Cognitive disonance

There is an article about Sidney Gottlieb and his mind control experiments for the CIA in the Daily Beast, The Sinister Scientist Behind the CIA’s Mind-Control Mayhem. Aside from the usual Daily Beast hyperbole, I found the following quote to be very interesting:

...Kinzer writes. “Their research had shown them that mind control is a myth—that seizing another person’s mind and reprogramming it is impossible.”

Soooo... the CIA couldn't figure out a way to control an individual, but Russian hackers can cause Americans to vote for Donald Trump? In some corner of my mind, it seems like the same paranoia that caused a fear of the Russians to start the CIA down the rabbit hole of mind control is still infecting us. If it is possible to influence a population through manipulation of mainstream and social media, don't tell me the Russians are the only ones capable of doing it. And if there is someone capable of doing media influence, they are probably doing it.

A motivational speaker named Denis Waitley said, "If a 60 second commercial can sell you laundry detergent, can't a 60 minute soap opera sell you a lifestyle?" What can a 24 hour a day connection to media sell you?

Serendipity? Coincidence? Small World

Last time I saw Mara Tekach was riding a train into Philly.

Today, I am reading New Trump travel policy takes Cubans back to old family separation standard in the Miami Herald, and I come across this line, "Mara Tekach, the U.S. embassy’s charge d’affaires, said the change achieves reciprocity between U.S. visa rules and Cuba’s, which allow most Americans only single-entry tourist visas for up to three months." So it turns out Mara is a career diplomat, Deputy Chief of Mission in Havana, Cuba. I sense something coming. Maybe I'm wrong, but maybe I'm not.

Jarrett Dodge

Some Jarrett Dodge links.

A couple of "Cars of the Month" from the 1970 GTX registry. They won an award at the final Jarrett Dodge All Mopar Show.

Car Dealership to Close After Nearly 70 Years - a sad day in Hatboro

Remnants of reviews on cars.com.

Kavanaugh

Have you ever sexually assaulted anyone?

Not under the standards of the time, but under today's standards.

Have you ever been sexually assaulted?

Have you ever been falsely accused?

Have you ever been 100% sure about something and found out you were wrong?

Can 2 people with completely different stories both be telling the truth? Not necessarily stating facts, but telling what is true to each of them individually in their minds?

I guess it's only fair, for the first time, a rich white man has been lynched over the unsubstantiated word of a white woman.

The whole thing reminds me a heck of a lot of the Joan Allen film, The Contender.

Cool story bro'

Joe Hill and a MA cold case.

Ted Sturgeon would be 100 years old if he weren't dead. He wrote some cool stuff, though.

Kathleen Turner is Great!

In Conversation: Kathleen Turner from Vulture. via Metafilter.

She didn't click with the cast of Friends

Vox talks about Turner's Vulture Interview.

Some stuff from Metafilter

What Happened to General Magic?

The Bullshit Web

Deep into the weeds on color-matching at an auto body shop

My parents just asked me what all this Q stuff is about

Creep

What makes someone creepy? Inspired by Slate's, Is Robin Hanson America's Creepiest Economist? and the Fark response, I began to wonder. Robin Hanson is kind of creepy, but why? Is it simply that he compares a socially acceptable resource deficiency (money) to a socially unacceptable resource deficiency (sex)((Unless you are Rodney Dangerfield, of course)).

An internet search reveals that there has been extensive research into creepiness. Psychology Today points our that men are more likely than women to be creepy and that clowns, taxidermists and morticians have a high creep factor. Many of the other links about "creep factors" refer to the same survey. Bustle points out 8 things that you can do to be creepy (or avoid as the case may be): Stare, avoid eye contact, take pictures, ask personal questions, overshare, focus on one subject, ignore hygiene and show little emotion). OK, it's really 8 habits all creepy people have, but it could be a guide. Quora puts the question out there and gets 15 answers.

Finally, the Scary Pockets cover of Radiohead's "Creep.":

Mallrats

Ian Bogost sort of eulogizes the mall in the Atlantic article When Malls Saved the Suburbs From Despair. It touched a nerve because malls have been integral to my life. As a young child, my parents would take me to Upper Darby's 69th Street or stand-alone stores along Lancaster Pike, but I do remember the occasional foray to the Plaza at King of Prussia. In junior high, I would ride my bike to MacDade Mall, (which doesn't merit a Wikipedia entry, but has closed and re-opened.) As I entered high school, Springfield Mall opened, and I spent quite a bit of time there over the next few years. Come to think of it, Springfield Mall was a pretty regular stop for me until I moved to Florida. In addition to these, Granite Run Mall and Exton Square were frequent haunts.

When I got married and moved to Horsham, my wife was working at the Village Mall. This gave me a sense of deja vu, because the Village Mall was a duplicate of the MacDade Mall in Holmes, PA. Of course, by that time Woolco had been replaced by Bradlee's, but they were still very similar. We did grocery shopping at the Acme, got pizza from Roman Delight, filled our prescriptions at Thrift Drug, bought batteries, switches, and other electronic ephemera at Radio Shack, and went to the movies at the Village Mall Cinema. Over the next 30 years, my wife worked at Willow Grove Mall and Montgomery Mall, and visits for meal breaks eventually included children who just had to visit KayBee Toys and the pet store.

My wife still works as an on-call at Macy's in a mall here in Florida, but things are certainly not the same as 30 or 40 years ago. I certainly spend more at Amazon than I do at any mall, and the Wal-Mart just down the street is the easiest place to go for various household items required on short notice. It would be nice if the mall would morph into something that could fit into our ever-changing society and grow along with it, but that is probably too much to hope for.

BTW, this post has absolutely nothing to do with the Kevin Smith movie, Mallrats. Other than, like the physical mall, Mallrats 2 seems to have died.

Wolves!!

Seacrest Wolf Preserve

Seacrest Wolf Preserve on google mpas

Seacrest Wolf Preserve on Atlas Obsura

Red Wolves

Red Wolf Recover Efforts

Return of the Red Wolf Blog

At the Durham Museum of Life and Science

The Ghouish Game

Is is Hungarian Ghoulish? ABC News says that the game drove a teen to suicide. It struck me as quite similar to the "Fishing Hole" game in Stephen King's "End of Watch." It seems like a Russian dude has been arrested for creating the game. Another article calls out the Stephen King similarity, but says that the Russian dude hasn't provided the impetus behind the game.

Beer

RateBeer

Explore Beers from Lifehacker

What is the Beer Capital of the US?

Science

The article The Problem With the March for Science states thoughts that I have been unable to articulate this clearly for a number of years. It also adds some more irony to Ars Technica's 107 cancer papers retracted due to peer review fraud.

My son, who is an actual scientist, commented:
Parts I found most amusing:

“When a lot of the fake peer reviews first came up, one of the reasons the editors spotted them was that the reviewers responded on time,” Wager told Ars. Reviewers almost always have to be chased, so “this was the red flag.

Fake peer reviewers often “know what a review looks like and know enough to make it look plausible,” said Elizabeth Wager, editor of the journal Research Integrity & Peer Review...I wonder if this journal has the same issues with the peer review process. That would be ironic.

Then again, some sort of response is needed. Attorney General Jeff Sessions' disbanding of the National Commission on Forensic Science was a move that will hurt the effort to prove the science behind "forensic science." Slate's Jeff Sessions Doesn’t Understand the Necessity of Science is perhaps the most thoughtful discussion of the decision I've seen. A quote from Jeff Sessions' decision to cut Department of Justice forensic science commission raises eyebrows says that "...we're going to take this and we're going to put it back in the Department of Justice, create a new office of forensic science. On the surface, that sounds good...The problem of forensic science is that it grew out of an arm of the judiciary, and by putting it back, you basically don't deal with the questions that are being asked from mainstream science." With explanations like that, it's hard not to read ulterior motives into Sessions' actions.

A day later, some more info on "science." Ars Technica again with “Mindless Eating,” or how to send an entire life of research into question describing a social scientist who seems to have a limited grasp on statistics. While I would tend to think that if this were a physicist or chemist or climate researcher, that they would have a better grasp of statistics, I am basing my opinion on conventional wisdom, not any actual review of the relative statistical ability of the scientists in various disciplines.

Farmers

I read two posts on Fivethirtyeight

about farming. Big Farms Are Getting Bigger And Most Small Farms Aren’t Really Farms At All points out the the official definition of a farm has masked the trend to consolidation in farms by including large tracts of land used for single family houses as farms. The follow-up story, Even Mega-Farms Are Mostly Family Owned seems to be a response to the fear of agri-business, that the big farms are still mostly family owned. For the most part, our food is still raised by farm families. They are just bigger farms than in the past.

Flames coming out of where?

Too good not to post
Listen to the video on this Pink New Article - and at 5:37, switch over to The Bangles - Eternal Flame.

Then go read the comments at fark.

Adware / Spyware Removal

I recently wrote up a procedure for a colleague having problems with Adware. I am posting here for my own reference. YMMV; no warranty expressed or implied.

There are 2 kinds of malware that you need to be concerned about – adware and spyware.

Here are some articles about removing them: This one is about removing Adware from Google Chrome. Ignore it if you are using a different browser. This is a Spyware removal article from PC World. You should read it, but not necessarily follow the instructions.

My first suggestion is to make sure your anti-virus on your computer is up to date. If you don’t have an anti-virus program, the first thing you should do is download Microsoft Security Essentials and install it. It’s free, it’s from Microsoft, and it works as well as any of the free anti-virus programs out there.

Once your anti-virus is up to date and you have scanned your computer, I recommend moving on to Ad-Aware. For Ad-Aware and the rest of the following programs I recommend in these instructions, make sure that you “un-check” any additional software that may be piggy-backing with the free software. This can be other anti-virus programs, pdf programs, video programs, etc. The software publishers include these to allow them to offer their free versions, but the reputable publishers allow you to opt out. AFAIK, there are not any surprise programs installed with anything I recommend here.

If the problem persists at this point, there is other software available for removing Spyware/Adware/Malware. I suggest trying them in this order:

Spybot Free

Malware Bytes Anti Malware Free

SUPERAntiSpyware Free

Give each program time to solve the problem. (Intall, scan, run the computer for a day or 2). If it solves the problem, keep it. If it doesn’t, uninstall the program, (but always keep an anti-virus program such as Microsoft Security Essentials on your computer).

Depressing News of the Day

Some really depressing news out there
Gang memebers kill 9 year old because DNA

Louisiana Law Enforcement shoot first grader because they can.

Puppy Happy Dance

Babies, Buble & Adele Dazeem

Some videos for your viewing pleasure

This little boy is exasperated:

So exasperated, he got to appear on Ellen:


The official video for Michael and Idina's "Baby It's Cold Outside":

Live on the X-factor in the UK:

Merry Christimas!

Some stuff from early December 2014

Shopping mall pictures from 1989 - all I can say is "why?"

Helen DeWitt wrote a second novel - apparently it is some kind of sex comedy.

Myopia is on the rise - Can I do it until I need glasses?