So, had a discussion with somebody who's the polar opposite of me politically. His comment was "You're the first person on the left who hasn't immediately screamed racist or sexist when disagreeing with me." Pleasant fellow. Served In Vietnam, which I thanked him for and he appreciated my service in Iraq.. We both agreed Hillary sucks. He's anti-union because of experience with bad union reps, I'm pro-union because I have had good experiences. He feels Bernie will take too much money from the middle class, which is why he won't support him. I emphasized the benefits of public works and likened single payer to a public work, like the space program, which always proved beneficial to the people. He pointed out, rightly, that the space program has been gutted. Don't think I changed his mind, but at least got him to concede the value of group effort. I call that a win.

In entertainment, I'm REALLY sick of a group of internet "Experts" who are dead set on ruining my favorite SF series because they claim that it isn't sufficiently anti-southern. I LIKE Firefly, dammit. The civil war in it is NOT our Civil War, and while elements were taken, there was no race-based slavery, and why are we even talking about this? Part of the element of the old west stories was that the civil war HAPPENED and that many people who lost went west. This does not mean we need to agonize about how horrible the people were during the war that led to the old west. It's idealized, like any good fiction. The actions of the characters speak FAR louder than any possible parallels that you are CHOOSING to drag into the stories which have very clear messages. Corporations screw over the little guys- The little guys don't always win, but they damn sure TRY. I can get behind that story. I don't need to be told "Well, actually the corporations are making life better for everyone..." Which is always the mantra of those defending the rich. Let me have my escapism, and you can enjoy your Trek, where the big glamorous ships are always on the side of "right" even when they are being completely arbitrary about what they will and will not find acceptable!

And I've been tweeting a lot about #Imnotashamed, which is an attempt to end the mental health stigma. Mostly put on by one actress in NY, I'm trying to support what she's trying to do, because dammit, the only time this ever comes up in the national dialogue it's to drag attention away from guns.

how much I love the number "one" and how much I hate the number "zero". Luckily you will never write an OT on the number "zero" and that's good, my rants over the zeros would just zero out all the numbers and everything left would be just zero, nothing, nada.

So, why do they say this is "ground zero", if from ground zero there is build something not equal zero? Zero hour? What's that supposed to be?

hmm, I going to hug my "ones", they stay the same whatever people try to do to them. That's very reassuring.

I am trying to live out and beyond the zero hour. Wish me luck.

biggest ponzi in the world

Twenty one executives from China’s largest peer-to-peer money lending platform have been arrested, on suspicion of fleecing investors of 50 billion yuan ($7.6 billion).

Police allege that the senior management of Ezubao stole that much from 900,000 investors nationwide, which would make it China’s largest-ever case of investor fraud, by both cash value and the number of victims. By number of victims, it would be the largest Ponzi scheme in the world.

At least two suspects have already confessed in police detention centers, according to a report by Xinhua (link in Chinese), China’s state-run news wire. Zhang Min, the former president of Yucheng Group, the lending scheme’s parent company, reportedly described the business as “a complete Ponzi scheme.”

link

As fourth quarter earnings start trickling in, lots of losses are piling up in the shale industry and another round of cuts are expected.

Over the next week or so, the U.S. oil and gas industry could announce more than $15 billion in losses for 2015, according to Bloomberg.

On January 26, Hess Corporation reported a net loss of $3 billion for the full-year of 2015, with a $1.8 billion loss in the fourth quarter alone. Production was flat at 362,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d), but the company also had to reduce its estimated recoverable reserves because of lower oil prices. Hess had proved reserves of 1.086 billion boe, down from 1.431 billion boe a year earlier, or a reduction of 25 percent. Hess will also slash spending this year by 40 percent to $2.4 billion.

On January 27, Murphy Oil announced a loss of $2.27 billion for the year. Murphy also slashed capex plans for 2016 by 62 percent compared to last year’s spending levels. Anadarko is set to announce on Feb. 1, and at the time of this writing, expectations are for a full-year $6 billion loss.

Continental Resources announced some pretty severe cuts on January 26 to its 2016 spending program. The Oklahoma City-based shale driller said that it will spend $920 million this year, a 66 percent cut from the $2.7 billion it spent in 2015.

love that song! Any OT with her, the Beatles, the Everlys AND Ovid jumps to the top of my fave OTs.

Meanwhile, since there was no year zero Ovid could have written The Art of Love and Metamorphoses a week apart. People back then were even more lost in time than we are. Let's face it. We're somewhere in the universe, now (whenever that may be, relative to any event). We currently are 2015+ years away from a certain possible event but why that one? Some use the number of years since Adam. People were painting caves about 25,000 years before Adam, however.

I think using the probable rough estimate of the age of the Earth is too unwieldy, especially because it is an estimate. We could have a big party and celebrate the year 6,000,000,000 but what if that year was really 5 years ago? Or 10,000,000 years ago? I know I'd feel funny about it. A numbers like 2016 is easier to deal with mentally, and I think it's preferable to "the 7th year of the Presidency of Obama".

... the holocaust. This is the latest example, which proves my point, I think. I am not good at translating the article Doku über KZ-Film von Jerry Lewis: Mit freundlicher Unterstützung der SS

This a documentary film by Erich Fiedler from the German Radio and TV channel NDR telling the story abou Jerry Lewis's attempt to make a comedy film about children being lead into the gas chambers of a KZ, called "The Day the Clown Cried". He failed and never finished the movie. The original movie was never shown.

Well, may be only a comedian can come up with such an idea, but what do I know. Jerry Lewis failed badly and never got over it too. So be it.

"Where's the comedy, if one leads 65 children into the gas chamber?" Jerry Lewis talks himself into a rage, and it sounds as if he were angry mainly about himself. It's about a film project with which he has failed over 40 years ago: the Holocaust tragicomedy "The Day The Clown Cried," in which he plays a German clown who accompanies a group of children in her death.

Lewis had also directed this film project in 1972 in Sweden. There he rebuild a concentration camp. While he searched for actresses on site, he asked Ingmar Bergman for help. He calculated it would take a four months shooting period. But the work was never completely finished, it is one of the great mythical lost movies. In the US research library Library of Congress a stored copy is supposedly kept, but that one can't be shown before 2015 due to legal issues. Eric Fiedler has now in an elaborate investigation searched for the reasons why this this mammoth project failed. Was it because of the circumstances - or may be because of the doubts Jerry Lewis had himself?
...
In March Jerry Lewis will be 90 years old ; he speaks in Friedler's documentary about the film "The Clown " and indulges himself in self-destruction: " There is no day in my life where I do not think of this movie ," he says . The blame for the disaster he blames at least in parts to himself. "Certainly 20 times I broke down while shooting. In my attempt to transfer this great crime against humanity over from reality into a fiction movie, the horrors of the holocasut occupied all my thoughts and feelings. I was so concerned that the movie slipped away. "

There are other films like "Life is beautiful" that deal with children during the holocaust time that were awarded and praised, but that was at a much later time (another generational audience as well). What shocked me the most is that Jerry Lewis apparently was tremendously naive or plain stupid. Sorry, but ...I mean, can you believe THAT?

Lewis broke new ground - and in some cases with an appalling naivete . Inconceivable from today's perspective: He hired a former SS man to represent the conditions in the camp can authentically . Lewis : "I had as my technical advisers a wonderful man, he was in the SS responsible for the concentration camps , he had murdered people , every day . "

He was kindly supported by the SS? A war criminals as a consultant? in the ARD interview Lewis sees it from the conciliatory side: " He begged constantly for forgiveness . I said, 'You did not do anything wrong. Had you refused you would happen to you the same thing that is happening to the other . '

Did anyone lost something to not have seen the movie?

Someone has seen the movie a long time ago, at least large cutouts : the comedian Harry Shearer, known as synchronous voice at the " Simpsons " . He says in the ARD documentation : "This film is not funny. " And he looks as if he had looked into hell.

Yeah, not funny. As many stuff coming out of Hollywood. But this one seems the icing on the cake.