Political rant and Hans the Horse

You guys have put me in a tricky situation.

When I started this blog I never dreamed it would be closing in on 400 comments a day. I'm in this vague area of trying to figure out if I should fix something that ain't broke. My fear is that new people are a little intimidated and some people just do not want to wade through 400 comments to find real stuff.

DON'T GET ME WRONG! I'm not complaining. I know I could get a chat room but seriously, it would not be the same. Just like how Jenny said maybe we should go to the bowling alley instead of the Kurth. It just would not have the same appeal.

Then there is the internet addiction thing. I know all about internet addiction. I was addicted to winning at poker once and stopped playing for a year when I realized I was spending all my time at the computer, I was winning money but the world was passing me by.

Be Careful.
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I was talking to someone in California and it is our feeling that PE is perhaps a week to two weeks behind schedule. Christian Bale's next movie has started filming in Albuquerque without him and he has missed some promo stuff for Batman. Rumor has it that MM was given an ultimatum to finish CB his stuff by the end of this week.

Milwaukee - if Greencastle interiors have not been shot yet Milwaukee has a chance. Also the Dog track sequence . . . .why go all the way to Miami?????
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Clever Hans the Horse. a true story

In the late 1800's Wilhelm Von Osten was riding his horse and mulling over scientific stuff in his brain. He was into phrenology, the now discredited theory that a persons intelligence, character, and personality can be derived based of the shape of his or her head.

But he had other thoughts. He was interested in animals and how smart they were. He started testing cats, a bear and his horse in the skills of numbers. The cat did not care (surprise) the bear just got angry but the horse was different.

Wilhelm taught the horse to tap his hoof 3 times when he wrote the number 3 on a black board. In fact the horse could go all the way to 10 and repeat this many many times.

Then he started doing simple addition and subtraction and after a while the horse was able to give the correct answer. In fact it got to a point where his horse could do fractions and basic square roots.

He started showing the horse off and the horse kept learning more and more. "If the first day of the month is a Wednesday," Von Osten would ask Hans, who had learned to respond to verbal questions, "what is the date of the following Monday?" Six hoof-taps would follow.

"What is the square root of sixteen" 4 taps would follow. Hans even learned the alphabet, 1 tap for A, 2 taps for B and so forth. He made mistakes but was 89% right.

The New York Times had an article about Hans and scientists from around the world flocked to test Hans. They tested with and without Wilhelm in the room.

Following extensive testing which finished in 1904 it was concluded that there was no trickery, Hans was for real.

Then they noticed something, when Wilhelm asked a question and was far away Hans had problems, and when Wilhelm was behind a curtain Hans rate went to 0%.

So instead of watching Hans they started watching Wilhelm or who ever was asking the question.

IT SEEMS that Hans could tell stress levels and would tap his foot until he noticed that the stress had passed. Even when the questioner KNEW this was what Hans was watching and would try to trick Hans. Hans was perfect. This proved that while Hans was not the math genius we thought, he was pretty smart in ways we could not see. He could tell exactly when stress left a human through body language that no one else could see. Hans was smart in other ways.

Hans and Wilhelm continued to tour Europe and lived a happy life.

Hans would have been a GREAT poker player.
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A few random political rants (I must speak - been holding it in).

Every Monday for the past five years I have walked out of my building for lunch and been assaulted with protesters waving signs at cars with slogans such as "HONK FOR PEACE" and other like sayings.

And I stand there on the corner as cars slow down and BLAST their horns and every Monday I start lunch a little pissed off.

COME ON PEOPLE. What good are you actually doing, what if I don't honk, does that mean I'm pro war? You get cars that just tap their horns and you get some that BLAST FOR FIVE SECONDS showing they are REALLY for peace. I'm all for peace but honking seems like an aggressive thing to do.

A while ago Madison had a election and on the ballot you could vote to impeach Bush.

WELL - I DIDN'T KNOW WE HAD THAT CHOICE!! How many hours and wasted ink did that one use up???

Then I'm watching the meetings this weekend concerning Florida and Michigan voting. Who allowed cheering sections. Why not hold it in a stadium and charge tickets. People cheering and booing. So much for a dignified discussion.

Dignified was not a word for this. One elected official who was arguing to give all votes to Clinton said" Yes - I voted to have the Florida elections early and to forfeit our seats, HOWEVER, I did not know at the time it would come down to this".

WAIT A MINUTE! Is that REALLY a logical argument? Really officer, if I would have known speeding would get me arrested I would not have done it. OH OK I UNDERSTAND!!

Who elected these people and WHY would someone even SAY that. That is the 2nd bonehead blunder she committed. Vote for something without looking at the consequences and then MAKE IT YOUR ARGUMENT?

And I'm not even going to go into the woman in Michigan that threw crying hissy fits stomping their feet like children saying "But our votes did not count WAHHHHHH!!!!! Good God People!

I'm not making a case for EITHER candidate but only the people who were involved with those two States.

HOWEVER - one thing I want to express and I believe this is very important. It was said on the HBO movie Recount so I can not take credit.

The entire world is watching how American democracy works and even though both sides are extremely set in their ways. At no time wduring the entire process has there been real violence in the streets.

And that, my friends, is why love it at times, hate it at times, America is the one of the best countries in the world.

On a completely odd side note. You do know that the reason the Democrat's are in control of the Senate don't you?

Poker players. That’s right. Four weeks before the midterm elections there was a terrorist bill being passed. It was over 10,000 pages and it was being passed on a Friday night Saturday morning and both sides were in agreement on signing it.

However - near the end was a tiny little bill that was inserted just after midnight saying that it was no longer legal for banks to except money from gambling institutions, EXCEPT if it involved State Lotteries OR Horse Racing (one of the sponsor's of the bill was from a horse racing State).

The Bill passed without many people even know it was inserted. BAM - over two million Americans, over night, had hundreds of millions of dollars locked away overseas with no way to get their money.

Angry? Do you think?

So now we have mid-term elections where MOST people ignore and the Republicans are pretty confident of keeping control of things. Except . . . . they pissed off a LOT of poker players that normally would not vote. I'm building a house and I have $7000 I can get too because it is locked away on the Isle of Man in England.

These players are not concerned with the war or the economy or heath care. They are concerned with their livelihood and their past time. I was one of them. In States that were close all of a sudden record numbers, BY SURPRISE, were having turnouts and all voting Democrat.

I am proud to say that not one politician that was a sponsor of that bill retained his office and all close races were won by Democrats.

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ENOUGH

On this day in history Miracle on 34th Street Premiered!! Yea - weird.

It seemed that the studio head thought most people would view the movie in the summer. So as they promoted it they kept the fact that it was a Christmas movie a secret. I guess you can do that as long as there was no Miracle on 34th Street Columbus blog.

Flower photo - Catmint behind Salvia in the Mailbox Garden.


And another thing. Did you guys read that news paper article yesterday? The first senetnce was too funny.

"In this beautiful little city of handsome family homes and old people. . . " and that is how a lot of people still think of Columbus!

Here is the house the Governor lived in


OK - feeling a little poorly! Later
Rod