One year ago today: July 21, 2015, saying no to banks.
Five years ago today: July 21, 2011, a generic day.
Nine years ago today: July 21, 2007, looking for gigs.
Random years ago today: July 21, 2009, Key West, Wallace, babe.
MORNING
This is a virtual reality camera, called the “Jump” from Google. It is a ring of 16 cameras intended to be used with their el cheapo cardboard viewer, which resembles those lame old “disney” stereoscopic slide scopes. It works on the same principle. But take heart. If you live long enough, you may actually see Google invent something new.
I was on the phone for an hour, a bit of a record this year. Somebody is upset. It seems a bit of clarification is called for. I right now have two places, this place in the trailer court, and a new place up in Lakeland. The casual pace of this move is easy to grasp—I don’t owe anybody any money. But nor do I have any money to spare. I’ve seen this a hundred times. People with four and five times my income are struggling to get by. They do not have my sympathy.
The trick is to manage your money well, and if you still have troubles, then you are not listening. Both Wallace and Theresa had twice my income but kept talking when they should have been listening. It is a question of financial discipline. And an understanding that lending or borrowing money is just plain the wrong life model. I’ve got fifty interesting, productive things to do right now that don’t involve booze, gambling, or spending money. My critics do not. Many of them honestly believe they can “save money” by watching cable TV and still call me for pity. I don’t think so. You can't follow if you fantasize you are a leader.
That brought me to musing about all the emphasis based on “leadership” qualities, but nothing seems much said about being a good follower. I know if I was a leader, I’d be picky about that. It takes years of brainwashing and propaganda to create good followers. I suppose the best thing we have just now on an adequate scale is credit card ads, common core, and the Democrat party.
Songs. Thrills. Romance.
NOON
What’s this with Trump suggesting a few more of the NATO members cough up their promised share of the defense costs? It has the free-loaders moaning in pain. The Liberal media is going hog-wild over the comments of some Polish lady [that her country has been abandoned]. Poland. That is a nation that has never paid its dues to the US, to NATO, or to anyone else. The reaction is so typical of Liberals when they have to start spending their own money. Go, Donald!
But my favorite news clip of the day has to be the sensational statement by a Texas cop that blacks have “violent tendencies”. There has been a massive uproar, mainly from TV viewers chortling over how Texas cops come up with such outrageous ideas.
And have you seen the IBM 5in5. That’s the five computer things IBM says will affect us most in five years. All of them, damn scary. It’s not the technology, which arrives with a shiny coat of new paint, but how it will be used. Here’s the list:
1) Classrooms will track the individual student, suggesting “enhancements” to “improve” him.
2) Local stores will “self-learn” your habits to provide you with a “better” shopping experience.
3) Medical visits will include a DNA “wellness” test.
4) Using cloud-based analytics, an online “guardian” will protect you at all times.
5) Cities will adapt to “citizens”, forwarding “relevant information” to the citizen’s phone.
It smacks of the old “Hi, we’re from the government and we’re here to help you.” IBM does not specify if the student or citizen can opt out of the constant monitoring and analysis. It will be sold to the public with the usual adjectives. “Public safety.” “National security.” The greatest generation eats that kind of rhetoric for breakfast. Will it become the norm? Yes. Thanks to social media, it has become impossible to ever disprove a widely held belief. Why, everybody knows Hitler was a lunatic, a homosexual, and a drug-addict by now, don’t they? You cannot pass the test unless you give the approved answers.
Equally scary, ERAD is proving a huge “success” in Oklahoma, money-wise. This is the device the police can use, when they pull you over for a minor traffic violation, to scan all your bank accounts and credit cards. Your cash and equity is then subject to “civil forfeiture”. If you have too much money, they can now confiscate it because you “might” in the future use such money to break the law. People who’ve been cleaned out report you never get the money back because it costs more than what was taken to get the police into a courtroom. Talk about creative law enforcement.
[Author’s note: I remind the world that after my single run-in with the system in 2003, the only money which survived was what I had “hidden under the mattress”. I have no doubt whatsoever that the expensive medical procedures I received were largely predicated by the amount of money the medical system found out from the credit system, even though I was never a credit customer. Never forget the first hospital left me to die until they found out I was loaded. And they got it all. While I’m happy to be alive, I also learned if I had hidden all my money, I would have walked out of that hospital with my life savings and be a millionaire today.
A millionaire? That's a bit lofty. Or is it? I had that planned twenty years earlier. You can go back in this blog and you can verify that I had money piled up to pounce the instant the real estate market collapsed. Yet, when that crisis happened in 2006, I was nearly broke—because all my valuables were on file somewhere and the credit system told the hospitals where everything was. I learned. I learned that the post office, the DMV, the land title office, and the electric company were all part of the credit system. What I really learned was not about paying bills, but about the wisdom of keeping valuables on file.]
Mark Dingemanse: Literature, 2015. Dingleman has conducted research to prove the word “Huh?” appears in every language. One can only suppose Mark reached that conclusion from trying to speak those languages.
NIGHT
I’m watching “White Tiger”, a Soviet-era movie about a mysterious German tank that can emerge from swamps and wipe out battalions of T-34s. Interesting to me was the portrayal of locomotives hauling damaged tanks to the rear through miraculously mud-free war zones. The plot is predictable but no expense was spared on the scenes. For those who know, shown are a Panzer Mk IV, a BT-3, and a Matilda. The British supplied the Red Army with Matildas, a tank that stunk so bad, when the 8th Army pulled out of North Africa, they left them in the desert.
The same should be done with that massive flop, the M-1 Abrams. A piece of scrap from the word go, it can’t go fifty miles without a breakdown. True, it suffered no casualties in several wars, but that was due to massive support from satellites, airplanes, drones, and computer target acquisition. It was not due to any particular crew skills, since it transpires that most of the volunteer crews lack the education to run the on-board computer. When you make the allowances, each Abrams requires the equivalent of a 23-man crew with 160 support staff. So yes, they did shoot up a lot of old T-62s and such.
But one cannot help but wonder how these Abrams would fare if they ever came up against a good old German-crewed Tiger or two.
ADDENDUM
Here’s something new, related to the movies I was watching today. It appear to be a way to get movies published that defeats YT piracy software. While youTube will move rapidly to shut it down, it seems to be working meanwhile. I have no idea if the idea is new, I’ve never seen it before. They invert the movie from left to right. It could be mechanically or electronically effected, but it must create a non-duplicate version not picked up by the censors.
I’ve used this technique a lot for photos of people, but never for action. It works well, since I’ve watched entire movies without noticing until I saw the “Russian” [Cyrillic-like] credits at the end.
And have you ever heard of the Munchausen Syndrome? That’s where, for example, a mother draws attention to a child’s medical condition to get attention. Well, I suspect there is an equally serious situation where the mother covers up to avoid the child getting any attention even where it is deserved. I speak with authority.
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