I guess this is about as close as we in America will "see" a royal wedding ...

Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinski
Besides Mediawingnuts, those not invited included President Barack Obama, who said that he appreciated the focus on Chelsea and her friends. I'll buy that.

And before I forget to say it ... Congratulations to both of you as you tie the knot, Chelsea and Marc, and also congratulations to you, Chelsea, for continuing your education in Public Health. We need persons like you on "our side."

The "Middle Class" exposed for what it really is ... the FORGOTTEN Class!

A Photo I Recently Located--Taken of Mrs. Mediawingnuts and Myself in the Early Sixties--Back When Being Middle Class MEANT Something! Actually, Her Facial Features Haven't Changed All That Much. Mine, on the Other Hand ...
Michael Snyder is editor of theeconomiccollapseblog.com and one of my sons sent an article by him that included the following statistics (true through 2009):

(QUOTE)
• 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
• 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
• 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
• 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
• A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
• 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
• Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
• Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
• For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
• In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
• As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
• The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
• Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
• In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
• The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
• In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
• More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
• or the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
• This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
• Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
• Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
• The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income."
(UNQUOTE)

I hope that Mr. Obama delivers on the changes that he promised in 2008. I'm not among the 16% millionaires mentioned in Mr. Snyder's statistics. And although I am in the 61% he cited, I am not in the top 1% of anything other than ... well, that needn't be mentioned in a PC-rated posting, I guess.

How does one "leak" 90,000 military reports?

RQ-1 Predator Drone (I wonder what the leaked logs have to say about this, our most lovable weapon of late--we can kill our enemies now from desktops in the Pentagon
It seems as though nothing short of what appears to me to be a sad lapse in security will get our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

This story (clipped directly from the lead-in paragraphs of both CNN;s and Google's #1 news item today) should give all of us a creepy feeling:

"A whistle-blower website, WikiLeaks.org, has published what it says are more than 90,000 United States military and diplomatic reports about Afghanistan filed between 2004 and January of this year.

The first-hand accounts are the military's own raw data on the war, including numbers killed, casualties, threat reports and the like, according to Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.org, which published the material Sunday."

According to Assange, the leaks amount to a "total history of the Afghan war from 2004 to 2010, with some important exceptions -- U.S. Special Forces, CIA activity and most of the activity of other non-U.S. groups."

I really want us out of there, but surely our military should keep closer wraps on its reports. I hope they are not Top Secret or so sensitive as to endanger our forces who, for good, bad, necessary or otherwise, are over there fighting.

This "leak" looks awfully suspicious to me ...

Yeh, another book review .... but read this book!! Excuse me for yelling, but I tend to feel enthusiastic about so few things these days ...

I told myself that I would never again bore the few Mediawingnuts’ passers-bye with another book review … but let me at least write that The Help was/is awesome! I absolutely LOVED essentially everything about the book from the women’s “voices” as written by Ms. Stockett to the MANY truths that were woven into what is, after all, just another novel in your library.

But I think it’s no exaggeration to state that this book will be a classic in the years to come and be a must-read at even the high school level within a decade, if not sooner. It is certainly the best novel I’ve read in a couple of decades. Maybe in my lifetime.

This posting is long overdue, but believe me when I tell you that you won't be able to get The Help outta your head after reading it. Let me know what you think.

Well there goes my chance to check this week's winning lottery numbers and then go back a week in time to buy a ticket with the winning numbers.

Not in this Universe, friends!

After episode after episode of Star Trek and those clever Back to the Future flicks, I wasn't sure that the science/mathematics community would ever finally put the idea in the trash heap of interesting, but untrue, "go back in time" possibilities.

The idea of going back in time and murdering one of my direct ancestors always intrigued me. Would I exist thereafter--or therebefore? For that matter, would a murder have even been committed if I didn't exist? Well, researchers led by Seth Lloyd at MIT analyzed how some of the quirks/quarks and peculiarities of real-life time travel might play out and voilla! Traveling back in time simply can't happen!

So you see, Johnny, knowing a little bit about right triangles and similar polygons will come to some use as you traverse the exciting next school year. I really enjoy Science News online, but finally broke down and ordered a home-delivered subscription.

Thanks to searching through Google's "Images," I found the proof that e^iPi = -1 I should have seen it immediately ... (guess [sic] I'm getting old)

This is simple, graphical and the graphic proves the assertion that e^iPi + 1 = 0 (or e^iPi = -1) upon observation. I feel foolish having thought off-hand that it would be something simple and drawn on a coordinate system of the real numbers and the imaginary numbers ... and then not having seen it immediately. I had to run (more like stumble!) into it while researching some basic geometry/trigonometry for one of my grandchildren who could probably care less.

But yes, one needs to know e^ix = cos(x) + i*sin(x) ... which I believe I showed to be true in an earlier posting.

Mrs. S.: I assume your command of English will provide me a translation of the Abstract below--possibly relating to how ancients measured the earth.

Quote of the Abstract of Erik P. Verlinde's paper, On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton

"Abstract: Starting from first principles and general assumptions Newton's law of gravitation is shown to arise naturally and unavoidably in a theory in which space is emergent through a holographic scenario. Gravity is explained as an entropic force caused by changes in the information associated with the positions of material bodies. A relativistic generalization of the presented arguments directly leads to the Einstein equations. When space is emergent even Newton's law of inertia needs to be explained. The equivalence principle leads us to conclude that it is actually this law of inertia whose origin is entropic."

Although a bit troublesome in areas, if you download the entire 29 page paper (click on the Abstract above and then click on "Download"), a couple of the graphics directly relate to your question as to how the size of the earth was measured before the yardstick was invented.

BP Plugs Leak with Worst Case Scenario Still an Unknown

Not Quite the Worst Case Scenario

The worst case scenario, in all honesty, would not be likely to affect the spin rate of the Milky Way Galaxy … nor would it likely even cause the entire Gulf of Mexico to explode and burn. BP’s stock should continue to rise for at least until the weekend.

Mrs. S.: I would dearly like to see this proved without recourse to Euler's Equation

Euler's "Identity" ... although Euler didn't actually discover it!

A short proof of this elegant identity combining the most notable math constants (0, 1, i, e and Pi) with math's most basic operations (addition, multiplication and exponentiation) would be a genuine find, I think.

Proof(s) of Euler's Equation (or Theorem) are abundant and the identity above is simply a "special case" with x = Pi, but I was wondering if there was a Silver Bullet Proof, so to speak--probably graphical on the real-imaginary coordinate system.

No Higgs Boson yet, but blogs are NOT a poor source of credible information ... only those posted by the Tea Party movement!

Simulated Higgs particle decay in the ATLAS detector

The particle physics community was abuzz yesterday about a blog posted by a University of Padua (Italy) physicist and "Alien Associate Member" of the USA's Tea Party movement, saying that he's been hearing rumors (no source, of course) about a "light Higgs boson" discovery at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois.

Today, physicists worldwide have moved to quash rumours that the elusive Higgs boson - dubbed the God particle - was actually detected by a made-in-the-USA "atom smasher".

A spokesman for the Illinois branch of the “Tea Party” which claims to operate the Tevatron accelerator admitted today that scientists had made no such discovery there.

Note: The Illinois-based Tevatron is the made-in-the-USA rival to Europe's Socialistic Hadron Collider (SHC) located in a tunnel-like atom smasher passing under both France's and Switzerland's common border.

The rumors were originally made public in a blog post by an Italian particle physicist who was granted “alien” membership into the USA’s Tea Party as a result of his bogus revelation--apparently an initiation rite for non-Americans.

But a spokesman for the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) told CNN, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh (who is holding tight to the original revelation [sic]) and MSNBC: "There is no merit to the rumors of a Higgs discovery." The spokesperson for the DZero experiment at the Tevatron, told CNN: "There is no evidence yet of a Standard Model Higgs signal; more data will be needed for that.

"The rumors started by the Tea Party blog are not correct and blogs put out by the Tea Party movement in general (or as hastily scribbled on their various billboards and placards) in the US are not a reliable source of information."

For Mrs. S.: Area of a circle!

Click on the graphic above to see simple proof that A = Pi * r-squared for a circle! As mentioned in my note to Johnny and Mr. P. on July 8 (below), Pi is defined to be the circumference of a circle divided by its diameter, of course. I guess you would have to know that 2 * r = d, but everyone knows that, right?

Two interchangeable books to get you started in the world's #1 sport [sic]

Between allowing British Petroleum to create a tar pit of our Gulf of Mexico and the world pushing soccer as a sport on our children, we are ...

... becoming a Third World Nation!!!!

Dr Gro Bruntland Released the results of a 30-year study by the World Health Organization showing that soccer is particularly popular in the poorest of the poor nations of the world. His results are quoted below:

“A 30-year study released today by the World Health Organization links soccer to poverty, famine and disease. the results of the study show that the game is very popular in countries with poor and unhealthy populaces and thrives in third-world countries.
"The results of this study are shocking, but the culprit was pretty much staring us in the face for all these years," said Dr. Gro Brundtland, director-general of the WHO. "Soccer is the clear cause of many of the world's ills."
“The study showed that countries where soccer is the dominant sport almost exclusively have the greatest economic and public health problems.
"The only thing that has saved much of Europe is that there are other popular sports there that dilute the effect of soccer," said Brundtland. "But in many African countries, the destructive effects of soccer have been able to spread unchecked."
“The WHO's presentation of its study results was accompanied by a slide show, including pictures of starving children clutching soccer balls on their deathbeds, and groups of malnourished children playing games with balls made out of rags and string.
“The organization's report repeatedly focuses on soccer's most unique characteristic -- that competitors may not use their hands, relegating the ball to the ground at all times -- as the primary cause of disease in third-world nations. Soccer balls roll through dirt, standing water and animal feces. When picked up by the goalie or the owner of the ball after the match, that person becomes a carrier of disease and anything they touch is infected.
"It is horribly sad what the game has done to these people," said Brundtland. "They have put soccer above everything else, and it has destroyed their lives."
“Brundtland asked the United Nations to take immediate action to free third-world countries from soccer's grasp.
"The World Health Organization's findings are very troubling," said UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon.
"The UN will begin working immediately with worldwide aid organizations to give these poor nations much-needed basketballs, American footballs and baseball equipment. In the most dire situations, we will even distribute lacrosse sticks."

Write your Congressmen/women!! Write Barack Obama!! Collect and destroy as many soccer balls as you can!! Boycott the World Cup final game!!

Did you ever wonder why Third World Countries played a sport where a score of 0-0 is considered satisfactory? ... and a score of 1-0 is a rout! Put America first ... baseball, American football, basketball ... these are First World Nation sports ... along with gang wars, drug busts and Tea Parties, of course!

Hi Johnny! Have your dad show you why the sum of the squares of the sides of a right triangle equals the square of the hypotenuse ...

He can use the little diagrams (that I borrowed from Mr. GOOGLE) below if he wishes. (Click on it to make it a tad more readable!)





The diagram below is clearer to read, but you would have to compute the areas and write the equations out. Then again, what the heck--here's the "work."

Area of each triangle is ab/2. The large square is (a+b)^2
Thus (a + b)^2 – 4(ab/2)= c^2 or A^2 + b^2= c^2



Ask your geometry teacher to prove the Pythagorean Theorem and let's see how quickly he/she comes up with a solution ... there are dozens on the Internet.

Love

Grandpa

Finally, the Republicans see the light!

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele telling Obama to get the &%$#@& out of Afghanistan!

I may have to rethink my previous post wherein I dissed the Republicans for everything from my loss of unemployment benefits to cruelty to Gulf wildlife.

The Republican Party FINALLY sees the error of their ways and is asking for the US to pull out of an unwinnable war. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele finally articulated the latest Republican views on the Afghanistan War and surprise! .... He pointed out the futility of defeating the Taliban in a shooting war and all but told Obama to "Get out of Afghanistan!"

This puts the Republican Party in line with the Democrats, Libertarians, Independents and even the Green Party for the first time in my memory.

Congratulations to the Republican Party for FINALLY seeing the light!