For certain people, after fifty, litigation takes the place of sex. -Gore Vidal

The law firm of Dewey, Cheatham and Howe has informed me that I am being sued by the American Civil Duties Union, Mother's Against Dumb Republicans, and People for My Way or the Highway. The charges against Dr. S. O. Teric are unclear at this time. I am meeting with counsel next week. I have decided to take this as a sign from God (or the Gods) to cease writing this blog for a while. :)

Printing press Vs. Internet

The reinvention of the printing press set in motion the end of feudalism, the renaissance and the creation of the King James bible. So far, the Internet has produced witless joke lists, Nigerian scams and Viagra email ads.

sample lists at - MOST POPULAR LISTS

• Best Programming Language
• Top Beers
• Best Text Editors
• Top Albums
• Best Movies of All Time
• Top Women You Would Leave Your Partne...
• Most Powerful Character in the TV Sho...
• Worst Single Moments in US History
• Top Comedy TV Shows of All-Time
• Who Is the Favorite HEROES Character
• Top PHP frameworks
• Best Programming Language--Ever
• Best Comic Strips of All Time
• The 15th Ave/19th Ave Popularity Contest
• Top Science Fiction Films
• Dumbest Celebrities
• Worlds Greatest Logos
• Most Attractive Female Celebrity
• Best Lines from Seinfeld
• Best Euphemisms for Sex

New images at art has reasons blog

click to see more images at http://arthasreasons.blogspot.com/

Socialists say the most peculiar things

Venezuela President Hugo Chavez said last night in a televised speech the government will cut three zeros from the bolivar's exchange rate by February 2008,. "The only economic indicator that has me a bit worried is inflation,'' Chavez said. "Cutting three zeros will have a positive psychological effect and lower inflation expectations.''


"He has a funny understanding of the problem,'' Alberto Bernal, a Latin America economist with Bear Stearns & Co., said in an interview. "Cutting a number of zeros from the bolivar is irrelevant in the end." Chavez's plan to curb inflation by lopping three zeros from the currency may backfire because the move fails to address production bottlenecks that are pushing prices higher, economists said.

Science and Religion - Strange brew continued

Creationist arguments against evolution don't address evolution, but rather argue against a set of misunderstandings of evolution.

misconceptions about evolution

5."Evolution is only a theory; it hasn't been proved."

First, we should clarify what "evolution" means. Like so many other words, it has more than one meaning. Its strict biological definition is "a change in allele frequencies over time." By that definition, evolution is an indisputable fact. Most people seem to associate the word "evolution" mainly with common descent, the theory that all life arose from one common ancestor. Many people believe that there is enough evidence to call this a fact, too. However, common descent is still not the theory of evolution, but just a fraction of it (and a part of several quite different theories as well). The theory of evolution not only says that life evolved, it also includes mechanisms, like mutations, natural selection, and genetic drift, which go a long way towards explaining how life evolved.

Calling the theory of evolution "only a theory" is, strictly speaking, true, but the idea it tries to convey is completely wrong. The argument rests on a confusion between what "theory" means in informal usage and in a scientific context. A theory, in the scientific sense, is "a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena" [Random House American College Dictionary]. The term does not imply tentativeness or lack of certainty. Generally speaking, scientific theories differ from scientific laws only in that laws can be expressed more tersely. Being a theory implies self-consistency, agreement with observations, and usefulness. (Creationism fails to be a theory mainly because of the last point; it makes few or no specific claims about what we would expect to find, so it can't be used for anything. When it does make falsifiable predictions, they prove to be false.)

Science and Politics- Strange Brew continued

excerpt from - www.opinionjournal.com

Mark Twain once complained that a lie can make it half way around the world before the truth gets its boots on.
-----------------------

Last week the London Guardian published a story headlined, "Scientists Offer Cash to Dispute Climate Study." The story alleges that the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative-leaning think tank in Washington, collected contributions from ExxonMobil and then offered climate scholars $10,000 so they could lobby against global warming legislation.

---------------------

What AEI did was send a letter to several leading climate scientists asking them to participate in a symposium that would present a "range of policy prescriptions that should be considered for climate change of uncertain dimension." Some of the scholars asked to participate, including Steve Schroeder of Texas A& M, are climatologists who believe that global warming is a major problem.

AEI President Chris DeMuth says, "What the Guardian essentially characterizes as a bribe is the conventional practice of AEI -- and Brookings, Harvard and the University of Manchester -- to pay individuals" for commissioned work. He says that Exxon has contributed less than 1% of AEI's budget over the last decade.

we- are-all-going-to-hell

I found a link to Jessica Hagy's blog; she thinks about sin a lot more than I do. I vaguely remember there are seven deadly sins. The idea is you combine lust(A) and greed(C) and you get prostitution(AC).

There are the 21 secondary sins. I leave it to others to figure out the tertiary sins.

http://indexed.blogspot.com/2007/01/were-all-going-to-hell.html

Thucydides Quotes

"The state which separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

“The strong do what they have to do and the weak accept what they have to accept.”

"It is frequently a misfortune to have very brilliant men in charge of affairs. They expect too much of ordinary men.”

"History is Philosophy teaching by examples."

Everybody talks about the weather

Internet Weather Forecast Accuracy article

excerpt-

Weather forecasting is a secure and popular online presence, which is understandable. The weather affects most everyone, and the Internet can provide information on just about any location at any hour of the day or night. But how accurate is this information? How much can we trust it?

Conclusion

• In seeking high temperature forecasts, it looked best to use IntelliCast or The Weather Channel in the long term, but there wasn't a clear leader in the short to mid term. BBC seemed unreliable in all cases, as well as MSN in the long term. The Weather Network, CNN and Unisys all had blemishes, but were generally in the pack.
• In seeking low temperature forecasts, IntelliCast and The Weather Channel were again the choice in the long term, joined by Unisys in the short term. BBC was still a dud in anything but the very short term, and MSN performed horribly in nearly all cases, as well as Accuweather in the long term.

The investing B.S. artist detection checklist

“The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.” George Bernard Shaw

The http://www.johntreed.com/BSchecklist.html lists the red flags for get rich quick and pyramid schemes. The author is looking at real estate investment schemes, but the advice can be used for detecting B.S. in general.

excerpt-

20. Use of the following words.
These words are dishonest because they depict a degree of ease or
exclusivity or certainty or absence of risk or amount of profit which
does not exist. They are fraud at worst and puffing at best. Puffing is
a legal term. Black’s Law Dictionary defines it as
“Exaggeration by a salesperson concerning quality of goods.” If the
guru you are considering uses any of these words or phrases in his or
her presentation, brochures or Web site, he or she is a B.S. artist.


• perfect offer

• confidential

• sure-fire

• secret (if it ever was a secret, it stopped being one when he sold the first copy)

• cinch

• always

• lazy way

• anyone can make a killing

• removes risk

• easy money

• easily determine market value

• air-tight

• take the fear out

• risk-free

• judgment proof

• insider

• painless

• fool-proof

• win/win

• removes guesswork

• easy

• magic

• bulletproof

• gold mine

• riches

• This is not a get-rich-quick scheme

• automatic

“Prices Have Receded” In Florida

The Housing Bubble Blog

MyFox Tampa Bay reports from Florida. “In the 18 years Roz Fenton’s worked at the Pasco Clerk of Courts Office, she’s never seen this. ‘At least 60 foreclosure sales a week,’ she said. The files and files just seem to keep growing. ‘We’ve had more overtime in the office. We’ve had to pull in additional sources to help with the overload in the area,’ she explained.”

“‘You had a lot of investors that speculated and came in and bought properties thinking property values were going to keep escalating,’ said real estate investor Scott Wheeler. ‘Adjustable rates adjust, and they are consistently adjusting up at this point in time, and those homeowners would never have been qualified under the existing rates,’ he said.”

“Back at the Pasco clerk’s office, two weeks worth of foreclosure files are set to be sold at auction on the courthouse steps. ‘We conduct sales twice a week frequently. We’ll have as many as 10 to 15 sales each time,’ said Fenton.”

The Importance of Being Earnest - Quotes

I have always been of opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing.
Lady Bracknell, act 1.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
Algernon, act 1.

It is awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I don't mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind.
Algernon, act 1.

Oh, I don't think I would care to catch a sensible man. I shouldn't know what to talk to him about.
Cecily, act 2.

And certainly once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes painfully effeminate, does he not? And I don't like that. It makes men so very attractive.
Gwendolen, act 2.

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
Gwendolen, act 2.

I could deny it if I liked. I could deny anything if I liked.
Jack, act 2.

The chin a little higher, dear. Style largely depends on the way the chin is worn. They are worn very high, just at present.
Lady Bracknell, act 3.

Gwendolen, it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth. Can you forgive me?
Jack, act 3.

Medical therapy for restless legs syndrome may trigger compulsive gambling

Thu, 2007-02-08 14:42 — BJS

Compulsive gambling with extreme losses -- in two cases, greater than $100,000 -- by people without a prior history of gambling problems has been linked to a class of drugs commonly used to treat the neurological disorder restless legs syndrome (RLS). A new Mayo Clinic study is the first to describe this compulsive gambling in RLS patients who are being treated with medications that stimulate dopamine receptors in the brain. The Mayo Clinic report appeared in the Jan. 23 issue of Neurology (http://www.neurology.org).

The extent of this problem is unknown. Apparently, it occurs only in a small number of RLS patients treated with drugs called dopamine agonists. Considering this potential side effect of dopamine agonists, the Mayo Clinic authors suggest that physicians screen all RLS patients for compulsive behaviors while taking a thorough medical history prior to prescribing dopamine agonists. Patients should be monitored closely for signs of compulsive behaviors once dopamine agonist treatment has begun. The report suggests that the compulsion to gamble worsened with increasing doses of the dopamine agonists.

Slave Exhibits Stir Old Passions at Virginia Civil War Museum

link to article about Virginia Civil War Museum

Feb. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Richmond, Virginia, whose statue-lined Monument Avenue has glorified Confederate heroes for a century, is making room for new voices to tell the story of the Civil War.

The American Civil War Center, which opened in the one-time capital of the Confederacy in October, is the first museum in the U.S. to discuss the history of the war from the perspectives of three sides -- the North, the South and the slaves.

A century and a half after the fighting ended, the museum isn't settling old arguments about the war, which took more American lives than any other conflict.

``The hope has been to try to educate everybody away from whatever prejudices or ill-informed biases they had,'' said James McPherson, winner of a Pulitzer Prize for his 1988 book, ``Battle Cry of Freedom: the Civil War Era,'' who was an adviser on the museum.

Some black residents say the museum, founded by the Tredegar National Civil War Center Foundation, doesn't go far enough to shed light on the past.

``This presentation simply serves to sanitize the Confederacy and to glorify false heroes,'' said Raymond Boone, publisher of the Richmond Free Press, the city's leading newspaper aimed at a black readership. ``If we were going to have balance in a World War II museum, would you give Hitler the same weight as Roosevelt?''

Buddha, the skeptic?

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”

Buddha ( Siddhartha Gautama, 563-483, B.C.E.)

Please contact me if you can find a primary source for this quote. This quote seems almost too good to be true.

"There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one."

Democracy in America, by a French visitor named Alexis De Toqueville, is rightly considered the best book on America. Written in the 1800s, it remains an astute and penetrating view of all that is right and wrong with the United States. Even when the ideas seem outdated or just plainly wrong, they are often provocative.


I looked up the arts in democracies in the index and found:

. . . when, all privileges being abolished, ranks are intermingled and men are forever rising or sinking in the social scale. Among a democratic people a number of citizens always exists whose patrimony is divided and decreasing. They have contracted, under more prosperous circumstances, certain wants, which remain after the means of satisfying such wants are gone; and they are anxiously looking out for some surreptitious method of providing for them. On the other hand, there is always in democracies a large number of men whose fortune is on the increase, but whose desires grow much faster than their fortunes, and who gloat upon the gifts of wealth in anticipation, long before they have means to obtain them. Such men are eager to find some short cut to these gratifications, already almost within their reach. From the combination of these two causes the result is that in democracies there is always a multitude of persons whose wants are above their means and who are very willing to take up with imperfect satisfaction rather than abandon the object of their desires altogether.

The artisan readily understands these passions, for he himself partakes in them. In an aristocracy he would seek to sell his workmanship at a high price to the few; he now conceives that the more expeditious way of getting rich is to sell them at a low price to all. But there are only two ways of lowering the price of commodities. The first is to discover some better, shorter, and more ingenious method of producing them; the second is to manufacture a larger quantity of goods, nearly similar, but of less value. Among a democratic population all the intellectual faculties of the workman are directed to these two objects: he strives to invent methods that may enable him not only to work better, but more quickly and more cheaply; or if he cannot succeed in that, to diminish the intrinsic quality of the thing he makes, without rendering it wholly unfit for the use for which it is intended.

Guide to the Warped and Perplexed

Check out http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/index.htm to understand the strange behavior on Internet discussions forums .




Example-



Furious Typist’s combat strategy is to drown her adversary in a tsunami of angry verbiage. She is absolutely immune to subtlety and ignores all but the barest essentials of any argument. After briefly appraising the gist of her opponent’s counter attack, she puts her head down and rapidly fires off long rambling messages replete with grammatical and factual errors. The typical Furious Typist lacks endurance. If the other combatants can weather the initial assault, she will quickly exhaust herself and retire from the field.

Quotes

“The last words of Jesus on the cross, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' hardly seem like the words of a man who planned it that way. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure there is something wrong here."
-Rev. Donald Morgan


“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.”
-Voltaire



"He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a
political career."
-George Bernard Shaw


"Nobody has ever bet enough on a winning horse."
-Richard Sasuly


"The nice thing about being a celebrity is that when you bore people, they think it's their fault."
-Henry Kissinger

Cloning the smell of the seaside

Scientists from the University of East Anglia have discovered exactly what makes the seaside smell like the seaside – and bottled it!

The age-old mystery was unlocked thanks to some novel bacteria plucked from the North Norfolk coast.

Prof Andrew Johnston and his team at UEA isolated this microbe from the mud at Stiffkey saltmarsh to identify and extract the single gene responsible for the emission of the strong-smelling gas, dimethyl sulphide (DMS).

"On bracing childhood visits to the seaside we were always told to 'breathe in that ozone, it's good for you'," said Prof Johnston.

"But we were misled, twice over. Firstly because that distinctive smell is not ozone, it is dimethyl sulphide. And secondly, because inhaling it is not necessarily good for you."

DMS is a little known but important gas. Across the world's oceans, seas and coasts, tens of millions of tonnes of it are released by microbes that live near plankton and marine plants, including seaweeds and some salt-marsh plants. The gas plays an important role in the formation of cloud cover over the oceans, with major effects on climate. Indeed, the phenomenon was used by James Lovelock as a plank to underpin his 'Gaia hypothesis'.

Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.

Don't try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.
- Philip K. Dick

Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.
- Mel Brooks

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
- Mark Twain