The superficiality of race; meaningless or adverse change for the sake of change

The link: Down the Mississippi: Barack Obama effect ends white rule in Deep South town

A quote:

“They wanted a black mayor,” said a philosophical Mr Fava, 71. “Another Obama – I think that’s what brought it on. I ran on ’30 years of dedicated service’ and he ran on ’Change’. He promised a swimming pool and a recreation centre, which he can’t do.

But it’s possible that Big Daddy G will provide. If he applies for a grant for a swimming pool, there’s always the chance he’ll get one.

“If we don’t look after our youth, what do we have? The population is dying out and I want more people here. I want better living conditions.

I just want the people to be comfortable. Small towns like this depend on government funding and that’s what we’re seeking.

Time will tell whether change for change’s sake is good.

“”Everybody out here was whooping and hollering and running and trying to flip,” said Patrina Brown, 25, the new mayor’s niece and newly elected as one of Alligator’s five aldermen.

Some youngsters ran into Mr Fava’s store to taunt him. “They was pulling down their pants, shouting, ’Kiss my black ass, because we got a black mayor’, swinging their things around and throwing stuff,” said Jennifer Green, 31, a black mother of 10.

Miss Green is dubious about whether Mr Brown, whose duties will include organising contract labour, overseeing the water and sewer systems and distributing any grant monies, can deliver. “He says there’s going to be lots of changes and everything with all these kids running around here.

“But he do the same thing they do, drinking beer and stuff. You’ve got to stay at home and study the town. Alligator is the kind of place where if you leave your door open, when you come back there ain’t nothing in your house.

“There’s guns. Kids knock on your door asking for a beer at three and four in the morning. I get 14-year-olds asking me if I want weed or whatever. They should have just left Mr Robert in there.

“Tomaso won’t do anything about any of it. He’s going to put his hand in the cookie jar just at the wrong time and get caught.”

Her boyfriend J. R. Cook, who is white, disagreed. “It was about time for Robert to get out. He was tired. And there ain’t no saints around here. They may be Christian people but when they get out of church it makes no difference.”

Christian-decadent wimps feeling sorry for themselves

The link: Sanford: I “Crossed Lines” With Women

A quote:

“This was a whole lot more than a simple affair, this was a love story,” Sanford said. “A forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day.”

During an emotional interview at his Statehouse office with The Associated Press on Tuesday, Sanford said Chapur is his soul mate but he’s trying to fall back in love with his wife.

“Hey, Jenny. I don’t know that I like you that much any more, especially when I compare you to you know who. But you’re my wife, and you did hang with me all these years, especially through the tough times, so I’m trying to fall back in love with you. It’s not gonna be easy. You really don’t turn me on any more, but I’m gonna try so hard to love you again, but if I can’t, then you really can’t blame me, can you?”

Obama and Michael Jackson

The link: Will Obama Make A Statement On Jackson? (cbsnews.com)

A quote:

The White House hasn’t yet decided whether Presiden Obama should issue a statement on the death of Michael Jackson.

He was a world-renowned superstar, but there are parts of his life that hardly merit words of tribute from an American President.

I’m a little mesmerized by the untimely death of Michael Jackson, but other than Michael Jackson’s phenomenal abilities as a musician and dancer, primarily as a dancer in my opinion, there’s nothing admirable about how Michael Jackson lived his life; there’s nothing in the way of his character that we would want to emulate, and much in the way of superficial and shallow character that we wouldn’t want to emulate.

So could it be that a black man who achieved success without becoming white to cater to the white majority, wouldn’t care to pay tribute to a black man who became white to cater to the white majority?

Of course, black Obama has kissed a whole lot of white butt to get ahead in life, but I don’t see that as any attempt on his part to distance himself from being a black man. As the butt kisser of the masses, he’s pretty much willing to say anything, and willing to appear to be all things to all men. By all appearances, he doesn’t prefer white butt over, say, Islamic butt. Butt kissing is butt kissing to Obama. He’s an equal opportunity butt kisser. Who can rightfully say that Barack Obama prefers kissing white butt over any other kind of butt? No one.

Why would a person of another race ever want to be white anyway? Well, okay, in general, it’s easier to run with the majority than the minority, and so there’s lots of people who change colors in lots of ways to make sure they’re a part of the majority, a part of the middle, to be moderate, to not be labeled as a radical, to fit in, to go with the flow, not out of principal, but out of fear, of persecution, of being rejected, of being ridiculed for being different, even if different is right, which isn’t always the case.

Suckers for Scientology

Three links in the right-hand column of drudgereportarchives.com for future ridicule material.

Falsifiable: Popper’s much to do about nothing much, and Woit and Smolin as the logically challenged (or two non-experimentalists who have a need for science by consensus)

Indirectly, through Lee Smolin, I finally get Peter Woit’s definition of falsifiable, which is actually nothing much more than the standard nonsensical nonsense that’s summarized by answers.com.

In Smolin on the Anthropic Principle, Woit says,

[Smolin] gives an eloquent explanation of the importance of falsifiability for a shared scientific enterprise.

I can assume, then, that Woit is satisfied with Smolin’s explanation of “falsifiable.”

In Smolin’s preprint, on page 3, Smolin writes,

According to Popper[1], a theory is falsifiable if one can derive from it unambiguous predictions for doable experiments such that, were contrary results seen, at least one premise of the theory would have been proven not to apply to nature.

This is definitely not phrased to impart knowledge, so it pays to keep reading. Smolin then clarifies by saying,

While the notion of falsifiability has been challenged and qualified by philosophers since Popper, such as Kuhn, Feyerabend and others1 , it remains the case that few philosophers of science, and few working scientists, would be able to take seriously a proposal for a fundamental theory of physics that had no possibility of being disproved by a doable experiment.

[First, I'd say that few working scientists have studied enough logic to know what a universal and existential quantifier are, which are at the core of falsifiable. And even Popper does nothing in his book to emphasize to the reader that falsifiable is meaningless once separated from the context of these quantifiers, which is what happens when people use a watered down version of falsifiable.]

I’ll rephrase Smolin’s last clause in the quote above: A proposal for a fundamental theory of physics should not be taken seriously if there is no possibility of disproving it by a doable experiment.

Immediately, to the uneducated and unsophisticated mind, such as my own, the question arises, “But what if your proposal is right, and it can’t be disproved?”

But the sophisticated and educated merely roll their eyes at such a question and know that it would be in vain to try and explain such lofty ideas as “falsifiable” to those who would ask such a question, although I remember Crazy Lubos basically making the same assertion, that something can’t be falsified if it’s true. However, although Crazy Lubos is educated, he’s rough around the corners, thus he’s unsophisticated, so we can ignore Crazy Lubos on matters involving falsifiable.

Now, I must admit that I’ve only read the first two pages of Popper’s book, but the fact is, falsifiable is meaningless if divorced from the context that science is 100% inductive by nature, and that falsifiable is 100% wrapped in the logic of the universal and existential quantifiers, the existential quantifier being the negation of the universal quantifier. And this context I’m talking about is laid down by Popper in the first 3 or 4 paragraphs of his book, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, although Popper doesn’t spell it out like I just did.

And on the surface, really smart, educated, and sophisticated falsifiable evangelists appear to be using the logic I just mentioned to justify why legitimate science must be falsifiable. For example,  Smolin tries to convince us that the negation of a statement, rather than confirmation, is what’s of ultimate importance. He says,

…confirmation of a prediction of theory does not show that the theory is true, but falsification of a prediction can show it is false.

So in other words, because science is 100% inductive by nature, the act of dropping a rock ten-thousand times and watching it fall to the ground ten-thousand times does not prove that the rock will fall to the ground the next time you drop it. After all, only God knows the future.

Well, okay, I gave a bad example, because really smart, sophisticated, and educated people don’t speak of such simple experiments when talking about falsifiable; they don’t use such simple examples from which we can derive propositions that can never be falsified.

I’ll end on an assertion. In experimental science, confirmation rules, because confirmation is what gets practical results. Where falsification of a prediction tells you that you’re wrong, confirmation tells you that you’re on the right track, and getting on the right track is what pays the bills.

No, that can’t be the end. If you understand that it doesn’t pay to get dogmatic, then you understand that falsifiable is much to do about nothing much.

And if you understand that confirming something N times is valuable information, as opposed to never being able to prove that “every time it will happen,” then you understand that falsifiable is much to do about nothing much.

Smolin says  that falsifiable is needed to keep science from grinding to a halt. Somehow, I don’t think Smolin’s needs are the same as the needs of an experimental scientist. I can imagine that the first time a scientist gets some results, his or her heart beats a little faster. And on the second or third time their prediction bears some fruit, they’re feeling good. And when they confirm that what they’re doing is the real thing, they’re not thinking about falsifiable at all.

Now, once they start trying to refine what they’re doing, then I suppose a concept similar to falsifiable comes into play. But the fact is, if a statement holds true N times under experiment, then something has been proved which can’t be unproved, something has been proved that can’t be falsified.

And once a statement has been modified, it’s not the same statement any more. So if a modified statement is falsified, then it’s not the same thing as falsifying the original statement. If you understand these kind of things, then you understand that falsifiable is much to do about nothing much.

Finally, here’s where the use of falsifiable can get absurd.

Falsifiable is supposed to be a safeguard against the situation where because an experiment has been successful N times, a dogmatic claim is made solely on that evidence. Because the N swans we’ve seen have all been white, we say dogmatically that all swans are white.

The absurdity is that certain propositions are  said to be falsifiable, thus qualifying them as science, when the claims have never been verified by experiment; that is, they’ve been verified zero times by experiment. Of course, this brings up another absurdity that’s needed for science by consensus, and that’s the equivalence of “in principle” with “actual experiment.”

And from the absurdity of this equivalence, we get some absurd logic, that if a proposition A is falsifiable in principle, that is, if in principle we have a hypothetical, doable experiment, then the negation of A, not A, must also be falsifiable, which means that both A and not A are both valid scientific propositions.

For if we’ve thought of an experiment that will confirm either A or not A, but we haven’t yet conducted the experiment, then for proposition A, the possibility exists that the experiment will show not A. And for proposition not A, the possibility exists that the experiment will show A. Therefore, both A and not A are falsifiable.

Rephrased, because the experiment hasn’t yet been performed, the possibility exists that proposition A will be confirmed and not A will be falsified, and the possibility exists that proposition A will be falsified and not A will be confirmed. Therefore, if proposition A has been given the status of science because of an in-principle experiment, then not A must also be given the status of science.

Obama: the leader of the Fools of Slam

The link: Obama Speech In Cairo: VIDEO, Full Text (huffingtonpost.com)

Future ridicule material.

Obama, the butt kisser of the masses and a Saudi king

The link: Hot Topic: The Price Of Diplomacy (cbsnews.com)

A quote:

In Saudi Arabia, where President Obama arrived Wednesday morning, the legal system is based on Sharia, or Islamic law. It is illegal to spend time alone with someone of the opposite sex to whom you are not related, to drink, to smoke, or to engage in other behaviors deemed immoral. There is little freedom of expression and no freedom of religion.

And another:

When he arrived in Saudi Arabia, President Obama did not publicly discuss human rights issues. Of the country’s head of state, King Abdullah, he said this: “I’ve been struck by his wisdom and his graciousness.”

To get elected, Obama had to kiss a lot of butt; he was willing to say what people wanted to hear.

In Saudi Arabia, the King of Saudi Arabia is a tyrant, but yet Obama, the President of a republic/democracy has bowed before him. He’s grovelled before the king of a tyranny.

And a big portion of Americans are willing to allow for that and not show any ourtrage. As long as Big Daddy G makes sweet promises, Americans allow for that and make Obama out to be some sort of messiah.

It’s disgusting. Socialist Democrats and Republican whores are disgusting.

A simple observational fact: if a small percentage of the few Muslims in America are willing to attack alone, then a small percentage of the many future Muslims (a small percentage of many being many) will attack together

The link: Suspect pleads not guilty in soldier’s death (sandiegounion.com)

A quote:

A Muslim convert who already was under federal investigation pleaded not guilty Tuesday in what police called a likely “political and religious” attack that killed a young soldier at a military recruiting center.

And another:

Police Chief Stuart Thomas said Muhammad, previously known as Carlos Bledsoe, was a convert to Islam and was not part of any broader scheme to attack the American military.

If you read news about parts of the world where there are lots of Muslims in the population, you know that large numbers of Muslims are willing to go on the attack on behalf of their religious beliefs.

Additionally, the story above shows that individual Muslims are willing to go on the attack alone when there aren’t other Muslims available to operate with them. This is testimony that many Muslims are willing to not just talk the talk, but they’re willing to also walk the walk.

As the number of Muslims grow in America, which guarantees that the number of Muslims who are willing to walk the walk will also grow, there will cease to be a need for Muslims to go on the attack alone.

When it comes to Muslims, as simple observation of the rest of the world shows, there doesn’t have to be a “broader scheme to attack” to exist for groups of Muslims to go on the attack together. All there has to exist is the occurrence of an event that offends Muslims, and the existence of lots numbers of Muslims in the population.

But the fools of Islam, commonly called flaming liberals, shake in their boots at the thought of resisting Islam, and they proclaim the virtuals of diversity, as if Islam can coexist with diversity.

Evolutionist’s need to show definitive evidence of what supposedly has definitively already been shown to be true by science

The link: Scientists Unveil Missing Link In Evolution (news.sky.com)

A quote:

Scientists have unveiled a 47-million-year-old fossilised skeleton of a monkey hailed as the missing link in human evolution.

The search for a direct connection between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom has taken 200 years – but it was presented to the world today at a special news conference in New York…

Sir David Attenborough said Darwin “would have been thrilled” to have seen the fossil – and says it tells us who we are and where we came from.

“This little creature is going to show us our connection with the rest of the mammals,” he said.

“This is the one that connects us directly with them.

“Now people can say ‘okay we are primates, show us the link’.

“The link they would have said up to now is missing – well it’s no longer missing.”

The above would imply that believers in evolution have been conceding that it hasn’t been proved scientifically that humans evolved from monkeys. So if evolutionists have, up until now,  been emphatic that humans evolved from monkeys, and now a evolutionists tells us that the missing link has now been found, which implies that it hadn’t been proved that humans evolved from monkeys, what does that tell us?

It tells us that evolutionists assert claims as scientific proof that aren’t actually scientific proof, which has been fairly obvious to me all along.

A reasonable definition of observation excludes that evolutionists have proved evolution. Huge jumps in logic and lots of extrapolation is what evolutionists add to what they observe in the present. The above news story shows that nothing has changed.

Wolframalpha.com: clueless how to use it until I figured out it’s free Mathematica without having to fire up Mathematica

Because of all the media hubbub, I went to check out the search engine capabilities of wolframalpha.com.

Not having any profound question on my mind at the time, I typed in “multisets,” and it came back with Wolfram|Alpha isn’t sure what to do with your input.

So I said to myself, “I thought you were supposed to have all the answers?”

So I typed in “multiset,” although I hadn’t noticed that it had asked me on my last question, “Did you mean: multiset?”

This time, it came back with some operator notation that I suppose is associated with multisets. Again, I wasn’t impressed with the intelligence of this supposedly intelligent search engine.

Because I thought it might want to be comparing things, I entered in “multisets compared to sets.” Again, it wasn’t sure what I wanted.

I sat there a while, racking my brain trying to figure out what this thing was supposed to do. Finally, not wanting to read any documentation to figure out how I was supposed to use it, I clicked on one of the example links in the sidebar: x^2 sin(x).

After I saw it spit out a bunch of stuff that looked like it had come from Maple, the notion started to form in my mind, “Could this possibly be a free, web front end to Mathematica?”

So I clicked on examples at the top, and then clicked on calculus on the examples page, and then clicked on the first example: integrate x^2 sin^3 x dx.

In the right sidebar, I saw a link to something that looked like Mathematica documentation for the cosine function in Mathematica: Cos[z].

I clicked it, and that’s when some major revelation/hope started to sink in, and I said to myself, “Forget about trying to make this thing intelligently answer questions posed to it in everyday English, I wonder if it’ll let me use the complete Mathematica library of functions?”

So I noticed the link for Cos[z] had taken me  to

• http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/ref/Cos.html

Being the extremely net savvy individual I am, I wanted to poke around and pick a Mathematica function haphazardly, so I shortened the link to

• http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/ref.

This led me to Mathematics and Algorithms, then to Number Theory, and then I picked PrimeQ out of the pack, and I tried it out: PrimeQ[12345678889]. And it worked.

That’s when I knew I had found a use for wolframalpha.com.

I abandoned Mathematica years ago because I was constantly formatting my hard drive, and every time I reinstalled Mathematica, I’d have to call Mathematica and beg for some kind of activation junk. So I bought a full blown version of Maple 7 off of eBay shortly after Maple 8 came out, for a clearance price of $35.

But I use Maple so infrequently I can never remember much about it, and there’s the hassle of firing it up to do some little plot or calculation, and then fire up the help page, and search for the syntax for some function I need.

However, my web browser is always open, and as you well know, access to information is the WWWs specialty. Why fire up that dictionary program of mine, and make my computer work harder, and take up more RAM, when it’s so easy to go to dictionary.com?

So where I wouldn’t touch Mathematica with a 10 foot dollar pole at this point, I’m more than happy to use their library of functions for that occasional specialty math function I want to use. Especially when it’s free and the documentation is all conveniently accessible from the web. I think I might even make Wolfram Web Resources my home page on my browser.

Wolfram has been doing all this work for years now, which has cost them millions of dollars, and through wolframalpha.com, they’re brought it to my attention that they’ve consolidated a whole lot of information and services that’s math related, and free. That’s sweet, as they say.

You gotta like those Wolfram guys for doing all this for us, or at least appreciate the competitive, capitalistic, market forces for giving them incentive to give us stuff for free. As far as Obama and all the socialist kips who voted for him, they’re no good, but Wolfram The Company and capitalism, those are okay things.

Now, if I need to get fancy, and string a bunch of their functions together, assign things to variables, and do that kind of stuff they call programming, something I hate to do these days, then I guess I’ll have to go back to Maple, unless, over time, I learn a bunch of Mathematica syntax and decide it’s easier to buy Mathematica. In that case, having fallen prey to the sales trick of wanting to buy something as a result of having gotten something for free, they’ll make some money off of me, but I hope not.

Somebody’s gonna fall for it though. The question is whether enough people will fall for it for Wolfram to stay in business. I really don’t care. It’s not my problem.