" Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.
"
-- Proverbs 29:18, King James Bible (KJV)
Once people take a stance on a given issue, they are unlikely to change their minds and admit that they were in the wrong, even if it becomes clear later that they in fact had erred. Wishful thinking and saving face rather than facing reality guides their actions.We see this particularly in the paradigms of mainstream science and in political, economic, social and religious views and affiliations. People will cling to their previously made allegiances regardless of the actual facts.Although a certain amount of "loyalty" is surely laudable, blind allegiance is not, although the "Chump Factor" is a widespread human characteristic. Economist Paul Krugman has it right in principle
in discussing the U.S. Presidential candidates at http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.
com/2015/12/15/the-donald-and-
the-chump-factor/?emc=edit_ty_
20151215&nl=opinion&nlid=
14116646
.As Krugman writes:" Nobody likes looking like a chump, and most people will go to great lengths to convince themselves that they weren't.
"Krugman, however, wrongly points to Donald Trump and his supporters as an example. Regardless of one's political leanings, Trump's supporters have thus far not been proven to be "in the wrong" at all. Trump leads, and he could win.We say that as a political centrist.What about all those who support and sponsor a broad field of Republican Party candidates who have no chance of winning? What about all those GOP candidates who lack the common sense to drop out of the race even though they are clearly out of the running? What does it say about a political party when "everyone" out there wants to be President? We call that wishful thinking.The Democratic Party candidates fare no better under the "Chump Factor" test.Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State of the USA in the Obama administration from January 2009 to February 2013. That is FOUR years. Wikipedia:
" She viewed "smart power" as the strategy for asserting U.S. leadership and values, by combining military power with diplomacy and American capabilities in economics, technology, and other areas
." What was the result? The result is a world in chaos
. Unchanged thereafter, she has committed herself to an errant foreign policy philosophy based on wishful thinking which has proven wrong.The Democratic Party has another puzzling candidate in 74-year old Bernie Sanders looking longingly for an American version of Scandinavia in the States. A socialist-type system that is effective primarily in the more-or-less homogeneous
(uniform, unvarying) countries of northern Europe has no chance of succeeding in the heterogeneous
(diverse, non-uniform) USA. It is just is not going to happen. A President can not run a nation based on wishful thinking.
Some years ago in Domain Names as Collateral
, Warren E. Agin in Business Law Today
at the ABA Business Law Section
wrote that:" No doubt about it, domain names are big business
."Today that statement is truer than ever, as short dotcom domain names are proving to be a valuable " commodity
" viz. " property
" viz. " contract right
", that can be bought and sold, indeed, in part for enormous sums.In any case, the shorter the name, the more difficult it is to find a dotcom name that has not already been registered.Indeed, persons or institutions looking for a short dotcom domain name for their web presence may be out of luck, unless they are willing to invest big bucks to buy such a domain name in a dotcom name market being bought up in China.Alan Dunn at TechCrunch.com has the story in China Is Making Domain Name History
.
Samsung Replaces Head of Struggling Smartphone Division
is the title of an article at EWeek by Todd R. Weiss.The magazine CHIP in Germany has a similar piece online at Samsung-Krise: Dieser Mann soll die Galaxys retten
.In its newest 01/2016 print issue, CHIP at p. 17 runs the headline " Wir stecken in der Krise
", i.e. " we have a crisis
", quoting Samsung's Vice Chairman Dr. Oh-Hyun Kwon that an " extraordinary transformation
" (außergewöhnliche Transformation) was required in the company to avert the worst, including rumors of plans in the works to release masses of employees and executives if the financial situation of the company does not improve.Samsung is faced e.g. with monopolistic Apple -- on the one hand -- trying to corner the smartphone high-end high-price market for itself by destroying competition with the aid of an outdated patent law system, while, on the other hand, the lower-price segments of the smartphone market are being increasingly dominated by Chinese companies such as Huawei and Xiaomi.Patent cases such as the one we refer to in our previous posting have played a decisive role in promoting such monopolies by skewing markets and destroying legitimate competition in various technological market segments.