Merge Left

You know what I mean.

GWB’s nemesis has been done in by Barack Hussein Obama. A resounding victory for Neo-Libs, eh? Without leaks, to boot. Powerful stuff.

One, two punch combo, too, with the recent SNL-, Meyers- facilitated “D. Trump is a dip-schitck and here’s the long form I’ve been sitting on” skit. Head writer for the BHO network, too, Seth?

Is it really the anniversary of Georgie’s “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!” debacle, or was that a dream?

Seems they’ve been working on this since 2004?! Could explain why Obama retained GDub’s staff, and rearranged so recently. Job finished.

On the terrorist vs US of A board: Obama 1, Usama 0. Step up from the “I protected you for X many yrs” Bush/Cheney with 0 and Usama 1 + Old Europe Targets.

A drone in Pakistan attacked a mansion in a sovereign nation and killed a person with much hatred piled upon his head. Am I to be elated? Deflated?

Its really “exasperated” and “let’s try something different-itated”, if you get my drifteration and gistification.

Closure. An eye for an I. Blindness disenlightened by drones. Pilotless. Sterile.

Powerful and stochastic.

In a world where comics spark death squads, what will this execution bring?

Can it be buried quickly enough? The coal black ea may have claimed it, and with it our hatred. Perhaps.

If we push that way. Synergize and switch.

Come on, now.

It would seem that expecting people to be convinced by the facts flies in the face of, you know, the facts.

Chris Mooney offered up a veritable briar patch of stochastic possibilities with his recent article, The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science, at Mother Jones.

This is not a new topic for the Open Left crowd. Some topics, however, may benefit from being repeated. There’s a lot of “motivated reasoning”, I think, in the deference so many on the leftish end of the US political spectrum show toward Obama and the Democratic Party in general.  This is not a novel idea. It has been hashed over by others.

There is much to be discussed about the motivations that beget the kind of rational use of the irrational that underlies this phenomenon. Or is it, the irrational use of rationality? Ivy League lawyer, Dan Kahan, sums it up:

The study subjects weren’t “anti-science”—not in their own minds, anyway. It’s just that “science” was whatever they wanted it to be.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m still on the Off Topic series.

The context of this diary is primarily cellular. We’ve moved up a level of biological scale from the previous diary, Transition. Some may suggest that the molecular and cellular scales also define the non-living/living divide (if such a thing actually exists). That topic is beyond the scope of this diary. [Besides, I tend to piss off the philosophers when I talk about the meaning of life, so let’s get better acquainted before we tear the lid off that one.]

One of the minor mysteries in biophysical chemistry is how cells manage to elicit sudden changes in various metabolic and physiologic characteristics, traits, or phenotypes. These changes are in response to signals of fuel availability and physiological exigencies pertaining to the multi-cellular individual as implied by homeostasis. The cohort of human beings pondering these mysteries as a matter of career define the word “manage” in terms of macromolecular conformational changes, enzyme catalysis, and a wide range of interactions between macromolecules and with smaller molecules. The shorthand jargon term for this is mechanism. These are not new questions. They have bugged us ever since the first moving cells were observed.

The question becomes: How do cells organize the molecules within them in order to accomplish the functions that these have been observed to fulfill?

This discussion is in context of all the caveats this community can conjure.

Read the rest of this entry »

Many of the discussions here and elsewhere often come to a semantic juncture where the participants bemoan the need to use words to convey their message and/or points.

Let’s try to be proactive, eh?

Have at it.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Off Topic series continues and this time it is chemical. More precisely, the discussion begins with thermodynamics and this Gibb’s Free Energy diagram.

It seems strangely appropriate to mention that the phrase “Free Energy” was the first thing about academic chemistry that resonated with my childlike entrancement with nature. What more could an Anarchist want? But that’s another story.

There are 2 key aspects to the energy diagram, 1) the relative position of the left and right hand states (pun fully intended) and 2) the shape/height of the transition between them. (this video explains in more detail).
Read the rest of this entry »

This is a continuing Off-Topic series explores concepts put forward by people trying to understand biological mechanisms in terms of chemistry and physics. My intent is to relate these biological mechanisms to the events observed in human societies and cultures.
The ongoing actions of human beings and other natural forces are forcing us to reassess definitions of “stability” and the closely associated mechanisms of “change”. The basis of stability implies a temporal standard. That is, how long must we fend off instability in order to be deemed “stable”? But, time is only one of the recognized biological scales.

It seems prudent to consider such from the biological perspective because ultimately, human culture, society and the politics are biological systems. More complex than an ant colony, no doubt about that, but nonetheless, a vast pile of animals crawling all over everything.
Read the rest of this entry »

On one hand we are faced with a Corporo-Conservative assault on labor unions using their mercenary GOPper legislators in WI and elsewhere.

On the other, a cultural hegemonic front that systematically excludes Progressive views, analysis, and solutions from the mainstream media, elected office, and the history of our nation.

As Merge Left was taking form from the remains of Open Left one idea that percolated up was for us to use this site to organize members to swarm other web-sites and media outlets in a effort to push their coverage toward the left. To show them that the Right Lane is Closed!

This coming Monday morning from 9 – 11 AM (CST) we have an opportunity to swarm Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) during the Midday call-in program. The site is structured to allow non-members to stream the programs in real time and to submit questions via the website or a toll-free phone line. We can do this.

Read the rest of this entry »

At this moment at the dawn of 2011 a rare alignment of instabilities is occurring. The analogy surfing through my brainpan is one of dams breaking upstream in many rivers. While each river has filled (and is filling) its “natural” flood plain, these have yet to flow together; to roil in unison. Maybe they will never find the watersheds that would push them toward each other, or maybe the connections between rivers are not found only in water flowing over rocks and dirt. After all, these connections extend through the atmosphere and are found where the climate meets the weather. For that reason, my recent posts have highlighted those of M. Stoller. because I think his analyses are an apt description of a “watershed” in the analogy that I’m currently beating to death. That labor rights and human dignity are the common foundation of the Jasmine Revolutions, the protests in Europe, and the growing movement centered in Wisconsin, USA is clear. The burst of hand-made content by those now posting here was sparked by Travis and it actively feeds forward as I post.

Travis was exactly correct, these are truly stories from the Front Lines. John has started us toward a bit longer event horizon by putting impending elections in the context of on-going events, so we have begun to gain some traction, perhaps. Even as we discuss (im)possible names for The Site to be Named Later, the steadfast dignity of the union members/supporters in WI has clearly gone viral.
Read the rest of this entry »

From the Tripoli Post. An opinion piece by Nicola Nasser. It is a bit dated, but on the scale of current events, might be appropriately considered an historical perspective.

Despite the U.S. rhetorical defense of the “universal rights” in the region, it is still premature to conclude that this hegemonic alliance will allow the Arab move for change to run its course, judging by the historic experiences of the last century as well as by the containment tactics the United States is now adopting to defuse whatever strategic changes might be created by the revolting Arab masses.

Emphasis mine.

At least two good points: 1) “premature” to conclude hegemonic change/shift, and 2) “containment” tactics are being used to damp the up-rising.

#1 is obvious, IMHO. The push for justice and dignity is more like an asymptote than a goal-line.

#2 Begs the question of whether one wishes the Jasmine Revolution to continue to spread, or to recede.

Meanwhile, at home the folks are all atwitter and askance.

Really!? What do you say when you hear, “no one could have seen it coming?”, or “Intelligence failure”?

Excuse me if I look elsewhere for some level-headed news and discussion.

Strategic Crossroad. Do we agree with GOPper Boss Ryan and tie the spreading labor “unrest” in the US to the labor unrest spreading through the global community?

In the Good Bye Threads on the now zombie-like Open Left site, I dropped a comment to Paul Rosenberg commenting on stochastic mechanisms and the blossoming of the Jasmine Revolution on the global scale. I followed up with the slap dash “Stochasticism” diary on the OLSB site, mostly to keep the feed-forward cycles churning until I could flesh out some of the ideas that underpin my “fluffy” comments to Rosenberg. So, here we go.

Stigmergy is a mechanism of self-organization among populations of animals, most readily observed in the hives and colonies of insects. As described by the conceiver of the concept, Pierre-Paul Grassé, it is the “Stimulation of workers by the performance they have achieved.” He was talking about ants and termites. The bottom line on stigmergy is that it describes ways that individual animals, acting only in accord to their own interests and seemingly ignorant or unconscious of any collective benefit that might follow from their actions, can accomplish complex tasks. The mechanism is based on communication between individuals, but it need not be direct, only beneficial. As of the moment, there is evidence that pheromones are involved in stigmergic mechanisms in eusocial animals. It seems likely that the targets of these swarms, whether food or the entrance to the hive, will also provide some kind of positive signal that reinforces their place in the network as well.

During previous discussions on stochastic mechanisms in human social networks and Rosenberg’s diary about “metrizing hatespeak” (or whatever), I noted the value of analyzing the pattern and context of word usage. At the time I was thinking about something like stochastic diffusion search algorithms and whether it might be possible to use these to analyze the words and the connections between those words in the clouds of hatespeak spewed by the likes of GBeck and ilklings.
Read the rest of this entry »