moon traveller herald

Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin had the Jesuits’ questioning stance in great measure. He taught science and sought to reconcile it with religion — not always a favored stance in Vatican City and beyond. He promoted concepts of evolutionary science, which were only slowly accepted by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. His notions were such that it wasn’t difficult for him to discern trends in scientific discovery that could readily be combined with religious lines of thought. MORE on MEDIUM It's Always Back to the Inverted Cone. AI Generated.

  Highlights from the discussion A giant snow was coming up from Missouri. The same excitement today as long ago. A new subscription magazine appears thru the mail chute. The New York Review of Books in 2026 as welcomed as Car & Driver in 1966. In 1966 - that's when I first discovered NYRB. I was working in the Children's Library in Racine, and going up to the adult stacks and periodicals on break. In those days the nickname for the pub was 'The New York Review of Viet Nam" - and it offered a more worldly view than the Racine Journal Times concerning what goes on. Intellectual, for sure. This was going to give me fodder for class discussions. It was my ticket to the elbow patch sports jacket and collegiate-like erudition. An IQ boost.  Well of course, those were different times. But I'm still trying to hone a world view...as it happens, this is as the present world order is shaking, rattling and rolling. Gee, but the essayists today face a hard task. The world ...

I blogged this a few years ago, around the time we hunkered in place, when Marathon bombers were on the loose here. That was still a high time for Globalism, different than now. Such change since! Change in tone at Harvard Commencement last week. Anyway, I thought I'd give a whole page to Havel's brilliant commencement speech of 1995. It's on Globalism. 30 years on. - JV   [Vaclav Havel, President of the Czech Republic, on the occasion of his receiving an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws, LL.D., at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, delivered the Commencement Address on June 8, 1995. We share with our readers a slightly abridged version of this address. -- ED.] One evening not long ago I was sitting in an outdoor restaurant by the water. My chair was almost identical with the chairs they have in restaurants by the Vitava River in Prague. They were playing the same rock music they play in most Czech restaurants. I saw advertisements I'm familiar with back hom...

 1. I have been studying Disinformation since Journalism School. More and more the study of disinformation became a specific college study. [One of my professors back in the day, Larry Martin, had a full career as head of Intelligence in Czechkoslovokia during Communist Era. He could tell you how it was done before the Web.] 1.5 Weakly funded in the last two years the Important Cause of Disinformation Study has all been shut down. 2. This is how the Constitution Loving Dictator Works. The Mission: Spread Partisan Propaganda that He approves of. Harass others. 3. How? Set up pop-up groups with Right-Thinking Billionaire Funding capable of heaping subpoenas for emails, text messages, and other information related to government and social media companies. [This post was researched with the help of NYTimes and Bing AI.] 4. Complying with these requests consumed time and money. The threat of legal harassment also led to a decrease in funding from donors, including philanthropies, corpor...

Tomorrow is UN Day - I posted this two years ago -  I headed it Cavalcade of the World – as recognition of the news of time time passing ….. and in homage to then retiring Scott Simon of NPR. The U.N. is a source of controversy now – conservatives see it as a Martian colony that landed East of Murray Hill In NY ….  ….. When I was young … it was hopeful thing… better than the League of Nations – say this in the wrong bar today and you get an F U. 'What's the big look back and ponder?' Simon is asked. He said more or less:"I recall when I started out the world was still working to ensure the carnage of the Holocaust and WW II would not be (easily) repeated. So we had UN, NATO, Berlin Airlift, and so on.The biggest surprise today is that motivation to put humanism ahead of nationalism has unexpectedly been TURNED ON ITS HEAD." Why does he still do radio he is asked and Simon says the likes to watch the Cavalcade of the World. (Cavalcade is formal procession of people...

Did a breaking story Sunday-Monday on a bank run. A first for me! Was still catching my breath on Wednesday. Members of the high-tech and venture capital communities — as well as many in the world beyond — braced today in the immediate aftermath of last week’s Silicon Valley Bank failure. The regulators also said they had taken control of New York-based Signature Bank, which had also faltered, after becoming a major banking service provider to companies in crypto markets. The regulators announced “systemic risk exceptions” for both banks. This exception allows the regulators to take extraordinary action that goes beyond what they are are minimally required to do, and is used in rare circumstances when inaction may lead to a snowballing of investor fear. On Friday, the Silicon Valley Bank was closed by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, and the FDIC was named as receiver. That came as the bank struggled to meet customers’ often-frantic requests for withdra...

  At night I read hear or see the dispatches. An old man./Ham radio people are intercepting the missives. | They tell a story of a 'conventional war'. Its brutal. Shells flying. Blood spilling. | In the West, People pop off, safe on their twitter account. | News  Talk is chatter. Theres been too much of it by media filling up space. Its a job. | Talk is chatter. "The Russians are going to plan b." | Of course. The first thing that goes in war (well after truth) is plan a | then b c d and so on. | The pentagon expected a russian roll over and was preparing guerilla war armaments with pamphlets etc. it's said | |What this is is conventional war tho asymmetrical which means confusing - they dont line up for the hike. yet they go out everyday.||things will go wrong with ukranian supply lines and how we adapt how they adapt will be crucial||if you are following along in your hymnal||How well we adapt has a lot to do with supply chains.||The constant drumbeat of the las...

Censured by his party and shunned by his church and family members, rational people of any ilk should support Rep. Kinzinger. I thought this interview with Adam Kinzinger was worth pointing to. Strong enough to stand up to Trump and the Trump tools. From the Midwest which been turned head over heels like the South by Trump. He’s seen into the heart of darkness. Excerpt What’s your sense of whether Trump was sui generis or a particularly bad symptom of trends that had already been going on in the Republican Party?  The best analogy I can give: He’s like a gangrenous limb. But then that limb gets cut off, and now you don’t have a leg. He’s a symptom of what probably was about a quarter of the party that was always kind of conspiracy-driven but was generally suppressed by most normal Republicans. But everybody has fear in their heart, and when somebody, especially somebody in authority, speaks to the darkest parts of your heart, your fears, your racism — it gives you permission to let...

A journey once placed me with the folks on "the other side of the tracks." Very kind, warm people and innovative. I courteously tried to be helpful with chores and the like, and mind my manners as a guest. But that was not always easy. Someone there subscribed to the National Enquirer or it might have been The Star. The headline story that week was the discovery of a WWII bomber on the moon. All I'd ever seen in my house growing up was Time magazine. I'd only seen the Enquirer at stores, and bus stations. The imp in me arose and I asked: "Do you believe this stuff?" and the answer, a little meek, was: "Well ... it could be true." Travel is a teacher if you are a learner. This should have prepared me then and there for life in America in the future. This election has been the biggest example, but there are others, of the fact that "it could be true" is good enough for a lot of people. Not the majority, except in some states, but a lot of p...

 The Filene’s Bros., R.H. Stearns or the Jordan Marsh of Boston were in their times barons of sorts – of no more interest now than Charlemagne and his barons. In their days, they were lords of the city, forming a merchandising class with distinct social oblige. Unique among all was Edward A. Filene. His family came to this country as part of the Prussian-German exodus of 1848. And, like a lot of those folk, he inherited some innovative ideas about man and society. He was eager, as the Filenes store succeeded, to improve the lot of Filene’s workers, and of the city of Boston. This reached a culmination of sorts when, at Filene’s request, muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens came to Boston in 1909. Filene and Steffens formed an inspired partnership, with civic duty as the bond. Filene influenced the Merchant’s Association to hire Steffens, at a salary of princely $10,000 per year, to uncover corruption in Boston. He hired Steffens to write the “Boston 1915 Plan.” Within six years i...

An epic mojo of a wind blew across the country and swirled many up in it. It was 2016, the eve of the election. I was one in the swirl. I find myself picking through the debris it left now – nearly four years later, as another round begins. In the days running up to the election, oddball Tweets and frenetic Facebook posts started to gather. They’d been gnats, but then, swarms, and you could see them, as if congregating on an ancient hill, in preparation for a ballot day charge. This light brigade of social media distress would bring great agitation upon us, in the midst of the last election push. What says it more than the immortal post of the Pope? Francis took time from his papal duties to tweet his support for Donald Trump. This was reported in July of 2016 by web site WTOE 5 News. And into the twittersphere it fled. It had the pope as saying that the FBI’s inability to prosecute Hillary Clinton for her emails led him to endorse Trump. As you may have gathered, it was a pu...

Look out, it's MOAB coming! I read the news The Mother of All Bombs Fired away Mr Trump said it was huge and to what's next answered Make it bigger Call out the dancers Get me the doctor Bring on the enhancers. - Jack Vaughan Related http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/14/asia/afghanistan-isis-moab-bomb/

Underlying the larger discussion of Fake News is the fact that it has been a central element of Donald Trump's manner of gaining the White House. The Fake News ploy has been one of the trusted irons in his fantastic golf bag as he has run amok without replacing divots. Evidence now shows that Trump re-tweets anything that helps his point - if it is planted misinformation, he doesn’t care. *He took time out of his busy life style in 2011, to tweet that Obama wished America Happy Kwanza, but not happy Christmas. A lie. *In 2012, Trump tells us Obama's birth certificate is a fraud. A lie. (Full disclosure: I was born at the same hospital as our first Black president, and I have a stat-foto replica of my own birth certificate, and heck if doesn't actually resemble Barak's.) *Ted Cruz's father was part of the Kennedy Assassination. *He didn’t lose the popular vote because the popular vote was a fake. And on and on. Link Trump up with the retired KGBers over...

Chineses bases spring fro sea-Newsies regret running Putin thefts. NCGOP changing the rules for the gov at night. It's all 2 much. The news. — Jack Vaughan (@JackIVaughan) December 17, 2016

There was a day when I stopped time Or better said: I saw time stop to check its hair in a mirror Watching Kuwait invasion on TV at a bar, while reading that day's paper which held - you know - the previous day's news It took many beers, years, cigarettes, and news editions to get to the moment Where the datelines chase the deadlines and portend the news about diplomatic shuttles and armed buildups on a border. And you could see the future there even though it was the day after like sam spade Sam spade in The Maltese Falcon reading The Shipping News  and He sees a notice, the La Paloma is arriving. A little column of type not even spinning in animation. He circles it. In the film he heads to the docks. Emergency is evident. The ship is on fire Fire foretold in a close up of a column in a paper. Just like the wormhole of Kuwait.

La Monte Young came to New York by way of Los Angeles where he played with Wayne Marsh and Ornette Coleman, and by way of the plains of Idaho where he was born. He was influenced by Gregorian chant, Asian Indian classical music and gamelan- hearty drone lineage, all - and, to hear tell, by the hum of power generators and transformer on utility poles. "It's the drone of the city," he said – and he heard it, and he followed it by way of L.A. to New York.  He was totally dedicated to experimental art that still puts him outside the mainstream. He formed a group, Dream Syndicate, that included future Velvet Underground members John Cale and Angus MacLeis (and Billy Name). For Cale undoubtedly the experience was formative. The long sustained sound that Young favored was intrinsic to the Velvet Undergrounds re-interpretation of basic rocknroll. Something like SunRa, Young formed a "Dream House" music collective that played a lot of monotonous music for many year...

Graduates: If you read the paper most everyday in your own time mind you can come to be  a universe master. Something can go big and surprisingly wrong but to you it seems logical - because you can see the developing evidence in your daily paper looking backward. Like God watching the Preakness I stopped time once, watching Kuwait invasion on TV at bar, while reading day's paper with previous day's news of possible armed buildup on border (and night before was reading Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which begins in Kuwait.) So I understand the Unknown Known. To be continued

http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2015/04/10/todayspaper/index.html In an ongoing effort to contemplate my life of the mind I will mark here what the Friday Times told me as I drank beer and watched the Masters Saturday. The Civil War is over 150 years Tell the Men playing checkers in backyards talking in North Charleston. Parades of the obvious as experts say shooting of a fleeing unarmed man does not appear to be justified. There's corruption in the top family of Chile. We visit the winged bull of Gilgamesh back from the dead again in the Baghdad museum. Rubio and Bush have hissy fit. Looking at a map of Yemen wonder that if this was US it would have been annexed a long time ago. Intel will not buy Altera  it seems.Night Life aint the right life in New York tis dangerous for athletes John Barry has good advice for all time “shouldn't be anywhere at 4 am . Only bad things happen at 4 am.” All power is mine as I read the Times in the bar room." - Jack Vaughan

You are there. So I got back to town and I bought the Boston Globe. Determined to enhance my attachment to the current. To be here now that I am no longer gone. Not for the front page mind you I head, with an Iran deal, and a Kenyan campus slaughter. But for the local. The MBTA’s cost of maintenance per vehicle is on the roof..way above other services. But the cost is not a result of our trains being older. Protest vthe head of RCC. The never ending saga. But the Aaron Herna ndez trial is coming to an end. I got a sneaky feeling they should have done the murder trials in sequence of chronology. An off duty cop beat up an Uber driver. Did he expect a free ride? The Red Sox are sending one of their two new Cuban players to the minors ($88m!) - why did they get Hanley Ramierez, keep Victorino? This is all starting to make no sense. The Celtics are tied for last playoff spot. [I hope we get Fred Kaminsky.] Andris Nelson has an international program planned for BSO next season, including ...