I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may, -- light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful. -John Constable, painter
Williamsburg was lovely. Pretty easy drive back to Pittsburgh--much easier than down because I avoided the highway construction on Route 17.
Chris looks good.
Was able to see great skies in Williamsburg, more than overcast here. Jupiter was so bright in Williamsburg I thought it was a plane.
Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez want the federal government to cap interest rates charged by credit card companies at 15 percent. The likely results will be that people with no credit history or poor credit will have more difficulty getting credit cards. Price controls always decrease the availability of what is controlled.
Want to discourage smoking? Make cigarette companies charge less for them.
The students who receive a special designation allowing them extra time to take the admissions exam to New York City’s elite public high schools are more often white or well off, according to data released Monday by the city Department of Education.
From an interview I found with an environmentalist on "ecomodernism" vs. "traditional environmentalism":
"..ecomodernism is the view that we can solve and/or manage environmental problems through economic growth and technological innovation."
"The way we put it in the manifesto was that ecomodernism shares one big goal of traditional environmentalism, which is that we have an ethical responsibility to protect non-human nature. We differ very substantially in another way, which is that they think we need to harmonize with nature in order to protect it. We don’t think we need to harmonize with nature in order to protect it."
"Things like, to put it in practical terms, 100% renewable energy. Where you are only relying on the wind, the water, and the sun. Things like regenerative agriculture, where you are getting rid of sort of as much industrial and chemical technology in agriculture as possible to make it “more natural.” Those things might be more natural depending on how you define it, but they actually use more nature, they use more land, and they’re more devastating in a bunch of ways.
So, the way that we think about protecting the environment is by using much less of it, by using more technology."
You must reuse an organic cotton shopping bag 20,000 times before it will have less climate damage than a plastic bag.
Remember, too, that there are many examples of how men are underprivileged relative to women. For example, when women have a deficit, like being "underrepresented" in STEM, there has been massive redress. Yet when men suffer the ultimate deficit—they live five years shorter and die earlier of all 10 of the top 10 causes of death (There are more than four widows for every widower!)—the vast majority of gender-specific health efforts, including research over the past half-century, has been on women.--Psychology Today
(This is from Schmitt, from an article on a State Department paper. In May, State Department Policy Planning head Kiron Skinner described the strategic competition with China as “a fight with a really different civilization,” echoing Sam Huntington’s 1993 clash of civilizations thesis that the post-Cold War order would be defined by conflicts between the cultural West, and Islam and Confucian orders of the East. This thesis got a lot of blowback--and does seem wearisomely superficial for a State Dept. concept.)
The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), the country's equivalent of NASA, has announced that its lunar lander will launch between July 9 and 16, 2019, when proper weather conditions present themselves. ISRO scientists expect the lander to touch down on the moon's surface around September 6.
On this day in 1815 Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo.
Anxiety Revisited
Huxley wrote a book commenting on his earlier Brave New World called, creatively, Brave New World Revisited. He mused about ways it could be revised and improved--especially with the backdrop of Orwell's 1984, which always haunted him, although it followed his book. (Interestingly, Huxley's book has been compared to We, the first great dystopian novel of the 20th century, written in secret in early Soviet Russia by Yevgeni Zamyatin.) Huxley also wrote about his concerns for the future and listed them:
1. Overpopulation 2.Quantity, quality and morality, 3.Over-organization, 4. Propaganda in a democratic society, 5. Propaganda under dictatorship, 6. Arts of selling. 7. Brainwashing, 8. Chemical persuasion, 9. Subconscious persuasion, 10. Hypnopaedia
Before I read "Revisited" recently, I made a list of my own concerns (several are more gripes than true concerns) and there were very few in common. I'm not as observant? Things change? Man is always under creative, new threat?
1. Art that does not teach.
The primacy of the individual gives personal meaning the highest altar
2. Genetic Manipulation.
Children kits are available
3. Bonding of Lunatics
How could the Manson Family have lunch?
4.Unresponsive Technologies
Closed loop consumer systems
5. A.I..
AlphaZero
6. Decline of Philosophy; why things are done.
Freedom does not need a reason
7. Borderless, Self-contained Cultures and Companies
Organizations without the support of surrounding social principals
8. Surveillance/Privacy
Does Roe v. Wade actually have importance as an insightful document? Is the "right of privacy" actually important?
9. Bioweapons
The Russians and their shameless program
10. Declining Populations
Undermining the Ponzi scheme of the welfare state
11. The Wide and Far Reach of Small minds and Ideas
Internet and the value of every man's vision
12. Subservience of Individuals to New Tribes
The search for belonging now that the old homes are gone
Williamsburg was lovely. Pretty easy drive back to Pittsburgh--much easier than down because I avoided the highway construction on Route 17.
Chris looks good.
Was able to see great skies in Williamsburg, more than overcast here. Jupiter was so bright in Williamsburg I thought it was a plane.
A Solar Minimum (SM) is a periodic 11 year solar cycle normally manifesting a weak magnetic field with increased radiation and cosmic rays while exhibiting decreased sunspot activity that, in turn, decreases planetary temperatures. Today’s solar cycle is referred to as the Grand Minimum which, according to NOAA, predicts reductions from the typical 140 – 220 sunspots per solar cycle to 95 – 130 sunspots. As the Sun is entering “one of the deepest Solar Minima of the Space Age,” a NASA scientist predicted a SM that could ”set a Space Age record for cold” but has recently clarified his statement as it applies only to the Thermosphere.
Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez want the federal government to cap interest rates charged by credit card companies at 15 percent. The likely results will be that people with no credit history or poor credit will have more difficulty getting credit cards. Price controls always decrease the availability of what is controlled.
Want to discourage smoking? Make cigarette companies charge less for them.
The students who receive a special designation allowing them extra time to take the admissions exam to New York City’s elite public high schools are more often white or well off, according to data released Monday by the city Department of Education.
From an interview I found with an environmentalist on "ecomodernism" vs. "traditional environmentalism":
"..ecomodernism is the view that we can solve and/or manage environmental problems through economic growth and technological innovation."
"The way we put it in the manifesto was that ecomodernism shares one big goal of traditional environmentalism, which is that we have an ethical responsibility to protect non-human nature. We differ very substantially in another way, which is that they think we need to harmonize with nature in order to protect it. We don’t think we need to harmonize with nature in order to protect it."
"Things like, to put it in practical terms, 100% renewable energy. Where you are only relying on the wind, the water, and the sun. Things like regenerative agriculture, where you are getting rid of sort of as much industrial and chemical technology in agriculture as possible to make it “more natural.” Those things might be more natural depending on how you define it, but they actually use more nature, they use more land, and they’re more devastating in a bunch of ways.
So, the way that we think about protecting the environment is by using much less of it, by using more technology."
You must reuse an organic cotton shopping bag 20,000 times before it will have less climate damage than a plastic bag.
Remember, too, that there are many examples of how men are underprivileged relative to women. For example, when women have a deficit, like being "underrepresented" in STEM, there has been massive redress. Yet when men suffer the ultimate deficit—they live five years shorter and die earlier of all 10 of the top 10 causes of death (There are more than four widows for every widower!)—the vast majority of gender-specific health efforts, including research over the past half-century, has been on women.--Psychology Today
Under the terms of the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984, Hong Kong was to exercise a high degree of autonomy captured by the phrase, “one country, two systems.” In addition, under the terms of the “Basic Law” to which China committed as part of the handover agreement with the UK, Hong Kongers were led to believe they would eventually have the right to elect the city’s leaders. This obviously has not come to pass and, as anyone who is familiar with the city’s inner workings knows, the squeeze from Beijing has taken its toll on key elements of the city’s civic life — the press, political parties, higher education, and the judicial system.
The Hong Kong government’s effort to pass a new law allowing individuals — citizens or foreigners — to be detained by Hong Kong police and extradited to China to stand trial for one of more than three dozen types of criminal offenses (as defined by Beijing) is only the latest decision by the PRC to turn its back on its original pledges. Nevertheless, its consequences will be far reaching, further reducing confidence in the business community that they can operate outside of the PRC’s watch and reach and, as Sophie Richardson of Human Rights Watch has noted, “irrevocably damag[ing] Hong Kong’s status as the safe harbor for people peacefully promoting human rights in China.”(This is from Schmitt, from an article on a State Department paper. In May, State Department Policy Planning head Kiron Skinner described the strategic competition with China as “a fight with a really different civilization,” echoing Sam Huntington’s 1993 clash of civilizations thesis that the post-Cold War order would be defined by conflicts between the cultural West, and Islam and Confucian orders of the East. This thesis got a lot of blowback--and does seem wearisomely superficial for a State Dept. concept.)
The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), the country's equivalent of NASA, has announced that its lunar lander will launch between July 9 and 16, 2019, when proper weather conditions present themselves. ISRO scientists expect the lander to touch down on the moon's surface around September 6.
On this day in 1815 Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo.
Anxiety Revisited
Huxley wrote a book commenting on his earlier Brave New World called, creatively, Brave New World Revisited. He mused about ways it could be revised and improved--especially with the backdrop of Orwell's 1984, which always haunted him, although it followed his book. (Interestingly, Huxley's book has been compared to We, the first great dystopian novel of the 20th century, written in secret in early Soviet Russia by Yevgeni Zamyatin.) Huxley also wrote about his concerns for the future and listed them:
1. Overpopulation 2.Quantity, quality and morality, 3.Over-organization, 4. Propaganda in a democratic society, 5. Propaganda under dictatorship, 6. Arts of selling. 7. Brainwashing, 8. Chemical persuasion, 9. Subconscious persuasion, 10. Hypnopaedia
Before I read "Revisited" recently, I made a list of my own concerns (several are more gripes than true concerns) and there were very few in common. I'm not as observant? Things change? Man is always under creative, new threat?
1. Art that does not teach.
The primacy of the individual gives personal meaning the highest altar
2. Genetic Manipulation.
Children kits are available
3. Bonding of Lunatics
How could the Manson Family have lunch?
4.Unresponsive Technologies
Closed loop consumer systems
5. A.I..
AlphaZero
6. Decline of Philosophy; why things are done.
Freedom does not need a reason
7. Borderless, Self-contained Cultures and Companies
Organizations without the support of surrounding social principals
8. Surveillance/Privacy
Does Roe v. Wade actually have importance as an insightful document? Is the "right of privacy" actually important?
9. Bioweapons
The Russians and their shameless program
10. Declining Populations
Undermining the Ponzi scheme of the welfare state
11. The Wide and Far Reach of Small minds and Ideas
Internet and the value of every man's vision
12. Subservience of Individuals to New Tribes
The search for belonging now that the old homes are gone
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