Archives for August 2023

Saturday, August 12, 2023

I survived my birthday and am now in post-pondering: “What am I going to do with my life?” etc.

It’s about time I figure that question out, but there are other things that need pondering too.

For example, The Iowa State Fair made a sculpture of Caitlin Clark out of butter – “Is it life size?”

Scientists at the Hadron Collider are on the verge of discovering a fifth source of .. of … what? Let’s see, there’s gravity and three others…damn. Here’s the problem – muons aren’t behaving the way the Standard Model says they should. Therefore, it might be that some other force – yeah, that’s the term I was looking for. There might be another force in the universe that is causing this. 

But then again, I thought the Standard Model was being replaced by a better explanation using octagonal math, that is being worked on by Nichol Furey (ie Chol Furey). I stand corrected. According to her website, she is working on  the following:

…

MOTIVATION FOR MY RESEARCH

The standard model of particle physics is the result of decades of collaboration, which began roughly in the 1930s, and converged finally on its current state in 1979, [1]. It is a perfected set of rules that tells us how the known fundamental particles behave. In the decades since 1979, the standard model has seen little in the way of alterations, and yet has survived rigorous experimental testing, nearly completely unscathed.

However, despite its long string of victories, the standard model is in some ways hollow, or incomplete. Roughly speaking, we know how to use the model to make predictions, but we do not know why it is the way it is.

To be more explicit, we do not know why the standard model is based on the gauge group SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1)/Z_6, and not some other gauge group. Even given that gauge group, the standard model does not specify why it uses such a long, apparently arbitrary, list of particles to represent that group. The standard model does not explain why its quarks and leptons are organized into three generations. It does not explain why SU(2) weak isospin acts only on left-handed states. These questions, and others, have gone unanswered now for nearly 40 years.

The main goal of my work is to try to answer questions like these.

…

from: https://www.furey.space

To be honest I have not considered the gauge group SU(3)… before.

I wish Nichol well on her work. Btw she also plays the accordion and likes martial arts fighting. So if I say she can kick your ass, I mean that literally.

But Back To Butter (BTB – is not a K-Pop group), I knew from research my PhD math daughter had done a few years ago in Minnesota that they fashioned the heads of that year’s Butter Queen in … you guessed it – butter! But whole figures? Of sports athletes? This led me to wondering if Iowa and Minnesota have a long seething state fair butter challenge going on. I don’t know.

Tonight, or to be more exact, early this morning, I went out to see the Perseids Meteor Shower. I have always been disappointed by this event. Mainly, because of my high expectations. This based on Uncle Bill saying years ago that his son and a friend were hiking somewhere one night and saw hundreds of meteors. I envisions fire from the sky, almost, raining down in a glorious shower of light. I’ve never really gotten that vision out of my head, and so, the paltry one or two I see an hour is, well, disappointing. I do remember standing on a rooftop in a valley in new Jersey and seeing a few more than that. 

Given the insistence of my neighbors to have on lights all night, and the kindness of the community organization to insist on putting a street light near the road one house up despite my saying I didn’t want it and being besieged by concerned mothers that their little darling couldn’t walk in the dark to the bus stop even though they don’t walk in the dark and are driven there didn’t seem to matter. Nor the fact that it is never dark when the bus comes. Close but not dark, besides there are all the neighbors yard lights. But all that included means that The Milky Way has disappeared. 

It’s easy to find the Milky Way because the constellation Cygnus The Swan can be clearly seen in the night sky. That’s all that is left of the Milky Way. Cygnus looks like the top of a cross. There’s a few other stars that make up its neck, but they are fainter. The cross would be her tail feathers. She flies down the Milky Way. If you find the “W” that is Cassiopeia, Cygnus will be to the west (ie left as you face Cassiopeia).

I miss The Milky Way. We can see it when we go to Maine, but otherwise it is gone. Which is too bad because that means that many will probably never see it. It is a grounding mechanism. It connects us to a larger world. It gives us wonder and joy.

As I watched the sky and tried to find a place where cast shadows blocked most of the most egregious light sources I heard the last hurrahs of some young people staying up late and I heard the metronomic sounds of frogs down the way in what remains of the woods and the creek. 

I had seen two meteors streak pretty much horizontally. There were no skippers, Nor was there a big green one that I saw one time that looked like a giant flat rock thrown on the top of our atmosphere, I said to myself, “One more, and I’ll call it quits.” 

Then between the end peak of the house and the rising top of the pear tree a giant wide white streak – straight down.

Time to call it a night. (or morning.)

ps In an earlier post I mentioned Tom Van Sant’s dragon kite and a video of it. I can’t find the original video but here is a later movie and my updated comments:

Here’s an updated color movie of Tom’s kite. I stand corrected on the drogue. Either my memory is faulty or he changed some of the design. (Couldn’t be me? Naw.)

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6RiTIEgLDIc

Friday, August 11, 2023

Yes, yesterday was my birthday, and I don’t have to tell you how successful it was. We hung out at home and had family and our next door neighbor over for dinner. Perfect.

Earlier in the day I saw a segment with a Republican Congressman who is heading up a committee to investigate what he calls “The Biden Crime Family.” This week for I believe the third time he has issued a report which was going to reveal the truth. Like the previous two reports he hasn’t quite gotten there. He apparently found out someone named Biden got money from I think Gasprom, the Ukrainian Gas company that, before the Putin installed dictator had been overthrown by the people of Ukraine, had been using as a huge profit skimming operation. To say skimming would be an understatement. Putin had installed a guy there whose job was to receive money, a lot of money, like 25% of everything Gasprom did. 

There is a connection to Joe Biden. He was aware of this back when he was VP under Obama, maybe even before that. He worked with various entities to stop this grift. Gasprom when exposed did what so many of these corrupt companies do – they hired someone close to Biden to clean up their image. Yeah, they hired Hunter. Whether Hunter did anything is not clear, but he did lead them on in terms of telling them that Joe was his dad. There is nothing suggesting that Joe and Hunter ever discussed any of this. But this hasn’t stopped this congressman and the right wing Republicans from pursuing this line of questioning endlessly.

So this week the congressman released his 45 page report, which basically says, “We got nothing,” and suggests that the next report will have something (like evidence). Just like his last two reports insinuated.

Okay, so this got me to thinking, if the house turns over and the Democrats are in charge then they’ll be able to pick up where these clowns left off? Let’s say a Democrat is in charge of Jim Jordan’s weaponization committee and a Dem is in charge of the family crime committee. Imagine what they might find?

See, here’s the problem with doing this sort of stuff. Remember when the Republicans were screaming over stolen elections and rigged ballot machines? They created an agency to investigate and monitor such stuff. When the 2020 election happened and they started their tirades about missing ballots, rigged machines, and all that – their own committee man pushed back and said, “No, this was the fairest election ever.” So, they fired him. Not the answer they were looking for.

I do want to know about the weaponization of elections. I think investigating what Trump did, and what various Republican state legislatures have done with voter suppression and Gerrymandering would be enlightening. Then there’s the family crime investigation. You won’t have to dig deep to find that on the Republican side. Trump commits his crimes in public. His son-in-law is just as sneaky (NOT). To see the bribery of Supreme Court officials will take a bit more digging. But not much.

The problem that we have as a republic is that the assumption was made by our founding fathers that people elected to the Senate and the Supreme Court would be people of high moral and ethical character. Not a good assumption.

Thursday, August 10, 1050

Yeah, it’s early morning and time to contemplate because I’m now a year older. Well, not til 10:30 tonight, but close enough for me to ponder what I’ve done in the last year, and with my life so far, and what I intend to do in the future.

I’m giving a talk on Angkor Wat soon and I was trying to think of a way to wrap it up. I thought about Ayn Rand and the phrase she used over and over again in “The Fountainhead, “Check your assumptions, one of them is wrong.” And that sums up the problem ancient Angkor ran into.

I was also thinking about Florida and the elephant they are not dealing with, which will make Ron DeSantis’ mean spirited dumb actions irrelevant. (His latest one was to dismiss a prosecutor he didn’t like. Somehow he thinks this endears him to people? I don’t know. You’d think he’d want to get a handle on leprosy and malaria in the state he’s supposed to be governor of.)

And this led me to thinking about Tom Van Sant. Back in the 70s when I was very active in kiting, Tom was an artist on the west coast. He had some materials left over from a job and he used them to make a centipede kite, also called a dragon kite. The typical Asian dragon kite is a series of round cells with bamboo arms sticking out to either side. These cells are joined together with lines and equally spaced. The kite can be very long, a hundred cells or more. The arms have feathers on them and they droop down a bit from the center. This actually helps stabilize the kite. Much like a high wire performer on a tight rope with a long pole hanging to either side helps stabilize them. Tom made a huge cell and it was an oval. I think it was three feet across. He stabilized each cell with a drogue hanging from a vertical stick off the bottom. It was very unique and spectacular. There’s a black and white movie on YouTube showing it flying.

Here’s an updated color movie of Tom’s kite. I stand corrected on the drogue. Either my memory is faulty or he changed some of the design. (Couldn’t be me? Naw.)

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6RiTIEgLDIc

When I went to see Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” he had maps showing what would flood if the sea levels rose. He mentioned they were done by his old pal, Tom Van Sant. I wondered if it was the same guy. I didn’t really know Tom; I knew of him. I noodled around, got an email address and asked. Yup. Same guy.

One of his map models shows Florida when the sea levels rise. Most of the state is gone. It’s underwater. We are already seeing evidence of that when downtown Miami gets flooded on a regular basis. What is the answer of the political right? Last I heard it was to point out that someone who is famous and known to be progressive bought a house on the Florida shore. This as if to say, “See! If they are doing that they don’t believe it.”

Soon it won’t be a matter of belief.

Like the people of Atlantis (e.g. Santorini) and it’s neighbor Crete, when the volcano collapsed Santorini was mostly gone and what wasn’t was buried under a wave of water. Crete suffered from a set of tidal waves, at least seven. What do you do when a wall of water nearly 300 feet high is approaching? There’s nowhere to run. Like the folks in Galveston who went out to see the dry ocean bed, not realizing this meant a huge wave  had sucked out all the water and was coming. They should run like hell the other way. When it came; it was too late.

But Florida will suffer a similar if slower fate. Enough time for the right wing and QAnon folks to develop elaborate theories and conjecture as to why it’s not their fault. When the wave comes, when the water rises, it doesn’t care.

Angkor? They planned their whole city around the water staying at a certain level. When the water level dropped, the whole plan was moot. People moved away. 

The Mayans cut down their forests to grow crops and make stucco. They saw the rain levels drop, but they kept cutting. Soon their cities could no longer sustain their populations.

We know what happens. Some are in denial. Some don’t believe it. Some make excuses. The ocean doesn’t care.

Hum. This isn’t where I thought I’d end up. Hum. 

Here’s hoping that people will start standing up and like the little kid say, “The emperor has no clothes.”

Speaking of which, a politician I heard speaking yesterday said that if Trump is convicted of all the charges he’s accused of he could be spending over 600 years in jail.

There. That’s a better place to leave it.

Wednesday, August 9, 2023

If you yell, “Fire!” in a crowded theater when there is no fire you can be arrested because it causes a dangerous situation. One where people can be trampled to death or otherwise hurt. I guess you could argue it impinges on your right to free speech, but I don’t think that would get you very far. 

“Guilty. Next.”

This is the argument that Trump and his lawyers are making. “What do you mean I can’t threaten, browbeat, and tell my rabid supporters where witnesses, judges, and prosecutors live so they can go exercise their second amendment rights by shooting up those homes?”

To be fair, he has a habit of doing this. Anyone who watched what happened on January 6th and listened to what he said can have little doubt. Well, okay the people who still believe that a pizza parlor build on a slab of concrete had a basement – well, there’s no hope for them, but that’s the point isn’t it? Someone will believe the lies and take action.

Just ask Amy Fisher. She shot Joey Buttafuoco’s wife, Mary Jo, in the face, because she was having an affair with old Joey. She got 5 to 15 served ten. Joey got four months for statutory rape. Amy was seventeen at the time. Everyone wrote a book and there’s a sex tape. Ah, America. And New Jersey. Go Eagles.

There’s lots of speculation and excitement that Fani Willis is going to be issuing indictments soon. She subpoenaed two people yesterday. I don’t want to get my hopes up too much. I was disappointed by Robert Mueller, and then by the DOJ. Why didn’t the Department just take Vol 2 and charge Trump?

But now, there’s analysis that by Trump declaring early for the presidency that this triggered DOJ to appoint a special consul which has resulted in all these charges ahead of the primaries and election. If Trump had waited there would not have been enough time to charge him before the election. Bummer Donnie.

I’ve been watching a lot of the women’s soccer. I am as befuddled by what constitutes a foul and what doesn’t as I am in basketball. You can’t step on someone’s butt when they are lying on the ground – got it. But you can pinwheel your arms around and grab at someone’s shoulder or you can place your arms around someone’s waist (or very close) as long as you don’t wrestle, but if you flick their cheek as you are doing this it’s a penalty. I played the game and I never remember this sort of stuff being allowed. But the passing, the team formations, and the overall level of play is fascinating.

In Ohio over three million voters turned out to reject a Republican plan to up the percentage on making changes in the Ohio constitution. This in a state of just under twelve million people. So over 25% of the state showed up to tell the Republicans in charge to stick it. Now, the ballot initiative in the fall about enshrining abortion rights into the state’s constitution is  cleared, despite the Republican efforts to do whatever they could to rig it for defeat. This included not only holding a special election in the dog days of summer, but also closing some polling places to thus confuse voters as to where they should go to vote.

This morning a memo has surfaced by a Trump lawyer that was dated back in December of the previous year describing a way to delay the vote on January 6th, which Trump and his cronies did. This shows that there was a conspiracy. The events of Jan 6 did, in fact delay the proceedings. For those arguing otherwise, well I suggest you get your nose out of the Kool-aid. Kind of a mixed metaphor with “wake up and smell the coffee.” Some things can’t be helped. 

Tuesday, August 8, 2023

Charges in three cases against Trump are up to 68 or 70 some odd counts. He has started attacking the judge, the special counsel, potential witnesses and co-conspirators. His lawyers in the Jan 6th case filed just before the 5pm deadline asking to be allowed to let Trump reveal names and addresses of witnesses so his supporters could go harass them. The special counsel responded within hours saying they didn’t want him trying the case in public as it would, among other thing “taint the jury pool.” 

Okay, the Trump lawyers didn’t put it as I have stated it, but that would be the result of their ask.

As to trying the case in public, Jack Smith’s team pointed out that one of Trump’s lawyers went on five talk shows this weekend spouting nonsense. I mean, it sounds good to a non-lawyer – for a few seconds, but then a real expert comes on and points out the idiocy of what is being said. Like, “a technical violation of the Constitution” is a violation of the Constitution, but that is not what Trump is being charged with. He is being charged with violating the law, not the Constitution.

More charges are probably going to drop late this week or early next in Georgia and these should be doozies. I’m hearing racketeering and up to twelve co-conspirators, among them Lindsey Graham.

Also the pyramid scheme is set for trial on January 29th. That’s the case where Trump was pushing a video phone that he claimed could make you a millionaire if you got in on the ground floor and got others to sell too. Somehow a video phone that only worked with the same brand of video phone didn’t sell. I mean if you’re Apple and have millions out there – okay, but otherwise, no.

And then there are the states fake electors, five of the seven states have brought charges against the fake electors. They are looking at serious jail time. Jack Smith is reportedly looking into the schemes as well, but his interest seems to be the people planning, coordinating, and directing the overall plot. Hum, who could that be? Rudy? John Eastman? Steven Miller? and and wait one other, oh yeah the Orange One.

Donnie is in more than a one legged ass kicking contest. He needs to become a Hindu and grow some extra legs.

And then in a (Not) class move he attacked the women’s soccer team. Accused them of being woke and that’s why they lost. Then he took a dig at Megan Rapinoe. What a turd, he is.

One of the former Republicans asked the question, “What do these current crop of Republicans like about America?” It seems hard to find anything they are positive about.

Today, the people in Ohio vote on a single issue – should the percentage to make changes to their state constitution move from 50% to 60%. This is an attempt to make the fall ballot initiative to enshrine access to abortion part of the constitution harder to pass. Recent polling had it at 58%. 

In the six times states have had this question voted on access to abortion it has always passed by big margins. Yet, Republican lawmakers and their enablers keep pushing these very restrictive measures. They know if it comes to a public referendum they will lose. Why do they keep embracing it? It seems they, like the dog, have bit the tire and can’t let go. Thump. Thump Thump.

The gun lobbies and their Republican enablers. are busy trying to block states from banning the advertising of AR-15s to kids. I’ve mention the JR15, the Junior AR15, made especially for children. Some governors think children should not have lethal military grade (okay near military grade?) weapons that fire real bullets. Jeez, how are you going to settle playground disputes without such things?

I wonder if the makers of these weapons have given then to their kids?

What are we going to do when some three year old is brought up on charges of murdering his family or half his kindergarten class?

Meanwhile, climate change. Apparently there’s a dome of hot air that is sitting over most of the country trapping more hot air and it’s getting worse. There’s a lot of scholarship that is coming to the forefront right now about the Mayans. They cut down their forests, paved their plazas and temples with stucco, which made things hotter and they kept doing it. It seems they knew it was causing less rain and then drought, but they kept doing it. It seems we are no smarter, nor able to act.

Ron DeSantis is running for President, touting what he did in Florida as what he will do for the whole country. Wow. Malaria, Leprosy, and quack doctors in charge of public health (or no one.) Attacks on minorities and businesses claiming “too woke,” and spending millions to trick people into bus and jet trips to the north to be dumped without warning somewhere. This is the kind of accomplishment and leadership he is promising.

You know, it’s like the folks attacking Biden. It’s either his family or his accomplishments. However, they never get to the point of actually specifying anything, because it they did they find he’s done a great job and there is no crime or nepotism like there is with the former president.