foxbat

There's a little "reliving the event" from the other side that impacts many kids that do activities like this. That juxtaposition is good for realizing that A LOT goes in to making Friday Night happen. One of the things that I remember when my boys' teams went to lay wreaths is that they just didn't lay wreaths and leave. Part of the process was to say the person's name out loud and perhaps thank them for their service. For my boys, they also kept the tags that were on the wreaths and also took a picture of each tombstone as a reminder. For my boys, the event resonated with them more so as they thought about what they were doing in more than just doing the laying of the wreaths. It also brought about dialogue about the various military conflicts and wars and where our family's members fit in to that as their grandfathers on each side both served ... my dad in the Air Force and my wife's father in the Navy.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/new-caledonian-crows-are-even-smarter-and-scarier-than-we-thought?utm_source=pocket-newtab FTA: In a 2018 paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, a team of researchers showed evidence that New Caledonian crows, which have been observed making several types of tools out of sticks, may be able to build tools from memory — even if they have only seen the tool itself and haven’t ever seen the tool being constructed. This suggests that crows can form a “mental template” of tools based on other crows’ tools and their own past tools, which would explain why New Caledonian crows’ tools could have improved over time.

The start of the summer horror movie season is earlier than usual. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/trump-slams-federal-reserve-pathetic-slow-moving-tweet-rates-coronavirus-2020-3-1028981439

Are we going to need to send in the online betting intervention team? 😃

Similarly, the two "pieces of bread" that you selected would have been a whole lot better without the rest of the sandwich. As I originally stated, "Seems to be plenty of that going around ..."

While this is for baseball, my boys play travel ball in the Harrison program, I was pleased to see that they've done community service activities. One of my boys' teams volunteered their time at the local food pantry stocking and prepping distribution bags. Another one met and had lunch as a team and then went shopping at Christmas for a local kid that the team "adopted" for Christmas. Both boys' teams also participated in an event where they laid wreaths on the graves of the veterans at Indiana Veterans' Home Cemetery.

Yep ... although retirement's a little closer. Gotta admit though, in my younger day's when I used to day trade, there was an "addictive" level to it. Nowadays, I'm addicted to watching my dividends reinvested.

I stand corrected. Edit: Of interest is a comparison of the various strains given spread and mortality. https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-compared-to-sars-swine-flu-mers-zika-2020-3

Did you find a neck brace in there too? The whiplash from the market movements are going to be enough to snap the head right from the shoulders. 😀 My financial advisor touched base with me yesterday and I'm meeting with him Thursday ... it's actually just a regular check-up, but the timing makes it seem sinister. Based on all of our previous meetings, we'll probably talk money for 5 minutes and football for 55 minutes. The only thing that would make it better is if we were doing it over a beer.

I believe he was referring to another poster's insistence that that 3.5% that you quoted is media fabrication and hype.

Sure. And I'll do it the same way, "Turn this primary from a campaign that’s about negative attacks into one about moving forward."

Seems to be plenty of that going around ... The President's response to moderator Martha MacCallum's question, " "Because the issue of pre-existing conditions, you say you're going to protect them. ... But your administration is also fighting Obamacare in the courts. So how do you promise you're going to protect them ... based on that?": "Yeah. That's what I said. We want to terminate Obamacare because it's bad. Look, we're running it really well, but we know it's defective. It's very defective. We got rid of the worst part. And that was a very important thing. You know getting rid of the individual mandate was a very important thing. But we want to get something — if we can get the House, you'll have the best healthcare and health insurance anywhere on the planet. But we have to get the House back. Now, that means we have to hold the Senate. We have to get the House. We have to, obviously, keep the White House. But, what we're doing is managing it really well. Now, it's a case; it's called Texas vs. — you understand — it's Texas who is suing. They want to terminate it. But everybody there is also saying, and everybody — we have our great senator from Pennsylvania. Thank you very much, Pat, for being here. (Applause.) And Pat Toomey. And — but, very important — and our — by the way, our great congressmen, I have to say, they were warriors. Right? Real warriors, in terms of the fake impeachment. I will tell you that. (Applause.) But, so Texas is trying — and it's Texas and many states — they're trying to terminate, but they want to put something that's much better. They're terminating it to put much better. And they've all pledged that preexisting conditions, 100 percent taken care of. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-fox-news-town-hall-scranton-pa/

I was speaking to the idea that such an act doesn't preclude one from being a racist. Strom Thurmond also paid for college for his daughter who attended an HBCU. I think we'd have trouble posting a line like "Strom Thurmond paid for an HBCU college education for his mixed-race daughter. I sure wish Senator Thurmond wasn't so racist." I don't have an issue with the posting of the act of the nomination, but I did not see it, as seemed to be alluded to, as somehow providing evidence that the President isn't racist or doesn't have racist tendencies. I do find the timing interesting ... on the heels of the South Carolina primary ... when talk of Black support for Biden compared to Sanders was at the forefront of several media coverages. A prime opportunity to blunt said news and for the President and/or White House to say "me too."

A very curious read indeed ... https://aeon.co/essays/why-dont-rats-get-the-same-ethical-protections-as-primates?utm_source=pocket-newtab FTA: In the late 1990s, Jaak Panksepp, the father of affective neuroscience, discovered that rats laugh. This fact had remained hidden because rats laugh in ultrasonic chirps that we can’t hear. It was only when Brian Knutson, a member of Panksepp’s lab, started to monitor their vocalisations during social play that he realised there was something that appeared unexpectedly similar to human laughter. Panksepp and his team began to systematically study this phenomenon by tickling the rats and measuring their response. They found that the rats’ vocalisations more than doubled during tickling, and that rats bonded with the ticklers, approaching them more frequently for social play. The rats were enjoying themselves. But the discovery was met with opposition from the scientific community. The world wasn’t ready for laughing rats. That discovery was just the tip of the iceberg. We now know that rats don’t live merely in the present, but are capable of reliving memories of past experiences and mentally planning ahead the navigation route they will later follow. They reciprocally trade different kinds of goods with each other – and understand not only when they owe a favour to another rat, but also that the favour can be paid back in a different currency. When they make a wrong choice, they display something that appears very close to regret. Despite having brains that are much simpler than humans’, there are some learning tasks in which they’ll likely outperform you. Rats can be taught cognitively demanding skills, such as driving a vehicle to reach a desired goal, playing hide-and-seek with a human, and using the appropriate tool to access out-of-reach food. The most unexpected discovery, however, was that rats are capable of empathy. Since the 1950s and ’60s, behavioural studies have consistently shown that rats are far from the egoistic, self-centred creatures that their popular image suggests. It all began with a study in which the rats refused to press a lever to obtain food when that lever also delivered a shock to a fellow rat in an adjacent cage. The rats would rather starve than witness a rat suffering. Follow-up studies found that rats would press a lever to lower a rat who was suspended from a harness; that they would refuse to walk down a path in a maze if it resulted in a shock delivered to another rat; and that rats who had been shocked themselves were less likely to allow other rats to be shocked, having been through the discomfort themselves. Rats care for one another.

A very curious read indeed ... https://aeon.co/essays/why-dont-rats-get-the-same-ethical-protections-as-primates?utm_source=pocket-newtab FTA: In the late 1990s, Jaak Panksepp, the father of affective neuroscience, discovered that rats laugh. This fact had remained hidden because rats laugh in ultrasonic chirps that we can’t hear. It was only when Brian Knutson, a member of Panksepp’s lab, started to monitor their vocalisations during social play that he realised there was something that appeared unexpectedly similar to human laughter. Panksepp and his team began to systematically study this phenomenon by tickling the rats and measuring their response. They found that the rats’ vocalisations more than doubled during tickling, and that rats bonded with the ticklers, approaching them more frequently for social play. The rats were enjoying themselves. But the discovery was met with opposition from the scientific community. The world wasn’t ready for laughing rats. That discovery was just the tip of the iceberg. We now know that rats don’t live merely in the present, but are capable of reliving memories of past experiences and mentally planning ahead the navigation route they will later follow. They reciprocally trade different kinds of goods with each other – and understand not only when they owe a favour to another rat, but also that the favour can be paid back in a different currency. When they make a wrong choice, they display something that appears very close to regret. Despite having brains that are much simpler than humans’, there are some learning tasks in which they’ll likely outperform you. Rats can be taught cognitively demanding skills, such as driving a vehicle to reach a desired goal, playing hide-and-seek with a human, and using the appropriate tool to access out-of-reach food. The most unexpected discovery, however, was that rats are capable of empathy. Since the 1950s and ’60s, behavioural studies have consistently shown that rats are far from the egoistic, self-centred creatures that their popular image suggests. It all began with a study in which the rats refused to press a lever to obtain food when that lever also delivered a shock to a fellow rat in an adjacent cage. The rats would rather starve than witness a rat suffering. Follow-up studies found that rats would press a lever to lower a rat who was suspended from a harness; that they would refuse to walk down a path in a maze if it resulted in a shock delivered to another rat; and that rats who had been shocked themselves were less likely to allow other rats to be shocked, having been through the discomfort themselves. Rats care for one another.

I feel the same way.

My wife and I were discussing this the other day when we were counting our blessings. Our daughter was heading to the dentist's office and was getting the 2nd of four procedures that she had scheduled. We were talking about how, after the second one, we will have exhausted the FSA, but still had plenty in the HSA and also still had some remaining insurance coverage on the procedures. We were wondering what would be the outcome if we didn't have the insurance and if we didn't have the extra money at the end of the month, the savings, etc. to cover these kinds of things. The realization is that we'd probably have to cut out some of the fillings or wait on treatment, etc. We discussed the reality that there are so many other people that don't even have the luxury that we do to even conjecture about what would be done if the money wasn't there. For so many, that question of rent vs. healthcare or eat vs. healthcare isn't even a question. That office furniture stipend seems like one of the first things that should probably go long before any cuts are made any where else. You'd think the furniture would just stay with the office and that's what you get when you are hired on. That's $4 million right there. Bring the bean bag chair from the basement playroom if there's extra seating needed.

Mulvaney is out ... https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/06/politics/trump-mulvaney-out/index.html FTA: President Donald Trump announced late Friday that he was replacing his acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, with Republican Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina, a shake-up in the top echelons of the West Wing just as the President confronts a growing public health crisis and girds for reelection. Meadows, who had previously announced he was leaving Congress, will become Trump's fourth chief of staff in a little more than three years in office. In a tweet, Trump did not denote him "acting," a designation Mulvaney never graduated from in the turbulent 14 months he spent in the job. "I am pleased to announce that Congressman Mark Meadows will become White House Chief of Staff. I have long known and worked with Mark, and the relationship is a very good one," Trump tweeted Friday just after arriving at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Trump, who did not immediately offer an explanation for the swap, thanked Mulvaney and said he would become special envoy for Northern Ireland.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

You do realize that Strom Thurmond, who ran most of his political career on a segregationist platform, had a mixed-race daughter as a result of a liaison with the family's Black maid?

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how-the-beatles-wrote-a-day-in-the-life?utm_source=pocket-newtab FTA: “A Day in the Life” isn’t a song to sing, as are “Eleanor Rigby” (ideal for both car and karaoke), “Hey Jude” (written to soothe John Lennon’s young son, no lullaby works better at children’s bedtime), or “In My Life” (a perennial at weddings and funerals and, I can’t help mentioning, rock’s analog to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116). Nor is “A Day in the Life” guided by melody like so many Beatles creations. It’s an elaborate production, filled with sophisticated George Martin and Geoff Emerick musical trickery (distortion, echo, dubbing, reverb). An orchestra plays, and then one singer’s voice gives way to another’s—John’s worldly reflections transitioning to Paul’s sketch of domestic memoir, and then back again—before orchestral cataclysm and a final resting place.

In some cases, humans? Especially gangs and to a larger degree countries?

As long as you aren't wasting it as hand sanitizer. 😀 https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/05/us/titos-vodka-coronavirus-trnd/index.html