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

How many days until the world ends? Climate Cassandras from Gore on down screw up in their own words.

Posted at Wattsupwiththat by Jimbo:   Reminds me of the Jehovah Witnesses movable goal posts for the immanent return of Jesus and their debate about how immanent "immanent" is.
h/t smalldeadanimals.

Moscow-Pullman Daily News – 5 July 1989
“governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.”
[Noel Brown - New York office of the United Nations Environment Program]
=======================

The Vancouver Sun – May 11, 1982
Lack of such action would bring “by the turn of the century, an envi-ronmental catastrophe which will witness devast-tation as complete, as ir-reversible as any nu-clear holocaust.”
[Mostafa Tolba - Executive director of the United Nations Environment Program]
=======================

New York Times – November 18, 2007
…..The IPCC chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, an engineer and economist from India, acknowledged the new trajectory. “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late,” Pachauri said. “What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.”…..
=======================

Independent – 20 October 2009
[SPEECH]
Gordon Brown: We have fewer than fifty days to save our planet from catastrophe
……..Copenhagen must be such a time.

There are now fewer than 50 days to set the course of the next 50 years and more. So, as we convene here, we carry great responsibilities, and the world is watching. If we do not reach a deal at this time, let us be in no doubt: once the damage from unchecked emissions growth is done, no retrospective global agreement, in some future period, can undo that choice. By then it will be irretrievably too late….
=======================

National Post – 2009?
… In the summer, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon insisted “we have four months to save the planet.”…
=======================

Guardian – 3 November 2009
We only have months, not years, to save civilisation from climate change
…….Lester R Brown is president of Earth Policy Institute and author of Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.
=======================

WWF – 7 December 2009
12 days to save the planet!
…“The world has given a green light for a climate deal. But the commitments made so far won’t keep the world under 2° of warming, This has to change over the next 12 days. …
[WWF-UK’s head of climate change, Keith Allott]
=======================

Guardian – 18 January 2009
‘We have only four years left to act on climate change – America has to lead’
Jim Hansen is the ‘grandfather of climate change’ and one of the world’s leading climatologists…..

“We cannot now afford to put off change any longer. We have to get on a new path within this new administration. We have only four years left for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world. America must take the lead.”
=======================

The Star – Mar 24 2009
‘We have hours’ to prevent climate disaster
…Recently, Prince Charles has said we have only an estimated 100 months. Unless the world comes together and negotiates a meaningful agreement to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions nine months from now – at the Copenhagen meeting of the United Nations climate conference in December – another 90 months won’t help. We have hours to act to avert a slow-motion tsunami that could destroy civilization as we know it.

Earth has a long time. Humanity does not. We need to act urgently. We no longer have decades; we have hours. We mark that in Earth Hour on Saturday….
[Elizabeth May of Canadian Green Party]
=======================

And Al  (Ice Cap Gone) Gore, of course.

Best political speech ever: Ronald Reagan, "A Time For Choosing"

The Montreal Massacre had a Muslim link too

I don't remember seeing this in the news, but Marc Lépine was the son of an Algerian muslim, Rachid Liass Gharbi.   Marc changed his first name from "Gamil".   The dad was abusive and "non-practicing" but it looks to me like the culture of Mohammed played a role.  Marc went after women in non-traditional roles.   What are the odds nowadays he'd have been on-line posting approvingly about ISIS before turning butcher?      Substitute "stick" for "gun" and I'm reminded of the Saudi Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

On December 6, 1989, Lépine walked into the École Polytechnique de Montréal. There, he entered a second-floor classroom where he separated the men and women and then ordered the approximately fifty men to leave. Claiming that he was fighting feminism, he shot the nine women who remained, killing six and injuring the rest.

h/t commenter at smalldeadanimals

Avatar of the average male. Netherlands looking tops.

See the avatars for yourself. The average Dutch male is much taller and slimmer than the white American male.   Nothing pretty here, just the average shape.  Original article at The Atlantic.

US dethroned by three inches.
Crown goes to the Netherlands.
US (and Canada) looking a little soft.

Left to Right:  US, Japan, Holland, France.

Dems will rewrite history to get rid of love affair with Barack Obama.

  Ramirez cartoon.  "Hello? Tattoo removal service?"

Easter Island discovered America

A genetic study shows Easter Islanders have 8% American Indian ancestry and the DNA was picked up in the AD1300-1500 period before the Spanish and English got their licks or dicks in. (The genomic tally also shows 16% of European origin.)   Easter Island was reached about AD 1200 and it is easy to imagine some settlers continuing on to find America because if they explored to the east, they couldn't miss.  A few must have made it back.

Reported in Science Daily News.
Something else interesting about the 900 statues they built:  Most of the carved statue is sunk below grade.

To be fair, the first reported European on Easter island  is neither Spanish nor English.  In 1722  Dutchman, Jacob Roggeveen, landed there.

Is fatal cancer setting Putin's schedule of accelerated aggressions?

The New York Post publishes rumours pointing to spinal or pancreatic cancer that gives Vladimir Putin a short time to leave a legacy of strong borders and respect for Russia.   You may not like Russia but it does have hard-to-defend borders on the west, and impaired ocean access through the Black and Baltic seas.

From the Financial Post

This can explain the brass balls threat of using nuclear weapons, expropriation of the Crimea, the pardon of Khodorkovsky, repeated air incursions into Japanese,  Nato  and American airspace and threats to the Baltic states. Is his face a little puffy from steroid treatments, the Post asks?

Rumours should be mistrusted but not ignored.   h/t HotAir for the link.

Karate chop-the-block GIF in slo-mo.

Dust flies off the block, the fingers are assels in the breeze.
Found at Ace of Spades
If you persist towards a goal
and give 100% against the odds,
what you accomplish may look impossible to others.

Courts hide behind "Judicial Restraint" to favour Big Government and its parasites.

A new book argues that right-leaning judges (you read that right) erode citizen protection from Big Government by invoking judicial restraint, which is  "a theory of judicial interpretation that encourages judges to limit the exercise of their own power. It asserts that judges should hesitate to strike down laws unless they are obviously unconstitutional".    h/t Instapundit.

From reviews of Neily's "Terms of Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitution's Promise of Limited Government" at Amazon:

“Clark Neily’s elegant essay slays the idea that ‘judicial restraint’ is always a virtue. It often amounts to judicial abdication. Neily explains that judges must judge to defend the rights that government exists to secure.”
—George F. Will

“Through the use of compelling real-world cases and remarkably clear, accessible and accurate explanations of current law, Clark Neily exposes the legal charade by which, in the name of ‘restraint,’ judges have stacked the deck in favor of those who use laws and regulations to line their own pockets. Required reading for all who care about their liberties and the Constitution that is supposed to protect them.”
—Randy Barnett, Professor at Georgetown Law School


“Clark Neily weaves constitutional analysis with anecdotes in service of large principle. His basic principle is that a squishy policy of judicial deference disserves his clients, the public at large, and the critical role of judicial oversight in a democracy. He is right on all counts. A great read for lawyers and nonlawyers interested in the real-world consequences of judicial decision making.”
 —Richard Epstein, Professor at the New York University School of Law

Data breach at the White House? UPDATE: It's for real and Russian

Developing story, reported at Powerlineblog.

"We have yet to hear from the White House press office in response to our request for a comment on our reader’s report that a major network problem has hit the computers used by staff in the Executive Office of the President. Our source, however, updated us with the latest on the issue overnight. He believes it is expected that news of the problem (whatever it is) will soon break publicly, if not today. Describing the problem as a “major data loss,” he believes that repair is expected to take weeks.   From what he understands, this is a serious problem. He asserts: “We are potentially talking OMB, USTR, ONDCP, OPM, and the White House itself(!). Top-line executive deliberations. Gone. Stolen? No idea.”

An update: Limited acknowledgment.  Perhaps only "non-secure" areas were breached.
Major update at the Washington Post:  The White House acknowledges the event which was detected two weeks ago and traced to Russia.  An ally (Britain) alerted Washington to the problem in the "non-secure" part of the President's office network.   Further comment at Powerlineblog emphasizing that the entire network of reporters kept silent for two weeks and somehow it had to be a foreign ally to tell us what was happening under our own noses.

Cash for Trash

Don't get your pants in a knot about the attack of the killer landfills.  All the garbage ever generated in North America from day one to a hundred years in the future will fit in a hole less than three miles to a
side.  ( What if the U.S. put all its trash in one giant landfill?  Take the numbers and convert to cubic miles, top it up 10% for Canada and add a fudge factor for the first couple hundred start up years).

I wish I could live long enough to buy that landfill and turn it into gold, paper and fertilizer, steel and  fuel.  The technology is around to do this, it's just inconveniently expensive at the moment.  If you've ever watched a cream separator at work on a farm, you'll know what I mean.  Raw stuff goes in the top, and pure yummy cream and milk comes out the bottom spouts.

Cream on the left, skim on the right.
I used to have one of these.

How can you keep a straight face watching your neighbours dividing their little pile of debris into bottles and papers and light compostables and heavy compostables, stuff for the metal recycling depot and styrofoam to quarantine at a special corner of the regional dump.  To question this is to question their faith.   Maybe Christ didn't die on the cross to redeem them from sin but they sure as heck believe that paper goes in the paper box.

If you value your time at even the minimum wage and times it by the number of mostly wasted hours citizens spend with their garbage, you might get the idea that the money would be better spent learning how to mine junk.  Capital that should go into better, market-based landfill technology is replaced by hundreds of millions of hours from volunteer little "green" helpers with blue boxes.

Crazy.

Misfits for Mohammed

There will be more lone shooters creeping out of the slums of Mohammed.  Islam is an ideology willing to give status and licence to killers who tack the name of Allah to their predation.   Just be glad the Jihadi's flag-bearer, ISIS, doesn't have a seat in the UN.  Then Misfits for Mohammed will be replaced by Undercover Islamic Warriors.    ("Warriors" sounds better, doesn't it?  That's the whole idea).

At least we're not calling it road rage or political protest when Misfits for Mohammed kill people in Canada.  Thank you Stephen Harper for saying "Terrorism".

We know the response will be incremental like the response to Ebola, but the bad actor can  grow exponentially for a time.  A little more glory for ISIS and  home-grown crooks with Islamic names will quickly hoist the black flag to join the winning team, and will kill with "Allahu akbar" on their lips and a kaffiyeh on their shoulders.  (Add "loot and rape" to "murder" and you get the picture.)

Below excepted from "The Relgiion of Peace":

"The Quran contains at least 109 verses that call Muslims to war with nonbelievers for the sake of Islamic rule.  Some are quite graphic, with commands to chop off heads and fingers and kill infidels wherever they may be hiding.  Muslims who do not join the fight are called'hypocrites' and warned that Allah will send them to Hell if they do not join the slaughter.
Unlike nearly all of the Old Testament verses of violence, the verses of violence in the Quran are mostly open-ended, meaning that they are not restrained by the historical context of the surrounding text.  They are part of the eternal, unchanging word of Allah, and just as relevant or subjective as anything else in the Quran.  

Quran (48:29) - "Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. And those with him are hard (ruthless) against the disbelievers and merciful among themselves"  Islam is not about treating everyone equally.Quran (2:216) - "Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. But Allah knoweth, and ye know not."Quran (2:191-193) - "And kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out. And Al-Fitnah [disbelief] is worse than killing...but if they desist, then lo! Allah is forgiving and merciful.   And fight them until there is no more Fitnah [disbelief and worshipping of others along with Allah] and worship is for Allah alone.  But if they cease, let there be no transgression except against Az-Zalimun (the polytheists, and wrong-doers, etc.)"  

I'm inexpert but have read the Quran through once slowly and a second time skimming looking for parallels with the Old and New Testaments, which I've also read several times.

Drudge Juxtaposes "Fat Man Christie" with UK "Pound for Pound" Weight Loss Program.

Tongue in cheek.  The picture of the NJ Governor appears to go with the weight loss story.

Networks give up on US election: Crickets

A chart to warm the cockles:   ABC  CBS and NBC have stopped reporting on the midterms, a total turn-coat operation compared to 2006 when it looked like their beloved Democrats were making a comeback.  Convincing evidence this is turning into a surge election.

"According to an exhaustive study performed by Media Research Center analysts, between September 1 and October 20, the three major broadcast networks only bothered to mention the fact that there is a critical election coming up only 25 times. Of those mentions, only 16 of them were in the context of packaged report.
By contrast, in the same period in 2006, when Democrats were believed to be likely to take control of both the House and Senate, the three major networks mentioned the coming midterms 159 times with 91 of those mentions broadcast as part of detailed reports."

Surge Election in the US

2014 feels like a surge election.  The  Republicans don't deserve it but feeling sorts out a lot of "undecided" votes.  I think polls understate the trend.

It's not a trend to the right but a trend away from stress about government.  My money's on Romney because Americans want a break from worrying about things like Ebola, ISIS and Ferguson.  "A rest is as good as a change".

I want a robot surgeon

Microsurgery by a robot sounds like it will be better than an experienced guy with a knife and a degree. Proof of concept had a titanium thread follow a curved path through the cheek into the base of the brain  while a dummy patient was in an MRI machine. The destination was accurate within a couple millimetres and could have been used for epilepsy repair on a real patient, the kind of repair you can stand up and walk home from.  Cadavers are next and real patients in ten years.  That "thread" had a couple inside layers capable of steering the outer shell and giving a pathway to deliver service.  Bring it on, but don't skip the practice stage.
Story at Science Daily News.

Russia's budget gets fracked hard

Fracking and a drop in oil demand will teach Russia manners.  Their economy has to have oil above $104/barrel.  Expect a little more cooperation with Europe and the Ukraine soon.  The little chart spells curtains for adventurism.  As a bonus, The American Interest shows the breakeven oil price for some trouble-maker countries that were blessed with oil and used the money to enrich the big shots and make the populace dependent on government redistribution.  The source article has detail.  Energy abundance bugs tyrants.

Russian deficit tied to price of oil.

Note: The red graph exaggerates the vertical scale to create drama but the message is important.

Hysteria in the Schools

Political correctness is the ancient hysteria that burnt witches and staked vampires.    A little kid in Alabama was used as a scapegoat offering by school officials who wanted to abjure Satan and all his works and bring back goodness to their community.   They got their holiness back after apprehending the five year kid who said "pew pew" with a crayon gun.    She was made to recant, sign a confession she didn't understand and evicted from the fellowship.  I don't see a difference between Iron Age hysteria and this magical behaviour to stave off harm.

It's as old as the hills.  They are still digging up ancient corpses in Europe with stakes through the heart, stakes put there by a PC community of believers who found a ritual to keep their village safe from vampires.

A Mobile, Ala., mom says school officials forced her daughter to sign a contract promising not to commit suicide or harm others after the kindergartner "drew something that resembled a gun," then pointed a crayon at another kid and said "pew, pew!" 5-year-old Elizabeth was sent home after school officials made her take a questionnaire .. evaluating her for suicidal thoughts, then had her sign the safety contract promising to contact an adult if she was thinking of suicide or homicide. This all happened while her mom waited in the lobby to pick her up.   According to her mom, Elizabeth didn't know most of the words on the contract she signed. "Suicide," in particular, was a new one for her. "Mommy, daddy, what is suicide?" Elizabeth's mother says she asked.

Vinyl LP's and newspapers - Legacy Media

About 5% of our viewing goes to papers and magazines but advertisers still drop 20% of their bucks on them.  They will soon wise up that maybe four times too much goes into hard copy updating only once a day or once a month, says former Washington Post chief.   Subscribing to a magazine will be a novelty purchase, a legacy quirk like limited edition vinyl LP's.

Source

"Extra Extra Read All About It" is a ding on your twitter inbox, not a lad on the streets with arms full of paper.

This is good news.  More information is reaching you before it's mascaraed and  and corseted by the spinmeisters.  Papers need to move on to where there former customers are now congregating.

As Peter Drucker wrote, the first task of a business is to create a customer and the second is to keep him.  You go where he goes, and serve him well.

Added:  Getting unfiltered information won't make us smarter but it will improve the marketplace as more people bid for access to power.

The Highest Bidders Control The State

The chart shows who has the money.
The wealthy co-opt the political class.
The political class transfers payments to the voting class.
That's why socialism appeals to the very rich and the poor
if every adult gets a vote.

Chart and post title from Zero Hedge


 (They call it, "Self Serving Elites" and argue that any town, province or country run by such is the poorer for it.)

Trapped in a Coma.

 Scientists found some wide awake people in a brain survey of vegetative state patients.  32 "brain dead" people and some normal ones were asked to pretend they were playing tennis.  An EEG was taken. Graphics were added to show traffic between parts of the brain.  Some of the "vegetables" showed the same activity as normal people.  The image is stunning although the aura is a digital FX.

Vegetable on left, normal on right, miracle in the middle
after being told to pretend to play tennis.

Comet almost crashes Mars Sunday October 19th.

An Oort cloud comet, "Siding Spring"is missing Mars by a whisker on Sunday, by a mere 87,000 miles.  The planet will get a small dusting of carbon compounds and water vapour.  A little closer and it could have dumped enough stuff to restart a robust atmosphere..  Mars orbiters plan to duck and cover on the other side of the planet about an hour and a half after the nucleus passes to hide from the debris trail. Meanwhile both orbiting sun observatories and other devices will scoop data.
Science Daily News.

Artist's Imp;ression

A Flat Tax Is Progressive

"Any flat tax calibrated to earnings from labor and capital will necessarily redistribute income to the less well off, because an individual’s share from standard public services, such as access to public highways, does not increase proportionate to his income."

   Jay Epstein at Hoover.org 

 The rest of the article is pretty good.  A head tax is regressive because the same charge to rich and poor takes more of the poor's wealth away.  A flat tax targets those who are better off.  And even a fair tax can be corrupted by politicians if they take too much cream off the milk.  At least it reduces perverse incentives and any increase in tax will come out of the pols pockets too.

Remember, all those loopholes in tax law are a feature, not a bug, giving lawmakers the power to distribute favours to lobbies.