Tag Archives: fantasy

Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe – Roger Penrose

by Myrna Posted on September 24, 2016

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Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe

Roger Penrose

Genre: Science & Nature

Price: $16.99

Publish Date: September 13, 2016

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Seller: Princeton University Press


What can fashionable ideas, blind faith, or pure fantasy possibly have to do with the scientific quest to understand the universe? Surely, theoretical physicists are immune to mere trends, dogmatic beliefs, or flights of fancy? In fact, acclaimed physicist and bestselling author Roger Penrose argues that researchers working at the extreme frontiers of physics are just as susceptible to these forces as anyone else. In this provocative book, he argues that fashion, faith, and fantasy, while sometimes productive and even essential in physics, may be leading today's researchers astray in three of the field's most important areas—string theory, quantum mechanics, and cosmology. Arguing that string theory has veered away from physical reality by positing six extra hidden dimensions, Penrose cautions that the fashionable nature of a theory can cloud our judgment of its plausibility. In the case of quantum mechanics, its stunning success in explaining the atomic universe has led to an uncritical faith that it must also apply to reasonably massive objects, and Penrose responds by suggesting possible changes in quantum theory. Turning to cosmology, he argues that most of the current fantastical ideas about the origins of the universe cannot be true, but that an even wilder reality may lie behind them. Finally, Penrose describes how fashion, faith, and fantasy have ironically also shaped his own work, from twistor theory, a possible alternative to string theory that is beginning to acquire a fashionable status, to "conformal cyclic cosmology," an idea so fantastic that it could be called "conformal crazy cosmology." The result is an important critique of some of the most significant developments in physics today from one of its most eminent figures.

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Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe – Roger Penrose

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The Trump Files: Watch Donald Not Be Able to Multiply 17 By 6

by AlbertiLafferty Posted on June 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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Until the election, we’re bringing you “The Trump Files,” a daily dose of telling episodes, strange-but-true stories, or curious scenes from the life of presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump.

Donald Trump was a frequent and favorite guest on Howard Stern’s radio show, and one day in 2006 he brought his children Ivanka and Donald Jr., along for an episode. At one point during the nearly hour-long appearance, the Trump kids explained how they got into the famed Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, their dad’s alma mater, on their own merits. The pair talked up their high SAT scores and told Stern that no one, even parents of friends who allegedly donated large amounts to Wharton, could buy their way into the school.

Then Stern gave the Trumps a pop quiz in simple math. The kids struggled to get the answer right—and Trump himself couldn’t do the basic calculation. But, in what might have been a telling moment, the elder Trump insisted that his answer was correct.

Read the rest of “The Trump Files”:

Trump Files #1: The Time Andrew Dice Clay Thanked Donald for the Hookers
Trump Files #2: When Donald Tried to Stop Charlie Sheen’s Marriage to Brooke Mueller
Trump Files #3: The Brief Life of the “Trump Chateau for the Indigent”
Trump Files #4: Donald Thinks Asbestos Fears Are a Mob Conspiracy
Trump Files #5: Donald’s Nuclear Negotiating Fantasy
Trump Files #6: Donald Wants a Powerball for Spies
Trump Files #7: Donald Gets An Allowance
Trump Files #8: The Time He Went Bananas on a Water Cooler
Trump Files #9: The Great Geico Boycott
Trump Files #10: Donald Trump, Tax-Hike Crusader
Trump Files #11: Watch Donald Trump Say He Would Have Done Better as a Black Man

Original article – 

The Trump Files: Watch Donald Not Be Able to Multiply 17 By 6

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Quote of the Day: You’d Have to Be Nuts to Want a Leadership Role in the Republican Party

by UIVJodiexgz Posted on October 7, 2015

Mother Jones

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We all know that John Boehner quit the speakership because he was finally fed up trying to deal with the lunatics in his own party. But how about some of the tea party darlings, like Trey Gowdy or Paul Ryan? Apparently they feel about the same:

Gowdy insists he’s not interested in joining leadership, not in any capacity. He is funny, and biting, about the chaos of the present House.

“I don’t have a background in mental health, so I wouldn’t have the right qualifications to lead right now,” he says. Who wants you to be in leadership? “No friend does,” he says.

….“To me, just speaking as one member, the smartest kid in the class is Paul Ryan,” Gowdy said. “If I had one draft choice and I was starting a new country, I would draft Paul to run it. Not because I agree with him on everything, but because he’s super, super smart. And when someone is super, super smart and is not interested, that tells you something. It tells me a lot.”

By coincidence, this is sort of related to the conservative fantasy I talked about in the previous post. Folks like Gowdy and Ryan are smart enough to see it too, even though they’re both stone conservatives themselves. A leadership role wouldn’t give them the power to actually implement the conservative agenda, but too many conservatives these days don’t care. They’re living the fantasy that if only their leaders fought hard enough, they could win. So when they don’t win, it must mean that they didn’t fight very hard. Right now, there’s just no way to puncture that fantasy.

And why the squirrel illustration? Nothing to do with Gowdy or Ryan or the tea party or conservatives being squirrely or nuts. Honest! This is just our household squirrel, who was outside feeding his face a few minutes ago. So I went out and took his picture. And speaking of squirrels, here’s an interesting squirrel factlet: if you Google “squirrel saying,” 7 of the top 20 hits are about the difficulties that German speakers have saying “squirrel.”

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Quote of the Day: You’d Have to Be Nuts to Want a Leadership Role in the Republican Party

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Here’s Why Libertarians Are Mostly Men

by ConsuelWaylen Posted on June 5, 2015

Mother Jones

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Jeet Heer investigates a burning question today: why are most libertarians men? He offers several plausible explanations, but I think he misses the real one, perhaps because it’s pretty unflattering to libertarians.

So here’s the quick answer: hard core libertarianism is a fantasy. It’s a fantasy where the strongest and most self-reliant folks end up at the top of the heap, and a fair number of men share the fantasy that they are these folks. They believe they’ve been held back by rules and regulations designed to help the weak, and in a libertarian culture their talents would be obvious and they’d naturally rise to positions of power and influence.

Most of them are wrong, of course. In a truly libertarian culture, nearly all of them would be squashed like ants—mostly by the same people who are squashing them now. But the fantasy lives on regardless.

Few women share this fantasy. I don’t know why, and I don’t really want to play amateur sociologist and guess. Perhaps it’s something as simple as the plain observation that in the more libertarian past, women were subjugated to men almost completely. Why would that seem like an appealing fantasy?

Anyway, this is obviously simplistic and unflattering, and libertarians are going to be offended by it. Sorry. But feel free to take some guesses in comments about why women don’t take to libertarianism as strongly as men.

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Here’s Why Libertarians Are Mostly Men

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Sam Brownback’s Administration Is Auctioning Off Some Incredibly NSFW Sex Toys

by KristinKellway Posted on September 25, 2014

Mother Jones

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Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback drove his state into the gutter with a string of income tax cuts that were among the largest in history. As I explained in my story on Brownback’s struggling campaign, many typical Republican voters turned against the governor after it became clear that his trickle-down promises of wild economic growth looked a lot more like a sop to the state’s richest denizens, such as Charles Koch.

Read more about how Sam Brownback’s red-state experiment could turn Kansas purple.

State revenues have regularly come in below projections this year. The state legislature’s nonpartisan numbers crunchers expect a $238 million budget deficit by summer 2016, and things will only grow worse as further tax cuts go into effect. How is the state going to make up the difference? Perhaps by getting into the sex toy business. From the Topeka Capital-Journal:

Kansas state government is on the verge of a financial windfall with the auctioning of thousands of sex toys seized by the revenue department for nonpayment of income, withholding and sales taxes, an official said Wednesday.

Online shoppers for adult DVDs, novelty items, clothing and other products can participate in a bonanza shopping experience resulting from the four-county raid on a Kansas company known as United Outlets LLC.

Owner Larry Minkoff, who was doing business under the Bang label, apparently resisted requests from the Kansas Department of Revenue for payment of $163,986 in state taxes.

…

The online site lists about 400 lots — individual lots can contain dozens of items — that include the Pipedream Fantasy Love Swing, books, hundreds of DVDs, sex and drinking games, a wide assortment of sexually oriented equipment, carrying cases for devices, the Glass Pleasure Wand, bundles of lingerie and the Cyberskin Foot Stroker.

Kansas officials explained to the Capital-Journal that this is the standard operating procedure when businesses can’t pay off their tax debts, though the list of available wares is a bit more colorful than usual.

The full online auction is available here, (that link takes you to the entry landing page, but should you venture past that it becomes quite NSFW).

The “Booty Parlor Good Girl Bad Girl Wrist Cuffs,” one of the few SFW images we could find in the auction Equip-Bid

The timing isn’t ideal for Brownback, though, as he’s been busy trying to capitalize on a racey scandal involving his Democratic opponent. Last week the Coffeyville Journal, a small-town, twice-weekly paper that lacks a website, revealed that in 1998, Brownback challenger Paul Davis had been at a strip club when the cops showed up in a drug raid. Davis, 26 at the time, counted the club owner among his firm’s legal clients, though at the time cops busted down the door he was receiving a lap dance from a topless dancer.

Davis wasn’t charged or implicated in the drug dealings, but Brownback’s camp has been using the incident to smear the Democrat as out of step with heartland values. Now that the Brownback administration has gotten into the sex toys business, that could be a tougher sell.

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Sam Brownback’s Administration Is Auctioning Off Some Incredibly NSFW Sex Toys

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Here’s the Latest Right-Wing IRS Fantasy

by HelenaHastings Posted on August 26, 2014

Mother Jones

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Here’s a great example of the conservative media bubble at work. I was browsing The Corner a few minutes ago and came across a post telling me that the government has, rather astonishingly, acknowledged that it has another backup of Lois Lerner’s missing emails. Judicial Watch, which has been trying to get hold of these emails, sent out a press release trumpeting its discovery:

Department of Justice attorneys for the Internal Revenue Service told Judicial Watch on Friday that Lois Lerner’s emails, indeed all government computer records, are backed up by the federal government in case of a government-wide catastrophe….This is a jaw-dropping revelation. The Obama administration had been lying to the American people about Lois Lerner’s missing emails….The Obama administration has known all along where the email records could be — but dishonestly withheld this information.

Well. That’s fascinating. But I wondered what was really up. I went to Google News but all I found were links to conservative news sites. The Judicial Watch story was plastered over all of them: Forbes, The Blaze, NRO, Breitbart, Fox, Townhall, the Washington Examiner, the Free Beacon, and the New York Observer. But none of the usual mainstream news sources seemed to have anything about this.

Except for The Hill. Hooray! So I clicked:

An administration official said Justice Department lawyers had dropped no bombshells last week, and that Judicial Watch was mischaracterizing what the government had said.

The official said that Justice lawyers were only referring to tapes backing up IRS emails that were routinely recycled twice a year before 2013, when the investigation into the Tea Party controversy began….The administration official said that the inspector general is examining whether any data can be recovered from the previously recycled back-up tapes and suggested that could be the cause of the confusion between the government and Judicial Watch.

Roger that. What he’s saying is that backup tapes are routinely recycled and written over, but it’s possible that some of the tapes weren’t entirely written over. There’s a chance that old emails might still be at the tail end of some of the tapes and could be recovered. And who knows: maybe some of them were Lerner’s. This is, as you can imagine, (a) the longest of long shots, and (b) a pretty difficult forensic recovery job even if some parts of the backup tapes contain old messages. It’s certainly not a jaw-dropping revelation.

But in right-wing fantasyland, it’s no doubt already become conventional wisdom that the feds have some kind of massive government-wide backup system that contains every email ever written by any federal employee. The Obama administration has just been hiding it.

Which is exactly what you’d expect from them, isn’t it?

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Here’s the Latest Right-Wing IRS Fantasy

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Republican Tax Increases: A Centrist Fantasy That Refuses to Die

by Lila3153jc Posted on May 13, 2014

Mother Jones

Dave Weigel points me to Ron Fournier’s latest column:

As late as a year ago, just a few months after Obama shoved a reelection tax hike down their throats, the GOP leadership was still open to compromise. A budget deal would be hard, but not impossible, to strike. The situation required an able, nimble partner in the White House, a president who could help the GOP leadership reach and sell a deal to their conservative base. In March 2013, I wrote of the GOP: “Don’t mistake a negotiating position for reality. House Republicans tell me they are open to exchanging entitlement reform for new taxes—$250 billion to $300 billion, or approximately the amount that Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania proposed raising over 10 years under the guise of tax reform.”

The numbers were specific because the possibility of a deal was real. But the White House, quite literally, laughed at it. The president had already bowed to his base, given up on compromise, and damaged his legacy.

I just don’t get this. Are there a few House Republicans who are open to a tax increase? Sure. Probably. Is there even the slightest chance of getting a majority of the GOP caucus to support a tax increase? Of course not. The evidence on this score is overwhelming. John Boehner was never able to get agreement even for the smoke-and-mirrors version of a tax increase, the kind that relies on dynamic scoring and rosy growth estimates. Nor were Republicans willing to accept Toomey’s proposal, even though it was effectively a tax cut, not a tax increase. There’s just plainly never been any chance at all of getting agreement for a proposal that would genuinely, concretely raise revenue.

I’m just flummoxed by this stuff. Whatever else you think of Fournier, he’s an experienced reporter who understands the political landscape. How can he possibly believe this stuff?

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Republican Tax Increases: A Centrist Fantasy That Refuses to Die

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Iraq Delusion Syndrome Is Alive and Well

by nowabazaBS1 Posted on May 1, 2014

Mother Jones

Max Boot writes today that over the past couple of years, Iraq has spiraled ever downward into outright anarchy and civil war:

Contrast that with Afghanistan, which I visited last week. While violence, corruption, drug production and government dysfunction remain very real problems in what is still one of the world’s poorest countries, Afghanistan is making real progress. Kabul is bustling and, notwithstanding some high-profile Taliban attacks, far safer than Baghdad….Even more impressive, the security forces managed with virtually no coalition presence on the ground to secure the April 5 presidential election despite Taliban attempts to disrupt it.

….Just a few years ago, Iraq appeared to be in much better shape: President Obama bragged on Dec. 14, 2011, that “we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq.” In hindsight, however, it is obvious that Iraq began to unravel the minute the last U.S. troops left.

….There is an important lesson to be learned here: It’s vitally important to keep a substantial commitment of U.S. troops in Afghanistan after this year. Military commanders are asking for at least 10,000 personnel, and if that request isn’t granted by the White House (as leaks suggest it may not be), the odds will increase that Afghanistan, like Iraq, will descend into a civil war that undoes everything U.S. troops sacrificed so much to achieve.

I should say at the outset that I don’t necessarily oppose a long-term commitment of a small US peacekeeping force to Afghanistan. Fifteen years after the Kosovo war, NATO still has several thousand troops there, about a thousand of which are American. That’s how long this stuff takes sometimes.

That said, I’m endlessly flummoxed by the attitude of guys like Boot. After ten years—ten years!—of postwar “peacekeeping” in Iraq, does he still seriously think that keeping a few thousand American advisors in Baghdad for yet another few years would have made a serious difference there? In Kosovo there was a peace to keep. It was fragile, sure, but it was there. In Iraq it wasn’t. The ethnic fault lines hadn’t changed a whit, and American influence over Nouri al-Maliki had shrunk to virtually nothing. We had spent a decade trying to change the fundamentals of Iraqi politics and we couldn’t do it. An endless succession of counterterrorism initiatives didn’t do it; hundreds of billions of dollars in civil aid didn’t do it; and despite some mythologizing to the contrary, the surge didn’t do it either. The truth is that we couldn’t even make a dent. What sort of grand delusion would persuade anyone that yet another decade might do the trick?

Maybe things are different in Afghanistan. Tribal conflicts are different from sectarian ones. The Taliban is a different kind of enemy than al-Qaeda. Afghanistan’s likely next leader will almost certainly be more pro-American than Hamid Karzai. And strategically, Afghanistan plays a different role than Iraq ever did.

But Iraq? In 2003, maybe it was reasonable to think that the US could not just topple a dictator, but change the culture of a country. We can argue about that forever. But to still believe that in 2014? That’s the stuff of dreamland. Why are there still people around who continue to cling to this fantasy?

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Iraq Delusion Syndrome Is Alive and Well

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Will Democrats Kill the Filibuster Entirely Next Year?

by AlannahBeaulieu Posted on February 11, 2014

Mother Jones

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After the 2000 election, with the Senate divided 50-50, Democrats demanded a power-sharing agreement in which both parties would have the same number of committee members and the same budget. Even though Dick Cheney provided the tiebreaking vote in favor of Republican control, Democrats got their way by threatening to filibuster the organization of the Senate.

So what if this happens again after the 2014 election? Joe Biden will provide the tiebreaking vote this time, but Republicans will threaten to filibuster unless they get equal representation. Richard Arenberg thinks this could lead to the end of the filibuster:

Here’s the interesting question. Last November the Democratic majority used the so-called “nuclear option” to eliminate the filibuster for presidential nominations (with the exception of the Supreme Court). This established the principle or at least demonstrated the means by which any rule could be changed at any time by a simple majority. In the wake of a hard-fought election to determine control of the Senate, would the temptation to eliminate the filibuster in order to gain clear control using the simple majority (with the vice president’s vote) be irresistible? Would the Democratic base tolerate any less?

I have long argued that the use of the nuclear option would place the Senate on a slippery slope. I believe that the elimination of the filibuster on legislative matter is close to inevitable.

A tied Senate could be the test.

Maybe! But I’m not sure that either party has much motivation to kill the filibuster entirely at this point, regardless of what their bases demand. Let’s examine the two parties separately.

Democrats: Killing the filibuster for presidential nominees made sense because nominations require only Senate approval. But what’s the value of killing the filibuster for legislation? With the House under Republican control, it wouldn’t do them much good. Nor would it be worth it just to avoid power-sharing during the last two years of Obama’s term, when little is likely to be accomplished anyway. That simply isn’t a big enough deal. And as unlikely as it seems, Democrats do need to be concerned with the possibility of complete Republican control after 2016. It’s a slim possibility, but it’s a possibility. If that happens, why hand over the rope to hang themselves?

Republicans: Suppose Republicans win the Senate outright in 2014. A lot of liberals take it as an article of faith that they’ll immediately kill the filibuster completely. But why? With Obama still in office, it wouldn’t do them any good. And they have to be deeply concerned about complete Democratic control after the 2016 election. It’s not just a slim possibility, it’s a very real possibility. If that happens, why hand over the rope to hang themselves?

Bottom line: There’s nothing new about the procedure Harry Reid used to kill the filibuster for nominations. It’s always been available, and everyone has always known it. But it hasn’t been used before because both parties have always been afraid of what the other party would do in a filibuster-less world. That fear would continue to far outweigh the negligible benefits of killing the filibuster while government remains divided.

But what about after 2016? What if one of the parties wins total control of Congress and the presidency? That’s harder to predict. I still think that fear of what the other party could do without a filibuster runs deep, and may well prevent either party from axing it. But I wouldn’t bet on it. Both Republicans and Democrats will be chomping at the bit to break the grinding deadlock of the post-2010 era, and either party might decide to finally take the plunge.

But if it happens, it will be after 2016. The benefit of killing the filibuster after the 2014 election is just too slim to make it worthwhile.

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Will Democrats Kill the Filibuster Entirely Next Year?

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Google Reads My Mind (And My Web Searches) Once Again

by AYZShantell Posted on February 11, 2014

Mother Jones

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I realize this is old news, just part of the modern world, etc. etc., but it still seems sort of creepy to me. A few minutes ago I got the email on the right asking, “Why are the charging cables so short?”

And you know what? That’s a good question! In fact, I was asking myself that just a few days ago. As a result, I spent a bit of time googling around for cheap USB power cables, and of course I clicked on cables of various lengths. Because, you know, those 3-foot cables really are kind of dinky.

Anyway, I know that Google knows all and sees all, but this is just a little too specific for comfort. It’s like it was reading my mind and sending advertisers my way. Which it was. And I suppose some people would consider this pretty cool. I’m getting ads not for the usual junk, but for something I’m actually interested in. And yet, it still seems a little creepy. Maybe I should start using private browsing tabs a little more often.

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Google Reads My Mind (And My Web Searches) Once Again

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