Rape of Mother Earth...science and technology

"An Interview with Derrick Jensen on Science and Technology"

Against Prometheus

by

Frank Joseph Smecker

October 28th, 2009

counterpunch

Derrick Jensen is the prize-winning author of A Language Older Than Words, The Culture of Make Believe, Listening to the Land, Strangely Like War, Welcome to the Machine, and Walking on Water. He was one of two finalists for the 2003 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, which cited The Culture of Make Believe as "a passionate and provocative meditation on the nexus of racism, genocide, environmental destruction and corporate malfeasance, where civilization meets its discontents." He is an environmental activist and lives on the coast of northern California.

Frank Joseph Smecker: You write that this culture is murdering the planet – species extinction, entire continents of clear-cuts, the removal of 90 percent of the large fish from the oceans, global warming – all are but a handful of the dire effects of industrial civilization; how has philosophy shaped and influenced the behavior that has led to these despairing conditions?

Derrick Jensen: The stories we are told shape the way we see the world, which shapes the way we experience the world. R.D. Laing once wrote that how we experience the world shapes how we behave in the world. If the world is presented as resources to be exploited, then more than likely, you’re going to exploit the world. For example, if one sees trees as dollar bills, then one will look at trees and treat trees one way; if one sees trees as trees, for what they are – as other beings to be in communion with – then one will see them and treat them another way. Philosophy is the telling of the world a certain way.

FJS: Would you say that the stories and ideas passed on by Western philosophers and other ideologues, which have influenced the modern behavior of the dominant culture, are perpetuated through other mediums today?

DJ: Absolutely. Even today our media and entertainment present stories that affect our behavior. Take for example Ugly Betty – that new show on television. This is just cruel, and ultimately influences the way this culture sees and treats women. Personally, I think she’s fairly cute, and if I'm going to do the objectifying rating of women thing, scores easily a six or more on a scale of one to ten– but they throw some glasses and braces on her and suddenly the culture is telling us that she is ugly. My point is that in Hollywood, even someone who is explicitly labeled as "Ugly Betty" is still reasonably good looking. What does that, along with all the other images of women that are put out there, do to both women's and men's perception of women? Newspapers, too, are just as responsible. For example, I recently read an article in some newspaper about the decline of certain frog populations, and the header of the article read something along the lines as: “Another Frog Croaks…” What that does is trivializes… it makes a joke out of species extinction! Or how about the salmon that are going extinct? In this culture, if salmon are of no economic utility then what good are they? This seems to come from a place of hatred and narcissism. I write in Endgame how the narratives we are told shape the way we live. If you are told your entire life that only the most successful at dominating survive; that nonhumans have no desires of their own and are here for us to use; that the U.S. has your best interests at heart; that those in power hold some inherent moral and ethical value; that trees and mountains are resources to be extracted, then you will come to believe all of that and behave in the world one way. If the stories that are told are different, then you will come to believe and act much differently. If your culture told you stories since childhood that eating dog shit tasted good, that’s going to affect your behavior. What I mean by this is that if someone told you story after story extolling the virtues of eating dog shit since you were a child, you’ll grow to believe them. Sooner or later, if you are exposed to other foods, you might discover that eating dog shit doesn’t taste too great. Or if you cling too tightly to these stories of eating dog shit – that is if your enculturation is so strong that it actually does taste good to you, the diet might make you sick or kill you. To make this example less silly, substitute pesticides for dog shit, or for that matter, substitute Big Mac™, Whopper™, or Coke™. Eventually physical reality trumps narrative. It can just take a long time.

FJS: You often write that the dominant culture has robbed the world of its subjectivity; how does this influence our behavior? And if the stories we are told inculcate an objective perception of the world and those around us, then how do we shatter those lenses in order to begin perceiving the world for what it is – a matrix of subjective relations to be in communion with?

DJ: If you do not perceive the fundamental beingness of others (i.e. nonhuman animals, trees, mountains, rivers, rocks, etc), or in some senses do not even perceive their existence, then nothing I say or write can convince you. Nor will evidence be likely to convince you, since, as already mentioned, you won’t perceive it, or more accurately, won’t allow yourself to perceive it. No matter how well I write, if you have never made love, I cannot adequately describe to you what it feels like to do so. Even moreso, if you insist that no such thing as making love even exists, then I will certainly never be able to adequately explain to you what it feels like. For that matter, I cannot describe the color green to someone who is blind, and who even moreso insists that green does not exist, could never exist; as well as to someone who knows that philosophers from Aristotle to Descartes to Dawkins have conclusively shown that green does not exist, could not exist, has never existed, and will never exist; or to someone who is under the thrall of economic and legal systems (insofar as there is a meaningful difference, since the primary function of this culture’s legal systems is to protect—through laws, police, courts, and prisons—the exploitative activities of the already-wealthy) based so profoundly on green not existing; who cannot acknowledge that this culture would collapse if its members individually and/or collectively perceived this green that cannot be allowed to exist. If I could describe the color green to you, I would do it. I would drive you, as R.D. Laing put it, out of your wretched mind. And you might be able to see the color green. Or someone else could drive you out of your wretched mind. It certainly needn’t be me. I’m not the point. You’re not the point. Your perceived experience isn’t even the point. The point is your wretched mind, and getting out of it. And beyond that, the point then is your experience.

FJS: So to “see green,” figuratively speaking, is to experience the world personally, emotionally, convivially and reciprocally with other beings, rather than to experience it as a set of objective truths for personal material gain or information, or as protocol to maintain the status quo?

DJ: Exactly. This culture is based on the assumption that all of the world is without volition, is mechanistic, and is therefore predictable. The existence of the willfully unpredictable destroys a foundational assumption of this culture. The existence of the willfully unpredictable also invalidates this culture’s ontology, epistemology, and philosophies, and reveals them for what they are: lies upon which to base this omnicidal system of exploitation, theft, and murder; it’s much easier to exploit, steal from, or murder someone you pretend has no meaningful existence (especially if you have an entire culture’s ontology, epistemology, and philosophy to back you up), indeed, it becomes your right, even your duty (e.g. war, genocide, death squads, mercenaries, etc). The existence of the willfully unpredictable reveals this culture’s governmental and economic systems for what they are as well: means to not only rationalize but enforce systems of exploitation, theft, and murder (e.g., effectively stop Monsanto’s exploitation, theft, and murder, and see how you are treated by governments across the world).

FJS: So it’s really about personal experience over narrative, over inculcation?

DJ: In many ways it is. R.D. Laing began his extraordinary The Politics of Experience with: “Few books today, are forgivable.” He wrote this, I believe, because we have become very alienated from our own experience, from whom we are, and this alienation is so destructive to others and to ourselves, that if a book does not take this alienation as its starting point and work toward rectifying it, we’d all be better off looking at blank pieces of paper. I of course agree with Laing that few books today are forgivable (and the same is true for films, paintings, songs, relationships, lives, and so on), and I agree for the reasons I believe he was giving. This culture is murdering the planet. Any book (film, painting, song, relationship, life, and so on) that doesn’t begin with this basic understanding—that the culture is murdering the planet—is not forgivable, for an infinitude of reasons, one of which is that without a living planet there can be no books. There can be no paintings, songs, relationships, lives, and so on. There can be no dreams. There can be nothing.

FJS: It’s about experiencing a symbiotic world that is in dynamic equilibrium, not a world that is at our disposal. It’s about recognizing the pervading relationships between all of us: trees and fresh water, birds and wall-eyed pike, mountains and the sky, you and I; not about hours and wages, markets and policy, resources and industrial modes of production.

DJ: Correct.

FJS: The indigenous were and are in kinship with nonhumans, and in fact indigenous peoples never once held a utilitarian worldview over their landbase insofar as they perceived the natural landscape as a matrix of reciprocal relationships to enter into. Why do you think it is that the dominant culture cannot engage with the land in the same way?

DJ: In all of my books I’ve emphasized that the fundamental difference between civilized and indigenous ways of being is that for even the most open-minded of the civilized, listening to the natural world is a metaphor. For traditional indigenous peoples it is not a metaphor. It is how you relate with the real world. This culture’s way of life is based on exploitation, domination, theft, and murder. And why? Because it is based on the perceived right of the powerful to take whatever resources they want. If you see yourself as entitled to a resource, and if you’re not willing or incapable of seeing this other as a being with whom you can and should be in relation with, then you’re going to take the resource.

FJS: Do you believe that scientific philosophy galvanizes the exploitative utilitarian worldview?

DJ: Richard Dawkins, the popular scientific philosopher—he’s got almost as many Google hits as Mick fuckin’ Jagger—states that we exist in “a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication.” Implying that humans are the only meaningful intelligence on earth, and possibly in the universe, the world then consists of objects to be exploited, not other beings to enter into relationship with. Dawkins also writes: “You won't find any rhyme or reason in it [the universe], nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.” Because the latter scientific assumption posits that nonhumans have no meaningful intelligence, they have nothing to say, to each other or to us. Thus interspecies communication is bunk, no matter who the nonhumans are: animals, plants, rivers, rocks, stars, muses, and so on. Anyone who thinks otherwise, and this is key, is superstitious, that is, delusional, maybe primitive, maybe crazy, maybe childish, maybe just plain stupid. Suddenly science has a stronger hold on one’s belief moreso than any religion. Scientific philosophy is much better at controlling people because if you don’t buy into it, you’re stupid. The fundamental religion of this culture is that of human dominion, and it does not matter so much whether one self-identifies as a Christian, a Capitalist, a Scientist, or just a regular member of this culture, one’s actions will be to promulgate this fundamentalist religion of unbridled entitlement and exploitation. This religion permeates every aspect of this culture.

FJS: In the book you wrote with George Draffan, Welcome to the Machine: Science, Surveillance, and the Culture of Control, you elaborated on the conflation of science and control; can you talk a bit about what you wrote? And would you agree that there’s also something to be said of this culture’s conflation of the power of command and truth?

DJ: Absolutely. First, if the scientific materialist instrumentalist perspective is right and every other culture is wrong, the universe is a gigantic clockwork – a machine: a very predictable and therefore controllable machine. Power in this case, then, is like meaning in that there is no inherent power in the world (or out of it)—just as no power inheres in a toaster or automobile until you put it to use—and the only power that exists is that which you project onto and over others (or that others project onto and over you). Power exists only in how you use raw materials – the more raw materials you use more effectively than anyone else, the more power to you. And science is a potent tool for that. That’s the point of science. This means, of course, that might then makes right, or rather, right, too, is like meaning and doesn’t inhere anyway—if nonhumans are not in any real sense beings and are here for us to use (and not here for their own sakes, with lives as meaningful to them as yours is to you or mine is to me) then using (or destroying) them raises no significant moral questions, any more than whether you or I do or don’t use or destroy any other tool—which means right is what you decide it is, or more accurately, it’s irrelevant, right is whatever you want it to be, which means it’s really nothing at all. But this malleable notion of right means that you can fairly easily talk yourself into feeling good about exploiting the shit out of everyone and everything else. If all of this sounds sociopathological, that’s because it is. Western philosophy and scientific philosophy is sociopathological, it finds logic through the power of command. It makes us all insane. Richard Dawkins wrote, “Science boosts its claim to truth by its spectacular ability to make matter and energy jump through hoops on command, and to predict what will happen and when.” Do you see the fundamental flaw in logic here? I’m guessing that if we lived in a culture that wasn’t sociopathological we would all see through this in a heartbeat. Let’s ask a simple question: How does science boost its claim to truth? Here is Dawkins’s (and the culture’s) answer: by making matter and energy jump through hoops on command, and by predicting what will happen and when. Do you see the problem yet? Okay, let’s try it a different way: Let’s say Dawkins has a gun. Let’s say he points this gun at your head. Let’s say he commands you to jump through hoops. Let’s say you do it. He does, after all, have a gun pointed at your head. Now, with this gun pointed at your head, he tells you to jump through those hoops again. And then he predicts that this is precisely what you will do. You do it. Whaddya know, he’s a fucking genius: He commanded you to jump through hoops, and he predicted right when you’d do it. Dawkins was with this sentence incredibly intellectually dishonest—and sneaky as hell—and the only reason he hasn’t been called out on it – and someone seriously needs to call this fucking guy out – is that he has a whole culture of sociopaths for company. He has conflated the power to command with truth. He has conflated domination with truth. But neither the power to command nor domination is the same as truth. The power to command is the power to command, domination is domination, and truth is truth.

Richard Dawkins could put a gun to my head. He could even kill me. But that wouldn’t mean that he is telling the truth. This culture is dominating the planet. This culture’s domination of the planet is killing it. That does not mean this culture is telling the truth, or is even capable of understanding it. At the same time, the power to dominate is a sort of truth. But there are other truths as well, that can be masked, obscured, or destroyed by this truth. An example should make this clear. Let’s say I force you to jump through hoops. Let’s say I enslave you. Are there not other truths that have been closed off because I forced you to jump through hoops, because I enslaved you? Any path forecloses others. Some paths foreclose more than do other paths. The same is true with truths: some paths to certain forms of knowledge, and some paths to certain forms of truth, irrevocably foreclose other paths to knowledge, and other paths to other truths.

I recently read an essay by Sam Harris, an ally of Dawkins and a full-blown nature-hater in his own right. The essay is entitled “Mother Nature is Not our Friend.” It begins, “Like many people, I once trusted in the wisdom of Nature. I imagined that there were real boundaries between the natural and the artificial, between one species and another, and thought that, with the advent of genetic engineering, we would be tinkering with life at our peril. I now believe that this romantic view of Nature is a stultifying and dangerous mythology. Every 100 million years or so, an asteroid or comet the size of a mountain smashes into the earth, killing nearly everything [sic] that [sic] lives. If ever we needed proof of Nature's indifference to the welfare of complex organisms such as ourselves, there it is. The history of life on this planet has been one of merciless destruction and blind, lurching renewal.”

The whole essay is as shoddy as it is full of nature-hating. I’m not sure why he couldn’t be bothered to spend a whole thirty seconds doing a Google™ search to learn that only one of the major mass extinctions was probably caused by an asteroid. I’m also not sure why he didn’t just say that nature is red in tooth and claw, and be done with it. The exploration of mass extinctions is based on data gathered by scientists using the premises, methods, and tools of science, then turned into stories by these or other scientists using the framework of scientific stories to assign meaning to these data points.

Big deal, you might say. Well, it is a big deal. The premises and other preconditions of any story nearly always overdetermine the direction of that story. They especially overdetermine a story’s morality, and even moreso they overdetermine the moral of the story (which is not the same as the story’s morality). And of course the story about multiple mass extinctions has a moral that is obvious at least to Sam Harris. This moral is precisely that of the larger scientific materialist instrumentalist mechanistic perspective, that, “Nature” is, as Harris says, “indifferent.” Or actually “Nature” is—as Harris would say were he a clear enough thinker to have even the slightest bit of internal consistency—even less than indifferent: “Nature” is insensate: indifference implies a capacity to feel. I can reasonably be described as indifferent as to whether the Knicks or the Spurs win tomorrow night. That may also be true for you. But one does not normally describe one’s clothes hamper as “indifferent” as to the outcome of tomorrow night’s game. I want to focus just a bit more on Harris’s sloppy word usage here, because I think it’s indicative of something far deeper than unclear thinking. Part of my clue for this is that his use of the word indifferent wasn’t the only interesting choice of words. Another was his title: “Mother Nature is Not our Friend.” I am fascinated by the fact that although people like Harris and Dawkins claim to believe that the universe is mechanistic, they so often use emotion-packed words like mother and friend and trust and merciless, and their language is quite often hostile, as though they’re describing not a machine as they pretend, but rather an enemy, or someone who has betrayed them. Think about this in your own life: how often have you said that your clothes hamper is not your friend? How often have you said your toaster is merciless? If you truly believe that something—something—is utterly insensate, you would hardly be likely to describe this thing as either a friend or an enemy or as anything other than a thing. These supposedly clear thinkers are, I believe, very confused in their thinking and most especially in what they feel about all of this, by which I mean what they feel about life. I can’t prove this, of course, but it seems very clear to me that the emotions they express toward life and toward the natural world are not the sort of neutral feelings one would normally experience and express toward an inanimate object, but rather a hatred toward, and fear of, life and the natural. I believe, and once again I can’t prove this, but it feels right, and has felt right since I first read Dawkins twenty years ago, that they really fear life, and fear death, and feel betrayed by life in part because they, too, like everyone else, must suffer, and they, too, like everyone else must die. The fact that they, too, must pay this price of suffering and death as a cost of participating in the joyous web of experience and relationship that is the ongoing and eternally creative process of living, somehow seems to them an affront. To which I have a two-word response: grow up. Clearly in their descriptions of life, they focus more on inherent suffering than they do on inherent joy and delight. Were they not so influential their perspective would merely be pathological and pathetic. As it is, their popularity is of course what one would expect it to be in a culture that hates and fears wild nature, that attempts to control and destroy wild nature, and that is in fact killing life on earth. The perspective of people like Harris and Dawkins (and indeed most people in this culture)—that of believing that the universe is “merciless” or is otherwise insufficient and needs to be significantly manipulated and/or improved in order to make it bearable—is a central perspective and driving motivator of the murder of the planet, and is in utter contrast to the perspectives and motivations of most of the indigenous, who generally perceive the natural world as sufficient, as bountiful, as beautiful, as generous, as provider, as mother, as father, as family. The perspective of people like Harris and Dawkins—the perspective that underlies civilization—is not only murderous, but it is also extraordinarily ungrateful.

Whether or not you believe the universe is mechanical, it gave you your life, your extraordinary, unique, awe-filled life. Unless your life truly is miserable, to not show gratitude for this gift is to show yourself a spoiled, immature wretch.

FJS: Has science provided the world with anything good?

DJ: That’s a very common question that is asked: Hasn’t science done a lot of good for the world? For the world? No. Show me how the world—the real, physical world, once filled with passenger pigeons, great auks, cod, tuna, salmon, sea mink, lions, great apes, migratory songbirds, forests—is a better place because of science. Science has done far more than facilitate the destruction of the natural world: it has increased this culture’s ability to destroy by many orders of magnitude. We can talk all we want about conservation biology and about the use of science to measure biodiversity, but in the real, physical world the real, physical effects of science on real, living nonhumans has been nothing short of atrocious. Science has been given three hundred years or so to prove itself. And of course three hundred years ago great auks (and fish, and whales) filled the seas, and passenger pigeons and Eskimo curlews filled the skies, and soil was deeper, and native forests still stood. If three hundred years of chainsaws, CFCs, depleted uranium, automobiles, genetic engineering, airplanes, routine international trade, computers, plastics, endocrine disrupters, pesticides, vivisection, internal combustion engines, fellerbunchers, dragline excavators, televisions, cellphones, and nuclear (and conventional) bombs are not enough to convey the picture, then that picture will never be conveyed.

Without science, there would not be ten times more plastic than phytoplankton in the oceans. The Nazi Holocaust was, as I made clear in The Culture of Make Believe, and as Zygmunt Bauman made clear in Modernity and the Holocaust, a triumph of the modern industrial rationalistic scientific instrumentalist perspective. Global warming, which may end in planetary murder, would not be running rampant without the assistance of science and scientists. Without science there would be no hole in the ozone. Without science and scientists, we would not face the threat of nuclear annihilation. Without science, there would be no industrial civilization, which even without global warming would still be leading to planetary murder. Sure, science brought us television, modern medicine (and modern diseases), and cardboard-tasting strawberries in January, but anyone who would rather have those than a living planet is, well, a typical member of this culture. If it’s the case that evolution happened so that we would come to exist, then it’s pretty damn obvious we’re fucking up whatever we were brought into being to do. How much sense would it make to have all of this evolution take place simply so that the point, the apex, the pinnacle of this evolution can end life on the planet? Talk about the world’s longest and stupidest shaggy dog story.

FJS: Is there any personal philosophy you do uphold? And is there any hope for the future survival of life on the planet?

DJ: Everything is circumstantial. We can definitely rely on tenets to guide our behavior, but ultimately, care about what happens in the world supersedes philosophy. We need to recognize that physical reality trumps our philosophy. Life is far more complex than philosophy can state. I can’t even figure out romantic relationships, or the relationship between what I eat and my Crohn’s disease. As for philosophy, it is like a map. The map is not the territory – the territory is far more complex than the map, and the constituents of the territory are even far more complex. Ourselves, trees, mountains, nonhuman animals – everyone alive in this world is far more complex than the philosophy or science that seeks understanding (viz. control). In all honesty, we can’t talk a philosophy. Philosophy teaches us how to live, so a philosophy must be land-based. Therefore, the philosophy of Vermont has to be different in Vermont than the philosophy of northern California. As for hope, hope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency. That's how we use it in everyday language: we don't say, "I hope I eat something today." We just do it. But the next time I get on a plane I hope it doesn't crash, because once I'm in the air I have no agency. So I don't hope this culture doesn't kill the planet: I'll do whatever it takes to stop it. I have agency. So do you. We must actively protect as much of the natural as possible. When we realize the degree of agency we actually do have, we no longer have to hope at all. Think about it: what is the real source of our life? Of our food, our air, our water? Is it the economic system? No. It’s the landbase. And those in the future will only care about whether or not we left them with clean air, clean water, and healthy intact landbases. The world is being killed and we have to stop this.

Thousands of years of inculcation and ideology all aimed at driving us out of our minds and bodies, away from any realistic sense of self-defense, real land stewarding, have gotten us to identify not with our bodies and our landbases, but with our abusers, governments, and civilization. Break this identification, and one’s course of action becomes much clearer. Love yourself and love the land, and each other, and you will act in the best interest of, and defend, your beloved. The material world is primary. This doesn’t mean that the spirit does not exist, nor that the material world is all there is. It means that spirit mixes with flesh. It also means that real world actions have real world consequences. It means this mess really is a mess, and we have to face this mess ourselves; that for the time we are here on Earth – whether or not we end up somewhere else after we die, and whether we are condemned or privileged to live here – the Earth is the point. It is primary. It is our home and it is everything. It’s silly to think or act or be as though this world is not real and primary. It is very silly to not live our lives as though our lives are real.

[Frank Joseph Smecker is a writer and social worker from Vermont.]

Existential dilemma...swine flu vaccine

The swine flu vaccine has come under considerable scrutiny resulting in long lines for vaccination to those that choose to ride the wave and distrust the pharmacology and employ common sense. It is truly an existential dilemma.

"Swine flu: The return of existential decision-making"

by

Steve Bowles

October 27th, 2009

Pohjolan Sanomat

After so many years of so many following this or that official version of the truth now we face our existential dilemma. Let us all face it. There is no big certainty here and there is no one answer for all. Swine flu forces us all back to personal responsibility for our own lives.

More and more research awareness concerning this ”virus” is leading us to the conclusaion that there is no one-way. No one way for all. It will be a combination of selective ”medicines” that will eventually handle this Swine Flu. This seems to be because this Swine Flu itself is no one-thing. This is also because this Swine Flu is not a traditional ”natural” virus. It is an ”artifical man-made” virus born of laboratory experiments mixed with what can only be called ”social-nature”.

The information that we can find about a Swine Flu vaccine is here and it is there. There are many different opinions and there are many different professional perspectives on this Swine Flu issue. Most of us cannot get into the hard scientific evidences. But, you see, most scientific experts are not ready to say in public that all is well with this Swine Flu programme. But that is good science talking here. No certainty and no one-way-for-all and what it will need is a longer time to research into the goods and the bads for this Swine Flu vaccine.

Today we must accept this humbleness of science. Today we must accept again that existential dilemma of decision-making with life. That is with a life is that bigger than us ourselves and much more varied. We are even thrown into the moral dimensions of health and life itself.

The best in the media struggle to give a balanced story and end up with huge problems of the very philosophy of science itself. But the best of the media do try. The worst of the media plays fear-games or official political-propaganda-games. The scientific research papers speak in a language that is just about unknown to everyday folk. The business stories can only be found through the legal sytems and their lawyers and we find that the big Pharma companies have moved to protect themselves against litigation.

We may read this report or that report from the media saying this or that. But I am sorry. We cannot escape the fact that this is our own time to make personal decisions. Swine Flu forces us into personal decision-making today.

If you read enough different media comments you will only find far too many different stories. This is nothing against the media problems concerning ”truth” here. This is really about making your own bed and then sleeping in it. This home-made bed is that Swine of existential existence. Sorry but you are all on your own with this one. This is YOUR STORY NOW.

So many media reports, even when they try and help us, get involved in fear-making or marketing or even selling this or that way to heaven. Some media try their best to report for the public good. Other media just try to sell newspapers through fear and scandal. It is up to the reader here to see just what is to be believed. From the internet I guess that about two days of continuous research would be necessary if any of us would feel able to make a reasonable judgement. My head is spinning that is for certain and that is the only certainty that I have right now.

From governments we still wait for honest human opinion and advice. Few politicians feel safe to really speak out on this matter. Yet at the same time national projects are agreed. It is no wonder that so many folk feel that they will be used as a test-case. But test-case this is. The studies are really beginning now. But which politician will be strong enough to say ”Too late” we are too late on this one. This Swine Flu has been concocted many years ago already. Strange that Mexico is the home of so many Pharmo companies but a real link remains to be proven here.

From big business we must beware and take care here. It seems that big business has already taken out an insurance policy that denies anybody the right to make legal claims in any big way. If something goes wrong with the Swine Flu vaccines then it might be very difficult today for people to sue the company involved or even make a legal claim. It seems to be that the big business companies have already started to protect themselves. Why would this be so, people ask. Why if this vaccine is safe and well tested?

To make business more suspicious we find the financial markets are waiting now for the next financial results, due for the next quarter, when the investment risks for these big Pharma companies can be best analysed. Swine Flu vacines are today big financial news and if you want to sense the safety of all this then keep watching the financial reports.

You see money talks. What is the truth of this money talking? Can it be that a few political decisions have been made through this (un)insurable-uncertainty of big business? This is not conspiracy from internet bloggers. In some cases it seems that the big business has already moved to protect itself from public claims. Could this be under the law of the land? The real details are difficult to find here. But I do know that the big drug companies have already protected their huge investment and I do know that this information is difficult to ”get at”.

For Doctors and nurses? This must be one of the most difficult issues. Doctors and nurses are ”at-risk” themselves. Doctors and nurses are also seen as responsible for this Swine Flu project. Would you be a doctor or a nurse in this situation. As far as I can tell we can only take advice from the hospital professionals and then make the final decision ourselves. I have the strong feeling today that if we say yes to this vacination and then things go wrong then we can only blame ourselves. This today is our moral and existential adventure. We cannot blame normal hospital workers.

After checking out over 20 polls I find that in most areas there are between 40 % and 60 % that hold a deep suspicion of this Swine Flu vacination project. This means that it is usually a minority that really trust this project for vacination. Many admit that they do not know.

What concerns many is that the causes of this whole Swine Flu episode are almost ignored. The public do need to know more about the ways that this Swine Flu actually was made. That is we need to know the cause so we can begin to treat the causal problem itself.

Many debates continue today whereby Swine Flu vacines are made through the same systems that actually caused Swine Flu in the first place. I find these debates fertile (this debate is not the same as for Sall Pox) and I find this ongoing debate to be at the heart of this pandemonium.

For us as everyday folk we may know more about all this in a few years but until that time we are thrown back into time. We are thrown back into making our own existential decisions for life itself. There are no big certainties available. There are not even any decent risk-analysis studies made as yet to guide us. Morality is the adventure of life itself is it not?


H1N1 flu vaccine poll

Charles R. Knight...father of dinosaur art

Charles Robert Knight
October 21st, 1874 to April 15th, 1953

Yesterday I mentioned Rudolph F. Zallinger's "The Age of Reptiles" and should have made note of Charles Knight, the father of "dinosaur art" who was born October 21st, 1874. Bill Ashworth wrote in the Linda Hall Library Newsletter:

"...Knight was given the opportunity to paint some dinosaur scenes to illustrate an article in Century Magazine. These four small paintings were to revolutionize the way dinosaurs were portrayed, especially the depiction of "Leaping Laelaps," which showed two small theropods fighting with one another in the most agile manner, quite unlike the way dinosaurs, or any other reptiles, were conventionally portrayed. The idea of the active dinosaur lost favor in the 1940s, and the famous Age of Reptiles mural at Yale, completed in 1947, shows dull, stolid dinosaurs who can barely lift one foot off the ground. When the "hot-blooded" dinosaur re-merged in the 1970s (making Jurassic Park possible), Knight became the patron saint of every would-be dinosaur artist, and he remains so today."

Charles R. Knight

"Mole Day"...6.02 x 10^23

Today could be considered "Mole Day". "Mole Day"? We celebrate a rodent? No. Not that kind of "mole" but rather Amedeo Avogadro's [nineteenth-century Italian physicist] discovery that a mole of any gas contains the same number of atoms or molecules, which happens to be 6.02 X 10^23.

Amedeo Avogadro

Avogadro constant

Rudolph F. Zallinger's "The Age of Reptiles"

[Click to enlarge.]

Rudolph F. Zallinger

November 12th, 1919 to August 1st, 1995

What is 110' long and resides at Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History? Not a dinosaur but close. It is a mural by Rudolph F. Zallinger who completed the "The Age of Reptiles" [covering the Devonian Period 362 million years ago to the Cretaceous Period 65 million years ago] in 1947.

The mural is one of the largest in the world, measuring 110 feet (33.5 meters) by 16 feet (4.9 meters). It required more than 4.5 years (1943–1947) to complete.

Painted in the Renaissance fresco secco technique, the mural is a work of art that showcases a panorama of the evolutionary history of the earth — from the Devonian Period 362 million years ago to Cretaceous Period 65 million years ago — based on the best scientific knowledge available at the time. The chronology of the mural reads from right to left and spans more than 300 million years, with the large foreground trees marking the boundaries between the geologic periods.

Zallinger’s portrayal of the prehistoric plants and animals was innovative for its time, showing them in natural, realistic landscapes, the result of the collaboration of the artist with the most preeminent paleontologists, paleobotanists, biologists and geologists of that day. In 1949 Zallinger received the Pulitzer Award for Painting in recognition of his work on The Age of Reptiles.

The Zallinger Murals at the Yale Peabody Museum

Greedy scientist is nabbed

This certainly looks like a simple case of greed..."Well, I should tell you my first need is that they should figure out how to pay me ... they don't expect me to do this for free."

"Scientist who worked for gov't accused of spying"

By

Larry Margasak and Devlin Barrett

October 19th, 2009

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — A scientist credited with helping discover evidence of water on the moon was arrested Monday on charges of attempting to pass along classified information to an FBI agent posing as an Israeli intelligence officer.

Stewart David Nozette, 52, of Chevy Chase, Md., was charged in a criminal complaint with attempting to communicate, deliver and transmit classified information, the Justice Department said.

Nozette was arrested by FBI agents and is expected to make his initial appearance in federal court in Washington on Tuesday. Law enforcement officials said Nozette did not immediately have a lawyer.

Nozette worked in varying jobs for the Energy Department, NASA and – in 1989 and 1990 – the National Space Council in the president's office. He developed the Clementine bi-static radar experiment that is credited with discovering water on the south pole of the moon. He also worked at the Energy Department's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he designed highly advanced technology, from approximately 1990 to 1999.

At Energy, Nozette held a special security clearance equivalent to the Defense Department's top secret and "critical nuclear weapon design information" clearances. DOE clearances apply to access to information specifically relating to atomic or nuclear-related materials.

Nozette also held top offices at the Alliance for Competitive Technology, a nonprofit corporation that he organized. Between January 2000 and February 2006, Nozette, through his company, had several agreements to develop advanced technology for the U.S. government.

An affidavit suggests why FBI agents posed as agents of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad to conduct the sting operation.

From 1998 to 2008, the complaint alleges, Nozette was a technical adviser for a consultant company that was wholly owned by the Israeli government. Nozette was paid about $225,000 over that period, the court papers say.

Then, in January of this year, Nozette allegedly traveled to another foreign country with two computer thumb drives and apparently did not return with them. Prosecutors also quote an unnamed colleague of Nozette who said the scientist said that if the U.S. government ever tried to put him in jail for an unrelated criminal offense, he would go to Israel or another foreign country and "tell them everything" he knows.

The complaint does not allege that the government of Israel or anyone acting on its behalf violated U.S. law. In Jerusalem, Israeli government officials had no immediate comment.

The affidavit by FBI agent Leslie Martell said that on Sept. 3, Nozette received a telephone call from an individual purporting to be an Israeli intelligence officer. The caller was an undercover FBI agent.

Nozette agreed to meet with the agent later that day at a hotel in Washington and in the subsequent meeting the two discussed Nozette's willingness to work for Israeli intelligence, the affidavit said.

Nozette allegedly informed the agent that he had, in the past, held top security clearances and had access to U.S. satellite information, the affidavit said.

The scientist also allegedly said that he would be willing to answer questions about this information in exchange for money. The agent explained that the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, would arrange for a communication system so Nozette could pass on information in a post office box.

Nozette agreed to provide regular, continuing information and asked for an Israeli passport, the affidavit alleged.

According to the court papers, Nozette and the undercover agent met soon afterward in the same hotel, where the scientist allegedly said that while he no longer had legal access to any classified information at a U.S. government facility, he could, nonetheless, recall classified information by memory. Nozette allegedly asked when he could expect to receive his first payment, saying he preferred cash amounts "under ten thousand" so he didn't have to report it.

Nozette allegedly told the agent, "Well, I should tell you my first need is that they should figure out how to pay me ... they don't expect me to do this for free."

About a week later, FBI agents left a letter in the designated post office box, asking Nozette to answer a list of questions about U.S. satellite information. The agents provided a $2,000 cash payment. Serial numbers of the bills were recorded.

Nozette was later captured on videotape leaving a manila envelope in the post office box. The next day, agents retrieved the sealed envelope and found, among other things, a one-page document containing answers to the questions and an encrypted computer thumb drive.

One answer contained information classified as secret, which concerned capabilities of a prototype overhead collection system. Nozette allegedly offered to reveal additional classified information that directly concerned nuclear weaponry, military spacecraft or satellites, and other major weapons systems.

Agents left a second letter in the post office box with another list of questions about U.S. satellite information. The FBI also left a cash payment of $9,000. Nozette allegedly retrieved the questions and the money the same day.

Again, authorities say, Nozette was videotaped leaving a manila envelope in the post office box. FBI agents retrieved it and found a second set of answers. The responses contained information classified as both top secret and secret, on U.S. satellites, early warning systems, means of defense or retaliation against large-scale attack, communications intelligence information, and major elements of defense strategy.

Nozette performed some of this research and development at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in Arlington, Va., and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.


Thanks to POSP stringer Tim.

Deceased--Rodger Doxsey

Rodger Doxsey
March 11th, 1947 to October 13th, 2009

"Rodger Doxsey, Astronomer Who Worked on the Hubble, Dies at 62"

by

Dennis Overbye

October 18th, 2009

The New York Times

Rodger Doxsey, an astronomer who played a crucial below-the-decks role in keeping the Hubble Space Telescope flying and doing science in good times and bad for almost 20 years, died Tuesday in Towson, Md. He was 62 and lived in Towson.

His death, in a hospice after a long battle with cancer, was announced by the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.

As head of mission operations at the institute, Dr. Doxsey was the go-to guy for making the Hubble telescope work and squeezing the last bits of data out of it. Starting work a decade before the launching, he helped it deliver data in its first troubled days and led the search for ways to extend its useful life when NASA stopped sending manned missions to repair it.

“He understood this observatory from top to bottom, and knew it like few others out there,” said Kenneth Sembach, the Hubble Project Scientist at the institute.

Matt Mountain, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, called Dr. Doxsey “the heart and soul of Hubble,” adding, “He could zoom in and out and see the whole telescope system or zoom in and see the spring that wasn’t working.”

In 1991, NASA awarded Dr. Doxsey the Distinguished Public Service Medal, the highest honor it gives to a nongovernment employee.

Rodger Doxsey was born in Schenectady, N.Y., on March 11, 1947, and reared in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, the eldest of five siblings. His father was an executive in a steel industry trade association, and his mother was a homemaker.

He is survived by his companion, Vicki Balzano of Towson, Md.; his father, John, of Cleveland; and his siblings, Martha Doxsey of Edmonton, Alberta; Douglas Doxsey of Ironwood, Mich.; Virginia Doxsey of Boston; and Mary Lou Shane of Duxbury, Vt.

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Doxsey studied physics and rowed on the lightweight crew, a lifelong passion. He returned each year to race with old crewmates in the Head of the Charles Regatta.

After earning a Ph.D. in 1974, Dr. Doxsey stayed on at the Center for Space Research at M.I.T., where he worked on satellites to study X-ray emissions from the sky.

When Riccardo Giacconi, who had founded the field of X-ray astronomy and later won a Nobel Prize, was appointed director of the newly founded Space Telescope Science Institute in 1981, Dr. Doxsey asked him for a job and became one of the first hired for the institute. At the time, the telescope was scheduled to be launched in 1986 but NASA had no good plan for enabling astronomers to use the telescope. That became Dr. Doxsey’s job.

“Rodger became one of the few people in the world who understood Hubble as a whole, in all its complicated sophistication,” Dr. Giacconi wrote in his book “Secrets of the Hoary Deep.”

Along the way to Hubble’s launching, Dr. Giacconi and his small band of recruits proceeded to reinvent the way astronomy was done. Before, Dr. Mountain explained, an instrument and its data were the exclusive province of a few people who had built it and understood how it worked.

“What Riccardo and Rodger did was turn the whole thing on its head,” Dr. Mountain said. “Any astronomer should be able to use the instrument and get great science. Rodger really understood how to do that.”

Among other things, Dr. Doxsey became a master of the complex computer program that actually runs the telescope on a minute-to-minute basis, said Tod Lauer of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson. In the early days, “when the spacecraft was crabby and cranky,” he was adept at getting it to work, Dr. Lauer said. “In simpler terms,” he continued, “he figured out how to get the trains to run on time, during a period when it wasn’t quite clear if the train was even on the track.”

Dr. Doxsey’s mastery of the telescope was put into service in 2004, when the NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe decreed an end to astronaut-servicing missions to the telescope and Hubble’s engineers and astronomers were scrambling for ways to prolong its life. Among other problems, the gyroscopes that help it find and keep fixed on points in space had a habit of failing. “It looked pretty grim,” Dr. Sembach recalled.

Working closely with engineers at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Green Belt, Md., Dr. Doxsey and his team worked out a way to save the fragile gyroscopes, by operating only two of them at a time (normally three are required, one for each dimension of space) and by filling in the missing information from other spacecraft systems.

Dr. Doxsey’s team and the Goddard team even devised a way for it to run on only one gyro, should it come to that. For five years, the telescope performed as well on two gyros as it had on three, until astronauts finally arrived last May to give Hubble a new lease on life.

Dr. Lauer said, “In a sense, he was sort of the ‘Scotty’ to all the astronomers who used the telescope,” referring to the engineer on the television and movie series “Star Trek” who always managed to keep the spaceship Enterprise going.