Didn't think I'd feel like writing today but here I am, pulled out of my funk by the arrest of Martin Shkreli that dirt bag former hedge fund manager and current pharmacutical company CEO who raised costs of a life-saving drug from $13.50 to $750.00. Then he has the balls to spend $2 million on a one-only record album by Wu-Tang Clan. Shkreli's arrest is on every single site I visit in the news sweeps.

Think I'm a little harsh about the way he spends his money? After all, it is his money, right? Here's a piece of an article as published in The Atlantic by Spencer Kornhaber who is a staff writer at The Atlantic covering pop culture and music.

"The news that Wu-Tang Clan had recorded an album of which there would only be one copy, sold for millions of dollars at auction, with the stipulation that it couldn’t be resold, has inspired debate for more than a year. Some people, like RZA, have argued that the plan is a radical statement on behalf of the value of music and the album format. Others have argued that it’s an insult to fans, a capitulation to traditional ideas about exclusivity and power that rap once railed against, and a demonstration of how capitalism can hurt art.

The debate is now settled. Wu-Tang has made a horrible mistake.

Once Upon a Time in Shaolin  has been sold to Martin Shkreli, the 32-year-old pharmaceutical executive who triggered outrage worldwide earlier this year when his company increased the price of a drug used to treat some AIDS sufferers by 5000 percent—from $13.50 to $750 a tablet. He recently said he wished he’d raised it more. He appears to have bought this album in hopes of scoring dates, and for now, he does not seem interested in letting the public hear it."

Here's a 1% wanna be in all his glory.

I am so proud to be an American. How many men have died in the military defending this shitburg's "freedom" to manipulate complex financial processes to enrich himself at the expense of others? 

I asked Dr. K, head headologist in Meland, what he thought of Shkreli. After reading of his exploits and hearing Shkreli himself during interviews, Dr. K came to the conclusion that Mr. Shkreli "has something missing." There appears to be no empathy within Shkreli. He feels nothing for others. They are players in his universe. Were we to look inside his brain, we would likely find the robot who operates Shkreli's body sees the universe as intersecting spreadsheets from which all decisions are made."

Or perhaps Shkreli is just so used to playing with big numbers in his career path that he becomes inured to the plight of others. That's it! The poor lad is a victim of the dreaded rich-man disease of affluenza!! Just like that kid in Texas who seems to have "gone missing." Another example of a member in good standing of the "All For Me" Club.

Texas authorities fear ‘affluenza’ teen who killed 4 and got probation may have fled country

December 16, 2015

Naheed Rajwani
Dallas Morning News 
DALLAS — He's 18 years old, but the wealthy Tarrant County teen who killed four people when he drove drunk in 2013 is still a juvenile as far as the legal system is concerned.

Ethan Couch, whose case made "affluenza" a household term, is back in the spotlight again, two years after a Fort Worth judge gave him 10 years' probation instead of sentencing him to jail.
Couch is wanted now for allegedly violating the terms of his probation — and officials say they won't let him off easy this time.
"Any mess-ups from now on, he's going to be over with us," said Terry Grisham, the spokesman for the Tarrant County sheriff's office. "He's going to see what the big-boy jail is like."
But Couch is nowhere to be found, and authorities worry he may have fled the country.
"With the wealth and the wherewithal that his family has, it's going to be a tough assignment for us to find him," Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson said Wednesday.
Earlier this month, a video claiming to show Couch violating the terms of his probation — by allegedly playing beer pong at a party — reignited the public outrage surrounding the case.
On Tuesday, Couch's attorneys announced that the teen's probation officer hasn't been able to reach him and his mother for several days.
Tarrant County's probation department has ordered authorities to take Couch into custody if they see him. The district attorney's office has said he could be jailed for up to 10 years for violating the terms of his probation.
"It's one of those times when you hate to say, 'I told you so,' but I told you so," the sheriff said. "I knew he was going to end up in more trouble."
Justice for the crash victims' families, Anderson said, now hinges on Couch's arrest.
"He ruined a lot of lives," Anderson said. "We're determined to make sure he's fully accountable within the boundaries that are set in the case. He needs to be brought back."

Nice kid. Kills four people (!!!!!!) while he's driving drunk and walks away on probation. (Apparently, if you're a rich, white Texan you can get away with killing people.) Then, if you think probation is too tough—what do you mean no alcohol? Are you kidding?—you can always just skip the country and piss on the state that allowed you to get that way in the first place.

Oh my gosh! Here I am on a Texas tear and I come across this:

Season’s beatings: Texas GOP official threatens to slap next person who wishes him ‘Happy holidays’

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller may be taking the so-called “war on Christmas” a little too literally. In a Facebook post on Wednesday, the Republican official said that he would “slap” anyone who wished him “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.”

Several months ago I got the unsettling feeling that certain trends seem to be appearing in the various news/websites I monitor on a pretty constant basis. "But thinking isn't knowing" (King of Queens) so I decided to build a small, very basic database to keep track of the things I wanted to monitor.

This is a screen shot of the database input screen. It's hard to see but you can discern the basic structure. (All my databases are built with FileMaker Pro because it's cross platform, flexible, networkable, and can serve as portal to the Internet.) Consider each white rectangle as being a container into which you can put information.

The first line holds the date of this record. To save typing the date every time I create a new record, I made a little gray button which, when clicked, will automatically stuff the current date into the date bin.

The next line/bin/field (different names for the same thing) holds the name of the source from which I got the information—newspaper, website, online publication, whatever ... Source info is typed in.

When one clicks the cursor on Bin 3 (Category), a list appears:

Corporations

Police

Politics

Religion

Science

Society

Weapons

Edit

I would select a category for the information I'm saving by clicking on it. (Selecting "Edit" with the cursor allows me to call up the list of categories and add a new category on the fly). Then come input lines/bins for city and state for those instances in which the item's geographic location is pertinent. The first of the larger bins, bin 6, holds the headline of the source article; and the large bin with all the text in it holds the first two or three graphs of the source article itself. That large empty block at the bottom of the record is labelled "Comment" so I guess I was supposed to be able to attach my own wisdom to each record as well. It's an empty bin on every record. (Which may show more than I want it to.)

With a database like FileMaker, setting up a data structure can start simple but you have the flexibility to build complexity of purpose over time. You can link bins together in conduits of information, you can redirect flow, you can automate processes. You can construct hugh Rube Goldberg structures whose subroutine cogs and shafts grind up data and crank out information. You can analyze huge amounts of information.

Databases are symphonies (or maybe concertos, damn, now I have to go back to those Great Courses CDs to see which form of music databases seem to reflect). The are intricate structures built to satisfy man's deep need to look for patterns. Databases can make info dance to the conductor's tune. I think building databases was the most fun work in all my years of promoting personal computers. Chances are pretty good I'll be back to talk about them. 

Well-intentioned purposes aside, my project fell apart after only 12 records. That's all it took to show me that I would have to spend hours upon hours just collecting info on those categories above. Even with straight cut-and-paste from source to database, major investment in time. Project on pause because of huge volume of data being generated by news sources.

Oh well, that frees me up to worry about something else.

Holidays starting to be uncomfortable. The loneliness is depressing. This was K's favorite time of the year. It will never be the same without her. We used to love the Christmas movies on Hallmark; now I fall apart if I try to watch one. Eyes down; one foot in front of the other. This too shall pass.

This is just too depressing for words

Beginning of an article by Lee Moran, trends editor for Huffington Post:

"A town council in North Carolina rejected plans to rezone land for a solar farm after residents voiced fears it would cause cancer, stop plants from growing and suck up all the energy from the sun (my emphasis). Two citizens reportedly made the allegations at a Woodland Town Council meeting in Northampton County, northeastern North Carolina, on Wednesday."

Suck up all the sun's energy!? Stop plants from growing? (From what I understand, one of the complainants is a retired science teacher! No evidence to refute her fears about cancers (that's an awful lot of energy being concentrated in a limited geographical area), but don't see how farm's presence would hinder the process of photosynthesis which results from sunlight hitting chlorophyll. 

The last charge about sucking up all the sun's energy...

Never mind. Just realized that however I vote in future elections, that vote is likely to be cancelled by somebody in NC. 

Not even I care what I think anymore.  

Depressed as of late but found four things that perked up my spirits.

First - The Donald

Interesting article by Mark Bowden of Digg. To quote the headline: "Donald Trump Really Doesn’t Want Me to Tell You This, But …" Subhead: Over a long weekend on assignment forPlayboy magazine, Mark Bowden found that behind the garish Trump façade lies only more ugliness."

The article offers insights and perspectives to something that happened years ago but pertains every bit to today. Great read.

Second - Old Blue Eyes

Never was an avid fan of Frank Sinatra (more to my parents' liking) but the article by Polly Toynbee in The Guardian entitled A very long retirement: Sinatra’s bittersweet final years remembered, is excellent. Didn't know what had happened to him before his death and this piece summed up the end of his life. Found it saying a lot about fame (or lack) and death. It also makes much more poignant that ad on TV right now in which Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett meet in a store. I wonder where he is in his life. (Still earning a pretty good buck for this commercial, I venture. Lucky old dude.) Anyone who recognizes Sinatra's name should be interested in this tale.

Third - Psy•coholic

I've always liked the energy and eccentric creativity of Korean entertainer Psy. I started with Gangnam Style. Well, this afternoon I discovered Psy in 2015 moma. It's a live concert. Portion of one. It's a psychedelic romp that would take too many words to describe and never do it justice anyway. Anyone who wonders what things (like concerts) are like in other cultures should see this. Man does that guy deliver a show. I could become addicted.

Fourth - Feminine Side

This one deserves to be a discussion on its own but I finished all available episodes tonight and it plays important role in perking life up.

I refer to the NetFlix series Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries which, as I mentioned the day I met former colleagues for lunch, was recommended to me. I am so pleased to have been pointed to this show. I've binged it lately over a number of days (the Australian series has a season of 13 episodes!! The third season ended at episode 8). A 1920s lady detective in Australia with her faithful ward solve murders with the assistance of their boyfriends (eventually) who happen to be the local detective inspector and his young patrolman assistant.

That's the thread. Turns out, however, it's the jewels entwined in that thread that make it special. I am going to start the series again with particular interest in:

How many different deep colors shown in cars? I don't know where those cars came from or how they came to be the colors they were, but the re-watch will be fun. From the deep red mahogany of Miss Fisher's roadster (?) to obsidian black, emerald green, and cerulean blue, the cars can pop up for a single drive-bye. They're like old-fashioned meteors streaking through scenes. Sometimes so fast yo wonder if you really did see something that stunning just go by.

Pay attention to the gorgeous range of clothes. No idea whether said styles are authentic but they come in a stunning array of fabrics, patterns, textures, and accessories (ah, what watching Project Runway all these years has taught me).

The women's hats. Much more colorful and varied than those worn by male characters. A re-watch will be like collecting butterflies or stamps only cinematically in this case. I will also be searching for sight of the elusive translucent green corsage. It is a Marcel Proust madeleine cookie. This time I will pause series to look at such jewels more closely for a longer period of time.

The characters' faces. Although the "stars" in this series (say the top ten regulars) are sort of an American Barbie and Ken style population in Australian terms, villains and lesser characters can be surprising. I'm going to look for them this time.

Oops. It's late. Later.

Charles in Charge

The atmosphere crackles with energy. Literally. Right now. Fearsome forces compete to wipe us off the earth: electromagnetic waves bombard us incessantly; climate changes endanger our physical wellbeing; food sources are shifting.

Once again, I’m feeling that life is a microscopic coating of slime on a bullet aimed at some great barrier. Contact will result in an “explosion” for want of a better word. We know this because this phenomenon has happened many times already (Rome, Maya and Aztecs, French Revolution, American Revolution, World Wars, etc.). Unfortunately, like previous occurrences, we can’t know with certainty the outcome. (This state of affairs is a basic Prigogene Bifurcation, if you ask me. All the various systems, both physical and social, are in high-energy, increasingly chaotic states. Pretty soon, supernova.)

As I try to assess fairly my external environment and wonder if I might be a hint overly pessimistic in my take on the future, I remember what I consider to be a near perfect description of situations today:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

If that doesn’t delineate today perfectly, I’m not sure anything can. We can thank Charles Dickens’ opening to A Tale of Two Cities for describing exactly what our present circumstances seem to be (thereby providing an information link between his age and ours). Even though these “times” of which Dickens writes were 156 years ago, the lead paragraph of his book could be describing today.

If we see his words as an accurate description of our reality now, I dread the likelihood that the rest of his tale will be predictive as well. The world he describes up to and beyond the French Revolution is not something I would like to experience in any transcription from that age to this. I hope that societal conditions only seem to be identical, but are really different enough that outcomes don’t have to be the same. Butterfly Effect and all that.

It’s pretty easy to self-doubt one’s opinions about how the universe works, given how often that very universe goes out of its way to prove I know nothing at all—about anything.

I bring up Dickens because I think his is a literary description of what I’ve been referring to—and here we are again—a Prigogene Bifurcation: A system becomes overly unstable, explodes and transforms into something radically different without any way to control the “different.”

Constantly on the prowl for any information that might relate to the change I think is taking place right now, I came across “This is why we’re so f*cked: Our politics are only going to get worse” by Paul Rosenberg for Salon on 11/23/15.

Despite the crudeness of the title, the piece is a terrific discussion of the work of Peter Turchin, a former theoretical biologist who devised something called Cliodynamics which seeks to treat history as a dynamical science.

Turchin has authored several books expressing his theories, one of which is Historical Dynamics: Why States Rise and Fall. I checked out his work on Amazon and found this to be the outline of that book:

Ch. 1 Statement of the Problem 1

Ch. 2 Geopolitics 9

Ch. 3 Collective Solidarity 29

Ch. 4 The Metaethnic Frontier Theory 50

Ch. 5 An Empirical Test of the Metaethnic Frontier Theory 78

Ch. 6 Ethnokinetics 94

Ch. 7 The Demographic-Structural Theory 118

Ch. 8 Secular Cycles in Population Numbers 150

Ch. 9 Case Studies 170

Ch. 10 Conclusion 197

App. A: Mathematical Appendix 205

App. B Data Summaries for the Test of the Metaethnic Frontier Theory 214

Bibliography 226

Index 243

No offense to the author but that looks like some pretty heavy sledding. (Metaethnic Frontier Theory? Ethnokinetics?) I respect mathematicians of all ilk, and think they should be celebrated—perhaps even venerated—for the insights they provide about all kinds of things, but there’s no way I’m going to be absorbing much of this even if I wanted to. (In the time it would take to get from Algebra I to beyond calculus into some pretty mind-boggling specialty math, might come the death of the universe. So even if Turchin’s book shows some kind of math underlying a transformation phase event I’ve been calling a PB, I will never be able to see it for myself.)

Which makes Rosenberg’s piece a goldmine of digestible info about Turchin and what he believes.

A smattering:

(Quoted from Rosenberg’s Salon article)

“As with any study of dynamical systems—from the simplest to the most complex—it’s logical to focus on critical indicators of when such systems shift from one regime (stability, say, or expansion) to another (instability, or decline). So it was perfectly apt that Turkin wrote a 2010 letter to  warning of “growing instability” over the next decade, citing a number of “leading indicators of looming political instability” including “stagnating or declining real wages, a growing gap between rich and poor, overproduction of young graduates with advanced degrees, and exploding public debt.”

“In the United States, 50-year instability spikes occurred around 1870, 1920 and 1970, so another could be due around 2020,” with all the relevant cycles—including a “youth bulge” of people in their 20s—“set to peak in the years around 2020.”

“In fact, Turkin (sic) argues that what we’re seeing now represents an unraveling of what makes civilization possible.”

“There are not enough positions, power positions governing, in business and government, to satisfy all elite aspirants. And that’s when inter-elite competition starts to take uglier forms.” That can be measured in terms of “overproduction of law degrees, because that’s a direct route into government, or the overproduction of MBAs,” and, higher up, in the increased competition for House and Senate seats, where the money spent on such contests spirals ever upwards.”

“So the competition intensifies, and when competition intensifies, there are losers. There are many more losers now than there were 40 or 50 years ago,” Turkin said, and “Many of them are not good losers,” meaning they devote themselves to frustrating others, further eroding the cooperative ethos societies need to keep functioning.”

There is way more. Mr. Rosenberg wrote about a tough subject in a pretty insightful way.

Just read an article in which Donald Trump declared that if he had been at San Bernadino, he would have gone down shooting. He's calling for more guns!

To quote part of an article by David Edwards in RawStory:

“You look at Paris, no guns, nothing. And you look at California, no guns,” he (Trump) opined. “I can tell you one thing, if I’m in there and I have a handgun, we’re going down shooting. We’re going to knock ’em out. Okay? One way or the other.”

“And if a couple of guns are in that room — you talk about Second Amendment, which I’m a big believer in the Second Amendment. In Paris they had no guns. In California, they had no guns. Only the bad guys had the guns. So, they were like sitting ducks. Every one of them.”

The candidate added that “it’s going to be a lot safer” if more people are carrying guns."

The only kind of person who would say stuff like that is someone who has never been in live fire. Putting a gun into the hand of an average person doesn't turn that person into some kind of TV hero. Even cops freak out during a shooting. (How else to account for the incredible number of rounds fired in so many cases?) And police get tons of hands-on training compared to the average citizen gun carrier.

I'll bet most people, even those who have had some training, would find it hard to make a body shot in a real-life gunfight—let alone hit a moving target with a head shot if the bad guys are wearing body armor. In addition, your firing is sure to draw the likely lethal attention of the shooter. As a result of having an insane killer turn to start firing directly at you, most people are likely to fire their weapons to empty states as quickly as possible in —volume over accuracy—in panic-hopes of hitting something.  Unfortunately, bystanders are often the somethings who are  hit! 

A gun is a deadly machine with no ability to distinguish good from evil. The slight pressure of a fingertip becomes a metal projectile flung at nearly 4,000 feet per second, which, in turn, transforms into 2800 ft-lb or 3800 joules. (Tried to find nifty analogy to explain but couldn't.) Whatever that force "is," you don't want to feel it exploding in your body. Or even just near your body.

Police in Michigan discovered 145 guns in the home of a man they took into custody after he shot at his wife twice following an argument, the Oakland Press reports. John Lewis Piotrowski, 68, was jailed and charged with assault with the intent to murder, which carries a potential sentence.

145! For what? What threat does he perceive needs 145 guns to repel/conquer it? Who but a gang/army leader needs to arm 140 people? What rights am I defending that allows this to happen?  I don't want anyone's "rights" abridged but this is freaking insane!

Had lunch with two dear friends I met years ago at a school. During our wide-ranging discussion, I was pointed to Miss Fisher's Mysteries. Will be looking for it on NetFlix. In all, it was great catching up with people whose opinions and outlooks are always worth hearing. After a leisurely lunch, I dropped in on my daughter at work and chatted with her as well.

Get home thinking it's been a great day only to find out there's another gun attack going on. Again!!!! Right now. 14 people killed; another 14 wounded. Lead graph from Net article: As many as three people opened fire at a center for people with developmental disabilities in San Bernardino, Calif., on Wednesday, killing at least 14 people and injuring 14 others in what the city's police chief described as an act of domestic terrorism.

It has to stop.  We better start getting the gun problem under control or we face the chance of living in 2015 as if it were the old Wild West days. Not everyone qualifies for a driving license; not everyone should be able to get a gun license. (Possession of a gun without a license is a felony in Meland.)

In my paranoid moments, I think how easy it would be for the gun industry to hire three cartel members to shoot into a crowd. Big money paid to the shooters but really really BIG money to the guys who make and sell guns as sales surge around the rest of the country. More guns around, more tragedies both accidental and purposeful will occur which will bring about even more gun sales. If you want an idea of what "everybody entitled to have a gun" gets you, look to the Middle East. Hell, just look to Colorado Springs and now, San Bernardino.

I'm ready to punch a wall in angry frustration at the way the "present" is presenting itself.

I turn to my background universe, Mr. TiVo, and see that he's recorded some stuff for me to watch. It's easy to eliminate the first three selections (Maury, Jerry Springer, Steve Wilkos Show). I binged on all of them for awhile not believing they were still on. Outrageous in the subjects they covered, I eventually got fed up seeing unemployed men prance around while bragging how they took care of their 11 children with nine different mothers. And then there is the neverending sage of: "Er, but Mandy, why do you stay with a man who beats you?" "Because I love him, Maury, because I love him. He ain't always this way. Only when he hits me, Maury." 

Next on the list was Married for the First Time. Six people get married (never having actually met until that moment. Then they live as married couples for nine (?) (maybe six?) weeks, at the end of which they have to decide whether they want to stay married. The show follows their paths. (I wonder how bad it must be that a person would do this. Money? Shot at TV reality starship? 

Reality versus reality TV.

They got the guys who did the killings. (Wow. This whole CA shooting is so messed up. Husband and wife team who worked there. Muslims.) Have to go pay attention.