Allegory

Ever know someone who made utterly wild, fantastic claims about one of your friends? Really off the wall stuff about what she is likely to do, or be capable of? And he tries to get other people to say the same things or worse about your friend? And then you catch this person and his clique in lies, both verbal and written? But their reaction is to simply change their story, deny they lied, while they increase their yelling and also abuse anyone who stands up for her?

Makes it hard to believe them, even if there really is some truth to what they say about your friend, right?

That's global warming.

When you have the truth on your side there's no reason to scare monger, lie, and silence those who disagree. The fact the global warming side does these things is the reason I remain skeptical.

Neat Math Tricks to Blow Your Mind.

Want to know if 3 goes into 126?  Simple.  Add 1 + 2 + 6.  Since this equals 9, which IS divisible by 3, then so is 126.

It works just as well for the number nine. "A number is divisible by 9 if the sum of its digits is divisible by 9."  Take the the number 1098.  Is it divisible by 9?  Yup.  1 + 0 + 9 + 8 = 18, and 18 is obviously divisible by 9.

Why does that work?  'dunno.  I don't have any theorem or mathematical proof.  I suppose someone probably took the time to prove it, but I don't really care -- as long as it works.

How about this one?

What's 11 x 34?  You have five seconds to answer.

Here's the trick: Take the first number (3), then add the other two digits (3 + 4) and end with the last digit.  The answer is 374.  Don't believe me?  Do it, or break out a calculator, and try it yourself.  It also works with 3 digit numbers, but its a little trickier.

You probably already know the next one.  A quick way to determine 9 times any single digit.  Example 9 x 6.  Subtract 1 from the first digit (6-1 = 5) then figure out how many you have to add that answer to equal to 9.  In this example we need a 4.  Voila: 9 x 6 = 54.  This works just as well with any single digit.  Therefore, 9 x 3 = 27 (because 3 - 1 = 2, and 2 + 7  = 9)

Lastly, this isn't a math trick. 
Its just fun.

111,111,111 times 111,111,111 equals 12,345,678,987,654,321

Out of Touch

Why Can’t Hollywood Tell America’s Stories?

 

Time Magazine asks, and comes up with the answer, "[Because] Our onscreen heroes are white men. But most of us aren't"

Oh Please!

If only Chris Kyle had been Mexican, or a woman, or better yet a Chola, then THAT would have made American Sniper a success. Superman would be a money maker if played by a tranny, to reflect the real look of America. See, the problem isn't that Hollywood's version of a hero is someone who hates America, or is a bad father or husband, its that the skin color of the protagonist who hates America is wrong.

Further down in the story the author, Priscilla Peña Ovalle (who teaches media at the University of Oregon) complains that "Hollywood trades in the spectacular, the dramatic, the titillating. Even romantic comedies usually elevate the “everyday” business of love with fantasies of wealth."  Ovalle would instead have movies about more ordinary struggles of ordinary (non-white) dish washers working part time at a minimum wage job.  These are the true heroes we should look up to.

Discriminate No More.

President Obama authored a piece in the LA Times today which demonstrates the theme I've been blogging about for the past week or so - the need for liberals to practice indiscriminateness, and in fact to raise up bad over good, while denouncing what is right. The Unified Field Theory of Liberalism, as Evan Sayet calls it.

This theory holds the the underlying theme of liberal thought about conflict is that it stems from this belief that some ideas are right, and some are wrong.  That some are good, or bad.  That we must not discriminate (because discrimination is bad).  So, its necessary to tear down the good and raise up the bad until we reach a point where there is no right or wrong, and therefore no reason for disagreement, anger, warfare.

Which is almost exactly what Mr. Obama did in his editorial.  I'll give him props for laying out many of the terrorist threats around the world, and for the first time I know of he hinted the attack at Ft. Hood was terrorism.  Still, he can't bring himself to say this is Islamic terrorism:

"Efforts to counter violent extremism [terrorism] will only succeed if citizens can address legitimate grievances through the democratic process and express themselves through strong civil societies..." [my emphasis]

"Groups like al Qaeda and ISIL promote a twisted interpretation of religion that is rejected by the overwhelming majority of the world's Muslims. The world must continue to lift up the voices of Muslim clerics and scholars who teach the true peaceful nature of Islam."

A "twisted interpretation of religion." Note how he can't bring himself to state what religion in this context. I agree we should hear more from mainstream Muslim clerics who denounce terrorism, but part of the reason we don't is the fact that ISIS is in fact following the teachings of the Koran and the actions of Mohammed, and any cleric who denies that faces being called an apostate (a traitor to Islam) - a crime punishable by death under Sharia law.

Now, Mr. Obama goes on to the second part of the Unified Theory - - tearing down the good.

[America] has at times been threatened by hateful ideologies and individuals from various religions. We've seen tragic killings at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin in 2012 and at a Jewish community center in Kansas last year.

We do not yet know why three young people, who were Muslim Americans, were brutally killed in Chapel Hill, N.C. But we know that many Muslim Americans across our country are worried and afraid. Americans of all faiths and backgrounds must continue to stand united with a community in mourning and insist that no one should ever be targeted because of who they are, what they look like, or how they worship."

See, all of the problems in the world that Mr. Obama outlined in the first part of his piece are not really all that different from the 'backlash' against Muslims he struggles to find. Even in the midst of this effort he practices indiscriminatness, for when he says "We do not yet know why three young people, who were Muslim Americans, were brutally killed," we do in fact know that the killer was a progressive atheist, who hated people in general, including people from all religions.

If Mr. Obama wishes to imagine a reality where there's no right or wrong ideas, where we all "just get along," more power to him.  But when that fantasy world view affects his policy and actions, then we're in trouble.

Whoa.  Dude. Trip Out!

Quantum physics is so cool.  Even though I don't understand anything about it.

Photo from RecoverySoul

I came across this article "When Time Flows Backwards," by Michael Byrne at Motherboard.  "New experiments conducted at Washington University St. Louis offer a further demonstration of one of the quantum world's more difficult implications: time symmetry"

It concerns a fascinating aspect of Quantum science; that the simple act of observing a particle at the Quantum level may cause it to react differently than if we were not observing it.  In fact, it seems, it will change the way it is acting even before we observe it, as though somehow its future self told its present self, "hey, you're going to be observed."

Nothing to Kill or Die For.

The Danes held a rally after the Copenhagen shooting and they all sang Lennon's "Imagine." Which simply drives me to rant. Pardon me for a moment:

Photo from the The Telegraph

Imagine if we were all brainless, unable to see the difference between good or bad, right or wrong... That's what that song is saying. This philosophy is actually the MAJOR problem with the leadership in the west. It goes hand in hand with being unable to call the terrorists what they are; with equating current terrorism with the crusades; why muslims are raised up as victims who need jobs; while beheaded Christians are 'random citizens.' This ideology must praise evil and condemn good until there are no differences (and no religion too...), because that will end the fighting, somehow.

That philosophy scares me.

Imagine all you want. That's nice. Really, it is.

But when it comes to actions and policy in this cruel world one must not be blinded. This is the philosophy of 'we must be thoughtlessly indiscriminate, because the opposite - discrimination (even thoughtful discrimination) - is bad.' So lets do away with thought.

Yet, the real world is still the real world, no matter what one wants to believe -- as Mr. Lennon found out, unfortunately (may he RIP).

Gotta Love the Asians!

Tigger: If I ever get outta this, I promise never to bounce again! N-Never!

Rabbit: I heard that, Tigger! He promised! Did you hear him promise? I heard him! I heard him! You heard him, didn't ya? Didn't ya?

From: The Atlantic. "In some zoos in Japan and China, staff members perform regular security drills to practice their response to a large animal escape by using costumed zookeepers"

WHY IS IT SO HARD FOR MODERATE MUSLIMS TO SPEAK OUT AGAINST ISIS?

Graeme Wood is a contributing editor at The Atlantic, who has written a very in-depth, intelligent article entitled "What ISIS Really Wants."  I can't overemphasize, it IS a long read; however, you should take the time to read it all: you won't find better analysis anywhere.

Wood breaks his essay into five sections 1. Devotion, 2. Territory, 3. The Apocalypse, 4. The Fight and 5. Dissuasion, but I want to excerpt just a portion to focus on why its so hard for mainstream Muslims to speak out against ISIS.

In order to go there, we first need to establish a vocabulary. Here's a few terms we need to understand:

Stone Age People Get Their Rocks Off.

Porn before the written word.

The Archaeologists say they're "trying to determine what meaning there is in the sites’ structures and artifacts."  Seems pretty simple to me.  The only question I have is, how do you chip rock with just one hand?

Helpfully, they go on to tell us, "Deeper and broader interpretation will be published pretty soon.”

Applying the Qur'an: Global Warming and SJW Edition.

Muslim scholars teach that there are two forms of lying to non-believers that are permitted under certain circumstances, taqiyya and kitman.  These circumstances are typically those that advance the cause of Islam - in some cases by gaining the trust of non-believers in order to draw out their vulnerability and defeat them.

Replace the word 'Muslim' with Environmentalist or Social Justice Warrior, and "Islam" with (fill in your favorite leftist cause) in the above and it still works.

How is this applied?

From Islamic Law: (Reliance of the Traveler)

"Speaking is a means to achieve objectives. If a praiseworthy aim is attainable through both telling the truth and lying, it is unlawful to accomplish through lying because there is no need for it.  When it is possible to achieve such an aim by lying but not by telling the truth, it is permissible to lie if attaining the goal is permissible"

I think the modern term is "fitting the narrative."  So, it may not actually be true that a woman was gang raped at the University of Virginia, as the thoroughly debunked Rolling Stone article claimed, but it still points out the rape culture in our colleges.  Somehow.

Or, "2014 was the Hottest Year on Record" is a completely accurate headline, somehow, even though the NASA scientists who put out the report are only 38% sure that its actually true (the results are so tiny that they fall under the margin of error of the available measuring devices.)  But - Global Warming.