Shed Sweet Shed 8/26/2015

Link to album

After a summer of lots of frustration, the IA place is finally coming together. Gravel in front, LP tank in, drainfield in, opening for dock to go into lake complete (needs bigger gravel), tile to drain lower part of property to lake and take the water from the gutters,  in!

The gutters are SUPPOSED to go on this Friday, the 2"+ rock for the base where the dock goes in is due tomorrow, more dirt is due next week. Still more to go, but after a LONG summer of delays and waiting, it is "getting close".

If you look at the album you can see the long kitchen counter now with 4 stools, stove, mwave, fridge, cabinets and see the door to the small bedroom. It is very liveable now.

2015 will go down as the summer we never got the dock in -- the thought was that the place would be ready by Mindy's Miles in June -- it is really as of today, August 26, that it finally became ACTUALLY "liveable". Projects in the real world with real weather and real contractors to not show up often fall behind schedule ... badly.

From the "wisdom of today", don't build, find something to buy -- but then of course, you never get exactly what you want. We did that twice, lots of money spent remodelling both times. The good thing about building is that  when you build you have no money left, so you have no temptation to remodel! ;-)

Hopefully as we slide into fall, some crisp nights with pretty sunsets over the water, then winter, with maybe some ice fishing, then the promise of spring, getting the dock in EARLY and hopefully actually enjoying the place a good deal next summer, it will all then seem completely like a great idea and the memories of the frustrations and sticker shocks of 2015 will be only dimly recalled.

I DO understand how I am SUPPOSED to think and feel! ... and sometimes I even do. I covered some of it in this post (some things don't look as "inevitable" as they did then, do they?). It's funny to look back at the bookends of "Pond Depression" and "Pond Elation" from the blog last year ...

If intellect drove emotion, rather than generally the other way around, I'd be completely confident that the "lake place" will become a place of joy and happiness as opposed to a frustrating money sink with endless work and added costs. Most likely it will -- but then, I have moments when the algae is growing in the pond or the water is murky, that I wonder about that as well.

Mooses just think too much! Perhaps a lobotomy is in order!

"Israel Should Be Annihilated"

http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Iran/Israel-should-be-annihilated-Iranian-official-says-413212

"Our positions against the usurper Zionist regime have not changed at all; Israel should be annihilated and this is our ultimate slogan," the Iranian Parliament Speaker's Adviser for International Affairs Hossein Sheikholeslam was quoted as saying by Iran's Fars news agency.

Prior to WWII, Winston Churchill stood virtually alone in saying that it was just possible that Hitler actually meant what he said in Mein Kampf and his speeches. The "smart people" said that it was "just talk", and Churchill was a crazy warmonger. (isn't it surprising that BO also thinks those that disagree with him are "crazy")



What "right" do we have to say who can and cannot have nuclear weapons is really just a translation of "what right do Jews have to exist"?



and as the left thinks of babies in the womb, Christians, and those with views that oppose theirs -- why, no right at all!



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3 U.S. Defeats of Will, Vietnam, Iraq and Iran

3 U.S. Defeats: Vietnam, Iraq and Now Iran - The New York Times:



Brooks does a good job of describing the defeat in Iran -- it is worth the read.

The purpose of war, military or economic, is to get your enemy to do something it would rather not do.

Let's be clear here -- the purpose of the left in this country and world wide has been the defeat of America at least since the Bolsheviks arose in the USSR.  They call it lots of things -- "inevitable", "what right do we have to dictate who has nukes", "being realistic", etc -- but the message is the same. America prostrate before her foes is the only posture that the left in this country or around the world is willing to accept.



BO was able to snatch defeat from victory in Iraq -- just maintaining a small presence there (say 10-20K soldiers) would have prevented the rise of ISIS. Everyone that pays any attention knows this -- but in general, nobody cares. They mostly LIKE the idea of the US being defeated yet again! It makes it less likely we will attempt to exert military (or in the case of Iran, diplomatic) power in the future, and that is just fine by them. We have way too many promised entitlements to afford having a military anyway -- lets be French. Surrender is the best policy! Perhaps the Nazis will stop over for wine after we lick their boots.



Vietnam was the first experience with America on her knees -- the position that the left has long espoused for this once great nation. It was the defeat that signalled the end of America, and we continue to lurch toward the ash heap of history which folks like BO, Hillary and Bernie feel that we more than richly deserve.



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People Who Disagree With Me Are Crazy -- Temperate Rhetoric

Obama: Look How Crazy the Republicans Are! | Power Line:

Well, at least when it comes from our supreme odiferate leader it is temperate and diplomatic rhetoric! Anyone calling BO out as "crazy" is labeled as a racist, bomb thrower, intemperate completely rancid cad! But as we know, things like "bi-partisanship, propriety, statesmanship, courtesy, etc" depend ENTIRELY on which side is doing the talking in our current time.

The article is well written and points out the obvious -- our extreme leader has not a whit of mooring in anything factual, but this is so well established to the sentient that it really doesn't bear repeating.

The sad part is that in order to be a democracy, people have to be informed on issues -- some political hack calling the other side "crazy" provides not a whit of actual information, and the fact that the MSM lets it spew from BO without comment just shows how in the tank our general media really is!

Democracy depends on an independent press -- and we absolutely don't have it!

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Ignorance, My Bliss

The Case for Teaching Ignorance - The New York Times:

This article points to one of what I hope comes through in this Blog; I am ignorant, "the experts" are ignorant, all mankind is ignorant. It could not be otherwise -- we are alive, yet we can barely describe what "life" even is beyond "a really special chemical reaction". We believe we are "intelligent", but the "we" that we perceive as our consciousness is even less understood than "life" -- is it chemical, electrical, quantum, ????, spiritual, or more likely "all of the above"! The question of "the ghost in the machine" goes back at least to Descartes.

In 2006, a Columbia University neuroscientist, Stuart J. Firestein, began teaching a course on scientific ignorance after realizing, to his horror, that many of his students might have believed that we understand nearly everything about the brain. (He suspected that a 1,414-page textbook may have been culpable.)

Looking at a map can make one think they might understand the territory, but the reality is that even a very detailed map carries very little information about the reality of the territory (is it hot? cold? wet? crime ridden? loaded with bugs? ... etc). We are wired as humans to "the illusion of understanding" -- lest we cower in a cave in abject fear unwilling to face the (mostly) unknown world outside and the second to second prospect of mortality (see brain hemorrhage, heart attack, simple choking, etc).

So, as the students above, we VASTLY overcompensate -- we think a thick textbook HAS to cover most everything about the brain. We think that "a bunch of studies, many of them in agreement" on climate MUST correctly predict the future of climate. We especially want to be "more right than others" ... "less ignorant" ... the problem of accumulated "knowledge", much of it mere "data" is that it has a horrible tendency to actually make us LESS aware of our true condition.

Presenting ignorance as less extensive than it is, knowledge as more solid and more stable, and discovery as neater also leads students to misunderstand the interplay between answers and questions. 

People tend to think of not knowing as something to be wiped out or overcome, as if ignorance were simply the absence of knowledge. But answers don’t merely resolve questions; they provoke new ones.

Again, modern man is WAY behind the ancients. It was completely covered in Proverbs 9:10, no special classes required.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.

The ancients realized the state of their souls and the fragility of life -- that of being most unholy and uncontrollably near an eternity judged by an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God.  

For thousands of years, Western Civilization worked because it was based on: 

1. The fear (best read "awed respect") of a perfectly just and KNOWABLE (to some degree) God. 
2. That God had created an ORDERED and KNOWABLE (to humans) universe. 
3. Man had been given DOMINION over that universe. 

These were powerful beliefs that properly placed man -- as potential master of the physical, servant of the eternal, blessed with the ability to know both the universe and God. The base for western thought brought thousands of years of relative "advancement", and since say "1300", fairly rapidly so. 

But, as in the original Eden, the snake was busy. Did God REALLY create all this? Maybe not ... and if not, maybe he doesn't exist at all. If he doesn't exist, is there REALLY "truth"? Certainly not "ultimate truth" ... and whatever feels good seems a lot more like "human morals". Oh, and BTW, why does man have "dominion" -- is man not just an animal, and therefore no more deserving of a place on the planet than animals? While we are at it, maybe "the earth" is really "divine", and man should "serve the earth"? 

So now we have mass confusion. Our natural desires to "be as intelligent as gods" make us want to fake that we are not ignorant. Meanwhile, our hopeful promethean reach much exceeds our grasp, and we are lost in a random meaningless universe. Unsure of our place -- even relative to the dead rock of the planet, or the clearly less intellectually capable life forms that share it with us. 

We have traded legitimate and actually beneficial "ignorance" (humility, wisdom, the fear of God) for a false sense of "having figured it all out", while our spiritual state is beyond lost -- not knowing even OF God, and having lost all contact with our created place in the universe. 

Proper ignorance (humility) is indeed bliss! In fact, it is WISDOM! 

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A $620K Watch, Record Cold

A $620,000 watch tells what time it is in Vladimir Putin’s Russia:

The European press often seems less controlled than the American. Couple little tidbits here:

Fall comes suddenly to Russia in mid-August, a dose of harsh reality that ends summer’s brief respite with a foreshadowing of the legendary winter that shapes the Russian psyche. With temperatures near record-lows, last week was no exception.

Fall sometimes comes suddenly to MN in August as well -- as I realized last evening I ought to have worn more than a T-shirt down to the last free concert of 2015 down at Mayo Park -- "America". Given my warm nature, it wasn't bad, but as temps started to slide below 60 degrees by the end of the evening, I could have used a bit more warmth. I'm sure it isn't close to a record, but it is certainly closer to cold records here than warm ones.

I remember 2012 being nice and warm for the last concert with George Thorogood, and a couple years where we even decided it was too hot to go. Same sort of remembrances of State Fair. Not looking like those are issues here -- but we of course know from reporting that it is getting hotter all the time. Are you going to believe your own stupid experience or the geniuses that do the warming thing -- heck, some of them can even fake like they work at the CIA and play hooky from their climate gig for 15 years and nobody notices! Are you that smart? See? Those warming people really ARE brilliant!

The rest of the article is an OK read as well on Putin's Russia -- corruption, graft, little or no wage gains, rich getting richer, lots of failures that "should remove him from office". I couldn't help but think that the list sounded just like BO's America -- lots of corruption, graft, no wage gains, big EPA spill,  ... etc, etc Russia might be a tad more honest, they actually report it when they are in a recession ... we fudge the numbers.

I suppose the press in Russia treats things differently than Reuters -- hopefully with the past experience with the USSR, people there know enough to look for answers from other sources!

How many Americans are that intelligent?

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China, Stocks, The Unknown

China to Flood Economy With Cash as Global Markets Lose Faith - WSJ:



People sometimes ask me "what have you been wrong about -- what things do you think you might be wrong about now". I went into a few of them here, but China is a bit in "another category".



My theory is that command economies can't work -- the USSR, Cuba, North Korea, China prior to the '90s, etc. Even "more controlled" economies like Europe and the US that seemingly "keep going" with increasing government intervention, start to show signs of "stagflation", low employment, poor productivity, slower or non-existent growth rates, etc.



But then there has been China. Since the '90s, growing like topsy always supposedly with more to come -- and even more important, with a population dedicated to doing the hard work to continue to make that happen! It has been enough to make a poor Moose wonder about his basic beliefs of economics!



Now it looks like the ship of Beijing is at least in rough water, potentially upon the rocks.

The moves reflect an economy increasingly failing to cooperate with Chinese leaders’ playbook to control the world’s No. 2 economy.

The real world has a horrible (depending on perspective) tendency to fail to cooperate with various pronouncements from "supreme leaders", or even "huge landslide" votes. If it were not so,  death, pain, poverty and a whole host of unpopular elements of reality would have been conjured away by some potentate or populist movement long ago!



For those that believe that God is in his heaven, and we live in an ordered purposeful universe, this is GOOD! For those that believe that man's powers as a conjurer are unlimited, this is of course VERY BAD news! (to the UNconstrained view, in fact THE WORST news! ... because it destroys their entire worldview!)



If the China economy meets a bad end (possibly taking the world for a scary downhill toboggan ride with it), my sense of how things work will be confirmed ... although with some pain in the net worth column!



While "the world" no doubt is a long way from switching fully over to my view on the prospects for long term successful control of the economy by government, this paragraph indicates that they are are least having some second thoughts on the brilliance of the Chinese attempt at economic command and control.

“The world is starting to realize China is not nearly as competent as thought, especially in the economic sphere where everyone gave it good grades,” said Fraser Howie, co-author of “Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China’s Extraordinary Rise.”

The following paragraph gives a superb opportunity to understand why growth is hard:

A key problem is that risk-averse banks continue to favor state-owned companies, eschewing private enterprises with less-traditional collateral and balance sheets. This often leaves entrepreneurs with higher growth potential to fall back on high-interest non-bank financing or go without. Meanwhile, many state-owned companies, already awash in cheap capital, are reluctant to borrow because of overcapacity in various industries.

Let me try to break this down so it is understandable to all:

• "risk-averse" -- general human nature is risk-averse. Thus insurance, votes for "security" provided by the the government, etc. 
• "State-owned companies" are VERY risk averse -- as is the government, THEY CAN AFFORD TO BE! 
• The "wildcard" is THE PROFIT MOTIVE! Keynes "animal spirits" -- the counterpose to "risk-averse", that if ignited, drives the economy forward. 
• BUT, the government typically ends up dousing animal spirits and rewarding the risk-averse. It seeks to increase state actual ownership, or "de facto ownership" (as in medicine, education and other industries in the US), it seeks to increase regulation, it seeks to increase taxation -- all of which reduce the animal spirit (DRIVE) of the economy. It picks PAST winners and strangles potential future winners in the cradle. 

Eventually, "reality intrudes" -- it turns out that "the state" or "government" is not magic, all-powerful, etc, but rather just another competing organization that can suffer losses, lose the confidence of it's own people and other governments, and eventually, collapse -- the imaginary "security" that it so fervently promised is exposed as a chimera.



USUALLY, reality intrudes at levels smaller than "collapse" -- stock market crashes, housing or land value collapses, "austerity", financial controls, "stimulus packages" -- but not always, sometimes it is bigger. A political party dies, a new form of government comes in, violence, etc.



In my worldview, these things are inevitable, not surprising, and like "surgery now vs surgery later" can even have positive effects without killing the patient. It is like "pruning a tree", or "weeding the garden" -- expected and normal.



To those that believe that government is something "beyond the world" however -- that it is capable of "conjuring spirits from the vasty deep" (to butcher Shakspeare), problems as we see in China create great anguish since ultimately they call the infallibility of man through government into question, and since that is the only faith they have, that is a crisis indeed!



"There be Dragons" -- the unknown, out of our hands. If you are a "progressive", such shouldn't even exist -- because you believe that the world is "getting better" through more and more control exerted by man.



I prefer the unknown.



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Trump, Rome, Exceptionalism

Are Republicans For Freedom or White Identity Politics?:

What we are hearing now from the Trump-supporting right is akin to the Roman people’s call for the dissolution of the Senate: the demand to install a strong horse, the outsider who will fix all things, the powerful man who promises he will, at long last, get things done for the people.

I don't think this article really makes a cogent case for the "White Identity Politics" theme it claims, but it does make some points, and it led me to think of some others.

First, the quote above. The country has been sliding socialist since the 30's with predictable and gathering crisis all around. Generally rising debt, crime, destruction of the family, weaker and weaker general business and employment climate, corruption, loss of trust, and general "malaise". Carter called it out in the late '70s ... Reagan gave us a heavy dose of positive energy, but that had fizzled by the late '90s. The only thing that prevents there from being "malaise" discussion right now is the fact that the BO admin has cooked the economic numbers, and the MSM is certainly not going to point out what a disastrous president he has been and is ...

But, many people still know what is happening -- and a bunch more "feel it". They may not have a lot of education, they may know what the MSM tells them they are SUPPOSED to think, but they are fed up! Reagan  got that vote in '80, and that "mad as hell and not going to take it any more" emotion is one of the things driving the Tump support. Reagan was certainly a "Strong Horse" -- Trump is acting like one at this point, who knows what is really in his heart and soul?

The other big thing that Trump says that Reagan said also "Make America Great Again"! Even though the MSM fights like hell for "The Party" to win, they forget that a whole lot of people are still AMERICANS first and they WANT THEIR TEAM TO BE #1 !!

This isn't all that hard -- Packer fans want the Packers to be "NUMBER ONE" -- not "as good a team as any, maybe similar to say "Cleveland, or Atlanta" (like BO saying America was exceptional like Britain or Greece). All humans have a yearning for themselves, their families, their companies, their countries to be truly exceptional -- "the greatest". Even BO has that yearning for his tribe, the Luo -- he very much wants "his people" to be exceptional. He can help accomplish that by taking America (and Western Powers) down a peg to achieve his "Dreams From My Father".

Reagan spoke to that yearning for greatness in Americans -- in his case, I HONESTLY, with a worthy vision and the capability to make it happen. Trump speaks to that same yearning -- but I believe in his case falsely, cynically, because he knows that is what a set of people will react to. But the yearning is so strong and only Trump seems to have tapped into it -- so it gives him an edge.

The media is driven to play with fire on Trump. They love him throwing bombs all over in Republican primaries and alienating especially Hispanic voters from any chance of voting Republican. They also love the idea of Trump running as a 3rd party and making it possible to even elect someone like Bernie Sanders. They see Trump as a way to destroy the Republican party which they so much hate.

It is a story as old as man -- the weapon that we pick up to destroy the hated other often destroys US! Will the media (and all the rest of us) be Trumped?

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Wisdom Is Too Long, Markets Are Concise and Honest

The collected (nit)wit and (un)wisdom of Bernie Sanders:

The linked article is chock full of excellent rebuttal of the fallacies of Bernie Sanders -- and by extension the entire current dominant political view in America ... that of the Democrats, Media, Academia, etc that I call "The Party".

I recommend reading it, but I'll give you the part that I found to be especially clear, easy to understand and somewhat non-intuitive. The BIGGEST advantage of Capitalism and Markets is that they quickly and accurately deliver BAD NEWS, and other systems very much tend to try to hid bad news, which is BAD!! This is most certainly true -- and well worth realizing, understanding, and taking to heart in everything you do! The whole article this is from is linked here.

... "The most valuable property of the price mechanism is as a reliable mechanism for delivering bad news." These two statements explain a lot about why socialist systems fail pretty much everywhere but get pretty good press, while capitalism has delivered truly astounding results but is constantly besieged by detractors. 

It is simple really: When the "Great Leader" builds a new stadium, everyone sees the construction. Nobody sees the more worthwhile projects that didn't get done instead because the capital was diverted, through taxation, from less visible but possibly more worthwhile ventures — a thousand tailor shops, bakeries or physician offices. 

At the same time, markets deliver the bad news whether you want to hear it or not, but delivering the bad news is not a sign of failure, it is a characteristic of systems that work. When you stub your toe, the neurons in between your foot and your head don't try to figure out ways not to send the news to your brain. If they did, you'd trip a lot more often. Likewise, in a market, bad decisions show up pretty rapidly: Build a car that nobody wants, and you're stuck with a bunch of expensive unsold cars; invest in new technologies that don't work, and you lose a lot of money and have nothing to show for it. These painful consequences mean that people are pretty careful in their investments, at least so long as they're investing their own money. 

Bureaucrats in government do the opposite, trying to keep their bosses from discovering their mistakes. 

Likewise, the pricing system tells people things that they can’t know directly. In a command economy, where bureaucrats set production targets, if someone uses more pig iron than expected, there’s a shortage. In a market, prices for pig iron go up, which sends two signals: To pig iron producers, the signal is produce more pig iron. To pig iron consumers, the signal is don’t use more pig iron than you have to. Both ways, the prices tell people things that they need to know, without any direct communication required. This is why market economies do better than command economies, as historical examples ranging from the old Soviet Union to today’s Venezuela demonstrate over and over again.

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Iran Will Self "Verify"

AP Exclusive: UN to let Iran inspect alleged nuke work site - The Washington Post:



This has been reported in the right wing press for weeks -- since WaPo is now confirming, I'll take it as fact. Again, those damned Republicans are up on arms and don't seem to trust the "Death the America, Death to Israel" chanting Mullahs -- go figure.



I've heard a few hard lefties say "Since Israel has nukes, how can we expect Iran to not have them?"



That is commonly known as the defeatist position ... "Since we are all going to just die anyway, why not just commit suicide now and get it over with?".  It is an argument of the form "Since X is inevitable, why bother". It used to be the gospel of the left on the USSR; "The USSR is always going to be around, isn't all that bad anyway, and there is nothing to do about it -- so quit competing, quit having a military, quit talking about them, etc".



It is often the "mature intelligent position" of the left on a whole set of topics that include  Israel continuing to exist, the US having a role in the mideast, (or any global role these days), etc. It is NEVER raised on such questions as the attainability of "income equality", "universal healthcare" or "gun control". Consistency remains a convenient non-issue for the left.



Much of human life is a struggle against the "inevitable" -- to be a Christian is to believe that even death for the soul is not in fact "inevitable", but that a better life will exist on an eternal plane. So too, poverty, despair, moral decrepitude, ignorance and a host of other natural and "inevitable" human conditions are considered worthy of hard work, dedication, individual effort, struggle, etc for those of the Christian and often "conservative" thought process.



While the left may make claims that they too seek to erase at least say "poverty and ignorance", a not very close perusal of their rhetoric will show they expect that "someone else" -- the "rich", "the 1%", "the greedy"; will do all the actual work and funding of their supposed "goals", and that what they call "education" will primarily be "indoctrination" to assure that all agree with the leftward view.



The core belief of leftward thought is that ultimately all will be forced to agree with all the tenets of leftward ideology!



... or they will be dead, very possibly due to Iranian nukes in the case of Israel. Iran will be very willing to "verify" that they don't have any right up until the mushroom shows up over Israel.



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Black Balls Matter

LA 'black ball' reservoir rollout potential 'disaster' in the making, say experts | Fox News:



I saw this last week and thought that black was an odd color given its heat absorption qualities.



White came to mind -- I hadn't thought of chrome, but the point is that color does sometimes matter.



Perhaps a bit more study would have been in order prior to dumping  $34 million worth of black balls into a reservoir? Hmm ... something that works in your martini glass doesn't necessarily work for Lake Superior? Wow, what a concept!



A quick scan of the article shows the likely culprit scenario that is so common these days -- one branch of government reacting to another, in this case the LA and their reservoirs to the EPA, along with a lame attempt to cover up what they are really doing.  Claiming they are "saving evaporation" when really they are trying to meet an EPA mandate on the "somewhat cheap" (very relative when it comes to government) -- typically "obscenely expensive" vs "intergalactically insanely beyond imagination expensive".



Balls are relative.



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Climate Change Expert Missing, Government in Action

Climate change expert sentenced to 32 months for fraud, says lying was a 'rush' - NBC News:

Well, he seemed to be OK for 15 years ...

But now he is going to jail -- I'm sure it will be nice jail. He ONLY failed to do any work by telling his supervisors that he was a CIA Spy for FIFTEEN YEARS! Those government jobs that pay $206K a year must REALLY have some awesome responsibilities considering he was shirking for 15 years and nobody was the wiser!

Supposedly though, he only defrauded the government of near $1 million ... but $200K X 15 is a lot closer to $3 million -- I suppose "close enough for government work".

I love what he did with his time ...

When Huvelle asked Beale what he was doing when he claimed he was working for the CIA, he said, "I spent time exercising. I spent a lot of time working on my house."
He also said he used the time "trying to find ways to fine tune the capitalist system" to discourage companies from damaging the environment. "I spent a lot of time reading on that," said Beale.

The article is worth a read -- your tax dollars at work. Two presidential administrations from opposing parties, both houses of congress switching parties (twice) ... no matter, the administrative incompetence and downright fraud rolls on ...

And those on the left will tell you that the answer is MORE GOVERNMENT!

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Catstantinople

Why Istanbul Should Be Called Catstantinople - WSJ:

“Being a cat in Istanbul is like being a cow in India,”

The article is a bit on the long side unless you are REALLY a cat lover. File under "interesting tidbits".

We brought our kitties down to the IA place for this week -- it was a rather difficult car ride with a lot of distressed kitty noise, and last night our smaller grey "Misty" was vocal enough for me to spend some extra late night time with her that I hadn't planned on.

Cats and Dogs are one of those cases where we can understand "why don't we all get along"? A large reason is that we have quite significant differences in likes and dislikes. Some love dogs, some love cats, some love both -- and we can do the inverse with hate.

For those that love, it is very hard to understand those that hate, and vice-versa. As Spock might say, "It is not logical" -- which it isn't.

The best we can hope to do is "respect the differences", but our feelings will not do that -- the haters and lovers of the two favorite pets have a feeling in their gut, and while we can cover it up and behave civilly (usually), there is a wiring difference that means that our "tolerance" for the inverse is not really at a felt level.

Perhaps if we ponder a bit on this reality we can begin to understand our humanity more, and maybe understand why it is that there is a need for transcendent religion that holds out the potential to step beyond the felt reality of our humanity.

How can we think and feel so differently on something of seemingly such slight significance? The fact that we can and do is a simple proof that "being more human" is never going to be enough to achieve peace on earth.

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Military Spends 57% or 16% Of Budget -- Lessons in Obfuscation

Pie chart of 'federal spending' circulating on the Internet is misleading | PolitiFact:

This one is so far out that even a prominent lefty "fact check" site has to call it out as being wrong. What I find interesting though is how one can fudge numbers to "kinda sorta" show something as true that is totally false.

In this case, take "discretionary spending ONLY", completely ignore "mandatory" spending, plus take a few more liberties, and "wala", you have a "proof" of what many on the left want to believe anyway ... Republicans are stupid / insane / evil, there are no problems at all with massive entitlement / welfare spending, and all our problems are due to "defense spending".

Our lefty media pulls this basic sleight of hand all the time ... switching between debt and deficit, using raw numbers one day, percentage of GDP another, screwing with what inflation adjustment is used (or none) ... this is THE LARGEST TAX INCREASE IN HISTORY!!!! (certainly, in a country of 320 million and money worth less every year, virtually ANY tax increase (or decrease) is "the largest in history" in raw non-inflation or population adjusted numbers!

It is worth going off to the column to see just how easy it is to go from a chart that purports to show defense as some nefarious monster eating the budget, to one that at least comes close to showing the reality of entitlements consuming an ever growing percentage of our GDP.

"Facts" are sticky things -- but hiding them is often not very difficult.

A truly unbiased news source could do a bit more work on "remainder", "food and agriculture", "education", etc  to get to the 70%+ that is now "entitlements and welfare".

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Happiness Is A Serious Problem, Dennis Prager

http://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Serious-Problem-Dennis-Prager-ebook/dp/B0014Y09OI

An alternate title for this excellent book would be "Wisdom About Happiness".  I'm not wired to be a particularly happy person, nor am I wired to be a thin person -- so I do the best I can to play the hand I have been dealt. While neither diet books nor happiness books are likely to make me thin or happy, they help me understand my wiring and predilections so that I can possibly be a bit wiser, and compensate where possible.

Nearly anything written by Prager seems to at least border on excellent and this book is no exception. It walks through a lot of the many  misconceptions on happiness. I'll put a few more quotes in than I usually would, since this book is chocked full of short, well-written and to the point statements.

Everything worthwhile in life is attained through hard work. Happiness is not an exception. 

But not working AT happiness -- and especially not at YOUR happiness. As you look back on life, you will almost certainly realize that you were most happy when you were enmeshed in some "cause" or "project". In my case, the big development projects at IBM and raising kids were the largest examples. Hopefully writing will continue to develop into another.

But the purpose of life is not to avoid pain. That is the purpose of an animal’s life.

Many of our problems and even false desires about happiness are due to forgetting that man is not an animal. If we were, the rich, successful, beautiful, etc would actually BE the most happy -- but we see examples all the time in which this is not the case. Animals don't know human happiness -- they know relaxation, satiation, pleasure, etc -- all of which humans feel as well. A simple definition of hell for humans is mistaking the pursuit of animal pleasures with happiness -- addiction, obsession, disaster are terms associated with these, certainly not happiness!

whatever brings the most happiness can also bring the greatest unhappiness.

Ask a parent who has lost a child, or just has a child that has returned the love and care of the parent with disrespect and derision. Ask the loving spouse whose life partner has died. We know this to be true -- one whole chapter, chapter 25 is titled "Everything has a price -- Know what it is!". How much wiser (and happier!) the world would be if just a tiny extra percentage of our fellow man understood this simple truth!

The problem in our time is that maturity is not high on the list of goals we offer the next generation. We stress happiness, success, and intelligence but not maturity. And that is too bad, both for society, which suffers when too many of its members are immature, and for the individual who wants to be happy. For happiness is not available to the immature. And one of the prominent characteristics of immaturity is seeing oneself primarily as a victim.

"Maturity", defined as "wisdom, self control, perspective, having a philosophy of life (or even having a clue what philosophy is!)" When "maturity" is defined to mean some combination of the terms I listed (and I believe that to be his intent), then the quote above is true.

The "sage" can be "happy" in the sense that they have access to and make use of many of the "secrets" of this book, but when they live in a culture that often glorifies sensation, immaturity, mixing ends with means, substitution of animal senses for human wisdom / maturity / development, they are going to feel regret for the rest of humanity.

Yes, there is a “secret to happiness”—and it is gratitude. All happy people are grateful, and ungrateful people cannot be happy. We tend to think that it is being unhappy that leads people to complain, but it is truer to say that it is complaining that leads to people becoming unhappy. Become grateful and you will become a much happier person.

The problem with the "secret" to happiness is expectations. We don't feel happiness when expectations are met, we feel happiness when they are exceeded, and our human nature is to expect A LOT! Our culture, media and education system is all about telling us of our "rights" and how much we ALL "deserve" this and that. We are each so VERY special and deserving!! Our expectations are sky high -- for products, events, teams, friends, spouses -- EVERYTHING!

Grateful? To who or what? The order of the day is entitlement -- and nobody is ever grateful for what they are entitled to! So modern western man is saddled with the greatest unhappiness in world history -- gravely wounded soldiers in terrible wars have been grateful to be alive, modern man is often distraught and grossly unhappy if their Facebook "Friends" fail to put a "like" on their new rainbow profile picture!

There is a lot more in the book -- Prager does a characteristically insightful and compassionate discussion of medications and being wired toward depression.

If we are, in fact, “built” this way, we no longer have to blame ourselves or loved ones for our unhappiness. There is something worse than depression—blaming it on yourself or a loved one.

For those of us with such wiring, this is possibly the most important day to day advice -- because the depressive wiring comes with self-blame as a "feature". How strange that even the modern "progressive" would likely agree with Prager on this relative to depression, but find it TOTALLY WRONG for someone with say a tendency to homosexuality to seek to understand and control that "wiring".  Does the depressive, alcoholic, or even narcissist NOT have some sort of a responsibility to be "true" to themselves and "authentic"? Consistency remains a non-sequitur for the "progressive".

I highly recommend the book even if you are a very happy person. It is an excellent broad-brush skim of some of the more important, but often forgotten today, wisdom for a meaningful human life.