Reality has finally set in and it's the Zoloft/Abilify phase for liberals, the PTSD of Hillary losing. Now in a logical universe Trump becoming president of the United States would be like if the late Benny Hill had at one time become the PM of Great Britain. Wouldn't happen, not likely to happen and really can't happen all things considered. Trump has gone on the record as saying that the use of nuclear weapons would be a good strategy in the war against ISIS but on the plus side he and Pence have accepted the official report on the Russian hacking. I got the heebie-jeebies too that vague weird anxiety ever since the Election but liberals are so shaken to the very core of their being that even in dreams they're working out their tweets and blogs and anti-Trump posts for the next day now that Ole Man Winter has set in and it's cold as a witch's tit outside so all the placards and posters have been safely stashed away gathering dust and spiderwebs ready for the first hint of spring. We'll see what happens but I hope they make it. Hang in there!
The King Of Tweets pretty much adds to his problem. If you
ReplyDeletedidn't vote for him, disagree with him or hate real estage
moguls- you are a 'loser'. I wouldn't be surprised if some
astronauts are killed in some orbiter operation, rather than
a dignified, sad and comforting Reagan/Bush gathering; we will be treated to a Trumptweet "I hate losers; it was a huuuuge failure and I predicted it. PS have you seen Melania's new dress?" The man has 'protest me' written
across his forehead. What can I say? Winter: I second that.
My old Dodge pickup has been in 4WD more this winter than the last twenty combined. I blame the Russians.
Trumpian logic is hard to configure. If I understand it correctly John McCain was a loser because he was a POW. Worse than Boolean algebra.
DeleteDe-regulate coal, no tax on coal, bring back the coal mining jobs. Sounded good to a lot of voters, no? It won't do squat and here's why-
ReplyDelete1. Like logging, most of the jobs have been eliminated by
automation; a guy in a machine replaces 20 or more workers,
even in strip mining.
2. The use of coal has declined yearly since the 1970s. The
reason is it has been replaced by the cheaper, less polluting, higher BTU natural gas.
3. Supply side fails when no one wants the product.
Comment?
Coal mining is such a risky and dangerous job I'm surprised anybody does it anymore. Mineshaft collapses, black lung disease...then again if I were an ornithologist I'd hate those wind turbines.
DeleteOrnithologists are a cranky bunch...they are not fond of kitty cats either. Icheologists hate dams (anybody remember the NY salmon runs). BTW as an old river-runner, I was checking out Your Housatonic River, which looks like it runs fairly rapidly through some nice country. Can't eat the fish though, because they are full of PCPs from an GE plant upstream. There is something to be said of the Indian concept of
DeleteMother Earth: her children do well to take little and leave little.
Didn't you post something recently that somebody on FOX News was questioning Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring"? Like bring back the PCB's and -f- the eagles.
DeleteThere are a few who think DDT had nothing to do with
Deletethe decline of eagles, in particular a blog I used to follow. His thinking was that DDT could wipe out
Malaria and eagle decline was simply a natural thing. But, I read in the area papers that eagles have come back to high levels, except in the Columbia Gorge, where it was found that they were not reproducing. Biologists found their egg shells
very thin and no viability in the contents. Then they found very high levels of residual DDT in the
mud flats and shallows above the dams. The stuff settled and has a long half-life. IMO, that sort of evidence is compelling. I'm not sure if like some think atheists, anti-environment is a religion, but there are interests of that ilk, typically over $$$.
I've seen many eagles and many landfills and frankly, the former are much nicer.
The kind of folk who made the Gowanus Canal possible, who almost polluted the Hudson River beyond repair in the not-too-distant past. Even now they have the most stringent regs for eating fish out of the Hudson.
DeleteWeather: Visitors to Idaho on US 12 from Missoula have to go back-
ReplyDeleteBetween Pete King Creek Road and The Colgate Licks Rest Area (50 to 60 miles east of the Kooskia area). The road is closed. There is danger of an avalanche.
Web Comment: From milepost 126, Pete King Creek Road and milepost 136, The Colgate Licks Rest Area. Closed for avalanche danger.
I have a strong dislike of Trump, but there are others with
ReplyDeletesevere Trumpanoia .
I keep telling the guy at work relax we've had bad presidents before (e.g. Jimmy Carter). If he wrecks the economy he's a one-termer easy and the conservatives who supported him as the default choice have alot to answer for.
DeleteAlways behind on current culture. Are Judge Judy and Lou Dobbs related? Married? Divorced? ...and are their children sociopaths?
ReplyDelete$47 million salary for belittling people in small claims court. I can't get over it.
DeleteIs it possible to be a victim of Anti-Hillary Munchausen
ReplyDeleteby proxy syndrome?
Please elaborate.
DeleteDo presidents usually give farewell addresses or is this an Obama thing? I am so shook.
ReplyDeleteThere are a number of precedents as well as those who
Deletewere so worn out they just went out the back. We await
with bated breath the Farewell Tweet, though.
Being the emotional president I guess he feels it's required. What's he gonna say it's been real?
DeleteDoesn't look like Trump will reveal his tax returns, breaking a tradition. Understandable though- if you don't pay taxes, there is nothing to reveal. The rules seem quite
ReplyDeletelax for themselves when the Republicans take charge.
Woke up at 4 AM, fairly typical. But I had just more or less finished an odd dream. I went into my basement alcove
ReplyDeleteunder the upstairs front porch, looking for an empty box and noticed a hole through the basement bricks. So I poked my head in and there were 4 teenagers, 2 girls and 2 boys
of which two were digging enlarging the hole and the other 2 making out. Asked them what the heck they were doing. They were quite polite and said their parents had kicked them out and it was very cold so they were going underground below the frost line. I told them the front yard would fall in and where did they put all the dirt?
They muttered something intelligible and I told them to
fill in the hole and leave. Next day they were still there
and had enlarged an underground room, even had a couch.
"Where is all the dirt?" "Oh, it's around". Told them to
fill the place back up or else. The next morning I checked and they had built an underground discotheque; band, flashing lights. "Where did you put all the dirt, my front yard will fall in!" A lot of dancing teens. They introduced their lawyer who said where the dirt went was none of my business and that most of the town now had underground living and entertainment places. I was mulling
this over when an owl hooted out back and I woke up. The
dream is not one of my usual ones. I await your erudite
analysis. :)
IMO the Christian Bros. inspires some good ones. For most of my life my dreams were never that unusual but as soon as I was put on the blood pressure pills a few years ago some of my dreams took bizarre turns with no logical sense. Mentioned this to the doctor but I guess it's more important not to have a heart attack.
DeleteAlways get a kick out of the TV ads for drugs and all their
ReplyDeleteawful side effects. Today, I noticed a class action suit against Abilify (aripipazole-works to balance serotonin/dopamine) a $7 billion wonder drug which has some
bizarre and serious side effects. The side effect which caught my attention was "can cause compulsive gambling". My
entrepreneur side quickly conjured up big sales to casinos
for sprinkling in the chips, dips and drinks. (Or has somebody already figured that out?)
The classic is still the 4-hour erection but adding Abilify may make you visit a casino in such a state. BTW are doctors trained to deal with the 4-hour erection?
DeleteWorked with a guy, born again fundamentalist, very strict. He was fascinated with that ad, would go on for several minutes. Finally told him that three
Deleteand a half hours was enough for most of us.
Imagine walking into the doctor's or ER with this problem. What exactly are they supposed to do???
DeleteCharlotte Church, British wunderkind soprano, sings for the Pope but when asked by the Trump circle to perform at
ReplyDeletethe inauguration tweeted back-
"Your staff have asked me to sing at your inauguration, a simple Internet search would show I think you're a tyrant. Bye," she tweeted at his official account, along with a row of poop emojis. He sure like to twitterfeud. His mouthpiece, Kelly Ann Conway criticized the press for taking
his tweets as fact, "you should report what is in his heart"
she admonished. What - plaster of paris? What a fascinating administration coming up.
You're right, his best bet right now is still Kanye West. Ya think Meryl Streep is overrated?
DeleteWatched a bit of the Jeff Sessions confirmation hearing. He has old baggage from back in the Old South, but seemed pretty reasonable to me for Attorney General.
ReplyDeleteBoring as burnt toast on a Sunday morning which in this day and age is a good thing.
DeleteKind of a strange problem at work. The box of fried chicken containers has an equal number of bottoms to lids, say 100 but seems like every other day there will be a huge pile of lids in the kitchen but no bases so then I have to fetch another box. Where'd they go? Happens repeatedly and nobody can explain it. Weird quantum effect, kitchen poltergeist, confabulation, some A-hole playing a prank or some horticulturalist type taking 'em home for seedlings?
ReplyDeleteInteresting. You have some good ideas. Could someone
Deletebe using two bottoms for a large serving? I will be interested if you find a solution.
& it also happened in my previous job only with rotisserie chicken containers. You'd usually have say 150 lids but no bottoms and so you have a problem.
DeleteThen my friend and I went to an old mall in White Plains. Had to use the public restroom but it was locked probably due to vandalism. There were a set of numbered buttons by the knob so a woman in the nearby foodmart gave us the combination. A set of four numbers to be pressed simultaneously in pairs. Tricky and wasn't working right away. Let's say you have the runs, that old familiar percolating feeling. I really should start shopping for the old American classic .
ReplyDeleteGetting the runs on the interstate in the Great Plains
DeleteI have found to be problematic. No trees, no place to
walk quickly into the brush, and a sign that says "Next Rest Area 78 miles" with a little sign under it that says "closed". So, yeah, the problems:
One time I was so desperate, I dashed into the rest area right into the women's side, another time pulled off and dashed into some big sage brush at the base of
a little ridge. The ridge was a railroad right of way and the train engineer gave me a couple hoots. After some years of this, I figured out that every little village and town usually has a public park with restrooms. I have an extensive list of them.
We wonder if walking around in loaded Depends is uncomfortable, even if less embarrassing than not having them for that emergency is.
DeleteThen there's that backwoods classic "How to Shit in the Woods" which I haven't read yet. Maybe it's available in PDF.
DeleteI know that book. Lesson 4- thow shalt not squat in poison ivy.
Delete& watch the funnel-shaped webs.
DeleteI'm gonna claim double standard on the treatment of Hillary and Donald. Remember the hue and cry when she called half of his supporters deplorable and had to apologize? But
ReplyDeleteTrump's volumes
of similar and worse get a free ride.
Shouldn't he at this point be boning up on world leaders and the usual geopolitical complexities? Perhaps have a luncheon with Henry Kissinger and giving the tweetmeter a rest.
DeleteIt has been said that the voters wanted a change.
DeleteSo we got something new and different; at least I
can't think of any president quite like the Donald.
Not a Kissinger fan: bomb Hanoi, invade Cambodia,
Deletekick ass, Peace With Honor..as the last of our helicopters got the hell out of there.
Christopher Hitchens wasn't exactly a Kissinger fan either.
Delete"So we got something new and different" and strange.
DeleteWe live in Idaho's lowest spot. Winters are typically mild,
ReplyDeletewhatever little snow falls melts in a couple days. But this Winter is different: cold, windy, tons of snow and constant.
I was grumbling to the wife after shoveling out the driveway for the 8th time this week and she noted, "Remember
when you said 'it would be a cold day in Hell if Trump got
elected?". We have been in Arctic Circle terriroty since.
I may trade the 4x4 for a dog team.
Funny how global warming makes for below average temperatures.
DeleteClimatologists blame on the increased variablilty in the AO&PV . For example, Australia had their hottest winter on record (which is Summer
Deletebelow the equator). In layman's terms, we are being
vortexed and oscillated. Trump's fault? The groundhogs around here all froze to death, so we can
skip Groundhog Day. My alt-theory, the Bitteroot Mts
are getting ground effect snow from Lake Erie. We got so much coming down that I saw several flakes that were identical.
Well on this and other subjects I was googling "google ai" and they're very big now on incorporating ai into its search engine ranking system which promises better search results for the user. I think google ai is going to run the world. Have they cured death yet?
ReplyDeleteI have to be honest though, technology is getting creepy.
ReplyDeleteWill we see driverless cars taking robots to their
Deletejobs? Some of the old science fiction works considered that one robots got more intelligent,
stronger and long-lived, the would consider humans
obsolete; maybe put the lucky ones in zoos and attend
St. Steve Jobs AI Church on Sundays. IMO technology
has already made the younger generation a bit mindless
(and the old generation totally confused)
It's like the job search and the algorithms companies use. Knew this manager and he liked me so I fill out a paper application. After that it was out of his hands as I had to do everything else online and I seemed to get lost in online limbo and never got the call. Wasn't applying for Homeland Security but maybe the algorithm saw you didn't live the perfect life e.g. a spotty employment record like what 25 years ago? No human touch.
DeleteThe dreadful history of a computerized system which was supposed to get rid of paperwork. Big Biz loves
Deletedata, especially current data, so we find many employees constantly at their screen updating. No
one reads it, but it puts them on cloud record as
doing something. As for the computerized evaluation of potential employees, it was developed by Human
Resource people and computer types- a questionable
combination...and two jobs that were non existent when I first started. The pink slip has been replaced by a puff of cloud. Just saying.
The sad truth is you may have lost out on a job because of an algorithm. The guy shaking your hand telling you can start in three days is too old school.
DeleteWe should differentiate between A.I and A+.I ...
DeleteArtificial Intelligence and Actual Intelligence.
Still getting a lot of hits from E Europe?
I will check that out tomorrow. There are so many things the average person doesn't know. Google's RankBrain and Tensorflow for instance. You just think you're doing a search and Google knows what you had for breakfast. If you insult AI will it delete your post?
DeleteI just can't with Trump. I mean, every day I say it can't get worse, but then again, every day it IS worse. Even some of the rank and file Republicans know this shit is out of hand. I can't imagine what Paul Ryan is thinking.
ReplyDeleteSo we got six inches of snow which is a vast amount when there is no infrastructure to deal with it. I spent two days at work and then it took me two hours to drive home over roads that were compacted into a single sheet of ice. The temperature dropped on Monday all the way down to 1.
Fast forward to Thursday. It's 68 degrees and all the snow is gone except in the most shady places, which is totally surreal. But of course climate change is a hoax perpetuated by the Chinese and those pesky islanders whose villages are being eaten by the ocean as it rises.
I really think it's way past time for people to be legitimately alarmed about this impending nightmare of a presidency. It's also alarming how many precedents and rules are being thrown out the window. In a hundred years, will this all be the first chapter of a book on the fall of the United States? Democracy has always been an experiment. It appears its days are numbered.
I saw on the weather channel that NC was getting quite
Deletea blizzard. One of these days you will have Polar Bear
crossings on the back roads.
I wash my hands of Trump as I didn't vote for him. I can sleep with a clear conscience. Now CNN is saying Putin may have compromising information on him and "Inside Edition" is reporting the rumor he may have had sex with Russian prostitutes in a Moscow hotel. What gets me is during the primaries there were so many well-qualified candidates and he blew everyone out of the water. It scares me that he's still tweeting and seems to care more about what Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin are doing than refreshing himself on world history and global hotspots. I swear if he does even one juvenile tweet after Jan. the 20th maybe he should be impeached on those grounds alone:)
ReplyDeleteThere's a survey out: 64% think Trumpster tweets to
Deletemuch and should have his tweeter taken away. And that
is across party lines! Jeb Bush is looking better all the time.
For me Mitt Romney. Remember when Jeb made attacking Trump a cornerstone of his campaigning? DUH
DeleteRemember Mitt's speech enumerating why Trump was
Deletetotally unfit for the presidency?. He and Jeb are
moderates, acceptable to independents, but anathema to the contemporary GOP voter. Trump's already low
polls are continuing to drop...expect a fake poll
tweet any day.
Mitt Romney's pro-life/pro-choice/pro-life oscillation. I believe he's currently pro-life. Mandela Effect?
DeleteSo back to the Eastern European taps apparently there's a blog out there with the same title and heading and partly in English and looks like Polish. Top post is something about buying Viagra online with no prescription. Me blog hardly a ripple in today's search engines but popular in the Ukraine. Go figure.
ReplyDeleteThe other one seems to have stolen your heading. Couple observations, the PMIU (Program Monitoring & Information Unit) seems related to the state of Punjab
Deletein N. India..and the last update was 11-01-2011. Is
your heading that old? You might
check with these guys.
That's weird. Lately I've been averaging about 5 or 6 visitors/day but that's gone up to around 14 and all this interest in India and Poland. Reverse mandela?
DeleteThat St. Casimir's with the Polish masses I thought was on the NY Archdiocese chopping block. Church these days being run like a large corporation rather than a spiritual enterprise. Never been to that Polish deli. Always went to the Miasarnia on Lockwood Ave.
DeleteMy problem with the large Catholic corporation is the local hospital here, St. Josephs. Been here 100
Deleteyears as a non profit with proceeds going to some
Catholic charities. This year they decided to sell it to some for-profit big corporation. Everyone is
up in arms. Odd thing is, it is a big modern hospital and they only ask $105 million, while the
new high school costs $55 million (and they don't have as many beds, doctors, nurses and MRI machines)
I suspect it is a need for short term cash, or something.
Reason school taxes are so high, look now every student gets their own laptop in class to take home FREE but not for you since you're partly footing the bill. On your next AT&T bill or whatever you have there might be say a $35 surcharge to pay for the students' computer needs. At least that's how it is in Yorktown Heights and some of the other tony Westchester 'burbs. Didn't have that back in my day. Schools also automatically close as soon as the local tv weatherperson says "3 inches of snow."
DeleteThen if you go to YouTube and type in the Search bar "wireless charging" before you know it the kids will want that.
DeleteElectric toothbrushes are said to have wireless charging, eg. no wire between the charger and toothbrush..the old familiear 'induction charging'.
DeleteBut the electric razor has wires leading from the
step down transformer. I'm thinking true wireless
charging would be to lay your smartphone on the windowsill and some wi fi beam would charge it up.
Or perhaps infrared. In which case, we suspect the AI personal android would go to be to recharge rather than sleep. So he would miss dreaming about
that shapely robotess he saw down at the club?
Funny but with all these tech-advances colonoscopies are still done the same way. A full day of prep then a 4-ft. tube thru the caboose. Then come the bills.
DeleteWe note there the commonality with Roto-Rooter.
DeleteGot an e-mail from wife's cousin in Zurich. She follows US politics and ends up crying. Gets all her news from the Swiss re-runs of Steven Colbert. I sent her a brief description of the problems, the electorate and the large
ReplyDeletedivide among us. (I owe her. A few months back, she said my writing reminds her of the author John Irving . Apparently the Swiss know more about American authors than I do.
I was never against Joe Biden but did he do something? How 'bout awarding me for my ten years of blogging?
ReplyDeleteHow does the Polish Medal of Blog Distinction sound?
Delete...the one with the double eagle crest that reads
Delete"Do służby w dziedzinie komunikacji". Would look great on the wall.
With the low readership I'm thinking it's more like a diary. Blog is short for weblog, kind of the same thing.
DeleteI've been pondering around google and different psychological topic and somehow thought of Trump. Usually attacking others and then acting like the victim is a hallmark of not good. We can start there in our profile.
ReplyDeleteSounds more like the profile of a grade school bully
Deletethan a US president?
He doesn't have the gravitas.
DeleteYou familiar with the Roman Emperor Caligula?
DeleteUnfortunately I one time watched the Bob Guccione/Penthouse version of the same. Are you making a Trumpian metaphor here like some pretty and nubile nymph is going to feed him grapes poolside?
DeleteKind of, only the Suetonius/Tacitus version of same.
DeleteCaligula was drunk with power. He appointed his favorite horse as an advisor, built a bridge across a gulf with hundreds of boats so he could gallop his horse across it for a couple of days, when the arena ran out of gladiators, he ordered part of the
crowd into the arena with the lions, etc. We submit
his perception of women was Trumpian.
I quote from a comment by a BB-Idaho on another blog:
Delete"For those with even the slightest interest in history, the Roman Emperor Caligula stands out as
an instructive example of politics, power and disaster. We note that if one searches for
Trump and Caligula, 374,000 articles exist."
When you think about it the ancient Romans in some respects were not that different from ISIS in terms of atrocities.
DeleteWe haven't been close to a thaw since early December. Global
ReplyDeleteWarming is freezing us out here.
You see this is a paradox in my own head. It's like if we had global cooling instead of global warming and this led to overly scorching summers.
ReplyDeleteThe climatologist opinion is that while the overall
Deleteearth atomospheric temperature very slowly rises, atmostpheric oscillation increases...leading to weird
weather.
What's this about the coming Pole Shift I keep seeing? Supposed to be catastrophic or something.
DeletePole shifting is not uncommon over the long spans of geological time. It is hypothesized that
Delete"The flow of liquid iron in Earth's core creates electric currents, which in turn create the magnetic field." So,
"Reversals are the rule, not the exception. Earth has settled in the last 20 million years into a pattern of a pole reversal about every 200,000 to 300,000 years, although it has been more than twice that long since the last reversal. A reversal happens over hundreds or thousands of years, and it is not exactly a clean back flip. Magnetic fields morph and push and pull at one another, with multiple poles emerging at odd latitudes throughout the process. Scientists estimate reversals have happened at least hundreds of times over the past three billion years. And while reversals have happened more frequently in "recent" years, when dinosaurs walked Earth a reversal was more likely to happen only about every one million years."
The perception of a coming pole reversal is based on
the fairly rapid (600 miles in the last century) movement of the magnetic N pole. Some worry that the
process, which involves periods of radical magnetic
actions during the process, would disable the field
protection from solar flares, with the associated
electrical/electronic/atomospheric balances. Others
simply note that it would be really good for the makers of compasses.
Call it the Polar Effect.
DeleteFair enough. And in the interest of being fair, I
Deletenote your perception on it's possible collusion in
odd weather patterning.
In the interest of being thorough while most blame climate change for our recent aberrant weather patterns some go further and blame CERN and the Large Hadron Collider. What do they say those magnetic things in the LHC are more powerful than any other magnetism on Earth. Let's throw in tinnitus.
DeleteMagnetic field effects diminish by the reverse cube law, similar to that of explosions (except the latter initiate shrapnel which follows the normal
Deletegravitational equations. So-
"
1
down vote
accepted
The magnetic field at the center of an LHC magnet may be very strong, but the strength of the field drops very rapidly as you move away from it. By the time you're more than about a meter away from the magnet, the field is undetectable. These magnets don't have any effect on the surrounding environment. The worst thing these magnets could do is damage electronic devices that get too close."
Still, with any large unknown, there are always
theoreticals to ponder. There were some that worried the first nuclear bomb at Alamagordo would
ignite the atmosphere. Others at that even took
a practical approach: as the blast wave passed over the prone observers, physicist Enrico Fermi, tossed
a crumpled paper into the air, measured its trajectory, pulled out his slide rule and announced
"The yield is 1--7 Kilotons". Later more detailed analysis gave 18-19KT. Like most large explosions, somewhat less material reacts as it is blown free
from the center. I've never had an MRI, which is a junior CERN, because I would need valium to stay in
a confined space, magnetic or not.
My comment suffers from accidently hitting the stupid numlock button on my key board, giving four
Deletenonsense lines; and 1--7 should be 17. Sorry Enrico.
You're more pro-CERN than I am. With so many unknowns and theoreticals and the open admission they're looking for parallel realities some are simply saying shut the LHC and D-Wave down for a time and do a risk assessment. What are CERN effects on humans? Some just want Dolly's braces back:)
DeleteI hate when people say they don't believe in global warming. Like it's Santa Claus that you can believe or not believe and that makes it truth. Global warming is science and doesn't hinge on someone's belief to make it valid.
ReplyDeleteAnd I've only ever been in an endoscopy unit once but I think that scope for the colon is more like eight feet long. Just sayin.
Polyp: better to have the medical kind than the zoological kind...
DeleteREF-
1. Zoology
a solitary or colonial sedentary form of a coelenterate such as a sea anemone, typically having a columnar body with the mouth uppermost surrounded by a ring of tentacles. In some species, polyps are a phase in the life cycle that alternates with a medusoid phase.
2. Medicine
a small growth, typically benign and with a stalk, protruding from a mucous membrane.
BB and I have batted this around a few times already. I've never claimed to be a medical expert and so you can say I imbibed my biological knowledge through a kind of osmosis while growing up. At any rate I and quite a few others always thought of the colon as the lower part of the large intestine (hence the syntactical sense of "colo/rectal") and the large intestine was also known as the bowel. So imagine my astonishment when my PCP talked about the procedure as regards anesthesia and the 4' tube although you may be right about the length. Kind of a confabulatory wonder but it bugged me at the time. I also thought the kidneys were lower in the body (hence the old boxing term for the illegal "kidney punch") and was rather surprised when I got a kidney echo and the woman was focused farther up with the probe. Oh well what are you gonna say I ain't no House, it ain't my thing;)
DeleteI think with the global warming topic people resent what they see as a kind of intellectual bullying (how dare you question the theory) and while it is true there are outright climate change deniers others are simply not convinced. Also when you're struggling with Life in general and trying to make ends meet on a daily basis chances are the topic isn't on your list of top priorities. You're worried about putting food on the table not the fate of the polar bears.
DeletePolar bears are like the canaries in the old mines,
Deletetheir fate is a clear warning. The polar bear has become adapted to arctic conditions and I guess the argument boils down to are we humans responsible for
maintaining those conditions, or is it not our fault they are changing. In any event, there are a lot of species at risk because of human encroachment and it tells us something about ourselves in how we view it.
Saw a documentary once. Because of the warmer conditions polar bears are venturing farther south and intermingling with the grizzlies. I believe there's even a grizzly/polar hybrid.
DeleteI often wonder what is Paul Ryan really thinking. Can he truly believe that taking healthcare away from 30 million people is a good thing? Or is he just that much of an unfeeling bastard?
ReplyDeleteEither way there will be huge protests at the inauguration and the days following. In no way is the left going gently into that good night. The only way to combat this is to keep on combatting it, and never let it become the new normal.
Yeah once the system is set up and in place how do you just kick 30 million people off their plans? Weren't we accusing Obama of the same thing?
DeletePaul Ryan is scary: he looks like packers QB Aaron Rogers on meth and his mission is to utterly destroy Obamcare, come what may.
DeleteThere is an old concept in the SCOTUS and judiciary called stare decisis. In other words something may not be a great precedent but once it becomes established and people are used to it you just don't throw it out. I believe the same applies here. Obamacare deserves a major tweaking (e.g. get rid of that thing on the IRS form) but don't just throw people off the rolls.
DeleteAfter studying the per person cost and the health outcome statistcis, I'd scrap Obamacare AND Ryancare and simply put the European single payer plan in place. Probably inevitable, given the logic, but not in our lifetimes, given US politics.
DeleteAre we talking totally free colonoscopies?
DeleteSure with an appendectomy bonus..
DeleteI'm not that familiar with Diplomacy By Insult, nor negotiation by Twitter. How will that work?
ReplyDeleteI've been kind of following the preps for the inauguration and last I checked nobody wants to sing for him. I think he might be going country but Marie Osmond has said we should all get behind the new president no matter what so there you go.
ReplyDeleteSince Americans now have no problem with putting one of the most disagreeable people into the presidential office how 'bout Judge Judy in 2020?
ReplyDeleteBut....can she Tweet?
DeleteWhen was the last time a group of Dems boycotted the inauguration of a new president? Normally this would be considered in very bad form. The polarization continues (but don't blame me)...
ReplyDeleteWhen was the last time we had a president like Trump?
DeleteAs of today Trump's disapproval rating was 51% with
Delete37% approval. IMO, probably bad from to attend his
inauguration. You suppose his popularity will go
up when 29 million people lose their health insurance, NATO goes belly up, China (our best customer) stops buying and Putin takes over eastern
Europe?
What is the perception of us in the rest of the world that half of us hate our new president? That we are a divided country does this embolden terrorists? Will this rage and political disorder last through the next four years?
DeleteThe latest European poll shows 9% approval for Trump. Their perception is that we are crazy. On the bright side, the new dating site for Trump supporters is doing quite well. Have you given it
Deletea try? Who can predict the next four years? Maybe
things will get so screwed up Trump will bring Hillary back as Secretary of State, or he will get
bored with tweeting and administrating and turn everything over to Gingrich and Guiliani. The future is fraught with possibilities, at least in
our current dimension/universe. We can only imagine the alt-universe where Hillary won and Trump sued.
Forget Fruit Loops/Froot Loops flip-flopping Trump winning and winning rather handily at that may be the best evidence yet of bended reality. So where's the portal to the Hillary Administration? Can we blame CERN?
DeleteSaw on the Weather Channel today that fifteen people a year are killed by icicles. Is there a colored ribbon for that?
ReplyDeleteWhenever I read my morning paper I often skip over the main garbage (Trump, the usual political commentary) and go for the more offbeat stuff. Those things are beautiful but scary. I try to avoid them.
DeleteSo, you probably missed that among the Trump Inaugural attendees will be Martin Shkreli, given
Deletepermission by a judge. Shkrelli is the guy who bought Turing Pharma and raised the price of a drub
from $13 to $750 a pill. He is out on bail for that and now being charged with twitter stalking some woman. If enough Rockettes and Mormon Choir people
fail to show up, will they combine them as the Mormonettes?
Twitter stalking - isn't that why we have Settings on our accounts? At any rate Trump must think he's some type of business model.
DeleteWe have our annual financial review with our fiscal expert
ReplyDeletethis morning. I have had real good retirement, anticipating
each administration since Nixon. But, this time I haven't a clue. She is sort of a GOP type, so maybe she can predict
our economic future. I'm thinking maybe icicle insurance
bonds and CERN Futures....
D-Wave is the stock to follow imo.
DeleteIf you get tired of the NY metro life style, the capitol of
ReplyDeleteS Dakota has only 14,000 people and could use a good chef .
No matter where you go chefing is a very stressful job. I can count on one hand the number of calm chefs I've known.
DeleteI imagine it is the sudden rushes and demands, sort of overload a person..then the boss chimes in. Me,
DeleteI have trouble with cup-o-soup. I remember Army cooks, even they were stressed. 5:30 AM and you have
five hundred young soldiers lined up out in the blizzard with the next bunch showing up at 6:30.
Do you think being a Trump presidential chef would be more relaxing?
Dunno. I think Bill Clinton would have been the easiest to chef for. Just fast food, burgers and dogs and if you happen to see anything untoward don't say anything.
DeleteIn the 'what if' department, if all digital data ends up in
ReplyDeletethe cloud, does all quantum computer end up in the mist? In one of our infinite sister universes, what if L. Ron Hubbard
became president, instead of Eisenhower? What if Francis of Assisi hated animals? What if Genghis Khan had been gay?
Lincoln hadn't been shot? What if Occam had no razor? We ponder that at each of the billions of lives and events had been slightly different, what would the current reality be? That's about as mystical
as I get. Although admittedly in some other universe I might have been a Themelite Occultist .
I do believe there is fairly strong evidence for a parallel universe or two but I don't believe in the multiverse. That's just scientists masturbating their minds. Many reasons are given for CERN's existence but the primary one is to find a doorway.
ReplyDeleteDriving my friend to the train station before and he told me he had a Mandela effect the other day. He told me when he heard the news story the other day that Roy Innis (chairman of CORE) had passed away he thought he had died a few years ago. I had the same recollection since my Dad and I personally liked him as he was a rare black conservative. We can't say with 100% metaphysical certitude we remember this but it was an impression. In other words we had the same confabulatory experience. A weird feeling. Maybe modern life is slowly corroding our brains.
ReplyDeleteModern life certainly has more things for us to remember. 450-500 generations ago, you just had to remember where your cave was, what a mammoth looked like and the name of your buddy Urg. But such is brain capacity, we have adjusted pretty well, considering. My memory is clogged with useless things
DeleteI can't seem to dump; the Universal Gas Constant (R)
is 1544 ft-lbs per lb degree Rankine, the Battle of
Agincourt was fought on St. Crispin's Day 1415, the
fungus Cronartium Ripiculum causes White Pine Blister Rust, Avogadro's Number is 6.023 x 10 to the 23rd, etc. No one asks, I don't use them in conversation,
and never dream about them. What gives?
CBS or Crowded Brain Syndrome. You can trace the rise of the Mandela Effect with the rise of the Kardashians. Was on YouTube just now watching autonomous car videos and some flying car videos came up. Where will it end?
DeleteGoogle "terrafugia". Driverless flying cars with robots? Autonomous trucks buses and cars and android sex robots. The more I read about this stuff the more I long for the cave system:)
DeleteWatched a bit of Pat Robertson today. Fund drive. They
ReplyDeletehad little vignettes of people who were in debt, or out of work, but had great faith. So much so that they tithed what little they had to the Lord (well, through Pat's well
padded operation). Lo and behold, they became rich. I'm trying to figure out how the $$ helped the Lord, and whether the pathetic folks in the vignettes were actors, or
just suckers like those on Judge Judy. Call me cynical.
WHY am I spitting chickens and cooking seasoned leg quarters everyday? I could become a tele-minister and live in a glass cathedral.
DeleteTrue, tele-ministering is lucrative. Tough world though. Rabbi Kirt Schneider of "Jewish Jesus", whose qualifications consist of a vision at age 20
Deleteand going to Toccoa Falls College in Georgia, has enough following to have personally blessed Donald
Trump (it was on TV). But Rabbi Kirt is not a Rabbi,
he is a tele-preacher and the real Rabbis give him a hard time. Like saying "Jews for Jesus is like saying vegans for hamburger". But, you certainly have more real religious education than Kirt and just need a niche. Cronut Cathedral On The Hudson
has sort of a ring, no?
DIdn't Giuliani get dissed or did I miss him getting an appointment?
ReplyDeleteTrump's whole cabinet is like vegans for hamburger. He deliberately picks people who are anti the agency they're heading. A DAPL supported for Indian Affairs?
Maybe get a homeschooler to run the Dept. of Ed and an anti-vaxxer to be sec'y of HHS?
DeleteHis cabinet choices are a bit peculiar, given his campaign for the little worker: Perry at Interior
Delete(the name of the dept he wanted to close, but couldn't remember the name in his debate), Betsy
DeVoss at Education (a dept she had wanted to close.
She and her children never set foot in a public school, all top end private schools), Tom Price at
HHS (a retired MD whose main goal in life is to get
rid of Obamacare), Steven Munchin at Treasury (made
his fortune at Goldman Sachs by forclosing on dozens of thousdands of homeowners), Ben Carson at
HUD (a surgeon, he has never held any political office, nor administered any entity..and really doesn't feel qualified for his appointment( etc.
Basically, these are the 1%, billionaires who got
rich at the expense of everyone else in the country.
My guess is that there is a slim possibility they
were chosen, because they are experts in screwing the middle class and only they know how to fix it;
otherwise it is to hell in a handcart and as Saty
and millions of others think, putting the foxes in
charge of the henhouse. Tis about as optimistic as I can get....
Trump has defied critics and promised to continue his tweets. Eagerly awaiting the presidential tweets.
ReplyDeleteGoogle "thorium car." Wondering the Donald's position. Thorium is a radioactive metal that supposedly can fuel a car for 100 years. Might get Republicans interested in alternative sources of energy but I don't think most liberals/environmentalists would have this in mind. YouTube it.
ReplyDeleteThe thorium reactor has its proponents, and indeed one operated at Oak Ridge for
Deletea few years and several nations are investigating the process, the thorium powdered car is long off, if ever. Nuclear reactors and their ancillary processes
are huge. I toured one at Hanford Site, 3 stories tall
made of lead..and Hanford is terribly polluted with radiation to this day. So size is a "yuuuuge problem"
for starters. Consider though, your thorium car with
its chain reaction cooled by molten floried salt. You
turn the key, activate the halfnium control rods and
have a melt down right in the street. The manholes become radioactive, the molten salt cools and flows into the Hudson; where the Cherenkov Effect causes that already polluted
body of water to glow a bright blue for a few thousand years. You would have to move to Schenectady.
Didn't think it was a good idea. Worse still would be a bunch of terrafugia flying cars powered on thorium. I have seen the future and prefer the Now.
DeleteAnd yes, REpublicans boycotted Obama's inauguration.
ReplyDeleteWhich ones? I know George Will ain't going.
ReplyDeleteNot going. Not a big Ted Nugent fan.
DeleteRomney did not attend Obama's, and has not RSVP'd to
DeleteTrump's. Not to say Mitt might show up in the tenor
section of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
Possibly 60 Dems boycotting or did I read right?
DeleteI count 50, plus most of entertainment. Part of the problem is they got 3 million more votes than he did and his popularity is 37% (and drops 1% for every nasty tweet). Unusual, for an inauguration, huh?
DeleteUmmm...file this under the Hindsight is 20/20 Dept. but shouldn't we've had a growing movement to dismantle the electoral college like YEARS ago? The EC makes weird things possible. Why wait for a Trump candidacy with the EC still in full swing? While we're at it let's get rid of Daylight Savings Time too. In other words let's get rid of the anachronisms.
DeleteYou are right. The unusual concept of the electoral college was to protect slavery in the southern states. They
Deletedidn't have as many votes as the more urban northern states, and would not ratify the constitution unless there was 1. an electoral college in which their individual votes would count more than one, and 2. Their population would be
artificially increased by counting each slave as
3/5 of a person. Although slaves could not vote, this population 'increase' allowed them more congressmen per voter than the northern states.
In summation, the electoral college then and now,
results in 'one man, one vote' being untrue...and
it cause the Civil War and the election of the Twitterer.
-- Ouch --
ReplyDeleteI like this blog's green and leafy template, very relaxing. However every post about Politics? Don't these bloggers have pets or garden or watch old "Bewitched" episodes? Who was better Dick York or Dick Sargent? I liked York. I mean there's more to Life no?
DeleteGee, I never watch old 'Bewitched' episodes. Does
Delete'Gilligan's Island' count?
Absolutely.
DeleteAny flat-earthers gonna be at the inauguration?
ReplyDeleteThey may be picketing the Thorium car factory....
DeleteWe seemed to have warped into the Trump dynasty. CERN?
ReplyDeleteToday is a very surreal day. Woman at work hit the nail on the head. Said she: "The most stupid person on Earth got elected president." I'm going with CERN/D-Wave/AI/wormhole/muon/quark.
DeleteMakes as much sense as anything. They ran it on the D-Wave quantum computer, which ran for a minute, got hot and and printed out 'Trump, a card of a suit which outranks all other suits in many trick-taking games.' followed by 'what dimension are we in?'.
DeleteJust to be on the safe side maybe they shut down the Large Hadron Collider before Trump runs for re-election;)
DeleteSo Obama recently gave a farewell address to the nation, gave a farewell press conference and now left a farewell letter on his desk. Did he wave goodbye yet?
ReplyDeleteInteresting too that Mexico gave up El Chapo on Obama's last day, a kind of symbolic distaste for Trump.
ReplyDeleteThe Mexicans are not fond of our new el Presidente.
DeleteThey may be willing to pay for an electric anti-tweet
wall, though.
The unusual inauguration was an opportunity for some nice
ReplyDeletephoto ops
of the GOP congress.
Can you believe riots over Trump. Don't these people have jobs?
ReplyDeleteHe's off and running already-
Delete"About an hour after President Donald Trump was sworn in on Friday, his administration suspended indefinitely a scheduled cut in mortgage insurance premiums—effectively raising costs for middle-class borrowers by about $500 a year." If I had house payments and was 70 years younger, I'd riot too.
I'd at least go to the bathroom first.
DeleteNoticed a lot of empty reviewing stands at the inaugural parade. Where the tickets overpriced, or were they all over
ReplyDeletea couple blocks away rioting?
They're looking for any excuse to riot. Turns off Middle America.
DeleteRemain calm. Progressives will not bring AR-15s and take over Federal land. They dislike firearms.
DeleteHowever when Dems align themselves with the anti-Trump protesters as NYC Mayor Bill deBlasio has done and then later when some of them burn cars and throw bricks at cops like in DC in the mind of Middle America the Democrats rightly or wrongly get seen as the party of law and disorder. That's a turnofff and only helps Trump. It's like the party has never really evolved since the Jane Fonda days.
DeleteThe liberal Robert Redford has the better pov: "Presidents come and go. The pendulum swings." A more healthy holistic approach imo. The Shaw approach leads to hypertension.
ReplyDeleteOr as Edgar Allen Poe might note, "the pendulum swings in the pit of the despairing majority". Accept ye minions, if ye must, the womanizing, thrice married, non taxpaying tweeting jerk. For he has been
Deletefoisted upon you by an odd 37% of you." -presidents
come and go, but we have never seen one like this.
People can aggravate themselves for the next four years or take a walk and look at the birds. I'm beginning to think Politics is bad for our collective health.
DeleteProbably. My wife turned off the TV inauguration and immediately caught a bad cold. Do we suspect the
Deletenefarious rhinovirus HRV-C Trumpae horribilus ? Or
maybe she picked it up from the 2nd graders over at
McGee School....
During this last election which was so weird there was a bona-fide anxiety disorder whose cause was said to be Trump vs. Hillary. I forget the name even if it has one but this unique election caused an actual anxiety state in many Americans.
DeleteIMO, workplace aggravation is harder on long term health than politics; the latter at least permits a voice. That no one listens is aggravating, but for me it is the partisan hypocracy. Obama submitted a moderate for SCOTUS
ReplyDeleteand the GOP congress wouldn't even permit a committee hearing (Johnson of Wisconsin muttering 'we will never vote
on a judge for any Democrat administration). But when Trump's picks show up without the required documentation and clearly unqualified, the GOP screams when they are not
cleared the very same day. It is the same double standard
the made Hillary some sort of evil crook, when clearly she
was the class act in the process compared to Trump (I won't list the many disqualifications of his, some of which indicate he doesn't pass muster as a member of the species).
So, my health stays good when I can rant, and when I get
depressed with the electorate, I can blame them...he didn't get my vote and he won't get my support. He needs neither,
but it helps my happy dance as they say.
But when does complaining turn into political obsessions? Many blogged against Obama on an almost daily basis now safe to say many are going to blog against Trump on a daily basis. Even if the points are true at what point does it just become boring? I've read enough Shaw to see for her all things GOP are the dark force in the universe. What is the average blood pressure reading of the average anti-Trump protester? Are there studies about politics and health?
DeleteSuppressed anger causes known endocrinological imbalances and the mind/body paradigm offers other
Deleteexamples. But, we may posit that unsuppressed (let off your steam, baby) anger is alleviated by complaining, posturing, etc. Otherwise, we are in for a plague of PSTD (post traumatic Trump syndrome)
no?
Consider, if we use the well-worn reductio ad absurdum argument: if a human is suppressed by outside sources, say the Gestapo, (What else did you whisper about der Furhrer, do I have to pull another fingernail?) overt complaining, rioting,
Deletegathering, rumor-mongering, etc goes covert. You
have an organized underground in operation. Same
factors drive the far alt-right militias with their
caches of weaponry and hatred of all government.
Among the tactics of crowd control is the concept of
'don't drive them into a corner' because a trapped crowd is a desperate crowd, with its attendant problems. Perhaps best to listen half-heartedly
like my Norwegian Grandma used to, the opine :Ooo,
ja, shure...Oofta" Just saying.
Venting - I've vented a few times in my life. Looking back it was ugly but maybe it was healthy too.
DeleteThat's why suppressing even ugly speech really serves no purpose. Twitter suspending the accounts of some alt-righters - I'd rather know what they're up to.
DeleteIn the not to distant future, cybernetics will bring us a plethora of AI devices. So, if a driverless car gets crushed at the RR crossing by a AI train...do they call
ReplyDeleteRobocop?
I'm also thinking in the future can you send your ai robot out to do the grocery shopping, walk the dog etc. I just had a very disturbing image of Anthony Weiner and a sexbot.
DeleteJust got a big postcard in the mail from the NYS Dept. of Taxation and Finance. It says you can follow them on social medai (Twitter and FB) which begs the question why would you want to follow them on social media?
ReplyDeleteSocial media, the latest must-have. Businesses, government, entertainers, sociopaths, teen coeds...
Deletethey gotta be out there and have followers. I seem
allergic to passwords and go to great lengths to avoid
creating any more. I had a 4 digit pin for my check card, but it never worked, so I just use it as a credit card. Credit: what's the deal, I see on TV
all the times ads for checking your credit. Like wake
up, check your credit, shower, check your credit. Then
check it again at breakfast and for sure while you are driving to work. I would guess my credit score floats in the quantum clouds, but I have never seen it. Not interestd. Color me dull.
I have generally good credit but never felt the need to google myself. What does John Tesh say to do?
DeletePasswords- ya gotta have an undecodeable password. Then, I you forget, you get the usual "what was your mother's maiden name" "what was the first musical instrument you learned" etc. That seems a bit mundane and not very secure.
ReplyDeleteMaybe better, "What was your great great grandmother on your father's side nick name?" "Give the cube root of your
weight to the nearest three decimals? "What became of Fort
Duquesne?" "How many of your close relatives have been arrested?" "Where in the alphabet is your blood type?"
Silicon valley-no imagination.
Had ten different passwords just so I could apply for ten different jobs. Reince Priebus - lol.
DeleteMaybe the tinfoil hat types that worry about a secretly implanted microchip in the head are on to
Deletesomething. Heck, instead of passwords, just lean over and scan your noggin. Like snowflakes, no two
head microchips are the same. :) The Yonkers traffic
cam could catch your orange light misdemeanor and wifi your brainchip and your summons would be at your door before you were. Hmm, the health food
people could Wi-Fi you at your french-fries, and the MRI might scramble your chip into Beyoncé's.
On second thought....bad idea.
Watched a YouTube video the other day that claims CERN has a group of 23 scientists called the Collective. Anyway our world ended the nuclear way in 2012 and the Collective moved us into another timeline and as my friend said a higher tax bracket. Also a CERN scientist a Dr. Edward Mantill shot himself to death in his CERN office after burning all his papers in the wastebasket (of course). Role for Tom Hanks?
DeleteI thought Tom got killed in 'Saving Private Ryan'.
DeleteIt was TV again this afternoon. Pretty violent effects. If watch it too much I get PTSD. Hanks is
pretty versatile and definitely a better choice than one of the scientologist actors. The odd thing about theoretical physics is that it is quite
boring..mostly blackboards and big humming magnets.
The Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser (which you can google and/or wiki, same thing). Maybe we can fix the election?
DeleteIf they can figure out the wave/particle duality
Deleteproblem. C'mon physics guys, is it a wave or is it
a particle. Maybe a simple test. Ice cream has a taste-it must be a particle. The old Queen moved
her gloved hand-it must be a wave. A delightful
wave...a D-Wave. :)
I'll read about the Double Slit or Quantum Erasure experiment ten times and still not understand it. Is there a geek translation system?
DeleteIt was reported that Canadian, English and French visitors
ReplyDeletewere turned away by the border patrol because they were going to attend the women's rally. A new wall? Will HE make them pay for it? His problem is that basically he is a bully. Probably potty training issues.
I was reading through my Sunday paper today and saw an ad for a Trump Vodka. So there you go your Russian connection.
ReplyDelete