Wednesday, March 05, 2008

The Helo Prediction

Truth in fantasy.

Here is my prediction for the election of 2008: Hillary is going to tap Obama and they are going to run together. It’ll create one giant liberal love-fest of unification, racial diversity, age and experience.

In reality, all that you’ll be faced with is two socialists who want to take your money and tell you what to do. The only difference between the two is that Hillary has some white guilt, but she still think she’s smarter than you, and Obama harbors some strange anger, and yes, he believes that he’s a lot smarter than you.

Six of one, a half dozen of another.

I predict this will happen very soon to prevent the Democratic party from tearing itself apart over what side to take.

Interesting bit of mathematical fun

I was flipping through the Intartubie-thingies and ran across a weird link to a page that had a Java calculator to determine on which day of the week a given calendar date would fall/has fallen.

Y’see, there is a special day of the week for any given year, referred to as the “Doomsday” for that year. (I don’t know why they used that word, but never mind...) There are several days during the year that all fall on that Doomsday, and once you have determined what the Doomsday for a given year is, you can then figure out, by either adding or subtracting, what day of the week your selected date falls.

First, the formula to determine that special day of the week.

• If the year is 19xx, divide xx by 12, to get a quotient ‘Q’ and remainder ‘R’.
• Divide ‘R’ by 4 to get another quotient ‘S’, and ignore any remainders.
• Add Q+R+S and count that many days from Wednesday (the “Doomsday” for the 1900’s; see below), circling the week as many times as needed, and you will determine the Doomsday for the year in question.

The Doomsday for the various centuries advances backwards through the week in a four-century cycle. To determine the Doomsday from which you must start counting for any given century, you can use the following table.

In years

• 15xx, 19xx, 23xx, etc., use Wednesday
• 16xx, 20xx, 24xx, etc., use Tuesday
• 17xx, 21xx, 25xx, etc. use Sunday
• 18xx, 22xx, 26xx, etc., Use Friday

Remember, this will only work for Gregorian calendar years (which means that any date earlier than early October, 1582 requires that you do all of these calculations, and then add three more days (to make up for the 10 days chopped out of the year when October 4th moved right into October 15th with no intervening days between).

Okay, so it’s worthless. Doesn’t mean it isn’t interesting. In any case, don’t give up yet…

Must reads

I’ve been catching up on a lot of sites that I haven’t visited often enough for a while now, and started with these four Wackos a few months back. They’re still on Blog*Spot for some reason, but I can’t fault the quality of the writing, or their ability to ferret out news items and other things that I have missed.

Such as this little gem. I can’t find a snippet worth excerpting, because you need to read the whole thing, start to finish, to get the full lesson. Go ahead, I’ll wait. (You’re probably going to have to scroll down to “Cookie Economics”. I’d love to reprint it, just to be able to provide a hyperlinked copy that isn’t going to be eaten by Blog*spit (piss be upon them), but I don’t want to even hint that I am taking any credit for being so smart. If any of you four are reading this, that was a hint. )

Another link well worth perusing in its entirety is this link to a debate regarding the products of the different types of society and “Why The West Is Best”. They had this snippet that caught my attention:

A culture that gave the world the novel; the music of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert; and the paintings of Michelangelo, da Vinci, and Rembrandt does not need lessons from societies whose idea of heaven, peopled with female virgins, resembles a cosmic brothel. Nor does the West need lectures on the superior virtue of societies in which women are kept in subjection under sharia, endure genital mutilation, are stoned to death for alleged adultery, and are married off against their will at the age of nine; societies that deny the rights of supposedly lower castes; societies that execute homosexuals and apostates. The West has no use for sanctimonious homilies from societies that cannot provide clean drinking water or sewage systems, that make no provisions for the handicapped, and that leave 40 to 50 percent of their citizens illiterate.

Amen, brudda. As Thomas Sowell (another VERY smart guy) states, “Those who say that all cultures are equal never explain why the results of those cultures are so grossly unequal.”

Anyhow, if you aren’t stopping by (just to catch up) every couple of days, you’re missing out. ‘Nuff said.