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.

I have worked in national security my entire life. Most of that has been in the intelligence community surrounded by classified information. For twenty years, I worked undercover in the Central Intelligence Agency, recruiting sources, producing intelligence and running operations. I have a pretty concrete understanding of how classified information is handled and how government communications systems work.

Nobody uses a private email server for official business. Period. Full stop.

The entire notion is, to borrow a phrase from a Clinton campaign official, “insane.” That anyone would presume to be allowed to do so is mind-boggling. That government officials allowed Hillary Clinton to do so is nauseating. 

Classified and unclassified information do not mix. They don’t travel in the same streams through the same pipes. They move in clearly well defined channels so that never the twain shall meet. Mixing them together is unheard of and a major criminal offense.

If you end up with classified information in an unclassified channel, you have done something very wrong and very serious.

Accidentally removing a single classified message from controlled spaces, without any evidence of intent or exposure to hostile forces, can get you fired and cost you your clearance. Repeated instances will land you in prison.

Every hostile intelligence agency on the planet targets senior American officials for collection. The Secretary of State tops the list. Almost anything the Secretary of State had to say about her official duties, her schedule, her mood, her plans for the weekend, would be prized information to adversaries.

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

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.

Scientists had long ago proposed that common swifts, a medium-sized migratory bird, might spend most of their lives in flight, but it is only now that it is proved that these birds can actually fly for 10 months straight.

"This discovery significantly pushes the boundaries for what we know about animal physiology," lead author Anders Hedenstrom of Lund University in Sweden, said in a statement on Saturday.

"A 10-month flight phase is the longest we know of any bird species -- it's a record."

Previously, scientists have found frigate birds and alpine swifts can remain in flight for up to seven months.

"They feed in the air, they mate in the air, they get nest material in the air," researcher Susanne Åkesson 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.

But an extensive examination by The New York Times indicates that the debate has missed a more basic problem — genetic modification in the United States and Canada has not accelerated increases in crop yields or led to an overall reduction in the use of chemical pesticides.

The promise of genetic modification was twofold: By making crops immune to the effects of weedkillers and inherently resistant to many pests, they would grow so robustly that they would become indispensable to feeding the world’s growing population, while also requiring fewer applications of sprayed pesticides.

Twenty years ago, Europe largely rejected genetic modification at the same time the United States and Canada were embracing it. Comparing results on the two continents, using independent data as well as academic and industry research, shows how the technology has fallen short of the promise. 

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 ?

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.

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.

RIP Steve Jobs - February 24, 1955 – October 5, 201

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.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.[1]

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.

"New Report Says There's No Speech Crisis on Campus," wrote the College Fix, in a piece that was heavily critical of PEN for failing to take a stronger stand. "Report provides an overview of threats to free speech while refusing to label the campus situation a 'crisis,'" seethed Reason, in a similar article.

But the "no pervasive crisis" line isn't the whole story. If you read the text, there's no way to avoid concluding that its authors were in fact very concerned about the future of free speech in this country.

The massive amount of anecdotal detail in the report – covering everything from an incident in which an English professor was sanctioned for asking students to define the word "pornography," to the extraordinary fact that up to a third of all students are "unaware that free speech is addressed by the First Amendment" – leave the reader without any doubt that PEN was trying to address a serious issue.

"The mere fact that we put out a report of such length suggests that it's important to raise some alarm bells," says Suzanne Nossel, one of the report's authors.

This report's timing is important, for a perhaps unexpected reason. The aftermath of the Trump campaign will leave us facing some very thorny questions as a nation, particularly in the areas of speech and media freedoms.

Clearly, we're entering a new era in our national attitudes toward such principles. The issue has gone beyond campuses.

And this.

The report arrives at a moment when many free-speech advocates see a growing, and troubling, generational divide. A Gallup poll last spring showed that college students were overwhelming in favor of free expression on campus in general but also significantly in favor of some restrictions on “intentionally offensive” speech.

“From an old-fashioned free-speech perspective, it strikes one as contradictory,” said Alberto Ibargüen, the chief executive of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, a sponsor of the poll.

The PEN report digs right into those seeming contradictions. It outlines the cases for and against demands for safe spaces, trigger warnings (which some students demand be given with class assignments relating to difficult topics, like sexual assault) and campaigns against so-called microaggressions (small, often unintentional racial or other slights), and then explores the ways they do, or don’t, conflict with free expression.

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.

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