The League of David

Philistines Felines

You can't make this crap up. 

The Philistine, er, Washington Post has an article this morning about a poor suffering firefighter in Wisconsin who wants to do something that will have a substantive and positive impact for the local environment.   

Eliminating feral cats.

Mark Smith watches feral cats stalk and kill birds at his bird feeders.  Feral cats are major problem in practically all areas of the country, and according to various government reports destroy tens of millions of native songbirds,  other birds, small mammals, and lizards.  In some cases, like in Florida, they aggravate already fragile environments.  You would think that Philistines would embrace environmental management programs that can work. 

The response from the cat crazzies:  death threats.

Every year in Wisconsin alone, an estimated 2 million wild cats kill 47 million to 139 million songbirds, state officials state. Despite the astounding numbers, Smith's plan has been met with fierce opposition from cat lovers.

"I personally picked up the phone at work on four threat calls," Smith recalled about the first days after his idea became public.

While Smith expected criticism, he did not expect such a bitter reception for what he considers a reasonable solution to an environmental problem created by irresponsible pet owners. People who get tired of their cats should not set them loose in the country, he said.

The same people who have no problems dehumanizing and forcefully advocating for the state sanctioned murder of a helpless handicapped woman, will freak -- literally, freak -- when reasonable measures want to be taken to control a real destructive force in the environment:

Alley Cat Allies (ACA,) the National Feral Cat Network, is concerned that present efforts to vilify cats could result in animal control departments, as well as private citizens, embarking on misguided efforts to exterminate feral cats. The reduction in some species of songbirds has many concerned people looking for answers about who or what is to blame. A campaign recently launched by The Humane Society of the United States and the American Bird Conservancy erroneously targets all free-roaming cats, including managed feral cat colonies, as the "problem."

There are more Philistines to protect wild cats then there are to defend the helpless.

"You don't take on cats. It is one of the most popular companion animals in the world," said Ted O'Donnell of Madison, founder of Cat Action and owner of five rescued cats. "Why would you propose an idea that would treat that relationship so callously?"

Un-fucking-believable.

An Exercise in Flattery

The Philistine, er, New York Times finds a way to simultaneously mock real faith and take seriously the uninformed musings of scientists (in some cases "scientists").  The article is based on The Edge's annual question posed to "great minds," you know, like, scientists and...other Philistines.  The entire premise seems to be an exercise in flattery among an intellectual class that already has a little too much self-esteem.  It comes out in the answers to the question:  what do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?"

Get ready to be bored, irritated, and sneered at all at once.

A psychologist [why are they always psychologists?] and computer scientist says the great unwashed don't really think things through:

I do not believe that people are capable of rational thought when it comes to making decisions in their own lives. People believe they  are behaving rationally and have thought things out, of course, but when major decisions are made - who to marry, where to live, what career to pursue, what college to attend, people's minds simply cannot cope with the complexity. When they try to rationally analyze potential options, their unconscious, emotional thoughts take over and make the choice for them.

Gee, mom, should I take the full scholarship to Harvard or should I just go to community college?  It's just too complex, I don't know what to do!  Maybe I'll ask a shrink what I should do.

With this developmental psychologist infanticide is just another evolutionary process:

I believe, though I cannot prove it, that three - not two - selection processes were involved in human evolution...The third process selects for beauty, but not sexual beauty - not adult beauty. The ones doing the selecting weren't potential mates: they were parents. Parental selection, I call it.

There's this one who believes that he can't provide consciousness in other human beings:

For me, this is an easy question. I believe that animals have feelings and other states of consciousness, but neither I nor anyone else has been able to prove it. We can't even prove that other people are conscious, much less other animals. In the case of other people, though, we at least can have a little confidence since all people have brains with the same basic configurations.

This scientists believes we inherited some of our innate abilities from our "bacterial ancestors":

That our ability to perceive signals in the environment evolved directly from our bacterial ancestors. That is, we, like all other mammals including our apish brothers detect odors, distinguish tastes, hear bird song and drumbeats and we too feel the vibrations of the drums. With our eyes closed we detect the light of the rising sun. These abilities to sense our surroundings are a heritage that preceded the evolution of all primates, all vertebrate animals, indeed all animals.

This neuroscientist believes there's no god, because, you know, bad things happen in the world:

I'm taken with religious folks who argue that you not only can, but should believe without requiring proof. Mine is to not believe without requiring proof. Mind you, it would be perfectly fine with me if there were a proof that there is no god. Some might view this as a potential public health problem, given the number of people who would then run damagingly amok. But it's obvious that there's no shortage of folks running amok thanks to their belief...in my world of biologists, the god concept gets mighty infuriating when you spend your time thinking about, say, untreatably aggressive childhood leukemia.

This guy hasn't spent much time in a children's hospital, because if he did, he'd know that they are like foxholes.  There are no atheists in child cancer wards.

Lordy, this guy is an "emeritus professor" at Stanford.  He doesn't know which way to go, should he be a rational scientist or a seething Philistine:

I believe that the prison guards at the Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq, who worked the night shift in Tier 1A, where prisoners were physically and psychologically abused, had surrendered their free will and personal responsibility during these episodes of mayhem.  But I could not prove it in a court of law. These eight Army reservists were trapped in a unique situation in which the behavioral context came to dominate individual dispositions, values and morality to such an extent that they were transformed into mindless actors alienated from their normal sense of personal accountability for their actions - at that time and place.

Read this:  big bad military-industrial complex controlling the minds of our youth!

Wait!  Is this a scientist with a heart?

I've spent two decades of my professional life studying human mating. In that time, I've documented phenomena ranging from what men and women desire in a mate to the most diabolical forms of sexual treachery. I've discovered the astonishingly creative ways in which men and women deceive and manipulate each other. While love is common, true love is rare, and I believe that few people are fortunate enough to experience it...But I know true love exists. I just can't prove it.

I can't agree more with this guy, but..what the hell is the point of thinking this in the first place?

I believe neuroscientists will never have enough understanding of the neural code, the secret language of the brain, to read peoples' thoughts without their consent... For ill or good, our minds will always remain hidden to some extent from Big Brother.

For ill or good?  There's ill in this limitation? 

I think I agree with this guy, but I don't know what he's saying:

I believe that that systems of self-interested agents can make progress on their own without  centralized supervision.  There is an isomorphism between evolution, economics, and education.

This psychologist really wants to believe that human beings can't think things through:

Human Behavior is Unconsciously Controlled.   Until proven otherwise, why not assume that consciousness does not play a role in human behavior?

Perhaps this is his way of arguing for more federal research funds.  After all, what better justification for more government than the belief that we are not in control of our own behavior?

It goes on and on, in an endless and depressing line of ever so many unproven "processes" that will one day make it easier for robots to think and human beings to be controlled.  With nary a humanist among them, these scientists seem to base their world view on individual conceptions of  what is "rational," producing the  scientist's version of Manichaenism:  Science (and the pursuit of knowledge) = Good.  Matters of the human heart = Irrational, bad.  It's the irrational belief that human beings have the ability to know and control everything. 

We have learned nothing since the Garden.

Philistines Aflutter

Ha!  Author Michael Crichton has a new book.  This time around he's taking on environmentalism, the Philistines' religion of choice.

ABCNews' John Stossel profiles Crichton and his new book, State of Fear.  To be fair, Stossel also publishes a statement from the Union of Concerned Philistines, er, Scientists:

We hope Michael Crichton fans enjoy his new science-fiction thriller, while keeping in mind there is a very strong consensus among the vast majority of climate scientists that global warming is under way and human activity is a primary cause. Every time we drive a car, use electricity from coal-fired power plants, or heat our homes with oil or natural gas, we release carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases into the air.

We're all gonna die!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Man, Philistines really love to tell other people what to do.  Now, if the Committee of Scientists Who Want You Do What They Tell You Because They Know They're Right would only practice what they preach we wouldn't have to worry about whether the ice caps are going to melt in three hundred years. -- swallowing up blue state property.  They should stop working all together.  They should stop driving to work (greenhouse gases),  stop writing statements on paper (killing trees),  stop collecting paychecks (killing trees with all that paperwork), and most important, they should stop bloviating and breathing out all that CO2 .

If they would just stop, then we would all be much better off.