I continue to hear and see items purporting to be information that involve phrases like Russia(n), China, Mob, Cartel, DNC, GOP, and/or many other things "linked". Stuff like "hackers linked to Peru ..." are so non-informative that they are literally nonsense. Linked how?, and by whom? are but two of the great many open questions embedded in such garbagespeak. (Worse yet, even if those questions were resolved then they would only lead to a case of guilt or goodness by association, instances of the genetic fallacy.)

I am arguably linked to everybody who every went to the high school I attended and everybody they ever knew and every trade, business or occupation any of them engaged in, and even more concretely to all those who went there at the same time I did. I am definitely linked to my second cousins and through them to their in-laws and their in-laws' attorneys and accountants and those people's spouses and so forth. It really is not a worthwhile concept when used in that fashion.

For illustrative purposes, consider that years back there was something of a fad/game in finding people linked to, specifically, Kevin Bacon, and in finding the least number of necessary persons to make the linkage.This was called Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, and illuminated the fact that it is probably almost impossible for a given person to not be "linked" to some other given person. We are all, somehow, linked to China, Bill Clinton, Putin, GW Bush, Trump, and, of course, Kevin Bacon.

and, some additional and different info and science --

OK, the Bacon number, like the Erdos number, are special cases of the idea of Six Degrees of Separation set out by Frigyes Karinthy in 1929 . However, if we expand the parameter to say 7 or 10 degrees of separation or more I am for sure linked to Putin, though, as of yet, I don't know how. But, that matters not, I am "a blogger linked to Putin" and am therefore guilty of a great many things by association.

On this day in history:

1497 – Vasco da Gama set sail on the first direct European voyage to India.

1709 – Peter the Great beat Charles XII at the Battle of Poltava, ending Sweden's days as a world power

1776 – The first reading of the US Declaration of Independence

1853 – The Perry Expedition arrived in Edo.

1876 – The Hamburg massacre resulted in the deaths of six African-Americans of the Republican Party, along with one white assailant.

1889 - The first issue of The Wall Street Journal was published.

1898 – Soapy Smith was killed in a shootout on Juneau's Wharf, which is a big thing up there.

1947 – There were broadcasts that a UFO crashed at Roswell, NM. Their veracity was denied and are thus uncertain.

1948 – The USAF accepted its first female recruits.

1960 – Francis Gary Powers was charged with espionage for spying on the USSR in a U-2

1970 – Nixon declared Native American self-determination to be official US policy

1972 – The Mossad assassinated Palestinian author Ghassan Kanafani.

1994 – Kim Jong Il began to assume supreme leadership of North Korea

2011 – The final mission of the U.S. Space Shuttle program was launched

Some people who were born on this day:

The year that Rutherford died (1938 [sic]) there disappeared forever the happy days of free scientific work which gave us such delight in our youth. Science has lost her freedom. Science has become a productive force. She has become rich but she has become enslaved and part of her is veiled in secrecy. I do not know whether Rutherford would continue to joke and laugh as he used to.

~~ Pyotr Kapitsa

1478 – Gian Giorgio Trissino, linguist, poet, and playwright, proposed adding new letters to the Roman alphabet
1593 – Artemisia Gentileschi, baroque painter
1831 – John Pemberton, invented Coca-Cola
1839 – John D. Rockefeller, founded Standrd Oil
1894 – Pyotr Kapitsa, physicist and academic
1895 – Igor Tamm, physicist, co-discoverer of Cherenkov radiation
1900 – George Antheil, composer and pianist
1904 – Henri Cartan, mathematician
1908 – Louis Jordan, singer, songwriter, saxophonist, friend of Caledonia, and actor
1914 – Billy Eckstine, singer and trumpet player
1918 – Oluf Reed-Olsen, resistance member and pilot
1924 – Johnnie Johnson, pianist and songwriter
1930 – Jerry Vale, wedding singer
1935 – Steve Lawrence, singer, and actor generally teamed with Eydie Gorme'
1940 – Joe B. Mauldin, songwriter, Cricket, and bass player
1944 – Jaimoe, drummer
1948 – Ruby Sales, civil-rights activist
1952 – Larry Garner, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
1958 – Kevin Bacon, actor and musician linked to Putin and the Clintons
1961 – Karl Seglem, saxophonist and record producer
1962 – Joan Osborne, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
1965 – Dan Levinson, clarinet player, saxophonist, and bandleader
1969 – Sugizo, singer, songwriter, guitarist and producer
1970 – Beck, singer, songwriter, and producer
1992 – Ariel Camacho, singer and songwriter

Some people who died on this day:

There is no real wealth but the labor of man. Were the mountains of gold and the valleys of silver, the world would not be one grain of corn richer; not one comfort would be added to the human race.

~~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

1695 – Christiaan Huygens, Dutch mathematician, astronomer, and physicist
1822 – Percy Bysshe Shelley, poet known for skylarking about
1933 – Anthony Hope, author and playwright
1939 – Havelock Ellis, psychologist and author
1943 – Jean Moulin, French Resistance fighter and leader
1971 – Kurt Reidemeister, mathematician
1979 – Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, physicist and academic
1979 – Robert Burns Woodward, chemist and academic
2015 – Ken Stabler, The Snake

Some Holidays, Holy Days, Festivals, Feast Days, Days of Recognition, and such:

International Tartan Day
Inteernational Town Crier's Day
National Blueberry Day
National Ice Cream Sundae Day
Islamic New Year (First of Muharram)

Today's Tunes

Roswell, NM

George Antheil

Louis Jordan

Billy Eckstine

Johnnie Johnson

Jerry Vale

Steve Lawrence

Joe B. Maulding

Jaimoe

Larry Garner

Karl Seglem

Oxofon

Goat Horn

Joan Osborne

Beck

Kenny Stabler

BONUS: Ballet Mécanique 1924

Some Words for our Politicians and Leaders, actual and wannabees:
- Ozymandias -

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

― Percy Bysshe Shelley,

Ok, it's an open thread, so it's up to you folks now. So what's on your mind?

Cross posted from http://caucus99percent.com

Open thread, Kevin Bacon, Linkage, Shelley, Vasco de Gama, Poltava, George Antheil, Louis Jorddan, Johnny Johnson, Jaimoe, Billy Eckstine