For what purpose? :)

Carved stone ball, Towie, Aberdeenshire by National Museums Scotland on Sketchfab

Some of the most enigmatic human-made objects from Europe's late Stone Age — intricately carved balls of stone, each about the size of a baseball — continue to baffle archaeologists more than 200 years after they were first discovered.

Such proposals have included the possibility that they were made as the stone heads for crushing weapons, or standardized weights for Neolithic traders, or rollers for the transport of the giant stones used in megalithic monuments.

One theory is that the knobs on many of the carved stone balls were wound with twine or sinew, which allowed them to be thrown like slings or South American bolas. Other theories describe the balls as objects of religious devotion or symbols of social status.

Here's a set of them.

Neolithic carved stone balls, Scotland by National Museums Scotland on Sketchfab

Just another mystery for us rubes to ponder in the year of our lord 2018. :)

Jovian Eye Candy/Rev XX :)

Just think of what we don't know, not only of Jove but also of the solar system, the Milky Way or the universe as a whole. Staggers the imagination doesn't it.

Regarding this pix, NASA's Juno never disappoints. :)

This image captures the intensity of the jets and vortices in Jupiter’s North North Temperate Belt. 

NASA’s Juno spacecraft took this color-enhanced image at 10:31 p.m. PDT on May 23, 2018 (1:31 a.m. EDT on May 24), as Juno performed its 13th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time, the spacecraft was about 4,900 miles (7,900 kilometers) from the tops of the clouds of the gas giant planet at a northern latitude of about 41 degrees. The view is oriented with south on Jupiter toward upper left and north toward lower right.

Had to do another.

In a new paper published in Nature today, scientists from NASA’s Juno mission describe the ways in which lightning on Jupiter is actually analogous to Earth’s lightning. Although, in some ways, the two types of lightning are polar opposites.

While the revelation showed how Jupiter lightning is similar to Earth’s, the new paper also notes that where these lightning bolts flash on each planet is actually quite different.

“Jupiter lightning distribution is inside out relative to Earth,” said Brown. “There is a lot of activity near Jupiter’s poles but none near the equator. You can ask anybody who lives in the tropics -- this doesn’t hold true for our planet.”

Why do lightning bolts congregate near the equator on Earth and near the poles on Jupiter? Follow the heat.

Earth’s derives the vast majority of its heat externally from solar radiation, courtesy of our Sun. Because our equator bears the brunt of this sunshine, warm moist air rises (through convection) more freely there, which fuels towering thunderstorms that produce lightning.

Jupiter’s orbit is five times farther from the Sun than Earth’s orbit, which means that the giant planet receives 25 times less sunlight than Earth. But even though Jupiter’s atmosphere derives the majority of its heat from within the planet itself, this doesn’t render the Sun’s rays irrelevant. They do provide some warmth, heating up Jupiter’s equator more than the poles -- just as they heat up Earth. Scientists believe that this heating at Jupiter’s equator is just enough to create stability in the upper atmosphere, inhibiting the rise of warm air from within. The poles, which do not have this upper-level warmth and therefore no atmospheric stability, allow warm gases from Jupiter’s interior to rise, driving convection and therefore creating the ingredients for lightning.

Isn't science grand? :)

There's a storm coming this way ...

Crunching bits is a biggie in 3D graphics, crunching bits using voxels to model a tornado is something else all together.  Check this out, amazing says it all. The second clip shows how big these guys can get. Time killer to the max is the intent here without question. :)

Killing time intelligently is not a bad idea, right?

The man who would be king

His royal majesty, the Donald, is claiming powers beyond that of the Magna Carta by stating he could pardon himself if the need arises as he is above the law, not needing to obey his own rules.” a notion contrary to the 801 year old document stating that King John, England's most hated monarch, had to do just that when dealing with rebellious barons who wanted laws in place to protect their freedoms from any capricious acts that may come about by this weak and spiteful leader. (Sound familiar?)

Under the terms of the charter, the King, his plural self, granted “to all the free men of our kingdom, for us and our heirs in perpetuity” certain “written liberties, to be had and held by them and their heirs by us and our heirs.” (Essentially, a “free man” was a nobleman.) One of those liberties is the one that had been demanded by the barons in Article 29: “No free man is to be arrested, or imprisoned . . . save by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.” 

King John

On June 4, 2018 ...

WASHINGTON — President Trump declared on Monday that the appointment of the special counsel in the Russia investigation was “totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL!” and asserted that he had the power to pardon himself, raising the prospect that he might take extraordinary action to immunize himself from the continuing inquiry.

In a pair of early-morning tweets, Mr. Trump suggested that he would not have to pardon himself because he had “done nothing wrong.” But he insisted that “numerous legal scholars” had concluded that he had the absolute right to do so, a claim that vastly overstated the legal thinking on the issue.

In fact, many constitutional experts dispute Mr. Trump’s position on his pardon power, an issue for which there has been no definitive ruling.

Mr. Trump’s assertion that “numerous legal scholars” believe he could pardon himself ignores the one official opinion on the subject. In August 1974, just days before former President Richard M. Nixon resigned, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, Mary C. Lawton, said in a memorandum that “it would seem” that Mr. Nixon could not pardon himself.

Any questions?

If you break it ... you own it

As followup to "The war ..., the well worn phrase of "if you break it, you own it." applies to the US as the only thing this nation knows how to do is break things ... at enormous cost.

The United States is "incapable of producing any results other than destruction and further fragmentation across staggeringly large parts of the planet," argues Tom Engelhardt, A Nation Unmade by War. Since 1991, the US has been engaged in a misguided and destructive exercise of triumphalism. In this interview, Engelhardt discusses why the US is an empire of chaos.

Mark Karlin: How much money has gone to the US "war on terror" and what has been the impact of this expenditure?

Tom Engelhardt: The best figure I've seen on this comes from the Watson Institute's Costs of War Project at Brown University, and it's a staggering $5.6 trillion, including certain future costs to care for this country's war vets. President Trump himself, with his usual sense of accuracy, has inflated that number even more, regularly speaking of $7 trillion being lost somewhere in our never-ending wars in the Greater Middle East. One of these days, he's going to turn out to be right.

The death of empires always involves the following:

1. Environmental degradation.
2. Resource depletion.
3. Infrastructure collapse.
4. Corrupt and inept politicians running said empire and ...
5. Over reliance on military.

Sound familiar?

To get another take on the US Chaos engine, check out Pepe Escobar, you will not be disappointed.

Addendum: Bin Laden has apparently absorbed the Reagan strategy. It is difficult to know whether he really thought that a handful of terrorist acts would hobble the United States or that al Qaeda and the Taliban could defeat the U.S. and its allies in Afghanistan. What he must have anticipated, however, was the predictable U.S. response: to throw money at the Pentagon.

Any questions?

“The war ...

George Orwell's take on war becomes ever more prescient as we move further into the 21st century. 

The primary aim of modern warfare (in accordance with the principles of doublethink, this aim is simultaneously recognized and not recognized by the directing brains of the Inner Party) is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living. - Emmanuel Goldstein War is Peace (George Orwell) 1984

A self inflicted Whack a Mole construct comes to mind here without question. 

Once upon a time, dystopian fiction was left to the novelists: Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Margaret Atwood, Philip K. Dick. And once upon a time, the futuristic dreams of the military were distinctly upbeat. They were of generals leading armies to victory, of air power causing the morale of enemy nations to collapse (with surrender on the menu), of admirals dominating the seven seas with a fleet beyond compare -- 11 aircraft carriers included -- that would awe the rest of the world.

That was then; this is now. These days you’re likely to hear the word “victory” in Washington about as often as “peace.” In fact, according to the Washington Post, the futuristic phrase of the moment at the Pentagon, the one regularly on the lips of “senior officers,” is the dystopian “infinite war.” In translation: almost 17 years after the administration of George W. Bush launched its Global War on Terror and American military conflicts began to spread across the Greater Middle East, Asia, and Africa, no end is in sight. Ever. And that’s not just a passing phrase in the Pentagon’s arsenal of words. As TomDispatch regular Nick Turse makes clear today, as early as 2016, the Pentagon’s fantasists were already producing dystopian scenarios of the first order, bloodcurdling tales of a forever-war-fighting future as an over-muscled replication of the present never-ending war on terror. They were already, that is, beginning to write their own Brave New World (of War), their own 2084, their own The Lieutenant’s Tale, their own Do Drones Dream of Electric Terrorists?; they were, in short, creating stunningly well-funded gravestones for the American (and global) future.

7 trillion & counting...

This graphic just covers the time period of 2015 - 2017 

Read more about The Cost of War Project. Worthwhile to the max IMHO.

Women's right to choose ...

Statist's infomap shows two rather interesting characteristics about nations prohibiting a woman's right to choose. 

1. Questionable economic status.
2. Hegemony of religion (catholic/muslim).

And now, right to lifers (evangelical christians) want to prohibit women's right to choose in America circa 2018. Makes sense, right?

On May 25, Ireland will hold a referendum on whether to repeal the eighth amendment, which recognises the equal right to life of a foetus and mother during pregnancy. Ireland has some of the strictest abortion laws worldwide and the debate leading up to the referendum is proving one of the most polarising in years. The following visualization is based on a map produced by The Center for Reproductive Rights since 1998. As Ireland gets ready to go to the polls, it shows the legal status of abortion across the world.

Modernity and commonsense won.

The Republic of Ireland has voted overwhelmingly to overturn the abortion ban by 66.4% to 33.6%.

A referendum held on Friday resulted in a landslide win for the repeal side.

Currently, abortion is only allowed when a woman's life is at risk, but not in cases of rape, incest or fatal foetal abnormality.

The Eighth Amendment, which grants an equal right to life to the mother and unborn, will be replaced.

The declaration was made at Dublin Castle at 18:13 local time.

The more educated one is, the less need for religion.

Sailing across the sky

Tom Heany's Sailing across the sky, brought to life by Tom and Lara Schuler, is a a gentle and whimsical look at love, life and companionship. Enjoy.

21T & Counting ...

Tech audits are really important when one does not know how a given system operates as dollars cannot be properly assigned to said system unless one knows how said system operates, a situation yours truly finds absolutely astounding when it comes to the Pentagon and it's amazing ability to not be able to account for 21 trillion dollars, a rather large sum, especially when one calculates the size, weight and volume of the Benjamins that would be required to cover the loss in question, an amount slightly larger than the 2017 20 trillion US debt that will expand to ever greater heights thanks to the 2018 passage of Trump's massive tax cut that will help the rich in ways that truly boggle the mind.

So he went and looked at the inspector general’s report, and he found something interesting: It was trillion! It was fucking $6.5 trillion in 2015 of unaccounted-for spending! And I’m sorry for the cursing, but the word “trillion” is legally obligated to be prefaced with “fucking.” It is indeed way more than the U.K.’s GDP.

Skidmore did a little more digging. As Forbes reported in December 2017, “[He] and Catherine Austin Fitts … conducted a search of government websites and found similar reports dating back to 1998. While the documents are incomplete, original government sources indicate $21 trillion in unsupported adjustments have been reported for the Department of Defense and the Department of Housing and Urban Development for the years 1998-2015.”

Let’s stop and take a second to conceive how much $21 trillion is (which you can’t because our brains short-circuit, but we’ll try anyway).

1. The amount of money supposedly in the stock market is $30 trillion.

2. The GDP of the United States is $18.6 trillion.

3. Picture a stack of money. Now imagine that that stack of dollars is all $1,000 bills. Each bill says “$1,000” on it. How high do you imagine that stack of dollars would be if it were $1 trillion. It would be 63 miles high.

4. Imagine you make $40,000 a year. How long would it take you to make $1 trillion? Well, don’t sign up for this task, because it would take you 25 million years (which sounds like a long time, but I hear that the last 10 million really fly by because you already know your way around the office, where the coffee machine is, etc.).

The human brain is not meant to think about a trillion dollars.

And it’s definitely not meant to think about the $21 trillion our Department of Defense can’t account for. These numbers sound bananas. They sound like something Alex Jones found tattooed on his backside by extraterrestrials.

Read the rest of Nation of Change's astounding piece after downloading the IG office's PDF detailing this FUBAR if you dare. 

Newspeak 2018

Going beyond the mangled syntax of our beloved POTUS is the administration's push to censor, eliminate and codify words along the lines of Newspeak, the official language of 1984.

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten." (1.5.23, Syme 1984) 

34 year later ...

Consider us officially in an Orwellian world, though we only half realize it. While we were barely looking, significant parts of an American language long familiar to us quite literally, and in a remarkably coherent way, went down the equivalent of George Orwell’s infamous Memory Hole.

Since then, the language of an America that the president and his associates reject has been under constant attack. Some of those acts of aggression were to be expected, given the campaign promises that preceded his election. Take climate change, which Donald Trump called a “Chinese hoax” long before he filled his administration with rabid climate deniers. The Department of Agriculture was typical. Its new officials excised the very word “climate change” from their website, substituting “weather extremes,” and changed the phrase “reduce greenhouse gases” to the palpably deceptive “increase nutrient use energy.” Across the board, in fact, .gov websites replaced “climate change” with vague words like “resilience” and “sustainability.”

It might be worth reflecting on the words of Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister for Hitler’s Nazi Party. He had a clear-eyed vision of the importance of disguising the ultimate goal of his particular campaign against democracy and truth. “The secret of propaganda,” he said, is to “permeate the person it aims to grasp without his even noticing that he is being permeated.”

Consider this a word of warning to the wise. Perhaps instead of hurling insults at President Trump’s incompetence and the seeming disarray of his presidency, it might be worth taking a step back and asking ourselves whether there is indeed a larger goal in mind: Namely, a slow, patient, incremental dismantling of democracy, beginning with its most precious words.

To realise English Socialism (Ingsoc) in Oceania, the Party created the controlled language of Newspeak to ensure universal orthodoxy of ideology and politics among the populace.

Seen below is a partial list of Newspeak works. 

• artsem – artificial insemination
• bb – Big Brother
• bellyfeel – a blind, enthusiastic acceptance of an idea
• blackwhite – to believe that black is white, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary
• crimestop – to rid oneself of unwanted thoughts, i.e., thoughts that interfere with the ideology of the Party. This way, a person avoids committing thoughtcrime
• crimethink – Thoughtcrime, thoughts that are unorthodox or outside the official government platform (or the crime of thinking such thoughts)
• dayorder – Order of the day
• doubleplusgood -Replaces excellent, best and benevolent
• doubleplusungood - Replaces terrible and worst

Addendum: The Trump administration is planning to instate a rule that will bar recipients of federal family planning funding from educating women about abortion options, making referrals to doctors that provide abortions, or providing abortion care. Conservatives have cheered the move as a way for the federal government to partially “defund” Planned Parenthood without requiring an act of Congress.

In essence the ... New Trump Administration Rule Will Force Doctors to Stop Saying “Abortion”?

Any questions about this version of the Memory Hole circa 2018?