Author: photog

One Small Cup for a Man. One Giant Carafe for All Mankind

photog Current Events, Fake Science, Science , , ,

The Future Circular Collider (FCC) or as I call it “The Really, Really, Really Large Hadron Collider (TRRRLHC) is proposed to be 91 kilometers in circumference and estimated to cost $30-40 billion.  Now granted, this is chump change when US military projects are considered.  But when it is taken into account the fact that it is very, very, very unlikely to provide any useful information at all to scientists it does seem somewhat uncareful with the public’s money.

I was just watching Sabine Hossenfelder’s latest video where she explains why the community of high-energy particle physicists despise her.  You see she was a high energy particle physicist herself but she discovered that the whole field had become a racket.  All of these highly intelligent scientists are basically engaged in fraud.  Instead of doing actual research in physics they are employed at fabricating theories for which not a shred of evidence exists but for which tests can be devised to justify building larger and larger colliders.

I give Hossenfelder credit for her integrity.  She describes the personal vitriol that her colleagues heap on her for calling out their fraud.  She is right.  American and European governments fund these outrageously expensive instruments and also foot the bill for all of the research grants that fund the half-century long careers of all the thousands of particle physicists that subsist on this government gravy train.

Well, at least in the United States a lot of this will probably be going away very soon.  DOGE is tallying up the costs for and analyzing the alleged benefits of all these research grants.  I think that the great majority of these research grants will be denied funding starting next year.

Now, before being accused of being a Luddite, let me state that a case can be made for some scientific research being facilitated by federal money.  I can see how research on nuclear weapons, laser systems to knock down drones and lots of other military adjacent categories could justify the government underwriting some part of the work.  And there is probably biological research that the various government agencies on health could decide deserve government funding.  But anything with dark energy, dark matter, worm hole, black hole, multiverse or string theory in the title should definitely be denied funding automatically.  Likewise, any social science grants with the words diversity, equity, inclusion, DEI, intersectional, BiPOC, Latinx, gender, transgender, gender fluid, pansexual, LGBTQ, pronouns, feminist, white nationalism, white supremacy, whiteness, white privilege, white fragility, resistance, sanctuary or Trump in the title should be denied and the authors put in a database for rejection from that point forward.

Look, industry will foot the bill for any scientific research for which applications in the real world exist.  And the government can make a case for expanding knowledge in certain limited academic categories where knowledge can improve the lives of Americans.  Predicting weather and solar storms are easy examples.  But as fascinating as black holes and multiverses are let’s leave these subjects to the Marvel Cinematic Universe to imagine and let scientists try using reality and experiments involving reality as their province.

For my part I am willing to do my part and fund research on coffee that doesn’t turn bitter after fifteen minutes on the stove.  You see I believe in following the science.

We Have Some Good News and Some Bad News

photog Country Music Reviews, Current Events, Music Reviews ,

It’s very rare that New York City newspapers can trumpet good news about crime in the city.  But last week they could:

“Major crimes in the subways, including robberies and felony assaults, declined 18 percent from Jan. 1 through March 31, to the second-lowest level in nearly three decades, police officials said at a news conference last week. There were no murders during the same period for the first time in seven years, the officials said.”

Unfortunately, this good news was nestled near the end of a crime story that was entitled:

“Police Seek Man Who They Say Violated a Corpse on an R Train.”

For the non-New Yorker, the R Train (or RR as it used to be known in my day) is a local subway line that plies the underground between Brooklyn and Downtown Manhattan.  The details were sparse but sufficient:

“The police were searching on Thursday for a man investigators believed violated a dead man Wednesday night on a train in a Manhattan subway station, according to an internal police document.

The person who died boarded an R train at around 8 p.m., according to a law enforcement official with knowledge of the matter and the internal document. It was unclear on Thursday when or how the person died.

A man entered the same train car at around 11 p.m. at the Whitehall Street-South Ferry station in the Financial District, according to the official.

Within 45 minutes, the man saw the dead man and began to rummage through his pockets, the official said. The man then began to have sex with the body, according to the official and the document.

The sexual acts were captured on surveillance cameras inside the train car, the official said.

Soon after, the man got off the train and fled, the police said.”

Well, at least it’s good to know that the surveillance cameras were doing their job even if no one else was.  So, a man can drop dead and be lying there for three hours in a subway train without anyone including the crew aware of the fact and in fact another patron can take the opportunity to bugger the departed at his leisure without fear of interruption.

So, this 18% reduction in subway crime is being touted as a great success by the Mayor and the Police Commissioner’s offices but the fact that corpses are being sodomized on the R Train is to be taken in stride.  Call me a glass half empty kind of guy but somehow the 18% crime reduction rings a little hollow when necrophilia has surfaced in Gotham City.

I used to live in New York City during the time when crime was considered at its worst.  I can remember several gruesome murders and some aberrant behavior but I will say I’ve never heard that anything like this ever happened on the subway.  And the fact that the New York Times is trying to paint this “reduction in crime” as a triumph in law enforcement can only be described as Kafkaesque.

I like how the New York Times article describes the crime, “Police Seek Man Who They Say Violated a Corpse on an R Train.”  “Who they say” as if it’s in dispute.  What else could it be?  Could he have had prior consent from the deceased in the event his corpse happened to be found on the train?

I have friends and relatives who still live in the city.  I can only assume it would be too expensive for them to relocate.  Otherwise, I cannot imagine anyone who can get out, not doing so.  The public schools have become a sad joke.  The streets are covered with filth and the homeless and crime is at the point that you probably have to fear for your life on a regular basis.

But up until now you never had to consider that after you were murdered your corpse might be sexually abused by your attacker.  This does seem like an inflection point.  Or am I being oversensitive?

13APR2025 – Quote of the Day

photog Quote of the Day ,

When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the small space which I fill, or even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I know nothing, and which know nothing of me, I am terrified, and wonder that I am here rather than there, for there is no reason why here rather than there, or now rather than then. Who has set me here? By whose order and design have this place and time been destined for me?—

Blaise Pascal

Donald the First

photog Current Events, Literature, Poetry, Trump , ,

William Shakespeare breathed life into Prince Hal and Marc Antony when he portrayed them in his plays.  He took some historical accounts and turned them into…?  Into what?  Well, into dramatic personae.  They joined Oedipus and Socrates and all the other characters that we know from the drama.  And not that the characters are historically accurate; they’re not.  They’re the invention of the playwright.  But they’re better than accurate.  They’re vivid.  Alive.  We know them.  We know them better than we know any real personalities from history or even the news of the day.  So, in a way they’re immortal.  Millions and millions of human beings have watched and heard and read the words spoken by Hamlet and Falstaff and Macbeth.  They’ve thought about the words, the intonation, the feelings the characters portrayed to understand what the characters were feeling and thinking.  This is a level of existence that otherwise only occurs for most people within the confines of their own family.  And in fact, rarely even there.  Which of us is so witty or profound or emotional that the day-to-day dialog we share with our spouses or children or friends does more than just bounce off of their consciousness?  It’s almost background noise in a way.  It’s only in moments of crisis or discussions about important matters that we choose our words carefully and fully listen to what is being said.

Outside of drama we rarely listen with our full attention to what people around us say.  Maybe during times of crisis.  I remember very clearly after September 11th 2001 that Bush gave a few very carful and important speeches and I remember that I was glad that his rhetoric wasn’t too flowery.  It was more about retribution and I was glad for it.  But that was an exception.  Most of what gets said by talking heads in the news goes in one ear and out the other and rightly so.

But it makes you think.

Who will be the next Shakespeare?  When will we get another dramatic poet of his stature?  And who will he write about?  I was thinking, “Will someone write a play called Josef Stalin or FDR or Donald Trump?”  It could happen.  These were men who defined their times.  If a great poet came along and breathed life into the character and made the story compelling future readers and viewers would be mesmerized by scenes where these characters mouthed the words that the author heard in his soul.

Of course, it might be a hundred years from now or even a couple of thousand.  Shakespeare’s closest foray into recent history was one of his last plays, “Henry the Eighth” and it was hardly in line with his greater works.  In fact, it’s doubtful he wrote most of it.  If an audience a thousand years from now watches (or however entertainment is sensed at that point) about Donald Trump it’s doubtful that the real Trump will shine through at all.  Only a comic genius, a futuristic Aristophanes could capture the bombast and swagger that “The Donald” provides in all of his speeches and interviews.  And if he did manage to capture that spirit would the audiences (especially the critics) reject it as too over the top and exaggerated?  They probably would.  But I’d go see the show on the first night.