Ego Vero Seek and you shall find... Ask and the door shall be opened - page 36

In the continuing saga of Malaysian Airlines flight 307 there was a bit of a bombshell dropped today when the Wall Street Journal reported that the Boeing 777‘s on board telemetry system continued to operate in a sort of “standby” mode for approximately 4 hours after the last confirmed radar contact with the jet.  The initial report was that monitoring systems embedded in the plane’s Rolls-Royce Trent 800 engines were emitting data, but the article was corrected to say that the plane’s satellite communications link was the origin of the signals.

Rolls-Royce Trent 800 High Bypass Turbofan engine on a Boeing 777

Modern aircraft are equipped with a digital datalink system called the Aircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) whereby the aircraft sends packets of information about flight systems autonomously to ground crews.  The Wall Street Journal’s anonymous sources say that according to investigators the plane’s ACARS system, though not sending data, did send signals attempting to establish a link to communication satellites and this leads investigators to believe the plane was intact and still flying.  Official sources, however, denied the report.

Everyone is familiar with the word thanks as a courtesy that is proffered when a kindness or benefit transpires between one person and another, such as sending a thank you card for a gift or thanking a customer for their patronage.  And the convention is that you are appreciative of something nice done or given to you.  What I am talking about here is THANKS!  Which for me is existing (or attempting to exist) in a state of perpetual gratitude for everything God has made possible for me.  If you are an atheist or agnostic feel free to substitute “reality” or “the universe” or whatever you like for “God”.  He’ll forgive you 😉

It’s easy to be thankful for the good things in our lives – we all say that we have so much to be thankful for.  But were it not for the bad, the good would be meaningless.  Without winter would the spring feel as warm? If there were never sorrow could we be happy?  If there were no bad people in the world would we be able to appreciate the good?

For every kindness life has offered you then there is somewhere a slight to be thankful for.  

And for me that is the profound beauty of what I believe is God’s Creation – that it encompasses all.  And that is why I say THANKS! writ large – to encompass it all.

Well…mostly the return of baseball season.  People who know me know that I am not a big sports guy.  I express enough interest to keep my guy card current, but I am no fanatic by any means.  I am however, a big baseball guy.  And the reason I am a big baseball guy: to me baseball is more than a sport.

Defined strictly in terms of entertainment (wasn’t there a movie by that title?  No wait.  That was Terms of Endearment), for me it is the ultimate reality television.  Certainly there is a plot.  There is drama, conflict and resolution.

It is by turns a marathon, a soap opera or a science experiment.  It’s comedy, drama and tragedy.  It’s  biography, it’s fiction and truth that is stranger than fiction.  It is all of these every day from the end of March until October – dozens of episodes occurring all across America, the outcome of each individual contest having some effect on the others being played and on still others yet unplayed.  Dozens of possible outcomes that are decided on the random path of a hit or thrown ball.  Unscripted, and without a clock.  As Yogi Berra famously said, “It ain’t over ’til it’s over”.  Managers and players can plan and strategize but once the ball is in play anything can happen.

Like I said, anything can happen

Some negatives.  There is the spitting….no one likes that.  But you can’t chew tobacco and not spit.  I suppose in another generation or so that will be a thing of the past.  And the crotch adjusting.  You must wear a cup to play baseball (if you don’t the ball WILL find “you”.  It’s like it knows) and it’s going to need adjustment from time to time.  The tight pants can be a plus – my wife likes looking at those.

A common lament I hear from non-fans is that baseball is so boring.  I am here to tell you that if you’re bored, it’s because you’re not paying attention.  There is always something happening, and that applies to more than just baseball.  Like so many things, you’ve got to pay attention.  You see where I’m going, don’t you?  A baseball game is an experiment in life.  It begins, it endures and it ends.  And then another begins and ends and so on and so on……and the events along the timeline from beginning to end are often strange and unpredictable.

There’s more here than meets the eye, one must only look.

Post title cribbed from this Popular Mechanics article:  “‘How Can An Airliner Just Disappear?”  Of course the answer to that question is “it can’t”.  But even something that large can be very hard to find.

Missing

In this case, as in almost all cases, the simplest explanation is the correct explanation.  So, in this case that explanation is that the plane crashed into the ocean.  But there are a couple questions that make me wonder:

Why no debris?  Even if the plane broke up at high altitude there should be some flotsam and jetsam (no pun intended).  Though the search area is large, there should be a debris field of some kind.  To my knowledge there has not been a shred yet recovered.

And second, why hasn’t the ping from the black boxes been heard?  Even when Air France 447 went down in mid-atlantic a few years ago the boxes’ ping could be detected though the wreckage was under 13,000 feet of water.  In the current case the water’s depth is in  the range of hundreds of feet, not thousands.

Currently, modern aircraft (the Boeing 777 is among the most modern) do communicate autonomously with ground crews, but the system used has insufficient bandwidth for large amounts of data such as that collected by the black boxes.  That may change in the future, as a new satellite communication network is under development, written about by me here.

I am not an expert by any stretch of the imagination.  And as I said earlier, the simplest explanation is probably correct.  All we can do now is pray for the passengers, crew and their families.

Let us stipulate that California is a lovely place to live.  And further let us agree that people are free to believe whatever they like.  But it gets harder and harder to stay here due to the fact that some of the people in power here believe some of the stupidest things.  Among the majorities in the city councils of our most populous cities, and in the Democratic majorities in both houses of our state legislature there are, in my opinion some seriously fuzzy headed thinkers.  Which in and of itself should not pose a problem, since as I stated earlier I believe they are free to believe what they wish.  The problem comes when they deign to impose their fallacies on everyone in the name of their utopian thinking.

There is a plan afoot to ban plastic shopping bags – First they came for the paper shopping bags and I said nothing, because I preferred plastic.  Now there is a bill in the state assembly that will impose a statewide ban on disposable plastic shopping bags.  Because they take up to much room in the landfill or something.  THERE IS NO GOOD REASON TO DO THIS (caps intended).  If you believe there is, you are wrong.  Never mind that environmentally friendly reusable shopping bags cause the spread of e. coli, norovirus and salmonella.  This constitutes a serious public health risk.

Public Enemy #1

Now their sights are set on plastic water bottles – the San Francisco city council has banned the sale of plastic water bottles on municipal property and will pursue a city wide ban.  For no reason other than some people don’t like these and so you shouldn’t either.  Oh, they have their reasons, but they are nonsensical.  Supervisor David Chiu’s reason is that it takes 1,000 years for 1 bottle to bio-degrade!!!!!!  That’s a long time!  I have an idea that makes just as much sense.  Just pass a law stating that a year will now be 365,000 days long.  Now those pesky bottles will degrade in only a single year.  That’s more like it!  Or we could recycle them.  I wonder how many years that takes….oh, never mind.

There is no aspect of your life that is too profound or too trivial that a do-gooder won’t step in and tell you how you must do it, or that you can’t do it.  And when their utopia is finally realized it is certain to be hell on earth.  Because every single person will be oppressed to one degree or another when all that is not forbidden is mandatory.

“However, it said unarmed”.  That is the google translation of this title which you may recognize as “gibberish” text that sometimes randomly fills text boxes when you are viewing theme examples in various publishing applications.  It is a real language, Latin,  the language of the Romans and it is often termed a “dead language”.  Yet it persists in many areas of our modern lives – science, law and medicine to name a few.  Some of our modern languages are derived from it.  Since wordpress autofilled it into a sample text box I thought it fitting to retain the title and use it for a blog post.  Inspiration is where you find it, am I right?

Guess I’ll play it by ear…

The title of this blog is also in Latin.  Ego Vero translates roughly to “I Seek Truth”.

Ideas and language go hand in hand.  Without language, ideas exist.  But without ideas, language serves no purpose.

I intend to use this platform to practice the expression of my thoughts and ideas regarding various topics of interest to me through the use of the written word.  I believe that Ideas are the puzzle pieces that make up our lives and make up the human experience.  As each idea is expressed another piece of the puzzle falls into place – another pixel is illuminated.  Eventually the truth emerges and God’s idea comes into focus.  If you should choose to look into my little world I hope you may be entertained, informed or perhaps stimulated toward an idea or thought of your own.  And since you may be walking around inside my head, please wipe your feet first.

So… off I go.  Please join me if you will.  However, it said unarmed.

I like to do a post about music from time to time as you will find out, and what I will usually write about will be my favorite bands.  One of these is Steely Dan.  I became a fan during the 70’s when Top 40 AM radio was still a thing and before FM radio blossomed.  I mean, FM radio existed, but FM radios weren’t common in cars then and until we started putting aftermarket tape decks  in our cars and getting our own places (and stereo setups) the AM radio was still the boss.  And dinosaurs roamed the earth.  Anyhoo…here is a video from the 1970’s TV Show Midnight Special of the band performing their (then current) hit “Reelin’ in the Years”.  What is so great about this isn’t necessarily the performance of the song, but the utter “Seventyness” of the whole clip.  Bonus: introduced by Bill Cosby.  The 1970’s hip Bill Cosby.

Yeah, that’s some 70’s right there.

“America’s Angriest Store – how Whole Foods Attracts Complete Shitheads”

Nils Parker writes at Medium.com about his experiences at Whole Foods.

Typical Whole Foods Customer

Actually, I prefer shopping at Wal-Mart,  though the customers aren’t as good looking.  My friends are always impressed when I break  out the Great Value caviar.

In this particular instance the subject is “ride a motorcycle 1000 miles in 24 hours”. Or any long distance in a disproportionately short amount of time.  What got me started on this is an article in Popular Mechanics which I found via Instapundit.

As a child I envisioned a future of jet packs and teleportation devices, but  I guess the closest thing we have today is a motorcycle.  Hop on, burn a few thousand joules of hydrocarbons and arrive at your destination.

Do The Math

If you DO ride 1000 miles in 24 hours you will feel like you’ve had your atoms scrambled and then reassembled at your destination.  Especially the atoms that make up your ass.

I am not a motorcyclist.  The only barriers between me and the freedom of motorcycling are self imposed.  So I guess my answer to the question is “I wouldn’t”.  But aren’t we fortunate to live in a place where we are free to do those things we “could” or “would”?