william.scherk

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  4. william.scherk

    "Anger Studies"

    By william.scherk,

    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. 
     
  5. william.scherk
    Another repulsive mass-murder in America. Another 'type' of and motive for killing, this time a "creepy" and militant atheism -- at least according to some media outlets. Our old pal Baxter Dmitry adds a bit of fey canoes ... 
    Texas church shooting – Facebook rants of ‘creepy’ gunman Devin Kelley, 26, who preached about atheism before killing 26 churchgoers
    Devin Kelley, 26, who carried out the worst mass shooting in Texas' history, ranted on Facebook about churchgoers being 'stupid'
    Classmate Nina Rosa Nava write on Facebook that the mass murderer used to rant on the social network about his atheist beliefs.
    She said: “He was always talking about how people who believe in God were stupid and trying to preach his atheism.”
    The man who shot and killed 26 people in a Texas church on Sunday is reported to be a creepy, crazy, and weird outcast who preached atheism online.
    TEXAS CHURCH SHOOTER WAS SJW ATHEIST WHO HATED CHRISTIANS
    Learn the truth about the Texas church massacre
    Infowars.com - NOVEMBER 6, 2017
    Real News with David Knight: The Texas church gunman who killed 26 and injured 24 others in Sutherland Springs Texas was an atheist SJW who specifically targeted Christians in the despicable rampage.
    Texas Church Shooter Being Identified As An Atheist On The DNC Payroll Is Fake News
     Shawn Rice — November 5, 2017
    Here are examples of people sharing the fake news on social media.
    Texas Church Shooter Was Antifa Member Who Vowed To Start Civil War
    November 5, 2017 Baxter Dmitry 
    The gunman who opened fire inside a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, has been identified as Devin Kelley, an Antifa member who vowed to start a civil war by “targeting white conservative churches” and causing anarchy in the United States.
    ...
    Devin Kelley, who killed at least 27 people and injured many more, was one of two shooters in the church, according to eyewitnesses, who also report Kelley carried an Antifa flag and told the churchgoers “this is a communist revolution” before unloading on the congregation, reloading several times.
    Classmates of Texas Gunman Reveal the Unsettling Things He Said Leading Up to Church Attack
    BY REID MENE
    Sunday afternoon, Devin Patrick Kelley stormed into a Sutherland Springs, Texas, church and opened fire, killing 26 and injuring many more.
    While there is no question Kelley was deranged in his actions, it turns out those who knew him prior referred to him as “creepy,” “crazy,” and “weird.”
    But Kelley's most well-known quality was his distaste for religion, with some referring to him as the first atheist they'd ever met. Just prior to the shooting, a number of his classmates from New Braunfels High School said they had deleted him as a Facebook friend because they couldn't deal with his hateful posts all the time.
    UPDATE: Sutherland Springs Gunman Devin Kelley Wore “All Black” – Facebook Page Suggests He Was Diehard Atheist, CNN Fan
    by Joshua Caplan
    According to his now deleted Facebook page, it appears Kelley was a fan of CNN and Atheism.
    These are the Facebook likes of the shooter, as being reported by Heavy and other outlets.
     
     
  7. william.scherk
    Some thoughts from the author of 'The Righteous Mind,' Jonathan Haidt (see OL mentions here), at Spiked online: 
    The Fragile Generation
    -- my favourite conceptual creep is with the weasel-term "Fake News."  Where the species-genera distinction is obscured mightily.
    On an unrelated note, "Hate whomever you want. It's your right."  Lauren Southern bashes back at micro-aggressions from the folks at Reason TV.
     
  8. william.scherk
    The topic of emotion in Randland has always interested me. My very first point of contact with Objectivish things online was the place of emotion in cognition. It is interesting to find myself in rough agreement with Michael all these years later. 
    In the midst of a very intriguing conversation with my favourite South African Randian, this by MSK:
    It's not really fair to truncquote this bit, but readers can plunge back into the front porch thread to gain the flow of discussion, and the hinge-point of disagreement. But besides that, I think I can add a clarifying point in response to this (highlights added):
    This describes a similar-but-not-identical syndrome that I became aware of by reading the work of Antonio Damasio (whom I have mentioned a few too many times ...). Damasio worked with a neurological patient given the code-name "Elliot."  I mentioned 'Damasio,' 'emotion,' and 'Elliot' in one post five years ago:
    The gist was this: "Here is a teaser from a popular article in the Sydney Morning Herald, Feeling our way to decision" -- which I excerpted in the 2012 post ...
    Back to Michael's post today ...
    I'd like to find the famous example ... perhaps Michael can introspect hard and come up with the details. 
    -- this is roughly what I began to think when I learned of the case of "Elliot." I won't belabour the point here, since my "too many times" link above shows the same kind of discussion points I would make this time.  Without emotion, one's thinking is crippled.
    An additional knowledge point would be what "emotional intelligence" is missing in psychopaths (and here I plug the brilliant synthesis of research given in Ken Kiehl's book, The Psychopath Whisperer). Here is a brief extract from the 2010 Scientific American Mind article "Inside the Mind of a Psychopath."

    -- imagine waking up to a world in which none of these bodily feelings were present in mind,  but were mostly inaccessible ... and try to figure out which emotional circuits are blunted to the point of disappearance in the "rational" mind of a psychopath.

  9. william.scherk
    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 struggling with the entailments of conspiracy-ideation --in friends, family, and perhaps in themselves ... as those of us who have read the Rob Brotherton classic understand ... "Its not THEM, it's US" ... no one wing of political or social groups is more vulnerable to the harms of conspiracy ideation than another.
    "Try to figure out my tricks."  What good advice ...
  10. william.scherk
    My homespun header sung to the tune of something from Paint Your Wagons, I think. The headline at Phys.org is "Modern humans inherited viral defenses from Neanderthals." Click and go, but someone go first for Peter and give him an all-clear, thanks.

    We sometimes talk about viral things and sometime talk about Neanderthal and sometimes we talk about Neaderthal and Rand.  This is my half-assed attempt to knit together a proper blog post. Since I can't socialize the means of content-production, I quote from the forum itself:
    Musical interlude.
    Who knows who he was Listing at:
    Jerry Biggers and WSS scolding each other politely.  Just off stage right, Jonathan.
    An on-ramp to Point of Inflection, regarding our present ability to make conclusions about prehistory.
    A kind of stew of Neanderthal and history and Rand and Brant and Bob. Mood generally sunny with an occasional sharp gust:
    Gentle guidance, away from epistemological swamplands:
    A sly comic confection and call to order from Jerry:
    I will try to populate this thread with a few other standouts from over time.  Who wants all our Musings on the Missing Link linked here too?
    Yours truly, minor content provisioner.
     
  12. william.scherk
    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. .  Please keep personal abuse to a minimum. Creative insults are kosher, but if they aren't on topic, why post them?
    hr
    Our forum leader opened discussion on the phenomena back in January of this year.  My key-word search-term was "QAnon,"  not "Q," so the search results will not necessarily return all incidence of discussion touching on the phenomena.
     
  13. william.scherk
    The work history of the folks in the Robert Mueller team is reported on by the Daily Beast's Betsy Woodruff.  For those unspooked by a relatively quiet news front on the special counsel's activities, and for those who are curious about credible/non-credible implications of the activities. And maybe for those who use "Muh Russia" unironically ... (& for those who may have forgotten the details of the inquiry's frame of reference: the Rosenstein order establishing his authority)
    The DB article's subheadline slug:
    To probe alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election, the special counsel has essentially built his own miniature Justice Department. Meet the experts he’s recruited.
    Here is an excerpt from the conclusion (emphasis added):

  15. william.scherk
    The folks at the Voter Study Group have an article from June, in which some 'types' of Trump voters have been discerned. The title and subtitle -- The Five Types of Trump Voters: Who They Are and What They Believe. It is worth a read, if only to explore the path of belief ...
    The five 'types' are said to be:
    Staunch Conservatives
    Free Marketeers
    American Preservationists
    Anti-Elites
    The Disengaged

  16. william.scherk
    On the 'Boy did this one backfire!' thread, discussion has roamed over a few acres of various disputes, all tied to the Menace of Islam. At one point I wondered how Richard Wiig could be so confident about 'Sharia law in Canada.' That led to a schmozzle with Adam Selene, who forked up the first (incorrect) reference he could find . . . but eventually Wiig admitted he was wrong in his claim. But he didn't just say "I was wrong. Bite me." He added more material which led to more shmozzle in two back to back posts.
    So, there we split off the main trunk road of the story, which was the Islamic TV exec who went to jail for beheading his wife. The trunk had already sprouted 'honour killing' and other shoots, but here several buds erupt: Did Qaradawi raise two million voices in a chant to go die in Jerusalem? Will Canada face more credible demains for special religious arbitration? What does the registration of the Al-Wasat party signify? Wiig has stirred these all together into an unappetizing glop.
    But before I examine those offshoots, what really captured my eye was the reference to Qaradawi and The Google People -- a report by Michael expanding on Wiig's point about Menacing Signs.
    Michael references a Beck program, the awful Qaradawi sermonette in Tahrir Square, and then tells us that The Google People have been used . . .
    I have asked Michael if this Beck program was the one from February 21st, but have muffed my queries.
    I think this is the video, which has been chopped (I will upload a better sound version):
    Look for anyone other than Wael Ghonim to be mentioned as 'Google People.' One other Google person might be Amr Khaleed.
    And so much for trying to fight a dictator with do-gooder public manipulation, no matter how touchy-feely it is, while ignoring the toxic ideology waiting in the wings

    Mr Khaleed is an Islamic Preacher and TV personality. His Facebook page is the most popular in Egypt, according to the Washington Post.
    And from an overview of the Muslim Internet in Egypt via Islamonline:

    _______________________
    -- a few links and embeds that I will put in the body of the entry.
    Wael Ghonim at Twitter.
  17. william.scherk
    David Seaman has had a fair bit of promotion on Objectivist Living, not that there's anything wrong with that. Here is his latest, from which you can glean a coherent narrative of his work.
    Seaman had a recent appearance with the dean of American 'truther' media, Alex Jones, in a short and sweet update on the dread communication platform Twitter.
    Truth, Truther, Truthest!
     
  18. william.scherk
    This is a headline that needed an entry -- it is embedded within a story about, er, "cyber warfare" -- or whatever laden term best describes the augmented reality of propaganda, misinformation, and its effects. It's in a Bloomberg special report called A Global Guide to State-Sponsored Trolling. I can't wait till I get to the Canadian section.
    ________ ____ ____ ___ __ ________ __________ _____ / ____/ / / __ \/ __ )/ | / / / ____/ / / / _/ __ \/ ___/ /\ / / __/ / / / / / __ / /| | / / / / __/ / / // // / / / __/ ___ __ / .\ / /_/ / /__/ /_/ / /_/ / ___ |/ /__ / /_/ / /_/ // // /_/ / /__ |_ _| .| /_/\_\ \____/____/\____/_____/_/ |_/____/ \____/\____/___/_____/____/ |_||__| _____ _ _ _____ _ / ____| | | | / ____| | | | (___ | |_ __ _| |_ ___ ___ | (___ _ __ ___ _ __ ___ ___ _ __ ___ __| | \___ \| __/ _` | __/ _ \|___| \___ \| '_ \ / _ \| '_ \/ __|/ _ \| '__/ _ \/ _` | ____) | || (_| | || __/ ____) | |_) | (_) | | | \__ \ (_) | | | __/ (_| | |_____/ \__\__,_|\__\___| |_____/| .__/ \___/|_| |_|___/\___/|_| \___|\__,_| | | _________ _______ ________ ___ |_| ___ _______ __ __ ________ | || _ \ | || | | | | | | \ | || | |__ __|| | | | | _ || | | | |_ _| | \ | || _ | | | | |_| / | | | || | | | | | | \| || ||___| | | | _ \ | |_| || |___ | |___ _| |_ | |\ || ||_ | | | | | \ \ | || || || | | | \ || |_/ | |___| |___| \___\|________||_______||_______||_______| |__| \___||________|

  19. william.scherk
    Styx the election observer poses a question and answers it today. In the run-up to the 2018 midterms, he began to offer an estimation of Democratic House wins ... and won that Election Night prognostication game with H A Goodman, who figured on a Red Wave.
    Styx assesses the chances of a Biden win at 15% ...
     
  20. william.scherk
    [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 administrative-technical while being built and edited. I haven't figured out if Jonathan and I should impose some 'rules' going in, so your comment may be subject to arbitrary deletion before the field is ready for play. Fan notes included.

    http://wsscherk.hostingmyself.com/VIDEOCASTS/A23KF/globalWarmingPEWpolarization.png
    Adam, see what you think of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, especially the revealing map-based representations of opinion. You can drill and zoom down to state, county, district level to track data across a number of survey questions, where some of the answers are surprising. On some measures at least, the thing it is not found only in the UK, Quebec, Canada: Here's a snapshot of several maps which do not always show an expected Red State/Blue State pattern;
    [images updated January 2 2019; click and go images]
    http://wsscherk.hostingmyself.com/VIDEOCASTS/A23KF/2018YaleClimateOpinionMaps.png
    http://wsscherk.hostingmyself.com/VIDEOCASTS/A23KF/personalHarmYaleCC.png
    [Deleted image-link]
    Edited 4 May 2015 by william.scherk
     
    Plug my How To Get Where I Got book of books, Spencer Weart's The Discovery of Global Warming. Insert link to Amazon, Library link, and to the intro chapter of Weart's companion website to the book. Make sure you include a link to Ellen's mention of a book review. 
    Bob Kolker's June 3 comment is a good hinge. What do we (J and I) think we know about the mechanism Bob sketches? What can we 'stipulate' or what can we agree on, for the sake of argument?
     
     

  21. william.scherk
    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 hinkiness.
    In among the news-hoopla today, a few reports that stand out. This from The Week: A record-breaking 31 House Republicans won't seek re-election in 2018
    A whopping 31 House Republicans will not be seeking re-election in November, NPR reports, including Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.), who announced his impending retirement from Congress on Wednesday. The 2018 GOP exodus is a new record: The last time there was such a massive departure from Congress was when 28 Democrats left in 1994, and Republicans subsequently seized control.
    Most significantly, Republicans in states won by Hillary Clinton are leaving in droves. "Vulnerable House Republicans would clearly rather call it quits than stand for re-election with a deeply unpopular agenda hanging over their heads," Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman Tyler Law told NPR.
    [...]
    Democrats would need to flip 24 seats to take back the House, with the Senate being more of a long shot; in the upper chamber, Democrats have to defend 25 seats and pick up an additional three in order to take back the majority. A Washington Post/ABC News poll from November found that hypothetical Democratic candidates are favored by voters against their Republican counterparts 51 percent to 40 percent.
    One of my favourite election handicapping sites is Decision Desk HQ, a relatively-nonpartisan group of wonks and dweebs. Their DDHQ 2018 House Midterm Forecast is a good place to come up to speed on the challenges and excitement ahead.
    The 2018 House Midterm Election is bound to be one of the more interesting in recent memory. With Donald Trump in the White House, infighting on both sides of Congress, and an American public that is bursting at the seams we have a recipe for a perfect political storm. Keep your eye on this page, which houses our forecasts for all 435 congressional districts, and stick with us as we attempt to answer the ultimate questions: who will win majority control of the US House of Representatives?
    Here is an image from that page:
    http://www.thecrosstab.com/data/forecast-2018/leafletmap/index.html [Guy keeps 'fixing' his blog layout. He now works for the Economist]
    https://www.thecrosstab.com/project/2018-midterms-forecast/
    Click on the image above to go to the fully interactive version of this image, where you can zoom in and examine each race's details and present-day forecasts. Eg, 

    -- another very good site is Ballotpedia. Here is a link to their comprehensive 2018 elections page.
    ___________________
    ** a welter of reports on the controversial commission and its end can be accessed here. Click the following for a snapshot ...
    Prediction:  surprise surprise!  
    Countdown clock.
  22. william.scherk
    Elsewhere on Objectivist-Trumpism Living, the Republican run-off between Luther Strange and Roy Moore was highlighted. 
    ...
    It made me wonder just what qualities and policies an Objectivish person might celebrate in the Republican candidate for the December 12 special Senate election.

    I have narrowed it down to 24 attributes exemplified in direct quotes from the man ...
    "Homosexual conduct should be illegal"
    “We have blacks and whites fighting, reds and yellows fighting, Democrats and Republicans fighting, men and women fighting. What’s going to unite us? What’s going to bring us back together? A president? A Congress? No. It’s going to be God.”
    "Now, I haven't seen one thing in the press about this, and yet the President of the United States will not produce his birth certificate [...] That's very strange indeed. Why we don't hear about it — because the press won't report it."
    "We have child abuse, we have sodomy, we have murder, we have rape, we have all kind of immoral things happening because we have forgotten God.”
    “False religions like Islam who teach that you must worship this way are completely opposite with what our First Amendment stands for"
    “I want to see virtue and morality returned to our country and God is the only source of our law, liberty and government”
    "I'm sorry but this country was not founded on Muhammad. It was not founded on Buddha. It was not founded on secular humanism. It was founded on God,"
    “[Islam is] a faith that conflicts with the First Amendment of the Constitution”
    “Just because it [homosexual behaviour is] done behind closed doors, it can still be prohibited by state law. Do you know that bestiality, the relationship between man and beast is prohibited in every state?”
    “There is no such thing as evolution. That we came from a snake? No, I don’t believe that.”
    “Homosexual behavior is a ground for divorce, an act of sexual misconduct punishable as a crime in Alabama, a crime against nature, an inherent evil, and an act so heinous that it defies one’s ability to describe it.”
    "When we forget God, we lose the only true basis for morality and ethics, and we are cast upon the shifting sands of moral relativism in which anything goes, including lying, cheating and stealing."
    “God’s laws are always superior to man’s laws.”
    “Buddha didn’t create us. Mohammed didn’t create us. It’s the God of the Holy Scriptures. They didn’t bring a Quran over on the pilgrim ship, Mayflower. Let’s get real. Let’s go back and learn our history.”
    “You think that God’s not angry that this land is a moral slum? How much longer will it be before his judgment comes?”
    "God is the only source of our law, liberty and government,"
    "The free exercise clause of the constitution does not apply to any religion but Christianity."
    "Anytime you deny the acknowledgement of God you are undermining the entire basis for which our country exists."
    “Muslim Ellison should not sit in Congress”
    “We’ve got to remember that most of what we do in court comes from some scripture or is backed by scripture.”
    “‘It was the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America that Christianity ought to be favored by the State’”
    “There are communities under Sharia law right now in our country. Oklahoma tried passing a law restricting Sharia law, and it failed. Do you know about that?”
    "But to deny God — to deny Christianity or Christian principles — is to deny what the First Amendment was established for. The rights of conscience are beyond the reach of any human power; they are given by God and cannot be encroached on by any human authority without a criminal disobedience of the precepts of natural or revealed religion."
     
  23. william.scherk
    Mike LaChance is a contributor to the website "Legal Insurrection." His article "25 Not Salon-Approved Conservatives Worth Following on Twitter" wryly comments on an article at boo-hiss Salon.
    So I made a Twitter list.
    -- both LaChance and Salon writer Taylor Link address the point of 'the bubble,'' AKA 'information silos,' a tendency to consume news and commentary drawn only from a pool of like-minded people. One of the things I bear in mind as a Twitter consumer. Extend my purview, and all that. 
    Here's LaChance's 25 embedded:
    A Twitter List by wsscherk
  24. william.scherk
    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 the nomination of his party. 
    Ballotpedia has a good, clean, in depth section devoted to the exciting Democratic candidates ...

    President Trump had the kindest words for one declared Democratic hopeful, Senator Kamala Harris. From an interview with the New York Times shortly after she declared:
    Michael has debuted a new topic, 2019 Dem Primary Watch [May 8 2019]