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About this blog

Between the void and the invalid, Reason!

Entries in this blog

Drafts and Do-Ups [March 1 2023 -- the Year of ChatGPT]

I asked the 'instance' of ChatGPT to just have some brainstorming fun before dinner. I ended up with a bizarre tale told in an ersatz Rand ''voice."  But first, discoveries. What did I find out about ChatGPT? Well, headline: "You can jump back in to earlier chats"!  -- yahbut. This is not news. I just hadn't tried it before, or bathered to read immense How To documents.  So, if you had something like this: The preserved chat exchanges at the tip of the red arrows are not a u

[2023] AGW/CC 'How we got here'

[Edited January 2 2019 -- to remove or replace dead visual-links] Long ago Jonathan and I got some good traction out of a tangle of issues related to Global Warming slash Climate Change.  I think we are slated to renew or refresh our earlier exchanges.  I am going to poke in links to some he-said/he-saids from a few different threads at different times. One feature of the updated software is an automated 'sampling' of a link posted raw.  See below.  So this blog entry will be kind of a

william.scherk

william.scherk in Challenge

Reading: Freud, the Making of an Illusion

I've mentioned the author Frederick Crews a few times on OL** ... and now I am ploughing steadily through his book "Freud, the Making of an Illusion."   It's the kind of book people reserve the word 'magisterial' for, so far.  The subject is Freud's story-telling, in essence, and the divergence from the actualities. Crew is the first to exploit the new availability of previously censored or suppressed materials.  He has previously rubbished mythic Freud in some earlier work referred to by the

william.scherk

william.scherk in Freud

Essay on the Deep State, by Mike Lofgren

Do you ever get slightly confused by the term "Deep State," or wonder if another person is sensing the same concept as you? Here's an interesting analytical essay by Mike Lofgren, author of the book "The Deep State."  Anatomy of the Deep State [NB Dec 17: The code above did not survive the relocation of my web host to HostPapa. The poster to the video and the direct link follow. https://wsscherk.com/VIDEOCASTS/A11KF/The-Heat-Is-there-a-deep-state-or-shadow-governmen

Presidential Debates Watch 2020 [Updated]

I am going to have an election aftermath party with one of my study groups, using a Streamlabs "call in" format. This entry will present a 'live' debate watch-along for the Cleveland encounter between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. I'll post the Streamyard link here below, just in case anyone feels the urge to call in and give me (or Biden or Trump or Chris Wallace) a talking-to. I suspect tonight and the next two debate nights next month will not affect the electorate -- except

william.scherk

william.scherk in ELECTIONS 2020

All Polls Are Wrong

The phrase "all polls are wrong" was a cool hinge-point of argument last year, as the Trump train rolled on ... Yesterday a Democrat penned an interesting article at The Hill. It didn't say that "all polls are wrong," but that surveys of President Trump's popularity in the USA are flawed and in no way indicative. In other words ... Why the polls are still wrong.  Here's a few excerpts from the article: The Penn article also received some pushback, in this instance from Philip Bump o

william.scherk

william.scherk

Sessions, leaks, security, Manafort and 'false news.'

Six fun (sad/awful/false/infuriating) stories emerged from the swamp in the last couple of days. Peter Taylor noted elsewhere on the site some vows made by Attorney-General Jeff Sessions on the issue of "leaks."  Some of the usual suspects have pretended that this is a "Threat" against the noble profession of prostitution journalism. The strongest or least-false coverage of this issue from that point of view may be from font of evul Politico ... in a story called Jeff Sessions' Attack on th

william.scherk

william.scherk

Restoring deleted blog comments

[Link to kerfufflage on the main stage] Three unfinished 'draft' blog entries had been posted into abeyance, had been put off to the future, which future was January 1 2020.  The entries were glops of quoted material (some of which contained a stupid 'turn Trump to Drumpf' JS routine) ... and I had no pertinent plan to revisit them. When I deleted them, I also deleted a number of comments that were attached to at least one of the entries.  I had thought there was no way of saving those comm

william.scherk

william.scherk

Impeachment thread corral

No one knows at the moment how the impeachment process will end up, though OL members will generally have in memory the Nixon and Clinton impeachment efforts for use in comparing and contrasting.  At the present moment, nose-counting wonks have counted noses,  providing spreadsheets of current House members who have indicated they support an impeachment inquiry. There is enough to agree articles of impeachment at last count -- if the process gets that far (see also the Politico breakdown of impe

william.scherk

william.scherk

Book: "Fake News, Propaganda, and Plain Old Lies."

"Are you overwhelmed at the amount, contradictions, and craziness of all the information coming at you in this age of social media and twenty-four-hour news cycles?  Fake News, Propaganda, and Plain Old Lies will show you how to identify deceptive information as well as how to seek out the most trustworthy information in order to inform decision making in your personal, academic, professional, and civic lives. • Learn how to identify the alarm bells that signal untrustworthy information. •

william.scherk

william.scherk

The 5 O'Clock Club

My second test is also awful ... long, choppy, echoey, but I fear not [added February 2] _______________________________   I have been fussing with technical impediments for a few days -- with the end of the fuss a more-success-than-fail test of streaming video live from Chilliwack. It is still awful, laggy, popping here and there, distorting audio, skipping frames, refusing to play video so I can hear it ... but with some more fussing and rehearsal, and more script card

william.scherk

william.scherk

489 Days of Excitement (Democratic Party Presidential Candidates)

Three hundred and twenty-five days until the first chance Democratic electors have to select a candidate (beginning with the Iowa caucuses), plus the time between that caucus and the end of the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee Wisconsin on July 16 2020. I'll be using this topic thread to note various peaks of excitement between now and then.  I don't think there will be much excitement on the Republican side -- since barring unforeseen circumstances, President Trump is assured th

william.scherk

william.scherk

"Anger Studies"

The Real Roots of American Rage | The untold story of how anger became the dominant emotion in our politics and personal lives—and what we can do about it. Anger, Averill concluded, is one of the densest forms of communication. It conveys more information, more quickly, than almost any other type of emotion. And it does an excellent job of forcing us to listen to and confront problems we might otherwise avoid.   

william.scherk

william.scherk

"In the matter of Q"

I'd like to open a field of discussion for the QAnon phenomena.  Here is where I will post in already existing material presented at OL by members.  I'll take direction from comments and from poll answers.  What is Q / QAnon? Why should anyone on OL pay attention? Is skepticism justified? What are the main questions readers have in mind to guide discussion? No special rules or guidelines for this thread; the OL guidelines are good enough and will apply here. .  Pl

william.scherk

william.scherk

What to learn about Russian goals when you don't really care [updated]

One of the items I fish out of the general Russia Russia Russia hoopla is geopolitical strategy. In other words, setting aside the unproven allegations of the Trump-Russia 'collusion' grab-bag, and putting to one side the actual details of the "Russia hack" of the 2016 US presidential election -- leaving the residual "what is this administration's larger strategy with regard to Russia, its hopes and fears, its ambitions." This is no easy task. The election campaign revealed just a few rules

william.scherk

william.scherk

2018 Midterm Congressional Elections: 300 days of excitement

There are times when I miss the Objectivist Living stalwart "Adam Selene." I am definitely going to miss his wonkish, passionate opinions on the coming mid-terms. I put this blog entry up to have a place for OLers who are interested in tracking the campaigns, the shoddy and unconvincing polls, and the final night of returns.  With the disbanding of President Trump's "voter fraud" commission** we will have no executive guidance on where or how various states are vulnerable to rigging or other hin

william.scherk

william.scherk

Reading: "Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories"

I want to recommend a book I just started reading last night: "Suspicious Minds," by Rob Brotherton. As is usual, I read first the chapter that stuck out -- Chapter 5, The Paranoid Fringe. It takes a useful critical look at the seminal article by Richard Hofstadter -- "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" -- and also runs to ground a plausible origin of 'tinfoil hats.'  The book is written in a wry conversational tone, and is not on the surface a ''scholarly" read thick with endless foo

william.scherk

william.scherk

"How to pull a friend out of the conspiracy theory rabbit hole"

Mick West at Metabunk.org has published a book!  It's called "Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect."  The early reviews at Amazon.com are brutal. I publish a fair-use excerpt from the introduction to the book published last month at Salon: How to pull a friend out of the conspiracy theory rabbit hole | It’s not a blue pill or a red pill, but a poison pill I've added highlights to parts of the excerpt that might be helpful to OLers st

william.scherk

william.scherk

How to disagree without being disagreeable

I was thinking about some of the life-learning and wisdom of Nathaniel Branden, half-convinced in my mind that I was remembering a quote accurately, that Nathaniel Branden had written "disagree" and "disagreeable" much like I thought in the title of this entry. I did find a phrase, something like I remembered and put it in fuller context at bottrom. But first some thoughts from the departed. The natural inclination of a child is to take pleasure in the use of the mind no less than of t

william.scherk

william.scherk