This oped ran in the Sunday April 23, 2006 Harrisburg Patriot News.   I could have written it yesterday.

AS I SEE IT

BY GEORGE KROLOFF

Hello, candidate. I'm available, but I can't find you on Match.com.

You don't have to be a perfect 10. I'd probably settle for an eight.

I'm the politically unattractive guy in the middle who isn't swayed by ideology or any one issue. I just want to make a match with someone who usually thinks like me. Someone who believes the federal government should work like my local "administration." It actually arranges to get the garbage picked up before 10 a.m. every Monday.

Do you agree our national government needs able managers who can prioritize? That we can't do everything at once? If you want us to get together, tell me how you will run the government I am paying for.

Of course, I have issues. Doesn't everyone? Here are some:

The economy. It's good in some places, bad in others. Good if you are in the right place, bad if you aren't. Tell me what you think government can and should do regarding our quality of life. Remember, "can" and "should" are not the same things. What are realistic goals we can agree upon?

Environment, education, and jobs. See economy.

Immigration. Our diversity is an enormous strength and a great gene pool. And there aren't enough Americans willing to fill a lot of jobs. But illegal means illegal. Immigration from Mexico is an economic issue that can't be solved by building a border wall. In a somewhat similar situation, Ronald Reagan told the Soviets, "Tear Down This Wall." Where's the win-win solution?

Elections. Certainly, all politicians are not corrupt. But the system has been corrupted because contributions drive campaigns and then pay for decisions made by winners. How will you fix the broken system?

Abortion and health. Of course, abortion's an important moral issue. But so are other life-and-death issues that involve even more people (such as the millions who die of hunger, wars, and easily prevented diseases). Meanwhile, U.S. health policy is worse than complicated. How will you manage the time and the money available for major health issues? Think simple, but give me context, not sound bites.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Life refers to more than what the abortion sides say. Liberty is much more than freedom of speech and much less than anarchy. Happiness? America seems to be depressed. Too much Viagra, too little Zoloft?

Foreign policy and the Middle East. Worldwide, our ever-changing policies are a mixture of morals (some of which we actually practice), but mostly economic. Oil is not the root of all evil, but we need a root canal to deaden our pain. How can we get along and stop picking fights? Where is the middle ground in all the Mid-east's shifting sand?

Religion. Way too slippery a slope for the government. The Ten Commandments are wonderful, but which ones? The Catholic? The Protestant? The Jewish? They do differ you know. Or maybe you don’t know. We probably agree on the ethics and morality of most of the commandments. But don't tell me how important it is to have them in public squares. Tell me how you will instill the basic concepts into government.

Technology. What should be our government's role when technology is the driving force in the global economy, environment, education, wars, and health; even in religion? As a conversation starter, what would you do about our place in a world where China and India are only two of several powerhouse nations racing to overtake our lead?

Special interests. Every individual, organization, and nation has special interests. I want a manager who can balance the spectrum of issues by openly and honestly discussing varying points of view. Are you brave enough to talk about how you made a decision?

Here's a bonus topic: terror: Why am I so frightened? Can you make me comfortable with a middle ground between terror and caution? I'm needy, a hug or a gun isn't enough.

Can you bring us together? My last political relationship broke up over the use of money, power and not really caring about me. I'd like to find a candidate who wants to build a relationship, not someone who will kiss-up just to get my vote and then abandon me.

Want to meet over a cup of coffee?

GEORGE KROLOFF of East Berlin has held senior positions in the legislative and executive branches of the federal government, and in the private sector. 

Note: Since this was written we moved from East Berlin back to Maryland. 

 poor georgie’s almanack

Atlas Shrugged?

Unlike humans real snow birds sense Earth’s magnetic waves. They use them as an avian GPS to get from freezing Yukon winters to warm southern nests. A bird’s sky atlas, would look very different than National Geographic’s. The illustration is an artist’s suggestion of a bird’s-eye-view of the night sky showing magnetic waves from Jupiter.  

Everything

 

poor georgie’s almanack

Your Body’s Bureaucracies

Your body is run by a bunch of bureaucracies, just like the Pentagon.  

An ER doctor said I collapsed when I tried to stand up because there was a communications problem between the bureaucracies running my nerve system and the blood system.  When I stood up the blood bureaucracy didn’t get the message that my brain needed more.  

Actually, everything from electrons to elections is run by bureaucracies. 

(for more …  https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:c9efc503-d8a7-401d-944f-b51d3a686bc1)

 USA 2022

A parent who knows the family of the Highland Park mass killer and many of the grieving families  told me earlier this week the school kids are handling the aftermath better than the adults.  The reason: School shooting drills.

Sportin' Life, a memory

 Yesterday a book review in The Washington Post reminded me of this from April 10, 2016.  

poor georgie’s almanack 

John W. Bubbles  

As a young show business press agent in Chicago around 1960 I promoted an interesting “B List” of world-renowned performers visiting The Windy City.  Bernstein, Belafonte and a bunch of others whose names began with B.  

Last night’s powerful performance at Strathmore Music Center of “Porgy and Bess” brought back memories of John W. Bubbles.  He was Sportin’ Life in the original Broadway production of the Gershwin classic.

Bubbles had appeared in Chicago on a bill with Judy Garland and the comic Alan King.  I was hired after it already was clear the show’s run would be standing-room-only.  I guess the producer’s contract said there must be a press agent.

Irv Kupcinet, the leading local gossip columnist, invited me to a private dinner at the Chez Paree nightclub a couple days before the show opened.  About ten of us sat around a table and listened to a clearly disturbed Garland swearing up a storm.  That was a bit uncomfortable.  Even more disturbing were the futile attempts by her husband, Sidney Luft, to calm her down.  I didn’t want to get involved in that.  But, I needed someone to promote, because I was being paid to do the press agentry.

King was equally obnoxious.  He didn’t need me and I not only didn’t need him, I didn’t want to be around him.  He seemed to be mean and disdainful of everyone but himself. 

Bubbles, meanwhile, came across as quiet, introspective and a genuinely warm human being.  I only knew about his being in vaudeville where he partnered with a fellow who’s nickname was “Buck” and the team was “Buck and Bubbles.”  The name had intrigued me as much as another star team on the “Negro” Vaudeville Circuit, “Butterbeans and Susie.” 

I quickly arranged for Studs Terkel to interview Bubbles in a small WFMT radio studio. Terkel, probably the best interviewer ever, didn’t dwell on the obvious, like how Bubbles allegedly taught Fred Astaire to tap dance.

Terkel zeroed in on Bubbles’ climb to stardom in Jim Crow America.  Jim Crow was a popular 19th-century minstrel song and dance that negatively stereotyped African Americans.  It was performed by White men in blackface makeup.  The mythical Jim Crow morphed into shorthand for a system of government-sanctioned wide-spread racial oppression and segregation, illustrated by Bubbles career.  Successful as his career was, during most of it he could not walk into millions of front doors or stay at most hotels because of his skin color.  

Studs delicately brought out the pain, suffering, and sorrow of Bubbles’ journey to greatness.  Several poignant sounds of silence spoke volumes, as the three of us around the table and the sound engineer in a cramped “booth” behind a large glass window, gathered our thoughts and quietly reflected upon the discomfort pent up in Bubbles’ story.  A story of simultaneously living the American dream and the American nightmare.  

The temperature in the room began to heat up.  

And suddenly I noticed. The four of us.  Suspended in a tiny time capsule.  In a soundproofed safe high above the hustle and bustle of “The Second City.”  And each of us with tears in our eyes. 

All of this was flashing before me last night.  A night with little if any silence and a totally different experience.  Not at all like Studs’ studio.  Not even like sitting near the blaring orchestra pit during the early 1950’s revival of Porgy, where I was a teenaged usher in Chicago’s cavernous, classic, Civic Opera House.

Now, last night, in the sleek and nearly perfectly-tuned modern Strathmore Music Hall, just 15 minutes from our apartment door, the house lights dimmed, then Susan and I focused on the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s pleasing full, fluid sound. It was a sharp contrast to what I remembered as an equally pleasing, but brassy, Broadway-born Porgy pit orchestra.

But, the voices.  Behind the orchestra in the loft, were the 60-or-so members of the highly acclaimed choir from Morgan State University a historically black college.  In front, performing in an imaginary Catfish Row, were the lead performers.  Some were professional opera singers, some students.  They deservedly took their standing ovation bows.  And I thought.

Oh those voices.  Oh, those emotions.  Oh, those memories.

The Gershwin brothers, George and Ira, and the all-Caucasian team creating the original Porgy in the Jim Crow mid-1930s were creating one of America’s first operas.  Jim Crow was blocking the door to the audition stage. There weren’t many stage doors for Blacks wanting to be opera singers.  The show’s creators reportedly worried they would have casting troubles.  Of course, in time, they did find those voices.

One was John W. Bubbles, who also was one of America’s greatest dancers.

Then last night at Strathmore, as the performers took their bows, to a well deserved standing ovation for a performance that soared with current and future stars.  Jim Crow is not dead, but at least one wing has been clipped.

It is a weak pun to say we walked out on a high note.   

###

George Kroloff May 23, 2022

The book reviewed in The Washington Post is 

Sportin’ Life: John W. Bubbles, an American Classic by Brian Harker.

 poor georgie’s almanack

Clue 12 of 12 … The conclusions.

WHY A ROCK … A STAR ... A ROCK STAR … AND YOU ARE THE SAME THING BUT DIFFERENT 

This is a very short version.  A longer version, written for teens in simple language and with pictures is attached.

• Nearly 14 billion Earth Years ago an amazingly hot blob of Energy instantly expanded.  Today that is called The Big Bang.  It took at least 200,000 years for the ingredients to cool enough to form the first atoms.  Like all atoms, they were made up of even tinier thing.
  

• A controversial, but very popular, idea among scientists claims those tiniest things are made up of strings of Energy, and that Energy probably is in a form of Information that can be communicated.  
• The strings, according to this concept, create everything in our Universe.  They vibrate, and they make decisions to combine with other strings to build what we think of as mass (a grain of sand, a rock, or our Moon).  

• I hope I haven’t lost you already, but with new computers, telescopes, microscopes and other technologies the evolving picture of reality gets weirder.

• The tiny bits of Energy can make other things, like electricity, magnetism, light and other stuff that humans can sense.  The Energy also makes things we can’t sense, such as microwaves that cook food.

• Everything vibrates, producing waves of information.  For instance, high waves on Lake Michigan  probably mean a storm is near by.  A siren signals danger.  A plucked guitar string becomes part of a language we call music.  X-Ray devices translate waves that let you look into a body as if you were Superman.

• Some communicating waves combine or cooperate to build the bureaucracies that govern our bodies and our Universe.  A doctor told me the reason I was collapsing onto the floor when I stood up was that my nervous system (a bureaucracy) stopped communicating with my blood system (another bureaucracy).  The nerves were not telling the blood vessels in my legs to squeeze, so more blood would be forced up to my brain so I could function.  Eventually, communications were restored.  

• Meanwhile, photos of communication channels in a brain looks suspiciously like communications channels between galaxies in computer simulations. 

• There seems to be a chain of command.  For instance, in a woman’s womb ‘director’ stem cells tell ‘worker’ stem cells to build a developing baby’s ear or knee, etc.  
  

• Your bureaucracies were built following the same blueprints as mine.  Yours may tell you to speed through the yellow light at the same time as mine order the muscle system and my foot to hit the brake hard.
  

• Everything seems to communicate, making human-brain-like decisions.  Something in the atoms must be telling water ‘it is 32 degrees Fahrenheit and time to change to ice.’  We know how the chemistry works to make that happen, but we don’t know how the chemistry knows what to do.  Like the stuff mentioned above, there is cooperation going on among atoms and molecules, so there must be communication.  Another example, something tells a cell to attack an invading Covid or cancer cell.

• There probably is a cosmic language.  Or languages.  The idea of finding a Universal Rosetta Stone to help us translate the language(s) is appealing.  Creating the Electromagnetic Spectrum to measure, or detect, waves is a first step.  Those waves humans evolved to sense, like light, heat and sound are only a small part of the spectrum.  Other waves are colors, radio, and ultraviolet. 

• Because humans evolved to understand only a little bit of what is going on around us, our understanding of life, bodies, and the Universe must be different than birds that can see ultraviolet waves, or use the magnetic waves around our globe as an avian GPS while migrating.  Trees can communicate and nurture other trees.  Flowers follow the sun and must have something like a brain.  It would be nice to be able to know what they think. 

• I hope teens will eventually find a form of a Cosmic Rosetta Stone that will help us understand the languages of the Universe.  (The Rosetta Stone was found near Egypt’s city of Rosetta.  It had the same propaganda message about an ancient pharaoh carved in different languages.  One was Hieroglyphics, a dead language that no one living human could interpret.  Another was Greek.  By matching the two, someone figured out how to read the obsolete Egyptian language.)

Two final thoughts.

• Many scientific studies are ‘proved’ by using the oddly constructed language of Mathematics and equations, where each side of the = or Equal Sign cancels out the other and the answer is 0 … zero.  Maybe that’s why people who believe in one theory assume other theories don’t add up.  Yet, nobody has shown that Albert Einstein’s E = mc2 is wrong.  It says Energy equals Mass … they are the same thing.  Go figure! 

• Because I believe youth will figure out what we are missing … and to encourage them to do so … I have written, in language an eighth grader could understand, the following that provides more details.  It is fully illustrated and titled: THE SEARCH FOR ALBERT EINSTEIN’S TOE …THE LANGUAGES OF THE UNIVERSE …AND A UNIVERSAL ROSETTA STONE.

It is a challenge for teenagers.

Go to: https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:2228cea8-647e-4304-9fc9-cac63a08794f

Drafted January 22, 2022
George Kroloff
gmkroloff1@icloud.com

 1.22.22c
poor georgie’s almanack

Your decisions vs. mine.

Clue 11 of 12. 

Think of approaching a stoplight as it is turns from green tocyellow. You are driving a car in the lane next to mine at the same speed. We get identical information.  I decide to stop. You speed past the light before it turns red.c

We have the same information, but our brains and the bureaucracies that feed information to the brains tell us to react differently.  

I remind you that ouc optical and auditory systems (and all the other body systems) work just like bureaucracies.  They send only the most important messages to the brain for operating decisions.

Interestingly, the atoms that cooperate with other atoms to form brains, cars, and super-hot stars are built by the same itty-bitty things that build human bodies.  They are arranged differently … and different arrangements produce different decisions.

They cooperate, so they must communicate.  But How?

Tomorrow.  My thoughts.  They may be different than yours.

Or see:  https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:2228cea8-647e-4304-9fc9-cac63a08794f

It still is the same thing but different

 1.21.22

poor georgie’s almanack

How does it remain the same thing but different?

Clue 10 of 12.

About 45 years ago I wrote a report and organized hearings for The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee titled, ‘The New World Information Order.’  If you have been following my recent online posts, it is obvious I have begun thinking about ‘The Cosmic Information Order.’  

Clearly, gazillions of brain-like decisions are being made everywhere in an almost logical pattern.   

For instance, on Earth, water, clouds, ice, sleet, and billowing steam from a teapot, are different forms of the same thing at various temperatures.  

What kind of communications between the atoms tells them to take a different shape?  

How do they get the message that ‘It is 32 degrees Fahrenheit now, time to change your outfit.’

Tomorrow.  Two human brains, built with the same materials and blueprint get the same information but make different decisions.

Or see:  https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:2228cea8-647e-4304-9fc9-cac63a08794f

A different Rosetta Stone?

 poor georgie’s almanack

A different Rosetta Stone?

Clue 9 of 12.

In 1799, near the Egyptian city named Rosetta, soldiers found a large stone.  Carved onto it were three messages.  Two in forms of Greek and one in Hieroglyphics, a forgotten Egyptian language using pictures and symbols.

After the Greek was translated, someone figured out that the hieroglyphics said the same thing.  This was the first step in re-learning the ancient language.  (The messages turned out to be propaganda promoting a pharaoh (king) who was losing popularity.)

Is the Electromagnetic Spectrum that identified waves carrying information a cosmic Rosetta Stone?  If so, is it a language in the blueprints to build humans, maybe one our cells understand? 

We have begun to break the code (radio, X-Rays, music and colors).  

If broken, will we learn everything about everything?  Should we?

A bit more tomorrow.

Or see:  https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:2228cea8-647e-4304-9fc9-cac63a08794f

life is a wave, catch it

What’s in a wave?  As the surfer said, ‘Life is a wave.  Catch it.’

Of course it sounds silly … that everything is made up of waves or that waves are full of information. 

Even rocks.  To humans they are very tightly packed waves.  To an atom, a rock probably is like living in a towering apartment building.

We evolved to understand the messages in a few of the waves.  Rough seas often means a storm nearby.  Sirens means danger.  Plucked guitar strings are music.  Rainbows are colors.  

Humans are beginning to build translators.  My favorite today is the X-Ray machine that lets us see like Superman.

It appears that everything is made up of Energy and Energy is Information.  What the hell does that mean?

More tomorrow.

Or see:  https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:2228cea8-647e-4304-9fc9-cac63a08794f

Universal building blocks?

poor georgie’s almanack

This is the eighth of 12 clues for solving a puzzle.  A BIG puzzle.

Common wisdom in the science community is that everything in our body and everything in our universe arose nearly 14 billion years ago in the very hot mili-second that started The Big Bang. 

That event produced a vast amount of Energy.  The Energy, in turn, produced what we perceive as mass and space.  

A newly-researched idea is that everything in our bodies and all the bodies of the Universe is made of the very small “things” that popped into existence that moment.  These little somethings are units of Energy and/or Information.  They almost like LEGO bricks.  When those things are combined one way, they make a brain ... another way, a building ... or a blazing star named Betelgeuse.

And, as noted in the last week’s poor georgie’s posts, everything communicates.

Is there a common language or blueprint of the Universe we don’t know how to hear or read?

More tomorrow … "Musing about a Universal Rosetta Stone."

Or see:  https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:2228cea8-647e-4304-9fc9-cac63a08794f

The Ups and Downs of Cosmic Communications

poor georgie’s almanack

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Introducing the idea of living and cosmic bureaucracies

It sure looks like our bodies, all animal activities on Earth, and even gigantic galaxies like our Milky Way, are run by bureaucracies.  Everything.

For example, the odd little things in atoms, called Quarks, are organized to decide what kind of particle they will build.  In animals, the atoms build cells, which build molecules, which build systems … like the blood or nerve systems.  

The systems usually work quietly running our bodies.  They make a million little decisions a minute.  Sometimes the brain makes final big decisions.  

Thus, just like our optic systems, there is more to everything than meets the eye.  

To be continued tomorrow.

Or see:  https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:2228cea8-647e-4304-9fc9-cac63a08794f

it thinks, therefore it is?

 poor georgie’s almanack

Maybe every living thing thinks.  Cells in our bodies do communicate with other cells.  (Hey guys, We gotta kill that cancer cell over there.)  Trees communicate with other trees (really).  Sunflowers know to tilt to the moving sun.  Fish, Gnus, and starlings swarm together to intimidate attackers.  How do they communicate?  

More tomorrow.

Or: https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:2228cea8-647e-4304-9fc9-cac63a08794f

 

 

What we see is not what they get

poor georgie's almanack

What we think is our universe, or our world, is based on what humans evolved to sense.  

Birds evolved differently.  Some, if not all, migrating birds use the magnetic waves around the Earth as a GPS.  No monthly fee.

Their description of the Earth and sky would be different than ours.  This picture is an artist’s concept of what the night sky might look (or be sensed by) a migrating bird.  It shows magnetic waves around the planet Jupiter… much bigger than our Moon.  Humans eyes and brains only sense the Moon from the Sun's light waves bouncing off of it.  

And chickens can see the same light waves we see, but also ultraviolet light waves, which help them find bugs to eat.  Maybe that's why we don't eat bugs.

More tomorrow.  

Or: https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:2228cea8-647e-4304-9fc9-cac63a08794f

your energy matters

 

poor georgie’s almanack

Some serious researchers say ‘Energy’ and ‘Information’ are equivalent.  If so … Einstein’s equation should be E/I=Mc2.  

EVERYTHING humans perceive as mass (a body or brick) is a bundle of energy?  Needs more research, but what if it is true?  

More tomorrow.

Or: https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:2228cea8-647e-4304-9fc9-cac63a08794f

caption says energy and matter are equivalent.