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I don't initiate Hangouts, but will attend if invited.
2014 is, of course, 100 years since the Great War (World War I) and I posted a rather lengthy blog entry about The Great War's Armistice Remembered. I notice that a lot of European countries, plus China and Russia, are bringing a lot of traffic to that post today. I mentioned, last year, an event talked about this year by everyone from Britain's Queen to the local news paper: the Christmas Truce.
It was never really forgotten, though, and in the 1960's, a novelty band called the Royal Guardsmen celebrated World War I in a manner that became quite popular; they tied it in with Charles Schultz' World War I Great Flying Ace and master of the Sopwith Camel, Snoopy.
My regulars already know that I'm a firm believer in Santa (Saint) Claus (Nicholas), who has been demonized by some religious people originally because he's a prominent Orthodox saint, totally ignoring the fact that he was a major participant in the first Ecumenical Councils that even Protestants recognize as legit.
To the Enid News & Eagle's credit, today's editorial ran a reprint of Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus--but not to their credit, they hide behind a subscription wall which negates them as a resource for periodical research...which is why the link I provided goes to a different entity.
My regulars also know that I turn another year older as New Year's Eve becomes New Year's Day (meh). But as the late Erma Bombeck pointed out, aging isn't for sissies, and y'all know I'm no sissy.
Have a good one.
Before I turn in to let Santa come visit, I just want to say that I got quite a bit well before this time, and all I wanna do is just offer the milk and cookies. I'm fine. Luvz ya, Santa.
Earlier, I took advantage of the low traffic downtown to attempt a video walk-around of the Bike Trail, and will be posting that before long. The trail head begins in Ward 5 but crosses over into Ward 6 before it enters Ward 5 again on Washington, and along my walk I got quite a chuckle out of Vanhooser signs, regarding "product placement". His huge signs are in the windows of what I used to call "dead bodies"--empty storefront property. He must be quite proud of the "dead bodies" in Ward 6. And one of those "dead bodies" had a deteriorated sidewalk in front of it, too. Not quite a pothole as such, but all the same, a still of that is so priceless, I'm gonna post that here too, so that y'all can get a chuckle out of it yourselves. I think I'll caption it thus: "If you like what he didn't do for Ward 6, you'll love what he won't do as mayor."
Here we go--
"COMING FALL 2014" and it's friggin' end of December. Must have taken a long Fall off that step.
I've mentioned, in passing, in the previous post, the seasonal band presentations of Emerson Middle School. I mentioned the packed parking situation but haven't presented any of the performances yet. People on Google + and Twitter are already looking at two such videos I uploaded to YouTube, and so I'll take this time, in this separate post, to link those here, with the caveat that there are more besides these two.
Note how packed the auditorium was, too. The +cityofenid spent big bucks with Waller and the high school while the Ward 5 incumbent rolled over and played dead when it came to advocating for improvements at Emerson, from which come the freshmen for that fancy-schmancy high school. More's the pity because the best kids go there, as you will see shortly, below...
There were two unadvertised open houses today--one at NBC bank and the other at the InterBank, which used to be Roserock. Both had sparse fare compared to previous years, and it's no wonder they didn't advertise. NBC is worth mentioning because it's a strong supporter of local artists. Its upstairs mezzanine used to be an art gallery of sorts, but the walls up there were bare today. I was told that they do have art work in progress to be hung up there later.
Aren't video cameras wonderful? Isn't public access wonderful? Some folks in +cityofenid don't think so, clearly, but former exec editor of the Enid News & Eagle weighed in on that...
...and...TA-DA!--I have study session footage. Stay tuned. If I was on the Council, I wouldn't take exception to a camera. As a bonus I'd probably do a li'l soft-shoe or an impression of Edith Piaf. Ya never know--I'm always full of surprises. {Note to Kyle Dillingham--non, je ne regrette RIEN.}
Speaking of same ole potholes, there's the first Punched Out Judy Show, censored by Steve Kime and denied access to what's supposed to be a public access cable channel. Kim Jong Un is proud of you, Steve.
Note that the following video was produced at a time when the +cityofenid pulled the plug on recording/producing Enid Chautauqua and all I had to work with were snapshot cameras that could record video, and Microsoft Live Moviemaker by way of software. I know it's quite clunky as a result, but it got the point across. I have since acquired one better camera and better production software.
Saturday Mini-UPDATE:The drive-around video at Emerson and the nighttime video of the parking situation will be supplemented by an illuminating daylight walk-around video which will also show the size of the parking lot that was full during the concert. While the walk-around was in progress, one lady I talked to told me that the street was also bad further to the east and that her mother had moved there, and that the road has been bad for a long, long time. No matter who was mayor and no matter who held office as a Commissioner, the roads were always bad and nobody did anything about it. I told her that I was on a mission to change that. No bought yard signs or bought street signs can beat actually getting out there and talking to people. Nothing beats it. The video is being processed at this time, so watch this space. And the next time a Commissioner or City Manager tries to snooker you into voting for a vast parks overhaul or a ferris wheel or a hiking trail while whining about improving the quality of life in Enid, don't believe one blithering word of it. Quality of life begins with quality residential roads especially around, to, and from Enid's schools. Any other plot to improve quality of life isn't just vast--it's half-vast. So, Enid Ward 5...what has your Commissioner done for you in the last 3 years? I keep looking for it and I can't find it.
Yeah--I found this out earlier in the week this week, and in today's paper was this:
Vance Air Force Base was saved during the Dubya administration's BRAC closings because Enid passed a tax levy specifically to upgrade our schools, but BRAC is over. Long time ago over, and we haven't sunsetted that levy yet? I ask the question because I found out earlier this week that it's out of the EPS budget which comes the money paying for "EPS TV", the production operation queued up to take over PEG cable channel 19. Yeah--Vanhooser keeps bragging that he's saving the city money by taking over the 501(c)3 corporation PEGASYS, putting our government in charge of getting into the broadcasting business, when what he's done was a shell game of putting production costs on the backs of our schools, because hey--after that BRAC tax, they can damn well afford it.
I do NOT think that's why we passed the BRAC tax, buddy. That's the kind of budgetary shell game Chicago is famous for, and Mr. Vanhooser, I have yet to meet any Oklahoman that thinks turning the City of Enid into Chicago was ever a good idea. It's bad enough that our government took over a 501(c)3 corporation media outlet and some of us think that sounds more like Moscow--forget Chicago.
So, in order to explore the future, EPS has only to read yesterday's paper:
Duh.
Enid Public Schools system has no business being in the business of broadcasting anymore than the city does, and if we're going to do stuff with the ongoing BRAC tax, let's pay our teachers first.
Monday EPS Board Meeting UPDATE: it was mentioned that the ad valorem tax was high in Enid, calculated to be 15% on corporate property...without mentioning that certain corporations get exempted from that according to Oklahoma law. I can't swear to it, but I was under the impression at least Koch Nitrogen got such an exemption, but I need to re-research that before making a definitive statement in that regard.
What grabbed my attention more than that was the plan for EPSTV to be part of a high school curriculum in broadcasting. Excuse me, but is EPS supplanting universities now? That's college level, and the preceding presentation highlighted dips in math and science. So training highschoolers in a college level arts course brings up the EPS performance in math and science how, exactly?
What was approved tonight was a contract involving airing school sports along with those commercial entities already broadcasting those on radio, and I'm sure they were focused myopically on the sponsors part of the deal, perhaps in view of the inevitable readjustment of the ad valorem tax to approach the 11% level.
Nobody said anything about still collecting the school-improvement BRAC tax, which was a sales tax, if I remember correctly, and that's something else that deserves quality time researching.
Thursday evening Emerson UPDATE: This outstanding middle school, the pride of Ward 5, did their seasonal band show tonight, and here's a vid to show exactly why its decrepit roadways are such a cryin' shame. Emerson is one of the best shows in the Tristate event, second only to Enid High in my view, and yet even after BRAC tax improvements (supposedly), this is the moonscape they're stuck with.
I will be posting a video sampler of the event in a separate post. Next is a vid of the same scene but in the daylight, followed by an on-foot rendition of the Emerson Drive-Around.
Friday UPDATE: EPS is suing the state for not handing over more money, claiming that the district got shorted...when it was pointed out during the board meeting that the ad valorem tax had been too high (15%) compared to state average (11%). WTF?
Friday UPDATE: I found a setting for my video processor that generated a video that was 80 MB and Blogger still errored out, although it claims a limit of 100 MB ( actually 1 G, of course). Google, FIX THIS. Yesterday.
============okay, I got a WMV file to work, 320 x 240. MAN that sux bilgewater. Saturday night UPDATE: I finally got to see the movie Interstellar and I gotta say that it's an epic science nerd flick. Bigtime. I've heard the criticisms of the science community about it but if you're a scientist and a critic, then you missed one very significant statement made which renders your criticism unqualified. It was the statement that years and years of going over the same mathematics expecting different results was the result of recursive definitions. That's exactly why you scientists and mathematicians who think you know better have NOT mastered timespace travel yourselves. You therefore do NOT stand with sufficient authority to criticize what is basically true. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the zero needs to be reinvented before you can make any progress in that direction. That's the thing that, in the main, is holding you back. You seriously need to know how to define imaginary and irrational numbers as something other than unknowns. You need to successfully redefine what the square root (actually any given even root) of a negative number is and you can't do that without a better concept of what zero is. As long as your number system remains faulty, your mathematics will remain faulty. No, I did not read Thorne's companion book, but I really didn't have to. The movie is scientifically solid all the same.
Sunday Addenda:I still haven't read every scientific criticism of the movie at this point, but I did want to address the matter of the biology of crops being wiped out globally. The point made in criticism is that it's not a likely scenario even though it's remotely possible. Sorry, but that's the current criticism of GMO monoculture and what the movie portrays is the future success of Monsanto to establish GMO seed as the only seed available, and Monsanto GMOs its patent protection by designing in sterility for second generation seed. What does that have to do with the vulnerability of a singe crop to a single form of blight? The crops in question--all grain crops--are of a singular genetic makeup with no diversity, which guarantees a singular susceptibility to a singular form of blight, and blights are typically evolving virii. We're looking at a "superbug" type virus and we're already seeing "superbugs" today.
Something else worthy of pointing out: you don't see anybody from the future although you see the designed wormholes (including the one that goes through the "black hole" Gargantua). Those people existing in a past they're not supposed to exist in would create a fatal temporal paradox, a paradox presumably defeated by the Doctor Who concept of a TARDIS. People who exist in their own proper time cannot properly exist in other times, necessitating the "poltergeist" form of communication. There was an era when Doctor Who was based on sound science, but that was in its earlier days--it's not as true with "NuWho".
Ah, good point by a Whovian. Both the TARDIS and the movie Interstellar feature libraries as central to time navigation. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Books are always bigger on the inside than on the outside, and in the case of the TARDIS, the library is simply a visual interactive interface with its core database. And even though the TARDIS was already an outmoded antique Model 40 when the Doctor acquired it, it was uniquely suited to the Doctor because of the type and size of database it had on board. Nice catch.
Sunday a week later UPDATE: BBC Newsnight presented a segment on quantum computers, presented at Blechley Park, explaining how basic computing works using the Colossus computer, built with vacuum tubes (in Brit: "valves"). It's important to note that the quality of the quantum mechanical computer deals with a "third state" which is neither zero nor one (binary) but both. In industry, this is not a novelty, however--traditionally, it's been called a "toggle state", and it's been with us for a very long time already, and thusfar, has been context-dependent on interpretation. In one type of context, it's a Boolean OR; in another, it's a Boolean AND. In yet another, it's a Boolean NOR, and in still another, a Boolean NOT, and in other contexts, NAND. It's all very geek-sexy to talk about quantum mechanics in applied computing, but the fact remains that successful computing means successful equivalencies in interpretation, and it's all still very much open to interpretation. Which brings us back to the importance of avoiding recursive definitions, and the quality of one's number system
The mainstay of any type of mathematics lies within the rules of establishing equivalence--the definition of what is and what is not equivalent. As long as equivalency definitions contain recursive definitions, this condition will continue to be the main mathematic bugger until your mathematicians successfully sort it all out properly.
Wednesday Science UPDATE: If the very idea of intelligent metal machines give you nightmares, the following two articles should totally shock you outta yer shorts:
Maybe it's a good thing that the SyFy Channel pulled the plug on "Caprica" because the deal about the difference between "toasters" and "skin jobs" just got blown outta the water.
My fellow coders out there in cyberspace might hoot & holler, "not so fast, pneumatic plastic is not logical!" but being the mechanic that I am, I hasten to remind everyone of Boolean persuasion that there IS such a thing as pneumatic logic, and it has been in use in mining and any environment in which electronics might cause an explosion should there be a release of volatile gases during operations. Boolean works with pneumatics, too.
And with that, I can segue into a comment on the Cuba thing, given that a Cuban guy I admire from afar, Arnie Coro, happens to be the consummate junkyard genius. Luvz ya, Arnie, but if relations between Cuba and America are about to normalize, your baby, Radio Habana, might be headed for the same mission graveyard that Radio/TV Marti is headed. You had a good run, fella, but I would think that, at your age, you would welcome retirement, eh? Hey Arnie--you can start by giving up jamming WRMI. Just sayin'.
Last year I blogged about the various open house events in Enid during December, and posted a few videos of these events--but this year, Blogger is being a bitch about directly posting videos in a blog, restricting file size to an unrealistic 100MB. Blogger errors out even when the vid is iPhone size. I suppose that's for the purpose of "encouraging" people to post vids on YouTube and then link the YouTube vid to the blog, but with all the copyright trolls unfairly targeting Fair Use and Public Domain posters who don't fight back either because they don't know that they can, or that each complaint is just too damn much bother, that remains a big bugger with Blogger but also Google, which desperately needs to fix that problem yesterday but won't.
However, a few YouTube trolls found out the hard way that not only do I fight back, but successfully at that...but Google, good buddy, it's STILL a huge bother that diminishes all the brands affected by this where the public at large is concerned. Fix it.
As my readers already know, 'tis the season for Enid city politics, and on December 6, the Enid News & Eagle meddled in the running field by publishing this:
What this does is revisit the horror of the City government taking over a corporation and going into the broadcasting business that it has no business getting into. The write-up is biased in the favor of Vanhooser, a challenger to Mayor Shewey for his office, as if a big government take-over of a corporation is a good thing. It pretends that the City money from its citizens is better spent on a media vanity project than on the upkeep of city-wide bad residential roads.
What the Eagle didn't know at the time, I'm sure, is that the Republican Women organization has scheduled a candidates' forum for January 9 and that at least one candidate that I know of is going to bring this up as a prime example of big government picking winners and losers among corporations. Thank you, "liberal media" Enid News & Eagle.
Oh, I haven't abandoned my satiric side, though. Just to let you know that, in light of yesterday's Saturday Night Live, I'm also trying to work on a ditty I'll call "Men Make Big Passes At Lasses With Big Asses". Just as it is in politics: it's all about that base. No trouble.
For the next Punched Out Judy, there will be a send-up of Between Two Ferns. It'll be called "Just Among Fronds".
You heard it here first.
Late Saturday UPDATE: I think I finally figured out how to work around Blogger's inanities regarding video uploads, and I've got a backlog of vids I wanted to post on this particular entry, beginning with the seasonal open house events held around town. Tonight I just got back from a Christmas extravaganza at the Oakwood Church, and tomorrow is the Mennonite feast, so I've been hopping lively these days. By all means check back in a few.
...and speaking of our talented Enid High School kids...
That was the EHS Big Band. After that, the EHS Jazz Band performed, kinda proving that not all our kids are brilliant. Oh, the band was brilliant, but the vids I recorded were visually ruined by some brat in a seat nearby going back and forth between that seat and one further up on the other side of the aisle. Repeatedly. Only the sound track is worthwhile on those. After that came the EHS Symphonic Band. Different brat in this one, but much younger, smaller, and harder to see in the dark...but definitely there playing Aisle Tag or something...
Oh, happy happy joy joy! Kyle Dillingham's annual church concert is on the 28th! WOOT!!
I'd rather watch paint dry than watch football, but there's no escaping this recent development regarding some player named Rice, caught delivering a haymaker to his wife in an elevator, and she stepping forward to make curious remarks about it. So--what's so Fergusonish about this?
The fact that unions defend union members just like they do in the police force, that's what. When a member steps out of line, his union brotherhood will step up to defend even the indefensible, that's what, and reinstate such people on the basis of contract terms alone.
Much earlier in this blog, I stated that even as a union member myself, the fact that unions were BROTHERhoods was exactly what precipitated my schooling the boys on how actual defense if contract REALLY works, and all this talk about frat boys and how bad Greeks are on college campuses is related to fraternities as unions. Good ole boys clubs, to hell with women. They might as well be the ole Spanky & Our Gang's celebrated He-Man-Women-Haters Club.
For the record, I've been a Greek 3 times over: Alpha Lambda Delta, Phi Beta Lambda and Phi Theta Kappa. 2 Honors and 1 business. There's nothing wrong with Greeks. There's just a whole lot wrong with the people recruited nowadays to be Greeks.
GO RAMS!!
Friday-after-the-Monday-Update UPDATE:You betcha I've been very busy, but at this time, not too busy to make note of the Rolling Stone retraction about their original story about frat gang-rape, and the current howling about sloppy journalism. Even in the view of the high reputation track record of the Rolling Stone, everybody's surprised except me. Why? Because it's less a matter of sloppy journalism as it is journalism-on-the-cheap and it's the cost of high quality journalism that has been a bone of contention ever since the 3 major network broadcasters relegated their newsrooms to the profit-making department. If you're in the profit business AND you have shareholders, Job One is to cut costs to increase profits...which means that Job One is putting the costs of investigation and verification on the chopping block. I'm not the least bit surprised.
Monday UPDATE--THIS JUST IN: There are now 2 candidates for Ward 5 City Commissioner to choose from come February.You have a choice between potholes-as-usual ferris-wheel-priority incumbent, or the anti-pothole candidate. You, the residents of Ward 5, are apparently more intimately familiar with your potholes than the incumbent is.
You heard it here first.
Tuesday UPDATE: Welcome to the blog, you 3 people searching out my name. Hope you have lots and lots of time for that. By all means, visit my Newsvine page and my page on Huffington Post. Luvz ya!
You've lodged another complaint with YouTube about my posting the police report video of the Halloween event you usually take all the credit for. You're a public figure, hon, and I know that the public record video will easily pass any scrutiny performed by YouTube. But it is so much more fun deleting it and reposting it because every time a video is posted on my YouTube channel, it automatically gets distributed on both G+ and Twitter. Plus it keeps you and your cronies coming back to my blog again and again and again and again.
I could do this waltz with you all week, sweetie. MmmmWAH!
And this, well before we hear from the Oklahoma Attorney General's opinion of the Enid Permit (Parks) Department. That's still pending.
Oh, I almost forgot to thank you for being such a loyal fan of my blog. I hereby appoint you as President of my fan club, with profuse thanks for all the traffic to here. There's something I can donate to your re-election campaign, as it happens--I can make a lot of DVDs of that and pass 'em around like campaign fliers. Thanks to the Black Friday Sale at Staples, a DVD disc is like 20¢ a pop. Luvz ya!
Oh gee, I almost forgot to mention---MSNBC Newsvine. And the fact that my friends that are still on Facebook share this blog as well as G+ postings on Facebook. {....singing & strutting to.....MC Hammer's "U Can't Touch This"}
Interesting Comment I got on this blog entry--a fan steps forward to identify herself in public. +Amy Swanner , friend of Ward 5 City Commissioner +Tammy Wilson , as being one of Enid's public figures in the video even though only Commissioner Wilson was specifically identified.
Thank you, Amy, for providing the cool screenshot that is going into my next rendition of the reposted video. I appreciate that.
I am more than happy to repost that video as many times as you like. And I have the "off-shore option"....to post the video on a foreign domain and hotlink it here in the blog.
Ain't that right, gri? I could even hotlink it on your site, gri, huh. And everywhere else in cyberspace including Facebook, even. Grivitation RULES!
I might not be a grivitation purist like you are, gri, but I'm still a toogrian.
As for crony of Wardsman Wilson, our dear Ms. Amy...well, Tammy, with friends like that, who needs enemas?
...by filing complaints without merit to Google and YouTube. The same people who filed a complaint with Facebook that my name was fake.
So you KNOW that I'm onto something quite seriously nefarious in the City of Enid. +YouTube , which is owned by +Google (as is +Google+ ) currently make no distinctions between videos that are on public record file (like the video filed in police report number 201413272 which was recorded in a PUBLIC park at a PUBLIC event--Halloweenid) and those that are not, to the point where their stated Privacy Policies preclude the uploading of security camera videos, police report videos, and the like provided that even a perp can complain of a privacy violation.
My friends and fans, know ye by this posting that if these entities continue to presume I'm guilty of policy violations based on false complaints by which their Privacy Policies depart from legal norms, I'll be moving again, to their competition. +cityofenid , note ye that even though giants like Google like to think they own the entirety of cyberspace, they do not and their search engines will still produce my postings when they appear on the websites of the competition.
Hasta la vista, baby. Hey gri--I know you're still reading the blog, my friend, and these very developments makes me thankful on this Thanksgiving Day for the time we spent working together. It's gonna come in very handy, soon. We disagree on the politics, but on technology, we're a winning team...until you get banned by the host, that is. I'm about to go there and get my own domain and post all this stuff out the wazoo, which will still turn up in search engine crawlers even though the SEO won't be what Google enjoys. What is important is that it not be censored, and I know how you feel about censorship yourself, buddy. There, we have a common cause. See you around the web.
To everybody else--of course there's a Plan B. And C, D, E, F...haven't gotten to the end of the alphabet yet, but I'm closin' in on it. You've heard the saying about bringing a gun to a knife fight? I bring chess pieces to a checker match.
This is going to be a short commentary on the major production roll-out of the grand jury ruling on the killing of Michael Brown, as this is my immediate reaction to that. Yup, you can gather as much from the title of this blog entry, if you know what piccalilli is made of, and you know of a certain demographic that prefers those to be fried.
I was in the regional neighborhood for the race riots in Cairo, IL..talk about a war zone...and one would think that this nation has made a lot of progress since then...but because of personal experience even in this day and age, I know better. Just like I know better about the so-called "long way, baby" that women are presumed to have benefited from. Nah. Same snit, different day, and this is what it took to get things to change, back in the days of Cairo, Birmingham and Memphis, and even now.
The question is, how long will the progress last before the non-evolving neanderthals try to resurrect and restore ante-bellum Jim Crow Brigadoon again.
News outlets are no doubt combing over what materials are being made public, but there's also no doubt that there's bias in such gate-keeping of what's withheld, too. Nonetheless, a hearing and judgment in The Court of Public Opinion is the only hope that powers that be in Ferguson have left, and it's not looking good. So far. Tuesday UPDATE, Nobody's Listening/Nobody Wants To Hear It/Now Hear This edition: Washington Post report
The calling for a grand jury to hear only one side shows that nobody's listening; the wide range of eye witness accounts showed the need to sort out which accounts were reliable, which weren't, compared to physical evidence cited. But the conclusions arrived at while evaluating the physical evidence involved some extrapolations without cross examination.
The calling up of the Missouri National Guard in advance of a ruling that occurred, per some reports, at 2pm but announced at 7pm (times vary with what time zone you're hearing/reading the various reports, filed in different time zones, while the difference in number of hours between ruling and announcement remains a constant), but failing to actually deploy the called-up troops, was justified when you consider that Missouri was criticized for calling them up when they were called up, and then criticized for failing to deploy them after all that criticism. Nobody wants to hear it.
Now Hear THIS: McCulloch's presser after dark, coming down as an edict from on high as a verdict rather than a ruling even though there was no trial.
Sorry, folks, but proper argument is required here, as well as good listening skills that come with understanding the point of view of the other...which is the first casualty of massive distrust on both sides. The first order of business when it comes to talking and listening is to sort through what's valid and what's bogus excuse, as evaluated by cooler heads than are currently the case. For example, a police officer who views any unarmed teen as a superman who causes such a fear in a police officer to the point where the officer feels like a child is a police officer who should find a different line of work. A police officer who uses the excuse that he was fearful of an unarmed teen to cover for his undisciplined fury should find a different line of work. His credibility just got shot down.
A prosecutor whose performance is that of defense attorney definitely needs to be dispatched to a different line of work.
Note to my Egyptian and Turkish friends: Yes, this is the Tahrir Dilemma, too--criticism for calling in the military is inevitable whether or not you actually send them in or don't. The ONLY answer to such criticism is a clear statement of the mission: protection of public safety and property. If that isn't your mission going in, you have already lost the argument. What does Tahrir in Egypt have to do with Turkey? The role of the military in protecting the public, that's what. If it weren't for Turkey's military, ISIS would have already taken over what's supposed to be a secular government, which is something President Erdogan's actions and philosophy is clearly against.
Note to China: this is why your idea of harmony isn't a good one. Arguments are necessary in order to establish the best path toward harmony, and imposing YOUR idea of harmony on others is not harmony but a superficial and false veneer. Without arguments and without the ability to hear out the people who disagree with your idea of a good path forward, you proceed as a blind man on the hope that your next step won't land you in a pitfall, and China has already experienced numerous pitfalls due to its self-inflicted blindness. Talking without listening is unforgivable. Being a good listener is essential, especially when you don't want to hear the person who disagrees with you. The greatest oratories of history are arguments; the best laws are crafted from persuasive arguments. Argument as oratory is an art form, noticeably absent in your nation. As you think you show your courage and might by rankling your neighbors in the China Sea, EVERYBODY knows how cowardly you cringe at the sight of a free pen.
Kill the argument with the excuse of harmony and you kill inspiring oratory. Kill the argument in a lawmaking session and you get stupid laws. Kill the argument in science and you kill ideas of merit and thereby kill the brainstorm session and science with it. Therefore kill the argument and you kill your own progress and growth as a civilization. Wednesday UPDATE: After all the appeals for peaceful demonstrations, we still got molotov cocktails. Ferguson is racially mixed, so I'm wondering of white supremacists were behind the fires, especially given that the church that the Browns attended got torched.
Those of us of a certain age recognize my reference to a certain movie in my title, and yeah, the person who is Topic A these days was more a comedian than actor...but hey--a poser either way. Those of us of a certain age remember the flavor of this man's irreverent gags and know better than to mistake him for some kind of saint. But those of us of a certain age also recall that he experienced something of a major change of direction when he started doing Picture Pages on Captain Kangaroo, too, and from that launched Fat Albert et al. Time marches on, society's sensibilities change from the norm of smoking on every airline flight while pinching the ass of the stewardess who was hired for her looks in the first place, to a society less tolerant of past abuses. So, dear public--are we about to sit in judgment on a public character whom we really don't know actually for things he did under a different standard than today's and judge him by today's standards?
Good historians will wrestle with this issue every time they research a particular historic figure, too, as it happens, and good historians would prefer to judge a character by the times he/she was found in.
My regular readers know that I'm fully against abuse, but that I'm also a proponent of historical accuracy, too, and a lot of what we consider to be abusive now was taken in stride as normal not too many years ago, and that what we consider to be abusive today is considered to be abusive today because of all the people who fought to bring these things out from under society's rug and into the glare of the full light of day. But also consider that people change over time, too, and the people most disappointed if the charges prove to be true are people in love with an illusion. Not real. Don't feel duped by the show because you knew it was a show in the first place and you don't really know this person.
Sunday UPDATE, Brian Stelter/Reliable Sources edition: Brian stated that Cosby's questioning of the AP reporter's integrity completely overlooked that such a story = tabloid "yellow journalism" and therefore Cosby had a point in that regard. I'm surprised that Brian Stelter makes no distinction between serious journalism and tabloid journalism. Something was mentioned on another program which I overlooked: the kids who grew up watching Fat Albert and Picture Pages on Captain Kangaroo--they wouldn't have been adult enough to know that a show is, well, just all for show. Be that as it may, they're grown up enough to know that now, and fact remains that the illusion presented by a show is not just actor, but writers and producers, too. Anybody mistaking a mouthpiece for a saint remains seriously misguided.
Yup, I know a lot of my readers are looking for previous posts about the Al Aqsa Mosque, such as THIS one, and my position on that remains the same. My position on Israel's reprehensible settlements activity remains the same as well. What's to be mourned is the destruction of artifacts of antiquity, and even if it gets no respect for anything else, the Al Aqsa Mosque deserves respect as a magnificent artifact of antiquity.
As it happens, the post I linked to in the above paragraph is prefaced by remarks about how we in the audience didn't really know Robin Williams, either. Please review that part as well.
Jews and Muslims, God hasn't championed either side and remains silent, without action, for all these decades you've been fighting each other, with Jews fighting for some legendary structure that hasn't existed for more centuries than the Al Aqsa Mosque HAS existed. To say that it's all foolish lunacy would be to make an understatement.
...and welcome to the blog, Arabcom Group. I expect you'll find a lot here that's worthy of consideration whether or not you loosely use the terms "orientalist" and "orientalism".
Between now and the last time I posted about the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty (TPP), a number of game-changers have occurred. There was the uprising in Thailand, head-scratcher activity in North Korea, and, most recently, warmer overtures of both Japan and China toward each other despite the ongoing South China Sea disputes.
Is Japan now willing to overlook the kidnapping of its citizens these days? Is the issue of "comfort women" during World War II suddenly forgivable when it wasn't last week?
At any rate, Japan has had ongoing tariff issues with the TPP which a more friendly response to China's leadership would probably accommodate better than the U.S. leadership might, and this, friends & neighbors, is where we find the crux of the power tussle going on within APEC this week.
I'll bet it is. A statement like that is like saying that Turkey is ready to lead the Eurozone economy--what's an Armenian, what's a Kurd? I can almost hear my Chinese readership roaring with laughter at this because as a national economy, Turkey really isn't comparable. Ah, my Chinese friends, in terms of relations with it's neighbors, it IS comparable. And we know you're playing footsie with Russia, who thusfar hasn't been mentioned in any news about APEC.
The TPP is going to have the same trouble with geography that I've mentioned before regarding South American member states--their continental neighbors, being excepted for not having Pacific ocean-front property, are going to have to respond to that, and probably in competition, with middle-most continental nations playing both ends (Pacific and Atlantic) against the proverbial middle. And Putin just might be taking notes about that, being in the middle between China and the Eurozone.
Yeah--as a chess game, this APEC thing is well worth watching. China, you might be able to play with history like you would a dry-ink whiteboard, but you'd be the only one betting on that gambit. Lotsa luck with that. Not.
What brought about Obama's statement about making the Internet a utility was this APEC situation, particularly with China in mind, and the hew/cry over here Stateside is that Obama's blindly making declarations with total disregard for ramifications of that in the broader, more future sense. Future. What chess masters foray into, nevermind Doctor Who. Which is why I depart from such critics. What Obama's Internet move is, is best characterized as a shrewd gambit. I'll betcha a stack of chips that this man knows exactly what he's doing, and how the moves are going to go from that point forward. Veterans' Day mini-UPDATE: Yup, I'm out and about, not posting a separate post for today. FYI, I'm partial to flyboys when you get right down to it. I now refer you to a previous post I posted for this occasion, The Great War's Armistice Remembered.
Enjoy.
Hey Jim Gray! Fancy meeting you again on Newsvine! I think you'll like Google Plus, though!
P.S. UPDATE:Getting the China presser at this moment. In short, an agreement was reached with China, basically "to work together" on stuff including visas. I'm sure various news venues will be filling in various details in the morning. It's starting to sound like there's gonna be a tug o war between the U.S. and Russia over China's favor. Climate agreement has been reached, and that sounds definite. It also sounds like China-Japan accord mentioned by NHK earlier today is definite, too. G'night everybody.
Page 2--Myanmar: Big topic is China's belligerence in the South China Sea. For Japan, also East China Sea. So, China, you think you're ready to LEAD? You aren't.
Sunday mini-UPDATE, Zakaria GPS edition: Interesting take that Fareed has on Russia kissing up to China and China's attitude of institutional megalomania. There's no doubt that Putin is over a barrel, figuratively and literally, which can't be of assistance to his own megalomania. But economic prosperity can't last forever, China, and megalomania is extremely expensive to maintain, becoming exponentially more costly with the passage of time. So are Putin's designs on Ukraine. It's just a matter of time.
I already celebrated Thanksgiving with the Enid Intertribal Club. Ate buffalo instead of turkey and that suits me just fine. Here are a couple table centerpieces from the event...
It's something I attend every year (and the same is true of their Gourd Dance, which they did not have this year, unfortunately). I typically can't stand hominy but their pozole was outstanding to the point where I searched for a good recipe for that and now I make it at home, too. Turkey? What turkey?
An attendee of the Gourd Dance would recognize this. All the dancers carry one.
The above display decorated an end of the table where the guestbook was. The following is the guestbook display.
The event took place at NWOSU and behind the table these things were sitting on is a dark glass elevator shaft; the images you see behind the figurines are reflections.
The meal was opened by a prayer, and during the course of the meal there were a few presentations, one of which was a video of youngsters learning the proper way to set up a tee-pee; another was a song, and another, a speech about preservation of languages.
Next, the serving table just prior to the opening prayer. Usually the elders are served first, but this time the elders called for all military veterans to be served first.
It's good to know that people care that much. I am deeply touched by this and quite grateful, because I enjoyed all you guys too.
+Moukhtar Tba I haven't heard from you yet and yet Facebook sends me email notices about what you and others post while denying me access. Final results are in: Facebook is rubbish. Others will go through their rubbish appeals process to fight to get back on, like Janis Ian did--but not me. Facebook is not worth the trouble to lift a finger.
You guys will find Google Plus a considerable improvement once you get used to it, and there's a lot to get used to. Hangouts is something Facebook doesn't do and doesn't care to. Facebook just doesn't care, so hell with 'em. Gimme my Google Plus.
And would somebody tell Fred Jodry, Lite Dave? And other WBCQ folks (except kracker). Thanks. Fred Waterer, getcher ass over here. :P :)
And hello to 62.210.181.15, whomever you are. I haven't bothered to look you up in WHOIS yet, but I just wanted to say hello. :D
Notice to Fiends of Fear: I know there are those among you who have been saddened when you thought that a certain somebody you were counting on to pull off a Scare let you down. He didn't, but he did get attacked by his own City alligators and had to wrestle those off first. It might not be "on time" as far as the Scare was concerned, but he's on it. Don't get pissy at him--he's still good. And yeah--I know a few other things you don't but I'll have to tell you in a G+ Hangout instead of on Facebook PM. Take heart.
Earlier today, when checking my email, I got 2 email notifications from Facebook, the geniuses that gave me the unceremonious boot for no damn good reason. I checkmarked 'em both and hit the Spam button.
Here it is late night, Craig Ferguson has just come on the tube, and while checking the emails one last time before closing down, my Spam box said there were two more messages. Checked the box and by golly 2 more from Facebook. Check it out:
Did those forkers decide to reinstate my account? I can tell you that right now I don't give a snit. Fork you, Facebook.
Thursday UPDATE: still prohibited from logging on, so Facebook notifications remain marked SPAM in my emailbox.
The traffic to this blog has exceeded the last noticeable spike. Facebook might be a cyberbully both online and in one's emailbox, but it's the best thing that ever happened to Blogger and Google Plus, the primary beneficiaries of Facebook's deathwish. Not bad--not bad! I should have quit wasting my time on Facebook a long damn time ago.
Oh yeah--there was a mid-term election. What do I think of that? I think it was bought, fair and square. Our nation suspected that we had morphed from a democratic republic into an oilygarchy, and now we have the proof. It's also mid-term, which means that the party in power gets a chance to piss off more of the electorate for the next two years to lose the presidency. Again.
As my regular readers already know, the City of Enid has waged war against its citizens and I'm one of the few actually fighting back. Yesterday, the minions of the City invoked Facebook's personhood law to get me evicted from Facebook.
The trouble is, Google also has personhood laws that, upon receipt of complaint, could get any pen name account bounced off of it as well, so if all my fans wonder what happened to this blog should it disappear, know ye in advance that the City of Enid was behind it. They've been the reason why the stats of this blog have reflected unusually high traffic--there's a video they're monitoring for posting because it's unflattering in a big way, and I haven't posted that yet. Same is true for Gov. Mary Fallin's office. But they have no idea where else I might post that video, and it may be all over cyberspace in all kinds of places before it's all said/done. What matters is that the proper authorities already have possession of copies of said videos, and there's no putting THAT toothpaste back in the tube. As much as Facebook fancies itself to be a proper authority to the point of demanding compliance with its demand for personal documents, it isn't. And neither is Google. (mini-update note--I just posted that statement on Twitter, and it's getting re-Tweeted. There are a lot of people not happy with #Facebook right now)
My fans know where to find me and I celebrate the fact that neither Facebook nor Google own the entirety of cyberspace, and just like that mole in Whack-A-Mole, I'll pop up elsewhere. That's one of the benefits of having a pen name that dates far back into the world of print-on-paper media, as very little of that has been scanned and posted online--I'm in closer touch with my fans than Facebook is with its clients, which it just decided was too big of a group and so culls it with its demands for personal ID documentation it has no legal right to demand as part of its terms of service. Neither does Google, for that matter.
1) Facebook isn't an administrator of elections devoted to curtailing voter fraud, so it can't use that excuse to claim a right to a person's identification documents.
2) Facebook doesn't charge money as a condition of membership and therefore has no right to include bank statements in its demand for personal identification documents.
3) Facebook doesn't maintain roads and has no standing to demand a person's driver's license in its demand for personal identification documents.
4) Facebook isn't a government agency, and as a peer citizen has no standing to demand identification papers of any kind.
3) Facebook has a feature for accounts like Twitter does, to display a check mark on an account to mark it as a "verified account", and that's a case in which the holder of the account voluntarily surrenders its personal ID documents. Facebook fails to realize that ALL accounts for which personal ID documents are surrendered are therefore "verified accounts", but Facebook fails to mark them as such. A voluntary option has become an involuntary demand by Facebook and in that, Facebook commits an overreach and therefore is an EPIC FAIL I can readily kick to the curb. But so is Google Plus should it make the same mistake.
Unless and until any given Internet entity has standing as a government official or financial institution or medical provider, they have NO RIGHT WHATSOEVER to demand personal ID documents as part of its Terms of Service. Bubbye, Facebook. I won't miss you and my fans can still find me, loser.
Businesses who get snookered by Web dot com into buying a presence on #Facebook don't realize they've been fleeced, but I'll wager it won't take 'em long to find that out that paying for Facebook presence is a rip-off because Facebook itself is a rip-off.
The trend is to make Facebook a verified-celebrities/business-only exclusive club as the customers and fans thereof realize increasingly that Facebook hasn't sufficient legal authority to make the demands it's making on its hoi polloi denizens. I find that, on Twitter, are the very people who have been fed up with Facebook long before Facebook gestapo bounced my pen name off for being a "fake person". Hey, Facebook--Mark Twain doesn't have a birth certificate and you permit THAT fake person to have an unverified account, you idiot.
YouTube is on a similar self-destructive path with its copyright nazis, and everybody who has viewed old pages on this blog with links to YouTube content know all too well what I mean--YouTube has even yanked content that is public domain simply because the person who posted the vids didn't respond to its copyright nazi challenges, and it must be said that, by and large, the average person lacks the legal competence to make a counter argument. I've been hit on by these copyright nazis filing complaints about videos I've made of Christmas displays playing what they claim is copyrighted content being infringed upon. But I don't have an average lack of background in copyright/patent law and I have successfully argued in my favor.
More than once, and that's the problem with YouTube--the copyright nazis make crazy claims like the one they made about the Christmas displays and YouTube bans innocent people because they don't have the ability to respond to such insanity. Like Facebook, YouTube is an insane asylum populated and run by the inmates and is more exclusionary than inclusive. FAIL
Far be it from me to tell my fans to drop their own accounts on Facebook--that decision is entirely theirs to make--but I will say that as long as they or anyone else stays on at Facebook, they're presenting themselves as commercial farm animals to be milked by Facebook advertisers and commercial accounts. People, it's your funeral.
...what it is that I'm doing, but I have done a lot. (If you haven't figured it out by now, check out the update about the flash mob)
In the meantime, there's a message I found on Facebook that's worth sharing because it applies in so many ways.
Traffic to this blog has really skyrocketed, too. Welcome to all my new readers!
I still see somebody in France gathering the images from this blog, so if that's you, Yatoula--RAZPBERRIES! You're still PWNED! And I'm still gloating. Up yours.
MiniUPDATE: somebody I'm working with on the stuff I can't speak about yet just said I did effin' awesome work. That, folks, made my day. I am now officially feeling awesome. And now---I shall commence being insufferably smug and a half for the rest of the day.
Samhain UPDATE: Despite hell, high water, and a corrupt commissioner, there WAS a scare on the square on Halloween.
In the flash mob at the downtown post office, raven boogies with timelord to the tune of Time Warp from the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Suck it, City--you emptied the downtown area while a few people stuck around to promote it. FAIL.
More stuff happened on Halloween including footage of a squad of crazies running Hallowenid at Meadowlake. Stay tuned. Note to the peanut gallery driving my hit stats up: It's Sunday and I still haven't posted that video. Y'all come back now, y'hear? :D
By the way, you guys have a YouTube channel to check, too, and that's where it's posted now, also shared on Twitter and G+, and, via a few friends who are still on Facebook...it's up on Facebook as a Share, too (check the bottom of each of my blog posts and you'll find buttons to click on for the purpose of Sharing across social media platforms).
Nice try to censor that YouTube video, Tammy, but it's public record, at the Enid Police Department, report number 201413272. You can thank your business partners for that. As a public figure, neither you nor your business partners have the same right to privacy as us regular folk. You made the call, sweetie--you gotta live with it. You also forget, my dear, that YouTube isn't the only website that circulates videos. It has stiff competition.
Also, by the way, I have avid fans in the Chinese government (and in the Russian government) who follow every move of everyone clicking on this blog. I'm sure they love you too. Thanks for dropping by.
Well, how about that. It took 'em long enough to visit this blog, but I'm finally getting a bit of traffic from the TARDIS Wikia. Hi guys--I *told* you I'm a TARDIS navigator, and nobody is as painfully aware of that as the scholars who go to Enid Chautauqua. As for Sharon, well--even if she did recognize Hilda's TARDIS when she saw it, she wouldn't know what to do with it. It's in better hands in MY hands, you can bet on that.
Tuesday UPDATE, Enid Commission Edition: If you're in Enid and you have cable, and if you didn't catch the Diane & Bob Show on the City Commission this evening, make a point of catching it on the replay. You'll thank yourself for that.
There's been a a new discovery of an old silent film about somebody thatI've been a long time fan of and it's the same somebody who was the celebrity recruiter for the 369th regiment--not the least bit obscure at the time.
Late Breaking News UPDATE on the Mysterious Lab: Usually I'd put this update where I posted "Is This A Great State Or What", but I'm posting on the fly here, just getting in from a second installment of a lecture series on Oklahoma history (theme is water) and I've just barely sat myself down at the pooter. KFOR did another segment as an update to that old footage, and here's the LINK to that segment. As a Fiend of Fear zombie, I feel like more than just the walking dead--looks like a resurrection is imminent. WOOT!
It's nice to know that at least one smart guy appreciates questions.
It's about time you did some good for us in the west, and you're bringing all the psychopaths out of the woodwork so that we can get our constabulary out after 'em. I'm sure an army of undisciplined psychopaths is exactly what you were looking for, right?
You were looking for hand-to-hand combat with our great military and all you ever get is our great police. I can live with that, but can you, you silly ignoramuses?
It's no laughing matter that you butcher people who can't fight back, but it's laughable that the only people you think you look brave in killing are people who can't fight back while whining about going up against our military, you yellow bellied clowns. Nobody but raving lunatics find you attractive...but still, thank you for identifying for our police the ones to lock up. You're next. No military for you.
May all your new "wives" bear nothing but daughters.
In other news today--it was with considerable delight that I discovered that I had a long time fan at one of Enid's major radio broadcasting companies. WOOT!
Friday mini-UPDATE: getting into more clandestine mischief. Hell, I'm *always* in trouble. Deal with it.
Oh dear, yet another school shooting (Seattle). America, make note of politicians who think than an NRA endorsement is something to brag about, and vote them the hell out.
Saturday mini UPDATE: Looks like I'm going as a banshee this year, not the time traveler. Hell, I do time traveler the rest of the year.
