catchpenny or clickbait

What is it driving this Anti-Vaxxer phenomenon? I too am, I think, healthfully skeptical of the pharmaceutical lobby when it comes to rigour, transparency and the production of medicines as lifestyle accessorisers (potions to counter all those self-inflicted ailments), but I don’t feel that we ought to take for granted the science that’s really enabled population health in manner that’s seen little precedence in human history and risk resurgence of otherwise preventable diseases.
I feel that this anti-science drift, for what it’s worth, which includes the climate-change deniers—and no, questioning does not belie conspiracy but I think rather than educating themselves, some go along with the propaganda they know and see the counter-arguments as mere propaganda, too, evidence fabricated and institutions manipulative—has parallels in the last wave of worry—which although far from hysterical can and has been displaced by this movement of distrust for drugs and doctors. Americans were passionate about being spied upon—though the lack of outrage when they bought the lie that such eavesdropping activity was limited to overseas solicits little sympathy, and the tantrum subsided rather quickly. I am not sure how the revelation was received that the intelligence agencies are not staffed with savants and are bound by the same laws of mathematics that allow encryption to work and remain virtually imperviously to prying, and it was only that the big telecommunication conglomerates giving the secret agents the secret-knock that allowed them to get inside. Service providers may not have willingly surrendered to government pressure but certainly did not disclose the scale of collaboration either, and they managed to escape suffering too much damage to their reputation over public ire. We of course tell on ourselves too, and refrain passing judgment on the real peddlers of snake-oil.

flux-capacitor

Quartz Magazine features a very engrossing and inspiring profile of the unsung inventor, John Bannister Goodenough, who gave the world its mobility and galloping pace of miniaturisation with the lithium-ion battery. This robust and rechargeable power-source is in every electronic gadget worldwide and in the motors of hybrid vehicles, and I could imagine that the world might look very different if Goodenough had not found the right balance and combination to improve upon the transistor. Goodenough achieved his breakthrough at the age of fifty-seven—and now at the age of ninety-two, he’s far from ready to retire, believing that he can develop the next generation of storage-medium that could help finally wean the world off oil and start to reverse climate change. I wager that he’ll be about to deliver.

quod numquam

Though the popular myth that no one expected the Spanish Inquisition has been dispelled for the most part, it’s a pretty fun thing to proclaim and the phrase might have its origins in another Church culture struggle. In 1875 on this day, Pope Pious IX issued the encyclical called Quod Numquam, “What we never Expected” to Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and Prussian King Wilhelm I during the height of what was known as the Kulturkampf, the systematic dissolution of Church holdings in Protestant territories and discriminatory measures taken against the congregation, including the forced exile of priests and bishops. What was never expected was that the House of Prussia might turn its back on Catholicism, and though no on the level of the Crusades, clerics ignited a holy war to sue for the freedom of religious worship.

redirected from berenstein

Via Reddit, an older speculative post on a blog called the Wood between Worlds by the self-described world’s worst scientist puts forward such a profoundly baffling psychological blind-spot that the imaginative explanation—that we are in our own parallel universe, seems pretty plausible.

Like the cognitive dissonance that occurs when the seating arrangement of the Last Supper (with Mary Magdalen next to Jesus) is pointed out or a revisionist Orwellian memory hole, the Berenstein Bears—and I distinctly remember the book covers and the stories that my Mom read to me, though I knew nothing about an animated syndicate in the mid-80s or relaunch—is and always was Berenstain. Either we’re all remembering it incorrectly, like some famously misquoted line from a movie that no one bothers to correct, or there’s an element of time travel or dimensional engineering involved. One ought to read the whole post through, and I am glad it’s of the right vintage to have garnered a lot of responses, to be rewarded with a comment from the son of the authors with an explanation about the spelling of the family name. Can you think of other examples were something false was so broadly ingrained? I hope the Scientist is continuing his intrepid research.

empty nest oder relocation bonus

A consortium of architects and civil engineers and some elements that advocate for the welfare of senior citizens in Germany are proposing (DE) that one way to address the housing shortage in metropolitan areas would be to provide pensioners with support and an incentive to move out of apartments that have gotten to be too big for them that would better accommodate young families with children. No one is proposing to force homesteaders out and of course retirees have the liberty to do what they want, but the logistical and financial help, finders’ fees and helping to arrange and pay for relocation, may prove amiable to some who feel otherwise tied to too big a place. What do you think about this idea? Most Germans are apartment dwellers and no one is occupying a McMansion but that still comprises a vertical neighbourhood, and I am sure something changes when the most veteran residents leave and are replaced with up-and-comers.

pax populi

Back to World War III—though it’s hard to say when the declaration came, the sort of false urgency lent to housekeeping items that really could and ought to be tabled until cooler consideration can be paid, like breaking the internet or pushing through a shambles of a shady trade deal with international ramification usually seem to herald its beginning—it seems that the US is poised to directly, rather than its usual proximate warfare, supply armaments to certain factions in Ukraine.

The whole business seems pretty murky and shrill propaganda won’t allow matters to settle enough for any party to gain their bearings. Naturally, this announcement is also an overture to the broader coalition of the West to join in, willingly or not. I cannot think of an instance, at least during the American Century, when arming terrorists/unionists/rebels/freedom-fighters (depending on one’s point of view) has ever served to calm the fighting and did not escalate the violence. Arguably, US support for al Qaeda bankrupted the Soviet Union and ushered in Glasnost and Perestroika, but of course that backing had unintended consequences, whose inheritors are at the war’s other front. I don’t pretend to know what course to take, even if there wasn’t the little strip-tease of opposing world-views, but I do know in many instance no action is wiser and not at all the same as inaction, much more in line with the popular peace we’ve consented to. There’s a real danger in conflating the belligerents, and distinctions will be lost while circling one’s wagons, forgetting that one faction is looking for the barest sign of provocation and the other already has every justification it needs.

eschat and eschew

Here’s a rather disheartening romp through the US public education system, now tossed into a Romano-Briton gladiatorial ring and pitted against the Christian text book publishing racket.
The poor defanged beasts hardly stand a chance, with what little financial support allowed to them siphoned off by quasi-private institutions that placate and patronise God-fearing parents with creationist curriculum. The twenty-two theses levied against the syllabus in the article illustrate not only droning ignorance but also unchecked propaganda and nutty conspiracies—which are not unique to this group’s agenda or even this day and age. Rather what appears most tragic in all of this, outlandish claims included, is in the disdain and contempt for which the programme holds for free-thinking and independent thought. Parents, both in the US and UK, may believe that their children are schooled nearer to God (or maybe at least a safe distance away from those Sharia magnet schools that everyone’s talking about) but it’s about as far as one can stray, since the instruction is very disengaging and fosters no curiosity, intellectual or spiritual.

writers’ block

So much ink has been spilt over the subject of writing, whether calling it recursive, self-referential or bestowing it with the intellectual shorthand of the affix meta- that’s really just become a tag for something bigger, super-, supra-, para- by recalling that the Metaphysics was only labeled as such owing to the fact, chapter-wise, came after the treatment on Physics, as if that were all to be said on the subject. Many lyrics, too, sing of composition—in this same tidy, higher-plane manner. This coupling is hardly a unique observation. I do believe that it is such a common and also tolerable theme because any of us can relate to the repairing and resurgence when a certain career has careened, as it were, and this exercise is needed for atrophied talents. Focus and attention have become commodities priceless beyond words because there’s a life-hack for that, there’s an app for that and oh, sitting is the little death, the new mind-killer and oh, one’s imagined dives and hangouts don’t exist except as those idealised gathering spots that are plot devices and the familiars of the tempo of situation-comedy exposition, and oh, those votes of confidence, those clicks of solidarity don’t mean don’t suggest readership or even comprehension—much less loyalty, oh, those literary magazines are only read by those who’ve gotten a by-line and attribution and maybe those whom apingly hope to.  Schuyler Greene thought about this litany of stereotype and out-modishness as he leaned rather demandingly over his interface device that remained ostensible external so that he might retain some sense of restraint or decorum—or helpful censure, planted in a familiar haunt though really nowhere, a romanticised sense of place that respected no special protocols nor drew any measure of notice, aside from what his more inchoate gadgets wished to broadcast, so as to to invite in more novelty and distraction. “Schuyler Greene,” he wondered and cursed with hushed incredulity, begging what could be more nostalgic, more old-fashioned than a name than announcing that’s what he’s called and continued to insist for inspiration among anonymity, which was a buffeting force of expectation.
Do the connoisseurs and gourmands only wish for this, to shy away and wilt from anything more challenging than a sequel or a re-awakening of an established classic that toyed with half-remembered impressions or the learned biopic of half-forgotten influences? Was he being too harsh? He only had his name, after all. In this environment, what had others done to become viral or at least to enjoy the ballast of the moment? Aggregating machines, maybe, were better suited to indulging and winning over such fickle and mutable fancies. It all came so quickly; the culture that had already been digitised—which was most of it and it was the only share that mattered since the ethnographies of the saboteurs and luddites and the late-adopters was incorporated as well, was landscaped for machine-access to filter by algorithm to its human pets, leaving out any efforts at direct curating and care-taking for automated and adaptive processes. Certainly there was an inexhaustible feel for the cannon, and the amalgamating machines had conjured up some very good and convincing protocols that had fooled Greene and many others by posing as fully undiscovered authors and genres, not that they weren’t very astute about being discovered and never neglected to reward someone for being mistook and got all the more clever for their transgressions and spoofs, however advertised. Toponyms, endonyms and exonyms were only honoured for those jobs—which Greene had had the sense to cleave to, which were grandfathered in a sense of minor celebrity and the legacy of systems that refused to talk to one another. Past the human vanity to make noise, Greene also enjoyed for the moment security from redundancy from his day job, codified by humans in the same predicament but surely ruthlessly calculated to whatever gain, admitting day-by-day that it was cheaper to keep him on. Humans, of course, were also capable of such efficient reckoning—only the machines excelled at it. It had become fashionable to worry about the singularity—the moment of no return when machines became self-aware but no one really was arguing that it had already occurred, that somehow intelligence had crawled out of the chaotic primordial soup of our social malcontent. Greene was supposing that the capacity to feel threatened, self-preservation and the instinct for fight-or-flight would come later, if those were even universal traits. “Let the Wookie win,” he thought with half a chuckle. Maybe though a sentient machine, extant or emergent, would foresee all possible outcomes with its first thought and would not be prone to the vanities of making the big spectacle of its birth and have the sense to be humble, regardless of how it was programmed. Machines must calculate into that formula that kept Greene employed, weighing in the labour-laws and the price of dismissal and severance packages, and concluded that maybe Greene was being retained solely for his moonlighting.