Looks familiar but isn't
The new Minitrue sounds superficially like a proper tradition. In WW2 and in Cold War 1 we organized media to provide a unified message countering enemy propaganda.
Here's one of our efforts in WW2:

Sounds a lot like the new Minitrue.
Two crucial differences:
(1) WW2 was started by Germany and Japan. We were actually defending our territory from unprovoked attack, so all forms of war activity were morally justified.
The current wars were started by USA STRONG. We are the aggressor pretending to be the defender. All of our activity is strictly evil and criminal.
(2) In WW2 we weren't trying to jam Berlin and Rome, and we didn't treat enemy broadcasting as an "act of war". We understood that the best defense against propaganda is confident people who know what they're fighting for.
Now we are trying to jam Russian information sources and trying to prosecute Americans who listen to them. We have been undermining and demoralizing and disarming our OWN people for 30 years.
Labels: STRONG!, switchover
Where's the watchdog?
In the context of charities, soliciting donations for a specified cause and using the donations for something else is explicit fraud. It's not always prosecuted, but consumer watchdogs keep track of such activities and do a good job of informing the public.
Bait and switch happens OFTEN in a slightly different context, and never gets prosecuted or watchdogged. I've been frustrated repeatedly by online publications or forums that promise political neutrality or pro-life or anti-banker, then suddenly take the Soros side.
In some cases the Soros side is just one or two articles, perhaps presented in the name of "fairness". Doesn't matter. I was paying to help a source of NON-SOROSIAN THINKING. I was emphatically NOT PAYING TO SUPPORT SOROS. Soros owns and runs everything. He doesn't need "fairness" from supposedly sane sources.
Latest example is Archive.org, which had been carefully "non-political" during the years when "politics" didn't exist. Now that we have actual politics, a government that may conceivably depart from Globalist orthodoxy, Archive shows its Globalist hand.
Again, probably not prosecutable, but certainly deserves the watchdog approach.
Still not getting it
KBS is having a free-form discussion of American/Korean relations in the new year, with some Korean experts and some American experts.
An American expert named Kurt or Curt said:
"I can't get this out of my mind. Before the election I asked a working-class person who he planned to vote for. He said either Trump or Sanders. You COULDN'T HAVE two more different people."
Different? Well, if you mean different PERSONALITIES, okay. Trump is a real estate developer by vocation and temperament, Bernie is a politician by vocation and temperament. But if we're talking about STATED** AGENDAS, Trump and Sanders were close to the same side, and Hillary was the DIFFERENT candidate.
The expert still can't understand, still hasn't figured it out. Left and right disappeared 100 years ago. The only division is Globalist vs Nationalist. With the bankers or against the bankers.
** I emphasize STATED because it's still not clear which side Trump is REALLY on.
Nice to have honesty anyway
Lower Nuthouse starts session by reading the obsolete 1787 constitution, which told the Federal government not to abridge freedom of the press.
Upper Nuthouse starts session by reading the 2017 constitution, which says
journalism is an act of war.
Now's your chance
Obama is trying to preserve his "legacy" of Romneycare. The top D leaders in the Lower and Upper Nuthouses are following him, but it will be more interesting to watch the D backbenchers.
Fact: Obama did not have a mandate to enact Romneycare. Americans were tired of a fucked medical system, but there wasn't a consensus on the solution. Among people who thought about the problem and compared with other countries, Medicare For All looked like the simplest and cleanest solution. It still looks like the simplest and cleanest solution, because it IS.
NOBODY imagined that a monstrosity like Romneycare would solve anything. The system was fucked because insurers had a monopoly, and because government rules and litigocracy created crazy convolutedly contradictory incentives. Romneycare multiplied BOTH of those fuckings by 10. This was NOT a surprise, NOT unanticipated. Basic economics guaranteed it.
But Wall Street wanted Romneycare, so Obama grabbed the political momentum and passed Romneycare.
Many of the D backbenchers were elected after the Romneycare debacle, so their own "legacy" doesn't depend on it. They may respond to voters who see that Romneycare made things massively worse. Will those reps push the program that Obama SHOULD have pushed, or will they try to preserve Jamie Dimon's trillions?
Now's your chance, assholes.
A more complete solution would also break the litigocracy. Loser pays on all lawsuits, delete the HIPAA law and NEMT rules. Both R and D could agree on these changes.
Scanty? Nope.
Couple days ago I said:
What was the best thing I wrote this year? The least trivial item in a year of trivial shit?
The last few months have been scanty and distracted because of the surgery stuff in Sept. Starting earlier, the Best Thing stands out instantly.....
Scanty? Testable observation. Updating my 'size-by-date' Excel that tracks monthly blog verbosity:
(The numbers are size of monthly archive file in bytes, not wordcounts.)
In fact the last few months show a steady upward trend in verbosity, accelerating from a relative plateau. The windstorms and long power outages in July 2014 and Nov 2015 aren't salient on this graph. The only short month in the last two years is April 2015, with no obvious reason. (April 130k, neighboring months 180k.) Good weather, no memorable events or troubles, last courseware project was finished in Feb 2015. Apparently I just didn't feel like writing. **
Just to be sure, I did a little Python processing of the files to cut out the HTML/CSS/JS overhead. Found the markers that start and end actual posts, and counted only real words between those markers.

Allowing for my total lack of Excel skills, it's pretty much the same graph with numbers/12. So the overhead didn't change through the years, and the overhead wasn't distorting the pattern. Why the factor of 12? Do I use long words? No. Median length of my
real words is 6, mean is 5. Agrees with the traditional 5-character word in Morse and typing WPM calculations. The factor rises to 12 because of all the HTML overhead around and inside the posts.
Also: The obvious mode-switch in late 2010, from wild variability to mostly flat, matches two important changes in Aug 2010.
Throwing away the TV, and
getting blood pressure under control. Which was the driving variable? I'd like to credit the former, but it's more likely the latter.
= = = = =
Later: No, I didn't skip April 2015. The archive file as stored on Blogspot is defective. It contains only a few posts from the last two days of April. The rest of April is still online and looks like a normal-sized month. It can't be reached from the April archive, but it can be reached by hitting the March archive and then clicking the Newer Posts button.
Labels: coot-proofing, Metrology
CH Smith gets it
Still thinking about the 'gig economy' vs solid corporate jobs. Remembering families I knew in various places. Corporate jobs were definitely superior in Manhattan in the '50s. All the fathers had W2 jobs, all were able to support a family without working viciously hard. Work was 9 to 5 Mon through Sat. Fathers could drive kids to school and eat dinner at 6. I didn't know anyone who worked from home.
Later, in Enid and Ohio in the '60s and '70s, I knew several people who worked at home or informally. One lady had a giant folding and collating machine in her house and ran contract work for various printshops. Another lady sold tropical birds from her house. One father bought and sold antiques, especially guns. These entrepreneurs got along fine without constant intense slaving. They had time for kids and enjoyment.
Why do modern entrepreneurs have to work 27 hours a day to get by for a year or two until they collapse or go bankrupt? Why was at-home work relatively easy in Enid but not in Manhattan?
Why was at-home work easier 40 years ago? Simple answer. Less regulation, less litigation, less inflation in health care and other REQUIRED expenses.
Why was Enid a better place for at-home work than Manhattan? Subtle answer. Enid was cheap and isolated, a self-sufficient universe. You could establish a
comparative monopoly for your skill. Manhattan was close to Topeka and KC, which made monopolies harder to create; and a college town is always more expensive.
Charles Hugh Smith states the modern problem completely and concisely:
If we seek a coherent context for the new year, we would do well to start with the foundations of widespread prosperity. While the economy is a vast, complex machine, the sources of widespread prosperity are not that complicated: abundant work and a low cost of living.
When work is abundant, there are opportunities for many skill levels, and employers must bid for the most productive, reliable workers. This supports wages and widespread employment.
When the cost of living is low, even low-wage households can not only get by but put a little aside if they are prudent and thrifty.
This may seem obvious, but the conditions required for work to be abundant and the cost of living to be low are not so obvious. For work to be abundant, it must be easy to start a business, easy to operate the new business, easy to make a profit so the business can survive the first few years and easy to hire employees.
Smith doesn't discuss the comparative monopoly factor. Globalism OBLITERATES local monopoly. Nearly all businesses can be undercut or undermined or outlawed by Amazon's infinite bully power, leaving only a few menial skills like cutting grass. For the moment. Until Amazon MowDrone comes out next month.
Graybill.
Labels: Old Economy Steve, skill-estate
Really dumb thought
Thinking about the
trend of roof raking, which seemed to spread last year but not this year. Now it's just me and one other obsessive raker.

Random thought: In an earlier era this would have led to a Raking Club. What would be a good name? Aha! American Roof Raking League.
Oops, that acronym is already taken by the ham radio association American Radio Relay League.

Well.... since roof rakers and hams are similar types, let's just modify the icon.

Works rather well. You can see the rake, the ladder, and the snow flying down to the ground.
Who's assaulting CIA?
Yeah, I know it's too common to deserve comment, but still...
BBC headline:
Donald Trump: New attack on US intelligence over Russia hacking
US President-elect Donald Trump has made a fresh assault on America's intelligence community. He said on Twitter that an intelligence briefing he was due to receive on alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election - which is said to have benefited Mr Trump - had been delayed.
"Perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange!" he wrote.
= = = = =
BBC in 2003:
Doubts have been widely cast on the existence of the mobile labs, not least by the former US chief weapons inspector in Iraq, David Kay, who now says does not know whether Iraq ever had a mobile weapons programme.
No evidence of weapons of mass destruction has emerged in Iraq since the end of the war.
Mr Powell said the US intelligence officers "indicated to me" that the information about the mobile labs was reliable, and "I made sure it was multi-sourced".
= = = = =
CIA has been 100% wrong about 100% of events for the last 50 years. This perfect record of perfect negative knowledge and perfect falsehood is perfectly well known. If you really trust their assessment this time, you need to SHOW YOUR FUCKING WORK.

Show ABSOLUTELY EVERY DETAIL of the evidence, every byte of code, every digital packet, every physical wire connecting Putin's office to Wikileaks. If you show EVERYTHING, we may believe that Russia was involved in JOURNALISM. You will then have to EXPLAIN why JOURNALISM is now defined as meddling or hacking or interference.
Of course BBC wasn't really 'attacking' CIA in 2003 and they're not really defending CIA now. Logic plays no role in [**]. They're just infinitely evil infinitely monstrous superbigots. Anything that threatens the infinite evil and infinite power of Soros must be smashed.
[**] I will not profane any innocent English word, nor sully the keys of my keyboard, nor besmirch the ASCII or Unicode characters needed to encode the last part of the above sentence.
Possibly useful dream
I was visiting a new 'multidisciplinary' academic research facility. The purpose of this lab was to harness two opposing academic forces as complementary countervectors to get an important job done.
Science types and
drama types had to work with and against each other, performing tasks that were utterly unfamiliar and bizarre to each side.
= = = = =
Normally science types work toward two purposes: (1) Exterminate facts and logic. (2) Obliterate the universe.
In this lab the science types were forced to BUILD REAL THINGS that were meant to SOLVE REAL PROBLEMS that would help REAL PEOPLE to live BETTER LIVES or to do BETTER JOBS. The solutions had to be understandable and explainable by the drama types.
= = = = =
Normally drama types work toward two purposes: (1) Emit ultrasonic dissonant screeching hymns of demonic praise for imperialist fag hags like Hillary and Merkel. (2) Erupt molten volcanic flows of curses and anathemas to burn and melt Deplorables into piles of powdery ash.
In this lab the drama types were forced to TELL REAL STORIES with a BEGINNING, MIDDLE AND END. The stories had to SHOW NORMAL WORKING PEOPLE how to use the REAL DEVICE OR METHOD that was being developed by the science types.
= = = = =
Counterforces. The science types had to produce a method or device that could be explained and narrated. The drama types had to understand the method or device and had to understand the needs of real people.
Bizarre dream. Totally weird.
Writing about it, I wondered if it's original. Has it been tried before? Partly. Some WPA projects were designed along these lines, but they didn't last long.
Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter, Alternate universe
Natural punishment 3
Obama and Antichrist Bergoglio are playing the same game. Trying to lock in as many demonic policies as possible so a potentially non-demonic replacement will have to work doubly hard to restore sanity.
Demon John Allen at demonic Crux lists the actions Antichrist is taking....
What’s interesting for our purposes, however, is the way Bianchi closed the piece.
“Francis, as everyone knows, has stirred much hope and enthusiasm, for which we can only rejoice,” he wrote. “When I listen to so many simple faithful, the impression I get is of hope that the pope will reform just a few essential things, but do it in a way so there’s no going back.”
But wait.... there's an important difference.
Obama is controlling a NATION, where normal people are stuck. Deplorables can't hop into our private jets and move into our private resorts in Dubai or Switzerland, because we can't even afford a new car let alone a private jet or a private resort. Thus it's important to keep track of Obama's destruction and hold his replacement's nose to the repeal grindstone.
Antichrist is controlling a CHURCH, which is a VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATION. In the big picture there's no need to worry about his actions. Good people, even extremely poor good people, are not forced to stay within the church. They can just walk out and find another church. Even better, each acceleration of satanic evil drives more good people out of the church, leaving it with nothing but demons. Demons are rich, but they can't and won't sustain a massive institution like Rome, ESPECIALLY when the slaves are gone. Power is no fun when there's nobody to whip.
This process has already worked beautifully in demonic protestant churches like Episcopal and Presbyterian. Good people departed, leaving demons with nobody to enslave and nobody to mock. No fun at all. Rome has been slow, but Bergoglio is speeding up the process.
Thanks, Ralph!
Labels: Emersonian justice
Interesting sign?
The Lower Nuthouse started their year by trying to eliminate an "independent" ethics committee that had been created by D to ruin R. Everyone knows that "independent" means D, so this was a rational move for R.
Trump immediately chided them. You have REAL business that needs to be done. Quit fucking around with INTERNAL shit. You can argue about your union bylaws after you FIX THE ROOF.
Amazingly the Lower Nuthouse obeyed and stopped fucking around!
Normally a D president encourages D nonsense and an R president encourages R nonsense. This is the first time an R president has told R politicians to KNOCK IT OFF. I hope this interaction continues.
PAY ATTENTION
Heard in a radio PSA just now: "Throwing salt over your shoulder is a common superstition to prevent bad luck."
No it's not. Nobody does it. Nobody talks about it or thinks about it. Throwing salt was common in the time of Jesus.
What was the PSA about? Dunno. I stopped listening after hearing nonsense.
If you want people to hear your PSAs or your fake news, you need to PAY ATTENTION TO REALITY. Get out of your media bubble and OBSERVE ACTUAL HUMANS doing things. When you claim that people "commonly" do X or Y, STOP AND THINK. Have you ever done X or Y? Have you ever seen or heard anyone doing X or Y?
Most likely you are just copy-pasting a standard Insatiable bigoted bias about the horrible lives of Deplorables.
Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter
Smart Trump
I'm still reluctant to trust Trump's intentions, but it's encouraging to see that he understands the world accurately. He is setting up plans to use old-fashioned PAPER and HUMAN MESSENGERS for important communications inside his admin.
This is a man who UNDERSTANDS the whole point and purpose of digital, and possibly also understands Deepstate.
As I've been
saying forever, the web was designed by and for NSA. Idiot "privacy" advocates and idiot bitcoiners are constantly improving their encryption to preserve "privacy". Useless and self-deceptive.
This is NOT NEWS.
If you want to talk privately, don't talk in a public place. If you don't want Deepstate to know what you're saying, don't pass your messages directly through Deepstate. True 5000 years ago and still true today.
Paper currency and paper messages CAN be private. Digital currency and digital messages CANNOT be private.
The web is OWNED BY DEEPSTATE. Amazon and Google and Facebook are all GOVERNMENT CONTRACTORS, all PART OF THE DEFENSE AND INTEL ESTABLISHMENT. When you communicate via any part of the Web, you are talking DIRECTLY to Deepstate.
Later thought with max paranoia: If Trump is really smart he'll maintain a separate supply of paper and pens to guarantee that the paper is not RFID-chipped and guarantee that the pens are not equipped with accelerometers and wi-fi transmitters. Buy a boutique paper mill and a small maker of promotional ballpoints, and keep a close watch over their operations.
Labels: defensible spaces
Both senses
Convective thought:
Obama's anti-Russian tantrum underestimates Russian
INTELLIGENCE in both senses of the word. The sanctions and diplomat expulsion have two purposes: (1) shift blame from DNC incompetence and corruption to Russian "hacking"; (2) make life harder for Trump.
Purpose 1 has already failed. Only the Sorosian media believe the idiot fairy tale.
Purpose 2 is more interesting. Trump's intention to back away from Hillary's nuclear war is ALREADY KNOWN to Russia via a publicly announced phone call. Even without the phone call, Putin is more INTELLIGENT than any USA STRONG politician, and Russians in general are more aware of the world than Americans. They understand that politicians can have different agendas. Unlike our Sorosian idiots, Russians aren't locked into a globalist bubble that sees only one way of doing things.
And in the other sense of the word, Russian INTELLIGENCE agencies have been spying on us for 100 years, often penetrating and owning our intel agencies. This is NOT NEWS. Russian INTEL already knows Trump's intentions.
So what's the point of the tantrum? It didn't fool Americans or Russians, and it won't force Trump to continue Hillary's WW3 plans.
Labels: STRONG!
Relevant observation 2
Last winter at the height of ice-dam season I
tried to observe patterns in ice-dam formation. I couldn't find any clear correlation.
I started with hypotheses that steep roofs should be better and newer houses should be better. Nope. Shape and age are IRRELEVANT.
Even the steepest roofs and the newest houses can form ice dams. Some metal roofs have icicles, but on a metal roof it doesn't matter because there's no way for the water to force its way through the membrane.
This year (almost the same date!) the pattern is far more distinct.
My morning walk includes a dozen houses of this species. Nice late-50s ranchers, well maintained, often still occupied by OEM owner.

All the houses of this species have formed 5" high ice dams. No other houses have
visible dams. Remarkably sharp correlation.
Also unlike last year, I'm not seeing a growing trend of raking. It's just me and the other predictable regular. Not coincidentally, the other regular raker is one of the abovementioned OEM owners, and not coincidentally his house is the only exception to the abovementioned rule.
Labels: Heimatkunde
What in the holy fuck is going on?
Police in Denmark have
ARRESTED a Korean girl who is the daughter of the Korean prime minister's friend. What crime did this girl commit? Supposedly she got into a prestigious university because she was the daughter of the prime minister's friend.
This makes no sense at all, especially for Denmark. The Korean prime minister is a powerful woman, and her supposedly corrupt friend is also a powerful woman. Denmark, the HOME of lesbian haggery and gender-free insanity, would normally be PROTECTING these women.
Even without the hypocrisy, the basic facts are crazy.
Everyone gets into prestigious universities by some form of influence or nepotism. THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT OF PRESTIGIOUS UNIVERSITIES. They serve to verify and certify your genetic status. We have replaced noble titles like Duke and Marquis with noble titles like PhD and LLD and MD.
Even if you choose to call this normal procedure a crime, the daughter wasn't the one who committed the "crime". She was the beneficiary of the "crime".
Why does being the beneficiary of a nonexistent "crime" justify an international arrest with extradition?
Labels: Loughnerian Logic
At it again
Antichrist Bergoglio is at it again:
In looking to the infant born in Bethlehem, “we should acknowledge that we need the Lord to enlighten us, because all too often we end up being narrow-minded or prisoners of an all-or-nothing attitude that would force others to conform to our own ideas,” he said.
Look in the fucking mirror, Supersatan. You're commanding the world to conform to your infinitely evil "ideas".
Bergoglio is running in well-worn commie tracks. "Broad-minded" means 1000000000000000% adamantine rigid doctrinal conformity to perfect evil and perfect falsehood. "Narrow-minded" means observing facts and following the experimentally determined rules of Nature.
Simple fact: There's no such thing as "broad-minded" or "relativism". Meaningless concepts. Everyone is narrow-minded, everyone has morals and standards and taboos. The decision is not broad vs narrow, absolute vs relative. The decision is Natural Law vs Lunacy, survival vs suicide.
Labels: Natural law = Sharia law
Everyman's X
Carmakers have repeatedly gone bankrupt trying to make Everyman's Car, a superbasic car cheap enough for a minimum-wage employee.
The idea seems attractive but it never works. Basic economics shuts it down. There's no way to build a USABLE car that a poor man can buy NEW. Smart carmakers understood this point. ('Smart carmakers' = exactly Nash.) Mason didn't try to design the Rambler for Everyman. He realized that small cars were going to be SECOND cars for middle-class types.
In the current situation Everyman's car is a
used car. Rambler and descendants like Gremlin became the best Everyman-cars because they were GOOD cars with low status. A poor man could afford a GOOD used Gremlin.
In earlier times Everyman's car was a
streetcar. When America gave up on public transit in 1950, Everyman's life got harder.
= = = = =
This is a broad and general rule. I've consciously applied it in Polistra's new milltown:
If you want lower-income people to have decent STUFF, you need to provide for legal distribution of OLD STUFF, and you need to provide for COLLECTIVE SHARING.
Housing: Everyman's house is an old house or an apartment. Real estate bubbles often price both of these out of Everyman's range.
Clothing: Everyman's clothing is bought at Goodwill, or shared within the family. Large families make this method work better.
Food: In this case the USED part is impossible! It's cheaper and better to have a large family with a mother who has time to prepare and cook from scratch. Fast food and restaurants are the equivalent of new cars.
Jobs: The best job for Everyman is a W2 wage job, working for a middle-size company. Since 1980 the bankers have set up the cruel joke of the 'gig economy', supposedly turning Everyman into an entrepreneur. In fact it's a perfect replication of the old sweatshop system.
Health care: Everyman's doctor is Medicare. Only the government has enough BULLY POWER to control feral hospitals and Big Pharma. Romneycare is another cruel hoax, pushing the myth of 'shopping around'. Insatiables can shop around because they have money + status = bully power. Deplorables can't shop around. After a few years the hoax is exposed, as the shopping malls (exchanges) disappear.
Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter
Natural punishment 2
Following on the
Natural punishment theme.....
Government technocrats love to "fix" old systems that are working just fine. A golden example, reported by a
small Idaho weekly paper:
If the Community Colleges of Spokane knew how much being the test case for a new computer system would cost in overtime, blown deadlines and disruption to students, faculty and staff, the schools would not have volunteered for the job, Chancellor Christine Johnson said.
“We didn’t expect it would be this troubled (of a) system,” Johnson said recently of the $100 million software system purchased to run most aspects of accounting, finances and student affairs for the state’s network of 34 community colleges.
Now an estimated $10 million over budget and SEVERAL YEARS BEHIND SCHEDULE, the system known as ctcLink still isn’t working properly at the two institutions that volunteered to be guinea pigs – the two-school system in Spokane and Tacoma Community College.
As usual the new monster was meant to make CENTRAL CONTROL easier so Emperor Inslee could order all heretics silenced with a snap of his/her filthy fingers.
Trouble is, Nature doesn't want CENTRAL CONTROL. In software as in all else, Nature has an optimal level of modularity. The college had already reached this optimal level, with separate systems for separate departments.
The fagass shiteating copkilling Repooflicans in the alleged "legislature" didn't object to this idiocy, because they're fagass shiteating copkillers. They're too busy doing IMPORTANT THINGS like
making malicious false accusations against local police and
making malicious false accusations against local police.
With
no auditing, no checks and balances, poor old overworked Nature had to pick up the slack. So she did. This idiot system will never work.
Thanks, Ralph!
Labels: Emersonian justice
The Kaiser exception
Observation I've made too often: New gadgets are rarely new. Most are either variations of present gadgets or long-standing old dreams that suddenly become possible. Why possible? New materials. The last truly new invention was around 1908. Everything since then is materials.
Material advancement leads to gadget advancement.
By numerical economics, you'd think a material maker would try to develop gadgets to use the material. Best way to expand your sales!
Nope, it ALMOST never happens that way. Makers of materials almost never spawn or produce gadgets that are enabled by the material.
Cotton growers didn't turn into clothing makers.
Lumbermills didn't turn into housebuilders.
Coal mines didn't turn into electric power companies.
Steelmakers didn't turn into carmakers.
Tungsten miners didn't build light bulbs or vacuum tubes.
Glassmakers (silicon) didn't make transistors.
= = = = =
There are some complex or parallel situations. Ford developed its own iron and wood supplies. Edison (GE) started with appliances, then became a major producer of electricity to help sell more appliances. In both cases the
gadgets came first.
= = = = =
By far the most common pattern is old gadget makers turning into new gadget makers.
Carriage builders became (or were absorbed into) auto makers.
Light bulb makers specialized into vacuum tubes.
Tube makers who specialized in miniature tubes moved directly into transistors.
= = = = =
One giant exception to the rule.
Henry Kaiser broke the rule FOUR TIMES and succeeded each time.
Started with a gravel pit here in Spokane.
From gravel he expanded to concrete.
From concrete he expanded into building dams with concrete.
From the power generated by the dams he developed an aluminum industry.
From aluminum into ships.
Each of these is a switch from a material to a thing that uses the material.
He pulled the usual old-gadget to new-gadget switch only once: Ships to cars.
= = = = =
Conclusion: For everyone but Henry Kaiser, skill overrules simple economics. The skills of mining or growing don't translate into the skills of manufacturing.
Labels: skill-estate
Misses every point
BBC did a brief idiot story on the scarceness of female inventors as judged by patents. Needless to say, we MUST MUST MUST "break all barriers and walls" to reach MORE THAN 100% wyyymoenes inventors. They mention that Russia is an exception to the rule. In Russia the proportion is 5:1 male, while it's more like 20 to 1 elsewhere. They attribute this to Soviet education which "broke the barriers for wyyiymmmyunses."
The idiot story gets everything wrong. (Well, I already said it's BBC, didn't I?)
1. Nature. Males are designed to try new things and take risks because males are less necessary than females. This tendency isn't absolute among humans but it's plenty strong.
2. Inventing and patents are opposites. Patents are strategic anti-invention weapons. Corporations acquire patents to HALT competing innovation. Most patents are held by males because males enjoy playing corporate war games.
3. Soviet education did a better job for girls, but not because of "glass ceiling" ratshit. Soviet science education was strongly
EXPERIMENTAL AND PHYSICAL AND SANE. This was BETTER FOR EVERYONE except Jews and Orientals. Western math and science education is purely THEORETICAL AND WACKED-OUT LUNATIC, which is better for Jews and Orientals, along with a narrow slice of extremely abstract male Caucasians.
Labels: Experiential education
Year-end Graybill
Already did a
personal year-end thing. Ought to do the authorly year-end thing as well. What was the best thing I wrote this year? The
least trivial item in a year of trivial shit?
The last few months have been scanty and distracted because of the surgery stuff in Sept. Starting earlier, the Best Thing stands out instantly.
Graybill's Law. Indexing shows 24 entries that mention it.
The first mention isn't the best.
This item in February where I defined
skill-estate is the best.
= = = = =START REPRINT:
Hernando DeSoto, who speaks fluent Polistran,
comes at Antipope Bergoglio from a more biological and natural-law perspective.
Second, focus on property and not national borders. No one can successfully challenge America’s right under international public law to restrict entrance to people coming from outside across its sovereign borders. What Pope Francis can do is to publicly defend the universal right of all people – sanctioned by the U.S. Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – to enclose, defend and develop property borders inside their countries, so that they don’t have to migrate to America to get them.
Again something is missing. This time the missing element, visible as an afterimage, suggests a NEW notion.
DeSoto constantly and correctly informs us that the problem in Brazil and Mexico is poorly defined REAL-ESTATE. But DeSoto improperly applies the cure to USA/UK/EU. We have good boundaries and titles for real-estate. Our problem is poorly defined, deteriorating and polluted SKILL-ESTATE. See
Graybill again.
Skill-estate is an old concept. Guilds developed to protect it. Guilds descended into unions, which then descended into mobocracy. Before this mafiation, guilds and guild-like unions maintained a strict
chain of title on skills. Master rented to apprentice; apprentice paid his journeyman mortgage and gained full ownership as master.
We have some remnants of skill-estate, quickly losing legitimacy because they've neglected the importance of the skill itself. Uber vs taxis is purely a skill-estate question. Pro taxi drivers had a level of knowledge and ACCOUNTABILITY that Uber has refused to replicate. We forget this and treat the problem as purely monetary, a question of Market Efficiency. Nope, that's a false flag.
Innovative Disruptors constantly seek to break into skill-estate, vandalizing and burglarizing licensed professions from various angles. Offshoring, immigrant labor, robots. The licensers lack a proper defense because they've let the skill-estate deteriorate into pure money or pure credentialism.
When real-estate loses its basic purpose as A PLACE TO LIVE, it turns into pure GPS coordinates. Fancy neighborhoods in
Frisco or
Vancouver or
London have succumbed to this craziness, becoming nothing more than bonds defined by latitude and longitude. No soul left, which means the abstract value is always ready to tumble.
When skill-estate loses its basic purpose as a WAY TO CREATE, it turns into pure paper credentials. College degrees, taxi medallions. The skill-soul is gone, so the abstract value can be pumped and popped by external factors.
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Later items under the
skill-estate tag carry the theme further, but the original definition is sufficient.
Labels: skill-estate