Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

I’m binge watching John Adams on HBO, and finding it pretty compelling stuff. Partly because it’s an era of history I find particularly interesting, and partly because it’s a well done show.
Despite the wigs and canes and big buckles, and despite all the super pompous speechification, a lot of the issues they were dealing with back then are the same issues we’re dealing with now. Do you have a strong central government, as Hamilton and, to some extent Adams, wanted, or a weak one, leaving the power in the hands of the whimsical mob, as Jefferson (who still must be admired as a statesman, philosopher, inventor, writer, and president, despite the invention of DNA testing proving beyond a shadow of a doubt what some rivals accused him of at the time, that he liked having sex with his slaves, and then keeping the children as slaves) wanted. The tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants, etc…
Complete freedom would be wonderful. I understand the Libertarian’s desire for it. But, it’s insane. Without any regulation, there is anarchy, and anarchy leads to mob rule, which leads to totalitarianism in one big, vicious circle.
So, what is the best system for achieving the perfect balance between freedom and a smooth running civilization? I think the key is not to look for the outcome that the most people desire (because most people are fucking idiots) but to develop some way of determining which outcome is the best. That which will benefit the greatest amount of people, and inconvenience the fewest, over the longest period of time.
In the beginning, back in the ’80s, when the internet was just a wee baby of an idea, I had high hopes that this would be it. A forum where all views could be aired, assessed on their merits, modified, perfected, enacted, assessed, and modified again, in an endless feedback loop mirroring scientific progress with social progress and building a utopian society.
It hasn’t worked out like that -yet. But, we may get there eventually.

I’ve just discovered something extremely cool on the internet. Apparently, from the comments, it’s been around a couple of years, but I didn’t know about it until a couple of hours ago, so it’s new to me. It’s a map of the world, sprinkled with little green dots. Every dot is a radio station.
So, we (my wife and daughter were also impressed) took a little trip around the world. We listened to stations in Prague, in Poland, in Norway, in Canada, in Iowa where I’m from, in L.A., in Russia, and discovered that there were no radio stations in North Korea. Actually, I’m sure they must have some kind of state radio there, and it’s just that they are not co-operating with the mapmakers. We listened to a little bit of K-pop while we were in the region (can that be called Seoul Music?) Heard some rock, some golden oldies, some techno, a little bit of talk radio.
The person who sent it to me thought it was a great way to practice foreign languages, and I’m sure she is right. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a pretty good way to listen to the radio, because it gives you a wide selection of stations, and the sound quality is perfect, which is not always true when you’re listening to radio on the radio. It’s also kind of a fun way to travel around the world, without actually going anywhere.
Check it out. You might enjoy it.

I have been writing this blog, roughly once a day, for over 10 years now. Not as many people read it as I would like but, in addition to trying to get my views in front of an audience, it also serves as a writing exercise for me. For about the last 8 of those years, I have also been writing a short poem a day, to post on Twitter and Facebook, with a link to the blog. It’s also a writing exercise, but I find it surprisingly easy to write, as it doesn’t have to be any longer than a rhyming couplet. Anyway, I always write the blog first and the poem after but earlier today, a short poem, which isn’t actually very good, popped into my mind, but it is something I can write a blog about, so that makes my life just a little bit easier.
Everything’s ironic
it’s always cool to be hot
if you think you’re intelligent
you probably are not

Of course, everything is relative, and we are all victims of Dunning-Kruger syndrome to some extent. But, the more we learn, the more we realize that, in this great, grand universe which is all around us, we don’t know shit. Worse than that, there are not only things we don’t know, but things we will never know. We have not seen to the edge of the universe, for instance, and we do not know if there is one. We can’t really figure out electrons, and other sub-atomic particles, because they move every time we look at them.
But what if people were smarter? Would it lead to solutions to all of our problems, or would we just find more sophisticated ways to screw everything up? I don’t know. Nobody knows. Because we’re not that smart.

Censorship of social media is getting heavy handed. YouTube has decided to demonetize a whole bunch of left wing bloggers, such as Caitlin Johnstone, who is probably my favorite single political analyst at the moment, and has an uncanny way of leaving me saying “Wish I’d written that,” and Niko House, who was among the first to seriously call out election rigging in the 2016 primaries. I’m a bit off Niko at the moment, as he is going beyond Jimmy Dore in his fight against AOC. Admittedly, his beef with her is the censorship issue itself, and she’s on the wrong side of it, but calling her a fascist was going a bit far.
Still, I definitely don’t think he should be censored. He gave his reasons, he defined his terms, so even if it was hyperbole, it wasn’t slander. And, I’m sure that’s not the reason they censored him, anyway. There are people they are defending, but AOC isn’t one of them.
Also, a few of my friends on Facebook have suffered the banhammer. “Community Standards.” And I know one of them just posts pro-marijuana stuff all the time, so it seems that Facebook’s “community standards” were written some time in the 1950s.
What to do? Sure, it has been suggested that Facebook should become a public entity but, as much as I’m in favor of socialism, actual appropriation of private companies by the government is going a bit far. That’s not Bernie Sanders type socialism, that’s Soviet style socialism. But, having one public forum, like NPR, or the BBC, might be a good idea. I say might, because the government can put the kibbosh on free speech as much as any corporation, and it has happened many times throughout history.
What I’d really like to see is one site become the go-to place for left wing views. A full service site, with news, comments, expert analysis, music videos, book reviews, debates, interviews, and more comments.
Meantime, I have a suggestion for whoever’s job it is at Facebook to prioritize which shit they post. I was reading the caption beneath a photo today, and almost ready to click on the article, because I like Medea Benjamin, and she was going on about Trump’s military parade, but then I realized: he’s not president now, this article is probably a year old, maybe two, and why is this even showing up here. Shouldn’t there be an algorithm that just checks the date, and deprioritizes stuff that nobody is even talking about any more?

Joe Biden is a terrible human being but, as much as I dislike him, I am aware that he is getting as much flack from the right as he is from the left. When I bitch about his energy policy, it is because he is too friendly with big oil and, while he gets huge publicity for stopping one pipeline, he quietly issues 30+ new drill permits at other sites, but the right is all about “He’s killing oil industry jobs!”
That said, I’m not sure what I think about the cancellation of a test launch for Elon Musk, that was supposed to take place recently. According to the Washington Times, it is a sign that Biden wants nothing to do with Musk, and is anti-space, and that means China will be the first to Mars. According to the Wall St. Journal, it was just a routine cancellation due to weather. Neither of those is a source I particularly trust, and most news articles on the subject I couldn’t access because ‘not available in your country,’ so all I know is that one launch was canceled, but it did get me thinking.
In space, we are not Americans, Europeans, Chinese or Russian. Anybody who makes it into space is, quite literally, beyond all that. Yuri Gagarin’s name will be taught thousands of years from now, provided there are still human children to be taught, and it won’t matter that he was Russian. When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, people around the whole world applauded, and it didn’t matter that he was American. When you watch Star Trek, they are out in Space and they talk of Earth fondly, as home, but there are no national distinctions. That’s true of almost all science fiction.
We are on a small planet, adrift in the vast universe. Our efforts in space should be co-operative.