SeniorJunior

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy; but I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven; for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect . -- St Matthew v.43-48. ... And the rascally Dems made peace with the obdurate Repubs. Then the nation came together to heal a needy and troubled world. Amen

Propaganda's Secret Weapon REPEAT, Repeat , Repeat, repeat, repeat .... You know it's a lie, then you keep hearing it over and over, and the repetition will twist your mind. “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth”  A law of propaganda: Nazi Joseph Goebbels.   Research experiments conducted by social scientists help illustrate why it’s so insidious for President Trump and his congressional defenders to keep  parroting  the debunked conspiracy  theory , which originated with Russian intelligence agencies, that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 U.S. election. People who are repeatedly exposed to the same false information, even if they’re initially told that it is false, feel fewer qualms sharing it on social media after each additional time they see it. In five experiments involving more than 2,500 Americans, Daniel Effron, who teaches organizational behavior at the London Business School, and Medha Raj, a PhD student at the University of Southern Ca

Think the Mighty Russian Internet Army Doesn't Watch You? I was amazed when some Republican pals bought into the "Not Russia, But Ukraine" bald faced lie, so I did a mild mannered blog post pointing out the obvious.  It got a lot of attention IN RUSSIA!  Here's the count of where this blog's readers were over the last few days: Hmmm. Usually I get maybe one or two views from Russia.   Make of it what you will.

Eleven Months Ago Settled : The Russian Troll Factory Significantly Interfered With the 2016 Election Ve Luff Breitbartski and Fox News!      Subject crushed .            Russians indicted.                  Research done proving Trump was helped.                    Yes, Russian Trolls Helped Elect Trump Social media lies have real-world consequences. By  Michelle Goldberg    Dec. 17, 2018 [Article here] Excerpt:  Respondents were asked to rate the accuracy of statements claiming that Hillary Clinton was suffering from a serious illness, that she’d approved weapons sales to the Islamic State as secretary of state, and that Donald Trump had been endorsed by Pope Francis. “Belief in these fake news stories (fake news items  proven  to be  planted by Russian Trolls) is very strongly linked to defection from the Democratic ticket by 2012 Obama voters,” wrote the researchers, Richard Gunther, Paul A. Beck and Erik C. Nisbet. Even

China Exporting Killer Autonomous Drones To Middle East: Should You Be Scared? By Karan Sharma | Published: Monday, November 11, 2019, 12:00 * "Autonomous," as in "No direct human oversight," and "Makes its own kill decisions." Just call me "Tommy Gun Gertie."                                       These guys can also form up into SWARMS. They coordinate:   "You go in high, I'll go in low. Lefty, go 'round to the right. Mess 'em up. They can carry many weapons, grenades, incendiaries, lasers. And really loud speakers to talk to the targets. Pick a weapon, any weapon, and latch it to my belly button. China is churning out new ones by the day. The biggest market? The Middle East. The implications of that are mind boggling. My mind is boggled the most by the fact that these little murder machines are perfect for crowd control.  The algorithm: "Disperse or die!" (Small comfort: The U.S.A.

THE MOST POSSIBILITIES! The Ongoing Flood of New Science Discoveries Only Bowls Me Over Occasionally.  This Is One of Those Times Our Galaxy Is Almost As Old As The Universe . I know, I know... I don't look that old. The overall universe is about 13.7 billion years old. That long since the Big Bang. Astronomers have known that the Milky Way is among the oldest of galaxies. The new study puts its age at 13.6 billion years. We live in one of the oldest of all galaxies. Think how many civilizations could be started, go for millions of years and die out in 13.6 billion years.  Sci-Fi city! Read a cool version of this story at Space.com

Mostly We Are Making Critters Go Extinct NOT WITH ROACHES, Just the Opposite. Cockroaches may soon be unstoppable—thanks to fast-evolving insecticide resistance What can I say? We are just tough mothers. It's just one (Fill in the Blank)-ocalypse after another.  ---A million species are at risk , sayeth the U.N. ---The foundations of life - microbes - are at risk. ---Birds, beautiful BIRDS , are down by a third. --- Pollinators, critical to our food supply, are in real trouble --- Fugus that can kill is overcoming all anti-fungals. ---Climate-ocalypse, of course, is the Big One . But roaches? Those fecund facilitators of filth? Those radiation-proof critters destined to survive a nuclear war?   They are getting tougher by the day. Almost impossible to kill with ANY chemicals.  Don't take my sissy words for it, check out that ultimately credible source:   Science Magazine. Some of us are beauty queens. ... Oh, and ebola is back , s

Kinda Catches the Essence of Pro-Life Hypocrisy While Crushing It on the Border Crisis A Super Twofer Big kid supporters... right up to the moment of birth. After that?  Meh. (I know everyone is currently distracted by "Send 'Em Back," but this one is deep .)

...While You Are Looking at Melting Permafrost I'm just bubbling with CO2, mercury and germs. There are visible, dramatic effects of the rapidly warming Arctic. The permafrost – up until now, permanently frozen land and soil – is thawing out, and revealing its hidden secrets. Alongside Pleistocene fossils are massive carbon and methane emissions, toxic mercury, and ancient diseases. This is a fake but, you know, dramatic! The "ancient diseases" are from thousands of  reindeer killed by anthrax, frozen and now thawing and releasing their microbes. I didn't know about the mercury.   "The Arctic is home to the most mercury on the planet. The US Geological Survey estimates there’s a total of 1,656,000 tonnes of mercury trapped in polar ice and permafrost: roughly twice the global amount in all other soils, oceans, and atmosphere."  Who wudda thunk? Worse, of course, it that as the permafrost in the Arctic melts, the extra CO2 and methane will ac

"I’m losing the ability to communicate the magnitude of change," said  Jeremy Mathis, current board director at the National Academies of Sciences.   "I’m running out of adjectives to describe the scope of change we’re seeing."* It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's Arctic Ice doing a nosedive! It must be really frustrating trying to get the public (thee and me) properly exercised about our climate sinking into chaos.  We've got more important stuff to think about, don'tcha know. * Mashable ME

Our Prez is doing something I like! (...and you know that doesn't happen often.) Let's all line up and rip people off! White House to Issue Executive Order  to Disclose Pricing  Across the Health Care Industry Published: May 24, 2019   By Alex Keown [Excerpt]  President Donald Trump is expected to issue an executive order next week that will  mandate price disclosure across the health care industry , the  Wall Street Journal  reported this morning. The move would be highly disruptive to the industry, which is not used to having a spotlight shined on its pricing policies, the  Journal  noted. Citing unnamed sources who are familiar with the matter, the  Journal  said the Trump administration will wield the power of the federal government to force the price disclosures as part of an effort to drive down health care costs. In particular, the  Journal  said that the order could be aimed at “regional monopolies of hospitals and health-insurance plans over conce

Artificial Intelligence, The Future of Everything The bigger you are, the more you can use A.I. This pretty much says the big will get bigger, the strong will get stronger, the weak will fall further behind. So this chart is bad news for the U.S. Down in that light blue "Other countries" category are places like  Germany, Bahrain, South Korea, and spectacularly, Israel.  While the U.S. overwhelms the world in conventional military power, the new battlefields are forming up in cyberspace. The cyber nukes are the A.I.s   I (humbly of course) propose that spending priorities be shifted from the existing military industrial complex to the new A.I. development complex. War is hell, but less hellish when fought in The Cloud. And WAY less hellish when you win. Think that's scary? Check this out: The Chinese A.I. Leapfrog (...and 16 other Worries About China)

 Eye in the Desert Researching Western Australia for the book I'm currently hammering on (it's about  Super i ntelligence), this wonder leapt right out at me.  I SEE that person to your right. It's the Wolfe Creek Meteor Crater, on the easter edge of Western Australia. The Picasso part is the tiling collage effect of merging satellite shots. I thought you might like to see it.  I know you are just dying to know something about this new book!  Working title: What Would Supe Do?  Perhaps I should weave in something about the Wolfe Creek Crater.