I am the mom of a 27-y.o. with whom I had a rare phone conversation on Friday.  She lives 3 hours away, but due to my health, job, and caregiving responsibilities and her job and nervousness about driving far, we don't see each other very much.

My husband is away today to a memorial service for his late aunt, who was like a second mother to him growing up.

"In a room sit three great men, a king, a priest, and a rich man with his gold. Between them stands, a little man of common birth and no great mind. Each of the great ones bids him slay the other two. `Do it,' says the king, `for I am your lawful ruler.' `Do it,' says the priest, `for I command you in the names of the gods.' `Do it,' says the rich man, `and all this gold shall be yours.' So tell me - who lives and who dies?""

Since I had spent the morning reading about the physics of visual perception and therefore particle physics I thought it was relevant. The 'answer' to the riddle is "nowhere, power is an illusion in the mind of the sellsword", in other words it is a social construct. It is in the nature of the invisible relationships of the particles - the forces acting on them like magnetic and gravitational forces. But I don't have the math skills to back up my ideas. My nephew (who I love like a son) never lets any BS slip by. Of course the way the riddle is phrased limits the answer to the riddle, but it's still interesting. But that was not his beef. He said it was the rich guy.

A bit more on visual science - apparently scientists do not know definitively exactly how visual preceptors in  our eyes function.  There has never been a living eye dissected and the chemical/neurological reactions measured or recorded. Perception in primaries is not proven science. In other words our color receptors - (the cones in our retinas) are not dedicated to certain limited electromagnetic frequencies we may experience as "primaries'. Nor is this accepted science --only science that has never ever been truly tested.

Of course the riddle is about political power, financial power, and religious power..... and military power - assuming military power follows attitude (the force, magnetic, gradational)l of their perception of Power.

And it does not cover the power of love which is greater than gravitational or magnitic force. In some families gravitational force is the most powerful, but the power of love is altogether different. And I cannot dismiss it as not elemental force - and in fact I think it is the strongest force on particles and all of us in the march of time.

Moms came over with my sister and her fam to celebrate. Busted out the BBQ for the first time this season for mi pollo con salsa ajo especial y camarones a la plancha...delicioso!  

We had awesome weather too, let the spring and summer begin in earnest...woo hoo!

Who can control the post-superpower capitalist world order?
In a divided and dangerous world, we need to teach the new powers some manners

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What is most interesting to me is that while Sam was drafted by the team geographically closest to where he played college ball a lot of folks think St. Louis has the best front seven in the NFL (lets not argue that please, but they do have a good front seven and two DEs much better than Sam).  St Louis will be one of the hardest places for Sam to make the cuts once training camp starts.

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Nel responded by comparing the athlete's mental state to post-traumatic stress disorder and saying the law required psychiatric observation.

The prosecutor's extremely unusual move is essentially an effort to maneuver the court into considering an insanity or "capacity" defense even though the athlete's legal team is not mounting one, CNN legal analyst Kelly Phelps said. Phelps, a criminologist and law lecturer at the University of Cape Town, said she had never seen this done before.

Pistorius' lead defense lawyer, Barry Roux, is fighting back, saying Nel is oversimplifying the law.

If granted, this eval could delay the trial by 30 days or more.

Although (my) highlighted portion would seem to be a problem for the defense, if this article is capturing it correctly.

[Dr. Meryll] Vorster's testimony also dealt with what she said was Pistorius's fear of crime and how, because he was a double amputee, he reacted to perceived threats in a different way to other people. She noted that Pistorius's mother, who died when he was a teenager, slept with a gun in her bed and feared being attacked in her home.

Cross-examining Vorster at the start of the eighth week of the trial, Nel asked whether she was saying that Pistorius had a mental illness and should undergo a 30-day period of observation, and whether he was changing his defence to one of diminished responsibility.

Nel asked her whether someone who was suffering from an anxiety disorder of the kind she had diagnosed in Pistorius, and who had access to guns, would be a danger to society. Vorster said such a person would indeed be a danger.

I think the best way to begin a review of the Lewinsky article is to quote its ending: "It is time to burn the beret and bury the blue dress. And move forward."   This sentiment is certainly understandable, but the interweaving question that arises during its reading seemed to be why is now the time to burn and bury, and how is she going to do this at this point, if it could not be done before?  

The answer appears to be that psychological encumbrances delayed her moving from being "That Woman" to being a woman--as she wants to be.   Ms. Lewinsky has harbored disappointment, if not ire, for, what she considers unfair treatment aimed at shame and humiliation.  Including, from quarters that she might have expected at least a modicum of support, such as feminists who joined the cultural chorus that put her through the wringer.

She does observe and note  that it was difficult for feminists, for example, to criticize President Clinton who was supportive of women's causes. Moreover, she recognizes that hers was a consensual affair, and not sexual harassment.   Indeed, she seems to offer a countering position to those of her own.   She comes across as neither pitiful or pitiable.

Ms. Lewinsky's internalized torments  were re-awaked with the recent references to her from Senator Rand Paul, in his defense of charges that Republicans are waging a war on women.  Also, the archival retrieval from the late Diane Blair, a confidant of Hillary Clinton, who recorded that "Bill's lapse was inexcusable, but she praised him for trying to manage someone who is a"narcissistic looney toon."

Intellectually, Monica seems to grasp the  wife's assessment, but, emotionally, she does not countenance the loon label, claiming  that  a loon would not have stood up to Ken Starr and his minions with threats that included 27 years in jail.   It is evident that Monica is smart, but the loon context does not relate to intelligence.  

As for the photo of Monica lounging on a red brocade sofa, it seemed to be just that--an attractive woman lounging on a read brocade sofa.  Not a siren, but probably an effort to over come the sting of comments she heard of her unsvelte appearance, in which she believes that this was a factor.  JKF was excused, she feels, because he had an affair with the beautiful, Marilyn Monroe.

As of last count, Aiken led Crisco by a little less than 400 votes. Crisco had issued a statement last week which stated his unwillingness to concede the race, but was said to have been considering his concession to Aiken tomorrow.

BRUSSELS -- The highest court in the European Union decided on Tuesday that Google must grant users of its search engine a right to delete links about themselves in some cases, including links to legal records.

The decision by the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg is a blow for Google, which has sought to avoid the obligation to remove links when requested by European users of its service.

By ruling that an Internet company like Google must comply with European privacy laws when operating in the European Union -- a consumer market of about 550 million people -- the court is indicating that such companies must operate in a fundamentally different way than they do in the United States.

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