Cab Thought 9/26/15

Look homeward Angel now, and melt with ruth;

And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth. --from "Lycidas" by Milton


The Hillary security/arrogance problem is a huge problem for Hillary but might be bigger for Obama. He has always wanted to be above the fray, being precise and honest, doing good. That view of him goes out the window if he uses his office to protect her. But investigating and pursuing her will enhance the image and could create the legacy he has hungered for. What's a politician to do?

Companies have been pouring money into research and development at the fastest pace in 50 years. From November through the end of March, U.S. companies funded R&D at an annual rate of $316 billion, or about 1.8 percent of gross domestic product, the largest share ever for the private sector. That’s up from 1.7 percent last year and 1.6 percent from 2007 to 2014. “If secular stagnation is a ‘thing,’ then U.S. companies are investing like crazy to make sure it doesn’t happen,” says Neil Dutta, senior U.S. economist at Renaissance Macro Research.

Who is ....Charles Frazier?

In his speech defending the Iran agreement Obama said,  "Our nuclear experts, including one of the best in the world, Secretary of Energy Ernie Moniz, worked tirelessly on the technical details" of the Iran pact. But when Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., asked him about the secret side deals between the International Atomic Energy Agency and Tehran, the "tireless" Moniz was forced to admit, "I personally have not seen those documents."

Liminal: adj. Of or pertaining to a threshold or entrance. Of or pertaining to a beginning or first stage of a process; inceptive; inchoative; marginal. Also used as an anthropological term to describe transition in a culture.

The deliberate starvation of Ukraine in 1932 and 1933,  killed, at a minimum, 7 million people, more than half of them children. At one point, more Ukrainians were dying each day than Jews were to be murdered at Auschwitz at the peak of extermination in the spring of 1944.

If the fetal parts sold by Planned Parenthood is such a good idea and scientifically valuable, why don't they advertise it?

A recent FBI alert: “On numerous occasions family members of military personnel were confronted by Middle Eastern males in front of their homes.” The FBI’s alert says Middle Eastern men attempted to gain personal information about military members and family members through intimidation. This has occurred in Colorado and Wyoming; probably Jehovah Witnesses.

Golden oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-prince-of-darkness-on-elevator.html

Cold Mountain is now an opera, composed by Jennifer Higdon with a libretto by Gene Scheer. The story is based on Charles Frazier's debut novel, published in 1997, about the soldier W.P. Inman and his struggle to make it home. It became a movie six years later. Jennifer Higdon is an American composer of classical music. A recording of her Percussion Concerto won a Grammy, while her Violin Concerto won a Pulitzer Prize. Cold Mountain is being performed at Santa Fe Opera through August. Most performances are sold out. It will be produced by Opera Philadelphia early next year, and again in 2018 by Minnesota Opera. Higdon grew up in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee — not far from the setting of Cold Mountain.

The Food and Drug Administration has approved the first prescription drug made through 3D printing: a dissolvable tablet that treats seizures. 

"Lycidas" is a poem in the elegiac tradition written by John Milton. Lycidas himself represents Edward King, Milton's fellow-student at Cambridge, and also an aspiring poet, who was drowned in a shipwreck off the coast of Anglesey. A pastoral poem, it was famously disliked by Johnson who said, "Surely no man could have fancied he read 'Lycidas' with pleasure had he not known its author." It is best known as the source for Thomas Wolfe's book title, Look Homeward, Angel.

Senator Chuck Schumer, the most influential Jewish voice in Congress, said that he would oppose President Obama’s deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program.

Only 3 percent of soldiers in the active-duty Army have earned Ranger badge, it is an unofficial prerequisite for obtaining many infantry commands, and an explicit requirement for leading combat troops in the Ranger Regiment. It is also a significant career enhancer even for officers who do not serve in combat units. There are at present two women in the advanced stages of Ranger School and, if they finish, they will be the first women to do so. 17 other women who started Ranger School this year did not make it. None of the 29 female officers who started the similar Marine program passed. Both of these women pass the Ranger course and they will place a real question upon the sincerity of the military in their often stated gender equality.

 

Kang had a chance to be Rookie of the Year. But not with Bryant.

In Brazil, race is fluid and is determined by a number of factors such as a person's parents, a person's phenotype, and a person's socioeconomic status. In places like Brazil, a person's race can change as they become wealthier or poorer.

Natalia Molchanova, the most decorated freediver in the world with 41 world records and 23 world champion titles, was diving in the Balearic Sea, near to the Spanish island of Formentera on Sunday when she failed to surface. Freediving is a form of underwater diving in which divers hold their breath instead of using a breathing apparatus such as scuba gear. Even Houdini wasn't crazy enough to do this without a trick.

Skiplagged.com finds those cheap “hidden city” fares where you are supposed to connect in Minneapolis on your way to Dallas but just stay in Minneaspolis because that was where you wanted to go in the first place.  This cute trick is apparently a very dangerous practice. As Wikipedia explains:  “Many airlines have established means of identifying and penalizing travelers who take advantage of such tactics, most notably through their frequent flier programs. When a traveler is shown to have practiced such methods, airlines may respond by confiscating tickets, canceling frequent flier status, and billing travel agents for the fare difference.  Airlines contend that booking ploys are an unethical practice. However, even though booking ploys might be a breach of contract and against airline rules, such endeavors are not considered illegal.”

It was Rousseau who made the hatred of one’s own culture the stance of the cultivated person....

Turner’s intellectual history becomes, in large part, a history of intellectuals trying to make a religion out of something that can’t actually be one—nature, art, the inner self, primitivism, progress, the distant past, the radiant future, nation, culture, even science—and in the process turning each of them into a myth......

German idealist philosophy took a plunge into the inner self and emerged cradling a new conception of art and the artist. Art, sometimes along with nature, was seen as an expression of profound inner realities: the unique, autonomous, creative genius of the artist or of some pantheistic or transcendent inner spiritual essence. Art was given a metaphysical status and sacred aura: It was now understood as inherently expressive, with an emphasis on the artist’s personality and on radical originality instead of the faithful, self-effacing imitation of nature—or an edifying version of it—found in classical aesthetics. But once sacred mysteries were expected of the artist, mystification often followed...--Lawrence Klepp's review on Turner's European Intellectual History from Rousseau to Nietzsche

AAAAAaaaannnnnndddddd......a picture of Sanctuary at Las Lajas in Colombia near the Ecuadorian border