When tragedy becomes farce or ... god has a plan

When tragedy becomes farce ...

First of all, the only time the words “Trump,” “fighting,” and “corruption” go together in a sentence is when it’s something like: “Donald Trump is fighting hard to keep authorities from uncovering his corruption.” 

But let’s pretend, for argument’s sake, that the US president really is interested in fighting corruption abroad. If that were the case, why is he such a strong supporter of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is facing three sets of corruption charges right now? And why does Trump back some of the more corrupt and ruthless strongmen in the world?

Or better yet, god has a plan

Finally, we figured out why so many “Christians” and their leaders seem to think that Trump was somehow chosen by God, even though this president is the antithesis of the teachings of Jesus, cheated on his third wife with a porn star, and knows less about the Bible than he does about running a profitable casino. It’s because, they’re insisting, God did handpick Trump — but not because of the reasons the president’s base thinks. Instead, it is the only way to get an uncharismatic stiff like Mike Pence into the Oval Office.

Yes, The Lord chose Trump because He knew there was no way that such a corrupt serial liar with a total lack of morals or scruples could stay in office for a full term. But even God could not anticipate that Republicans would turn their backs on Him and bow down at the altar of Trump, instead.

One cannot make this up.

A simple matter of measurement, right???

Yours truly loves science. Why, because, when done right, it's a discipline whose theories are designed to be disproved, something seen in a "simple" matter of measurement, in this case, the Hubble Constant and how it relates to our understanding of the universe.

We're getting something wrong about the universe.

It might be something small: a measurement issue that makes certain stars looks closer or farther away than they are, something astrophysicists could fix with a few tweaks to how they measure distances across space. It might be something big: an error — or series of errors — in  cosmology, or our understanding of the universe's origin and evolution. If that's the case, our entire history of space and time may be messed up. But whatever the issue is, it's making key observations of the universe disagree with each other: Measured one way, the universe appears to be expanding at a certain rate; measured another way, the universe appears to be expanding at a different rate. And, as a new paper shows, those discrepancies have gotten larger in recent years, even as the measurements have gotten more precise.

"We think that if our understanding of cosmology is correct, then all of these different measurements should be giving us the same answer," said Katie Mack, a theoretical cosmologist at North Carolina State University (NCSU) and co-author of the new paper.

The central plot in the paper shows that most measurements of the Hubble constant and mass fraction point to one range of numbers, but the Cepheid-supernova measurement (yellow bar) points to a different range of numbers. (Image credit: Weikang Lin, Katherine J. Mack, and Liqiang Hou)

It's not all bad as new physics might be at hand. :)

Hidden passage???

Physicists conceptualize black holes spin at almost the speed of light. With this being said, it stands to reason that the extreme inertia generated by such spin rates could transform black holes into wormholes, a notion being seriously studied by researchers checking out the supermassive black hole residing in our Milky Way galaxy.

Wormholes are a controversial topic in physics, to say the least. Not only is the idea of traveling through these theoretical passageways between two disparate regions of spacetime debatable, but their very existence is unclear. A forthcoming paper, however, suggests a method to look for a wormhole inside a black hole—and those observations could occur within a decade.

Seems BRT's take on black holes possibly being wormholes is not too far fetched after all. :)

We live in interesting times.

Something's afoot/rev XX

Something's afoot applies here as there is not one drop of blood nor are there any tracks to cattle mutilated in Oregan.

Five young purebred bulls mysteriously showed up dead on the ranch this past summer, drained of blood and with body parts precisely removed.

Coming upon one of the dead bulls is an eerie scene. The forest is hot and still, apart from a raven's repeating caw. The bull looks like a giant, deflated plush toy. It smells. Weirdly, there are no signs of buzzards, coyotes or other scavengers. His red coat is as shiny as if he were going to the fair, but he's bloodless and his tongue and genitals have been surgically cut out.

Jenkins says the cases have been tough, with little evidence and no credible leads.

On his whiteboard, he has a running list scrawled in green marker with the top theories. What's clear: It isn't bears, wolves, cougars or poisonous plants. Nor were the animals shot.

The FBI won't confirm or deny that it's looking into the multiple slaughters.

Two years ago and 200 miles south, near New Princeton, Ore., one of Andie Davies' cows was also found cut up and bloodless.

She and her husband drove concentric circles around the corpse, but they never found any tracks.

And in this dusty country, "everything you do leaves tracks," Davies says

Something;s afoot indeed ...

Captain Chaos ...

As most intelligent people know, The Donald is Captain Chaos to the max, As long as everything centers on him, it's ok, as long as people's lives are not on the line, a situation not the case with people in combat, where coolness of temperament, combined with battlefield competence, is key to keeping people alive under the most trying conditions possible. With this information is factored into the equation, people in the know know that Trump is not qualified to be commander in chief in any way, shape or fashion.

To whit.

Amid threats spanning the globe, from nuclear proliferation to mined tankers in the Persian Gulf to terrorist attacks and cyberwarfare, those in command positions monitor the president’s Twitter feed like field officers scanning the horizon for enemy troop movements. A new front line in national defense has become the White House Situation Room, where the military struggles to accommodate a commander in chief who is both ignorant and capricious.

It gets better ...

I. HE DISDAINS EXPERTISE

Trump has little interest in the details of policy. He makes up his mind about a thing, and those who disagree with him—even those with manifestly more knowledge and experience—are stupid, or slow, or crazy.

As a personal quality, this can be trying; in a president, it is dangerous. Trump rejects the careful process of decision making that has long guided commanders in chief. Disdain for process might be the defining trait of his leadership. Of course, no process can guarantee good decisions—history makes that clear—but eschewing the tools available to a president is choosing ignorance. What Trump’s supporters call “the deep state” is, in the world of national security—hardly a bastion of progressive politics—a vast reservoir of knowledge and global experience that presidents ignore at their peril. 

Read the entire Atlantic piece to learn why this guy doesn't cut it as CIC.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. - Erasmas

Reddingites ...

Need your input without question.

GB without a doubt ...

Being a former jazz drummer and Berklee Alum, hearing this gem brings back memories. Long tracks but worthwhile to the max.

There were a few moments when we were playing when I felt like, I must be dreaming. That’s the thing I try to hang onto. Those moments when I was young and you’d get that rush, the joy of music. And so playing with Ginger, it was like I had this direct line — like you’d plug into an electrical current, directly into the main source of what got you going in the first place. - Bill Frisell.

Stellar and ... I bet Elvin listened to this as well. 

State of the Art ...

State of the Art says it all regarding Pixar and 3D animation. Years ago, yours truly beta-tested Pixar code from the user perspective. Something altogether amazing without question. :)

Lin was interviewed for FMX's Professional Spotlight series in 2016, in which he explains what exactly he does as a DP for animated films. This video offers some real clues as to why he insists on making the cinematography in Pixar's films as true to life as possible. When asked if his cinematic approach changes between live-action and animation (around the 1:40 mark in the video below), he responded:

"I think it's exactly the same between a live-action shoot and computer animation in terms of the sensibility, because what our goal is is to tell a story visually, and the way to do it is exactly the same. How you set up a camera, what kind of lens you use, what kind of camera angle you use...it doesn't matter if it's live-action or an animated film, the technique is the same."

Brilliant artistry without a doubt.

Inside Out 2015

Toy Story 4 2019

Artistry to the max indeed.

This clip shows how Pixar's tech has evolved over the years. Interesting without question.

Cat 6 & counting ...

Dorian deserves to be a Cat 6 hurricane,
the first of many to come as civilization moves further into the Anthropocene.

Category 5 Atlantic hurricanes are rare. Only 7% of the 243 hurricanes observed since accurate satellite measurements began in 1983 have reached that catastrophic intensity. And it is truly exceptional to see a category 5 hurricane as strong as Hurricane Dorian, which powered ashore on Great Abaco Island in The Bahamas on September 1, 2019, with sustained winds of 185 mph and gusts up to 220 mph. Winds of this strength would make Dorian worthy of a category 6 rating, if it existed. (For those of you unfamiliar with me, know that there is already a Category 6—it’s the name of a blog I co-author with Bob Henson over at Weather Underground, specializing in daily updates of global tropical cyclone activity).

The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, which is used to rank hurricane winds on a scale of one to five, stops at category 5: sustained 1-minute average wind speeds of at least 157 mph (70 m/s). If we were to add a category 6 to the scale, we must consider that the scale is not quite linear. Winds for a category 2 hurricane span a range of just 15 mph, for example, but winds for a category 4 storm span a range of 27 mph. Regardless of this non-linearity, a one-category increase in intensity on the scale results in approximately four times more wind damage, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Cat 6 candidates to date ...

If one uses 185-mph winds as the threshold for category 6, only five Atlantic hurricanes in recorded history would qualify. If we lower the threshold to 180 mph, there are a total of eight that would rate as a category 6:

• 190 mph: Allen 1980
• 185 mph: Dorian 2019, Labor Day 1935, Gilbert 1988, Wilma 2005
• 180 mph: Mitch 1998, Rita 2005, Irma 2017

It's just a matter of time.

Defending Science

BRT has long questioned the Trump administration's adverse take on science and it's 24/7 push to subvert or politicize the same for political gain and/or corporate profits as needs warrant but people are resisting because turning one's back on science guarantees the slow demise of any country as the world moves ever forward into the 21st century.

To whit ...

In recent years, the norms and expectations that once ensured that our government was guided primarily by the public interest rather than by individual or partisan interest have significantly weakened. There are now far fewer constraints to deter abuse by executive branch actors. This report focuses on two distinct areas: the growing politicization of government science and research and the breakdown of processes for filling key government positions.

It gets better.

Now, we are at a crisis point, with almost weekly violations of previously respected safeguards.

• The acting White House chief of staff reportedly instructed the secretary of commerce to have the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — a part of the Department of Commerce — issue a misleading statement in support of the president’s false assertion about the trajectory of a hurricane, contradicting an earlier statement released by the National Weather Service. 
• The secretary of commerce reportedly threatened to fire top NOAA officials in pressuring them to act.
• The Department of Agriculture relocated economists across the country after they published findings showing the financial harms to farmers of the administration’s trade policies.
• The Interior Department reassigned its top climate scientist to an accounting role after he highlighted dangers posed by climate change.
• The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) adopted rules that prevent leading experts from serving on science advisory boards and encourage participation by industry-affiliated researchers.
• The White House suppressed a report showing a toxic substance that is present in several states’ water supplies endangers human health at levels far lower than previously reported by the EPA.

Dangeville without a doubt. Click here for the full National Task Force Report.