Wednesday, June 28, 2017

What's next on the technological front?

Should be sometime in the near future we'll have a quantum internet whatever the heck that means. Supposed to be virtually impervious to hackers and then there's something called the personal jetpack. It truly is a marvel but not for me. I prefer to be stuck in traffic thank you. Also I'm not a fan of autonomous vehicles at all. All it takes is one bad microchip to wreak havoc on the highways and imo AAA should take a stand against. Not a fan of AI robots either. I always think of Yul Brynner in Westworld. Wireless charging as it stands now is said to be slow with promises of fasting charging speeds in the future. Don't know, ya got anything?

104 comments:

  1. Well, we have the Atlas Robot which is being continuously
    updated. It is being uber-programed to learn from mistakes
    to become better balanced. That which does not short circuit Atlas makes him stronger. In the bad news department, they are introducing a robot chef . We ponder his resume:
    don't drink, don't smoke, no criminal record, works 24 hrs a day, incapable of sexual harassment and works well with
    other robots.

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    1. Can Atlas spit chickens? There seemed to be a little robot abuse going on in that first link.

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  2. Meanwhile, the Brits are building submarines which will stay
    underwater for 25 years . We suspect longer enlistments, a crew which will need undersea colonoscopies
    later in their voyage, and old seadogs when they return and
    surface. (Unless, the sub is crewed by a bunch of Atlas
    robots)

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  3. Speaking of Seadogs...this is a great beer for summer. https://www.dogfish.com/files/media/front/large/SeaQuench_LowCal_Main2%5B14%5D.jpg

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  4. Reminds me maybe I'll pick up some microbrews later.

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    1. Right on. The Seaquench is a sour ale. I would describe it as a better version of a Corona with a salted lime.

      What have you been drinking lately?

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    2. I'm mainly going with the Christian Bros. as it's the most agreeable to me. Today I bought Montauk Summer Ale and went with Old Speckled Hen a couple times recently. Oh yeah there's also a Yonkers Brewing Company.

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    3. Old speckled hen..drank that back in 2007 when we first started going to Club Jager during the run-up to Ron Paul's 2008 run.

      I just found out today that one of our local craft brew houses is bringing back a strawberry kettle sour that they introduced last year. It was a collaborative effort they did with New Belgium. It's called Strawberry Fields and it is hands down the best sour ale I've tried.

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    4. I haven't tried Angry Orchard and Ole Dirty Bastard yet. I like those abbey ales after a hard day of praying.

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  5. If I was a drinker I would be going for Southern Comfort with a hint of sweet tea and lemon. This one student I have kept me all day today in a state of wanting to stress overeat. When I walk around saying 'you know what would be good right now? A giant bowl of redskin mashed potatoes' I'm having a bad day. It kind of sucks, I'm sure he hates me but every time we work together I'm disappointed on a new and ever-increasing level.

    Rand Paul thinks national healthcare is like forced labor camps? I would like to know what Europe thinks about Rand Paul.

    Single payer is the way to go. It's the way we should have gone a long, long time ago.

    I misread 'seaquench' as 'sasquatch' and I saw a headline today (I didn't read the article) that Rob Lowe saw Sasquatch? And it almost killed him? Maybe he's got the evidence we've all been waiting for. How long before Discovery makes a reality show out of him?

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    1. So I was talking about Sasquatch with someone who's more a believer than I am. Re 'squatch BB is curmudgeonly for the status quo (no Bigfoot) but I was telling the guy for me the consistent lack of any dead apeman is the biggest debunker for me. He went on to explain Bigfoot does exist but the national parks cover it up to make money. Apparently one was shot or a dead one was found or whatever but I'm still the skeptic. Did Rob Lowe make a YT vid about it yet? I think Chuck Norris should lead the search.

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    2. Beer: the never ending search. Started with Leinenkugels back in the 50s, Pabst and Grain Belt
      for awhile and switched to Coors when I moved west.
      MGD for awhile. Not a big beer drinker though. Got interested in Moose Drool Brown Ale, then Blue Moon and currently Stella Artois, Corona and Newcastle Brown. As a part time beer guy, I tend to avoid high bitter counts like IPA and real dark stuff like Guiness. Like Z-Man, I find a few brandies more to my liking. Although with the temps approaching 100 here, I stocked up on some Newcastle last week. As near as I can tell, almost all stuff I am familiar with comes from the biggest conglomerate (beerglomerate? in the world.

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    3. The beer elite? Are they going to the Bilderbergers next month?

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  6. If you're looking for a great movie I highly recommend this one.

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  7. If you could write code, you could be the first to come up
    with a Petya kill switch .

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    Replies
    1. Again? Since at its root it was a "tool" taken from the NSA we can kind of blame Edward Snowden right?

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  8. We note the twitter-in-chief getting on Mika Brzezinski's
    case. Can't help himself. Damn, I hear Putin laughing out loud again.

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    1. First I thought the blood comment was in reference to something else and he has gone there before. Did Obama tweet as much? I don't recall.

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  9. I totally accidentally stumbled across "real-life dinosaurs caught on camera" on YouTube the other day. BB have you encountered any of these creatures on your rambles? Nor have I. Haven't even got my first Sasquatch in my gallery yet.

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    1. Uh, no. No pterodactyls, but a nice pair of yellow warblers, no allosauruses, but three young sibling squirrels. Had a meter reader once that looked rather
      Neanderthal....
      Most of my YT viewing is old reruns of 'Black Adder',
      folk music of a couple generations back and a bit of
      Handel. At my age, real-life dinosaurs in the back
      yard might put me in the ER, ya know? Just wondering
      if you had contacted the US Park Service yet regarding
      the charge that they are hiding Sasquatches by Yosemite Falls and Old Faithful? Ammunition for discussing same with befuddled co-worker...

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    2. Watched Episode 2 of "The New Andy Griffith Show" today on Dailymotion, the one with Glen Campbell. Yeah I'm not sold on Bigfoot but I'm a polite listener. Did see a YT vid on an alligator in Florida. Supposed to be extinct, a real monster crossing a path with startled onlookers and scientists confirmed it. Some people want the Wooly Mammoth back. What did I read today Japan wants to go to the moon.

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  10. Thinking this morning in this age of emails and tweets it's been ages since I actually got a letter from somebody. OK a couple Xmas cards but the art of putting pen to paper. It could be to resolve differences or just for old-time sake. The good old-fashioned letter.

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  11. Hollywood making a movie about Mandela Effect. Actors I never heard of. Dunno if this lends itself to the screen. Premise may be boring, not alot of action. Main character notices name of breakfast cereal slightly different or South America too close to Africa? Dunno, we'll see.

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    1. Probably another whole series of sequels- "Mandela 3,
      Return of the Sasquatch", "Mandela 5, Who moved S. America?" "Mandela 7-Reddit Redux", etc? Maybe if they get Ron Howard for class and Jennifer Lawrence for Z-Man...

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    2. If I were a Hollywood producer I'd be like what do I do with KitKat may or may not have had a dash in the past? What would be the grand finale for the team to find a shelf of Depends diapers in a CVS? This already has Raspberry written all over it like even 3 months after its release you find it in the discount dvd bin at Kmart. You'd have to make Geordie Rose the archvillain and like you say have Jennifer Lawrence. She could be the leader of the CERN resistance. Maybe the movie can answer where will the kidneys be in 2058?

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  12. Greta van Susteren quits FoxNews, joins MSNBC-gets fired by
    MSNBC. *yawn* Meanwhile, intrepid TV explorer Rob Lowe runs into a Sasquatch in the Ozarks (the Ozarks, for crying out loud?) and turns into a true believer. Hint: what he
    ran into was Chris Christie, wearing a coonskin jacket he borrowed from Bobby Jim Plunket up in Coon Hollow. We've seen the tapes..all Sasquatches live in British Columbia.
    Mostly.

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  13. Folk believe in everything these days. Bigfoot, time travel, alien/human interbreeding, we're living in a simulation (Elon Musk), the hollow moon is really a spaceship (Jim Marrs), there are at least 100 other versions of you doing other things in other universes (Geordie Rose). How come nobody believes in vampires?

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    1. "I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness..."
      Carl Sagan, Demon Haunted World, 1995

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    2. Haven't read much of Sagan in the past. I have to mull the quote. You can have a Wiccan as a neighbor but who keeps the noise down. I think the sciencey types feel you should just rely on science totally. Churchgoers feel they need something more to make their lives complete.

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    3. I have all of Sagan's books and was quite interested in his Cosmos TV series years back. You touch the crux of the contention between science
      and the mystical side. Sagan was a rationalist, accused of materialism, but driven by the two
      criteria for good science: creativity and experimental verification. The second of these limits science to the senses and mathematics; the
      Big Bang is an example. It satisfies the physics,
      but offers no cause for a big bang. Religions offer numerous explanations, unverifiable and thus requiring faith. What I like about Sagan and other splitbrain science people, is a profound sense of
      history, a basic understanding of geology, astronomy, chemistry, physics, biology and a concern about the human condition. Hence he had a distaste for superstition, gullibility and lack
      of critical thinking about the world. So, his
      conclusions are summed in his Pale Blue Dot dissertation, eg. as far as we know, we humans
      live on a spec of dust in the universe. In a sense we are a miracle and our fate is in our own hands, etc. The philosopher Will Durant noted that the great majority of us need religion for the world to make any sense and that is the comforting thing about faith. Dunno..deep stuff sometimes.

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    4. In Sagan's day science wasn't talking about things like the multiverse. D-wave what's that? Science is useful but it can't cure death or tinnitus apparently. What would Sagan have thought of what Geordie talks about? Maybe science itself has become unmoored of rational thinking.

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    5. Computer science is a field somewhat isolated from
      the classical sciences: the basic electronic engineering for hardware comes closest. Writing code
      is more of a linguistics technology. People like Gates, Snowden and other numerous examples
      are college dropouts; entrepreneurs that are strongly focused on a narrow niche of the science world. (with a strong business sense). IMO, you throw business into science and rational thinking
      moves to second seat. Apple, for example, embedded
      a little program that if you tried to fix your I5
      phone, it would die..the objective being to magnify their repair division business (there was even a class action suit over it). I don't know about Geordie, he is highly educated, but also a salesman. To turn a phrase, religion and philosophy are useful, but can't cure death or tinnitus apparently. We recall the Bush Admin, and now the
      Trump admin, replacing scientists in EPA, CDC, even
      NASA with political appointments, and Sagan would
      surely point out THAT unmooring of rational thinking. The attraction of the qbit computing is
      not that it gives an answer, but gives a percent
      chance of several answers: great for philosophical
      gambling or code breaking. For example, there may
      be a 10% chance I have a clue what I'm talking about. :)

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    6. Geordie Rose, a co-founder of D-Wave Quantum Computing is over the average person's head. He's a strong believer in the multiverse and claims quantum computers can get resources from parallel universes. He also believes the Singularity is coming in maybe a little over ten years from now when ai robots will outpace us in everything. I still have a job though.

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    7. Geordie is a salesman of Trump-like ego, with an
      idea to make a breakthrough. But there is still
      much controversy about the practicality
      of D-Wave. BTW, if you read that entire mind boggling article, there are a few math expressions
      between paragraphs. I got interested in the equation Square root (x+15) + square root (x) = 15.
      My three quarters of a century old brain did it in my head (ans = 7.5) with out D-wave, classical computer, slide rule or pen and paper). Nor did
      my gray noggin require the quantmbit 15 millikelvin
      operating temperature. (-459.668 Fahrenheit for us
      pre-singularity Neanderthals). Its all good.
      I think.

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    8. The ego does shine through. One way to look at it at least they made something. From that more progress can be made. Better than saying and theorizing quantum computers may be here twenty years hence when z is an old man. If not fully quantum 10 or 15 mil seems alot to ask for a d-wave. In his sales talk Rose made it sound like you can access parallel universes, focused on that alot imo. As I said at least he put something out there. Better than quantum eggheads theorizing ya know?

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    9. Geordie reminds me a bit of the eccentric, but
      brilliant Seymour Cray . There is a museum in his little hometown with a couple of his old supercomputers which he worked on in the 1960s. I was in HS and Z-Man, Jobs and Gates weren't here, but possibly in some other universe; and computers were just making the crossover from vacuum tubes to the newly invented silicon chip. The guy had a business on the bank of the Chippewa River right about where I almost drowned when our canoe went over a pipeline construction under the river. It was near midnight
      and the river at floodstage, a poor choice which I
      never repeated BTW). His home perched on a rock bluff above the Little Falls of the Eau Claire River, which I often traversed much more easily.
      My experience with the Cray computer derived from
      my dealing with NASA-Lewis in 1984, when their
      complex thermodynamic explosives program had been
      converted to work on a jazzed up Dell with extra
      math coprocessors. The Cray s-computer at NASA ran a program in a minute, the Dell took about half an
      hour. Even at that late date, data was spooled out
      on an 18 in. wide mechanical printer. Almost makes me a witness to history. Next week a B-24 Liberator,
      a B-25 Mitchell and a P-51 Mustang are here at the airport. I was just a tyke when they ruled the skies. This afternoon the P-51 came in over the house and I hollered at the Mrs. "Damn, did I just hear a 12 cylinder Rolls-Rice Merlin scream over?"
      She says "Nah, just an airplane'. The tales of the
      old guy, ya know?

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    10. I think he's a doer and not a talker. Put something out there. Get the ball rolling. Beat the Chinese. Looks like a time machine.

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  14. Autonomous vehicles- if they get caught on a traffic cam,
    who do they charge? Would they eliminate road rage? What
    radio station would they like? Do their many video cameras
    store trip views..eg. if THEY saw a Sasquatch, it would have to be believed. Dunno, riding when my wife drives is
    nerve wracking enough..

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    1. Rinspeed even has an underwater car for all you James Bond wannabes. A toy for the idle rich. Has Rob Lowe uploaded any footage to YT yet?

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  15. Ever say good morning like to someone at work and they walk right past you? Happens fairly often. I feel like the guy in Sixth Sense. Am I dead?

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    1. Heard on local TV last month that there was a phone scam going on: the caller would ask innocent sales questions and record a person's voice saying "yes".
      Then record it and later patch the voice into an
      illegal deal 'you agree then that the bathtub will
      cost you $1500 and your payment will be made this week?" "yes". Made me wary, so next call I got
      the guy says "Am I speaking to BB?" "uh ha". "what?"
      "uh ha". "uh ha?" "uh ha is correct". Long curious pause, "sir, you are ineligible." "uh ha, goodby".
      Odd phonecalls- one time a young woman called and said "you were wonderful last night". I said "was not" "good bye". There is a murky audio version of
      twitter out there.

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  16. My computer is acting up again, hence why I'm not around. I think the fan is not working and it's going into repeated thermal shutdowns. I would like a new computer but will I lose all my iTunes stuff if I go to a new one? Not sure about the answer to that so I continue to tolerate this one...

    Almost done with my 8 volume series. I am so disillusioned with Christianity but I'm being edified on the Reformation.

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    1. You really plowed through them. You must be a fast reader.

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  17. "I would like a new computer but will I lose all my iTunes stuff if I go to a new one? Not sure about the answer to that so I continue to tolerate this one..."

    Unless you've got it all backed up to your iTunes Cloud account or a secondary copy on another source, you'd lose whatever is on your computer unless you explore a recovery option.

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  18. Thanks, Chris. The fan seems to be working at the moment but I have the computer propped up to enhance airflow anyway. I have one of those usb plug in fans that go underneath but it doesn't work.

    Z, you talked about quantum internet. I don't know..I live more than 18000 feet from the closest switching station, so I guess that means that even when you've got D wave internet I will still have 512. Welcome to the world of buffering.

    How do you feel about silicone bakeware? I just bought 2 small bundt pans that I am fixing to try out today but just a little nervous about the result.

    Have they impeached Trump yet? My fasting from news is still going on. I did see that NK has a missle that can reach Alaska. Are we going to go to war?

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    1. There are various opinions about silicon bakeware and
      numerous pros and cons . My wife bought some but never even tried it. It is chemically inert and safe. I used to use
      silicon molds for forming models for n scale train
      stuff and found it very flexible for mold release.
      Computer data: I'm on my fifth PC. Each time I get
      a new one, I go to a place called 'Computer Guy' and
      they run the contents of to a device and put it all on the new one. Some stuff goes back to 1998.

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    2. You don't wanna spring 10-15 mil for a d-wave? It's quite big. I don't know where'd you put it.

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    3. I've never tried silicone bakeware. Then again I'm more into cooking than baking.

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  19. If you can get the computer to stay powered on long enough to access the files (music, photos, documents...). It would be a good idea to get them copied onto an external hard drive.

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  20. Will be off the grid a couple weeks. Motoring through MT,
    WY, NE and KS, counting antelope, watching trains, surviving
    on fast food and visiting with middle girl a few days. Further than NYC-Miami, Raleigh-Dallas or Mpls-New Orleans
    with about 1% of the traffic.

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  21. Avoid the Virginia Bigfoot.

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  22. I've never seen an antelope. Do you have regular deer too?

    Reading all day off one of Chris' FB postings about the Tridentine Mass, going one link to another and I realized how much I've learned from this book. Best 99 cent I ever spent. It almost makes me want to see if I could get a degree in religious studies on the internet (like a real degree). On the other hand what I really should be reading is Bhagavatam so maybe that should suffice.

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  23. Just the other morning there was a deer in the backyard munching on the weeds. I took pictures and videos. Deer in Yonkers.

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  24. "Reading all day off one of Chris' FB postings about the Tridentine Mass"

    Which one was that?

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    1. There was one prefaced with 'ten years to the day'. I just went link to link for a couple of hours all over Wikipedia. It was good.

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    2. Ah yes the 10th anniversary of Summorum Pontificum which re-established the Tridentine Mass in its legal right. It also lifted the excommunications following the 1988 ordinations by Lefebvre.

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  25. When I lived in Putnam County there were maybe 20K people there. Now I see the census is over 100K. The deer are in Yonkers because there's no room for them anymore in Kent.

    At my mother's house (Kure Beach NC) there's a deer problem. She lives on an island and there's a state park there so the deer have somewhat of a habitat but since there's no hunting they have an overpopulation situation. The park rangers tranquilize them and bring them elsewhere. Meanwhile they continue to eat her roses.

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  26. Last I checked Hastings on the Hudson had a birth control program for deer but I really don't know how that went. You still see herds grazing along the Saw Mill.

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  27. I hope BB didn't get caught by the Sasquatch.

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  28. Disbelievers are the most vulnerable.

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  29. Hey! When I start a comment the words disappear after about a few seconds. Whassup mit dat?

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  30. No Sasquatch pics? We were beginning to worry.

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  31. Your sited still only allows me to type about a line and a half before autodeleting me. What is the deal?

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  32. Tridentine Latin Mass-
    While in Topeka, I stayed on the deck and read a book while my wife and daughter went craft shopping. They said they were going to eat lunch and bring me a burger from Freddy's. One of those rare instances, while they were at Freddy's, a mother and two pre teen boys approaced and asked,
    “Are your Joann?”. It turned out that she was my nephew's wife; he was teaching summer school
    in Wisconsin and she was visiting her parent's home in rural Kansas. The couple had met on the internet, both being Latin Mass types. She was from Lousiana, but her family had moved to be near the church they preferred. They were married in Latin at a Latin Catholic church in Rockford, Illinois.
    My nephew was always a a black and white thinker, which extended to religion. But he got into discussions with priests and found that they felt persecuted over the pederasty investigations, believing still in the medieval thinking that a priest is immune from secular law; and apparently pederasty is
    theologically a minor sin in their view. He abruptly left religion, although the wife and kids still attend all the daily Latin Masses, etc. IMO, the appreciation of the Latin liturgy is a personal one, based on
    tradition. Afterall, the mass was Latin for a couple of millenia. Pragmatically, the language seems immaterial, God in his infinite wisdom being comfortable with the Aramaic of Jesus, the Hebrew of
    the Jews, the well written Latin of the Church Fathers, Wycliffe's late medieval English, King James somewhat later English and even the crude English in the modern translations. We ponder the biblical 'many tongues' verse. Language and codewise, I am copying and pasting this from a text editor in an
    attempt to get more than a dozen words in the to comment box.

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    1. I've never been to a traditional Latin Mass but I'm sure it's a beautiful thing.

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    2. If you have a spare hour, there are many of them on
      youtube

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    3. I thought of that and may check out a couple.

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    4. They say it's the most beautiful thing this side of Heaven. It's very solemn and serene. It's 180 degrees from anything else in my life which is one of the reasons I enjoy it. Novus Ordo Masses seem so stale to me. Like a community rec center or a doctor's waiting area.

      This is a good video > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enWiFcsBqIE&t=1683s

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  33. Smartphones-
    Friends of my wife from church left for a Minneapolis trip yesterday. Our airport has a huge free
    parking area, but my wife drove them over to the AP and will pick them up in 10 days. I just got in from mowing the lawn, and the lady calls from the airport: “I left my smartphone at home. I must have it. It is my brains, ya know? All my contacts, my schedule, my life.” “Yeah?” Can you get it for me?
    The code for the garage is xxxx. Press it. When it blinks 3 times press yyyy and the garage will open.
    There is a house key in the freezer. The phone and charger are on the kitchen table. Our plane leaves in 48 minutes.” “OK, that is a close trip. If I can't break in, we will first day mail the thing.” “Oh you
    must try. I can't live without my smartphone for a minute longer.

    The 2000 Dodge ¾ ton 5 speed and I tore across town, down the Gun Club road that hangs on the cliff
    over Lidsey Creek, dodging dump trucks, across the creek and back up the twisty road to Cougar Ridge. Found the house in the fancy development there, hunted for the control box (trying not to look
    like a burglar) got the thing to open and found three freezers. Hunted among frozen food, found a
    refrig full of beer (checked all the brands) and finally located the frozen house key in the top shelf of
    freezer #3. House was all dark. Found and turned on the lights, grabbed the &%$#* snartphone and
    spent a minute figuring out how to make their garage door go down. Time was running out, so I figured I could get back on the crummy route and run about 5 miles over the speed limit and push the
    orange lights in the higher part of town.

    Found a parking spot and semi-ran (top speed at my advanced age) into the airport. Two feeder flight
    leaving, passengers going this way and that. The smartphone lady was hidden away past the TSA station, so dashed to the front of the Delta check-in waving the &^%$#@ smartphone and caught the
    attention of a Delta supervisor. Explained the situation. She dashed back through the office area and
    said I should fight to the head of the checkout and give it to the TSA agent, who was talking already
    with the Delta supervisor. He grabbed the phone and said he would run it throug the scanner. She got
    the phone as the plane was loading. The smartphone dash took me 36 minutes (and I could have been
    puffing my pipe loafing). I'm thinking the rescue mission could only have been done in a small town.
    I'm also thinking that as we approach the singularity, the forgetful lady in a couple of years could just
    'beam' the *&$^ phone from her kitchen to the Delta Jet. My life is simpler: My phone is dumb and I keep my watch adjustment insttructions on a tiny slip of paper in my billfold, ya know?

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  34. Hey gang. You should have heard the story by now. White 40yr old Australian woman in pajamas shot and killed by city's [Minneapolis] first Somali police officer who joined the force in 2015.

    Ya best start a new thread Z cuz this one is gonna get hot hot hot.

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  35. Vacation Sasquatch Report-
    Didn't roam too far into the wilderness. A few antelope, a moose, some buffalo and a red fox.
    Closest thing to sasquatch was a hirsute guy wearing a hardhat directing traffic at a road construction bypass. Coolest thing for a train guy like me was finding a retired Union Pacific engineer who explained how far locomotive crews went in each direction from the world's largest railroad yard in North Platte, NE. Worst thing was a sudden onset of traverler's gut after gorging at a Whiskey Creek cafe in Wyoming. There's no place like home.

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  36. Sean Spicer finally resigned as WH Press Sec'y. BTW I just got a call from Washington DC on my cell phone before. I get a lot of spam and stuff on my cell but that one stood out.

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  37. BB I'm glad you're back, glad the Sasquatch didn't get you and hope you're feeling better.

    Spicer... Melissa McCarthy will have nothing to do now. Seriously I don't think that could have been an easy job he had given the chaos in the WH. Who could put up with that circus? Anyway he will probably land a gig with Fox News and make more money than he was getting. I keep feeling like every day we're closer to that magical impeachment thing. Did I hear right that Trump is looking into the legality of giving himself a presidential pardon? Are we truly in the Twilight Zone?

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  38. McCain has gioblastoma. One of the very few Senators admired by both GOP and Dems. Probably president except for
    Sarah Palin.

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  39. I'm sorry about McCain. I didn't want him to be president but he always had my respect. More so since Trump's been in office; he's never backed down from going against the WH.

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  40. On Aug. 21 at exactly 11:33AM Snake River Valley, Idaho will be in the path of totality of the upcoming total solar eclipse you lucky SOB! Hope it's a fair weather day.

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  41. We are to the north of the line of totality, giving us a .96 totality. With the jogs in the time zone,
    our maximum is about 10:20, the entire affair lasting about two hours. Given our 4 straight weeks
    of hot sunshine, potential cloud cover seems minimal. In fact, it may be the only shade we get this summer. Tiny towns to our south in the 1=total path, have reservations for up to 20,000 start gazing
    aficionados, but only room for about 500. They expect traffic chaos, campers galore and have contacts the office of Emergency Management for help. Your best bet out this way for view and lack of crowds
    would be in the snow atop the Tetons, or in the alkali flats of South Pass in Wyoming. For us, the last
    time we had midnight in the middle of the day was when the huge dust cloud from Mt. St. Helens eruption enveloped us. It rained dust and we still have some mason jars full. Is this a astromomical
    phenomenon, or some sort of New Age Message?

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  42. I thought eclipses were harbingers of doom. It would appear that if this is the case, it's about six months late.

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  43. Replies
    1. www.theverge.com/tldr/2017/7/17/15986042/dc-security-robot-k5-falls-into-water

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  44. Those K5 security robots rent for only $7/hr; if they can avoid drowning, they are more efficient than
    a human security guard. Maybe if the K5 received a transplant swim motion electronic module
    and a pair of arms, it could avoid drowning?

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  45. So Trump wants to be on Mount Rushmore? And John McCain comes in from brain cancer and votes to take away healthcare from millions of people?

    Maybe that eclipse is right on time.

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    1. I don't say this to be mean to McCain but I've long felt he should retire by now.

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    2. Trump on Rushmore? More like in a lineup photo in the Bronx vice squad.

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  46. Never know how McCain is going to vote. He is his own man. After Trump's 'POW's are losers'
    statements, McCain owes him didly squat, so why he would vote against his constituents (or why
    the rest of the Gopers would), who knows? As for Trump being born in Leningrad-that's just another rumor. :)

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    Replies
    1. So maybe he should hang up the gloves at this point no?

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  47. That's the way it was in the olde days BB in Washington and Jefferson's time. It wasn't considered a lifetime career with all its perks the way it is today. Back in the day you'd serve your terms and go back to pig farming or harvesting wheat or whatever.

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  48. We went to a wonderful program in Colonial Williamsburg with the four presidents from Mt. Rushmore. They introduced themselves, gave an overview of their time in office and then took questions from the audience. It was really great but one thing I remember about Washington especially was that he was actually really reluctant to be in office. It was an onerous duty and he said he was much happier once he was able to get back to his land. Jefferson was much more standoffish but he did say a few things about the separation of church and state and said he didn't care what a man believes as it neither picks his pocket nor breaks his leg. My favorite was Roosevelt, he was quite bumptious but he did so many great things, one of the things he focused on was civic duty and service. Scott's favorite was Lincoln. He seemed to be quite melancholy and really under the burdens that he faced in office. It was an awesome program, a special one for the election year.

    I have gotten to the point where I just read the headlines anymore. I did read that the military has said no one's being kicked out just yet thank you very much and until such a directive comes down we will continue to treat all personnel with respect. I hope that business goes straight to the courts.

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    Replies
    1. Oh it most certainly will just like the travel ban.

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  49. Busy. Needed a new radiator for the car. Time to shop for a new one. The work grind, the vet, other things. Things like that but I do check in.

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  50. Meanwhile Scaramucci is out after 11 days. Apparently his rant wasn't befitting the office. This is kind of the quintessence of hypocrisy coming from the WH. Scott swears Trump is just looking for a way out and will do pretty much anything at this point to make that happen. I don't know but I hope he's right. I see the Democrats are finally going to take a real shot at putting forth single payer and that they're willing to work with the GOP on tax reform as long as it isn't just a fancy name for giving the rich a break. Like I said I just read the headlines. I'm finding that it helps my anxiety level.

    Lately I've been working on my spiritual life. I get up at 250 AM and chant ten rounds before it's time to leave for work. In the car I listen to lectures and I read Bhagavatam before I go to bed. Scott is feeling like I'm a bit of a fanatic, I think, but I am finally getting to a point where I'm doing most of what I'm supposed to be doing. At any rate I feel good about it so I'm keeping up on it.

    Speaking of this, I have a Catholic question. I don't ever remember being taught where we are before we're born. So have you got an answer for that one? This really came up for me as a result of some lectures I've been listening to but I honestly don't remember it ever being addressed by the Church. I'm sure they have some answer somewhere, I'd just like to know what it is.

    BB, are you ready for the eclipse? I bought some glasses. We aren't in the path of totality but I'd like to see what I can. Somehow I ended up with the day off so I'll be able to get to see it.

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  51. Origen wrote that the soul preceded birth based on his biblical sholarship. Other Church Fathers disagreed (based on their biblical scholarship). For Catholics, and most Christian denominations,
    the issue was settled at the 2nd Council of Constantinople: the soul is born at the minute of conception.
    Islam teaches that all souls are immortal and were created at the same time as Adam. Mormons also
    believed in a pre-mortal 'imortal spirit', a person's soul existing far prior to birth and far after death.
    Congruently, they believe that Jesus is therefore the 'older brother' of believers. Agnosics ponder what,
    precisely, is the soul...was Hitler's maybe defective, and/or at the time of death the mitochondria cease
    their energy production, organs fail and the body dies. At what point in the process does the soul leave and where does it proceed? ..or, like all other forms of life, do we just die? Primitive peoples assigned spirits to all sorts of things and were particularly worried about the lingering spirits of the dead. Hence ancestor worship. Profound questions, lots of answers depending.

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  52. I don't have a ready answer right now Saty. On another topic traditional Catholics are very suspicious of ghosts. If your dearly departed Uncle Ted stops by in your living room to say hi I'm alright the trad-Catholics say it's the Devil but I don't get the point.

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  53. When I think of the eclipse, that song 'Total Eclipse of The Sun' from the movie 'Little Shop of Horrors'
    always comes to mind. As we recall, during that eclipse, an alien blood sucking plant appeared when the sun did. Our newspaper is providing eclipse glasses in the Aug 17 issue. My wife called an eye
    doctor and enquired if they were available for sale. He replied “what eclipse?” Given the age old
    superstition about the sun getting blocked by the moon, I may utter a few incantations and sacrifice a
    Big Mac and Fries during the event.

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  54. Thanks for the clarification BB. There's always something more for me to think about.

    We're putting (he's installing) a laminate floor in our bedroom this weekend. He's never done it before so I'm a bit nervous.

    I read bits of Trump's phone conversations. You really have to wonder what other governments think of us now.

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  55. Replies
    1. They say laminate flooring is DIY ready. Are you tearing out old flooring first, or laying laminated
      atop the old floor? 'Not going well'- sounds like my projects.

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