Multiculturalism - Destroying American Culture

Less than 30 years ago, most everything in America enjoyed the moniker "All American." Sports heroes became "All Americans." When you bought a product, it read, "Made in America." Everyone spoke English and raised their hands to their hearts while saying, "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God with liberty and justice for all."  Our leaders, with their open-borders approach to life, dismantles the fabric of a successful nation. Which is it--free market economy, or forced multiculturalism? "Many liberals hear talk of national culture and shout 'Nativist!' first and ask questions later, if at all. They believe it is a sign of their patriotism that they hold fast to the idea that we are a 'nation of immigrants' - forgetting that we are also a nation of immigrants who willingly assimilated and became Americans." - Jonah Goldberg  Today, millions in this country call themselves Hmong-Americans, Muslim-Americans, Korean-Americans, African-Americans, Sudanese-Americans, Bangladeshi-Americans. In other words, they do not hold total allegiance to or loyalty as an American. One of our presidential candidates calls himself an African-American. In fact, he is a Kenyan-American. He grew up in Indonesia until the age of 10. Barack Obama cannot be considered an All-American man by his own words. Those people with hyphenated nationalities manifest "multiculturalism."  By its very name, it destroys one culture by breaking it into many. It's like throwing a baseball through a window in a house, fracturing it into many pieces. The window can no longer protect that house from rain, winds or snow. Additionally, with numerous cultures come multiple languages. Linguistic chaos equals unending tension. The writer, Kant, said, "The two great dividers are religion and language." Colorado Governor Richard Lamm (D) said, "The histories of bilingual and bicultural societies that do not assimilate are histories of turmoil, tension and tragedy. Canada, Belgium, Malaysia, Lebanon- all face crises of national existence in which minorities press for autonomy, if not independence. Pakistan and Cyprus have divided.  Nigeria suppressed an ethnic rebellion. France faces difficulties with Basques, Bretons and Corsicans." On the other hand, millions respond and respect their one allegiance as that of being an "American." Thus, we grow as a country at odds with itself. We lose our national identity with every added citizen who calls him/herself a hyphenated American. Europe provides a peek into our future. Their Muslim-British immigrants stand at odds with everything English. If you visit London, you will find two separate societies. The Muslim-French immigrants balk at everything French. The Muslim-Dutch backlash against everything in Holland. Ethiopian-Norwegians will not assimilate into Norway's culture. Would you bake a cake by adding mustard, ketchup and vinegar? What kind of a cake would result? Bitter, at odds with itself and discordant! Not to mention it would taste horrible! Today, America's grand 232 year run fractures, falters and degrades under the march of "multiculturalism." The word sounds unifying, inclusive and respectful. Yet how unified can a nation remain where a foreign language forces its way into our national character?  Los Angeles provides a peek into our future where Mexican culture "overtook" its way into dominance. Maywood, California, one of many American cities featuring 90 percent illegal aliens, illustrates a case in point. From an LA Times article,  "6+4 = 1 Tenuous Existence", for a short time, an illegal alien lived with his family in Maywood, but discovered that crime, drugs, guns, prostitution and dilapidated schools made life miserable. He moved into the heartland of America ­ where he discovered safety in the America of law and order.  "What we weren't able to do in many years in California," Alejandra said, "we've done quickly here. We're in a state where there's nothing but Americans. The police control the streets.  It's clean, no gangs!  California now resembles Mexico- everyone thinks like in Mexico. California's broken." Given enough time, via adherence to his Mexican culture, Alejandra and millions of immigrants like him, recreate the same conditions created in Maywood, California. One look at Mexico City's poverty living conditions portends the picture of America's future cities. A recent PEW report shows America adding 138 million people in four decades. Of that number, 90 million immigrants will reach America's shores by 2050. One in five citizens will be born out of our country. They drag in 100 incompatible third world cultures. The mind-boggling first question remains: should all these immigrants that arrive from failed cultures succeed in their demands that we respect the injection of their culture and language into ours? A second question knocks on your brain: what underpins your ability to walk into any grocery store in America and find thousands of food products while, in contrast, millions worldwide starve to death annually? Answer: those qualities that make up our very successful All American culture! The third question explodes in an American's mind: why do we choose to maintain a two million annual legal immigration load (2007) from failed cultures that cannot be sustained ­ PLUS more than double that amount in illegal immigration (2007) ­ while degrading everything in America toward third world conditions?  In Dr. Otis Graham's book, UNGUARDED GATES: A History of America's  Immigration Crisis, he writes, "Most Western elites continue urging the wealthy West not to stem the migrant tide, but to absorb our global brothers and sisters until their horrid ordeal has been endured and shared by all ­ ten billion humans packed onto an ecologically devastated planet in 2030." Will we as a nation survive this "Cultural Katrina"? One look at Maywood, California; Mexico City, Mexico; Dhaka, Bangladesh; Paris, France; and many other cities provides the answer.  Let this be your call to the grave dilemma America faces. We throw incompatible ingredients into the cake, and when it comes out of the oven, we sicken and die from multicultural food poisoning. Yes, integrity mandates respect for all cultures and people. However, when will Americans leap past "political correctness" to stop the death of America? Listen to Frosty Wooldridge on Tuesdays and Thursdays as he interviews top national leaders on his radio show "Connecting the Dots" at www.republicbroadcasting.org at 6:00 PM Mountain Time. Adjust tuning-in to your time zone. Tonight, March 13, 2008, interview with U.S. senatorial candidate Buddy Witherspoon as he tries to unseat South Carolina amnesty supporter Senator Lindsey Graham. C

Nintendo NX controller

Its the end of the line

Nominating Donald Trump will wreck the Republican Party as we know it. Not nominating Trump will wreck the Republican Party as we know it. The sooner everyone recognizes this fact, the better.

Denial has been Trump's greatest ally. Republicans and commentators didn't believe he would run. They didn't believe he could be an attractive candidate to rational people, no matter how angry with "the establishment" voters said they were.

The denial lasted longer for some than others. Long after many observers had come to the realization that Trump was the front-runner, Jeb Bush's super PAC, Right to Rise, believed Bush's real rival was Marco Rubio. It spent $35 million trying to destroy Rubio before it dropped its first $25,000 attacking Trump.

Over the weekend, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus showed the first public signs of acceptance about what's in store for the party. He finally acknowledged that the Republican nominee was probably going to be determined on the convention floor in Cleveland.

Priebus explained, rightly, that the rules are the rules, and that if Trump can't secure the required 1,237 delegates before Cleveland, it's anyone's game. "This is a delegate-driven process," he told CNN's Dana Bash. "The minority of delegates doesn't rule for the majority."

Trump's response to this floor-fight talk was to vomit up the usual word salad.

"All I can say is this, I don't know what's going to happen," Trump told ABC's "This Week." "But I will say this, you're going to have a lot of very unhappy people [if I'm denied the nomination]. And I think, frankly, for the Republicans to disenfranchise all those people because if that happens, they're not voting and the Republicans lose."

Even through the syntactical fog, Trump's point is clear: If he can't reach 1,237, he should get the nomination anyway. Because he is Trump. If that doesn't happen, his supporters will stay home, defect from the party, riot or all three.

And he's right. Not about deserving the nomination even if he doesn't have the delegates. That's typical Trumpian whining. But he's right that if he's denied the nomination, many -- not all, but many -- of his supporters will bolt from the convention and the party.

Left out of Trump's unsubtle threat: Many anti-Trump Republicans will desert the convention and the party if he's not denied the nomination.

There are only three possible ways to avoid a calamitous walkout. Ted Cruz can win the nomination outright before the convention. That's very unlikely given that he'd need to win roughly 80 percent of all the remaining delegates.

Second, Trump could reveal he has a hidden reservoir of magnanimity and patriotism, and rally his faithful to the consensus nominee. Stop laughing.

Third, the delegates could pick someone sufficiently attractive that Trump followers get over their understandable bitterness and support that candidate despite Trump's objections. Who would that be? Certainly not Mitt Romney. Maybe a reanimated Ronald Reagan. Or Batman? I have no idea.

All of these scenarios are so unlikely in part because the split in the GOP isn't merely about a single personality. Trump represents just the most pronounced of a spiderweb of ideological and demographic fault lines that are increasingly difficult to paper over. As Joel Kotkin put it in a column for the Orange County Register, the Republican Party now "consists of interest groups that so broadly dislike each other that they share little common ground."

Put simply, and with the incessant and obtuse comparisons of Trump to Reagan notwithstanding, you cannot have a party that's both Reaganite and Trumpish.

Trump's cheerleaders insist that he's a symptom of long-simmering maladies on the right. I'm persuaded (even though I think Dr. Trump's remedies are nothing but snake oil). Even now, too many GOP leaders think Trump's success is purely a result of his brash personality, and nothing more. But only when we accept that a terrible diagnosis is real is it possible to think intelligently about our options.

To wit: This ends in tears no matter what. Get over it and pick a side.

Best movies of the 1970s

1     Taxi Driver    8.3  1976
2     Mean Streets    7.4  1973
3     Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore    7.4  1974
4     Five Easy Pieces    7.5  1970
5     The Last Detail    7.6  1973
6     Chinatown    8.3  1974
7     One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest    8.7  1975
8     The Godfather    9.2  1972
9     The Godfather: Part II    9  1974
10     The Conversation    7.9  1974
11     Apocalypse Now    8.5  1979
12     The French Connection    7.8  1971
13     French Connection II    6.8  1975
14     The Exorcist    8  1973
15     Jaws    8.1  1975
16     The Wicker Man    7.6  1973
17     The Omen    7.6  1976
18     A Clockwork Orange    8.4  1971
19     Star Wars    8.7  1977
20     Klute    7.2  1971
21     The Deer Hunter    8.2  1978
22     Shampoo    6.3  1975
23     Straight Time    7.4  1978
24     Kramer vs. Kramer    7.8  1979
25     Close Encounters of the Third Kind    7.7  1977
26     American Graffiti    7.5  1973
27     Animal House    7.6  1978
28     High Plains Drifter    7.6  1973
29     The Outlaw Josey Wales    7.9  1976
30     Play Misty for Me    7  1971
31     Dirty Harry    7.8  1971
32     Badlands    7.9  1973
33     Carrie    7.4  1976
34     Little Big Man    7.7  1970
35     The Bad News Bears    7.3  1976
36     Rocky    8.1  1976
37     Three Days of the Condor    7.5  1975
38     The Last Picture Show    8.1  1971
39     Black Sunday    6.8  1977
40     Saturday Night Fever    6.8  1977
41     Enter the Dragon    7.7  1973
42     The Texas Chain Saw Massacre    7.5  1974
43     Halloween    7.9  1978
44     Marathon Man    7.5  1976
45     Papillon    8  1973
46     Serpico    7.8  1973
47     MASH    7.6  1970
48     The Sting    8.3  1973
49     Patton    8  1970
50     Nashville    7.8  1975
51     All the President's Men    8  1976
52     All That Jazz    7.8  1979
53     Deliverance    7.7  1972
54     Breaking Away    7.7  1979
55     Carnal Knowledge    7  1971
56     Midnight Express    7.7  1978
57     McCabe & Mrs. Miller    7.7  1971
58     Blue Collar    7.6  1978
59     Last Tango in Paris    7.2  1972
60     Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid    7.4  1973
61     Straw Dogs    7.5  1971
62     Scarecrow    7.4  1973
63     Silver Streak    6.9  1976
64     Paper Moon    8.2  1973
65     Being There    8  1979
66     Harold and Maude    8  1971
67     Annie Hall    8.1  1977
68     Manhattan    8  1979
69     Superman    7.3  1978
70     Bound for Glory    7.4  1976
71     Don't Look Now    7.4  1973
72     An Unmarried Woman    7.2  1978
73     The Killing of a Chinese Bookie    7.5  1976
74     A Woman Under the Influence    8.2  1974
75     Stay Hungry    5.7  1976
76     Smokey and the Bandit    6.9  1977
77     Phantasm    6.9  1979
78     Salem's Lot    6.8  1979
79     Suspiria    7.5  1977
80     Piranha    5.9  1978
81     Silent Running    6.7  1972
82     Lenny    7.6  1974
83     The Way We Were    7.1  1973
84     The Main Event    5.9  1979
85     The Parallax View    7.2  1974
86     Every Which Way But Loose    6.2  1978
87     Network    8.1  1976
88     The Passenger    7.7  1975
89     Sleuth    8.1  1972
90     Sisters    7  1973
91     A Touch of Class    6.5  1973
92     Barry Lyndon    8.1  1975
93     Duel    7.7  1971
94     Night Moves    7.2  1975
95     Kingdom of the Spiders    5.9  1977
96     Earthquake    5.8  1974
97     The Poseidon Adventure    7.1  1972
98     Airport    6.6  1970
99     The Towering Inferno    6.9  1974

Wii U is still a very expensive console

Newspaper reports of Wii U production ending are substantiated by Japanese retail shortages - indicating an NX announcement sooner rather than later
Nintendo

. It's a story about the details, of course; the dogs on the street know that the Wii U, still drastically underperforming even the GameCube, is on the way out. What's interesting about the Nikkei's story is that it claims that Nintendo is tapering off production of the console already, with production of some components of the console by third-party manufacturers already suspended, and remaining inventory likely to run dry some time this year. The Nikkei report highlights how unusual it is for a console manufacturer to start the process of shutting down production in this way before even announcing its next-generation system, and it's not wrong; even the GameCube, Nintendo's previous worst performer, didn't suffer this particular indignity.

Nintendo responded to the Nikkei's story with a statement which has been widely reported as a denial, but isn't; it was a "we didn't say that", which isn't the same thing at all. That their response is so careful about not outright denying anything is interesting in itself; Nintendo has a sulky, deeply adversarial relationship with the Nikkei, and has rarely let the truth get in the way of a good denial of a Nikkei story in the past. The newspaper for its part seems to have pretty good sources within Nintendo and regularly gets wind of major developments ahead of time, which might explain why Nintendo hates it so much; it had early details of the 3D screen of the company's Nintendo DS successor, and of the firm's partnership to make smartphone games. On both occasions Nintendo vehemently denied the stories, only to announce the same details within a matter of weeks. The lack of the same vehemence in this instance suggests that the Nikkei is on to something, and perhaps that Nintendo thinks this week, with Miitomo floating high in the download charts, is a good one to bury a little bad news.

"In the console's most successful market, though, it's disappeared from the shelves despite outstanding consumer demand - an extremely unusual and irregular situation for a console at this late stage in its lifespan"

Here's a little extra context for you, which makes the Nikkei's story both even more plausible, and more unusual. In Japan, the only market where the Wii U has been performing reasonably strongly, the console's sales nose-dived early this year and have hit rock bottom in recent weeks - trailing along at a few thousand units a week, an absolutely miserable rate. The problem isn't demand, though - the console has been supply-constrained for six weeks. It hasn't been in stock consistently at major electronics retailers or at online stores like Amazon for weeks, although there are plenty of third-party sellers on Amazon happy to take advantage of the shortage by gouging you for as much as $200 over the console's normal retail price.

It's a different story overseas, of course - the Wii U is genuinely flatlining in other territories, and I've heard of no supply constraints anywhere outside Japan. In the console's most successful market, though, it's disappeared from the shelves despite outstanding consumer demand - an extremely unusual and irregular situation for a console at this late stage in its lifespan.

What does it mean? To me, it suggests that Nintendo is being hyper-cautious about inventory of the console. Taking a "better safe than sorry" approach, it is severely limiting the number of Wii U consoles it puts into the channel in order to avoid leaving retailers and distributors with large amounts of unwanted stock on their hands should demand for the Wii U plummet abruptly. The Nikkei article, although it didn't mention the current shortages, did suggest that part of the company's reason for tapering off manufacturing is an attempt to avoid such inventory problems.

Why, though, would Nintendo be anticipating a major drop in demand for the Wii U in the near future? There are still games in development for the console, though it's almost certain that the biggest title on the slate, Zelda, will appear on the NX as well. All the same, in Japan at least, games like Splatoon and Mario Maker were still doing pretty well and appeared to have the stamina to sustain console sales at a decent level for some time. Could it be that Nintendo anticipates something else happening soon that would make the public suddenly decide not to bother with the Wii U after all? If so, the only thing I can imagine that would have that effect is the unveiling of the NX.

The timing makes sense, in many regards. If the NX is unveiled in the next month or so, it will be after Miitomo is already on the market around the world - which gives Nintendo some breathing room for its mobile ambitions, and allows it to turn back to consoles without being accused of losing focus. Assuming Miitomo and the network functionality it uses are also part of the NX experience, that would also feed into the console announcement. Announced soon, the system would presumably be ready to show off in some form, with software, at E3 - though we don't know if Nintendo even considers E3 to be terribly relevant any more, some form of digital announcement broadcast seems very likely. With Wii U production tapering, the company would be able to move smoothly to promoting the new system, avoiding the spectre of large amounts of Wii U hardware left in the channel and cluttering up its financials; and of course, an announcement in the imminent future would also make that much-rumoured late 2016 launch possible. (I reckon the Nikkei's report shortens the odds on a 2016 NX launch from about 6/1 to about 3/1, for what it's worth; still not the most likely scenario, but getting there.)

"Either Nintendo is going to announce and bring a console to market in the space of about six months, or it's going to completely bow out of the home console market for an entire holiday season, for the first time in decades"

Would the announcement of the NX really kill interest in the Wii U so dramatically that Nintendo needs to manage its inventory in such a miserly way? Perhaps so. Bear in mind that the Wii U is still a very expensive console - most consoles are far cheaper (and thus opened up to new markets) by the time their replacements are announced. The NX price point is likely to be within spitting distance of what you buy a Wii U for today, so it will instantly cannibalise a lot of interest in its older sibling. That's probably the most likely reason that Nintendo is concerned for Wii U demand in the wake of an NX announcement - but there are other possibilities. It may, for example, transpire that NX is backwards compatible with Wii U games, in which case the most basic raison d'être of the current console will evaporate when it is announced - though that would also mean the NX is doubling down on the Wii U's dual-screen approach to games, which would be interesting and gutsy on the firm's part.

Whatever the rationale at Nintendo may be (and of course, I shouldn't discount the possibility that they've just royally messed up their supply chain somehow - though this seems vanishingly unlikely), we'll find out sooner rather than later. It's now very clear that the Wii U isn't going to make it to Christmas, which means we're getting one of two equally dramatic things happening - either Nintendo is going to announce and bring a console to market in the space of about six months, or it's going to completely bow out of the home console market for an entire holiday season, for the first time in decades. We'll almost certainly know which of those remarkable new chapters in Nintendo's history is going to be written within a matter of weeks.

Best movies of the 1960s

1     Cool Hand Luke      1967
2     The Virgin Spring      1960
3     To Kill a Mockingbird      1962
4     Psycho      1960
5     The Haunting      1963
6     Through a Glass Darkly      1961
7     The Whip and the Body      1963
8     Yojimbo      1961
9     Knife in the Water      1962
10     The Good, the Bad and the Ugly      1966
11     The Graduate      1967
12     Hour of the Wolf      1968
13     Once Upon a Time in the West      1968
14     Black Sunday      1960
15     Repulsion      1965
16     Night of the Living Dead      1968
17     Persona      1966
18     Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb      1964
19     Easy Rider      1969
20     The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance      1962
21     Lawrence of Arabia      1962
22     Spartacus      1960
23     Lord of the Flies      1963
24     The Wild Bunch      1969
25     True Grit      1969
26     They Shoot Horses, Don't They?      1969
27     Who's That Knocking at My Door      1967
28     Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid      1969
29     L'Eclisse      1962
30     A Fistful of Dollars      1964
31     Onibaba      1964
32     The Pawnbroker      1964
33     Days of Wine and Roses      1962
34     The Dirty Dozen      1967
35     For a Few Dollars More      1965
36     Testament of Orpheus      1960
37     Wait Until Dark      1967
38     West Side Story      1961
39     Shock Corridor      1963
40     Rosemary's Baby      1968
41     The Apartment      1960
42     Breakfast at Tiffany's      1961
43     The Conqueror Worm      1968
44     Red Desert      1964
45     Oliver!      1968
46     What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?      1962
47     The Magnificent Seven      1960
48     King of Kings      1961
49     The Bad Sleep Well      1960
50     Cape Fear      1962
51     The Passion of Anna      1969
52     Contempt      1963
53     The Naked Kiss      1964
54     L'Avventura      1960
55     The Sword in the Stone      1963
56     The Exterminating Angel      1962
57     Romeo and Juliet      1968
58     The Great Escape      1963
59     The Bride Wore Black      1968
60     Bonnie and Clyde      1967
61     Cleopatra      1963
62     8½      1963
63     A Raisin in the Sun      1961
64     Mary Poppins      1964
65     The Pink Panther      1963
66     Long Day's Journey Into Night      1962
67     Pierrot le Fou      1965
68     Planet of the Apes      1968
69     101 Dalmatians      1961
70     At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul      1964
71     Harakiri      1962
72     Viridiana      1961
73     Hud      1963
74     In the Heat of the Night      1967
75     El Dorado      1966
76     Jules and Jim      1962
77     Village of the Damned      1960
78     Lolita      1962
79     Sweet Bird of Youth      1962
80     Le Samouraï      1967
81     The Sinners of Hell      1960
82     Judgment at Nuremberg      1961
83     A Man for All Seasons      1966
84     The Miracle Worker      1962
85     Midnight Cowboy      1969
86     The Odd Couple      1968
87     The Guns of Navarone      1961
88     Le Doulos      1962
89     The Firemen's Ball      1967
90     Eyes Without a Face      1960
91     The Innocents      1961
92     2001: A Space Odyssey      1968
93     Bullitt      1968
94     Splendor in the Grass      1961
95     Charade      1963
96     Django      1966
97     In Cold Blood      1967
98     Guess Who's Coming to Dinner      1967
99     Hombre      1967

Support of Senate Leaders In Supreme Court Appointment

The untimely passing of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, an ardent defender of our founding documents and a pillar of American jurisprudence, has left our nation with a massive void in defense of the Constitution. This void threatens many of the bedrock values and principles that have shaped America.

Elected officials, judges, journalists and everyday Americans of all political persuasions recognized the contributions of Justice Scalia upon his death, while opining on the political, judicial and societal impact of replacing him began in earnest, often at the same time. President Obama announced on Twitter shortly after Scalia’s death that the justice would “be remembered as one of the "most consequential judges and thinkers to serve on the Supreme Court” and just two minutes later stated, "I plan to fulfill my constitutional responsibilities to nominate a successor in due time. The battle with ?@SenateMajdr is joined.”

The wheels of power in Washington, DC move at a very plodding pace, and in this case and throughout our nation’s history, appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court are not, and should not, be any different. Accordingly, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley have both publicly vowed to block any nominees from the White House until the American people have elected a new president in November.

Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution provides the U.S. Senate with the power to confirm or reject Presidential appointments to the Court. Our founders included the clause as a safeguard against authoritarianism by providing a clear separation of powers. Leader McConnell and Chairman Grassley are performing their duties to the full extent authorized by the Constitution and conservatives should commend and support their leadership.

The filling of this vacancy could shift the ideological balance of the Supreme Court for an entire generation. A shift that social conservatives and people of faith who cherish our founding principles and freedoms should not underestimate. Some of the most important social and political issues of our time are both at stake and so conceding to the wishes of the President to stack the court with his third left-leaning ideological judge, after liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, would tip the scales against values held by people of faith.

President Obama has fundamentally transformed the court with his appointments, shifting legal decisions to favor his progressive, anti-traditional values agenda in some of the most substantial decisions in decades, including Obergefell v. Hodges, which held that same sex marriage is a Constitutional right and that states must either license same-sex marriages or recognize those marriages from other states.

Two other decisions, which protected some of our most sacred Constitutional rights, and were decided on votes swung by Justice Scalia, could also be threatened with another liberal appointment to the Court, including: District of Columbia v. Heller and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby.

The Heller decision provided an important Second Amendment victory by establishing a right to own a gun for personal use and for self-defense, and Burwell was an important religious liberty decision which exempts some businesses from being forced to provide contraception services in their employee health insurance plans.

Thanks to Mr. McConnell and Mr. Grassley, and the social conservatives standing behind them, he will not have the opportunity to continue to fundamentally change America through the courts.

The brain can only manage 150 friends

Obsession: Facebook 'friends' may total thousands but the human brain is only capable of keeping 150 friendships

The Facebook obsession of amassing 'friends' creates the impression that some users are wildly more sociable than others.
But while we may be able to count 5,000 friends on the online social networking site, scientists have shown that humans' brains are capable of managing a maximum of just 150 friendships.
Oxford University Professor Robin Dunbar has conducted a study of social groupings throughout the centuries, from neolithic villages to modern office environments.
His findings, based on his theory 'Dunbar's number', developed in the 1990s, asserts that size of the part of the brain used for conscious thought and language, the neocortex, limits us to managing 150 friends, no matter how sociable we are.
The professor of Evolutionary Anthropology has applied this theory to see if the 'Facebook effect'  has stretched the size of social groupings.
He compared the online 'traffic' of people with thousands and friends to those with hundreds.
His findings show that there is no discernible difference between the two.
'The interesting thing is that you can have 1,500 friends but when you actually look at traffic on sites, you see people maintain the same inner circle of around 150 people that we observe in the real world,' said Dunbar.
'People obviously like the kudos of having hundreds of friends but the reality is that they’re unlikely to be bigger than anyone else’s.'
Dunbar defined 'maintained' friends as those you care about and contact at least once a year.
He has also found that women are better at maintaining friendships on Facebook.
'There is a big sex difference though ... girls are much better at maintaining relationships just by talking to each other. Boys need to do physical stuff together,' he said.
Dunbar's findings, due to be published this year, will be welcomed by psychologists who warn that Facebook is driving a worrying trend of 'friendship addiction' causing insecurity in those who use it.
Addictions expert David Smallwood claims that many who use Facebook become hooked on the urge to acquire more friends in an attempt to appear popular and successful.

Ted Cruz

The so-called "establishment" fear both Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. The reasons they fear them however, couldn't be more stark. They fear Trump because he threatens their brand; Ted Cruz on the other hand, threatens their crony socialism and the current system as it's evolved - big government, big deals, no principles.
Trump isn't an ideologue; he's liberal on many issues and conservative on others. Further blurring the lines between Democrats and Republicans could prove to be disastrous for the GOP if they're planning to maintain the Senate in the short term and salvage the party in the long term. Ronald Reagan understood this principle. Conservatives are to be bold in color, no pastels! It's what the Tea Party movement has demanded in no uncertain terms. In my opinion, it's also what's made the movement vulnerable to anyone who could tap into the anger and frustration.
Consider the warp speed the word "conservative" swept through the halls of Congress after President Obama was elected. Everyone and their mama began calling themselves one. The 2010 and 2014 midterm elections were landslide victories for Republicans and the conservative movement. But many are displeased with the lack of fight we've seen in Washington over the past ten years. Once you see the system isn't working for you time and again, it's only natural to want to buck the system. This explains the rise of the "outsider." The problem is, in order to avoid being duped again, we must hold fast to the Constitution and hold every candidate equally accountable for things they've said and done. Which brings me to Sen. Ted Cruz.
"Outsider" is the wrong moniker for Ted Cruz. Although, he is an outsider when it comes to the D.C. political class, that term is more befitting of former presidential candidates Carly Fiorina, and Ben Carson. If we're to be honest, Donald Trump has been more of a lobbyist than an outsider for decades - brokering sweetheart deals with progressive politicians. Were it not for Ted Cruz infiltrating the halls of Congress like a spy determined to expose the dirty secrets of our congressmen turned adversaries from within, there'd be no "outsiders."

So why doesn't he get the due he deserves from the voters? Is it his lack of charisma? Is he too conservative? Too smart? Not foulmouthed enough? Unelectable like the media and the GOP establishment would have us believe? His stance on amnesty is tougher than Trump's, when you consider he opposes Trump's "touch-back" amnesty policy- a policy that would allow illegal immigrants who broke our laws to apply for re-entry. Ted Cruz's flaw in the eyes of many voters is that he's a politician now. But, I beg to differ. He's an infiltrator. He was a “spy” sent to Washington by "We The People" to give us a full report. Did he ever fail in his mission? No.
Do you remember Ted Cruz's Iowa victory? It seems so long ago. He was the only candidate to campaign against their ethanol subsidies - crony socialism, and he won! Additionally, you may or may not know that Sen. Cruz was the first Latino ever to win an American presidential caucus or primary.
At the time, I wrote about the colossal mistake the GOP establishment made by not shouting that from the rooftops. They weren't happy that the "outsiders" were taking over the party. Unfortunately, not only did the establishment fail to recognize the historic impact of Cruz's victory, they failed to recognize the mood of their own constituency. To their detriment, the establishment failed to get behind Sen. Cruz, as the one candidate that could conserve their brand and reenergize the conservative movement within the party. Let's not make the same mistake as voters. Are we going to fall for the marketing, media blitz, and messaging of the Trump campaign, or do we want the tried and true conservative that has been battle tested?
There's something to be said about a politician that has gone into the belly of the beast and stood his ground. Think about it. What's your biggest temptation? Money? Sex? Power? Accolades? Food? Stuff? For Ted Cruz to have deprived himself of the power, relationships, glitz and glamour that Washington offers is the equivalent of 400 pound man walking into a bakery, bypassing the cupcakes, and asking if they sell salads - it doesn't happen!
You can cast a vote on Super Tuesday for Marco Rubio or John Kasich, who have no mathematical path to the nomination at this point. Frankly, they're serving as nothing more than spoilers for Cruz. You can fall pray to the media hype of "the Duper." Or, you can vote to set America back on a constitutional course by voting for Ted Cruz. I choose the latter and I hope you will too.

Best movies of the 1950s

1     The Night of the Hunter    8.1  1955
2     Cat on a Hot Tin Roof    8.1  1958
3     12 Angry Men    8.9  1957
4     Witness for the Prosecution    8.4  1957
5     East of Eden    8  1955
6     Rear Window    8.5  1954
7     Vertigo    8.4  1958
8     Rebel Without a Cause    7.8  1955
9     Giant    7.7  1956
10     Sunset Blvd.    8.5  1950
11     Stalag 17    8.1  1953
12     Some Like It Hot    8.3  1959
13     North by Northwest    8.4  1959
14     High Noon    8.1  1952
15     The Defiant Ones    7.7  1958
16     It Happened in Broad Daylight    7.9  1958
17     The Caine Mutiny    7.9  1954
18     Suddenly, Last Summer    7.7  1959
19     Wild Strawberries    8.3  1957
20     Los Olvidados    8.3  1950
21     Diabolique    8.1  1955
22     Eyes Without a Face    7.8  1960
23     The Ten Commandments    7.9  1956
24     Friendly Persuasion    7.5  1956
25     Touch of Evil    8.1  1958
26     Sabrina    7.7  1954
27     Ben-Hur    8.1  1959
28     The Bridge on the River Kwai    8.2  1957
29     La Strada    8.1  1954
30     Sweet Smell of Success    8.2  1957
31     Journey to Italy    7.4  1954
32     The Country Girl    7.3  1954
33     On the Waterfront    8.3  1954
34     The 400 Blows    8.2  1959
35     The Bridge    7.8  1959
36     Seven Samurai    8.7  1954
37     The Trouble with Harry    7.2  1955
38     I Want to Live!    7.5  1958
39     Strangers on a Train    8.1  1951
40     In a Lonely Place    8  1950
41     The Asphalt Jungle    7.9  1950
42     Limelight    8.1  1952
43     The Enforcer    7.4  1951
44     The Desperate Hours    7.6  1955
45     The Killing    8.1  1956
46     Rififi    8.2  1955
47     All About Eve    8.3  1950
48     Paths of Glory    8.5  1957
49     Blackboard Jungle    7.4  1955
50     Rio Bravo    8.1  1959
51     On the Beach    7.3  1959
52     Winchester '73    7.7  1950
53     Stromboli    7.3  1950
54     Bad Day at Black Rock    7.8  1955
55     From Here to Eternity    7.8  1953
56     I Confess    7.3  1953
57     El    7.9  1953
58     Singin' in the Rain    8.3  1952
59     Niagara    7.1  1953
60     The Seven Year Itch    7.2  1955
61     Elevator to the Gallows    8  1958
62     The Tin Star    7.4  1957
63     The Big Heat    8  1953

Playstation VR in April 2016

Type     Virtual reality headset
Manufacturer     Sony Computer Entertainment
Platform     PlayStation 4
Display Technology     OLED
FOV     100°
Resolution     1920×1080 px (960×1080 per eye)
Refresh Rate     120 Hz
Release Date     2016

PlayStation VR, previously known by the codename Project Morpheus, is an upcoming virtual reality headset produced by Sony Computer Entertainment. It is designed to be fully functional with the PlayStation 4 video game system. It is currently a prototype and has no confirmed release date, although Sony has scheduled its launch for the first half of 2016.

The prototype revealed at GDC'15 included an OLED 1920x1080 pixel display (providing 960x1080 px resolution per eye) with an RGB subpixel matrix, and is capable of displaying content at 120fps. It features a FOV of 100°, 6DOF head-tracking, stereoscopic 3D, and unwarped output to a TV, either for others to view what the headset wearer sees, or a separate display to compete against the headset user using a standard PS4 controller.

History

Sony's interest in head-mounted technology dates back to the 1990s. Its first commercial unit, the Glasstron, was released in 1997. One application of this technology was in the game MechWarrior 2, which permitted users of the Glasstron or Virtual I/O's iGlasses to adopt a visual perspective from inside the cockpit of the craft, using their own eyes as visual and seeing the battlefield through their craft's own cockpit.

In early 2014, Sony Computer Entertainment research and development engineer Anton Mikhailov said his team had been working on Project Morpheus for more than three years. According to Mikhailov, the PlayStation 3 Move peripheral, itself revealed in June 2009, was designed with unspecified, future head-mounted technology in mind. "[W]e specced it and built it to be a VR controller, even though VR wasn’t a commodity. As engineers, we just said it was the right thing to do. [...] At the time, we didn't have a consumer-grade project that we could work on, but it was definitely designed with that vision in mind." Shuhei Yoshida, the president of Sony's worldwide studios, also said the project started as "grassroots" activity among engineers and programmers, which came into focus in 2010 once the Move controller had been released.

Project Morpheus was first announced at The 2014 Game Developers Conference. Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida introduced the device on March 18, 2014 and stated Project Morpheus was "the next innovation from PlayStation that will [shape] the future of games."

On September 15, 2015, it was announced that Project Morpheus has been named PlayStation VR.

On October 8, 2015, Sony acquired SoftKinetic, a tech startup whose focus includes visual depth-sensing gesture recognition, for an undisclosed amount.

As of November 2, 2015, Sony has confirmed that they are still shooting for a release in the first half of 2016. While they have not released a specific price, many speculate that it will cost around the same price as a new gaming platform. For comparison, Sony announced the PlayStation 4’s $399 price tag five months before launch, with the official launch date in multiple regions announced three months ahead of time.

PlayStation VR is capable of rendering two separate displays simultaneously: one display for the headset and a completely different display for television. The purpose, Sony say, is to prevent VR from invariably being a solitary experience.

    Japan Studio has made a new demo called Monster Escape. So that's a five-player game; one versus four. One being the person wearing Morpheus [Playstation VR]. And if you're in Morpheus, you become the Monster. And the four people holding the DualShock and looking at the TV and playing the game like a regular game [are] against the monster. ... And actually, third-party devs were ahead of us in terms of making the game called Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. ... One person is wearing Morpheus and that person looks at the bomb, like a time bomb. And in order to stabilize it, the other person [watching the television] who is not wearing Morpheus, has an instruction manual. And that person has to tell the person wearing Morpheus how to do the job. But that person doesn't see what the person wearing Morpheus sees. So they have to communicate. ... So that's a social experience.

best movies of the 1940s

1     The Great Dictator    8.5  1940
2     The Sea Hawk    7.8  1940
3     The Shop Around the Corner    8.1  1940
4     The Philadelphia Story    8.1  1940
5     The Mark of Zorro    7.6  1940
6     Rebecca    8.2  1940
7     The Grapes of Wrath    8.1  1940
8     The Letter    7.7  1940
9     Foreign Correspondent    7.6  1940
10     The House of the Seven Gables    7.2  1940
11     The Great McGinty    7.5  1940
12     My Favorite Wife    7.4  1940
13     His Girl Friday    8  1940
14     The Ghost Breakers    7.3  1940
15     The Thief of Bagdad    7.6  1940
16     Fantasia    7.8  1940
17     Pinocchio    7.5  1940
18     The Wolf Man    7.4  1941
19     The Devil and Daniel Webster    7.8  1941
20     I Wake Up Screaming    7.3  1941
21     The Sea Wolf    7.6  1941
22     The Maltese Falcon    8.2  1941
23     High Sierra    7.6  1941
24     A Woman's Face    7.2  1941
25     How Green Was My Valley    7.8  1941
26     Ball of Fire    7.8  1941
27     Sullivan's Travels    8.1  1941
28     Penny Serenade    7.2  1941
29     In the Navy    7.2  1941
30     49th Parallel    7.5  1941
31     Saboteur    7.2  1942
32     This Gun for Hire    7.6  1942
33     The Talk of the Town    7.6  1942
34     Cat People    7.4  1942
35     Reap the Wild Wind    6.8  1942
36     To Be or Not to Be    8.2  1942
37     Mrs. Miniver    7.6  1942
38     Jane Eyre    7.6  1943
39     Action in the North Atlantic    7  1943
40     Sahara    7.6  1943
41     Heaven Can Wait    7.5  1943
42     The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp    8.2  1943
43     The Song of Bernadette    7.7  1943
44     Le Corbeau: The Raven    7.7  1943
45     I Walked with a Zombie    7.3  1943
46     Carnival of Sinners    7.6  1943
47     Double Indemnity    8.4  1944
48     Gaslight    7.9  1944
49     The Lodger    7.3  1944
50     Murder, My Sweet    7.6  1944
51     Passage to Marseille    6.9  1944
52     Lifeboat    7.8  1944
53     The Curse of the Cat People    7  1944
54     The Uninvited    7.4  1944
55     Laura    8.1  1944
56     The Woman in the Window    7.8  1944
57     Phantom Lady    7.4  1944
58     The Suspect    7.5  1944
59     Arsenic and Old Lace    8.1  1944
60     The Scarlet Claw    7.6  1944
61     The Keys of the Kingdom    7.5  1944
62     Between Two Worlds    7.3  1944
63     Mildred Pierce    8  1945
64     Dead of Night    7.7  1945
65     The Lost Weekend    8  1945
66     Detour    7.5  1945
67     Conflict    7.1  1945
68     Leave Her to Heaven    7.7  1945
69     The House of Fear    7.6  1945
70     Spellbound    7.7  1945
71     The Spiral Staircase    7.6  1945
72     The Picture of Dorian Gray    7.6  1945
73     Blood on the Sun    6.2  1945
74     Objective, Burma!    7.4  1945
75     Children of Paradise    8.4  1945
76     A Royal Scandal    6.9  1945
77     A Tree Grows in Brooklyn    8.2  1945
78     The Big Sleep    8.1  1946
79     The Best Years of Our Lives    8.2  1946
80     Notorious    8.1  1946
81     Deadline at Dawn    6.8  1946
82     Angel on My Shoulder    6.9  1946
83     Gilda    7.8  1946
84     The Killers    7.9  1946
85     Stairway to Heaven    8.1  1946
86     The Dark Corner    7.2  1946
87     Beauty and the Beast    8  1946
88     Great Expectations    8  1946
89     Green for Danger    7.7  1947
90     It's a Wonderful Life    8.6  1946
91     Shoeshine    8  1946
92     Black Narcissus    8  1947
93     The Lady from Shanghai    7.7  1947
94     Boomerang!    7.3  1947
95     Nightmare Alley    7.8  1947
96     Dark Passage    7.6  1947
97     Brute Force    7.7  1947
98     The Bishop's Wife    7.6  1947
99     The Ghost and Mrs. Muir    7.9  1947
100     Odd Man Out    7.8  1947