The Contrarian

Satan's Stargate.

Our friend Tanner hipped us to this awesome YouTube clip of an odd British gentleman explaining how the Large Hadron Collider is a Gateway to the Old Gods. Actually, he calls it Satan's Stargate, but whatevs.

To be fair, the Hadron project has spurred some quasi-legitimate fears about accidental black holes. (Dvorsky examined the collider's existential risk factor not too long ago.) But a trans-dimensional portal through which the Nephilim will reenter  our realm? That's a new one. 

Favorite quote: "Allegedly the machine is to find a particle. . . nicknamed by the scientists or the Freemasons — same thing — as the God particle." And: "You could be seeing some flying saucers by this summer." The latter probably depend on this year's mushroom crop. . . right Jebson?.

Enjoy:

One Year of The Contrarian.

So this here blog is now one year old. (Our archives go back to 2005, but that's because we were under the Solidstate mantle until last May.) Since separating from our alternative newsweekly progenitor, The Contrarian has grown steadily, picking up readers and adding two fine contributors, Jebson Interlandi and James P. Caldwell.

I'm really proud of what we've accomplished in the last twelve months. We publish every day, and NEVER dumb anything down, despite conventional wisdom to the contrary. We continue to pick up unique (and returning) visitors, and we get more daily hits than the site from which we were spawned. Not bad for a completely unaffiliated personal blog that scribes on some pretty arcane subjects.

But enough of the self-aggrandizing. It's really all about you regular readers, stumble-upon-ers and lurkers. So I put the question to you: What would you like to see more or less of here at The Contrarian?

Leave your suggestions in the comments field. Who knows, we may even listen to them!

Thank you, John Edwards!

Did I Just Call The Entire State of West Virginia Racist?

If not, then I strongly implied it. How 'bout this: West Virginia has racists in her midst. So do other states. But maybe not as many.

Is that a fair assessment?

UPDATE:

Stats from HuffPost:

According to the exit polls, West Virginia’s voters revealed that they are the most racist in the country so far in the Democratic primaries. Fully 20% of the voters consisted of whites who reported that race was a factor, and they voted for Clinton 84-10 over Obama. That’s a total racist vote of 17%, exceeding the racist vote in all of the previous primaries where exit polls were taken, and going far above the 13.7% in Arkansas, the most racist state before now in this election.

So I dunno. You hear all this shit about black women being tortured, and newspaper quotes from people saying things like "‘Hang that darky from a tree!’" and you start to form some opinions.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE:

Maybe we can just blame the media.

(West) Virginia Is For. . . Losers?

Well, Barry got trounced last night. No surprise there, really — West Virginia is Clinton country. Most people were predicting a 10 to 20 point victory margin, but it ended up being more like 40. What does this say about Clinton's campaign? What does it say about Obama's? What does it say about West Virginia?

Clinton is done. There's nothing she can do about it. West Virginia is a nice score, but doesn't net her many delegates, and certainly not enough to stop Obama. Plus she's 20 million in the hole, and owes tons of money to the small mom & pop vendors who make her signs and pamphlets. (Yet she's good about paying the giant cable companies for her slick ads.) Dana Milbank of the Washington Post compares Hillary's campaign to the Monty Python's infamous dead parrot sketch. Funny. And true.

Obama soldiers on, flag lapel pin and all. It's clear he's gearing up for the general election against John McBush, and he's not gonna let the big defeat in WV distract him. Hillary trumpets the fact that no President since 1916 has been elected without carrying the state. “John Kennedy didn't have the number of delegates he needed when he went to the convention in 1960," she told supporters, "but he had sumpthin' equally as important — he had West Virginia behind him." [My emphasis; her opportunistic adoption of the local parlance.]

The New York Times' Maureen Dowd suggests Obama will have real trouble turning West Virginians his way come the general. That's why his campaign is redrawing the electoral map to concentrate on states previously considered unwinnable by Dems. It' a calculated risk, but it could pay off.

There's really no way to look at the situation in West Virginia without stating the obvious. In a state whose white population tops 95 percent, only one conclusion can be drawn. WV is chock full of racists. This is something the news networks are reluctant to come out and say; instead, they offer anodyne statements like "West Virginian voters are white and socially conservative." Translation: they call black men "boy," and talk gleefully about lynching on call-in radio shows.

An entire state that indulges in open bigotry and willful ignorance. And this is Hillary's base! Maybe the question souldn't be why Obama can't win the undereducated, white and old people vote, but rather why Clinton can't win the educated, young and BLACK vote?

We should just put West Virginia behind us. If they want to wallow in pre-Civil War fantasies about white superiority while the rest of America looks to a post-racial future, I say let 'em. Better yet, let's annex the state and set up reeducation camps like they did in China during the Cultural Revolution. Okay, that's going way too far.

America's racist past is its racist present, at least in pockets of the country. I find this heartbreaking, as I do Clinton's willingness to embrace this sad fact for the sake of political expediency. That's why the so-called "dream ticket" is a joke.

I'd love to see Chuck Hagel as Barry's veep. Anti-war Republican, Vietnam vet, good guy. Who do you think should be on the ticket?

Brain Dharma.

Image: Alex Grey

David Brooks has a very interesting Op-Ed in today's New York Times, called "The Neural Buddhists." The piece posits a near future where advances in neuroscience lead to a new understanding of the transcendental experience. This means a major challenge to Judeo-Christian religious hegemony.

Instead of science reaffirming a trend towards materialism, it will present a broader view of mental processes and their mystical/ethical implications."The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going end up challenging faith in the Bible," Brooks writes.

Scientists have more respect for elevated spiritual states. . . the mind seems to have the ability to transcend itself and merge with a larger presence that feels more real.

This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in the form of militant atheism. Instead it will lead to what you might call neural Buddhism.

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is. . .

. . .the real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits. It’s going to come from scientists whose beliefs overlap a bit with Buddhism.

I say right on. Read the full piece here.

Protecting the Internets.

Brooke is in San Jose, CA, at a Media Access Project event about the interwebs. We're both going back out next month for another MAP-sponsored net thingie. Then we'll swing over to San Fran and bug the boy from Blammos.

Speaking of net neutrality, my org, Future of Music Coalition, is gearing up for the release of a CD to benefit our Rock the Net Campaign. The record comes out on July 29, via our pals at Thirsty Ear Recordings. It'll be prominently positioned at Coalition of Independent Music Stores shops, so you Pure Pop shoppers have no reason not to pick it up. Artists who kindly donated tracks include:

Wilco
Bright Eyes
They Might Be Giants
Aimee Mann
The Wrens
DJ Spooky
Vernon Reid
Matthew Shipp
David Bazan
Palomar
The Classic Brown
Portastatic,
BC Camplight
Guster

So yeah, it's a pretty big deal. I've been super-busy project managing the release, writing the liner notes, securing the artwork and putting together a neat download card promotion to coincide with the National Conference on Media Reform — which takes place in Minneapolis on June 6-8.

It occurs to me that I haven't really explained net neutrality here at The Contrarian. At its root, net neutrality is about choice, freedom of expression and access to information. And  tubes. A whole series of 'em, even.

Net neutrality ensures that everyone has the same level of access, and can upload and download the legal content of their choice. The Internet grew up with these principles; indeed, they're its lifeblood. But Big Bad Telecom wants to charge content providers a fee for the faster delivery of their sites, which could cripple innovation, inhibit free speech and move us that much closer to a monoculture where music is all Nickelback all the time and Brawndo is the beverage of choice. Sorta like now, but worse.

This issue is incredibly important for musicians and fans. Imagine going to your favorite band’s website, only to have it take forever to load because they weren’t able to cut a deal with their Internet service provider. Or maybe you’re redirected to a totally different site, where the artist only gets a fraction of the revenue from your purchase.

The internet has made it so entrepreneurs, innovators and artists can do business without unnecessary bottlenecks and gatekeepers. There's  low barrier to entry, and you can reach people around the world. We need to preserve our open access to the most powerful communications tool in history.

I do need to make something clear: all you freetards out there should just get off the net neutrality bus right now. It's not about protecting your right to steal music. Or video. Or software. You people are jerks, and I don't like you.

Net neutrality doesn't prohibit copyright holders exploring ways to prevent piracy. It's a separate issue — NN is about access, "filtering" is about enforcement. Net neutrality only preserves the public’s access to lawful content, applications and online services, which leaves the door open to discuss strategies to combat illegal filesharing — something the ISPs have every right to do.

What the ISPs wouldn't be allowed to do is discriminate against legal applications and/or competing services, like Comcast did by  delaying BitTorrent traffic. You see, there's a perfectly legal company called Vuze, that offers audiovisual content using BitTorrent technology. As it happens, they compete with Comcast's own audiovisual service. Which makes the whole "managing traffic" argument that much flimsier.

Filtering or watermarking, which net neutrality allows, is a whole 'nother ball of wax.

Of course, many believe that filtering would spark an encryption war with no end. And there's doubt about how "smart" the pipes need to be to tell the difference between legal and illegal material. These are valid points. But they should not stop us from adopting a set of guidelines that will allow the internet to function as an open platform to all, and not just the big corporations. Or else we'll be throwing the baby (and American competitiveness, and innovation, and culture) out with the bathwater.

More on this subject later, I'm sure.

Goobers.

Give Ben Stein Money. . . By Jebson Interlandi

"Darwin said nothing about how life originated."

Who wants to have some fun today? The above quote is from Ben Stein during his appearance on the Glenn Beck show back in 2007. Stein, famous for his classroom-cameo monotones (and speeches for Nixon), released a film in February called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. The "documentary" argues for the inclusion of "Intelligent Design" discussions in the public realm, particularly in the classroom.

Although I've yet to see the film, Stein's primary objective seems to be questioning Darwin's Theory of Evolution. Stein suggests that since it hasn't yet explained the origins of existence, Intelligent Design should be entertained as an alternate hypothesis.

Nothing seems to illicit as much bitter back-and-forth as Creationism vs. Evolution, but no one ever talks about how fundamentally STUPID and INEFFECTIVE the entire dispute is. In fact, actual debate between these two worlds is simply impossible. Supposition and science are totally different things.

Now, I'm not an expert. But from my understanding, a theory is an argument that can be falsified through processes of experimentation. In some cases, a theory becomes law, such as the Law of Gravity. Intelligent Design is a claim stating supernatural power(s) deliberately created all Life. It is not a theory, since it can neither be proved or disproved. It's merely somebody's assertion.

Of course, some in the scientific community posit that Existence is the result of a Big Bang, Cosmic Egg, or Electrical Bolt to the Mud Puddle, but these are only guesses. Frankly, this is all anyone can do. Yet there are key differences between empiricism and assumption. Intelligent Design is a conjectural activity with a supernatural worship agenda. Evolution is a theory regarding an ongoing process of adaptation and survival. Evolution utilizes a different critical framework than Creationism, rendering debate between the two futile.

Stein is troubled that Darwin didn't answer how life began or how cells came to be, and his counter-proposal is Intelligent Design. On a recent Bill O'Reilly segment, Stein claimed that supporters of ID are failing to be heard. Hey Stein, guess what? Since at least the days of Thales, every fucking thinker has been discussing and speculating about the supernatural or natural origins of life. The mythological arguments have been made and are certainly well known. They continue to be claims and guesses; that's all they will ever be.

To be fair, Stein is mostly concerned with modern frames of discourse. Scientists and other professionals do run a risk of  harassment if they voice religious beliefs. Freedom of speech still stands, but pointing out the possibility of God or Tiamut is frowned upon in the scientific community, mostly because it's irrelevant to their work. The aim of experimentation and research is to achieve results, and simply saying the world may have been created is unnecessary.

I've said it before: if Intelligent Design wants a place in the classroom the teachers better be prepared to address every single Creation Story known on this planet, as they are all equally possible and impossible. You say Jehovah, I say Uranus.

O'Reilly asks: "Why can't you just mention in Biology class, or whatever class you want, that there are theologians who believe a higher power was responsible for first life?"

Most children do, in fact, know there are theologians who believe in higher powers. Hell, even Secular Progressives are aware of the concept. If you are wondering why public schools don't educate on supernatural primogenitors, it's because we have churches for that. So if you want spoon-fed answers to the unanswerable, you've got a place to go, and plenty of flavors to choose from.

I've heard it suggested that Stein is only in this racket for the money. By rallying for controversial Creationism, Stein is guaranteed attention, publicity and a fatter wallet. Now that's a decent theory.

Wesley Crusher Gets Political.

Remember Wil Wheaton from Stand By Me and "Star Trek: The Next Generation?" Of course you do.

Well, Wil is all growed up and is now something of a wonk. And of course he's got a blog. I bring this up because he recently posted an excellent summary of our current Hillary Clinton problem. It's a lot like what I've been writing, but the white-knuckle rage is a bit more subdued. Check it out.

And here's the Madatoms post that got Wil all worked up: "Hillary Clinton: The Psycho Ex-Girlfriend of the Democratic Party."

Good stuff, ja?