Putin is playing with fire, skirting along the edge of war. The fool may miscalculate at some point, to his peril. It is unfortunate that the rest of us have to live on the same planet as Putin. He is in a similar category as Hitler and Stalin, his two heroes. That such a fool is in charge of a nuclear-armed state is a big reason to be pessimistic about the future of H. Sapiens. The odds that H. Sapiens will survive the nuclear age are about one in a million.
Friday, April 6, 2018
Occam's Razor
Putin is playing with fire, skirting along the edge of war. The fool may miscalculate at some point, to his peril. It is unfortunate that the rest of us have to live on the same planet as Putin. He is in a similar category as Hitler and Stalin, his two heroes. That such a fool is in charge of a nuclear-armed state is a big reason to be pessimistic about the future of H. Sapiens. The odds that H. Sapiens will survive the nuclear age are about one in a million.
Tuesday, April 3, 2018
Hand-wringing over Tariffs
When I read that tariffs don't work and trade wars are all bad, I just don't believe it. I think that is a lie. The U.S. imports far more than it exports. We still have the biggest economy. So, any country having a trade war against us is going to lose financially. And, in the end, the U.S. does not need any international trade at all. We are an entirely self-sufficient country, with enough natural resources and people to produce whatever we need. Stop all trade, is a good idea, for several generations, and then automatically we will be a strong competitor again, producing anything and everything. Meanwhile, China can stockpile all the junk it produces and build a mountain with it and name it after their dictator.
Funny how otherwise liberal-minded folks cozy up to foreign dictators and think everything is just hunky-dory that we are letting them have so much wealth, while so many of our own people are just getting by working for Uber.
Monday, April 2, 2018
Asylum
Opinion Repository
Now, I think that social media is stupid, by its very design. Place your personal opinions and personal information on a public venue where anybody can scan them to learn all about you. In the first place, people underestimate the number of hostile eyes. They don't realize, people have bad intentions for gathering information. By giving away information, one serves one's enemies.
The beginnings of social media stretch back far into the days of BBSes. Even back in the BBS world, there was danger, but now the danger is ten-fold, because social media encompasses the globe, and everyone is in on it. I have known people to get in trouble on their job because of what they wrote on social media. It is better not to write anything that is attached to a real name. Everything you write or post goes directly to your current and future employers, friends, lovers, foes, co-workers, and so on. It never ends.
Censorship on Facebook and Twitter is a gift. Everyone should be censored. No one should post anything. That is the perfect ideal. Anytime someone is censored, they should write a thank-you note to the censor and mail a check for a hundred dollars. The censor is your friend.
I've never understood why they call it social media. People are sitting at home, alone, in front of a computer screen. How social is that?
Sunday, April 1, 2018
National Public Radio
I think that NPR should focus more on science and education, because there is a real hunger and need for that. Just pressing the enrage button constantly makes people miserable and dumbs people down. I wonder what good NPR is, if that is all it ever does.
Friday, March 30, 2018
Amazon
So this is the real reason that Amazon's owner is hyped as this great big genius. In reality, he is just a selfish, cruel tycoon very willing to take advantage of anyone and everyone. He is farther right-wing than Trump. Trump is a liberal next to Amazon. The only reason Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post was to use it as a tool against Trump, because he feared that the U.S. government might act against Amazon's selfish interests. Well, it should. Congress should pass legislation to make sure that the Postal Service is paid, not just what it needs for current costs, but to ensure that Postal employees are getting the health benefits and retirement savings that they need long-term. Postal employees are temps with no benefits, work long hours and suffer long-term hearing loss from their dilapidated jeeps. Congress should see to it that Amazon pays its fair share to local and state governments, who have been short-changed for years. How is the government supposed to get funding, when people are buying everything from Amazon and not paying a dime of sales tax?
Thursday, March 29, 2018
Trump was Right about Africa
But I'm sure it's all the fault of whitey.
Crapple Claims It Is Made in America
Saturday, March 24, 2018
Arthur C. Clarke
Trump is entirely unacquainted with either science or scientific thought, and to be fair, the same applies to many world leaders, who view science merely as a tool for military weapons or economic gain, if they think of it at all. Elevating the bullies of the world into positions of power has had a deleterious effect upon our future prospects. Putin, Trump, Xi--and then the nitwits of Iran, North Korea, and really most all of Africa. I think there is a great case to be made for pessimism over the future of H. Sapiens, given that many of these leaders have vast arsenals, including biological, chemical and/or nuclear weapons at their disposal. Probability will run its course, and there is a distinct probability one of these nitwits will miscalculate at some point in time and set off a most regrettable chain of events.
Therefore, what is an ethical person with sense to do? Enjoy life, I suppose, and try not to dwell upon the coming end of humanity, and try to secure little pockets of knowledge and culture into safe havens that can endure, perhaps, the coming nuclear/biological/chemical Apocalypse, when vast numbers of the human race will perish in suffering and death, slowly or mercifully quickly. It is well to stockpile cans of pinto beans and dried milk, as I know many folks that do, but also stockpile books and data, because much learning could be lost when the Internet is no more, and libraries have burned to the ground.
Give a care, not just to the immediate needs of current life, the avoidance of hunger and thirst and so forth, but also to the knowledge-base of the human race. Imagine having to discover all of our science and technology all over again. Imagine being without all our fiction and prose. We could well be sent back to the Stone Age, depending on the severity of the Apocalypse. It would be well to have many treasure-chests hidden around in various locations with a wealth of knowledge.
Perhaps if all is lost, and most all our species perish, there is yet hope, if not a hundred years after, then a thousand, or even ten thousand, or a hundred thousand. I imagine a secure and timeless repository like the Pyramids of Egypt, something that can endure, in a desert perhaps, or some remote place far from the beaten path, hidden from thieves and wild animals, safe even from rot and decay, microbes, humidity and solar radiation. It is a technical problem that demands a technical solution. It would be worthwhile to invest a million dollars in securing hidey-holes around the globe for future wanderers to uncover, that our civilization might be reborn in a future age, after the radiation has died down and open spaces are habitable by human beings again.
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
In Education, Bigger Isn't Better
Sunday, March 18, 2018
Never Using Piriform's CCleaner Again
A good substitute for CCleaner is Bleachbit.
The Eternally Ungrateful E.U.
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.
Friday, March 16, 2018
Guns Vs. Pot
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.
Thursday, March 15, 2018
Oh, No! A Professor Speaks Out
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.
Tuesday, March 13, 2018
Death Dream
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.
Saturday, March 10, 2018
Pelosi on RuPaul
Tuesday, March 6, 2018
Checked Out Wal-Mart's Web Site...
Saturday, March 3, 2018
We Probably Do Need a Trade War
Thursday, March 1, 2018
AMD
Wednesday, February 28, 2018
Republicans and Corruption Go Hand in Glove
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.
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techlorebyigor is my personal journal for ideas & opinions