March 3, 2017

Randi Rhodes' interview with Malcom Nance is a beautiful thing.

It's the 3/2 show, about fifteen minutes in. The full-on truth. Impressive journalism. A lot of nuanced information I hadn't heard.

Brilliant. Damn I'm glad she's back.

http://randirhodes.com/

March 3, 2017

That moment when you see the psychopath go rolling by.

Taking the old dog out for a walk at the business park. Just out the back door -- a shiny black Bighorn Dodge slides by, and the young man inside gives me a creepy smile.

Normally when someone smiles at me, I smile back. I like people, in general. This guy's smile was clearly sinister. Couldn't see his eyes through the sunglasses, but the twist in the smile --

Humans have major brain systems devoted to reading facial cues. My systems were screaming at me -- step back. Break contact. danger.

Handsome young man with black slightly-oiled hair, nice blue dress shirt, shiny black truck -- why were my primeval sensors yelling at me?

He rolled on by.

And on the back of the truck's bumper -- 'Trump'.

Of course. Of course.

March 1, 2017

About Emmy Noether.

Emmy Noether

Amalie Emmy Noether (23 March 1882 – 14 April 1935) was a German mathematician known for her landmark contributions to abstract algebra and theoretical physics.

She was described by Pavel Alexandrov, Albert Einstein, Jean Dieudonné, Hermann Weyl, and Norbert Wiener as the most important woman in the history of mathematics. As one of the leading mathematicians of her time, she developed the theories of rings, fields, and algebras. In physics, Noether's theorem explains the connection between symmetry and conservation laws.

........

In the spring of 1915, Noether was invited to return to the University of Göttingen by David Hilbert and Felix Klein. Their effort to recruit her, however, was blocked by the philologists and historians among the philosophical faculty: women, they insisted, should not become privatdozent. One faculty member protested: "What will our soldiers think when they return to the university and find that they are required to learn at the feet of a woman?" Hilbert responded with indignation, stating, "I do not see that the sex of the candidate is an argument against her admission as privatdozent. After all, we are a university, not a bath house."

.........

Noether's work continues to be relevant for the development of theoretical physics and mathematics and she is consistently ranked as one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century. In his obituary, fellow algebraist BL van der Waerden says that her mathematical originality was "absolute beyond comparison", and Hermann Weyl said that Noether "changed the face of algebra by her work". During her lifetime and even until today, Noether has been characterized as the greatest woman mathematician in recorded history by mathematicians such as Pavel Alexandrov, Hermann Weyl, and Jean Dieudonné.

In a letter to The New York Times, Albert Einstein wrote:

In the judgment of the most competent living mathematicians, Fräulein Noether was the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began. In the realm of algebra, in which the most gifted mathematicians have been busy for centuries, she discovered methods which have proved of enormous importance in the development of the present-day younger generation of mathematicians.

On 2 January 1935, a few months before her death, mathematician Norbert Wiener wrote that

Miss Noether is... the greatest woman mathematician who has ever lived; and the greatest woman scientist of any sort now living, and a scholar at least on the plane of Madame Curie.

In Michio Kaku's 'Physics Of The Impossible', he states that her symmetry theorem had a profound influence on modern physics, and that he personally found the implications staggering when he understood it for the first time.

I just thought she needed a post.

February 25, 2017

So I'm going to make a little movie March 11th.

Cascade

I wrote this script last weekend. Short film, ten minutes. Four excellent actors and a bunch of friends for crew and extras for a Saturday afternoon shoot. Green sheets for the car matte and a rubber gun. Black cats are already on set.

It's a little dark, but hey. I'm feeling a little dark. Everybody's still in shock like me, a little frozen, and I thought to myself 'I'm not going to let fucking Donald fucking Trump fuck with my art.' So I asked around.

And everybody's into it. These two play Cascade and Simone. It's going to be a little weird, strange concept, post-modern Fresno murder for hire, but hey, I'm shaking it up. I'll light it, block it, we'll run dialogue and shoot it sixteen different ways with my little HD camera, and then I'll edit up and post it here. Send it off to some contests. Why not?

Shine. Shine it out. Rage against the fucking dying of the light.

And Fuck Donald Fucking Trump.

February 9, 2017

'There Will Be No Holocaust.'

Is what the Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche told us at the opening ceremony of the 1982 Jack Kerouac Conference.

He explained that he believed people are often attracted subconsciously to the idea of conflagration and mass death, unwittingly helping it be realized. Anxiety and uncertainty can drive cultures into catastrophe, he said, and we should take steps to protect ourselves from such fear with conscious meditation.

I'm not generally a religious man, but what he said felt quite profound at the time. The early eighties were darkened for every intelligent, conscious person by the rise of Ronald Reagan, who may seem like a mild-mannered moderate in the dim light of history, but whose dissembling and machinations made many of us on the left think the End had begun. (?!)

The Rinpoche made us all hold up our hands in an 'OK' sign, an entire auditorium of artists and Good People making the symbol above our heads while he led us in a chant -- 'There will be no holocaust...There will be no holocaust...' -- over and over and over for far too long.

Alan Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman, Timothy Leary, William S. Burroughs, Anne Waldman, Norman Mailer, Gary Snyder, Peter Orlovsky -- all of them holding up their symbol above their heads and chanting along with the Rinpoche as all of our eyes slowly blurred out of focus and our heads swam --

I'd like to believe it helped. It certainly felt good to engage in that ritual with like minds in that turbulent time. The conference was a total blast, a formative event in my young life, and I've never forgotten that first moment.

There will be no holocaust. We the Better Half must rescue the world, and drag the Troubly Half kicking and screaming into the future with us, using the Rule Of Law and Respect For Democracy, and all the other beautiful forces that make the idea of America so powerful, so perfect --

We are the superheroes. 'There will be no holocaust.' Say it. Fight for it.

February 8, 2017

All That We Share.

February 7, 2017

Dah, Donald: Russian Blood Money and the FBI's Case Against Trump.

Dah, Donald: Russian Blood Money and the FBI’s Case Against Trump|The Weeklings

THIS IS AN ATTEMPT to assemble the pieces in the Trump/Russia jigsaw puzzle, to reveal the Big Picture.

My conclusions were heavily influenced by Louise Mensch‘s eye-opening January 17 essay, “Dear Mr. Putin, Let’s Play Chess.” Other sources include Seth Abramson’s “The Domestic Conspiracy That Gave Trump the Election is in Plain Sight,” which ran on the Huffington Post on the same day, and “A Brief History of the First Russo-American Cyber War,” by War Is Boring’s Bryan E. Frydenborg. The Steele dossier, the “Golden Shower” series of intelligence reports written by Christopher Steele in 2016 and subsequently released by Buzzfeed, was also a useful resource. I have exhaustively fact-checked assertions, linking to a wide range of news sources from across the political spectrum, from the Washington Post to Reuters to Breitbart.

The dramatis personae—the pile of puzzle pieces, if you will—is generally well known to most observers: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, James Comey, Rudy Giuliani, Anthony Weiner, Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Blackwater founder Erik Prince, Trump attorney Michael Cohen, “ratfucker” Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Russian moles in the NSA and the FBI’s New York field office, and an obscure Russian hacker named Yvegeny Nikulin.

This is how the pieces fit together. This is how they connect. This is what it means.

From the last part:

In short, it’s about the money. Which makes sense, given Trump’s disgustingly obvious greed. The Russian oligarchs are laundering money all over creation, and Trump, with his opaque taxes and billion-dollar losses and cash business concerns, is somehow complicit in the scheme. Campaign finance, one imagines, is just the tip of the iceberg.

If he’s shown to be in debt to the Russians and the Chinese, Trump can explain that away. Fake news, he will say. So what. I won, people don’t care. Same with the Russian prostitutes. You can’t shame a man incapable of feeling shame. What is Trump afraid of? Prison. That would be the ultimate downfall for Donald Trump. The loss of his position, his social standing, his fortune, his golden throne, his access to beautiful women willing and otherwise. His Twitter account.

There is no “alternative fact” that can spin the very real possibility that Donald J. Trump will die in federal prison, alone.

And that’s why Comey sent the letter about the emails, but did not comment on the Russia connection.

And that’s why Trump is so deferential to Putin.

And that’s why Melania Trump walks around like she’s Carmela Soprano in Season 7.

And that’s why the Trump Cabinet is honeycombed with Russian sympathizers (I haven’t even mentioned the friendship medal Secretary of State Rex Tillerson personally received from Putin).

And that’s why Snowden is in Russia, and Assange is still holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy.

And that’s why Rudy Giuliani withdrew his name from consideration for State.

Most of all, that’s why Barack Obama seems so chill about the whole thing. He knows how the movie ends! But thanks to Glomar, there can be no spoilers.

And so we wait for Jim Comey to wrap up the investigation and bring charges against Flynn and Stone, Manafort and Cohen, Carter Page and Donald J. Trump. Through no intention of his own, Comey gave Trump the presidency; now we hope that he will take it away. Given Trump’s disastrous foreign policy, his deplorable positions on climate change, his willingness to use nuclear weapons, it’s not hyperbole to suggest that the fate of the human race rests on Comey’s shoulders.

History suggests that Comey is up to the task. But if he’s not, we, the people, must make a citizen’s arrest. We must convince our Members of Congress to impeach our treasonous president, to make the traitor stand trial.

And if Donald Trump is found guilty of these heinous crimes? Lock him up.

Interesting read. Rings true.

February 7, 2017

Ohio by The Murder Merchants.

This is my band.

February 3, 2017

Josephine.

From the new EP '3' by The Murder Merchants.

I produced this song, and created this video.

And I'm very proud of that fact.

So there.

February 1, 2017

First song from the new EP my band just released.

The Murder Merchants

I engineered this collection, and made the videos.