Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

This is good, yes. This is a huge relief. Derek Chauvin has been found guilty. There was never any doubt about his actual guilt. That was proven more than guilt has ever been proven in any murder, ever, in the history of mankind. You didn’t even need all the witnesses who said they saw him kill George Floyd, everybody in the connected world saw Derek Chauvin kill George Floyd. So, I’m glad with the verdict, but it’s a sad reflection on our society that it was ever in doubt.
Also, there are things I do not understand about our justice system. Like, why isn’t life mandated for murder? There are people in jail for life for drug charges and shit. Sure, if he’s sentenced to the 75 years that’s possible, and he isn’t allowed out early for good behavior, and doesn’t live past 110 or so, he will die in jail. But that’s really the bare minimum, morally, for someone who has deliberately taken somebody else’s life. We’ll see if it happens.
Also, I don’t really understand how the 3 separate charges makes sense. Why not just go with the most severe charge, which was 2nd degree murder, I think, and sentence him to 75 years for that? But, that’s a technicality, really. I’m not bothered. The more guilty they found him, the happier I am.
The thing that’s really bugging me now is the 8 weeks before sentencing. What, the judge hasn’t already had enough time to think about this? Has he seen the tape? It strikes me that 8 weeks is a long time, I’m not sure if they do that in other murder cases, I always thought the sentence was announced directly after the verdict, the way it is in all the TV shows.
Since, it’s such a long time, the sentence will be decided on after everybody’s stopped protesting and gone back indoors, so to speak. Or everybody will be focused on the Kim Potter trial (let’s hope there is one) or whatever the cause of the day is in two weeks. The judge will be able to give him a slap on the wrist while he thinks everybody isn’t watching. I’m still worried about that.

This is not about anything that’s happening specifically today, but rather a phenomenon which has existed for as long as I can remember, so at least the last 60 years ago. I just saw a post on Facebook this morning that reminded me of it, so that is today’s blog topic.
The person was lamenting the fact that kids today don’t know how to write in cursive, which is probably true. Kids today also wouldn’t know how to DIAL a telephone, and many cannot drive a car which has a clutch. Writing, today, means typing. But, again, that’s not the point. My point is in the final line of what she wrote, saying it was ‘the dumbing down of America.’
It has nothing to do with America. If it is a dumbing down, it is the dumbing down of the whole world. But Americans (who are probably over 50% of the people on my Facebook page, although I didn’t plan it that way) just don’t see the rest of the world as existing. Most of them have never seen it, or inter-reacted with it in any meaningful way. It is one of the reasons I left the USA the first time, and one reason I am glad to be away from it now.
It is a natural phenomenon. It must be. Americans are not a separate race, they come from different countries all over the world. So, the fact that they see the world this way is due to their culture and the accidents of history which have led to its being the world’s dominant superpower, much as Rome was 2,000 years ago.
Come to think of it, the Romans probably had a very similar attitude. And look what happened to them.

It happens every couple of days. One of my friends posts something about how they weren’t allowed to post something on Facebook, accompanied quite often by a screenshot of the piece that got blocked, and I have a mix of feelings about that. For one, it looks like they did get to post it, because I’m looking at it. I’m aware, though, that Facebook made them take a couple of extra steps to do that, one which somebody less computer adept wouldn’t know how to take, and so it is suppression. Sometimes I can kind of see Facebook’s point. There’s a painting, I think it’s called “Birth of the World” and it’s a legit piece of art hanging in a museum somewhere, but it’s also a big, hairy vagina right in your face. Every so often, I’ll see that posted, accompanied by the message “Facebook won’t let me post this!” More often, I don’t get Facebook’s point at all. Sometimes, it makes me feel a bit jealous, which is irrational. I post political shit all the time, some of which probably offends some people, but I’ve never been banned. Am I that insignificant? Well, maybe so. Facebook’s a big place and we’re all spitting in the ocean.
This morning, it was a friend who posted a comment saying that the Pan-American highway is not contiguous, you have to get around the Panama Canal by some other means of transport which, I’m pretty sure, is true unless they’ve built a bridge or tunnel when I wasn’t looking. Facebook said it was spam, which I suspect is bullshit. Spam is something that’s sent out to millions of people at once. Spam is something that is sent over and over again. Spam is generated by a machine, and I happen to know for a fact that this particular friend is not a machine. He has some other faults, but he is most definitely not a machine.
So, Facebook got it wrong, which they often do. They either need to fix those algorithms, hire some human beings, establish an appeals process, or some combination of all three. As the traffic warden of the information highway, Zuckerberg is doing a seriously poor job.

I am one of those people who wants to think aliens exist, because that would be super cool, we could learn so much from them and it would be fascinating to talk to a sentient being who is not human. It would give you a vastly different perspective of the universe, more even than LSD.
The Drake equation, which I maintain is not an equation at all, more of a checklist, would seem to indicate that they do. Number of stars in the galaxy/ percentage of those with planets/ percentage of those planets with water and inside the Goldilocks zone/ percentage of those planets where life has evolved/ percentage of those planets where intelligent life has evolved, i.e. technological societies/ percent of those who’ve developed space travel/ duration of those societies before extinction, and maybe a couple of factors I missed. The thing is, at the time Drake, who was no doubt some famous astronomer, wrote this ‘equation’ we didn’t know quite how many stars there are in the galaxy, or whether any of them at all have planets, and whether any of those planets have water. Since then we’ve discovered that the answers are a. a whole shit ton, b. most of them, seems like, and c. quite a few of them and it turns out water is super common throughout the universe, not rare at all.
So, there should be lots of aliens out there just itching to make contact with us. Then, there’s the Fermi paradox, which says if life throughout the universe is so damn likely, how come they’ve never made contact with us? It’s a good question.
For the purposes of this blog, I’m going with the Star Trek origin story hypothesis. The Vulcans came to Earth and made official contact as soon as Zephram Cochrane invented the warp drive. It seems logical that there might be some kind of threshold, upon which space-faring alien would sit up and take notice of us. I’ve heard it suggested that the increase of UFO sightings in modern times began with the first use of nuclear weapons, back in the 1940s. But, if so, they still haven’t made contact and it’s easy to see why. Not exactly putting our best foot forward.
So, here’s what I propose, since we have no way of knowing what that threshold will be. Let’s establish a colony on Mars. Maybe that’s the threshold but, if not, it will give us a hell of a deep space observatory and prepare us for the next step.
Or maybe they are looking more to see if we can create a stable, sustainable society within a stable, sustainable environment, and once we’ve created a planetary utopia, they will judge us mature enough to join their Federation of Planets. Let’s do that, too.
If that doesn’t bring them, we’ll go to the next stage, which is interplanetary travel.
And if that doesn’t cross the Cochrane Threshold and encourage them to make contact, then maybe we truly are alone in the universe, which would also be kind of awesome because it would mean there are billions and billions of planets out there ripe for the colonizing, and when our great great great great great great great great grandchildren meet intelligent space-faring aliens, they will still be human, just from other planets. And that would be pretty awesome, too.

While debating the guilt of Kim Potter, I made the comment that what it would take to solve the problem is one or two police officers getting sent to jail for the appropriate amount of time, which is life. The rest, I said, would stop killing people.
My gun loving, generally cop supporting nephew said I was being optimistic. Perhaps.
Ridiculously disproportionate sentences for possession of marijuana do not discourage people from smoking marijuana, at least not very much. A couple of million deaths is not enough to convince everybody to wear masks. The ‘it can’t happen to me’ belief is strong, and it applies to police officers as well as other human beings.
Nonetheless, if every time a police officer murdered someone they had to go to trial for it, and some of those trials resulted in convictions and long sentences, it would make the news. Some officers might think twice before popping somebody in the head. At least, look around for a second or two to make sure there are no cameras around, all of the other officers have their body cams turned off, and a quick glance up at the sky to make sure there are no drones, and that instant of hesitation might be enough for their murderous rage to pass.
If 15 or 20 of those trials resulted in guilty verdicts or long sentences, some of them might entirely get over their life long dream of killing a black person (Racist officers do not grow on trees. They come from racist families, in racist communities. There are most definitely conversations where all the adults talk and laugh about how much they’d like to kill black people. I’ve heard them.)
If it takes a couple of hundred officers going to jail (which unfortunately would mean hundreds more victims), then it’s still best we start now. It is very important that Derek Chauvin, the officers who stood and watched Derek Chauvin, Kim Potter, and whichever one of that rabid band of Chicago’s “finest” (quotes indicate sarcasm) pulled the trigger that shot the bullet that killed Adam Toledo, should all stand trial and should all go to jail.
Partly because they are guilty as fuck. Partly though, also, as a warning to others. An example needs to be made of them.