Two years after the disaster in the Gulf we have new reports that the waters are horribly toxic and is killing the marine life. Much of the science remains unavailable to us due to the litigation and the rules of law. You can watch Thom discuss the situation or read about it in Crude Awakening.

The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science - and Reality is partly to blame. This is because that mindset is a regressive force in the fight for progress. You can listen to a podcast from Point of Inquiry with Mooney and find other informative stuff there too. He talks about integrative complexity...

How Wealth Reduces Compassion is an interesting article published in Common Dreams and it might be fun to look for more writings from Daisy Grewal....like The Evolution of Prejudice.

Chris Hedges on the Myth of Human Progress     

Joseph Tainter on the Collapse of Complex Societies on You tube

Chris Hedges The World as it is...he doesn't think that Maddow is progressive...but that can all be found in Hartmannland along with a synopsis of The Long Decent. The longer the better is what I say. Unfortunately we may be in for a quick collapse.

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As usual, I came here to

There is some evidence that conservative policies will cause harm, even death to many people. Demos has an article on the subject. It reminds me of the study that shows suicides increasing with conservative administrations...perhaps we need more play ethic....

It's not surprising, markets can be irrational as Ultimatum Game theory demonstrates...here's a youtube video, one of many...ah, here we are..an interview from marketplace about how irrational people make irrational markets so I'll have to watch this NOVA. Now we have the author and the book to help out with the perspective.

Saving What We Can

Many of us are familiar with our climate crisis, but fewer are aware of The Other Inconvient Truth. What are we to do?

Integral Activism is my suggestion. We need to create a social networking site that is a very modestly priced subscription service which will fund global democracy, education and charitable efforts for the greater effort of saving as much of the biosphere and the gains of civilization as is possible.

Brian Skerry read that 90% of the fishes have been caught and killed since he was born and that startling statistic inspired him to reveal the ocean's glory - and horror. Shall we save what ew can?

Jeremy Jackson is known for his deep understanding of geologic time..or so it has been written. If you can stomach it he will explain How we wrecked the oceans. I hope you're not faint of heart.

Pump and Dump

Looks like we're in for a lot more bubbles forming in the stock market. William Black explained pump and dump scams that the JOBS bill will foster. He seems to be a regular contributor in the Huffington Post. Small business is less than a billion dollars as defined by the bill.  Alexis Goldstein is becoming a regular on UP w/ Chris Hayes. She and Black repeatedly reference Sarbanes-Oxley Act and how it is being undermined and gutted by the JOBS bill.  

Karen Ho, author of Liquidated, is my kind of anthropology professor.

Why Nations Fail looks like a good read...and Zacharia has Charles Murry author of Coming Apart and although he may be a libertarian type, he sounds reasonable...

One of my favorite economists, Paul Krugman, wrote a piece about banks and the monetary supply titled Banking Mysticism, Continued,  that I'll have to read over again because he seems to be rejecting the banking conspiracies..

Check this out...from Robert Reich...
The top 1 percent got 45 percent of Clinton-era economic growth, and 65 percent of the economic growth during the Bush era.
According to an analysis of tax returns by Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Pikkety, the top 1 percent pocketed 93 percent of the gains in 2010. 37 percent of the gains went to the top one-tenth of one percent. No one below the richest 10 percent saw any gain at all.
In fact, most of the bottom 90 percent have lost ground. Their average adjusted gross income was $29,840 in 2010. That’s down $127 from 2009, and down $4,843 from 2000 (all adjusted for inflation).

So considering Stand Your Grounds, could we shoot all those rich people because poverty causes premature death and illness? Or if those people with pre-existing conditions may loose the healthcare provided by Obamacare may loose that healthcare thanks to the Supreame Court, can they shoot the justices that rule for repeal? Or how about the folks poisoned by the Koch brothers' owned industries that have life threatening and life ending illness...can they shoot the Koch bro's with immunity? That makes more sense to me than being forced to buy broccoli.

A question and request for Sam Harris

Dear Sam Harris,

I write to you with a question, a request and an explanation of an intellectual position and philospohical stance which is difficult to explain. Please bear with me as I attempt to express this matter that I believe has profound implications.

I write to you because I admire your intellectual rigor and hope that this will provide intellectually nourishing food for thought.

The request is that you contemplate spirituality and other matters within the framework of developmental psychology and contribute to the process of differentiating between spirituality and religion. The distinction

I do not know if you are familiar with the works of Ken Wilber, Spiral Dynamics and the likes, but the basics provide a context. While I disagree with many of the details, applications and conclusions of the authorities in these matters, I find the general theory to have merit worth consideration and hope to save the baby from being tossed with the bathwater.

I agree with your position in The Problem With Atheism and would like to suggest that spiritual, but not religious can be an improved framing that may serve us well in teasing out the confusing knot of conflated ideas regarding these matters. Rather than framing religious beliefs as wrong or misguided (although they are often both), it may be more fruitful to position them as immature.

The use of this term is new and still needs significant refinement. While there may be a significant portion of people that identify as SBNR who are relatively intellectually immature, there are others who have more sophisticated and nuanced perspectives. It is my contention that those in the later category can help to shine the light of wisdom and clarity in these otherwise muddied philosophical waters.

In the developmental scheme, rejection of the mythic can only happen after exposure to the mythic. One cannot reject religion in the absence of religion. While Ken Wilber may have realized and described the Pre/Trans Fallacy, he still seems to be missing something significant. Maybe this guy got it right or at least better. It may be true of Steve Taylor too, but geez....so many words...

If there is a mature spirituality that recognizes religion as a relatively narrow and primitive aspect of its greater being, then perhaps religious conflict will become as unnecessary for humanity as an appendix...wouldn't that be nice?

The Delusion of the Middle

A community of peers is necessary to promote understanding and growth within a given field. Peer review is essential to the progress of continued growth whether it is a hard science or soft science.

The softer sciences of politics, philosophy and psychology are now in a state of retarded development due to a delusion of the middle, aperspectival madness and a lack of proper developmental understanding.

As an example of the delusion of the middle is Richard Dawkin's refusal to verify the reality of climate change/global warming when he appeared on Up with Chris Hayes. As a trained scientist, Dawkins should have adequate understanding of the science that is requisite for an informed opinion on the matter of climate change. Greenhouse gases trap energy and humans are creating significant greenhouse gas emissions. The science is simple enough, so why would Dawkins fail to acknowledge such basic scientific consensus? The only reasonable answer is a delusion of the middle which is a misguided intellectual conceit that truth can only be found in the middle of ideological camps. It seems strange that a man with such outspoken atheistic convictions succombs to such folly, but that serves as an example of how pervasive and subtle the delusion of the middle is. Sam Harris argues this same point in his short essay, The Fireplace Delusion.

The delusion is pervasive and harmful to the intellectual growth of culture in similiar manner that religion affects political policy. Congratulations are in order for Stanley Fish for his perception and contribution regarding this subject. A noble but misguided labor to prove impartiality and to rise above the fray is how the high ground is compromised and disconence is created.

Let us form a community of peers to rescue one another from this moral hazard that prevents us from speaking truth and bearing the banner of modern enlightenment. Let us keep rational skepticism and the higher ground.

As a side note: the Bottom Line reminds us to look at corruption, state by state...and let us, or let me review the problem with Atheism...

UP to GPS

I love a Sunday with the talking heads and the internet. I get more information in a couple of hours than our grandparents got....well..

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is a guest on GPS with Fareed Zecharia so then I find he delivered a talk on TED about Iran's future...he teaches at NYU and has a site, but doesn't really self promote so it's hard to find info from the man.

In the What in the World section Fareed focuses on India and how they play for neutrality, "narrowly pursuing their self interest"...hmmm....they are a market...

So here's the clergy project. Perhaps I/we could petition them to upgrade to spiritual or SBNR and to frame religion, athiesm and spirituality in developmental terms. Have they fallen from grace or are they falling into grace? We are atheism...

The focus has shifted to The World Bank with James Wolfenson on GPS. What's up with the wolves at the helm of global finances? Remember the fall of the big bad wolf?

Reid Hoffman says we should have more lunches with more innovative people....how's that for a reminder to promote the development of a social networking site that charges nominal fee and donates all the proceeds to charities. Dude is a VP of Pay Pal and helped start Linked In. He says we have to invest in the future because it changes ever faster...talking about his book....a work in progress seems to be his motto..he also asks what should I be asking/thinking/doing...there it is, sort of ....
relationships rule the world....perhaps I should mention the creation of not-for-profit restaurant/bar/bistros..
Paper Promises is the reccomended book of the week...whi
ch you can listen about thanks to NPR and watch a video about thanks to Reuters and....is this a different NPR production? It isn't really about the future of capitalism...

To finish things off I have to note that ABC's This Week has Michele Bachmann in a special one-on -on interview with host George. Really? people really still take that nutcake seriously? Looks like nothing but propagandist infotainment to me. but hey, it reminds me to search out the Fox crap about
The Language of the Left...I'll have to discect that later...but from what I've seen, they compare one man, Bill Mahaer, to ALEC and a whole bunch of legislature around the country...ridiculous...

So here's some sanity, sad, but there is global warming...