We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Your Editor Dog is back after 12 days without phone, email, internet, TV, or radio. That was a blessing, and put life in perspective - as corny as that may sound. Home is good, work is good, but away is good too. We saw very few Americans, which was different too.
I'll post a few Show 'n Tells of pics when and if I get them organized, with my usual snappy commentary, keen observations, and handy travel tips.
In short, our itinerary was flying non-stop to Milan (Malpensa airport, Italy's largest and busiest), arriving at 7 am local time and picking up our rental car (thanks, Costco international rentals) which they unaccountably and without charge upgraded from an Audi A3 sedan to a Mercedes diesel standard shift wagon which was a comfortable car to drive. The standard was handy for the mountain driving and endless uphill hairpin turns.
We promptly escaped Milano and headed east on A-4 (which is Italy's I-95 - busiest highway in the country) to our excellent B&B about a third of the way up the western shore of Lake Garda, but we had to spend a few hours on the way checking out Bergamo (parked in the town center and took the funicular up to the old city, and had an elegant lunch and a good stroll). Then we proceeded up to our 15th C. B&B farmhouse (Thanks, Karen Brown) in Gardone Riviera for a couple of days on the lake before driving up (the long, scenic route with tunnels, curvy roads, and the large Alpine foothills via Riva del Garda for a brief look-see - lots of quick stops for a caffe or Coke) before getting on the A-22 through Trent and Bolzano to our B&B high on an alpine hill outside Ortesei in the Val Gardena in Italy's Alto Aldige on the Austrian border for a few days of energetic hiking in the Sud Tyrol where nobody speaks Italian but mainly German or Ladin. (Yes, I can write run-on sentences if I need to.) The Val Gardena in the Dolomites is an UNESCO World Heritage site.
After that, we cruised down from the Alps on A-22 to Verona in the Veneto, and spent a few days exploring the old part of the charming city from our elegant old hotel (which was about twelve steps from the Piazza del Erbe) before departing early yesterday morning to drive the A-4 again from Verona to the airport in Milan. Verona has the most beautiful women in the world, in abundance. Juliets, most of them, and they know how to dress - and walk - for maximum impact. Make a note of it, you single fellows. La Bella Figura.
Highest points of our trip:
- Rigoletto in the Arena di Verona, 4th row center. This year was the centennial of Verona's opera season in the huge Roman arena, built to seat 20,000 blood-thirsty citizens of Roman Verona. They request that you dress nicely for the good seats, so we did.
- Hiking above the top of the Seceda funicular in Ortesei, up to 3200 m. where you have to take a breath between each spoken phrase while hiking until you get down a few hundred meters where there is a bit more oxygen.
- Seeing the sort-of Persian, sort-of Klimt, stunning Madonna of the Rose Garden at the Castelvecchio Museum in Verona:
Thanks to Mrs. BD for yet another splendidly-planned joint-birthday adventure.
Here's your Editor, high in the Dolomiti at the tree line. Yes, we hiked our butts off. As usual on our trips, we lose weight from our levels of activity despite very fine dining.
Understandably, Bird Dog usually takes a while to get into gear the morning after a trip, so here are a few goodies to tide you over if he's a tad late.
Pic: Just back from his vacation, the big guy feels fresh and invigorated.
As I've noted in past NASA posts, I've been a huge fan of the space program from the beginning, and have watched all of the major launches over the years. When Story Musgrave and his valiant crew fixed the Hubble back in '93, I was hitting the sack at 9 in the evening and getting up at 3 to watch it live.
The problem is that they've had half a century to deal with the first problem, and that ol' 'treadmill routine' just isn't cutting it. And they're just as clueless — if not just as helpless — with the second problem.
So it's actually kind of sad to see articles like these floating around, misleading people into thinking that whole 'space exploration' business is doable at this point in time:
It was 1973 and I was working at a high-end stereo shop in Keene, NH. Owning a 12-string, I was obviously very intimate with guitar-tuning. This was the dawn of PC chips, remember, and suddenly one came out that could 'read' audio frequencies. It occurred to me that you could incorporate twelve of them to look for a specific frequency and send a plus or minus signal to a mini-servomotor attached to each tuning key, telling it to turn one direction or the other. You'd strum the guitar once and they'd all kick into gear.
Alas.
And we have a fun new twist on the global warming front. You've been told that violence and terrorism and war and 98% of all species dying off and continent-destroying hurricanes and all the rest are going to be a direct result already happening now, as they attempt to scare you into believing. But this guy takes it to the next level.
Sensing such dangers, most people have an instinctively negative reaction to climate geoengineering. The reality, however, is that unless we deal seriously with the climate change problem (which we are not) the siren call of geoengineering will grow. And, when we get to the point where burgeoning concentrations of greenhouse gases are causing undeniable catastrophes -- tornados, hurricanes, droughts, coastal flooding, wild fires, mass extinctions -- on a scale orders of magnitude larger than we are experiencing today, the temptation to seriously consider a technological fix will become irresistible to many.
Since it's Sunday and we're just horsing around, I'll run through his little list, just for practice:
Tornadoes — We're currently at a 10-year low in twister activity — despite an ever-mounting rise of 'killer carbon', CO2.
Hurricanes — Also at an historic low, and some global climatologists are now starting to think that warmer waters reduce the number and strength of hurricanes.
Droughts — Our current drought is nothing compared to the barn-burner of the Dust Bowl 30's.
Coastal Flooding — Ah, you can always tell somebody who grew up in a landlocked state. It's like he's never even seen an oceanside beach. He's picturing the entire surrounding land mass as being at or near sea level, whereupon a few-feet rise in ocean level would devastate everything for miles around. Yet San Francisco, for example, surrounded on three sides by water and obviously one of the first to be washed away, is 15 feet above sea level.
Furthermore, I-
Hold on, this just in:
DATELINE 5/23/2033 (UPI): San Francisco Tourists Shocked At What They See
"I couldn't believe it," said Betina Wilkenson from Flatbush, Arkansas. "We drove all the way out here to kick back on the beach, and there's at least 10 less feet of sand than in the brochure!" Longtime resident Bud Ferris is also upset. "When we moved here back in my youth, there was at least fifty feet of sand running down the water. Now, after all this global warming, we're lucky if we've got forty feet!"
San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom II vowed to take corrective measures. "We long ago outlawed gasoline-powered vehicles, so the obvious next step is to outlaw electric vehicles, since energy is energy and it's obviously all bad."
When asked about the state resolution of 2028 that converted the great agricultural valley into the clean-energy Big Valley Wind Farm, he scoffed. "That wind stuff is okay when it comes to charging up your laptop or cellphone, but a car? Forget it."
Where we we? Oh, right.
Wildfires — We have definitely seen bigger and bigger wildfires in recent times, and will continue to do so. And it has everything to do with poor brush management and the poor clearing of old timber and not maintaining a proper airborne fleet and nothing to do with the weather.
Mass Extinctions — As I point out in my own AGW treatise, the funny thing about the "species dying off" meme is that we have absolutely no friggin' idea how many species there are. So, if you don't have a starting number, how do you know when there are "less"?
But the real point is that there isn't any reason to think masses of species will die off simply because it gets a bit warmer. Colder, yeah, but warmer? And for those on the cusp who actually do die out, a lesser species will find the warmer temp a boon and flourish. Nature's real big on that 'balance' stuff.
On a personal note, however, I have to thank the AGW crowd for giving me the opportunity to write the above 6,531-word dissertation, one of my finest pieces. They also gave me the opportunity to create an entire new environmental movement. So thanks, global warming crowd.
Gwynnie is up in Eastport, Maine and learning about the Old Sow whirlpool. According to Wikipedia, Old Sow is the largest tidal whirlpool in the Western Hemisphere, located off the southwestern shore of Deer Island, New Brunswick, Canada, and Moose Island, the principal island of Eastport, Maine.
According to popular etymology the name "Old Sow" is derived from "pig-like" noises the whirlpool makes when churning; however, a more likely origin is the word "sough" (pronounced "suff"), defined as a "drain," or a "sucking sound." Early settlers to the area may easily have mispronounced "sough," as "sow," due to its similar spelling to other words with "sow-sound" endings, such as "plough."
The whirlpool is caused by local bathymetry and extreme tidal range where waters exchange between Passamaquoddy Bay and the Bay of Fundy, combined with the unusual topography of the location's sea floor at the confluence of the numerous local currents.
Old Sow is one of five significant whirlpools worldwide (Corryvreckan, Scotland; Saltstraumen, Norway; Moskstraumen, Norway; and Naruto, Japan are the others). Although the tidal currents within Western Passage surrounding Old Sow compare with faster whirlpools elsewhere, the speed of Old Sow's vortex is considerably slower than Moskstraumen, the world's most powerful whirlpool.
Tremendous water turbulence occurs locally in the greater Old Sow area, but it does not usually constitute a navigation hazard for motorized vessels with experienced operators at the helm; however, small craft — especially vessels with keels (sailboats) and human-powered vessels — are warned to avoid these waters when the tide is running.
Besides Old Sow and its numerous "piglets" (small and medium whirlpools surrounding Old Sow), other area phenomena include standing waves, upwellings (that on rare occasion may even spout several feet into the air), and 10- to 17-foot-deep or more, non-vortexing depressions in the water.
Robert Godfrey writes in Smithsonian Magazine: “The reasons for the Old Sow are several. To begin with, some 40 billion cubic feet of water floods into Passamaquoddy Bay with each incoming tide and mixes with the countercurrents from the St. Croix River to the north of the bay. There's a 400-foot-deep trench to the southwest of New Brunswick's Deer Island Point that continues as a 327-foot trench to the northwest. Bisecting the trench is a 281-foot undersea mountain. All that water flooding into the bay has to negotiate a right-angle turn to get around Deer Island Point, and then it slams into that undersea mountain. When heavy winds coincide with especially high tides, it becomes liquid chaos and disaster for the unwitting seafarer.”
See also It’ll Thrill Y, It’ll Kill Ya in WIRED Magazine... "Chaos isn't just a theory in the Passamaquoddy Bay. Here in the waters off of Eastport, Maine, lurks the Old Sow, the western hemisphere's biggest whirlpool. She shows up wherever and whenever the spirit and tides move her, occasionally opening her maw suddenly in the form of a madly spinning, 40-foot-deep hole in the ocean, several hundred feet wide. Sometimes she's more subdued, creating a funnel-shaped hole roughly 12 feet wide and 12 feet deep.
A friend of mine sent me this link with the comment "This is the best song of the summer." I opened it, expecting to be blown away. I was, though I have to admit not in the sense I expected. It definitely got some sideways glances from the rest of my family while I listened.
Meanwhile, my friend was kind enough to pass this along to me, as well. A sorbet for the ears, I suppose. Math makes good music. Fibonacci numbers are a sequence beginning with 0 and 1, then each following number is comprised of the previous two added together. Thus the sequence is 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13....and so on. Fibonacci numbers are closely related to Phi, or the golden ratio, which nature follows very closely. Items which utilize the golden ratio are aesthetically pleasing.
I don't play an instrument, and I suffer from tinnitus, but I know when I hear something I enjoy.
That conclusion should be obvious. Roughly 48 percent of our college graduates are in jobs that the require less than a four-year degree, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the future looks worse: growth in the number of graduates in this decade is likely to be nearly three times as great as the projected number of jobs requiring such degrees. Despite incredibly lax standards (the typical full-time student spends about 30 hours a week on academic matters) and rampant grade inflation, well over 40 percent of entering students fail to graduate within six years.
That conclusion should be obvious. Roughly 48 percent of our college graduates
are in jobs that the require less than a four-year degree, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the future looks worse: growth in the number of
graduates in this decade is likely to be nearly three times as great as the
projected number of jobs requiring such degrees.Despite
incredibly lax standards (the typical
full-time student spends about 30 hours a week on academic matters) and
rampant
grade inflation, well over 40 percent of entering students fail to
graduate
within six years. - See more at:
http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2013/08/too_many_people_are_going_to_c.html#sthash.MdCB3djG.dpuf
That conclusion should be obvious. Roughly 48 percent of our college graduates
are in jobs that the require less than a four-year degree, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the future looks worse: growth in the number of
graduates in this decade is likely to be nearly three times as great as the
projected number of jobs requiring such degrees.Despite
incredibly lax standards (the typical
full-time student spends about 30 hours a week on academic matters) and
rampant
grade inflation, well over 40 percent of entering students fail to
graduate
within six years. - See more at:
http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2013/08/too_many_people_are_going_to_c.html#sthash.MdCB3djG.dpuf
That conclusion should be obvious. Roughly 48 percent of our college graduates
are in jobs that the require less than a four-year degree, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the future looks worse: growth in the number of
graduates in this decade is likely to be nearly three times as great as the
projected number of jobs requiring such degrees.Despite
incredibly lax standards (the typical
full-time student spends about 30 hours a week on academic matters) and
rampant
grade inflation, well over 40 percent of entering students fail to
graduate
within six years. - See more at:
http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2013/08/too_many_people_are_going_to_c.html#sthash.MdCB3djG.dpuf
Shopping for electronics at Best Buy already feels like some kind of hidden camera prank, with staff who never want to help and rarely know a thing about the gear they're selling. But an artist who refers to himself as Plastic Jesus took things one step further by secretly stocking Best Buy displays in LA with a useless plastic box complete with a description of the non-existent product.
And then there's the "useless" empty plastic 'Project Box' from Radio Shack, just waiting to be stuffed with batteries and switches and relays and all kinds of fun electronic goodies:
Best of all, compared to the Best Buy price, the $14.99 Radio Shack wants is a steal!
Our fearless leader should be back from the exotic land of Italia today and should be back at the helm tomorrow.
Interesting News
Well, I always like to get the sad news out of the way first, so our first article this morning is about that Israeli spy bird that was caught by Egyptian authorities a few days ago as it tried to peck out its report on a miniature telegraph: Stork Detained as Spy in Egypt Found Dead
That's the third Israeli spy bird that's been captured in the last few years, by the way. One's first impulse might be to think, "Geez, won't those Israelis ever learn?" — until you stop and ponder how many of their spy birds haven't been caught.
Say, how about a geographic question? Like the U.S. has the bald eagle, there's a country which has a unicorn as its national symbol, and another has a fiery Chinese dragon. Which two are they?
Glenn Reynolds seems like a fairly reasonable guy, doesn't he? Honestly, one of the most baffling things I see in the blogosphere is when he occasionally jumps up on this soap box:
Meanwhile, can we (1) fire university administrators who don’t understand free speech, and see that they’re forever blackballed in academia; and/or (2) return the drinking age to 18 where it belongs?
Because if there's one thing this country really-really needs, it's more drunken teenagers on the road. If this is one of those goofy Libertarian things, please cancel my subscription to Libertarian Gazette immediately.
It's 1923 and you're a pilot for the United States Airmail Service. You're flying one of these across the country:
But wait. Not only do you not have GPS, but you also have to fly at night. Remember all that "nor gloom of night" stuff? Well, here you are.
This is, of course, supposed to be a scathing indictment of California squandering money on lavish pension plans and the like — and that might very well be true and Harvard would be the better choice. Except that: The cheat goes on at Harvard
Cheaters never win — but they get into Harvard!
Nearly half of the school’s incoming freshmen admitted to cheating on homework, exams or other assignments in their young academic careers, according to a survey by the Ivy League institution’s student newspaper.
So, hmm. Move to beautiful sunny California and make lots of money, or hang out with cheaters in frigid Massachusetts and make less money. Tough choice!
"If the first hurricane fails to appear until after 8 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time Sept. 15, this will be the most hurricane-free first half of a season since satellites began tracking the storms in 1967, he notes in an e-mail."
We're also at a 10-year low in tornado activity.
But a good try, nonetheless, Popular Science. Keep up the good work. We all need a break from reality now and then.
Like I said, sad.
And speaking of profound sadness...
Political News
Into each life a little rain must fall.
Yes, even here in the happy-go-lucky political section we occasionally have to face some cold hard facts and admit that not everything coming out of Washington these days is all peaches and cream.
Worse, I have terrible news here about two of everybody's favorite Washington characters.
Even worser, they're both women. So brace yourselves.
18:1 The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD:
18:2 "Come, go down to the potter's house, and there I will let you hear my words."
18:3 So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was working at his wheel.
18:4 The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him.
18:5 Then the word of the LORD came to me:
18:6 Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the LORD. Just like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.
18:7 At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it,
18:8 but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it.
18:9 And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it,
18:10 but if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will change my mind about the good that I had intended to do to it.
18:11 Now, therefore, say to the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: Thus says the LORD: Look, I am a potter shaping evil against you and devising a plan against you. Turn now, all of you from your evil way, and amend your ways and your doings.
Knowing the full-truth that unites the human race, and not teaching all is deathly guilt, learned carpenter Jesus from Mason Rabbi Hillel! But Marx, innocent grandson of 2 rabbies, learned only half truth! As Mao wrote in Redbook 51: Marxist-Communism, once in power, is utterly unworkable, has less value then cowdung. Its power is the gun! What an apology we Rabbis owe Israel, Marx, Mao, all mankind, for not teaching Astronomy's great All-One-God-Faith, that with just 6 words eternally unites the human race! As teaches African-shepherd Astronomer Israel for 6000 years, LISTEN CHILDREN ETERNAL FATHER ETERNALLY ONE! For on God's Spaceship Earth, with Bomb and Gun, we are All-One or none! All-One! All-One! All-One! Exceptions eternally? Absolute none!
Got that? It's deep and makes good sense (if you are on an acid trip).
It's the hippy soap, Dr. Bronner's. It's organic, whatever that means. When I saw the bottle, I remembered this stuff. Knew a hippy-styled girl in college who used it.
On the top of Maggie's Farm, we seem to reject being subject to the efforts of do-gooders. Is the road to hell paved with good intentions? Do-gooders always seem to either want my money, or want to control me.
In just eight dense pages, Prof. Oakley covers a lot of ground and goes far beyond the Law of Unintended Consequences. She touches on psychology, science, medicine, philosophy, and politics. It's a remarkable paper which indeed pulls enough threads together to represent a potential paradigm shift. One quote:
The bottom line is that the heartfelt, emotional basis of our good intentions can mislead us about what is truly helpful for others. Altruistic intentions must be run through the sieve of rational analysis; all too often, the best long-term action to help others, at both personal and public scales, is not immediately or intuitively obvious, not what temporarily makes us feel good, and not what is being promoted by other individuals, with their own potentially self-serving interests.
Indeed, truly altruistic actions may some-times appear cruel or harmful, the equivalent of saying no to the student who demands a higher grade or to the addict who needs another hit. However, the social consequences of appearing cruel in a culture that places high value on kindness, empathy, and altruism can lead us to misplaced "helpful" behavior and result in self-deception regarding the consequences of our actions.
THE IDEA THAT VIOLENCE in human society has decreased over time invites scepticism, incredulity and sometimes anger. It hasn’t been a smooth decline – and it isn’t guaranteed to continue – but it is a persistent historical development, visible on scales from millennia to years, from the waging of wars to the spanking of children. The human mind predisposes us to believe that we live in violent times – especially when stoked by news media that follows the watchwords: “If it bleeds, it leads.” We tend to estimate the probability of an event based on the ease with which we can recall examples, and scenes of carnage are more likely to be beamed into our homes and burned into our memories than footage of people dying of old age.
No matter how small the percentage of violent deaths may be, in absolute numbers there will always be enough to fill the evening news. This disconnects our impressions of violence from actual proportions. Also, distorting our sense of danger is part of our moral psychology: no one has ever recruited activists to a cause by announcing that the world’s becoming a better place.
OK, this may be one post that goes over some people's heads, but I'm having a chuckle over it. For context, if you're unaware, the Austrian School of Economics is not about Austria, but about a group of economists who were primarily Austrian (von Mises, Hayek, Schumpeter), and support free market economics. The Chicago School was comprised of economists from the University of Chicago, of whom the most notable was Milton Friedman.
Apparently, it doesn't take much schooling to become a CEO, just the ability to shake hands, tell anecdotes, and generally be personable.
Hope you all had a great week and are looking forward to a relaxing Saturday. Bulldog back again, providing morning links because Doc Mercury was busy howling at the moon late into the night. Something about that salt air...
Leftist media hates censorship, unless it's their censorship. Media Matters seeks to quiet Joe Kernan and have CNBC spend more time discussing the perils of AGW. If CNBC could just get some viewers, what they say might be worth censoring. 42,000 signatures is important, because, you know, it's a consensus.
I do loves me a Big Mac every once in a while, but how will raising the minimum wage affect Mickey D's? I will not pay $17 for a Big Mac (I paid only $5.50 a week ago). A $15.00 minimum wage will only make it more difficult for the poor to feed themselves.
The problem with anyone feeding themselves is that everything they eat will kill them. When I read articles claiming "Collard Greens May Cause 85% of all Colds!", or articles about things that cause cancer (or almost any disease) my inner skeptic is aroused. For example, recent studies linking meat to Alzheimer's. Note the key word in this, and virtually every other title of this nature. Could. One of my favorite sites utilizes an acronym, MMC, for these articles. May, Might, Could. In fact, the article on red meat even points out:
Dr Marie Janson, of Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “This study suggests that during Alzheimer’s, iron could accumulate in an area of the brain that is critical to memory, but it is not clear whether this build-up might be a cause or consequence of the disease."
Correlation does not imply causation. If we study football statistics, we can see that teams which take a knee win an overwhelming amount of the games. A new headline: "Studies Show Quarterbacks That Genuflect Win 90% of Games". A new strategy I hope the New York Giants adopt because, after all, science proves it works.
In this case, however, the word "May" carries an entirely different meaning. You take your Molly, or any hard drug, you take your chances.
Apparently, the bar scene isn't even all that safe these days. Guess you take your chances anywhere.
Even the dead don't get much peace. I grew up near Jim Thorpe, this is about the most excitement they've had, well, ever.
Moving a body is contentious, and so is patent and copyright law lately. I'm not sure where I stand on the issue. Jeffrey Tucker's view is a Libertarian stance, which someone once explained to me this way: "If I light a match, then someone else lights another match from mine, and this fire is passed from person to person, who owns the fire and why should we limit ownership rights?" Too simplistic for my taste and there is a role for patents and copyrights, but perhaps in the modern media economy the length or application of them should be reconsidered. After all, can we honestly say the one-click shopping Jeff Bezos patented is deserving of one?
Tucker made the following comment, which is informative:
How important are playbooks in sports? They are gold. And yet they are not covered by "intellectual property" law. You can't copyright, patent, or trademark them. Every team is free to steal what they see every other team doing. Mass thievery? Nope. It's called information anarchism and its makes for a vibrant and dynamic game that is ever evolving and changing. It just works.
Speaking of mass thievery, or at least some form of it, several people asked about Bitcoin the other day. Here's a primer, and another. I'm no expert on the concept of crypto-currency, but I know a good idea when I see one, and this is one which has got the digerati very excited. Bitcoin, oddly enough, could serve as a new reserve currency, which is one reason why the US government is concerned by its growth and use. The US has benefited from being a reserve currency for years, and it's one reason the growth of our money supply has not yet led to rampant inflation.
One place where there has been rampant inflation is in Peyton Manning's performance on the football field. Against a defense that was supposed to be very good, Peyton threw 7 TDs, a feat performed by only 5 people before, and not since 1969. It's one game, but what a game it was. Sadly, it was a precursor to this heart-rending annual event.
Speaking of aerial attacks, it's interesting that Obama won election in 2008 on an anti-war platform. But it's 'just politics' that part of his platform in 2012 was anti-war-with-Syria.
He also won with a jobs-creation platform. Sure, jobs have been created. But not as many as are actually being originally reported due to downward revisions and people dropping out of the workforce. Or maybe that's not the real cause of our unemployment woes. Perhaps the decline of working actors could have been limited with these.
To make matters worse, Obamacare is causing jobs to be reduced to less than 29 hours per week, and his administration is lying about the impact.
Few of the unemployed and part-time worksers are likely to buy this. Too expensive. It's odd, too, as far as I'm concerned. Tablets and smartphones? Yeah, sure. Glasses and watches? I guess there's a niche for this stuff. The people I see wearing Google Glasses just look like they're trying to be digital hipsters.
Finally, because I promised Doc lots of pictures of fluffy puppies...have a great weekend!
Under a spreading chestnut tree The village smithy stands; The smith, a might man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands.
His hair is crisp, and black, and long, His face is like the tan; His brow is wet with honest sweat, He earns what'er he can, And looks the whole word in the face, For he owes not any man.
Week in, week out, from morn till night, You can hear the bellows blow; You can hear him swing his might sledge, With measure beat and slow, Like a sexton ringing the village bell, When the evening sun is low.
And children coming home from school Look in the open door; They love to see the flaming forge, And hear the bellows roar. And catch the flaming sparks that fly Like chaff from a threshing floor.
He goes on Sunday to the church, And sits among his boys; He hears the parson pray and preach, He hears his daughter's voice, Singing in the choir, And it makes his heart rejoice.
It sounds to him like his mother's voice, Singing in Paradise! He needs must think of her once more, How in the grave she lies; And with his hard, rough hands he wipes A tear out of his eyes.
Toiing, -- rejoicing, -- sorrowing, Onward in life he goes; Each morning sees some task begin, Each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, Has earned his night's repose.
Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, For the lesson thou has taught! Thus at the flaming forge of life Our fortunes must be wrought; Thus on its sounding anvil shaped Each burning deed and thought.
One purpose of The Moral Sense was, as Wilson put it, “to help people recover the confidence with which they once spoke about virtue and morality.” The other goal was to trace the origins of human morality. Summoning an array of anthropological evidence, Wilson elaborated on the idea that our moral sense is innate, acquired not through learning but through evolution. These sentiments do not spring to life fully formed; instead, they are cultivated within family and society. Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson had advanced the idea of inborn moral affinity but Wilson enlarged upon it, proposing that the moral sense rested upon four foundational pillars: sympathy, fairness, self-control, and duty.
We haven't discussed computer security in a while, so let's hop through a few things.
As for an anti-malware program, I'm still a fan of the Zone Alarm Internet Security Suite, although it appears from a few reviews I read the other day that there are a number of quality programs out there these days, so there doesn't really appear to be a 'best'.
As for the freebie programs, like AVG and Avast, I'd be worried that it'd turn into a case of 'you get what you pay for'. As far as I can tell, while they get high marks for anti-malware prevention, they don't monitor browser activity in real-time. It should be noted that hackers are so smart these days that you don't actually have to click on a box to get infected. Just visiting the site will do it. So, real-time browser monitoring seems important. Using a freebie also raises the question, if you aren't going to spend computer money on a quality anti-malware program, just what are you going to spend it on?
The biggest problem with the new wave of 'smart' viruses is that, should they manage to slip by your present program and infect your system, they won't allow any other anti-malware programs to be installed. I've seen two computers with the problem in the last few years, both not allowing either Zone Alarm or Norton Anti-Virus to be installed.
For that problem, it appears the best program out there at the moment is Malwarebytes, which should install and hopefully find that bad boy. It's only hitch is that it deems every non-officially-sanctioned program a threat, including patches and 'keygen' programs, so be careful that it doesn't remove anything legitimate. It's not a real-time anti-malware program, just a file scanner.
When it comes to browsing, Rule #1 is that you never, ever click on a pop-out box on a web site unless you're 1,000% sure it's legitimate. I was on Fark.com the other day and one of those "Your system might be infected! Click HERE to get a FREE SCAN of your system!" boxes popped up when I went to the 'Video' section. Now, maybe it was an earnest attempt to keep my system as clean as possible and Fark was only thinking of bettering humanity — or the whole site's run by a bunch of doofuses and some hacker snuck in overnight.
The two most common 'messages' in the boxes these days are the "Might be infected!" variety and either a Flash or Java 'You need to update!' box. Avoid both at all costs.
On the subject, here's a question for you. Let's say you're a clever hacker and you put two buttons on the box, "OK" and "CANCEL". Wouldn't you make them both install your nastyware on their systems?
Now what about that little 'close' box on the upper-right of the box? If you were a clever hacker, wouldn't you make that also do the dirty deed?
When that box popped up on Fark the other day, I immediately hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, opened Task Manager, right-clicked on the browser's entry on the first panel and selected 'End Task'. That closed down both the browser and the 'warning' box without clicking anything on the site. That's the proper way to avoid such intrusions.
That's too bad. He's always been a fave. Looking over the twelve Connery movies in my collection, I'd be hard pressed to pick a favorite, but I have a particular fondness for The Rock because he was pretty old by that time but still kicked butt.
Yep. When a Christian hits the button on his suicide vest and murders 37 innocent civilians, the last words out of his mouth are always "Thank God!"
Everybody knows that.
On the subject, although the author doesn't mention Sarah Palin by name, he continues her theme of "Let Allah sort them out": Syria is Allah's war, Mr. Obama
“When I meet a gay person, I have to distinguish between their being gay and being part of a lobby … If they accept the Lord and have good will, who am I to judge them? They shouldn’t be marginalized. The tendency (to be homosexual) is not the problem. They are our brothers.”
So it's nice to see him dumping all that silly, outdated 'morals' and 'ethics' stuff. And if 2,000 years of Catholicism gets washed down the drain in the process, well, there's no stopping progress.
On the entertainment scene, I thought the best news recently was the Repubs finally taking a stance on the televised debates issue. As you might remember, I covered all 279 televised debates last year, and one of the ever-current memes was the spin the liberal debate moderators had put on the previous night's event. So this was refreshing to read: Republicans look to change structure of campaign debates
During an hour-long deep dive into the growing use of food stamps in America, Fox News highlighted “the new face of food stamps.”
That new face is a pina colada-sipping, lobster-loving lothario named Jason Greenslate.
Fox News’ cameras joined Greenslate on one of his grocery shopping expeditions. With his Electronic Benefit Transfer card (EBT), the vehicle for food stamp benefits, Greenslate purchases sushi, lobster and coconut water.
Some of you economic majors out there might be able to pry apart the one, tiny little flaw in this otherwise great piece of right-wing propaganda.
Food stamps are $200/mo. After buying the expensive sushi, lobster and coconut water, he had just used up half of his monthly allotment in one day.
The implication of the article, of course, is that he does this every day, never quite explaining how one can live like a king by spending half his monthly allotment for one meal.
In other words, just like the rest of the MSM, Fox News thinks you're an idiot, and certainly the blogger who wrote the article fits that description to the letter.
These awards aren't handed out to just anybody, y'know.
Political News
Finally! After all that ugly stuff up above, it's always nice to hit the political section where good news always abounds.
And here's a fun recap of recent presidential pets:
I have two pets, by the way. Well, they're not exactly 'mine', but they visit me regularly. The male is Oscar and the female is Periwinkle.
Picasso and Truth: From Cubism to Guernica, by T J Clark, review: "When Picasso was asked
why he had painted so few landscapes, he replied that he had never seen any."
Ah, modern green technology. Here, those clever Brits have built a 'green' building that not only houses tenants, but also replaces your electricity-hungry stove by providing its own hot plates for your cooking convenience!
As far as the old-style rationalists were concerned, any desire to ritualise death and remember the dead was a sign of a failure of nerve, and an inability to grow out of religious indoctrination – especially all that Christian stuff about personal survival, arraignment before a divine judge and consignment to heaven or hell. But in fact Christianity does not speak with one voice when it comes to death and dying. In the gospels of Matthew and Luke, Jesus issued a severe reprimand to a disciple who wanted to give his father a proper funeral: get back to work at once, he said, and “let the dead bury their dead.” The rebuke may seem like an enlightened anticipation of 20th-century rationalism, but it is also perfectly consistent with some main doctrines of Christianity: if the body is just a temporary home for an immortal soul, and a perpetual temptation to sin, then the sooner we shuffle it off the better.
Apparently, Anthony Weiner doesn't realize this. What's he eating, anyway?
I'm adding this after the fact, since Dr. Mercury made a comment which is germaine, but not wholly correct and I feel the need to address. While the commentator mentions a "racial epithet", the entire video, if you have the chance to view it, begins with the antagonist saying " married to an Arab." He then calls Weiner disgusting and a scumbag, which are epithets, but not racial. The first comment is not an epithet, even if it was used in a derogatory fashion, but sensibilities on issues like this vary. For the record, when I saw this on TV in the morning, I was laughing at the whole thing, as was Charlie Rose. Weiner is a public figure, and his wife is too, and they are open to any criticism which comes their way and have to accept that as part of their choice of profession. Sometimes it's ugly and uncomfortable, but even when it is, Weiner's reaction was over the top and damages an already heavily damaged public persona. As a public figure, voters do get to judge him in whatever way they choose.
Understandably, Bird Dog usually takes a while to get into gear the morning after a trip, so here are a few goodies to tide you over if he's a tad late.
Our fearless leader should be back from the exotic land of Italia today and should be back at the helm tomorrow.
Knowing the full-truth that unites the human race, and not teaching all is deathly guilt, learned carpenter Jesus from Mason Rabbi Hillel! But Marx, innocent grandson of 2 rabbies, learned only half truth! As Mao wrote in Redbook 51: Marxist-Communism, once in power, is utterly unworkable, has less value then cowdung. Its power is the gun! What an apology we Rabbis owe Israel, Marx, Mao, all mankind, for not teaching Astronomy's great All-One-God-Faith, that with just 6 words eternally unites the human race! As teaches African-shepherd Astronomer Israel for 6000 years, LISTEN CHILDREN ETERNAL FATHER ETERNALLY ONE! For on God's Spaceship Earth, with Bomb and Gun, we are All-One or none! All-One! All-One! All-One! Exceptions eternally? Absolute none! 
seeks to 
We haven't discussed computer security in a while, so let's hop through a few things.
Interesting News