Improving Status

 A wide ranging bar conversation stumbled into the subject of overt and intention idiocy.  Rather predictably, flat earthers came up.  We all marveled at the idea of someone looking through telescopes and looking at photos taken by other telescopes and not seeing any obviously flat objects yet, coming to the conclusion that the entire astrophysics community is in on the con.  Our heads shook at the various experiences we had with travel that made it look as though the surface of the planet was curved.  We pointed out every flaw in their “arguments” and the obviousity of said flaws.

Later on though, it occurred to me that we had “missed a trick”.  I challenged myself with a thought experiment.  If we were to stipulate the flat earthers had a point.  If we said that there was indeed proof that Earth was uniquely shaped in comparison to all of the objects viewable in the sky.  It is a strain on the intellect of rational peoples but go ahead and try to imagine it.  Imagine that everything you can remember, everything you have experienced in this life happened on the one non-spherical object in the observable universe the size of our planet.  Go ahead, fix that in your imaginations.  Ready?  

Now tell me what has changed.

Seriously, imagine the planet as the flat earthers describe it and then tell me how your life was improved or degraded by the revelation or the deception.  I am not asking for the math to describe the orbit of a satellite of a flat object.  I am talking about your life, your status, your existence.  What specifically changes if the planet is proved to be flat?  What if there are other flat planets?  What if there are flat stars being edited on the official photos of every nation with a telescope, how is your life improved??  

Now, perhaps I am just a paranoid from waaaaaaaay back but, when someone exerts an undue amount of effort in promoting something that is effectively meaningless, I immediately suspect them of trying to hide something of trying to distract from something.  However, I am willing to consider the idea that there might be something I am missing.  So clue a brotha in.  If there is a reason or effect that I have missed, feel free to tell me.

I am also more than mildly curious as to what the flat earthers are attempting to distract us from.  I have no problem believing that many, perhaps even a majority of the flat earthers, are simply useful idiots to some controlling authority.  But somewhere, there must be someone that is getting some benefit from folks ignoring evidence in the pursuit of convincing others to not trust their lying eyes.

So tell me, true, false or inbetween, what are the reasons and effects of spreading flat Earth theories?

Who Was Moses Fleetwood Walker

A post by my friend Bill Foster. 

In the post linked above, Bill talks about chaotic nature of race relations in the USA.  While, the trend is generally positive in my experience, setbacks are anything but difficult to find.  If you look at most any 100 year period, things have improved towards the end.  If instead you look at most any random 10 or 20 year period, negative or neutral trends are at least as likely as positive.  

We really need to do better.  Read the essay and share it widely.

Contagious Incompetence

 I am starting to suspect that Felon47 is not just catastrophically bad for the USA.  Given the unpredicted military troubles Russia is experiencing as the 2nd best army in Ukraine, it just makes sense to look at the factors that weren't taken into consideration when doing the assessments prior to Russia's initial attack on Ukraine.

No one in the Intel community would have actually expected POTUS to run interference for Vladimir Putin.  Our nation was (rightfully to my thinking) concerned about the expansion of the conflict to the point where a NATO ally was threatened or harmed which would result in us having to respond to an Article 5 situation.

While I never actually thought Putin's initial estimates of a week or less to take the capital, I did think that Ukraine would lose the hot war and then spend the next 20 or so years in a guerrilla war that would keep Russia occupied and out of the affairs of the "free" world.

The only reason I can come up with as to why the professionals - and my own - assessments were so wrong is that Felon47 is so mind-numbingly incompetent that his efforts to run interference for his Vladdy Daddy have actually helped Ukraine.  Other nations are willing to undertake extreme measures to assist Ukraine in no small part because they hate Trump and want him to fail.  Putin might have benefited from access to the American Intelligence apparatus but the Felon pays no attention to them and in some ways, they are comfortable with that.  If Putin says it, the Felon takes it as gospel.  So Putin has no one on his staff and no major allies that are willing and capable to tell him the truth or to demand the truth from him.

There are two major rules you must follow to win a war.  Know your enemy.  Know yourself.  Trump is too ignorant for rules and it is starting to look as though his ignorance is contagious.

It could not happen to a more deserving dictator.

Autonomous Racism

 Several years ago in my hometown and the area around it, we had an absolute slew of public meetings in an effort to decide what our area was going to be.  Were we going to be an extension of the campy tourism that attracted hordes to Gatlinburg or Pigeon Forge?  Were we going to be a tourist trap with a different set of lures?  What if we didn’t want to be a tourist trap at all, what then?

A lot of opinions were expressed and notes were taken.  Plans were developed.  Some of them were immediately discarded but others made it further along in the process before being discarded.  A few came to some level of fruition. 

One of the ideas was developed into a concept and some conceptual drawings were made for the benefit of those of us whose internal graphic generator doesn’t function as well as your average architect’s.  The architects & developers chose to present one of the concepts with a large PR push to help sell it.  The concept was graphically revealed during a program at a recently renovated theater.  

I was there in the theater, near the back of the main seating area. When they unveiled the artist’s rendering of how their project would look, I reacted verbally loud enough for those in my immediate vicinity to hear although I was mostly talking to myself.  I said something to the effect that “apparently Black people will not be welcome”.  I said that because the artist’s rendering was liberally populated with people but all of the depictions appeared to be of white people.  There was some strained laughter in response to my comment and again, only the folks sitting about three or four folks in either direction would have heard me in that 1500 seat theater.  Still, a week or so later when I saw another version of that artist’s rendering posted publicly, it contained what appeared to be depictions of Blacks and other minorities along with the whites.

I am not of the opinion that my casual linguistic expectoration somehow interrupted a sneakily planned racist act.  As a matter of fact, I do not have any reason to believe there was any racist intent at all.  That’s a problem in itself.  Neither the artist, the architect, the developer or the money people they showed it to first saw a problem.  Not one of them (and yes, I acknowledge they might have served more than one role) noticed the absence of their neighbors of color when presented with the graphic.  If you ever need a clear example of institutional racism, there it is.  There was no racist intent because there didn’t need to be.  The lack of intent however, does nothing to stop an act or behavior from having a racist effect.

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A while back I expressed to a friend that the first time I ever saw a Black person on television for something that had nothing to do with being Black, it was Neil DeGrasse Tyson explaining something about an astrophysical event that was going on and that it happened well after my exit from the USN in 1983.  My friend concluded that I must be misremembering.  Now, I have no idea why that was their kneejerk response.  Perhaps they could recall several instances of that happening and I just didn’t see it.  Perhaps it was simply a “That can’t be right” moment.

In the end, the response doesn’t matter.  What matters is the effect experienced by all of those who could make a claim similar to mine.  It is a particularly insidious form of racism which, like the theater reveal, does not necessarily result from racist intent.  It has been taught in several disciplines for a long time that you can’t do what you can’t see yourself doing.  You have to be able to mentally visualize yourself doing a flip or a jump or a kick or beating a time record etc etc.  When young me watched television or movies, the folks who did stuff were white, criminals were “other”.  Scientists?  White and male most every time.  Drug dealers?  “Others” most every time.  

Consider how many folk might have made amazing contributions to the nation or to humanity in general if only they had known they had the ability.  Plenty of minorities have done amazing things in this nation and elsewhere.  They have overcome the issues I describe and probably several others.  Imagine what they might have done if instead of wasting time and energy “overcoming” the various obstacles - whether they were intentionally or unintentionally placed, they instead started from a position of confidence and encouragement.  Racism takes on a life of its own.  It reaches a stage where no driver or decision is needed, no intent need be expressed.  It is built into the system and it keeps working unless steps are taken to stop it.  It effectively becomes autonomous.

Things are better now than they were in the early stages of my lifetime.  Images of minorities as successful people are not difficult to find. But if you think racism is over, especially institutional racism, do a Google image search on the phrase “welfare queen”.  Do that with the knowledge that the majority of folks on welfare in the USA are white people.  

The engineer in me feels the strong urge to remind you that “better” is not the same as “all good” or “perfect”.  It may be heading in that direction but it aint there yet.  The Voting Rights Act made things better for minorities.  The effect was dynamic rather than static and it had a tendency to spread.  But while it made things better, there is still a significant amount of work to be done.  The Google search I suggest above is not the only example of that by far but it is an example of it.  The VRA’s work is not done and anyone who actually looked and was honest with themselves would not need that explained to them.  Tennessee’s governor and other state politicians clearly have no desire for honesty, either expressed to them or from them.  Unfortunately, TN is not unique.

The VRA was a known entity.  It was peaceful, predictable and not punitive.  I do not know what comes next.  In that not knowing, neither I nor anyone I know is willing to guarantee that the next thing will meet those criteria.  “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” — John F. Kennedy

 

TED Truths

 I found the content of this talk to be comforting.  The idea of humans who don't understand or have a clear and coherent definition of consciousness being able to create it has obvious undesirable elements.  Imagine a cave man getting his hands on a nuclear weapon.  He could kill and cook his mastodon in one fell swoop.  Also everything near and not so near the mastodon most likely including the cave man.

Anil Seth does a pretty good job of suggesting that we are unlikely to have to face the modern equivalent of that scenario in the near future.  Again, I find his reasoning comforting.

See the TED talk here.

Projection Protection

 During my time in the USN, I went to sea several times on several different ships.  I have been all over the Mediterranean and seen a goodly portion of the North Atlantic.  Sometimes the ship anchored out of sight of land.  Sometimes we basically cut large circles in the water.

Whether we were sitting still, moving slowly, or traveling at “operational” speed there is one thing in particular that we were NOT doing.  We were not protecting the ocean.  We were not there to stop others from using the ocean near us.  As a matter of fact, we quite frequently shared the ocean immediately around us with other vessels commercial, military or recreational from any number of nations.

But if we were not there to protect the ocean in whole or in part, why were we there??  We were there to prove we could be there.  We were there so that if something happened closer to there than to our nation, we could respond (assuming a response was necessary) more quickly than a response that had to come from the USA proper.  In government/military speak, we were there to “force project”.  We also are typically very visible so as to let others know that we can force project at will.

It is not necessarily obvious but the Army works that way too.  When we either establish an American base or are granted significant access to a foreign ally’s base, we are not doing it to protect that particular bit of geography or the local inhabitants.  Our primary purpose will be to force project.  The Philippine Islands were not in particular danger of being invaded or assaulted.  We put multiple bases there anyway.  We did it so we did not have to respond to Asian issues from the USA.  

There are secondary and tertiary reasons for those bases.  The economic benefit to the area can be significant but, it is generally a side effect.  

We do not have bases in Germany because we think Hitler might not be gone for good.  We have them to enable a quick and effective response to issues affecting our European allies and by extension, us.  The primary threat consideration for those bases has been the Soviet/Russian/Eastern Bloc nations.  

Removing a base or simply reassigning the soldiers from that base does not directly endanger the area immediately around that base.  It does diminish our ability to force project.  It does diminish our ability to present a speedy response to threats coming from that general direction.  It effectively makes our nation weaker and less secure.

Sometimes a base outlives its usefulness.  Political and national alliances have been known to change.  Technological changes can render a base significantly less useful.  But the core truths do not change.  The removal of several thousand troops from any given European base might well cause some fiscal and social discomfort to any number of individual Europeans.  But it will not significantly impact the EU.  What it will do is negatively affect our ability to project military power.  It might make some less willing to do business with those who purchase consumable supplies for our deployed military units.  It will hurt us more than it hurts them.

I would suggest that is not sustainable “leadership”.

Betrayal Writ Large

 Belle of the Ranch is fond of communicating any of several truisms.  One of my favorites I hear from her is “Nations don’t have friends, they have interests.”

She does not mention another observable truism.  That being that leaders of nations can be susceptible to influence from specific leaders of other nations or otherwise powerful people.  We observe that in our own “leadership” in which other national leaders appear to have outsized influence.  I could also point out that current leadership in particular appears to be especially vulnerable to flattery and useless gifts of frippery.

A reasonable assessment of the motivation(s) for our current military involvement in Iran would suggest that Bibi Netanyahu was very instrumental in convincing Felon47 to commit huge amounts of national treasure and no few lives of USA citizens for gains we will not need to brag about.

I could of course, go on about any of several current and former national leaders with autocratic tendencies who dubiously earned the admiration of the guy trying to destroy our nation for profit.

But for as betrayed as I might personally feel, there are those who have been betrayed far worse.  I’m thinking specifically of Iran and their leaders.  I would have to include the religious leadership, the Republican Guard, and the military leadership.  As much as Felon47 appears to be under the direct control and influence of Vladimir Putin, it is difficult for me to conceptualize the situation wherein he commits us to violence in Iran and the Strait without the express permission of Putin.  The same Putin who has been counting on Iran for drones and electronics and other goods to help them in their doomed-to-failure “special military action” in Ukraine.

I’m serious.  While run of the mill Russians may be starting to doubt Putin’s competence, they have been conditioned to believe whatever he tells them.  Iranians may have been conditioned but NOT to believe or revere Putin.  Were I in charge of the military in Iran, I would be developing the plan to grab and relocate Putin immediately upon his political fall or even shortly before.  They are well within reason to believe that he could have ordered Trump to stand down or at least to continue with the status quo wherein we commit the occasional act of terrorism after punishing them for adhering to the internationally agreed upon JCPOA.

International relations are complicated.  I don’t know what was in Putin’s mind.  (Although to be fair, I seriously doubt he values Iranian lives and comforts as much or more than he values the lives of the Russian soldiers he has been using for years now to soak up Ukrainian ammo.)  What I know is that as soon as he perceived his interests as diverging from Iranian interests, he was willing to betray them regardless of what they had done for Russia.

I don’t know where Vlad will go to attempt to escape accountability but, I will be the least surprised person in the world if I wake up to a headline informing me that Persian elements have assisted him in a definitive test of localized gravitic effects.