Friday, September 30, 2016

Eye Candy Rev III



Eye Candy Rev III


Louder Daddy


To yours truly, this is what a summer festival rock tune is all about.
Crowds, beer, laughs & good vibes. Enjoy.

The Art of Stupid


BRT has talked often about the art of stupid, where government and corporate entities do mind numbingly dumb things that truly boggle the mind. Toons like Dilbert illustrate this all too human trait with absurdist humor of the highest order as does Douglas Adams and his notion that the number 42 truly is the answer to the multiverse and beyond but I digress as the gist of this blurb is a clever piece written by Andre Spicer titled Stupefied, which proves that the art of stupid is universally practiced & enncouraged by nearly every company and government agency in the good ole USA. :)

Each summer, thousands of the best and brightest graduates join the workforce. Their well-above-average raw intelligence will have been carefully crafted through years at the world’s best universities. After emerging from their selective undergraduate programmes and competitive graduate schools, these new recruits hope that their jobs will give them ample opportunity to put their intellectual gifts to work. But they are in for an unpleasant surprise.

Smart young things joining the workforce soon discover that, although they have been selected for their intelligence, they are not expected to use it. They will be assigned routine tasks that they will consider stupid. If they happen to make the mistake of actually using their intelligence, they will be met with pained groans from colleagues and polite warnings from their bosses. After a few years of experience, they will find that the people who get ahead are the stellar practitioners of corporate mindlessness.

It gets better.

We found many ways that all kinds of organisations positively encouraged intelligent people not to fully use their intelligence. There were rules and routines that prompted them to focus energies on complying with bureaucracy instead of doing their jobs. There were doctors who spent more time ‘playing the tick-box game’ than actually caring for patients; teachers who spent more time negotiating new bureaucratic procedures than teaching children. We met Hans, a manager in a local government agency: after a visit from a regulator, his office received a list of 25 issues in need of improvement. So Hans’s agency developed 25 new policies and procedures. The result: the regulator was happy, but there was no change in actual practice. 

Another significant source of stupidity in firms we came across was a deep faith in leadership. In most organisations today, senior executives are not content with just being managers. They want to be leaders. They see their role as not just running their business but also transforming their followers. They talk about ‘vision’, ‘belief’ and ‘authenticity’ with great verve. All this sounds like our office buildings are brimming with would-be Nelson Mandelas. However, when you take a closer look at what these self-declared leaders spend their days doing, the story is quite different.

The march of the lemmings continues. :)


The Bobby Paltauf Band


Playing with controlled passion is a hard thing to do with any musicain but this group does it without effort. Redding Rock'n Roots rules. :)

Yippee Coyote


Folk Rock, as performed by Yippee Coyote, never disappoints. Rock'n Roots rules. :)

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Open Road


"Before the Fall" written by Nancy Burger & Scott Weber (guitarist all the way to the right) is Open Road's take on this piece. Enjoy.

Rock'n Roots rules. :)

"I'll Know You"


"I'll Know You", a haunting and wonderful song, written by Don Sparks and performed by Don and Dan Bonis, will stay with you for a very long time. Enjoy.

Rock'n Roots strikes yet again. :)

Decision-Making 101


Decision Making 101 or how DC does business. See first debate for example No. 1.


Monday, September 26, 2016

Reality Guide


Here's an all-in-one chart showing the structure of reality. Pretty cool I must say.



Sunday, September 25, 2016

Every Move you Make ...


Surveillance as art form, abetted by Obama, the most secretive administration in history, has created the most pervasive surveillance program in history, able to tap into every aspect of one's life whether it be analogue or digital, courtesy the NSA, CIA, FBI and significant others, like the largely unknown NRO - The National Reconnaissance Office, the outfit that builds and launches the top secret satellites that spy on us 24/7.





The Patch


Here's another.


Read The Verge's article, creepy says it all.

The Lonetown Boys


A slow blues with subtle power, performed by the Lonetown Boys, is the theme of this video shot @ The Redding Rock'n Roots Revival. Enjoy. :)

Friday, September 23, 2016

Motion /2


Nature never disappoints, especially when a Super Monarch makes the scene, the one that files all the way to Mexico from NE environs like CT. Enjoy.

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Friday, September 16, 2016

Into the Night


Keeping to a night theme, here is a shot clip showing the wonders of same in CT. Enjoy.


Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Night Vision


Seeing in the dark is now possible with the Canon MH20f-SH, the camera that changes everything regarding the night and how we perceive it. Astounding says it all. :)

Sugar High


Yours truly was a sugar junky. Still am but no longer does this rube pig out on sweets as this was and is the right thing to do. Said diet change started 5 months ago and the impact has been pretty amazing but this blurb is not about how "virtuous" this writer is but rather about yet another pay to play scheme, this time with Harvard and the sugar industry.






The sugar industry's funding and role were not disclosed when the article was published by the New England Journal of Medicine. The journal did not begin requesting author disclosures until 1984.

It gets better





Just think about the results of this skewed finding regarding not only cardiac but also obesity, diabetes and cancer in terms of the numbers of people adversely affected by the intake of refined sugar that was blessed by Harvard back in the 60s. This fubar goes in concert with Exxon gaming the system back in the 70's regarding climate change and the use of fossil fuels. 

As often stated in BRT, It's all about the money.

To boldly go ...

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Reaching Out :)


Mr. Fidencio Sanchez 

Sometimes kindness sneaks up on us reminding us that people can be kind and helpful, something all together different from what we usually see in nightly news and the never ending barbs tossed in abandon in the election from hell as we move toward making a "choice" between two people unable to speak the truth.



It gets better.


Thus far, folks have contributed over $250,000. Stellar without question.

Monday, September 12, 2016

Am I missing something here?


There was a burst of righteous populist anger anger last week, when it emerged that Wells Fargo had engaged in pervasive, "massive" fraud since at least 2011, including opening credit cards secretly without a customer’s consent, creating fake email accounts to sign up customers for online banking services, and forcing customers to accumulate late fees on accounts they never even knew they had. For this criminal conduct, Wells was fined $185 million (including a $100 million penalty from the CFPB, the largest penalty the agency has ever issued). In all, Wells opened 1.5 million bank accounts and "applied" for 565,000 credit cards that were not authorized by their customers.

As "punishment" Wells Fargo told CNN that it had fired 5,300 employees related to the shady behavior over the last few years. The firings represent about 1% of its workforce and took place over several years.  The fired workers went to far as to create phony PIN numbers and fake email addresses to enroll customers in online banking services, the CFPB said. What was hushed away is that not a single employee will go to prison, and that ultimately it will be Wells Fargo's shareholders - such as Warren Buffett - who will end up footing the bill.

What Wells did not disclose publicly to anyone is that the head of the group responsible for Wells' biggest consumer fraud scandal in years, Carrie Tolstedt is quietly leaving the bank with a $125 million bonus, a bonus which as Fortune's Stephen Gandel writes today will not see even one cent clawed back as part of the dramatic revelations.

Ami I missing something here?

Friday, September 09, 2016

Evolution in real time


For those rubes not believing in evolution, don't view this short clip as deeply held beliefs dependent on rather shaky ground from the scientific perspective is a non starter for the ages, kinda like Flat -Earthers not accepting the rather obvious fact earth is a sphere revolving around the sun but we won't go there, for now. :)



Superbugs, it's just the beginning as nature finds a way... always.



Monday, September 05, 2016

Sunday, September 04, 2016

A subversive act

And so it begins


BRT has written ad nauseam about GW and how it's accelerating beyond any researcher's expectations due to esoterica like Albedo and the Antarctic Bottom Water combining to transform earth into a world possibly as warm as the Cretaceous due to the injection of Co2 into the atmosphere through the extensive use of fossil fuels for over 500 years. 







The NYTimes interactive graphic rules.

Saturday, September 03, 2016

Epicycles writ large


Epicycles or the concept of circles within circles, the prime mechanism used to make the Ptolemaic earth centric system a viable enterprise. certainly applies when analyzing the "scientific" approach of how Silicon Valley escapes the taxman by turning dollars into bits in moving monies from one country to another to avoid paying their fair share 24/7 in the same fashion epicycles were used to explain a flawed scientific system lasting for over 1200 years.


Bermuda, the Caymans and Singapore, the perfect places to stash cash shows just how easy it is to move bits instead of dollars to said locations when it comes to maximizing profit 24/7 while stiffing the US in the process. Hell of a way to do business, right?

Epicycles writ large :)



Rinse & Repeat


When yours truly sees this pix, it reminds me of what is happening in America where illiteracy, stupidity and propaganda rule while the country continues to slide toward an abyss of our own making. 



Combine this with the incredible incompetency and deceitfulness of Hillary's interview with the FBI where any intelligent person with an ability to read anything of consequence, can see why this nation is so screwed in more ways then this writer can count.







Rinse & Repeat, Rinse & Repeat: Let's not talk about the number of unsecured devices she had (13?), that cannot be found or that she could not remember being trained by the State Department on handling or retaining classified information.

It gets better. 


Rinse & Repeat, Rinse & Repeat or maybe it's true, it's turtles all the way on down, right?
Better yet, Keystone Cops antics apply in this never ending saga of gross incompetence and inept lying to the nth degree in mishandling sensitive and corrupt content to the nth degree.


K. Cops to the rescue.:)