Just in Case it Matters to You
Weekly Report 17-30
- THE ‘THINKING CLASS’ OF AMERICA, IN REACTION TO ITS OWN FAILURE, is now functioning with “an essentially religious hysteria, as the world is clearly not becoming a better place – but rather reeling to disorder and ecological crisis, despite all the rational programs and politics of modern democracy, with political failure is everywhere… The practical problems of economy approach an event horizon of energy scarcity, runaway debt from trying to mitigate it, and eventual collapse of our day-to-day hyper-complex economic arrangements. These things are so scary that the thinking classes (except for a minority of nerdy scientists) can’t even bear to think about them… Instead we have the Gnostic drive to alter human nature, which has terminated in preoccupation with abolishing sexual identity… while universities, instead of free inquiry, now offer intellectual martial law chained to sets of ersatz metaphysics… touting esoteric principles of ‘post structural’ (reality-optional) thought where quandaries of ‘minority’ America have resolved in the simple superstitious idea that demonic forces of ‘white male privilege’ and ubiquitous, implacable misogynistic racism are entirely responsible for the woes and sorrow of the world, and the failure of progress in particular.” [ZEROHEDGE.COM – July 14, 17 – http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-14/why-has-thinking-class-america-abandoned-thinking ]
- CRYPTOCURRENCY IS “EITHER THE BEGINNING OF A GLOBAL FINANCIAL REALIGNMENT, OR A BUBBLE OF HISTORIC PROPORTIONS.” Some $6.6 billion in ‘digital tokens’ now trade daily, through mainstream players including Goldman Sachs, Visa, NASDAQ and NYSE, with collective value having grown by 600% since the beginning of this year to now exceed $100 billion. Cryptocurrency is essentially electronic cash, serving as a form of universal currency which allows transactions to be processed without recourse to any central authority – government, bank or payments company – through a complex decentralized system called ‘blockchain,’ where ledger control is simultaneously stored on computers of everyone running the software and complex math maintains user anonymity. A system not for the faint of heart. [FORTUNE – July 1, 17]
- BUT, LIKE IT OR NOT, ‘THE BLOCKCHAIN’ IS HERE TO STAY, most likely along with its first iteration Bitcoin – which “corporations and government initially scoffed at, but are now racing to adopt its power… (JP Morgan, for example, has announced incorporation of its anonymity protocol in Zcash, their own enterprise blockchain, an idea which would have seemed absurd only a few years ago) …Blockchain process straddles two equally obscure and poorly understood fields: cryptography and accounting, … in a manner providing an alternative currency with no centralized trust” – which is now driving innovation with potential impact of comparable importance to “development of the printing press… It’s coming at a pace like a tsunami that will remake every aspect of our lives and societies.” [HACKERNOON.COM – June 22, 17]
- ABOUT GEEZERHOOD: As lifespan longevity continues to lengthen, the ‘Age 65’ social construct which calls for retirement and losing momentum is quite outmoded. “The word Retirement – which literally means withdrawal to a place of seclusion – has become misleading… It’s no longer a cliff edge over which workers and consumers suddenly tumble and with little relation to the real world.” Seniorhood is mostly a state of mind, and realistically just “a stage of life, between work and decrepitude, which lacks a name. What do you call a person over 65 but not yet elderly? Geriactives errs too much on the side of senescence; Sunsetters or Nightcappers risk being patronizing; NYPPIES (Not Yet Past It) or OWLS (older, working less, still earning) ring truer… At 65 today, you are not clapped out, but pre-tired.” [THE ECONOMIST – July 8, 17]
- THE CONCEPT OF ‘TELEPORTATION’ – transmitting solid objects thru a vacuum – became popular science fiction over three decades ago when Jeff Goldblum turned into a Fly. “The nature of teleportation has since become a standard operation in quantum labs around the world;” now Chinese scientists have actually just achieved the first teleportation from a ground station to a satellite 300 miles overhead. The low-earth-orbit satellite received and held stable over nine hundred photon transmissions, over 30 days in orbits at distance of up to 868 miles, demonstrating “China’s obvious dominance and lead in a field that, until recently, was led by Europe and the U.S… a fundamental element in protocols such as large-scale quantum networks and distributed quantum computation.” [MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW – July 10, 17]
- THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK: Electrifying 3-dimensional drawings: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/TE8Z4Mu9DgY?rel=0&showinfo=0
If pharmaceutical ads could be real life… Disgusting but very funny. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNQ3sxvslhQ
NPR reports that “micromanagement can kill motivation, employee creativity and job satisfaction, and yet it remains the biggest beef workers have about their boss… justifying their doing the absolute bare minimum for a paycheck, not to help the company.”