Midterms cure S.A.D.

Folks who live in the north call it Seasonal Affective Disorder.  They get depressed by long dark winters.  For the rest of us it's a political disease called Shut-Out Affective Disorder when conservative & libertarian voices aren't heard.  The last time I had it, Chretien was ruling in Ottawa and Glen Clark was the NDP rooster in Victoria.   Lately it's the U.S. of A that's been getting me down.  It's so fricking big that it's politics affect our politics.  The 2014 midterms look set to change a lot of roosters and the more that change, the better it will be.

Suddenly I'm cured.   Getting out of bed briskly,  I post early and often, and every glass is half full.

"Mein Fuhrer, I can walk! " Link to clip from Dr. Strangelove.

Optics is morality: Obama lies about the White House Drapes.

Standing in the Oval Office August 2010, Obama told C-Span they hadn't remodelled the room.   Because, Austerity.  Two weeks later the White House asked C-Span to can the story because the Washington Post was doing an expose on millions spent remodelling the Oval Office.  Morality is optics.   This is reported at the Washington Post and sourced from Cheryl Attkisson's book, "Stonewalled".

Petty, unpresidential, immoral.

Russia snooping in White House computers. WH says yes but everything's cool.

The White House finally says yes, we were hacked from Russia, but not to worry, it's the non-secure part of the President's network.  Is that where Obama orders up a salami-arugula sandwich for lunch? You and I both know it's all secure and no one drops in.  What can a president lose that isn't about national security?  2014 election insider stuff and tit-for-tat deals with politicians and press?

The White House admits the probe came from Russian territory.  Read the saccharine assurances that all is well.  The weaselly blather is hard to stomach: "In the course of assessing recent threats we identified activity of concern on the unclassified EOP network. Any such activity is something that we take very seriously. In this case we took immediate measures to evaluate and mitigate the activity,"

You want to believe they have it in hand. Then you learn they didn't find out until a foreigner told them. Britain or maybe  Israel sent a tweet along the lines of "Do you feel a breeze on your bum?"  If nothing of significance was compromised or planted in the net of the Executive Office of the President, maybe most of the office could be eliminated  as a cost-saving measure.

While the Washington press was ignoring the story, John Hinderaker of Powerlineblog was the only one for some days that even said "boo".  

Replace the census with data mining:

That door-to-door stuff is like using a Gestetner to duplicate something instead of  "right click-copy-print" with your mouse.

 Here's  another study showing that data mining cell phone traffic can, for example, tell planners what they need to know about where people work and relax, in what numbers, and the routes they follow.  One glance at the chart confirms your suspicions.  No more long form census interrogations are needed, just a little ingenuity in data scooping.

The University of Southampton study was reported at Science Daily News.

A little drinky poo helps old people remember things.

Science Daily News reports that moderate alcohol consumption in seniors can improve memory for events.  Light drinkers had a larger hippocampus.  The hippocampus is a part of the brain that goes downhill in early-stage Alzheimer's disease.

This connects to another study reported this week showing that flavonols in chocolate and cocoa can reverse memory decline by affecting a different area, the dentate gyrus in the brain.  This reversal of age-related memory decline is different from the episode memory discussed above.  "A cup of cocoa, then bed, keeps you smart in the head".

Two life forms in one body

People are a symbiosis of two life forms, the XY-Guy and the Identity (I.D.)  I'm calling XY-Guy the behaviour baked into the genes for the organism to survive with food, sex and air.  I.D. is the "I" thing that happens in the same organism.  A few years after being born, every little kid starts calling himself "I" using the same name his neighbours call themselves..    Experience and thought is structured with a life of its own and eventually I.D.'s structured data exceeds the amount of information in XY-Guy's genome.  Both life forms infuse the same organism.

Men and women form couples with a double union.  The XY-Guy is somewhat generic but powerful while I.D. has character and more options.    Their respective goals can be out of sync but somehow, as couples, we blink at those moments and refocus.  It's similar to falling asleep and waking up.  The two different but related worlds aren't quite compatible but they reflect each other and share places in our brain with the help of a little forgetfulness at the door from one to the other.  

I may call my wife honey (a food word) or nibble her ear and at the same time listen to her presentation strategy for a meeting.   At the same moment I admire her kindness to a stranger I can get a bump in my pants.  Two life forms share the leadership with a little blink as they hand off to one another.

This is nothing new.  The cells of our body seem to be alive with several subordinate life forms.  The mitochondria even have their own DNA lineage.    We also exist in two radically different forms at the moment leading up to conception.  Just as a mushroom can exist as a mycelium cloud underground or a gilled lump after a rain,  XY-Guy can exist either as a brainy organism or as eggs and a million spermicules wriggling about with a sense of destiny.   They are alternating life forms (haploid and diploid).

Can Identity reproduce without a body?  This is where AI is heading.

(Semantics:  ID and I.D. make a good word pair but there's too much baggage with Freud's term.)

Repositioning the donkey while Obama dismounts: Barack more likely to antagonize Dems than Republicans after Mid Terms.

With Republicans up in both houses, expect a family feud.  Obama is more likely to be pushing back at angry Democrat pols than the Republicans he has been governing without for six  years.

Awkward

The new dynamic will be repositioning the Donkey while Obama dismounts.   I  think the left will join forces with the right to steal any executive order triumphs from the diminished president. Immigrating millions of new voters by decree of the imperial president will meet bipartisan opposition.

Dems nervous about mid-terms

Clinging to hope.  The photo makes me think of unhappy Democrats having a melt-down.

Dog going to the vet to "take his medicine" with great reluctance.

Black Folks Rebel Against the Democrat Machine

Drudge promotes game-changer video that may move a lot of black votes in 2014 and 2016.  In a city like Chicago run by blacks, the Democrat machine is abusing their own people, offering a "turkey" on voting day and making you a turkey the rest of the time.  I'm a Honky WASP sort of person but am persuaded by the black plain-spoken men in the video.  This time it's for real.


"Black folks is in an abusive black leadership relationship"

Ghomeshi Meltdown at National Post

Canadian Cincinnatus has already posted on this but a screenshot of seven (count them) front page stories about a rough-sex radio station employee gives you pause.  I wish Conrad Black still owned NP.

Click to enlarge NP screen shot 9am PDST Oct 28

Ebola Spa: A market solution to quarantine

Mickey Kaus:  "What’s needed is a quarantine so luxurious that health care workers will look forward to it   ..   Volunteer health care workers are not exactly encouraged to make the trip to West Africa if they know they'll have to spend 21 days in a tent with a portable toilet on their return."  

The writer, a thoughtful Democrat, envisages Government buying and stocking the resort but this is the perfect public-private partnership giving private enterprise a way to prosper while serving the public good.

People in a Florida quarantine isolation camp

h/t Instanpundit.   A few words in the opening quote were shifted around.

Personal note:  My father was born in a quarantine camp on Torrens Island near Adelaide after coming off a ship from Canada.

Cup of cocoa, then bed, keeps you smart in the head.

A cup of hot cocoa with honey, sounds nice before bed.  Maybe it will also keep your memory from fading as you age. The study at Columbia showed significant memory improvement in a seniors group fed high-flavonol drinks derived from cocoa beans.  After three months, many had memories like 40 year olds instead of 60 year olds with brain change being noticed in the dentate gyrus.

Caveats:  "high-flavonol" isn't quite the same as "chocolate" and the study which used 37 senior volunteers should be replicated.

Excerpted from Science Daily News where you'll find more detail about the researchers and their results.







While revived faculties is the topic, I'll add some senior's humour:

"Auntie George and Uncle Mabel

Fainted at the breakfast table.

But Ovaltine has set them right

and now they do it morn and night,

and Uncle George is hoping soon

to do it in the afternoon"

   
                                                                               (Kudos to my late Aunt Nan)

Wear the uniform proudly.

From "A Bear's Rant":

Telling Canadian soldiers not to wear the uniform in public is like telling women they must dress modestly or be raped.  Follow the link.

Following the shootings, the Defense Department issued an advisory to military personnel to avoid wearing their uniforms in public. Is that really the message we want to send to terrorists? Do we really want them to celebrate that they have so frightened us that our military are afraid to publicly wear their uniforms in their own country?
That strikes me to be more than just a little like telling women to dress modestly lest they be raped or assaulted.

See:
Australian Muslim leader compares uncovered women to exposed meat

How many days until the world ends? Climate Cassandras from Gore on down screw up in their own words.

Posted at Wattsupwiththat by Jimbo:   Reminds me of the Jehovah Witnesses movable goal posts for the immanent return of Jesus and their debate about how immanent "immanent" is.
h/t smalldeadanimals.

Moscow-Pullman Daily News – 5 July 1989
“governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.”
[Noel Brown - New York office of the United Nations Environment Program]
=======================

The Vancouver Sun – May 11, 1982
Lack of such action would bring “by the turn of the century, an envi-ronmental catastrophe which will witness devast-tation as complete, as ir-reversible as any nu-clear holocaust.”
[Mostafa Tolba - Executive director of the United Nations Environment Program]
=======================

New York Times – November 18, 2007
…..The IPCC chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, an engineer and economist from India, acknowledged the new trajectory. “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late,” Pachauri said. “What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.”…..
=======================

Independent – 20 October 2009
[SPEECH]
Gordon Brown: We have fewer than fifty days to save our planet from catastrophe
……..Copenhagen must be such a time.

There are now fewer than 50 days to set the course of the next 50 years and more. So, as we convene here, we carry great responsibilities, and the world is watching. If we do not reach a deal at this time, let us be in no doubt: once the damage from unchecked emissions growth is done, no retrospective global agreement, in some future period, can undo that choice. By then it will be irretrievably too late….
=======================

National Post – 2009?
… In the summer, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon insisted “we have four months to save the planet.”…
=======================

Guardian – 3 November 2009
We only have months, not years, to save civilisation from climate change
…….Lester R Brown is president of Earth Policy Institute and author of Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.
=======================

WWF – 7 December 2009
12 days to save the planet!
…“The world has given a green light for a climate deal. But the commitments made so far won’t keep the world under 2° of warming, This has to change over the next 12 days. …
[WWF-UK’s head of climate change, Keith Allott]
=======================

Guardian – 18 January 2009
‘We have only four years left to act on climate change – America has to lead’
Jim Hansen is the ‘grandfather of climate change’ and one of the world’s leading climatologists…..

“We cannot now afford to put off change any longer. We have to get on a new path within this new administration. We have only four years left for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world. America must take the lead.”
=======================

The Star – Mar 24 2009
‘We have hours’ to prevent climate disaster
…Recently, Prince Charles has said we have only an estimated 100 months. Unless the world comes together and negotiates a meaningful agreement to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions nine months from now – at the Copenhagen meeting of the United Nations climate conference in December – another 90 months won’t help. We have hours to act to avert a slow-motion tsunami that could destroy civilization as we know it.

Earth has a long time. Humanity does not. We need to act urgently. We no longer have decades; we have hours. We mark that in Earth Hour on Saturday….
[Elizabeth May of Canadian Green Party]
=======================

And Al  (Ice Cap Gone) Gore, of course.

Best political speech ever: Ronald Reagan, "A Time For Choosing"

The Montreal Massacre had a Muslim link too

I don't remember seeing this in the news, but Marc Lépine was the son of an Algerian muslim, Rachid Liass Gharbi.   Marc changed his first name from "Gamil".   The dad was abusive and "non-practicing" but it looks to me like the culture of Mohammed played a role.  Marc went after women in non-traditional roles.   What are the odds nowadays he'd have been on-line posting approvingly about ISIS before turning butcher?      Substitute "stick" for "gun" and I'm reminded of the Saudi Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

On December 6, 1989, Lépine walked into the École Polytechnique de Montréal. There, he entered a second-floor classroom where he separated the men and women and then ordered the approximately fifty men to leave. Claiming that he was fighting feminism, he shot the nine women who remained, killing six and injuring the rest.

h/t commenter at smalldeadanimals

Avatar of the average male. Netherlands looking tops.

See the avatars for yourself. The average Dutch male is much taller and slimmer than the white American male.   Nothing pretty here, just the average shape.  Original article at The Atlantic.

US dethroned by three inches.
Crown goes to the Netherlands.
US (and Canada) looking a little soft.

Left to Right:  US, Japan, Holland, France.

Dems will rewrite history to get rid of love affair with Barack Obama.

  Ramirez cartoon.  "Hello? Tattoo removal service?"

Easter Island discovered America

A genetic study shows Easter Islanders have 8% American Indian ancestry and the DNA was picked up in the AD1300-1500 period before the Spanish and English got their licks or dicks in. (The genomic tally also shows 16% of European origin.)   Easter Island was reached about AD 1200 and it is easy to imagine some settlers continuing on to find America because if they explored to the east, they couldn't miss.  A few must have made it back.

Reported in Science Daily News.
Something else interesting about the 900 statues they built:  Most of the carved statue is sunk below grade.

To be fair, the first reported European on Easter island  is neither Spanish nor English.  In 1722  Dutchman, Jacob Roggeveen, landed there.

Is fatal cancer setting Putin's schedule of accelerated aggressions?

The New York Post publishes rumours pointing to spinal or pancreatic cancer that gives Vladimir Putin a short time to leave a legacy of strong borders and respect for Russia.   You may not like Russia but it does have hard-to-defend borders on the west, and impaired ocean access through the Black and Baltic seas.

From the Financial Post

This can explain the brass balls threat of using nuclear weapons, expropriation of the Crimea, the pardon of Khodorkovsky, repeated air incursions into Japanese,  Nato  and American airspace and threats to the Baltic states. Is his face a little puffy from steroid treatments, the Post asks?

Rumours should be mistrusted but not ignored.   h/t HotAir for the link.