Alan Friedman's stunning photo of the sun was featured on the home page of MSNBC today. I decided to visit his website to see what else he has done from his backyard observatory in Buffalo, and I recommend that you do the same.
To continue... The Whiskey Rebellion more or less blew up in Alexander Hamilton’s face. The tax he pushed through congress on whiskey that triggered the entire affair was shortly thereafter repealed and it was a while before the federal government tried to impose internal taxes. One of the stated goals of the revolution was to end taxation without representation, but in practical terms this meant an end to taxation, period. The federal government used tariffs and land sales to pay off the debt incurred by the revolutionary war. Jefferson’s purchase of Louisiana was still done by a combination of the two plus borrowing. Generally, tariffs were kept low, to encourage volume of trade. Some high tariffs were employed in the 1820s and 1830s as protectionist measures to level the field with Britain, which was in the midst of its “workshop of the world” period. The South hated these tariffs because it raised the price of manufactures and shipping, which impacted on their trade which was almost entirely agricultural. It was different in the states. Property taxes early became a source of state revenue. The definition of “property” for the purposes of such taxes stretched far beyond the bounds we would recognize or accept today and under Jackson came to include just about anything a person owned. Local reaction to such impositions varied by city and state, but rarely rose to the level of rebellion. Federal internal taxes did not come into play until the Civil War. The need to raise revenue in huge amounts and quickly necessitated the creation of the first income tax, among others, including a vast array of excise taxes and licensing. There were special corporate taxes, stamp taxes for legal documents, and inheritance taxes. Most of these were phased out after the Civil War. Interestingly, the Republicans—a new party formed just before the Civil War which became the second national party, supplanting the archaic Whigs—kept two elements of the new tax system: high tariffs and taxes on liquor and tobacco. High tariffs were protectionist measures. The excises on liquor and tobacco were not greatly challenged because they coincided with the growing Temperance Movement, which was becoming politically significant. [More . . . ]
The co-founder of Free Press, Robert McChesney, discussed U.S. support for public broadcasting with Amy Goodman on today's episode of Democracy Now. The episode begins with Hillary Clinton's recent statement that Al Jazeera and other foreign news sources are offering real news--useful information--unlike America's corporate news. Here's an excerpt of Clinton's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last Wednesday:
Viewership of Al Jazeera is going up in the United States because it’s real news. You may not agree with it, but you feel like you’re getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads and the kind of stuff that we do on our news, which, you know, is not particularly informative to us, let alone foreigners.
Robert McChesney agreed with Ms. Clinton's disparagement of America's new media. He disagrees with her proposal for addressing this serious problem. Clinton is proposing to increase funding for America's foreign media operations. According to McChesney, we should scrap the plan to increase international propaganda and, instead, provide better support for America's domestic public media. The current federal support for Public Broadcasting and support for community broadcast stations, is $420 million. This amounts to one one−hundredth of one percent of the total federal budget, (i.e., that is one ten-thousandth of the federal spending for 2010) and this only about half the amount ($750 million) that the federal government pays to support various international broadcasts (Voice of America and other international media operations). McChesney recommends that we combine these monies into a single first-rate public-supported media that will treat the United States just like it treats other countries. It should be a network with no double-standard and no blatant propaganda (BTW, I recently noticed that American media outlets call opponents of a government "rebels" when it approves of them but "insurgents" when it doesn't). McChesney proposes that this new government-funded public media should produce the type of information that other countries trust to such an extent that they will value it and rely on it; we should thus make this new public-funded entity's news freely available to the rest of the world. Wouldn't that be a fundamental change? I certainly haven't seen any indication that the world flocks to see the jingoistic arguing-head-pundit "news" that our electronic currently specializes in producing. McChesney reminded Amy Goodman's audience that those concerned with media reform should consider attending the upcoming National Conference for Media Reform, April 8 - 10, in Boston, Massachusetts. I will be there; I've attended prior national conferences by Free Press and they present numerous critically important topics, including reform of corporate media and lots of encouragement for citizen journalists. Admission to the entire conference is $175. Here's what one can expect at the upcoming conference, according to McChesney:[T]his will be the fifth National Conference for Media Reform, in Boston. I’m more excited about this one than any of the other four, because I think politically in this country right now, with what’s happening in Wisconsin, with what is happening with the battle over public media, with the battle for an open and uncensored internet, the network neutrality fight, I think this is going to be an organizers’ conference. This is going to be an activists’ conference. This is going to be a conference for people to get engaged with issues and learn how to effectively fight, because I think what we’re learning now is that on issue after issue, the vast majority of the American people support us. They care about these issues. And all they need to do is drop a match on that prairie, and we’re going to have a fire. And that’s what we’re going to be doing in April in Boston. It’s going to be an extraordinary event.
This article is a continuation of my previous post analyzing Installments I – IV of David Sloan Wilson's series of articles titled "Atheism As a Stealth Religion" (Here is Installment I). This article relates to D. S. Wilson’s installments V through VIII. In Installment IV, D. S. Wilson presented six major hypothesis that have been used as plausible evolutionary explanations for religion. In installment V of his eight-part series of articles on atheism as a stealth religion, he indicates that religion is "a fuzzy set," and that each of the six hypotheses he previously offered seem to bear on at least some aspect of religion. The only way to pick and choose which hypotheses truly work is to employ the scientific method, strictly speaking. That is the approach D. S. Wilson has claimed to have done in showing that the super organism hypothesis is more relevant and persuasive than the others.
If you could say only one thing about religion, it would be this: most enduring religions have what Emile Durkheim called 'secular utility.' They define, motivate and coordinate groups to achieve collective goals in this life. They promote cooperation within the group and bristle with defenses against the all-important problem of cheating.… [T]hey score high on practical realism, no matter how much they depart from factual realism along the way.
Wilson argues that the "byproduct" and "individualistic" accounts of religion can be fully reconciled with the superorganism hypothesis. For instance, the byproduct approach often includes the concept of a "hyperactive agency detection device (HADD)" that refers to our over willingness to explain events in terms of actions of "intentional human-like agents." To the extent it exists, such a tendency could have come into existence about for reasons having nothing to do with religion. As such, HADD could well be a byproduct (or an exaptation) that currently contributes to our groupish tendencies. D. S. Wilson's argument reminds me of the concept of "ontological metaphors" offered by Lakoff and Johnson. At bottom, human animals quite often demand intuitive explanatory models for understanding causation with regard to complex phenomena, and a prime method of portraying causation is through some sort of sentient agency. Since there is no evidence of such sentient agency, it becomes a logical move for a motivated individual to argue for a supernatural version of sentient causal power. What are the consequences of accepting the superorganism hypothesis? By choosing among the hypotheses, we can better devise strategies for dealing with religion. Organisms and super organisms "compete, prey upon each other, coexist without interacting and engage in mutualistic interactions." In these ways, superorganisms can be seen to be a special type of secular system akin to governments and business corporations. Religious organizations are not exceptions to the rule on how one conceives of and deals with organizational systems. Religions are, rather, merely one type of organizational system. Granted, they are notable to the extent that they "depart so flagrantly from factual realism," but they are, at bottom, "corporate units." Because they are essentially corporate units, we should expect that they behave comparably to other corporate units with regard to such things as competition and predation. D. S. Wilson notes that he has done quite a bit of research in this area, and is convinced that[T]he majority religions… Originated and spread in a non--violent fashion--think of early Christianity and current versions such as Seventh-day Adventist him. I am not claiming that religious groups are biased toward pacifism, only that they are like secular groups in employing the full range of options in their interactions with other groups.
[More . . . ]The price of gas is shooting up again, and who knows how high it's going to get. Panic is starting to set in because, in one of history's most incredible displays of poor planning (or lack of planning), the American economy will fall apart unless there is plenty cheap oil. We burn an insane amount of this precious and dwindling resource: 10,000 gallons of oil per second (this is not a typo). We already burned off our cheap oil, and the only oil remaining is difficult to extract and therefore expensive. Our politicians refuse to say the phrase "peak oil," but that's what we are now facing. Obama's administration is now considering the following "solution": tap into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That's because America has a huge amount of oil in its reserves--more than 727 million barrels of oil. That's enough oil to last us for [drum roll] about a month [sound of balloon deflating]. That's because we burn 21 millions barrels per day. Those who find solace in tapping into the Strategic Petroleum Reserves are either foolish or intentionally dishonest. We could embark on using less oil, but American politicians can't bear to even mention conservation or else they would face the torches and pitchforks of the populace. Conservation is a powerful tool to use--every barrel of oil that we don't burn is a barrel that we don't need to yank out of the ground from 5 miles under the Gulf of Mexico. With the amount of oil we could save through modest conservation, we could completely fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in about a month. But no politician dares to mention conservation because it amounts to telling Americans that there are limitations on their "freedom." Even though conservation will enhance our freedoms. You won't hear any politicians uttering the "C" word. Perhaps for this reason. Or these reasons. And though the conservatives have taken the lead on this dysfunctionality, "liberal" politicians are largely silent, and therefore complicit.