Privacy...

Apple took a high-profile swipe at Google, Amazon and Facebook at this year's Computer Electronics Show, with a full-building ad touting "What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone." CEO Tim Cook has criticized competitors for their privacy.

However, privacy as a differentiator may be a risky business move.

Apple is just one iCloud breach away from an embarrassing incident. Major celebrities who have had nude photographs stolen from their iCloud archives have been dangerously close.

Third-party applications are also a potential sticking point. From a security point of view, Apple's app store has stringent safeguards in place that make it more resilient to security issues like application spoofing than competitors like Google's Play store.

But independent iPhone apps still have the capacity to misuse data. The company routinely removes applications from the store for providing user information to unauthorized third parties.

So Apple may also be one data-tracking scandal away from significantly denting the idea that data necessarily "stays on your iPhone."

Later...

A rapist who attacked two women in the 1980s was caught more than 30 years later through DNA evidence because he urinated in a neighbor’s plant pot.

Eric McKenna, 60, was jailed for 23 years after being found guilty of raping women in Gateshead and Newcastle in separate street attacks.

He selected his victims when they were walking alone and on each occasion he grabbed them from behind and threatened to use a knife.

His crimes went undetected until 2016 when he was arrested following a dispute with a neighbor which led to DNA swabs being taken which eventually matched him to the unsolved attacks.

However, in 2016 Northumbria police neighborhood officers arrested him for urinating in a neighbor’s plant pot following a dispute and he was cautioned for harassment. His DNA was processed and exact matches were made for the two historic rapes.  [The Guardian]

Left...

The American left’s issue for now is “We hate Trump.”  

Many Americans hate Mr. Trump’s vulgarity, his unwillingness to walk away from a fight, his bluntness, his certainty that America is exceptional, his mistrust of intellectuals, his love of simple ideas that work, and his refusal to believe that men and women are interchangeable.

Worst of all, he has no ideology except getting the job done. His goals are to do the task before him, not be pushed around, and otherwise to enjoy life. In short, he is a typical American except exaggerated, because he has no constraints to cramp his style except the ones he himself invents.

Mr. Trump lacks constraints because he is filthy rich and always has been and, unlike other rich men, he revels in wealth and feels no need to apologize ever.

He never learned to keep his real opinions to himself because he never had to. He never learned to be embarrassed that he is male, with ordinary male proclivities. Sometimes he has treated women disgracefully, for which Americans, left and right, are ashamed of him—as they are of JFK and Bill Clinton. 

Sawdust...

A Texas pastor who praised a deadly shooting at a gay nightclub has resigned. 

Donnie Romero, former pastor of the Stedfast Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, apologized in a YouTube video.  " I'm sorry......I've lied to many of the people at our church."  "I went to Jacksonville and I went to a casino and I was drinking. And there were girls there that were prostitutes and I committed adultery on my wife multiple times. I drank and gambled multiple times. ... I even smoked weed."

Romero voiced support for the gunman behind the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando in which 49 people were slaughtered.   "These 50 sodomites are all perverts and pedophiles, they're the scum of the Earth and the Earth is a better place." Romero said. 

Sorry to say that Romero didn't follow the Bible, in support of murderer or for doing the wrong thing. 

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? Just a thought.

Triangle...

Four years ago when Christopher Tur’s lifeless body was found floating in the water near the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, speculation quickly surfaced.

The former commander of the naval base turned himself in to face charges related to Tur’s death. Navy Capt. John Nettleton was charged with obstructing justice, lying to investigators, and falsifying records related to the January 2015 death of Tur, who was 42, according to a federal indictment.

Nettleton is accused of trying to hide that he was having an affair with Tur’s wife, that he had fought twice with Tur the night the victim disappeared, gave misleading information about Tur’s last whereabouts, and that he would not let Coast Guard helicopters search for Tur after he was reported missing.  

At the time of his death, Tur worked as a civilian for the Navy Exchange Service Command, which runs retail stores serving bases worldwide. His wife, also a civilian, worked as director of the base’s Fleet and Family Services Center, which provides counseling and support to Navy families.
Now one is dead, one ruined, and a wife that may have lost double of everything.
 Just a thought.

First...

"You figured that January wasn't depressing enough already"

Media's Hostility...

To say that the big networks haven't exactly had a love affair with Donald Trump, as they plainly did with President Obama, is an understatement. 

A new survey shows that not only is coverage of Trump overwhelmingly negative, but the president's biggest accomplishment, the roaring economy, gets almost no attention.

What they found was sad: "Over the summer, the broadcast networks have continued to pound Donald Trump and his team with the most hostile coverage of a president in TV news history — 92% negative, vs. just 8% positive."

Moreover, the very focus of what the media cover is highly selective. Some two-thirds of the Trump coverage came from five topics, Russia investigation, immigration, the Brett Kavanaugh nomination, North Korea, and U.S.-Russia relations, and these issues are reported with a twist.

The economy is ignored completely as the third quarter saw 4.2% GDP growth, and Trump's average is now 3%. Wages are rising, and real median household incomes are now at their highest level ever. As for September's overall unemployment rate of 3.7%, it was the lowest in nearly half a century. Meanwhile, unemployment rates for African Americans, Hispanics and Asians are at or near all-time lows.

Resolution...

The cartoonists are running out of materials. Nothing exciting any more. No one changed his/her mind. It is not amuzing anymore to no one. Move on.

Disorder...

A study carried out by Board and Fritzon at the University of Surrey in England found that narcissistic personality disorders are actually more common in high-level executives than in mentally disordered criminal offenders at the high-security Broadmoor Hospital.

People with narcissistic personality disorder may be highly ambitious, confident, driven, and able to exploit people and situations to maximum advantage. They may be adept at charming and manipulating others, and thus adept at building and exercising business relationships.  

Board and Fritzon described the executives with a personality disorder as ‘successful psychopaths’ and the criminal offenders as ‘unsuccessful psychopaths,' and it may be that highly successful people and disturbed psychopaths have more in common than first meets the eye. As the psychologist and philosopher William James put it more than a hundred years ago, "When a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce… in the same individual, we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries." Or sadly we may get the alternative. Some are inbetin be. Just a thought.

Grandiosity...

The hallmark of narcissistic personality disorder is grandiosity. The narcissist harbors a strong sense of entitlement, self-aggrandizing fantasies, and a craving for admiration. 

In severe cases, he/she may be envious, lacking in empathy, and ready to exploit others in the pursuit of her lofty ambitions. 

Although he/she can be charismatic and charming, she more often seems self-absorbed, controlling, and insensitive. If she feels slighted or ridiculed, she might be provoked into a fit of destructive rage and revenge seeking. 

Such a paroxysmal reaction is sometimes called ‘narcissistic rage’ and can have disastrous consequences for all those involved, including the narcissist herself.

Contrary to popular belief, narcissists can change. They cannot change or heal their narcissism, but they can (and do) change their behavior. ... The problem is that the narcissist is generally unwilling to change. Changing a behavior means that the narcissist must admit that their behavior was wrong.  Just a thought.