Mindconnection eNL, 2012-06-03

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Many companies are not laying off. And that's good news. It's a classic case of the glass that's half full or half-empty, except the ratio is more like 9:1 in favor of empty. But the 1 in 10 is good news for those who work there.

A big layoff at a competitor's company is good news for your company. It's like being in a race with someone who decides he can outrun you if he sheds the weight of his left leg and has it amputated. Gee, what a strategy.

Recently, HP announced it was laying off 27,000 people. This is great news for HP's competitors, because it leaves HP much weaker. If HP had any kind of ROI on the vast salaries it pays its senior executives, those grossly overpaid people would figure out how to use 27,000 brainy people's talents to make more money for HP.

If layoffs are logical, then why do companies hire anyone to begin with? If people are just a cost and you are better off without 27,000 brains working for you, why not fire everybody and maximize the cost-savings? Why not stop selling products so warranty returns drop to zero? Because it's stupid to fire everybody, just as it's stupid to fire people simply to have fewer people to pay. In the real world, layoffs never solve a company's problems. They just make the company weaker. Except in rare cases, only morons choose the layoff as a solution.

People are a resource. If you're an exec with a multi-million dollar salary, you are obligated to figure out how to use that resource to increase revenues. In the case of HP, the only people who should have been let go have titles starting with C and/or dis-serve on the board of misdirectors.

Doctors used to "treat" patients by bleeding them nearly to death. They eventually figured out this didn't work. At some point, most corporate boards and their incompetent execs will also figure this out. At many companies, there's a no layoff policy because that's the smart approach. Most companies should have that policy.

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And it's very easy to use.

• Familiar QWERTY keyboard.
• Clear sound quality, and you can use the included earphone and volume control for private listening.
• Large backlit, easy to read display for your comfort and convenience.
• It can translate words or phrases between any two languages, not just English and a target language.

Discontinued.

Good statistical analysts always ask, "Compared to what?" Understanding the context is usually requisite to forming a correct conclusion.

When looking at any bit of information, understand its context so you can correctly determine what it means.

Here's an example to illustrate the point, though this isn't the kind of situation I'm actually referring to.

"The man was driving at 50MPH"

What can you conclude from this? Was he speeding? You do not know, unless you have the context. If he drove 50MPH in a school crossing zone, he was speeding and clearly endangering others. If he drove 50MPH on the interstate where the posted speed limit was 70MPH, he was probably underspeeding and endangering others.

But what if he's driving 50MPH in a 50MPH zone, was he driving safely and legally? Probably, but again you lack the context. Is the road covered in ice? Is it pouring down rain? Are other drivers barely moving because a herd of cows is crossing the road? Is this man's car even on the road? What if there's a traffic jam or accident and he's doing 50 MPH on the shoulder?

So you can see context is important. Here's an example more relevant to today's govt crime epidemic. We have another fake "election" coming up. The Party has its two employees pretending to "run" against each other (since Ron Paul is the only candidate who has promised to follow the law, he is the only eligible candidate unless lawlessness is your thing).

These two very strange people are making their "campaign" pronouncements, even though the outcome of the fake "election" has already been determined by criminals who own the govt (one of their two employees will "win" and they probably don't care which one). The criminals permit these fake "elections" just to see if most Americans still buy the lie that there is any difference other than rhetoric between two "parties" when the crime and devastation continue no matter which one is "in power."

Or that, somehow, out of 310 million people, it makes any sense whatsoever that these two retards are the best we can do. And, of course, that somehow the ballot isn't controlled by criminals yet nobody who follows the law made it onto the ballot. Ah, but I digress.

A few months ago, Obama stated that unemployment (new claims for unemployment insurance benefit) had dropped an entire percent so he "deserves" a second term. I agree he deserves a second term, but we disagree on the location. It need to be Fort Leavenworth or maybe Gitmo.

What is the context? Thanks to Obama's aggressive attacks on the economy, new claims for unemployment rose well above the level to which they had dropped when Obama started bragging about his "accomplishment." The level was still higher than when he took office. Without the context, we don't see that we are worse off in the third year of Obamagbeddon than when it began. If we simply listen to our criminal in chief spew statistics without the context, we get the opposite impression of what the reality is.

But wait, it gets worse. Add more context here. Claims for disability are way, way up. Why is this? People who have run their unemployment benefits out and still can't get a job in our trillion dollar a year Obama misadministration debt-sacked, waylaid economy still have this crazy penchant for food, clothing, and shelter. As refrigerator boxes are in short supply these days (too many homeless claiming them, too few people buying refrigerators), a huge number of people need some other way to provide for themselves. They are filing disability claims. It would be easy to argue they have been economically disabled by extremely bad, downright sadistic public policy.

That's what context tells you. Only with context can you see reality. Which is why Obama excludes it from his propaganda spewing sessions.

Just in case someone gets the wrong idea that I somehow see any actual difference between the two "parties" and rant on Obama only because he is nominally a Democrat, here's some context. GW Bush did the same thing with his "Mission Accomplished" nonsense. There was no clear mission, and nothing positive was accomplished. The context tells you this was just a mindless slogan aimed at zombies who, with no regard for context, might actually believe it. Sadly, many did.

It should now be clear that your brainpower is made effective rather than useless when you use context to evaluate things. But you can also use context to avoid wasting brainpower. There's an old adage to not argue with a fool, lest passersby not be able to tell the difference. Sane people are often exposed to the blatherings of those brainwashed by the state-run mudstream media.

You might be tempted to try to argue these people into seeing reality. But consider the situation. That person has willingly exposed his/her mind to a known source of disinformation. Such a person is not going to respond to facts and logic, but will instead try to defend the statements just spewed forth. Rather than attack the delusion, attack the method used to support it.

A good response is to simply ask that person for the context.

• Brainwashed: "Unemployment is down to 8%"
• You: "Compared to what? And what time frame are you looking at? Is this actual unemployment, or just new claims for unemployment benefits? How does that figure compare to other claims for public assistance?"
• Brainwashed: "Uh...."

When confronted thusly, the brainwashed usually change the topic, state something completely irrelevant, or engage in a non-sequitor or two. You do not need to respond to those things, as the person has conceded the point by this response. Change the topic and move on. Congratulate yourself for not having wasted time engaging in "an argument about the existence of gravity."

Here is some information you probably didn't know, further bolstering the case for eliminating the crime-infested IRS and the idiotic 1040 income tax.

Over the past decade alone, our grossly overpaid misrepresentatives in CONgress have made 4,428 changes to the federal income tax code. That's more than one per day. And they still can't get it right. This idiotic code has grown so complex that Americans spent a total of 7.64 billion hours in 2010 grappling with tax-related paperwork (Source: Reason Magazine).

Look at that number again. The 7.64 billion hours is 7,640 million hours. That is a huge amount of wasted time. So much, in fact, that simply abolishing the 1040 tax outright would result in a huge increase of federal revenue due to using those hours productively. So obviously, this 1040 tax system doesn't exist to fund the government; in fact, it serves no legitimate purpose at all.

But it is costly on a grand scale. Consider again the number of hours. It's more than twice the number of hours worked by all of the country's elementary school teachers combined. If you understand the concept of "opportunity cost" you see how important it is to abolish the 1040 income tax system and the IRS. There's no need to replace it with another form of taxation.

Now, combine this waste problem with the federal govt crime problem. The Demopublicans have done zero about this situation; since they work for the same corporate criminals, Ds and Rs give you the same result so a D/R choice is no choice at all. It's just a different checkout line in the same dishonest store.

Unlike Demopublicans, the Libertarian candidates for office consider gangsta government unacceptable. Unlike the Demopublicans, they want to restore law and order. When you vote in the next fake federal "election," are you going to refuse to give the Demopublicans your approval? Doing that is the only way your vote has any effect at all.

In the meantime, go onto the Websites of your CONgressional misrepresentative and senators every month and fill out the contact form with a statement that the IRS must be abolished and/or the 1040 income tax must be abolished. You can use facts like the ones presented here to explain why this is so.

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=xOAgT8L_BqQ&feature=player_embedded

Consider the fact that cow's milk is the main source of saturated fat in the American diet. In other words, people who look like cows almost certainly got that way from drinking cow's milk. A single glass of this stuff has the same amount of fat as 5 strips of bacon. How in the heck is that doing anybody's body good?

What about lowfat or nonfat milk? You must ask yourself what they did to the milk to make it that way.

There is something to be said for buying organic non-homogenized milk and removing the cream from the top. That's a safe way to get low-fat milk. But it's still cow's milk, and therein lies the problem. Before I explain why cow's milk should be no more than an occasional treat, I'll expose a disease-causing myth about milk.

The myth is that cow's milk is a great source of calcium. Read why the reality is quite different and what you can do about it.

Age 50.

At www.supplecity.com, you'll find plenty of informative, authoritative articles on maintaining a lean, strong physique. It has nothing to do with long workouts or impossible to maintain diets. In fact:

• The best workouts are short and intense.
• A good diet contains far more flavors and satisfaction than the typical American diet.