Friday Musings

Randomly pixelated in between thesis paragraphs, updated through the day. Maybe.

Were you aware that “pixilated” is an actual word? It means “mildly insane, bewildered, drunk.” Surprisingly, I only learned that today.

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If she wins through to election in the fall and re-election in 2012, HRH will be 69 years old when she leaves office. Bill Clinton will be 70. John McCain would be 80.

We seem to be doing the legacy thing around here recently. Charles Krauthammer does it for Bubba.

Clinton is a narcissist but also smart and analytic enough to distinguish adulation from achievement. Among Democrats, he is popular for twice giving them the White House, something no Democrat had done since FDR. And the bouquets he receives abroad are simply signs of the respect routinely given ex-presidents, though Clinton earns an extra dollop of fawning, with the accompanying fringe benefits, because he is (a) charming and (b) not George W. Bush.

But Clinton knows this is all written on sand. It is the stuff of celebrity. What gnaws at him is the verdict of history. What clearly enraged him more than anything this primary season was Barack Obama’s statement that “Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that . . . Bill Clinton did not.”

I know that had to sting. I wonder whether Obama did it on purpose – waving the red flag in front of the bull, like?

They play politics without pads in Chicago…

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What kind of military aircraft are you?

Speaking of military aircraft, the Thunder Buckeye is apparently going through it’s last few schpins. Tells you how long I’ve been out of the game that I thought it was already retired. A great airplane to learn how to fly in, even if it had a profile that only a mother could love and a seat that could best be labeled “disciplinary”. Still, as an all-weather, radial interceptor it was goodly gear and with nearly 50 years of continuous service the design owes nothing further to father time.

Cute caption on the PNJ photo: “ Terry Gossett unlocks the flight controls while performing a pre-flight inspection to one of the T-2 Buckeyes Thursday morning at Sherman Field on Pensacola NAS.”

That’s the ejection seat restraint harness he’s unlocking, so while it’s true that it’s a “flight control” in a terminal, nothing-else-is-working sense, I doubt the author had that meaning in mind.

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Look who’s getting religion:

(Moqtada) Sadr has spent much of the last 10 months in Iran, living in a 14-bedroom villa in Tehran’s posh Farmanieh neighborhood. From there, he travels 90 minutes to Qom twice a week, for a crash course designed to transform him first into a Hojat al-Islam (Proof of Islam) and then a full-fledged ayatollah (Sign of God).

No doubt the theological exposure will help transform him from being a murderous leader of a thuggish militia into a creature of peace and light.

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The Enhanced Range Guided Munition is part of the US Navy’s 21st Century Sea Strike strategy for surface forces. Fired from a 5-inch gun, the rocket-assisted ERGM is intended to support forces ashore with responsive, persistent and precision fires. Terminal guidance is provided by a GPS-aided inertial navigation system.

Groovy. Although not an ERGM.

Look who has more.

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I really don’t know much about modal logic. Don’t really know that I’ve ever had to. But you may – or may not – be interested to know that there is a variant called Axiom S5 which is useful for sorting through duality stacks, thus:

Axiom S5 is the distinctive axiom of the S5 modal logic and says that if necessarily possibly p, then possibly p and if possibly necessarily p then necessarily p. There are some who make the claim that the latter description is faulty.

The S5 axiom is usually introduced to systems that already have Duality, and so this axiom is given as either

 * Possibly P implies Necessarily Possibly p []
 * Possibly Necessarily P implies Necessarily p []

Which Notre Dame professor Alvin Plantinga used to, well… see for yourself:

1. It is proposed that a being has maximal excellence in a given possible world W if and only if it is omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good in W; and
2. It is proposed that a being has maximal greatness if it has maximal excellence in every possible world.
3. Maximal greatness is possibly exemplified. That is, it is possible that there be a being that has maximal greatness. (Premise)
4. Therefore, possibly it is necessarily true that an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good being exists
5. Therefore, it is necessarily true that an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good being exists.
6. Therefore, an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good being exists.

Which, if that don’t bake your noodle, what does?

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Natchul bawn killaz.

And never a rifle to be seen. *sigh*

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Wait, over.