Saturday, September 7, 2013

Cab thoughts 9/7/13

We all get the same amount of ice. The rich get it in the summertime and the poor get it in the winter.” ~ Bat Masterson, found in his typewriter after he died.

John Peterson, a blogger on SeekingAlpha who is knowledgeable in the energy field, has a new article which is simple and straightforward. He has no position on global warming but agrees CO2 is rising. His argument is with the efforts to deal with the changes which he thinks are both focused on the wrong populations and mired in the belief that there are adequate rare earth minerals to substitute for cheap petroleum. But his basic point is this:
"The .....[two CO2 producing]..... culprits are:
1. 1 billion humans in industrialized economies where per capita CO2 emissions have been flat or falling for decades; and, 2. 6 billion humans in developing economies that (a) want to be richer, (b) know a better life is possible because we gave them Internet access, and (c) are working hard to build a brighter future for themselves and their children and grandchildren.
CO2 emissions aren't climbing because of activities in the industrialized west. They're climbing because billions of humans in developing economies are increasing their carbon footprints as they try to catch up."

One can view the world as sets, as mathematicians do. The editor of the Guardian says a UK official told the newspaper to destroy the files regarding Snowden. Are the government and its people in the same set?

Billy Carter, the President's brother, was paid a half a million dollars by the government of Libya while his brother was president and was registered as an agent of the Romanian government.

Named for a physician in Napoleon's army, the "Lisfranc" injury was first described when a rider fell from a horse with his foot still in the stirrup. It can be the result of a direct blow or a fixed rotational injury. They are appearing in football athletes. It occurs at the midfoot, where a cluster of small bones forms an arch on top of the foot between the ankle and the toes. From this cluster, five long bones (metatarsals) extend to the toes. The second metatarsal also extends down into the row of small bones and acts as a stabilizing force. The bones are held in place by connective tissues (ligaments) that stretch both across and down the foot. However, there is no connective tissue holding the first metatarsal to the second metatarsal. A twisting fall can break or shift (dislocate) these bones out of place. These injuries are usually mistaken for sprains.

Who was .... Phoebe Mozee?

According to a recent article on The Wefunder Blog (a crowdsourcing group), the U.S. has at least 256,000 active Angels who collectively invest some $21 billion a year (more then all venture capital sources combined) in new businesses.

Keynes’ described President Woodrow Wilson as “slowminded and bewildered”; a “blind and deaf Don Quixote”

Titanic director James Cameron optioned Steven Pressfield's Last of the Amazons in 2002 when it was still in galleys. Apparently he has lost interest.

Scientist Harold Pashler showed that when people do two cognitive tasks at once, their cognitive capacity can drop from that of a Harvard MBA to that of an eight-year-old. It's a phenomenon called dual-task interference. In one experiment, Pashler had volunteers press one of two keys on a pad in response to whether a light flashed on the left or right side of a window. One group only did this task over and over. Another group had to define the color of an object at the same time, choosing from among three colors. These are simple variables: left or right, and only three colors. Yet doing two tasks took twice as long, leading to no time saving. This finding held up whether the experiment involved sight or sound, and no matter how much participants practiced. If it didn't matter whether they got the answers right, they could go faster. The lesson is clear: if accuracy is important, don't divide your attention. (from Your Brain at Work by David Rock)

Bracken Cave, near San Antonio, Texas, harbors one of the world's largest breeding colonies of bats - about 10 million Mexican free-tailed bats. They consume an estimated 100 tons of insects each night, mainly agricultural pests.

vicissitude \vih-SIS-ih-tood; -tyood\, noun: Regular change or succession from one thing to another; alternation; mutual succession; interchange; Irregular change; revolution; mutation. Vicissitude comes from Latin vicissitudo, from vicissim, in turn, probably from vices, changes.

Donte' Stallworth, an NFL wideout, was released by the Washington Redskins. Stallworth was hindered through most of training camp by a hamstring injury. The story centered on a hot air balloon accident he suffered earlier this year. And he has had a number of injuries in the past--but nothing compared to the injury he inflicted. Buried in the story was this quote: "He was suspended for the 2009 season by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell for violating the league's personal conduct policy for a DUI vehicular manslaughter charge." DUI vehicular manslaughter is apparently against NFL policy and will be dealt with seriously. Not only was he suspended, he was sentenced to 30 days in jail for the crime.

Alpha particles are 2 protons, 2 neutrons, like helium. Alpha particles cannot even go through a few centimeters of air. Alpha irradiation cannot hurt humans when the alpha source is outside the human body, because human skin does not let the alpha particles go through. But alpha radiation can be very harmful if the source is inside the body, for example when people breathe dust or gas containing materials which decay by emitting alpha particles.

Golden Oldies:
Buffett on value investing: "I can only tell you that the secret has been out for 50 years, ever since Ben Graham and Dave Dodd wrote Security Analysis, yet I have seen no trend toward value investing in the 35 years I've practiced it. There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult. The academic world, if anything, has actually backed away from the teaching of value investing over the last 30 years. It's likely to continue that way. Ships will sail around the world but the Flat Earth Society will flourish. There will continue to be wide discrepancies between price and value in the marketplace, and those who read their Graham & Dodd will continue to prosper."Warren Buffett(Speech he gave at Columbia Business School May 17, 1984 marking the 50th anniversary of Security Analysis)

A study done at the University of London found that constant emailing and text-messaging reduces mental capability by an average of ten points on an IQ test. It was five points for women, and fifteen points for men. This effect is similar to missing a night's sleep or about three times more than the effect of smoking cannabis.

AAAAAaaaaaaaaannnnnnddddd.......a picture:
Phoebe Mozee (aka: Annie Oakley). Famous for her marksmanship by the age of 12, she once shot the ashes off of Kaiser Wihelm II's cigarette at his invitation. When she outshot famed exhibition marksman Frank Butler, he fell in love with her and they married. They remained married the rest of their lives.

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