The Substance Of Ideology

An ideology is a system of ideas. A system.

There is often a misconception or confusion that ideas in the hands of people - especially well-known or respected people - are necessarily logical or derived from correct observation and analysis. In fact, usually, they are ideologies and not simply ideas - based on a particular characteristic system that is recommended by the individual. And it is the system, thus, which is paramount; not 'ideas' as such.

I think this is a scene of human ideas at their best.

Ideas, are particular discrete (as in, consistent describable or categorize-able) conceptions that the human mind has inside of the instruments and chemical and neural structures of the human's brain and extended 'brain-space' you might call it (or 'mind,' in this vague label we have to use). When a person is said to be 'of sound mind,' typically, one expects these 'conceptions' to come from some process of relational logic - and if dependent on the data and its quality, sometimes we say the process is only rational and not guaranteed to be always deriving a correct conclusion in the absolute sense.

An insane person may still have 'ideas,' yet they will potentially have disconnections from function, from actuality, and from true logic based on quality data and the necessary relational connections that make them 'sane' ideas. But once a system has been formed in the mind of the crazy person, that person becomes ideological.

Many ideologies are functionally useful, even though they rely on definitions that are extremely vague. Mathematics, or perhaps modern mathematics is one of these systems of ideas with vague but necessary definitions.

For example, all real integers have square roots... except (now here's the 'definition' and exception because of the 'definition:') for 1 (one), and 2 (two) the latter of which is an 'irrational' number and the former of which is, is, is... well they don't say, but it is an 'exception' to the rule about ALL REAL INTEGERS.

Oh and of course '0' (zero). And there is some other fanciful 'definition' that 'explains' what the problem is with 'zero;' it's not a number, or not a real number, or not er er er er, et cetera.

The true 'problem' with the ideology of modern systems of mathspeak is that it deliberately or maybe even just accidentally by habit, doesn't understand the definition of 'boundary.' A thing is not some other thing, because of the boundary concept.

Michelin 3-Stars is a system,
Robert Parker's wine rating is a system,
but genuine self-assurance is cultural and functional.

Sure there is some lip-service paid to boundaries in physics and Riemann space and things like that - but this already is in the upper reaches of weirdo (or at very least nerd!) maths and physics and not the commonplace maths taught in most schools.

You see the problem of the current financial and banking world and the economics obtaining there, is that 'definition' maths is iterative, and not generative; it relies on someone else having previously created something new and valuable, and then copying this endlessly using a process and a systematic plan of undermining inputs including time even to the extent of producing a counterfeit or substitute product and accepting that.

'Idea' maths - or logical idea maths, uses function as the means of ultimate proof, and defines difference through another, separate, discrete idea, namely - 'boundary' or 'boundaries.'

When difference is defined too vaguely, you can get into 'systems' becoming the substitute for logic - and then you have the presence of 'ideologues' in your midst.

And then you get this modern cult-ish nonsense of litanies (text books/'bibles'/platforms/ manifestos/manuals/extensive lists) of iterative slight changes with technical terms like you would find in the vocabulary of a separate language - but that are meant to cover 'everything' so that the 'system' becomes the universal; able to enclose all things.

Unlike a functional cultural memory of things that happened, this 'language' is theoretical but it's also like a fanatical religion. It doesn't work or function but one cannot argue against it or try to contradict the priests of the system.

But the main point is, it doesn't work.

The Invisible Slippers

Unless you have actually ever been to and lived in, one of the truly exotic places of the world, you will remain convinced that a modern academic codifying of ancient myths and legends is sufficient to understand how the world of human society works.

Today, Disney will tell us about 'Cinderella' and her glass slippers.

A magical boat, to the magical castle

Aarne-Thompson will tell us that this story falls under that category of the academic codex of world myths to do with the 'oppressed heroine.' Disney bills the story as the fabled lesson of 'the purest heart in a cruel world.'

I can hardly do justice to any of the things I learned growing up among Tamilians from South India... I might be able if you had a digital printer that was able to re-molecularize for you a tamarind soup and a fish murgh-thani.

The ancient Greeks had a story about some beautiful Thracian courtesan actually living at the time of Sappho, whose brother (IE. Sappho's) in fact, ransomed her from some tyrant or other.

And the Italians had a fairy tale about a certain 'Angelica, Pagan Princess of Cathay,' which is the same basic story - lost footwear, beautiful, pure-hearted and so on, falls in love with a prince... And there's plenty of magic in this version - magic fountains from which one can drink and immediately fall in love.

The modern Cinderella story has the heroine wearing glass slippers.

At night, the magic is in full force

If the heroine were a princess of Cathay - which would have meant India as well, at the time - and were she an Indian princess, she might easily have been wearing 'invisible' slippers!

There are many rationalists who like to dismiss Eastern and otherwise certainly quite ancient accounts of the effects and consequences of magical forces, or the employment of magical forces, to create kingdoms, amass wealth, gain an enchanted power over ordinary people's minds - usually, they like to explain things in terms of modern psychology. 

In the end, the carriage turns back into a pumpkin, and the brave chargers into mice.

Here endeth today's lesson on the magical kingdom... Do you know or have you heard of any magical kingdoms? Created from out of some dismal, and worthless swamp perhaps?

The Torturing of Billionaires

I am not going to linger on this subject because it is very distasteful to me, and in particular because of the sheer weight of public spin-doctoring of history that results in a kind of 'wastefulness' in raising these issues to a new and modern generation in any terms other than as a lesson to learn about what some humans are capable of doing and to what lengths they will go to put up a facade of respectability.

But, as in Plato's account of the fall of Atlantis, sometimes clues - albeit that they are very small ones - are to be seen in names and simple words and signs that survive the otherwise all-consuming flood.

Take a look at the name of the original founding political party of the Nation of Malaysia following its independence from the British Empire: 'The United Malaysian National Organisation.'

Take particular note of the word 'United.' 

This is different from the ideas that today's common and popular press and media is using to proliferate what are essentially deliberate lies used to aggrandize the memory of Lee Kuan Yew. The BBC has even shown an old film clip of Lee crying crocodile tears when he says that the Malaysian Prime Minister had told him to take Singapore with him and 'get thee out.'

If you go by what you see on the usual news, apparently, Singapore was an undeveloped swamp, and the Malaysian Prime Minister - in Lee's own deprecating words 'a backward-looking, non-modern, parochial person who had an opinion of himself as some kind of aristocrat.'

The BBC does not have the guts to explain to you, that in World War Two, methods of torture, were a little different than the tame bullshit that Dick Cheney sneeringly espouses can be used on other ignorant village idiots suspected of something vaguely anti-Coke or Pepsi.

But I will tell you one time, and one time only, what torture meant then.

Lee Kuan Yew, even during his lifetime, had the hide and audacity to say that he had indeed been an interpreter for Japanese wartime interrogators - of ethnic Chinese, of course; Lee was certainly no Malay.

Nevertheless, beforehand, there are things you need to know about the times of which I speak.

Here is a photograph of a car very similar to the one owned by then leader of the United Malaysian National Organisation, Tunku Abdul Rahman:

An Aston Martin of 1958

I know it is like it, because my uncle kept the car in his townhouse in a hidden garage at the back, since a lot of the locals thought at the time of the Prince as something of a playboy. My uncle was head of Shell Oil Far East.

Anyway, perhaps I'm wrong and it was only a sampan that was paddled after all through these famous 'swamps...'

Much much later on, a very wealthy property owner in Singapore called Tang Liang Hong, was sued by Lee and his government with the result of Tang leaving Singapore forever to live permanently in Australia.

Lee ended up taking all of the Tang families properties including the world famous Tang Department Store, even though this was partly owned by the rest of the Tang family in Shanghai.

Now, by 'Tang' we really mean 'Deng' as in Deng Xiao Peng. Or Deng like the Beijing way of saying the 'Tang Dynasty.'

And so, when I tell you that a certain Chinese Doctor by surname of Deng or Tang and his family were interrogated under torture by the Kempetai during WWII, we are talking about a HUGELY WEALTHY and aristocratic Chinese person.

The remnant of that particular family also went to live in Sydney, Australia shortly after WWII, and because the son (who was a very successful dental surgeon) married a blonde Swedish woman, the children actually have blonde hair and unusually not-very-Swedish eyes. And they today speak with extremely strong Australian accents too.

Now Lee says that the Tunku kicked him out of Federation. The reality is he was using a vast amount of money from some mysterious source to foment, behind the scenes, acts of race violence and he, and not anyone else, created this idea of ethnic and racial divisions in Singapore and Malaysia - and that is why, in the first place Rahman called his party 'United,' and it gained over 80% of the popular vote, whereas Lee, created the Chinese People's Action Party, demanding a special voting right for ethnic Chinese, although ONLY those of his party (because he said those NOT in his party MUST have been Communists).

This is the guy who in recent times, sucked up to the new Beijing, somehow changing the way he looked upon their 'spots.'

Malaya - is not an Arabic, nor a muslim or islamic word; it is Tamilian Indian. China and India had colonized various parts of the isthmus and islands since 100 AD. All of the Tunkus, are from Rama Rajah kingdoms and empires - and Tunku Abdul Rahman's Chief Minister was a Circassion.

If there was one single person responsible for the ethnic divides in this part of the world, above anyone else it was Lee Kuan Yew, and he did it, riding on top of other Chinese that he envied, despised, or was extremely callous towards.

Tunku Abdul Rahman, an
aristocrat, a Cambridge scholar,
and a gentleman.

Lee called Tunku Abdul Rahman an aristocrat, and that he was. And he was a Cambridge University graduate, and, yes, another one of these colonial era sultanic playboys. He spoke impeccable English. Unlike the clipped lingo of the street thug Lee, which Lee bequeathed his slave population.

And yes, the Tunku was a muslim, and he did have several wives, and children. But you will never, ever find anyone say anything against him, EXCEPT FOR LEE, who unwisely spoke his mind openly about the ways he thought about Rahman.

Rahman, says Lee, with tears rolling down his eyes, 'in his aristocratic manner, told me, get thee out.'

Now this is how the Japanese Secret Intelligence Division tortured people: they found some thickets of bamboo near the famous swamps that Lee tells us about, and they cut slivers of bamboo and inserted them under the fingernails of young girls. And then, they pulled out the fingernails altogether. And then, with the young girls watching, they inserted chopsticks into the ears of their fathers, and clapped their hands together, killing the men gruesomely. And there are other things too.

And that, is what Lee interpreted for. As he says, himself.

And that is what I wish you to know.

And do not tell me that any critic of what I say, or any modern government, or any press or media, or anyone either has the guts, or the brains, or the integrity to deal in any way honestly, openly, truthfully, or justly with anyone short of having some kind of heavenly finger pointed at their heads from some divine hand. And on this line, you may adduce more about today's ideas of academic science, financial regulation, legal justice, and social behaviour, following from the conclusion that with money, whether stolen from someone under extremes of torture, you can get away with absolute blue murder, and hang the odium of it onto 'political correctness.'

Rahman never sought an islamic nationstate in Malaysia and Singapore.

He never Arabicized the Malay language, or the Malay people - who are of many different ethnic sources. And as a well-read, aristocrat, he knew every well what he meant when he used the phrase: 'get thee out!'

And as a king, his words have indeed been prophetic as king's words are, since Lee is now in that very place for which he had been consigned by Rahman, after, Rahman, in Lee's own words again, 'had considered everything from A to Z and from Z back to A,' and finally come to his conclusion about where Lee should go.

Honest, Upright, and Truthful.

Even the BBC finally couldn't get away with it any longer - at last, in today's Obit. column for Lee Kuan Yew, the BBC says that he 'worked for the Japanese Propaganda Department during the War and was involved in the black market...'

The reality is, he was interpreting, actually physically present, during Japanese torture of wealthy Chinese professionals and businesspeople, including of their very young children, and he suddenly and mysteriously became extremely wealthy himself after the war, whilst being despised and ostracized by the general Chinese community not from his own extended family itself, and including the Hakka tribe of which he made been a 'black sheep.'

Socony building with
the Chrysler Building behind it

And as for the island of Singapore being a lowly and isolated and backward place before his 'reign,' here is a photo of the Standard Oil Company of New York's head office building in New York, built on the wealth of its major refinery in Singapore before and after the War. Not to mention that Singapore held the prime Asian and Southern-to-Northern hemisphere's shipping routes preferred port location due to its strategic position.

The world's first refrigerated air-conditioned department store was in Singapore BEFORE the War and dozens of major global corporations were located there: Unliver, Fraser and Neave, Palmolive, Dunlop's Tyre Company,  Shell and Socony, Castrol, Wrigley's, Union Carbide, Vestey's Shipping and Refrigeration, and many many more.

Singapore was hardly the Third World swamp that Lee and his cronies like to make out, and never the backward joint that the BBC stupidly has recently also claimed on behalf of the money that is doing its talking - especially since Churchill had the audacity to want to defend it from the Japanese and even worse, the foolishness to regularly go stay at the suites named after him later in Raffles Hotel, and that Somerset Maugham and even that drunken sot Anthony Burgess also stayed in to write their books and short stories. 

Every time you see some big-headed, self-opinionated, and obstinate political leader using heavy-handed tactics, it is always to cover over something wicked they themselves have done, and to intimidate others into shutting up. Always. And remember that, as you watch today's political leaders too - they are no different and they will never be any different and it is useless to bet that they are, due to 'new and different circumstances' or any other 'new' thing. It's always the same. Thieves, get into their positions, by thieving, and then creating drama to obfuscate on the truth of it.

"I GUARANTEE you, the Congress of the United States, that if you get rid of Saddam now, ALL of the problems of the surrounding Middle Eastern countries will be resolved!"

Who said that, and had the audacity to go back and do it again just the other day? Diebold machines. Diebold machines...

And Duly Won

The colt Vancouver did indeed win the Golden Slipper today, giving Gai Waterhouse her sixth Golden Slipper victory, equaling the record of her father Tommy Smith, who is regarded as Australia's greatest ever race horse trainer. One has to bear in mind the lamp-lighting role that trainers from earlier eras had, and so it is difficult to compare with mathematical certainty today's trainers to those of the past - but in my own view, the daughter has surpassed her illustrious father already, and history will place her on as high a pedestal.

Gai Watyerhouse,
Australia's greatest race horse trainer

Vancouver not only won but paid a fairly decent price for such a good thing - 2/1 in many books. Basically you got double your money for the win plus your own stake back.

The Rosehill (Sydney) Golden Slipper is the richest two-year old 1200 meter race in the world, being a 3.5 million dollar race.

These things are nerve-wracking affairs because of the value to the owners and breeders of the win, and it certainly sounded from the immediate after-race interview of the jockey Tommy Berry, that it was a very emotional victory for him for multiple reasons.

For a dyed-in-the-wool gambler like myself, post-race activities are just as much part of the whole deal as the race itself and all of its nail-biting angst. 

At Sydney's 'Prime' Restaurant

The sun goes down, the crowd goes home, the gambler sizes up the day, finds the best place to eat and drink - and to think about life - and waits for the river of time to slowly wend its way back around to the same starting place all over again...

The problem that the entire world of investing makes all of the time, is that winning is a lonely profession... Not only does the shoe not fit everyone, there is no university course that guarantees you will be a millionaire in thirty minutes just by drinking coffees. And there is a massive difference between those who are in the papers today as 'billionaires' and you never hear of them again when times change. The Riverboat Gambler is always stalking the wooden boards at twilight. What does he know, that the others don't?

Golden Slippers!

I've been thinking of inviting a few people I know to emerge from out of the shadows and post a few things here - I'm not sure they will be prepared to, however. We shall see.

Meanwhile, I am having to resort to 'food porn' or 'doomer porn' - I shall have to attribute that to whomever on the Bear Chat Forum used that phrase as soon as I go back and check... (It was 'SpongeRob').

Yellen's Fed has continued what the idiot Bernanke started, and the Euro-Zone gangsters are clinging onto, and this has none too subtly destroyed the meaning of money and risk. On the one hand we are meant to believe interest rates have never been lower, on the other, billionaire Australian mining magnate Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest couldn't get his corporate bond issue set at anything like decent odds in the market last week and has called the whole thing off - which simply tells me what I already know, 'benchmark' and 'risk free' rates are fictional right now.

And so, here I am, in the position of considering tomorrow's Golden Slipper horse race as the nearest thing to a real money market that I can see anywhere right now. 

Seldom will I 'declare' a particular horse 'the winner' before a race, but on this occasion I find it is possible for me to seriously consider putting my own money on this:

'Vancouver'

If you look closely, you will see that these kinds of Australasian thoroughbreds run with a straighter at the knee action than their counterparts in England and the rest of Europe for the most part. And this is because the grass is flatter here, better cut, and tends not to have the thick, muddy under-surface which characterizes so much of European flat courses. the consequence being that European horses are (possibly) given medications to ease knee problems they get by lifting and banging their legs down on the track surface after trying to extricate their hoofs from the mud.

With the possible exception of the best Japanese stables, Australasian and New Zealand horses are the best shorter distance to derby distance racers in the world, and they are a remarkably good investment from the breeding perspective given the comparative genetic talent available in this location. They almost always 'translate' to other regions, whereas the foreign horses do not always by any means.

I know that either before, or even during, but most certainly after, this year's Golden Slipper, I shall be indulging in food and/or drink porn so here is a suggestion along those lines:

A Golden Slipper from the Purple Bar,
at Sanderson's Hotel in London.

Hope For The World

Were they thinking about Howard Hughes when the creators of largely Sixties mass cultural diversions like Bond and Flint or even The Thunderbirds, for that matter, set 'home base' on some secluded and distant island?

There is a staggering lack of invention and fizz in the lifestyles of the 'said-to-be' stonkingly wealthy contemporary identities of the known world. Hughes was notoriously eccentric, and like Putin, disappeared although for longer than just eleven days at a time...

For the nostalgic - like myself - we may be able to find solace in re-imaginings, as they call them:

And, in the rare instance, recent creations drawn from the legacy of human envisioning:

Where's Vlad?

Who cares? Not me.

There's been a political assassination in a country that is being pressured with 'sanctions' (whatever the hell that is supposed to mean), every Western media outlet is claiming to know that Putin and/or his government is in some way behind the murder, and suddenly the same Western media is pissed off he isn't more around so that they can continue to place the 'searing lights' of Western media wisdom onto him.

Me, I care that Kylie Minogue is in Moscow.

Kyles is looking better and better the older she gets.

Thank god no one reads this blog. It wouldn't do to have old John Brennan worry too hard about where all this stuff is coming from, especially since it isn't the CIA that is getting pissed all over right now.

I understand they do a lot of cycling in Switzerland.

Perhaps our Kyles is heading in that direction next. Who's to say?

Betting 'Over Round'

Unlike Wall Street, horse racing concentrates extremely wealthy people in a crucible atmosphere, alongside everyone else.

And this is not to say they do not or cannot have an exaggerated effect on the running of any race - because the sheer overbalance of their money power effects all aspects of any given event.

Sheikh Mohammed

A young race horse, Brazen Beau, was purchased by Sheikh Mohammed of Darley Thoroughbreds just prior to last Saturday's 1 million dollar Australian Newmarket Handicap. Darley Stud paid 10 million dollars for the three year old colt and he will go to stud at the end of next year.

This crucible atmosphere of a horse race, is a mini money market with a highly compressed time frame.

In normal circumstances, bookmakers give odds on all the horses in a race in such a way as to ensure they must end up winning a percentage - 5%, 8%, or 10%, something like that - no matter which horse wins. The terminology for this is 'betting over round.'

And, the more betting interest in a race - the more genuine chances there are - the better odds can be quoted in order to attract a higher volume of money and therefore enabling the bookmaker to achieve a better final result for himself or herself (my sister was a licensed boomaker!)

Saturday's Newmarket on paper held many chances and theoretically, the odds quoted for every horse should have been larger than they actually were on the day. And this is because the winner, Brazen Beau, had a massive weight of well-informed money on it, even to the extent of having probably the current world's best rider, Joao Moreira, flown in from Hong Kong to Australia just for the ride. 

Joao Moreira on Brazen Beau

This kind of heavy-duty money means the bookmakers cannot afford to indicate to the general market that it is basically a one-horse race by 'blowing out' the prices of all the other horses, and thereby underscoring which specific horse held the enormous 'insider' money - because, the whole world of gamblers would simply follow the favourite leaving the bookmakers with a huge bill!

In consequence, the betting becomes 'cramped' leaving no room for anyone to bet, really. Except of course for the big money people on the inside, against whom even the best bookmaker must end up under pressure.

Being the younger horse in the field, Brazen Beau held a weight carrying advantage but that alone need not have been reason to think the horse was guaranteed to win. On the other hand, being an 'entire' means that there are questions over whether the other horses that were not heading for a stud career could not have been bought off for guaranteed cash up front - and I'm not saying this happened or that it does happen, but I think the completely swaying factor is in the stable having the wherewithal to fly in the world's best rider (given that Damien Oliver did not have a threat in the race; Oliver is arguably equal-best in the world).

10 million dollars before the race buys many things the other stables cannot afford.

All in all, Brazen Beau was a certainty on the day.

The race prize was 1 million dollars. The horse was bought for 10 million that week. It's career at stud will be worth perhaps a hundred million.

A share in the horse when it first went into racing as a two year old could have been had for as little as two thousand dollars.

This is a great winning story. It has its nuances and complexities, but horse racing exists as a genuine business for the breeding industry. At that side of things it is in no way a 'gamble.'

Brazen Beau is a great horse, whether the race it just won was entirely 'fair' or slightly conducted in its favour. 

Big money exaggerates things at their natural extremes - but it does not belie them as such.

I personally do not believe that either money markets in currencies, nor equities markets are exaggerated towards natural extremes right now. And you can draw your own conclusion as to what that implies.

But I am suggesting there is no real big money around in these markets and that their 'controlled performance' is a sign of bureaucratic and administrative and official manipulation, rather than the clear advantage that genuine big money buys itself to get a result on the display board.

And that is a problem for said markets.

Right now, Wall Street is not betting 'over round.' It is not betting 'under the odds' either. It is just not betting at all, and yet still putting up numbers that people are being expected to believe are really reflective of investors' buying and selling actually going on. But I doubt that it is going on.

People who have seen a lot...! : )

I don't think there is a way back from QE. The market moves when the market is infused from one source only. And this has 'cramped' the odds for everyone and everything else.

Now I am going to tell you something about what happened when this kind of thing happened on race horse tracks at least once before that I can remember personally.

An important jockey fell off a horse and nearly died, the biggest owner and gambler did die, a famous horse that had just won a huge race died the next day - in short, a lot of funny things happened. And the whole industry went into a decline for many long years. No one foresaw it. No one much expected it, and you wouldn't have necessarily predicted it going on the surface of things - which looked good on the outside.

Evidence And Mystery

If you hide something, it is often the best policy to hide it completely in plain sight. That way the typical and reliable characteristic that most people have of denying the obvious can be exploited. Whether they are only denying to others but secretly admitting to themselves I don't know...

The 'War Fairy.' -
it's a just a sci-fi thing...

Carl Jung though, said something along the lines of enlightenment not being reached by envisioning ever more luminous things and beings but by discovering 'the consciousness in the dark.'

Socrates much earlier voiced some criticism of the professional sophists, as he called them, applying the term specifically to a character called Protagoras, who went around charging money to 'make people wise,' but who in reality had a linguistic tactic of making 'the weaker argument appear the stronger.'

And so in many of these matters of ideas, we are often left to contemplate the ephemeral.

There are few, if any, immediate lightning bolt strikes of logic and persuasion, whose impact may be palpably felt like a kung fu blow!

Rather, the effects of sound ideas, especially those rare and precious and innovative and inspired ones - are often only understood a long long time after they had already worked their mysterious magic.

And thus the idea of 'evidence' is regularly a futile and a misconceived approach, when taking on the errors of world opinion.

News Synchronicity

Have you noticed that almost beyond the monolithic 'news item priority' evident in virtually every single media outlet across every medium, there is a great 'flatness' descending upon the world... Apparently.

You would think that no one interesting lives on the planet anymore. And of course, the rationalists will always say that someone like me has watched too much news and has become jaded because of the quantity I have consumed.

It must be a short trip for me then, to Depression!

I notice Momofuku Ando being remembered yesterday, as the inventor of packet noodles. I noticed that because of the doodle, on Google.

Funny because, I also remembered eating Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup from a WWII supply crate of the type that used to be parachuted into the jungles where my dad was hanging out during that particular episode. These used to come in 'softpacks' of cardboard. In fact, they even had little accompanying tins made of two metals fused together that, when a ring-pull was lifted, and a hole punched at the top, boiled the water that was sealed inside them through a chemical reaction process.

I'm not sure I understand what the exact difference is, between 'Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup' (dry powder plus dry noodles) in those small portable containers - and Ando's Ramen invention.

The Campbell's version happened a lot earlier than Ando's soup.

Same as the Younger Dryas Stadial happened a lot earlier than most biblical accounts of The Great Flood, and in fact, there were two or three earlier, shorter but also pretty 'great' floods before THE Great Flood.

Plato's account of the YDS - in his Atlantis story - is dated by his Egyptian priests telling the story to exactly the correct historical (or really, pre-historical) time. And moreover, he also says the people were given warnings beforehand by smaller flood and earthquake events, though the people paid no heed.

Of course, HE says this thing was all about gods and men; not science and happenstance. 

I go by the RAND Corporation's hypothesis about the decline effect of uncovering unusual phenomenon - once you observe something in a way that is known both to the doers and the done-to or the observers, the phenomena subside, although they don't immediately disappear altogether. James Randi's challenge about Twilight Zone phenomena on the other hand, is a little different to the way RAND approaches things; he has a very narrow and constructive framework for his observations. His structure for looking at things doesn't allow for 'shades' of 'event' and so, he always observes an immediate 'stop' rather than a decline.

And by this I am not talking about observing that there is emotional content synchronicity in media reporting. I am specifically talking about going too far in exposing those who act, let's say more or less covertly in assassinating people like De Margerie and Nemtsov, and more than that, I am really specifically speaking about those who turn around and enact some retribution, or some real justice, or who take control away in order to restore by discipline, the errant leaders, back to the path of decent behaviour. The media generally does not like to face difficult facts.

Plato, I believe, couches his story about something he clearly knew to be factual, as a myth, on account of both the political dimension of it, and of people's expectations - whether of creating fear of some disastrous future, or endless demands of 'the gods' and thus a futile obsession with religion and 'the gods' as opposed to actually doing things to make something you want, happen.

Politically, there was an implication at that time, that leaders were in some way divinely appointed, but also that they were nonetheless capable of miscreant ways. And hence, the general public would always use their leaders as a 'sink' for their malaise of any kind - and never look to themselves as really responsible for anything.

Hence, it was a myth, that a great pre-Athenian society once ruled but went off the rails because of the leaders.  

Plato makes his point clear that each individual carries a kind of personal responsibility for their own futures and for the happiness of their own lives. He says that some people survived the Great Flood.

Nostalgia, What Nostalgia?

One of the great historical icons of Australia - was originally started by an American, Freeman Cobb.

Cobb & Co were the equivalent in Australia of the great stagecoach companies of America before the 'iron horse' came to rule the plains.

I've had the pleasure and the privilege of having seen one of the premium, when at their peak after the Lambing Flat gold discovery, Cobb & Co stagecoaches, and my god, it is something like an even more luxurious thing (if you can imagine it) than a Rolls Royce. It is dramatically solid, and stylish, and high-quality, and beautiful.

Simply beautiful - Japanese caliber,
battery-powered workings

Today, you can I think, still get the occasional men's aftershave from Avon called 'Cobb & Co.' 

And there is a company which makes clocks using the 'Cobb & Co' name. And they also make a very beautiful style of watch of their own design using varieties of Australian natural wood and gold or steel. 

Soon, I believe even the Postal Services in Australia will be cutting back on the 'normal' delivery of envelope mail. 

Personally I really approve of the way I see ordinary everyday people of almost every kind sitting at bus-shelters thumb-tapping away on their latest Samsung intelligent phones. People like to write and read more than they ever did; which is a good thing.

Some things you read and/or write are of course, constructed with a great deal of thought and skill and art. 

Tomorrow the 2015 Geneva Motor Show will open to the public and in it, will be the new Aston Martin Vulcan track racer. In limited numbers of maybe around thirty, this car is the equivalent of a Samsung Galaxy Intelligent Phone.

The following pic is not of the Vulcan, but it is an Aston Martin and you will not see much publicity about this edition anywhere.

Aston Martin DBC - rare,
but real...

The fact is, today, there are at least two different worlds.