One year ago today: May 17, 2013,
last photo of the estate.
Five years ago today: May 17, 2009, a nothing day.
Lots of commentary today. First, this picture. It impressed me because I could never have thought of that myself. Yet, boneheads will continue to say that lame phrase as long as there are jocks dumb enough to believe it. To date, my only comeback was, “There’s no I in “Team” but there is a “me”. Congrats to whoever came up with this one.
And you’ve probably not tasted real licorice since 1996. Most licorice distribution is controlled by an aircraft hydraulic pump company which sells a reputed 90% of pure licorice extract to, guess who: the tobacco industry. Burnt licorice is not detectable in tobacco smoke, but it opens the lung pores (bronchodilator), which is why experienced smokers can inhale deeply without coughing. What you thought was licorice was probably anise.
Do you know anybody whose kids have AHDH (Attention Deficit Hyperactivy Disorder)? No you don’t. The originator, Dr. Eisenberg, admitted on his deathbed that he made it all up. (Would the “doctor” who came up with that bipolar crap please do the same as quickly as possible?) Now we have ODD, for Oppositional Defiance Disorder, the claim by American psychiatrists that all non-conformity is a mental illness, that “only sheeple are sane”. Therefore, all government dissenters must be crazy. This fact has formerly been discovered in Red China, Communist Russia, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Nazi Germany, resulting in the establishment of their highly renowned in-patient treatment centers.
I found this trivia trying to find more details on a cancer patient who had been cured by the injection of ten million doses of measles(?) vaccine. It somehow provokes the body’s immune system to attack, according to a report from the Mayo.
Dork of the Day Award goes to Larry Menteer of Jackson County, Oregon. They have a law that rainwater which falls on your property belongs to the government (they call it “the public”) and puts people in jail for “stealing” it by, say, digging a pond on their own land. Larry the Loser is one of those pinhead jerks who supports the letter of the law. He is reported to have said “the water law is the law, whether you like it or not”. Larry, who titles himself “Watermaster”, has successfully kept his photograph off the Internet and is very lucky dueling has been outlawed
Yeah, well I kind of didn’t stay home last night. I went downtown and wound up at a club where the clientele was . . . hang on, I have it written down here . . . ah, yes: “less than familiar and appreciative” of my style. So I said to myself, am I a pro or not? I can work a room and that is what happened. ( If you really done something, it ain’t bragging.) I had the first hour to myself and they loved me. I’m invited back next week. The only downside is their Karaoke disks are those cheesy vibraphone versions.
How about the paperback I’m reading, “Bringing Down the House”? Once you get into it a few chapters and realize it is not about gambling, it is good reading. The plot is more about the recruitment of a new member named Kevin. Surprisingly well written, the book has unmistakably been expertly proofread and ruthlessly edited, and gets on with the tale in a fashion that would bring a tear to Capote’s eye. I’m around halfway. Again, the book does not reveal any tricks, rather more an account of how a card counting ring is able to use the Asian rich-kid stereotype to scoop a 25% profit per night. Yes, I recommend the book.
This may seem an odd claim, but as a non-gambler one of the things that keeps me interested [in this book] is I would by now easily have spotted the patterns the ring was using. I would quickly have noticed such signals as crossing arms over the chest or running fingers through the hair, and not just because I am an expert pattern matcher either. This gang fully understood the psyche of the white-boy casino staff and takes full advantage of them at every turn. That’s what would have tipped me off, not the winnings. If any oriental won more than fifty bucks, I’d be watching him like a hawk—because I know the regard the East has for luck and I’d have seen the lack of reaction.
I was intrigued by the casino reaction to counters. Everything in the common areas of the building is videotaped, and these are not your old style monitors on the ceilings. Every patron is face-printed and the digital mini-cams automatically follow a suspect from camera to camera, each camera can capture twelve people at a time. And this book was written in 2002. Apparently, even better is thermography, the heat signature of a face and ears. Ear heat prints are hard to fake.
Also data-based is each person’s characteristic walk or gait. There is a central file of every face that walks into a casino instantly linked to all other casinos. This is the same system that made the news being tested at the Super Bowl by training the camera at the crowd. It picked out all the wanted criminals. This facial database is described as “massive”. There will be countermeasures. I offer my services for $5,000,000. My picture is not on any casino database.
As Descartes put it, “I think, therefore I can’t play blackjack.”
And for the record, I’ve noticed that youTube is combing their videos for copyright infringements at the account level. They don’t go by the individual video any more, they terminate the poster’s account. No doubt anyone who can post a video will know how to open another account, but that’s an explanation of why encrypted computing is doubling in size every year. As always, I have plans to switch to encryption as soon as doing so becomes so common that it no longer draws attention. Bottom line: Those who provide Internet service should have absolutely no control or knowledge of what is being transmitted. That is the only system that is truly free and it is the very premise of the Internet.
ADDENDUM
In response to inquiries, yes I do believe that computer surveillance software should be made illegal. It should be illegal to gather information on users because the potential for abuse is too great. Toward that end, I imagined a juke box, say five years from now. What can one expect?
Well, as you step up to the juke box, it recognizes your face, greets you by name, and updates your file. It asks you to confirm you live at the displayed address before you are allowed to continue. Cash is not accepted. Credit cards are extinct so it takes money directly from your bank account after reading your retina patterns.
After it has taken your money it confirms your car has been in the parking lot for three hours seven minutes and informs you the ignition has been disabled until you blow into the tube beside the screen. If you do not do so, your cell phone will automatically call you a taxi, for which you will be billed whether or not you take the ride. You must key your pass code on your home door within the hour or your car will be towed. If you try to ride with a friend, they must take the same test.
Your progress will be monitored by compulsory GPS.
