Reverie

Republics are created by ideals and preserved by process.--Alaric Phlogiston

This is interesting. Less than two weeks after the Greek Defense Ministry announced that Turkey had violated Greek airspace 138 times in a single day, a Turkish coast guard patrol boat on February 13 rammed a Greek coast guard vessel off the shore of Imia, one of many Greek islands over which Turkey claims sovereignty.

Most of the areas within modern Greece's current borders were under the occupation of the Ottoman Empire from the mid-15th century until the Greek War of Independence in 1821 and the establishment of the modern Greek state in 1832.

Although the custom of “scalping” was once practiced in Europe and Asia, it is generally associated with North American native groups. In addition to its value as a war trophy, a scalp was often believed to bestow the possessor with the powers of the scalped enemy. In their early wars with Native Americans, European colonists of North America retaliated against hostile native groups by adopting their practice of scalp taking. Bounties were offered for them by colonial authorities, which in turn led to an escalation of intertribal warfare and scalping in North America.

Who are.....Pascale Joassart-Marcelli and Fernando J. Bosco?

A Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation poll released in November found that 42 percent of young people support capitalism, but 44 percent prefer socialism for a socioeconomic system. On the more practical side, the Venezuelan socialist government  recently advised its citizens to eat their pet rabbits.

The U.S. is planning on selling armaments to Japan and the Russians are furious. Apparently the Russians were relying on our sense of fair play and good will while they infiltrated our elections, supported Assad, do dramatic military fly-by stunts and support the North Koreans. The U.N. censures the U.S. over Israel--something they, the U.N., created--, the Americans bite back and these guys are stunned. These states wish everyone ill and are shocked, shocked when the ill will is returned.

A significant graph. Take a farmer to lunch:

According to the  latest findings, the Nordic nations are projected to see national intelligence scores drop by a total of seven points by 2025. Some are blaming this on the social practices of Islam: According to a 2007 study by the Rockwool Foundation, after ten years in the Danish school system, two-thirds of students with an Arabic background remain functionally illiterate. In Bradford, Yorkshire, 75 per cent of Pakistani Britons are married to their first cousins, many of whom are themselves the children of first cousins.

Inbreeding raises the chance of recessive genes finding a match. (e.g. The Royal Disease)

The Amish in the U.S. are an interesting case study of the impact of family marriages. The Amish make up only about 10 percent of the population in Geagua County in Ohio, but they're half of the special needs cases among children.

Wiki has a section that says this:

Specifically, in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Arabs in Israel, it has been discovered that offspring of consanguineous relationships have an increased risk of congenital malformations, congenital heart defects, congenital hydrocephalus and neural tube defects. Furthermore, among inbred children in Palestine and Lebanon, there is a positive association between consanguinity and reported cleft lip/palate cases. Historically, populations of Qatar have engaged in consanguineous relationships of all kinds, leading to high risk of inheriting genetic diseases. As of 2014, around 5% of the Qatari population suffered from hereditary hearing loss; most were descendants of a consanguineous relationship.

Oh my! Two California Professors claim that farmers markets are racist "white spaces" because they promote "gentrification" in poor neighborhoods where the "habits of white people are normalized." 

This, according to a new book by San Diego State University geography professors Pascale Joassart-Marcelli and Fernando J. Bosco entitled "Just Green Enough," an environmental anthology focusing on urban development.

These farmers markets "attract households from higher socio-economic backgrounds, raising property values and displacing low-income residents and people of color."

The professors feel that "curbing gentrification" may be a difficult task, however "strong community involvement" is needed to ensure that the "needs of the poorest...residents are prioritized," while local governments can choose to enact "equitable zoning policies, rent-control laws, and property tax reforms in favor of long-time homeowners."

Tanks might work, too.

In 1900 Sweden's foreign-born population was 0.07 per cent - or 35, 627, of whom all but 300 were from Europe or North America. By 2010 Sweden's foreign-born population was just under 15 per cent - or 1.33 million, of whom two-thirds were born outside the EU. In 2015, they admitted so many Muslim "refugees" that in the space of a single year they overtook China's "one child"-policy sex imbalance (119 boys for every 100 girls) and in their late-teen cohort now have 123 boys for every 100 girls.

"Swatting" is a hoax where people falsely report an emergency to authorities that requires a police response, usually by Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT, teams. Sometimes people are hurt. In Kansas police were called to the home of an innocent man after a male caller identifying himself as him said he had killed his family and was going to burn his house down. The cops showed up and in the confrontation killed the guy. That is not a hoax, that is a murder.

A loyalist paramilitary claims MI5 asked them to assassinate the Irish prime minister in 1985 is among revelations in newly-released Irish state papers.

Documents include a letter purportedly written by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) to Charles Haughey, saying an MI5 officer asked them to "execute" him.

The documents also contain a claim Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams "set up" an IRA gang who were shot dead by the SAS at Loughgall, County Armagh, in 1987.

"If my neighbor were ruining his life and undermining his family’s happiness by abusing alcohol, I would do my best peacefully to persuade him to mend his ways.  But were I to use coercion to prevent him from using alcohol, I would step way out of bounds.  I would become a criminal.  Ultimately, his life is his business; it’s not mine.  Ditto if my neighbor were ruining his life and undermining his family’s happiness by, say, gambling, by philandering, or by overeating.  In none of these circumstances is it my or anyone else’s business, besides that of his family, how my neighbor conducts his life.  You would, I’m sure, regard me to be unambiguously in the wrong if, to stop my neighbor from overeating, I coerced him and his grocers into cages.  The ethics of the situation are unchanged if I and other of my neighbors vote to hire a gang of armed thugs whom we call “the government” to coerce my neighbor into eating less.  Such coercion against a peaceful person remains wrong.

And the ethics of the situation are also unchanged if my neighbor’s chosen method of self-destruction is opioid abuse rather than any one of the countless other methods available for self-destruction.  An adult’s life belongs to him or her; it does not belong to you, to me, to the state, or to any collective."

This is from a letter from Bordeaux and contains what seems to me to be basic libertarian thinking. But what does one do about the argument that opioids, like rubella, has an infective nature that endangers innocents  in proximity to the user? Does the society not have some responsibility to protect him?

"Based on per capita consumption from alcoholic beverage sales data, the average American drinks roughly 1.35 drinks per day, 9.5 drinks per week and 494 drinks per year, said Aaron White, senior scientific advisor to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism director. But, White said that number is higher — 1.94 drinks a day, 13.6 per week and 705 a year when adjusting for age (looking at just adults 18 and older, the majority of the nation's drinkers)." Wait, they were counting kids? That has to be a misprint.

Russia is hoping the Bazhenov shale formation in western Siberia, the largest in the world, will help it defend its title as the world’s top producer of crude oil for decades to come. (wsj) Criminal enterprises are successful if they offer a good product.

A Sunni jihadists group with links to Syria's Nusra Front has destroyed an oil pipeline in Iran while targeting "the economy of the criminal Iranian regime." And Telecom providers in Iran have begun blocking internet access across several cities in the country and interrupting main networks as mass protests erupted in Iran for the third day in a row.

What is going on in Iran?

Where does "buy and hold" come from? Missing just 10 of the best days per decade--per decade--would wipe out around 99% of an investor's total gains since 1930.

From a blog I came across:

"But “ability to concentrate” is a normally distributed trait, like IQ. We draw a line at some point on the far left of the bell curve and tell the people on the far side that they’ve “got” “the disease” of “ADHD”. This isn’t just me saying this. It’s the neurostructural literature, the the genetics literature, a bunch of other studies, and the the Consensus Conference On ADHD. This doesn’t mean ADHD is “just laziness” or “isn’t biological” – of course it’s biological! Height is biological! But that doesn’t mean the world is divided into two natural categories of “healthy people” and “people who have Height Deficiency Syndrome“. Attention is the same way. Some people really do have poor concentration, they suffer a lot from it, and it’s not their fault. They just don’t form a discrete population."

Golden oldie:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2010/11/smart-and-dumb.html

STARTing in any Direction steeleydock.blogspot.com Any treaty purporting to control and/or limit nuclear weaponry seems on its face to be reasonable and desirable. The current START Treaty un...

Not only is Bernie Sanders, Vermont Senator and former contender for the Democratic nomination, the most popular politician in America, but according to one recent poll, he’s seen as the most likely candidate to win the Democratic nomination to take on Trump in 2020.
How is this possible? How is Trump possible? How is any of this possible?

Omar Amanat, 44 and an associate were convicted of fraud on Tuesday for deceiving shareholders in their tech company by falsely inflating revenues. They face a 10 years in prison at his scheduled April 25th sentencing. 

The jury was "not permitted to hear a recorded telephone conversation in which Amanat tells a government cooperator that his first cousin is Huma Abedin.

Another first cousin of Huma Abedin, Irfan Amanat, was charged on December 5 in Manhattan Federal Court in the KIT Digital case. He was busted by The SEC in a separate case for tricking the Nasdaq exchange into giving him $50,000 with a computer program he wrote.

And as Luke Rosiak of the Daily Caller reports, in 2013 Omar Amanet partnered with businessman Vladislav Doronin, known as The Russian Donald Trump, to buy a luxury resort for $358 million.

Russians!!!!!

The New York Times has an article describing how some apps track TV and movie viewing even when the loaded app isn't currently active. These seemingly innocuous games, geared towards both adults and children work by "using a smartphone's microphone." For instance, Alphonso's software can detail what people watch by identifying audio signals in TV ads and shows, sometimes even matching that information with the places people visit and the movies they see. The information can then be used to target ads more precisely.

According to reports from the Wall Street Journal, the Chinese government is building the largest DNA database in the world  and expanding electronic surveillance. No citizens or subjects have ever been submitted to this level of surveillance. Innocent individuals are tricked into providing DNA samples when they are not simply forced to comply. Big Brother in Orwell's 1984 and the benevolent rulers of Huxley's Brave New World  would be green with envy.

Nearly 5 million Americans are in default on student loans.

One of Hillary Clinton’s wealthy supporters paid $500,000 in an unsuccessful effort to fund women willing to accuse President Trump of sexual misconduct before the 2016 election, the NYT reported Sunday.

"In the absence of individual interest, there is no interest." This is a quote from Buchanan who won a Nobel Prize. Think about this for a minute.

Collectively, Americans carried $13.15 trillion in debt as of year-end 2017. Most if it is mortgage debt.

AAAAAAAannnnnnndddddd.....a graph: