Friday, July 31, 2015

Benjamins


Benjamins rule politics, but we already knew that, a sad reality egregiously amplified thanks to Citizens United, the supreme's ruling codifying the fact America's now an oligarchy with bought and paid for politicians whose mendacity knows no end. 




Addendum:

Any questions?

Remembering Cecil in a good way


Yours truly won't talk about the wanton killing of Cecil the Lion by a unconscious moron but rather about how his kind, and other endangered species, can be saved if we change how we do business on planet earth. To that end, this Saturday, August 1st, a powerful wake up call telling us to do just that will take place via the Empire State building where ... 

The callous murder of Zimbabwe’s beloved Cecil, the lion, has cast the plight of endangered species across the internet.

But this Saturday night, that plight will be cast offline in a new way as well, as digital projection mapper Travis Threlkel and filmmaker/photographer Louie Psihoyos collaborate to project massive images of the world’s most majestic endangered animals onto the face of New York City’s Empire State Building.

“We’re going to try to create something beautiful, not bum people out,” says Threlkel, adding that “hopefully, this is one big domino. If we can tip it, it would be great.”


To yours truly, the Snow Leopard is one prime reason why biodiversity must be maintained, not only for preserving animals as magnificent as these big cats are but also for our survival as everything's connected and we are, as my wife is won't to say, only as strong as our weakest link.

Monday, July 27, 2015

Queen Anne's Lace


Queen Anne's Lace is a treasure. Coming to bloom in early summer, the action doesn't start until its fragrance becomes just right to attract wasps, bumble bees, honey bees and green flies, not to mention ants of all varieties and butterflies of many persuasions.

Factoid: Early Europeans cultivated Queen Anne’s lace, and the Romans ate it as a vegetable. American colonists boiled the taproots, sometimes in wine as a treat. Interestingly, Queen Anne’s lace is high in sugar (second only to the beet among root vegetables) and sometimes it was used among the Irish, Hindus and Jews to sweeten puddings and other foods.

Not bad for a wild carrot that plays well with tomatoes and lettuce and provides a banquet for insects both small and large as seen by an alpha wasp helping itself to a midday snack of nectar. :) Enjoy.



Sunday, July 26, 2015

360 & Then Some


Insane says it all. Not a plug but Immersive's pretty stellar tech without question.

Here's yet another.


Mother Nature's Way :)


Yours truly is a natural path. No prescription drugs, a relatively decent diet, (not perfect by any stretch of the imagination) and true distaste for the dysfunctional healthcare system in America where symptoms are treated and not the cause, are prime drivers in my dealing with health issues that, to date, thank god, are pretty damn minor in the grand scheme of things. In support of my "wonderful" approach to health, here is a treasure trove of useful info regarding the natural way to deal with day to day maladies courtesy Pioneer Settler, a terrific site filled with common sense advice on preventative health practices that work without issue. 


Read the article. You will NOT be disappointed. :)

Saturday, July 25, 2015

Flyover & Than Some - Pluto Style :)


NASA's New Horizons rules. :)


Pluto's hazy skies, courtesy NW's nightside shot of our 9th planet. :)

Beyond Control


BRT has talked about secrecy and control and its connect to tech quite often as the subject matter is fascinating, something akin to a moth attracted to a flame, dangerous yet not if one keeps proper distance from the source of the attraction. To that end, 9/11 has given rise to an America we don't know, a Hidden world, growing beyond control.

The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.

These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

The investigation's other findings include:
"No one knows, do one?" - Fats Waller




Thursday, July 23, 2015

Guns, lots and lots of Guns ...

"Guns, lots and lots of guns." - Neo/The Matrix sums up the military might of the established US vs China, the new kid on the block. Without question, Visual Capitalist's graphic depicts the strengths of the two in exquisite detail and precision, two qualities techs like yours truly admires to the max.

Divvying it up

Yours truly loves maps, especially if they illustrate data in ways not seen before, at least by this individual. To that end, How Much does the deed in spades in showing how the world's economy is divided by area. Awesome kind of says it all. With this in mind. Zero Hedge's take on the ponzi scheme writ large by the banks vis a vis the creation of unsustainable debt laid on entities like Greece means pucker up time is fast approaching if their analysis rings true. From this perspective, it looks pretty sound to me. To whit:

If itsy bitsy pie slice – Greece (.33%) – can create this much worldwide economic havoc because of their unpayble level of debt, imagine what will happen when the truth is revealed about France (3.81%), Italy (2.88%), and Spain (1.88%). China’s (13.9%) entire economic model has been built upon debt and the world consuming their output.

The world has run out of money to consume their shit. Japan (6.18%) is in the midst of a demographic and debt death spiral. The U.S. (23.32%) is living on borrowed time and the continued dominance of the USD. How long will it last? We are inhabiting in a world stacked with TNT run by monkeys with matches.

The map explained.


Any questions?

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Feedback Loops





Feedback loop

"Simple causal reasoning about a feedback system is difficult because the first system influences the second and second system influences the first, leading to a circular argument. This makes reasoning based upon cause and effect tricky, and it is necessary to analyze the system as a whole." [3] , something that's happening to earth regarding the melting of ice caused by increased CO2 levels trapping in more heat, which, in turn, reduces the all important albedo which, in terms of the feedback loop effect, accelerates the process of turning the arctic and antarctic from a reflective surface to a heat sink, thus accelerating climate change at a rate unforeseen by climatologists, until now.


The study—written by James Hansen, NASA’s former lead climate scientist, and 16 co-authors, many of whom are considered among the top in their fields—concludes that glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica will melt 10 times faster than previous consensus estimates, resulting in sea level rise of at least 10 feet in as little as 50 years. The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, brings new importance to a feedback loop in the ocean near Antarctica that results in cooler freshwater from melting glaciers forcing warmer, saltier water underneath the ice sheets, speeding up the melting rate. Hansen, who is known for being alarmist and also right, acknowledges that his study implies change far beyond previous consensus estimates. In a conference call with reporters, he said he hoped the new findings would be “substantially more persuasive than anything previously published.” I certainly find them to be.

To come to their findings, the authors used a mixture of paleoclimate records, computer models, and observations of current rates of sea level rise, but “the real world is moving somewhat faster than the model,” Hansen says.

It gets better.

If you truly understand global warming, then you know it's all about the ice. That's what matters. Planet Earth has not always had great ice sheets at the poles, of the sort that currently exist atop Greenland and Antarctica. In other periods, much of that water has instead been in liquid form, in the oceans—and the oceans have been much higher.

How much? According to the National Academy of Sciences, the globe's great ice sheets contain enough frozen water to raise sea levels worldwide by more than 60 meters. That's about 200 feet. And it makes all the sea level rise that we've seen so far due to global warming appear piddly and insignificant.

That's why scientists have long feared a day like this would come. Two new scientific papers, in the journals Science and Geophysical Research Letters, report that major glaciers that are part of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet appear to have become irrevocably destabilized. The whole process may still play out on the scale of centuries, but due to the particular dynamics of this ice sheet, the collapse of these major glaciers now "appears unstoppable," according to NASA (whose researchers are behind one of the two studies).

BRT has talked about the 900 lb GW gorilla in numerous articles including the one titled Albedo , a blurb describing just how powerful a cooling agent ice truly is, something earth is losing 24/7 as we move further into the 21st century.


Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

One must know one's limits


BRT did a post back in 2014 titled The 1st Law, depicting, IMHO, the most important law in science (The 1st law of Thermodynamics conservation of energy) stating that energy can neither be created or destroyed, only transformed, a law that supports a new study regarding the limits of earth's resources and what it means to man's survival as we move further into the 21st century. 








Overshoot awaits, if we let it.




"One must know one's limits" - Dirty Harry



A simple matter of perspective


In Transit :)


New Horizons is in transit. Awesome!

The image seen below shows just how small Pluto & Charon are compared to Earth.
(Pluto should still be reinstated as our 9th planet given how complex Pluto's system is. ) :)




Monday, July 13, 2015

Greece on Ebay


Zero Hedge nails it in terms of what will happen to Greece courtesy the Eurozone and the troika that runs all things related to the Euro.









One readily senses the reaction from the Greek people will not be pleasant by any stretch of the imagination. 



Sunday, July 12, 2015

Wrong Number


I can honestly say I am not addicted to my smartphone. Addicted to tech and blogging maybe, but not to the phone, thank god but to many other poor souls, this is simply not the case.





It gets better, especially when somebody does something about it, especially when cluelessness is part of the equation.





Awesome!

Friday, July 10, 2015

Mixed metaphor



BRT did a post titled There must be a Pony in there somewhere, a blurb about Google's Neural Net, the startpoint for true AI. Here's the video a good friend of mine turned me onto. Awesome and ... somewhat disquieting to say the least. Thanks Chuck for turning me onto this gem. :)

It's not what it seems :)


When looking at this shot, yours truly thinks of serendipity and how creatives take advantage of mistakes, accidents and, as seen by Alexander Fleming, the ability to "see" and not judge when looking at a particular, in this case, experiment that, on the surface, seemed to go awry.



Or this... 





When reading about Fleming, one gets encouraged to play and see beyond because, after all, play and perception are the prime drivers of creativity, without question. :)


Ominous Beauty


BRT posted a blurb titled Albedo, showing the enormous difference of ice vs water in terms of the fraction of solar energy (shortwave radiation) reflected from the Earth back into space. It is a measure of the reflectivity of the earth's surface. Ice, especially with snow on top of it, has a high albedo: most sunlight hitting the surface bounces back towards space. something hauntingly depicted in NASA's nighttime shot of noctilucent clouds surrounding the North Pole on June 10, 2015.




Here's what they look like from the ground.


Interesting, don't you think?

Thursday, July 09, 2015

The Domino Theory


Charles Smith is a gem. Long term, analytic and correct, he explains economics in a precise and commonsense way as seen by his nation cycle chart seen at the top of this post. When his thought process is applied to the situation in Europe, one gets an alarmingly clear picture of just how dire the situation truly is.




Pucker up, the ride has just begun.

Your moment has come


Standing before the European Parliament yesterday, it took Nigel Farage just four minutes to completely destroy every argument supporting the Eurozone.

A few years back when he spoke at one of our Sovereign Man events in Santiago, he anticipated everything that we’re seeing right now.

Today it’s not nearly as controversial to say that the Eurozone experiment has failed. Anyone aware of what’s happening in Greece should say the same. But very few people really understand why.

As Nigel explains in the video below, right from the start, the system was never intended to help the Greek people.

Greece entering the euro was great for Goldman Sachs. But terrible for Greeks. It chained the country to a system in which it didn’t belong.

And what about all the bailout money that’s been thrown at Greece in the time since?

None of it actually went to the Greek people. It went to bail out the French, German, and Italian banks who own Greek debt.

Matt Taibbi nailed this bad boy a couple of years ago when describing Goldman as the Vampire Squid and how it drives high finance to make as much money as possible, no matter the cost.

Wednesday, July 08, 2015

LSD without the need for LSD

Cyberwar - In Real Time


Cyberwar in real time courtesy, Norse , shows where attacks come from and where they go, in real time. Intense without issue, something Zero Hedge talked about regarding the NYSE shutdown. The Norse map seen above shows St. Louis as a target from the Far East or Wargames - 21st century style.


Question, what's in St Louis to make it a biggie in this version of cyberwar circa 7/8/2015?

Tuesday, July 07, 2015

Franklin's Tower


On July 5, 2015, my home town had an outrageous July 4th blowout, complete with a bodacious cover of the Grateful Dead's classic, Franklin's Tower. Check it out. Worthwhile for sure. :)

In another time's forgotten space
your eyes looked through your mother's face
Wildflower seed on the sand and stone
may the four winds blow you safely home

Roll away, the dew
Roll away, the dew
Roll away, the dew
Roll away, the dew

I'll tell you where the four winds dwell
In Franklin's tower there hangs a bell
It can ring, turn night to day
It can ring like fire when you lose your way

Roll away, the dew,
Roll away, the dew
Roll away, the dew
Roll away, the dew

God help the child who rings that bell
It may have one good ring left, you can't tell
One watch by night, one watch by day
If you get confused just listen to the music play

Roll away, the dew,
Roll away, the dew
Roll away, the dew
Roll away, the dew

Some come to laugh their past away
Some come to make it just one more day
Whichever way your pleasure tends
if you plant ice you're gonna harvest wind

Roll away, the dew,
Roll away, the dew
Roll away, the dew
Roll away, the dew

In Franklin's Tower the four winds sleep
Like four lean hounds the lighthouse keep
Wildflower seed in the sand and wind
May the four winds blow you home again

Roll away, the dew
Roll away, the dew
Roll away, the dew
Roll away, the dew
You better roll away the dew

Songwriters: GARCIA, JEROME J. / KREUTZMANN, WILLIAM / HUNTER, ROBERT C.

Saturday, July 04, 2015

Estimated Prophet :)


Yours truly has seen a lot of concerts, particularly from the early 60's to early 70's. One group I only saw once were the Dead, one of the truly great bands of all time, who did the ultimate mashup of blues, Django, bluegrass, reggae, jazz and rock in a style both generous and pure CA to the max. To make amends for only catching them once, here's a connect to arguably one of the best concerts they did way back in 1977, the same year Steely Dan did the deed with their masterpiece AJA.

Check out Estimated Prophet where Garcia does wa wa to the max with a touch of reggae thrown in for good measure. Without question, rock, back in the day, was truly unconscious, in a very good way. :)



Had to put in Blues for Allah, another gem from the Dead circa 1975.



Last but not least, here's a stellar 1972 concert stream.


The 1% "Solution"


Many people don't think twice about the chemicals they put on their bodies, perhaps thinking that the government regulates the personal care products that flood the marketplace. In reality, the government plays a very small role, in part because it doesn't have the legal mandate to protect the public from harmful substances that chemical companies and manufacturers sell in their products. Federal rules designed to ensure product safety haven’t been updated in more than 75 years. New untested chemicals appear on store shelves all the time.

"Under federal law, cosmetics companies don't have to disclose chemicals or gain approval for the 2,000 products that go on the market every year," notes environment writer Jane Kay in Scientific American. "And removing a cosmetic from sale takes a battle in federal court."

It's high time these rules are revisited. Not only have thousands of new chemicals entered the market in the past several decades, there is overwhelming evidence that the public is unnecessarily exposed to health hazards from consumer products. In 2013, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued a report that found "robust" evidence linking "toxic environmental agents" — which includes consumer products — to "adverse reproductive and developmental health outcomes."

Formaldehyde is a good example. It is a known carcinogen used as a preservative to kill or inhibit the growth of microorganisms in a wide range of personal care products, from cosmetics, soaps, shampoos and lotions to deodorants, nail polishes and hair gels. It is also used in pressed-wood products, permanent-press fabrics, paper product coatings and insulation, and as a fungicide, germicide, disinfectant and preservative. The general public is also exposed to formaldehyde through automobile tailpipe emissions. Formaldehyde has been linked to spontaneous abortion and low birth weight.

Something to think about, don't you think?