Bendable Concrete -- Strong and Durable

Engineered Cementitious Composite (ECC), also called bendable concrete, is an easily molded mortar-based composite reinforced with specially selected short random fibers, usually polymer fibers. Unlike regular concrete, ECC has a strain capacity in the range of 3–7%, compared to 0.1% for ordinary portland cement (OPC). ECC therefore acts more like a ductile than a brittle (as does OPC concrete), leading to a wide variety of applications.

Development
ECC, unlike common fiber reinforced concrete, is a micromechanically designed material. This means that the mechanical interactions between ECC's fiber and matrix are described by a micromechanical model, which takes into account material properties and helps predict properties and guide ECC development.
ECC looks similar to ordinary portland cement-based concrete, except that it does not include coarse aggregate and can deform (or bend) under strain. A number of research groups are developing ECC science, including those at the University of Michigan, Delft University of Technology, the University of Tokyo, the Czech Technical University, and Stanford University. Traditional concrete’s lack of durability and failure under strain, both stemming from brittle behavior, have been a pushing factor in the development of ECC.

Properties
ECC has a variety of unique properties, including tensile properties superior to other fiber-reinforced composites, ease of processing on par with conventional cement, the use of only a small volume fraction of fibers (~ 2%), tight crack width, and a lack of anisotropically weak planes. These properties are due largely to the interaction between the fibers and cementing matrix, which can be custom-tailored through micromechanics design. Essentially, the fibers create many microcracks with a very specific width, rather than a few very large cracks (as in conventional concrete.) This allows ECC to deform without catastrophic failure.

This microcracking behavior leads to superior corrosion resistance (the cracks are so small and numerous that it is difficult for aggressive media to penetrate and attack the reinforcing steel) as well as to self-healing. In the presence of water (during a rainstorm, for instance) unreacted cement particles recently exposed due to cracking hydrate and form a number of products (Calcium Silicate Hydrate, calcite, etc.) that expand and fill in the crack. These products appear as a white ‘scar’ material filling in the crack. This self-healing behavior not only seals the crack to prevent transport of fluids, but mechanical properties are regained. This self-healing has been observed in a variety of conventional cement and concretes; however, above a certain crack width self healing becomes less effective. It is the tightly controlled crack widths seen in ECC that ensure all cracks thoroughly heal when exposed to the natural environment.

When combined with a more conductive material (metal wires, carbon nanotubes, etc.) all cement materials can increase and be used for damage-sensing. This is essentially based on the fact that conductivity will change as damage occurs; the addition of conductive material is meant to raise the conductivity to a level where such changes will be easily identified. Though not a material property of ECC itself, conductive ECC for damage-sensing applications are being developed by a number of research groups.

Types
There are a number of different varieties of ECC, including:

• Lightweight (i.e. low density) ECC have been developed through the addition of air voids, glass bubbles, polymer spheres, and/or lightweight aggregate. Compared to other lightweight cements, lightweight ECC has superior compressive and tensile strength, crack-width control, and damage tolerance. Applications include floating homes, barges, and canoes.
• ‘Self compacting concrete’ refers to a concrete that can flow under its own weight. For instance, a self-compacting material would be able to fill a mold containing elaborate pre-positioned steel reinforcement without the need of vibration or shaking to ensure even distribution. Self-compacting ECC was developed through the use of chemical admixtures to decrease viscosity and through controlling particle interactions with mix proportioning.
• Sprayable ECC, which can be pneumatically sprayed from a hose, have been developed by using various superplasticizing agents and viscosity-reducing admixtures. Compared to other sprayable fiber-reinforced composities, sprayable ECC has enhanced pumpability in addition to its unique mechanical properties. Sprayable ECC has been used for retrofitting/repair work and tunnel/sewer linings.
• An extrudable ECC for use in the extrusion of pipes was first developed in 1998. Extruded ECC pipes have both higher load capacity and higher deformability than any other extruded fiber-reinforced composite pipes.

Field applications
ECC have found use in a number of large-scale applications in Japan, Korea, Switzerland, Australia and the U.S.[3]. These include:

• The Mitaka Dam near Hiroshima was repaired using ECC in 2003. The surface of the then 60-year old dam was severely damaged, showing evidence of cracks, spalling, and some water leakage. A 20 mm-thick layer of ECC was applied by spraying over the 600 m2 surface.
• Also in 2003, an earth retaining wall in Gifu, Japan, was repaired using ECC. Ordinary portland cement could not be used due to the severity of the cracking in the original structure, which would have caused reflective cracking. ECC was intended to minimize this danger; after one year only microcracks of tolerable width were observed.
• The 95 m (312 ft.) Glorio Roppongi high-rise apartment building in Tokyo contains a total of 54 ECC coupling beams (2 per story) intended to mitigate earthquake damage. The properties of ECC (high damage tolerance, high energy absorption, and ability to deform under shear) give it superior properties in seismic resistance applications when compared to ordinary portland cement. Similar structures include the 41-story Nabeaure Yokohama Tower (4 coupling beams per floor.)
• The 1 km (0.62 mi) long Mihara Bridge in Hokkaido, Japan was opened to traffic in 2005. The steel-reinforced road bed contains nearly 800 m3 of ECC material. The tensile ductility and tight crack control behavior of ECC led to a 40% reduction in material used during construction.
• Similarly, a 225-mm thick ECC bridge deck on interstate 94 in Michigan was completed in 2005. 30 m³ of material was used, delivered on-site in standard mixing trucks. Due to the unique mechanical properties of ECC, this deck also used less material than a proposed deck made of ordinary portland cement. Both the University of Michigan and the Michigan Department of Transportation are monitoring the bridge in an attempt to verify the theoretical superior durability of ECC; after 4 years of monitoring, performance remained undiminished.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineered_Cementitious_Composite

Positive Quiddity: Almond Roca candy

Almond Roca is a brand of chocolate toffee butter crunch candy containing a ground almond coating and also almond chunks inside the candy itself. It is similar, if not identical, to English Toffee. It is made by the Brown & Haley Company of Tacoma, Washington.

                                Almond Roca, shown wrapped, unwrapped and
                                  cut open to show the hard center of the candy

Almond Roca was invented in 1923 by Harry Brown and J. C. Haley, founders of Brown
& Haley. The candy's name is said to have been inspired by a local librarian, who chose the Spanish word "roca", meaning "rock" in English, to describe the hard, log-shaped confection. Brown & Haley first used Almond Roca's trademark tin can containers in 1927 to extend the product's shelf life. Individual pieces of Almond Roca candy are wrapped in gold-colored aluminum foil [sic, actually aluminum foil plated with 24 carat gold and embossed with an oval containing the words "Almond Roca"].
　

Ingredients

Almond Roca contains sugar, almonds, butter (cream (milk) and salt), vegetable oil (coconut and/or palm oil), partially hydrogenated cottonseed and soybean oils, cocoa powder, whey (milk), non-fat dry milk powder, soya lecithin, chocolate, cocoa butter, and vanilla.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almond_roca

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Almond Roca is an elegant candy, made in an environment of high quality control of the finest ingredients and wrapped in gold. The manufacturer advertises it as "America’s finest confection." Brown and Haley also makes Mocha Roca, Macademia Roca, Cashew Roca, sugar free Almond Roca and three flavors of "Mountain Bar" candy nuggets.

See: http://www.brown-haley.com/

Mysterious Loss of the USS Thresher

The second USS Thresher (SSN-593) was the lead boat of her class of nuclear-powered attack submarines in the United States Navy. Her loss at sea during deep-diving tests in 1963 is often considered a watershed event in the implementation of the rigorous submarine safety program SUBSAFE.

The contract to build Thresher was awarded to Portsmouth Naval Shipyard on 15 January 1958, and her keel was laid on 28 May 1958. She was launched on 9 July 1960, was sponsored by Mrs. Frederick B. Warder (wife of the famous Pacific War skipper), and was commissioned on 3 August 1961, Commander Dean L. Axene commanding. In 1963 the submarine sank off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, with no survivors.

Sinking
On 9 April 1963, after the completion of this work, Thresher, now commanded by Lieutenant Commander John Wesley Harvey, began post-overhaul trials. Accompanied by the submarine rescue ship Skylark, she sailed to an area some 190 nmi (220 mi; 350 km) east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and on the morning of 10 April started deep-diving tests. As Thresher neared her test depth, Skylark received garbled communications over underwater telephone indicating "... minor difficulties, have positive up-angle, attempting to blow." When Skylark received no further communication, surface observers gradually realized Thresher had sunk. Publicly it took some days to announce that all 129 officers, crewmen, and military and civilian technicians aboard were presumed dead.

After an extensive underwater search using the bathyscaphe Trieste, oceanographic ship Mizar and other ships, Thresher's remains were located on the sea floor, some 8,400 ft (2,600 m) below the surface, in six major sections. The majority of the debris had spread over an area of about 134,000 m² (160,000 sq yd). The major sections were the sail, sonar dome, bow section, engineering spaces section, operations spaces section, and the stern planes.

Deep sea photography, recovered artifacts, and an evaluation of her design and operational history permitted a Court of Inquiry to conclude Thresher had probably suffered the failure of a joint in a salt water piping system, which relied heavily on silver brazing instead of welding; earlier tests using ultrasound equipment found potential problems with about 14% of the tested brazed joints, most of which were determined not to pose a risk significant enough to require a repair. High-pressure water spraying from a broken pipe joint may have shorted out one of the many electrical panels, which in turn caused a shutdown ("scram") of the reactor, with a subsequent loss of propulsion. The inability to blow the ballast tanks was later attributed to excessive moisture in the sub's high-pressure air flasks, which froze and plugged the flasks' flowpaths while passing through the valves. This was later simulated in dock-side tests on Thresher's sister sub, Tinosa. During a test to simulate blowing ballast at or near test depth, ice formed on strainers installed in valves; the flow of air lasted only a few seconds. Air driers were later retrofitted to the high pressure air compressors, beginning with Tinosa, to permit the emergency blow system to operate properly.

Unlike diesel submarines, nuclear submarines rely on speed and deck angle rather than deballasting to surface; they are "driven" at an angle towards the surface. Ballast tanks were almost never blown at depth, and to do so could cause the sub to rocket to the surface out of control. Normal procedure was to drive the sub to periscope depth, raise the periscope to verify the area was clear, then blow the tanks and surface the sub.

At the time, reactor-plant operating procedures precluded a rapid reactor restart following a scram, or even the ability to use steam remaining in the secondary system to "drive" the sub to the surface. After a scram, standard procedure was to isolate the main steam system, cutting off the flow of steam to the turbines providing propulsion and electricity. This was done to prevent an over-rapid cool-down of the reactor. Thresher's Reactor Control Officer, Lieutenant Raymond McCoole, was not at his station in the maneuvering room, or indeed on the boat, during the fatal dive. McCoole was at home caring for his wife who had been injured in a household accident—he had been all but ordered ashore by a sympathetic Commander Harvey. McCoole's trainee, Jim Henry, fresh from nuclear power school, probably followed standard operating procedures and gave the order to isolate the steam system after the scram, even though Thresher was at or slightly below its maximum depth and was taking on water. Once closed, the large steam system isolation valves could not be reopened quickly. Reflecting on the situation in later life, McCoole was sure he would have delayed shutting the valves, thus allowing the boat to "answer bells" and drive itself to the surface, despite the flooding in the engineering spaces. Admiral Rickover later changed the procedure, allowing steam to be withdrawn from the secondary system in limited quantities for several minutes following a scram.

In a dockside simulation of flooding in the engine room, held before Thresher sailed, it took the watch in charge 20 minutes to isolate a simulated leak in the auxiliary seawater system. At test depth, taking on water, and with the reactor shut down, Thresher would not have had 20 minutes to recover. Even after isolating a short-circuit in the reactor controls it would have taken nearly 10 minutes to restart the plant.
Thresher likely imploded at a depth of 1,300–2,000 ft (400–610 m).

The Navy has periodically monitored the environmental conditions of the site since the sinking and has reported the results in an annual public report on environmental monitoring for U.S. Naval nuclear-powered craft. These reports provide specifics on the environmental sampling of sediment, water, and marine life which were taken to ascertain whether Thresher's nuclear reactor has had a significant effect on the deep ocean environment. The reports also explain the methodology for conducting deep sea monitoring from both surface vessels and submersibles. The monitoring data confirms that there has been no significant effect on the environment. Nuclear fuel in the submarine remains intact.

According to newly declassified information, the Navy sent Commander (Dr.) Robert Ballard, the oceanographer credited with locating the wreck of RMS Titanic, on a secret mission to map and collect visual data on both Thresher and Scorpion wrecks. The Navy used Ballard's search for Titanic as a screen to hide the mission. Ballard approached the Navy in 1982 for funding to find Titanic with his new deep-diving robot submersible. The Navy saw the opportunity and granted him the money on the condition he first inspect the two submarine wrecks. Ballard's robotic survey discovered that Thresher had sunk so deep it imploded, turning into thousands of pieces. The only recoverable piece was a foot of marled pipe. His 1985 search for Scorpion, which was thought to be a victim of a Soviet attack, revealed such a large debris field that it looked "as though it had been put through a shredding machine." Once the two wrecks had been visited, and the radioactive threat from both was established as small, Ballard was able to search for Titanic. Due to dwindling funds, he had just 12 days to do so, but he used the same debris-field search techniques he had used for the two subs, which worked, and Titanic was found.
U.S. submarine classes are generally known by the hull number of the lead ship of the class–for instance, Los Angeles-class boats are called "688s" because the hull number of USS Los Angeles was SSN-688. The Thresher-class boats should thus be called "593s", but since Thresher's sinking they have been referred to as "594s" (Permit class).

Time Line of Disaster -- (Time) Event
07:47 Thresher begins its descent to the test depth of 1,000 ft (300 m).

07:52 Thresher levels off at 400 ft (120 m), contacts the surface, and the crew inspects the ship for leaks. None are found.

08:09 Commander Harvey reports reaching half the test depth.

08:25 Thresher reaches 1,000 ft (300 m).

09:02 Thresher is cruising at just a few knots (subs normally moved slowly and cautiously at great depths, lest a sudden jam of the diving planes send the ship below test depth in a matter of seconds.) The boat is descending in slow circles, and announces to Skylark she is turning to "Corpen [course] 090." At this point, transmission quality from Thresher begins to noticeably degrade, possibly as a result of thermoclines.

09:09 It is believed a brazed pipe-joint ruptures in the engine room. The crew would have attempted to stop the leak; at the same time, the engine room would be filling with a cloud of mist. Under the circumstances, Commander Harvey's likely decision would have been to order full speed, full rise on the fairwater planes, and blowing main ballast in order to surface. The pressurized air rapidly expanding in the pipes cools down, condensing moisture and depositing it on strainers installed in the system to protect the moving parts of the valves; in only a few seconds the moisture freezes, clogging the strainers and blocking the air flow, halting the effort to blow ballast. Water leaking from the broken pipe most likely causes short circuits leading to an automatic shutdown of the ship's reactor, causing a loss of propulsion. The logical action at this point would have been for Harvey to order propulsion shifted to a battery-powered backup system. As soon as the flooding was contained, the engine room crew would have begun to restart the reactor, an operation that would be expected to take at least 7 minutes.

09:12 Skylark pages Thresher on the underwater telephone: "Gertrude check, K [over]." With no immediate response (although Skylark is still unaware of the conditions aboard Thresher), the signal "K" is repeated twice.

09:13 Harvey reports status via underwater telephone. The transmission is garbled, though some words are recognizable: "[We are] experiencing minor difficulty, have positive up-angle, attempting to blow." The submarine, growing heavier from water flooding the engine room, continues its descent, probably tail-first. Another attempt to empty the ballast tanks is performed, again failing due to the formation of ice. Officers on Skylark could hear the hiss of compressed air over the loudspeaker at this point.

09:14 Skylark acknowledges with a brisk, "Roger, out," awaiting further updates from the SSN. A follow-up message, "No contacts in area," is sent to reassure Thresher she can surface quickly, without fear of collision, if required.

09:15 Skylark queries Thresher about her intentions: "My course 270 degrees. Interrogative range and bearing from you." There is no response, and Skylark's captain, Lieutenant Commander Hecker, sends his own gertrude message to the submarine, "Are you in control?"

09:16 Skylark picks up a garbled transmission from Thresher, transcribed in the ship's log as "900 N." [The meaning of this message is unclear, and was not discussed at the enquiry; it may have indicated the submarine's depth and course, or it may have referred to a Navy "event number" (1000 indicating loss of submarine), with the "N" signifying a negative response to the query from Skylark, "Are you in control?"]

09:17 A second transmission is received, with the partially recognizable phrase "exceeding test depth...." The leak from the broken pipe grows with increased pressure.

09:18 Skylark detects a high-energy low-frequency noise with characteristics of an implosion.

09:20 Skylark continues to page Thresher, repeatedly calling for a radio check, a smoke bomb, or some other indication of the boat's condition.

11:04 Skylark attempts to transmit a message to COMSUBLANT (Commander, Submarines, Atlantic Fleet): "Unable to communicate with Thresher since 0917R. Have been calling by UQC voice and CW, QHB, CW every minute. Explosive signals every 10 minutes with no success. Last transmission received was garbled. Indicated Thresher was approaching test depth.... Conducting expanding search." Radio problems meant that COMSUBLANT did not receive and respond to this message until 12:45.

Hecker initiated "Event SUBMISS [loss of a submarine]" procedures at 11:21, and continued to repeatedly hail Thresher until after 17:00.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Thresher_(SSN-593)

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Note by the Blog Author

The Thresher sank at the height of the Cold War, not long after the Cuban Missile Crisis. For many years the U.S. Navy was deeply suspicious that this submarine was sabotaged by the Soviet Union.

Years of testing and underwater salvage attempts have gradually altered the Navy’s view of probable cause to valves in a new class of submarine. The Thresher thus represents a landmark in submarine safety studies and improvements.

Obama's Communitarian Ideology

Below are excerpts from Obama’s victory speech early Wednesday in Chicago, with comments added by the blog author. This speech is remarkably clear about the anti-individual communitarian society Obama would like to build.

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OBAMA: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Tonight, more than 200 years after a former colony won the right to determine its own destiny, the task of perfecting our union moves forward.

COMMENT: So his opening statement praised American anti-colonial and anti-British history.

OBAMA: …while each of us will pursue our own individual dreams, we are an American family and we rise or fall together as one nation and as one people.

COMMENT: This is a philosophy of groupthink and communitarianism.

OBAMA: But despite all our differences, most of us share certain hopes for America's future. We want our kids to grow up in a country where they have access to the best schools and the best teachers.
A country that lives up to its legacy as the global leader in technology and discovery and innovation, with all the good jobs and new businesses that follow.

We want our children to live in an America that isn't burdened by debt, that isn't weakened by inequality, that isn't threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet.
We want to pass on a country that's safe and respected and admired around the world, a nation that is defended by the strongest military on earth and the best troops this - this world has ever known.

But also a country that moves with confidence beyond this time of war, to shape a peace that is built on the promise of freedom and dignity for every human being. We believe in a generous America, in a compassionate America, in a tolerant America, open to the dreams of an immigrant's daughter who studies in our schools and pledges to our flag.

To the young boy on the south side of Chicago who sees a life beyond the nearest street corner.
To the furniture worker's child in North Carolina who wants to become a doctor or a scientist, an engineer or an entrepreneur, a diplomat or even a president - that's the future we hope for. That's the vision we share. That's where we need to go - forward.
That's where we need to go.

COMMENT: This means even more money for schools and teachers, government research and government technological emphasis, somehow with less debt, less socio-economic inequality, and free from global warming (with an absolute insistence that such warming is a scientific fact). He emphasizes maintaining a country with the strongest military on earth, but also a country that is generous and compassionate and tolerant, exemplified by making immigrant children in American schools American citizens. Obama also wants to extend federal help to children on street corners, federal help to children of blue-collar workers with big dreams. Federal help in these circumstances is "where we need to go – forward." All of these communitarian goals are in sharp antagonism to the quick mention of reducing the deficit. Either reducing the debt comes first or expanding socio-economic federal spending comes first. There can be no waffling nor compromise for this nation now that debt exceeds gross domestic product, a reality that came true on Obama’s watch on August 2, 2011.

OBAMA: …I am looking forward to reaching out and working with leaders of both parties to meet the challenges we can only solve together. Reducing our deficit. Reforming our tax code. Fixing our immigration system. Freeing ourselves from foreign oil.

COMMENT: The parties did not work together in 2011 to reduce the deficit, and as a result the problem was kicked forward and an ineffective "super Committee" was established which accomplished nothing whatsoever. Now, late in 2012, less than two months remain before the "fiscal cliff." Obama ties this issue with freedom from importing foreign oil, an issue that takes years of consistent policy to address and is therefore irrelevant to the enormous and nearby deficit reduction policy decisions.

OBAMA: This country has more wealth than any nation, but that's not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military in history, but that's not what makes us strong. Our university, our culture are all the envy of the world, but that's not what keeps the world coming to our shores.

What makes America exceptional are the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on earth.
The belief that our destiny is shared; that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations. The freedom which so many Americans have fought for and died for come with responsibilities as well as rights. And among those are love and charity and duty and patriotism. That's what makes America great.

I am hopeful tonight because I've seen the spirit at work in America. I've seen it in the family business whose owners would rather cut their own pay than lay off their neighbors, and in the workers who would rather cut back their hours than see a friend lose a job.

I've seen it in the soldiers who reenlist after losing a limb and in those SEALs who charged up the stairs into darkness and danger because they knew there was a buddy behind them watching their back.
I've seen it on the shores of New Jersey and New York, where leaders from every party and level of government have swept aside their differences to help a community rebuild from the wreckage of a terrible storm.

And I saw just the other day, in Mentor, Ohio, where a father told the story of his 8-year-old daughter, whose long battle with leukemia nearly cost their family everything had it not been for health care reform passing just a few months before the insurance company was about to stop paying for her care.

I had an opportunity to not just talk to the father, but meet this incredible daughter of his. And when he spoke to the crowd listening to that father's story, every parent in that room had tears in their eyes, because we knew that little girl could be our own. And I know that every American wants her future to be just as bright. That's who we are. That's the country I'm so proud to lead as your president.

COMMENT: Obama is falsely saying that what holds Americans together and makes it exceptional is compassion put into action by government commitments and government actions.

But this is not the exceptional power and unique nature of America. What makes America unique and successful is rule of law exemplified in "due process,"

in which the process of legal disputes and decisions is a process for which even the government itself is subservient. The American Revolution, specifically, was a revolt against backtracking on due process and denying it to overseas colonies by the crown of Great Britain. These are the complaints listed and explained in the declaration of independence.
Obama, a former lecturer on Constitutional law at the University of Chicago, must know this. Yet what he praises about America is the continental European philosophy of an activist government involved in detail in the lives of its citizenry, and this is praise for paying government to act compassionately, a goal that has never been achieved, anywhere.

To this enormous extent, Obama is dishonestly praising the philosophies of continental Europeans, especially nineteenth century Germans, rather than the anti-utopian limitations on power and the necessity for making government itself subservient to due process that are the heart of American exceptionalism. Insofar as Obama means what he says, his victory speech is dangerous to the continuance of a free America, because it subordinates due process to a kind of sentimental bureaucracy in which the agents of the government are paid to be compassionate.

OBAMA: America, I believe we can build on the progress we've made and continue to fight for new jobs and new opportunity and new security for the middle class. I believe we can keep the promise of our founders, the idea that if you're willing to work hard, it doesn't matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or where you love. It doesn't matter whether you're black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight, you can make it here in America if you're willing to try.

COMMENT: The founders didn’t promise Americans success if they worked hard, nor were they promised help if they were divorced or out of a job or unable to provide for their children. They were promised a government limited in power and subordinate itself to due process, promises this president (and his predecessor, George W. Bush) have minimized and stripped at every opportunity, through defense authorization legislation and through the Patriot Act and its revisions. Obama is baiting-and-switching on the topic of patriotism and on the nature of the American experiment by the founding fathers.

OBAMA: I believe we can seize this future together because we are not as divided as our politics suggests. We're not as cynical as the pundits believe. We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions, and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are and forever will be the United States of America.

COMMENT: What is this language? Is the President worried about secession?
-- Redacted with comments added from the text of Obama’s victory speech. The raw text is available at:http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/11/07/transcript-obamas-victory-speech/

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Afterword by the Blog Author

What Obama is doing is substitute a communitarian ideology for the limited-government, anti-utopian empiricist legal structure of Magna Carta, the restoration of William and Mary and the philosophy of John Locke as perfected by the American Revolution. Obama’s philosophy and ideology are abruptly contradictory toward the the genuine exceptionalism of America, the world’s oldest revolutionary republic.

Instead, what Obama worships as an idealogy is summarized below.

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Communitarianism is an ideology that emphasizes the connection between the individual and the community. That community may be the family unit, but it can also be understood in a far wider sense of personal interaction, of geographical location, or of shared history…. Central to the communitarian philosophy is the concept of positive rights, which are rights or guarantees to certain things. These may include state subsidized education, state subsidized housing, a safe and clean environment, universal health care, and even the right to a job with the concomitant obligation of the government or individuals to provide one. To this end, communitarians generally support social security programs, public works programs, and laws limiting such things as pollution.

A common objection is that by providing such rights, communitarians violate the negative rights of the citizens; rights to not have something done for you. For example, taxation to pay for such programs as described above dispossesses individuals of property. Proponents of positive rights, by attributing the protection of negative rights to the society rather than the government, respond that individuals would not have any rights in the absence of societies—a central tenet of communitarianism—
and thus have a personal responsibility to give something back to it. Some have viewed this as a negation of natural rights. However, what is or is not a "natural right" is a source of contention in modern politics, as well as historically; for example, whether or not universal health care, private property or protection from polluters can be considered a birthright.
Alternatively, some agree that negative rights may be violated by a government action, but argue that it is justifiable if the positive rights protected outweigh the negative rights lost. In the same vein, supporters of positive rights further argue that negative rights are irrelevant in their absence. Moreover, some communitarians "experience this less as a case of being used for others' ends and more as a way of contributing to the purposes of a community I regard as my own"
.
-- redacted from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communitarianism

Positive Quiddity: Mel Blanc

Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc (May 30, 1908 – July 10, 1989) was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Brothers as the voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Marvin the Martian, P:epe Le Pew, Speedy Gonzales, the Tasmanian Devil, and many of the other characters from the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoons during the "Golden Age of American animation." He later worked for Hanna-Barbera’s television cartoons, most notably as the voice of Barney Rubble in The Flintstones and Mr. Spacely in The Jetsons. Blanc was also a regular performer on The Jack Benny Program, in both its radio and television formats. Having earned the nickname "The Man of a Thousand Voices," Blanc is regarded as one of the most influential people in the voice-acting industry.

At the time of his death, it was estimated that 20 million people heard his voice every day.

Early Life
Blanc was born Melvin Jerome Blank in San Francisco, California, to Jewish parents Frederick and Eva Blank. The younger of two children, he grew up in the neighborhood of Western Addition in San Francisco, and later in Portland, Oregon, attending Lincoln High School. Growing up, he had a fondness for voices and dialect, which he started to do as early as the age of 10. He claimed that when he was 16, he changed the spelling from "Blank" to "Blanc" because a teacher told him that he would amount to nothing and be, like his name, a "blank". Blanc joined The Order of DeMolay as a young man, and was eventually inducted into its Hall of Fame. He dropped out of high school in the ninth grade and split his time between leading an orchestra, becoming the youngest conductor in the country at the age of 17, and performing shtick in vaudeville shows around Washington, Oregon, and northern California.

Radio work
Blanc began his radio career in 1927 as a voice actor on the KGW program The Hoot Owls, where his ability to provide voices for multiple characters first attracted attention. He moved to Los Angeles in 1932, where he met Estelle Rosenbaum, whom he married a year later, before returning to Portland. He moved to KEX in 1933 to produce and co-host his Cobweb And Nuts show with his wife Estelle, which debuted on June 15. The program played Monday through Saturday from 11:00 pm to midnight, and by the time the show ended two years later, it appeared from 10:30 pm to 11:00 pm.

With his wife's encouragement, Blanc returned to Los Angeles and joined Warner Brothers-owned KFWB in Hollywood, California, in 1935. He joined The Johnny Murray Show, but the following year switched to CBS Radio and The Joe Penner Show. Blanc was a regular on the NBC Red Network show The Jack Benny Program in various roles, including voicing Benny's Maxwell automobile (in desperate need of a tune-up), violin teacher Professor LeBlanc, Polly the Parrot, Benny's pet polar bear Carmichael, the tormented department store clerk, and the train announcer (see below). The first role came from an mishap when the recording of the automobile's sounds failed to play on cue, prompting Blanc to take the microphone and improvise the sounds himself. The audience reacted so positively that Benny decided to dispense with the recording altogether and have Blanc continue in that role.

One of Blanc's most memorable characters from Benny's radio (and later TV) programs was "Sy, the Little Mexican", who spoke one word at a time. The famous "Sí...Sy...sew...Sue" routine was so effective that no matter how many times it was performed, the laughter was always there, thanks to the comedic timing of Blanc and Benny.


At times, sharp-eyed audience members (and later, TV viewers) could see Benny struggling to keep a straight face; Blanc's absolute dead-pan delivery was a formidable challenge for him. Benny's daughter, Joan, recalls that Mel Blanc was one of her father's closest friends in real life, because "nobody else on the show could make him laugh the way Mel could."

Another famous Blanc shtick on Jack's show was the train depot announcer who inevitably intoned, sidelong, "Train leaving on Track Five for Anaheim, Azusa, and Cucamonga". Part of the joke was the Angeleno studio audience's awareness that no such train existed connecting those then-small towns (years before Disneyland opened). To the wider audience, the primary joke was the pregnant pause that evolved over time between "Cuc.." and "...amonga"; eventually, minutes would pass while the skit went on as the audience awaited the inevitable conclusion of the word. (At least once, a completely different skit followed before the inevitable "...amonga" finally appeared.)

Benny's writers would regularly try to "stump" Blanc by asking him to perform supposedly impossible vocal effects and characterizations, such as an "English horse whinny" and a goldfish. For the latter, Mel walked up to the microphone and pursed his lips several times, making no noise.

By 1946, Blanc appeared on over 15 radio programs in supporting roles. His success on The Jack Benny Program led to his own radio show on the CBS Radio Network, The Mel Blanc Show, which ran from
September 3, 1946, to June 24, 1947. Blanc played himself as the hapless owner of a fix-it shop, as well as his young cousin Zookie (who sounded quite a bit like Porky Pig). Many episodes required Mel to impersonate an exotic foreigner or other stranger in town, ostensibly for carrying out a minor deception on his girlfriend's father, but of course simply as a vehicle for him to show off his talents. Other regular characters were played by Mary Jane Croft, Joseph Kearns, Hans Conried, Alan Reed, Earle Ross, Jim Backus, Bea Benarderet and The Sportsmen Quartet, who would supply a song and sing the Colgate Tooth Powder commercials. (Blanc would later work with Reed and Benaderet on The Flintstones.) Shows usually adhered to a predictable formula, involving a date with his girl Betty Colby (Mary Jane Croft) and trying to either impress her father or at least avoid angering him. However, Mr. Colby (Joseph Kearns) usually had occasion to deliver his trademark line, "Mel Blanc, I'm going to break every bone in your body!" The show was the inspiration for the real Mel Blanc Fix-It Shop, a small hardware store in Venice, so his parents could have something to do. It garnered a lot of publicity, due to the long lines of people wanting to meet Blanc.

Blanc appeared frequently on The Great Gildersleeve, uncredited, often voicing two or more supporting characters in a single episode: deliverymen in "Planting a Tree" and "Father's Day Chair" also "Gus", a petty crook in the latter; a radio station manager and a policeman in "Mystery Singer", and many others.

Blanc also appeared on such other national radio programs as The Abbott and Costello Show, the Happy Postman on Burns and Allen, and as August Moon on Point Sublime. During World War II, he appeared as Private Sad Sack on various radio shows, most notably G.I. Journal. The character of Sad Sack was a bumbling Army private with an even worse stutter than Porky Pig. ("I'm Lieutena-eh-Lieutena-eh-Capta-eh-Majo-eh-Colone-eh-p-p-Private Sad Sack.")

Blanc also had hit recordings throughout the 1940s and 1950s, including his biggest hit song, "Big Bear Lake." Due to the immense popularity of Blanc and the song, the city of Big Bear Lake, California made Blanc an honorary mayor for 33 years.

For his contribution to radio, Mel Blanc has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6385 Hollywood Boulevard.

Animation and Voice Work in Hollywood
In March 1937, Mel Blanc joined Leon Schlesinger Productions, which made animated cartoons distributed by Warner Brothers. Blanc liked to tell the story about how he got turned down at the Schlesinger studio by music director Norman Spencer, who was in charge of cartoon voices, saying that they had all the voices they needed, as he went to him once every two weeks for two years straight. Then Spencer died, and sound man Treg Brown took charge of cartoon voices, while Carl Stalling took over as music director. Brown introduced Blanc to animation directors Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Fritz Freleng, and Frank Tashlin, who loved his voices. The first cartoon Blanc worked on was Picador Porky as the voice of a drunken bull. He replaced Joe Dougherty as Porky Pig’s voice in Porky’s Duck Hunt, which marked the debut of Daffy Duck, also voiced by Blanc.

Blanc soon became noted for voicing a wide variety of cartoon characters from Looney Tunes, addiong Bugs Bunny, Tweety Bird, Pepe Le Pew and many others. His natural voice was that of Sylvester the Cat, but without the lispy spray. (Blanc's voice can be heard in an episode of The Beverly Hillbillies that also featured frequent Blanc vocal foil Bea Benaderet; in his small appearance, Blanc plays a vexed cab-driver.)

In his later years, Blanc claimed that a handful of late 1930s and early 1940s Warner cartoons that each featured a rabbit clearly a precursor of Bugs Bunny all actually dealt with a single character named Happy Rabbit. No use of this name by other Termite Terrace personnel, then or later, has ever been documented, however. Happy Rabbit was noted for his laugh which became more famous as the laugh of Woody Woodpecker (of which Blanc was the original voice) until he won an exclusive contract with Warner Bros. which meant he couldn't do Woody's voice anymore as the Woody Woodpecker cartoons were produced by Walter Lantz Productions and distributed by Universal Pictures. Blanc later recorded "The Woody Woodpecker Song" for Capitol Records.

Though his best-known character was a carrot-chomping rabbit, munching on the carrots interrupted the dialogue. Various substitutes, such as celery, were tried, but none of them sounded like a carrot. So for the sake of expedience, he would munch and then spit the carrot bits into a spittoon rather than swallowing them, and continue with the dialogue. One oft-repeated story is that he was allergic to carrots and had to spit them out to minimize any allergic reaction; but his autobiography makes no such claim; in fact, in a 1984 interview with Tim Lawson, co-author of The Magic Behind The Voices: A Who's Who of Cartoon Voice Actors (University Press of Mississippi, 2004), Blanc emphatically denied being allergic to carrots. In a Straight Dope column, a Blanc confidante confirmed that Blanc only spit out the carrots because of time constraints, and not because of allergies or general dislike.


Blanc said his most challenging job was voicing Yosemite Sam; it was rough on the throat because of Sam’s sheer volume and raspiness. (Foghorn Leghorn’s voice was similarly raucous, but to a lesser degree.) Late in life, he reprised several of his classic voices for Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but deferred to Joe Alaskey to do Yosemite Sam's and Foghorn Leghorn's voices.

Throughout his career, Blanc was well aware of his talents and protected the rights to them contractually and legally. He, and later his estate, did not hesitate to take civil action when those rights were violated. Voice actors usually got no screen credits at all, but Blanc was a notable exception; by 1944, his contract stipulated a credit reading "Voice characterization(s) by Mel Blanc." Blanc asked for and received this screen credit from studio boss Leon Schlesinger when Leon objected to giving Blanc a raise in pay.

Voice Work for Hanna-Barbara and Others
In 1960, after the expiration of his exclusive contract with Warner Bros., although Blanc continued his voice work for Warner Bros., he also went to Hanna-Barbera and continued to voice various characters, his most famous being Barney Rubble from The Flintstones (whose dopey laugh is similar to Foghorn Leghorn’s booming chuckle) and Mr. Spacely from The Jetsons (similar to Yosemite Sam, but not as raucous). His other notable voice roles for Hanna-Barbara included Secret Squirrel, Speed Buggy, and Captain Caveman. Daws Butler and Don Messick were Hanna-Barbera's top voice men when Blanc began providing voices for the company.

Blanc did those voices plus others for such ensemble cartoons as Wacky Races and The Perils of Penelope Pitstop for Hanna-Barbera in the late '60s. Blanc shared the spotlight with his two professional rivals and personal friends, Butler and Messick: In a short called Lippy the Lion, Butler was Lippy, while Blanc was his hyena sidekick, Hardy Har-Har, and Don Messick was usually the guest villain or other supporting characters. In the short Ricochet Rabbit, Messick was the voice of the gun slinging rabbit, while Blanc was his sidekick, Deputy Droop-a-Long Coyote.

Blanc also worked with Chuck Jones, who by this time was directing shorts with his own company Sib Tower 12 (later MGM Animation), doing vocal effects in the Tom and Jerry series from 1963 to 1967.
In addition, Blanc was the first person to play Toucan Sam in Froot Loops commercials, using a slightly cartoonish version of his natural voice. (The ad agency later decided to give Sam an upper-crust English accent and replaced Blanc with Paul Frees.)

Blanc reprised some of his Warner Bros. characters when the studio contracted to make new theatrical cartoons in the mid-to-late 1960s. For these, Blanc voiced Daffy Duck and Speedy Gonzales, the characters who received the most frequent use in these shorts (later, newly introduced characters such as Cool Cat and Merlin the Magic Mouse were voiced by Larry Storch). Blanc also continued to voice the Looney Tunes characters on the bridging sequences for The Bugs Bunny Show and in numerous animated advertisements.

Car Accident and Aftermath
On January 24, 1961, Blanc was involved in a near-fatal car accident on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Hit head-on, Blanc suffered a triple skull fracture that left him in a coma for three weeks, along with fractures of both legs and the pelvis.

The accident prompted over 15,000 get-well cards from anxious fans, including some addressed only to "Bugs Bunny, Hollywood, USA", according to Blanc's autobiography. One newspaper falsely reported that he had died. After his recovery, Blanc reported in TV interviews, and later in his autobiography, that a clever doctor had helped him to come out of his coma by talking as-if to Bugs Bunny, after futile efforts to talk directly to Blanc. The doctor got him to talk as his characters, before Blanc finally got out of his coma and talking as himself. Although he had no actual recollection of this, Blanc's wife and son swore to him that when the doctor was inspired to ask him, "How are you today, Bugs Bunny?", Blanc answered in Bugs' voice. Blanc thus credited Bugs with saving his life.


Blanc returned home from the UCLA Medical Center on March 17 to the cheers of more than 150 friends and neighbors. On March 22, he filed a US$500,000 lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles. His accident, one of 26 in the preceding two years at the intersection, resulted in the city funding restructuring curves at the location.

Years later, Blanc revealed that during his recovery, his son Noel "ghosted" several Warner Brothers cartoons' voice tracks for him. At the time of the accident, Blanc was also serving as the voice of Barney
Rubble in The Flintstones. His absence from the show would be relatively brief; Daws Butler provided the voice of Rubble for a few episodes, after which the show's producers set up recording equipment in Blanc's hospital room and later, at his house to allow him to work from his residence. Some of the recordings were made while he was in full-body cast while he lay flat on his back, with the other Flintstones co-stars gathered around him. He also returned to The Jack Benny Program to film the program's 1961 Christmas show, moving around via crutches and a wheelchair.

During that time, Warner Bros. considered having Stan Freberg do the voice of Bugs Bunny, while Blanc recovered from his injuries; Freberg refused, out of respect for Blanc.

Later Career
In the 1970s, Blanc did a series of college lectures across the United States on the side, which broke attendance records of any college lectures in the country. He would also collaborate on a special with the Boston-based Shriners Burns Institute called Ounce of Prevention, which became a 30-minute TV special that aired worldwide.

Contrary to popular belief, Blanc was not one of hundreds of individuals that George Lucas auditioned to provide the voice for the character of C-3PO in the original Star Wars film. That distinction instead fell to fellow voice actor Stan Freberg, and it was Freberg who ultimately suggested that the producers use mime actor Anthony Daniels’s own voice in the role.


After spending most of two seasons voicing the robot Twiki in Buck Rogers in thr 25^th Century, Blanc's last original character, in the early 1980s, was Heathcliff, who spoke a little like Bugs Bunny. Blanc continued to voice his famous characters in commercials and TV specials for most of the decade, although he increasingly left the "yelling" characters like Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn and The Tasmanian Devil to other voice actors, as performing these were too hard on his throat. One of his last recording sessions was for a new animated theatrical version of The Jetsons.

In the early 1980s, he would appear on commercials for American Express, as well as 9 Lives cat food spots featuring Sylvester, which combined live action and animation. He also re-teamed with the Shriners Burn Institute in the mid-1980s for a series of public service announcements in which his Warner Bros. characters were used to advise children about burn prevention in the home.

In 1983, he was asked by comedian Rick Moranis to voice the father of Bob and Doug MacKenzie in the film Strange Brew, which he did.

Blanc voiced all his well known Looney Tunes characters (save for Yosemite Sam and Foghorn Leghorn, both of whom were voiced by Joe Alaskey) in the 1988 live-action/animated comedy-mystery film Who Framed Roger Rabbit making this project one of the final times he voiced these characters as he died only a year after the film's release. A license to use the Looney Tunes characters (along with many other characters) for the movie was acquired from their respective owners to appear in this film by Disney making Who Framed Roger Rabbit one of only a few times Blanc worked for Disney.

He died on July 10, 1989 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California. Animator Darrell Van Citters did a memorable drawing entitled "Speechless," which showed a spotlight on a microphone, as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Foghorn Leghorn, Speedy Gonzales, Pepe Le Pew, Tweety, Sylvester, and Yosemite Sam bowed their head somberly in a moment of silence. It was printed on some newspapers around the world.

Records in the field of Animation
Mel Blanc holds some important records in the field of animation (none of which are currently recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records), the most famous being the "1000 Voices" he was said to have performed. Not as notable are two records of longevity: his original characterization of Daffy Duck (for over 52 years) is the longest time any animated character has been performed by his or her original voice contributor. He also voiced Porky Pig for exactly the same amount of time as Daffy — since the same cartoon (Porky’s Duck Hunt) — through to his death, though Porky was not originally voiced by Blanc.

Blanc was also the original voice of almost every character he voiced, leaving him as the clear holder of the record of "Most Characters Originally Voiced By One Actor," and he almost certainly provided voices in more cartoons than any other voice actor. He is also in 3rd place to his own 52-year record of his original characterization of Daffy, by voicing Bugs Bunny for almost 49 years from the date of his debut (July 27, 1940). The runner-up is Clarence Nash, who voiced Donald Duck for 51 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Blanc

Positive Quiddity: Game Theorist Epstein

Richard Arnold Epstein was born in 1927 and is a remarkable game theorist. He wrote The Theory of Gambling and Statistical Logic (revised in 1977), which contains the following thought-provoking quotes:

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

• In our most Puritan of society, gambling-like other pleasures-is either taxed, restricted to certain hours, or forbidden altogether. Yet the impulse to gamble remains an eternal aspect of the irrationality of man. It finds outlets in business, war, politics, in the formal overtures of the gambling casinos, and in the less ceremonious exchanges among individuals of differing opinions.
• Preface To The First Edition, p. xiii
• Shortly after pithecanthropus erectus gained the ascendancy, he turned his attention to the higher-order abstractions.
• Chapter One, Kubeiagenesis, p. 1
• "Breaking the bank at Monte Carlo" is a euphemism for closing a single gaming table. It was last accomplished at the Casino Ste. des Bains de Mer during the final days of 1957, with a harvest of 180 million francs.
• Chapter One, Kubeiagenesis, p. 10
• In general statistics can be considered as the offspring of the theory of probability, it builds on its parent and extends the area of patronymic jurisdiction.
• Chapter Two, Mathematical Preliminaries, p. 24
• A proven theorem of game theory states that every game with complete information possesses a saddle point and therefore a solution.
• Chapter Two, Mathematical Preliminaries, p. 36
• The essence of the phenomenon of gambling is decision making. The act of making a decision consists of selecting one course of action, or strategy, from among the set of admissible strategies.
• Chapter Three, Fundamental Principles Of A Theory Of Gambling, p. 43
• There are no conventional games involving conditions of uncertainty without risk.
• Chapter Three, Fundamental Principles Of A Theory Of Gambling, p. 44
• The French philosopher Pierre-Hyacinthe Azaïs (1766-1845) formalized the statement that good and evil fortune are exactly balanced in that they produce for each person an equivalent result.
• Chapter Three, Fundamental Principles Of A Theory Of Gambling, p. 53
• Generally, a betting system for which each wager depends only on present resources and present probability of success is known as a Markov betting system.
• Chapter Three, Fundamental Principles Of A Theory Of Gambling, p. 61
• Coin matching and finger flashing were among the first formal games to arise in the history of gambling. The class of Morra games extends back to the pre-Christian era, although not until comparatively recent times have game-theoretic solutions been derived.
• Chapter Four, Coins, Wheels, And Oddments, p. 75
• Against human opposition the machine usually emerges victorious, since individual patterns tend to be not random but a function of emotions and previous training and experience.
• Chapter Four, Coins, Wheels, And Oddments, p. 90
• While no rigorous proof of an optimal strategy has been achieved, Robbins has proposed the principal of "staying on a winner" and has shown it to be uniformly better than a strategy of random selection.
• Chapter Four, Coins, Wheels, And Oddments, p. 98
• The hope of a positive expected gain lies in detecting a wheel with sufficient bias.

• Chapter Four, Coins, Wheels, And Oddments, p. 113

The first-known public lottery was sponsored by Augustus Caesar to raise funds for repairing the city of Rome; the first public lottery awarding money prizes, the Lotto de Firenze, was established in Florence in 1530.

• Chapter Four, Coins, Wheels, And Oddments, p. 119

One of the oldest mythological fables tells of Mercury playing at dice with Selene and winning from her the five days of the epact (thus totaling the 365 days of the year and harmonizing the lunar and solar calendars).

• Chapter Five, Coups And Games With Dice, p. 125

Although the major gambling casinos do not maintain statistical records on the results of games of Craps, one event has been recorded-that wherein a young man achieved 28 consecutive "passes" at the Desert Inn Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada (June 10, 1950). Odds against such an event are 400 million to 1.

• Chapter Five, Coups And Games With Dice, p. 149

In 1423, the Franciscan friar St. Bernardino of Siena preached a celebrated sermon against cards (Contra Alcarum Ludos) at Bologna, attributing their invention to the devil. Despite such ecclesiastic interdiction, Johannes Gutenberg printed playing cards the same year as his famous Bible (1440). The cards from Gutenberg's press were Tarot cards, from which the modern deck is derived.

• Chapter Six, The Play Of The Cards, p. 158

Blackjack does possess a memory (the interdependence of the cards) and a conscience (inferior play will inevitably be penalized) and is not democratic (the mental agility and retentiveness of the player are significant factors).

• Chapter Seven, Blackjack, p. 215

• Because the fluctuations in the composition of the deck as it is dependent over successive (and dependent) trials, it is intuitively apparent that altering decisions or the magnitude of the wager or both in accordance with the fluctuations should prove advantageous to the player.
• Chapter Seven, Blackjack, p. 231

• Contract Bridge is likely the most challenging card game extant; it is certainly the the most obsessive for its ranks of zealous followers. The initial progenitor of all Bridge forms is the game of Triumph, which gained currency about A.D. 1500. In the mid seventeenth century, Triumph evolved into Whist, a partnership game for four players. The change from Whist to Bridge occurred about 1886with a publication in London of a small pamphlet, titled Biritch or Russian Whist.
  Chapter Eight, Contract Bridge, p. 252

The earliest full-length account of a chariot race appears in Book xxiii of the Iliad.

• Chapter Nine, Weighted Statistical Logic And Statistical Games, p. 287

Treatment of the apparently whimsical fluctuations of the stock quotations as truly non stationary processes requires a model of such complexity that its practical value is likely to be limited. An additional complication, not encompassed by most stock market models, arises from the manifestation of the market as a nonzero sum game.

• Chapter Nine, Weighted Statistical Logic And Statistical Games, p. 295

Reflecting an amalgam of economics, monetary, and psychological factors, the stock market represents possibly the most subtly intricate game invented by man.

• Chapter Nine, Weighted Statistical Logic And Statistical Games, p. 296

A weakness of the random-walk model lies in its assumption of instantaneous adjustment, whereas the information impelling a stock market toward its "intrinsic value" gradually becomes disseminated throughout the market place.

• Chapter Nine, Weighted Statistical Logic And Statistical Games, p. 299

From a rational standpoint, it might be expected that man should be far more willing to express financial confidence in his skills rather than risking his earnings on the mindless meanderings of chance. Experience, however, has strongly indicated the reverse proposition to hold true.

• Chapter Ten, Games Of Pure Skill And Competitive Computers, p. 337

Anthropologists have often commented on the striking resemblance between the uneducated gambler and the primitive.

Chapter Eleven, Fallacies And Sophistries, p. 391

The assumption that individuals act objectively in accordance with purely mathematical dictates to maximize their gain or utility cannot be sustained by empirical observation.

• Epilogue, p. 410

From: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Arnold_Epstein

Aspirin May Delay Alzheimer's Disease

Aspirin reduces pain and may prevent heart attacks and strokes. This drug may ward off certain caincers. Now researchers have discovered that it may even delay or prevent Alzheimer’s disease when used in a low dosage, according to a new study published in BMJ Open

[link: http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/2/5/e001288.long ].

The study adds to earlier research suggesting that
"The BMJ researchers tracked the brain health of 681 Swedish women ages 70 to 92. At the start of study, none of the women suffered from dementia, but 95 percent were at high risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD). All of the women were given a battery of memory and cognitive tests known as the mini-mental state exam.

"When the exam was repeated five years later, scores fell, on average. However, women who had consistently taken low-dose aspirin during the study actually increased their scores, compared to never-users. The study didn’t find any brain benefit in women who regularly took other non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as ibuprofen or naproxen."

• Taking a baby aspirin daily may cut the risk for Alzheimer’s by up to 55 percent.

• aspirin has a unique benefit not provided by other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs): It thins the blood, lowering the likelihood of a clot that can trigger a heart attack or ischemic stroke (a category of stroke which is caused by blood clots and is the most frquent type of stroke.

• Those little aspirin pills fight against chronic inflammation, a factor in triggering heart attacks.

• Heart attacks and ischemic strokes are caused by the same problem, plaque inside the artery walls which bursts. This can lead to a clot which blocks the flow of blood.

• Strokes interfere with memory, speech and movement—and rank as the leading cause of disability. But people who have never experienced stroke symptoms can also suffer from memory problems, even tiny clots that result in no apparent symptom can result in progressive impairment such as memory loss.

• A Harvard study showed that that so-called "silent strokes," which occur without any symptoms, are also related to cognitive decline. These small strokes can lead to a memory-impaired condition called vascular dementia.

• There are also several lifestyle choices which reduce the possibility of a brain disease such as dementia, including regular exercise, improving your diet, shunning tobacco and secondhand smoke, and maintaining an active social life.

Some doctors recommend low-dose daily aspirin for any patients with vascular risk factors. Patients should consult with a doctor before beginning an aspirin regimen, since the drug can induce gastrointestinal bleeding. [There is also a very rare disease for which those who have it should never take aspirin].

Summarized from:

http://health.yahoo.net/experts/dayinhealth/aspirin-may-reduce-cognitive-decline