What If. . . .

I want to play a game.  It is a silly game, with no basis in reality.
Let's begin.

What if Donald Trump KNEW they were coming after him?  What if the Director of the NSA, when he visited Trimp in Trump Towers, told him everything.  That he was being spied on, that HRC was behind a soon to come out 'dossier', what was in the 'dossier', who (what agencies) was against him, who was for him, and who was neutral.

What if when Rosenstein brought Mueller over to meet him (Trump), it WAS NOT for a job as head of the FBI?  What if Mueller hired the Best PRO-HRC lawyers, to make it abundantly clear, that this was NOT a "vast right wing conspiracy", that HRC would be caught, convicted, and jailed without ANY Bias.

The scope documents for the Mueller probe would reveal all this.  The FBI would have investigators detailed to Mueller.  Rosenstein would HAVE TO STALL any document releases.  Wray also, would have to stall.  Manafort is guilty, he just figured he'd never get caught.

A LOT of things can be explained IF we assume this investigation was STARTED by Trump.

NOW.   This is ALL, WILD, speculation.  I doubt (99% UN-certain) that this has ANY basis in reality.  It is ALL dreamed up by ME.

But What if,  . . .

A Fairly secure Password

You need at least 6 words.  A phrase you like, the chapter title of a book, some witty or funny saying, something you KNOW by heart.  Easy to remember.  Or, you already know it.  You also need some replacement rules. How you ALWAYS replace certain letters with numbers or symbols.  Rules that you ALWAYS use, so you can remember them.
As an example, rules can be:

    Letter             Replacement
----------------------------------------------------------
       o                         0   (zero)
       i                          |   (vertical bar)
       e                         3
       s                         $
       w                       \/\/ 
       m                       /\/\

       l ("ell")               1   (#1)
       x                         ×  (multiply sign)

And so forth.

Let's imagine the phrase you chose is:
you can easily make good secure passwords

You take the first letter from each word in the phrase:
  ycemgsp

You next use your replacement rules on these characters:
  yc3/\/\g$p

To make it better, you capitalize every alternate letter, giving:

Yc3/\/\G$p

THAT is a password that is pretty damned secure. It cannot be guessed.
If you chose a phrase of six or more words that you already KNOW, then all you have to remember is the replacement rules you created.  If you make those rules easy to remember, (Except for the "w" and "m", the rules above are easy to remember), then you have a secure password without too much trouble, THAT YOU CAN REMEMBER.

This sounds like a lot of work.  It really is not.  It takes a lot of words to explain it in detail.  ALSO, you only have to do this VERY infrequently.  For some passwords, only once every couple of years or so.  It is not as bad as coming up with new passwords every couple of months. 

Try it.  See how it works out.  Leave a comment.
Thanks.

Thoughts after a Tweet

Recently, a friend of mine re-tweeted an aphorism from the Dalai Lama.  I followed with a comment on how I feel the "average" human views such action / advice.
In the USA, it seems, unless we are constantly "promoting" ourselves, and defending such "promotion", we are a failure.  Humble is a handicap, hubris a strength.  Along with the seeming world wide view that the only true "success" is monetary, these views seem to me to be truly the downfall of modern man.

Now I, on the other hand, have a set of beliefs that contain the following:

1) Always try to treat others as you yourself would wish to be treated.  It seems to me to be simple respect for a fellow human being.  Being human, you will often fail at perfectly implementing this rule.  But as you keep trying, you will get better and better at it.  Patience and determination will win out.
[Obviously, people with severe mental handicaps are not included in this "aphorism".]

2) When possible, always think before you act.  It seems the "primeval brain" (hippocampus, thalamus, amygdala, et. al) will react in "fight, flight, or freeze" (highly emotional or threatening) situations Before the "thinking brain" has time to act.  (To the best of my knowledge, that is.)  IF you can develop a habit of thinking first, you can avoid all types of problems in situations that are not really "fight, flight, or freeze" situations.  Since perceived "verbal attacks" fall into this category, (evoking immediate response), thinking first allows a lot of potential interpersonal crises to be avoided, or even a true understanding to be reached.  It is a hard habit to truly learn, but once you do, it can be immensely rewarding in your relationships with other humans.

3) Remember always, that you cannot give something you do not possess.  This pertains to time, also.  Do not start something that may take years to complete unless you are willing to devote years to it.  Also, of course, are the "ordinary" things.  Money, emotional support, compassion, understanding, love, et. al..  If you do not "have" these things (possess and understand them), you cannot give them to others.  Not in any way that will help or assist them.  Remembering this will limit the amount, and number of times, you disappoint someone and "let them down".  [Disappointing someone, or letting them down, will usually have a more profound and longer lasting effect than any help you might have given.]

4) If you take an action, or a course of behavior, expecting some personal gain (or reward), do not bother.  You are doing it for entirely the wrong reason, and it's outcome will not be what it should be.
Take the action because you wish to, because you feel it is right, and/or because nobody else is.  In other words, if you are expecting to gain from this action / course, or a reward, your heart will not be "in" your actions.  This will cause you to fail, or worse, to leave things in a state worse than they were initially.
Obviously, I am not writing about investing money (which you do specifically for future gain), or investment in yourself (learning, physical and/or mental training, etc.), which you do for the same reason.

These four "rules", that I try to live by, are by no means all inclusive.  There are others.  Many derived from a set of Main Rules that I try to live by.
All this was prompted by a re-tweet from the Dalai Lama, that a friend of mine made this morning.  I only created this blog entry as an attempt to explain, partially, how I think.
[And to give some insight as to why I think the way I do.]

Cheers, and, of course, comments are always welcome.

Musings on the Money Crisis.

I do not know banking that well.  It seems to me that when you borrow money, you put your life into the hands of the lender.  Not your whole life, but a good portion of it.  The lender gets to "guide" you (by a set of rules) into behaving in ways that benefit them.  These rules are designed in a way that makes you want (or need) to follow those rules.  To be able to borrow, or once you have borrowed money, you have to follow these rules or risk your "lifestyle" (or business).

When I look at the banking industry (sic), I see that the behavior of companies, as well as individuals, is controlled through that set of rules.  The rules force the borrower into behavior that is beneficial to the lender.  Keeping a good credit rating (to keep interest rates down).  Working to keep your cash flow as high as possible (to pay your current debts).  [Whether you are increasing your income, or cutting expenses (or cutting your workforce).] 
The rules guide you into behavior that result in the loans made getting repaid, and more loans being arranged.  It keeps the money (and profits), flowing.  These behaviors are very beneficial to the lender.  They afford the lender an incontrovertible influence over the borrower (whoever they may be).  The rules keep a steady cash flow coming into the lending institution.

I notice, since the "World Wide Recession", that access to money has gotten extremely restricted.  "Money is tight", as they say.  I find this odd, because the worldwide money supply has not gotten smaller.  The money supply has grown, if anything, in the years since 2008.  It makes me wonder how all that money is really getting used.

I find the "news" might be a source of information.  The global news, (BBC, RT, Al Jazeera, France24),  have been reporting, in depth, on the world economy.  Greece, Portugal, Spain, even France, have been having monetary problems.  Most of these countries have been required to secure "bail-outs", to keep their national economies "afloat".  Where are they ultimately getting their funding ?  The countries are ultimately getting their financing from the banks. 

"Bailing out" national economies is big business.  It also requires huge amounts of funds.  Enough funds are required to severely limit the amount of monies available to lend for "normal" business (corporate and individual lending).  [Hence the highly restrictive lending environment that currently exists.]  It also affords the lending institutions a whole new level of control over the world.  If lending institutions can now guide countries, the way they have been guiding corporations and individuals, the world now becomes a very friendly place for these institutions.  A world where the most important thing in that world becomes the health and well being of the lending institutions.

These are the musings of an outsider.  Someone who knows very little about "high finance".  There are many places where I might be getting something wrong, because of a general lack of understanding.  The implications, however, are staggering.  It also makes me wonder, possibly in a fit of paranoia, why the market crash ever even happened (since the crash did setup the current need for bail-outs).

Think about it.

My two cents on Climate change.

O.K., I have to say something.  When I scientist I respect, Neil deGrasse Tyson, takes pot shots on Twitter:  "Climate Change Deniers are often politically conservative", I feel compelled to say something.

If Neils Bohr had started calling Einstein incompetent, and had tried to discredit Einstein instead of (correctly) attacking the "science" behind Einstein's thought experiments, we probably would not have the Quantum theories we have today (if at all).

Bohr did the correct things, the ONLY things he could do when Einstein proposed his thought experiments on how Quantum Mechanics "failed".  This is the type of science, "Bohr's science" that is required to disprove a proposed scientific theory.  No other method can be used to invalidate, or disprove, a scientific theory.

If the scientists at the IPCC had simply shown where the science, or the data, used by the "nay-sayers" was wrong, I would have felt much better, and avidly joined the "team" warning about the dangers of anthropogenic Global Warming.  But when the IPCC actually CHANGED the data in Lamb's original climate report (the same report issued by the IPCC in 1990) to reflect their beliefs, and had any scientist who questioned the data, the models used, or the results  made into scapegoats and PERSONALLY attacked, I called bullshit.

When Michael Crichton denounces "consensus" science and calls for facts, transparency, and peer reviews (and immediately gets castigated by the scientists of the "consensus"), I call bullshit.

I'm sorry.  I believe in the scientific method.  The "consensus" was against Jenner when he suggested infecting someone with cowpox could immunize them against smallpox.  His scientific proof finally won out (with rabid support from the general population).  When Einstein invented thought experiments that poked holes in Quantum Mechanics, Bohr stayed up nights finding the holes in his experiments and presented them, directly, to rebut Einstein's conclusions.  Both are good examples of the ideal way science should be practiced.   Not "Consensus science".  Not hiding the data, or the models, or calling the scientists who don't "believe" dirty names, or banning them.  Not, in fact, by "believing" at all.  But by looking at the data, at the test methods (models in this case), and slowly walking through all the steps used to arrive at the "anthropogenic" result.  If you take the IPCC data, and their models, and accurately follow all the steps taken by the IPCC, you will wind up at the conclusion that there is significant anthropogenic cause for Global Warming.

If you do not.  Then they are wrong.  Period.

The only thing.

Thinking about modern technology, I realize that we have been severely limited in our advancement by the folks who MARKET the technology.  I would go so far as to say an entire industry, and the country as a whole, has been stultified by the "research data" produced by our marketing collectives across the US.  They are all ignorant of what is good for the consumer, and therefore good for the economy & the US.  With the obvious exception of Apple, who regularly defies conventional marketing strategies to create what the people REALLY want (even if Apple has to "manufacture" the perceived need).  [Odd that nobody, since Steve came back, can figure that out.  Maybe they all are listening to their internal marketing staff.  (DUH!)]

Today's case in point.  Telephony.  The basic technology has been in existence for well over one hundred years.  A diaphragm is placed in a way that it will vibrate in response to changes in air pressure (sound).  It is coupled to a transducer, which creates a varying electrical signal in response to the fluctuations in that pressure.  This signal is amplified and transmitted (via wire, radio waves, or both) to a terminal device (another transducer) that has the opposite function of the input transducer (input: microphone; output: speaker).  This is all (now) well known.

Telephone designers have, for most of the past century, been driven by the needs of the consumers who use their devices.  When businesses needed the ability to answer incoming client calls, and have any one in a group of "customer service representatives" answer these incoming calls, the multi-line phone was born.  We've all seen them, a desk phone with a bank of buttons on it, each button being a different phone line.  When the realization came that running a huge number of wires across the country, one pair of wires for each "conversation" taking place, was logistically impossible, "carrier" was created.  Carrier is the multiplexing of up to 24 separate conversations onto a single pair of wires [by means of "piggy-backing" the relatively low and narrow frequency range of the human voice, multiple times, onto a much higher frequency signal (the "carrier") and transmitting that composite signal on two wires to their destination.  Much like how the relatively small (low bandwidth) containers carried by trucks are loaded onto a MUCH bigger ship (high bandwidth) to be delivered to their destination.].

Telephone designers also incorporated this notion (multiple lines/conversations) when designing the last decade's cellular phones.  To wit, the Motorola RAZR, (Motorola has designed the most utile cell phones over the past decades), has the ability to connect the user to up to four separate phone lines.  A business person could use that phone easily to (almost) duplicate the utility they had at their desk.  Wonderful design.

Enter the modern Marketing collective.  What they see is the need to optimize the revenue streams in modern business.  What marketing strategy can provide the needed increases in revenue streams?  In the modern telephony market (cell), it is creating as many contracts as possible from the existing customer base.  After all, profits "need" to grow at around 10% per year.   Since the market is almost saturated, that growth must come from population growth.  OOPS.   THAT is highly unlikely to happen.  Another space to increase contracts must be created (even by artifice).   If every middle income or higher working person can be convinced that they need two cell phones, the required profit increase could be maintained for a number of years.  By only allowing a single "phone line" per cell phone, you (artificially) create the need for separate business and personal phones, which require their own contract to operate in the US telephony system.  TA-DA!!  Problem (temporarily) solved!!

Thus we have arrived at the telephony market as it exists today.  Good for profits (and profits are GOOD for EVERYONE), bad for innovation,  and HORRIBLE for the consumer (business & individual alike).
Do not forget that this telephony "structure", as it exists in the US, limits the profits that can be made by the creators of the devices we use to make calls.  For in the US, (except for Apple), cell phone manufacturers sell their phones to the telephone companies at a much smaller markup than they would if selling directly to the consumer.  This hurts their bottom line, the revenue they have available for Research and Development, and, by extension, the utility, performance, and functionality of the phones they offer for sale.  This "structure" also (almost arbitrarily) increases the price paid by consumers for the basic "cell phone service" they buy, because the price of the phone is hidden in the service cost structure.  The ROI for the telephone company is VERY high (on the initial price of the "phone"), because it is not only recouped before the initial contract expires, but the contract price is not reduced by that amount after the price of the phone has been recovered by the phone company.  Consumers who do not get  a new phone upon the expiration of their contract are being bilked out of that "allotment" money until they do upgrade to a new phone.  This is a good source of revenue for the phone companies.  It is a bad deal for consumers.

What I propose is that the current model for the US telephony market ("Profit:  the only thing") be changed to a model more in line with the European model.  Where the consumer pays for the phone (once, and not continually), and then acquires a service contract for that phone from the telephone company of their choice.  This would accomplish several (IMHO good) things.  First, it would place more profit into the hands of the companies creating the devices.  Leading to more research and development, plus phone features and functions more attuned to the desires/needs of the consumer (and not those merely tolerated by the phone companies).  Since most of the "device manufacturers" also make the equipment that creates and supports the telephony infrastructure, it would most likely lead to a technologically advanced infrastructure (which would benefit everyone involved).   Second, it would lead to the phone companies having to actually charge for the services rendered (and the cost thereof), not "pad" their contracts with some pseudo-calculated amount of money called "device cost recovery".  This could well lead to the phone companies adopting and deploying newer technologies into their infrastructure in an effort to reduce, as much as possible, their outlay for the service they are selling.  If that happened, it would benefit all the consumers.  It might also lead to a more transparent cost structure for the "service" they are providing to consumers.  Third, it would also mean, much to the chagrin of the phone companies, that they would, over time, once again become one of the "utilities" that they were before the creation of the "un-regulated market" (created during and after the Reagan era, with the promise, unfulfilled, of decreasing costs and benefitting the consumer).  This would allow (if only Congress would avail themselves of the opportunity) for regulating the industry with an eye towards a high level of R&D, stability in the basic costs, and long term stability of the phone companies as a segment of the market (all of which would positively impact the US economy as a whole).

Finally, my own personal (greedy) reason for these proposals.  The phone system, and the devices using that system, would be able to function efficiently with multiple (individual) phone "lines" incorporated into each end device (the phone itself).  This could  easily lead to individuals having multiple phone lines as a matter of course.  I can see where it might be desirable to have (off the top of my head), four phone lines (or instances of "service" the phone companies can charge for) per individual.  As follows:  One would be the "family and close friends" line.  The line that rings when someone emotionally important to you calls.  Another would be the "business" line.  Work and work associates would use that line to reach you when they needed.  The third would be the "second class" line.  The phone number used by acquaintances and other people you have met in person (but who have not yet reached the "critically important" level of family and close friends) to contact you.  The fourth line would be your "public" line.  Published in the "phone book" (and/or the online equivalent) and for use by all others.  With the real cost of phone service regulated, transparent, and at a relatively low level, these "vanity" phone lines might just become popular to those who could afford a little more money on "phones".  It would also mean that "basic' (connectivity) service would be quite inexpensive (which would benefit lower income households).  With the proper "marketing", the vanity phone lines would be a stable, additional source of revenue for the phone companies (and probably taxes).  That would stabilize the phone company's  existence in the overall marketplace and make their stock worth buying (assuming they increased their dividends, which would be possible with the additional revenue from these multiple phone lines).

This, to the best of my ability, is how I think the "phone system" could be reconstructed to benefit all the parties involved (including the overall US economy).  I'm sure I have missed some salient points.  I am also sure it is not an "ideal" reconstruction.  But it might just get some people thinking that "the only thing" that really matters is the consumer.

Relatively Speaking.

They say that even if you send a single photon through a diffraction grating at a time, over time, an interference pattern will build up on the "screen" behind the grating.  As if there are more than one photon traveling through the grating at a time.

Scientists theorize an answer to this problem by saying the interference comes from all the "nearby" alternate universes (alternate realities) that are doing the same experiment at the same time.   All these photons are "reacting" with each other and forming the interference pattern as if they were all in this universe.
[Presumably a form of quantum entanglement.]

Star Trek touched upon this with the kid, Wesley Crusher, who found a way, WITHIN himself, to bridge these universes and instantly travel between them, at will.

Fringe (current TV show on FOX) is also basing its long range plot line on a version of this "alternate reality" (alternate universe) theory & making some decent story lines dealing with it.

Since I'm so busy lately <snicker>, I'm wondering if this whole concept isn't a matter of perception.  Even, maybe, quantum mechanics only describes perception.  Because it  seems that in most of these experiments, (Schrödinger's Cat, for instance), we don't come across this "quantum goofiness" until we decide to do something.  Measure something, watch something, even putting the cat & equipment into the box is "deciding something".

Time, also, according to modern physics, is relative and might not even exist at all in the 'absolute' (as Newton thought it did).

What I'm wondering here, is if "all this" is not a result of us observing, deciding,  and trying to "measure" the universe around us.  And if, somehow, we could truly "be" (in the purest Buddhist sense of the term), all these "problems" would be resolved.

And we might "see" the universe (and all around us) with fresh eyes and much clearer understanding.