"I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids - and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination - indeed, everything and anything except me."
"The COVID Tracking Project" Every day, our volunteers compile the latest numbers on tests, cases, hospitalizations, and patient outcomes from every US state and territory. - https://covidtracking.com/ ○
2/22/2021: "Cases are very high but have decreased over the past two weeks. The numbers of hospitalized Covid patients and deaths in the Pinal County area have also fallen. The test positivity rate in Pinal County is very high, suggesting that cases are being significantly undercounted. We’ve recommended additional precautions below."
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A Comment, 2/22/21: Folks, this is your worst nightmare made real, the first 48 hours, day and night, are painfully intense, relentlessy sucking the life right out of you. Now on day 4 the symptoms are far less powerful, but quite noticable. I simply have no way to adequately describe this experience without including the words horror and terror. Please, avoid this monster at all and every cost! Stay safe!
"You’d think that a wobbling civilization, plagued by failures of economy and politics, would have better things to do than submit to the crypto-religious ghost-dance of racial hysteria called “being Woke” that preoccupies its thinking class. Case in point: the vocational martyrdom at Smith College of a lowly staffer named Jodi Shaw, who objected publicly to the ritual indignities heaped on her by colleagues and students in the name of “social justice” — that is, the holy war against “whiteness.”
Her story: Ms. Shaw, a divorced mother with two children (and Smith alum, 1993) worked as a Student Support Coordinator in the Department of Residence Life (that is, a dorm counselor). She was asked to denounce herself in staff meetings about “systemic racism,” and complained about it through the proper channels, which only invited more hectoring abuse. In frustration, she finally posted a video on the web to expose the Stalinist bullying that was allowed to infect every corner of campus life at Smith. The admin offered her a cash settlement to shut up and get lost. Ms. Shaw turned it down but resigned anyway in a long letter to Smith President Kathleen McCartney that she made public about the college’s hostile workplace.
How does this happen? Because Wokery above all is about status, and the elite schools exist to confer status on the young people who can get into them, who then move on into an adult life of high-status (high-paying) employment facilitated by their old school connections. In prior times, the elite schools accomplished this by offering a superior education via superior faculty and superior curricula. Lately, the emphasis has shifted to promoting sham moral superiority, because it is a shortcut to gaining power over other people - and nowadays, elitism is no longer about excellence, but just raw power over others. As the Woke hysteria ramped up on campuses across the nation, and the various colleges and U’s started competing to out-do each other in moralistic fanaticism, Smith College vied with its sister schools and the other Ivies for Woke-est of all.
The moral black hole at the center of this vicious nonsense is the spectacular failure of authority of the people who run these institutions. Smith President Kathleen McCartney supported and encouraged the Woke inquisition on her campus. She gets paid the tidy sum of $515,461 a year. Maybe she didn’t want to give that up by taking a principled stand against bad behavior and bad ideas. Maybe she favors the rule of bad ideas and unprincipled behavior? Is she stupid or depraved? And, of course, what about her huge staff of vice-presidents and deans, not to mention the school’s board of trustees? To what degree are we seeing simple cowardice?
Ms. McCartney got stung in 2014 - the year of the Ferguson, Missouri, riots - when she sent out a campus-wide email, trying to mollify the inflamed student body, under the heading “All Lives Matter.” This was early in the Woke frenzy, and the phrase “all lives matter” was just then getting minted as a form of “hate speech,” so Ms. McCartney apparently made an innocent blunder - for which she was forced to pay with one of those abjectly disingenuous apologies that have become the standard dishonorable response to Woke coercion. Evidently, she learned a lesson with that: just go with the flow. The wonder is that not one other adult on that campus has the decency to speak out against the new Stalinesque fashion, or to support Jodi Shaw.
It must be self-evident to many of the people caught up in this mob madness that the Woke crusade is dishonest, stupid, cruel, and evil. All it really accomplishes is to generate more racial animosity while it paints people-of-color as not having the personal wherewithal to get on in their lives without extra-special assistance from people not of color. But having sacrificed their sense and their honor, how can people in authority repent? As author James Lindsay puts it on a podcast at his New Discourses website:
"They have been supporting this thing that they can see for themselves is complicit in evil, they intuit it… but psychologically they cannot let themselves see it, because to admit that what they see in front of their own eyes… to admit that it’s obviously as bad as it is, that the theory itself [systemic racism] is worse than bankrupt, it’s evil, requires going through the entire psychological process of admitting to yourself, and to others around you, that they got duped, and they carried water for that evil thing… There’s a high psychological cost to admitting that you were dumb and got tricked, and there is a high social cost for both of those things as well.”
Yeah, there should be a cost. I hope Jodi Shaw sues the living sh*t out of Smith College, its president, and its board of trustees. She has a Go-Fund-Me page. It contains the video she made. Send her some money so she can support her kids and hire a lawyer. There’s a desperate need to impose consequences for the failure of authority in this land. And to put this insane race hustle behind us so we can get on with the task of preserving civilized life in a society that is about to implode from further failures in economics and politics."
"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
Investors Fueled The Bubble, But The Fed Will Burst It"
by Epic Economist
"There's no doubt we're in a massive stock market bubble. The only question is, what will be the trigger event that will finally burst it? Several factors are at play and one wrong turn can lead to a crash. However, according to experts, there are two main determinants that are already setting up the stage for a major collapse. That's what we're going to expose in this video.
Financial strategist and market expert, Lance Roberts has recently shared an analysis on the website Real Investment Advice, in which he outlined that the common belief that as long as the Federal Reserve is active there would be nothing investors should worry about may actually not be backed by tangible prospects anymore. In fact, the central bank might soon find itself trapped by its own policies, and ended up providing the two pins that will pop the stock market bubble.
All market crashes, which resulted from the preliminary bubble, have actually occurred as a consequence of other factors unrelated to valuation levels. The primary catalysts have varied from liquidity troubles to political actions, reckless monetary policies, economic recessions, or inflationary spikes. Those determinants were the catalyst, or trigger, that led to the investors' “reversion in sentiment”, and therefore, the crash. Right now, amongst many other possible drives, there are two key factors that very likely to make markets implode.
The first one is inflation. The Federal Reserve has persistently maintained that its monetary policy is a function of two essential components: full employment and price stability. So, on one hand, the Fed has signaled it is willing to let “inflation” run hot, but on the other hand, the central bank's biggest fear is to repeat the runaway inflation of the 70s. By contrast, the foundation of the entire current bull market is low rates. If historical patterns can still be used to reflect modern-day trends, it appears that very soon the Federal Reserve will start talking about tapering monetary policy, and hiking interest rates.
Consequently, the second key factor would be higher interest rates. As Roberts highlights, the problem with inflation is that if economists do get their wish for higher prices, such also corresponds historically with higher interest rates. However, every time interest rates have moved up correspondingly with inflation, that never remained the case for long. Although much of the media constantly suggests that interest rates are may surge higher due to economic growth and inflationary pressure, the expert disagrees with that notion. Instead, he sustains that economic growth is “governed” by the level of debt and deficits. And at this point, it isn’t just the heavily leveraged government - it is every single facet of the economy. Debt has exploded in pretty much every sector of the economy throughout the past few years.
"So, how did the Federal Reserve fall into this trap?" one may ask. As people often say, “a crisis happens slowly, then all at once.” Considering interest rates affect “payments,” rising rates are likely to have a negative impact on consumption, housing, and investment, which ultimately halts economic growth. That's why Roberts argues that "with expectations currently off the charts, literally, it will ultimately be the level of interest rates that triggers some “credit event” that starts the great unwinding. It has happened every time in history."
So now, the biggest concern for the market going forward is that the current prices are backed by the ambitious idea that the economy will experience a speedy recovery back to pre-recession norms, the health crisis will be swiftly controlled and the widespread distribution of a vaccine would put that chapter behind us. However, considering our real economic prospects, and the emergence of two new virus variants, and the slow speed of vaccination, it's very unlikely that things will go smoothly, so the Federal Reserve is going to have a huge problem.
Every time excessive bullish optimism takes over the stock market it is eventually met with disappointment. In short, the monumental amounts of liquidity, the strong appetite for speculative risk, and a fear of missing out have all merged to fuel asset bubbles especially in the tech sector, cryptocurrencies, and many other speculative startups in favored market segments. Investors may have created and fuelled the bubble, but policymakers are the ones that will make it all explode. As margin debt keeps spiking and continues to contribute to the speculative frenzy, stock prices will remain trading at record-highs even though our bleak economic outlook won't sustain all of that optimism. All signs point to a coming market crash and the bursting of the tech bubble. At this stage, there's no more escape."
“Separated by about 14 degrees (28 Full Moons) in planet Earth's sky, spiral galaxies M31 at left, and M33 are both large members of the Local Group, along with our own Milky Way galaxy. This narrow- and wide-angle, multi-camera composite finds details of spiral structure in both, while the massive neighboring galaxies seem to be balanced in starry fields either side of bright Mirach, beta star in the constellation Andromeda. Mirach is just 200 light-years from the Sun. But M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, is really 2.5 million light-years distant and M33, the Triangulum Galaxy, is also about 3 million light years away.
Although they look far apart, M31 and M33 are engaged in a gravitational struggle. In fact, radio astronomers have found indications of a bridge of neutral hydrogen gas that could connect the two, evidence of a closer encounter in the past. Based on measurements, gravitational simulations currently predict that the Milky Way, M31, and M33 will all undergo mutual close encounters and potentially mergers, billions of years in the future.”
"Everything passes away- suffering, pain, blood, hunger, pestilence. The sword will pass away too, but the stars will still remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the earth. There is no man who does not know that. Why, then, will we not turn our eyes towards the stars? Why?"
"There is a power in nature, restless and terrible- storm, wildfire, earthquake, tidal wave. There is a delicacy too, to which we attend with a more perceptive eye and ear- the woolly bear caterpillar in the grass, the red-tailed hawk circling high and silent above the meadow, the six-dotted shadow of the water strider on the bottom of the pond. I think of lines from a poem of Grace Schulman, a poem called “In Place of Belief”:
“...I would eavesdrop, spy,
and keep watch on the chance, however slight,
that the unseen might dazzle into sight.”
Listening. Watching. Waiting admidst the clamor of strident certainity for the still small voice. Waiting for the unseen to dazzle into sight. Karl Popper, the eminent philosopher of science, once wrote, "It is imperative that we give up the idea of ultimate sources of knowledge, and admit that all knowledge is human; that it is mixed with our errors, our prejudices, our dreams, and our hopes; that all we can do is to grope for truth even though it is beyond our reach." Reaching. Groping. Evavesdroping. Four centuries after Galileo, the world is still beset by those who claim access to ultimate sources of knowledge- divine revelation through tradition, holy books, or prophets. If there is a fundamental way to divide people in the world today it is into those who know and those who grope.
In the southern hemisphere summer of 1848, at age twenty-three, Thomas Huxley was sailing Australian waters as Assistant Surgeon on HMS Rattlesnake. He was head-over-heels in love with a remarkable young women he had met Down Under, and drifting into the skepticism about matters of religion he would later dub "agnosticism." Other than young Henrietta "Nettie" Heathorn, the main thing on his mind was jellyfish, of which he had netted hundreds. As the ship sailed up the Australian coast he worked at sorting out the relationships between his many specimens, and between the jellyfish and other marine organisms. Huxley's biographer Adrian Desmond writes: "Nettie, a sensible girl who liked Schiller and penned love poems, must have asked 'Why jellyfish?' And he must have led her self-importantly from these pulsing 'nastinesses' to the great problem of existence, contrasting the tiny truths of creation with the great sandcastle sophistries for which men were willing to die. The tiny truths were real bricks which would build a palatial foundation to Truth. They were stanzas of Nature's great poem; and only by reciting the ultimate sonnet could we gain a rational set of mores and a real meaning to life."
The tiny truths of creation! Huxley was convinced that we have something to learn about the creation and ourselves by studying the lowliest blobs of protoplasm afloat in the sea. The great truths, if they are to be found, will be discovered in the Book of Nature, as a patient accumulation of individually minute observations. For Huxley, the only knowledge worth having was secular, not theological, and "was not to be delegated by episcopal patrons, but seized by plebeian hands." His jellyfish represented common knowledge- groping, partial, tentative- the still small voice, by and for the common man.”
“To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special. I just got one last thing... I urge all of you, all of you, to enjoy your life, the precious moments you have.”
"You've seed how things goes in the world o' men. You've knowed men to be low-down and mean. You've seed ol' Death at his tricks... Ever' man wants life to be a fine thing, and a easy. 'Tis fine, boy, powerful fine, but 'tain't easy. Life knocks a man down and he gits up and it knocks him down agin. I've been uneasy all my life... I've wanted life to be easy for you. Easier'n 'twas for me. A man's heart aches, seein' his young uns face the world. Knowin' they got to get their guts tore out, the way his was tore. I wanted to spare you, long as I could. I wanted you to frolic with your yearlin'. I knowed the lonesomeness he eased for you. But ever' man's lonesome. What's he to do then? What's he to do when he gits knocked down? Why, take it for his share and go on."
"The COVID Tracking Project" Every day, our volunteers compile the latest numbers on tests, cases, hospitalizations, and patient outcomes from every US state and territory. - https://covidtracking.com/ ○
2/20/2021: "Cases are very high but have decreased over the past two weeks. The numbers of hospitalized Covid patients and deaths in the Pinal County area have also fallen. The test positivity rate in Pinal County is very high, suggesting that cases are being significantly undercounted. We’ve recommended additional precautions below."
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My luck ran out Thursday, after dodging this monster for a year. No idea
how this plays out, will do my best to maintain the blog. Please folks, stay safe!
“The Tarantula Nebula is more than a thousand light-years in diameter, a giant star forming region within nearby satellite galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud, about 180 thousand light-years away. The largest, most violent star forming region known in the whole Local Group of galaxies, the cosmic arachnid sprawls across this spectacular composite view constructed with space- and ground-based image data.
Within the Tarantula (NGC 2070), intense radiation, stellar winds and supernova shocks from the central young cluster of massive stars, cataloged as R136, energize the nebular glow and shape the spidery filaments. Around the Tarantula are other star forming regions with young star clusters, filaments, and blown-out bubble-shaped clouds In fact, the frame includes the site of the closest supernova in modern times, SN 1987A, at the lower right. The rich field of view spans about 1 degree or 2 full moons, in the southern constellation Dorado. But were the Tarantula Nebula closer, say 1,500 light-years distant like the local star forming Orion Nebula, it would take up half the sky."
“There is a concept in physics called angle of repose. Set an object, a book say, on a plank. Now slowly tip up one end of the plank until the moment when the book just starts to slide. The angle between the plank and the horizontal is the angle of repose, where the component of the gravitational force down the plank becomes greater than the maximum friction force holding the book at rest. Or, in more evocative terms - as I write I am lying on the couch with the laptop in my lap, in perfect repose. If you started tipping up the couch, at some point I'd go sliding into a heap at the bottom. That's the angle of repose, or perhaps it would be more accurate to call it the angle of the end of repose.
This comes to mind because I just spent fifteen minutes on my knees in the yard watching ants excavate a nest in the ground. One by one they scurry out of the hole carrying a tiny grain of sand, which they dump in a ring around the hole. A circular pile. Now if the ants just dumped their burdens at the mouth of the hole, pretty soon the pile would get so steep that the sand grains would slide back into the hole. Instead, the circular ring gets higher and wider, with a slope that never exceeds the angle at which the grains will slip - the angle of repose. Now here's the thing: the ants almost invariably carry their grain to just beyond the top of the pile. If the grain slips, it will slide away from the hole. These tiny ants, hardly bigger than sand grains themselves, understand a little physics in their mysterious instinctive way.
Wallace Stegner has a novel titled "Angle of Repose." It is indeed an evocative phrase. In a job, in a relationship, in life itself, many of us instinctively seek that maximum degree of individual gratification that will satisfy emotional needs without doing violence to our essential repose, and that of those around us - the art of walking close to the edge, the thrill without the spill. Every day in the news we hear of folks - politicians or celebrities - who tipped the plank too far, whose lives went sliding into self-destruction, who failed to grasp, metaphorically speaking, something that a tiny ant instinctively understands.”
