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.

SOLUTIONS

Ok, I’ve had a lot of fun with the whole situation in Garberville, and I think the levity was completely in order, but a lot of people are very frustrated with the situation, and they want SOLUTIONS. So, I’m here to help, seriously, but we don’t get to solutions without doing some analysis first, and that includes taking responsibility for the disastrous consequences of our consumptive middle-class lifestyle, and it means taking responsibility for economic policies that have kept wages low, while housing, health-care, fuel and other costs soared. I don’t care whether you voted for Reagan or not, if you want solutions, take responsibility, otherwise we can just play the blame game till we’re blue in the face.

The middle-class really needs to get over their Boomer era Populuxe expectations, especially the expectation that they will be surrounded by only middle-class people. We can’t all be middle-class, and really, not that many of us should be middle-class, ecologically speaking. It takes a lot of working-class people to support a single middle-class person, so we should expect to have many more working-class people than middle-class people. Get used to it folks, there are a lot of poor people around.

On the other hand, it shouldn’t suck so much to be poor. Ever since Reagan, we’ve had this attitude that we should punish and humiliate the poor as much as possible, so that we might thereby motivate them to work harder to become middle-class. In reality, punishing the poor drives down wages and keeps housing prices high for everyone. Seeing desperately poor people on the street makes middle-class people feel less secure, and the super-rich exploit that insecurity.

This is why grown adults with full-time jobs need a roommate to afford an apartment.  This is why so many salaried employees put in 60 hour weeks to meet their work load.  This is why fewer Americans than ever can afford their own home.  This is why so many healthy able-bodied adults have decided that the jobs they can get don’t pay enough to be worth their time.  That’s how the super-rich uses the dirt poor against the middle-class.

Look at where punishing the poor has gotten us. Still we have plenty of resentment to go around. We punish the crazy, because we don’t want halfway houses in our neighborhoods.  We don’t want to see them and we don’t want to pay for them. We punish the addicted for their weakness. We punish the young and adventurous because they remind us of our lost youth and we punish the lost and confused because we just don’t have time for other people. We punish them all because we see them as blemishes on our middle-class dreams, but the ones we resent the most don’t have any excuse, do they?

I’m talking about the healthy young people who have decided that the jobs they can get, don’t pay well enough to be worth their time, and that their time is better spent learning to live without a job and without a home. More and more people are making that decision, not because it looks like an attractive option, but because it looks like a better option than any of their alternatives.  They would rather sleep outside in the rain and scrounge for food then work themselves to death, and kiss ass all day for a rented room, a TV and enough beer to ease the pain.  These people have resentments too. Just sayin’

We all like having someone to punish. It makes us feel better about how much we punish ourselves in this stupid economy. We punish the poor, because we want poor people to suffer more than we do in our struggle to be middle-class. The struggle to be middle-class sucks so much because being middle-class is a totally unsustainable lifestyle. It has nothing to do with the poor, except that every person now struggling to be middle-class makes the whole world poorer, and helps the super-rich enslave us all. That’s what middle-class people do. It’s nothing to be proud of.

Thanks to three decades of trickle-down economics, welfare reform, and the Great Recession our population of punishable people mushroomed. Despite the economic pressure, despite the social stigma and open hostility, they have learned to live outside of mainstream society, and there are now enough of them that they have their own society. The more they talk to each other, the more they identify with each other. The more they identify with each other, the more they support each other, and the more they support each other, the more insulated from, and immune to the punishments of, the mainstream culture they become. So, we become like the Israelis and the Palestinians, or like Black and White America, two segregated societies that hate each other, living in the same place.

This problem is not going away, and it’s never going to get better without compromise, leadership, foresight and understanding. Knowing this community as I do, that means it ain’t gonna happen, and instead, things will go from bad to worse. The whole situation is very revealing. Poor people can’t afford to conceal their ugliness, and having ugly poor people around brings out the ugliness of the middle-class. We now see just how ugly and dysfunctional American society has become. The situation is so pathetic that probably the best that will come from it was the small amount of humor, and insightful analysis I was able to glean from it for this blog.

But just imagine for a moment… What if we had some thoughtful, enlightened, cultural creatives among our local gentry? What could they do to make the situation better for everyone, and to make Garberville a much better place to live?

Right now the number one need in this community is housing. We need housing more than we need ball fields, schools, parks, roads or anything else. By ignoring that need, in favor of perks for the middle-class, like ball fields, concert venues or the town square, we provide adequate reason for the homeless to despise the gentry. Everything we do to relieve that pressure, will also reduce that hostility, and pay off in better life for everyone in Garberville.

SoHum prides itself as the heart of the “back to the land” movement, where once upon a time, people bought cheap land, and built their own homes without permits. The Boomers now make sure that no one ever gets a deal on land like they got, but a lot of people would still like to build their own tiny cabin, somewhere where a landlord won’t evict them, and the cops will not come tear it down.

If you’ve been to Oregon Country Fair you’ve no doubt noticed how harmoniously hippie architecture can blend into a natural environment. It doesn’t happen by accident. OCF has volunteer building inspectors that look for genuinely dangerous or particularly ugly structures, and cites them, but mostly, people can build what they want. A lot of people would really appreciate an opportunity to build their own little home, and would have a lot of motivation to make it work. Half Habitat for Humanity, half Oregon Country Fair, part campground, part tree-fort residential subdivision, entirely innovative, entirely SoHum, we could make it happen if only someone with some land around here actually gave a fuck.

Even without building a single other structure, we could probably solve our housing problem another way.

Right now, about half of this county’s available residential housing has been converted to indoor marijuana farms. Why are half of our residential houses full of marijuana plants, while thousands of people sleep outside? That’s insane. Every grow house is a crime against humanity, and a crime against nature, and if there is any role for the cops it should be to bust every indoor grow scene in Humboldt County.

Frankly, I don’t think the cops will be much help. Cops aren’t going to solve this problem. This is a “crumbling society” problem, not a “law and order” problem. If our social problems could be solved by a pin-headed red-neck with a gun, they’d have all been solved a long time ago. These problems were created by pin-headed red-necks with guns. We need unarmed hippie solutions, the kind we used to have when pot was cheap and it all came from Mexico, before we got greedy and decided we wanted to be middle-class.

The pressure should come from the community. We should hear PSAs on KMUD about how to recognize a grow house, how much damage to the environment comes from growing marijuana indoors, and especially about how many families go homeless because greedy drug dealers have taken over our residential neighborhoods. Homes are for people! Get the pot farms out of our residential neighborhoods. This isn’t just common sense, it’s common decency.

Another common sense, absolute desperate necessity is a reasonably priced campground with bathrooms and a coin-operated shower. State campgrounds charge $35 a night for camping, which is highway robbery (Fuck You, State of California!). That’s why you only find rich retirees camping at them anymore. The county charges $15 dollars a night for their campgrounds. That’s closer to reasonable. Reasonable does not mean, “competitive,” reasonable means a price that people will actually pay, rather than take their chances finding a place where they can crash for free.

We get a lot of budget conscious tourists who are resourceful enough that they don’t ever have to pay tourist prices for camping. Currently, the only people who welcome them are the homeless. If the townsfolk welcomed them with the kinds of services they need at a price they’re willing to spend, these tourists would not so quickly identify with, and become a part of the local subculture, and local entrepreneurs would make money from them. Again, this is just common sense.

Here’s something a little more ambitious, but desperately needed, an affordable, cannabis-therapy-based treatment and recovery camp. We all know people who have beat serious addictions to alcohol, narcotics, tobacco,cocaine or speed, by using cannabis. Decades of prohibition have deeply enmeshed cannabis users and growers alike into the black-market drug trade. A large part of the money that comes into this county, comes from individuals and organizations that deal in other, more addictive substances, along with Humboldt’s finest cannabis.

Addiction is a huge problem both among SoHum’s housed community as well as the unhoused. A very rustic, drug-free, cult-like, cannabis intensive retreat, built around a culture of recovery, mutual support, mutual-sufficiency and community service has enormous potential around here. We have the rustic. We have the addicts. All we need is one good Pot Doc with cult-leader aspirations.  At the very least, it would help a lot of people quit hard drugs, take a lot of pressure off of the community, and do a lot of research on cannabis and addiction.

And while we’re dreaming…. Here’s another good idea: Economic diversity, and by that I mean, make space for tiny businesses, and local artists. Support them. Celebrate them, don’t just exploit them, or force them out of town.

Eureka and Arcata both have rocking Arts Alive nights every month. Garberville could do it too, but it would take planning, and some commitment to make it happen.

Now, I expect most of the people who own land around here to think: “Why should I do anything for them?” Here’s why: Doing all of these things helps to shrink that “problem population,” and it creates the illusion that people actually give a fuck about their fellow human beings. That makes it harder for people like me to make fun of the situation, and it gives people more options, which makes it harder to take sides. In reality, it’s a diabolical strategy designed to subdue insurgents. They call it Psy-Ops.

Every time you put someone in a home, you cut the homeless population by one. Every time you get an addict off of drugs and into a cult, your problem shrinks. Every time a tourist sees an entrepreneur bending over backwards to accommodate them, the less likely it is that they will camp with the homeless, get to know them and and decide to stick around. And of course, every artist who can count on reliable local work because someone at the C of C makes Arts Alive a priority, means one sarcastic critic with a sharp pen, has something better to do.

Name(required)

Email(required)

Website

Comment(required)

Submit

Δ

On The Money, A Movie About Money

On The Money

Financial Advice For The Working-Class

A Movie About Money

 

I saw an interesting film last night. That’s not quite right. Actually, I found it a rather dull film, a dull film with atrocious dialogue, characters I did not care about, an a weak story that just ran out of gas and died, literally.

 

Other than that, I’d call Mira Nair’s Amelia, a stunning and magnificent masterwork. The cinematography took my breath away. The film takes us into a slightly sepia-toned fantasy world of opulence, excess and exploitation. I say “fantasy world” because although allegedly set in America during the Great Depression, Amelia had a dream-like other-worldly quality that seemed completely unreal.

 

No one in the thirties would have said “Thank you for not getting defensive.”, as one character did in Amelia. The rest of the equally bland dialogue contributed little to the characters, the story or least of all the setting. Amelia reminded me of Star Trek crew members playing a holodeck game, like people from another world inhabiting an idealized imitation of a particular era.

 

Rather than a realistic depiction of opulence, which never completely manages to hide its true ugliness, in Amelia, we see greed and avarice portrayed as an almost heavenly state of grace. In Amelia we see an aspirational, idealized portrayal of wealth, designed more as an escape from reality for the economically downtrodden, than as a realistic portrayal of the life of Amelia Earhart.

 

Mira Nair really spared no expense on the visual impact of Amelia. In fact, the movie just reeks of money. I found myself wondering, “If they could afford all of this beautiful aerial photography, antique cars, aircraft and period costumes, why couldn’t they spring for some better writers?”

 

Gerbil Boy, Richard Gere spoke the most memorable line in the film, when he said; “I’m an American, and am therefore obligated to make as much money as possible.” In fact, the whole movie seemed to be about money, and everyone’s obligation to serve it. Both in the story, and in the production values, I felt bludgeoned by money, and I resented it.

 

Yes, money, not Amelia Earhart was the main character and subject of this film. In that sense Amelia succeeds in revealing the true character of its subject. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a more spectacular display of emptiness in my entire life. While I don’t know any more about Amelia Earhart than I did before I saw Amelia, I found the movie interesting because of what it said about Mira Nair, Hollywood, and money, none of which is very flattering.

SoHum Town Attempts Bold Makeover

SoHum Town Attempts Bold Makeover

Gargleville Merchants to Hold Auditions for Classier Townsfolk

 

In an effort to spruce up the image of the small rural Northern California town, the Gargleville Chamber of Commerce has decided to hire a completely new set of townspeople and shoppers.

“We were really sick of all of the skuzzy dirty hippies hanging around Gargleville.” Lake Blamin of the Gargleville Chamber of Commerce said this morning in a press conference at the Gargleville Chamber today.

“They’re missing teeth, have terrible complexions, smell bad and they’re disheveled. That’s not the image that we want to project. We’d really like to cash in on what’s happening in Wine Country, and we’d like that upscale clientele to feel more at home here.”

Blamin continued, “So, we’ve decided to hire people to pose as shoppers, park patrons and restaurant goers in Gargleville. Each day they will have to pass inspection before they report to work. They will have to be clean, dress fashionably and smell nice. They will spread out through the town, posing as urban professionals,

well-to-do retired people,

and college students.

The kind of people we’d all like to see shopping in our stores, eating at our restaurants and enjoying our parks.

This town employs very few professionals, has no college, and our old people look grizzled and haggard. We realized that Gargleville would never live up to our dreams unless we took drastic action.”

Blamin explained, “So, now we will pay 200 actors to play the parts. We’ll give them a clothing allowance, comp their meals, and provide a nice lounge with restrooms and showers. Because, you can’t expect someone to spend all day in town without letting them use the restroom. Also, it’s often very hot or very rainy in Gargleville, and we want them to look their best.”

Won’t that get expensive for a small rural town with a remote location, few employment opportunities and all the charm of a suburban strip mall?

Blamin responds, “Look, half of the residents of Gargleville subsist on Social Security, SSI or veteran’s benefits. They don’t bring in the big piles of cash that have made our registers ring for the past 25 years. We’ve grown accustomed to having large quantities of untraceable cash dumped in our laps by the marijuana industry thriving in the hills from Blocksburg to Whale Gulch.

Now, we take those piles of $100 bills for granted, but we’ve never liked the people we take them from, especially the people who bring the money into this area. These lowlife, dirt-wad street and mid-level pot dealers often hang around town for days or weeks before they work out a deal. And in general, an underground drug based economy attracts problems like addiction, exploitation and lawlessness. But that’s not my problem.”

Isn’t Gargleville already pretty crowded?

Blamin explained, “From now on all traffic coming towards Gargleville on Bedwood Drive will feed directly onto 101 North. That way, all the traffic from Bedway and points West, and Boulder Point and points East get funneled North to Eureka. Chamber of Commerce Police Officers stationed on 101 at Leggett will direct all Northbound: hippie buses, dusty pickup trucks, vans, old RVs and cars with bumper stickers to use Usal Road. Officers at Salmon Creek will direct the same miscreants through Honeydew. This way we can enjoy the benefits of a thriving underground industry without inviting it in through the front door.”

How will Gargleville merchants continue to benefit from the underground industry if you divert all of their business to Eureka?

Blamin is optimistic, “For years Gargleville merchants have charged more money for less goods and services than anyone in the area. Considering that history, I don’t think it will be difficult to make them hand us piles of cash, and in return, we’ll give them nothing at all. That’s the next logical step really. And this way, we won’t even have to look at them.”