... Fritter and Waste the Hours in An Offhand Way ... .

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Far from me to cite Roger Waters or whoever came up with the by - line here :  Russia is angry about finances, its leaders are angry at these things including at their oil prices and how that affects national policy in Eastern Euroe, and Tom Petrie has gone on the air telling everyone the petrol - behemoth Saudis have different aims than just minting cash with what they produce in announcing policy changes themselves today that don't really work out for Moscow right now but for others; somehow this has to affect the Russians who even under communism just did / do things for moneys as much as possible, almost strictly under the circumstances.  Their getting into a currency value peeing contest with other currencies that compete for value in every way, not to mention newer and newer ways every day, and on the part of the Russian leadership who's really upset, again, about oil prices, again, and that their "monopolistic" policies however well - oiled domestically that are not marching on in the overall oil markets gives cause to their seemingly angrier and angrier moods.  What to do?  The Russian leadership undoubtedly has a solution to this and this included in their open market actions during the last week, though this prolongs the peeing contest and constitutes an appeal to all for mercy on the ruble that might not appeal itself to much more than former soviet satellites and political clients for the time being.  You have to love the drama of this.  What is the market bid price of a ruble today, by the way?

With the Cacaphony of Health News Lately -- Remember!

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In the Spirit of Christiaan Barnard. 

From one and only one thorough reading of Dr. Barnard’s last book as published in 2001, it does appear that there is credence of sorts to current admonitions about different health issues and his medical purview which was the human heart during the time he was alive.  It does appear by many measures, starting with transgenerational mass media like the “Beatles” (and their analogs) and the effects all their lives had on all our hearts, to more specific and individualized traits that each of us has, and Christiaan Barnard, in any review of his notes, saw not the catastrophe of human foibles leading to health issues, but the potentialities of taking the bad with the good, and hopefully for the good to prevail, especially concerning things like habit – forming substances and various behaviours around these and their derivatives that could be changed and then one’s individual health re – acquired.  One example of this is about smoking, in which Barnard chides the reader not about inundating oneself in tobacco and smoke, but suggests a number of time – honored palliatives and old – wives cures before suggesting seriously that one just “stop”. 

It might have been one of Barnard’s great and highly valuable observations that much around the health condition of any individual has to do directly with conditioning of various sorts that is really beyond the ordinary powers of the regular person to determine and to resolve apart from what one has the time to glean through the media itself, regular channels and the like.  In fact, the human health condition, and especially on the atomized individual level, is so complex and complicated that all Barnard could hope to do in attempting to reach most people would obviously be suggesting not actual medicines, drugs, compounds and so forth, but rules for personal use and behavior that honored the ethics of Aesclepius in helping his audience in their various health foibles and presumably poor habits with suggestions, if not strong ones at times, for changes or re – enforcing different behaviors,  it is possible the condition therefore of the health of each of us is not a closed system of inputs and outputs, processing of things and other predetermined processes, but a state of affairs that for each of us largely depends upon our habits and resolve to keep up the good ones and dispense with the bad. 

This calls for some moral and other uses of human judgment, other reasons for which Barnard finally published a book for the masses and health issues that takes from many, humanistic disciplines, and addresses human health issues, many of them apart from ordinary genetic and

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other pre – dispositions, actually from a “game changer” standpoint where if one has the resolve, one is always in a position not necessarily of direct choice but of volition about health issues and resolving them to ameliorate one’s state or condition before one’s physician or nurse practitioner.  It is a real leap to suggest that many, many health issues are resolved not by medicine itself, but by preventive behaviours, but this is apparently in fact what Barnard held as true in his 2001 text without going into it all.  Many even simple diseases or symptoms, while we are led down a garden path by things sometimes including not paying attention to symptoms, when they are telltale do warrant a medical visit and then simple changes in habit and behavior.  Eating ones vegetables is one such “game changing” factor, both literally and metaphorically as far as un – tidy behaviors are concerned, and for each of us as individuals, of which the following obvious examples :  Drinking and drugging, smoking, self – imposed stress (taking on too much at hand) or pressure and its derivative, anger in all its forms; eating fatty foods; negative or destructive preoccupations or thinking, often as engendered by mass media; trying to do too much with too little time; avoiding the chance to relax and the peaceful, bucolic interludes we all need in place of jerky and other activities of industrial – strength noise and chaos that one makes the norm for cheap thrills sometimes; avoiding exercise and so on.  With the New Year just around the corner, is this not something to take to heart or keep in mind?  Before doing anything about this, take a good look at oneself and remember that along with seeming choices there is strength of resolve and its power is in our ability to choose, yes, but to stick with things.  Great! 

More Discussion about Cybersecurity.

It is possible and probable that snooping, phishing, spoofing, and other forms of hacking will just become more de rigueur since this major hacking, again, of the giant SONY's computing / data facilities and some other observations that have made their way into the public eye, even more so now than before :  That people do these things as there is no virtue in them really, save for instance for oversight and rule - making and enforcing purposes, when they have the ability and time available (for everyone in fact) to proceed in these activities, sometimes for the purposes of one's own amusement.  How could this be -- breaking and entering a house might now be the same as simply "hacking" another's computer.  Why?  The house in question, and it might be your house, is so full of computing appliances, controls and other devices that change your living environment and then that report to a data center, for example, that almost everybody's home is a danger point if one worries about controlling access to data on any level. 

Certainly security, and internet and computer security are important for everyone including especially property owners; and even including those who rent their homes, workplaces, vehicles and so on.  What is the to - do really if data and information products, and the information in them is properly designed and used in this information commons that we all have as part of the totality of the internet?  There should not be, save for the internet has become a haven for things that are not just simple and innocent M2M electronics and communication :  This internet of things is a place of the drudgery of proper computer operations, applications and systems; and data gathering and storage - typical technological scope here, though also, and in greater part, the "Internet of Things" is a place of electronic hazard, chaos and even mayhem that causes in many ways corporations and society to be shaken badly when things are not and do not go right.  The SONY hacking situation is one such

annoying and disconcerting example of this sort of thing and the thing that has people angered is the actual hackers will never be caught and they use rogue situations and computing power to allow for such things, very negative and destructive in the least.  The disconcerting and unsettling, angry thing about this is it's more and more frequent, and occasionally a large - scale business is affected by this sort of thing and the silent alarms connected to the internet of things call out and officials and the like just scratch their heads, waiting for IDS reports and the like, probably.  The process of countermanding such things is prohibitive as we are all still learning about this type of technology and its use and only "experts" really understand the accents and inflections of the science of computer intrusion and hacking and they pay themselves pretty well by the various events same create and cause havoc and annoyance with under the circumstances. 

There is currently some discussion among the leaders in the IS community about changing the structure and infrastructure of telecommunications and wired and wireless technology that makes it so easy for some individual or individuals to wreak havoc on everyone, essentially first as a scare tactic and then to really hold us all hostage, perhaps through some integration of hacking efforts to utilities and other activities, in the end in scandals and crimes that will corrupt even best efforts to use the web properly and in the way free people want it to work.  Something must be done with how computers and machines and the like communicate and talk to each other -- and without suggesting an overall change that might make everyone angry due primarily to the work involved and the expenses as well :  Hacking defenses can be built in to devices and so forth that are telltale of where the attacks are from and that these details are not made available to more people is additionally disconcerting and in some respects a public safety issue as much as when some party in the old days would use the neighbors' telephone to gab about you and your long vacation and so on.  Remember as well the ERM and smaller risk frameworks we are all in that have us calculating chances of adverse events upon leaving for work each day, or even stepping out of doors when it's misty or foggy, or in warmer weather even.  The effects of the recent hack on SONY are over - burdensome psychologically and without a doubt due to this have destroyed at least a few private executives, the individuals on their coattails, their overseers, and other stakeholders such as those charged with a watchful eye to such things and their oversight and the way they activate their defenses to protect first a business and then all of us from the annoyance of lost, corrupted, stolen, deleted and destroyed data and so on.  We now need among corporate America and its regulators and other stakeholders concerning these sorts of things, a kind of computing "Elvis", or "Spiderman", or similar iconic ideal and deterrent that will just tell the offenders to cram it systemically then next time anyone tries such a thing.  In you all our hopes rest, what with all the education and other activities that will lead to this, again, ideal out there and the feasibility of it.  By this column and its writing to - day, I do solemnly and solely at first, and without dismissing the kind of objectivism that might be necessary here, propose these fighting words against hackers and their ilk.  "Okay"? 

Chairman Camp's Tax Reform Plan and its Impact on the Economy

Chairman Camp's Tax Reform Plan and its Impact on the Economy



As might have been discussed more, publicly and privately, in the event David Camp (R - Michigan) stayed in Congress.  A good read in view of the apparent coming revisions by the U.S. conservative party.  Great!

A Dismal Showing for Defense in the Day; and Really Disaster (Pouf!) for the Agressor in the End.

While the author here has tried for two or so days to capture, in fact after having been to Hawai'i, the spirit of the destructive effects and remembrance thereof of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Oahu on December 7, 1941, I cannot, really.  As a person from the U.S. and having been to that place, on most days a wonderful place, sunny and with highlights for sightseers and tourists these days, the harbor itself does not appear to have changed much even from pre - War days, much less from when air traffic started over to Honolulu in earnest and then in other places in Hawai'i.  Links of very passable editorials appear below, of which from an edition of a U.S. national paper.  Every American should salute at the thought of it, and that it appears apart from some military personnel and their families in years like 2014 and a camaraderie from some tourists, the portrayal of the Arizona Memorial and others on December 7 might have been one of wanting to relegate the overall importance of what happened there versus stirring the heart and mind against the power of rapacious tyranny of the time.  Our military defenses have been fighting two wars for more than a decade, extremely expensive in both monetary and psychological / emotional currencies and other intangibles.  This needs make us remember the meaning of what aggression and destruction there was at Pearl Harbor so long ago and the sacrifices of the War in the Pacific that ended the threat of the Axis powers at the time.  This

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perhaps means more today than ever as the comparisons of the ranting of the despots and capital criminals of the day who ran countries and who went to defeat are no legend, nor are they fairy tales, nor anyone's fantasy about how to or the way to win at conflicts.  There are things today that have not been resolved and that will never be, even as the result of the very peaceable resolution to Japanese surrender aboard the Missouri; and as much is in every story and every even detailed mosaic one assembles about WWII and the Pacific and Axis belligerents.  One cannot deny the unbiased pride of those who fought for peace -- as much should be accorded them in looking at the subject of Pearl Harbor and its analogs.  It is regrettable that brother and friend were pitched against brother and friend, and families clashed over alliances and ideologies not to mention international borders and then on battlegrounds, land, sea and air.  As much a symbol of this is in that fateful (at one time) harbor for those interested and motivated enough to go and visit now, and even more through the years, and at present for the dissuasion of others against despotic tyranny, militarism, and bloody clashes wherever they are in the vein of military aggression and destruction at the whim of fascists who would have "empire". 

NY Times articles -- "Unsung Heroes", Pearl Harbor movie - 2014, news coverage, Pearl Harbor remembrance 2014.

Coverage of Arizona Memorial Ceremony - December 7, 2014.