Wrestle Mania...

Mil Máscaras, 2009. Source: Wikipedia

Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, COVID-19, Existentialism, Human Rights, Humor, Politics

In the old days, wrestlers would meet, and fans would be interested in knowing who wins and how. There were stories, but there were also plain old matches. Now, there are writers. Every match, every encounter, is designed to advance a character. And all the matches fit in to the general theme of the broadcast, which is given a title. For last week's Raw, the backstage title was "The Evolution of Justice." It's a reference to two sets of wrestlers who are on a collision course.

Your WWE wrestling script begins with background: What happened the last time WWE played to this area. Knowing what the fans remember is very important motivation for the wrestlers.

Then there are the "dark matches." Before WWE Raw goes live on the USA Network, WWE tapes two matches that will air exclusively on the company's own TV network.

Then there's the audience prep. Just like any TV show, the audience has to be conditioned to react to certain things. On April 14, WWE was going to mourn the death of the Ultimate Warrior, felled from a heart attack a few days before. So WWE announcer Jerry Lawler, who gets his own pre-event, full-stage introduction, is instructed to remind fans to put on their masks so that WWE can go live on the air with a tribute.

Then comes the first match. It'll be interrupted by a commercial break, which is something that the wrestlers know — they can't decide to go to "the finish" when the TV audience is watching a Pringles commercial. Match number one is between Rob Van Dam and Alberto Del Rio.

The announcers know who will get "over," i.e. win, but they don't know how. This allows them to actually announce the action in the match legitimately.

Excerpts from: "Here's what a pro-wrestling script looks like," by Mark Ambinder, Newsweek

My last foray with pro wrestling was about 1974 (age 12) with both of my parents at the Winston-Salem Memorial Coliseum.

These were originally father-son outings, but my mother decided she wanted to go, so we let her tag along for more than a few times. Generally, she was quiet during the action as my dad and I shouted either our approval or disdain for the admitted actors in the ring: The "American Dream," Dusty Rhodes, Dick, the Bulldog Brower (I know the definitions of his first two names, I'm clueless as to what a "Brower" is); The Mighty Igor and "the man of a thousand masks," Mil Máscaras. Mil and the Brower were in heated, pitched mock battle in the ring, when mom suddenly yelled out:

Break it off, it don't belong to you!

This was from my mother, mind you. My father and I were speechless. As if reading my embarrassed young mind, Pop said: "I expect we'll go home now." We did, and I never went to a wrestling match again. Mom wasn't exactly fuming: I think SHE was as shocked by what she said as WE were!

Previously, I've speculated this reality show carnival barker is running an episodic tragedy, only because as a terrible B-movie actor with zero empathy and no social graces, this is the only show he knows how to produce. Twitter is just a bullhorn for a snake oil salesman and carnival barker.

I posit here, instead of a reality show, he's running a typical pro-wrestling script. He's fake wrestled before and sent a doctored version of the video out personifying CNN as his adversary. He probably bathed in Ben Gay after the stunt.

My mother when she was alive was five foot, two inches, petite and well, motherly. Yelling like the rest of the crowd was a response of being in the crowd, being influenced by my father's and my actions as well as theirs. Orange Satan's spawn following is in-the-crowd: following every inane tweet, every suggesting this pandemic would be 15 people, then zero, every prediction from a faux "cubic model" this would be over by Memorial Day (it's late June), every suggestion hot weather would diminish the infections (it's not), every suggestion to drink bleach or shine a flashlight up our asses; every stupid example of NOT wearing a mask, until it's become a culture war issue.

"Stable genius" maybe should have asked Mil Máscaras?

36, or 42...

A meme of past memes - seemed apropos.

Topics: Astrophysics, Humor, Science Fiction, SETI

Note: I use three sources for the commentary I've seen breathlessly displayed on the Internet speculating there may be 36 communicative (but, noticeably silent) civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy. I grinned, and composed the combo meme above. Two words came to mind on my social media feed: click bait.

*****

The number 42 is, in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, the "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything", calculated by an enormous supercomputer named Deep Thought over a period of 7.5 million years. Unfortunately, no one knows what the question is. Source: Wikipedia

*****

It's been a hundred years since Fermi, an icon of physics, was born (and nearly a half-century since he died). He's best remembered for building a working atomic reactor in a squash court. But in 1950, Fermi made a seemingly innocuous lunchtime remark that has caught and held the attention of every SETI researcher since. (How many luncheon quips have you made with similar consequence?)

The remark came while Fermi was discussing with his mealtime mates the possibility that many sophisticated societies populate the Galaxy. They thought it reasonable to assume that we have a lot of cosmic company. But somewhere between one sentence and the next, Fermi's supple brain realized that if this was true, it implied something profound. If there are really a lot of alien societies, then some of them might have spread out.

Fermi realized that any civilization with a modest amount of rocket technology and an immodest amount of imperial incentive could rapidly colonize the entire Galaxy. Within ten million years, every star system could be brought under the wing of empire. Ten million years may sound long, but in fact it's quite short compared with the age of the Galaxy, which is roughly ten thousand million years. Colonization of the Milky Way should be a quick exercise.

So what Fermi immediately realized was that the aliens have had more than enough time to pepper the Galaxy with their presence. But looking around, he didn't see any clear indication that they're out and about. This prompted Fermi to ask what was (to him) an obvious question: "where is everybody?"

SETI Institute: Fermi Paradox, Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer

*****

How many intelligent alien civilizations are out there among the hundreds of billions of stars in the spiral arms of the Milky Way? According to a new calculation, the answer is 36.

That number assumes that life on Earth is more or less representative of the way that life evolves anywhere in the universe — on a rocky planet an appropriate distance away from a suitable star, after about 5 billion years. If that assumption is true, humanity may not exactly be alone in the galaxy, but any neighbors are probably too far away to ever meet.

On the other hand, that assumption that life everywhere will evolve on the same timeline as life on Earth is a huge one, said Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, who was not involved in the new study. That means that the seeming precision of the calculations is misleading.

"If you relax those big, big assumptions, those numbers can be anything you want," Shostak told Live Science.

The question of whether humans are alone in the universe is a complete unknown, of course. But in 1961, astronomer Frank Drake introduced a way to think about the odds. Known as the Drake equation, this formulation rounds up the variables that determine whether or not humans are likely to find (or be found by) intelligent extraterrestrials: The average rate of star formation per year in the galaxy, the fraction of those stars with planets, the fraction of those planets that form an ecosystem, and the even smaller fraction that develop life. Next comes the fraction of life-bearing planets that give rise to intelligent life, as opposed to, say, alien algae. That is further divided into the fraction of intelligent extraterrestrial life that develops communication detectable from space (humans fit into this category, as humanity has been communicating with radio waves for about a century).

The final variable is the average length of time that communicating alien civilizations last. The Milky Way is about 14 billion years old. If most intelligent, communicating civilizations last, say, a few hundred years at most, the chances that Earthlings will overlap with their communications is measly at best.

Solving the Drake equation isn't possible, because the values of most of the variables are unknown. But University of Nottingham astrophysicist Christopher Conselice and his colleagues were interested in taking a stab at it with new data about star formation and the existence of exoplanets, or planets that circle other stars outside our own solar system. They published their findings June 15 in The Astrophysical Journal.

Are there really 36 alien civilizations out there? Well, maybe. Stephanie Pappas, Live Science

Control and Chaos...

Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Diversity, Human Rights, Humor

Note: Enjoy the holidays. I'll be on break until 7 January 2019.

"He's a 'Chaos Candidate' and He’d Be a 'Chaos President,'" former Florida Governor John Edward ("JEB") Bush in an alarmingly accurate moment of prescience.

Maxwell Smart, a.k.a. Agent 86, works for CONTROL, a Washington, D.C.-based counterintelligence agency. Totally inept as a secret agent, Smart can barely use the gadgetry the agency provides him (including a phone embedded in his shoe). Nevertheless, he and his fellow agents always seem to thwart the operations of KAOS, an organized crime outfit dedicated to evil. Agent 99 is Smart's smarter partner, a resourceful agent who eventually marries her bumbling cohort. Smart and Agent 99's boss is a man known only as The Chief. Source: Google users search

His "charity" has met the fate of his "university": eventual oblivion. The market has erased all its gains in 2018 in November, and it doesn't show any signs of slowing down. We are at this posting, hours from a reality TV inspired government shutdown that the current occupant of the Executive Mansion proudly owned to the surprised delight of "Nan-Chuck-Ku," who needed no mental Jujitsu to outwit a nitwit. Michael Cohen is "rat" and Michael Flynn a "saint," at the moment - the jury's still out on Roger Stone. With his 3-month delayed Mulligan sentence to think about Flynn and his lawyer's cute "perjury trap" stunt and Judge Sullivan's disgust, he'll likely be Mus musculus by poetically, the Ides of March and a morning bowel movement/Twitter rant. Wired published a complete guide to 17 investigations related to him. So...much..."winning."

"Who's going to pay for the wall? MEXICO!"

This was the refrain at rallies before and after the election. It was shtick; an applause line that appealed to his audience's racism and xenophobia. He embarrassed himself literally begging the previous Mexican president, Enrique Peña Nieto to fund it, who patently refused. Now he's demanding 5 billion dollars - an arbitrary number I'm certain - or, the equivalent of a screaming match from a toddler ensues. A toddler that until January has control of the Executive Branch, Supreme Court, the Senate and the House he lost in the midterms. Mattis is out; and the stock market is in free fall. So a shutdown is the chaos that goes down well, in the spirit of the season with sugar, coal and golf at Mar-a-Lago. The secret service will by duty protect him, albeit unpaid.

New Knowledge published a White Paper "The Tactics and Troupes of the Internet Research Agency." You should read it. We all should read it. At 101 pages, it's shorter than a novel. At 10 pages a day, you could have it finished in over a week. The social media companies have always made money on the aggregation of information our behaviors log on their platforms. They then sell that typically to companies. It's why your "like" of something on social media turns up on Amazon or other websites as an associated product to sell you. It's not too far a reach to speculate they'd sell it to governmental agencies, or extra-governmental agencies (i.e. "spies"), some interested in exploiting the fissures in our society. If the most famous democratic republic in history falls, it's dominoes across the planet. We are literally, the linchpin to chaos.

I participated in the Facebook boycott, adding Twitter and Google since those are the main platforms I use. Before we wait on the slow grind of government to finally regulate social media companies, we should regulate our own behaviors. They gather that aggregate data by the sheer number of times we engage their platforms, typically now through social media apps on our mobile phones. Rather than a single day's abstinence, why not delete the apps from our phones? That is what I did. I imagine it would cut engagement times from a surprising number of hours to minutes. I think you'll find yourselves less distracted, and like I said, it's an easy, voluntary implementation. The companies will regulate themselves to survive and get some of your business back.

My theory of the case is simple: he never meant to win, and Putin never envisioned him winning. His biggest fear isn't pee tapes, but that Putin knows his actual net worth (which we'd know if he released his taxes). He wanted to hamper his opponent - who he really hated - from implementing her agenda. It's why he has that Cheshire cat smirk every time he and Orange Doofus are in the same room: he despises him, thinks he's an idiot and the pee tapes are probably on permanent loop at the Kremlin with Vodka and laughter. And like a cat, Cheshire or otherwise, he's playing with his prey before he's done with it. Any collusion by his Keystone Cop campaign was clumsy and stupid. It's why the tower in Russia was still on the table. His payoffs of an adult film star and a Playboy centerfold was pure ego. The affairs happened years before: If he was going to lose, he WASN'T going to lose for that! Though, he would rather have lost, and just not admitted to losing. Then he could scream from the bleachers "the system is rigged," get another Apprentice gig and his own Faux News 2.0 station with his buddies Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly.

It was the PERFECT plan...until he won.

Related link:

Saturday Night Live Cold Open: It's a Wonderful Life

Damnatio memoriae...

Topics: Civics, Existentialism, Humor, Politics

Damnatio memoriae is a modern Latin phrase meaning "condemnation of memory", i.e., that a person is to be excluded from official accounts. There are and have been many routes to damnatio, including the destruction of depictions, the removal of names from inscriptions and documents, and even large-scale rewritings of history.

In Latin, the term damnatio memoriae was not used by the ancient Romans. The first appearance of the phrase is in a dissertation written in Germany in 1689. The term is used in modern scholarship to cover a wide array of official and unofficial sanctions whereby the physical remnants of a deceased individual were destroyed to differing degrees.

Damnatio memoriae, or oblivion, as a punishment was originally created by the peoples of Ephesus after Herostratus set fire to the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of antiquity.[citation needed] The Romans, who viewed it as a punishment worse than death, adopted this practice.[citation needed] Felons would literally be erased from history for the crimes they had committed.[citation needed] Wikipedia

Apparently I have a few fans on the site Black In America dot com, a forum started by Soledad O’Brien when she was an anchor at CNN:

Another idiot is Mr. Reginald Goodwin! He’s always criticizing Pres. Trump, but I logically know this!

I am positive that Mr. Goodwin voted for Hillary Clinton and this is my argument.

If Mr. Goodwin was as smart as he think he is he would have reasoned like I did that Mr. Trump would be White America’s 45th president. Instead, the idiot Mr. Goodwin comes on Black in America and trash Pres. Trump for winning proving that Mr. Goodwin isn't smart at all since he voted for the wrong candidate, Ms. Hillary Clinton!

The policies that Mr. Trump campaigned on I reasoned Mr. Trump would win and that did happen, Mr. Trump won!

Mr. Goodwin is an idiot and I can say he is because I've proven he is since he voted for the wrong person and is now trashing the candidate that won, that is not intelligence!

Despite calling me out with an insult, I'm judiciously protecting this person's privacy. I'm obviously being facetious about his fandom. From his own words, we know who he's a fan of.

A few points before my retort:

1. All of Robert Mueller’s indictments and plea deals in the Russia investigation so far, Andrew Prokop, Vox.com

2. The Mueller indictments so far: Lies, trolls and hacks, Jesus Rodriguez and Beatrice Jin, Politico

3. Mueller Indictments: Who’s Who, Wall Street Journal

4. Quoting myself in the post Belief in Oneness:

65,853,625 voted for the sane (though, maybe not desired) candidate.

62,985,105 voted for the orange fascist tweeting on the loo and defecating from his pie hole in a breathtaking achievement of daily, all-time Olympic-level lying.

Note: I was Who's Who For Colleges and Universities in my undergraduate days; International “Who’s Who” of Professionals 1998, volume 3 - page 2-47. I've never aspired however, to be on Director Robert Mueller's "Who's Who."

In response, I'm positive I voted for Secretary Clinton too. I'm pretty certain I did (my candidate is saner, and makes complete sentences on and off Twitter). I also don't think she's so much of a narcissist to call for a civil war if removed from office. He's Vladimir Putin's orange wet dream.

My retort (curt and to-the-point):

Who the hell are you, and why should I care? Take your meds and go back to bed, idiot. A prophet you're not, and a profit you've yet to net from your asinine comments. Enjoy oblivion as you will now be blocked and your insane commentary you can keep to yourself. Monday, December 10th 2018 at 1:52 PM

My troll posits himself a "prophet," a title I suspect he's assigned himself and is probably as accurate as Ms. Cleo, may she rest in peace, not speaking ill of the dead.

So, my response was to use the site's tools to block him. Because I've blocked him, he can only fume, post, spit at me from cyberspace and I won't respond or care. I do sincerely hope he takes his meds.

Lastly, I think damnatio memoriae is apropos once we are all post this era of Tweets, insults, incitements, indictments, arrests and Russian collusion. Oblivion should be his purgatory and zero access to the Internet. Like the Witch in the "Wizard of Oz" and my disturbed troll that is his fan: Entropy will allow him to shrivel and die alone and ignored, a Twitter account archived; no presidential library commissioned, bald; bereft of ferret toupees and tanning beds in something beyond hell and pee-pee tapes he would loathe above all else - obscurity.

Great Seuss!..

The Lorax and the patas monkey both possess distinctive facial hair.
Left: Dr. Seuss Enterprises. Right: Istock/Getty

Topics: Biology, Ecology, Environment, Humor, Philosophy

Near the town of Nanyuki
No Grickle-grass grows
And the wind smells fast and sweet when it blows.
Nevertheless, some scholars propose
That this is the home of the Lorax.

Of the dozens of children’s books, Theodor Seuss Geisel wrote under his pen name — Dr. Seuss — The Lorax was reportedly his favorite. Published in 1971, it tells the story of deforestation and environmental destruction by the Once-ler and his family, despite the protestations of “sort of a man” — the curious Lorax.

Most readers have assumed that the Lorax was a character born in Geisel’s extraordinary mind. But a study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution on 23 July1 suggests that Geisel was inspired by a monkey that lives across West and East Africa.

“It began at a formal dinner,” says Nathaniel Dominy, an anthropologist and evolutionary biologist at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, where Geisel once studied. Dominy was seated beside Donald Pease, the Ted and Helen Geisel Third Century Professor in the Humanities at Dartmouth. “I have two young kids, and because he’s the Geisel professor, I figured Dr. Seuss was some common ground,” says Dominy.

He told Pease that during fieldwork in Kenya, he had often thought that the patas monkey (Erythrocebus patas) looks as if it walked off the page of a Dr. Seuss book.

'I speak for the trees': Could this monkey be Dr. Seuss’s Lorax? Colin Barras, Nature

Slaying Pollyanna...

Image Source: IMDB.com

Topics: Commentary, Diversity, Humor, Science Fiction, Star Trek, Women in Science

I finally used my Fire Stick - post the Kodi "jail break" for watching some well-deserved (and on-demand) escapist TV, especially appreciated while doing graduate school.

I'm glad the producers ignored the misogynist/racist rabid puppies/sad puppies/pound puppies (my add) with regards to a female Captain Philippa Georgiou, played by Michelle Yeoh and a female first officer that's the main focus of the series - Michael Burnham, played by Sonequa Martin-Green. I guess the need-of-neutering crowd missed all those female admirals in TNG, DS9 as well as Captain Katherine Janeway that probably rose up the ranks on their command and management skills* as well as knowing a few things theoretical and practical about their respective (fictional) warp cores. It's annoying that as a person of color, I cannot see or watch a science fiction (the operative word is "fiction") without commentary when the genre has been diversified and some get their panties in a wad. It's as if we're invisible and not credible (at least in their mindsets) in technical realms. Also note Thor: Ragnarök - Tessa Thompson; NK Jemisin (Google rabid puppies/sad puppies - they're a hoot!).

Klingons: uglier. Some have compared them to fans of our current POTUS (for however long that, or the species lasts). I'm not sure about the 24 houses thing, but I'm a little concerned in a hundred years, we're supposed to get Worf out of these guys! They remarkably improve their looks, apparently.

Vulcans: snootier. I mean we got they didn't like Sarek, his human wife Amanda (Pon Farr, dude?) and his half breed son Spock, but they threw a sister in the mix of an already unique family to reveal other than Sarek, Vulcans are xenophobic pricks! And isn't "logic extremist" an oxymoron? We're a far cry from T'Pring, Stan and the whole Pon Farr ritual mating, as in this reboot time line, Spock gave the middle finger to the Vulcan Science Academy and apparently has a ("it's complicated") thing with Uhura.

Humans: PTSD. That was a shocker, since Roddenberry left us with the impression science cured everything from the common cold to world hunger. Although, Captain Lorca sauntering about with a phaser in his back hip to his door is probably NOT a good look! (If he has an accident, you KNOW someone's going to post it on Galactic Facebook.) With the reintroduction of Harry Mudd, they obviously didn't eliminate money either, else the character has no motivation to be a smuggler and all-around jerk.

The Trek series are always influenced by the time periods the respective series are produced in. In the 1960s you had miniskirts, The Cold War (that's lately gotten chummy, picking our president for us and all); Sean Connery's James Bond, so William Shatner's James T. Kirk had to be his space cowboy equivalent (with the exception of green alien women). Worf on board the Enterprise and the United Federation of Planets' allegiance to the Klingon empire preceded the Berlin Wall coming down by four television years. TNG discovered quite late in the maturity of the series that Jean Luc Picard - a faux Frenchman who rarely spoke French, drank Earl Grey and said English colloquialisms like "shed-yule" - might have sex once in a while (can't let William T. Riker have all the fun). Avery Brooks as Benjamin Sisko on Deep Space Nine was during both terms of the Bill Clinton presidency (per Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, our "first black president" before we actually had one). Captain Janeway led Voyager through the Delta quadrant between an infamous blue dress and hanging chads with three powerful women that seemed clones of Hillary Clinton: Janeway, B'Elanna Torres (half Klingon) and former Borg 7 of 9. Enterprise brought up the rear with a short series that matched our shortened attention spans post 9/11, plus the future was here and our infatuation with it waned as we worried about explosive shoes and dwindling civil liberties in the War on Terror. This new series has an openly gay couple - a scientist, Lt. Stamets - played by Anthony Rapp - responsible for "spore drive" (using a macro-ripper, souped up five-dimensional tardigrade, because speeds > c on fungal power is so plausible) and the ship's doctor played by Wilson Cruz, something that would have gotten Roddenberry and company canceled in a fortnight (Exhibit A: the kiss between Kirk and Uhura wasn't broadcast in southern markets for years). Times have truly changed.

Tongue-in-cheek commentary: I'm taking umbrage with the openers for TOS and TNG:

(TOS) Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

(TNG) Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.

Sounds regal...noble, almost altruistic. I'm here to say it's pure hokum and futuristic political posturing. I'll explain.

Remember the growth formula?

N = N₀e^rt, where N₀ = initial number, r = 0.02 (for humans) and t = time.

As of 2017, we're roughly 7.6 billion people on the planet.

The fictional World War III on the Trek time line takes place in 2026 (eek) to 2053, shaving off 37 million souls - a lot, but assuming this subtraction is calculated AFTER the fictional war (27 years duration):

2026 - 2017 = 9 years, so that increases us to 9,098,851,960 at the beginning.

9,098,851,960*e^0.02*27 - 37,000,000 = 1.55766924 x 10¹⁰, or 15.6 BILLION people, presumably after nuclear war, nuclear winter, eugenics, famine, drugs, etc before "first contact" with what we'd soon discover as Vulcan snobbery.

To get to Kirk's time 110 years later: 1.55766924 x 10¹⁰*e^0.02*110 = 1.405798592 x 10¹¹, or 140.6 BILLION people. I leave it to you to calculate the 24th century's burst at the seams. All it requires is a calculator with a "ln" (natural logarithm) function key. e^x is usually the second function key option, or close by. It also requires places for all these people, who are being "fruitful and multiplying" to go, and a means to get there for cities, schools, industry, potable water, food, video games and procreation.

See how our future descendants' motivations might be a little less than altruistic?

You just might need force fields, phasers and photon torpedoes as you "boldy go" and "explore" real estate in somebody else's parsec. Humans - gotta love us - can get downright pushy when we colonize anything!

We've also got a history where that didn't work out well for the natives encountered.

And other sentient beings - Klingons, Vulcans, Romulans, Borg, et al despite space being the "final frontier" and a lot of it, might they consider our encroachment - and our prodigious human reproductive powers - at sub light (most likely) or warp speed - rude?

It boils down to the admitted grit and tensions designed in Star Trek: Discovery are simply the same we're experiencing over resources and politics on Terra Firma. It is the Trek for these times, and the most realistic thing about the fantasy franchise.

Thanksgiving next week. Blog vegging till the 27th. "Dif-tor heh smusma." \\//_

Related links:

[Article] – Star Trek: Discovery – The Sci-Fi We Need Right Now, Ronita Mohan, Film Debate, UK

Den of Geek - Star Trek: A History of Female Starfleet Captains on TV

Internet Movie Database - To "Boldly Go": The Women of Star Trek

*Memory Alpha:
Admiral Kat Cornwell
Captain (promoted to Admiral) Kathryn Janeway
Admiral Alynna Nechayev
Admiral T'Lara

Star Trek dot com's interactive database - you'll catch up quick.

Torches and Pitchforks...

Image Source: Giphy.com

Topics: Existentialism, Humor, Politics

I'm 50% there after moving from New York to North Carolina, as I'm seeing more floor in the new place. Successfully registered Lowe's and Harris Teeter grocery store cards for discounts and gas points. I've humbly had to use GPS to relearn my way in my "old stomping grounds." I bought two Amazon Fire Sticks (ironically from Best Buy), and "jail broke" both to get local news and entertainment channels. It saves me $44.90 on a bundle from Spectrum/Time Warner that will likely double at the end of the year discount. I made an appointment with Dr. Zhang at the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering for 11:00 am, at the very least to meet him and thank him for his assistance thus far. That will be my "formal" tour, since out of excitement and to show [to] myself I could FIND the place, I visited already on Tuesday.

Planning on posting today; next week Tuesday - Friday. I'll hopefully be back on schedule after a week of unpacking and the viewing of more floor in the new home.

I've spent a while looking at the news, aghast at how bad our dysfunctional republic is, how some of my fellow citizens are practicing cognitive dissonance on steroids:

The emails show music promoter Rob Goldstone telling the future US president's son that "the crown prosecutor of Russia" had offered "to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father". Goldstone adds: "This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr Trump." Trump Jr replies 17 minutes later and welcomes the offer. "If it's what you say, I love it, especially later in the summer."

The email chain makes clear that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government. Further, it also makes plain that not only Junior, but also Manafort and Kushner knew the campaign had done so because Junior was kind enough to forward the emails to them. He incriminated himself. He incriminated the other two. He made a lie out of practically everything that the Trump camp has said on the subject for over a year. He landed a clean shot below the waterline of his father's administration. Again, I thought of Nixon, standing behind a podium in the White House, while the tape from June 23, 1972 unspooled to an eager world, and then telling the assembled press corps, "See? It's just like I said. I'm not involved." It also was announced that Junior would appear with Sean Hannity on Tuesday night. I fully expected Junior to show up on the set dressed as an evil boyar from an Eisenstein film.

The government of the United States is a shambles. An incompetent administration headed by an unqualified buffoon is now descending into criminal comedy and maladroit backstabbing. It is an administration that not only self-destructs, but glories in the process. There seems to be no end to it, and no desire to end it by the people who actually have the power to do so. That, in itself, seems curious, and it probably should remind us all that Paul Ryan's Super PAC was hip-deep in the borscht itself. Ryan, who really is the person best situated to close the circus down, seems to be afflicted with one of his periodic bouts of invisibility, poor lad. [1]

**********

Marc Kasowitz, President Trump’s personal attorney on the Russia case, threatened a stranger in a string of profanity-laden emails Wednesday night.

The man, a retired public relations professional in the western United States who asked not to be identified, read ProPublica’s story this week on Kasowitz and sent the lawyer an email with the subject line: “Resign Now.’’

Kasowitz replied with series of angry messages sent between 9:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern time. One read: “I’m on you now. You are f*cking with me now Let’s see who you are Watch your back , b---h.”

In another email, Kasowitz wrote: “Call me. Don’t be afraid, you piece of s--t. Stand up. If you don’t call, you’re just afraid.” And later: “I already know where you live, I’m on you. You might as well call me. You will see me. I promise. Bro.” [2]

What ELSE can be said? If Putin had put in a Democrat (and for grins, he likely could in the future) we would be looking at torches, pitchforks, civil war: champaign and vodka as the Kremlin toasts our descent into dystopia; his Cheshire Cat, cheese-eating grin as he proves we were always only a nudge and a few clicks away from anarchy.

Other than...

There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone. Rod Serling

1. How Much More Absurdity Can You Handle? Charles P. Pierce, Esquire Magazine
2. Trump Lawyer Marc Kasowitz Threatens Stranger in Emails: ‘Watch Your Back , B---h’, Justin Elliott, ProPublica

Pi In The Sky Day...

The NASA Pi Day Challenge is an illustrated math problem set that gets students solving some of the same problems NASA scientists and engineers must solve to explore space.

Topics: Education, Einstein, Humor, Mathematics, NASA, STEM

Math Symbol	Pronounce Like
ex, dx, dx	e to the x dee ex, dee ex
ex, dx, dx	e to the x dee ex, dee ex
Cosine	kōˌsīn
Secant	sēˌkant,ˈor sēˌkənt
Tangent	tanjənt
Sine	sīn (long "i" sound)
3.14159...	three point one four one five nine

YAY TEAM!

The engineer's cheer (supposedly from MIT). Lowercase "e" is the natural logarithm (also an irrational number), "dx" in Calculus defines small, infinitesimal change in the variable x; four Trigonometric terms and Pi (symbol: π) you know.

Once you see it, you can't UN-SEE it. I have officially corrupted you.

Also to note: Albert Einstein's birthday happens to be today. In 2015, National Pi Day had some significance as it was his birthday and the year General Relativity was confirmed observing the phenomena we now know as Gravitational Lensing 100 years prior, giving rise to studying a now popular enigma of the universe: Black Holes.

NASA is giving space fans a reason to celebrate Pi Day, the March 14 holiday created in honor of the mathematical constant pi. For the fourth year in a row, the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has created an illustrated Pi Day Challenge featuring four math problems NASA scientists and engineers must solve to explore space. The challenge is designed to get students excited about pi and its applications beyond the classroom. This year’s problem set, designed for students in grade six through high school – but fun for all – features Mars craters, a total solar eclipse, a close encounter with Saturn, and the search for habitable worlds.

Educators, get the standards-aligned Pi Day Challenge lesson and download the free poster and handouts. The answers to all four problems will be released in a companion infographic on March 16.

Why March 14?

Pi is what’s known as an irrational number, meaning its decimal representation never ends and it never repeats. It has been calculated to more than one trillion digits, but NASA scientists and engineers actually use far fewer digits in their calculations (see “How Many Decimals of Pi Do We Really Need?”). The approximation 3.14 is often precise enough, hence the celebration occurring on March 14, or 3/14 (when written in US month/day format). The first known celebration occurred in 1988, and in 2009, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution designating March 14 as Pi Day and encouraging teachers and students to celebrate the day with activities that teach students about pi.

NASA JPL: Celebrate Pi Day Like a NASA Rocket Scientist, Lyle Tavernier

Happy Hallowing...

Mutant flies are scary things, as victims of The Fly can attest. Happy Hallowing!
20th Century Fox/The Kobal Collection at Art Resource, NY

Topics: Biology, Humor, Nobel Laureate, Nobel Prize, Science Fiction

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens and the shades of evening drew on, a sense of insufferable gloom fell on geneticist Michael O’Connor. He was looking at decaying embryos of fruit flies in his lab that had mutations in genes known as disembodiment and ghost, mummy and haunted, shroud and phantom, spook and shadow. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart—an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime, when it came to him with a power that lies beyond our depth. “These are Halloween genes!” he declared, trembling at the realization that he had coined a catchy scientific phrase. And from that shadowy day forward in the late 1990s, so they have been known far and wide.

OK, that’s not exactly what happened, and apologies to Edgar Allan Poe. But O’Connor, who heads the genetics department at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis did dub disembodiment, ghost, and their creepy, ghoulish kin “Halloween genes.” In what became an iconic image—in his lab at least—one of the postdocs, Marcela Chavez, drew a fly on a witch’s broom. A native Spanish speaker, Chavez remembers cracking everyone up at one lab meeting when a misspelling in her presentation read “Hallowing” genes.

The identification and naming of the genes themselves came out of a massive screen for mutants in the fly embryonic genome that led to the Nobel Prize in 1995. One of the winners, Ed Lewis, was a friend of O’Connor’s. “Ed was a big Halloween person,” O’Connor says. “He’d spend all year making his Halloween costumes.” A fan of Belgian surrealist René Magritte, Lewis would dress as characters from his paintings, including the man in a leopard print caveman garb holding a barbell in Perpetual Motion and the man with a birdcage chest and straw hat in The Therapist.

Science: A gory tale behind the origin of ‘Halloween genes’, Jon Cohen

How Much For Half The Planet...

Image Source: First link, first paragraph

Topics: Diversity in Science, Existentialism, Humor, Science Fiction, Star Trek

I use a derivation of TOS novel, "How Much for Just the Planet?" in the title of this post. Captain Kirk and some Klingons were in brinkmanship (United Federation of Planets = USA; Klingons = Soviets - Cold War, got it?) over Dilithium Crystals (an important commodity in 23rd Century economy for the whole warp drive thing). Lithium exists; dilithium just sounded uber cool, I think. Zephram Cochran apparently did it with good old Earth tech and a CD from Steppenwolf. The article reminded me of it.

The NASA endeavor at its essence ultimately is to avoid a H.E.L.E. - better known as a human extinction level event - a term I was introduced to in the miniseries Heroes Reborn, and the dizzying pseudo paradoxes of teleportation, time travel, self-cloning, telepathy and consciously occupying video games. Er...it has to do with EVOs - a group of humans with evolutionary extraordinary powers, and like most science fiction/modern myth asks questions about humans, humanity, xenophobia and society similar to the X-men (a metaphor for African Americans during the Civil Rights Movement):  Charles Xavier née Martin Luther King; Magneto, Malcolm X.

As I'm apt to ask (I did mentally in "Interstellar"): who flies off to the Moon, Mars or Alpha Centauri for the species to survive; who goes to the other half of the planet for the species to survive? And, where exactly is the other half of the planet that's "desirable," and protected/isolated from the effects of climate change?

It may boil down sadly to: 1. Who has trained in a STEM field; 2. Who can afford it.

Edward O. Wilson sees mass extinction of species “among the deadliest threats that humanity has imposed on itself.”

Invoking the kilometers-wide object that struck Earth some 66 million years ago, Edward O. Wilson calls the extinction rate humans are imposing in the biosphere “the equivalent of a Chicxulub-sized asteroid strike played out over several human generations.” His 32nd book, Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life, comes out this month. The New York Times and other media have begun reporting the solution it advocates: reserving half the planet to let other species survive and flourish.

Claudia Dreifus writes for the Times’s science section and teaches at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. In an Audubon Magazine piece, she reminded readers about Wilson’s scientific and public stature:

At 86, Edward Osborne Wilson, Harvard University research professor emeritus of comparative zoology, is among the most famous scientists of our time. Only Jane Goodall and Stephen Hawking can draw a larger crowd. Over the decades he’s made his mark on evolutionary biology, entomology, environmentalism, and literature. In all there have been 31 books, two of which, On Human Nature and The Ants, received the Pulitzer Prize.

She added that he’s widely accepted as “one of the greatest researchers, theorists, naturalists, and authors of our time,” is “known as the father of the concepts of sociobiology and biodiversity,” and is “highly celebrated for his lifetime of environmental advocacy.” Concerning the forthcoming book, she explained that it’s “his answer to the disaster at hand: a reimagined world in which humans retreat to areas comprising one half of the planet’s landmass.” She continued: “The rest is to be left to the 10 million species inhabiting Earth in a kind of giant national park. In human-free zones, Wilson believes, many endangered species would recover and their extinction would, most likely, be averted.”

Physics Today:
Media coverage begins for a book that calls for setting aside half the planet
Steven T. Corneliussen

Future Engineers...

Image Source: Tokyo Tech

Topics: 3D Printing, Humor, NASA, Science Fiction, Space Exploration, Star Trek, STEM

I kind of tackled this in the posts Tea, Earl Grey and Kardashev Scales, essentially we're likely not to achieve the clearly miracle technologies that would violate the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (I'm pretty certain about that!).

However, the closest approximation to replicators are the 3D printing systems that are becoming almost routine; some mentioned even in the same breath as the 2nd Amendment strangely enough.

It is good, with Star Trek due in 2017 to start now to engage the young in STEM activities that will lead ultimately to the next generation of scientists and engineers that will get us to Mars and beyond.

And, for that consequential and monumentally long journey (barring we survive our own hubris to make the actual trek): we shall have to EAT.

NASA, ASME, Star Trek Challenge Future Engineers to Turn Science Fiction into Science Fact
Future Engineers: Star Trek Replicator Challenge

Spaghetti Monster...

Image Source: Urban Dictionary

Topics: Computer Science, Humor, Mechanical Engineering, Robotics, STEM

Beyond the non-rigid, this may have applications in realistic prosthetic limbs, like a replaced finger or hand severed in an unfortunate accident.

I tweeted this yesterday, and gave it a face lift, of a sort. This made me smile quite broadly, and chuckle! You have to admit: the resemblance is uncanny, and likely from highly imaginative nerds, not at all accidental.

Nature: Meet the soft, cuddly robots of the future, Helen Shen

Man From U.N.C.L.E...

Image Source: Reuters Science

Topics: Humor, International Space Station, Space, Space Exploration

Showing my age again, but it was a good show and great movie.

A Soyuz spacecraft successfully delivered a Russian, an American and a Briton to the International Space Station on Tuesday after blasting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The otherwise smooth journey ended with a slightly delayed docking at 1733 GMT as Russian commander Yuri Malenchenko aborted the automatic procedure and manually guided the spacecraft towards the station.

Alongside Malenchenko, a veteran of long-duration space flights who is on his fourth space mission, were NASA astronaut Tim Kopra and Briton Tim Peake, both former Apache military helicopter pilots.

Peake, 43, a former army major who is on a six-month mission for the European Space Agency (ESA), became the first astronaut representing the British government and wearing a Union Jack flag on his arm. The first Briton in space was Helen Sharman, who travelled on a Soviet spacecraft for eight days in 1991.

Reuters Science: Spacecraft carrying Russian, American, Briton docks with space station

Power To Pluto...

Image Source: Wired

Topics: Electrical Engineering, Humor, Planetary Science, Space Exploration

This was a rather tongue-in-cheek article, I say that because all solutions point to the company web site and the products it produces or allegedly can produce. It does raise the issue of interplanetary and interstellar travel: charging your cell phone for selfies is kinda low on the scale of concerns once you fly beyond the "Goldilocks Zone" we currently inhabit. Like "The Martian," you're probably going to have to subsist on a lot of veggies even if you didn't like them as a kid since a burger and fries would be well...several billion miles away!

Imagine this. You have just parked your private space ship on Pluto, intrigued by all the recent NASA photos of the not-a-planet small wannabe-could-be-planet, and you realize your cell phone is on its last legs. Power-wise, that is. Not because you skipped the last two upgrades.

What to do? For sure, here on Pluto, a zillion miles away from the sun, rigging up some sort of solar screen recharger thing is out of the question. Not that you can't do that and not because it wouldn't work (eventually) but because you need power fast. There are Pluto selfies to take and tweets to be tweeted.

Mouser Electronics: Portable Power: Especially Useful on Pluto, Arden Henderson

Aleatory Architecture...

Image Source: Technology Review

Topics: Architectural Engineering, Architecture, Civil Engineering, Condensed Matter Physics, Humor, Science Fiction

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: Architecture is a conservative discipline, not least because of the exacting standards of stability and safety that all human-made structures must adhere to. The forces acting on and within any structure must be carefully calculated and the design modified accordingly. Little can be left to chance.

At least, that’s the traditional view. But some designers are toying with another idea—that there’s a different way to build that exploits randomness rather than avoids it. This kind of building will rely on new kinds of granular materials that when tipped into place, bind together in ways that provide structural stability. In this way, walls, columns and even domes could be poured into place, forming complex but stable structures.

That may sound like science fiction but today Sean Keller at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago and Heinrich Jaeger at the University of Chicago explain how this kind of “aleatory architecture” is finally becoming possible. These guys say that the first aleatory structures are already being built and that the approach is introducing new ways to think about architecture and design in general.

Not quite here yet...

Physics arXiv: Aleatory Architectures - Sean Keller, Heinrich Jaeger

Smarter Than a 4-Year-Old...

Image Source: Technology Review

Topics: Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, Humor, Robotics, STEM

IQ tests have a dubious history with respect to bias of cultural groups' exposure and resources. This is a new twist. Alas, the robot apocalypse shall have to wait for...kindergarten (and, maybe potty training)!

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: First some background. The science of measuring human skills and performance is known as psychometrics. When it comes to human intelligence, the most widely accepted psychometric test is the Intelligence Quotient, or IQ test.

This consists of two parts. The first is a set of questions designed to test various aspects of human performance. The second is a database of test results that future results can be compared against. This is how humans are rated; as above or below average compared to the database, for example.

IQ tests are also designed to test humans at different stages of their lives. So a test designed for adults is unlikely to provide much insight into the performance of 10-year-olds or 4-year-olds. So the process of designing tests and creating the test-result database has to be done for each of these groups.

Just why it has trouble with this kind of reasoning in certain circumstances isn’t clear.

What’s more, many of the wrong answers are entirely unlike those that children would give. For example, in the word reasoning category, ConceptNet 4 was given the following clues: “This animal has a mane if it is male,” “this is an animal that lives in Africa,” and “this a big yellowish-brown cat.”

But its top five answers were: dog, farm, creature, home, and cat.

That’s bizarre. “Common sense should at the very least confine the answer to animals, and should also make the simple inference that, “if the clues say it is a cat, then types of cats are the only alternatives to be considered,” say Ohlsson and co.

All this pointed Ohlsson and co to a clear conclusion. “The ConceptNet system scored a WPPSI-III VIQ that is average for a four-year-old child, but below average for five- to seven-year-olds,” they say.

Physics arXiv:
Measuring an Artificial Intelligence System's Performance on a Verbal IQ Test For Young Children
Stellan Ohlsson, Robert H. Sloan, György Turán, Aaron Urasky