New Species Classifiction

My Latin sucks, and I'm not a biologist, but I'll give it my best shot.

The Latin for productive is fucundia.  The Latin root of parasite is parasitus, which seems pretty useful.

So I propose we create two new classifications.

Homo Fucundia - productive man
Homo Parsitus  - parasitic man - or Mooch Man. 

I propose this because I think there is clear evidence of an evolutionary trends (albeit - a dead end)  that man as evolved away from wisdom toward to evolutionary experiments, Productivity and Parasitical.

No I can't actually site any of that evidence,  I think we've clearly seen that evidence or lack thereof is irrelevant - just look at global warming.

Hmm maybe I can site some of it - if one looks at the percentage of the U.S. population that receives government support and or works for said government.  Those numbers have clearly been on the climb for decades.  (despite the recent drop starting in 2008, which I attribute to a couple of things, non of them are Obama)

From Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Note, these are growth rates, not quantities. 

 

Want to graduate with a 4.0?

Now is a good time to go back to college - you can get a 4.0.  Why?  because Obama's new plan to help colleges (who don't actually need any help)  is to tie federal aid to performance - what's the measure of performance - number of graduates, how do you graduate more students, grade inflation.  C is the new F.   A is the new C.

How cool and ultimately useful that will be.   The department of labor says, only about 20% of jobs need a college degree, yet were pumping out about 30%.  Why?   well it's good for the colleges, it's great for the teachers.   Is it good for the students?  with an average debt of $26K and lots of debt in excess of $100K  and almost no empolyment opportunity for recent grads- yeah great idea.  Do you really want to start your job as a janitor with $30,000 of debt, when you could spend half that, see the world and then end up in the same place with half the debt?

But he has a fix for that too.   He wants to cap the payment to 10% of your disposable income, and if you don't get it paid off in 20 years we'll just let it go.  So you can rack up a dept of 50K, have a disposable annual income of $1000 and pay be only $100 a year.  So let's see if we assume a 0 interest load, you'll pay back $2000 of the $50,000  - Don't you wish they'd do that with your car?  Or you house?  Wondering who's going to eat the difference?   

If you get a federal job you can stop paying after 10 years. Obviously working for the government is good and working for industry is bad. The obvious message is - BIG GOVERNMENT.    

The flaw they never talk about is what happens when the costs of federal employees exceeds the income tax of the non-government employees -  Government employees pay income tax too you say?  OK so we discount the budget line item for salaries by 17%  Think that'll solve the problem?    You do?  did you forget all the other stuff the government spends money on that isn't salary? Where did that money come from?


Compiled from: WSJ,  ABC, NYT, and a few others.
I'd start with the WSJ, more facts less fluff.

Atheism

I find the concept of atheism kind of odd. 

As near as I can tell, it's based on the idea of Science, and an unwillingness to believe in something you can't prove. You can't prove the existence of God, or gods - so they don't exist.  OK as far as that goes. And yet, almost all science is based on finding things we can't prove, we keep looking until we can - even then we're wrong more often than not.

The atom was suggested back as far as 500 BCE maybe earlier. But we didn't really get close until around 1800 CE. That would be a long time to refuse to believe in something because there's no proof.  Once we had the proof, it turned out to be wrong.  Yep.   The original atom which they proved existed, and hence was something you could now believe in was close but not quite right.   Then we proved that atoms were made of sub atomic particles - the smallest division of matter possible - you know, Protons, Neutrons, and Electrons - Oh, wait, still not right - started believing too soon, looks like there are smaller parts.  Do we have it right now?   maybe maybe not.  

So apparently it's OK to believe in something as long as you call it a theory - which is essentially something you believe but can't prove.  

Man couldn't fly until he flew.  He would never get to the moon until he got to the moon.  So why do some people insist that the Divine is - I think the last term I heard was - Bullshit.    

Now, You'll notice I didn't Talk about "The Bible" or "The Koran" or "The Tanakh" because that's your problem.   I don't follow any of those - doesn't make them wrong, just wrong for me.

The other thing that confuses me about atheists is the vehamence that having to look at, see, or hear other people talk about "God" makes them uncomfortable. - Why?  if you don't believe in God, then it should make you about as uncomfortable as people talking about unicorns.  Who cares?   why make a big deal out of it?

I've considered a lot of theories about why but frankly I'm not happy with any of them, maybe there isn't just one reason.   Maybe it's because they don't believe a Divine being, presence or what ever would  have allowed the world to become the way it is - but that's a personal perception on the part of the atheist - that the way things are is wrong - maybe it's exactly the way it's supposed to be,  maybe the Divine doesn't give a damn, maybe we're too stupid to understand, maybe it's irrelevant.    Maybe they don't like the idea that there's something more ... "more" than them - which seems pretty egotistic.   Anyway - I don't get it.

Agnostic I understand - Don't know, don't really care - I can get behind that - but they rarely throw temper tantrums about the 10 commandments on a building or Christmas lights.   Which is probably why I get them. 

In the end it doesn't matter except there seems to be some evidence that believing in something is better than not. 

I'm not a Christian, but I love Christmas - I love the feeling, I love the fact that people spend a few days, a week maybe a whole month acting the way the should be acting all year.   I like the lights, I like the songs.   I like Churches, and Synagogs, and Mosques, because it shows the best of what we can be.  I really don't like organized religion but sometimes, they do some pretty nice things (Not enough to make up for the rest but some).   One of the things I don't like about book based religions is the book get's used as a club to beat people over the head with, it's a weapon to show how someone else is wrong.  Not a single book religion is homogenous - they're all fractured with differing interpretations - sometimes those differences can get pretty violent, and heaven forbid - you use a different book than me.   Yikes.

I think it's part of human nature to turn everything into a destructive force.  Makes me wonder how we've survived as long as we have - unless there's some Divine plan I don't know about :)

Excuse me while I get filthy

I have a need to just let it rip, I'm going to spew a lot of dirty words - just to release a little tension.

Honor, Duty, Sacrifice, Self Reliance, Independence,Personal Responsibility, Truth, Fact, Honesty, Saying what you mean, Meaning what you say, Community, Caring, Privacy, Courage, Liberty, Freedom, Personal Initiative, Personal Achievement.

OK, I feel better now.

Sophomore Humor

For the most part I'm not a fan of sophomoric humor.  Things I found funny when I was 17 are just sort of annoying now.  For some reason I find these guys funny.   No accounting for taste - seriously.

 

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost creators of Shawn of the Dead, and Paul,  have a  one coming soon.   The Worlds End. 

Racist is a dead word, Science is a dying one.

The meaning of racist has been so mutilated that it has no use anymore. 

Here's a case in point: 

Guns are for white people

As so eloquently pointed out in the comments by Mark R.   it's a matter of demographics.   Advertising is ALWAYS aimed at a target market - because it works.   

In a recent conversation someone told me - "Of course I voted for Obama, I'm not a racist!" 

Well, yeah you are - If we were in fact to be completely non-racist, race would never be considered in anything.   You wouldn't go out looking to fill a certain number of RACE slots for jobs, or advertizing or politicians or anything else - because it just doesn't matter.    But apparently it does matter, it matters to the people who like to label others as racist, it matters to those who want benefits from being non-white, in this country anyway.    So who's more of a racist, someone who votes for a politician based on job history, and their best guess as to what the politician actually will do when they're in office, or someone who votes for them because they're the right race?

Apparently I'm a racist because I believe in FACTS. - It's getting harder and harder to believe in facts, because they're being so adulterated with agenda.   I look at numbers and I have to look for a long time before I can decide that the numbers aren't just a bunch of lies.   Science used to be relatively pure, in that people didn't just make stuff up to fit their agenda, or to get famous.   They actually presented data secure in the knowledge that others would perform the same tests and get the same results.    Take Global warming, or I guess it's climate change now, since the "proof" keeps getting shot to pieces.   I see evidence of warming, it's hard to miss because so many people want me to see it.  I occasionally hear of evidence of the contrary but it's rare, I suspect it's rare because it goes against the AGENDA.  

Here's a fun bit (H/T to the Captain, Maggie's Farm, and Reason) from an article by Roland Bailey at Reason. 

In 1846, botanist John Hooker from the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew visited and decided to try transplanting a wide variety of plants onto the island. A century and a half later, the result has been an “accidental rainforest.” White Mountain, now renamed Green Mountain, is covered with an extensive cloud forest consisting of guava, banana, wild ginger, bamboo, the Chinese glory bower and Madagascan periwinkle, Norfolk Island pine, and eucalyptus from Australia. Because of the man-made micro-climate, what used to be a desert island now features several permanent streams.

 Ascension Island undercuts the conventional ecological wisdom that tropical rainforests are supposed to take millions of years to form. And what happened on Ascension has been happening all around the world, as people have moved thousands of species from their native habitats to new locales, increasing species richness. Wherever human beings have gone in the past two centuries, we have increased local and regional biodiversity.

See what I mean about agenda.  If you listen to the MSM, and Environmentalist propaganda, you'd be sure to believe that EVERY time we do something, we screw up mother nature.   Sure we do our fair share, but what they seem to forget is the human race is also part of nature and we're just doing what we do, just like beavers making dams that ruin wetlands, or flood endangered species - but since they're not humans, it's OK.   Yeah we have the ability to know what some (perhaps quite a few) of the consequences of our actions will be, before we take action, but we're hardly omnipotent and doing nothing is not in our nature - that's a FACT.    Biology is a fact, one that feminists seem to be unable to deal with, so they call it a lie.  It's true for every living creature on the planet except humans apparently - wow is that ever egotistical.   Science is abused to show what they want to believe and ignored or ridiculed when it shows something else.  

Science is dying because it's inconvenient for the agenda's of various "popular" people.    It's not dead and hopefully we can recover from what the MSM and academia, eco-nuts, and feminists have done to it.

Racism as it's used now I think we're just stuck with.   If your not a racist - your a racist.