Astrophysicist sends dingbats into orbit

British astrophysicist Steven Hawkings has UFOers spinning around the moon.  People who discuss UFOs, aliens on earth, and space abductions crowded the talk radio airwaves in recent days to vilify Hawkings for saying that he believes there must be life on other planets in the universe, but we should not attempt to contact them.

"We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach."

He concludes that trying to make contact with alien races is "a little too risky". He said: "If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans."

The reason the dingbat caucus is so enraged is because Hawkings' statement implies that no one has met a space alien in reality up to this time, despite the fact that some spend so much time recounting their encounters.  His statement suggests that they are telling stories.
  
But some people are offended about this characterization of the human race.  He is not the first to suggest that we might not want to encourage visits by space aliens because they might be just like us.  One of the myths (used in its perjorative sense) they circulate is that space aliens came centuries ago and taught humankind to build the pyramids in Egypt, the temples in Maya, and crawler tractors in Peoria.  They see space aliens as a superior species that came to earth and attempted to raise the human race out of its primordial muck.

Of course, the same might be said of Jesus Christ, whose life-story fits the pattern of space creatures who invade the earth by adopting human form.  Whatever story one prefers to believe, the main idea is that humanity needs to acquire some redeeming virtues.  The teachings of Christ called for a total revision of the precepts of condemnation and vindictiveness on which humankind did and continues to operate.  His teachings are, indeed, alien to the principles that humankind prefers.

One of the things that distinguishes American literature from other world literatures is its sardonic take on the nature of humankind.  The protagonists in most of America's better literature are what is sometimes called anti-heroes.  They refute the notion that mankind, even at its most pretentious, is noble.


Mark Twain was less than subtle when he confronted "the damned human race."  He thought that when a person was called an animal, it was a complement because it was likening a person to a behavioral superior.  No  other species, he claimed, was as malicious, perverse, cruel, and obstinately stupid as the human.  A lot of  people do  not like Mark Twain because he makes fun of humanity and its pretenses toward superiority.


One of my correspondents made the point that if there are space aliens out there who are actually superior to humankind, why would they want anything to do with us?  Do you find virtuoso musicians and poets hanging out in biker bars?  He reverses Hawkings comments a bit.


But he also asked if space creatures observed the mass killings taking place on earth under the name of Islam, or drug cartels, or even read the kind of thought--actually the lack of it--in blog posts and the comments following them, why would advanced creatures not do everything to avoid getting involved with humanity?   If they coveted the earth's resources, they might just wait until humanity has destroyed itself with its own malicious foolery.  Then they can take over, if there is anything left.


Ironically,it may be those orbiting dingbats who survive and carry on the traits of the race. 

Health care opponents vie for Nobel Prize in fiction

Here is the way that Factcheck.org puts it:

We’ve seldom seen a piece of legislation so widely misrepresented, and misunderstood, as the new health care law. We stopped counting the number of articles and items we turned out on the subject after the total reached 100.

Some of that is understandable. The debate went on for more than a year, while the different House and Senate bills changed their shape constantly.  The final law was the product of an awkward two-step legislative dance that first enacted the Senate’s version, then quickly amended it with a reconciliation "fix." No wonder people are confused.

And even now the misrepresentations continue. The new law is no longer a moving target, but some opponents persist in making false or exaggerated claims about it. Our inboxes are filled with messages asking about assertions that the new law:

• Requires patients to be implanted with microchips. (No, it doesn’t.)
• Cuts benefits for military families and retirees. (No. The TRICARE program isn’t affected.)
• Exempts Muslims from the requirement to obtain coverage. (Not specifically. It does have a religious exemption, but that is intended for Old Order Amish.)
• Allows insurance companies to continue denying coverage to children with preexisting conditions. (Insurance companies have agreed not to exploit a loophole that might have allowed this.)
• Will require 16,500 armed IRS agents to enforce. (No. Criminal penalties are waived.)
• Gives President Obama a Nazi-like "private army." (No. It provides a reserve corps of doctors and other health workers for emergencies.)
• "Exempts" House and Senate members. (No. Their coverage may not be as good as before, in fact.)
• Covers erectile-dysfunction drugs for sex offenders. (Just as it was before the new law, those no longer in jail can buy any insurance plan they choose.)
• Provides federal funding for abortions. (Not directly. But neither side in the abortion debate is happy with the law.)

For details on these claims about the new law, please read our Analysis section.

Democrats criticize Senate financial reform bill

Former financial regulators and Democratic insiders have written a letter to Senate leaders Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell criticizing the bank reform bill being advanced in the Senate.  They say:

Neither the bill passed earlier this year by the House, nor the one currently under consideration in the Senate would have prevented the crisis. Without serious restructuring, they will not prevent a future crisis.

The letter lists eight specific provisions such a bill must contain to prevent the  kind of financial failure that led to the current recession.  The full text of the letter may be read in PDF format on the Huffington Post.    

The U.S. Constitution: the Great American Inkblot

Spurred by an administration he believes to be guilty of numerous transgressions, self-described American patriot Kyle Mortensen, 47, is a vehement defender of ideas he seems to think are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and principles that brave men have fought and died for solely in his head.

 That is the lede in one of those great send-ups on American foolery that The Onion does so well.

 On one hand with all the histrionics and cries of paranoia filling the air, one can celebrate the First Amendment and the fact that freedom of expression is taking place without restraint.  On the other hand, it is disconcerting when free expression reveals how many people out there are absolutely bonkers.  Or whose launchers of verbal missiles are powered by such paltry brain cells.

I keep asking just what part of the Constitution is being violated by Obama, Congress, and the gov-mint in general.  The only answer I have seen so far that is specific is the Second Amendment, because Obama plans to come in the night with his troops and confiscate all firearms.

There are law suits being mounted against the healthcare reform act on the grounds that it is unconstitutional.  The argument goes that the Constitution prohibits the gov-mint from forcing people to buy health care insurance.  The states seem to have no problems forcing drivers to buy auto insurance, but that does not seem to violate the Constitution anywhere.

I guess our founders realized that someday the world would need a great, big Rohrschach blot on which the good people could project their fears and fantasies.

You know, for a more perfect union.  

How did we lose the war in Afghanistan?

We shot innocent civilians   In the first three months of this year, we killed 72 of them. .

The last incident was Monday when U. S. troops shot up a bus, killed five riders, and wounded 18.


Our commanders and government have apologized and promised extensive investigations.  We have become obsessed with apologies, which do nothing to assuage the anger at the forces who are killing innocent Afghan people, particularly when those forces claim to be protecting those people by combating Taliban forces from which we are trying to free the people.  The Afghan people have to decide who is the real enemy.  The Taliban or NATO?  Or both? 

It's quite simple.  The enemy is whoever kills you,  

The Taliban is responsible for more civilian deaths in Afghanistan.  They like to kill with bombs--car bombs, suicide bombs, anything that works.  The NATO forces kill with drones sometimes, which can't tell a wedding party from some dude jigging into a suicide bomb harness.  Sometimes innocent civilians are in the way when our forces are opening fire on what they think is Taliban fighters.  Other times, like on Monday, they open fire on what they think might be some kind of bomb coming at them,  this time in a bus.

U.S. troops are being asked to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people.  That is a lot of responsibility to  heap on a bunch of grunts.  It might be in the command's mind to cast the soldiers as saviors, but it is hard to fill that role convincingly while killing those who are supposed to be saved.  But in Afghanistan it is impossible at times to discern the enemy from the innocent civilians.  That is because what appear to be "civilians" may not be so innocent.

The problem is defined by the country's President Kharzai.  At this point, who knows what side he is on?  He has threatened recently that in the face of the NATO-led occupation and assaults on his people, he may join forces with the Taliban.

Kharzai represents the status of Afghanistan.  He is making America very nervous.  President Obama made his surprise trip to Afghanistan largely to try to get Kharzai to affirm his support of the U.S. in Afghanistan.  A few weeks ago, Kharzai hosted a visit by Iran's  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who is a dipshit, but he is the president of the country.  At that visit Ahmadinejad unleashed his usual vitriol against America, but he asked what may be one of the few coherent things he has ever said.  He asked, in words translated for the blogosphere, WTF are American troops doing in Afghanistan?  What is their purpose for being there?

Within days President Obama made his sudden flight to Afghanistan to meet with Kharzai.  He extracted some commitments to cooperation from Kharzai, but within days of his leaving Kharzai made his threat to join up with the Taliban.  Now President Obama may himself ask WTF are American troops doing Afghanistan with full comprehension of the situation.

Benjamin R. Barber breaks the question down into the fifteen salient points that suggest the answer:

1. There is no " Afghanistan," only an inchoate collection of warring tribes, factions and clans.

2. To the extent there is an "Afghanistan," its government is deeply corrupt and unable to control its own divided country.

3. President Kharzai, our "ally" and the official representative of the "state" on whose behalf we fight, would prefer that we leave -- at least when it comes to what he says for internal consumption.

4. Not that it matters what he thinks since the President of Afghanistan is for all practical purposes little more than the Mayor of Kabul -- and that's on good days.

5. The only thing that unites this otherwise disintegral non-state is that the fractious tribes that despise one another hate foreigners even more.

6. Foreign forces, whatever their intentions, will always be seen as occupiers and hence, the enemy.

7. Ghengis Khan, the British and the Russians all tried to "win" in Afghanistan, and they all failed; it would be an exaggeration to say their futile attempts brought down three empires.... or would it?

8. You can't win wars when you're killing civilians, yet in Afghanistan where the boundary between combatants and civilians is blurred you necessarily are killing a great many civilians a lot of the time.

9. Occupying places where Muslims live (and where they die at your hand) will always been seen as a war against Islam rather than a war against terrorism.

10. You can't make people free at the barrel of a gun.

11. There is no better way to create terrorists than to make war on Muslims in the name of fighting wars against terrorism.

12. America can't save the world, and risks losing what is best in America when it tries.

13. Military force and overwhelming firepower applied from the outside are more likely to undermine than sustain the development of democracy inside a developing country.

14. Al Qaeda is not Afghanistan and it is not the Taliban either; it is a malevolent NGO, and winning Afghanistan or defeating the Taliban cannot vanquish al Qaeda.

15. We can't pay for questionable wars abroad and afford justice and economic recovery at home, and trying to do so is likely to lead to losing the war and undermining justice.

145 years ago tonight

He was assassinated. 

Confederates in South Dakota

One of the first U.S. Army units to be assigned to Fort Sissseton to work on its construction in 1864 was composed Confederate prisoners of ware who joined the Union Army.

Dr. Blanchard and I have both commented on the Virginia Governor’s  proclamation declaring April Confederate History Month without mentioning slavery.  Re-enactors concentrate on the battle field operations, but there is much more to know and understand about the War and the people involved in it.  My son and I are in the miiddle of the drill line in the photo above as part  of Company F, 1st U.S. Volunteer Infantry, who we portray.  The infirmities of age and arthritis have limited what I can do (I can’t do the reverse arms carry anymore), and whereas once we won trophies during the shooting matches, the rifling of the bores of our Japanese replica Springfield muskets is so worn that the the balls do loopty-loops on their way in the direction of the targets.

The group we portray was recruited at the Point Lookout military prison in Maryland from Confederate soldiers who had been captured and confined there.   After President Lincoln and General Grant gave the matter much thought, they approved an initiative to allow the prisoners to sign an oath of allegiance to the Union in exchange for which they would be allowed to enlist in the Union Army. They were called Galvanized Yankees.  They were assured that they would not been put into battle against their Confederate friends and relatives, but would be sent to the West to man forts on  the frontier.  The 1st U.S. Volunteers was sent to  the Dakota Territory where they were deployed at forts along the Minnesota-Dakota border and at forts on the Upper Missouri River.

At the time Fort Sisseton was named Fort Wadsworth.  The name was changed in 1868 when an eastern fort claimed the Wadsw0rth name.  The fort was designated to be built at Aberdeen.  But there was no timber or masonry materials in the vicinity to be used in contructi0n, and there was doubt about potable water.  The officers in charge of the project found a  nice site on the coteaus above the lakes , where there was timber, rock outcroppings, and clay for making bricks. And a lot of fresh water.

Conpany F arrived at the Fort in August 1864 and left about a year later.  They did the initial construction of the Fort.  After the Civil War ended, companies of the 1st U.S. Volunteers were mustered out but others were redeployed to guard stage routes in Kansas.

 

Men from the Confederate states did the early construction at Fort Sisseton.

Although the Fort was built to deal with the Sioux uprising that occurred at the same time as the Civil War, no troops at Fort Sisseton were ever involved in any battles or major operations.  That is because, the Fort commanders recruited among the Sisseton-Wahpeton people  a company of scouts that maintained camps in the areas outlying the Fort.  The scouts took care of any hostiles that ventured into the area.  The biggest burden the troops complained of was boredom.  And those Southern boys were not terribly impressed with the winter.

So, the establishment of South Dakota began with a big boost from the Confederacy.  And this all illustrates what a complex time it was.  Many of the men had been forced to enlist in the Confederate Army and did not share the political motives of their leadership.  Others saw the futility of war and came to believe that as long as there were slaves, they could be enslaved.

The President of Harvard, Drew Gilpin Faust, has written a whole series of books on the history of the South during the time of the Civil War.  Her work is a good place to begin to understand the Confederacy.

If you want to dabble in a little history of the Confederates in South Dakota,  come to the Fort Sisseton Historical Festival June 4-6.