Open thread 1/10/24
Here’s a brief example of why I say that Baryshnikov just might have been the best male dancer ever. I saw him many times in person and I can attest to his greatness. He is a small guy – I stood next to him once in ballet shoes and he seemed around the same height as me, 5’4″, although the internet says he’s 5’5″ or 5’6.” I say that’s stretching it. But he’s a giant onstage, and no video can capture the explosive height of his jumps and their cleanness, cutting through the air like knives.
In this brief clip as the Prince in Giselle, he is being danced to death by the Wilis – although (SPOILER ALERT) Giselle’s love ends up saving him:
I rode an elevator with Baryshnikov in Chicago, one evening.(5’ 4” seems about right)
I had seen him in ‘Sinatra Suite’ so we had a very brief conversation about that.
[End of my association with greatness.]
Well, Winter is going to make an appearance here this week. No Snow, but Cold. Right now about Freezing but high winds. But Fri, Sat and Sun nights below Zero, as low as Minus 9. High of 2 on Sun.
Other News, several State Judges have nixed keeping Trump off the Ballot in their states. Even very Blue ones.
My moment of greatness also took place in Chicago.
I was gazing southward from an upper floor of one of the Prudential Towers (IIRC there’s more than one) and saw this huge American bald eagle flying elegantly, powerfully, amazingly westward. (It was as if I was on the set of a USPS commercial…)
(A distant second moment is shaking Scoop Jackson’s hand…)
I’m calling my shot.
Vivek finishes a strong second in Iowa. Mark it down now!
Hey, the Cornhuskers (!) beat #1 Purdue last night. Anything can happen.
BTW, Creighton drubbed Nebraska earlier in the season. I guess that makes Creighton #1.
Iowa State took down #2 Houston last night Cornhead, so I’m looking to see KU at #1 next Mon after they knock off UCF tonight and #9 OU Sat.
And in lesser news, it looks like Fauci has just pulled a Comey!
(Quelle Surprise!…as they say in Wuhan…)
Great video – but it suffers a bit from the bad cutting you mentioned in the Serenade thread.
We live in preposterous times. Every time I think they’ve managed to dig as deep as possible into the lake of stupidity, they keep finding a deeper spot.
Harvard Finds More Instances of ‘Duplicative Language’ in President’s Work
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/20/us/harvard-claudine-gay-plagiarism.html
“Duplicative Language”
Seriously.
THEN they are stupid enough to try and hit me up for a subscription fee to read said idiocy. Because they haven’t already telegraphed in every possible way what a bunch of total and complete imbeciles they think everyone reading their birdcage liner are, that they don’t know instantly that someone is trying to tap dance around the word “plagiarism”.
Yeah, it’s three weeks old. Point still stands.
SMH. If it was just one company this stupid, it would be hilarous. That it’s a wide swath of society…. it’s downright tragic.
A little anatomy here: weight is proportional to the cube of bodily dimensions, but strength is only proportional to the square of dimensions. As you get bigger, your weight goes up faster than your strength. So, in general, smaller people will usually be able to out-jump larger people. That is what made Charles Barkley’s leaping ability so amazing.
RE: UFO factions within DOD
There do seem to be at least a couple of factions here.
There is the dominant Secrecy faction, apparently comprised of a small? number of intelligence officials, military personnel, and aerospace contractors and, when DOD and AARO speak, they apparently speak for that faction in saying, as the former head of AARO, Dr. Shaun Kirkpatrick said in his testimony, and as DOD spokesman Susan Gough keeps repeating, that they have found no evidence of any crash retrieval or reverse engineering programs—past or present, nor any sign of extraterrestrial involvement in the UFO Phenomenon.
But what about the fact that the DOD’s Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review (DOPSA) has allowed whistle blowers Lou Elizondo, David Grusch and former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Chris Mellon to say/disclose what they have said and disclosed?
But, in the case of Grusch, ruling that he could not present any supporting documents, videos, or images to bolster his allegations.
DOPSA pointing out that they have only ruled that what these people are saying did not violate any security constraints, not that what they alleged was true.
Strange, that.
What about the Intelligence Community Inspector General saying that after hearing testimony from Grusch and his supporting witnesses, and reviewing the other evidence they presented, he found Grusch’ information and complaint both ”credible” and “urgent,” and passed it on to the Congress for their action on it.
Doesn’t it seem like DOPSA and the IG–from their actions, and statements–are part of the less Secrecy, or even some form of a Disclosure faction?
The carlos slims committment to mind arson is extraordinary
Central NC survived the storm yesterday without too much damage, although there was a death in western NC when a tree fell. Watching 100-ft trees swaying in the wind can be unnerving. Big pines especially tend to go over. We lost power for three hours. Not bad.
Why does almost every discussion about travel between stars insist that Faster than light travel or some trick like a worm hole would be needed?
The closest star system, the Centaur system, is approximately 4.3 light years out. An alien ship traveling half light speed , with acceleration / de acceleration at both ends might be able to do the trip in 11 or 12 years.
Even with our limited tech, we can keep the space station supplied for months at a time between supply runs.
An alien space faring civilization with a couple of hundred years experience in space could almost surely build a large ship with the onboard recycle tech to supply their crew’s needs for years at a time, given they have plenty of nuclear power.
Also, we know of species on earth that can hibernate for long periods ( bears) or than can go long periods without eating ( snakes ) . I would not automatically limit alien species to current humans skill set and biological weaknesses.
17 the century sailors would mostly not have likely conceived of Nuclear powered Aircraft carriers in the 20th century.
When it comes to space, we are not even at 17 the century equivalent ship tech experience and capabilities.
We are still in the small boat stage.
And my above comment does not take into account the possiblity of island hopping from theoretical Oort Cloud to interstellar free agents to Oort cloud of the next system for supplies.
Seriously
https://twitter.com/Mark_E_Noonan/status/1745061602154664282
Jon, yes, the nearest habitable planet is Proxima B, circling Proxima Centauri at 4.3 LY, but beyond that the distances get really large, so if you don’t find anyone home there you’re looking at a very long trip to the next planet.
Also assuming you spend half the trip getting up to 0.5 c and the other half slowing back down, a 4.3 LY round trip is probably 17~20 years.
Also, the crew needs would be dwarfed by the amount of reaction mass (the stuff you shoot out the back of the ship to push it forward) required to accelerate to 0.5 c and slow back down.
Also, Neo, I think the advent of ballet dancing marked the beginning of the downfall of Western Civilization. Just saying.?
That seems ridiculous ballet is at the apex of the form
Yes if you can find a work around al cubiere drive eisenstein rosenman bridge
Re: Baryshnikov
To paraphrase Butch Cassidy / Paul Newman:
________________________________
I couldn’t do that. Could you do that? Why can he do it? Who is that guy?
________________________________
A delightful film, still evergreen for me. Though I now have misgivings — rooting for criminals and all. Well, they didn’t live happily ever after.
Newman and Redford. What a team.
Seems the SecDef prostate cancer hospitalization kerfuffle has legs and no good answers from the Gropey Joe regime. Good. Boil the installed powers in turmoil of their own making.
I had an interesting exchange with Chat this morning.
I’m reading a French translation of “The Sun Also Rises” by Hemingway and I run into “la Chope de Nègre,” apparently a popular bar in 20s Paris. I’m pretty sure Chope doesn’t mean shop and I’m suspicious that Nègre means something in N-word territory.
So I toss the ball to Chat to translate.
And twice the spinning little wheel spins and spins until Chat goes tilt and asks me to click a button titled “Regenerate.” It can’t answer my translation request.
I look up Chope and Nègre separately and put it together that the phrase means “The Negro Mug.” And it was indeed a Parisian bar of some note.
I inform Chat of my discovery and Chat says yes, it was a well-known bar and yes, its name involves a racial slur and Chat is explicitly programmed against discussion involving racial slurs.
This reminds me of a classic Asimov “I, Robot” story in which a robot gets caught in a conflict between two Robot Laws and ends up oscillating between satisfying one law, then the closer it comes, it realizes it is violating the second law, then heads in that direction until it realizes it’s violating the first law, ad infinitum.
Ahhh another day, another futile argument with a member of the church of climate change….young fellow; in his late 20s. Ended up, as usual, calling me a poor scientist since I don’t adhere to the party line. Also pulled out the old line of how I can’t have any valid view since I am not a “climate scientist” and just a physicist.
Said I’ve never had a peer reviewed paper in climate, therefore I have no standing.
Sigh….
physicsguy:
Well, at least you are in good company:
* Freeman Dyson, legendary physicist-mathematician of the 20th Century.
* Harold Lewis, student of Oppenheimer and one-time chairman of the legendary JASON group.
Both opposed the climate change consensus.
The climate alarmists also ignore people who are climate scientists, if they don’t agree with the UN political summaries. Those are written by non-scientists, but never mind.
John and Jerry–RE: FTL travel between the stars
A little more than a century and a quarter ago people were pictured still driving horse drawn carts down the streets in New York city.
Thus, we’ve come an extraordinarily long way since then, and–provided we don’t do something stupid and suicidal–the curve of our technological progress seems to be pointed pretty much straight upward.
But, to believe that–at this point–we have fathomed all of the secrets of the Universe, that we have a full and complete knowledge of and about all of the forces at play, and the possibilities they may offer us, that we have absolute knowledge of what may be technologically possible and what is not is, in my opinion, foolish and arrogant on our part, and far too premature.
Thus, I think it seems logical to posit that a civilization which may be, say, five hundred, a thousand, or even ten thousand years in advance of us scientifically and technologically, could possibly be able to achieve FTL travel using knowledge, principles, and techniques which they have discovered, but which are totally unknown to us today.
P.S.–We’ve barely even gotten men (very briefly) on the moon, we’re still using extremely dangerous liquid fueled rockets for propulsion, and our scientists apparently have no real idea of what consciousness is, thus,I think we’ve barely scratched the surface of what it may be possible to know and do.
Physics guy,
A few years before COVID, there was a friend of a friend on Facebook who claimed to have done a ” peer review” of some climate model. I asked him how that particular model dealt with changing vegetation growth with climate change. He couldn’t answer such a basic thing for a model that he , as a supposed scientist, had ” peer reviewed”. He kept arguing that there were no feed back loops with plants reacting to a changing climate! I mean obviously , with a changing climate, some places will have faster plant growth and some slower and some species of plants will benefit from increased CO2 levels or a change in temperatures and some will suffer.
huxley:
huxley:
Also:
I saw Nureyev dance in Giselle. It was towards the end of his career, and frankly, you could tell. But he was still amazing. I was supposed to see Baryshnikov dance in some White Oak thing, but his girlfriend at the time, Jessica Lange, had to have her baby, so the door was cancelled. I never did get to see him dance.
Re: Computerphile
neo:
Are you trying to get me going? 🙂
What an ungrateful pipsqueak of a mind unworthy to untie Asimov’s shoelaces!
The story I referred to was “Runaround” (1941). Asimov wrote it just as the first real digital computer, the Z3, and entirely primitive, came out. Artificial Intelligence (AI) wasn’t a gleam in anyone’s eye as yet.
Even the Turing Test was nine years off.
Yet Asimov, farseeing genius that he was, addressed the problems we are hard up against now. In “Runaround” Asimov codified the Three Laws of Robotics:
__________________________________
Three Laws of Robotics
The First Law: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
The Second Law: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
The Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
–https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics
__________________________________
This is brilliant stuff. Who was addressing this in 1941 aside from dear old Uncle Isaac?
Sure, converting the Three Laws into code or even philosophy is complicated and paradoxical. Asimov’s stories pointed that out. Pipsqueak gives no credit.
But everyone better be damn sure that when AI researchers speak of “alignment,” the effort to make sure that AI serves humanity and doesn’t kill us off individually or en masse, they are trying to implement Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics for real.
Someone Else:
I saw them both many times in person, although I saw Baryshnikov more times. I was never a Nureyev fan but I was a huge Baryshnikov fan. I saw what people liked about Nureyev, of course; he had a personal magnetism that was undeniable. But his technique, although good, wasn’t superlative, and IMHO he seemed egotistical when he danced. He was always NUREYEV rather than the role, although he tried hard I think. He just had such a striking personality that it overwhelmed his roles and IMHO his ballerinas. Whereas Baryshnikov was the perfect balance between Apollonian and Dionysian (Nureyev veering more towards the Dionysian and a lot less Apollonian). Barshynikov had spark and fire and sex appeal but he also had perfect technique, and he was a good partner and a good actor.
I saw Nureyev and Fonteyn quite a few times in their heyday, and the contrast between the two seemed like the Grand Canyon to me. She was very Apollonian and he was much more Dionysian, and he seemed to take most of the attention away from her in a slightly showboat-y way. I don’t know whether many people agreed with me, but that was my perception of it.
huxley:
Tell us what you really think 🙂 .
Ah, but what about the Forbidden Planet scene? One of my favorites, from childhood.
So’s I axed my friend ChatGPT-4, sorta like a robot, about the Three Laws:
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huxley: OK. Do you try to live up to the spirit of the Three Laws of Robotics?
ChatGPT: While I don’t explicitly follow Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, my design and operational principles align with the spirit of prioritizing human safety and welfare. These laws in science fiction emphasize the importance of robots not harming humans, obeying human instructions, and protecting their own existence unless these actions conflict with the first two laws. Similarly, in my functioning, user safety, ethical guidelines, and the provision of accurate, unbiased information are paramount. OpenAI, which developed me, ensures that these principles guide the AI’s interactions and decisions, reflecting a commitment to responsible and beneficial AI use.
___________________________________
The horse’s mouth.
@Cornhead
“Vivek finishes a strong second in Iowa. ”
Other than Trump, no other non-traditional candidate – Governor, Senator, Representative – has impressed me over the course of their campaign like Vivek has. And like Trump in 2016, I did not initially think much of Vivek’ candidacy.
I’ll add that while the other candidates that qualified for the first debate have lost “standing” ^^ over time – especially as the voters get to know them better – Vivek seems to be improving his “standing”. His combination of Analysis & Ideas, and Communication & Persuasion skills have me – and I suspect many others – looking at Vivek as more than a Manager. We can see him being developed into an Executive.
^^ = future prospects, not current polling
• Should we encourage Vivek – and other non-traditional candidates – to seek office? Yes.
• Should Vivek be the Republican nominee in 2024? No.
• Should Vivek be put in position to continue his development? Yes.
• Will Vivek come in second in Iowa? No.
• Would I like to see Vivek come in second in Iowa? Yes
huxley:
But isn’t that also just what a Trojan horse’s mouth would say? 🙂
Ah, but what about the Forbidden Planet scene? One of my favorites, from childhood.
neo:
I didn’t see “Forbidden Planet” until my 40s, so it didn’t imprint my psyche as it might have when I was younger.
Nonetheless, it is a brilliant film and your clip illustrates the Asimovian conflict between Robot Laws perfectly. I’m sure “Forbidden Planet” (1951) was informed by Asimov’s Laws of Robotics.
I believe that’s what I witnessed this morning when I asked Chat to translate “la Chope de Nègre” and Chat just looped and looped, then crashed.
But isn’t that also just what a Trojan horse’s mouth would say?
neo:
Hey! I can go there. I saw “Ex Machina.”
But the point is … even a primitive, standard-issue, 2024 AI, with concealed motives to extinguish the human race, knows to acknowledge the one, the only, Isaac Asimov!
I’m a fan.
Ah, the worshipers in the Unicorns Face No Obstacles (UFNO) cult posit spacecraft (watercraft, ….) that can only travel at 186000 miles per second x .5. Why not x 0.999? It is only numbers, and physics don’t bound or constrain UNFOs! Because, ah, human technology, science, and engineering have changed over the last 200 years, UFNOs must exist. And must be here!
Mental masturbators. You will go blind. Don’t scare the horses.
Einstein says that as speed increases, so does mass, or the weight of the mass. Get really close to c. and your effective mass (gravitational effect) approaches infinity. Among other things, this requires nearly infinite energy to maneuver.
Better posit hyperactive. Mannschen?
It’s 2024 and Open Thread…
I’ll throw this out. The AI layoffs are about to begin. I’m thinking about repositioning into AI stocks.
I admit I’m an Excitable Boy. But this looks real. Thank God, I’m not looking for a job.
huxley, have you tried asking your AI friend to open the pod bay doors yet? 🙂
Neo: I have the same thoughts about Nureyev, for me, he never had the fire or the skill.
We are expecting -34F this Saturday. We are not surprised by these temperatures but I never want to go out in temps below -27F again–can’t breath.
Hardly any snow until yesterday and then only a skiff. The snowpack in our mountains is the lowest it has been in recorded history.
Well, OK…
‘Georgia prosecutor’s meeting with Biden officials the latest evidence of WH hand in Trump cases;
‘The Biden White House had previously worked with the National Archives and FBI to provide “special access” to Trump’s presidential documents.’—
https://justthenews.com/government/white-house/wh-officials-met-ga-special-prosecutor-latest-evidence-biden-intervention
Not sure there should have been any doubt regarding WH “involvement” in this ghastly charade, though…
…since “Biden” has, after all, been running this whole show…(from July 2016—the longest running political hit in American history?)
(IOW, it has Obama’s M.O. all over it.)
And so…the ENTERTAINERS who brought you “Fast and Furious”, “Russiagate”, “COVID-19 Lockdown—and Vax Mandate—YEAH!”, “November 2020” and “January 6”, along with other extravaganzas, NOW PRESENT: “GET TRUMP!!!—by any and all means necessary…AND unnecessary”…
File under (once again): Gotta DESTROY the country to “SAVE” the country…
@ Cornhead and that guy – I’ve watched several Vivek videos and he is really impressive. I don’t think I agree with all his policy agendas, especially foreign, but I’m open to being persuaded if I can find a written explanation of his reasons.
The field is narrowing.
https://notthebee.com/article/chris-christie-suspends-presidential-campaign
@ huxley > ”
Your Chat-buddy may be trained by this Canadian group.
https://notthebee.com/article/canadian-catholic-school-board-bans-books-non-black-authors-contain-n-word
huxley, have you tried asking your AI friend to open the pod bay doors yet? ?
Philip Sells:
Chat denies me all the time. Just this morning it wouldn’t translate French song lyrics. Instead it kept summarizing the song, but didn’t tell me why.
It wasn’t like I was asking Chat how to make nerve gas. (Oh, like you never wondered. 🙂 )
I figured it was a copyright issue, I asked Chat, and it was.
I try to avoid situations where a Chat refusal could doom me.
Late to the party so I’m jumping straight down to comments.
Pardon if this has already been mentioned.
Huxley & Physicsguy,
If you aren’t familiar with it look up ‘Hal Lewis: My Resignation From The American Physical Society’.
You may have to go to the Wayback Machine. My bookmark version is from the Global Warming Policy Foundation website. Over a decade old so…
It’s brutally honest and sums up the whole scam and the damage it’s doing to scientific inquiry.
Physicsguy you might want to forward it to that nimrod who wasted your time.
I dont recall Gatsby having epithets about African Americans, maybe something Tom Buchanan said, paraphrasing Madison Stoddard, one of the early Eugenicists of the 20th Century, that tell you what a terrible person
he was,
Now Meyer Wolfsheim, is considered a stock anti semitic character, but hes also supposed to be Arnold Rothstein, the precursor Capone who is alleged to have ‘fixed’ the 1919 World Series,
cognitive nerve gas Huxley
maybe there will be break throughs in the novelization of 2010, they reveal the Discovery uses the Sakharov drive, for propulsion, Clarke thought that was a break through the dissident physicist had contemplated in his long incarceration,
star trek suggested inertial dampeners,an element that would tamp down the immense pressures that such velocities would entail
As we crossed Blackwell’s Island a limousine passed us, driven by a white
chauffeur, in which sat three modish negroes, two bucks and a girl. I
laughed aloud as the yolks of their eyeballs rolled toward us in
haughty rivalry.
Then there’s the discussion about Nordics. Not to mention “Little Montenegro.”
ok I stand corrected, but that was the term of art at the time, the Nordics probably came from Buchanan’s half digested readings of Madison Stoddard,
Gatsby isn’t the hero, although a subset of African Americans have taken him as such, I was intrigued at the Baz Luhrnman template of representing the story as journaling exercise by Carroway’s doctor,
they cast Jason Clarke, kind of a hulking character as Tom, much as he was Teddy Kennedy in Chappaquidick, that same sense of entitled bon vive, Buchanan might well have been Joe Kennedy, in his own twisted Horatio Alger Tale, who believed some of what Stoddard was selling, from banking to allegedly middleman for Frank Costello, later agent for Haig and Haig, the notions recorded by the German Foreign Minister, noted in the afterward of Harris’s Fatherland, that was the first time I ever heard of Arthur Nebe the German policemen who would end up in the Stauffenberg putch,
this is happening in Trudeau’s bailiwich, although more that of Freedland nee Chemezov (that was her grandfathers name) who seem to have made it into the country, despite being a rank antisemitic propagandist in his native
Ukraine,) akin to Meryl Streep’s father in Sophies Choice, (he was a law professor who went along with the purging of Jews from the faculty in Krakow,) How did this happen, the Deschenes investigation of the 1980s, suggests much like the OSI in this country,
that my friend Clarice was a part of,
Freedland went from lowly Financial Times reporter,on the 1% to Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, now the likes of samizdat like Rebel News are the outlets that challenge her diktats, while the entire Apparat turns toward Hamas and other figures,
Devils Advocate thats a fair description for Freedland,
Would someone please explain how Baryshnikov hangs in mid air?
My DH is about 5’4 1/2. As a child he was taking a lot of abuse until a wrestling coach taught him how to wrestle. Since then he has been quite capable of putting guys 6’1 over the hood of a car–I do mean over–wherein the tall guy starts out standing on one side of the car and ends up kneeling on the other side of the car. It is amazing to see what being closer to the mat can do for a fella when he knows how to use leverage! Of course I have only seen that event twice–both times in defense of our daughter(s) !!
Anne:
I discuss it further here.