No Tax Legislation

No Tax Legislation with DonDon Trump's signature on it making that legislation legal...

without the prior full disclosure of DonDon Trump's Tax Returns.

Damn!  That seems so simple.  Too simple for the arational America that we find ourselves.

Bob Goodlatte, VA Republican "Representative", US House, has announced he'll not run

Bob Goodlatte, Republican "Representative" in the House of Representatives, has announced his plans to not run for re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-election in 2018.  He promised to serve three (3) two (2) year terms starting in 1992.  His "retirement" is a little delayed.  Now, He just wants to spend more time with his family

I predicted that Bob Goodlatte would not run in 2018...  not in my blog (maybe) but in numerous Facebook and Twitter posts.  I was trying to shame him with references to Dondon J. Trump's (obvious?) aberrant behavior.   

I was unable to believe that he, Bob Goodlatte, a 12 term "lawyer in Washington, D.C.", was ignorant and stupid enough to believe the BullShit that he felt "forced" to say and do, for the last year.  There may be a limit to almost anything.  I may have been wrong; I think he still thinks trump is sane.  Goodlatte just figured out that he might lose.

The people on Capital Hill know way better than you and I where the bullshit is.... they just get paid to pretend that they don't approve and are doing something about it.  

Whistling past the graveyard is human nature... $$$igns have captured human nature.

Aloha Bob.

Why I quit. AGAIN

For the few of you who noticed, and the even fewer of you who cared that I have quit Facebook; I post on FB one more time.  (You may mock me for my Trumpish lack of even the hint of irony in that statement, I deserve it, again.). What we deserve and what we get doesn’t seem to correlate with our actions much less our motives. Truth and facts have been destroyed.  I believe that there are no longer consequences to behavior that correlate in any way with lawfulness, truthfulness, decency, and/or utility to our civilization.  I believe that Fox News started it, but FB made it all far worse.  FB supplied the forum for fake news.  In their naive confidence in the 1^stamendment and the decency of human nature, they believed that everything would be alright.  At this point, I would usually type: “HAHAHAHAH” (in my opinion, superior to “LOL”).  Apparently, human nature isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  We will see if the 1^st amendment will survive.

 Facebook was wrong and now that they know it and admit it, everything that they do is too little too late, we've been subjected to Trump for a president, likely the worst disaster to befall America since Pearl Harbor.  I blame Zuckerberg and Facebook for the Nazis that have been running our government the last four years.

 The Republicans that have pretended to believe that trump would ever change need to be reminded of their words:

“I expect, we pray, I believe, it is to be hoped, many people feel, people of good will wish.  We expect, are waiting…. The office has a way of lifting…. it sometimes takes awhile, it’s not uncommon for these difficulties to occur, give him a chance.  we've heard a new tone....”

When was the last time you heard anyone speak of trump without using these words?

Optimism is wonderful right up until you discover that it is masking an important perception of reality that presages disaster. Stop pretending; Trump was mentally ill.   He wasn't ever going to recover sanity in the position that the ignorant people of the USA placed him.

Facebook and Zuckerberg were, are, and will be used for evil forever.  Without "presidenting by Twitter" trump would never have been able to cause as much damage as he has.

The evil has outweighed the advantage of the free speech.  Give it up.

 

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