Category Archives: Political – thoughts

I just really don’t like politics, but when blatant infringements on common sense and civility abound, I am obliged to comment. These are personal thoughts, nothing else.

Twitter and Facebook as Ego Strokers: not good for meaningful conversation

Political - thoughts, Rants

Twitter and Facebook: I was interested in a nice little pair of words that i heard in a YouTUBE video by Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro: Religion, Trans Activism, and Censorship: that these media platforms are just ego boosters. It is pretty apparent that these in fact are that–instant ego gratification platforms when one can look and see who likes you or agrees with you. They are not profitable conversations, they allow explusvie, anonymous blurbing. BUT they do stroke the ego. The intercourse is not really a conversation with another human. It is binary, polarizing, and splits groups into opposing moral, social, intellectual and political views (binary, ok whats new in the universe) that profit no one. (here is one opinion on the topic)
The ego-boosters and the ego-busters (words coined by Dr Suzanne Gaddis) are great names for the Democrats and Republicans. Haha, very little is exchanged on these platforms, in anonymity that benefits the world.

TAKE HOME MESSAGE: todays twitter and facebook platforms allow both ego-boosters and ego-blasters anonymity while engaging in self-aggrandizing self-ego-stroking. This may amount to braingasm (what a cute word).

Earth temperatures

Political - thoughts, Rants

From my friend DWN.

Here is a list of natural causes that affect global atmospheric temperatures:

  • solar activity (frequency and strength of sun flares)
  • geothermal vents and underwater volcanoes cosmic ray flux
  • orbital eccentricity-axial tilt-and-precession of Earth’s orbit
  • magnetic effects of other planets
  • heat distribution between oceanic and atmospheric systems
  • changes in radioative forcing (balance between solar-radiation energy absorbed by Earth’s  surfaces and energy radiated back into space)
  • the large difference in land:sea ratio between the Northern and Southern Hemisphere

“Human activity” contributes something, but the effect is well under 1%, i.e. it’s not statistically detectable. (Yet. Could be in 100-500 years.)

Really nice video from NASA here.

Tell me why —

Political - thoughts, Rants

Tell me why?

If the human brain is not fully developed until age of 25 (give or take a year)(that is, it is not developed enough to have full executive, or full cognitive restraint functions)  WHY CAN CHILDREN OF LESS THAN 14 be allowed to have long guns, and any kind of gun in most states by 18.  This makes no sense to me.
I found this fantastic site. called GunPolicy.org which is run by the University of Sidney, and deals with international data on gun deaths. The graphs below I just did quickly to compare where I was born, with where I live now. You can see that the US has a big problem, but not as big as south of the border, but way in excess of the western european countries. The takeaway message can be many things.

-americans mature late in life  (haha…maybe they never develop mature frontal lobe function

-we need to change gun policy to fit american’s brains… that means, treat kids like they are really just that…. kids,

-we need to do some statistical analysis of WHO does the murdering….. young, adult, old, mentally unstable, or deviant…  and change the laws to match

 

This made me laugh so hard

Political - thoughts

This made me laugh so hard i boosted my immune system for a full week.

….Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star…..

I think overall the health of all americans will improve just because we laugh at your tweets.

Scientific illustrations — Artistic vs Accurate

Political - thoughts, Rants, Ultimate order, the cell

I googled erroneous diagrams in science and came up with a series of articles in Scientific American, but the link was broken. In case the repair the link here it is, but it seems that a paid subscription is necessary.

This blog just is another attempt to make individuals who write articles for scientific journals aware that they do a great disservice to our knowledge base when they carelessly use inaccurate and lazy renditions of data, just because they feel (or the editors feel) there should be visual content does not forgive “junk graphics”.  If there is going to be visual content, then it needs to be accurate.

Scientific publications are not the place for “artistic” renditions unless they have basis in real fact.  Artistic license is NOT an excuse for poorly made illustrations.  I wont spend the time to detail errors in the diagram about which I am thinking at this moment, but it was so poorly drawn as to be laughable. An attempt to avoid asking permission for use of graphics from previously published works, or better diagrams from other publications, perhaps, or just trying to turn out another manuscript at warp speed, may have been the problem.  I did in fact email the first author (who is at my same institution) and mention how sad it was to include “fake diagrams” in scientific works. I got a response but it was sadder still.   Does the use of “fake diagrams” mean that there are “fake data” and “fake interpretations” in the publication as well.  This all fits right in the “fake news” and “fake accomplishments” mentality rampant in our world.

What is even worse is that the reply from the lead author seemed to point to the idea that the bad diagram was justified by calling it “artistic”. This was an excuse, and it means to me that many in the scientific community think that “made up diagrams” are ok, even when good evidence says that what they “made up”, the depictions are erroneous. How egregious, especially when there is easy access diagrams with honest content of the same material.

It is a perplexing issue.

Price reduction!!! ha ha still too much?

Political - thoughts, Rants, Ultimate order, the cell

“In 1990, Congress established funding for the Human Genome Project and set a target completion date of 2005. Although estimates suggested that the project would cost a total of $3 billion over this period, the project ended up costing less than expected, about $2.7 billion in FY 1991 dollars.”

“But the price for genome sequencing has been in continuous free fall since the beginning. In 2006, Illumina’s first machine could sequence a human genome for $300,000, and in 2014 the company announced it could do the same thing for $1,000.”

“BGISEQ-500 Service Human Whole Genome Sequencing from $600, data delivered in standard industry formats”
price for genome wide scan

If you are a —

Political - thoughts, Rants, Sara-Witts-end

If you’re free-thinking, they will think of you as a trouble-maker

but, if you’re a conformist, they will think of you as weak
——————————————
If you’re educated they will call you egotistical

but if you aren’t, they will call you stupid
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If you work but can’t support your family, they will call you lazy

but, if you work 2 jobs, they will call you a bad parent
——————————————
If you don’t have a car, they will think less of you

but, if you have a nice car they will think you’re pretentious
——————————————
If you stick by people that do you wrong, they will call you a fool

but if you cut people out of your life, they will call you disloyal
——————————————
If you are overweight they will call you unattractive

but if you diet and exercise, they will call you vain
——————————————
If you don’t do your makeup and your hair, they consider you ugly

but if you do, they consider you fake
——————————————
If you didn’t vote they will tell you were negligent

but, if you did, they will tell you it was for the wrong person
——————————————
If you were born with the help of affluent parents, you will be “entitled”

but, if you take help from others you will be a “freeloader”
——————————————

There are 10,000 ways to skin a cat.
In a world we have created, in which NOBODY is ever “doing it right,” wrong opinions abound, and everybody has one… but also, everybody has the right to be opinionated. WHO DOESN’T SEIZE THAT OPPORTUNITY!!

Just as long as that individual isn’t causing me personal problems, and mine isn’t doing the inverse… then let’s just ALL be the biggest that we can be!

Just do everybody a favor and CLENCH when you feel the urge to deliver MORE than JUST your opinions on people.