How these gibbering numbskulls came to dominate Washington

The degradation of intelligence and learning in American politics results from a series of interlocking tragedies

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• 
• • George Monbiot
  • The Guardian,
  • Tuesday October 28 2008
  • Article history

How was it allowed to happen? How did politics in the US come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of ignorance? Was it charity that has permitted mankind's closest living relative to spend two terms as president? How did Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle and other such gibbering numbskulls get to where they are? How could Republican rallies in 2008 be drowned out by screaming ignoramuses insisting that Barack Obama was a Muslim and a terrorist?

Like most people on my side of the Atlantic, I have for many years been mystified by American politics. The US has the world's best universities and attracts the world's finest minds. It dominates discoveries in science and medicine. Its wealth and power depend on the application of knowledge. Yet, uniquely among the developed nations (with the possible exception of Australia), learning is a grave political disadvantage.

There have been exceptions over the past century - Franklin Roosevelt, JF Kennedy and Bill Clinton tempered their intellectualism with the common touch and survived - but Adlai Stevenson, Al Gore and John Kerry were successfully tarred by their opponents as members of a cerebral elite (as if this were not a qualification for the presidency). Perhaps the defining moment in the collapse of intelligent politics was Ronald Reagan's response to Jimmy Carter during the 1980 presidential debate. Carter - stumbling a little, using long words - carefully enumerated the benefits of national health insurance. Reagan smiled and said: "There you go again." His own health programme would have appalled most Americans, had he explained it as carefully as Carter had done, but he had found a formula for avoiding tough political issues and making his opponents look like wonks.

It wasn't always like this. The founding fathers of the republic - Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton and others - were among the greatest thinkers of their age. They felt no need to make a secret of it. How did the project they launched degenerate into George W Bush and Sarah Palin?

On one level, this is easy to answer. Ignorant politicians are elected by ignorant people. US education, like the US health system, is notorious for its failures. In the most powerful nation on earth, one adult in five believes the sun revolves round the earth; only 26% accept that evolution takes place by means of natural selection; two-thirds of young adults are unable to find Iraq on a map; two-thirds of US voters cannot name the three branches of government; the maths skills of 15-year-olds in the US are ranked 24th out of the 29 countries of the OECD. But this merely extends the mystery: how did so many US citizens become so stupid, and so suspicious of intelligence? Susan Jacoby's book The Age of American Unreason provides the fullest explanation I have read so far. She shows that the degradation of US politics results from a series of interlocking tragedies.

One theme is both familiar and clear: religion - in particular fundamentalist religion - makes you stupid. The US is the only rich country in which Christian fundamentalism is vast and growing.

Jacoby shows that there was once a certain logic to its anti-rationalism. During the first few decades after the publication of The Origin of Species, for instance, Americans had good reason to reject the theory of natural selection and to treat public intellectuals with suspicion. From the beginning, Darwin's theory was mixed up in the US with the brutal philosophy - now known as social Darwinism - of the British writer Herbert Spencer. Spencer's doctrine, promoted in the popular press with the help of funding from Andrew Carnegie, John D Rockefeller and Thomas Edison, suggested that millionaires stood at the top of a scala natura established by evolution. By preventing unfit people being weeded out, government intervention weakened the nation. Gross economic inequalities were both justifiable and necessary.

Darwinism, in other words, became indistinguishable from the most bestial form of laissez-faire economics. Many Christians responded with revulsion. It is profoundly ironic that the doctrine rejected a century ago by such prominent fundamentalists as William Jennings Bryan is now central to the economic thinking of the Christian right. Modern fundamentalists reject the science of Darwinian evolution and accept the pseudoscience of social Darwinism.

But there were other, more powerful, reasons for the intellectual isolation of the fundamentalists. The US is peculiar in devolving the control of education to local authorities. Teaching in the southern states was dominated by the views of an ignorant aristocracy of planters, and a great educational gulf opened up. "In the south", Jacoby writes, "what can only be described as an intellectual blockade was imposed in order to keep out any ideas that might threaten the social order."

The Southern Baptist Convention, now the biggest denomination in the US, was to slavery and segregation what the Dutch Reformed Church was to apartheid in South Africa. It has done more than any other force to keep the south stupid. In the 1960s it tried to stave off desegregation by establishing a system of private Christian schools and universities. A student can now progress from kindergarten to a higher degree without any exposure to secular teaching. Southern Baptist beliefs pass intact through the public school system as well. A survey by researchers at the University of Texas in 1998 found that one in four of the state's state school biology teachers believed humans and dinosaurs lived on earth at the same time.

This tragedy has been assisted by the American fetishisation of self-education. Though he greatly regretted his lack of formal teaching, Abraham Lincoln's career is repeatedly cited as evidence that good education, provided by the state, is unnecessary: all that is required to succeed is determination and rugged individualism. This might have served people well when genuine self-education movements, like the one built around the Little Blue Books in the first half of the 20th century, were in vogue. In the age of infotainment, it is a recipe for confusion.

Besides fundamentalist religion, perhaps the most potent reason intellectuals struggle in elections is that intellectualism has been equated with subversion. The brief flirtation of some thinkers with communism a long time ago has been used to create an impression in the public mind that all intellectuals are communists. Almost every day men such as Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly rage against the "liberal elites" destroying America.

The spectre of pointy-headed alien subversives was crucial to the election of Reagan and Bush. A genuine intellectual elite - like the neocons (some of them former communists) surrounding Bush - has managed to pitch the political conflict as a battle between ordinary Americans and an over-educated pinko establishment. Any attempt to challenge the ideas of the rightwing elite has been successfully branded as elitism.

Obama has a lot to offer the US, but none of this will stop if he wins. Until the great failures of the US education system are reversed or religious fundamentalism withers, there will be political opportunities for people, like Bush and Palin, who flaunt their ignorance.

monbiot.com

George Soros on Markets

Interviewed on Bill Moyers' Journal 10-10-08 on PBS~

I caught a bit of this interview, and loved what I heard. If you don't know who George Soros is, then click here: http://www.soros.org/about/bios/a_soros but once you're finished with this blog, explore the OSI website, and then google his name.

I'll just say that besides being one of the world's wealthiest men, he's also been one of the biggest philanthropists for a very long time. He has been consistenly involved in trying to make this a better world, since 1979 when he provided funds to help Black students to attend the University of Capetown, in apartheid South Africa.

In other words, when it comes to global markets and finance, George Soros is someone that knows what he's talking about. See if you find, like I did, that you and Mr. Soros share similar attitudes and thoughts about some of today's institutions.

Saturday, October 11, 2008 03:00 PM

Bill Moyers talks with George Soros about the global capital meltdown, how he saw it coming, and what can be done now.

This is a fascinating, long form discussion between two smart people. It is a great example if using television to elucidiate ideas, discuss fact, ideas, opinions in an intelligent fashion.

Source:Bill Moyers JournalPBS,
October 10, 2008http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10102008/watch.html


BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the Journal.

You are not alone if you are worried about the financial melt down. So is my guest George Soros, one of the world's best known and successful investors, making billions in times of boom or bust. He's been warning for years of a financial melt down fueled by easy credit and sleepy regulation. Now he's out with this timely book, "The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means."
In the interest of full disclosure, you should know that I served three years on the board of George Soros' foundation, the Open Society Institute, dealing with such issues as a free press, the rule of law, and human rights. But I've had no involvement in his political activities and nothing to do, with his business interests unfortunately. It's good to see you.

GEORGE SOROS: Same here.

BILL MOYERS: Let's imagine for a moment that we're not in a New York studio but we are in Neely's Barbecue Stand in Marshall, Texas, my hometown, and we're surrounded by people I know, people who have lost half of their 401(k)s in the last three or four weeks, and what they want to know is does this financial meltdown represent the end of the American dream as they have known it.

GEORGE SOROS: No. No. I think it's got nothing to do with the American dream as such. There has been some kind of an ideological excess; namely, market fundamentalism for the last 25 or so years. And now that world is collapsing...

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean "market fundamentalism"?

GEORGE SOROS: It's that markets will correct themselves, that you should leave it to the markets, and there is no need for government intervention in financial affairs. Letting markets run rampant. And that doesn't work.
Markets have the ability to adjust and they're very flexible. There is this invisible hand. But it is also prone to be mistaken. In other words, markets instead are reflecting reality. They always look at reality with a bias. There is always a prevailing bias. I'll call it, you know, optimism/pessimism.
And sometimes those moods actually can reinforce themselves so that there are these initially self-reinforcing but eventually unsustainable and self-defeating boom/bust sequences or bubbles. And this is what has happened now.
This current economic disaster is self-generated. It was generated by the market itself, by getting too cocky, using leverage too much, too much credit. And it got excessive.

BILL MOYERS: You used the word "disaster."

GEORGE SOROS: The financial system is teetering on the edge of disaster. Hopefully, it will not go over the brink because it very rarely does. It only did in the 1930s. Since then, whenever you had a financial crisis, you were able to resolve it. This is the most serious one since the 1930s, there hasn't been one as serious as this.
Unfortunately, the authorities are behind the curve. They are reacting to these crises as they emerge. One thing leads to another, one market after another gets into difficulty. And they react to it. And they don't quite understand what's hitting them. So they are not anticipating and not gaining control of the situation.

BILL MOYERS: This is what's interesting, why wouldn't the government be able to look at what you looked at and see what's coming?

GEORGE SOROS: Because actually they have been working on false premises. This sounds very strange, but there's been this development of, this belief of market fundamentalism. And particularly the idea that markets always revert to the mean and deviations from the mean occur in a random fashion. And you can calculate it.
And you will get a nice distribution and you can anticipate it. And based on that, you can manage your risk. And that actually was based on a false idea. This namely, the markets self-correcting because the market moods have a way of affecting the fundamentals the markets are supposed to reflect.
And there's always a divergence between our perception and what actually exists. For instance, take the simplest situation, namely housing.
Banks give you credit based on the value of the houses. But they don't seem to somehow understand that the value of the houses can be affected by the amount of credit they are willing to give. Now, we've developed these fabulous new ways of securitizing mortgages, which has made credit much more amply available.
And we've been able to calculate risk. And, therefore, we were willing to give more and more credit. And that has pushed up the value of the houses. Also, of course Greenspan kept interest rates too low, too long. And so you had very low interest rates, easy credit, and house prices have been appreciating at more than ten percent a year for a number of years. And the willingness to lend actually increased. There was an insatiable appetite for these new fangled securities.

BILL MOYERS: Yeah. Nobody understood, really.

GEORGE SOROS: Which they didn't properly understand. And there was always a separation between the people who generated the mortgages and packaged them and sold them to you and the people who owned them. So nobody was paying attention to the quality of the mortgages because they didn't have an interest. They — all day collecting fees. And then there were other people holding the mortgages.

BILL MOYERS: Right.

GEORGE SOROS: And that was not factored into those instruments. The idea was that by distributing risk, you actually reduce risk. But by separating the principal from the agent, you actually greatly increase the risk. And that was not reflected. And the rating agencies didn't realize it. So they gave triple-A ratings. And then a few weeks later, those triple-A bonds became practically valueless. And that's what has happened.

BILL MOYERS: But how does the system become deranged like that? So separated from reality like an individual who goes insane because he or she is separated.

GEORGE SOROS: Well sometimes we get carried away. I mean, you know, let's say in the Middle Ages, people were religious. And so they had tremendous discussions about how many angels can dance on the eye of a needle. Now, if you believe that angels can dance then that's a legitimate question. And this is exactly what has happened here. You thought that you could slice and dice and engage in this kind of financial engineering. And it became very, very sophisticated and got carried away.

BILL MOYERS: What happened that we lost control?

GEORGE SOROS: There was a failure of regulations because they couldn't understand these new instruments. But they said, "Oh, well, the banks have very good risk management techniques. So we leave it to them to calculate their own risks."
And, you see, it wasn't only in the housing market. There were all kinds of other financial instruments. So there was not just one bubble. I describe in my book there is the housing bubble. But this housing bubble, when that burst, it was only the detonator that exploded the bigger bubble, the super bubble.
Which is this 25 years of constant credit expansion using greater and greater leverage. The amount of credit in the economy has been growing at, I don't know, I don't know the exact figure, but maybe at least twice as fast as the economy itself. I think it's more like three.
And now, suddenly, you have a contraction of credit. And it's a sudden thing. And it's a period of great wealth destruction. And that's how these poor people in Texas suddenly find that their 401(k) is worthless.

BILL MOYERS: So as we talk, Secretary Paulson and the government seem to be coming around to what you've been advocating and that is taking taxpayer money, public capital, and injecting it directly into the banks — in effect, nationalizing some of these banks. Why do you think that will work when everything else has failed?

GEORGE SOROS: Well unfortunately because they are delaying it, it may not work so well because there's a certain dynamism. And they're always behind the curve. So there are many things that they're doing now if they had done several months ago, it would have turned things around.

BILL MOYERS: That's a very gloomy assessment. You're saying that everything they're doing is coming too late? How does that ultimately play out?

GEORGE SOROS: Unfortunately, that is the case. I'm quite distressed about it. I hope that you know, eventually they'll catch up.
We are determined to put the money in, not to allow the financial system to collapse. And that's the lesson we learned in the 1930s. It's an important lesson. But because we are behind the curve, the amounts get bigger and bigger. If we understood it earlier, we could have brought it to a halt perhaps sooner. But they've got still a number of things to do. And this idea, you see, of just buying noxious instruments of you know, off the balance sheet of the banks was a non-starter.

BILL MOYERS: But that was the idea.

GEORGE SOROS: But it was the wrong idea.

BILL MOYERS: But this is disturbing, George. If everything we're doing keeps accelerating the downward negative feedback and isn't working, are you suggesting, can one insinuate from what you say that we're heading for 1930?

GEORGE SOROS: Hopefully not. But we are heading for undoubtedly very difficult times. This is the end of an era. And this is a fact.

BILL MOYERS: End of an era?

GEORGE SOROS: At the end of an era.

BILL MOYERS: Capitalism as we have known it?

GEORGE SOROS: No. No, no, no. Hopefully, capitalism will survive. But the sort of period where America could actually, for instance, run ever increasing current account deficits. We could consume, at the end, six and a half percent more than we are producing. That has come to an end.

BILL MOYERS: So what do we do now?

GEORGE SOROS: We are probably at the height of the financial crisis. I think it can't get much worse. I think it could get a bit worse yet. But then you have the fallout in the real economy.

BILL MOYERS: We're in a downward spiral.

GEORGE SOROS: We are in a downward spiral.

BILL MOYERS: How long will it go on?

GEORGE SOROS: Look the one thing that my theory says is that you can't predict the future because the future depends on how you react to it. So if we do the right things then things will not — will be less painful. If you do the wrong things, they'll be more painful. Now, so far we've been doing the wrong things. I very much hope that we'll have a different government in a few months and they'll be doing the right things.

BILL MOYERS: Well, don't be shy. What do you think the new government should do?

GEORGE SOROS: Well, first of all you have to prevent housing crisis from overshooting on the downside the way they overshot on the upside. You can't arrest the decline, but you can definitely slow it down by minimizing the number of foreclosures and readjusting the mortgages to reflect the ability of people to pay. So you have to renegotiate mortgages rather than foreclose.
And you provide the government guarantee. But the loss has to be taken by those who hold the mortgages, not by the taxpayer.

BILL MOYERS: You mean the homeowner doesn't take the loss. The lender.

GEORGE SOROS: The homeowner needs to get relief so that he pays less because he can't afford to pay. And the value of the mortgage should not exceed the value of the house. Right now you already have 10 million homes where you have negative equity. And before you are over, it will be more than 20 million.

BILL MOYERS: But, you're talking about taking action three months from now, whether it's a McCain administration or an Obama administration. What happens in these next three months? And I'm serious about that.

GEORGE SOROS: I am very worried about it. And I hope that they will have a new secretary of treasury, somebody else.

BILL MOYERS: Sooner than later?

GEORGE SOROS: I...

BILL MOYERS: You don't think...

GEORGE SOROS: It would be very helpful if...

BILL MOYERS: You don't think Paulson's up to it?

GEORGE SOROS: Unfortunately, I have a negative view of his performance.

BILL MOYERS: Why?

GEORGE SOROS: Because he represents the very kind of financial engineering that has gotten us into the trouble. And this buying off the noxious things was a...

BILL MOYERS: Buying the bad assets, that was his...

GEORGE SOROS: Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: First idea.

GEORGE SOROS: Yeah, and before that, he wanted to create a super SIV, special investment vehicle, to take care of the other special investment vehicles. That didn't fly. And they are now within a week recognizing that they have to change and inject money into the banks to make up for the whole in the equity because those banks lost money. And they can't make it up by taking their assets off their hands. You have to recognize the losses and replenish the equity.

BILL MOYERS: Is that what you would do with the bailout money now? Right now?

GEORGE SOROS: Yes, yes, yeah.

BILL MOYERS: You would put it where?

GEORGE SOROS: Into the capital of the bank so that the capital equity can sustain at least 12 times the amount of lending. So that's an obvious thing. And every economist agrees with this.
You see, what is needed now the bank examiners know how those banks stand. And they can say how much capital they need. And they could then raise that capital from the private market. Or they could turn to this new organization and get the money from there. That would dilute the shareholders. It would hurt the shareholders.

BILL MOYERS: Of the bank?

GEORGE SOROS: Of the banks. Which I think Paulson wanted to avoid. He didn't want to go there. But it has to be done. But then, the shareholders could be offered the right to provide the new capital. If they provide the new capital then there's no dilution. And the rights could be traded. So if they don't have the money, other people could, the private sector could put in the money. And if the private sector is not willing to do it then the government does it.

BILL MOYERS: The assumption of everything you say is that the government is going to be a big player now in the economy and in the financial markets. But what assurance do we have that the government will do a better job?

GEORGE SOROS: We don't. Right now they are doing a bad job. So you want to use the government as little as possible. The government should play a smaller role. In that sense, people who believe in markets, I believe in markets. I just want them to function properly. To the extent you can use the market, you should use the market.
Governments are also human. They're also bound to be wrong. Moreover, they are bureaucratic. So they are slow and they are subject to political influence. So you want to use them as little as possible. But to not to use them, see, assumes that markets are perfect. And that is a false belief.

BILL MOYERS: Has the whole global system become so complex with such gargantuan forces interlocked with each other, driving it forward, that it doesn't know how to obey Adam Smith's natural laws?

GEORGE SOROS: No, I think our ability to govern ourselves doesn't keep pace with our ability to exercise power over nature, control over nature. So we are very complicated civilization. And we could actually destroy our civilization because of our inability to govern ourselves.

BILL MOYERS: Would this all be happening if we still had a strong sense of the social compact? I mean, our social safety net has been greatly reduced. The people have a real sense that the gods of capital have left little space for anyone else. People at the top don't have much empathy for people at the bottom.

GEORGE SOROS: There is a common interest. And this belief that everybody pursuing his self-interests will maximize the common interests or will take care of the common interests is a false idea. It's a suitable idea for those who are rich, who are successful, who are powerful. It suits them to justify you know, enjoying the fruits without paying taxes. The idea of paying taxes is an absolute no-no, right?

BILL MOYERS: Unpatriotic.

GEORGE SOROS: Unpatriotic. So, yes, you must have, in my opinion, you need, for instance, a tax on carbon emissions. But that is unacceptable politically. So we are going to have cap and trade. And the trading will have all kinds of loopholes and misuse of the regulations and all kinds of ways of making money without actually dealing with the problem that it's designed to cure. So that's how the political process distorts things.

BILL MOYERS: So let's think about those people down at Neely's Barbecue going home tonight having heard you. What they've heard you say is the system is really disfunctioning right now. It's out of control. Nobody's in charge. They've heard you express your own worry that in the next three months it could get much, much worse.
And they've heard you say that you don't see much good news immediately on the horizon. So let's leave them something to think about as they go home. Let them go home and say, "Mr. Soros said here are three things we can do, simply." One?

GEORGE SOROS: Well, deal with the mortgage problem. Reduce foreclosures. Recapitalize the banks. And then work on a better world order where we work together to resolve problems that confront humanity like global warming. And I think that dealing with global warming will require a lot of investment.
You see, for the last 25 years the world economy, the motor of the world economy that has been driving it was consumption by the American consumer who has been spending more than he has been saving, all right? Than he's been producing. So that motor is now switched off. It's finished. It's run out of — can't continue. You need a new motor. And we have a big problem. Global warming. It requires big investment. And that could be the motor of the world economy in the years to come.

BILL MOYERS: Putting more money in, building infrastructure, converting to green technology.

GEORGE SOROS: Instead of consuming, building an electricity grid, saving on energy, rewiring the houses, adjusting your lifestyle where energy has got to cost more until it you introduce those new things. So it will be painful. But at least we will survive and not cook.

BILL MOYERS: You're talking about this being the end of an era and needing to create a whole new paradigm for the economic model of the country, of the world, right?

GEORGE SOROS: Yes.

BILL MOYERS: One of the British newspapers this morning had a headline, "Welcome to Socialism." It's not going that way, is it?

GEORGE SOROS: Well, you know, it's very interesting. Actually, these market fundamentalists are making the same mistake as Marx did. You see, socialism would have worked very well if the rulers had the interests of the people really at heart. But they were pursuing their self-interests. Now, in the housing market, the people who originated the houses earned the fee.
And the people who then owned the mortgages their interests were not actually looked after by the agents that were selling them the mortgages. So you have a, what is called an agent principle problem in socialism. And you have the same agent principle problem in this free market fundamentalism.

BILL MOYERS: The agent is concerned only with his own interests.

GEORGE SOROS: That's right.

BILL MOYERS: Not with...

GEORGE SOROS: That's right.

BILL MOYERS: The interest of...

GEORGE SOROS: Of the people who they're supposed to represent.

BILL MOYERS: But in both socialism and capitalism, you get the rhetoric of empathy for people.

GEORGE SOROS: And it's a false ideology. Both Marxism and market fundamentalism are false ideologies.

BILL MOYERS: Is there an ideology that...

GEORGE SOROS: Is not false?

BILL MOYERS: Yeah.

GEORGE SOROS: I think the only one is the one that I'm proposing; namely, the recognition that all our ideas, all our human constructs have a flaw in it. And perfection is not attainable. And we must engage in critical thinking and correct our mistakes.

BILL MOYERS: And that's one...

GEORGE SOROS: That's my ideology. As a child, I experienced Fascism, the Nazi occupation and then Communism, two false ideologies. And I learned that both of those ideologies are false. And now I was shocked when I found that even in a democracy people can be misled to the extent that we've been misled in the last few years.

BILL MOYERS: The book is "The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means". George Soros, thank you for being with me.

GEORGE SOROS: Pleasure.

Kentke

George Soros Bio - http://www.soros.org/about/bios/a_soros

The source of the program transcript is from a blog called Market Fundamentalism and the Madness of Crowds JOURNAL Blog - I am Not familiar with the blog's content beyond this transcript.
October 10, 2008 12:45 PMhttp://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog/2008/10/market_fundamentalism_and_the.html

Comics, Campaigns, Crisis

CBS News anchor Katie Couric interviews Republican Presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain, Wednesday, Sept. 24 in New York. The interview aired on that evening's CBS Evening News With Katie Couric.

I am not a fan of late night talk shows, and will only tune in just to catch the segment with a guest I want to hear or see.

I did see Wanda Sykes on Jay Leno this week, and she was her usual candid and very funny persona. She looked great too, radiating a beauty that seemed to arise from comfort in being herself, along with attention to health and fitness.

Her public persona is a good role model: Integrity, humor, and ease with oneself that creates a wholesome persona whereby her natural beauty can shine forth.

I also received an email with a video clip of Chris Rock on Letterman. Here's the link, because his appearance was also definately worth catching.
http://www.popeater.com/movies/article/chris-rock-bill-clinton-hillary-lost/184732?icid=100214839x1210220373x1200609800

Dave Letterman had also scheduled candidate McCain for an appearance this week, but McCain cancelled to fly to Washington to 'help with this crisis'. (help?!?)

Why did he ever do that? Letterman had a lot of fun with that decision. And it sure made me laugh.

Republican presidential nominee Arizona Senator John McCain steps away from the lectern after speaking on the financial crisis at a hotel in New York City. Barack Obama surged into a lead of six or more points in two new national polls released Wednesday, as survey data revealed fresh signs that the financial crisis was hurting his foe McCain.(AFP/Mandel Ngan)

Ah....is it just me,...... or is his body language looking like he's running away from the podium? And I hope you don't miss the expression on his face.

Any way....Enjoy!

Kentke

Letterman unloads on McCain for not showing up

NEW YORK - "Late Show" host David Letterman treated John McCain's decision to cancel an appearance on his talk show more like a stupid human trick than the act of a statesman.

The Republican presidential candidate said he was halting his campaign activities Wednesday, citing the need to deal with the nation's financial crisis, and called Letterman to drop out of the show's late-night lineup. On the air Wednesday night, Letterman assailed McCain's rationale and, with prickly humor, questioned whether the nominee — now trailing in some polls — was in trouble.

"This doesn't smell right," Letterman said. "This is not the way a tested hero behaves. Somebody's putting something in his Metamucil."

McCain spokeswoman Nicole Wallace said Thursday that the campaign "felt this wasn't a night for comedy."

"We deeply regret offending Mr. Letterman, but our candidate's priority at this moment is to focus on this crisis," Wallace said on NBC's "Today" show.

Letterman called McCain "a true American hero" but told his viewers: "This is not the John McCain I know, by God. It makes me believe something is going haywire with the campaign."
Instead of suspending a campaign, Letterman said, a presidential candidate should go to Washington to deal with a crisis and let his running mate shoulder the burdens of politicking.

"That's what you do. You don't quit. ... Or is that really a good thing to do?" Letterman said, a reference to McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. "What's the problem? Where is she? Why isn't she doing that?" he asked.

Letterman later asked: "Are we suspending it because there's an economic crisis or because the poll numbers are sliding?"

Making matters worse for McCain, his replacement was MSNBC's "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann, a constant critic of the Arizona senator.

McCain told the CBS show that he was immediately flying back to Washington, Letterman told his audience. Then Letterman showed a TV feed of McCain being made-up for an appearance on news anchor Katie Couric's "CBS Evening News."

"Doesn't seem to be racing to the airport, does he?" Letterman said. "This just gets uglier and uglier."

As McCain spoke to Couric, Letterman shouted at the feed: "Hey, John, I've got a question. Do you need a ride to the airport?"

Letterman later said: "We're told now that the senator has concluded his interview with Katie Couric and he's now on Rachael Ray's show making veal piccata. ... What are you going to do?"
___
CBS is a division of CBS Corp.

Holocaust scholars urge prosecution of Sudan's al-Bashir

Sep 15, 3:40 PM (ET)


By ARTHUR MAX
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP)


Holocaust scholars appealed Monday to the International Criminal Court prosecutor to pursue his indictment of Sudan's president on charges of genocide in Darfur.

The 130 scholars signed a letter to chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo urging him to resist pressure to drop the case against Omar al-Bashir. They warned against putting politics ahead of justice, and said al-Bashir's prosecution would "deter future atrocities."

Phone calls to officials in the Sudanese capital Khartoum went unanswered Monday evening, probably because of the traditional iftar evening meal to break the daily fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Al-Bashir, who is the first sitting head of state to face genocide charges, has in the past dismissed the ICC prosecutor's allegations against him as politically motivated and aimed at destabilizing his government.

The appeal from the scholars came as Moreno-Ocampo published an expanded version of his charges against al-Bashir, accusing him of employing all the tools of state in an attempt to eliminate three rebellious tribes in the Darfur region of western Sudan.

Up to 300,000 people have been killed and more than 2.5 million chased from their homes since the conflict in Darfur began in early 2003.

The judges at the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal, based in The Hague, have not yet responded to Moreno-Ocampo's request in July to issue an arrest warrant for al-Bashir.

The Arab League and the African Union have sought a United Nations resolution to suspend the indictment against the veteran Sudanese leader. Russia and China, two permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, have indicated they would support such a move.

But it was the Security Council that first asked Moreno-Ocampo to launch an investigation into Darfur war crimes.

Even some humanitarian organizations have voiced concern that an arrest warrant could provoke a backlash that would worsen the plight of the people of Darfur.

"During the years of the Nazi genocide, too, there were those who put politics ahead of justice," said the statement, organized by the Washington-based David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.

After World War II, when 6 million Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis, the U.S. and British governments sought to prosecute only a few war criminals so as not to jeopardize postwar relations with Germany, the scholars said.

"They were wrong then, and those who are seeking to protect Omar al-Bashir are wrong now," said the letter.

"The governments that are trying to protect al-Bashir should be ashamed of themselves," Rafael Medoff, director of the Wyman Institute, said in a statement.

The signatories included Holocaust experts in the United States, Germany, Israel, England, Russia, Australia and Canada. Medoff said many of the signers rarely participate in public protests.

Sudan's government has rejected the genocide charges. It has said the Darfur troubles result from a tribal conflict over the sparse resources in the desert region, and denied any government involvement.

Last month al-Bashir threatened in an interview with pan-Arab Al-Arabiya TV to expel Darfur peacekeepers if the international court formally seeks his arrest.

U.S. actress and Darfur campaigner Mia Farrow also called for persistence in the case against al-Bashir, referring to "a new frenzy of savage attacks upon civilians." She said a suspension of the indictment "seems criminally inappropriate. For every day that al-Bashir is in power, more people are sure to perish."

The court has issued arrest warrants for another senior Sudanese official and a commander of the government-allied janjaweed militia. Sudan has refused to arrest them and said it would not cooperate with the court.

“So Sambo beat the bitch!” -Palin

by Charley James

This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama’s win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days after Obama locked up the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

According to Lucille, the waitress serving her table at the time and who asked that her last name not be used, Gov. Palin was eating lunch with five or six people when the subject of the Democrat’s primary battle came up. The governor, seemingly not caring that people at nearby tables would likely hear her, uttered the slur and then laughed loudly as her meal mates joined in appreciatively.

“It was kind of disgusting,” Lucille, who is part Aboriginal, said in a phone interview after admitting that she is frightened of being discovered telling folks in the “lower 48” about life near the North Pole.

Then, almost with a sigh, she added, “But that’s just Alaska.”

Racial and ethnic slurs may be “just Alaska” and, clearly, they are common, everyday chatter for Palin.

Besides insulting Obama with a Step-N’-Fetch-It, “darkie musical” swipe, people who know her say she refers regularly to Alaska’s Aboriginal people as “Arctic Arabs” – how efficient, lumping two apparently undesirable groups into one ugly description – as well as the more colourful “mukluks” along with the totally unimaginative “f**king Eskimo’s,” according to a number of Alaskans and Wasillians interviewed for this article.

But being openly racist is only the tip of the Palin iceberg. According to Alaskans interviewed for this article, she is also vindictive and mean. We’re talking Rove mean and Nixon vindictive.

No wonder the vast sea of white, cheering faces at the Republican Convention went wild for Sarah: They adore the type, it’s in their genetic code. So much for McCain’s pledge of a “high road” campaign; Palin is incapable of being part of one.

Tough Getting People Who Know Her to Talk

It’s not easy getting people in the 49th state to speak critically about Palin – especially people in Wasilla, where she was mayor. For one thing, with every journalist in the world calling, phone lines into Alaska have been mostly jammed since Friday; as often as not, a recording told me that “all circuits are busy” or numbers just wouldn’t ring. I should think a state that’s been made richer than God by oil could afford telephone lines and cell towers for everyone.

On a more practical level, many people in Alaska, and particularly Wasilla, are reluctant to speak or be quoted by name because they’re afraid of her as well as the state Republican Party machine. Apparently, the power elite are as mean as the winters.

“The GOP is kind of like organized crime up here,” an insurance agent in Anchorage who knows the Palin family, explained. “It’s corrupt and arrogant. They’re all rich because they do private sweetheart deals with the oil companies, and they can destroy anyone. And they will, if they have to.”

“Once Palin became mayor,” he continued, “She became part of that inner circle.”

Like most other people interviewed, he didn’t want his name used out of fear of retribution. Maybe it’s the long winter nights where you don’t see the sun for months that makes people feel as if they’re under constant danger from “the authorities.” As I interviewed residents it began sounding as if living in Alaska controlled by the state Republican Party is like living in the old Soviet Union: See nothing that’s happening, say nothing offensive, and the political commissars leave you alone. But speak out and you get disappeared into a gulag north of the Arctic Circle for who-knows-how-long.

Alright, that’s an exaggeration brought on by my getting too little sleep and building too much anger as I worked this article. But there’s ample evidence of Palin’s vindictive willingness to destroy people she sees as opponents. Just ask the Wasilla town administrator she hired before firing him because he rebelled against the way Palin demanded he do his job, or the town librarian who refused to hold the book burning Walpurgisnach Mayor Palin demanded.

Ironically, Palin was pushed into hiring the administrator by the party poobahs who helped get her elected after she got herself into trouble over a number of precipitous firings which gave rise to a recall campaign.

“People who fought her attempt to oust the librarian are on her enemies list to this day,” states Anne Kilkenny, a Wasilla resident and one of the few Alaskans willing to speak on-the-record, for attribution, about Palin. In fact, Kilkenny actually circulated an e-mail letter about Palin that was verified and printed by The Nation.

For good measure, Palin booted the Wasilla police chief from office because, she told a local newspaper, he “intimidated” her.

Running on Extreme Fringe Evangelical ViewsSarah Palin drew early attention from state GOP apparatchiks when, during her first mayoral campaign, she ran on an anti-abortion platform. Normally, political parties do not get involved in Alaskan municipal elections because they are nonpartisan. But once word of her extreme fringe evangelical views made its way to Juneau, the state capitol, state Republicans tossed some money behind her campaign.

Once in office, Palin set out to build a machine that chewed up anyone who got in her way. The good, Godly Christian turns out to be anything but.

“She’s doesn’t like different opinions and she refuses to compromise,” Kilkenny notes. “When she was mayor, she fought ideas that weren’t hers. Worse, ideas weren’t evaluated on their merits but on the basis of who proposed them.”

Sound familiar? Palin may well be Dick Cheney’s reincarnate.

Something else has a familiar Republican ring to it: Her tax policies, and a “refund surpluses but borrow for the future” attitude.

According to Kilkenny and others in Wasilla as well as Juneau, Palin reduced progressive property taxes for businesses while mayor and increased a regressive sales tax which even hits necessities such as food. The tax cuts she promoted in her St. Paul speech actually benefited large corporate property owners far more than they benefited residents. Indeed, Kilkenny insists that many Wasilla home owners actually saw their tax bill skyrocket to make up for the shortfall. Two other Wasillian’s with whom I spoke said property taxes on their modest, three bedroom homes rose during the Palin regime.

To an outsider, it would seem hard to do, but an oil-rich town with zero debt on the day she was inaugurated mayor was left saddled with $22 million of debt by the time she moved away to become governor – especially since nothing was spent on things such as improving the city’s infrastructure or building a much-needed sewage treatment plant.

So what did Mayor Palin spend the taxpayer’s money on, if not fixing streets and scrubbing sewage?
For starters, she remodelled her office. Several times over, as a matter of fact.

Then Palin spent $1 million on an unnecessary, new park that no one other than the contractors and Palin seemed to want. Next, Sarah doled out more than $15 million of taxpayer money for a sports complex that she shoved through even though the city did not own clear title to the land; now, seven years later, the matter is still in litigation and lawyer fees are said to be close to at least half of the original estimated price of the facility.

She also worked hard to get voters approval of a $5.5 million bond proposal for roads that could have been built without borrowing. Anchorage may not be the center of the financial universe but, like good Republicans everywhere, Sarah Palin knows how to please Alaskan bankers and bond dealers.

For good measure, she turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots.

Sarah Barracuda

En route to the governor’s igloo, Palin managed to land what Anne Kilkenny says is the plumb political appointment in the state: Chair of Alaska’s Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (OGCC), a $122,400 per year patronage slot with no real authority to do anything other than hold meetings. She took the job despite having no background in energy issues and, as it turned out, not liking the work.

“She hated the job,” an OGCC staff member who is not authorized to speak with the news media told me. “She hated the hours and she hated what little work there was to do. But she couldn’t figure out a way to get out of the thing without offending Gov. Murkowski” and the state Republican Party regulars, some of whom were pissed off they didn’t get appointed.

But ever the opportunist, Palin quickly concocted a way. First, she waged a campaign with the local news media claiming that the position was overpaid and should be abolished – despite the fact that she lobbied Murkowski hard to get it. Then, mounting what she saw as a white horse, Palin raised a cloud of dust by resigning from the OGCC and riding away with an undeserved reputation as a “reformer.”

But when a local reporter dared to suggest that the reformer Empress has no clothes, Palin tried to get her fired.

“She came at me like I was trying to steal her kids,” said the targeted reporter, who now works for an oil company in Anchorage. “I heard she had a wild temper and vicious mean streak but it’s nothing like you can imagine until she turns it on you.”

Not surprising since some of her high school classmates still openly call her “Sarah Barracuda,” Kilkenny insists.

Still, as a Republican Party hack Palin managed to get herself elected running under the false flag of a “reformer.”

And what did she bring to the job? No legislative experience other than a city council of a village of 5,000 people, which is smaller than some high schools in Chicago. Little hands-on supervisory or managerial experience; after all, she needed to hire a city administrator to run Wasilla. No executive experience, except for almost being recalled as mayor. A philosophy of setting public policy based on one word: No.

And what has she done since winning the job?

According to Kilkenny, nothing. Well, nothing other than suggesting the state’s multi-multi-million dollar, oil-generated surplus be distributed to residents and finance future state needs by borrowing money. Gee, doesn’t that sound precisely what George Bush did with the surplus he inherited from Bill Clinton in 2001 and we all know in what great shape Bush’s economic policies left the nation.

It may explain why, when asked by reporters, including me, what she thought about Palin being picked to be McCain’s running mate, her mother-in-law replied with a sardonic, “What has Sarah done to qualify her to be vice president?” Of course, when the woman – said by many I spoke with to be well-respected in Wasilla – was running to succeed Palin as mayor, Sarah refused to endorse her, so that may explain the family tension.

As Governor, Palin gave the legislature no direction and budget guidelines, according to the chair of a legislative committee. But then she staged a huge grandstand play of line-item vetoing countless projects, calling them pork. “They were restored because of public outcry and legislative action,” the aide said. “She vetoed them mostly because she had no idea what they were or why they were important.”

But it was enough to get the McCain, who is mostly unobservant of the world around him anyway, to think Palin has a reputation as being “anti-pork”.

In fact, Juneau observers note that Palin kept her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork ladled out by indicted Sen. Ted Stevens. She only opposed the “bridge to nowhere” after it became clear that it would be politically unwise to keep supporting it, these same insiders assert.

Then, Palin fell back on her old habits and publicly humiliated him for pork-barrel politics.

“Sambo Beat the Bitch”

“Palin is a conniving, manipulative, a**hole,” someone who thinks these are positive traits in a governor told me, summing up Palin’s tenure in Alaska state and local politics.

“She’s a bigot, a racist, and a liar,” is the more blunt assessment of Arnold Gerstheimer who lived in Alaska until two years ago and is now a businessman in Idaho.

“Juneau is a small town; everybody knows everyone else,” he adds. “These stories about what she calls blacks and Eskimos, well, anyone not white and good looking actually, were around long before she became a glint in John McCain’s rheumy eyes. Why do I know they’re true? Because everyone who isn’t aboriginal or Indian in Alaska talks that way.”

“Sambo beat the bitch” may be everyday language up in the bush. Whether it – and the outlook, politics and worldview Palin reflects when she says such things in public – should be part of a presidential campaign is another thing altogether.

The comment says as much about McCain as it does about Palin, and it says a lot of things about Americans who overlook such statements (as well as her record) and vote anyway for McCain.

by Charley James
Charley James is an American journalist, author and essayist who lives in Toronto.
Reprinted with permission from The Progressive Curmudgeon

Thank you Joy, for bringing this article to our attention!
Kentke

Sarah Palin: Who do they think they're foolin'?

She certainly isn't Hilary.

Good friend Dedan brought our attention to a similarity with the 1970's comic book inspired TV character

Wonder Woman !

What do you think?

The saying goes, the fruit doesn't fall to far from the tree...Presenting the Palin daughter to society,

debutante Bristol~

Or as another old friend Aaliyah put it, folks overseas might think the U.S. fall line up has a new Reality TV show called

Britney Goes to the White House!!!

But no.....that's not Britney, that's Bristol....there's a new gun in town.

Bristol with baby's daddy Levi Johnston

You're right!

She ain't Chelsea either!
Already, this is looking like serious Reality TV.

Remember the lowlife (style) of the Bush twins? So far, this season we've got reruns of those scenarios, plus teenagers with a baby on the way, and an 'a' la Posse Comitatus' plot twist.
Stay tuned.

My brother Mose and his family are on the right track urging people to step into the Voter Registration Mode in a big way.

If for no other reason, than to avoid having to have your eyes and ears pestered with images of the folks I've presented here for the next four years......

Get out there and sign someone up to vote. Please.

Do Not feel good about yourself, until you have helped to register at least one person to vote in November to save us all from the greater *hell we're doomed to if we don't show up at the polls.

*greater hell: as in having to look at, listen to, be governed by people that are less developed, less intelligent and evolved, and far less wholistically focused on Being here on Earth, for the good of All Life. Yes I said it...less evolved. I mean really. A woman who's favorite sport is shooting wolves, running free in a pack, from a helicopter flying overhead......the image I've received mentally as I write this is enough to break me down into tears.

Oh God forgive her.

Kentke

Meditate on the Dark....Matter that Is.....

Dark matter is shown in blue, ordinary matter is coloured pink.

As it is above, so it is below~

The following article is deep.

Not only does it reveal new findings about deep space, but it brings to our attention new information about one of the most mysterious, unknown aspects of the Cosmic realm.....Dark Matter, and Dark Energy.

I always seek ways to relate what's happening in the Cosmos to my own little micro-Cosmic Being. And by following discoveries in the heavens, I too have discovered greater freedom, stemming from an acceleration of the expansion of my conscious awareness.

I also find this article interesting because earlier this summer I finished a book entitled, "Why Darkness Matters ~ The Power of Melanin In the Brain". Edited by Edward B. Bynum, Ph.D, Ann C. Brown, Ph.D, Richard D. King, M.D , and T. Owens Moore, Ph.D.



The book was a fascinating read about the properties of Neuromelanin. Much of the time, we hear melanin discussed in terms of skin surface melanin which is responsible for dark pigment in skin and hair cells. To quote the editors, "The importance of variable surface skin melanin in Western and European-influenced societies, and the subsequent psychodynamics of racism and color are well known and documented....Melanin as a social and skin perception experience is a complex, political and cultural phenomenon."



I really appreciate these authors for putting together a work that goes beyond the usual to explain that, "Brain or neuromelanin, however, is an altogether different phenomenon that has less to do with various human prejudices and fears, and more to do with human nervous system functioning, evolutionary unfoldment, and ultimately, (they suggest), consciousness itself."

Neuromelanin is present in all human beings, and indeed, as melanin and neuromelanin are present in higher life forms, (and the 'higher' the level of nervous system development among animals, on through the primates, the higher the amount of neuromelanin found in the cerebral structures) scientist feel that this substance that is paradoxically 'dark' but has a profound 'light' absorbing quality, plays a crucial role which is not yet fully understood, in the complex processes of life.

But not just in matters of skin color and social status, darkness has been on the short end of human understanding for far too long now. Think of the Star Wars stories, with Darth Vadar, and his issues...giving in to the 'Dark Side'. References as to the negativity of Darkness just never end in our world.

It's about time, that we begin to see the light and the Truth about this marvelous rich phenomena that is the hiding place of the Divine, the source of all Creation,..... and ......who know's what else??????

da shadow do~

Pretty heavy stuff, when you connect it with this article about Dark Matter in the Cosmos......

In the article, I've used a colored font to highlight the descriptions of Dark Matter the scientists have come up with so far.

I wonder what are the correlations that can be drawn from these studies of Dark Matter in the Cosmos? Are there prototypes, templates, influences from up above that permeate everything everywhere and beam down, filtering into our existence? Can we follow threads of intelligent pondering back out into space for explanations of similar phenomena we witness in the natural world here on Earth? How can these new insights stimulate understanding of the self that contribute to a greater relaxing into the Wholeness that is Life?

Beam me up Scotty! I'm ready to go check this out....

Afterall....we are All made of the same stuff as star dust.....

Dark Matter in the Cosmos.....Dark Matter in us~
Kentke



By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News
Saturday, 30 August 2008 08:29 UK


Striking evidence has been found for the enigmatic "stuff" called dark matter which makes up 23% of the Universe, yet is invisible to our eyes.

The results come from astronomical observations of a titanic collision between two clusters of galaxies 5.7 billion light-years away.

Astronomers detected the dark matter because it separated from the normal matter during the cosmic smash-up.

The research team are to publish their findings in the Astrophysical Journal.
They used the Hubble and Chandra space telescopes to study the object MACSJ0025.4-1222 - formed after an incredibly energetic collision between two large galaxy clusters.

Each of these large clusters contains about a quadrillion times the mass of our Sun.

A technique known as gravitational lensing was used to map the dark matter with Hubble.

If an observer looks at a distant galaxy and some dark matter lies in between, the light from that galaxy gets distorted. It looks as if it is being seen through lots of little lenses. And each of these lenses represents a piece of dark matter.

Astronomers used the Chandra X-ray telescope to map ordinary matter in the merging clusters, mostly in the form of hot gas, which glows brightly in X-rays.
As the two clusters that formed MACSJ0025 merged at speeds of millions of kilometres per hour, hot gas in the two clusters collided and slowed down.

However, the dark matter kept on going, passing right through the smash-up.

Speeding Bullet

This phenomenon has been seen before, in a structure called the Bullet Cluster - which also formed after the collision of two large galaxy clusters. The Bullet Cluster lies closer to Earth, at a distance of 3.4 billion light-years.

"It puts to rest all the worries that the Bullet Cluster was an anomalous case. We have gone out and found another one," co-author Richard Massey, from the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, told BBC News.

The study sheds light on the properties of dark matter.

The fact that dark matter does not slow down in the collision supports a view that dark matter particles interact with each other only very weakly or not at all (when one excludes their gravitational interaction).

"Dark matter makes up five times more matter in the Universe than ordinary matter," said co-author Marusa Bradac, from the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB).

"This study confirms that we are dealing with a very different kind of matter, unlike the matter that we are made of. And we're able to study it in a very powerful collision of two clusters of galaxies."

Larger sample

The latest astronomical observations suggest that dark matter makes up some 23% of the Universe. Ordinary matter - such as the galaxies, gas, stars and planets - makes up just 4%.

The remaining 73% is made up of another mysterious quantity; dark energy, which is responsible for speeding up the expansion of the cosmos.

According to one model, dark matter

may be comprised of exotic

sub-atomic "stuff" known as Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPS).

The Large Hadron Collider may shed further light on
dark matter.

Others hold that the dark substance consists of everyday matter, rather than some elusive sub-atomic particle. However, this ordinary matter, referred to as Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects (MACHOS), happens to radiate little or no light.

A powerful physics experiment, the Large Hadron Collider, situated on the French-Swiss border, could shed further light on this question after it begins operating later this year.

Dr Massey said his team had found other candidates for colliding clusters.
"Ideally, we don't want just one or two, we want lots of these things to really study them statistically," he explained.

"Then we either use the whole lot, or pick out one 'golden bullet' which will provide the best constraints on what dark matter is."

The Hubble Space Telescope failed just after the team had taken their image of MACSJ0025, so they have not yet been able to study these other candidates.

Dr Massey said the astronomers hope to do this after the next Hubble servicing mission with the space shuttle, which is due to launch in October 2008.

Paul.Rincon-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

Thought I was done....checked my home page, and found this for you~

Yes...more science.

And only 'High Science'.

As in The latest, the highest understanding and processes. The Universe unraveling right in your hands, what was muddy becoming clear. Right before your eyes, within your mind, thru the intelligence of your loving Heart---All so you can work your magic ~ or ~ the Magic can work thru you!

Everybody has the Magic within, so share this with your lovers of hip hop:

This ain't no jive, particle physics rap is a hit

Sep 1, 2:38 PM (ET)
EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP)

Who says science doesn't turn people on? Kate McAlpine is a rising star on YouTube for her rap performance - about high-energy particle physics.
Her performance has drawn a half-million views so far on YouTube.
The 23-year-old Michigan State University graduate and science writer raps about the Large Hadron Collider, the groundbreaking particle accelerator that has been built in a 17-mile circular tunnel at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland.
McAlpine raps that when the collider goes into operation on Sept. 10, "the things that it discovers will rock you in the head."
The $3.8 billion machine will collide two beams of protons moving at close to the speed of light so scientists can see what particles appear in the resulting debris.
"Rap and physics are culturally miles apart," McAlpine, a science writer at CERN, wrote to the Lansing State Journal in an e-mail last week, "and I find it amusing to try and throw them together."
Others, including physicists, also find it amusing.
"We love the rap, and the science is spot on," said CERN spokesman James Gillies.
McAlpine received permission to film herself and friends dancing in the caverns and tunnels where the experiments will take place.
"I have to confess that I was skeptical when Katie said she wanted to do this, but when I saw her previous science rapping and the lyrics, I was convinced," Gillies said. "I think you'll find pretty close to unanimity among physicists that it's great."
McAlpine honed her physics rapping skills at Michigan State's National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, where she was part of a student research program two years ago.
---
Information from: Lansing State Journal, http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/