What and who is behind that lapel pin so proudly displayed by congresscritters these days and how much is it worth to them in blood money terms?
Smoking Guns
Author: patd
“But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad."
"How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn’t have come here.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Waco Wacko Taco
It has been 30 years.
The most recent celebrity visitor to recognize the horrendous event at Waco seems to be a one-man manifestation of it and memorialized here by the Waco Wacko taco: a bent, corny covering stuffed with cheesy topped left-over beefs.
On a serious note, click here for an Analysis: How the Waco siege resonates 30 years later | PBS NewsHour
March comes in lyin’ then goes on the lam.
We live in crazy times. Stormy in, stormy out.
Pithing on Pythagoras
Our subject today is from the esoterica file and a story on page one of The Guardian website. Don’t laugh, who knows it may be relevant and help disprove the lies of the lying liars who rely on circular reasoning in our current culture. Then again it may not; however, “atta girls” to some really savvy students in NOLA.
[…]
The 2,000-year-old theorem established that the sum of the squares of a right triangle’s two shorter sides equals the square of the hypotenuse – the third, longest side opposite the shape’s right angle. Legions of schoolchildren have learned the notation summarizing the theorem in their geometry classes: a2+b2=c2.
As mentioned in the abstract of Johnson and Jackson’s 18 March mathematical society presentation, trigonometry – the study of triangles – depends on the theorem. And since that particular field of study was discovered, mathematicians have maintained that any alleged proof of the Pythagorean theorem which uses trigonometry constitutes a logical fallacy known as circular reasoning, a term used when someone tries to validate an idea with the idea itself.
Johnson and Jackson’s abstract adds that the book with the largest known collection of proofs for the theorem – Elisha Loomis’s The Pythagorean Proposition – “flatly states that ‘there are no trigonometric proofs because all the fundamental formulae of trigonometry are themselves based upon the truth of the Pythagorean theorem’.”
But, the abstract counters, “that isn’t quite true”. The pair asserts: “We present a new proof of Pythagoras’s Theorem which is based on a fundamental result in trigonometry – the Law of Sines – and we show that the proof is independent of the Pythagorean trig identity sin2x+cos2x=1.” In short, they could prove the theorem using trigonometry and without resorting to circular reasoning.
[continues]
Don’t Look Up [subtitle: Famous Last Words]
‘City killer’ asteroid to pass harmlessly between Earth and moon | Asteroids | The Guardian
An asteroid big enough to wipe out a city will pass harmlessly between Earth and the moon’s orbit this weekend, missing both, while providing scientists a chance to study the object close up.
Asteroid flybys are common but Nasa said it was rare for one so big to come so close and that events like this occurred only about once a decade. Scientists estimate its size to be somewhere between 40 and 90 metres in diameter.
Discovered a month ago, the asteroid known as 2023 DZ2 will pass within 515,000km of the moon on Saturday US time and, several hours later, fly past the Earth at about 28,000km/h.
The close encounter will provide astronomers the chance to study a space rock from just over 68,000km away. At less than half the distance from here to the moon, the asteroid will be visible through binoculars and small telescopes.
“There is no chance of this ‘city killer’ striking Earth, but its close approach offers a great opportunity for observations,” the European Space Agency’s planetary defence chief, Richard Moissl, said in a statement. [continues]
