A massacre is a terrible thing but it’s worse when it’s forgotten.

Could there be anything worse than that?

Yes, there could!

The regime that enabled the massacre was being feted by the world.  Kind of similar to Nazi Germany being feted after the Anschluss. Or exactly like if Stalin’s Russia had been allowed by the international community to parade itself.

Today is the 20th anniversary of the infamous massacre of thousands of its own citizens by the Burmese Junta. Most authorities blame China as well as the Junta since it is the Chinese weight behind the Junta that has enabled them to thumb their nose at the world.

The entire story is here.  Several ideas in that story deserve to be taken up.

Instead of Champion Olympians, maybe China should be called Champion Genocide enablers. Tibet, Burma, Darfur.  Who will be next?

I wasn’t going to write another post because I decided to re organize this blog and set up another one.  But when I logged onto wordpress a few minutes ago I saw this “hawt post” about “Nutty Story of the Day: “Global Warming” is Killing the Penguins in Antarctica.” “

I clicked on the story, mainly because I found it incredible that someone could doubt that.

What did I find?

I found that a poorly written newsreport had been very carefully cherry picked all the way from the United Kingdom. To make it seem as though it was misguided, links were placed to Audubon society and the like but of science, nary a view. Unless one counts another cherry picked chart of temperatures.

And what is the science? There are several studies that indeed confirm that penguins are at risk. However in the interest of my time and yours, I picked these 5 links for 3 different types of media:

1) An old national geographic news story here

2) A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. You can read the extract here. To read the entire study requires access to a library or subscription to the proceedings.

3) Some bloggers’ take on the matter:

here -this describes the full PNA study.

here - this gives a very even handed view of gloal warming in general and on the issue of ice.                                  Recommended reading in general.

4) An editorial in the Journal Science here which puts that cherry picked temperature chart in perspective. Science is the most prestigious journal on the planet- for those who may not be aware of the prestige associated with different journals.

You know the really sad part – disinformation is always read more! More on that tomorrow.  And if you liked this post then you might want to read this one too about global warming deniers here

Continuing the conversation on why conservatism sells (the first part is here). If you were a liberal, when would you want to pretend that you were a conservative?

When you want to make money of course!

How so?

How many liberals do you see with merchandise displaying their belief such as say, global warming exists  or that we did ascend or descend (as your preference might be) from apes? Not many. Truly – look around you.

Whether it is tee shirts or mugs or key chains or whatever, conservative stuff sells more.  Just like the blogs with conservative point of view on how global warming doesn’t exist or how the earth was created 10000 years ago get far more traffic than their liberal/progressive counterparts. So do blogs that say that the science behind evolution or global warming is not science.

This was gently pointed out to me when I was thinking of putting up an online store with my smart alecky slogans about global warming and some creative insults etc.  So naturally I got to thinking why there was this imbalance.

It’s not like conservatives have more income or that they work less hard or are somehow different. I knew some really, really nice people who voted for Bush in 2000.  In short, conservatives aren’t different from others except in their doggedly held opinions.

And so my final hypothesis is:

that conservatives spend so much time and money on reiterating their opinions because they need to constantly reaffirm to themselves that they are right about things.

Now it may be that you are disappointed by this hypothesis. I was. I said really – is that all?  Then I began to see what it meant. It meant that anyone who makes conservatives feel good about their beliefsis sitting on a gold mine. On the other hand, liberals/progressives et. al are so comfortable with their beliefs that they don’t need to display them on  tee shirts.

So someday I may write a post about why conservative beliefs  about global warming etc are so lightly held that they need constant reassurance that they are right!

And a note:

Some of you may wonder why I did not have a hypothesis that conservatives buy stuff because they feel like they are in a minority. I didn’t because the fact is conservatives talk to other conservatives and really don’t have very much reason to suppose that they are in a minority.

Here is the answer to the last scrambled quote. Walt Disney said:

If you can dream it, you can do it.

On the other hand an old proverb says:

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

Which one do you believe?

This is the last scrambled quote and it’s nice that it ends with something worth thinking about!

From the 1987 Wall Street directed by Oliver Stone, comes this gem of a paragraph – I took the liberty of breaking it up into three for readability.  It’s the best speech on the general economy in a movie.

Gordon Gekko:

“The richest one percent of this country owns half our country’s wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It’s bullshit.

You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own. We make the rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price per paper clip. We pick that rabbit out of the hat while everybody sits out there wondering how the hell we did it. Now you’re not naive enough to think we’re living in a democracy, are you buddy?

It’s the free market. And you’re a part of it. You’ve got that killer instinct. Stick around pal, I’ve still got a lot to teach you.”

What do you think - does this speech have any truth to it?

Sometime ago I read about a guy who said he had a six figure income from selling tee shirts with conservative slogans on cafepress (you can read the article here) .  Which got me to thinking about why is it that conservatives spend so much on stuff that basically keeps repeating what they believe.

When I say spend, I don’t mean just money, but also time. Conservative blogs whether on wordpress or elsewhere have dedicated readers.  One of the few liberal blogs which has a huge readership is the Huffington Post.  If there are other such blogs with a million plus readers, please do let me know.

Now why is that?

One reason could be:

All the conservatives have more money and therefore do not have to work so much and therefore have all the time in the world to congregate on the Internet, whether to promote creationism, now called intelligent design, or to tell each other global warming doesn’t exist or that science and scientists know squat.

But although this may seem to explain why conservative stuff sells, it is not supported by data. Conservatives that spend their time and money are not likely to be richer than progressives, scientists and liberals. At least I can’t find any data that says one is richer than another. I have seen comparisons between red and blue states but every state has both conservatives and liberals so to say blue states are richer and therefore liberals are richer is simply not good logic.

So if that is probably not the answer, then what other reasons could there be?

More tomorrow.

An aside: for all those who think that the globe is cooling (a.k.a. global cooling), Northern Californians now feel the need for fans and air conditioners – ask anyone who can remember 20 years ago or earlier about how cool Northern California has always been. Remember Mark Twain’s famous San Francisco quote?

“the coldest winter I ever saw was the summer I spent in San Francisco”

I should mention that all Twain scholars are not convinced that he actually said this.

Here is the answer to the last quote:

First the top task, then the Internet.

If you can stay off the internet till you finish your number 1 task for the day then you, my friend, can go places. If you are already doing that, then you must already be at a good place:)

The higher the lever of executive, the more likely it is that they observe a hour media fast for an hour or two every morning – no phones, no Internet, no email – just plain work.

A serial entrepreneur also gave this advice but in his book one should finish the top two priorities for the day before turning to the Net.

I’m still trying to take that advice. You?

The shout for today is an inspiring quote from Walt Disney:

Fi oyu nca rmade ti, uyo anc od ti

Wouldn’t this world be a different place if more people believed that and actually lived their dreams?

From that 1987 classic movie Princess Bride:

Great to use on any kid, whatever be your age!

Grandpa: “When I was your age, television was called books.”

Grandpa and Grandson in the Princess Bride

And the next two lines just make me laugh and say “ain’t that the truth”

The Grandson: “I wasn’t nervous. Maybe I was a little bit “concerned” but that’s not the same thing.”

Miracle Max: You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.

And from a non-classic 1989 Road House with Patrick Swayze as Dalton:

A really good insult:

“You’re too stupid to have a good time. “

And this line falls in the pantheon of classic action movie one liners:

“Pain don’t hurt”

The next few glee is me posts are going to be about more undiscovered move one liners.

Ever seen an ugly baby? No?

Really it’s a serious question. But why you might think, am I writing about babies when I actually meant to write about why people own guns? It so happens that right now I am around a couple of babies. Really cute babies.

But this particular post was triggered when I saw the father actually raise the 16 month old to smell him to check if he had done a “big job.” This from a guy who didn’t care for bathroom humor and the like.

It is my observation that people change when they have babies. They don’t change when they get married but let a little bundle of delight come into their life and it becomes hard to recognize even one’s oldest friends. Suddenly the hardened partier will sober down and get involved with nappies instead of daiquiris. Amazing!

It turns out that babies of every species are cute. Even skunks and snakes. If they weren’t, presumably, the parents would not look after them till they got old enough to be independent.

Yet even though all babies are so cute and adorable, notice they all don’t turn into the adult equivalent of cute which would be handsome and beautiful.

What happens?
Genes kick in. So thank evolution for cute babies and blame the parents and ancestors for ugly adults!

Here is the answer to the last shout:

The story goes that after Charles M. Schwab took over Bethlehem Steel in early twentieth century, he hired a consultant to help increase the efficiency of his staff.  The consultant observed the executives as they worked and then made a recommendation which apparently greatly doubled executive productivity.

The recommendation was:

Plan the evening before.

If the next day is planned the evening before, when one gets into office then they are ready to go. It may seem like common sense now but how many of us manage to even plan the next day, forget about implementing the plan.

Of course in those days communication technology was not as advanced as today so people actually got work done. Which brings me to the scrambled shout for today:

Stifr het pot stsk tnhe eht ennttei

This one is guaranteed to increase your personal productivity and also falls in the realm of common sense.