I thought it was “hopeless, but not serious…”.

In case you haven’t come across this yet: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/20122277438762233.html

Yes, I doubt a lot of ‘this’. The US population is rising only because of immigration, which we need to take care of the old folks. China is going to be in a world of hurt real soon if they don’t open their immigration gates AND make their country look like a place people want to move to in order to take care of old people. The wars we have gotten into up to this point have been wars to maintain our empire, which is in deed in decline. The next war is likely to be a big one, and after it the US dollar will have lost its status as a reserve currency. THAT will change everything.

WWII happened for the UK in 1939, 10 years after the US stock market crash which started the Great Depression. As a result of WWII, the UK got their national health service. This time around, the US stands in for the UK as the declining imperial power, and so we can look forward to getting our single payer health insurance as a result of WWIII, due to start in 2018.

If it makes you feel better, Obama will not be given credit for our single payer plan, since he will be out of office before WWIII; instead, credit will be given to Vermont, which plans to have their single payer insurance in place by 2019.

Bassets like couches, just like Roman emperors did.

You should translate “allah” as “the god”, since that is what the words mean (al lah).

“Lah” is cognate with Hebrew “Eloh”, as in “Elohim” (meaning “male gods”, so Genesis starts with “In the beginning of the male gods’ creation of the heavens and the earth, the earth was chaos and emptiness…”).

Psychiatrist Nassir Ghaemi in his book A First-Rate Madness makes the point that normal people (like Obama) do not do well during times of crisis (like the current Great Depression II), largely because they are not risk takers. For what it is worth, he considers people like FDR and JFK to be abnormal.

A well written murder mystery novel, if it follows the formula, shows that the world is inherently rational, despite the presence of chaotic elements, and that therefore reason triumphs over villainy. “True crime” does not support this world view. So no surprise you would like one but not the other.

She did not cop a plea despite spending three years in jail. Does it take being a psychopath to stand up to the “justice system”?

Have you been to Sacramento after 4:00 PM? Not a trace of state government in sight. Nope, they’re filling up on their free gasoline and heading out of town. That is small government sitting on top of a big economy. California won’t get serious, government-wise, until they move the state capitol to Los Angeles. But the four guys who created the state (Huntington, Crocker, Hopkins and Stanford) didn’t want an effective state government to tax their ill-gotten gains, so they picked Sacramento (not a major port city, and never will be) as the capitol.

The California DMV has to keep track of some 30,000,000 drivers/ID cards, while the US Social Security Department has to keep track of some 300,000,000 social security contributors/recipients. Of course Social Security is seamless, while the California DMV is not. And if you go from needing glasses to not needing glasses, just try to get that taken off of your driver’s license…

The California DMV is a good argument against small (state of California) government; the US Social Security Administration is a good argument for big government.

Dogs are domesticated wolves, and you can see the signs of domestication in their skeletal differences (even huskies have skeletal differences from wolves). This means domestication involves changes to DNA.

Cats, on the other hand, are genetically identical to the solitary wild cats that are their ancestors and cousins. This means cats were not domesticated; they simply changed their behavior to take advantage of a new environmental niche (humans, with associated garbage and rodents).

The cat’s meow is tuned to the human ear, and cats never meow to each other. “Meow” is cat for “human”. Dogs, on the other hand, think we are tall dogs.

Of course, on the internet no one knows that you are a dog.

Since Weiner never actually met these people, I am waiting for one of them to turn out to be an old, Republican male. Or Wembley.

Now that Google is providing free ebooks (including such classics as Mark Twain’s Mysterious Stranger), when are we going to be treated to the top ten ebook titles each week?

In light of the movie’s plot, it is very interesting this Thor had a beard.

I am now looking forward to the Conan reboot.

Welcome to the world of Java apps! Steve Jobs and his designers are no longer responsible for your experiences, but Little Brother Google can remove and install apps on your phone without your knowledge, consent, etc. For now, Google does send an email when Google does this. For now, Google restricts this to apps downloaded from the Android App Market.

But, you can surf the web for Java code, copy, paste, tweak, make your own app, put it on an SD card, put the SD card on your phone, and install your own app on your phone – something you could not do with Apple technology.

Of course, now you are going to be inexorably drawn into getting an Android tablet…

We just had a snow flurry in Los Gatos. It has been 35 years since we last had snow here (pretty close to sea level).

when do we get to see the picture of Fenway standing under Wembley?

The Chinese central bank just announced that they are torpedoing Obama’s chance to be re-elected: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20101208/ts_nm/us_china_economy_growth.