As I write this, I mean it took a couple of days, but during the last hour of January 6^th (the Epiphany) it was 22 below zero (F).

The ice has been permanently (at least it seems so) on my living room window for four weeks!

We are now 16 or 17 days from the Solstice for chrissakes.

The sun supposedly arose at 7:56 Am and set at 4:34PM. Eight hours and 38 minutes of Sunlight.

Well it is an improvement some 16 days following the Solstice! Ha

I wished to take advantage of Saturday's +16F advertisements on Yahoo Weather and the Weather Channel, but there was a blizzard and the winds were at 25?MPH. So the actual wind chill temp approached -20F?

Monday (today) I could not take it any more and finally 'got out'. The 'high' was -16F! With a substantial wind but under 10 MPH?

Normally, on a Monday following payday, I would go out at least two times if not three times for supplies.

This is how I get my exercise. But I told my daughter that in the last four weeks I think I 'got out' about ten or twelve times.

I wrote in 2012 that the dems have to stay away from climate change and just stick to pollution of our air and water—in the end we achieve the same results. CORPORATIONS MUST PAY FOR THEIR POLLUTION. This is the basis of old English Common Law involving nuisance and trespass but that discussion is for another day.

Nobody is going to convince those of us in northern Minnesota or Northern Maine or Northern Montana that there is such a thing as global warming. Even though I know for a certainty that there is global warming but....

None of this background really has something to do with the purpose of this essay of course.

And yet...

HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT WE KNOW?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/31/science/i-had-my-dna-picture-taken-with-varying-results.html?ref=science

This NYT essay concerned an individual's experience with DNA, is illuminating, even though the results varied. (As they say in the commercials! ha)

Are hobbits human and just really short? Or are they some entirely other species, like a gold-hoarding dragon? In high-school biology class they teach you to define species in terms of interbreeding. A horse is something that can make nonsterile babies with other horses; it may mate with a donkey, but since their offspring are sterile mules, horses and donkeys count as separate species. By that standard, the most relevant J.R.R. Tolkien passage comes from Appendix A of the Return of the King:

HOBBITS

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/12/are_hobbits_human_can_elves_and_humans_and_dwarves_interbreed.html?wpisrc=burger_bar

This is not a perfect definition of the term 'species'.

The Hobbit find has been one of ten important anthropological finds that I have read about during the last decade.

Horses do mate with donkeys and produce fertile offspring from time to time. I researched this issue (in my jammies of course) and discovered that my elementary school education failed me and that the throw away lines concerning the definition of 'species' is not at all clear.

Sometimes jack asses are fertile.

I mean look at the example of Representative Gohmert for instance; I mean he has produced children. (although we must take the word of his wife for chrissakes!)

Now if one were to use the word probability when discussing a basic definition of the word 'species'...well that seems to work in the real universe.

Probability is all we have in this universe, really.

TP INJUSTICE 2013

There are injustices in the world as the following link notes from TP, but damn, if you are Black you are looking at an entirely different probability with regard to arrest and prosecution and enslavement.

JUST A THOUGHT

Did you ever notice that Louie CK has this Jewish agent who appears to be about 16?

I dunno, it always makes me laugh.

This has nothing to do with nothing except for expectations and probabilities.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwUmXT3RJCM

TAIBBI AND PROBABILITIES

Earlier this month, for instance, former House Majority Leader and cause-betraying Tea Party progenitor Dick Armey complained that Republicans have been getting whipped at the polls because "we had a lot of candidates quite frankly that did dumb things out there." And way back in March of last year, Karl Rove himself, speaking on behalf of his Crossroads SuperPAC, told Fox News Sunday that "our goal is to avoid having stupid candidates." Rove’s group is reportedly also involved in this new $50 million effort....

 

So with George W. Bush, Rove basically gave us the political version of Married With Children, an ongoing self-parody routine where couch-potato America tuned in week after week to cheer on the nitwit hero as he and his brood took on a world of self-serious snobs and their silly "civilized" conventions (like, say, international law). It was political junk food and American voters ate it up, although the people on the business end of our endless bombings and waterboarding sessions and other atrocities were less stoked about the show...

 

Still, the reason Married With Children worked is that it was an industry in-joke, a piece of camp. It was actually kind of an inspired rip on the low entertainment standards of American TV audiences, though the humor of that mostly went over the heads of a lot of the people who actually watched 

 the show.

WHEN MIGHT YOU DEMAND THE ASSASSINATION OF A PRESIDENT AND GET AWAY WITH IT?

Days after he wrote a column endorsing the assassination of President Obama, Fox hosted Michael Scheuer to accuse Hillary Clinton of effectively murdering the Americans who died during the 2012 attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya.

Where is the National Security Act when you need it?

Probabilities I suppose.

You know, a white guy on FOX is not going to be prosecuted for treason and mayhem.

If Scheuer were a Muslim, he would have found himself in some cell in Turkey!
 

WHAT ARE THE PROPER QUALIFICATIONS FOR ELECTIVE OFFICE IN AMERICA?

Bryan Fischer, spokesman for the American Family Association and Fringe Factor regular, emphasized this attitude on his Christian radio show Thursday, ringing in the new year with the declaration that anyone who believes in evolution should be disqualified from holding political office.

This standard for elective office aint gonna happen!

It seems to work as far as repub debates, but damn...

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

CONCLUSION

There is no one truth.

There are only probabilities.

I just watched Mark Levin, whom I despise, on CSPAN ranting about the idiocy of the radical right.

He spent a lot of time—which is usually directed at communist liberals---attempting to tell this radical right that Obama will not be impeached, that the attempts at nullification will result in nothingness, that secession will go nowhere and that fifteen proposed Constitutional Amendments will fail.

But I swear on everything I believe that if Mark Levin says it aint gonna happen.

It aint gonna happen. hahahahahaha

Mark is speaking of probabilities.

I mean look at Curly Rand sometime, he speaks about impossibilities even though he is attempting to color his previous comments.

Re-invoke the gold standard?

It aint gonna happen.

Freedom of a diner to deny customers on the basis of race?

It aint gonna happen.

The end of Social_Security/

It aint gonna happen.

The end of all abortion for any reason?

It aint gonna happen.

The end of Medicaid?

It aint gonna happen.

But we are all faced with contingencies.

We are all faced with the improbable at times.

Now improbable does not mean impossible.

I mean the religious zealots will continually tell us the world is about to end and we, that is the unwashed shall be banished to hell for all time.

Well, for heaven's sake, we might be seeing the end of times.

Although that is IMPROBABLE BECAUSE I HAVE BEEN READING THIS CRAP FOR SIXTY GODDAMN YEARS, and it has not happened. Hahhahahaha

At any rate, it is now -30F in the tundra within which I live, and I find myself only 16 days outside of the Solstice.

And I believe that this cold will last forever.

But the ice shall finally clear from my windows within 30 days or so; supposedly I will see +32F by Saturday (without knowing the wind chill or blizzard conditions); April will arrive (and up here April means highs of +45F) and the Arctic Circle will most probably be navigable come July.

TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY

WHAT THE HELL WAS THE QUESTION?