FREETHINKER'S HOLIDAY "GRACE"

Just before Christmas of 2018, I had the pleasure of having dinner with some folks I have been seeing at that time of the year for a long time.  It was a convivial and happy time, per usual.

Prior to the serving of dinner, a grace was delivered by one of those present, most of whom are deeply and sincerely religious.  I hope I am properly respectful, but I am not religious.

Nevertheless, I thought the giving of thanks was most appropriate, so I decided to create my own Freethinker’s Holiday "Grace” to adequately (I hope) embrace the spirit of the Season without any particular “encumbrances.”

Feel free to use any part of it you wish.

FREETHINKER’S HOLIDAY “GRACE”

(12/24/18)

LET US BE THANKFUL for the company of our loved ones and friends with whom we are so fortunate to spend this evening;

LET US BE THANKFUL for their unconditional love and affection for us, and for our ability and readiness to return it in kind;

LET US BE THANKFUL for the wonderful food that we are about to eat and for those who worked so hard to buy it, prepare it, cook it and serve it to us;

LET US BE THANKFUL that we do not have to suffer the hunger and deprivation and poverty and hatred and danger that afflict so many others around the globe;

LET US BE THANKFUL that we will always be mindful of those afflictions and do whatever we can to alleviate them;

LET US BE THANKFUL that we have the freedom to express our thoughts and opinions without fear of pain or government sanction, even if others are thus annoyed—let us also be thankful for the wisdom to know when to keep our mouths shut;

LET US BE THANKFUL that we have the freedom to express these thanks to and in the name of any who may be thus invoked.

AMEN.

SINE WAVES (Amended)

For years I have struggled to understand WHY the so-called analog "sine" wave (the wiggly up and down wavy line stretching from left to right) is thus called, since the "sine" of any given angle (ϕ) is the quotient of the vertical altitude of that angle divided by the hypotenuse of that angle, where "x" is the horizontal axis and "y" is the vertical axis measured from the vertex of the angle to the tip of the hypotenuse, projected over and down to those y and x axes, respectively, in perpendicular fashion, thus forming right triangles where those angular components meet the axes.

wikipedia.org has a very interesting and thorough explanation of the related mathematics:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sine_wave

Wikipedia says (in part):

A sine wave or sinusoid is a mathematical curve that describes a smooth periodic oscillation. A sine wave is a continuous wave. It is named after the function sine, of which it is the graph. It occurs often in pure and applied mathematics, as well as physics, engineering, signal processing and many other fields.

As I thought and thought about it, I picked up a Slinky spring toy and stretched it out between my hands and, viewed from the side, it looked like the proverbial sine wave!  Then I looked at the tubular end of the Slinky and realized that the angle of a radius projected from the center point of the Slinky "circle" thus seen as that radius sweeps around that circle is, in fact, the HYPOTENUSE of every right triangle thus formed at the vertex of the center of the circle by those y and x axes!

Consider that a perfectly vertical diameter projected from the lowest point to the highest point of the circle is arbitrarily labeled the "x" axis, and a similar perfectly horizontal diameter projected from the extreme left to the extreme right is arbitrarily labeled the "y" axis.  They cross each other in the middle at the center point of the circle, which is also the vertex of any right triangle formed therein.  The radial “hypotenuse” of those right triangles is thus 1/2 of that diameter.  As the radius sweeps around the spiral of the Slinky, it must slide along the imaginary midline (as viewed from the side) that is aligned with the center point of the circle, such that the radius must always be perpendicular to that imaginary midline.  When the radius is pointed to the extreme top or bottom when viewed from the tubular end, it just happens to correspond to the maximum altitude of the "sine" wave at the upper or lower peaks of the wave when viewed from the side.

See the diagrams at the above Wikipedia cite for a fuller understanding.  I was unable to copy that image into this document.  Disregard the equations shown.  Click on the black arrow for animation.

SO, the radius/hypotenuse (shown blue in the diagram) may be thus quantified as the maximum altitude of such a sine wave!

As that radius sweeps around the circle as viewed from the end, the tip of it must spiral along the stretched-out Slinky as that radius also slides along the imaginary centerline, remaining perpendicular thereto.  When viewed from the circular end, that radius/hypotenuse will project an imaginary right triangle that has a vertical "x" component and a horizontal "y" component (shown as red on the diagram).  So "sin ϕ" IS the height (or depth) of the "x" component at any point on the circle divided by that radial hypotenuse.

And, when viewed from the side of the Slinky, that "x" component will rise and fall with the sine wave as it curves up and down along and across the imaginary midline.  THEREFORE, each point along the sine curve is, in fact, determined by dividing the height of the sine wave at any such point by the maximum altitude representing the quantity of the radius of the circle!

Note also that the gradually curving slope of the wave is due to the fact that each of the "sines" calculating the relative height of the wave (being the same for all waves, regardless of wavelength) are equally spaced in time as for each frequency, such that the points at the top of the wave are shallower then grow longer the closer the spinning "radius" comes to the fully horizontal "zero" point, either at "9 o'clock" or "3 o'clock."

AND, in reversing that calculation, multiplying the maximum altitude of any given sine wave by the variable range of sine factors will yield the respective heights of given points along any sine wave!  It's the same calculation for all such waves, regardless of the number of points plotted.  The slope (steepness) of a given sine wave (and its resultant wavelength from altitude to altitude) are a "horizontal" factor possibly determined by how fast the internal "radius" spins as it slides along the imaginary centerline.  I am guessing the radial "slide" moves forward at the rather constant speed of the relevant energy, being the speed of sound for sound waves or the speed of light for electromagnetic waves.  I suspect the spin of the "radius," therefore, determines the frequency of the wave pulses, the wavelength, and the steepness of the sine wave slope!

So, there is, necessarily, a three-dimensional aspect to understanding WHY the "sine" wave is thus called, because all the points along the wavy line are, in fact, determined by the sine ratios (being fractional quantities between zero (perfectly flat) and one (perfectly vertical)) of the height of those points along the wave above or below that midline with reference to the maximum altitude of the wave already quantified!

Now the reader hereof may wonder, "So what?"  I cannot create an actual desire to know this factoid (?) as I have figured it out, but it was bugging me, so I just fiddled with the Slinky until I figured it out!

November 18, 2018

Amended July 27, 2019
(Added the animated three-dimensional image of a "sine" wave above; from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sine_wave)

SENIOR MOMENTS

1—Longevity is WAY overrated!

2—The reason getting old is called the "Golden Years" is because that is the color of our underwear!  And also our pill bottles!

3—My heart used to skip a beat and go pitter-patter whenever I'd see a good-looking woman; now it's just atrial fibrillation!

4—I used to get my Second Wind at 9 PM--now I’m just breaking wind at 9 PM!

5—I quit buying Viagra because there’s just no point.

6—What’s with all the “smartphones”?  Why would people want a phone smarter than they are?  I’d be afraid I’d step out into the street and not notice the smart-car about to whack me!

7— People all just sit around in restaurants and bars wiping their phone screens with their fingers, oblivious to everything and everyone else around them!  Should those using smartphones while ignoring dinner companions be considered dumb-asses?

8—I was quite the dancer in my younger days, juking around to rock ’n’ roll.  Now my rocking and rolling are done in chairs!  Someone asked me recently if I could still “get down.”  Of course I can still “get down,” but getting up is now a serious problem!

9—I can now listen to all the loud music I want without bugging my parents!  In fact, it’s a necessity!

10—One may as well get to bed by 10 PM because the body is gonna wake up at 6 AM no matter what time one goes to bed!

11—I used to love going to fine restaurants and pounding down a big steak for dinner.  Now I just bring 2/3 of it home for later!  I’ve brought home so many “doggie bags” I’m now trying to scratch behind my ears with my feet and am howling at the moon!

12—I used to have longer hair, but about 30 years ago my hairdresser told me my bald spot would show less if I cut my hair short!

13—Those irregular red diagrams on our arms are not really cool tattoos; they are just “geezer” bruises!

14—I remember pitying the Old Grads celebrating their 50th Reunions at alumni functions, thinking I would NEVER get to be that pathetic; now I are one!

15—The body will surely age and turn to mush, but the brain and the eyes stay 19 FOREVER!

16—I used to love going into bars and restaurants and flirting with all the good-looking waitresses and bartenders; now they all address me as “sir” and ask if I want the “Senior Discount."

17—You know you are getting old when you lust after your friends’ (grand)daughters or your (grand)daughter’s friends.

18—I knew I was gonna get older, but I did not think it would happen so fast!  When I was a kid, I was desperate to become a “grownup.”  Now I am a geezer!  What happened to “grownup"?

19—Back when I was in school, I observed that the trip between Lexington and Richmond was “6 beers and 2 pit-stops long”; now it’s 2 beers and 6 pit-stops long!

20—I get my usual lengthy nap during the day, so don’t need coffee anymore to stay awake.  One may as well get to bed by 10 PM because the body is gonna wake up at 6 AM no matter what time one goes to bed!

21—Drunk driving IS reprehensible and wrong, but I can remember when it was a competitive sport!  The “trigger” BAC was 0.15% back then!!  There were fewer idiots and a lot less traffic on the roads, and cops were often kind enough to just drive someone home.  Most of us geezers are lucky to be alive today, but getting killed on the highways was considered just another acceptable risk, like BB-gunfights and cherry bombs!  “Hey, y’all!  Watch this!”

22—“Light” beer is OK now, but “3.2” beer back in the good ol’ days was nasty!

23—Fear of the contents of one’s “Permanent Record” never goes away!

24—God invented toilet tanks so we’d have a convenient shelf for our pill bottles!

25—God invented khaki pants as a malicious joke.

26—We may be in danger of losing our sense of humor as we age; some of us feel compelled to righteously demonstrate our intellectual superiority by literally responding, in detail, to the gist of mere jokes!

OR

???

26—You know when you are dealing with a “humor-challenged” geezer when he feels compelled to righteously demonstrate his intellectual superiority by lIterally responding, in detail, to the gist of mere jokes!

27--I don't do "stand-up" comedy anymore.  I have to sit down now.  And, it's a bitch to get up onstage with a walker!

MORE TRICKLE-DOWN

Below is a link to the latest graph from Wikipedia, eff. 2017, showing "Real Median Household [gross] Incomes" in the US, from 1985 to 2017.  "Median" differs from "average" because it is the true midpoint: half over/half under.  It is now almost a whopping $62K for all those American slackers out there!  HALF of ALL American households are grossing LESS than that stupendous largesse!

I guess "real" means it's been adjusted to currently inflated dollars for comparison, which means that ACTUAL gross median incomes were lower back then.  I recall that the ACTUAL Gross Median Household Income in 2013 was less than $54K.  See how low it got during/after the Recession in 2008.

Don't let the steep "rise" in median incomes between 2011 and 2017 shown on the graph fool you: the entire scale of that graph is only between $50K and $62K.  Basically "chickenfeed."  I don't know how much larger they have gotten since those wonderful tax cuts last year.  

Recall that the "middle class" INCOME tax cut that Barack Obama lobbied for and signed several years ago was for married couples having joint NET TAXABLE incomes up to $700K, which is about $1 Million GROSS.  He originally proposed his income-tax cut for up to $250K TAXABLE which is at least $300K gross!  "Middle Class," indeed!  I daresay the TRUE "Middle Class" is somewhere between $55K and $70K GROSS.  Back in 2013, 75% of ALL American households were UNDER $100K.

Note also that, ON TOP OF income taxes, ALL the schmucks in the TRUE Middle Class must also pay the FICA (SS) FLAT tax of 6.2%, matched by ALL their employers paying an additional 6.2% (which, of course, indirectly whacks all workers receiving lower wages thereby).  And it is also well to note that FICA, being assessed on ALL GROSS EARNED INCOMES (wages and salaries) up to about $130K (but not over that), winds up whacking the portion of "gross" incomes being withheld and paid over for federal and state INCOME taxes!  AND, because there is no allowable income-tax deduction for FICA taxes withheld, those schmucks also get to pay INCOME taxes on those FICA taxes also withheld!  Neat!  It's like a taxation House of Mirrors!

But the swells do not pay ANY FICA on earned incomes over about $130K NOR on their passive-income dividends, interest or capital gains.  Nor should they, since SS benefits are limited.  However, I can't recall ANYONE ever discussing the adverse impact of the FICA tax bite on the economy when jabbering about how badly INCOME tax cuts are needed to further stimulate all the "Job Creators" out there!  Smells like I stepped into a pile of "trickle-down" now smeared on the bottom of my shoe!

Meanwhile, those Working Stiffs who actually spend about 100% of their shrinking net incomes into local economies get to pay proportionately higher taxes (thus leaving lower net incomes to spend) so that the Filthy Rich can get another INCOME tax cut that they will likely spend overseas on vacations, fine cars, whisky and artworks they can't possibly understand!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States

11/17/18

MY SAYINGS (so far)

MY SAYINGS (so far) 2/4, 17, 4/21/18

On the difference between A-theism and ANTI-theism:

Absence of belief is not the same as belief of absence.

On drinking, drugs, addiction and recovery:

If it were not for my wonderful, dangerous life experiences, I would not be the fucking know-it-all that I am today!

I inhaled—and I like it!

On “majority” rule:

The purest form of “democracy” is a lynch mob, for everyone in attendance agrees on the outcome except for the victim!

On the rancid ubiquity of MBA’s (palindrome):

“Generic Management 101”

A BMW; a rake—EGAD!  A geek!  A raw MBA.

On getting old:

The reason old age is called the “Golden Years” is because that is the color of one’s underwear!

On gay marriage:

If two gay guys get married and call each other “husband,” does that mean they are both WRONG at the same time?

Shouldn’t gays also have to experience the pain and heartbreak of matrimony?

If one objects to gay sex, then he should, nevertheless, strongly promote gay marriage, because we all know that married people don’t have sex!

On evolution:

I get so frustrated with evolution-denying dumb-asses it makes me want to go swim in blue-green algae!

On suicide:

It is really difficult to slit one’s wrists with an electric razor!

On depression:

I get so despondent it makes me just want to go lie down.

On coveting:

The Ten Commandments prohibit coveting thy neighbor’s ass.  Well, my neighbor’s got a cute little ass, but she won’t give me the time of day!

On self-identity:

I’m Wat and you’re not!

On career choices:

Trust me: I’m a lawyer!

On “free speech”:

The First Amendment ensures the “right” to be annoyed by someone else’s utterances.

On the difference between Donald Trump and Godzilla:

One is a huge, ill-tempered reptile with a big tail, small forelegs, orange skin and weird orange scales on its head, and it goes around stomping on helpless people, bellowing and baring its teeth a lot; the other is just a Japanese movie dinosaur.

On scary images:

Considering that all Presidents probably lie is horrifying, like thinking about your grandparents having sex!  You just don’t want to BELIEVE IT!  (Too bad somebody told Donald Trump!  About the lies, not the sex!  Well, that is a horrifying image, too!)

On bestiality:

The Rev. Rick Warren is one of those “Wrong-Wing” hyper-Christians who gave the invocation at Barack Obama’s first Inauguration, and who declares that “gay sex is like sex with animals.”  I have a couple of issues with that: (1) how does he know that? and (2) I really resent it because I AM NOT GAY!

On reproductive choice:

If a male wishes to express his anti-choice opinions about pregnancy and childbirth, he should first be able to extrude a fully-inflated football through his anus!

On outer space:

Black holes suck!

On abuse of power:

Most Democrats employ intrusive govt. to save us from ourselves, while most Re-Pubes employ intrusive govt. to save themselves from the rest of us!

On cutting-edge surgical developments (Johns Hopkins):

Dicks On Ice!  Coming soon at a major transplant center near you!

On buoyancy:

Imagine my surprise to learn that malfunctioning chainsaws and weed-eaters don’t float!

On growing up (Rockwell Kent):

“Doing as one is told” is a great characteristic in a child and a horrible characteristic in an adult!

This year:
May our 20/20 hindsight become our 2020 FOREsight!

Democrats who've lost touch (most current Democrats):

Chardonnay Democrats!

ON THE BUS--OR NOT

The brilliant author Tom Wolfe died May 15, 2018 at age 88.  I have read most of his books.  He was a native of Richmond, Va.  I did not think he was THAT old.  I always regarded him as young and “hip.”  I guess that means I’m pretty old, too!

One of his earliest works is Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, being about the LSD-fueled wild journeys of Ken Kesey and his gang of “Merry Pranksters” in the early 1960’s, back and forth across the US in a psychedelically painted school bus named "Further."  Reading that book moved me to pursue a thorough reading of the published works of Ken Kesey, now dead, whose most well-known book is probably One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, later made into a great movie starring Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher.  I have a photo still from that movie autographed by Jack Nicholson.

In the mid-1990's I went to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC to hear Ken Kesey speak in a presentation sponsored by the Resident Associate Program, of which I was then a member.  Kesey was also rather well-known to most as having been an aggressive experimenter with drugs of all kinds, including psychedelic mushrooms and LSD. However, on the night he was at the Smithsonian, he seemed rather straight and sober.

Prior to the start of his talk, I saw Kesey "meandering" in the lobby of the auditorium where he was to speak. I approached him, and I asked him first if he was, in fact, not "Mr. Kesey," to which he replied he was. I then asked if the Smithsonian had been trying to get him to donate his old bus to them for display.

Kesey said that the folks with whom he had been speaking there had wanted to display the bus, but he said to me, "Y'know, that bus is rusting away in my back yard and is almost completely gone now!" I said that was no surprise to me; then he said (which I knew) that they had shot a lot of 16-millimeter film on those bus rides, and they had a tape recorder patched into the bus's electrical system. Unfortunately, the tape recorder would speed up when the bus engine speeded up, then it would slow down again when the engine slowed down. Kesey said they had been unable to "sync" the film to the tape, but the emerging digitized sound technology was holding out some promise.

(Indeed, subsequent to Kesey's death, his son has managed to produce DVD's of those films with the digitized sound track intact.)

Anyway, Kesey said he had proposed to the Smithsonian officials an idea they were not very warm to--to create a long, narrow theatre with two rows of bus seats therein, with those films projected onto a far wall for viewing by visitors who would be seated in those seats and who might, in some small way, be able to share the experience of "being on the bus."

He then looked at me and said, "Y'know, it was not about the ride; it was about the trip!"

LET THEM EAT CAKE! (Joke)

Regarding MASTERPIECE CAKE SHOP vs. COLORADO; oral arguments were heard in early December of 2017 before the US Supreme Court:

The case concerns the refusal of Jack Phillips, who claims to be a devout Christian, refusing to bake a wedding cake for a gay male couple in Colorado.  The Colorado Civil Rights Commission had held that, as a business, the Shop cannot refuse to DO BUSINESS with anyone pursuant to a prohibited discrimination.  Phillips asserts that his First Amendment right to freedom of religion prevents the Colorado government from forcing him to violate his fundamental moral and religious beliefs.

I have a serious observation about that: I assume that Phillips objects primarily to the manner in which gay men purportedly have sex.  If so, he should hurry to bake the cake and do everything he can to expedite the marriage, because we all know that married people don't have sex!

THE Memo

… or, much ado about nothing.

The text of THE Memo (cobbled together by congressional Republicans) was published in The Richmond Times-Dispatch on Feburary 4, 2018, so I decided to read it a couple of times.  One must get information "from the horse’s mouth” if at all possible.  I must admit that I have not seen any of the classified material that purportedly undergirds the “damning” conclusions in the Memo concerning the recent machinations about the "Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act" (FISA), but I doubt there is any “there” there.  The Memo's “conclusions” are pretty much bootstrap fluff that amount to the same-ol’/same-ol’.  We’ve heard all that blustering crap before.  But for a couple of minor revelations therein concerning "sources and methods," I really don’t understand why the Memo was classified material in the first place!

I must first get something off my chest: most Democrats have really blundered in their response to the Memo.  Their near-hysterical reactions have basically invested the thing with much more significance than to which it is entitled.  I realize they had no way to know in advance what the Memo would say, but they behaved as if it would likely be a serious condemnation of Robert Mueller's "Russia" investigation, James Comey, Rob Rosenstein, et als.  RELAX!  Calm down!  The Memo is utter nonsense.  Democrats, however, seem incapable of playing things “cool.”  They need to take a chill-pill, but I doubt they will.  They seem to think they will achieve political advancement with their self-righteous, histrionic, paw-wringing contortions.

I feel somewhat hypocritical even defending the FBI or Justice Department because I have been seriously concerned about the establishment of the FISA courts and the wanton, gratuitous, routine spying on Americans by the federal Security State.  But the incongruity of REPUBLICANS worrying about government spying is just too much of an incredible provocation for me to resist.  What is WRONG with that picture?  Not that Democrats are rushing to defend our rights against such stuff.  They have carefully avoided expressing any concerns about government spying, also.  They seem to be buttressing the work of the Security State!  So, I don’t trust Democrats any more than I trust Republicans.  Neither group is committed to protecting us from wanton government snooping.

The document that I read in no way presents anything credible along the lines of what Donald Trump and many others have said about it.  It is certainly no exposé of anything significant, and it does not validate any hostility toward the FBI or the Justice Department nor any of the prominent persons thereabout.  Carter Page is the central figure in the Memo.  He is identified in the Memo as a “volunteer advisor to the Trump presidential campaign” that did not get cranked up until 2016, so it is curious that the Trump campaign engaged Page AFTER he had been under  close investigation for his machinations with the Russian government since 2011!  The Memo takes up as the FISA court was approached to issue (renew?) a warrant for “electronic surveillance” (wiretaps) of Page.  The Memo seems to imply that the initial Page wiretap was first sought in 2016, not in 2011.  Such warrants must be renewed every 90 days under FISA.

As someone else pointed out in criticizing the revelations of "sources and methods," the Memo does impugn the work of a British spy, Christopher Steele, who compiled a “dossier” that was allegedly used to buttress the FISA wiretap warrant.  Steele was purportedly employed by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign, which facts were apparently not revealed to the FISA court.  Part of Steele’s mission was to dredge up negative information on Trump’s dealings in Russia.  Steele had been "methodically" used by the FBI as a “reliable source” in the past, but his overt ties to the Hillary Clinton campaign and some indiscretion with Mother Jones Magazine (properly) cost him his FBI connections.  So what?  The Memo asserts that none of this was revealed to the FISA court in the wiretap application and should have been.  As a major justification, the Memo asserts that Andrew McCabe, the Deputy Director of the FBI, testified under oath that the 2016 wiretap warrant would not have been sought without the “Steele dossier information,” [my emphasis] but of course there is no way to know if there were other sources for that information, or that other information might have been sufficient.  So, "but for" Steele's corrupt work, Carter Page would have been totally vindicated?  That is what Donald Trump is claiming for himself, but I failed to see either vindication.  Sometimes what is NOT said is every bit as important as what is said.

The Memo also asserts, incorrectly I think, that FISA wiretap applications “should include information potentially favorable to the target of the FISA application that is known to the government.”  I practiced criminal-defense law for about 12 years and have never known of any obligation put upon any prosecutorial operation to reveal “favorable” information about a suspect.  If there is known EXCULPATORY information that shows that a suspect is INNOCENT, then I think it would be bad faith to thus proceed.  But there is NOTHING in the published Memo that suggests that there was ever ANYTHING FALSE asserted against Carter Page, nor did it contain any EXCULPATORY information seemingly withheld.  True, the DNC and Clinton connections make Steele look bad, but they don’t suggest Page’s INNOCENCE!  There is NOTHING in the Memo that suggests that Steele’s information procured a phony wiretap.  There is NOTHING in the Memo that suggests that any information ever obtained by the FISA wiretaps demonstrated Page's INNOCENCE!  Even if Steele is totally prejudiced against Page, the FISA courts issued wiretap warrants against Page numerous times, so there must have been SOMETHING going on!  But the Memo tells us nothing of that.

If Donald Trump were capable of feeling embarrassment about anything at all, he ought to be embarrassed that the tepid contents of the Memo do not in any way vindicate his silly bloviations about it.  But Trump has never demonstrated he is thus capable, so I guess he is also incapable of shame, REGARDLESS of what his thugs and sycophants do.  I am not going to hold my breath, waiting for him to act “presidential” for a change!  I hope Robert Mueller will eventually tell us what we need to know.

And, speaking of “shame,” EVERYONE I grew up with was scornful of “brown-nosers”!  They were the scum of the Earth, dismissed derisively!  What has happened to all those people I grew up with?  Where are they now?  If there was EVER someone who almost begs people to “brown-nose” him, it is Donald Trump, and there are scads of such earnest little “puppies” out there, all lined up to just burrow right on in!  And I am talking about people with advanced degrees and a fair amount of presumed intelligence!

Good grief!