First Blog

This is the second part* of a group of posts on the wonders of your brain.  Situation: The ball is flying toward you, but how do you know where and when it will arrive? Yes, it is all about the flying ball. One thing you know, if you’ve every played catch, volleyball, baseball, basketball, or an assortment of other sports where a ball is in play, is that it goes up and down, but more.  Here’s just a sample of what that good ‘ole brain can do.  It can compute  the speed of the ball and when it will arrive. It’s done automatically, a consequence of evolution.  Every animal can do the same thing, that is to compute when and where a moving or flying object will reach them.   For us humans, not sure about you other readers, much of this happens in the cerebellum, a part of the brain near the brain-stem. Most flying objects, like the ball, change height and speed in the air due to gravity and air resistance. Another remarkable consequence of evolution, reading this is also a skil

Social media : The dangers of  highly misunderstood social  media are without historical precedent.  They is scarcely research, and few case studies.   They allow contact with select groups with no possible reflection, with no possible oversight, and with only a slight possibility of correction.  They allow the naïve to be converted to almost any persuasion. They are used to bully others, sometimes to the act of suicide.  The worst possible outcome is a populace convinced by errant arguments onto a pathway of destruction.  This allows results generated by the clever miscreant to recruit the ignorant toward societal demise.  Principles from hundreds of generations past are cast aside in favor of an emotional construction of truth. Base principles seem to have disappeared.  On top of all that social media operators mine all subscribers for information about them and at minimum their possible buying habits, possible political beliefs, and religious affiliations.  This is an aspec

Safe-space: a place to go where all is good, little responsibility is required, needs are met, and contrary things are avoided.  These are the spaces where children grow up.  In the olden times, kids had a tree house.  They grew out of that by size.  Times have changed.  Many, especially those affluent, grow up in physical safe spaces, a kid-designated den where children live. They all contain normal kid toys, kid chairs, a cell phone, computer, and TV where only kid-venues are tuned.  In less affluent environs, kids live in personal safe-spaces, in their rooms with their cell and computer always on.  Contacts are through text and other social media.  Adults have scarcely any knowledge of their world and what transpires in it.  It is a world of filters, allowing in only what they desire. It is a world of ultimate, personal selfish behavior.   When I grew up, there was one TV, and the family watched it together.  No longer. In this modern day, kid safe-spaces are everywhere. Th

“It’s what they want,”  is the message we receive from both Dems and Reps,  and from the left of the Dems and from the right of the Reps.  The Freedom Caucus (Rep), for example, demands the people want fiscal austerity, balancing the budget, and therefore a reduction of all spending, no matter what. Period.  The Dems, mostly in locked-step, believe in ultimate humanitarian goals by providing everyone with all they need.  Just increase spending, they tell us.  The Reps want to rein in spending, develop more free enterprise, and “hopefully” grow an economy that will support a benefit-thirsty population.  The anarchists simply don’t know what they want beyond their love of disruption.  Throwing crap into the fan and hoping it will land in the right place, is the extent of their thinking.  And this assessment is far too kind. All claim that what they propose is what the public wants!  Not so.  All these groups somehow have equated what they want to what everyone wants.  My gosh, s

This is a conspiracy theory about large-scale terrorist attacks.  Beware of such theories as they are mostly plausibility arguments gleaned from a sequence of events.  So, be suspicious and critical.  We do our theory by the numbers. 1.  First of all, it seems the big terrorist organizations such as ISIS can strike at will really wherever and whenever they so choose.  They have “soldiers” willing to give their lives in the cause of terror.  These are not occasional, random attacks, but well planned logistically and technically.  They could strike somewhere in the world frequently, perhaps even weekly, but do not.  Why? 2. These organizations also have a strong survival instinct.  They know that weekly attacks will result in the overwhelming response even from the most globalist of countries to strike back, annihilating their bases, their funding, and their very organizations.    3. So, they face an optimization problem, which is to survive while creating a recurrent sense

Do we want school choice or choice schools?  The latter we do not have in general; we do have the opposite: too many bad schools.   When the USA, for all its expenditure on education, ranks rather low on international tests, there obtains an indelible indicator.  Hence, we witness the birth of the alternative, charter schools. We’ve always had the private schools as religious-based or expensive prep types.  But they are part of the system, and not what the ed establishment decries.  It is these new charter schools earning the black grades of some officials. Know their talking points*.  The following are typical. 1.      Privatized school choice will inevitably reduce funding for your local neighborhood public schools . 2.      Direct and disguised vouchers to private schools and other public school alternatives start small and then expand, increasing the burden on taxpayers. 3.       Additional administrative costs coupled with a lack of transparency waste taxpayer dollars a

At my high school (Pulaski) graduation in Milwaukee many years ago, the guest speaker was a local judge, Christ D. Seraphim.  Odd name I know – thought so even back then.  But one comment he made has served me well over the decades.  He instructed us with, “No one owes you anything.”  This advice, I know, is totally out of fashion now, but it served me well. We now live in a world where many expect the government to give them opportunity, safety,  and success. It is also counter to the admonition that came just a few years later at the Presidential inauguration speech of John F. Kennedy, when he counseled us, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”  Widely quoted for years afterward, this resonant call is hardly heard anymore. Conditions in the USA have changed fundamentally from an era of independence and self-reliance to one of dependence and safe-spaces, and yes, variations of self-styled utopias*.  In fact, I do not feel I

Letters from the future.   Many of us wonder what can be achieved with big data, which combines multiple data bases and machine learning.  This is the third of a series of letters maybe not sent yet but soon will flood the world.  We are suggesting what can be done right now, like today.   This particular letter is sent to commercial vendors.   The footnotes are for you, the reader, not the letter recipient. NOTE.  Many databases need to be resourced for this letter.  This is what big data does, and it does it very well today. Online buying reveals, BTW, massive information about yourself – much is indirect. --------------- Dear Vendor, It is with great pleasure we offer you a database of names for your commercial interests.  This database contains not only names and email addresses, but also includes postal mailing addresses, and DOB (1). For the additional charge, we will also include SSN, primary bank, routing and account numbers as available - about 63% of all names

Cable News.  I watch cable news mostly.  You can tell what stations if I tell you the advertisers.  A. Insurance, life, auto, home, all.  B. Drugs, many for unusual conditions. C. Automobiles. D. Weight loss programs – where the food is mailed to you.   High profit products all, I see the same ads dozens of times, ad nauseum  These are actually common to all cable news channels.   The content is mostly about events, polls, rumors.   Occasionally , there is actual news, like a train derails, or congress passes a bill – rare.   But this is just the filler placed between their favorite offerings, and those are  Opinions.    They come in non-dietetic quantities.  Lumping events, polls, and rumors into “news,”  fake and otherwise, we use the symbol “N.”  Symbolically, this means I/you get daily servings of OAN, or opinions about the news.  This is OK, but the stations, wanting to feed the frenzy of their viewers then move on to OAOAN, or opinions about the opinions about the news.  Som

Timeline for James Comey.  There are two emotional threads.  Love and hate and then hate and love. July 5, 2016 .  Comey condemns Clinton for mishandling classified information.  But then say we will not indict.   Dems love it.  Reps hate it. October 28, 2016 .   Comey’s wait a minute moment.  We reopen the investigation, found new emails with classified info on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. Oops.  Reps love it. Dems hate it. Interim.  Both sides generally disdain Comey basically because he seems beyond the control of anyone.  Reps hate Comey; Dems hate Comey.  Especially, Hillary hates Comey, blaming his “re-opening letter” as a primary cause for her loss. May 9, 2017.  Trump fires Comey.  Reps claim it was appropriate; Dems also, probably.  However, because Trump did the deed, Dems hate it; Reps love it. Even the Nixonian metaphor has been issued – within an hour of the termination letter!  But it’s OK since it was made by an aging Senator.  “Never let a crisis go to

Trump.  Nowadays...  If you watch left-leaning channels, you will rarely hear anything positive about Trump.  If you watch the other channels, you will hear constant editorials about how Trump is not living up to promises.  I mean like we are only at about 100 days in.  The Dems are locked into a unity of contempt; the Reps seem to have more camps of interest than most countries have political parties, each criticizing Trump isn’t pure enough in their direction.  Promises???  Most newly elected officials simply say what's that?  Go figure. -------------------------------- Salt.  When I was a kid, years and years ago, almost every locker room had salt dispensers.  We were advised to take some any time we felt we needed the mineral.  Then, suddenly they disappeared, with the admonition that it was only rarely needed.  More damage than harm, etc. Now it’s back with trainers recommending the need for salt when working out or playing hard.  Go figure. ------------------