We generally shoot for 8:00 PM, but it's often later than that before we sit down to supper. I like to get my shower in before supper, so that's what I do after watching the evening news and reading my newspaper. Don't forget, this whole scenario is punctuated by trips to the smoking lounge. It's usually around 10:00 PM before I sit down in front of the computer. First I read what you guys have written, then retire to the smoking lounge to contemplate my reply. I try to wind it up by 11-ish, but some times I run a little late. After that, it's ice cream time, bracketed by smoking time and, before you know it, it's 1:00 AM.
I appears that Uncle Ken does get about the same hours of sleep as I do, although mine is broken up by trips to the bathroom and the garage. I usually can only sleep a couple three hours in one stretch. If I've got something to do in the morning, I stay up and catch a nap later. If not, it's back to sleep for another stretch. I am sleeping more now than I ever have and, until recently, my health has been better for it. When I was working, I could expect to miss a few days a year for illness. This flu thing kind of blindsided me, I haven't been sick like this in decades. Indeed, I don't remember ever being sick exactly like this. A bout with the flu used to last a day or two, but this thing has been going on for well over a week with no end in sight. I read somewhere that "the elderly" are more vulnerable to this sort of thing, which is why they are supposed to get their flu shots. Funny, I never thought of myself as elderly before. Old, sure, but not elderly. Old people are stubborn, crotchety, eccentric, and even endearing in a rugged sort of way. "Elderly", on the other hand, implies weakness and infirmity. I don't think I'm ready for that yet.
Friday, March 30, 2018
happy Easter
It appears that Beagles and I are four hours out of synch. I get up around 5 every morning and I go go bed at nine. Used to be it was a point of honor to close the bar every night at one and then there would be a couple beers at home. If I got up at ten I was starting the day pretty early. When I started a responsible job and had to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (bushy-tailed?) I turned in at eleven and got up at seven. Since I've retired I seem to be getting up earlier and earlier, six, then five, and lately I've been edging up to four.
Wait a minute. Beagles spends from suppertime to one AM on the computer? How long does it take to post? Seems like there is plenty of time to keep up on current events.
Anyway, I guess the tale of Oog the wise man and Boog and Doog and Foog and that awful Hoog is going nowhere. But you know what, going back to check on the names I see there is a post by the discerning Old Dog who has the the strange, to me, opinion that not every question can be answered. That seems alien to me. Offhand I can't think of a question that can't be answered.
Speaking of Old Dog, he was speaking of late of The Death of Stalin which has just lately come out and is getting rave reviews, but I wonder how he was able to see it so early.
I don't follow Old Dog's reasoning for not getting the flu shot. Of course it's not 100 percent, Google tells me that this year it was only 36 percent effective, but still that's better than nothing isn't it?
Sometimes I think that there are some people that have no respect for any opinion other than their own.
Hum, is that aimed at any particular member of The Institute? Well here it is. If we are talking about oh a painting or a movie, certainly everybody has their own opinion. If we are talking about who is the greatest third baseman of all time, there are a lot of factors in that so the answer would never be clear, but if we are talking about your odds of getting the flu are better with or without the shot, then the answer seems pretty clear.
I don't know, maybe I am too argumentative. I've heard that before from various other sources. Everybody is sitting around and wants to have a nice chat and there is that single-minded Uncle Ken hammering away at some point that others have lost interest in.
Sorry about that. Here comes Easter.
Wait a minute. Beagles spends from suppertime to one AM on the computer? How long does it take to post? Seems like there is plenty of time to keep up on current events.
Anyway, I guess the tale of Oog the wise man and Boog and Doog and Foog and that awful Hoog is going nowhere. But you know what, going back to check on the names I see there is a post by the discerning Old Dog who has the the strange, to me, opinion that not every question can be answered. That seems alien to me. Offhand I can't think of a question that can't be answered.
Speaking of Old Dog, he was speaking of late of The Death of Stalin which has just lately come out and is getting rave reviews, but I wonder how he was able to see it so early.
I don't follow Old Dog's reasoning for not getting the flu shot. Of course it's not 100 percent, Google tells me that this year it was only 36 percent effective, but still that's better than nothing isn't it?
Sometimes I think that there are some people that have no respect for any opinion other than their own.
Hum, is that aimed at any particular member of The Institute? Well here it is. If we are talking about oh a painting or a movie, certainly everybody has their own opinion. If we are talking about who is the greatest third baseman of all time, there are a lot of factors in that so the answer would never be clear, but if we are talking about your odds of getting the flu are better with or without the shot, then the answer seems pretty clear.
I don't know, maybe I am too argumentative. I've heard that before from various other sources. Everybody is sitting around and wants to have a nice chat and there is that single-minded Uncle Ken hammering away at some point that others have lost interest in.
Sorry about that. Here comes Easter.
Thursday, March 29, 2018
Where Does the Time Go?
It sounds to me like Uncle Ken doesn't sleep much, and that may be why he has more time than I do. I usually go to sleep around 1:00 AM and get up around 9:00 AM. I might lose an hour or so going to the bathroom and putting wood in the stove a couple times a night. I am usually hungry when I wake up, but I'm not ready to deal with ham and eggs yet, so I have a bowl of cold cereal to tithe me over. Then I have these back exercises that I need to do. I have a chronic back problem for which there is no cure. The best I can do is keep it as flexible as possible to delay the process of degeneration. Once I lose something, it's gone forever, so I try to hang on to what's left. The exercises only take 15 minutes or so, but I am supposed to sit in a comfortable chair afterwards for another 15 minutes or so. While I'm sitting there, I turn on the Weather Channel and promptly fall asleep for at least a half hour, more on a rainy day.
After that, I get dressed and get ready for my regular breakfast. But before that, I go out into the garage on alternate days and make cigarettes. That takes about a half hour and, on the days that I don't make them, I still go out into the garage to smoke one, which takes about 15 minutes in itself. Come to think of it, that's probably where a lot of my time goes. Since I stopped smoking in the house 10 years ago, every time I go into the garage for a cigarette, it's 15 minutes out of my life. At 15 cigarettes a day, that's over three hours. I do some multitasking with that, though, like reading the newspaper and drinking my two beers a day, but most of it is just chalked up to break time. I stopped smoking few days ago because it was aggravating my flu symptoms. I thought that would free up some time for me, but I still take as many breaks, only in the living room recliner instead of the lawn chair in the garage. Did I mention that I do all my sleeping in that recliner because it's better for my back than a bed? I'm tired all the time with this flu thing so I tend to fall asleep as soon as my ass hits the seat. No time saved there.
After breakfast, I clear the table and wash the dishes that have accumulated in the previous 24 hours. My hypothetical wife has health issues of her own, so I took over the dishes when I quit working in 2004. She still does most of the cooking, but I do a lot of grilling in the summer, which doesn't take any time because I set the grill up outside the garage door and do some of my smoking and drinking while I keep an eye on it. On a good day, I might get an hour or so to work on my own projects before it's time to watch the evening news while I eat a snack before doing my thing in the garage. We watch TV, more often than not a DVD of an old show we like, while we eat supper. Then it's off to the computer for me till it's time to eat ice cream and go to sleep. And so it goes.
After that, I get dressed and get ready for my regular breakfast. But before that, I go out into the garage on alternate days and make cigarettes. That takes about a half hour and, on the days that I don't make them, I still go out into the garage to smoke one, which takes about 15 minutes in itself. Come to think of it, that's probably where a lot of my time goes. Since I stopped smoking in the house 10 years ago, every time I go into the garage for a cigarette, it's 15 minutes out of my life. At 15 cigarettes a day, that's over three hours. I do some multitasking with that, though, like reading the newspaper and drinking my two beers a day, but most of it is just chalked up to break time. I stopped smoking few days ago because it was aggravating my flu symptoms. I thought that would free up some time for me, but I still take as many breaks, only in the living room recliner instead of the lawn chair in the garage. Did I mention that I do all my sleeping in that recliner because it's better for my back than a bed? I'm tired all the time with this flu thing so I tend to fall asleep as soon as my ass hits the seat. No time saved there.
After breakfast, I clear the table and wash the dishes that have accumulated in the previous 24 hours. My hypothetical wife has health issues of her own, so I took over the dishes when I quit working in 2004. She still does most of the cooking, but I do a lot of grilling in the summer, which doesn't take any time because I set the grill up outside the garage door and do some of my smoking and drinking while I keep an eye on it. On a good day, I might get an hour or so to work on my own projects before it's time to watch the evening news while I eat a snack before doing my thing in the garage. We watch TV, more often than not a DVD of an old show we like, while we eat supper. Then it's off to the computer for me till it's time to eat ice cream and go to sleep. And so it goes.
Checking in
I'm glad he is getting his flu shot next year though. I wonder if Old Dog got his. Where is he?
Lurking. Not every discussion requires a response from me, especially those of a cynical bent, and not every question can be answered.
But no, never had a flu shot but to me it's an acceptable risk. From what I've read, a flu shot reduces your risk of getting the flu by 50% once you are exposed, but there are a lot of flu variants and the flu shot only covers maybe three or four of them. The vaccine itself is prepared well in advance of flu season, based on the best estimates of which flu variations will appear. Having the flu shot does not guarantee immunity from all types of flu and not having the shot does not mean you will, with 100% certainty, get the flu. Maybe there is compelling data to convince me otherwise but, until then, it's an acceptable risk for me.
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Beagles has a tendency when presented with two opinions to give them equal weight and shrug his shoulders, what's a fellow do to? When the mechanic tells him he needs an oil change and the guy on the next bar stool tells him to paint the truck yellow, he doesn't know which way to go.
I don't know how you arrive at such a conclusion, Uncle Ken, since you're not giving Mr. Beagles any credit for considering the source of the proffered opinions. I think it's more likely that he will consult a second mechanic rather than the guy on the next bar stool.
Sometimes I think that there are some people that have no respect for any opinion other than their own.
Lurking. Not every discussion requires a response from me, especially those of a cynical bent, and not every question can be answered.
But no, never had a flu shot but to me it's an acceptable risk. From what I've read, a flu shot reduces your risk of getting the flu by 50% once you are exposed, but there are a lot of flu variants and the flu shot only covers maybe three or four of them. The vaccine itself is prepared well in advance of flu season, based on the best estimates of which flu variations will appear. Having the flu shot does not guarantee immunity from all types of flu and not having the shot does not mean you will, with 100% certainty, get the flu. Maybe there is compelling data to convince me otherwise but, until then, it's an acceptable risk for me.
-----
Beagles has a tendency when presented with two opinions to give them equal weight and shrug his shoulders, what's a fellow do to? When the mechanic tells him he needs an oil change and the guy on the next bar stool tells him to paint the truck yellow, he doesn't know which way to go.
I don't know how you arrive at such a conclusion, Uncle Ken, since you're not giving Mr. Beagles any credit for considering the source of the proffered opinions. I think it's more likely that he will consult a second mechanic rather than the guy on the next bar stool.
Sometimes I think that there are some people that have no respect for any opinion other than their own.
Is Hoog THEM?
I beg to differ Beagles, I pay a lot of attention to stuff and yet I am able to put in three hours of painting in the morning, an hour or more writing my post, a leisurely lunch, a nap on my LaZboy covered with cats, 40 minutes at the gym or a two hour walk, a leisurely supper, a crossword puzzle and the Jumble, and two hours of generally trash tv, and then off to knit the raveled sleeve of care. With all that I still have time to read a couple newspapers, watch some tv news, and read some internet news. So what does Beagles do all day?
Despite all this I don't recall haring about The Swine Flu Fiasco, even though I lived through it in 1976. I was spending a lot of my time then tending bar and sitting on the other end of the bar, so that may have something to do with it. Fortunately there is the internet. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/long-shadow-1976-swine-flu-vaccine-fiasco-180961994/
The swine flu did not kill more people than the flu did. 450 people did come down with GBS after getting the vaccine, but they were more likely to come down with it if they got the flu. It was clearly a big waste of money, (though not as big a waste as putting a cop in every school), 1976 was an election year and politics was involved.
But even if The Swine Flu Fiasco was not as big a debacle (killing people) as Beagles makes it out to be, it was a debacle. Sometimes the experts fuck up, but in general they have a better record than some people, and now I notice they are mentioned, and I wonder if they are the fabled them who are pulling all the strings.
Nobody believes everything anybody says, but remember, Boog, some people know more than others, and if you are seeking advice it's better to go to Boog than Hoog. Beagles has a tendency when presented with two opinions to give them equal weight and shrug his shoulders, what's a fellow do to? When the mechanic tells him he needs an oil change and the guy on the next bar stool tells him to paint the truck yellow, he doesn't know which way to go
I'm glad he is getting his flu shot next year though. I wonder if Old Dog got his. Where is he?
Despite all this I don't recall haring about The Swine Flu Fiasco, even though I lived through it in 1976. I was spending a lot of my time then tending bar and sitting on the other end of the bar, so that may have something to do with it. Fortunately there is the internet. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/long-shadow-1976-swine-flu-vaccine-fiasco-180961994/
The swine flu did not kill more people than the flu did. 450 people did come down with GBS after getting the vaccine, but they were more likely to come down with it if they got the flu. It was clearly a big waste of money, (though not as big a waste as putting a cop in every school), 1976 was an election year and politics was involved.
But even if The Swine Flu Fiasco was not as big a debacle (killing people) as Beagles makes it out to be, it was a debacle. Sometimes the experts fuck up, but in general they have a better record than some people, and now I notice they are mentioned, and I wonder if they are the fabled them who are pulling all the strings.
Nobody believes everything anybody says, but remember, Boog, some people know more than others, and if you are seeking advice it's better to go to Boog than Hoog. Beagles has a tendency when presented with two opinions to give them equal weight and shrug his shoulders, what's a fellow do to? When the mechanic tells him he needs an oil change and the guy on the next bar stool tells him to paint the truck yellow, he doesn't know which way to go
I'm glad he is getting his flu shot next year though. I wonder if Old Dog got his. Where is he?
Wednesday, March 28, 2018
Guilty as Charged
But, if it please the court, I'd like to submit articles of mitigation and extenuation. If I paid attention to everything the experts said, following their advice would be a full time job, leaving me no time to do anything else. Then there's the way they keep changing everything. One day coffee is bad for you, and the next day it's good for you. Back in the1970s there was an event known as "The Swine Flu Fiasco", in which the swine flu vaccine killed more people than the swine flu did. Admittedly, nothing like that has happened before or since, but you never know, it could happen again next year, or a hundred years from now. Be that as it may, I have already resolved to get my flu shot this fall.
It's like what they told us about the ethanol in the gas. Actually, there's been ethanol in our gasoline for a long time now but, some years ago, they increased the percentage. When they first added the ethanol, again back in the 1970s, it was supposed to ruin the engines of every car on the road, but it never did. When they increased the percentage, they said it wouldn't hurt our cars and trucks, but it was not recommended for small engines like lawn mowers and chain saws. A small amount of ethanol free gas was made available at an increased price, so I figure it was just a scam to get more money out of us. I continued to use regular gas in my small engines for years, until it ruined all the seals in the carburetor of my weed whacker. I have used ethanol free gas in all my small engines ever since. It was probably a wash, cost wise, but I didn't like having my weed whacker stuck in the shop for several weeks during prime weed whacking season.
Life is like that. If you believed everything they told you, it would drive you nuts, but you have believe something once in a while or you wouldn't be able to do anything at all. It's a puzzlement.
It's like what they told us about the ethanol in the gas. Actually, there's been ethanol in our gasoline for a long time now but, some years ago, they increased the percentage. When they first added the ethanol, again back in the 1970s, it was supposed to ruin the engines of every car on the road, but it never did. When they increased the percentage, they said it wouldn't hurt our cars and trucks, but it was not recommended for small engines like lawn mowers and chain saws. A small amount of ethanol free gas was made available at an increased price, so I figure it was just a scam to get more money out of us. I continued to use regular gas in my small engines for years, until it ruined all the seals in the carburetor of my weed whacker. I have used ethanol free gas in all my small engines ever since. It was probably a wash, cost wise, but I didn't like having my weed whacker stuck in the shop for several weeks during prime weed whacking season.
Life is like that. If you believed everything they told you, it would drive you nuts, but you have believe something once in a while or you wouldn't be able to do anything at all. It's a puzzlement.
the Hoogites will always be with us
Walking on two legs was a good move, now we could pluck that low-hanging fruit. We needed those opposing thumbs to pluck it well so that we didn't mash it up and we could enjoy its juicy goodness. But what they say that really got us going towards mastering the Earth was language. It's a lot of fun to gossip and to make jokes but the main advantage of acquiring language was that we were now able to pass on our knowledge. If Oog bit of a fruit and it made him sick, he was now able to tell Boog, and now instead of puking up his guts Boog was feeling sharp as he pondered that round rock and that shiny stuff at night and the next thing you know Boog had figured out fire and the wheel, and then Boog told Doog how told Foog, and you see how that works.
And when Boog just kept collecting knowledge from the rest of the tribe so that he became the wise man of the tribe that the rest of the tribe could tap into. He wasn't always right, and sometimes he probably lied, but you were better off listening to him than Hoog who just sat around the fire all day complaining that everybody in the tribe was a crook..
And then the Greeks established their academies and we got universities and we figured out how to build bridges and split the atom, and now we have the internet and The Institute. We have medical schools and we have medical research labs and more guys in white coats than you can shake a stick at, and doctors even in the far northern reaches of the freehold. Dollars to doughnuts had Beagles consulted his doctor the doctor would have said get the shots. If he had been paying attention to his tv and newspaper he would have heard them say many times, that while it is no guarantee, your odds of avoiding the flu are better with the shot, had he done some internet research he would have seen the opinion was almost universal that he should get the shots.
Well perhaps Beagles did get this knowledge, but then he had to balance it with the knowledge of that knowledgeable group (doubtless descendents of Hoog) which he identifies as some people, who said "Nah, those guys don't know shit, they're all a bunch of crooks." Faced with these two two opposing views Beagles chose the latter and now he is sick. I imagine when he has trouble with the truck he takes it into the mechanic and after listening politely he drives to the nearest bar and asks the guy on the next barstool what he thinks about his truck troubles.
Ten thousand years of civilization and the Hoogites are still among us and people are still listening to them. Kleenex seems like a wise investment.
What I originally said was that there will be no gummint program to send guns into the hallways. Beagles responded that some schools are already doing that. Quite so I replied but what I said was there would be no gummint program.
It's a waste of money whether it is federal program or a local program. It is a waste of money because it will cost a lot and the shootings it may avoid are very few.
Tuesday, March 27, 2018
Locked Out Again
The Google Machine locked me out of my account again. I tried using my recovery email, and that didn't work. Well, it kind of worked, but it didn't get me into my account. They sent their verification code just like they promised, with instructions to type it in the box, which I did. Then I got two messages, one right over the other. One said, "Thank you for confirming your account", and the other said, "We were unable to confirm your account". I suppose I could have fooled around with it some more, but it was late and I have been sick with the flu lately. I didn't even try last night, but everything was back to normal tonight.
I suppose I should consider getting one of those flu shots next fall. I have been evading it so far because some people claim, that those shots do more harm than good. Anyway, the flu didn't used to be such a big deal when we were kids but, of course, we're not kids anymore. Both my hypothetical wife and I have been struggling with this one for a solid week, and we're not out of the woods yet.
I know better than to argue gun control with Uncle Ken, I was just trying to bring Old Dog up to speed on our previous discussion because he asked. There was one point that I wanted to follow up on, however. Uncle Ken had stated that posting armed guards in the schools just wasn't going to happen, and I pointed out that it is indeed happening in some communities as we speak. Uncle Ken rejoined with:
I suppose I should consider getting one of those flu shots next fall. I have been evading it so far because some people claim, that those shots do more harm than good. Anyway, the flu didn't used to be such a big deal when we were kids but, of course, we're not kids anymore. Both my hypothetical wife and I have been struggling with this one for a solid week, and we're not out of the woods yet.
I know better than to argue gun control with Uncle Ken, I was just trying to bring Old Dog up to speed on our previous discussion because he asked. There was one point that I wanted to follow up on, however. Uncle Ken had stated that posting armed guards in the schools just wasn't going to happen, and I pointed out that it is indeed happening in some communities as we speak. Uncle Ken rejoined with:
"Individual communities can waste their money as they please. What I was speaking of, of course, was action by congress, which will not happen. There. Sigh."
So why is it a waste of money if local governments do it, but not if Congress does it on a national level? What's the difference, as long as it gets done?
Was it something I've said?
I have to wonder. Sometimes I get too caustic, I worry about that. I try to tone it down, but when I get in the mood, well it's hard to stop, and it's kind of fun, and you know, people get caustic right back at me, and that's fine. Sometimes I get a little loopy, like going out your door in the morning and walking around with no particular destination just to see where you end up. Sometimes I realize what I've said doesn't make sense and I just leave it that way to see what the Dawgs will make of it,
It's kind of fun just doing that verbal walk to see where I end up, thinking as I'm typing, seeing what I will come up with. But it's no fun writing if nobody is listening. Where are you guys?
It's kind of fun just doing that verbal walk to see where I end up, thinking as I'm typing, seeing what I will come up with. But it's no fun writing if nobody is listening. Where are you guys?
Monday, March 26, 2018
Youth speaks
A whole long weekend and neither dawg has anything to say? Lately I have begun to fear for the future of the Institute, and mostly this morning I wonder what am I to say. Am I supposed to disagree with myself?
I suppose I should be heartened by the Saturday marches, Look at that turnout, look at those young earnest faces. Oh they are so determined to do the right thing, they are speaking out boldly, Back in the day I remember Life Magazine speaking glowingly of the anti war movement. We were young and earnest then, and now we are old and cynical. That is not so bad, cynicism comes with age, it is really well, wisdom, it is the realization that everything is complicated.
There is a certain strain of cynicism that I want to withhold the mantle of wisdom from, and that is that bitter "they're all a bunch of crooks," variety. You know where they start out young and idealistic and then something bad happens to them and they are so dismayed to find that other people are not pure like them that they decide everybody is a crook and a liar, like the world is too dirty for the likes of them. This is not the cynicism that is wisdom, life is more complicated than that.
But there are those of us who feel a little uneasy about our cynicism, who long for the idealism of our youth and when we see the young and earnest marching our hearts sing and we think the youth are our conscience and see hope in that and think maybe a little kid should lead us. Not me. Meet the new kids, the same as the old kids. Remember when we were kids? Remember how stupid we were? Case closed.
The message of the marches is a bit scattershot, but I think it is basically gun control. not prying rifles from old coot's hands, more like banning semis and autos and making it a little harder to prove you are a law abiding person before you can buy a gun. I think they are reasonable demands, but people of Beagles' ilk think they are one step closer to getting at Old Betsy, so they will probably never happen.
Well maybe, we'll see how the issue plays in the 2018 elections. If a few gun nut candidates fall we may get reasonable demands. In any case I expect it will be good for the dems, who are not all crooks and bad for the reps who are also not all crooks, though more of them probably than the dems, but that is just my opinion. Maybe that's cynical, but I am young and earnest no longer.
I was a little disappointed in the Stormy interview. Not much of a circus. More of a bust. Pun intended.
Friday, March 23, 2018
labor intensive ice cream???
Nomenclature is a weapon of the gun nuts sown to cause confusion among the gun control nuts. All sorts of bogus arguments are offered again and again even after they have been debunked. The essential belief is that any advance in gun control is a step closer to prying Old Betsy out of their cold dead hands. There is no room for reasonable discussion. There is no application of logic. It is a dead issue as far as I'm concerned. There, I have wasted more time on this than I meant to.
Individual communities can waste their money as they please. What I was speaking of, of course, was action by congress, which will not happen. There. Sigh.
I was intending to dive into the cool refreshing space time of ice cream machines, but now I come across the phrase labor intensive and I have lost my interest.
I'm not that incensed about the Cambridge Analytica hoopla as perhaps I should be. I've never been as big on privacy as much of my ilk and the fringe of the Tarians! are. I just don't see it as a threat. I do see Russian collusion as a threat, not so much as swaying a large number of votes, but this is the Russkies whose aim is our destruction so it's not seemly to be playing footsie with them, or to tut tut playing footsie with them in order to get the supreme court justice of your dreams.
And then there is the issue of high tech politicking in general. It goes against the Liberal Agenda, or that part of the Liberal Agenda that says we are in the right and logic proves that, so all that we need to do is logically discuss it with our opponents and they can't help but come to our way of believing. But high tech politicking is like surveying and targeting your audience and just all that crap that is merely technical expertise and can be used for any agenda. Obama's big machine was cited for having a lot of technical expertise and I was always a little uncomfortable with that.
I said I skipped a lot of that youtube about the hot tub of ice. It was just too hard to put up with all the hamming up of the participants, a persistent weakness of youtube, the lame presenters who kill interest with their unsnappy patter.
I get the part about the NDAs in gummint not being enforceable but I did not see the part about NDAs not being enforceable in the private sector. A contract is a contract isn't it? People use these all the time. Who said they are not enforceable? I have long wondered about all these guys who have been fired by Trump and not one of them has said, you know what this guy is an asshole. What's with that?
Soap opera? I prefer the term circus, but last night they were interviewing one of those women on CNN, McDougal I think it was and it seemed to be all about what a cad Trump was, which to me is not really the point.
It was my birthday yesterday and everything was going just fine until I got back to my tv and heard about the trade war with China and (shudder) John Bolton.
Individual communities can waste their money as they please. What I was speaking of, of course, was action by congress, which will not happen. There. Sigh.
I was intending to dive into the cool refreshing space time of ice cream machines, but now I come across the phrase labor intensive and I have lost my interest.
I'm not that incensed about the Cambridge Analytica hoopla as perhaps I should be. I've never been as big on privacy as much of my ilk and the fringe of the Tarians! are. I just don't see it as a threat. I do see Russian collusion as a threat, not so much as swaying a large number of votes, but this is the Russkies whose aim is our destruction so it's not seemly to be playing footsie with them, or to tut tut playing footsie with them in order to get the supreme court justice of your dreams.
And then there is the issue of high tech politicking in general. It goes against the Liberal Agenda, or that part of the Liberal Agenda that says we are in the right and logic proves that, so all that we need to do is logically discuss it with our opponents and they can't help but come to our way of believing. But high tech politicking is like surveying and targeting your audience and just all that crap that is merely technical expertise and can be used for any agenda. Obama's big machine was cited for having a lot of technical expertise and I was always a little uncomfortable with that.
I said I skipped a lot of that youtube about the hot tub of ice. It was just too hard to put up with all the hamming up of the participants, a persistent weakness of youtube, the lame presenters who kill interest with their unsnappy patter.
I get the part about the NDAs in gummint not being enforceable but I did not see the part about NDAs not being enforceable in the private sector. A contract is a contract isn't it? People use these all the time. Who said they are not enforceable? I have long wondered about all these guys who have been fired by Trump and not one of them has said, you know what this guy is an asshole. What's with that?
Soap opera? I prefer the term circus, but last night they were interviewing one of those women on CNN, McDougal I think it was and it seemed to be all about what a cad Trump was, which to me is not really the point.
It was my birthday yesterday and everything was going just fine until I got back to my tv and heard about the trade war with China and (shudder) John Bolton.
Thursday, March 22, 2018
No Compromise!
A long time ago, before Old Dog joined our illustrious body, increasing our membership by 50%, Uncle Ken and I were discussing gun control legislation. At that time, Uncle Ken only wanted to ban assault rifles. I don't think he even knew the difference between a semi and a fully automatic until I explained it to him. I was willing to go along with that, provided that "assault rifle" be clearly defined so as not to confuse it with other semi automatics. Uncle Ken then upped the ante and wanted to ban all semi automatics. I then explained to him that some manually operated actions can be fired almost as fast as some semis, with more accuracy. Upon hearing this, Uncle Ken decided that he wanted to ban all repeating firearms, declaring that single shots are all we need for hunting and target shooting.
While that may be true, that's not how a compromise is supposed to work. A true compromise is where we start at two opposite points and meet in the middle. Uncle Ken's version of a compromise is where he keeps advancing and I keep retreating until he has gotten everything he originally wanted, and then some. I see now why the gun nuts don't want to give an inch of ground to the antis.
"And in the end I won't get my repeating rifles ban because of the gun nuts, and Beagles won't get any programs for arming teachers or diverting police or having retired coots set up their deer blinds in school hallways because it costs too much money." - Uncle Ken
Au contraire, mon ami. They have had armed cops in the Maryland schools for some 20 years, and I know of a couple of Northern Michigan school systems that have recently deployed them. I didn't know about the ones in Maryland until I read that article, so there may be more of them that I don't know about.
While that may be true, that's not how a compromise is supposed to work. A true compromise is where we start at two opposite points and meet in the middle. Uncle Ken's version of a compromise is where he keeps advancing and I keep retreating until he has gotten everything he originally wanted, and then some. I see now why the gun nuts don't want to give an inch of ground to the antis.
"And in the end I won't get my repeating rifles ban because of the gun nuts, and Beagles won't get any programs for arming teachers or diverting police or having retired coots set up their deer blinds in school hallways because it costs too much money." - Uncle Ken
Au contraire, mon ami. They have had armed cops in the Maryland schools for some 20 years, and I know of a couple of Northern Michigan school systems that have recently deployed them. I didn't know about the ones in Maryland until I read that article, so there may be more of them that I don't know about.
No screaming
Okay, now I'm getting confused. It looks like the discussion of automatic weapons has shifted to repeating rifles, which is a completely different thing. Am I missing something?
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So are you guys gearing up your ice cream machines for the upcoming long hot summer? Any exciting new innovations? I am all ears.
So now Uncle Ken wants to discuss ice cream makers? Sorry pal, you had your chance. You can bring up the topic later, after you've done some experimentation with your own machine. Matter of fact, you don't even need a machine; with the proper ZipLoc baggies, rock salt, ice, and an ice cream mix you can do just fine. More labor intensive to be sure, but the results will be the same.
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Since both of you guys are on FaceBook, do you you have any thoughts on the recent Cambridge Analytica hoopla and the shenanigans with user's personal data? All I can determine is that it's a big mess, with FaceBook being called out by many governments resulting in a plunge in stock price.
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The hot tub made out of ice didn't have a liner; maybe Uncle Ken skipped that part. It was not a trivial task, as it took them a few weeks to get it right. What impressed me the most was that hanging out in 14F temperature was no big deal for them. A bathrobe is fine, and who needs gloves? Even their kitty cat didn't seem to mind the cold. It's all relative, I suppose. Although Chicago has had what I call a mild winter, I remember how comfortable 15 degree weather felt like after a spell of sub-zero days.
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The business with the White House non-disclosure agreements is getting very interesting. One of the lawyers involved with their creation has stated that they are not enforceable but were made to give Trump peace of mind. And more legal pundits are saying that none of Trump's NDAs from his previous businesses are worth the paper they are written on; all worthless, created solely to scare people into keeping their mouths shut. I expect a deluge of unhappy campers spilling their guts about their experiences with the Great Deal Maker. Nothing may come of it but it should make for some entertaining reading. This is becoming the best soap opera, ever.
-----
So are you guys gearing up your ice cream machines for the upcoming long hot summer? Any exciting new innovations? I am all ears.
So now Uncle Ken wants to discuss ice cream makers? Sorry pal, you had your chance. You can bring up the topic later, after you've done some experimentation with your own machine. Matter of fact, you don't even need a machine; with the proper ZipLoc baggies, rock salt, ice, and an ice cream mix you can do just fine. More labor intensive to be sure, but the results will be the same.
-----
Since both of you guys are on FaceBook, do you you have any thoughts on the recent Cambridge Analytica hoopla and the shenanigans with user's personal data? All I can determine is that it's a big mess, with FaceBook being called out by many governments resulting in a plunge in stock price.
-----
The hot tub made out of ice didn't have a liner; maybe Uncle Ken skipped that part. It was not a trivial task, as it took them a few weeks to get it right. What impressed me the most was that hanging out in 14F temperature was no big deal for them. A bathrobe is fine, and who needs gloves? Even their kitty cat didn't seem to mind the cold. It's all relative, I suppose. Although Chicago has had what I call a mild winter, I remember how comfortable 15 degree weather felt like after a spell of sub-zero days.
-----
The business with the White House non-disclosure agreements is getting very interesting. One of the lawyers involved with their creation has stated that they are not enforceable but were made to give Trump peace of mind. And more legal pundits are saying that none of Trump's NDAs from his previous businesses are worth the paper they are written on; all worthless, created solely to scare people into keeping their mouths shut. I expect a deluge of unhappy campers spilling their guts about their experiences with the Great Deal Maker. Nothing may come of it but it should make for some entertaining reading. This is becoming the best soap opera, ever.
ice cream will always be with us
First of all I want to congratulate Beagles on his new sharp looking font. The best thing I like about is that it is black and not that stupid dark grey that blogspot seems to favor, God knows why. Whenever I cut and pasted some Dawg comment I had to not only adjust the size and put it in italics I also had to turn it from grey to black.
Uncle Ken has expressed the opinion that there is no way to stop these mass shootings, so we shouldn't even try.
Like this, all I had to do was put it in italics.
I believe Beagles does me a disservice. In the very next sentence does he not quote me as saying that I believe banning repeating firearms will slow the shooters down? To me that is doing something.
Yes, I believe school shootings like mental illness, the poor, terrorism, drug addiction, inclement weather, and gun nuts, will always be with us. We can seek to make them less bad (except for the gun nuts, because they are, well, nuts), but they will never be eradicated, to pretend otherwise is to be dishonest.
"The only thing necessary for evil to prosper is that good men do nothing."
We see this trotted out whenever anybody wants to defend their case, It can defend a good case, it can defend a bad case. Haven't we humans said we have been fighting evil as long as we invented language, and last I looked evil is still with us. And aren't the people doing the most evil the ones who think they are doing the most good?
And in the end I won't get my repeating rifles ban because of the gun nuts, and Beagles won't get any programs for arming teachers or diverting police or having retired coots set up their deer blinds in school hallways because it costs too much money. And then after the next shooting both sides can trot out their arguments again and pretend that they are doing something. And what about that concert in Las Vegas and that theater in Boulder, and that gay bar in Miami? What are they, chopped liver?
The whole thing makes me weary.
So are you guys gearing up your ice cream machines for the upcoming long hot summer? Any exciting new innovations? I am all ears.
Uncle Ken has expressed the opinion that there is no way to stop these mass shootings, so we shouldn't even try.
Like this, all I had to do was put it in italics.
I believe Beagles does me a disservice. In the very next sentence does he not quote me as saying that I believe banning repeating firearms will slow the shooters down? To me that is doing something.
Yes, I believe school shootings like mental illness, the poor, terrorism, drug addiction, inclement weather, and gun nuts, will always be with us. We can seek to make them less bad (except for the gun nuts, because they are, well, nuts), but they will never be eradicated, to pretend otherwise is to be dishonest.
"The only thing necessary for evil to prosper is that good men do nothing."
We see this trotted out whenever anybody wants to defend their case, It can defend a good case, it can defend a bad case. Haven't we humans said we have been fighting evil as long as we invented language, and last I looked evil is still with us. And aren't the people doing the most evil the ones who think they are doing the most good?
And in the end I won't get my repeating rifles ban because of the gun nuts, and Beagles won't get any programs for arming teachers or diverting police or having retired coots set up their deer blinds in school hallways because it costs too much money. And then after the next shooting both sides can trot out their arguments again and pretend that they are doing something. And what about that concert in Las Vegas and that theater in Boulder, and that gay bar in Miami? What are they, chopped liver?
The whole thing makes me weary.
So are you guys gearing up your ice cream machines for the upcoming long hot summer? Any exciting new innovations? I am all ears.
Wednesday, March 21, 2018
Chalk One Up For the Good Guys
"Didn't Beagles have a Gage Park teacher who taught him that anecdotal evidence don't mean shit?"
I assume that Uncle Ken is referring to the link that I provided last night. I didn't intend for it to be proof positive of my previous argument, just an interesting story where the good guys won for a change. Come to think of it, my first post on the subject wasn't exactly an argument anyway. It was new information to me, and I thought it might be relevant to the school shooter discussion. Now I find out that Maryland has had school resource officers for the last 20 years. When we had one in Cheboygan, I believe they were calling him a liaison officer, or something like that, but I seem to remember that the folks in Indian River call theirs a resource officer. I thought they invented it, but apparently not.
Be that as it may, I kind of like the idea. I'm not saying I can prove it like the Pythagorean Theorem, I'm just sayin that the idea appeals to me. I like the idea of arming the teachers too, but I like this one better. The cops already have some of the necessary training. Of course more specialized training will be required, but they would have to train the teachers from the ground up. It just occurred to me that the National Guard might also be a provider of this service. Not the whole National Guard at once, just a local detachment whose members could rotate through the position. I don't know if anybody else has already proposed this, it just now came to me.
Uncle Ken has expressed the opinion that there is no way to stop these mass shootings, so we shouldn't even try. He wants to ban all repeating firearms, although he doesn't believe that will stop the shooters, just slow them down. Maybe none of the options that have been proposed will work. All that means is we need to keep coming up with new options until one of them works. I am not willing to concede the field to the bad guys. It's like that famous guy said, "The only thing necessary for evil to prosper is that good men do nothing."
the morning after election day
I guess the election went well enough for me. I lost at gov and attorney general, but these were long shots anyway. The main thing is Berrios lost, and I got my county commissioner. Alas that very blue (and not blue in the right way) dog Lipinski squeaked out a victory, The right winger running against Rauner fell a wee bit short. I guess I would rather have run our nominee against her, but then I was rooting for Trump all along because I wanted to run against him and look how that turned out.
That jabberwocky thing was just because I couldn't find any regular English words slimy enough to describe Berrios, and then I just carried on with it, you know, for style.
As for that brief Finnish Better Living video, I don't know, it looks like they put some kind of liner in it, I suppose I could have done the same thing if I put in a liner. I said it looks like, because there was a lot of giggling and whatnot going on so I skipped through much of it. That's the main weakness of youtube in my opinion, everyone thinks they are a Hollywood star and you have to put up with their shenanigans when all you want to know is how to build an ice cream machine or an icy hot tub.
I like Stormy Daniels, a bit too much of a spicy meatball for Ken's tastes, but I like her attitude, and now two more have come forward. I don't expect these to hurt Trump all that much, but the richies are getting all the bread, so we might as well enjoy the circus.
I guess I could have voted in 66 too, but that was an off-year election so not much going on. I see where Douglas was running against Percy. I wonder if Percy might have been more liberal than Douglas.
I wonder why Beagles was for JFK in 60. I understand not liking Nixon, but JFK? Well thinking back he was not the liberal icon he is thought of today, I believe he was rather hawkish. Read a book a couple years ago about how Ike treated Nixon, abominably, but who could doubt Dick deserved it. He had those solid anti-commie bona fides from his California days, but I think that was mostly just opportunism.
Didn't Beagles have a Gage Park teacher who taught him that anecdotal evidence don't mean shit?
That jabberwocky thing was just because I couldn't find any regular English words slimy enough to describe Berrios, and then I just carried on with it, you know, for style.
As for that brief Finnish Better Living video, I don't know, it looks like they put some kind of liner in it, I suppose I could have done the same thing if I put in a liner. I said it looks like, because there was a lot of giggling and whatnot going on so I skipped through much of it. That's the main weakness of youtube in my opinion, everyone thinks they are a Hollywood star and you have to put up with their shenanigans when all you want to know is how to build an ice cream machine or an icy hot tub.
I like Stormy Daniels, a bit too much of a spicy meatball for Ken's tastes, but I like her attitude, and now two more have come forward. I don't expect these to hurt Trump all that much, but the richies are getting all the bread, so we might as well enjoy the circus.
I guess I could have voted in 66 too, but that was an off-year election so not much going on. I see where Douglas was running against Percy. I wonder if Percy might have been more liberal than Douglas.
I wonder why Beagles was for JFK in 60. I understand not liking Nixon, but JFK? Well thinking back he was not the liberal icon he is thought of today, I believe he was rather hawkish. Read a book a couple years ago about how Ike treated Nixon, abominably, but who could doubt Dick deserved it. He had those solid anti-commie bona fides from his California days, but I think that was mostly just opportunism.
Didn't Beagles have a Gage Park teacher who taught him that anecdotal evidence don't mean shit?
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
Not in My Neighborhood
My first election, the one I told youse about, was in 1966. When I said that I didn't have any axes to grind in those days, I meant local axes. I had plenty of national and international axes. If my parents had still been living in Chicago, there would have been axes aplenty but, if there we any axes in Palos Park, I wasn't aware of them. My parents had just recently moved there, and I had only visited them on my 30 day leave in June. I wasn't going to turn 21 until September, but I explained my situation to the clerk, and she let me register. I don't remember, but she probably had me fill out the papers and held them until the appropriate time. Same with the absentee ballot.
By 1968 I was firmly ensconced in Cheboygan, but I don't remember any local axes there either, except maybe the school millage, but that vote was taken at a different time. I voted for George Wallace for president and Republican for everything else. For some reason, I never did like Nixon, even when he was Eisenhower's vice. I liked Ike okay but, if I could have voted in 1960, I would have voted for JFK. I would have voted for Goldwater in '64 because he was a sworn enemy of those Godless Commies. I knew that he might start a war, which I was looking forward to in those days. I figured we were going to have to eradicate Communism sooner or later and, the longer we waited, the harder it was going to be. From all appearances, they were getting stronger all the time, while we were being sold out by Communist sympathizers in our own government. I didn't know at the time that Nixon was one of them, I just didn't like him. There was something, I don't know, sleazy about him. Ah yes, there were axes aplenty, but not in my neighborhood.
Breaking news, hot off the internet. Discuss.
https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBKuaCu?m=en-us
By 1968 I was firmly ensconced in Cheboygan, but I don't remember any local axes there either, except maybe the school millage, but that vote was taken at a different time. I voted for George Wallace for president and Republican for everything else. For some reason, I never did like Nixon, even when he was Eisenhower's vice. I liked Ike okay but, if I could have voted in 1960, I would have voted for JFK. I would have voted for Goldwater in '64 because he was a sworn enemy of those Godless Commies. I knew that he might start a war, which I was looking forward to in those days. I figured we were going to have to eradicate Communism sooner or later and, the longer we waited, the harder it was going to be. From all appearances, they were getting stronger all the time, while we were being sold out by Communist sympathizers in our own government. I didn't know at the time that Nixon was one of them, I just didn't like him. There was something, I don't know, sleazy about him. Ah yes, there were axes aplenty, but not in my neighborhood.
Breaking news, hot off the internet. Discuss.
https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBKuaCu?m=en-us
Vote early, vote often
Property taxes are a big scam in Cook County. If you have a lot of money you hire a lawyer and go to court to get them knocked down.
I'm not so sure about that, at least not in the old days. A long time ago, maybe in the late 50s or early 60s, my father appealed his property tax and got it knocked down significantly. I don't know how he did it; no lawyer was ever mentioned and he wasn't involved in the local political scene. At that time the alderman, John Hoellen, was the lone Republican in the Chicago City Council so maybe dad just went to his office which was on Irving Park, not far from where he worked. Hoellen was a lawyer whose office was above the shoe store that his family owned. We always got our shoes at Hoellen's, so maybe that was the deal; you'll get a tax break if you buy all your shoes at our store. Funny thing is that the tax break lasted more than fifty years until the building was sold.
Anyhow, taking a cue from Uncle Ken I brought a cheat sheet to the polling place this morning, and I'm glad I did. Not having watched much local TV lately I wasn't familiar with a lot of the candidates, and I haven't suffered the deluge of junk mail that Uncle Ken has received; some pieces but not as many as in past years, less than ten in total. There may have been phone calls, but I don't answer calls from unknown numbers; if they don't leave a voicemail, screw 'em. There were a lot of text messages for one candidate but their database must be goofy. My name isn't Kristen.
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...slithy toves gyring and gimbling in the wabe,
What is this, some reference to Lewis Carroll and perhaps the implication our political process is a trip through the looking glass? I suppose future topics should include cabbages and kings.
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I don't really care too much about the business with Stormy Daniels and Trump except for the non-disclosure agreement part. The pundits are stating that it is too onerous and won't stand up in court which may open the floodgates for others who had to sign NDAs. That could include current and former White House staffers; there has never been a president who required an NDA as a condition of employment. But what do you expect from Precedent Trump?
And speaking of Stormy Daniels, she has a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for legal expenses and it is doing well, more than a quarter of a million bucks in less than a week. It's at a site devoted to raising money for all types of cases, which is an interesting spin on the crowdfunding model. Maybe the little guy can finally catch a break.
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I can't close without mentioning those happy-go-lucky Finns. Here's a nice couple who made a hot tub out of ice: Lauri & Anni
I'm not so sure about that, at least not in the old days. A long time ago, maybe in the late 50s or early 60s, my father appealed his property tax and got it knocked down significantly. I don't know how he did it; no lawyer was ever mentioned and he wasn't involved in the local political scene. At that time the alderman, John Hoellen, was the lone Republican in the Chicago City Council so maybe dad just went to his office which was on Irving Park, not far from where he worked. Hoellen was a lawyer whose office was above the shoe store that his family owned. We always got our shoes at Hoellen's, so maybe that was the deal; you'll get a tax break if you buy all your shoes at our store. Funny thing is that the tax break lasted more than fifty years until the building was sold.
Anyhow, taking a cue from Uncle Ken I brought a cheat sheet to the polling place this morning, and I'm glad I did. Not having watched much local TV lately I wasn't familiar with a lot of the candidates, and I haven't suffered the deluge of junk mail that Uncle Ken has received; some pieces but not as many as in past years, less than ten in total. There may have been phone calls, but I don't answer calls from unknown numbers; if they don't leave a voicemail, screw 'em. There were a lot of text messages for one candidate but their database must be goofy. My name isn't Kristen.
-----
...slithy toves gyring and gimbling in the wabe,
What is this, some reference to Lewis Carroll and perhaps the implication our political process is a trip through the looking glass? I suppose future topics should include cabbages and kings.
-----
I don't really care too much about the business with Stormy Daniels and Trump except for the non-disclosure agreement part. The pundits are stating that it is too onerous and won't stand up in court which may open the floodgates for others who had to sign NDAs. That could include current and former White House staffers; there has never been a president who required an NDA as a condition of employment. But what do you expect from Precedent Trump?
And speaking of Stormy Daniels, she has a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for legal expenses and it is doing well, more than a quarter of a million bucks in less than a week. It's at a site devoted to raising money for all types of cases, which is an interesting spin on the crowdfunding model. Maybe the little guy can finally catch a break.
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I can't close without mentioning those happy-go-lucky Finns. Here's a nice couple who made a hot tub out of ice: Lauri & Anni
election day
I was just recounting my political evolution at a St Paddy's day party on Saturday. I had to admit that in 1960 I was for Nixon. My mom was a democrat but my dad was a republican, and I guess I wanted to be like dad, and we subscribed to the Tribune so I got a lot of right wing propaganda from the Colonel, and there was this rubric going around (I don't think we hear it anymore) that the democrats always got us into wars, and there was such a wave in Irish Catholic Gage Park that I was moved to buck against it. In 64 that guy Goldwater was just too freaking nuts, I went democrat and never went back.
But I wasn't able to actually vote until 1968 which I guess was the same election Beagles is speaking of. My guess is he went Tricky Dick. The happy warrior should have been my man but he was too afraid of LBJ to come out against the war. Anyway I had my heart set on Dick Gregory and the Freedom Party, but then I was afraid that when I got into the booth good sense would overwhelm me and I would vote for the hump. I solved that problem by never registering. Which is a bad example that I sometimes trot out to the youth of today who are making the same mistake, but they ignore me just as I would have.
In 1970 I was down in Herrin doing my CO when Everett Dirksen died and they had a off year between a republican hack, Ralph Tyler Smith, and democratic warhorse Adlai Stevenson III. Here's a tidbit from wiki, Karl Rove cut his teeth working for Smith. I was for Adlai of course, but what pushed me into the polls was Smith ran a photo of Adlai with the right half of his face regular guy, and the left half stone hippie. Pissed me off, of course and I cast my first vote. I wonder if young Karl Rove was behind that photo, sure sounds like him huh?
Property taxes are a big scam in Cook County. If you have a lot of money you hire a lawyer and go to court to get them knocked down. Did I say a lawyer, I meant a law firm, and you would be a fool to not hire a law firm headed by an alderman or some other political hotshot of which there are plenty. The result is the rich pay little and the poor pay a lot. It's an obvious scam which just keeps on going, which is why I hope that by the time Old Dog reads this he will be basking in the glow of casting his vote like a shining vorpal sword to slay the Berrios and his slithy toves gyring and gimbling in the wabe,
Got five robos in an hour last night and had to sort through about twenty mailers to see if I had any real mail. that should end today, and hark yonder clock reads 6:06 AM, time to put on my shoes and walk down to the polls.
Went well enough I suppose. I got all the big ones, had to guess on a few of the smaller ones. The judges instead of listing the judges where you could go thumbs up or thumbs down the various courts each had like three names none of which meant anything to me, and I forgot to take my cheat sheet, so I just didn't vote for any. I hope other voters did more due diligence than I. On the other hand I did better than most just by showing up and voting. And now all mimsy are the borogroves.
But I wasn't able to actually vote until 1968 which I guess was the same election Beagles is speaking of. My guess is he went Tricky Dick. The happy warrior should have been my man but he was too afraid of LBJ to come out against the war. Anyway I had my heart set on Dick Gregory and the Freedom Party, but then I was afraid that when I got into the booth good sense would overwhelm me and I would vote for the hump. I solved that problem by never registering. Which is a bad example that I sometimes trot out to the youth of today who are making the same mistake, but they ignore me just as I would have.
In 1970 I was down in Herrin doing my CO when Everett Dirksen died and they had a off year between a republican hack, Ralph Tyler Smith, and democratic warhorse Adlai Stevenson III. Here's a tidbit from wiki, Karl Rove cut his teeth working for Smith. I was for Adlai of course, but what pushed me into the polls was Smith ran a photo of Adlai with the right half of his face regular guy, and the left half stone hippie. Pissed me off, of course and I cast my first vote. I wonder if young Karl Rove was behind that photo, sure sounds like him huh?
Property taxes are a big scam in Cook County. If you have a lot of money you hire a lawyer and go to court to get them knocked down. Did I say a lawyer, I meant a law firm, and you would be a fool to not hire a law firm headed by an alderman or some other political hotshot of which there are plenty. The result is the rich pay little and the poor pay a lot. It's an obvious scam which just keeps on going, which is why I hope that by the time Old Dog reads this he will be basking in the glow of casting his vote like a shining vorpal sword to slay the Berrios and his slithy toves gyring and gimbling in the wabe,
Got five robos in an hour last night and had to sort through about twenty mailers to see if I had any real mail. that should end today, and hark yonder clock reads 6:06 AM, time to put on my shoes and walk down to the polls.
Went well enough I suppose. I got all the big ones, had to guess on a few of the smaller ones. The judges instead of listing the judges where you could go thumbs up or thumbs down the various courts each had like three names none of which meant anything to me, and I forgot to take my cheat sheet, so I just didn't vote for any. I hope other voters did more due diligence than I. On the other hand I did better than most just by showing up and voting. And now all mimsy are the borogroves.
Monday, March 19, 2018
Here Come the Judge!
I remember the first time I ever voted. I was still in the army when I turned 21, which was how old you had to be to vote in those days. I had registered to vote when I was home on leave, and sent away for an absentee ballot when election time came. My parents had moved to Palos Park by then, so I didn't have the chance to vote against Mayor Daley and his ilk. I seem to remember that the Palos Park election was non partisan, so I must have asked my parents who to vote for in that one. I didn't plan to live there when I got out, so I didn't really care who won, but it was my first election and I didn't want to just blow it off. Then there were the judges. There must have been at least 50 of them, and I didn't know anything about any of them. They weren't running against each other, you had to vote "yes" or "no" for each one, and I don't think their parties were listed. Not knowing what else to do, I voted "yes" for all of them. A few years later I might have voted "no" for all of them on general principles, but I didn't have any political ax to grind in those days.
I don't know how many judges we have where I live now, but their terms don't all expire at the same time, so we only have to vote for a half dozen or so at once. Our judicial elections are non partisan on paper, but all the judges are nominated by their political parties, the parties are just not printed on the ballot. This would be confusing, because all judges still look alike to me, if it wasn't for those mailers that Uncle Ken mentioned. Sometime before the election, each party sends out at least one mailer that tells you which judicial candidates were nominated by their party. I just write down the Republican ones and vote for them.
Living in Michigan, it's hard for me to imagine a crooked assessor, but I suppose it's not that unusual in Chicago. Our township supervisors used to do the assessments, and they still might in the smaller townships. Our township, being adjacent to the thriving metropolis of Cheboygan, is a little larger than most, so the the township board hires a professional assessor. His name is Clayton something, and I think he does the assessing for at least one other township as well. After the township guy does the annual assessment, a state guy follows right after him and does it all over again. If the state guy thinks the township assessor assessed too low, he multiples it by number that is usually only a fraction over "one". I understand that used to happen because the township supervisors, wanting to get re-elected, routinely low balled their assessments, or at least the assessments of their families and friends. I don't know why they didn't just dispense with the township guy and have the state guy do it, tradition I guess. At some point, the township people all got together and sent their supervisors off to assessing school, so they could learn to do it right the first time, and the state multipliers have all been "1.0" for as long as I can remember. Nevertheless, the state guy still goes through the motions, I suppose just to keep everybody honest.
I don't know how many judges we have where I live now, but their terms don't all expire at the same time, so we only have to vote for a half dozen or so at once. Our judicial elections are non partisan on paper, but all the judges are nominated by their political parties, the parties are just not printed on the ballot. This would be confusing, because all judges still look alike to me, if it wasn't for those mailers that Uncle Ken mentioned. Sometime before the election, each party sends out at least one mailer that tells you which judicial candidates were nominated by their party. I just write down the Republican ones and vote for them.
Living in Michigan, it's hard for me to imagine a crooked assessor, but I suppose it's not that unusual in Chicago. Our township supervisors used to do the assessments, and they still might in the smaller townships. Our township, being adjacent to the thriving metropolis of Cheboygan, is a little larger than most, so the the township board hires a professional assessor. His name is Clayton something, and I think he does the assessing for at least one other township as well. After the township guy does the annual assessment, a state guy follows right after him and does it all over again. If the state guy thinks the township assessor assessed too low, he multiples it by number that is usually only a fraction over "one". I understand that used to happen because the township supervisors, wanting to get re-elected, routinely low balled their assessments, or at least the assessments of their families and friends. I don't know why they didn't just dispense with the township guy and have the state guy do it, tradition I guess. At some point, the township people all got together and sent their supervisors off to assessing school, so they could learn to do it right the first time, and the state multipliers have all been "1.0" for as long as I can remember. Nevertheless, the state guy still goes through the motions, I suppose just to keep everybody honest.
make your vote count
And I see that there is a primary in Illinois on Tuesday
You just happen to notice? My god, my phone rings ten times a day on some robo call, I must get an equal number of those oversized mailers, tv is chock a block with accusations against opposition pols. it is a mudfest to beat the band. If Old Dog manages to get his butt out into the blustery winds of the thirteenth he ought to vote for Kaegi to unseat that truly awful nepotist, soaker of the poor to give to the rich, crooked, lying sack of shit, Berrios, in the assessor's race..
We should indeed pay more attention to who is running, that is the thesis of my previous post, not all crooks are equally crooked and it behooves us well to study up and find out which crook is less crooked, or more like the kind of crook we like so that we may make intelligent decisions to better steer the ship of state. Otherwise it aids the more crooked crooks to prosper and make the thesis that they are all crooks more true.
Judges though, geez, who has the time? The thing is they are mostly ok, but some of them are really rotten apples, and because nobody bothers to take that helpful list from the newspaper into the polls they all get elected. My shorthand solution is to vote against all of them. This will add to the negative count of those good citizens who bring in the neighborhood list and maybe some of the worst candidates will not be retained.
The deafening noise, masquerading as information and news, has reduced us to a confused and frustrated mass no longer able to think clearly and make rational decisions.
Speak for yourself Lone Ranger. I can still think clearly and make rational decisions. And it's not like this is a new thing, it has ever been thus, well ever since democracy, back in the days of tyrants the king would make some effort at making people think he was a good guy but if you were still unconvinced he could just toss you into the dungeon.
The robocalls are more irritating than the mailers, but the mailers, just by their sheer volume catch may attention. In my building they wheel a garbage can right next to the mailbox during elections, os it's not too arduous to be rid of them, but just looking at that garbage can, what a waste.
Here's what they ought to do, host some kind of picnic or party for poor kids and then the guy can get a photo in the paper of himself surrounded by giggling moppets. It wouldn't help us winnow the crooks, but at least the poor kids would have a good time.
You just happen to notice? My god, my phone rings ten times a day on some robo call, I must get an equal number of those oversized mailers, tv is chock a block with accusations against opposition pols. it is a mudfest to beat the band. If Old Dog manages to get his butt out into the blustery winds of the thirteenth he ought to vote for Kaegi to unseat that truly awful nepotist, soaker of the poor to give to the rich, crooked, lying sack of shit, Berrios, in the assessor's race..
We should indeed pay more attention to who is running, that is the thesis of my previous post, not all crooks are equally crooked and it behooves us well to study up and find out which crook is less crooked, or more like the kind of crook we like so that we may make intelligent decisions to better steer the ship of state. Otherwise it aids the more crooked crooks to prosper and make the thesis that they are all crooks more true.
Judges though, geez, who has the time? The thing is they are mostly ok, but some of them are really rotten apples, and because nobody bothers to take that helpful list from the newspaper into the polls they all get elected. My shorthand solution is to vote against all of them. This will add to the negative count of those good citizens who bring in the neighborhood list and maybe some of the worst candidates will not be retained.
The deafening noise, masquerading as information and news, has reduced us to a confused and frustrated mass no longer able to think clearly and make rational decisions.
Speak for yourself Lone Ranger. I can still think clearly and make rational decisions. And it's not like this is a new thing, it has ever been thus, well ever since democracy, back in the days of tyrants the king would make some effort at making people think he was a good guy but if you were still unconvinced he could just toss you into the dungeon.
The robocalls are more irritating than the mailers, but the mailers, just by their sheer volume catch may attention. In my building they wheel a garbage can right next to the mailbox during elections, os it's not too arduous to be rid of them, but just looking at that garbage can, what a waste.
Here's what they ought to do, host some kind of picnic or party for poor kids and then the guy can get a photo in the paper of himself surrounded by giggling moppets. It wouldn't help us winnow the crooks, but at least the poor kids would have a good time.
Sunday, March 18, 2018
Thumbs up
I have discussed the matter with other bus drivers, and the consensus was that 10% of the kids cause 90% of the trouble.
That sounds about right, and I've seen those numbers used in other contexts although sometimes it's 20/80. In basic training one of the sergeants used to impress upon us that 10% of the ammo will be duds, 10% of the guys in the unit will be duds, 10% of everything will be duds, and on and on. I think this is one of those rules of thumb that has been exaggerated over the years but it still has a ring of truth.
Years ago there was a series of books titled Rules of Thumb, an anecdotal collection of little pearls of folk wisdom. I should dig out my copies since I've forgotten most of them except for this gem from Japan: if your turds float you have too much fat in your diet. That's the kind of thing I'm not inclined to forget.
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I think to some extent we like to believe in good vs evil, we like to believe in democracy...
Yes, but I think we have become delusional and unrealistic in our expectations, often applying a double standard. The deafening noise, masquerading as information and news, has reduced us to a confused and frustrated mass no longer able to think clearly and make rational decisions. Some of us, not all, but enough to keep the circus train rolling down the tracks. I don't know where I want to go with this, that's how screwy it all is.
"They're all crooks."
I suppose they are, to one degree or another, but that's the dark reality of the system and the money that is required to attain office. Maybe this is changing. I don't know how much money the guys in Pennsylvania spent on their campaigns or whether the biggest spender won.
And I see that there is a primary in Illinois on Tuesday and except for the free-for-all among Democrats for governor I don't know who is running for what. Probably a bunch of judges or water commissioners; they usually fill up most of the ballot. I should pay closer attention to these matters.
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As a final word about automatic weapons, there are organizations that sponsor "shooting days" where, for a fee, you can blast away to your heart's content. Plan on needing deep pockets; a few moments of visceral joy will cost about $100 and much more than that for the larger calibers. Let's see, 600 rounds per minute, $4 per round...that's gonna add up quickly. Some people still have more dollars than sense.
That sounds about right, and I've seen those numbers used in other contexts although sometimes it's 20/80. In basic training one of the sergeants used to impress upon us that 10% of the ammo will be duds, 10% of the guys in the unit will be duds, 10% of everything will be duds, and on and on. I think this is one of those rules of thumb that has been exaggerated over the years but it still has a ring of truth.
Years ago there was a series of books titled Rules of Thumb, an anecdotal collection of little pearls of folk wisdom. I should dig out my copies since I've forgotten most of them except for this gem from Japan: if your turds float you have too much fat in your diet. That's the kind of thing I'm not inclined to forget.
-----
I think to some extent we like to believe in good vs evil, we like to believe in democracy...
Yes, but I think we have become delusional and unrealistic in our expectations, often applying a double standard. The deafening noise, masquerading as information and news, has reduced us to a confused and frustrated mass no longer able to think clearly and make rational decisions. Some of us, not all, but enough to keep the circus train rolling down the tracks. I don't know where I want to go with this, that's how screwy it all is.
"They're all crooks."
I suppose they are, to one degree or another, but that's the dark reality of the system and the money that is required to attain office. Maybe this is changing. I don't know how much money the guys in Pennsylvania spent on their campaigns or whether the biggest spender won.
And I see that there is a primary in Illinois on Tuesday and except for the free-for-all among Democrats for governor I don't know who is running for what. Probably a bunch of judges or water commissioners; they usually fill up most of the ballot. I should pay closer attention to these matters.
-----
As a final word about automatic weapons, there are organizations that sponsor "shooting days" where, for a fee, you can blast away to your heart's content. Plan on needing deep pockets; a few moments of visceral joy will cost about $100 and much more than that for the larger calibers. Let's see, 600 rounds per minute, $4 per round...that's gonna add up quickly. Some people still have more dollars than sense.
Friday, March 16, 2018
All Generalizations Are Invalid
I learned that from one of my high school English teachers, Mrs. O'Hara I believe, but I doubt that she originated it. When you say "all" in a statement, all your opponent has to do to prove you wrong is find a single exception. There is really no such thing as "the exception that proves the rule", that's just a figure of speech. You may be able to disprove a rule with one exception, but you are not likely to prove a rule with one exception.
I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I thought all kids are hooligans. In my experience, the vast majority of kids are pretty well behaved most of the time. I have discussed the matter with other bus drivers, and the consensus was that 10% of the kids cause 90% of the trouble. I believe that this 10% account for a disproportionate amount of a teacher's time and effort in the classroom as well, but Uncle Ken would know more about that than I. When Jesus was criticized for hanging around with sinners, he replied that well people are in no need of a physician. While that may be true, physicians are in business to treat sick people, but I don't think that teachers and bus drivers should have to be. Teachers should be in the business of teaching willing learners, and bus drivers should be in the business of transporting kids to and from school. Dysfunctional children should be under the care of trained specialists whose focus should be on curing them of their dysfunction, not catering to it. When they start running the schools that way, I'll start voting for school millages.
Well, there still is that thing about the blue jeans. I know they let kids wear blue jeans in school nowadays, but that's not the point. If your student council is going to be a puppet show, you should call it a puppet show, not claim that it's an example of democracy in action. Come to think of it, maybe that's why our government is so dysfunctional. When the politicians went to school, they observed that people in authority don't always practice what they preach, and they figured that's the way it's supposed to be. Silly me, I followed the preaching instead of the practicing, but I never claimed to be normal.
According to my TV guide display, "Hee Haw" is on Sundays at 12:00AM and 7:00PM Chicago time.
I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I thought all kids are hooligans. In my experience, the vast majority of kids are pretty well behaved most of the time. I have discussed the matter with other bus drivers, and the consensus was that 10% of the kids cause 90% of the trouble. I believe that this 10% account for a disproportionate amount of a teacher's time and effort in the classroom as well, but Uncle Ken would know more about that than I. When Jesus was criticized for hanging around with sinners, he replied that well people are in no need of a physician. While that may be true, physicians are in business to treat sick people, but I don't think that teachers and bus drivers should have to be. Teachers should be in the business of teaching willing learners, and bus drivers should be in the business of transporting kids to and from school. Dysfunctional children should be under the care of trained specialists whose focus should be on curing them of their dysfunction, not catering to it. When they start running the schools that way, I'll start voting for school millages.
Well, there still is that thing about the blue jeans. I know they let kids wear blue jeans in school nowadays, but that's not the point. If your student council is going to be a puppet show, you should call it a puppet show, not claim that it's an example of democracy in action. Come to think of it, maybe that's why our government is so dysfunctional. When the politicians went to school, they observed that people in authority don't always practice what they preach, and they figured that's the way it's supposed to be. Silly me, I followed the preaching instead of the practicing, but I never claimed to be normal.
According to my TV guide display, "Hee Haw" is on Sundays at 12:00AM and 7:00PM Chicago time.
They're all crooks
"They're all crooks." I remember hearing that some time in my early teens from a cousin two or three years older and thus more worldly wise than me. It rankled me. Maybe I still had some of that grade school love your country stuff infused in me. I argued a bit against it, but you know, I was the wide-eyed naif and he was the worldly cynic. We all know who wins those arguments.
I suppose they are crooks though, no upright blameless guy is ever going to rise in power without doing some dirty deed. The queen is the more powerful than the rook or the bishop because she can move both diagonally, and horizontally and vertically, unlike her subjects who can only use one mode. If you want to maneuver to the top of the heap you have to have some flexibility.
Later as I increased in wisdom and cynicism I came up with, well sure they are all crooks, but some of them are bigger crooks than others, some are more your kind of crook and some are more the opposition's kind of crook. You may believe that all shopkeepers are out to cheat you, but you'll choose the shopkeeper that cheats you less to buy your goods.
Doesn't that make sense?
But you still hear it all the time, and when you try to use the all crooks are not equally crooked argument, the response is something like a crook is a crook. Which doesn't make any sense at all, but it suits the cynic just fine.
Two things here. One, the cynic is just lazy. It takes a lot of reading and thinking and that's work man, who wants to work when they can just utter a worldly wise cynical statement and watch tv instead of making that long trek to the polls, possibly in the rain.
Two, it is a little disheartening. I think to some extent we like to believe in good vs evil, we like to believe in democracy, we like to believe that there is some good blameless man on the ballot who will set things right, and in a mud-slinging contest, which they always are, nobody looks very good, and to vote for someone who isn't squeaky clean, it makes you less than squeaky clean, and even if none of us are squeaky clean we like to think we are, so it is best to avoid the brothel that is the polling place.
Am I right? Am I right?
I suppose they are crooks though, no upright blameless guy is ever going to rise in power without doing some dirty deed. The queen is the more powerful than the rook or the bishop because she can move both diagonally, and horizontally and vertically, unlike her subjects who can only use one mode. If you want to maneuver to the top of the heap you have to have some flexibility.
Later as I increased in wisdom and cynicism I came up with, well sure they are all crooks, but some of them are bigger crooks than others, some are more your kind of crook and some are more the opposition's kind of crook. You may believe that all shopkeepers are out to cheat you, but you'll choose the shopkeeper that cheats you less to buy your goods.
Doesn't that make sense?
But you still hear it all the time, and when you try to use the all crooks are not equally crooked argument, the response is something like a crook is a crook. Which doesn't make any sense at all, but it suits the cynic just fine.
Two things here. One, the cynic is just lazy. It takes a lot of reading and thinking and that's work man, who wants to work when they can just utter a worldly wise cynical statement and watch tv instead of making that long trek to the polls, possibly in the rain.
Two, it is a little disheartening. I think to some extent we like to believe in good vs evil, we like to believe in democracy, we like to believe that there is some good blameless man on the ballot who will set things right, and in a mud-slinging contest, which they always are, nobody looks very good, and to vote for someone who isn't squeaky clean, it makes you less than squeaky clean, and even if none of us are squeaky clean we like to think we are, so it is best to avoid the brothel that is the polling place.
Am I right? Am I right?
Thursday, March 15, 2018
it's a free country
The nuts, like the poor, have always been with us, and they will always be with us, there is nothing to be done about that. That's why you don't want superweapons to be easily available. Rental trucks have a use in society, people need to move their stuff and they don't own a truck. Superweapons have no use in society so we don't lose anything by getting rid of them.
I wonder about the Florida kid slipping through the cracks. I'll bet there are plenty more that act like him and hauling them all in before they do anything is probably impractical.
I don't have any answers for this one.
If Old Dog means he has no answer on preventing school shootings, don't feel bad neither does anybody else, nor are there answers to terrorism or the opiate epidemic or long severe winters/ All these political speeches, all these earnest kids marching with candles, and they are all talking about how we should eliminate the problem when they should be speaking about minimizing the damage.
I don't understand being jaded with too many plot structures like that is a new thing, has it not, like the poor and the nuts always been with us? There are only like three primary colors and yet I see new things every time I go to watercolor class. I don't read literature like I used to but I see plenty of movies and I don't see any running out of plots there. Actually I have an issue with the very idea of plots, like they are what a movie is all about when I think of them like just frameworks to hang your movie on.
Genre movies are numbingly repetitive because that is what their fans want. They want the hero to punch out the villain in the old warehouse down by the river, and the swain to appear at the door of the girlfriend who thought she had been rejected with a big teddy bear and a chest of jewelry and some kind of boat or something on a trailer in the street. If they don't get that they feel cheated. Well it's a free country.
I don't know what to say to the freeholder on the edge of the country who doesn't want to rub elbows with people unlike himself and doesn't want to pay for his neighbors kids to be educated because he thinks the kids in the school are hopeless hooligans and wants cops patrolling the halls of those dangerous places. What hope for America with citizens like that? On the other hand, it is a free country.
Hey Grandpa, what's for supper?
I wonder about the Florida kid slipping through the cracks. I'll bet there are plenty more that act like him and hauling them all in before they do anything is probably impractical.
I don't have any answers for this one.
If Old Dog means he has no answer on preventing school shootings, don't feel bad neither does anybody else, nor are there answers to terrorism or the opiate epidemic or long severe winters/ All these political speeches, all these earnest kids marching with candles, and they are all talking about how we should eliminate the problem when they should be speaking about minimizing the damage.
I don't understand being jaded with too many plot structures like that is a new thing, has it not, like the poor and the nuts always been with us? There are only like three primary colors and yet I see new things every time I go to watercolor class. I don't read literature like I used to but I see plenty of movies and I don't see any running out of plots there. Actually I have an issue with the very idea of plots, like they are what a movie is all about when I think of them like just frameworks to hang your movie on.
Genre movies are numbingly repetitive because that is what their fans want. They want the hero to punch out the villain in the old warehouse down by the river, and the swain to appear at the door of the girlfriend who thought she had been rejected with a big teddy bear and a chest of jewelry and some kind of boat or something on a trailer in the street. If they don't get that they feel cheated. Well it's a free country.
I don't know what to say to the freeholder on the edge of the country who doesn't want to rub elbows with people unlike himself and doesn't want to pay for his neighbors kids to be educated because he thinks the kids in the school are hopeless hooligans and wants cops patrolling the halls of those dangerous places. What hope for America with citizens like that? On the other hand, it is a free country.
Hey Grandpa, what's for supper?
Wednesday, March 14, 2018
That's News to Me
I read Old Dog's link about machine guns, and it was news to me. The last I heard, sometime in the 1960s, gun collectors were allowed to own military weapons of historic value, but they had to be permanently rendered incapable of firing, which usually involved welding the action or the barrel shut. I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of the article, but I am a little confused about the bill that was passed in 1986. Did the gun have to be manufactured before or after 1986? The article seems to say "before" in one place and "after" in another, but that might have been just a typo.
I'm also confused about this mental health thing. I suspect that those people have more control than they let on, but I can't prove that. Back in the day, when a person did something really stupid, people would say to them, "You keep that up and the men in the white coats gonna come take you away." and it often caused them to reconsider their actions. I doubt that telling them, "You keep that up and they gonna make you talk to a counselor ." would have the same effect. I remember one kid on my bus bragging to me, "I've been to lots of counselors. They couldn't do anything with me, and you won't be able to either."
Uncle Ken tells us that rubbing elbows with all kinds of people is good for a person. It seems like the experts are always telling us what is or is not good for us these days. If I liked rubbing elbows I would still be living in Chicago instead of the Beaglesonian Swamp. As long as I obey most of the laws and don't bother anybody, I will decide for myself what's good for me. Thank you very much.
From my experience working for the Cheboygan Schools, I can tell you that kids act differently in the classroom than they do on the school bus. God only knows how they act at home. I have been told that tending bar will teach you more about human nature than going to college. Since Uncle Ken has done both, he surely knows more about that than I do. Although I have never tended bar, I used to frequently attend bars in my younger days, and I can tell you that people act differently in bars than they do in other environments. If you want to study human behavior in the wild, drive a school bus.
They are still running old "Hee Haw" reruns on cable channel 231 RFDTV. I think they run them on the weekends, either Saturday or Sunday evenings. I tried to look it up, but my TV guide menu only covers a couple of days forward. I'll try again when the weekend gets closer, and let you know the time slot. They might also be available on DVD, but I don't know that for sure.
I'm also confused about this mental health thing. I suspect that those people have more control than they let on, but I can't prove that. Back in the day, when a person did something really stupid, people would say to them, "You keep that up and the men in the white coats gonna come take you away." and it often caused them to reconsider their actions. I doubt that telling them, "You keep that up and they gonna make you talk to a counselor ." would have the same effect. I remember one kid on my bus bragging to me, "I've been to lots of counselors. They couldn't do anything with me, and you won't be able to either."
Uncle Ken tells us that rubbing elbows with all kinds of people is good for a person. It seems like the experts are always telling us what is or is not good for us these days. If I liked rubbing elbows I would still be living in Chicago instead of the Beaglesonian Swamp. As long as I obey most of the laws and don't bother anybody, I will decide for myself what's good for me. Thank you very much.
From my experience working for the Cheboygan Schools, I can tell you that kids act differently in the classroom than they do on the school bus. God only knows how they act at home. I have been told that tending bar will teach you more about human nature than going to college. Since Uncle Ken has done both, he surely knows more about that than I do. Although I have never tended bar, I used to frequently attend bars in my younger days, and I can tell you that people act differently in bars than they do in other environments. If you want to study human behavior in the wild, drive a school bus.
They are still running old "Hee Haw" reruns on cable channel 231 RFDTV. I think they run them on the weekends, either Saturday or Sunday evenings. I tried to look it up, but my TV guide menu only covers a couple of days forward. I'll try again when the weekend gets closer, and let you know the time slot. They might also be available on DVD, but I don't know that for sure.
Tasteless
Although highly regulated, automatic weapons such as machine guns and assault rifles are not illegal at the federal level. Owning such a weapon is a lengthy and expensive process requiring special permission from the ATF, with plenty of hoops to jump through, but it can be done. When a weapon is said to be illegal it is because the fees and taxes have not been paid but the feds are like that. LINK
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Since some folks are eager to install cops in the schools to forestall future shootings, how about the other locations where those shootings have occurred, like churches? Are you going to put a cop in every church, temple, synagogue, or mosque? People are the problem, not the weapons, like the goofballs that drive a truck through a crowded shopping center. Has anybody talked about banning rental trucks?
The kid in Florida who shot up that school had a history of problems yet he fell through the cracks, not getting the help he needed. Something should have been done but wasn't, and maybe that's the high price we pay for a free society. I don't have any answers for this one.
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One of the problems with movies is that we may have become jaded with the abundance of product. There are only so many plot structures available, some say three, some seven, others as many as 36, and we've run the well dry. The same could be said for music or literature. We have such an abundance that nothing is new or exciting and we are losing our sense of taste, as it were. This is just a passing thought in further need of development.
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I guess the Finns aren't so dour after all. According to the AP, Finland leads the world in the Global Happiness Index. And for some reason, the US has dropped from 14th to 18th place. Is it because we've been Trumped?
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Since some folks are eager to install cops in the schools to forestall future shootings, how about the other locations where those shootings have occurred, like churches? Are you going to put a cop in every church, temple, synagogue, or mosque? People are the problem, not the weapons, like the goofballs that drive a truck through a crowded shopping center. Has anybody talked about banning rental trucks?
The kid in Florida who shot up that school had a history of problems yet he fell through the cracks, not getting the help he needed. Something should have been done but wasn't, and maybe that's the high price we pay for a free society. I don't have any answers for this one.
-----
One of the problems with movies is that we may have become jaded with the abundance of product. There are only so many plot structures available, some say three, some seven, others as many as 36, and we've run the well dry. The same could be said for music or literature. We have such an abundance that nothing is new or exciting and we are losing our sense of taste, as it were. This is just a passing thought in further need of development.
-----
I guess the Finns aren't so dour after all. According to the AP, Finland leads the world in the Global Happiness Index. And for some reason, the US has dropped from 14th to 18th place. Is it because we've been Trumped?
the kids are alright
I think the schools are the people in them, what are they otherwise, just big piles of brick., I don't know about the wild horsing around mobs that infest the halls of Cheboygan schools, but my experience subbing in Chicago schools is that the kids are alright and will do just fine without cops inspecting hallway passes. It's a zero sum game so the more cops you have in the schools the fewer cops you have patrolling the mean streets.
I don't like home schooling for a number of reasons, the main one being that most of the people doing it are doing it because they don't want their kids to learn anything that isn't in the good book. Secondly it's probably poorly done in most cases. Takes a lot of effort and dare I say skill to teach and how many people are going to do a good job of it? And thirdly I like the mixing, rubbing shoulders with your fellow man, I think it's good for people.
I don't see anything happening on the school front. The plans that the gun nuts put forward to distract people will cost piles of money (why don't they put that money into teachers and books and better buildings?) and nobody is going to want to pay for it. I think after an initial splash of press, the NRA is showing it's strength. One troubling thing for the NRA has to be that gun sales are way down, A couple stores are refusing to sell monster guns so that's good. Gun control is polling high among the masses so the dems should be able to ride that for a congressional district or two.
Rustic philosopher sounds nice. Remember Hee Haw where they had like a country version of everything like the Empty Arms Hotel, and radio station KORN, and that poet Claude Strawberry, a rustic philosopher would have fit in fine, I imagine you whittling on the steps of the county courthouse while a bevy of Hee Haw babes lounge around in their shorty shorts waving their legs in the breeze to your pronouncements, Damn I miss those Hee Haw babes in their shorty shorts. Sigh.
Did Siskel walk off the show because he didn't like same movies as Ebert? And why don't we have something like that show anymore, even a kind of crappy one with a couple guys in arm chairs and a screen showing film clips? Maybe there's something like that on YouTube, but you know there was something special about a show that was on at a certain time and if you didn't arrange your life so that you would be there to watch it well then, tough shit,
I like comedies just fine, mostly the darker ones because I am a gloomy Gus. I have seen animation I like but I think Old Dog would have to admit most of it is abysmally stoopid. Horror can be okay if it's kind of artsy like those South Korean movies. Romance (romcom) and musicals I have no truck with. Mostly I don't like genres, the western, the detective story, things like that. Not that these can't be good, but mostly they are just ragbags of cliches. Like Harlequin romances there is a list of things the viewer expects to see in them and as long as all the stepstones are stepped on the guy feels like his price of admission is well spent. I sort of like weird movies. I give points for something different tried even if it doesn't work.
Tillerson was just another oil man to me, but he did seem not to be a moron, which is a rare thing in Trumpland. Now we have Rocket Man and the dotard deciding the fate of the world. If we could get Dennis Rodman to join them it would raise the average sanity of the team.
I don't like home schooling for a number of reasons, the main one being that most of the people doing it are doing it because they don't want their kids to learn anything that isn't in the good book. Secondly it's probably poorly done in most cases. Takes a lot of effort and dare I say skill to teach and how many people are going to do a good job of it? And thirdly I like the mixing, rubbing shoulders with your fellow man, I think it's good for people.
I don't see anything happening on the school front. The plans that the gun nuts put forward to distract people will cost piles of money (why don't they put that money into teachers and books and better buildings?) and nobody is going to want to pay for it. I think after an initial splash of press, the NRA is showing it's strength. One troubling thing for the NRA has to be that gun sales are way down, A couple stores are refusing to sell monster guns so that's good. Gun control is polling high among the masses so the dems should be able to ride that for a congressional district or two.
Rustic philosopher sounds nice. Remember Hee Haw where they had like a country version of everything like the Empty Arms Hotel, and radio station KORN, and that poet Claude Strawberry, a rustic philosopher would have fit in fine, I imagine you whittling on the steps of the county courthouse while a bevy of Hee Haw babes lounge around in their shorty shorts waving their legs in the breeze to your pronouncements, Damn I miss those Hee Haw babes in their shorty shorts. Sigh.
Did Siskel walk off the show because he didn't like same movies as Ebert? And why don't we have something like that show anymore, even a kind of crappy one with a couple guys in arm chairs and a screen showing film clips? Maybe there's something like that on YouTube, but you know there was something special about a show that was on at a certain time and if you didn't arrange your life so that you would be there to watch it well then, tough shit,
I like comedies just fine, mostly the darker ones because I am a gloomy Gus. I have seen animation I like but I think Old Dog would have to admit most of it is abysmally stoopid. Horror can be okay if it's kind of artsy like those South Korean movies. Romance (romcom) and musicals I have no truck with. Mostly I don't like genres, the western, the detective story, things like that. Not that these can't be good, but mostly they are just ragbags of cliches. Like Harlequin romances there is a list of things the viewer expects to see in them and as long as all the stepstones are stepped on the guy feels like his price of admission is well spent. I sort of like weird movies. I give points for something different tried even if it doesn't work.
Tillerson was just another oil man to me, but he did seem not to be a moron, which is a rare thing in Trumpland. Now we have Rocket Man and the dotard deciding the fate of the world. If we could get Dennis Rodman to join them it would raise the average sanity of the team.
Tuesday, March 13, 2018
What, Me worry?
I wasn't exactly terrified walking the halls of Gage Park, but it could have been safer. I had some stuff stolen from my gym locker, I reported it, and nothing was done about it. I was writing for the school newspaper at the time, and the teacher asked me to write an editorial, so I wrote about the lack of concern about locker room theft that had been displayed by the gym teacher. The teacher refused to print it because it was critical of school policy. Next semester, I signed up for ROTC instead of gym and didn't sign up for the school paper, and that was the end of that. The hoodlum types were always trying to bait me into a fight, but I wouldn't bite because I didn't want to get suspended. One day it occurred to me that the reason the hoodlums kept hassling me was that they knew I wouldn't fight, so I fought the next one. I got suspended for two days, but the hoodlums never bothered me again, so it was worth it.
There is nothing wrong with the schools today, it's the people in them. They don't have many hoodlum types in the Cheboygan schools, but they do have a lot of goofy kids that could hurt someone with all their horsing around. I think the teachers are more competent that they were in the old days, but they can only do so much. If I was a kid today, I would try to do home schooling or online schooling. That way I could learn stuff without having to put up with all those goofy people.
Sorry I got that wrong about Trump banning bump stocks. I just heard a brief mention of it on the TV news and didn't bother to look into it further. Like I said, fully automatic guns are already illegal for civilians. I think that was passed back in the 1920s when Al Capone and his people were shooting up Chicago and other cities. I don't know how effective that law was at the time. I think it was the repeal of Prohibition that finally put those guys out of business. Semi autos are not illegal and, if my buddies in the NRA have anything to say about it, they never will be.
I always thought of myself as a philosopher until I did some reading about real philosophers. It just occurred to me that I could call myself a rustic philosopher. That sounds good, I think I'll go with that.
There is nothing wrong with the schools today, it's the people in them. They don't have many hoodlum types in the Cheboygan schools, but they do have a lot of goofy kids that could hurt someone with all their horsing around. I think the teachers are more competent that they were in the old days, but they can only do so much. If I was a kid today, I would try to do home schooling or online schooling. That way I could learn stuff without having to put up with all those goofy people.
Sorry I got that wrong about Trump banning bump stocks. I just heard a brief mention of it on the TV news and didn't bother to look into it further. Like I said, fully automatic guns are already illegal for civilians. I think that was passed back in the 1920s when Al Capone and his people were shooting up Chicago and other cities. I don't know how effective that law was at the time. I think it was the repeal of Prohibition that finally put those guys out of business. Semi autos are not illegal and, if my buddies in the NRA have anything to say about it, they never will be.
I always thought of myself as a philosopher until I did some reading about real philosophers. It just occurred to me that I could call myself a rustic philosopher. That sounds good, I think I'll go with that.
Short take
I'm surprised that Old Dawg doesn't want to step into mire of film criticism.
Can you blame me? I enjoy a much broader range of movies than the Gloomy Gus dramas that Uncle Ken prefers. Noticeably absent from his list of favorites are comedies, animation, horror, romance, musicals, or the just plain weird and there are fine films in all of those genres. But I have lowbrow tastes and am forgiving of flaws as long as a film has redeeming virtues such as good acting, good direction, good production values, good writing, or the way the story is told. Not all of these are required for me to like a movie, and a movie like Hard Boiled works for me because of it's style, which was unique at the time for that kind of movie. I like Jackie Chan too, but there's still no accounting for taste, is there?
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I can only marvel at the melodrama in the White House; nothing like firing your Secretary of State when you're about to start a dialogue with a country like North Korea. But Trump has the singular ability to fail upwards and will come out on top while everything else is ashes and rubble. When this is all over he may be the most written about political figure in history; too bad we all have to live through it.
Can you blame me? I enjoy a much broader range of movies than the Gloomy Gus dramas that Uncle Ken prefers. Noticeably absent from his list of favorites are comedies, animation, horror, romance, musicals, or the just plain weird and there are fine films in all of those genres. But I have lowbrow tastes and am forgiving of flaws as long as a film has redeeming virtues such as good acting, good direction, good production values, good writing, or the way the story is told. Not all of these are required for me to like a movie, and a movie like Hard Boiled works for me because of it's style, which was unique at the time for that kind of movie. I like Jackie Chan too, but there's still no accounting for taste, is there?
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I can only marvel at the melodrama in the White House; nothing like firing your Secretary of State when you're about to start a dialogue with a country like North Korea. But Trump has the singular ability to fail upwards and will come out on top while everything else is ashes and rubble. When this is all over he may be the most written about political figure in history; too bad we all have to live through it.
the dangerous halls of Gage Park High
No Trump has not unilaterally banned bump stocks. He has asked his justice department to look into it. It will require legislative action, and the NRA which previously had said it liked a ban now thinks that it shouldn't be banned, it should just be, um, regulated better in some unspecified way which when you put all this together the inevitable conclusion is it ain't gonna happen.
If Beagles thinks they should enforce the gun laws on the books and if banning all auto and semi weapons is on the books, why I am right with him.
Tariffs seem to be an idea that Trump really loves but even the idiots around him think it's stupid. We will see what happens, If they are ever actually put into place, people will be pretty upset because we will be in a trade war and everything we buy will cost more and the stuff we make to sell abroad will cost more so those industries will be laying off.
Having one guy keep his semis locked up, or better yet not having them, is going to save a lot more lives than posting cops in all the schools in the country. But wait Beagles didn't feel safe in the hallways of Gage Park High? He would have felt safer if there were cops posted in the hallways? Old Dog mentioned an article lately about the psychological differences between liberals and conservatives and I kind of pooh poohed it because I have read these things before, but one of the things these studies have always found is that conservatives are nervous Nellies who never feel safe which is why they want these huge armies and a cop on every corner, Well there you have it,.
Doesn't Beagles philosophize every evening? Doesn't he consider himself a philosopher? The thing is when you cogitate upon an issue, any common sense issue, you inevitably realize that it is more complicated than you thought it was at first, so you are going to have to discuss a little history, introduce a few concepts, define a few terms, and by then I guess you have become a little incomprehensible to anybody who just wants a simple answer. Maybe if you had been to a better school in a better building with better teachers and better books that Beagles doesn't want to pay for you would be more inclined to follow the thread of an argument.and come away wiser.
Not that I am running off to buy a copy of the Tractacus.. On the other hand according to common sense the world is flat.
If Beagles thinks they should enforce the gun laws on the books and if banning all auto and semi weapons is on the books, why I am right with him.
Tariffs seem to be an idea that Trump really loves but even the idiots around him think it's stupid. We will see what happens, If they are ever actually put into place, people will be pretty upset because we will be in a trade war and everything we buy will cost more and the stuff we make to sell abroad will cost more so those industries will be laying off.
Having one guy keep his semis locked up, or better yet not having them, is going to save a lot more lives than posting cops in all the schools in the country. But wait Beagles didn't feel safe in the hallways of Gage Park High? He would have felt safer if there were cops posted in the hallways? Old Dog mentioned an article lately about the psychological differences between liberals and conservatives and I kind of pooh poohed it because I have read these things before, but one of the things these studies have always found is that conservatives are nervous Nellies who never feel safe which is why they want these huge armies and a cop on every corner, Well there you have it,.
Doesn't Beagles philosophize every evening? Doesn't he consider himself a philosopher? The thing is when you cogitate upon an issue, any common sense issue, you inevitably realize that it is more complicated than you thought it was at first, so you are going to have to discuss a little history, introduce a few concepts, define a few terms, and by then I guess you have become a little incomprehensible to anybody who just wants a simple answer. Maybe if you had been to a better school in a better building with better teachers and better books that Beagles doesn't want to pay for you would be more inclined to follow the thread of an argument.and come away wiser.
Not that I am running off to buy a copy of the Tractacus.. On the other hand according to common sense the world is flat.
Monday, March 12, 2018
Trump Dumps the Bump
I saw on the TV news that Trump has banned bump stocks. I don't think Congress was involved, he just did it by decree like Obama used to do stuff. The more I think about it, though, the law was already there, Trump just told his people to start enforcing it. When you put a bump stock on a semi-automatic rifle, it transforms it into a fully automatic rifle, which is already illegal for civilians to possess. It's like I've said in the past, before they pass any new laws, they should start enforcing the laws that are already on the books.
Another thing that Trump has been up to lately is talking tariffs. At first I thought he had already implemented them, but then I found out that he has only proposed them. The stock market went nuts for a few days, but seems to have pretty much shrugged it off by now. By the time the proposed tariffs are actually implemented, if they are ever actually implemented, most people will have forgotten about it and the news cycle will have moved on. Remember, you heard it first from Talks With Beagles.
Of course posting a few cops or other armed personnel in the schools isn't going to totally solve the problem, but I think it's a step in the right direction. The response time of the SWAT teams is already pretty good, but it only takes a few minutes to kill a bunch of people. Having even one cop already on the premises might save some of those people. I also like the idea of having the cops there to keep an eye on the little angels themselves. I know that I would have felt safer at old Gage Park High if there had been some kind of police presence. Young people account for a disproportionate amount of violent crimes, so it makes sense to post the cops where the young people spend a lot of their time.
Or course there will be some collateral damage if the cops start trading bullets with the bad guys, but I don't think it will be as much as the damage caused by an unopposed active shooter firing at defenseless victims. The sooner this guy is taken down, the sooner the shooting stops.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: A philosopher is a guy who takes something that should be just common sense and makes it incomprehensible to the average person.
Another thing that Trump has been up to lately is talking tariffs. At first I thought he had already implemented them, but then I found out that he has only proposed them. The stock market went nuts for a few days, but seems to have pretty much shrugged it off by now. By the time the proposed tariffs are actually implemented, if they are ever actually implemented, most people will have forgotten about it and the news cycle will have moved on. Remember, you heard it first from Talks With Beagles.
Of course posting a few cops or other armed personnel in the schools isn't going to totally solve the problem, but I think it's a step in the right direction. The response time of the SWAT teams is already pretty good, but it only takes a few minutes to kill a bunch of people. Having even one cop already on the premises might save some of those people. I also like the idea of having the cops there to keep an eye on the little angels themselves. I know that I would have felt safer at old Gage Park High if there had been some kind of police presence. Young people account for a disproportionate amount of violent crimes, so it makes sense to post the cops where the young people spend a lot of their time.
Or course there will be some collateral damage if the cops start trading bullets with the bad guys, but I don't think it will be as much as the damage caused by an unopposed active shooter firing at defenseless victims. The sooner this guy is taken down, the sooner the shooting stops.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: A philosopher is a guy who takes something that should be just common sense and makes it incomprehensible to the average person.
movies and philosophers
It seems to me unlikely that much good will come out of putting a cop into the school for an extremely unlikely event while the mean streets of Inland Lake will will have only a two thirds of its constabulary to prevent crime. I think the students of the school would be better off with the books and teachers and maybe a better building that Beagles regularly votes against them getting rather than having some cop strut through the halls urging them to stay in school and stay off drugs. and to be careful. .
I'm surprised that Old Dawg doesn't want to step into mire of film criticism. It seems to me an interesting topic. I think at one time I had a top ten list of movies, I can recall six of them offhand, Badlands, Fitcarraldo, Apocalypse Now, The Unforgiven, The Last Detail, and Mother.
I thought I made it clear that I don't like pc in the movies so why would I object to the Italian heritage of Godfather? Oh add Goodfellas to my list. Actually I like that whole European stereotype thing, French are snobby, English are twitty, Italians are passionate, etc, Nobody here really discriminates against Europeans, so I don't see the harm and it makes for some good jokes.
I remember a couple good movies that Old Dog recommended to me, the one where the hired gun drinks milk and Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer.
Oh philosophy, there's a topic we don't discuss nearly often enough in the ivied halls. When I took a course in philosophy each philosopher was given a chapter, maybe twenty pages, and that was quite a bit of stuff to cram into the brain, but then I realized that that was just a distillation of like a dozen books that they wrote, thick books, even more crammed than that chapter, phew. So I guess I would take issue with the like two paragraphs they are given in the breezy article.
I never heard of two of two of those guys but I certainly know of Sartre whose girlfriend Nelson Algren craved, and Wittgenstein is one of my favorites even though I have never read a word he wrote. The thing is philosophy is not science or math, these guys don't have to prove anything they say, it's a lot like what Old Dog refers to as bar talk, Sartre was a big time commie, Unlike most non-Russkie commies I don't think he broke with Stalin over the pact that he made with Hitler, but wiki tells me that he did criticize their abuses in the satellite countries. Wittgenstein was a member of the Vienna Circle that gave us Godel, so he was kind of mathematical, I believe the Tractatus was vaguely about putting language into mathematical terms. It was a tough book, widely praised by other philosophers at the time though few claimed to understand it or even to have read it all the way through. And then the guys says, you know what, everything I said in that book is untrue. Well thanks a lot Ludwig,
I'm surprised that Old Dawg doesn't want to step into mire of film criticism. It seems to me an interesting topic. I think at one time I had a top ten list of movies, I can recall six of them offhand, Badlands, Fitcarraldo, Apocalypse Now, The Unforgiven, The Last Detail, and Mother.
I thought I made it clear that I don't like pc in the movies so why would I object to the Italian heritage of Godfather? Oh add Goodfellas to my list. Actually I like that whole European stereotype thing, French are snobby, English are twitty, Italians are passionate, etc, Nobody here really discriminates against Europeans, so I don't see the harm and it makes for some good jokes.
I remember a couple good movies that Old Dog recommended to me, the one where the hired gun drinks milk and Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer.
Oh philosophy, there's a topic we don't discuss nearly often enough in the ivied halls. When I took a course in philosophy each philosopher was given a chapter, maybe twenty pages, and that was quite a bit of stuff to cram into the brain, but then I realized that that was just a distillation of like a dozen books that they wrote, thick books, even more crammed than that chapter, phew. So I guess I would take issue with the like two paragraphs they are given in the breezy article.
I never heard of two of two of those guys but I certainly know of Sartre whose girlfriend Nelson Algren craved, and Wittgenstein is one of my favorites even though I have never read a word he wrote. The thing is philosophy is not science or math, these guys don't have to prove anything they say, it's a lot like what Old Dog refers to as bar talk, Sartre was a big time commie, Unlike most non-Russkie commies I don't think he broke with Stalin over the pact that he made with Hitler, but wiki tells me that he did criticize their abuses in the satellite countries. Wittgenstein was a member of the Vienna Circle that gave us Godel, so he was kind of mathematical, I believe the Tractatus was vaguely about putting language into mathematical terms. It was a tough book, widely praised by other philosophers at the time though few claimed to understand it or even to have read it all the way through. And then the guys says, you know what, everything I said in that book is untrue. Well thanks a lot Ludwig,
Sunday, March 11, 2018
Running on empty
Schools can be big places with a lot of entrances and I don't think adding a few cops will make much of a difference except provide a false sense of security. A few handguns are no match for a highly motivated and deranged mope with an assault rifle, and regular cops aren't trained for that kind of confrontation. You would need a team, equipped with body armor and well trained in special weapons and tactics (SWAT) to take the guy down, and the collateral damage would be extensive. I can't think of any practical solution to this mess, and arming teachers is a bad idea. Weapons training is not trivial, and it takes a lot of practice to stay sharp. You can be a good teacher or a good armed guard but I don't think you can be both. As a former substitute teacher maybe Uncle Ken should weigh in. Would he have been happy packing heat in his classes?
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Before I get mired in a meaningless discussion of film criticism, I'd like to know which movies meet Uncle Ken's standards of goodness, going back as far as he wishes. Did The Godfather suck because of its portrayal of Italian-Americans or for some other reason?
And I hope it's not too late for him to delete Buckaroo Banzai from his Netflix queue. He won't like it one bit. He shouldn't watch Makkhi either, the film from India about a guy who is reincarnated as a housefly and seeks vengeance on the guy who killed him.
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Although not discussed recently, philosophy has been a recurring topic in the Institute. I thought you guys might like reading about some philosophers who changed their minds.
Flip flops
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Before I get mired in a meaningless discussion of film criticism, I'd like to know which movies meet Uncle Ken's standards of goodness, going back as far as he wishes. Did The Godfather suck because of its portrayal of Italian-Americans or for some other reason?
And I hope it's not too late for him to delete Buckaroo Banzai from his Netflix queue. He won't like it one bit. He shouldn't watch Makkhi either, the film from India about a guy who is reincarnated as a housefly and seeks vengeance on the guy who killed him.
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Although not discussed recently, philosophy has been a recurring topic in the Institute. I thought you guys might like reading about some philosophers who changed their minds.
Flip flops
Friday, March 9, 2018
Cops in Schools
I read in our local paper the other day that neighboring Inland Lakes Schools has stationed a policeman in their school buildings during all times when school is in session. The school district only has two buildings, and the cop will split his time between them. Inland Lakes serves the community of Indian River and the surrounding area. Indian River is not incorporated as a city or village, so they do everything through their township government. Tuscarora Township has its own police force, which is unusual for townships around here. Last I heard they only had three or four officers, and now one of them is being assigned to the schools full time. Their chief told them that he can spare one guy for now, but he will want him back when school lets out for the summer because that's his busiest time of year. The school district managed to come up with almost $15,000 to fund this program till the end of the school year and plans to look for a permanent funding source after that. They had a meeting with the public, and everybody agreed that they needed to do something right now and work out the details later.
Cheboygan had something like that for awhile but, last I heard, it had been discontinued, and I don't remember why. I saw on the TV news this evening that Kalkaska Schools are doing something similar. In this case, I believe that their county sheriff is donating one of his deputies, they didn't say anything about funding. Like with Inland Lakes, this is only temporary until they can work out something permanent for the long term.
In all three cases, the cops are not only there to ward off a terrorist attack. They also will be looking out for any other illegal activity in the schools and teaching drug and safety classes in their spare time. I have never voted for a school millage in my life, but if this one came up, I believe I would vote for it.
Cheboygan had something like that for awhile but, last I heard, it had been discontinued, and I don't remember why. I saw on the TV news this evening that Kalkaska Schools are doing something similar. In this case, I believe that their county sheriff is donating one of his deputies, they didn't say anything about funding. Like with Inland Lakes, this is only temporary until they can work out something permanent for the long term.
In all three cases, the cops are not only there to ward off a terrorist attack. They also will be looking out for any other illegal activity in the schools and teaching drug and safety classes in their spare time. I have never voted for a school millage in my life, but if this one came up, I believe I would vote for it.
movies
I don't know, it seems kind of suspicious to me that a regular google guy would tell you from afar that your computer was infected, or try to sell you a program for three hundred bucks, or monkey around in your computer, but Beagles is closer to his computer than I am, so I'll let him deal with it.
On to movies.
I don't know what Old Dog, or anybody, found to enjoy in Hidden Figures. I don't mind at all if it wasn't true-to-life, in fact I generally applaud that. But it has to be true-to-life in that we believe what we are seeing on the screen could happen, that this is how real people would act. Of course there were no real people in Hidden Figures, except maybe the white women bosses, maybe because they were between good guys and bad guys the way I like my movie characters, so they were a little more than stick figures (I loved the way they said more or less, fuck you, and then dropped a huge stack of work on the desk, like bosses everywhere immemorial). Other than that there was no dialogue, just uplifting speeches, that Kevin Kostner character, gag me with a Sputnik. I stand by everything else I said, everything that happened, you knew it was going to happen and how exactly it was going to happen even as you knew this would never actually happen in real life.
I am a big fan of South Korean dark movies (Old Boy) and speaking I guess of Asian films in general Old Dog recommended Hard Boiled to me, The word that stuck out for me upon reading the Netflix review was thriller. I hate thrillers. Way back when I was a lad they tried to sell me young adult books by calling them adventures. The good guy is going to run into some hard times and then win in the end. How boring. Why bother to open the book?
Hard Boiled had cops and mobsters and one guy who was a bad guy, but you could tell he was going to help out the good guy at the end, you could tell this right at the beginning, and you didn't see anything in his character that would cause this to happen. These guys had even less character than the stick figures in Hidden Figures, and it was all bangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbang. And even if such a thing were to happen in real life, it would never happen that way, shooters just showed up and disappeared and showed up again in no logical pattern. I think aficionados of this sort of movie would say something like that is part of the fun, but I didn't see any fun. I was looking out the window at the cars passing on Lake Shore Drive bridge which was much more entertaining.
Oh and it had like 98% favorable on the Tomatometer, Hidden Figures came in at like 95.
Get Out started very well. Everything was all very normal, except not quite, just a bit off, just a tinge of sinister. You know we White people are used to being a bit scared passing through a Black neighborhood, but I had never thought of how Black people must feel passing through a White neighborhood, and especially a ritzy White suburb to see their White girlfriend which all the other White people assure you they are perfectly fine with, actually applaud this love crossing racial boundaries into a bold better world, except there is something creepy about the way they say it.
It was all good until they sprang the trap on the guy and then it was just a horror thriller, nothing really going on in the last half except you weren't sure if he would actually break away, which was more than I could say about the other two movies where there was never any real suspense about what would happen.
That's a wrap. I'll get to art to make us better people or just for its own sake on Monday.
Have a wild weekend Dawgs, and hey, be careful out there.
On to movies.
I don't know what Old Dog, or anybody, found to enjoy in Hidden Figures. I don't mind at all if it wasn't true-to-life, in fact I generally applaud that. But it has to be true-to-life in that we believe what we are seeing on the screen could happen, that this is how real people would act. Of course there were no real people in Hidden Figures, except maybe the white women bosses, maybe because they were between good guys and bad guys the way I like my movie characters, so they were a little more than stick figures (I loved the way they said more or less, fuck you, and then dropped a huge stack of work on the desk, like bosses everywhere immemorial). Other than that there was no dialogue, just uplifting speeches, that Kevin Kostner character, gag me with a Sputnik. I stand by everything else I said, everything that happened, you knew it was going to happen and how exactly it was going to happen even as you knew this would never actually happen in real life.
I am a big fan of South Korean dark movies (Old Boy) and speaking I guess of Asian films in general Old Dog recommended Hard Boiled to me, The word that stuck out for me upon reading the Netflix review was thriller. I hate thrillers. Way back when I was a lad they tried to sell me young adult books by calling them adventures. The good guy is going to run into some hard times and then win in the end. How boring. Why bother to open the book?
Hard Boiled had cops and mobsters and one guy who was a bad guy, but you could tell he was going to help out the good guy at the end, you could tell this right at the beginning, and you didn't see anything in his character that would cause this to happen. These guys had even less character than the stick figures in Hidden Figures, and it was all bangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbang. And even if such a thing were to happen in real life, it would never happen that way, shooters just showed up and disappeared and showed up again in no logical pattern. I think aficionados of this sort of movie would say something like that is part of the fun, but I didn't see any fun. I was looking out the window at the cars passing on Lake Shore Drive bridge which was much more entertaining.
Oh and it had like 98% favorable on the Tomatometer, Hidden Figures came in at like 95.
Get Out started very well. Everything was all very normal, except not quite, just a bit off, just a tinge of sinister. You know we White people are used to being a bit scared passing through a Black neighborhood, but I had never thought of how Black people must feel passing through a White neighborhood, and especially a ritzy White suburb to see their White girlfriend which all the other White people assure you they are perfectly fine with, actually applaud this love crossing racial boundaries into a bold better world, except there is something creepy about the way they say it.
It was all good until they sprang the trap on the guy and then it was just a horror thriller, nothing really going on in the last half except you weren't sure if he would actually break away, which was more than I could say about the other two movies where there was never any real suspense about what would happen.
That's a wrap. I'll get to art to make us better people or just for its own sake on Monday.
Have a wild weekend Dawgs, and hey, be careful out there.
Thursday, March 8, 2018
The Ghost in the Machine
I think I've got this thing figured out, but I won't know for sure until it happens again, if it happens again. The Google machine seems to be occasionally having trouble recognizing my computer, so it wants to send me an authentication code by text message, but I don't have texting capabilities. There are several other options, none of which work for me at the present. It looks like the easiest one for me to accommodate is the one where I establish another email account with somebody other than Google. Google calls this a "recovery email". Then they can send their authentication code to me that way. They have a record of the account I had with the Dish company, but that address doesn't work because Dish discontinued their email service some years ago, which is why I went to Google in the first place.
It was about three weeks ago that this happened the last time. Both times it lasted for two days and then went away. The messages that Google sent me after they let me back in are identical except for the name of the town where the alleged hacking attempt came from. This suggests to me that there is some kind of glitch in Google Land because a human hacker wouldn't be so consistent. Unless the alleged hacker is another computer, a renegade bot that escaped from its handlers and struck out on its own.
That other thing was your classic "your computer is infected" scam. I don't think he did any damage, but again, it may be too soon to tell. He wanted to sell me a program that was going to take 35 to 40 minutes to down load, and I think that's where the bad stuff was. I didn't allow that, and I didn't give him any money, so I should be okay.
When I can't get into my Gmail, I can't get into Blogger either because they are both Google products. I had no trouble with Wikipedia, Face Book, or my news or weather apps.
I don't think I'm even going to try to catch up with you guys, I'll just jump in somewhere as soon as things settle down around here.
It was about three weeks ago that this happened the last time. Both times it lasted for two days and then went away. The messages that Google sent me after they let me back in are identical except for the name of the town where the alleged hacking attempt came from. This suggests to me that there is some kind of glitch in Google Land because a human hacker wouldn't be so consistent. Unless the alleged hacker is another computer, a renegade bot that escaped from its handlers and struck out on its own.
That other thing was your classic "your computer is infected" scam. I don't think he did any damage, but again, it may be too soon to tell. He wanted to sell me a program that was going to take 35 to 40 minutes to down load, and I think that's where the bad stuff was. I didn't allow that, and I didn't give him any money, so I should be okay.
When I can't get into my Gmail, I can't get into Blogger either because they are both Google products. I had no trouble with Wikipedia, Face Book, or my news or weather apps.
I don't think I'm even going to try to catch up with you guys, I'll just jump in somewhere as soon as things settle down around here.
Quick fix?
As I understand it, Mr. Beagles' problem lies mainly in accessing the blog, with other computer and browsing capabilities remaining intact, correct? Something has been compromised, but there may be an easy solution: create a new GMail account and then either Uncle Ken or I could add him as an admin. This was something I found after digging around in the Blogger help files. Most login failures stem from something hinky with GMail, so this may be worth a shot before attempting more drastic measures.
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I, too, saw Hidden Figures and thought it was a pretty good story; you could even say I was entertained. It wasn't meant to be a documentary so I won't begrudge the creators in how they wanted to tell the story.
Film making, especially by the major studios, is a very commercial enterprise and the producers go to great lengths to fill the seats. Sometimes they make strange casting decisions, other times they tweak the story in service of bigger box office receipts. And they don't call it HollyWeird for nothing. A better movie, I think, was Get Out, which addressed racism in a very different way. The guy who wrote it even won an Oscar the other day.
Although it was released in Europe (and banned in Russia) the film The Death of Stalin has reached American theaters. If you like dark comedies this may be up your alley. None of the characters have Russian accents; can you picture Steve Buscemi as Nikita Khrushchev? It reminded me a little of the Marx Brothers but with plenty of political executions.
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I, too, saw Hidden Figures and thought it was a pretty good story; you could even say I was entertained. It wasn't meant to be a documentary so I won't begrudge the creators in how they wanted to tell the story.
Film making, especially by the major studios, is a very commercial enterprise and the producers go to great lengths to fill the seats. Sometimes they make strange casting decisions, other times they tweak the story in service of bigger box office receipts. And they don't call it HollyWeird for nothing. A better movie, I think, was Get Out, which addressed racism in a very different way. The guy who wrote it even won an Oscar the other day.
Although it was released in Europe (and banned in Russia) the film The Death of Stalin has reached American theaters. If you like dark comedies this may be up your alley. None of the characters have Russian accents; can you picture Steve Buscemi as Nikita Khrushchev? It reminded me a little of the Marx Brothers but with plenty of political executions.
It's not entertainment, it's boring
A message from Beagles:
Sounds to me like he got scammed. I don't know when we will hear from him again. I suggested that he email me his posts and I'll put them up.
I put social realism in the title of my last post, well mainly to get attention, but really socialist realism is really just their version of the patriotic feed we got fed regularly in the fifties. Family values. Your country is never wrong. Obey authority. It was bogus man, and worse, it was boring.
And this pc stuff, same fucking thing.
A couple weeks ago I saw Hidden Figures about three black women that the whole space program would have failed without their help. It had feel good and preachy written all over it, but the critics had loved it. The three black women never did anything wrong. The white people never did anything right unless it was after they got their comeuppance from the black women. Well the white women sometimes did something right, because they were women, but not very often, because they were white.
I'm a good liberal, I believe in black rights and women's rights and if they had a LBGTQ person in the movie that too, oh and a Puerto Rican lesbian in a wheelchair, that also.
But Gentlemen, that is not entertainment.
Good
Day.
I called Google today and they just gave me the run around. A recorded message directed me to a web site, and the web site directed me to another phone number. The guy at that number said that my computer is "infected" and tried to sell me a protection service for $299 a year. I hope that's all he did because I let him in for a remote session. I figured that would be all right because I initiated the call. Now I wonder if I was really talking to a guy at Google or some scammer that slipped in between me and Google.
If I still can't get on tomorrow, I'll start looking for a new email provider. I don't know what effect that will have on the Institute. Meanwhile, my esteemed colleagues will have to carry on without me.
Sounds to me like he got scammed. I don't know when we will hear from him again. I suggested that he email me his posts and I'll put them up.
I put social realism in the title of my last post, well mainly to get attention, but really socialist realism is really just their version of the patriotic feed we got fed regularly in the fifties. Family values. Your country is never wrong. Obey authority. It was bogus man, and worse, it was boring.
And this pc stuff, same fucking thing.
A couple weeks ago I saw Hidden Figures about three black women that the whole space program would have failed without their help. It had feel good and preachy written all over it, but the critics had loved it. The three black women never did anything wrong. The white people never did anything right unless it was after they got their comeuppance from the black women. Well the white women sometimes did something right, because they were women, but not very often, because they were white.
I'm a good liberal, I believe in black rights and women's rights and if they had a LBGTQ person in the movie that too, oh and a Puerto Rican lesbian in a wheelchair, that also.
But Gentlemen, that is not entertainment.
Good
Day.
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