Statistically Insignificant or ... It's all about the money

Statically insignificant says it all or ... It's all about the money.

Professors Martin Gilens (Princeton University) and Benjamin I. Page (Northwestern University) looked at more than 20 years worth of data to answer a pretty simple question: Does the government represent the people?Their study took data from nearly 2000 public opinion surveys and compared it to the policies that ended up becoming law. In other words, they compared what the public wanted to what the government actually did. What they found was extremely unsettling: The opinions of the bottom 90% of income earners in America has essentially no impact at all.

Any questions?

Merry Xmas & a Happy 2018

Merry, Merry

Robin Hood redux

A stocking filled with coal.

Basking in the sunshine.

Praying to the Divine.

The 2% solution.

Segway

To perform in the manner of the preceding section (used as a musical direction). 2. to make a transition from one thing to another smoothly and without interruption: In this case, from country to town with transitions within. Enjoy.

Wate, Water everywhere ... :)

Water, as my loyal readers know, is an endlessly fascinating subject to yours truly, not only as compound extraordinaire but also as an entity that reacts to its environment in unique ways that boggle the mind, particularly when it comes to turbulence, whether it be driven by wind, gravity or combinations of the two in relationship to the environment in which water resides. With this in mind, water, when impacted by the aforementioned conditions, becomes a chaotic system that can never be fully analysed given the intractable law of initial conditions and the vagaries of an ever changing reality but mathematicians continue to try in spite of the immense barriers nature presents to spite these intrepid researchers. :)

The Navier-Stokes equations capture in a few succinct terms one of the most ubiquitous features of the physical world: the flow of fluids. The equations, which date to the 1820s, are today used to model everything from ocean currents to turbulence in the wake of an airplane to the flow of blood in the heart.

While physicists consider the equations to be as reliable as a hammer, mathematicians eye them warily. To a mathematician, it means little that the equations appear to work. They want proof that the equations are unfailing: that no matter the fluid, and no matter how far into the future you forecast its flow, the mathematics of the equations will still hold. Such a guarantee has proved elusive. The first person (or team) to prove that the Navier-Stokes equations will always work — or to provide an example where they don’t — stands to win one of seven Millennium Prize Problems endowed by the Clay Mathematics Institute, along with the associated $1 million reward.

When reading this, one is simply amazed as to how well math models reality even if it doesn't cover ALL instances of said particular instance of reality being modeled. :)

What Are the Navier-Stokes Equations?

The Navier-Stokes equations govern the motion of fluids and can be seen as Newton's second law of motion for fluids. In the case of a compressible Newtonian fluid, this yields

where u is the fluid velocity, p is the fluid pressure, ρ is the fluid density, and μ is the fluid dynamic viscosity. The different terms correspond to the inertial forces (1), pressure forces (2), viscous forces (3), and the external forces applied to the fluid (4). The Navier-Stokes equations were derived by Navier, Poisson, Saint-Venant, and Stokes between 1827 and 1845.

These equations are always solved together with the continuity equation:

The Navier-Stokes equations represent the conservation of momentum, while the continuity equation represents the conservation of mass.

Any questions?

Short takes. :)

Aperture

Landing Zone

Thinking of Escher

Naples @ Nite :)

Panovision: Homage to "D" :)

Bad Moon Rising

For years, BRT has stated that this once great nation is in trouble. Seems other entities feel the same way about what's happening to America 24/7.

A Bad Moon is rising: America is polarised at home; unitive government has splintered into departments at odds with each other, and with officials leaking on each other; with fake news abounding; with Congress gridlocked, and with American social and political fabric tearing apart. Against this background - can a president, concerned that he might be removed from office, and beset still by hitherto hidden ‘ruling interests’ now dragged out from the shadows into the public glare for their tawdry schemes, resist the march toward war – the original question posed by Paul Craig Roberts? 

Either a war in North Korea (“the greatest threat facing America”, McMaster says), or an aggressive military show of force against ‘bad actor’ Iran – and in support of a failing Saudi Crown Prince. Is this the diversion that either a now exposed and vulnerable Deep State, and a hobbled President, might welcome as the chance to stand erect in public esteem? Both might share a common interest in escaping domestic problems to mount a show of American strength and military power. Very possibly they might, but oddly, the US military have chosen to leave American soldiers hostage and isolated in both cases: 30,000 US forces in the DMZ between the Koreas, and in smaller outposts in north-eastern Syria and in Iraq. This may turn out badly. Remember Beirut in 1983.

A bad moon rising indeed.

Destinations

Destinations are the endpoints of all of us no matter what mode of transportation we take to make it happen. Enjoy.

Newspeak

Policy analysts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta were told of the list of forbidden terms at a meeting Thursday with senior CDC officials who oversee the budget, according to an analyst who took part in the 90-minute briefing. The forbidden terms are “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based” and “science-based.”

1984 anyone?

We are in such trouble as it matters not whether Trump or Pence is in "charge", the sheer incompetence, mendacity and urge to control the public goes beyond comprehension.

Making Holy Water :)

Making Holy Water. :)

Speaking of Language ...

Japanese may be the toughest language to learn for us rubes. 88 weeks anyone? :)

Connect Speed Comparison ...

The UK is 23rd in the ranking, the US 20th, Australia 50th and China 111th. The world average is 5mbps, according to the report. The majority of the worst performing countries are in Africa, the South Pacific, the Middle East and South America.

Akamai also calculates the average peak connection speed. In this ranking Singapore comes out on top (98.5Mbits/s), followed by Hong Kong (92.6Mbits/s), South Korea (79Mbits/s), Kuwait (76.5Mbits/s) and Romania (71.6Mbits/s). The UK comes 27th (51.6Mbits/s) and the US 22nd (53.3Mbits/s).

Click here to get the full skinny on why the US is NOT even close to being in the top 10.

The Porcine approach to Governance

To yours truly, this amazing NYTimes graphic sums up Trump and the repugs' approach to governance as the GOP of today is NOT the GOP of years ago, a party that actually knew how to govern back in the day.

NN eleganty explained

This encapsulates in elegant fashion what can happen to the net thanks to the Pai fubar.

Click the image to get MITs take on this monumentally bad decision on the part of the FCC.

TR would get this without question.

No words needed.

Checking out Westport, CT

A nighttime walk in the environs of Westport, CT. Enjoy.

3 Night Studies - The Hunter's Moon

Channeling William Turner

Night for Day

Emergence

Surface Noise

Water never sleeps. 

Stop the FCC

A Set of 4

Fire in the Sky

Snow Catcher

Floaters

Blinded by the Light

Are we talking packages here?

1990's crap on something America built, NOT THE TELCOS. WTFU America before it's too late.

The Wolf Moon - Prelude to Winter

Early December is the prelude to winter with the Wolf Moon as the master of ceremony. Enjoy.

Colonization - of all kinds :)

Excellent take on colonization of all kinds. 

Beyond Real Time has arrived

Beyond Real Time is the graphic holy grail whereby if one can generate a realistic HD 3D scene at 60 frames/sec, the rendering of same is beyond the ability for us rubes to perceive. Nvidia and Radeon are achieving this objective as we speak.

Stellar says it all.

A caffeine primer :)

The chasm of ignorance :)

The chasm of ignorance rules as the more we know, the less we know as reality is a fractal with no end in sight. :)

Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. But DON’T PANIC. Physics is on it. And if you've ever wondered which part of physics covers which part of space, fret no more. Here is an awesome map that lays it all out.

Works for me.

Here are two more gems from the mind of Dominic Walliman.

Stellar without question.

Graphene - Game Changer to the Max

Nature never disappoints/rev XX :)

3/4 Full

Blue on Gray

Cockleburs

Lichen +

The definition of Assume is ... :)

The definition of Assume is ... :)

It's a Utility, Stupid

Its a Utility Stupid.

Wired's terrific article, Ajit Pai's Shell Game, demystifies what's really at stake regarding Pai's move to privatize the net by describing how small town Wilson, North Carolina turned the net into a utility, thus ending Time Warner's ability to rip off its citizens 24/7, a process that can be done by any town in America that has the guts to do it.

The real problem is a complete absence of leadership and policy aimed at making sure that low-priced, ubiquitous, world-class fiber optic services reach every home and business. Left to their own devices, the giant US companies Pai is determined to protect have every incentive to divide markets, avoid capital investments in upgrades to fiber that reach everyone, charge as much as they can get away with, and leave out poorer and rural people. That is in fact what has happened here.

The differences between the way the unrestrained, profit-at-all-costs-driven operators run things and the way a public interest-driven operator acts are obvious. For a clear illustration, take a look at Wilson, North Carolina.

I recently traveled to Wilson, a town in the eastern part of the state that is known to most as an exit ramp on Interstate 95. I found it to be a scrappy place with a tradition of taking the long view—most notably by successfully deploying a low-priced fiber optic service. Earlier this decade, the citizens of Wilson weren’t happy with the low-capacity connections and poor customer service offered by Time Warner Cable (now Spectrum). Wilson already had a public electric utility, so it was familiar with the benefits of operating a utility in the public interest. It built its own fiber optic network, and today offers 50 Mbps service (equal uploads and downloads) for $40 a month.

This can be done without question. Take back the net and take back America at the same time because it's the right thing to do.

A Zen Space

Huntington State Park in Redding, CT is a pretty cool place with a zen like feel as seen in this short clip. 

Enjoy.

Muscle Bound

The age of strong bots is nigh.

Humans have soft muscles and rigid skeletons, and when exerted in optimal sync they have the potential to lift a fairly impressive amount of weight. But a new technique, created by humans, that uses soft muscles and rigid skeletons allows a device to lift 1,000 times its own weight. This is a major development because, while soft robotics have exhibited promise with dexterity and human-like motion, they have typically lacked sufficient strength.

In a new paper published in the journal PNAS, scientists from MIT CSAIL and Harvard’s Wyss Institute show how soft robotics can retain immense strength with the help of rigid origami skeletons. Professor Daniela Rus, CSAIL director and lead author of the paper, said in an interview with The Verge, “Soft robots have so much potential, but up until now, one of the limitations has been payloads. [They’re] very safe, very gentle, but not good for lifting heavy objects. This new approach allows us to make strong and soft robots.”

And so it goes. - K. Vonnegut

Intense without question...

Intense without question... 

Of Light & Shadow

The revealing of shadow when the sun comes out never gets old as seen in this short clip edited with
Luma Fusion. Enjoy.

The 3rd Season

Warm colors, with a touch of blue, define the look of fall in CT. Enjoy.

Fall's End 2017

The  end of fall, the prelude to winter.

It's just a matter of time ...

Check out the impact of GW regarding sea level rise for your city via
JPL's interactive Virtual Earth System Laboratory. Disquieting without question.

New York should be flooded with concern about global warming.

Scientists at NASA are using simulation technology from their Jet Propulsion Lab to predict what cities the ice caps will affect when they melt. Using New York, London and a few other port cities as examples, the simulation shows which Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets will affect 293 port cities across the globe over the course of the next century.

According to the demo, which was also published in the journal Science Advances, New York will be most affected by the ice on the northeastern half of Greenland. The tilt of the Earth as it spins around the sun shifts the water from the melting caps, so the water doesn’t trickle straight down. This means that, though the icy country is pretty far away from New York, the water from Greenland will affect New York more than other, closer coastal cities.

It's just a matter of time ...

Random walks

Environs + or a very short clip using a smart phone, iPad Pro and Luma Fusion to do the deed. Enjoy.

Another kind of intelligence

Smarts comes in all shapes, sizes and configurations with the most surprising being that of microbes whose collective intelligence truly boggles the mind.

The slime mold Physarum polycephalum sometimes barely qualifies as a microorganism at all: When it oozes across the leaf litter of a forest floor during the active, amoeboid stage of its life cycle, it can look like a puddle of yellowish goo between an inch and a meter across. Yet despite its size, Physarum is a huge single cell, with tens of thousands of nuclei floating in an uninterrupted mass of cytoplasm. In this form, Physarum is a superbly efficient hunter. When sensors on its cell membrane detect good sources of nutrients, contractile networks of proteins (closely related to the ones found in human muscle) start pumping streams of cytoplasm in that direction, advancing the slime mold toward what it needs.

But Physarum is not just reflexively surging toward food. As it moves in one direction, signals transmitted throughout the cell discourage it from pushing counterproductively along less promising routes. Moreover, slime molds have evolved a system for essentially mapping their terrain and memorizing where not to go: As they move, they leave a translucent chemical trail behind that tells them which areas are not worth revisiting.

Something's afoot. - S. Holmes :)

Just ask ...

With nooze being nooze, the hysteria about Russian hacking continues unabated with bloviators telling everyone the RUSSKIES are everywhere but in reality, to discover the truth, all you have to do is just ask.

It’s also noteworthy that the usual suspects – Neocon warmongers such as Max Boot – have tried to discredit both Binney and Pompeo.

But there’s a huge part of the story that the entire mainstream media is missing …

Specifically, Binney says that the NSA has long had in its computers information which can prove exactly who hacked the DNC … or instead prove that the DNC emails were leaked by a Democratic insider.

Remember – by way of background – that the NSA basically spies on everyone in America … and stores the data long-term.

It gets better.

Binney also sent me hard-to-find company literature for Narus.  Here are some interesting excerpts:

NarusInsight …

Provides full visibility into network traffic …
Analyzes at macro or micro level targeting specific or aggregate full-packet data for forensic analysis
And:

Universal data collection from links, routers, soft switches, IDS/IPS, databases, etc. provides total network view across the world’s largest IP networks.

Binney also pointed me towards a couple of network engineering principles that show that figuring out who hacked the emails (or proving they were leaked) is well within NSA’s capabilities.

Initially, when data is transmitted online, it is sent using the TCP/IP Packet format.  Put simply, data is not sent in a vacuum, but rather as part of a bundle containing a lot of other information.

Here’s the TCP part of the bundle:

And here's the The IP part of the bundle

So any data analyst can learn a tremendous amount about the source address of the sender, the destination address of the receiver and a boatload of other information by using a “packet sniffer” to  inspect the “packets” of information being sent over the web.

Additionally, it’s simple to conduct “traceroute” searches. “Traceroute” is a computer network diagnostic tool for displaying the route and measuring transit delays of packets across an Internet Protocol network.

Wired reported in 2006:

“Anything that comes through (an internet protocol network), we can record,” says Steve Bannerman, marketing vice president of Narus, a Mountain View, California, company. “We can reconstruct all of their e-mails along with attachments, see what web pages they clicked on, we can reconstruct their (voice over internet protocol) calls.”

So NSA can easily basic packet sniffers and traceroutes, 

Which means ... All you have to do is JUST ASK.

Night for Day

Taking inspiration from Truffaut's wonderful Day for Night film, this short 4K clip does the opposite, shooting the night for day, something not possible until the advent of cameras like the Sony A7SII. Enjoy.

Jove's latest selfie :)

Jove's latest selfie & yet another, seen below, of Jove's intense aurora. :)

This is a reconstructed view of Jupiter’s northern lights through the filters of the Juno Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph instrument on Dec. 11, 2016, as the Juno spacecraft approached Jupiter, passed over its poles, and plunged towards the equator.

Why is it called ... :)

Why is it called ...? :)

Why Lenny was cool :)

Lenny was cool without question. Check out his take on modes, the vehicle Miles used to create Kind of Blue. Stellar without question. :)

Indian Summer - The Hunter's Moon

From sunrise to moonset, this short clip shows how Indian Summer unfolds in the year of our lord, 2017. :)

Seriously Faster

Talking about speed. Here's a screamer that blows away any remote controlled aircraft yours truly has ever seen without question. :)

In preparation for a new official world record time (seen here), Niels is seen here taking his turbine model jet for a test run and reaching unofficial speeds of 727 km/h (451 mph).

Awesome ...

Seriously fast

Intensity plus. :)

A trillion times faster & counting

It's just the beginning.