First Blog

All the world is becoming fake.   The USA leads this parade. Fake news Fake bombs Fake outrage Fake reports Fake politicians Fake investigations Fake accusations Fake terrorism Fake security Fake votes Fake voters Fake citizens ---------------- Fake love Fake religion Fake science* Fake lies** * History is loaded with false scientific reports.  From Piltdown man, to countless cures for obscure diseases, to causes for earthquakes. **This one needs an explanation.  You have an unfavorable event, such as the murder of a reporter.  What you do is admit the event but lie about its origins or outcomes.  All these are co-mingled with the real thing. I used to believe someone, somehow, someway would bring back sanity.  Someone would find the words.  Now I believe the contagion of "hate" and "fake" must burn itself out.  It may take a generation or more. One reason that "FAKE" is there in such quantity is so many, too ma...

No mistakes, no errors, no risk implies no value People who have never made a mistake have never taken a risk.   Do we want such folks to govern the country?   Your answer is no, I hope.    But with vast data silos, data lakes, and soon data oceans, anyone’s past mistakes will be documented and available at cost.   From cheating in the 4 th grade, to groping in the 10 th , to claiming unusual heritage in the 12 th , to being charged with drinking in college, to an advantaged business deal in their 20s, only a few years remain before a full online biography of everyone is accessible – and publishable. We may get what we think we want: purely clean, unspoiled, untested, unknowledged, and unable representatives in our legislatures.    Lucky us.

The slider If you’re a baseball fan, a slider is a type of pitch that tails laterally down through the batting zone.   Basically, it is a curveball , not horizontally left to right, but vertically down and to one side. If you’re a baseball runner, you might be sliding into home plate to avoid being tagged out. You’d be a slider. If you’re a kid, you could be called a slider by sliding on the winter ice. Luge racers are called sliders.   In the summer, you could slide down a hill on your butt – becoming a slider.   If you’re a radio or TV slider, you would be a knob that slides left-to-right or up-down to change the volume or station, rather than in a circular motion. If you’re a door, say to a patio that slides to open or close, you’d be called a slider. If you’re in a restaurant, you might order a dish of sliders, small little burgers served in four's. Also they are served as Hor d oeuvres .   Usually overcooked, they are often dry and taste...

MODERN POLITICS  Modern politics is life imitating fiction, this Tale of Two Parties , with each party cheering wildly as an opponent is guillotined, and with each having battalions of Madams DeFarge knitting furiously the names of the victims and accused.    To be a victim, one only needs to accuse, evidence not being required. To be accused, a committed crime is not the factor; it is whose side you’re perceived to be on.   To be convicted does not imply guilt has been proved, only believed.   Our Madams and Messieurs have their whole beings consumed by hate and they “will not rest until their bloodthirsty desires are satisfied.”*  Thank you Charles Dickens for predicting the future, which has now come to pass. *From a review by Daisy Bowie-Sell of the Dickens classic, Tale of Two Cities . ---------------------- GOODNESS It is important to support good people even if, only if, or while they have value to you and what you belie...

CHINA and President XI We know Chinese President Xi Jinping has an appointment for life.   This is good news and bad for Xi.   Who doesn’t like a life-time job?   Following Machiavelli, this puts Xi in another category as dictator or king who is quietly and covertly challenged by the nobles in China.   The nobles are the super rich and super powerful players within China who see themselves in the same position.   They covet his power. They wait silently for Xi to make a mistake, one big enough to take him out.   And out he will come.   Xi is thus vulnerable and remains so, not having a cult-like following as did Mao, who was immune from any mistake. Trade by China may cause a Xi mistake.   The world is now openly talking about how China has taken advantage of all countries in trade, IP theft, high interest loans to poor countries, and the like.   This wholesale exposure indicates that it seems likely that China will be forced to...

Plasma Partisans We have achieved a new and advanced state in devotion to alternative political viewpoints.  All of us know the  partisan  has allegiance to a given party.  The next level up is the  hyperpartisan , which means extremely partisan, sharply polarized in fierce disagreement with the opposition. Hyperpartisans are generally uninterested in compromise.  We'll call the next level the  plasma partisan  where all the (political) bonds of allegiance have been stripped away, leaving an ionized substance with an increased polemic political temperature. It is a dislocation of molecular-like bonds of normal political discourse, even to the hyperpartisan.  The plasma partisan, while appearing to want their presence within a party, is substantially beyond their normal controls.  Such could be likened to free radicals, those causing cancerous cell growth within. They often have a well defined, call it plasmatic, cause or...

If hate is a disease, it is virile, vile, contagious, and lethal.   It has sanctioned all varieties of murderous activity, including war and the destruction of entire groups, ethnically, religiously, and politically.   This emotion of destruction compels those infected with a single-mindedness overwhelming any sense of propriety.   It defeats normal logic and decency. Associated,   there is a logic, and it’s simple.   Call it the first order propositional logic of hate .  "If A hates B and B loves C, then A hates C." This is also a type of converse transitivity.   Aristotle, of course, would be dismayed. You may say the logic of hate is ridiculous.   Yet, the philosophers have constructed quite an interesting and complete logic of belief .   It even has a name , Doxastic logic. Just Google it. Applications: a. Let A = Catholics, B = Protestants, and C = Martin Luther.   (maybe a little dated) b. Let A= Muslims...

The Google executives'  spitballing*  over how to censor or endorse conservative views is not unlike military strategizing. It is not unlike what most people do in their lives, or corporations do with their business plans. It is not unlike what one political party does upon its opponent.   However, the result is a plan that can be implemented on a moment's notice.  For Google, a map of which key words to interdict and substitute is listed, the alternate substitute sites have been selected, the procedure for identification of the inquirer is outlined, and the public explanations of why it was not done have now all been described.   Spitballing  can and does develop a battle plan. Spitballing is a method that’s been used over all of time, for all causes.   I’m sure the Cardinals in Rome do spitballing on how to increase church membership, or the Major Sports Leagues do on increasing game attendance.   Not to be deceived by a...

The latest news is that Facebook has been hacked again, this time for a mere 50 million users.  Is this cause for alarm?  Not for those that don’t use it.  But for others, organizations, politicos, and others it might be. Counting to Billions!! An old question asks for the identity of the world’s best con man.  The answer is the one(s) never detected. Yet the question is reflected from con men to hackers.  Who’s the best?   The answer is exactly the same. Note that Facebook has unlimited resources to protect their data as do other large-scale companies.  Most have also been hacked. What we do not know are those companies that have been hacked and haven’t reported it.  More significant are those hacked companies that don’t know it and maybe never will.  If the hacker is not greedy, and extracts data in a disciplined manner, it may never be detected even with competent IT people available. The other problem is that most IT peo...

Many think that progress has been made.  After all, there is little old-style slavery these days.  This is not so; slavery has merely assumed another form.  We now have slaves with a cell phone, TV, iPad, and house.  But their functions are not much different than in millennia prior.  They work to live.  They have a little more mobility, true.  They can tell their boss to shove it, true.  But mostly, their next job is isomorphic to their previous one. They live in the service of others . Example: In education, we have slaves (teachers) leading new slaves (students) into the bondage of slavery (a job). Socialism merely changes just who are the "others."  Indeed, just about any "-ism" amounts to a similar redefinition.   The only difference is which class becomes the out-caste.

At One Point of Your Life At one point of your life you dream of all those things that may yet be. At one point of your life you think of dreams that have come true. At one point of your life you think of all those dreams that have slipped from your grasp. At one point of your life you think about past dreams that never will be. At one point of your life you dream no longer but think on the joys that remain.

Here are a few thorny issues for your week's consideration.  The News Feed .  Have you wondered what news feed that foreign leaders read about the USA?   For example, if Canada's PM Trudeau listens only to CNN he learns one thing; if he listens to FOX he learns another.  If he listens to the White House he learns more insider information we don’t know.  So, how does he compute his operational calculus?  How would you?  Not so easy, yes?  And Canada is tiny - and friendly.  Multiply all this by 5x or 10x gives a complexity glimmer of USA negotiations with other nations, e.g. China.  What news from the USA do they compute with?  I don’t know.  Do you?   Just how are these deals done?  Almost all of us are completely naive and inexperienced on such interactions.  We guess. We criticize. But actually we just don't know.  ----------------- The Insider Betrayal .  This is the politi...