No thanks, Barack!

Lech Walesa did not accept Obama's request to meet with him in Poland after the G8 summit. Not interested in a photo op with someone willing to sell out Poland to "reset" relations with Russia?

Sharia Law's latest victim?

19-year-old Katya Koren may be the latest victim of Sharia Law. What did she do? She entered a beauty contest. Her body was found in a forest, after she was stoned to death.
Moonbattery has the story.

More on Black Swans

I am going to try to write about some of the concepts presented by Taleb in his thought-provoking book The Black Swan. I wish I would have read it before I went through my stock trading days, although that would not have been possible, since he wrote it in 2007, a few years after I squandered money in the stock market. He recommends having 85% of your money in extremely safe investments, and 15% of your money in risky bets.

The book is just chock full of prescient thoughts. For example, he writes about how Syria and Saudia Arabia are ripe for devasting chaos, and he writes about the global economic collapse that occured one year after he finished writing his book.

He points out that it is contagion that determines the spread of a theory, not its validity. One cannot help but think of the Obama contagion in that context.

Taleb has a doctorate in derivatives, and is an options trader. He points out that there have been ten days (Black Swans) in fifty years of trading that have accounted for one half the financial returns.

You and I are black swans, when you realize the extraordinary odds against our being alive. Like Donald Rumsfeld, Taleb writes about the importance of "unknown unknowns." He points out that our military leaders understand his concepts much better than any other professions. He asserts that models of contempory economics are fundamentally flawed, and modern financial theory is dangerous junk science.

He skewers the Nobel Prize (Obama and Gore are recipients; that is enough for me to be convinced it is a fraud). He points out that more people have been killed because of political, social and economic "sciences" than religion, although the left loves to skewer religion.

Taleb wants us to avoid being suckers, to think for ourselves, to be as much in control of our lives as possible. He warns us to avoid "mechanistic minds who don't want to deal with ambiguity," and likewise avoid "mind-closing certainties" induced by mathematical models such as the Bell curve.

More later. It's time to cook some corn on the cob and burgers for the kids.

Above the Law

George Will writes in the Washington Post about Obama's choice to ignore the War Powers Act, which requires that a President terminate military action within 60 days, if Congress has not approved it. The war against Libya began more than 70 days ago. However, Obama has the full support of one John McCain, as Will points out in this final paragraph:

“No president,” says Sen. John McCain, “has ever recognized the constitutionality of the War Powers Act, and neither do I. So I don’t feel bound by any deadline.” Oh? No law is actually a law if presidents and senators do not “recognize” it? Now, there is an interesting alternative to judicial review, and an indicator of how executive aggrandizement and legislative dereliction of duty degrade the rule of law.

Is reality no fun any more?

Have you noticed that for some time now the supernatural has been the big theme in book sales? Well, today's Wall Street Journal says we are again going to be flooded with the supernatural this summer. Tales of zombies, werewolves, ghosts, robots, aliens, magicians, dragons, demons, vampires, and witches were the top items the publishing houses were featuring at the Book Expo America convention this week in New York, which is the book industry's biggest convention. In 2010 358 fantasy titles hit the bestseller lists. Stephanie Meyer's "Twilight" series sold 116 million copies. The champ, of course, is J.K. Rowling, whose "Harry Potter" books have sold more than 400 million copies.

Are people looking for some way to make sense of their lives? Do we feel trapped in dead end scenarios in our real lives? Is reality no fun any more?

Goodbye Osama

Found this at Andy's Place

Flipping a coin

I have found another really good book. This one is called The Black Swan. It is not connected to the recent popular movie. It was written in 2007 by Dr. Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It is about the impact of the improbable. 9-11-2001, for example, was a Black Swan that has had a huge impact on our lives. Taleb is a maverick thinker who is witty and irreverent.

Here is a math problem from the book. I gathered Greg, Jon, Sara and Kim to get their thoughts on the problem. A person has a coin. One side is heads, and the other side is tails. The coin is to be flipped 100 times. The first 99 times the coin ends up showing heads. What will it be on the 100th flip?

Sara said it would be tails (Sara fantasizes more than anyone I have ever known). Kim said a hobo would come up and snatch the coin away from the fool who keeps flipping it, apparently unaware that the coin has value! Jon said the coin should be spent, not flipped. He further added that there was something fishy going on here, and that he expected it would again be heads. Greg agreed, saying that the person who has been tricked is going to hire a hit man and go after that trickster!

What is your prediction?

The Potion

Now that school is out for the summer, parents need to be vigilant in protecting their children from all manner of potential mishaps. Or, as in my case, you need to encourage your kids to practice good preventive health. This morning Jon and Greg decided to go outside and collect items for a health potion. If anyone is injured, they just need to drink from this magic potion. Here are the ingredients:
Rum
Snake eye goop
wild mushrooms
Leprechan blood
Zandernach (a dragon monster) blood
goblin piss
black powder
evil flowers that bite
dried Rhinosasaurus tears (a creature with three tails)
the brain of a thing only Jon and Greg know how to spell and pronounce
Armadillo milk
Fire Ant (this is the most important ingredient)

Cook for fifty minutes on high
Mush everything up as you cook
Freeze until ice forms
Thaw it out
Freeze it again
Thaw it out
Pour it in an old aspirin container
Try to get your little sister to drink it.
Run when your father intervenes.

Let's go back to pre-1959 borders!

I just heard a funny thought (by listening to Mike Rosen's talk radio show). Someone wrote to the White House Facebook page, and suggested that the United States go back to pre-1959 borders, before Hawaii became a state. That way Barack Obama would no longer be President.

A Play Day!

What a fun day. I took the three youngest back to the most beautiful town in America: Golden, Colorado, where they spent their first few years of life. Each had won an award at their school, which is now out for summer recess. Jon won two awards in the fifth grade: Best Reader, and Most Likely to be a Millionare some day. Greg won the fourth grade award for Most Creative. Sara won the first grade award for Funniest! While I am bragging, but not taking any credit, Kim got straight As in the 11th grade, and Erik got straight A's in his first year of technical college, where he is studying to be a diesel mechanic. More importantly, he got his scholarship renewed for his second year! On the way home we called the fifth sibling, Thomas, who was leaving Wisconsin for a 900 mile jaunt to Oklahoma: just another day in the life of an over-the-road trucker!

In Golden we hiked, fished, netting eight crawdads, ate pizza, jumped, ran, climbed every tree, statue, and other structure not built for climbing, posed for pictures, dipped our toes in creeks big and small, swung, and slid. I promise to figure out how to post photos soon.

By the grace of God...

via Joan at Primordial Slack, who urges conservatives NOT to shut up!

Comin' in by the tractor trailer full!

The Wall Street Journal today has this X-ray photo of one of two tractor trailers filled with hundreds of people coming illegally into the United States. This one has people from Guatemala. They paid $7,000 each for the privilege of being smuggled into Mexico on their way to the U.S. Mexico does not take kindly to people coming into Mexico from neighboring countries, even if they are just passing through to the U.S.! Can you imagine how long it took them to save $7,000? Would we be willing to make that kind of a sacrifice to come to America?

We are staggering each other!

Did you know that the Middle East is "staggered" by the cost of wheat? According to the Wall Street Journal, wheat prices have increased by 17% this week alone! They are up 91% in less than one year! The main two factors causing the rise are wetness in the United States and drought in Russia. Wheat is the main staple of Middle Easterners. Tunisians, for example, consume 478 pounds per person per year, whereas in the United States we consume 177 pounds per person.

So, while we are "staggered" by the cost of Middle East oil, they are staggered by the cost of our wheat!

Did the President of the United States throw down with the enemies of Israel?

Which of the Jihadist groups now taking power throughout the Middle East is willing to disavow Iran's call for the destruction of Israel? I'm waiting... Give up? How do you make sense, then, of Obama's speech today calling for Israel to return to 1967 borders?

Obama a war criminal?

President Obama has until tomorrow to comply with the 60 days he has under the 1973 War Powers Act to ask Congress to declare war on Libya. It was 59 days ago that he went to Congress to tell them about his "kinetic military action" in Libya. Jim Geraghty has the details here. Ace wonders if that will make Obama a war criminal.

A field guide

Innominatus gives us here the first accurate history of the Hippie movement. I don't know where he got that picture of me, though.

Thin skin

When President Obama visited Boston on March 6, the Boston Herald featured an op-ed piece by Mitt Romney. Yesterday, because of that, the Herald was frozen out of full access to Obama, as he again visited Boston. The Herald vows not to be intimidated. We'll see.

He's on his way!

Adversity can make us or break us. When my oldest stepson was 17, because of his own honesty, and desire not to repeat the lifestyle choices of his birthfather, he confessed to having committed a crime, when he was 15. The juvenile justice system gave him a severe consequence. He asked himself who he was and who he wanted to become. He worked hard in therapy and religiously followed all the rules of probation.

Now four years later, he has become an absolute joy to be around. He has a warmth, softness, and vulnerability that I find very appealing. He is happy in his job as an over-the-road trucker, going back and forth across this great land, or at least the eastern half of it. He is responsible and loving. This world is and will continue to be a better place because he is in it!

Growing up in orphanages.

I met a woman today who told me she had just had a great experience. I asked her what it was. She said she had just gone shopping! I asked her what was so great about that? She replied that she had just returned from South Africa, where she had been working in two orphanages, and had not shopped in months. She said that because of the AIDS epidemic, 40,000 African adults die each year, leaving their children without a parent. She said that in homes where there are older children, the babies are often raised by the older children. Where there are no older children, the young ones are raised in orphanages. She said there is a huge need for adoptive families.

Losing confidence in Blogger

My post about our politically incorrect school was dropped by Blogger after it initially published. I don't enjoy having to type it again. What can we do to back up posts?