Sleepless in Midland

Jimmie JJ Walker's joke during the Rodney King riots still rings true

Sometime after the Rodney King riots and looting of stores in Los Angeles JJ Walker was doing a stand-up routine on a late show. It went something like this:

"On the third night no one was on the streets. You know why they weren't out, don't you? They were all home trying to hook up their new VCRs."

Funny stuff. His joke rang true because of a widespread feeling that those looters were less motivated by a desire for revenge or justice as much as they were by the desire to get free stuff.

As TV screens fill with sights of ransacked stores in Minneapolis we are reminded that for the looters, vandals, and rioters justice really isn't the prime motivator.

Dyn-o-mite!

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3:26 PM 5/29/2020

Fox Friday 5-29-20 -- bumping heads and sniffing butts

Sniffing butt.

Bumping heads.

I think they might be friends.

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2:18 PM 5/28/2020

Facebook profits off the divisiveness it inspires

Anyone who saw the movie "The Social Network" probably came away with a solid apprehension of Facebook. Yeah, it was just a movie, but the producer in an interview said he stuck closely to the trial transcript when Zuckerberg got sued by the people claiming to have invented the concept Zuckerberg exploited. So any untruths in the movie were there for Zuckerberg to refute. The only scene Zuckerberg reportedly refuted was one in which he was shown trying to reconnect with a female friend he had jilted.

But here's the thing that really should rile customers. Facebook embraced the polarization it created because it was more profitable than bringing people together. See Facebook's own research warned its algorithms exploit 'divisiveness'. Excerpt:

Facebook’s executives resisted internal efforts to make its platform less divisive, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The company’s internal research found that its algorithms “exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness,” and could make the social network a more polarized place. In another piece of research reported by the WSJ, Facebook found in 2016 that 64 percent of users joining extremist groups on the platform did so as a result of the company’s recommendation algorithms.

The following year Facebook launched “Common Ground,” a wide-ranging effort to make the social network less polarizing and “increase empathy” among users.

Yet the company ultimately decided not to act on many of the group’s recommendations, fearing it could fuel claims the company was biased against conservative viewpoints. Other proposed changes were watered down, according to the report.

The first rule of fight club is you don't talk about fight club.

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10:06 AM 5/27/2020

Economic boom coming

When WWII ended thousands of men came home and went to work. Some started companies, some went to school, and some got good jobs.

As this coronavirus shutdown ends, we are likely to see the same thing as people go back to work.

Mark Cuban was on Charles Payne's TV show on FBN answering viewer questions. And in one response Cuban said now was the best time ever to start a company. Cuban is a very successful entrepreneur, and his advice is worth listening to.

However, government could get in the way. Currently, there are a lot of people making more money from the Cares Act than they were while working. And common sense tells them to stay off the job until the gravy train stops.

But eventually we'll have a great economy again. Buckle up and prepare for liftoff.

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1:10 PM 5/23/2020

Fox Friday 5-22-20

Fox calling out for his companion.

One fox in submissive position. Did they have a squabble?

Fox in the trap. It wasn't set, but because of the long tail the trap door may not have snapped shut. So it probably wouldn't do for catching foxes, not that I would want to do that anyway.

This is the cat for which the trap was intended. It wasn't set that evening, but now we know the cat will enter it as he did here to retrieve the chicken scrap in the back of the cage. Look closely to see the bait he is carrying out. The challenge will be to trap that cat and not any of the other critters.

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1:36 PM 5/21/2020

Fox Friday 5-15-20

Fox and cat face off.

Two foxes eating out of the same bowl at the same time. That doesn't happen often.

Fox takes a wary look at the cage.

Two foxes  -- something off screen has their attention.

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4:01 PM 5/14/2020

The Flynn case demonstrates the plea bargain fiction

One of absurd aspects of the Michael Flynn case is the recent suggestion by Federal Judge Sullivan that Flynn could be in contempt of court for perjury because Flynn pleaded guilty but later withdrew that plea.

If there's anything good to come from this case it should be a change in the law that requires a defendant to plea guilty in order to accept a plea bargain. Most criminal cases end with a plea bargain. And it's conceivable that an innocent person could plea guilty in order to avoid the expense and hardship of a trial, not to mention the possibility that an eloquent prosecutor with circumstantial evidence could convince a jury that the person is guilty.

The law needs to be changed. A person should be able to accept a plea bargain without having to convince a judge that he/she actually committed the crime.

Related: Federal Judge Orders Arguments on Whether Michael Flynn Should Be Jailed for Perjury

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6:08 AM 5/14/2020

Cosmo Kramer as teaching aid for entrepreneurship

The TV show "Seinfeld" has been in rerun mode so long that most of us have probably seen each episode at least once. But who would have thought that clips would be used in business school classrooms as teaching aids?

Sure enough, it's happening. And Penn State prof Jamey A. Darnell is promoting the idea in a paper titled, Yada, Yada, Yada...Successful Business! Using Seinfeld Clips to Teach Business Model Evaluation. Here's the premise:

One of the primary characters on Seinfeld is Kramer, the eccentric neighbor of Jerry Seinfeld, who often comes up with business ideas that are usually characterized as not feasible. A common activity of Kramer is the quest of creating something from nothing. The pursuits of these ideas often show the difference between an idea for a new business and a true entrepreneurial opportunity. Many of these Kramer examples are teaching opportunities and can be extended to discuss ideation, creativity, entrepreneurial behavior, foundations of entrepreneurship, innovation, market research, trend analysis, value proposition/differentiation, foundational business models, etc. ...

The goal of incorporating Seinfeld clips into the classroom is not necessarily to facilitate the creation of a specific business idea for a student, but rather to expose the student to the process of creating and evaluating business ideas.

Actually, some of Kramer's ideas could have been contenders. A bladder for oil tankers to prevent spills, for example:

Kramer: Bombs away (Uh oh).

Jerry: This is going to be a shame.

(SPLAT!)

George: Hello.

Kramer: Well, that didn’t work. Hey, how about this…ketchup and mustard in the same bottle?

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2:17 PM 5/13/2020

Celebrities against consumerism -- what an irony

There was a time when actors were considered lower class. But then movies were invented, and shrewd entrepreneurs developed a very profitable business. Promoting actors into stars enhanced that business enterprise and elevated the status of actors.

The job of an actor is to pretend to be some other character. Actors are simply people with a talent for convincing others that they are something they really aren't. A celebrity worship cult developed, and the actors capitalized on that to become fabulously wealthy. And somehow they convinced themselves that people wanted to hear what they themselves had to say.

Eyebrows get raised when celebrities pontificate about how normal people should live their lives. Here's a case in point. Stars and scientists call for world not to 'go back to normal':

"The pursuit of consumerism and an obsession with productivity have led us to deny the value of life itself: that of plants, that of animals, and that of a great number of human beings," the short letter added. "Pollution, climate change, and the destruction of our remaining natural zones has brought the world to a breaking point."

So here we are. Working people are struggling to make ends meet, and celebs richer than Croesus are railing against consumerism. What a scene.

Kat Timpf takes them down a notch:

Now, to be clear, I’m not attacking them for their success – or even for them enjoying it with lavish lifestyles. What I am saying, however, is that I can’t help but be irked by the unconscionable lack of awareness you’d have to have in order to sign something like this while you’re sitting in an extravagant home surrounded by servants.

After all, if any of the super-wealthy people who signed this letter had any real interest in stopping the “pursuit of consumerism,” they would certainly have started with taking a look at their own habits in that area.

Here's an idea. Let's support their battle against "consumerism" by avoiding any movie, TV show, concert, or other performance involving those actors. Yeah! We're in this fight together!

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3:11 PM 5/12/2020

If China wanted to ruin the American economy they hit on the right strategy

Few rational observers can ignore what China did. Regardless of how the virus developed and got released, what China did afterward certainly was war like. Redstate.com has a quote from Peter Navarro from a TV appearance that sums it up nicely. To wit:

We know that patient zero in China was about mid-November. It was in Wuhan. We know that ground zero had the P-4 weapons lab, where the virus likely came from. For the next two months, we know that China hid the virus from the world behind the shield of the World Health Organization.

And, as they did that, they sent gleaming passenger jets from China, not into the rest of China from Wuhan, but to places like New York and Milan, seeding the world with what would become a pandemic.

As they did that, we also know, Maria, from their own customs data that they vacuumed up virtually all of the world’s personal protective equipment, including over two billion masks.

And we also know that, today, what China is doing, sitting on that stockpile of what we call PPE, is, they are selling it at profiteering prices to some. And, to other countries, they are actually putting pressure on those countries to deny the virus came from China or to talk about Taiwan or to do other things.

So, that’s it in a nutshell. And what that means for us here is, this morning, Americans won’t go to church because of the China virus. Sons and daughters of America won’t be taking their mothers to brunch. Tomorrow, 33 million Americans won’t be going to work, and millions of children in America will be home climbing the walls, instead of learning, reading, writing, and arithmetic.

So, that’s the China problem that we face. President Trump built the most powerful and beautiful economy in the world in three years.

The Chinese Communist Party took it down in 60 days.

Source: White House Trade Advisor Peter Navarro Points out How Frighteningly Fast Communist China Took Down Our Economy.

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2:54 PM 5/11/2020

Fox Friday 5-8-20 -- Foxes that eat together, stay together

The foxes will eat together so long as each has a separate bowl.

The foxes give the Big Grey Meanie wide berth.

Here the fox watches as the cat sniffs out the box.

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1:18 PM 5/7/2020

Fox Friday 5-1-20

Big Grey Meanie captures bird.

Fox tries to look fierce. Take a close look at the right edge of the frame to see a pair of eyes -- probably a cat -- trying to stare down the fox.

Fox takes a cautious look at the *box.

*The box is there as an experiment to see if the Big Grey Meanie (cat) will go into an open ended container for food. Sometimes he does, and sometimes he doesn't.

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10:45 AM 4/30/2020