One year ago today: March 6, 2017, the “H” is silent.
Five years ago today: March 6, 2013, I coin “The Ransom Ratio”.
Nine years ago today: March 6, 2009, remember the Nano?
(It was recalled for catching itself on fire.)
Random years ago today: March 6, 2014, a biologically determined majority.
This photo is a recent breakthrough in superconductivity. You can skip this section if you are not into physics, but everyone knew this would happen. Normally, certain substances lose their resistance to electric current at impossibly low temperatures. With my background in physics I knew they were looking in the wrong places for how to duplicate the effect a “room temperatures”. We are still a ways from that, but these pictures show ordinary single atom layers of graphene, the nano wonder-substance. In the left photo, they are aligned, in the right photo, misaligned at precisely 1.1°, causing a dramatic drop in resistance, but not quite there yet.
Nothing to report today, I’m overwhelmed a bit. Hold on, I got some reading done this morning. And it is scary. The artificial intelligence community reports they were able to reconstruct very raw pictures of what a person had just seen by using an MRI scan. I navigated to the site and saw the samples. Be very afraid. While you could not make out the photos, the shape and color was more than distinct. You can bet there will not be full pressure on increasing the resolution and range. Soon to follow will be government funding, then weaponization, then turning it on the citizenry packaged as security, and of course, child safety. Never leave out child safety.
Once again, I read Jimmy Ruska (jimmyr.com) to scan for this and other items. It’s still the quickest source for me, although he’s limiting his success with his annoying liberal slant. It seems Washington and Oregon have passed legislation ensuring net neutrality. So you just watch service and speed deteriorate as the giants fight back. Europe is going to slap a tax on these companies, the talk is 2% of their profit. Affected would be Apple, MicroSoft, Google, and similar players. But they are rank amateurs against the Europeans who have centuries of connivances (called “statesmanship”) behind them. The Eurocrats say if it is true about the profits arising elsewhere (as the companies claim), then the tax will barely hurt them. Sweet.
At any rate, it shows that it now takes the better part of 25 years for the system to catch up with a new invention like the Internet. From the halcyon early days of anonymous surfing and free sites everywhere, through the era of the first dotcom bubbles and basic user tracking, to new laws aimed directly at stripping away privacy, to finally taxing and banning on a national scale. It was fun while it lasted, but the fact is, the Internet as we knew it is gone. The world will go on as usual, just with the more sinister operators going a little deeper underground, always one step ahead of the system.
You can’t blame them much, either. Every time you try to get ahead legitimately, the government will come along and knock you back into place. The US is still the land of opportunity compared to most places, but the very fact that you cannot get ahead by working hard means they are a far cry from the ideal of free enterprise. The average man can probably come up with five good ideas to make money without lying, cheating, or stealing. Yet due to the system, most of them will never even try.
What’s ludicrous is the barrage of magazines and broadcasts by financial experts all saying the way to success is investing in stocks and bonds and the maze of deferred tax retirement accounts. These have become guaranteed ways to lose your money. They ceased representing good investments two generations ago. How can you make money at a 3% return when taxes and inflation chew up 15% off the top every year and it’s poised to get worse. With the rich fleeing to New Zealand and renouncing citizenship, I once more repeat the old French proverb that the fortunes that survive are those that can be carried across the border in a suitcase at midnight.
Nor can I give any advice on what to invest in. These days, even gold and silver are just speculation. But you can take steps to protect yourself should things go sour. Buy the best place to live in that you can afford cash. Bury some silver in Colorado. Have a second vehicle in running condition. Mostly common sense stuff that will leave you standing after 30 days. By then, you’ll know who the other winners are because there will be so precious few of them. My time is over, I lived through the greatest expansion times in history, but every time the prizes went to those who already had a surplus. You can’t get ahead in life when you have to spend the first half of it just catching up.
Meanwhile in Swizterland.
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It was 8:45PM before I got home to relax. Chicken soup and a muffin, closest thing to a meal this week. There’s a tune I don’t know kept playing in my brain, actually just the neat part of the song. It’s that KT Scottish lady I can’t place. Tunstall? Something like that, and the tune is “Black Horse”. The original has an anemic bass line, but that Bo-Diddley guitar shuffle is just begging to be stifled by some creative bassist. That’s it, “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree”, the whoo-oo song. I’ll download it tomorrow and see how it goes. Tomorrow is also the first rehearsal in ten days.
I want to continue with guitar coaching until she gets it or hangs it up. She wants me to bring the bass. But that is a lot of work unless I’m seeing significant improvement. Any guitarist will sound better if I’m on the bass, but I won’t stand for them learning their parts by listening to me. No, no, that’s what the recordings I provided are for. I was also talking to people back west on the telephone. Things are no better back there—but they are supposed to be. Nonetheless, I may have to make a major month-long trip later this year, so start planning now.
In the meanwhile, keep the faith, read the blog daily, and wait for results. Hmmm, that sounds like there will be results and that’s false encouragement. Yet that’s the excitement left until this band sinks or swims. Fact is, this band has not been bad for the drama and ego that has normally flared up by now. I’ve had to block several song suggestions and there was not a peep of objection over that. (The usual reasons are the song is too slow, overplayed, or not suitable for duo arrangement.) I’m still not optimistic much, since the longer till first gig, the more time for problems to crop.
I also feel that once again I’m shouldering the majority of the load myself. Nobody helps at the non-musical levels, which are plenty. Nobody seems to lean into the project without being prodded. Here I am, after all these years, teaching basic guitar to a guitar player again. Are you sure Charlie Daniels done it this way? It seems so unfair that from my first band to my last, I basically had to babysit the situation every inch of the way. Sigh.
Last Laugh
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