degringolade

Realism / Helene Schjerfbeck/ Three Pears in a Vase

Super bowl day. Going to head over and watch with the family. I have missed one in fifty--five years. I was in the jungle and the reception was poor.

Can’t really think of anything particularly interesting today to write about. JMG has intimated that he will be running a course in mundane astrology which kinda intrigues me. I have always been curious about the side streets of knowledge. Now, a lot of you will probably take me to task for being interested in a medieval superstition (actually, it is a lot older than that, but let’s not quibble).

In the long ago, one summer before I was in the army, I took an accelerated course in Physics for Scientists and Engineers (three quarters in a single summer quarter) and I had the amazing good fortune to listen to a couple of lectures by Richard Feynman who was in town hanging out with one the Professor of the class who was with him at Los Alamos. During the lecture he pointed out that he had no particular problem with Astrology, but he laughed at anyone who said that it was “true”. Simply put, there was no way to prove if it worked or not or to figure out causal factors.

So, to make myself look smart here in the land of labile electrons, I went searching for something quotable. What I landed on instead was this.

https://sites.cs.ucsb.edu/~ravenben/cargocult.html

So, I am going to go and lay down $5.00 a month on JMG’s new addition to the rent payment. I buy his books, so what the hell. But I think that I will spend a lot of time in the next little while thinking about the nature of the Cargo Cult and politics and business and science and try and see if such a thing is still real.

From first blush, without drilling down, I am thinking is that our world is Cargo Cult gone mad.