Cab Thoughts 11/4/15

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a
torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an
oracle, is inborn in us. -Paul Valery, poet and philosopher (1871-1945)

 

 

 

The Department of Homeland Security and representatives with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection have declined to comment on why certain states have been singled out, but starting in 2016, residents of New York, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and American Samoa will need a passport to fly domestically. All other states will still be able to use their state-issued driver's licenses and IDs - for now, at least.

 

Autism is diagnosed in 1 percent of individuals in Asia, Europe, and North America, and 2.6 percent of South Koreans. We know there is a strong genetic component to autism -- so much so that until recently autism was thought to be a primarily genetic disease. There is clearly an underlying genetic component to many cases of autism. If one identical twin has autism, the probability that the other is also affected is around 70 percent. Until recently, the sibling of an autistic child, even though sharing many of the same parental genes and overall home environment, had only a 1 in 20 probability of being afflicted. Meanwhile, the neighbor's child, genetically unrelated, has only a 0.6 percent probability, But even though millions of dollars have been spent trying to identify 'the genes' for autism, so far the picture is still murky. The hundreds of gene mutations identified in the past decade do not explain the majority of today's cases. And while we searched for genes, a big epidemic was brewing.


In business, the "holy grail" is to get long-term, recurring business from the same customer, rather than having to make a new sale each time. In the late 1800s, William Painter had achieved this with cork, a disposable sealant. One used the cork, then got rid of it and bought more. He encouraged a young employee named King Gillette to invent something with this same disposable quality, and Gillette came up with the idea of a disposable razor blade.

Who is...Patricia Highsmith?

Graham on speculation: "To see why temporarily high returns don't prove anything, imagine that two places are 130 miles apart. If I observe the 65-mph speed limit, I can drive that distance in two hours. But if I drive 130 mph, I can get there in one hour. If I try this and survive, am I 'right'? Should you be tempted to try it, too, because you hear me bragging that it 'worked'? Rashy gimmicks for beating the market are much the same: In short streaks, so long as your luck holds out, they work. Over time, they will get you killed."

 

A "Brocken Spectre" occurs when a person is standing above the horizon, causing a shadow to be cast on the mist or cloud below. As a result, a circular rainbow halo forms around the shadow or "Spectre."  In essence, it is a man's own shadow cast on mist.A "Brocken Spectre" occurs when a person is standing above the horizon, causing a shadow to be cast on the mist or cloud below. As a result, a circular rainbow halo forms around the shadow or "Spectre." so named because of sightings on the Brocken, the highest peak of Germany's Harz Mountains.

Mawkish: a.: 1. characterized by sickly sentimentality; weakly emotional; maudlin. 2. having a mildly sickening flavor; slightly nauseating. Mawkish entered English in the late 1600s from the now-obsolete word mawk meaning "maggot."

Two documents were issued in the mid-1980s under the auspices of the Roman Catholic church - one is a document from the U.S. National Conference of Catholic Bishop, and the second is from a 30-member Lay Commission of Catholics. "The work of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops' ad hoc committee and the Lay Commission both start from the same presumption: that there is a well-defined body of Catholic thought or, more accurately, set of values, which united with economic principles will yield an economic policy prospectus.  The truth is that there is no such well-defined body of Catholic thought, i.e., set of values, and it is quixotic to believe that there could be.  If the history of the Catholic Church teaches us anything it is that the Church as an organization has extraordinary survival characteristics both across nations and through time.  The Catholic Church is nothing if not universal, i.e., catholic.  It has been and is all things to all people.  Can we reasonably expect such an organization to have a unified view of what constitutes justice, or what trade-off is appropriate between present and future poverty, or between freedom and distributive capacity." --from Alchian's 1986 essay, co-authored with William Meckling, "The Bishops and the Lay Commission"

The Smithsonian is getting calls from a campaign to have the bust of Margaret Sanger removed from the institute.In 1952, novelist Patricia Highsmith published the novel The Price of Salt -- the inspiration behind the highly-anticipated lesbian drama " Caro,"  starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. Also included in her body work are the famous novels  Strangers on a Train, which later became an Alfred Hitchcock film, and The Talented Mr. Ripley.

 

Jacob Fugger changed history because he lived in an age when, for the first time, money made all the difference in war and, hence, politics.  He paid the bribes that secured Charles V's elevation as Holy Roman Emperor, he had also financed Charles's grandfather and taken his family, the Habsburgs, from the wings of European politics to center stage. Fugger made his mark in other ways, too. He roused commerce from its medieval slumber by persuading the pope to lift the ban on moneylending. He helped save free enterprise from an early grave by financing the army that won the German Peasants' War, the first great dash between capitalism and communism. He broke the back of the Hanseatic League, Europe's most powerful commercial organization before Fugger. He engineered a shady financial scheme that unintentionally provoked Luther to write his Ninety-five Theses, the document that triggered the Reformation, the earth-shattering event that cleaved European Christianity in two. He most likely funded Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe.--or so Greg Steinmetz believes in his book The Richest Man Who Ever Lived

That horrible picture of the drowned child is said to be a rallying point against Assad and his war. But the kid was a Kurd. His family were Kurdish refugees from Kobani who had to flee that city when it was besieged, not by Assad, but by Assad’s enemy, ISIS. What can be done here? It is likely that Europe will never run out of people to rescue and will exhaust their resources long before. And what of the inherent changes in the European nations? In his 1964 “Suicide of the West” James Burnham predicted that the magnanimity of liberals, who subordinate the interests of their own people and nations to utopian and altruistic impulses, would bring about an end to Western civilization. After all, civilizations are of fragile components.


"Woodpeckers don't get concussions, but there's nothing we can learn [from them]," Dr Ainissa Ramirez said on the podcast StarTalk.

Tolkien's mother, Mabel, valued learning and vigorously set about transmitting what she knew to her son. She instructed him in Latin, French, German, and the rudiments of linguistics, awakening in him a lifelong thirst for languages, alphabets, and etymologies. She taught him to draw and to paint, arts in which he would develop his own unmistakable style, primitive and compelling, She passed on to him her peculiar calligraphy; he would later master traditional forms and invent his own. She tried to teach him piano, although that proved a failure. And she introduced him to children's literature.
But Mabel wished to give her children more than the metaphorical immortality of transmitted gifts; she wished to give them true eternity. This she accomplished in 1900, by bringing herself and her two boys into the Roman Catholic Church, a controversial and unpopular move in Anglican England.

Hillary and her staff have announced they are trying to show more spontaneity and humor. They seemingly see no conflict between planning and spontaneity.

Golden oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2009/09/fundamentalist.html


The earliest settlers of the lands that lie within the heart of Europe between the Carpathian Mountains and the Danube were the Boii, a Celtic tribe on the run from northern floods. Those pioneers were gradually pushed out by Germanic warriors, who were then suppressed by the legions of imperial Rome. The Romans called the land 'Bohemia' after the Boii, which means that the territory was named by Italians in honor of the Irish.

 

The Southern Cross is such a famous constellation that it is depicted on the national flag of Australia.


Billions of research dollars have been spent on depression; probably less than a million has been spent to find treatments for psychopathy. One of the most striking peculiarities of psychopaths is that they lack empathy. They lie and manipulate yet feel no compunction or regrets -- in fact, they don't feel particularly deeply about anything at all. Images of psychopaths' brains made by Kent A. Kiehl show a pronounced thinning and underdevelopment of the paralimbic tissue, and area which includes the orbitofrontal cortex, the amygdala, the anterior cingulate cortex and the insula; that is, their brains look different. Some researchers have estimated that as many as 500,000 psychopaths inhabit the U.S. prison system, and there may be another 250,000 more living freely -- perhaps not committing serious crimes, but still taking advantage of those around them.

 

The Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report (MMWR) is the publication that provides how many people got sick or died last week.

 

In Mayan civilization, cacao beans were the currency, and counterfeiting cacao beans out of painted clay had become a thriving industry. Goods could be priced in units of cacao: a slave cost 100 beans, the services of a prostitute cost 10 beans, and a turkey cost 20 beans. While the Spanish conquistadors horded gold, the Mesoamericans horded cacao beans. In some parts of Latin America, the beans were used as a currency as late as the 19th century.

 

Nicknamed "Three Finger" by the press because a farming accident in his youth cost him parts of two fingers on his right hand, Mordecai Brown was one of the top Major League Baseball pitchers at the turn of the 20th century. He used his injury to his advantage, developing a unique grip on the ball that produced an unusual amount of spin, baffling batters. Over the course of his major league career, Brown won 239 games and lost just 130.

 

AAAAAnnnnnnddddd.........a Brocken Spectre: