Dependent’s Day Fireworks

“I want to have within my own hands the choice of my leaders…”
– From “My Day” by Eleanor Roosevelt,  July 4, 1940

Yes, that would be nice, wouldn’t it?   Too bad the residents of the United States do not have it.

Instead, we are forced (at gunpoint) to live under the thumbs of leaders chosen by a minority of our neighbors (i.e., generally, a plurality of the people who vote).

I voted faithfully for many years. I usually cast a write-in vote for “Nobody.”   My votes were never tallied or reported and my candidate never won. I have therefore stopped this futile act of voting.

And who can blame me?  What slave, given an opportunity to vote for his next master, will not vote for “No Master at All”? And who will cast contemptuous eyes on such a man, except those who wish to continue exploiting him,  or the Uncle Toms among his neighbors?

Impress and Intimidate Your Friends, Family and Boss!

…impress them by using this scary word in a sentence:  The word is “teleology.”

Teleology is the notion that shit doesn’t just happen.  Everything supposedly happens because it serves some other creature’s cunning purpose.

This other creature might be a god, like Zeus, or an evil spirit, like Satan, or a god-like authority figure, such as Abraham Lincoln, or a conceptual pretend-creature like “nature” (as though an evil bitch named “Nature” gets her jollies by playing games with your life).

To intimidate your boss, you might use the word in a sentence like this:

Look, I’m sorry I came in a little late this morning but, as every educated person knows, it’s a basic fact of teleology that my tardiness was completely unavoidable, and it served a far higher and nobler purpose than a blind obedience to your otherwise-excellent rules about punctuality.

Naturally, this is pure horseshit.  But your boss doesn’t need to know that.

I have tentatively concluded that all teleological statements are horseshit.  If you can suggest one that isn’t, please post it!

Blogger Gene Callahan recently suggested one:

Try this one: a living heart circulates blood. It also gives off heat.  Why does every biologist say the function of the heart is to circulate the blood, and not a single one says its function is to give off heat?

First of all, Mr. Callahan’s assertion is false.  While biologists frequently say that a primary function of the heart is to pump blood,  no competent biologist would claim that this is the heart’s only function.  It is not difficult to locate an academic paper that says the heat generated by the heart has a function:  It is used in “endothermic reactions.”

Second (and more important), a statement that the heart has a function is not a teleological statement.  It does not assert that your heart was designed by some other entity in order to pump blood through your body.

Since it is not “teleological” to point out that the heart happens to function in certain ways, we cannot claim that biologists who make such statements are betraying a belief in the superstitious ideas of teleology.

But wait!  Not so fast!  Mr. Callahan asserts that the following statement is teleological:

…given that the heart has several functions, a failure of the pumping function is the thing that would lead most quickly to the failure of all the other functions.

Here is his reasoning:

To fail, a thing must have something it *should* be doing.

I responded with the following question.  So far, no response from him.

The primary function of cancer cells is to reproduce without limit.  Is that what they “should” be doing?

Perhaps his point is that all statements containing the word “fail” seem teleological to him.  Like these?

During ice ages, rivers blocked by glaciers failed to transport the water they contained to the oceans, and large lakes  formed as a result.

The reason Jupiter failed to ignite as a star is because it does not contain a sufficient quantity of hydrogen.

Should Jupiter have been a star?

Consider an unnamed river that became blocked by oozing lava on a lifeless continent four billion years ago – should it have carried water to the ocean?

Who was around to care?   Whose plans were thwarted by these failures?

Maybe the unicorns were disappointed?

What’s going on here, I theorize, is that when Mr. Callahan reads the word “function” he assumes (erroneously) that the writer means “intended function.”   If the function was “intended” then one can leap to the teleological conclusion that there must have been some sort of creator who intended it.

Takeaway lesson:   If you have an honest desire to determine what a statement means, do not assume that the word “function” means “intended function”, or “primary function”, or “useful function”, or anything else other than “function.”

Morality

Gene Callahan offered the following assertion:

“If a moral person breaks the rules, it is to produce a more moral, not a less moral, outcome.”

I replied:

To break a rule of morality is to do something “bad.” So what you are saying is that it can be “good” to be “bad.”

That is self-contradictory, and all self-contradictory statements are false.

What’s your opinion?

For example, was it “good” to bomb Hiroshima, killing innocent babies, in order to produce the supposedly “more moral” outcome of preventing the deaths of invading U.S. soldiers?

Lies Your Rulers Tell You

People who wish to keep you in a state of subservience frequently tell lies using sentences that do not refer to real people. Instead, they hope to trick you by referring to concepts. Here are some examples of concepts:

Us. Them. We. The State. The People. Our Children. Voters. Society. Government. Public.

Concepts (i.e., conceptualizations) are not real entities. They cannot be seen, touched or felt.   They are make-believe. They do not exist in the real world. They exist only in the mind. Therefore, they cannot act or be acted upon. But liars pretend they can.

Here are some typical lies told using concepts, together with true statements that avoid the use of such concepts.

The poetic lie: “The U.S. has government of the People, by the People, and for the People.”
The truth: Individuals with guns will murder you if you refuse to pay taxes to them and/or their masters. You are are a slave. You will do whatever your rulers command you to do or you will be killed, or locked in a cage.

The poetic lie: “Soldiers fight bravely to protect our freedoms.”
The truth: A soldier is a hired hit-man who will kill virtually anyone his master orders him to kill. He will do this because he is afraid of the consequences of failing to carry out his master’s orders. It is only when he refuses to obey his master that he can properly be called “brave.”

The poetic lie: “We are one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all.”
The truth: Heavily armed, immoral individuals conspire together daily to control you and seize portions of your property for their own benefit. They control you by issuing commandments they call “laws” and “regulations.” They are perfectly willing to murder you if you disobey these commandments. They desire maximum liberty for themselves but have no intention of allowing you to enjoy any liberty at all, except to the extent it makes you more productive and easier to control.

A Long Story in Ten Words

There’s a lot to notice and think about here.

It’s 1908 and someone in Oxford, England thinks it worth the high cost to send a cryptic message to Connecticut using the fastest and most expensive mode of communication available.   This suggests both the sender and the recipient were fairly wealthy.

A lengthy letter, full of newsy prose, probably would have reached the recipient within a week or two.  Yet a terse, expensive, quick sentence was judged superior.

Under what conceivable circumstances might it be appropriate, or humorous, or instructive, or supportive, or helpful, or courteous, or kind, or sweet, or gracious, to text-message the line “Congratulations life owes you nothing.”?   On the occasion of a divorce?  Bankruptcy?  An engagement?  Maybe the sender was gloating over some calamity suffered by his enemy, the recipient?

This telegram was well-preserved for over 100 years, so it must have been greatly valued by its recipient.

The sender was charged for ten words.  I can only see ten words if I count the comma and the two periods as separate words and ignore the address.   If a punctuation mark counts as a word, maybe this explains why there is no punctuation mark after the word “Congratulations.”

The address is “New Haven House.”  No street number.  The recipient’s full name is not given.  Yet it was evidently assumed the telegram would be delivered quickly, as telegrams generally were.   According to one web site, “New Haven House” was a hotel that was demolished just two years after the telegram was received:

Built in 1911, the Taft Hotel, on College Street in New Haven, opened its doors to the public on New Year’s Day, 1912. The elegant hotel was right near the Shubert Theater and many Broadway celebrities stayed there over the years, including Rogers and Hammerstein, who wrote the tune Oklahoma in their rooms at the Taft. Former President William Howard Taft, for whom the Hotel was named, lived there for eight years while he was teaching at Yale Law School. Before the Taft Hotel was built, other hotels and taverns had stood on the site, including one in which George Washington stayed in 1775. The Taft’s immediate predecessor was the New Haven House, designed by Henry Austin, which was built in 1858 and was razed in 1910.

I wonder, why do people personify the concept “life”?  An abstract concept cannot owe anybody anything.  Concepts do not act.  Here is another concept: “We the People of the United States of America.”  For the same reason that “life” does not owe me anything, neither do “We the People.”  Among the things that the abstract concepts “life” and “We the People” do not owe me are:  Social Security,  Roads,  an Education,  and Health Care.

And I’m not kidding.

The telegram is typed on lined paper.  The form must have been designed with the thought that telegrams would often be hand-written.  I wonder if managers of local telegraph offices screened job applicants by examining the legibility of their handwriting.

Unlike the U.S. Postal Service, Western Union was a privately-owned company.  Even in 1908, if you wanted a message delivered quickly and reliably, you did not rely on a government bureaucracy like the Post Office.  Private enterprise provided a superior service, at least in the judgment of the person who sent this telegram.

The heading on the telegram boasts of all the undersea cables the company had laid on the ocean floor between continents.  What an impressive amount of copper!  What a hugely expensive undertaking!  Yet the investors fully expected to recover the high cost of this investment by selling text-messaging services.

Carmalt and Osler were probably surnames, not given names.  It’s possible that the recipient, Mr. Carmalt, might have been the Dr. William Carmalt who was involved in mosquito control activities in New Haven in 1912, according to this website.

This committee met November 12th and again November 19th, and thoroughly discussed the matter in all its phases. Two bills were drafted, (1) declaring mosquito breeding places a public nuisance and giving the health officers more authority to abate them, and (2) providing for the drainage of marsh lands under state control. These bills were submitted to a general meeting held November 22nd, and after slight changes were approved. A portion of the first bill was changed into the form of an amendment to Sec. 2526 of the Statutes; consequently three bills instead of two were prepared.

It was voted that the Chairman appoint a committee of five to see that these bills were printed and distributed, introduced into the legislature and to assist in their passage. The following were appointed members of this committee: Dr. William H. Carmalt, New Haven, Chairman; Dr. Charles J. Bartlett, New Haven; Mr. A. S. Barnes, Bristol; Mr. R. A. Rutherford, Old Lyme and New York; Dr. Valery Havard, Fairfield.

The bills were introduced at Dr. Carmalt’s request by Representative William S. Pardee of New Haven and referred to the Committee on Public Health and Safety; a hearing was held February 19th, about twenty-five appearing in favor and -no one against the measures. It also appeared that the medical, public health and civic associations of the state all supported the bills.

Whether or not these bills are passed by the legislature, their introduction and consideration has had some effect in bringing the matter to the attention of the members.

The whole problem is largely one of education, and if the measures are rejected by this General Assembly, the next or some other General Assembly in the near future will pass similar measures.  Every thinking, person knows that the Panama Canal could never have been finished but for the mosquito suppression work done there. Thus we have neglected our own territory and have gone to the tropics and made a record in sanitation. The whole world has noted our success there. With Panama as an object lesson, we should now clean up our own territory and make it as safe, as sanitary and as comfortable as Panama.

We must still raise money and drain marshes, even though only a few acres, are improved each year. The Anti-Mosquito Committee, Inc., will urge corporations to drain their own land; the city to take better care of the marshes in its parks; and it will ask the board of health to inspect private grounds and public dumps to prevent mosquito breeding in the receptacles there.

Evidently, the good doctor was not a fan of wetlands.  Nor were his friends in the legislature.  If it was “good” for government officials to destroy wetlands in 1912, how can it be “bad” for people to destroy them today?  Does the passage of one century turn morality on its head?  Are today’s political busybodies doing “evil” when they make it a criminal offense to drain wetlands?  Or was it the 1912 busybodies who were doing “evil” when they did the draining?

How can you tell?  Prove it.

In closing, let me say:   Congratulations, Carmalt, death owes you nothing.

Implosion

The U.S. government is financially self-destructing, just like Greece.  Its tax revenues are falling, its spending is increasing, and it is entirely dependent on the generosity of foreigners who are willing to lend it more trillions of their dollars this year than they did last year.

Inevitably, the day will soon arrive when foreigners stop increasing the amounts they lend to U.S. politicians.  On that day, the entire house of cards will topple.

One morning, not too many months from now, you will awaken to discover that paper dollars are suddenly worth a fraction of what they were the day before.  Grocery store shelves will be empty before you get there.  Lines of cars at the few stations still selling gasoline will stretch around the block.

You might be able to actually buy some gas if you bring pre-1962 silver coins.  Otherwise, you’d better get used to walking.

Here is a poetic quote about how our rulers are mishandling the situation, from Joel Bowman in The Daily Reckoning:

“In a misguided effort to rescue the economy from the untold horrors of the ‘abyss,’ the prophets of modern central planning seek to transfer society’s means of production from the most to the least productive class; from private fist to public mouth; from worker to moocher; host to parasite.”

You Can Grow Up to Be President!

Yes, kids it’s true!  If you work very hard and become the very best at the special skills the job requires, you have a very good chance of becoming President someday!

And the best part is, there are only two skills you need to develop:  Reading somebody else’s words on a teleprompter,  and Lying!

Now, I don’t want to make this seem easy.  It’s not enough to become merely a competent liar, or even a very good liar.  You must spend hours practicing this special skill every day so that you eventually become one of the very best liars in the land.  Only then will you have an excellent chance to become president.

I urge you to begin by studying YouTube videos of Obama, who is truly a magnificent liar.   Again and again, this grandmaster has demonstrated his astonishing skill.  He is able to lie convincingly about anything, and to everyone, even himself.  Honestly, he is an absolute wizard at prevarication, fraud, hypocrisy and all the other subtle and difficult arts of lying.

Clearly, he has devoted his life to this.  It is his calling and his passion.  I stand in awe of his virtuosity in this area.

But there have been other grandmasters as well.  Who can forget “read my lips”?  Who can think of Ronald Reagan, who expanded the cost and intrusiveness of government faster than even Roosevelt, and not be inspired by his ability to persuade the entire world that he wanted to reduce the size and scope of government.   Genius!

If you find these role models inspirational, kids, get started with your intensive practice immediately!  Why not start a Ponzi Scheme tomorrow?

Doing Unto Others

Many adults routinely vote in deeply immoral ways.  For example, they vote in favor of taxes to fund government schools.  Or they vote for politicians whom they know will tax their neighbors.

These are clear, unambiguous violations of the Golden Rule (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”)

Would these unethical voters want you to encourage an armed thief to break into their homes or bank accounts to steal their money?  Obviously not, yet they are sanctimoniously delighted to encourage armed thieves who call themselves  “IRS agents” or “sheriffs” to break into their neighbors’ bank accounts and steal their money.

And when one of their neighbors resists, they are quite pleased when this “tax evader” is kidnapped by heavily armed thugs and locked in a cage. Whenever they have the pleasure to be a member of the jury that will decide whether a “tax evader” is guilty of a so-called “crime” and should spend years being raped in a cage, they happily shout “Guilty, guilty, guilty!”

Not all people do such wicked things, but many do.   And those who do such things are clearly showing, by their actions, that they do not think the Golden Rule is a correct moral rule.   They are showing that they live by primitive, childish rules such as “Might makes right” and “Whatever ends I selfishly desire justify whatever means that I (or my rulers) can use to achieve them.”

If you know such a person then it is appropriate for you to apply his own moral rules in all your dealings with him.

For example, if you selfishly want his money and you have the means to take it away from him, you are not bound by any moral rule to refrain from doing so.  You would simply be doing unto him what he has already encouraged others (e.g., his rulers) to do unto you.

Eating the Way Lobbyists Want You to Eat

Whenever I spot a fat person, here are some of the things I do NOT think:

• That person eats way too much.
• That person needs to exercise.
• That person has no self control.
• That person is lazy.

Here’s what I do think:

• There goes another victim of the government’s organized insulin poisoning program.

Like me, you have probably believed (hopefully in the far distant past) that it is healthy to eat according to the guidelines encapsulated in the USDA’s Food Pyramid.

If you eat like this you are probably fat or under age 30.   If not, then it’s likely you frequently starve yourself miserably.

The food pyramid is not based on science.  It is based on politics.   The USDA is not a scientific organization, it is a political organization.  If you are eating the way self-interested, money-motivated farm lobbyists, congressmen and bureaucrats want you to eat, you are being successfully hoodwinked by professional liars.

Discussion Question:  What do you think would happen if legitimate scientists persuaded USDA bureaucrats to publish a Pyramid showing that grain products (cereal, bread, crackers, cakes, etc.) should be avoided at all costs because they cause obesity and diabetes, that fruits should be limited to a small fraction of one’s diet, and that fruit juices and skim milk should never be consumed?

Here’s my answer:  The USDA bureaucrats would immediately receive a swarm of calls from violently angry farm-state congressmen.  They would be reprimanded and threatened.  And they would withdraw the new Pyramid before the sun set.

If this is similar to your answer, then you MUST IGNORE THE POLITICAL FOOD PYRAMID and do your own research about nutrition.

And here is an excellent place to start: http://www.why-low-carb-diets-work.com/

Parasites Celebrating Themselves

Apparently this has been “Public Service Recognition Week,” a celebration for amoral, incompetent, self-congratulatory parasites who prey on productive people by “working” in government make-work jobs.

Saturday Night Live lampooned these parasites in a skit that would be funnier to me if it didn’t seem so sadly accurate.

Here’s some career advice:  Do not take a  job in a government bureaucracy, ever – not even temporarily.  It will be a permanent stain on your “work” history.   If you are employed in the bowels of a government agency for five years or more, you risk being viewed as unemployable anywhere within the legitimate, non-criminal, voluntary economy.   It will generally be assumed that you have absorbed the anti-customer, “me-first” entitlement mentality shared by virtually all bureaucratic parasites and you will be shunned.

If you hope to retain any self-respect and to live a fulfilling, productive life, accepting a position on a government payroll is not worth the risk.

Think about it.  How many people can you name who have wallowed in the pestilential mudscape of a government bureaucracy for at least five years and who were then able to pursue a successful career in a legitimate job?    Please post their stories, if you can come up with any examples.

Otherwise, keep your reputation pure.  Don’t accept a position as a paid parasite!