Maggie's Farm

Taking another look at the data, Holland in a piece titled The Marketing of Global Warming in On Line Opinion finds data cherry-picking all over the place.

Here's the now-discredited scary hockey stick (no longer defended by anyone due to erroneous stat analysis, plus the Southern Hemisphere is, of course, entirely different):

Here's the unmanipulated graph:

Holland's piece, with many more graphs and analysis, is here. h/t, An Englishman's Castle.

Related: The Sky is Falling. And I see that the Pope, a far more scholarly sort than the pompous, thesaurus-addicted Al Gore, is a skeptic, but where's that Pope link I had earlier? Got to find it...OK Here it is.

Quoted by Dr. X:

Anatomists have found that in most areas of the cortex, for every fiber carrying information up the hierarchy, there are as many as ten fibers carrying processed information back down the hierarchy...

Ten times as many going "down" than "up"? I find it fascinating that there are such identifiable anatomical structures which correlate with what we know well: perception is not "input." It's our brain and mind's interaction with the input not just in the cortex where we expect processing and interpretation to take place, but also back down to the sensory level itself. 

So sensation itself is not passive reception: it is shaped by the cortex. Another quote:

[Y]our understanding of reality is a far cry from reality itself. Your understanding of reality is constructed in large part according to your expectations and beliefs, which are based on all your past experiences which are held in the cortex as predictive memory. This is worth repeating: Many of your perceptions—what you see, hear, feel, and think is real—are profoundly shaped and influenced by your beliefs and expectations.

I think it's a big leap from the micro-anatomy of basic sensory perception to the theme of construction of reality, but it's always a good topic. The piece is further quoted and linked here.

Photo: A stained cortical neuron in a sea of dendrites

Vanderleun rates Van Morrison one of the great souls of our time. So do I. I have heard "Brown-Eyed Girl" more than enough times, but not "These are the Days." If you don't know that tune, find it. Read Vanderleun's piece, and listen, if you wish, to this YouTube long version of T.B. Sheets he posted:

I am periodically reminded that relative newcomers to the blogosphere - of which there happily seem to be many at Maggie's Farm - need to be advised to right-click links that you wish to see, without losing your page.

It's the best use of that right clicker on your mouse: it's certainly why God created mice with two ears.

A teleology is a basic component of most religions. As I understand it, Darwinian evolution contains no teleology and is based on random variation which "leads" nowhere.

However, even our non-scientific use of the word "evolution" connotes a sense of "progress." Philosophical naturalism cannot speak of progress, or "success" or "need" or "purpose" - only of temporary adaptations and maladaptations to conditions based on accidental genetic events.

As the very lame Wikipedia entry says correctly:

Teleology would argue that a person has eyes because he has the need of eyesight, form follows function, while naturalism is the reverse of this position: it would say that a person has sight simply because he has eyes, or that function follows form (eyesight follows from having eyes).

Auster discusses this in a short piece on the subject (The Intellectual Fraud which is Darwinism).  Fact is, people have a tendency to fallaciously (via the pathetic, or anthropomorphic fallacy -or more specifically, personification) apply human notions like intent or direction to a Darwinian world-view which entirely lacks intent or purpose - but which does contain design (as humans comprehend it - eg snowflakes). Thus they impose a religious-like teleology upon a theoretically meaningless, purposeless and indifferent nature. This has no source in Darwin or in modern evolutionary theory, which reject any meaning or purpose in nature.

In fact, the source of the teleology in science is the human desire to impose human notions of purpose on nature.

Now one might argue that the use of animating figures of speech is nothing more that a way of making something dead feel more vivid and compelling - and that may be the case - but I believe that the figures of speech we use reflect how we really think about things.

Tropes, with repetition, aquire a sort of pseudo-substance - a mental substantiality in the absense of reality. This is termed "reification." Reified tropes may be the origins of religious ideas.

In that way, our animation of an indifferent nature with delusions of purpose and direction permits us to extend the notion of evolution to history, society, human activity, and even to the notion of human perfectability - as if "things" were "leading" anywhere: that is closer to religion than to Darwinism.

But is it even possible to talk or think effectively without using figures of speech, without tropes (outside of math and formal logic, which may also be tropes of a different sort)? And is it possible for a human being to not reify some of their tropes, resulting in a religious-like belief or faith in them? ("My raspberries like full sun," "The earth has a fever," "Mankind and society are stumblingly evolving towards better, kinder realities," "Species seek adaptation," and so forth. Doesn't such language form a teleological  foundation for a primitive religion? I say "primitive" because based on a "Ghost in the Machine" category error.)

This is long enough, but these sophomoric musings could go on and on. (Mind you, this is written mainly from the standpoint of philosophical naturalism/materialism, as if that were the ground I stand on. It's not. When I hear the Messiah - or even listen to Alicia Keys, I cannot stand on that ground. And that's my point - no-one really can for very long unless they deaden their brain.)

That is NYC's Metropolitan Museum of Art's Annual Christmas Tree and Neapolitan Baroque Creche in the Medieval Art wing.

Many thanks to Ed Driscoll for finding this highly enjoyable talk by Tom Wolfe at Duke last year, titled "What is Southern Today?" (It's about an hour, but well worth it.) Also, thanks to Ed Driscoll for introducing us to FORA.tv.

Best quote: Young writers are told "Write what you know." OK, but what do you know?

Heat in a saucepan, almost to boiling, a few cloves, a stick of cinnamon, a whole orange peel, and real, fresh cider.

Strain out the solid ingredients and serve in a heat-proof glass mug.

Why Karlheinz Stockhausen really was great (with links): Daily Telegraph. Below, Stockhausen on sound. (h/t, Marginal Rev.)

Below: Kontakt (I'd ignore the video and just listen)

Quoted from O'Neill at Spiked:

Imagine a country where city officials could take it upon themselves to ban art exhibitions, pieces of music and other performances that might, in their view, provoke violence. Where a pub, club or gallery could be threatened with having its licence revoked, and effectively be forced to close down, if it played music or displayed art that has been blacklisted by officialdom. Imagine a country where a young woman could be put under house arrest for, amongst other things, writing poetry judged to be ‘dangerous’. Imagine a country where the strictures on what you can and cannot say are so stifling that arts institutions censor themselves, sometimes withdrawing potentially inflammatory plays or exhibitions in order to keep sweet with the powers-that-be.

Surely no one would put up with such a regime? Even in Eastern Europe in the dark days of Stalinism, individuals protested against dictators who sought to control art and curtail artistic freedom. Yet all of the things listed above are happening right now, here in Britain, and people are putting up with it.

Read the whole thing. Yes, it's more about the Fascist Left.

Our blog friend Theo is taking a sabbatical after having run into problems with Google's Blogger. As a reliable purveyor of wit, art, and military aircraft, we will miss him and hope he comes back soon. For a sample of his famous photographic art collection, we offer this Odalisque below:

Call for quote. No bag limits, and no licenses required.

- Posted by Roger de H.