Pitcher's insightful book of 2002 charts a turning point that many of us may have otherwise missed. Until the late 20th century, politicians could get away with "spinning" the news in the faith that what you say about what is happening is the important thing. How it looks rather than how it is . This is getting harder and harder as ordinary slobs like me have access to massive sources of detailed information. Of course, some if it is still "spun" in one direction or another but we quickly learn to see the spin and seek relatively spin-free sources of information. The current struggle of Jeb Bush is a case in point. He's an old fashioned politician, trying to come to terms with the way his brother "spun" the American media to go along with the war he always wanted. The truth "on the ground" is out, exposing George II as a liar and war criminal.  So how does Jeb manage to continue the dynasty started by his father? His struggles are epic an

Career CIA insider, John Kiriakhou was jailed for telling the world about the CIA torture program immediately after Obama declared it didn't exist. This interview is full of unique insights about how intelligent, reasonable people become murderers, torturers and liars -- assimilated ruthless agenda of the CIA (basically to kill people). Robert Sheer is asking all the right questions. How does it happen? Fear . The government will crush whistleblowers. Threaten you with baseless charges and decades in prison then watch you bankrupt yourself trying to defend yourself. Ruin . The government will isolate you from your friends and colleagues Career . Even if you go through "channels", your career will be over. You can go from being a senior "insider" to selling widgets at Radio Shack. Borderline sociopaths.  CIA deliberately recruits people who are willing to put moral concerns on the "back burner" and emphasize things like career  Love of being on the ins

One of the most important threads to follow in current affairs is the war modern heroes like Julian Assange and Eric Snowden against the dragon (in this case), the US military-intelligence community. The struggle is of historic importance: full of lessons for the rest of us. In both cases, it's instructive to observe the faces of the combatants. Julian and Eric are both familiar faces -- you hear from them and hear them talk about their personal stories almost daily. On the other side, we have an army of faceless bureaucrats, afraid to even admit that they are going after these guys full time with every weapon at their disposal. Obviously, replacement of any one of these bureaucrats would not affect the battle in the least. They are zombies -- assimilated by the American "dragon". It's instructive to observe the tremendous damage that two ordinary individual guys have inflicted on the dragon.  The more the dragon fights back, the more it visibly tramples every princ

In 1969 I was awarded an M. Sc. for developing a useful set of AI techniques to solve an interesting but obscure little problem in computer language development. Back in 1969, the term "Artificial Intelligence" seemed about right. We were programming computers to solve problems that would ordinarily require human intelligence. However, what we were doing (and what we are still doing) is using powerful and sophisticated programming techniques to solve "hard" problems.  The techniques have become more and more sophisticated, the hardware has become more and more powerful and the problems have become harder - leaving the idea of somehow mimicking human intelligence in the rear view mirror.  "AI" is now an engineering discipline, routinely creating electronic systems that solve problems far beyond any conceivable human capabilities. Back in 1969, AI techniques were already very powerful and useful when applied to the right problem . However, at the time, thin

It his hard to find a more accurate and concise summary of the meaning of "law" as we experience it in the real world: " L iberal democracy rests on three distinct sets of rights: property rights, political rights, and civil rights. The first set of rights protects owners and investors from expropriation. The second ensures that groups that win electoral contests can assume power and choose policies to their liking - provided these policies do not violate the other two sets of rights. Finally, civil rights guarantee equal treatment before the law and equal access to public services such as education.  P roperty rights and political rights both have powerful beneficiaries. Property rights are of interest primarily to the elite - owners and investors. They may be comparatively few in number, but they can mobilize material resources if they do not get their way. They can take their money elsewhere, or choose not to invest - imposing substantial costs on the rest of society.

This blog was once called "diary off a Christian Skeptic" and later re-named to "The Road To Reality". In plain terms, it's about trying to figure out what the Hell is going on -- in general. The original reference to "Christianity" reflected the fact that none of us starts from scratch. We are born into a specific culture with it's own set of misconceptions, historical myths and mostly unstated assumptions about what is real and what isn't.  As we move on past singing "Jesus Loves Me" in Sunday School, we gradually become aware that the history of Christianity is the history of genocide, intolerance and endless warfare against "heathens" or "heretics". At root, this bloody tendency is inspired by the claim (unique to "people of the book") that believers are "blessed of God" - preferred in some basic sense to the rest of humanity. Even though this attitude is still prevalent among modern "b

When I try to explain the Bible, I sometimes think of an analogy that goes something like this ... Suppose that Nuclear War wipes out 99% of humanity and almost all documents. The only survivors are a small band of lucky people who have managed to salvage a disintegrating copy of "Gone With The Wind", written in a language that is no longer spoken among them, but has been painstakingly puzzled out by a few dedicated shamans. Since the "Wind" is the only connection these people have with the deep past, it has become a holy book - even more revered since it takes decades of special study to read it in its original language. Literacy is, after all, useless in this hard and bitter new world. Most people know the "Wind" only by what the shamans have told them about it. Quite naturally the people build their history of the world around the "Wind". Extensive moral lessons are drawn from it and everyone knows passages by heart. In particular, since the s

I love the metaphor of "The Shoe Box Universe" and use it frequently, especially when discussing the world portrayed in the Bible -- the world actually experienced  by the authors of that book. While the idea seems obvious to me, I'm finding that it is far from obvious to most people I talk to, so let me try to describe what goes through my head when I talk about the shoe box. I assume that everything "historical" or "factual" in the Bible was pretty well worked out before it was written down. This is especially true of the strongly mythical elements, such as the stories in Genesis but it's also true of the stories featuring Jesus, which were passed on by word of mouth for generations before being committed to Greek. This would seem to be a minor point, but the effect is to drastically obscure what the writers would see "looking back". This contrasts remarkably with what we are used to with, for example, film records of Word War II and m

This continues from yesterday ... The one insight that lead me to regard yesterday as an "Enlightenment" connects my own (somewhat quirky) "take" on the idea with the fact that reincarnation is assumed by the Buddha and all his heirs and disciples. The insight itself is really nothing new but the connection is powerful and opens up a radical interpretation of Buddhism. Reincarnation is the bedrock of Buddhism just as the "one God" is the bedrock of "religions of the book" (Christianity, Judaism, Islam). In both cases, the unquestioned "bedrock" belief creates problems of its own. Much of the intellectual "work" (Theology) of these traditions is devoted to attempts to solve problems artificially created by the theory that the entire faith is built on. When a theory is defended for centuries against all reason and evidence, the cure is worse than the disease. These theories should have been abandoned centuries ago by reductio

Today began as a lazy Sunday. I was dragging myself through  Professor Malcolm David Eckel's rather dry account of Buddhism (Great Courses - "Buddhism"). I had been getting more than a bit disappointed -- "Too much information" on Buddha, especially the absolutely central role that reincarnation plays in Hinduism and its offshoots (including Buddhism). There is a huge amount of more or less accurate recollections of Buddha's teachings (he taught for over 40 years and died at about 80). This is quite unlike the "teachings" of Jesus as presented in the New Testament -- always filtered through at least 50 years of interpretation and nascent Christian theology. You hear the voice of Jesus very faintly in the New Testament, if at all. For better or worse, you can "listen in" to the Buddha for as many hours as you have time. Plodding on through Eckel's  lectures , I was dragged through the first 1,000 years or so of evolving Buddhism, along