AdamSmith

And heeere we go... Editorial Could this be the beginning of the end of the Trump administration? http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-flynn-plea-20171201-story.html

The Proper Way to Self-Immolate...

Also perhaps timely...

Daily Beast has this very good analysis of things to date: TEA LEAVES After Michael Flynn, Robert Mueller's Next Targets Are in This Document https://www.thedailybeast.com/michael-flynn-jared-kushner-robert-muellers-next-targets-are-in-this-document-4?yptr=yahoo

Highly desirable trait in a pilot, seems to me! As likewise in any kind of engineer. (One strives for the same thing oneself, in investigating and reporting what engineering software technologies are mature and working reliably, vs. what new ones are worth investigating now, but to be deployed into first use only with high caution & watchfulness.)

This could get REALLY interesting. Was Michael Flynn asked to wear a wire in Mueller hunt for evidence on Russia? Plea agreement includes clause showing Flynn consented to participate in ‘covert law enforcement activities” if required The least-noticed sentence in Michael Flynn’s plea agreement with special counsel Robert Mueller may also be the most important one. Section eight of the deal reached by Donald Trump’s former national security adviser in the inquiry into Russian meddling in the US election is entitled “cooperation”. It specifies that as well as answering questions and submitting to government-administered polygraph tests, Flynn’s cooperation “may include … participating in covert law enforcement activities”. Long-time students of federal law enforcement practices agreed, speaking anonymously, that “covert law enforcement activities” likely refers to the possibility of wearing a concealed wire or recording telephone conversations with other potential suspects. It is not known whether Flynn has worn a wire at any time. “If the other subjects of investigation have had any conversations with Flynn during the last few months, that phrase must have all of them shaking in their boots,” said John Flannery, a former federal prosecutor in the southern district of New York. “The one who must be particularly terrified is [Trump son-in-law and adviser] Jared Kushner, if he spoke to the special counsel’s office without immunity about the very matter that is the subject of Flynn’s plea. I think he must be paralyzed if he talked to Flynn before or after the investigators debriefed him.” ... Since there was no legal requirement for Mueller to include this information about covert law enforcement activities in the plea agreement, Flannery believes it was put there “to put the fear of God” into anyone who may have given the special counsel answers that conflict with Flynn’s information. Cont.: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/03/michael-flynn-plea-agreement-mueller-russia

All this stress on him really does look to be accelerating the onset of his reported dementia. I should say the news reports that some close to him think it is early dementia.

Viktor Frankl on the Human Search for Meaning “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” By Maria Popova Celebrated Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl (March 26, 1905–September 2, 1997) remains best-known for his indispensable 1946 psychological memoir Man’s Search for Meaning (public library) — a meditation on what the gruesome experience of Auschwitz taught him about the primary purpose of life: the quest for meaning, which sustained those who survived. For Frankl, meaning came from three possible sources: purposeful work, love, and courage in the face of difficulty. In examining the “intensification of inner life” that helped prisoners stay alive, he considers the transcendental power of love: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance. Frankl illustrates this with a stirring example of how his feelings for his wife — who was eventually killed in the camps — gave him a sense of meaning: We were at work in a trench. The dawn was grey around us; grey was the sky above; grey the snow in the pale light of dawn; grey the rags in which my fellow prisoners were clad, and grey their faces. I was again conversing silently with my wife, or perhaps I was struggling to find the reason for my sufferings, my slow dying. In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious “Yes” in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose. At that moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miserable grey of a dawning morning in Bavaria. “Et lux in tenebris lucet” — and the light shineth in the darkness. For hours I stood hacking at the icy ground. The guard passed by, insulting me, and once again I communed with my beloved. More and more I felt that she was present, that she was with me; I had the feeling that I was able to touch her, able to stretch out my hand and grasp hers. The feeling was very strong: she was there. Then, at that very moment, a bird flew down silently and perched just in front of me, on the heap of soil which I had dug up from the ditch, and looked steadily at me. Of humor, “another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation,” Frankl writes: It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds. … The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living. Yet it is possible to practice the art of living even in a concentration camp, although suffering is omnipresent. Lithograph by Leo Haas, Holocaust artist who survived Theresienstadt and Auschwitz (public domain) After discussing the common psychological patterns that unfold in inmates, Frankl is careful to challenge the assumption that human beings are invariably shaped by their circumstances. He writes: But what about human liberty? Is there no spiritual freedom in regard to behavior and reaction to any given surroundings? … Most important, do the prisoners’ reactions to the singular world of the concentration camp prove that man cannot escape the influences of his surroundings? Does man have no choice of action in the face of such circumstances? We can answer these questions from experience as well as on principle. The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action. … Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress. […] Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. Much like William James did in his treatise on habit, Frankl places this notion of everyday choice at the epicenter of the human experience: Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate. Like Henry Miller and Philip K. Dick, Frankl recognizes suffering as an essential piece not only of existence but of the meaningful life: If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete. The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity — even under the most difficult circumstances — to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not. … Such men are not only in concentration camps. Everywhere man is confronted with fate, with the chance of achieving something through his own suffering. In working as a psychiatrist to the inmates, Frankl found that the single most important factor in cultivating the kind of “inner hold” that allowed men to survive was teaching them to hold in the mind’s grip some future goal. He cites Nietzsche’s, who wrote that “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how,” and admonishes against generalization: Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on. He was soon lost. The typical reply with which such a man rejected all encouraging arguments was, “I have nothing to expect from life any more.” What sort of answer can one give to that? What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life — daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual. These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment. Thus it is impossible to define the meaning of life in a general way. Questions about the meaning of life can never be answered by sweeping statements. “Life” does not mean something vague, but something very real and concrete, just as life’s tasks are also very real and concrete. They form man’s destiny, which is different and unique for each individual. No man and no destiny can be compared with any other man or any other destiny. No situation repeats itself, and each situation calls for a different response. Sometimes the situation in which a man finds himself may require him to shape his own fate by action. At other times it is more advantageous for him to make use of an opportunity for contemplation and to realize assets in this way. Sometimes man may be required simply to accept fate, to bear his cross. Every situation is distinguished by its uniqueness, and there is always only one right answer to the problem posed by the situation at hand. Lithograph by Leo Haas, Holocaust artist who survived Theresienstadt and Auschwitz (public domain) In considering the human capacity for good and evil and the conditions that bring out indecency in decent people, Frankl writes: Human kindness can be found in all groups, even those which as a whole it would be easy to condemn. The boundaries between groups overlapped and we must not try to simplify matters by saying that these men were angels and those were devils. […] From all this we may learn that there are two races of men in this world, but only these two — the “race” of the decent man and the “race” of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people. In this sense, no group is of “pure race” — and therefore one occasionally found a decent fellow among the camp guards. Life in a concentration camp tore open the human soul and exposed its depths. Is it surprising that in those depths we again found only human qualities which in their very nature were a mixture of good and evil? The rift dividing good from evil, which goes through all human beings, reaches into the lowest depths and becomes apparent even on the bottom of the abyss which is laid open by the concentration camp. The second half of the book presents Frankl’s singular style of existential analysis, which he termed “logotherapy” — a method of healing the soul by cultivating the capacity to find a meaningful life: Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible. Thus, logotherapy sees in responsibleness the very essence of human existence. This emphasis on responsibleness is reflected in the categorical imperative of logotherapy, which is: “Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!” Frankl contributes to history’s richest definitions of love: Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true. Frankl wrote the book over the course of nine consecutive days, with the original intention of publishing it anonymously, but upon his friends’ insistent advice, he added his name in the last minute. In the introduction to the 1992 edition, in reflecting upon the millions of copies sold in the half-century since the original publication, Frankl makes a poignant meta-comment about something George Saunders recently echoed, noting: In the first place I do not at all see in the bestseller status of my book an achievement and accomplishment on my part but rather an expression of the misery of our time: if hundreds of thousands of people reach out for a book whose very title promises to deal with the question of a meaning to life, it must be a question that burns under their fingernails. … At first, however, it had been written with the absolute conviction that, as an anonymous opus, it could never earn its author literary fame. In the same introduction, he shares a piece of timeless advice on success he often gives his students: Don’t aim at success — the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run—in the long run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it. (Hugh MacLeod famously articulated the same sentiment when he wrote that “The best way to get approval is not to need it.”) If there ever were a universal reading list of existential essentials, Man’s Search for Meaning would, without a shadow of a doubt, be on it. https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/03/26/viktor-frankl-mans-search-for-meaning/

...Former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, Dan Pfeiffer‏, tweeted, "If Trump keeps admitting to obstructing justice, Ty Cobb might be right that the Mueller investigation may wrap up sooner than we think." http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/02/politics/trump-tweet-flynn-firing-fbi-reaction/index.html

Nixon implicated himself on his own, supposedly private, tapes. Trump is now doing it on his public tweets! STORY HIGHLIGHTS Trump tweeted that he fired Flynn for lying to Pence and the FBI Critics are questioning when Trump learned Flynn had lied to the FBI Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump's tweet on Saturday about firing Michael Flynn from his position as national security adviser is garnering a lot of attention from critics -- with some calling it a possible admission of obstruction of justice. Trump tweeted about Flynn's Friday guilty plea, in which the former national security adviser said he lied to the FBI about conversations he had with Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak during the transition and disclosed that he is cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller's office... http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/02/politics/trump-tweet-flynn-firing-fbi-reaction/index.html

The beauty and genius of this is well worth reposting. http://radioopensource.org/whose-words-these-are-15-blooms-hart-crane/#

Flynn plea deal increases exposure of senior Trump transition team members Mike Pence, Jared Kushner, Reince Priebus, Jeff Sessions and Trump at risk ...“Trump has categorically said that he was not aware of any campaign communications with Russia,” said Anne Milgram, who has worked closely in the past with Mueller and his team as a former attorney general for the state of New Jersey and former federal prosecutor. “That is the kind of question that you would want to ask Michael Flynn. Were there conversations about those communications? Was there an understanding that the Russians had so-called ‘dirt’ on Secretary Clinton? And so all those things are going to be really important for the government to understand.”... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/02/flynn-plea-deal-exposure-senior-trump-transition-team-members

This feels like it is the Watergate moment in this investigation and pending prosecution.

'Vud not be difficult, Mein Feuhrer!' ...'Animals could be bred, and slaughtered...!'

Maybe almost time to recall this historic moment...and how history repeats...

Yes. Is FF the culprit? Safari on my iPhone does not suffer from these pathologies, so maybe it must be FireFox?

Horrible! Also uproarious!

Voyager 1 Thrusters Fired Up After 37 Years of Deep Sleep By AKALib Friday Dec 01, 2017 · 7:08 PM EST 14 Comments (14 New) 44 Credit: NASA RSS REBLOGGED BY SciTech Recommended TAGS Recommended Science Space Voyager Share this article After 37 years of deep sleep, a set of thrusters aboard the Voyager 1 spacecraft, were successfully fired up on Wednesday, Nov 29. They will help augment the primary thrusters which are getting old and weak. The thrusters are used periodically to reorient the spacecraft and re-point its antenna to Earth, now 21 billion km away. Voyager 1, launched in September 5, 1977, now flying in interstellar space, relies on thrusters that are fired for short millisecond periods to subtly rotate the spacecraft and point its communications antenna at Earth. Since 2014, NASA engineers had noticed that Voyager’s "attitude control thrusters" have been degrading and losing efficiency. The Voyager team assembled a group of propulsion experts to study the problem. The solution that came up with was to use the four Trajectory Correction Maneuver (TCM) thrusters, which were originally used for orientation control when Voyager flew by planets and moons during the first few years of its mission. The TCM thrusters are identical in size and functionality to the attitude control thrusters, and are located on the back side of the spacecraft. The TCM thrusters were last used on November 8, 1980, when Voyager 1 flew by Saturn. Back then, the TCM thrusters were used in a more continuous firing mode; they had never been used in the pulse mode necessary for its new role. On Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2017, Voyager engineers sent instructions to fire up the four TCM thrusters. It took 19 hours and 35 minutes for the signal to reach Voyager 1 and another 19 hours and 35 minutes for the response to arrive. The received signals indicated that everything went according to plan — after 37 years of deep sleep in cold dark space, the thrusters worked perfectly! Kudos to the designers of the spacecraft and the mission team, who pored through decades-old data and outdated assembler language software to figure out and implement the solution. The plan going forward is to switch to the TCM thrusters in January. To make the change, Voyager has to turn on one heater per thruster, which requires power -- a limited resource for the aging mission. When there is no longer enough power to operate the heaters, the team will switch back to the attitude control thrusters. The thruster test went so well, the team will likely do a similar test on the TCM thrusters for Voyager 2, the twin spacecraft of Voyager 1. The attitude control thrusters currently used for Voyager 2 are not yet as degraded as Voyager 1's. More details at www.nasa.gov/... Voyager 1 Voyager 1 was launched by NASA on September 5, 1977, to study the outer Solar System. Its twin Voyager 2 was launched 16 days earlier. The Voyager 1 mission included flybys of Jupiter, Saturn and Saturn's large moon, Titan. It completed its primary mission with the flyby of Saturn on November 20, 1980. It is now pursuing an extended mission to explore the regions and boundaries of the outer heliosphere. The mission is expected to continue until around 2025 when its radioisotope thermoelectric generators will no longer supply enough electric power to operate its scientific instruments. A few vital statistics - Parameter Value Distance 141 AU (2.11×1010 km) from Sun A AU = Earth-Sun distance = 150 million km Speed 38,026 mph 520 million km per year Communications Delay (one-way) 19 hours and 35 minutes Launch Date September 5, 1977 Power 3 radioisotope thermoelectric generators 470 W at launch time Plutonium-238 left = 72.76%. Will decline to 56.5% by 2050. Here is a diagram of Voyager 1 and its instruments - voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/... Voyager 1 is in "Interstellar space" and Voyager 2 is currently in the "Heliosheath" -- the outermost layer of the heliosphere where the solar wind is slowed by the pressure of interstellar gas. See voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/… for some more fun facts of Voyager. Here is an animation showing the trajectory of the two Voyager spacecraft - The Golden Record Each Voyager spacecraft carries a gold-plated audio-visual disc intended for any intelligent life forms out there. The disc carries encoded photographs, music, sounds and greetings in 55 languages.See diagram below for the record cover. voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/... See voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/… for a fascinating description of the images and the playback instructions encoded in them. An excerpt is shown below - In the upper left-hand corner is an easily recognized drawing of the phonograph record and the stylus carried with it. The stylus is in the correct position to play the record from the beginning. Written around it in binary arithmetic is the correct time of one rotation of the record, 3.6 seconds, expressed in time units of 0,70 billionths of a second, the time period associated with a fundamental transition of the hydrogen atom. The drawing indicates that the record should be played from the outside in. Below this drawing is a side view of the record and stylus, with a binary number giving the time to play one side of the record - about an hour. Voyager 1 and 2 both carry this record. There are ten more on display at various NASA institutions. Even Carl Sagan, who chaired the committee that created the record, did not get a copy. The record was never made available to the general public. Now we can get a copy (for $98), thanks to a Kickstarter-funded reissue of the Voyager Golden Record: 40th Anniversary Edition, issued as a 3 LP box set. Also, available as a 2 CD set at lightintheattic.net/… for $50. Both versions come with a hardcover illustrated book. Ozma Records. Here is video containing decoded information from the record - https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/12/1/1720285/-Voyager-1-Thrusters-Fired-Up-After-37-Years-of-Deep-Sleep