Monday, March 15
COVID Relief and Inflation
But Republican lawmakers haven't been the only ones to raise concerns. The sheer magnitude of the fund has prompted lively discussions within economic and political circles about whether it is too large for its own good, and whether inflation is now in the cards.
"I agree that too much is better than too little and we should aim for some overheating. The question is how much," economist and former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund Olivier Blanchard wrote on Twitter in February, responding to the proposed bill. "Much too much is both possible and harmful. I think this package is too much."
"This would not be overheating; it would be starting a fire," he wrote.
Over the last decade, the rate of inflation in the US has only occasionally gone above the Federal Reserve's target of 2%. For anyone born after 1960, it might be difficult to imagine what a US ravaged by exploding consumer prices might look like. But in the 1970s, overly loose monetary policy, the introduction of wage and price controls, and a series of energy crises pushed the inflation rate into the double digits and plunged the US into a painful recession.
"There's a real possibility that within the year, we're going to be dealing with the most serious incipient inflation problem that we have faced in the last 40 years," former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers told Bloomberg News in February. READ MORE
Unbridled inflation is bad enough on its own terms. But it's also self-perpetuating. The faster people try to spend their depreciating money, the quicker it will lose value. If this were to happen in the US, the Fed would have to step in and consciously inflict pain on the economy. This would take the form of higher interest rates meant to increase unemployment, forcing a stop to the spending frenzy on the most unpleasant terms.
Tep Zepi: Egyptian Creation
In all of these myths, the world was said to have emerged from an infinite, lifeless sea when the sun rose for the first time, in a distant period known as zp tpj (sometimes transcribed as Zep Tepi), "the first occasion". Different myths attributed the creation to different gods: the set of eight primordial deities called the Ogdoad, the self-engendered god Atum and his offspring, the contemplative deity Ptah, and the mysterious, transcendent god Amun. While these differing cosmogonies competed to some extent, in other ways they were complementary, as different aspects of the Egyptian understanding of creation. SOURCE: Wikipedia
Alternative historian Robert Bauval in his book Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt argues that Egypt grew out of a sophisticated African civilization that existed for millennia prior to the civilization of the pharaohs. This theory is not new—it was first proposed by 19th century European explorers as well as the eminent Egyptologist Sir Wallis-Budge in 1911 who wrote that the religion of ancient Egypt was derived from the indigenous peoples of Northeastern and Central Africa.
Budge found numerous similarities between ancient Egyptian and modern African religion and magic: ancestor worship, veneration of animals and cattle, funerary customs, pantheons of gods, use of fetishes, etc. He reasoned that since many of the African tribes he surveyed had probably never had contacts with the Egyptians, cultural influences must have originated with them and spread north up the Nile. Budge’s colleagues dismissed his theory as impossible, instead espousing the theory that invading Caucasoids conquered Egypt and founded the first dynasties. SOURCE: TreeofVisions
Sunday, March 14
Saturday, March 13
Double Standards
My first exposure to this concept of double standards came when I was a young boy living in my parent's home and was often told: DO AS I SAY NOT AS I DO... now, don't get me wrong, I love my parents and was very upset when they both passed away, but the fact remains they set the stage for me resenting those people who display or have behavior that represents a set of double standards.
A recent and flagrant example of this can be seen by looking back at the Kavanaugh hearings in the Senate and how many female legislatures, Kamala Harris in particular, were extremely vocal with their comments making the claim that they believed the females accusing Kavanaugh of sexual harassment instead of Kavanaugh who denied it... Their claims revolved around the notion that because these women came forward they must be believed.
Now, Kamala Harris is SILENT when it comes to Governor Cuomo even though7 women have come forward and make accusations.
This is a BIG REASON why I am no longer a Democratic even though I have still retained all of my liberal attitudes and beliefs.
President Biden HATES TRUMP so much that neither he nor his administration is giving any credit to Trump for his WARP SPEED COVID VACCINE program... in fact, they are saying that there were no vaccines when Biden started his Presidency even though he was vaccinated with the COVID vaccine before he took office.
WHY these DOUBLES STANDARDS?
China's New Future
GUANGZHOU, China — China is looking to boost research into what it calls “frontier technology” including quantum computing and semiconductors, as it competes with the U.S. for supremacy in the latest innovations.
In its five-year development plan, the 14th of its kind, Beijing said it would make “science and technology self-reliance and self-improvement a strategic pillar for national development,” according to a CNBC translation.
Premier Li Keqiang said on Friday that China would increase research and development spending by more than 7% per year between 2021 and 2025, in pursuit of “major breakthroughs” in technology.
China’s technology champions such as Huawei and SMIC have been targeted by U.S. sanctions as tensions between Beijing and Washington have ramped up in the past few years.
As such, China has concentrated on boosting its domestic expertise in areas it sees as strategically important, such as semiconductors. And now it has laid out seven “frontier technologies” that it will prioritize not just for the next five years, but beyond too.
- Artificial Intelligence
- Quantum Information
- Integrated Circuits
- Brain Science
- Genomics and Biotechnology
- Clinical Medicine and Health
- Deep Space, Deep Earth, Deep Sea, & Polar Research
Friday, March 12
Living Overseas
INTERESTLY... and, somewhat disappointing I fear to this individual is the FACT that I live in East TN for $2,500/month as well and while I am not living in a beach town, I am living 30 minutes away from a University Hospital...
Of course, I have to pay IRS taxes and I am sure this person does not... however, I would think the efficacy of THAILAND is less than the efficacy of East TN... but, I could be wrong.
After traveling throughout Europe and seeing how those people live and what they have available to them, I cannot imagine that I would ever want to live outside the USA no matter how CHEAPLY living there can be...
On My Back Porch
We had one bathroom with a shower for 5 of us to use and our outside yard could be mowed in about 30 minutes. We lived in a community that was considered to be in the country... 4 miles south of Alexandria and 8 miles south of Washington, DC. My father walked two blocks to catch the bus into Washington where he worked. My mother did not work and we had 1 car that did not have a heater or an air conditioner because those features increased the base price. We wore coats and sweaters in the car in the winter and rolled the windows down in the summer.
However, my parents lived better with children than they had lived in North Carolina as children with their parents... BUT, according to the critics, both my parents and I were raised on white privilege.
WHERE PRIVILEGE ENTERED THE PICTURE was when I attended high school in Cairo, Egypt and attended classes with students of all colors from countries all over the world. Our 1966 graduating class was 28 in number with 15 different nationalities; in fact, the VALEDICTORIAN of our senior class was a HUNGARIAN COMMUNIST who was flown to Russia after he graduated. Whites, Blacks, Browns, Asians, Africans, Canadians, Europeans, Chinese, Japanese shared life together, never realizing we were different in color or different in our religious beliefs, or different in our political ideologies.
In the summers and since we could not work, groups of us 10-15 would travel through Europe for 30-60 days. At that time, we could travel through Europe between $3-$5/day. We oftentimes purchased a EURAIL PASS that gave us UNLIMITED mileage for 30 days for about $100. So, the total cost of traveling throughout Europe was about $500. And... the education we received was invaluable and had nothing to do with white privilege... as color was present all around us... if your parents worked for the US EMBASSY, then you were privileged... there were just as many blacks as there were whites...
After graduating from high school whatever privileged I had previous enjoyed VANISHED into the thin air of LIFE. I worked while I attended college because I no longer wanted my parents to control me and require that certain grades be achieved. I dropped out of college and ENLISTED into the US NAVY and there is no privilege associated with being an enlisted man in the military.
After two years, I was honorably discharged from the active duty military but had to continue 4 more years as a RESERVIST. Using the GI BILL, I finished my undergraduate degree and also had enough money to complete an MBA. There was no white privilege there either as I earned the right to have the government pay for my education, especially since we were engaged in the Vietnam War at the time.
Throughout my 45 year career, I was FIRED because I challenged the incompetence of management and refused to kiss the ass of management or violate my integrity. My behavior was not an example of white privilege... in fact, it was an example of having no privilege at all.
At the age of 60 I experienced a serious heart attack and my Cardiologist recommended a triple bypass... My brother was on the Board of Directors of NY Presbyterian Hospital and opened the door for me to fly to NYC and have my arteries cleaned out and five stents inserted over a period of 3 operations. THIS WAS CLEARLY AN EXAMPLE OF PRIVILEGE and to be quite honest I am glad that MY BROTHER had been in a position to have forced this to happen. And... 13 years later, my heart is responding perfectly for a man of my age.
On my back porch, I reflect and remember a not so glamorous past and I wonder if I would have changed anything if given a second change since this is what actually happened and since this is what actually happened why would I ever want to change it?
Similarly... what's happening now is what is happening... and, when it is done, why would we ever wish for it not to have happened? Life happens because it is supposed to happen... and, there is a reason for it to happen whether or not we understand it at the time. If we loose our freedoms, we were meant to loose our freedoms.
First Space Hotel
Fast forward a couple years and the hotel has a new name -- Voyager Station -- and it's set to be built by Orbital Assembly Corporation, a new construction company run by former pilot John Blincow, who also heads up the Gateway Foundation.
In a recent interview with CNN Travel, Blincow explained there had been some Covid-related delays, but construction on the space hotel is expected to begin in 2026, and a sojourn in space could be a reality by 2027.
"We're trying to make the public realize that this golden age of space travel is just around the corner. It's coming. It's coming fast," said Blincow. TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE, Click Here...
Thursday, March 11
TURN... Turn... turn...
- males and females
- rich and the not so rich
- black and white
- management and labor
- liberals and conservatives
- north and south
- east and west
- educated and non educated
Mom and Dad
AND... since they are physically different, males and females wear different clothes... and, those clothes in particular is going to differentiate between the two genders. However, there are a few males who want to be females and exercise that desire by taking female steroids to create breasts or have surgery for implants. This is their choice... but, once they have these breasts, can these males now use the female restrooms in public?
What if, a male who wants to be a female, also wants to play female sports... does his male body give him the advantage over his female teammates? And if the courts says YES... he can do this... what then are the rights for the females who have been put at a disadvantage?
Meyers Briggs and AI
Then they put you on camera while you take the test verbally, and you frown slightly during one of your answers, and their facial-analysis program decides you’re “difficult.”
Sorry, next please!
This is just one of many problems with the increasing use of artificial intelligence in hiring, contends the new documentary “Persona: The Dark Truth Behind Personality Tests,” premiering Thursday on HBO Max.
The film, from director Tim Travers Hawkins, begins with the origins of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality test. The mid-20th century brainchild of a mother-daughter team, it sorts people based on four factors: introversion/extraversion, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling and judging/perceiving. The quiz, which has an astrology-like cult following for its 16 four-lettered “types,” has evolved into a hiring tool used throughout corporate America, along with successors such as the “Big Five,” which measures five major personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. SOURCE: NYPOST.com TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE, Click Here...
Wednesday, March 10
Stimulus Checks
This new COVID RELIEF package soon to be passed by the HOUSE, will not help us at all in that we do not need the money and plan to save the money for a later use since we have NO DEBT to pay off. Actually, my wife and I have been debt free for over 15 years and have only been retired for 5 years. The fact that we cannot really go anywhere does not bother us either because we have plenty of activities outside our house to keep us entertained. We do go to doctor's appointment, the grocery store, and have gone out to eat about a dozen times since the lockdown as restaurants in TN are for the most part OPEN even though social distancing is still maintained inside.
What we were HOPING FOR more so than Stimulus Checks was a substantial increase in Social Security and now that the Democrats are in power and like to spend money, perhaps that will happen sooner or later. The other concept that we were HOPING FOR was to have MEDICARE cover more services than it currently is covering. Our supplemental health insurance covers what Medicare does not, still there are more out-of-pocket expenses than we anticipated... and it would be nice if the Democrats did something about that.
Minimum Wage does not do a thing for us, especially since we are not working and especially since we have worked all our career in a State that pays low wages anyway which has resulted in us being very careful how we spend our money.
However, increasing prices would bother us... and, it would appear that the Biden Administration is putting scenarios into play that will increase prices rather than maintain stable prices as we have seen for the last several years. Increasing prices contradicts the minimum wage increase and will actually put those workers in a financially worse situation than before even though they are earning more money.
Gasoline Prices have been increasing in our area and there are increases in prices at the grocery stores as well as at restaurants because they have to spend more money on cleaning tables. Although, it will not slow down the people in this State who like to go out and eat.
A Division of the Republic
John Adams worried that “a division of the republic into two great parties … is to be dreaded as the great political evil.” And that’s exactly what has come to pass.
George Washington’s farewell address is often remembered for its warning against hyper-partisanship: “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.” John Adams, Washington’s successor, similarly worried that “a division of the republic into two great parties … is to be dreaded as the great political evil.”
America has now become that dreaded divided republic. The existential menace is as foretold, and it is breaking the system of government the Founders put in place with the Constitution.
Though America’s two-party system goes back centuries, the threat today is new and different because the two parties are now truly distinct, a development that I date to the 2010 midterms. Until then, the two parties contained enough overlapping multitudes within them that the sort of bargaining and coalition-building natural to multiparty democracy could work inside the two-party system. No more. America now has just two parties, and that’s it.
The theory that guided Washington and Adams was simple, and widespread at the time. If a consistent partisan majority ever united to take control of the government, it would use its power to oppress the minority. The fragile consent of the governed would break down, and violence and authoritarianism would follow. This was how previous republics had fallen into civil wars, and the Framers were intent on learning from history, not repeating its mistakes. TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE, Click here...
Swirlons
By Stephanie Pappas - Live Science Contributor 5 days ago
Researchers discover a...
Physical laws such as Newton's second law of motion — which states that as a force applied to an object increases, its acceleration increases, and that as the object's mass increases, its acceleration decreases — apply to passive, nonliving matter, ranging from atoms to planets. But much of the matter in the world is active matter and moves under its own, self-directed, force, said Nikolai Brilliantov, a mathematician at Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology in Russia and the University of Leicester in England. Living things as diverse as bacteria, birds and humans can interact with the forces upon them. There are examples of non-living active matter, too. Nanoparticles known as "Janus particles," are made up of two sides with different chemical properties. The interactions between the two sides create self-propelled movement.
To explore active matter, Brilliantov and his colleagues used a computer to simulate particles that could self-propel. These particles weren't consciously interacting with the environment, Brilliantov told Live Science. Rather, they were more akin to simple bacteria or nanoparticles with internal sources of energy, but without information-processing abilities. TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE, Click Here...
Tuesday, March 9
Three Squares and a Room
But, the bigger question here is not so much whether it is right or wrong to keep people in prison who have committed crimes, but to take another person's life by having a DEATH PENALTY. In 2020, there were 2,553 DEATH ROW INMATES. In case you are interested, it costs $1.26 million per inmate to implement the death penalty which includes the cost of a trial, jail time, and the actual execution. And... the median cost to keep an inmate in jail until they are released is $740,000.
While there is a rather large price tag to put an inmate to death, the greater question here is the MORAL IMPLICATIONS of killing another person, even after they have killed one or more individuals which landed them in jail in the first place. Of course, there is also the facts surrounding the case and how terrible or horrific the actual crime was or was not.
Should we take another person's life?
Successful or not...
It is easy to be successful when one is born into money or when one has the support of someone with money... but, when money is not the foundation of it all... why does one person succeed and another person does not?
- determination
- never giving up
- self-confidence
- willing to put family second
- willing to work long hours
- affirmations of positive thinking
- Having a plan and executing it
- goal setting
- don't accept defeat
- long term thinking