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Who is President of the United States?

Friday, January 12th, 2018

[ by Charles Cameron — going all diagnostic on you! ]
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Roberta R. Greene in her Social Work with the Aged and Their Families (p. 100) lists questions nurses routinely asked by physician using Kahn’s Mental Status Questionnaire. I’m only too aware of these, having been subjected to these questions regularly over the past year..

5. What year is it?
6. How old are you?
7. What is your birthday?
8. What year were you born?
9. Who is President of the United States?

They are going to ask President Trump these questions, I immagine, as part of his overall medical evaluation. But that last one:

Who is President of the United States?

That’s an ouroboric question right there — what will he say?

If he says, President Trump, then he’s third-personalizing himself, and that’s diagnostically called illeism: Julius Caesar uses the third person in describing his French campaigns in De Bello Gallico.

But if he avoids that third person usage —

Me! It’s me!

That would suggest he may be uncertain of his victory over Secretary Clinton back when — after all, she won the popular vote!

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Oh the ouroboros! Oh the dilemma!

I had one of those medical questionnaires this morning. My conclusion: the questionnaire or routinized test has not yet been devised that doesn’t seem faintly ridiculous..

Please note that Roberta Greene’s work currently costs $100 as a book book. Urgh. Kindle $45.95 us a little better.

Polarized light — pls review before final exam, Thurs

Sunday, August 13th, 2017

[ by Charles Cameron — actually the exam is daily, ongoing — and we’re not scoring very high marks ]
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Unpolarized light vibrates in any planes:

A light wave that is vibrating in more than one plane is referred to as unpolarized light. Light emitted by the sun, by a lamp in the classroom, or by a candle flame is unpolarized light. Such light waves are created by electric charges that vibrate in a variety of directions, thus creating an electromagnetic wave that vibrates in a variety of directions. This concept of unpolarized light is rather difficult to visualize. In general, it is helpful to picture unpolarized light as a wave that has an average of half its vibrations in a horizontal plane and half of its vibrations in a vertical plane.

Polarized light vibrates in only one plane:

It is possible to transform unpolarized light into polarized light. Polarized light waves are light waves in which the vibrations occur in a single plane. The process of transforming unpolarized light into polarized light is known as polarization.

The most common method of polarization involves the use of a Polaroid filter. Polaroid filters are made of a special material that is capable of blocking one of the two planes of vibration of an electromagnetic wave. .. In this sense, a Polaroid serves as a device that filters out one-half of the vibrations upon transmission of the light through the filter. When unpolarized light is transmitted through a Polaroid filter, it emerges with one-half the intensity and with vibrations in a single plane; it emerges as polarized light.

This works either way — so to speak, either vertically, or horizontally — though not, by definition, both at once. Ohh, and there’s paradox involved:

Read the whole lesson at The Physics Classroom: Polarization — and memorize, remember?

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Ali Soufan notices polarization in our political sphere wrt events we label or do not label terrorist:

NPR likewise:

Tim Furnish sees this polarization as avoiding mention of Islamic influence when it is clearly present:

And then there’s this:

Sebastian Gorka told MSNBC

Gorka in full:

Sometimes an attack is unequivocally clear for what it is. When somebody shouts ALlahu Akbar as they’re stabbing a police officer, it’s pretty clear it’s not a case of the mafia robbing a bank, wouldn’t you say so?

Eh?

Vox is oppositely polarized to Gorka et alii:

As, indeed, am I.

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Incientally, all you special ops types with cool shades:

For lightweight, functional shades that protect your eyes in any lighting situation, Oakley has designed the SI Flak Jacket. Featuring an innovative 8.75 base lens curvature for optimal peripheral vision, these sunglasses provide side eye protection as well as a maximal field of view. The stress-resistant O-Matter frame found in many Oakley tactical models is lightweight, ergonomic and will not succumb to the pressures of constant wear and travel. The Plutonite polycarbonate lenses fully filter out harmful UVA, UVB, UVC and blue light up to 400 nm for maximum sun protection. Oakley also has included an Iridium coating on the lenses which reduces glare in extremely bright light. For adaptability in any environment, the lenses are easily interchangeable. « less

Take heed:

Polarization has a wealth of other applications besides their use in glare-reducing sunglasses.

Like — in USian politics?

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Okay, time for the test. Sample question:

Answer:

A. Referring to the above question, the glare is the result of a large concentration of light aligned parallel to the water surface. To block such plane-polarized light, a filter with a vertically aligned polarization axis must be used.

Perhaps because I’m looking for the tauromachia

Thursday, September 15th, 2016

[ by Charles Cameron — Syria echoes Guernica ]
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This, from JM Berger today, offers a glimpse of Syria that is neither war, nor peace, if I might put it this way, but war longing for peace:

Irresistibly, it reminds me of this:

Isn’t that a bull’s head in cloth, hanging right above the shoulder of the leaping boy in the Syrian image — and isn’t that alnmost exactly Picasso’s swooping white head, again in cloth, just to the right of it? The illusion of their similarity is enhanced by the aspect ratio of the Twitter image from Syria, which cuts off a stretch of green in the original photo, just below the image as you see it here..

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But it may be I’m seeing this because the bullfight and tauromachia have been on my mind recently — mythic combats of man pitted agains one of his worthiest opponents. There’s an archaic resonance there that’s inmportant in some way, but the actual killing of the bull, blood in the sand, horrifies me, the animal descending from grandeur to humiliation, its bowed head propped on one horn as it awaits finality — terrible.

And I was accordingly happy to recall the less violent version of the sport, still pitting man’s skill against adversary — in the bull-leaping of Knossos:

and its latter-day practice, shown here at the San Fermin Festival in Pamplona:

**

Taurus:

taup
This image comes from the fabulous Constellations of Words site.

Somebody at DARPA is a Fan of Daniel Suarez

Tuesday, April 12th, 2011

Freedom (TM) by Daniel Suarez

Remember those augmented reality glasses that the daemon operatives like Loki used to connect to the Darknet? Well, DARPA did…

DARPA Designing Augmented Reality Goggles to Fight Friendly Fire 
 

DARPA smart tech

Remember how the Beastmaster could see through the eyes of his pet eagle? DARPA does. And it’s pursuing augmented reality goggles tech that’ll let troops see through the eyes of a nearby unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in order to more accurately target its weapons.

The issue of accurate targeting and weapons-fire has a renewed interest in the wake of NATO mistakenly destroying rebel armor in Libya rather than Gadhaffi’s hardware, but it’s never been an easy task. One of the very best ways to deliver today’s smartest weapons is to have an “eyes-on” soldier in the field near the target relaying real time data up to the aircraft that’s about to drop a bomb–but this situation is not often practical or desirable and can be dangerous for both the soldier and the incoming aircraft.

vuzixgoggles

Read the rest here. 

Very cool. If John was not so busy with his new company, he probably could tell his readers how to combine this off-the-shelf modified tech with DIY drones.

An always fun thought experiment is to figure out how far ahead DARPA really is in the lab compared to whatever toy they feel comfortable giving a press release. And then there’s what exists on the drawing board that is technically feasible but not particularly economical at the present time to pursue seriously. Imagination usually far outstrips budgets

Monday, July 23rd, 2007

TESTING A WIDGET

This is from searchCrystal – in beta version presently. Readers – give it a spin and ( if you have time)sound off in the comments. I’m going to play around with it a bit myself.


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