Saturday, November 11, 2017

Reverie

Biographical history, as taught in our public schools, is still largely a history of boneheads: ridiculous kings and queens, paranoid political leaders, compulsive voyagers, ignorant generals, the flotsam and jetsam of historical currents. The men who radically altered history, the great creative scientists and mathematicians, are seldom mentioned if at all. -Martin Gardner, mathematician and writer (1914-2010) 



"To rationalize or to explain choices in terms of either genetic endowments or social environment removes the elements of freedom and responsibility.  “Natural man,” in the model of some behavioral responder to stimuli, akin to my dog, contradicts both the notion of individual liberty and that of individual responsibility for the consequences of the choices made.  Man must bear the responsibilities for his own choices because of his artifactual nature, because he has available to him alternative “choosables,” to use [George] Shackle’s term, because man makes his own history.
If individual man is to be free, he is to be held accountable, he is to be deemed responsible for his actions.  But at the same time he is allowed to take credit for his achievement."--Buchanan
This is a crucial question. Can--or should--an individual be held responsible for his situation? His actions? The result of those actions regardless of intent?


The University halls of tolerance issued Halloween costume guidance. Princeton's workshop capsulizes it:

At a “Conversation Circle” at Princeton University this Sunday, students will “engage in a dialogue about the impact of cultural appropriation, Halloween, and why culture is not a costume.”

Who is...Fusion GPS?


Buildings are constructed with fire-resistant materials; clothing and curtains are made of flame-retardant fabrics; and municipal laws mandate sprinkler systems and smoke detectors. The striking results: On highways, vehicle fires declined 64 percent from 1980 to 2013. Building fires fell 54 percent during that time. When they break out, sprinkler systems almost always extinguish the flames before firefighters can turn on a hose.
As the number of fires has dropped, the ranks of firefighters have continued to grow — significantly. There are half as many fires as there were 30 years ago, but about 50 percent more people are paid to fight them.
Large-scale disasters, such as the 1942 Cocoanut Grove inferno in Boston that killed 492 people, and the 1903 Iroquois Theatre conflagration in Chicago, which killed 602, are largely forgotten. As recently as the early 1980s, it wasn’t unusual to have a couple of home fires a year that resulted in 10 or more deaths each, according to the National Fire Protection Association. Until the recent California warehouse fire,  that kind of fire-related tragedy is almost unheard of. There wasn’t a single one between 2008 and 2013 (the most recent year recorded). The California warehouse fire is a rare exception.
In a February 2001 report, the Wall Street Journal noted that 90 percent of firehouse calls in Los Angeles, Chicago and certain other cities were to accompany ambulances to medical emergencies.
Today, fewer than 4 percent of fire department calls are for fires. Meanwhile, requests for medical aid more than quadrupled between 1980 and 2013, to more than 21 million, according to the National Fire Prevention Association. In other words, for every structure fire a fire department responds to, it receives 44 medical calls, on average.


In 1896 Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, the first of his masterpieces, premiered in St. Petersburg. The opening night was such a disaster that by Act Two Chekhov was hiding backstage from the jeering, and by 2 a.m., after hours of walking the streets alone, he was declaring, "Not if I live to be seven hundred will I write another play."


Puig has become my symbol of our modern exhibitionist life. After he hit a home run in the Playoffs he sat down--then decided to take a curtain call although no one was cheering. He walked out of the dugout at waved acknowledgement to silent fans.

Everything you need to know about our carbon-based life form can be captured in this single anniversary: In 1915, in the eastern sector of the Italian front in World War I, the Italians launched their third offensive of the year, known as the Third Battle of the Isonzo.

Before the Obama administration approved a controversial deal in 2010 giving Moscow control of a large swath of American uranium, the FBI had gathered substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin’s atomic energy business inside the United States, according to government documents and interviews. Federal agents used a confidential U.S. witness working inside the Russian nuclear industry to gather extensive financial records, make secret recordings and intercept emails as early as 2009 that showed Moscow had compromised an American uranium trucking firm with bribes and kickbacks in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, FBI and court documents show. The FBI has apparently obtained an eyewitness account — backed by documents — indicating Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow, sources told The Hill.
Oh, well. 

U.S.-backed forces said they have captured Islamic State’s de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria, wrenching away the terror group’s last major urban stronghold in the Middle East. (wsj)

In a project called AutoML, Google’s researchers have taught machine-learning software to build machine-learning software. In some instances, what it comes up with is more powerful and efficient than the best systems the researchers themselves can design. Hide the women.

In September—the same month we had 4.2% national unemployment—the US had 6.8 million unemployed people. Of those, 1.7 million had been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer.
An additional 5.1 million Americans were working “part-time for economic reasons.” In other words, they couldn’t find the full-time job they wanted, so they were forced to work part-time.
Add to that the 1.6 million “marginally attached” workers who were available to work, but hadn’t actively looked for a job in the last four weeks.
That means 13.5 million Americans were in some kind of employment distress last month.
That doesn’t  include the millions who have simply dropped out of the labor force—and millions more who are employed at far lower wages than before the recession.



Marlins owners Derek Jeter and Bruce Sherman will try this winter to cut the team's payroll by as much as $65 million, a source recently told Clark Spencer of the Miami Herald. Jeter, Sherman, and their ownership group recently agreed to pay $1.2 billion to buy the Marlins, who are expected to lose roughly $50 million in revenue next year, Spencer reports. Stanton might get traded!

Two of the co-founders of Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm behind the infamous Trump dossier, invoked their Fifth Amendment rights during a meeting with the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, a person familiar with the matter told the Daily Caller.
As Strassel's WSJ article this week shows, this was a serious change in the politics of the country, going well beyond "dirty tricks." A citizen response is unlikely because it would depend, to some degree, upon the media responsible for it becoming honest, which is unlikely.

Price controls are essentially lies about supply and demand.--Sowell
 


Samantha Power, who was the US Ambassador to the UN under former President Barack Obama, averaged more than one “unmasking” request for every working day in 2016 — even going so far as to seek the names of Trump associates just before his inauguration, a report says.
Sources told FOX News that Power tried to expose more than 260 people last year, most in the final days of the Obama administration.

I do not think I have read any of the White House proclamations and firestorms since the inauguration speech but I accidentally watched John Kelly last night. I was really impressed. He sounded like a reasonable, sensitive, honest man. They will tear him to pieces.

And of course the government is in active discussions over which promises to break. According to the WSJ, proposals floating around Washington to cap the amount that Americans can contribute before taxes to 401(k) plans and individual retirement accounts are unsettling professionals in the retirement industry.

There was a recent discussion on the Internet over the Dark Ages. Was it geographic? Religious? (There is a strong argument that it was a function of the dominance of Islam controlling the trade routes.) Here is an interesting summary from Will Durant: The Dark Ages are not a period upon which the scholar can look with superior scorn. He no longer denounces their ignorance and superstitions, their political disintegration, their economic and cultural poverty; he marvels, rather, that Europe ever recovered from the successive blows of Goths, Huns, Vandals, Moslems, Magyras, and Norse, and preserved through the turmoil and tragedy so much of ancient letters and techniques. He can feel only admiration for Charlemagnes, Alfreds, Olafs and Ottos who forced an order upon this chaos; for the Benedicts, Gregorys, Bonifaces, Columbas, Alcuins, Brunos, who so patiently resurrected morals and letters out of the wilderness of their times; for prelates and artisans that could raise cathedrals, and the nameless poets that could sing, between one war of terror and the next. State and Church had to begin again at the bottom, as Romulus and Numa had done a thousand years before and the courage required to build cities out of jungles, and citizens out of savages, was greater than that which would raise Chartres, Amiens, and Reims or cool Dante’s vengeful fever into measured verse.

Multiple U.S. security consultants and other industry sources tell The Daily Beast customers are dropping their use of Kaspersky software all together, particularly in the financial sector, likely concerned that Russian spies can rummage through their files.

Golden oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2013/07/change-up.html
steeleydock.blogspot.com
Work fast. Throw strikes. Change speeds. This is the classic advice to major league pitchers as they try to influence the batter's accurac...




HealthDay (10/18, Mozes) reports that research suggests “as many as 2 million Americans may be drinking well water that contains potentially dangerous amounts of arsenic.” HealthDay adds, “Exposure to high levels of arsenic is known to raise the risk for a broad range of cancers, including skin, lung, bladder, kidney and liver cancers.”

In the Amazon sweepstakes astonishing tax bribes are being offered, the largest from New Jersey. New Jersey proposed $7 billion in potential credits against state and city taxes if Amazon locates in Newark and sticks to hiring commitments, according to a Monday news release from the governor’s office. That's about $140,000 per proposed employee. It is said that Austin has the inside track. Bloomberg on Pittsburgh's chances: Pittsburgh:  The city is home to a large labor force and well-respected research institutes like top AI and robotics university Carnegie Mellon. It’s also close to major distribution hubs and has an industrial manufacturing background that could be useful for Amazon’s warehousing projects. Yet it’s far from other major metro areas and tech hubs.

Scientists at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) confirmed the presence of a cave on the moon after examining the hole using radio waves. The chasm, 50km (31 miles) long and 100 meters wide, appears to be structurally sound and its rocks may contain ice or water deposits that could be turned into fuel, according to data sent back by the orbiter, nicknamed Kaguya after the moon princess in a Japanese fairy-tale. Jaxa believes the cave, located from a few dozen meters to 200 meters beneath an area of volcanic domes known as the Marius Hills on the moon's near side, is a lava tube created during volcanic activity about 3.5bn years ago. 

There is a fascinating accusation floating around about the Russians and their "contributions" to the Clintons in hopes of influencing American policy. Newsweek published a debunking of it with this summary:
"All told, $145 million went to the Clinton Foundation from those linked to Uranium One and UrAsia, but it went to the charity organization and not the Clinton family. Furthermore, most of those donations occurred before and during Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign, according to The Post.
Assessment: Yes, the foundation received money and Bill Clinton was paid to give a speech, but there’s no evidence the Clintons were paid by Russians to push through the uranium deal."
They think this is an exoneration!
Remember, Newsweek is Pro-Clinton! This is what these people admit to and feel is innocent!

In a strangely similar intellectual and logic-defying vein, Democracy in Chains has been nominated for the National Book Award.

AAAAAaaaaaaannnnnddddd.....a bar graph:

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