Reverie

Their biggest fear is acceptance, because then they cease to be special.--Katie Hopkins

When Hugo Chavez, the father of Venezuela’s nightmare, died in 2013, President Carter praised Chavez’s bold leadership saying, "We came to know a man who expressed a vision to bring profound changes to his country to benefit especially those people who had felt neglected and marginalized.”

How could anybody with a brain say that? How could such a destroyer get the benefit of a good heart?

There is an interesting, if twisted, argument crediting the undeniable decline of poverty to increased government transfers. There is indeed a correlation, but it's backwards. Poverty declined in the nineteenth century and improvement continued into the twentieth. And transfers occurred and increased--but only at the end of the twentieth and only in rich countries. So the transfer payments occurred only after poverty was in rapid decline--and in the wrong places. The next obvious question is, why did the wealthy countries do that?

South Korea is threatening to block a revised free-trade agreement with the U.S. unless its cars win an exemption from proposed American tariffs, putting at risk the only free-trade deal the Trump administration has successfully renegotiated.

Delicious.

Freedom gives us a chance to realise our human and individual uniqueness... those who lack the capacity to achieve much in an atmosphere of freedom will clamor for power.--Erik Hoffer, called by Richard Pipes "one the wisest minds of 20th century America."

Who the devil is...Arkady Babchenko?

An Amazon Echo user in Portland, Oregon her Echo had recorded a conversation with her husband without them knowing, then sent the audio file to one of his employees in Seattle.

Alexa's always-listening microphones mishearing a series of words and mistakenly sending a voice message.

"Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like 'Alexa.' Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a 'send message' request," Amazon said in a statement. "At which point, Alexa said out loud 'To whom?' At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customers contact list. Alexa then asked out loud, '[contact name], right?' Alexa then interpreted background conversation as 'right'. As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely."

Creepy.

While Clapper is not as impressive as Hayden, he said something of interest in an interview. He said the normal government controls of checks-and-balances has shifted. In the current Washington struggle, the executive branch is aligned with the legislative against a separate executive segment. 

A recent report from the King's Fund, a leading British think tank, finds that the National Health Service has fewer doctors, nurses and beds per capita than almost any nation in the Western world.

In the first three months of 2018, the NHS canceled more than 25,000 operations, according to a new analysis by the Royal College of Surgeons. That's the highest figure in nearly a quarter-century.

This month, the London Telegraph reported that some cancer patients were waiting as much as 18 months for treatments. Across 88 NHS organizational units called trusts, the longest wait for cancer care was 213 days — approximately seven months.

This Roseanne Barr thing is surprisingly interesting. Comediennes have been getting a pass--their statements overlapping into the fluid "art" designation--but not this time. More, the general opinion seems to have evolved that one has more than a right to speak, one has a right to be heard--a bizarre notion. Not this time.

Caplan says a funny thing in his argument against college. No professor will throw you out of a class--so if you want to go to Princeton, move there and just go to class without paying. He says no one will do that though, proving that the diploma and not the education is the real point of college.

Drug tests of car drivers killed in crashes in 2016 found more drivers had marijuana, opioids or other substances in their system than a decade ago, a report shows.

European leaders have called for a new presidential election in Venezuela. Maduro called this "colonialism;" he's not right--that is simply a hope for a hot button. But it is a strange attempt to influence the inner workings of a country, something the Americans are very upset at Putin over. And something the Europeans are upset with the Americans over in the Middle East.

A prominent Russian journalist known for his sharp criticism of Vladimir Putin was reported murdered in the Ukrainian capital. 

Arkady Babchenko, 41, was found by his wife in a pool of blood at their Kiev apartment on Tuesday evening. He had been shot in the back. 

He appeared alive and well the next day.

Golden oldie:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2016/08/mrs-miniver.html

"Mrs Miniver" steeleydock.blogspot.com I saw "Mrs Miniver" recently. Mrs. Miniver was originally a fictional character created by Jan Struther  in 1937 for a series of newspaper...

"All I know is that I know nothing" is called Socrates' Paradox, a position that sounds very modern for an ancient searcher for truth. It is attributed to Socrates on the basis of his remarks in Plato’s Apology. Socrates reports that his friend Chaerephon went to the oracle at Delphi to ask if any person was wiser than Socrates. The oracle apparently answered, no.  Socrates then cross-examined people who had a reputation for wisdom and concluded that their reputation was undeserved. Socrates then said this about the significance of the oracle’s answer: “I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know when I do not know.”

So Socrates' wisdom is in knowing the limits of his knowledge and not allowing an overestimation of his knowledge to breed overconfidence  that would close off further searching. No so paradoxical.

Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens said he would resign as state lawmakers weighed his impeachment amid allegations of sexual misconduct and campaign finance violations. He is an ex-SEAL and a former Rhoades Scholar.

There is a giant trade surplus for Germany financed by unpayable debts for those who bought German goods. But much of that debt is on the balance sheet of European banks. S&P just cut its rating for Deutsche Bank to BBB+. That is only a few notches above junk status. And if there were Italian issues? A lot of German banks could see their ratings fall to below junk.

Diversity is interesting. Socially it is seen as a contributor to the value of life, the expansion of experience. It is a cultural enrichment. Biologically it is quite the opposite: It is the means by which destruction provides change. It is the variety of elements from which a narrow, more successful line is created.

Aaaaaaannnnnddddddd....an amazing graph, considering what you hear all the time: