Bipolar Self Evaluation

Stages of a photographer

This is a pretty great graph. These curves can probably be applied to any skill.

Via View From The Porch wherein Tam mentions the Dunning-Kruger effect.

One of these days, Alice . . .

Showcasing SpaceX's Shiny Stainless Starship
Elon Musk did a presentation last night about the new spaceship SpaceX is building. I tried watching it, but it's long (an hour and a half) and, as Scott Manley notes, Elon is not the best speaker. Scott sums up the presentation pretty well here.

The part that I find interesting is that 50 years ago the science fiction artists who drew shiny spaceships with fins that landed using their rocket engines were exactly right.

All this is going on in Boca Chica which is on the gulf coast of southern Texas a couple of miles from the Mexican border.

. . . pow! Right to the moon.

P.S. Somewhere in all this Elon mentioned that they are super cooling (or maybe hyper cooling?) the methane.

• Methane turns to liquid around −160 °C,. 
• SpaceX is going to be cooling it down very close to the freezing point, which is −182.5 °C, which is only 20 degrees cooler. 
• Oxygen, the bigger part of the fuel package boils at −182.962 °C. 

So the freezing point of methane is one half a degree higher than the boiling point of oxygen. Managing these two substances in close proximity to each other while keeping them both liquid is going to be a bit of a trick. Maybe that's why they call it rocket science.

Groove Armada - Superstylin'

Groove Armada - Superstylin'

I generally don't care for hip-hop, which is what I think this is. The lyrics are often boring, stupid and / or offensive, but this tune seems to have a pretty positive attitude. I don't know what the two guys talking at the beginning is, but it seems to fit with the general attitude. The two roadies are kind of fun as well. I've listened to several other songs by Groove Armada and I like what I hear.

Update June 2022 Adam Berg directed the video.

Republic and Democracy

The School of Athens by Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino 1511
The original image is quite large and shows a great deal of detail. Click it to embiggen it.

Sometimes it pays to review the basic principles of a subject. I think this is a good description.

"Thus, the idea of a Republic, which considered from this perspective is the required universal acknowledgement of a common wealth of morals, traditions, and aspirations (which often boils down to religion), plus some of the following: territory, language, stories, heroes – culture. This commonwealth, shared and enforced by all, shapes the laws and reigns in the sociopaths leaders who inevitably arise. Within a Republic, you can have democracy – a democracy in which all the truly important stuff is off the table, and the voter and candidates and issues all fall within the bounds, in both senses of the word, of the Commonwealth." - Joseph Moore

A couple other items I gleaned from Joseph's essay:

• a Stagirite is a native or resident of Stagira, Greece, which is just a few miles down the coast from the ancient ship railroad. Aristotle was a Stagirite. The railroad was in operation during Aristotle's lifetime.
• The movie The Last Temptation of Christ was adapted from a book of the same name written by Nikos Kazantzakis, who is a pretty famous writer. I say 'pretty famous' because I had never heard of him, but he also wrote Zorba the Greek. I saw the movie version of Zorba a zillion years ago and it was pretty great. The stoning of the woman was a shock to my system. I had heard of such a thing, but that isn't really the same as seeing it. God forbid I ever encounter that in real life. The collapse of the log transport system was also a shock. The failure of a well constructed system was something my very young self had never before considered. I might have to read one of Nikos' books.

Geico

Geico Gecko

Reading a Forbes story about Patrick Byrne, I come across this line:

[Patrick] Byrne is the son of the late John “Jack” Byrne, a University of Michigan-trained mathematician and renowned insurance executive credited with turning around Geico in the mid-1970s and persuading Warren Buffett to invest in the auto insurer. Geico would eventually become one of the biggest contributors to Berkshire Hathaway’s bottom line, and Buffett once described Byrne’s father as “the Babe Ruth of insurance.” 

I think my folk's had Geico insurance, many years ago, long before the talking gecko became their spokes-animal. I had no idea about Warren Buffett's investment, but then, why would I? I mean Berkshire Hathaway must be invested in about a zillion different companies, any number of those could be classified as the 'biggest contributors', and some fraction of a zillion is still too large a number for my feeble brain to deal with.

Usury

Ertugrul expels the money lenders (Season 5, Episode 2, Mark 8:15) Netflix

Season 5 of Ertuğrul is up on Netflix. In episode 2 Ertuğrul brings the smack down on the money lenders operating in the town square. Okay, so the show is painting Ertuğrul as a devote Muslim. That's fine. But it got me to wondering about this whole usury thing.

A common theme running through many of these historical dramas we have been watching is the triumph of logical thought over people just throwing their weight around because they want to and no one is stopping them. This leads me to thinking that logical thinking is not all that prevalent. Planning ahead requires a certain amount of logical thinking, so the problem with usury is that the money lenders were able to plan ahead, but they were lending money to people who didn't, either because they couldn't, or had never been introduced to the concept. So they borrow money without considering the future impact the terms will have on them and they end up being impoverished.

So the problem wasn't that the money lenders were charging interest, the problem was they were lending money to people who were mentally unprepared to consider the consequences of their actions. Hard to imagine that people don't understand how loans operate, given that our modern world seems to be entirely financed by loans. But new people are coming into the world every day, and understanding how loans and interest work requires a certain amount of study. Once you have mastered it, it seems ridiculously simple, but getting to that point requires a certain amount of work. And even people who ought to know better sometimes get themselves into hot water by borrowing money to finance a purchase they can't really afford.

Glorious Days of Yesteryear

Woodstock was 50 years ago, I was 18, the Vietnam war was in full swing, we had landed on the moon. I had just graduated from high school and was working my first job away from home. I thought the Vietnam war was really stupid, I mean, everyone said so. If the chief-jerks-whats-in-charge had a good reason for it, I didn't hear it. Whether that was because they weren't talking or I wasn't listening, I can't tell you. It wasn't until a couple of years ago that I became aware of an endorsement for the war.

This pops up on YouTube, probably because I've been listening to Sweet Lorraine, and I listened to what he says.


1960s Rebels: Country Joe McDonald - Musician, Country Joe and the Fish
I remember the Fixin To Die Rag, and here we have the scene Country Joe is talking about.


Country Joe & The Fish Live @ Woodstock 1969 Fish Cheer_I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixing-To-Die-Rag.mpg