A Blizzard that Never Was Beyond Benign

A Blizzard that Never Was Beyond Benign

Blow, blow, thou winter wind.
Thou art not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.

~~William Shakespeare, As You Like It

The religious acolytes of Global Warming are collectively twisting themselves into Brooklyn pretzels or the more elaborately designed pigtails of most Mongolian warlords to spin the latest spell of the winter Polar Vortex into an appropriate fit for the global warming narrative.  The endeavor to retrofit a natural phenomenon into the template of a pre-conceived hypothesis that serves as the main vehicle for a social advocacy agenda has the unintended effect of distorting the quality of the event to appear more severe than it actually is.

It behooves to emphasize sans apologies that the existence of atmospheric vortices had been sufficiently established by Helmholtz 150 years ago to behave according to the Navier-Stokes nonlinear partial differential equations in fluid dynamics.  Ergo, long before Al Gore was a hint of a glint in his father’s eyes for a hormonal escapades, the physics of vortices was a settled science. 

The introduction of “polar vortex” terminology into the global warming lexicon is nothing more than an attempt by an unhinged movement to impress and deceive a gullible public into believing that a highfalutin term could lend credence and respectability to the movement’s rhetoric.

It’s difficult to avoid the impression that the younger generation has become soft and somnambulant in both understanding and handling natural-physical adversity.  There was a time when I had to hike both ways of a normally forty-five minute tramcar ride from my living quarters to school to take my finals in Organic Chemistry when all public transportation was suspended, snowed out if you will. 

Kyoto University did not reschedule the exams and I did not make such a big deal about the rather memorable trek.  I could not even write about it until now and that was the winter of 1967.  Apparently, either the public is getting soft or the reporting infrastructure has gotten super idle it does not have much to talk about.  To compensate for the deficit and salvage its relevance, the media has resorted to exaggerating the gravity of events.

This is not to rule out the likelihood that the media has just been preparing the public for the worst while hoping for the best.  Giving anybody credit for good intentions is benign until the unintended consequences of good intentions backfire as they often do.

I observed on my Facebook page while the snow was falling that it bordered on the amazing how a blizzard was much more fascinatingly enjoyable when appreciated from the warmth and comfort behind my glass window.  Having been acutely aware that I would not even be allowed to take part in the clean-up proceedings in its aftermath when the storm finally settled down, the so-called storm had not even made it to my list of emergency concerns.

The County Sanitation contractor crew cleared the heart of Howe Court, the main access to my residence, before I went to bed. The accumulation appeared to be of very fine-grained powdery type~~a potential back-breaker to shovel off the ground.  I looked forward to posting on Facebook amusing pictures of the landscape by the morrow.

I ended up having to apologize for not being able to deliver on my intention to post pictures of the “blizzard.”  To begin with, there really was not much of a blizzard to write home about.  My grandson cleared up the driveway and walk-paths before I could find my boots to go outside and take pictures, not to mention about trying to find the upload-enabled camera.

Lest the political angle is lost in the shuffle, let it stay on the record that the blizzard that was not, served as the centerpiece of the newly installed New York City mayor’s first order of business.  It was immaterial that there was less than six inches of snow on the ground.  The most important point is he paid proper obeisance to the Sanitation Workers’ Union whose coffers are one of the more reliable sources of the Democrat Party’s campaign funds.

Mayor De Blasio, for all practical purposes sails left of the activist retired entertainer Harry Belafonte.  The mayor is the one who has the electoral mandate to translate, by whatever means, into harsh reality the Utopian fantasies of good old calypso Harry.  Belafonte only parleys the dreams and phantasms of social equality.  Mayor De Blasio distributes the dollars and cents and kindred resources.  For starters, he assured expectant Gothamites that under his watch the distribution of snow plows to liberate the hapless New Yorkers from the clutches of the blizzard shall be equitable amongst Gotham’s five boroughs.

All the electorate need to do is make sure they stay out of the way of those devoted sanitation workers so they can perform their jobs with due diligence unencumbered by the petty daily chores of New Yorkers living their lives.  The scarcer they keep themselves the safer they would be.  This projected the profile of the Nanny State at its finest.

Mayor De Blasio having been elected by “74% to 24% — the largest margin of victory by a non-incumbent in any mayor’s race in city history,” appeared somewhat justified in claiming an electoral mandate for his agenda.  The qualifier “somewhat” is in order because this margin was dwarfed by Pres. Obama’s winning “81% of the vote in New York City in 2012.”

Usurpation of political prerogatives being the hallmark of the Obama paradigm of governance, Mayor De Blasio had deservedly earned the mantle of distinction as implementor par excellence of Pres. Obama’s progressive statist designs on Americans of any and all political persuasions. 

Proceed, proceed: we will begin these rites,
As we do trust they'll end, in true delights.

~~William Shakespeare, As You Like It

Advanced Attempt At Annual Inventory

Advanced Attempt At Annual Inventory

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,

The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear:

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,

And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

~~Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

XCIII 
Indeed the Idols I have loved so long 
Have done my credit in this World much wrong: 
Have drown'd my Glory in a shallow Cup 
And sold my Reputation for a Song. 

~~Omar Khayyam, The Rubaiyat

Arguably there are physical bases of the modern (both Julian and Gregorian) calendars on the nature and properties of the earth’s orbital around the sun and the moon’s orbital around the earth.  But long before planetary science had established its physical underpinnings, the mundane economic rationale for its implementation was the landlords’ need for taxation to be levied on an harmonic periodicity.  Ergo the demands of collecting taxes promptly made the practice of observing the upkeep of the calendar a matter of necessity.

Thus it came to pass that monthly and annual inventory takings became as much a part of the routine business cycle as keeping track of elapsed time spent at the workplace itself, nay applied against specific projects.

Ad extremum, it has become a tradition, going back a few years, for me to take stock of myself, delve into the inner recesses of my reverie, on the first day of any fresh year.  What better means to look into the disposition of your soul than to get some insights into your thirst and sensibility for music?  Concretely, this has translated into putting together a new crop of playlists on YouTube.  And of course, the attendant endeavor to share them with anybody in cyberspace who could be bothered to listen, and might even enjoy doing so.

This year’s motif for this habitual indulgence is a return to my passions of yore, to some elusive episodes of my Yamato Escapades.  The unwitting “usual suspects” vehicles of this journey are Brenda Lee and Caterina Valente both of whose artistic repertoires have been part of the vocal styles I loved and attempted to emulate over the years.

Brenda Lee is seventy-seven days younger than me.  I am 105 days shy of being thirteen years younger than Caterina Valente.  This trivia which I gleaned from sketches of their respective bio-data was somewhat of a surprise to me.  I got introduced to Brenda in the summer of 1965 and to Caterina three summers later.  I followed both artists religiously since.  I’d never have suspected that Caterina was much older than Brenda.

Aside from these two adorable ladies, I added a third playlist.  This one will serve as the vehicle for my New Year’s resolution which I pledge to keep or exhaust myself trying.  The pledge consists of being able to make a vocal rendition of the piece, by my 70th birthday, without a tearful cracking of my voice at the following touchy verses:

“I'll sail on your smile I'll ride on your touch
I'll worship your eyes that I love so much
But if you go, go on I won't cry
Though the good be gone, from the word goodbye.”

I still have all of 363 days to make good on my pledge.  So wish me luck all you good people out there.  Meanwhile, please enjoy my modest offering.  And please don’t shoot the messenger should it not meet your expectations or tickle your fancy.

{Best of Brenda Lee}

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mbRGVHXMoY&list=PLjC-YRc2AjQANG3Tyk6KUBVLjscuB9648

{If You Go Away~~Various Artists}

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMwIKER1OkU&list=PLjC-YRc2AjQDZmNGPSauH1fe0_S0ERwA8

{Caterina Valente Selections}

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThuzUZjRNrI&list=PLjC-YRc2AjQDq1vfvZe7KFQln-_DQTO2h

The more I try to deliver on my resolution, the more I came to realize I might have gotten myself a very tall order.  I’m afraid I’ll have to resort to taking a few showers a day to improve on the odds.  Else I end up invoking the immortal thoughts of the poet, to wit: {C.f., http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174603 }

I hold it true, whate'er befall;

I feel it, when I sorrow most;

'Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all.

                      ~~ Sir Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam

To somehow modulate the poignant bite of Rod MacKuen’s original English lyrics I attempted to improvise some unauthorized variations.  Below is the final stanza sample of this endeavor:

If you go away as I know you must
There'll be nothing left in the world to trust
Just an empty room, full of empty space
Like the empty look, I see on your face
I’d have been the shadow, of your sorry plight
If I thought it might, keep me at your sight
Please don’t go away, Huwag mo ko’ng lisanin! [Tagalog],

Ikanai de ne! [Japanese], Ayaw ‘kog biya-i! [Bisaya], Bitte geh nicht fort! [German], Ne me quitte pas! [French], Nie zostawiaj mnie! [Polish].

Revising the verses to my own liking used to work for me before.  My own variation of the verses allows me to immerse myself on the emotion of the song rather than being distracted by trying to remember the words.  But in a song as sentimental as this one being submerged in the song’s emotion may just precisely be the problem I’m trying to overcome.

If this time-tested trick does not work for me this year, I’ll have to seek refuge in the resigned fatalism of uncle Omar and add another item to my long list of defeats over the ages:

XXXIX 
And not a drop that from our Cups we throw 
For Earth to drink of, but may steal below 
To quench the fire of Anguish in some Eye 
There hidden--far beneath, and long ago.

~~Omar Khayyam, The Rubaiyat

2014 Is A Spenserian Year

At Long Last~~The 39^th Made It

LXVIII 
We are no other than a moving row 
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go 
Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held 
In Midnight by the Master of the Show; 

~~Omar Khayyam, The Rubaiyat

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

~~Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Mirabile dictum, this is the thirty-ninth year that I greeted the changing of the calendar year in the Western Hemisphere.  For consecutive eleven of those thirty-nine years I was a resident in Manhattan.  For non-consecutive ten of those years Times Square was on my commuting route to work.  But what I found amazing was that for the first time this year I watched on TV’s Fox News Channel the New Year’s Eve midnight ball drop in Times Square.

It is amazing because in New York it is considered a landmark event.  On a number of occasions I was part of the crowd gathered to witness the event.  In all such other occasions I was somehow distracted and missed the main event entirely.  That I actually had the energy this year to focus on the drop itself was as eloquent an expression as any of how far I have slowed down in my old age.  It did not help that as readers of this blog may have noticed a good deal of 2013 was spent playing some sort of hopscotch from one health care provider to another.

It amused me somehow that I found it amazing than sad.  Ordinarily, I would have been shocked and saddened that I seemed to be eager and willing to “go gentle into that good night.”  The chutzpah to brave the telltale relics of the ruins of time seemed definitely missing from my arsenal.  That there was no hint of rage in my reaction should have been alarming.  It has been noteworthy, nevertheless that there was more of a curious wishful thinking than detached resignation.

The telecast itself had a sixty-second countdown.  Throughout this interval, the ball was shown to change to various colors as it traversed its downward trajectory.  It was at the thirty-second mark that my wishful thinking actually kicked in.  I found myself asking: what if the ball just stops without reaching the ground?  Would it mean that gravity actually had temporarily malfunctioned, or an anomalous kink was discovered in the time continuum? How would the crowd react to it? 

It’s amazing how much diverse thoughts can occur in a time span of thirty seconds.  So much of our imagination is invested away into futility.

Lo and behold none of my what-if scenarios materialized.  The unexpected did not disrupt reality.  I ended up greeting the New Year invoking a few choice admonitions of the poet:

[. . .]

All such vain Monuments of earthly Mass,
Devour'd of Time, in time to nought do pass.

[. . .]

So unto Heaven let your high Mind aspire,
And loath this Dross of sinful World's Desire.

~~Edmund Spenser, Ruines of Time

This would, for the record, make the year 2014 decidedly Spenserian for me.  There is no telling whether such is good, bad, indifferent, or otherwise.  Let the chips fall as they may.  We’ll adequately deal with them somehow.

Season’s Greetings

In Lieu of a Greetings Card*

Often the truth we sadly miss

As we see only what we know.

Nor each occasion could reveal

The gravity of what we feel,

On things we dare and dare not do.

Yet, though in vain, let me express

One simple thought, one sincere wish:

That may with love and peaceful bliss

Replete you find the Holidays!

And may the seasons thereafter

Be seasoned with mirth and laughter.

The rare occasioned somber sky

May not but serve to amplify

The happiness of days gone by,

And glories of unyielding prime,

And promises of days that lie

Uncharted in the blue abyss

And daunting vagaries of Time!

May each grief find sweet redress;

Alien to fears, much less to tears,

May triumphs and exploits increase

All through the fast succeeding years!

H A P P Y   H O L I D A Y S !!!

Merry Christmas & A Most Prosperous New Year to All

=<+>=

*I have circulated this piece every year from way back when I first wrote it in 1980.  This year, though I’m slowing down in the uptick, I don’t find sufficient reason to forbear.  So wherever you are and whatever you are into, may all your endeavors be rewarded with the bounty you so richly deserve, both materially and spiritually.

Considering that my days seem to be loaded with unpredicted (mostly close to emergency) frustrating doctors’ appointments, I deem it prudent to post it earlier than I did in previous years.  These days I never can tell where I might be during the week of Christmas Day to New Year’s Eve.

Incidentally, this piece is also on page 170 of my book released by FriesenPress, Sep-2011.  {Cf. also, http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/flirting-with-misadventures-constancio-sulapas-asumen/1105736537}

JFK Legacy Redux~~It’s Rommel’s Birthday

JFK Legacy Redux~~It’s Rommel’s Birthday

Could not find much else to do, that would not exhaust my reserved energy.   I therefore stayed with TCM (Turner Classic Movies) which, to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the JFK assassination, showed the below selections all of which I saw for the first time.  Ergo it afforded me some entertainment value.  I therefore almost enjoyed the series.  In fact I’d recommend to it to everybody so inclined to watch commercial-free TV.  So check them out when you can.

Primary (1960)

Adventures on the New Frontier (1961)

Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment

Four Days in November (1964)

I threw in the “almost” qualifier because all the while I was thinking it was Rommel’s birthday.  He happens to be my oldest nephew.  He was most instrumental in getting me reconnected to the clan when I needed it most, i.e., in a timely fashion; and at a time when I did not know how.

The information in and of itself is nothing remarkable.  All of us happen to have been born not of our choosing where or when.  We are all historical incidentals unless of course we’re lucky enough to leverage the unfolding and recording of history.

I found it ironical that when your birthday, which by all reckoning has to be one of the most significant events in your life, happens to be coeval with a world historical event, e.g., the assassination of a U.S. President (only twice last century),  it becomes rather difficult to hide your true age.

You might say, whatever for?  Believe me, if you are resourceful and live long enough you’d find instances when the leverage of falsifying your age, in numerical terms, has some advantages.  At least one of my younger brothers can attest to it ~~ good, bad, indifferent or otherwise.

So to Rommel let me say: Happy Half A Century.  May you enjoy as much the second and third halves of a century that’s yet to come.

JFK Legacy Redux~~It’s Rommel’s Birthday

JFK Legacy Redux~~It’s Rommel’s Birthday

Could not find much else to do, that would not exhaust my reserved energy.   I therefore stayed with TCM (Turner Classic Movies) which, to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the JFK assassination, showed the below selections all of which I saw for the first time.  Ergo it afforded me some entertainment value.  I therefore almost enjoyed the series.  In fact I’d recommend to it to everybody so inclined to watch commercial-free TV.  So check them out when you can.

Primary (1960)

Adventures on the New Frontier (1961)

Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment

Four Days in November (1964)

I threw in the “almost” qualifier because all the while I was thinking it was Rommel’s birthday.  He happens to be my oldest nephew.  He was most instrumental in getting me reconnected to the clan when I needed it most, i.e., in a timely fashion; and at a time when I did not know how.

The information in and of itself is nothing remarkable.  All of us happen to have been born not of our choosing where or when.  We are all historical incidentals unless of course we’re lucky enough to leverage the unfolding and recording of history.

I found it ironical that when your birthday, which by all reckoning has to be one of the most significant events in your life, happens to be coeval with a world historical event, e.g., the assassination of a U.S. President (only twice last century),  it becomes rather difficult to hide your true age.

You might say, whatever for?  Believe me, if you are resourceful and live long enough you’d find instances when the leverage of falsifying your age, in numerical terms, has some advantages.  At least one of my younger brothers can attest to it ~~ good, bad, indifferent or otherwise.

So to Rommel let me say: Happy Half A Century.  May you enjoy as much the second and third halves of a century that’s yet to come.

Decoding the Rollout Debacle

Decoding the Rollout Debacle

XXI

When countless colleagues have besieged your doors

And left wild traces of some User's rage,

Take heed to not translate them to remorse

Nor head off to some sorry escapades.

The force with which most often users plead

Or emphasize the justice of their cause,

Its source, most oft', of good intentions made,

Undoing which cause justice to your use.

Most chances as begot of discontent

Of others, prove best opportunities

To probe the limits of your worth; else, vent

Your umbrage at some worthless legacies:

Such are the monuments of gross incompetence,

Much shame well-hid in codes for else ill-hidden sins!

-- “In Search for Reason” {Cf. p. 140 at Flirting with Misadventures}

The histrionics ubiquitous throughout the national landscape over the so-called ObamaCare rollout debacle has been, more than anything else, clinically symptomatic of a national polity who has lost its bearings.  With the notable exception of Pat Buchanan who exhibited an exceptional semblance of equanimity amidst frenzied hysterical call for Secretary Sebelius’ head to roll as just wages for the ObamaCare logistical fiasco, Pat counseled to let her be.  I whole-heartedly concur.

Getting rid of Sec. Sebelius would only allow the administration to replace her with somebody equally as incompetent if not more so.  It would be a worse exercise in futility than re-arranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic as a countermeasure to the impending plunge into the depths.  It would not cut our (the taxpayers’) loses to a minimum because we the taxpayers still have to pay her for a pension of sorts and pay somebody else to do the job as incompetently.

As it turned out, the main contractor for the ObamaCare rollout had a long-documented history of budget overruns on under-delivered systems, as most recently documented by Mark Styne:

Their most famous government project was for the Canadian Firearms Registry. The registry was estimated to cost in total $119 million, which would be offset by $117 million in fees. That’s a net cost of $2 million. Instead, by 2004 the CBC (Canada’s PBS) was reporting costs of some $2 billion — or a thousand times more expensive.

It takes unmitigated temerity, if not utter stupidity, deemed normal for any regime of bureaucrats and government functionaries to entrust the implementation of its signature Legislative policy achievement to a company of kindred sterling reputation.  Huckleberry Finn would not entrust the repairs of his slingshot to an outfit with such a track record.  But then again, Huck Finn was not an Obama Regime apparatchik.  Rather, he was the epitome of American pragmatism. 

He was the prototypical American with skills, who “You send them into the wilderness with a pocket knife and a Q-tip and they build you a shopping mall.”  Obamism has no room for the Americanism which has served as the foundation of global American hegemony, which candidate Obama vowed to cut down to size, and Pres. Obama profusely apologized for in public, every time he found a convenient platform.

Lest we get sidetracked, it behooves to emphasize that in the canonical annals of the Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC), the product owner is always the stake holder who oversees and underwrites the development.  Who ultimately ends up doing the dirty deed is a personnel decision, a matter of resource deployment and allocation.  The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) was the system owner of record at every stage of SDLC.  The choice of personnel to delegate mission critical projects to is reflective of executive managerial acumen which the Obama Regime time and again had proved to be in woeful deficit.

The fact that all levels of testing including unit, integration, regression, performance and UAT (user acceptance testing) have been established gospel in SDLC seemed to have been swept under the rugs, in an attempt to provide excuses for the rollout fiasco.  Of the above testing modalities, UAT is the most crucial.  Without it, there is no justification for any systems rollout.  Conversely, if you attempt a systems rollout, it is prima facie evidence that adequate UAT was passed with flying colors.

GIGO, an axiomatic acronym in the province of systems development, was always taken to mean, “garbage in, garbage out,” or “gospel in, gospel out,” but never “garbage in, gospel out.”  An algorithm that would effectively cleanse or purify the content from whatever inherent conceptual sins is yet to be invented.  This was largely the reason that the acolytes of Global Warming miserably failed in their attempt to fudge the data to prove that the paradigm of anthropogenic global warming was an accepted settled science. {Cf. e.g., “Consensus Does Not a Science Make,” Ch 20 pp. 263ff at Flirting with Misadventures also see, http://www.newmediajournal.us/staff/asumen/2009/11272009.htm }.

The redistributionist mechanism that is embedded in ObamaCare is precisely the kind of content garbage, the “ill-hidden sins,” that the system attempts to bury so that it is implemented unbeknownst to the user, i.e. the insurance consumers or policy holders.  In the succinct formulation of Charles Krauthammer, “. . . [The] three pillars of Obamacare: (a) mendacity, (b) paternalism and (c) subterfuge” were the sins that the insurance policy cancellations laid bare.  And, as I emphasized earlier elsewhere {Cf. p. 211 at Flirting with Misadventures}, ‘. . . President Obama is the Zen Master of “the nexus of political subterfuge so effectively employed by both Lenin and Stalin against their rivals to pull off the Bolshevik revolution.”’

In order to fix the logistics woes of the ObamaCare rollout, this nation has to fix the ideological underpinnings of the Statist Regime which mandate that the health of the citizenry should be managed by the government.  This requires cleansing the national psyche of the culture of dependency and parasitic opportunism that Obamism has perpetrated on the national polity.

This should start with garnering a veto-proof majority in the House and getting a GOP majority in the Senate.  Otherwise, it might be far easier or more politically convenient to succumb to the fatalistic resignation and comfort of surrender:

One might argue: Why get so annoyed?

Tough work to pursue, tougher still unemployed

What with inflation going up by the hour

'Tis no simple mission to get worth for your dollar.

Well, then, it is obvious, there isn't any choice;

Methinks it takes genius, takes cunning otherwise;

Some take the drudgery, all day, nine to five,

Mischief and trickery, nay, sin to survive!

-- “Worker’s Lament” {Cf. p. 171 at Flirting with Misadventures}