meehawl

It’s Election Day in the Islas Malvinas Falkland Islands. What a great day for democracy. Of course, I can’t really see the UK granting the weak pseduo-Crown Dependency Falklands government any real local power or veto, mainly because of of long-term economic strategy.

The real reason the UK was so eager to hang on to the Falklands is that as well controlling excellent Antarctic fishing grounds, it sits nicely on some underexploited, rather extensive oil deposits. Pending some developments in deep sea extraction technology, it’s estimated that the Falklands oil fields will be able to produce ~500K barrels per day. With a 3000 person population, that’s just over 150 barrels each per day, or around 61K barrels per person, per year. Were the Falklands to be independent, that would put it into UAE/Kuwait/Qatar status for sheer filthy lucre per inhabitant. Of course, neither the UK nor Argentina is likely to allow the Falklands to become independent and retain most of its oil wealth for itself.

I also find it unsurprising that only after Scotland’s North Sea oil flows have begun to dwindle has the UK’s Westminster government finally become somewhat willing to allow the Scots any measure of devolution and self-government.

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Kermit the Frog as a multiplicity of necromancers. Incredible!

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The position in which Jamadi died [is] a form of torture known as Palestinian hanging, in which a prisoner whose hands are secured behind his back is suspended by his arms. (The technique has allegedly been used in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) … When Diaz entered the shower room, he said, he was surprised to see that Jamadis knees had buckled, and that he was almost kneeling … Diaz, sensing that something was wrong, lifted Jamadis hood. His face was badly bruised. Diaz placed a finger in front of Jamadis open eyes, which didnt move or blink, and deduced that he was dead. When the men lowered Jamadi to the floor, Frost told investigators, blood came gushing out of his nose and mouth, as if a faucet had been turned on” … Dr. Michael Baden, who is the chief forensic pathologist for the New York State Police [said] He also had injuries to his ribs. You dont die from broken ribs. But if he had been hung up in this way and had broken ribs, thats different. In his judgment, asphyxia is what he died fromas in a crucifixion.

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Guantnamo is becoming like a little American town. A Starbucks had recently opened, and a McDonalds and several other restaurants did a brisk business. The area was unpleasantly wet and hot when I was there, but also surprisingly beautifullush and green, framed by hills of tropical jungle and blue mountain peaks. During their free hours, the soldiers swim at the coral beaches and dive. There’s even a golf course.

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I complained that too many world cultures were primed to reject the idea of random evolution through natural selection because most cultures or ideologies came out of or are immersed in and dependent upon a historical dialecticism. Someone took me to task for including Hinduism in the list.

A fundamental tenet of Hinduism is that this is not a rudderless world of chance events but instead is shaped by vague metaphysical forces that manifest as “karma”, or a cycle of cause and effect that propagates in a punctuated manner through time, the mechanism of which can be harnessed by individuals to enhance their position within the universe. In essence, it is spiritual Lamarckism. It is manifested very directly in Hinduism through the approaches of Vedanta and Tantra.

It presupposes a metaphysical calculus, wherein karma past (sanchita), karma present (parabdha), and karma future (kriyamana) are judged by a deity and, upon passing a certain point, enables the soul to reach moksha, a point of spiritual singularity or ultimately recursive development. It is the dissolution of the “name form” and union with the metaphysical force that created the universe. It is a release from the yoke, or burden, of existence. It is the union of the atman with the Brahman.

Sikhism, Buddhism, & Jainism, as descendent religions of Hinduism, also share this developmental approach. It should be noted that some of Hinduism’s descendent religions, such as Buddhism or Jainism, retain the idea of karmic development while removing the Brahman as a consciously aware or morally judgemental deity.

I enjoy reading the Rig Veda and other Vedic texts as much as the next person, but while I admire their artistry, I do not share their enthusiasm for asserting that their accounts of anthropic manifestations of a cosmic guiding principle are grounded in fact.

Most religions are selling Lamarckism, in one form or another. The idea of cosmic randomness is usually reserved for the likes of Azathoth.

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North Carolina’s pro football team got rid of two cheerleaders who were arrested at a bar where witnesses told police the women were having sex with each other in a restroom stall.

Witnesses said the women were having sex in a stall with each other, angering patrons waiting in line to get into the restroom at the club in the Channelside district.

The Panthers have fired Thomas, a dance major at UNC Charlotte, and Keathley, a nurse at Carolinas Medical Center. The hospital has put Keathley on administrative leave without pay, a spokesman said. Meanwhile, Penthouse magazine is trying to convince them to pose nude.

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Someone asked recently was “England” a democracy, given that it has a monarch. One trouble with this question is its sloppiness in assuming that “England” is the entirety of The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. In fact, of all the constituent nations of the UK, only England has no real, functioning national government. Scotland and Wales got their own legislatures recently, while Northern Ireland’s pops in and out of existence depending on levels of testosterone prevailing there. It’s interesting to note that unlike the UK’s national legislature in Westminster, Scotland and Wales’ devolved legislatures are elected using a vaguely proportional voting system, while Northern Ireland’s use an even more proportional voting system similar to that used in the Republic of Ireland.

The UK’s Crown Dependencies/tax dodge islands (Isle of Man, Jersey, and Guernsey) also have their own legislatures. The Isle of Man’s legislature, in fact, predates all other governments within the UK by several hundred years. I’m anticipating Cornwall getting its own legislature sooner rather than later, because devolution is all the rage in the UK at the moment.

All the nations and dependencies of the UK do though, of course, acknowledge Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor as Head of State by virtue of her direct legal descent from Electress Sophia, Princess Palatine of the Rhine (1630-1714).

The Act of Settlement (1701) defines who can be Head of State of the UK. Basically, you can be any religion but Roman Catholic and can not have married a Roman Catholic or be descended from any union where a Catholic was involved. This Catholic exclusion defines the legal descendents of the above-mentioned Sophia, a relative of William and Anne of Orange, the victors of the last successful military coup within the UK (1688).

It’s a curious and discriminatory historical accident that Catholics are excluded from possibly becoming the UK’s Head of State. When written, the Act seems to have assumed there could only be “Protestants” and “Catholics”, and so the definitions are very strict about what constitutes a Roman Catholic, but very loose about what constitutes a “Protestant”.

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Can one occupant of a home grant the police consent to search, thus effectively vetoing the stated objections of the other?
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Justice Anthony Kennedy is concerned about the scope of the search: “What if the wife says it’s OK to come in and OK to look in her husband’s top drawer?” Smith says that depends on whether he has “exclusive use of his top drawer,” or whether, perhaps, “she has put some socks in them.” Whether there is a man alive who allows his wife to tuck a few pairs of her socks into his top drawer is not explored.

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Feith held up a piece of paper and read aloud an account of al-Qaida’s ties with Iraq in the early 1990s. Then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, a man well-known and well-liked in Washington for his gentlemanly manners, looked on, aghast at the scene. Wilkerson told me that after the end of the meeting, he got a copy of the paper and determined it was a newspaper clipping that had been retyped in the vice president’s office to be presented as “intelligence.”

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So this is how imaginings of alien abductions take place. I entered the shower this morning at my usual time (noted because I checked the time as I was switching off the phone alarm). I exited the shower at some indeterminate time. After I did the usual shaving, scratching, and assorted ablutions. However, when I finally checked my watch getting breakfast ready I was surprised to realise that I was around 15 minutes behind schedule. Lisa told me “I *thought* you were in the shower longer than usual”.

I can only assume that somehow I fell asleep or dozed off into an insensate fugue while standing up! When I think about it, I can;t actually firmly recall showering at all. It’s all hazy.

Were I living in a trailer park I would probably conclude that I was abducted for around 15 minutes and subjected to the anal probe. But I was not. Of course, thats what they’d want me to believe, isn’t it?

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