My two senators, Cornyn and Hutchinson

are worthless--& Cornyn is actually vile. 

I've just read Krugman's take on the inadequacies of the proposed stimulus plan & I think now would be the time for everybody who has a potentially responsive Senator & representative to urge them not only to pass this piss-poor stimulus plan (as a niggling start), but to urge their Democratic Senators, if they have any, to do away with the effing filibuster.  I know that in the past it has occasionally been used to good effect by the Democrats to block an especially obnoxious Supreme Court appointment, but by and large, the Democrats do not use the filibuster effectively, and the Republicans do.  If and when the Republicans regain the majority and get Caligua appointed to the Supreme Court, the Democrats can take it to the masses with at least as much effect as they have wielded the filibuster in years past...The Democrats have (and have long had) the bulk of public opinion on their side with respect to the issues.  If they would start
behaving like a mass party, maybe THEY could put together that Rovian semi-permanent majority...

Obama's supporters, if he can mobilize them, may be that mass party.  

I get his emails.  I'm going to do stuff.  I gave money for Howard Dean and Obama & actually did stuff for Howard Dean.  Now I'm going to do stuff for Obama. 

R.
 
http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

On the Enigma of ESP

I read Diane Powell's book, the Enigma of ESP, or the ESP Enigma--something like that--and frankly, I was a little disappointed.  I didn't find anything new in it, except for a interesting metaphor for the mind-body problem--that is, the mental and the physical being like a Mobius strip--and I'm not sure how usefully explanatory that is. 

On a philosophical level, as far as I am concerned, the philosopher David Chalmers has PROVED beyond a shadow of a doubt that mental process can never be be reduced to mere neurological process.  On the other hand, the rough correlations between brain process and mental activity,  even if they don't prove cause-effect, are indisputable and suggestive--even when there's the suggestion that the cause runs from mind to brain. 
 
An anesthesiologist named Stuart Hameroff has proposed that consciousness is seated in the microtubles of the brain--(whatever they are, they are not neurons), and that consciousness arises as a result of quantum activity in said microtubules.  He invokes the notion of nonlocal quantum entanglement to explain the whole range of subtle psi phenomena.  Hameroff's ideas carry a great deal of weight for me because he is supported by the British mathematician Roger Penrose, who is, as they say in California,  One Real Smart Dude.

Hameroff also explicitly invokes Alfred North Whitehead's notions of panpsychism, which to me is philosophically convincing, but the very nature of which is something that perhaps can never be established by empirical scientific methods*

In all fairness,  Powell discusses Hameroff's ideas and several others of interest, and it is always encouraging to find someone from the relatively hard sciences, a psychiatrist and neurologist, no less, who is willing to go outside the box on these matters.  

But Hameroff's ideas, however interesting, are still subject to Chalmer's critique of physicalist reductionism.

*Unless it is possible to establish valid criteria for evaluating mental phenomena as empirical--whatever the hell that means. 

R.
 
http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Just this once, Digby--please be wrong

"Update: Ronald Brownstein tells us (on Hardball)that he always felt that Obama's weakness was that he didn't have a fiscal responsibility element of his platform. Because, you know, you have to be willing to cut taxes for millionaires or else you aren't fiscally responsible.

He also pointed out that in April 2001, the senate pared back Bush's tax cuts but he got some of them all back in conference so Obama could get some of the money put back into the bill before the end.

Does anyone believe that this congress will be able to do that --- even though the Dems have 18 more senators and dozens more congressmen than the Republicans had in 2001? I don't."

(Me writing now).  How many of these effing Blue Dogs are there any way?   Does Senator Reid belong to phylum chordata?  Is Senator Nelson fit for anything--especially survival?  These questions keep me awake to the point I have to soothe myself with scenarios of boiling cauldrons &  Rush Limbaugh &  Mitch Mcconell & John Boehner & David Brooks & yes, Chris Matthews...

R.

 
http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

6000 Cool People

Clifford Pickover, polymath extraordinaire (gawd, how I writhe with hatred & jealousy) has a wonder website called "Reality Carnival"  

Actually, he has several, including this one:

http://sixthousand.blogspot.com/

Perhaps at my age I shouldn't notice, but the majority of the cool people on his '6000 Cool People' are incredibly brainy women who are also--not altogether unattractive.

 
http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Withdrawal of Daschle and Killefer

Daschle's withdrawal as HHS secretary nominee & Killefer's as "Performance Czar"--whatever that is--is probably just as well.  This is probably not the time to have a tin ear about the PR impact of being an apparent (or real) tax scofflaw.  Daschle supposedly had a reputation, at least with Republicans, as being a soft-spoken but hard-nosed minority leader in the Senate.  I can't recall any instances of that hard-nosed stuff. 

I hope that Howard Dean has got his, um, stuff together.  He is the guy I would like to see as head of HHS.  Not that there's ever much justice in politics, but there's hardly anyone more deserving...
 
http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Another test of the email post to blog function

Peace, Love and War Crime Trials for the Bush Administration

---

Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now.

Test of the email post to blog system

Is it working? Peace, Love and War Crime Trials for the Bush Administration

---

Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now.