Allan D. Angus

Kleptocracy metastasizes

Revisado: 04-10-25

It’s an old story: power corrupts. Perhaps a subtheme here is hidden money corrupts secretly. The scope of human corruption across the globe with major centers in Moscow, Beijing and increasingly DC is amazing.

Get this book and elbows up.

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I thought I knew, but no...

Revisado: 11-28-22

Perhaps I was lucky, but my parents had different religious backgrounds. My mother was Catholic, and my father was raised very Scottish protestant. For his part, my father was no longer practicing, and my mother never went to church for her feelings of sinful guilt. However, she insisted on me getting some Christian education. Unfortunately, they could only agree on a little Lutheran church close to our home. We did not have a car, so every Sunday, I would walk to Sunday school myself from about age seven and on.

I did love Sunday school. I loved dressing up in my Sunday best. I loved the Bible stories. I loved the Christmas pageants. But eventually, the good times had to end. Finally, I got old enough to join the grown-up church upstairs. It came to light that I had never been baptized, which led to extra steps in joining the adult side of the church. By this time, I was 12-13 and attending junior high right across the street from this church. To aid my education, my father had signed up for the Encyclopedia Britannica, which I began to devour. Since all of that apostle creed, catechism, etc., was on my mind, I started with what the Encyclopedia had on the bible and all things Christianity.

Imagine my surprise to read that the gospels were dated from the late first century (Mark) to the fourth (John). Then all of the mystery cult myths echoed in the Jesus story; Attis, Osiris, Romulus, Mithras, and so on. My young belief in all the stories was shattered, and I never completed my induction into the church.

At university, I came across the works of Carl Jung, Mercia Eliade, Joseph Campbell, James Frazier and others. I bought and read everything from these authors, including esoteric volumes from Jung on alchemy and the evolution of the Arthurian legend as a modern update to the Christian myth.

Also, in university, in physics and engineering, I encountered Bayesian methods, maximum entropy methods, information theory, and again, everything E.T. Jaynes had written on the topic. I used these methods myself in my research.

So I thought I knew these topics. Yeah, right. Dr. Carrier disabused me of that mistake. I had no clear concept of the first-century BC Christian cult that postulated a messiah who was sacrificed, as Carrier says, in outer space by Satan. The underpinnings of this belief in Judaism were not clear to me, although I was well-apprised of the relationship to earlier mystery cults and young dying gods. While I knew enough medieval philosophy to be aware of Christian selectivity about who they would retain (neo-Platonists like Plotinus, for example), I had not appreciated the distinctions between Mark and Matthew on Torah observance or not. Paul opening up the religion to gentiles is well-known, but the evolution of the gospels in a timeline that ran from Paul, circa 50AD, to John, circa 300AD or so, and what the change entailed had passed me by.

Two thousand years of "Christian thought" has damaged the collective brain. Every time the world manages to escape some war or cataclysm enacted by true believers, it takes almost no time for the next fever dream to infect this damaged brain. Carrier defines methods of critical thinking that would assist in correcting this damage, but no true believer will ever appreciate the clarity and logic of his proposal, IMHO. The current tool for winning arguments is the trusty AR-15.

In another venue, Carrier has suggested that most conservative Christians embody the anti-Christ, as opposed to the Christ, in the sense that they deny Christian theology and express the exact opposite. Turning the other cheek is one example. Rendering unto Caesar (paying taxes) is another.

I recommend Carrier's book to anyone living in the world, anywhere. Even if you are not in a Christian nation (US), and not a Christian at all, it will give you a clear-eyed view of what the history is, what with all its witch trials, indigenous people's massacres, Catholic/Protestant/Jewish battles, holocausts, Christian nationalism, and so on.

Be well...

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I thought I was educated

Revisado: 11-14-22

I have two degrees in science and engineering and I thought I knew a few things about the history of science. Well no.

Dr Carrier disabused me of that fallacy and showed that almost everything I had been told from elementary school forward about science before the Renaissance was claptrap.

Thank you, Dr Carrier, once again, for enlightening me in my old age.

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Not worth a credit

Revisado: 10-17-22

I saw an interesting review of this book on Apple News and ordered it from Audible. After an hour or so of the author’s self-aggrandizing babble and faked-out statistical “beliefs” I started to skip over the following material. About all that I found interesting was a recommendation to check out NR/NAD. To my way of thinking, the author’s most outrageous claim was a prediction of population growth based upon availability and use of COVID vaccines. This was made by mid-2022 when the pandemic and vaccine denial of conservatives everywhere was well known. Finally, the last few minutes of the book with 14 recommendations just seemed to be cut off. Whatever…. The worst thing I’ve ever heard on Audible in years.

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Journalism v Science

Revisado: 08-24-19

As the authors write in their summary, modern science could be said to have begun with the creation of various scientific bodies who published journals in which members could offer papers subject to peer review. Whatever thesis a paper might support, it would be printed only after review of its data, logic, references, and conformation with existing knowledge. While, at the edges of scientific inquiry, there is often dispute about theory, the body of evidence and its coherence with accepted theory dominates. For example, the Special Theory of Relativity is a given.

OTOH, modern journalism, especially TV journalism, loves a good fight. The latest clip of a Dem sounding off on a Trump move or Trump sounding off on AOC or better yet, a Proud Boy and an immigration lawyer in a shouting match makes for viral video that drives advertising clicks.

The average human being doesn’t get their information on climate change, acid rain, tobacco smoking, pollution controls, CFC damage to the ozone layer, nuclear winter, and so on, from reading peer reviewed scientific sources. They get their information from journalism. And journalism loves a debate.

As this review demonstrates, a debate format might make great journalism, but it’s lousy science, especially when the topic is the potential collapse of a habitable planet because of manmade causes.

The book covers the artificial creation of doubt about settled scientific evidence in all of the areas I just touched on, by a small group of bought and paid for actors with some scientific credentials but no expertise in the specific subject being questioned. The businesses who most felt under attack have gradually coalesced around a now proven model for casting doubt on settled science by manipulating the journalism of its presentation to the public.

Why? Because there’s a lot of money to be made in selling unregulated products. Meanwhile, the Amazon is burning, Greenland and the Antarctic are melting, and every new month sets a record for being warmer than ever before.

Scientists appear to have a certain contempt for those who make their subjects accessible to the public. Carl Sagan fell afoul of this problem years ago during the nuclear winter debate.

I am increasingly of the opinion that modern journalism is failing the public on what constitutes settled knowledge, scientific or not, and that the “information commons” is almost irretrievably damaged by Fox News and the like. I found this book through Sean Carroll’s Mindscape podcast. That is just the sort of thing that might defeat these Merchants of Doubt.

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Best book on Trump/Putin

Revisado: 09-19-18

While Putin’s Kleptocracy details Putin’s rise to power, and other books tackle interference in the 2016 US elections, this book goes back 40 years to show the breadth and depth of connections between Putinworld and Trumpworld. I have to imagine that Mueller’s report will be Unger’s book complete with proofs. As a side note, until reading this, I was unaware of the connection that Mueller had already gone after Mogilevich in Budapest years ago. It also becomes apparent why Trump wanted to fire Bharara.

Like so much of domestic US coverage, the focus of much reporting is on Putin’s influence on the election of Trump. What Unger documents is Putin’s broader strategy of destabilising every Western nation and alliance without fear or favor. From creating 20 million Syrian refugees to flood Europe and then fostering anti-refugee parties, to Brexit to investments in Toronto and Winnipeg, while Trump may be Beelzebub, Putin is as close to Satan as any man standing.

I suppose that right now it’s an open question as to whether historians will count Putin along with Peter the Great or Beria, a creative force or a destructive engine. My vote is for the latter, so far. He has certainly deconstructed the weaknesses of the West. Or perhaps that was Surkov?

We appear to be in the middle of Surkov’s WWIII and we are barely aware of it.

I highly recommend Unger’s book to you.

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