Category Archives: What’s Up

A flare for things unusual in gadgetry and technology.

The Wheels Are Coming Off

I don’t like partisan politics. Those who believe in their cause, Right or Left, are usually not the people who can be reasoned with or understand the necessity of looking beyond their own dark shadows. We have before us a circling of wagons over the nomination of a Supreme Court judge. Both sides of the aisle are out in full regalia, beating their chests in chorus, claiming the need for justice.

Supreme-court-building-smlI would normally not take notice of the appointment of a judge, even to the Supreme Court. I don’t have an opinion whether Judge Brett Kavanaugh is a good choice for a life long appointment to our highest court. In the end, I think we will never know, because of the recent accusations, primarily from someone who describes a sexual assault which was to have occurred 36 years ago.

This isn’t the first time powerful positioned men have done horrible things to women. That’s what makes this type of situation so compelling, it’s just that we seem to be missing the date, specific place, time and named witnesses, who deny or don’t recall the complaint made by Professor Christine Blassey Ford. She was 15, and Brett Kavanaugh was 17. The circumstances were there was a party, and a lot of underage drinking was involved. Now we have a second person coming forward, with an accusation that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her, when they were allegedly at another school party. She admits drinking to excess, falling down on the floor, but still recalls the incident. Unfortunately all of her witnesses, even a good friend, deny or don’t recall the incident.

What has me concerned, are all the people absolutely convinced he did some egregious act towards one or more women. The other side are equally sure it’s a false story, designed to derail a conservative judge appointment. We don’t know facts, we only have accusations. The political push-pull isn’t so much about guilt or innocence, rather it’s about the ability to get their man in, or block him from being chosen. There’s an air of desperation, because if the delays are long enough, the November elections may alter the majority party. Democrats are hoping they can regain the Senate and then they can chose who will be the next ‘Supreme’.

It seems there are two kinds of people in the world, those that struggle to know what’s true, and those that don’t let the facts get in the way of their personal view.  The problems with these accusations, are the distant history of it, as time goes on, memories, especially those from someone who was intoxicated during the incident, are apt to be altered or remembered incorrectly. It’s completely believable that Professor Ford, can’t recall the correct details. It’s just as possible her story is partially true, but she might have been hurt by someone else, or there were interactions between the boys and the girls which became more aggressive over time as alcohol was consumed.

 SCORCHED EARTH REASONING

What we have are two large groups of people, shouting at each other, using names and labels, finding any item, quote, or expression, in an open active campaign to discredit and take control of what other people may say or think. It pains me to see a growing discord in not only this country, but throughout the ‘free world’. Using any means possible to exert their “rightness” at the expense of liberty, freedom of speech, tolerance for others, and an equal right to protection under the law.

Additional Reading

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    IT HAS COME TO THIS ~ ACT ON IMPULSE
    It’s only fair if we declare it so!
    OpEdNews.com By DAVID KANEGIS 9/23/2018

    womens-rights-poster

    He may not be guilty but he’s white & Republican – that’s all we need to know!

    As Christine Blasey Ford bravely faces the indignity and insults of Donald Trump, the Republican all white, all male majority of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the prejudgment of foul Senators like Mitch McConnel, it’s time for everyone to protest and be heard.

    This is not just a woman thing. Guys we’re all up to bat. Perhaps we’ve done harmful things in the past, maybe without even realizing it. Whether we have or not, now is the time to atone and join with all our sisters to put a halt to the travesty of justice being perpetrated even as this article is being written.

    A charge has been made against Brett Kavanaugh, nominee for the highest court in the land. If confirmed he will be shaping laws for us, our kids and our grandkids. Perhaps he’s guilty, perhaps not.

    However, if we are to move forward as an evolved species then we must commit to act on our best impulses — not our worst!

    Do we want to let men like Mitch McConnel who blocked President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee for over a year push through a vote in less than a week?
    This for a man who will likely spend 30+ years helping an ultra-conservative court make decisions about race, gender, choice and the rights of all?

    If the names John G. Roberts Jr., Clarence Thomas, Samuel Anthony Alito and Neil Gorsuch give you cause for concern about the future then fight, fight, fight!

In an effort to protect those who have been victimized, shouldn’t we apply the principle of innocent until proven guilty? In our effort to be fair, don’t we act in fairness to all?
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Contrary to many who equate democracy with freedom, the mere replacement of a Communist socialist government with a democratic socialist one, while an improvement, does not alone advance the cause of freedom very much.

Freedom and democracy are different. Democracy addresses how affairs in the public sector will be conducted. Democracy is greater when individuals vote on those matters assigned to the public sector. On the other hand, freedom is concerned with the relationships among people in the private sector. Freedom means individuals may choose how to interact on a voluntary basis outside the purview of the state.

In short, democracy means you get to vote in the public sector; freedom means you get to determine the terms of your interactions with others in the private sector.

 ~ Foundation for Economic Education – 1 August 1990

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Feeling Compelled to Turn in Your Firearms?

☆☆ PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT ☆☆

If any who read this message feel obligated to turn in their semi-automatic rifle, or hand gun, and it’s legally owned, contact me. I can assure you I’ve never committed a crime nor used one for that purpose. I will pay you up to $1 for the donation. You will need to transfer ownership and ship through a FFL to my local FFL. Contact me before you take the necessary steps.

I’m a trained and qualified professional. I began my government certified training over 46 years ago. Thank you. See reference pictures below.
☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

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Marine Corps 1971

MCB Twentynine Palms

MCB Twentynine Palms

What is a Human?

DaVinci atomatronic model graphic

Emergence from the knowledge abyss

“What is man?”

“is probably the most profound question that can be asked by any human. It has always been central to any system of philosophy or of theology. We know that it has been asked by the most learned humans 2000 years ago, and it is just possible that it was being asked by the most brilliant australopithecines 2 million years ago. The point I want to make now is that all attempts to answer that question before 1859 are worthless and that we will be better off if we ignore them completely.” —Simpson 1966, p. 472

“Intelligent life on a planet comes of age when it first works out the reason for its own existence. If superior creatures from space ever visit Earth, the first question they will ask, in order to assess the level of our civilization, is: “Have they discovered evolution yet?” Living organisms had existed on Earth, without ever knowing why, for more than three billion years before the truth finally dawned on one of them. His name was Charles Darwin. To be fair, others had inklings of the truth, but it was Darwin who first put together a coherent and tenable account of why we exist.”—Dawkins 1976, p. 1

“Identifying ultimate causes, however, is important, because certain proximate explanations may be incompatible with certain ultimate explanations. This is because certain ultimate explanations specify the existence of certain types of proximate mechanisms. For example, the ultimate explanation that the human eye evolved by natural selection because it increased our ancestors’ ability to detect light requires the existence of proximate light-detection mechanisms in the eye.”

“No aspect of life can be completely understood until both its proximate and its ultimate causation are fully known. To understand how ultimate causes can be known, one must understand how natural selection leads to adaptations” | RANDY THORNHILL and CRAIG T. PALMER |

Orthodox-Apocalypse-FrescoAll arguments to the contrary are opinions of the individual unsupported and unsubstantiated except by ancient oral traditions, eventually written down, but not by those within the story itself. Traditions, stories, beliefs, superstitions, are all normal human reactions to a world of random chaos and events beyond our level of comprehension. It’s just more comforting and easier to assign unexplainable moments, catastrophe, cruelties, to some deity.

Over the centuries of written tradition, we find explanations that are outside of the authors abilities or comprehension to be associated with a deity. Monarchs and despots have used deities to give gravitas or approval to their actions, no matter how self-serving or egregious.

Natural Selection and Adaptations

“Adaptations are phenotypic features (morphological structures, physiological mechanisms, and behaviors) that are present in individual organisms because they were favored by natural selection in the past. Darwin sought to explain the existence of adaptation in terms of evolution by selection. Initially, he observed the action of selection on living things in nature—a fact of natural history that is inescapable in view of the high rates of reproduction and mortality in all organisms. Later, he realized just how creative selection could be when extended over the long history of life on Earth. This retrospection is evident in the following eloquent passage from On the Origin of Species:”

“Natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working…. We see nothing of these slow changes in progress, until the hand of time has marked the long lapse of ages.” (Ridley 1987, p. 87)

“The biologist George Williams, in his 1966 book Adaptation and Natural Selection, clarified what Darwin meant when he wrote of natural selection’s rejecting all that was “bad” and preserving all that was “good.”- First, Williams noted, these words were not used in a moral sense; they referred only to the effects of traits on an individual’s ability to survive and reproduce. That is, “good” traits are those that promote an individual’s reproductive interests.”

Remember that Christmas, although heartwarming and comforting to some, is just another one of those long traditions carried forward to our children.

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“The question is this: Is man an ape or an angel?  I, my lords, am on the side of the angels.”
| Benjamin Disraeli |