- I haven’t had much to say about the Comey flap. Far as I’m concerned, everybody in power in DC should be fired. But Jim Bovard says the FBI needs booting off its pedestal.
- Ah yes, the ever-magical drug whisperers on the police force. (H/T jc2k in comments)
- But alas, some stoners are as dumb as their reputation. Here’s a pair who, it seems, forgot they were no longer in Colorado (Tip o’ hat to ML)
- Uh oh. You remember those nasty cyberwar tools developed by the NSA? The ones they carelessly lost control of? Yeah. Seems somebody is putting them to serious worldwide use. Thanks so very much for keeping us so “secure,” famous “security” agency. UPDATE: Wendy McElroy just posted her take on the NSA’s criminal bungling in her Bitcoin.com news column.
- So Jimmy Carter and Bernie Sanders believe inequality breeds authoritarianism. It may be true … and those two know all about authoritarianism, don’t they?
- “Renew your brilliance.” Oh yeah. Words of wisdom from Wendy McElroy (and Baltasar Gracian, the sage she’s been interpreting lately; but I think Wendy’s take is more true than the original).
- How much do you know about dogs? I got 10 out of 10, but there were a couple of tricky ones.
I missed the questions on color vision and magnetic alignment. I’m not actually surprised by the yellow/blue bit, because a lot of regular vision tests of dogs wouldn’t have turned that up.
The magnetic alignment is — appropriately enough — crap. That claim appears to be based on a single Czech study from 2013. I read through most of it, and their methodology sucked. And even then, they only got a 20% “correlation.” I was amused by the claim that dogs are so sensitive to field fluctuations that their “alignment” is thrown off by daily changes in the Earth’s field. Odd that I can’t detect that much change with a compass (for which I don’t have correct declination more than yearly).
Now, if they’d put the dogs in a metal chambered that isolated them from external fields and provided one fixed test field, they might be on to something. If they had a correlation higher than 50:50.
I can’t possibly be the only person who remembers how much political hot water the FBI was in just prior to 9/11, but sometimes it sure seems like it.
I missed the poo question – I’ve never heard of that, and it doesn’t make sense to me. Why would dogs be affected? Might other animals have such idiosyncratic responses too?
I also don’t know the small red fox-faced dog. Who knows what is that breed?
https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-04/11/11/enhanced/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/original-1275-1491926033-5.jpg
You mean this one, Pat? Shiba Inu (AKA the Doge meme dog, which sort of made it a trick question). Or is that not the one you mean?
Yes, that’s the one. Thanks.
Somebody give me the name of a government which has acted to reduce its control over the citizenry. Please.
IMO, all governments everywhere act to increase their power over the people. Always, regardless of economic conditions.
No matter how brilliant any few of the NSA boffins may be, as a group I’ll lay six, two and even that the group mindset is like that of any government bureaucracy: “We are infallible!”
Thanks for sharing the Gracian quote and reflection.
If I could duplicate myself, I’d have the other me read Wendy’s stuff.
Efrem Zimbalist Jr. is spinning in his grave.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efrem_Zimbalist_Jr.
The kids from Colo. aren’t as bad as the ones we get down here, folks who get into trouble in Mexico and demand their Constitutional Rights.
Blew the dog quiz. I thought they cooled off by panting.
Jimmy Carter and Bernie Sanders are correct; the more inequality there is between bureaucrats and the People, the more authoritarian the government becomes.
Wait. What? That isn’t what they meant?
I got 3 out of 10. Given my ignorance about dogs, it’s a wonder the shelter let me adopt. Tess (a hound mix) thinks I walk on water. I’ll not be sharing my test results with her for fear of disillusioning her.
Apparently I don’t know anything about dogs either. Or, just possibly, somebody at Buzzfeed is full of…poo.
Can’t say which.
7 of 10 on the dog quiz, probably because I generally like dogs better than people. š
They’ve apparently stopped the spread of the “wannacry” ransomware for now (in a very interesting way) https://www.wired.com/2017/05/accidental-kill-switch-slowed-fridays-massive-ransomware-attack/
This one warmed my heart a bit. The little guy flipping the bird to the politicians:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/us/anti-tax-fervor-roseburg-oregon-.html?_r=0&referer=https://www.google.com/
My dog shows no apparent concern regarding her orientation at expulsion time. I did once see on TV – can’t find a reference on the ‘net – that when Arctic Foxes are leaping and diving in the snow for prey, they have a much higher success rate (75%?) if they are facing magnetic north.
With this conversation in mind I actually paid attention to the compass direction this morning while Little Bear did his business. Which he did twice – facing in two apparently completely random directions.
LB can’t read a compass, it seems. I know this violates the law according to Buzzfeed, but neither of us ever studied law.
That’s actually pretty funny, Joel. Ever since reading the (possibly dubious) study a few months ago, I’ve noticed that Ava does align herself north-south most of the time. She doesn’t seem to care which of those compass points she faces, but she does prefer that body alignment.
I just got around to watching the Drug Whisperer video, and it doesn’t surprise me. The cop’s attitude is: “3 innocents out of 90? That’s a 96.67% success rate… and they probably got away with it some other time.”
To the police, the population is divided into 3 groups: cops, crooks, and crooks that haven’t been caught yet.
“Public Safety” is a secondary effect. A cop’s JOB is to arrest people.