Life, Space Travel, Artificial Intelligence, Peak Oil and Perfect Bourbon More Complicated Than Thought

Atlantic Ocean current could be responsible for slowing global temperature increase | Science Recorder:



In the '60s, we were all pretty certain that we would have bases on the moon, travel to mars, and maybe farther by now. The US can no longer put a person in orbit.



HAL from "2001 A Space Odyssey" seemed very doable to a lot of AI researches even up into the '80s ... hopefully without the murderous insanity. Somehow, that objective seems to have moved a lot farther away. Might be nice to focus on easy phone configuration and less crashes before we take on sentience.



When I was in college, biology was "pretty sure" that life was "simply" mixing some proteins, perhaps a little laboratory "lightning", and "wallah" man would create life ... no big deal. The wait goes on ... probably gladly, when we humans bite some "fruit", the results are often not as positive as we imagine.



We've been at "peak oil" for pretty much my whole life if you like to believe "the experts" -- even with constant efforts to stop exploration and hamstring those that bring us the lifeblood of our current technology, it keeps moving into the future.



Somehow I think efforts will continue on the perfect bourbon, let alone craft beer, long after I've gone to my eternal reward.



In the linked article, scientists believe they have found a pesky Atlantic current that MAY be responsible for "slowing the warming" ... or as I posted earlier this week, maybe it is solar activity. or? Could it be that there are other things about the planet and it's climate that we are yet to figure out?



Human kind is frequently certain, most often very wrong -- but given the species "we've got it THIS time" design, and specifically the highly optimistic nature of each succeeding generation of youth, I believe that I can point to the continued leaps to "certain conclusions" with much more certainly than any of those conclusions.



Wisdom will remain far harder to attain than theories and data that appears to support such theories in some locations and time.







'via Blog this'

Holy Sunstroke Batman! Sun Influences Climate!

Sun’s activity shown to influence natural climate change:

The article is a very well written scientific discourse undeserving of my juvenile title, but really, how obvious is this? Stooges like Al Gore would like us to believe that the climate of the earth is uni-variable based on level of CO2 alone -- put more in, it gets warmer, put less in it gets colder. I continue to be simply floored that ANYONE with greater than 20 years of life on the planet and education beyond 8th grade would be so foolish as to give that thesis a moments notice!

If you think that only a single variable is affecting almost anything you are looking at in the real world, it is a pretty ironclad rule to LOOK HARDER. Let's not talk about the times we were trying to start something -- choking, checking spark, etc and discovered it was OUT OF GAS. Humans have a remarkable tendency to ASSUME (thus making an ass out of you and me) as well as jump to a conclusion -- "this explains EVERYTHING"!

We also love to believe "it's us"! We did it, we are the center, it is all about US! The earth has had 4 large ice advance/declines in the last 500K years, plus numerous smaller fluctuations, and man is only conceivably a factor in the last 10K years, there MAY be something else involved!

In this case, along with water vapor, methane, dust and no doubt a number of other things, we have THE SUN. Yes, that very large quite close star that at least those of us in the higher latitudes notice has a pretty darned significant impact on climate every year, appears to not be an absolute flat output candle -- and of course there are axis wobble and orbital variations that get thrown in there as well.

The article is worth a read -- the authors judiciously avoid questioning C02 based Warmist orthodoxy -- they probably need government funding, but they at least seem willing to consider something beyond CO2.

The study shows an unexpected link between solar activity and climate change. It shows both that changes in solar activity are nothing new and that solar activity influences the climate, especially on a regional level," said Dr Muscheler. "Understanding these processes helps us to better forecast the climate in certain regions." 

The upshot of all this is that the team claims that these results provide a testable theory for an alteration of current orbital sun/climate hypotheses, as the position and strength of the eddy driven jet is, along with other influences, proven to be related to orbital forcing (the effect on climate of slow changes in the tilt of the Earth's axis and shape of the orbit).

'via Blog this'

BO Calls Baghdadi on Beheading

Islamic State claims beheading of American journalist - Chicago Tribune:

This is W's fault.  We have a Nobel PEACE  Prize winner as President. I can imagine the call to ISIS now ...
Hey, Bro, this is Barack man ... I know you guys, I'm one of you. Hey Baghdadi man, gotta say that I LOVE the name! Could be a rappah! Like BAG  Daddy! Sweeeet! 

Say, I had you released back in '09, and I think we understand each other. I went to a Muslim school, I'm down with the Koran, Muhammad and all that. Check out the "church" I went to for 20 years, hell, God DAMN America! You gotta dig that, right?!!! FUCK these stupid Honkeys! You are kicking ASS over there and I'm your biggest fan! Kill a couple Christians for me man!

Hey, I'm a Luo Tribesman myself -- screw this US gig, lots of white shit, lots of racism -- we should smoke some blunt sometime! Where are you on that Muhammad 9 year old chicks thing? Let's talk that out in the NEAR future!

Anyway, I can dig some beheading for a good cause -- say John Boehner ( "Boner" as I call him) ...

So anyway, I'm not sure I can get you Boner right away, but consider it a future swap. I'll skate on this in any case -- I always do, but there are a lot of "tidy whitey" folks here in the US that just don't see the righteousness in a good beheading. I can help you more if you let this one slide and give me a shot at getting you close to some better heads -- say the Boner!

Anyway, T TIME! I gotta go -- just give my cell a ring and we will git it done! Nice chattin, Praise to Allah and all that! Later Bro  ...

... but perhaps the links called too early or our "citizen of the world" couldn't get a good connection.

Anyway, it is Ws fault, I'm certain of that.

'via Blog this'

Hating Government Transparency, Only Dictatorship Is REALLY "Liberal"

The Transparency Trap - David Frum - The Atlantic:



The author never actually specifies how to "fix" what he calls the transparency trap -- probably because he suspects his readership isn't ready for the call for dictatorship yet.



My favorite paragraph:

By the International Monetary Fund’s reckoning, American government spent about 40.65 percent of the national output in 2012. That’s somewhat, but not radically, less than what Germany’s government spent (44.93 percent), only slightly less than what Canada’s spent (42.02 percent), and more than either Australia (36.4 percent) or New Zealand (34.24 percent) spent. These raw numbers overstate the difference between the United States and other countries, however. The U.S. government tends to route its subsidies through the tax code—with child tax credits and deductions for state and local taxes—rather than by issuing mother’s allowances and aid to local governments, as other countries do. This mode of doing business makes both spending and taxes look lower in the United States, even when the country is doing nearly the exact same thing as its European counterparts.

I can say it over and over, and naturally only a very few people will read this Atlantic column -- the US **IS** spending money at European levels and beyond -- we are close to them in actual spending and when you add in our various tax "credits" (like "earned income credit" ... fill out your taxes and get a giant payment that is called a "refund" even when you paid in little or nothing) we largely EXCEED THEM!



So "liberals" actually loathe transparency -- especially when they are in power. We are spending like drunken sailors but not getting the "results" they want because government isn't "efficient enough" (now THERE is an oxymoron!) ... want efficient government? Get a dictator.



'via Blog this'

The Slaughter Bench Of History

Reparations for Ferguson - Atlantic Mobile:

I wonder what percentage of the black population thinks as this man? The Atlantic seems to find him representative enough to be "not a kook".

There have been young people fighting outside my window for as long as I can remember. I was no older than five sitting on the steps of my parents' home on Woodbrook Avenue watching the older boys knock shoulders in the street—"bucking" as we called it then—daring each other to fire off. From that point on I knew that among my people fisticuffs had their own ritual and script. The script was in effect that evening: show cause "some niggas jumped me in the park" "I ain't no punk" "wait right here son, I'm bout to get my shit"

"My people" . There is always going to be scripted violence among "my people". I'll admit to ignorance on "get my shit" ... too cultural for me, but maybe gun? After all, 10's of young black men die by gunfire at each other each month in Chicago alone, and nobody is writing lamentations in the Atlantic for them. That is acceptable scripted cultural violence I guess -- better to call out the extremely exceptional cases of white on black killing.

Then we come to the money quote -- the idea that maybe we could escape "the slaughter-bench of history", soon to be rebutted,

We know that America is exceptional in one key respect—we came to democracy without much bloodshed. Around the world, from Hungary and Russia to Iraq and Nigeria, we see the dream of peaceful democratization dragged again and again to what the philosopher Hegel called the slaughter-bench of history. Racial strife and murderous governments, not liberty and democracy, are the rule in history, the established pattern. We know that, mercifully, democratization scourged us only once in ferociously modern style: during the Civil War.

This is a quote from another author, James Poulos -- and the author if the column is not in the mood to accept that a mere 600K dead is sufficient blood to cover the sin of slavery.

So he ends with the not subtle at all threat that "his people" are going to visit "the slaughter bench of history" onto the US at some point -- at which I assume we will have the same sort of "justice" found in vast swaths of Africa today. His position seems to be that such is proudly part of the legacy of "his people".

This is not the singular, special fault of the police. The police are but the tip of the sword wielded by American society itself. Something bigger than Stand Your Ground, the drug war, mass incarceration or any other policy is haunting us. And as long we cower from it, the events of this week are as certain as math. The question is not "if," but "when."

'via Blog this'

Big Money In Politics, D $104M R $76M

Senate Democrats have $8M July, have $32M banked - SFGate:



You will read and hear quite a lot about Citizens United, the Koch brothers and the evils of "big money in politics".



What you don't hear is that in pretty much every case the Democrats have something around a 25-35% advantage -- union, government, education, legal, finance, telecommunications, medical, etc ... buried in this article are the figures in title -- Democrat Senate fund raising vs Republican. It's from SF, they can afford to lift the curtain and let the masses chat with Oz a bit.



The Ds  pretty much have to have a fundraising advantage, they are the dominant party and basically everyone has to curry some level of favor with them if they want to prosper -- the unions need laws to allow them to force membership, education needs grants, subsidies, new rules to force more required degrees and certifications, lawyers need more laws for them to both charge and defend various people -- the lawyer winning on both sides financially ... and so it goes.



When over 50% of the economy is either government spending, tax breaks or credits, or government DIRECTED spending (you have to put a scrubber on your smokestack, you have to keep this kind of medical record), it is no wonder the dominant party dominantes in political fundraising and spending.



I suppose that given the amount of time they have been dominant -- since the 1930's, it is also not surprising that they are dominant in the media, so we hear very little about their political spending dominance, and are instead fed myths about "big corporate money" and "the Koch brothers".



The game is to really have a token opposition in name only .., a few left leaning Rs that can be trotted out and demonized while letting the masses think they are not under one party rule.



'via Blog this'

PGI 2014, Blow Away Fireworks

We took in the Pyrotechnics Guild International (PGI) convention finale at Mason City IA this past Friday evening. As I say, the video is so misleading that I hesitate to put in in, but MAYBE along with some words it will give a TINY clue.

The video is nigh on useless -- like "getting" a space shuttle launch, an iceberg calving in Glacier Bay, mountains, or a zillion other things that fall similarly short on pictures and video, but MAYBE it gives SOME idea. My favorite part is at 5 min in, set to Pink Floyd "On the Turning Away" -- I like the tune and that was the first one they did the giant "flame flashes"on which I thought were especially impressive.

What they do is essentially create a "virtual screen", roughly 300yards wide and like 1K' high plus something like 30 yards deep, with computer controlled launching equipment and TONS of fireworks. In front of that screen are big speakers for the music.

If you have seen "Illuminations" at Epcot in Florida, that is the idea -- in some ways that is maybe "better" in some abstract sense, since their "stage" is the whole lake, huge water fountains, fireworks launchers around the lake, lasers, video projections on the water screens, etc --- BUT, you give up the sense of immediacy. "Illuminations" is "stadium full orchestra" ... PGI finale is ZZ Top live in your living room -- you are RIGHT there.

I sat with my mouth agape for most of the show -- the scope is incredible, the immediacy is simply riveting. $20 per ticket, no parking cover -- the bargain of a lifetime for unforgettable entertainment.

Next year Gillette WYhttp://www.pgi.org/convention/sites.php

If you have never seen Illuminations, do. If you get a chance to see PGI anywhere close to you ... WELL worth the trouble!

Ferguson, Brown, Wilson, Good Summary

Thoughts on the Ritual Now Taking Place in Ferguson, Missouri | Power Line:



Short, well thought, well written.



'via Blog this'

How The Party Uses Legal System to Suppress Opposition

Rick Perry is latest 2016 GOP hopeful to face legal trouble - The Denver Post:

See any pattern here? Christie, Walker, Perry -- all with "legal trouble", and one doesn't have to look very deeply at all to find that various left wing groups have taken to filing lawsuits and supposed "criminal" investigations on matters political.

This is not new. Tom Delay was pushed from politics over a bogus case relative to his transferring of political money to other Republicans in a "supposedly illegal" manner -- he won the case http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/09/19/224070833/tom-delays-conviction-overturned-on-appeal ... eventually, and too late.

Ted Stevens of Alaska lost his seat due to a corruption case that was later thrown out as bogus http://www.npr.org/2012/03/15/148687717/report-prosecutors-hid-evidence-in-ted-stevens-case ... the 60 vote Senate that allowed BOcare to pass would never have happened without Stevens being forced out and Franken "winning" by less than 300 votes in Minnesota. Note that 6K of MN same day registration ballots, heavily weighted to Franken, turned out to not be verifiable -- no such address, no such person there, etc.

I'm sure some on the left will complain that "Republicans in Congress are pressing a legal case against BO".

Yes indeed -- CONGRESS, not some right wing advocacy group. Over specific CURRENT and ONGOING policy questions -- re-writing major laws like BOcare on the fly, usurping specific congressional powers via executive order. CONSTITUTIONAL questions that are to be handled in the courts.

Rick Perry is facing his "indictment" over a dispute as to providing more funds to an Austin DA convicted of drunk driving http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/austin-texas-district-attorney-rosemary-lehmberg-resign-dui-21159650

See, if you are a member of THE PARTY, you ought to get off from whatever offence you may commit ... murder in the case of Ted Kennedy, sexual harassment in the case of Slick Willie -- if you are a member of the THE PARTY in good standing, you are to be completely protected!

THE PARTY is heavily composed of and funded by lawyers http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=K01. While it is not yet directly illegal to oppose THE PARTY, we see clear pattern of legal system attacks against those who are brave enough to oppose THE PARTY -- out and out illegality of opposition is the path we are on.

'via Blog this'

Terminating Abortion

Stop calling abortion a ‘difficult decision’ - The Washington Post:

It is hard for me to imagine that the woman writing this exists -- and if she does, it is positively chilling. I'd like to believe that she is just making up bluster because she knows that is what she is supposed to do -- maybe some woman's studies class or other left wing cheering section has shamed her into acting the part of a creature more fearsome than the mother of the "Alien" in that popular move -- at least that creature had maternal instinct.  I'll forget any Christian perspective, since she definitely never mentions any higher power. 

This was in the mid-1980s, when abortion was about women having control not just over their bodies but over their destinies. An unwanted pregnancy would have derailed my future, making it difficult for me to finish college and have the independent, productive life that I’d envisioned.

So she believes that billions of years of evolution left the human female with absolutely no attachment to the idea of carrying the child within her to term. Our species evolved to a form where there is no maternal instinct to be dealt with -- the death of a new life within her is absolutely devoid of moral and emotional content. Her own life is ALL that is of importance. Like some form of Lemming, the human race reached a place where species suicide became an evolutionary mandate.

OTOH, I'll bet she is passionate about Global Warming. If we asked her about the morality of some oil company that cared only about profits so they could be "independent and productive", rather than the idea that the planetary temperature might rise a few 10ths of a degree in 100 years, she would most likely be outraged!

The left would like us to believe that evil does not exist and that humans are "basically good". How are we to believe this?

A typical leftist human female is trained to be 100% selfish next to what those without God would assume to be the prime function of the species -- reproduction. From an atheistic evolutionary perspective, it is indeed ALL that counts -- we are the product of what atheist evolutionist Richard Dawkins called "Selfish Genes", end of story, full stop. How could those genes create this woman?

Western Civilization is proof that such non-genetic selfishness can happen -- we have aborted or controlled away so much of our future generations that our populations are in decline. The "White European descent" population has found itself too guilty, narcissistic or just clueless to bother itself with continuation of it's particular strain of the species. The Muslims, Indians, Africans, Hispanics and a few others will inherit the earth.

While the article is chilling in the sense of the moral and emotional black hole that now sucks in 100's of millions  of innocent lives in the decaying west, it does give us a glimpse of God's Wisdom.

Modern secular thinking is self-terminating! 

Christ's Kingdom is growing in Africa and South America -- some of which is washing over the borders into the declining America. This article gives us a little glimpse into the soulless abyss that we allowed to become the fruit of a once-great Western civilization.

It will surely die ... and God is obviously just!

'via Blog this'

Our Cities, Our Future

Who Lost the Cities? | National Review Online:

Well done article that covers the costs of wishful thinking in key American cities -- and gives some good hints as to what we can expect for the country as a whole in the coming decades.

The following paragraph is what has happened to our cities, but they are only in the lead, the most "progressive" -- the pathology is well at work across the nation:

1. Higher Taxes (on the productive) -- we are actively taxing work and subsidizing sloth with predictable result. 
2. Defective Schools -- with active measures to limit school choice and private schools. 
3. Crime -- Less outside the cities, but back on the rise everywhere. 
4. Declining economic opportunity -- With the exception of a few bright spots, North Dakota, Texas , Oklahoma, we are in steep decline -- where we are not, the federal government is seeking to damage the progress.

For years, our major cities were undermined by a confluence of four unhappy factors: 1. higher taxes; 2. defective schools; 3. crime; 4. declining economic opportunity. Together, these weighed much more heavily upon the middle class than upon the very wealthy and the very poor. In the case of Philadelphia, the five counties in the metropolitan area have had a mostly stable population, but the city itself lost more than a quarter of its population between 1950 and 2000 as some 550,000 people fled to the suburbs or beyond. How many people matters, but which people matters, too: They were the ones with the means and the strongest incentive to relocate. Over the same period of time, Chicago lost a fifth of its population, Baltimore nearly a third. Philadelphia is one of the few U.S. cities to impose a municipal income tax (one of the taxes Mayor Rizzo raised), creating very strong incentives to move across the line into Delaware County or Bucks County. This is sometimes known as “white flight,” but that is a misnomer: In Detroit, the white middle class got out as quickly as it could — and the black middle class was hot on its heels. Upwardly mobile people and those who expect to be — i.e., those with an investment in the future — care a great deal about schools, economic opportunity, and safety. And they know where the city limits are.

The cities are the vanguard of the "progressive" movement -- expect those results to swallow our once great nation, soon to be the equivalent of Detroit.

'via Blog this'

Shooting, Robbery, Looting, Race

Police: Brown suspect in robbery before shooting - CNN.com:

The "standard model" of "white" -- or rather "non-black" as in George Zimmerman, and in the case of some of the officers in the Rodney King case, "not truly black" -- shooting, beating, sometimes killing of a young or younger black man has repeated yet again.

The first portrayal of the "assumed victim" is always complete innocence, almost beautification. Then, inevitably we find a little robbery, a little gangsta activity, some drugs, some booze, some whatever -- and the equally inevitable charge from the black community that whatever the previous history -- or even the actual facts of the incident, "it doesn't matter, it is an attempt to blame the victim".

Then we have the looting. For some cultural reason, black communities always need to do some looting. Somehow a few flat panel TVs, jewelry and maybe some custom rims are a good way to show your solidarity with the victim dejour.

This is a major cultural difference that I'm quite certain that sociologists have fully explained, but it never seems to happen in white, Jewish, Korean or even very much in Hispanic communities. Some white kid can take a wrong turn and end up beaten, shot, raped or otherwise damaged or dead in some altercation with blacks and nobody ever seems to say "Hey, let's go loot the neighborhood Best Buy".

I have this backward idea that culture drives human behavior far more than race, economic status or even education. I don't believe that soccer hooliganism in certain stadiums in Britain or the wearing of the cheese in certain stadiums in WI are racial at all -- I believe they are cultural. But then I'm so foolish as to be a conservative, so what do I know.

So we will have another standard scripted "discussion" made up largely of talking past each other. The cops are racist, circumstances are beside the point, the kid is dead.

Am I the only one that finds it all way way too predictable? I have no idea what happened between the cop and the kid, hopefully some obvious evidence will show up. I CAN imagine that determining someone is armed or not in an encounter where physical pushing and shoving ensues with an officer is not as easy as even reading an NFL defense with a 300lb lineman bearing down on you. Robbery or not, if he was unarmed, it is a tragedy he is dead -- as it is that the guy that Tony Stewart hit is dead, or a friend guy from IBM I knew is dead because someone failed to see him and made a left turn in front of him when he was on his Harley.

Tragedy, bad decisions, death -- they all happen with way too much regularity, and sometimes we can even do something to reduce future ones -- like NASCAR deciding that there should be a rule on the obvious, stay in your car. Left turns in front of nearby oncoming motorcycles are already illegal -- maybe look twice?

I wonder if getting in any kind of physical altercation with an armed police officer will ever be perceived as a bad idea?

'via Blog this'

Siberian Craters, Methane, CO2, Vostok, Profit

Siberian craters are worrisome (Opinion) - CNN.com:

The chart is from the Vostok ice core data drilled from Antarctica. It goes back no farther because the ice melted there between 400-500K years ago.

The last time there was this much atmospheric CO2 was 3 million years ago, when seas were 80 to 100 feet higher. Since the Industrial Revolution, atmospheric methane has more than doubled, and the amount now gushing from the seas alone is 34 times what we thought just seven years ago.

The top squiggle on the chart is temp, the next one is CO2, the bottom is methane. So the article from CNN is either misinformed or lying on C02 ... it was higher 120K years ago, not 3 million, and there is an obvious pattern. Carbon dioxide and methane both rise as we hit peak temperature prior to the onset of the new big cooling cycle. It has happened 4 previous times in the last 500K years and we are clearly rising to the 5th.

Second, we admit that this loop began with us. By now, the link between fuel that jet-propels our industrialized civilization and excess CO2 and methane in the atmosphere is challenged only by those who profit obscenely from it.

Did the previous 4 rises in Co2 and methane "begin with us"? Can you look at this chart and say that this link is ONLY challenged by those that "profit obscenely from it"? I can't believe that the purveyors of the climate scare are not aware of this data. I believe that they saw these patterns and were smart enough to profit from what they knew was a natural phenomenon -- but they miscalculated how close we were to the peak -- I suspect we are now on the cooling side of the peak.

WHY do we continue to see article after article like this when the information that I have posted is publicly available on the web, easily accessible by a simple Google ... published by NOAA and other government organizations?

My view is that the reason is just as simple as the motives applied to those who "profit obscenely" -- the climate change industry has also profited obscenely -- giant fields of subsidized wind turbines and solar cells, 100's of billions in subsidies for "green energy" and countless studies, grants, offsets, etc. People like Al Gore becoming worth 100's of millions of dollars and more by not producing a blessed thing but text equivalent to the linked article.

Anyone who had basic science in school knows that this planet cycles through climate changes with or without humans and that the normal state is much colder than what we have seen in the last 10K years. I believe we are in the early stages of being rudely (and very coldly) reminded of this fact.

'via Blog this'

A Bit Of Chill Reporting

The Big Chill | National Review Online:

There has been no actual Global Warming in nearly 18 years and record cool temps continue to be broken all across the US.

I report this because the MSM doesn't. We have seen the reverse -- have a good hot spell or two, a mild winter, a streak of storms, and the MSM is chocked full of headlines breathlessly reporting the "proof of warming" -- when you report only night, it might seem to a media believer that the world has gone dark.

Does a cool summer and a very cold winter "prove" there is no warming or that there is cooling? No, but then neither does the opposite! Does it cast some doubt? Well certainly, which is exactly why it is not reported!

'via Blog this'

No Victor, No Vanquished - Ignorance Aligned With Power

Obama’s map of misreading: A comment | Power Line:

If you can stomach reading the linked BO discussion with  sycophant automaton Tom Friedman, the main thing you will get out of it is "no victor no vanquished". BO apparently read a book or got the phrase got stuck in his head somewhere else and keeps repeating it in the interview like he is high or something. Perhaps he is hoping that the rest of the world buys into the self-esteem movement, no grades, prizes for everyone,  and potentially even all the sports teams will go to no keeping score in any of the games and everyone getting a trophy at the end of the year. I guess Vikings fans would be for it -- they would finally get a Lombardi Trophy!

I find the following paragraph to summarize not just BO, but a lot of a generation of Americans to come of age around the millenium :

This was allied with a personal drive for High Moralism, the felt need to build a castle around yourself behind a moat of 12-foot thick walls from behind which you could shoot moral arrows at everyone else to demonstrate your superiority and quickly destroy any emerging criticism of yourself. So from this position of invincible ignorance allied with moral perfection and then allied with power, you could become able to cross a line in history to reach a new world shaped by your conviction of your perfected sensibility.

Certainly there have always been smug people, and many Christians were and still are more smug than they ought to be, however this PERSONAL drive for "high moralism" is largely a very recent phenomenon that I find to be very related to the post-Christian world.
I grew up in a very "fundamentalist" Baptist sect where "goodness" was a game of one-upmanship along the lines of "What is it that you DON'T do" ... no smoking or drinking were mandatory, but no dancing, no movies, no TV, no rock music -- etc, etc were all on the list of potential "moral winners".

Today it is environmentalism, recycling, vegetarian, vegan, no plastic bags, etc, etc -- the kind of moralzing that used to be confined to a few fairly obscure sects has broken out into the general public as a plague a zealotry -- in the ignorant hope that people can PERSONALLY effect a "world shaped by your conviction of your perfected sensibility".

Both "the enemy" in the case of foreign policy, and more commonly considering the current level of ignorance involved, simple reality, definitely get a vote ... no matter how smug someone is.

As I've observed since '08, when the smugly ignorant person is president, we are all in grave danger -- a fact which at least more people are now developing increasing awareness of.

'via Blog this'