Demonology

When I (Ed Simon) reveal that I wrote a book about demonology, I’m invariably asked if I believe that demons are actually real. “Of course, I don’t think that demons are actually real,” is the expected response and the one that I give. “I’m a modern, secular, educated, liberal, agnostic man. I don’t believe in demons and devils, goblins and ghouls, imps, vampires, werewolves, ghosts, or poltergeists either.” Yet whenever giving the doxology of all of that which we’re not to have faith in, I’m mentally keeping my fingers crossed, because so much of that question depends on the definitions of the words “believe,” “demons,” “actually,” and “real.”

Since the Enlightenment, Western intelligentsia have been the inheritors to a rather anemic model of knowledge known as the correspondence theory of truth, whereby the validity of a statement is ascertained simply by whether or not it matches empirical reality. If I say, “The dog is in the yard,” that statement is either true or false depending on whether or not said dog is in said yard. Easy enough, but then what of statements like “A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” “I think that I shall never see/a poem as lovely as a tree,” or “I wondered lonely as a cloud?”

A fundamentalist adherence to the correspondence theory of truth, trumpeted by logical positivists and other philosophical heretics, would consign John Keats, Joyce Kilmer, and William Wordsworth into a bin marked “meaningless” (even though I think we can all ascertain that there is meaning, even if it’s the “slant” truth that Emily Dickinson writes about). And so, you can imagine what is made of statements about divinity and diabology (though theology has, in my estimation, always just been a branch of poetics anyhow).


That the correspondence theory of truth doesn’t even match its own exacting prescriptions to what is legitimate or not is a bit of self-referential absurdity best passed over; concluding that as a model it’s clearly ineffectual in describing whole swaths of human experience is sufficient enough. You can see my difficulty with the question of whether or not I “actually” believe in demons—I reject the entire epistemological attitude in which the query is posed. If the question is asked in the spirit of ascertaining whether or not demons exist as tangibly as a dog in the yard, then obviously the answer is in the negative, and yet in those moments of sublime terror when approaching the core of the cracked numinous, I can’t help but know what I felt. That warped smile and those red eyes might not be staring back at me from the yard, but they’re staring back from somewhere.   READ MORE...

Just For You

Take them off!

What is Putin's ENDGAME?

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a long speech full of heavy sighs and dark grievances, made clear today that he has chosen war. He went to war against Ukraine in 2014; now he has declared war against the international order of the past 30 years.

Putin’s slumped posture and deadened affect led me to suspect that he is not as stable as we would hope. He had the presence not of a confident president, but of a surly adolescent caught in a misadventure, rolling his eyes at the stupid adults who do not understand how cruel the world has been to him. Teenagers, of course, do not have hundreds of thousands of troops and nuclear weapons.

Even discounting Putin’s delivery, the speech was, in many places, simply unhinged. Putin began with a history lesson about how and why Ukraine even exists. For all his Soviet nostalgia, the Russian president is right that his Soviet predecessors intentionally created a demographic nightmare when drawing the internal borders of the U.S.S.R., a subject I’ve explained at length here.

But Putin’s point wasn’t that the former subjects of the Soviet Union needed to iron out their differences. Rather, he was suggesting that none of the new states that emerged from the Soviet collapse—except for Russia—were real countries. “As a result of Bolshevik policy,” Putin intoned, “Soviet Ukraine arose, which even today can with good reason be called ‘Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s Ukraine’. He is its author and architect.”

It is true that Soviet leaders created the 1991 borders. That is also true of what we now call the Russian Federation. Putin, however, went even further back in history: “Ukraine never had a tradition of genuine statehood.”

By that kind of historical reasoning, few nations in Europe, or anywhere else, are safe. Putin’s foray into history was nothing less than a demand that only Moscow—and only the Kremlin’s supreme leader—has the right to judge what is or is not a sovereign state (as I recently discussed here). Putin’s claims are hardly different from Saddam Hussein’s rewriting of Middle East history when Iraq tried to erase Kuwait from the map.  READ MORE...

About the author: Tom Nichols is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and the author of its newsletter Peacefield.

Late Arrival

 

Waiting For A Star To Explode

Supernova 1987A appears as a bright spot near the centre of this image of the Tarantula nebula, taken by the ESO Schmidt Telescope.Credit: ESO

Masayuki Nakahata has been waiting 35 years for a nearby star to explode.

He was just starting out in science the last time it happened, in February 1987, when a dot of light suddenly appeared in the southern sky. This is the closest supernova seen during modern times; and the event, known as SN 1987A, gained worldwide media attention and led to dramatic advances in astrophysics.

Nakahata was a graduate student at the time, working on what was then one of the world’s foremost neutrino catchers, the Kamiokande-II detector at the Kamioka Underground Observatory near Hida, Japan. He and a fellow student, Keiko Hirata, spotted evidence of neutrinos pouring out of the supernova — the first time anyone had seen these fundamental particles originating from anywhere outside the Solar System.

Now, Nakahata, a physicist at the University of Tokyo, is ready for when a supernova goes off. He is head of the world’s largest neutrino experiment of its kind, Super-Kamiokande, where upgrades to its supernova alert system were completed late last year. The improvements will enable the observatory’s computers to recognize when it is detecting neutrinos from a supernova, almost in real time, and to send out an automated alert to conventional telescopes worldwide.

Astronomers will be waiting. “It’s gonna give everybody the willies,” says Alec Habig, an astrophysicist at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. Early warning from Super-Kamiokande and other neutrino observatories will trigger robotic telescopes — in many cases responding with no human intervention — to swivel in the direction of the dying star to catch the first light from the supernova, which will come after the neutrino storm.

But when the light arrives, it could be too much of a good thing, says Patrice Bouchet, an astrophysicist at the University of Paris-Saclay who made crucial observations of SN 1987A, from the La Silla Observatory in Chile. The brightest events, which would shine brighter than a full Moon and be visible during the day, would overwhelm the ultra-sensitive but delicate sensors in the telescopes used by professional astronomers.

Ship Passing

 

Fighting Child Poverty in America

It was heralded as a game-changer for America's social safety net. It dramatically reduced child poverty. But, last month, the enhanced Child Tax Credit — a kind of "Social Security for kids" — expired, and millions of American children sank back into poverty.

In March 2021, President Biden and congressional Democrats revamped the Child Tax Credit as part of the American Rescue Plan. They restructured it, so that parents could get a monthly check from the government. They increased the credit's size, allowing parents to claim as much as $3,600 a year per child, or $300 a month. And they made the credit fully refundable, so that even super-low-income families who don't pay much — or anything — in federal taxes could get it.

For those primarily concerned with ending child poverty, these changes were a resounding success. Scholars at Columbia University found they reduced child poverty by about 30%. Another study found the enhanced program cut household food insufficiency by 26%.

But President Biden's efforts to renew the credit have been thwarted by opposition from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and congressional Republicans. They disliked how much the program cost and how generous it was, and they worried that it would encourage parents to stop working because it did not have a work requirement.

According to the Tax Policy Center, the beefed-up Child Tax Credit would cost around $225 billion per year (about $100 billion more per year than the original version, which is now back in effect). For context, that's less than a quarter of the annual cost of Social Security, about a third of the cost of Medicare, and about the same as the budget for the Department of Agriculture. A report from the Urban Institute finds that even with the enhanced Child Tax Credit, America spent only about 7% of its federal budget on kids in 2021 — and that is now projected to decline.

As for how many parents stopped working as a result of the enhanced Child Tax Credit, estimates range from about 300,000 to 1.5 million. There are about 50 million working parents in the United States, so even if we accept only the highest estimate, more than 97% of parents continued working after receiving the payments. That makes sense because 300 bucks a month is hardly enough for most families to live on.

The failure of Washington to renew the enhanced Child Tax Credit continues a long tradition in America: Our welfare system has long spent generously on the old, but it has consistently skimped on the young. While America spends about as much, or even more on the elderly than many other rich nations, it spends significantly less on kids. Among the almost 40 countries in the OECD, only Turkey spends less per child as a percentage of their GDP. It's a big reason why the United States has a much higher rate of child poverty than most other affluent countries — and even has a higher rate of child poverty than some not-so-affluent countries.

In a new paper, the economists Anna Aizer, Hilary W. Hoynes, and Adriana Lleras-Muney explore the reasons why the United States is such an outlier when it comes to fighting child poverty. While they acknowledge the reasons are varied and complex, they focus their analysis on one factor: American policymakers, influenced by economists, have dwelled much more on the costs of social programs than their benefits.  TO FIND OUT THE COST OF FOCUSING JUST ON COSTS, CLICK HERE...

Cereal

Alice

 

Australia Wants Investigation of China

A PLA-N Yuzhao-class amphibious transport dock vessel transits the Torres Strait February 18, 2022. Picture taken February 18, 2022. Australian Defence Department/Handout via REUTERS

SYDNEY — Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said a Chinese naval vessel that pointed a laser at an Australian defense plane was potentially visible from Australia’s mainland, as Canberra demands a “full investigation” by Beijing.

Morrison said on radio on Monday his government had not received an explanation from China over the incident last Thursday, considered by Canberra as a “dangerous and reckless act”.

A Chinese navy vessel within Australia’s exclusive economic zone directed a laser at an Australian military aircraft in flight over Australia’s northern approaches, illuminating the plane and potentially endangering lives, Australia’s defense said on Saturday.

The P-8A Poseidon – a maritime patrol aircraft – detected a laser emanating from a People’s Liberation Army – Navy (PLA-N) vessel, the Defense Department said, releasing photographs of two Chinese vessels sailing close to Australia’s northern coast.

A Chinese guided missile destroyer and an amphibious transport dock were sailing east through the Arafura Sea between New Guinea and Australia at the time of the incident, and later passed through the narrow Torres Strait.

“It’s possible people could even see the vessel from our mainland, potentially,” Morrison told reporters in Tasmania on Monday.  READ MORE...

Dog on Ski Lift

 

Folding Phone

It's been well over a month since the OnePlus 10 Pro got its official announcement, but thanks to its region-locked exclusivity to China, it almost feels like the phone doesn't exist yet. 

While recent rumors point to a global release in March, famed durability tester Zack from JerryRigEverything managed to get his hands on the device a little early. Unfortunately, it seems like this is one OnePlus device that might not make it out unscathed.

Avid JRE fans know how this usually goes: scratch test, burn test, bend test, all to see if a specific device can hold up to daily wear and tear. For the most part, the OnePlus 10 Pro performs as you'd expect. 

Its glass display scratches around a level 6 on the Mohs hardness scale (once the screen protector is removed, at least), and the OLED display permanently burns after about 45 seconds under a lighter. That's all pretty usual for a smartphone in 2022.

It's the bend test where the real challenge comes in. Glass slabs usually handle this process pretty well, especially when reinforced with some sort of metal or steel. 

Every now and then, though, a phone's construction just can't hold up to this sort of torture, and it seems like the OnePlus 10 Pro falls squarely into this category.  READ MORE...

Slow Moving Train

 

Working in a Metaverse

Facebook’s metaverse was always intended to be more than another virtual reality application. It would provide users with infinite space and infinite possibilities, to move around, interact, engage, and even earn in a VR world. One of the key use cases the company has factored in is work.

“By 2030, the new generations of Oculus will allow users to teleport from one place to another without moving from their couch — not only for gaming and entertainment but also for work,” Mark Zuckerberg said in a March podcast. Then, in August, the company introduced a VR collaboration solution called Horizon Workrooms. And now, Facebook has completely rebranded as Meta, with a clear vision for a VR-enabled metaverse.

The notion of the metaverse contains within it several elements: multiple VR worlds, interactive and near-real digital assets, the ability to move around and teleport without restrictions, and problem-solving in 3D. All of these are extremely conducive to work-related use cases.

What Is the Metaverse?
The metaverse is defined as a three-dimensional internet powered by virtual reality and augmented reality. It is persistent (exists regardless of the user’s presence), real-time (users can experience live events), infinite (supports unlimited concurrent users and VR worlds), self-sustaining (users can work for and pay for things in the metaverse), and interoperable (there’s only one metaverse and everything is integrated within it).

Importantly, this definition of the metaverse exists independent of Facebook (now rebranded as Meta). The term was coined in the 1992 sci-fi novel Snow Crash and there have been several attempts to build the metaverse since then. However, early attempts like Second Life, Roblox, and NeosVR were all limited gaming applications. The new metaverses put forward by Facebook and also Microsoft are geared for work-related use cases – i.e., communication, collaboration, and problem-solving.

Working in the Metaverse: Key Advantages
What are the advantages of working in the metaverse? In 2019, this question might have been slightly harder to answer. But now, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, millions around the world were forced to switch to digital-only modes of communication and some kind of a virtual workspace. Working in the metaverse takes this a step further to bring you all the capabilities of the real world, with very little of its challenges or limitations.
Overcome the challenges of remote work

This is the biggest advantage of working in the metaverse. When telecommuting, users often complain that they are unable to read body language and communicate effectively. Managers struggle to maintain visibility over team productivity. And, due to the prolonged absence of in-person interactions, there is risk of disengagement. The metaverse creates an immersive virtual workplace where 3D avatars of employees can work together just like in the real world.  READ MORE...

Midas

Lower Back, Butt, Upper Thigh, and Hip PAIN

 

About 6 weeks ago, when I got out of bed one morning, there was a deep muscle pain in both ass cheeks.  It bothered me when I tried to walk but when I was sitting there was no pain at all.  The next day, it was gone, but returned the following day.  That lasted for about 7-10 days, then the pain was not only in my ass cheeks but started to radiate down the backs of both thighs.

This pain was consistent every morning, disappeared when sitting but returned when I tried to walk, and sometimes the pain was so great that, my legs gave way and I felt myself begin to fall to the ground, so I frooze and reached out for something to hold onto like the side of a wall.

This pain last for another 7-10 days when I decided to search online for exercises and when I did those exercises, my pain subsided for a while but always returned.  About this time, I started icing but butt and the back of my thighs for 20 minutes each day and that seemed to help temporarily.

So, today after about 6 weeks, I decided to make an appointment with an orthopedic doctor and see if s/he can tell me what the hell is going on.  I have this appointment for March 1, 2022 so it is only 5 days away.

According to my research, pain like this could be coming from:

• a slipped disk in my back
• a pinched nerve 
• sciatic nerve
• sitting too long without exercising
• pulled lower back muscle
• joint pain from arthritis
• a bad hip joint that needs replacing
• long term use of my cancer drugs

Snow Lift

Truckers to Capital Beltway

A trucker convoy heading to Washington, D.C., later this week plans to shut down the Capital Beltway in protest of wide-ranging issues such as fuel prices, vaccine requirements and immigration, the organizer said. (WTTG)

A trucker convoy heading to Washington, D.C., plans to shut down the Capital Beltway later this week in protest of wide-ranging issues such as fuel prices, vaccine requirements and immigration, the organizer said.

Bob Bolus, who owns a truck parts and towing business in Scranton, Pennsylvania, told FOX5 DC that he heard hundreds of people were interested in taking part in shutting down the roadway in protest.

CANADA FREEDOM CONVOY: NEARLY 100 VEHICLES TOWED AMID OTTAWA POLICE CRACKDOWN

"I'll give you an analogy of that of a giant boa constrictor," Bolus said. "That basically squeezes you, chokes you and it swallows you, and that's what we're going to do the D.C."

Bolus, who the station reported is a longtime supporter of former President Trump, said that the protest will leave a lane open for emergency vehicles for safety, but he couldn’t promise that commuters would make it to work on time.

"We will not compromise anybody's safety or health, one way or the other," Bolus said. "As far as if they can't get to work, geez that's too bad."

The caravan comes as a similar demonstration involving truckers, dubbed the Freedom Convoy, shut down Ottawa, Canada, in protest of the country’s COVID-19 mandates. Authorities there had arrested 191 people and filed 389 charges, police announced mid-afternoon Sunday. They had also towed 99 vehicles.

In response to the impending protests in the capital, D.C. police have already limited time off for officers and put nearly 500 officers on civil disturbance units daily beginning Wednesday, the station reported.

Law enforcement in the D.C. area told the station that police are aware of the situation and are communicating with local, state, and federal partners.

Guinea Pigs