Paul's blog

“Polly wants a cracker”

Sorry Polly, can’t have one, cuz you voted for Obama, and by doing so, you have aligned yourself with ‘intrinsic evil’.

For details see: link

If you know me you will now expect a long and bitter rant about abuse of (in this case: perceived) authority …

But I will show strength and restrict myself to a simple remark, since my blood pressure is way too high already as it is.

Concerning the remark by the volunteer church lector:

“I don’t understand anyone who would call themselves a Christian, let alone a Catholic, and could vote for someone who’s a pro-abortion candidate,” said Ted Kelly, 64, who volunteers his time as lector for the church. “You’re talking about the murder of innocent beings.”

“anyone who would call themselves a Christian, let alone a Catholic …” let alone a Catholic? Can you say ‘arrogance’?

Oh RIGHT, I forgot, Catholics are those Über Christians. I know: I was raised as one.

“You’re talking about the murder of innocent beings.” .. True! But I’m just wondering: Are you a vegetarian, Mr. Ted Kelly?

 

Tomorrow I’ll be headed to San Antonio, Texas, to join my wife who’s there for business, and to visit some good friends.
I know that there are rumors that the one and only true reason for my trip to San Antonio is an opportunity to raid the various local Half Price Book stores, but I, of course, have to deny these slanderous and vile rumors: the fact that I travel with a ridiculously large, yet almost empty suitcase for just four days is merely incidental.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to meeting my friends.

What I’m most certainly NOT looking forward to, is the actual flight.

I have always been fascinated by flying and airplanes.

However, ever since my maiden flight, in 1973, in an old tail dragger over the skies of that sorry excuse for a North Sea resort town, Skegness, Lincolnshire, England, flown by a seemingly deaf, blind and dumb WWI veteran, complete with stuttering engine, to the more comfortable trips in Boeing ‘Jumbo’ 747’s of such respectable companies like KLM, Quantas. Garuda en Singapore Airlines, I have been ambivalent about being the actual subject of transportation in these otherwise fascinating flying machines.

Yes, while at different times at different levels of intensity, I suffer from fear of flying.

Unlike most people with phobias, I don’t think my fear is particularly unreasonable or irrational!

Let’s face it: these things DO crash from time to time!

Sometimes I wonder about all those tens of thousands of people who, on any given day, voluntarily board an airplane.
Don’t they see the risk?

Are ALL those people of the mistaken but extremely popular opinion, that, yes, planes DO crash, but this, as by a law of nature, always happens exclusively to ‘other people’?

While this statement has been true, especially for me, so far … am I the only one who sees the fallacy in such a notion?
Don’t they see that there IS a risk that THEY will die in a crash?
True, the odds are firmly against it, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible! Do they simply dismiss the risk based on its low odds?

But don’t these same people buy lottery tickets, hoping to become overnight millionaires on even worse odds?

Okay, admitted, that’s maybe not a good example: the ‘bad’ outcomes of each ‘bet’ aren’t really in the same ball park: losing a few bucks by ‘not winning the lottery’ isn’t nearly as life altering as dying in a fiery plane crash.

And here I am, pondering all this, knowing full well, come tomorrow, that I’ll take a deep breath, drive to the airport, park my car, check in, buy a Scientific American, eat the traditional hot dog at the food stand between gates 123 and 125 in Terminal A, and finally board that plane… accepting my fate, “playing the odds”…

 

… just not one of mine …

… but it certainly and easily could have been one!

The following is a quote from a book I just finished (and recommended earlier: this is how chapter 21 starts in “The Black Hole War” by the renowned theoretical (theoradical!) physicist Leonard Susskind).

I post it here, because this is a perfect example of the type of conversations my wife and I sometimes have.

One morning, when I went down to breakfast, my wife Anne, remarked that my T-shirt was on backwards; the V shape woven into the fabric was in the back. Later in the day, when I came home from a jog, she laughed and said: “Now it’s inside out.” That set me to thinking: how many ways are there to wear a T-shirt? Anne mockingly said, “That’s the sort of stupid thing you physicists are always thinking about.” Just to prove my superior cleverness, I quickly declared that there are 24 ways to wear a T-shirt. You can stick your head through any of 4 holes. That leaves 3 holes for your torso. Having picked a neck hole and a torso hole, that leaves 2 possibilities for your left arm. Once you decide where your left arm goes, there is only one choice for your  right arm. So that means 4 x 3 x 2 = 12 ways to choose from. But then you can turn the shirt inside out, giving another 12, so I proudly announced that I had solved the problem: 24 ways to wear a T-shirt. Anne was not impressed. She replied, “No, there are 25 ways. You forgot one.” Puzzled I asked, “What did I miss?” With a look that would freeze hell, she said, “You can roll it in a ball and shove it …” You get the idea ¹.

¹. Since writing this, Anne has discovered at least 10 more ways to wear a T-shirt.

Sometimes … you just can’t win.

“What are you looking at?” asked my wife while she walked up behind me, looking at my computer screen.

Me: “something I absolutely NEED!!!”

She: (The look!)

I sighed, and answered “A Digitech RP250 Multi-Effects/Modeling Processor”

“What’s THAT?”, she wanted to know.

Now, HOW does one explain an RP250?

I thought about this for a while …

… do you start by explaining the ‘68 Marshall® 100 Watt Super Lead (plexi) Amp module?
*salivates*
or tell her about the mild-to-wild classic distortion stompbox models including TS-808, DOD® 250, ProCo Rat, Big Muff® Pi?
*sigh*
but then, suddenly, there is Jimi Hendrix and his Vox® Clyde McCoy Wah.
*swoon*
the “USB connectivity for recording, preset editing archiving and downloading and more.” is very cool, but then ..
you spot the “‘81 Mesa/Boogie®* Mark II C”
*heavy panting*

But wait! There is more!

There is the ‘65 Fender® Blackface Deluxe Reverb!
24 bit, 44.1kHz Sampling rate!
A high quality drum machine with 60 patterns.
The new AudioDNA2 ® DSP super-chip.
A 30-preset Quick Start Effects Chain Library.

And and and ….

And then there is the spousal verdict, very loud, very clear:

“If you don’t know what it is, YOU CAN’T HAVE IT!”

 

Link

Warning: The following post is “indecent but not obscene” [US Supreme Court case 438 U.S. 726 (1978)]

Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits.

Rest in peace, man.

And thanks!

 

Shamelessly stolen from, well, … actually, I forgot, but it’s all over the Internet.

Vicious Dog Pack Kills Gator in Florida

At times nature can be cruel, but there is also a raw beauty and even a certain justice manifested within that cruelty.

The alligator, one of the oldest and ultimate predators, normally considered the ‘apex predator’ in its natural eco-system, can still fall victim to an implemented ‘team work’ strategy made possible due to the tight knit social structure and ‘survival of the fittest pack mentality’ bred into the canines over the last several hundreds of years by natural selection.

Note that the Alpha dog has a muzzle hold on the gator preventing it from breathing, while the remainder of the pack prevents the beast from rolling and attacks the alligator’s soft underbelly.

See the attached remarkable photograph courtesy of Nature Magazine.

We strongly recommend that you preview this privately before determining if a younger audience should view the photo below.

View the photo

In episode 29 of the Star Trek series “The Next Generation”, the holodeck computer generates a character from the Sherlock Holmes novels by Arthur Conan Doyle: the villainous Professor Moriarty.

The interesting twist is that this holographically created image, at some point, starts to realize that he, in fact, IS a computer generated entity, and not the actual human being he is supposed to represent.

A remarkable feat! Only outdone by his success in actually leaving the holodeck.

I found that a very interesting episode, mostly because I have often thought along those lines myself (and who hasn’t?) .. what IF? What IF we were just part of a computer simulation? Could it be we’re just somebody’s (cruel) science project? Could it be that the universe as we perceive it, is just a hologram?

As I recently found out, scientifically, this is maybe not such a crazy nutjob idea after all.

The idea more or less started when the Dutch physicist (and Nobel laureate) Gerard van ‘t Hooft proposed his holographic principle, which, simply put, states that all information in a three dimensional space can be mapped onto a two dimensional boundary surface of that space. Or, to turn that around, the information described on a two dimensional surface can be projected in a three dimensional ‘holograph’.

The American scientist (who started his career at age thirteen as a plumber) Leonard Susskind developed that idea further.  If you find the idea of a holographic universe intriguing, you may consider getting yourself his book “An Introduction To Black Holes, Information And The String Theory Revolution: The Holographic Universe“ [Update: Disclaimer: This book is NOT exactly a ‘popular science’ book: it’s chockful of ‘higher’ mathematics! WAY over my head.].

Or, for a quick introduction, read the August, 2003 article in Scientific American by Professor Jacob Bekenstein.

Fascinating stuff, and I wish I would understand ten percent of it. [Update: Now that I have thumbed through the above mentioned book – that I no longer recommend for lay persons like myself – I have to humbly adjust that percentage from 10 to 1]

 

“Computer … resume program!”
 
[Update: Instead of the book mentioned above I WOULD recommend two of Leonard Susskind’s books that ARE written for the lay person. See below.]

The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics

The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design

— Link —

Imagine this: you and eight buddies go on a trip.

You’re all in a plane when suddenly, while in flight, a wing falls off.

Can you imagine, what it would be like, to have a reunion with your friends in, say, a week from the unhappy event.

Reminiscing about the lucky coincidence that you all happened to be wearing … parachutes when the incident happened?

Link

 
Some critiques on the “Crystal Skull” Indiana Jones movie, from Russia.

Communist Party members in Russia want to ban Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull from local theaters, calling it anti-Soviet propaganda that distorts history.

(Anti-Soviet propaganda? Get with the program: the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991. As for distorting history: wait till you see the Matrix!)

“It’s rubbish,” said Sergei Malinkovich, a leader for the St. Peterburg Communist Party. “In 1957 the Communists did not run with crystal skulls throughout the U.S. Why should we agree to that sort of lie and let the West trick our youth?”

(Come on! It’s not nearly as bad as when we tricked them with the lies of Harry Potter)

“Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett [are] second-rate actors, serving as the running dogs of the CIA,” the Party member wrote in a blog entry. “We need to deprive these people of the right of entering the country.

(Why? Because Russia already HAS enough second rate actors?)

Source:

Communist Party members in St. Petersburg said on a web site this week that the Soviet Union in 1957 “did not send terrorists to the States,” but launched a satellite, “which evoked the admiration of the whole world.”

(Oh that Sputnik thing? Looks like a crystal skull to me!)

Moscow Communist lawmaker Andrei Andreyev said Saturday “it is very disturbing if talented directors want to provoke a new Cold War.”

(I bet he finds this disturbing! Considering who lost the previous one.)

Source:

“What galls is how together with America we defeated Hitler, and how we sympathized when Bin Laden hit them. But they go ahead and scare kids with Communists. These people have no shame,” said Viktor Perov, a Communist Party member in Russia’s second city of St. Petersburg.

(Scare kids with Communists? And WHO is accusing us of that? HAHAHAHAHA)

Other communists said the generation born after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union were being fed revisionist, Hollywood history. They advocated banning the Indiana Jones [movie] outright to prevent “ideological sabotage.”

(And which ideology exactly would be sabotaged by this work of pure fiction?)

“Our movie-goers are teenagers who are completely unaware of what happened in 1957,” St Peterburg Communist Party chief Sergei Malinkovich told Reuters.
“They will go to the cinema and will be sure that in 1957 we made trouble for the United States and almost started a nuclear war.”

(Your kids don’t know what happened in 1957? Blame on you, Russia! As for us making them think you guys almost started a nuclear war in 1957: True, that’s distorting history alright, we all know that didn’t really happen until 1962)

Vladimir Mukhin, another member of the local Communist Party, said in comments posted on the Internet site that he would ask Russia’s Culture Ministry to ban the film for its “anti-Soviet propaganda.”

(Soviet propaganda? See above. Having a Culture Ministry banning movies: way to go guys!)

Source:

Party leaders accused the actors Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett yesterday of promoting crude, anti-Soviet propaganda in their new film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. They have urged Russian moviegoers to boycott the film and told Ford, 65, not to visit the country.

(Well, if Ford doesn’t get to go to Russia, then you don’t get to play in his next movie! So! There!)

The Communist Party’s ideology committee in Russia’s secondlargest city saw red over the plot. In an open letter, it declared: “Your work in this film is an insult to the Soviet and Russian people, who remember the difficult Fifties when our country was concluding its reconstruction after the Great War, but did not send merciless terrorists to the USA.” It said that Russians had loved Ford in previous serious roles ” which include a Soviet submarine commander in K-19: The Widowmaker – but went on: “You have no future in Russia any more. Speaking plainly, it is better for you not to come here. You will be beaten and despised.”

(Beaten and despised. Yes we have grown up a bit since the end of the cold war …)

The party’s central committee called Steven Spielberg’s film an attempt to “slander Soviet Communists” and poison the young against them. It called Ford and Blanchett “capitalist puppets”.

(Capitalist puppet: Psst, here in the west, that’s a compliment!)

Source:

“Our women don’t look like Nazis, but maybe Cate Blanchett was threatened by unemployment, so … she made this film,” Perov said.

(What DO Nazis look like?)

“The film is low-quality and would raise a smile if there wasn’t a danger of drawing into its orbit teenagers who know nothing about the 1950s,” Vladimir Mukhin, another member, said in comments on the Internet site.

(Low quality films raise smiles in Russia? As for your ignorant teenagers: why not TELL them about the fifties? Oh I know… I know.. it IS a bit embarrassing, but hey, they deserve to know!)

“Indians and aliens unite with Jones and his untrustworthy buddies to save the world from a Russian threat – what rubbish, simply a paranoid Churchillian fantasy,” Mukhin said.

(Right! Fantasy! Finaly one who ALMOST gets close!)

 

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: “O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.”
And God granted it.
Voltaire

*sigh*

I guess that’s what a life long exposure to state sponsored propaganda movies, presented as the truth and historically correct, does to the less enlightened minds: it apparently grows a blind spot for the genre of ‘FICTION‘.

 

To be sure:

Not all Russians are communists and apparently the above sentiments don’t quite represent the opinion of the average Russian:

The protests appeared to have little impact on the film’s commercial prospects. It was released on Thursday on 808 screens in Russia, a record for a Hollywood film.