Fuzzy Caucus Math

We've already been told about fuzzy math by Bush... now there's fuzzy caucus math, per Hillary! ;)

The ear-mark of a true candidate

For a majority of likely voters, meaningless bullshit will be the most important factor in deciding who they will vote for in 2008.

This is satire from the Onion...but its almost all true!

Although the clip has one guy saying, "No one party has a monopoly on bullshit", some of the fun in the humor was lost to me when there was a rather unnecessary special dig at Hillary at the end, followed by this priceless quote: "Not just talking bullshit but actually living the bullshit...that's the ear-mark of a true candidate." (They all bullshit...why pick on Hillary in particular?)

Earlier post about Bullshitting here and couple good definitions of Bullshit here and here.

A video-wall of great music

..courtesy, Dailymotion.com! Enjoy, like I did tonight...whilst following the 3rd days play of this exciting cricket match!

Speed-dating Bush

Maureen Dowd writes in the NYT:

It took Mr. Bush almost his entire presidency to embrace diplomacy, but now that he’s in the thick of it, or perhaps the thin of it — given his speed-dating approach to statesmanship — he is kissing and holding hands with kings, princes, emirs, sheiks and presidents all over the Arab world and is trying to persuade them that he is not in a monogamous relationship with the Jews.

His message boiled down to: Iran bad, Israel good, Iraq doing better.

Probably spoken in two-three word sentences like that too! ;)

Misogyny in the media

Nancy Grace ... I hope you read this and realize what you are!

Bob Herbert writes in the NYT about politics & misogyny in the US.

Little attention is being paid to the toll that misogyny takes on society in general, and women and girls in particular. Its forms are limitless.

....

The cable news channels revel in stories about women (almost always young and attractive) who come to a gruesome end at the hands of violent men. The stories seldom, if ever, raise the issue of misogyny, which permeates not just the crimes themselves, but the coverage as well.

Read the article - there is much to be outraged! Even in the land of the free. And elsewhere around the world, these crimes and violence against women can reach some rather depressing levels.

Mortality is on the horizon

51 the age for mid-life crisis? Dang! I'm only in my 30s!* :)

In an article about mid-life crisis, Richard Friedman, M.D. writes:

No doubt about it, life in the middle ages can be challenging. (Full disclosure: I’m 51.) What with the first signs of physical decline and the questions and doubts about one’s personal and professional accomplishments, it is a wonder that most of us survive.

...

Why do we have to label a common reaction of the male species to one of life’s challenges — the boredom of the routine — as a crisis? True, men are generally more novelty-seeking than women, but they certainly can decide what they do with their impulses.

But surely someone has had a genuine midlife crisis. After all, don’t people routinely struggle with questions like “What can I expect from the rest of my life?” or “Is this all there is?

Of course. But it turns out that only a distinct minority think it constitutes a crisis.

Maybe there is some truth to the fact that the idea of a ;mid-life crisis' is just an excuse for many to fight the 'boredom of the routine'... but questions of 'what is the true meaning of life' do arise in many people's lives -- sometimes even in your 20s, as it did in the case of David Seaman, who... , actually, let me just cut-n-paste from the amazon.com link for a recent book - the real meaning of life - that is edited by him.

(The book) collects the insights of everyday people who responded to David Seaman’s simple query, “What is the meaning of life?” typed into an online forum on a laptop at Starbucks. To his surprise, a flood of responses came. Some suggested “boobies and beer,” but Seaman found that most were much more thoughtful — so much so that he created a website and now this book to collect the best of them. From thousands of respondents — including Buddhists, born-again Christians, atheists, waitresses, students, and recovering heart attack patients — come incredibly diverse wisdom that can be aphoristic (“Be grease, not glue”), philosophical (“There is no point to life, and that is exactly what makes it so special”), or whimsical (“Me, I'm going snowboarding”).

Here are some excerpts from the book and you can subscribe to 'the real meaning of life' newsletter here.

Yes.. mortality is on the horizon -- but deal with it! :)

* I should clarify: No thoughts of seeking "self-knowledge in the arms of another woman" or buying fancy cars here. Maybe I am going in reverse gear -- feeling a 20-something-ish feeling of crisis/existential angst coming. Maybe I am going in reverse gear, you think? :) My body is definitely not...but maybe my mind is? :)

A naked brain floating in space.

Big brain theory, indeed!

It could be the weirdest and most embarrassing prediction in the history of cosmology, if not science.

If true, it would mean that you yourself reading this article are more likely to be some momentary fluctuation in a field of matter and energy out in space than a person with a real past born through billions of years of evolution in an orderly star-spangled cosmos. Your memories and the world you think you see around you are illusions.

Dang.. I knew I was insignificant but a "momentary fluctuation in a field of matter and energy"! :)

There is more oddball speculation in this theory...

The basic problem is that across the eons of time, the standard theories suggest, the universe can recur over and over again in an endless cycle of big bangs, but it’s hard for nature to make a whole universe. It’s much easier to make fragments of one, like planets, yourself maybe in a spacesuit or even — in the most absurd and troubling example — a naked brain floating in space. Nature tends to do what is easiest, from the standpoint of energy and probability. And so these fragments — in particular the brains — would appear far more frequently than real full-fledged universes, or than us. Or they might be us.

Read the details at the article, if interested. Makes for some fascinating sci-fi-ish leaps of imagination for sure but who said life is simple. Jokes aside, even Einstein's relativity theories sound sci-fi-ish to me and those are pretty well proven! These theories are still evolving and could well be proven wrong by someone else down the road or maybe we are really fluctuations!