Chet Raymo, “As Time Goes By”

“As Time Goes By”

by Chet Raymo

“Is time something that is defined by the ticking of a cosmic clock, God’s wristwatch say? Time doesn’t exist except for the current tick. The past is irretrievably gone. The future does not yet exist. Consciousness is awareness of a moment. Or is time a dimension like space? We move through time as we move through space. The past is still there; we’re just not there anymore. The future exists; we’ll get there. We experience time as we experience space, say, by looking out the window of a moving train. Or is time…

Physicists and philosophers have been debating these questions since the pre-Socratics. Plato. Newton. Einstein. Most recently, Lee Smolin. Without resolution. What makes the question so difficult, it seems to me, is that time is inextricably tied up with consciousness. We won’t understand time until we understand consciousness, and vice versa. So far, consciousness is a mystery, in spite of books with titles like “Consciousness Explained”. Will consciousness be explained? Can consciousness be explained? If so, will it require a conceptual breakthrough of revolutionary proportions? Or is the Darwinian/material paradigm enough? Are we in for an insight, or for a surprise?

As I sit here at my desk under the hill, looking out at a vast panorama of earth, sea and sky, filled, it would seem, infinitely full of detail, so full that my awareness can only skim the surface, I have that uneasy sense that it’s going to be damnably difficult to extract consciousness, as a thing, from the universe in its totality. I think of that word “entanglement,” from quantum theory, and I wonder to what extent consciousness is entangled, perhaps even with past and future.

Who knows? Perhaps consciousness, or what I think of as my consciousness, is just a slice of cosmic consciousness, in the same way that the present is a slice of cosmic time. As a good Ockhamist, I am loathe to needlessly multiply hypotheses. But time will tell. Or consciousness will tell. Or something.”

- https://www.sciencemusings.com/

The Poet: Mary Oliver, “Can You Imagine?”

“Can You Imagine?”

“For example, what the trees do

not only in lightning storms

or the watery dark of a summer’s night

or under the white nets of winter

but now, and now, and now – whenever

we’re not looking. Surely you can’t imagine

they don’t dance, from the root up, wishing

to travel a little, not cramped so much as wanting

a better view, or more sun, or just as avidly

more shade – surely you can’t imagine they just

stand there loving every

minute of it, the birds or the emptiness, the dark rings

of the years slowly and without a sound

thickening, and nothing different unless the wind,

and then only in its own mood, comes

to visit, surely you can’t imagine

patience, and happiness, like that.”

- Mary Oliver, “Long Life”

"The Old Tablecloth Trick"

"The Old Tablecloth Trick"

by Jeff Thomas

"Newton’s first law of motion states that an object at rest tends to stay at rest. Therefore, if a tablecloth is spread out on a table and an object, such as the fishbowl above, is placed on that tablecloth, the fishbowl will tend to "want" to remain right where it is. If the tablecloth were to be yanked away quickly, the fishbowl would move very little. Inertia, having been overcome by the tablecloth, would then be overcome, but the fishbowl, already at rest, would tend to remain right where it had been before – on the table.

And the same is true of human nature. If a government or an economic system collapses, the populace will experience an immediate shock of change, but their tendency will be to adapt as quickly as possible to maintain their previous situation as much as can be accomplished.

Has the government collapsed? Create a new one, possibly on similar principles as the previous one (hopefully with revisions made, to prevent the next government from making the same self-destructive mistakes a second time.)

Has the economy collapsed? Throw together whatever new form of economy works best until a more solid one can be created. This could mean relying temporarily on barter, but might mean the establishment of a safer form of currency, such as precious metals. And, again, when a new currency is introduced, revisions might be made as to who controls it, in order to assure that the same mistake is not repeated.

But, these are natural calamities that happen from time to time in civilization and, as long as the people dealing with the re-establishment of the government or economy are motivated in the direction of the benefit of the populace, there’s every chance that a solution will be created that would be implemented quickly, might minimize damage and, hopefully, be better than the last version. After all, if left to their own devices, people will come up with whatever system serves them well.

But, of course, we rarely witness the above scenario with regard to governments and economies. What we do see playing out, time after time, in one era or another, in one geographical location or another, is something quite different. Historically, what we’ve seen is that government performs the political and/or economic equivalent of pulling the tablecloth away slowly. And, of course, anyone who’s familiar with the old tablecloth trick understands what will happen. The fishbowl ends up smashed on the floor and the fish are left gasping for their last breaths.

This latter fact illustrates vividly why no one should ever pull away the tablecloth slowly. And yet, in generation after generation, humankind is repeatedly suckered into a situation in which their government does exactly that.

The way it works is that the government first says, "It’s too troublesome for you to run your own lives; leave it to us and we’ll look after you. We’ll take care of all those pesky details of life that are nuisances for you now."

First, they take control of "protection" in the form of a military, to protect the populace from threats from without and, later, create a police force to protect the populace from threats from within. Then, clearly, the people need a central fire service. They also need roads and community buildings. And, of course, these all cost money, so taxes are implemented. Then they are raised, as the costs of such services inevitably increase over time.

Then, an increasingly expansive list of other services is put forward – assistance for the poor, retirement funds, universal health benefits, etc. Soon, it becomes "necessary" to increase taxes to pay for the ever-expanding list of services the government controls. Throughout this process, the populace nods as each new "benefit" is introduced. And, since the process is gradual, they almost invariably fail to worry that the tablecloth is in motion and that their fishbowl is closer to the edge of the table than it was before.

But, in the meantime, the political leaders are continuing to pull the tablecloth and are aware that the fishbowl is nearing the edge. At this point, if they were responsible people, they’d say, "Oh-oh, we’ve been a bit too greedy and we’ve put you folks in danger. But, at this point, it won’t do any good for us to tax you less and cut out the services that have been promised to you. At this point, we need to stop pulling entirely."

And, of course, were they to do that, two things would occur. First, the populace would be up in arms at their entitlements being cut off. Second, the political leaders would be out of a job. With no more services to provide, taxation would cease to have validation. The political leaders would be in far greater danger from a cessation of movement than the people themselves.

What to do? Well, most of us, as we become adults, recognize that, in order to live, we must become productive. That’s what turns us into responsible people. But, remember, political leaders never learn this lesson. They go straight from being parasitical as children to being parasitical as adults. When the jig is up and the fishbowl is nearing the edge, they act the way they’ve always acted – as parasites. Only now, they realise that it’s all about to end very soon. Therefore, it’s time to get a last squeeze of the lemon before it goes dry.

At that point, they ramp up the economy through the creation of debt. They also increase taxation dramatically, with the claim that benefits must be increased. They then do their best to get themselves out of the way as the last pull of the tablecloth sends the fishbowl over the edge.

This, of course, is why it’s so overwhelmingly common for political leaders to take a hike just as their economies and/or governments are collapsing. Regardless of the era, regardless of the geographical locale, whether the leader be Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Shah of Iran, Fulgencio Batista or Idi Amin, those who caused the problem tend to have a well-funded exit plan in place and are rarely themselves trapped in the fishbowl.

Since this has been the nature of governments throughout history, we’d be wise to observe the situation objectively when assessing the country in which we live, and, we’d be wise to concurrently assess how things are going in other countries. If our home country is literally getting close to the edge, we might wish to make a move before the inevitable occurs.

 

Historically, in any era, there are always some countries that are getting near the edge and others that are not. Unfortunately, there's little any individual can practically do to change the course of these trends in motion. The best you can and should do is to stay informed so that you can protect yourself in the best way possible. The choice for anyone whose situation is reaching its expiry date might wish to vote with his feet, rather than to await the final pull of the tablecloth."

- internationalman.com

Free Download: Erich Fromm, “The Fear of Freedom"

“The Fear of Freedom:

Automaton Conformity”

by Erich Fromm

“In the mechanisms we have been discussing, the individual overcomes the feeling of insignificance in comparison with the overwhelming power of the world outside himself either by renouncing his individual integrity, or by destroying others so that the world ceases to be threatening. Other mechanisms of escape are the withdrawal from the world so completely that it loses its threat (the picture we find in certain psychotic states), and the inflation of oneself psychologically to such an extent that the world outside becomes small in comparison. Although these mechanisms of escape are important for individual psychology, they are only of minor relevance culturally. I shall not, therefore, discuss them further here, but instead will turn to another mechanism of escape which is of the greatest social significance.

This particular mechanism is the solution that the majority of normal individuals find in modern society. To put it briefly, the individual ceases to be himself; he adopts entirely the kind of personality offered to him by cultural patterns; and he therefore becomes exactly as all others are and as they expect him to be. The discrepancy between “I” and the world disappears and with it the conscious fear of aloneness and powerlessness. This mechanism can be compared with the protective coloring some animals assume. They look so similar to their surroundings that they are hardly distinguishable from them. The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton, identical with millions of other automatons around him, need not feel alone and anxious any more. But the price he pays, however, is high; it is the loss of his self.”

- Erich Fromm, “The Fear of Freedom”

Freely download 

“The Fear of Freedom”, by Erich Fromm, here:

- http://realsociology.edublogs.org/files/

"Live All You Can..."

"Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much 

matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life.

If you haven't had that, what have you had?"

- Henry James

"Complexity Theory: The Avalanche And The Snowflake"

"Complexity Theory: 

The Avalanche And The Snowflake"

by James Rickards

"One of my favorites is what I call ‘the avalanche and the snowflake’. It’s a metaphor for the way the science actually works, but I should be clear: it’s not just a metaphor. The science, the mathematics and the dynamics are actually the same as those that exist in financial markets.

Imagine you’re on a mountainside. You can see a snowpack building up on the ridgeline while it continues snowing. You can tell just by looking at the scene that there’s danger of an avalanche. It’s windswept… it’s unstable… and if you’re an expert, you know it’s going to collapse and kill skiers and wipe out the village below. You see a snowflake fall from the sky onto the snowpack. It disturbs a few other snowflakes that lie there. Then, the snow starts to spread… then it starts to slide… then it gains momentum until, finally, it comes loose and the whole mountain comes down and buries the village.

Question: What do you blame? Do you blame the snowflake, or do you blame the unstable pack of snow? I say the snowflake’s irrelevant. If it wasn’t the one snowflake that caused the avalanche, it could have been the one before, or the one after, or the one tomorrow. The instability of the system as a whole was the problem. So when I think about the risks in the financial system, I don’t focus on the ‘snowflake’ that will cause problems. The trigger doesn’t matter.

A snowflake that falls harmlessly – the vast majority of all snowflakes - technically fails to start a chain reaction. Once a chain reaction begins, it expands exponentially, can ‘go critical’ (as in an atomic bomb) and release enough energy to destroy a city. However, most neutrons do not start nuclear chain reactions, just as most snowflakes do not start avalanches.

In the end, it’s not about the snowflakes or neutrons. It’s about the initial critical state conditions that allow the possibiity of a chain reaction or an avalanche. These can be hypothesized and observed at large scale, but the exact moment the chain reaction begins cannot be observed. That’s because it happens on a minute scale relative to the system. This is why some people refer to these snowflakes as ‘black swans’, because they are unexpected and come by surprise. But they’re actually not a surprise if you understand the system’s dynamics and can estimate the system scale.

It’s a metaphor, but really the mathematics behind it are the same. Financial markets today are huge, unstable mountains of snow waiting to collapse. You see it in the gross notional value of derivatives. There is $700 trillion worth of swaps. ($2.5 Quadrillion by other reputable estimates. - CP) These are derivatives off balance sheet, hidden liabilities in the banking system of the world. These numbers are not made up. Just go to the IS annual report and it’s right there in the footnote.

Well, how do you put $700 trillion into perspective? It’s ten times global GDP. Take all the goods and services in the entire world for an entire year. That’s about $70 trillion when you add it all up. Well, take ten times that, and that’s how big the snow pile is. And that’s the avalanche that’s waiting to come down."

- https://caperebel.com/blogs/

The Daily "Near You?"

Columbia, Tennessee, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Great Decentralization"

"The Great Decentralization"

May the forces of history be with you.

by Joel Bowman

Buenos Aires, Argentina - Welcome, dear reader, to a new year and another Sunday Session... that time of the week where we pull back from the granular and ponder the grander, all with the abiding help of a glass or two of Bonarda. Today, we widen the lens even further...

Inflation and deflation... tyranny and liberty... bulls and bears... Betty and Veronica. History is full of epic matchups. Apparently equal, yet wholly opposing forces wrench at the heart... the brain... the wallet... and other vital organs... tearing us in impossible-to-reconcile directions. The story is the same in markets, in politics, in love and in life...

Take, for example, the economy, our primary area of concern in these here pages. On the one side, innovation and competition tend to exert downward pressure on prices over time. It is the natural outcome of competition, of creative destruction, where weaker hands and lesser ideas are weeded out over time. Lessons are learned... skills acquired... processes bettered. The resulting price deflation should deliver, as Jim Grant once phrased it, a kind of "dividend for the working man."

And it would... but for the dead weight on the other side of the fulcrum: the unnatural, para-market meddling of the State. Subsidies, grants, taxes, fixes, quotas, manipulations, infernal obfuscations and, perhaps above all, flagrant counterfeiting on the grandest of scales; all these nuisances collude to exert tremendous upward pressure on prices.

Destination: Oblivion: Despite the great leaps of mankind, in other words, against his best efforts to economize, optimize, progress, streamline and advance, prices tend to float higher upon a steadily rising tide of liquidity: inflation. At the end of the day, the average Homo Credulous is left with less... and the State that rules him with more. Of course, no one force holds sway for eternity. Abused currencies eventually collapse under the mass of their issuers' hubris. The clock is reset. And the battle begins anew.

Down here on the Pampas, for example, the local peso is accelerating towards oblivion. When we arrived, a dozen years ago, the exchange rate was 3 pesos to $1. Today, it’s 350-1. Here, just look at what we found under the sofa cushions over the weekend. Almost enough to buy a cup of coffee!

We've covered the inflation vs. deflation saga at some length in these pages already. Suffice to say, the struggle continues. Today, however, it is another Titanic battle that occupies our thoughts, one that manifests itself in almost every realm you can imagine, from the political to the financial to the economic and beyond. We refer, of course, to that great inhalation and exhalation of power: centralization versus decentralization. Read on for more..."

"The Great Decentralization"

by Joel Bowman

"A quiet insurrection is underway, dear reader. Participants already number in the hundreds of thousands. Perhaps millions. Some are only vaguely aware they are even part of it. Others think of little else. The rebellion grows, regardless. Hour by hour... day by day...

As for the movement's modus operandi... No shots will be fired. No soldiers conscripted. No taxes levied. In fact, this revolution will not be televised... mostly because it is not a revolution at all. By definition, revolutions simply return us to our point of origin. It's why they say history repeats... or at least rhymes. Kings are toppled, tsars slain, prime ministers ousted and presidents assassinated. And what changes? One gang of thugs is marched up the scaffold... just in time for another to take its place... on the throne, in the White House, the Casa Rosada, Downing Street.

To repeat: This is NOT a revolution. It is an evolution. First, a little background...

The Passing Parade: Seining through the pages of history, we come to discover cycles great and small. Some, like news cycles or fashion cycles, pass by in an instant. Unless you're paying close attention, these fads and distractions can pass right by without you even noticing them. In one season, out the next. We're talking about background chatter... cocktail party banter... the ho-hum white noise of a workaday existence.

Other cycles, like stock market cycles or election cycles, occur over a slightly longer period of time. At three... four... five years, they are small enough to remain vaguely comprehensible... intellectually digestible... available even to our poorly evolved, mammalian brains.

The average bull market in stocks since the Great Depression, for instance, ran for about 4 1/2 years. The average bear market, being of roughly equal and opposite force, lasted about the same time. There have been 21 bear markets since 1928, averaging 330 days. The current bear market – which began June 13 of last year, is ~185 days young. (In case you’re plotting our present coordinates: the shortest bear market in history, in the Spring of 2020, lasted just 33 days. The longest, when the dot com bubble burst, dragged out over 929 days...)

Monitoring these cycles, armchair analysts can reasonably expect to see many ups and downs during their own lifetimes. Bears follow bulls; donkeys succeed elephants. For those of us in the cheap seats, it's all part of the entertainment, the passing parade.

Grander cycles require a still wider lens. We have to stand further back, to broaden our scope, just to view them. Take, for example, bond-market cycles. Most economists reckon on about 30 years for a typical downtrend (like the one from 1920 to 1949) followed by about the same for the upswing (from 1949 to 1981). The last bond market bull celebrated its 40th birthday in September of 2021... before turning in its worst performance on record last year. If history is any guide, and this is the beginning of a new downtrend, many of us reading (and writing) these words will not live to see it turn again.

All in all, it takes two whole generations for a bond-market cycle to complete its journey, from Ithaca to Troy and home again. A bond investor might go his entire professional career without seeing the market return to one or the other extreme (low to high to low... or high to low to high). And like Odysseus’ gallant oarsmen, many will perish along the way.

In the grand scheme of things, however, this too is a relatively short cycle. Zooming out still further, we come to notice even larger, super cycles... great movements that lay hidden in plain sight from our granular, daily focus. Here we refer to the inhalation and exhalation of great political powers over time.

Dealing with the Devil: At one moment - the height of an empire, say - we find that it coagulates, congeals, coalesces. Power consolidates. It centralizes. We watch it swirl around the drain of a capital city... a Rome or a London or a Washington, D.C. While mighty militaries patrol the distant frontiers, wealth and influence are sucked toward the center. Sensing the direction of the loot, degenerates, sociopaths and the morally depraved gravitate in the same direction.

Power brokers. Power meetings. Power players. Power lunches. Power mongers. Bribing... conniving... contriving... Muckraking... phone hacking... unashamed Faustian pacting.

Politicking. The District of Columbia - and surrounding area - is an obvious example of this centralizing, centripetal trend. Just look at the grafters and opportunists lining its lucre-paved avenues. Witness the lobbyists scurrying hither and thither up and down K Street. Count the dollars sloshing around at feeding/election time.

The website opensecrets.org set for itself the impossible, presumably thankless task of tracking special-interest spending in the nation's capital. According to the non-profit’s data, more than 12,191 lobbyists shelled out a record $3.8 billion in 2021, currying political favors and courting preferential treatment on behalf of their paymasters. That's two and a half times the $1.4 billion spent in 1998, when the organization began keeping score.

Trawl around the site for a while – if you can stomach it – and follow the literally thousands of millions of dollars passing from one greased palm to another. Finance... insurance... real estate... defense... construction... labor... transport... health... there is nary a sector of the economy absent from the table.

Even so, you can be sure the funds you see and hear represent a mere fraction of the actual amount actually shuffled around, so called “dark money.” Both behind closed doors and on telescreens across the world, political actors dance for the camera. The show goes on. Bread and circuses for all.

For the poor outsider, it seems as if the game is consciously rigged against him. It is as though a guiding hand is working the machine, ensuring that he is kept out of the loop. An omnipotent director is posited to account for the direction for the current. But no such operator exists...

No doubt there are nefarious actors involved, rabid parasites feeding at the system's rotten core. A dozen soft euphemisms spring effortlessly to mind, from “defense contractors” (war/armament/munitions factories) and “security specialists” (hired guns/mercenaries/hitmen), to pharmaceutical “consultants” (drug dealers/pushers) and environmental/ESG “experts” (climate alarmists/anti-human death cultists), to mis/disinformation “advisors” (propaganda ministers) and the rest of the unholy, symbiotic alliance between State and crony-corporate interests... But these are merely byproducts of centralization, odious symptoms of a trend already in motion.

As the cycle of centralization continues, the cesspool at its dark heart gains in both mass and weight. Unable to move as quickly as it once could, it becomes taut... rigid... ill-adapted to absorb stressors... susceptible to disruption. It is at this point, when the center can no longer hold, when the heaving political apparatus is laden with crushing financial debt and malignant public doubt, that we hear history cry out for a catalyst... a stimulant... an agent of change.

It's been over half a millennium since the last such catalyst reshaped the world around it. Might the next moment already be upon us? Stay tuned for Part II, next Sunday..."

- https://bonnerprivateresearch.substack.com/

"Straight Calls with Douglas Macgregor"

Full screen recommended.

Straight Calls with Douglas Macgregor, 1/8/23:

"The Real Ukraine/Russia for Political/Military Insiders"

"Your home for analysis of breaking news and in-depth discussion of current geopolitical events in the United states and the world. Geopolitics. No ego descriptions. No small talk. Straight to the point. Calls with the relevant analysis only."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How It Really Is"

“The government is good at one thing. It knows how to break your legs, and then hand you a crutch and say, 'See, if it weren't for the government, you wouldn't be able to walk.”

- Harry Browne

Canadian Prepper, "Red Alert! Something Is Very Wrong Here"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 1/8/23:

"Red Alert! Something Is Very Wrong Here"

"Something is happening and it looks very bad."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Empty Shelves At Kroger! More Price Hikes! What's Next?"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 1/8/23:

"Empty Shelves At Kroger! More Price Hikes! What's Next?"

"In today's vlog we are at Kroger Marketplace, and are noticing more price increases on groceries! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Carmax Can't Find Buyers, Car Dealers In Big Trouble; Utility Bills Skyrocket; Economic Collapse"

Full screen recommended.

Jeremiah Babe, 1/8/23:

"Carmax Can't Find Buyers, Car Dealers In Big Trouble; 

Utility Bills Skyrocket; Economic Collapse"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Ukraine Was Not Built To Last" (Excerpt)

"Ukraine Was Not Built To Last" (Excerpt)

By David Stoclman

Excerpt: "The present disaster in Ukraine incepted in the Washington-sponsored Maidan coup of February 2014. Among other things it was a "revenge intervention" designed to punish Russia for being so bold as to thwart the neocon regime change adventure in Syria; and especially to haze Putin for persuading Assad to give up his chemical weapons, thereby removing any pretext for Washington military intervention.

As it happened, the Russian-friendly president of Ukraine at the time, Vicktor Janukovych, had at the last minute in late 2013 ditched a long-pending EU affiliation agreement and IMF stabilization plan in favor of a more attractive deal with Moscow. Under the so-called rule of law, that reversal would hardly seem outside the realm of sovereign prerogative.

But not by the lights of Washington, red-hot from being check-mated in Syria. Accordingly, the neocon operatives in the Obama national security apparatus, spear-headed by the horrid Victoria Nuland, insisted that the Russian deal not be allowed to stand and that Ukraine’s accession to NATO should be fast-tracked.

So doing, they demonstrated an immense ignorance about the 800-year history of the various territories which had been cobbled together in the artificial state of Ukraine, and the long-history of these pieces and parts as vassals and appendages of both Greater Russia and various eastern European kingdoms and empires that had marched back and forth across the pages of history.

In a word, they dove into a rabbit hole that has made Washington’s misadventures in the middle east small potatoes by comparison. But the War Party would be be stopped, encouraged to believe that its vast conventional military armada and the reach of its global economic sanctions could bring Putin to heel, as well.

In this context, however, it can be truly said that occasionally a few words are worth a thousand pictures–at least when it comes to Ukraine. Here’s one of them: The Ukrainian leader said that his country hadn’t been willing to cede territory from the beginning. "Had we been willing to give up our territory, there would have been no war," Zelensky said. He got that right!

So the question recurs. Why is it worth Washington’s sweeping Sanctions War on Russia, which is destroying the dollar-based global trading and payments system and triggering a worldwide inflationary calamity, to defend every inch of a sketchy map located on Russia’s doorstep? And that’s to say nothing of risking nuclear war!

Indeed, as we elaborate below, the present Ukrainian territorial map exists only due to the handiwork of Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev. Here is how and when these brutal tyrants attached each piece of today’s Ukrainian map (in purple, light blue and red, respectively) to the territories acquired or seized by the Russian Czars over 1654-1917 (yellow).

So the question recurs. Why is it worth Washington’s sweeping Sanctions War on Russia, which is destroying the dollar-based global trading and payments system and triggering a worldwide inflationary calamity, to defend every inch of a sketchy map located on Russia’s doorstep? And that’s to say nothing of risking nuclear war!

Indeed, as we elaborate below, the present Ukrainian territorial map exists only due to the handiwork of Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev. Here is how and when these brutal tyrants attached each piece of today’s Ukrainian map (in purple, light blue and red, respectively) to the territories acquired or seized by the Russian Czars over 1654-1917 (yellow)."

Full, highly recommended article here:

- https://original.antiwar.com

"What Happened to Made in America?"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 1/7/23:

"What Happened to Made in America?"

"It is amazing to see such a beautiful American craftsmanship. What happened to Made in America? We are at the Shelby Museum in Las Vegas."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Endless Horizon"

Deuter, "Endless Horizon"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"In silhouette against a crowded star field along the tail of the arachnalogical constellation Scorpius, this dusty cosmic cloud evokes for some the image of an ominous dark tower.

In fact, clumps of dust and molecular gas collapsing to form stars may well lurk within the dark nebula, a structure that spans almost 40 light-years across this gorgeous telescopic portrait. Known as a cometary globule, the swept-back cloud, is shaped by intense ultraviolet radiation from the OB association of very hot stars in NGC 6231, off the upper edge of the scene. That energetic ultraviolet light also powers the globule's bordering reddish glow of hydrogen gas. Hot stars embedded in the dust can be seen as bluish reflection nebulae. This dark tower, NGC 6231, and associated nebulae are about 5,000 light-years away."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210715.html

Chet Raymo, “Cosmic View”

“Cosmic View”

by Chet Raymo

“When writing about Philip and Phylis Morrison’s “Powers of Ten” I found I had made the following notation in the flyleaf, perhaps a dozen or more years ago:

Britannica
 32 volumes
 1000 pages per vol
 1200 words per page
 5 letters/wd
 = 200 million letters. So, 200 million letters in the 32 volume set of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Why was I making that estimate? I can think of several possibilities. Perhaps…

1. I was making a comparison with the number of nucleotide pairs in the human DNA; that is, the number of steps- ATTGCCCTAA, etc.- on the double-helix. If the information on the human genome- an arm’s length of DNA in every human cell- were written out in ordinary type, it would fill 15 sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Nearly 500 thick volumes of information labeled YOU. Think of that for a moment. Fifteen 32-volume sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica in every invisibly-small cell of your body. And every time a cell reproduces, all of that information has to be transcribed correctly. Did I say the other day that it took a semester to stretch the imagination to grasp the universe of the galaxies? It could take another semester to stretch the imagination to grasp the scale of the molecular machinery that makes our bodies work.

Or maybe…

2. I was trying to give an insight into the complexity of the human brain. There are something like 100 billion nerve cells in the brain. That’s equivalent to the number of letters in 500 sets of the Britannica! Each many-fingered neuron connects to hundreds of other neurons, and each synaptic connection might be in one of many levels of excitation. I’ll let you calculate the number of potential states of the human brain. We’ve left behind the realm of Britannica. Even talking of libraries would be insufficient. I was marveling here recently about the amount of digital memory Google must command to store all of those 360-degree Street View images from all over the planet, all of it instantly retrievable by anyone with access to a computer and the internet. I imagined banks and banks of electronics in some cavernous building in California. Big deal! I’m sitting here right now in the college Commons and I can bring to mind street views of every place I’ve lived since I was three or four years old.

By the way…

3. The number of letters in 500 sets of the Britannica is about the number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy.

And…”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

The Poet: Maya Angelou, “Alone”

“Alone”

“Lying, thinking

Last night

How to find my soul a home,

Where water is not thirsty

And bread loaf is not stone.

I came up with one thing

And I don’t believe I’m wrong,

That nobody,

But nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone,

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires

With money they can’t use,

Their wives run round like banshees,

Their children sing the blues.

They’ve got expensive doctors

To cure their hearts of stone,

But nobody,

No, nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone,

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely

I’ll tell you what I know…

Storm clouds are gathering,

The wind is gonna blow.

The race of man is suffering,

And I can hear the moan,

‘Cause nobody,

But nobody,

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone,

Nobody, but nobody,

Can make it out here alone.”

- Maya Angelou

The Daily "Near You?"

Robstown, Texas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"No Smooth Road..."; "Benedicto"

"Life has no smooth road for any of us; and in the bracing atmosphere

of a high aim the very roughness stimulates the climber to steadier steps,

till the legend, over steep ways to the stars, fulfills itself."

- W. C. Doane

o

"Benedicto"

"May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets' towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you - beyond that next turning of the canyon walls."

- Edward Abbey

"The Very Idea..."

"In the last few years, the very idea of telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is dredged up only as a final resort when the alternative options of deception, threat and bribery have all been exhausted."

- Michael Musto

"Brain Differences in Psychopaths Identified"

"Brain Differences in Psychopaths Identified"

by Louise Pratt

"Professor Declan Murphy and colleagues Dr Michael Craig and Dr Marco Catani from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London have found differences in the brain which may provide a biological explanation for psychopathy. The results of their study are outlined in the paper 'Altered connections on the road to psychopathy', published in 'Molecular Psychiatry.'

The research investigated the brain biology of psychopaths with convictions that included attempted murder, manslaughter, multiple rape with strangulation and false imprisonment. Using a powerful imaging technique (DT-MRI) the researchers have highlighted biological differences in the brain which may underpin these types of behavior and provide a more comprehensive understanding of criminal psychopathy. Dr Michael Craig said: 'If replicated by larger studies the significance of these findings cannot be underestimated. The suggestion of a clear structural deficit in the brains of psychopaths has profound implications for clinicians, research scientists and the criminal justice system.'

While psychopathy is strongly associated with serious criminal behavior (eg rape and murder) and repeat offending, the biological basis of psychopathy remains poorly understood. Also some investigators stress mainly social reasons to explain antisocial behaviours. To date, nobody has investigated the 'connectivity' between the specific brain regions implicated in psychopathy.

Earlier studies had suggested that dysfunction of specific brain regions might underpin psychopathy. Such areas of the brain were identified as the amygdale, ie the area associated with emotions, fear and aggression, and the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), the region which deals with decision making. There is a white matter tract that connects the amygdala and OFC, which is called the uncinate fasciculus (UF). However, nobody had ever studied the UF in psychopaths. The team from King's used an imaging method called in vivo diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DT-MRI) tractography to analyze the UF in psychopaths.

They found a significant reduction in the integrity of the small particles that make up the structure of the UF of psychopaths, compared to control groups of people with the same age and IQ. Also, the degree of abnormality was significantly related to the degree of psychopathy. These results suggest that psychopaths have biological differences in the brain which may help to explain their offending behaviors.

Dr Craig added: 'This study is part of an ongoing program of research into the biological basis of criminal psychopathy. It highlights that exciting developments in brain imaging such as DT-MRI now offer neuroscientists the potential to move towards a more coherent understanding of the possible brain networks that underlie psychopathy, and potentially towards treatments for this mental disorder."

Contact: Louise Pratt, louise.a.pratt@kcl.ac.uk, King's College London

- http://www.eurekalert.org/