I have lost confidence.

I have lost confidence in people who have stopped listening to Trump, both for him and against him.  They are abrogating responsibility for the maintenance of our democracy.

I have lost confidence in those who are listening to Trump, who just believe what he says.  I have no words for willful self delusion.  I recognize Trump’s self delusion; I don’t understand its appeal to others.

I have lost confidence in those who are listening to Trump and are still trying to fit his statements and actions into a rational narrative (willful self delusion, again).  I have said that it is a waste of time to try and understand why a mad man might kill and eat his victims; Trump’s mental state is on this level.

I have lost confidence in those who are listening to Trump who are still pretending that he will change into something acceptable as a president of the USA.  This is hopelessly optimistic and also willfully self delusional.

I have lost confidence in my fellow Americans, even though millions of them did not vote for this mad man… too many did.  Unfortunately, many of them will be the ones paying the price of  “getting what they asked for.”

I have lost confidence in the legislative branch of our government that is supposed to check the excesses of the executive branch.  Too many have also succumbed to willful self delusion, or in some cases, greedy lust for the power that might come to them by their sycophancy.

I have lost confidence in rational discussion of issues.  The false equivalency of “two sides” of every issue has resulted in a never ending argument that has paralyzed all action. 

I have lost confidence in our American civilization’s ability to discern and respect honesty, and to rationally separate fact from fiction.  Lying and alternative facts have been normalized and monetized into lucrative vocations. Far too many of us are shopping for the information that we like to hear.  You may say that this blog is part of that.  At least it's free.

What will the next generation of children who look up to the president of the United States be like?  I have lost confidence in what we adults are teaching them by our complicity.

Trump "cleaned up" by the Media

Many people have been enabling Trump by editing his comments, withholding honest analyses of his words, and "euphemizing" his lies (using euphemisms for the word "lie").  It is a grave error to paraphrase Trump and by so doing, inaccurately make him sound like an intelligent adult.  The transcripts of Trump's interview with the New York Times and what they chose to publish in their paper are miles apart.  It's ironic that the main stream media would do this service for someone who excoriates them for being "fake news".  

The way that people speak is an indication of how they think.  The authors missed an opportunity to allow Trump to communicate honestly; they succumbed to writing “fake news” in Trump's favor.  They cleaned him up.

The fool's hope that Trump would "grow" into the presidency, that he was "only kidding" when he said all those outrageous things, that he would stop "exaggerating" once he stopped campaigning, that the office would tame his baser qualities, that his ignorance was an act that would be fixed by the good council of his advisors, has not been granted to us.  All that expectation of massive change and improvement was just what it was; hope, whistling past the graveyard, denial of reality, self delusion.  He really couldn't have been as bad as he looked during the campaign, could he?  What he was as a Ponzi businessman and divisive candidate, is what he is as President of the United States.  

More recently, a perfectly accurate quotation of Trump's comments concerning an issue about Tom Price would have made a Washington Post article on Sept. 28 more instructive; but they too, cleaned him up. 

Trump said:   “I was looking into it, and I will look into it and I will tell you personally I’m not happy about it.   I’m not happy about it.   I’m going to look at it.  I’m not happy about it and I let him know it.”  

  

Soaring oratory should never be abridged.

Paradigms and Eeyore: Why we can’t change; DARK is a privative

“It isn’t going to work,” Says Eeyore; the quintessential pessimist, implying that “we never did it that way before, so it can't be right to change it”.  

How about the things that we have always done this way that aren’t working, never will, and ensure, that we will have to deal with the same old problems forever?  I guess that if we’re lucky, we’ll get new intractable problems compounded on the unresolved problems that we just ignored because “We’ve always done it this way.”  Ah!   New!  That’s progress!  Then there's band-ades: computer code is super long and complicated because it just uses old stuff that works and relies on processor progress speed to "fix" the inefficiency.

No, that’s unaddressed issues.  Eventually, the problem of the "inefficient" buggy whip factory becomes moot…  But is that anyway to run a planet?

Nobody likes big surprises to what they expect to happen next.  Human nature, which I have so often said, "ain’t all it’s cracked up to be", defines our comfort level with new things.   Young people are better at this (they have way less invested in the status quo) than older people.  I’ve come to the conclusion that corporate management, and designers who have taken a long route to positions where they get to make decisions, are mentally old people; in other words; cowards, afraid of change.  

Having said that; I've seen plenty of new things designed by people (probably some young, some old) that illustrate that the designer never actually used the product.  They never got within ten feet of actually using it (that's a different problem).  I've got a dust buster that is round so you can't set it down without it rolling off onto the floor. "Form follows function has been fogotten. Now, we are stuck with cosmetic changes just to make us think it's been improved. Tailfins this year, no tail fins, next.

About 190 years ago, some really clever people invented photography.  They captured images of the real world in a way that had never been done before; they made permanent accurate photographs.  The apparatus that they used required the exclusion of any and all stray light from impinging on their light sensitive “film”.  Therefore, everything was black because it absorbs stray light.  Black cameras, black clothes they wore and black tents they could duck under behind the lens in order to see and capture the image.  Black everything (for good reason) was associated with photography.

 Later we put the film inside a light impervious camera…   But the cameras stayed black.  Later, our photography moved into a movie camera and a VCR, something to show images (pictures/photos on a screen or your TV).  The projector and your TV emit light; all the equipment still stayed black. Then we got DVD players (guess what?) they were black.  Furthermore, the controls are black buttons.  The remote controls are black, even the letters on the keys are dark gray.   Have you ever seen a camouflaged flash light?  DUH.

Wow!  I guess we’re still terrified of stray light!  How often have you had to turn on a light to operate your DVD or the damn remote?    I’m sitting at a computer that shows images, pictures on it’s screen; the key board is black, the letters on the buttons are dark gray, requiring that I turn on a light to see them. 

Ever wondered why you bicycle seat is so awful?  Can't get the ketchup out of the bottle?

By the way, "privative" is the absence of something, like a hole in the ground or a vacuum, or debt.  I guess stupidity is a privative too.

Langton’s Ant

    

If you knew everything in the present, exactly, and you also knew the “laws of nature” could you predict the future?  We live in a dynamic system that we can measure, and we know all of the rules we can measure, so like predicting the eclipse of the sun, can’t we predict more complicated things as well?    

A conventional dynamic system (CDS) is defined as a system where all the parts (every part) are described precisely as to position, and motion, (and by implication; the rules that govern their interaction - what they can do).  The rules are that we don’t make up outside influences; they are all defined in our complete and precisely defined system.

The Rule takes the system one step from its current state to the next (possible, ergo defined state) step.  If we’ve done everything right, the result will be predictable.

If we work with a planetary solar system, (this means all the planets, their sizes and densities, distances, velocities, moons, gravitational constant, etc), it’s pretty complicated.  But we can, and do, predict eclipses and the position of our planets and moons millions of years into the future with excellent accuracy.  Even the Mayans did this 1,400 years ago for eclipses, (hold that thought*).  So this means we can predict at least some parts of the future; we live among predetermined systems, right?

Consider a far simpler CDS, it has only four or five defined parts and only three rules.  The parts are a graph paper like grid (two parts?) and a locator of the  starting point, the initial state.  The rules are:

   Rule 1). Each step in this CDS takes the locator one square forward.

  Rule 2). At a white square, turn 90° right, flip the color of the square, move forward one unit

 Rule 3). At a black square, turn 90° left, flip the color of the square, move forward one unit

This called “Langton’s Ant**.  The ant is the locator that moves one step at a time, following the “rules”.  This can be run on a very simple computer program (OK, the computer is complicated but it is doing a very simple step by step process).

This is much simpler than planets, moons, velocities, orbits, distances and all their interactions as they whizz around our sun.

So when you run it, it should be very predictable, right?  Info in, info out; always the same result…  Nope.  When run, it is unpredictable for the first few hundred moves then a strange locked in pattern emerges to infinity. 

This simple CDA leads to complex behavior. Three distinct modes of behavior are apparent.

Simplicity.  During the first few hundred moves it creates very simple patterns which are often symmetrical.

Chaos.  After a few hundred moves, a big, irregular pattern of black and white squares appears. The ant traces a pseudo-random path until around 10,000 steps.

Emergent order.  Finally the ant starts building a recurrent "highway" pattern of 104 steps that repeats indefinitely.

All finite initial configurations tested eventually converge to the same repetitive pattern.  No one has been able to prove why this is true for all such initial configurations. It is only known that the ant's trajectory is always unbounded regardless of the initial configuration.

Here is a super simple CDS that results in a pattern that no one could predict, and even now that we know what happens, we can’t explain why, we had to run it to see it happen.

 So the debate about the future being determinable from the present is resolved; it can't be. Not to mention quantum mechanics which suggests that we can't even accurately observe the exact initial conditions.  Now do something a little bigger, a litte more complicated like a CDS with 200,000 atoms in three dimensional space…. You know, like a virus.  Oh, and no one has been able to suggest what spot in the universe is holding still or not accelerating.  Even simple Newtonian physics only works in an inertial frame.

          *The Mayans could predict the eclipses with great accuracy (at the same time that most Europeans believed the earth to be flat and the center of the Universe).  But before you get too laudatory of the Mayans’ scientific abilities, at the same time that they could do this, they still had religious mythology about jaguars eating the sun.  Their CDS still had outside influences, Gods.

         **If you’d like to see this in action, go to:    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langton%27s_ant

GRATEFUL DEADHEADING: A GARDENER'S REVELATION Guest post By Chris Bolgiano

Pinch. Snip. Snap. Severed, spent flowers drop into the compost bucket like guillotined heads into a basket. I pretend they are my bad habits, bad temper, bad hair. If only it was so easy.
In the dusk of my life, I’ve arrived at a garden plan that puts my cutting herbs on my deck. Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, basil, tarragon and oregano, plus a scattering of spring onions, live in four large planters on coasters and one stationary, soil-filled horse watering trough. Mixed through all the pots are flowers. First come the early season, self-seeding volunteer annuals like violas and little native poppies, then later the verbenas, petunias, calendulas, marigolds and other hummingbird and insect-attracting annuals available every spring from the local greenhouse.

In the twilight of a summer’s day, I go out on my deck to groom the herb garden. I’ve already put in some cool morning hours working the four long beds in the vegetable garden that supplies most of our meals, either fresh, from the root cellar, in the jars I can or the bags I freeze. Growing your own food was basic to the “Back to the Land” movement in the counterculture of the early 1970s, and the husband I were basic back to the landers.
A life lived close to nature offered the only real promise of inner peace in a war-centered world. So we moved from suburbia to the backwoods of rural America. Our generation was going to change the world through flower power and eating low on the food chain -- low as in on your knees cultivating vegetables and those powerful flowers.

Forty-some years later, going “Back to the Land” has taken on a darker meaning. The flower power that once seemed so gentle has revealed itself as the relentless force pushing up daisies in Nature’s perennial garden. For years I’ve called myself an aging hippie, but what looks back at me in the mirror is an aged hippie with liver spots. It’s the “hippie” part that matters, I tell myself: peace, love, and folk rock and roll.
Growing old happens to everyone who lives long enough, although I did think it would take a lot longer than it actually has. No one ever seems quite ready for it, despite its universality. It’s while I’m deadheading on the deck at dusk, in our tiny clearing in the midst of forest, that I muse over old ideals and measure how far I still have to go.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell a flower that’s done from a young unopened bud, and I end up plucking off promises for the future. Sometimes when I go away, the flowers go to seed and even clipping every deadhead doesn’t bring back any blooms.

No matter. I pour time like water onto the plants, moving my fingers tenderly through them, giving and drawing nurture. Every decision I’ve made, every path I’ve chosen, has led me here, to these plants on this deck on this dwindling summer day. Light slowly fades and cool air flows down the mountain. Everything around me is beautiful, perfect, even the dead leaves and withered flowers I pick off the plants, because they are a part of the endless, sacred cycle.
Deadheading has become a ritual of mindful mindlessness. Here is where I realize what I already knew, what I’ve learned from all these decades but could not find through conscious searching. Here is where I contemplate, not just what a long, strange trip it’s been, but how grateful I am to have arrived, even with a bad hip.

DonDon Jr. "It wasn't his fault he's innocent"

Dear DonDon Jr.:

At 39, You are no kind of "kid". 

You are a billionaire son of the President of the United States; have I got your attention yet?  If not, maybe you should go to jail. 

Criminal stupidity/ignorance/privilege, (and ignorant of your privilege), unethical behavior (because that's what you learned at your Daddy's knee), are not defenses. 

So this is your definition of "INNOCENT"?   Gee, words are important.  I've talked about the definition of words; nobody's listening to me, they are listening to you.  

But, DonDon Trump, your dad, Sarah Huckabee-Sanders, Conway, Spicer, Tillerson, Sessions, and FOX are changing our dictionary to their liking every day.  They think that facts are malleable, alternative, fake, real, temporary, inoperative, made up, and made up by people THEY don't like... Words have to have an agreed upon definition or there is no communication.  You happen to be stuck between your dad's idea that reality follows from what his delusional mind concocts, and what he has the capacity to remember long enough to Tweet in the middle of the night (do you worry about his sleep habits?  When was the last time he saw a real doctor?).

But words are important;  their definitions after the fact, and in the moment of their utterance.  Your words like:

“If it’s what you say, I love it,”      are important.  

They signify your willingness to violate our laws about foreign influence in our electoral process.   You aren't a kid any more.  You are not innocent.  You are: ignorant, privileged, (and ignorant of your privilege), and unethical.  Now if your motives were pure, we would forgive you.  As it is, not so much.  You have admitted that you were attempting to encourage a foreign, hostile, enemy government of the United States to help you steal the election of the President of the United States. Am I right?   

Can you refute ANY of these statements?  What color orange jump suit do you prefer?

Brand Destroyed Up Date Up Date

By attaining the public position of president of the United States, DonDon has for the first time in his life, subjected himself to the scrutiny of people who will not be bullied or bribed into changing an honest assessment of his character, methods, knowledge, and demeanor. 

Thus, for the first time, the truth about him is in the public domain where he can’t control it. 

And, no, finally making an appropriate response to the Nazis, KKK, and white supremacists' actions in Charlottesville, Virginia, because someone told you to and after most of the people in America learned that you were absolving them of their American Apartheid agenda;       Doesn't count!

And 24 hours later...

Especially, if you then clearly reveal that you believe in the false equivalency of "many sides" are equally bad.  


           Brand destroyed.