I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity.
Edgar Allen Poe

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
- H. L. Mencken

Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so
-Bertrand Russell

What I have been telling you, from alpha to omega, what is the one great thing the sigil taught me — that everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. If the sigil were proved to be the top of a tomato-can, it would not alter that big fact, nor my fixed faith. No Harrowby, the common names we call things by do not matter — except to show how very dull we are ...
-James Branch Cabell

August 21, 2015 - 12:26 p.m.

If You Like Me You'll Believe This

Hey it's 10:13 and I'm starting to write. Sure that's an hour later than I would prefer to start but it's two hours earlier than I started the last couple of days. I'm going to look at the glass as half full.

I did something I always but rarely do this morning. I checked the WFUV member line. They were offering tickets so something I very much want to see, The Decemberists. Wish me luck. The station should really change the system. The first one to ask for the tickets get them. That lets some people game the system and win repeatedly. They are free at the right time of day and keep hitting refresh so they are the first ones. Then there's the rule that you can win only once a month. What some people do is get multiple memberships, there's no minimum contribution to be a member. The way it should be run is everyone who enters is put in a random drawing and no household should be able to win more than once a month.

There is a bright side of WFUV's new schedule. 139 people read Wise Madness yesterday. If you didn't read what I wrote about the new schedule you should now, I Want MY WFUV.

I worked on my photo backlog yesterday. I have hundreds, maybe thousands of photos in my dropbox that I have never downloaded. I found out from Fred who also has a backlog that I'm using the LIFO system, Last In First Out. I have pictures from last year that I haven't looked at. I was scanning what I have, some are good. It's a trip down memory lane.

Hey I just overcame anxiety and did something; I registered for NERFA. And I have a roommate. It isn't even the deadline yet. Tomorrow I get a hotel room. They haven't opened that yet.

And now I spent an hour and a half on that and talking to people so much for an early start.

I was going to write about politics and I still am but in a very meta way. I'm going to write about writing about politics, more specifically on how to get people to change their mind. I know my mind gets changed from things I read but it seems rare. The bit problem as I see it is that people are not nearly as rational as they'd like to think. They are irrational about their own rationality. Hey I told you I'm getting meta. Paul Krugman often writes about affinity fraud on the right. From Wikipedia:

Affinity fraud is a form of investment fraud that preys upon members of identifiable groups, such as religious or ethnic communities, language minorities, the elderly, or professional groups. The fraudsters who promote affinity scams frequently are – or successfully pretend to be – members of the group. They often enlist respected community or religious leaders from within the group to spread the word about the scheme, by convincing those people that a fraudulent investment is legitimate and worthwhile. Many times, those leaders become unwitting victims of the fraudster's ruse.
The same thing goes on in politics. To a great extent people believe what the people they identify believe in. Part of what makes that work is that people don't want to believe that of themselves. But this has been tested and found to be true. It isn't total. It isn't fate, but it's a huge factor. So how do you convince people then? They can see when others are irrational but not themselves. And I'll be honest. I don't know. I don't have answers but I spend a lot of time thinking about this because there are things I want to convince you, My Gentle Readers, of. I can't even bring the topics up now because if I did it would probably just harden your positions. I was just reading an article where someone was saying the way to combat irrational beliefs is to educate people with the facts. The problem is that so often doesn't work. Now it does work more with liberals than conservatives but it still doesn't work most of the time. I end up just hoping that people like me and our affinity will give you some impetus to change your mind. But that's not what I want to do. I want to lay down the facts and have people make logical decisions. But it isn't logical to think that will happen. So I tear my hair out. And so now I have a very high forehead. OK I'm bald except for my pony tail.

I'll keep it short today. I haven't figured out what I'm eating yet and I haven't taken out my dinner to defrost. That's too bad things. On the good side my cold brewed ice coffee is ready. On the bad side that's decaf so I now have to brew up some high octane.


I signed the Pro-Truth Pledge:
please hold me accountable.





Memories: Not that Horrid Song - May 29, 2018
Wise Madness is Now In Session - May 28, 2018
The NFL and the First Amendment - May 27, 2018
On The Road Again - May 26, 2018
Oliver the Three-Eyed Crow - May 25, 2018



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Horvendile August 21, 2015
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