PUTIN & POLITICS

(From an e-mail sent to friends 6/17/17.)

There has recently been a SUGGESTION that Russia may have tried to mess with the actual vote-tallies in the 2016 Presidential Election!  That would be reprehensible and actionable, in my opinion, if true.  It transcends the issue of “stupid people” being manipulated by ALLEGED Russian meddling with e-mails and other media.  Hillary Clinton DID write and send those surreptitiously disclosed e-mails, though!  Vladimir Putin did not invent those!

However, I am still skeptical of anything coming out of the American Security State.  I think most of our Fearless Leaders in BOTH parties are spoiling to revive the “Cold War."  President Trump has done some seriously stupid stuff lately, but he’s not alone.  America really NEEDS a villain, just like Christianity NEEDS the Devil!  We must have a boogeyman to hate and to dump on and, since the “queers” are now off-limits, and the Muslims are slowly fading, that leaves China, Russia and North Korea, the titans of our precious “Domino Theory.”  Welcome back, Kotter!

This past week I watched all 4 nights of interviews with Vladimir Putin by Oliver Stone on “Showtime.”  I am certainly not ready to become a Putin cheerleader.  He is probably VERY ruthless, but I have no doubt that being President of Russia is a much harder job than being President of the US.  Some autocracy is not excusable, but it is understandable.

I DO think Putin is very wise and very accomplished.  He does not seem to traffic in petty nonsense at all.  He is a black belt in judo and in another self-defense skill AND he plays competitive team ice hockey (w/SKATES!!!) on a regular basis!  He is as “focused” as anyone I have ever watched!  He seems to regard most of our obsessions and declarations as utter silliness.  I have no doubt he was playing to the American audience, however.  I don’t know if he is “truthful,” but I have no reason to trust his version of things any less than the usual bullshit coming from the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, etc.  They are KNOWN liars!  Why do Americans so easily forget?  EVEN IF they are telling the truth THIS TIME, their warnings and conclusions are impaired by their past dishonesty, manipulations and even assassinations.  I trust Edward Snowden and Julian Assange (who denies that the Russian government was the source for the Wikileaks-published e-mails) a lot more than I trust the American Security State!

Most Americans have a two-dimensional view of most foreign nations and peoples.  We cannot seem to comprehend their complexities as being as convoluted as our own, but they are.  I learned this first-hand during my travels in China back in 1987, which was the ideal time to be there, being between the “Gang of Four” and "Tiananmen.”  It was an extraordinary experience, as I traveled up and down the east coast of China, from Hong Kong to Guangzhou to Shanghai to Beijing and back, by train, alone, in the winter of 1987.  I tried to pay attention during that extraordinary experience.

That warped view of the “other” that so afflicts most Americans is seriously damaging to our level of global awareness and sophistication.  We are mostly abject fools and don’t know any better.  The recent expansion of NATO is a case in point: NATO SHOULD have been disbanded when the Berlin Wall came down, but instead it has been thrust right up against Russia’s borders.  That was a stupidly arrogant provocation so easily avoided with a shred of common sense!  But, NATO is really Big Business for defense contractors!

The perfect metaphor for the Usual Suspects fabricating US foreign and military policies is Lucy van Pelt in “Peanuts,” when every fall she wheedles Charlie Brown to trust her JUST ONE MORE TIME to hold the football so he can kick it.  Then, of course, she jerks it away just as Charlie runs up to kick the ball and winds up on his back instead!    General Motors periodically declares that it has learned from its past mistakes building total crap on 4 wheels and that we can trust it THIS TIME to make good cars, which it mostly STILL does not do (see Consumer Reports' evaluations).  Likewise, the American Security State, knowing that its deplorable record is now common knowledge, implores us to trust it JUST ONE MORE TIME when it tells us that Russia, etc. is messing with us.  Right.  The journalists and politicians may be willing to suck on that lollipop, but not I.  Not yet, anyway.

I am thinking more and more that there may be no constitutional authority for the federal government to keep “secrets” from the taxpayers in peacetime, exc. as related to potential war strategies and armaments specs.  I don’t see it enunciated anywhere in the Constitution, and I think the 10th Amendment plainly prohibits “implied” powers.  I believe the American Security State expends most of its energy and money trying to manipulate alleged allies to give knee-jerk support for our business-focused global policies instead of protecting us from “terrorists.”

And now, with Donald Trump at the helm, it is bound to get much worse.  It seems he’s even got the American Security State itself worried!

GOLDEN RATIO & SQUARES

(E-mail to a friend 6/17/17.  Updated 2/7/18.)

I have been reading a lot, lately, about the Golden Ratio (ϕ = 1.618) and the Fibonacci Series which, as you know, is manifest in nature in many ways.

My friend, Bill Atalay, has published (several years ago) Math And The Mona Lisa about the use of mathematical proportion by Leonardo da Vinci, etc.  Bill is a professor of physics at Mary Washington, U.Va. and Princeton.  I may have already mentioned him.  I recall that I did so.  He goes into extensive detail about da Vinci’s use of the Golden Ratio and related factors.  He discusses the Great Pyramid as a manifestation of the Golden Ratio, which may be why I mentioned it to you earlier.

He references a stained-glass window (with photo) at the UN by Marc Chagall, which has 5 square panes x 8 square panes, a manifestation of two numbers in the Fibonacci Series, which mathematically invokes the Golden Ratio.  I have taken it upon myself to graph the expanding projection of the Series in a “logarithmic spiral” on graph paper, proceeding in successive squares and starting at 1-1-2-3-5-8-13-21-34-55-89-144, etc., making a right-angle turn at each break.  I ran out of space at “55” but it continues, of course, into infinity.

ANYWAY, as each number increments, it does so by adding an exact SQUARE of the long side of the preceding rectangle, such that the two side-by-side ones add a 2 x 2 square adjacent, then a 3 x 3 square is added to the long side of the (2 + 1 =) 3 x 2 rectangle, then a 5 x 5 square is added to the long side of the (3 + 2 =) 5 x 3 rectangle, then a 8 x 8 square is added to the long side of the (5 + 3 +) 8 x 5 rectangle, etc.  If one assigns an arbitrary value of “1” (1 x 1) to any square added, then the preceding rectangle that itself already measures as a Golden Rectangle is 0.618 of the square, 1/ϕ, being the mathematical inverse of ϕ!  Then that prior Golden Rectangle added to the new square becomes it’s own Golden Rectangle which is then 0.618 of the next larger square added, etc.!!  Therefore, each manifest Golden Rectangle is 1.618 of the preceding rectangle (1.0 + 0.618)!

THIS IS SIGNIFICANT and explains why (I believe) the Golden Ratio is manifest in nature!  Consider that a plant, a chambered nautilus, whatever, is going to grow LARGER by adding more tissue to its existing size, and it will do so more “efficiently” if added to the larger "side" of the existing tissue.  It might also be confined by the allowed physical space (like the nautilus shell), so it is forced to "spiral" out to the side again and again as it grows.  Now, the new growth produces a “SQUARE” of sorts because the new tissue has spread out more or less equally in all directions, and that is basically what a “square” is—it is spread out from side to side and end to end equally, and that "spread" will arguably be defined in scope by the size of the existing tissue from which it emanates.  Perhaps the existing long side of the prior rectangle serves as sort of a “brake” to tell the organism to stop growing for that particular sequence once it reaches the full-spread “square” equivalency.  I don’t know if this explains WHY it grows that way, but that is what I imagined.

I took my graph of the squared-off “spiral” and colored the succeeding squares added in different colors to readily show how it accretes size in such a maneuver.

SHUT THE F*** UP!

(Published in the Richmond [Va.] Times-Dispatch 6/14/17, “Flag Day,” inexplicably without the last sentence!)

Dear Editor:

I have concluded that there is WAY too much attention being paid to the many peccadilloes of Donald Trump, and that we should ALL just shut up about him.  He is NOT going to change nor reform.

I agree with Trevor Noah of “The Daily Show” that there is so much silly stuff coming from Donald Trump that a whiplash injury may well result from jerking one’s head back and forth trying to comprehend all the absurd words and deeds of Donald Trump.

I propose that a 30-day period of self-imposed total silence about Trump be observed from June 20 to July 20.  He may well be unable to bear the burden of being utterly ignored and thus have a meltdown!  We owe ourselves at least THAT much!

I hereby express my gratitude in advance to those who refrain from pointing out that I have already violated my own suggestion!