Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Surprise!!!!!
And not a Gomer surprise this time. A damned real surprise!
Obama has done something that Sultan Bush never did: opened a significant chunk of offshore and Alaska territory to drilling.
For the first time in many years, Polistra can ride her favorite horse!
Under the allegedly pro-petroleum Sultan Bush and his allegedly pro-petroleum Republican Congress, we got nothing but cutesy game-playing. The House would open territory, knowing full well that the Senate would close it; then vice versa. Sultan Bush NEVER used his executive authority to break this destructive game.
Now we have some halfhearted but meaningful assistance for nuclear power, and some major assistance for petroleum.
As my father always said: If you want Republican policies, elect a Democrat. If you want Democrat policies, elect a Republican.
Parallel in some ways to health reform. Brand-R had full control from 2002 through 2006, and never did one damn thing about it. They could have created good "conservative" solutions. They could have broken the insurance monopoly. They could have enacted serious tort reform. If those two steps had been taken in 2002, we'd be in much better shape now. We'd have a private system that most people could afford. But no, they didn't do shit. And now they have the fucking gall and chutzpah to bitch when Brand-D actually adopts some of their lesser proposals.
= = = = =
Later: Wolf Blitzer, bless his annoying Lawrence-Welk-accented heart, actually got it right this time. None of the standard agreed-on lies, none of the idiotic false assumptions about Oilman Bush.
Wolf started the hour by saying: "Presidenta Obama, breaking two decades of Federala policy, opened up large sectionsa of offshore territory to drillinga."
Exactlya.
Obama has done something that Sultan Bush never did: opened a significant chunk of offshore and Alaska territory to drilling.
For the first time in many years, Polistra can ride her favorite horse!
Under the allegedly pro-petroleum Sultan Bush and his allegedly pro-petroleum Republican Congress, we got nothing but cutesy game-playing. The House would open territory, knowing full well that the Senate would close it; then vice versa. Sultan Bush NEVER used his executive authority to break this destructive game.
Now we have some halfhearted but meaningful assistance for nuclear power, and some major assistance for petroleum.
As my father always said: If you want Republican policies, elect a Democrat. If you want Democrat policies, elect a Republican.
Parallel in some ways to health reform. Brand-R had full control from 2002 through 2006, and never did one damn thing about it. They could have created good "conservative" solutions. They could have broken the insurance monopoly. They could have enacted serious tort reform. If those two steps had been taken in 2002, we'd be in much better shape now. We'd have a private system that most people could afford. But no, they didn't do shit. And now they have the fucking gall and chutzpah to bitch when Brand-D actually adopts some of their lesser proposals.
= = = = =
Later: Wolf Blitzer, bless his annoying Lawrence-Welk-accented heart, actually got it right this time. None of the standard agreed-on lies, none of the idiotic false assumptions about Oilman Bush.
Wolf started the hour by saying: "Presidenta Obama, breaking two decades of Federala policy, opened up large sectionsa of offshore territory to drillinga."
Exactlya.
Labels: Shared Lie
¶ 7:22 AM
Sometimes
Every now and then, you see something that makes you want to rip your eyes out, and then rip out the section of your brain that stored the experience.
In this clip, three unhanged traitors talk in calm measured academic tones about how to maximize treason, how to destroy America, how to aid our enemies with best efficiency.
I will not speak further. Any further comment I could make, or for that matter any truthful response by any civilized human, would bring down the Stasi in full force. Midnight knock. ¶ 6:26 AM
In this clip, three unhanged traitors talk in calm measured academic tones about how to maximize treason, how to destroy America, how to aid our enemies with best efficiency.
I will not speak further. Any further comment I could make, or for that matter any truthful response by any civilized human, would bring down the Stasi in full force. Midnight knock. ¶ 6:26 AM
Surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise.
The Brits have "investigated" the climate criminals at Hadley, and find no problems whatsoever.
This is perfectly normal in Soviet colonies like UK and US.
Government "investigations" have exactly three jobs, which they always accomplish to perfection:
(1) Allow the criminals to repeatedly chant "Sorry, no comment because of pending investigation" until the process is finished, which ideally lasts until the criminals reach retirement age.
(2) When the process is finished, richly reward the criminals.
(3) Ferociously punish the whistleblowers and truth-tellers, ideally by "suicide".
We now have (1) and (2). Expect (3) shortly. ¶ 5:27 AM
The Brits have "investigated" the climate criminals at Hadley, and find no problems whatsoever.
This is perfectly normal in Soviet colonies like UK and US.
Government "investigations" have exactly three jobs, which they always accomplish to perfection:
(1) Allow the criminals to repeatedly chant "Sorry, no comment because of pending investigation" until the process is finished, which ideally lasts until the criminals reach retirement age.
(2) When the process is finished, richly reward the criminals.
(3) Ferociously punish the whistleblowers and truth-tellers, ideally by "suicide".
We now have (1) and (2). Expect (3) shortly. ¶ 5:27 AM
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Modest proposal: House of 1,1,1
Ever since the 17th Amendment took away its original purpose of representing the governments of the States, the Senate has been nothing more than an occasion of sin, a literal house of iniquity.
I'd really like to see the original situation restored, but since we're no longer allowed to repeal anything, here's a fresh way to make the Senate represent some fucking thing.
Instead of taking money out of politics which ain't gonna happen, let's take voting and parties out of politics. Make the upper house serve as the House of Vested Interests.
Specifically: If you can get 1% of the national voting population to sign your petition and contribute exactly one dollar each, you get to serve exactly one year in the upper house. One percent, one dollar, one year.
Your pay comes solely from the contributions --- about $2 million in typical years, which should make most bribes look paltry by comparison --- so the taxpayers are off the hook. Petitions that don't make the 1% threshold are refunded. This could be done with minimal overhead via the web.
No limits on numbers. If this yields 12 Senators one year and 3500 Senators the next year, that simply means the intensity of public interest is properly represented each time.
The 1,1,1 system would remove the current false pretense of representing a state while actually representing a union or a corporation. You could openly and cheerfully serve as the Senator from Exxon.
The only thing you couldn't represent is lawyers. Any Senator found to be a lawyer, or found to have ever taken a class in law school, or found to be representing lawyers in any way, shape, or form, shall be instantly ejected and his total pay distributed equally among the other current members. (Incentive to spot ringers.)
This setup would give representation to newly formed or ad hoc interest groups that don't have billions to buy permanent lobbyists and offices. You could be the Senator from the South Park Fan Club, or one of several Senators from the Get Those Teenage Dickheads Off My Damn Lawn Club.
You'd have only one year to make your mark. If the group is strong enough and you do a good job, someone else will serve the group next year. If you do a bad job or the group was transitory, the group will lose interest and thus lose its representation next year. No incentive to gain personal power by seniority, but plenty of incentive to give your group a good run for its money. ¶ 4:48 PM
I'd really like to see the original situation restored, but since we're no longer allowed to repeal anything, here's a fresh way to make the Senate represent some fucking thing.
Instead of taking money out of politics which ain't gonna happen, let's take voting and parties out of politics. Make the upper house serve as the House of Vested Interests.
Specifically: If you can get 1% of the national voting population to sign your petition and contribute exactly one dollar each, you get to serve exactly one year in the upper house. One percent, one dollar, one year.
Your pay comes solely from the contributions --- about $2 million in typical years, which should make most bribes look paltry by comparison --- so the taxpayers are off the hook. Petitions that don't make the 1% threshold are refunded. This could be done with minimal overhead via the web.
No limits on numbers. If this yields 12 Senators one year and 3500 Senators the next year, that simply means the intensity of public interest is properly represented each time.
The 1,1,1 system would remove the current false pretense of representing a state while actually representing a union or a corporation. You could openly and cheerfully serve as the Senator from Exxon.
The only thing you couldn't represent is lawyers. Any Senator found to be a lawyer, or found to have ever taken a class in law school, or found to be representing lawyers in any way, shape, or form, shall be instantly ejected and his total pay distributed equally among the other current members. (Incentive to spot ringers.)
This setup would give representation to newly formed or ad hoc interest groups that don't have billions to buy permanent lobbyists and offices. You could be the Senator from the South Park Fan Club, or one of several Senators from the Get Those Teenage Dickheads Off My Damn Lawn Club.
You'd have only one year to make your mark. If the group is strong enough and you do a good job, someone else will serve the group next year. If you do a bad job or the group was transitory, the group will lose interest and thus lose its representation next year. No incentive to gain personal power by seniority, but plenty of incentive to give your group a good run for its money. ¶ 4:48 PM
Doesn't smell right
The "militia" caught plotting to kill local cops is not unprecedented. There have been several halfway organized plots against local cops in the Seattle area.
Something unnatural is going on. Local cops are not the logical or immediate target of anger for working-class whites. In fact most cops are themselves working-class whites.
Cops are appropriately hated by black and Mexican gangsters, and this hatred has been artificially spread through the general black population by the political bosses of the gangs (Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, ACLU, the media.) Yet there haven't been any plots by blacks or Mexicans. (When a gangster gets into a firefight with a cop, the cop sometimes dies.... but that's not a plot. That's a natural tragedy.)
This smells more like FBI agents provocateurs at work. FBI has admitted to penetrating the Ohio "militia", and the arrest came at a nice convenient time when the media were already running a Hundred Flowers Information Campaign to discredit all opposition to the Infinite Monopoly For Insurance Companies Law. ¶ 8:41 AM
Something unnatural is going on. Local cops are not the logical or immediate target of anger for working-class whites. In fact most cops are themselves working-class whites.
Cops are appropriately hated by black and Mexican gangsters, and this hatred has been artificially spread through the general black population by the political bosses of the gangs (Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, ACLU, the media.) Yet there haven't been any plots by blacks or Mexicans. (When a gangster gets into a firefight with a cop, the cop sometimes dies.... but that's not a plot. That's a natural tragedy.)
This smells more like FBI agents provocateurs at work. FBI has admitted to penetrating the Ohio "militia", and the arrest came at a nice convenient time when the media were already running a Hundred Flowers Information Campaign to discredit all opposition to the Infinite Monopoly For Insurance Companies Law. ¶ 8:41 AM
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Quayle reveals the truth
Dan Quayle, interviewed just now on Fox: (approx quote)
"The Tea Party is a movement, not a party. It doesn't have a leader and doesn't want a leader. Most of its members are Republicans, but plenty are Dems and independents. It doesn't want to become a party like Ross Perot in 1992. If it moved toward becoming a party, then I'd be concerned."
Hear that, TP folks? Until you become an organized formal party, nobody is concerned about your desires and views. Therefore your views are precisely meaningless. As long as you remain an amorphous 'movement' you are easily manipulated and co-opted, just as the hippies were manipulated by the Dems in 1968.
= = = = =
Watching today's rally for McCain, I realize it's a lot worse.
Think about this.
Manchurian Candidate McCain was the REASON why a Tea Party seemed necessary.
MC McCain is Mister Wall Street, Mister Big Tent, Mister Open Borders, Mister Liberal, Mister We Do Not Torture, Mister Global Warming, Mister Close Guantanamo Now, Mister Censor Political Hate Speech, Mister Affirmative Action. Overall the veritable Heart of Gramscian Darkness. Absolutely indistinguishable from Comrade Obama, except that Obama is more pragmatic, less ideologically rigid.
And now the R machine has shaped the TP movement into rallying for McCain.
This would be the equivalent of Mayor Daley persuading the 1968 hippies to rally for Strom Thurmond or Robert Byrd.
Those events didn't happen. We were malleable, but not THAT malleable. ¶ 9:00 AM
"The Tea Party is a movement, not a party. It doesn't have a leader and doesn't want a leader. Most of its members are Republicans, but plenty are Dems and independents. It doesn't want to become a party like Ross Perot in 1992. If it moved toward becoming a party, then I'd be concerned."
Hear that, TP folks? Until you become an organized formal party, nobody is concerned about your desires and views. Therefore your views are precisely meaningless. As long as you remain an amorphous 'movement' you are easily manipulated and co-opted, just as the hippies were manipulated by the Dems in 1968.
= = = = =
Watching today's rally for McCain, I realize it's a lot worse.
Think about this.
Manchurian Candidate McCain was the REASON why a Tea Party seemed necessary.
MC McCain is Mister Wall Street, Mister Big Tent, Mister Open Borders, Mister Liberal, Mister We Do Not Torture, Mister Global Warming, Mister Close Guantanamo Now, Mister Censor Political Hate Speech, Mister Affirmative Action. Overall the veritable Heart of Gramscian Darkness. Absolutely indistinguishable from Comrade Obama, except that Obama is more pragmatic, less ideologically rigid.
And now the R machine has shaped the TP movement into rallying for McCain.
This would be the equivalent of Mayor Daley persuading the 1968 hippies to rally for Strom Thurmond or Robert Byrd.
Those events didn't happen. We were malleable, but not THAT malleable. ¶ 9:00 AM
Friday, March 26, 2010
New START agreement
Probably a good thing.
Russia and US are no longer truly enemies. For several decades we were the Heavyweight Contenders, trading punches in the ring and trading insults elsewhere. Now we're just a pair of beaten senile coots, trundling our oxygen tanks through the halls of the Assisted Living Centre, glaring at each other when we remember who we are, while dear Doctor Cheng and dear Nurse Ling raid our bank accounts behind our backs.
Anyway, we've already told the world that we will never use nuke weapons under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES AT ALL, so there's no point in holding them now.
Sultan Bush should have used nukes to vaporize the entire Arabian peninsula on 9/12/2001. By refusing to take the correct action on the SINGLE SOLITARY OCCASION WHEN IT WAS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY, Sultan Bush pre-emptively and abjectly surrendered to all present and future enemies at once. Pretty impressive from a Gandhian viewpoint, and deeee-licious from a Mohammedan viewpoint.
So it doesn't really matter any more if we have weapons or forts or armies or navies.
On the sort-of-good side, more decommissioned weapons means more recycled fuel for nuclear power, which we also refuse to use. So the fuel will end up in China like the rest of our substance and wealth and property. ¶ 8:09 AM
Russia and US are no longer truly enemies. For several decades we were the Heavyweight Contenders, trading punches in the ring and trading insults elsewhere. Now we're just a pair of beaten senile coots, trundling our oxygen tanks through the halls of the Assisted Living Centre, glaring at each other when we remember who we are, while dear Doctor Cheng and dear Nurse Ling raid our bank accounts behind our backs.
Anyway, we've already told the world that we will never use nuke weapons under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES AT ALL, so there's no point in holding them now.
Sultan Bush should have used nukes to vaporize the entire Arabian peninsula on 9/12/2001. By refusing to take the correct action on the SINGLE SOLITARY OCCASION WHEN IT WAS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY, Sultan Bush pre-emptively and abjectly surrendered to all present and future enemies at once. Pretty impressive from a Gandhian viewpoint, and deeee-licious from a Mohammedan viewpoint.
So it doesn't really matter any more if we have weapons or forts or armies or navies.
On the sort-of-good side, more decommissioned weapons means more recycled fuel for nuclear power, which we also refuse to use. So the fuel will end up in China like the rest of our substance and wealth and property. ¶ 8:09 AM
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Dreher's 10 books
Dreher opened a topic "List 10 books that changed your worldview." Caught my attention because I'd been thinking along those lines lately. (More precisely, I'd been listing things that opened my eyes to reality at various times, and most were books.)
My list, roughly in chronological order and expanded from my comment in Dreher:
1. Mario Pei, Story of Language. Around age 11. Taught me the true logic and the fascinating family tree of language, showed me that the English teacher didn't know what the hell she was talking about. Learned to mistrust experts, which comes in mighty handy down here, Bub.
2. Fletcher Pratt, Secret and Urgent. Around age 12. Learned basics of cryptography and by extension some basics of human nature. (As in why people need codes to run wars and businesses.)
3. George Gamow, 1-2-3 Infinity. Around age 12. Lively book on mathematics, intro'd many concepts of limits, calculus, etc. (Hadn't thought of this book in decades, but oddly enough dreamed about it last night, so it must belong on the list! In the dream, I was moving into a new house and found one room filled to overflowing with huge man-sized copies of this book. Strange, eh?)
4. Edward Wallant, Tenants of Moonbloom. Around age 14. Taught me about human endurance, love, death.
5. Huxley, Brave New World. Around 15. Perfect vision of modern America, caution about my pseudo-intellectual pretensions. Should have paid more attention to the latter.
6. Steinbeck, Cannery Row / Sweet Thursday. Around 16. Found a role model in Doc Ricketts, pretty much followed that role model for rest of life. Worked out well so far. (Found out later that the actual Ed Ricketts was significantly different from Doc character, but that didn't really matter....)
7. C. Northcote Parkinson, Parkinson's Law. Around 18. Taught me to think of human behavior in biological and mechanistic terms, ignoring the ideological and psychological crap that drives Americans to reach uniformly delusional answers.
8. Forrest Mims's electronics books. Around 27. Working a series of projects with the Mims books as guide, I learned enough about modern electronics to become a competent teacher. In other words, I got from Mims what I couldn't get from college.
9. Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon. Around 40. Not really a life-changer like the rest, but still important ... taught me how Wall Street Casino really works, just in time to remove temptation of throwing life savings down the Casino rathole. (If I hadn't picked up this information, I wouldn't have been able to carry out the Doc Ricketts "independently poor" life!)
10. WPA Writers Project. 50 to present. Learned what FDR was really doing, picked up the flavor of a time when American politicians, intellectuals and scientists wanted the American PEOPLE to succeed. Seen against this background, our current generation of treasonous genocidal truth-murdering servants of China show up with stark tragic clarity.
In short, Polistra was born from the WPA guides.
My list, roughly in chronological order and expanded from my comment in Dreher:
1. Mario Pei, Story of Language. Around age 11. Taught me the true logic and the fascinating family tree of language, showed me that the English teacher didn't know what the hell she was talking about. Learned to mistrust experts, which comes in mighty handy down here, Bub.
2. Fletcher Pratt, Secret and Urgent. Around age 12. Learned basics of cryptography and by extension some basics of human nature. (As in why people need codes to run wars and businesses.)
3. George Gamow, 1-2-3 Infinity. Around age 12. Lively book on mathematics, intro'd many concepts of limits, calculus, etc. (Hadn't thought of this book in decades, but oddly enough dreamed about it last night, so it must belong on the list! In the dream, I was moving into a new house and found one room filled to overflowing with huge man-sized copies of this book. Strange, eh?)
4. Edward Wallant, Tenants of Moonbloom. Around age 14. Taught me about human endurance, love, death.
5. Huxley, Brave New World. Around 15. Perfect vision of modern America, caution about my pseudo-intellectual pretensions. Should have paid more attention to the latter.
6. Steinbeck, Cannery Row / Sweet Thursday. Around 16. Found a role model in Doc Ricketts, pretty much followed that role model for rest of life. Worked out well so far. (Found out later that the actual Ed Ricketts was significantly different from Doc character, but that didn't really matter....)
7. C. Northcote Parkinson, Parkinson's Law. Around 18. Taught me to think of human behavior in biological and mechanistic terms, ignoring the ideological and psychological crap that drives Americans to reach uniformly delusional answers.
8. Forrest Mims's electronics books. Around 27. Working a series of projects with the Mims books as guide, I learned enough about modern electronics to become a competent teacher. In other words, I got from Mims what I couldn't get from college.
9. Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon. Around 40. Not really a life-changer like the rest, but still important ... taught me how Wall Street Casino really works, just in time to remove temptation of throwing life savings down the Casino rathole. (If I hadn't picked up this information, I wouldn't have been able to carry out the Doc Ricketts "independently poor" life!)
10. WPA Writers Project. 50 to present. Learned what FDR was really doing, picked up the flavor of a time when American politicians, intellectuals and scientists wanted the American PEOPLE to succeed. Seen against this background, our current generation of treasonous genocidal truth-murdering servants of China show up with stark tragic clarity.
In short, Polistra was born from the WPA guides.
Labels: Experiential education
¶ 7:39 PM
Small favors
Mike Pence spoke a plain and rare truth just now, amid the usual recitation of false talking points about the Infinite Monopoly For Insurance Companies Act.
Pence said the current economy is "the worst in 30 years."
Precisely right. Everyone else in politics and media has been universally describing it as "worst since the Great Depression", which is wildly false.
The current situation is similar in cause and timeline to the Depression, but vastly less severe. In terms of overall seriousness, it's much closer to 1980 (i.e. 30 years ago.)
Thank heaven for small truths. ¶ 5:33 PM
Pence said the current economy is "the worst in 30 years."
Precisely right. Everyone else in politics and media has been universally describing it as "worst since the Great Depression", which is wildly false.
The current situation is similar in cause and timeline to the Depression, but vastly less severe. In terms of overall seriousness, it's much closer to 1980 (i.e. 30 years ago.)
Thank heaven for small truths. ¶ 5:33 PM
More fun with blind atheists
Cornelius Hunter's latest little piece on Intelligent Design wasn't especially dramatic, but one of the "devastating refutations" from an evolutionist commenter was just perfect.
(I really should have written this directly in Hunter's comment section, but I don't like "piling on" even when it's massively justified ... so I'll put it here with names withheld to protect the guilty.)
= = = = =
Think about this.
"I'm sure ... that we will find it doesn't take supernatural power."
and then ...
"Evolutionists are guilty of not having stale minds... not changing one's mind is absurd."
= = = = =
Always the same with commies, regardless of specialty. Atheist, feminist, evolutionist, environmentalist, "civil rights" activist, "animal rights" activist, always the same wildly obvious contradiction at the heart of all thought:
(1) Absolutely everything I say is absolutely true and absolutely unquestionable, and you shall be transported to the Gulag for daring to question it.
and then ...
(2) My mind is absolutely flexible, absolutely neutral and objective, absolutely open to new facts at all times. Your Stale Flat-Earther Neanderthal Sexist Homophobic Racist Speciesist Ageist Looksist Neurotypicalist Breederist Bushitlerist BigOilist mind is absolutely rigid and unchanging!!!
and then the cherry on top ...
(3) How DARE you label me as a Leftist! You can't judge me! You can't label me! Labelling is just another filthy Inquisitorial Wing-nut trick by you Secretly Gay Klansmen, you Stale Flat-Earther Neanderthal Sexist Homophobic Racist Speciesist Ageist Looksist Neurotypicalist Breederist Bushitlerist BigOilist LABELIST!!!!!!!! ¶ 6:16 AM
(I really should have written this directly in Hunter's comment section, but I don't like "piling on" even when it's massively justified ... so I'll put it here with names withheld to protect the guilty.)
= = = = =
What has been found is that viruses account for a large portion of DNA changes. I'm sure that as more research is done on junk sequences, we will find that it doesn't take supernatural power for them to come about.
It is funny that us "evolutionists" are guilty of not having stale minds, more so when the notion of not changing ones mind based on new findings seems so absurd to us. To some the world we always be flat.
Think about this.
"I'm sure ... that we will find it doesn't take supernatural power."
and then ...
"Evolutionists are guilty of not having stale minds... not changing one's mind is absurd."
= = = = =
Always the same with commies, regardless of specialty. Atheist, feminist, evolutionist, environmentalist, "civil rights" activist, "animal rights" activist, always the same wildly obvious contradiction at the heart of all thought:
(1) Absolutely everything I say is absolutely true and absolutely unquestionable, and you shall be transported to the Gulag for daring to question it.
and then ...
(2) My mind is absolutely flexible, absolutely neutral and objective, absolutely open to new facts at all times. Your Stale Flat-Earther Neanderthal Sexist Homophobic Racist Speciesist Ageist Looksist Neurotypicalist Breederist Bushitlerist BigOilist mind is absolutely rigid and unchanging!!!
and then the cherry on top ...
(3) How DARE you label me as a Leftist! You can't judge me! You can't label me! Labelling is just another filthy Inquisitorial Wing-nut trick by you Secretly Gay Klansmen, you Stale Flat-Earther Neanderthal Sexist Homophobic Racist Speciesist Ageist Looksist Neurotypicalist Breederist Bushitlerist BigOilist LABELIST!!!!!!!! ¶ 6:16 AM
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Census
I'm constantly amazed and amused by the weak and feckless "paranoia" exhibited by people who claim to be "pro-freedom" or "anti-government". They believe that putting their name and address on the census form will give the government all sorts of information that it didn't already have. They also believe they're sticking a wrench in the works by answering "human" or "American" in the race blank.
Listen, you poor self-deluding fools, the government already knows ten thousand times that much. Probably knows more about you than you know about yourself, unless you've spent your whole life disconnected from the grid like Kaczynski.
And you're only hurting yourself by answering "human" or "American". Those statistics determine who gets the goodies. The goodie distribution system has no slot for "human" and explicitly no slot for "American". By filling in those slotless and meaningless answers, you're effectively shrinking the slot for your own tribe, thus sending more goodies to other tribes. ¶ 5:31 PM
Listen, you poor self-deluding fools, the government already knows ten thousand times that much. Probably knows more about you than you know about yourself, unless you've spent your whole life disconnected from the grid like Kaczynski.
And you're only hurting yourself by answering "human" or "American". Those statistics determine who gets the goodies. The goodie distribution system has no slot for "human" and explicitly no slot for "American". By filling in those slotless and meaningless answers, you're effectively shrinking the slot for your own tribe, thus sending more goodies to other tribes. ¶ 5:31 PM
Restoration in one paragraph
I had stopped reading Front Porch Republic for a while, because it had slipped into a mix of strange abstractions and raw Gaia-worship. Now it seems to have recovered its balance, climbed back into more substantial territory.
James Wilson's latest column is a fine example, containing a perfectly concise and precise recipe for American restoration:
Says it all. ¶ 2:27 PM
James Wilson's latest column is a fine example, containing a perfectly concise and precise recipe for American restoration:
So long as the federal government continues to monopolize the power of treaties and tariffs, it should deploy them for the purposes of protecting vital American industries. It should do so with an eye to encouraging the proliferation of small, geographically dispersed firms, favoring none. Wise, if limited, tariffs, strictly enforced competition law (e.g. anti-trust law), and re-devolution to the States the power to enforce regulations regarding corporations within their borders: here are three decisive starts to a restoration of American society. The State at any and every level should regulate financial dealings so they conform to nature, allowing the kinds of investment proper to shared ownership and concrete financial partnerships, but prohibiting the irresponsible manipulations that have allowed finance to become an industry unto itself, wherein financial stakeholders remain radically removed from the productive enterprises on which their abstract profits are “vaguely” based.
Says it all. ¶ 2:27 PM
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Yay Chu (again!)
Energy secy Chu is openly pushing in THE RIGHT DIRECTION!
As Polistra happily noted a year ago, there is in fact a Silver Bullet solution for the whole energy problem, which even looks like a Silver Bullet.
Hyperion, based in Los Alamos, was the first American firm to commercialize these small nuke power plants; Chinese and Jap companies have also been forging ahead in the field. China, the most sane and normal country in the world, has already installed some.
Now Chu intends to load up and shoot some silver bullets, though he's still painfully slow on the draw:
Energy secy Chu is openly pushing in THE RIGHT DIRECTION!
As Polistra happily noted a year ago, there is in fact a Silver Bullet solution for the whole energy problem, which even looks like a Silver Bullet.
Hyperion, based in Los Alamos, was the first American firm to commercialize these small nuke power plants; Chinese and Jap companies have also been forging ahead in the field. China, the most sane and normal country in the world, has already installed some.
Now Chu intends to load up and shoot some silver bullets, though he's still painfully slow on the draw:
“Small modular reactors would be less than one-third the size of current plants. They have compact designs and could be made in factories and transported to sites by truck or rail. SMRs would be ready to ‘plug and play’ upon arrival,” he writes.¶ 3:41 PM
“Right now we are exploring a partnership with industry to obtain design certification from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for one or two designs. These SMRs are based on proven light-water reactor technologies and could be deployed in about 10 years.”
Frum explains it
I've been trying without success to figure out why Goldman Sachs Red Label is uniformly opposed to the Infinite Monopoly For Insurance Companies Act, while Goldman Sachs Blue Label is (almost) uniformly in favor of IMFICA. Both "parties" are labels for the financial industry, and the financial industry gains tremendously from this act. Thus both labels should have favored it.
I was looking in the wrong place! David Frum explains it completely:
I was looking in the wrong place! David Frum explains it completely:
Now the overheated talk is about to get worse. Over the past 48 hours, I've heard conservatives compare the House bill to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 -- a decisive step on the path to the Civil War. Conservatives have whipped themselves into spasms of outrage and despair that block all strategic thinking.¶ 8:06 AM
Or almost all. The vitriolic talking heads on conservative talk radio and shock TV have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination.
When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say -- but what is equally true -- is that he also wants Republicans to fail.
If Republicans succeed -- if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office -- Rush's listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less and hear fewer ads for Sleep Number beds.
Could get interesting
Wash Attorney General Rob McKenna is joining other brand-R state AGs, suing to nullify the new Infinite Monopoly For Insurance Companies Act.
Both statements are nominally true, but since the Great Exterminator wiped the 10th Amendment off the books in 1861, the first part won't matter. No section of the Constitution may be used or cited to help American citizens; the document shall only be used and cited by ACLU to help enemy soldiers and criminals. Everyone knows this.
McKenna's second sentence has more of a practical meaning: all states except Nebraska and Louisiana will now be required to spend even more money they don't have. (Yeah, yeah, we hear those exceptions were removed. Count on it. They weren't.)
Looks like McKenna is setting up to run for Gov next time around; this act of independence may help him to start his campaign. And it helps even more that Gov Gregoire has immediately promised to fight his effort.
= = = = =
The real tragedy in all of this: Federalism still exists as a cultural norm, despite its long-murdered Constitutional basis. Federalism was working as it should in health care until the Infinite Monopoly Act. Wash has a partly-subsidized health care system filling the hole between Medicaid and "real" insurance. Basic Health is built on the non-profit Group Health cooperative, and works very well. (I know because I'm a member!)
Other states have been developing other systems with varying degrees of success. Canada reached its national health plan through province-level experimentation, and America was on a glide path to reach ours the same way. Now the Infinite Monopoly Act will break all the state plans, imposing a single plan for the benefit of a few high-profit insurance companies. ¶ 5:20 AM
“I believe this new federal health care measure unconstitutionally imposes new requirements on our state and on its citizens,” McKenna said in a statement released by his office Monday afternoon. “This unprecedented federal mandate, requiring all Washingtonians to purchase health insurance, violates the Commerce Clause and the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”
The bill places “an extraordinary burden” on the state budget by expanding its Medicaid eligibility standards, McKenna said.
Both statements are nominally true, but since the Great Exterminator wiped the 10th Amendment off the books in 1861, the first part won't matter. No section of the Constitution may be used or cited to help American citizens; the document shall only be used and cited by ACLU to help enemy soldiers and criminals. Everyone knows this.
McKenna's second sentence has more of a practical meaning: all states except Nebraska and Louisiana will now be required to spend even more money they don't have. (Yeah, yeah, we hear those exceptions were removed. Count on it. They weren't.)
Looks like McKenna is setting up to run for Gov next time around; this act of independence may help him to start his campaign. And it helps even more that Gov Gregoire has immediately promised to fight his effort.
= = = = =
The real tragedy in all of this: Federalism still exists as a cultural norm, despite its long-murdered Constitutional basis. Federalism was working as it should in health care until the Infinite Monopoly Act. Wash has a partly-subsidized health care system filling the hole between Medicaid and "real" insurance. Basic Health is built on the non-profit Group Health cooperative, and works very well. (I know because I'm a member!)
Other states have been developing other systems with varying degrees of success. Canada reached its national health plan through province-level experimentation, and America was on a glide path to reach ours the same way. Now the Infinite Monopoly Act will break all the state plans, imposing a single plan for the benefit of a few high-profit insurance companies. ¶ 5:20 AM
Monday, March 22, 2010
Art Robinson runs for Congress
Art Robinson was among the first real scientists to fight the Global Warming Cult. He's been toiling in this field for more than 20 years, along with running an independent biochem lab dealing with human aging and metabolism.
Now that the force of truth against the Carbon Cult has finally taken on a life of its own, Robinson has decided to run for Congress against Peter DeFazio in his home area of Oregon. Here's his initial statement:
His ideology is closer to Ron Paul libertarians than I'd like, but the Paul approach seems to be popular now with college-age folks, who can energize a campaign. I've been following and supporting Robinson's efforts for quite a while and I'd love to see him become the sole spokesman for honest science in the House, just as Inhofe is in the Senate.
(It would be even better to have more than one honest man in each house, but that's waaaaaaaaaaaay too much to expect. The saving grace: Truth has a miraculous way of infecting a place from just one carrier. With no carriers at all, Truth has no chance at all.) ¶ 1:51 PM
Now that the force of truth against the Carbon Cult has finally taken on a life of its own, Robinson has decided to run for Congress against Peter DeFazio in his home area of Oregon. Here's his initial statement:
The citizens of Oregon District 4 are today in danger of being without incomes, without jobs, without homes, and without the freedom, prosperity, and way of life that America has previously provided.
The federal government is nearing bankruptcy and the Oregon government is scrambling to survive, while citizens see their savings dwindle, their home prices plunge, their budgets contract, and their employers endangered.
Why have these problems come upon us? Why are we unable to produce 100% of our energy instead of buying 30% from unstable foreign sources? Why have our industries moved abroad? Why are our brave young soldiers quartered in more than 100 foreign countries and constantly involved in foreign wars? Why are our industries, including our health care system, in danger of government takeover?
The answer is in Washington, where the federal government has abandoned Constitutional principles and gradually imposed crushing taxation, overwhelming bureaucratic regulation and control, and vast government-sponsored litigation upon the once free American people - burdens so great that their hard work and ingenuity can no longer provide the economic freedom and prosperity they once enjoyed.
These burdens must be rolled back. The career politicians in Washington, including the Deomcrate from District 4 who has helped to impose those burdens, should be replaced. Art Robinson is a respected scientist, educator, businessman, and 30-year resident of Oregon with the knowledge and ability to protect and restore our freedoms.
His ideology is closer to Ron Paul libertarians than I'd like, but the Paul approach seems to be popular now with college-age folks, who can energize a campaign. I've been following and supporting Robinson's efforts for quite a while and I'd love to see him become the sole spokesman for honest science in the House, just as Inhofe is in the Senate.
(It would be even better to have more than one honest man in each house, but that's waaaaaaaaaaaay too much to expect. The saving grace: Truth has a miraculous way of infecting a place from just one carrier. With no carriers at all, Truth has no chance at all.) ¶ 1:51 PM
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Hope Kucinich is right
I was puzzled by Kucinich flipping to support the Senate mess on health care. Until now, DK has been firmly in favor of the only rational solution, namely a single-payer national system. After hearing his explanation, I hope he's right. He hasn't changed his mind on the ultimate need, but says that the only politically feasible path toward the rational system starts with this awful contraption.
DK says: If this jumbled-up mess fails to pass, the political assholes will never again touch the question. If it passes, the main circuit breaker for the third rail will be turned off, and the assholes will ever-so-slowly move in the correct direction.
The latter is highly unlikely, but unlikely is a little better than impossible. Far more likely result of passage: the insurance companies will love their new absolute 100% monopoly so much that nobody in DC will ever be allowed to decrease it; instead, the insurance companies will expand to fill the entire economy.
= = = = =
Of course what we really need is total irretrievable collapse of DC, followed by formation of two or three new confederations by state governors. And what I really hope is that the Senate contraption will generate enough wild imbalances between states and regions to speed the collapse. ¶ 6:46 AM
DK says: If this jumbled-up mess fails to pass, the political assholes will never again touch the question. If it passes, the main circuit breaker for the third rail will be turned off, and the assholes will ever-so-slowly move in the correct direction.
The latter is highly unlikely, but unlikely is a little better than impossible. Far more likely result of passage: the insurance companies will love their new absolute 100% monopoly so much that nobody in DC will ever be allowed to decrease it; instead, the insurance companies will expand to fill the entire economy.
= = = = =
Of course what we really need is total irretrievable collapse of DC, followed by formation of two or three new confederations by state governors. And what I really hope is that the Senate contraption will generate enough wild imbalances between states and regions to speed the collapse. ¶ 6:46 AM
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Oh, the wiggling humanity
Interesting report in New Superstitionist about a relatively lo-tech way to separate hydrogen from water. The trick involves a fine fiberglass-like material made of zinc oxide. Like many other materials, these fibers generate electric charges when bent. (The piezoelectric principle.)
When submerged in water and then vibrated, these fibers produce opposite charges at each end, which bubbles off hydrogen at one end and oxygen at the other. The hydrogen can then be captured and used as fuel.
Unique feature: no electrical connection needed. Just put the fibers in water and put the water in a location with plenty of slosh. Result: absorb part of the vibration (which can be useful in itself) and get fuel.
¶ 9:31 AM
When submerged in water and then vibrated, these fibers produce opposite charges at each end, which bubbles off hydrogen at one end and oxygen at the other. The hydrogen can then be captured and used as fuel.
Unique feature: no electrical connection needed. Just put the fibers in water and put the water in a location with plenty of slosh. Result: absorb part of the vibration (which can be useful in itself) and get fuel.
¶ 9:31 AM
Friday, March 19, 2010
Walking weather
After a richly-deserved easy winter, this Spring is turning out to be perfect walking weather. Crisp, cold, sunny.
Polistra and Happystar are taking full advantage.......
= = = = =
Tech note 1: Star poop really should be made of planets, not stars ... but I couldn't make planets look convincing in this context. They just looked like dog poop.
Tech note 2: I checked Google for other references to 'star poop'. There are a handful, and one is a fascinating mix of folklore and science! ¶ 12:42 PM
Polistra and Happystar are taking full advantage.......
= = = = =
Tech note 1: Star poop really should be made of planets, not stars ... but I couldn't make planets look convincing in this context. They just looked like dog poop.
Tech note 2: I checked Google for other references to 'star poop'. There are a handful, and one is a fascinating mix of folklore and science! ¶ 12:42 PM
Yup, another Agreed-on Lie
C-Span interview this morning with Cutler, a Harvard prof involved in setting up the Infinite Monopoly For Insurance Companies Act Of 2010. He says the reason for the mandate is to prevent young healthy folks from going without insurance until the moment they get sick or injured. "Otherwise, you'd call up an insurance company on the way to the hospital." And the brand-R talking point heads have been hitting this as well, obviously from the other angle. "Why shouldn't you be able to get insurance when you need it?"
Both are wrong, because AS THINGS NOW STAND you CAN'T get insurance at the moment when you need it. Individual insurance has a waiting period, typically 90 days, which makes complete sense. Perfectly rational limitation.
So this mandate is based on an assumed situation that DOES NOT EXIST.
Cutler mentioned one important and true fact, never acknowledged by either so-called quote """"side"""" unquote:
There's no logical reason why individual coverage should cost more than group coverage.
Polistra discussed this in detail last year. In short: The insurance company is the only risk pool. Employers don't "pre-pool" the risk; they don't do anything but send the claim forms along. In fact the employer-based system is more risky, because an employer often keeps a good worker on board despite large family medical expenses, while the individual customer can be ruthlessly dropped. ¶ 7:43 AM
Both are wrong, because AS THINGS NOW STAND you CAN'T get insurance at the moment when you need it. Individual insurance has a waiting period, typically 90 days, which makes complete sense. Perfectly rational limitation.
So this mandate is based on an assumed situation that DOES NOT EXIST.
Cutler mentioned one important and true fact, never acknowledged by either so-called quote """"side"""" unquote:
There's no logical reason why individual coverage should cost more than group coverage.
Polistra discussed this in detail last year. In short: The insurance company is the only risk pool. Employers don't "pre-pool" the risk; they don't do anything but send the claim forms along. In fact the employer-based system is more risky, because an employer often keeps a good worker on board despite large family medical expenses, while the individual customer can be ruthlessly dropped. ¶ 7:43 AM
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Miniaturization
Paying attention to old stuff can be informative. I enjoy the pictures posted by Retro-Space on Flickr. Lots of fine '60s babes and cool '60s advertising. But he caught me off guard with this picture from some kind of tabloid magazine in 1962. Clearly the electrical gadget in the drawing was meant to be a horrible and unimaginable torture machine.
Nowadays we've miniaturized both the electrical device and our moral sense.
Recognize the device? It's perfectly familiar, used daily by our cops. Taser. ¶ 9:19 AM
Nowadays we've miniaturized both the electrical device and our moral sense.
Recognize the device? It's perfectly familiar, used daily by our cops. Taser. ¶ 9:19 AM
Where's the tea-drinking Abbie Hoffman?
From Huffington:
It's been clear for quite a while that Goldman Sachs dba "Republican Party" has taken control of the Tea Party, which began as a truly amorphous bottom-up expression of outrage.
So we have yet another agreed-on lie, convenient for both established brands. Goldman Sachs dba "Democratic Party" can mock the Teacups, raising their level of outrage, and then Goldman Sachs dba "Republican Party" can steer the outrage against Congresscritters who get out of line.
Back in the '60s, something halfway similar happened to the hippies. Starting as an amorphous movement, we were quickly co-opted by leftish Democrats under Gene McCarthy. Most (including me) went along with this, not quite realizing what had happened. A few (eg Abbie Hoffman) saw the betrayal and took a truly separate path.
In the end it won't matter. Unlike several Euro countries, America will never have a true nationalist party. Never never never never never never never never. The machine will bomb it down to bedrock every time it's imagined, let alone suggested.
= = = = =
Comrade Armey's intentionally confusing use of Reagan is both irritating and illustrative.
Nationalism means that the government of this nation should build and strengthen this nation, weaken other nations where possible, and strictly avoid hitching its fate to allies who can use and abuse us.
In living memory only three presidents have taken this side to some extent: FDR, Eisenhower and Reagan. All tried in different ways to improve this nation's internal structures and weaken our enemies; none of them engaged in foreign adventures merely to serve the League of Nations or the UN or some dubious "friend in need".
When Reagan told Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, he wasn't making a philosophical statement about walls, for Christ's motherfucking sake. He was working the rhetorical side of a complex and multi-sided campaign to weaken the Soviets. ¶ 7:56 AM
For the second time in as many weeks, former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, who has become the corporate personification of the Tea Party movement, verbally smacked down former Rep. Tom Tancredo, another Tea Party fixture, for his unsympathetic views on immigration reform.
Armey called the Colorado Republican a “destructive” force on the Republican Party and claimed that, as Majority Leader, he made sure that Tancredo “didn’t get on a stage” to profess his hard-line views on immigration.
“Republicans need to get it right, and get off this goofiness that they have,” Armey added. “Ronald Reagan said, ‘Tear down that wall.’ Tom Tancredo said, ‘Build that wall.’ Who’s right? America’s not a nation that builds walls. America’s a nation that opens doors, and we should be there.”
It's been clear for quite a while that Goldman Sachs dba "Republican Party" has taken control of the Tea Party, which began as a truly amorphous bottom-up expression of outrage.
So we have yet another agreed-on lie, convenient for both established brands. Goldman Sachs dba "Democratic Party" can mock the Teacups, raising their level of outrage, and then Goldman Sachs dba "Republican Party" can steer the outrage against Congresscritters who get out of line.
Back in the '60s, something halfway similar happened to the hippies. Starting as an amorphous movement, we were quickly co-opted by leftish Democrats under Gene McCarthy. Most (including me) went along with this, not quite realizing what had happened. A few (eg Abbie Hoffman) saw the betrayal and took a truly separate path.
In the end it won't matter. Unlike several Euro countries, America will never have a true nationalist party. Never never never never never never never never. The machine will bomb it down to bedrock every time it's imagined, let alone suggested.
= = = = =
Comrade Armey's intentionally confusing use of Reagan is both irritating and illustrative.
Nationalism means that the government of this nation should build and strengthen this nation, weaken other nations where possible, and strictly avoid hitching its fate to allies who can use and abuse us.
In living memory only three presidents have taken this side to some extent: FDR, Eisenhower and Reagan. All tried in different ways to improve this nation's internal structures and weaken our enemies; none of them engaged in foreign adventures merely to serve the League of Nations or the UN or some dubious "friend in need".
When Reagan told Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, he wasn't making a philosophical statement about walls, for Christ's motherfucking sake. He was working the rhetorical side of a complex and multi-sided campaign to weaken the Soviets. ¶ 7:56 AM
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Sounds of spring
Walking to the store this morning, I noticed no less than three houses getting new roofs. One of the roofing jobs sounded wrong somehow ... seemed to be missing something. As I tuned my ears to the location, I realized that I couldn't hear an air compressor, I couldn't hear a boombox emitting rock-n-roll, and the tools sounded strange. More like a resonant ringing sound than the usual Thunk-thunk-thunk. Are these guys actually roofers? If not, what are they doing up there?
As I walked closer, I saw that they were indeed putting on new shingles, but they were doing it without hammers. That's why they didn't need the air compressor and the boombox. Instead of hammers, they were using tools with a long wooden shaft and a metal head, which accounted for the ringing sound.
Might be some strange kind of Amish tool? I've shown a comparison below, in hopes that someone can solve this mystery.
¶ 11:46 AM
As I walked closer, I saw that they were indeed putting on new shingles, but they were doing it without hammers. That's why they didn't need the air compressor and the boombox. Instead of hammers, they were using tools with a long wooden shaft and a metal head, which accounted for the ringing sound.
Might be some strange kind of Amish tool? I've shown a comparison below, in hopes that someone can solve this mystery.
¶ 11:46 AM
Soon to be seen on Tru TV
Police in Spokane caught a team of thieves using stolen credit cards. One of them had $26,000 stuffed in her bra. How is that possible? Well, she weighs 400 pounds, so a few extra cubic feet didn't show.
Yup, we'll be seeing them on World's Dumbest Criminals....
Interestingly, this is the second Grande Theft in two days. On Monday, a 300-lb man robbed a pizza joint. Amazingly, he stole money, not pizza; embarrassingly, he eluded the cops in a foot chase! ¶ 8:07 AM
While one bank fell for the scam, Washington Trust employees suspected forgery and called deputies. Among the group of thieves was Lukeisha Harris, who apparently didn’t want to leave all that ill-gotten loot laying around so she stuffed her bra with cash.
By the time police officers arrived the group had moved on to the Chase Bank at Northpointe where deputies arrested 25-year-old Corey Jones, 24-year-old Lukeisha A. Harris, and 23-year-old Elicionne L. Washington for first degree theft.
This group’s next mistake was to lie about their identities.
“Both give the same name of Aurora Wright. Well that doesn't work out in our book, so we say lets see some ID, oh its in my Bible in the car, they open up the Bible and a whole bunch of IDs fall out of the Bible,” Spokane County Sheriff Sergeant Dave Reagan said.
Yup, we'll be seeing them on World's Dumbest Criminals....
Interestingly, this is the second Grande Theft in two days. On Monday, a 300-lb man robbed a pizza joint. Amazingly, he stole money, not pizza; embarrassingly, he eluded the cops in a foot chase! ¶ 8:07 AM
Verrrry interesting. But useless.
The state governments of Idaho and Wyoming are working on a proposed new Constitutional amendment that would basically restate the 10th Amendment.
This is useless for three reasons:
(1) The 10th Amendment was supposed to accomplish this purpose, and it has been completely ignored and violated by the Feds since 1861. Madman Lincoln destroyed the Federal structure along with half the country, and there's no way to bring it back.
(2) Because most people understand that the document only serves the purposes of the Soviet-front ACLU, it's impossible to motivate enough states to pass any meaningful amendment.
(3) Even if you could pass this amendment, it would only make things worse. A new amendment will only give the black-robed saboteurs a new piece of text to interpret backwards, a new mechanism to expand tyranny and serve our enemies. ¶ 7:27 AM
The measure urges Congress to approve amendments to narrow the scope of the Commerce Clause and broaden the 10th Amendment on states’ rights. Among other changes, the proposal calls for adding a sentence to the Constitution declaring that “any power claimed by the Congress shall be construed narrowly by all courts so as not to infringe upon or limit the powers reserved to the States,” and adding that Congress has “no authority … to regulate matters that are primarily intrastate.”
This is useless for three reasons:
(1) The 10th Amendment was supposed to accomplish this purpose, and it has been completely ignored and violated by the Feds since 1861. Madman Lincoln destroyed the Federal structure along with half the country, and there's no way to bring it back.
(2) Because most people understand that the document only serves the purposes of the Soviet-front ACLU, it's impossible to motivate enough states to pass any meaningful amendment.
(3) Even if you could pass this amendment, it would only make things worse. A new amendment will only give the black-robed saboteurs a new piece of text to interpret backwards, a new mechanism to expand tyranny and serve our enemies. ¶ 7:27 AM
Random puzzlement 2
In the last few days the chattering class has been discussing the pressures placed on brand-D congresscritters. Obama and the brand-D leaders are pushing hard for party solidarity, pushing to approve the Permanent Guaranteed Infinite-Profit Monopoly For Insurance Companies Bill of 2010 (falsely called "health care reform").
Many of the congresscritters know full well that the folks back home will toss them out for this vote.
Puzzle: Inducing you to end your own career for the sake of the party requires some serious motivation. But what's the carrot and stick? Normally the party's carrot is money for campaigns, and the stick is the party's power to run another candidate against you in the next primary.
Those are obviously irrelevant if the desired action will end your career anyway!
= = = = =
Later thought: Maybe the carrot is an iron-clad promise of a cushy think-tank position? Or a high-paid lobbying job for the insurance industry?
= = = = =
Update 3/17: More specific question: What flipped Kucinich? He is generally incorruptible, and on this point he's been exactly right. In today's world, single-payer systems work better and cost vastly less than mixed-up systems. Why then did he agree to vote for this monstrous Rube Goldberg contraption that mixes up our system even more, and gives even more profit to the grossly obscenely profitable monopoly of insurance? He surely knows that laws are never repealed, knows that this monster prevents us from ever achieving a competent and useful system. ¶ 6:18 AM
Many of the congresscritters know full well that the folks back home will toss them out for this vote.
Puzzle: Inducing you to end your own career for the sake of the party requires some serious motivation. But what's the carrot and stick? Normally the party's carrot is money for campaigns, and the stick is the party's power to run another candidate against you in the next primary.
Those are obviously irrelevant if the desired action will end your career anyway!
= = = = =
Later thought: Maybe the carrot is an iron-clad promise of a cushy think-tank position? Or a high-paid lobbying job for the insurance industry?
= = = = =
Update 3/17: More specific question: What flipped Kucinich? He is generally incorruptible, and on this point he's been exactly right. In today's world, single-payer systems work better and cost vastly less than mixed-up systems. Why then did he agree to vote for this monstrous Rube Goldberg contraption that mixes up our system even more, and gives even more profit to the grossly obscenely profitable monopoly of insurance? He surely knows that laws are never repealed, knows that this monster prevents us from ever achieving a competent and useful system. ¶ 6:18 AM
Monday, March 15, 2010
Random puzzlement
Why are flood indications always given in such a clumsy form?
"The Big Blue has crested at 45.9 feet. Flood stage is 41.2 feet."
We don't do this with rain. We don't say "Wauwatosa's rain level is 1409 feet 8 inches, with a base altitude of 1409 feet 6 inches." We simply say "Wauwatosa got 2 inches of rain."
So why not simply say "The Big Blue is 4.7 feet above flood stage." ¶ 11:02 AM
"The Big Blue has crested at 45.9 feet. Flood stage is 41.2 feet."
We don't do this with rain. We don't say "Wauwatosa's rain level is 1409 feet 8 inches, with a base altitude of 1409 feet 6 inches." We simply say "Wauwatosa got 2 inches of rain."
So why not simply say "The Big Blue is 4.7 feet above flood stage." ¶ 11:02 AM
Sunday, March 14, 2010
March language update
Professor Polistra brings us this season's harvest of new or altered words.
Around.
Prof Polistra likes this recently exploding usage. It replaces other prepositions like on or concerning, but its meaning is distinct.
"An invention around a standard."
"How would you address the issues of care, around stockholder value?"
"Recently on the web there has been a lot of activity and discussions around the issue."
"As you well know, the debate around climate change has recently become
highly politically charged."
"There's already a lot of consensus around that idea."
No duh.
"Is the state in a financial emergency? With a general fund budget
about $2.8 billion out of whack, one might answer, No duh."
Not clear how this flipped from plain duh, which has been around for a while. Unfortunately it's backwards. When you say an idea is No duh, you should strictly mean that it's not obvious, not transparent. Prof P thinks no duh may be an illegitimate hybrid of duh with phrases of parallel meaning like no brainer and No shit, Sherlock.
Tolling.
"We're expanding the use of tolling in our highway system."
"We'd be able to use tolling money for those purposes."
An interesting shift of the grammatical center of gravity on a very old word. Toll came to the Germanic tribes from their Roman conquerors in the Dark Ages, with the broader meaning of a tax or payment for government services. Apparently the tollhouse (toloneum in Latin) was named first, then shortened to something like toln, then the word shifted from the building to the coin, requiring the addition of house to describe the building.
Now we finally have a second shift of center and a second re-suffixing. The center of gravity shifted from the booth to the coin, now from the coin to the process of taking the coin. The coin itself is no longer the toll, it's the tolling money.
Professor Polistra brings us this season's harvest of new or altered words.
Around.
Prof Polistra likes this recently exploding usage. It replaces other prepositions like on or concerning, but its meaning is distinct.
"An invention around a standard."
"How would you address the issues of care, around stockholder value?"
"Recently on the web there has been a lot of activity and discussions around the issue."
"As you well know, the debate around climate change has recently become
highly politically charged."
"There's already a lot of consensus around that idea."
No duh.
"Is the state in a financial emergency? With a general fund budget
about $2.8 billion out of whack, one might answer, No duh."
Not clear how this flipped from plain duh, which has been around for a while. Unfortunately it's backwards. When you say an idea is No duh, you should strictly mean that it's not obvious, not transparent. Prof P thinks no duh may be an illegitimate hybrid of duh with phrases of parallel meaning like no brainer and No shit, Sherlock.
Tolling.
"We're expanding the use of tolling in our highway system."
"We'd be able to use tolling money for those purposes."
An interesting shift of the grammatical center of gravity on a very old word. Toll came to the Germanic tribes from their Roman conquerors in the Dark Ages, with the broader meaning of a tax or payment for government services. Apparently the tollhouse (toloneum in Latin) was named first, then shortened to something like toln, then the word shifted from the building to the coin, requiring the addition of house to describe the building.
Now we finally have a second shift of center and a second re-suffixing. The center of gravity shifted from the booth to the coin, now from the coin to the process of taking the coin. The coin itself is no longer the toll, it's the tolling money.
Labels: Language update
¶ 10:05 AM
Fall back, fall back
Time to do the stupid daylight dance again. We continue to play this game every year, even though its original purpose is long gone. DST made a bit of sense in the '40s and '50s when most people worked standard shifts, and when most electricity went into light bulbs. Now it makes no sense at all, and records indicate that it actually uses more energy, not less. Nevertheless, Sultan Bush decided to expand its reach for no reason at all; possibly he believes that the sun actually changes its schedule when we turn the clocks, and he wanted to exert power over the sun.
= = = = =
C-Span did an interesting interview yesterday with Michael Cohen, head of educational think tank 'Achieve'. Cohen likes the new English and Math standards, agreeing entirely with Polistra. Cohen also said one thing that should be true but sadly isn't.
In discussing the implementation of new standards via textbooks, he said "Every state updates its textbooks on a regular cycle. You wouldn't want, for instance, 20-year-old science textbooks. You'd miss half of what we've learned in that period."
This seems intuitively right, in the same way that DST seems intuitively right. You assume that moving forward in time is 'progress'. Textbooks, like clocks, should be set forward to reflect that 'progress'. And like DST, this statement would have been valid in earlier times. Unfortunately it specifically fails for the last 20 years. Science has done a lot of stuff in those years, but very little of it was progress, and much of it is simply criminal.
Physics? Yeah, lots of new particles "discovered" and "understood", but quantum theory is a sidetrack that we should never have taken. The farther we travel on this road, the deeper we get into the jungle of contradictions and nonsense. Basic rule of logic: If you're exploring a path that leads to contradictions, the path is false. Time to start over with waves, start from de Broglie. And if you're knowingly exploring a path that leads to a real chance of destroying the entire Universe, you should be executed.
Chemistry? At least chemistry is not on a guaranteed false path, but not much happening.
Geology? Nothing that I can think of.
Economics? Basic rule of logic again. Economists led us to Alan Greenspan and Hank Paulson. Nuff said.
Medicine? Okay if you think Viagra is progress. Cancer cure rates haven't improved significantly for 50 years.
Climate? Pure crime. Falsified data processed with atrocious logic and intentionally corrupt math. This could be a tremendous learning experience for students if presented as a horrible negative example ("Here's what happens when Science serves evil ends") but that ain't gonna happen.
Biology? Here's the real tragedy. There has been tremendous positive progress in genetics and in taxonomy and evolution. But the progress in genetics will not be featured in American textbooks, because it leads inexorably to the truth that people are different. American educators are forbidden to get anywhere near that truth. And the progress in evolution is very quickly tearing down the whole edifice of Darwin, leading inexorably to the truth that life has a purpose. And this truth is explicitly forbidden. Any teaching that refers to possible weakness in the Gospel of Atheism shall be struck down by the Unholy Lightning Bolts of Lord Michael Newdow.
Thus, we'd be marginally better off with 1980 textbooks. They'd miss a few interesting details, but at least they wouldn't be metastasized by the all-consuming cancer of Global Warming.
Time to do the stupid daylight dance again. We continue to play this game every year, even though its original purpose is long gone. DST made a bit of sense in the '40s and '50s when most people worked standard shifts, and when most electricity went into light bulbs. Now it makes no sense at all, and records indicate that it actually uses more energy, not less. Nevertheless, Sultan Bush decided to expand its reach for no reason at all; possibly he believes that the sun actually changes its schedule when we turn the clocks, and he wanted to exert power over the sun.
= = = = =
C-Span did an interesting interview yesterday with Michael Cohen, head of educational think tank 'Achieve'. Cohen likes the new English and Math standards, agreeing entirely with Polistra. Cohen also said one thing that should be true but sadly isn't.
In discussing the implementation of new standards via textbooks, he said "Every state updates its textbooks on a regular cycle. You wouldn't want, for instance, 20-year-old science textbooks. You'd miss half of what we've learned in that period."
This seems intuitively right, in the same way that DST seems intuitively right. You assume that moving forward in time is 'progress'. Textbooks, like clocks, should be set forward to reflect that 'progress'. And like DST, this statement would have been valid in earlier times. Unfortunately it specifically fails for the last 20 years. Science has done a lot of stuff in those years, but very little of it was progress, and much of it is simply criminal.
Physics? Yeah, lots of new particles "discovered" and "understood", but quantum theory is a sidetrack that we should never have taken. The farther we travel on this road, the deeper we get into the jungle of contradictions and nonsense. Basic rule of logic: If you're exploring a path that leads to contradictions, the path is false. Time to start over with waves, start from de Broglie. And if you're knowingly exploring a path that leads to a real chance of destroying the entire Universe, you should be executed.
Chemistry? At least chemistry is not on a guaranteed false path, but not much happening.
Geology? Nothing that I can think of.
Economics? Basic rule of logic again. Economists led us to Alan Greenspan and Hank Paulson. Nuff said.
Medicine? Okay if you think Viagra is progress. Cancer cure rates haven't improved significantly for 50 years.
Climate? Pure crime. Falsified data processed with atrocious logic and intentionally corrupt math. This could be a tremendous learning experience for students if presented as a horrible negative example ("Here's what happens when Science serves evil ends") but that ain't gonna happen.
Biology? Here's the real tragedy. There has been tremendous positive progress in genetics and in taxonomy and evolution. But the progress in genetics will not be featured in American textbooks, because it leads inexorably to the truth that people are different. American educators are forbidden to get anywhere near that truth. And the progress in evolution is very quickly tearing down the whole edifice of Darwin, leading inexorably to the truth that life has a purpose. And this truth is explicitly forbidden. Any teaching that refers to possible weakness in the Gospel of Atheism shall be struck down by the Unholy Lightning Bolts of Lord Michael Newdow.
Thus, we'd be marginally better off with 1980 textbooks. They'd miss a few interesting details, but at least they wouldn't be metastasized by the all-consuming cancer of Global Warming.
Labels: Grand Blueprint
¶ 7:19 AM
Friday, March 12, 2010
Texas 'victory'
Conservatives are cheerful at the moment because the Texas book commission has given first-stage approval to a pro-American and pro-Western outline for history and social studies. Any victory is worth a bit of jubilation, but watch out. This will rile up the Commies, who will find a way to undo the decision at a later stage.
And if they don't, the publishers, hard-line Stalinists all, may simply tell Texas to pound sand, then choose their own hyper-diverse anti-Christian doctrinaire deconstructionist text for the rest of the country. (Actually I'm surprised they haven't done this a long time ago ... the literary Commies have always HATED this process of oh-so-reluctantly and ever-so-marginally toning down their genocidal gibbering to fit standards designed by Knuckle-Dragging™ Drooling™ Christers™ And Neanderthals™. Publishers would absolutely revel in their new-found freedom!)
And that would be the real victory, if Texas knows how to handle it.
Back in the civilized era most states had their own gov't-owned printing plants, churning out textbooks for all students at no expense to parents. This enabled each state to choose its own approach for various subjects. State self-sufficiency didn't matter as much back then, because Commies didn't yet own all of our national culture and corporations. Now it does matter, and Texas is probably the only state with both the resources and the guts to resurrect the old way of doing things. ¶ 4:27 PM
And if they don't, the publishers, hard-line Stalinists all, may simply tell Texas to pound sand, then choose their own hyper-diverse anti-Christian doctrinaire deconstructionist text for the rest of the country. (Actually I'm surprised they haven't done this a long time ago ... the literary Commies have always HATED this process of oh-so-reluctantly and ever-so-marginally toning down their genocidal gibbering to fit standards designed by Knuckle-Dragging™ Drooling™ Christers™ And Neanderthals™. Publishers would absolutely revel in their new-found freedom!)
And that would be the real victory, if Texas knows how to handle it.
Back in the civilized era most states had their own gov't-owned printing plants, churning out textbooks for all students at no expense to parents. This enabled each state to choose its own approach for various subjects. State self-sufficiency didn't matter as much back then, because Commies didn't yet own all of our national culture and corporations. Now it does matter, and Texas is probably the only state with both the resources and the guts to resurrect the old way of doing things. ¶ 4:27 PM
No, it's not a budget problem
CNN is discussing plans by several big-city schools to eliminate buildings. CNN describes this as an answer to budget cuts, and treats it as horrible and intolerable. Nope, budget cuts are only incidental, and trimming a system to fit its population should be normal practice.
KC's schools have been so bad that all parents who cared about their kids took them out. This was already true in 1980; the tyrannical and pointless expenditure forced by Not-Yet-Hanged Enemy Agent Russell Clark in 1985 didn't change anything except to bankrupt the district. Adding new Disneyland-quality facilities doesn't help if you don't change the teachers and their idiotic assumptions.
Detroit is even less complicated: the city is imploding, returning to farmland.
Maintaining lots of half-empty school buildings makes no sense at any time, but the pressure of the unions and the ever-growing administrations forced legislatures to keep the system large even while its purpose disappeared. (See Parkinson's First Law.)
The budget pressure finally comes into play at this very late date, after a decade of pure waste. Legislatures finally have absolutely no choice, no excuses, and they HATE IT! HATE IT! HATE IT! Well, it's about goddamn time. Eat frugality, you monstrous fuckholes. Eat it hard and raw.
= = = = =
Sidenote: It's amusing, in a clinical-psychology way, to watch the brand-R establishment types like Rush and Dreher wrestling with this question. The Compassionate Conservatives have decided, for their own incomprehensible reasons, to buy into the Grand Leftist Falsehood that all humans are identical grains of sand, therefore all apparent differences in intelligence result from environment or social constructs. When you start from bizarrely false assumptions, there's no way you can reach a good conclusion or a useful solution. ¶ 7:01 AM
KC's schools have been so bad that all parents who cared about their kids took them out. This was already true in 1980; the tyrannical and pointless expenditure forced by Not-Yet-Hanged Enemy Agent Russell Clark in 1985 didn't change anything except to bankrupt the district. Adding new Disneyland-quality facilities doesn't help if you don't change the teachers and their idiotic assumptions.
Detroit is even less complicated: the city is imploding, returning to farmland.
Maintaining lots of half-empty school buildings makes no sense at any time, but the pressure of the unions and the ever-growing administrations forced legislatures to keep the system large even while its purpose disappeared. (See Parkinson's First Law.)
The budget pressure finally comes into play at this very late date, after a decade of pure waste. Legislatures finally have absolutely no choice, no excuses, and they HATE IT! HATE IT! HATE IT! Well, it's about goddamn time. Eat frugality, you monstrous fuckholes. Eat it hard and raw.
= = = = =
Sidenote: It's amusing, in a clinical-psychology way, to watch the brand-R establishment types like Rush and Dreher wrestling with this question. The Compassionate Conservatives have decided, for their own incomprehensible reasons, to buy into the Grand Leftist Falsehood that all humans are identical grains of sand, therefore all apparent differences in intelligence result from environment or social constructs. When you start from bizarrely false assumptions, there's no way you can reach a good conclusion or a useful solution. ¶ 7:01 AM
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Pork-eous
Listening to CSpan.... lower nuthouse is doing an impeachment on a Nawlins judge who behaved in normal Nawlins style. I suppose it's correct in a narrow sense, but they're trivializing the process. Porteous has never damaged the country or destroyed the Constitution.
"Pork-busting" focuses public outrage on small projects that actually create jobs, making it easier to donate trillions to a handful of Wall Street criminals who destroy entire industries.
Similarly, Porteous-busting focuses public outrage on private bribes that cause no systematic harm, making it easier to leave true criminals, enemy agents, mass murderers and saboteurs like Stephen Reinhardt, Phyllis Hamilton, and Russell Clark in office. ¶ 8:19 AM
"Pork-busting" focuses public outrage on small projects that actually create jobs, making it easier to donate trillions to a handful of Wall Street criminals who destroy entire industries.
Similarly, Porteous-busting focuses public outrage on private bribes that cause no systematic harm, making it easier to leave true criminals, enemy agents, mass murderers and saboteurs like Stephen Reinhardt, Phyllis Hamilton, and Russell Clark in office. ¶ 8:19 AM
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Damn, this is good!
Dept of Ed has issued a new set of standards for K-12 schools, seemingly connected to the "Race to the Top" stuff.
I've thoroughly read the math parts, and skimmed the other parts.
Everything is just about perfect! Though it's written in drab passive edu-ese, it's still clear, and the lists of goals and 'core skills' are exactly what I've always wanted to see.
Frankly, I was afraid the pressure to catch up with China and India would produce math goals designed for Oriental brains, with lots of abstraction and memorization. That would be counter to the national interest, and wouldn't work anyway. Our mix of genotypes (mainly African and European) will never match Orientals in those departments. We're better at estimating, problem-solving and organizing. During the decades when America was successful, those were the skills that took us to the top. And these new goals have returned to the direction of success!
An extract from the section on modeling:
Just as a randomly chosen f'rinstance, a student who mastered this concept could easily see how the whole Global Warming mess is a crime.
I only wish standards like these had been in effect when I was a student in the '50s and '60s, and when I was teaching math and electronics in the '80s. Especially in the '60s, math teachers were whipsawed back and forth by competing and conflicting standards, each based on some ivory-tower asshole's pet theory.
Trouble is, new standards don't really help until teachers and textbooks implement their ideas. Some experienced teachers will be glad to have this new focus and will know what to do with it. Unfortunately, it will dissolve when it runs into the teacher-training courses at universities. Teacher training courses have always been hopelessly stupid, and recently have served nothing but Gramscian multi-culti tyranny.
I've thoroughly read the math parts, and skimmed the other parts.
Everything is just about perfect! Though it's written in drab passive edu-ese, it's still clear, and the lists of goals and 'core skills' are exactly what I've always wanted to see.
Frankly, I was afraid the pressure to catch up with China and India would produce math goals designed for Oriental brains, with lots of abstraction and memorization. That would be counter to the national interest, and wouldn't work anyway. Our mix of genotypes (mainly African and European) will never match Orientals in those departments. We're better at estimating, problem-solving and organizing. During the decades when America was successful, those were the skills that took us to the top. And these new goals have returned to the direction of success!
An extract from the section on modeling:
In any given situation, the model we devise depends on a number of factors: How precise an answer do we want or need? What aspects of the situation do we most need to understand, control, or optimize? What resources of time and tools do we have? The range of models we can create and analyze is constrained as well by the limitations of our mathematical and technical skills. For example, modeling a physical object, a delivery route, a production schedule, or a comparison of loan amortizations each requires different sets of tools. Networks, spreadsheets and algebra are powerful tools for understanding and solving problems drawn from different types of real-world situations. One of the insights provided by mathematical modeling is that essentially the same mathematical structure might model seemingly different situations.
The basic modeling cycle is one of (1) identifying the key features of a situation, (2) creating geometric, algebraic or statistical objects that describe key features of the situation, (3) analyzing and performing operations on these objects to draw conclusions and (4) interpreting the results of the mathematics in terms of the original situation. Choices and assumptions are present throughout this cycle.
Just as a randomly chosen f'rinstance, a student who mastered this concept could easily see how the whole Global Warming mess is a crime.
I only wish standards like these had been in effect when I was a student in the '50s and '60s, and when I was teaching math and electronics in the '80s. Especially in the '60s, math teachers were whipsawed back and forth by competing and conflicting standards, each based on some ivory-tower asshole's pet theory.
Trouble is, new standards don't really help until teachers and textbooks implement their ideas. Some experienced teachers will be glad to have this new focus and will know what to do with it. Unfortunately, it will dissolve when it runs into the teacher-training courses at universities. Teacher training courses have always been hopelessly stupid, and recently have served nothing but Gramscian multi-culti tyranny.
Labels: Experiential education, Real World Math
¶ 8:45 AM
Massa
After listening to a few bits of this dude's interviews with King and Beck, and looking briefly at the timeline of events, there's only one possible conclusion. He's not psychologically fucked up; he's suffering from a serious and sudden neurological condition. Stroke, brain tumor, drug-induced damage?
He sounds a lot like the "deinstitutionalized" crazy guys I hear every day on the bus and the streets.
Even the total insanity and pathology of DC can't produce this type of confusion and sudden switches of logic. DC's insanity is on the epistemological level. Everything they "know" is absolutely false and backwards, all of their "facts" are perfectly wrong, perfectly treasonous, and nationally suicidal ... but the inhabitants of that toxic universe are internally consistent.
= = = = =
Later: Jerry Doyle points out the 'crazification' process that both parties use to eject and discredit truth-telling rebels. I'm well aware of how that works, but I don't see it here. At least from public info, Massa doesn't appear to be a serious heretic, not a Joe McCarthy or a Dana Rohrabacher or a Tom Tancredo. He apparently favors a single-payer medical system, but so do a dozen other Dems who haven't been kicked out or 'crazified'. ¶ 7:05 AM
He sounds a lot like the "deinstitutionalized" crazy guys I hear every day on the bus and the streets.
Even the total insanity and pathology of DC can't produce this type of confusion and sudden switches of logic. DC's insanity is on the epistemological level. Everything they "know" is absolutely false and backwards, all of their "facts" are perfectly wrong, perfectly treasonous, and nationally suicidal ... but the inhabitants of that toxic universe are internally consistent.
= = = = =
Later: Jerry Doyle points out the 'crazification' process that both parties use to eject and discredit truth-telling rebels. I'm well aware of how that works, but I don't see it here. At least from public info, Massa doesn't appear to be a serious heretic, not a Joe McCarthy or a Dana Rohrabacher or a Tom Tancredo. He apparently favors a single-payer medical system, but so do a dozen other Dems who haven't been kicked out or 'crazified'. ¶ 7:05 AM
Monday, March 08, 2010
Courting the net
Google is preparing to set up a new superfast web service, beginning in a few chosen cities.
Polistra loves this, partly because it's a real physical expansion of infrastructure, not just a new way to sell advertising "eyeballs" ... and partly because it's stirred up a happy competition among cities who want to join the Chosen Few.
This is purely wonderful. In the 1880s when the railroad networks were expanding, cities on the Plains competed in the same cheerful way, naming themselves after railroads or railroad officials.
Orienta was named after the Orient railroad.
Parsons was named for Judge Levi Parsons, promoter and president of the Katy.
Peabody for F.H. Peabody, vice president of the Santa Fe Railroad in 1875.
Skiddy for Francis Skiddy of New York, a magnate of the UP.
And so on.
Oddly enough, Topeka missed the trend since it began as the source and hub of the Santa Fe, so didn't need to court or invite other railroads. Now it's finally getting in the game with the new transcontinental 'road'. ¶ 6:10 PM
Polistra loves this, partly because it's a real physical expansion of infrastructure, not just a new way to sell advertising "eyeballs" ... and partly because it's stirred up a happy competition among cities who want to join the Chosen Few.
The "twin ports" cities of Duluth, Minn., and Superior, Wis., tried to steal some of Topeka's limelight this past week after Mayor Bill Bunten drew national attention by issuing a proclamation calling for Topeka to be referred to throughout March as "Google, Kansas, the capital city of fiber optics."
Duluth officials helped arrange for a tongue-in-cheek video on Youtube in which business executive Dave Orman — pretending to be Duluth's mayor — spoke in a Scandinavian accent about the city's reaction to Topeka's temporarily naming itself "Google."
Orman said: "We in Duluth believe that this sort of obvious pandering and shameless self-promotion is uh, it's really kind of cool. I mean, come on, why didn't we think of it first?"
Orman also said he was seeking to help his community prevail "in the Google pandering arms race" by decreeing that all first-born males there shall be named "Google Fiber," while first-born females shall be named "Googlette Fiber."
This is purely wonderful. In the 1880s when the railroad networks were expanding, cities on the Plains competed in the same cheerful way, naming themselves after railroads or railroad officials.
Orienta was named after the Orient railroad.
Parsons was named for Judge Levi Parsons, promoter and president of the Katy.
Peabody for F.H. Peabody, vice president of the Santa Fe Railroad in 1875.
Skiddy for Francis Skiddy of New York, a magnate of the UP.
And so on.
Oddly enough, Topeka missed the trend since it began as the source and hub of the Santa Fe, so didn't need to court or invite other railroads. Now it's finally getting in the game with the new transcontinental 'road'. ¶ 6:10 PM
Sunday, March 07, 2010
The right kind of preservation
We spend billions of dollars and destroy millions of jobs in the false name of "preserving" a few peculiar fish and insects. On the rare occasions when we do increase the species, we don't count it because the increased critters are hatchery-bred peons, not Royal Old-Blood Aristocrats. Products of human activity are evil, pre-existing items are good. (You can see the same religious separation in the Carbon Cult's false math, where CO2 produced by human activity is treated differently from naturally bubbling CO2.) This discount of evil human production enables the EPA murderers to continue killing jobs, dams, and humans.
Amid this national suicide, we put very little effort into preserving the life, livelihood, and cultures of our OWN GODDAMN SPECIES.
Here's a tiny but wonderful exception:
= = = = =
= = = = =
More text here. ¶ 7:07 AM
Amid this national suicide, we put very little effort into preserving the life, livelihood, and cultures of our OWN GODDAMN SPECIES.
Here's a tiny but wonderful exception:
= = = = =
= = = = =
More text here. ¶ 7:07 AM
Saturday, March 06, 2010
Invincible ignorance, sho nuff.
Latest issue of New Superstitionist has a surprisingly even-handed article about a new perspective taken by some anthropologists. But an editorial introduces the subject, and the editor shows us how an atheist will blindly follow his own dogma regardless of facts:
Fine up to here, except for "progress" and "many". It's not technical progress that creates atheism. What causes large numbers of people to doubt their faith is the brutality and randomness of war and disasters, which are the opposite of progress. For instance, 1920 was a very good year for progress and a very good year for atheism. Radio, airplanes, automobiles, and Einstein were fresh in the public mind. None of them created atheists. It was the purposeless cruelty of WW1 that did the job.
But after all that fine buildup, the writer then turns down the wrong path:
No, dummy. "Not needing supernatural beings" is not a characteristic of rationality, it's only a boast by Laplace in the midst of the French Revolution, which was itself the first dramatic proof that official atheism leads to brutality and disaster.
Hmm. Atheism ---> brutality. Brutality ---> atheism. Do we see a hypothesis here? Only if we're not blinded by Laplace.
= = = = = = = = = = = =
The article itself is more objective. The kernel of its argument:
I love Weber's phrase "religiously unmusical". Exactly hits the mark.
[No surprise, considering that Max Weber discovered Polistra's favorite curve...]
Polistra's First Law: All human traits, talents and tendencies are partly innate, with varying proportions and spectra.
Some of us are tone-deaf, some have perfect pitch, most can be trained to sing competently with considerable work. Some are unstoppably evil, some unstoppably good, most can be trained to do the right thing with sufficient practice. Some have a perfect broadband connection with God, some are religiously retarded, most can see the light with guidance.
I'm in the religiously retarded end of the spectrum. I can intellectually spot the obvious signature of a designer, but can't snap over into genuine belief. ¶ 6:03 PM
If you're one of those committed atheists in the Dawkins mold who dreams of ridding the world of religious mumbo-jumbo, prepare yourself for a disappointment: there is no good evidence that education leads to secularization.
In fact, the more we learn about the "god instinct" and the refusal of religion to fade away under the onslaught of progress, the more the non-religious mindset looks like the odd man out. That is why anthropologists, psychologists and social scientists are now putting irreligion under the microscope in the same way they once did with religious belief.
The aim is not to discredit atheism but to understand how so many people can override a way of thinking that seems to come so naturally. For that reason, atheists should welcome the new scrutiny.
Fine up to here, except for "progress" and "many". It's not technical progress that creates atheism. What causes large numbers of people to doubt their faith is the brutality and randomness of war and disasters, which are the opposite of progress. For instance, 1920 was a very good year for progress and a very good year for atheism. Radio, airplanes, automobiles, and Einstein were fresh in the public mind. None of them created atheists. It was the purposeless cruelty of WW1 that did the job.
But after all that fine buildup, the writer then turns down the wrong path:
Atheism still has a great deal to commend it, not the least that it doesn't need supernatural beings to make sense of the world. Let's hope the study of atheism leads to new insights into how to challenge such irrationality.
No, dummy. "Not needing supernatural beings" is not a characteristic of rationality, it's only a boast by Laplace in the midst of the French Revolution, which was itself the first dramatic proof that official atheism leads to brutality and disaster.
Hmm. Atheism ---> brutality. Brutality ---> atheism. Do we see a hypothesis here? Only if we're not blinded by Laplace.
= = = = = = = = = = = =
The article itself is more objective. The kernel of its argument:
It appears that Enlightenment assumptions about the decline of religion as the population becomes more educated will no longer do - at least, not without considerable qualification. Why is it that, despite the long history of the study of religion, the picture seems to be getting more and not less confused about what it means to believe in God?
This oversight might seem remarkable (or remarkably obtuse on the part of the social scientists) but it is one with deep historical roots. Many of social science's 19th-century founders, including Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, Auguste Comte and Max Weber, were unbelievers, or "religiously unmusical", as Weber memorably put it. For them, religion was the great explicandum: how, they wondered, could so many people believe in something so absurd? What they failed to recognise was that their own, taken-for-granted, "lack" of belief might itself be amenable to inquiry.
What we need now is a scientific study not of the theistic, but the atheistic mind. We need to discover why some people do not "get" the supernatural agency many cognitive scientists argue comes automatically to our brains. Is this capacity non-existent in the non-religious, or is it rerouted, undermined or overwritten - and under what conditions?
I love Weber's phrase "religiously unmusical". Exactly hits the mark.
[No surprise, considering that Max Weber discovered Polistra's favorite curve...]
Polistra's First Law: All human traits, talents and tendencies are partly innate, with varying proportions and spectra.
Some of us are tone-deaf, some have perfect pitch, most can be trained to sing competently with considerable work. Some are unstoppably evil, some unstoppably good, most can be trained to do the right thing with sufficient practice. Some have a perfect broadband connection with God, some are religiously retarded, most can see the light with guidance.
I'm in the religiously retarded end of the spectrum. I can intellectually spot the obvious signature of a designer, but can't snap over into genuine belief. ¶ 6:03 PM
Orwell low-balled the British appetite for tyranny 2
Along with turning 40,000 kids into 'hate offenders' for talking the way kids always talk, the British government has now installed a tremendous infrastructure to monitor your trash.
Some 2.6 million microchips with transmitters have been surreptitiously installed on trash bins.
Sorry, this explanation doesn't wash. The guys who drive the trucks are already able to spot a house that puts out too much trash. It's part of their job, because most cities charge extra for picking up extra. So the chips must be monitoring something other than plain old quantity.
I'm amazed that our own dear state-sponsored terrorist organization EPA has allowed the Brits to get ahead of them on this front. I don't know whether this has been implemented in some American cities, but I'm pretty sure it hasn't happened here in Spokane. Yet. (i.e., there hasn't been any mass recall and redistribution of trash bins.) ¶ 11:48 AM
Some 2.6 million microchips with transmitters have been surreptitiously installed on trash bins.
The advocacy group Big Brother Watch found through a series of Freedom of Information requests that many local governments are installing microchips in trash cans distributed to households, but in most cases have not yet activated them – in part because officials know the move would be unpopular.
“They are waiting for the political climate to change before they start using them,” said campaign director Dylan Sharpe, who predicted that families who produce large amounts of garbage would be fined.
The trash microchips are now part of the British information grid, which already includes a heavy reliance on closed-circuit television surveillance and cameras to monitor the population, particularly on the crowded public transportation system.
Sorry, this explanation doesn't wash. The guys who drive the trucks are already able to spot a house that puts out too much trash. It's part of their job, because most cities charge extra for picking up extra. So the chips must be monitoring something other than plain old quantity.
I'm amazed that our own dear state-sponsored terrorist organization EPA has allowed the Brits to get ahead of them on this front. I don't know whether this has been implemented in some American cities, but I'm pretty sure it hasn't happened here in Spokane. Yet. (i.e., there hasn't been any mass recall and redistribution of trash bins.) ¶ 11:48 AM
Almost fooled me....
Listening to a discussion of health care on Fox.
Cal Thomas, usually a pretty good thinker, failed to think about this one ... or else consciously deceives us:
"Obama is blaming the insurance companies for increased costs. Well, the insurance companies have already explained why premiums are going up. It's unemployment. More people are out of work, which means the risk pool is smaller, so the premiums have to go up to compensate."
Sounds good for a moment. Might even make sense in a discussion of taxes; the government's output of basic services must remain constant while the pool of payers decreases. Doesn't work in this case, because the employees who pay the premiums are exactly the same people who consume the services of the insurance companies. Unemployment means that the payers and the receivers are both decreasing, so the premium to each remaining employee shouldn't change. If the premium does increase in this situation, it means that the insurance company is taking advantage of innumeracy to gain more profit. ¶ 10:07 AM
Cal Thomas, usually a pretty good thinker, failed to think about this one ... or else consciously deceives us:
"Obama is blaming the insurance companies for increased costs. Well, the insurance companies have already explained why premiums are going up. It's unemployment. More people are out of work, which means the risk pool is smaller, so the premiums have to go up to compensate."
Sounds good for a moment. Might even make sense in a discussion of taxes; the government's output of basic services must remain constant while the pool of payers decreases. Doesn't work in this case, because the employees who pay the premiums are exactly the same people who consume the services of the insurance companies. Unemployment means that the payers and the receivers are both decreasing, so the premium to each remaining employee shouldn't change. If the premium does increase in this situation, it means that the insurance company is taking advantage of innumeracy to gain more profit. ¶ 10:07 AM
Friday, March 05, 2010
Cullen reincarnated
On a totally non-serious note, I love the new "Let's Make a Deal".
Host Wayne Brady reminds me of Bill Cullen, ubiquitous quiz host of the '50s. Since the start of the quiz/game genre on radio in the '30s, nearly all hosts have been loud and obnoxious. Brady and Cullen are exceptions: clever, adaptable, and quiet, but always ready to turn snide when a contestant deserves it. ¶ 2:23 PM
Host Wayne Brady reminds me of Bill Cullen, ubiquitous quiz host of the '50s. Since the start of the quiz/game genre on radio in the '30s, nearly all hosts have been loud and obnoxious. Brady and Cullen are exceptions: clever, adaptable, and quiet, but always ready to turn snide when a contestant deserves it. ¶ 2:23 PM
Orwell low-balled the British appetite for tyranny
In Airstrip One, new "hate laws" require schools to record every use of "hate words".
Well now. With a bit of organization, kids could bring this tyranny to a, um, screeching halt and have some fun along the way.
All the kids would simply agree in advance to use nothing but the word 'gay' in conversation and in class answers.
Gay gay gay gay gay. Gay? Gay gay. Yes, gay gay gay gay.
At the end of the day, students would converge on the principal's office and demand to see their records, to insure that every 'hate utterance' is fully and accurately recorded so that the rule of law shall be maintained, and so that their sins shall be fully and deservedly punished. If the record seemed incomplete, the students would repeat the conversation for the benefit of the principal, watching the transcription carefully. ("No, no, you placed a comma between those two gays. There should be a colon between those two gays.")
Wouldn't need to do this very long. A few days would suffice to break the system. ¶ 8:23 AM
Teachers are to be told that even if a primary school child uses homophobic or racist words without knowing their meaning, simply teaching them such words are hurtful and inappropriate is not enough.
Instead the incident has to be recorded and his or her behaviour monitored for future signs of 'hate' bullying.
The accusations will also be recorded in databases held by councils and made available to Whitehall and ministers to help them devise future anti-bullying campaigns.
Well now. With a bit of organization, kids could bring this tyranny to a, um, screeching halt and have some fun along the way.
All the kids would simply agree in advance to use nothing but the word 'gay' in conversation and in class answers.
Gay gay gay gay gay. Gay? Gay gay. Yes, gay gay gay gay.
At the end of the day, students would converge on the principal's office and demand to see their records, to insure that every 'hate utterance' is fully and accurately recorded so that the rule of law shall be maintained, and so that their sins shall be fully and deservedly punished. If the record seemed incomplete, the students would repeat the conversation for the benefit of the principal, watching the transcription carefully. ("No, no, you placed a comma between those two gays. There should be a colon between those two gays.")
Wouldn't need to do this very long. A few days would suffice to break the system. ¶ 8:23 AM
AHA!
The latest action by the Carbon Cult looks like more of the same: a group of fraudulent fake "scientists", beginning to taste fear now that they only control 99.4% of the media instead of their accustomed 100.0%, are organizing an even louder publicity campaign.
It's fortunate that they're doing it now instead of a couple years ago; by now a very large part of the public has stopped believing them. By now the louder they scream, the more people will simply laugh.
More importantly, a commenter in the WUWT topic pointed out that three of the participants in this effort were involved at the very start of the crime. I'd been wondering about the starting point, but hadn't found any clear references.
Here it is. Read it all.
Briefly: In 1975 Stephen Schneider, George Woodwell, Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren [now Obama's "science" advisor] met with long-time pseudo-scientific fraudster Margaret Mead, and concocted the scheme. The original ingredients have persisted remarkably well over 35 years.
Mead's proposal talked mainly about cooling, because in that particular decade the world was getting cooler, but the switch from cool fraud to warm fraud was insignificant. Only the genocidal goals are important.
It's all there 35 years ago. Same set of tyrants, same all-consuming blood fetish.
It's fortunate that they're doing it now instead of a couple years ago; by now a very large part of the public has stopped believing them. By now the louder they scream, the more people will simply laugh.
More importantly, a commenter in the WUWT topic pointed out that three of the participants in this effort were involved at the very start of the crime. I'd been wondering about the starting point, but hadn't found any clear references.
Here it is. Read it all.
Briefly: In 1975 Stephen Schneider, George Woodwell, Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren [now Obama's "science" advisor] met with long-time pseudo-scientific fraudster Margaret Mead, and concocted the scheme. The original ingredients have persisted remarkably well over 35 years.
Mead's proposal talked mainly about cooling, because in that particular decade the world was getting cooler, but the switch from cool fraud to warm fraud was insignificant. Only the genocidal goals are important.
Mead and her co-organizer William W. Kellogg (a climate scientist from RAND and later NCAR, the National Center for Atmospheric Research) ... came up, in 1976, with the idea that carbon dioxide emissions should be controlled “by assigning polluting rights to each nation” — an early version of the cap-and-trade program of Al Gore.
It's all there 35 years ago. Same set of tyrants, same all-consuming blood fetish.
Labels: Carbon Cult
¶ 7:37 AM
Syllogism
Still rumbling about Chief Idiot Krauss. Realized a nice little syllogism ...
One of Idiot Krauss's favorite premises: You can't work in any scientific or technical field unless you understand the philosophical underpinnings of science. (By underpinnings he really means This Week's Official Genocidal Atheist Orthodoxy, but when he makes this point he speaks generally.)
Another of Idiot Krauss's favorite premises: Any theory that implicitly or explicitly assumes, or might lead you to find, the existence of a Creator or Central Mind is WRONG. Not unprovable but STRICTLY FALSE.
Conclusion: Krauss misunderstands the deepest philosophical underpinning of science. He doesn't know the difference between unprovable and false. Thus by his own standards he is unqualified to work as a scientist, and he should resign.
One of Idiot Krauss's favorite premises: You can't work in any scientific or technical field unless you understand the philosophical underpinnings of science. (By underpinnings he really means This Week's Official Genocidal Atheist Orthodoxy, but when he makes this point he speaks generally.)
Another of Idiot Krauss's favorite premises: Any theory that implicitly or explicitly assumes, or might lead you to find, the existence of a Creator or Central Mind is WRONG. Not unprovable but STRICTLY FALSE.
Conclusion: Krauss misunderstands the deepest philosophical underpinning of science. He doesn't know the difference between unprovable and false. Thus by his own standards he is unqualified to work as a scientist, and he should resign.
Labels: Krauss
¶ 6:15 AM
Thursday, March 04, 2010
McAfee si, Norton no.
I don't normally discuss techie stuff; arcane debates about one product versus another tend to be tiresome and useless, though they do fill up a lot of bandwidth on all web-based forums.
However! This was such a dramatic difference that it's worth 'registering' for the sake of searches.
I've been using Comcast as my ISP. For the last two years Comcast included McAfee antivirus as part of the package. I was completely happy with McAfee; it stopped all viruses and malware, and it stayed out of the damned way better than other antivirus systems I'd used before.
Last week Comcast switched its free service from McAfee to Norton, and I went along because it was still free. Immediately Norton got underfoot like a cat, slowing everything down, thrashing the disk for long periods with no obvious reason, and popping stupid warnings about "failing to back up."
This afternoon Norton wouldn't let me shut down the computer. Two of its component DLLs were busy and couldn't be halted.
When an "antivirus" causes as much trouble as a virus, it's worthless.
Went to McAfee and bought their yearly package, tossed Norton and reinstalled McAfee.
All is well again. ¶ 7:01 PM
However! This was such a dramatic difference that it's worth 'registering' for the sake of searches.
I've been using Comcast as my ISP. For the last two years Comcast included McAfee antivirus as part of the package. I was completely happy with McAfee; it stopped all viruses and malware, and it stayed out of the damned way better than other antivirus systems I'd used before.
Last week Comcast switched its free service from McAfee to Norton, and I went along because it was still free. Immediately Norton got underfoot like a cat, slowing everything down, thrashing the disk for long periods with no obvious reason, and popping stupid warnings about "failing to back up."
This afternoon Norton wouldn't let me shut down the computer. Two of its component DLLs were busy and couldn't be halted.
When an "antivirus" causes as much trouble as a virus, it's worthless.
Went to McAfee and bought their yearly package, tossed Norton and reinstalled McAfee.
All is well again. ¶ 7:01 PM
Playing with fire
The elites are so blindly involved in their own fucked-up genocidal Commie religion that they don't see what they're doing. (I was going to say "and don't care", but on second thought they probably would care if they were capable of seeing anything.)
From NYtimes today:
And unsurprisingly, here's my favorite tyrannical asshole Lawrence Krauss, spewing toxic dictatorship as always:
Krauss is, as always, wrong on all counts and all levels. His sequence of events is wrong, and his dangerous murderous idea that the peons MUST BE REQUIRED BY FORCE TO ACCEPT MY ROYAL HOLY WORD WITHOUT A MURMUR OF DISSENT OR QUESTION is just as massively psychopathic as always.
The whole point of science, repeat the whole goddamn point and purpose, is to "cast doubt on veracity". If your sole purpose in life is to muzzle everyone who "casts doubt on veracity", you are the EXACT OPPOSITE OF A SCIENTIST. You are the worst sort of religious cult leader.
Finally, the elite Stalinists don't seem to realize they're playing with fire. When you force rational and well-informed people to shut the hell up and swallow official lies on several subjects at once, you are NOT turning rational well-informed people into meek passive identical robots. You ARE turning them into rebels who will not accept anything you say, even on the exceedingly rare occasions when you happen by accident or misprint to say something true.
From NYtimes today:
Critics of the teaching of evolution in the nation’s classrooms are gaining ground in some states by linking the issue to global warming, arguing that dissenting views on both scientific subjects should be taught in public schools.
And unsurprisingly, here's my favorite tyrannical asshole Lawrence Krauss, spewing toxic dictatorship as always:
Lawrence M. Krauss, a physicist who directs the Origins Initiative at Arizona State University and has spoken against efforts to water down the teaching of evolution to school boards in Texas and Ohio, described the move toward climate-change skepticism as a predictable offshoot of creationism.
“Wherever there is a battle over evolution now,” he said, “there is a secondary battle to diminish other hot-button issues like Big Bang and, increasingly, climate change. It is all about casting doubt on the veracity of science — to say it is just one view of the world, just another story, no better or more valid than fundamentalism.”
Krauss is, as always, wrong on all counts and all levels. His sequence of events is wrong, and his dangerous murderous idea that the peons MUST BE REQUIRED BY FORCE TO ACCEPT MY ROYAL HOLY WORD WITHOUT A MURMUR OF DISSENT OR QUESTION is just as massively psychopathic as always.
The whole point of science, repeat the whole goddamn point and purpose, is to "cast doubt on veracity". If your sole purpose in life is to muzzle everyone who "casts doubt on veracity", you are the EXACT OPPOSITE OF A SCIENTIST. You are the worst sort of religious cult leader.
Finally, the elite Stalinists don't seem to realize they're playing with fire. When you force rational and well-informed people to shut the hell up and swallow official lies on several subjects at once, you are NOT turning rational well-informed people into meek passive identical robots. You ARE turning them into rebels who will not accept anything you say, even on the exceedingly rare occasions when you happen by accident or misprint to say something true.
Labels: Krauss
¶ 1:03 PM
Front porches are back!
Enid News reports on a set of low-priced houses built by the local Community Development agency.
Purchase price is high at $80K, when you can get a fairly new house in a better neighborhood for $40K. Utility cost is excellent, and might compensate for the purchase price over time.
What really catches my attention is the fine generous front porch.
A deep porch on the south side, plus wide overhangs on all sides, is the bungalow's secret of natural coolness. This house isn't a strict bungalow but it certainly has the right qualities for both coolness and community.
The style nicely matches a type of house common in Oklahoma before the bungalow trend came along. Most new 'retro' designs miss their mark, looking more like nastily ironic references to an older pattern; this one simply and honestly looks like the old.
Specifically it resembles an Aladdin style:
If I'd been designing this house, I would have gone closer to the Aladdin proportions, and would have used wide casement windows farther off the ground (like the nearest window on the Aladdin) instead of narrow doublehung sashes. A high-up casement can be left open at night without the feeling that a burglar could just step on through. (I know serious burglars won't be stopped, but this is more about the internal feeling of confidence than the actual odds of burglary.)
= = = = =
While looking closely at window heights, I realized the people in that Aladdin drawing are ridiculously small. The man and two women are correctly proportioned to each other, but the man is half the height of the front door, which makes him about 3 feet 6 inches tall! These are circus midgets! ¶ 9:43 AM
Enid News reports on a set of low-priced houses built by the local Community Development agency.
A recently completed house on East Randolph may be the secret ingredient to helping achieve that goal. The model house is newly constructed with Styrofoam insulated panels, which are highly energy efficient, said Craig Stokes, CDSA housing director.
“We can do any size house,” he said. “This is the first one.”
The house is 846 square feet with two bedrooms, one bath and a loft. It is completely electric with an anticipated average monthly utility bill of $50. Stokes said the next home will be 1,000 square feet.
Purchase price is high at $80K, when you can get a fairly new house in a better neighborhood for $40K. Utility cost is excellent, and might compensate for the purchase price over time.
What really catches my attention is the fine generous front porch.
A deep porch on the south side, plus wide overhangs on all sides, is the bungalow's secret of natural coolness. This house isn't a strict bungalow but it certainly has the right qualities for both coolness and community.
The style nicely matches a type of house common in Oklahoma before the bungalow trend came along. Most new 'retro' designs miss their mark, looking more like nastily ironic references to an older pattern; this one simply and honestly looks like the old.
Specifically it resembles an Aladdin style:
If I'd been designing this house, I would have gone closer to the Aladdin proportions, and would have used wide casement windows farther off the ground (like the nearest window on the Aladdin) instead of narrow doublehung sashes. A high-up casement can be left open at night without the feeling that a burglar could just step on through. (I know serious burglars won't be stopped, but this is more about the internal feeling of confidence than the actual odds of burglary.)
= = = = =
While looking closely at window heights, I realized the people in that Aladdin drawing are ridiculously small. The man and two women are correctly proportioned to each other, but the man is half the height of the front door, which makes him about 3 feet 6 inches tall! These are circus midgets! ¶ 9:43 AM
Wilders gains
European people are getting serious about resisting the enemy, even while their governments are surrendering and collaborating [except for Switzerland and maybe France.]
In Holland the PVV party started by Geert Wilders won a city election today and came in second in The Hague, a long-time center of Eurocowardice.
One notable difference between US and Euro: in Holland the anti-Mohammed side is especially pushed by film-makers. Theo van Gogh made a pro-West film and got assassinated by a jihadi. Geert Wilders made an anti-jihad film and has survived so far, mainly because he can afford private security. The hero who tackled Abdul bin Underpants on Christmas is also a Dutch film-maker. Must be something very healthy bubbling up in the artistic realm over there.
Here in Goldmansachsia, the entire arts community is solidly and violently on the enemy's side, along with the entire government and military. No pro-Western sentiment is allowed; when the Tea Party showed tiny hints of nationalism, it was carefully co-opted and tamed to serve the Gramscian progressives. ¶ 5:40 AM
In Holland the PVV party started by Geert Wilders won a city election today and came in second in The Hague, a long-time center of Eurocowardice.
The results came on top of an opinion poll showing that the PVV, which campaigns against Muslim immigration as its main platform, would win the most seats -- 27 in the 150-member Dutch parliament -- in the June 9 election.
"The leftist elite still believes in multi-culturalism, coddling criminals, a European super-state and high taxes," Wilders told cheering supporters at a rally in Almere after polling ended Wednesday.
"But the rest of the Netherlands thinks differently. That silent majority now has a voice," he said.
One notable difference between US and Euro: in Holland the anti-Mohammed side is especially pushed by film-makers. Theo van Gogh made a pro-West film and got assassinated by a jihadi. Geert Wilders made an anti-jihad film and has survived so far, mainly because he can afford private security. The hero who tackled Abdul bin Underpants on Christmas is also a Dutch film-maker. Must be something very healthy bubbling up in the artistic realm over there.
Here in Goldmansachsia, the entire arts community is solidly and violently on the enemy's side, along with the entire government and military. No pro-Western sentiment is allowed; when the Tea Party showed tiny hints of nationalism, it was carefully co-opted and tamed to serve the Gramscian progressives. ¶ 5:40 AM
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
Sneaking around the terrorists
The Wash State senate just passed a bill allowing cities to designate 'Golf Cart Zones'. The house will undoubtedly pass the same bill soon. A similar law also passed recently in Oregon.
Interesting in three ways:
(1) It's a recognition of something that's already going on. In small towns and gated communities, folks are puttering around in golf carts. Legislatures nearly always recognize a current practice by outlawing it. This time they officially 'in-lawed' it, rare enough to be worth a little celebration.
(2) The Wash traffic law already has similar special provisions for Neighborhood Electric Vehicles, but those are rare and expensive. Golf carts are common and cheap, and serve exactly the same purpose. (Actually, some NEVs are just rebranded and up-priced golf carts!)
(3) Both types of vehicle are a nice return to technical simplicity and decentralization, and most of all a workaround for the wildly expensive regulations placed on 'real cars' by the government-sponsored terrorist organization EPA.
Since 1963, the Feds have piled so many conflicting requirements on 'real cars' that they have become terribly expensive to buy and maintain, and often misfitted for their intended use. If you're only going to travel a mile to Safeway each day, you don't need 600 horsepower, zero to 60 in 5 seconds, airbags, air conditioning, or a supercomputer grabbing the wheel and flooring the gas pedal for you. You just need an electric horseless carriage. ¶ 5:30 PM
The Wash State senate just passed a bill allowing cities to designate 'Golf Cart Zones'. The house will undoubtedly pass the same bill soon. A similar law also passed recently in Oregon.
Interesting in three ways:
(1) It's a recognition of something that's already going on. In small towns and gated communities, folks are puttering around in golf carts. Legislatures nearly always recognize a current practice by outlawing it. This time they officially 'in-lawed' it, rare enough to be worth a little celebration.
(2) The Wash traffic law already has similar special provisions for Neighborhood Electric Vehicles, but those are rare and expensive. Golf carts are common and cheap, and serve exactly the same purpose. (Actually, some NEVs are just rebranded and up-priced golf carts!)
(3) Both types of vehicle are a nice return to technical simplicity and decentralization, and most of all a workaround for the wildly expensive regulations placed on 'real cars' by the government-sponsored terrorist organization EPA.
Since 1963, the Feds have piled so many conflicting requirements on 'real cars' that they have become terribly expensive to buy and maintain, and often misfitted for their intended use. If you're only going to travel a mile to Safeway each day, you don't need 600 horsepower, zero to 60 in 5 seconds, airbags, air conditioning, or a supercomputer grabbing the wheel and flooring the gas pedal for you. You just need an electric horseless carriage. ¶ 5:30 PM
Yet another agreed-on lie
This one really puzzles me. Both brand-R and brand-D agree on the following delusional fantasy:
"Our health-care system is purely free-market. The Senate reform plan takes insurance companies out of the equation and replaces them with government."
As usual, one side likes the delusional version of reform, while the other hates the delusional version of reform. The likes and dislikes make sense within the bizarro world of the delusion.
Brand-R repeats over and over: BEST HEALTH CARE IN THE WORLD! DON'T YOU DARE PUT YOUR FILTHY GOVERNMENT HANDS ON MY HEALTH CARE! USA! USA! USA! WE'RE NUMBER 1! WE'RE NUMBER 1!
Brand-D repeats over and over: INSURANCE COMPANIES ARE EVIL! DON'T YOU DARE PUT YOUR FILTHY INSURANCE HANDS ON MY HEALTH CARE!
As usual, the actual factual facts are in an entirely different universe.
Actual factual facts:
Government already pays 70% of all medical expenses. The Senate plan gives the insurance companies an even larger monopoly over the remaining 30%.
Now here's the puzzle. Surely both sides must know the facts, despite their constant shouting of fake outrage based on the agreed-on lie. If they know the facts, then why in the hell do Republicans oppose the Senate plan that gives even more obscene profits to huge corporations? And why do Democrats support it?
Have both sides convinced themselves of the lie? Or is there a more important monopoly that would lose money under the Senate plan? Maybe it's there, but I can't see it. ¶ 1:24 PM
"Our health-care system is purely free-market. The Senate reform plan takes insurance companies out of the equation and replaces them with government."
As usual, one side likes the delusional version of reform, while the other hates the delusional version of reform. The likes and dislikes make sense within the bizarro world of the delusion.
Brand-R repeats over and over: BEST HEALTH CARE IN THE WORLD! DON'T YOU DARE PUT YOUR FILTHY GOVERNMENT HANDS ON MY HEALTH CARE! USA! USA! USA! WE'RE NUMBER 1! WE'RE NUMBER 1!
Brand-D repeats over and over: INSURANCE COMPANIES ARE EVIL! DON'T YOU DARE PUT YOUR FILTHY INSURANCE HANDS ON MY HEALTH CARE!
As usual, the actual factual facts are in an entirely different universe.
Actual factual facts:
Government already pays 70% of all medical expenses. The Senate plan gives the insurance companies an even larger monopoly over the remaining 30%.
Now here's the puzzle. Surely both sides must know the facts, despite their constant shouting of fake outrage based on the agreed-on lie. If they know the facts, then why in the hell do Republicans oppose the Senate plan that gives even more obscene profits to huge corporations? And why do Democrats support it?
Have both sides convinced themselves of the lie? Or is there a more important monopoly that would lose money under the Senate plan? Maybe it's there, but I can't see it. ¶ 1:24 PM
Ya lost me, Cathy
Spokane's rep in the Lower Nuthouse, Cathy McMorris, has unfortunately returned to her instinctual form. For the first two terms, she voted with the brand-R leadership most of the time, coming out especially strongly for Gramscian subversion. Anything that sounded nicey-nice, sounded like an advance of "rights" while actually clamping down on normal people, was wonderful with Cathy.
I voted against her in '06 because this was getting tiresome. Many others had the same revulsion, and she suffered a political near-death experience in a carefully designed safe district. Result: for a brief time in '08 she showed courage, voting with the people and against all the bailouts.
Now she's back to her natural tendencies, loudly supporting HR4247, a measure to eliminate restraints on bad kids. Yet another nice-sounding move, supposedly eliminating "abuse" of bad kids (in Party jargon, "special needs individuals"). Guaranteed result: Teachers will now refuse to exert any kind of control over bad kids ("special needs individuals") and the bad kids ("special needs individuals") will run rampant, bullying and beating the good and normal kids (in Party jargon, "unpersons").
You lost me forever on this one, Cathy. ¶ 12:18 PM
I voted against her in '06 because this was getting tiresome. Many others had the same revulsion, and she suffered a political near-death experience in a carefully designed safe district. Result: for a brief time in '08 she showed courage, voting with the people and against all the bailouts.
Now she's back to her natural tendencies, loudly supporting HR4247, a measure to eliminate restraints on bad kids. Yet another nice-sounding move, supposedly eliminating "abuse" of bad kids (in Party jargon, "special needs individuals"). Guaranteed result: Teachers will now refuse to exert any kind of control over bad kids ("special needs individuals") and the bad kids ("special needs individuals") will run rampant, bullying and beating the good and normal kids (in Party jargon, "unpersons").
You lost me forever on this one, Cathy. ¶ 12:18 PM
Old Moonbeam now looks sane
Listened to a bit of Jerry Brown's interview on CNN last night. Brown, formerly viewed as El Weirdo, now sounds remarkably sane by comparison to the rest of our political class.
Discussing criminals and prisons, Brown said that we can easily distinguish between "bad seed", permanently evil creatures, versus mere lawbreakers who can be turned toward normalcy with the right set of incentives. We need to permanently restrain the "bad seed", and try to incentivize the temporarily bad dudes. This is perfectly true, and our court system naturally operated according to this truth until the Commie revolution of 1968-1974.
By now, no other Democrat or Republican dares to speak this plain and obvious truth. Our ruling idiots have totally surrendered to grains-of-sand egalitarianism, which means that prison sentences must be absolutely identical for anyone whose actions happen to fit into the definition of a crime at any given moment. And because the political idiots also have to respond to the public once in a while, the identical sentences end up being maximum sentences.
Any recognition of innate differences among people is unthinkable to leftists. I don't know if it's unthinkable to conservatives, but they are certainly so afraid of gang leaders Jackson and Sharpton that they end up following the Commie line rigorously.
So old Moonbeam, formerly in the Commie vanguard, is now a counter-revolutionary. Bravo. ¶ 6:31 AM
Discussing criminals and prisons, Brown said that we can easily distinguish between "bad seed", permanently evil creatures, versus mere lawbreakers who can be turned toward normalcy with the right set of incentives. We need to permanently restrain the "bad seed", and try to incentivize the temporarily bad dudes. This is perfectly true, and our court system naturally operated according to this truth until the Commie revolution of 1968-1974.
By now, no other Democrat or Republican dares to speak this plain and obvious truth. Our ruling idiots have totally surrendered to grains-of-sand egalitarianism, which means that prison sentences must be absolutely identical for anyone whose actions happen to fit into the definition of a crime at any given moment. And because the political idiots also have to respond to the public once in a while, the identical sentences end up being maximum sentences.
Any recognition of innate differences among people is unthinkable to leftists. I don't know if it's unthinkable to conservatives, but they are certainly so afraid of gang leaders Jackson and Sharpton that they end up following the Commie line rigorously.
So old Moonbeam, formerly in the Commie vanguard, is now a counter-revolutionary. Bravo. ¶ 6:31 AM
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
That's all, she wrote.......
The New York leader of NOW has called on Gov Paterson to resign.
This is the first time NOW has broken its hitherto perfect record of hypocrisy. Until this moment, NOW loyally supported all politicians who favored abortion, no matter how many women those politicians ruined or killed. Given that Paterson carries no less than 4 Party Cards (loyal pro-abort, loyal Democrat, black, disabled) this is a highly significant turnaround.
I truly wonder what's the real problem with Paterson. Corruption, affairs, incompetence ... all perfectly normal for a big-city politician, and until now they never stirred up such a total mutiny in the politician's own party.
Rush says the problem is Paterson's refusal to appoint Caroline Kennedy to an open Senate seat. That was certainly a grave insult to America's Royal Family, but the mutiny didn't happen until a year after the lèse majesté, so the timing doesn't seem right. ¶ 8:11 AM
The National Organization for Women is urging New York Gov. David Paterson to resign because of a report he directed two staffers to contact a woman about a domestic violence case involving one of his top aides.
NOW New York State President Marcia Pappas said Tuesday it's inappropriate for Paterson to have any contact with a victim of alleged violence.
This is the first time NOW has broken its hitherto perfect record of hypocrisy. Until this moment, NOW loyally supported all politicians who favored abortion, no matter how many women those politicians ruined or killed. Given that Paterson carries no less than 4 Party Cards (loyal pro-abort, loyal Democrat, black, disabled) this is a highly significant turnaround.
I truly wonder what's the real problem with Paterson. Corruption, affairs, incompetence ... all perfectly normal for a big-city politician, and until now they never stirred up such a total mutiny in the politician's own party.
Rush says the problem is Paterson's refusal to appoint Caroline Kennedy to an open Senate seat. That was certainly a grave insult to America's Royal Family, but the mutiny didn't happen until a year after the lèse majesté, so the timing doesn't seem right. ¶ 8:11 AM
Monday, March 01, 2010
Excellent birth control
In the unlikely event that I ever need, shall we say, a counter-Viagra pill, a guaranteed droop, I'll just remember this news story:
Funny for about two seconds, until you really think about it. The guy was so relieved at surviving the crash that he relieved himself, and ZAP!
Can't think of a worse way to die. ¶ 3:51 PM
MONTESANO, Wash. — An Elma man was killed by accidentally urinating on a downed power line after a one-car crash near Montesano.
[The sheriff] said Monday that 50-year-old Roy Messenger was not seriously hurt after he collided with a power pole Friday night and called a relative to pull his car out of the ditch.
When family members arrived they found Messenger electrocuted. Messenger apparently urinated into a roadside ditch but didn’t see the live wire.
Funny for about two seconds, until you really think about it. The guy was so relieved at surviving the crash that he relieved himself, and ZAP!
Can't think of a worse way to die. ¶ 3:51 PM
Portland finally gets Commie Avenue
Since I noted an earlier failed attempt, probably should note the success.
Portland's Mexican Commies have been trying for years to get a major street named after Comrade Cesar Chavez. The earlier attempt was focused on the main street in Portland's Chinatown, which was so absurd that even a hard-line Maoist place like Portland couldn't stomach it. Now they've finally found a street that didn't have enough of its own identity to fight back. ¶ 3:25 PM
Portland's Mexican Commies have been trying for years to get a major street named after Comrade Cesar Chavez. The earlier attempt was focused on the main street in Portland's Chinatown, which was so absurd that even a hard-line Maoist place like Portland couldn't stomach it. Now they've finally found a street that didn't have enough of its own identity to fight back. ¶ 3:25 PM
Resolved a paradox...
Lately I've been digging [again!] into Intelligent Design, triggered by a review of a new book on evolution. The review answered a question that has been puzzling me for a long time.
Apparent paradox: Since Commies believe above all in absolute randomness, tabula rasa, all nurture and no nature ... since they cannot acknowledge that any** human quality is inherited, why do they love Darwin so much? After all, Darwinism is mostly about inheritance, and Darwin certainly held that innate differences determine your success in life. Why didn't they stick with the Lysenko theory of acquired characteristics, which was explicitly designed as a Marxist opposition to Darwin?
This review explains that the randomness of natural selection is the key. Commies were willing to go along with Darwinism (which had already become the religion of their fellow rich assholes) because the standard theory grants the real power to chaos and disorder. Random mutations change genes for no reason, and some of them survive for no reason.
The book under review details the complete failure of random selection as a theory. And it's written by two well-credentialed atheist scientists, which is deeply offensive to The Party. Elites don't get all hotted up when Darwin is questioned by heretics; since the Scopes trial in 1925 all Christian-oriented heretics are simply nonexistent Unpersons, unworthy of notice. But when card-carrying Party members question Doctrine, it's serious. Time to crank up the Two Minutes Hate machine, time to hit the Purge button.
= = = = =
Clearly modern Commies hate Christianity, hate anything that remotely reminds them of an active God, but at the deepest level they hate life and reason, which makes Christianity (the main supporter of life and reason) a secondary target.
Egalitarianism wants to reduce living things to indistinguishable, dead, isolated and passive particles with zero characteristics. (Sidenote: this is also why elite assholes fanatically support Bohr's quantum physics against de Broglie's wave-based physics; quantum depends on pure randomness and pure subjectivity, while wave-based physics could lead you to think about connections and relations, could lead you to detect an overarching intelligence.)
How did this particle-addiction arise? Easy. Lenin and Stalin bred it into the Commie species by killing all intellectuals who believed otherwise. No random mutations here. And why was it necessary? Again easy. Maximum passivity plus maximum disorder equals absolute dictatorship. If you can't tell the difference between types of humans, if you are completely isolated, if you can't decide for yourself that one viewpoint is more valid than another, you are completely pliable. Completely incapable of physical or intellectual self-defense.
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** In recent years a special exception has been carved out for homosexuality, declared to be the only human quality that can be inherited. This exception is made on purely political grounds, to satisfy a rich and powerful constituency of the Left, but it gets treated as Science because the Politburo says it's Science. Subjectivity and all that, y'know. In reaction, conservatives decided to take the opposite position that homosexuality is the only human quality that cannot be inherited. Both of these beliefs are just weird. ¶ 8:12 AM
Apparent paradox: Since Commies believe above all in absolute randomness, tabula rasa, all nurture and no nature ... since they cannot acknowledge that any** human quality is inherited, why do they love Darwin so much? After all, Darwinism is mostly about inheritance, and Darwin certainly held that innate differences determine your success in life. Why didn't they stick with the Lysenko theory of acquired characteristics, which was explicitly designed as a Marxist opposition to Darwin?
This review explains that the randomness of natural selection is the key. Commies were willing to go along with Darwinism (which had already become the religion of their fellow rich assholes) because the standard theory grants the real power to chaos and disorder. Random mutations change genes for no reason, and some of them survive for no reason.
The book under review details the complete failure of random selection as a theory. And it's written by two well-credentialed atheist scientists, which is deeply offensive to The Party. Elites don't get all hotted up when Darwin is questioned by heretics; since the Scopes trial in 1925 all Christian-oriented heretics are simply nonexistent Unpersons, unworthy of notice. But when card-carrying Party members question Doctrine, it's serious. Time to crank up the Two Minutes Hate machine, time to hit the Purge button.
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Clearly modern Commies hate Christianity, hate anything that remotely reminds them of an active God, but at the deepest level they hate life and reason, which makes Christianity (the main supporter of life and reason) a secondary target.
Egalitarianism wants to reduce living things to indistinguishable, dead, isolated and passive particles with zero characteristics. (Sidenote: this is also why elite assholes fanatically support Bohr's quantum physics against de Broglie's wave-based physics; quantum depends on pure randomness and pure subjectivity, while wave-based physics could lead you to think about connections and relations, could lead you to detect an overarching intelligence.)
How did this particle-addiction arise? Easy. Lenin and Stalin bred it into the Commie species by killing all intellectuals who believed otherwise. No random mutations here. And why was it necessary? Again easy. Maximum passivity plus maximum disorder equals absolute dictatorship. If you can't tell the difference between types of humans, if you are completely isolated, if you can't decide for yourself that one viewpoint is more valid than another, you are completely pliable. Completely incapable of physical or intellectual self-defense.
= = = = =
** In recent years a special exception has been carved out for homosexuality, declared to be the only human quality that can be inherited. This exception is made on purely political grounds, to satisfy a rich and powerful constituency of the Left, but it gets treated as Science because the Politburo says it's Science. Subjectivity and all that, y'know. In reaction, conservatives decided to take the opposite position that homosexuality is the only human quality that cannot be inherited. Both of these beliefs are just weird. ¶ 8:12 AM
