One year ago today: July 21, 2018, Tiny Tim, what a shmuck!
Five years ago today: July 21, 2014, WIP – standby, this is messed up.
Nine years ago today: July 21, 2010, no U,X,Y, or Z.
Random years ago today: July 21, 2009, Wallace @ Key West.
What a glorious day, as long as you enjoy high humidity and 90+ temperatures. That’s Fahrenheit, folks, the good old American way. Why is the US so resistant to Celsius? Because, Euro-people, you should not talk. Until recently you didn’t even have a standard currency. The reason is it would cost too much to change over. There are built-in costs that have to be recovered when you are running the biggest economy in the world. What? China? You believe that? Listen, you cannot compare because they are not a market economy. Their GDP is what the government tells you it is. Or else.
The real problem is that fewer and fewer countries are willing to touch American money as time goes by, although at street level, it remains the common currency. It works the same with tax rates. When you lower taxes, people will invest their own money instead of borrowed money. So while the government wants small business to thrive, they hate it when you use your own cash. If you want to know why, take an economics course.
All of this got thoroughly discussed at the location shown here. That’s the beautiful Terrace Hotel in Lakeland, and guess who gets prime seating because the staff insists? This is where the Reb dines if she ever makes it to Florida. Today it was business first. Trent called from Tampa, we decided to meet up and embark on some serious babe-watching, such as there is in Lakeland, Florida. This is the hotel where biscuits, gravy, & coffee sets you back $20. But look at that view.
Nonetheless, I advocate getting real silver. There are two reasons, one you already know. If the market collapses, you don’t want to be left holding paper. The other consideration is that you cannot buy silver certificates anonymously. You are on your own with that one. But I would buy a hundred ounces of silver and wait. We’ve been through this ten years ago, and barely broke even. I know, my bad advice, but I did not know banks could manipulate the prices like they did. This time, I will do what the banks say not to. And they are all for gold, but as I said, who has change for an ounce of gold? Trading even a single ounce is beyond the means of most shops, and cashing it anywhere else draws a lot of unwanted attention. Stick with silver.
Chinese off ramp.
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Lakeland rhymes with 'wasteland' and as for cultural pursuits, that’s a good comparison. We already toured Florida southern when it hit me. My real estate lady mentioned the place with the electric cars. It’s only 11 miles from here by GPS so we decided to chance it being open on Sunday. It wasn’t. We could kind of tell because there were open parking spaces. Here’s a shot of the spaceship Florida Polytech. Designed by the guy who did the rebuilt Trade Center.
We peeked in on the medical research section, something called human studies, and room after room of laboratory equipment. If I’m not mistaken, the lectures themselves take place in a hands-on environment. My question was answered satisfactorily; all graduates must pass a practical. I now have to at least try to take a course. The competition must be ferocious with such a limited head count, but my GPA (of 3.9) has never let me down. Even attending such a school is prestigious. Trent and I talked about the increased number of seniors, and we are talking 90-year-old ladies, returning for advanced degrees. As for ideas, there has never been a shortage of those around here.
Why, it’s a good old Arduino Uno, with a sonic sensor, built from a kit. Six years ago, my little club had designs on the table that used six of these sensors, and used artificial intelligence to navigate a maze of books on the floor. Real artificial intelligence, not fuzzy logic and pre-programmed responses. I did the coding, I recall it well because I tricked the PWM timer to keep the sensors alert while solving the maze. Let me check again if I’m allowed to talk about results. Yes, same five year limit. Our gizmo could figure out not only the maze, but if you changed the maze behind it. We considered it a failure, however, because the cart (as we called it) could take up to four minutes to figure out how to turn around out of a blind alley, and took the same long time to retrace its way out.
It had other issues, which time and money could have solved. For instance, when turned 180°, it could easily go down the same blind alleys as before. We called the maze the “coal mine” because the textbook patterns with an enter and exit, while our unit was to enter the maze and find it’s way back out via the same port. Another limitation was we could not navigate more than three corners.
Yeah, well just let me get my hands on a laboratory like they’ve got over there.
ADDENDUM
I have the cure for Ebola. It’s called Mother Nature. It’s a virus, so the only known deterrent is avoiding exposure. But Africa is not a place for that. Civil war is a way of life and a favorite target of both sides are health clinics, duh. Pouring zillions of dollars into the place hasn’t improved a damn thing, although you get the odd new quip of some super-achiever on the six o’clock news. It happens about the same rate per birth as China, what is it, one in 300 million has a high enough IQ, but that is so rare as to be considered a mutation. Ever possible remedy for Africa has been tried, except as the pundits say, the whites pulling out altogether. That’s crazy talk. Before the whites, they used spears for population control. Now they have AK-47s.
And have you seen those women who were told to go back where they come from now making clowns of themselves? They went overboard trying to twist the comment into something sexist and racist, but nobody worthwhile bought it, even many of the left-leaning radio stations. (It may seem primitive, but 90% of adult Americans regularly listen to radio.) What Trump meant, goes the consensus, is that they should go back to the countries they come from and make a difference over there before crowing about changing America. Remember, these women were not trying to make America a better place, they were trying to change it to fit their own cultural backgrounds. That’s selfish, and the fact is most Americans don’t ever want to be anything like what we see in other countries.
Liberals who think America should dedicate itself to making the world one big happy, but hopelessly poor community, are borderline idiots. These places we are already sending money and technology have each already had their hand at achieving a great empire and their own “cultures” destroyed every one of them. The Chinese destroyed something like 13 of their own dynasties. The Egyptians, the Indians, the Persians, all collapsed. So anybody who thinks America can put the world on welfare has a deeply flawed concept of human nature. Give people enough rope, and they’ll hang you.
What’s more, is these Third-Worlders have bought into the concept that America made them that way. Not so. Some of the worst places have existed in much the same form as they have for hundreds of years before America came along. It is their lack of achievement and process in the face of democracy and freedom that gives them such a poor showing, not anything America ever did to them. Buy you’d think by now the libtards of America would have figured out if you give such people money and modern devices, they’ll form a dictatorship of even worse proportions and abuse.
So, the best thing to do is admire this picture of a blue heron in central Florida. I recall not so many years ago these were almost extinct. The flock JZ and I saw on a backroads excursion ten years ago was considered a phenomenon.
