Re: Anitra

Anitra Wrote in I Now Support Ron Paul

The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend. A President may be able to end the war. No Presidential candidate, including Ron Paul, can single-handedly reign in corruption or restore Constitutional liberties. Ron Paul is the least likely to even try. His idea of restoring liberties is letting the state governments have complete control of your life and not letting the federal government say boo about it. His idea of ending corruption is removing all regulations -- nobody can be accused of breaking a law that doesn't exist!

If we want to end corruption and restore liberty, we have to do the work ourselves. Counting on a demagogue to do it for us has always been a losing proposition.

Well, the enemy of your enemy is still better than the friend of your enemy, I would have to say. I think that Ron Paul would at least be a start in the direction of restoring our constitutional rights and privacy. He seems like the sort that would go after the telecom industry for their role in spying on innocent Americans. He seems like the sort that would call Halliburton on their role in profiteering from war. He seems like the sort that may actually push to have charges filed against the people that are responsible for hundreds of thousands of peoples' deaths.
And of course no one person can possibly end the horrible corruption that exists in our government today, but he sounds like he would at least start us in that direction.
The current system of economics that we've been led down started decades ago. That system being obscenely rich people tricking just about everyone into putting themselves into so much debt, and raising the cost of everything so high, that they have to work themselves to death just in the hope of breaking even before they die.

To get back to the point, it is going to take more than the work of just an elected official to get this country of ours back of track. The of the biggest things we need right now is to get our budget crisis back in order, and the only way that is going to happen is if we stop dumping hundreds of billions of dollars into a war we have no right or need to be in, and start concentrating on getting things here, in the US, back into shape.

Also, if you have a better candidate, I would really appreciate hearing your reason behind choosing them, as I would like to make an informed decision about who I choose. Election day is still months and months away, so any info that I get between now and then very well may sway my vote.

Just how much brain does it take to outsmart Neil Cavuto?

About as much brain power as a squirrel that likes to run in front of cars, but that's not really the point, now, is it? I just find it very amusing that he brought Ron Paul onto his show for the sole purpose of calling him on accepting a donation from a very outspoken racist, only to be turned on his ear.

That's just the sort of thing I find funny. :)
Oh yes, and yay chocolate!

I Now Support Ron Paul

For a while I have been basically ignoring the US election. I mean, why bother paying attention to it when it was more than a year away? What can these candidates possibly say or do different a year from now that they have not already done right now?

They can do nothing more than advertise themselves, and try to devalue their opponents.

Because of this, I really don't like the way the political system is at the moment.
To get back to my topic though. I have just watched the following video. In it Ron Paul destroys the idiot host, Neil Cavuto, with sheer force of logic.

From the look of things Faux News Invited Ron Paul onto the show in a guise of an interview about him not running a Christmas ad. Then, out of nowhere, Cavuto comes out with a little tid bit of information they wanted to use against Dr. Paul.

It seems that of the 58,000 people that donated over six million dollars, $500 of that was from a white supremasist that runs a hate site. Cavuto said he should give back the money...



... but Ron Paul simply turned him on his ear. I also fully agree with him. Why give back money to a person that would most likely use it toward goals that could harm people?

What more, his views on the sheer amount of money that are being funneled into getting rich off of war is staggering.

Did you know that in about 2003 Halliburton's stock price was relatively low? Dick Cheney also has a great deal of stock in their company as well, thanks to his history with them; He was the CEO of the company for five years, from 1995-2000, just in time to let go of the position, and become the vice president to a total and complete dumbass that is more of a court jester than he is a president.

Once the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions started, guess what company the executive branch decided to get services from. That's right, good ol' Halliburton! In two years his stock value soared more than %3,000, leaving him $8,000,000 richer.

But remember, there's no such thing as a free lunch, or in this case free money. No no, only cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

Brains Default to a Logarithmic Scale

A while back, I came across a study that was done that came to a reasonable conclusion that a pigeon's brain worked on a logarithmic scale. ( Logarithmic scale Wiki page )

In the experiment, pigeons were trained to tap one lever when a light flash was "short", perhaps 1 second long, and another lever when the flash was "long", say 16 seconds. When the birds then saw flashes of intermediate length, you would expect them to distinguish long from short around the mid-point of 8 or 9 seconds. But instead they switched at 4 seconds.

I thought this was rather interesting, though didn't really think anything of it at the time. I mean really, what do I care about the numerical inner workings of a flying pest's brain who's droppings take out bridges?

Today I read another study. This one about children, and how they first learn about numbers.
From the article:

... There's a pattern to the second-graders' responses. Nearly all the kids (93 were tested) understood that 750 was a larger number than 366; they just squeezed too many large numbers on the far-right side of the number line. In fact, their results show more of a logarithmic pattern than the proper linear pattern.

This chart shows the average places the two grades placed the various numbers:

When these results are plotted on a graph we get the following:

So, it seems that before children are taught the "proper" linear way numbers work, they instead think of them in a logarithmic way... just like the pigeons. I would imagine that if we were to train any other animal, or even a baby, the way they trained the bird, they would see the same results; They would all think of things in a logarithmic scale, rather than a linear one.

Now, why is it that we enforce this linear thinking of numbers upon our children, when our brains clearly work on a logarithmic scale? Perhaps we should instead let them continue with their proper way of thinking, rather than forcing them into a new one.

After all, children are able to simply invent an entirely new language, without any adult helping them out, so it's clear to me that there's alot more to a young mind than we think.

I'll leave you with that to think about.

Ahh, the Joys of Christmas®

The myriad of TV commercials hocking the same things they did for the last ten years.
The stores playing the same small selection of songs in a continuous loop.
Those same stores displaying a huge assortment of gaudy, useless gadgets, gizmos, and knick-knacks that flash, dance, or play Jingle Bells as you walk by.
The hundreds of various, hugely overpriced cards that line twenty foot aisles.
The huge waste of electricity that entire countries use to power over the top displays all night to compete with their neighbors...
The same old movies they play year after year. And you can't forget the latest ridiculous Santa-based movie!

Christmas® is in the air!

Seriously, what's happened to this holiday?