Symbolism of food and clothiing

When I was a kid in the 50's, clothing was the social signifier. "You're not going out dressed like THAT! " If you saw someone dressed informally, you knew she was not upper class.  I remember going to the ball parks and the men wore suits, ties and hats. Today billionaires wear hoodies.

Food is now the signifier.  If you see someone eating a Twinkie you know they are prole. Go into a temple of food such as Whole Foods.   Behind the bread counter  there are two slicers, one for organic bread and the other for conventional.  God forbid that little Peirpontle get one crumb of conventional bread  -- he won't get into Harvard.  It'st like the rules of kosher food.

Excellent display of data on deaths in WWII- worth watching

https://player.vimeo.com/video/128373915 

Unpopularity of the Trade Pact

After reading a Paul Krugman opinion piece about the defeat of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiation authorization in Congress, I did what I normally do not do -- I read the comments.  They were almost unanimously, and often vehemently against the pact.  Here is a typical comment.

It isn't about what countries are at the table. It's about the fact the the working class isn't at the table at all. It is about flag-less corporate leaders and their politicians, not about national interests. It is about expanding the property rights of the corporate rich through stricter patents, longer copyrights and other restraints on free trade are a major part of the TPP. It is about limiting the ability of nations to restrain corporate power by allowing corporations to sue for damages if nations try to protect workers or the environment

This is no surprise considering the these are readers of Krugman and the New York Times.  Most of the yes votes were Republican, which on the surface is surprising -- after all aren't they against international agencies, such as the UN, dictating policy to us.  To see where they are at I went to the National Review's site, clicked a pro-TPP piece by George Will, and read the comments.  If you don't count the Obama bashing entries, the comments were very heavily weighted negative.  Here is a typical one.

All the elites in this worthless [Republican] party have fully embraced the idea of crony capitalism and big government. They can fool themselves calling it free markets and compassionate conservatism, but I'm not buying this BS anymore. We're angry as hell and we're not going to take it anymore! This party may well rip down the center after 2016 if the business wing leads us to another defeat.

My take is that even if there are good environmental and labor provisions in the pact as promised (The text is secret -- another issue ), do you trust that they will be enforced by the same crowd that gives Wall Street a free pass.  I think will can assume that Obama's successor will be even worst.

(Mideast) politics Make strange bedfellows

Israel is depending on Hamas and Hizbollah to keep ISIS away from its borders.  As bad as these two are, they do get the hint after massive bombing.  I doubt that ISIS would respond to bombing.

James Webb for President

James Webb is my man.

Right now Webb, who has not declared, is running a lackadaisical campaign.  As a comparison, he has 8000 Twitter followers compared to Sander's  52,000  and Hillary's 3.6 million. He has no chance of going anywhere, but would make a wonderful addition to the debates.

Here are some of his points that I that attract me to him.

Webb pays attention to poverty of all races, not just minorities,  urban and rural. This connects with white voters who have drifted away from the Democratic party, and connects with me because I spent my early teens in a poor white neighborhood.

Geek-out over a shaving brush

Each morning I use a shaving brush.  At the end of the shave I shake it out and put it in its rack.  The next day it is dry.  In a geek-out I became curious.  How many molecules per second are required to dry it in 24 hours?

My kitchen scale showed that the we brush contained 12 g of water.

Before I show the calculations, I will give the result.  4.63E+18 molecules leave the brush every second.  This is a large number.  It means there are 18 places to the left of the decimal point. How large.  Well it is a billion billion.  One billion seconds is 31 years.  Someone has another way to look at it  - it is in the same level as the number of grains of sand on all the beaches of the earth -- and this is just in one second!!
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If you are still paying attention, here are my calculations for the shaving brush evaporation.

War on everything ...

We have a habit of declaring unwinnable wars on nouns, poverty, terrorism etc.  and we end up with more of them.  Maybe we should declare a war of common sense -- we sure need more or it.