Funny snack sign at the bowling alley: Socks $2.00 Hot chocolate $2.00

A juicy sock well-stewed



       might have helped Charlie Chaplin with his shoe.
(Scene from "The Gold Rush" available free on line).

Mobbing Ivanka: Four reasons elections have gone feral.

Designers brag they will never dress her.
Others want us to know they will shun her line of designer clothes.
Artists posture that she must take their paintings off her apartment wall right this minute.
She's flying coach and a guy boasts on twitter that his husband is going to harass Ivanka because she's on the same flight.  "Your father is ruining this country" "Why are you on this flight, you should be flying private".
She wasn't on her Dad's ticket, for heaven's sake, and Donald isn't even president yet!

I see four reasons for this uncivil meltdown:

1.   Government has been plus-sized and embiggened until it's such a large part of the economy and our personal lives that to win an election has more consequence than in years past.
2.   The Politics of Identity is the antithesis of a republic.   The latter is a rule of law under which all citizens have equal standing.  The former I despise, but it prevails.
3.    The speed of news has picked up.  The uncivil can gang up on others in minutes when formerly they'd hear a snippet of news long after the opportunity to brag in front of cameras had passed.
4.    Civility is undervalued and under-taught.   What sets us above beasts if not manners?

Is Donald Trump Your President?

Flow chart points out the obvious but somehow undetected fact:

Is Socialism Caused by Climate? Voting Democrat and Global Warming

Interesting maps to compare:  One shows where people have experienced the most record high temperatures.  These people are likely to believe in Global Warming as unassailable fact.   The second map shows the Democrats' "Archipelago" where the most socialist voters are found.  Kind of similar.

Darker grey is where the most people believe most in Global Warming.  Red dots are where the most record high temperatures have been recorded. (Science Daily News)

The Clinton Archipelago describing the Clinton vote in 2016.

Bigger brains go with shorter guts, say Scientists

Brain is expensive tissue to maintain and hogs oxygen.  This is paid for with a trade-off  in smarter food harvesting which in turn means you can get by with less gut to digest the high value food you eat.   Science Daily News gives the example of some large brain Mormyrid fish (3% of body mass) compared to other Mormyrid fish with smaller brains.  (For comparison, human brains run 2.0 to 2.5% body mass.)  The same connection was found in a study of 30 species of frog and toad.

Illustration from the linked article

Bitter Clingers at the White House (Cartoons)

h/t Powerlineblog



h/t powerlineblog

The Media Hating on Donald will put them under the same shower of gold that funded Jill Stein

The media will be happy whinging about The Donald for the next 8 years.  Paycheques will be covered and reporters will feel needed.
When Jill Stein can pick up way more cash trying to dump Donald that she ever saw sight of for herself, you know it will be good.

Update from NY Times:

"Mr. Carter seized the moment with a red home page banner calling Vanity Fair “The Magazine Donald Trump Doesn’t Want You to Read” and imploring visitors, “Subscribe Now!”
Lo and behold, subscriptions spiked a hundredfold over their daily average, the magazine said, bringing Vanity Fair’s parent company, Condé Nast, the biggest number of new daily sign-ups in its 116-year history. (The tally had hit 42,000 by Sunday.)
in the weeks since the election, magazines like The New Yorker, The Atlantic and Vanity Fair; newspapers including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post; and nonprofits like NPR and ProPublica have been reporting big boosts in subscription rates or donations."

"Bug Bounty": Markets will protect us from hackers.

The US Army is eliminating the middle man and offering cash rewards direct to successful hackers.  "Cheaper and usually generates better results".  This could be applied to digital voting too.  It makes sense because generating useful data is a big investment while stolen data sells for pennies on the dollar.

  From Strategy Page:

"The American Army has recently launched the “Hack the Army” campaign. This is a bug bounty program in which the Army will offer cash rewards to hackers who find vulnerabilities in some selected systems and websites. This “Hack the Army” is a direct successor of previous "Hack the Pentagon" program launched earlier this year with the support from HackerOne, an organization dedicated to making the Internet a safer place for users. The program has brought many surprising discoveries when it comes to government websites. It was even commented by U.S. Defense Secretary who emphasized that this way is cheaper than the use of traditional penetration tests and tiger teams (which require a lot of expensive contractors). Moreover offering bug bounties, as many commercial software firms have discovered, is a lot cheaper and usually generates better results. As a result many even some of the biggest software companies, like Google, Microsoft or Facebook are using “bug bounty” programs because of these advantages." 

Media Ignoring Major Trump Statement On Trade

The Donald tweeted, of course.  The press weren't called in to filter the news.   In Canadian terms, this is Justin Trudeau saying we will abolish interprovincial trade barriers, halve the corporate tax rate but if you leave Canada after we get off your back, we'll tax the heck out of anything you sell back.

Here's the statement in full, extracted from six consecutive tweets this morning:

"The U.S. is going to substantially reduce taxes and regulations on businesses, but any business that leaves our country for another country, fires its employees, builds a new factory or plant in the other country, and then thinks it will sell is product back into the U.S. without retribution or consequence, is WRONG!  There will be a tax on our soon-to-be-strong border of 35% for these companies wanting to sell their product, cars, A.C. units, etc., back across the border. This tax will make leaving financially difficult, but these companies are able to move between all 50 states, with no tax or tariff being charged. Please be forewarned prior to making a very expensive mistake!  THE UNITED STATES IS OPEN FOR BUSINESS."

Source: https://mobile.twitter.com/realdonaldtrump?lang=en  December 4th 2016.
This will surely be misrepresented.  Trump says the first move is the government's move, to reduce tax and regulation.  The companies will face punitive tax only if they reject freer trade at home and only if their foreign plants target the U.S. for sales.

The statement is rough-and-ready but not hard to parse.
The culture in which CEO's make choices has been altered as well.

FORD Robot taxis in sixty months

Ford is going head to head with Uber and Lyft, Bloomberg reports.

"The carmaker has promised to put 100,000 robot taxis -- without steering wheel, gas or brake pedals -- on the road in five years."

Your beefs about turn lanes, signals,  crazy men, women and kids behind the wheel, about weaving vehicles, tailgaters and honkers, will trend to irrelevant.  The interface between safe robot vehicles and dangerous people ones will be the cutting edge.  Persuading men in particular to let go of the steering wheel, rethinking everything you ever knew about insurance, and the elimination of driver licences as a rite of passage are  almost upon us.  A car becomes a leisure space and communication hub, if you bother to own one.

The rate of change of the rate of change is going up.

On Trump: "When the officer class fails, the warrant officers and sergeants have to take over"

Your time will be rewarded reading Barrel Strength's two views:  That of his eloquent officer class friend who is dismayed that Trump has advanced and his own eloquent riposte.

Ethnic map of USA

The largest group is "other" since the Daily Mail figures add up to about 240 out of 317 million Americans.  Some 20 million now consider themselves simply "American", many of these formerly of "English" extraction.   Heritage in order of size by millions:
German (49)   Afro-American (41)    Irish (35)      Mexican (32)     English (26)   "American" (20)    Hispanic/Spanish (18)     Polish (10)     French (9)

The map is coloured by "most named" heritage for every county in the U.S.  It's astonishing how Germans, who never had a New World colony, are geographically represented the most.  This doesn't mean in the majority in each county, just the most common.  Also noteworthy are Black Americans in two northern cities and a band across the south.

People are surprised? "Romney for Secretary of State"

Didn't something like this happen once before in recorded history?  Obama picked Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State.

See what I mean about horses?

Harper Worse Than Trump? US Civil Service Faces Pruning By The MRHIBBX Donald

MRHIBBX = Mysognist Racist Hater Islamophobe Bully Bigot Xenophobe.
Trump's people have a plan for the US Civil Service.  As the Washington Post say, "They won't like it".

“Hiring freezes, an end to automatic raises, a green light to fire poor performers, a ban on union business on the government’s dime and less generous pensions — these are the contours of the blueprint emerging under Republican control of Washington in January.”

Compare The National Post 2014:

Canada’s Conservative government has wiped nearly 37,000 people off the federal payroll and reduced key services for Canada’s veterans and the unemployed and budgets for food safety in the “rush” to pay for its promised tax cuts, according to a new report.

And, "Is Harper The Worst Prime Minister In Canadian History". (National Observor)

Canadian Morals Hit Hard As R.O.I. On Sex Goes Down

The return on investment of sex for reproduction is going down. Although I don’t care for homoerotic pandering, LGBT is economically viable these days. So is serial monogamy without children. So is the possibility that a pair bond for seniors will be different from the one that raised the kids. Marriage norms were embedded in a culture when people died by fifty. Marriage hasn’t been tested much from there to a hundred.   The Canada I grew up in won't be there for my grandchildren.  It won't even make sense to them.

We have fewer kids. Government policy offering a Baby Bonus will never turn that around. The gains (and joy) of having kids are real but a much smaller dose of parenthood can bring it on.  Since a child born is pretty much a child that reaches adulthood, way fewer births will produce the same number of viable adults. Since the economics of industry and nation states mean that individuals can support themselves with a job outside the family and tribe, and they can count on pension income and medical care without their kids when they age, they don’t need to reproduce to survive personally.

Reproductive pairing brings childbirth pain and includes two decades of expensive, vulnerable, tied-down safe-space to raise a crop of youngsters.. This was once the only way to survive. Now it’s becoming optional. It was also the only way for the tribe to survive which meant parents controlled who paired with whom. Now individuals generally decide and romance is factored in too. 

Such pairing and need of safe space has mandated marriage and cultural institutions that protect it and the offspring. That isn’t so today for many Canadians. Although marriage often works well into the grey and wrinkled years, it was designed for teens who could expect to put in a couple dozen years “being fruitful and multiplying” before dropping dead.

The Canadian census will have startling findings in years to come.  

The Left Hijacked The Presidency: Of Course They Are Crying When Trump Inherits An Imperial One.

Americans have gotten an Imperial Presidency.  It's a presidency that can rule with a pen and a phone and elevates the man in the office to god-like eminence, distributing the nation's treasure and showered with it himself.  It's no wonder people are crying that Trump is president-elect, that they are running to safe spaces with Play-Doh and warm puppies and that others are cursing, waving Mexican flags, and rioting in the streets.  They are losing control of their hi-jacked presidency.

I think it comes down to this: The President has too much power.   An election shouldn't cause a meltdown in peoples' lives.   The President is the chief executive officer of the United States.  The CEO has duty with discretion to carry out the mandate of congress and none other (except briefly in times of emergency).  This "I have a pen and I have a phone" talk is abhorrent and unpresidential.  When the new president carries out the mandate of congress with a Republican or Democratic spin, he or she is doing it right.  No riots.  No tears.  No emigration.

H/T Powerline
for the cartoon.

Humor: "Trump Delivers Play-Doh to College Campuses"

h/t Powerline.

Two Solitudes: Unique election map describes U.S.

The New York Times shows that two solitudes make up the US.  Counties that went for Hillary are shown as bodies of water on the Republican map and counties that went for Trump are shown as bodies of water on the Democrat map.  The "Santa Fe Sea" on Trump's map is "Albuquerque Island" on Hillary's map.

The Democrats map is an island archipelago.  The Republican map is continental. The populations, though similar, are divided by culture.   "Two Solitudes"  The new president is from the archipelago. The mainland voted him in.

Trump and the Saudi Prince (Rebel Yell)

What the Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal tweeted in the lead-up to the US election and what Donald Trump tweeted back.  Here are the four tweets embedded in the Rebel Yell video by Ezra Levant (Over 2 million views) so you don't have to check out all five minutes on YouTube.   h/t smalldeadanimals