Much Better

aurora_iss_wheelock_25july2010_900x500

I finally rushed to the library to drop off the terrible book that took me ten weeks to read. It was time to change-up and get back to reading enjoyment, instead of pain, suffering and intellectual torture. I cruised the book racks looking for something to jump out and yell, “take me.”

Three rounds of staring at covers, titles and authors set a new record for me. Usually I find something within a round and a half. I finally decided to read Steven King. I have avoided him for years. Mostly because of all the things I have heard about his books being weird. It was time to break through the barrier of ignorance and decide for myself what he was like as an author. I know he is a progressive nut job in his politics which puts him on my hit list of people to avoid.

The book I picked up is “Elevation.” A mere two hundred and fifty-eight pages of very large print. It took me three hours to finish. What a joy it was to read a story and not some obnoxious author’s brain dump about a genius mathematician. Elevation is a story about real people with real problems except one who has an exceptional problem. The problem is so weird that the character is afraid go to a doctor to learn what it is. I guess this is the weird Stephen King coming into play. The story has a sad but happy ending which I loved. Elevation is a good short read well worth the time.

Our Unfair Tax System Explained in Beer

I Finally Finished


In my old age I should know better than to struggle for twelve weeks to finish reading a book. My time on earth is rapidly diminishing and reading useless literature is not what I want to be known for. The book that almost broke my back is Alan Turing: The Enigma. I love the story of the Enigma. It is an important piece of WWII history. A machine invented by the Germans to scramble messages, it drove the British nuts. I saw the movie Imitation Game and loved the story. Following my rule that a book is usually  better than the movie I trusted my fellow reading club members that this was still true. Except, in this case the movie is infinitely better.

Who ever this author Andrew Hodges is, I will never read another of his works. This work is over six hundred pages of small print. The story could have been cut in half that amount of words and pages. True, trying to describe a mathematician’s work process and ideas is trying. None of Hodges’ descriptions of Turing’s early work while inventing the modern digital computer was understandable. The only way I was able to decipher what he was trying to say was by looking at Turing’s sketches of his early machine which contained a series of zeros and ones. It was then that I began to understand some of his gibberish. I learned to program an early digital computer using binary numbers which was the basis of the machine i learned to program.

This story convinced me that I abhor intellectual work and should refrain from reading it. I love good stories. I hate reading math books. Even a physics book is more exciting than a math book. Alan Turing was a pure mathematician and Hodges failed to tell his story in a simple understandable way. The last two hundred pages finally started to read well, but by then the story drifted away from math and toward the man and his life struggles.

I also like stories with short chapters. This work has boring with long chapters of a hundred pages or more. The chapters could be shorter. The author may have decided to cut some of them had he done so.

All in all, if you want to learn the story of the Enigma go see the movie “The Imitation Game.”

Five ughs.

What Mexico Will Pay For

President Trump is in trouble now that he is building the wall. It seems, we the people are not satisfied that he is batting well over .750 on his campaign promises, we insist that he get Mexico to pay for the wall (a baseball player with a 0.750 batting average will earn millions of dollars). It is, and was my opinion that Mexico will never pay for the wall or any part of  it. They will however spend some money to build a new Federal Highway number E-W for East-West. This new super highway will stretch from the Pacific ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. It will parallel within the shadow of any wall the United States will complete.

Why will they spend money on an East West road? Simply to give people a way to get to the end of the wall segments. Central Americans and Mexicans are very resourceful and will find ways to get into the Promised Land. Think about the money the Coyotes will make transporting bus loads of immigrants along a high-speed corridor avoiding all surveillance by the US Border patrol. The bus will stop at various points along the route to allow passengers off within a short walking distance of the border. If and when the wall gets longer, the bus merely travels to the end of the new section to let the passengers off. Busses will move East to West with occasional reverses to confuse any surveillance of border activity.

Currently our border patrol is advising the President to build sections of fence that will cut crossings at the points most used. I have already read reports that crossers are moving to the end of the fence to walk over the border. With a high-speed air-conditioned bus to move them, and to confound border patrol technology in these areas the flow of illegals will increase. Coyotes will outwit the border patrol by running decoy tour busses along the fence and by stopping randomly to have a picnic.

Socialists in Congress (often called democrats) will continue to stall, cry, bellow, and rant that there is no need for a wall. The Communist manifesto decrees that the country be divided (“A House against itself cannot divided cannot stand.”  Abraham Lincoln). Lincoln was not a communist but communists want to destroy America and dividing the nation is one of their goals. Obama further divided us and his party is continuing the legacy.

The President will continue to build the wall in segments as he finds money. In the meantime thousands of people will continue to enter the country through the breaks. They will get in using every port of entry. Next, we will need a fence across the Northern border. Once we complete the northern fence, Intruders will use ships to land on beach heads along both coasts, like the Army did at Normandy. I can also imagine people jumping out of airplanes and parachuting in.

What we have in our country is something everyone wants, i.e. freedom and liberty, but we are also a Nations of laws. We welcome new people but we want them to come lawfully. How many countries in the world allow one million immigrants to enter yearly? The answer is one, the USA.

Artificial Intelligence vs Common Sense

 

It has been several years since my last cartoon. I took a rest from drawing political opinion cartoons. I actually had a cartoonist block. The pictures didn’t come to me, but this morning I got a message and had to go to work.

The debate which is no longer a debate about building a wall has broken my block. I can’t stand it any longer Nancy has to be taken out via cartoons. Her Senate husband Chuckie Schumer is her sidekick. They are as easy a target as Obama and Hillary were.  The sad part of this plan is that Nancy and Chuck are too dense to understand how stupid they are. Stupid is as Communists Do. Their vision for America is to make it like Socialist.

There is an interesting rumor floating on the internet that past Mexican President Pena Nieto took a $100 million dollar bribe from a drug cartel. This part of the rumor is pretty solid, but attached to it is secondary rumor that Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer also took bribes from the cartels and this is the reason for their obstinacy to deny money to build a wall. It makes some sense to me, but I am a sucker for a good conspiracy theory.

What ever Nancy and Chuck’s motives are they are dug in will not do what is right for the country. They are so self-centered that only their own personal lives are important to them. This attitude should be grounds for impeaching them.

The democrats are solidly pushing the use of technology to keep border jumping to a minimum. Since Nancy lives in the San Francisco area which is close to Silicone Valley it occurs to me that collusion may be in play. Democrats will call it lobbying. The only technology that I can think of that they would want get government funding for is Artificial Intelligence. Why spend stock holder money to test your latest toy when Uncle is salivating for a new hole into which he can pour money? Any combination of technology is easily beatable by people with an average brain and some common sense. Americans love technology as a way to solve every problem. We have the 911 system to save us from all kinds of harm. Having a heart attack?  Call 911, someone is breaking down you door and he has a gun, dial 911. When my wife had her heart attack, and I finally dialed 911 it took them five minutes to arrive at my door, and I lived four miles from the firehouse. When ICE gets a 911 call from a drone or a sensor in the desert, how long will the response time be? When you have a heart attack the responders can expect to find you at the address you give them. Will it be the same in the desert when the call comes in? Will the illegals stay put to wait for ICE to show up? Oh, but with artificial intelligence the system will find and track the culprits as they continue to their next rendezvous. This smacks of an “all-seeing, all-knowing” entity which Sister Flora  taught me is God. This fits right into the Democrat scheme to spend an infinite amount of money on a system that is infinite in scope. Maybe it is my naïvety but common sense tells me the wall is a better deal.