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Dec 26
Chuck Spinney: Is Global Warming Religion or Science?
Categories: 03 Environmental Degradation
Chuck Spinney
From a perspective of elementary epistemology, the difference between practice of religion and practice of science is really quite simple: in religion, one changes one’s observations about reality to fit one’s conception or model of reality ; in science, one changes one’s model of reality to fit one’s observations about reality. At the heart of this distinction are the notions of incontrovertible truth on the one hand and conditional (or convertible) truth on the other. Each has its place in the human affairs, and differences in place implies acceptance of one does not necessarily mean rejection of the other.
Of course the real world is more complex than this simple distinction implies and the different notions of truth coexist and overlap. Indeed, notions of Truth revealed though religious study, for example, have in fact changed over the long term, often in unwilling response to the progress of science. The causes of thunderstorms in antiquity were in realm of religion and explained as acts of gods; today those causes can be explained by advancements in scientific knowledge. The Catholic church successfully suppressed the views of Galileo in the short term, but in the long term adapted its religious dogma to them, ditto for the ideas of Darwin. In contrast, the practice of science views “facts” in the context of a conception of truth, be it convenient or inconvenient, that is by definition conditional or controvertible in the short term and always subject to refutation. All scientific theories are conditional hypotheses about reality, and as the historian of science Thomas Kuhn has shown, these hypotheses may be accepted as truth during the normal practice of fleshing out scientific knowledge, but they are nevertheless alway subject to refutation. In fact, to be a valid hypothesis, a scientific theory must be stated in a form that can be falsified by logic or experiment or both — and while its truth may be accepted by the scientist, he recognizes that his/her acceptance is always conditional and subject to change. Indeed, many of the greatest experiments in science are those that falsify generally-accepted theories of reality, like Galileo’s observations of Jupiter’s moons or the Michelson-Morley experiment. The other necessary condition for the practice of science, namely that its efforts must be transparent and subject to replication by other scientists, flows naturally from the notion of conditional truth — hiding data, suppressing competing views, and political or hidden agendas have no place in the scientific ideal.
Now, I urge you read the attached letter by 16 scientist/engineers, and ask yourself if the theory and practice of the incontrovertible “truth” of global warming is evolving along a religious or scientific vector of knowledge creation? Are its practitioners treating it as as a theory — an hypothesis — subject to falsification or as a dogmatic truth that should not be questioned?*
——————–
* Of course, you can dismiss this letter. After all, it appeared in the Wall Street Journal, which is owned by the arch climate denier (itself a revealing epithet) Rupert Murdoch. On the other hand, if you are more openminded and want to determine for yourself if the anti-scientific behaviours alluded to in this letter are atypical isolated examples, I recommend you start by reading A.W. Montford’s “The Hockey Stick Illusion,” which goes to the core of the question of whether or not it is an incontrovertible truth that the temperature increases since 1850 are unprecedented. But there is more — a lot more — readers interested in learning about alternative scientific hypotheses might explain the dynamics of climate change since 1850 can start their journey by reading Professor Akasofu’s paper on the subject [here].
Chuck Spinney
No Need to Panic About Global Warming
There’s no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy.
Wall Street Journal [ op-ed], 27 January 2012
Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed below:
Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.
A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about “global warming.” Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.
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Jan 27
Dolphin: Scientists Cure Cancer, But No One Takes Notice
YARC YARC
Scientists Cure Cancer, But No One Takes Notice
Canadian researchers find a simple cure for cancer, but major pharmaceutical companies are not interested.
Researchers at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Canada have cured cancer last week, yet there is a little ripple in the news or in TV. It is a simple technique using very basic drug. The method employs dichloroacetate, which is currently used to treat metabolic disorders. So, there is no concern of side effects or about their long term effects.
This drug doesn’t require a patent, so anyone can employ it widely and cheaply compared to the costly cancer drugs produced by major pharmaceutical companies.
Read full article with significant graphic.
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Jan 27
DefDog: FBI Wants App to Detect All Threats
Categories: IO Impotency
DefDog
FBI wants an app to detect global and domestic threats
ThinkDigit, 27 January 2012
The FBI is in talks with developers to create an app that will notify them of suspicious behavior, combining information from Facebook, Twitter and Google Maps. The FBI has been monitoring user content on a lot of these sites for a while, and have lucked out in the past, catching many criminals who’ve unthinkingly revealed incriminating information.
“Social media has become a primary source of intelligence because it has become the premier first response to key events and the primal alert to possible developing situations.”
The app will work as an early-warning system, allowing the FBI be alerted of any threats or crimes, with location information displayed on maps. The FBI’s Strategic Information and Operations Center (SOIC), had put out a market research request for a “Social Media Application,” last week, specifying the features required:
- Collect open source information from across the web on domestic and global terror data
- Automated search and scrape capability of social networks
- Allow for users to create specific keyword searches.
- Display levels of threats on maps, with colour coding, etc.
- Google Maps 3D and Yahoo Maps the “preferred” mapping options.
- Plot a wide range of domestic and global terror data.
- Translate tweets into English
The FBI said the “Information posted to social media websites is publicly accessible and voluntarily generated. Thus the opportunity not to provide information exists prior to the informational post by the user.” Further assuaging privacy concerns, the bureau added that policy was in place to edit out any content that was not relevant of specific categories being researched for investigations. Sites it intends to monitor include YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and Itstrending.com.
Source: BBC News
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Jan 27
Howard Rheingold: Critical Thinking vs. Information Literacy
Categories: Advanced Cyber/IO
Howard Rheingold
Is There a Difference Between Critical Thinking and Information Literacy?
Abstract
This paper investigates the similarities and differences between two important ideas in information processing and knowledge utilisation. Those ideas are [critical thinking] and [information literacy]. The two phrases are shown in brackets to indicate that the two words involved in each idea are not arbitrarily combined but have been coupled by authors to represent a single entity or a focus for development of concepts describing the characteristics involved. By exploring terms related to this couplet from the same sentence, the meaning of each of the central ideas can be expanded. The education, library science, and health science literature were used in this study, which analysed 8745 articles dealing with [critical thinking] and 8201 reports dealing with [information literacy] included in either ERIC or PubMed from 2000-2009.
The findings showed that combinations of terms (i.e. ideas) such as [information & literacy & related term] or [critical & thinking & related term], when organised based on Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning (Bloom 1956), clarified the similarities and differences between the two central ideas. [Information literacy] was involved in all of the cognitive functions suggested by Bloom. This finding is consistent with the definitions of [information literacy] that relate it to lifelong learning and effective decision-making. In addition, the ideas describing [information literacy] were consistent with actions and perceptions that were more public and standardised than those associated with [critical thinking].
This suggests that [information literacy] and its associated procedures could significantly augment current instruction in [critical thinking] and indeed, the possibility has been explored by some authors in the current literature. A merging of the two ideas would involve [information literacy] providing tools and techniques in the processing and utilisation of knowledge and [critical thinking] supplying the particulars and interpretations associated with a specific discipline. This type of integration could lead to instructional programs similar in concept and application to those in research methodology where methods from statistics are integrated with the techniques and skills associated with a specific discipline. The development of a curriculum of this type would change functions and perceptions from private, individualised mentation, now associated with [critical thinking], to a more easily learned and practiced process suitable across the breadth of disciplines.
Keywords
critical thinking; information literacy; idea analysis
Full Text: PDF
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Jan 27
Venessa Miemis: Reflection – The Concept of Enlightenment
Categories: Philosophy
Venessa Miemis
Reflection: The Concept of Enlightenment
musings on Adorno & Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment.
When I review these passages, my mind speaks back – “the machine is using us”.The goal of the enlightenment was to free our minds, by favoring ‘rationality’ over myth and mysticism. Nature became something that was to be controlled by us, quantified, compartmentalized, labeled, manipulated.
But, this new scientific way of looking at things changed the way we THINK… or perhaps limited our ability to think at all. Instead of looking for greater ‘Truth’ or deeper meaning in things, identifying the essence of a thing, giving it ‘value’, it becomes a mere definition. The framework of thoughts are based in a soul-deadening logic and mechanicality. Everything that can be named and described and explained away can be somehow controlled, and there’s a power in that, but at the same time, something sacred is lost.
Click on Image to Enlarge
The belief in positivism seems as irrational to me as mythology must have been for those that started the enlightenment movement. To place utmost value in what the senses can perceive, and call it Truth, is ridiculous. I think we’re finally coming around full circle, not to a return to mysticism, but at least allowing ourselves to say that there’s more to life than meets the eye. In some ways, science itself has pointed out its fallibility. The more we dive into quantum mechanics, the more incongruities and incompatibilities we find with what we think we know and what is. Perhaps there really is an unknowable universal. Is it really such a horrible thing to have a sense of awe of the world around us??
We become like slaves in invisible chains, our minds shaped into the pattern of a machine: efficient, mechanical, repetitive, causal, our thoughts on the conveyor belt of an assembly line – there are no alternative paths for them to take.
This machine-like way of thinking is tied directly to the division of labor – the mechanized process of thinking is merely a function of material production and the “all-encompassing economic apparatus”. By abandoning the cumbersomeness of formulating actual thoughts in favor of following a predetermined reified path, the greater machine/system of society can operate smoothly. At the same time, the smooth operation leads to a distillation of society, a loss of culture.
By treating nature as something outside of oneself, something that needs to be manipulated and controlled verse something with which to be in harmony, humans become isolated and estranged. Both the lowly worker and the ones in charge are victims – the dominated are resigned sheep, and the dominators are equally immobilized by their distance from the experience, the self imposed detachment and repression of novelty in favor of utility in order to ‘better’ perform their role of power.
(from the archives; friday february 6, 2009; media studies graduate paper)
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Jan 27
Event: 18-20 June Games for Change [Submit by 17 Feb]
Categories: Games Serious / Change
The 9th Annual Games for Change Festival will be taking place on June 18-20, 2012. The call for talks and presentations is now live! The Festival is the leading global event that facilitates the creation and distribution of social impact games that serve as critical tools in humanitarian and educational efforts.
To submit a talk or presentation, visit:
http://www.jotform.com/form/
Submission deadline: Friday, February 17 at 11:59 pm EST.
Accepted speakers will receive a complimentary pass to the Festival and will be notified on March 16.
To learn more about what topics we’re looking for this year as well as information about the review process, visit out website:
http://www.gamesforchange.org/
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Jan 27
Robert Steele: Slate and New America Foundation a Propaganda Front – Taking Money Under the Table?
Categories: 07 Other Atrocities,Corruption,Corruption,Cultural Intelligence,IO Deeds of War,Media,Non-Governmental
Robert David STEELE Vivas
Warning: This Site Contains Conspiracy Theories
Does Google have a responsibility to help stop the spread of 9/11 denialism, anti-vaccine activism, and other fringe beliefs?
By Evgeny Morozov|Posted Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, at 7:43 AM ET
In its early days, the Web was often imagined as a global clearinghouse—a new type of library, with the sum total of human knowledge always at our fingertips. That much has happened—but with a twist: In addition to borrowing existing items from its vast collections, we, the patrons, could also deposit our own books, pamphlets and other scribbles—with no or little quality control.
Such democratization of information-gathering—when accompanied by smart institutional and technological arrangements—has been tremendously useful, giving us Wikipedia and Twitter. But it has also spawned thousands of sites that undermine scientific consensus, overturn well-established facts, and promote conspiracy theories. Meanwhile, the move toward social search may further insulate regular visitors to such sites; discovering even more links found by their equally paranoid friends will hardly enlighten them. Is it time for some kind of a quality control system?
Robert Steele: I am disengaged from Phi Beta Iota most of the time, but this piece was brought to my attention with the observation that it combines a claim to legitimacy involving Stanford University and Foreign Policy (no longer a serious rag, now a sub-set of secrecy & rendition apologist The Washington Post), and that it appears to be an early shot in a new national security propaganda theme aimed as neutralizing the use of the Internet for self-education. When Obama said in the State of the Union that it is known kids do better when they are forced to stay in school until graduation, I was sharply critical–the reality is that the best and the brightest leave school as soon as they can pass the GED, realizing that rote learning of old knowledge from poorly-paid burn-outs is not the way to “jack in.” What we have here is a very troubling indicator that the New America Foundation (wittingly) and Slate (perhaps unwittingly) are now part of the domestic propaganda arm of the military-industrial complex. The idiocy and illegitimacy of this piece should not have to be pointed out, but since Slate, which I thought had educated leadership, evidently saw nothing wrong with this piece, I will just point them to several books that will explain to them why collective intelligence, open source everything, and the three values of clarity, diversity, and integrity, are all essential to resilience and sustainability. Transparency, truth, and trust are the heart of the matter. This article is a disgrace to Slate and to Stanford, and confirms my growing disdain for the New America Foundation and Foreign Policy.
Robert David Steele, The Open Source Everything Manifesto: Transparency, Truth, & Trust (Evolver Editions, 2012)
David Weinberger, Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren’t the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room (Basic, 2012)
Robert David Steele, Intelligence for Earth: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability (Earth Intelligence Network, 2010)
Mark Tovey (ed.), Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace (Earth Intelligence Network, 2008)
David Weinberger, Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder (Holt, 2008)
and then of course there are all the other books that in the aggregate would suggest to any intelligent reader that Slate has just published the biggest piece of crap in the recent history of digital journalism.
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Jan 26
Jim Fetzer: New Evidence Oswald Was In The Doorway
Categories: 07 Other Atrocities
Jim Fetzer
JFK Special: Oswald was in the Doorway, after all!
EXTRACT:
In JFK: What We Know Now That We Didn’t Know Then (Veterans Today, 21 November 2011), Dr. James H. Fetzer provides a valuable summation of recent advances in JFK assassination research, including the discovery of the written notes of Detective Will Fritz concerning Oswald’s whereabouts during the shooting, as mentioned above. That Oswald told Fritz that he was “out in front with Bill Shelley” contravenes the established belief that he said he was in the lunchroom, where he was shortly before and would be confronted shortly after. Here are those notes:
. . . . . .
The Demise of the “Lone Nut” Theory
In conclusion, even though a lot of manipulation went into transforming Oswald into Lovelady, it didn’t work. We can still tell that it’s him, Oswald–and I would bet my life on it. The preponderance of the evidence is overwhelming, and the meager challenges to it are riddled with suspicion and doubt. The worst thing that ever happened to the JFK research community was relinquishing Doorway Man.
We need to take him back. We need to add the Altgens photo to the list of physical evidence that the conspirators altered and corrupted. We need to shout from the rooftops that Oswald could not have killed Kennedy because he was standing outside in front of the building at the time. This settles it. This ends it. This is checkmate for THE WARREN REPORT (1964).
The cover-up of the murder of President Kennedy, by our government and our media, has been going on for 48 years, and it must stop. It has been poisoning us as a people, that is, our society and our culture. To heal, to recover, and to start anew, we need to know the truth.
See Also:
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Jan 26
David Swanson: Military Spending Going UP Not Down
Categories: Corruption,Military Reform
David Swanson
Panetta: Military Spending Is Going Up
By David Swanson
On Thursday, Leon Panetta held a press conference announcing what he called “cuts” to military spending. The first question following his remarks pointed out that the “cuts” are to dream budgets, while the actual spending will be increased over Panetta’s 10-year plan.
Is there any year, the reporter asked, out of the 10 years in question, other than the first one, 2013, in which spending will actually decrease at all. Panetta replied that he was proposing really truly to cut the projected dream budgets that he had hoped for. In other words, he did not answer the question.
Now, there are additional minor cuts “on the table” as the saying goes, cuts that Panetta has described as disastrous, cuts that would take U.S. military spending back to about 2007 levels, cut nowhere close to what a majority of the country favors. (How we survived 2007 and all the years preceding it has never been explained.) Earlier this week, Republican members of the House Armed Services Committee sent President Obama a video denouncing these cuts. They are, of course, the cuts mandated by the legislation that created the Super Committee, which failed, resulting in supposedly automatic cuts.
The video (available here) is itself packed with lies.
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Jan 26