Archive for the ‘Trivia’ Category

The strange tale of King Bho, the witch and the buffoon

November 1, 2016

A fable for our times

In this time, in a land across the sea, the people of a Once Great Country are to decide on a new ruler. The incumbent king has no choice but to step down because rulers are not allowed to reign forever. They have to relinquish their power after 8 years of wearing the crown and King Bho’s eight years are up. The ruler does not have to be a King. The people can choose a Queen if they wish though they had never done so before. The ruler has to be either a King or a Queen. The rules of Monarchy did not allow for a half-King/ half-Queen to be enthroned. However the consort of the King or Queen, though expected to be of the opposite sex, may, in fact be either.

At this particular time, about 2 months before King Bho has to step aside, a Great Convention of all the people is to be held on one particular day (November 8th). All the people will have their say to choose between the two main claimants to the throne. Nobody is still quite sure how the two claimants have taken their places on the Final List. (During King Bho’s reign the Once Great Country has degraded slowly to become a somewhat indulgent, degenerate and depraved place. But that is another story.)

witch

The first contender, a woman, (Witch Hills of Little Rock) is known to be a powerful witch who desperately wishes to be Queen and to rule with her own Court. Even her own supporters acknowledge she is a witch but claim she is a “white witch”. Of course her detractors claim she is all evil and a “black witch”. There is little doubt that if she becomes Queen she will reign as a Red Queen and many “heads will off”. She has claimed that she is well-trained to be a Queen since she had been the consort of a previous King (the infamous King Bill of Lewinsky). Many suspect that King Bill had only become King, and remained King, because she had used her witchcraft and her weirding powers not only to eliminate all whistlers but also to procure buxom paramours to satisfy the depravities of the King. Nevertheless, Lady Hills has developed and enlarged her own band of bewitched sycophants and acolytes who are now leading the charge to have her enthroned as Queen. During the campaign to get her included on the final list, she has used her witchcraft to very good effect and has ensured that her sycophants and fellow witches have eliminated all opposition. The Witch Abedin and the Witch Brazile have been particularly adept at ensnaring gullible and perverted men to their cause and made sure that the aged but Honourable Bensanders, who tried to challenge for her place on the Final List, was discredited and humiliated. Many men were also bewitched and ensnared to the cause of Witch Hills. In any event Witch Hills of Little Rock won her place on the Final List to be considered by the people for monarch. King Bho – who was himself the first ever monarch of mixed blood – now supports, though somewhat reluctantly, the elevation of Witch Hills to become the first ever Queen of the Once Great Country.

buffoon

The second contender on the Final List is a professional buffoon but an, apparently, very rich buffoon. Clown de Trump has had a raucous and an eventful journey on his way onto the Final List. He was opposed by many dull and sober men (and even a dull and sober woman), of little talent, along the way. But they were all – unexpectedly – laughed away by a disillusioned audience. All the spectators who were expecting a sober play were blown away by the farce which developed. The slapstick nature of the competition meant that Clown de Trump dominated the proceedings and his sober opponents could not keep up. They all fell, one after another, by the wayside, extinguished by the roustabout and their own lack of talent. Finally, only Clown de Trump was left standing to take his place in the Final List. He promised the people that he would Make the Country Great Again, which was very uplifting but nobody – not even Clown de Trump – had any idea of how he would achieve that. He promised to bring Law and Order back to the Once Great Country and that struck a nerve.

With just a week to go before the Great Convention of November 8th, the war of words between Witch Hills of Little Rock and Clown de Trump is now reaching a crescendo. Most people are expecting Witch Hills to win and be crowned Queen. But the buffoon is still in the lists and is refusing to go quietly. A witch or a buffoon? The people shall decide what they themselves deserve.

The world watches, bemused and bewildered. Is this truly what this Once Great Country been reduced to? A witch or a buffoon?


 

State of the species: globally there are as many abortions as there are deaths per year

October 31, 2016

Getting some perspective.

state-of-the-species-2016

 


 

Paradoxes for our times / 4

October 22, 2016

paradoxes-4


 

Paradoxes for our times/ 3

October 18, 2016

paradoxes-3


 

Paradoxes for our times / 2

October 15, 2016

paradoxes-2


 

Paradoxes for our times / 1

October 15, 2016

paradoxes-1


 

Quite unexpected: Dolly Parton at 33

October 15, 2016

I only saw this yesterday but this You Tube video was posted by Tom Berry in 2010, so it’s been around for a while.

The New Yorker:

Dolly Parton must be one of the only singers around whose voice could undergo such extreme manipulation and sound not sadly distorted but, rather, beautifully remade. Her baby-high soprano has always seemed slightly unreal anyway, a record played a little too fast. As it happens, one of her longtime stage stunts is mimicking a 45 r.p.m. record played at 78 r.p.m.: she goes into full Chipmunk mode, not missing a syllable or a wave of vibrato—an offhand joke at the expense of her own voice, as well as a flourishing exhibition of her impressive control of her instrument.

Parton, slowed to a speed at which most people would sound like gloopy, slothlike creatures, comes down to a reasonable alto range, sounding like a soulful male ballad singer.

Dolly Parton was born in 1946 so here’s an image of her at 33 in 1979.

Dolly Parton by Ed Caraeff-1979 (The Red List)

Dolly Parton by Ed Caraeff-1979 (The Red List)


 

Man smart – woman smarter

October 1, 2016

i was 34 when my son was born. My father was 37 when I was born and his father was 41 when he was born. However my mother was 22 when I was born and her mother was 25 when she was born. My great grandmother was 19 when my grandmother was born.

So my grandfather’s grandfather was born at about the same time as my grandmother’s, grandmother’s grandmother. From just about 1860, I am the product of 4 generations on my paternal line but of 6 generations on my maternal line. The same pattern is reproduced all the way back to when Anatomically Modern Humans began some 210,000 years ago and possibly even before that. But that means that everybody living today, for any given time period going back, has a maternal line of descent containing around 40% more generations than the paternal line of descent.

The conclusion is simply that the maternal line, generationally (and therefore also in evolutionary terms), is almost half as long again and therefore, that much more advanced than the paternal line.

Woman smarter (by 3,000 generations)

Woman smarter (by 3,000 generations)

Since the “start” of modern humans we have 3,000 more generations on the line of all our mothers than the line of all our fathers (7,000 fathers of fathers and 10,000 mothers of mothers).

Much is explained.

Remember the Harry Belafonte song, “Man smart – women smarter”.

I say let us put man and a woman together
To find out which one is smarter
Some say man but I say no
The woman got the man de day should know

And not me but the people they say
That de man are leading de women astray
But I say, that the women of today
Smarter than the man in every way

………..

Garden of Eden was very nice
Adam never work in Paradise
Eve meet snake, Paradise gone
She make Adam work from that day on

Methusaleh spent all his life in tears
Lived without a woman for 900 years
One day he decided to have some fun
The poor man never lived to see 900 and one

……


The consumption of time

September 7, 2016

No change without the passage of time.

No passage of time without change.

That is almost trivial. It does not help to tell us what or why time is.

Or perhaps it does.

Perhaps time is a consumable. It is the fuel that is needed for and is consumed by change. Quantum of change per unit of time taken as miles traversed per gallon of fuel. It follows that we can stop the passage of time if we can stop change – down to the motion of the elementary particles. Time does not just pass – perhaps it has to be consumed.

Perhaps the single great mystery is gravitation. Then gravitation (or gravitational energy) is manifested as the passage of time. The speed of the passage of time then varies with the gravitational field. One real second per perceived second now, but perhaps zero at the Big Bang.

The magical speed of an inconstant time

speed of time

No time without gravity.

And no change without time being consumed.

So, no change without gravity and time is just the medium of change.


 

Electric dreams – Mercedes-Maybach 6

August 19, 2016

Electric Dreams

Vision Mercedes-Maybach 6

Autoblog:

Four electric motors that can produce a combined 738 horsepower. Mercedes says that will be enough to get the car to 62 mph from a standstill in under 4 seconds. The motors are backed by an 80 kWh battery that the company says can propel the car up to 200 miles. Perhaps more interesting than its range is the fact that the Mercedes-Maybach 6 can pick up a charge worth 62 miles in just 5 minutes, assuming you’ve got the right charger.

You gotta have a dream, if you don’t have a dream,
How you gonna have a dream come true?

Mercedes-Maybach 6

Mercedes-Maybach 6 Interior