We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
The world is moving strongly into a period of hostile takeovers.
For the purposes of our discussion, a hostile takeover is the subversion of an existing power structure from its current owners without shooting. I'll skip questions of merit. Deserve's got nothing to do with it, according to William Munny, the famous philosopher. Of course that line is a hostile takeover itself, from Lawrence of Arabia:
Lawrence: Tell the politicians to burn their paper now.
Allenby: Fair enough.
Lawrence: Fair? What's fair got to do with it? It's going to happen.
Sexual harassment lawsuits in the tech industry are a minor form of hostile takeover, for instance. Tech businesses were founded on circumventing established laws and customs by simply putting an http in front of your name. It worked for a while. They created nothing. They were hostile takeovers of existing power structures. They ignored laws and customs to get between the customer and the providers of goods and services they desire, as surely as Paulie in Goodfellas did to the restaurant and the patrons. Tech titans don't understand business much. That's why they're in charge of great affairs, but still sitting through TED talks about the productivity gains they'll enjoy by sorting their intellectual crayons by color. Their businesses are now big and established enough to be pillaged in turn, however, and the lady lawyers will have them, easy. They looked at my client funny, your honor. Make her CEO. You wouldn't look at Joe Pesci funny, and he's a walk in the park compared to any given woman in an office setting. I don't care. Uber run by Yahoo management doesn't bother me.
On a larger scale, shooting wars don't accomplish much anymore. Assad fights because he's weak, not because he's strong, for instance. If you order your affairs correctly, opportunities for plunder fall in your lap. People who are fighting are generally proxies of obscure power syndicates. For the most part, the world is a being ruled by syndicates. Gangster states. China is a syndicate. Russia is a syndicate. Their outward forms do not reveal their inner power structure. You simply watch what they do to identify what they're driving at. Russia wants a port on the Black Sea. They will keep the Crimea. That's not fair, say the Ukrainians. Fair? What's fair got to do with it? It's going to happen.
It appears that America is being run by a syndicate. There was a hostile takeover by an outsider who understood a proxy battle. The in crowd is attempting to put humpty dumpty back together again by any means they can muster. Looking for a head for this hydra is a waste of time. They do not need marching orders. They simply understand, as a group, that power is slipping away from them, so they might as well go all in, because if they don't, they'll be on the outside. You know, in the dreaded private sector.
They believe they deserve to run the United States, and signal their merit to rule by a series of categorical blandishments they swap with each other. They're a fraternity without Greek letters on the front. They don't think it's fair that they devoted their lives to the nomenklatura career track, only to have their skillset made superfluous by an outsider.
What's fair got to do with it? It's either going to happen, or it isn't.
The article's author inexpertly tries to flip the script back to: No one went to Trump's inauguration. He's not popular. There's 2500 words of foot stamping, and then a very interesting item I'd missed:
A White House official confirmed on Tuesday that part of Trump's globally televised speech will focus on energy issues, a reference to the Three SeAs Initiative meant to unite a dozen central European countries in a north-south economic alliance that will weaken Russia's regional power.
If that map at the top of this page looks like a nothingburger to you, you're not paying attention. I have found myself, completely by accident, doing business with businesses in three of the green countries, and the Ukraine, too. That's where the action is. Trump knows where the action is. His wife is Slovenian, after all, and she looks like she's still ready for action.
I think it is telling that most psychologists don’t seem to be able to recognize data patterns that are too large to be caused by psychological mechanisms. There are simply no plausible psychological effects that are strong enough to cause the data pattern in the hungry judges study. Implausibility is not a reason to completely dismiss empirical findings, but impossibility is.
Ah, statistics. Did you know that 94.73 percent of statistics are made up on the spot?
An empire like Byzantium does not last for a thousand years without its own share of political intrigue. Here are three accounts of murder told by medieval chroniclers in vivid detail, in which the plot did not go as smoothly as the conspirators hoped, but in end resulted with a new emperor on the throne.
Kathy Griffin and James Comey seen furiously taking notes.
Independent analysts told History the photo appears legitimate and undoctored. Shawn Henry, former executive assistant director for the FBI and an NBC News analyst, has studied the photo and feels confident it shows the famed pilot and her navigator.
Ooh. Independent analysts. I love those. They're better than anonymous sources. Did they prove that Amelia refused to show up for her physical in the Texas Air National Guard, too? I'm asking for a friend. Alright, alright, I'm asking for Dan Rather.
Davila said that plaintiffs could have taken steps to keep their browsing histories private, for example by using the Digital Advertising Alliance’s opt-out tool or using “incognito mode”, and failed to show that Facebook illegally “intercepted” or eavesdropped on their communications. “Facebook’s intrusion could have easily been blocked, but plaintiffs chose not to do so,” said Davila, who dismissed an earlier version of the five-year-old case in October 2015.
"Can" is not le mot juste. Does, and will be allowed to continue to do so, is more like it. The judge's reasoning is piquant: Did you see the way the plaintiff was dressed online? They were asking for it.
Volvo will only offer electrified powertrains in models that it launches starting in 2019, a move that signals its intention to phase out the internal combustion engine from its lineup, the automaker said Wednesday.
Younger people increasingly want more egalitarian relationships in which men and women can both pursue their careers and share household duties. But career pursuits have won the battle for the last decade or so, while starting or growing families has taken a backseat on a mass scale.
I see the kamikaze ethos is alive and well in the land of the rising sun.
“They’re not hard to pick out at the end stage,” Dr. Zabel said. “They have a vacant stare, they have a stumbling gait, their heads are drooping, their ears are down, you can see thick saliva dripping from their mouths. It’s like a true zombie disease.”
The deterioration in physiological function normally associated with aging is, in fact, caused by a combination of reduced physical activity and the aging process itself. By maintaining an active lifestyle, or by increasing levels of physical activity if previously sedentary, older persons can maintain relatively high levels of cardiovascular and metabolic function, including ˙VO2max (Kohrt et al. 1991), and of skeletal muscle function (Rogers and Evans 1993). For example, Fiatarone and colleagues (1994) found an increase of 113 percent in the strength of elderly men and women (mean age of 87.1 years) following a 10-week training program of progressive resistance exercise. Cross-sectional thigh muscle area was increased, as was stair-climbing power, gait velocity, and level of spontaneous activity. Increasing endurance and strength in the elderly contributes to their ability to live independently.
The saddest part of the story is how quickly training gains are lost during periods without regular (meaning 3+ days/wk) strenuous activity. There is measurable decline in cardio functioning and muscle strength in weeks, and training gains can be lost in a few months. Use it or lose it. That is just how it is after age 30 or 35.
Physical fitness, like mental fitness, is a life-style choice.
This will be a two-part post. I'm going to cover two Internet-related topics. If you have a bunch of siblings, kids and in-laws, definitely read the second part.
Avoiding The Domain Havesters
Pic: artist's conception of average domain harvester
If you ever, ever, think you might want to start up a blog or web site one day using your name (or future business name) as the domain, you need to do it ASAP, then hold onto it with both hands. The problem is that once a domain expires, the domain harvesters will grab it up, and then they'll charge you a pretty penny if you want to buy it back. I've seen them ask for upwards of $3,000.
And you can see why they do it. If you want to open Mary Brown's Boutique, and desperately want the 'marybrownsboutique.com" name, well, you'll probably be willing to shell out some bucks for it. And that'll be especially true since you'll then be able to write it off on your income tax as a business expense. In your mind's eye, that might be enough to justify it.
So, the answer is to get the rascal registered now, then desperately hold onto it until the day you want to use it. I'd suggest you use BlueHost, the web hosting company I've been using for 15 years. The domain will only cost you $3.95/mo, which beats the heck out of paying some domain harvester their blood money down the road. And BlueHost will help you keep the domain, either by billing you automatically every year, or notifying you by email when it's due.
Some tips on grabbing a unique domain:
— If you're looking to register "jimcrawford.com", but it's already been taken, try using your middle initial, your full middle name, or perhaps "james" instead of "jim".
— You can use hyphens, so if all the above are taken, try "jim-crawford.com".
— If you're opening a fun blog site and "coolestblogintown.com" is taken, try adding "the" to the beginning, or "a", "another", "yet another", "my", "your", etc.
As for using domain suffixes other than ".com", I tend to recommend against it. If someone's trying to remember your domain name from memory, and it finally comes to them, they're going to use ".com" just by default. And if someone else already has your domain but with a ".com" (which is likely, or you would have used it), that's where they'll end up.
BTW, there's no web site involved. All you're buying is the domain. Come the day you want to use it, that'll be when you either hire a webmaster or do it yourself using the remarkable WordPress software and my easy step-by-step guide.
Here's the link to BlueHost. The sign-up process is pretty simple. At one point you'll make up a BlueHost password. Scribble it and the domain into a Notepad file and keep that rascal safe. You might also print out a copy and stick it in some file folder.
Below the fold, the wonderful adventure of opening a family blog. If you've got a bunch of siblings, kids and in-laws, it's a great experience for everyone involved.
I could never figure out if Christopher Plummer was any good. He's been a fixture in movies I like to watch for a long time. He wouldn't get carved into any cinematic Mount Rushmores or anything, but he was always hanging around. He's more important than a That Guy in the movies, but I have trouble picturing people plunking down the shekels because his name was above the fine print on the poster.
He was Kipling and Arthur Wellesley and Rommel to good effect. He flounced around as Commodus pretty well in The Fall of the Roman Empire. The Sound of Music was approximately the most successful movie ever made, so it looks good on a resume, but he was just a bright moon in Julie Andrews' orbit in that one. The Battle of Britain is movie worth rewatching, but he's hardly the star of it. And no one pays any attention to anyone else when Peter Sellers is eating the scenery, so his turn in the Pink Panther series is also a secondary one. He and Cato have to fight it out for second place.
I got the impression he takes himself pretty seriously. Or, perhaps, wants us to take him seriously. That can be deadly. It leads to Charlton Heston trying to do Julius Caesar (shudder). Plummer has also declaims Shakespeare, but only in places where Canadian pigeons act as critics, so I have no idea to what effect. He's Canadian himself, and they ladle awards and titles all over him, but I don't know if that matters. They give statues out at random these days, based on a virtue-signalling order I can't bother to figure out.
So I get this movie Barrymore. It's a more-or-less one-man-play set to celluloid. Plummer is John Barrymore, a famous actor you never heard of if you're under the age of 93. Anyway, it's Barrymore ten minutes before his liver became an insuperable sea anchor. Washed up, bank account hoovered by Hoover and alimony. A man who made a bundle in bad movies, got serious about his work, and became a formidable Shakespearean stage actor. The movie is just Barrymore, wandering an empty stage with a reader offstage to give him cues. He wants to do Richard III, one last time, but he has to prove to some backers that he can still find the lines in the fog of his alcoholism. He still needs the work, every which way.
So Plummer plays Barrymore, a man born to a stage family, who works in Hollywood for dough and entree to the high life, but who wants to be taken seriously. Plummer has a chair or two, a drinks cart, a rack of costumes, and a basket of swords and flyswatters to work with, and a man in the canyon of the curtains to yell something back when he yells LINE! That's it. Plummer has to conjure up a man, bigger than life, then make him small, and somehow resurrect the greatness in fits and starts. He has to cook envy and pity for the audience on a hobo stove while they wait.
Identity thieves don't honor HIPAA rules? And an obese clerk with Mary Tyler Moore clothes and Post-It notes all over her monitor isn't good at safeguarding your medical records? I'm shocked. This is my shocked face.
Beacon Hill is a charming 19th neighborhood in Boston, close by the Massachusetts State House. It can't really be compared with the West Village of New York because the current charming West Village was built for the poor and working class, while the Beacon Hill development was built for the gentry.
Mrs. BD and friends were visiting colleagues on Beacon Hill a little while ago. She wondered where the beacon was. I checked it, and discovered that most of the hill and its warning beacon were taken away by horse and wagon in 1811.
It is still hilly, though.
Some major urban areas still have delightful, quiet, antique neighborly enclaves, untouched by modernity or urban renewal. I'm thinking Brooklyn Heights - and large parts of Harlem. Outside the northeast, I think of the entire downtown of Savannah, GA, which was spared the devastation of the Union armies and of urban renewal.
I have no desire to mock our British brethren on Independence Day. They are required by their circumstances to live on a pile of rocks and peat in the North Atlantic. We got the amber waves of grain. No sense rubbing it in. I'm not sure they'd acknowledge the slight. I imagine the reaction in Old Blighty at the occasion of the original Brexit was a shrug. The who, with the what now, where, has declared independence? Does that mean Lord Cornwallis will be back for the season in London? Jolly good!
The very idea that the United States would hold a grudge against England over the War of Independence seems odd to the modern American. There are plenty of European countries in line for mockery before we skip on down to the Anglo-Saxon-Norman-Scots-Irish-Welsh-Cornish-Manx-Chav conglomerate. Personally, I'd heap derision on, oh, I don't know -- Luxembourg -- before I'd mention Merry Olde. I mean, honestly, Luxembourg is a zip code, not a country. Their navy is a joke. Britain's navy has never been a joke. England expects that every man will do his duty, and they know how to get it out of him. In Luxembourg, mentioning Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash just means that Claus von Bulow is invited to your cocktail party.
Canada burned down the White House back in the day. Forgive and forget, I say. England shot Congreve rockets at Andrew Jackson. Water under the bridge, if you ask me. The Welsh may be swearing at us, but there's no way to tell by listening to them, so it's pointless to take offense. Australians do punch Americans with amazing regularity. But they punch everybody, so nobody takes umbrage. The United States is celebrating its 241st birthday today, and in the spirit of a guy who landed on his feet, I hereby invite the nation-state version of our crazy ex-wives, ne'er-do-well brothers in law, and illegitimate children to the barbecue. Happy Independence Day to one and all!
Watch a hyperlapse of the world's oldest commissioned warship the USS Constitution "Old Ironsides" entering dry dock for a planned multi-year restoration. The critical restoration work will allow her to continue her mission for years to come.
The USS Constitution is interesting as all get-out. It's made more interesting by the fact that it's basically a Ship of Theseus at this point. The United States is a Ship of Theseus. All the parts have been replaced a few times, but it's still basically the same thing.
Using a combination of traditional and modern tools and techniques in keeping with the ship’s original construction, Mystic Seaport’s shipwrights are helping to preserve the art of shipbuilding.
I've been on that boat. It's basically a studio apartment with wood paneling you can drown in. People used to be brave.
The “legendary” Moshulu is indeed the world’s oldest and largest square rigged sailing vessel still afloat. She is in fact the one and only restaurant venue on a Tall Ship today in the World. Built by William Hamilton & Co., Port of Glasgow, Scotland in 1904 for the G.J.H Siemers Co. of Hamburg, Germany as the four-masted barque Kurt. This “state-of-the-art” sailing ship was the finest and latest of man’s achievement in the world’s shipbuilding industry for the construction of bulk or packaged cargo sailing ships.
All male humans know the Moshulu is the boat packed with immigrants that cruises past the Statue of Liberty in The Godfather Part II. We also know that Han shot first. We don't know much else.
The U.S.S. Massachusetts was the worst battleship ever made. That has a lot to do with why it has spent the last 95 years rusting on the seafloor just outside the mouth of Pensacola Bay. Today, the ship is an Underwater Archaeological Preserve managed by the state of Florida. The rusting hulk is considered the oldest battleship still in existence. Scuba diving among the fish swarming over the steam-era wreck provides a portal to another time, when the nation's fledgling Navy was first beginning to flex its muscles.
Oh, THAT USS Massachusetts. The one they have in Fall River, Massachusetts is easier to visit, but it's just as rusty, I think. They have a submarine, too. It's basically a studio apartment with metal wallpaper you can drown in.
As the numbers dwindled of those who actively fought, focus turned toward others who had some sort of connection to or memory of the war. In 1868, the Anderson Intelligencer reported on an African-American man known as Old Father Robinson living in Detroit. Robinson had been born on the plantation of a Colonel in 1753 in Maryland. When the Colonel went to serve in the Revolutionary War, Robinson served alongside him as his bodyguard and was present for Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown which ended the war.
One of the Founding Fathers, John Adams, predicted that Independence Day would become America’s greatest holiday. This is what he wrote to his wife Abigail on July 3rd 1776: “(This) the Second Day of July 1776 will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.” Adams got the day wrong, though. Congress voted for independence on July 2nd 1776, but didn’t approve the text of the declaration until the Fourth.
Men who fought in a real, live shooting war weren't afraid of sparklers.
Don’t put accelerants on bonfires? Says who? You’re not my real dad. You’re not my supervisor. Who died and put you in charge? Yeah, well, you and whose army is going to stop me?
As Sam Adams used to say, "Hold my brandy smash and watch this!"
Due to their lust for drink, early Americans came up with a baffling variety of proto-cocktails from their slim culinary arsenal of rum, cider, ale, cream, sugar, molasses, eggs, spices and citrus. Some of the drinks they consumed—such as shrubs and hard cider—are again on the ascendance behind the bar; others, such as Whistle-Belly Vengeance (bits of stale bread dropped into warm, sour beer, then sweetened with molasses) might deserve to stay lost to history.
Goes to show what I know. I thought "Whistle-Belly Vengeance" was a reference to the Taco Bell drive thru. Silly me.
The Department of Historic Foodways was created in 1983, with the purpose of researching and recreating the foods of the 18th century. The department currently operates daily in the Governor’s Palace kitchen and the Armoury Kitchen.
Pro Tip- Don't stick your knife in the salt cellar. Old Muttonhead gets sore if you do. Viz:
As a young schoolboy in Virginia, George Washington took his first steps toward greatness by copying out by hand a list of 110 'Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation.' Based on a 16th-century set of precepts compiled for young gentlemen by Jesuit instructors, the Rules of Civility were one of the earliest and most powerful forces to shape America's first president, says historian Richard Brookhiser.
George Washington is the greatest man who ever lived. I mean it. He refused to become the king of America, though it was offered to him. When he turned over the reins of government to John Adams, it was the first peaceful transfer of real power by election in the history of the world. Many of his rules of civility still are intelligent, actionable advice for today's world. For instance:
Utter not base and frivolous things among grave and learned men, nor
very difficult questions or subjects among the ignorant, or things hard
to be believed; stuff not your discourse with sentences among your
betters nor equals.
Apparently, the internet needs to be abolished. George said so.
Happy Independence Day to Maggie's Farm readers, and all the ships at sea!
Like many other animals, humans are napping creatures. Our Western society doesn't really take that into account, nor should it because we demand a lot from people.
In my workday, I schedule in a 20-minute catnap after a chicken-salad lunch. It does me a lot of good, since I do my daily workouts at 6 am. After my catnap I am good for another 6 hours of work or a drive to NH.
Mediterranean-based societies have siestas - especially Spanish and Italian. Naptime, or sex + nap. In many cultures, lunch is their dinner and I do not know how they handle work after a large meal. I don't know about Asians or Africans.
I do believe that some of what we term "sleep disorders," and diagnose at great expense and often treat with amphetamines, are simply due to a need for a power nap. People vary.
Ocean liners, aka Cruise Ships, still dock on Manhattan's remaining Hudson River piers. The Normandie was one of the great liners but not the last one as the article wrongly suggests (eg The France, QE ll, the Nieu Amsterdam, the Queen Mary, the United States, etc)
Well, it's a nothing sort of Monday. Tuesday's a holiday, and everyone had Friday off, too. By the time the 4th rolls around, everybody's going to be too sunburned and hung over to blow their fingers off with off-brand fireworks properly. We're working in shifts here at Maggie's Farm, though. Bird Dog is still having his blood swapped out at the Peter Thiel/Keith Richards clinic, but the rest of us soldier on. We're not as interesting as Bird Dog, but we always tell the truth as we see it. We all wear really thick intellectual glasses, however. It makes us see things funny.
For instance, I'm not even sure that Donald Trump is Hitler. I know, the science is settled on that one, and I try and I try, but I can't see it. I squint and hold him at arm's length, and lift my lids real high, then rub my eyes, but I just can't picture it. He doesn't even look like Ernst Roehm to me. There's not even a hint of Admiral Raeder about him. I can't even gin up a resemblance to Roderick Spode, the amateur dictator. As far as I can tell, the body politic got tired of having Billy Ray Valentine as president, so we elected Thornton Melon. Meh. On to the links!
The family welcomed John to their home on April 30, 2015 and were even more surprised when they found they would be expecting their third biological child. Seven months later, the DHS contacted the family and asked them if they wanted to foster John's sister Paizley who was born while in jail. He said: 'We literally picked her up in the hospital the next day when she was a day old and brought her straight home.'
The White House usually picks a photo of the day. On June 28, the image they chose showed two girls from Nigeria who were abducted in 2014 by Boko Haram but managed to escape: Joy Bishara and Lydia Pogu. They're flanked by President Donald Trump and his daughter, Ivanka Trump. The photo had been taken the day before. (via The Instapundit)
It is actually rare for a marine mammal to "drown," as they won't inhale underwater; but they do suffocate from a lack of air. Being born underwater can cause problems for newborn whale and dolphin calves. It is the touch of air on the skin which triggers that first, crucial breath. And necropsies sometimes show that an animal never gets to the surface to take its first breath of air.
There has been one arrest following April's disastrous Fyre Festival event, as the Southern District of New York US Attorney's office announced the arrest of Fyre Media founder William McFarland. He's charged with wire fraud for allegedly lying to investors about how much money the company was making from artist bookings. According to Assistant Director-in-Charge William F. Sweeney Jr., "McFarland truly put on a show, misrepresenting the financial status of his businesses in order to rake in lucrative investment deals."
Slowly but surely, it's bound to start dawning on Millennials that the internet is not a magical place where regular old laws don't apply.
Everything about the painting — from the subject matter (a Caucasian man between the age of 30 and 40) to his clothes (black, wide-brimmed hat, black shirt and white collar), facial hair (small mustache and goatee) and even the way his face is positioned (facing right) — was distilled from Rembrandt's body of work.
If Rembrandt was a clapboard, this is vinyl siding.
Her appointment was a victory for the women on the Hill. Though women were integral to the success of the Manhattan Project—scientists like Leona Woods and Mary Lucy Miller played central roles in the creation of the bomb—none occupied leadership positions. In this respect, Serber stood alone. As the head of the scientific library, she became the Manhattan Project’s de facto keeper of secrets, a position that soon saw her targeted for an FBI probe—and almost ended in her being fired from the project.
The quest to portray secretaries as more important than their bosses rolls on. Because girlz.
The new controlled folder feature is designed to protect against viruses and ransomware from locking machines out of certain folders. Ransomware has hit the headlines recently as WannaCry and Petya wreak havoc on older Windows machines worldwide. Microsoft is also including exploit protection into its Windows Defender software in Windows 10, which should help prevent viruses and malware from exploiting vulnerabilities in the first place.
As is usual, the article is refreshingly information-free. It sounds similar to always running Windows as a user, and reserving the administrator role for nothing but recovering an earlier image of your computer if things go south on you.
“Although it hasn’t been tested in a kangaroo-specific environment, there was an instance where black swans were interfering, and so they had to build into the car the ability to recognise animals,” Amy Kaa said. Volvo plans to release its first autonomous cars by 2020 and has pledged zero fatalities or serious injuries from all its cars by that time.
I'm confused by the term "kangaroo-specific environment." What about vaguely kangaroo-ish environments, like bars at closing time?
For the entire video, the camera captures him slowly pedaling by numerous tents under the Hairball, as people congregate near their belongings in the narrow bike path. Shopping carts, recycling bins and more sit in the path. The number of people living in tents is near constant through the video. Waddling described it as “impressively depressing,” when he sent it to the San Francisco Examiner.
As usual, the answer is, "Something must be done." Since this is San Francisco, that means something must be done by someone else, at great expense, to assuage your guilt as you pedal past the poors. The policeman in Oklahoma in the first link shows you what "something" really means, virtue signallers. Get busy.
”Since our work is theoretical and computational it must be still verified experimentally, before it can become a standard model of light in a transparent medium. Measuring the total momentum of a light pulse is not enough but one also has to measure the transferred atomic mass. This should be feasible using present interferometric and microscopic techniques and common photonic materials”, researcher Mikko Partanen says.
I'm not exactly sure, but wouldn't that mean that Tired Light is in, and the Red Shift is out? So Einstein was confused, and the universe probably isn't expanding? Other than that, this isn't big news. I wouldn't worry about it. The scientist is obviously a loon. Look at that quote:
"Since our work is theoretical and computational it must be still
verified experimentally, before it can become a standard model of light
in a transparent medium."
Theoretical, computational work needs to be verified experimentally? Hold on there, Poindexter. That kind of approach doesn't fly in climate science, so I don't think we should pay attention to it in physics, either. Hey, Mikko, just say that because of Republican obstruction, light will keep getting slower and slower until you can catch it with fielder's glove. You'll get a big grant, and the science will be settled.
IQ is easy to measure, as an example, but many things which effect our reaching our goals are more difficult to measure.
I know that,when organizations consider people for hire or for promotion, they always consider the person's "intangibles." That includes things like amiability, appearance, dress, comportment, manners, sophistication, cultural knowledge, reliability, tone of voice, and so forth. Their "vibe." A good vibe is a sort of personal capital.
Another intangible which matters in life is social capital, something Charles Murray often speaks about. People obviously vary a great deal in the extent of their social connections and (cliche again) one can easily be lonely in a crowd. Many prefer to be isolated but I think there is a basic human need to be "in community," to have human connections of all sorts outside of family. We are tribal creatures. I feel sad for those who lack tribes with whom to touch base and reconnect during the holiday season. That makes it depressing indeed because it's supposed to be about fun fun fun and party party party, right?
There are many ingredients to constructing a satisfying life, but what a satisfying life means is different for everybody. However, I believe that to be in community, or really a part of multiple communities, is a key component. Some care about it more than others, for certain. With a little luck, the construction begins with an anchor solidly lodged in immediate or extended family, and extends, in separate but often-overlapping circles, out from there depending on what one does or decides to build.
And I do mean "build." Like career, community is never handed to you on a silver platter. I like to connect with interesting, intelligent, positive, and amusing people with interesting and adventurous lives. Who doesn't? On Saturday night, I met a gent, a retired banker, who covered the erection of the Berlin Wall for the New York Times when he was 21 years old. He had taken his grandkids to the Checkpoint Charlie museum in Berlin this summer. I want to include him, and his wife, in one of my circles.
Finding people with whom we have affinity and comfort is not easy especially for the shy, and seeking at least a few which go beyond the superficial is a wholesome and worthwhile life challenge. For example, I do not need any more friends who love to discuss handbags because my handbag interest is two minutes deep. Possibly three minutes.
I discussed the topic somewhat in my post Class, Social Capital, and Character Traits. Sometimes I ask patients to create a Venn diagram of the human communities in which they live and form relationships, beginning with family and extended family as the necessary and solid core - regardless of how one may feel about them at a given moment. It can be illuminating.
The categories (Venn circle diagrams) that I suggest include things like:
Family and the people who are "like family" Closest confidants, closest personal and family friends Old friends Spouse's buddies and closest pals Warm and friendly acquaintances, friendly neighbors, and friendly shopkeepers, doctors, lawyers, and other life helpers Group connections (eg church, clubs, sports friends, favored activities companions, etc) Colleagues and work-related groups or organizations Local community-based organizations and volunteer organization associates and pals
and so on.
It can be a bit of a drafting challenge when there are plenty of overlapping circles. but that results when one has built "an established life," a well-rooted and integrated life over years. I drew one such diagram out for myself last year, and it was an interesting little project.
When people move, they risk losing quite a bit. I don't know how some people move or retire to South Carolina or Florida and rebuild a rich life from scratch. We could not do that, but we would not want to anyway.
6:12 Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions.
6:13 No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness.
6:14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
6:15 What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!
6:16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?
6:17 But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted,
6:18 and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.
6:19 I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification.
6:20 When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.
6:21 So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death.
6:22 But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life.
6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Matthew 10:40-42 10:40 "Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.
10:41 Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous;
10:42 and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple -- truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward."
Avoiding The Domain Havesters 
Beacon Hill i
Dr. Tim Ball's new book: 
For summer get-togethers or any other festive occasion, along with beer and wine it's fun to have a cocktail theme, like one kind of pitcher cocktail.
American Houses: A Field Guide to the Architecture of the Home