Category: Essay

Dr. Tyson’s latest edition of Cosmos focused on leaded gasoline and a scientist’s unanticipated fight to stop it’s use as a side-effect of his work on cosmology. It’s a quaint, simplistic and, with the animation, almost naive approach to the story (although I’ve never seen an animated short quoting articles from Nature). While the primary important issue was Dr. Patterson‘s “aha!” moment on lead in gasoline, the subtext, as Mother Jones pointed out, was corporate greed.

In the context of many changes we Americans have encountered over the past twenty years, it’s worth revisiting Superman’s credo:

• Truth
• Justice
• The American Way

97% yes, 2% unsure, 1% no.

Truth: Hitler made the ‘big lie’ a key weapon in his propaganda and brainwashing of Germans and the rest of the world. That lesson has been learned well by those in the US who believe that the “truth” is the lie spoken most loudly.

The truth is objective, not subjective. Fact, not opinion. Data, not belief. In the America of 2014, this means… not much. Politicians big and small make poisoned statements, disclaiming their need to stand behind them. Cue President Obama.

Justice: Justice has always been a squishy thing. It’s injustice for the loser. And what is just? Sure, property claims, business liens, tort law… these all apply. Justice as in “let’s kill the murderer to serve justice” is a hairsbreadth away from “eye for an eye.” (Don’t get me wrong: if we had a working justice (sic) system, I’d see the necessity for putting down a human animal. Not for justice, but to keep them from hurting society.) Is it just when a court orders putting down a religious artifact on public grounds because the majority of the local powers believe it’s the just thing to do? Justice in the time of Superman was decidedly on the white, male savior side. While justice occasionally rears its head in the form of marriage equality, the injustice of perverted law claimed as justice is the travesty of our time on the public national stage.

Now we’re left with “The American Way:” Which should be interesting given that we’re teetering at the cusp of a white minority in these here United States. So what’s the ‘American Way’ going to look like in my grandchildren’s time? (Kids, please don’t get any ideas!) Apple pie replaced with flan? A chorizo wrapped in a tortilla? A quiet, calm Tesla in lieu of a muscle car?

Bottom line: TJaTAW is a product long past its expiration date in America circa 2014. A pure truth today invalidates many of the initiatives and their idiot religious sycophants on the Justice side. And practical demographics will lay waste to the white, male, Christian ‘supermen’ that keep minorities and women economically beneath them.

Good News Everyone! Astronomers smelling planets!

I wonder what the earth smells like? Is it like one’s own flatulence, tolerated by self and abhorred by others? Is that why aliens keep coming to our planet and then dashing off at top speed?

The culture “war” (to besmirch Rupert’s pet yellow rag) continues. This time it’s “Ban Bossy,” an alliterative sound bite. Proponents of putting “bossy” in the same isolation ward as “retarded” say it’s because the word is fundamentally pejorative and used in conjunction with girls.

Unlike the “R” word (thanks, Tali, for being early in the game in having that banned in our households), “bossy” isn’t an objectively difference in a person from the perceived physical or psychological norm, it’s the user’s subjective opinion of another’s behavior.

Bosses should be “bossy.” In a random grouping, there will be leaders and followers. Leader frequently “boss” others to achieve their — and hopefully the group’s — goals. Bossy is a power term: this person directs others.

In the warped world of misogynistic etymology, “bossy” is the new “assertive” (trans: “aggressive”). Should we ban “assertive?” How about “pushy?”

Let the words roam free, I say, and attach the meaning to the speaker and context, and not the sequence of letters. And if that makes me bossy, or a pushy bastard, so be it.

A IT SR-52 calculator and it’s magnetic program storage card

The BASIC computer language turned fifty today. It was the second non-human language I learned, after Texas Instrument’s SR-52 programming “language” (read: keystrokes). The last paragraph in the SR-52’s manual said something like: “…If you want to learn more about programming, look for a book on BASIC.”

The visceral thrill I felt when I finished a 4-player Monopoly® game on the SR-52. 3½ hour games were now brisk 45 minute ones. No calculating 10% luxury tax, no shuffling around making change for paying rent. Bing, bang, done.

Boring.

The next thing I learned from programming was that just because something is made easier doesn’t make it better. The stodgy details of the board game turned into a boring set of whizzing shoes, dogs and flatirons. Sure, the game only lasted 45 minutes: but it was devoid of the social interactions.

Now it’s 38 years later and I’m still learning, still exploring. I’m not a perfect programmer, and I’m not a mathematician programmer. I see programming as a kind of poetry: governed by rules as stringent as the iambic pentameter and rhyming forms of a Shakespearean sonnet.

Languages change over time and yet remain the same: BASIC, COBOL, FORTRAN, PL/1, TECO gave way to C++, Java, Ruby, lua, and their ilk. More words, a more complex syntax. The nuanced idea that statements create functions which can endlessly aggregate into larger and still more powerful programs.

Haiku to verse to story to novella to epic. To volumes of functional poetry that powers our social, electronic world.

I’m the child of Holocaust survivors. One of my closest family friends is dying (at 95), and my mother, an Auschwitz survivor, is in a sessile state with Alzheimer’s. That leaves me as the “elder generation” person. Which freaks this 54-year-old out. If I found a true “SS” member I’d kill him: only he’d be 90+ years old, so what’s the point:

I learned a lot about the concentric levels of evil, where “governments” pulled the noose tighter and tighter.

The Russians decided to use the bogey monster of “the Jews are selected” in their latest Psy Ops against the Ukraine.

Don’t get me wrong: I’d dance at the party to burn all the Ukraine SS that not only cheerfully joined the Nazis but performed all manner of independent cruelties while their victims were alive. But the Ukrainians of today ARE NOT the Ukrainians of WW II. And Putin, dictator of Russia, is making cynical use of that trope. And in that we are reminded not to jump to action, but to guard the memory of all those Ukrainians who did NOT Participate. All those Ukrainians who are more interested in the hatred and nonsense of

We are NOT the Jews of 1939. We are the Jews of the new century. We are the Jews of Now. The Jews of Understanding. Passover is the holiday Putin’s evil minions and absurd statement attempt to cover. And we are the Jews of We Will Not Bow.

My Ukrainian tribe-mates use Twitter and Facebook and all manner of social media. They stood at the barricades in Kiev and stand with the idea that the people, not the corrupt kleptocrats of the Ukraine and the rulers of Russia, . We, as they say “are not amused.”

It will take more than trying to pit Ukrainian against Ukrainian. Putin’s going to do it the hard way.

And the Jews of the World, despite all the time we’re spending on “running the global markets,” are just trying to stay alive.

But if you _really_ want to be honorable, and have guts, please, oh please, show yourself. American and non-psychotic countries would be happy to relieve you of your burden of life.