"Clanking of the swords" though bloody is an ISIS movie, not a news report.

Difficult to watch this ISIS self-promotion video.
Drive by murders of unarmed men in cars looks like a video game gone horribly wrong.
And it's celebrated in Allah's name.

1.  This is a movie, not a news report.  It's purpose is to alarm and demoralize the enemy (that includes you, dear reader). It's purpose is to recruit young hot heads.  Works on both levels.
2.   Note that some of the warriors are kitted out professionally and have infrared goggles being used for night raids.  The preponderance of newspaper photos shows a rather rag tag lot of men but this one hour video shows a high percentage with professional uniforms.
3.   Note that every time something goes kaboom, it is presented three times with slow motion added.  This means the supply of actual events was much smaller than the promoters want us to believe.
4.   There are some professional values in the movie like the closing scene of the flag carrier walking majestically, split screens showing a prisoner now and in his public life, lots of Islamic quotes with subtitles and a near continuous musical score with chanting.
5.    The score had to have been mostly written before the attacks began.  The loader being used to tear down barracks didn't just happen to be handy. To embed video clips of prisoners from before they were captured and to do it while the action was still happening bespeaks a significant budget and priority being given to the film makers.
6.    The leader who rants and then pulls out his sword that a second person appears to have been holding in readiness ... makes me think of Attila the Hun.   That invasion fell apart since it wasn't designed to hold territory but that didn't happen overnight.
7.     If you've watched other Middle East preaching clips on MEMRI, you'll appreciate that ranting with "death to infidels and sons of monkeys" rhetoric is a skill set widely employed by Islamic notables.  The ranter picks up the mike and keys in the rant program.
8.     Killing  is glorified.  This isn't something new.  It's Islam from day one.      "Honour" is repeatedly mentioned because Arab culture is an honour culture.  It doesn't mean what you think it means.
9.     Notice the laptop with a personnel database being used at a check point.  This is US technique being used in the confusion of battle and likely includes stolen information.  This is high end technology that was put in place with advance planning and money.
10.   Loot is an effective financing technique.  Today's news shows Hummers being transported back to Syria from Iraq by the terrorists.  Yesterday's stories report hundreds of millions of dollars falling into the warrior's war chest.
11.   The military vehicles that are destroyed are taken out by roadside bombs in some cases and by RPG's and by high power guns.  The new factor seems to be more guns capable of damaging military vehicles.
12.   There are a couple repentance meetings available to those who aren't being killed immediately.  This is old fashioned conversion at the point of the sword which got Islam started in the first place.
13.    The warrior's ferocity is directed almost entirely at Shia Muslims.
14.    Their creed is supranational.  There are two scenes involved with destroying passports.

Bitcoin software can replace the ballot box.

Bitcoin is the topic du jour but is at bottom a privacy tool applied to money, an anonymizing security protocol.   Researchers at the University of Waterloo applied it to voting to create a secure and unique vote that can't be traced back by the people who count them.   Participation could jump and corrupt political machines (where present) will lose some grip.  The method can be extended to voting even on parliamentary bills. Why rely on representatives in Ottawa when we can represent ourselves?  (Trick question.)

"The trick to bitcoin might be that it doesn't have to be a currency at all. Maybe cryptocurrency’s fundamental value is as a security protocol—a safe, anonymous, hack-proof network that decentralizes trust and democratizes power. ...  Online voting in its current form— is very vulnerable to fraud, cyberattack, and government corruption. The theory is that the bitcoin security protocol matched with anonymizing software and a totally open source voting infrastructure would solve for a lot of these problems.  Like a bitcoin transaction, the entire process is recorded in the blockchain public ledger, repurposed to verify votes and avoid voter fraud. So instead of placing your trust in a central authority like, say, the ballot counters tallying up hanging chads in Florida, the network is anonymous but transparent, and audited by the crowd.
"Just replace a coin in your head with a vote, and run it the exact same dynamic,"  (Link to story at Motherboard.)

From the source of the source at New Scientist:

(Researchers) "at the University of Waterloo, also in Ontario, realised they could convert a message - for example, a list of codes that securely link voters to their votes - into a Bitcoin address. Sending a tiny fraction of a bitcoin - a small transaction - to that address would allow the holder of that list to store it in the public record without revealing its contents. When they later publish the message for verification, anyone can repeat the conversion to a Bitcoin address and confirm its age by checking the public record.
Faking Bitcoin's public record would be very difficult as you'd need more computing power than the rest of the Bitcoin network combined - a feature that ensures the currency's security".

 One man person featherless biped, one vote.

 

Solar X flare video of eye-popping beauty from NASA

I did not dream to see such beautiful film from the reaches of space in my lifetime.  Here is NASA's video from June 10-11th.  Watch in full screen.

Blood on Obama the Innocent.

Obama's smarter-than-thou disengagement will take tens of thousands more lives.  He skipped a status of forces negotiation so he could skedaddle from Iraq.  Reading that Mosul fell to ISIS and half a million people are fleeing Tikrit (where Saddam was captured), while beheadings spurt and almost half a billion dollars is taken from Iraqi banks into terrorist pockets.... makes me beyond spitting mad, beyond contempt for the world view Obama so well espouses.  He is always innocent, finding out about stuff by reading the newspapers.

John Hinderaker takes a different view:  Arab culture is the problem.

"It looks as though the many sacrifices that we and our allies made to overthrow Saddam Hussein and establish a semblance of a modern democracy in Iraq will be in vain. It is tempting, and maybe correct, to blame the Obama administration for Iraq’s descent into chaos. But after the surge, Iraq had a good opportunity to build a functioning society, a growing economy, and a legitimate, self-governing country. American troops could not forever be the guarantor of relative peace in Iraq.
In my view, the Iraq war was fought, in part, to answer a critical series of questions. The first was, are Arabs capable of self-government? A further question was, will helping Arab countries to build modern, normal, self-governing societies be enough to destroy the appeal of radical Islam for young Arabs? The effort, in my opinion, had to be made, and Iraq was the logical, if not the only, place to begin. At this point, however, it is hard to be optimistic about the results of that effort. Arab culture is deeply dysfunctional. Expansionist, homicidal Islam is the most potent ideology in the region".

The Genesis forecast that there would always be trouble with Abraham's Arab kids by his Egyptian wife, is tempting to believe, although a sober review of the text de-emphasizes that.

(Ishmael) “He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers” (Genesis 16:12 NIV).
“His descendants settled in the area from Havilah to Shur, near the border of Egypt, as you go toward Asshur. And they lived in hostility toward all their brothers” (Genesis 25:18).

Tracking tag on Great White Shark points to giant predator.

A three meter Great White Shark was tagged and disappeared.  Months later the device, still functioning, washed up on an Australian beach.  Data showed the Great White suddenly accelerated to a depth of 580 metres and the surrounding temperature rose from 7C to 25C.    Something really big grabbed it, dragged it 1900 feet below the surface of the ocean and warmed the device by sticking it and the aforementioned shark in its belly.  What ate the shark?

I like how a bloody death is inferred from such a harmless digital file.  If you read the article, it becomes clear that this happened 11 years ago and the reason we are reading about it today is promotion for a movie, "Hunt for the Super Predator" due to air on the Smithsonian Channel June 26th.

Great link bait photo used by The Independent in its story. See link.

Fossil record shows men are specialized to fight.

Reported in Discovery:

The researchers found that bones that suffer the highest rates of fractures in fights are the same parts of the skull that exhibited the greatest increase in sturdiness during the evolution of our early human relatives. These bones are also the parts of the skull that show the greatest difference between males and females in both australopiths and humans today.
"In other words," Carrier said, "male and female faces are different because the parts of the skull that break in fights are bigger in males. Importantly, these facial features appear in the fossil record at approximately the same time that our ancestors evolved hand proportions that allow the formation of a fist."

Source article. 

Do you have the copyright on your own DNA? Insurers would like to see your genetic report. Welcome to a world without privacy.

This is a little scary but it's coming. Can you refuse to let the life insurance company see your DNA?  You let them take a drop of blood to check for a few things including drugs but suppose they spend a few bucks to do your whole genome?  Lawmakers are putting up little barriers but your DNA will be like a piece of gossip that someone will divulge somewhere sometime in your life.  It's under $1000 already and three quarters of a million Americans have had at least partial sequencing.

I talked to a GP back from a Hawaiian medical conference and this was one of the issues discussed there.  There are some costly health problems that can be guessed at before your baby is born and that little kid may never ever be eligible for health insurance.

From an NYT story:  Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, asks potential customers in Massachusetts about genetic testing — and stipulates that refusing to share results could lead to a declined application or an extra premium. Jean Towell, a spokeswoman, says applicants are told “out of fairness” that insurers have the right to decline coverage if any medical information is omitted. .... 12 other companies ask no explicit questions about genetic testing. But when Dr. Green asked company executives why not, he said, “at least one of them has told me, ‘We would do this, but we don’t want to be the first.' ”

Google satellites will compete with Big Brother

Google has announced a $1 billion plus plan to circle the globe with hundreds of low-orbit quick-ping satellites.  Privately owned-satellites parked above Tiananmen square, Tehran and Pyongyang point to governments losing control over what their captive populations see and hear.   They also point to "the other three billion" people on earth getting convenient affordable communications and internet access. (This is the stated business plan from Google. It started with the o3b network.)  Google also complicates the picture by introducing more competition for snooping on us.  Google, the NSA, the GPS people, and all the broadband satellite companies have competing business models.  They will still know far more about us and than we consider decent but the divided ownership will give us more options.

It's probably going to be cheaper too.
And have fewer blank spots where some government says "Don't peek".
Military implications.

Tipping point in Mexico

Cartels are getting more money from mining than drugs, moving from thuggery to the Robber Baron stage. Can national government be many decades off?  As reported by Strategy Page:

Officials and national security analysts believe that the Knights Templar and the Zetas may have reached a “tipping point” in sources of income. The cartels may be making more money from non-narcotics related criminal operations. The Knights Templar and Los Zetas both make a lot of money in mining (Templars extracting iron ore, Zetas in coal). Both run extensive business extortion operations.

Davidson and Rees-Moog make the case in The Sovereign Individual that the opportunity costs and benefits of violence explain much of society.  Government and banditry, in their view, are on a continuum.  At the low end,  life is cheap and everyone poor.  At the high end, few people own the right to use violence and rewards are widely distributed to crony players and to civil servants but the size of the pie is so big that the insider who gets a small slice has more than the old time warlord who got all of his local little pie.

Matthew Jameson's book, "The Robber Barons" makes the case for this halfway step from brigandage to a prosperous economy. The book summary at Amazon is below.  I've never forgotten the tale.  This looks like Mexico's future, creating societal institutions from the ground up at home.

The Robber Barons details the history of a small class of men who arose at the time of the American Civil War and swept into power. They were aggressive, and in important crises, nearly all of them tended to act without those established principles associated with the common people of the community. At the same time, many of them showed qualities of courage. These robber barons, as were their medieval counterparts, were the dominating figures of an aggressive economic age.
In their hands the renovation of American economic life proceeded relentlessly: large-scale production replaced the scattered, decentralized production; industrial enterprises became more concentrated, where they had been purely individualistic and wasteful. To organize and exploit the resources of a nation upon a gigantic scale, to regiment its farmers and workers into producers, and to do this only in the name of profit—is the great contradiction whence so much disaster, outrage and misery has flowed.
Matthew Josephson illuminates the story of industrial concentration in the United States, which is here pursued through the study of the major financial events and personalities between 1861 and 1901. This book also focuses on establishing the manner in which the country’s natural resources and arteries of trade were preempted, its political institutions conquered, and its social philosophy turned into an economic one, by the new barons. This is, by all odds, a classic study of the culture of American capitalism.

British Army has more horses than tanks

A thoughtful review of Britain's shrinking armed forces has this as link bait:  "The UK military has more horses than tanks; two admirals and thirteen captains for every ship of the line".   The deeper point is that the special military relationship between the US and the UK is drifting into irrelevance and the stability that offered is being replaced with uncertainty.  Canada's standing vis a vis the US will shift.

Read article at The American Interest.

Caution: Investors choose risk over caution in record numbers.

Chart from Global Economic Analysis:  The ratio of money put into hopes of growth compared to money parked on the sidelines is over four to one, a new high.  This may not be unsound when prospects are good but it is out in black swan territory where consequences are hard to guess.

Sea going down and up at the same time.

While alarmists sound the climate klaxons, sea and land go up and down  to their own tune.  Look at this chart off the Chesapeake coast of America.  Subsidence and rise of sea relative to land are everywhere and satellites tag it.  The blocks of land we inhabit are rafts bogged into moving molten muck with seawater sloshing around the crannies and hollows as stuff moves about.

Crater, page 20 of Chesapeake report.

Distrust ecopoliticians painting good and evil on a simple canvas.  The earth is still rebounding from the recent ice age as a mile thick layer of ice melted from Canada.  Ten thousand years ago, native people were migrating from the Prince Rupert area (through what is now the 100 ft deep Hecate Strait) to the Queen Charlotte/Haida Gwai area on foot.  Tectonic plates are grinding into each other and slipping past as one rises and one falls.   The study referenced by the chart even found a hitherto unknown but enormous meteor impact by the mouth of Chesapeake Bay which is still altering the land's response to the sea.   Worldwide you can see drowned coastlines (like the fjords of Norway and the west coast of BC) and emerging ones with lazy deltas and flats.  Not that long ago, the Thames and the Rhine emptied into the same bay and the settled areas of Doggerland in the North Sea (once the heart of Europe) subsided below the sea.

These maps are modern history since the last ice age.  The old landscape has been re-charted
under the mud of the North Sea and many artifacts of early settlement turned up.

Give me a gigantic break from THE-SEA-IS-RISING-THE-SKY-IS-FALLING alarmism.  How sea and land levels alter is a good topic of study and may even someday be well quantified.  That day is not yet.

Obama Presidency: Perverse in ways no other country in history would contemplate.

Paul Mirengoff at Powerline supplies the headline.

"Any country might do a prisoner swap, even if it meant freeing very bad people. But only an exceptional country would swap five leading terrorists in exchange for a deserter.
Any second-rate county might screw up in providing medical treatment for its veterans. But only an exceptional country would do so while at the same time providing a sex change operation for an ex-soldier who betrayed his country.
What Obama really believes in, of course, is his own exceptionalism. This belief is fully justified.
President Obama believes in American exceptionalism — his own version, in which American does things so perverse that no other country in history would even contemplate them."

Paul adds about Bergdahls:  Appeases a deadly enemy, makes like more dangerous for an ally we are about to abandon,  disregards American law, and does it on behalf of jihad sympathizers.   That warm hug with Obama was beyond inappropriate and topped off with Islamic praise in the Pashto language, the language of an enemy to whom Bergdahl fils apparently gave bomb making instruction.

Angelina Jolie`s nose and the brains of a professor, coming to a crib near you.

DNA and reproductive technology predict the future:  We will have more choice but end up more alike than ever.  Can we even breed for voting tendency?   We will be like those monoculture fields of corn or beets of just a few genotypes, the ones you find on the seed shelf at the farmer's co-op.  Given the choice, there will be more blondies with noses like Angelina Jolie and more broad-shouldered dudes with near genius IQs.  This Atlantic article on where we`re heading with reproductive choice gets into the topic in section five.

I apologize for the misleading suggestion that professors are smarter than average people.  Their politics and 97% rate of agreement on global something suggest much is wrong in that department.

Don't legislate against violent video and porn.

The US army takes measures to reduce PTSD.  Showers, air conditioning and one holiday to anywhere per tour.  Most surprising to me is access to violent video games.   Not soothing music and picnics in the country but pretend violence is what it take to untwist some minds heading for crack-up.

From Strategy Page's longer article on post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD):

It was also discovered, quite by accident, that the troop habit of playing violent video games, in between bouts of real combat, reduced combat stress. Mental health practitioners tested the use of violent video games for their PTSD patients, and found out that it worked.

In the past I went for the argument that violent games promote real-life violence. Now I see there's a strong argument that we will have a society with less violence when feelings about survival, rage, revenge, defence of your family and group,  can be acted on without victims.      The same seems to apply to pornography.

Scientific examination of the subject has found that as the use of porn increases, the rate of sex crimes goes down.  (From "The Scientist").

While I was convinced in the past that viewing sexual parts and activity promoted lascivious behaviour that threatened marriages, it also seems likely that dispersing the sex drive into play in a never-never land, reduces the drive to engage in appropriate and inappropriate sex with live partners.

Pretend behaviour seems to reduce the trouble caused by acting undesirable stuff out in real life.  Be very cautious about introducing legislation to appease one crowd when the problem addressed has ambiguous outcomes.

Most polluted countries

This chart from WHO shows China well down the list.  Does it mean something that the five worst offenders are Islamic?  And what does PM2.5 mean?  This is a catchall definition of pollution that includes all particulate matter under  2.5 micrometers in size.  That means four hundred specks would make a row less than one millimeter long.  This is stuff that you breathe in and out and can float for ages in the breeze.  H/T  Zero Hedge.

I love capitalism

My prosperous neighbours seem to hate it but I love capitalism.  What the heck do they think it is?  In their lives they feel free to use their time and assets to prosper their family, and why shouldn't they? A financial guy and a professional guy expressed their disdain of capitalism to me recently at dinner.   Is their scorn for capitalism a moral judgement on the greedy with the presumption that those who prosper most covet most?  The history of philanthropy disproves it.   Is it contempt for the three BIGS who rig the markets, big business, big labour and big government?  That's not capitalism. Those are the three tools that  subvert it.

The free-est markets I've ever seen are yard sales.  People sell what they want where they wish and make deals with each other, even re-selling to newcomers as they walk back to the car with their prize.

From the Merriam Webster dictionary:  Generally your choices instead of the government's and mainly free markets.  In a civil society.

The sky is always falling

The sky is always falling and climate change but the latest excuse.  The goal posts keep moving but the stifling prescription does not.

"The Left doesn’t really believe in climate change. Their true religion is raising taxes, increasing government, impeding capitalism and reducing national sovereignty. Climate change is just a temporary excuse to achieve those ends".

Gabriel of Ricochet.com  makes it sound funny in a well-written piece as the left segues from ice age to DDT to aerosols to global warming to more natural gas to less natural gas.

Is "Left" the right word for people who seek status and power through alarmism and hijacking collective piggy banks?

Science discovers renewal, not extinction is in the driver's seat. Sorry, lefties.

All over the world, niches full of critters have just as many kinds now as decades ago,  or even more.  The news is that those tear-jerking extinctions you read about are the small part of the tale.  The large part is change, that those ecological communities are forming and reforming and changing again, often with different players from the ones you knew as a kid.

From the abstract:  Scientists re-examined 100 world-wide monitoring studies and were surprised to discover that, over decades, the number of species in many places has not changed much -- or has increased. But the researchers did discover that almost 80% of the communities showed changes in species composition. This shows that a rapid global turnover of species is happening, resulting in novel biological communities.

It's not about redistributing the old pie but making new pie.

The left view that man is a destructive interloper who needs to be humbled and to give up liberties is a rehash of the doctrine of original sin, but without a redeemer.  Change and re-creation is the norm and you can't stop it.  Protests about saving minnows and birdies are like zoning regulations,  a plan to keep everything the same as it was, that is, the same as it was right after you moved into the neighbourhood.

Going the way of the Dodo and going the way of the dinosaurs is the same death road.  Man didn't mess it up for the sauropods.   When man spread, so also did starlings, coconut palms and wild mustard.  They prospered while Dodos were clubbed and shot.  Facing change and complexity is helpful.  Promoting the sinfulness of man and the cure-by-government-run-by-smart-superior-people is not.

UKIP Farage takes lesson from Canada

On the eve of Nigel Farage's triumph Sunday in the Euro elections, it's nice to remember he takes lessons from Preston Manning and the reverse takeover of the Conservative party.   Example one: his decision not to run for a safe seat was modelled on Manning's decision to let Deborah Grey keep  first chance at it.  That turned out well.  Example two:  Farage may see the Reform/Alliance experience applying to the Conservative party in the UK.   smalldeadanimals linked this yesterday.

Nigel Farage made news today saying "the Ukip fox is in the Westminster chicken house" after winning a substantial number of council seats.   This goes double for the EU parliament when Nigel is no longer the gadfly but the official face of Great Britain.

Then there's this shock opinion from Lib Dem MP and former minister,  Jeremy Browne, who said "Mr Farage was a rare politician who, like Alex Salmond or Boris Johnson, had an air of authenticity and did not sound like he was part of “a hectoring, out-of-touch elite”. “People have a sense with them that they are saying what they fundamentally believe in.”         Politicians who generally say what they fundamentally believe in, sounds about right.

Of course, politicians disappoint over time, but I like this man's ability to smile freely when others reflect what they think people want to see. (Justin Trudeau and Barry Soetero come to mind.)

Taken Friday.  If you're interested look up the mostly smooth
indeterminate faces of the other leaders voting.

Obama's Greatest Hits

Eight track humour, courtesy Ed Driscoll:  See image of yesterday's man.

Russia - China Rapprochement - Not so big a deal.

Body language says a lot:  Putin and  Xi Jinping looking away from each other as the gas pipeline from Siberia to China is announced.   This is not a triumph.    Although analyst Goldman sees big problems with expanded military cooperation coming up,  Russia has had to settle for lower gas prices, China has quietly brought its first fracked gas on-line and probably has a way to get out of the deal if gas drops far. (At the link read notes for May 21st.)

The body language belies the official handshake photos.  (Clip sourced here.)

Click on body language to see how it goes.

Maybe a big deal despite the antipathy:  Goldman quotes the south China Morning Post:  "Chinese and Russian units taking part in the Joint Sea-2014 drill will be combined rather than operating separately during the exercise, the first time the Chinese navy has worked so closely with a foreign maritime force".

Somewhere down the line it makes sense for Siberia to be a Chinese hinterland rather than a Russian one.  Watch the investment and migration.

No Money, Honey. VA Bad Behaviour Prompted by Insolvency. UPDATE

Behind the secret wait lists for US veterans is a simple story:   The outpatient demand doubled in the last ten years and funding didn't match.  "The root of the scandal is not what self-serving bureaucrats failed to do or tried to cover up; it is a federal budget that prevents us from meeting even the national needs on which our polarized political parties can agree."  The money is running out.   See story by William Galston linked at Instapundit.

Veteran support is an adjunct of defense policy and is a core duty of government.
Unlike Galston, I think bad behaviour is as big a problem as insolvency.  Integrity matters.

UPDATE:  The VA funding is complex and has gone up a lot when other agency funding did not.  See article at Hot Air.

Mysterious banker deaths - chance with a dash of stupid?

Zero Hedge has been flagging a "Banker Death Epidemic", a cluster of suicides and accidents framed as a mystery but likely explained by chance.  Or Stupid.  The death of Stanley Morgan VP, Gabriel Magee of London was ruled a suicide today in the sober press, but the Daily Mail takes it to the next level:  

His ex-girlfriend Lucy Pinches said today Mr Magee had an obsession with the concept of parallel universes and a suicide pact of two U.S. students. 'There was a story of a double suicide in the States where two students had killed themselves, she said. 'It was to do with quantum physics and suicide, the two students were linked up to lethal injections which were operated by lottery numbers.'So the only universe they would wake up in would be the one they both won the lottery in. 'That was something Gabe thought about a lot and had the mental capacity to think about it a lot, with the equations and the physics.'

Winning the lottery in parallel universes?  Printing money makes us richer?   Smart and wise are independent variables.  There are many smart bankers.

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

Privacy update: "It will be a bit like living in a nudist colony".

Aldrich, University of Warwick

 "We will soon have to live in a world with no such thing as privacy and no such thing as secrecy":   Richard Aldrich.(historian of espionage).   This will apply to the privacy of the ballot box, too.

From the article:  We're used to the idea that secret intelligence agencies spy on us, but over the last ten years the big intelligence gatherers have become airlines, banks, internet providers and Tesco -- all of which have more information about us than GCHQ and the NSA put together.
"These organisations are becoming cleverer and cleverer. Cleverer than the CIA; cleverer than the KGB."

And you'll be part of this invasive tide too, as you consider it normal to know what your neighbour's house is worth, who drives that Mustang convertible, and the names and backgrounds of most of the people your smart phone just photographed.

Privacy is going to be expensive, available only to the rich or resolute.
That includes privacy at the ballot box:
In the last US presidential election, the Democratic party software tagged every resident in every neighbourhood in the land with known or guessed voting behaviour, street by street.  This is also Aldrich's theme, that your friendly data gatherers can probably guess accurately how you will vote in the next major election.

Politics and poker

If you play poker for twenty minutes and don't know who the mark is, you're the mark.
When a silver-tongued politician is hard to follow but seems to be for you, he's against you. This is neatly summarized by David Steinberg:

Little comes easier to a skilled speaker than clarity ..... Politicians require the ability, and generally have the personality type that draws one to public speaking. Ironically, these facts produce a wonderfully useful corollary: If a politician’s statements leave you unsure of his stance on an issue, you can be sure he opposes the popular stance of his electorate.

Before moving on, read some Mark Twain:

"All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity." –Mark Twain

"An honest man in politics shines more there than he would elsewhere." –Mark Twain

“There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress." –Mark Twain

Spendthrift California Gets Awful Warning From Ontario's Debtpalooza.

Ontario's government has put its citizens into four and a half times the debt per capita of California.  California is almost a basket case.

The Fraser Institute reports:

The Golden State has gained international notoriety for its deficits and government dysfunction.....On every measure of indebtedness, Ontario is markedly worse than California.   Ontario’s debt is almost two-thirds larger than California’s bonded debt even though California is a much larger jurisdiction .... Specifically, California’s bonded debt is $143.9 billion as of 2011 while Ontario’s is $236.6 billion, two-thirds larger than California.      As a share of the economy, Ontario’s debt (38.6 per cent) is more than five times larger than California’s debt (7.7 per cent).   Ontario’s per capita debt ($17,922) is over four-and-a-half times that of California ($3,833). ...  Ontario spends a little over three times the amount of revenues on interest costs as California: 8.9 per cent versus 2.8 per cent. More specifically, Ontario spends roughly $10 billion a year on interest costs, about $750 per Ontarian per year just paying the interest on already accumulated debt.

The report is free at the link.

Remember Bob Rae?
This is not just a Wynne-lose scenario.

A cow is a great comfort

My dairy cow was a great comfort on a frozen winter morning before the sun came up.  At the house, all were in bed but I'd lean into her, both enjoying a patch of warmth and familiar touch.  She blocked the wind and we looked after each other.  

The sweet familiar smell of her breath pleased me as the warm milk in her teats thawed my finger tips and she was well content with the molasses-flavoured granola I fed her.  (dairy mash)   Such a cow can be closer to a man than his wife, more familiar to touch.   Thank you, Rosie.

Purifies the inhabitants with magic sentences: Politician or Himba witch doctor?

"This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal".   Barry, the Healer.

"(PICTURE) A witchdoctor such as this one is called when bad things happen in a village. The man purifies the inhabitants using magic sentences "  Daily Mail On Line.  (The link has fabulous fair styles).

Closer to home, Canadian Liberal policy sounds warm , fuzzy and uplifting, if you believe in magic.

"Liberals stand for true fiscal responsibility.   Liberals stand for affordable access to post-secondary education.  Liberals stand for universal affordable health care.  Liberals stand for open, fair and strong democratic representation.  Liberals stand for an evidence-based crime policy."

As a young fellow I read the constitution of the USSR.  Sounded pretty good in big magic sentences but meant little in truth.   A helpful guide when deciding what to believe is in this quote:

"Reason obeys itself and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it". Thomas Paine (linked by Bears Rant).

Shut up, he explained

As Mark Steyn puts it, there's a clamour for "new blasphemy laws for progressive pieties...  Once you get a taste for shutting people up, its hard to stop. Why bother winning the debate when it's easier to close it down?"           Despite his mistreatment at the hands of Human Rights bozos in Canada, he holds up the Quebec election last week for praise.  

"A fortnight ago I was in Quebec for a provincial election in which the ruling separatist party went down to its worst defeat in almost half a century. This was a democratic contest fought between parties that don’t even agree on what country they’re in. In Ottawa for most of the 1990s the leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition was a chap who barely acknowledged either the head of state or the state she’s head of. Which is as it should be".

"Free speech is essential to a free society because, when you deny people ‘an opportunity to act like normal political parties’, there’s nothing left for them to do but punch your lights out".

Steyn reviews recent depradations against free speech.  (The BBC was advised it should get special clearance before interviewing climate sceptics, liberal artists asked 
for the first state restraints on the British press in 325 years, the apalling treatment of Ayaan Hirsi by Brandeis University and more.).  This puts me in mind of Kate of smalldeadanimals' capsule quiz:  "What is the opposite of diversity?  University."

Homework question: When was controversial public speech ever free or safe?  If people whose opinions annoy you have the right to bear arms, are you more willing to let them speak as long as they keep the peace?  Discuss.

Government: Trespassers will be shot

What is the Bureau of Land Management doing with guns?   Bundy's offence is "cattle trespass" in Harry Reid's home state.  It's clear from the picture that BLM officers contemplated killing citizens for trespass.   Swat teams and armoured vehicles, many surplus from warfare abroad, are swallowing up decency in the States.  It seems every branch of government is loading up on bullet, weapons and attack teams.

Link

Tortoises 0, Hubris 1, Public exposure 1.

The Bureau of Land Management withdrew 200 armed men and dogs and wrote off milions of enforcement dollars at the Bundy ranch because they weren't popular?   Who called them off? The Bundy land is in a swath designated for future solar plants, a use that is incompatible with the tortoises this foofaraw is supposedly about.  Senator Reid and his sons are involved with Chinese investors to invest in desert solar power.  The story came out during the week and the optics are awful for Reid.   Somehow, the information about the solar reserves and their incompatibility with tortoise habitat disappeared from the BLM website.    (Sources:  Powerline: Standoff at the Bundy Ranch ends with photo of the year, and DC Clothesline:  Nevada Standoff: Harry Reid, Russian Soldiers, Chinese Businessmen and Euthanized Turtles.  The second link includes BLM documentation but wanders into the farfetched with the "Russian soldiers" footnote.)

There actually are tortoises in this story but they don't explain a thing.  There's a facility funded to the tune of $1,000,000 per year to raise and release the rare tortoises.  While more money than that is being spent making a fool of the federal government at the ranch, the facility has run out of support and plans to kill about half their animals and let the rest go wild.

Why is the federal government even present in this story?  The mandate comes from those endangered tortoises.  Is Mr Bundy in the right?  Perhaps in part.  But the over-reaching federal government is clearly wrong.

From Gateway Pundit:Deleted from BLM.gov but reposted for posterity by the Free Republic, the BLM document entitled “Cattle Trespass Impacts” directly states that Bundy’s cattle “impacts” solar development, more specifically the construction of “utility-scale solar power generation facilities” on “public lands.”

Teachers getting younger and leaving the NEA union in droves. Hair-line crack in the public sector.

Are  Canadian teachers getting younger too?   American K-12 teachers under 30 have doubled in the last couple years although still only making up 1/6th of their work force.  They're quitting unions, too.  It's appalling there are so few young teachers but an increase is good.  Instead of bargaining for seniority, younger pedagogues are interested in high tech and merit pay.  The NEA has lost 11% of its membership in the last four years.  The full story is at the Wall Street Journal behind a pay wall, but quoted at The American Interest.

I think of teachers as public sector because most are paid by taxes that are taken from people and their unions fund parties like the NDP that will scratch their backs.  The public sector is the sector of the economy least responsive to price signals (choice) and even the tiniest hint of a hairline crack in that sector is a sign of hope to me.

"Most notable, however, is the impact these younger teachers are having on teachers unions. The unions usually negotiate rules that favor seniority, so younger teachers are generally the first to be let got when cutbacks are made. Unsurprisingly, those teachers are pushing for unions to adopt measures they have traditionally opposed, like merit pay, or are breaking with unions entirely, as the WSJ reports."

Gamechanger: US Navy turns ocean water into fuel on the cheap.

The US Naval Research Lab thinks they could turn out aviation fuel for under $6 per gallon anywhere you find ocean water. The economics of energy shapes world power. The story is at NRL and popularized a bit at the Daily Mail.

To make fuel, you need a carbon chain with hydrogen clustered along its length.  Hydrogen in the water molecules can be teased loose with electric charge, a technology that's been around for ages.  It turns out there's also a lot of carbon in the ocean water, about 100 times as much as in the air.  2/3 of it is dissolved C02 gas and 1/3  is tiny specks of carbonate.  92% of this carbon is teased out with an "innovative and proprietary NRL electrolytic exchange module" (NRL thingy). The next two steps coax it into carbon chains and clothe the chains in a hydrogen skin.  That's what all fuels, oils and waxes are made from, depending on length.  This tech has been around for quite a while too. The process is nearly pollution free.

Green has to love it.  Power-to-the-people has to love it because a scarce resource becomes everywhere commonplace.   I'd like to make and sell fuel by the sea with a hose running down the beach to the well.  If the economies of $3 to $6/gallon can only be achieved in a large plant, this will still free up some countries.   The picture of the E-CEM Carbon Capture Skid at the link looks like it would fit in a small building, even when scaled up.

Nations get along better when they are not too beholden to one another.

Model airplane being fueled from the sea
with a few clever intervening steps.

Old fart almost destroyed the world. Archaean bacteria outgassed.

Although a dozen great meteors set back life on earth, detective work blames the biggest hit of all on a giant methane fart from Archaean bacteria.

Evidence left at the crime scene is abundant and global: Fossil remains show that sometime around 252 million years ago, about 90 percent of all species on Earth were suddenly wiped out -- by far the largest of this planet's five known mass extinctions a form of microbes -- specifically, methane-producing archaea called Methanosarcina -- that suddenly bloomed explosively in the oceans, spewing prodigious amounts of methane into the atmosphere and dramatically changing the climate and the chemistry of the oceans.
Volcanoes are not entirely off the hook, according to this new scenario; they have simply been demoted to accessories.

MIT reports on three clues from the scene:

Methanosarcina

Carbon dioxide increased over ten fold and Methanosarcina processed it, after picking up a gene from some other bacteria.  The limiting nutrient for the processing was nickel which had just been spewed out by the world's greatest ever volcanic upheaval in the Siberian Traps area.  With extra C02, a new gene and a shitload of nickel, Methanosarcina ramped up the production of methane, one of your basic fart gases.

The resulting outburst of methane produced effects similar to those predicted by current models of global climate change: a sudden, extreme rise in temperatures, combined with acidification of the oceans. In the case of the end-Permian extinction, virtually all shell-forming marine organisms were wiped out -- consistent with the observation that such shells cannot form in acidic waters.

Extinction article

Fartology: There's a half dozen ingredients,  Two of them burn.  Hydrogen sulphide is the stinky one.  Methane is made in our gut by bacterial beasties that live down there.

Stinkburger: Obamacare fakes enrolment boost, then brags.

Obamacare enrolments jumped two million in the last two weeks for Obama's Mission Accomplished moment.  It was easy.  As Gateway Pundit puts it:

"How do you get from 5 million Obamacare enrollees to 7.1 million Obamacare enrollees in two weeks? You start the applications yourself."

HHS apparently started enrolment files for hundreds of thousands of Americans without telling them using data swiped from the states.   (The Gateway site has a bug but the Shark Tank story they linked to is here.)   Obviously some of the new enrolment was to beat the deadline but this has been open for half a year and the last two weeks won't account for a 40% jump in sign ups.

"Mocking his critics, President Barack Obama boasted Tuesday that 7.1 million people have signed up for his health care law, an unexpected comeback after a disastrous rollout sent his poll numbers plummeting and stirred fears among Democrats facing re-election this fall".

Unexpected?

Remember the vitriol George Bush earned for his arrogance, claiming "Mission Accomplished"? That was the banner on the boat, that their mission was done and they could set sail for home.

Harcourt: None of the above

Mike Harcourt surprised BC by leaving one party (the NDP) and joining the fastest growing party, the party of ME.  He says he is now free and as the Globe & Mail reports, is "going to be an independent sustainability democrat". The same is happening in the US where the Donkey-Elephant party is being nipped at by a growing swarm of independents who want to make choices without wearing the team colours.  The same is happening in the faith department where most people say they're spiritual and much in favour of peace & love, but if you ask for specifics, they are all over the map, with customized beliefs selected from aromatherapy, bibles, telepathy, being nice to people, slaughtering plants but not animals, reincarnation, and what have you with no hard-copy doxology.  Large enclaves in the nation states, as they prosper, become confident they can make it on their own in smaller independent chunks. (Did I really read a proposal to cut California into six new states like a slice of cherry pie?).  Couples that once could only survive on teamwork to scratch out a living and raise the kids, now find divorce is a sound economic option.   In this list come also political parties which will tend to fracture as the need for intermediaries to tell you what to think declines.  Any Dick or Jane that reads and thinks a little can have greater knowledge to hand daily than the first members of parliament who slowly congregated by train and buggy from the corners of our dominion for once a year sittings of the legislature.

Mike Harcourt, free man (G&M)

Mike Harcourt, whose politics I scorned but for whom I have always had a warm spot personally, is part of this centripetal trend.  Choice, knowledge, and access to power are increasing at the individual level and the worth of parties and other intermediaries is declining somewhat.

Two asides:
1.  That word "Sustainability".  Harcourt could have turned Green or Liberal but chose "an independent sustainability democrat".   This word can appeal to a conservative bunch as well as a distributionist bunch.  Think of the Five S program for getting a handle on any undertaking and bringing it to a sustained peak:
S(1) Sort through stuff to see what's worth keeping.
S(2) Set in order what you keep.
S(3) Shine it up, get it into top condition.
S(4) Standardize so there are plainly stated successful working policies to get things done.
S(5) Sustain it.  This means keep developing people and resources so the undertaking or group renews itself .  A little bit of reduce/re-use/recycle fits in here but developing new leadership and new opportunity and and long term perspective is more important.  So if Mike Harcourt's definition of sustainability overlaps mine, I could join forces with him.
2.  The Time Colonist reports a pleasantly realistic side of this ex-NDP man:"He said the party needs leadership that balances an understanding of the Lower Mainland with the resource realities of the province. “Vancouver is an important part of the province, but most communities, about 150 of them, survive on natural resources, and if you say, ‘You can’t log, you can’t mine, you can’t drill wells for gas or ranch,’ you’re ignoring 95 per cent of British Columbia and most of the communities that depend on natural resources.”

Two surprises in Afghanistan

Why have four million refugees returned from Pakistan to Afghanistan?  More than job prospects, it's living longer, a whole lot longer.  Life expectancy has risen from 42 to 62 years since 2001.  Strategy Page reports this is mostly because America brought better sanitation and health care, especially for pregnant women and their babies.  (The information is in paragraph 8).

The second surprise is the extent of the Taliban's publicity addiction.  They feed on Western publicity despite shrunken influence at home and the proof is in this story.  When the Kabul hotel was bombed March 20th and a local reporter was killed along with all his family, the Afghan press hit back:  No Taliban stories for fifteen days!    (This information is in paragraph 10)

Just starve the buggers for publicity.  Why can`t we be that smart? 

 

Hell is still an option

Pope Francis tells mafia mobsters to repent or go to hell.   This will have more impact than a school program to combat bullying.  Address core beliefs to redirect a life.  Kind of old-fashioned.  "Convert" rather than adjust-your-behaviour lays claim to truth.

«Convertitevi. C’è tempo per non finire nell’inferno, che è quello che vi aspetta se non cambiate strada. Avete avuto un papà e una mamma pensate a loro e convertitevi».

He suggested gays not be condemned and was lionized as a gay rights supporter.  He suggested marriages solemnized outside the Catholic church may be recognized and was feted as favouring living together for sex and convenience.  Now what?  Mobsters are almost Christian and he wishes them the best?

From Repubblica

Alinksy Rule 13 goes global: "Obama gets personal, sanctions Putin's inner circle"

Obama's training as a community organizer/shit disturber may help America's foreign policy. Twenty more big shots in Russia and the Ukraine have been added to the first eleven.  They can't travel to the US and funds lodged in American institutions will be frozen.  For now, several of the biggest names including Putin himself have been left off the list.  This escalation is getting interesting and I approve of it.  This, however, is not the rule of law.  It's realpolitik, amorally doing whatever gains the most and loses the least.  I'd rather see a small number of Russian stakeholders mistreated than see thousands bloodied and maimed in a war they never asked for. The same principle is applied in Congress where small personal favours sway the vote for costly public bills. Congress illustrates the carrot approach, personal sanctions on Russian potentates illustrates the stick approach.  While Obama may really have little grasp of world forces, I commend him for applying the nasty side of American politics to international bargaining.   As a side benefit, the Russian people who are pretty excited about getting a bit of Mother Russia back, will also be wondering if their country was robbed of the money that made the targeted guys so rich.

Alinksy's rules for radicals directed at community organizers:

Rule 13: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

Picking is the public naming of big shot Russian players.

Freezing includes freezing their US wealth.

Polarizing creates distance between them and the Russian people who have less.

Link.

If you hadn't read this before, Obama is regularly linked to community organizer, Saul Alinksy, by critics on the right.

Probiotics for little kids cuts sniffles. Should your medical plan cover Yoghurt?

In a controlled study with hundreds of preschoolers, half were given gut bacteria supplements (probiotics) for three months while half got placebos.  Colds were cut in half and incidences of diarrhea fell by a third.  A follow-up three months later showed the advantage persisted.  This isn't crop circles any more. It is science. Poo RX sounds gross but is the real deal.  

Reported at the NYT  "Probiotic Eases Ills in Children"
Lactobacillus reuteri was given daily to half the kids aged 6 months to 3 years while at day care.

A yoghurt bacterium
lactobacillus bulgaricus

Link to the source study at Pediatrics:  Diarrhea in Preschool Children andLactobacillus reuteri: A Randomized Controlled Trial

A teaser about gut bacteria's role.
Probiotics have always been around, just tucked into the corners of  normal diet and in our yoghurts and yeasty things.  Look around the internet for studies about gut bacteria affecting cholesterol, multiple sclerosis, mood, and much more.

False colour electron microscope photo of gut bacteria.

Those power signs mean there are a lot.
10¹² means one trillion.