Bloodlust
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The Trailer Countdown for "CELESTINE" is on!!!
Last week, the show I'm the head writer of premiered on DISNEY XD. If you missed the first episode, here it is, in its entirety.
Episode 3 drops this Sunday. This is not a series you can check and out of and expect to keep up. You need to watch every ep. Hope you will. Come on down.
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Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Diversity, Human Rights, Politics
"While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction (or, son of perdition - KJV) so that Scripture would be fulfilled." John 17:12 NIV
"Don't let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God's temple, proclaiming himself to be God." 2 Thessalonian 2:3, 4 NIV
I will be off blog studying for midterms next week.
I am admittedly trolling...
This is the basis for "doomsday preppers" and conspiracy theorists positing positions on "the New World Order" and Davos globalist (an anti-semitic term). It sold a lot of books, like "Christ Returns in 1988: 101 Reasons Why" (newsflash). These are the lines televangelists used to raise ungodly amounts of "seed money" from desperate people that are doing the enlarged equivalent of throwing a coin in a fountain; the visible fruit being mansions, suits, limos and leer jets. It bled into the deification of market forces in a Janus, Faustian merger of libertarianism and prosperity gospel. Co-opting God, the party previously of "family values" voted for the p---y grabber without batting an eye. For the Right/Reich Neo-Fascists that bear no relation to the progenitor of their "faith," these scriptures do not give them pause, since they never believed them in the first place.
These were their Emperor's Klan bedsheets since the legitimization of domestic terrorism cum white supremacy. It was easier to hide them in "abstract" Lee Atwater language, coded phrases: "dog whistles" either with shouted lies from literally a bully pulpit, or tweeting like a loon from the loo. The orange one used the word acquisitions versus the correct accusations in reference to his Supreme Court nominee. When I called him on it, he deleted the tweet. Orange genius has no sense of cache memory...probably thinks it's "fake news."
We are post the spectacle of a kangaroo court where evidently, eleven white men's ball sacks shriveled as they whined in the shadows of the senate, hiring a "female assistant" from Maricopa County, Arizona to ask the tough questions so they wouldn't look like they're as unfair as many were to Professor Anita Hill a generation ago. This is SUPPOSED to be a part of their constitutional duties to "advise and consent" a Supreme Court nominee. If they wanted safety, they should have stayed out of politics and frankly, stayed at home. They sidelined her when she tried to do the job she was hired for to Kavenaugh - prosecuting sex crimes, whom I will now and forever refer to as the screaming lunatic, conspiracy theorist judge and raging misogynist. Lindsey Graham mimicked him perfectly.
What used to be called "norms" have been eroding for some time. It was during the over year-long delay to even hear Merrick Garland, Mitch McConnell's proudest moment. It precedes the orange dolt by years, if not decades. Clarence Thomas invoked "high-tech lynching," playing his one and only race card after a life of black republicanism disdaining the advances made by Civil Rights and Affirmative Action that even made his ascension possible. As most republican appointees we've seen recently, his mission to the EEOC appeared to be wreck it or at least hobble its primary function, anathema to most conservatives. As 53% of white women consciously and deliberately voted for an admitted sexual assaulter, there are African Americans that consciously go along with, and support white supremacy. So, it's not at all surprising that conservative women not only support Kavenaugh, but are willing to make excuses they would not make to their own daughters...or, they just might.
These old, ossified buffoons and their caricature of a wise-guy mobster are not republicans. That is just a label of their tribal cult. They are impervious to facts, as debates about adequate sexual education as the most effective means of reducing teenage unwanted pregnancy; climate change and the pursuit of alternative energy resources, the age of the earth, evolution, scientific literacy jettisoned. The hearing's limits were - to agree with the screaming, crying, pompous banshee trying to lie his way on the Supreme Court - an orchestrated farce!
Federal Republic: A federal republic is a federation of states with a republican form of government.
Republic: A republic (Latin: res publica) is a form of government in which the country is considered a "public matter", not the private concern or property of the rulers. The primary positions of power within a republic are not inherited. It is a form of government under which the head of state is not a monarch.
You cannot be a federal republic with the shameful display by twelve misogynists (11 senators and one asshole, crying judge) without norms, rationality, reality and an agreement on what is truth!
"While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction (or, son of perdition - KJV) so that Scripture would be fulfilled." John 17:12 NIV
The sons of perdition will not go to destruction alone. With Putin and his lackey's help, so will our republic and likely...the world.
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| Lasers are used to trap arrays of atoms within glass chambers made by ColdQuanta, a neutral atom quantum computing startup. COLDQUANTA INC. |
Topics: Computer Science, Laser, Quantum Computer, Quantum Mechanics
In a small basement laboratory, Harry Levine, a Harvard University graduate student in physics, can assemble a rudimentary computer in a fraction of a second. There isn't a processor chip in sight; his computer is powered by 51 rubidium atoms that reside in a glass cell the size of a matchbox. To create his computer, he lines up the atoms in single file, using a laser split into 51 beams. More lasers—six beams per atom—slow the atoms until they are nearly motionless. Then, with yet another set of lasers, he coaxes the atoms to interact with each other, and, in principle, perform calculations.
It's a quantum computer, which manipulates "qubits" that can encode zeroes and ones simultaneously in what's called a superposition state. If scaled up, it might vastly outperform conventional computers at certain tasks. But in the world of quantum computing, Levine's device is somewhat unusual. In the race to build a practical quantum device, investment has largely gone to qubits that can be built on silicon, such as tiny circuits of superconducting wire and small semiconductors structures known as quantum dots. Now, two recent studies have demonstrated the promise of the qubits Levine works with: neutral atoms. In one study, a group including Levine showed a quantum logic gate made of two neutral atoms could work with far fewer errors than ever before. And in another, researchers built 3D structures of carefully arranged atoms, showing that more qubits can be packed into a small space by taking advantage of the third dimension.
The advances, along with the arrival of venture capital funding, suggest neutral atoms could be on the upswing, says Dana Anderson, CEO of ColdQuanta, a Boulder, Colorado–based company that is developing an atom-based quantum computer. "We've done our homework," Anderson says. "This is really in the engineering arena now."
Arrays of atoms emerge as dark horse candidate to power quantum computers
Sophia Chen, Science Mag
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| Rescue personnel evacuate residents as flooding continues in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence in Spring Lake, N.C., Monday, Sept. 17, 2018. AP Photo/David Goldman |
Topics: Climate Change, Global Warming, Politics, Research
We're not over it, not by a long shot. This will, even to the callous capitalists, be un-affordable and unsustainable.
As Hurricane Florence’s wrath along the Carolina coast concludes, things for thousands of North and South Carolina families will never be the same. Heavy downpours from the Category 4 storm, which was downgraded to a Category 2 when it hit landfall, brought flash flooding from the coastal plain last Thursday all the way to the Triad by late Sunday night. Winds in some parts of Guilford County reached upwards of 30 mph, with Guilford County receiving a total of up to 24 inches of rain.
Although Florence had been downgraded to a Tropical Depression by the time it reached Guilford County, the area experienced flash flooding, while other parts of the state experienced extreme flooding that will likely last several weeks. Duke Energy reported 1.4 million total power outages in the Carolinas. There have been at least 37 storm-related deaths reported – 27 in North Carolina, eight in South Carolina and two in Virginia. Preliminary numbers from government officials estimate the storm left behind $2.5 billion in damages to the state of North Carolina. The storm also kept Eastern North Carolina synagogues closed on September 19, the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur.
In Greensboro, a section of Lake Brandt Road is still closed while crews repair a sinkhole that formed in the pavement under a bridge due to heavy rain flow. City officials also reported that 63,000 gallons of untreated wastewater in Greensboro leaked from Buffalo Creek and the Cape Fear River basin for four hours before it was detected. [1]
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When Hurricane Florence thundered ashore, it came crashing down on Duke Energy’s coal ash disposal site and cajoled loose some 2,000 cubic yards of the mucky material. Duke, which is closing all of its coal ash sites by 2029, has been through this before. What has the industry learned?
Coal ash is disposed of either as a liquid that goes into large surface impoundments or as a solid that is placed into landfills. But now the industry is in the process of converting it to dry ash and burying it in places with liners while also monitoring the ground water.
“Once the damage is assessed,” says the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, “DEQ will determine the best path forward and hold the utility accountable for implementing the solution that ensures the protection of public health and the environment.” [2]
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Millions of chickens have died and waste from pigs and coal ash has leaked into floodwaters in North Carolina as authorities work to control environmental threats and stop the spread of any contamination.
But continued high water is keeping state and federal officials from knowing the full extent of the problem.
Officials are most concerned that the coal-burning byproducts, animal waste, and even untreated human sewage in floodwaters could contaminate sources of drinking water. The Environmental Protection Agency said Monday that at least 23 public and private drinking water systems in North Carolina were not supplying water and that 21 others were operating with restrictions like a boil water advisory.
Reggie Cheatham, director of the EPA's Office of Emergency Management, said Monday that some sewage has been released into the floodwaters through sewer system manholes and, in one case, a power failure at a water treatment plant. Cheatham told reporters some of the untreated sewage had been released into the Neuse and Cape Fear rivers. [3]
1. Hurricane Florence Aftermath, Yasmine Regester, Carolina Peacemaker online
2. Hurricane Florence Brings The Issue Of Coal Ash Back To The Surface, Ken Silverstein, Forbes
3. Concern continues about overflowed animal waste pits, coal ash in Florence flooding, Stephanie Ebbs, ABC News
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| Image Source: Link below |
Topics: Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, Internet, Nobel Prize, Optics
Charles Kao, the electrical engineer who shared the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physics with Willard Boyle and George Smith, has died in Hong Kong aged 84. Kao was awarded half of the 2009 prize “for ground-breaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibres for optical communication.”
Kao was born on 4 November 1933 in Shanghai, China. He studied electrical engineering at Woolwich Polytechnic (now the University of Greenwich) and received his PhD in electrical engineering from University College London in 1965 under the supervision of Harold Barlow. While pursuing his PhD, he was employed by Standard Telephones and Cables (STC) at the firm’s Standard Telecommunication Laboratories (STL) in Harlow, UK.
While working at STL in 1966, Kao realized that optical fibres made from high-purity glass could be used to transmit light signals over long distances. A few years later, he showed that fibres made of fused silica had the required purity and could also be easily manufactured. This was a crucial step towards the development of fibre-optical telecoms networks, which provide the backbone to the Internet.
Optical telecoms pioneer and Nobel laureate Charles Kao dies at 84
Hamish Johnston, Physics World
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| Image Source: Link below |
Topics: Alternative Energy, Chemistry, Green Energy, Nanotechnology, Photosynthesis
During photosynthesis, plants split water into hydrogen ions and oxygen. If researchers could devise a method to mimic nature, the hydrogen could provide a carbon-neutral energy source. A significant challenge to implementing such a technology is developing a system that separates the electrons and the positively charged holes; otherwise, the hydrogen and oxygen could react back into water. Researchers led by Jacek Stolarczyk of Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich and Frank Würthner of the University of Würzburg may have overcome the difficulty by introducing two intermediaries—an oxidation catalyst and platinum particles—to a novel semiconducting nanorod.
The researchers started with an approach that already generated hydrogen but at the nanorod’s expense. When a cadmium sulfide nanorod in water absorbs light, the energy spurs the donation of electrons to a platinum reducing agent. The free H+ can then form H2. But without an oxidation catalyst, the arrangement is unsustainable because the remaining holes oxidize the nanorod’s sulfur lattice. The figure illustrates the researchers’ solution: decorating a newly synthesized CdS nanorod with both platinum nanoparticles and an oxidation catalyst.
The process begins when the nanorod absorbs light, which mobilizes electrons. The oxidation catalyst then draws holes from the length of the nanorod. Each Pt tip attached to either end of the nanorod acts as the electron sink. The oxidation half reaction (red arrows) removes electrons from OH− to produce O2 and water; the reduction half reaction (blue arrows) uses the electrons to covalently bond hydrogen atoms to generate H2. The researchers deployed a fresh chemical group to attach the catalyst to the nanorod. With that innovation, the anchoring group was more resistant to oxidation and the holes were swiftly transferred to the catalyst. (C. M. Wolff et al., Nat. Energy, 2018, doi:10.1038/s41560-018-0229-6.)
New nanoarchitecture generates hydrogen, Alex Lopatka, Physics Today
Topics: Civil Rights, Diversity, Human Rights, Politics
Charles Blow revealed his own assault experiences on CNN. It was courageous but not hard to believe, as every 98 seconds an American is sexually assaulted; 15 persons per day. One in nine girls and 1 in 53 boys under 18 experience this. I apologize if this triggers anyone.
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I was five years old, and my mother visited her sisters in Washington, DC. He was introduced to me as my "uncle," as cohabitation in 1967 was still considered taboo. I accepted that explanation and had my trust violated by a stranger. My mother defended me with what looked like a lead pipe administered forcefully on his temple. We left on the next bus. We never discussed it.
It erupted in fits and starts after I married my wife. I argued about insane things that I didn't think important, but wanted to "win." She was at her wits end, and very close to ending our marriage. My rage was not expressed physically, but I was verbally and emotionally abusive.
My "uncle" experience came out in marriage counseling. I tried to describe it dispassionately, as if I was viewing a scene through an opaque screen. Our counselor wasn't having it: "No, Reginald. That was abuse. That was assault."
That hit me with the same blunt-force trauma as the original lead pipe planted in the asshole's head. I tried to drown my feelings of helplessness and lack of masculinity in a 1.5 liter wine bottle. I collapsed on my kitchen table. I wept. My wife embraced me. I was solidly in my thirties, decades from the event. I dreaded telling my father. When I did, we didn't speak for about two weeks. When we finally did, he was angry that my mother didn't tell him; that I didn't tell him. I just recalled to him the likely reason my mother didn't bother. My father owned a .38 caliber pistol, .22 caliber rifle, and a protective temper. We made amends as I told him I preferred him on this side of the criminal justice system...as my dad.
Time has consumed my parents and my hellish assaulter. It is a defense mechanism to construct a "screen" - opaque and dim to hide the pain. I am revealing this as a husband and a father. I am revealing this as a US Air Force veteran. I am revealing this as a martial artist of 38 years experience. I am revealing this as an example that damning a woman for not reporting an assault immediately as it happened is not taking into account the psychology of survivors and a complete lack of human empathy.
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Questions have lingered since shortly after Kavanaugh’s nomination was announced in July and reporters digging into his public record found that Kavanaugh’s financial disclosure forms showed tens of thousands of dollars of fluctuating credit card balances as well as a loan against his retirement account for the 12 years before 2017. All of these debts disappeared from Kavanaugh’s financial disclosures in 2017 and the forms did not indicate an obvious source of funds to repay them, prompting speculation about potential conflicts of interest.
Kavanaugh contradicts White House account of credit card debt, raising more questions Luppe B. Luppen, Yahoo News
Finances are the first lever point of influence by an adversary or a oligarch - American or Russian - to a sitting Supreme Court Justice. It's why it's front-and-center on a government SF-86 application, and why the Federal Bureau of Investigation (apparently, the teen girl tweeter-in-chief thinks "investigation" is not part of its function) looks at it. On just this alone, it turns the spirit of the court from an arbiter of the law without partisan considerations on its head. The court teeters from Supreme to kangaroo; the Federal Republic to banana. We are teetering towards collapse, which only pleases Putin.
The optics are already bad when you're putting the pressure of a deadline on a possible victim of sexual assault who has to flee her home due to death threats. For that alone, the FBI should be called. What used to be derisively referred to as cowardice or "shell shock" is now correctly Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which anyone who has been sexually assaulted are now triggered by the Neanderthal clumsiness of Senators Grassley and Hatch. The optics are already bad post the public accountability of Roger Ailes, Bill Cosby, Bill O'Reilly, and "me too" that pretty much the same cadre of old, ossified white males will judge an accuser of their president*'s pick to the US Supreme Court, only to give himself a 5-4 vote in case the House of Representatives flips and "impeachment is ON the table." Grassley previously was all for an FBI investigation for Clarence Thomas, yet he and Hatch are deathly afraid now. The defense of Judge Kavenaugh, who according to former Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin) may have lied under oath for his current job is "that was decades ago" and "boys will be boys"; sexually assertive girls are routinely called whores and sluts, sexually assertive p---y grabbing man-babies with toadstool penises... become president*.
The only way to get "boys" to behave is to remove the current statute of limitations most laws have on sexual harassment and predation. That Sword of Damocles is only oppressive on a certain group of men that wish to practice predation unencumbered by accountability. It should force society as a whole to think reflectively on how poorly American culture raises its men in misogynistic toxicity.
The accountability for toadstool man-babies...is The Constitution.
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| A group of researchers recently observed a mysterious infrared emission coming from near a pulsar in NASA's Hubble Space telescope data. This animation depicts one possible source of the emission: a "fallback disk" or a disk that formed from materials of the parent star falling back into the neutron star after a supernova. Credit: ESA/N. Tr’Ehnl (Pennsylvania State University)/NASA |
Topics: Astrophysics, Infrared, Neutron Stars, Neutrons, X-rays
Space is filled with bizarre signals that we scramble to put meaning to — and now, researchers have detected yet another mysterious signal. This one emanated from near a neutron star, and for the first time, it's infrared.
So, what's nearby that could have created the weird signal? Scientists have a few ideas.
When a star reaches the end of its life, it typically undergoes a supernova explosion— the star collapses, and if it has enough mass, it will form a black hole. But if the star isn't massive enough, it will form a neutron star. [Supernova Photos: Great Images of Star Explosions]
Neutrons stars are very dense and, as their name suggests, are made up mostly of closely packed neutrons. Neutron stars can also be called "pulsars" if they are highly magnetized and rotate rapidly enough to emit electromagnetic waves, according to Space.com.
Typically, neutron stars emit radio waves or higher-energy waves such as X-rays, according a statement released by NASA yesterday (Sept. 17). But an international group of researchers from Penn State, the University of Arizona and Sabanci University in Turkey observed something interesting in NASA's Hubble Space Telescope data: a long signal of infrared light emitted near a neutron star, the researchers reported yesterday in The Astrophysical Journal.
This signal, they found, was about 800 light-years away and was "extended," meaning it was spread across a large stretch of space, unlike typical "point" signals from neutron stars that emit X-rays. Specifically, the signal stretched across 200 astronomical units (AU) of space, or 2.5 times the orbit of Pluto around the sun, according to a statement from Penn State. (One AU is the average distance from Earth to the sun — about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.)
Weird Infrared Signal Emanates Across Space, But What Created It?
Yasemin Saplakoglu, Live Science
During the heady days of the Black Cultural revolution in Chicago, there was a lot of art dealing with this hope and concept. The mainstream galleries, Black art curators, historians and critics mostly stayed away from it. Then once certain major players in this died in came the White parasites. One a college professor the other a Jewish art dealer. Both swooped in making deals to sell works, with the other building a entire career path for herself. Now they are the accepted go-to authorities of this movement. That they treat as a dead slave on their plantations. "The Black Art Movement" now produces no revenue or power for the people it were supposed to benefit.
And all of this happened due to the "Black on Black boycott" that allowed non-Blacks to walk in a take it to the bank. WHen Black do not support and endorse its own positives others come in later to reap its resources, power & wealth.
Sort of like Jazz, The Blues, Peanut Butter and Hip Hop.........
I plan to write about this and be sure, in my life time this will not happen to the growing Black Age of Comics Movement.
"Indie today: Black Age Forever!!!"
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| A new uncertainty principle holds that quantum objects can be at two temperatures at once, which is similar to the famous Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, in which a cat in a box with a radioactive element can be both alive and dead. Credit: Shutterstock |
Topics: Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, Nanotechnology, Schrödinger's cat, Quantum Mechanics, Thermodynamics
The famous thought experiment known as Schrödinger's cat implies that a cat in a box can be both dead and alive at the same time — a bizarre phenomenon that is a consequence of quantum mechanics.
Now, physicists at the University of Exeter in England have found that a similar state of limbo may exist for temperatures: Objects can be two temperatures at the same time at the quantum level. This weird quantum paradox is the first completely new quantum uncertainty relation to be formulated in decades.
Heisenberg's other principle
In 1927, German physicist Werner Heisenberg postulated that the more precisely you measure a quantum particle's position, the less precisely you can know its momentum, and vice versa — a rule that would become the now-famous Heisenberg uncertainty principle. [Twisted Physics: 7 Mind-Blowing Findings]
The new quantum uncertainty, which states that the more precisely you know temperature, the less you can say about energy, and vice versa, has big implications for nanoscience, which studies incredibly tiny objects smaller than a nanometer. This principle will change how scientists measure the temperature of extremely small things such as quantum dots, small semiconductors or single cells, the researchers said in the new study, which was published in June in the journal Nature Communications.
"I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." Richard Feynman
Bizarre Physics Phenomenon Suggests Objects Can Be Two Temperatures at Once
Meredith Fore, Live Science
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| When the researchers turn an external magnetic field in different directions (indicated with arrows), they change the orientation of the linear electron flow above the kagome (six-fold) magnet, as seen in these electron wave interference patterns on the surface of a topological quantum kagome magnet. Each pattern is created by a particular direction of the external magnetic field applied on the sample.Image by M. Z. Hasan, Jia-Xin Yin, Songtian Sonia Zhang, Princeton University |
Topics: Modern Physics, Nanotechnology, Quantum Computer, Quantum Mechanics
An international team of researchers led by Princeton physicist Zahid Hasan has discovered a quantum state of matter that can be “tuned” at will — and it’s 10 times more tuneable than existing theories can explain. This level of manipulability opens enormous possibilities for next-generation nanotechnologies and quantum computing.
“We found a new control knob for the quantum topological world,” said Hasan, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics. “We expect this is tip of the iceberg. There will be a new subfield of materials or physics grown out of this. … This would be a fantastic playground for nanoscale engineering.”
Hasan and his colleagues, whose research appears in the current issue of Nature, are calling their discovery a “novel” quantum state of matter because it is not explained by existing theories of material properties.
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| Hasan discusses the discovery with Yin and Zhang in his office in Jadwin Hall.Photo byNick Barberio, Office of Communications |
Hasan’s interest in operating beyond the edges of known physics is what attracted Jia-Xin Yin, a postdoctoral research associate and one of three co-first-authors on the paper, to his lab. Other researchers had encouraged him to tackle one of the defined questions in modern physics, Yin said.
“But when I talked to Professor Hasan, he told me something very interesting,” Yin said. “He’s searching for new phases of matter. The question is undefined. What we need to do is search for the question rather than the answer.”
The classical phases of matter — solids, liquids and gases — arise from interactions between atoms or molecules. In a quantum phase of matter, the interactions take place between electrons, and are much more complex.
“This could indeed be evidence of a new quantum phase of matter — and that’s, for me, exciting,” said David Hsieh, a professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology and a 2009 Ph.D. graduate of Princeton, who was not involved in this research. “They’ve given a few clues that something interesting may be going on, but a lot of follow-up work needs to be done, not to mention some theoretical backing to see what really is causing what they’re seeing.”
Hasan has been working in the groundbreaking subfield of topological materials, an area of condensed matter physics, where his team discovered topological quantum magnets a few years ago. In the current research, he and his colleagues “found a strange quantum effect on the new type of topological magnet that we can control at the quantum level,” Hasan said.
Princeton scientists discover a ‘tunable’ novel quantum state of matter
Liz Fuller-Wright, Office of Communications, Princeton University
Topics: Civil Rights, Diversity, Existentialism, History, Human Rights
Republicans: Founded in 1854 by anti-slavery expansion activists and modernizers, the Republican Party quickly surpassed the Whig Party as the principal opposition to the Democratic Party. In 1860, it came to power with the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency. The party presided over the American Civil War and Reconstruction and was harried by internal factions and scandals toward the end of the 19th century. Today, the party supports a conservative platform (from an American political perspective), with further foundations in supply-side fiscal policies, and social conservatism. Merriam-Webster
Fascism: The term Fascism was first used of the totalitarian right-wing nationalist regime of Mussolini in Italy (1922–43); the regimes of the Nazis in Germany and Franco in Spain were also Fascist. Fascism tends to include a belief in the supremacy of one national or ethnic group, a contempt for democracy, an insistence on obedience to a powerful leader, and a strong demagogic approach. Oxford dictionary
Friday, the campaign manager flipped to help Special Prosecutor Mueller, and himself as the cost of defense was becoming prohibitive, and at 69, spending the "rest of his life" in prison will likely be a short duration.
Also Friday at the end of a week of the Woodward book and an anonymous op-ed in the New York Times, an anonymous woman's incident with the Supreme Court nominee was proffered by Senator Feinstein (D-California). The alleged victim's name was hidden at her request. Senator Grassley was determined to plow ahead with a nomination in committee on the 20th. The charges by an anonymous person was "baseless" unless she came forward.
So, his accuser, came forward. In her own words "Now I feel like my civic responsibility is outweighing my anguish and terror about retaliation." We will see if Chairman Grassley will follow "the rule of law," give her a hearing before the senate committee vote. Senators Collins and Murkowski will have pressure on them if Kavenaugh goes before the full senate.
The Republican Party prior to the fall of Richard M. Nixon had made a Faustian compromise between my kindergarten and first grade year. They turned from their foundation in Civil Rights and prosecuting the Civil War for political expediency by pulling in the disaffected "Dixiecrats" disillusioned by the tilt that started with Harry Truman in the '48 Democratic convention towards expanding equal opportunity towards African Americans. The 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights and 1968 Fair Housing Acts were more than many could bear. They were wooed, then migrated en masse to the siren song of the "Southern Strategy" and Nixon's "law and order" platform (read: reestablishment of white supremacy). This would be slightly camouflaged by coded language, as Lee Atwater opined:
You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.” Rick Perlstein, Exclusive: Lee Atwater's Infamous 1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy, The Nation
The Republican Party of Ronald Reagan I did not agree with in my youth, but I did admire aspects of it as a lot of people did. If you read novels as I did and still do, Tom Clancy and "The Hunt for Red October" or Robert Ludlum's "Bourne Trilogy" held your rapt attention. That was back when you talked about novels at work near water coolers. That was post the Vietnam era, when the country spat on vets as "baby killers." In the wake of the Iranian hostage crisis, we wanted desperately to seem "tough" and in control. We recreated a new mythology for ourselves, and catharsis with characters like Sylvester Stallone bouncing between "Rocky" and "Rambo"; we all loved Clint Eastwood's "Dirty Harry."and through a brash machismo, we tried to rescue our bruised national self-image in a tough-talking, B-movie actor, who's "awe shucks shrug" persona masked an agenda infused with the Janus religions of Ayn Rand worship and libertarianism. This was also prior to the "Me Too" movement and acknowledging the lingering toxicity of misogyny. AIDS was becoming a health crisis in the LGBT community that Mr. Shucks would ignore as the bodies represented by memorial quilts piled up, and pop culture along with Hollywood had a keen focus on nostalgia.
Abstract
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Hollywood studios churned out film after film that sought to recapture, revise, and re-imagine the fifties, as evidenced by films like American Graffiti (1973), Grease (1977), The Outsiders (1983), Reckless (1983), Footloose (1984), Back to the Future (1985), Blue Velvet (1986), Stand By Me (1986), and Hairspray (1988). Academic and popular critics alike have noted the peculiar fascination Hollywood had for the fifties, comparing the politics of its fifties nostalgia to the rise of the neoconservative movement that took Ronald Reagan as its avatar.
However, it is important to recognize that representations of the fifties in Reagan Era films and popular culture were far from homogeneous. Rather than a concept with discrete political or social import, "the fifties" functioned in the Reagan Era as a set of unstable signifiers, the meanings of which were the subject of intense negotiation and struggle.
Dwyer, Michael D., "Back to the fifties: Pop nostalgia in the Reagan Era" (2010). English - Dissertations. 54. https://surface.syr.edu/eng_etd/54
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This country has been surprised by the way the world looks now
They don't know if they want to be Matt Dillon or Bob Dylan
They don't know if they want to be diplomats ...
Or continue the same policy of nuclear nightmare diplomacy
John Foster Dulles ain't nothing but the name of an airport now
The idea concerns the fact that this country wants nostalgia
They want to go back as far as they can ...
Even if it's only as far as last week
Not to face now or tomorrow, but to face backwards
And yesterday was the day of our cinema heroes
Riding to the rescue at the last possible moment
The day of the man in the white hat or the man on the white horse ...
Or, the man who always came to save America at the last moment
Someone always came to save America at the last moment
Especially in "B" movies
B-Movie, Gil Scott Heron
This is a party, before its current avatar, that has always looked back longingly to the 1950s: when industry wasn't so global and a white male with a high school education (or less) could purchase a house and support a family. This of course was a time of segregated schools, transportation and neighborhoods by law prior to the nascent efficacy of the Civil Rights movement; an era of closeted LGBT people, who's existence I can only imagine was like constantly living in a suffocating envelope or cocoon; there weren't many Hispanic/Latino with exception of pockets in California and Texas, usually in agriculture and women - white women - were in the kitchen at home. Black women were too - mostly, but not completely as the servants of white women.
And now, they see a chance at a stolen Supreme Court seat to take us all back to those (not-so) Happy Days, a sexual assaulter appointed by a sexual assaulter to sit next to a sexual harasser to decide the future of women and their bodies, as well as people of color and LGBT and their Civil Rights. The desperation for those (not-so) Happy Days will have them lie, cheat, steal (2016 and past questionable late 20th century elections) and possibly collude with a foreign power to maintain Christian Supremacy sans White Supremacy that has had remarkable staying power.
Their "great again" has since the existential threatening presence of President Obama been quite literally by "any means necessary" (Malcolm X). We just didn't fathom how much power meant to them.
So, when do we stop calling them "republicans"?
Republicans: Founded in 1854 by anti-slavery expansion activists and modernizers, the Republican Party quickly surpassed the Whig Party as the principal opposition to the Democratic Party. In 1860, it came to power with the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency. The party presided over the American Civil War and Reconstruction and was harried by internal factions and scandals toward the end of the 19th century. Today, the party supports a conservative platform (from an American political perspective), with further foundations in supply-side fiscal policies, and social conservatism. Merriam-Webster
Fascism: The term Fascism was first used of the totalitarian right-wing nationalist regime of Mussolini in Italy (1922–43); the regimes of the Nazis in Germany and Franco in Spain were also Fascist. Fascism tends to include a belief in the supremacy of one national or ethnic group, a contempt for democracy, an insistence on obedience to a powerful leader, and a strong demagogic approach. Oxford dictionary
Which definition...fits?
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| Image Source: AARP, which up to this moment, I didn't realize was so "woke." |
Topics: Climate Change, Existentialism, Global Warming, Star Trek
The home world of the Ferengi species is Ferenginar. The Ferengi have a culture which is based entirely upon commerce. They follow a code of conduct known as "The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition." These rules ordain conduct such as "Never place family before business." Reportedly these rules are subject to interpretation depending upon the situation. Plea bargaining is a legal tradition, as is the purchasing of an apprenticeship following the Attainment Ceremony. There is no distinction between business and pleasure in Ferengi culture. Source: Star Trek (the link to Ferenginar is priceless)
In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world-- through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.
At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves…. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the “War on Terror” to Halliburton and Blackwater…. After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts.... New Orleans’s residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened…. These events are examples of “the shock doctrine”: using the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters -- to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy. Sometimes, when the first two shocks don’t succeed in wiping out resistance, a third shock is employed: the electrode in the prison cell or the Taser gun on the streets.
Naomi Klein, though a Canadian author is a national treasure, that despite the faux-existential crisis between our nations initiated by a baboon. The Shock Doctrine came out in 2007, 6 years after 9/11; 11 years ago and her follow on books This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate and The Battle For Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists follows the same theme: using the misery of others by climate, terrorism and war for profit. She is the proverbial "voice calling in the wilderness" metaphorically speaking, minus the camel's hair wardrobe and proto Paleo diet of locusts and wild honey. Quite literally, it is about the only planet the human species currently lives and exists on.
We may not be able to reverse climate change, but we can adapt to it—and climate change isn't all bad for the construction industry. Construction Business Owner tells us that climate change means warmer winters and a prolonged construction season for many states. And as the pressure grows to reduce our carbon footprint, new solutions and innovations are introduced within the construction industry each year. Source: Concentra: The Effects of Climate Change on Construction
We had literally decades to address this repeated, slow-moving catastrophe. There is only one thing that delayed any actions to mitigate it.
Profit. The crass, self-serving reason nothing about guns, climate change, terrorism or wars get any better. There are businesses that require this chaos. It's a part of their business model. Serenity and world peace are death knells to them. We see this in every American mass shooting that increases the profits of gun manufacturers, causing hand ringing and naval gazing by the news media, until the next shiny object diverts our attention. We saw it when we stumbled into Iraq on the manufactured lie of "weapons of mass destruction," the prelude to "alternative facts." Martin Paredes in Medium took a humorous stab at 47 rules of acquisition sans our twitter freak with presidential seal.
Puerto Rico's death toll was raised from 64 to almost 3,000, approximating 9/11. The current resident of the executive mansion made his first tweet all about "no Russian collusion" on the 17th anniversary and a fantasy collaboration between his democratic opponent, the FBI, foreign spies and his Russian benefactors. He then denied almost 3,000 American citizens (which I doubt he knows they are) died at all. Puerto Rico is still under stress, they still have limited access to electrical power and in North Carolina, I have little confidence in the efficacy of government assistance from a raging lunatic.
The campus closed Wednesday at 5:00 pm. We await Hurricane Florence, whose eye proceeds up the Carolina coasts. An estimated 1 million people evacuated South Carolina, the highways converted to one-way lanes out. I have supplies for several days; no water's on the shelves in grocery or convenience stores. Gas stations have plastic bags on pump handles. This reminds me of Hurricane Sandy in upstate New York, when people from Manhattan drove up to gas up (get in a few fights) and drive back. This reminds me of Katrina: the citizens called "refugees" by the news media; in central Texas - grocery shelves stripped of water, food and empty pumps - the monstrous eye, the survivors on rooftops, the stratification of society before we called it by its modern nom de guerre "income inequality" and which sides of New Orleans recovered and which were purchased as distressed properties and gentrified. It would remind me of "heck of a job, Brownie," except the reality of failure would just be denied, "explained" and parroted by cult ditto heads. I have somehow been on a jury to witness the effects of climate change up close. It's something I didn't think I volunteered for.
For a very brief, shining moment, the republican presidential candidate George W. Bush talked about "compassionate conservatism." It was short-lived, as compassion led to diversity, black pres, healthcare and gay marriage. What is within the darkest bowels, hidden from view by "winks and nods" with coded language eventually erupts like a boil or a pimple; it is an infection that must emerge, and cannot be denied its day in the sun.
And, "We The People" breathlessly, daily await that rancid zit, who might actually tweet its first jumbled, insane thoughts during morning bowel movements.
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| Image Source: DC Wiki |
Topics: Existentialism, Global Warming, Politics
Apokolips is a fictional planet appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. The planet is ruled by Darkseid, established in Jack Kirby's Fourth World comic book series, and is integral to many stories in the DC Universe. Apokolips is considered to be the opposite of the planet New Genesis. Wikipedia
Apokolips is an ecumenopolis with burning firepits, extant in between dimensions, occupying a 'frequency' somewhere between the physical universe and Hell; the war that destroyed the Old Gods and created New Genesis and Apokolips separated the Fourth World from the rest of the universe proper, leaving it accessible by Boom Tube.
The population is a downtrodden lot, including many kidnapped from other worlds before being 'broken.' The majority of the population are called "Lowlies", a bald and fearful race that has no sense of self worth or value. The Lowlies are subject to constant abuse that ends only with death. Slightly above them are the Parademons, who serve as the keepers of order on the planet. Higher above the Parademons are the Female Furies, who are Darkseid's personal guard. (Male Furies also exist, but are less common.) They are blessed with unnatural strength and longevity and are allowed to develop as individuals. This exposure to new concepts often results in them developing comical or garish personalities that contrast strongly with the immense sadism that is required to reach their position. The leaders of the Furies are Granny Goodness, who sports the appearance of a matronly old woman while being the most powerful of the guards, and Kanto, who enjoys a unique position as Darkseid's master assassin. The chief guard, Big Barda, had a third position under Granny, which has not been filled since her defection from the group. DC Wiki
As if the name Apokolips wasn’t foreboding enough for this place, the planet is actually just one massive city that is peppered with raging fire pits. These pits are engines of war and torture, fueled by the very fire that stems from Darkseid himself. It is where the armors and weapons of the Parademons are forged and where they learn that pain is no obstacle, merely a nuisance. Apokolips Now: 15 Crucial Facts About The Justice League Movie Villains, Comic Book Review
And now...
The Trump administration has been working to rollback rules instated by the Obama administration that would limit how much methane gas could be vented to the atmosphere at oil- and gas-drilling and processing operations. In a press release today, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it is proposing to relax Obama-era rules, saving the industry $484 million in avoided energy costs.
But the EPA is expected to justify its rules with analysis. That analysis (PDF) suggests that this regulatory rollback will also come with costs in the form of 308,000 short tons of methane emitted between 2019 and 2025. For context, the Aliso Canyon gas leak three years ago represented the largest accidental release of methane in US history, and over the four months that workers struggled to plug that well, 107,000 short tons of methane are estimated to have been released.
That is a serious amount of methane with serious climate consequences in the short-run. Methane is many times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas, though it decomposes in the atmosphere more quickly. Carbon dioxide sticks around in the atmosphere for a longer time, but each individual molecule of CO2 has less of a warming effect than a molecule of methane.
The EPA's own analysis also says than an additional 100,000 short tons of volatile organic compounds and 3,800 short tons of hazardous air pollutants would also be emitted, compared to keeping the existing rules in place.
Trump admin. proposes rollback of methane rules to save industry $484 million The new rules would save regulatory costs for industry at a huge cost to climate. Megan Geuss, Ars Technica
...Apokolips...
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| At 2:30 a.m. EDT (0630 UTC) on Sept. 11, the MODIS instrument aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite looked at Hurricane Florence in infrared light. MODIS found coldest cloud top temperatures around the eye, as cold as or colder than minus 80 degrees (yellow) Fahrenheit (minus 112 degrees Celsius). Surrounding the eye were thick rings of powerful storms with cloud tops as cold as or colder than minus 70 degrees (red) Fahrenheit (minus 56.6 degrees Celsius). Credit: NASA/NRL |
Topics: Climate Change, Global Warming, NASA, Stochastic Modeling, Research, Weather
Predictive Modeling: Another good reason why science is important.
Sep. 11, 2018 – NASA Satellite Finds Hurricane Florence Undergoing Eyewall Replacement
NASA’s Aqua satellite provided an infrared look at powerful Hurricane Florence early on Sept. 11 that indicated it was likely undergoing eyewall replacement.
Intense hurricanes can and often undergo an eyewall replacement cycle. That happens when a new eyewall or ring of thunderstorms within the outer rain bands forms further out from the storm’s center, outside of the original eye wall. That ring of thunderstorms then begins to choke off the original eye wall, starving it of moisture and momentum. Eventually, if the cycle is completed, the original eye wall of thunderstorms dissipates and the new outer eye wall of thunderstorms contracts and replace the old eye wall. The storm’s intensity can fluctuate over this period, initially weakening as the inner eye wall dies before again strengthening as the outer eye wall contracts.
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| In a new study, Asst. Prof. Edwin Kite finds ocean planets could stay in zone of habitability longer than previously assumed. Copyright istockphoto.com |
Topics: Astronomy, Astrobiology, Astrophysics, Exoplanet, Planetary Science, Space Exploration
The conditions for life surviving on planets entirely covered in water are more fluid than previously thought, opening up the possibility that water worlds could be habitable, according to a new paper from the University of Chicago and Pennsylvania State University.
The scientific community has largely assumed that planets covered in a deep ocean would not support the cycling of minerals and gases that keeps the climate stable on Earth, and thus wouldn’t be friendly to life. But the study, published Aug. 31 in The Astrophysical Journal, found that ocean planets could stay in the “sweet spot” for habitability much longer than previously assumed. The authors based their findings on more than a thousand simulations.
“This really pushes back against the idea you need an Earth clone—that is, a planet with some land and a shallow ocean,” said Edwin Kite, assistant professor of geophysical sciences at UChicago and lead author of the study.
As telescopes get better, scientists are finding more and more planets orbiting stars in other solar systems, called exoplanets. Such discoveries are resulting in new research into how life could potentially survive on other planets, some of which are very different from Earth—some may be covered entirely in water hundreds of miles deep.
Analysis by UChicago, Penn State scientists challenges idea that life requires ‘Earth clone’
Louise Lerner, University of Chicago News
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| Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered pulsars as a PhD student.Credit: David Hartley/Shutterstock |
Topics: Astrophysics, Diversity, Diversity in Science, Nobel Prize, Pulsar, Women in Science
Fifty years after discovering pulsars — compact rotating stars that emit beams of radiation — astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell has been awarded one of the most lucrative prizes in science: a US$3-million Breakthrough prize. Thought by many to have been snubbed for a Nobel prize for the discovery1, Bell Burnell, 75, has been recognized by the Breakthrough committee with a special award in fundamental physics for both her scientific achievements and her “inspiring leadership” over the past five decades.
“I cannot think of a more deserving scientist to win this prize,” says Chiara Mingarelli, an astrophysicist at the Flatiron Institute in New York City. “In addition to being both a pioneer and a giant in the field, Bell Burnell is the highest calibre role model — a champion for women in science, who speaks out against the many inequities faced by women in STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] fields.”
The Breakthrough prizes were launched in 2012 and are funded by entrepreneurs including Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg. Awarded in fundamental physics, life sciences and mathematics and each worth $3 million, they are usually handed out in December, based on selections made after an open nomination process. But the selection committee can decide to make special awards, bypassing the standard nomination procedure, to those they deem particularly deserving. Previous special awards have been given to Stephen Hawking, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) collaboration for the discovery of gravitational waves, and seven CERN scientists who co-ordinated the hunt for the Higgs boson.
Pulsar discoverer Jocelyn Bell Burnell wins $3-million Breakthrough Prize
Zeeya Merali, Nature
Related link:
Scientist Robbed of Nobel in 1974 Finally Wins $3 Million Physics Prize — And Gives It Away
Rafi Letzter, Live Science
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| Ferdy on Films - The Manchurian Candidate |
Topics: Commentary, Existentialism, Politics
"I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters." Orange Satan, Snopes
Note: The disdain of a conman is he has no respect for his marks. If they fall for his shtick, he respects and fears them far less than the clear-eyed who won't be fooled.
Mutt without Jeff? Corn beef sans cabbage? Unthinkable. Knebel without Bailey? Well, it's hard to tell the difference. It's still the same sort of push button/panic button story about politics from the Pentagon to the Hill, only this time one of the levers got stuck close to the beginning. The one called Idea. This is, namely, that a president of the United States, and he's got his button (The Bomb), has lost his other buttons. He's mentally disabled. No one suspects that Mark Hollenbach, a figure of great rectitude and a strong drive for excellence, is paranoid. Except Jim MacVeagh, a senator, whom he has just tapped as his next running mate. Jim, young, attractive, but lazy, has a family. He also has had, on the side, Rita, ""the urgency and solace of sex."" As the F.B.I. investigates this, at Hollenbach's instigation, Jim tries to persuade others just before a private Summit meeting. They remain unconvinced, think Jim is disturbed, and only Rita can supply the evidence until the President's unreasonableness becomes apparent elsewhere, and action, sadly missing throughout the book, is finally taken...Let's see now -- it could be Fredric March, Kirk Douglas, Ava Gardner. Oh, no, that was Seven Days in May. This isn't.
KIRKUS REVIEW, "Night of Camp David" by Fletcher Knebel.
There has been the flourishing of a cottage industry, from "Fire and Fury" by Mike Wolff; "A Higher Loyalty" by Former FBI Director James Comey; "What Happened" by Former Secretary and presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton; "Unhinged" by Omarosa Manigault Newman and the soon-coming "Fear" by Bob Woodward. It's been a great year for authors; terrible for trees. He has been referred to as "a poor man's idea of what a rich man is like." He refers to himself in third person with the single syllable contraction of his name to invoke a Mafia kingpin. He's more a caricature of a caricature of actual mob bosses: imagining himself Vito or Michael Corleone of "The Godfather," when he's actually Fredo.
The New York Times Op Ed from a staffer that is internal to this "administration" is literally the icing on the cake. I am not sure if a five-deferment draft dodger, serial adulterer that pays off the silence of his mistresses and insults all of our allies, but routinely avoids insulting a foreign adversary with all the deference of a sex worker to a pimp can call the author "gutless." This is a Constitutional Crisis as David Frum, former speech writer for President George W. Bush (he was the "axis of evil" guy), opined such in The Atlantic. Real patriots step out of the shadows into the light. Real courageous actors don't "look the other way" and get tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation to the same Wall Street entities that caused the last Great Recessions (almost becoming a Great Depression). We appear determined to prove the definition of insanity.
Hans Christian Anderson's "The Emperor's New Clothes" has been shortened to a byword and pejorative "the emperor has no clothes," shouted originally from the mouth of a small child of his constituency in the story, saying what the more reserved adults around him dared not say. It is stating the blatantly obvious as the "Southern Strategy" grandparents of MAGA supporters once did, now parroted by their progeny:
"The Manchurian Candidate" as a movie came out in my birth year. It, like Knebel's Camp David is admittedly dystopian. It was a plausible thriller during the Cold War with the former Soviet Union that posited a hostile power could have unparalleled and unwanted influence on a political figure; the potential for controlling the office of the presidency. Plausible, but until recent events unthinkable. Life is stranger than art.
"Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over." Op Ed by Anonymous in the New York Times
