Leany on Life -- November 2013


I may not agree with your opinion, but I will defend to the death my right to ridicule it.

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Meanwhile, over in an Alternate Universe


Click Here to go to Blog Below
(Best viewed with a mind not clouded by the Kool-Aid)


Forever Wednesday

Billy Shakespeare once said "There is nothing new under the sun." True it is.

I really don't need to post new material every Wednesday; I've posted enough to show you the correct viewpoint on whatever comes up. But even if the news is always the same, you like to have a fresh clean newspaper with breakfast every day.

Clicking the "Billy's Blog" button to the left will deliver a fresh old post right to your screen. No matter how old it is, it will probably be relevant to what's happening today.


Today's Second Amendment Message


What to do until the Blog arrives


The John Galt Society

It can be discouraging to look around at who's running the show these days and wonder "Where have all the grown-ups gone?"

Take heart. There are still some people who are not drinking the Kool-aid. Here's where to find them. I would suggest going down this list every day and printing off the most recent articles you haven't read to read over lunch.

Michelle Malkin
Michelle Malkin is a feisty conservative bastion. You loved her book "Unhinged" and you can read her columns here.
Ann Coulter

Ann posts her new column every Thursday, or you can browse her past columns.
George Will
What can you say? It's George Will. Read it.
Charles Krauthammer posts every Friday. Just a good, smart conservative columnist.
If you want someone who gets it just as right, but is easier to read, try Thomas Sowell, who just posts at random times.
Jonah Goldberg seldom disappoints.
David Limbaugh carries on the family tradition.

Jewish World Review has all these guys plus lots more good stuff.

Or you can go to radio show sites like
 Laura Ingraham's or Glenn Beck's or Rush Limbaugh's..

If you'd like you can study The Constitution while you wait.

Then there's always TownHall.com, NewsMax.com, The Drudge Report, FreeRepublic.com, World Net Daily, (which Medved calls World Nut Daily), News Busters, National Review Online, or The American Thinker.

For the Lighter Appetite

If you have to read the news, I recommend The Nose on Your Face, news so fake you'd swear it came from the Mainstream Media. HT to Sid for the link.
Or there's always The Onion. (For the benefit of you Obama Supporters, it's a spoof.)

Dilbert.
Dave Barry's Column
Daryl Cagle's Index of Political Cartoons
About half of these cartoonists are liberal (Latin for wrong) but the art is usually good. (Fantastic, if you're used to the quality of art on this site.)
Another Cagle Index
Townhall Political Cartoons
In case you want cartoons that are well-drawn and don't make your jugular burst.

Or just follow the links above and to the right of this section (you can't have read all my archived articles already). If you have read all my articles (you need to get out more) go to my I'm Not Falling For It section.

Above all, try to stay calm. Eventually I may post something again.



The Litter-ature novel is here. I update it regularly--every time Rosario Dawson tackles me and sticks her tongue in my ear.


Handy Resources

Understanding the 2012 Election

My Sister's Blog New!

The Desktop Dyno

Salem Gravity Gran Prix

Jordan's Eagle Project.

Duke Boys Car Chase

LoL Cartoons

Logic Primer

Gymkhana Practice

Compass Course Spreadsheet

Complete Orienteering Course Files

Things you may not know about Sarah Palin

Amazing Grace on the Sax

Obama's Magic 8 Ball


What the hell kind of country is this where I can only hate a man if he's white?
        Hank Hill

On This Day in History

Oh, wait . . . that's from an alternate universe


And the blah-blah-blog continues . . .

Refresh to get latest blog entry


Happy Thanksgiving
11.27.13

The Fiasco Formerly Known as Obamacare
That's funny, right there . . .

You can't really blame them . . . who would want his name associated with a calamity like that?


You know it's bad when . . .

When Bill Clinton is lecturing you about commitment.


Is this where we are still?
You wanna hear a great joke? Obama was going to be the "post-racial" President.

Is that what we're seeing now? Gimme a break. The race-baiting comes in cycles, but recently we've been in the upswing part of it. That's a good sign, 'cause it means that the liberals are desperate and they're retreating to their last gasp position.

What's that? Oh, yeah, now that you mention it, I guess it is a bad thing for the country when you have liberals destroying decades of civil rights efforts. But here's what you have to remember:

A color-blind America doesn't serve the liberals' needs.

The worn-out liberal line is that "America is not ready for a black President." You recognize this as projection; Liberals are not ready for a black President. They aren't mature enough. One of the most excellent analogies to illustrate that was something I read . . . right here on this very blog!

You've heard that the upside of Alzheimer's is that you can hide your own Easter eggs. That's me. I'm the Guy Pearce character in Memento. As much as I hate that my brain is so useless, it is entertaining to read my own stuff and think "Wow, brilliant. That guy really nailed it."

In this blog post I said

Obama's race is a distraction, pure and simple. If Pamela Anderson were your English teacher, and she came to school naked, how much would you learn about grammar?

I was saying that liberals are not ready for a black president.

"The liberals' obsession with race wrecks the open political process. Even if he weren't a completely worthless waste of skin like Obama, just being black is a distraction the liberals can't get over. It makes any open discussion of the man's policies impossible."

Then here's an observation I made recently enough that I still remember it:

I hereby declare all liberals to be misogynists for not supporting Sarah Palin.


You now realize how brilliant the analogy is. You just read the last four paragraphs without internalizing a single thing. You were thinking about Pamela Anderson naked at the blackboard.

Distraction, I tell you. Distraction.

Now go back and read them.


As long as I'm tooting my own horn . . .
It's fun when someone who can actually cartoon . . .

Comes up with the same idea that I did.


Stupid Democratic Process
You heard about this. Obama gave some speech on immigration, but he had a heckler planted in the White House approved backdrop. On cue the heckler shouted something out, then Obama delivered his prepared 'off the cuff' remarks explaining "I'd love to be able to just do the right thing. Unfortunately we have this democratic process deal . . . "


Toons

. . . Or "100 million!" as Obama said.

Just sayin' . . . if George Bush had said something like that it would've been the only headline for weeks.



Great minds thinking alike department
You remember when I talked about how democrats have it exactly backwards on the failures of the Obamacare rollout. This is the "If only . . ." concept I'm always flapping my gums about.

Last line of the article: A non-functioning website may be the best thing Obamacare has going for it right now.

Having an excuse to hide behind is critical to these people's credibility. They are the snarling dog behind the safety of the chain link fence. Open the gate and they are incapable of treeing a kitten. Obama was freaking amazing. He was going to halt the rise of the oceans and usher in world peace . . . until he actually got elected.

See, these people are good at holding up signs at sit-ins and whining about the way the adults are running things. They can bloviate and "occupy" all day long, but once you say "Fine, you're in charge" the charade is over. All of a sudden it's not hypothetical and they can't pretend what it would be like "if only . . . " they were in control. Reality is their worst enemy.

This ties into the Limbaugh theorem. Obama uses the fact that he's not governing to blast the things that are happening – like he's as outraged as you are! This even though the things he blasting are things he's in charge of.

Don't be mistaken and think that it's a conscious strategy—that he brilliantly keeps his distance in spite of desperately wanting to be in the fight. He's just a celebrity. He doesn't bother with things that don't involve mugging for the camera. But the concept of him campaigning rather than governing--complaining about things like he's not in charge--is a very instructional framework.


Tactics
You remember in Obama's self-serving biography when he was running for the Illinois State Senate. The night before the election he went out and gave a speech, then he said "It must have been a pretty good speech, because the next day the people elected me to the Senate."

That had to be it . . . well, that and the fact that they had no other choice. Obama forgot to mention that he had everyone else thrown off the ballot. So you're standing in the voting booth with one choice on the ballot. "Hey, that guy gave a good speech—I think I'll choose him."

That's the way these people work. They can't compete in a fair fight, so they have to trick you into voting for them.


Wednesday's Post
11.21.13
I guess you can look at it like I just got the Wednesday's post up one day early.

That's my post. Everyone who says I am a racist for disagreeing with Barack Obama is a misogynist for not supporting Sarah Palin.


When you point a finger . . .
Actually, they are also racist for not supporting Alan Keyes and Thomas Sowell. And they are bigots--actually they really are--for not voting for the Mormon Mitt Romney.

It's just a shame. It's a shame that Bill Maher and Todd Essig and Oprah and Chris Matthews and all the other brain-dead morons out there are too stupid to understand that by calling me a racist they are trumpeting the fact that they are racists and bigots and a misogynists.


Six years
I know, I'm as tired of saying it as you are of hearing it. For six years they've been running the same play. Six years without a shred of anything to back it up, and they keep it coming.

But they aren't tired of accusing us of it, and you know the rules. The second they say it and we don't dispute it, it becomes fact. I can't bag on the lily-livered Republicans for not defending themselves against the Clinton's government shut down trick if I don't keep giving those wastes of skin Jason Clarke's "straight right to the nose bone."


Consider the source
11.19.13
Oprah is joining the band of morons calling me a racist because I don't agree with Barack Obama.

I hereby declare every one of them a woman-hating misogynistic chauvinist for not supporting Sarah Palin.


You want drama?
How about this for drama?

You remember just after Romney trounced Obama in the debate and then the unemployment rate miraculously went down to 7.8% after hovering above 8 for years? 'Turns out those jobs reports were faked just like Jack Welch said at the time.

Stop the presses! The Obama administration lied to us!


Obama the Benevolent
11.14.13
Does anything strike you as odd about this headline?

Obama will allow old plans? He, the ruler, has pointed his bony finger and issued the edict that he will deign to allow this or that?

I should have screen captured the original—they softened the headline somewhat. But regardless of what the headline says, the concept is just bizarre. Is this the kind of government we live under? The crown prince, on his whim, can decide issues of law all by himself?


You just can't please some people
In case I don't get this done, here's the cartoon for the day. Obama has just shot an arrow into Uncle Sam. "What? You're complaining about that? Here, let me fix it." Obama pulls the arrow out and a gusher of blood shoots into the air. Uncle Sam's not happy about it.

Obama shrugs "There's just no pleasing some people!"


Amateur Hour in Washington
If you just got off the shuttle from Mars there are two things this taught you about Obama that everyone else in the world knows. First, his idea is that he is the King. He knows what's best for his foolish subjects. He is the all-powerful ruler who gets to point his finger and issues edicts and "So I have spoken; so let it be done."

Second, the man is a bumbling idiot. Completely freaking incompetent. It's like we've turned the family reunion over to the crazy uncle. Obama's the incompetent organizer who didn't think to reserve the park, didn't think about making food assignments, scheduled the whole reunion on the weekend everyone told him they weren't available, excluded grandma and grandpa whom everybody came to see, wouldn't quit telling Uncle Fred's new wife how much he loved her old one . . .


Speaking of incompetent idiots

How to fight
I love you, Ted Cruz. I do. But I'm still furious with you for doing the standard Republican beta male bend over for the dogs in the alley routine on Leno.

You cannot let these putzes get away with their mis-characterizations. Did we not learn anything from the Clinton government shutdown in 1995?

Back in 1992 Rush Limbaugh was on the Phil Donahue show. That was back when people had heard of Phil Donahue. Phil is liberal, his studio audience is liberal . . . Rush was in the lion's den. It was not a friendly setting for him. He won my respect just by venturing in there.

I can't even remember the point that was being discussed, but I'll never forget what Rush Limbaugh said. He told Phil in his own studio "I'm not going to let you get away with saying that." That's when he won me over.

In one of the deleted scenes in "Lawless" Jason Clarke tells Shia Labeouf

I'm gonna' tell you sumpin—it's the one thing you need to know in this life, Jack . . . You got to hit first. See, as many men likes the idear of fighting, Jack, there's very few likes to get hit. And a good straight right to the nose bone—most men'll let be.

Those who don't learn from history . . .
11.13.13
I can't take it!

I guess I'm just old. Am I the only one who remembers what the democrats did to us last time? It's just . . . wow

Ted Cruz was on Leno. Leno kept saying crap like "Was it worth shutting down the government?" And good old Teddy just being polite and grinning and letting it slide past as fact. Maybe you think I wasn't screaming at my screen. When you don't confront people on their lies they just become accepted as truth.

I've explained this to you. When you have a disagreement how do you make one person responsible for it?

If Mortimer would just come down to my price, I'd buy the car. It's his fault!
Oh, yeah! Well if Englebert would only pay what I'm asking I would sell him the car. It's his fault!
What did the democrats (and other Americans who are stupid freaking idiots) expect the Republicans to do?
"We are serious about this. This is so important to us that we are willing to push the edge."
Nope, we won't negotiate.
"Oh. Okay, well never mind then."
Just as Cruz was kind of explaining that concept (after tacitly agreeing with Leno's false premise a dozen times), the clip I watched ended. I don't know if this one keeps going. I honestly cannot watch it again. I just can't.


Again
This is the exact same thing that Leno was doing—just keep telling a lie and Bam! It magically becomes the truth.

I told you how the liberals are having great success in changing the connotation of words and phrases. Being a tea party conservative is a great thing. But the liberals are relentlessly pushing it into a negative thing.

They are experts at this kind of "Politics of Personal Destruction." You saw them do it to Sarah Palin. A Martian just landing here would think that a Tea Party is a dank dungeon where a wicked witch in black leather named Sarah Palin tortures you non-stop.

Sorry . . . I'm going to go think about Sarah Palin in black leather for a minute . . .


Dick Cheney
I would be amazed if you ever meet a greater American than Dick Cheney. First class all the way.

But the loonies on the left have done that same thing to his name, too. Just relentlessly associating his name with evil.

You remember Dennis Miller talked about that. He said he can still say he likes Dick Cheney. The context of that was that someday it is going to get so ugly you can't. You'll have to reference your Little Red Book to know whether you can express an opinion without the Gestapo hauling you off.

In the meantime, how do you deal with idiots who say "Dick Cheney? The man is just evil!"?

Just ask for details.

These people have been told they hate Dick Cheney. They have no idea why. Just press them on why.

"He's evil! He's just an evil, bad guy."

Oh? Why is he evil? What did he do that was evil?

They'll stumble and stutter and mumble, but they're only bright enough to remember they're supposed to believe he's evil. They aren't bright enough to remember why. Eventually they'll probably perk up and say that he shot some guy.

But if you press them the most intelligent thing they'll be able to say is "Shut up!"


If only . . .
You remember Monica Lewinsky. You remember me saying that was the best thing that ever happened to Clinton's presidency. Clinton was an awful President. But after the Lewinsky deal everyone said "Well, but if it weren't for that, he would have been a great President!" That's why Kennedy was such a great President. 'Cause he got shot. So he didn't have to do anything, 'cause think of all the amazing things he would have done . . . if it weren't for that."

Obamacare is a disaster. But they have a Monica Lewinsky in the website. Obama says it's like a store with a great product, but you can't park and you can't get in the door. "Gosh, gee whiz, guys, if it weren't for the website . . . "

Yeah, if it weren't for the website you wouldn't have anything to hide behind. It would be more obvious what an unmitigated disaster that piece of crap is.

The interesting thing is that the whole Obama Presidency is kind of the anti of that. The morons that voted for him don't get a "But if it weren't for that . . .!" He got elected and it's no conjecture what a great President he might have been . . . if only.

It's plain and evident what a complete failure that experiment in idiocracy has been.



Edited!
11.10.13
You saw the videos, you heard the audio, you read the transcripts. Dozens of times the President said "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it. Period."

Well, those transcripts and videos were wrong—they were incomplete. What the President actually said was "If you like your health care plan and I like it too and it doesn't ever change then you get to keep it." Then period.

I'm not sure how that didn't make it into the original videos. But we know that's what he said because he said that's what he said. He told us that he never said what you saw in the edited version in all the tapes and transcripts.

We have a bad habit of missing those things. When Obama was telling Congress about just exactly what Obamacare would and wouldn't do, Representative Joe Wilson said "You lie!" Well, that's what you and I heard him say in the audio and the video and in the transcripts that we read. But again, they must have been edited.

Maureen Dowd explained that he actually said "You lie, boy!" I never heard that. Hmmm.

It's troubling. All your senses are telling you one thing—all the information you have says something, and no matter how hard you look that's all you can see. We have to rely on the democrats to explain what we're not seeing. No matter how I try to find it, none of my copies of the founding documents say "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, and Abortion on Demand."

For the life of me I can't find the jump where they edited out the President's actual remarks on Benghazi.

[Even though you might have heard that . . . ]
"The attacks in Benghazi were all about a YouTube video!"
[ . . . let me make it clear that they were a terrorist attack orchestrated by Al Qaeda, just as I've been proclaiming for the past two solid weeks.]
Whoever does these edits is really good.

It's scary, honestly. How can I trust my senses? What if I'm trying to cross a street and I can't see or hear any vehicles coming? Can I trust that? Do I need a democrat to point out the speeding bus that's about to crush me that I can't see or hear?


Meanwhile, in Mary Matlin's Universe
Can you imagine how confusing it would be to be married to a democrat?

You're working in the yard Saturday afternoon and your wife shrieks at you. "How come you're not ready to go to Lulubelle Pulsifer's daughter's wedding reception?!!"

What? You told me you hated Lulubelle Pulsifer.

"I did not! That's not what I said."

You did. I showed you the invitation and you said you hated her and that was the end of it.

"What I said was I hate her, but her husband is a prominent doctor and on the city council and we had to go if I ever wanted to show my face at the ladies' garden club again and would you buy an expensive and tasteful gift for the reception and be showered and ready to go at 6:00 o'clock."


It's all Bush's Fault
One of the ways the left is trying to justify Obama's lies is to claim—say it with me—Bush was worse. They say that so what, Obama lied to get socialized medicine passed, but it doesn't matter, 'cause Bush lied about WMDs.

Only Bush didn't.

This article explains it very well for anyone who has already drunk the Kool-Aid.

Then Victor Davis Hanson gives us this rundown of Obama's lies.

And if you still want to inform yourself here is another article about the truth about the WMDs in Iraq.


Toons


Obama Doesn't Like People
Here is a great article from American Thinker analyzing the Obama persona. It's hard to characterize in a sentence or two, but it's a good summary of his political personality. Nothing here is a revelation to anyone who has been paying attention.

Crossing the line on speech
11.07.13
Here's what kind of "hate speech" offends liberals:
Obamacare by Morning
(to the tune of Amarillo by Morning)

Obamacare by morning, why is this takin’ so long?
I’m gonna wind up with hemorrhoids if I sit here till dawn,
We’ll have cataracts and dementia, oh this is gettin’ on my last nerve,
Obamacare by morning, over six people served.

Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood on the CMAs 11/6/13

Here's what liberals consider "humor":
“I’m thinking to myself if we were in other countries, we would all, right now, all of us together . . . would go down to Washington and we would stone [Republican Congressman] Henry Hyde to death! We would stone him to death! Wait! Shut up! No, shut up! I’m not finished. We would stone Henry Hyde to death, and we would go to their homes and we’d kill their wives and their children. We would kill their families.”

Alec Baldwin on Late Night with Conan O'Brien 12/11/98

Okay, so one guy goes a little berserk on a late night show. Whatever. But here's the bizarre part: You need to read the comments of them defending him. These people are insane.

Twitter
Twitter went public. This is a perfect example of the kinds of things I'm talking about that inform how we think. Between Twitter and Facebook and Google and Wikipedia we are storing information in ever smaller packets.

I'm not saying that's all bad, although obviously there are some very bad aspects of it. I'm saying that it's a different way that our minds are being wired and it's interesting to be aware of it.


Mood and its Influencing Factors
11.06.13
If you've spent more than five minutes on this blog you know I have this little hobby about . . . I dunno, harmonics? Things under the surface that inform our thinking.

The movies we watch and music we listen to, obviously, affect the way we think, but other things do, too. The software we use. Its look and feel, the structure and architecture. It all molds our mind and our thought processes. I believe that the British have to think slightly different from us because they drive on a different side of the road. They make decisions based on a different frame—turning right across traffic and left into traffic.

iOS 7. It has to have an effect on your outlook. Specifically, I'll bet it kills your testosterone levels. It has to. It's just a gay interface.

I'm not even talking about the functionality that they screwed up—although it's a perfect example of something that does affect your mood. You're always pissed off that you have to click three times to do something that you used to click once to do, and things are moved around where you can't get to them as easily. And the buttons are just enough changed that you're always clicking the wrong one (What the crap even is FaceTime audio that you can't help but hit when you want to make a call?), and what was wrong with the position of the buttons you used to hit to take another call while you were on a call? And I would love to use my phone for a couple of hours before I have to recharge it. Yeah, that affects my mood.

But I'm talking about the feel.

The puke colored icons. The memory hogging fade in effects. Before you had buttons and controls you could see. Now you have these white hairlines on a light gray background. And even if you could see the symbols, who knows what a square box with a line through it is trying to depict?

You feel like hiding it from sight when you use it. People looking over your shoulder will think you chose that effeminate crap and draw erroneous conclusions about what you browse late at night.

Just horrible.

But that's one of the things I'm supposed to be groovy about.


Mood and the National Psyche
What I'm talking about here is the idea of subliminal effects of things. Basically I'm talking about mood; things that influence mood.

Have you ever just felt ornery and didn't understand why? You just had this barely below the surface anger or anxiety . . . Sometimes you figure out the cause and then you feel better.

I sometimes think that feelings are more sophisticated than thought (and I swear I didn't steal this from Malcolm Gladwell's Blink). I think our conscious stage is only capable of a certain level of complexity. But under the surface our brain is processing huge amounts of very complex multi-level data. And this is manifest to us as feelings. That's where hunches come from. "I dunno, I just have a bad feeling about this." Why? "I can't tell, you, but I do." You can't say because the data is to complex for your conscious mind's stage. It's all happening back behind the curtains. But all those faint memories and things you read and experienced and "harmonics" that are too faint for your conscious mind form the 'feeling' that you shouldn't.

Anyway . . .

I can't leave this topic without bashing Obama. That's the whole raison d'etre of this blog. Do you think that the rotten economy and knowing that your medical needs won't be met might affect your mood? Is it possible that just under the surface we as a nation have an anxiety? An uneasiness.

And isn't it possible that affects our productivity?


Why money?
A guy I work with said (I am not making this up) "I don't understand why we can't just go in a store and take what we need." His idea is that you work for free and everyone else does, too. Then they take what they "need" from you and you take what you need from them.

Andrew McCarthy said it best. That's an idea so ridiculous that to state it is to refute it.

I get it—money is evil . . . no, wait, is that right? No, I think that's not right. I think the love of money is the root of all evil. Money is exchange, that's all. 'Cause the guy I want to buy the protein powder from doesn't need a diamond milling pick designed, which is what I do. So money is the great facilitator as a universal exchange.

You know what money is? Money is productivity.

That's it. Money is a place where we store our productivity in a way that we can benefit from others' productivity.

I know, I know, that's a hypothetical ideal, and in reality lots of good people who should have money don't and lots of people who shouldn't have money do.

But let me know when you come up with a better system. I mean really a better system, not some asinine "We all just take what we need from the store" system.


What a lovely name!
As the saying goes, housing developments are named for what the habitat they destroyed.

You've seen them. Cottonwood Hollow. Dove Ridge. Elk Lane. Crystal Pines. Eagle Mountain Estates.

That's democrats. Whatever they're talking about is what they're bent on destroying. Their War on Poverty has created more poverty. The party of Clinton has the gall to talk about our "War on Women?" Seriously?

Make you own list: Choice, Race, "Affordable" Health Care . . . It is an inviolable axiom that whatever a demorat is talking about is what's going to be destroyed by his plan.

Hope.

That's Obama's legacy. With a wrecked economy and a wrecked Health Care System and a wrecked presence in the world, how much Hope are you feeling right now?



Equal Temperament
Look it up. That's the tuning system we use. It's not the way nature tunes things. But without it you couldn't play certain instruments in more than one key (theoretically. Actually a few keys).

But some of the notes in a scale are slightly out of tune. We don't notice. But when it was first introduced a few hundred years ago a lot of people found it dissonant or lacking in richness.

What if . . . I know this sounds crazy . . . what if that slight dislocation affects our mood? You know that if a song were way out of tune it would grate on you. What if it's just enough out of tune that you aren't consciously aware of it, but it still engenders a low-grade anxiety or discord?

Just a thought.


Shaking the information tree
I've flapped my gums before about the Bayesian logic that Pandora and Facebook and all sorts of technology uses to identify your preferences. You tell them a couple of things and all of a sudden they know a lot about you.

This gets into the weeds a little, but imagine you're laying out a four-hole pattern. You put in one hole, move over to the right, put in the second hole. It's on a line with the first hole and it's the same diameter. Now you move down from that hole. The horizontal location is already determined by the horizontal location of the hole above.

The lines the second and third holes were on were identified, but you needed the distance. Once that third hole is in the place the final hole placement is fully identified. It's where the lines intersect.

That's how Bayesian logic works. In real life the nodes are triangular (so the information falls out quicker), but that's the mathematical principle.


Have you ever noticed . . .
. . . the people who say "This isn't Republican or democrat issue" always seem to be democrats?

Memento
Get Memento. Watch it. It's ingenious.

It's about a guy with a "condition" where he has no short term memory. He has all of his old memories from before a certain incident, but he can't make new memories. Anything he hears just fades.

The ingenious mechanism is this: How do you make an audience forget things the way the main character does? You don't tell them . . . yet. You can't remember something you haven't learned, so the scenes are presented backwards. It's an ingenious way of putting you in his shoes. You are as lost as he is, because you haven't yet learned the things that he's learned but forgotten.

One guy said that the technique was "gimmicky." Interestingly enough, the person who said that didn't think of it. And, in fairness, it was on a site making fun of all movies, so he had to say something disparaging even if he didn't believe it.

But it's ingenious and it works.

Anyway, the way the guy copes with not remembering anything is to write notes to himself on Polaroids. That's how he remembers who people are and things about them. He has no clue, and if it's not written there's no way he can know it.

My brilliant son saw the metaphor in this

The character in the movie only knows what he reads. He's at the mercy of the information without understanding where it came from or what the details are behind it.

That's the press.


Reverse Psychology
Here's an interesting angle—pride and human nature. Obamacare sucks. Everyone knows that at this point, including the people that were initially in favor of it. But those people still hate us more than they hate it. They aren't going to admit it's a disaster, because that would be giving us a victory. They'd rather die from a broken system than admit they were wrong.

So we can't push too hard. We have to let it be their idea.

I'm not saying this very well, but you get the idea. If you've made it this far you're smart enough to get it.


On Drama
You know someone like this. Real life isn't dramatic enough for them. So everything they tell you is done in superlatives.

Here's the secret: Drama isn't usually all that dramatic. The things that are really earth shaking don't come with appropriate background music and fireworks. This idea kinda' ties into the concept that consequences aren't immediate, that way only the intelligent can benefit from the action/consequence equation.

What I'm saying is that you can miss the dramatic things in your life.

As you've seen, the most important topics on this site are the ones I make the most boring. This is an important topic, so this post is going to be really boring.

Let me illustrate it this way. Once a close personal friend of mine was sitting in on a conference call. It was just a normal weekly call with the England and Singapore offices going over the projects. They were talking about my close personal friend's project when everyone looked at him. Just stared at him, like "Did you catch that?"

Something significant had happened. But there was no dramatic music or lighting, so my friend missed it.

That's the way life is. Looking back you might realize it. "Oh, when she said that, that was the moment the relationship came apart." But usually the drama is masked. Tires that are going to blow look the same as safe tires. You make bad decisions and no alarms go off, but in a few years you're broke. That sort of thing.

When you look forward to it or read about it in the past it's pretty dramatic. The fact that most of the functions on the planet haven't changed a bit can fool you into thinking nothing has changed.

You remember Obama laughing about how he expected Armageddon the day after Obamacare was passed. But the birds were singing and people were walking around the mall. "Look! No harm done!"

Lying about Bengghazi and health care, undermining our liberties, spying on us and targeting us for our political beliefs—that's dramatic.

Don't be fooled because you don't hear the theatrical background music.


In the Ancient History Department
11.01.13 . . . Kinda
Sorry. I honestly don't know why I spend one minute posting here, much less going back and finishing notes that went stale long ago.

This is from more than a month ago when Obama was throwing a hissy fit over not getting his way.


You remember when the Republicans shot Gabriel Giffords? No, they did . . . well, they made that guy shoot her.

How?

They said they were "targeting" certain areas in an election. Democrats cited that as what caused that guy to shoot people up in Tucson.

You can't use language like that. You can't say "Let's pull the trigger on that plan," or "We should aim higher" or "Let's shoot for higher voter turnout" or . . . well, anything that mentions anything related to weapons.

Who said you can't?

Why, the Messiah himself. No, not that one that Christians believe in who said "Love one another," "Turn the other cheek," "Pray for them that despitefully use you." I mean the one who says that Republicans are taking hostage and want to use a nuclear bomb and are trying to burn down the house.

Barack Obama, the Messiah, declared those words off limits . . . well, for Republicans. It's okay to use that kind of language when you're talking about Republicans.

Rush Limbaugh's staff put together a montage of Obama calling for Republicans to shut up then using violent metaphors about Republicans. I formatted that into a table summarizing the philosophies of

Barack Obama on Civil Discourse

After the Gabriel Gifffords shooting Speaking of Republicans
At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized. Extortion, insane, catastrophic, chaos.
We are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently. You have some ideological extremist, extreme Republicans.
It’s important for us to pause for a moment. We're not going to pay a ransom, you don't pay a ransom, demand a ransom.
And make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals. You do not hold people hostage.
Not in a way that wounds. Ransom-taking or hostage-taking.
Usher in more civility in our public discourse. Burn down the plant or your office.
Only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face the challenges of our nation. I'm going to burn down your house.
Not on the usual plane of politics and point scoring and pettiness. Tea Party Republicans flirted with the idea of default, a nuclear bomb.
We should do everything we can do to make sure this country lives up to our children’s expectations. You're just a deadbeat.


The audio from Obama (Praised be His blessed name forever) comes at about 1:12

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