Robot Jazz

  Take a look at this teaser trailer for the forthcoming documentary about the disturbing story of Elizabeth Holmes: Elizabeth Holmes was once heralded as a business prodigy, a woman who had become a billionairess via the launch of her medical technology company, Theranos . The problem was that the basis of her company and wealth, a magical medical device that could screen for countless medical conditions via a mere drop of blood, was nonexistent.  Holmes and her secret lover, Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, had concocted an elaborate hoax around a biomedical device that was impossible to manufacture using contemporary technology. Despite warning signs that many industry experts had identified early on,  Holmes was nonetheless showered with awards, including an appointment to the  Harvard Medical School Board of Fellows  and a spot on  Time  magazine's 100 most influential people list . Holmes also received the "Under 30 Doers Award" from Forbes and rece...

  September is yellow. I don't mean "yellow" in a cowardly sense, just that it is...well, yellow . It feels yellow in a way other months do not.  Why that is, I do not know, but that's the way it is.  Because it is a yellow month, I, of course, have set all the lighting effects on my tech to shades of yellow. It pleases me to do so. The time for more vibrant colors - the oranges of October's Halloween, the rusty browns of November's falling leaves, and the vibrant reds and greens of December - is not yet here. Instead, we are trapped in the forgettable days of September's yellow. I believe this is why I have written so little this month.  Granted, I have been swamped with "real-life" hassles and challenges - that has most definitely eaten into my writing time.  But I also think it is because the nation is caught in something of a holding pattern, Gandalf's "deep breath before the plunge."  November will certainly be one of the most ...

  I know I've just seen a good World War Two movie when it makes me interested in World War Two again. That is no small feat. After nearly half a century marinating in an era that is now less a historic period and more a multimedia empire of films, documentaries, television series, video games, and books, I've reached the point of saturation. It's one reason I eventually drifted toward the Cold War, a period that receives only a fraction of the attention (I am a contrarian, if nothing else!). So, when a movie sends me rummaging through my shelf of World War Two wargames, I know it has accomplished something remarkable. Bernd Eichinger's Downfall did exactly that. While Downfall didn’t reveal anything I hadn’t already known, what struck me wasn’t the events themselves but seeing those familiar facts brought vividly to life through exceptional acting. It’s one thing to read about Frau Goebbels poisoning her children because she didn’t want them to live in a post-Nazi wo...

  In my last blog post, I pointed out that politics, in a functioning democracy, is not immune to Newton's Third Law: it is subject to an equal and opposite reaction from the opposing political side. What is more, I warned that when politicians fail to come to grips with that axiomatic principle, upheaval can result.  I also demonstrated that the rise of the socialist and progressive left is happening precisely because the leadership of the Democratic Party has not grasped this basic concept and is repeating the mistakes of the pre-2016 Republican leadership, something that led to the GOP being devoured by Trump and his MAGA minions.   Well, before the electrons on that post even had a chance to, er, dry, Hakeem Jeffries — the putative future Speaker of the House — demonstrated that he is one of those leaders who still hasn’t grasped this basic principle of political physics. As the New Zork Times reported: Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and t...

  "Whenever one object exerts a force on another object, the second object exerts an equal and opposite force on the first." - Sir Isaac Newton Politics is not immune to physics, as much as it pains me to admit as a former liberal arts major.  Specifically, politics is just as beholden to Newton's Third Law of Motion, as quoted above, as is any planetoid drifting through the zero-G void of space.   And this is why America is seeing a surge of renewed enthusiasm for both progressivism and socialism. The natural predator of fascism is socialism. They are the matter-antimatter dynamic of political extremes. One will always oppose the other, and when the two come into conflict, explosions can result, as seen in the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939. The same dynamic is now occurring in the United States of America, as the predatory Trump regime exhibits aspects of both predatory capitalism and fascism. As Americans face rising food prices, fuel costs, and utility rat...

  The ship was one of the navy’s pride, bearing the name of an esteemed statesman of its homeland. It served dutifully, carrying out its tasks with the professionalism and elan expected of its service’s long history. But morale had collapsed. The government had blundered into a war it assumed would be an easy victory over a weaker regional power — and it was not. Worse, conditions aboard the ship deteriorated under wartime stress so badly that even the food became unfit for consumption. Eventually the situation grew so dire that the crew mutinied. They seized the ship and fled while loyalist vessels scrambled to hunt them down. It played out like something straight from The Hunt for Red October — except this time the sailors weren’t defecting to a better world. They were escaping misery. That is the story of Potemkin, a pre-dreadnought battleship of the Russian Navy that mutinied during the disastrous Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. You can watch these events recreated in Russian...