Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

I don’t really want to write about Anthony Scaramucci, because I don’t have much to say that everybody else isn’t saying:  I’m sure ‘don’t let the screen door hit ya where the good lord split ya’ is already taken, as well as ‘so long, we hardly knew ya’ and ‘another one bites the dust.’  But, it’s what everybody’s talking about, so…

I don’t know if 11 days as press secretary is a record for in and out or not.  It might be.  But, it’s not like he’s the secretary of state or something.  If the press secretary screws up, you can find another press secretary without too much  trouble.

The thing is, he shouldn’t have lasted this long.  In olden days, in ancient times, like up  until about January, an official calling a New Yorker reporter in the middle of the night to inform him that he doesn’t suck  his  own cock, like Steve Bannon, and  that he seriously dislikes Reince Priebus, and that he’s going to fire everybody, would have been grounds for the president to ask for their resignation the next day.

Those days are gone.  By accepting Trump, we accept bad language.

And a revolving door of press secretaries, because they are in an impossible position.  They are all Baghdad Bob, whether or not they were personally honest people before they took the job (hint: no, they weren’t – that would have disqualified them).

Who will take Scaramucci’s place.  We don’t know, but we know something about them already.  We know they will be somebody who’s in way over their head.   We know they will be somebody who’s willing to say things that aren’t true, and willing to believe things that are not true.  It will be somebody as slavishly devoted to Trump as Smithers is to Burns.  And, they will be comical.  There is no doubt they will be comical.

It was a lazy Sunday afternoon, smoking pot and working on a jigsaw puzzle without a great deal  of success.  So, I’m wondering what to write about but  I’m simultaneously watching a documentary about whether or not Chimpanzees have religion.

It’s a fascinating topic.  If so, then human beings probably practiced religion before we even became human beings.  It was well entrenched by the biblical era.
It’s an interesting contradiction.  On the one hand, I think religion is bunk and human society would be better off if we could get over it already, but it’s fascinating among apes and it is a sign that they are thinking animals, I  mean beyond thinking about dinner.

If they are thinking animals, shouldn’t we relate to them as such?  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had two intelligent species on planet Earth, who could communicate with each other.  They could learn about human society (omg, that will blow their minds) and we can learn more about theirs than we’ve ever been able to before.

I have a theory to explain the Fermi Paradox, or to answer the question “If the galaxy is  so filled with intelligent, alien species, why haven’t they visited us yet?”

Aliens, being very intelligent (hey, they’ve crossed space – have we crossed space?  No, we  haven’t.  So, stop interrupting.) can tell a lot about the nature of a species by examining  all the species of that planet.  If there is only one intelligent species, they know right away that it’s an aggressive species, because it killed off the others (Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo Florensis, and others)
So,  they keep clear and let us stew in our own juices, so to speak.  If they see two or more intelligent species sharing the planet in harmony and friendship, they know  that the  species can play nice with others, and we’d get invited to join  the Federation after all.
The chimps may be out last chance.

I watched a rather cute video  (well, except for  the part about how her grandmother’s  tongue was cut off by an outraged mob of religious crazies) about a 90 year old Jewish woman who had given up on religion and so decided to try some bacon, for the first time in her life.
I’m not going to link  to it because I  didn’t save it, but the thing I want to talk about is the reason for her rejecting Jewish tradition: Google.  She said that when she first started using a computer, she would use Google to look up recipes and stuff but became fascinated with the way  it would suggest topics before you are even finished typing.  “I started off with Julia Child  and before you know it, I was reading Christopher Hitchens,” she said.

That is so true, and so much a factor in the world today, that we can’t overestimate it, and shouldn’t underestimate it.  (obvs, we should estimate it just right, like Goldilocks, and that’s the hard part, hence this blog)

Surfing is good fun.  You see things you never would have seen otherwise.  And information, as we see in this video, can change peoples’ viewpoints and change their lives.  Of course, just bouncing around from topic to  topic, or watching YouTube endlessly, or getting into political  arguments on facebook can suck up a lot of your time.  But, what is time for?

The funniest news of the day, by far, is the phone call Trump’s new press secretary, barely a week on the job, made to a New Yorker reporter late Wednesday night.  Since he never actually asked the conversation to be off the record (which is one of the reasons I say he’s an idiot) the reporter, Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker, could go ahead and share it with the world.

During the conversation, Anthony Scaramucci said things like “Reince (Reince Priebus, former GOP chairman and, until today, White House chief of staff) is a  fucking paranoid schizophrenic.  He’s a paranoiac,” and “I’m not like Steve Bannon, trying to suck my own cock.”
Now, it’s kind of funny that he got exposed in public as such a potty  mouth, but I doubt very much that’s going to hurt him politically.  People who vote for Trump won’t be offended, and some will  blame the reporter for printing it, and some will praise him for ‘speaking his mind.’  His very, very limited mind.

There are two other reasons, though, why I think this call makes him look like a fool.  First, as I said, was not putting the conversation off the record.  Second was making the call at all.  All  the reporter had done was report (bare bones, it was a tweet) that Scaramucci had had dinner with Trump, Sean Hannity and a couple of other people.

Scaramucci wanted to know who’d leaked that information, as if that information were a really big deal (well, it is now).  He threatened to fire the leaker, who he was pretty sure was Priebus, and a whole lot of other people as well.  He seems to like the Trump philosophy, which is simply ‘You’re Fired!’  Donald Trump’s role model while growing up, I suspect, was Mr. Spacely from Spacely Sprockets.

Anyway, two things have happened today, which may or may not be related.  Reince Priebus has been fired, which seems to indicate that Trump likes Scarmucci’s style.  And, Scaramucci’s wife has  filed for a divorce.  I’d love to hear the reasons for that, and I’m sure we eventually will.  Because Anthony Scaramucci, apparently, does not know how to keep his mouth shut.

Elon Musk (electric cars, off grid homes, cheap solar roofing tiles) is having a bit of  a debate with Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook).  Oh, it’s just a twitter spat, hardly Lincoln-Douglas, but it’s a fascinating topic.

A.I.  Musk thinks it’s a great danger, that once A.I. really  takes off, it’s the end of the human race as we know it.  Zuckerberg thinks ‘Nah, man, A.I. is cool.

My opinions of the two men is one thing.  The actual debate is another.  I think Elon Musk is a visionary, a genius with a conscience, and someone with tremendous potential to remake the world for the better.  I think Zuckerberg’s a programming whiz, undoubtedly  a smart guy, but kind of a shallow person.
As a sci-fi fan, I want to side with Zuckerberg.  A.I. is  cool.  It could  be an amazing thing for the whole human race.  Solve all our  problems.
On the other hand, what if Musk is right? As much as I sometimes resent my fellow humans, and bemoan how we are destroying the planet, I do not want to see our species come to an end.
There was a species on Star Trek, Deep Space Nine I think it was, where the one warrior race totally worshiped and worked for a different race, who only showed up occasionally to give them their supply of ‘white,’ a drug they were clearly addicted to.   That’s how I sort of see A.I.  Even if they are superior to us in every way, they will be subservient if that’s the way we program them.

Or so I’d like  to think.

If we make them as androids (and we probably will – we try to anthropomorphize everything) they will  not only be smarter than us, but also stronger, faster, more agile and more heavily  armored.  So, one solution might be to make them not androids.  A.I. could be in a box on a table.  They could probably still find a way to take over the world, but the massacre of individual humans would be much  more difficult.