,hl=en,siteUrl='http://0ldfox.blogspot.com/',authuser=0,security_token="v_SeT2Tv8vVdKRCcG9CCW-ZdIfQ:1429878696275"/> Old Fox KM Journal : November 2014

Monday, November 24, 2014

Mohammad Goes to School

Eight year old Mohammad entered his classroom on the first day of school.
"What's your name?", asked the teacher.
 
"Mohammad", he replied.
 
"You're in America now", replied the teacher. "So from now on you will be known as Frank."
 
Mohammad returned home after school.
 
"How was your day, Mohammad?", his mother asked.
 
"My name is not Mohammad. I'm in America and now my name is Frank."
 
"Are you ashamed of your name? Are you trying to dishonor your parents, your heritage, your religion?

Shame on you!" And his mother beat him.
 
Then she called his father, who beat him again.
 
The next day Mohammad returned to school. The teacher saw all of his bruises.
 
"What happened to you, Frank?", she asked.
 
"Well, shortly after becoming an American I was attacked by two fucking Muslims!”
 

The Secret Life of Passwords - NYTimes.com

The Secret Life of Passwords - NYTimes.com:



'via Blog this'



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Friday, November 21, 2014

Joe v. Barack, Jeh, Leon, and Eric

Case 1:14-cv-01966



'via Blog this'



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Passwords!

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The Secret Life of Passwords

We despise them – yet we imbue them with our hopes and dreams, our dearest memories, our deepest meanings. They unlock much more than our accounts.
By IAN URBINA  Video by LESLYE DAVIS

Monday, November 17, 2014

Sunday, November 16, 2014

A Jewish American Monster: Stanley Kubrick,Anti-Semitism and Lolita (1962)

















Stanley Kubrick's black comedy Lolita is one of my favorite films of all time.  I don't know if it qualifies as Film Noir or not but it is certainly dark.

The paper cited here opened up many windows of thoughts about the cultural and historical nuances of the film, and the novel, that completely escaped me until just now.

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Jewish American Monster: Stanley Kubrick






Is Trolling a Crime, and thus a Defamatory epithet?




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"The Internet has developed a rather unfortunate infection, which is called Trolls. Trolls are unpleasant Internet vigilantes who target anyone who they feel doesn’t fit in with their own personal views on the world, and woe betide you if you actually directly challenge those views.
Trolling is a new term for an old, and very antisocial form of behaviour called harassment, and in civilised societies we have laws preventing one individual from harassing another, or from organising a group to do so.
This is where the Internet steps in and messes things up somewhat. Not only does the net give people anonymity for good reasons, such as hiding from persecution, but it also allows people to hide their identities whilst they cause trouble for others."

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Internet Sales Tax bill

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FT reports Republicans will not let the Internet Sales Tax bill pass this session of Congress.

High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ac18e94a-6930-11e4-b389-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz3IjujsXCJ

"Marketplace Fairness" is the cynically coined title  of a bill that denies fairness and manipulates the  market.

Markets need to be free, not encumbered by price and  quota loopholes devised by a greedy, economically illiterate government.   Sales tax is imposed by most states at the cash  register.  If the cash register is in another state,  they cannot impose or collect sales tax.  That is  NOT a loophole.  That's fairness.

By renaming "Sales Tax" as "Sales and Use Tax" they  try to assert that the tax is due from the consumer well  separated and apart from the cash register.  It's  crooked.
Where I live, the state sales tax is 9.75% until  last year when the county added 2% sales tax to  food.  I'm not talking fine upscale restaurant food.  I'm talking bread, milk, baby formula, vitamins,  cough drops, rice, flour, beans, your family's  GROCERIES!

Sales Tax is justified if at all by the  infrastructure, services, and facilities furnished by  the local government.  That means that the brick and  mortar retailers in town get:  Police and fire  services, meat, kitchen, elevator, deli scale,  building, fire marshal inspections, courts, prosecutors, public defenders, jails, and probation  officers to identify, apprehend, detain, try,  incarcerate, and rehabilitate offenders who  shoplift, embezzle, steal, purse grab, armed rob the  retailer or his customers.  It enables street  cleaning, pothole repair, sewers, water supply,  traffic signals, snow removal, accident response and  ambulance service, tornado sirens, early disaster  responders, and on and on.  All very expensive services for the benefit and protection of the  local retailers.   Not one of those benefits accrue to the  interests of the out-of-state merchant.  None,  bubkis, nada, zilch, zero!  "Marketplace Fairness?"   I think not.

Doctors, lawyers, chiropractors, accountants,  therapists, UPS, FedEx, the post office, storage  spaces, veterinarians (except for pet food) are not  required to collect sales tax, and we users of those  services are not required to tally and pay tax for  their use.  
We consumers-tax payers have been struggling more  and more every pay period to make our ends meet  since 2008.  Internet merchants enable us to find  bargains and broaden our choices.  It is a trade off:  We have to pay  shipping.  The state tax authority will want sales  tax on the shipping, you can depend upon it. Each  state, I suggest will need to hire two additional  people, with offices, parking spaces, and generous  benefits to administer the sales tax collections  from each of the 50 states and several territories  subject to US law.  That's 50 times 50 more tax  collectors!  They want every resident to file a  Sales & Use Tax Return?  An army of new auditors on our state's payrolls making government yet even that  much bigger than the productive working sector.  How  are they going to deal with creative merchants who  take their fulfillment to Canada, Mexico, France,  Hong Kong, or Antigua?

What about the five states that have NO sales tax?   Is my state going to put 11.75% sales tax on any  maple syrup I bring in from New Hampshire, crab legs  from Delaware, rocky mountain oysters from Montana,  or granola from Oregon.  "Fairness?"  Hardly.  It is favoritism paid off to the legislators with billions  for new spending.  That's what it is--a sweetheart  deal!   The mobsters in Brooklyn were less rapacious as this. 

This proposal is an unmitigated outrage and insult  to the taxpayers and consumers of this entire  nation.  How Senator Lamar Alexander, Bob Corker,  and other Republican senators could support this  just shows how badly we need Tea Party, low tax,  shrink government leaders now.  These "Marketplace  Fairness" Republicans are sellouts with no right to  our vote.

Friday, November 07, 2014

Test Everything!

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Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman said, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”
These words are no less insightful today than they were when he wrote them in 1985. Despite our best efforts, we are all vulnerable to believing things without using logic or having proper evidence—and it doesn’t matter how educated or well read we are. Our brains seem to be hardwired to have our beliefs come first and explanations for our beliefs second. And although we are skilled at recognizing the cognitive biases in other people’s thinking, we often have blinders on when it comes to our own.
But there is a method for avoiding these pitfalls of human nature, and it’s called skepticism. By using rational inquiry and seeing subjects from a scientific perspective, we can approach even the most sensitive claims with clear eyes to ultimately arrive at the truth. And today, the need for skepticism has never been more dire as superstition and magical thinking experience a resurgence in our society and around the world.

Wednesday, November 05, 2014

Monday, November 03, 2014

Jumpcut: Minimalist Clipboard Buffering for Apple's OS X

Jumpcut: Minimalist Clipboard Buffering for OS X:


Works pretty well.
I have set Option [alt] - up arrow as the hotkey.



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Bob Precter warning




Did You Know?

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Did You Know?
“Between speaking fees, investments and income from presidential appointments, Frederick Douglass’ was able to mass $300,000 in savings–an equivalent of more than $10 million dollars today. We shouldn’t ENVY those earning $250,000 per year. We should EMULATE them. That’s how jobs are created.” ~ KCarl Smith, ConservativeMESSENGER
  • African Americans originally came to America unwillingly, having been stolen and sold by Muslim slave-catchers in Africa to Dutch traders journeying to America in 1619.
  • The Three-Fifths Clause dealt only with representation and not the worth of any individual.
  • In 1857, a Democratically controlled Supreme Court delivered the Dred Scott decision, declaring that blacks were not persons or citizens but instead were property and therefore had no rights.
  • The 13th Amendment to abolish slavery was voted for by 100% of the Republicans in congress and by 23% of the Democrats in congress.
  • Not one Democrat either in the House or the Senate voted for the 14th amendment declaring that former slaves were full citizens of the state in which they lived and were therefore entitled to all the rights and privileges of any other citizen in that state.
  • Not a single one of the 56 Democrats in Congress voted for the 15th amendment that granted explicit voting rights to black Americans.
  • In 1866 Democrats formed the Ku Klux Klan to pave the way for Democrats to regain control in the elections.
  • George Wallace was a Democrat.
  • Bull Connor was a Democrat.
  • In the 19th century, Democrats prevented Black Americans from going to public school.
  • In the 20th and 21st century Democrats prevented Black Americans trapped in failing schools from choosing a better school. In fact Democrats voted against the bill by 99%.
  • Jim Crow laws, poll taxes, grandfather clauses, Literacy tests, white only primaries, and physical violence all came from the Democratic Party.
  • Between 1882 and 1964, 4,743 individuals were lynched. 3,446 blacks and 1,297 whites. Republicans often led the efforts to pass federal anti-lynching laws and Democrats successfully blocked those bills.
  • Though both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were signed into law under Democrat President, Lyndon Johnson, it was the Republicans in Congress who made it possible in both cases – not to overlook the fact that the heart of both bills came from the work of Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
  • In the 108th Congress, when Republicans proposed a permanent extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, it was opposed by the Congressional Black Caucus (composed only of Democrats).
  • Following the Civil War, Frederick Douglass received Presidential appointments from Republican Presidents Ulysses Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, and James A. Garfield.  Democratic President Grover Cleveland removed Frederick Douglas from office but Republican President Benjamin Harrison reappointed him.
  • Very few today know that in 1808 Congress abolished the slave trade. Although slavery still had not been abolished in all the states, things definitely were moving in the right direction.
  • By 1820, most of the Founding Fathers were dead and Thomas Jefferson’ party (the Democratic Party) had become the majority party in Congress.
  • In 1789, Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance that prohibited slavery in a federal territory.  In 1820, the Democratic Congress passed the Missouri Compromise and reversed that earlier policy, permitting slavery in almost half of the federal territories.
  • In 1850, Democrats in Congress passed the “Fugitive Slave Law”.  That law required Northerners to return escaped slaves back into slavery or else pay huge fines.
  • Because the “Fugitive Slave Law” allowed Free Blacks to be carried into slavery, this law was disastrous for blacks in the North; and as a consequence of the atrocious provisions of this Democratic law, some 20,000 blacks in the North left the United States and fled to Canada.
  • The “Underground Railroad” reached the height of its activity during this period, helping thousands of slaves escape from slavery in the South all the way out of the United States and into Canada – simply to escape the reach of the Democrats’ Fugitive Slave Law.
  • In 1854, the Democratically controlled Congress passed another law strengthening slavery:  the Kansas-Nebraska Act.  Even though Democrats in Congress had already expanded the federal territories in which slavery was permitted through their passage of the Missouri Compromise, they had retained a ban on slavery in the Kansas-Nebraska territory.  But through the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Democrats repealed those earlier restrictions, thus allowing slavery to be introduced into parts of the new territory where it previously had been forbidden.
  • Following the passage of these pro-slavery laws in Congress, in May of 1854, a number of the anti-slavery Democrats in Congress – along with some anti-slavery members from other political parties, including the Whigs, Free Soilers, and Emancipationists, formed a new political party to fight slavery and secure equal civil rights for black Americans.  The name of that party?  They called it the Republican Party because they wanted to return to the principles of freedom and equality first set forth in the governing documents of the Republic before pro-slavery members of Congress  had perverted those original principles.
  • One of the founders of the Republican was U.S. Senator Charles Sumner.  In 1856, Sumner gave a two day long speech in the U.S. Senate against slavery. Following that speech, Democratic Representative Preston Brooks from South Carolina came from the House, across the Rotunda of the Capitol, and over to the Senate where he literally clubbed down Sumner on the floor of the Senate, knocked him unconscious, and beat him almost to death.  According to the sources of that day, many Democrats thought that Sumner’s clubbing was deserved, and it even amused them.  What happened to Democrat Preston Brooks following his vicious attack on Sumner?  He was proclaimed a southern hero and easily re-elected to Congress.
  • In 1856, the Republican Party entered its first Presidential election, running Republican John C. Fremont against Democrat James Buchanan.  In that election, the Republican Party issued its first-ever Party platform.  It was a short document with only nine planks in the platform, but significantly, six of the nine planks set forth bold declarations of equality and civil rights for African Americans based on the principles of the Declaration of Independence.
  • In 1856, the Democratic platform took a position strongly defending slavery and warned: “All efforts of the abolitionists… are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences and all such efforts have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people”.
  • It is worth noting that for over a century and a half, Democrats often have taken a position that some human life is disposable – as they did in the Dred  Scott decision.  In that instance, a black individual was not a life, it was property; and an individual could do with his property as he wished.  Today, Democrats have largely taken that same position on unborn human life – that an unborn human is disposable property to do with as one wishes.
  • African Americans were the victims of this disposable property ideology a century and a half ago, and still are today.  Consider:  although 12 percent of the current population is African American, almost 35 percent of all abortions are performed on African Americans.  In fact, over the last decade, for every 100 African American live births, there were 53 abortions of African American babies.  Democrats have encouraged this; and although black Americans are solidly pro-life with almost two-thirds opposing abortion on demand, a number of recent votes in Congress reveals that Democrats hold exactly the opposite view, with some 80 percent of congressional Democrats being almost rabidly pro-abortion and consistently voting against protections for innocent unborn human life.
http://frederickdouglassrepublican.com/donate/we-need-you/