Archives for March 2021

Saturday March 20, 2021

I have been using a weight loss app, and to save them any embarrassment or bad press I will only use the name in a word scramble. I’ll switch the second and third letter and the first and last and call it MOON.

What is interesting about the app is it really has little to do with weight loss directly but much more to do with psychology. It’s a great tool to learn how to make behavioral changes in yourself. Not only do they give you daily lessons of stuff you, by and large, have known but they do it in a manageable way and at about the time you need it. The app has a progression of six courses which take you along a path to, hopefully, be able to change the way you eat and think about food. The first course deals with food and they divide food into three groups: red, yellow, and green. The criteria is calories per weight. A grape would be a green food as it has few calories for its weight while a raisin (a dried grape) would be red.

That’s it. That’s all they say really about food you eat. Nothing is off the table (ha ha) but you should be careful when eating the calorie dense red stuff. You weigh in once a day, you enter your meals, you read the lessons. The meal entry is the easiest I’ve seen in an app. I have taken to eating an egg with sautéed onions, celery, and carrot in the morning. If I enter egg it brings up the other ingredients I have with it thus saving me the trouble of having to search an input each name each time. I can just click on the item.

They also have a group where you can share your experiences. The group has two coaches that make comments and issue challenges and give “helpful” hints.

And this is where I have gotten into trouble. I know “Me?” right. Hard to believe. (NOT!)

So I am in trouble for soliciting, exposing myself, and being dis-respectful. Sounds bad. But that isn’t the worst of it. They want me to post my favorite emoji to show that I understand the rules. Obviously they haven’t learned their lesson with me.

My favorite emoji? Hum. Maybe a turd pile? Maybe a stinking turd pile? Maybe a flaming shopping bag? (Which would have turds inside.) Maybe an eggplant? (No not that. It means a dick!) OMG, that’s right. Better to do one with the letters “DICK” in a frame? Maybe a pink purple sparkly pony or unicorn with pink purple sparkly hearts? 

How about a park bench with a giant W on it. This would be an homage to Arlo Gutherie and Alice’s Restaurant where he was sitting on “The Group W Bench” with the mother rapers and father rapers smoking cigarettes and having a good old time.

When I was first in the group I invited people to sign up for one of Shelby’s Cook and Chats where they could learn how to cook something. Immediately, one of the coaches posted “The Rules” which said “No Soliciting.” Okay. I get it. Cool. I would have preferred a private message starting out “Hey Rick…” but that’s not the path she took, which would have been okay had she not immediately followed up with a rainbows and unicorns message asking me and asking how my positivity was going and what was my plan to make this an awesome week or some such passive aggressive shit.

 I stayed away. I’m very cognizant of that kind of PA crap and am easily hooked by it. My interacting could have made it a lot worse.

So the other day the lesson was “Expose Yourself.” The idea being that you are more likely to succeed at a goal if you share it with someone else and more importantly that you reveal yourself in some personal way. But there’s an obvious double entendre here. I got silly and posted that I’d expose myself but it felt a little weird and I threw in a “as James brown would say ‘Help me!’ “ 

BANG immediately there a message from the coach with the title RESPECT and a “I guess I need to remind everyone what THE RULES are!!!” and the rules are posted again. Okay, but then she asked for us to post our favorite emoji to show we had read The Rules again.

And therein lies my quandary.

I’m also mystified about the respect thing. Was it the comment about exposing or the reference to The Godfather of Soul? BLM and all that. I clearly am not WOKE enough.

But I gotta say when a crude woman chants about her sweaty behind and vagina and wins artist of the year or whatever it was at The Grammys and in accepting the award sticks her tongue out like Maori warrior and gives a spastic looking gang sign at the same time I gotta ask, “What part of respect don’t I get?”

When the former president is under investigation in two different states for unrelated and multiple crimes and was twice impeached for other obvious crimes I gotta ask, “Respect?”

Or as that great sports clip that gets played every football season, “Playoffs? Don’t talk to me about playoffs. We’re just trying to win a game.”

Respect? Don’t talk to me about respect. I’m just trying to lose some weight and have some fun (on Santa Monica Boulevard or elsewhere.)

The President has hit his 100 million vaccinated in 100 days pledge but done it in 60 days. Now it looks like we may hit 200 million in 100 days. And some people are saying he set the bar too low. OMG. F! Them.

I feel better.

Thank you.

PS Meghan accepting her Grammy 

(Class? Don’t talk to me about class!)

Friday March 19, 2021

Several government reports have now been made public. These were created during the Trump administration. We are just getting to see them. One by the intelligence community that says that China did not interfere in the 2020 election, but Russia did meddle. Another report by Homeland security which said the effect of Russia’s meddling was negligible.

So we have Bill Barr on video saying China meddled and not Russia. He went on to say he knew this because he had looked at the intelligence. Presumably that means these reports. At a minimum Billy isn’t telling the truth. He is either lying about reading the reports or he is lying about what they said. Either way he is lying.

So did the Attorney General at the time and the head of intelligence. They all said China interfered when the reports they had said clearly they didn’t and Russia did.

I don’t know if it’s a crime for a public official to lie to the public or not, but these people should never hold an office of public trust again.

Then we get to the giant election fraud stuff. Yeah. Turns out the guy in the post office who swore he heard his boss and his boss’ boss talking about back dating election ballots didn’t hear them talking about that at all. He saw them having a conversation. He didn’t hear what they were saying. He signed his name to an affidavit that was written up by a right wing group who in turn trotted it to Fox News, Lindsey Graham, and it got to Donald’s hands etc. Etc. Etc. This guy recanted his testimony the next day. Never the less the FBI investigated the post office where these ballots were and found nothing amiss. However, this is the basis for much of the Republican justification for getting rid of mail in balloting.

The shooter in Atlanta? The one whom the police guy said wasn’t racial motivated but the guy was just having a bad day? Yeah. Turns out that police guy was selling t-shirts with the words China Flu on them. Hate crimes against Asian Americans is way up. Ya think it might be related to all that racist stuff about Covid? 

If Trump had kept in place the team that was in China and had acted quickly to help the Chinese contain the virus over there and had built up PPE here and put a nation wide mask mandate in place a year ago do you think maybe we wouldn’t be the world leader in death and infection from this thing? 

What is it with these tough guys that they can’t face reality? For all Brazil’s Bolsonaro’s tough talk thousands of people are dying there for the same reasons they died here. Inaction. Ignoring the truth. Stupidity.

Not only are the Republicans in Congress dead set against helping, they are actively siding with the Russians and the virus. I mean I guess it’s better to do that than it is to vote with the Democrats who have actually done something to help people in this country as opposed to what we had before, which was lying, incompetence, and stupidity.

Joe Manchin the Democratic Senator from West Virginia says he’s not sure he wants to get rid of the filibuster. Okay, then you want to sit on your thumbs for the next two years? Maybe longer.

Voting rights – The Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. The justification was it wasn’t needed. Immediately Texas started passing voter suppression laws. Now we have draconian laws in the hopper in 43 states with over 250 bills. All aimed at restricting voting. Why? Because Republicans realize that if people vote they lose.

Maybe the Republican senators will vote for the Voting Rights bill? Well, none of their colleagues in the House did. So I wouldn’t put any faith that any of them will do the right thing.

PS A temple in Orchha, India.

Thursday March 18, 2021

Yesterday, I began to outline the central points that make up the through line on the question of “What was Trump doing in Russia?” We still don’t know. 

It seems to be that Trump, desperate for money, found aid in Russia. The Russians groomed him to be “a useful idiot.” Boy, did they get their money’s worth! Under Satan they were left unperturbed and then Satan even aided them by pulling our protection away from the Kurds, allowing them to be massacred, and the Russians to take possession of Northern Syria and Iraq without firing a shot. What a deal!

Now we have a Russian agent (ie Spy) actively living and working in the U.S. during the 2016 and 2020 elections to do whatever he, as a representative of Russia and its spy agency, he could do to denigrate Biden and encourage Trump’s victories, all the while spreading false information with the aim of dividing our nation as much as possible. He, the Russian spy, named Kilimnik, was given internal polling data by Manafort and we still don’t know what all that was about.

It seems that the Republican party is happy to go along with all this as useful idiots as well. Mo Brooks, who spoke at the Jan 6^th Insurrection Rally, has been happy to say that a Democratic Congressman can’t be believed because said Congressman had a woman working in his campaign who might have been a Chinese spy. Mo goes further and says said Congressman was sleeping with her at one point. Hum, seems bad. Old Mo seems to forget that said Congressman cut all ties with this woman once the FBI told him of their suspicions. Yet Mo is standing up at a rally inciting the overthrow of an election for a man who has been accused of having prostitutes come piss on a bed in Russia, has had multiple affairs, and lied about them. I’m sure Rep. Brooks will be suitably outraged about all this! (NOT.)

So the questions remain:

What was Trump doing in Russia?

Why was Deutche Bank loaning him money, which seems to have come directly from Russia? (And why are certain high level Republicans cherry to investigate and scramble to avoid this topic?)

Who and why was Manafort thrust forward to be Trump’s campaign chairman in 2016?

Why was Manfort handing over internal polling data to a Russian agent?

Why has Trump worked so hard to hide his taxes, his grades, and anything else about himself?

What does Putin have on Trump?

What we know is that Satan has lost a lot of money running his businesses. He’s lost money for years. He was the biggest loser four years running to the IRS. Close to a billion dollars a year, that’s some record. He has paid little to no income taxes. He got a phony deferment and he thinks people who serve are suckers and losers, because he can’t see what is in it for them.

Meanwhile the Republican Party has been split between the racists, nazis, fascists,  religious fanatics, white supremacists and Qanon supporters that support Trump and the Trump look alikes and what is left of the old Republican party, which was folks who were veiled racists, nazis, fascists,  religious fanatics, white supremacists and Qanon supporters. The latter bunch are folks who hate Democrats, well they all hate Democrats. The reason for the hatred seems to stem from the fear that “their” money in taxes is going to help someone who doesn’t deserve it. That it will be wasted.

However, they seem happy to have their party waste money, but not the other side.

Many if not most of these supporters have been helped and in fact owe their financial existence to Democratic initiatives. Social Security, Medicare, pensions are all due to Democrats and opposed by Republicans. It’s odd that the states most dependent on Federal handouts are the reddest of states while the states that give more money to the Federal government than they take are the bluest of states. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.

Ah me. Then we get to Tucker Carlson. If you haven’t seen John Oliver’s last Sunday night show “Last Week Tonight” I urge you to do so. Oliver does a masterful job of pointing out what a racist he is. Tucker will say he’s not, but Oliver points out that even if Tucker thinks he’s not a racist there are a few people who think he is. Like David Duke, former head of the KKK; the head of a neo-Nazi group in the U.S. (The one Paul Gosar spoke at recently); and the head of one of the oldest white supremacist organizations in the U.S. 

Let me also remind folks that Carlson, Kavanaugh, Ingraham, and Coulter all used to hang out together at a fancy row house in Georgetown. So there’s a nod nod, wink wink kind of thing there.

Speaking of Kavanaugh, Shelton Whitehouse has dropped in the new AG’s lap an accusation that the FBI carried out a sham investigation into his background when he was being considered for the Supreme Court bench. (Well, Duh. ‘Bout time we got the truth.)

PS Feel good about God day (I declare it.)

PPS I keep forgetting this little shout out. Trump’s guy running the Post Office, DeJoy? Yeah, he wants more money from Congress so he can guarantee to be able to deliver mail more slowly. This is America!

Wednesday March 17, 2021

The vaccine rollout continues and increases. States are saying they are dropping down in their lists of who can get shots. Some places have opened it up to everyone above 16. Other states, all Republican, have sided with the virus in a conspiracy to infect and try to kill as many voters as possible. (Hum, that was good to put a Fox News type twist on things.)

Meanwhile, more is being revealed about what the Trump administration was up to and trying to hide. Konstantin Kilimnik is back in the news. The FBI has issued a $250,000 reward for him. Why you might ask. Well, see, other than being linked to the Russian spy agency and having received internal polling data from Paul Manafort while Manafort was running Trump’s 2016 election he is now accused of interfering in the 2020 election. Hum. 

A recent Senate report mentions him over 750 times in connection with the 2016 election. He is also “Person A” in the Mueller Report. That Senate report and a newly released report from the National Intelligence Council makes clear Konstantin was busy in the 2016 and 2020 Presidential elections trying to get Trump elected. The report says he used US media, US officials, and prominent US citizens to “launder disinformation.”

Hum, well maybe Rudy is in trouble? This also explains why Bill Barr and others lied?

The fact that Trump has been intertwined with Russia is nothing new. He had a beauty pageant there. Remember the one where he walked in on the contestants while they were dressing? Before he was anointed to be the Republican candidate in 2016 the Republicans hired Global GPS to do opposition research on him. The head of that firm testified that they couldn’t figure out what Trump was doing in Russia. That’s why they hired Steele, which led to his infamous report. All that which has been verified has been shown to be true and none false. So we keep coming back to “What was Trump doing in Russia?”

All indications are that he was being groomed as a useful idiot. This has more recently been verified by former Russian officials. What we do know is that he was trying to make a deal for a Trump Tower in Moscow during the 2016 Presidential election, even though he lied to the American people about it. We also know that Paul Manafort, a man with a reputation for doing the dirtiest peoples’ dirty work in Washington, appeared out of nowhere and was approved to run the campaign. Even though Satan never heard of him.

More later.

PS Rocket Man

March 16, 2021

Having survived both Pi Day and The Ides of March I would like to start this screed off with a thought experiment, which may be a new way to look at mathematical knots.

To begin you’ll need to visualize a strip of material that is three inches wide and three or four feet long. This material must be flexible yet rigid enough that the side don’t collapse. A piece of sheet metal will do, or a long strip of that flexible magnet stuff that goes on the back of things so you can stick them on the refrigerator. Or maybe a piece of plastic. 

I was thinking of a plastic strip when I came up with this idea. What I wanted to do was to make a traveling protective wall for stuff I might buy on a trip. I have used plastic coffee containers in the past. They are bulky but perfect for a coffee mug to go into, stuffed with dirty laundry. I thought, “What if I had something that was just the wall of the container?” When not in use it could lie flat on the edge of my suitcase. If I cut a slit halfway on either end such that the two slits could fit into each other I could then create a round strip to hold something. (This would require the slits be cut starting at the opposite sides on the strip.)

Now I played in my mind with how to attach that strip. The standard way would be to fit the notches together such that the strip had two little ears sticking out. Or you could attach them such that the whole strip was flat and the notches would them lay flat to the surface.

Okay, here comes the thing I got to, “What if I needed a a slightly higher container, say for one of those tall thin coffee mugs?” 

I could take my strip and put a loop in it like you see on those plastic racing tracks for kids cars – a loop de loop. This would require you put a 360 degree turn in the strip before attaching the notches.

Okay. Okay. Here’s the mind F*cker. I mean the mind meld. What happens if you grab the joint where the two notches are and twist it 180 degrees? That is you turn it inside out?

I was picturing a strip that had raised portion due to the fact that when you put the loop in the strip there had to be a point where the sides were bumping against one another. If I laid the construction on a flat table there would be part that was sticking up.

Now if I twist the thing 180 degrees, the part sticking up goes to the other side of the construction!

So what? ( “Sew buttons, you can’t glue them,” I always say to that. )

Now imagine that you have your strip but instead of being notched it is magnetic so you can just snap the two ends magnetically in place. This allows you to do something new. You can now take the strip and before you attach the ends you can twist the strip 180 degrees and now you have a Möbius Strip, a continuous surface, whereas before you had two surfaces.

“Is that the same as what I described in my loop de loop?”

I’m not sure.

This gets into that study of surfaces where an object with a hole in it could be a donut or a coffee mug.

However, it also gets into the study of quarternions and octonions. A rather forgotten corner of math until Cohl Furey (don’t you love that name?) revived it a few years ago and said that it could explain The Standard Model of the Universe and if so we don’t need no mo’ stinkin’ leptons, quarks or other particles. The advantage of octions is they can describe another characteristic that vectors can’t, spin. In the Standard Model it can be shown that we got all we need to describe the universe.

With my mind experiment have I tripped over something that knot theory (not string) has missed? That is the twisting of surfaces? With a rope, imagine it like my strip, but the top and bottom sides have been fused together to form a sheath. Therefore the question of the sides is ignored. At least I haven’t heard anyone talk about a rope in terms of it being a sheath, having an inner and outer side.

Oh well, moving on.

Two more arrests have happened on the Jan 6^th Insurrection. They nailed two guys that were using bear spray. They are shown spraying the officer who was killed.

The CDC has announced, ever so quietly, that they are investigating, and taking down, all the crap the previous White House administration put up in the name of the CDC.

The CDC is back! Hooray!

Checks are going out to people.

The Republican state legislatures are busy passing voting suppression laws that are so egregious it is now being called by some “The Second Jim Crow Era.” Having lost the past election, and realizing they don’t have a chance in a fair fight, they are doing everything they can to rig the game.

If this is not stopped it is not the end of the world as we know ( I quoteth Mad Magazine and their take off called “The Daily Dirt” in reference to nuclear war having started.) No, it is just THE END OF OUR DEMOCRACY. No biggie. Right? It’s just a bunch of good old boys and girls doing their racist thing. That’s the cover. The truth is some more malevolent forces are at work.

To be continued …

PS Part of a maithuna frieze, north wall, Vishwanath Temple, Khajuraho, India. Circa 1000 C.E.