Volunteering to Pay More Taxes Doesn't Make You a Saint

From FEE.org:

As seems to happen whenever tax rate reductions that could be demonized as “tax cuts for the rich” are proposed, the Trump administration’s tax reform framework has triggered vehement opposition, because “we need the money” to finance government programs.

However, such advocates must divert attention from the ethics of forcibly imposing greater burdens on one group of people who already bear the greatest burdens, which we would call theft in any other setting. So to inoculate themselves from criticism, some rich people publicly volunteer to pay more in taxes. Tom Steyer provided the most recent illustration in October 5’s Los Angeles Times, with “I’m a billionaire. Raise my taxes.”

Displays of such “sainthood” deflect consideration from the central issue—what can ethically justify such coercion of others against their will—to how much the self-sainted signal that they care. Further, it implies that those who disagree with them are merely selfish. However, no such implication can be drawn. That some will volunteer to bear higher taxes to support government programs they like (as long as others are forced to do the same, even if they disagree) is perfectly consistent with the existence of excellent reasons to oppose a vast array of such government programs for waste and ineffectiveness, rather than out of cold-heartedness.

You're Not Helping

If a few rich people each volunteer to pay more in taxes to fund some “caring” government program, that would not demonstrate they believe it is effective enough to be worth its cost. That implication only follows from donations that fund programs without the coercion of others. Only that shows a belief that a program is effective enough to justify its cost (although when  donations are tax deductible, even such private donations do not demonstrate that). But that is far different than what they propose.

Rich tax volunteers are not just private benefactors; they mainly propose imposing “coercive charity” on others. However much they may preen about their moral rectitude (which they can always display directly through their own independent, private giving), they offer to pay only a small share of the total cost of trying to do what they consider good through the tax code. They are primarily volunteering others, who need not in any way share their views or evaluations of the programs in question, to pick up the vast majority of the tab for their favored causes. [read more]

I agree with the article. They should stop it. But Rush Limbaugh makes a point that the people who want their taxes raised are people who don’t want to be attacked by the Left. That strategy doesn’t work though. The Left will keep attacking them unless they donate to Leftist groups and candidates. Then the rich will be left alone.

China is opening a new quantum research supercenter

From PopSci.com (Oct. 10);

On 37 hectares (nearly 4 million square feet) in Hefei, Anhui Province, China is building a $10 billion research center for quantum applications. This news comes on the heels of the world's first video call made via quantum-encrypted communications and the completion of a quantum-encrypted fiber optic trunk cable.

The National Laboratory for Quantum Information Sciences, slated to open in 2020, has two major research goals: quantum metrology and building a quantum computer. Both efforts would support military and national defense efforts, as well civilian innovators.

But let's back up. What is quantum metrology, anyway? Basically it measures minute changes in gravity and other physical effects, which can be used to build highly accurate, self-contained navigation systems. This has a key application for autonomous vehicles and submarines, which wouldn't have to rely on GPS or other external navigation signals that could be jammed or used to detect their location.

And then there are quantum computers. Pan Jianwei, a leading Chinese quantum scientist, says that the first general-purpose Chinese quantum computer could have a million times the computing power of all other computers presently in the world. In the computers we use today, information is encoded in a series of bits set as either 1 or 0. In a quantum computer, bits would theoretically be able to hold one, both, or some combination of these states. They could be used to speedily crack encrypted messages or solve complicated research problems involving anything from weather modeling to fusion research and biomedicine, because quantum bits allow certain calculations that happen one by one on a standard computer to occur simultaneously. [read more]

IBM is trying to build a quantum computer too. Let’s hope they do it first and not just because I own stock in the company—although it wouldn’t hurt the stock price.  But because I want America to do it first.

The Wisdom of Winston Churchill 6

No race, country or individual as a monopoly of good or evil.

The strength and character of the national civilization is not built up like a scaffolding or fitted together like a machine. Its growth is more like that of a plant or a tree.... No one should ever cut one down without planting another. It is very much easier to cut down trees than to grow them.

Do not disband your army until you have got your terms.

Large views always triumph over small ideas.

It would be a great reform in politics if wisdom could be made to spread as easily and as rapidly as folly.

We are for private enterprise with all its ingenuity, thrift and contrivance, and we believe it can flourish best within a strict and well-understood system of prevention and correction of abuses. In a complex community like our own no absolutely rigid uniformity of practice as possible.

Some see private enterprise as a predatory animal to be shot, others look on it as a cow to be milked but a few see it as a sturdy horse pulling a wagon.

Private property has a right to be defended. Our civilization is built up by private property and can only be defended by private property.

Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge.

Source: The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill: A Treasury of More Than 1,000 Quotations and Anecdotes (1994) by James C. Humes.

'Beam of Invisibility' Could Hide Objects Using Light

From Live Science.com (Oct. 11):

Once thought of as the province of only "Star Trek" or "Harry Potter," cloaking technologies could become a reality with a specially designed material that can mask itself from other forms of light when it is hit with a "beam of invisibility," according to a new study.

Theoretically, most "invisibility cloaks" would work by smoothly guiding light waves around objects so the waves ripple along their original trajectories as if nothing were there to obstruct them. Previous work found that cloaking devices that redirect other kinds of waves, such as sound waves, are possible as well.

But the new study's  researchers, from at the Technical University of Vienna, have developed a different strategy to render an object invisible — using a beam of invisibility.

Complex materials such as sugar cubes are opaque because their disorderly structures scatter light around inside them multiple times, said study senior author Stefan Rotter, a theoretical physicist at the Technical University of Vienna.

"A light wave can enter and exit the object, but will never pass through the medium on a straight line," Rotter said in a statement. "Instead, it is scattered into all possible directions."

With their new technique, Rotter and his colleagues did not want to reroute the light waves.

"Our goal was to guide the original light wave through the object, as if the object was not there at all. This sounds strange, but with certain materials and using our special wave technology, it is indeed possible," study co-author Andre Brandstötter, a theoretical physicist at the Technical University of Vienna, said in the statement.

The concept involves shining a beam, such as a laser, onto a material from above to pump it full of energy. This can alter the material's properties, making it transparent to other wavelengths of light coming in from the side.

"To achieve this, a beam with exactly the right pattern has to be projected onto the material from above — like from a standard video projector, except with much higher resolution," study lead author Konstantinos Makris, now at the University of Crete in Greece, said in a statement. [read more]

Fascinating, but I would think it would be hard to implement for everyday uses. Like for a spy for instance.

There is no black culture without America

Commentary from Meeke Addison on One News Now.com:

People have joked that the United States of America has no culture of its own. They've suggested that American culture is the collection of other cultures. That's partly true. America is an amazing tapestry of subcultures mixed together to give the country a unique, distinct, and very evident culture. America's culture is, in fact, the result of the great experiment that is our existence. We come from all over the world, and together we form what was once called a "melting pot." We're not required to lose the identity of our country of origin, but instead, we're celebrated for what we bring, adding to the culture at large.

I grew up attending public school in New Orleans where teachers taught us that we were an amazing country because we were made up of so many people groups. I remember having what was called "cultural assemblies." Our entire school would gather in the auditorium to watch our classmates display what made us who we are. It was an opportunity for us to learn what made America so great. I loved it! Seemingly, we all loved it. Seemingly, we all loved America. And that was normal.

But today something disheartening has happened. Today many subcultures are encouraged to hate America. It often feels that if you love this country and are an ethnic minority, then you must by default hate yourself. This is especially pronounced in black culture. It's confusing, particularly when one considers that black culture is American culture. In fact, it is a culture that is the result of America. In that way, black culture may be different from Italian, Japanese, French, or Hispanic cultures, which all brought their individual cultures and practices with them to the United States. These and various other cultures were then shaped by their new homeland. Black culture, on the other hand, is different. Black culture is uniquely American. It is birthed right here, proudly made in the USA.

……………………..

I love this country, with all of her flaws and scars. I'm an American. I'm ethnically and culturally black, and God caused all of it. He determined it, and I'm grateful. In America, inside my black culture, I met Jesus and received eternal life. Unfortunately, many Christians have lost the greatest reason to celebrate our countries of origin and even to value for our various ethnicities – the Lord's sovereignty. The apostle Paul in Acts 17:26-27 teaches, "[H]e made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. …" (Emphasis added.)

I celebrate the greatness of my country because God raised it up. I celebrate my country for all of the reasons people continue to risk their lives to come here and beg to remain here. More than anything, I love and celebrate my country because it is the country in which God caused me to live; He created me black and allowed me to find Him here as a black female living in America. I hope Christians who are white, Hispanic, or any other ethnicity feel the same way. [read more]

She evidently doesn’t believe in identity politics. Hmmm. Wonder what the Left would call her.

The Wisdom of Winston Churchill 5

One mark of a great man is the power of making lasting impressions upon the people he  meets.

There is a precipitous on either side of you-- a precipitous of caution in the precipitous of over-daring.

They're the most disagreeable of people.... Their insincerity? Can you not feel a sense of disgust at the arrogant presumption of superiority of these people? Superiority of intellect! Then, when it comes to practice, down they fall with a wallop not only to the level of ordinary human beings but to a level which is even far below the average.

These very high intellectual persons who wake up every morning... see what they can find to demolish, to undermine or cast away.

Let them quit these gospels of envy, hate and malice. Let them eliminate them from their politics and programs. Let them abandon the utter fallacy, the grotesque, erroneous fatal blunder of believing that by limiting the enterprise of man, by riveting the shackles of false equality... they will increase the well-being of the world.

What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes in to make this muddled world a better place to live in after we are gone?

The human story does not always unfold like a mathematical calculation.... [T]he element of the unexpected and unforeseeable is that gives some of its relish and saves us from falling into the mechanical thralldom of the logicians.

Logic, like science, must be the servant and not the master of man.

To change your mind is one thing; to turn on those who have followed your previous advice is another.

Source: The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill: A Treasury of More Than 1,000 Quotations and Anecdotes (1994) by James C. Humes.

Ten Principles of Health Care Reform

From FEE.org:

1. Government should not be determining what is or must be insured. That should be up to the consumers to decide.
2. Government should not interfere in contractual relationships between providers and purchasers of insurance, whether individuals or businesses.
3. Prices for medical services need to be completely decontrolled, and the convoluted market-rigging by a conspiracy of providers, insurers, and government welfare bureaucracies must be ended.
4. Government should not mandate coverage by employers or privilege employer-provided coverage over individually purchased coverage. Third-party payment should be an option.
5. Government should not mandate that insurers accept all comers at the same price; that system makes a mockery of the whole idea of insurance itself.
6. Discrimination for “pre-existing conditions” should not be a criminal act but rather a rational consideration for determining premiums.
7. Government should not restrict who gets to try their hand at providing insurance; entry and exit need to be competitive too.
8. Government should never force anyone to pay for a service that he or she does not want. You say coverage is a human right? It’s a human right for a person to refuse coverage.
9. If you want to get serious about fixing the system, the byzantine pharmaceutical system has to go. Again, let the consumers decide, and, while we are at it, there should be complete free trade in medicine.
10. The 100-year old medical credential monopoly that has so severely restricted entry into the profession should be dismantled. The market is fully capable of assuring quality, and remember too that there is not one definition of quality.

Source: “Real Health Insurance Is a Crime.” by Warren Gibson from Essential Guide to Healthcare (pdf).

Good ideas. Make sense.

Hitler may have come close to building atomic bomb, German treasure hunter finds

From Fox News.com (Sept. 26):

A pensioner in Brandenberg, Germany, was casting about with his metal detector last week when it gave an unusual ‘bleep’.

According to German media, it’s cause was what first appeared to be a nondescript but shiny lump of metal.

Then the 64-year-old hobbyist, Bernd Thälmann, gave it a quick test.

It was not magnetic.

This was odd. Bernd had been scouring the terrain around Oranienburg in Brandenberg for some time. He had some experience in what to expect to find.

After bringing it home and leaving it laying around for several days, he and his children began to do some digging on the properties of various metals

What they found caused them to became somewhat anxious.

He notified authorities.

He suddenly became the centre of a huge emergency services effort — including the evacuation and cordoning off of surrounding homes.

NAZI LINK

Men in hazmat suits moved into his house, and carefully packed his find into a special lead-lined container, which was itself put in a protective suitcase.

Now Bernd’s being investigated for possessing ‘unauthorised radioactive substances’.

Police have confirmed Bernd’s metallic find is radioactive. And they’ve also reportedly suggested a source.

Oranienburg was, during World War II, the location of a secret research facility.

It was working on enriching uranium oxide sourced from South America..

Its objective was to create weapons-grade plutonium.

This was to be the core a Nazi atomic bomb.

The research facility is long gone.

But it seems some rather telltale traces still remain.  [read more]

It sure was a good thing that Hitler didn’t build the atomic bomb. That would have been a game changer.

Miscellaneous Thoughts Part 42

• When you look at the Abyss, the Abyss looks back at you and bitch slaps you.
• A free press definition: Factual, objective and no attitude. I don’t even care if they are biased as along as those three conditions are met.    
• Usually when the republicans reach across the aisle in Congress they get their hands cut off. 
• If you can represent yourself in a court of law without a lawyer’s license why can’t you hire someone to represent you without a license? Lawyers would probably like to outlaw someone representing themselves too if they could get away with it.
• Term limits in Congress will never happen as long as the majority of members are addicted to power.
• Peer pressure –> Group think –> Socialism
• I think the Left is resisting reality and reasonableness. That’s their resistance movement.
• Congress should be the ones who drain-the-swamp. They won’t do it as long as they view their swamp as a luxurious swimming pool.
• The Law of the Jungle doesn’t care a whit about an endangered species.
• You can’t argue for small gov’t if you believe man can be made perfect or incorruptible by man himself. The corruptibility of man is the basic difference between the Left and Right viewpoints of the nature of man.

The Wisdom of Winston Churchill 4

A nation that forgets its past has no future.

Everyone can recognize history when it happens. Everyone can recognize history after it has happened; but it is only the wise man who knows at the moment what is vital and permanent, what is lasting in memorable.

Those who seek to plan the future should not forget the inheritance they have received from the past, for it is only by studying the past as well as drawing for the future that the story of man's struggle can be understood.

Nourish your hopes that do not overlook realities.

The human race cannot make progress without idealism, but it dealers them at other people's expense... cannot be regarded as its highest or noblest form.

Imagination, without deep in full knowledge, is a snare.

Individualism offers and infinitely graduated and infinitely varied system of records for genius, for enterprise, for exertion, for industry, for faithfulness, for thrift. Socialism destroys all this.

Innovation of course involves experiment. Experiments may or may not be fruitful.

On international law: Humanity, not legality, must be our guide.

What the horn is to rhinoceros, what the sting is to the wasp, the Mohammadan faith is to the Arabs.

It is a fine thing to be honest, but is also very important to be right.

Source: The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill: A Treasury of More Than 1,000 Quotations and Anecdotes (1994) by James C. Humes.

The Dangers of the Hackable Car

From The Wall Street Journal.com (Sept. 17):

Hackers may have a new target in their sights—one that’s just as central to everyday life as computers are.

Our cars.

As vehicles fill up with more digital controls and internet-connected devices, they’re becoming more vulnerable to cybercriminals, who can hack into those systems just like they can attack computers. Almost any digitally connected device in a car could become an entry point to the vehicle’s central communications network, opening a door for hackers to potentially take control by, for instance, disabling the engine or brakes.

There have been only a handful of successful hacks on vehicles so far, carried out mostly to demonstrate potential weaknesses—such as shutting down moving a car and taking control of another’s steering. But security experts paint a grim picture of what might lie ahead. They see a growing threat from malicious hackers who access cars remotely and keep their doors locked until a ransom is paid. Cybercriminals also could steal personal and financial data that cars are starting to collect about owners.

Or they might get even more ambitious. Some experts warn of a day when millions of fully internet-connected vehicles will be at risk of being hijacked remotely. A mass hack could be catastrophic for the self-driving cars of the future, especially if those cars don’t have steering wheels or other backup systems to let drivers take manual control.

Now the auto industry and lawmakers are rushing to meet these threats. Congress is proposing new standards that car companies must meet to guard against cyberattacks. Car makers are beefing up their software to make their vehicles tougher to hack, as well as reaching out to benevolent hackers to help them identify potential security flaws.

While there are disagreements among manufacturers and security experts about the exact magnitude of the possible threats, there is a widespread consensus that action is needed immediately to minimize risks. [read more]

Hopefully, the car manufacturers will beef up the computer security in cars because just about any computer can be hacked.

The Wisdom of Winston Churchill 3

Expert knowledge, however indispensable, is no substitute for a generous and comprehending outlook upon a human story with all its sadness - with all its unquenchable hope.

You must look at facts because they look at you.

The idea that nothing is true except what we comprehend is silly.

It is bad for a nation when it is without faith.

There's no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human society, are created, strengthened and maintained.

A fanatic is one who won't change his mind and won't change the subject.

The best method of acquiring flexibility is to have three or four plans for all the probable contingencies all worked out with the utmost detail.

A nation without a conscience is a nation without a soul. A nation without a soul is a nation that cannot live.

Never surrender ourselves to servitude and shame whatever the cost may be.

If you destroy a free-market, you create a black market.

Some people's idea of free speech is that they are free to say what they like but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage.

I have no fear of the future. Let us go forward into the mysterious, let us tear aside the veils which hide it from our eyes and let us move onward with confidence and courage.

Source: The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill: A Treasury of More Than 1,000 Quotations and Anecdotes (1994) by James C. Humes. 

Quit Obamacare And Build Your Own Mutual Aid Organization

From FEE.org (Sept. 14):

A better way to manage health care costs without the federal government’s involvement is for us to do it ourselves through mutual aid. The mutual aid model has been around for decades in the form of health care sharing ministries (HCSMs). HCSMs are not-for-profit religious organizations that act as clearinghouses for people with similar strong beliefs and who wish to share their medical expenses with each other. HCSMs organize the efforts of their participants by funneling grassroots financial support towards those participants who incur medical expenses.

The most important thing people need to understand about HCSMs is that they are NOT insurance. Whereas the relationship between a policyholder and an insurance company is contractual, the relationship within an HCSM is a covenantal agreement between individual participants.

How My HCSM Works

Each month, the HCSM publishes a newsletter that it distributes to all participants. The newsletter lists participants who have incurred legitimate medical expenses, and it directs other participants to send a previously agreed-upon amount of money to those with medical expenses. Gift givers are also encouraged to pray for those to whom they send money.

Recipients are given a list of participants the HCSM has assigned to send them money, and when they receive it, they cross that gift giver’s name off the list. Assigned gift givers who are late in sending funds are reported to the HCSM, who will remind them of their commitment. If they still don’t send the gifts they agreed to, they get dropped from the program.

There are no financial reserves, no legal protections, and no lawsuits; there are only thousands of participants helping each other with medical expenses, organized by an HCSM. Eleven months per year, gifts are sent to participants and one month per year, a gift is sent to the HCSM to cover the costs of running the organization. The overhead cost of the program is only 8.3%, which is significantly less than the 20% of overhead expenses and profit insurance companies are allowed under Obamacare.

Most HCSMs hold strict lifestyle and moral guidelines for participation: no tobacco, drug use, sex outside of marriage, and only moderate alcohol use. Some require overweight participants to demonstrate good faith efforts and progress towards losing weight. All participants are ultimately responsible for paying their medical bills, and participants are expected to negotiate lower fees from their health care providers before submitting a medical share need to the HCSM.

HCSMs don’t pay for preventive care; mammograms, pap smears, and annual physical exams; all these services are paid for by the participants themselves. Most HCSMs (but not all) require members to be active church attendees, and several require a pastor’s signature verifying a participant’s commitment to the HCSMs lifestyle and faith obligations. With that said, there is no reason (other than political) why people of different worldviews and values couldn’t organize their own health care sharing programs around common values and needs.  [read more]

Another good idea that the Obamacare designers never thought of. Then again the designers wants the citizens dependent on the gov’t for their healthcare.

Leftism Is Not Liberalism. Here Are the Differences.

Commentary from Dennis Prager on The Daily Signal.com:

What is the difference between a leftist and a liberal?

Answering this question is vital to understanding the crisis facing America and the West today. Yet few seem able to do it. I offer the following as a guide.

Here’s the first thing to know: The two have almost nothing in common.

On the contrary, liberalism has far more in common with conservatism than it does with leftism. The left has appropriated the word “liberal” so effectively that almost everyone—liberals, leftists, and conservatives—thinks they are synonymous.

But they aren’t. Let’s look at some important examples.

Race: This is perhaps the most obvious of the many moral differences between liberalism and leftism.

The essence of the liberal position on race was that the color of one’s skin is insignificant. To liberals of a generation ago, only racists believed that race is intrinsically significant. However, to the left, the notion that race is insignificant is itself racist.

Thus, the University of California officially regards the statement, “There is only one race, the human race,” as racist.

For that reason, liberals were passionately committed to racial integration. Liberals should be sickened by the existence of black dormitories and separate black graduations on university campuses.

Capitalism: Liberals have always been pro-capitalism, recognizing it for what it is: the only economic means of lifting great numbers out of poverty.

Liberals did often view government as able to play a bigger role in lifting people out of poverty than conservatives, but they were never opposed to capitalism, and they were never for socialism. Opposition to capitalism and advocacy of socialism are leftist values.

Nationalism: Liberals deeply believed in the nation-state, whether their nation was the United States, Great Britain, or France.

The left has always opposed nationalism because leftism is rooted in class solidarity, not national solidarity. The left has contempt for nationalism, seeing in it intellectual and moral primitivism at best, and the road to fascism at worst.

Liberals always wanted to protect American sovereignty and borders. The notion of open borders would have struck a liberal as just as objectionable as it does a conservative.  [read more]

What Mr. Prager calls a liberal is what sometimes are called the Old Left—eg FDR, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, etc. Although, Woodrow Wilson was a racist so he doesn’t completely fit the definition of a liberal. Senator Joe Biden is a liberal. The New Left got started somewhere in the 1960s.

The Wisdom of Winston Churchill 2

There is no case for a quarrel between wealth and poverty, it is a quarrel between methods of government and themes of government.

Great quarrels... arise from small occasions that but seldom from small causes.

The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is a rectitude and sincerity of his actions.

The difference between our outlook [conservatism] and the Socialist outlook is the difference between the ladder and the queue. We are for the ladder. Let all try their best to climb. They are for the queue.*

The Conservative Party stands for a way of life which at every stage multiplies the choice open to the Socialist devotees... We plan for choices they plan for rules.

Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.

We must beware of trying to build a society in which no one counts for anything except a politician or an official, or a society where enterprise gains no reward and thrift no privileges.

Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities... Because it is the quality which guarantees all others.

Defeat is one thing; disgrace is another.

It is the people who control the Government - not the Government the people.

Dictatorship: the fetish worship of one man.

The process of the creation of new wealth is beneficial to the whole community.

Source: The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill: A Treasury of More Than 1,000 Quotations and Anecdotes (1994) by James C. Humes.

*Bernie Sanders things waiting in line is a good thing because the successful has to wait in line too. Never mind that the poor and middle class has to wait in line for food too under socialism. That’s okay as long as the rich gets their punishment or as Sanders might say their “justice.” That should make the other groups feel better.

Nazism, Marxist Socialism, and AntiFa Differences

Source: What's Worse Than Liberal Socialism? Marxist Socialism from FEE.org

Basically, there are no differences according diagram above. Only the goals are different. Another commonality: All love big gov’t.

AntiFa and groups like them are just trying to implement Van Jones “top down—bottom up—inside out strategy.” AntiFa is the bott0m-up part. George Soros or whoever to controlling and donating money to AntiFa is the top-down part. Guess who is the inside-out part? If you said the American people, you would be correct. 

Hackers could train sex robots to kill, cyber security expert warns

From Fox News.com (Sept. 11):

A cyber security buff has issued a bizarre warning that sex robots could one day rise up and kill their owners if hackers can get inside their heads.

Last month, tech billionaire Elon Musk claimed that artificial intelligence could take over the planet, and he's not the only one concerned about the dangers of killer tech.

With sex robots becoming increasingly popular and sophisticated, Cyber security lecturer Dr. Nick Patterson revealed that the lifelike dolls could end up going all Terminator on us.

However, in the case of sex robots, the danger isn't that the love dolls will end up developing minds of their own, Westworld-style.

Instead, the risk is that hackers could breach the realistic robots' inner defenses and catch out their owners with their pants down.

Dr. Patterson told Star Online that hacking into many modern-day robots, including sexbots, would be a piece of cake compared to more sophisticated gadgets like mobiles and computers.

The tech expert, from Deakin University, Australia, said: "Hackers can hack into a robot or a robotic device and have full control of the connections, arms, legs and other attached tools like in some cases knives or welding devices.

“Once a robot is hacked, the hacker has full control and can issue instructions to the robot." [read more]

Well, if hackers can hack any computer system they can hack sexbots or any domestic robot for that matter like Rosie the Robot on the Jetsons cartoon. You wouldn’t want a robocook to come after you with a butcher knife. That wouldn’t be good.

The Wisdom of Winston Churchill

Youth for freedom and reform, maturity for judicious compromise, and old age for stability and repose.

If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you in only a precarious chance of survival.

An appeaser is one who feeds the crocodile hoping it will eat him last.

If the present tries to sit in judgment of the past, it will lose the future.

Books in all their variety are often the means by which civilization maybe carried triumphantly forward.

Broadly speaking, human beings may be divided into three classes:  those who are billed to death; those who are worried to death; and those who are bored to death.

On campaigning:   
First of all grin or as they say "smile." There is nothing like it. Next, be natural and quite easy as if you were talking to people in a quiet place about something in which you were much interested.
Third, cultivate a sense of detachment from the clatter and clamor proceeding around you.

The vice of capitalism is that it stands for the unequal sharing of blessings; whereas the virtue of socialism is that it stands for the equal sharing of misery.

Is it better to have equality at the price of poverty or well-being at the price of inequality?

Do not let us speak of Darker days, let us speak rather of sterner days.

Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

The more man's choice is free, the more likely it is to be wise and fruitful not only to the chosen but to the community in which he dwells.

The flame of Christian ethics is still our best guide... only on this basis can we reconcile the rights of the individual with the demands of society.

Source: The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill: A Treasury of More Than 1,000 Quotations and Anecdotes (1994) by James C. Humes.

Hillary Clinton could have used the political advice.

There Is No Such Thing as a ‘Deserving Dreamer’

From The Daily Signal.com (Sept. 6):

Over and over again, from the mouths of politicians in both parties, identity politics purveyors and cheap labor lobbyists, we hear the same refrains about President Barack Obama’s 800,000 amnestied illegal alien youths:

“They don’t deserve to be punished.”

“They deserve protection.”

“They deserve the American dream.”

Deserve, deserve, deserve.

Over and over again, in countless cookie-cutter op-ed pieces published over the past month, so-called Dreamers have vociferously lamented President Donald Trump’s push to eventually undo their unconstitutional five-year reprieves from deportation, plus coveted work permits:

“Dreamers like me have flourished under DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). Trump might take it all away.”

“If Trump ends DACA, Dreamers like me will return to a life of anxiety and doubt.”

“I feel exhausted, I feel frustrated, I feel angry, and in the worst moments, I feel helpless. I feel terrified that at any moment this program is going to be taken away and once again I won’t be able to work—how will I pay my bills? … What is going to happen to me if I get stopped on the street and I no longer have DACA? What’s going to happen to me if I get put into deportation proceedings and I don’t have thousands of dollars to hire an attorney to stay in this country?”

…………………..

Since when did DACA become the Depression and Anxiety Cure for Amnesty-seekers?

It’s this insatiable appetite for collective entitlement that demonstrates the perils of blanket amnesty. Give a privileged political class an inch and they’ll take, take, take until feckless public servants give away their country.

The proper response to illegal alien activists demanding that Washington act “Now!” to preserve their comfort, allay their anxieties, and extend their unconstitutional protections indefinitely is this:

Why?

Americans in uniform who’ve dedicated their lives to defending our nation are struggling to gain access to quality health care they’ve earned by action, not by accident or circumstance. Imagine their stress.

Five million American young people between 16-34 were unemployed last year and 50 million more are not even in the labor force. Imagine their anxiety.

Hundreds of thousands of law-abiding people from around the world are waiting patiently for their backlogged visa and green card applications to be reviewed. Imagine their frustration.

Why don’t their dreams come first?  [read more]

Good question. Shouldn’t legal immigrants dreams come first? Shouldn’t immigrants who want to be citizens have their citizenship streamlined? Or is it because the Dems think the term “dreamer” means an illegal who dreams about voting for the Democrat party? Just asking.

Dreamers used be called anchor babies. Maybe that’s a derogatory term. Then let’s call them “children of illegals.” That’s more accurate, I think, and to the point.

The term “dreamer” is a stereotype. It makes the children of illegals sound warm and fuzzy. Well, that may or may not be the case. Some anchor babies are in gangs. And like all stereotype the term “dreamer” can be good or bad. Usually, bad.

5 Reasons Marxism Has Nothing to Offer Millennials

From FEE.org:

For millennials looking to shake off a dull weekend with a good economics or philosophy book, Marxism is one topic you might want to avoid. Anyone who has taken the time to read either Karl Marx or Friedrich Engels would, hopefully, realize just how lucky they are to live in a relatively free society. But for those who do manage to find some merit in Marxism, here are five things every millennial should consider before subjecting their minds to the oft-appealing ideology.

1. Millennials Love Choice, Marxism Rejects It

Marxist doctrine discourages individual creativity in favor of state control over both social and economic aspects of life. It favors an economy dominated by the state, which is antithetical to a generation that loves innovation and choice. Even the most zealous socialists still have personal preferences: which movies to watch on Netflix, where to go out to eat via Uber or Lyft. Millennials would not be willing to sacrifice their real-world lifestyles for the utopian promises of Marxism.

………………………

2. Violence Is The Marxist Way

Karl Marx believed that violence was one of the primary means to defeat the capitalist order. For example, he responded to the 1849 counter-revolution in Vienna by explicitly encouraging his followers to embrace terrorism. Marx wrote:

“There is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror.”

This statement would later inspire the violent radicalization of Soviet dictator, Vladimir Lenin—an avid devotee of Marx. Lenin eventually toppled the Russian democracy in 1917 and condemned millions of his own people to starvation and terror.

………………………

3. Marxism Discourages Public Dissent

Nowadays, governments are more responsible to their people greatly because of open public criticism and the possibility of revolt against an authoritarian state. Marxism only encourages revolt against capitalist government. But the “dictatorship of the proletariat” is to be absolute and unquestioned.

Marx and Engels were clear about their ideal government. For instance, Engels posited in The Iroquois Gens, a section of his 1884 book The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, how crucial it is that the proletarian government maintain unchallenged authority. He glorified the workers' government, which he said was a natural extension of the family, drawing from the ideas of American social theorist Lewis H. Morgan.

This would be a non-starter for millennials, many of whom bridle against authority and are very keen on voicing criticism and their opinions in general.

4. Marxism Is the Gateway to Communism

Millennials are big fans of market freedom, in deed if not in expression. It wouldn't be out of the ordinary to see a Che Guevarra t-shirt on an iPhone-using Uber driver. However, Marxism ultimately results in system tantamount to universal slavery: a condition that would be absolutely intolerable to a generation accustomed to the app economy and everything-on-demand.

For example, Joseph Stalin’s forced land reforms between 1928 and 1933 exemplifies the brutality of communism. The Soviet leadership thought that collectivization would increase the use of the countryside for urban and industrial needs due to increasing demand for food by workers in industrializing Russia. Stalin forced his people to labor on their own farms and harvest their own crops all in the name of the state. This resulted in nearly ten million Russians dying due to excessive labor and starvation.

………………………..

5. Tear down this Wall

Communism ended in Eastern Europe in 1989 and since then, greater economic freedom has made governments more accountable to its people. Nowadays, criticizing the state is a fundamental right in most countries. It is highly unlikely that millennials would support a reversal of history when the world is such a better place to live in today.

Before communist nations like China started their capitalist reforms, the majority of the world was relatively poor. Millions died of poverty and hundreds of thousands were incarcerated. If Marxist ideals had dominated the world, many of the beautiful things humanity has achieved would be non-existent.

An authoritarian regime is the greatest enemy of freedom. Millennials need more liberty and more choice and Marxism does not offer these things. Therefore, we are better off appreciating the ideas of John Locke and Adam Smith, which have saved more lives than all the Marxist philosophers from Karl Marx to Slavoj Žižek.  [read more]

The three words that make brainstorming sessions at Google, Facebook, and IDEO more productive

From QZ.com (July 10):

Brainstorming can be a tricky business. There’s the awkward silence when your boss asks a far-fetched question and no one knows how to respond. The fear that you’ll toss out an idea only to draw blank stares. The collective sense of disappointment when the whole team wants to help, but can’t come up with anything new.

To avoid these pitfalls, the design firm IDEO has developed a brainstorming strategy that relies on three simple words: the phrase “How might we.”

At a recent creative leadership class at the firm’s office in New York City, put on by Adobe’s 99U conference, nearly every question was framed as a “How might we,” or HMW: How might we make our teams more engaged? How might we foster deeper relationships between employees? How might we inspire more frequent knowledge-sharing? The same approach is popular at Google and Facebook, according to the Harvard Business Review.

While the phrase “How might we” seems pretty basic, each word is intended to serve a specific purpose. “How” asks employees to be descriptive, “might” suggests there are good answers, but not a single correct answer, and “we” evokes inclusivity and teamwork, says Duane Bray, IDEO’s global head of talent. [read more]

Interesting. Congress could use this technique: How might we have the country more productive? How might we make the country more freer? How might we make citizens more personal responsible for their lives? Just thinking out loud.

Entrepreneurs Have Been Proving Experts Wrong Forever

Commentary from Ilya Pestov on FEE.org:

Below, I’ve listed the very worst predictions, which show how even the titans of industry don’t always know what they’re talking about. Whether they were predictions about technological progress, adoption rates, or market potential, we can all agree that these predictions were dead wrong.

1876: “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication.” — William Orton, President of Western Union.

1876: “The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.” — Sir William Preece, chief engineer, British Post Office.

1889: “Fooling around with alternating current (AC) is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever.” — Thomas Edison.

1903: “The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty — a fad.” —President of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford’s lawyer, Horace Rackham, not to invest in the Ford Motor Company.

1921: “The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to no one in particular?” — Associates of David Sarnoff responding to the latter’s call for investment in the radio.  [read more]

Physicists thought one time that atoms could not be manipulated individually. Now, we have nanotechnology. Unless there is a scientific reason why a product cannot be done then sometime in the future it could be. Even a scientific principles can change. One time scientists thought the sun revolved around the earth and the moon didn’t have craters.

Even in the fine arts experts can be wrong. A record company told The Beatles “we don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.”

The lesson here: Be skeptical or leery of experts.

Eliminating Down Syndrome Children Is Not Something to Be Proud Of

From The Daily Signal.com (Aug. 16):

This week, the CBS News program “On Assignment” included a long feature on what it described as the near eradication of Down syndrome in Iceland.

As the story unfolded, viewers learned of the impact of genetic screening and abortion on a countrywide scale.

On that tiny island, known to people mostly for its geothermal pools and Northern Lights, what one scientist called “heavy-handed genetic counseling” has led to the death in utero of nearly every boy and girl affected by Down syndrome.

The CBS News report focused on a single nation, but the trend toward elimination of children with Down syndrome is tragically widespread.

New genetic screening tools available earlier in pregnancy have exacerbated this situation, leading to the lethal rejection of the majority, perhaps the vast majority, of these children worldwide.

In France, an estimated 96 percent of children with Down syndrome are killed before birth. In the United States, estimates range between 61 percent and 93 percent.

There is no haven for these children, no safe place that tells them they are no more imperfect, no less beautiful, than you or I am.

Just 27 years ago, a future U.S. surgeon general, testifying before Congress, looked forward to the day when Down syndrome could be eliminated in America.

She did not mean by ameliorating the disease itself. She meant by searching for and destroying children who have the condition, which she said would have “an important, and positive, public-health effect.”  [read more]

Eugenics anyone? I wonder if they aborting these children because the Down syndrome children are happier than the people in Iceland. Actually, the truth is because the children are imperfect. That’s why. What’s next? Children with muscular dystrophy or mental disorders?

Notes on the The Great Partnership Book

The premise of the book: Both science and religion are compatible. Science analyzes and explains and religion integrates. Science breaks things down to their component parts. Religion binds people together in relationships of trust.

The founders of modern European politics were religious, and their key text was the Hebrew Bible. Using it as their warrant, they developed three revolutionary principles.

1. All legitimate constitutions are republican.
2. One of the tasks of the state is to fight poverty, if need be by redistribution of income and the widening of land ownership.
3. Principle of toleration, that it is no business of the state to legislate in matters of religious belief.

All three propositions were based, not on Plato or Aristotle, but on Leviticus and Deuteronomy and the books of Samuel and Kings.

Politics is about power, and at the heart of of the Abrahamic vision is a critique of power. Power is a fundamental assault on human dignity. When a person exercises power over another, the exerciser denies freedom to the other person, and that is dangerous to both. A free political order is possible only when the fundamental political act is a mutual promise between governor and governed [author’s emphasis]. But no human being can be trusted to keep his or her word when he or she has access to power – a power not available to opponents. Sooner or later, if not in the lifetime of the ruler, then in that of his/her descendants, there is an inescapable risk of tyranny.

Darwinism has immense religious implications:

1. It tells us that God delights in diversity.
2. This is Darwin’s wondrous discovery: the Creator made creation creative. We already knew that he made man creative. Now, thanks to Darwin, we know that is applies to nature too.
3. We know now that all life derives from a single source. The three-letter words of genetic code are the same in every creature.
4. Science and Genesis have now converged, in an utterly unexpected way, on the same metaphor. Life is linguistic.
5. The interconnectedness of all life – the fact that plants, animals and humans have a common origin – helps us understand in new depth the Bible’s phrasing, ‘Let the Earth bring forth…’ and its generic name for Homo sapiens, Adam (from adamah, meaning ‘the Earth’).

If there is no Judge, there is no reason to expect justice. If there is no God, there is no transcendental ‘Thou shalt not.’ Lose belief in God, and sooner or later you may lose belief in the possibility and necessity of justice.

Source: The Great Partnership. Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning (2011) by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.

Even Atheists Judge Atheists

From Live Science.com (Aug. 8):

Even people who don't believe in God judge other nonbelievers as less moral than religious types, new research finds.

The study showed that in 13 very different countries, people were more likely to think that a serial killer must be an atheist rather than a believer. These findings persisted even in highly secular countries such as Finland and China; they were also true even for people who reported zero belief in God.

"Even as secularism reduces overt religiosity in many places, religion has apparently still left a deep and abiding mark on human moral intuitions," study researcher Will Gervais, a psychologist at the University of Kentucky, wrote with his colleagues Aug. 7 in the journal Nature Human Behaviour. [read more]

You don’t have to be religious to judge people. The Left like Hillary Clinton believe people who don’t believe like she does are inferior. She called them “irredeemable deplorables.” In her last book, Clinton called President Trump a creep.

4 Lessons From History's Greatest Inventors

Commentary by Adam Noar on FEE.org:

I spend a lot of time reading about entrepreneurship and innovation because I admire people who take sensible but daring risks. I want to be more like them.

I recently left Google to start a technology company. I’ve spent much of my time talking with other founders. And I’ve read countless books and articles about the nature of startups.

But still, I’ve struggled to answer this fundamental question: What are the most important lessons from history’s innovators?

Thankfully, I discovered some thoughtful answers in the work of British author Harold Evans. The words he wrote left an indelible impression on me. And now I’m going to share with you some his most important insights.

Lesson #1: Make No Assumptions

“Ignorance that ignites curiosity is a better starting point than half-knowledge.” – Harold Evans

Edwin Armstrong exemplified this lesson. He was constantly trying to do things in radio circuitry he was told by the experts was impossible. He went on to invent FM Radio.

………………

Lesson #2: It’s OK to Borrow

More innovations come from borrowing and combination than from simple invention.

Jean Nidetch did not invent the diet she used for Weight Watchers.

Nolan Bushnell, who established Atari, did not invent the first home made video game.

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Lesson #3: Nothing Works the First Time

“Too often impatient entrepreneurs expect instant results. History shows us that there are a hundred setbacks for every change.” – Harold Evans

USA Today, Amazon.com, and CNN struggled initially, but later thrived because their basic ideas were sound.

Innovation is often cut too soon because backers fail to appreciate that it takes time to work out the wrinkles.

……………………

Lesson #4: The Whole Can Be Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts

“Isolated innovators may produce wonders but they are more likely to succeed in a knowledge network, whether connected by geography or electronics. Connections between innovators are ubiquitous – one good innovation deserves another.” – Harold Evans

Many innovators flourish in partnerships. Take the partnership of Wozniak and Jobs at Apple. Or the partnership of Ida and William Rosenthal at Maidenform. Then there’s Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark at Netscape. The Wright brothers, and Sergey Brin and Larry Page at Google, the list goes on.   [read more]

Principles for Defeating Alinsky Tactics

1. Anticipate that the tactics will be used against you. You MUST be prepared with a response that does four things: (1) The response must adequately answer and/or deflect the charge; (2) The response must be sincere and honest; (3) The response must reveal the tactics they are using; (4) The response must flip the tactic and transfer the pressure from you to your opponent.
2. Define yourself positively before your opposition has the chance to define you.
3. Use ridicule to your advantage.   There are two things to keep in mind when using ridicule: (1) ridiculing your opponent can be effective if it is funny and not mean-spirited; (2) ridiculing yourself in a self-deprecating manner can be just as effective as ridiculing your opponent.
4. Emulate their use of Alinsky’s fourth rule – make them live up to their own book of rules.
5. Force your opponent to back up any and all accusations made against you.
6. Refuse to be targeted, and refuse to be smeared with the deeds of others.
7. Fight fire with fire.
8. Embrace religion, and not run from it.
9. Use what your opposition gives you.
10. Take away their talking points.
11. Be open and honest about your faults and failures from the outset. If your position on an issue has evolved, then admit it and explain what changed your mind. Remember, even Ronald Reagan was a Democrat at one time.
12. Never apologize for success, and extol the virtues of opportunity and individual achievement.
13. Always to make your argument, and your candidacy, about America. America’s best days are still square in front of her. NEVER apologize for America!
14. Not to allow yourself to be lumped in with any group or any less than flattering ideology.
15. Always to project America as strong.
16. Think more than one move ahead.
17. Know both sides of the issue.
18. Control the pressure.   Always force your opponent to react.
19. “Don’t fall for ‘implied’ attacks”.
20. Remember that the sooner you reveal anything that can be used against you – the sooner it will become old news.

Source: Rules for Radicals Defeated: A Practical Guide for Defeating Obama/Alinsky Tactics (2012) by Jeff Hedgpeth.

Good advice to anyone debating the Left especially conservative politicians even if Obama is out of office. The Left still use Alinksy tactics. Hillary Clinton sure does.

6 Stories of Super Successes Who Overcame Failure

From Entrepreneur.com (Dec. 8, 2014):

Failure is not the alternative to success. It’s something to be avoided, but it’s also only a temporary setback on a bigger, more significant course. Everybody encounters failure at one point or another. What truly matters is how you react to and learn from that failure.

Take the stories of these six entrepreneurs. Their stories end in massive success, but all of them are rooted in failure. They’re perfect examples of why failure should never stop you from following your vision.

1. Arianna Huffington got rejected by 36 publishers.
2. Bill Gates watched his first company crumble.
3. George Steinbrenner bankrupted a team.
4. Walt Disney was told he lacked creativity.
5. Steve Jobs was booted from his own company.
6. Milton Hershey started three candy companies before Hershey's.

Draw inspiration from these stories the next time you experience failure, no matter the scale. In the moment, some failure might seem like the end of the road, but remember, there are countless successful men and women in the world today who are only enjoying success because they decided to push past the inevitable bleakness of failure.

Learn from your mistakes, reflect and accept the failure, but revisit your passion and keep pursuing your goals no matter what.  [read more]

 

Marijuana Use Linked to Increased Risk of Dying from High Blood Pressure

From Live Science.com (Aug. 9):

Smoking pot is often considered safer than smoking cigarettes, but a new study suggests that marijuana use may increase a person's risk of death from high blood pressure.

Over the two-decade-long study period, marijuana users, whose level and frequency of smoking was not assessed in the study, had a more than threefold greater risk of dying from hypertension than nonusers. This increase in risk was greater than that associated with cigarette smoking, the researchers said.

"Support for liberal marijuana use is partly due to claims that it is beneficial, and possibly not harmful, to health," lead study author Barbara Yankey, a doctoral student of epidemiology and biostatistics at Georgia State University, said in a statement. "However, there is little research on the impact of marijuana use on cardiovascular and [stroke] mortality." [read more]

Thoughts of Max Picard

Only in a world of total discontinuity could a nullity such as Hitler become Führer, because only where everything is disjointed has comparison fallen into disuse. There was only Hitler, the nullity, before everybody’s eyes, and in this instable world wherein everything was changing at every moment one was glad that at least the one nullity, Hitler, remained stable before one’s eyes. An orderly world, a hierarchy, would automatically have placed the nullity, Hitler, into nothingness; he could not have been noticed. Hitler was the excrement of a diabolical world; a world of truth in its order would have pushed him aside. . . .

There is no permanence in this world of discontinuity. The ego exists only in the moment and for the moment. The individual, therefore, can have no evolution in the dimension of time. Everything has to be done in far too little time; hence, the individual gets restless and nervous. In discontinuity the individual also lacks context with his own personal history; he is lacking in the possibility of joining an experience with the context of previous experiences. Since life is lived solely in the moment and for the moment, the moment must carry all the burden; if the experience of a moment is grave, the individual is hit all the harder because the burden cannot be distributed through context with other things. That is what aggravates, exhausts, and unnerves the individual. The ego cries out loud; unable to expand in the dimension of time, the ego in its crying need explodes itself into the dimension of space. Then Hitler came and took over the job of crying into space for all the others, and because his was the loudest cry, he was accepted by all.

Western capitalism doesn’t have any humor either, today, and that comes from the fact that the West has lost its faith. A sense of humor can exist only in a world of faith. For in humor is a trace of the smile with which God observes the mistakes of man. That trace of God’s smile, in man, is our sense of humor.

Source: “Max Picard: A Man of Vision in Our Time.” The Essential Russell Kirk: Selected Essays (2006) by George A. Panichas [editor].

From Kleenex to Zippers: The Unpredictable Results of Entrepreneurs

Commentary from Burton W. Folsom on FEE.org:

The 1920s was a decade that taught us many lessons in economics—perhaps foremost among them is that cutting tax rates encouraged entrepreneurs to invest in a variety of revolutionary products, from radios to refrigerators.

A corollary lesson, however, is also important: When entrepreneurs are turned loose and their property rights are protected, what they eventually produce can’t be predicted—even by them. I want to describe four products that became part of American life in the 1920s—Kleenex tissues, the zipper, air conditioning, and Scotch tape.

Kimberly-Clark developed the material in Kleenex tissues from wood pulp in World War I as a substitute for cotton, which was in short supply. Originally called cellucotton, it was first used in wadded form as a surgical dressing. Later in the war, in its modern tissue form, it was used as a filter in gas masks.

After the war Kimberly-Clark had large supplies of cellucotton on hand and the company searched for years for new uses for their product. Finally, in 1924 the cellucotton became Kleenex tissues. The marketing staff at Kimberly-Clark believed the tissues had a niche market for removing cold cream and other cosmetics. Endorsements from Hollywood stars such as Helen Hayes and Gertrude Lawrence promoted Kleenex as soft and efficient for cleaning their faces.

Fortunately for Kimberly-Clark, their marketers were wise enough to read their mail, and expand their market. Many letters from customers asked,“Why don’t you ever say it’s good for blowing your nose?” That led the company to do test-marketing—and yes, indeed, more customers preferred Kleenex tissues to handkerchiefs. In fact, the company now boasted that tissues were healthier because they were disposable. “Don’t put a cold in your pocket” was the theme of the next wave of advertising. In 1929 Kimberly-Clark introduced the pop-up box. Sales grew further and were even strong during the Great Depression of the 1930s. [read more]

No planned economy can create products like those named in the article above. Why? Because socialism and communism cannot manufacture creativity and innovation. Although a planned economy can hamper creativity and innovation.

It is interesting to note that the most inventions came out of the 1920s when conservative Calvin Coolidge was president. Coincidence? I’ll let the reader decide.

Cannabis reduces creativity, but user generally not aware

From Science Daily.com (October 4, 2016):

Regular users of cannabis are less aware of their own mistakes, and they are not good at creative thinking. This is the conclusion drawn by psychologist Mikael Kowal from his research on the effects of cannabis. PhD defence 6 October.

Dopamine

Kowal conducted experiments on 40 regular users of cannabis. The control group of 20 non-users were given a placebo. Kowal studied the direct and chronic effects of cannabis on dopamine-related functions, such as creative thinking and the ability to recognise one's own mistakes. The brain chemical dopamine is important for the proper working of the brain and also plays a role in learning performance.

Less good at brainstorming

Kowal's research showed that cannabis users were less able to brainstorm, a mental process that is crucial for creative performance: 'There is a widespread belief among users that these drugs enhance creativity. This experiment disproves that belief.'

Poor at recognising mistakes

Kowal also demonstrated that for chronic users the brain processes involved in monitoring mistakes also work less effectively. A high dose of cannabis seems to influence both the unconscious processing of mistakes and also the later and more conscious stages of error processing. Kowal: 'It is important that we gather more knowledge about the effects of cannabis on a person's ability to detect mistakes. This can help with putting together a treatment programme for drug addiction.'  [read more]

I don’t think the dopers are aware of much around them unless they are low on Doritos. Or dope for that matter.

Thoughts of George Santayana

Individualism is the only ideal possible; and if individuals are subordinated to the state, it is only that they may fulfill their devotion to things rational and impersonal, a higher individualism. For a time, democracy and individualism exhibit a parallel growth; but presently democratic legislation presumes to regulate all things, and industrial liberalism, supported by democracy, aspires to replace individuality by efficient standardization; thus the man who loves beauty and variety will endeavor (like Socrates in Dialogues in Limbo) to puncture the bubbles of social planners who have forgotten the real aim of society, the life of mind and art.

“If you refuse to move in the prescribed direction, you are not simply different, you are arrested and perverse. The savage must not remain a savage, nor the nun a nun, and China must not keep its wall.”

“A man without traditions, if he could only be materially well equipped, would be purer, more rational, more virtuous than if he had been an heir to anything. Weh dir, dass du ein Enkel bist! Blessed are the orphans, for they shall deserve to have children; blessed the American!”

“Liberalism has merely cleared a field in which every soul and every corporate interest may fight with every other for domination. Whoever is victorious in this struggle will make an end of liberalism; and the new order, which will deem itself saved, will have to defend itself in the following age against a new crop of rebels.”

Source: “George Santayana Buries Liberalism.” The Essential Russell Kirk: Selected Essays (2006) by George A. Panichas [editor].

The text in quotes are the actually thoughts of George Santayana about the Left believes.

Old Planned Parenthood pamphlet: Abortion is ‘dangerous’ to the ‘life and health’ of women

From Live Action.org (June 11):

An undated pamphlet from Planned Parenthood Federation of America, formerly named the Birth Control Federation of America, reveals that abortion is not health care, as the abortion giant now unabashedly claims. Instead, the pamphlet, housed online by Smith College Libraries, describes abortion as a procedure that “kills life after it has begun” and “dangerous” to the “life and health” of the mother.

In discussing birth control, it reads: “Abortion kills life after it has begun. … Abortion is dangerous to your life and health.”

The back of the pamphlet also contains Planned Parenthood’s iconic slogan, “every child a wanted child,” which may stem from the eugenics movement. Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger, was a staunch eugenicist who held racist affiliations and believed in the elimination of certain groups of people. Sanger, who despised the poor, the sick, the disabled, and immigrants, noted that one of the methods to “weed out the unfit” and breed a “pure” human race is through birth control. [read more]

Interesting. Planned Parenthood would probably say now, unlike back then, abortions are safe.

How Trump Could Force Congress and Its Staff to Live Under Obamacare

From The Daily Signal.com (July 31):

President Donald Trump could have Congress in an uncomfortable corner over the lawmakers’ exemption, and that of their staff, from Obamacare.

“This is one more instance of Congress passing an unpleasant, expensive, onerous law on citizens and then conferring a valuable benefit on itself,” Joe Morris, former general counsel for the Office of Personnel Management, told The Daily Signal.

Over the weekend, Trump tweeted that he could take away the exemption, granted by the Obama administration’s Office of Personnel Management, to prod Congress toward agreement on getting rid of Obamacare.

The provision provides what critics say is tantamount to an unconstitutional waiver for members of Congress and their staff from rules mandated by the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare.

To exempt themselves, the 535 lawmakers and their more than 13,000 staffers are treated as if they were a small business employing fewer than 50 workers.

The exemption policy was created in an OPM directive under President Barack Obama, and could easily be overturned by Trump, said Morris, who worked at the agency during the Reagan administration.

How the Exemption Works

Not a single Republican voted to pass Obamacare. Under a subsection of the Affordable Care Act, Democrats voted Congress out of its own employer-sponsored Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. The provision required members and House and Senate staff to enroll in the new health insurance exchanges created for other Americans under the law.

Obamacare subsidies are capped so that no one with income higher than $48,000 gets a subsidy. Members of Congress earn $174,00 annually.

On Aug. 7, 2013, the OPM—which administers the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program—determined that members of Congress and staff still could enroll in the program through the SHOP Exchange, a health insurance exchange set up to provide special insurance subsidies for small businesses in Washington, D.C., with fewer than 50 employees. [read more]

It seems the Ruling class always exempt themselves from laws they make for everyone else. Obamacare is no exception. President Trump gave plenty of time for Congress to repeal and replace the Unaffordable N0-Care Act. He should take Congress’ exemption away. Maybe, that’ll give them an incentive to get rid of the crappy socialized healthcare bill. Besides they should live under the stupid law they created.

Orestes Brownson and the Just Society Part 2

To the Socialist, says Brownson, poverty, obscurity, and physical suffering are positive evils, because the Socialist does not perceive that these challenges are put into the world to save us from apathy and sloth and indifference. The Socialist would condemn humanity to a condition of permanent injustice, in which no man could hope for what is his due, the right to exercise his talents given him by God; the Socialist would keep us all in perpetual childhood:

Veiling itself under Christian forms, attempting to distinguish between Christianity and the Church, claiming for itself the authority and immense popularity of the Gospel, denouncing Christianity in the name of Christianity, discarding the Bible in the name of the Bible, and defying God in the name of God, Socialism conceals from the undiscriminating multitude its true character, and, appealing to the dominant sentiment of the age and to some of our strongest natural inclinations and passions, it asserts itself with terrific power, and rolls on its career of devastation and death with a force that human beings, in themselves, are impotent to resist. Men are assimilated to it by all the power of their own nature, and by all their reverence for religion. Their very faith and charity are perverted, and their noblest sympathies and their sublimest hopes are made subservient to their basest passions and their most groveling propensities. Here is the secret of the strength of Socialism, and here is the principal source of its danger.

The United States was not brought into being to accomplish the work of Socialism. For every living nation, Brownson wrote in The American Republic, “has an idea given it by Providence to realize, and whose realization is its special work, mission, or destiny.” The Jews were chosen to preserve traditions, and so that the Messiah might arise; the Greeks were chosen for the realizing of art, science, and philosophy; the Romans were chosen for the developing of the state, law, and jurisprudence. And the Americans, too, have been appointed to a providential mission, continuing the work of Greece and Rome, but accomplishing yet more. The American Republic is to reconcile liberty with law:

Yet its mission is not so much the realization of liberty as the realization of the true idea of the state, which secures at once the authority of the public and the freedom of the individual—the sovereignty of the people without social despotism, and individual freedom without anarchy. In other words, its mission is to bring out in its life the dialectic union of authority and liberty, of the natural rights of man and those of society. The Greek and Roman republics asserted the state to the detriment of individual freedom; modern republics either do the same, or assert individual freedom to the detriment of the state. The American republic has been instituted by Providence to realize the freedom of each with advantage to the other.

Source: “Orestes Brownson and the Just Society.” The Essential Russell Kirk. Selected Essays (2006) by George A. Panichas [editor].

Character and Destiny

An excerpt from a Hillsdale College lecture from historian David McCullough (February 15, 2005):

Now those who wrote the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia that fateful summer of 1776 were not superhuman by any means. Every single one had his flaws, his failings, his weaknesses. Some of them ardently disliked others of them. Every one of them did things in his life he regretted. But the fact that they could rise to the occasion as they did, these imperfect human beings, and do what they did is also, of course, a testimony to their humanity. We are not just known by our failings, by our weaknesses, by our sins. We are known by being capable of rising to the occasion and exhibiting not just a sense of direction, but strength.

The Greeks said that character is destiny, and the more I read and understand of history, the more convinced I am that they were right. You look at the great paintings by John Trumbull or Charles Wilson Peale or Copley or Gilbert Stuart of those remarkable people who were present at the creation of our nation, the Founders as we call them. Those aren't just likenesses. They are delineations of character and were intended to be. And we need to understand them, and we need to understand that they knew that what they had created was no more perfect than they were. And that has been to our advantage. It has been good for us that it wasn't all just handed to us in perfect condition, all ready to run in perpetuity—that it needed to be worked at and improved and made to work better. There’s a wonderful incident that took place at the Cambria Iron Company in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in the 19th century, when they were building the first Bessemer steel machinery, adapted from what had been seen of the Bessemer process in Britain. There was a German engineer named John Fritz, and after working for months to get this machinery finished, he came into the plant one morning, and he said, ”Alright boys, let’s start her up and see why she doesn't work.“ That’s very American. We will find out what’s not working right and we will fix it, and then maybe it will work right. That’s been our star, that’s what we've guided on.

I have just returned from a cruise through the Panama Canal. I think often about why the French failed at Panama and why we succeeded. One of the reasons we succeeded is that we were gifted, we were attuned to adaptation, to doing what works, whereas they were trained to do everything in a certain way. We have a gift for improvisation. We improvise in jazz; we improvise in much of our architectural breakthroughs. Improvisation is one of our traits as a nation, as a people, because it was essential, it was necessary, because we were doing again and again and again what hadn't been done before.

Keep in mind that when we were founded by those people in the late 18th century, none of them had had any prior experience in either revolutions or nation-making. They were, as we would say, winging it. And they were idealistic and they were young. We see their faces in the old paintings done later in their lives or looking at us from the money in our wallets, and we see the awkward teeth and the powdered hair, and we think of them as elder statesmen. But George Washington, when he took command of the continental army at Cambridge in 1775, was 43 years old, and he was the oldest of them. Jefferson was 33 when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. John Adams was 40. Benjamin Rush—one of the most interesting of them all and one of the founders of the antislavery movement in Philadelphia—was 30 years old when he signed the Declaration. They were young people. They were feeling their way, improvising, trying to do what would work. They had no money, no navy, no real army. There wasn't a bank in the entire country. There wasn't but one bridge between New York and Boston. It was a little country of 2,500,000 people, 500,000 of whom were held in slavery, a little fringe of settlement along the east coast. What a story. What a noble beginning. And think of this: almost no nations in the world know when they were born. We know exactly when we began and why we began and who did it. [read more]

Back when America was new the country was really an experiment.

India's Gruesome New Welfare Trend

From FEE.org (July 12):

The welfare state is bad news for both taxpayers and recipients.
Pervasive handouts also are a mistake because they create incentives for very bad behavior.
And I’m not just talking about the incentive not to work. Welfare enables and encourages utterly horrifying examples of misbehavior.

• Such as the guy who cut off his own foot to ensure continued handouts.
• And the awful people who tried to impregnate a 12-year old to boost handouts.
• Or the various and sundry terrorists who have been subsidized with handouts.

But there’s a new example that probably would win the prize if there was a contest for the most sickening behavior enabled by governments giveaways.
People in India apparently are feeding their older relatives to tigers is order to get cash payments from the government.
……………………….
Imagine the conversation around the dinner table. “Good news, Granny, we’ve arranged an overnight trip for you to the nature preserve.”
It’s even more chilling if the old people are actually willing participants. “Son, make sure to make the scene look realistic after you move my body out of the preserve.”  [read more]

This is what happens when citizens become addicted to their gov’t’s handouts.

Orestes Brownson and the Just Society Part 1

“In most cases,” Brownson continued, “the sufferings of a people spring from moral causes beyond the reach of civil government, and they are rarely the best patriots who paint them in the most vivid colors, and rouse up popular indignation against the civil authorities. Much more effectual service could be rendered in a more quiet and peaceful way, by each one seeking, in his own immediate sphere, to remove the moral causes of the evils endured.”

The humanitarian, or social democrat (here Brownson uses those terms almost interchangeably), is by definition a person who denies that any divine order exists. Having rejected the supernatural order and the possibility of a Justice more than human, the humanitarian tends to erect Envy into a pseudo-moral principle. It leads him, this principle of Envy, straight toward a dreary tableland of featureless social equality--toward Tocqueville’s democratic despotism, from which not only God seems to have disappeared, but even old-fangled individual man is lacking.

The just society will seek to give unto each man his due: not through the release of selfish impulse, not through a sentimental and enervating socialism, but by recognizing both the Christian virtue of charity and the profound natural differences that distinguish one human being from another. The just society will not repudiate democracy, properly understood, though it will turn away from both the atomistic “Jacksonian” democracy and the oppressive humanitarian democracy:

“Democracy, understood not as a form of government, but as the end government is to seek, to wit, the common good, the advance in civilization of the people, the poorer and more numerous, as well as the richer and less numerous, classes, not of a privileged caste or class, is a good thing, and a tendency toward it is really an evidence of social progress.” Such a democracy, if it is to remain just, must be restrained by solemn and prudent constitutions and by an enlightened faith. Nevertheless, its government will not hesitate to conduct itself with courage or to undertake large projects. It is shallow sophistry to say that government is a necessary evil: government is no evil, but a device of divine wisdom to supply human wants. The function of government is not repressive merely:

Its office is positive as well as negative. It is needed to render effective the solidarity of the individuals of a nation, and to render the nation an organism, not a mere organization—to combine men in one living body, and to strengthen all with the strength of each, and each with the strength of all—to develop, strengthen, and sustain individual liberty, and to utilize and direct it to the promotion of the common weal—to be a social providence, imitating in its order and degree the action of divine providence itself, and, while it provides for the common good of all, to protect each, the lowest and meanest, with the whole force and majesty of society. . . . Next after religion, it is man’s greatest good; and even religion without it can do only a small portion of her work. They wrong it who call it a necessary evil; it is a great good, and instead of being distrusted, hated, or resisted, except in its abuses, it should be loved, respected, obeyed, and, if need be, defended at the cost of all earthly goods, and even of life.

Source: “Orestes Brownson and the Just Society.” The Essential Russell Kirk. Selected Essays (2006) by George A. Panichas [editor].

Four Principles of American Freedom

Excerpts from a lecture by Dr. Arthur Shenfield at Hillsdale College (December 2, 1982):

First, the state is not society. Society and the state are two different entities, even though their members may be the same and even though they may intermesh with each other intimately. The state is the entity charged with the task of protecting society, but the society overflows the bounds of the state into fields where the state has no right to go. A society cannot be free if it is synonymous with the state. For if it were, all human activity would not only be governed by law. It would also be prescribed and licensed by law, which is the meaning of totalitarianism.

Secondly, liberty is a negative, not a positive, concept. It has been a sad misfortune that a few not undistinguished thinkers have espoused the positive concept, because they have thus induced demagogues to bemuse the people with nostrums such as “freedom from want.” The negative concept teaches us that liberty is freedom from coercion, not power over desires or desired resources. It includes the freedom to seek the satisfaction of one’s wants, subject to the like freedom of others, but not the power to command that satisfaction.

…………………..

Thirdly, the only form of equality which may be sought by the state is equality before the law. With equality before the law, the goddess of justice is rightly depicted as blind as she holds the scales evenly; blind because she is no respecter of persons. To her all, rich or poor, strong or weak, high or low, come for equal protection.

…………………….

Notice that though the free society does not seek equality of opportunity, it does produce abundance of opportunity; and in that abundance there is a closer approach to equality of opportunity than is known in any unfree society.

Fourthly, the state may not command, direct, control or regulate the economic activity of the people, except where it can be convincingly shown that such a measure is an essential means of preventing the people from encroaching upon each other’s liberty or rightful property. [read more]

Source: A Durable Free Society: Utopian Dream or Realistic Goal? lecture by Dr. Arthur Shenfield.

Informative and interesting speech. The doctor also talks about how economic and political liberties are inseparable and the connection between utopians and barbarians among other topics.