On a Pale Blue Dot, Popularity Contests and Personality Cults

I have an election prediction. Democrats are going to get destroyed, losing the House and Senate, even losing to a few of the lunatic Republicans that they funded in the primary. 

And here's another prediction- I'll accept the results!

November 8, 2022

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A DARK DAY- November 8, 2016

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My prediction- Clinton 341, Trump 197.

My other prediction- many Trump supporters will still think it's rigged, overlooking the fact that Clinton has been ahead in every model, that Obama's +50% approval gives the incumbent party the advantage, that more people think Clinton will win (often a better indicator than asking them who they will vote for), that people trust her more on key issues, that people believe she has a better temperment for the job, early voting was well in her favor, and although she has a low favorability rating, it's higher than Trump's.

And come on, what outcome did they think a xenophobic, racist, sexist campaign would have?

November 8, 2016, 7:35 AM

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I hope that next time we can focus on the actual issues instead of basic human decency. Wouldn't arguing over the issues be a breath of fresh air?

November 8, 2016, 5:34 PM

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NPR- Need Some Perspective? Watch Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/11/08/501128898/need-some-perspective-watch-carl-sagans-pale-blue-dot

November 8, 2016, 6:59 PM

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Can't wait to hear Trump's concession speech! (Just can't believe I have to wait a minimum of four years to hear it.)

November 8, 2016, 9:33 PM

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Every time they update Clinton's firewall states I morph into a bushbaby.

November 8, 2016, 9:44 PM

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This is without a doubt the best year and a half long movie I've ever seen.

November 8, 2016, 9:55 PM

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If Trump wins, here's my suggestion- buy stock tomorrow. Or run for the hills. I'm not sure.

November 8, 2016, 9:57 PM

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On the positive side, Melania Trump is going to cut down on online bullying.

November 8, 2016, 11:00 PM

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At least Obamacare will be replaced with, "something terrific."

November 8, 2016, 11:17 PM

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Nate Silver is still giving Clinton a 40% chance to win...and that sounds SO optimistic.

November 8, 2016, 11:21 PM

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One of only maybe 5 moments from Trump's presidency that literally caused my jaw to drop, and by far the most subtle of the bunch, was when he said he decided to bring back the Coronavirus task force because he "didn't realize it was so popular." He didn't realize it was so... popular?

The guy was completely divorced from how USEFUL it could be. It had the potential to curb the disease the way other countries did, or at least the ones without authoritarian-type leaders.

This guy just didn't bother to take it seriously. It was just a marketing problem. What's the first thing a marketer might say? Downplay the negatives. 

Trump is the worst president, but perhaps the greatest marketer since... I was going to say since Jim Jones, but just imagine how many people would follow Trump to Guyana.

Biden/Harris are stoking the task force back up, and I don't think popularity has anything to do with it. It might actually do some good.

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The death knell for claims of widespread fraud?

-Fox News suspends Jeanine Pirro over false claims.

-Rick Santorum acknowledged that Biden did a little worse in Philadelphia than Clinton.

-No evidence. World leaders seem unconvinced by claims of, "It's coming, it's coming." (Reminds me of Trump's health care plan.)

Without evidence, it's dismissed.

November 8, 2020

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For the record, in the last year of Biden's term if he brags about passing a dementia test for a week, let's 25th Amendment him right out of there.

November 8, 2020

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As the impeachment trial inevitably goes forward, you can already hear the Senate Republicans saying that we have to wait until November 2020 to let the people decide. These so-called constitutional originalists apparently don't even believe in representative democracy. The people have already chosen!

November 8, 2019

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They don't make book covers like they used to! And you know what else, they don't write them like they used to either:

"Our own interest lay in the relationships of animal to animal. If one observes in this relational sense, it seems apparent that species are only commas in a sentence, that each species is at once the point and the base of a pyramid, that all life is relational to the point where an Einsteinian relativity seems to emerge. And not only the meaning but the feeling about species grows misty. One merges into another, groups melt into ecological groups until the time when what we know as life meets and enters what we think of as non-life: barnacle and rock, rock and earth, earth and tree, tree and rain and air. And the units nestle into the whole and are inseparable from it. Then one can come back to the microscope and the tide pool and the aquarium. But the little animals are found to be changed, no longer set apart and alone. And it is a strange thing that most of the feeling we call religious, most of the mystical outcrying which is one of the most prized and used and desired reactions of our species, is really the understanding and the attempt to say that man is related to the whole thing, related inextricably to all reality, known and unknowable. This is a simple thing to say, but the profound feeling of it made a Jesus, a St. Augustine, a St. Francis, a Roger Bacon, a Charles Darwin, and an Einstein. Each of them in his own tempo and with his own voice discovered and reaffirmed with astonishment the knowledge that all things are one thing and that one thing is all things – plankton, a shimmering phosphorescence on the sea and the spinning planets and an expanding universe, all bound together by the elastic string of time. It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again."

My copy of The Log From the Sea of Cortez

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I'm very proud of my best Scrabble game ever... I ended up with 607 points and 5 bingos, one on two triple-words. Shari was a good sport. And now I'll stop bragging for a little while...

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Errol Morris- "I was accused of being a 'glass-half-empty' kind of person. How hurtful. I'm a 'glass half-empty and filled with poison' kind of person."

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Tom Magliozzi's urn is courtesy of Diane B. Ashy.

November 8, 2014

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Emma and I thank all of you for the well-wishes and congratulations on the birth of our daughter Gretel. She's out of the ICU with no lasting effects and feeling tip-top. We're heading home tomorrow. Once she can form coherent thoughts we'll be sure to teach her how great all of you are.

November 8, 2013

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"I'm calling the election early- Obama 319, Romney 219." Ben Kreider, 11-3-12. Not too shabby by the way, ended up 332-206. Also by the way, Hillary Clinton will win in 2016. You heard it here first.

November 8, 2012

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Beer Hall Putsch: In Munich on this day in 1923, Adolf Hitler lead the Nazis in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government.

Also in Munich, sixteen years later, Adolf Hitler narrowly escaped an assassination attempt of Georg Elser.

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John F. Kennedy wa elected as the 35th President of the United States on this day in 1960, defeating incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon by about half a percentage point, which somehow Nixon accepted graciously for the good of the country.

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The Zodiac 340 Cipher was received on this day in 1969. The encrypted message wasn't decoded for over 50 years.

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On this day in 1973, the right ear of John Paul Getty III was delivered to a newspaper outlet along with a ransom note, convincing his father to pay US$2.9 million. He was the grandson of J. Paul Getty, one of the richest men in the world, and he was the father of Balthazar Getty, of Lost Highway fame.

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The Life of Brian was released on this day in 1979. It was banned in Norway, and then it was marketed in Sweden as, "the film that's so funny, that it was banned in Norway."

George Harrison mortgaged his house to pay for it. When asked why he put up so much money, he said that he wanted to see it.

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On this day in 1999, Bruce Miller was killed at his junkyard near Flint, Michigan. His wife had convinced her online lover to kill him (before later killing himself), in what became the world's first Internet murder.

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Edmond Halley was born on this day in 1656.

"In the year 1456 ... a Comet was seen passing Retrograde between the Earth and the sun... Hence I dare venture to foretell, that it will return again in the year 1758."

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Bram Stoker was born on this day in 1847.

"Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!"

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The novelist Martha Gellhorn joined us on this day in 1908. She said:

People often say, with pride, ‘I'm not interested in politics.’

They might as well say, ‘I'm not interested in my standard of living, my health, my job, my rights, my freedoms, my future or any future.’

If we mean to keep any control over our world and lives, we must be interested in politics.”

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The iconic Alain Delon, of Le Samourai, was born on this day in 1935.

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Poet and philosopher, John Milton, left us on this day in 1674. 

"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."

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Alex Trebek left us on this day in 2020.

"I'm curious about everything--even things that don't interest me."

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Another notable birthday- Hermann Rorschach (1884)

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Another notable deathday- Doc Holliday (1887)

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Scientific American- Four Laws That Could Stem the Rising Threat of Mass Shootings

The 4 laws- ban those convicted of a violent crime from owning guns, domestic abusers must surrender guns, temporarily ban active alcohol abusers from owning guns, require permits for all sales. I'm in. I know, I know... "SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED!" So amend the Constitution. (Or recognize current infringements.)

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/4-laws-that-could-stem-the-rising-threat-of-mass-shootings/

November 8, 2018

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The Onion- Cockroaches Feeling Very Optimistic About Future Of Planet

"Across species, cockroaches offered robust support for prevailing trends in environmental policy, with 86 percent expressing enthusiasm for technologies such as fracking and open-pit mining, 81 percent praising the growing demand for disposable consumer goods, and 84 percent saying they were happy with the amount of industrial runoff in ground soil. Another 4 percent reportedly skittered away beneath a baseboard crevice before answering any questions."

https://www.theonion.com/cockroaches-feeling-very-optimistic-about-future-of-pla-1819579564

November 8, 2019

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Huffington Post- Eric Trump Busted For Fake Video Of Someone 'Burning 80 Trump Ballots'

Voter fraud fraud.

https://www.huffp.st/7LutARt

November 8, 2020

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Kerouac- "Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them; disagree with them; glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.“

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Juan Marichal- “The only way you preserve pitching arms is throwing; that makes the arm stronger.”

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Campbell- "You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen."

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Oscar Wilde- "To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance."

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Normie- “You know, with Hitler, the more I learn about that guy, the more I don't care for him.”

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Myspace Blogs

November 15, 2008 

The Tack Chronicles: Volume 1

Woke up yesterday at 2am to take 5 pallets of cabbage to DC. No problem for a dedicated guy like me. I don't mind doing extra things like that. What I do mind is when I come back with my head too bleary to think straight and I sit down square on a tack. (I'd say that my butt was pricked, but that would be tacky, right?) If you know my boss, you know who the culprit was. He even cut a small hole in my chair where he inserted the tack-head to keep it in place. He's a professional.

I was so tired I couldn't even muster a whimper, let alone a yelp. I let out half a sigh and slumped my shoulders in defeat. He was on the phone with a customer, convulsing with silent laughter. Yep, really funny buddy.

Tonight I noticed a half-pint of frozen raspberries thawing on his desk. I picked one up and stuck the same tack in it, positioning it to make it so appealing he'd pick it first. About a half hour later I was helping a driver (Muncy, to those in-the-know) unload his truck when my boss came storming out of the office with a huge smile yelling "It worked perfectly!!! It worked perfectly!!!" I asked him what the hell he was talking about. "You know!" Oh, yeah. That.

I never intended for it work. I thought he'd find it like that time he heard the tack I put in his water thermos clanking against the metal. Certainly, I thought, he would see my fingerprints where they melted the frost on the frozen berry. Turns out that in the intervening half hour all of the frost melted off just that one, making it look even more appealing.

So what happened, you wonder? What made it work perfectly? Brace yourself. Read on slowly.

Without a thought he tossed it in his mouth and bit. It clanked in his teeth. He chomped again and pinned the raspberry to the roof of his mouth. Confused, he tried to get it out with his tongue but couldn't. The face he made in his retelling looked like a cross between a rattlesnake finishing a rat and Sterling Hayden, when he got shot in the neck in the Godfather. He had to pull the raspberry and tack out of the roof of his mouth with his fingers.

Victory is mine. (For today.)