John Bell and why I want to be him

Who is John Bell? Those of us with internet access have seen his face (faces?) and story (stories?) on our home page daily for the last few months. It seems that John was/is a hedge fund manager or was that a college student with blond hair or was that brown. One thing is certain - I know because I took the time to read his story- he had ADHD as a child. And he knows the secret and will share it with us. The guy must be a saint! - or a creation of Stock Market Magic the name at the bottom of the ad. And though they tout penny stock picking on the ad, the article that the ad points to talks about buying spin offs, undervalued stock of spin off companies.

What I want to really know is how with such obvious changes of information and strategy right out in the open, do they get anyone to buy the book of "secret" trading information. So simple that the "23" year old taught his 5th grader to make millions with it.

Are we really that gullible and naive, or are we that greedy and stupid? It would be nice to make money the old fashioned way - steal it from easy marks, but how do I divest my conscience? It seems that there is a secret there, but John isn't selling that one. Honesty loses again. :-(

Universal Soldier

In scrolling through my playlists the other day I came across a title that is probably the most socially unacceptable song of the budding 21st century, and one at the same time that is still relevant and true. It is Buffy Ste. Marie's "Universal Soldier" a song that unabashedly puts the blame for continued warfare on the steady supply of raw recruits. In an age of support your troops it is unthinkable and yet in the 60's it was considered to be an act of supporting the humanity within us to counsel soldiers to defect and draft aged men to take off for Canada.

Like Masters of War (anyone thinking Dick Cheney?) these songs saw the conflict of nations as the story of people and their responsibility to others instead of in the finger pointing and blame mode of today. Yes, Dylan blamed the profit makers but he was really attacking their reliance on the bottom line. Theirs, the soldiers and profiteers, was a fault finding, but one which could be reconciled through personal change. One cannot change others, but one can change themselves.

I gladly offer the Universal Soldier as a necessary voice in our wilderness. A John the Baptist crying for repentance and a fundamental reordering of our lives. It is time to support the humans, stop the carnage and come home.

Dollhouse, Adieu

It was sad to watch the Dollhouse finale this weekend. Sad because it really ended two weeks ago and yet we all knew it couldn't be that easy. Never the less, Whedon managed to make it harder than it had to be.

Did we really need the Mad Max team headed by Victor? Did we need a bloated reincarnation of Harding? (and why not just shoot Ballard when you recognize him Mr. Harding? It was a James Bond bad guy explains all so Bond can get free moment to me.)

We did, however, get Topher being redemptive and Adele, mother Adele, taking care of the brave new afterworld.

It was very troublesome, however, understanding how the world got that messed up. What was the profit for Rossum Corp. in unleashing all the chaos after their headquarters went down? How did anything make it ten years in the chaos? What was the advantage of pitting everyone against each other? Why, why, why?

There was even more crazy though, Alpha as good guy? It made as much sense as Boyd being a Rossum founder.

No, for all the closure that we needed in a series, we didn't get much in the end. Hollywood happy endings like the next to the last episode are sometimes better. To just walk away with the pieces mostly picked up is preferable to scattering the pieces all over the floor.

Still got to love Caroline/Echo good to the end and yet for the long run, I still love Adele.

Interstellar map in real time

Every day it seems I see stories about discoveries of star systems that are billions of years old but what we do not seem to know or care about is what the whole of space might look like in real time.

I am hoping that out there somewhere is a budding PhD candidate in astrophysics or some related field that can harness the power of several hundred (thousand?) computers and create a real time galactic map. Trying for star positions in real time would seem to complex but to take the known galaxies and move them through space at their relative speeds and directions and bring them to a real time relationship should present a very intriguing picture of space and perhaps give us a better understanding of the Big Bang phenomenon.

So all of you out there, all I ask is a footnote in your research and a link to it when published. Any takers?