Obama: "Did I do that?"

Obama and Urkel:  "Did I do that?"
Remember, his policies are "on the ballot".
As the cartoonist says,  Obama is offering amnesty to millions because they are willing to do the jobs Americans aren't willing to do: Vote Democrat.

What would you take in a time machine to the Stone Age? Update: Software

If I brought a smartphone, it would probably be torn down and reprocessed as blade edges.  In one hand I'd carry a piece of scrap steel and in the other some mirrors and patterned silk.  Stuffed in my pocket would be plasticized Google satellite maps.

The men and women of thirty thousand years ago would be quick learners.  You can think of lots more if your goal is to kickstart the industrial revolution.  I'm thinking of what the people would be ready to accept:   Sharp edges for battle and things to make women look stunning to men.

Added:  Probably the stuff you bring would be taken by force. If you don't want to try for the Number One position, perhaps a retreat to the forest with a personal survival kit would be wiser.

Update:  Bring software not hardware.  Language is software and it seems to have been upgraded maybe six thousand years ago to have a word for everything we see and do and to let us tell stories.  No one can steal my language.

All Politics Is Old Politics When Smartphones Are Lie-detectors.

Cheap smartphones on the net are upending party politics.  There is no longer a memory hole to throw stuff down.  The sound bits and video clips are starting to resurface at election time. Those who run for high office have to match their walk and talk better.  Now there's news of effective lie-detector apps to add to your phone.   (What happens when your friend’s smartphone can tell that you’re lying?)  Do you think the voters won't be checking it out?    

The average person has a random chance of spotting a lie while good poker players and trained interrogators can get above 70%.  We all give out tells when we lie, a little glance, finger fidget, change of pitch, "let me be clear".    Voters are about as smart as politicians but they have been handicapped for lack of information.  That is changing and not because of policy, just because that's what people do with cheap smartphones and internet access.

Chance of spotting a lie.
Remember, 50% isn't a pass, it's the baseline, strictly random

  Another four or five elections will pass before it's obvious.  We're only a dozen years into the eWorld where Everyman has a phone.  Politicians will put policy brakes on it but it will spread anyway because they want it too.  Cheap quick information is addictive.

The ultimate compliment

"Mustafa, now you may die".

Source

Some years back in a Palestinian camp in Jordan,  a Western optimist tried to interest the camp leaders in digging a well for their own supply of fresh water.  They thought it was a hopeless project.  He ended up recruiting the kids.  They dug down over thirty feet, shoring up the sides as they went and truly did find water.  The community came to see and a cup of water was drawn up for the eldest to sip.   He turned solemnly to the volunteer and said, "Mustafa, now you may die".

This one act made his whole life worthwhile to the community.  The ultimate compliment.

I read this in a book about thirty years ago and haven't found it on the Internet or in Google Books. If anyone knows the source, I'll add it.

Christmas Math

Grandpa and Grandma are sending $150 to buy all the kids presents this Christmas.  At our end, we don't know what G&G need and have decided to send them $100 to get something they really like.  You see where I am going.

Source

 
All the love can be handled in a single clearing entry.    Make a phone call.  The high bidder does a $50 transfer on their smartphone. Not only is this cheaper, it's greener.  No cars drive around burning gas and no Christmas card paper is consumed.

On the receiving end, I used to bank the cheque.  Next time we talked, I'd mention the nicest thing I'd bought since then and give them the credit.

US Voters have favourite brands.

Amazon, Craftsman, Johnson & Johnson make everybody's list.  They serve and don't lecture.  But Google is mistrusted, by Republicans and Independents and PBS only matters to Democrats.   (So much for "public" radio.)  

This is the Google that styles their logo to celebrate thug Chavez' birthday on Easter Sunday 2013.  It cooperated with China to censor search results, but later relented.  It cooperated with NSA to spy on Americans.  It's pretty much the biggest snoop into our lives, more even than the government and uses data about how we live our lives in way we never quite get to see.  A clue should be that you don't get the same search results as your neighbour because they've been edited by what they know about you.

Source of list at yougov.com.

A modest proposal for November 5th

Stunned democrat voters won't have the option November 5th of moving to Canada to get away.  That was the Republican refuge.   Venezuela does photo ops with the American left but it's not a great place to set up house.  There is a better way:   The tens of thousands hired to peddle Obamacare and get folks signed up can be repositioned as Grief Counsellors.  They weren't busy anyway.

Waiting to take your call.

"Hit the refresh button every ten minutes".  A former worker at Serco's processing facility in Wentzville, Mo., Lavonne Takatz, said she and other workers played games or slept because there was nothing for them to do. She and other workers said company and government supervisors knew they were being paid to do little or no work at all.

Midterms cure S.A.D.

Folks who live in the north call it Seasonal Affective Disorder.  They get depressed by long dark winters.  For the rest of us it's a political disease called Shut-Out Affective Disorder when conservative & libertarian voices aren't heard.  The last time I had it, Chretien was ruling in Ottawa and Glen Clark was the NDP rooster in Victoria.   Lately it's the U.S. of A that's been getting me down.  It's so fricking big that it's politics affect our politics.  The 2014 midterms look set to change a lot of roosters and the more that change, the better it will be.

Suddenly I'm cured.   Getting out of bed briskly,  I post early and often, and every glass is half full.

"Mein Fuhrer, I can walk! " Link to clip from Dr. Strangelove.

Optics is morality: Obama lies about the White House Drapes.

Standing in the Oval Office August 2010, Obama told C-Span they hadn't remodelled the room.   Because, Austerity.  Two weeks later the White House asked C-Span to can the story because the Washington Post was doing an expose on millions spent remodelling the Oval Office.  Morality is optics.   This is reported at the Washington Post and sourced from Cheryl Attkisson's book, "Stonewalled".

Petty, unpresidential, immoral.

Russia snooping in White House computers. WH says yes but everything's cool.

The White House finally says yes, we were hacked from Russia, but not to worry, it's the non-secure part of the President's network.  Is that where Obama orders up a salami-arugula sandwich for lunch? You and I both know it's all secure and no one drops in.  What can a president lose that isn't about national security?  2014 election insider stuff and tit-for-tat deals with politicians and press?

The White House admits the probe came from Russian territory.  Read the saccharine assurances that all is well.  The weaselly blather is hard to stomach: "In the course of assessing recent threats we identified activity of concern on the unclassified EOP network. Any such activity is something that we take very seriously. In this case we took immediate measures to evaluate and mitigate the activity,"

You want to believe they have it in hand. Then you learn they didn't find out until a foreigner told them. Britain or maybe  Israel sent a tweet along the lines of "Do you feel a breeze on your bum?"  If nothing of significance was compromised or planted in the net of the Executive Office of the President, maybe most of the office could be eliminated  as a cost-saving measure.

While the Washington press was ignoring the story, John Hinderaker of Powerlineblog was the only one for some days that even said "boo".  

Replace the census with data mining:

That door-to-door stuff is like using a Gestetner to duplicate something instead of  "right click-copy-print" with your mouse.

 Here's  another study showing that data mining cell phone traffic can, for example, tell planners what they need to know about where people work and relax, in what numbers, and the routes they follow.  One glance at the chart confirms your suspicions.  No more long form census interrogations are needed, just a little ingenuity in data scooping.

The University of Southampton study was reported at Science Daily News.

A little drinky poo helps old people remember things.

Science Daily News reports that moderate alcohol consumption in seniors can improve memory for events.  Light drinkers had a larger hippocampus.  The hippocampus is a part of the brain that goes downhill in early-stage Alzheimer's disease.

This connects to another study reported this week showing that flavonols in chocolate and cocoa can reverse memory decline by affecting a different area, the dentate gyrus in the brain.  This reversal of age-related memory decline is different from the episode memory discussed above.  "A cup of cocoa, then bed, keeps you smart in the head".

Two life forms in one body

People are a symbiosis of two life forms, the XY-Guy and the Identity (I.D.)  I'm calling XY-Guy the behaviour baked into the genes for the organism to survive with food, sex and air.  I.D. is the "I" thing that happens in the same organism.  A few years after being born, every little kid starts calling himself "I" using the same name his neighbours call themselves..    Experience and thought is structured with a life of its own and eventually I.D.'s structured data exceeds the amount of information in XY-Guy's genome.  Both life forms infuse the same organism.

Men and women form couples with a double union.  The XY-Guy is somewhat generic but powerful while I.D. has character and more options.    Their respective goals can be out of sync but somehow, as couples, we blink at those moments and refocus.  It's similar to falling asleep and waking up.  The two different but related worlds aren't quite compatible but they reflect each other and share places in our brain with the help of a little forgetfulness at the door from one to the other.  

I may call my wife honey (a food word) or nibble her ear and at the same time listen to her presentation strategy for a meeting.   At the same moment I admire her kindness to a stranger I can get a bump in my pants.  Two life forms share the leadership with a little blink as they hand off to one another.

This is nothing new.  The cells of our body seem to be alive with several subordinate life forms.  The mitochondria even have their own DNA lineage.    We also exist in two radically different forms at the moment leading up to conception.  Just as a mushroom can exist as a mycelium cloud underground or a gilled lump after a rain,  XY-Guy can exist either as a brainy organism or as eggs and a million spermicules wriggling about with a sense of destiny.   They are alternating life forms (haploid and diploid).

Can Identity reproduce without a body?  This is where AI is heading.

(Semantics:  ID and I.D. make a good word pair but there's too much baggage with Freud's term.)

Repositioning the donkey while Obama dismounts: Barack more likely to antagonize Dems than Republicans after Mid Terms.

With Republicans up in both houses, expect a family feud.  Obama is more likely to be pushing back at angry Democrat pols than the Republicans he has been governing without for six  years.

Awkward

The new dynamic will be repositioning the Donkey while Obama dismounts.   I  think the left will join forces with the right to steal any executive order triumphs from the diminished president. Immigrating millions of new voters by decree of the imperial president will meet bipartisan opposition.

Dems nervous about mid-terms

Clinging to hope.  The photo makes me think of unhappy Democrats having a melt-down.

Dog going to the vet to "take his medicine" with great reluctance.

Black Folks Rebel Against the Democrat Machine

Drudge promotes game-changer video that may move a lot of black votes in 2014 and 2016.  In a city like Chicago run by blacks, the Democrat machine is abusing their own people, offering a "turkey" on voting day and making you a turkey the rest of the time.  I'm a Honky WASP sort of person but am persuaded by the black plain-spoken men in the video.  This time it's for real.


"Black folks is in an abusive black leadership relationship"

Ghomeshi Meltdown at National Post

Canadian Cincinnatus has already posted on this but a screenshot of seven (count them) front page stories about a rough-sex radio station employee gives you pause.  I wish Conrad Black still owned NP.

Click to enlarge NP screen shot 9am PDST Oct 28

Ebola Spa: A market solution to quarantine

Mickey Kaus:  "What’s needed is a quarantine so luxurious that health care workers will look forward to it   ..   Volunteer health care workers are not exactly encouraged to make the trip to West Africa if they know they'll have to spend 21 days in a tent with a portable toilet on their return."  

The writer, a thoughtful Democrat, envisages Government buying and stocking the resort but this is the perfect public-private partnership giving private enterprise a way to prosper while serving the public good.

People in a Florida quarantine isolation camp

h/t Instanpundit.   A few words in the opening quote were shifted around.

Personal note:  My father was born in a quarantine camp on Torrens Island near Adelaide after coming off a ship from Canada.

Cup of cocoa, then bed, keeps you smart in the head.

A cup of hot cocoa with honey, sounds nice before bed.  Maybe it will also keep your memory from fading as you age. The study at Columbia showed significant memory improvement in a seniors group fed high-flavonol drinks derived from cocoa beans.  After three months, many had memories like 40 year olds instead of 60 year olds with brain change being noticed in the dentate gyrus.

Caveats:  "high-flavonol" isn't quite the same as "chocolate" and the study which used 37 senior volunteers should be replicated.

Excerpted from Science Daily News where you'll find more detail about the researchers and their results.







While revived faculties is the topic, I'll add some senior's humour:

"Auntie George and Uncle Mabel

Fainted at the breakfast table.

But Ovaltine has set them right

and now they do it morn and night,

and Uncle George is hoping soon

to do it in the afternoon"

   
                                                                               (Kudos to my late Aunt Nan)

Wear the uniform proudly.

From "A Bear's Rant":

Telling Canadian soldiers not to wear the uniform in public is like telling women they must dress modestly or be raped.  Follow the link.

Following the shootings, the Defense Department issued an advisory to military personnel to avoid wearing their uniforms in public. Is that really the message we want to send to terrorists? Do we really want them to celebrate that they have so frightened us that our military are afraid to publicly wear their uniforms in their own country?
That strikes me to be more than just a little like telling women to dress modestly lest they be raped or assaulted.

See:
Australian Muslim leader compares uncovered women to exposed meat