This week, some PhD group laid out their research and said that there are approximately 750 million people on the Earth....who'd like to migrate and seek asylum....somewhere else.
Naturally, there are various groups (pro-asylum in doctrine) who'd like to create these doorways to make this possible.
What the PhD guys didn't lay out....is that if you asked the 750 million folks about 'where' they want to go, it usually ends up being the US, Canada, the UK, France, Australia/New Zealand, and Germany. No one cares about going to Mexico, Greece, or Peru....or for that matter....roughly a list of 120-odd countries.
Even if you had some path just ten million folks a year on this migration effort....to these seven countries....most would suggest a limit. That limit in the case of the UK? Probably 100,000 max. For Australia or New Zealand.....they want questions answered over your English ability and past criminal behavior, and they might go and accept a limited number (I doubt if New Zealand would take more than 10,000).
All of this migration chatter is leading to a smuggling gimmick where people are just paying money and figuring if they arrive....with no passport, the pain of forcing people to return will be too much and you will have to accept them. Jobs? Well....this is the fantasy of the whole story. Most of these people have no skill other than flipping burgers or physical labor like mowing grass. The same folks will be angry after five years of one-star employment, and shake their heads over the whole migration business.
What really triggered all of this? The internet. People sat there and looked at these wonderful lives being lived out in Germany, Australia, and the US......then figured they could easily fit into that image.
A bigger mess coming in the next decade? You just don't see this being easily resolved.
Tuesday, 11 December 2018
Sunday, 9 December 2018
2019 and What I Expect
My list of ten things I expect to happen in 2019:
1. BREXIT will occur, with the treaty thrown out the door, and most Brits shaking their head over all the chatter that occurred about some trade situation with the EU.....which doesn't apparently happen. The US concludes a trade agreement in six weeks and it opens up a number of unexpected doors for Americans and Brits to travel, trade, and expand on industrial relationships.
2. The budget situation is not worked out, and President Trump ends up in the spring shutting down the government. The Democratic House will think they hold some control over the situation, and find by the sixth week of the shut-down....that the President has no enthusiasm for their game, and by day 60....a massive negativity exists with federal workers running out money while sitting at home.
3. The past dozen-odd folks who headed finances with the Clinton Foundation over the past 20 years....will find themselves in Grand Jury rooms, and having to explain details....which seem to suggest they never understood how the Foundation worked and that outsiders seemed to run the money aspects more than they did. Money-laundering? Well, the end-result will suggest some small and limited efforts at money-laundering (unconnected to Hillary or Bill).
4. Senator Feinstein of California will retire by mid-summer and the new incoming Governor (Newsom) will appoint himself into the job.
5. At least fifteen Democrats will announce themselves for the 2020 primary season. At least ten of them will only participate only in four races (lacking the money for a more serious effort).
6. Macron will settle back into limited appearances in public. Bastille Day in Paris (the 14th of July) will be a mess with Yellow Jackets showing up in 200,000 range.
7. A minimum of one new special prosecutor is appointed to review the email server episode of Hillary Clinton. Charges will come up but it'll be some junior employee who issued orders on the behalf of Secretary of State Clinton.
8. Arlington, VA residents complain about escalating housing costs with Amazon folks taking root. A 20-percent rise in apartment rental costs will be 'average' by the end of 2019.
9. President Trump decides that he's accomplished everything on his plate, and will not run in 2020. The wall? The Democrats will see wall funding as the massive threat to get the budget back on track, and by day seventy of the shut-down.....will agree to fund one-quarter of the wall cost.
10. Some coup unfolds in Saudi Arabia and for forty-eight hours.....no one will be sure of who is in charge or who was 'whacked'.
1. BREXIT will occur, with the treaty thrown out the door, and most Brits shaking their head over all the chatter that occurred about some trade situation with the EU.....which doesn't apparently happen. The US concludes a trade agreement in six weeks and it opens up a number of unexpected doors for Americans and Brits to travel, trade, and expand on industrial relationships.
2. The budget situation is not worked out, and President Trump ends up in the spring shutting down the government. The Democratic House will think they hold some control over the situation, and find by the sixth week of the shut-down....that the President has no enthusiasm for their game, and by day 60....a massive negativity exists with federal workers running out money while sitting at home.
3. The past dozen-odd folks who headed finances with the Clinton Foundation over the past 20 years....will find themselves in Grand Jury rooms, and having to explain details....which seem to suggest they never understood how the Foundation worked and that outsiders seemed to run the money aspects more than they did. Money-laundering? Well, the end-result will suggest some small and limited efforts at money-laundering (unconnected to Hillary or Bill).
4. Senator Feinstein of California will retire by mid-summer and the new incoming Governor (Newsom) will appoint himself into the job.
5. At least fifteen Democrats will announce themselves for the 2020 primary season. At least ten of them will only participate only in four races (lacking the money for a more serious effort).
6. Macron will settle back into limited appearances in public. Bastille Day in Paris (the 14th of July) will be a mess with Yellow Jackets showing up in 200,000 range.
7. A minimum of one new special prosecutor is appointed to review the email server episode of Hillary Clinton. Charges will come up but it'll be some junior employee who issued orders on the behalf of Secretary of State Clinton.
8. Arlington, VA residents complain about escalating housing costs with Amazon folks taking root. A 20-percent rise in apartment rental costs will be 'average' by the end of 2019.
9. President Trump decides that he's accomplished everything on his plate, and will not run in 2020. The wall? The Democrats will see wall funding as the massive threat to get the budget back on track, and by day seventy of the shut-down.....will agree to fund one-quarter of the wall cost.
10. Some coup unfolds in Saudi Arabia and for forty-eight hours.....no one will be sure of who is in charge or who was 'whacked'.
Thursday, 6 December 2018
If Global Warming is Coming
In recent weeks, there's been a lot of chatter about global warming, and the great catastrophic events coming. The chief topic that accompanies this....we need to redistribution of money....mostly to go to poor nations (never West Virginia or the hill-country of Kentucky, or Selma, Alabama).
After much reflection, I've come to the better solution.....it's basically too late, and we need to put the money into transport (of some type) and just leave the Earth.
I've watched just about every single episode of Stargate, Star Trek, and Lost in Space (probably totalling 3,000 hours), and feel that it'd just be a better investment to haul up and leave (like when the trailer is no longer inhabitable or when neighbors have made a mess of things).
So what's our priorities in finding a new planet?
1. No bug-people. I've come to notice that things tend to go badly when you have to deal with them.
2. Preferably a planet with 24 to 36 hour days. If this is a planet with 134-hour days....it'll be a problem for me to adjust my sleeping hours to 60-plus hour per day.
3. Preferably a planet with no snakes.
4. Preferably a planet with ongoing climate change business. The climate needs to be rock-solid and not changing sixteen different ways every year.
5. Preferably a planet without any Amazon ten-foot tall women. It'd just draw a guy's attention around the clock and make it hard to concentrate.
6. Preferably a planet with no cable new networks or political business going on.
7. Preferably a planet with no giant eels or forty-foot alligators.
8. Preferably a planet with no tornadoes.
9. Preferably a planet with freaky monsters that you might have seen off a hundred of the Stargate episodes.
10. Preferably no robot creatures.
After much reflection, I've come to the better solution.....it's basically too late, and we need to put the money into transport (of some type) and just leave the Earth.
I've watched just about every single episode of Stargate, Star Trek, and Lost in Space (probably totalling 3,000 hours), and feel that it'd just be a better investment to haul up and leave (like when the trailer is no longer inhabitable or when neighbors have made a mess of things).
So what's our priorities in finding a new planet?
1. No bug-people. I've come to notice that things tend to go badly when you have to deal with them.
2. Preferably a planet with 24 to 36 hour days. If this is a planet with 134-hour days....it'll be a problem for me to adjust my sleeping hours to 60-plus hour per day.
3. Preferably a planet with no snakes.
4. Preferably a planet with ongoing climate change business. The climate needs to be rock-solid and not changing sixteen different ways every year.
5. Preferably a planet without any Amazon ten-foot tall women. It'd just draw a guy's attention around the clock and make it hard to concentrate.
6. Preferably a planet with no cable new networks or political business going on.
7. Preferably a planet with no giant eels or forty-foot alligators.
8. Preferably a planet with no tornadoes.
9. Preferably a planet with freaky monsters that you might have seen off a hundred of the Stargate episodes.
10. Preferably no robot creatures.
Wednesday, 5 December 2018
Knowledge Essay
Everyday that you walk around....you are forced into a situation where you have to retain a fair amount of knowledge....not only to survive, but to conduct most all of the little taskings in your life.
If you take a 1936 car....there's about fifteen general things that you needed really know about the car, and maybe eight total controls that mattered on the car (brakes, accelerator, lights, key, horn, fuel display, speedometer, heat control, and window 'roller').
If you take a 2018 car....after you've read the ninety-page manual....you will reach the conclusion that there's about three-hundred significant things about the car that you need to know and remember. The sixteen different warning symbols on the dash? Well....yeah, you need to remember what exactly they mean. The forty-odd controls now at your disposal? Their significance matters. Every year that passes.....they add another two or three characteristics that add dynamics onto the way you operate the car.
GPS devices? There's probably a hundred features now that matter (you could program it to tell you where all the Sonic-burger 'joints' are located as you pass through town after town). You could use your GPS capability on the smart-phone to tell you about gas prices along the sixty-mile route to work and where you ought to stop to fuel up and save 4-cents per gallon.
Your refrigerator? You might have the newest model with forty features connected to some massive memory device.
Your heating system in the house? In my house, the system (from 2007) has seven control items, and I can arrange it to drop the temperature after 10 PM by fifteen degrees, and 'wake-up' at 5 AM to heat the house back to normal. Some folks have AC units which work in the opposite fashion.
ATM machines used to be dirt-simple, with only four options (besides dispensing money). Even their functionality has increased.
The problem is that you now need expertise there to answer very technical questions. In 1975, if you'd stopped at some hardware store for a home-project....'Dandy Dave' would have been able to answer every single question and you would have left in eight minutes with the right items. Today...'Dandy Dave' is gone, and you have his nephew 'Leon'.....who barely got out of high school, and he only knows of four types of hammers, while there are officially 23 models and types of hammers in the 'real world'. 'Leon' is worthless but he's all you got.
The burger kid at McDonalds? In the 1975, that kid knew the entire grill operation and any problems could be resolved in three minutes. Today, the kid has to call some technician out to repair the grill....mostly because it's too complicated for the real world. Same way for the coffee maker, the soda apparatus, and the fryer.
We each now walk around with 40,000 index cards of information that we have to remember....to survive and operate all the gadgets in our life. Will this actually double in the next twenty years? It's possible.
If you take a 1936 car....there's about fifteen general things that you needed really know about the car, and maybe eight total controls that mattered on the car (brakes, accelerator, lights, key, horn, fuel display, speedometer, heat control, and window 'roller').
If you take a 2018 car....after you've read the ninety-page manual....you will reach the conclusion that there's about three-hundred significant things about the car that you need to know and remember. The sixteen different warning symbols on the dash? Well....yeah, you need to remember what exactly they mean. The forty-odd controls now at your disposal? Their significance matters. Every year that passes.....they add another two or three characteristics that add dynamics onto the way you operate the car.
GPS devices? There's probably a hundred features now that matter (you could program it to tell you where all the Sonic-burger 'joints' are located as you pass through town after town). You could use your GPS capability on the smart-phone to tell you about gas prices along the sixty-mile route to work and where you ought to stop to fuel up and save 4-cents per gallon.
Your refrigerator? You might have the newest model with forty features connected to some massive memory device.
Your heating system in the house? In my house, the system (from 2007) has seven control items, and I can arrange it to drop the temperature after 10 PM by fifteen degrees, and 'wake-up' at 5 AM to heat the house back to normal. Some folks have AC units which work in the opposite fashion.
ATM machines used to be dirt-simple, with only four options (besides dispensing money). Even their functionality has increased.
The problem is that you now need expertise there to answer very technical questions. In 1975, if you'd stopped at some hardware store for a home-project....'Dandy Dave' would have been able to answer every single question and you would have left in eight minutes with the right items. Today...'Dandy Dave' is gone, and you have his nephew 'Leon'.....who barely got out of high school, and he only knows of four types of hammers, while there are officially 23 models and types of hammers in the 'real world'. 'Leon' is worthless but he's all you got.
The burger kid at McDonalds? In the 1975, that kid knew the entire grill operation and any problems could be resolved in three minutes. Today, the kid has to call some technician out to repair the grill....mostly because it's too complicated for the real world. Same way for the coffee maker, the soda apparatus, and the fryer.
We each now walk around with 40,000 index cards of information that we have to remember....to survive and operate all the gadgets in our life. Will this actually double in the next twenty years? It's possible.
Criticizing the Criticizer
I sit and watch around three to five hours a week of YouTube lectures. Often, after opening up for questions.....you have these 20-year old types stand up and open up with criticism on the lecture guy and it's the left-wing versus right-wing type of dramatic situation. The 'kid' wants to make some melodramatic moment for his 'cause'.
In 99-percent of these breathtaking moments....the student basically drives a 'stake' through their own argument and you end up watching some theatrical defense of a fifth-grade kid wearing adult clothing.
So I often sit there wondering....the kid has at least a year or two of college....maybe even closing in on four years of university time. Can't he sit and develop his basic argument and present it with a fact or two, and avoid stupid commentary, or protest-like singing, or yelling enough to shut down the lecture?
A lot of these university kids have tuition and living costs that amount to $25,000 a year and you would sit there and think about the limited capability that they are getting out of this deal. A hundred years ago....debate was an actual class and you had to show some marginal skills in this....to graduate.
After you've seen enough of these, you just shake your head. They obviously want to shut down the lecture....there's too much information flowing from the lecture guy. There are ideas being suggested which 'just blow the mind' of the kid trying to oppose or hinder the hecture. You can sense that they'd really like to stop this lecture chatter because some people in the audience might fall for this stuff and move away from the kid's beliefs.
As each one of the episodes occur....you kinda wonder.....if the kid realizes his dramatic failure at this lecture, does he go back to his professor 'mentor'....the guy giving him the basic for his arguments, and admit failure....or does he just go to the routine of marking his criticism of the lecture as a 'win'?
It's a sad thing to consider, but we are perhaps pumping out idiot university graduates, with huge debts, and debate skills are still that of a fifth-grade kid.
In 99-percent of these breathtaking moments....the student basically drives a 'stake' through their own argument and you end up watching some theatrical defense of a fifth-grade kid wearing adult clothing.
So I often sit there wondering....the kid has at least a year or two of college....maybe even closing in on four years of university time. Can't he sit and develop his basic argument and present it with a fact or two, and avoid stupid commentary, or protest-like singing, or yelling enough to shut down the lecture?
A lot of these university kids have tuition and living costs that amount to $25,000 a year and you would sit there and think about the limited capability that they are getting out of this deal. A hundred years ago....debate was an actual class and you had to show some marginal skills in this....to graduate.
After you've seen enough of these, you just shake your head. They obviously want to shut down the lecture....there's too much information flowing from the lecture guy. There are ideas being suggested which 'just blow the mind' of the kid trying to oppose or hinder the hecture. You can sense that they'd really like to stop this lecture chatter because some people in the audience might fall for this stuff and move away from the kid's beliefs.
As each one of the episodes occur....you kinda wonder.....if the kid realizes his dramatic failure at this lecture, does he go back to his professor 'mentor'....the guy giving him the basic for his arguments, and admit failure....or does he just go to the routine of marking his criticism of the lecture as a 'win'?
It's a sad thing to consider, but we are perhaps pumping out idiot university graduates, with huge debts, and debate skills are still that of a fifth-grade kid.
Tuesday, 4 December 2018
The Odds of a Government Shutdown
In this period of 2009 to 2013, being a government employee.....this 'threat' continued to come up and began to really affect morale of personnel around me. I look at the approaching threat of a shutdown, and think this might go longer than ten days....maybe even past the thirty-day point.
So some observations:
1. Within the DC area, there are a heck of a lot of people who work for the government and have themselves in a massive mortgage mess....with fifty percent of their check going to car payments and their mortgage. These are people who have enough 'extra' money laying around to handle a max of thirty days, and after that.....they go into emergency mode.
2. If this were to go 45 to 60 days? I could see banks having to send out warning notices and getting fearful of a massive collapse.
3. If Amazon was up and running with their new headquarters? That's a curious thing.....I think they could go and recruit 10,000 new employees and have them hired in seven days.
4. If the shutdown went past 60 days? A whole new door opens up with a 'all or nothing' political fight.
So some observations:
1. Within the DC area, there are a heck of a lot of people who work for the government and have themselves in a massive mortgage mess....with fifty percent of their check going to car payments and their mortgage. These are people who have enough 'extra' money laying around to handle a max of thirty days, and after that.....they go into emergency mode.
2. If this were to go 45 to 60 days? I could see banks having to send out warning notices and getting fearful of a massive collapse.
3. If Amazon was up and running with their new headquarters? That's a curious thing.....I think they could go and recruit 10,000 new employees and have them hired in seven days.
4. If the shutdown went past 60 days? A whole new door opens up with a 'all or nothing' political fight.
Monday, 3 December 2018
Harris Running?
If you read the front page today.....Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) says that in the next couple of weeks....she will come to a decision on a 2020 presidential bid.
My take?
She has three problems. First, beyond the borders of California....she's virtually unknown. In the south and midwest, she won't be able to run a four-star campaign effort.
Second, the Iowa-affect. I think she falls into the category of being less-than-desirable with most Iowa Democrats. Confrontational and prosecutor-like.....that's not an agreeable value to run a campaign there.
Third, personality-wise.....having seen her confrontations in the senate, she's a very difficult person on handling conflicts. In a debate, she'd really lose votes. A Trump-Harris election? It presents a tough dynamic to figure.
So if she goes forward....I think she's there mostly to run as VP. Otherwise, there's not much in wasting time and money in 2020.
My take?
She has three problems. First, beyond the borders of California....she's virtually unknown. In the south and midwest, she won't be able to run a four-star campaign effort.
Second, the Iowa-affect. I think she falls into the category of being less-than-desirable with most Iowa Democrats. Confrontational and prosecutor-like.....that's not an agreeable value to run a campaign there.
Third, personality-wise.....having seen her confrontations in the senate, she's a very difficult person on handling conflicts. In a debate, she'd really lose votes. A Trump-Harris election? It presents a tough dynamic to figure.
So if she goes forward....I think she's there mostly to run as VP. Otherwise, there's not much in wasting time and money in 2020.
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