The Age of Anomalies

By Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser —— Bio and Archives April 30, 2019

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Have you noticed, "Anomalies" are the new grand evil culprits, of everything gone wrong, anywhere? Dictionaries describe the term like "something that deviates from what is standard, normal, or expected." I guess that could mean anything, like (not) arriving on time at your destination, or having a bout of hiccups. Whether it's failed rocket tests, bombings, combustion, companies' "unforeseen" obstacles to deliver on past promises, (supposedly) faulty gauges or faulty computer programs, robberies, shootings, solar panels, technical problems, or any other problems of note, it does not matter. There may still be some old-timers, who call them a glitch. Don't listen to them; the correct buzz word now is anomaly.

Just think Weather

Just think weather, or climate if you will. Please note that these terms are NOT interchangeable. Neither one is ever quite "normal." Snowstorms in winter, rapid snow melts in spring with inherent flooding of the rivers' flood-plains, droughts in summer, too much or too little sunshine, strong winds or their lack--they are now rapidly turning into anomalies and, therefore, must be caused by the species Homo sapiens. Believe it or not, the sub-species Cro-Magnon and their forerunners, the Neanderthalensis group started it all--I mean the climate anomalies. Their small fires in a few caves made the great European and North American one-mile-high ice shields melt in a hurry. And that's why we have now (anomalous) spring freshets that flood the basements of structures built on the flood plains along the shores of creeks and rivers. The cause of any problem is readily ascertained by the main stream media (MSM) as an "anomaly" of sorts. Of course, in reality, that term is used to circumscribe what any clear mind could likely have foreseen with a bit of understanding of the root cause of such events. It's rarely something entirely new that was never seen or heard of before and, therefore, truly unexpected. However, if one cannot differentiate between the cause and its effect, it's pretty much a lost cause.

Most life is just a sequence of Anomalies

As an old joke goes: Sometimes the other guy wins, sometimes you lose. Believers in wonders or pre-determined lives may just say c'est la vie or, possibly, it's all cast in stone, from the beginning to the end, don't even try to change your fate. Hence, all events are "normal anomalies."

Only some anomalies are more anomalous than others. That's when clear thinking comes to be of importance: Was it really something entirely new, unexpected, or out of the realm of known knowledge? Or, conversely, was that "anomaly" entirely predictable from past experiences and knowledge, all of that accumulated by mankind for many centuries? The question of "what's new" becomes increasingly important. With many of the long established public libraries converting their shelf space to internet terminals, it's becoming more difficult to find records of past endeavors and what was (at the time) learned from their failure. So, what's new?

What's New?

Indeed, rather than being really new, most of the MSM-defined "new ideas" are "old news," previously thought of, experimented with, subsidized or fostered with OPM (other people's money, AKA taxpayers' funds), now just re-invigorated with plenty of government incentives, credits, forgivable loans, bureaucratic goodwill, and other nebulous benefits. Just one example for the merry-go-round system of inventive ideas is the hydrogen economy, with hydrogen-fuel in fuel-cell powered cars. It has been touted as the best thing since sliced bread for at least two decades now (http://www.terrabase-inc.com/Hydrogen.pdf ). This "green" idea gets regularly pulled from dusty drawers, slightly polished and resurrected as a novelty item that--undoubtedly--must be worthy of much(more) government support. But that's not all. According to Energy & Capital, even "Amazon is all for it." Surely, Bezos & co. could not be wrong! And, to boot, even your next case of beer may have been transported by this new tech.