Sunday, November 22, 2015

Slipstream - in a quiet way


Fall 2015 was extraordinary due to, as stated before in BRT, the weather gods conspiring to get the color out at the right time to enhance autumnal light in ways that have not been seen in NE for quite a long time. Enjoy. :)

After 50 years ...


Another giant of the computing industry just died, Gene Amdahl, the architect of IBM's System/360, the most successful mainframe in history, passed away at 92. In looking at his singular accomplishments, the one thing that stands out is the fact his code is still being used after 50 years, something simply unheard of in the age of the digital computer.










Had to show another System/360, this one @ NASA, used to crunch data for Apollo missions.

Friday, November 20, 2015

A Hard Rain ...


Had to do another - Definitely in the same league as It's Alright Ma....






It's Alright Ma


Like rolling thunder or Finnegan's Wake, It's Alright Ma is hypnotic, riveting and terrifying in it's take on reality, humanity and the demons that reside in us all. Without question, Dylan, in the early 60's, was incandescent, just as Miles was when he headed two great groups in the late 50's and mid 60's. Listen to the song and read the lyrics as they relate to the dark times we are living in. Something to consider as we move further toward the end of 2015.

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child’s balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn
Plays wasted words, proves to warn
That he not busy being born is busy dying

Temptation’s page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover that you’d just be one more
Person crying

So don’t fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don’t hate nothing at all
Except hatred

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Make everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacred

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked

An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged
It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge
And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it

Advertising signs they con
You into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks they really found you

A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit
To satisfy, insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not forget
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something they invest in

While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God bless him

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society’s pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he’s in

But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him

Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn’t talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony

While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer’s pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death’s honesty
Won’t fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes must get lonely

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed
Graveyards, false gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough, what else can you show me?

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine
But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only

Friday, November 13, 2015

Wish fulfillment :)


This Dilbert resonates big time with yours truly, especially when relating it to politicians running for office. :)

Checking out the neighborhood


As per the Physics Forum post, here are all the robots checking out the solar system. 
Pretty cool without question.


Thursday, November 12, 2015

Past the point of no return



It won’t take much to cause the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet to collapse—and once it starts, it won’t stop. In the last year, a slew of papers has highlighted the vulnerability of the ice sheet covering the western half of the continent, suggesting that its downfall is inevitable—and probably already underway. Now, a new model shows just how this juggernaut could unfold. A relatively small amount of melting over a few decades, the authors say, will inexorably lead to the destabilization of the entire ice sheet and the rise of global sea levels by as much as 3 meters.

Previous models have examined the onset of the collapse in detail. In 2014, two papers, one in Science and one in Geophysical Review Letters, noted that the Thwaites Glacier, which some scientists call the “weak underbelly” of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, has retreated dramatically over the past 2 decades. Most Antarctic researchers chalk this up to warm seawater melting the floating ice shelves at their bases; seawater temperatures there have risen since the 1970s, in part because of global temperature increases. Right now, an underwater ledge is helping anchor the glacier in place. But when the glacier retreats past that bulwark, it will collapse into the ocean; then seawater will intrude and melt channels into the ice sheet, setting the juggernaut in motion.

And we haven't even talked about the Greenland equation. Click albedo effect to see how disappearing ice transforms the uncovered ocean into a heat sink, thus helping to push the state of GW past the point of no return.


Region where collapse is imminent.


Wednesday, November 11, 2015

The Shining ... returns :)


A good friend of mine turned me onto this gem. It's a 10 Chuck. :)
Stanley would relate to this bad boy without question.

The Military Aid Equation


Howmuch strikes again, this time regarding military aid and the region of the world where such largesse is so freely given. 

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

The Political Gambit


The political gambit: get elected/reelected, become useless (save for the politically connected) & get well paid to be so. Not a bad way to rip off the public, don't you think?

Sunday, November 08, 2015

2001


2001, the finest SF movie of all time, (Interstellar's No. 2) in tandem with Arthur C. Clarke's 2001, one of the finest SF novels of all time, (Starmaker's the other) gives one pause given just how deep and sophisticated both works are. When looking at Kubrick's masterpiece, one sees just how prescient both men were in describing a reality set 33 years into the future from 1968, regarding computers, tech and the nuance of space, where no sound resides, where ion engines rule and where science takes precedence over religion as the only viable way to try to understand the mysterious reality in which we all live, something altogether different from the fractured and increasingly illiterate environment of earth circa 2015.


Take the time to read the book as it's not only a seamless connect showing how writing is properly translated into film when done by a master like Kubrick but also it explains, in clear fashion, the raison d'ete of 2001 in a way impossible to do in a medium that plays out in just two hours and 22 minutes.

 Foreword
 Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead
outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, roughly a hundred billion human beings have walked
the planet Earth.

 Now this is an interesting number, for by a curious coincidence there are approximately a
hundred billion stars in our local universe, the Milky Way. So for every man who has ever lived,
in this Universe there shines a star.

 But every one of those stars is a sun, often far more brilliant and glorious than the small,
nearby star we call the Sun. And many - perhaps most - of those alien suns have planets circling
them. So almost certainly there is enough land in the sky to give every member of the human
species, back to the first ape-man, his own private, world-sized heaven - or hell.

 How many of those potential heavens and hells are now inhabited, and by what manner of
creatures, we have no way of guessing; the very nearest is a million times farther away than Mars
or Venus, those still remote goals of the next generation. But the barriers of distance are
crumbling; one day we shall meet our equals, or our masters, among the stars.

 Men have been slow to face this prospect; some still hope that it may never become reality.
Increasing numbers, however, are asking: "Why have such meetings not occurred already, since we
ourselves are about to venture into space?"

 Why not, indeed? Here is one possible answer to that very reasonable question. But please
remembert thi sis only a work of fiction.

 The truth, as always, will be far stranger.

 To Stanley

Saturday, November 07, 2015

A sense of scale

Drugs - In a good way :)


Time killer to the max. Enjoy.

Pinocchio Lives


When listening or reading what Ben Carson has to say in areas outside of his expertise, the content accessed boggles the mind whether it be his takes on evolution, opinions regarding science or his declarative view on the Founding Fathers.





Inconvenient facts.






Pinocchio anyone?



Friday, November 06, 2015

Everyone loves a good mystery


Conjecture, guesses and inquiry, the stuff of science writ large. :)

Click here for more info on this "magic" duo of infinite mystery.

Language Set 101

Fall 2015/Light/Color & Image


Fall 2015 was spectacular due to the perfect combination of rain/sun/heat & cold needed to amp up the transition from all green to all shades of green plus yellows tamping down to browns as NE moved into November.  Hopefully, this video captures, in small part, this most beautiful of seasons with it's take on light, color and imagery. Stellar without question. Enjoy.

Thursday, November 05, 2015

43 Mil




The art of stupid anyone?

1888 - 2015 R.I.P.


For more years than I want to count, yours truly, like countless others, loved National Geographic, a magazine filled with incredible imagery and well researched writing that showed us readers the wonder and beauty of reality, died when Rupert Murdoch bought the company and effectively killed it in the year of our lord, 2015.




R.I.P. 


Nat Geo circa 1915

Tuesday, November 03, 2015

An artful dodge


BRT has waxed poetic about Citizens United, the corporate power grab made manifest, courtesy the supremes, the bought and paid for court that favors business and church above the rights of the public this august entity is supposed to represent. With this crit notwithstanding comes an incendiary and well researched piece from the NY Times titled Arbitration Everywhere, Stacking the Deck of Justice




Read this piece along with its 3 section addendum titled Beware the Fine Print to see why BRT's criticism of the supremes rings true.

Monday, November 02, 2015

Ice Lines :)


GunFAIL Ad Nauseum


Yours truly has no problem with people having guns IF they are registered and IF they know what the hell they are doing with said firearm, something that's not true in so many cases with idiots possessing tech able to kill, maim and wound without question.




Kind of reminds me of the Repugs debate where anti-knowledge rules and ignorance is good. Unreal as we move further into the never ending campaign of people not qualified to run anything of consequence let alone POTUS. 

End of rant, for now.