Archive for Uncategorized

“Get up in the morning slaving for bread, sir, so that every mout’ can be fed” edition:

As usual, I get an idea about something; this starts a train of thought and I just go where it takes me.  Here’s where the train leaves the station:  the “Get up in the morning…” line is from a song called “The Israelites” by a fellow named Desmond Dekker.  I remember hearing this song on the radio when I was young, when “the radio” was where I heard my music.  I heard it again the other day (when I was less young) on the radio – the satellite radio – and it got me thinking.

“Got you thinking about what?” you ask?  Yeah, yeah I’m getting there.  But first let me finish the background on the song since this is a Music Friday post.

In the late 1960s after British music invaded America, reggae music invaded Britain. In 1968 the Jamaican group  Desmond Dekker and the Aces released “The Israelites” which topped the British charts the following year. As near as I can tell it’s a simple song about living poor in the ghetto of Kingston, Jamaica.

Though what we hear about is a poor man dressed in rags whose wife and kids have left him, we also hear about ourselves.  Sure, we don’t all get up in the morning  literally slaving for bread, but we do have our motivations to work whatever time of day (or night) it happens. I wrote earlier about Concupiscence  which could be broadly defined as the force to action exerted on us by our passions.  It seems obvious that everyone has their motivations above and beyond the necessities to maintain life: wealth, notoriety, attention from a certain someone etc. etc. etc. These motivations are there pushing us to act.  Somewhere in the human DNA is a gene shaped like a little cardboard sign that reads “Will work for (something I want but don’t have)”.  Is this humankind’s greatest blessing, or a fatal defect?  As usual the answer seems to be: both.

So many mout’s to be fed.  I’d better set my alarm an hour early.

If you are a new vistior here, welcome!

Let me give you a couple tips on how to get the maximum out of your time spent here.  Essentially this is my soap box, a forum to express my thoughts through writing.  My secondary goals are to entertain my readers, perhaps even to educate or inspire them as well.  For more background, click on “about” in the upper right hand corner.

The technical stuff:  the articles (or “posts”) are in chronological order – newest at the top and older below.  To the left of each title is the date the post was created.  The main page shows all the posts in all categories – if you want to narrow it down, click on a category in the list on the right and – voila!  Only posts in that category are displayed.  Also on the right hand sidebar are “recent posts” whaich are – you guessed it – the 5 most recent posts; and “popular posts” which are the posts that have received the most views in case you like to follow the crowd.  My recommendation?  Read everything.

Within each post you will notice some text in red.  These are links to additional information.  Click on the red text and a new tab will open taking you to an article, a wikipedia page, a song or something that supports or relates to the material I am writing about.  Try it – click on this link and see where it takes you.

Most pictures within posts can be enlarged by clicking on them.

And – the blog is interactive.  That’s right!  You can participate by leaving a comment or comments on each post by clicking the “comments” button on the left under the date.  All comments are moderated (that means I have to approve them before they are published) so I will see your comment.  And so will the rest of the world if I approve it.

So – happy reading!  And enjoy!

and I suppose you could dance to it.  Sure.  Why not?

No tuning neccessary.

Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ

If you are a baby boomer like I am, then you grew up in the era of duck & cover drills and you remember Civil Defense sirens being tested on the first Friday of every month.  If you are not a baby boomer  let me explain.  Duck & Cover drills were performed periodically in school, similar to a fire drill.  Except during a duck & cover drill the teacher would exclaim “duck & cover!” and the students immedately jumped under their desks and covered their heads with their hands.  This was to practice what we were to do when we saw the flash emitted by a detonating nuclear bomb.  Also we were warned not to look directly at the flash lest our eyeballs melt.  Good times.  Civil Defense sirens were basically air raid sirens to warn everyone to get ready to duck & cover.  These were tested at 11:30 AM on the first Friday of every month, which I’m sure the Soviets figured would be the best time for an attack.

Anyhoo, the Civil Defense authorities that thought up duck & cover and installed the sirens also put together a map of targets that the Soviets were likley to nuke when the shit got real:

click to enlarge

They planned for every eventuality.  The triangles depict targets is an “500 warhead” scenario.  The black spots are “2000 warhead scenario” targets.  I happen to live within the intersection of two black spots that are within the intersected area of three triangles.  So I doubt the duck & cover would have helped.  But I guess it’s better than telling a second grader to “bend over and kiss your ass good-bye”.

I may have mentioned that I am longer a Man Out Of Work.  I am now a Man Who Seems To Work Every Waking Minute Of His Freaking Life.  But that’s a poor name for a blog.  I’m not complaining, mind you, but I am playing the excuse card for light *non-existent* blogging.

I like blogging.  I want to blog.  I know that all the great bloggers whose blogs I read and who have inspired me to begin blogging work jobs that are undoubtedly more demanding than mine, yet they still crank out the content.  I just haven’t figured out how to make the adjustment from having lots of time to having almost no time.

Right now three things take up virtually 95% of my time.  Work 40%; Sleep 30%;  Wife 25%.   The wife’s time budget has already taken the biggest hit, so there’s no cutting back there.  In fact she is in need of an increase of at least 10%.  Can’t cut back on work, so it looks like sleep is gonna have to take the hit.

We’ll see how it goes.  It should be fairly easy for you to tell:  as the posts get more frequent and less coherent you’ll know I am making an adjustment to my sleep schedule.  Stay tuned!

We can close the books on another year – I hope 2014 treated you all well enough.  For me it was not the best of times, nor was it the worst of times and so I can’t complain too loudly.  It’s not that I don’t like to whine, you’ve all heard it often enough.  I’ll try to save it for when it really counts.  So here’s to a hopeful look forward to 2015 – may it be a Happy, Healthy, Prosperous year for us all!

The question comes to us courtesy of Popular Science.  And it appears that the answer to that question is much more liklely to be “yes” if you live in Japan.  Do those people have problems relating to one another or what?  They really seem to put alot of thought into robot existentialism if you ask me.  Don’t believe me?  Follow the link and read the article.

My next best friend will not be a robot.

I’d like to first welcome any new readers, then give some background and answer some questions about the blog.

*taps the microphone*  Is this thing on?

Ego Vero is my little corner of the internet where I can transform thoughts and ideas that are rattling around inside my head into a form of reality by comitting them to writing.  Ego Vero is Latin for “I seek truth”.  I have invited you along on my journey which may take us along strange paths.  This means I may write about any of several general topics that interest me and for whatever reason occupy my thoughts.  The articles (which are called “posts”) on the home page are in chronological order – newest at the top, older below – and not sorted by category.  As you scroll down you go back in time and see every post covering every subject.  If you don’t wish to see all the categories, you can narrow things down to one category at a time.  Here’s how.  You will see these categories listed on the right hand side of the page – clicking on one of those categories will show you only the posts on that subject.  Let’s say you are an aviation buff who only wants to read my aviation posts and avoid the rest of my blather about Empiricism, robots, music and so on – click on “Aviation” and voila!  You will see only the aviation posts – still in chronological order with the newest at the top.  Same goes for any of the categories.

The category with the most posts by far is “Life”.  Just FYI

You know – Life – as in Life One and Life Two (three? four?……)

Any red text you see within a post contains a link to additional information – an article I used for reference, perhaps another related post I wrote, or a wikipedia link, etc.  Clink on the red text and the link should open in a new tab.

My goal first and foremost is to get these ideas out of my head!  Read the “About” page for more background.  But I invite you, dear reader, in the hope that we may learn something together about ourselves and each other.  And that you may be at least somewhat entertained in the process.  I welcome your feedback via the comments.  To the left of each post title is a two colored box – the top half is red and indicates the date the post was created.  The bottom half is grey and says “comments”.  The number  – which is almost always zero, dammit – indicates how many comments readers have left about the post.  Click on that grey box and you can leave a comment about the post.  Please do!  Your e-mail adress will not be published, shared or used by me in any way.  And there is definitely a slim chance that I will not stalk you.

For more, read How to Read This Here Blog Thingy and For New Readers – Welcome!

So Welcome!  And enjoy.

…”Six States” initiative fails to qualify for ballot.

Well, it was fun while it lasted, but according to the California Secretary of State, insufficient valid signatures were submitted to qualify the initiative for the 2016 ballot.  The initiative would have carved California up into six separate states.  You can read this for backgound.

I opined early on that this would never come to fruition because it would upset a very large apple cart for the Democratic Party and Public Sector Labor Unions that have a stranglehold on political power in this state.  They found this baby in it’s cradle and pressed the pillow hard.  Long Live the Status Quo!

Approximately 800,000 signatures were required for the initiative to qualify – nearly 1.4 million were submitted, a seemingly sufficent margin for error.  The SOS predicted that only 66 percent of the signatures were valid based on “random sampling”.  So fully 1/3 of the submited signatures were deemed “invalid”.  I’d like to see a little more in depth reporting on this.  The sponsors of the initiative have promised a review of the invalid signatures.

I’m certain that the Secretary of State did a careful and thorough job of verification.  Certain!

Now this:

Two drummers.  Awesome.  And Mike McDonald when he was still “Salt and Pepper Lightning”.

I have been away from home on a family matter.  I had expected to have time for some light blogging and that has proved not to be the case, in fact this is the first time I have had the computer out of the case.  I will have a few posts in the next day or so and be back up to speed in a few days.  In the meantime, watch this:

I always thought the Karmann Ghia was a cool enough little car even with the stock VW powerplant, but that a few extra horsepower would make it more interesting, and a sleeper version would be even better.  The fact that this one’s a hot rod is a little too obvious for my taste.  Mine would be more understated.