Displaying 91 To 120 Of 1,384 Comments The View From the Left Hemisphere of the Universe Khirad – I add the science part, because it’s actual evidence of the “reality” of that outlook. Consider… Take a photon and split it. You end up with two electrons. Each electron is the reverse twin of the other, with opposite properties, spin, direction of travel, etc. The interesting thing about that is that if you manage to change something about one of these twins, say direction, the other one changes as well, just in the opposite way. Even more interesting… no time lag. The speed of light is not a factor. Now, consider that all electrons are one of a pair that exists SOMEWHERE. What are the ramifications of that? Some part of my body may have a link to some part of yours in this way (and who knows how many other ways?). Isn’t that exactly what is meant in various religions when it is said “We are all one” or words to that effect? » Posted By PocketWatch On April 25, 2011 @ 5:15 am jkk – Actually, Maggie doesn’t mind riding in the car… I have taken her around town now and again when the weather was cool… she’s just fine. In fact, the day I brought her home, she escaped from the box they gave me and sat up front, no problem. She’s just unusual, I guess. I deal with her the same way I dealt with dogs and kids…. expect something as a matter of course, and you generally get the reaction you want. Don’t make a big deal about it… Works sometimes, too!!! » Posted By PocketWatch On April 25, 2011 @ 5:06 am KT – That old “Tree of Knowledge” and its fruit is self awareness… something I believe is more common than we imagine. Anyone that’s had dogs or cats around knows that they have SOME awareness of themselves, their surroundings, and what the immediate future holds, depending on what’s happening at the moment. This whole notion that animals are merely collections of conditioned responses is nonsense, IMO. » Posted By PocketWatch On April 24, 2011 @ 9:18 pm jkk – yeah, I’m headed home… I’ve missed it, and it’s time. I imagine the Princess will have issues, but she’s a savvy beast, and I’m sure will deal with it. She’s sooooo laid back now that she’s experienced all sorts of things on our walks. Very little phases her. I’ll be interested to see how she handles 2 or three days in a big UHaul truck. » Posted By PocketWatch On April 24, 2011 @ 9:13 pm KT – When most folks talk about or think about “nature,” they tend to think and talk about it as a thing separate from people. I never understood that. » Posted By PocketWatch On April 24, 2011 @ 8:49 pm I’ve gotta weigh in on this one… I rarely get into my metaphysical beliefs, but I am this time. I believe that the concept of “god” as a singular entity is wrong. The universe is “god” IMO. We are a part of it, probably one of millions of species throughout the universe that are self-aware. Therefore, we are the conscious thoughts of “god.” When we damage any part of the universe, our world, we literally damage ourselves. When we weep for others, we weep for ourselves, whether we realize it or not. “God” notices every sparrow that falls, because “god” IS the sparrow, the grass, the fish, and US, as well. Our disconnect with “nature” (god) is artificial. There is actually scientific evidence that all the elements and atoms throughout the universe are interconnected, and I believe that to be true. I also think the only way out of our delusions about species superiority and “managing” nature (god) is to stop working against it and start working with it, therefore working with ourselves. I don’t know what form that will take, or even if it will happen, but that’s what I believe. » Posted By PocketWatch On April 24, 2011 @ 8:39 pm Hi jjk – I know it’s been a while. I’m in the process of moving, lots of packing and sorting through all my crap. I hate it, and Maggie doesn’t much care for it either, other than the opportunity it gives her to paw through closets she usually doesn’t have access to… LOL! We’re moving in with my daughter for the summer up in Wisconsin, and Maggie will be riding shotgun in the UHaul truck. Should be an experience! My daughter has 2 cats, Bob (a girl that looks like a bobcat) and Jasper, a male. I hope they will all get along. She lives out in the country in the woods, so we’ll have an opportunity to explore. I’ll have to figure out a way to keep the deer ticks off her, though. Once I’m settled (should be in about 2 weeks), I’ll see if I can get some video to post. » Posted By PocketWatch On April 22, 2011 @ 11:01 am Caru – I studied Tae Kwon Do and an old Chinese art called Pa Qua Chang, which was the basis of Judo, plus a little Shotokan karate and actual Judo. Shotokan is a straight-ahead aggressive form, which I didn’t much care for. TKD is also pretty aggressive, but incorporates many disabling moves which allow for escape from a bad situation. PQC is a style that stems from one of the old original Shaolin monks, and is very fluid, sort of like a high-speed TaiChi, and Judo is fully defensive unless it “needs” to be aggressive. All of these forms can be deadly if used and applied that way. It is really all about the sensei. It is my experience that many, if not most, American dojos are simply “black belt factories” in it for the money. Anyone that awards a black belt (which is actually the equivalent of a grade school diploma, NOT a master’s in martial arts…. that takes decades, really) to a 10 year old is not worth studying with. My sensei was American but very traditional, and did not guarantee any belt or level of achievement. You just came 3 times a week and studied. He firmly believed in what I expressed above, and people that came in that just wanted to learn how to kick butt did not last long. In the end, regardless of the “style” learned (I ended up with a sort of amalgam of all I mentioned based on my physical limitations – short legs, good upper body strength, limited leg flexibility, fast hands, and able to think through a situation) it all comes down to having the confidence through training to be able to walk away and not feel emasculated or somehow inferior. That alone is worth it. » Posted By PocketWatch On April 22, 2011 @ 10:49 am Caru – This discussion reminds me of the training I received for almost 2 decades in various forms of martial arts. Since most of them are derived from Buddhist monks and the morality of that lifestyle and belief system, ‘necessity’ and ethics are a big part of ***proper*** martial art training. As to self defense, the ideal is to never put yourself in the situation where it’s needed or warranted. However, recognizing the fact that not everything is under your personal control, sometimes it is warranted. So, how to proceed? The answer, according to my training, is to only apply as much force as necessary to extract myself (or another in the case of the defense of others). Any further force is now aggression, and not ‘approved’ or moral. In the end, the only fight you win is the one you never have to fight. I always think of it this way… An axe will cut down a tree, but the axe is harmed in doing so, becoming dull and corroded to some degree, and in the end, becomes useless. Any act of intentional violence harms the perpetrator as well as the victim. » Posted By PocketWatch On April 22, 2011 @ 7:27 am Regarding Social Security… Here’s a thought (just a thought worth thinking about, maybe…) ——— Eliminate Minimum Wage altogether at the federal and state levels. Gone. Done. Replace it with a Basic Income system. At the age of majority, every citizen, without any other qualification, gets a yearly stipend from the government large enough to meet basic needs. Studies show that increases in Minimum Wage do have a tiny negative effect on job creation. A Basic Income system would not, and studies show it may be cheaper to the economy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income The math: 300MM people, about 70% adults (210MM) $20K per year Basic Income stipend 20K x 210MM = $4.2T per year (about 28% of current annual GDP) Replaces SocSec, Medicare, Medicade, federal retirement pensions, etc. Completely eliminates the need for minimum wage, workers can “sell” their time for what they think it’s worth. Completely fair, rich, poor, male, female, everyone gets the same. Non-taxable. Will allow people to pool their resources and live decently in retirement. Encourages innovation and creativity, since people are no longer tied to the necessity of having to work all day every day. If people want to live like a poor college student or a starving artist and not work, that’s fine. Opens up the workforce for more motivated people. ———– I have no idea if this sort of scheme is viable or desirable, but it, or something like it, may end the idea of “work ’till you die.” Something that I know I will be facing. » Posted By PocketWatch On April 22, 2011 @ 10:26 am Americans Can Lose Weight By Doing Nothing (Really!) Well, well, well………. The “laws of physics” you say? You KNOW all that’s just ‘theories’ from those pointy-headed elitist so-called scientists and know-nothing doctors!!!!! And we all know what ‘theories’ are, don’t we? Just a bunch of nonsense from panty-wasted do-gooder tree-hugger Socialists, that’s what… The Bible says NOTHING about this crap! —— Actually, I had a doctor tell me this a couple decades ago. I’m a big boy, and always have been… 6″ and about 240, but I don’t show it. Runs in the family. Interestingly, and not surprisingly, I did a little math once about this. It turns out that a guy my size burns about 70 calories an hour just by existing, breathing in and out. That’s 1,680 calories a day. It’s called “baseline metabolism.” So, to lose weight and be a couch potato (my preferred method of existence), I have to consume less than that. I also asked about different types of food…. protein, carbs, fat, and all that. The doc said “Your body has no idea where a calorie came from.” Now I know that sugar does different stuff than fat, and from proteins, but mainly, if you eat a balance of that stuff over a weeks’ time or so, and keep it under your basal metabolic rate, you WILL lose weight. Simple. I know this to be true because when I was laid up last year with recovering from cancer surgery for a couple months, and had no appetite (a bowl of soup was all I ate, maybe a bowl of cereal) I lost 30 pounds. I wasn’t doing anything other than struggling to get up and empty the catheter bag every day. So, where can we market this miracle cure???? » Posted By PocketWatch On April 7, 2011 @ 10:31 am I just was playing around looking at the largest digital picture in the world… just how cool is THAT?!?!?!? The resolution is so good, you can zoom in on the ceiling murals and look at individual brushstrokes! That is just about the neatest thing I’ve ever seen! » Posted By PocketWatch On April 6, 2011 @ 9:46 am The Democratic Scorpions: Always the Sting in Our Own Collective Ass chase – I can get behind the fist-shaking angst… As a socialist, you can just imagine MY frustration with just about everyone outside of Bernie Sanders. » Posted By PocketWatch On April 4, 2011 @ 9:29 pm chase – That’s an easy one…. lefties are conditioned to see all sides of issues. They tend to respect another POV. So, when someone says “you want to tax us back to the Stone Age,” the tendency is to argue the point and to listen to that idea and at least consider it. To someone that has no other POV, and will not allow one to enter their brain, that is a weakness and an opportunity. It creates the APPEARANCE of weakness, of uncertainty. And as we know, many people WANT strong, certain leaders, not someone that thinks things over. That makes ’em nervous. So, lefties pause and reflect while they get their throats cut by the RW. » Posted By PocketWatch On April 4, 2011 @ 9:01 pm kes – I’m of two minds on this. On the one hand, I’d like to bitch slap these assholes all over the country, and for as long as possible, and to fry their asses in boiling skunk juice at every turn. I’d love to just turn loose every lie, dirty trick, prevarication, and plain bad assedness on them. I really would. On the other hand, I don’t think it would work in the long run. Progressives and liberals don’t have to be saints, but if they descend into the depths that the neocon RW has, then the argument that “they are all the same” becomes true. Maybe they ARE all the same, but I don’t believe it. So, we struggle. What model is PROVEN to work takes time and planning and effort. Elect school boards that are socialists. Elect DA’s that are Progressives. Elect mayors and state reps that are Green. These are the back-benchers that in 30 years will be our national leaders. That’s what the RW did, and it worked. Not sexy, but that’s the only way. » Posted By PocketWatch On April 4, 2011 @ 8:34 pm This quote from West Wing sums it up for me: “Because I’m tired of working for candidates who make me think that I should be embarrassed to believe what I believe, Sam! I’m tired of getting them elected! We all need some therapy, because somebody came along and said, “‘Liberal’ means soft on crime, soft on drugs, soft on Communism, soft on defense, and we’re gonna tax you back to the Stone Age because people shouldn’t have to go to work if they don’t want to!” And instead of saying, “Well, excuse me, you right-wing, reactionary, xenophobic, homophobic, anti-education, anti-choice, pro-gun, Leave It To Beaver trip back to the Fifties…!”, we cowered in the corner, and said, “Please. Don’t. Hurt. Me.” I firmly believe that this is what happened to “liberals” a long time ago. » Posted By PocketWatch On April 4, 2011 @ 7:52 pm Free Speech and Commenters’ Experiences at The Huffington Post I’ve said it before… I always expect to get screwed over by profit-centered enterprises. Therefore, it did not come as a shock to me that HP became what it became. I was on it for the last 2 years, ended up with well over 35K comments and hit 1,600 fans or followers or whatever you want to call them, and a Mod2 badge along with all the other badges. As anyone that knows me from there (same AV) can attest, I tried to “do it right.” I kept my cool, did not engage in flame wars, kept the snark to a minimum, and posted thoughtful ideas that were either fact-based providing links, or opinion-based that were identified as such. I was rarely moderated and never came close to being banned or even complained about, officially or otherwise. My personal policy was to rarely – if ever – comment on a fully-modded thread. There was no point, as I enjoy the back-and-forth rather than the mental masturbation of just posting my thoughts and walking away. I say all that as preface… “Free speech” is a governmental distinction, not a private enterprise one. Whether it’s AH or AdLib or anyone else, the owner of a site or a building has the right to control what goes on inside. We need to remember that. If you don’t like it, leave. They call it voting with your feet, and many people, including myself, did just that. My reasons had more to do with the fact that most of the folks I enjoyed “talking” to were leaving, and the best came here. I suspect that this exodus barely made a dent in the click counts and the financial impact clicks have. They were probably made up for by new subscribers due to the publicity of the merger. I doubt very much if the quality of comments was of any concern at all. Also, I know AOL pretty well, and know that they are a very uncaring corporate creature, interested in the commerce of the internets and not any particular ideology. So I knew full well that HP would simply fully descend into the cesspool of adolescent feces-throwing that any comment thread or chat room on AOL has been for years. Just a matter of time. I personally never paid much attention to AH and HP’s so-called ideology. I liked the format and the ease of use and the comments. Facts were iffy, at best, and the articles would maybe lead me to research better and more detailed articles by people with no axe to grind, or at least that were intellectually honest. HP was a tool to me, and nothing more, and now it’s a very dull one, so I have gotten a better one. I trust quality, and PPOV has that. ‘Nuff said. » Posted By PocketWatch On April 1, 2011 @ 11:34 am When I worked for a market research company in NYC, one of the issues we had back then were 34 banker’s boxes full of records… They were the results of studies the company conducted for several tobacco companies back in the 50’s and 60’s to evaluate different commercials for cigarettes. Everybody and his dog subpoenaed these records. I remember very well, because we had to pull them from storage and inventory them and they sat around in an unused conference room for 3 years while lawyers trooped in and out. Our Operations Manager complained constantly that we really should have just burned the damned things. » Posted By PocketWatch On March 29, 2011 @ 1:37 pm ADONAI – As a smoker myself, I know, as all smokers do, that it isn’t the healthiest thing a person can do. My standard response when I am confronted is “A man’s gotta have at least ONE vice! I don’t drink much, don’t chase skirts, don’t go out to bars, and don’t do drugs (MJ is NOT a drug! LOL)… So leave me alone!” » Posted By PocketWatch On March 29, 2011 @ 1:33 pm How Many US Jobs Can You Fit Inside This Cargo Container? SB – When dealing with economists, remember one thing… If you get 10 economists in a room and ask a question, not only will you get 15 answers, every one of those answers will have a “but on the other hand” attached to them. Economics is not anything like an exact science, it is more philosophy than anything. Models are made after the fact, then theories are developed around what has already happened as to why they happened, then are projected out into the future. What could possibly go wrong? I have thought lately that the group of economists working on a more psychology-based model may have something. It has been shown that even experts in money make irrational money decisions every day. Why? No answers yet, but that seems to be why we get into the messes we get into as a society. » Posted By PocketWatch On April 1, 2011 @ 11:59 am Abby – thanks for the response. Always good to have an expert on hand! I was working from a months-ago memory, and don’t know the ins-and-outs of tariffs and finished goods and all that fun stuff. ****EDIT**** » Posted By PocketWatch On April 1, 2011 @ 11:37 am SB – Interesting! I like math… numbers are a way to show what’s really going on. I ran across something (I don’t know where anymore) that said that a large part of “imports” to the US were not imports at all in the classic sense. They were parts of “domestic” products brought into the country from mega-corps subsidiaries overseas. In other words, GE might have a motor assembly or something made in China in a GE plant and shipped here to a GE assembly plant for final assembly, packaging and sale. The idea is that GE is not really “importing” anything, really. If that is taken into account, only something like 20% of “imports” are really imports in the classic sense of a finished product or commodity coming into the country. I think the point is, if the US were to tax or tariff those pieces parts (GE being a global entity, and I would bet anything that China gets a piece of the action IN China, using my example), we would be fine in terms of budget balancing and trade differentials. Did you run into anything like that in your journey through the snake pit? » Posted By PocketWatch On April 1, 2011 @ 10:54 am Friday Music Thread – Amazing Voice, How Sweet The Sound Another Stan Rodgers fave… “Barrett’s Privateers”… a great sea chantey, again, Canadian oriented..
» Posted By PocketWatch On March 25, 2011 @ 6:26 pm I’m an old folk song junkie, and Stan Rodgers is the best! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th-WDf42rG0 An a capella song from Canada… » Posted By PocketWatch On March 25, 2011 @ 6:13 pm I have always said that, when you really want to understand something, pay attention to Nature. I told my nephew, back when he was getting interested in girls, to: “Observe the male deer. A buck is King of the Forest. He has the best food, the best sleeping place, is smart enough to avoid all sorts of trouble. “Then, one day, he sniffs the wind, and senses a female deer. He immediately becomes the dumbest animal in the woods. He ignores everything else when tracking down that doe. He never sees the hunter. “At that point, the doe then gets the best food, the best sleeping place, the preferred watering hole. In short, she gets everything he used to have. Observe the deer…” Lesson learned. » Posted By PocketWatch On March 29, 2011 @ 1:45 pm KQ – any school of ‘journalism’ will tell you that the very first principle in ‘reporting’ is “proximity.” Proximity is defined in this context as “if you can’t relate the story to someone or something local, or hook it into a local perspective, it’ll never sell.” Pay close attention to any ‘reporting’ in the US, and see what I mean. That’s why they do it. » Posted By PocketWatch On March 24, 2011 @ 3:38 pm e’cat – it’s a curse! » Posted By PocketWatch On March 24, 2011 @ 6:34 pm Cher – I would ask President Obama the next time anyone asks about free markets or tax cuts to simply use those two words… PROVE IT. No one can. They can cite estimates and projections, theories and ideas, but the historical facts are simply not there. » Posted By PocketWatch On March 24, 2011 @ 9:23 am Abby – I know you have seen me jousting merrily with people on {spit!} in the past, and I was usually able to reduce know-nothings to rubble or to silence them, simply because there is no proof of efficacy, and never has been. » Posted By PocketWatch On March 24, 2011 @ 9:17 am Abby – in all my years around business, I met one, and one guy only, that actually bought equipment in advance of demand. He bought about $200K of industrial computers for publishing and just mothballed it all. I installed it all and asked him if he was crazy, and he just smiled. 5 years later he was the largest electronic publisher in that part of Wisconsin, not a small market. He told me later that he didn’t want to sell into capability he didn’t have. This guy was one smart cookie. » Posted By PocketWatch On March 24, 2011 @ 9:11 amComments Posted By PocketWatch
I think the point of the article had to do with the idea that it was all GE (or whoever), and actual “foreign” products that were wholly from other countries (as opposed to within a family of a single company) were not as large as one might think.
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