Foldable Phone Or Tablet
Two years ago the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft dropped off the samples it collected of the asteroid Bennu. I’ve been fascinated by our ability to fly a spacecraft to an asteroid, which is also rapidly hurling through space, do a “touch and go” to collected samples, then fly back to earth, drop the samples off and continue on to another asteroid. Today I did a quick search to see what has been learned about Bennu. Recent reports state that Bennu is “a mixture of dust that formed in our solar system, organic matter from interstellar space, and pre-solar system stardust. Its unique and varied contents were dramatically transformed over time by interactions with water and exposure to the harsh space environment.” [Source] and “In addition to the five nitrogenous bases – adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine and uracil – required for building DNA and RNA, the researchers also found xanthine, hypoxanthine, and nicotinic acid (vitamin B3).” [Source]. OSIRIS-Rex has been renamed OSIRIS-APEX and is currently flying toward another asteroid, Apophis, which it is scheduled to meet up with in 2029.
Finished reading: The Tears of Things by Richard Rohr 📚 Because civilization seems stuck in an infinite loop, the Hebrew prophets are as relevant today as in their day.
The U.S. Supreme Court seems firmly entrenched on institutionalizing the unitary executive theory. In light of this, if SCOTUS serves more than President Trump it seems they need to clarify the power of Congress over the Executive, for it seems to me that the Constitution invests Congress the power to write and pass laws, including the power to overturn a President’s veto, and that the Congress says the Executive must execute the laws of Congress. It does not seem to me that the Constitution gives the Executive power to interpret a clear law, even if that constrains the executive. In other words, dear SCOTUS, please explain to me how checks and balances of the Constitution exists in the world of the U.S. Presidential monarchy that you are creating.
Personal Computing Using Tablets
Enjoying a nice nearly fall morning. Could be the last of warm weather.
Do you recognize this?
Engineers and Lawyers
I am reading this interview of Dan Wang by Russ Douthat of the New York Times and find it fascinating how Wang describes the difference between China in terms of engineers and lawyers. Wang says the current China is founded by engineers, who in my experience put great value on efficiency. I think Elon Musk’s DODGE was/is very much a rise of engineers in the United States who believe they know better about running a country than lawyers. Whenever you have a group of people who are dominated by ego to think they alone are the smart people and therefore know all the answers to all the problems, you have a high potential for tyranny. Democracy and liberty is not about efficiency, it’s about peaceful co-existence. If one insists upon efficiency you end up being like the other countries, such as the old USSR and China, who likewise make efficiency a prime directive.
Here is the money quote of Dan Wang in the article:
The game goes to he who outlasts the adversary. But what the Chinese want to do is to just keep things really, really stable and just wait for the Western countries to collapse.
China plays the long game while the U.S. plays the short game.
Remember the trope, you can’t shout fire in a crowded movie theatre? The trope is intended to convey the limits of free speech, but it also conveys the extent of free speech. Perhaps one of the reasons why I remember this trope is because of it’s roots in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, my home land.
If you believe that capitalism depends upon a free market that depends upon democracy to exist, then it seems to me that the U.S. Executive successfully threatening a U.S. corporation that results in that corporation meeting the Executive’s demands is clear evidence the U.S. is now an illiberal democracy. Corporations are the prime entities of capitalism that has wealth as it’s prime directive, not liberty, so they are not going to stand up to the Executive. And here is the kicker… given that most American’s retirement savings is tied to capitalism via corporate stock, it can be argued their actions are in the best interests of the citizens. The affect is trading liberty for wealth and security.