Back-to-school

The weather here has been rather cool the last few days, with highs in the low 70s and chilly evenings dipping into the low 50s or lower. It is starting to feel like fall, which still triggers back-to-school feelings for me despite it being 7 years since fall actually meant that I was starting classes. But this year I am, and I'm excited. The undergrad course I'm TAing, Evolution and Human Behavior, starts one week from tonight, and I think my classes start the week after that. I've been filling out all the forms and all that administrative bullshit while peeking ahead at some of the things I'll be reading.

I didn't believe I was done with school when I graduated in 2002, but I wouldn't have guessed at the time that my next class would be in 2008 in a psychology department in Canada. Funny how things happen, eh?

Democrat Warlust (update)

They're giddy that it might soon be their turn to order the bloodshed. They'll be doing it more efficiently than those Bush guys!

Seriously, this is what I'm supposed to support? I'm supposed to line up and cast a vote for these lunatics? This is the "lesser evil" offered to me by the system? Doesn't this kinda make you think that maybe a system where this is the best available option is hopelessly broken?

I just want to fucking scream and then puke and then weep for humanity. I don't know, maybe this is what we deserve.

Fuck you, Biden.
Fuck you, BO.
Fuck the Democrats.
Fuck this election.
Fuck the system.

Update: Typically great stuff from Chris Floyd.

fucking google

Democrats are great

In this round of The Most Important Election Ever, it is very important not to Waste Your Vote, and thus it is every right-minded citizens duty to march to the polls and vote for the party that thinks this is a perfectly good idea.

I know, I know, the other guys are going to cage their protesters in 15X15 razor-wired pens and sprinkle them with flesh-eating acid, so the 20X20 razor-wired pens are clearly deserving of our support. I wonder how much I have to donate to the BO campaign to get my name as a sponsor on one of those cages?

Brightly-lit opium dens

Fast food joints are brightly-lit opium dens -- funhouse mausoleums juiced by deforestation and massive animal suffering. We'd be much better off without them, but the national addiction runs too deep, and too many lobbies stay rich from the fat.
Dennis Perrin

It has been over a year since I last ate McDonald's food, or Burger King, or Wendy's. Hopefully I never will again.

Neon God: The State. Bow and Pray.

Trakker at Neon Gods recently accused me of using "dishonest tactics" by saying that government is an inherently violent institution in the comments on one of his posts. He says that my comments "insinuat[ed] that this violence is the norm in this country and that we as citizens have no recourse." He goes on to say that government functions without acts of violence 99% of the time.

It may be the case that the vast majority of government action proceeds without the use of violence, but only in the trivial sense that there is no "violence" committed when you escape injury by giving your wallet to a mugger without resisting. All government action is backed by the threat of coercion. I would say this threat is an act of violence, as is the mugging where the weapon is never used. The point remains that government is an inherently violent institution because violence is the government response to not getting its way.

Watch these videos, in which passive resistance to very mundane and common government action is quickly escalated to the use of physical force.





I saw these videos at Anarchy in Your Head, which went on to post some important thoughts about them. What is the point of these videos? Of the woman's resistance?

It’s that government as we now know it is violence, through and through. The source of it’s authority is nothing more than a persistent threat of violence. A majority may consolidate power in the form of a government, but can’t ensure that it’s moral. A broad consensus, e.g. a vote, or an elaborate proclamation on a piece of paper can not create truth or morality and hence can’t create authority. Government isn’t just violent when it engages in aggressive wars. Every order it issues is backed by the threat of serious violence. Why rebel against something seemingly minor like a driver’s license to point this out? Should we pick our battles more carefully? Because it’s part of the hard truth that people aren’t ready to accept. Any order you resist, from a seizure of private land to a parking ticket, can ultimately escalate to serious violence including incarceration or even death if you continue to resist the orders or the punishments they impose on you. All punishments by government are for disobeying. The so-called little things demonstrate this particularly well. When the authority of government ultimately rests on nothing more than the threat of violence, any deviation from strict adherence cannot be tolerated or the illusion is threatened. By simply remaining passive in a seemingly small matter, Lauren causes them to show their true nature.

Trakker's criticism rings quite hollow:

Characterizing the coercion powers given to the state by the people as "violence" is dishonest. If you examine the laws that govern our law enforcement agencies you will see that the use of violence is rarely allowed and when it is, it must be justified. In fact every day we read of law enforcement agents being punished for exceeding the laws that govern their activities.

That there are rules on paper that say you can send armed men to forcibly arrest and imprison someone for smoking marijuana doesn't make that arrest any less violent, nor does it justify such acts. And a few cops getting docked a paycheck or put on administrative leave doesn't make the shootings, beatings, taserings, or any of the other less sensational daily acts any less violent. Trakker says "because this is a democracy, and many Americans believe the use of force IS the answer to many of our problems, we won't always have a government we (liberals) approve of" in the same essay where he claims that characterising the government as violent is dishonest. He appears to be arguing that if 51% of the population approves of brutal use of force, such force isn't violent.

The only one using dishonest tactics in this debate was Trakker. His arguments were incoherent, and never came close to justifying his accusations of dishonesty. Trakker is a good guy and a friend of this blog, and I think he generally thinks through what he writes. So why has he fallen short in this case? I think the last paragraph of the Anarchy in Your Head post quoted above offers an explanation.

People do not casually abandon a deeply held belief. Irrational beliefs provide comfort even while causing us to engage in irrational behavior. How do you softly tell a child that Santa doesn’t really exist and prepare her for the cold reality that a mythical character is not bringing her presents Christmas morning? How do you gently convince someone their God doesn’t exist and that they won’t be going to Heaven when they die? How do you tactfully explain that the government they’ve trusted all their lives to provide their security is actually enslaving them under threat of violence? I’m not sure there’s a soft way to convey a hard truth, a cold hard truth that rocks the foundations of deeply held lifelong beliefs.

Most Americans are the victims of an intense lifelong assualt of propaganda and misinformation, religion and politics being the most noteworthy. Trakker, despite his recognition of the insidious lies of religion, like many liberals believes in government in much the same way my parents believe in God. Being confronted with arguments and evidence that undermine that belief is a system shock, which tends to manifest itself in lots of bad counterarguments and unfounded personal attacks. Indeed, Trakker has repeatedly been flustered by and responded similarly to comments that emphasize the overwhelming similarity between Democrats and Republicans and are critical of electoral participation, comments that draw attention to atrocities committed by Democrats or popularly revered historical figures, comments that suggest BO won't cure America's "cancers" of corporatist neoconservative policies, and comments in objection to "nanny state" government interference in personal decisions. And like many religious people confronted with persistent atheist response to their counter-arguments, Trakker's reaction to anarchist argument is to ignore it, which is now the official policy of Neon Gods:

I'm convinced our current system of government in the United States is basically sound.... It is time to set some guidelines for commenting here. NEON GODS is a blog about improving our system government, not abolishing it. I am convinced that the system of government envisioned by founding fathers, and the Constitution they wrote and the amendments added later have resulted in a safe, stable, vibrant, nation and I would like to see the same for my kids and grandkids. To this end, NEON GODS is a blog that encourages liberals to become more engaged in the government. This blog also believes that there are times when voting for a mediocre candidate to block a bad candidate makes sense. Thus, comments that advocate giving up and dropping out of politics, and comments denouncing liberals who plan to vote for Obama to prevent McCain from becoming our next President are not really welcome and will be ignored.

I've enjoyed participating in conversation on that blog and put a lot of time and effort into my comments, so it hurts to see my position mischaracterized as "giving up and dropping out of politics" and my participation swept aside based on the argument that the US is a "safe, stable, vibrant" nation. I've argued only for dropping out of (national) electoral politics, but strongly encouraged other political action. This isn't "giving up." It is recognizing a failed system, refusing to endorse it, and advocating for positive change from outside the system. America has violent crime rates dramatically higher than other first world nations, and more people in prison than any other country. Our national infrastructure is crumbling, leaving bridges and roads and water pipes in frightening shape. Our meat and produce and other foods are laced with a diverse array of contaminants. Our government refuses to address the impending disaster of climate change, in fact it actively worsens the threat. This is safe? We spend more on military the the rest of the world combined; We've launched 2 overt wars of aggression in the last several years, following decades of covert wars and terrorist campaigns throughout the world. We threaten to use nuclear weapons against Iran, we send troops to support a belligerent Georgian dictator after he initiated conflict with the nuclear-armed Russians, and both Presidental candidates want to increase the size of the military and send even more troops into Central Asia. The soldiers participating in this violent insanity are coming home with a terrifying medley of mental disorders, and many of them joining heavily armed private mercenary armies that operate with legal impunity in the US and througout the world. This is stable? Our public school system is rotting from the inside out, our citizens are driving further to work, working longer hours, sleeping and exercising less, dying younger, and going deeper into debt to pay for it all. This is vibrant?

And the idea that the state just might be the problem can't be discussed? The only worthy response to our slow-motion train wreck of a country is to keeping working within the same failed system? I hope Trakker reconsiders his views and his policy.

BO and race (BO = B. Obama)

Via Freedom Rider:

Leroi Moore: 1961-2008

Leroi Moore died yesterday. He was a founding member of my favorite band, The Dave Matthews Band, and it was probably his saxophone and jazz experience that first turned me on to the group. I've seen Leroi in concert over 20 times, collected hundreds of his live shows with the band, and listened to their albums over and over. I really love the music he made, and I'm very sad that he won't be making any more. I'll have to think about some of my favorite Leroi moments and figure out a way to share audio on this blog.

Looking beyond these feelings about the tragedy of his sudden death, it will be interesting to see how the band moves forward without him. It has been years since I obsessively read everything published about them, so I won't even try to speculate how his loss will effect the personal dynamic among the other four members and their regular supporting cast. But from a musical perspective it could be an opportunity to inject some fresh creativity if they choose to bring in one or more new woodwind players. It must be pretty hard for those guys play the songs they've been performing together for almost two decades (seriously, 17 years? how did that happen?) without being able to look over and see Roi wailing from behind his sunglasses, but they actually played what must have been an intensely emotional show last night in LA, featuring the amazing Jeff Coffin from Bela Fleck and the Flecktones on sax. So I can't really imagine the band doing anything other than moving on together, trying to have fun and keep playing.

nice marmot

IOZ has had some fucking sweet quotes lately:

A North American power currently occupying two Asian nations (and with both current presidential candidates pledging escalation in Afghanistan) gives Russia pompous moral lectures and demands it reverse course and repent. We are the world's pedophile priest.

John McCain may be a lousy candidate and shitbag of a human being, but he's certainly a timely literary device.

bad times ahead

Here we have a nation [the US] that has stripped its own industrial base, brutally neglected its educational system, allowed its physical infrastructure to rot, and driven its small-holding farmers from the land, dispossessing its own citizens and degrading their communities, all for the short-term profit of a moneyed elite -- and, what's more, has based its prosperity on the profligate and disproportionate use of a finite resource which it cannot produce in sufficient quantities within its own borders.

- Chris Floyd

Yeah.

"Evolutionary" Psychology? Why bother?

In an imporant sense, there is no such thing as 'evolutionary psychology' because there is no such thing as non-evolutionary psychology (after all, scientific psychologists cannot be 'creationists'). Evolutionary psychology is likely to be a temporary discipline, which will exist only as long as it is needed. As psychologists of all stripes come to make explicit their currently implicit hypotheses about human nature, past selection pressures and environments of evolutionary adaptiveness, evolutionary psychology will wither away as a distinct field and all psychology will be 'evolutionary' - for precisely the same reason that all biology is evolutionary. Psychology is, after all, a branch of biology.

Salmon C & Symons D (2001). Warrior lovers: erotic fiction, evolution and female sexuality. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

While I don't go so far as to predict the future, the theory here seems right to me. I usually feel a little silly when I say I'm going to study evolutionary psychology for exactly that reason - all psychology should be evolutionary. I want to study human behavior, and I expect that study to be informed by and compatible with evolutionary theory, as all study of human behavior should be.

In a somewhat related note, I'll continue using this "grad school?" tag despite "grad school." or grad school" being more appropriate now.

On Deep History and the Brain

Both reviews I've read of this book take swipes at evolutionary psychology that seem unfair, but the book sounds quite fascinating. I can't seem to find it in the libraries here though.

Despite what he says, this retarded fuckmonkey doesn't speak for me

McCain told more than 2,000 voters in York, Pa., that he spoke Tuesday morning with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to make sure he knows "that the thoughts, prayers and support of the American people are with that great little nation as it struggles today" for independence.

"I told him that I know I speak for every American when I said to him, today, we are all Georgians," McCain said.

Technically I'm an American, and I'm not a Georgian, today or any other day. Furthermore I don't give my support to dictators who slaughter civilians for political gain, whether they're named Saakashvili, Bush, Clinton, or Washington. And that that list includes you, John McCain, you fucking piece of shit. You don't speak for me, and you never will, even if you manage to hack your way into office.

My Closing Ceremonies

I'm paying very little attention to the Olympics. I haven't cared much about them since I was a child, and I'm getting more turned off to them every time. The commercialism and nationalism are pretty gross. And this year there's a variety of human rights controversies because of the authoritarianism of the Chinese host government.

I wonder if anything could make me like the Olympics even less?













Yeah, that oughta do it.

terrorism

via RadGeek

stammering BO

More good stuff via Freedom Rider:

A Message from Diop Olugbala

What About the Black Community, Obama? On Friday, August 1st I led a contingent of the Uhuru Movement into Barack Obama’s town hall meeting in St. Petersburg, Florida to raise the question, “what about the black community, Obama?” Without the benefit of a big media budget, our organization attempted to bring the serious issues experienced by African working class people across this country into the national political debate.

These issues include the targeting of African and Latino communities with predatory “sub-prime” mortgages – a scheme that has made millions for people like Obama’s chief financial advisor Penny Pritzker, while stripping black families of billions of dollars, the greatest loss of wealth our community has suffered since being brought in chains to this country. We also challenged Obama to take a stand against the police shootings of unarmed African people, and explain why he has publicly defended the judge’s acquittal of the NYC police who murdered Sean Bell.

He has said that he cannot speak out on behalf of those who have been historically oppressed for fear of offending other people. Yet in Miami, he promised the Jewish community, which considers itself a historically oppressed community, that he supports turning all of Jerusalem over to Israeli control, despite the internationally enforced sharing of that city with the Palestinians. When Obama speaks to black audiences, he attacks us, attributing our community’s poverty, not to systemic oppression, but to bad culture and lack of work ethic.

Barack Obama has criticized African fathers for abandoning our children, although a recent study showed that black fathers stay more involved with their children after a split from the mother than white fathers. And Obama says nothing of the unjust imprisonment of 1 in 9 black men of child-bearing age, the overwhelming majority of whom are locked up on minor drug or other non-violent economic violations stemming from conditions of desperate poverty. He has failed to achieve any meaningful program of economic development for the African community. In speaking to a group of black legislators, Obama said “a good economic development plan for our community would be if we make sure folks weren’t throwing their garbage out of their cars.”

Barack Obama wants to increase military spending and praised Clinton for abolishing AFDC and welfare. He has reversed his position opposing the death penalty and speaks out against reparations. He wants to escalate the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and has threatened Venezuela and Iran with military aggression. He has upheld the FISA, supporting wire-tapping and government spying on citizens. He receives unprecedented financial backing from Wall Street. His close advisors and potential cabinet members include war criminal Richard Clarke, Tri-lateral commission founder Zbigniev Brzezinski, Madeleine ‘it’s worth the price of 1 million dead Iraqi children’ Albright, and Free Trade advocates Jason Furman and Austan Goolsbee.

Some argue that we must support Obama or else we are supporting McCain. We in the Uhuru Movement don’t believe our community should restrict our political options to a choice between one white ruling class party or another. In fact, the black community’s most recent experiences in the U.S. electoral arena have resulted not only in the Republican Party’s theft of our votes, but prior to that we suffered some of the worst attacks on our community at the hands of the Democratic Party administration of William Jefferson Clinton, who put 100,000 more police on our streets to murder our people, privatized the prisons to exploit our unpaid labor, and discontinued the public subsidies for impoverished children and families that had been won by African people as a concession to our movement of the 1960s.

African people’s experiences with these last several elections and the desperate conditions facing our community have created a willingness by our people to seek independent political alternatives. In response to this crisis, the white rulers put forward Barack Obama – a pied piper taking African people back into clutches of the Democratic Party. If anyone looks seriously at the positions, programs and advisors of Barack Obama, they will see that he does not stand for any kind of real change, but for the defense of the same old status quo, with a new face. America is in an economic crisis and the white ruling class hopes to save itself by deepening the exploitation of African people in the U.S. and on the continent of Africa, where the world’s biggest reserves of oil and precious minerals lie. How better to do it than with an African face at the head of state?

Our success as a people requires that we achieve our own independent political agenda. African people’s votes should be contingent on the willingness of a candidate to support and fight for that agenda. The International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement has invited Barack Obama, John McCain and Cynthia McKinney to attend our annual convention on September 27-28 in St. Petersburg, Florida to clarify their position on the question, “what about the black community?’ Based on their response, we will consider endorsement of a U.S. presidential candidate.

Diop Olugbala is the International Organizer for the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement

www.inpdum.org

a cartoonist gets it

via Freedom Rider

A must-read for August 6.

spatial-temporal coordinates

Baltimore, Maryland: 1980-1983(?)
Charleston, South Carolina: 1983-1986
New Bern, North Carolina: 1986-1990
Bel Air, Maryland: 1990-1998
College Park, Maryland: 1998-2002
Silver Spring, Maryland: 2002-2003
Rockville, Maryland: 2003-2004
Gaithersburg, Maryland: 2004-2007
Ada, Ohio: 2007-2008
Dundas, Ontario: 2008-

So far Dundas in my favorite.

imagine my rage if not for the klaxons!

"...adspar at See For Yourself is furious ... also exceptionally angry ... despite all the klaxon sirens..."



the rest

some other field

BF: Your book is really an antidote to the dominant Chicago school of free marketeers. What is the meaning of “free market” these days, as understood on Wall Street?

MH: It's exactly the opposite of what Adam Smith, and Ricardo and the classical economists defined as a free market. Classical economics defined a free market as one that is free of overhead charges, free of unnecessary charges of production, free of watered stock. Today a free market means that predators are free to extort any price from the public, they are free to deregulate, free to lie to consumers, free to exploit, free to load any company they want down with debt, and basically lead (us) to a world of debt peonage... So the whole concept of freedom has been turned upside down by the Chicago school and by the Bush administration.

BF: Why is today's understanding so different?

MH: Because hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent to mislead people and to endow business schools and universities to stop teaching the history of economic thought, to stop teaching the classical economists, and essentially to brainwash students, so that those with a sense of realism simply drop out of the field of economics and go into some other field.

Ding ding ding!!!

suck on this

We've been over this before of course, but what the fuck, let's remind people:



And I should also have mentioned earlier that Al Gore's running mate was Joe fucking Lieberman, who never saw a war he didn't like. But we're supposed to believe that Gore was fucking Gandhi.

Go vote for Obama like the liberal sheep that you are

CHANGING THE VERY NATURE OF POLITICS!!

"My interest is in making sure we've got the kind of comprehensive energy policy that can bring down gas prices." Thanks BO!! The US puts more carbon into the air than any other nation, 22% of the world total despite having just 5% of the world's population, but BO's interest is in making sure we have cheaper gasoline. Such bold leadership! Such vivid change!

In linking McCain to the unpopular President Bush, [BO] struck a theme from Ronald Reagan's successful 1980 campaign against President Jimmy Carter by asking a town-hall audience in St. Petersburg: "Do you think you are better off than you were four years ago or eight years ago? If you aren't better off, can you afford another four years?"

Just like in 2006 when we took over Congress! Republicans had been in charge, but you marched to the polls and voted for Democrats because you knew they'd make everything better! Remember how great things were after that? BO supporter Glenn Greenwald will remind you:

Since that overwhelming Democratic victory, this is what the Democratic-led Congress has done:

• Repeatedly funded -- at the White House's insistence -- the Iraq War without conditions;
• Defeated -- at the White House's insistence -- Jim Webb's bill to increase the intervals between deployments for U.S. troops;
• Defeated -- at the White House's insistence -- a bill to restore habeas corpus, which had been abolished by the Military Commissions Act, enacted before the 2006 election with substantial Democratic and virtually unanimous GOP support;
• Enacted -- at the White House's insistence and with substantial Democratic and virtually unanimous Republican support
-- the so-called Protect America Act, vesting the President with extreme new warrantless eavesdropping powers;
• Overwhelmingly approved the Senate's Kyl-Lieberman Resolution, to declare parts of the Iranian Government a "terrorist organization," an extremely belligerent resolution modeled after those which made "regime change" the official U.S. Government position towards Iraq;

• Deleted from a pending bill -- at the direction of the House Democratic leadership and at the insistence of the White House -- a provision merely to require Congressional approval before the Bush administration can attack Iran;
• Overwhelmingly enacted -- at the White House's insistence, and with substantial Democratic and virtually unanimous GOP support -- the "FISA Amendments Act of 2008," to vest the President with broad new warrantless eavesdropping powers and to immunize lawbreaking telecoms, all but putting an end to any chance for a real investigation and judicial adjudication of the Bush administration's illegal NSA spying program;
• Confirmed, with the indispensable support of two key Democratic Senators, Bush's nominee for Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, despite his support for radical Bush theories of executive power and his refusal to oppose torture;
• Stood by passively and impotently while Bush officials flagrantly ignored their Subpoenas and refused to comply with their investigations.

BO and the Democrats are fucking filthy slime, and you just can't get enough. He'll punch you in the face and you'll ask for more. When someone mentions that he just punched you in the face, you get mad... at the person who mentions it... as you crawl back to Obama and kiss his feet.

Then he kicks you in the teeth.

CHANGING THE VERY FOCUS OF OUR IMPERIAL WARS OF AGGRESSION!!

Hooray! Glorious freedom bombs dropped on different civilians! But dropped by a President who might actually know how to pronounce the name of the towns he destroys, so that makes it better!