Cab Thoughts 2/19/14

The greatest obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents, and the oceans was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge. -Daniel J. Boorstin, historian, professor, attorney, and writer (1914-2004)

 

 

Is there a reason why all the pop-up ads are promising to reveal a hitherto hidden "trick?" And why is it usually "weird?"

Presidents' Day is a bad idea. It drags all the individuals in and celebrates none. It submerges each individual with his special abilities into a meaningless composite. In a world of Armstrong, Bonds and Grass we should elevate heroes and men of integrity, not mix them in a stew. This new world of equality-through-sameness may not tolerate such distinctions, though. We have not had a real hero since Pat Tillman and he, symbolically, was killed by friendly fire.

 

The Russians developed the Spartakiad workers' games early in the Soviet/communist state. The Russians were banned from international sport--a Western boycott--but they really had no infrastructure to develop athletes; the worker was a worker. And there was a serious ideological problem: How, in a world of equality, could there be individual champions? (Sometimes history more than rhymes.) The first Spartakiad Games were held in 1928 and was a mixture of parades, artistic gymnastics, sport, music and dance. These were all non-competitive. They joined the Olympics in 1952.

 

I heard a very interesting discussion between entrepreneurs over the distinction between the word "entrepreneur" and "businessman." The one man thought they were the same but "entrepreneur" gave a businessman cover, in case he should fail. In essence it gave him an excuse to fail. 

I suppose the distinction is that an entrepreneur is an innovator trying to change a business landscape and becomes a businessman only after the dust has settled and his business stable and successful. But "the excuse to fail" idea was interesting.

 

Golden oldie:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2012/05/forest-and-trees-of-politics.html

 

Sulfites  in wine prevent bacterial growth and further fermentation. While sulfites are a by product of fermentation they are also added.  To say on the label that the wine "contains sulfites" is mandatory only if a certain level is attained. Wines which claim to be "100% Organic" are not permitted to use sulfites in the production process but may still contain trace and/or undetectable amounts, which on a practical level means they are sulfite-free. The absence of added sulfites, or an extremely low level, implies that the wine  may well be more sensitive to changes in temperature and light during shipping and storage. Since bacteria and yeasts may remain, there is a greater risk of spoilage once the wine leaves the protected environment of the winery.

 

$10,000 invested in the S&P 500 only during Republican administrations since 1929  would have grown to only about $12,000 — versus about $572,000 under Democrat administrations.

 

jovial:    adjective. 1. endowed with or characterized by a hearty, joyous humor or a spirit of good-fellowship: a wonderfully jovial host.

Of (the planet) Jupiter, considered by astrologers to foster good humour. The planet is named for the father of the gods, Latin Jov-, stem of Old Latin Jovis, who was replaced later by Jupiter, the Roman Zeus.

 

In 1967  Paul Engle, director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, received money from the Farfield Foundation to support international writing at the University of Iowa. The Farfield Foundation was a CIA front that supported cultural operations, mostly in Europe, through an organization called the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Engle had been evangelical about the rising ambitions of the Russians in cultural expansion through their new Moscow University and his concerns were heeded.

 

The first demonstration of a public radio broadcast was in Australia in 1920. The first radio station, KDKA in Pittsburgh, was aired in 1923.

 

Big vote against immigration in Switzerland. 70,000 immigrants a year in a country of 8 million. Almost a quarter of the population already holds a foreign passport. Somehow this vote has been translated as an anti-free trade vote. This will impact some EU rules but only indirectly. Leadership always seems to prefer the worst about their citizens.

 

A notion being kicked around by our betters. Instead of banks, mostly low-income individuals use check-cashing stores, pawnshops, payday lenders, and other unscrupulous financial services providers who gouged their customers to the tune of $89 billion in interest and fees in 2012, according to the IG report. Post offices could deliver the same services at a 90 percent discount, saving the average under served household over $2,000 a year and still providing the USPS with $8.9 billion in new annual profits. The question of why these cutthroat places exist was not asked.

 

Jesus Chavez Castillo, a killer for the Juarez drug cartel, testified he stopped counting the number of people he killed at 800, and said he often beheaded and dismembered victims to impress his boss. A good employer-employee relationship. It is charged that the cartel had a daily murder quota calibrated to instill fear in police and the public. They took a contract out on the entire city. At least Genghis Khan gave a town the chance to surrender.
 

America has more than 2 million miles of natural gas pipelines and about 175,000 miles of hazardous liquid pipelines. Would the proposed Keystone line make that much of a difference?

 

"In many states, felony disenfranchisement laws are still on the books. And the current scope of these policies is not only too significant to ignore -- it is also too unjust to tolerate,” AG Holder told a criminal justice forum at Georgetown University Law Center. Our dragons to slay are getting smaller and smaller.

 

Who was...Lady Jane Grey?

"To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss." This was a motto of the Khmer Rouge, a communist outfit that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. They would probably quality as “one of modern history’s pivotal experiments” according to the logic of NBC. The revolutionary group was made up mostly of college educated Marxists and they aimed their dialectic fury at professionals, teachers, city dwellers and generally anyone suspicious. The mortality rate attributed to the dialectic cleansing was about 30% of the population. They preferred torturing people to death but, for time and economic reasons, had to scale back their means of murder, which is why the verb "to hoe" in Cambodia means "to kill."

 

Two activists were found guilty  of "deliberate destruction of property" for spray-painting the fence of what they said was a local governor's property. Pretty touchy about private property for a culture that so recently outlawed it.

 

AAAnnnndddd.....a picture of one of the displays by Al Taylor at the Zwirner Gallery in London: