Questions and Comments Form
------------------------------------------
Sender: chrstphre campbell
Email: transamoebae@seanet.com
Subject: Inverted Flags
Question or Comment:
i have noticed that quite a few of the drivers are sporting inverted flags
on their jackets.
While they may provide the excuse/explanation that these are 'flying in the
wind', one might expect another flag on their right shoulder patch that is
flying in the correct orientation.
But this is Never the case.
What do the inverted flags really mean?
Are they a code for an Al Qeada Sleeper Cell?
Or are they simply an expression of The Amazingly Open Racism that has
always been an important part of Spokane's Culture and Heritage?
The Inverted Flags are just wrong,
And Spokane Metro should not allow these to be displayed on their official
uniforms.
( ! )
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - : o
ReSponse One :
-----Original Message-----
From: Robideaux, Peggy On Behalf Of STA Questions
Sent: Monday, February 14, 2011 11:27 AM
To: 'transamoebae@seanet.com'; STA Questions
Subject: RE: Inverted Flags
Dear Mr. Campbell,
Thank you for contacting Spokane Transit and sharing your opinion on the US flags on
STA uniforms. I am forwarding your email to our management team for review and
consideration.
I appreciate that you have taken the time to give our staff your input on this
situation. Please let me know if I can be of additional assistance.
Sincerely,
Peggy Robideaux
Communications Specialist
Spokane Transit
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - : o
ReSponse Two :
Mr. Campbell
About two years ago, it came to our attention that the flags sewn on the right
sleeves of our uniforms were technically oriented in the wrong direction. One of
our coach operators pointed out that the flags on the uniforms of our Armed Forces
always have the 'union' (or blue field) facing forward. This caused us to research
the technically correct way to display the flag on the right sleeve of our uniforms.
It is a little known detail, and one not commonly practiced -- that is why it may
look odd. We immediately requested our uniform supplier to change the orientation
of the flags on all our future uniforms. Due to the fact that it is common for the
flag to be displayed both ways, and due the cost of replacing the flags on all
uniforms, we did not retroactively change the previous uniforms. Consequently, you
will still see a mix of both types on our uniforms.
As public servants, we at Spokane Transit are proud to display the flag as an
expression of our love of country. I appreciate the fact that you noticed and care
about this much as we do.
Steve Blaska
Director of Operations
Spokane Transit Authority
1230 W. Boone Ave.
Spokane, WA 99201
509.325.6083 direct
509.710.9474 cell
sblaska@spokanetransit.com
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - : o
RePly :
i should first note that i am not a xenophobe or jingoistic ultrapatriot.
In fact i don’t even have a flag to wave.
i believe that our government routinely lies to us,
That we never went to the moon,
And that 911 was the work of a home grown group of American born millionaires,
And not that of islamic Terrorists.
Nevertheless;
i belong to the old school of believing that the flag should always be displayed with the union in the upper left hand corner,
Whether displayed horizontally or vertically.
And consequently; i will continue to believe that the inverted position is wrong.
In any other context, this would be wrong.
Just wrong.
Anyone looking at an inverted flag as those are displayed on your uniforms,
Viscerally knows that this is Not the correct depiction of the iconically presented american flag.
If you really believe that the union should face front;
Then the flags should be sewn onto the left shoulder,
Where it can be Displayed correctly.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Friday, February 11, 2011
Shoot 'Em Up.
i was just looking through Google for a Recent police shooting in which a woman in the passenger seat of a car was shot and killed by police.
i just heard a snippet of it on the radio or TV ( ? )
And so i thought i would find some more details on the interweb ( a few days later... )
Unfortunately; When i typed in Police Shooting,
i got about a million hits,
And when i tried to refine the search for innocent victim,
it cut the results back to only a half a million hits.
???
i see this over and over again;
Whenever The Police decide to use deadly force to disable a man in a wheelchair that may or may not be wielding a rock,
It invariable results in every cop in the vicinity just opening fire in the general direction of what they think, may or may not be in the correct target.
i would like to advocate a new policy for this sort of situation;
And that is;
Some of The Officers would only be allowed to use Blanks.
These are The Police Officers that can't shoot straight,
and tend to become panicky when they see a spider in the bathtub.
They would still be able to provide 'Coverfire' for The Officers that were allowed to carry live ammunition, but they would be less likely to kill innocent children or hostages.
Also: At any given location in which there was more than one Officer with Live Ammunition,
Only one would be designated as -The Shooter-.
This would be the one that could actually shoot the straightest,
And it would be well understood in any given situation, which Officer that was.
Then The other Officers with blanks would provide the necessary cover fire
To allow the Designated Shooter to safely put themselves in a good firing position,
And fire ONE or Two Appropriately placed shots to disable the suspect,
Evaluate The situation; Then fire again, If The Designated Shooter thinks that this is Necessary.
But that would take all the fun out of it,
Wouldn't it ?
i just heard a snippet of it on the radio or TV ( ? )
And so i thought i would find some more details on the interweb ( a few days later... )
Unfortunately; When i typed in Police Shooting,
i got about a million hits,
And when i tried to refine the search for innocent victim,
it cut the results back to only a half a million hits.
???
i see this over and over again;
Whenever The Police decide to use deadly force to disable a man in a wheelchair that may or may not be wielding a rock,
It invariable results in every cop in the vicinity just opening fire in the general direction of what they think, may or may not be in the correct target.
i would like to advocate a new policy for this sort of situation;
And that is;
Some of The Officers would only be allowed to use Blanks.
These are The Police Officers that can't shoot straight,
and tend to become panicky when they see a spider in the bathtub.
They would still be able to provide 'Coverfire' for The Officers that were allowed to carry live ammunition, but they would be less likely to kill innocent children or hostages.
Also: At any given location in which there was more than one Officer with Live Ammunition,
Only one would be designated as -The Shooter-.
This would be the one that could actually shoot the straightest,
And it would be well understood in any given situation, which Officer that was.
Then The other Officers with blanks would provide the necessary cover fire
To allow the Designated Shooter to safely put themselves in a good firing position,
And fire ONE or Two Appropriately placed shots to disable the suspect,
Evaluate The situation; Then fire again, If The Designated Shooter thinks that this is Necessary.
But that would take all the fun out of it,
Wouldn't it ?
Determinism: Fate or Phat ?
In A January 5th 2011 Blog Post by Wm Jas ( Bugs to fearen babes withall )
He mentions the concept of Determinism;
Asking : What does that mean?
[ From the Future } : i've been doing some more light thinking on this,
And i've decided that Wm Jas has made all the correct deductions,
But he simply doesn't like the conclusions.
i.e.; Determinism infers The Reality is Wrong.
Do you believe that anything is possible,
Or that only possible things are possible?
Determinism; for me, has always meant : Cause & Effect.
And i don’t believe in Quantum Randomality or Indeterminism Either.
i believe that everything that goes on inside a proton is happening for specific reasons, And when one of them decays, it is doing so for statistical improbable reasons, Not random ones.
If there was any Genuine Randomality in The Universe;
Randomality would take over. There wouldn’t be any order at all.
Every time Any Motion were attempted, And That Motion were to Pass through The Force Lines of Any Given Atom, Any Given Atomic Nucleus, Any Given Proton;
And encountered A Spatial Zone of Randomality; The Intended Line or Path of Motion Would be lost, and Everything would fly apart.
This analogy is similar to what allegedly happens when light passes through a sheet of glass, Or bounces off a Mirror, Where All The Photons enter the glass or mirror, are absorbed by Electrons & Are then reemitted Randomly, In Any Imaginable Direction.
The Reason that Glass & Mirrors work; So it is suggested, Is that All this Randomality Somehow Cancels Itself out and And Clear Images are Produced.
This is Suspicious.
But If Randomality Does Exist; And Does Cancel itself out,
Leaving a thin veneer of Order that arises from ( ? )
Is that Determinism?
This would seem to suggest that There is Order,
But it is Riding on a Wave Front of Neutralized Randomality,
Which means that Everything that happens,
Doesn’t happen for Reason ( x )
It happens for Reason ( x ± ).
In a Strictly Cause & Effect Universe,
Everything was set into Motion several billions of years ago,
And The Universe as we know it today was predestined at that moment of Creation,
Or - - The UnMoment of NotCreation, an Infinitely long time ago.
Or : Everything was loosely set into motion at some time, Or not,
And It has Fudged itself, Randomly, Into the current universe.
The Version with Things Randomly falling into It’s Current State, i think,
Is Far more Disturbing.
There is a Theory, Or Crazy Idea, Insane Speculation or Whatever;
That Our Entire Reality has Not slowly evolved from a structured Origin Point,
But is At The Current State that it is;
Because a Randomly UnStructured Cloud of Plasma,
Has; Given an Infinite Amount of Time to Play Around In,
Settled on This Universe, for this Instant ( or two ) and it will,
At any future moment, Return to it’s State of Randomized Plasma.
The Version mentioned a paragraph or two above seems to be only a slight variation on that argument.
- - :
Then Wm Jas’ Post considers the question of Orderliness.
How Can Orderliness be Determined?
Given A Very Simple Example of A Series of Numbers
1 2 3 4 5 7 8 9 26 68 2 3 9 …
Is this An Orderly Set or Not?
i was thinking sometime ago, and actually believed that i was making some progress on solving this problem of creating a perfect code, base on a psuedo-random number generator.
The way that proposed it working, Would be; You would create A Plain Text Document,
Then Convert all The Characters into a Three Digit Representation; A = 001 Z = 026
And so on; With allowances for Punctuation and so on,
Then Create a Psuedo-Random Number Generator that would Produce This Sequence of Numbers.
My Idea was that It - IS - ( In some crazy Theoretical Universe ) Possible to Find a Wave Form Generator that will Produce Any Desired Number Sequence.
- - [
Something like A Fourier analysis
The analysis of a complex waveform expressed as a series of sinusoidal functions,
the frequencies of which form a harmonic series.
A Field of Mathematics which i had briefly overhead somewhere’s,
and my understanding of it has not expanded from that point since !
] - -
From this Insight; i thought that it would only be a few days or weeks before i tinkered together a procedure to do this.
Although i have yet to make any further headway on this project,
It does remain feasible to me.
So.
What does this mean for Orderliness.
It would seem to me that it means that No Matter How Random Something May Seem,
It DOES HAVE, Available to it, A Procedure to Codify it, And recreate it at any future time.
Or another way of looking at it;
You may have a V-8 Engine block,
And a bucket of Sand,
And Then posit the question;
Which is more orderly?
To my way of thinking;
They are both exactly what they are.
One may seem more orderly and =Functional=,
But What does that mean to The Universe?
In The Comix -WatchMen- Dr. Manhattan has taken Laurie Jupiter ( Silk Spectre ) to Mars; And Remarks that Mars is fine place without Oil Pipelines, That Life only appreciates the Importance of Life as a Self Interested Delusion.
The Universe of Atoms is beautiful without having to be seen or admired,
These are egocentric illusions brought about within the fleeting & mundane chimera of Consciousness.
Most of The Universe ( Apparently ) gets along fine without people to snap pictures of it.
Order is An Entirely Subjective Deception of Structure.
In this book i’m tentatively working on;
As a minor Subplot of the main story,
A Time Machine is created that uses a Force that is responsible for what we think of as Time, to Turn Time Backwards, So that Events Flow Backwards in Time.
That is; When the machine is turned on; An Expanding Bubble of Reverse Time is Created, And everything within The Bubble is exposed to This Reverse Time Field.
Everyone walks around backwards, Lightbulbs absorb light, The Dead come to life and eggs leap back into their shells.
The Time Machine comes with a Bathysphere which shields this effect, So that Chrononauts can view this spectacle from a small window.
Curiously though; Since the Chrononauts are no longer part of the external world, They leave a hole wherever they were supposed to have been as time is flowing backwards around them. All The Other Laws of Physics are still fully operational, so that when a missing chrononaut had opened a door to let their infirm mother into her house; He is no longer there to cause this sequence to happen, backwards.
Hilarity of a sort ensues.
When The Time Machine turns off The Field; It has to Restart The Universe, So that it begins to move forwards again, And remarkably; This Forward Canceling Field moves slightly faster than The Reverse Field - -
So that The Forward Bubble will eventually catch up to The Expanding Reverse Field, and Nullify The Effect. So that : The Reverse Field doesn’t keep expanding forever throughout The Universe.
And this is good. Because;
Not only are there bumps caused by missing chrononauts,
But The Reverse Field isn’t quite at 100% Parity to Forward Time.
Every Time The Reverse Field is Activated, There are slight anomalies introduced to The Universe when The Forward Time Field is Resumed.
The Farther you go back in Time with this Device, The Stranger The World Becomes when you Restart it.
The Way that The Engineers & The Government have determined to get around The Principle Problem of Missing Chrononauts from The Resumed Time Line, Is to Recruit a Group of Slightly Crazy Chrononauts that enjoy being completely alone, and isolate them in an underground bunker. These Cells are completely isolated from one another and each contains it’s own Time Machine. When The Government decides that a Time Mission is required; One of them is selected and s/he goes back in time no further than when they were put into isolation.
In The Story; One of The Chrononauts; Suzi is sent back to assassinate a young boy that takes over the world with giant mechanical ants. Although while in The Isolation Cell, Suzi can’t have any contact with the outside world, He can receive phone calls, and frequently receives calls from himself, giving him clues as to how to accomplish his decidedly more difficult mission than one would have thought.
Along with the giant mechanical ants, there are several other interested parties that each have their own agenda.
There are several Alien Species that are very annoyed with our use of this time traveling technique. Of all the different ways of traveling through time, this is the worst.
The Aliens are using a variety of methods of time travel to stop us, but each method has it’s own problems.
And so on.
Exiting this Digression :
Determinism is directly related to FreeWill,
Everyone thinks that they have it,
Yet there is just NO WAY that it can work.
All Variations of Determinism, Near Determinism, Fudged Determinism,
InDeterminism & Pure Anything Goes Randomality
Are all stained with severe Improbability as a mechanism to explain how the universe got from there to here.
In an infinite universe where everything, so it is assumed, will happen eventually;
Improbability doesn’t carry much weight,
But when you’re standing in the frying pan, it does seem hot.
The Solution that i have chosen;
Which explains everything from what takes the place of determinism, freewill & consciousness; As well as bigfeet, flying saucers, angels & missing socks - -
Is that The Hindu’s got it right when they decided several thousands of years ago that the world is Maya.
Pure Illusion.
The True Reality is Incomprehensibly Incomprehensible,
But from it; Freewill & Consciousness are an Easy Extrapolation from First Principles.
The Alternative is that we simply live in an impossible reality.
He mentions the concept of Determinism;
Asking : What does that mean?
[ From the Future } : i've been doing some more light thinking on this,
And i've decided that Wm Jas has made all the correct deductions,
But he simply doesn't like the conclusions.
i.e.; Determinism infers The Reality is Wrong.
Do you believe that anything is possible,
Or that only possible things are possible?
Determinism; for me, has always meant : Cause & Effect.
And i don’t believe in Quantum Randomality or Indeterminism Either.
i believe that everything that goes on inside a proton is happening for specific reasons, And when one of them decays, it is doing so for statistical improbable reasons, Not random ones.
If there was any Genuine Randomality in The Universe;
Randomality would take over. There wouldn’t be any order at all.
Every time Any Motion were attempted, And That Motion were to Pass through The Force Lines of Any Given Atom, Any Given Atomic Nucleus, Any Given Proton;
And encountered A Spatial Zone of Randomality; The Intended Line or Path of Motion Would be lost, and Everything would fly apart.
This analogy is similar to what allegedly happens when light passes through a sheet of glass, Or bounces off a Mirror, Where All The Photons enter the glass or mirror, are absorbed by Electrons & Are then reemitted Randomly, In Any Imaginable Direction.
The Reason that Glass & Mirrors work; So it is suggested, Is that All this Randomality Somehow Cancels Itself out and And Clear Images are Produced.
This is Suspicious.
But If Randomality Does Exist; And Does Cancel itself out,
Leaving a thin veneer of Order that arises from ( ? )
Is that Determinism?
This would seem to suggest that There is Order,
But it is Riding on a Wave Front of Neutralized Randomality,
Which means that Everything that happens,
Doesn’t happen for Reason ( x )
It happens for Reason ( x ± ).
In a Strictly Cause & Effect Universe,
Everything was set into Motion several billions of years ago,
And The Universe as we know it today was predestined at that moment of Creation,
Or - - The UnMoment of NotCreation, an Infinitely long time ago.
Or : Everything was loosely set into motion at some time, Or not,
And It has Fudged itself, Randomly, Into the current universe.
The Version with Things Randomly falling into It’s Current State, i think,
Is Far more Disturbing.
There is a Theory, Or Crazy Idea, Insane Speculation or Whatever;
That Our Entire Reality has Not slowly evolved from a structured Origin Point,
But is At The Current State that it is;
Because a Randomly UnStructured Cloud of Plasma,
Has; Given an Infinite Amount of Time to Play Around In,
Settled on This Universe, for this Instant ( or two ) and it will,
At any future moment, Return to it’s State of Randomized Plasma.
The Version mentioned a paragraph or two above seems to be only a slight variation on that argument.
- - :
Then Wm Jas’ Post considers the question of Orderliness.
How Can Orderliness be Determined?
Given A Very Simple Example of A Series of Numbers
1 2 3 4 5 7 8 9 26 68 2 3 9 …
Is this An Orderly Set or Not?
i was thinking sometime ago, and actually believed that i was making some progress on solving this problem of creating a perfect code, base on a psuedo-random number generator.
The way that proposed it working, Would be; You would create A Plain Text Document,
Then Convert all The Characters into a Three Digit Representation; A = 001 Z = 026
And so on; With allowances for Punctuation and so on,
Then Create a Psuedo-Random Number Generator that would Produce This Sequence of Numbers.
My Idea was that It - IS - ( In some crazy Theoretical Universe ) Possible to Find a Wave Form Generator that will Produce Any Desired Number Sequence.
- - [
Something like A Fourier analysis
The analysis of a complex waveform expressed as a series of sinusoidal functions,
the frequencies of which form a harmonic series.
A Field of Mathematics which i had briefly overhead somewhere’s,
and my understanding of it has not expanded from that point since !
] - -
From this Insight; i thought that it would only be a few days or weeks before i tinkered together a procedure to do this.
Although i have yet to make any further headway on this project,
It does remain feasible to me.
So.
What does this mean for Orderliness.
It would seem to me that it means that No Matter How Random Something May Seem,
It DOES HAVE, Available to it, A Procedure to Codify it, And recreate it at any future time.
Or another way of looking at it;
You may have a V-8 Engine block,
And a bucket of Sand,
And Then posit the question;
Which is more orderly?
To my way of thinking;
They are both exactly what they are.
One may seem more orderly and =Functional=,
But What does that mean to The Universe?
In The Comix -WatchMen- Dr. Manhattan has taken Laurie Jupiter ( Silk Spectre ) to Mars; And Remarks that Mars is fine place without Oil Pipelines, That Life only appreciates the Importance of Life as a Self Interested Delusion.
The Universe of Atoms is beautiful without having to be seen or admired,
These are egocentric illusions brought about within the fleeting & mundane chimera of Consciousness.
Most of The Universe ( Apparently ) gets along fine without people to snap pictures of it.
Order is An Entirely Subjective Deception of Structure.
In this book i’m tentatively working on;
As a minor Subplot of the main story,
A Time Machine is created that uses a Force that is responsible for what we think of as Time, to Turn Time Backwards, So that Events Flow Backwards in Time.
That is; When the machine is turned on; An Expanding Bubble of Reverse Time is Created, And everything within The Bubble is exposed to This Reverse Time Field.
Everyone walks around backwards, Lightbulbs absorb light, The Dead come to life and eggs leap back into their shells.
The Time Machine comes with a Bathysphere which shields this effect, So that Chrononauts can view this spectacle from a small window.
Curiously though; Since the Chrononauts are no longer part of the external world, They leave a hole wherever they were supposed to have been as time is flowing backwards around them. All The Other Laws of Physics are still fully operational, so that when a missing chrononaut had opened a door to let their infirm mother into her house; He is no longer there to cause this sequence to happen, backwards.
Hilarity of a sort ensues.
When The Time Machine turns off The Field; It has to Restart The Universe, So that it begins to move forwards again, And remarkably; This Forward Canceling Field moves slightly faster than The Reverse Field - -
So that The Forward Bubble will eventually catch up to The Expanding Reverse Field, and Nullify The Effect. So that : The Reverse Field doesn’t keep expanding forever throughout The Universe.
And this is good. Because;
Not only are there bumps caused by missing chrononauts,
But The Reverse Field isn’t quite at 100% Parity to Forward Time.
Every Time The Reverse Field is Activated, There are slight anomalies introduced to The Universe when The Forward Time Field is Resumed.
The Farther you go back in Time with this Device, The Stranger The World Becomes when you Restart it.
The Way that The Engineers & The Government have determined to get around The Principle Problem of Missing Chrononauts from The Resumed Time Line, Is to Recruit a Group of Slightly Crazy Chrononauts that enjoy being completely alone, and isolate them in an underground bunker. These Cells are completely isolated from one another and each contains it’s own Time Machine. When The Government decides that a Time Mission is required; One of them is selected and s/he goes back in time no further than when they were put into isolation.
In The Story; One of The Chrononauts; Suzi is sent back to assassinate a young boy that takes over the world with giant mechanical ants. Although while in The Isolation Cell, Suzi can’t have any contact with the outside world, He can receive phone calls, and frequently receives calls from himself, giving him clues as to how to accomplish his decidedly more difficult mission than one would have thought.
Along with the giant mechanical ants, there are several other interested parties that each have their own agenda.
There are several Alien Species that are very annoyed with our use of this time traveling technique. Of all the different ways of traveling through time, this is the worst.
The Aliens are using a variety of methods of time travel to stop us, but each method has it’s own problems.
And so on.
Exiting this Digression :
Determinism is directly related to FreeWill,
Everyone thinks that they have it,
Yet there is just NO WAY that it can work.
All Variations of Determinism, Near Determinism, Fudged Determinism,
InDeterminism & Pure Anything Goes Randomality
Are all stained with severe Improbability as a mechanism to explain how the universe got from there to here.
In an infinite universe where everything, so it is assumed, will happen eventually;
Improbability doesn’t carry much weight,
But when you’re standing in the frying pan, it does seem hot.
The Solution that i have chosen;
Which explains everything from what takes the place of determinism, freewill & consciousness; As well as bigfeet, flying saucers, angels & missing socks - -
Is that The Hindu’s got it right when they decided several thousands of years ago that the world is Maya.
Pure Illusion.
The True Reality is Incomprehensibly Incomprehensible,
But from it; Freewill & Consciousness are an Easy Extrapolation from First Principles.
The Alternative is that we simply live in an impossible reality.
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