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not including Doodles
not including Doodles
Page 45 of 131, posts 221 - 225 of 651
We might wish politics was about having full access and understanding of where your candidates stand on the issues, gauging a candidate's character, and choosing from among the best.
Instead, politics is usually a game of salemanship. It's about packaging candidates. Which often means leaving us with candidates who are marketable, but utterly valueless once elected.
With that in mind, here are fliers I've received for the two leading candidates for the U.S. Senate seat of the retiring Dr. Tom Coburn.
James Lankford and T.W. Shannon Nearly Tied In U.S. Senate Primary
News on 6, 2014 May 14
News on 6, 2014 May 14
Those unfamiliar with Oklahoma politics should be aware that the winner of the Oklahoma Republican primary will almost certainly become our Senator in this overwhelmingly Republican state.
The candidates are T.W. Shannon and James Lankford.
First thing you want to know about selling your candidate is, get Shannon's photographer. Here are the head shots of the candidates, clipped from the front of each flier:
Let's face it, neither of these guys is a beauty.
There's something off about the shape of Lankford's head, his eyes, his jaw, but it's hard to tell because the photo is so ill-lit, grainy, and washed out — or, who knows what kind of distortion his photo went through to end up looking like this.
And Shannon, honestly, he looks kind-of like a goofy kid, with his oval face and ears sticking out. Shannon has a genuine, if slightly goofy, smile. Lankford's ghostly visage is unfortunately for him like a waxwork or zombie.
On Shannon's flier,
the photo is the height of the flier, the family is casually dressed, outdoors, nicely lit, all great smiles. The candidate's name, with the nick-namish "T.W." especially prominent, is to the right. Republican for U.S. Senate is simple and straightforward, and almost humbly at the bottom in small type is "Endorsed by conservative leaders Sarah Palin & Mark Levin."
On Lankford's flier,
the family photo is only half the height of the flier, the family is casually enough dressed, although Lankford looks like he's trying too hard with his denim button-down. The prominent headline above them, stretching the length of the flier, has, in large type, "America's Foundation" and a sub-head of "The Constitution & our faith" both in all-caps. The family and text are superimposed over a collage of the Constitution, and a simple rural church flying an American flag. Further text finally presents the candidate's name and says he has fought to "defend religious freedom, protect Oklahoma values, uphold the Constitution, and preserve individual liberties."
Nothing particularly specific on either flier's front. Shannon's presents the candidate, with a small blurb of powerful endorsement. Lankford's, like his denim shirt strives too hard to stress key themes. Shannon's definitely wins for layout and photography. Lankford's photographer should find a new career, it's a terrible shot of people who could probably look much less posed and certainly could look brighter. Lankford's may hit some folks, but his shotgun approach seems a little too desperately look-how-conservative-I-am. ("Oklahoma values" are what, exactly?)
Let's flip them over!
A small copy of the same washed-out photo of Lankford is repeated, lonely, isolated from the family, on the back, in the bottom-right, partially hidden behind the address block. The other three photos on the page are what you might get if you did an image search on "USA flag rural."
Can't we stick a few more flags in there?
This is the problem with Lankford's flier throughout. It looks like clip-art for Constitutional and religious conservatives. Beneath his oddly-still-not-prominent name is the all-caps blurb, "trusted conservative service." The text hits these notes: Constitution (for), God-given freedoms (for), intrusive liberal policies of President Obama (against), protecting our values (for), Washington's assault on freedom to worship, make our own decisions, and pass on a better life to our children (against, er, against the assault, um, for that other stuff).
The most solid meat in the flier is the last paragraph. "Obamacare endangers our personal liberties and individual freedoms. That is why James Lankford has stood up to President Obama and Washington liberals, voting to repeal, replace, or delay Obamacare more than 40 times."
Funny thing. The women on the front are, one is surely meant to presume, Lankford's wife and daughters. They might as well be clip art too, however, as there is no reference to suggest he's married or has kids anywhere in the flier.
The Lankford flier features a phone number where you can "thank Congressman Lankford for his trusted conservative service." It was paid for by the "Foundation for Economic Prosperity, Inc."
The back of Shannon's flier, to begin with, is much easier to read than the white-on-graple of Lankford's. Shannon's features another big, bright photo of the candidate and his family, happily strolling down a park path, a small photo of the candidate (not looking so goofy) and his wife at their wedding, and one more small photo of the family, seated, formally dressed. Shannon definitely wins on photos.
The text in Shannon's flier is less bulleted blurbs and more narrative. Married twelve years, teaching their children to "put God and family first." Opposes government dependency "pushing families into poverty." Some personal history, their hard times, teaching the kids to count on hard work not handouts. Wife had cancer. "God's lesson was that every day and every moment count."
"When Dr. Tom Coburn stepped down, T.W. and Devon believe it was God's assignment for their lives to run…." Welllll, maybe… 
The blurb to the right mentions Shannon as "Oklahoma's most conservative Speaker of the House in history." Welfare "workfare" reform (passed), Obamacare Medicaid expansion (stopped), 2nd Amendment (for), slips his pro-life position in there as an adjective "pro-life Republican," and touches once more on family.
Nothing about who paid for this. TWShannon.com website is listed. (I tried pressing the Facebook and Twitter icons on the card, but nothing happened.)
The financing for both these candidates is shady.
More U.S. Senate donors remain anonymous — Organizations have spent more than $100,000 on ads running in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, but public information is hard to come by and the leader of one group is apparently shy about commenting. (News on 6)
Two organizations with scant public information available have purchased nearly $110,000 of broadcast television time in Oklahoma for “issue ads” that promote U.S. Rep. James Lankford without specifically endorsing his Senate campaign.
The ads, running in the Oklahoma City and Tulsa markets, are attributed to a group called the Foundation for Economic Prosperity. However, the public forms filed with television stations in Oklahoma City say the money for the ads was provided by the First Amendment Alliance Educational Fund.
There is no information about the Foundation for Economic Prosperity on the public websites of the Internal Revenue Service or the Federal Election Commission. Two political committees with “economic prosperity” in their names were recently established under federal election rules by an Oklahoma City fundraiser and an associate. However, neither have reported any advertising expenses.
The First Amendment Alliance funded ads in the 2010 election cycle, but it has not filed reports with the IRS or Federal Election Commission for years and appeared to be dormant.
Shannon is also being supported by anonymous donors:
A group that has spent nearly $400,000 to boost the U.S. Senate campaign of state Rep. T.W. Shannon organized as a “social welfare” organization under the federal tax code and will be able to keep secret the names of its donors.
Donors to Oklahomans for a Conservative Future can give unlimited amounts of money to help the Republican candidate, but the secrecy comes at a cost: The group must raise at least twice as much money as it can spend on politics.
Oklahomans for a Conservative Future does have to report its expenditures for Shannon to the Federal Election Commission. This month, the group has filed three reports with the FEC showing that it spent $395,178 on television advertising and direct mail on behalf of Shannon, the former state House speaker from Lawton. (News on 6)
In an age of IRS harassment and political vindictiveness, the need for such protection of donors becomes understandable. It's also a great way for enemies of conservatism to sponsor faux conservatives and split tickets or actually elect RINOs in conservatives' clothing.
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Old computer hardware…
I had the wide-carriage pinfeed-paper attachment, numerous wheels, pica, elite, italics. Different color ribbons.
And the ribbon re-inker. (My accountant had the same, until he spilled a bottle of ink on an expensive oriental carpet, after which he calculated just buying fresh ribbons was more economical. Heh Good times.)
1200 precious 1980 dollars, a real hearty investment even when I was well-off.
Bought fanfold paper by the case. Still have half a case of wide-carriage green-bar fanfold, if anyone needs some.
The one thing I never sprang for was the sound-insulated clamshell box for it. My neighbors didn't complain. But, then, I was the landlord....
Yes, I do still have it in the museum.
TRS-80.org: The Daisy Wheel Printer II - "built like a Sherman tank."
Ira Goldklang's TRS-80 Revived Site
Ira Goldklang's TRS-80 Revived Site
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I got two miracles on Saturday.
"The very hairs on your head are counted," Jesus reassured us in Matthew and Luke.
Somehow…
…I don't think this is what Jesus had in mind.
Image source: Sat Eve Post 1935, c/o Duke University Libraries
…I don't think this is what Jesus had in mind.
Image source: Sat Eve Post 1935, c/o Duke University Libraries
Urantia Paper 38 clarifies that the angels don't waste their time pawing through your lice and dandruff to enumerate your follicles; they are math geniuses, inherently capable of such estimations. Sounds right to me.
Which was on my mind early Saturday morning, as I examined the fall of two of the three forks of a once-mighty 100-year-old oak:
Squirrels evicted. — The remaining trunk is cracked and rotten, too.
Branches fell inches from the big plate glass window - there were oak leaves caught on the roof flashing above the window, and all through the little cedars on either side of the window. Inches. Very close thing.
The power lines to the barn run under a branch of a neighboring pecan, which branch got snapped, but missed the lines.
And big branches fell all around both vehicles, yet only one small twig-end broke against the pickup door. No scratch worth mentioning.
And no human or beast got hurt. Not even the resident family of squirrels, I think.
That was the first miracle, the incredibly precise harmless tree-fall. Thank you, hypercalculating chaos-controlling angels!
Then…
We were also fortunate that it happened early on a Saturday morning. Within a few hours of the fall, the neighbor's Son-in-Law, and the Son-in-Law's two Sons-in-Law, came over with their chainsaws, a big trailer, and a really sweet little Deere (want!) with grapple attachment. They sacrificed their Saturday morning enthusiastically.
This may be fake
By two in the afternoon, tons of tree were gone to the South 40, and I was left raking up leaves and twigs.
That was the second miracle, in many ways, more miraculous than the first. Mrs & I stood there mid-afternoon, amazed at our blessings.
There's a big hole in our leafy canopy now, though. Won't be filled in my lifetime.
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Dr. Frank Drake conceived an approach to bound the terms involved in estimating the number of technological civilizations that may exist in our galaxy. The Drake Equation, as it has become known, was first presented by Drake in 1961 and identifies specific factors thought to play a role in the development of such civilizations.
The short, common form of expression of the most positive potentials of this equation is: "Odds suggest there's lots of technological civilizations out in the universe, so why haven't they contacted us yet?"
Or, in the other end of the possibility range, "if advanced, intelligent life exists elsewhere at all, it's going to be extremely uncommon." —OregonMuse on Ace of Spades
This video isn't available anymore.
It's been practically half a century since I read Asimov, but as I recall, in his Foundation and related science-fiction, Asimov projected a creation where the only human-intelligence level reached was earth-spawned humans. Other proto-forms of life were found, but nothing else close to intelligent life. Part of this formulation is the first arrivals (that would be us) interrupt the natural development of any other life form; the "niche" of intelligent life having been filled, we prevent any other. Yay us.
Of course, it makes for easier SF if you don't have to make up a cosmos full of extraterrestrials. Yet some of the finest (and sometimes worst) of science-fiction has been the "first encounter" story, where incredibly different cultures meet.
Galileo suffered from geocentric theology. Pre-reason religionists could be forgiven for thinking geocentrically. The scriptures don't mention that stars are suns with other planets; pre-reason, pre-Copernican people wouldn't've even been able to grasp the concept (some still can't today). The modern believer can't help but put the Drake Equation into the formula. Like the question of why God would allow Evil in the World, the question of Where Is Everybody? can be a challenge for belief.
I would presume that intelligent life evolves everywhere, yes in astonishing variety, yet along recognizably similar lines as our evolution because it's inherent to the design as light and water and air and carbon. (My Physics 100 professor said something like this.)
I assume life evolves out of mud (possibly with some nudging), that motility induces central nervous systems, which grow brains which look and think and wonder and eventually recognize, "I am me" and "you are not me" and morality and theology derive from that realization everywhere just as they may in the development of any terrestrial.
My view is that Darwinian evolution is really quite predictable, and when you have a biosphere and evolution takes over, then common themes emerge and the same is true for intelligence.
Simon Conway Morris, professor of evolutionary paleobiology at Cambridge University, quoted in 5 Scientific Theories About What Aliens Might Look Like, The Week, 2013 Jul 16.
Therefore, just as we have (rather recently) discovered that galaxies abound and planets are plentiful, we can project that the solar systems of the universe, naturally, will be as teeming as possible with the children of the Almighty.
Even more, moving science under the more general umbrella of theology, the faithful assume that this is not some randomly-fluctuating mechanism in which we are spawned, but that the universe is under the overcontrol of, not the Almighty First Source and Center his own self directly, necessarily, but at least direct and trusted appointees, as it were.
It is, in other words, a grand, well-ordered universe, designed to be inhabited.
So, again, where is everybody?
Taking the above assumptions, presuming we're not unknown but well-known to the Governors of the Galaxy, what's the deal?
One would pretty much have to conclude our isolation is intentional. In this framework, we might be left alone, the way an anthropologist might try to avoid unduly corrupting a hidden native culture, or the Star Trek reflection of that, the "Prime Directive," (which only seemed to be brought up when it was about to be violated).
Another possibility is that we have been corrupted, and we are isolated the way the body walls off a virus, or we would (back in thoughtful days) isolate a community that had become rife with contagion.
They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course. —Psalm 82
Andovontia is the name of the tertiary Universe Circuit Supervisor stationed in our local universe. He is concerned only with spirit and morontia circuits, not with those under the jurisdiction of the power directors. It was he who isolated Urantia at the time of the Caligastia betrayal of the planet during the testing seasons of the Lucifer rebellion. In sending greetings to the mortals of Urantia, he expresses pleasure in the anticipation of your sometime restoration to the universe circuits of his supervision.
Links encountered while researching the above
• Why We Haven't Met Any Aliens, by Geoffrey Miller, Seed — Perhaps our current science over-estimates the likelihood of extraterrestrial intelligence evolving. Or, perhaps evolved technical intelligence has some deep tendency to be self-limiting, even self-exterminating.
• Anthropic principle (Wikipedia) — The strong anthropic principle… [states] the Universe is compelled, in some sense, for conscious life to eventually emerge.
• Everything Forever — Gevin Giorbran "eloquently explains for the lay reader the governing role a cosmic zero plays in the evolution of all universes and all life"
• Physics and the Immortality of the Soul, by Sean Carroll, Scientific American blog — The questions are these: what form does that spirit energy take, and how does it interact with our ordinary atoms? Not only is new physics required, but dramatically new physics…. [That's true, y'know.]
• Does science make belief in God obsolete? — Mary Midgley: "Of course not."
• Why We Haven't Met Any Aliens, by Geoffrey Miller, Seed — Perhaps our current science over-estimates the likelihood of extraterrestrial intelligence evolving. Or, perhaps evolved technical intelligence has some deep tendency to be self-limiting, even self-exterminating.
• Anthropic principle (Wikipedia) — The strong anthropic principle… [states] the Universe is compelled, in some sense, for conscious life to eventually emerge.
• Everything Forever — Gevin Giorbran "eloquently explains for the lay reader the governing role a cosmic zero plays in the evolution of all universes and all life"
• Physics and the Immortality of the Soul, by Sean Carroll, Scientific American blog — The questions are these: what form does that spirit energy take, and how does it interact with our ordinary atoms? Not only is new physics required, but dramatically new physics…. [That's true, y'know.]
• Does science make belief in God obsolete? — Mary Midgley: "Of course not."
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