Thursday, August 4, 2016

Thursday Morning Links And Comments -- August 4, 2016

Updates

Later, 10:37 a.m. Central Time: I don't want to beat a dead horse, but the "arson" story below, I think, has it wrong. Yes, in the "general" sense it was arson -- seriously, is there any doubt? -- but arson in this country generally has a different connotation. In any other context this would be considered environmental terrorism:
Eco-terrorism is defined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as "the use or threatened use of violence of a criminal nature against people or property by an environmentally oriented, subnational group for environmental-political reasons, or aimed at an audience beyond the target, often of a symbolic nature." 
I think this would also fall under the "general" definition of "hate crime." On a lesser scale, of course, it was "malicious vandalism."

Hava Nagila


Original Post
 
Britain cuts rates for the first time since 2009, and boosts quantitative easing. This is a huge headline story, but the rate is almost inconsequential, it seems. The Bank of England "rate" was already at a meager 0.5%. The bank cut it to 0.25%.

Huge miss by SRE: misses by 18 cents. 2Q16 earnings per share: $0.79. Revenue also misses by $420 million. Revenue was down 7% year-over-year. Shares are trading about 1% lower, but all-in-all, it looks like investors are taking the news in good stride. Story here although it says not much more than the headline data points. The transcript is here.

Huge beat by Denbury Resources: beats by 6 cents; 2Q16 earnings of 8 cents/share. Revenue misses by $31 million, a stunning 32% decrease year-over-year. 

Old news, as Hillary would say. This was published in The Bismarck Tribune two days ago -- arson suspected at three Dakota Access pipeline sites in Iowa.
NEWTON, Iowa -- Three fires that scorched heavy equipment being used to build the Bakken oil pipeline — which investigators believe to be arsons — won’t slow construction, the developer has vowed.
Jasper County Sheriff John Halferty said his office was investigating two fires reported there Monday. The fires caused an estimated $1 million in damage to construction equipment.
“We believe it was intentionally set. We are investigating them as arson cases,” Halferty said.
Newton, Iowa, is near the center of the state, fairly close to Illinois, actually. It is home of the world-famous Iowa Speedway.

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First World  Problems

Only in America.

This Wall Street Journal reporter continues to complain how long it takes for her chip-embedded credit card transaction. I say "continues to complain" because this meme began some time ago. Most folks have gotten over it. I cannot make this up. The Journal devoted almost a whole print page to this story:
After pulling out the stopwatch for over 50 transactions at various retailers in recent days, I can confirm that it takes twice as long to pay with a chip card than with a card swipe or mobile payment—on average, 13 seconds versus 6 seconds.
So, we have this millenial, I assume, complain that her chip card took, on average, 13 seconds to process, and provided almost perfect security protection. That was versus the alternative that took 66 seconds and provides almost no security protection.

What a chump.

She says this 7-second "delay" is giving her "chip card nightmares. Wow, she needs to get a life.

Personally I love the chip card. It give me 7 more seconds to chit-chat with the clerk. That's why I don't have an ATM card. I like going into the bank to say "hi" to the manager and to talk to the tellers. Sometimes I even learn something in the idle chit-chat.

It must be a North Dakota thing.

Now, I'm curious -- there were 197 comments to the story -- I wonder how others saw this story? The second comment (at the moment) noted that conventional swipe terminals are inherently unfriendly to lefties.
Someone noted that in the "old" days, we used to write checks. Or sometimes even use cash and then wait for the clerk to count out the change, and then for the customer to recount the change to make sure it was correct. And then after finding an extra penny in one's pocket, handing back the other four cents that was received in change, and asking for a nickel instead.
One individual noted that part of the delay -- about 5 seconds -- was purposely programmed in the system for testing while programmers debugged the system. That artificial delay had been removed. That person has not noticed any chip card delays in 2016.
Chris summed up her article perfectly: "This is all a joke, right? A few seconds here versus a few more there. We are all totally insane, especially the WSJ for the silly video explaining a truly first-world (non) problem and "vital" solutions. And Stern [the reporter] is insufferably immature, complete with vocal fry, uptalk, and valley girl presentation. Please find a grownup.
What's "uptalk"? Uptalk is a manner of speaking in which declarative sentences are uttered with rising intonation at the end, as if they were questions. Something I often do with Sophia. She always responds.

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Jewish Boycott
Making The Rounds On Social Media -- This Was First Posted Some Years Ago

From a Facebook posting (which I am surprised, has not been removed). I have not confirmed the veracity or accuracy of the following, however, it is clear there are some inaccuracies and disingenuous observations. It was posted by Jerry Goodwin.

I posted it mostly because of the list of Nobel prize winners.
Jewish Boycott

A short time ago, Iran's Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khomenei urged the Muslim World to boycott anything and everything that originates with the Jewish people.

In response, Meyer M. Treinkman, a pharmacist, out of the kindness of his heart, offered to assist them in their boycott as follows:

"Any Muslim who has syphilis must not be cured by Salvarsan discovered by a Jew, Dr. Ehrlich. He should not even try to find out whether he has syphilis, because the Wasserman test is the discovery of a Jew. If a Muslim suspects that he has gonorrhea, he must not seek diagnosis, Because he will be using the method of a Jew named Neissner.

"A Muslim who has heart disease must not use digitalis, a discovery by a Jew, Ludwig Traube.

Should he suffer with a toothache, he must not use Novocaine, a discovery of the Jews, Widal and Weil.

If a Muslim has diabetes, he must not use insulin, the result of research by Minkowsky, a Jew. If one has a headache, he must shun Pyramidon and Antypyrin, due to the Jews, Spiro and Ellege.

Muslims with seizmures must put up with them because it was a Jew, Oscar Leibreich, who proposed the use of chloral hydrate.

Arabs must do likewise with their psychic ailments because Freud, father of psychoanalysis, was a Jew.

Should a Muslim child get diphtheria, he must refrain from the "Schick" reaction which was invented by the Jew, Bella Schick.

"Muslims should be ready to die in great numbers and must not permit treatment of ear and brain damage, work of Jewish Nobel Prize winner, Robert Baram.

They should continue to die or remain crippled by Infantile Paralysis because the discoverer of the anti-polio vaccine is a Jew, Jonas Salk.

"Muslims must refuse to use Streptomycin and continue to die of tuberculosis because a Jew, Zalman Waxman, invented the wonder drug against this killing disease.

Muslim doctors must discard all discoveries and improvements by dermatologist Judas Sehn Benedict, or the lung specialist, Frawnkel, and of many other world renowned Jewish scientists and medical experts.

"In short, good and loyal Muslims properly and fittingly should remain afflicted with syphilis, gonorrhea, heart disease, headaches, typhus, diabetes, mental disorders, polio, convulsions and tuberculosis and be proud to obey the Islamic boycott." [Actually, it appears many are already treatment for mental disorders.]

Oh, and by the way, don't call for a doctor on your cell phone because the cell phone was invented in Israel by a Jewish engineer.

Meanwhile I ask, what medical contributions to the world have the Muslims made?"

The Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000; that is ONE BILLION TWO HUNDRED MILLION or 20% of the world's population.

They have received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature:
1988 - Najib Mahfooz

Peace:
1978 - Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat
1990 - Elias James Corey
1994 - Yaser Arafat
1999 - Ahmed Zewai

Economics:
(zero)

Physics:
(zero)

Medicine:
1960 - Peter Brian Medawar
1998 - Ferid Mourad

TOTAL: 7 SEVEN

The Global Jewish population is approximately 14,000,000; that is FOURTEEN MILLION or about 0.02% of the world's population.

They have received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature:
1910 - Paul Heyse
1927 - Henri Bergson
1958 - Boris Pasternak
1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon
1966 - Nelly Sachs
1976 - Saul Bellow
1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer
1981 - Elias Canetti
1987 - Joseph Brodsky
1991 - Nadine Gordimer World

Peace:
1911 - Alfred Fried
1911 - Tobias Michael Carel Asser
1968 - Rene Cassin
1973 - Henry Kissinger
1978 - Menachem Begin
1986 - Elie Wiesel
1994 - Shimon Peres
1994 - Yitzhak Rabin

Physics:
1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer
1906 - Henri Moissan
1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson
1908 - Gabriel Lippmann
1910 - Otto Wallach
1915 - Richard Willstaetter
1918 - Fritz Haber
1921 - Albert Einstein
1922 - Niels Bohr
1925 - James Franck
1925 - Gustav Hertz
1943 - Gustav Stern
1943 - George Charles de Hevesy
1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi
1952 - Felix Bloch
1954 - Max Born
1958 - Igor Tamm
1959 - Emilio Segre
1960 - Donald A. Glaser
1961 - Robert Hofstadter
1961 - Melvin Calvin
1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau
1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz
1965 - Richard Phillips Feynman
1965 - Julian Schwinger
1969 - Murray Gell-Mann
1971 - Dennis Gabor
1972 - William Howard Stein
1973 - Brian David Josephson
1975 - Benjamin Mottleson
1976 - Burton Richter
1977 - Ilya Prigogine
1978 - Arno Allan Penzias
1978 - Peter L Kapitza
1979 - Stephen Weinberg
1979 - Sheldon Glashow
1979 - Herbert Charles Brown
1980 - Paul Berg
1980 - Walter Gilbert
1981 - Roald Hoffmann
1982 - Aaron Klug
1985 - Albert A. Hauptman
1985 - Jerome Karle
1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach
1988 - Robert Huber
1988 - Leon Lederman
1988 - Melvin Schwartz
1988 - Jack Steinberger
1989 - Sidney Altman
1990 - Jerome Friedman
1992 - Rudolph Marcus
1995 - Martin Perl
2000 - Alan J. Heeger

Economics:
1970 - Paul Anthony Samuelson
1971 - Simon Kuznets
1972 - Kenneth Joseph Arrow
1975 - Leonid Kantorovich
1976 - Milton Friedman
1978 - Herbert A. Simon
1980 - Lawrence Robert Klein
1985 - Franco Modigliani
1987 - Robert M. Solow
1990 - Harry Markowitz
1990 - Merton Miller
1992 - Gary Becker
1993 - Robert Fogel

Medicine:
1908 - Elie Metchnikoff
1908 - Paul Erlich
1914 - Robert Barany
1922 - Otto Meyerhof
1930 - Karl Landsteiner
1931 - Otto Warburg
1936 - Otto Loewi
1944 - Joseph Erlanger
1944 - Herbert Spencer Gasser
1945 - Ernst Boris Chain
1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller
1950 - Tadeus Reichstein
1952 - Selman Abraham Waksman
1953 - Hans Krebs
1953 - Fritz Albert Lipmann
1958 - Joshua Lederberg
1959 - Arthur Kornberg
1964 - Konrad Bloch
1965 - Francois Jacob
1965 - Andre Lwoff
1967 - George Wald
1968 - Marshall W. Nirenberg
1969 - Salvador Luria
1970 - Julius Axelrod
1970 - Sir Bernard Katz
1972 - Gerald Maurice Edelman
1975- Howard Martin Temin
1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg
1977 - Roselyn Sussman Yalow
1978 - Daniel Nathans
1980 - Baruj Benacerraf
1984 - Cesar Milstein
1985 - Michael Stuart Brown
1985 - Joseph L. Goldstein
1986 - Stanley Cohen [& Rita Levi-Montalcini]
1988 - Gertrude Elion
1989 - Harold Varmus
1991 - Erwin Neher
1991 - Bert Sakmann
1993 - Richard J. Roberts
1993 - Phillip Sharp
1994 - Alfred Gilman
1995 - Edward B. Lewis
1996- Lu RoseIacovino

TOTAL: 129!

The Jews are NOT promoting brainwashing children in military training camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause maximum deaths of Jews and other non-Muslims.

The Jews don't hijack planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics, or blow themselves up in German restaurants.

There is NOT one single Jew who has destroyed a church.

There is NOT a single Jew who protests by killing people. The Jews don't traffic slaves, nor have leaders calling for Jihad and death to all the Infidels.

Perhaps the world's Muslims should consider investing more in standard education and less in blaming the Jews for all their problems.

Muslims must ask 'what can they do for humankind' before they demand that humankind respects them.

Regardless of your feelings about the crisis between Israel and the Palestinians and Arab neighbors, even if you believe there is more culpability on Israel 's part, the following two sentences really say it all:

'If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel."

Benjamin Netanyahu: General Eisenhower warned us. It is a matter of history that when the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight Eisenhower, found the victims of the death camps he ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and even made to bury the dead.

He did this because he said in words to this effect: 'Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses - because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened'

Recently, the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offends' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred.

It is not removed as yet. However, this is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it.

It is now more than 65 years after the Second World War in Europe ended.

Now, more than ever, with Iran, among others, claiming the Holocaust to be 'a myth,' it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets.

How many years will it be before the attack on the World Trade Center 'NEVER HAPPENED' because it offends some Muslim in the United States?

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