2975 Bits bouncing around for the past two weeks

Wednesday, June 2, 2010 (Oh Good Grief! June already?)

Where would Christianity be if Jesus got eight to fifteen years with time off for good behavior?
--New York State Senator James Donovan, speaking in support of capital punishment--

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The Bible, the Mayan calendar, and various philosophers have decided the end of the world occurs in 2012. This has been echoed and reinforced in movies. One person whose intellect I respect firmly believes it. There's a lot to argue there - the simple fact that the references are obscure, and it's fallible humans doing the interpreting, but believers tend to use the recent natural worldwide disasters as proof. Earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, storms, volcanoes - so very many recent ones.

Well, there really haven't been more than ever before. It's just that now we hear about them. They've been going on for thousands of years. We just weren't aware of what was going on in the rest of the world until recently.

What does worry me is that some religion that teaches that theory will feel a responsibility to take it upon themselves to set it off. It would take a religion to so thoroughly banish common sense.

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The sunscreen the friend recommended arrived today (The Naked Bee). I tried it on my arms, and it was fine, no heavy feeling, no white deposit in creases, didn't paste the hairs down. Then I tried it on my face. My nose did not break out in beads of sweat. We may have a winner.

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Investment advice: The FAA has ruled that all aircraft must have on-board GPS by 2020. That's a lot of devices, and probably not cheap ones. Some GPS manufacturer(s) will make out like bandits, and because they are mandated, there will be no incentive to compete on prices. Unfortunately, who knows which companies will reap the gold?

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Trial lawyers are complaining of the "CSI effect". Jurors expect to see all kinds of swoopy evidence. They don't seem to realize that much (most!) of what they see on the TV show simply does not exist as a technology, and secondly, for what advanced technology does exist, there are very few labs, and third, those labs are very slow and not famous for reliability. Not to mention that most local police departments are not well trained in evidence collection.

So juries are letting otherwise "clearly guilty" defendants off because they didn't see evidence that in their minds, should have been there. They figure that the police must have found it, but it didn't support their theory, so they chose not to present it?

If you expect ever to be on a criminal court jury, you should read http://www.usnews.com/usnews/culture/articles/050425/25csi.htm.

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This is my own theory. Men and women have vastly different concepts of what constitutes a lie.

Men seem to believe that you have to tell something that is no way true, ever, for it to be a lie. However, a statement or answer that is in some way, some special context, true, is true enough, and is not a lie.

Jay and Obie were both the most honest and moral men I've ever known (both lovers, both deceased), but even they seemed to believe this. For example, if I asked Jay, "Did you pay the electric bill?", he'd quite honestly, honest in his mind anyway, answer, "Yes." If I asked, "Did you pay this month's electric bill?", he'd quite honestly answer, "No, not yet. I'll pay it tomorrow." Note the difference in the questions. He has often paid the bill, so "Yes, I paid the bill" is true, where "Yes, I paid this month's bill" is not.

Most men will avoid conflict at all costs, and they figure what you don't know won't hurt you. They seem to feel that if they leave things out, and you believe things that are not literally true, well, that's your own fault, not theirs. They didn't lie.

Women, on the other hand, consider being misled, being allowed to believe untruths without correction, is exactly the same as being lied to. Women have a much lower line. If you know that I think you paid this month's bill based on your statement, and you don't correct that impression, then you have allowed me to believe a lie.

It's the facts not the words that matter, guys.
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2038 The Conspiracy!

Saturday, September 27, 2008

I'm not going to footnote (i.e. link) anything because you can find anything you like on the internet, so have at it.

Ok. Here's what I've heard and/or read lately, no assurances that any of it is true, but when do you ever get assurances with conspiracy theories?

My Very Own Conspiracy Theory:

Point 1: The US economy is a mess. The debt is enormous. Tax relief, let alone anything like health care assistance will be impossible. Foreign affairs are a mess. The world hates us. We're in one war we can't win and another we don't dare lose, and we can no longer afford either.

Point 2: I hear that Sarah Palin's handlers are having fits. They've had some practice debates, and some mock news conferences, and they've been total disasters. They'd like to cancel the upcoming Palin/Biden debate, or postpone, but that doesn't seem possible. People are freaking. There are those in the GOP rarified levels that would like her to voluntarily withdraw (but I'll bet she keeps insisting she's ready), but it probably wouldn't help anyway (that "experience and judgment" thing McCain thinks he has going for him would be shot full of holes).

Point 3: I hear that Palin was recommended to John McCain by none other than Henry Kissinger.

Point 4: Of all the people in the world who suffers least from cognitive dissonance, I'd put Kissinger pretty far up there. I see him as coldly logical.

Point 5: I think Kissinger knew exactly what he was doing, and I think others were involved.

Conclusion: The GOP wants to lose this election. They will be happy to hand the whole mess over to the Democrats, who will be forced to do some unpleasant and very unpopular things to clean it up. The American public has a very short memory. In a few years, they'll forget who created the mess, and all the anger and frustration of the cleanup will be dumped on the Democrats (who not incidentally don't know how to use the media to the same effect as the right), and in 2012, the Republicans will be able to waltz right in, and look like saviors. And in running McCain and Palin, well, it's not like they sacrificed any of their valuable players.

How's that for a conspiracy theory?

(Oh, and don't forget what the Mayan calendar and Nostradamus and some interpretations of the Bible have to say about 2012.)
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