Telling You What To Do

 Do you want our Federal Government telling you

 what to do...

how to do it...

and when to do it???

This is what bothers me more than anything else about the DEMORATS and the PROGRESSIVE LIBERALS...

I am my own person and I don't need the Federal Government telling me what to do with my life...  and, controlling my behavior with MONEY...

If I want to drink alcohol, I will...

If I want to use illegal drugs, I will...

If I want to support abortions, I will...

If I want to own a firearm, I will...

If I want to support the transgendered, I will...

If I want to overeat, I will...

If I want to work or not work, I will...

If I want to steal, I will...

If I want to get more education, I will...

I understand that the wealthy have a fundamental right to become wealthy but I do not think it is appropriate for our Federal Government to take money away from them just because they are wealthy...

If the wealthy want to share their money on their own, then they should be allowed to do that...  and, if the wealthy want to donate money to a political campaign to influence elections then they should have the right to do so.

Relax...

 

Expanding Into What?

The universe is everything, so it isn't expanding into anything. It's just expanding. All of the galaxies in the universe are moving away from each other, and every region of space is being stretched, but there's no center they're expanding from and no outer edge to expand into anything else.

But that doesn't mean that the universe is infinite. That brings us to the long answer. To understand how something could be finite but have no edge, think of the fabric of the universe as the surface of a balloon. As the balloon inflates, the surface stretches and every point on that surface moves away from every other point, but a tiny being on the surface of that balloon could walk forever and never run into the edge of its balloon universe. There's no edge, yet that balloon universe has a finite volume.

The Shape of the Universe
But the balloon is just one example. Scientists aren't actually sure whether the universe is finite or infinite, or even what shape the universe is. There are three options: spherical, flat, or hyperbolic (that is, it curves upward). Evidence from the earliest light in the universe suggests that the second option is on the money, and the universe is, in fact, flat.

Even if the universe is flat and not balloon-shaped, however, it's still easy to think about how it could be finite with no edge. Think about a flat piece of paper. You could take two opposing edges and make them touch, creating a cylinder. If a tiny 2-dimensional rocket ship traveled from one of those edges to the other, it would arrive back where it started. You could do the same thing in the perpendicular direction: Connect the two ends of the tube to each other (pretend this is magically stretchy paper, for the sake of argument) and create a donut shape, also known as a torus. Now your 2-dimensional rocket ship could travel anywhere it likes, and it would never encounter an edge — even though your paper torus has finite volume.

But wait, you might be saying. Paper is flat; a torus is curved. Isn't that cheating? No, and that's because scientists have a very specific definition for the word "flat." When they say flat, they mean "Euclidean," which means that parallel lines always run parallel and the sum of the angles of a triangle is always exactly 180 degrees. This doesn't happen on a sphere or a hyperbola, but it does on a cylinder, a torus, and any other shape you can make out of a flat piece of paper.

This suggests something kind of exciting: If we live in a flat universe, you could potentially travel in one direction for long enough (or build a telescope that can see far enough) to end up right back where you started. Even cooler things happen when you think about other weird shapes — shapes that twist back on themselves could make you arrive back at a mirror image of where you started, for example.

But no matter what shape the universe is, it's not expanding into anything. There's nothing outside of the universe because the universe has no edge.  READ MORE

Division Dilemma

The 2016 Election divided the United States of America along the lines of liberals and conservatives even though there was a division among the wealthy and the not so wealthy that had been lingering around for decades...  or, at least since the 1960's but became more apparent in 2000.  In addition to the wealth and political divisions in this country, we are also facing since the 2016 election a racial division the likes of which has not been seen since the 1960's as well and the era of MLK Jr.

BLM and ANTIFA have exacerbated this racial division along with the pushback from White Supremacists but the black movement against whites has become far more powerful than any push back, especially with the killing of George Floyd.

Blacks now want to tear down Confederate Monuments, Rewrite the US Constitution, Receive Slavery Reparations, Teach Critical Race Theory, and destroy whatever White Privilege really means...  just because it is white I suppose.

What bothers me and no doubt others is the fact that Blacks only represent 13% of the overall population with the whites representing 60% of that same population...  and if, only half the whites FIGHT BACK, there will still be TWICE AS MANY WHITES as blacks...  and, the resulting confrontation could be seriously troublesome.

The last thing that any political administration in power wants is a HIDDEN AGENDA mental battle between whites and blacks...  in other words, each side giving the other side the COLD SHOULDER and refusing to be cooperative and friendly, especially in communities where the opposite was previously taken place.  This silent treatment will foster ill will and resentment on both sides that will eventually manifest itself in more obvious confrontations like refusing to eat at the same restaurant, or attend the same movie or share drinks at a bar...  or allow children to play on the same sports team.

ALREADY, blacks and white attend separate Churches and for the most part live in separate communities, but we shop at the same stores and at the same malls and that could change.

Small businesses not controlled by Government Regulations could stop hiring blacks for a variety of LEGAL reasons, especially in the South and Employee at Will States.

If Americans are forced to direct their efforts to repair divisions between:

• politics
• wealth
• race

then, the rest of the world will be afforded an excellent opportunity to take advantage of the United States because of that perceived weakness.

Retiring Law Enforcement

All over the United States, law enforcement personnel are retiring and/or leaving their jobs because the general public no longer has respect for them...  in addition, the general public is calling for the defunding of the police departments and some members of the US Congress want to abolish the police altogether...

I think this a great idea for America...

We do not need the police...

However, if the general public cannot have the police then elected officials should not have the police either...  whereas, if you are wealthy you can do anything damn thing that you want to do...  and, believe it or not...  the wealthy have been doing that for decades...

I like the idea of violent cities that perpetuate the increase of illegal drugs and crimes...  as long as it stays in these larger cities, it will not move out to the rural areas of the country...  where people like me live.

My wife and I are going on vacation soon and it would be nice to drive as fast as I want to without concern that highway patrol are hiding behind some blind spot trying to give people like me speeding tickets instead of protecting the citizens against violence.

Keep up the good work...  those of you who want to defund the police...  I support your efforts.

Also, I think more and more law enforcement people all over the United States should retire and find some other kind of job like building solar panels or windmills.

Art

 

Chahokia Mystery

For a couple of hundred years, Cahokia was the place to be in what is now the US state of Illinois. The bustling, vibrant city was at one time home to some 15,000 people, but by the end of the 14th century it was deserted – and researchers still aren't sure why.

A new study has been able to rule out one previous idea – that deforestation and overuse of the land around Cahokia caused excessive erosion and local flooding in the area, making it less inhabitable for Native Americans.

Through an analysis of sediment cores gathered near earthen mounds in the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, researchers have established that the ground remained stable from Cahokia's heyday until the mid-1800s and industrial development. In other words, there was no environmental disaster.

"There's a really common narrative about land use practices that lead to erosion and sedimentation and contribute to all of these environmental consequences," says geoarchaeologist Caitlin Rankin from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "When we actually revisit this, we're not seeing evidence of the flooding."

The mounds that the excavation site was next to are in low-lying areas and close to a creek – a prime position for any local flooding that would have happened. Yet there were no signs of sediment left behind by floods in the layers of earth.  READ MORE

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-mystery-deepens-over-why-the-lost-city-of-cahokia-was-abandoned

Komic Korner Kartoons

 

Through My LENS...

The last time I looked...  I was...

1. Southern Born
2. Cancer survivor
3. Heart Attack survivor
4. A few pounds overweight
5. Over 6 feet in height
6. INTJ Personality
7. Scorpion
8. Retired
9. Married
10. Divorced
11. Veteran
12. Educated
13. Religious  
14. Teacher
15. Father
16. Husband
17. Writer
18. Poet
19. Artist
20. Male

There is nothing I can do to change the way I am even though I can change my behavior...  but, whatever happens to me, flows through the LENSES of my preconceived ideas and ideals that have been forming and reforming throughout my entire life.  I am not who I was nor will I become who I am today.  Choices help formulate my life and its experiences but my life has already been seen by our Creator who is the past, present, as well as the future.  I am and will become that which I am supposed to become and nothing more or nothing less.  Life conforms to my development and evolution as it revolves around my essence and my essence is what life has given me.

Critical Race Theory

Critical race theory (CRT) is an academic movement made up of civil-rights scholars and activists in the United States who seek to critically examine the law as it intersects with issues of race, and to challenge mainstream liberal approaches to racial justice.  Wikipedia

According to Purdue University
Critical Race Theory (1970s-present)
INTRODUCTION
Critical Race Theory, or CRT, is a theoretical and interpretive mode that examines the appearance of race and racism across dominant cultural modes of expression. In adopting this approach, CRT scholars attempt to understand how victims of systemic racism are affected by cultural perceptions of race and how they are able to represent themselves to counter prejudice.

Closely connected to such fields as philosophy, history, sociology, and law, CRT scholarship traces racism in America through the nation’s legacy of slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, and recent events. In doing so, it draws from work by writers like Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others studying law, feminism, and post-structuralism. CRT developed into its current form during the mid-1970s with scholars like Derrick Bell, Alan Freeman, and Richard Delgado, who responded to what they identified as dangerously slow progress following Civil Rights in the 1960s.

Prominent CRT scholars like Kimberlé Crenshaw, Mari Matsuda, and Patricia Williams share an interest in recognizing racism as a quotidian component of American life (manifested in textual sources like literature, film, law, etc). In doing so, they attempt to confront the beliefs and practices that enable racism to persist while also challenging these practices in order to seek liberation from systemic racism.

As such, CRT scholarship also emphasizes the importance of finding a way for diverse individuals to share their experiences. However, CRT scholars do not only locate an individual’s identity and experience of the world in his or her racial identifications, but also their membership to a specific class, gender, nation, sexual orientation, etc. They read these diverse cultural texts as proof of the institutionalized inequalities racialized groups and individuals experience every day.

As Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic explain in their introduction to the third edition of Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge, “Our social world, with its rules, practices, and assignments of prestige and power, is not fixed; rather, we construct with it words, stories and silence. But we need not acquiesce in arrangements that are unfair and one-sided. By writing and speaking against them, we may hope to contribute to a better, fairer world” (3). In this sense, CRT scholars seek tangible, real-world ends through the intellectual work they perform. This contributes to many CRT scholars’ emphasis on social activism and transforming everyday notions of race, racism, and power.

More recently, CRT has contributed to splinter groups focused on Asian American, Latino, and Indian racial experiences.  Read More

Saturday in the Valley

I woke up this morning to the sounds of rain outside my window and felt the immediate congestion inside my head specifically around my sinuses...  one of the pitfalls of living in East TN.  But, for me the advantages out-weigh the disadvantages...  especially at my age where sights and sounds are worrisome. 

As an English major in College, I am very familiar with the symbol of rain in literature...  and, is omnipresent in both prose and poetry to create the proper mental environment among the readers and the critics.  Whenever you have literature present, you have a whole host of critics who like to criticize writers for not writing as they would have expected them to write.

But, college has been behind me for over 50 years and I simply don't give a shit anymore what the critics may or may not think...  Rain, is a necessary evil in the South, especially in the Valley where a little rain is so necessary for survival.

I just mowed my lawn and with this rain and lots of sunny days after the weekend, no doubt I will have to mow my lawn again once maybe twice before the week is over...  While it is not that annoying to mow since I daydream while mowing, it does take time and money...  and, gasoline is not necessarily cheap anymore.

Once it warms up a tad, I plan to put on a sweatshirt and go out on my screened in back porch and listen to the rain for an hour or two...  for me, it is just as relaxing as sitting in my hot tub for 20 minutes.

Unfortunately, I only started learning to relax after I retired in 2015...  perhaps, if I had learned to do this earlier, I would not have experienced a heart attack...  who knows?

Need Coffee...

 

What Does RAIN Symbolize?

The Symbolism of Rain – 7 Examples in Movies & Books
By Chris Drew, PhD

The symbolism of rain varies across different types of literature and movies.

It has been used as a symbol for many thousands of years, perhaps most notably in the floods in the bible.

Rain can symbolize many things. It can represent unhappiness, rebirth, foreboding, determination, the breaking of a drought, and a pause for introspection.

Here are some examples of how rain is employed as a literary device.
1. Unhappiness and Melancholy
2. Ominous Foreboding
3. Rebirth and Renewal
4. Romance
5. Determination
6. A Pause for Introspection
7. Cleansing

1. Unhappiness and Melancholy
Rain often washes over a scene when the protagonist in a film, TV show or literature is ‘awash’ with sadness.

This may be because rain is oppressive. The clouds that it comes with lock out light and the warmth of the sun. It prevents us from going outdoors to enjoy nature. It literally makes our days grayer and darker.

When a character is sad or moody, rainy weather is often employed as a way of showing how the world is empathizing with the character.

An example is in the book Great Expectations. Pip narrates:

…stormy and wet, stormy and wet; and mud, mud, mud, deep in all the streets. Day after day, a vast heavy veil had been driving over London from the East, and it drove still, as if in the East there were an Eternity of cloud and wind. … gloomy accounts had come in from the coast, of shipwreck and death. Violent blasts of rain had accompanied these rages of wind, and the day just closed as I sat down to read had been the worst of all.

Here, Pip is outlining how the weather is mirroring his gloomy feeling as he spends his days depressed in London.

2. Ominous Foreboding
Rain may also symbolize foreboding. In fact, this symbolism often parallels the use of rain as a sign of melancholy – because the rain is indicating that there are no good prospects to come. There are “dark clouds on the horizon”. Indeed, it can often take place in the final scene of a move that we know will not end well.  READ MORE

 

Multiple Intelligences

What is Multiple Intelligences Theory?

Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences proposes that people are not born with all of the intelligence they will ever have.
This theory challenged the traditional notion that there is one single type of intelligence, sometimes known as “g” for general intelligence, that only focuses on cognitive abilities.

To broaden this notion of intelligence, Gardner introduced eight different types of intelligences consisting of: 

Linguistic, 

Logical/Mathematical, 

Spatial, 

Bodily-Kinesthetic,

Musical, 

Interpersonal, 

Intrapersonal, and 

Naturalist.

Gardner notes that the linguistic and logical-mathematical modalities are most typed valued in school and society.

Gardner also suggests that there may other “candidate” intelligences—such as spiritual intelligence, existential intelligence, and moral intelligence—but does not believe these meet his original inclusion criteria. (Gardner, 2011).

The theory of multiple intelligences was first proposed by Howard Gardner in his 1983 book “Frames of Mind”, where he broadens the definition of intelligence and outlines several distinct types of intellectual competencies.

Gardner developed a series of eight inclusion criteria while evaluating each "candidate” intelligence that was based on a variety of scientific disciplines.

He writes that we may all have these intelligences, but our profile of these intelligence may differ individually based on genetics or experience.  READ MORE

 

Brick and Mortar is Going Away

Partly because of the COVID 19 Pandemic and partly because of
technology brick and mortar buildings, organizations, and institutions are going away...

The first of these will be EDUCATION...

Educational institutions both for profit and non profit have realized recently that ONLINE EDUCATION saves them "tons" on money each year in building maintenance and utility costs.  With instructors working from home or other remote locations, they are responsible for their offices and internet connections which they can then use as tax deductions when they file their IRS taxes each year.

Unfortunately, online education is not as knowledge transfer intense as in-class instruction but profits and reduced costs are more important than education.

I have taught both in online jurisdictions as well as in-class jurisdictions and in the online environment, I put in much more time than I do or did in the classroom environment.

The second group of organizations and institutions that will be giving up their brick and mortar buildings will be the RETAIL INDUSTRY.

Amazon and Ebay are good examples of organizations that have been very successful with just an online operation.

When the COVID Pandemic was in full force here in the US, my wife and I ordered as much as we could online to avoid having to go out in public to purchase what we needed.  This type of buying is only going to increase in intensity among the American people.

What will help spur this along will be the increase in popularity of using Crypt Currency and Bitcoins which is a natural byproduct of Pay Pal.

And...  as we begin to do away with gasoline vehicles and transform our transportation industry to electric vehicles and before we are able to build all those CHARGING STATIONS, Americans will be forced to do more and more shopping online rather than driving to a shopping mall or a grocery store.

You're Next...

 BLACKS DON'T WANT JUSTICE THEY WANT REVENGE...  AGAINST WHITES...

So...  this is now what America looks like...  to other Americans and to our global community...  

America is NO LONGER a respected Global Power...

Celebrities and Professional Athletes try to STIR THE POT of RACISM in the hopes that the WHITES will finally just GIVE UP and allow BLACKS to have whatever they want...

If this ever happens, then there will be RACE WARS in America especially since Blacks are only 13% of the overall population...

A majority of Americans, mostly whites, simply and politely try to be diplomatic as the racial events unfold in this country in the hopes that it will eventually be self-regulating...  however, if that does not happen, WHITES will begin to PUSH BACK as their toleration lessens...  and, when this push back takes place, the BLACK COMMUNITY better be prepared to RETALIATE or BACK OFF with their demands...  otherwise, violence and hate will flourish on both sides...  and, this divide will continue for many years.

Meanwhile, our global enemies will take advantage of this division...

A Dying Galaxy

From the smallest microbe to the mightiest oak, death is as true for above as it is for below, even for the mightiest galaxies.

The process, however, is not a quick one. A haunting new Hubble photo of the galaxy NGC 1947 demonstrates this well: Even from a distance of around 45.4 million light-years away (in the southern constellation of Dorado), we can see that the galaxy is slowly on the decline.

The clue lies in the dust and gas. A galaxy in the prime of its life will be filled with the stuff, using it to make new stars. Eventually, the star-stuff will run out, and that's what astronomers believe we are seeing with NGC 1947.

It's a rare type of galaxy known as a lenticular galaxy - disk-shaped, like the Milky Way or Andromeda, but without the spiral arms. NGC 1947 used to have spiral arms, but it has used up almost all the gas and dust that gave them structure; all that remains is a few wisps, backlit by starlight.  Read More