Reader Tips

and your point ?

Yesterday the Conservative budget passed in the senate, but the Liberal senators weren't very happy -- they didn't want to pass everything in the budget; they apparently wish to pick and choose which portions of a budget already passed by parliament would be acceptable to them as unelected Senators.

Why, you almost get the impression that the frustrated Natural Ruling Party is hoping to hobble the elected government and govern bureaucratically through the back door -- the unelected Senate.

Check out the general tenor of these Liberal Senators during the debate on the budget:

Mac Harb: "A number of times this government has bullied not only the House of Commons but the Senate as well. This bullying is ultimately a shameful thing and a shameful precedent in the history of this Parliament -- in the history of this Senate. Honourable senators, we were put in this Parliament, in this Senate, to debate important issues that are controversial....No, honourable senators, this is your moment as senators.

"Honourable senators, please think. Think, because you are independent here as members of this chamber. They cannot remove you until the age of 75. Speak out. Do you hear me? Speak out for what is right and for what is correct, over and over again...."

And here's Chretien appointee and former National Director of the Liberal Party of Canada, Senator Terry Mercer:

"I want to talk about several words we have heard around the chamber today. We heard the words 'blackmail,' bully,' and 'complicit.' I believe we have been blackmailed by a bully. I believe that the bully who runs this government has put us in the box we are in today...There will come a day when we will draw that line and we will send a bill back to the House of Commons. Hopefully that day will not come because there will soon be an election, the government will change and good people will finally be running the place."

The Liberals: they're good people.

http://www.parl.gc.ca/40/2/parlbus/chambus/senate/deb-e/019db_2009-03-12-E.htm?Language=E&Parl=40&Ses=2#62

So is this really how Obama settles his case for Gitmo ?!

"It appears on first reading that whatever they call those they claim the right to detain, they have adopted almost the same standard the Bush administration used to detain people without charge -- with one change, the addition of the word `substantially' before the word 'supported.' This is really a case of old wine in new bottles.''
• Center for Constitutional Rights
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/more-info/story/948872.html

john begley - I think that Vit was trying to say (rather verbosely), now is a good time to buy a GM vehicle.

Oh, I didn't have a point, John & Ural, I just publish the Reader Tips entry here every night to provide a standard place for people to bitch and whine about the same shit over and over again, things that they have no control over, and that often don't matter that much anyway in the big picture, but that they can't ever leave alone because they are not capable of rising to a better standard than that, because they have no sense of the concept of signal to noise ratio, and because they have nothing better to do or no higher calling in life, and they're too rich to notice it (as are all of us). Actually, that's a lie, or rather, it's not completely true, in the sense that I also publish here because I bring out the best in ET. In other words, I, Vitruvius, am simply a public service. I see trees of green, red roses too...

Vit - Are you recommending buying a Dodge?

Sorry, Vitruvius - I really get exercised about popularizations on such subjects. Despite Steven's comment that “experimentation is not understanding” (I paraphrase), he still had to experiment to condense the observations to rules, which permitted categorization and tautological identification with his “synchrony” label…

…you see my point? He is still no further ahead, if his goal be understanding WHY. Of course the “rules give rise to the patterns”. But as a mathematician, he should have stopped there. But no, he had to make a leap of faith: “you don’t require a brain to synchronize” (I paraphrase) is then implicitly transformed into (1) inanimate objects communicate and…(wait for it)…(2) synchrony mitigates entropy…(three shell game – watch the pea)…and…(3) fizzle – he did not even have the guts to explicitly state the complexity/synchrony argument for bootstrapping information from the “see spot run” to Shakespeare. He certainly did a good Kipling though, with his invocation that schooling/synchrony of fish is “safe for all of them”, and that the “firefly synchronization” was to “reinforce the message to the females…come hither”.

He WROTE his meaning on his LABEL.

Thus the chasm between ET and me…and likely thee.

Vitruvius - Why insult SDA readers and posters? Do you really think that the whole purpose of SDA and your contribution (much appreciated) to Readers Tips is for you to promote ET?

It was a joke, Ural, get a grip. And no chasm, Tenebris, as I said, I publish here to provide this place for you to bitch and whine about the stuff that gets you exercised, so I hope that was good for you. Still, I would have thought you would have interpreted Steven's talk at a higher level. Ah well, I've been wrong before.

Well, the snowdrops are out, vitruvius, never mind the red roses; they'll come later.

But - wow - quite the lecture. I liked the metronomes.

First, as I'm sure you know, I completely agree that 'the only thing that fundamentally exists' is information. But not simply metaphysically; that type of information is secondary; it's symbolic. But information is physical. That's all that exists. Matter is 'informed energy'; it is energy that is formed by means of measurements. Well, you know I'd say that anyway.

Now, as you also know, I'm a DieHard Fan of Charles Peirce, the 19th c. American chemist, philosopher, semiotician, logician..One of his basic theories is on 'synechism' or 'continuity'. He has a nice paper on 'Synechism and Agapism', and a great deal of his work is to show the basic force of continuity (synechism) as, yes, at first, a spontaneous order..which then settles into normative habits of form and interaction.

Synechism is a force that counters an equally important force, entropy, which is a force of freedom - that dissipates order and enables new orders and morphologies to evolve. After all, if you only had 'order'..the universe would freeze. And if you only had entropy..well, heck, you couldn't. You need both processes.

But, where I'd differ from Strogatz is his focus on 'selfish Darwinian behaviour'. No, no and no. He doesn't know about the second term in Peirce's title, 'agapism', which means the force of love or feelings and actions of connection. As Peirce wrote, "it follows, then, from the definition of continuity, that when any particular kind of feeling is present, an infinitesimal continuum of all feelings differing infinitesimally from that is present" (6.132).

Feeling. That's an act of information; a relation of information.
Essentially, this means that "a true continuum is something whose possibilities of determination no multitude of individuals can exhaust" (6.170). The feeling of attraction or agapism bonds them all.

What does this mean? It means that the flock of birds isn't operating, each bird on its own, focused on their own 'selfish Darwinian survival' but that, apart from their individual particular reality, they ALSO function within a collective, within a continuum that is maintained as such by 'attractor feelings, that function as 'informational relations'.

Each bird is a Form of information; and as such, is 'informationally in relational touch' with other Forms of information. So, you've got the single bird, and you've also got the swarm or flock. Two morphologies, two forms of information.

And 'whatever is continuous has material parts' (6.174); again, that means that the birds, or the atoms, or the molecules exist in two modes. One mode is in their individual particularity; the other mode is in their collective generality. Both modes of life (or abiotic reality) co-exist.

Strogatz acknowledges only the individual mode and seems to suggest that their synchronicity is based on 'nearest neighbour' preferential attachment, and a focus on individual survival. I disagree; the two modes are quite different and each has their own 'survival' requirement. Flocks are as vital as individual birds.

And, "since space is continuous, it follows that there must be an immediate community of feeling between parts of mind infinitesimally near together" (6.134). It is not only that one idea affects another - but, if we consider that ALL that exists is 'information' or 'formed matter', then, all 'parts' are 'infinitesimally related' with each other. Naturally, we can see this in the mechanical transfer of rhythm of the metronomes, but also, in the swarms of birds. And in the development of crystals.

Of course the planet knows that the star is there; the planet exists, as a unique Form of matter in interaction with that Star, another unique Form of matter. Both their singular Forms and their interactions are 'informational processes'. Yes, gravity is an informational process. Everything is information (Dretske)...

Nice lecture, vitruvius, many thanks.

Real Justice Cuts like a Knife
by Charles Adler

Bernard Madoff is in jail after stealing $55-billion from investors...I said BILLION...I said 55-billion times more money than the human imagination can even contemplate, far more than all the great bank robberies and train robberies and stage coach robberies combined. Let's be clear here. Madoff isn't just a thief. He is a Financial Cannibal. He cannibalized people's savings. His primary targets were his own friends, his own acquaintances, charities and the primary beneficiaries of those charities, children. If that doesn't add up to evil, then what does? And here's what gets me almost unhinged, and maybe I can get you to become a little bit bothered by this. Why is it that when a financial cannibal does evil and gets caught eventually for doing evil and then gets called evil, nobody in the legal community or the academic community
More at:

http://www.cjob.com/Blog/StationShared/Blog/OnTheEdge/blogentry.aspx?BlogEntryID=10025314

Revnant Dream -- So the question in the headlines today re Madoff was "What happened to all the money?" When you look at that figure -- 55 Billion -- it becomes obvious that Madoff could not have acted alone.

Vitruvius: "It was a joke, Ural, get a grip."

Sorry, Vit ... just a country boy.

Vitruvius - "Still, I would have thought you would have interpreted Steven's talk at a higher level."

There was no higher level congruent to reality. Look, I appreciate the attempts of my colleagues in this field. Just because I've failed thus far to demonstrate the premise does not necessaily invalidate future progress. But, to advance, you have to be ditch the muddy thinking and the gobbledygook.

Which leads me to ET's latest pearls...

So today on Power Play, the clip was shown of Stephen Harper commenting that "any man with a home and a wife would be needing money for rennovations." I gather this is considered to be a chauvanistic remark in some circles. So my question is what about Ignatieff and the nappies -- a far worse transgression in my books:

And a former close acquaintance recalls having lunch in a pub with the Ignatieffs while Theo was still in diapers, and being surprised when Michael said, "Susan, he needs his nappy changed." Says the friend: "That was the British norm. Michael was Canadian."

This is from Valpy's biography of Ignatieff that appeared in the Globe about a year ago and has been recently cited by Levant.

tenebris - there's no need to be insulting (latest pearls). I happen to focus on information dynamics in my research - and enjoy working in and debating about such issues. You may not like this area and/or may disagree with me. That's no reason to insult me.

What I find interesting, ET, and if memory serves there was a paper on this by a biology chap in the SEED Journal, is the notion of information enthalpy, which sounds to me like your synechism, and which reminds me of spontaneous organization, in the thermodynamic work sense. I wonder whether or not information, and meta-information (rules that information must follow), simply produce patterns, and that's all there is.

What's neat about our new computational insights, I'm thinking, is that now we can start to see that said patterns in collectives are manifestations solely of the spontaneous actions of individual axiological information entities as constrained by universal metaphysical information and as interpreted by available epistemological meta-information. I find this to be fascinating.

Now, Tenebris, I agree with you that being fascinated by zen-philosophy is insufficient to support engineering practice, and so I don't do that when I'm at work, nevertheless, I do think that if you are unwilling to allow a little artistic romanticism into this symposium then I shall have to sic Ayn Rand on you. But before I do that, perhaps you might like to read this et ibid:

http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/007392.html#c211013

I have two question:

Is it possible for information to exist without any interaction involved?

If feeling is an act of information, then what is a delusion?

Liberals synchronize ... Conservatives synchronize ... Dippers and BQers also do it ....!!!!

The party leaders are like the predators attacking each others swarm ... and Harper did a better job than Dion in the last election ... as witnessed by the voting swarms synchronizing mostly to the Conservatives ... while the lefty swarms broke up into smaller swarms ... following their leaders because they were not good predators.

Now we have a new swarm of unemployed and the party leaders are attempting to synchronize them.

Oh, you can draw your own analogies ... LOL

The answers to your questions, Xiat, are: no and yes.

Observant: "while the lefty swarms broke up into smaller swarms ... following their leaders because they were not good predators." -- This is so good! I once heard that termites push around particles at random until one particle lands on top of another and then the whole colony mobilizes and builds the most elaborate termite cathedral with arches and tunnels.

I think people are much like this. The challenge is, once the termite people have built one type of structure, how do you get them to consider a new design -- and we so need a new design!

Why do we so need a new design, Linda? I mean, I'm certainly not against incremental improvements, yet it remains the case that the design we currently have is at least polynomially better than anything we've ever had before. Don't try to pull off that simply linearly better shtick around here. You've either got to increase the exponent or, preferrably, go exponential, to impress the queens we use to excite us in these parts.

In case of political analogies, the structure is always dynamic. You either start re-designing as soon as possible or you'll be re-designed, that's why politics are reactionary most of the time.
The strange thing is that in today's world information travels faster to/from small town in Saskatchewan then to Ottawa.

Yes, Xiat, but the whole point of Steven's talk tonight was that the structure is always dynamic per se; politics it turns out is only a tiny corner of it. That's why to focus only on the dynamics of politics is to let life pass you by. Trees of green, red roses too. That's why Kate sometimes talks about non-politics stuff. And that's why SDA commenters should always keep that in the back of their mind, as a matter of good mental health. Good night, all; thanks, Kate.

Fascinating talk on US military classified projects uncovered via patches...
http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=201658-1&showVid=true

A closeup of one of the patches that is discussed, an entree so to speak, with logos "We serve men" and "gustatus similis pullus" (tastes like chicken), from Area 51. Yes that's a stealth bomber being munched on...
http://paradisedriver.blogspot.com/2008/04/gustatus-similis-pullus.html

The referring web page, with context and contest, is here:
http://anarchangel.blogspot.com/2009/02/this-guy-amuses-heck-out-of-me.html

Martin Armstrong: Is It Time To Turn Out The Lights?

Fragments from the link above

"Politicians have no long-term view because their self-interest is to merely win the next election. No one will run for office on a claim that they prevented a disaster. You just don’t know what could have happened! Just as President Obama is taking every possible wrong step that will ensure that this global economic disaster gets far worse, his advisers truly know nothing about history, trends or have any practical real world experience from the private sector to draw upon. How can we expect them to understand when such people have only lived within the bubble of government and convince themselves they have all the answers? "

"One would have expected interest rates to rise where there is a Debt Crisis. Yet interest rates even in England have collapsed to new historical lows going back to 1694. Indeed, most are now expecting interest rates in the United states to rise sharply in the face of Obama’s stimulus package. This is a rather simplistic view that we may not see unfold as many expect. This one-dimensional aspect of the problem is counter-balanced by the massive contraction in leverage at the core of the Great Depression of the 21st century."

"Civilization is destroyed by the inability of all governments no matter the form it may assume, to spend only what it earns. Every state in history has fallen into a Debt Crisis and that has always led ultimately to higher taxes. In the Byzantine Empire, the taxes became so outrageous, they forced the average person to become serfs seeking shelter and to retain a portion of their crops for protection from the state. It was taxation that created feudalism, drove people from the cities to the suburbs, and just led to the Waterfall Effect whereby the state became so weak, it could no longer defend itself or sustain its economy. Taxation destroyed civilization and capitalism."

LindaL:

When you look at that figure -- 55 Billion -- it becomes obvious that Madoff could not have acted alone.

Of course he did. I take that for granted with sums like that. Now there talking about half the Worlds wealth disappearing. Where? I have a good guess, but with no facts why spout it.

LindaL:

When you look at that figure -- 55 Billion -- it becomes obvious that Madoff could not have acted alone.

Of course he did. I take that for granted with sums like that. Now there talking about half the Worlds wealth disappearing. Where? I have a good guess, but with no facts why spout it.

Found: a cellmate for Bernie: Ali Al-Kurd.
...-

"Islamic-Style Ponzi Scheme Costs Investors 100 Million Shekels

(IsraelNN.com) Ali Al-Kurd, a money-changer in eastern Jerusalem, promised his investors a 26 percent annual profit. He disappeared several weeks ago, and 100 million shekels – some say 200 million – are gone.

The story, broken by Israel’s business weekly Globes, began seven years ago, according to some reports. Ali Al-Kurd, son of a wealthy businessman, began paying between 21 and 26 percent annual interest rates, in regular monthly payments, on investment sums that reached as high as $1.2 million. He held lavish meetings with potential investors, spoke vaguely of various opportunities in Israel and elsewhere, but “when you left the meeting with him, even though at first you thought you knew what he was saying, at the end you realized that you really have no idea what he planned to do with your money,” one broken investor said."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2205954/posts

"Warman is done."

"It is the most incredible ruling I have ever read from a human rights tribunal, and it discredits Warman, his enablers at the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (the censorship provision)."
...-

"Human Rights Tribunal: Richard Warman’s conduct “disappointing and disturbing”
By Ezra Levant on March 14, 2009 12:56 AM |

siren.gifsiren.gifsiren.gifThe Canadian Human Rights Tribunal issued a stunning ruling today, calling the conduct of Richard Warman, Canada’s most prolific human rights complainant, “disappointing and disturbing”.

Tribunal Chair Edward Lustig condemned Warman – who holds himself out as a human rights activist – for his membership in neo-Nazi organizations and ripped into him for his frequent anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi rants. The Tribunal effectively accused Warman himself of breaking the law – pointing out that Warman’s online anti-Semitism could quite possibly expose Jews to even more hatred and contempt. That just happens to be the offence Warman claimed he was trying to enforce. And, in perhaps the most damaging finding, the Tribunal pointed out that Warman at first did not answer questions truthfully – effectively calling him an attempted perjurer.

It is the most incredible ruling I have ever read from a human rights tribunal, and it discredits Warman, his enablers at the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (the censorship provision).

There have been dark days for the censors and bullies at the CHRC over the past year – like Bell Canada’s uncontradicted testimony that CHRC staff hacked a private citizen’s Internet account or Richard Moon’s surprise recommendation to scrap section 13.

But those were merely political developments. This is a quasi-judicial Tribunal ruling. It is not a consultant’s view or a pundit’s opinion or a mere PR blunder. It is the law. Richard Warman is a discredited man who promotes anti-Semitic filth online with no good excuse. Warman’s own favourite Tribunal says so.

Warman is done.

After this ruling, I would be surprised if he ever files a section 13 complaint again. Scratch that: of course he will. But the CHRC will never accept his complaints again – Jennifer Lynch, their chief commissar, is a censor too but she has a sense of political survival. She’s in enough trouble already with a Justice Department review and a Parliamentary Committee investigation getting under way, not to mention the Prime Minister’s Office breathing down her neck. The days of Lynch running with Warman’s cases – and paying his expenses, which she continued to do even after he left the CHRC – are over.

I wonder if even Bernie “Burny” Farber, Official Jewry’s censor-in-chief, will put some distance between him and Warman."
http://ezralevant.com/

A couple of interesting stories coming out of Halifax today:

Racist bus drivers!

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/1111209.html

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Metro/1110499.html

Women's studies program getting the axe at MSVU:

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Metro/1111356.html

Also on the front page, a drive by shooting, likely by the local gangsters that have been involved in a gang war over the past 6 months.

Its stories like these that don't make regret having moved out west!

A Yahoo! Finance discussion of the Jim Cramer segment on the Daily Show:

"Cramer vs. Stewart: Post-Fight Analysis"

"Wake judge orders home schoolers into public classrooms"

It's over religion, as you may have already guessed.

Say Amen, Gaia.
Amen Gaia.
...-

"In an age when environmental activists fly to distant locales to hold conferences about Climate Change in private jets or use high definition TV to broadcast their message, it is easy for some of them to forget how much of what they do depends on what they hate. For too many of them the current crisis is a sign from a God they do not believe exists to build a future they have no understanding of. Some part of me hopes they get it."

"The fatal hour

Anthony Giddens at the Guardian breathlessly describes our future. We will have jobs arising from the lifestyle changes that will come from the end of the carbon economy. Here’s his vision of Things to Come."
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/03/13/the-fatal-hour/#comments

xiat's questions:

Is it possible for information to exist without any interaction involved?

If feeling is an act of information, then what is a delusion?

Vitruvius's answers: no and yes.

The answer to "If feeling is an act of information, then what is a delusion?" is "yes"? The answer to "What is a delusion?" is "yes"?

Hmmm ...

Scratch a leftist/liberal:
"with aversion to Jews".

...-

"The challenge for the white man is to keep religion out of government, really. You see, liberals are America’s form of Judeo-Christian religion–with aversion to Jews, and without Christ. Liberalism is trying to be G-d, trying to save the world, trying to control everyone and every thing. This is the white man at his worst. This is the lowest form of the white man."

"Comanches and Horses
by David Yeagley"
"David Yeagley is the great-great-grandson of Comanche leader Bad Eagle."

http://www.badeagle.com/2009/03/06/comanche-and-horses/#comments

ET - "there's no need to be insulting (latest pearls)."

It was late, and I decided to go to bed. The next post was to begin...

"...you should not throw them so hard. You will hurt the swine."

Oink! Sez Tenebris.

I've a lot of work on my plate today, so I must still resist the temptation to dismantle your post. You must, however, resign yourself to being needled by me on this subject.

You can go all yippie ki-yay on me when mutually convenient. I'm thinking a 2 hour lunch should get things rolling. Sometime this summer? My treat of course.

Sorry to intrude on this post, but I've tried three times to comment at yesterday's Reader Tips, and no-go, it seems. 'Hope this posts:

"The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of."

Blaise Pascal (1600s)

"Heart speaks to heart."

John Henry Cardinal Newman (1800s)

"Reason and faith live side by side as amicable neighbours, not behind their separate fences as combatants."

batb (2009)

vitruvius - in reply to your 12,29 comment, yes, I fully agree, information exists as patterns. And yes, that's all there is. Then, energy morphs into matter, which are discrete Forms, according to these patterns. So, a Form, a discrete entity, is 'effete mind', so to speak. Consider the patterns as 'mind', and the Forms as 'energy trapped and moulded by Mind'.

I agree also with your second paragraph, which sets up the spontaneous axiological forms (there's the role of entropy) but, constrained by the general (common) metaphysical information-as-patterns. Other patterns from different species or systems interact with this binary structure (the pattern and the individual articulations of the pattern).

And yes, enthalpy would be analogous to synchronicity. But I'd say that synchronicity can move out of the internal (thermodynamic) and function also within the external (dynamic) realm.

xiat - no, information cannot exist without interaction. Nothing can exist without interaction. Not even a stone.

Feeling is an act of information, so is delusion. You are perhaps using the term 'information' in the 'library science' sense, where you think it means 'valid data'. That's not what some of us mean by 'information'. I, myself, simply mean a unit of formed matter, matter which is formed within a pattern - and that can be a quark, a cell, a swarm of cells, a human being, a word, a sentence, a society.

xiat - 'reactionary politics' i.e., one political party vs another, isn't about structure. The reactions are built into ONE structure. Societies don't change their infrastructures very often; it isn't something that can be done gradually but only via 'blood and thunder'. You have to take down the old structure. Societies, or any living system, requires STABILITY of structure. You can't have the lion species redesigning its structure every few generations. Same with societies.

And no, taxation didn't create feudalism! What an uninformed opinion! Feudalism is a particular societal structure, based on a particular population level, and operating in a non-industrial agricultural economy. It's extremely stable IF and ONLY IF the population level remains static. What moved Europe out of the feudal structure and into a market and capitalist structure was the growth in population. Absolutely nothing, nothing, to do with taxes.

I happened to watch this yesterday. It goes along the lines of the lecture but shows the cohesion and attack of predators on sardines. It shows a seal feeding while the sardines group under it's shadow and get wiped out. The Last Sardine.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=31f_1236952640

Yeagley said (see above): "Liberalism is trying to be G-d, trying to save the world, trying to control everyone and every thing."

Liberalism/leftism:
"*“God will deal with the Fox News channel for their treatment of Obama”".

Say Amen: O is the "one who has come to save the world."
...-

King Obama

I thought America elected a new president. But it is becoming increasing clear that in the minds of some, we have elected a king. Any criticism or disagreement with his policies are met with cries of “Off with their heads”.

A professor friend of mine perceives President Obama as almost 'god like'; one who has come to save the world. His scariest comment to date is *“God will deal with the Fox News channel for their treatment of Obama”. Is my friend a lone nut case or do many view Obama as divinity?

For years political correctness has been, for the most part, silly and annoying. It has become extremely serious business when it causes Americans to submit to an outrageous government take over of the private sector and restructuring of our great country simply because they're afraid to criticize or disagree with the first black president. Or, should I say, King Obama?

Lloyd Marcus, President NAACPC (National Association for the Advancement of Conservative People of Color)"
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2206499/posts

tenebris - heh - why should I resign myself to being needled by you? Patriarchal domination indeed.

Lunch? Sure...but watch out for my slipping something into your coffee...Meanwhile, by all means, dismantle.

Simone BC
Thanks for the link to the talk about military patches. At one point, the speaker refers to a patch which was ordered to be changed so as to give it a new "title".
It became "To Serve Man".
I'm sure this is in reference to the Twilight Zone episode from the 60's which has that same title.
(You can see the episode,or spoilers, by searching youtube for that phrase.)
The folks who retitled that one patch the speaker refers to in his talk have one wicked sense of humour. To Serve Man was the title of an alien cookbook.

"You are murderers, cowards, rapists and criminals," chanted groups of Muslim demonstrators, most of them born and educated in the town. "You are Nazis and baby killers and deserve to be slaughtered," they screamed. "Cowards all, you cannot fight and can only kill your own people" -- a reference to the friendly fire death of a teenage British soldier.

http://www.ottawasun.com/Comment/2009/03/14/8744621-sun.html

Wow, talk about deja vu. These are some of the same things that were said about my brother upon his return from their mission in Somalia.

The one fact that gets lost on all of these leftards, moonbats, dippers, hippies, religious extremists, etc, is the fact that no soldier ever wants to go to war......ever.....unless he is a deranged lunatic !

I have to hope that the same kind of bullcrap does not happen here in Kingston(stay clear of our remembrance day ceremonies)being a military town and all.

Aim your insults at the proper target, not the poor grunt who puts his/her life on the line to give you that "freedom of speech".

GO ARMY !

I liked what the The Police had to say about SYNCHRONICITY!

Bush is coming to Calgary on the 17th. Unfortunately,it is invitation only. Does anyone here know anyone who has been invited? I assume that the invites come through the U.S. consulate. Is it possible that the lady who runs the top conservative blog in North America received a much-deserved invite?...Heh,the word 'blog' gets caught by my spell-chick.

ET - "Patriarchal domination"? That's fighting dirty! I shall now respond in kind and note that the generation gap, Oh Matriarch, is the other way 'round.

Reload needle gun...

Re, your 10:38am: "information exists as patterns"

You do this to torment me, don't you? It is the breaking of patterns that encode information. And I'm not even going to touch the "exist" part.

Call for Claude Shannon, white courtesy telephone please.

O is a what? Look down, way down here*. It's a Lirpa Loof joke from the Wolfe who would eight years of O.
...-

"As for Obama, it is absurd to view his program as a step toward socialism. First of all ..."

"At most, his administration might nationalize banks temporarily; a socialist would nationalize them for good."

"These distinctions have reaffirmed the liberal dedication to human rights--and this at a time when conservatives like Bush and Cheney were prepared to dispense with them."

"Eight years of Obama, and the United States has its best chance in decades to return to the liberalism that has long defined its heritage. There would be no greater blow to socialism--in America, in Europe, or anywhere else--than for this venture to succeed."
...-

"Obama vs. Marx
Hint: One of them's not a socialist.
Alan Wolfe, The New Republic Published: Wednesday, *April 01, 2009"