Rebane's Ruminations

Happy ‘Heckler’s Veto’ for 2015 (updated)

George Rebane

For years RR has documented the sad retreat of our fundamental rights and liberties, the withdrawal of which has not caused many an eyebrow to be raised among the country’s gruberized hosts.  Instead, it has given rise to celebrations of every newly minted political correctness by our neighbors on the Left – for an enlightened society is a society mandated, monitored, and moderated.

The latest of these celebrate the advent of what has become known as the ‘heckler’s veto’.  This is where a protest - no matter its size, source, or legitimacy – can shut down free speech and cause exercises of the First Amendment to be reclassified as “mechanisms of subordination”.  This, in the eyes of the Left, removes any such protested speech from under the protective umbrella of said amendment.

In the recent past we have seen hecklers’ vetoes shut down entrepreneur Peter Thiel’s speech in Berkeley, invited commencement speeches by Condoleezza Rice and Christine Lagarde, and (seatbelts please) the ban on wearing American flag T-shirts in an American school on Cinco de Mayo “to avert violence”.  The list can be extended indefinitely, but you get the idea.

Other initiatives are in the works such as Muslims colonizing western countries working through their Organization of the Islamic Conference to pass laws that prohibit the “defamation of religion” and “any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination”.  On the secular side China has successfully squelched the participation of their dreaded Falun Gong - a religious society proscribed in China - in holiday observances and exhibitions within these United States.

Starting back in 1989 with the fatwa calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie (for writing The Satanic Verses), we have seen a progressive growth of such hecklers’ vetoes that most recently gave us North Korea’s attempted censoring of Sony’s movie ‘The Interview’.   To my mind the greatest victim of this scourging of the First Amendment has been the abrogation of free speech on the campuses of America’s colleges and universities that are run amok by their leftwing administrations and professoriates.  And sadly, when we listen to our indoctrinated young emerging from government schools, there is much more of that to come as we recall that great nations, impervious to outside assault, have instead fallen from within.  (More here.  Image by David Klein from the 30dec14 WSJ.)

[update]  From this post's comment stream with contributions on both sides of the ‘who suppresses free speech’ issue, I have noticed that the main point which I and David Klein want to emphasize seems to have been either completely missed, or is simply not accessible to some readers.  So let me be more explicit.  The protesting of something by speaking out against it is does not satisfy the definition of ‘heckler’s veto’.  For example groups or event speakers railing against abortion clinics or gun rights has nothing to do with such a veto, simply because the target of the speech – operation of the clinics or private gun ownership – is not impeded by the protesting speech.  But if such protest or threat of protest suppresses (or effectively vetoes) someone’s ongoing or planned expression of free speech, then that is a de facto ‘heckler’s veto’.  In other words, to be a heckler’s veto such heckling must make the targeted speech impossible or induce authorities to shut it down and/or prevent its future expression.

God in Science in God

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.  John 1:3

George Rebane

‘Tis the season to talk of God.  The debate about the existence of God or Intelligent Designer or Universal Intelligence or … (henceforth ‘God’) continues to grow as we discover more about our universe, or as some would have it, creation.

Celebrated physicist Richard Feynman said, “I do not believe that science can disprove the existence of God; I think that is impossible.  And if it is impossible, is not a belief in science and in a God -- an ordinary God of religion -- a consistent possibility? … Yes, it is consistent.”  He went on to say, “…many scientists do believe in both science and God, in a perfectly consistent way.  But this consistency, although possible, is not easy to attain...”

Since Feynman made this statement some years back, a lot more has been learned about how our universe is constructed.  This has caused more and more scientists to apply Occam’s razor and conclude that the most likely explanation for the existence of what we observe and measure is that there is a God, that what is, came to be through intelligent design.  Almost all scientists are Bayesians in how they treat uncertainty, the consistency of their belief in the existence of God is then taken as any other proposition they may consider.  In this case the existence of God in their mind has a very high probability (say, 0.999), but it is not a certainty and still makes a provision for future evidence to start diminishing that probability.  In other words, God, like descriptions of the rest of his creation, is accepted within the reasoning powers that have evolved within the sapient critters that populate his universe.

In the January 2015 Scientific American is a feature article discussing the statistical likelihood of myriads of exoplanets which may be even more suitable for life as we know it (i.e. carbon based with lots of complex molecules having hydrogen and oxygen in them).  Best current estimates number these planets to be around 100 billion just in our Milky Way galaxy.  In our visible universe there are up to 200 billion galaxies (they are still counting), and, of course, then there is the part of the universe that is already invisible to us.  These are the galaxies so far away that the intervening space itself is expanding faster than the speed of light, making it so that light from the invisible galaxies will never reach us – i.e. we will never see them, and they will no longer see us.  Put it all together, and there are a lot of potential homes where intelligent civilizations will come to be, are, and may have already passed into oblivion or onto paths of glory unknown to our meager peabrains.

In a 25dec14 piece ‘Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God’, Eric Metaxas discusses the unbelievably extreme precision with which tens of natural constants/parameters have been fashioned that make life on earth (and potentially elsewhere) possible.  The slightest variation in any of them would create universes to deny our existence.  Astronomer Fred Hoyle (of Big Bang fame) said, “a common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as with chemistry and biology . . . . The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”

We can go on quoting science luminaries drawing similar conclusions until the cows come home.  Let me throw out one or two more, first by one of the current greats in theoretical physics, Paul Davies.  He said, “the appearance of design is overwhelming.”  Oxford mathematician and philosopher of science John Lennox agrees, “the more we get to know about our universe, the more the hypothesis that there is a Creator . . . gains in credibility as the best explanation of why we are here.”  (more here)

Opposing them is the diminishing crowd of secular humanist scientists whose mantra is that ‘it’s turtles all the way down!’  These investigators may have their scientist credentials called into question because they don’t follow evidence and infer from what their data reveals.  Instead, they start with the firm yet unscientific belief that the debate is over, that ‘There is no God’, and then spend their lives looking for the next turtle upon which all the other turtles can be balanced (until the top one on whose back rests earth).  They never seem to understand that such a quest doesn’t even lead in the direction of the proof they seek.  (Today, from their ranks come also the climateers who fiercely mangle climate data records and run dodgy computer models to support their political funding benefactors in trumpeting the whys and wherefores of undeniable man-made global warming.)

The existence of God beckons to answer Princeton physicist John Wheeler’s last quest, ‘Why Existence?’ – a profound journey beyond the limits of science.

To recap Feynman, “So the question changes a little bit from ‘Is there a God?’ to ‘How sure is it that there is a God?’ This very subtle change is a great stroke and represents a parting of the ways between science and religion. … I do not believe that science can disprove the existence of God; I think that is impossible.  And if it is impossible, is not a belief in science and in a God -- an ordinary God of religion -- a consistent possibility?  Yes it is consistent.”

The Season of Joy

 

From our family to you and yours - a sincere wish for joyous Christmas and a healthy 2015.

Single-Payer Sucks & Federalism Works!

George Rebane

In 2010 socialist Peter Shumlin bamboozled his way into Vermont’s governorship by lying about the benefits of the new single-payer government insurance program that he would launch with a waiver from Obamacare.  Readers will remember that way back then, the dynamic trio of Obama, Pelosi, and Reid all made sure we knew that the new and unread national healthcare program would be just a stepping stone to European styled socialized medicine.  Well, it now turns out that this “purest progressive version of Obamacare has imploded.”

Vermont with 625,000 residents was the perfect place to field America’s first attempt at total government healthcare that replaces premiums with high taxes to pay for doctors and hospitals.  The state received $45M from Health and Human Services to plan a proper single payer system, calling in such experts from Harvard as William Hsiao of Medicare fame, and from MIT Jonathan Gruber (yes, that Gruber) of Obamacare fame to make sure that the protocols, processes, and numbers all would work out.  Vermont, “the most liberal state east of California”, was destined to become the template for other states to follow on their merry road to socialism.

But as more of Vermont’s own government accountants began running the numbers developed by Hsiao and Gruber, things just didn’t add up.  For Shumlin to “give each according to his need”, he would have to take more from the wealth-creating Vermonters than they would or could pay.  To the state’s already high top income tax of 8.95%, there would have to be added another 11.5% bringing a family of four earning more than $102K paying over 20% to Vermont alone while still excluding all the federal taxes and the 6% state sales tax.

Under leftwing legislative supermajorities Vermont already had a record of slower than average growth.  Moreover it was experiencing lower than projected tax revenues as it continued to raise taxes (pay no attention to the good Dr Laffer laughing behind the curtain).  It turned out that all those millions and billions of savings promised by Hsiao and Gruber were nothing but a bunch of hooey, which, of course, was exactly what in 2010 Shumlin’s opponents were telling the already gruberized Vermonters all along.  In the end Shumlin’s accountants told him these “savings”are “not practical to achieve”, apparently because it would cause a further exodus of wealth creators and would result in collections far short of the added annual $2.59B required that would double the existing $2.85B state budget.

So looking at the whole single-payer deal, Governor Shumlin concludes that the tax hit would be, “in a word, enormous”, and “the risk of economic shock is too high at this time to offer a plan I can responsibly support.”  And as we stifle our chortles and step back to look at the bigger picture, this has been a good exercise for the country.  This is what federalism is all about, and what our Founders intended about the several states being laboratories of various approaches to governance.

We can also hope that Vermont’s experience will open our progressives’ eyes to the socialist time bombs ticking in Europe that they have been celebrating for years, and holding up as examples for America to follow.  European single-payer healthcare systems have been unsustainable in that they continue to swallow a larger share of each nation’s GDP, a share that can only be diminished by offering lower levels of health services that cause more of those who can to seek critical and elective care elsewhere.  Europe is now in its second round of slow/negative growth and high unemployment – i.e. Great Recession 2.  And everyone there is trembling at the thought of interest rates resuming their normal levels while having to start spending realistic amounts for their own defense as the US has been pulling in its horns.  Sooner or later we, of course, will face the same twin fiscal dragons, and Obamacare has already demonstrated that in its half-assed implementation it is already an albatross around the country’s neck (more here).

Sandbox - 23dec14

[Am happy to see how RR readers use the sandboxes and how quickly they fill up with topics and tete a tetes that are beyond my meager abilities to cover and coherently comment on.  As an amusing aside, received an email about our celebrated cartoonist RL Crabb who for years has apparently been delinquent in not recognizing and thanking a generous and kind benefactor who 'saved his bacon' at the Union.  Shame on you Bob.]

Gruberize them early

George Rebane

I was chagrined but not surprised reading about Obama’s new implementation of pre-K education through his Early Head Start and Child Care Partnerships.  These federally funded programs promise to create a new bureaucracy and enlarge old ones while once again reducing the states’ ability to educate their own young.  I’m not sure how many RR readers give a big rat’s ass about this latest, but I do.

The collateral damage from these programs will be huge.  You see, the feds will require that to work these programs you will need a bachelor’s degree to teach toddlers.  And the monies will arrive with very large stacks of regulations.  The obvious purpose here is to create a whole new tranche of teachers union members and reliable Democratic votes while expanding the government as the employer of last resort.  Since any BS or BA degree will do, these programs will give those who ‘mastered’ useless fields a place to get a paycheck that doesn’t look like the dole.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention that they also will be able to start pouring all those good social values into the empty noggins that show up in their classes.  Research has shown that the benefit of pre-K education is nil for mastering real subjects later on, but that’s not the aim here.  Every true progressive knows that as the twig is bent … .  (more here)

Last but not least, I leave you with a little something from the ongoing catastrophe of Common Core.  The photo is of a CC math curriculum workbook wherein the little darlins are (mis)taught how to quickly estimate the sum of two numbers.  My math teacher would have slapped me up side my head had I responded with CC’s “estimated sum” of 500, instead of the correct estimate of 650.  Common Core graduates would suffer a 22.5% error, while the old school students would be off only 0.8%.  And you might note that CC assesses the correct answer of 645 as just being “reasonable”.  If any of these kids want to study for a STEM career, they will need a heap of remediation to undo the damage they suffered in their CC coated K-12 education.

The Pyongyang Censors

George Rebane

President Obama correctly chastised Sony for not releasing ‘The Interview’, its comedy critical of the North Korean tyranny and its idiot dictator.  And the FBI has now formally identified North Korea as the hacker that initially embarrassed Sony by releasing its internal memos to the world.  And now it has again embarrassed the electronics and entertainment giant by scaring it into withdrawing the film.  This is not a good precedent for the world’s liberal societies.

The press is full of chastisements of Hollywood for being gutless, and recommendations abound for alternative of releasing the movie.  One of the more attractive ones for me is for Sony to release it on the internet and really make it available worldwide.  Another is to also make a Korean subtitle version of it and put it on reproducible DVDs.  But whatever is done, its release should go forward.

Perhaps our own Congress can even step in and pass a law that limits lawsuits against theaters, distributors, networks, and media producers who may be subsequently attacked by terrorists launched by countries or organizations opposing the ideas expressed in productions they don’t like.  No country or cabal should be able to stop the dissemination of ideas in our society by just threatening to whump us.

This also brings up the entire notion of online publishing, and who gets to control what is made available on the internet.  My own strong feeling is that the US should henceforth maintain all the modes of control that it still has on every aspect of internet operations.  The last thing we need is to have some international commission (with questionable membership and agenda) start dictating internet protocols, access, and content.

On a related note, while the President was all for Hollywood maintaining its first amendment rights, a reader (here) pointed out that the same administration was not so supportive of the producer of the anti-Islamic video that Team Obama initially claimed caused the Benghazi attack that killed four Americans.  That filmmaker was jailed.

And segueing from that to another reader who points out (here) how the Common Core curriculum standards incorporate Islamic concepts and syntax, but remain anathema to anything relating to Judeo-Christian practices.

‘Our Best Days Lie Ahead’

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 17 December 2014.]

‘Our Best Days Lie Ahead.’  How many times have we heard some politician or public figure repeat those words into a microphone while looking at a sea of bright-eyed upturned faces?  This claim is almost never backed up with anything but unwarranted hope that the future will be a reprise of the longed for yesteryear.  And the speaker always leaves us with a feeling that such a future is inevitable, regardless of how we educate, employ, or allow ourselves to be governed (more here). 

Looking back at the last two centuries, one can almost make the case for such ‘best days’.  Two hundred years ago the industrial revolution was in full swing in Europe and America.  New ways of doing things were constantly being invented, and technology had finally been set free from the scientist’s laboratory to firmly settle in the arena of business and enterprise.  Capital began to displace labor, and new wealth began to be generated, as opposed to old wealth being inherited.

Islamophobia 2.0 (updated 4jan15)

George Rebane

Reports from Sydney (here) are the latest addition to a new dimension of threats from the world of Islam.  We have seen in Canada, the UK, the US, and now Australia how self-radicalized Muslims are emerging from the commonly viewed ‘moderate Islamic communities’ to plan and commit acts of jihadic terror in their adopted countries.  These terrorists have no formal relationship to established jihadist organizations that are publicly sworn to the destruction of our civilization, and its replacement with a most severe form of global Islam.

This class of lone wolf Muslim terrorist is always the hardest to detect and stop, especially in liberal societies of the west where today there is present an almost insane imperative to deny history and current evidence.  The delivered public wisdom is that the largely silent Muslim communities, already established in such host countries, share our horror and condemnation of the growing litany of ongoing terror that Islamists have spread to multiple continents worldwide.  Unfortunately, that is not the case.

One of the leading and more constructive voices in the west who warns us about the real mindset of Islam is Dr Tawfik Hamid, himself a former jihadist.  He has written and spoken extensively in the west’s leading media outlets such the WSJ and the NYT.  Years ago Dr Hamid started warning us about Islam and the dangerous politicized use of ‘Islamophobia’ (e.g. here).  Besides his own experience with radicalized Islam and its broadly accepted geo-strategic objectives, Hamid has brought forth evidence from Islam itself citing numerous surveys of Muslim attitudes (e.g. from Pew Research) both in the west and from ‘the Arab street’.

Hamid, along with other tolerant Muslim intellectuals, continue to paint a realistic picture of Islam’s relationship with the west.  An accessible compendium of such commentaries that seeks to inform us is available from ‘A symposium: What is Moderate Islam?’

I bring these reports to your attention not only in connection with the newly emerging ‘Islamist threat vector’, but also to remind some readers who have been critical of RR’s interpretation of what has really been going on between Islam and the west during the recent decades.  We are closer than ever to identifying the real geo-strategic threat to the west from radicalizing Islam (see also Kissinger’s World Order) without which we have been flailing ineffectively in what we mistakenly call our “war against terror”.  I believe we can begin winning again only after we realize the true nature of the conflict in which we are engaged.

[30dec14 update]  And one of the west’s greatest statesmen, historians, and wartime leaders Sir Winston Churchill penned and delivered these words in an 1899 history book when he was already a decorated veteran and journalist.  His prophetic insights about Islam (then Mohammedanism) - "No stronger retrograde force exists in the world" - echo stronger than ever across the intervening century.  (H/T to correspondent)

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.  The effects are apparent in many countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.

A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity.  The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.  Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.

No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.

(Churchill W., The River War (First Edition,Vol II, pgs 248-250), London)

[4jan15 update]  For more on what moderate Islamic leaders are saying about Islam's support of its radical factions, please see 'Scattershots - 4jan15'.

Sandbox - 12dec14

[Many apologies for falling asleep at the switch; this sandbox is long overdue.  gjr]

High Tech Quotas (updated 12dec14)

George Rebane

Our high tech industry is literally the last refuge of employment meritocracy, and the increase in our quality of life it has provided is unquestionable.  That may all be coming to an end if our so-called civil rights leaders like Jesse Jackson have their way.  You see Jesse and his crew have noticed that there is perverse reason why the make-up of companies like Google, Apple, and Intel don’t mirror the make-up of the country’s population.  And they are uniting under banners like ‘Rainbow Push’ to set things right and insure that the proper levels of diversity also come to places like Silicon Valley (more here and here).

From my rather intimate experience working with Silicon Valley high tech firms, there has never been any discrimination against blacks, Hispanics, or females.  In fact, it has been exactly the other way around.  Such companies have bent over backward to hire qualified blacks, Hispanics, and females.  The problem is that the supply of such people is low for a number of reasons discussed elsewhere that are neither the fault nor the responsibility of the employers.  But that is not how our progressive cadres see what they gladly tell you is a “lack of diversity problem” that needs to be solved.

And according to simplistic socialism, the solution will be simple – put race and gender first, and demote the requirement of being able to do the job.  The companies’ human resources departments will implement such policies until the population quotas are met, and everything thereafter will be hunky dory.  At gatherings where this lack of diversity problem is discussed, the attendance includes appropriate representatives from the leading high-tech companies in the land.  It does not pay to be absent from such obviously beneficial initiatives, and the threat of such quota systems becoming law is ever present given our gruberized electorate.

The bottom line is that these high tech enterprises will do what they have to do.  But you can be sure that this industry will not benefit any more from employment quotas than have the other industries so inflicted.  And maybe even less because of the nature of work involved.  The learning curve for high tech skills is a lot steeper and longer than for jobs involving manufacturing, parcel delivery, sales, and hospitality services.  This, of course, will make no never mind to Jesse and his halo of supportive NGOs that see lots of grants coming down to have them ‘advise’ corporations on how to meet their high tech hiring quotas.

[12dec14 update]  Quota systems have been in place in Europe for quite some time now.  The big headline today is that Germany will now follow those economic powerhouses of France and Italy with a new law that heralds ‘Corporate Germany set for Gender Revolution’.  That’s right, EU’s real economic powerhouse Germany will henceforth require their big companies to install at least 30% women in top management slots, and divers other percentages in other jobs.  The law will require even smaller companies to submit to government their plans to hire more women.

Germany’s leading employers and industry associations issued a joint statement declaring “a quota ignores that professional qualification must be the decisive criterion for filling a supervisory board position.”

This, of course, will hit their high tech and manufacturing sectors the hardest, where more often than not both management and line workers are required to have degrees in relevant fields of engineering and sciences.  High tech companies, according to chip maker Infineon Technologies AG, typically must have most of their management positions filled with people having “an academic degree in mathematics, computer science, natural science or technology, with the focus on electrical engineering and physics, where the number of female students is low.”

Given the continuing funk of Europe’s economies – most are now in double dip ‘recessions’, more correctly a continuing depression – this latest socialist salve is one more kick in the groin for its wealth producing sectors, and will do nothing to solve their employment problems.  By devaluing meritocracy in their hiring criteria, it will definitely make their companies less competitive in the global markets, which will be a critical problem for Germany.  However, in places like India and China they are toasting Angela Merkel, the new diva of diversity in Europe.

Storm Watch

George Rebane

OK, all you Ruminators, pay attention.  If you live in northern California, the NWS promises lots of water and wind coming our way starting tomorrow night (Wed) and going through Thursday.  PG&E is betting on power outages with crews doing last minute tree trimmings over/near vulnerable power lines.  But we all know that power will go out; some places for quite a while.

Time to get your vehicles gassed up, generators and chain saws fueled, oiled, and exercised, candles, flashlights, and kerosene lamps standing by, firewood stacked and handy, and all kinds of extra nummies stuffed into the ice box that you’ll have to eat cause else it will spoil (ha!).  Extra DVD movies to watch during the storm – after all, why did God invent generators.

Oh yes, and charge up all those up chargeables like your pad and cell phone.  Grab some good books.  Then strap on a set of your favorite snuggies, set up your favorite adult beverages, put on some music, and let come what may.  Stay safe.

Profiling

George Rebane

Today the Justice Department releases new regulatory guidelines on which federal agencies may do profiling and under which circumstances.  The report has been six months in the making and we are told its release in such close proximity to the events in Ferguson and Staten Island is a coincidence.  AG Holder will travel around the country explaining the new regulations to various police jurisdications which, he hopes, will also incorporate them into their enforcement protocols (more here).

Scattershots – 6dec14 (updated 10dec14)

George Rebane

Reading the 6dec14 Union this morning, I noticed a spattering of feedback from conservatives and progressives that the editors had assembled.  Jobs and economic development have been elusive objectives for years in Nevada County.  Now that a ton of new environmental regulations are coming down the pike, it is interesting to see how both sides of our polarized politics are handling that situation.  From conservatives we hear the expected wails and gnashing of teeth at the next tranche of self-inflicted pain California has to endure from agencies like CARB expanding its own CEQA.

From progressives we see an ongoing stream of inanities that insist that this time additional regulations will really - honest Injun! - create jobs in the county and encourage economic development – all of the ‘sustainable’ kind of course.  These same people see solutions through attempts to help local contractors contort themselves even more to satisfy the new CEQA and other regulations, none of which have been shown to have any credible benefit on our environment and economy.  The great escape of California’s corporations attests otherwise.

Ferguson Wrap-up (8dec14 update)

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 3 December 2014.]

I intended this to be a wrap-up on the Ferguson riots, but sadly there is no wrap possible, because Ferguson is just the latest chapter in the marathon effort to fundamentally transform America.  So all we can do is pause here and take stock of recent happenings with the Michael Brown shooting by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri on 9 August last.

Michael Brown was a product of our broken black culture.  He was an underachiever with an attitude, a racist, and on that day, a criminal.  He met his end by having the audacity to walk down the center of a trafficked street and challenge a policeman on patrol responding to a 911 about a convenience store robbery in the neighborhood.  It turned out the robbery was committed by Brown, a fact then not known by Wilson.  The criminal grand jury was presented all the evidence about the shooting, which it considered for over 12 weeks before concluding that Officer Wilson shot Brown in the line of duty, and the case required no indictment for a subsequent trial.

Scattershots – 1dec14 (updated 3dec14)

George Rebane

‘Why We Needn’t Fear the Machines’ is a feel-good piece by science writer Christopher Mims in 1dec14 WSJ.  I have no idea what the man’s educational credentials are, but from his article it is safe to say they are not much (his Facebook page omits his education).  Mims' piece looks like a promo for the current movie ‘Imitation Game’ about computer pioneer Alan Turing.  In the piece he makes some wild claims about what Turing taught and thought, while completely missing what is going on in the field of computer science.

His flagship proposition, what he calls “a basic truth”, is that “the machines we create are not, indeed cannot be, one-for-one replacements for humans”.  In a sense that he no doubt misses, machines have already become one-for-many replacements for humans in more fields than we can count.

But where he really blows a tire is by claiming that Turing himself gave rise to the notion that machines “indeed cannot be” replacements for humans.  Turing made no such claim, and Mims seems to confirm his claim by having interviewed “mathematicians, philosophers, physicists, and even neuroscientists”.   Somehow computer scientists were not worthy to be included in the list.  Mims also considers that the only kind of computers that man is limited to is the so-called ‘Turing Machine’ which can functionally mimic almost all the computers that now exist.  But for some reason the notion of accelerating technology is totally missed, Mims’ concept of the art of the possible is limited to the current state of our knowledge frozen in time (without even so much as look back at how rapidly we have arrived here).

I have no idea what is the purpose of this one-sided and flawed piece, and why the WSJ decided to include it.  The layman will walk away from it with the comfort that, as a human worker, he is safe; no machine will be able to take his job.  He should only talk to the millions already so displaced.

ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, it “controls the root zone of domain names and addresses on the Internet.”  This has been a non-profit American enterprise located in California that has done a wonderful job of managing the Internet ever since America invented that technology.  Now the America Last crowd in Washington, led by Team Obama, is planning next year to give up American control that has kept the Internet facile and free of politics.  Once we give it up, ICANN will come under international control with its board members coming from some of the biggest autocracies on earth.  Even Bill Clinton opposed Obama when the messiah introduced that as his latest bad idea (where does he get that garbage for public policy, can we blame it all on Valerie Jarrett?).  Clinton said, “A lot of people who have been trying to take this authority away from the US want to do it for the sole purpose of cracking down on internet freedom.”

A Republican Congress should do all that it can to put a stop to this travesty.  As Gordon Crovitz writes in ‘Halfway to Wrecking Internet Freedom’, “The Obama administration is so uncomfortable with Ametrican exceptionalism that it violated the cardinal rule of good government: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

[3dec14 update]  The other day I was perusing RR comments over the past years, and was struck by how frequently and vehemently our leftwing readers continued to expound their views and analyses concluding the imminent demise and/or shrinking into insignificance of the Republican Party.  As with the climateers, they seem to have become quite sanguine about the passing reality since issuing those dire predictions.  Today, in addition to blithely ignoring their manifest and manifold errors, they also seem to overlook what such ‘Wrong Way Corrigan’ prognostications indicate about their understanding of the national political scene, its history and dynamics.  Nevertheless, the best policy, it seems, is to just soldier on unphased, letting bygones be bygones, and remaining as certain as ever about their capabilities in the arena.