3 Things You Need to Know About Science

I love science and have tremendous respect for scientific inquiry. I have studied science. I know a few scientists, and I generally like them. However, I know a few things about science, and scientists, that more people need to know, especially now. So today, I offer you a few really important things you need to know about science and scientists.

1. Scientists know almost everything about physics, and almost nothing about life. That’s why physicists can build a reliable nuclear weapon but doctors can’t cure the common cold. Objective science works well for calculating the trajectories and velocities of objects in space and time. Organisms, however, are not objects, and so objective science is completely inadequate for studying them.

Most scientists don’t know this, but it is true. Sadly, many scientists, especially in the US continue to study human beings as though we were objects, or piles of objects called atoms. This has led to a medical system that dehumanizes and objectifies us more effectively than it treats disease or promotes health. It also means that there’s a hell of a lot that doctors don’t know. One thing doctors do know, however, is how to talk down to you in such a way that you won’t question their bullshit.

Physicists know how to blow shit up, and they don’t argue about it. Physicians, on the other hand, barely know what they are looking at, and there’s a lot of disagreement among them about practically everything. Doctors don’t like to let on that they really don’t know what they are doing, so they formed the American Medical Association in order to put up a consistent front that makes it look like they have everything figured out and know what to do in every situation. They do this so that people will trust them, and unfortunately, it works entirely too well. The AMA works very hard to quell dissent within its ranks, and banishes doctors who refuse to tow the party line, but renegade doctors persist, and many of them have better success treating patients than doctors who follow AMA guidelines.

2. Almost everything we know about science, we learned from the pursuit of war. We learned physics in the development of ever more lethal weapons, and we learned medicine from patching up the survivors. Today our weapons kill people far more effectively than our doctors cure disease, and much of the advance in modern medicine has been in improving survival rates of people who suffer the kinds of traumatic injury that only technology can inflict.

3. Plebes worship “Science,” while scientists worship money. You can’t do science without money, and finding money to do science isn’t easy. Unless somebody thinks they can make a lot of money on it, or the military thinks they can kill people with it, you are probably going to have a hard time finding money to study it. On the other hand, if you don’t really care what you work on, as long as it pays well, your opportunities as a scientist multiply. Scientists spend a lot on their education, and they expect to be rewarded for that, so many scientists look for the higher paying jobs.

That’s why, when you need a scientist to do something really terrible, like design a nuclear weapon that kills all of the people in a city, but leaves the buildings standing, or turn a minor statistical anomaly into a smoke-screen argument against global warming, or bio-engineer a bat corona-virus so that it infects humans, you can always find a meek and obedient scientist who is happy to do it for you so long as you have the money.

Plebes, on the other hand, have disavowed the creation myth of their Judaeo-Christian heritage in favor of an even bigger pile of bullshit called the Big Bang Theory, and they now embrace “Science” the great spirit from whom all new technology flows, as a religion. They traded the clerical collar for the white lab-coat of scientific authority. Now they believe anything the doctor tells them, just like they used to believe the priest, and of course they take their vaccines as a sacrament to their faith in “Science.” I hope they’ve at least learned not to leave their kids alone with a scientist either.

People have always believed a lot of stupid stuff. As I’ve so eloquently said before, “Stupid and wrong is the natural human condition, and it has never stopped us before.” That said, the human body is smarter than science can comprehend, and its natural tendency to heal, especially when supported by good nutrition, proper exercise and a non-toxic environment, tends to make doctors look good, if they can somehow take credit for it, but the miracle is you, not the medicine, and your body knows more than your doctor.

That’s why you should be very careful about messing with that miracle, or trusting “Science.” Science is not some noble pursuit of the truth. Science is about warfare, money, power and greed, and any scraps of truth that emerge from it are purely coincidental. Science is a tool of exploitation and control. In fact, psychologists are studying you right now, and the people paying those psychologists intend to use the knowledge they gain to control and exploit you. That’s what you need to know about science.

The Persuasive Power of “Russian Spirituality”

Recently, Trump supporters have begun sporting T-shirts that say: “I’d rather be a Russian than a Democrat.”

Some of you might be surprised to find Republicans so blissfully happy about Trump’s relationship with Putin. After decades of Cold War, and hot bloody proxy wars like Vietnam, with our arch enemy the Soviet Union, they watched Putin lead Trump around on a leash, whack his nose with a rolled up newspaper, and feed him treats from his hand when he said the right thing after the recent Helsinki Summit. Liberals found that whole display humiliating, and it offended their sense of national pride. Think about that. How weak and obsequious does a US president have to act to offend liberals? And who knew liberals had any sense of national pride?

Republicans, on the other hand, just took it all in stride. Many Republicans admire strong authoritarian dictators like Putin, and secretly yearn to serve, or lead, a regime like his, here in the USA. Honestly though, the real reason Republicans like Russians better than Democrats, despite the enmity, wars, and spying, is that Russians are whiter than Democrats. It’s not about patriotism, history or politics, it’s all about complexion. When it comes down to it, Russians look more like them than Democrats do.

Besides that, you have to credit the Russians. Recent news stories reveal that Russia has been working very hard to make friends with Republicans, especially those in the NRA. I can attest that Russia works very hard to make friends, all over the world, and it seems to be working for them.

Even before I left the States, last Spring, my friend in the Czech Republic started sending me news-clips from Russia Today, including one well-produced documentary by a kid from SoCal, about how happy the people of Crimea are to be part of Russia now. I got this from someone who grew up in Czechoslovakia, under Soviet Communist rule, where the loudspeakers that used to broadcast Soviet propaganda still hang on utility poles in every village and hamlet. Now, everyone gets Russia Today on cable TV and everyone in Europe seems to watch it.

Besides that, it seemed like everywhere we went in Europe, Russia had found some way to promote itself. For instance, in Bled, Slovenia, we visited a tourist information office, which turned out to be quite a large space, and appeared to still be somewhat under construction. The employees were helpful, and spoke very good English and they had a nice lounge with free wifi, so we hung out for a little while. They also had a performance space where they could host lectures or show movies, and a gift shop offering local crafts and delicacies. All around the perimeter of this substantial space however, the Slovenian Office of Tourism in Bled featured an impressive temporary exhibit called “The Wildlife of Russia” which consisted of more than a dozen large color panels.

 

Then, in France, at Grotte de Rouffignac, an ancient cave with prehistoric cave art, including more than 150 depictions of woolly mammoths drawn on the walls and ceiling more than 13,000 years ago, we saw a very interesting exhibit in the lobby. Very professionally laid out on about 8 color panels of about 4’x8’ each, we saw graphic depictions and explanations in French, English and German, of the ancient petroglyphs in Altai (part of Russia near the border with Mongolia). This exhibit was brought to us by the: Institut d’Archiologie et d’Ethnograhic de la branche siberiene del’Academie des Sciences de Russe. Everywhere we looked, Russia was there, acting friendly and inviting us to visit, right under the noses of our hosts.

I can’t imagine that happening in this country. I can’t imagine going to a ski resort in Colorado, for instance, and seeing a big splashy display, taking up half of the lobby, showing off great skiing conditions and saying “See, we’ve got some great snow up here in Canada!” …or visiting a tourist information center at the Everglades National Park in Florida, and seeing a huge exhibit called “Wildlife of the Costa Rican Rainforest.”

Then there was the World Cup. Once the World Cup started, every TV in Europe was tuned to Moscow. We happened to catch part of the first game of the 2018 World Cup in a cafe in the central train station in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The game pitted Russia against Saudi Arabia, and it was clear that everyone in the cafe that day, especially the locals, were rooting for Russia. The camera often cut to a shot of Vladimir Putin, an Arab Sheikh, and between them, a Russian oligarch, enjoying the game from the stands. Club Russia won the game handily and that victory elevated the mood in the room noticeably.

At a bar in France, I saw the most surreal pregame show to a World Cup Match. The players from both teams paraded out onto the field, each holding the hand of a young child, and each child wore a yellow jersey with the McDonald’s Golden Arches logo. Then they performed some kind of logo-heavy solemn ritual and then cut to a commercial for Air Emirates airlines.

I’m sure that the people in the room who spoke French understood what was going on, but to me it all looked vaguely satanic, fascistic or both, but the strangest thing I saw there was the ad I saw for Russia itself.

 

 

The narration was all in French, so I could not understand a word of it However, this ad showed a number of strong images of Russia, including a big bear lumbering through a frozen forest, rows of tanks, and a modern city skyline at dusk, but did not seem especially geared to promote tourism. Then three bullet points appeared in text on the screen: “*Pouvoir Politique Russe, *Force Militaire Russe, *Spiritualite Russe,” which I translate as “Russian political power, Russian military strength, and Russian spirituality” finally, an image of the Kremlin appeared, and dissolved along with the text. As near as I can tell, the ad appeared to communicate something like “Cordial greetings from your powerful white neighbors to the East.” I saw that ad at least twice.

Still, people around the world ate it up. Every toy store had the Club Russia 2018 World Cup sticker album in the window, every magazine had “Moscow World Cup 2018”splashed on it somewhere, and coverage of it ran nonstop on TV. After Mexico beat Germany, my friend in the Czech Republic sent me this image, which went viral on the internet:

Everyone loves Putin it seems, while Angela Merkel has taken a lot of heat for letting so many Syrian refugees into Germany. Putin’s Russia, by contrast, accepts none. Putin criticizes his European neighbors for “diluting their culture” by admitting so many refugees. It sounds rather racist, frankly, but I think that’s what the ad meant by “Russian spirituality.” That kind of “spirituality,” apparently, transcends past political differences and has the power to heal old wounds all around the world.

Some Christmas Music

Well here we are in the final week of 2017. As I look back on the year, I realize that I’ve made a lot of music, and watched almost no TV in 2017. I don’t regret it. In fact, I hereby resolve to do the same in 2018. However, I feel like I’ve done a really half-assed job of promoting the music I have created this year. I really need to step up to the plate on this because I have a lot more music in the pipeline for 2018. I hope you’ll take the time to listen and that you find some of my music interesting. You are welcome to listen to, and download, all of my music, for free, any time you like, at my music blog, www.electricearthmusic.wordpress.com, but allow me to present to you, dear reader, the gift of music this holiday season.

Not that long ago I told you about my new album, Vintage Startraveler , and the synthesizer I built from scratch, the GeoSafari Modular Analog Synthesizer. Since then, however, I’ve released two new videos featuring music from the album. These videos feature old footage that I found in The Prelinger Archive, a collection of movies and videos in the public domain. I turned the final cut on the album, Black Hole Energy Field, into the soundtrack to The Visitor, the story of an animated alien who gets frightened away by some Cold War era government propaganda. This alien originally starred in a weirdly religious driver safety film made by the Methodist Church, called Stop Driving Us Crazy.

Native Planet draws heavily from an old, sci-fi film titled Assignment Outer Space. The movie had terrible dialog, but exactly the kind of space footage I wanted. Intermittently, you’ll see shots of me, at the controls of the GMAS.

In addition to building synthesizers, I also enjoy creatively rewiring, or circuit-bending, electronic toys, and turning them into weird musical instruments. One particular toy, a Casio ML1 toy keyboard, has proven quite precocious. “ML” stands for “Magic Light.” This one-foot-long keyboard has a tiny two-octave keyboard, and red LEDs light up under each key when you press it.

While probing the electronic brain of this toy, I discovered several contact points that, when momentarily bridged, cause the ML1 to malfunction in such a way that it spontaneously composes its own original music. When manipulated in this way, the ML1 generates complex original musical themes that repeat, but change in subtle ways that evolve over time. The ML1 has it’s own aesthetic, a Merzbow meets Super Mario kind of vibe that takes some getting used to, but I find the ML1’s music quite interesting and compelling.

It was an honor to collaborate with the ML1 on the album we made together this year. I feel that Post-Apocalyptic Noise Fields for Active Listening barely scratched the surface of our musical potential, and I look forward to collaborating with the ML1 more in 2018. For now, here’s a video I made from the track, ML1 Quartet from our new album Post-ApocalypticNoise Fields for Active Listening. I titled the video “The Supreme Joy of Spontaneous Creation,” because of the short audio clip that starts the video. I created the video collage from a collection of TV commercials, a military training film and an anti-drug propaganda movie from the ’60s, all from the Prelinger Archive.

 

What’s ahead in 2018? You haven’t heard me play didgeridoo for a while, have you? Right now, I’m working on a new didgeridoo album that I’m really excited about. I don’t know what to call it, but here’s a couple of videos that’ll give you an idea of what’s ahead.

Happy Holidays!

Thanks for reading and listening!

Humboldt “Farmers” Go to Sacramento

Recently, a group of area dope yuppies visited the State Legislature in Sacramento to lobby lawmakers on behalf of local marijuana growers.

While addressing their representatives at the State House, these cannabis cultivators wore green T-shirts emblazoned with the words, “I am a Farmer,” which I suppose, served as their excuse for wearing T-shirts.

Surrounded by business suits and power ties, these alleged “farmers” explained how important prohibition-era profits have become, not just to them personally, but to the numerous BMW and Harley Davidson dealerships around the state, not to mention ski resorts, gun dealers and real estate agents in Costa Rica, to name a few. “Who else pays $200 a yard for dirt?” They asked, adding that “California’s cannabis cultivators are the ‘suckers of last resort’ who have kept the state’s economy moving forward by buying enormous amounts of stupid crap while the rest of the state just tightened their belts and suffered through the recession.”

They reminded lawmakers that local businesses in Humboldt County rely heavily on black market cannabis profits. First, a lot of Humboldt County “businesses” operate as “fronts.” These “fronts” allow cannabis cultivators to launder large sums of cash without actually serving anyone’s needs. The remainder of Humboldt County’s businesses pay exorbitant rent prices, because of the high demand for commercial space for indoor marijuana cultivation, and have trouble finding help, because people can’t afford a decent place to live because of the high demand for residential space for indoor marijuana cultivation. As a result, most Humboldt County businesses cater to drug dealers who can easily afford the ridiculously high prices, while they ignore the needs of the rest of the community. Despite the poor job they do of serving the community’s needs, these businesses all pay taxes.

Of course, meeting people’s needs is the last thing anyone at the State House cares about. At the CA State Legislature, it doesn’t matter if you are a lawmaker or a lobbyist, a department head or a dope yuppie dressed as a farmer, everyone wants something, and everything costs money. The State Legislature essentially acts as the pimp for the state of California. Anyone who wants to fuck the people or rape the environment, legally, in the State of California has to pay them for the privilege. The State House is where they negotiate the price and terms.

Marijuana prohibition was just such a deal, struck between powerful corporate interests and corrupt government officials, and they’ve screwed the American people with it for almost 80 years.  Today, the American people have had enough, and they demand change. Right now, state legislatures all over the country are wrestling with this one question: How can they preserve an economic system forged by the War on Drugs, while phasing out the criminal penalties for drug possession and sales.

It’s like the transition between the Vietnam War and Reagan’s Cold War. The public demanded an end to the Vietnam War, and the draft, but not an end to military spending. No one liked spending billions of dollars on nuclear weapons, but people weren’t rioting in the streets about it. The Cold War preserved the profits of military contractors who would have otherwise had to find productive work in a peacetime economy. The people still got fucked, but at least they stopped screaming and squirming so much.

That’s what’s going on in Sacramento right now. It makes sense that Humboldt County’s Drug War profiteers should join the negotiations. Cops, prison-guards, lawyers, and drug dealers all want to continue fucking us over, and now Wall St. investors want a piece of the action too. It’s a feeding frenzy for social parasites.

They all know that without a multi-billion dollar eradication  effort, the price of marijuana will drop to $0, as this hearty weed quickly colonizes every vacant lot, ditch and roadside in America.

Wouldn’t that be great? The time has come to make it happen. All we need are seeds. That’s why it is so important for everyone who cares about cannabis, and wants to see it free and legal, to grow seedy pot. To hell with the State House, and to hell with greedy dope yuppies.  We’ve waited for them long enough already. Now it is time to free the weed, and spread the seed, because we’re sick of the greed.

Humboldt Co. Rallies, Sept.30, Oct.1, To End Nuclear Power in the US, NOW!!!

Humboldt Rallies to End Nuclear Power in the U.S. Now

 

I haven’t spoken about this here yet, because its not funny, but the Fukushima nuclear facility continues to spew radiation into the environment in huge quantities, and will keep spewing highly radioactive material into the air and water for some time to come. People will die as a result.

Perhaps millions, but certainly hundreds of thousands of people will die, mostly after long, expensive battles with cancer. Tens of thousands more will be born with Down’s Syndrome, or other crippling birth defects that will prevent them from living anything like normal lives. Some of these people will be U.S. citizens. Some may live in Humboldt Co.

None of these people will be compensated in any way for their suffering. They will pay with their lives, the true price for nuclear electricity, as will millions more in the future. The Fukushima disaster is a catastrophe unparalleled in the history of humanity, now surpassing Chernobyl. But we have dozens of Fukushimas in the making, right here in the U.S.

The NRC, our national regulatory board, which acts more like cheerleaders than watchdogs of the nuclear industry, recently re-licensed the aging, leaking, Fukushima style reactor in Vernon, Vermont, over the objection of the Vermont State legislature and the Governor. The Federal government, through the NRC, has given the private for-profit corporation, Entergy, permission to operate this plant far beyond its designed lifespan, despite its numerous design flaws, inadequate containment structure, vulnerable spent fuel pool, and numerous unexplained and continuing leaks of radioactive waste into the surrounding environment. “To hell with the people of Vermont” say the NRC, “Run it into the ground”.

They say the same thing to us, “To hell with the people of California”, when we tell them that San Onofre and Diablo Canyon nuclear power plants must be shut down. “Run them into the ground” they say. They know, they’ll never have to compensate anyone for the disease they cause. They know that the people they harm will just slowly sink around them, suffering quietly until they die, racking up crushing medical expenses, for completely preventable conditions, that often prove fatal.

It’s time to say “To hell with the NRC” We cannot trust them. They have failed us. Its time to demand an immediate shutdown of all nuclear power plants in the U.S. Nuclear power has never been competitive in the market, it has never been clean, and it will never be safe. Its time to dismantle and decommission these relics of the cold war before we face a Fukushima scale disaster here in the U.S.

This Friday and Saturday, Sept 30 and Oct 1, will mark a day of rallies across the U.S. to demand an end to the deadly legacy of nuclear power. Here in Humboldt, rally in:

Garberville, at the Garberville town square on Friday Sept.30 at 11:00am

Eureka, at the Humboldt County Courthouse on Saturday Oct 1 at 11:00am

Arcata, at the Arcata Square on Saturday Oct 1 at 11:00am

for more info about this campaign in Humboldt Co.:

www.endnuclearpowernowhumboldt.wordpress.com

Please make time to participate in these events.  Bring a sign, come in costume, or come as you are  BUT PLEASE COME!!!!  Thank you!

See you there!!!