Snowman Blues, Plus Miscellany

I woke up last night in the middle of the night compelled to listen to Sia's Snowman. This is the best commercial I've ever seen in my life. I think she does that thing with her voice that Adele does... the thing that Kermit the Frog does in Rainbow Connection that makes you want to cry.

https://youtu.be/rnHHyGpkvuw

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Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata- "Music makes me forget my real situation. It transports me into a state which is not my own. It transports me immediately into the condition of soul in which he who wrote the music found himself at that time."

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The Youth of Today- Greta Thunberg and Kyle Rittenhouse we're each born on this day in 2003.

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Money suit experiment- take what you need. Spoiler alert- the rich take a ton, the poor take little.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/913083770036011

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Noah Baumbach is the Woody Alleniest Woody Allener since Woody Allen started Woody Allening.

January 3, 2020

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Donald Trump- "Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He's weak and he's ineffective. So the only way he figures that he's going to get reelected — and as sure as you're sitting there — is to start a war with Iran.”*

*but about Obama

January 3, 2020

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One thing everyone can agree on... if Trump's assassination of Soleimani leads to more overall peace and stability, it was a good thing. 

Another thing everyone can agree on... this was a risky move that could very well be the first step toward hundreds of thousands dead (or more) and trillions of dollars lost. It will take an extraordinarily stable person with the highest echelon of decision-making skills to navigate this potential catastrophe of epic proportions. Again, a simple fact.

Another thing we should be able to agree on- Trump is not that guy. He doesn't listen to advisors, is bored by intelligence briefings, yet thinks he's the expert. But don't listen to me, consider listening to this Republican's assessment of the guy:

"Donald Trump’s disordered personality—his unhealthy patterns of thinking, functioning, and behaving—has become the defining characteristic of his presidency. It manifests itself in multiple ways: his extreme narcissism; his addiction to lying about things large and small, including his finances and bullying and silencing those who could expose them; his detachment from reality, including denying things he said even when there is video evidence to the contrary; his affinity for conspiracy theories; his demand for total loyalty from others while showing none to others; and his self-aggrandizement and petty cheating. It manifests itself in Trump’s impulsiveness and vindictiveness; his craving for adulation; his misogyny, predatory sexual behavior, and sexualization of his daughters; his open admiration for brutal dictators; his remorselessness; and his lack of empathy and sympathy, including attacking a family whose son died while fighting for this country, mocking a reporter with a disability, and ridiculing a former POW."

A stable guy? Good decision-maker? Yeah, something makes me think this is going to turn out bad.

That's the other thing we can all agree on- if not assassinating another leader would have lead to more peace and stability, it would have been the right move. Granted, difficult to impossible to measure... it's not a flashy move, doing nothing, even when it happens to be right. 

Time will tell and spin will be spun either way, but before the next move we can analyze what we'd consider a win vs a loss.

January 3, 2020

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"Refugee Bannin'" Steve Bannon is buttin' in the Trump nuclear button news cycle and going as nuclear as his unclear and trumped up refugee ban. (I think I had a stroke.)

January 3, 2018

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So congressional Republicans tried to gut an independent ethics watchdog overnight, then backtracked after a massive public outcry. Massive public outcries still work??? That's good to know.

Btw, even TRUMP criticized them. Does he deserve credit? He can have the same credit he'd deserve if he criticized some plan to clone an army of Hitlers. A person is not good for opposing something so ridiculous, only awful for supporting it.

What's that? He only said the timing was off and there were more pressing things to focus on? I hope nobody's finishing up plans for a Hitler clone army...

January 3, 2017

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I think I had a premonition... while coming home from racquetball something flashed in my head, "Charles Manson is going to die this year." I get home and see a headline that he's seriously ill and moved from prison to a hospital. Others who popped into my head while driving- Shane MacGowan, Chuck Berry, Olivia deHavilland, Henry Kissinger, the big red fish in my fish tank. Let's wish them well. Except Manson. And Kissinger.

January 3, 2017

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Sorry in advance for posting this David Lynch quote.

"I when I was cleaning up in Bogus Basin, Idaho, in the summer, cleaning brush, to work up for ski pants, and we found a bloated cow in the creek. And we had these pick axes, Polaskis they are called. One side is sharp and the other is a blade so you can dig in the ground and clear the brush, right? So, this cow is bloated and I wanted to pop it. So, I hit the thing as hard as I could with this...pick axe. And that thing bounced, and it almost tore my arms off. It BOUNCED BACK! And we were trying to pop this cow for like a half hour. And uh, it was farting and, man, it was foul."

January 3, 2017

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You get the feeling he didn't read last night's homework assignment?

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Back when we had the kittens, Ernie, Meanie, Miney, and Moe.

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/MgPQisJfdg2m5o75

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On this day in 1962, Pope John XXIII excommunicated Fidel Castro.

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On this day in 2009, the first block of the blockchain of the decentralized payment system Bitcoin, called the Genesis block, was established by the creator of the system, Satoshi Nakamoto.

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Roman philosopher, lawyer, and politician, Cicero, was born on this day in 106 BC.

"If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need." 

The Beatles said that all you need is love, that love is all you need.

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J.R.R. Tolkien joined us on this day in 1892.

"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."

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Sergio Leone was born on this day in 1929. His five favorite films are Yojimbo (Kurosawa), The Man Who shot Liberty Valance (Ford), High Noon (Zinneman), Shane (Stevens), Vera Cruz (Aldrich)

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Mel Gibson was born on this day in 1956.

Ricky Gervais- "I like a drink as much as the next man, unless the next man is Mel gibson."

A compilation: https://youtu.be/oULEXfxr4nM

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Darren Daulton was born on this day in 1962.

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Danica McKellar was born on this day in 1975, on 

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Another notable birthdays- Marion Davies (1897)

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Notable deathdays- Edgar Cayce (1945), Jack Ruby (1967), Conrad Hilton (1979), Phil Everly (2014)

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The Marginalian- The Baloney Detection Kit: Carl Sagan’s Rules for Bullshit-Busting and Critical Thinking

Knowledge of logical fallacies and their application to real-world scenarios should be required for high school graduation. From Sagan:

1. Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.”

2. Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.

3. Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.

4. Spin more than one hypothesis. If there’s something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among “multiple working hypotheses,” has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.

5. Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will.

6. Quantify. If whatever it is you’re explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you’ll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations. Of course there are truths to be sought in the many qualitative issues we are obliged to confront, but finding them is more challenging.

7. If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them.

8. Occam’s Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler.

9. Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much. Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle — an electron, say — in a much bigger Cosmos. But if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of disproof? You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result.

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/01/03/baloney-detection-kit-carl-sagan

January 3, 2014

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List of people who died climbing Mount Everest

http://t.co/o2JksUh39y

One of the most beautiful views in the world, would be from the bottom.

January 3, 2014

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The fascinating story of Megan Phelps Roper leaving the Westboro Baptist Church

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/conversion-via-twitter-westboro-baptist-church-megan-phelps-roper

January 3, 2016

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Cisco Houston- The Cat Came Back

https://youtu.be/gmRA9k55dNg

The cat came back... like 3 months later. Bazo just showed up meowing at the window. We used to be nervous when she was gone for a couple days, then it was odd when she was gone for a week, then once she was gone for 2 or 3 weeks with temps around zero. She came back each time, the last time with a piece of her ear missing. I pity the other guy.

This time though, after two months or so we figured that was the end. How do you calculate when a missing cat is dead?

Just last night Gretel wanted me to tell her a story so I picked The Story of Razzles. But she didn't want that story, she wanted to hear The Story of Bazo. So I told it... about Emma finding her up in a tree on the other side of the world and letting her live with her, about her biting the heads off lizards and birds for months until she was brought back to our home, about her terrorizing our local songbird population, about her trying to have her kittens in Emma's lap, about the vet finding her insides all mixed up because she wasn't from around here, and finally about her deciding to live outside forever. That last part was a euphemism.

I just happened to watch a video this morning of her kittens playing. Maybe her hypersonic hearing drew her back. Or maybe she just finally got too cold.

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As a funny aside I actually said this to myself on Christmas Eve, "if Jesus and God are real and have the power to affect the world, and they have Bazo show up at our door tonight, I'll be a believer." It was just too long since she'd been gone, I thought it was impossible. But now say she was going to show up, without prayer, sometime between December 20 and January 10. It was a 1 in 20 chance that it would have happened December 24- a seeming miracle! But it would have been random chance. Nature rolled the 20-sided die and she came back January 3.

Aside to the aside... I still wouldn't have believed in God, haha. I would have asked myself which was more likely- that she came back like 80 days later when she had previous came back like 20 days later, or a good God who can affect the world sometimes has beings come into existence that can only experience pain and suffering... like Bazo if Emma hadn't rescued her.

But it would have been weird! Would have made it to my top 10 coincidences, out of billions of events.

Updated Jan 3, 2018, 10:45 AM

Jan 3, 2018, 10:45 AM

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"You never ask questions when God's on your side."

https://youtu.be/5y2FuDY6Q4M

January 3, 2020

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Business Insider- Trump tweets predicting Obama would start a war with Iran to get reelected are coming back to haunt him

No question it factored in to his decision...

https://www.businessinsider.com/old-trump-tweets-emerge-claim-obama-wanted-war-iran-2020-1

January 3, 2020

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Washington Post- ‘I just want to find 11,780 votes’: In extraordinary hour-long call, Trump pressures Georgia secretary of state to recalculate the vote in his favor

In case anyone needs to be reminded, leaders of democracies don't demand that election officials "find 11,780 votes." Stunning to hear an attempt to force someone to participate in his delusion, akin to a mob shakedown. Perhaps only more mind-boggling than what this bozo actually said is the fact that he either didn't consider that he was being recorded, or didn't care. Georgia wouldn't have made a difference, so he was pulling this garbage in each battleground state. This is a clear high crime and he needs to be removed immediately.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-raffensperger-call-georgia-vote/2021/01/03/d45acb92-4dc4-11eb-bda4-615aaefd0555_story.html

January 3, 2021

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Martin Luther King removing a burnt cross from his front yard.

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Cicero again- "Politicians are not born; they are excreted."

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Socrates, from Apology: "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 what I do not know."

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Kipling- "A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition."

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Unamuno- "Men shout to avoid listening to one another."

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Salinger- "When you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody."

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Henry Miller- "Chaos is the score upon which reality is written."

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Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath- "If you're in trouble, or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help - the only ones."

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Sarah Vowell, The Partly Cloudy Patriot- "I wish that in order to secure his party’s nomination, a presidential candidate would be required to point at the sky and name all the stars; have the periodic table of the elements memorized; rattle off the kings and queens of Spain; define the significance of the Gatling gun; joke around in Latin; interpret the symbolism in seventeenth-century Dutch painting; explain photosynthesis to a six-year-old; recite Emily Dickenson; bake a perfect popover; build a shortwave radio out of a coconut; and know all the words to Hoagy Carmichael’s “Two Sleepy People”, Johnny Cash’s “Five Feet High and Rising”, and “You Got the Silver” by the Rolling Stones...What we need is a president who is at least twelve kinds of nerd, a nerd messiah to come along every four years, acquire the Secret Service code name Poindexter, install a Revenge of the Nerds screen saver on the Oval Office computer, and one by one decrypt our woes."

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Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day- "When asked "What do we need to learn this for?" any high-school teacher can confidently answer that, regardless of the subject, the knowledge will come in handy once the student hits middle age and starts working crossword puzzles in order to stave off the terrible loneliness."

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Hitchens- "Time spent arguing is, oddly enough, almost never wasted."

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Asimov- "The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."

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Cicero, yet again- "The life of the dead is set in the memory of the living."

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There was a young fellow from Leeds 

Who swallowed a package of seeds. 

Great tufts of grass 

Sprouted out of his ass 

And his balls were all covered with weeds.