CNN is Fake News

I saw on CNN last night that Trump's inauguration didn't draw much of a crowd.  They showed pictures comparing Trump's inaugural crowd with a similar one from Obama's second inauguration.

Here are the comparison pictures they showed, both allegedly from 'shortly before noon' on their respective days.

Now take a look at a Getty Images photo, looking out over the crowd from the Congress building, clearly taken while President Trump was standing at the podium.

You may notice a slight difference.  Mainly, the absence of large white spaces on the Mall.  Clearly, the photo CNN used for their "news" story was taken before or after the inauguration - while the crowd was gathering or leaving. 

I noticed the discrepancy this morning on the cover of our local paper - which had a full page picture from the inauguration, looking from the Congress building at an enormous crowd, filling the space to the Washington monument, and clearly showing full bleachers in the distance.

Please, CNN, tell us about more about fake news.  There's a reason why we call you the "Commie News Network."  Perhaps there's a relationship between faking the news and poor ratings?  They may want to look into that.  It might be a newsworthy story.

The enTrumpening!

The God-Emperor is preparing to ascend to the Cherry Blossom Throne in a few minutes.
That disturbance in the force you're feeling is millions of snowflakes melting, and tens of millions of libtards crying out in anguish.  Let the commie pinko mutant traitor scum quake in fear in their romper room 'safe spaces', sucking their thumbs and fondling their blue blankies.

All your safe spaces are belong to us!  Long live America!  Death to traitors!

As for those who oppose us, who would disrupt the ascendancy of the God-Emperor, who would destroy our nation and enslave and murder our people:

Remember, all you pointy headed liberal retards:  Our side has the guns.  Our side has the veterans.  Our side has the rank and file policemen.  Our side has the enlisted Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines.  Plus the Coast Guard and the Civil Air Patrol.  Plus around ten million armed, experienced hunters.  We know how to aim.  We know how to cooperate.  We understand what discipline is. 


You want a civil war?  Just keep poking that bear with a stick.  I'm sure it will never wake up and tear your limbs off and devour your entrails. While you watch, screaming in pain, begging for death.

Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser

This is the greatest bit of scientific hokum I've run across in quite a while.  The delayed choice quantum eraser experiments are, to me, intensely amusing bits of scientific theater and sleight-of-hand.

The problem is, the scientists doing and reviewing these experiments don't get the joke.  They think it's real.

To review, a delayed choice quantum eraser involves using a clever arrangement of beam splitters and mirrors to identify (or not) which path a photon travels through, well, let's call it a maze.  They then claim than when we human's have knowledge of which path the photon took, it acts like a particle, but when we humans don't know which path it took, it acts like a wave.  Oh, and in some experiments, there appears to be a backwards in time flow of information from one part of the experiment to another.

This all has caused great consternation and debate in scientific circles.  Which just goes to show that most scientists aren't all that smart.

They all ignore one very simple thing:  scientific instruments aren't Platonian ideal instruments.  They are physical things.  To be specific, beam splitters work by selecting some photons to transmit, and some to select.  This is a mechanical action.  This selection is what seems to cause the interference patterns in these experiments.  That's it.  All these experiments serve simply to show that, by golly, the beam splitter selectively split the beam into two parts.

They completely overlook the physical nature of the half-silvered mirror.  It, by its nature and design, selects some photons for one path or another (even though the wave divides and travels both).  The specific properties of each photon determines which path it is more likely to travel.  These paths are thus deterministic but unknowable.  Similarly configured photons will follow similar paths.  And thus, the apparent interference pattern emerges from the simple act of selecting photons by the beam splitters.

Mental Illness

So, a New York Jewish lawyer faggot verbally assaulted President elect Trump's daughter and grandchildren on a plane.

Tweeted picture from the faggot's "husband", bragging how his butt buddy was harassing a young woman and her small children because he didn't like the outcome of an election.  Oh, and the asshole did this while carrying a small child.  Who gives a child to a gay man, anyways?  Oh, wait, New York now gives gay couples preference for all adoptions.  Because we need more screwed up (and with) kids, apparently.  (Not all faggots fuck little boys, but all the men who fuck little boys are faggots.  That's how they make more faggots - teach them while they're young.)

Homosexuality used to be considered a mental illness, as it obviously is.  Faggots tend to have other mental problems.  It's one of the reasons (besides being creepy) that they were barred from military service, and prevented from holding a security clearance.  They're inherently unstable.  And given that they are such a small percentage of the population (under 2%, around 3% including bisexuals), the risks they pose is nowhere near the possible reward of the value and quality of their work.  That and the fact that normal people are creeped out by them and don't want to be near them.  Especially sleeping and showering with some skeevy creep who wants to fuck you in the ass.

I knew several gay people in the Army.  Not a single one of them was worth the powder to blow them up, as my dad would say.  They caused no end of trouble, and were terrible at their jobs.  Especially the officers - uniformly completely terrible, faggots and lesbians alike.

Progressivism/liberalism is also a kind of mental disease.  It's victims deserve treatment, because it can be cured.  When the victims of this highly destructive malady are identified, they should be immediately confined to an appropriate treatment facility for long term care.  Unfortunately, faggotry and lesbianism simply aren't treatable.

More on the fundamental nature of the universe

The understanding I have of the fundamental forces of the universe has advanced a bit, so I thought I'd share.  To my understanding, the fundamental forces are simple and elegant.  Momentum and gravity and 'dark energy' are all related.  'Dark matter' may be an emergent property of these forces.  I've got just about everything here, in one nice, neat, relatively simple package.

Here is a crudely drawn picture of what I'm going to be talking about.

Assume an energy field, existing everywhere.  That field has a positive strength.  This is the fundamental nature of space-time.

Matter draws its energy from this field.  The field adjusts by lowering the energy level around the particle of matter, with the amount of drop decreasing in a square law fashion.  This is gravity.  All things seek to occupy a lower energy level, and require force to make them go up the energy gradient.  They gain energy by going down the gradient.

This is the slanted black line above.  Gravity is a push from empty space, more than a pull from matter.  Gravity is a lower energy level.

Momentum is a directional wave in the ambient energy, with the lower end of the wave in the direction of movement.  Above, it is shown as the red curve.  In reality, it is three dimensional, with relative null points at 90 degrees to forward motion.  (Think of a slanted bowl.)  Thus, particles are forced forward towards to lower energy level, and resist going backwards towards the higher energy level.  This also explains the red and blue shift of emitted photons - they gain energy if going forwards, are neutral at 90 degrees to motion, and lose energy if emitted backwards.

The blue dot at the center is the particle, whatever it may be.  The wave around it is its momentum - the higher the momentum, the steeper and more narrow the curve.  More massive particles require more energy to influence their momentum wave.  This implies that their waves have a shorter wavelength, which matches with observations.  The more massive and faster a particle is, the more fixed its location is - the shorter its position wavelength.  Remember, shorter wavelengths require more energy.

Here's the really cool part - space-time dilation is built into the picture.  Using natural units (speed of light equals 1, no time/space dilation equals 1), the sine of the angle is the velocity, and the cosine of the angle is perceived time and length.  Thus, a theoretical non-moving particle in an area of no gravity (no energy differentials at all) would have a perfectly flat wave (nonexistent, really) with sine 0 and cosine 1.  This is the fastest possible perception of time and distance (1), and the slowest possible speed (0).  Conversely, a photon's momentum wave is a verticle discontinuity of width zero.  It has a sine of 1 (fastest possible velocity) and a cosine of 0 (lowest possible perception of time and distance).  All of a photon's energy is in its spin, not its forward movement.

The edge of a black hole would be where the energy gradient is at 90 degrees to the vertical, and would be where the total energy level reaches zero.  What's beyond that?  Negative energy levels, with weird results.  There be dragons.

So, the universal energy accounts for dark energy.  It pushes matter away from it, the more you have of it.  So that checks out.  The fun question is - as the universe expands, does this energy level drop, or is it created out of nothing?  According to the recent research I've seen, it seems to stay steady, appearing out of nothing.  This violates the principle of conservation of energy on a large scale, but not so much at the local level.  So the universe isn't a pot of water, with the level going down as the pot grows larger.  It seems to be more of a sieve in a larger pool of water, with the level staying steady even as the vessel grows larger.

*****

Here's where things get speculative.  Imagine that the energy acts as a fluid.  Yes, it can move on its own.  That's where gravity waves come from, and the apparent existence of dark matter.  If the energy field is a fluid, it can and does move.  This movement is caused entirely by the existence and movement of matter, which we see as gravity. The fluid energy wouldn't move at any scale we would perceive, but it would have large scale movement.  Say, with the steady spin of a spiral galaxy.  The matter in a proto-galaxy would begin to coalesce and spin.  That causes the emergence of the spiral arm structure.  After a bit of resistance, the fluid energy would also begin to spin, eventually keeping up with the matter.  This fixes the spin of the arms like a record player.  The entire construct would spin like a record, with fixed axial rotation, instead of like water going down a drain.

To see this in action, fill a pot of water.  Sprinkle herbs on top.  Now, stick a spoon in the center of the pot and twirl it.  The herbs will spin around, faster and faster at the center, forming spirals.  The spirals will eventually stabilize as the entire pot of water eventually moves at a fixed axial rate of rotation.

Again, this part is speculative, but seems to agree with observations and basic principles.


Oh, and light speed limits don't apply to spin, just momentum.  They also don't seem to apply to the ambient energy levels, just the particles in them.  Gravity works instantly, across the entire galaxy, ignoring all limits.  Waves in the energy, however, must respect the speed limit.

*****

Why no, I can't even begin to express this mathematically.  I don't think in math.  I think in pictures, and thus geometry.  (I choked at three dimensional calculus.  I couldn't see the shapes described by the equations.) 

Math is just a description of what geometry is doing, anyways.  It's the geometry that is fundamental.  If you don't believe that, go back over the fundamental theorems of calculus - differentiation is computing the slope of a curve, and integration is computing the area under a curve.  The curve is fundamental, and may be described and analyzed with mathematics.

Albania, part 2 - Albania is a silly place

Note for the Albanians, and everyone else who may feel the need to nitpick - these are my recollections of my time in the US Army 'assisting' Albania during the Kosovo air war back in 1999.

Albania is totally the inspiration for Dilbert's Elbonia, without the mittens.  It is a cartoon country.

Albanians have been there in Albania for a long time.  How long?  The ancient Greek word 'barbarian' was invented to describe the Albanians.  This being the case, the population is remarkably inbred.  While I was there, I learned that there were only 6 male Albanian faces.  That's it.  You could tell which tribe some guy was from just by looking at him.  The women were more varied, which makes sense, given the Albanian's long history of participation in the sex slavery trade.

Albania has no national economy.  They don't even grow food.  They grow hay for the sheep and goats.  They eat the sheep and goats.  The Christian Albanians eat the pigs who are the only garbage disposal service.  The Muslim Albanians eat the pigs occasionally as well, and remark about how good the 'lamb' tastes.

Albania exports oil to Italy, and imports gasoline.  This whole process runs at a net loss.

Albania doesn't make anything except crime and more Albanians.  The Albanian mafia is the scariest on Earth.  The only time I've heard about the Russian and Sicilian mafias working together, was to exterminate the local Albanian thugs in New York City.  It didn't last - for some reason, the US just keeps letting more Albanians in.  They all then turn to crime.  (This is only a slight exaggeration.)  Yes, as a matter of fact I did actually meet a local Albanian crime lord who dressed in the height of fashion as an early '70s Hollywood movie pimp.  wide collars on a pastel shirt, left unbuttoned down to his belly button, with clashing bell bottom pants and a gold chain with giant medallion.  He even had the rose colored glasses and chrome pistol.  I wanted to shoot him, just out of general principles, but my boss wouldn't let me.

Albania runs crime throughout central and eastern Europe.  They even dominate parts of Italy, because they're more frightening than la Cosa Nostra.  The Italian mob prides itself, in its heart, as being men of honor and family.  They make deals and keep their word.  They generally leave the wives and kids out of things.  Even the Russians have an honor code, even if it is very different.  Yes, the Russians will go after your kids, but only if you really piss them off.

The Albanians start with your kids.  That is their idea of a first warning, a sort of opening offer for the deal they want.  They have never met, nor even heard of ruth.  All the cars in Albania are stolen from elsewhere.  I'm not making this up.  Every.  Single.  One.  Albanians run the sex slave trade in Europe.

Back in the '90s, when president for life Enver Hodja died, the country came apart.  The new government instituted a giant ponzi scheme, and defrauded everyone.  Once the scheme had run its course, they left the country with the money, leaving the country penniless and deeply in debt.  The people revolted, and stole everything.  I mean everything.  They sold the railroad tracks for scrap metal.  They sold power lines for copper.  They demolished what few industries they had and sold the machinery for scrap.  You've heard the phrase 'industrial wasteland'?  Albania had one.  I've seen it.  A large, long valley, full of shattered, rubbled factory buildings.  They stopped construction of the nation's second multi-lane paved road after just a few miles.  It was fun to drive on - they had only laid down the cement base, which had lengths of rebar sticking up randomly out of it.  Some of the rebar was up to about a foot high.  Really fun to drive along that road.

Albania doesn't have laws.  Well, it does, but that's just so the secret police can arrest anybody for anything, because everything's against the law.  Since everything is illegal, everybody ignores all the laws.  Traffic laws in particular.  Their traffic moves on the principal that you generally drive on the right, unless you don't feel like it.  The bigger vehicle has the right of way.  Since we were the US Army, we added a new variation on that - the vehicle with the biggest guns has the right of way.  It's amazing how fast a tailgater drops back when you point a 40mm machine gun at him.  (Yes, it's a mark 19 automatic grenade launcher.)

The weirdest thing about the country was the mushrooms.  Concrete bunkers, shaped like mushrooms, were scattered all over the country.  Millions of them.  There were more bunkers than there were people in Albania.  Hodja was one seriously paranoid man, even for a Communist.  There is a reason why Soviet citizens were allowed to visit Albania without explicit permission.  The place was worse than Soviet Russia, and deliberately made ugly.  The Russians who visited were happy to get back home, and grateful to live in such a good land, compared to Albania.

In northern Albania, we found a small lake that glowed in the dark.  It was bright green, like antifreeze.  Nothing lived within about 50 yards of the water's edge.  No plants, no animals, no fungus or lichen - nothing.We didn't get within a hundred yards of it.  I wish I had pictures.

The most entertainment I had was watching the Albanian army move tanks along the road towards Serbia.  Remember, there was a war of sorts going on.  The Serbs were cleansing Kosovo of all the Albanians they could.  Albania objected.  The US got involved, because Clinton.  Anyways, the tank carriers (tanks eat roads, and vice versa.  For long distance, non-combat purposes, tanks are carried on flatbed trucks.  Really big ones.) were too long for the switchbacks along the mountain roads.  So they had to do a lot of backing and filling to negotiate each curve.  Each truck had to do this, and there were several trucks.  (Soviet model tank companies had ten tanks.)  So we spent a half a day watching ten trucks move about one mile.  That's entertainment.

The roads - Being more paranoid than thou, Hodja had the cheif of the Army design the road network for national defense.  So he designed the roads to be as difficult as possible for any aggressor to use.  The roads generally didn't go anywhere useful, and they certainly didn't go anywhere directly.  Oh, and most off them weren't paved.  The good, main roads did have gravel, so at least that's something.  Our convoy drove up a corduroy road to the top of a mountain once.  The trail was about an inch wider than out trucks, up the side of a steep mountain.  I later checked, and yes, that was a thousand foot drop I was looking straight down as I drove the truck a few inches at a time.  With the passenger side mirror pulled in, that side scraped against the cut-away portion of the mountain, while the driver's side tires were just on the edge of the logs that made up the road.  The tires were actually not over the ground, just supported by the logs and branches that made up the road, held down by the weight of the vehicle on the tires on the other side.  I'm very proud to say that every truck made it up the mountain, and back down again the next day.

That night, we had a beautiful view of the bomber strikes on the other side of the border in Kosovo (Serbia).  Two thousand pound bombs illuminate the whole night sky briefly when they explode, highlighting the silhouette of the mountains.  Good times.

This is a good point to mention that our translator at that point was an ethnic Albanian girl who had grown up in Brooklyn.  She had never left the city before she volunteered for the job to be a translator for us.  She had never seen the night sky before, and actually didn't know that you could see the sun rise and set.  When she saw the sun rise from the top of that mountain, she wept tears of joy as she drank her cold cocoa.

So there I was, in Albania. Part 1

So there I was, Albania, 1999.  Kosovo "air war".

The Army, in its infinite wisdom, decided to go to war against Serbia.  Well, Bill Clinton and Madeline Albright did, anyways.  Anyway, we went to war, not with thew troops who were training for the mission, but with the troops who just happened to show up at the unit just then.  Nope, couldn't interrupt training for the actual mission.

So the two guys who were still inprocessing and I, who had completed inprocessing a week before, were ordered to war.  We got the notice on Monday morning, and left Tuesday afternoon.  The other guys had to finish inprocessing, so I got to find all the left over, broken junk gear that nobody else wanted, so we could go to war with it.  Did I mention that was was my first tactical assignment, and I knew slightly less than nothing about what I was doing?

The HMMWV was held together with 100mph tape and 550 cord.  I mean that.  I leaked oil more slowly than we could pour it in, so that was OK.  Good enough for going to war, anyways.  Where was all the good gear?  At Hohenfells, being used to prepare the existing teams in case we needed to go to war with Serbia.  Couldn't be spared, couldn't cancel or shorten training.  Wouldn't be right.  No, I'm not kidding.

Anyways, we eventually get all the gear (leaky tent, check.  Broken field desk, check.  Field phone built for the Korean conflict, check.)  We get our weapons - an M9 Beretta 9mm pistol each, six 15-round magazines each, and 30 rounds of ammunition each.  Yes, you read that right.  6 mags, only 30 rounds.  No maps - so I went to the post library, and copied out the pages on Albania and Yugoslavia from the encyclopedia.  No, I'm not kidding.  When we got there, I had the only map of the country, other than the General's personal map.  No, I'm not kidding.

Oh, did I mention that I just happened to have arrived at my unit in Germany straight from 2 years at DLI, Monterey, CA?  I learned Russian and Serbo-Croatian, as it happened.  That's not why I was sent - I was an available warm body.  So, the US Army went to war with Serbia, and I just happened to be the only Serbian speaker in the entire task force.  (Another guy from our unit who spoke Serbian showed up a little later, but he got assigned to different duties, and our paths didn't cross much.)  That's what I call good planning.

Much silliness happened.  I'm proud to say that I survived the mud with only minor foot ailments that left only one permanent mark on me.  I got the HMMWV out of the mud one night!  I helped rescue some woman from drowning in the mud.  You think you've seen mud?  The airfield there was built on a level field, at the confluence of two rivers.  Said field had been used as a sheep pasture for at least 5,000 years.  It was Spring - you know, when the snow in the mountains melts, and the rivers flood.  Into the big, empty field.  Around the airfield.  So we were thigh deep in liquid sheep shit.  For weeks.  Everything, and I mean everything, sank into the mire.  We made paths of early Hesco-like barrier material.  They sank.  We piled more on.  They sank.  We ran out of barriers, so started piling on sandbags.  They sank, but established a path that was only thigh deep, so we set out markers and called it good enough.   The porta-johns, delivered at the beginning, couldn't be emptied because the honey trucks sank in the mud.  You can't dig latrines in a swamp.  Things were ugly.  The showers showed up after two months.  They were only a half mile away from us - a pleasant stroll through the muck.  And, of course, they sank in the mud, which made showering a bit more interesting, and less cleansing, than you might imagine.