Make your own snowflakes!

A pretty fun timewaster, actually (click pic for link).
From the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary ---
Main Entry: thought·ful ---
1 a : absorbed in thought : MEDITATIVE b : characterized by careful reasoned thinking (a thoughtful essay)
2 a : having thoughts : HEEDFUL (became thoughtful about religion) b : given to or chosen or made with heedful anticipation of the needs and wants of others (a kind and thoughtful friend).
I am trying to be both heedful and meditative.


It was Chrisbus time but Randolph was alone. Where were all his good pals. Bernie, Dave, Nicky, Alice, Beddy, Freba, Viggy, Nigel, Alfred, Clive, Stan, Frenk, Tom, Harry, George, Harold? Where were they on this day? Randolf looged saggly at his only Chrispbut cart from his dad who did not live there.This cannot be emphasized enough.
The people who run your city, the politicians who are full of bright ideas for improving your life by infringing on others' rights, and the black-robed genius who is tasked with interpreting our founding documents; NONE of these people are smarter than you.
NONE of these people are gifted with superior insight on how better to run your life or use our native resources. But they believe that they are. So without the brake of morality or explicit law, these geniuses and pols and town busybodies will extend professional courtesy to each other as they go about dismantling your life for some dubious utopian idea.
I have kept saying this since the campaign. Obama is sooooo smart. Why? Well, uh, he got accepted to Harvard Law School (finishing is not a problem, the day you are accepted, they print your diploma). He wrote that super-awesome book about himself.
First, none of this is a serious intellectual task. There ain't no math. It's not about solving problems, it's about empty rhetoric at best. Just because pretentious people, who like to think they are smart (David Brooks) can understand nothing more complicated than prose in their mother tongue, doesn't mean someone who does it well is intelligent. Just the opposite, in my experience.
Second, this is why I rag on lawyers. If lawyers were like accountants -- experienced, professional specialists who (Doug Hoffman aside) don't try to parlay their education into some sort of divine right to rule -- then I'd have no problem. But there ain't nothin' special about lawyers. They're idiots by my scale. They usually have trouble with math. Send a native-English speaking PhD mathematician -- one of the two of them left -- to Harvard Law and see him laugh at the trivialities involved.
Law school is where you go when math is too hard for you.
So not only are these self-styled philosopher kings not smarter, they're dumber. But even if you do get a true genius, he doesn't know anything. Look at the brilliant economists who said that the unemployment rate wouldn't get above 8%. Has one of them apologized? Committed hara-kiri?
One thing math tells you is that everything, in the real world or theory, is waaaaay too complicated for even the most brilliant person to understand. It is one of the reasons American democracy has worked so far. We have resisted the siren's song -- more or less -- of the ubermensch and we are better for it.
Posted by: AmishDude at November 11, 2009 10:56 AM

Wow, more talks! That's so awesome. This is so much different than all the talking and inspecting of Iranian facilities we've been doing until now. No, this is nothing like the almost 10 years that came before. It's different because this time it's S-M-A-R-T.
See? You don't, do you? Because you're a wingnut.
EXCLUSIVE: Must Credit Ace Of Spades HQ---Obama plan to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons uncovered!
Step 1-Talk to Iran
Step 2- ???
Step 3- Victory!

The last season of Norman Borlaug's life was spent on the faculty of Texas A&M University where continued working to promote humanitarian projects and food yields around the world. Despite the many accolades he earned he remained modest, almost to a fault. According to one story a security cop refused him entry into his campus office parking lot one Saturday morning, due to an Aggie football game. He cheerfully complied and walked an extra mile from another lot, instead of pointing out to the cop that the building was actually named after him.
Unlike contemporary self-styled members of the environmental-scientific community -- many of whom seem to view the human race as malignancy -- Norman Borlaug was unapologetic in his view that science should be harnessed for the good of mankind. For him, starvation was a pressing human problem to be eradicated, not the inevitable self-inflicted consequence of human folly; and he went about solving it in a systematic, methodical way. Not through armchair theorizing or manifestos, but through hard work and dirt-under-the-fingernails empiricism. He didn't seek utopia, just better crop yields.
Wake Up, Mrs. Petrowski
Good morning! Did you have a restful sleep? Yes, I know it's 3 AM, I just thought... well, the whole orderly staff thought a little early morning air would do you some good after all that commotion yesterday. I have to say you're a pretty feisty old gal for 86!
How's that?
You're 78?
Still, you should really take better care of yourself. Just look at those bags under your eyes! You're no spring chicken and all that protesting just causes stress. Here, why don't we wheel you over to the balcony so you can get some of that fresh healthful air.
Yes, I know it's cold. But look at the spectacular 14th story view! A clear night sky full of stars, and if you lean over the railing you can see all the way down to the empty parking lot. Just like the Ferris Wheel at the 1892 World's Fair, back when you were a little girl.
Now if I can just unlatch this... stupid... mmmp... sliding... mmph... door. Crap.