Mathematicians Rule?

Before Copernicus, in the civilized world, mathematicians had managed to keep the Earth the center of the universe. Their math was maybe a little convoluted, maybe a little beyond the ken of the average person, but it worked.

Copernicus said, start here, not there, and the math is easier.

Now, mathematicians are working overtime to emphasize the relevance of our apparently 4-dimensional space-time continuum using, for instance, string theory, which is “based on the (deceptively simple) premise that at Planckian scales, where the quantum effects of gravity…” etc. They note that strings can begin or end on D-branes. So there you go: once again,
mathematicians are working overtime to keep us important.

Presumably, somewhere, sometime, someif, someelse, there’s a Copernicus saying “Hey, listen, all we have to do is put THIS at the middle instead of THAT and everything falls into place.”

Maybe there’ll be a visit.

My Conspiracy Compendium

Casey Denney wonders how 23-year-old army veteran Dillon Warn can call the Iraq war “unprovoked.”
There remain a lot of people like Casey Denney for whom the reality-based world is elusive.
Facts:

• Iraq had absolutely NO involvement in the 9/11/2001 destruction of the World Trade Center. That needs to be constantly repeated, because Bush and the Bushies continue to imply - sometimes outright say - Iraq did it.
• Iraq had absolutely NO Weapons of Mass Destruction. That also needs to be constantly repeated, because Bush and the Bushies continue to imply that they did, and for sure someday they will be found (gee, wouldn’t somebody use at least some part of them eventually?).
• Bush family & Saudi Arabian bin Laden family are friends and oil associates.
• Osama bin Laden masterminded the 9/11/2001 destruction of the Trade Center.
• 15 of 19 hijackers were Saudi Arabian
• Bush & Cheney repeatedly state that Iran supplies fighters in Iraq.
• Iraq’s majority is Shia.
• Iran is a Shia country.
• al-Qaeda is a Sunni group led by a Saudi Arabian.
• Saudi Arabia supplies Sunni fighters in Iraq.
• Saudi Arabia is a Sunni country.
• Saddam Hussein was a Sunni; his ruling group was Sunni.
• Saudi Arabia is seldom mentioned as the place from which al-Qaeda originated.
• Saudi Arabia is a major supplier of oil to the United States.

Some more Facts:

• All the bin Ladens who were in the US when the Trade Center was destroyed got on a plane and left the country at a time when no air traffic was allowed in the US (verifiable?).
• Osama bin Laden has never been captured or killed, and is still at large. (As far as I know)
• When the United States had Osama bin Laden in its sights, the US backed off.
• al Qaeda’s base of operations now seems to be in Pakistan, which is our ally.
• Saudi Arabia doesn’t allow American military bases in their country. (Is that right?)
• Cheney & Bush said Iraq involved in 9/11
• Cheney still says Iraq involved in 9/11

Obvious conspiracy conclusion:

• George W Bush & Dick Cheney and their fellow conspirators, at the request of the Saudi Arabian bin Laden family, stopped trying to kill or capture Osama bin Laden.
• The bin Laden family would have lost face if they had allowed the US to kill a member of their family. As it is, bin Laden is a hero in much of the Muslim world and the bin Ladens’ status is enhanced by that (despite the Saudis’ fear that if they make a misstep al Qaeda will begin to harrass the Saudis).

So there they are, all the factoids and such necessary to answer the question: why is the US in Iraq.

Anniversary Speech

I made the following speech as a City Council Comment on St. Patrick’s Day 2008.

Happy St. Patty’s Day.

“It’s been over 6 years since the US entered Afghanistan to crush the repressive Taliban and crush al-qaeda.
The Taliban have regrouped. When al-qaeda disappeared into the mountains, the US pulled back.
Remember Osama bin-Laden? His whereabouts are unknown. Maybe in Pakistan.
It’s been over 5 years since the US entered Iraq to get those weapons of mass destruction that were north, south, east, and west of Baghdad. Weapons of Mass Destruction. Didn’t even have to say what they were to dupe America. Oh, for those of you who still believe Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction: give it up. Not there.
It’s all such a huge mass of cynicism and lies and hypocricy and incompetence that I can’t really find a good way to tackle it but there is this:
our official count of dead American soldiers in Iraq is near 4,000, and
the cost of George Bush’s romantic adventure to Iraq is about 3 trillion dollars, and
no one we’ve elected has the courage or good sense to mention that somebody has to pay for it
Today the US Government started using your money - my money - to prop up Wall Street.
There’s still no policy proposed to pay for any of this stuff.
And here in Missoula we’re still looking for handouts from the Federal Government.
Hell, they might as well send us a few billion, it’s all free money.”

For what it’s worth, I bowdlerized the last sentence.

Crap.

Evolution? Smarter or dumber?

I thought this would make a simple post. And of course I was right.

Is the human race becoming smarter? or dumber?
(is it a given that the human race isn’t staying the same?)
Are the smartest humans becoming smarter or dumber? Are the human race’s smartest people alive today? Or not?
If the smartest humans are alive today, are they powerless because of the aggregate stupidity of the rest of us? Is that an Ayn Rand thing? How do you pronounce Ayn? (This has been fully responded to by Larry Kralj).

Put aside common sense* for just a moment and consider that it’s been 65,000,000 years since dinosaurs (except for birds) infested the Earth. All Human Beings share a common upty-great grandpa from 60,000 years ago (named Umpty). Neither of those things has any bearing on human intelligence trends, as far as I know; it’s just that given enough time, unexpected things can happen.

Which is more important: whether the smartest people get smarter or dumber, or whether the rest of us get smarter or dumber? I’d venture that us non-smart people don’t advance the Human Race; it’s the smart people who do that. Us non-smart people have our place, though; we act as the governor that keeps the smart people from going to far, too fast.

*common sense tells us that God’s tiniest fingers keep the proper spin on each and every quark, whether it be up, down or even dare I say, charmed; it’s much like David Spathaky spinning plates or Meadowlark Lemon spinning a basketball. Actually, way more like David Spathaky. That’s been quite a feat for the 6,000 years since God set it up. Nobody with any sense could imagine God doing that for sixty-five million years, much less 4 1/2 billion years or more. Why should He?

The cost of forestalling terrorism

2/29/08 A couple of days ago I was listening to a government spokesman say once again that because the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, no Terrorist Act Has Been Carried out in the United States or against US Installations anywhere in the world since. (Not counting attacks against all American installations, fixed and mobile, in Iraq and Afghanistan, of course).

Starting here: 3,000 people killed in the US 9/11/2001, mostly by Saudi Arabians trained in Afghanistan.

Since the US invaded Iraq for no particular reason in 2003, almost 4,000 American soldiers died there, 30,000 American soldiers were wounded there, 400+ contractors died there, 150 journalists (mostly locals) were killed there, and there are almost 90,000 documented Iraqi civilian deaths (but as General Tommy Franks said, we don’t do body counts).

The dollar cost looks to be over 3,000,000,000,000 dollars so far (borrowed money).

Leaving aside the question of whether the Iraq invasion kept terrorist acts from being carried out etc., is 4,000++ American lives and 3 trillion dollars a reasonable price to pay to forestall some imagined terrorist act?

Iraq is better? or worse?

3/2/8 there are 2 Missoulian articles on the same page. One says the situation in Iraq is improved. The other says Iraqis are moving from Iraq to the US in record numbers. The things-are-better article is from AP. It doesn’t go into what it means to be better. I don’t remember where the other article was from. I could go look but why bother?

Why are all those Iraqis moving to the US if things are going so well in Iraq?