Menagerie of Madness: 2015

The last two stories in the box are real. If you're planning on wearing a Michael Myers "Halloween" costume next Halloween around Seattle, you might want to wear safety goggles too.

There are some crows that recently developed a kind of 'attitude' for such a look. Watch Out!

The Ben Carson Show

USA Today

Ben Carson admits fabricating West Point story, report says

Ben Carson's campaign admitted to Politico, so "report says..."

Politico

Ben Carson admits fabricating West Point scholarship

...did not occur as he previously described.

Fox News

Carson campaign pushes back at published report questioning candidate's West Point claim

On Facebook, Fox News writes "West Point officials confirmed that there is no record of Dr. Ben Carson ever applying to the elite military academy."

Raw Story

Morning Joe hosts scorch Ben Carson: Does he think Noah built the Eiffel Tower, too?

Carson’s theory first came to light when Buzzfeed found a video of his commencement speech at Andrews University

FreakOutNation

Ben Carson’s Friends, Classmates And Neighbors Have No Memory Of His Alleged Violent Past

Ben Carson recalled the moment he became close to God.

Google+ Collection

The Rest of the Ben Carson Show so far

I don't know if people who are not members can see this. If not, sorry.

Look, I don't have the time to keep up with Ben Carson's plethora of Gaffes.

He's allegedly passing Donald Trump in some crazy poll that the main-stream media likes to cite, but I think they're only doing it to stir Trump's pot and make Trump spend even more campaign money on advertising.

I can't see any other reason that Ben Carson would remain a candidate, other than to garner cash from other candidates when the media proclaims him ahead of everyone else.

Earlier Than Previously Known

Medical News Today

Plague existed 3,300 years earlier than previously thought

But the bacteria mutated over a thousand years before becoming toxic.

Huffington Post

Life Started On Earth 300 Million Years Earlier Than We Thought

"Life on Earth may have started almost instantaneously. With the right ingredients, life seems to form very quickly."

Archaeology

Teeth Suggest People Left Africa Earlier Than Previously Thought

It had been thought that modern humans migrated out of Africa only 50,000 to 60,000 years ago

CTV

Canadian man proposed rocket spaceflight 30 years earlier than previously thought

Previous histories of spaceflight have maintained that the first scientific proposal of rocket-powered space travel came at the end of the 19th century.

The Daily Mail

Ancient tools suggest people lived in Scotland 3,000 years EARLIER than first thought and inhabited the region during the Ice Age

The tools were discovered with the help of a herd of pigs

Times Gazette

Earth’s Inner Core may have formed much earlier than previously thought – says researchers

about 1.3 billion years back.

As science progresses, our preconceptions change. This is called learning. Not "flip-flopping," the typical phrase used by TV new pundits.

But you better watch out for the Revisionists and the Distiortionists. They like to try and change data to suit their own ends.

Their hidden agenda is usually meant to cover up damage to health or the environment. Cultists typically hide or distort scientific facts and hold power over other people by calling everyone else liars.

Science always reveals the truth in the end.

My Favorite so-called "Holiday" Freak Outs!

I always liked Halloween. Now that it's October I started thinking about the old scary movies I watched as a child. After staying up late and watching Creature Feature, I used to look up from my bed at the window with the blinds closed, thanking God that there was a whole Pacific ocean and half a continent between myself and Godzilla.

My father introduced me to his generation of monsters, portrayed by Lon Chaney, Bella Lugosi and Boris Karloff. As my father outgrew his monsters and fell into his Establishment Workstyle, the Zeitgeist of the horror genre evolved.

Vincent Price, Peter Cushing and Ray Milland were just a few of the next generation of actors in the horror genre. Ray Milland sticks in my mind most of all because of the horrific scene at the very end of The Man With The X-Ray Eyes. I'm not going to spoil it for you.

Anyway, I was Googling old classic monster images and they just seemed ridiculously funny. At the same time I was watching the show 'Heroes' on Netflix as I came across an old photo of Ray Milland.

I started to freak out.

This isn't just one of those "Separated at Birth" situations.

10 Killed

USA Today

Ten killed by shooter at Ore. community college

HAARETZ

U.S. Military Plane Crashes in Afghanistan, 10 Killed

Yahoo News

10 killed in Turkey after bus crashes into bus stop

Newsweek

At Least 10 Killed in Suicide Bombings at Houthi-Run Yemeni Mosque

International Business Times

At Least 10 Killed, 38 Injured In Central African Republic Violent Outbreak

What the Hell is going on?

Are the Seven Dwarfs different types of drunks?

I consider myself a "Sleepy" type of drunk.

"Sleepy" Suddenly wants to go home and go to sleep
"Grumpy" becomes violent and wants to fight for no reason.
"Sneezy" is preoccupied with sneezing or other bodily functions.
"Doc" becomes overwhelmed with a need to help others, goes around asking if everyone is "okay."
"Bashful" recedes into the shadows, never to speak but later greatly regrets he or she never spoke.
"Dopey" slurs his speech and changes topics of conversation at lightning-speed.
"Happy" starts laughing every time someone finishes a sentence.

These three additions are from the show Once Upon a Time:
"Stealthy" Lurks around the various groups trying to pick up on conversations.
"Bossy" starts to worry about the neighbors and whether or not they will call the police.
"Watchy" becomes paranoid about everything, especially his or her appearance.

Economic Growth, Aluminum and the Tian Jin Explosion

New York Times

July 20, 2013

A Shuffle of Aluminum, but to Banks, Pure Gold

Forbes

July 25, 2013

Goldman Sachs Makes $255 Million Storing 3% of Global Aluminum Production

Bloomberg View

November 21, 2014

The Goldman Sachs Alminum Conspiracy Was Pretty Silly

Wikipedia

Aluminum price-fixing conspiracy

Forbes

Janurary 7, 2002

Shell Game

Forbes

A Stock Market Plunge May Expose Corporate Scandals

Accounting Degree Review

Info Graphic

The Ten Worst Corporate Accounting Scandals of All Time (so far)

Once upon a time there was a company that manufactured lots of consumer goods. For a while business was booming.

Everyone who had a job, whether at the factory or elsewhere was earning such meager wages they could only afford to share a small apartment with other families and buy food. They couldn't afford to buy new consumer goods such as televisions, cars, radios, computers or computer tablets.

In 2012 there was a drastic slowdown in factory orders.

The board of directors was alarmed that the shareholders would panic and sell off the company stock. They looked at how other countries handled their surplus of products and found an interesting solution in a New York Times article about the way Goldman Sachs handled Aluminum. It wasn't quite the same, but with a few tweaks adopted from a Texas company called ENRON, the company could save face just long enough for the board members to sell off their own shares of company stock and buy mansions and penthouse apartments in another country.

Billions of dollars were expatriated from the country.

The board of directors created a subsidiary company that would send in factory orders at a gradually increasing rate to keep up the appearances that everything was fine, or even better!

The subsidiary had to store the products in shipyard warehouses, and pray that they would not run out of space, but space was running out faster than the board members could sell off their shares without drawing undo attention. Something had to be done!

One board member stood up and said "Turn it all into garbage!"

The other board members were so frustrated from the ongoing situation that they couldn't think straight and thought the idea was ludicrous, then another board member stood up with another even more ludicrous idea.

"I need to rent some space right in the middle for another product!' he said.

They all stared at him dumbfounded for a moment, but then the idea gradually dawned on them because they knew he ran a company that produced a highly volatile chemical.

And the rest is history...

HEY, WANT A CONSPIRACY THEORY?

You Make the connection

May 13, 2014

Son of US VP Joe Biden appointed to board of major Ukrainian gas company

Bloomberg Business

June 29, 2015

Putin Allies Aided Russian Mafia in Spain, Prosecutors Say

BBC News

July 1, 2015

Russia halts gas supplies to Ukraine after talks break down

Sci-Fi Cliché part 2: Technology out of control yet again.

Someone posted on Reddit/r/WTF an ad for "Artificial Humans." Nicely done. I thought it was an ad for those life-like high-end sex dolls that cost about ten thousand dollars until I clicked on the "Watch Video" button and saw a serious looking William Hurt.

Surprise! A new series on AMC is coming called "Humans." From the trailer I can safely assume it's a long variation of "technology goes crazy." When I saw William Hurt I immediate thought of A.I. Artificial Intelligence, so there is the potential prequel filament.

Like Zombie films, I can't resist a show about technology turning against its creators, so I dug through my memory and Googled some classics you may or may not have seen. I hope this list is helpful, and suggestions are welcome in the comments.

Know your science-fiction subgenres: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/geekend/know-your-science-fiction-subgenres/

The Metropolis Wikipedia Page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_(1927_film)

A.I. Artificial Intelligence :http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0212720/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Stepford Wives Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stepford_Wives

Looker* Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looker

Blade Runner IMDB page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083658/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_40

Demon Seed Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_Seed

West World Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westworld

Colossus: The Forbidden Project Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus:_The_Forbin_Project

Terminator (franchise) Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminator_(franchise)

Runaway* IMDB page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088024/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_42

Zardoz*: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070948/

*Some of the films are about technology turning people into sociopaths and abusing it.

ps. I-Robot may be done to death, but it does broach the legality of automatons.

Here, take this pill.

It was the size of an average capsule. It was all white and had a red central band around it with something embedded that twinkled a purplish hue when I turned it over in my hand. The staff, previously busy moments before froze and stared at me wide-eyed. I hesitated. "What's in this?"

The doctor tightened his lips and exhaled a quiet, passive-aggressive hiss in his throat, then in a scornful monotone said "As part of the study we must rule out any psychosomatic effects. You might exhibit symptoms based only on what we tell you."

Clearly this was a phrase to every test subject he repeats ad nauseam to the point of having nightmares about it, like dreaming about your twelve hour shift working a summer job on the conveyor belt at a cherry orchard, sorting out rotten cherries for two hours, then switching to loading empty cans onto the canning machine for two hours, taking a ten minute break, then stacking full cans on pallets for two hours, then back to the conveyor belt again. The study, like working through cherry harvest season lasted six weeks and counting.

I supposed if I had read the contract all the way through I could have spared the doctor the aggravation. I looked at him and deliberately blinked rapidly and raised my eyebrows, expressing as clearly as I could without saying a word, 'Really? That attitude?' Then I took the pill.

I was escorted to a room with shower nozzles on the walls and ceiling. The door was a water-tight hatch. There was only one drain in the middle of the floor. They took all of my clothes, apparently so the drain would not clog. Luckily the room was warm. Something about the drain got my attention. The room was sterile, except there were about a dozen strands of hair stuck in the drain. As the door was closed and sealed, I reached down and pulled up the strands of hair. I kept pulling and pulling. The strands of hair were at least twelve feet in length.

Sci-Fi Cliche

Where do I begin? I would love to be able to tell stories that will shock everyone's imagination. Every aspiring science fiction writer has a notion about intergalactic travel or some scientific explanation for what was previously written off as a "miracle" in a religious text.

We want to live forever and we want to travel instantaneously to the very outer edge of the universe to see the boundary between the universe and absolute nothingness. What is there if we find it? A wall of some sort? Perhaps a boundary made of a clear material that we can see out and something or someone else outside can observe us? This is a classic device from the television series The Outer Limits

Are all the plots taken? Is there nothing under the sun that hasn't been done and done over and over again? Have we reached the limits of our imaginations? Can we accept old stories being updated and adjusted according to new scientific discoveries?

At the risk of justifying plagiarism I must admit that our choices for story telling are becoming limited as we reach the end of our imaginations. The rate at which new authors draw conclusions that match preceding authors exactly, is increasing exponentially.

As we find the edge of our imaginations, is there any way at all of going beyond? Is there nothing left of us but stories of relationships faced with different aspects of time and space?

We think we understand our own physical limitations. Perhaps we imagine that what we have found are the smallest particles in the universe. Perhaps we know only as much as Democritus, but at a smaller level.

How do we go beyond our perceptions, illusions, and delusions? Our mathematical skills can only take us as far as our perceptions can validate. We did develop technology that can sense the world around us outside of our biological capacity of perception, but by how much? Is it governed by our perceptual limitations?

Can we ever get out of this box?

This post was inspired by the film The Oculus.

Dirty Laundry

One afternoon Mike was folding his laundry and he began thinking about how to make the task easier.

He had six pairs of socks. His usual routine was to do laundry once a week which should leave him with a deficit of two pairs of socks. The pair of socks he wore when he did laundry was an extra one day old.

He did laundry on Tuesday, which meant he had a clean pair of socks for Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, so he had to wear the Monday socks when he did Laundry on Tuesday. This means he couldn't wash the Monday pair of socks when he did laundry on Tuesday, so those socks would have to wait for an entire week before being washed.

After doing laundry he kept wearing the Monday socks for the rest of Tuesday, until Wednesday morning. So he had a clean pair of socks for Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. This means he had to wear the Sunday socks on Monday and Tuesday the following week if he still did laundry on Tuesday. Now one pair of socks had to be worn for two days, and couldn't be washed for a week.

The stench in his rented room was unreal. He had only a window for ventilation and there was never a breeze. Mike was frustrated. He knew that no matter how many pairs of socks, or any other clothing he owned, there would always be one pair that he could not wash, unless he stripped totally naked at the laundromat. He finally snapped. He was going to wash all of his clothing at once, no matter the consequences.

It was around ten o'clock in the morning on a Tuesday, which was good for Mike because everyone else was at work or at school, so the laundromat was nearly empty. The clerk was back in the office out of sight, so Mike stripped everything off and filled the washer.

The day was hot and the laundromat clerk was ordered by the business owner to not use the air conditioner. The clerk was overcome by a horrible stench and had to crawl out of the building on hands and knees. After the 911 call, a Special Weapons Assault Task Force was dispatched to the laundromat and only one body was removed, but it had been dead for nearly six weeks.

The Homecoming Theory

I stood there for a moment looking at myself, wondering why my consciousness couldn't be in two places at the same time. My other self looked back eyes wide, probably wondering the same thing for a only a moment.

He suddenly knew something I didn't. He suddenly had an advantage over me, even though he was me. His thoughts and memories were now newer than mine because I was standing in the same place, and he was in a new place, seeing from a new perspective, only a few feet away.

He was an exact physical duplicate, down to the molecular construct of my brain. He retained all of my memories, there was a slight lag, a slight delay due to his being materialized after a certain amount of time had passed and his different spacial location.

The test was a complete success. The ship would be able to travel at near the speed of light, speeds no crew would survive, but no crew was now necessary. Upon arrival at its destination the ship could use available materials to re-create copies of the original crew.

It was a brilliant theory. It wasn't teleportation in the classical sense, I wondered what it would be like when the ship returned home after thousands of years of travel and re-created copies of the crew that colonized and thrived on a planet far away in another star system. I just wish I could get the original consciousness from my dead predecessor. Maybe it was the blow to the head. Why does it smell so bad in here? It smells like rotten meat and there are flies everywhere.

Chain of Incentive

Once upon a time there was a prison warden who thought up the idea of using prisoners to take jobs from private citizens for less than ten percent of the minimum wage, and sometimes no wage at all.

The prison labor saved the local government money, but taxes for the local community remained the same. The local government officials then voted to increase their own salaries to benefit from the windfall from the prison labor.

The prison labor program was so successful that private prisons were created so the private sector could get in on the action.

One day an accountant for the local government realized the profit potential of creating new laws that made it easier to arrest and convict people. He figured, in addition to the lawyers and judges getting their fees, the police would also get their cut from seized property, called 'Asset forfeiture.'

The proposals for profit motive were widely accepted at national conventions in the law enforcement community. Being tough on crime in such a way would be a good argument for cutting taxes on the wealthy, but hopefully for the sake of huge profits, taxes wouldn't be cut, and from time to time Democrats would win a majority in a state legislature and taxes would be raised, despite the increased profit from asset forfeiture and production by prison slave labor.

One year a "Three-Strikes" law was created that would seal the fate of non-violent drug offenders, to life in prison. Not much later a foreign trade deal was made that cost Americans over eighty million jobs. The crime rate spiked and tens of thousands more slaves were conscripted into prison labor. Public schools instituted a new policy of outsourcing discipline to local police, effectively fast-tracking children into the prison system. Police were trained in the art of inciting peaceful protesters into committing minor infractions. Entrapping people into committing crimes was no longer considered unethical.

Soon the United States prison population became the biggest in the world.

Bobby Must Run

Bobby's mother had to work early just about every other day. He couldn't be dropped off at school, he had to run as fast as he could to the bus stop, but he couldn't get there too early because if he did, a police officer would be waiting to snap him up and take him to child protective services.

These days unsupervised children in public places are targets of local officials for financial gain in the form of fines and court costs. But it doesn't stop there. Teachers are and school administrators now call the police when a student behaves inappropriately. Why? One theory is that parents of poorly behaving children are looking for any opportunity to make money by suing schools or teachers for disciplining their children. Therefore teachers and school administrators delegate discipline to the police who keep diligent records and know how to navigate through the justice system.

The consequences of dumping problem children into the justice system can be devastating and life-long for the student and the parents, but are of no consequence to the school. Why don't schools have disciplinary waivers that the parents must sign so the school can handle problem students internally? Simple answer: Educators are not trained psychotherapists or psychologists.

Students misbehaving are often frustrated by a home situation, or have a developmental disability. Public schools are not funded enough to handle special needs children, and many parents can't afford the costs of support for their special needs children, which creates a vicious cycle involving police, which appear to have no formal training in dealing with the developmentally disabled.

In the end the parents get fines and legal fees, which they obviously cannot afford since they couldn't afford a special program for their child.

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