It’s a funny thing about logic: The weakest strains of it are the most capable. When you find a brand of logic that can “prove” anything & everything, you know you’re looking at something so weak that it’s borderline useless.

Case in point…

Hat tip to Kate at Small Dead Animals.

Likin’ this…

I can never get over it. It’s amazing, how much nothing is packed into one state. If Nevada was something besides a nothing when the white man first discovered it, you’d have to count it among the top human achievements importing all that nothing. Or manufacturing that much nothing. Whatever…it is a truly mind-blowing quantity of nothing out there.

“Kidzmom” tells me it’s up to me to do the driving during the child pick-up or drop-off, and the first thing I do is run down and get a CD audiobook. Amazon used to be the perfect solution, but lately they’ve started taking two weeks to ship what used to take two days. So I’ve had to get creative. When I was contracted to IBM, first time I moved to this area some twenty years ago, there was this awesome truck stop, crammed full of everything a truck driver could ever need or want. It’s still there. I picked up a work of fiction there, which is kind of really creepy, and then my fiancee burned me a copy of Mark Steyn’s America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It. Requirement met.

I picked up the boy, last weekend, in time for spring break, by myself. This weekend we dropped him off, as a threesome. Me, girlfriend, kid. We stayed in Reno Saturday night, swapped him yesterday at noon in Battle Mountain, and crashed last night in Incline Village. What a blast. Big-ass lobster feast, followed by…well…frankly, Incline Village is afraid of being discovered, so I can’t reveal details. But we limped back home this morning, with a fresh box of beer, I just got done soaking my old ass in a hot bath with a couple bottles of cold suds, during which time I used a brand new Quattro to scrape the March whiskers off my throat. D-i-s-g-u-s-t-i-n-g.

Belly full of beer and shellfish. A newly discovered vacation spot. And my kid knows how to drive a go kart as fast as it can go, fire a .22 rifle, and help his old man with his taxes.

Reminds me of the perfect day.

7:30
Dinner. Lobster appetizers, 1963 Dom Perignon,20oz. New York strip.

9:00
Relax after dinner with 1789 Augler Cognac and Cohiba Cuban cigar.

10:00
Have sex with two
18 year old nymphomaniacs.

11:00
Massage and Jacuzzi.

11:45 Go to bed.

11:46
One last blowjob

11:59
Let loose a 12 second, 4 octave fart. Watch the dog leave the room.

12:00
Laugh yourself to sleep

It was kinda close to that, with some details missing. After we dropped off the kid, that is.

Well, I look at it like — I’d trade it all just to see the kid show some signs of being more manly and capable. And I didn’t have to trade; I got both. A highly successful spring break.

I’m still not sure what to make of the spring break tradition. In my day, this was something you could maybe think about during your senior year of high school. Possibly, maybe, junior. But only if you were one of the “cool” kids with the rich parents. And then something happened. Fast forward to today…from what I know about it, nowadays if you’re fifth grade or higher you get an automatic “spring break.” We-ell — my initial inclination is to disapprove, and my better judgment tells me that’s the right call. But I’ve procreated and failed to make a go of things with the female-incubation unit, who is now with my spawn in another state. So with things the way they are, I’m not sure what we’d do without it.

Is society starting up a whole bunch of new traditions in an attempt to adapt to single-parenthood? Or maybe, just one? I suppose I shall have to leave that to the philosophers.

The dining area was miniscule, with a posted capacity of 49. So we were in close proximity to the couple next to us, the masculine half of which noticed my “One Big Ass Mistake, America” tee shirt after their main course had arrived. It turns out they, too, are from the Golden State, San Luis Obispo area. And they, too, are confronted with an unpleasant reality that the state is headed over a Greek-style financial brink.

They’re probably about fifteen years senior to us, which puts them in early sixties, with a clean-cut “grown-up hippie” look to them both. We talked a bit about some of the more appealing parts of California, where to visit for the summer, and a bit about ObamaCare. The four of us were pleased that the accommodations allowed for fellowship rather than isolation. It would have been more pleasing if we’d been able to discuss current events, rather than liberals ruining everything; but, let’s quit beating around the bush. These days, that is the current event.

And this inspires my “DJEver Notice?” moment…

It isn’t that I object to the specific ideas the left-wingers have. Looking back over all their bills, their executive orders, their speeches, their “occupations,” and the subsequent arguing-over-the-innernets in which I’ve engaged…one big problem I see with the things they want to do, perhaps bigger than all the other problems, is that they don’t have any “specific ideas.” They have lots of general ones: Make it less profitable to be productive in our society, make it more profitable to be unproductive, try to make more abortions happen. Do whatever has to be done to make sure the democrat party wins more battles with its opposition, and that the country loses more battles with her opposition, because the democrat party is good enough for a “scorched earth” policy but America is not.

My DJEver-Notice-moment thought is that: The list of definable ideas ends right about there. Following that point, everything they want to do is not quite so much a what, as a who. “Give a blank check of [power/money] to [blank], who, take our word for it, [has/have] all the right ideas.”

Global warming scientists.

The Congressional Black Caucus.

Labor unions.

The members of Congress who wrote ObamaCare.

This-or-that alphabet-soup government agency that “regulates” this-or-that industry to “keep our water drinkable and our air breathable.”

ACORN.

Pharoah Barack The First.

Planned Parenthood.

The United Nations.

It’s not easy to pick up on this, because if you argue with a lefty for any significant length of time, the conversation will swing over toward “you’re just a bad, bad person” compared to the lefty. Unless, that is, you surrender to their nonsense. But on those rare occasions where the point-of-disagreement is actually defined, overall you’ll notice it comes down to the lefty saying yes, and you saying not-necessarily or I-don’t-think-so, to the proposal of granting unlimited power and deference to some panel of strangers — who will then flesh out the details. Which means you and your leftist antagonist are not arguing about details at all. You’re arguing about generalities, the most significant of which is where to put the power.

They are opposed to transparency in this kind of apparatus, they’re opposed to any kind of sharing of power, and they’re opposed to details. Their appeal, therefore, is toward those who are unaccustomed to thinking in details.

I have the impression that our new friends in the dining hall, perhaps, were once held hostage to this. Although it must be said I ave limited confidence in that impression; they struck me as intellectually capable, curious, and capable of handling details. But they also had a very subtle air about them, which I’ve seen many times before over the last three years, of …”Oops.” It came off looking like a distant regret, not so much Obama-era as Clinton-era. Maybe I imagined all that.

What was not imagined, was their California weariness. Oh, here we go again: Tax the filthy rich bastards and that’ll solve everything. Eyeball roll. They’re facing the same gut-punch reality we are, probably wondering, reluctantly, if the time has come to pack up and watch the wreckage from afar.

There are lemmings who are so sure the other lemmings have the right idea while their paws furiously claw away at the ground underneath, and then there are lemmings who remain sure of it as their furry bodies sail through the open air down toward the sea. I’m not sure if one class is more deserving of contempt than the other, or of pity, but I’m sure that it’s generally better in life to embrace details.

I’m also sure that those who shun details, are going to be forever starting fights with people who do not, and then blaming them for the fights.

Simply disgusting.

The economy is anemic, gas prices are skyrocketing, and it seems that we learn about some new betrayal or failure on the administration’s part every other day. This bad week for President Obama has followed a very bad week for him, as the president was caught promising something on missile defense to the Russians and ObamaCare faced scrutiny in the Supreme Court, and the president followed all of that up with his ill-informed and unwise attack on the Supreme Court. The Tuesday walk back only made the situation worse. A truly adversarial press would have made this story front and center. The Augusta question gave the White House an early lifeline, a chance to bring up its ridiculous “war on women” gambit from another angle and move the women’s conference story, which no one was talking about, into the public conversation ahead of the stories that the nation is talking about, but which don’t favor the president.
:
I can’t prove conclusively that Matt Spetalnick’s question about Augusta was a plant, but it was an awfully convenient question for the administration to push an election-year message that has been pushing since January.

Via Instapundit, via Kate at Small Dead Animals.

Also, it’s rather easy to forget now that the whole “requiring coverage for birth control” thing had not yet blown up back in January, when George Stephanopolous steered the Republican primary debate on to the subject of birth control. Of course, Stephanopolous was actually supposed to be a “moderator” and he was, according to your definition, moderating…so if he was ever accused of being a plant, anyone who knows anything about it would be conveniently able to brush that aside with a simple recitation of the relevant “facts.”

Which just goes to show, the definition is not that crisp. Plants don’t necessarily have to be plants. But a pattern emerges nevertheless: The Obama administration, or whoever has taken the stick on coordinating these fortunate public exchanges, would seem to have a cynical view of the attention span of the American female. Someone, somewhere, is of the mind that you just have to shift the conversation to The Pill for a minute or two and all the hysterical airhead American women will turn out in droves to re-elect His Holiness. Well, I know first-hand there must be problems with this — it’s certainly not true across the board. Some of the most intense longing for Him to haul His ass back to Illinois, is felt by the daughters of Eve, and this cheap shallow attempt to manipulate will only make that feeling more intense.

But it is a mixed effect, certainly. So as to whether or not it’s a winning strategy for He Who Argues With The Dictionaries, I suppose we’ll all find out in a few months.

So the kid’s here for spring break, of which today is the last day. The fiancee and I are driving him back to Nevada today so he can resume school. We had a blast with the go-karts and the trip to the shooting range, where I lost my .40 S&W virginity and managed a decently tight grouping in spite of the wicked recoil on the Beretta.

Also upgraded his home-built with a new 2GB video card. No time for blogging lately. But in my early morning ponderings, I did manage to upload some wisdom to the Hello Kitty of blogging…this has been eating at me for awhile…

There are certain “scientific studies” that I notice never seem to do the trick, with such completeness that it would be redundant to release another study saying the same thing, because said further-study is published soon afterward. And again and again and again…polar ice caps are shrinking, conservatives have tinier minds, girls mature faster than boys, et al. Perhaps there is minutiae that needs a further hashing-out and the layman can’t see it. But it’s more likely, I think, that science in these areas is running in circles. I don’t say this because I pretend to understand all that the scientists say; I say that because it is only in a narrow field of subjects wherein I see it happening. It looks like bored, inexperienced, not-yet-established scientists with laptop computers looking for something to do, and that’s probably what it is.

I would like to see a scientific study on this: Some public figure says or does something that generates a bit of heat, and then apologizes for it. What effect does the apology have? Do some experiments, with a control group that doesn’t offer an apology, and find a way to objectively measure the cred, or stature, or job security, that was supposedly lost [and then recovered again]. Also, did the angry people stop being angry when the apology was issued. Put the numbers on a graph, and plot a line.

THAT is a study I would LOVE to see. Once will do it.

Thing I Know #52 sez,

Angry people who demand things, don’t stop being angry when their demands are met.

…and that would seem to make such a study redundant already, since apologies certainly fall within the things being demanded by angry people. But Things I Know are nothing more than lifetime experiences — of me — open questions on which the uncertainty seems to have been eliminated…but looks can be deceiving. And, people didn’t just start issuing apologies when I was born, or when I became aware in my observations of such things. The clumsiness and ineffectiveness of apologies does seem to be something of a modern development, or at least, the dazzling phoniness and insincerity of the apologies are modern characteristics.

Do apologies work? There certainly does seem to be a lot riding on the question every year.

Demanding the apologies, that certainly does have an elevating effect on one’s social standing. Kinda reminds me of when Billy Batson said “Shazam!” and was transformed by lightning into Captain Marvel, remember that? That’s what we have had, in recent times, with this other catchphrase, “You know, I find that offensive.” Like, faster than the naked eye can perceive the change, you have acquired superpowers.

But for making the apology, I’m not sure anybody ever recovers a damn thing. I’m not sure why anybody bothers with it. I suppose they want to demonstrate that, at least, they’re not ignoring anybody. But I also see when the time comes to run for a high office, there are a lot of people ready to describe as their qualifications that they do ignore the right people. That, lately, seems to be a backbone to what American politics has become. This candidate, over here…is sensitive to the demands and grievances of that aggrieved victim group, over there…and, if he manages to be elected to the high hallways of power, we will see a gutterballing, a marginalization, of that other antithesis faction of critical people, way over there. *cough* President Barack Obama *cough*. Attorney General Eric Holder upholding the law for “his” people. Equal protection under the law doesn’t seem to have much to do with anything anymore, it’s all about voting in politicians to decide who will gain influence and who will lose it. I suppose that part isn’t really new. What’s changed is the feeling of obligation, the feeling of “These people, who were not really part of the socio-political phenomenon that swept me into office, nevertheless have a legitimate grievance and the Constitution suggests I should take it seriously, through the right it recognizes they have to petition their government.”

I do want to see such a study, though. What necessitates such an apology; why do people clamor for one, what are they looking for in one; what is the effect of issuing it, especially, contrasted with the control group that doesn’t offer one.

I don’t think they do a thing. If they did once, they don’t now. People don’t take them that seriously, and they probably shouldn’t. This is a field ripe for study. It is my impression that this open question affects us in ways it did not, in our recent past. We should get off our duffs and learn what’s going on, and how we’re changing. So much energy, concern, perspiration and drive being plowed into a place that is not providing us with a tangible reward, suggests this might not be a good change.

Sorry if that offends anyone.

It’s floating around the innerwebs since at least February. I can’t find a point of origin to credit properly. Sometimes, things just go that way, other times a helpful bit of evidence will roll in. Anyway — I see the “Re-elect Obama because Romney’s a Mormon” campaign has started in earnest, so this could be helpful.

Quit trashing President Obama’s accomplishments!

An impressive list of accomplishments:

First President to apply for college aid as a foreign student, then
deny he was a foreigner.

First President to have a social security number from a state he has
never lived in.

First President to preside over a cut to the credit-rating of the United States

First President to violate the War Powers Act. .

First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally
obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

First President to defy a Federal Judge’s court order to cease
implementing the Health Care Reform Law.

First President to require all Americans to purchase a product from a
third party.

First President to spend a trillion dollars on ‘shovel-ready’ jobs
when there was no such thing as ‘shovel-ready’ jobs.

First President to abrogate bankruptcy law to turn over control of
companies to his union supporters.

First President to by-pass Congress and implement the Dream Act
through executive fiat.

First President to order a secret amnesty program that stopped the
deportation of illegal immigrants across the U.S., including those
with criminal convictions.

First President to demand a company hand-over $20 billion to one of
his political appointees.

First President to terminate America’s ability to put a man in space.

First President to have a law signed by an auto-pen without being present.

First President to arbitrarily declare an existing law
unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it.

First President to threaten insurance companies if they publicly
spoke-out on the reasons for their rate increases.

First President to tell a major manufacturing company in which state
it is allowed to locate a factory.

First President to file lawsuits against the states he swore an oath
to protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN).
First President to withdraw an existing coal permit that had been
properly issued years ago.

First President to fire an inspector general of Ameri-Corps for
catching one of his friends in a corruption case.

First President to appoint 45 czars to replace elected officials in
his office. .

First President to golf 73 separate times in his first two and a half
years in office, 90 to date.

First President to hide his medical, educational and travel records.

First President to win a Nobel Peace Prize for doing NOTHING to earn it.

First President to go on multiple global ‘apology tours’.

First President to go on 17 lavish vacations, including date nights
and Wednesday evening White House parties for his friends paid for by
the taxpayer.

First President to have 22 personal servants (taxpayer funded) for his wife.

First President to keep a dog trainer on retainer for $102,000 a year
at taxpayer expense.

First President to repeat the Holy Quran tells us the early morning
call of the Azan (Islamic call to worship) is the most beautiful sound
on earth.

First President to take a 17 day vacation.

How is this hope and change working out for you?

The perpetual-vacationer speaks:

Michelle Obama, who has quickly become the Obama campaign’s tip of the spear when it comes to fundraising and vote-getting, is now stumping for children to convince their “great-grandparents” to vote for her husband. At an event at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park – for which tickets cost at least $500 – Michelle said:

I mean, I can’t tell you in the last election how many grandparents I ran into who said, I wasn’t going to vote for Barack Obama until my grandson talked to me, until my great-grandson talked to me, and talked about the future he wanted for this country.

You can get out there with your parents. You guys can knock on doors. I had one young lady who brought me a petition — she’s already working. You can convince wrong people. Sometimes we don’t listen to ourselves, but we will listen to our children.

The left seems to have a fascination with this that goes back aways — children being wise sages uniquely qualified to dispense the kind of wisdom that is attained only through experience.

Near as I can figure, it’s part of a much greater and broader perspective in which it’s important to see everything as the opposite of what it really is. We have to spend lots of money to keep from going broke, we show the greatest respect toward women when we systematically eliminate every reason for their existence, we’re “shoring up” capitalism by stealing money from the people who’ve been productive and giving it to people who’ve chosen to live destructive and self-destructive lifestyles…et al.

Children are experienced, knowledgeable, and have unique wisdom to impart. Fits right in. The younger the better, I suppose.

Uh oh…

Mega Millions mania has plunged a Maryland McDonald’s into a bubbling cauldron of controversy hotter than a deep-fried apple pie.

Workers at the fast-food joint who pooled their cash for tickets are furious at a colleague who claims she won with a ticket she bought for herself and has no intention of sharing.

“We had a group plan, but I went and played by myself. [The ‘winning’ ticket] wasn’t on the group plan,” McDonald’s “winner’’ Mirlande Wilson 37, told The Post yesterday, insisting she alone bought one of the three tickets nationwide that will split a record $656 million payout.

“I was in the group, but this was separate. The winning ticket was a separate ticket,” the single mother of seven said as she and her fiancé left her home in the squalid Westport neighborhood to attend church.

The Haitian immigrant refused to show what she said was the winning ticket, claiming she had it hidden in another location and would present it to lottery officials today.

Pressed as the day went on, she became more cagey.

“I don’t know if I won. Some of the numbers were familiar. I recognized some of [them],’’ she said. “I don’t know why’’ people are saying differently. “I’m going to go to the lottery office [today]. I bought some tickets separately.”

With winning tickets also sold in Illinois and Kansas, a single Maryland winner would get an after-tax lump sum of $105 million, or $5.59 million a year for 26 years.

This is why I hate lotteries so much.

Say what you will about people who make their profit by running some kind of business, but at least the profits are realized because, somehow, a product or service was provided to someone else. So if there’s some dispute coming out about where the profits should be going, people end up arguing about the who, what, when, where & why of the product/service coming to be.

These poor miserable wretches are arguing about the five W’s involved with exchanging a dollar for a crummy piece of paper…which piece it is…that determines who gets five million a year for 26 years.

Hard feelings are inevitable. Goodwill and mutual respect are not part of the equation. And in this case, in times recently past, they were — the group bought some tickets together. So something has been destroyed here. And it isn’t an unusual situation with lotteries.

I’ve written elsewhere that you can probably determine, with some good rugged accuracy, which direction our society is headed simply by tuning in to an AM radio station on a daily basis and counting how many times per week you hear an ad that says “find out if you qualify.” The same is true for the level of activity observed, on a weekly or monthly basis, with regard to lotteries. The common thread is: People trying to get hold of free stuff without doing or producing anything that would be valuable to anybody else.

Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom (hat tip to blogger friend Terri) snags the 125th award for BSIHORL (Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately):

The constant and steady perversion of language and meaning has finally brought us to the surreal endpoint where a president stands before the public and pretends that a Supreme Court ruling is illegitimate if it looks to the Constitution for guidance on checks to federal power.

He is referring to a comment made recently, by America’s First Holy President, He Who Argues With The Dictionaries, that it would be an act of “judicial activism” to strike down the Obamacare law.

“I am confident the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically-elected congress,” President Obama said at a White House event in the Rose Garden today.

“I just remind conservative commentators that for years we have heard the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint. That an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example and I am pretty confident that this Court will recognize that and not take that step,” Obama said to the White House press.

No distinction made between Supreme Court decisions that invalidate laws because of irreconcilable contradictions against the restrictions in the Constitution…and decisions that invalidate laws because of concerns over “if this, then such-and-such-a-thing might happen.” They’re all just sort of lumped in together and called “judicial activism,” if they go against the grain of what His Holiness wants.

This is supposed to be a Professor of Constitutional Law speaking. We’re told so, anyway.

The e-mails have been busy during my travels on Friday and Saturday, during which time I was at the mercy of the wireless networks in Nevada, a broad flatland in which one must consider himself fortunate to find working indoor plumbing. So this morning at coffee o’clock I have some reading to do. And what do I see in my inbox…vast, great volumes of not-much. Race hustlers trying to make the Trayvon Martin shooting more incendiary, and funny pictures of cats.

And then…

My President had some kind of deadline looming over His head Saturday night, for which He urgently needed me to pony up three dollars. I’m not sure what that was all about. Something to do with the FEC, so from this I infer it would be related to His efforts to win a second term in the upcoming elections.

Ed Darrell & Co. are completely upset with me. There is a picture of our President making the rounds, walking in His dignified way from a plane to a limousine or perhaps vice-versa, carrying a hardcover copy of The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria. People think poorly of this, and Mr. Darrell has harsh words for those who think so poorly. His critiism is against poor thinking, but as always seems to be the case with him, one cannot help but suspect he is upset that they’ve reached a conclusion he doesn’t like. One also ends up a little confused about whether his excited and scolding words are for those who send the picture around through the e-mail, or for those who quite reasonably and innocently draw their conclusions from it.

I’m not sure he himself knows.

President Obama has hit me up before for contributions of $2 or $3. Sometimes the e-mails are not from Him, but from people who report to Him or somehow support Him in His efforts. The last one, I think, was from His wife Michelle. There is a lot of language to the effect of how close we are to getting this thing done that we’re trying to do, that is so important. Nothing unusual about any of this, except in this case, I’ve not yet seen a specific statement made about what it is they/we are trying to be doing, which I find a little odd. Isn’t it part of typical deadline management, to keep in mind the horrific consequences to follow of failing to meet the deadline? Granted, that all by itself doesn’t necessitate a repeated chanting over & over again of what the consequences are…but it becomes an expected part of the pitch when the time comes to shake people down for money. What are we trying to do?

Ed’s pals are not happy with me going after just one thing…in which they’re squarely in the wrong. They would like the conversation to be expanded to include other things they think will make them look better. This “James Kessler” person would like to talk about “your [my] side” and/or Republicans, which is unfortunate since that has nothing to do with anything; my point was that Ed Darrell, wrapped up in his hatred and his passions, said something silly and illogical, I’m right and that’s that.

But after all these years of me subscribing to Ed Darrell’s website, and all these years of having been wisely led by President Obama, I notice nothing’s changed — not one single thing. There are these problems existing somewhere; nobody can say, specifically, what those problems are (except schoolteacher Ed is very often upset that the public education system is getting enough money, I guess there’s that, but that particular peeve is not under discussion here). There is not much specific discussion of the problems so it follows that there’s no talk at all about what the solutions are going to be.

But still there is something to inspire all the hot air flowing with such great heat, power and force from the progressives among us. The bulk of it seems to be: These nice people over here do not yet possess a monopoly on free speech — they’re having trouble getting their message out. Those other people, over there, are getting a message out and that’s part of the problem. They need to be shut up.

It is rather remarkable that if I were previously sympathetic to the global desires of Planet Looney Liberal, I’d be forced to seriously reconsider my allegiances right about now. After the last four years of Obama’s presidency and highly successful — and privileged — campaigning, if all the problems in the world that you can see are due to Him not quite being able to get the last word in on enough things…or perhaps not giving enough speeches?…there’s something very, very wrong with your viewpoint. Also, it’s further remarkable that after all the Best! Speech! Evar! going on again and again and again…I still don’t understand what the Obama agenda is. I’ve responded to quite a few of these e-mails asking me for the $3 asking, politely and succinctly, what exactly it is we’re trying to do. I’ve not yet received an answer back.

There is a new video out called The Road We’ve Traveled, narrated by Tom Hanks. Perhaps my question would be answered if the video had a title more like, The Road In Front Of Us or something…okay, so these people who are paid to come up with things that might possibly be credited to President Obama, have found some stuff. Fine, but what choices are we making, when we choose Obama’s leadership? What are the advantages of said leadership, contrasted with that of someone else — who is also capable of making decisions when the time comes, but would & could be expected to make different ones, due to a wholly different outlook on the world and how it works? On this, the seventeen minutes stand functionally mute.

If the video contributes anything at all to the decision to be made about the upcoming election, it is only this: Here, here and here, Barack Obama was confronted with an important decision that could be made by nobody else. And He decided!

Well…with all respect to the office of the Presidency…pffft. You could say exactly the same thing about Obama’s predecessor, couldn’t you? Actually, you could say that about everyone who’s been elected to that office. Except maybe those two guys who died in office without serving very long…I suspect even they would be able to point to something.

After all the hundreds of millions of dollars spent, and hundreds of speeches given by Him every single year out of the last three or four — I don’t really know what the Obama Doctrine is. About anything. I see He opts for this-or-that when such-and-such a decision comes up…sometimes. It’s much more usual for Him to, as they say, “vote present.” But from whatever definitive decisions actually do manage to be graced with His Holy Imprimatur, I try to reach conclusions about what the Obama philosophy is…and these loudmouths like Ed & Crew scold me about it. If my conclusion is not flattering, that is. And I cannot help but conclude, like I said, that that’s what the scolding is really all about. Meanwhile, the question remains unanswered.

Reasonable persons across the ideological spectrum should be able to agree, that if your argument can only be made to look good by impugning the character of the other guys, to the point where you’re avoiding any discussion of the decisions made & why they’re made, then your argument is probably wrong. According to that, then, they would support whoever is presenting a good plausible plan to get the gas prices back down and get all these capable and able-bodied people working again. I think President Obama should be displaying Himself and His crew as the people who are laboring to implement such a plan.

But from Him, and His supporters, all I’m seeing and hearing is how important it is that they be given more of a chance to get their message out, than those detestable other-people. In fact, it can be truthfully said that — for all I know — that’s the whole point of the seventeen-minute-video linked above: Re-elect Obama, so He can continue to give speeches every day, because who knows, sooner or later one of these days He’ll give the one speech that finally gets the message out. You know, I’m not entirely sure what that has to do with getting the unemployment rate down to five percent, getting gas back down to $2.65 a gallon, and recovering America’s triple-A credit rating.

Steven Hayward posts at PowerLine. He’s recapping the month of March, and this was a source of great enjoyment to me.

First came the Sandra Fluke controversy. What looked like a well-staged triumph for the Left because of a rare overreach by Rush Limbaugh resulted instead in a ferocious blowback against Bill Maher, Louis C.K., and HBO, while Rush’s ratings have spiked and advertisers came groveling back after the anti-Rush boycott was revealed to have been trumped up by Media Matters. Meanwhile, while the media elites identify with Fluke as one of their own, it is less clear that ordinary Americans think the government owes free contraception to 30-year old college students.

Second, Obama is in full retreat and panic mode over gasoline prices, and energy generally….Byron York flatly predicts that Obama will be forced to approve the Keystone pipeline before the election. Obama’s embrace of the GOP slogan of “all-of-the-above” energy means that environmentalists are being largely thrown under the bus.

Then came the Trayvon Martin incident. But what looked like a by-the-numbers drill for the racial grievance industry has started to collapse beneath certain inconvenient facts that don’t fit the narrative such as Zimmerman’s ethnicity and political party registration (Democratic), eyewitness testimony that Martin was assaulting Zimmerman, and Spike Lee advocating vigilantism against Zimmerman, but tweeting an incorrect home address, endangering an innocent elderly couple.
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Then of course we have the Obamacare argument in the Supreme Court this week. Even if the Court ultimately upholds the Affordable Care Act, the course of the argument is extremely damaging to the Left. And if it is struck down, I predict the Left will overreact in ways that will also backfire badly.

Finally, yesterday the House voted down Obama’s proposed budget for next year by a vote of 414 – 0. Not even the most leftist members of Obama’s own party are willing to go on record in support of his unserious and irresponsible budget. Political stunt by the GOP? Sure, but so what?
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None of this should be taken as a sign of a decisive “turning point,” or that our side has won, or even that we’re winning…But it’s been a lousy last month for the Left.

I like the last paragraph the best. After all, it isn’t clear that anything has actually changed here, at all. Odds of the democrats hanging on to the White House and Senate, and taking the House of Representatives — they’re about at the same level now as they were on the last day of February, I think. Obviously that’s always debatable, but that seems to be the case. And yet something did happen.

I think it’s a case not so much of something being altered in form or shape, or in the direction it’s traveling, but rather one of something being revealed. I see a trend permeating through four of the above five events, all of them apart from the budget thing. Fluke, gas and energy, Trayvon, SCOTUS…most especially with the last one. Do you see what I see?

The democrats have a bad habit going on, which they show no signs of arresting or even slowing down, wherein they write the future. That is to say, they start to invent some fiction about what is going to happen. It’s as if they lack the humility needed to acknowledge that we live in a universe filled with unpredictable things. Now in theory, that isn’t really true, because if there is any object in the universe capable of impacting another, then that object must possess sufficient significance for its state to be known and measurable, and if it is in a process of change, then that change must be known and measurable as well…but let’s not drift too far off topic into exploring chaos theory & all that, for it’s all a red herring. To effectively use such a vast repository of knowledge about object states, object metamorphoses, object bearings & vectors of travel, et al, is well outside of the capability of knowledgeable humans. Yoda pegged it: Always in motion, the future is, difficult to see.

But none of this has to do with what democrats do when they boast, with all their fanfare and all their insolent superiority, how they will prevail in this-or-that. They’re great ones for putting on airs and going through the motions like they reached their decisions as the culmination of some rational, scientific, methodical process full of weighing and measuring. Most of the time, though, it’s all posturing. Really, the mask had already slipped when they took this attitude with the Supreme Court ruling in favor of Obamacare, the White House was extra, extra, extra, super-duper sure that they’d prevail. Now really. Think it through with all the logic and rationality they pretend to be using. Why would you say that?

You work for the White House and you’re super-duper sure the SCOTUS will vote your way. That would mean, you’re super-duper sure the “liberal wing” will line up…which isn’t enough…and then, I heard some of the law was written with Justice Scalia in mind, maybe your hopes are pinned on him, or you have a lot of confidence Justice Kennedy will see fit to come down on your side. Neither of those prospects seem, to me, to be cause for optimism in the Obama White House. Maybe the combination of both of them, since it only takes one? Seems doubtful.

There was no reason for them to get all cocky about this. It was all a bunch of fakery.

They got their asses kicked, here, because they have this unfortunate tendency to start to believe their own fakery and posturing. We just saw them self-immolate over it, four times in a row. It really isn’t that complicated…see, part of the reason they can act all confident, even when the odds are stacked heavily against them, is that they have this zero-tolerance policy against any doubts in their own ranks. From what I’ve seen, the zero-tolerance policy persists even when they feel safely ensconced on high ground, among their own trusted peers, behind closed doors. I have no way to verify that, of course, it just looks that way to me…I argue with some of them, I come up with things that would make them doubtful, things with which they should have already been preoccupied, if they’re the cautious thinkers they pretend to be, and it’s like…der? They never heard of such a thing before. Have no idea what I’m talking about. So it seems, to me, to work that way. No doubts are allowed. Supremes will side with us, it’s a done deal.

Yes, they end up talking about the future as if it’s something that’s already happened. Pay attention, you’ll see they do that quite a lot.

If there is any cause for actual optimism, here, it is in that they just can’t stop. It is their chosen methodology for fellowship among their own, and the feeling of camaraderie is a vital ingredient to the fuel that drives them. They can’t do without it. They need everyone on the team, to stay on the team, and so many of the people on the team are only there because they want to be on the winning side.

This is the kind of thing a smart general spots in the enemy, right before a battle in which that smart general’s side emerges victorious even against long odds. The enemy, once afflicted with a weakness, is further injured by an inability to address the weakness — because to address it, the weakness would have to be inspected, and this enemy seems to be unable to even acknowledge such weaknesses exist.

How long was the left asked the question: If the government can require us to buy something we don’t want to buy, what can’t it do? And everyone asking, down to a man, was dismissed as a slobbering, slope-foreheaded, teabagger racist. Go away! You don’t count! Let the big boys figure out how this new perfect wonderful society will work, and then when we can’t make it work without your money, we’ll come after you and tell you what to do.

And what question did the Supreme Court ask them, when the time came to defend it in court.

How well-prepared were they, for the very same question they’d heard for two years solid. Uh…not sure how to answer that, derp derp derp.

Reckless optimism is not warranted here. But cautious optimism certainly is. The democrats can be told, point blank, right to their faces, where their weakest flank is…they can be given multiple years, solid, to fix it, said fix being no more complicated than writing up a message, testing it, and getting it disseminated. Which is something they’re pretty capable of doing when they put their minds to it. And in all that time, they won’t put their minds to it.

It happened four times in a row, in the space of a month. If they were tested, similarly, ninety-six more times, things would come out the same way ninety-six more times. We’ve seen the enemy’s strengths and weaknesses. Their defeat is more likely, if the weaknesses receive due attention, and those weaknesses are not complicated or hard to define.

Update: If the other side feels justified in playing some of this hazardous write the future game, just to see what it’s like…there is a likelihood that Peggy Noonan has isolated the next point of failure.

I notice we seem to be arguing lately not quite so much about what to do, as we are about who is to decide what we should do, and who should have no say in the matter at all.

Quoting my own words of wisdom in the Hello Kitty of Blogging account:

Awhile ago, columnist Larry Elder noted that conservatives think liberals are misguided, but liberals think conservatives are really, really, really, really bad people.

Maybe it’s time for an update.

Conservatives would like liberals to be disenfranchised from the electoral process, until such time as those liberals grow up a little bit, learn the value of a dollar, recognize that all people are created equal and deserve equality-of-opportunity but not equality-of-outcome, actually READ the Constitution, learn how our system of government works — and, where it applies, attain citizenship, meet the conditions of their parole, and use their own stinkin’ ID.

Liberals would like conservatives to be disenfranchised from the electoral process forever, and ever, and ever, and ever, and ever, and ever…until they die of old age, in a fire, get reincarnated as something hideous, die of old age again, in another fire, foreverandeverandeverandeverandeverandever.

The sad thing is, this “electoral process” has become more and more important to us, ultimately concerning itself with everything from, is appeasement the best way to deal with a country whose leaders want us all dead, and is trying to get nuclear weapons…to…what busybody bureaucrat will we hire to go through kids’ lunch sacks to make sure Mom put the right things in there. Think about it — that is quite a stretch.

From is-it-okay-this-guy-wants-us-to-bake-in-a-mushroom-cloud, to — are-you-wiping-your-ass-right. Perhaps it is possible for the spectrum to stretch more broadly than that, but it is difficult to see how.

There is more wisdom from Yours Truly over at Hello Kitty that dovetails into this:

Justice Anthony Kennedy nailed it. Obamacare is about changing the relationship between government and the citizens it purports to govern.

Time for some Dilbert logic. Imagine if you will, a society in which government takes care of the “citizen’s” most intimate and personal needs, and in order to do that, provides the citizens with instructions about how to live, right down to what kind of car to drive, how many times a week to have sex, proper toothbrushing procedures, etc. What do you think the elections for President would look like; what kind of megalomaniacs would want the job.

You might see the candidates most interested in preserving the dignity and autonomy of the individual, ejected from the running early on. For entirely nebulous reasons…like for example, “I just don’t get the feeling she’s qualified.” Like that. You might see the candidates most interested in providing their own children with a happy and sane childhood, pushed out of the race as sleazebag “journalists” rent houses next door and start peeking through their windows.

As the field is winnowed down, you might see the few remaining candidates utterly and completely failing to capture even trace amounts of real enthusiasm…even though the entire electorate knows the incumbent’s got to go.

And speaking of the incumbent, in the guys who actually get the top job, you might see this weirdly extreme self-centeredness. You might see their chin jutting upward at a permanent angle, as if their neck bones have been surgically fused together maybe. You might see them doing strange things like filling in fantasy sports team brackets while the unemployment bobs up & down around 9% to 10%. You might see the First Family take on this air of almost royalty. You might see the First Lady start campaigns to “battle childhood obesity” forcing the peasants to subsist on arugula and kale while she and her friends wolf down on cheeseburgers and fries.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you America Anno Domini Twenty Twelve.

So we have a bigger and bigger “everything” being decided by our political process, and we’re getting further and further away from the one-man-one-vote vision, embracing instead a model of we-vote-on-who-votes (and how many times). Well, what more is there to be said. We all like things to be a little less tense in our politics…nobody wants a fist fight over the Thanksgiving table just because this branch of the family is Roosevelt democrat, and that branch is Reagan Republican. We want our friends to be friends first, political allies/antagonists a distant second. We want to get along with each other. But I have to ask: Is there anything we can do to produce division and rancor, that we’re not already doing?

That, perhaps, is the ultimate argument against Obamacare: Politics will become more and more divisive, as long as politics decide more and more things, with little or no sincere or workable process for appeal.

Victor Davis Hanson writes about the Trayvon Martin weirdness:

The media cannot explain why in this particular case some outlets have adopted the new rubric “white Hispanic” — what is the reasoning behind that, and why all of a sudden now? Nor can it explain why it continues to run photos that give readers the impression that Mr. Martin was a pre-teen middle schooler, when a recent photo is accessible.
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So far all that is clear is that there is a growing anger among African-Americans about a failure to immediately arrest the shooter that in turn is provoking an even greater backlash against the antics of Al Sharpton, the creepy bounty offered by the New Black Panther Party, and others who inflame for their own careerist advantage, and no one — not the president, not the media, not the civil rights leadership, not the politicians — seems willing or able to call for a time-out until all the facts are reviewed and released. We have collectively regressed to the days of Rodney King and the L.A. riots and the O. J. Simpson trial — or to something far worse. Hope and change came and went.

Got that from an excellent round-up compiled by Ed Driscoll about the elderly couple that was forced out of their home when Spike Lee mistakenly tweeted their home address, violating the Terms of Service by doing so, as the residence of the shooter George Zimmerman.

Update: The shooter’s father discusses the hate. It’s thinly cloaked in some kind of quest for justice, which curiously, has the effect of making the hate deeper and broader than it would otherwise be.

This was all foreseen in a book written way back in the early sixties…it was called, To Kill A Mockingbird. Some irony, there.

The two visions are put alongside and contrasted with each other, so everyone can see the differences. Professor Mondo and The Major (Ret.) duke it out.

It’s educational. Wish my Social Studies teachers put on something like this. Like, way back, in sixth or seventh grade.

See, there’s a problem when these things are supposed to be kept civil: The left’s side of the argument presumes there is something about government work that makes one incorruptible, and/or wiser than others. They don’t come out and say it. But their entire vision is dependent on it. They’re very seldom compelled to come out and say what makes it that way. One gets the idea that their evidence comes down to: Government workers remind them of Mulder and Scully on the X-Files, who everone knows dress better and speak more articulately than those inbred rednecks they go out to see out in the boonies, with their dilapidated old houses with their creaking picket fence gates, and their glowing monsters locked up in the tool sheds, and their hick accents…

That, and government work does not involve that evil profit stuff. And that’s a breakdown in the argument right there. Government work might not involve profit, per se, but in many cases it involves a pension plan unlike anything you can get in the private sector. So if that’s the justification, the “government knows better” types are looking for an altruistic money-don’t-matter attitude, in a place where they’re less likely to find it than most other places.

So, which side has my sympathies, should be completely obvious as if it were ever in question in the first place. Now, on with the show.

Embedded by blogger friend Buck. This makes me giggle all weirdly & uncomfortably.

Maybe we can get the Occupy Wall Street types interested in it…

Was looking for a quote about what bad software engineers do, and I can’t even remember what it was I was trying to find…stumbled instead into this post from a year ago about what good software engineers do.

I’ve talked with a number of people, particularly business-type people, who seem to consider engineers working on side projects as a warning sign. This attitude, primarily held among non-technical people, is not only wrong but it actively interferes with their ability to find, nurture, and keep good software people.

Good software engineers almost always have side projects. In fact, those side projects are one of the reasons why they are good software engineers. The reason is simple: Good software engineering requires constant learning, and very few companies create a situation where all of that learning can occur on the job.

Technology, and software in particular, move incredibly fast. Today’s frameworks and tools are different than those of a year ago, and those are different still from those of five years ago. The details are ever-changing, requiring software engineers to be continually learning to stay afloat. At the same time, the techniques and practices that are used in software development, the deeper skills underlying the fast-moving surface, are consistent but require long and dedicated work to even begin to master.

This double requirement of keeping abreast of the latest tools and frameworks while at the same time mastering the underlying techniques means that in order to become and remain a good software engineer, you need to continually spend a tremendous amount of time learning. There are both requirements of breadth (keeping up to date with changing frameworks and tools) and of depth (improving your underlying skills), and it is very rare that learning on the job is sufficient to cover all.

Can’t disagree with any of this. I know better. I especially like that kick-in-the-chops at the beginning: “This attitude, primarily held among non-technical people…” Yes, that’s been my experience as well.

Wasn’t so thrilled to read about this: “…and the use of technology to accelerate social change.”

I’m sure he’s a good guy and all, and he’s definitely right on the money about the side-projects thing. My own observation about this has boiled down into a ripoff of the Glengarry Glen Ross monologue about Always Be Closing: Always Be Building. It is a lament rather than a lecture, in my case. I look back over the years and see I’ve always been surrounded by these well-intentioned sagely types urging me to not build anything, for one reason or another. It goes back to the very beginning. I regret every minute of every hour I’ve spend honoring that advice; it’s just not good advice. The “Always Be Building” thing, that’s better.

The dilemma that comes up is a vanishing boundary. In actuality, nobody’s ever told me “stop building things” because that would obviously be telling me to stop doing what I’m supposed to be doing in my job. The concern is about developing an architecture, protecting the code base, making sure nothing is committed that doesn’t properly gel with the architecture. Which is the very foundation of a good software engineering practice…right up until you get into that loop where, the whole team is waiting for an architecture to emerge, and there isn’t one emerging because you have these faux-architects wanting to “play architect.” They need to fiddle around with things before they can tell anybody what to do, because until they get that done, they just don’t know.

And that, of course, is a problem.

That can be people pretending to know things they don’t really know — or, it can be a natural outgrowth of what we used to call the “bleeding edge technology” situation. Meaning, since the whole development team has made it their business to confront an emerging technology, let’s say for example, supporting hardware that has just been developed and is offered to a narrow, specialty market — they’ve effectively removed themselves from the option of learning from others. There aren’t any others. So this isn’t architectural malfeasance. Yet. But the situation is the same: This narrow elite circle of “trusted,” not necessarily talented, coders start writing (bad) code as fast as they possibly can, in a quixotic attempt to try to make the unknown into a known, so they can come up with an architectural framework, and parcel out the work to these other guys who are sitting around waiting to be told what kind of code they should be writing. Who all have to be paid, regardless.

Or, maybe everybody’s trusted. That’s an ideal situation. But it doesn’t guarantee success, all by itself; and even there, you cannot count on the idea that your work will always be providing you with an optimal challenge. It all comes down to, your personal growth is your responsibility.

I think this feeds into a much larger debate, with well-informed and passionate opinions on both sides, among technical and non-technical people alike. Is the most effective development team a band of individualists, almost like bank robbers, who are in it for themselves, each bringing their own backgrounds to the project? Or should it be more like Star Trek, where team members devote their lives to the company construct just like Starship officers devote their lives to Starfleet…need a book? The company will provide. Weather getting nice? The company is having a softball match, see ya there.

I’m personally leaning somewhat toward the first scenario, with the bank robbers, although I recognize people need to communicate effectively in order to do an adequte job as a team. That is a hard requirement, but I think if the bank robbers act like professionals, it can be met without turning the whole organization into Starfleet with everyone running around wearing the same style of shirt and quoting regulations. The most successful teams I’ve seen, adopted a flexible, hybrid approach. We’ll have barbeques and softball matches…attendance not mandatory…buy the books, and we’ll reimburse you unless you have plans to stick your name and phone number on the inside cover and mark it up. (My current employer wouldn’t care about that, I don’t think, but I always buy my own because if a book is particularly valuable to me, it’ll end up getting torn to shreds.) But I think ultimately people favor one of the above two choices based on their personal politics. This guy is probably an exception, since his biography pegs him as a lefty. Most of the lefties I’ve met on the job, should they express an energized opinion about this, they’ll go the other way: No, the company owns what you do, lock stock & barrel, and you shouldn’t have side projects unless your manager has signed off on it, in which case you should be providing weekly status reports on it. Don’t care if you bought a media jukebox for your home movies and it was all loused up until you dashed off a three-line batch file to make it work right, on your home PC, at three o’clock on a Sunday morning — submit a report to your manager about that batch file, because it’s ours.

I’ve always been told you should think like you own the company. That advice is good, I think. If I’m the company, I do not want to own all the code any of the developers have ever written. New technology comes out, the developer pokes it with a stick, does whatever experiments on it he’ll be inclined to do, writes some crappy code to figure out how it works. After he’s familiar with its interfaces, he writes some better code. If I’m the company, I want to own that better, somewhat well-designed “I think I know what I’m doing now” code. I want to keep the wheat and leave the chaff behind.

From The Blaze.

The police must have had quite a laugh in Montgomery County, MD, after they pulled over a Lamborghini for not having proper tags. The driver instead displayed the Batman logo, and after they pulled him over, the police found him dressed like Batman, too.
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Officer Janelle Smith, who acts also acts as a police spokeswoman, clarified that the man is a “good samaritan,” and was previously at the hospital entertaining sick children. They let him off with a warning, and sent him on his way.

Naughty language in video. Hat tip to Linkiest.

Margot is not happy with the latest cover of Time Magazine.

People will see this cover, without even reading the story, as I haven’t yet, and conclude everything is fabulous for women. It’s not. Stats at the top have not changed for women. People in power across the board– business, politics, media, doctors, law, art– are men.

The spin on this article is pretty brilliant. From the cover, you can tell it’s not going to be that “women are achieving so much, so fast that males are the ones who need support.” No, it’s going to be that “women are achieving so much so fast, getting so very rich, becoming richer than men, and that’s good for men!” That way, feminists are supposed to be grateful for Time’s piece and somehow not notice that a national news magazine’s cover is actually referring to women as the richer sex. WTF?

Well, I haven’t read the Time article either. But I’ve read Margot’s work for awhile now, and while I think she is to be congratulated on giving-a-damn about what kinds of messages are being sent to her daughters and doing something about it — wish more parents would — I do see a rather narrow concentration on the demographics of the hallways and offices of power. There are corporate board rooms, corner offices, business partners, owners of sole proprietorships, executives, legislators, and others. And from what I can see, once such “mahogany rows” are defined, and their populations broken down, if the male statistic is any higher than 48% then Margot is an unhappy camper, and you can count on a blistering screed from the ReelGirl site within a day or two. But ya know…I’m not quite sure that’s the measurement to be applied.

Also, I’ve heard the arguments that say women are way behind, and I’ve heard the opposing arguments that it’s the men who are getting screwed right now. Seems to me they talk past each other. Both sides could be right in the fact that they present, completely right, which means they aren’t really locking horns like they think they are. Are the executives, legislators, equity holders, other decision makers much more likely to be men? Absolutely yes. Is a male baby, born today, much more likely to be financially successful than his female counterpart? Ehm…let’s just say I’m doubtful about it.

Will that female counterpart be deluged with advertising messages designed to keep her down, insulted, deflated, trod-upon…lowering her vision of herself…more than the male? No, absolutely not. It is possible, mind you, that what she does see will have a more pronounced effect upon her behavior. Guys have an ability to shrug that stuff off. Relatively speaking, anyway. Think about the writhing and whining and hand-wringing about “unhealthy body images in advertising” you’ve heard about, over the last ten or twenty years. Now imagine I’m wrong about the guys being tougher and less sensitive…let’s say I’m completely mistaken, and the blokes are equally susceptible…look at a replica of Action Comics #1 from 1938, look at Superman’s body, the slightly soft-n-squishy wrestler’s build. Compare to a more modern version, something from the John Byrne reboot in the 1980’s. Or a Doug Hazelwood Superman. I rest my case. There’s a noticeable change here, it isn’t doing the lads any psychological harm, or if it is, nobody gives a flying fig about it. But it’s probably not having the effect people are talking about with the gals.

As I pointed out in Margot’s comment thread, there is no perceptible statistical skew taking place right now — unless I’ve missed something? — with gentlemen winning elections more often than the ladies. Therefore, if men are outnumbering women in Congress five to one, you’ll have to take it up with the women who are deciding not to run. I don’t know what’s going on there and I can’t speak for them. Maybe they saw Kate Beckinsale or Keira Knightley running around in some undergarments, and got all put off by it. Seriously, members of Congress are frequently made to look ridiculous…and they should. It happens to everyone in a position of power. Well, that inspires one level of revulsion in potential male candidates, and a whole different level in females. Women don’t like being made to look silly. Eh, it’s just one explanation. Makes sense to me.

There’s also the magnitude, or perhaps I should say the intensity, of the ridicule to be considered. Remember the last time a man was the subject of as vicious and vociferous a hate campaign, as what was directed toward Sarah Palin? Me neither. Uh, by the way, who did that? Any of the feminists, and their male sympathizers, who are now complaining about inadequate female representation in these hallways of power? The lack of self-awareness that would have to be involved in any membership overlap, it would be absolutely breathtaking and stunning. And yet. I do think there’s overlap. Gonna go out on a limb and just guess that there is some.

But back to the “perspective” mentioned in the title. I see there’s an article about the glossy magazine advertisements of days gone by; its appearance is apropos, and timely. Spaking her right in the ass because she bought the wrong kind of coffee. And in the bygone days of those crappy percolators, hah! Keep her where she belongs…put her in her place…wifey as an animal-skin rug with his foot on her pretty head. Oh, my. You’ve come a long way baby.

Perspective is a wonderful thing. It’s refreshing…like having a beautiful woman serve you breakfast in bed. Perhaps, the solution to whatever problem that can be defined here — and I’m not convinced there is one — is not quite so much to filter out the messages that are aimed at impressionable females, but to take a closer look on how they choose to react to the messages. In fact, maybe that’s why the men aren’t quite so easily bruised and dented; in our world, after a few years of growing up, you need to start taking it as a given that any & all “messages,” be they spoken or be they printed, are not necessarily for you. I see there are some women who’ve figured that out as well…but on Planet Man, it is a requirement for survival. It’s basic. You go on those outings, in which five of you are someone well-adjusted socially and then you have that one jackass whose momma never told him no? There’s one in every crowd, it seems. Well, on Planet Man…this is something even the runt of the litter knows. Four out of five of us know you don’t double-dip, four out of five of us know you bring a towel when you bench press in a gym — but five of five who’ve survived to adulthood, get this one thing. Everything said is not intended for, nor does it have meaning for, every man. That’s one of the important reasons why we have bullying — any maturing lads who go through life with that “it’s all about me, me, me” thing, get bullied until they drop it.

Well…looking at the current White House occupant, I guess I’d have to admit there are some exceptions.

But by and large, this is a baseline requirement in the Man’s corner of the universe. And it’s one of the few things we do right. If we want to reach manhood and keep all our wits about us, we have to catch on that sometimes, a message is sent by one, received by another, and we are bystanders having not a single thing to do with any of it…therefore, if we’re offended, well, too bad so sad. Tomorrow’s another day. It’s a good lesson for everyone. What basket cases we’d be if we shouldered the burden of finding some meaning, for ourselves, out of every little thing. Three headache reliever commercials in which the husband’s using Brand X and the wifey is using something better, we’d be ready for the looney bin.

FOX News.

The Los Angeles Police Department will soon start ignoring California state law, which requires police to impound the vehicles of unlicensed drivers for 30 days.

The majority of unlicensed motorists in Los Angeles are immigrants who are in the country illegally and have low-income jobs. The LAPD says the state’s impound law is unfair because it limits their ability to get to their jobs and imposes a steep fine to get their car back.

As long as drivers can produce some form of I.D., proof of insurance and vehicle registration, they’ll be allowed to keep their car. Police Chief Charlie Beck insists that it’s simply leveling the playing field.

“It’s about fairness. It’s about equal application of the law,” Beck told a Los Angeles TV station earlier this month.

Ironic, isn’t it? If I break a law that says my car is to be impounded, my car is impounded. Nobody’s out there storming the capitol building protesting “Aw, gee, that poor Morgan K. Freeberg, it’ll be tough on him getting the money together to get his car out of the lot.” There damn sure isn’t anyone in the police force saying, hey let’s not enforce the law because it’ll be tough on Freeberg.

But illegal aliens get a pass because, and I quote, it’s about equal application of the law. Thin the herd so the species can survive, pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it, apply the law unequally for sake of equal application of the law.

Regarding Architects and Medicators, there are many ways to define the difference, but of course there is an obvious problem with multiple definitions: When applied, they may produce different results and create an ambiguity. On the other hand, there is a reason the multiple definitions exist. People, at least in my experience, don’t often fall on different sides of the chasm when these different definitions are applied. That’s what makes the difference worth noticing in the first place. Most people are either all-of-one and none-of-the-other, or vice-versa.

Then again, “most” is not “all”; in my own experiences I have met some individuals who are hard to pigeonhole. And my own experiences are not universal, exhaustive or encyclopedic. But if you try a little, people aren’t that hard to read. We all want to make things work and we all want to fit into whatever community we’ve selected. But there’s the split — sooner or later, the challenges of a more complicated life will compel us to displease our peers, for the sake of making something work, or to agitate toward unworkable solutions in order to please peers. To make a choice. People generally spend their entire lives choosing one of those or the other, and which one they choose, reflects the path of development they chose at a very young age.

I was explaining it to Dean Esmay and I ended up jotting down something that had been germinating in my noggin about this:

The simplest way to distinguish it that I’ve been able to formulate, is: The Architect comes up with a plan to produce a desired outcome based on the predicted behavior of inanimate objects, and the Medicator comes up with a plan to produce a desired outcome based on the predicted behavior of living, sentient creatures. These habits are formed in toddlerhood, typically chosen according to which methods have produced a positive result in the personal experience of that person, and they last throughout a lifetime.

As we mature, the Medicator learns to produce Architect-like results and the Architect learns to produce Medicator-like results. Example: The geeky eighth grader who doesn’t socialize and spends his time in the computer lab or in the chess club. In adulthood, he eventually learns to talk to people. But he’s not emotionally sync-ing up, he’s using his experience to figure out what most people will like & dislike, by means of logic, process-of-elimination, etc. He’s effectively interfacing with living creatures as if they’re non-living. The same holds true with the Medicator…taking tests that are supposed to gauge command of the academic material. Some of the kids who score highest, actually don’t have good command of the material, they learn to anticipate how the quizzes are put together, what kind of answer does the teacher want to see.

And perhaps the simplest litmus test to be applied is, if the test subject is cut off from all other living things for a sustained period of time, does he lose his cognitive ability. Not — is he unhappy and lonely — but rather — does he become confused, disoriented, start losing his way. That’s the test. Is there a social feedback loop going on, which has become indispensable in the everyday task of forming strategies for resolving complex and challenging new problems, and instilling some confidence in those strategies.

As a result of that differential, it is unavoidable that a justified sense of confidence is the exclusive domain of Architects, who internalize the process, and therefore can self-assess it in some rational way. Of course, the most concise definition out of all of them has always been: Architects think things, Medicators feel things. The disadvantage to thinking things is that the fine art of compromise, is in itself compromised; even with very simple problems, if an outside opinion happens to be right, it’s right the way a busted clock happens to be right. So the outside opinion, really, is irrelevant in every possible way. And the disadvantage to feeling things is that it’s simply an irrational process. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, so it can’t be reduced into component parts or analyzed or checked. It is a process of, like I wrote above, “anticipat[ing]…what kind of answer does the teacher want to see.” The answers are produced toward the same purpose everything else is produced: To arrive at an optimally desirable emotional state, in the person producing and in those who are in proximity.

Update: Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. An Architect can’t do this…not at age two anyway. You need to be responding to reactions from living things, to do something like this. (Hat tip to Linkiest.)

A black hole…for your time. You’re welcome.

Passing along the thanks to my friend on the Hello Kitty of Blogging, Mike Simone.

Wow…Senator McCain has a whole new round of things to explain to me.

But I wonder how the supposedly-independent-mindeds think about this kind of thing — knowing that, prior to 2012, nobody was talking about this stuff anywhere. How do they justify this? How do they explain it?

Three years democrats have held the White House…five years they’ve had the Senate. They could’ve gone after this issue of, “Hey waitaminnit, just because God says women are here to gestate with their babies, doesn’t mean it has to happen” — at ANY TIME they could’ve gone after that. But no. Only when Obama has to run for re-election, on a record He hasn’t managed to put together. Now we have to have this knock-down drag-out debate about “war on women” all across the fruited plain.

And what’s up with that democrat female? Is there a rule somewhere, you can’t be a spokesperson for the movement unless all sane straight men would run away from you, screaming?

H/T: CDR Salamander.

Thanks to Hello Kitty of Blogging pal Teresa. Happy hump-day.

This is doing very little to renew my faith…

What is it about the name “Carter”? Regretfully, the title of this post is intended to refer to a new magnitude of fail. Disclaimer: I still have high hopes for this movie, have not gotten around to seeing it, want to.

Bu-u-u-u-t…

Studio Disney has admitted that its $250m-budgeted science fiction adventure John Carter is set to lose more than $200m (£126m) following disappointing box-office results.

The film, directed by Andrew Stanton of the Pixar animation house, opened poorly in the US two weekends ago with just $30m, and has so far made $184m across the globe. It has been far more successful outside the US, with No 1 openings in Russia and the UK helping to save it from an even more humiliating total.
:
Critics have suggested that John Carter’s failure to connect with audiences may have been due to confusing marketing as well as lukewarm reviews. Disney chose not to run with the “of Mars” suffix in the wake of traditionally poor box-office results for films that focus on the planet, and trailers also largely ignored the movie’s central romance, something Hollywood tends to see as a surefire method of attracting female filmgoers.

“The movie is called John Carter, but aside from the fact that he can jump far and looks good without a shirt on, what else did commercials really convey about the title character?” wrote Ray Subers of the Box Office Mojo website. “Also, what was John Carter doing in this desert landscape occupied by tall green men, aside from fighting giant furry white creatures?”

What is fascinating, to me, is that these “marketing” people have spent their lives — I assume — honing their craft, learning how to connect with the public. To be sure, they succeed in a big way when they do succeed. But they’re not in the business of amplitude, what they’re supposed to deliver is frequency, and they don’t seem to be connecting that often.

Their industry is a fail. They’ve become overly-institutionalized, more worried about following rules of orthodoxy than about crossing the finish line.

And their fail, is ours. I see it everywhere now, in politics as well as outside of politics. People are supposed to convince me of something: Citizen Kane is the greatest movie ever made, this-or-that kid has Autism, the earth is getting warmer and humans are the cause, there’s way too much sexism in M&M candies, Mitt Romney is inevitable, Barack Obama’s birth certificate is genuine and Rush Limbaugh shouldn’t have called a slut a slut. Over and over again, we end up back at the same place: There’s no argument presented on which I can pass judgment. I’d like to say, I have doubts about my abilities to hear unwelcome ideas and to evaluate them with balance, fairness and objectivity. The reality is, we don’t make it to that point.

It says something bad about us, as a society, that the problem persists in everything from sexist candies, to mega-film-flops with shirtless guys, to talk radio hosts and sluts. We’ve lost something. As a resident of the culture, I view this with some measure of alarm. I perceive it thusly:

My job is to convince you of A. Step one: Figure out if you already think A. If not, fuck you and I’m outta here. There! Job done!

Isn’t that exactly what happened with all of the above examples. Here’s a marketing budget, now use it to convince people they should go see John Carter. Okay…here’s some footage. Look how high he can jump. Here he is facing off against a big monster. He’s got a gorgeous bod, ladies, and…oh, look at that! He just beaned the monster with a big rock. See our movie!

Contrast that with the plain and eloquent logic in the Marbury vs. Madison Supreme Court decision of 1803:

If, then, the Courts are to regard the Constitution, and the Constitution is superior to any ordinary act of the Legislature, the Constitution, and not such ordinary act, must govern the case to which they both apply.

Those, then, who controvert the principle that the Constitution is to be considered in court as a paramount law are reduced to the necessity of maintaining that courts must close their eyes on the Constitution, and see only the law.

This doctrine would subvert the very foundation of all written Constitutions. It would declare that an act which, according to the principles and theory of our government, is entirely void, is yet, in practice, completely obligatory. It would declare that, if the Legislature shall do what is expressly forbidden, such act, notwithstanding the express prohibition, is in reality effectual. It would be giving to the Legislature a practical and real omnipotence with the same breath which professes to restrict their powers within narrow limits. It is prescribing limits, and declaring that those limits may be passed at pleasure.

See what Chief Justice Marshall did there? This is what seems to have died off; he got into the opposing argument. Gave it a test drive. “This doctrine would subvert the very foundation of all written Constitutions…It is prescribing limits, and declaring that those limits may be passed at pleasure.” He declared the opposing argument to be just so much nonsense — not because it was his intention at the outset to do so, which it very well may have been, and probably was. But after giving it a try, and rationally weighing the consequences of following it, he declared this knowledgeably. Can’t take this car on the freeway. None of the gears above second are working, and the engine won’t go that fast. It’s the kind of finding that works best as an actual finding, not as conjecture. John Marshall embraced the experience. We don’t.

It seems we can’t think through ideas hostile to us, or against which we have pledged some hostility in return. Part of this obligatory hostility is that we have to hold the idea at arms-length, and get it dismissed before it’s had a chance to contaminate us. We’ve intellectually lost the idea to do much beyond declaring them welcome or unwelcome. This is injurious to our ability to hold aloft the welcome ideas, and state authoritatively why they are welcome. We select them with all the respectability and gravity of a flipped coin.

People like to bitch up a storm about movies having lost all their creativity, about a Hollywood overly enamored with remakes and sequels and “homages.” I don’t think the problem has to do with what can & cannot be cooked up; it’s got to do with what can & can’t be marketed. If the loyal following is not already built up and ready to miss important surgery appointments to buy the tickets, then the marketing project won’t be capable of building it.

Because we don’t communicate with each other in such a way for that kind of marketing to work anymore. I fear that all we have to say to each other, distilled down into its essentials, is: “agree with me already or else screw you.”

Maybe I’m reading way too much into it. I hope so. I’ve seen some bits of evidence to suggest so. But not much in the last, oh, five to ten years.

The Internet in thirty-seven seconds…since the whole damn thing is just cats & boobs anyway, why not combine them?

From here, hat tip to Linkiest.

So Breitbart.com has gotten ahold of a video from 1995:

This is really the divide between conservatives and liberals, in the modern age, right there. Not the gun thing. Well, not primarily anyway; there is a disagreement there, and there’s some importance to the disagreement, but that’s a distraction. Righties and lefties agree on the observed problem: Bored dumb young people are saturated with messages which compel them to make predictable choices that are not good. The conservative says, I see the problem, the young people are dumb and susceptible to these messages because they are bored. You know you’ve got a problem when these kids are sent down to the movie theater on a Friday, and by Saturday they’re trying to get hold of things they saw in the movie. Liberal says no, the problem is what the message is — we have to change it so the messages are “more productive.” Meaning, oh there’s another Archimedean lever that can be used to move the world, and the liberal’s hands aren’t the ones on the lever…that’s the real problem, as far as they’re concerned. Somewhere there’s a cockpit with all the pedals and steering wheels and push buttons, and they’re not the ones in it.

This is the Architect/Medicator divide, because the difference in world-visions has to do with recognition of a project perimeter. Holder, being a Medicator, doesn’t acknowledge such a perimeter; everything, everywhere, that is not being done the Eric Holder way is an unfinished task. I’ve learned from many mutually-frustrating conversations with Medicators that there is no end to the genuine angst they will feel about things being done in ways different from the ways they’d be doing them, if only they were the ones doing them. They just get hotter and hotter about it, like a nuclear reactor core melting down and burning its way to China.

Eventually you just have to face facts: All the trouble starts with their knowledge. They learn about the thing being done differently from the way they’d be doing it if it was theirs to do, and from that moment they’re doomed to this endless-circle round-robin of getting more and more pissed off. The only solution is to keep them in the dark, for their own good. So who’s the jackass who told Eric Holder about these movies?