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Home » Open thread 11/24/21

Open thread 11/24/21

The New Neo Posted on by

Is the dog really “thinking through” the problem, as the title says, or is it discovering a solution through a series of random efforts until one finally works? I think more likely the latter.

Comments

Open thread 11/24/21 — 31 Comments

  3. Sad to think that dog has a greater mental capacity and intellectual ability than the installed president of (some parts of the USA,) Joke Bidet.

    If Joke Bidet was presented with that problem, he would have demolished the foot bridge and then passed a trillion $$$ boon-doggle pork barrel disaster of a bill to rebuild the bridge (using of course, Russian and Arab workers) and then claim he solved the problem.

    Here is an interesting article about facts and progressives;

    https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-11-21-can-a-progressive-be-convinced-by-facts

  4. John, thanks very much for that link. Phew….
    Comments, too. E.g., interesting comment from that sales guy regarding chemistry (and many others…)

  5. Another Covid dissection and warning:
    “The WHO Is an Institution of Corruption”
    https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/11/24/who-institution-of-corruption.aspx
    Key grafs:
    ‘Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, former head of health at the Council of Europe, explains that a pandemic used to be associated with widespread severe illness and death, but by changing the definition, removing the severity and high mortality criteria, WHO can now make a pandemic whenever it wants.

    ‘COVID-19 was a “test” pandemic, not a virus pandemic, because PCR tests may give a positive result when it detects fragments of coronaviruses that have been around for 20 years, a fragment of virus too small to make you ill or a fragment of COVID-19 that was there weeks ago.

    ‘The mass COVID-19 shot campaign is riddled with conflicts of interest at a fundamental level, and these conflicts are putting people’s lives at risk by putting vaccine production ahead of disease prevention…’

  6. I believe a German study a decade or so ago demonstrated that dogs actually have a vocabulary of about 100 words of human speech.

    I’m definitely biased as we’ve had over 20 dogs over our marriage and currently have 3. But to me it’s obvious they have basic reasoning/problem solving ability, and communication skills.

  8. “but by changing the definition, removing the severity and high mortality criteria, WHO can now make a pandemic whenever it wants.”

    1st rule of any bureaucracy is to sustain and grow that bureaucracy. By such a rule change the WHO makes themselves indispensable at any time they wish. And with Pfizer and Moderna reporting billions in profit from the vaxes Covid will never leave. I just finished Schlichter’s latest book where he refers sarcastically to Covid 20, 21, 22, with variants…unfortunately probably not a bad prediction.

  9. “Sad to think…”
    In fact, it may turn out to be tragic. (Either that or a path out of the current morass…):

    Looks like “Biden”—the “great uniter”—has miraculously(!) united Saudi Arabia and Russia!
    (And they said it couldn’t be done…)
    And so, kudos to the America Politburo for creating another potential crisis….
    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/saudis-russians-consider-pausing-oil-production-increases-retaliation-biden-spr-release

    Meanwhile, VPOTUS confuses her myriad detractors by showing that she can, in fact, string two sentences together—well sort of—to her critics’s immense surprise; however, once Harris articulates (in a manner of speaking) her message they quickly recover:
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/priceshave-gone-kamala-harris-struggles-explain-decade-high-inflation-us

    Which leads one to wonder how much longer will this administration be able to trample on The People?

  10. Nonapod, doesn’t look like a Weimaraner to me. I have a blue one and I had gray one until last year. The blue looked purple in the sun when she was young. The gray’s eyes glowed emerald green in the dark while the blue’s glow sapphire blue.

  11. Neo, please delete my comment above.

    It is an incoherent jumble of two trains of thought, written and then forgotten as I only partly got to deleting it. while being distracted.

  12. Chases Eagles, I tend to agree. He seems to be a bit too stocky in build to be a pure weim. It’s likely he’s either a silver lab or some kind of mix, Labmaraner/Weimadors with more lab than wein.

  14. I had a good laugh at that DNW. I’ve deleted a great many comments before posting, either because of their irrelevance or disjointedness, but a few have slipped through.

    My wife and I have taken care of a pure weimaraner and a half lab half weimaraner. I’d guess the video dog is a silver lab.

    My take on the Jane Menton piece is that she lost any traction with her friend when her friend saw the name Bari Weiss at the top of the article in question. The friend actually said, “The article is racist because she wrote it, I’m not saying he [Rittenhouse] is racist – that isn’t the point.”

    The facts or detail on the Rittenhouse case instantly became irrelevant simply because the reader accepted the propaganda that Bari is a canceled person. I don’t know much about Ms. Weiss’ career arc, but I suspect liberal Jewish changers, even modest changes, are not allowed.

  15. Shazam. That was a DNW comment unlike all other DNW comments; a bit disjointed. Must have been quite the distraction, but it appears that DNW survived. 🙂

    Have a happy Thanksgiving.

  16. series of random efforts until one finally works?

    I have solved problems with (almost) random efforts. Even amazed people who couldn’t succeed with mere intelligence. Evolution in action.

  17. My (too long) quote of the day:

    1. Inflation (1919)

    Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, Governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become “profiteers,” who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.

    Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of Society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.

    In the latter stages of the war all the belligerent Governments practised, from necessity or incompetence, what a Bolshevist might have done from design. Even now, when the war is over, most of them continue out of weakness the same malpractices. But further, the Governments of Europe, being many of them at this moment reckless in their methods as well as weak, seek to direct on to a class known as “profiteers” the popular indignation against the more obvious consequences of their vicious methods. These “profiteers” are, broadly speaking, the entrepreneur class of capitalists, that is to say, the active and constructive element in the whole capitalist society, who in a period of rapidly rising prices cannot but get rich quick whether they wish it or desire it or not. If prices are continually rising, every trader who has purchased for stock or owns property and plant inevitably makes profits. By directing hatred against this class, therefore, the European Governments are carrying a step further the fatal process which the subtle mind of Lenin had consciously conceived. The profiteers are a consequence and not a cause of rising prices. By combining a popular hatred of the class of entrepreneurs with the blow already given to social security by the violent and arbitrary disturbance of contract and of the established equilibrium of wealth which is the inevitable result of inflation, these Governments are fast rendering impossible a continuance of the social and economic order of the nineteenth century. But they have no plan for replacing it.

    — John Maynard Keynes

    I’m sure there are more knowledgeable people today than in Keynes’s day, but I think the general notions still hold.

  18. Good Lord, Barry Meislin, so the Germans won’t even kill people who aren’t vaccinated! Sounds like a good incentive to stay away from the shots.

  19. TommyJay on November 24, 2021 at 12:02 pm said:

    I had a good laugh at that DNW. I’ve deleted a great many comments before posting, either because of their irrelevance or disjointedness, but a few have slipped through….

    LOL Glad it was good for something. Now Neo, please remove it.

    I had copied and pasted sloppily, and then noticed that I didn’t blockquote at all, just as I decided that my theme, and argument were trite, poorly formulated, and ultimately pointless. Somehow, I hit Post Comment. I then, instead of deleting, figured I’d simply reduce it by 2/3ds to a simple assertion, and add proper blockquotes to a re-copied triggering quote.

    But somehow I just let the original jumble sit for several minutes as I halfheartedly dawdled over the edit without ever saving it, while my mind drifted toward Vortex ‘scope models suitable for my 20 some year old but new in box Marlin MR-7.

    Then the ship sank beneath me without my noticing. Whaaa!!!!!

    Maybe I should have eaten breakfast and stuck to shopping for hunting gear this morning.

    Have a good holiday, all.

  22. Post Script … as a Thanksgiving gift to the guys … a time saver.

    So my Bro-in-law who is a V.P. of a significant mfg. firm, and can afford anything he wants, but who will shop Tikka models instead of Sako, scooped up, of all things, a Savage Axis II in 7mm-08.

    And, taking his new plaything out of the box making no adjustments whatever, he took a heavy beamed 8 pointer at the “farm” at about 250 yards across the fields, one shot.

    So however crude the Savage looks to some, the thing shoots straight.

    Now, Cabela’s is advertising a scoped package in (trumpets sound) 6.5 Creedmoor, for the absurdly low price of $249.00 after rebate.

    Buy one for your wife, your 12 year old son – or daughter – or your dog if you need an excuse, at that price right?

    Well, I just called to check stock. I was informed that each store has two: that is “two” as in one … two … and then no more … to sell.

    Tickets have been prepared for the lucky saps standing in line before the store opens, for the privilege of enjoying this deal. I didn’t ask if that is a lottery ticket chance for the right to buy, or just a ticket for the first two wannabe buyers some clerk encounters.

    I inquired if other stores in the state had more, or if the couple in “out of the way” locations might be better bets. “Nope”

    I’m not getting out of bed Friday morning to save a hundred dollars on a rifle I don’t need anyway. If they had dozens, I might drop by after lunch to check it out …

    If you are of the same mind, I suggest you save your time and energy too, and just forget about that particular Black Friday deal.

    And you probably don’t have any additional room in your cabinet, either.

  24. Neo @ DNW > “I hope I got the right one”

    @ DNW – After reading the comments on your comment, I’m kind of sorry I missed it!

  26. @DNW:

    Did you try to challenge me in the incoherent rants category while I was sleeping and then think better of it? Discretion is the better part of Velour — Someone should have told Elvis’s interior decorator about that.

  29. Zaphod —

    Did you try to challenge me in the incoherent rants category

    You’re a piker compared to artfldgr. We won’t even mention ymarsakar, that being’s in another category entirely.

  30. Neo:

    Clearly, you’ve never worked with Border Collies.

    I have. I presently have two, and I’ve had several in the past. I herd sheep competitively with them (think of the sheepherding trial in “Babe”).

    These dogs, in their work, exhibit awesome cognitive powers. They think, solve problems, make choices — often out of sight and earshot of their handlers. They are scary smart. They understand words and sentences and the concept expressed thereby. They are, as a National Geographic special on dogs observed, “masters of inferential thinking.” They are the consummate problem solvers.

    Not incidentally, they have an extraordinary work ethic. They love to work, and work for you. They love to be given a difficult task and and figure out the how to perform it. If all humans had their work ethic, the world would be a better place for it.

  31. DNW: might the gentleman consider something in 6.5×55 Swede? An excellent cartridge–flat-shooting and hard-hitting but with mild recoil–and much cheaper than 6.5 Creedmoor. I mean the ammo and reloading components, if you can find them.

    Bryan: Art wasn’t incoherent, just long-winded. He did have a point. Many points, in fact. By the way, that German term you were looking for a while back is “vorauseilender Gehorsam” (anticipatory obedience or compliance):

    https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorauseilender_Gehorsam

    Not limited to the Nazi regime, apparently. Also “Selbtsgleichschaltung” (I suggested the latter half).

    Happy Thanksgiving, all.

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