In Education, Bigger Isn't Better

One reason there are so many school shootings is schools are huge mini-cities nowadays. The only reason is people are cheap as hell and want to maximize their investment in education by herding kids into the biggest possible cattle farm. The kids don't know each other anymore and don't much care about each other, either. Every other kid is just another zombie in a video game shoot-em-up. It is a situation that was well-designed to create mass-murderers. When folks know one another by name and know what is really going on in a small school environment, that is when you nip these problems in the bud, rather than letting them fester.

Never Using Piriform's CCleaner Again

Ccleaner installed Avast Anti-Virus on a user's machine during a fresh install, even though I opted out. That resulted in a scenario where the user had two active anti-virus programs. What ensued was a 30 minute ordeal of trying to get Avast off the machine. A reboot was required, naturally. I will never use Ccleaner again and plan to blacklist it to prevent anyone from using it at all, under any circumstances. Ccleaner is malware. At one time last year, Ccleaner actually had a virus payload inserted into its code, by accident, or so Piriform claimed at the time. I rather think that Piriform has grown jealous of the wealth of other software companies and is doing anything at all to increase revenue, whether ethical (or legal) or not. The equation is simple. Ccleaner = Virus.

A good substitute for CCleaner is Bleachbit.

The Eternally Ungrateful E.U.

If the E.U. really retaliates on the steel and aluminum tariffs that Trump enacted for the sake of national security, we should begin preparations to withdraw all troops and military material from Europe. One hour after that announcement, any retaliation would disappear. Indeed, Europe should be paying for its own defense. American taxpayers have subsidized Europe's defense for decades, allowing Europeans to have a social safety net far better than U.S. citizens. Trump would be justified in exacting tribute from every European country, to the tune of many hundreds of billions per year. It is not right that the U.S. taxpayer pays only so that the European gets six weeks of vacation per year, free medical care from cradle to grave, early retirement and free education.

What Europe needs is another world war on their soil, to teach their people gratitude. They seem to have forgotten who pulled their delicate bits out of the fire.

European countries are arming fascist Turkey right now to crush the democratic, LGBT-friendly Kurds in Syria. European nations just don't have any scruples; they will do anything at all for money. They don't care that the U.S. protects them against annihilation, unless we start sounding serious about withdrawing that protection. That would be a wake-up call for the stupid Europeans, whose knee-jerk anti-Americanism is prevalent all throughout their public discourse. It is fashionable in Europe to dismiss the very people who protect Europe from annihilation. "Fat, stupid Americans," eh? Yeah, we're stupid, because we have been paying for their defense all these years, getting zero in return. And the U.S. has about the worst medical system in the entire developed world.

Guns Vs. Pot

It is amusing to contrast the police response to an active shooter situation at a Florida high school with that of a pot dealer. Tipped off that there's a large stash of pot, eager swarms of police bust in the doors of the pot dealer, looking to score cash, guns, and drugs, some of which can be siphoned off, but at any rate all opportunities for promotion, because the police department gets to keep the cash. Now, active shooter on a school campus? What's the hurry! We could get hurt, yo? No money in that, either.

It is a symptom of the collective schizophrenia in the world today that marijuana is perceived as a crime that must be answered with deadly force. China, Singapore and Malaysia, among other barbaric outposts, are known to execute those that traffic in large quantities of marijuana. For this reason, among others, an alien intelligence evaluating H. Sapiens would be wise to conclude that our species is not worthy of rescue, of enlightenment and education; that we should be left to our own devices, which means, to self-destruct in our own toxins and nuclear weapons. Rather than continue to contact us, they withdraw, leaving no trace.

Oh, No! A Professor Speaks Out

I read about Prof. Amy Wax's disparaging of black college students. In essence, she simply said that black students underperformed academically, but then she went on to point the finger at presumed causes--not genetic or racial, mind you, but cultural--rap music culture and the like. I think it is important to listen to what people are saying before jumping to conclusions about their ideology. Professors tend to carve out idiosyncratic world-views that borrow a bit of this, a bit of that, here and there. It is seldom correct to pigeon-hole them. But people are obsessed with labels, because they hate thinking.

There probably is merit to her observation, which was not denied, regarding underperformance among black students. Who benefits by her pointing out this discrepancy? Actually, if I were a black student, her words would serve as a spur to prove her wrong. Indeed, utter the inconvenient truth, say that the Emperor has no clothes. Truth is refreshing, liberating, and once truth is known, people can act based upon what they know. Prof. Amy Wax could potentially be the best friend of a high-performing black student. What she is demanding is better performance. She has not said that black students are incapable or biologically inferior at all, and they are not. She has said that rap music culture is brain-dead, and it is. Rap music prepares a mind to commit violent crime. Period. This is irrefutable, and there are tons of blacks in prison today, producing nothing, contributing nothing. A black student listening to Tchaikovsky, reading books, writing poetry, playing chess, and studying diligently--well, that would be a different kettle of fish, wouldn't it? I think that Prof. Amy Wax would be taken off her guard and might even write a recommendation letter for such a student.

The knee-jerk reactions of people in academia are insipid and do cause a reaction from the right. In the end, there is noise and little light.

Now, someone may say, but Igor! What if you were a college student that had to deal with a homophobic professor! Wouldn't you want him / her fired? Well, that did happen to me. I took two courses in microbiology from a very politically active, Republican (of course), right-wing, rabidly homophobic professor who equated homosexuals with pedophiles. She occasionally used the classroom as a platform for her views, although she was limited in this regard, because we had so much microbiology to cover that we had little time for extras. She had to contend with hundreds of pages, and it was a terrible confinement upon her clear and powerful desire to drone on and on about socially conservative politics, against the Godless liberals that wanted to normalize sexual perversion. Nevertheless, I liked microbiology and found her explanations of it tolerable and performed at the top of her class. I even gave a presentation on a disease that was quite well-received by the class and her comments and A+ led me to conclude she liked me. It is often thus with politics; people do not relate the solid and visible of everyday life with the invisible abstract, the boogieman homosexual that she conjures up in her fevered thinking about politics and public policy. Thus people persist in misguided views and generalizations based upon little but jokes, fancies or rumors they heard long ago.

It is possible to "prove 'em wrong" and there is a satisfaction in doing so. Yes, people begin by believing such and such, but they are mistaken, and if you are right, you must demonstrate to them, by your actions, they are wrong, and must revise their opinions, that is, if they want to be true. Not everyone wants to be true, but a great many people do, and upon descending into their world with clear and tangible evidence of a contradiction, one delivers a challenge to change.

Death Dream

I dreamed I was twenty again and driving my father into a deserted parking lot behind a closed shopping mall late at night. There was something work-related I had to check, a malfunctioning outdoor gadget of some kind, and I parked the car beside it. Another car pulled up. I shined my flashlight at the occupants. They got out, two men, armed with pistols. I was face down on the ground, begging for my life, and one thug smiled at my pleas, then put a bullet through my brain, which ended my life. What happened to my father, I don't know, but likely the motive of the attack was robbery, and the callous killers could brook no witnesses. It is deplorable, the tiny amounts of lucre that people are willing to kill other human beings for. It is not like I drive an expensive car or wear gold jewelry.

Upon awakening, I observed that the dream bore little relation to my current life, as I have no mortal enemies and have not been a victim of violent crime, at least recently. Perhaps I was visited by a traveling spirit that had seen the scenario. Or perhaps it was a memory of a television show. Television displays murders often. I guess it gets peoples' attention.

Of course, I will die in a certain amount of years, and that fate is unstoppable, even if I manage to elude the bullets that zip by in mad, modern-day America, where every hothead ends his life while taking out ten or twenty others.

So, what of it? I will not have any worries after I die. I will rejoin the earth, become one with it, and give up this individual identity known as self. The constituent atoms will reform into something else. And eventually, the earth will die, along with the universe itself.

I do not believe the self is so precious that it must be preserved forever. I believe the self is disposable rather, a base thing, prone to selfishness, driven by needs such as hunger and greed, and not really that fine. The dissolution of self could almost be regarded as a liberation of sorts. We cling to self and to life out of nostalgia and familiarity. One comes to realize that what we think of as the uniqueness of our self is actually replicated in many other people, who have the same drives, the same motives and desires. We are not really that different in the end. And the world keeps on spinning even after we are gone.

Pelosi on RuPaul

I have always admired Nancy Pelosi. That she is on one of my favorite shows, RuPaul, is something for me to look forward to. Pelosi functions as the conscience of a Congress that has problems mustering up compassion for the working poor, the sick and the vulnerable among our population. Congress spends too much time figuring out ways to help the rich get richer without any effort The rich must be awfully stupid, if they need so much help from the Federal Government to get even more billions on top of what they already have.

Checked Out Wal-Mart's Web Site...

...And, it looks like old WallyMart hasn't learned zip in ten years about how to design the web site. The whole thing looks like it is designed to sell paper cups and toilet paper, nothing more than that. It may be that they are just not intelligent enough to understand the digital age. Too many fossils up at the top of that company.

We Probably Do Need a Trade War

Trump's certainly correct that a trade war would be in U.S. interests, until the rest of the world stops exacting high taxes and barriers to American products. The reason so many of our people remain unemployed or underemployed in poorly paid, part-time jobs with few or no benefits and no retirement plans is that the rest of the world has been crucifying the U.S. on trade. Free trade is a great concept, but only the U.S. has been playing by the rules. The other countries block American goods at the border. This is why cities like Detroit are crime-ridden hell-holes. China is probably the worst offender, but the other countries certainly have problems as well. I think that Europe needs to start doing some soul-searching and stop raping the U.S. on trade. The U.S. can't foot the bill for everything for ever. Just because Europe is completely to blame for WW2, and the U.S. pulled their feet out of the fire and nursed their economies back to health, doesn't mean the U.S. is now the permanent nurse of Europe and has to give, give, give and never take. Trade needs to be equal, or else there does not need to be trade at all. I am sure that Europe has plenty of farmland to grow food, or else they can turn to Russia and ask for food, and maybe while they're at it, negotiate with the Russians as to surrender terms, and how many of their citizens need to be transported to slave camps in Siberia. Europe needs to think first of all about what they can do for the U.S., rather than imaginary obligations that the U.S. has to their ungrateful, bickering, backstabbing and freeloading societies. If the E.U. can't even keep calm, cool U.K. in the fold, it is not worth the paper their treaty is printed on.

AMD

AMD may be a cpu worth considering for Windows gamers, but no one else. AMD doesn't care about Linux. Never has, never will. So for me, it's Intel all the way. And the same goes for the hundreds of folks I buy PC's for. I don't even look at or consider AMD products, ever, under any circumstances, and for all of us, INTEL is worth a sizable premium. In fact, there is only INTEL, and they can charge whatever they want.

Republicans and Corruption Go Hand in Glove

It is amusing that Ben Carson, respectable Black Republican, talks against welfare for the poor, but greedily grasps welfare for himself. He is not O.K. with a $5000 budget to redecorate his office. He needs $31,000, or an ordinary person's entire salary, in order to buy a fancy gold-plated chair, diamond-studded desk and so on. What a hypocrite, grabbing bread from a child's mouth to sell it off so that he can put a feather in his cap. Stealing from the government is the Republican way. They talk against welfare for working people, then they take welfare for themselves.

It seems every member of Trump's team has indulged themselves, enriching themselves and their families at the public expense. Indeed, why work? Just mouth a bunch of lies and make people believe, and you can make a killing just hanging on the coattails of the Liar-in-Chief. I imagine Ben Carson finds taking handouts from the government easier than difficult, risky neurology ever was. In fact, the same motive is behind all of Trump's henchmen.

What we need is a good Democrat to go in and drain the swamp! Sell off the gold-plated chairs and expose all the excesses and theft of the entire Trump Administration.

Is the U.S. Doomed?

The United States will one day be one great big desert, with slave camps for all its people, who will be used as body bags by foreign conquerors--fresh organs, blood, tissue. One reason is other countries take science seriously, like Japan with its new cure for flu. How come the U.S. did not come up with that miracle drug? What's the reason?

All that Trump wants to do is buy bullets and bombs to blast the ragheads in the Middle East from afar, just like every Republican since 1988. Other than that, no medical care for the poor, no science, no space exploration, no infrastructure. The U.S. decays from within, while the Republicans have a jolly good time running up the deficit in a race to see how fast they can bankrupt Treasury and deplete our Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

The number of young people interested in pursuing a career in actual hard science (not just computers and nursing) is abysmal and paints a picture of the slave camps that will stretch from California to Florida. Sex slaves and organ bags are what our defeated people will become, to whichever nation or group of nations takes science seriously enough to gather up the secrets to future tech. China has already stolen a great portion of our technology, due to our leaders being asleep at the switch. No one in Washington, D.C. cares about or even really understands cybersecurity or science. All they care about is bombing ragheads, looking tough, standing tall, and partying all night in their drunken reveries of arrogance over their temporary power in this world. They will be forgotten, just like the old Weimar politicians.

Time is not on our side. I wish the Republicans would think for one second how many Ph.D.'s are graduating in China as opposed to the U.S., and how many new discoveries are being made, not in the U.S., but in competitor nations. It is not just because of resolve or toughness that the U.S. won WW2. It is because of what? Because of science. Without science, there would have been no radar, no breaking Enigma, no advanced bombers, no nukes.

Instead of a stupid border wall, which is a great big admission of defeat in the failed war on drugs, the Chinese are building dams, internet, highways, universities. Instead of invading worthless cesspool countries, the Chinese are investing in factories.

Who is going to rule the world in the future? It won't be the U.S., twenty trillion in debt. Our economy collapses the moment investors wake up and realize the debt is never going to be repaid. Inflation will turn into hyperinflation, and no one will have any retirement savings.

American Steel

Damn straight that steel should be produced in America. 100% of all steel used in the U.S. should be produced in the U.S., because steel is a vital national security resource, as is aluminum and many other metals. It is completely ridiculous that our leaders were asleep at the switch and let all these foreigners dump steel on the market. If there is ever a war or international disaster, then there are going to be a lot of problems as we will not the material necessary for the war machine, let alone domestic needs. And there is no safety margin in letting Japan supply our steel over China. An ocean, a language, a culture, and a vast distance separates the U.S. from Japan. It is entirely possible China could take over Japan in the foreseeable future. I can see letting Canada supply our steel, but not any other country. Canada is practically an auxiliary of the U.S., anyway. Canada would be an American state, except that Canada is better than the U.S. in so many ways, mainly in knowing not to get too involved in foreign wars.

The Mental Illness Defense

I'm not sympathetic to those murderers pleading mental defectiveness to escape the death penalty. They should be hung from the neck just the same, regardless if they suffer from every mental defect in the book. Although their brain may not understand the rope, their neck will understand perfectly and behave according to the laws of physics. This business where a murderer pleads insanity, then gets the taxpayer to foot his bill the rest of his days, is complete nonsense.

If there are some who want to pay to keep a murderer alive, then they should donate the cash, after compensating the victims' families a million dollars per life, and compensating the state for all legal costs, police overtime, etc. Perhaps some of these people that want to keep the insane murderers alive can sell their homes, cars, clothes, kidneys, fingers, eye-balls etc. to raise money. It is not the responsibility of the taxpayer to keep an insane murderer alive for the next hundred years. It is a violation of my rights as a human being to compel me to finance a murderer's food, shelter, and so on. The amount I am willing to pay for that sort of thing is zero.

Lenovo

Lenovo doesn't want to make money. Lenovo is in the business of losing money. I've seldom seen a company so determined to avoid acquiring new customers. The salesmen don't seem very interested in making sales. You're lucky if you can get one to call you back. Of course, their computers aren't any better than anyone else's, either. The Lenovo desktop has zero room for upgrades. Want to add another hard drive? Forget it. Open up the Lenovo desktop, and you are in Nightmare Alley. There's no space for anything, and working in it is a nightmare. But the worst part about Lenovo is that it is based in China, so their hardware probably comes with built-in hacks to let the Chinese spies in.

And, word to the wise: the defect rate of Lenovo products is high, while their technical support is extremely poor. Their tech support staff speak poor English, the kind of English that a third-grader in China learning English as a second language might use, and frequently Lenovo staff will return a product without performing any repairs at all. The amount of time Lenovo requires to perform a simple repair is 2-3 months; a complex repair is completely impossible. Those who invest in Lenovo as a company or as a customer have a desire to lose money and lose time. They would be better off playing video games, because at least they would have fun that way.

The Opioid Epidemic

I hate what opium and meth do to our people. Hate it. Rational human beings, good folk, transform into Cavemen, Cavewomen. Hurt themselves and others. Ruin their lives. Ruin others' lives. I sympathize with the desire to wall off Mexico, with its vast criminal drug network. Mexico has had a lot of time to reform itself and become like America, but is left behind in progress, because its people are stupid, in general. What else is to blame for drug lords running rampant in Mexico? What is to blame for the high level of corruption and crime in Mexico? Is everything the Yankee's fault? Mexicans should look in the mirror, and look at their kin and look at their neighbors, before pointing the finger North.

We should legalize marijuana from coast to coast and let that be our people's drug, because it has little harm, even next to alcohol. The resources devoted to locking up pot users are resources wasted. Pot is tea. No big deal. The biggest downside is potheads get thick-headed and lazy, but they aren't addicts and can quit tomorrow, with a bit o' willpower.

The other drugs, should they be legalized too? Yes and no. I would support legalizing methadone and other mild things to help addicts wean themselves off the hard stuff. I would not support the legalization and availability of meth, heroin or crack, because people are stupid, and they will take poisons until they die, and unfortunately, addicts have a nasty tendency to wreak ruin on those around them.

The Stock Market

I'm bailing.

The question is when, not if.

I'm quite satisfied with my gains thus far. Thanks, Obama. Oh, and a tip of the hat to Trump for not following Republican tradition in launching a new war. Yet.

True, bond interest rates are abysmal, insufficient to keep up with any rational projection of future inflation.

But, so what? Interest rates should catch up in time. Nice to have a hefty chunk of change in the bond market, dry powder for future use in the event of a stock market meltdown.

Right now, foreign stocks look interesting to me. I like the look of Asia. A war with North Korea just isn't something the U.S. really wants to do at this time, because our trade with Asia is such a huge part of the U.S. economy. Also, North Korea is nothing but a hundred-pound baby, with needs, not anything useful to offer the world. Bombing them just sort of reinforces their already existing bunker mentality, and they don't have anything worth bombing. If peace prevails, then Asia stands to gain, because China is highly rational when it comes to economic and trade policy.

Intel Slipped on its own Banana Peel

Intel's handling of the Meltdown/Spectre has made a quagmire, a nightmare for I.T., and I think many businesses around the world will be more receptive to AMD chips in the future. My biggest reason to avoid AMD is its abysmal performance in Linux, and the strange problems with its Catalyst video driver in Windows. I have not even looked at AMD in years and have no notion of what Catalyst looks like now, but perhaps I will be willing to try AMD again in 2030 or so. I figure by that time, AMD will have beta-tested Catalyst sufficiently. It was a horrible mess, worse than Meltdown/Spectre, ten years ago, and one thing I know about AMD is that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

How to Handle Afghanistan

This business where the U.S. just bankrolls a corrupt Afghan government into perpetuity is foolishness. The way to handle Afghanistan is to let the Taliban take over--after we have dumped all nuclear, biological and heavy metal waste on every acre in Afghanistan. Let the Taliban spend its energies on the environmental clean-up and enjoy the fun experiments in three-headed sheep. Do the same over in Pakistan, to impress upon that country's leadership the downside to betraying the U.S. after taking our money. What the Muslims need to focus on, instead of building bombs, is their three-headed sheep, poison in their water and air, and a host of communicable diseases. Perhaps the islamabads of the world can start cracking a book once in a blue moon, instead of a grenade pin. They need to learn about science and medicine instead of chanting the Koran every day. Maybe after a couple of generations, there will actually be some science going on in those worthless barbarian regions.

A bonus to dumping waste in Afghanistan is that the opium crop would have a built-in deterrent for all the drug users. They could get a hefty dose of radiation with every injection. That would cut down on the drug epidemic.

I don't understand why the U.S. has not recovered reparations from all the mines in Afghanistan. We should be rolling in gems and rare and precious metals now. Every taxpayer should receive a box filled with treasure captured from Afghanistan. Instead, all we receive is a big tax bill, and the tax money has gone over to help the ragheads, who hate us anyway. Worthless waste of money, getting involved in raghead nonsense. All they live for is martyrdom, they have no life and no culture.

500% Tax on Turkish Imports

Anything imported from Turkey should be taxed 500%. I think that Turkey has, for a long time, allied itself against the United States in every possible way, and the only thing that Turkey dreams about is killing Christians and sowing the seeds of terrorism throughout the Christian world. It's another Muslim-fanatic society, dedicated to genocide against non-Muslims. The markets of the West should be closed to Turkish goods, or else taxed at such a rate as to make them out of reach. Turkey's natural partner should be Iran, a similar society. The two of them can possibly merge one day to become Greater Persia. The only things they need to teach their children is Islam and how to make bombs. That is about the summit of the Muslim mind's imagination. Allah and bombs. Turkey needs to make reparations to one of the ethnic groups they practiced genocide against already, and then stop committing genocide against their own people, the Kurds.