Cream Cheese

 Of course social media are a waste of time.  Yeah, it’s like shouting into the toilet as far as meaningful responses to one's comments are concerned, no matter how cogent or germane to the issue they may be.

 

But what if it’s all that you have?  What if you find yourself in a situation where no matter what you say or do; nothing ever comes of it?   I’m not talking about a classically hopeless situation like being in a Saudi Arabian prison for heresy and drug possession.  I’m talking about being in a beautiful, safe, location like a self sufficient home far from any danger; but locked in because of a yearlong pandemic.  A year, and no end in sight.  And after that long, you’re afraid of even mentioning anything about it to your partner.

 

Sure, you say, aren’t we all?  Well, yes.  After four years of hateful incompetence and outright narcissistic disregard for anybody’s well being on the federal level; we expect to be dealing with a response that’s a year behind the eight ball.  Then there’s the state level incompetence that is expected from a large bureaucracy that is reeling from a year of chaos (in response to the federal problem?).  Add to that the roiling cluster-fuck of local bureaucracies with over and under lapping responsibilities, and it’s obvious why it is way more than likely that vaccine shots will never catch up with virus mutation rates even in the absence of nutjob deniers and anti-vaxxers.  Throw in a little corruption, rich and powerful greed, (AKA human nature) while you’re at it. SNAFU!

What I didn't expect was the outright total resistance to vaccinations and masks exhibited by 50% of the Republican Party voters and near 100% of the elected officials.  I will never say: "I can't believe..." again.

So?  Who do you tell?  The overworked, underpaid, and under protected first responders have nothing to do with this problem.  They are vastly more abused victims of this thing than we are; I am sure as Hell not going to rag on them.  So, I bitch on Twitter, It doesn’t do anything but makes me feel a little better for a minute or two.  

 

The only thing that comes even close to this total failure of logic and desire for improvement, that is killing us all; is the inexplicable decision by Philadelphia Cream Cheese (classic box package) to continue to package their product in a 19^th century manner.  I really hate that.

How much optimism is too much? Do you look both ways?

 

I just listened to @SciFri.  I’m really getting tired of hearing from people who can start with the current clusterfuck and calmly talk about it. Yes!  I know that that is exactly what they/we have to do.  But, it is profoundly depressing for me to hear the “optimists” who are featured who don’t start out with: 

“THE most ignorant, psychopathic idiot savant ever to attain power in the history of the USA... DID this to us”.   Then I'll be ready to listen to reason. 

 

I'm not happy about the slow and disorganized roll out of the life saving vaccines.   And even though, an ardent critic of the crazy and false "zero sum game" that supposes that everything good that happens to someone else is something bad that happens to me; I still can't dispel the idea that:  

"Everything that I can get for me" doesn't end up being something not so good for them.  So, I'll not jump into any vaccine lines. 

So.  I am happy for every single person who gets a vaccine (even the line jumpers).  I will try to not think about which one of those shots that I didn't get might end up in me dying.  I am a firm believer in the idea that when I'm dead; I will not know it.

I am also an ardent pessimist.   I have always expected to die from this pandemic.   If I don't; I'll consider it a triumph of something...

If I do, I won't know that I was right all along. 

Off all the things wrong with t****, I believe that his total adherence to the "zero sum" was his worst attribute.  From that, all inability of empathy flows.  Oh, and ignorance and stupidity.... but where does one stop?

What he didn't do Wednesday January 6, 2021

Is way worse than what he did to start it.

I wrote directly to my congressman, Ben Cline 6th District, Virginia.  Cline is an avid trump supporter who has, to my knowledge, never criticized anything trump has ever said or done.  He is among those who "protested" the vote counts of other states both before and after the invasion and sacking of the Capitol building.

I urge you to Read the timeline of events of last Wednesday [ As allies pleaded for help, Trump kept watching TV ] in the Washington Post, written from interviews with 15 white house staffers on January 12, 2021.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-mob-failure/2021/01/11/36a46e2e-542e-11eb-a817-e5e7f8a406d6_story.html 

I saw a live stream of some of this from Jr. Donald Trump's friend who was there at the time.  Trump watched the invasion of the Capitol like a toddler glued to the TV watching a cartoon, as his mob... did what they did.  Many Trump aides tried to get his attention, but it was hours before he would react.  When he did, it was by tweeting the wrong words.  Others danced and music played. It was hours before anyone could break into his reverie and convince him to issue a statement on the attack on the Capitol.  When he finally did, too late, it was too little.  Read the transcript of his last words that day.  He mostly said the wrong things.  He was still lying about the validity of the election and still supporting the mob: "we love you, you're special". 

 

I know that Ben Cline will never see this.   YOU his staff will.  If you can support Cline and Trump after knowing what is true of that day, you join them as traitors to America, plain and simple.  Trump is insane; he must not be president one day longer.

 

Your only redemption from this assessment is to resign and get another job... working for a patriotic American.

Hey! Ben Cline House "representative" for the 6th District, Virginia

 Dear Ben:

From your continued support Donald Trump I can only conclude that you have never read any of his comments on Twitter.  If you had ever read them, you would be clamoring for application of the 25th amendment.   He is now tweeting about a non-existent brother of Mr. Raffensperger.  And that is only one of thousands of demonstrably insane things he has said. 

 

By the way, your signature on that request to invalidate the votes in four other states is a violation of your sacred oath to the constitution that you swore to with your hand on a Bible.  

Many people believe that Jesus will remember that when you die.

What is an "intentional explosion" ?

It is the last few days of 2020 and we have the media coin new words:

            "intentional explosion"

A phrase that I've never heard before today.

Gee, is this planet just a little weird? Are we living in a Vonnegut novel? How long in the news cycle before you never hear about any of this again?

Oh, I often think about Robert Frost

 

I often think about Robert Frost’s poem, his “Death of the Hired Hand”; as I too, go about my chores.   As one who takes some pride in OCD, AKA: inappropriate meticulousness; I appreciate attention to detail that others ignore.

In the poem, Silas, the handy man who is dying out of sight, was being pre-eulogized by the wife and his sometime employer, her husband.  Silas was now, maybe worthless, sometimes in the past, valuable.  But after refection, he is acknowledged as being at least, good at some few things.    But:

 

    “What good is he? Who else will harbor him?  At his age for the little he can do?” 

   Well, I recall that he could build a hay pile,    he’s trying to lift, straining to lift himself, straining, not to stand,  not on anything, really.

    To stand or nothing….

as I do as I dig potatoes from a bed I will never step into, much less stand on.  But, also, as I collect firewood, first into the tractor bucket as I cut it in the forest… how might this log fit?  Can I maximize the load and minimize the trips?  Then, as I build the pile from the tractor to the storage outside the door to the house and even as I load the dolly I use to bring in those few pieces that will warm us for a day or two, or more, if we’re lucky because the days are warm.  These efforts stand on nothing.  They are nothings which are things only because.  They are nothings.

 I am a hired hand, valued or not, by my memories, my discipline, to myself, perhaps, only to myself.

 

        Surely you wouldn’t grudge the poor old man Some humble way to save         his self-respect.

         You never see him standing on the hay  He thinks if he could teach him             that, he’d be Some good perhaps to someone in the world.

 

And if you need to read the real thing:

 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44261/the-death-of-the-hired-man

Googleplex: Why not think really big?

In 1920, Edward Kasner's nine-year-old nephew, Milton Sirotta, coined the term googol, which is 10¹⁰⁰, then proposed the further term googolplex to be "one, followed by writing zeroes until you get tired".^[1] Kasner decided to adopt a more formal definition "but different people get tired at different times and it would never do to have Carnera a better mathematician than Dr. Einstein, simply because he had more endurance and could write for longer".^[2] It thus became standardized to:

         ¹⁰⁰

  10¹⁰ 

^{Ten to the tenth to the one hundredth}

 

A typical book can be printed with 10⁶ zeros (around 400 pages with 50 lines per page and 50 zeros per line). Therefore, it requires 10⁹⁴ such books to print all the zeros of a googolplex (that is, printing a googol of zeros). If each book had a mass of 100 grams, all of them would have a total mass of 10⁹³ kilograms. In comparison, Earth's mass is 5.972 x 10²⁴ kilograms, and the mass of the Milky Way Galaxy is estimated at 2.5 x 10⁴² kilograms.  The number of Protons and neutrons in the universe is 10⁸⁹ (without dark matter).  It looks like the mind of man who can think about 10^{10  to the 100th}   is greater than the Universe.