Slowed-down crickets sound like human choir: Eery and beautiful. UPDATE

The first track is crickets only but slowed way down.  In the background you can hear regular cricket chirps which were dubbed.  The second track is crickets plus an ad lib opera singer.  Two people say their cats went a little crazy and one person thought they were hearing the Vienna Boys Choir.  h/t holykaw site.




NPR has an interview with the Sioux opera singer that includes her voice improvising together with the crickets beginning about 2:15 in the recording. Click on "Listen".

From Bonnie Joe Hunt's interview: "I kept thinking, ‘Oh, I almost can understand them. It’s a nice, mellow tone. And they never went off pitch until one of the interludes, where they went real crazy and they got back on again to where they were".  And from the comments, two people say their cats went a little crazy and at another site, one person thought they were hearing the Vienna Boys Choir.

And one man questions the veracity. Is this reproducible?  Good question.

UPDATE:  I'm going to call bullshit on myself.  My suspicions peaked as I listened to the bass section join the choir.

‘When we go to the White House, we talk to people we wouldn’t hire.” Reported at Gateway Pundit.

Regent: a person appointed to administer a country
because the monarch is a minor
or is absent or incapacitated.

"One CEO complained to Alter that“when we go to the White House, we talk to people we wouldn't hire.”  "Business leaders “felt patronized and offended by Valerie,” Summers told Woodward, largely due to her tendency to insist that she spoke for the president, and an approach to problem-solving that involved little more than scheduling multiple lunch meetings".  Alter himself likened Jarrett’s role in the White House to “the CEO putting his sister in charge of marketing.”

When the Obama presidency is written up properly, there will be surprises about Ms Valerie Jarrett, the President Regent.

Remember this chart?

If Seattle doesn't want Boeing, we do.

Councillor-elect Sawant tells Boeing machinists to take over the plant if they don't get their way.  It's not far up I-5 from Seattle to BC.  Send some of those miserable jobs to Canada so we can suffer instead of them.

Seattle City Councilmember-elect Kshama Sawant told Boeing machinists her idea of a radical option, should their jobs be moved out of state.  “The workers should take over the factories, and shut down Boeing’s profit-making machine,” Sawant announced to a cheering crowd of union supporters in Seattle’s Westlake Park Monday night. …   On Monday night, she spoke to supporters of Boeing Machinists, six days after they rejected a contract guaranteeing jobs in Everett building the new 777X airliner for eight years, in exchange for new workers giving up their guaranteed company pensions.    (Kiro TV report, h/t Hot Air)

And this bonus wisdom from Sawant:

“We can re-tool the machines to produce mass transit like buses, instead of destructive, you know, war machines,” she told KIRO 7.

Boeing is already in Canada with 1600 employees in Winnipeg.  And this quirky story: Years back, a friend of mine stopped at an all night coffee shop for truckers near Winnipeg. The place was full of dwarfs. What's up, he asked. They worked inside jet wings running wiring and so on because they didn't have to crouch.

Canadian senators naughty but not world class.

Naughty but not world class.

Canadian senators looking to stretch a dollar with a spot of crookery and flipping the bird at the tax man seem mannerly and mild compared to the US.  Selling votes and access for sex and money was business as usual in the fifties as disgraced Bobby Baker, now 85, documents.  A juicy out-take of anecdotes is found here from Politico and the full 200 page open source interview is also published.  Blow jobs, $200,000 to switch a vote, unembarrassed pay-to-play, and so on, with names great and small listed.  Caution: No PC language is employed.

'Johnson jumped up and he said, ‘Mr. Baker, they tell me you’re the smartest son of a bitch over there.’ I said, ‘Well, whoever told you that lied.’ I said, ‘I know all of the staff on our side. I know who the drunks are. And I know whose word is good.’ He said, ‘You’re the man I want to know.’'  This dates from 1948 when he was a skinny 20 year old.  He went on to be champion vote swayer and counter for the Dems until 1964.

Another sample from page 20:

“When Senator Kerr died, he had two million in cash in his safe.  He had Neil Curry take $100,000 of his money and give it to Congressman Kirwan to let his water bill go through.  And he gave Jennings Randolph $100,000.  That is why Jennings cast that vote.  So he knew how to buy votes.  But I loved him.  Let me tell you, if he was not dead, I  would never be talking to you.”

Canada, just clean things up in the senate. Stop slavering at the latest titillation on the hill, like rabid dogs that need a shot.  If the moral outrage is substantive, there will be less barking and more fixing.

Footnote:  The USA is hardly in the running for corruptocracy.  A Russian recently said she was surprised that in America, the "President doesn’t automatically become the richest person in the country".
Footnote:  A reader commented that brown envelopes are known to have changed hands in private over public tenders in Queens Park and Ottawa.
Footnote:  I'm reading the 200 page interview with Baker and find that while the scuttlebutt is truly there, he has kind and respectful words for many he met.

Company's tale of health care chaos points to 2016 sweep by an unreformed Republican party.

November 2016. Democrats prepare to rebuild.

A tsunami shockwave is hitting American homes and companies. The buggered up mandatory ACA is like the Bay of Pigs or Kent State, and will be a generational memory for American voters.  People are going to be really upset. Sadly this will assure a sweep for an unreformed Republican and largely RINO administration in 2016.

One anecdote isn't data but this report from a California company describes bewilderment and anger that won't be patched by a fireside chat from President Obama.   Health-care-on-the-rocks is not a cocktail, it's a cock-up.

"None can opt out without penalty, and the rates are double or triple, depending upon the plan. ... Our 750k for 250 employees is going to $2 million per year for 600 employees. Our employees share of the premium goes from $7/week for the cheapest plan to $30/week … The cheapest plan now has a deductible of $6350! Before it was $150. …Here is the craziest part. Employees who qualify for mediCAL (the California version of Medicare), which is most of my employees, will automatically be enrolled in the Federal SNAP program. They cannot opt out. They cannot decline. They will be automatically enrolled in the Federal food stamp program based upon their level of Obamacare qualification. Remember, these people work full time, living in a small town in California. They are not seeking assistance. It all seems like a joke". Reported from comments at Zero Hedge.

Added: The Republicans would be a better choice, but if they have to fight hard to win those seats, better policies will prevail.

Robin's nest

I've set a bait for Spring
to come again.
Last week I climbed a ladder to trim the stringy bits from this robin's nest
and am hoping for the best.
November 20 2013   -2C

Archie Bunker for Mayor

"I will be Good"

Obama got in twice.  Ford may do the same.  Voters imagine some ideal guy in their head and hope the candidate on the stump will fit the hat.  At least no one thinks Robert Ford is god like!   Democracy is always somewhat at the pleasure of the crowd.

   

I love my gal and have these ridiculous thoughts that she’s perfect, she’s so beautiful, and so on. Ain't logical but it creates a foyer of collaboration and companionship.

Politicians may deserve adulation less than our spouses, but in bad times, crowds offer this gift of power 

to a candidate.  There’s no need for such excess when we have good government.  When insiders conspire to stifle the common man’s common sense in city hall and legislatures,  expect the startling elevation of outsiders with mass followings.  It’s a feature not a bug and doesn't depend on the greatness of the candidate. It rises from the unrecognized judgements of the voters.  A party that doesn't reflect those judgements has so many planks missing from its platform that no one can safely stand there.

A crowd is wrong as often as an individual but must be heard.

And that is why you can run for councilor of Don Valley East or vie for mayor of Toronto. And but for a few basic qualifications, none may deny you.

Ford Nation

The Argos crowd went wild chanting "Rob Ford  Rob Ford".  The team owners asked the police to escort him out and council is busy chopping him down to their size, but a flawed champion is better than none at all. He's giving a voice to the crowd who've had it up to here.  Had it up to here with rulers that sniff at vulgar beliefs held widely by the Canadian electorate.  Beliefs like don't throw good money after bad, honour the marriage and families of normal couples, test kids to see how they are doing in school and see they know the time tables, have consequences for bad behaviour, keep out of debt as much as possible, respect Christian faith, lay off the non-stop promotion of homosexuality, let people "keep their plan",  let volunteer groups decide who can join, enforce the law on reserves same as off the reserves, skip most of the minority quotas, quit the handouts to artsy insider groups and big business, don't get your panties in a knot every time you see a rifle and a deer on the roof rack, expect immigrants to fit in and use one of the founding languages,  use a little common sense when a law seems heavy-handed,  leave room for people who want to home school or charter school their kids, stuff like that.

This Sun News report from the Argos game:

If the mayor is supposed to be down and out, the crowds of people who ran across him Sunday did not receive the memo. They can strip him of his power at city council but that clearly did not affect his popularity among the fans at Sunday's Argos game.
With the kind of pandemonium surrounding the mayor as he entered and exited the stadium, you would think the Boatmen had pulled out the win against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. But what should have been a sombre exit for fans, ended up being a raucous parade for an embattled, world-famous politician.
"Rob Ford, Rob Ford, Rob Ford," chanted the mob which -- with the help of Rogers Centre security and Toronto Police -- ushered the mayor out into his famous Black Escalade.
The atmosphere around the mayor was rabid. In fact, it was a frenzy.
In 22 years of covering the biggest stars who come to Toronto, I have never seen any other human receive this kind of adulation and spirited veneration.
Pure adulation. Adoration. Lionization.
Sorry anti-Ford Nation, or the 42 other members of city council and those lining up to run for mayor, but that's what happened.
If it changes, I will let you know.

"Flawed" may be too sweet a word for his character.  Some is downright ugly.   But I like him and trust him more than the Minnan-Wongs who think they are analyzing the mayor's civic policy by saying, "He used the p word in a very derogatory way".

Canadian Cincinnatus points to the Mayor's real achievements:

Why would I rate Ford as good? Forget about his personal life for a moment and look only at his public record: he eliminated the car tax, eliminated the plastic bag tax, he balanced the budget, he privatized half of Toronto’s garbage collection, he took many steps to clean up the corruption at Metro Housing caused by Miller’s cronies, and he browbeat a Scarborough Subway extension out of the subway-hating Ontario Liberals. Which other mayor can match this record?

More from the Sun's amazing story of Ford at the football game:

Up at the Rogers Centre in a public lot, Ford paid the parking machine and then headed into the game. Walking in with him is what it must have been like for Elvis and the Beatles. I swear to God. It was insane.
He could not get in the door and once he did, he posed for hundreds of more pictures and signed dozens of autographs. People were actually telling him to not change.
"I love Rob Ford," Paul Reid said. "He is one of us."
"He's human and made some mistakes," added Tom Miras. "We have all done that.""I would vote for him again for sure," Andy Michalik said.

Think about it.
You who are outraged in front of microphones, don't you sometimes wonder if there are planks or even timbers missing from your platform?

The Ultimate Stink Pink - UPDATES

Stink pinks are rhyming riddles.  The clue doesn't need to rhyme but the answer does.  Trickier is a rhyming clue with a rhyming answer.    For forty years I've been looking for the ultimate Stink Pink where the clue is a homonym and the answer is a homonym.
With my son, Damien's help, we have two near perfect SP's to offer the world.

                                                                          Tight Tights?    

                                                                                    Close Clothes.

Possibly NSFW:

Ho's hose = Booty bootie.

A jumper

Jumper jumper?

Hare hair.

Not making the cut:
Panel panel = Board board.
The meanings are different but the derivation the same.

Technically a pass but somehow unsatisfying:
Well well?
Whole hole.

UPDATE March 2015:
First a pair whose connection is a bit obscure but whose rhyme is sweet:
"Rain Reign"  would be a "Grade-A grey day".
And (drum roll), I woke from a dream this week with a perfect stink pink:
To "sight a site" is to "spot a spot" and to "see a scene".
(My son gave came up with the third part..)
UPDATE May 2015
Speaking of the top lion:  Main Mane or Pride Pride.

UPDATE 2019   Mod' Maud would be a chic Chick.

Contributions welcome.  I'll add them to the post.

UPDATE 2020

Hart heart   .....  Dear Deer.

Diet Diet   ......    Meat meet.   (The Diet of Worms ordered Martin Luther to recant.)

Obama looks like Teflon Jean

Obama looks like Teflon Jean, nothing sticks to him.  "Liar" bounces off.  "Sir, have you no shame?" will sound simply quaint.  "The Chicago Way" is just 'sour grapes' from losers.  At least Chretien had competence and was capable of friendship.

I've puzzled for months how none of the outrage directed at bad politicians seems to stick.  The charges aren't even acknowledged.   I think it's because liars aren't ashamed when principles "depend on circumstances".

Don't waste your breath on another clever way to point the finger.  Someone like Obama verifies his rightness by checking with his inner circle.  If they tell him he is like a god, he has no reason to question his opinions.  Let the heathen rage, or blog, he can ignore them.  To change a man whose beliefs are all situational, you have to change his situation and that means his innermost circle.

Go Alinsky and make it personal. (Rule 12)
Be ungentlemanly.

Plan A is sometimes not enough.

Blue is Green

Conservatism is the natural home for conservation and everything green.  Losing the green brand to the left is inexcusable.  It's time to turn it Blue.

A good environmentalist is by definition a good conservative.   "Conserve: from Old French conserver (9c.), from Latin conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard," from com-, intensive prefix (see com-), + servare "keep watch, maintain"

For conservative christians, environmental responsibility is built into the first page of the first book of the bible.

God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”  Gen 1:28

This is not a vision of a stripped and poisoned landscape but of good government and a garden. The  task of government  ("rule") includes the care of plants and birds and fish and not just pleasing the taxpayers.  This a two-way street for the benefit of the creatures. (Rom 8:18-22).   It starts in a garden-gone-wrong and ends in a beautiful city.   The left gets excited about heading in the opposite direction,  trying to shrink cities-gone-wrong and return the world to a state of nature, a free-for-all struggle for survival.  Their pink goggles make the state of nature seem like heaven on earth but the elusive environmental equilibrium is simply what you get when every living creature is in open competition with everything else.

Nobel peace prize for Xi JinPing. The world needs a freer, prosperous China.

President Xi (right) shaking hands with Premier Li

Xi has already done more for world peace than Obama.  The Third Plenary which Xi JinPing oversaw will allow millions more to climb out of poverty, take some baby steps towards the rule of law, make rural living less of a prison sentence, and fight less against human nature which always wants to form families and have children.

A prosperous and relatively free China is what the world needs most for peace in our time.  Everywhere at all times, dictatorships find enemies abroad when there is unrest at home.  China is clearly developing a world class military through diligence at home supplemented by theft from abroad.  Keep it for parades.  Instead of 1.5 million soldiers, give me 150 million more well-heeled Chinese consumers.   Buying and selling create win-win networks while wars are a zero sum game.

Reforms will allow market pricing for utilities and energy.  The courts will be separated a little more from the communist party.  More country people will get permission to move to cities and have access to social services and the right to buy property when they get there.  Couples can have two children if one spouse came from a single child home.  Remember this is China where "Neighbourhood Watch" used to mean the Period Police who spied on the menstrual cycle of every woman.  The practice of sending people to labour camps without a trial is being suspended.  More decisions can be made at the municipal level without government approval.  Some competition will be allowed against state monopolies.  This is big, comparable to the revolutionary changes introduced by Deng XiaoPing of whom it has been written:

"Deng Xiaoping was a dictator, right? After all, he was the Communist Party boss of China from 1978 to 1992. He was not elected. He ruled through fear. He approved the massacre of protesters at Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989. But he also led China in the direction of a market economy that raised the standard of living and the degree of personal freedoms for more people in a shorter period of time than perhaps ever before in recorded economic history. For that achievement, one could arguably rate Deng as one of the greatest men of the 20th century, on par with Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt".     (Stratfor)

What's a third plenary:  It's a meeting of a governing body as a whole in the third year of its rule.  The catholic church had one in Baltimore.   It's a big deal in China because it's the year the political bosses feel secure enough to put out their program, not like in Canada where we expect a throne speech at the beginning of every legislative session.

Added:  A cautionary note from Steen Jakobsen of the Saxo Bank: "China's plenum real objective is overlooked: Policy uniformity - which never comes with real reforms and progress. China will not change fundamentally, but consolidate its Communist model".

Press Mocks Gettysburg Address

11/24/1863

The day after Lincoln's speech, a speech since learned by heart by thousands, the Patriot & Union devoted all of one (derisive) paragraph to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address: "We pass over the silly remarks of the President. For the credit of the nation we are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them, and that they shall be no more repeated or thought of.

“If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.”
― Mark Twain

Obama's skill set: Making pronouncements about stuff.

Mary Katherine Hamm at Hot Air wields a scalpel well, calling Obama's distinguishing mark "Ignorant Omniscience":

"He knows everything. And yet he seems to know nothing. He’s passionate about the details of domestic policy but wasn’t privy to the details of his own legacy law. He’s an academic with a command of every issue at once but seemingly only finds out what his administration is doing in news reports. He’s so brilliant every normal endeavor he’s tried has bored him, but he couldn’t bother to entertain himself with more than one monthly meeting on the make-or-break program of his presidency.

The animating feature of Obama’s leadership style is simply making pronouncements. Making them about things he knows, things he knows not, and waiting for everyone and everything to fall in line. And, when things don’t magically come together, he pronounces his disappointment and anger".

It's worth reading the original with documentation.

"Enough to eat at home". Ford flutters agony aunts.

Though appalled by Ford's bad behaviour,  I prefer a plain-spoken man to the pussy-footing agony aunt brigades.  Call me part of Ford Nation.  The other nation writes p...y and points fingers.

Though Rob Ford is heading for the exits,  Toronto council looks lawless, trying to undo the last mayoral election.  They'll regret shrinking the mayor's office for short term advantage. The same thing just happened in Annapolis MD.  A Republican mayor was elected for the first time in ages and, within two days, a pure laine Democratic council moved to strip the mayor's office of its power.

HR gets hundreds of applications for mid-level jobs but there is always room at the top.  The leader is tasked with breaking trail,  coordinating talents, directing attention to goals that motivate and articulating those goals well,  helping the group sustain and renew itself.  These skills are hard come by and not for the p...y-mouthed.

"He used the P-word in a very derogatory way," Minnan-Wong said.

HIRE CHARACTER TEACH SKILLS is the best business advice I ever received.  This applies to choosing mayors.  Part of Rob Ford's character is diamond and for that he is hated.  Part is straw and with that he is beaten.

Proof you're smarter than you think you are: Subconscious measured in action.

Sanguinetti presented black silhouettes to his subjects and in the white space of some of the images, he hid common objects.    The subjects didn't notice but their brains did.  About 400 milliseconds after the picture displayed, the "N400" negative wave peaked when there was a meaningful object hidden in the picture.  

Your intuition isn't always right but it has a bigger database to work with than the official memory.

"A doctoral candidate in the UA's Department of Psychology in the College of Science, Sanguinetti showed study participants a series of black silhouettes, some of which contained meaningful, real-world objects hidden in the white spaces on the outsides. Saguinetti worked with his adviser Mary Peterson, a professor of psychology and director of the UA's Cognitive Science Program, and with John Allen, a UA Distinguished Professor of psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience, to monitor subjects' brainwaves with an electroencephalogram, or EEG, while they viewed the objects.
"We were asking the question of whether the brain was processing the meaning of the objects that are on the outside of these silhouettes," Sanguinetti said. "The specific question was, 'Does the brain process those hidden shapes to the level of meaning, even when the subject doesn't consciously see them?"The answer, Sanguinetti's data indicates, is yes." (Medicalxpress.com)

h/t Instapundit. 

Two turkeys and two eagles: Second Term Polling Points to Republican Victory in 2014.

The two eagles are Reagan and Clinton.
The two second term turkeys are GW Bush and Obama.
View the chart and see the future.

h/t Powerlineblog

Kathy Shaidle: I want Ford to run again. Landslide win will explode socialist heads.

"Like so many Torontonians, I dearly hope Rob Ford gets help for the addictions and dependencies that will kill him if left untreated much longer.
My reasons are selfish:
I want him to run again next year and get re-elected in an even bigger landslide than the one before.
I love the sound of hundreds of socialist heads exploding at dusk as the returns come in.
It will sound like… victory".  (Kathy Shaidle)

The media story\
you probably saw.

Remembrance Day, the media reported that one veteran made a public point of not shaking Rob Ford's hand as in this National Post headline:  Toronto Mayor Rob Ford booed at Remembrance Day ceremony, veteran calls him ‘a druggie’  

For contrast and probably for the truth, read eyewitness "Canadian Cincinnatus"'s report:

His speech was well received  (emphasis added) by those in the crowd, but a really interesting thing happened after he laid his wreath. The way things were set up, the main dignitaries sat to the left of the Cenotaph, and the old war veterans sat directly to the right (these would be the people this ceremony honours).  ......  After Ford had laid his wreath, and was about to walk past the veterans, they waved him over. When he got there, many of them wanted to shake his hand. Some of them wanted to have their picture taken with him.    He was the only dignitary the assembled veterans showed any interest in. All the others – Karen Stintz, Denzil Minnan-Wong and an angry-looking Thomas Mulcair - elicited no reaction at all when they walked past the old soldiers.

Collectivization of health care USA. Remember what collectivization did for the Ukraine.

Millions died in the Ukraine when government made it illegal for people to grow their own food and forced them into collective farms without checking to see if collectives actually worked and would feed people. The Obamacare train wreck isn't in the same league for hardship but it's the same principle.

Ukraine 1932. Same principle but a  richer country.

"In North Dakota, WDAY-TV reported that only 30 people have signed up for coverage on the new federally run exchange. But some 35,000 people will lose their existing policies". (Chicago Tribune editorial). 

"Thanks to rules and regulations built into the law, millions of Americans have already had their existing individual-market insurance cancelled, and estimates say that millions more cancellations are on the way. The end result could be that many people—thousands, perhaps even millions—end up with their current private insurance plans terminated due to the law, but no way to sign up for new coverage".  (Reason)

Living Wage Baloney

The customer, not the the worker decides what a job is worth.  No minimum wage law will ever change that.  If you won't pay, it won't be made or done. Accounting 101 for hamburgers goes like this:  You fork out five bucks for a fast food burger with extra onions. Now take away a quarter for the boss, two bucks for ingredients, another buck for rent and stuff. That leaves $1.75 to pay people to make  two four ounce patties on a bun with pickle and secret sauce. Deduct another  thirty five cents for government surcharges (WCB EI CPP) and there you have it. The customer says the workers can be paid $1.40 per hamburger.  If the boss can't negotiate the gap between what you'll pay for a fast food hamburger and what John and Jane will work for,  there's a big fat zero. No job and no business. It's not rocket science.

Majority in favour of receiving
other people's money.

The worth of a human being is never the issue.  What customers will pay for the stuff they want is the issue.

ADDED: This may sound heartless.  I'm a small employer and try to shield staff from business ups and downs.  We don't hire unless we can offer a pretty much full time job, at least for a few months. I've never paid the minimum wage, always more. We avoid layoffs until we can find nothing to build or tidy up for the guys.  But the bottom line is still the same: The customers decide what the work is worth.

I want to pay more for a hamburger.