they didn't). Actually it makes me wonder what my brother did so that he's familiar with the possibility of self delusion.
I'm sort of relieved that he lives across the ocean (I think) & I seriously doubt that he'd smuggle nukes or anything (... heh). OK, my serotonin levels are back up again. So to continue ...

One of the explanations I've devised goes sort of like this:
Conscious creatures have a field of awareness that surrounds them & usually only extends out as far as one can reach because that's as far as one can verify effect. Samurais believed it goes as far as their weapons reach. Shamans say it goes as far as you can dream. A meditator, like a baby, is first aware of their body and intentionally ignores "distractions" as unreal because those divert awareness. Focused awareness is like a narrow beam spotlight, or a nonverbal non-philosophical hypothesis looking for verification.

According to this link below, I could have learned about the tools from information relayed to me from my future self, who was aware that I needed it, sort of like whats-his-name (Ford Prefect?) in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. because for my future self, the past is a record and he's just remembering his previous need. This would also explain the presence of a voice in my head admonishing me to remember the sequence. When I asked for his identity, he laughed and variously said he was god, the devil, and me. That actually does sound like something I would say, but so far I don't remember giving that advice to myself or anyone.

Here's a couple of links I find interesting: Inner speech speaks volumes about the brain, also quantum mechanics explanation (Part 1), (Part 2) that seems to fit. The author is derided in the comments, but that's usually what happens anyway.

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Zombies in theory and in practice:
A medical study of Haitian zombies.
All About Zombies


(SMBC comics)

Also:

the worlds newest religion: Kopimism

Jessica Ahlquist Has Won Her Lawsuit!

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News from the intelligent design movement.

The Science of Faith Healing (ScienceNow)

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An excellent deconstruction of Christianity:
Thomas Paine (1737-1809) on Deism: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/paine-deism.asp though he ultimately claims God is real because of his own definition of God. I can't argue with what he believes. My own experience is that something is there, but like random neutrinos that shoot by every year or two: there's no telling where it comes from (probably a variety of sources). Tracing trajectories back 14 billion years (if it were possible) could encounter millions of sources. The cause of the cause of the cause is not faith because faith comes after the fact. In fact there is no reason to think it's divine other than tradition and a lack of understanding.

But if it's not a physical phenomena, then it's inside my head, and if it's inside my head and divine anyway, then all you people better send me a fat check just to be on the safe side. Lastly, if you're skeptical of that scenario, then my work here is done.

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Neanderthal hypothesis

This is a hypothesis on Neanderthal society based on the apparent fact that they had no known jewelry [1]. A hypothesis is a proposition made as a basis for reasoning, without any assumption of its truth. Given that everyone has a history that influences the way they perceive the world, I admit to having one too, and that this is one of the cases where ‘anthropomorphism’ is appropriate.

Among Homo sapiens, jewelry and clothing are tribal badges which define social standing. Any kind of self defined group has it’s own symbolic badge: Monks robes, biker colors, suit & briefcase, Navajo turquoise. It’s built in & we do it without thinking. As of this posts original publication (2011), there was no evidence that Neanderthals used jewelry or other physical representations of abstract thinking.

Update 26 april 2021
Recent articles (just google it) offer evidence that Neanderthals were responsible for cave painting, stalagmite structures, and shell jewelry.

But the hypothesized case of Neanderthals without social badges, could translate to their entire population being co-operative and egalitarian, perhaps the same as the herd animals that they hunted. I kind of doubt that, because other social carnivores, like wolves and chimpanzees, do have tribes and castes without badges, instead defined by linage, behavior and smell.

Neanderthals may have defined their groups that way too. For example aromatic substances like pitch (tree sap) or mud, would be useful for primarily carnivorous hunters to prevent detection by game because those smells also mask body odor. Antiseptic qualities of pitch and anaerobic mud have benefit when dealing w/ the possibility of contaminated or spoiled meat, and in fact pitch has been found on many of their hand axes. It’s been suggested that pitch on hand axes was to assure a good grip, and to prevent slipping hands when climbing up the back legs of mammoths to attack their lumbar vertebrae w/ the axe. (many neanderthal mammoth kills have smashed lumbar vertebrae. But I don't see how said climbing could be done with one hand, pitch or not, if the other hand was holding a big rock). Pitch could also be seen (smelled) as an indication of an adult/hunter/provider/mate.

When meeting Homo sapiens in the egalitarian scenario, without social badges, they would assume communality with us, but be seen by us as homeless grafters. That is: assuming, threatening, uncomfortably personal, and expecting a share of the food and fire. Add to that a smell of mud or pitch and tendency to claim social respect through hormones and personal confrontation. I’m assuming they were confrontational because they were carnivorous predators who ate mostly large animals, so shy reticence meant starvation, and every social animal (that I know of) has a hierarchy of dominance.

My guess is that we avoided them whenever possible, and protected our women from them because of differing rules of behavior. Any children they sired among H. sapiens could mature early [2], and be like the ultimate Red Haired Stepchild who also eats all the camp dogs. Therefore outcast for their hormonal behavior, and culled from H. sapiens gene pool.

The other possibility of H. sapiens crosses raised by Neanderthals however, would mature late by their standards and be at a physical disadvantage for strength, assertion, finding mates, and weaning too soon, w/ possible intolerance for an all meat diet. However growing up with them would give one access to helpful intestinal flora.

Like us, they probably had formal rules of behavior to signal non aggression. Their tolerance for other people may be questionable though because of sparse and probably nomadic populations, with social badges limited to family faces, everybody else would be an outsider. Their genetic diversity itself however could translate to social badges, represented as it is in canines by differences in hair-eye color, size, and hunting specialty. And one could assume their disdain for each others tribes (evident from (rumored) broad genetic diversity, I'm assuming if there was less diversity it would be because they were hard to get along with), would also extend to H. sapiens as well. There’s seems to be some disagreement though on the extent of said diversity, some say it’s more narrow than Sapiens, others say the genetic difference between Neanderthal groups was greater than between Chimps and Humans. The dust will have to settle on that [3].

This then is the scenario when Neanderthals and Sapiens handle disputed territory:

Any encounters would probably be planned and result from first observing the other party from concealment or a distance to determine their threat potential. If the either species ever considered the other to be equal humans, they would test their communal standing by presenting themselves as hunting partners and mates. But I can’t imagine such an interview would have gone too well (unless the receiving group were starving. In which case, why bother.) and they would probably have been rejected by Sapiens, (you hairy naked people stay away from my kids!). So without mutual need and   negotiations exhausted, a Sapiens attack would be w/ spears and slings and a Neanderthal attack would be hand to hand. I imagine a hand axe would just be in the way with a small agile adversary because it slows down and occupies one hand, making the other only half effective, only good for trying to catch and hang onto a victim. Again implying close quarters. But this assumes warlike engagements which are a Sapiens specialty. A more probable Neanderthal confrontation would be in surprising a lone individual or a group, surrounding a smaller Sapiens group, and chase them to an untenable position like game. Then either a twist of the neck or a hand axe from behind. A one on one altercation with neither side possessing weapons would probably go to the Neanderthal.

But because Sapiens have longer childhoods, family groups would be larger to take care of the kids. Sapiens also had spears and stone slings to keep an attacker at a distance which would defeat a Neanderthal fighting style. It’s possible that Neanderthal relations molded Sapiens communities over thousands of years by forcing large groups of Sapiens to live and work together for protection.

A lack of social badges may have meant male Neanderthals were sort of like Orangutans, each having a piece of the woods to themselves, other males could live there quietly if they didn’t advertise for mates. I imagine they wouldn’t cooperate too well except when in mutual need, and would all be delighted to be next in succession if the dominant male got speared while challenging the skinny Sapiens. Females probably lived in small family groups.

There is the wild Sylvius scenario though where a young Neanderthal goes out looking for his own turf. He approaches a Sapiens camp, is unimpressed by the lanky men, sees the long legged girls and asks "hey can I help with things". Times are hard and the camp needs to eat so they say sure, see if you can catch some food. Later he comes to live on the hill nearby. And when the moon's right, girls sometimes sneak over there to see how he's doing. The tribe raises his red haired kids with local tips on how to control them (still a problem) & he brings in an occasional reindeer.  These things sometimes work.

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• There's some disagreement about whether Neanderthals had jewelry or if the sole example found was Sapiens @ 50k YBP. The article suggests that population density causes abstract thinking, I tend to agree but how you gonna prove it? Also Neanderthal Jewelry (University of Kansas)
• Neandertal Children Developed on the Fast Track (Science Now)
  
• Neandertal DNA Spells Separate Origins

  (Science Now).
  

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Another god essay:

The problem w/ god is that there's no universal definition. There may be a lot of minor gods like saints and spiritual advisers, but according to Judeo-Islamic-Christians (people of the book), there's One God to rule them all. A single 3-d, invisible, objective, self-aware entity, with a built-in jack to everyone's thinking, who created everything & can only be placated by submission. This is built on millenniums of refined god definitions with the objective of

• making Him impervious to rational dissection,
• default ruler over any other cultures deity(s), and
• which justifies religious imperialism.

It also simplifies ones course of deferral if there's only one choice.
God is the source that advises you during seizures, schizophrenic episodes, and hallucinations. If you get bad advice, either god's not happy with something you did, it's not god giving the advice, or you've sprung a few gears. It used to be ancestors, or forest and animal spirits, but now it's God. Same advice though.

Some famous authority once said there are no atheists in foxholes. Here's why: primates are social so we consider ourselves part of "the people". We first learn to imitate our parents (stick out your tongue sweetie), and transfer that learning process to any other authority (God the father, son & holy spirit). So there's a special area in our head that connects a resolution of the unknown with authorities ("mom can tell us"). When one is in a foxhole with an empty magazine & bullets zip inches overhead, ones natural response is to frame the question; "what would the ultimate authority recommend if I die?" Otherwise rephrased as "shit-oh-shit-oh-shit, no, no, no, please god, not me, ..." Then you either live or die. If you live, evidence supports the position that it was either worthwhile or coincidental. If you die, you either find out, or you don't, but there's no way to verify in either case because who are you going to ask if you were the only witness? 
Here's the dirty part:
There's a common practice among people who wish to be authorities, of teaching a response to various foxhole-like situations, which benefit the teacher rather than the student. The live-fire drill instructor says to keep your head down, keep moving, don't bunch up, resist capture, keep cool, stay on mission & don't run away screaming. The sergeant, though his intentions may be good, has no actual skin in this particular game, and is just making a living from saying those things. One supposedly can't question his motives if they benefit "the people" in general, and a sure way to be an authority is to assume that mantle. While it's true in the overall scheme of things that it's usually cheaper to train resilience than to replace the unit, that's not always so. If death is believed to be an illusion, people become expendable as well as exploitable.

Here's how to train people to be suicide bombers.

Arguments for plausibility of God are based entirely on doubt. You can't prove that He (She or It) doesn't exist, so if The Authority says god exists, one assumes it's so. Everyone has response options for a given situation, and selecting between them can sometimes be a chore, so we defer to some previous similar plan that turned out ok. The desired result is almost always hormonal relief because that's what's associated with the memory. The most deeply experienced hormonal relief is group security, (variously expressed as pleasing the leader or doing the right thing). To reach this state of enlightenment, two DI's yell at you from 6 inches away until you realize the elegant beauty of their logic, and then you return to that realization whenever you reach a similar stress level. Shortcuts to that relief are why some people consider mass mayhem a realistic response to a perceived insult. Therefore: when setting up your new religion, it's crucial to make your deity's blessing supersede any others and it probably wouldn't hurt to make it deliver a profit too (authorities gotta eat too y'know).

By the way, there's nothing in my blog that should offend most people, I just clicked the "offensive material" button because I was bored & wanted to see what happens. It turns out readership has gone up (sucker). Wait, don't be offended ...

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The apocalypse was supposed to happen when Babylon fell (it's been awhile). If the time scale is irrelevant, how is that different from coincidence? Joe sayeth "One day I shall be rich". Woops, that already happened & it was only relative to abject poverty.

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Yaaaay! it's rapture day!

Here's a Story

what you say about other also says a lot about you

Any Christians out there who have converted FROM atheism? (reddit) (probably not the best forum for a positive answer)

When you stop being snarky, do you really think that Christian mythology is as silly/implausible as Greek mythology? (reddit again)

How to beat a dead horse:



Here's a story:

Whilst serving his country diligently in the Peace Corps, Joe (name witheld by request) was asked by an Alpaca Wool company to consider working in a small town on Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. They offered to take him up there by truck to appraise the site. So he went and returned, decided against it, finished his 2 yr. contract, and later returned to the states to become a hippy artist living in a van for 20 years, and trying assorted kinds of self medication. One of them was Mandrake root which is legal, available through health food stores and traditionally used for divining. Joe was curious about that lore, and not having anything else to do one evening, made up a strong cup of tea (every cup of Mandrake is strong). After a couple of hours, Joe began to spontaneously remember the events that took place on that excursion in Bolivia years before without having thought about it in years, but the memory seemed to be narrated, and the narration revealed another parallel story from the perspective of a neutral (less self obsessed) observer. As if though the etiology was factual rather than based on casual opinion.

The main upshot of the revelation was that the above mentioned Alpaca wool company was actually a front for cocaine production and Joe's presence was needed on the trucks return trip to intimidate indian soldiers (read "Peons") at the contraband check stations. With an authentic Gringo on the truck, the peon wouldn't make a thorough search of the trucks contents and risk reprimand for wasting the time of someone who might be important, and also not find a wool sack on the bottom tier packed with cocaine.

When the truck first arrived at the wool station, the station "owner" wasn't expecting Americanos and met them nervously at the gate with a military full auto M3 Grease Gun hidden under his coat. When giving a tour of the hacienda, the "owner" made a big deal of a cast iron stove for burning Llama dung for heat like poor indians (no wood on the Altiplano), especially since Kerosene is also used in cocaine production, so naturally they didn't have any around. Cast iron wood stoves are expensive, and kerosene heaters are common and cheap. Everyone there used them, even indians. On another occasion, Joe was sitting on a bale of coca leaves and noticed it didn't have a band of print that govt. tax collectors put on legally grown coca. Joe naively asked one of the workers what they were doing w/ so much coca leaf, the worker said it was for the herders, and called one of the managers. The manager put his hand in his coat pocket & said grimly "Come on, lets go for a walk". Joe survived the walk by being a genuinely clueless American redneck gringo kid, not understanding the Quechua language, and enjoying the scenery (really nice mountains). He was threatened w/ guns several times w/ that company but couldn't figure out why & decided they were just screwed up people (and in fact they were outlaws and murderers). The Mandrake revelation wasn't a stoned illusion, it was factual, and every non sequituer on that trip (there were more than just the ones described here but listing them would be tedious) made sense from that perspective. But that's the way it is w/ conspiracy theories.

While walking out from the hacienda with Carlos the "manager", they walked to a nearby adobe house where a Quechua woman was working on a ground loom. Carlos spoke to the woman in Quechua and watched Joe to see if he understood. He didn't. Joe knew a few phrases and words in Aymara which is similar, like spanish and portuguese, but not enough to follow a conversation. The woman looked extremely uncomfortable while he spoke, and glanced at Joe, looking him directly in the eyes, Joe had the impression that she wanted to warn him about some danger associated with Carlos and his friends. When Joe caught the cue, she looked away and refused to look at either of the visitors. Carlos asked Joe if he wanted to ask her anything. Joe asked if she would be interested in obtaining a portable loom that she could bring indoors at night (so nobody could steal her weaving). Carlos actually sneered when he spoke to her. She hid her face and said "maman" (no). Joe felt he was being ridiculed as a Gringo (a popular pastime in Bolivia). So he decided that if he didn't participate in the situation, it would wear out for lack of fuel. He turned his back and looked at the mountains. After a bit, Carlos asked if Joe was expecting someone (maybe to come and save him?) Joe said no. Carlos said what are you looking for? Joe said the mountains are beautiful. Aparently that blew Carlos away because previously he had been sure Joe had discovered the purpose of the hacienda and was expecting to be killed for it, but also because Carlos was a native highlander and raised with local supersitions.

Brief interlude: Altiplano Indians are seriously religious and they blend old and "new" elements to get along w/ the church. One of the old elements is the sacredness of water. Ponchos of Aymara men in the Lake Titicaca area often have vertical brown stripes that represent fertility by showing vertically plowed hills. The Peace Corp tried to get locals to plow horizontally so water would have more time to soak in for root uptake instead of running down the furrow to carry topsoil away, but that fell flat because it was an insult to Pachamama (mother earth). Mountains are where water comes from, and they're protected by mountain gods callled Apus (Wikipedia), who demand respect or they'll kill you (like with cold, a rockfall, or a gust of wind that knocks you off a ledge), but they absolutely favor and protect the innocent. That's why Carlos was blown away: Joe had invoked Carlos own protector.

So was Joe blessed by an Apu? Or maybe clueless self obsession is necessary for our survival anyway. People who never contemplate doom might walk straight into it, but people who contemplate doom all the time are probably more likely to test it out, if only to see if it's real.

Brain study shows that thinking about God reduces distress -- but only for believers

Babies see human hand behind ordered events

OK, back to Mandrake lore: From the middle ages it tells of fatuously improbable procedures for collecting the root, but (IMO) those instructions may be either for 1) cornering the market through a "proper, harvesting technique" which makes it potent, or 2) for maintaining the users perspective (read: sanity) through the trip. For example, it's said that one should only pick it on the new moon, and to plug ones ears when it's removed from the ground because the root shrieks when pulled, and the sound is fatal to whoever hears it. One imagines that lore was collected by a 14th century scholar from some rural curandero-bumpkin, who was locally famous for using Mandrake, & who spoke an obsolete dialect full of colloquialisms which the good scholar took at face value. (Visit rural Kentucky some time but don't bother trying to find a phrase book, because 1): they don't make them, 2): you won't understand what they're saying anyway). It's reference to "magical" procedure is also a possible reason why the root isn't more widely used in christian countries (ghastly flavor might be a factor too though).

So the secret mandrake message is:
New moon is for dealing with personal, not public business, which would be on the full moon. ie. don't invite gawkers and don't let anyone know of your intention, here's why:
The tea's effect causes sensitivity to social cues (similar to Datura, also in the Solanaceae plant family, Also see Hallucinogenics) which, if interrupted by social cues from other people present, can cause confusion and "inappropriate" responses w/ possibly dire results. The shrieking root pulled from the ground refers to that too. Earth = the native soil of ones consciousness. But Mandrake is also said to be used for an aphrodisiac, possibly by focusing on social cues also, but simple Joe has never used it that way, so he couldn't say. He's a bumpkin though.

Acts of free will (wired) "... It is this sense of being the possessor of a consciousness that makes us feel responsible for it.” ... and also allows us to go around in a semiconscious state of self absorption.



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Beyond a certain minimum, wealth doesn't bring happiness. That people are driven by an irrational belief that it will, and persist in spite of all contrary evidence, is a form of madness. The definition of happiness is sometimes transposed to equal domination, power, or success. (for example Dick Cheney got a new tin heart in the belief that he would eventually find contentment) The same can be said for knowledge: it's just not possible to read all scientific papers that are produced in even one day. In Newton's time that was possible, but now, w/ hundreds per week, software does that job and also sorts for relevancy, draws conclusions, forms hypotheses, and publishes results. Eventually puny humans will become obsolete and waste away from irrelevancy.

A common denominator of these 2 disciplines (acquisition of wealth and acquisition of knowledge) is OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder). The belief that contentment or safety or a desired outcome will be produced w/ enough repetition. Human brains are good at organizing repetitive tasks to produce complex results, like assembly line production. Two somewhat comparable biological corollaries are the Limbic nervous system(controls fight or flight,) vs Autonomic nervous system (breathing and heart functions) which are repetitive tasks. With luck, our new robot overlords will not confuse the 2 systems.

Anyone who reads this blog hoping for a conclusive thought should be aware that the writer gets substantial kicks from simple plausibilities, (they give almost the same hormonal sense of gratification w/ a lot less work). As an avid conspiracy theorist, I'm often satisfied w/ implications as much as proven conclusions. So I offer this warning to others: this is not a survival trait, and one must constantly guard against becoming a slave to Republicans and religious cannibals because they prey upon this common weakness to gain our confidence before they eat our babies.

Confirmation Bias

in other news:
UK government acts to prevent arrest of Pope, petitions ensue.

Joe's flash for the day: Greater or lesser versions of Obsessive compulsive disorder as a survival trait are selected for by reward for community group efforts. Obsessive people as leaders are only valuable in politics where some kind of program or process has to be driven by popular mandate. Otherwise they're given jobs that are repetitive and boring, requiring detailed attention and conscientious responsibility. When robots rule the world, these people will either be their proponents or they will become obsolete. As a general rule, people don't value the trait in mates, it's something employers might look for though.

I can see a scenario where society crumbles with out them because of poor interface w/ the machines, another possibility is OCD will become the only game in town as a necessity for dealing w/ the machines. I more expect the latter because without OCD, there would be no machines and they would probably program their keepers to look out for their own.

God Comics (god-comics.com). My apologies to people who feel strongly about ridicule of religion. I expect if god made the known universe he probably has a broad enough mind to allow self ridicule, so any reflection would be on the limited experience of the believer. If objections stem from the perceived damage to the belief system, then the believer must admit the beliefs are vulnerable, so why "defend" those beliefs in the name of god. (shakes head) Alas, it comes from ignorance.

The Just World Phenomenon

Fundamentalist Christian Evangelism in the US Military, it's still there.

“Read other people's myths, not those of your own religion, because you tend to interpret your own religion in terms of facts - but if you read the other ones, you begin to get the message.” ~Joseph Campbell
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How is it that possible pathways work out? A person imagines something like space wars with ray guns and fantastic aliens. Then somehow these things work on their imagination to come about. (I think Niels Bohr said that but I can't find the quote) No they don't always come about, but that part that captures the imagination often does.

Satellite relay for transcontinental communication was first a si-fi story by Arthur C. Clarke, and the shape of the needle for the original singer sewing machine was taken from a dream. There seems to be a capacity of the mind that selects for possibility, of putting 2 & 2 together till e=mc2. For example NPR had Car Talk w/ Click & Clack the Tappet Bros. (program since ended in about 2022) who were pretty good (genius) at identifying mechanical problems on practically any car, from call-in descriptions of symptoms. They did it down to which wire of which part is loose, on which year of which model of which car, what caused it, & how it was missed by the mechanics at the shop.

How does that work? The internal adversary, that's used to bench test hypothesis is Assigned Symmetry (IMHO), & can usually be trusted not to go rogue because it has the same survival priorities as the protagonist. Real world adversaries (like the Wolf Man) draw on a broader source of negative responses (he rips peoples heads off), whereas the internal adversary is learned from someone who advocates your survival. The survival benefit of taking the side of the protagonist is low stress, better sleep, & an overall more agreeable disposition, so that you get social perks like getting laid instead of living in a dumpster. In other words, the internal protagonist may be subjective, but the internal antagonist must be purely objective in order to be reliable.

For that to occur, the native needs to be Descartes or learn that skill set from someone else (like maybe Science 101), because it won't happen by itself if you get lies.

Silicon Valley has a science fiction problem (aeon.com)

Sapolsky on Religion (blip.tv)
Reason & Un-welcom Evidence (The Guardian)
Carl Sagan & the Garden of Eden (youtube)
Platos code Cracked Religions supression of science didn't begin w/ Gallileo.

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So who is responsible for protecting the sanctity of our kids butts? Kids are people after all & just as curious as adults. Any bureaucratic remedy will only be as successful as the prejudice of it's reviewers. church, parents, police, industry(?!) all go about it differently, each has pros & cons. but the total is that there is no universal solution. They ultimately profile all adult males as potential predators, and that doesn't work either.

Assuming that all males are potential child predators is pretty much the same as assuming that males are all selfish sociopaths, so that the males fear of prison is their only control. Those kinds of reasonings require men to prove innocence of intent, which can't be done, it's requiring proof of something that doesn't exist, proof of a negative. GW said Saddam had to prove there was no nuclear program, & then used his authority to frame Saddam over Yellowcake Uranium. I recommend that legal institutions (or media, or someone) define which situations require negative proofs, and make it a social faux pas issue of gigantic dimensions so that ordinary people will be aware of it's destructive potential, not just random bloggers.

Better Courts Now, the right-wing group that is seeking to get judges with a Christian bias elected to the courts in California, and eventually nationwide. (rightwingwatch.org)

One of Joe's (many) pet peeves is that dog owners are legally responsible for the actions of their pets but cat owners aren't. The state is responsible for wild animal control but not if your car gets smashed up by a deer jumping into the road, which would be an act of god. However when the state acts in it's own interest to preserve it's survival, the state is behaving like an independent life form. In which case, the definition of legal "Entity" is altered from judiciary to metaphysical, and is a conflict of church & state & said to be prohibited by the constitution.

I've been wondering how long it would be before the Republican faction of the Tea Party would start trying to appeal to marijuana smokers, since dope users are a very large demographic, & even more credulous than Christians.

On the bright side, since the church and state are essentially inseparable, I'm suggesting that a "state entity" could actually become legally impartial. Because when the state (like god) acts in it's own behalf, it becomes selfish/exclusive and justice becomes a matter of opinion. When in fact, God is demonstrably unbiased (except in the opinion of it's support groups). So that for the state to become an entity by any definition, it must be unbiased, and not use concepts like "imminent domain" or "gerrymandering" to defend itself or it's believers.

"We follow the teachings of a man named Charles Darwin ... " (youtube)

Poll: 83% say God answers prayers, 57% favor National Prayer Day (usatoday)

Israel the victim (newmatilda)

The far side 1994

Ugh it's hard to write down a flash days after it occurs, one of 2 things are gonna happen, either it's matured somehow in my subconscious, or else it's evaporated.

here's the flash:
either we make the world or we're it's result. I'm of the opinion that we make the world but we're always living a few steps after it happens & are trying to catch up, this makes us look for patterns that indicate future events, and takes responsibility for the world out of our hands. Buddhism says the only control you have over the world is how you react to it. But that's because our perception is a few microseconds slow. Whatever happens might be a quality of a single continuum (this one), but it doesn't rule out others.

Remote viewing, (a sanctioned spy technique used by the govts of both the US & Soviet Russia) uses a squiggle line to represent the immediate impression before any interpretation, it's there so the mind can go back to something original and "permanent" for reference. OK that's pretty close, but it's not the event itself. The "event itself" is some kind of singularity that we can only observe in retrospect. It's gamely plausible that reflecting back on an event, places the observer in a different time than the event, as it places the event in memory. But it's also evident that time affects the world around us and leaves archaeological evidence that other stuff is going on. So it's the mechanism of perception that is actually at fault.

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." The above speech by Nelson Mandela was orignally written by Marianne Williamson who is the author of other similar material." source

The trouble with having power beyond measure is that it's freakin' lonesome at the top. In Joe's years as a vagabond, knowing that there were other people in the world made the trip worth observing, but he despised them because their territorial insecurities kept him from settling down.

I just got back from a road trip to visit my daughter. The traveling might have been a nightmare, or an Aircooled VW mechanics dream vacation. The engine has run wonderfully for 8 yrs but chose the middle of NM to reveal why the guy who rebuilt the head told me I should think about buying a new one. Two of the valve guides began to disintegrate. Pieces fell into the combustion chamber & sounded like a slapping rod. I had it towed to Bozo's Garage in Santa Rosa (hey Bozo!) & he let me work on it on his lot. I pulled the engine & found the problem. His crew were so amazed at the insanity of driving an old vw from CA to OK, that they all wanted to be in on it, "Baby Jesus watches over idiots". Ok, even as an atheist, I can't argue w/ that.

I cleaned out the pieces imbedded in the piston, drove it on to Oklahoma leaking oil like a sieve, and rebuilt it there again using new(er) parts. Okies are in no hurry to do anything when they sense desperation as an opportunity to raise prices. Fortunately, having grown up in the San Joaquin valley CA (Grapes of Wrath), I had a perfect Oklahoma accent, though somewhat rusty. It kept me from getting shot, but not from getting overcharged. Here is where years of meditation comes in handy: I decided not to care (much), & had my landlady send some pistons & cylinders from my garage workbench at home. My kid was occupied w/ finals so I sat around her place wasting away from ennui while she finished her year & I waited for parts & eventually wrote this post.


Richard Dawkins to file for the Popes arrest when he visits England in Sept. 2010