Monday, October 31, 2016

0.7


We might get to Type 1 if we're lucky. 


Full Stop


Mixing private data with government is a no no for techs and governmental officials as no one with any brains or common sense would want to take on the risk of handling sensitive data with the potential of going to jai if said data was mishandled, innocent or otherwise. To that end, yours truly will NOT talk about the email fiasco of HC but rathe will quote an ex CIA operative who knows the drill far better than I.








As Bernie said, Hillary, you have bad judgement. Without question, I totally agree.

Sunday, October 30, 2016

10 Months


Watching swifts do a number on insects over an open field is a transcendent experience of seeing how flight becomes magical in a tiny bird that fits in the palm of one hand. What's even more astounding is the fact they can fly for nearly 10 months without touching the ground.






"They feed in the air, they mate in the air, they get nest material in the air," researcher Susanne Ã…kesson from Lund University in Sweden tells National Geographic. "They can land on nest boxes, branches, or houses, but they can't really land on the ground."

The birds' shape contributes to this finding; their "wings are too long and their legs are too short to take off from a flat surface," the magazine reports.

The researchers suggest that one driving force behind the bird's incredibly long flights could be its diet. "[S]pecializing in high-altitude aerial insects as a main food source requires the suite of adaptations for efficient flight shown by swifts, ... which compromises terrestrial locomotion and make swifts vulnerable to predators and parasites had they been landing more often," the paper states.

On a Wing but Nota Prayer :) is a BRT piece on the Frigate Bird, the 2nd greatest flyer in the world.


Less than Zero Sum


BRT has talked about the possible dangers of GMOs in terms of how messing with DNA in a quantum reality could become rather dangerous to say the least. What was not discussed was the fact GMOs, made by Monsanto, Bayer and other entities, do not increase food production nor do they reduce the use of pesticides as nature always finds a way to do end arounds as seen by the renewed success of the Corn Borer Beetle vs Monsanto's GMO based corn product.




So, the end result of using GMOs is ...
  1. No greater yield
  2. Production of more expensive food crops controlled by big corporations and 
  3. Increased use of pesticides that indirectly & directly kill bees, butterflies and other friendly insects thanks to products like Monsanto's Roundup and Bayer's Imidacloprid (a neonicotinoid insecticide)
Sounds like less than Zero Sum, right ?

Saturday, October 29, 2016

PTown & The Onset of Fall



The onset of fall from summer is always unpredictable, something seen in this short clip showing this fact to be true. Enjoy.

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Composites


1 Pt Perspective


Composite 2Step


Subway Dreamtime

Just passing the time on a cold and rainy day. :)




Where are you Steve?


Where are you Steve? Apple is floundering big time. I want this machine save that the Mac OS should be running it. MS has a hit on it's hand without question. Surface looks good as well.


Politically Correct


Politically Correct, you know, the euphemism for "acceptable" criticism of whatever is not free speech but rather, as per George Orwell's masterwork, Politics and the English Language, a deceitful way to avoid offending anyone who may disagree with you on subjects ranging from race, diversity, pornography or the bete noire of bete noires, religion, something rather disquieting to say the least given just how important the Founding Fathers considered free speech to be in penning the First Amendment of the Constitution.



What's really amazing is that college students are generally unaware of the 1st Amendment when railing against views held by others that may be offensive, which has lead to self censorship on the part of students and faculty in some of the most prestigious institutions in America. What's even worse is the fact self censorship is happening beyond the confines of the campus as seen by the press, which has become propaganda machines and not purveyors of speaking truth to power, something the Founding Fathers intended with Amendment No. 1 of the Constitution.

To this end, PEN America discusses self censorship in a comprehensive report detailing the dangers of curtailing freedom of expression in all arenas as FOS is the only mechanism capable of maintaining a democracy as articulated by the First Amendment.







And this.




Weasal words one and all. Read Politics and the English Language to see why George Orwell understood the importance of free speech better then anyone.


Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Cassini - Stellar Says it All



Image Set - Into the Fall


Just a few pix showing, in part, the transition from Summer to Fall. This one's Summer's End


Moonbow


FenceLine



Thou Shalt Not :)



Organ-On-A-Chip


The move toward organ-on-a-chip tech is now reality, something that augers not only astounding advances in clinical testing and deeper understanding on how life does business but also sets up the start point for the creation of new organs created from patient's stem cells as needs warrant.




Monday, October 24, 2016

Clinton Cash


As you, my loyal readers know, Bernie was my man for POTUS, somebody I will continue to support by writing in Bernie's name when doing the deed on November 8th as the two candidates in this bottom feeder election are two entities yours truly cannot vote for in any way, shape or fashion. 

Two reasons for this decision centers on 1, Trump being a serial masher and out of control yahoo and 2, the inherent dishonesty of Clinton with emphasis given to the festering e-mail fiasco whereby many FBI insiders strongly believe Clinton should have been indicted, at a minimum, for criminal negligence of mishandling top secret data by hosting it on an unsecured server.





The "possible" raison d'ete for HRC getting off the hook, you guessed it, money, lots and lots of money.





It's all about the money - Robert E.

Saturday, October 22, 2016

The Busy Child/Rev II


BRT has often talked about AI with quiet trepidation as this tech differs from anything man has created thus far due to the fact it's open ended in terms of its ability to aggregate intelligence at speeds far beyond life as we know it. With this in mind, AI is now comparable to a 4 year old in intelligence, in 10 years, how advanced will the busy child be?



Click here for the paper on AI IQ circa 2016

The 5th Labor


BRT has talked quite often about the MICC aka the Military/Industrial/Congressional/ Complex, the sacred cow that keeps on taking without allowing for a meaningful audit to be conducted to see if the hundreds of billions of dollars garnered per year are well spent, something people are beginning to demand, especially in light of the fact it seems the US Army has lost track of a cool $6.5 Trillion, an astounding figure to say the least. Click here to get the IG Defense Report on the Army's fubar.








The 5th labor looms. 


The 12 Labors of Hercules, the 5th is the cleaning of the Augean Stables.


The 1st Labor, The Nemean Lion

Translucency is just the beginning


A significant first step...


Friday, October 21, 2016

In Pursuit of Science :)



The great Chuck Jones is a biggie with yours truly as BRT has a blurb about one of the truly great artists of all time with his intuitive sense of what makes cartoons memorable and forever young as the Road Runner & Wile E. Coyote toons are as fresh today as they were 60 years ago as seen by this gem titled Ready Set Zoom. :)

In honor of the great Mr. Jones is the Cartoon Laws of Physics, a tome penned by an unknown author, that captures the same tongue in cheek humor in delineating the laws just as the esteemed Mr. Jones did in creating his masterpieces contained in the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies universe.



Cartoon Law I
Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation. Daffy Duck steps off a cliff, expecting further pastureland. He loiters in midair, soliloquizing flippantly, until he chances to look down. At this point, the familiar principle of 32 feet per second per second takes over.

Cartoon Law II
Any body in motion will tend to remain in motion until solid matter intervenes suddenly. Whether shot from a cannon or in hot pursuit on foot, cartoon characters are so absolute in their momentum that only a telephone pole or an outsize boulder retards their forward motion absolutely. Sir Isaac Newton called this sudden termination of motion the stooge's surcease.

Cartoon Law III
Any body passing through solid matter will leave a perforation conforming to its perimeter. Also called the silhouette of passage, this phenomenon is the specialty of victims of directed-pressure explosions and of reckless cowards who are so eager to escape that they exit directly through the wall of a house, leaving a cookie-cutout-perfect hole. The threat of skunks or matrimony often catalyzes this reaction.

Cartoon Law Amendment C
Explosive weapons cannot cause fatal injuries. They merely turn characters temporarily black and smoky.

Addendum:

Jones based the Coyote on Mark Twain's book Roughing It,[6] in which Twain described the coyote as "a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton" that is "a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry." 

I rest my case and ... Thanks Evolution is True for discovering these wonderful Cartoon Laws

Thursday, October 20, 2016

ISpy - The 5 Eyes


Nations spy on each other 24/7 but listening to the disinformation bandied about in the three debates, it seems the US is portrayed as Lilly white and perfect while the Russians are cast as nefarious players all too ready to game the election for Trump by means of hacking, something rather questionable given the fact we do the same to Russia but Russia, being a mafia state, never divulges anything when the US does the deed when it negatively impacts Russia, particularly on the political side of things. As often stated in BRT, this piece is not about Hillary and the Donald but rather about the 5 Eyes, Australia, the US, England, New Zealand and Canada an alliance founded after WWII, that spies on the world 24/7.



Click ISpy to go to the interactive website showing how 5 Eyes does the deed 24/7.

The Big 8


Fossil fuel pollution has been around for a long time as man has been burning everything from wood and dung to oil and coal for thousands of years, which means global warming, particularly beginning around 1850, is fact, not fiction. To that end, an interesting piece from Alternet identifying the big 8 compnies responsible for a significant portion of the burning of FFs is a wakeup call for planet earth and the people who live on it.






Adapt or die.

If the companies UCS surveyed are smart, they will reinvent themselves. History provides clear examples of success—and failure. Back in the mid-1800s, whaling, which provided oil for the lamps that lighted much of the Western world, was the fifth-largest industry in the United States. By the second half of that century, whale oil was replaced by kerosene, which in turn was rendered obsolete by the electric light. The whaling industry collapsed.

By contrast, Fisher Brothers, which manufactured horse-drawn carriages at the turn of the 20th century, adapted to the changing times. Realizing that its future was tied to the fledgling auto industry, the company redesigned its product to handle the stresses and strains of the new technology. It morphed into the fabulously successful Fisher Body Company, which eventually became a division of General Motors.

The question is, can they do it as time is running out for them and ... for us.

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Hunter's Moon


The 2016 Hunter's Moon was a Super moon as it's perigee brought it closer to earth, thus making Luna appear 15% larger. To that end, on a flawless fall night, this clip captures the mystery of moonlight and how it illuminates the environment, in this case, a trip through Maple Road Tree Farm, a CT treasure to the max.


Monday, October 17, 2016

Do Not Resist


BRT has talked about the militarization of the police in several blurbs due to the fact there's an excess of military equipment, due to endless war, available at far less then cost, to local cops, something most disquieting to say the least when one sees what went down in Ferguson last year when the police showed up, armed to the teeth, with military gear better suited for Afghanistan then the US.









Friday, October 14, 2016

2 Trillion & Counting ...


BRT has commented about how insignificant earth is in the cosmic scheme of things. Seems our insignificance is even greater based on the latest findings as to just how insignificant we truly are.




Remember, this is just an estimate. How many more will there be when the James Webb makes the scene with 10 times the visual resolution of the Hubble. Boggles the mind, doesn't it?

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Pointless ...

Another pointless war, another hit against the economic well being of America as we continue to squander our resources in order to line the pockets of the Military/Industrial/Congressional Complex while the infrastructure of our once great nation continues to deteriate at alarming speed. Compare this with the Russian/Chinese initiative of the New Silk Road and you see why the US is slowly moving toward the dustbin of history as all empires eventually fail including this one. 




The question to ask here is, why are we involved in a guerrilla conflict between Saudi Arabia and Yemen? Arms sales anyone?

The Obama administration went ahead with a $1.3 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia last year despite warnings from some officials that the United States could be implicated in war crimes for supporting a Saudi-led air campaign in Yemen that has killed thousands of civilians, according to government documents and the accounts of current and former officials.

State Department officials also were privately skeptical of the Saudi military's ability to target Houthi militants without killing civilians and destroying "critical infrastructure" needed for Yemen to recover, according to the emails and other records obtained by Reuters and interviews with nearly a dozen officials with knowledge of those discussions.

U.S. government lawyers ultimately did not reach a conclusion on whether U.S. support for the campaign would make the United States a "co-belligerent" in the war under international law, four current and former officials said. That finding would have obligated Washington to investigate allegations of war crimes in Yemen and would have raised a legal risk that U.S. military personnel could be subject to prosecution, at least in theory.

For instance, one of the emails made a specific reference to a 2013 ruling from the war crimes trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor that significantly widened the international legal definition of aiding and abetting such crimes.

The ruling found that "practical assistance, encouragement or moral support" is sufficient to determine liability for war crimes. Prosecutors do not have to prove a defendant participated in a specific crime, the U.N.-backed court found.

It gets better

Quite the coincidence that within just a few days of increased war crime concerns, the U.S. military suddenly found an excuse to escalate its involvement. How convenient.

Before Thursday’s attack, Secretary of State John Kerry pushed for a peace deal in Yemen, arguing that the United States could be an honest broker because it was not directly involved in the Saudi-led bombing campaign.

The military response could now make that a more difficult position to take.

Just great, knee-fucking deep in another Middle Eastern war.

Peter Salisbury, a Yemen expert at Chatham House, a London policy institute, said in an interview conducted hours before the American strikes that “if they do intervene, it deepens the case that the Americans are party to the conflict.”

And just think, NeoCon Hillary will soon be president.

As Dylan so famously wrote - A Hard Rains Gonna Fall



Rand Paul is right when you stop to consider ...


It's all about the money. - Robert E.

Dylan & The Nobel


BRT has posted numerous pieces about Dylan and his commentary about the human condition.
Astounding says it all.


Had to add another as yours truly was @ Newport in 64 in the old venue in the center of town. :)

Channeling The Donald ...