COVID Vaccine

By the end of this week, I will have received my second COVID Vaccine shot using the Moderna Vaccine...  the shot is in the muscle and my first shot had no side effects except for a sore arm for a few days.  My shots are being delivered by our local health department while my wife receives her first shot from a local pharmacy.  I signed up in January and was called at the end of February and my wife called yesterday (Monday) and will be receiving her shot two days (Wednesday) later...  so, I am not sure who had the best approach although her request was processed quicker.

Last night, we discussed what we would be doing this summer now that we both will have been vaccinated and decided that by April, we should start making plans to visit the beach for a few days and while we will still wear our masks and socially distance, we will both feel more comfortable being out in public.

Last year in the Spring we went to Myrtle Beach and were both very concerned and very careful with our activities in that, we would not share an elevator.  When we first got to our room, we put on masks and gloves and cleaned the room even after it had already been cleaned.  We put the remote for the TV in a plastic bag and washed our hands often.  Were we lucky???

This spring/summer, we are going to the Gulf Coast of Florida at least once maybe twice and we are now planning to go the Myrtle Beach at least twice...  However, we have no plans to fly anywhere nor do we have plans to go on a cruise anytime soon if ever again.  No matter where we go we will plan to wear face masks and continue to socially distance.

Home

My wife and I have owned our current home for over twenty years and have eliminated our debt and mortgage payment for over 15 years.  We saved and did without so that we could become debt free and have more financial flexibility should the economy go "south".   

So, what does "home" mean to me?

Home means what I own...  this includes "renting" if it is considered to be a somewhat permanent residence as sometimes renting is a more preferable financial arrangement than owning since with owning one is responsible for repairs and preventive maintenance.

Home is my personal permanent residence where I live...  it gives me security and shelter and a since of serenity when it comes to getting away from the public.  I say public because the public is basically a group of people whose only agenda concerns themselves and they appear not to give a damn about other people.

It bothers me that people are like that now because this behavior is what I typically have associated with NEW YORKERS....  and, I say New Yorkers because this is exactly what I experienced every single time I visited New York and I have visited New York a couple of dozen times.

This behavior was not seen or experienced in the SOUTH...  but now, it appears that this behavior is EVERYWHERE in the USA.

My home keeps me away from the public.

My home is where I sleep

My home allows me to dress anyway I want

My home allows me to eat when I want

My home lets me be myself without annoying others

TAXES

The requirement to pay taxes to the Federal Government will never work like it was intended until our Federal Government does two issues....

First --  remove all the tax loopholes that allow individuals to shelter their money

Second  --  eliminate the ability for wealthy people to hide their money in offshore bank accounts in the Caymans

Right now we have a PROGRESSIVE TAX STRUCTURE that increases with one's taxable income, and many people favor a FLAT TAX that incorporates no deductions.

TAXES in America are not FAIR and EQUIABLE because we allow deductions and exemptions and oftentimes, the wealthy actually pay less taxes that do the not so wealthy.

WHY"

Because the wealthy can influence the politicians with their contributions to their re-election campaign.  Politicians care more about their re-election than they do about doing WHAT'S RIGHT for the American People.

Gadgets for 2021

Throw out your road flares, these discs are amazing!

Statistics show that every second there are 7 flat tires in America and only 1 in 10 people are fully prepared for a roadside emergency. With the Roadside Safety Disc, you can give a loved one the gift of preparation. It’s not a matter of if you will get a flat tire, but when; and when you do, having these ultra-bright Safety Discs in your vehicle can be life-saving!     Continue reading

Double your WiFi Speeds For No Extra Cost!

Do you hate having slow Internet and losing connection in some rooms? With RangeXTD WifiBoost, you can ensure that your entire hoe is optimally covered, no matter how far away you are from the router! Improve the strength and speed of the internet signal in your home! This is one device that every home should have.     Continue reading

21 Hottest Gadgets of 2021...   READ MORE

Quantum Entanglement

Frank Wilczek of Quanta Magazine writes:

Quantum entanglement is thought to be one of the trickiest concepts in science, but the core issues are simple. And once understood, entanglement opens up a richer understanding of concepts such as the “many worlds” of quantum theory.

An aura of glamorous mystery attaches to the concept of quantum entanglement, and also to the (somehow) related claim that quantum theory requires “many worlds.” Yet in the end those are, or should be, scientific ideas, with down-to-earth meanings and concrete implications. Here I’d like to explain the concepts of entanglement and many worlds as simply and clearly as I know how.

Entanglement is often regarded as a uniquely quantum-mechanical phenomenon, but it is not. In fact, it is enlightening, though somewhat unconventional, to consider a simple non-quantum (or “classical”) version of entanglement first. This enables us to pry the subtlety of entanglement itself apart from the general oddity of quantum theory.

Entanglement arises in situations where we have partial knowledge of the state of two systems. For example, our systems can be two objects that we’ll call c-ons. The “c” is meant to suggest “classical,” but if you’d prefer to have something specific and pleasant in mind, you can think of our c-ons as cakes.

Our c-ons come in two shapes, square or circular, which we identify as their possible states. Then the four possible joint states, for two c-ons, are (square, square), (square, circle), (circle, square), (circle, circle). The following tables show two examples of what the probabilities could be for finding the system in each of those four states.  TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE, Click Here...

For The Gender Confused

 

COVID Relief and Inflation

Opponents of the package, which included all Republican members of Congress, accused the bill of being a Trojan Horse used by Democrats to usher in partisan priorities under the guise of pandemic relief.

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

Ancient Egyptian creation myths are the ancient Egyptian accounts of the creation of the world. The Pyramid Texts, tomb wall decorations and writings, dating back to the Old Kingdom (2780–2250 BC) have given us most of the information regarding early Egyptian creation myths.  These myths also form the earliest religious compilations in the world.  The ancient Egyptians had many creator gods and associated legends. Thus, the world or more specifically Egypt was created in diverse ways according to different parts of the country.  Some versions of the myth indicate spitting, others masturbation, as the act of creation. The union between the first divine couple brought forth another brother-sister pair, Geb and Nut, who in turn created Osiris, Isis, Seth and Nephthys. An extension to this basic framework was the Osiris myth involving god, his consort Isis, and their son Horus. The murder of Osiris by Seth, and the resulting struggle for power, won by Horus, provided a powerful narrative linking the ancient Egyptian ideology of kingship with the creation of the cosmos.

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

According to modern historians, the earliest dynasty of Egypt began with the reigns of the proto-dynastic pharaoh Narmer or perhaps his predecessor King Scorpion who united the two lands of Upper and Lower Egypt around 3,100 BCE. The ancient Egyptians, however, saw their origins in the mythic Tep Zepi—the “first time”—believed to be the golden age when the gods lived upon the earth. Was the Tep Zepi a distant memory of their prehistoric ancestry?

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

The three main human races are:  Caucasian (Causasoids), Mongoloids (Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Native American), and Negroid.  Minor human races are:  Capoids and Pacific races (Aborigines, Polynesians, Melanesians, and Indonesians).

Komic Korner Kartoons

 

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

According to Arjun Kharpal at CNBC...

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.

These areas are:

1. Artificial Intelligence
2. Quantum Information
3. Integrated Circuits
4. Brain Science
5. Genomics and Biotechnology
6. Clinical Medicine and Health
7. Deep Space, Deep Earth, Deep Sea, & Polar Research

Living Overseas

I saw an article on Google News where this person moved to a beach town in Thailand because he could live there on $2,500/month.  And...  as I read through the article, I got the impression how lucky he was to have found a place like that in which to live...  and, a beach town at that...

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

Music of the 1960's and 1970's plays in my ears as I contemplate what it is like to again be out on my back porch enjoying the warming weather while listening to the Cream and Hendrix softly whispering into my imagination and memories of what it was like to be a teenager again...  for me, it was not like what others endured because I was white and theoretically was being raised on white privilege...  curiously, my parent's house was smaller than the house my wife and I live in 60 years later.  

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.

Find These Offensive?

 

First Space Hotel

(CNN) — If you're daydreaming of future travels while stuck at home during the pandemic, why fantasize about the beaches of Bali or the canals of Venice when vacationing in space could be in your future?

Back in 2019, Californian company the Gateway Foundation released plans for a cruise ship-style hotel that could one day float above the Earth's atmosphere.  Then called the Von Braun Station, this futuristic concept -- comprised of 24 modules connected by elevator shafts that make up a rotating wheel orbiting the Earth -- was scheduled to be fully operational by 2027.

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...

TURN... Turn... turn...

 

A Time For Every Purpose...  is sung as if the singer is as naive as the words...  and yet...  these words changed a generation into believing that peace in the world was possible...

The year was 1965 and the US was mired down in a war in Vietnam...  a losing war as it turned out and under President Nixon, the war eventually ended and the US left Vietnam in disgrace...  

And...  it was then that our country changed...  The US was vulnerable in a military sense even though we were the world's greatest economic power...  more importantly, citizens of the US saw for the first time since Slavery that they were wrong in what they had started.

Nixon resigned from the Presidency in disgrace as well and global opinions of the US were beginning to change.

THE USA WAS VUNERABLE...

Inside the US, divisions were beginning to develop as well.

Divisions between:

• 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

A Time For Every Purpose...  is the phrase and no longer is seen as innocent; in fact, the phrase is anything but innocent...  it is generational and biblical and has become an unintended consequence of FREEDOM in the USA...

Currently, the LIBERALS are trying to silence the CONSERVATIVES and it would appear that the time has finally come where that is a REAL POSSIBILITY...  and, once one party is silenced, we lose our FREEDOM to hear both sides of the story.  We have choice taken away from us because there is no choice.

A Time For Every Purpose...  is here and we are about to eat the forbidden fruits of that tree.

Mom and Dad

If I was a young lad growing up in the USA, I would not be able to refer to my parents as mom and dad or mother and father because those pronouns are gender specific and according to our COUNTER CULTURE culture, those pronouns are no longer appropriate...  At 73 years of age, I find this approach to referencing to parents rather absurd to say the least.  Using the term parents, folks, guardians, or whatever eliminates the intimacy between parents and their children.   Boys and girls are inappropriate as well and we should no longer distinguish between females and males...  but, the fact remains that they are different and will always be different... especially physically.

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?

Your Rights

 

Meyers Briggs and AI

Say you’re a job-seeker who’s got a pretty good idea of what employers want to hear. Like many companies these days, your potential new workplace will give you a personality test as part of the hiring process. You plan to give answers that show you’re enthusiastic, a hard worker and a real people person.

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...

Stimulus Checks

My wife and I have not worked since the COVID Pandemic Lockdown that started in the first quarter of  2020 and extended into the first quarter of 2021 with the likelihood that the lockdown will continue in some fashion in some States well until the 4th quarter...  However, the lockdown and the fact that we have not worked does not bother either one of us because WE ARE RETIRED and receiving Social Security Benefits whether we work or not, along with income from a Trust Fund set up years ago.  Our financial security is guaranteed until the day we both die however long that is from today...  but, we both know that it is bound to happen.

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

 Lee Drutman of THE ATLANTIC writes...

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...

More Expensive Oil

 

Swirlons

Meet the swirlon, a new kind of matter that bends the laws of physics
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...

Biden's Covid Relief Bill

 

Three Squares and a Room

In the United States of America, our prison population is 2,300,000 and the average cost per inmate is $35,...  the cost to maintain our prison is the burden of taxpayers and as of the writing of this article only 45 of 50 States have prisons...  even though all States have jails in which people are kept for crimes until they are sentenced...

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...

Why are some successful and others are 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?

Education can be a deciding factor...

Experience can be a deciding factor as well...  but, what if neither of those opportunities are available...  meaning, one must start from scratch...

There are some characteristics that successful people share, such as:

1. determination
2. never giving up
3. self-confidence
4. willing to put family second
5. willing to work long hours
6. affirmations of positive thinking
7. Having a plan and executing it
8. goal setting
9. don't accept defeat
10. long term thinking

Sometimes these characteristics are learned and acquired but more often than not, they are already inside the successful person and they just simply emerge as the situation dictates.  Some will work 15-18 hours a day and not be satisfied while other are only willing to work 10-12 hours so that they can make time for family.

New Sub Atomic Particles

Physicists Just Found 4 New Subatomic Particles That May Test The Laws of Nature

PATRICK KOPPENBURG, THE CONVERSATION  --  5 MARCH 2021

This month is a time to celebrate. CERN has just announced the discovery of four brand new particles at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva.

This means that the LHC has now found a total of 59 new particles, in addition to the Nobel prize-winning Higgs boson, since it started colliding protons – particles that make up the atomic nucleus along with neutrons – in 2009.


Excitingly, while some of these new particles were expected based on our established theories, some were altogether more surprising.

The LHC's goal is to explore the structure of matter at the shortest distances and highest energies ever probed in the lab – testing our current best theory of nature: the Standard Model of Particle Physics. And the LHC has delivered the goods – it enabled scientists to discover the Higgs boson, the last missing piece of the model. That said, the theory is still far from being fully understood.

One of its most troublesome features is its description of the strong force which holds the atomic nucleus together. The nucleus is made up of protons and neutrons, which are in turn each composed of three tiny particles called quarks (there are six different kinds of quarks: up, down, charm, strange, top and bottom).



If we switched the strong force off for a second, all matter would immediately disintegrate into a soup of loose quarks – a state that existed for a fleeting instant at the beginning of the universe.

Don't get us wrong: the theory of the strong interaction, pretentiously called "quantum chromodynamics", is on very solid footing. It describes how quarks interact through the strong force by exchanging particles called gluons. You can think of gluons as analogues of the more familiar photon, the particle of light and carrier of the electromagnetic force.  SOURCE:  ScienceAlert.com

"Twenty Four"

Using a ROKU device purchased a while back, we purchased subscriptions to NETFLIX and HULU to access a variety of extra services that were not available on CABLE without paying very high monthly fees...  and, while we still have to pay fees for these additional services, they are not as high as CABLE.

It would appear at least from my perspective that HULU offers a better variety of choices than NETFLIX...  one of these choices is the HULU offered series "24," which has a total of nine seasons which is a long time for any kind of recent series.  Among other well known actors, the main actor is Kiefer Sutherland who I never much cared for as a young actor and who has seemed to have improved as he has gotten older.  His father, Donald Sutherland, always played weird roles and his facial expressions made him perfect for those roles.  Kiefer does not have those facial expressions but he does seem to be a better overall actor than his father...  at least as far as this series is concerned.

HOWEVER...

the series is flawed and season after season they have perpetuated those same flaws so it would appear that neither the writers or the Director saw them as flaws, rendering my comments constructive but without support from Hollywood.

Here are my reasons:

1.  While the overall series is interested and each episode of each season is unpredictable, the same basic premise is played out each of the nine seasons, making it rather predictable  in general with unexpected twists and turns resulting in an inevitable outcome or conclusion.

2.  Every season and every episode relies on workplace incompetence and workplace egos which really is difficult to believe would take place in a COUNTER TERRORIST UNIT.  Maybe it could happen once, but this incompetence manifests itself in every single episode in every season as if these people have never learned anything from previous experiences.

3.  It is believable that spies could have penetrated a government organization, but the foundation of this series is that SPIES are at ALL LEVELS of our Military and Federal Government which is highly unlikely which causes the series to lose some credibility with the assumptions that have been made.  Not only are there SPIES in the government but there are spies in high levels of business organizations that have contracts with the government.

4.  Like Raiders of the Lost Ark, each episode of each season is filled will unbelievable twists and turns that could never take place and the reason that they continue to take place in this series is that many of the characters involved MAKE STUPID MISTAKES over and over again, which again is not that realistic.

5.  While the plots are PLAUSIBLE they always involve terrorists from a foreign country, usually in the Middle East, who wants to get revenge on the USA because of something the USA did to the people of their country, even though the USA had been invited to take military action in their country.  Also, each of the nine seasons involve some sort of nuclear device and the terrorist always seem to get the codes to make these nuclear devices active.  Again, the USA never seems to learn from previous experiences even though some characters continue to play role in subsequent seasons.

6.  Kiefer Sutherland plays the main character in all nine seasons and goes by the name of JACK BAUER.  Jack Bauer seems to have RAMBO like characteristics and no matter how often JB gets shot, stabbed, or suffers broken ribs from a brutal fight, he always seems to get back into the action without resting or recuperating as would be the case of a normal man.  Not only does he have the ability to recuperating fast, he seems to be impervious to ALL TYPES of torture both mentally, physically, and psychologically.

The Norwegian Krone

Why the Norwegian krone could be the 

world’s first global currency

The value of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, fed on its oil and gas receipts, is growing so much faster than the country’s GDP that the Norwegian krone may well become the world’s first global currency. Not the world’s most important currency or a reserve currency like the US dollar, but the first currency whose value is determined largely by the movement of global markets and only minimally by its country’s economic activity.

This won’t make the krone itself a target for investors overseas. It isn’t liquid enough for that; there aren’t enough krone to go around. Nor will it become a bellwether; observing the krone and deducing which aspect of the world’s financial markets is influencing its fluctuations won’t be easy. But the expansion of the fund will make it into an investor of immense means, with a singular capacity to transform green energy, infrastructure, and other causes Norway cares about.

Since 1996, Norway’s oil fund—formally called the Government Pension Fund Global—has been investing fossil fuel revenues in fixed-income assets, equities, and real estate overseas, trying to build a financial reserve for its citizens in a post-oil future. On its website, the fund hosts a live ticker of its value, which now hovers around $1.3 trillion—making it the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund.

The oil fund owns more than 1.5% of all the listed stocks worldwide, and its returns alone were worth a third of Norway’s GDP in 2020—even amidst the pandemic. “It’s as if every Norwegian has a personal offshore investment portfolio of $240,000,” said Tor Vollalokken, a senior advisor at the New York-based investment analysis firm Exante Data.

Vollalokken, who has tracked the krone for decades, recently extrapolated both the oil fund and Norway’s GDP forward over 30 years, using past rates of growth as a guide. At the moment, the fund’s value is roughly three times that of the GDP. By 2030, the fund will near $9 trillion—more than 14 times the value of the GDP. By that point, the krone will undergo a dramatic shift.  SOURCE:  QZ.com

WOKENESS