Obama Vs Congress As Depicted By Herr D And Shelob

Herr D made this cartoon on heromachine.com.

As instructed, blog will continue in Hairy's absence. The U.S. government is surprising in it's complexity and capacity for repetition. Obama mentioned that he expects certain identical arguments to be used in identical contexts as a repeated theme. Perhaps his success is partly due to his memory of what happened before. This would eliminate his opposition's element of surprise.

Does anyone agree with that hypothesis?

Good Grief, Good Day, And Possibly Good-Bye--If The Energy Fields Line Up Without Paradox

[transmission begins] Memo to all seventeen of Hairy's followers and the other random readers worldwide: With the Perseids beginning and Hairy erratically bouncing back and forth between hypothermic invigoration and hibernation, he is largely incapable of human language and is temporarily forbidden from neuralink access. Strobing in and out of time has already begun. Displacement is being kept to a minimum by keeping him lair-bound.

Should his planning enable his emigration, there will be a notification entry here.
Should he return, his health on restoration will allow him to resume blogging before the Perseids end.
Should there be an unplanned alternative, my instructions are set. 

medbot may enable occasional bulletins in the interim.

Any unusual magnetic activity will be brief. Please provide extra protein to anyone whose travel over the metropolitan area coast allows them to arrive at their destination before their departure.

[transmission ends]

The Trump Card Played On The GOP?

[recording begins at interruption following] -ide of Trump's remarks being right or wrong to have made?

You mean the ones about Mexico?

Yes.

[frustrated tentacular gesture-tips only] Shelob, I programmed you with the capability to supersede binary thinking. I've obviously failed. Trump's remarks were exaggerated to the point of foolishness, AND everyone has overreacted. Both sides were wrong. BOTH of them, Shelob. BOTH SIDES WERE WRONG AGAIN.

How did both sides manage to be wrong?

Easily! [gill snort] Both sides are USUALLY wrong in MOST arguments. That's why most arguments aren't really settled. BECAUSE both sides are wrong.

Please explain.

Obviously some people who remain illegal aliens are bad people.

Law enforcement records bear out that point. But yet you say Trump was wrong as well.

Well, he was! He made it sound like the overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants are horrible people--if that were true, it would be easy to prove, and no one would mind deporting all of them. You've forgotten about camouflage.

The principle of hiding within a larger body or group.

Yes! The only stats we dug up suggest that somewhere between one in twelve and one in six commit multiple felonies. That leaves a clear majority of good people. Of course, Mexico is only doing the same thing the U.S. does--

What's that?

Allowing some of their cagier criminals to cross the border among others. People do that in both directions, right?

[sixteen seconds pass] It appears there is a long tradition of criminals fleeing a government by leaving its jurisdiction.

Exactly! I'm more concerned about the possibility that Trump might try to wreck the GOP so that Hillary would be a shoo-in.

Why would he do that?

Because he's a businessman! He's in there with all those politicians, wrecking the GOP so there'll be a landslide election. That'll bolster the economy better than anything. Trump wins by losing everything to Hillary for the GOP. He's using camouflage better than I ever could!

You are correct. You make a rather unbelievable human.

HEY! Shelob, now--[recording ends]

The Causal Links Between Emotions, Sharks, and Thunderstorms

[recording begins] As to your listed goals, I have prepared you to fulfill one of them.
--You wish to declaim any possible higher intellect, telepathy, or empathy from sea creatures to humans to further convince any suspicious MiBs of the impossibility of you being extraterrestrial. 

Uh, yes?

[neuralink burst containing suggested topics]Oh! Those two are good ones. Ready to record?

Recording.

So—[gill sound translatable to ‘ahem’] –I’d like to address the topic of shark attacks in the Carolinas. Contrary to any possible conspiracy theory of government experiment or rogue geneticist, this cluster of activity does NOT indicate that sharks are sensing the anger felt collectively in the region over certain political events that have coincided. That would be a clear confusion of causality.

With?

Sorry. A clear confusion between cause and effect.

You are claiming that the sharks being drawn to the area caused the political events or the emotions?

What?! [gill spasm: laughter] NO. Yeesh. That’s funny, though. No. The emotions helped cause the sharks to be drawn to the area, all right—

You said that relationship was backward.

No, I didn’t. In this case, there was an effect of the emotions that was also a cause of the sharks drawn to the area.

Explain.

Okay. As an example . . . Think of offshore fishing. Some people use, for example, chum.

They use friends for bait.

NOOOOO! They chop up raw fish and dump it as bait. It’s called chumming the waters.

This would always call sharks.

--Except the fisherman felt differently recently, didn’t they? They chopped the chum with different levels of vigor, completion, and precision. They used different amounts. Their chum drops were less consistent between fishermen, because the fishermen felt more strongly different from each other. So the sharks were drawn differently. Of course this is only one example--there might be--

So, a causal chain, rather than a single effect.

Yes! And the lightning, too.

The emotions caused the lightning storms?

No, that’s just a straight reversal. Extreme behavior in the more suggestible parts of humanity clusters around weather events. Like the fact that more murders happen at 92 degrees Fahrenheit. In this case, the weather imbalances finally brought the storms. Shelob? When you blog this, put it through that subroutine for clever titling—this idea is fairly important.

Processing. [recording ends]

Red Flag?

Herr D made a rough draft for me on request. He calls this heromachine.com creation "New Mississippi Flag." and suggests that moving forward always requires the appearance of destroying links to the past. He's right about the requirement. How much destruction is actual always depends upon levels of unity, clarity, sanity, grace, and general intellect. -Hairy Deewon

[selected beginning of recorded dialog] No, Shelob, I don't understand this business about flags. Countries still use those?

Yes.

I thought that was an article about the barbaric side of human history.


Is there another part of human history?

Hey. Not nice. We're supposed to be encouraging.


The use of flags is still common. Symbols seem necessary to motivate humans to do moral and ethical things. The inexplicable part is what those symbols stand for.

Like what?


Your interview with those three people outside the mosque in New York contained their notion that the symbols for Islam call to mind the murder of Muhammed. Your interview with the protesters outside the abortion clinic indicate that the symbol for Christianity is the structure that Jesus was tortured and killed upon.

Oh, the cross thing; I knew that. Right. Go on.


Yet the Nazi swastika has not been adopted as an inspiration to followers of the Jewish faith. The Confederate flag has not been adopted as a reminder of why civil war should be avoided or why slavery should be considered wrong or why state's rights shouldn't supersede federal authority.

Ummmmm . . . [helpless tentacular gesture]

For that matter, the ambiguity of the symbol for piracy and poison is bound to lead to misunderstanding.

What?! [gill fluttering, translatable to confusion] What kind of situation could that possibly be a problem-- 

[redacted interruption, during which Shelob explains the danger] -ated by the trend of human history.

--rrrmmmm, no . . . I don't think that's very likely. You do make a good point though about the arbitrary nature of symbols. I'm ready to declare that displaying a symbol with or without context might be necessary for the education of younglings and that it plays an important part of any history lesson. In America, it also becomes important for freedom of expression. All this business about whether a flag should be flown is obviously important to some.

But you don't wish to say it is right or wrong.

Well, no. I DO think that everyone should feel grateful that they can direct their emotions so accurately that something so arbitrary as a flag could be used to rescue people. But doesn't that mean people are gullible enough to shoot their best friend in the dark if some criminal pastes a glow-in-the-dark swastika on them? Worse, in the case of certain ocular or neural trauma, wouldn't certain patients suddenly have the tendency to think, say, that good and bad symbols are reversed?

You are referring to vulnerability to manipulation.

Well, yes. If a symbol can be used against people . . . Shelob, you'd better blog on this.

Underway. [transmission ends] 

Marriage Law By Hairy, With All The Vexing Silence

[Interruption point determined, recording begins]

-the metaphorical dust cleared? Is the same-sex marriage issue decided?

No. All evidence suggests much more argument to come.

Have we successfully predicted an end to arguments like this?

You have, in theory, been correct on multiple occasions.

In theory?

Your answer of 'Never' has shown to be a correct supposition so far.

[violent gill expulsion] Yeah, okay. [ambivalent tentacular gesticulation] So, what progress has been made?

Multiple state-level jurisdictions have ruled upon it and added more argument. Do you intend to pick a side?

Uh, well, not to put too fine a point on it, Shelob, but both male AND female humans are rather unattractive. The females are sometimes neat, especially when they have longer, more flexible arms--

Legs. You are supposed to say legs. Limbs will suffice.

Legs! Right. Thank you for keeping me in practice  . . . but I wouldn't be allowed to marry anyway, so--

[auto-rephrasal procedure activated as misunderstanding detected] Do you intend to blog upon this issue?

--oh . . .  [very long pause, during neuralink access to recent newsfeeds, blogs, etc.]  I'm not even sure why this is an issue at all.

You think the answer is obvious?

No, I mean, I don't know why it's an issue. If I had an acceptable mate, I wouldn't want the government involved at all. Why do 'straight' people want the government having any say over their marriages? Isn't there a slogan somewhere about 'Keep The Government Out Of My Mating?' I don't even understand why heterosexuals are called 'straight.' They're just as twisted as bisexuals, homosexuals, pansexuals, asexuals, and the others I can't think of right now. Worse, they're just as crooked! Furth-

That slogan is an approximation of a 'pro-choice' slogan.

[one pupil dilates] -what?! Oh . . . well, okay. But seriously? Why should the government have any say over who, how, whether, or even why people should marry? I mean, marriage is a religious issue for many people--that means that the government shouldn't be involved under separation of church and state. Records probably DO need to be collected and kept, but why should there be any other governmental involvement?

Age limits, voluntary nature, tax purposes, and licensing.

[full five-eye roll] Those are all covered by other laws! Redundancy isn't that valuable! Age limits are covered by statutory rape laws, voluntary nature is covered under rape, kidnapping, and enslavement laws, licensing can be handled by event licensing for the ceremonies--and, really, why should the government license marriage? As for tax purposes, what difference should it make? Children are already tax deductions, right? Homemakers can already be listed as dependents on the tax form for a 'head of household,' right?

[sixteen seconds pass] Your legal interpretations do seem correct. Your suggestion is to eliminate redundancy and make government smaller?

Law is one of those things where less is more, Shelob. Do you want to blog on this for me since medbot hasn't released me yet?

Yes. [recording ends]

You Have All Been Punked By Educators

[transmission to Shelob interrupted here as recording begins] -und like their entire society has been punked by the education system?

Yes, just as you said before.

--what?

You said that before.

No, I didn't. I just came to that conclusion. Wait. Are you talking about that 'punked' statement, or the idea that college isn't such a great idea?

Both. You said both of those things before.

[Goes still] When? Show me.

[0.77 seconds pass for retrieval and transmission overlay] June 23, 2014   . . .

Is it horrible that some kids don't go to college? Humanity isn't so advanced that all menial jobs are done by robots or trained animals. Isn't it a waste to send someone to college if they're going to do menial jobs for their life? A trade school or vocational school can teach them what they want to know. More importantly, if all kids go to college, won't that mean the menial occupations will suffer? They're important too.

The alumni of four different colleges that I asked about quality instruction all looked at me like I was insane. Herr D in particular told me that he knew very few people who worked for his college that could really teach at all. He said they present the material, test the students on whether they learned it and answer questions and provide help only if asked. Well--huh.

Presenting the material could be done on videotape once and remastered and updated when necessary just like textbooks. Tests can be done by proctors. Grading can be done by subject matter experts. Help can be provided by tutors. What did you need the professors FOR exactly? Herr D said he needed them to drive up his tuition. I'm pretty sure he was being sarcastic. I am confused by the whole thing. It looks like institutes of higher learning are just institutes of higher cost learning. I mean, wouldn't it be better if everyone learned a career cluster surrounding their proven aptitudes with minimum classwork involved?

Becoming a well-rounded student can happen while a student is too young to work. There can't be a growing number of learning disabled students if the education methods aren't so artificially narrowed. --I mean that is correct, isn't it? The reason that we have learning disabled students that can LEARN BY DOING and not learn in a classroom is that the majority seems to have been punked. People actually seem to believe that classroom learning is the "best way." Learning doesn't have a best way! Individuals have preferred learning methods, sure, but those are individual.

I mean--is this not obvious? Tuition is too expensive. Student loans are too expensive. So . . . don't go? When you get there, you'll just have to learn the material on your own as best you can to pass a test written by somebody who works professionally impersonating an instructional film. Why not learn the material on your own while working full time in related industries? If a company wants a truly determined, truly worthwhile employee, and is smart enough to know what that is, why wouldn't they want someone who could learn without the broken-down crutch known as college?


Wow. Well, I thought of this exact topic and similar wording just about a year ago. Why would I have matched up with a year? Am I biologically preparing to strobe away again?

Subconsciously you may be remembering your conclusion that humans need repetition to learn and your presence on this particular M class planet with this particular revolution length. You specifically asked me to track those possibilities in February of this year, December, October, July, and June of last year.

Yikes. Blog on this then. It must be more important than the tangents I was likely to go off on.

Underway. [transmission checked, recorded, and ended]