The Fount of Useless Information

It is the small scale of the thing that is the issue

Paying companies to hire the unemployed
http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/18/news/economy/unemployed-subsidized-jobs/index.htm?source=cnn_bin

This is what our dysfunctional government should be doing with its stimulus dollars. Instead of enriching the already rich (have you heard of the _trillions_ of practically interest-free loans the government has given to Wall Street? What could you do with that?), which is fairly well proven to not help the economy one damn bit (while I don’t disagree with the TARP bailout in principle (the economy was going full-speed off a cliff), I totally disagree with the massive gift with absolutely no strings attached and I get really really upset that the rationale was to bail out because they were too big to fail and now they are even bigger!), help put people back to work by actually putting them to work for ‘free’. Companies now faced with all this ‘free’ labor (taint free, it is all out of our taxpayer pockets (but so is all the ‘free’ money going to Wall Street!)) are almost certainly going to ramp up business, since it is nearly risk free, and that would likely be just the shot-in-the-arm the economy needs to get going again (most of the economic ‘growth’ babbled about now is stocks and Wall Street, ordinary companies are still reluctant to hire).

Of course, the idea of our dysfunctional government doing anything like this is out of the question. The GOP even turns rabid against ideas it was promoting just a few years ago because their single goal is to get that damn black man out of the white house, the entire rest of the country can go into depression for all they care.

I doubt I have any raving GOP wingnuts in my reader(s), but just in case…

Why ‘President Romney’ Would Be a Disaster for Women
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/what-president-romney-would-mean-for-women-20120515

I like women a whole lot and figure that they are likely smarter (on average) than us Neanderthal, knuckle dragging goons. Certainly the one I married is! I strongly believe that if we have more women in our government that our government would be smarter (well, perhaps that is too generous, how about less dumb?). Ditto for our corporate leadership (ditto for less dumb). It frustrates me to no end that the GOP is so intent on marginalizing women (except, of course, when it comes to getting their votes, but I am already on record as considering all politicians as pathological liars); each election I get pushed more and more toward being a liberal (or perhaps, each election the GOP moves further to the right such that what used to be considered middle ground is now liberal).

6 Ridiculous Lies You Believe About the Founding of America
http://www.cracked.com/article_19864_6-ridiculous-lies-you-believe-about-founding-america.html

This was quite interesting to me and significantly contrary to what we were all taught in school. Not that I am amazed that school teaches crap, rather the opposite, I am often amazed when schools teach relevant, meaningful and insightful content. My interests in history tend to be scientific/technological and as such I know more about early Chinese and Middle East civilization, largely, I think, because there are better written records from those eras. Anyway, because what I read did jive with some of the historical information I am aware of regarding early civilizations in America, I thought my reader(s) might find it interesting. I will outline each of the myths here simply because I figure a lot of reader(s) won’t be able to read the site from work computers…

#6. The Indians Weren’t Defeated by White Settlers

Actually, it seems quite clear that early explorers inadvertently brought highly communicable diseases like smallpox with them and given that the population in the Americas had no resistance, it seems the plague wiped out huge swaths of the population, perhaps as high as 90% in some areas. As a consequence, almost certainly the local organizations of the natives were in total disarray when the ‘pilgrims’ landed and as a consequence there was no organized resistance to their ‘invasion’.

#5. Native Culture Wasn’t Primitive

Just like the Egyptians, the native American cultures were able to accomplish amazing works. Unlike the Egyptians, the works the natives produced were not protected by deserts and decayed much more quickly. Also, there seems to be a substantial cultural bias against the native’s achievements and little effort (until fairly recently) has been made to preserve or investigate the remnants. Though it appears that the cultures were all ‘stone age’ (meaning they hadn’t any significant use of metals such as copper, bronze or steel), one should be quite cautious in considering that as wildly primitive. For much of the modern European / Middle East / Chinese history metals were used sparingly and generally only as extended ‘wear points’. Even when steel became comparatively inexpensive to produce (I think between 1,000 AD and 1,500 AD) it was still so expensive that very few people made extensive use of it. It wasn’t until the industrial revolution happened (mid 1,800s) that steel started to become ubiquitous like it is today. My point is you can achieve a very high culture with stone-age tools, you are not in any way limited to primitive hunter-gatherer societies with very low population densities.

#4. Columbus Didn’t Discover America: Vikings vs. Indians

This is finally becoming mainstream. The Vikings not only had successfully navigated their way across the Atlantic, but had well established colonies and regular trade. Greenland used to be green! Greenland used to have extensive Viking colonies on it (why this is never discussed by global warming people is a conundrum to me). They were ‘lost’ when the climate turned cold around 500 years ago and Greenland became the ice covered continent we are all familiar with today. The very northern part of Canada was also settled by the Vikings, though what evidence I have read about says it wasn’t so extensive (meaning hundreds of people vs thousands on Greenland). This is the first that I have read of evidence that the Viking colonists regularly sailed down the East Coast. It makes sense that a healthy population of natives would routinely push back the Vikings. Even though the Vikings had some steel at the time (as well as bronze), as I mentioned before, it wasn’t in armor it was in the pointy ‘wear bits’ of the weapons. As such, their weapons were not materially different from stone axes, stone-tipped spears or stone-tipped arrows. If the local population was robust and experienced with warfare (I have read quite a bit (though mostly post-European settlement) that the native tribes pretty much were in constant conflict) I don’t see the Vikings as having much of an advantage. I suspect that if the population was as low as the early European settlers make out that the Vikings would have rapidly colonized at least North America and we would all be speaking something besides English.

#3. Everything You Know About Columbus Is a Calculated Lie

This is the first I have heard that supposedly Columbus died a penniless pauper. My understanding was he made a pretty nice chunk of change for his efforts, though my understanding was he died frustrated because his goal was to find trade routes to Asia, not discover a new continent.

#2. White Settlers Did Not Carve America Out of the Untamed Wilderness

If, as I am now seeing as likely, the first European settlers arrived shortly (my impression is about a generation, or around 25 years) after a plague (or series of plagues) wiped out most native Americans, then I would expect that the land would have been relatively easy to clear and farm. I was brought up on the idea that from the sand on the East Coast beach to the Mississippi river that the forest was an unbroken vista of hardwoods 4-6 feet in diameter. I am sure that there were plenty of locations where that was true, but I am starting to doubt that was generally true. With the stone tools available I doubt that the natives were capable of the whole-sale deforestation that the Europeans were, but by the same token it is fairly trivial to ‘girdle‘ a tree and once an area is cleared it is trivial to keep it clear (unless, of course, 90% of your population died horrible deaths).

#1. How Indians Influenced Modern America

I got no opinions/insights in this, early US history isn’t something that fascinates me that much, though I do know that a lot of what we commonly learn about our history is heavily skewed (the US, for instance, had a pretty steady policy of making treaties with the natives then immediately reneging on them, sending in the troops to commit heinous massacres of innocent women, children and elderly (and the occasional fighting-age male who was careless enough to be without weapons to defend himself). I know that trappers in the Midwest and Rockies knew that certain tribes could be easily negotiated with and certain tribes would immediately try to kill them, so clearly there was a very wide range of cultures within the native populations. I find the mention of ‘defections’ of early settlers to native populations interesting. Perhaps the walled forts with their pointy-topped posts were to keep the settlers _in_ rather than the natives _out_. If true, that puts a real different spin on things, eh?

I am sorely tempted to dive into some research on this topic, but I suspect I won’t make time for that in the near term. I already have too many projects on my plate. It is very interesting, though, and I know that many of these areas are subject to archeological flux (recently I was exposed to some plausible arguments that North America was initially settled by people arriving from the general area of modern France by way of boats across the Atlantic, as opposed to walking across the Bering land bridge on the West). The world was a very different place when the ocean was 300 feet lower than today (as it would be very different if the ice cap in Antarctica melted and the ocean rose 300 feet; no more Florida!) and since people tend to initially settle on the coast at the mouths of rivers, nearly all such archeological evidence would be most inconvenient to investigate.

So, anyone have any insights for or against?

Is American decline real?
More and more thinkers are warning that our glory days are over, but their arguments are flawed — and old
http://www.salon.com/2012/05/14/is_american_decline_real/

A lot of interesting stuff on Salon today…

So this is an argument against the looming apocalypse. I wish I could get excited about it, even for a few minutes, but to me this paragraph is most telling:

Beyond material strengths, the society itself benefits from a durable political system, rule of law, vigorous free press and information media, and a competitive and adaptable economy, as well as strong traditions of entrepreneurship and innovation, leadership and critical mass in new technology, and a history of resilience and flexibility in overcoming adversity.

“Durable political system”? I see that as a side effect of the design of our government. I doubt that our founding fathers intended to produce a revolution-free government (indeed, based on my reading, they specifically intended for there to be regular revolution), but I believe (and feel sure I mentioned here before, but can’t find the relevant post) they accidentally created one. Because, nominally, our government is elected by the people, anyone who is serious about changing our government has but to run for office and effect change. The reality, though, is that in order to effect change to the current system one must first become part of that current system and it takes a huge act of will to now turn against the very system that supported your rise in the first place. For those few who didn’t ‘sell their souls to the devil’ in order to get elected, through the simple expedient of rejecting any efforts to effect change, the status quo members can easily get the ‘change effector’ thrown out of office by the very people who elected him in the first place. So, to me, the very ‘durability’ of our political system is part of its problem, not something to brag about.

“Rule of law”? I believe I have made my case for the oligarchy-controlled police state quite clear (I believe I have a post on that topic earlier today). Law in the US today is in name only and exclusively applies to the 99%.

“Vigorous free press” must be a joke on the part of the author. While the two adjectives, taken in isolation, do in fact apply (it is very vigorous in reporting inane chatter like Kim Kardashian and it is ‘free’ in the sense that the government doesn’t actually own it), the intent for a ‘vigorous free press’, I am quite sure, was to have something adversarial to our government, not what we have today which could most generously be described as a loyal lap dog. The ‘information media’ tacked on at the end must be regarding the Internet, but anyone who bothers to read the news (which automatically means a very few percent of our sheeple-like population) knows the government is intent on eliminating any freedom on the ‘net.

The rest about competitive and adaptable economy of entrepreneurs, based on my analysis (and personal experience) that is a bunch of BS. Succeeding in business is more of a lottery today than any time I can think of prior to the crash early last century. When I ‘grew up’ it was expected that 80% of businesses would fail in the first 5 years. While that is a huge rate, much of that failure was due to ignorance on the part of the entrepreneur (it amazes me so often that while no one thinks anyone can be a brain surgeon, everyone seems to think that anyone can successfully start and run a business). Today venture capitalists are generally happy if they can have one out of ten companies make money and supposedly these people are highly educated, well funded, well connected and experienced. Where is there room for ordinary people any more?

Then again, I was reading this book on the history of atomic weapons (“US NUCLEAR WEAPONS The Secret History” BY CHUCK HANSEN (it is available for download if you search for it)) and found this in the introduction:

Since the end of WWII, a vast empire has arisen largely unnoticed in the United States. Conceived in secrecy during the war, its scope and products have remained beyond the public consciousness, except when its exploits or blunders have brought it widespread national or international attention.

This secret empire has cost taxpayers dearly: $89 billion in development costs since 1940, and $700 billion for delivery systems for its products [I wonder what that would be in inflation-adjusted dollars today]. The sheer volume and number of these products is mind-boggling: between 1945 and 1986, the nuclear weapons production complex in the U.S. manufactured approximately 60,000 warheads of 71 types for 116 different weapons systems. Of these warheads, 29 types remain in the current inventory. Since 1945, the U.S. Army has deployed 21 types of nuclear warheads; the U.S. Navy/Marine Corps, 34; and the U.S. Air Force, 43. Another 29 “candidate” warhead types were canceled before reaching production, and an unknown number of other warhead designs have never progressed beyond paper studies. By mid-1987, the U.S. had detonated more than 850 nuclear devices and weapons on the surface of the earth, underground, underwater, in the atmosphere, and in space during tests in, over, and under the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, and in several states in the continental U.S.2

The U.S. government has always gone to extreme lengths to keep this orgy of nuclear self-indulgence hidden from public view. Even though the weapons labs, research centers, and production complexes and their artifacts are well-known to the Soviet government, they remain a mystery to most of the citizens of the United States.3 Literally tens of millions of documents chronicling this vast “black project” remain locked in vaults, well-protected behind a formidable wall of secrecy, and hidden in perpetuity by one of the largest permanent classification establishments in the entire U.S. government.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s willingness to go to extreme lengths to protect this status quo was illustrated quite dramatically a few years ago when an obscure political magazine in Madison, Wisconsin attempted to publish an article about the American nuclear weapons complex. The article described the products of the secret empire by means of an illustrated account of the operation and design of a hypothetical thermonuclear weapon. The U.S. Department of Energy, specifically, James R. Schlesinger, its director at the time, requested the Department of Justice to seek an injunction to prevent republication of a collection of information that had been in the public domain for many years (much of this data had been released by DOE and its predecessor agencies).4 A compliant judge was found, and a preliminary injunction against publication was issued quickly. The battle to overturn this injunction lasted for six months in 1979 (the longest prior restraint on publication in the history of the country) until the government, faced with the strong possibility of a precedent-setting unfavorable court ruling, dropped the case in the fall. I was a key participant in the case: a letter I wrote to a U.S. senator, analyzing the government’s misbehavior and probable motives for bringing suit against publication, finally forced an end to the original injunction in Wisconsin and a second injunction against a student newspaper in California. Since 1979, the government has maintained an embarrassed silence about the case.

One of the purposes of this book is to shed more light on the history and products of the secret empire, and to provide at least a partial history and description of some aspects of U.S. nuclear weapons development and testing programs since the end of WWII. As has been the case with all of this writer’s previous articles on this subject, all of the information in this book is republished or derived from unclassified documents (including some very informative government reports newly declassified specifically for this monograph). Extensive footnotes in each chapter cite specific sources for many of the points discussed (footnotes are gathered together at the end of each chapter). All conclusions and opinions are those of the author (except where noted) and have not been reviewed, edited, verified, or approved by any agency of the United States government.

Chuck Hansen
July 1987

Note the year. Deja vu all over again, eh? Of course in my estimation things have steadily got worse since then, but clearly people have been predicting doom and gloom for a long time and (for the most part, for most of us (don’t want to be an outspoken Muslim at this point in US history!)) things are still going OK. However, just as Rome wasn’t built in a day (who in the hell thinks Rome could have been built overnight anyway?), it didn’t fall in a day either. It took a long time and while the decline was reversible for a substantial chunk of that time, there reached a point where it became irreversible. It is my opinion that we have passed that point of reversibility. Perhaps it will still be longer than my lifetime before things get really ugly (when the barbarians be at the gate) and perhaps there is still enough of a window I can squeeze through to climb up to the 1% of the 1%. But, just as I am sure was the case when Rome collapsed, once you start down the slide into the dust bin of history, momentum reaches a point where no amount of effort will reverse (or even slow) the decline. One can hope that the US doesn’t destroy the whole world when it goes into the dumps.

Then again, maybe I am the one full of shit and the author cited at the top is the one with the right vision. I am _happy_ for that to be the case!