philxix

Philosophy 321 '19

Bits and pieces. Table scraps. That's what you get. Machiavelli lives here.

January

A full size view of photos taken on January Forth illustrate the Thesis of this months post.

Fifty Meteors over a seven hour photo shoot in a single night. Click the photo for a full size rendering.

The Universal Crapshoot

This Hubble Space Telescope mosaic is of a portion of the immense Coma cluster of over 1,000 galaxies, located 300 million light-years from Earth. Hubble's incredible sharpness was used to conduct a comprehensive census of the cluster's most diminutive members: a whopping 22,426 globular star clusters. Among the earliest homesteaders of the universe, globular star clusters are snow-globe-shaped islands of several hundred thousand ancient stars. The survey found the globular clusters scattered in the space between the galaxies. They have been orphaned from their home galaxies through galaxy tidal interactions within the bustling cluster. Astronomers will use the globular cluster field for mapping the distribution of matter and dark matter in the Coma galaxy cluster.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Mack (STScI) and J. Madrid (Australian Telescope National Facility)

The Measurement of Space

As Represented Here : 684 Pixels by 472 Pixels

As Represented In Actual Space : Undefined

X3 By 10303 (Centillion)

Meteor Crater National Park, Arizona

In the simplest of terms, on a highly complex subject :

A Universal Constant is the randomness of the Universe itself.

Every Galaxy is random, subject to random events such as Meteors.

Our Galaxy in no exception. Our survival in this crapshoot is not assured.

Measuring Space, searching for the possibility of a cataclysmic event is :

Modern Computing Greatest Challenge.

Be it the Spider or the Top500 is irrelevant,

'Don't bother me, kid', is the message.

Washington DC and New York continue to waste perfectly good oxygen...

February

Notes From The Back Of The Bus, Continued

Noting that Extremism emanates from the front of the bus, on both sides of the aisle.

Winter athletes have an expression for snowboarders, and in particular, radicals... Shredders...

Imagine our Country with two more years of radicalism.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum...

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum

Ken Goldman, Yahoo CFO asks the Panel what can be done beyond taxes to solve inequality. (The guy making $15M+ per year)

Watch the Video for Winnie's response.

März (German for March)

3-15

Remarks on the path forward for the DPRK, without interference from Trump' own legal genius - Cohen.

Phil_321 Page Two

For those whom would prosper by attempting to convince me that "Making America Great Again"

is accomplished by sending a draft dodger to Vietnam to secure our Nuclear future.... Please don't.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum... Part 2

Part Two

Winnie Byanyima is correct, people are counting the exploited as social progress.

She refuses to acknowledge the exploited as social progress, I agree.

If social progress is to be measured- exploitation is not a measurement, but an oxymoron.

Ergo

A globally accepted measurement of social progress (or lack thereof).

Death of a Salesman Fallacy

Taxes fund government.

Governments function is to govern.

Social progress is an implied benefit of good governing.

--------------

Meet Captain Oxymoron

Kenneth Goldman shows up at a global conference in Davos wanting to do more (?) for social progress by paying less taxes. (?)

Great. Let's solve that equation. Travel northeast of that little slice of heaven you call Silicon Valley to Oakland. Spend some of the $15Million salary on Oakland's poor.

Wait! That's charity, right?

Nobody wants charity.

Why don't these poor people in Oakland get jobs?

Great. Give them a job at Yahoo!

No, Yahoo is in layoffs. Tax advantage.

Besides, we need money to buy other companies to make a profit for us.

I.E. - Go Pro, Tumblr, ect. ect.

So, Verizon is cash negative?

No, that's our parent company.

So you are the red-headed stepchild?

They bought us to make a profit for them. We couldn't ask them for money.

So Verizon thinks they should pay less taxes?

Please, explain that.

He can't, I know. He is confused.

It shows not in my demeanor, it shows in Winnie Byanyima's demeanor.

Once upon a time... Corporatism meant International Business Machines, National Cash Register, Chicago Mercantile - that was the sixties. Over the last sixty years the meaning of business and the hopeful expectation of a 10% profit year over year has vanished. Replaced by people like Kenneth Goldman who demand more. They would fault government for social failure. They will fault government for business failure. This is the meek insolence of our modern government. Their belief that their function is to serve Business.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

This is why I wouldn't associate myself with the U.S. State Department.

I would be slumming.

Aside from my personal opinion that Jeremy Corbin is a drunk scoundrel and someone's shill,

He is an outright pain in the ass to Her Majesty. Someone should look into that.

Good luck with the rest of that.

April

A trip to Mars, it looks so small from here.

Getty Images

America's space program is led by someone sexting pics from his phone.

Black History Month 2019

Congratulations to Jussie Smollet for his contributions to Hate Crimes!

Which is a Federal Crime, even in Chicago...

So Jussie Smollet is seeing his imaginary hate crime become real.

May

______________________

It is always nice to be trendy, eco-sensitive, and politically correct. It is extra special when you can contribute

to something that you can be certain will have a positive benefit. This was that project.

I implore you to contribute to the Nature Conservancy. They either purchase the land and set it aside as a

Conservancy, or they require a Conservancy agreement to become involved in a project.

You can contribute in a number of ways: Time or donations or setting up a trust (tax deductible).

Please - contribute. It is the only program I know that sets the land aside preventing development.

Update, May

Black History Month 2019

Congratulations to Jussie Smollet for his contributions to Hate Crimes!

May

Which is a Federal Crime, even in Chicago...

So Jussie Smollet is seeing his imaginary hate crime become real.

June

SAAB STORY

abridged

Henry David Thoreau said most famously, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation".

So it is not one whit mysterious that we poison the water and air and topsoil, and construct ever more cunning doomsday devices,

both industrial and military. Let us be perfectly frank for a change. For practically everybody, the end of the world can't come soon enough.

Imagine this: A great American University gives up football in the name of sanity. It turns its vacant stadium into a bomb factory.

I am speaking of my alma mater, the University of Chicago. In December of 1942, long before I got there, the first chain reaction

of uranium on Earth was compelled by scientists underneath the stands of Stagg Field. Their intent was to demonstrate the feasibility of an

atomic bomb. We were at war with Germany and Japan.

Fifty-three years later, on August 6th, 1995, there was a gathering in the chapel of my university to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the

detonation of the first atomic bomb, over the city of Hiroshima, Japan. I was there.

One of the speakers was the physicist Leo Seren. He had participated in the successful experiment under the lifeless sports facility

so long ago. Get this: He apologized for having done that!

Somebody should have told him that being a physicist, on a planet where the smartest animals hate being alive so much,

means never having to say you're sorry.

Now imagine this: A man creates a hydrogen bomb for a paranoid Soviet Union, makes sure it will work, and then

wins a Nobel Peace Prize! This real-life character was the late physicist Andrei Sakharov.

He won his Nobel in 1975 for demanding a halt to the testing of Nuclear weapons. He, of course, had already tested his. His wife was

a pediatrician! What sort of person could perfect a hydrogen bomb while married to a child-care specialist. What sort of physician

would stay with a mate that cracked?

" Anything interesting happen at work today, Honey-bunch?"

"Yes. My bomb is going to work just great. And how are you doing with that kid with the chicken pox?"

.....

Another way I was lucky: for the first thirty-three years of my life, telling short stories with ink on paper was a major American industry.

Although I then had a wife and two children, it made good business sense for me to quit my job as a publicity man for General Electric,

with health insurance and a retirement plan. I could make more money selling stories to The Saturday Evening Post and Collier's,

weekly magazines full of ads, which published five short stories and an installment of a cliff-hanging serial in every issue.

Those were just the top-paying buyers of what I could produce. There were so many other magazines hungry for fiction that the

market for stories was like a pinball machine. When I mailed off a story to my agent, I could be pretty sure somebody would pay

me something for it, even though it might be rejected again and again.

Not long after I moved my family from Schenectady, New York, to Cape Cod, Television, a much better buy for advertisers

than magazines, made playing short story pinball for a living obsolete.

I asked myself, and hopefully you will also:

Which of the two has a greater value? Television or Literacy?

Is the ability to flick the remote, to channel surf (with opinion) greater than literacy?

Narcissist of the Month, June

or

As The Empire Crumbles

or

Dis - barment

I am beginning to understand this a little better after reading this article.

The Chicago prosecutor Kim Foxx sought to deny Jussie Smollet his destiny.

Rough male sex and illicit drugs, or, as mainstream America knows it - A lengthly prison sentence.

She had the texts and ignored them, or, she failed at a prosecutorial basic - discovery.

There was a racial attack, and she didn't view his phone log?

Note to the rest of you aspiring masscists,

if you buy street drugs by texts, and then you stage a fake racial attack,

Do it in Chicago.

*Bonus Observation*

In an effort to appease the far right, we can blame this on Immigration. Eighteenth Century Immigration, but still....

July

Contrary to popular thought, the Revolutionary War wasn't started from an underground bunker.

Any comparison of our current government to our founding fathers... Is naive at best.

Classified information (not in the hands of Trump's children) and drone photography concludes

that Iran does not currently possess the technology to bomb Mar-A -Lago.

Good news for the Bushie's and the people who wanted to take the fight overseas...

Amidst the Constitutional celebration, Americans should be grateful that North Korea doesn't act like Trump or O'bama.

Otherwise, you would be dead.

And while your celebrating the founding father's achievements, remember you sent a draft dodger to Vietnam to spurn an agreement based on the conviction of his Lawyer; with no assurance that the next president will ratify the deal...

August

The Central Committee of German Catholics (German: Zentralkomitee der deutschen Katholiken, ZdK) is lay body comprising representatives of various Catholic organisations in Germany. They organise the Catholic Days in Germany. The organisation is headquartered in Bonn.

Its predecessor, the Catholic Society of Germany (German: Katholische Verein Deutschlands), was founded in 1848 by Charles, 6th Prince of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg, who served as its first President. In 1952, it was renamed the Central Committee of German Catholics.

8-1-19

When the Democratic Debates were first announced, I thought Barnum & Bailey would be a better solution to what I have expected...

Last nights debate actually contained substantial critical thought - not what I expected.

I arose this morning to muse that a dialog of twenty on the needs and wants of millions should be continuously debated without regard for elections, or parties... Indeed, it was a Greek tradition,

I wish last night's scene had been replayed thousands of times over the last 235 years.

September

(July)

Classified information (not in the hands of Trump's children) and drone photography concludes

that Iran does not currently possess the technology to bomb Mar-A -Lago.

Good news for the Bushie's and the people who wanted to take the fight overseas...

October

Simple math: 5.878625 trillion X 31 = 182.237375 trillion miles.

That's EXACTLY how close you are to preserving the Human Race.

Oh yeah, I checked.

Fastest human spaceflight. The crew of NASA's Apollo 10 moon mission reached a top speed of 24,791 mph (39,897 kph) relative to Earth as they rocketed back to our planet on May 26, 1969. That's the fastest any human beings have ever traveled.

November

I never lost sight of the European Union's political abuses in the Brexit process ...

As we enter November, it is less clear when the exact date of the Brexit will occur, not just for myself, but for anyone.

World Leaders charged with the prosperity of the human race can only guess at the final execution of the Political Disentanglement. My focus here is not on the global guessing game of Sovereignty, but of the continued economic consequences.

The next global holiday, World Town Planning Day will help to illustrate the points I wish to make.

If you are a French Lamppost maker, and you wish to sell lampposts on this holiday you would be well

advised to respect the Sovereign rights of the British people and would be happy to sell as many

Wind and Solar Generated Lampposts as you possibly could on this global holiday.

Similarly, if you are a British Lamppost maker, ect., ect.

A notable exception would be; If you are an American Lamppost maker, whom has contributed to the huge

trade imbalance with China by reselling your lampposts bought from China

and sold in the U.S. during holidays, while blaming the Chinese for this.

So - as you can plainly see, The Euro will survive the Brexit.

Great Britain would be well served to continue to honor the Euro as a monetary instrument.

I cannot say the same for the European Union, and I cannot say the same for

stupid Americans, whom cannot remember where they bought their goods,

and cannot foresee the buying power of three billion Chinese.

Not currently planning to build a wall,

Back later this month, to cover the Supercomputing event.

November 18th.

Denver, Colorado

December

Feliz Navidad

There is a distinct difference between being Un-Constitutional and being Anti-Constitutional.

The first is against the law. The other is against the principles of the Constitution.

The Constitution provides for three branches of Government. The Administrative, the Legislative, and the Judiciary.

None can function without the other two. To PRESERVE the Administrative Branch, the Constitutional powers of the

Judicial branch are relegated to the Legislative Branch; a limit imposed on the Judicial branch.

There is a continual and purposeful subversion of the rightful proceedings of the Legislative branch.

This is what I mean by Anti-Constutional.

Beyond that, there was no moral or legal reason to withhold aid to Ukraine.

It was a personal decision on the President's part.

That cannot be an excuse to subvert Justice.

Contrary to Republican claims, Trump receives advantages with Impeachment he would not

otherwise receive in a trial.

A Judge would have issued a gag order (much to everyone's delight). A Judge could order the entire trial closed to the public, even without classified informants. A Judge could rule as he pleased, knowing his verdict could be appealed.