kairosfocus

The kairos concept is, in a nutshell, that there are seasons in life and in community, so that there are times that are opportune or even simply pivotal and trend-making. At such times, we are forced to decide, for good or ill. And yes, carry on with business as usual . . . especially on a manifest march of folly . . . is a [collective, power-balance driven] decision; ill advised though it may be: More formally: With that in mind, I now draw attention to Chenyuan Snider’s expose of some of the more terrifying Red Guard-like group-guilt, stereotyping and scapegoating tactics of the totalitarian government she grew up under; here, targetting a particularly revered group in historic, Confucius- influenced Read More ›

Vid: Ponder the exacting systems engineering, reliability testing, required qualifications and multiple i/o instrumentation and control involved. Observe the precise, corrective jets to keep the process under control. This, is how a good future is going to be built: near earth colonisation and Lunar colonisation are the first stages to Solar system colonisation. (Note, they are expected to remain on the ISS for 30 – 119 days.) Blue Danube is extra, but it speaks to the cultural patterns that lie behind that precise docking exercise and all the rich promise it reflects. END

He writes: >> Participants: From the naturalists’ camp: chemist Lee Cronin (University of Glasgow, UK). From the skeptics’ camp: chemist James Tour (Rice University, USA). Okay, origin of life research. Like in any other research, there should be no magic: garbage in — garbage out. Between 25:00 and 26:00 Lee said something like this: We found in a laboratory how chemicals can be steered towards decision making. (emphasis mine). This is already telling. I am fine with experiments in a test tube. But as soon as naturalists need to explain something non-trivial like the alleged naturalistic emergence of decision making or information translation, they use imagination. Closer to the end of the debate, Cronin gives way to it: in 5 Read More ›

I forgot, today is a terrible anniversary, the Battle of Jutland: Had the Royal Navy managed to win here decisively (as 110 years before at Trafalgar), it might have ended WW1 before it spun utterly out of control across the next 18 months that wrecked the old order and ushered in a century of unprecedented horrors. As it was, it preserved the strategic situation of blockade, at the cost of a terrible battering. While this, Verdun. Then, the Somme as the French pleaded desperately for relief. Then, collapse of Russia, Mutiny in France’s Army, ultimately collapse of Germany, The Ottoman Empire, and much more. 1939, round 2. Lessons to ponder aplenty as we see Arab Spring attempted in the USA. Read More ›

As we see riotous turmoil grabbing headlines, a bit of balancing perspective is always helpful: Psalm 23:1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. 2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. 3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. 4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. 5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. 6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days Read More ›

vid: A new beginning. END

Dr Zelenko expects to be in publication along with some German colleagues, in about two weeks. In the following video (pardon quality issues): . . . he asks, in effect, isn’t it standard to treat a disease as early as possible, so why the strange difference here? He makes a comparison to how a fire can flash over into a much more dangerous stage and notes how much easier it is to hit it while it is small. He expresses a measure of anger with medical and political establishments, /do allow for that. He identifies that by the time people are at a Doctor’s office they are likely to be about day 5 in the disease process, on the verge Read More ›

Typical images of the solar system are NOT to scale, showing the planets at grossly exaggerated sizes. Here is a typical case, HT Wikimedia, WP and Planet User: So, some video makers did a little project to show it to scale, out to Neptune . . . beyond, lies vastly more of course, but Pluto has been demoted to “dwarf planet.” Video: A Pandemic Sunday reflection from scripture comes to mind: Psalm 19:1The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.2 Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.3 There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. 4 Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the Read More ›

Inimitable: Food for thought. U/D: When it reaches the pharmacy . . . U/D May 19, another Lozano interview: And, oh yes, breaking 1: Mr Trump is praising — yes, I am NOT using, “touting” — a promising vaccination. Announcement by the firm, here. Breaking, no 2, courtesy Daily Mail as usual: Of course, the now standard, it’s risky is in the subheads. U/D: Video: Compare our Texas Doctor’s remarks. And then, there is the latest from Dr Raoult: Whose report do you believe, why? END

Here, in human mitochondrial DNA — note the BLUE code start and the RED code stop; all HT to Wiki publishing against known ideological interest: Complex interwoven code is of course doubly functionally specific, so it is exponentially harder to account for, other than by exceedingly sophisticated and creative intelligently directed configuration. Indeed, when I had to write machine code, I thanked my lucky stars 2114’s and 2716’s were by then affordable RAM and EPROM chips, and proceeded from there. (BTW, a neighbour who was an engineer in an earlier era spoke of how people flew across North America just to see 1 MB of live RAM, in a video memory, a million dollar cost in itself.) We know v Read More ›

As Cardinal Pell has been recently cleared, perhaps some may be willing to learn from this telling vid: No, Virginia, you do not get a world from no-thing. END

It seems we need to clarify language. For, we see in the Ortho types thread: EG, 140: >> . . . Definitions of language: Webster’s: the words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used and understood by a community. Britannica: a system of conventional spoken, manual (signed), or written symbols by means of which human beings, as members of a social group and participants in its culture, express themselves. Cambridge: a system of communication consisting of sounds, words, and grammar, or the system of communication used by people in a particular country or type of work. Collins: A language is a system of communication which consists of a set of sounds and written symbols which are used by Read More ›

One of the more astonishing rhetorical gambits of objectors to the design inference is to try to suggest that the alphanumeric, code-using, algorithmic information system we see in the D/RNA of the living cell and linked protein synthesis is not really an information system, it all reduces to chemical reaction trains. A common associated gambit is to assert that terms like “code” etc are all readily dismissible analogies. As a first reminder, protein synthesis as graphically summarised: Of course, it never hurts to remind such objectors of p. 5 of Sir Francis Crick’s $6 million, March 19, 1953 letter to his son, Michael: Notice, his belief right from the outset of discovering the double-helix stricture: “. . . D.N.A. is Read More ›

There is a live exchange on the molecular nanotech communication systems in the cell that is trying to reduce them to Chemistry; where a chemical reaction is a physical process. Accordingly, I beg to remind one and all regarding layered communication systems and protocols: This is an elaboration of the general communication system: Here is how Yockey summarised it: Where, the standard genetic code [one of about two dozen dialects] reads like: The double helix: As was noted by Crick, right from the outset: In context: Now, we can see for ourselves just how desperate objectors to the design inference must be in the face of the point that D/RNA expresses a string data structure carrying a prong-height-based alphanumeric, 4 Read More ›

Let’s look at daily confirmed cases: and at a seven-day rolling average for deaths: South Korea seems to have beaten this wave. Several advanced countries show a stubborn plateau, which is reflected in the linear ongoing growth. It is not confined to the US, we need to learn from the Koreans; who BTW are HCQ users. The “mesa” for China underscores the observation that Chinese data has to be regarded with care. END