Category Archives: Politics

None So Blind

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Photo from NASA’s DSCOVR spacecraft, courtesy of the NASA EPIC Team.

Go to their website and watch the Earth spin in front of you, 898,000 miles away. This particular photo is from October 6, 2016 when Hurricane Matthew was forming in the Caribbean and heading toward the US Atlantic coast.

We have multiple spacecraft which can give us views like this. DSCOVR sends down one of these about every two hours. There’s a hi-def video here which shows a time lapse of the Earth spinning for an entire year.

We’ve had nine crews of Apollo astronauts (not quite 27 men – some went twice) who have seen this type of view with their own eyes.

Yet there are people out there who sincerely believe that the Earth is flat.

I can see being a flat Earth supporter if it’s done as a joke and they have great BBQ’s and parties. I’m a Pastafarian myself, singing the praises of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But to be absolutely dead serious about it?

Think about that sort of mindset when you’re watching the US news for the next couple of weeks. Think about how tens of millions of people can be so blind in the face of overwhelming evidence, because the mountain of facts is inconvenient to their worldview. Think about the possible consequences of that blind fanaticism at the ballot box.

I try to have faith in the human race – we can send people out to see things like this! We’ve sent our machines to every planet in the solar system, we’ve landed and roamed around on Mars repeatedly, and some of our spacecraft are already well on their way to interstellar space.

Then I watch the current news…

I need to spend more time watching videos of the Earth spinning and less time watching the news.

 

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Filed under Astronomy, Politics, Space

Please Accept My Apologies

On behalf of the sane citizens of the United States (a group that is apparently small and growing smaller by the day) I apologize for our electoral process.

Please accept my apologies. And these cute pet pictures. (Two of these are not like the others.)

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photo 2

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Filed under Cats, Critters, Dogs, Photography, Politics

Learning But Not Yet Smart

The predictive autocomplete function on our phones is both very stupid in human terms, and very smart. The latter is because of a simple programming routine, the former because human language and thought are incredibly complex and occasionally bizarre.

For example, if I type in…

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…anyone who’s spoken English from birth will KNOW that the extension of “smaller than a bread___” is “breadbox!” But there’s a lot of nuance and context in there, along with about a hundred zillion colloquialisms, not to mention the possibility of “close but no cigar” usage by someone who doesn’t know the exact phrase (“Excuse me, while I kiss this guy”) and people who are deliberately mixing things up (“it’s not brain science”). This is why IBM took years and hundreds of millions of dollars to create Watson.

On the other hand, it’s relatively easy to watch for words which are not in the lexicon but are used repeatedly. This lets your app “learn” and add initials, proper nouns, names, and so on to its stored dictionary.

So after a few days now, I get…

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…”Trumpencritter” from “Trum.”

That’s going to save a LOT of time over the next few months.

 

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Filed under Computers, Politics

Groundless Faith vs Depressing Reality

Having been raised Catholic, complete with six years of nuns in full “penguin” regalia teaching Catholic school, I’m familiar with the concept of faith.

Having rejected Catholicism and all other religions, I’m familiar with the realization that reality often sucks.

Tonight, having exposed myself to my daily dose of muck, mire, stupidity, and hatred in the news, I saw a comment by someone who was taking solace in her faith in God and her belief that under divine guidance it would all work out for the best. (For the moment we’ll ignore the discrepancy between that common view of the deity’s job description and the theological necessity for free will.)

For a moment I was almost jealous. In her piety and faith she wasn’t pissed off, depressed, furious, outraged, or anxious. God would take care of it, all’s well, let’s have dinner!

Then I was wondering how people with that kind of faith can manage to hold on to it when their it turns out God might have been asleep at the wheel that day. I know that many people lose their faith at that time (hey, welcome back to reality, have some wet wipes, there’s a lot of shit being flung about out here!) but many, such as my mother, hold onto it no matter what.

So which is better, to face reality with all of its flaws and warts and at times like this being pummeled heavily about the head and shoulders with the fact that we’re a long, long way from that mythical Paradise? Or to sail through it all with our faith as the rock solid keel keeping us on course, only to end up spinning and capsizing when that keel breaks away?

I’ll stick with reality for a lot of reasons, but here’s a key one that comes to mind.

If you forfeit the ownership of the world’s slimier aspects, you also forfeit any credit for its moments of bliss. You can believe that God’s invisible angels are all around you, or you can find yourself to be an angel of our own making. This can be in the smallest things, the way you treat people from total strangers to heads of state, to the biggest things possible, such as how you choose to react in a crisis.

You also get to take ownership of the world’s rainbows appearing in a ray of brilliant sunshine slipping through a hole in a black  thunderhead, the sound of the thunder rolling across the landscape, and the brilliant stars that come in the clear night skies that follow.

Sometimes there is an awful lot of shit to wade through, but if you’re going to have faith, think about a Mozart symphony, a 9-11 first responder, your child’s first cry, and the feel of your lover’s hand in yours as you walk through a quiet forest – then have faith there there really will be a pony underneath all of that shit.

 

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Filed under Politics, Religion

Adulting Sucks

That was my first conclusion tonight, but I think there’s more.

“Adulting” can be defined (at least by me) as “acting like the adult in the room, being responsible, keeping calm and reasonable – when what you really want to start smacking a bunch of freakin’ idiots upside the head with a baseball bat because they’re freakin’ idiots and really, really deserve it.”

Most of you know what I’m talking about.

Remember those times you had to count slowly backwards from twenty-five in Klingon to avoid spending some time as a guest of the city, county, state, or federal penal system? Yeah, those times.

This week has had more than its fair share of those moments, and today in particular felt like just one after the other.

So – adulting sucks!

Which is fine. Having recognized the universal truth therein, we somehow manage to muddle through to a better state of mind, even while we wonder why those freakin’ idiots are hit by a bolt of lightning out of a clear, blue sky. (Not enough smiting being handed down by a wrathful god these days, if you ask me!)

But why does it feel so much worse all of a sudden?

It came to me while flipping past the news. (As a side note, I would kill for a pill that I could take so I wouldn’t have to listen or see any political news until mid-November.)

The reason we go around adulting when we really want to go around slapping some sense into stupid people is because of the penalties involved. At best, people think we’re a flaming asshole and we’re socially shunned. (Except perhaps by other flaming assholes, but who wants to be around them?) We don’t want to be kicked out of the herd just for breaking social norms.

Abandoning our adulting ways could have permanent effects on our ability to earn a living, to have friends, to have people who can stand to be in the same room with us. As bad as adulting sucks, the consequences imposed by society for not adulting are much worse.

Unless you’re a current candidate for the US Presidency and you’re a smug, crude, ignorant, delusional, racist, hate-filled, misogynistic, jingoistic, pea-brained, dim witted, congenital liar who wants us to believe he’s the next coming of Christ and Buckaroo Banzai all rolled up into one.

This disgusting waste of flesh not only wouldn’t know adulting if it bit him in the ass, but no matter what he does, no matter how clinically insane, he has no negative consequences. His fortunes just continue to rise and rise and rise.

So why should we have to adult when he doesn’t?

And there we find the next level of the problem. We adult because people who don’t disgust us. But now an army of minions, most of whom are as racist, bigoted, ignorant, and clueless as their leader is, are crawling out from under their rocks and making our world a mess. They had been hiding in the dark with the slime molds, where they belong, but now it’s fashionable for them to come out into the light of day where they we have to put up with them and even more of their bullshit.

While we’re busing adulting and trying to carry on because we’re sane and good, despite the rising tide of hatred and ignorance.

Not enough smiting. I’m telling you, someone’s asleep at the wheel.

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Filed under Freakin' Idiots!, Politics

No Context For You – July 24th

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The world is not black and white – infinite shades of grey, an infinite rainbow of color, and a spectrum that the eye can’t see but the mind’s tools can, screaming up through the ultraviolet toward X-rays and meandering down from infrared to radio waves.

Aside from having a wildly distorted and inaccurate view of the universe, those who see everything as either black or white are just missing so much, both literally and figuratively.

It would be sad if it weren’t currently so dangerous.

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Filed under Photography, Politics

Reek (Attempt The Second)

Okay, THAT was weird! What I meant to say is:

…and not the “good” kind, like on Game of Thrones!

As I said on Facebook an hour ago:

A skunk in our back yard has expressed a powerful opinion about tonight’s RNC dumpster fire – repeatedly! Little striped dude, I’m sympathetic, I agree, but I can’t breathe! Please cool your jets!

It’s only gotten worse since then, as in giving-me-a-headache-making-me-want-to-puke-this-is-where-they-came-up-with-the-idea-of-tear-gas worse.

Bleah!!

I have no clue how all of that HTML from my Facebook feed got in there.

Is the moon full tonight? Close…

Maybe I should check the HTML of this post before I hit the blue button – and there’s all of that crap still in there, but not showing at all on the screen! Let’s hope that deleting it in the text/HTML version makes it go away.

Preview the post – still messed up. Try again. Preview again. Maybe it’s okay now?

First I can’t upload the stuff I want to, now something’s uploading crap that I do NOT want to and doing it invisibly.

Odd.

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Filed under Castle Willett, Computers, Critters, Politics

Reek

…and not the “good” kind, like on Game of Thrones!

As I said on Facebook an hour ago:
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A skunk in our back yard has expressed a powerful opinion about tonight’s RNC dumpster fire – repeatedly! Little striped dude, I’m sympathetic, I agree, but I can’t breathe! Please cool your jets!

It’s only gotten worse since then, as in giving-me-a-headache-making-me-want-to-puke-this-is-where-they-came-up-with-the-idea-of-tear-gas worse.

Bleah!!

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Filed under Castle Willett, Critters, Politics

Kelp

Or Cthulu rising up out of the depths to throw its hat into the ring for the US Presidential election.

Which would no doubt be better than ANY of the current options.

1 Comment

Filed under Photography, Politics

Perspective

Well, first of all, there’s the literal meaning of the term in this picture.

IMG_5402 small

Thrashing about wildly for something to share without turning into Captain Buzzkill!, this popped up. Thanks, Muse! I really like the foreshortening and blurring effects of the roof tiles.

In a more metaphorical meaning of the term, my second thought on seeing this picture was, “Is this little guy worried about ‘Brexit’ or the US elections or the plummeting stock markets or the complete failure of the US Congress or whether or not they should open ‘Rogue One’ with a crawl? No, of course not! Lucky bastard!”

Then I was thinking about how this guy can (and probably will) be snatched off this sunny, warm roof by a hungry hawk, taken up to the hawk’s nest and ripped to shreds and eaten by the baby hawks.

We’ll call this one even.

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Filed under Critters, Photography, Politics