Please dear god ...

deliver me from ... :)

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all. See you soon. Best/R. E. Moran :)

The night I was born ...

The night I was born
I swear the moon turned a fire red - Voodo Child/Jimi Hendrix

Australia is burning and the sky is a bloody red, just a reminder this is just the beginning of climate altogether different as we enter the 2020s.

The fires have been so fierce that they have created their own weather systems and forced volunteer firefighters to work around the clock. On Monday night, a volunteer firefighter died after a phenomenon called a fire tornado — turbulence caused by extreme rising heat — in New South Wales caused a 10-ton fire truck to roll over.

The firefighter, Samuel McPaul, 28, was due to become a father in May. He was the third volunteer firefighter to die this fire season; the other two were fathers of young children.

Don't worry, 6 months from now its our turn.

Channeling the Weimar Republic

1934 Nazi rally

Yours truly chanced upon an article about the Weimar Republic, the government that ran Germany from 1919 to 1933, that collapsed due to the catastrophic Treaty of Versailles, and the devastating hyperinflation of the German Papiermark thus giving rise to Hitler, something somewhat akin to the rise of Trump and what it could mean for the future of America if he gets reelected in 2020. 

Cover of the English version

50 trillion (50 Billionen, 50×10¹²) marks Eschweiler, 1923

As pundits often state, history never repeats but it does rhyme, a notion most disquieting to say the least, especially if one watches a Trump rally whereby our dear leader riffs for about an hour explaining to the devout just how great a president he truly is. Trump's bloviation isn't as potent as Hitler's nor is his message as horrific but similarities do apply without issue.

Is America about to suffer its Weimar moment, culminating in the collapse of its republican institutions? Our democracy may be far more rooted than that of Germany’s first republic, which fell in 1933 to Adolf Hitler, but there are disturbing similarities.

A polarizing would-be despot as national leader, rising anti-Semitism, an out-of-control upper bureaucracy, a politicized media and education systems, an economically stressed middle class, widespread dalliance with extremist ideologies and the rise of armed militant groups. America’s descent to authoritarianism is far from pre-ordained, but the reality remains that it could happen here, and perhaps already is.

2020 looms

Another reason why ...

The Environmental Protection Agency in Washington. Credit - Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

Another reason why ... Trump must go, The Denial of Science.

WASHINGTON — In just three years, the Trump administration has diminished the role of science in federal policymaking while halting or disrupting research projects nationwide, marking a transformation of the federal government whose effects, experts say, could reverberate for years.

Political appointees have shut down government studies, reduced the influence of scientists over regulatory decisions and in some cases pressured researchers not to speak publicly. The administration has particularly challenged scientific findings related to the environment and public health opposed by industries such as oil drilling and coal mining. It has also impeded research around human-caused climate change, which President Trump has dismissed despite a global scientific consensus.

But the erosion of science reaches well beyond the environment and climate: In San Francisco, a study of the effects of chemicals on pregnant women has stalled after federal funding abruptly ended. In Washington, D.C., a scientific committee that provided expertise in defending against invasive insects has been disbanded. In Kansas City, Mo., the hasty relocation of two agricultural agencies that fund crop science and study the economics of farming has led to an exodus of employees and delayed hundreds of millions of dollars in research.

“The disregard for expertise in the federal government is worse than it’s ever been,” said Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, which has tracked more than 200 reports of Trump administration efforts to restrict or misuse science since 2017. “It’s pervasive.”

Without a doubt, this is the perfect way to destroy the country's future.

Nothing Less ...

Nothing Less ... Than a Civil War occupies the minds of devout Trumpers who follow and adore this man to the nth degree, disregarding any criticism that may be levied against him in any way, shape or fashion. With this being said, the reference to the dangers of 2020 made by yours truly rings true after reading this NYTimes piece describing what they might do if their hero gets defeated 11 months from now.

GOLDEN VALLEY, Ariz. — Great American Pizza & Subs, on a highway about 100 miles southeast of Las Vegas, was busier and Trumpier than usual. On any given day it serves “M.A.G.A. Subs” and “Liberty Bell Lasagna.” The “Second Amendment” pizza comes “loaded” with pepperoni and sausage. The dining room is covered in regalia praising President Trump.

But this October morning was “Trumpstock,” a small festival celebrating the president. The speakers included the local Republican congressman, Paul Gosar, and lesser-known conservative personalities. There was a fringe 2020 Senate candidate in Arizona who ran a website that published sexually explicit photos of women without their consent; a pro-Trump rapper whose lyrics include a racist slur aimed at Barack Obama; and a North Carolina activist who once said of Muslims, “I will kill every one of them before they get to me.”

All were welcome, except liberals.

It gets better ...

The stage for Trumpstock was set up outside of Great American Pizza, a restaurant in Golden Valley, Ariz.Credit...Bethany Mollenkof for The New York Times

Trumpstock attendees say they are used to being denounced, another quality they feel they share with the president. It’s part of why they are protective of him, to the point that they refuse to acknowledge the possibility of a Trump loss in 2020.

Mark Villalta said he had been stockpiling firearms, in case Mr. Trump’s re-election is not successful.

“Nothing less than a civil war would happen,” Mr. Villalta said, his right hand reaching for a holstered handgun. “I don’t believe in violence, but I’ll do what I got to do.”

An image of Representative Adam B. Schiff, a Democrat and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, was used as a dartboard.Credit...Bethany Mollenkof for The New York Times

Any questions?

300/3000 ...

300/3000 ... = 300 blurbs in 2019, 3000 blurbs since 2007, something somewhat significant IMHO. What's even more significant is the fact you, my loyal readers, continue to read the musings of a senior citizen talking about all things related to science and tech and how both disciplines impact civilization 24/7.

This piece will not have links to sources more intelligent than said writer's (save 2) but rather personal takes on 2020, life in general and the issue of mortality as BRT has been fairly impersonal in its 12 years of existence inspired by a dear friend who said "You think you know a little bit so prove it." Hopefully I have and will continue to do so as there is simply too much happening to quit now in-spite of a world going mad as man moves ever forward into the 21st century. Note: this is a partial take at best.

The long decline

America is losing its mojo. From disastrous foreign policy endeavors beginning after WWII to the substitution of innovation in favor of money manipulation favoring the elite, the country's financial well being is being frittered away by greed (elimination of Glass-Stegall), incompetence and government corruption, not only in terms of tax code malfeasance favoring the rich but also with the fact there are no term limits, thus guaranteeing the pols never-ending quest for money in order to get re-elected no matter what the cost may be. This lack of term limits for the supremes also applies as this gives too much power to any sitting president in determining what political direction the country may go based on the kind of justice chosen for the job. Think Alito, Kavanaugh and Scalia for starters with Thomas in the wings.

The art of stupid

The educational construct in America is lacking to say the least and tech is one reason why this is so. Consider the smartphone and texting. In order to do this efficiently, newspeak is required due to the small form factor of the tech being used. This compression equation of newspeak ties in nicely with the use of emojis as showing one a happy face in social media equates to one-click while typing happy requires five. Expand this notion to writing whereby thought and the ability to tie together cogent thoughts necessitates taking the time and effort to make it happen, something starting to get rarer as AI is beginning to be used to replicate this valuable practice at speeds well beyond the ken of man. Endpaper. Nooze rules to sell ads and shape opinion. A lack of education makes the sell easy.

Thinking Elysium

The environment's unraveling, not only in terms of climate change but also in terms of environmental degradation and resource depletion, driven in large part by fossil fuel use, pollution and the impact of too many people living on planet earth. By 2050, the weakening polar vortex and jet stream, caused by global warming, will disrupt food production in unpredictable ways while intense drought and rising waters promise to displace millions, reminiscent of the film Elysium, a dystopian near-future view of mankind heading toward an abyss of our own making.

Technical incompetence & the denial of science

 All one has to do is listen to the president and congress talk tech to see just how blindingly ignorant these people truly are. The denial of science is even worse, not only in terms of the long term adverse effect it will have on the well being of the populace but also on the long term well being of the country. China has caught up to the US in terms of patents and computation and has surpassed the US in terms of developing rapid mass transit at a rate beyond anything this country has to offer. At the same time this is happening, the shortsighted view of never-ending growth and continued support of old industries like coal, fracking and drilling promise to accelerate the decline of the US while the rest of the world rapidly moves toward sustainables like wind, solar and wave. 

2020, politics & the end of the world

Politics, the art of lying and protecting the deep state of every country since the beginning of time, has reached its zenith (or nadir/take your pick) with the elections of far-right "populists" Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonro and Boris Johnson, provocateurs one and all, supporting the powers at be at all costs while the end of the world awaits thanks to climate change and the inability of nations to get their act together to ameliorate this existential threat to mankind. 

Regarding 2020, the Constitutional Crisis begins and ends with Trump with three questions silently moldering on the minds of thinking people everywhere ... 

1. The real 2016 Russigate ... How far will Barr and Durham go in their criminal proceedings?
2.  Will Trump leave if defeated? and ...
3. What will his hardcore followers do if Agent Orange is defeated?

On mortality

Gaff: It's a shame that she won't live, but then again, who does? - Blade Runner

Being a senior, yours truly thinks about mortality and ... the important things in one's life. 

To this writer it's

• Family. Having a son and his family close to my wife and me, rules. Ditto for two brothers and two sisters. On my wife's side, her niece's family rules.
• Friends, the close ones are truly rare indeed.
• Good art. You know, Miles, Shakespeare, Conrad, Twain, Carlin, Orwell, etc, etc, etc.
• Cartoons of all stripes :)
• Good coffee
• Good conversation
• Good wine & beer
• Pretty women - all ages :)
• Innovative tech
• Insightful science
• Good health
• Last but not least, having an open mind and the will to keep on moving :)

Any questions? :)

Merry Xmas to one and all :)

Merry Xmas to one and all :)

2050

BRT has posted many blurbs about 2050 and what it means for the world in terms of global warming, environmental degradation and resource depletion, conditions that portend a future most disquieting to say the least but remember ... this is just 2050 we're talking about. Imagine what earth will be like in 2100 or 2200 or 2500. Boggles the mind doesn't it?

Regarding 2050 ...

Crowtherlab shows what the climate will be like for cities all over the world just 30 years from now, which means Boston's climate will be akin to Charlotte, NC while Memphis will channel Houston. 

Our analysis shows that 77% of the cities around the world will experience a striking change of climate condition with 22% encounter conditions that currently don't exist. The dramatic shift will occur in cities in northern latitudes with their clime in 2050 resembling today's climate of cities over 1,000km to their south. In Europe specifically, cities will be 3.5 C warmer in summer and 4,7 C in winter. This mean that London, for example, will resemble today's Barcelona, Moscow today's Sofia, Stockholm today's Vienna.

Click on the interactive map below to get a shortcut as to what climate change 

will really mean to a city near you.

108Mp ...

108 million pixels will be part of the Samsung 11+ series phone via the ISOCELL HMX sensor, possessing a pixelcount not even imagined just one year ago. What it means for video and stills will be truly profound as low light sensitivity and a 5X optical zoom becomes a given, a notion guaranteed to keep digital camera vendors awake at night when this hardware hits the world market. As an avid photographer and videographer, this ultra portable tech will change how this rube creates art without question.

Pictures taken at nighttime sightseeing or in-doors tend to come out blurry or shaky due to limited light available. To enhance low light photography, the ISOCELL HMX transforms the 0.8um pixels into 1.6um pixels with Tetracell technology which merges neighboring four pixels to work as one. While the merging reduces the resolution down to 27Mp from 108Mp, transformed 1.6um pixels increases light sensitivity of the sensor allowing better results in low light environment.

108MP indeed ...

Password security 101 :)

123456 and password are two of the most egregious insults to web security devised by man. :)

Facepalm: It’s that time of year again when we look back at the year’s worst passwords and realize why so many internet users get hacked. For the sixth year in a row, the top spot is taken by the inspirational ‘123456’ while ‘123456789’ is at number two.

The top 10 ...

1. 123456
2. 123456789 (↑ 1)
3. qwerty (↑ 6)
4. password (↓ 2)
5. 1234567 (↑ 2)
6. 12345678 (↓ 2)
7. 12345 (↓ 2)
8. iloveyou (↑ 2)
9. 111111 (↓ 3)
10. 123123 (↑ 7)

iloveyou is the best. :)

May the force be with you :)

Researchers have discovered how particles bunch up in liquids, a discovery that will help to explain how life functions on planet earth.

Ocean particle accumulation has long been understood as the result of chance collisions and adhesion. But an entirely different and unexpected phenomenon is at work in the water column. Like so many discoveries, this one began accidentally. A graduate student intended to show a favorite parlor trick -- how spheres dumped into a tank of salt water will "bounce" on their way to the bottom, as long as the fluid is uniformly stratified by density. But the student in charge of the experiment made an error in setting up the density of the lower fluid. The spheres bounced and then hung there, submerged but not sinking to the bottom. Credit: Robert Hunt/UNC-Chapel Hill

The smart thing the student did was to not clean up the mess. :)

You can see the phenomenon at work in a video the researchers produced. Plastic microbeads dropped into a container of salt water topped with less dense fresh water are pulled down by the force of gravity and thrust upward by buoyancy. As they hang suspended, the interplay between buoyancy and diffusion—acting to balance out the concentration gradient of salt—creates flows around the microbeads, causing them to slowly move. Rather than moving randomly, however, they clump together, solving their own jigsaw-like puzzles. As the clusters grow, the fluid force increases.

"It's almost like we discovered an effective new force," Camassa said.

May the force be with you. :)

A dangerous beauty/rev II

Still Waters run deep ...

Yellow line ...

Of ice & snow

What's earth made of?

What's earth made of? Well kids, here's a video telling what's what without issue. Enjoy. :)

For starters ...

It includes water, silicon dioxide, aluminum oxide, calcium oxide, iron oxide, magnesium oxide, and some other constituents. So, the Earth isn't only formed by water, oxygen, soil, the birds and the bees.

We knew that already, right? :)

Orwell lives ... in China

Orwell lives ... in China as this country ramps up surveillance 24/7 on its 1.4 billion inhabitants as we speak.

ZHENGZHOU, China — China is ramping up its ability to spy on its nearly 1.4 billion people to new and disturbing levels, giving the world a blueprint for how to build a digital totalitarian state.

Chinese authorities are knitting together old and state-of-the-art technologies — phone scanners, facial-recognition cameras, face and fingerprint databases and many others — into sweeping tools for authoritarian control, according to police and private databases examined by The New York Times.

Once combined and fully operational, the tools can help police grab the identities of people as they walk down the street, find out who they are meeting with and identify who does and doesn’t belong to the Communist Party.

The United States and other countries use some of the same techniques to track terrorists or drug lords. Chinese cities want to use them to track everybody.

It gets better ...

People Pass and Leave a Shadow’

The police arrived one day in April to a dingy apartment complex in Zhengzhou, an industrial city in central China. Over three days they installed four cameras and two small white boxes at the gates of the complex, which hosts cheap hotels and fly-by-night businesses.

Once activated, the system began to sniff for personal data. The boxes — phone scanners called IMSI catchers and widely used in the West — collected identification codes from mobile phones. The cameras recorded faces.

On the back end, the system attempted to tie the data together, an examination of its underlying database showed. If a face and a phone appeared at the same place and time, the system grew more confident they belonged to the same person.

Over four days in April, the boxes identified more than 67,000 phones. The cameras captured more than 23,000 images, from which about 8,700 unique faces were derived. Combining the disparate data sets, the system matched about 3,000 phones with faces, with varying degrees of confidence.

Orwell lives ... in China

The right to choose ...

The right to choose, a notion the religious right denies with great fervor, is something women have done since the beginning of time as described in an educational  NYTimes piece titled Women Have Always Had Abortions.

Over the course of American history, women of all classes, races, ages and statuses have ended their pregnancies, both before there were any laws about abortion and after a raft of 19th-century laws restricted it. Our ignorance of this history, however, equips those in the anti-abortion movement with the power to create dangerous narratives. They peddle myths about the past where wayward women sought abortions out of desperation, pathetic victims of predatory abortionists. They wrongly argue that we have long thought about fetuses as people with rights. And they improperly frame Roe v. Wade as an anomaly, saying it liberalized a practice that Americans had always opposed.

But the historical record shows a far different set of conclusions.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, abortion was legal under common law before “quickening,” or when the pregnant woman could feel the fetus move, beginning around 16 weeks. The birth rate steadily dropped in the decades after the American Revolution, as couples sought to control the size of their families for a variety of reasons.

Abortion in the early stages of a pregnancy was common and generally not considered immoral or murderous. Along with breastfeeding, abstinence, the use of the rhythm method, vaginal douching and the use of herbs like pennyroyal or savin, which were believed to stimulate menstruation, abortion was considered part of the universe of what we now call “birth control.” By the 1820s, abortion services and contraceptive devices were advertised in newspapers with coded language.

Any questions?

Deep Fakes ...

Deepfakes (a portmanteau of "deep learning" and "fake"[1]) are media that take a person in an existing image or video and replace them with someone else's likeness using artificial neural networks.[2] They often combine and superimpose existing media onto source media using machine learning techniques known as autoencoders and generative adversarial networks.

It gets better ...

An example of deepfake technology: actress Amy Adams in the original (left) 

is modified to have the face of actor Nicolas Cage (right)

And now there's something else that Artificial Intelligence can do; it can create a moving digital avatar of you. 

It's crazy and people are seemed to be really hyped with this innovation. It seems indeed like a Black Mirror if you can think of all the things you can do with this feature of Artificial Intelligence. 

Something to think about for sure, don't you think?

Poster Child ...

This wonderful illustration by the great Victor Juhasz for Rolling Stone shows just how craven and needy these people truly are. If this is not a poster child as to why we need term limits, then nothing else will serve as we have no say as to how this country is governed as long as this corrupt system remains in place with The Turtle as head cheerleader in an enterprise more loathed then the ever-present cockroach surreptitiously lurking in the shadows of almost any city apartment in America.

The fight to dislodge Donald Trump from the presidency has sparked unprecedented interest in the 2020 Democratic primary, drawing dozens of candidates, including no fewer than seven sitting senators. But the fight to wrest the Senate from Republican control — and oust Mitch McConnell as majority leader — is arguably just as important. Take it from Amy McGrath, the former Marine fighter pilot aiming to win McConnell’s Kentucky Senate seat, who sees curbing McConnell’s power as essential to healing our republic. “He’s the epitome of Washington dysfunction, everything we hate about politics,” she says. “You cannot drain the swamp until you get rid of Mitch McConnell.” 

Truer words never spoken.

The guy on the left looks better without question.

Artistry to the max

Artistry to the max in the service of science is the raison d'ete of this blurb as Adam Makarenko is a master in making miniatures accurately depicting the reality in which we all live.

During 2018, Adam worked with the Keck Observatory on a project called the Exoplanet Imaginarium. He created models of 12 exoplanets to help people visualize some of the exoplanets being discovered. “On these projects I also worked with the scientists to get the image close to what they envisioned.” said Adam.

Stellar without a doubt.

“View from a Volcanic Moon” by Adam Makarenko. Adam says this is one of his favorite pieces partly because the scale is so large. Image Copyright: Adam Makarenko.

Stellar without a doubt.

Crossing the threshold ...

Permafrost, seen at the top of the cliff, melts into the Kolyma River outside Zyryanka, Russia, on July 4. Melting permafrost is altering Siberia's landscape and economy. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)

BRT, as my loyal readers know, has talked often about the danger of methane, the greenhouse gas of green houses gases, an entity beginning to issue forth at ever increasing levels as the permafrost melts, thus releasing this most powerful of planet warming agents in biblical proportions.

The findings are contained in the 2019 Arctic Report Card, a major federal assessment of climate change trends and impacts throughout the region. The study paints an ominous picture of a region lurching to an entirely new and unfamiliar environment.

The Arctic may have crossed key threshold, emitting billions of tons of carbon into the air, in a long-dreaded climate feedback

Scientists are alarmed that this earth, frozen for millennia, is now thawing. And the pace of the thaw is picking up.

Especially noteworthy is the report’s conclusion that the Arctic already may have become a net emitter of planet-warming carbon emissions due to thawing permafrost, which would only accelerate global warming. Permafrost is the carbon-rich frozen soil that covers 24 percent of the Northern Hemisphere’s land mass, encompassing vast stretches of territory across Alaska, Canada, Siberia and Greenland.

Channeling Thelma & Louise without question.

The Blob ... for real

This is the blob for real ... 

The new marine heat wave off the Pacific Coast is reminiscent of the early stages of the 2014–2016 “blob” that devastated marine life and is believed to have affected the weather. This year’s expanse of unusually warm water stretches roughly from the Gulf of Alaska south to California and west all the way to Hawaii. 

What does this all mean? For starters ...

Extremely low cod numbers have lead feds to close the Gulf of Alaska fishery for the first time ever. In an unprecedented response to historically low numbers of Pacific cod, the federal cod fishery in the Gulf of Alaska is closing for the 2020 season. It’s a decision that came as little surprise, but it’s the first time the fishery was closed due to concerns of low stock. “We’re on the knife’s edge of this over-fished status,” North Pacific Fisheries Management Council member Nicole Kimball said during talks in Anchorage Friday afternoon. It’s not over-fishing to blame for the die-off, but rather, climate change. Warming ocean temperatures linked to climate change are wreaking havoc on a number of Alaska’s fisheries, worrying biologists, locals and fishermen with low returns that jeopardize fishing livelihoods. A stock assessment this fall put Gulf cod populations at a historic low, with “next to no” new eggs, according to NOAA research biologist Steve Barbeaux, who authored the report.

It gets "better".

In November 2019, thousands of short-tailed shearwaters birds migrating from Alaska were washing up dead on Sydney's iconic beaches and the bird deaths had nothing to do with the massive wildfires in the area, thousands more, short-tailed shearwaters were dying out at sea, in what was confirmation of the incredible fish shortages in the Pacific Ocean. The corpses had been spotted at several shorelines including Bondi, Manly and Cronulla. The birds were migrating back to southern Australia to breed after spending the summer in Alaska. But, according to experts, a higher number than usual are dying on the way due to a lack of food. The birds need to be at full strength to make the 14,000km trip over the Pacific but the krill and other fish they feed on have apparently dwindled due to sea temperatures rising.

Gaia has had enough, the reckoning for man is nigh as earth, as stated many times in BRT, doesn't need us as she will recover but us ... No one knows, do one? - Fats Waller.

Remember, this is just the beginning of the impact of Climate Change
as man moves further into the 21st century.

A CF of historic proportions ...

Two trillion (and counting), the Afghan initiative has been a CF of historic proportions. With this in mind, please read the NYTimes post and weep but note that this fubar, on top of W's excellent adventure in Iraq, Hillary's and Obama's Lybian soiree and Obama's and Trump's intervention in Syria, has cost the US a cool 8+ trillion (and counting) while leaving a trail of death and destruction in its wake since 9/11/2001. 

Dazed and confused comes to mind here when contemplating this FUBAR of FUBARS.

Any questions?

A group of very powerful people should go to jail for this CF without question.

Channeling Nam & W's mis adventure in Iraq AKA Shock & Awe, comes to mind here without issue.

In the land of the blind ... :)

Portraits of a different kind ...

A few fossil bones in clay and limestone have opened a greater vista back into Time than the Indian imagination ventured upon for its Gods: and every day turns up something new.

—Edward FitzGerald to E.B. Cowell, January 28, 18451

And so it begins, the endless fascination of dinos never ends, particularly when one sees what they actually look like as seen by this amazing portrait of a different kind: A life-size model of the early Cretaceous tyrannosaur Yutyrannus huali; from Mark Norell’s The World of Dinosaurs: An Illustrated Tour. Originally part of the American Museum of Natural History’s 2016 exhibition ‘Dinosaurs Among Us,’ curated by Norell, it is twenty-three feet long and is now in the permanent collection of the Dinosaur Gallery at the Center of Science and Industry, Columbus, Ohio.

Yours truly often imagines just how dangerous and wonderous this world must have been as dinos ruled earth for over 250 million years, a length of time dwarfing the age of mammals without issue.  

The reason for this blurb centers on the superb piece in the NY Review of Books titled What Were Dinosaurs For? as said piece delves, in-depth, into the uneasy relationship of science vs. theology, issues Mark Twain described in incendiary fashion in his work titled Letters from the Earth.

In Mark Twain’s Letters from the Earth, God gathers the archangels and announces that He has made animals. Satan—who else?—asks, “What are they for?” Perhaps you can hear the strangeness, the dissonance in this question, which is the sort that marks the boundary between theology and science. Scientists have no trouble asking what the various parts of an organism are for or what function it has in a food web or an ecosystem. But they tend not to ask Satan’s question because it offers no hypotheses to be tested. What are animals for? Here is God’s chilly answer: “They are an experiment in Morals and Conduct. Observe them, and be instructed.” So Satan goes to Earth and soon concludes that “the people are all insane, the other animals are all insane, the earth is insane, Nature itself is insane.”

In reading Twain, Waiting for Godot comes to mind as Godot never shows up ...

Endgame:

Why do I mention all this? As I was reading some recent books on dinosaurs, I kept wondering, “What were dinosaurs for?” It’s a ridiculous question, and I wondered why I was wondering it. After all, dinosaurs were “for” exactly what we are “for,” what every organism has been “for” since life began. Every species that has ever lived is a successful experiment in the enterprise of living, and every species is closely kinned at the genetic level with all other species. This is harder to grasp than it seems, partly because the logic of that Satanic preposition—“for”—is so insidious, so woven through the problem of time. Teleology is the moralizing of chronology, and nowadays science tries to keep watch for even the slightest trace of it, any suggestion that evolution has a direction tending to culminate in us or in what we like to call intelligence or in any other presumably desirable end point.

To yours truly, it's probabilities. We live in a quantum universe where there are no certitudes, just probabilities. This is why Camus' Myth of Sysiphus rings forever true for yours truly.

Read What are Dinosaurs For? as it is truly extraordinary in every sense of the word. :)