WHY NOT TO WORRY ABOUT THE TURNOVER OF THE INTERNET
There's been a lot of concern recently about the “takeover of the Internet.” Yesterday (10/17), news reports broke that the lawsuit of four states suing the US for the Internet turnover has been dropped.
Here’s why not to worry about it. There’s something else to worry about instead.
The organization being handed to an “international body” is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN.
ICANN runs the DNS system that allows you to type in something like mysite.com, rather than something like 237.57.364.1. The root servers that people talk about keep track of all those numbers and names.
So, could the international group play ugly games with ICANN? It's possible, of course, but unlikely. ICANN really isn't very important anymore, save for political bragging rights. Here are some of the reasons why:
Join the forum discussion on this postGLOBAL WARMING VERSUS GLOBAL GREENING
[This is Matt Ridley’s full lecture delivered Monday, 10/16, at the Royal Society of London, the oldest – founded in 1660 – and one of the most prestigious institutions of science in the world. Ridley’s lecture will likely be considered the currently definitive refutation of the fraudulent doomsday science of Man Made Global Warming. –JW]
Matt Ridley
I am a passionate champion of science.
I have devoted most of my career to celebrating and chronicling scientific discovery. I think the scientific method is humankind’s greatest achievement, and that there is no higher calling.
So what I am about to say this evening about the state of climate science is not in any sense anti-science. It is anti-the distortion and betrayal of science.
I am still in love with science as a philosophy; I greatly admire and like the vast majority of scientists I meet; but I am increasingly disaffected from science as an institution.
The way it handles climate change is a big part of the reason.
After covering global warming debates as a journalist on and off for almost 30 years, with initial credulity, then growing skepticism, I have come to the conclusion that the risk of dangerous global warming, now and in the future, has been greatly exaggerated while the policies enacted to mitigate the risk have done more harm than good, both economically and environmentally, and will continue to do so.
And I am treated as some kind of pariah for coming to this conclusion.
Why do I think the risk from global warming is being exaggerated? For four principal reasons.
WHAT ARE EMOTIONS ANYWAY?
Back in the days of Sigmund Freud, the world was powered by steam. Everything was pressure, force, heat, release of pressure, explosive pressure. Pressure, pressure, pressure…
Because we tend to understand ourselves in relation to the world we live in, Freud and his students created explanations for emotions, drives and instincts in terms of build-up and release, just like the steam engines of their time.
This formed the basis of the charge/discharge theories of emotional release that were influential in psychotherapy and pop psychology in the 1960s and ‘70s, and into the ‘80s.
Fortunately for us, we aren’t steam engines. We’re also not computers either. The best that such explanations do is give us the illusion that we understand ourselves through an analogy or metaphor.
Analogies and metaphors are fine as far as they go, but the computer analogy doesn’t do justice to the complexity of our creative, living systems. And the steam engine analogy doesn’t do justice to our emotions.
So just what are emotions, anyway?
LOOKING UP
News Headlines This Week:
Over 250,000 to Lose Health Insurance in Battleground North Carolina Due to Obamacare (10/16)
Obamacare Rate Hikes for 2017 Even Bigger Than Expected (10/19)
The Simple Reason Why Obamacare Is Dying (10/20
Obama Compares Obamacare To Phones That Literally Explode (10/21)
HALF-FULL REPORT 10/14/16
That’s the question of the week, isn’t it? “Important for whom?” is the follow-up question. It’s critically important for the Pub Elite because “We’ll control the rubble,” as I wrote about on Wednesday (10/12).
But is it important for the rest of us? The Pubs will say it is, so their majorities in Congress will block her lawlessness and Scotus appointments. The riposte is, you didn’t stand up to Zero for 8 years, so how can we possibly believe you’ll stand up to her?
We are now 25 days away from knowing whether America has a future or not. Right now it’s looking like the latter.
The entirety of the corporate media has abandoned the slightest pretense of any objectivity whatever and is waging an all-out war of Trump, with every lie, smear, and distortion they can dream up.
“There is nothing the political establishment will not do — no lie that they won’t tell, to hold their prestige and power at your expense,” said Trump yesterday (10/13). Their pathological perfidy is directed at him because, “our campaign represents a true existential threat like they haven’t seen before.”
“This is our moment of reckoning as a society and as a civilization itself.” Trump said that last night, and he is right.
“BUT WE’LL CONTROL THE RUBBLE”
Tirana, Albania. Welcome to the most pro-American country in the world. From groups of young college kids to now-elderly former political prisoners of Communist dictator Enver Hoxha, you won’t find a country that loves America more.
To Albanians, America is the world’s beacon of hope, the nation that epitomizes freedom from tyranny. We Americans, under “the great Ronald Reagan,” are the people that won the Cold War, who liberated them and so many others from the curse of the Soviet Union.
Which is why they are puzzled and scared today that the man who represents America to Albania, Ambassador Donald Lu, is completely in bed with the criminal gang that currently runs the government of their country.
Yesterday (10/11), The Hill (the newspaper of record for Capitol Hill in Washington) ran a story detailing how Prime Minister Edi Rama and his Interior Minister Saimir Tahiri are in effect business partners with gangsters and ISIS terrorists who have turned Albania into Europe’s greatest drug haven.
There is no more rule of law in Albania today because Rama has used hundreds of millions of drug dollars to put police chiefs, customs inspectors, judges, and a myriad of politicians and other officials on his payroll. And of course journalists, making the Albanian Enemedia his poodle.
Albanians are losing hope for their future. The one hope they are clinging to right now is that Donald Trump will be our next president. “He is a strong man, not a weak man like Obama,” I was told over and again. “We do not trust Mrs. Clinton to be any different than Obama, while we are sure that Mr. Trump will be Obama’s opposite.”
Unspoken was their deepest fear – that a Hillary Presidency will be a criminally corrupt conspiracy that will end the rule of law in America as it has been ended in Albania.
And with the extinguishing of America as the world’s beacon of hope, what chance do the small powerless countries of the world have?
Indeed, what chance do we in America have?
This is why Republicans in Congress abandoning Trump for locker room talk 11 years ago is so monumentally cowardly and stupid it is they who should quit their races for elective office, not Trump. Then again, what they’re doing could be far worse than just cowardice.
OUR CIVILIZATION IS AT A CROSSROADS OF HISTORY
[This is the full video and text of Donald Trump’s speech in West Palm Beach yesterday (10/13). TTP could not encourage you more strongly to watch and read it entire.]
Thank you, folks. It’s great to be right here in Florida, which we love.
In 26 days, we are going to win this great, great state and we are going to win the White House.
Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt — now, when I say “corrupt,” I’m talking about totally corrupt — political establishment, with a new government controlled by you, the American people.
There is nothing the political establishment will not do — no lie that they won’t tell, to hold their prestige and power at your expense. And that’s what’s been happening.
The Washington establishment and the financial and media corporations that fund it exist for only one reason: to protect and enrich itself.
The establishment has trillions of dollars at stake in this election. For those who control the levers of power in Washington, and for the global special interests, our campaign represents a true existential threat like they haven’t seen before.
This is not simply another four-year election. This is a crossroads in the history of our civilization that will determine whether or not we the people reclaim control over our government.
CLINTON CORRUPTION AND THE END OF THE RULE OF LAW IN AMERICA
If all that mattered in this election is which candidate is the most vulgar, Donald Trump would get fewer votes.
But thoughtful people who despise him will vote for Trump because the rule of law is on the ballot too.
The most dismaying – and underreported – news dribbling out of Washington in recent weeks is that under Director James Comey, the FBI is now as corrupt as the IRS and the VA.
The investigation of Hillary Clinton was a sham, the FBI’s data drops late Friday afternoons make clear. The fix was in all along.
The evidence that FBI Director James Comey is willing to destroy the legitimacy of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency to protect Mrs. Clinton from prosecution is becoming overwhelming.
THE LITTLE PEOPLE HAVE HAD ENOUGH
Nigel Farage enjoying his favorite beverage
There are fewer than 30 days to go before the US presidential election.
It is a campaign which mirrors many of the arguments and conflicts that we have seen recently in British politics, especially during the recent Brexit referendum campaign. Essentially, this election is about continuity versus change, with huge doses of personal vitriol thrown in.
When I arrived at the Republican Party convention in Cleveland, Ohio back in July, I was amazed at the reaction to me over the Brexit result.
One thing is for certain: our successful Brexit referendum is being talked about the world over and it may well be the first kick-back against the status quo that leads to a popular revolt across the West.
Like him or loathe him, Trump is not a part of the political elite and he most certainly is not constrained by political correctness. This is why he is the leader of this popular revolt in America.
In fact, I believe we are witnessing a popular uprising against failed politics on a global scale – and that if Trump wins in November, he will be the leader of it not just in the US but world-wide.
THE NEW WAR BETWEEN THE STATES
Joel Kotkin
In this disgusting election, dominated by the personal and the petty, the importance of the nation’s economic geography has been widely ignored.
Yet if you look at the Electoral College map, the correlation between politics and economics is quite stark, with one economy tilting decisively toward Trump and more generally to Republicans, the other toward Hillary Clinton and her Democrat allies.
This reflects an increasingly stark conflict between two very different American economies.
Ephemeral vs. Heartland
One, the “Ephemeral Zone” concentrated on the coasts, runs largely on digits and images, the movement of software, media and financial transactions. It produces increasingly little in the way of food, fiber, energy and fewer and fewer manufactured goods.
The Ephemeral sectors dominate ultra-blue states such as New York, California, Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Connecticut.
The other America constitutes, as economic historian Michael Lind notes in a forthcoming paper for the Center for Opportunity Urbanism, the “New Heartland.” Extending from the Appalachians to the Rockies, this heartland economy relies on tangible goods production.
It now encompasses both the traditional Midwest manufacturing regions, and the new industrial areas of Texas, the Southeast and the Intermountain West.
Contrary to the notions of the Ephemerals, the New Heartland is not populated by Neanderthals. This region employs much of the nation’s engineering talent, but does so in conjunction with the creation of real goods rather than clicks.