One year ago today: August 23, 2015, you can’t go wrong.
Five years ago today: August 23, 2011, squid-brains.
Nine years ago today: August 23, 2007, census, my eye.
Random years ago today: August 23, 2012, Mississippi bridge.
MORNING
Loathe as I am to publish photos of the interior of my house, except tidbits, here is my old kitchen. In real life, it really is not that blurry. You can see the stove is disconnected for cleaning and I’ve been batching with the microwave. The cupboards need painting, as the earlier yellow color shows through in the worn areas. Then, I decided to leave it showing to give buyers a minor bargaining point.
My view is same as before, Trump would win by a landslide in a fair contest. Like many, I see the concern to be the huge mass people who would vote for Trump but who have either lost faith in the vpting system or never got out to vote before. Trump must also see this, as he is moving to solidify his position with those millions. The opposition should be very afraid, particularly those parties who have succeeded in getting elected before where voter turnout was minimal.
It’s my opinion that both parties intentionally made weak campaign issues an unspoken pact since the middle of the previous century. That way, large segments of the general population get dismayed and quit voting, allowing elections to be swung by small but aggressive factions, often voting fifteen times apiece. That’s who’s against voter ID and thumb-ink, the bunch who have been winning elections on the sly. But this time, even the sheeple are on to those tricks.
I stand corrected. I had read years ago that the Indians who had casinos on their land received, tax-free, $3,000 per month per family member. Wrong, it says in paper today it is $160,000 per adult and $120,000 per child per year. And, it is taxable says the IRS. I’m of two minds, one that the Indians are and should be tax exempt, but two, not with that kind of money. And over all, it is understood that the IRS cares not for the taxes, they want the ability to monitor the Indians like they do the rest of the nation. Meanwhile, that’s one hell of a lot of money for nothing flowing through the reserves.
Nothing? We stole their land, didn’t we? Folks, for that argument, the Indians stole the land rom whomever was there before them (and there were plenty) and in the future, a succeeding civilization will steal the land from us. It seems to me even if we did steal the land, we are unique in world history by having paid for it many, many times over by now. How much did the Brits pay the East Indians? Or did the Monguls pay the Russians? Or the Japanese pay the Chinese?
Mark 48 torpedo.
NOON
I’ve got a guy looking at this unit for sale tomorrow, which is getting tricky to list as the trailer court wifi system is malfunctioning again. It only works on incredibly low speed and the office would rather field the complaints than upgrade. I was at the library, where I found this picture, which you’ve already seen because it was on MSN. It’s Einstein visiting the Grand Canyon.
I was looking at porch designs again. I would like the overall motif to match the porch. Funny, all the examples on line showed porches only on two story or story and a half buildings. Am I missing something new in porch design? I also looked at sunrooms, trying to find one of those CAD sites that lets you project various porch renderings onto a photo of your house.
No luck, but what I saw caused me to have second thoughts about the sunroom. It would be south facing and the literature says that’s not optimum for Florida unless you have a massive air conditioning system. I don’t. I may be wiser to adapt the sunroom shape into a regular addition to the house that can be heavily insulated. Or at least shaded better than what I envisaged. The photos were all in Texas with the tumbleweeds rolling past. Except tumbleweeds are not native to Texas. That’s your trivia for today.
Or possibly make the base [of the porch} from 4x4”?
I’ve decided to take the next cash offer without regard to the underlying value of this property. I want out of here and I’m only a tank a gas away from a better lifestyle. The office is also getting antsy about all my “For Sale” signs that go up right after they leave for the day. Hey, I got away with it for almost a week. Plus, they can’t say much if I move the signs just past their property line.
NIGHT
My news feed says the housing bubble in Canada has begun, but I’ll reserve any belief because the system there is so government controlled. I did notice the province of BC, where all of Canada wants to live but can’t afford $1,000,000 for a house, did enact a 15% tax on foreign drug money pouring into the market. That brought sales to a halt and prices are bound to follow soon.
In Florida they claim the drop was 30% but it was really much more severe. The banks went insane trying to cover up the true losses. The "bailout" money did not go to homeowners, it went to banks so they did not have to repossess the massive numbers of houses that went into default. The effects of that bad decision are still around today with 112,000 unsold houses in Broward county alone. If the banks had to list them or lose money, house prices would drop to around $50,000 each, which is what they are really worth. But with the bailouts, the banks can afford to trickle a few hundred high-end houses onto the market every few days, approving mortgages only on those properties that make things look rosy.
Expect the same in Canada. No way will Ottawa allow a huge slump, since all Canuck savings bonds and certified deposits are property-value based. Everything from the school bonds to foreign loans being backed by housing values that cannot be allowed to fail. Same thing happened in England not so long ago.]
Later, still at the library, I thought to do a search on what is happening with the Mars program and to see if anything new has been discovered by the rovers. Man, what a load of crap comes back. It was like a National Enquirer convention. Every mutton-head and crackpot has a posting that proves just how stupid people can be. Every loonie and numbskull has a conspiracy theory on Mars, but the point I’m making is not how badly informed they are, rather how this brand of drivel is completely drowning out the factual articles.
And we’ve got the first completely computer-literate generations getting a steady diet of that claptrap. You can’t tell me that isn’t going to have some serious backlash. And thanks to Google tinkering with the algorithms, the junk is fairly impossible to filter out. I proposed long ago the name for that bunch should be the truth-by-majority gang, but the term isn’t catchy enough. We had urban legends in our day and everybody had an uncle who swears a big truck did come by an tear off the truck driver’s arm. But you had to seek out persons stupid enough to believe these fables. Now, the softheads have instant exposure 24/7 and no downtime to figure out where this is headed.
ADDENDUM
Finally, Book Eleven. It’s longer than the other “chapters” and contains most of the action in the book so far. Old Charlie is having stomach and back pains, mostly from worry about alienating his confreres over his already-published Theory of Evolution. The reader should note Darwin’s theory was only one of many circulating at that time and is only one of many in existence today. (The difference is his theory is backed up by immensely more physical and geological evidence than the others.)
The religious cults of his day used the same arguments which are the results of pre-conceived opinions. Good example, those who find a species that has not evolved in millions of years, stating that proves Darwin wrong. No, Darwin never stated that all species evolved or did so at the same rate. To find an “exception” is the work of idiots who, without realizing it, are quoting Darwin without the benefit of having read his book.
It’s his chapter (in his famous book) on natural selection that’s causing the upheavals. While Darwin never attacks any church, it is 100% religious types that are ganging up on him. As with all big religion, it is money at stake. Amusingly, all the attackers mentioned in the book were people Darwin knew or had heard of. He is ultra-sensitive to public opinion, that being what it was in Victorian England.
There is also that huge element of jealousy amongst professionals. Others are not standing by while Darwin cuts into their book sales and lecture tours. I’ve always wondered why this aspect of human nature isn’t the topic of more study. It’s a real struggle between the mediocre class and the real movers. The majority, the stupid people, have their own version, so I’ll leave them out of it. I’m referring to the dangerous covetousness of the wannabes to their superiors. (Over 99.9999% of guitar players will innately know what I’m talking about.)
Now that I’ve got more background on his situation, I accept that Darwin was sincerely religious. I recognize many of the events from other readings and finally agree if Darwin was only posturing, he would certainly have been exposed. His critics then, as today, sharply fit into a narrow category of people who don’t understand evolution by Darwin’s theory or anyone else’s theory either. They manage to deny species change is possible as they munch on their radioactive Monsanto muesli.
Last Laugh
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