Record Plague Cases in Colorado Cause Concern

St. Sebastian's Chapel in Partenkirchen, Germany, with paintings representing the Black Death.  Photographed by me while visiting in May, 2013. Over one thousand bodies of plague victims were buried in unmarked graves in the church's cemetery.

As our visits to plague town in Germany two years ago showed us, the bubonic plague is no joke, and tens of thousands died in small German towns as well as cities- often in horrific agony. Many Americans seem content that the plague has long since died out and is only of historical interest, but they'd be mistaken. 

In fact, the plague is alive an well in these United States, especially here in Colorado where at least 16 cases and two deaths have been documented thus far this year. This is more cases than in the prior ten years. In Larimer County, 16 year old athlete Taylor Gaes died of plague in June, four days after showing symptoms on his birthday. Then, in Pueblo Country a man died after walking his dog on his own land - an apparent victim of flea bites from prairie dogs - a common but misnamed rodent in Colo.

A search of his property found plague -bearing fleas in a prairie dog colony that extended from his land to adjoining properties. Everyone was alerted by the Pueblo County Health Dept. within five miles.,

The increase in cases is being blamed in some quarters on the wet winter and wet spring - with much higher than normal rain totals across the Front Range.  As this has occurred, the rodent population - including squirrels, chipmunks, rats and rabbits has multiplied, as well as prairie dog numbers,

Pet owners are now being warned to treat their animals - cats and dogs - with a durable flea-killing gel and also to make use of flea collars.

Plague is believed to have arrived in North America in boats coming in to San Francisco from Asia around 1900.  This was during a worldwide outbreak that ravaged millions.  The infected rodents then carried it eastwards. In Colorado, the first reported case was observed near Telluride in 1941 and the disease is now permanently entrenched in the state.

The good news is that this terrible disease that once wiped out an estimated one third of Europe's population can now be successfully treated with antibiotics. But that is only if caught early and that means recognizing symptoms, including: high fever, headache, muscle aches and vomiting.  Any of these may appear two to six days after a flea bite.

Right now, we're all hoping it is soon brought under control - especially when one beholds many young kids out in front of their homes chasing small "bunny rabbits" across their lawns. (Our area is now dense with rabbits and one observes 10 -12 scampering around any given morning). 

Hopefully, parents will instruct them that it is very unwise to try to catch or touch those cute little bunnies - whose fleas maybe are not so cute!

Doctors Are Correct to Wage War On Drug Prices

Under the header "It's About damned time",  is the outcry less than a month ago by more than one hundred oncologists from top cancer hospitals that the cost of cancer drugs is way too high. Indeed, the cost of many drugs is too high, and Americans are literally being taken to the cleaners by Big PhRMA.  So no surprise many doctors, not just oncologists (cancer specialists), are calling for new regulations to control the costs.

In fact, the oncologists and other doctors are only the latest to make vocal complaints. Preceding them have been insurers, state Medicaid officials, and most of all patients - many of whom have been forced to forego prescriptions because of the exorbitant costs.  All this in the wake of prescription drug prices rising more than 12 percent last year, and many prescriptions increasing more than 100 percent.

For example, as noted in an NBC News segment last night, one pharmacist complained that "it was the craziest price increase ever seen" in his life. He cited the wholesale price for the diabetes drug Glumetza which went from $1,000 for 90 days supply in January to just over $10,000 in July. He noted he had no choice but to pass the higher costs on.

The plight of patients was highlighted in one Mayo Clinic Proceedings editorial in which the financial burden was emphasized with the out of pocket costs bankrupting many just as they're fighting a deadly disease. As a result 10 to 20 percent of cancer patients don't fulfill their treatments as prescribed - and their cancers metastasize.  And 75% of other prescription drug takers have cut back on their medications, risking complications. No country with any dimension of decency can allow this to go on.

Fortunately some members of congress are on to this and have demanded that the pharmaceutical companies justify the pricing of hepatitis C medication which now runs tens of thousands of dollars per patient.  

Bernie Sanders, for example, has already advised the Department of Veterans Affairs to break the patents on hep C drugs so that generics companies can manufacture more of them for ailing vets. The problem is the Repukes won't hear of it as it constitutes "statist" interference in private business - so let the vets fend for themselves.

But this ought not be amazing or surprising given this is the typical Reptile response to everything concerning regular citizens - i.e. those not born with gilded spoons in their mouths.

Meanwhile, more sobering for many, has been the announcement from Medicare's Board of Trustees that expensive new medications will drive a sharp increase in the program's prescription drug spending over the next decade. In this milieu cancer medication increases have drawn particular ire with the average price of new cancer drugs having increased in the U.S. five fold to ten fold over 15 years to over $100,000 a year in 2015.

This isn't merely criminal, it's an abomination given those who can't afford the drugs are being issued a death  sentence. The newest and most effective drugs are those that harness the patient's own immune system and these can run up to $150,000 per patient per year. And the annual cost per patient could approach $300,000/ year if cancer drugs are prescribed in combination

As one Mayo Clinic hematologist put it:

"What we're fighting is the greed. The greed and the additional maneuvering that is being exercised after you've already recouped what you've invested. There is no control, no regulation."

This raises the plausible thesis that this "additional maneuvering" with no oversight - was actually built into the "Medicare Modernization Act" that Billy Tauzin and his Reepo criminal congress forced through back in 2003 - to the cheers of Big PhRMA.  It was no wonder that soon after it passed, Goldman Sachs estimated the benefit to PhRMA ( in terms of corporate welfare), would be over $13.7 b over ten years. It's probably even more now.

Indeed, another vile aspect of the 2003 law was that it barred Medicare from negotiating for lower drug prices like the VA does. The law actually leaves the negotiating to private insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers. The very existence of this refuse denies Medicare the ability to drive down prices - and indeed control prices. But then many of us at the time suspected the maggot Bushies were behind this recklessly expensive, bogus law as a means to rush Medicare toward insolvency - the better to privatize it. They even embedded a Trojan horse in the law called "Medicare Advantage" which is now spending $12b a year more than traditional Medicare.

Of course, the usual excuse trotted out by PhRMA for its current skyrocketing drug prices is that it "costs so much for research" - which is arrant bull pockey. The truth is the drug companies are blowing most of their profits and returns on TV advertising. Just look at a typical prime time news broadcast on any of the networks, you are sure to see at least five drug ads including one for Cialis or Viagra, every damned night.

All hope is not lost but it will still be an uphill battle, especially against the defenders of the PhRMA goons. Already, some Senators - such as John McCain (R-AZ) and Amy Klobuchar (D, MN) have supported legislation that would allow patients to import cheaper drugs from Canada. (Which option had also been foreclosed under the 2003 'Modernization'  Act.)

Others have called for the pharmaceutical industry to justify its rising prices - which I believe is one of the most urgent steps to hold these bastards accountable.  These efforts include one California bill demanding the PhrMA leeches provide a detailed breakdown of costs, including for clinical trials, regulatory expenses, advertising, manufacturing and acquisition costs - and for all drugs that have an annual wholesale price of $10,000 or more.

This is a step long overdue and let's hope it succeeds! For all our sakes!

WSJ's Gerald Seib Needs A Reality Adjustment

The Wall Street Journal's Gerald R. Seib now embodies the deaf, dumb and blind media tool so immersed in his own BS he can't even get reality correct. Sadly, with John Stewart no longer around to expose these conservo twerps and their misguided influence, someone else has to.. What I refer to is Seib's latest column ('Summer of Trump May End Up Helping GOP Rivals'. p. A4, Aug. 11) which is the biggest bunch of media malarkey since Sarah Palin was hailed as the huge "game changer"  asset for the GOP - before Katy Couric exposed her in 2008).

While Trump is definitely a crackpot, Seib's too myopic to see the rest of the GOP field is equal to or exceeding Trump on the crackpot spectrum. They may not bellow as much drivel - but their policy positions betray a bunch of psychos just as unhinged. As Hillary put it, while what Trump said ahout Megyn Kelly was "outrageous" what the other candidates are saying about women and denying them abortions - even in cases of rape and incest-  is equally outrageous. 

Let's see who Seib is praising and why he's daft.

Marco Rubio, aka the Cisco Kid -has a "fresh life story and a young face."

Uh no, Seib. Cisco is the usual right wing Cuban whiner (a 'dime a dozen' in Miami's  Little Havana),  with his own sob story of how "that big bad Fidel chased me family out with nothing, and we had to start with nothing in the U.S.....and my momma had to wash the neighbors' laundry all day long and I had to study by candle light". I will have more sympathy for punks like Rubio when his lot have more empathy for the 73 innocents murdered on Cubana Airlines Flight 455 off Barbados on Oct. 6, 1976. Blown up by Right wing Miami Cubans from Alpha 66 colluding with a Venezuelan rat with CIA links, Luis Carriles Posada

Rubio may have a young face but he also has an old solution for poor women who face death by medical complications rather than be able to get an abortion: Let them die!  Also, any young women impregnated by rape or incest under a Marco Rubio administration better not look for help from him or his lot!  You're better off leaving the country for Canada.

Rubio is also claimed to be "well schooled on national security matters" which goes to show how big an advantage it can be to have Alpha 66 lineage in one's background- especially when they were in the employ of the CIA. (Probably the DRE)

More mystifying even than Rubio, is Seib's selection of Ted Cruz and Ben Carson as "more sane outside conservative voices". Really?

Ted Cruz, let us bear in mind, is definitely not "sane", e.g.


 http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/03/ted-cruz-real-life-greg-stillson-from.html

He has all the hallmarks of an egomaniac and would love, if elected by enough morons, to usher in Armageddon and finally fulfill Biblical prophecy like the fictional nut ( Greg Stillson ) in 'The Dead Zone',

Carson isn't much better and is incompetent besides. To remind people who may have forgotten, Carson is the one who asserted anyone taking the AP  U.S. history course last year would "be ready to join ISIS".  Then, earlier this week on CBS Early Show, when asked about allowing abortion exceptions for mothers with medical complications (that might lead to their deaths if they gave birth), Carson said: "Oh, our medical advances have now taken care of things like that!". A total, bald -faced lie laden with ignorance.

Carson is also the bozo who's made basic mistakes  in various forums, including: suggesting the Baltic states are not part of NATO,  not knowing the main political parties in Israel and (no kidding!) believing Alan Greenspan had been Treasury Secretary instead of former Chairman of the Federal Reserve.  Any one of these bonehead errors would ordinarily disqualify a candidate as surely as Rick Perry (in 2012) failing to recall the DOE as one  of the main federal agencies.

If these two are the only "sane" alternatives the Reepos have to Trump, they could as well nominate the other Donald: Donald Duck. At least they'd gain in gravitas.

Oh, but let's not forget Scott Walker, because Seib hasn't. To Seib he's a "solid but conventional conservative". In other words, if you love your women barefoot and pregnant (especially after they've been raped) he's the guy for you. Also, if you want your university profs working with no tenure, and your unions all dissolved so that 52 -hour weeks become the norm along with unpaid overtime  - Scottie is also your guy.  This is a turkey who couldn't even complete college yet wants to lead the nation. How is he going to meet the exalted goals confronting the country, including getting its debt under control - as well as malignant inequality - if he couldn't meet the much more humble goal of completing the final term for a 4-year degree?

Do people really want to cheer a character who starts a 5 k race, is within 100 m of the finish line, then drops out?   Or a guy who is within 4 moves of checkmating his opponent then resigns?

Glaring by its absence was any mention of the sole sane person on the debate stage, John Kasich. Kasich was notable for his no-nonsense demeanor as he robustly defended Medicaid for the poor in his state as well as same sex relationships. Of course, his name may have been left out because most of the base that loved the names Seib did cite would be too "reep-tarded" to appreciate a candidate like Kasich. (Who now, by recent polls, has even African-Americans leaning more his way than Hillary's)

If Gerald Seib wants to be taken seriously on who the sane candidates are, he needs to leave out the screwballs. But, of course, he has to be able to recognize them first.

See also:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/04/where-were-miamis-cubans-when-terrorist.html

And:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/08/reepo-debate-more-fun-than-barrel-of.html

Even The Right's Resident Troglodytes Can't Process Bernie's Rise

Thousands turned out to feel the Bern at LA Memorial Sports Arena Aug. 10

You have to forgive some of those who opine on politics, as well as on global warming in the pages of The Wall Street Journal. Though they often appear to have some educational or institutional creds, once one applies the dissection tool of critical scrutiny a lot of it vanishes under the huff and puff of PR. Such is the case with a recent WSJ piece 'The Democrats' Socialist Surge' by "Manhattan Institute" lightweight, Jason L. Riley.

Like his WSJ  buddy Gerald Seib, Riley clearly knows very little and what he does know is skewed wrong by his ideology. That is the lens through which he judges reality so no surprise the reality  comes out twisted or debauched.

We who've been following Bernie Sanders are aware of the huge crowds he's been amassing - even despite interruptions (as in Seattle) by nuisance protesters from 'Black Lives Matter', who really need to adjust their own reality goggles and keep their powder dry for the 17 Repukes. As opposed to making their own ideological, economic allies targets of "friendly fire". Note they couldn't get 1 inch past Hillary's Secret Service detachment, which shows me they are only interested in  disrupting soft, friendly targets. As liberal talk radio  host Bill Press put it on Chris Hayes 'All In' two nights ago, they are "making the perfect the enemy of the good."    Adding:

"You target the people who disagree with you, not your friends."  Bingo!

Alicia Garza, co-creator of BLM, promised that  "all candidates will be disrupted", but I will believe it when I see it. Now, Ms. Garza, sic your troops after Donald Trump, Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee!  Cease with the friendly fire tactics which will only backfire on your group.

Moving on, we saw over the weekend, 28,000 turned out to see and hear Bernie in Portland, OR, while 27,500 came out to see him in LA on Monday at the Memorial Sports Arena. And then, on Wednesday, it was announced on MSNBC and CBS that the Bern had broken through in New Hampshire and he was now ahead of Hillary by 44 percent to 37 percent. (Hillary 'Third Way' supporters quoted in the WSJ suggested she "had no plans to attack Bernie because eventually the Lefties will come around to support her". Well, maybe, maybe not.)

All this has the right wing media troglodytes so worried they're pissing in their pants, or on the verge of acquiring the new DSM disorder, psychosis risk syndrome - a pernicious display of paranoia that can lead to paranoid schizophrenia if untreated. What is their paranoia? Well that that the WHOLE Dem party has now gone "socialist".

Gimme a break already!

Riley in his forlorn WSJ column is especially guilty of this bollocks as when he goes through a whole mini-history of socialism (most inapplicable to democratic socialism) then concludes Debbie Wasserman Schultz wasn't able to answer the recent question put to her by MSNBC's squawker Chris Matthews ('What's the difference between a Democrat and Socialist?') because:

"These days it's largely a distinction without a difference."

In other words this moron commits the fallacy of composition on a mega -scale (or moron scale) designating the minority Left base of the party as being its entire aggregate - totally leaving out the Third Way Neoliberals, as well as Neocons who easily comprise 75% of the party.

By saying this is a "distinction without difference" Riley is claiming the Democratic Party - so far to the Right now most of us from the 60s don't recognize it - is really without Neoliberal capitalists, or Neocon warmongers, But IF that were so, how explain all the bailouts of the banks, bankers as well as GM, when a REAL socialist gov't would have nationalized them all?  Also, how explain an immense defense budget - still greater than the next 22 nations combined - when a REAL socialist party (or Democratic Socialist ) would have halved it by now?

And, not to be too obvious - but NO socialist worth his salt (or party) would ever have tolerated a "debt commission" and considered a chained CPI to cut and gut Social Security!

Riley has no genuine reasons only paranoid suspicions for conflating Democrats and Socialists.. For example, because the Dems "allowed Sanders to caucus with them"  then the Democrats must all be the same party as Sanders, Socialist. This is the kind of reasoning I'd expect from a half- bright three year old, when any sensible person would grasp the Dems allowed it out of needing greater voting numbers vis-a-vis the Senate Repukes.

Oh, oh, I forgot "he also was granted seniority status to push a progressive agenda".   And what, pray tell, was this agenda?

Riley then ticks off Sanders' pushing for single payer healthcare (which would actually SAVE us over $500 m the next ten years compared to Obamacare), and pushing for a 50 percent reduction in military spending. That last, he appears to forget, was actually a transfer of spending - from buying new military toys and hardware to increasing VA benefits for troops. A push for which Sanders now has many thousands of grateful vets behind him.

Lastly, Riley whines that Sanders' agenda would only appeal to "upper middle class professionals obsessed with income inequality". But I have news for him, all intelligent people are concerned with that, and if he isn't he's an even bigger moron than I first thought.

His quotation from the book 'The Right Nation' that:

"In America socialists cast their seed on barren ground"

Misses the larger point that when polls are taken regarding which PROGRAMS Americans want, as opposed to which political philosophy, they invariably pick the more "socialist" choices -  showing at heart that Americans ARE socialists  - at least democratic socialists!

Thus, they DO want Social Security there for them, by nearly 70-30 percent majorities.

They also want Medicare to be their healthcare, as opposed to private insurance or even Obamacare

And they favor food stamps and Medicaid for the poorer among us.

Having supported these "socialist" programs in polls, they just need to be reminded that ideally their political philosophies ought to be in synch with their program choices! And conversely, voting for conservatives undermines their program preferences.

Again, political education can be as important as historical education.

See also:

http://www.salon.com/2015/08/13/larry_wilmore_mocks_black_lives_matter_activists_at_sanders_rally_black_manners_matter_as_well/

And:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-reich/63389/4-recurring-criticisms-of-bernie-sanders-and-why-theyre-wrong

On Social Security's 80th - The Solutions To Save It Are Clear

Bernie Sanders: His proposal to expand Social Security is common sense and can be achieved by increasing the wages covered by the payroll tax, and halting raids on the retirement fund.

As Social Security's 80th anniversary approaches, "solutions" are a dime a dozen to save the program - but in fact- most on offer (especially by Republicans)  would either kill it, or make seniors' lives unbearable.  Meanwhile, Sen. Bernie Sanders - now besting Hillary in NH primary polls (44 % to 37%) - has made expanding Social Security one leg of his progressive platform.

By the simple, straightforward expedient of applying the payroll tax to all wages (instead of only the first $118,500) then 66 percent of the current shortfall would be wiped out overnight. The rest could easily be wiped out by ceasing to raid Social Security monies and instead doing what Al Gore always suggested back in 2000 - put it into an effective "lockbox". The idiot media made fun of it at the time, but by implementing the sequestration of S.S. monies from all other - no shortfall would emerge - assuming all wages are also subject to the payroll tax.

Meanwhile, we have conservative curmudgeons like Sen. Orrin Hatch barking (in response to Sanders' expansion proposal):

"Where will they get the money? They don't even care how they are adding to the debt and how long it will take to dig out of it!"

Excuse me, Sen. Hatch, but that debt was YOUR party's doing!  You and your ilk implemented that ill-advised Medicare drug expansion (mainly at the behest of PhRMA) in 2003, and also implemented the Bush tax cuts while waging two wars that exploded the debt by $4 trillion. So don't hand me any BS about the debt and how Social Security was responsible! Hell, you bastards even raided it to help pay for the Iraq occupation to disguise the amount actually used for military operations, materials.

The other "solutions" now mainly being put forward by the conservos and Neoliberal Dems include:

- Increasing the retirement age (the age to receive full S.S. benefits) to 68 or even 70. But this really amounts to a benefits cut. And a severe one. It is claimed this would wipe out 29 percent of the shortfall but would more likely wipe out 29 percent of the most indigent seniors.

- Implement a "chained CPI" which decreases the cost of living adjustment received each year. This assumes that seniors would degrade their buying habits each year the COLA cuts are operative. So while they might afford chicken one year, for the next it will be sardines, and then the next kibbles, and the next....dumpster garbage.

Then there is the problem of Social Security Disability heading toward insolvency. As I noted earlier, e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/07/with-social-security-disabiiliy-nearly.html

  both parties are to blame for this, having cut in half the payroll taxes collected for almost two years. Ending up with a loss nearly equal to the current disability fund deficit. WTF did they expect would happen when they embraced such folly?

Now the solutions are few, either redirect revenue from the much larger S.S. retirement fund to S.S. disability or ...let the disability fund empty in which case an immediate 19 percent benefits cut goes into effect.

The Repukes don't like the Dem solution of redirecting funds because "that would be like robbing seniors to pay the disabled."

But that "lockbox" pretension doesn't hold them back from continually robbing seniors to pay for more military toys like the F35, or increased defense plants. The fact is that there is no magic line or box separating the retirement fund from the disability fund, any more than a magical barrier separates the retirement fund from general revenues.  So any transfers are simply a matter of account shifting.

If the Repubs were really so worried about disabled folks "robbing seniors" they'd have implemented a lockbox from the time Gore first mentioned it 15 years ago. In fact, since 1992 legislation entitled "the budget enforcement act' has existed to do just that. But it's never ever been enforced, despite the urgent need to do so.

The following data shows how much has been raided each year up through 2011, the data from the same Trust Fund sources and GAO:

Year:  ................Amount raided

2011.................$67.0 billion

2010.................$87.0 billion

2009...............$137.0 billion

2008...............$180.2 billion

2007...............$186.0 billion

2006...............$185.5 billion

2005..............$173.5 billion

2004..............$151.1 billion

2003.............$155.6 billion

2002.............$159.0 billion

2001.............$163.0 billion

2000.............$151.8 billion
----------------------------

TOTAL:  $2.63 TRILLION

 Any person with a single neuron for a brain would realize that it doesn't matter if you fill a one gallon bucket with a cup every day (equal to 6 oz.) if there are massive holes in the bottom that let out 12 oz. in the same time! 

Thus, the worker-to -beneficiary ratio is also a red herring meant to deflect attention from the REAL problem which is the yearly raids on monies received from payroll taxes and intended to go to future beneficiaries! So long as these raids continue unabated, NO solution or "re-tooling" of the program will work, not raising payroll taxes, not making cuts, NOTHING!  The raiding has to stop first.
Add in expanding the wages covered by the payroll tax, targeted cuts to the bloated defense budget and Social Security can be expanded.

Will the Reepos pull their heads out of their asses on this issue? No way! No more than Jeb  is capable of pulling his head out of his Bush ass on who is responsible for the rise of ISIS in Iraq. Obama for pulling out, as he claims? FUCK NO! His stupid ass brother for barging in in the first place and ousting a totally secular regime that had kept the Muslim factions (Shia and Sunni) at bay!

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/richard-eskow/63439/80-years-later-republicans-are-still-fighting-social-security


http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/02/a-social-security-expansion-bill.html

Defending the Hitch Bot "Killer"? Seriously?

Even after a probing column by Stephen Carter in the Denver Post on Sunday, basically asserting that anyone who'd wreak violence on a robot would also inflict it on a fellow human - the demise of the Canadian social experiment is still being examined. As we know, hitchBot met its end in Philadelphia after being carried through Canada to various new destinations, then through Europe (Netherlands and Germany) and at least 300 miles of the U.S. before being kicked to pieces by a numbskull Philly Eagles fan, e.g.



http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/08/now-hitchbot-becomes-hunted-as-moron.html

As I also noted, echoing Carter's take:

Seems only a sore loser Philadelphia Eagles fan could be such a bottom feeding a-hole as to carry out this senseless property crime..  Maybe the guy's chick ditched him. Maybe she knew if he expressed the desire to beat up on a non-ambulatory mechanical man he could beat up on a live human female too, or even a quadriplegic human.

I also quoted one demented Luddite who yelped on his blog, not exactly sympathetic :

It traveled across Canada and Europe for some reason, experiencing nothing, doing nothing, being all the while nothing more than a loudmouthed freak thing.

But as I responded,

Hey, Igor. You could have just ignored it. Besides, no one left the hitchBOT "for strangers to take care of". There was no taking care of, only transporting limited distances in response to its appeals. Got the difference? Or is that too difficult to process, say like a fetus not being a baby for Right wing twits?

I would not have believed any other knuckle dragger would defend the sick, angry clown who took his impotence out on an inanimate robot - but one did! A WSJ hack named Joe Queenan and former Philly native. After delivering the usual BS excuses for Philly natives', i.e. it wasn't a real Santa we booed years ago, but a fake, people should know better than to ask for sliced cheese on a Philly cheese steak sandwich.  He also insisted the whole city shouldn't be blamed as it was "just one guy". But we know when one guy would do it, dozens of others also would (they just missed the opportunity). Just as if  there's one wife beater after a football game his team lost, there are usually hundreds of others.

Queenan then delivered this gem concerning hitchBot's end:

"A robot wandering around the streets of Philadelphia at night is an idiot. A robot that dumb deserves to get his head handed to him".

Really? Seriously? That is your response? Hate to have to break this to you, Sparky, but the robot was non-ambulatory so wasn't "wandering". Nor was it conscious of human clock time so wouldn't have known whether it was midnight or dawn. It simply asked for assistance to get to its next destination via hitchhiking.  Humans, flesh and blood people - presumably like you and me - accommodated it in dozens of other cities, and moved it further to its ultimate destination, San Francisco.

Similarly, in those other towns and cities, when it was spotted at night - anywhere - it was quickly taken care of, protected, then transported to its next place at the earliest opportunity. This conveyed a fundamental respect for property not one's own. But not in Philly, where your nutty freak loser dolt in a Cunningham jersey clearly took it for an easy mark and spent his frustrations and energy in wrecking it.

A really, really tough little turd  - able to beat the crap out of a three and a half foot high vocal robot.  One wonders if this mutt would've been as tough against one of the "corners" my Peace Corps training group met in Philly while there in June of 1971. I suspect he'd have tossed them his jersey then took off running for mommy.

Big,  tough guy, he can beat up on a pint-sized metal man in the middle of the night. And you can defend it? I'd suppose you'd defend beating up on a quadriplegic lost in Philly in the middle of the night too, eh?

Carter was right that this robot-human interaction, dismissed as trivial by so many - again shows something peculiarly degenerate in our character that it could have happened in our country and no other. Maybe, just maybe, it's the same difference that drives us to kill 88 people a day with gun violence while defending an amendment that was never intended to cover automatic or semi-automatic weapons, nor to extend gun possession to those not belonging to a formal militia.

As for Philly cheese steaks sandwiches, I will be having no more until that little bot is repaired - by those in Philly- and send on his way to SF again!

Errr...No, That's Not A Real Woman Photographed By Curiosity on Mars

Image as released by NASA


Close up image - with  Mars "woman" circled.

It appears some crannies of social media and the internet have recently erupted with images purported to be of a human (or "alien") female, standing on a flat rock on the Martian surface  - as captured by the Mars Curiosity Rover, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/08/can-mars-curiosity-rover-get-it-done.html

The skinny is that the image shows a real living entity. But here is where skepticism must come to the fore, because first, no actual living being is going to be able to survive on Mars without space suits for more than a second. There is no breathable atmosphere - mostly CO2- plus the temperatures are absolutely frigid from minus fifty to minus 100 F.  Then there is the scale of the image. Is that really a being only a few inches high? Well, if so I guess you're going to tell me fairies and Leprechauns exist on our planet too.

Look, the human brain has the remarkable propensity to see patterns and objects where none really exist. Look at how the ancients put together all manner of creatures from the constellations. Here's a large bear (Ursa Major), then a small bear (Ursa Minor), there's a hunter (Orion) and even a scorpion (Scorpio).

The point is these creatures and objects didn't really exist in the sky, the brains of the ancients "filled in the gaps" between stars to connect them.  Indeed, in many cases the stars weren't even close to each other and only seemed so in the line of sight. In some cases the "connecting" star was hundreds of light years farther away.

One sees the same brain tendency when people observe clouds. Stare at them long enough and all kinds of cloud patterns become visible - you can see butterflies, giant fish, pitchers of beer or basically whatever you want to see. That's how your brain is made. Blame your 'creator' if you like, I blame evolution. (See the book, “Faces in the Clouds” for how humans project imagery because of a basic brain wiring defect in the frontal cortex) )

Mars' images have caused consternation before as with the 'face on Mars' that was observed in the region called Cydonia decades ago e.g.

Years later (1998) the Mars Global Surveyor went over the area and actually got detailed photographs using laser altimetry - and Voila!  With much higher resolution for a 3km x 3km area, No more "face", e.g.


Simply a geological formation whose shadows  and tricks of sunlight on it  earlier fooled people into seeing a "face" - when it was viewed with far less optical resolution by the Mars Viking probe.

The moral of the story in all things to do with space, is don't always believe your eyes  - or brain - they can and will play tricks on you!


See also:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewfrancis/2015/08/10/no-thats-not-a-woman-on-mars/