Archives for January 2016

I marathon watched the Netflix docu-drama, Making a Murderer, last week, in what essentially amounts to The Life and Times of Steven Avery.

In a nutshell: He was wrongly convicted of rape in 1985, served 18 years in prison, before being exonerated by both DNA, and a confession by the guy who actually did it; and because the county ignored the exculpitory evidence of his likely innocence at least twice post-conviction—forcing him to serve at least an additional eight years before finally being exonerated—he sued the county for $36 million in 2005…and at the point where two county employees were added to the civil complaint personally, and were being depossed, Steven ended up with a murder investigation and prosecution on his hands: and importantly, investigated—with evidence gathered—by those same people facing life devastating civil judgments.

Yea, it’s pretty riveting. It’s also, in se, grounds for rationabile dubium. But let me probare causam meam.

I’ve seen a number of pieces since this has exploded internationally. Nothing I’ve seen yet—these two pieces just yesterday, pro and con the murder conviction: Dead Certainty and Making a Murderer, “Biased” Journalism & Necessary Outrage (h/t: Mike Eades’ excellent monthly book and reading reco posts)—are particularly satisfying to me.

It’s like this, for me. Everyone is turning on guilt or innocence, evidence pro and con, and since short of red-hand-in-cookie-jar certainty, the principles that began to be laid down in jurisprudence nearly 1,500 years ago—predating even The Muslim Menace—are intended to put the burden of proof on the accuser. Ideally, a defendant ought be able to just sit there, and it’s decided—whether by judge alone, or jury—whether a stiff burden of proof has been met. And if not: acquittal. That means: no moral or legal judgment on guilt or innocence, and you live with the double-edged sword of Enlightenment and civility. In another nutshell: you just didn’t prove it.

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That was an impassioned plea from a 16-year-old German girl. Bibi Wilhailm. Does that sound like a claim to entitlement to you; or rather, an invocation, a reminder of how things just ultimately are in terms of biological reality?

How come she’s not pleading to Angela Merkel? How about the head of the EU, the UN, or the POTUS? FEMINISTS!!!??? See, that’s what’s interesting, especially given her age and less-that-totally corrupted, base animal instinct. She pleads for MEN! …And, the way I was raised, when genuine, it’s a plea that’s answered and accounted for, or you weren’t of the calling.

You can take a feminist to reason, but you can’t make her think.

I’m very happy to viscerally understand that this video would make my German dad’s—American immigrant since 1952 at 14—blood boil, as it does mine (probably my three brothers, too).

It’s sketchy to have this up. There’s now numerous outlets via YouTube, a Google Company, but Chancellor Angela Merkel has Mark Zuckerberg’s cell number, so it gets’s taken down continually from Facebook in Germany because…well, the last thing any German “men” would want to do in Europe is have their wives and daughters feel a base level of comfort in the place in which they were born and grew up. Or whatever. It falls under “hate speech” codes and such. Get back to clicking “Like” for cat, and Hans and Franz videos.

Mark Steyn put it up. Quoted this part, emphasis his:

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He’s on a damn roll, and I lafed more the 2nd time.

This one ought make every white, red-blooded man look for the sharpened sword. What kind of life would we have, gentlemen, if we never had the enormous pleasure of wowing the women we decided we couldn’t do without.

Goat fucker and women rapist Muslims have never enjoyed the privilege.

There’s a very good reason that women the world over smile at white men.

Let me give you a hint.

“…was deeply influenced by Arab astrology, Neoplatonism, Renaissance Hermeticism, and legends surrounding the Egyptian god Thoth.”

Any clue? No? Then how about this?

“…went even further than the [] Copernican model.”

Zip? Nada? Try this, then, the golden clue.

“He also insisted that the universe is in fact infinite and could have no celestial body at its ‘center’.”

…There is one reason, and one reason only that I have adored the early astronomers (Claudius Ptolemy, Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi, Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei) but it stopped there. You don’t typically find his name amongst the lists of the greats.

My modest idea is that the others were waffling under church pressure, and it was he who was the first to say that ‘hey, fuckheads, what’s the point in moving the centre of our universe from the Earth to our sun? It’s just one of many.’

The Universe has no center.

But the reason I adore all of them is that the Church at the time—the Roman Catholic Church—basically advanced a geocentric premise that was easily falsifiable, and though it took hundreds of years, it turned out to be an idea that’s time is past. Lots died putting it to rest.

So the Muslim Menace burned him at the stake in 1600. See here.

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Science calls…

Suppose I had admonished you over these years that the science is settled, that there appears to be consensus, and that those who raise questions that put us steps or miles back are deniers…peddlers of junk and pseudo science.

You might think me lazy, and you would be right. That’s why I’m right about the little Sunday-school, catechism children of the Christopher Hitchens Appreciation Group on Facebook. Pathetic; a Disgrace to Christopher Hitchens are they—now causing him to be rolling in his grave when he should be resting in peace.

How many times have you heard that there’s 10 times as many bacteria in our guts than cells in our body, here? Dozens, at least. Hundreds and thousands if you account for other sources. That was the science. It was also the science for over 100 ears that babies are born with sterile guts. I still see that peddled about, but I put this in Chapter 1 of “The Gut Bug Book,” yet to come, about 2 years ago:

Where do your gut bugs come from? From 1900 until very recently, it’s been held as dogma that human infants are born with sterile guts, and only begin acquiring microbes during the trip down the birth canal and subsequently, through breastfeeding and human contact. However, we now know that’s not the case (even though you still encounter the myth frequently) and fetuses are seeded with gut bacteria while still in the womb.[6]

[6] “Mom Knows Best: The Universality of Maternal Microbial Transmission.” 2013. 9 Feb. 2014 <http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001631>

So much for “settled” and “consensus” science over more than 100 years, until someone bothered to take a new look.

So here’s the new science:

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There’s zero doubt amongst anyone who’s read this bog—that goes back a dozen years with an average of a post per day—that at heart, I’m an iconoclast curmudgeon with little good to say about anything anyone does, except for myself.

Still, I always long for coming up roses; but, it’s so hard to find. When I do find, on those rare occasions, I get beside myself with a passion to share it, and it goes to the front of the line. I do think that balance is something one ought strive for.

It’s my one true fault.

As someone who’s a member of the club who started a business in a spare bedroom (with $250 left to my name) and took it to 30 employees and $3 mil in annual revenue—and stuck it for 20 years—I understand a few things about what I love and hate about business and entrepreneurial endeavors. Remember: love and hate are two sides of the same coin of passion.

Accordingly, I’m a fan of Shark Tank; and now, Beyond The Tank. Think of them as VC For Dummies and I’ll Forgive the Lies, but Now: SHOW ME THE FOR REAL! Respectively.

In Shark Tank, Kevin O’Leary is everyone’s favorite “bad cop” Shark (yes, meaningless distinction). In reality, he’s the most benevolent of all of them. This is why he’ll often trade off equity for limited royalties. It’s amazing to me how many entrepreneurs tend to reject that out of hand when, with the cash offering and his personal help and access to all connections and expertise, it’s way better than equity….IF, you build a lot of equity…which is the point.

O’Leary is my favorite Shark. In a nutshell, he offers deals where, if an entrepreneur had seriously asked himself before going into the Tank: What Deal Would I Offer Me? then Kevin would blow the other Sharks out of the Tank. Malheureusement, the other Sharks seem safe, for now.

…So a couple of weeks ago we were watching Beyond The Tank—a status-update show, where they follow up with previous folks who came away with a deal. Via Inc:

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Had to post this, just because. Via Mike Eades’ Facebook. Clicking the image ought to give you a readable one. Here’s a link with a large version too.

That’s pure art to me. Makes me feel all warm & fuzzy inside.

They’ll lie, like almost all of them always do, but it was immediately after I posted this: The Scientific Method For Dummies and Frauds, Like Richard Dawkins.

This post is dedicated to the memory of Christopher Hitchens, a remarkable man; not for any idea he ever held, but that he was honest enough to change his mind and tell eveyone why.

This is a prelude, a foundation to a later post, where Tim Steele and I will call into serious question the value of 16s rRNA sampling of the gut microbiome, after some time of both of us being “fanboys.” See, we did science and changed our views accordingly.

What the fuck is science, anyway? In today’s politicized world, it’s a bludgeon. It’s too often what one invokes in order to smear, dismiss, assert, or otherwise look the other way. It has—in modern use for too many—become a sort of “authority” one references in order to lay claim to legitimacy. And too often, it’s motivated by laziness, or a reluctance to dump a bad investment in shit that’s just wrong or in need of serious critical evaluation.

Good science is hard to do. Few are up to the task, and that may simply be for the reason that, having solved a huge number of plaguing problems in human quotidian history, we’re quibbling at nipping at heels. I don’t know, but I do know what science is:

Observation and experiment.

It continues for a god long bit and exposes everything about that group that would cause Hitch to disavow them. Of course, it not even close to the first time where a bunch of frauds and burglars have stolen a dead man’s legacy.

But, they are a preponderance of dishonest liars, using the memory and legacy of Christopher Hitchens to advance their pet social schemes, in pursuit of money and pussy.

Commenter Amy:

The things I listed are not “ideals”. They are the VALUES that modern Western Civ was built on. They basically came out of the Reformation and then the Enlightenment after Christians decided that the Divine Right of Kings and the excesses of the Catholic Church were a steaming pile of shit foisted on the rest of us by a few charismatic and/or power-hungry megalomaniacs. That’s an oversimplification in the interest of time, but that’s the gist.

These values are always going to be imperfectly applied because humans are by nature imperfect, and also because some humans are hypocrites. They espouse these ideals without believing in them, hoping to ultimately subvert them for their own gain. Sometimes they parrot them without understanding the real significance of what several centuries of simply attempting to attain them has brought to our existence. But imperfection is no reason to stop striving for perfection.

As a result of an imperfect application of Western values, some dummies see only a culture of greedy corporate barons, corrupt politicians/government, commercialization, and a polluted earth as the outcome.

But what I see is a culture where almost anybody can get ahead and be prosperous who’s willing to work hard and never give up…regardless of race, sex, or physical handicap. That’s not true in many places of the world, especially Muslim countries.

I see a culture where women are not chattels and can do what we want with free choice.

I see a culture where childrean are not exploited and pressed into slavery.

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