Jim Jesus' Law:

The amount lists logical fallacies is inversely proportional to how much they understand what they mean.

Jim Jesus' Second Law:
     
          People's admiration for Tesla is is inversely proportional to their sanity. 


Jim Jesus' Third Law:

        Those who object to participating in the culture war only object one side's participation.

More Zeitgiest Luddite Fail

New design and new shirt!

2 things:
 
Thing 1: As you can see I changed the layout of the blog, added a new logo and provided sharing buttons to make it easier to link this blog on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ Tell me what you think.

Thing 2: Not that I think anyone would buy it, but I designed a Shitegeist Movement shirt just because I was bored and was re-familiarizing myself with Photoshop.

The Shitegiest Movement by jimjesus

Hovind 2.0: Peter Joseph Quote Mines Keynes to Lie To His Followers.

I'm no Keynesian. However I feel as if I should come to his defense. John Maynard Keynes was wrong about macroeconomics, but he wasn't stupid. At least not stupid enough to buy into one of the biggest fallacies in economics: The Luddite Fallacy. However, you may of heard of it as "technological unemployment."

In case you're still scratching your head, I'll let Henry Hazlitt explain:

Among the most viable of all economic delusions is the belief that machines on net balance create unemployment. Destroyed a thousand times, it has risen a thousand times out of its own ashes as hardy and vigorous as ever. Whenever there is a long-continued mass unemployment, machines get the blame anew. This fallacy is still the basis of many labor union practices. The public tolerates these practices because it either believes at bottom that the unions are right, or is too confused to see just why they are wrong.

The belief that machines cause unemployment, when held with any logical consistency, leads to preposterous conclusions. Not only must we be causing unemployment with every technological improvement we make today, but primitive man must have started causing it with the first efforts he made to save himself from needless toil and sweat.

The Zeitgeist Movement and The Venus Project have a slight twist on this fallacy. In a nutshell instead of enacting policies to prevent technology, we should instead use it to create abundance of essential goods for people to consume freely. Now I know that I'll be getting the typical comments saying THIS IS A STRAWMAN BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T MENTION THIS THIS AND THIS ASPECT OF OUR ARGUMENT! Which is irrelevant since I'm not out to debunk the claim because it's been debunked so many times over the last 200 years, it's hardly worth the effort. I will list some resources at the bottom of the blog in case you haven't heard this myth debunked. I'm just showing how they differ from other economic illiterates. So modern leftists say stop automation, Zeitards say go with it and no one has to work anymore. Got it? Good!

Now recently I had the misfortune of watching the leader of The Zeitgeist Movement, Peter Joseph Merola, get grilled by the RT News Network anchor Lauren Lyster when he made a claim I've never heard before at about 3:20-3:37

"Many economists"? "Like John Maynard Keynes"? Look, say what you will about the guy, but he's not stupid enough to fall for the Luddite Fallacy. In fact, no major economist from any school of economics agrees with this, aside from some Neo-Keynesians who blame outsourcing but not technology. If there is one thing most economists agree on, is that this is a fallacy. So was Peter lying or just making yet another uneducated comment? We'll see. First let's examine Keynes.

I did some digging though some Zeitgeist material and within a few minutes I found what it was they were using to back this up in their "Activist Orientation Guide"

As John Maynard Keynes, in The General Theory of Unemployment, Interest and Money
disdainfully points out:
”We are being afflicted with a new disease of which some readers may not yet have heard the name, but of which they will hear a great deal in the years to come – namely ‘technological unemployment’. This means unemployment due to our discovery of means of economizing the use of labor outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labor.” -Keynes, John Maynard, The General Theory of Unemployment, Interest and Money, 1931

Interesting, yes? However that quote is not in 'The General Theory of Unemployment, Interest and Money.' In fact there is no book called "The General Theory of Unemployment, Interest and Money." I'm sure some of my economic junkie readers are folding their arms reading that, but let me clarify.

There is no book titled: 'The General Theory of Unemployment, Interest and Money.' Keynes treatise was titled 'The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money' and it wasn't written in 1931. It was written in 1936 and discusses the Great Depression mostly in the years 1929-1935. This quote was from an essay published in 1930 titled: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren 

I submit this error was intentional. The reason why is because the very next paragraph shows clearly that Keynes did not hold this to be accurate. This is a deliberate quote mine, there's no way around it.

For the moment the very rapidity of these changes is hurting us and bringing difficult problems to solve. Those countries are suffering relatively which are not in the vanguard of progress. We are being afflicted with a new disease of which some readers may not yet have heard the name, but of which they will hear a great deal in the years to come – namely, technological unemployment. This means unemployment due to our discovery of means of economising the use of labour outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labour.

But this is only a temporary phase of maladjustment. All this means in the long run that mankind is solving its economic problem. I would predict that the standard of life in progressive countries one hundred years hence will be between four and eight times as high as it is to-day. There would be nothing surprising in this even in the light of our present knowledge. It would not be foolish to contemplate the possibility of afar greater progress still.

There you have it, all pink and naked. Peter Joseph is the new Kent Hovind. He pretends to have credentials, he quote mines, has a double standard on copyright, and holds to a unscientific worldview which is not scientific at all. We already know he thinks you don't have to pay income tax, so we'll wait for the IRS to bust him so we can have 2 fake Doctors in one cell.

Why technological unemployment is crap:
EagleEye1975 on Eeconomics In One Lesson Chapter 7. Part 1 Part 2
Open Letter to Barack Obama by Don Boudreaux
Robert Murphy ph.D on The Curse of Machinery

Zeitgeist Media Fail

UPDATED Oct. 4, 2011

For those of you who know anything about The Zeitgeist Movement, I'm sure you've heard them annoyingly promoting their latest idea of pushing their crackpot ideas on the world "The Zeitgeist Media Festival." The idea was to plan an event with artists and speakers and show films in order to promote the concept of the redundantly named "Resource Based Economy." They planned to have events world wide but only funded only a few. If not a few than most definitely the one in Los Angeles, CA. The date was set on September 11, 2011 the 10 year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania (They're not a conspiracy theory movement, by the way. Wink, wink)

Now earlier this year, many of those most vocal against TZM noticed quite the fall in support in 2011's Z-Day as opposed to their 2010 events. While the size of the London event was significantly larger, mostly due the the fact that it was the headline event where Peter Joseph Merola, Jacque Fresco and Roxanne Meadows were set to speak, events around the world were fewer with less people attending. It showed a significant decline in interest in the movement as a whole as even Alexa traffic ratings showed a tapering off even lower than pre-Zeitgeist: Moving Forward levels.

If the drop of interest only as marginal as the time before, this would make for a very dry blog entry. Rest assured, it only gets better considering you're not a Zeitard.

While we expected some turn out to the 1st Annual (which is stupid, nothing is annual it's first time) Zeitgeist Media Festival, I personally was shocked at the level of failure of this event. Merola spent a lot of time organizing and promoting this and as little information as we've been able to gather, around only 100 people (which is a liberal estimate) attended the main event in Los Angeles. New York was as dismal, as the only pictures we could find purposely avoided the crowd. London was a joke with probably around 20-30 people attending. Germany was hardly a media anything, but rather a 10 person picnic.

As of September 12th, 9:45 PM CDT there is currently NO coverage mentioned on Google News. I mean NONE. No mainstream or fringe media. Not even the almighty RussiaToday which pimps their garbage gave a shit. I can't find any blogs covering the events aside from James Kush outlining it's failure to attract anyone. This alone is pathetic, but could it get worse? Well, when asking this question about The Zeitgeist Movement, the answer is usually always YES!

The Official TZMF Thread on the Official TZM Fourms had NO coverage aside from asking where to view it on the internet. V-Radio has made NO mention of it. The Zeitgeist Los Angeles Chapter makes NO mention of it after the announcement as the same for the whole State of California, Sacremento, New York or even United Kingdom or London! In fact as I browse around looking for something to show as an exception on this blog, I simply can not find a single Zeitgeist blog, chapter, or forum talking about this damn thing. It is as if this event never even came to pass.

Correct me if I am wrong, dear Zeitgeisters, but wasn't the point to reach critical mass? How does one get negative interest in offering people free shit for sitting around doing nothing that doesn't involve some kind of get rich scheme? I think I might have the answer. The fact that Peter Joseph Merola called it The Zeitgeist Movement after the first batshit crazy conspiracy theory film and people are waking up to the fact that they were just hanging out with nutjobs. There's not a week that goes by that I don't get some message on Twitter or my YouTube Channel accusing me of being a government agent. In fact, Peter Joseph himself has accused those who criticize The Zeitgeist Movement regularly as being paid by a "reputation company" to do this. Let me state, that as of yet I have never been paid one cent by anyone to do what I do. However if there are those interested, contact me and I will leave you my PayPal address.

Joking aside, The Zeitgeist Movement is dead and The Zeitgeist Movement killed it. Their ass-hattery and paranoid delusional fantasies have scared everyone with more than 2 brain cells away. I really don't see a point on paying too much attention to them anymore, so I think this will be one of the last things I'll put effort into as far as criticizing them goes. I might tweet or post something if they do something exceptionally fail again but, for the most part there's bigger fish to fry.

For now, I'll leave you a fitting song for TZM. We hardly knew ye.

UPDATE:
Well we got more proof now that the LA show was a disaster. A Zeitard by the name of voiceofreason467 tried to disprove this by providing proof there was only 70 people. Ignore the mumbley commentary and enjoy.

Why I Never Became a 9/11 Truther.

In the late summer of 2001 A friend of mine got a hold of a copy of Milton William "Bill" Cooper's infamous novel 'Behold a Pale Horse.' After he completed this book he gave it back to the owner and explained the book to me and told me to read it. He was rather convincing. Now I was only 18 at the time so I was very naive, especially if my friends liked something. Peer pressure on a very minor scale, I guess.  I didn't know anyone with a copy so I went out and purchased a copy at a local Barnes and Noble Store, and read it. I was convinced there was a global cabal of wealthy elites known as the Illumanati, JFK was assassinated by the limo driver with a gas powered pistol, and that the US Federal Government had flying saucer technology that they stole from the Nazis after World War 2 and were going to use it to stage a fake alien invasion to unite the world under a one government and one religion New World Order. And boy was that Kool-Aid* tasty at the time!

While I was tipped by one of my friends, I did a lot of the heavy lifting when it came to convincing everyone else we knew. I used to go to parties and have people pull out a dollar bill so I could show them the secret symbols that enslaved us on every dollar. I used to interrogate my father who worked in Military Intelligence for verification of MAJESTYTWELVE (to which he denied on all counts.) Needless to say I was quite the annoying twat, but a very convincing one. In the end I converted most of my friends out of reality and into the world of paranoid fantasy. I was very good at it.

On the morning of 9/11/2001 I was awakened early by my Dad. I was wondering why considering classes that day didn't start until late in the afternoon but he was quick to tell me why "You need to see this. We're under attack. Terrorists have just crashed planes into the World Trade Center, and the Pentagon." I hopped out of bed and ran to the TV and saw what millions of Americans and billions of others around the world saw. Believe it or not, as much of a conspiracy nutter I was at the time, the thought of this being a conspiracy never crossed my mind. Even on Cooper's website did he even allude to it for the first month or so. In fact he was very jingoistic about the whole situation. Posting messages about how upset he was at al-Queda for doing this to America and how we should bomb the shit out of Afghanistan. I slowly drifted into a 'Let it happen on purpose" 9/11 conspiracy theroist but I simply couldn't back it up so I just let it go. It was so short it's hardly worth mentioning, but for the sake of honesty here it is.

Now this was in a time before YouTube and podcasting. Finding videos and mp3s of radio shows was no easy task, especially with the recent death of Napster. However, with some work I was able to track down a Cooper lecture and some of his radio shows after 9/11 and became pretty convinced I had wasted my time on this guy. While in his book he seemed very insightful, in his spoken word you can tell this guy was off his rocker. I started to really investigate his claims independently and found they were hoaxes, elaborations or total fabrications. I found that he had some personal issues as well. Before I could really dig too deep, he had a shootout leaving him dead. That was the final nail in the coffin for me, even though it was clenching proof to some of my friends that he was really onto something.

Now for those of you who've wondered why I spend a lot of time debunking conspiracies, listen up. I felt terrible for what I did. I went around promoting this crazed nut job and his crackpot theories. A lot of my friends were still jockin' this lunatic's cock as if he had something of value to say and it was my fault they were exposed to it in the first place. So I tried to make amends by correcting my mistake and spending a lot of time researching and debunking his nonsense. 

I did quite well. I managed to convince all of the people I previously conned into this trap. Then in 2005, I was presented with a Flash presentation of the controlled demolition 9/11 conspiracy. As I watched it, it seemed credible until after it was over I thought about it for a few minutes and there was a few big red flags in my head. Now I'm not going to sit here and debunk all of the claims, because there are plenty of websites and videos that can do this better than I ever could. But these are the thoughts that really put the whole thing in the Recycle Bin in my mind:

• "How the fuck did this all happen and not one single person involved get caught or confess?"

 For something like this, it would of taken at least 10s of thousands of people all working together. No one defected from the group and ratted his buddies out? No one after the fact had a crisis of consciousness? Please. Ben Franklin said something, that's dead right. Not because he said it, but because it's empirically true: "Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead." 

• "If there were demolition charges, how come no one saw them being installed or noticed them post installation?"

How could you rig a building with that many explosives and have no body notice? No janitors, carpenters, ..etc. ever noticed demolition charges or wires? One of these guys told me it was planted shortly after the 1993 WTC bombing. Again, how did no one notice? Civilians were standing around the building and they just happen to get all of this equipment in the building without anyone noticing? That's unfathomable.

• "If a missile hit the Pentagon, why did everyone say it was a plane? Why would something like wings leave a hole if they are designed to be lightweight?"

This really was the smoking gun of bullshit for me. Nothing about the 9/11 Pentagon CT ever made sense to me. It's just flat out retarded on every level.

After this came out I did some investigation and found a lot more problems with their arguments, virtually every claim they made was either unfounded and thus ignored, cherry picked which I found supplemental information to correct it, or inaccurate which I corrected.

I tracked down a group on MySpace (which was all the rave with all the kids at the time) and presented my arguments to them. This was really a wake up call if I had any lingering doubts about conspiracy theories having any basis in reality. It was no different than debating creationists. Even today it's no different. Let's say we were to take the argument of steel melting. They make the argument and I respond that steel doesn't need to melt in order to weaken the structural integrity of a building. Then they shift gears and say something like "Well, what about how they built the towers to sustain a plane hitting it." Creationists employ this exact style of debate. They bring up you can't have speciation, you show them examples of speciation, and then it's off to 'you can't add information to a genome!'  Bitch, please! To this day, I have yet to run into Twoofer who hasn't pulled this on every single time I present counter evidence. They will NEVER conced a point. It's as if 9/11 'Truth' is a religion.

Now, I don't care what your political position is. However, the best way to alienate potential converts is to use 9/11 as an argument for it. 9/11 being an inside job is not an argument for anarcho-capitalism, minarchism, communism, democratic socialism, anarchist communism, liberalism, conservatism, monarchism, national socialism, or even Zeitgeister Robo-communism. No matter the flavor, it's a non-sequitur It's not, bringing it up does nothing but make you and everyone else who subscribes to your political stance look like a group of cranks. So knock it the fuck off, please. 

However, I know people who are in the 'movement' are not going to listen to what I say and just accuse me of being a shill, disinformation agent, psyop..etc. They'll send the typical hate mail and threats to my e-mail. They'll also leave the always funny stupid comments like "The planes hitting the towers was like throwing a aluminum can at a steel beam." And a few anti-semites will accuse me of being a Zionist. So be my guest. Comments are open and will not be deleted. 9/11 Truthers are good and shrinking their own support. If you need any more rope to hang yourself with, let me know in the comments.

Cheers!

*Yes I know this is a false analogy. The People's Temple cult led by Jim Jones didn't use Kool-Aid for their mass suicide/murder finally, it was actually grape Flavor-Aid.