Cosmic Microwave Miscellany

So sad. Apparently Trump doesn't want to unveil Obama's White House portrait. Right-wing sites are saying sour-grapes, Obama said he didn't want to go anyway, or something... so really, what is truth?

Come on Trump, use your imagination! Send Obama a super-duper nice invitation, and invite all of his best friends too. Then the night before the unveiling, sneak downstairs and paint jail bars on it, and a Hitler mustache. They'll rip off the veil, and just imagine his embarrassment!

When the media calls you on it, just tell them it wasn't you, and anyway you thought it was a Michael Jordan mustache. Your consecutive winning streak of news cycles will be preserved, and besides, any publicity is good publicity, right?

May 20, 2020

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I don't want to startle you, but this Pablo Cuervas shot is impossible in this universe. 

https://fb.watch/kEsuTBypUp/

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It's been 65 years since the first airborne hydrogen bomb was dropped over the tiny island of Namu in the Bikini Atoll.

The first public display of Thomas Edison's prototype kinetoscope, the first movie projector, took place on this day too, 65 years prior, in 1891.

Movie Recommendation: Radio Bikini.

May 20, 2021

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Israel Kamakawiwo'ole was born on this day in 1959. How can you take Judy Garland's Somewhere Over the Rainbow, cover it, and create an arguably better song? I'm not saying it's better, just that it's in the conversation. Legend has it that he was practicing it in the middle of the night and felt that he really got somewhere with it, called his producer and forced him to go in and open the recording studio.

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Jimmy Stewart was born on this day in 1908. This is the poem he read in a shaky voice on Johnny Carson:

'I’ll Never Forget a Dog Named Beau'

He never came to me when I would call

Unless I had a tennis ball,

Or he felt like it,

But mostly he didn't come at all.

When he was young

He never learned to heel

Or sit or stay,

He did things his way.

Discipline was not his bag

But when you were with him things sure didn't drag.

He'd dig up a rosebush just to spite me,

And when I'd grab him, he'd turn and bite me.

He bit lots of folks from day to day,

The delivery boy was his favorite prey.

The gas man wouldn't read our meter,

He said we owned a real man-eater.

He set the house on fire

But the story's long to tell.

Suffice it to say that he survived

And the house survived as well.

On the evening walks, and Gloria took him,

He was always first out the door.

The Old One and I brought up the rear

Because our bones were sore.

He would charge up the street with Mom hanging on,

What a beautiful pair they were!

And if it was still light and the tourists were out,

They created a bit of a stir.

But every once in a while, he would stop in his tracks

And with a frown on his face look around.

It was just to make sure that the Old One was there

And would follow him where he was bound.

We are early-to-bedders at our house -- I guess I'm the first to retire.

And as I'd leave the room he'd look at me

And get up from his place by the fire.

He knew where the tennis balls were upstairs,

And I'd give him one for a while.

He would push it under the bed with his nose

And I'd fish it out with a smile.

And before very long He'd tire of the ball

And be asleep in his corner In no time at all.

And there were nights when I'd feel him Climb upon our bed

And lie between us,

And I'd pat his head.

And there were nights when I'd feel this stare

And I'd wake up and he'd be sitting there

And I reach out my hand and stroke his hair.

And sometimes I'd feel him sigh and I think I know the reason why.

He would wake up at night

And he would have this fear

Of the dark, of life, of lots of things,

And he'd be glad to have me near.

And now he's dead.

And there are nights when I think I feel him

Climb upon our bed and lie between us,

And I pat his head.

And there are nights when I think I feel that stare

And I reach out my hand to stroke his hair,

But he's not there.

Oh, how I wish that wasn't so,

I'll always love a dog named Beau.

https://youtu.be/mwGnCIdHQH0

Shakespeare's sonnets were first published in London on this day in 1609. Are any of them as good as Jimmy's poem? I'm being serious. Would any of Shakespeare's poems have made Johnny Carson cry?

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On this day in 1927, Charles Lindbergh took off from Paris, in the Spirit of St. Louis, on the first solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean. Also on this day in 1932, Amelia Earhart left Newfoundland to do the same the same thing. Approximately nine years later, Charles Lindbergh would was that the 1936 Berlin Olympics as a guest of Herman Goering. 

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The first prisoners arrived at the Nazi's new concentration camp at Auschwitz on this day in 1940, two years after Lindbergh was planning a move to Germany.

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Cosmic microwave background radiation was discovered by Robert Woodrow Wilson and Arno Penzias on this day in 1964. We can see it in a sense in the static on black and white TV's, it's the remnants of the Big Bang.

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French novelist, Honoré de Balzac, was born on this day in 1799. I've never read anything by him, but his quotes are phenomenal.

"Solitude is fine but you need someone to tell that solitude is fine."

"Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught."

"Behind every great fortune there is a crime."

Also, he really liked coffee.

"This coffee falls into your stomach, and straightway there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move like the battalions of the Grand Army on the battlefield, and the battle takes place. Things remembered arrive at full gallop, ensign to the wind. The light cavalry of comparisons deliver a magnificent deploying charge, the artillery of logic hurry up with their train and ammunition, the shafts of wit start up like sharpshooters. Similes arise, the paper is covered with ink; for the struggle commences and is concluded with torrents of black water, just as a battle with powder."

I'll have what he's having.

Although I've never read anything by him, it bugs the hell out of me that I only have six out of the seven books of his complete works.

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John Stuart Mill was born on this day in 1806. If I'm remembering this right, he is considered to have one of the highest IQs ever, and after he died they discovered that he had a tiny brain. I don't know if that's true, maybe I can look it up sometime. Without him, we might have no Thomas jefferson, who essentially plagiarized him in the Declaration of Independence, and thank goodness.

"A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

Revolutionary spirit. 

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Ron "Not Afraid To Burn In Hell" Reagan was born on this day in 1958. I love that smile at the end of this commercials!

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The hoser Dave Thomas was born on this day in 1949. I don't think I could guess within 20 how many times I've watched Strange Brew. 

“Hey, we found a dead mouse in our beer, eh? That means you owe us a free case.”

That said, I don't think I watched it once before I was 12, or once after I was 13.

Somehow it starred Max Von Sydow!

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"Macho Man" Randy Savage left us on this day in 2011. Oh yeah.

Ranker- Then 10 greatest Macho Man Randy Savage Memories

http://www.ranker.com/list/the-10-greatest-macho-man-randy-savage-memories/greg

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Jane Wiedlin was born on this day in 1958. She's the bouncy guitar player and songwriter of The Go-Go's, and as far as I'm concerned she's the spirit of California from the early '80s. Talk about capturing a time and place, Yes or No is a knockout, written by Jane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02-DfG3LO30

YES OR NO

You're alone and I am too

You're my idea of a pretty view

You can move or so it seems

I bet we'd make a decent team

I'm not asking for all your time

A song or two would suit me fine

I'm not asking for you to say

That you'll be with me all the way

Shut your mind off for a while

Concentrate on the latest style

And everything's alright

Yes or no

I'll take it fast or slow

I'll make it easy for you to decide

Yes or no

You've got to let it go

Just take a stance

Either dance or tell me no

If you've got somewhere to be

If you've got someone besides me

Let me know don't put me on

If it's not right then I'll be gone

All those dancers can't be wrong

All those answers'd take too long

So tell me tell me now

Yes or no

I'll take it fast or slow

I'll make it easy for you to decide

Yes or no

You've got to let it go

Just take a stance

Either dance or tell me no

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Johnny Cash's brother, Jack, died on this day in 1944, the result of a wood saw accident. Tragic, and strange to think that without it we would never have known Johnny Cash. So many of those who have propelled themselves to greatness have had tragedies early on in their lives.

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Comedian Gilda Radner, left us on this day in 1989.

“Humor is just truth, only faster!”

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Another notable deathday- Christopher Columbus (1506)

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I saw Jim Jefferies tonight, the first real comedian I've seen live since Margaret Cho in 1993 at Slippery Rock. He said that he doesn't support the LGTBQI community. He supports each of them individually, but not as a group. Imagine two people standing next to each other and the one says that he likes sucking cocks. The other one says that they cut their cock off. He says that's no reason for them to be in a group. He is a lot more in common with each of them individually.

May 20, 2022

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Paleontologist and Biologist Stephen Jay Gould died on this day in 2002. Also on that day, I bought his three most well-known books. I haven't read them, but over the years I bought 5 more, and haven't read them either. I know a lot about him though, and I love reading through his quotes. Honestly though, I wish I had the time that those eight books could be the next eight books I read, I know I would love every word.

"Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview - nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty."

"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops."

"We have become, by the power of a glorious evolutionary accident called intelligence, the stewards of life's continuity on earth. We did not ask for this role, but we cannot abjure it. We may not be suited to it, but here we are."

I particularly loved him in Ken Burns's documentary, Baseball.

"The silliest and most tendentious of baseball writing tries to wrest profundity from the spectacle of grown men hitting a ball with a stick by suggesting linkages between the sport and deep issues of morality, parenthood, history, lost innocence, gentleness, and so on, seemingly ad infinitum . The effort reeks of silliness because baseball is profound all by itself and needs no excuses; people who don't know this are not fans and are therefore unreachable anyway."

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Martin Amis left us today. Somehow he died of esophageal cancer, same as his buddy Christopher Hitchens, and a testament to how much drinking the two of them did together.

“Every morning we leave more in the bed: certainty, vigor, past loves. And hair, and skin: dead cells. This ancient detritus was nonetheless one move ahead of you, making its humorless own arrangements to rejoin the cosmos.”

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Reading "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman

Pretend there's a 1/1000 chance you've contracted a deadly disease. If you got it you'll die a quick painless death within a week. There's a vaccine you can take but you must take it before there are any symptoms. What's the most you would pay for it? You can borrow money. Think about it... what's the answer?   

Now pretend there's a study with an opportunity to volunteer to be exposed to the disease, which also leaves you with a 1/1000 chance you'll be dead within a week. What would someone have to pay you to take part? You can not take the vaccine afterward.   

Here's the strange thing- they are essentially the same question. They each ask us to set the monetary threshold we're willing to be down to ensure health. Say you said $10,000 for the first question. That's the price you're willing to part with to ensure you don't get the disease. But if you said a million dollars for the second question, that means $10,000 is nowhere near what it would take to ensure you didn't get the disease.  

I'll put it another way cause this is wierd. If you have zero money, you'd be willing to go $10,000 in debt to not get the disease under the first scenario. In the second scenario, remaining with the status quo puts you a million down from what you would have had... it essentially costs you a million dollars. 

The only difference is our responsibility in the 2nd scenario. Weird, counter-intuitive.

May 20, 2012

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Also strange, right now I'm listening to a Michael Lewis book, The Undoing Project, on Kahnman and Tversky. I just wrote this down today, exactly ten years later.

If people are told they have a 10% chance to die during a life-saving operation only 54%vagree to it. If they are told that there's a 90% chance of survival, 82% agree to it. It's the same operation, and the same odds! It's just the framing.

They have hundreds of these little things.

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Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays- "Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults, and do better than it would have them?"

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Gretel and I went to a food pantry outside of a church today to drop off a bunch of slightly outdated food. It had a sign on it saying not to leave anything outdated. I asked Gretel what we should do- respect the rule of the church, or give some good food to some people who might need it. She decided that we should give the food. I told her I agreed. I'm trying to get her to not be a religious follower of rules.

May 20, 2023

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I bet a lot of body positive people think that Trump is a fat piece of shit.

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In honor of the destruction of the Bikini Atoll on this day in 1956, perhaps you'd like to watch this haunting documentary- Radio Bikini.

https://youtu.be/IVwzhGtzDuI

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IFLScience- The Five Biggest Threats To Human Existence

I love that #5 is- unknown unknowns!

"The most unsettling possibility is that there is something out there that is very deadly, and we have no clue about it. The silence in the sky might be evidence for this. Is the absence of aliens due to that life or intelligence is extremely rare, or that intelligent life tends to get wiped out?"

1. Nuclear War

2. Bioengineered Pandemic

3. Superintelligence

4. Nanotechnology 

5. Unknown Unknowns

http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/five-biggest-threats-human-existence

May 20, 2015, 11:14 PM

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New York Times- Trump Told Russians That Firing ‘Nut Job’ Comey Eased Pressure From Investigation

This is serious business. As a thought experiment, imagine Obama or Clinton did one of these. Or Bush. Or the other Clinton and Bush. Or Reagan or Carter or Ford. Or Nixon. Nixon was too smart for nonsense like this.

From Robert Reich:

To help you keep count, here are the 5 evidences of Trump’s obstruction of justice – his commitment to stopping FBI Director James Comey from investigating Trump’s and Trump aides’ dealings with Russia to rig the 2016 election. (Remember: Obstruction of justice is an impeachable offense, quite apart from the underlying illegality being investigated. This is what did Richard Nixon in.)

1. Trump’s meeting with Comey just after Michael Flynn resigned, in which Trump asked Comey: “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” according to Comey’s memo immediately after the meeting.

2. Trump firing Comey just after Comey asked for more resources for the investigation.

3. Trump telling Russian officials in the Oval Office, the day after he fired Comey, “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off,” according to a document summarizing the meeting reported yesterday by the New York Times.

4. Trump’s interview with NBC News’s Lester Holt about his firing of Comey, in which Trump admitted: “I was going to fire regardless of recommendation. In fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.’”

5. Trump’s tweet that Comey “better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”

These 5 items would be enough to initiate a Bill of Impeachment in the House -- if the House now had 23 Republicans more loyal to the nation than to their party, or if the House is flipped next year.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/us/politics/trump-russia-comey.html

May 20, 2017

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McSweeney's- I WAS IN CHARGE OF THE DECK CHAIRS ON THE TITANIC, AND THEY ABSOLUTELY DID NEED REARRANGING by Emily Blake

?fbclid=IwAR0xxMIUUjcwgK-7RvXatwkJPhxhZhKttp9KXMvoqeo5b_9QNEzFl-9IBJc

Just fantastic! Allow me to spoil the ending, one of the all-time great paragraph in American literature:

"Here is the truth of all of it, dear readers: whether our graves are the cold and shadowy depths of the ocean or a potter’s field stacked with plague victims, the grave awaits us all, and always has. Your efforts matter as much as they always did, which is to say not one little tiny bit, except that they are the most precious of things — they are your heart. Take care of your heart, my friends, and I shall see you on the other side."

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-was-in-charge-of-the-deck-chairs-on-the-titanic-and-they-absolutely-did-need-rearranging

May 20, 2020

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Perhaps my favorite few seconds of James Dean on screen- Jett Rink, after learning of Luz's death 

https://youtu.be/uHyh-K0UkpY

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From The French Dispatch- "After receiving the Host, marauding choirboys (half-drunk on the Blood of Christ) stalk unwary pensioners and seek havoc."

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Ralph Waldo Emerson- "Even in the mud and scum of things, something always, always sings."

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Henri Rousseau- "What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?"

Hard sometimes!

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Osho- “Truth is not something outside 

to be discovered, it is something 

inside to be realized.”

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Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms- "The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed."

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Agee- It is probably well on the conservative side to estimate that during the past ten to fifteen years the camera has destroyed a thousand pairs of eyes, corrupted ten thousand, and seriously deceived a hundred thousand, for every one pair that it has opened, and taught.

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Henry David Thoreau- "How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."

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David Hume- "Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them."

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Gilda again, “I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end.”

That's the end.