Fractured Definition

Democrats — A walk-through for Baltimore rodents with average school grades.

Virtue Signaling

Virtue signaling often creates suspicions of insincerity ... such as a Flag Day card from Colin Kaepernick, a de-nuke pledge from Kim Jong un or a vow of poverty from Hillary Clinton.

Big Bang

One of the conundrums created by the Big Bang theory is: How did the universe get so big in such a short period of time? (see: Stack Exchange Discussion). Using classic expansion formulae, accounting for gravitational forces, the actual size early on seems impossible. However, if one assumes that gravity did not attach itself to matter until sometime after the Big Bang (even if just milliseconds), then it seems possible that the universe’s initial expansion could be much faster and larger than possible using Newtonian formulae. .... see: More on Gravity.

If this notion approximates the truth, then many of my assumptions about orphaned gravity, gravitons, gravity waves, dark matter, the Earth’s increasing gravity, etc. seem much more likely to be fact ... see: Gravity and Climate.

Wouldn’t that be a hoot?

Fractured Definition

Speculate — quite tardy in getting a new pair of your reading glasses

Headlines

Trump’s intel pick collaborated with a fierce Russia foe

Sen. Elizabeth Warren wants to dramatically rewrite the rules for negotiating trade deals

USA to borrow $1.23 trillion in ‘19 ...  Second year in row ...

Omar promotes Tweet fantasizing about violence against Rand Paul

Trump’s Baltimore tirade expands to include Sanders, Sharpton

Facebook warns investors that Libra digital currency may never see the light of day

Study: 28% of delivery drivers have eaten your food ...

Donald Trump taunts Nancy Pelosi and ‘failing’ San Francisco

DOJ restricts asylum claims based on family relations

Earnings calls ‘painting a picture of an economy hampered by trade uncertainty’

Chicagoland weekend: 9 killed, 39 wounded ...

Poll: Majority of Americans reject cash reparations for slavery

Quotable Quote

Moral indignation is a technique used to endow an idiot with dignity. — Marshall McLuhan

Gravity and Climate

If gravitational waves are bathing the Earth and our solar system from all directions of the universe over the billions of years of our existence ... adding subtle changes in all our gravity profiles ... and therefore causing subtle changes in the tilts and orbits of the Earth (and the rest of the solar system) ... see: Pterosaurs (Updated); one can conclude that this has caused “signal” changes in our climate ... ice ages and warming periods ... all independent of the other smaller “noise” factors that also affect our climate.

The above image is NASA’s related depiction of the gravity map or “geoid” of our current Earth. Its topology is caused by differences in rock densities, sea levels and many other things ... see: NASA Earthdata Entry. But is it also caused, to a much smaller degree, by orphan gravity ... in the form of gravitons, bathing our Earth from outer space through gravitational waves? These changes would be so small and random that they might go unnoticed from month to month ... but, over the millennia or centuries or, possibly, even decades, have a significant impact ... not just on Earth, but on our entire solar system.

And, if such exogenous changes in our gravity alters, ever so slightly, the tilt of our planet ... or shifts, ever so slightly, our orbital path around the sun ... or maybe even changes in the sun itself ... these effects on our climate might well be quite significant. Have we been ignoring these possible gravitational factors in our current carbon-based hysteria about our planet having a fever? Dear reader, I would like to suggest so.

Juxtposition

Trump and China’s Xi Jinping

Obama and China’s Hu Jintao

Headlines

On the attack: Trump targets Cummings for second straight day

The Fed is about to cut rates for the first time since 2008 as trade war weighs on economic growth

Axelrod: If Trump loses [in 2020], this [Cummings attack] will be why ...

Baltimore Sun Op-Ed: Trump’s right, declare Baltimore a ‘disaster’ and rebuild it

Trump names Rep. John Ratcliff to replace Dan Coates as director of national intelligence

House judiciary chairman says Trump ‘richly deserves impeachment’

FoxNews poll: 47% want impeachment, 45% don’t ...

Sanders [once] blasted Elijah Cummings’ district as a ‘third-world country’

Trump will sign budget deal, Mulvaney says

There are surprising signs that Trump’s maximum pressure on Iran could lead to talks

Israel, US test intercepting ballistic missiles in Alaska ...

Update: 12 injured, at least 3 killed at Gilroy [CA] Garlic Festival shooting

Alexandria’s Occasional Cortex

From daily timewaster blog

Charm City

“Don’t shit in your own nest.” — old English proverb

Sixty-two years ago, before the Baltimore Harbor tunnel was completed (November, 1957), drivers had to traverse much of this inner-city when going north or south between New York and Washington, DC. Back then I recall that this city was famous for its freshly-scrubbed white front steps (often owned by minorities) — a badge of pride for the Charm City of Edgar Allen Poe.

Now things have dramatically changed and, according to almost every honest observer, Baltimore resembles a “third-world country” (ala Bernie Sanders). It has the highest murder rate in the US and is a sullen, broken, corrupt society. Why did this descent into hell occur. Perhaps 52 years of unbroken Democrat mayors and 23 years of being represented in Congress by Democrat Elijah Cummings?

I guess anyone lamenting this fall from grace is a racist? Just another symptom of why Baltimore is such a rotten place to live ... it’s always someone else’s fault.

Quetzalcoatlus

From reddit Pics

Largest flying animal ever ...

Pterosaurs (Updated)

Because pterosaurs were so much larger than today's flying animals, one must conclude that our atmosphere was much denser then. And  how could this be? One explanation is that our atmosphere is getting thinner. But the opposite seems true ... see Science Magazine Article.

Thus, our atmosphere then must have been infused with many more carbon dioxide and other complex (heavier) molecules such as methane and water vapor.

Therefore, if life flourished then, we must have far more latitude for changes to our current atmospheric mix than climate scientists, like Al Gore, give us credit for.

——————————————————————————————————
The above was written to try to explain why flying animals were so much bigger hundreds of millions of years ago. I concluded the the density of our atmosphere was much greater back then ... which helped to support more weight. The case I made was rather strained but I am not dismissing it here. But, upon further research and thought, it might (also) be that gravity on our Earth was so much weaker back then ... allowing for easier flight ... see: More on Gravity. Could be both, but I am now more persuaded by less gravity.

I also have some further thoughts on gravity ... starting with the question: what happens to its gravity when matter is destroyed? Clearly, nuclear weapons destroy matter, albeit a small amount turned into enormous amounts of energy (E = MC2). However, when celestial events occur, such as the merging of two black holes, enormous amounts of matter is destroyed. Such events, it has been recently discovered, send out “gravitational waves.” Although it has not yet been proven that gravitational waves carry away this orphaned gravity (see: Wikipedia Entry) ... I will so speculate.

These gravitational waves, if they distributed this orphaned gravity throughout the universe, would likely do so uniformly ... which seems a requirement for not upsetting the current celestial relationships (as I have previously been concerned with). Also, of course, even though this gravitational wave might possibly distribute an enormous amount of its orphaned gravity throughout the universe, the share that the Earth might receive would be very, very small.

But again, millions of years of these gravitational waves striking the Earth might accumulate to a meaningful number ... or, there might have been one or more super gigantic celestial events that provided the Earth with a large enough dose to goose our gravity to the point where pterosaurs could no longer get airborne ... and dinosaurs to became extinct over a short time span.

My speculations here may or may not make scientific sense ... but they sure make common sense.

Looking Back

If an honest accounting of one’s life is mostly positive, one is then in the minority of all humankind. — Anon.

Headlines

Democratic governors sound alarm on Trump re-election

Trump calls Baltimore a ‘rat and rodent infested mess’ in attack on Rep. Elijah Cummings

Fed’s to turn over ‘highly-sensitive’ material to Epstein’s lawyers ...

Rand: Maybe Ilhan Omar would ‘appreciate’ USA more by visiting Somalia

Trump, Boris Johnson working already on U.S.-U.K. trade deal

Safety groups, want FTC, state probes of Tesla’s Autopilot system — and its marketing efforts

Police arrest hundreds at Moscow election protest ...

Levin: Nadler has ‘declared war on American people’

Covington student’s defamation suit against Washington Post is dismissed

Facebook bans sale of alcohol, tobacco between users

China could wait for U.S. election for trade deal ...

Bill de Blasio: Trump ‘will not be welcome back in New York City’

reddit Pic

Manhattan, 1910 (no Broadway above 59th St.?)

More on Gravity

I recently posted a picture of the femur from a huge dinosaur ... see: Femur Found in France ... and speculated whether gravity has changed over the eons. I say this because it is doubtful that an animal this enormous could live today with today’s gravity pull. Note that the largest animal on Earth now is the blue whale which survives in an environment, sea water, where it’s buoyancy helps counteract today’s gravity. And the blue whale is much smaller than the land animal represented by the femur found in France. Therefore, it seems clear to me that gravity here on Earth must have increased to a level where such a behemoth could not exist today.

Einstein’s View

The questions then persist ... how and why? Newton called gravity a force and Einstein called it a warp in the space-time continuum. Others speculate gravity comes from an elementary particle called a graviton. In order to continue this discussion further, read first: Universe Today Write-up. On the other hand, I have speculate before that gravity is a fifth dimension ... one of the seven new ones predicted to exist in string theory mathematics.

I have also opined that the amount of gravity is finite and that, during the Big Bang, not all gravity found some mass “to attach to” ... and became dark matter (an ironic term since it apparently has no mass). And that this orphaned gravity is what causing the universe to expand ... because only that attached to mass would cause the universe to contract ... as the sum of  known mass would suggest. If this reasoning turns out to be fact, dark matter and dark energy are one and the same.

How can gravity be both another dimension and a form of free-floating dark matter? This I haven’t fully figured out yet. Maybe just the difference between a dimension and the metric that measures it?

So, to return to the original speculation about the Earth acquiring more gravity over time ... which has caused our animal populations to shrink in physical size. Perhaps “dark matter” or meandering gravity, unattached after the universe was created, does continually find homes in places like Earth ... and results in higher gravity readings over the eons. Of course, this needs be occurring simultaneously everywhere ... or else the gravitational relations between celestial bodies would go awry ... which would not be good.

Afterthought: Could the tipping point and the rapid disappearance of the dinosaurs have been finally caused by too much gravity?

The Good Life

The real motivation to overturn the good life for most is not to make it even better ... or for more people. It is to make the good life better for those who are the overturners. — Anon.

Femur Found in France

From reddit Pics

How different our world must have been!  Perhaps less gravity?

Headlines

Dems move closer to impeachment in strategy shakeup

S&P 500, NASDAQ notch another record close after strong earnings from Alphabet, Starbucks

[Q2] GDP: 2.1%

Donald Trump: No tariff wavers for Apple computer parts

Poll: No impeachment bump after Mueller’s testimony

Trump says he ‘might’ put tariffs on French wind in response to digital tax

Mystery: Rep. Omar splits with another husband ... Moves into luxury penthouse ...

Joe Biden: Donald Trump ‘won fair and square’ in 2016

Trump shuts down Navarro over ideas to devalue U.S. dollar

Kudlow: ‘I wouldn’t expect any grand deal on China’

Guatemala signs immigration asylum deal ...

Trump furious with Fox News poll ...

Armageddon

There are quite a number of threats to the survival of our culture ... even our people. Whether they actually mean that the Earth will turn into Mars is dubious, but some actually might pose this menace. I have listed below real and imagined Armageddons ... in a descending order I consider reasonable. Each deserves its own extensive blog entry ... which I may well do. You may differ with the sequencing, but I doubt that you will dispute these items themselves:

Nuclear Proliferation — Nukes in the hands of lunatics

Top-dog Hegemony — China vs. Russia vs. USA vs. radical Islam ... unless the U.S. wins, things will be over

Plague — Biological weapons or natural pandemics might easily wipe out huge numbers of people

Artificial Intelligence — The nutroots are constantly predicting that robots will rule us. I am dubious.

Climate Change — the Earth has been getting warmer since 1750. Will it burn up as many predict? Maybe in a few million tears ... but not tomorrow.

Green Energy — I think that capturing energy from the wind and tides may present some unintended consequences.

Recreational Drugs — opium once almost took down China. It is conceivable that the legalization and propagation of mind-altering drugs could profoundly affect our future outlook.

Designer Babies — DNA-altering medicine will be changing our offspring and lives in ways not fully understood. Are we in for a planet full of Frankensteins?

Population Bomb — thirty years ago this was close to the number one fear. However populations are leveling off and declining everywhere bu Africa. Thus threat is therefore small.

Famine — the reduction of population pressure combined with higher crop yields reduces the possibility of widespread famine.

Big Data — although not threatening the end to civilization, the collection of massive amounts of personal data through social media and otherwise does pose a serious danger to our freedoms.

UFOs — Sorry Tucker ... not a threat.

Fractured Definition

Mischief — Elizabeth Warren back when she was single

Whew!

From Powerline blog

Powerline Pic

Literally ...

daily timewaster Pic

Red sails in the sunset ...

Headlines

House Republicans balk as budget vote looms

Hedge-fund manager Kyle Bass says US-China trade deal can’t be reached

Newspaper circulation lowest level since 1940 ...

Tulsi [Gabbard] sues Google for censorship

Warren: I would’ve accepted VP offer from Clinton

Biden, Harris and Buttigieg rack up donations from big bank executives on Wall Street

Europe struggles to conserve water amid record heat ...

Rashida Tlaib in 2015 on Donald Trump: ‘Deport this asshole!’

McConnell moves to confirm 19 judges next week

Goldman sees stronger second-half growth, says buy cyclical companies

POLL: Biden only Dem leading Trump in OH ...

‘Disaster’: Robert Mueller testimony backfires on Democrats

Collusion Zombies

Our previous Special Counsel Robert Mueller fumbled through his Congressional testimony this past Wednesday which, one would think, finally put a stake through the heart of the spectre of Russian collusion. Not so fast pilgrim. There are still dozens of professed loyal Americans who still cling to this cockamamie theory which has been disproved over and over and over and over and over again. These collusion zombies occasionally switch topics to Trump’s alleged obstruction of justice ... particularly when their cognitive dissonance causes them night sweats.

But this generally is only temporary since it is almost impossible to get a conviction for obstruction of justice involving a non-crime. Sooo ... this Night of the Living Dead procession, led by Nadler, Pelosi, Schiff, The Squad, Joe Scarborough, etc., again starts chanting “COLLUSION” in unison. And, again, without any evidence gathered by the Weismann hoax blitzkrieg over two years and tens of million dollars, they march into the dismal swamp.

 Sidebar: Despite Mueller’s declining mental acuity and the obvious truth that Weismann was running the show, I choose to believe that Mueller made the decision not to accuse Trump and Company with Russian collusion ... since I have little doubt the Weismann would have done so given his leash. And this probably was negotiated in exchange for the weaselly-worded obstruction of justice language in part two of the report. Thus, Mueller might still be considered a smidgen of a patriot.

Quotable Quote

There is never just one cockroach in the kitchen. — Warren Buffet

Headlines

‘Euphoria’: White House, GOP exult after flat Mueller performance

Tesla falls after posting wider-than-expected loss

Mueller: My report did not exonerate Trump ... Can be indicted after office ...

Trump triumphant: Republicans ‘had a very good day’ ...

Mueller dodged lawmakers’ questions roughly 130 times

South Korea says North  Korea has fired two unidentified projectiles into the sea

Rep. Tlaib to receive ‘big welcome’ in family’s Palestine village ...

NYPD Memo: Cops should press charges for water-bucket dousing

Facebook discloses FTC antitrust investigation is under way

Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she opposes 2020 Democrats’ plans to expand the Supreme Court

Google engineer goes public: Tech ‘dangerous,’ ‘taking sides’ ... Manipulated, political ...

Robert Mueller corrects earlier remark that he would have indicted Trump

Triple Whammy

The US economy seems to be doing quite well at the moment, historically low unemployment, blowout durable goods orders and an upwardly revised 2019 GDP estimates by the IMF. And it seems that at least one Fed rate cut this year is now baked into the cake. Next, the Democrats do what they invariably do (they can’t help themselves) ... they negotiated with the White House fire-house federal spending increases next year in exchange for raising the debt ceiling for two years (until after the next presidential election). Do they not realize that this is fiscal stimulus in an election year? And this will do nothing but help the president’s economic braggadocios?

If China has any smarts, it will realize that fiscal stimulus on top of monetary stimulus will mean that it would be best to cut a trade deal with Trump before he gets re-elected for the best terms possible. And, if it does so capitulate, this will be a a triple economic whammy ... one which could easily drive US GNP growth to over 5% — almost an unimaginable number for the world’s biggest economy!

Now, dear reader do you understand why America’s stock market keeps making new highs day after day?

Mischief

Your childhood is best defined by what mischief you were allowed to get away with. — Anon.

Juxtaposition

Donald Trump: having been indicted by a grand jury for obstruction of justice once he leaves office

Also-indicted ham sandwich

Rogues Gallery

Mueller’s legal team, it clearly shows

Was packed with Democrat politicos.

Chief among this ugly clan:

Pit bill, Andrew Weismann,

Whose legal ethic is “anything goes.”

Common Sense

If you find yourself on a train traveling in the wrong direction, get off and board one going to where you want to go. — Anon.

Headlines

Mueller scrambles hearing by choosing top deputy as counsel

DOJ says it will take a broad antitrust look at Big Tech, stocks dip

NYT: Only 35 arrested in ICE raids

Exclusive: Gulf cartel recruitment of young teens on rise near border

Crackdown on food stamps could worsen hunger, USDA acknowledges

US-China in-person trade talks expected next week, White House eyes longer-term timeline for deal

Mexico sets murder record ...

Trump sues to block Congress from obtaining [his] tax returns

NAACP  leadership unanimously votes to support impeaching Trump

New research finds differences in the brains of US Cuban embassy staff after mystery attacks

CENTCOM: [US] May have downed more Iranian drones ...

Tucker: Dems say ‘no one is above the law’ — make exception for illegals

Ding Dong

The wicked witch-hunt is dead...

Condensed Soup

I was wrong once again. Robert Mueller is actually testifying in front of two House committees today. It seems that the purpose of these hearings, from the Democrat point of view, is to reprise his 448 page report to the viewing public ... since so few of them have actually read this tome ... or have waded through the many media attempts to spoon-feed the juicier portions to them. It would appear to this observer that the sheer length of this document defeated its purpose. Some brevity might have worked wonders in focusing the impact its author (Andrew Weismann?) desired. Condensed soup is not improved by an extra two gallons of water (i.e., 400 extra pages of innuendo in the Mueller report.)

These hearings are obviously political theater ... unlikely to produce anything new. But there will be heroic efforts by the Democrats therein to create enough dramatic moments to swing the American public’s opinion toward Trump’s impeachment ... or at least sully him enough to make his re-election problematic. It will be interesting to see how these Democrat plot twists will be manufactured and how clever thy will be.

Can these two committee (bone) heads, Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff, script these hearings to so swing public opinion to their purpose? which is impeachment. We shall see. I’ll wait to finish this blog entry until this answer emerges from Mueller’s testimony.

Results:

Nadler hearing — Mueller has gone soft ... didn’t know of Glen Simpson and Fusion GPS (WHAT!?) ... He couldn’t answer why his posse reached a conclusion about collusion but not obstruction. Dems did their best to show that Trump obstructed injustice  ... otherwise YAWN

Schiff hearing — Muddled, mixed-up Mueller with few real answers. ZZZZ!

Racism

Accusing someone of racism on scant or no evidence ... or merely to enjoy political leverage ... displays an animus that is as immoral as actually being a racist itself. — Anon.

Headlines

Pompeo: U.K. must look after its own ships

Elizabeth Warren’s recession scare seems long on fear, short on facts

Poll: Even most DEMs don’t want border crossings demilitarized ...

Pete Buttigieg: White supremacy threatens to end United States

Rashida Tlaib: ‘I’m not going nowhere, not until I impeach this president’

Lawmakers strike two-year US debt ceiling and budget deal

Venezuela blames ‘electromagnetic attack’ on blackout ...

Brexit leader Boris Johnson wins race for UK prime minister

DOJ tells Mueller to limit testimony to his report

The market has a technical problem, making it ‘vulnerable’ to a rapid sell-off, JP Morgan

Lights go out in NYC — again ...

Huawei hopes Google will influence White House

Urban Decay

A sanitary plumbing system was one of the great innovations of urban civilizations. It was designed to supply fresh water to the masses ... and carry away their waste products. Mystically, many West Coast (Democrat) mayors seem to have turned their backs on this invention. And, all across our country, liberal city officials are abdicating other civic duties ... such as workable transportation systems, even-handed law and order, well-educated children, uplifting urban beauty, insuring a disease/vermin-free environment and promoting fiscal responsibility. I wonder why these doofuses think they were elected? To grab a megaphone and call the rest of the us racists?

Is there some Jovian reason they are not supposed to do their jobs?

Quotable Quote

Asserting something you have been told, without checking it out first, is like taking a cheap shot in a football game. — Anon.

reddit Pic

Interchange near Tokyo ...

Headlines

Cory Booker charges Trump is ‘worse than a racist’

Hong Kong police fire rubber bullets, tear gas as protests descend into chaos

Israeli minister boasts his country has been ‘killing Iranians’ ...

Stephen Miller: Criticism is OK, turning US into Venezuela isn’t

Japan’s ruling coalition scores an election victory

Iran tanker seizure shows oil price has become a ‘broken barometer’ for Mideast tensions

How Trump could lose by 5 million votes — and still win ...

Sanders campaign limiting staffer hours in order to pay $15 minimum [hourly] wage

Trump claims not to care if his attack on Omar and the squad are good politics

Puerto Rico governor Ricardo Rossello says he will not run for re-election, but is not resigning

Wealthiest 10% of households own 84% of all stocks ...

Exclusive: Mex cartel leader caught sneaking across TX border

Precociousness

Art Linkletter and friend

My nine-year-old paternal twin granddaughters were arguing this afternoon. One accused the other of being bossy. To which the accused shot back, “I’m not bossy ... I just have leadership skills.”

“Kids say the darnedest things.” — Art Linkletter

Floral Displays

Shrinking violets are never part of grand floral displays. — Anon.

Send Her Back?

There is credible evidence that Ilhan Omar may have committed immigration fraud, marriage fraud and tax fraud ... see: Powerline Blog, Another Powerline Blog and Still Another (Most Important) One. It would seem to this observer that these suspicions should be run to ground by the FBI, including a DNA test if necessary. And, if at least the tax and immigration fraud charges are proven, she should be stripped of her House seat, citizenship and possibly deported.

Of course, such an outcome would result in a melt-down by those who believe that Trump is a Nazi racist and Omar is an innocent-looking martyr .... with unknown volcanic repercussions.

This is why Omar will likely walk. It seems politics always trumps justice ... at least lately.

Fractured Definition

Doozy — fancy ethnic headwear