Pax Orbis

C++

November 12, 2019 21:31 - 3 minutes - 2.85 MB

I just saw on YouTube an interview to Bjarne Stroustrup. Stroustrup began developing C++ in 1979 (then called “C with Classes”), and, in his own words, “invented C++, wrote its early definitions, and produced its first implementation… chose and formulated the design criteria for C++, designed all its major facilities, and was responsible for the processing of extension proposals in the C++ standards committee.” Stroustrup also wrote a textbook for the language in 1985, The C++ Programm...

Terrorism

November 05, 2019 01:22 - 3 minutes - 3.23 MB

A US army manual says, fair enough, that terror is the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence to attain political or religious ideological goals through intimidation,coercion, or instilling fear. That’s terrorism. If you take a look at the definition of Low-Intensity Warfare, which is official US policy, you find that it is just another name for terrorism. That’s why all countries call whatever horrendous acts they are carrying out, counter-terrorism. In December 1987, a...

Crime rates among senior citizens around the world.

October 25, 2019 04:13 - 1 minute - 1.64 MB

BloombergBusiness reported a sharp uptick in crime rates among senior citizens around the world. In South Korea for example, crimes committed by people 65 and over rose 12.2 percent from 2011 to 2013, which includes a shocking 40 percent increase in violent crime, such as murder, robbery, and rape, according to the Korea Times.

Bulletproof backpacks

September 20, 2019 06:31 - 3 minutes - 3.64 MB

Every day, 100 Americans are killed by gun violence, and hundreds more are injured. While most of these shootings are not in public schools, children safety at school is a major concern. Gun control measures are currently political non-starters and people are turning to palliatives like bulletproof backpacks among other desperate solutions in an attempt to protect their children. Sales of bulletproof backpacks have spiked almost 300 percent following a spate of school shootings and t...

Arn-Wolf

September 11, 2019 04:56 - 7 minutes - 6.74 MB

Eagle (Arn) is a symbol of leadership and forsight but man knows that his roots are closer to the wolf. The wolf is very dear to man and represent the purity of heart he has lost in his quest for godness. The wolf is a loner that fights to death for the clan if need comes. Gray wolves are social predators that live in nuclear families consisting of a mated pair, their offspring and, occasionally, adopted immature wolves. They primarily feed on ungulates, which they hunt by wearing the...

Pay it forward

September 03, 2019 01:00 - 1 minute - 1.67 MB

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his 1841 essay Compensation, wrote: “In the order of nature we cannot render benefits to those from whom we receive them, or only seldom. But the benefit we receive must be rendered again, line for line, deed for deed, cent for cent, to somebody.” In 1916, Lily Hardy Hammond wrote, “You don’t pay love back; you pay it forward.” Woody Hayes (February 14, 1913 – March 12, 1987) was a college football coach who is best remembered for winning five national titles ...

Justino

August 31, 2019 04:00 - 12 minutes - 11.1 MB

My grandfather Justino was the Benjamin of a long list of siblings. The older ones were more surrogate parents than brothers and sisters. The records show that he was born in Cameron County, Texas, in 1897, however the family folklore says he falsified the records to enlist for World War I when he was a minor. Justino grew up in San Benito, a typical Texas town of the beginning of the twentieth century, where the railroad tracks marked the segregation boundary, on one side was San Beni...

Settler-colonial societies

August 29, 2019 22:00 - 5 minutes - 5.5 MB

Settler-colonial societies eliminate the indigenous population. Thomas Jefferson said, well, we have no choice but to exterminate the indigenous population, the Native Americans; the reason is they’re attacking us. Why are they attacking us? Because we’re taking everything away from them. But since we’re taking their land and resources away and they defend themselves, we have to exterminate them. The settler-colonial societies are a striking illustration of, first of all, the massive destr...

Down the rabbit hole

August 28, 2019 22:00 - 5 minutes - 4.77 MB

Going “down the rabbit hole” has become a common metaphor in popular culture, symbolizing everything from exploring a new world, taking drugs, or delving into the unknown. (Think The Matrix, where “following the white rabbit” and later choosing the “red pill” starts Neo off on a journey of philosophical realization with no return.) InAlice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the rabbit hole is the place where it all begins. It’s Alice’s unthinking decision to follow the White Rabbit that leads to al...

Humans are instinctively tribal and violent

August 27, 2019 22:00 - 33 minutes - 31.1 MB

Humans are instinctively tribal and violent. However instinctive, the tribalism of targeted groups can be manipulated. For example, in my hometown, people have been divided into two groups according to soccer team allegiance. So how is it that something so important to our flourishing as a species — being part of a group, or tribe — is simultaneously one of the primary forces tearing the social fabric apart? At the core of tribalism is not truth, or objective reality, but beliefs. And the ...

Gun ownership is a divine right

August 26, 2019 22:00 - 16 minutes - 15.5 MB

Gun ownership is a divine right and that the second amendment was inspired by God because the US is chosen land, a place of a covenant between God and the true believers.

Christmas truce

August 25, 2019 09:09 - 7 minutes - 7.16 MB

During the miserable trench warfare of WWI, a night of humanity offered some hope of peace. Arthur Conan Doyle called it “one human episode amid all the atrocities.” After war, some soldiers become peace activists. All Quiet on the Western Front (German: Im Westen nichts Neues, lit. 'In the West Nothing New') is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of World War I. The book describes the German soldiers' extreme physical and mental stress during the war, and the detachment fro...

General Smedley Butler

August 25, 2019 02:21 - 3 minutes - 3.18 MB

Speaking of brutal Nicaraguan dictator Somoza, Harry Truman is supposed to have said “He’s a bastard, but he’s our bastard.” This quote is attributed to Truman, FDR, and Nixon. This is a broad chronological range, because there were actually three Somozas: Anastasio Somoza Garcia, who fathered Luis Somoza Debayle and Anastasio Somoza Debayle, the Somoza dynasty that ruled Nicaragua from the mid 1930s through the late 1970s. The Marines invaded Nicaragua in 1912 and stayed until 1933,...

Lord of the flies

August 23, 2019 22:00 - 3 minutes - 3.29 MB

The title “Lord of the flies” is a translation of the Hebrew Ba´alzevuv, a devil whose name suggests decay, destruction, demoralization, and panic. Golding´s Beelzebub is the anarchic, amoral driving force whose function seems to insure the survival of the individual. The tenets of civilization and intelligence from a veneer over the fury and the mire of human veins. Nonetheless, Golding says that he does not know really where the story comes from and advices the reader that his own interpr...

Alan Watts

August 22, 2019 21:07 - 4 minutes - 3.78 MB

“What I think an awakening really involves is a re-examination of our common sense. We’ve got all sorts of ideas built into us which seem unquestioned, obvious. And our speech reflects them; its commonest phrases. ‘Face the facts.’ As if they were outside you. As if life were something they simply encountered as a foreigner. ‘Face the facts.’ Our common sense has been rigged, you see? So that we feel strangers and aliens in this world, and this is terribly plausible, simply because this is w...

Episodes

C++