Government Money Laundering

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The semester has started, and the students are in full swing letting us know just how dissatisfied they are with how much college costs. I agree. I don’t know exactly how much it should cost; I just know that they are paying a lot more than I did. Perhaps it’s because higher education, like most government activity, is just another opportunity for people to launder money.

Students buy books with grants, loans, or other forms of financial aid. Then, friends of mine who work in college bookstores report that students return the books and exchange the money for iTunes gift cards, candy bars, and other items that are not covered by their student aid. I know that when I was in college I had friends who took out loans and bought cars with them. I don’t know how they paid their tuition, but some of them never went to class. After all, as long as you are still in college you don’t have to pay back the loans, and several folks I knew finally graduated in 2010. We end up with a significant fraction of the student body that is actually making very little progress towards graduation if they are progressing at all, who are beneficiaries of student financial aid for which they think they will never have to pay, particularly if they never get a job. This is depicted well in a college humor spoof I enjoy greatly.

The more I watch the behavior of government, the more convinced I am that government is really just a money laundering operation. Bastiat points out in “The Law” how the oppressed turn the tables when power changes and become the oppressors. So in essence, the plundered become the plunderers, except that government can do it behind the law, in the guise of law, by the force of law, and masquerading as according to the law. Obama has given special funding privileges to pet projects in green energy, despite the fact that they keep going bankrupt or moving to other countries after receiving tons of money in loans (Solyndra anyone?). Other presidents probably did the same thing. I have previously written perhaps here but definitely elsewhere that I suspect Feinstein’s husband is heavily invested in Smith and Wesson and Sturm, Ruger, and Co. and that she used her position to create an artificial run on guns and bullets by which to pad her wallet. It has been done in the past. It is called war profiteering usually, which is a war crime, but according to the current government and the media that’s a crime that only Republicans can commit.

At our group meeting in the department this month, we saw some examples that hit home personally. All of the chairs in the laboratories were replaced last term, without regard for the fact that the chairs they chose do not fit underneath the lab benches, which meant we ended up buying other new chairs for some labs, including my desk. We probably got a sweet deal because whoever owns the chair company is in bed or in business or in the pews with someone with authority over the college's purse. They have spent months trying to install a new autoclave in the microbiology prep area, and we finally learned that it cannot be done because nobody in the state is authorized to work on this special kind of pipe, and you can’t get a license to work on it in Nevada. This means some connection in California likely got a special and exclusive deal to work on it. It’s collusion. We found a way around it. While not technically money laundering in the classical sense, these kind of specially privileged projects appear regularly in government. That’s how government has worked.

I do not tend to work that way. My father tells me regularly that he thinks I should work towards a tenured professorship. He knows that offers the best job security. What he doesn’t realize is that many of those people do as little teaching as possible, and if we are an educational institution doesn’t it make more sense for our best instructors to teach as much as possible and pay them commensurately? Right out of college, I attempted to leverage his connections to get a job, but they were either unable or unwilling to help me. My siblings have fared similarly. In fact, I got this job because of what I know rather than who I know, and I continue to stay and teach and advance because I excel. It does take a lot of work. I suspect quite a few people work here because they are well connected with people in positions of power, but if they are not the best people for the job, we are shortchanging everyone who walks through our doors.

Liberals like to project on conservatives our penchant for “big business” as if that excuses big government. What they don’t want you to notice is that it’s a red herring. Like all members of the oldest profession, they are also capitalists, and they also support only businesses that launder money back to them. They like to see only the set of facts that validates what they believe. Even if their facts are true it does not license them to ignore the rest of the facts. Today on Facebook someone posted this thought without attribution: “People who work for a living are being undermined by people who vote for a living,” and that is true REGARDLESS of your party. I have been saying for years that the politicians are their own favorite constituents, beneficents, and beneficiaries, and if you happen to benefit from their policies, it’s largely coincidental. As the Samaritan told Jesus, "the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table". When Obama came to Vegas yesterday, he took credit for things that are true in spite of his policies, but because they happened during his presidency he likes to link his policies as causative, even though coincidence is not necessarily causality. He flies to Vegas to give a speech, which costs this city in lost revenue and increased security during his visit, and then he tells other people not to come spend money here. He transfers money from areas he doesn’t like to the ones he prefers.

It is a consistent mark of capitalism that people put their money into things they like. Sometimes government guilt trips them into liking certain things or eschewing others. Ultimately, we vote with our feet by putting our money into the things we prefer. Government doesn’t like that we get to choose; they want to decide for us what each of us needs. We don’t “need” assault rifles, but we do “need” healthcare, even though I only go to the doctor each year because the state tells me that I must. We don’t “need” big SUVs, but how else do people transport all six of their children in one car? They do not know what we need. They want us to want what they want us to want. At least they could have the intellectual honesty to admit that not enough people want what they want us to want. As for me, I just want them to leave me alone and let me do my job and live my life as well as I can.

Power in Possessions

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A week or so ago, while watching Back to the Future III, I decided it might be cool to buy a Colt Peacemaker. I was astounded at the price I would have to pay to buy one and thought just briefly it might be cheaper to travel back in time. However, since Deloreans go for $25,000 or more, I can buy several Peacemakers at that price, but it made me think about inflation and how far our dollar goes. I also realized that I could unwisely splurge on a Delorean or I could put away that money for retirement. I can have pleasure now or peace of mind later.

When I ran the numbers, I found something very illuminating. As they clamour for higher minimum wages to help people live better lives, I found that the numbers tell an interesting story. Below is a chart showing the historical price of certain goods and their annualized rate of inflation since to today’s approximate price. The calculated inflation rates tell an interesting tale.

Item	Historical price	Year	Current price	Inflation rate
Colt Peacemaker	$                   8.00	1885	$      1,250.00	4%
Gasoline	$                   0.88	1995	$               3.31	9%
Stamp	$                   0.19	1988	$               0.45	4%
Gold	$              350.00	1995	$      1,650.00	9%
9mm FMJ	$                   0.25	2007	$               0.75	25%
Atomic fireball	$                   0.05	1988	$               0.25	7%
Minimum Wage	$                   3.25	1995	$            10.75	7%
House	$      128,000.00	1995	$  245,000.00	5%
Car	$        10,000.00	1995	$    15,000.00	3%

It also tells me in what I might want to invest as a hedge against inflation or as the government continues to print money it does not have to pay its bills. It also tells me a little about what the government suggests we buy, what society suggests we buy, and how useful those things really are to making our lives better.

If these were investments, they have very different rates of return. If you are a child, the rise in the inflationary rates will pay for the kind of consumables that children seek. If you are an adult, it also pays for it. However, some of the things the government doesn’t want you to buy have risen at far higher than the standard inflation rate. While the USPS tells you to buy Forever stamps as a hedge against inflation, the data shows that stamp prices are among the slowest increase in price. What gives us the highest rates of return? Gas, gold, and ammunition beat even the rapid spike in the minimum wage. Even though it seems like a Colt is way up in price, standardized over that many years, it hasn’t increased nearly as much as other things. As investments, some things are wise for their yield; other things are useful for the value they bring to our life. I think a house brings a lot of value to life, but I don’t know anyone who finds a lot of satisfaction out of all the gold he has. Gold is, after all, pretty boring and mostly useless.

Why do these things hold value? Primarily, I wager they do because they are not things in which the government is directly interested or can directly manipulate. You can always find gold or make your own bullets, but by yourself it’s tough to build a house, a car, or even a pencil. These goods give you the best bang for your buck literally and figuratively, because they allow you to negotiate from a position of power. That’s why government doesn’t want you to have them- they give YOU power.

Personal property provides power to the people. Government is a self-licking ice cream cone interested primarily in its own advancement. Any benefits you receive are usually and largely accidental or coincidental. Why aren’t guns on the list? Well, guns don’t actually kill people. Guns allow you to fire bullets. Guns don’t accidentally blow up. Ammunition does. Guns don’t actively fire themselves. They are how people project bullets. The bullet makes a gun different from a rock as a weapon. Gasoline makes a man faster than a horse or a bicycle, or even a train. Gold is transferrable for almost any commodity, despite my reservations against it, and so it gives men power. In fact, you’ve heard of government’s golden rule: he who has the gold makes the rules. These things give men power. Cornering the market on chalk or candy or stamps will never make you rich. It will maintain the status quo, which is what government wants.

I still disagree with raising the minimum wage. If you look at the items we need, they keep pace with the rise in inflation via wages, so a new employee can buy no more than I could when I was brand new to the workforce. It gives the impression that we accumulate wealth faster per hour, but I remember movies from the 80s in which saving $5 million in ten years was a big deal. Now the federal deficit is in trillions, or a million millions. The numbers are so big they have no meaning. The efforts of government do not really have any meaning. They are not designed to empower you.

In the end, the rich man is not one who invests in things. It is the man who spends his money well. I have maintained for some time that it’s not how much a man earns as much as it’s a function of how much he has left over after he pays his bills. By that metric, our government is worse than bankrupt! By other comparison, I have coworkers who earn $20,000 more annually than I. However, they purchased houses that cost them thrice per month what I pay, meaning that if they take 30 years to pay off their mortgage, that expense alone sucks up all the difference in our wages. If you spend the difference in disparate earnings on more expensive lodging, that in essence can negate the extra money you earn. I have no problem with owning things. The main problem is when your things own you.

Government wants your things to own you, but God teaches that we can be masters of our souls, our destinies, and the world around us. Government maintains the status quo while God encourages improvement. There is power in what we posses, but it is less about what we possess than it is about how we use it. If you buy things you don’t need with money you don’t have to impress people you don’t like, you trade what matters most for what matters in the moment. Eventually, we learn that our power is in what we possess, and that it’s not in things but in how we use those things to bless the lives of people around us.

Open Letter to Big Lots

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Five years ago, when I moved to Vegas, I first really discovered your store. It felt like an exciting treasure hunt akin to trips to the store with my mother where we never knew what treat we might find! I was able to pick up things at your store that were unique, that were high quality, and that were at huge discounts. When they closed the one near my house, I was disappointed, but I understood that the landlord was asking for too much rent. I went out of my way to visit other locations. Then things changed.

Big Lots is no longer the store it was before. It has become a diet version of other retailers. Rather than offering us values we couldn’t find anywhere else on other people’s product lines, now you have your own. Over the past two years, I have paid attention and kept some of your fliers because I can track like clockwork what you will have and when and what price it will cost. The fun and adventure and surprise of Big Lots is gone, as is most of my interest in going to your store.

I know someone probably told you that this was a good idea. My father still calls your chain “Odd Lots”, and other people who do so may mean so meanly. You probably wanted to get away from your image and attract better (cleaner) customers. You probably stand to make more money per item. What you may not have realized is that the customers who helped you during your rise have now been alienated as you change your focus. You may not realize that you will have fewer sales and perhaps less total income.

Changing focus led to the deaths of other stores and nations. Other retailers have fallen for the deceptive lure of bread and circuses in order to attract either a particular sales volume or a particular customer demographic. In trying to appeal to others you have left us behind. I no longer pop in to browse the shelves for surprise treasures, and as a consequence, I also no longer impulse buy at Big Lots. The more trendy you become, the more you risk losing the rest of the kitten caboodle. If you want to be the next Montgomery Wards or JC Penny, then that’s your choice.

Most of the shoppers in this nation are ordinary folks. While sometimes they want the latest and greatest, when times are hard and paychecks decrease as they are in Obama’s America, ultimately they choose to push their paychecks as far as they can. Trendy styles give way to sufficient apparel, and paying bills becomes more important than upgrading furniture, and putting food on the table matters more than whatever savings coupons you offer on things we don’t really need. It seems to me like you’re taking advice from the same people advising the President who parrot the OLD, not new as they claim, and tired plan to spend money we do not have to buy things we don’t need to impress people we don’t like. Trendy folks already have their favorite stores. I don’t visit those either.

When Saturn came out with the Astra, I was initially excited. I had waited for a long time for the heir apparent for my Saturn SL1 to arrive on the market. I went over to the dealership to drive one. I was disappointed greatly. The car was even more cramped than mine. The engine was irrationally arranged under the hood. It was a hatchback! It was plastic. It didn’t even get as good gas mileage as mine despite having the “same” engine. The saleswoman attempted to sell the car by pointing out that it had an access port for my iPOD. I turned to her and said, “You saw what I drove here. What makes you think I own an iPOD?” She told me that it was very popular in Europe. I told her I hated the cars they loved in Europe (which they like because they are small for the small streets, small garages, and small parking and ideal for the huge gasoline expense). I drove a BMW Isetta. Just because it says BMW on it doesn’t make it a good car. She told me that they had reached out to customers and tried to please them. I told her that I was a customer and I wasn’t interested in the Astra one whit.

You may of course do as you please. As one of your customers, like with the Saturn Astra, I am not impressed by the upgrade to your business. The customers you asked are not like me, and they are not interested in what I like. You would do well to have a contract from them promising to spend money in your store, because it has been months since I was there last, and only because you sell things I buy anyway for which I had a coupon. In making a new design, it is important to keep in mind what made your old design popular. If you abandon that completely, you had better offer us something else we value, or you lose your old customer base too. I don’t have to shop at Big Lots. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a new, cleaner, Wal-mart with fewer selections. Like my father told me, I can go elsewhere and buy some cheap Chinese product and get a warranty on it with unquestioned returns.

Mostly, I miss the thrill of shopping at Big Lots and finding something amazing I had not expected to find. It’s no longer fun to shop there. Now, the stores are basically all the same, with all the same products and in basically the same places. Ask yourself what you’re doing that nobody else does and ask how much value that really has for your old customers. I kept my Saturn, which I still drive, and Saturn closed because at least in part they abandoned their old customers like me. We are the engine of business. Vroom vroom. Then there’s Apple; I still don’t own any iProducts.

Welcoming the Water

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When I awoke yesterday, something smelled strangely. I went outside to discover that it had rained, and I found myself excited about what the day might bring because the best days in my life or for my life are always rainy. I have written quite a bit, such as this, which I wrote yesterday during lunch. I welcome the water, because God is in the rain. A friend of mine on Facebook posted the following story which I find useful for commentary on today's post.

The Stranger

A few years after I was born, my Dad met a stranger who was new to our small town. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was around from then on.

As I grew up, I never questioned his place in my family. In my young mind, he had a special niche. My parents were complementary instructors: Mum taught me good from evil, and Dad taught me to obey. But the stranger ... he was our storyteller. He would keep us spellbound for hours on end with adventures, mysteries and comedies. If I wanted to know anything about politics, history or science, he always knew the answers about the past, understood the present and even seemed able to predict the future! He took my family to the first major league ball game. He made me laugh, and he made me cry. The stranger never stopped talking, but Dad didn't seem to mind. Sometimes, Mum would get up quietly while the rest of us were shushing each other to listen to what he had to say, and she would go to the kitchen for peace and quiet. (I wonder now if she ever prayed for the stranger to leave.)

Dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions, but the stranger never felt obligated to honour them. Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our home - not from us, our friends or any visitors. Our long time visitor, however, got away with four-letter words that burned my ears and made my dad squirm and my mother blush. My Dad didn't permit the liberal use of alcohol but the stranger encouraged us to try it on a regular basis. He made cigarettes look cool, cigars manly, and pipes distinguished. He talked freely (much too freely!) about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive, and generally embarrassing. I now know that my early concepts about relationships were influenced strongly by the stranger. Time after time, he opposed the values of my parents, yet he was seldom rebuked ... and NEVER asked to leave.

More than fifty years have passed since the stranger moved in with our family. He has blended right in and is not nearly as fascinating as he was at first. Still, if you could walk into my parents' den today, you would still find him sitting over in his corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures.

His name? ... We just call him 'TV.' He has a wife now ... we call her 'Computer.' Their first child is "Cell Phone". Second child "I Pod " And JUST BORN THIS YEAR WAS a Grandchild: IPAD

I found this story fascinating personally, because I have been reading recently about Philo Farnsworth, the creator of the technology that brought us Television. His son recounts that, despite his father creating the infernal contraption, his father advised against them having one in their home. Such advice always piques my interest when someone who accomplishes something advises against it.

I already wrote at length about how we invite evil to approach us any time it likes by virtue of the gadgets we carry with us. It reminds me of a poem my paternal grandfather used to quote: "All the water in the world, no matter how it tried, could never sink the smallest ship unless it got inside. All the evil in the world, the blackest kind of sin, cannot hurt you the least bit unless you let it in". My parents hated TV, and for many years we had no channel access at all, my parents choosing instead to purchase movies they felt it wise to allow into our home. I will be forever grateful for that wisdom! Maybe it left me naive in the world, but it protected me from the allowances other people took, from acquiescence, and from permissiveness of things that they felt ought not be tolerated and that I now in kind also refuse to tolerate let alone support.

It concerns me greatly that so many parents procure these gadgets as a surrogate for parenting. I watch children in church, sometimes as young as two years old, playing games on their parents' iPhone, and in some sad cases on their OWN iphones! We seek to be distracted, and as CS Lewis wrote, too often we do not desire true nakedness in prayer. We like to look like we are interested in something while we seek any and every diversion when the opportunity comes. How many children have started down the dark path of abuse and crime because of their ease of access to electronic gadgetry?

Since I don't have a night class every evening this semester, I took time, albeit unwisely, to view some of the jejune programming on during prime time. Without mentioning the names of any specific program so as not to offend any readers for their personal preference, I found the programs all basically the same. They depict a bunch of people who are doing neither what they like nor what they ought who are fascinated with pleasure, particularly of the sexual kind. It is all they talk about, all they seek, and all they send as a message to those who watch. I have heard plenty of criticisms from friends on facebook about prime time programming, and having seen it myself, I concur with their conclusion that it exists in order to send a message that promiscuity is permissive, that selfishness is society, that saintliness is silly, that achievement is awkward, the work is for the woebegone loser, and that primeval and primate behaviors are preferable to gentlemanly behavior.

Rather than welcoming the water of the world, it behooves us to welcome Living Water into our homes. Last night, rather than turn on the same quesquilia into the loft, I opened my scriptures. Tonight, I will probably review my copy of the Screwtape Letters (which I have read about a dozen times and from which I quote frequently), to see what other ways in which I have recently been deceived. I realized that I can either sit for several hours each evening while the filth of the world washes over me or I can follow the example of my parents and choose which guests I invite to sojourn in my home. I almost regret buying this television, but I can choose to overcome that and turn it from my master to my servant. After all, it is not so much a question of what happens to us as much it is a question of what we do with what happens. I will follow Joshua's admonition: "And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord" (Joshua 24:15).

God in Our DNA

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This morning on NPR, I listened to a story about scientists who managed to store Shakespearean sonnets by encoding them into DNA. I came up with this idea myself back in 2005, and I can prove it. It shows that there are no original ideas really. Like most scientific studies, they are shared by multiple people who all come to the same idea different ways. Perhaps this group was able to accomplish it because they had money to back them whereas I had simply an interest in cryptology and the use of DNA to communicate other messages besides which amino acid to attach in a protein.

Read about it here. Listen to it here.

I postulate that this is not a new thing that we have discovered. Perhaps our noncoding sequences contain all the information the human race will ever discover or need ala the crystals sent by Jorell from Krypton. If so, our Creator may have programmed into us the sum total of human knowledge or His knowledge so that we have it in us. In any case, we know that it codes for something, and as such it is a form of communication even if its cryptograms are not letters from the alphabet.

We know quite a bit about noncoding regions. One of my interests in graduate school was in gene promoter regions, which are basically the equivalent of DNA’s mission control, that tell cells how to use DNA, when to use it, how much to use when it’s needed, and may contain information catching a ride or left behind by other organisms. Why not information left behind by our Creator? McClintok identified transposons, and more recently we learned about how retroviruses like HIV can hide inside your DNA and either deliver genes or steal them. In fact, that’s one way in which bacteria become resistant to antibiotics; they pick up antibiotic resistance genes from viruses that can invade but not destroy them. Maybe all of our genes are actually God’s entire repository of knowledge put into every person. We know that most of our brain is not actively in use, and the same can be said of our human genome which, despite being much larger than that of other organisms, in some cases contains fewer actively transcribed regions called genes. Perhaps the God gene is not about conferring an ability to believe in Him but rather makes it more likely that we will.

I have been saying for a long time that there are no new ideas but rather new ways of expressing things we already know. If our DNA already contains information like these researchers have copied, then that is a true statement. We have that knowledge, all knowledge, already but don’t know how to use it or don’t even use it when we find out how. Some people may have figured it out, or maybe it’s more accurate to say that when God inspires man all He really does is show us how to use what He already gave us. This would explain how men like Lincoln or Moses or Pasteur or women like Curie, Shelly or Joan of Arc arose when they did. They were born when they needed to be, and God inspired them to use what was in them specifically to solve the problem of their time. This would explain that Beethoven already had it in him to compose that music. Despite being deaf, he was able to access the data stored in his noncoding sequences. The power and the information are already in us.

God already gave us everything He had if DNA codes more than just the information for biological sustenance. Every single human ever born may already contain, if God used this same process, the total sum of God’s knowledge, power, and potential. In that case, the main condition required in order to have everything God has becomes then that a man be born a mortal and obtain DNA. We don’t know how to use it yet, but now we have it, which may be why resurrection is so crucial, because we will still need the DNA after we finish our probation. Combine that with the notion that God made man in His own image, male and female, and we find a microcosm for coupled and matched chromosomes as well as an argument for marriage as man and woman, but I digress. That is the only way to pass on the information and propagate the species. Even then, a perfectly working organism on its own is not possible, because we are split into genders, thus requiring man and woman to come together in order to achieve perfection, albeit after this life. Each of us only uses half of our genetic complement, and men and women balance each other out, which is also a pattern observed in the cosmos.

If men can figure out how to store information in DNA, it is easy to assume that other more developed organisms could and did. Humans become therefore the perfect library, perpetuating the continuity of all the repository of human knowledge in their biology and chemistry even when parts of their society are annihilated. We are a self-perpetuating, self-maintaining storage facility, and if this postulate holds, we become a sort of artificial intelligence because our knowledge and wisdom and intuition come from chemistry and physics made manifest through a biological lens in our behavior. This also gives credit to the notion other organisms besides humans may be sentient, including ANYTHING that has DNA. These are things taught by my Faith but never fully explained to my satisfaction.

Before you get emotional about this, consider that this is just a variegated notion on a common science fiction theme. The Alien series, Avatar, Contact, and scores of other movies and TV series, including Star Trek, addressed the possibility that we were put here on purpose by a higher power, that they made us and that we are using what they gave us to improve. How does something faulty become better on its own? IT learns to use what it already has better than it ever did before. We are learning to use what we already have better than ever before and making use of what the universe provides to make useful work for us and our Maker.

The researchers comment on the cost of this storage medium as well. There is a great cost to using this great gift well and wisely. If indeed every human has the sum of God’s knowledge, skills, and abilities, that increases the obligation we have to use it well and wisely and explains His wrath when we disobey. It also supports CS Lewis’ belief that if you take away all that is good in man, you are not left with a bad man but with nothing at all. Take away all the good stuff stored in our DNA, and you are left with no code, no letters, no useful work at all, only junk or gobbledygook. Time will tell what we can make of this. It is an interesting notion that if we can store it outside us that some Higher Providence might have already stored all that information inside of us, and inside every single one of us. That sounds like just another way in which we are created equal.

Partisan or principled

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Shortly after Obama won reelection, several of our citizens unwisely decided to fly their flags upside down as a sign of distress. An old college friend of mine was very upset, to the point where she used some very colorful and derogatory metaphors about them because her husband was a marine. Nevermind she was very upset that he had been forced to deploy, but that’s apophastic. When I suggested that it might be prescient to educate them rather than roast them, she proceeded to roast me too. I have never flown the American flag upside down, and now I know what the rules are.

It seems however that some people do not. I wonder if my friend was as offended by Michelle Obama’s using the flag as a dress as she was by her neighbors flying the flag in distress. You would like to think that the first lady knows proper flag etiquette; it’s possible that she does not, or that she does not care. If she knows about that, I suspect she gave the first lady a pass because she is completely transparent in her blatant support for the president. If I brought it up, I would likely become the villain once more for “casting an aspersion” which is the behavior my friend previously exhibited.

My friend doesn’t know the different between partisanship and principle. It is a matter of principle if and only if you are upset about the behavior no matter who does it especially if you find yourself doing it as well. You only really advocate a cause when it wrongly affects people you don’t know or especially that you don’t like. Why just last night, when a friend of mine posted to facebook an address allegedly linked to that editor who published the addresses of gun owners in New York, I asked her if she verified the information. I’m upset with the Journal News too, but I don’t think it makes it right to do in kind to her; an eye for an eye hurts everyone. Making special allowances for people you know or like or who are related betrays an emotional reaction that is based on connectivity rather than reason. That is partisanship.

Usually the partisans are also the people who are absolutely convinced they are principled or who talk incessantly about how principled they are. It’s sort of like suddenly realizing, “hey, I’m being humble” at which point you are no longer humble. Partisans project their behavior, and because they have the podium, it comes across loud and clear every hour on the hour. Christians and Jews are frequently critiqued for being intolerant when they are the most tolerant, almost too tolerant at times. They don’t usually blow up schools and buses when they don’t get their way. Partisan people put a crucifix in a jar of urine and call that art; you don't see Christians doing that to holy edifaces of other Faiths.

Emotion is the vehicle often of partisanship. If you listen to the president speak, he often speaks to jubilant crowds that sound more like fans at a Justin Bieber concert than journalists or legislators or serious statesmen. His voice comes from the front of his mouth which is where you talk when you are emotionally excited by something. The issues he advocates are typically ones that evoke an emotional response from people. While they can whip us into a fervor, they move quickly, before cool heads prevail and we are no longer engaged by our emotions. The partisan must create a demon, because it’s easier to drum up a mob to drive out a beast than it is to discuss an issue in the arena of ideas.

Our entire system of laws stands on the notion that some behaviors we tolerate and some we forbid, because they do not contribute to the continuity of civil society. The partisan is for expediency, and so he will sell himself to every behavior group. He teaches that if we disprove of a behavior we are also disproving of the person entire. In this way they shame us into capitulation and get us to tolerate the intolerable like during Robespierre’s Reign of Terror where any discontent with the executions of aristocrats in the plaza was assumed to make one an enemy of the republic. All that is needed is the suspicion to destroy a man. By that emotion, we are tolerating ourselves out of existence. When everything is allowed, nothing will be. When everything is free, nothing will be. We will have lost our sense of value and values, and in complete relativism, there is no point of reference. I sometimes criticize the GOP for not fighting, that some Idahoan Senator resigned for sexual misconduct while William Jefferson Clinton parades around his perversion and manages to win Father of the Year. At least the GOP Senator resigned. That was principled.

The Founding Fathers intended the legislature to be deliberative on purpose. Thomas Jefferson suggested laws wait an entire year when writing John Adams from Paris, so that people would not be swept up in emotion as they are too often now. Partisans are not thinkers, they are puppets. Partisans don’t have any accountability; they expect to be continually integrated in the present without regard for the past or weighed on intentions rather than results. How else can an impeached pervert still be the “best democrat president ever”? If he was a man of principle, he would fade into ignominity and stop getting in the way of principles. He shows up because women swoon with emotion when they see him.

Far too often, the people I know who think themselves most rational and driven by reason are the biggest partisans. They take sides on matters that are emotional and can give no substantive justifications for their positions or to support those whose platforms they espouse. Then they attack the character of people of principle without regard for the notion that men are mortal and that everyone has an Achilles heel. If they were of principle, they would either ignore them altogether or treat everyone who had the same one the same. That’s however a utopian wish and as such not founded in reason because it demands that people be principled. Thank God we imperfect people have a Messiah to save us.

Wikipedia Project

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Apparently, I am famous amongst the faculty now. In fall 2010, when I started teaching in the Chemistry department, I gave my Microbiology class a research assignment as one of their tests. Before I did so, I went onto wikipedia and changed the articles relevant to their project to be factually inaccurate. I even went so far as to type in the middle of a sentence this phrase, "I like to do the cha-cha like a sissy girl" so that I could easily identify the cheaters. The class submitted their papers electronically, so the first thing I did was search for that phrase to catch cheaters. I caught two people who copied their research from wikipedia. Today, one of the regular microbiology instructors (I only teach it when they need someone extra) mentioned me in his class. I'm famous!

We have access to tools unlike any the world has ever known. We have access to more information than perhaps at any other time in human history. We are still humans and seek to do as little work as possible, turning to the internet for easy answers without regard for their veracity or utility. One close friend said that most of what's on the internet isn't useful, which is probably why it's free. There is a reason why Wikipedia is only useful as a starting place. At least when it links to other sources you can go looking for more.

Remember that Wikipedia represents the very worst in second hand information. Since it is user built, it contains largely the opinions and information gleaned by other people who are doing the minimum standard. You will not find much in the way of articulate analysis or objectively relayed information. It is colored by its users as those two students learned, and even when it is true, it is not always the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Today however under the notion that they are being objective, too many people write with an objective- to persuade people to agree lock, stock and barrel with them, and in so doing, they present usually only the parts with which they happen to agree. On the occasion where I turn to wikipedia for something more than the date on which a movie was released, I appreciate those who have cited their source, because that's where I frequently turn next, and it is something I try very hard to do in my writings, both here and in print, so that you can see where I got it and decide what you think of it yourself.

Earlier this year, the Founder of Wikipedia fell victim to the same symptoms. Someone altered the wikipedia page about him to be inaccurate. The moral of the story is that just because someone says it does not make it true. Just because it's on the internet doesn't make it true or useful. All it means is that it's free.

Composition and Context

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In a conversation with my parents a week or so ago, I reminded myself of one of my more brilliant points in my teaching and one of my pet peeves with researchers. Wednesday night when I go to lecture for the first time this term, I will point that out in my discussion of the Scientific Method, that in our experimental design and description it is important to discuss the setting. You see, the rules are the rules under a certain set of conditions. Chemistry is the science of changing the conditions in order to force matter and energy to change from the state in which we find it to the state in which we prefer it be.

Even students of the fine arts know about setting. It plays a huge part in plays, in books, and in the cinema. I mean, it wouldn't make much sense for the Rebel Alliance to fight the Death Star using slingshots or for people to be fighter pilots in a story set in 1650 AD. The setting helps us "set the stage" and defines under what conditions a thing might happen, and in our particular case the conditions under which it does. Scientists do the same. They are supposed to report their experimental and control settings so that we know in what context the results they observe occurred so that we can reproduce it or draw relevant conclusions based on changing conditions.

Much of science, I teach my students, tells us that it depends. Normally, according to scientists, heat and light are not considered to be useful work. Work to us means the conversion of matter. However, light and heat can be useful if we set the stage correctly. When you get up in the middle of the night and flip on the lamp, light is absolutely critical. When the sun explodes, it casts just the right amount of heat and light 93 million miles to keep the earth sufficiently warm and lit for life to persist. It depends, on what, where, with what, how much, at what time, and with what other props or conditions a thing occurs. Under different conditions, other outcomes are likely.

Many people do not think the Nevada desert is beautiful. In and of itself, perhaps they are right. The rocks are bleak and unimpressive. The plants are scrawny. The game is colored blandly. However, it means fewer people want to come here, so I can see the stars more clearly here than I could at 10,000 feet in the middle of Colorado, and I can hike without having to suffer the incessant chatter and electronic intrusions that seem to always disrupt the peace in Utah's "wilderness". Even my own father who once worked as a professional photographer complimented me on many of my photographs of this state. He taught me, on a late summer day during high school with an old Canon A1 camera, about composition and context.

Gambling on Neutrality

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Neutrality has been the fallacy of people through all ages of time. They think or perhaps more accurately hope that by staying out of the fracas they can avoid any of the pain and reap all of the benefits. As the government of this nation repeats the errors of every other government throughout time, people should realize that there are no conscientious objectors. Somewhere, on both sides, there is someone thinking that if you are not with us you are against us, and they will hold you accountable for the sins of others around you.

The great principle on which our civil society exists is the freedom to choose. One forgotten freedom of the First Amendment is free association as long as that organization does not infringe upon other rights or threaten to undermine the Constitution. You can choose; you must choose. It need not be today, but there are tens of thousands of folks joining the NRA not because they own guns or like them but because they believe they one day may want that right or require it. At the same time, the enemies concentrate that hatred on people who advocate the Second Amendment because they claim those advocates are predominately white and stupid. They have already said you are racists. They have already made you the enemy unless you agree lock, stock and barrel with them.

History is replete with examples of people who mistakenly believed that everyone could be Switzerland without realizing how Switzerland maintains their neutrality. Switzerland is one of the most mountainous nations on earth and populated by a people who are all required to learn to use a weapon and to own one, not unlike the 13 Colonies prior to 1776. Just because you are not doing anything doesn’t afford you protection. When the Goths sacked Rome, they killed people at random including the women and children, the rich and the powerful; they were just there to get paid. When the British marched on Concord, they shot people in the back on the porches of their own homes despite the fact that their victims were complying with the order to disperse. In the end, women and children are not protected because they may grow up to challenge the conquerors. And before people of differing melanin contents than I protest, the savagery of Africans against subjugated women knows no comparison in my ancestry. Only the Aztecs were more savage. The best defense against evil people with guns is for good men to arm themselves in kind.

Neutrality is a huge gamble. In many ways it resembles a Russian Roulette in which they hope that the round in the gun of the invading army will be one who does not decide they are guilty by association. It will depend. You might be fortunate to see the mutual deference depicted in Saints and Soldiers where Deacon and Rudi both spare each other, but that’s unlikely. It’s possible that the British Officer will only want to quarter his troops in your home and not take any other liberties. Colonel Chamberlain knew that when he received the mutinous 2nd Maine deserters he could shoot them, but that if he did he could never return to Maine, and so he opted against it. Perhaps as in Saints and Soldiers Airborne Creed the Fallshirmjaeger Commander will treat your wounds until the armor arrives to relieve you. Not everyone is so lucky. The civil war was the last time when people could expect to surrender and be treated fairly, but even then it wasn’t always the case.

More often than not, the opposite is true. When the Mayor of Innsbruck was forced to greet the Nazis and opted against the salute, he was shot dead on the spot by the SS. Look at Captain Blood wherein Peter Blood is condemned to the block and then the plantation not because he was part of Monmouth’s revolution but because he treated men who were. Those who are not for them will be against them. Then there is The Scarlett Pimpernel, where you could be condemned to the guillotine just for not being a “friend of the republic” even though history has shown us that Robespierre was a tyrant. During our Revolution we were fortunate because the British army was largely commanded by gentlemen who abode by the rules of war. The enemy today is different; they care nothing for you or the people hurt by their schemes. Largely they lack the collegiate congeniality of Chamberlain and the courtliness of Cornwallis, choosing instead the savagery of Sherman.

The time to choose is soon upon us. It is not about left or right, up or down. It is about Tyranny or Liberty. You can either join with those who are for freedom or you can be the enemy of freedom. The enemies of freedom will not give you a pass. They will kill your sons, enslave your daughters, raze your homes to the ground, take all your goods, and leave you bereft like the British did to the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Switzerland is an abnormality. You can be denounced at any time, not just for hiding Anne Frank, but for knowing who is hiding her or not accurately inquiring or because you are neighbors with the family secreting her. Your churches, the pins on your lapel, and your civic memberships will not protect you when the army comes through. Their job is to kill people and destroy stuff, and they do a smashing job at it. Tanks do not discriminate. They drag down the innocent with the guilty, and no reason is given or needed.

Disney depicts this in a way that speaks truth. Captain Hook tells the lost boys that you can join up and become a thief and pirate or walk the plank. The choice is up to you, but there is no middle ground. In fact, if you were there during the Great War, that was the worst place to be- in no man’s land! Not choosing is a choice. If you are actively advancing a thing or towards a thing or idea, then it is what you have chosen. Declaring a major differs greatly from taking classes that will complete the requirements. Maybe you’ll be lucky. Maybe the roulette will land on 2 in green, but it’s very unlikely. Now is the time for choosing while you still have a choice.