Shortly after I published my essay, Mathematical Models of Human History: Are They Plausible?, on the use of mathematical models in history, I saw an article by Stephanie Pappas summarizing some results of work done by Simon Powers, “a postdoctoral researcher in ecology and evolution at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.” Powers is working … [Read more…]
I’m not an unqualified supporter of quantitative modeling in the social sciences, most certainly do I have my doubts about modeling in history. It’s a dangerous business and the results have been spotty at best. Yet, it could work for some sorts of analyses and doing it in a disciplined way would allow rejection or … [Read more…]
According to a couple of dictionaries, an `explanation’ is “Something that explains” or equivalent definitions of the sort which would gain a failing grade on a junior high school test back in the days when American schools were so tough we had to write essays explaining how it was possible to walk uphill going to … [Read more…]
In a recent essay, Deep States and the Modern American Citizen, I addressed the ways in which members and gangs of members of the ruling class of the modern world, and many other ages of man, use crimes—even brutal and murderous crimes—as tools to gain control over other human beings or human communities. In the … [Read more…]
The issue of `deep states’ had drawn the attention of at least some mainstream journalists for an instant or so around February of 2014 because of a very interesting article by Mike Lofgren, a former Senate staffer; I’ll get to that article in a short while. The attention seems to have been a flash in … [Read more…]
A short while back Ralph Nader published an article, Who Owns America?, which begins: There was a time in the Depression of the 1930s when conservative thought sprang from the dire concrete reality of that terrible era, not from abstractions. They did not use the word “conservative” very often, preferring to call themselves “decentralists” or … [Read more…]
Col Pat Lang (ret), a Green Beret and military intelligence officer, has written another of many short and authoritative commentaries on the current messes which are the US civilian government and US military. Of the two, the military seems to be the far lesser mess, even to the point of being reformable so long as … [Read more…]
In his spiritual biography of John Henry Newman, The Spiritual Journey of Newman, Fr Jean Honore (a future cardinal and Archbishop and member of the committee which supervised the writing of the Catechism of the Catholic Church) told us that Newman had seen the problems the Church (and all Christian churches—in my opinion) was having … [Read more…]
In the article, The Cognitive Dissonance of Spying, subtitled It’s Always Illegal and Often Immoral, Philip Giraldi, who has served as an officer of the CIA and also of the DIA (military intelligence), tells us: It is being reported that the attempt by Director of Central Intelligence John Brennan to steer the CIA away from … [Read more…]
Larry Cahill, a distinguished brain-scientist, recently published an article in which he discusses the need for recognizing the differences between male and female brains by first discussing some bad medical results due to the assumption that there are no such differences and, thus, medicines will affect both the male and female brain in the same … [Read more…]