Wednesday, February 29, 2012
  Ideas from an old book

Trying to locate more info on the nickel-iron batteries that last forever, I bumped into a wonderful old book that's fully readable in Google ebook form.

Electrical Catechism, by George Defrees Shepardson.

It's a basic intro to all aspects of electricity as known in 1901, with plenty of clear engraved illustrations and lots of plain wisdom about electricity and human nature. Written in the form of a catechism, with small questions arranged in a proper sequence for learning.

'Proper sequence' means that the learning starts with observations of common things, proceeds to an explanation of several mysteries and puzzles, and later on introduces measurements and numbers. This is the direct opposite of modern American "teaching" of math and science, which starts with numbers, ends with numbers, and ferociously avoids all possible contact with reality or facts or truth.

Example of wisdom: Several questions about medical electrical devices, which were common at that time.



Huge amount of wisdom and understanding packed into one paragraph! Think you'd find that much respect for common humanity in any modern science text? Hell no. You'd just get a whole chapter of scathing contempt for White-ass Bible-Thumping-ass Hetero-ass Redneck-ass Amerikkkkkkkkkkan-ass Yahoos ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha who are fucking dumb enough to believe anything ha ha ha ha ha, including the ridiculous horrible nasty idea that Carbon is not solely responsible for killing Our Beloved Fragile Sensitive Endangered Weeping Planet[pbuh]. We The Enlightened Progressive Ones know better, of course.

Here's an interesting experiment plus more dry wisdom:




An item that sort of echoes those everlasting Edison batteries:



This seems to imply that incandescent bulbs of 1901 had an 'analog' failure pattern, asymptoting gradually toward darkness. You had to decide when the bulb had faded enough to toss it. Modern bulbs fail 'digitally': they burn out abruptly after 1000 hours. You don't get to make the decision. Remember the famous perpetual bulb in the fire station in Livermore, Calif? Installed in 1901.


= = = = =

Enough fun... I'm really trying to bring out a thought-provoking concept that seems to have been lost since 1901.

First, a basic explanation of a well-known effect:




Second, an interesting biological connection:




Third, an application of the biological connection:




The part about grass not growing under pine trees has been explained differently since then: Fallen needles are the pine's chemical weapon to prevent the encroachment of grass.

But the basic idea that plants use their points and hairs to charge/discharge is interesting and (I think) unexplored in recent times.

Compare with recent discoveries about nanowires on bacteria. When bacteria need to exchange electrons with their surroundings to create various chemical reactions, they send out little pointy-ended wires to charge or discharge.

It's certainly true that conifers like to be closer to the aurora, while broad-leaf trees prefer to be closer to the equator. It's also true, as electric power companies know only too well, that trees like to grow toward high-voltage lines.

Conifer needles are pointy and narrow, which makes them good electron transfer agents and poor absorbers of light. Conifers don't bother to shed their needles in winter, which implies they're still getting good stuff from the needles when the sun is absent. Snow is apparently part of the good stuff: Shepardson observes in a later book that uninsulated telephone wires often get charged to hundreds of volts by powdery 'dry' snow. It would appear that needles are a potent electron-gathering tool in all seasons!




Looking at this from the other angle, do conifers affect local climate? Do they suck up spare electrons from ionized air, making the air less plasma-like and less prone to thunderstorms?

Broader questions: Do all plants play a part in sunspot control of climate? Are they directly modulated by sun-influenced ionization?

Later followup here.

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Tuesday, February 28, 2012
  Does Not Compute

Repooflican bots love to quote Obama's "Energy prices will necessarily skyrocket...", and at the same time they love to call Obama "anti-free market".

Well, the first part is right, but not in the way brand-R means it. Obama wants energy prices to skyrocket so Goldman can take the money.

The "anti-free market" part has always been wrong, by R definitions. Repooflicans use "free market" to mean "China gets the jobs, Goldman gets the money, Americans get nothing." In their Satanic eyes this is a good thing. Well, by that definition Obama is ferociously pro-free market. He showed his Goldman loyalty before the 2008 election by helping with the TARP bailout, and has served Goldman slavishly ever since.

From McClatchy News:
Robert Wilkins, a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, declined a request for a preliminary injunction to halt the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from implementing a congressional mandate to limit how many oil contracts any single financial speculator or company can control.

However, Wilkins told both the CFTC and lawyers for the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association and the International Swap and Derivatives Association that he expected to make a ruling soon on whether to hear the case. His line of questioning left both sides with the impression that he was concerned about how the regulatory agency has proceeded.

The two influential lobbies for Wall Street sought the injunction hoping to thwart what are called “position limits,” which were ordered by Congress as part of the landmark Dodd-Frank Act in 2010. The act was the broadest revamp of financial regulation since the Great Depression. The limits sought to prevent excessive speculation not just in oil but across the broad range of commodities, including farm products and metals.

Judge Wilkins expressed concern that Congress would direct the agency to impose market-wide limits without detailed study beforehand. President Barack Obama nominated Wilkins to the bench and the Senate confirmed him in 2010.

In other words, Goldman's loyal slave Obama has appointed a Goldman Guardian to the federal "court" system, and Goldman Guardian Wilkins is about to halt the tiny weak loophole-filled Dodd-Frank joke.

Classic agreed-on lie. R-bots hate Obama because he's supposedly anti-Wall Street. D-bots love Obama because he's supposedly anti-Wall Street. As always, the parties share the same false "facts", and use the shared lie in opposite polemical directions.




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Sunday, February 26, 2012
  Edison's revenge on Tesla



A super-modern Tesla electric roadster shows off its super-modern propulsion system. Occasionally the Tesla is propelled by electric motors, but if you mistakenly allow its batteries to discharge, it becomes a Brick, absolutely immovable and unrollable and unrechargeable. You have to haul it to a Tesla dealer and spend $40,000 (uninsured, unreimbursed) for new batteries. This is apparently part of the aristocratic Gaian thrill you get in return for your original $170K investment.

Meanwhile, Polistra hums sedately past the Brickmobile in her 1910 Detroit Electric. The Detroit has roughly the same short range as the Tesla, but lacks the super-modern super-digital Brickification feature. If you discharge its primitive batteries completely, you just have to recharge them. Dull. Analog. No more exciting than refilling an empty gas tank.

The picture was inspired by this delightful story. (Link leads directly to a PDF.)

Outline of the story: A remote Adirondack hunting lodge had been lighted since 1924 by an Edison DC generator outfit using 80 nickel-iron storage batteries. The system had been used fairly steadily with spotty maintenance. When the lodge's owners decided to sell, they offered the antique electric stuff to people who would preserve it or display it, rather than discarding it.

The authors of the story heard about the batteries, went up to the lodge, took the system apart, and brought the batteries down to their lab. Some cells still had electrolyte, some had been empty for many years.

Best part of the story: The authors flushed out and refilled the cells, and every single one still worked, still charged up to specified voltage, still discharged smoothly.

Edison had advertised his nickel-iron batteries as lasting a hundred years, and he was right!

Nickel-iron cells are no longer made in America ... [Didn't really need to say that, did I?] ... but one Chinese and one Russian company still make them. Aside from the obvious advantages (not turning to Bricks when they discharge, and lasting a century) nickel and iron are common minerals in plentiful supply. Contrast with the Tesla's laptop batteries, requiring rare Lanthanide minerals found mostly in China.

= = = = =

Later: Another testimony to Edison's nickel-iron cells. When car collectors restore Baker Electrics from around 1910, they don't need to replace the batteries! After a full century the nickel-irons still work perfectly.

= = = = =

Much later addendum, Jan 2013: Looks like the gov't is considering a rule that electric cars must emit sounds. As a perpetual pedestrian, I love this idea. I've been vastly more careful and 'optical' since I got whacked by an SUV in 2008, but I still rely on hearing for a general sense of approaching cars. Been fooled several times by quiet Priii and Leaves.

Electric cars should constantly emit characteristic tunes, like the ice cream man with his Entertainer Rag (aka the Sting tune). The Tesla Roadster needs to emit the following song over and over and over and over:

Oh give me a place
where the wind turbines race,
where the birds and the bats die and scream;
where subsidies pay
for my Latté Grandé,
and exploded dams kill human dreams.


Home, home is my range,
where the volts charge my batteries quick,
I can quietly roam,
thirty miles from my home,
then my Tesla turns into a brick.

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  Satan loves stats

Paul Homewood in UK discusses the funneling of most remaining science funding toward Green shit. This is predictable; the Green tumor knows how to claim all the blood supply of its victim until the victim is completely dead.

What really caught my attention was this sentence:
As a result certain areas of science are having all funding withdrawn, for, at the least, the next year. For instance PhD fellowships will no longer be available for Engineering graduates, and will be limited to only Statistics & Applied Probability for Mathematicians, as the EPSRC website makes clear.

The agency knows perfectly goddamn well what it's doing. Preferring stats over engineering isn't as obvious as funding projects with "Climate Change" in their titles, but it's actually worse in the long run.

Engineering is a constructive use of math.

Statistics is a destructive use of math.

Satan loves stats.

Stats serves the climate pseudoscientists. With the help of stats they are able to make a completely false theory give very small positive results. Without it, they'd have to look directly at the data and see the complete lack of connection between temperature and CO2.

Stats serves the sociologists who provide a "factual" basis for court decisions on Die-Versity, smashing great cities into rubble. Without it, they'd have to acknowledge the obvious factual differences between living societies like Korea and dying societies like Britain and US.

Stats serves the Wall Street Mafia and their slaves in CongressMart. With the help of stats they can find the most likely bet (derivative, option, etc), and then kill companies directly, or design laws to kill the proper set of companies to guarantee the bet.

Stats serves political operatives like Karl Rove and Dick Morris. With stats they can find the best possible gerrymander to guarantee My Party Wins Forever. With stats they can locate the 100 voters who really count in a national election, then figure out how to spend a trillion dollars of everyone else's money to buy those 100 voters. (See Medicare Part D.)

= = = = =

Here's reality: A difference that's worth acting on will appear clearly in the properly measured data of a properly designed experiment or observation. You won't have to tease it out with stats. If you can't design a good experiment to pin down the relevant variable, or locate a 'natural experiment' that separates the variables, you don't have a point. Give up and take a nap.

If your model "requires" thousands of variables, you have ALREADY ADMITTED that you are not objectively analyzing real data. You have ALREADY ADMITTED that you are seeking a predetermined result which will advance your career, improve your status, and enrich your grant account.

Medical research tacitly recognizes this reality. If Drug A is curing most of the terminal cancer patients, the clinical trial stops and all the cancer patients get Drug A immediately. No need for stats. If Drug B is killing some patients, the trial stops and Drug B is discarded forever. No need for stats.

If I were emperor I'd ban statistics entirely, except for the median. Since I'm not emperor, I can only show the problems and wish for lower subsidies to stats and higher subsidies to engineering and agriculture.

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  What's wrong with this picture?

Seems like an odd placement of priorities:

Israel, America's lord and master, is ordering us to make war against Persia, and we're meekly obeying by banging the war drums, tightening the screws, raising the rhetoric daily.

But at the same time Israel, America's lord and master, doesn't seem especially concerned about Syria. Our Israel-slave politicians, while saying the predictable "Strongly Condemn" shit, are also sending a perfectly clear hands-off message.



Look at the map.

Syria touches the northern end of Israel, so you'd think total civil war in Syria would be an immediate concern. But it obviously isn't!

Persia is a thousand miles away from Israel, with three allies of Isramerica between the two. How would Persia's warriors possibly reach Israel without being stopped? Despite the physical impossibility of an attack, Ahmadinejad's empty rhetoric is the only thing that matters.

Something is askew here!

Reading between the lines, one plausible hypothesis: Israel is running the Syrian civil war, and already has a puppet government ready to take power when Assad has been softened up. So we've been ordered to stand back from a well-choreographed process.
 
Saturday, February 25, 2012
  We need a Reagan, but not that way....

We grind through yet another episode of unspeakable lunacy in Afghanistan. Some brainless idiot with zero understanding of religion decided to burn some Korans publicly instead of secretly.

In the first place, how does any trash-burning operation go public? Even in ordinary homes and businesses without hundreds of highly-paid Blackhawk security specialists on board, it's perfectly easy to get something into the trash without being observed.

Nobody takes things out to the trash, waves them around and shouts "I'm discarding my porn!" or "I'm tossing a Bible!" or "I'm throwing away some old cabbage!"

Here's the mysterious arcane secret: BAGS. These are soft containers made of plastic or paper, which prevent people from seeing objects placed inside the container.

Polistra and Happystar demonstrate this ferociously complex ultra-high-tech method, so that our milifairy specialists might learn how to perform it after several months of study and several years of feasibility task-forces:



In the second place, there's plenty of history for occupying forces in Afghanistan. Britain learned the lesson, Russia learned the lesson. We could have figured out in 2001 that it wasn't going to work, and lots of people ... even inside our government ... tried to explain that it wasn't going to work. No, we're fucking EXCEPTIONAL. God is on our side, and everything we do, no matter how fucking stupid, is guaranteed to work because we're fucking EXCEPTIONAL.

Again Polistra and Happystar have created a brief 'training film' to assist our milifairy in understanding the strategic steps necessary to solve this problem:




When Russia was going through the same End-Stage Cultural And Governmental Alzheimer's in the 1980s, Reagan came along to mercifully pull the plug. Russia finally had to stop fucking around in Afghanistan, had to stop being EXCEPTIONAL.

Who will do for us what Reagan did for Russia? Who will pull the plug on this atrocious comatose wacked-out miserable excuse of a country?

Putin? Perhaps operating indirectly through Persia?

I just hope it happens soon. We may or may not fall into chaos. Most likely we won't, because we still have non-Alzheimer governments in a few states, and we have a long English history of self-organization. Our people are somewhat less likely to run completely wild without an iron hand on top.
 
Friday, February 24, 2012
  Thanks for proving his point

Something fairly interesting and smart is happening in England, with Muslim Baroness Warsi forming an alliance with Christians against secular evil, and now Chief Atheist Dawkins admitting to a small amount of doubt on the basic question.

Meanwhile, the Anglicans are showing a classically uninteresting and stupid response to a direct encounter with evil.
The soaring cost of metal during the global economic crisis has helped fuel a surge in metal thefts, triggering chaos on the rail network when copper signalling cables are taken.

But churches in particular have been viewed as a soft option by thieves, often poorly guarded and situated in all of the most crime-ridden areas of the country.

My first thought is that Baptists here in America would know how to solve it. Volunteers from the congregation would stand guard with double-ought shotguns. One click-click sound would knock most thieves off the roof; if that wasn't enough, an assfull of buckshot would definitely accomplish the task. After that, no more theft on this church. Criminals are highly social animals, constantly figuring risk-benefit equations.

But that's not the pussy-ass Brit solution:
Special "Voice of God" movement sensors are to be hidden in spires and finials, triggering a booming voice to take intruders by surprise warning that they have been detected and that security guards are on their way.

Oh nice. Let the machine do it, remove human morality and human decision from the picture. This will work the same way as car alarms, i.e. not at all. Especially since you've removed the surprise by announcing the system in the newspaper.

I wonder if the pussy-ass Anglicans are aware that they're proving a favorite Dawkins point nicely: God was invented by the organized churches to keep the lower class at bay.

Baptists and Muslims have a more rational view of the whole arrangement. God wants us to help him create a moral world, not just to keep the riffraff out of the basilica.

= = = = =

The Anglicans are also missing a chance to help solve the real problem. Theft of copper is a double consequence of the same underlying problem. Corporate traitors and Jew speculators have been conspiring to move the entire British (and American) economy to China. This means working-class Brits no longer have any chance of a decent job, and it also means Chinese demand and Jew speculation have driven the price of copper to levels where it's worth the risk of climbing a steep church roof to pry it off.

Well, what would Jesus do? No need to ask, because we know what Jesus actually did when Jew speculators were oppressing the common people. Drive them out, dammit!
 
Thursday, February 23, 2012
  Steak

[Caution: mixed meat metaphors ahead!]

The main theme this week on brand-R talk shows is "makers vs takers". Same old tiresome shit about socialist redistributionist collectivist plastic banana rock-n-roller, etc. Half the people pay no taxes and they are the only voters, etc. Largesse from the public treasury, etc. Atlas Shrugged, etc. Losers losers losers nyah nyah nyah, etc.

Doyle asked the question in a somewhat fresh way: "When the other side is offering something for nothing, how do you beat them?"

Last night an old trucker calling into Lars Larson show said: "I always vote Democrat because I figure they're going to give me a little slice of the pie. Republicans want to keep it all for themselves."

Well, there's your answer if you want to hear it.

First, Doyle's "something for nothing" is a dishonest appraisal. Most of the "takers" have paid a lot of taxes in the past. Now the Satanic system has moved their jobs to China or obsoletized their hard-won skills. They have no real choice, and frankly they ARE entitled to get something back from a Satanic system that forces its own citizens into poverty, transfers all work to Chinese slaves and transfers all money to Jew billionaires.

Second, the trucker is right about perception if not reality. Both parties have been baking the Satan pie, but Dems historically gave the working man a slightly better chance to eat a micro-sliver of the pie. (Not much difference recently, though.)

As Polistra has been saying forever, you can't ignore the value of bringing home the pork. If you try to clean up all those earmarks, you're simply removing the one way an individual politician can return value to his voters. Without this real return, politicians are forced to sell only slogans and ideology.

Supposedly you have to sell the sizzle before you sell the steak, but brand-R politicians have completely removed the steak. You're left with nothing but the abstract ideological sizzle of Exceptionalism and Permanent Wars. Exceptionalism does absolutely no good for any actual American; trying to be Nurse Ratched for the world just makes us spend billions on foreign aid and other shit that enriches foreign potentates. Permanent war causes nothing but harm to real Americans. They pay more taxes and lose their sons, and get only tyranny (Homeland Security, TSA) in return.

If you wanted to offer an Amarillo-size steak without creating more welfare entitlements, here are some things you could do: (1) Eliminate EPA, ESA, TSA, DHS. (2) Jail the speculators. (3) Slap a 100% tariff on China. Blockade if necessary. (4) Eliminate the Federal Reserve's control of interest rates and require bankers to pay interest on savings.

Impose all of these with massive force. Instantly shoot any bureaucrat or banker or CEO who appears to hesitate for a millisecond. Head on a pike pour encourager les autres.

Some of the R candidates are talking about (1), but they won't do it. Nobody is talking about the other steps at all. Each of them would bring a quick increase in real return to the people, with no increase in tax or spending.
 
  Never learn // EDIT: Maybe learning?

Spokane news item:

Few years ago a city cop drove while drunk, caused an accident, then left the scene. At first he was quite properly fired. Now he's used the insane ADA definition of alcoholism as a "disease" to claim improper firing for a "disability", and he's being rehired with two years of back pay.

This whole mess was brought to us by bitch-ass sissy-ass fag-ass Commie-ass Repooflicans. Back in 1990, Comrade Bobdole and Rezident Bush The Father conspired to push the ADA into law. Result: Fewer jobs for REAL disabled people, and piles of wildly expensive grotesque idiocy like this.

Now Repooflican mayor Condon has gone along with the wildly expensive grotesque ADA settlement instead of fighting it.

Same Repooflican Condon who got elected by favoring "disability" "rights" and Die-Versity over civilization in an even more egregious police situation.

Idiots never learn. They keep voting for Repooflicans, and Repooflicans keep shooting them in the face with raw suicidal Lenin-bullets. Over and over and over. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

= = = = =

Update: Maybe Condon is teachable. He's suddenly pulling back from the surrender. Using the excuse that the state Human "Rights" Commission seems to be backing away from the deal. He's received plenty of criticism from actual citizens, but that's irrelevant to a public official. Must be something coming down from above.

= = = = =

Update March 1: Amazingly the Corrupt City Council has showed some real backbone for the first time in the 20 years I've lived here. They voted unanimously to reject the settlement and to refuse to rehire drunk cop Thoma. This may give Repooflican Sissybitch Comrade Condon some reason to hold firm, though I doubt he'll stick with it.
 
  Incomplete news

One of today's news stories needs a lot of clarification and amplification.

Here's the corrected version:


President Obama, wearing clothes made by Chinese slaves and carrying a cellphone made by Chinese slaves, Mayor Vince Gray, wearing clothes made by Chinese slaves and carrying a cellphone made by Chinese slaves, former first lady Laura Bush, wearing clothes made by Chinese slaves and carrying a cellphone made by Chinese slaves, and others wearing clothes made by Chinese slaves and carrying cellphones made by Chinese slaves, were on hand at a ceremony on the National Mall this morning to break ground on the Smithsonian Institution's new National Museum of African American History and Culture.

The museum, which will be the Smithsonian's 19th facility, is slated to open in 2015. Actual construction work using tools made by Chinese slaves won't begin until this summer.

At the ceremony today, which was also streamed live on the Smithsonian's website using technology built by Chinese slaves, Obama read a speech from a teleprompter built by Chinese slaves. The speech said a museum charting several centuries of black history will show "not just a record of tragedy, but a celebration of life."

Also participating in the ceremony were Smithsonian Secretary Wayne G. Clough, wearing clothes made by Chinese slaves and carrying a cellphone made by Chinese slaves, museum director Lonnie Bunch, wearing clothes made by Chinese slaves and carrying a cellphone made by Chinese slaves, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, wearing clothes made by Chinese slaves and carrying a cellphone made by Chinese slaves, and Citigroup Chairman Richard D. Parsons, whose bank finances Chinese slavery. When it came time to turn over the first ceremonial clumps of dirt, however, Obama was not among those wielding a shovel made by Chinese slaves, though the president and his family remained on the stage built by Chinese slaves.

= = = = =

Yessiree bob, we deserve to congratulate ourselves for ending slavery.
 
  Edison would appreciate this!

The headlines are a little deceptive:

'Bacteria battery' boosted by space microbes

Turns out the 'space microbes' are commonly found in rivers as well, but for some reason were first noticed in the stratosphere and named accordingly. They get cycled up and down with evaporation and rain. Maybe 'rain microbes' would be a better term.

The more important part of the story:
The survey tested 75 species before combining the best into a Microbial Fuel Cell whose output then rose from 105 watts per cubic meter to 200, or enough to run an electric light.

Old Tom is smiling. No theory, just lots of organized trial and improvement.

"The research and findings show the potential power of the technique," said Grant Burgess, professor of marine biotechnology at Newcastle. "What we have done is deliberately manipulate the microbial mix to engineer a biofilm that is more efficient at generating electricity.

Selected by Time magazine three years ago as one of contemporary science's 50 most important inventions, microbial power harnesses the glow-worm-like electricity naturally generated by some microbes during their processing of waste water or mud. Commercial versions coat carbon electrodes with a bacterial slime whose tiny organisms convert nutrients into electrons and pass the power into a battery.

The research brings the lead in MFC technology back to the part of the world where it first began. In 1911, Prof M C Potter at Durham University produced electricity from E.coli bacteria in his botany department, a breakthrough little-remarked at the time but followed up from 1930s onwards.

One word, young man: BACTERIA.
 
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
  Not gloating, just proud.

Pretty good windstorm today, which crashed a number of trees into houses.

Didn't crash any trees into my house! Why? Because I finally had the sense to cut the weapons down last year.

Didn't mess up my fence either! Why? Because I finally had the sense to get it properly braced last year.



Gloating? More like gratitude. Gratitude is important, even when it's just gratitude to myself for having goddamn sense and goddamn frugality. Frugality piled up enough money to do the job, and sense made the decision.

Thanks, me.


Update late 2014: Adding more thanks after the tornado-like storm on 7/23/14. Of course the trees are still gone, so they still couldn't crash into my house; more meaningfully, the braced fence held up perfectly. It was supposedly guaranteed up to 70 mph, and this was 75 mph. And special thanks to the neighbors on the west, who cut down one big tree around the same time (2011) when I cut all of mine. Their big tree would certainly have taken me out in July, but its murderous intentions were also foiled by good sense.
 
  Two Minutes Murdoch

WUWT notes a WSJ interview with Joe Bast of Heartland.

Textbook example of how Satan's Boss Rupert Murdoch has adapted Orwell's lame old "Two Minutes Hate" into an infinitely more effective and vicious modern propaganda tool.




The interview begins with a split screen, host and Bast; but whenever Bast speaks for more than a few seconds, the whole screen switches to scenes of destructive weather. Tornados, ice storms, snowbound cities, floods.....

Hardly subliminal.

Message to the Viewer: "This Nazihalliburtonfascist Bast[ard] is trying to tell you that Global Warming is bad science. We know better, because we can see the disasters all around us, and we know with absolute fanatic religious certainty that none of these disasters ever happened until CO2 reached its current proportions in the atmosphere. Before CO2, the world was perfectly calm and heavenly, with no snow, no rain, no wind, no earthquakes, no volcanos."

If you're still deluded into thinking that Comrade Murdoch is a "right-winger", please undelude yourself! His views and agenda are identical to other media moguls; the only difference is that Murdoch is vastly more clever and fiendish. The other moguls serve Hell by directly advocating Satanic causes. Murdoch serves Hell by leading good people into stupidity, triviality and confusion.
 
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
  Means and ends

I've tried not to pay overmuch attention to the various 'gates' in the world of climate lately.

In general I believe that all means are proper if the end is good. People who get into hot arguments about methods (journalistic phone-hacking, email leaking etc) tend to miss the more important questions. Most of the time, the method questions are intentional distractors to prevent the yokels from thinking about the important end-questions.

In journalism, war or science, the important end-questions are:

1. Are the facts true?

2. Is it necessary to do this?

3. Will it improve the lives of innocent humans?

If you can give positive answers to those questions, then do it. All methods are justifiable, depending on the situation and the desperation.

If not, then don't do it at all. No methods are justifiable. Just take a nap.

= = = = =

You may well ask, how do you know? Both sides may think they're justified. Okay. The pair of 'gates' in climate show what happens when both sides think their causes are true, necessary and good.

First the anonymous Mr FOIA leaked a large set of REAL emails from the Carbon Cult pseudoscientists. Twice. These emails were packed full of obvious indications of intentional fraud, sabotage and censorship, full of specific conspiracies with specific members of the media and governments. Everything the 'skeptics' had been saying turned out to be true, and far worse. The Cult complained, but world opinion changed. Some governments now feel empowered to drop their support for the Carbon Crime.

Now Peter Gleick has leaked a small set of REAL emails from Heartland Institute, plus one that he apparently made up. These show no conspiracy or fraud at all; they only show that Heartland gets support from some corporations who agree with its work, and support from some sneaky big corporations who like to keep both sides feuding. Just like every other think-tank.

Both sides used nasty methods for (in their view) good ends. Now the world sees the full extent of the problem, and sees where the real crimes are.

If the honest 'skeptic' side had unilaterally disarmed, as some of the nicey-nice types seem to think we should, the Cult would simply continue to own all the words and communication. There would be no progress at all.

= = = = =

As Polistra has been saying from the start, "We must be better than them" is suicidal. In any conflict, better is meaningless. If you lose, nobody will care that you were honorable and gentlemanly. Your cause, no matter how good or bad, will simply disappear. If you win or at least stay in the game, people will be able to judge the truth and goodness of your cause properly.

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Monday, February 20, 2012
  Should we worry?

I've been worried about Chinese espionage for 25 years, because I saw it firsthand in the Penn State engineering labs and military research facilities. It was already big in 1986, and it's much bigger now.

But, you may say, Russians and others also spy. Shouldn't we also be worried about them? Nope.

Chinese are sober, smart, disciplined and focused. They are able to take every morsel of knowledge and efficiently turn it into arrows aimed at our hearts, figuratively and literally.

Are Russians sober?

Are Russians smart?

Are Russians disciplined?

Are Russians focused?

Nope, nothing to worry about.


= = = = =

Though this makes life a little easier for us, and provides a few cheap laughs, it's a pure tragedy for Russians. They're actually smart and highly creative, and they can be disciplined and industrious when properly governed. But within Russia, they're forever doomed.

Occurs to me: I decided last year that America would be better off under some form of Islam. The same goes triple for Russia. What would an ayatollah do first? No alcohol. And no thievery, no idiotic pranks, no whoring. For a while there would be a shortage of stones and a slight surplus of dead and one-handed Russkis, but if the alcohol absolutely disappeared, everything else would pretty quickly fall into place.

For what it's worth, the Slavs here in Spokane have shown great wisdom, picking up Baptist and Evangelical faiths. And they're successful and productive citizens. What do Baptist and Muslim have in common? Both keep you dry above all.
 
Sunday, February 19, 2012
  Plots

IPR ran a cute feature tonight on William Wallace Cook, a pulp writer in the '20s who churned out one novel a week. Cook served his profession by writing a book of plots, with 1462 instant plots ready to boil up into potboilers. Just add overwrought prose to taste.

Modern TV writers don't need such a book. They only have one plot, which serves equally well for every "drama" and "comedy" and "news" show.

= = = = =

Plot LGBTQQRSTUVWXYZ:

A bunch of Jewish Communist Homosexual New Yorkers sit around in a New York scene talking about subjects of interest to Jewish Communist Homosexual New Yorkers.

During the half hour, each Jewish Communist Homosexual New Yorker must utter at least five (5) snide bitchy hateful ignorant bigoted false libelous violence-inducing statements against EACH of the following subjects:

1. Heterosexuals
2. White people
3. Southerners
4. Midwesterners
5. Christians
6. Soldiers
7. Republicans
8. Global Warming "deniers"
9. Evolution "deniers"
10. George W. Bush

The synthetic audience must make the same prolonged synthetic EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE sound, as of some monstrous machine running without oil, and the same synthetic standing ovation in response to each statement.

= = = = =

(I haven't watched TV in a couple years, so I'm not sure about the George W. Bush topic ... I suspect Bush may have been dropped from the list now that Obama is beating the pants off Bush in the supposedly evil skills of killing terrorists and increasing oil production. Best not to mention the whole subject; might confuse the masses.)
 
  Bless you, Sevenforums!

I was running into yet another of Windows 7's endless wonderful beautiful advantages and features: A large backup folder (apparently created by the system during a sudden power-outage shutdown) couldn't be deleted by any of the tricks I know. "You require permission from SYSTEM...."

Well, on a sane OS you wouldn't require permission from anyone to delete a folder on YOUR OWN FUCKING COMPUTER WHICH HAS EXACTLY ZERO OTHER FUCKING USERS.

Finally found the answer here on SevenForums.

The trick is fairly simple: a registry entry that gives you the ABILITY TO DELETE FUCKING FILES WHEN YOU WANT TO DELETE THEM.

Again, bless you.

= = = = =

Imagine the automotive equivalent: The user's manual doesn't tell you how to change a tire that was punctured by nails. It only tells you how to change a tire that was punctured by glass. If you run over a nail and get a flat tire, the tire is completely unremovable. Every time you put the lug wrench on a lug, a loud alarm sounds. You call the factory from a pay phone, run through a hundred layers of unhelpful assistants, finally get the right administrator on the phone. He tells you how to punch in a mysterious code, usable only once, which will make your on-board computer release the tire lugs.
 
Saturday, February 18, 2012
  When loops were closed




Polistra and Happystar are listening to an episode of the 1946 series Night Editor.

The series is a 'one-man show', more like reading a bedtime story than a proper theatrical performance. The narrator reads the various parts. One-man shows are sometimes weird, but this one is effective.... perhaps because the narrator doesn't try too hard to make the voices sound different? (Think uncanny valley.)

This episode illustrates an event that could happen when business was conducted face-to-face between actual humans: a judge who knew the difference between good and evil used a few legal tricks to prevent a predatory banker from foreclosing on a worthy widow.

Story couldn't happen today. All business has been outsourced and securitized. All morality has been outsourced and chopped into senior and junior tranches. Senior tranche can steal trillions and get rewarded with more trillions. Senior tranche can order other countries to make war on its behalf. Junior tranche can live until it gets in the way of senior tranche. Any judge or prosecutor who tries to prevent a senior-trancher from eating a junior-trancher will be instantly removed.
 
  Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.

Here we goooooooooooooooooooooooooo again.
Iran's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction is threatening to trigger a “new Cold War” that poses an even greater threat of nuclear conflict than the stand-off between the USSR and the West, William Hague warns.

No, asshole, Persia is not threatening anything. Persia has not started a war in 1300 fucking years. Israel is planning and organizing this war, and you are Israel's supine little house nigger.
Mr Hague repeatedly stressed that “all options must remain on the table” when confronting the Iranian regime, despite Liberal Democrat concerns that the Government may be dragged into another military conflict.

Jesus, man, can't you AT LEAST think of another fucking way to say it? You Israel house niggers have been chanting that shit about options and tables 900000000 times per day for the last 50 years.

Every fucking one in the fucking world knows that ONE option is NEVER on the table when psychopathic mindless hyper-aggressive bully Israel is giving the orders. The option of LETTING OTHER FUCKING COUNTRIES ALONE is never on the fucking table. The option of MINDING OUR OWN FUCKING BUSINESS is never on the fucking table.

All other fucking options ARE on the fucking table, namely (1) war; (2) war; (3) war; (4) war; (5) war; (6) war; (7) war; (8) war; (9) war; (10) war; (11) war; (12) war; (13) war; (14) war; (15) war; (16) war; (17) war; (18) war; (19) war; (20) war; (21) war; (22) war; (23) war; (24) war; (25) war; (26) war; (27) war; (28) war; (29) war; (30) war; (31) war; (32) war; (33) war; (34) war; (35) war; (36) war.

Despite such a bewilderingly wide array of fucking options, our most wise and judicious house niggers always manage to select exactly the correct one, because WE'RE FUCKING EXCEPTIONAL.

Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.

[As noted before, my anger here is partly directed inward. I spent entirely too many years as an Israel house nigger, mindlessly obeying all the neocon lies even while seeing most elements of the truth.]
 
  Does this make any sense? Probably not.

Random thought, most likely invalid. Yesterday's bad experience with a decongestant made me ponder the alternatives. Not just the weird little trip, but the decongesting itself. Trying to get all the mucus out means extra coughing and blowing, thus extra inflammation of the airways and extra soreness in abdominal muscles. Makes it harder to cough and blow when really needed.

I asked: Why is this good? Practice what you so tiresomely preach, boy. Trust subsidiarity and negative feedback; let the body make its own decisions.

Let the mucus dry instead of wetting it down, and try for as much sleep as possible.

And in fact this seems to work better.

Maybe there's an analogy to healing a wound. You don't want to keep it bleeding. You want to insure that the worst stuff is out, then expose it to air, let the scab form, don't disturb it.

Substitute mucus for scab.
 
Friday, February 17, 2012
  That's it....

Misteromney has been reminding me of something that I couldn't quite pin down. His little ode to Michigan today (All the trees are the right height. All the little inland lakes. I love cars.) finally locked it up.



That's it. That's him.

= = = = =

More seriously, Santorum is ahead because he understands that having the right size of job is far more important to real people than the right size of tree.
 
  Think about that for a moment

Bit of foofaraw in "scientific" circles over some genetic modifications on the bird-flu virus that make it transmissible from human to human. Some say the modification is just a bad idea and should be forbidden; some say it should be kept secret so those mythical terrorists can't get hold of it; some idiots say everything should be open.

I'm not paying attention to any of those arguments; I'm just noticing that the virus has to be modified before it's contagious among humans. It's been around forever; people have been keeping birds for thousands of years; viruses are notoriously fast mutaters; but this virus has never mutated into a human-transmitted form on its own. Required lots of expensive "scientists" to make it happen.

So: What the fuck was all the Bird Flu panic a couple years ago? It was a complete fraud, designed to increase the power and funding of bureaucrats.

Toldja so.

 
  Won't try that again

Tired of coughing, decided to give modern pharmaceuticals a chance. Got a package of Tylenol Cold & Sinus pills this morning. Around 9AM took one pill. Waited for action; nothing happened. Around 11:30, read the package, noticed it said to take two at a time, so took two.

Did it decongest? Well, somewhat. Lungs did loosen up a bit. But at the same time the Tylenol sent me into a semi-hallucinogenic state for a half hour.

Back in hippie times the latter would have been fun. Now it's just scary.

No thanks! If that's the price of clearing the lungs a little faster than otherwise, it's too high. (Didn't intend that pun, but might as well leave it!)

From now on I'll stick to exercise and steam.

= = = = =

Two days later: Yup. Finally got 7 hours of unbroken sleep. Just like last time: Lungs all clear now. Yay!
 
  Deluxe Schadenfreude

Got some kind of flu or cold again. Third time in 12 months; clearly triggered by lack of sleep plus stress each time.

So won't be writing much. However, this news item is so fully packed with sweet Schadenfreude that it has curative powers!


Even sweeter and vastly more important: America finally joins the list of sane countries that are abandoning hippieshit wind "power".
The wind power industry is predicting massive layoffs and stalled or abandoned projects after a deal to renew a tax credit failed Thursday in Washington.

The move is expected to have major ramifications in states such as Illinois, where 13,892 megawatts of planned wind projects — enough to power 3.3 million homes per year —

Ooops: Correction needed here. Wind turbines do not power anything. They consume natural gas or coal power, and very efficiently kill birds and bats.

Continuing:
...are seeking to be connected to the electric grid. Many of those projects will be abandoned or significantly delayed without federal subsidies.

There is still a possibility the wind power tax credits could come through as a stand-alone bill or tied to other legislation. But Washington insiders say that is unlikely to happen before the election in November.

By then, the wind industry says, it will be too late to avoid massive layoffs and project delays, because wind projects slated for 2013 should already be far along.

The tax credit, which debuted in 1992,

That last line deserves to be left standing on its own.

ALWAYS REMEMBER WHO BROUGHT US ALL THIS SHIT. ALWAYS REMEMBER WHO PUNCHED THE OVERDRIVE BUTTON ON THE MARAUDING ENEMY ARMY EPA. IT WAS YOUR DEAR "CONSERVATIVE" BUSH SENIOR.

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Thursday, February 16, 2012
  What is Switzerland for?

News:
Swiss scientists plan to launch a "janitor satellite" specially designed to get rid of space junk, the orbiting debris that can do serious and costly damage to valuable satellites or even manned space ships.

The $11-million US satellite called CleanSpace One — the prototype for a family of such satellites — is being built by the Swiss Space Center at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology in Lausanne, or EPFL.





Couldn't resist.
 
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
  Obama starting to campaign against Santorum?

Obama has always made the right noises about manufacturing and outsourcing. But until now he's never made any specific proposals to solve the problem, and has happily gone along with the usual Free Trade shit.

Now he's finally getting exact:
Appearing at a Milwaukee padlock plant, Obama said the U.S. must do everything it can to make it more attractive for American businesses to stay put and grow here home, and "one place to start is with our tax code."

The president visited Master Lock, a manufacturer that has brought jobs back to the United States. Reprising ideas from his State of the Union address, Obama asked Congress to approve tax system changes right away, including a minimum tax on multinational companies so that American firms can't skirt taxes by moving jobs and profits overseas. He also pushed for tax breaks for businesses that move into communities that have been hurt by factories leaving town.

Wonder if he's starting to feel heat from Santorum?

The Leninist media, both "right" and "left", have been dismissing Santorum as "just a Catholic social-issues suckup", but his audiences are picking up the whole picture. He's been advocating American production for a long time, as an integral part of the moral message. The media can't understand this.

Plain fact: If you want to return marriage and stability to the working class (both black and white), you must first return decent jobs to working-class MEN (both black and white). Decent jobs must include industrial jobs of all types, not just super-refined high-tech jobs.

Mildly optimistic sidenote: This is how party politics is supposed to work. When both parties trade meaningless slogans while agreeing on everything important, the country is fucked. But when an opposition candidate makes a real argument that resonates with a large segment of the public, a smart incumbent will adjust real policy to damp down the opponent.

FDR succeeded partly because he had two deadly serious opponents in Father Coughlin and Huey Long, who were resonating deeply and violently with large parts of America. And they were resonating for damn good reasons.

FDR had to head them off at the pass or lose the whole country. If the useless Repooflicans had been his only opposition, he wouldn't have been forced to do anything. He could have coasted along, copying Hoover while spouting anti-Repooflican slogans.
 
  More false flag

Several "failed and unprofessional" Persian attacks supposedly attempted to harm Israeli targets in India, Gruzya, and Siam. Western experts are "puzzled" by the unprofessional and ineffective nature of these supposed attacks, and the one in India seems "counterproductive" because India is more or less friendly to Persia.

IPR can't figure it out.

I can.

False flag by Mossad.

Remember the earlier false-flag attempt in October. Supposedly Persia was trying to hire a Mexican gangster to assassinate a Saudi ambassador. That one was so obvious and absurd that most commentators, even at IPR, couldn't bring themselves to support the official Isramerican story.

But when you're trying to stir up a war, facts never matter. Ask William R. Hearst. Ask Lyndon Johnson. Ask Rupert Murdoch. Ask Gary Knell.
 
  Salute to Canada

Polistra thinks a salute to Canada is timely. Today is their Flag Day, and Canada has been showing considerable sanity.

First, Canada didn't have a financial crash in 2008 because Canada never repealed its 'Glass-Steagall' type laws. Unlike US and UK, Canada never surrendered to Goldman.

Second, after many years of following Gaia even more zealously than we did, Canada is seriously cutting loose from Green Suicide. Canceling subsidies for hippieshit wind "power", officially pulling out of the Kyoto tyranny, and opening wide to oil and gas exploration.

Why does Canada hold firm against Goldman and recover more quickly from insanity? Because it retains a natural parliamentary system. When we switched to our purely abstract republic in 1776, based on lunatic Philosophical Theories about "rights" and "equality", we created the conditions for total paralysis and total corruption. It took a long time, but we arrived at the destination in 1989, and now we're just about dead.




Radio Canada ran its own brief salute to Flag Day this morning, including a soul-stirring rendition of the old Maple Leaf anthem in Sacred Harp harmony. Makes me wonder why they stick with the drab and vague 'Oooooooo Cannnnadaaaaaaaaaaaa' anthem when this perfect and snappy little song is available!


= = = = =

2/20/12:

Canada is getting even better:
Canada has threatened a trade war with European Union over the bloc's plan to label oil from Alberta's vast tar sands as highly polluting...

"Canada will not hesitate to defend its interests, including at the World Trade Organisation," state letters sent to European commissioners by Canada's ambassador to the EU and its oil minister.

ABOUT FUCKING TIME! The elderly lunatic mass-murdering wacked-out hypercriminals of EU are finally getting some serious punchback from countries with real influence. (It wouldn't matter if, say, Belize or Mali threatened a trade war.)
 
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
  Non-barking dogs

The usual neocons aren't barking very loudly at Obama's proposal to cut our A-bomb arsenal by 80%. Nothing on NRO, nothing on Daily Caller, minor mentions on Drudge and Newsmax. Only Weiner alias "Savage", the pure neocon transparently pretending to be an "independent", hit it hard today.

Wonder if most of the usual suspects are coming to terms with post-Cold War reality? Or are they remembering that their boy Bush eliminated ALL of our neutron bombs in 2003 under an agreement with Putin?

In either case, the cut is sensible at this point.

Bush failed to use the bombs on 9/12 when he should have thrown a few at Arabia. Now the world knows that we're not going to use them in ANY circumstance. Zero deterrent value.

Also, the weapons wonks at CFR and other think-tanks have been quietly warning that the bombs may not even be functional because of poor maintenance. Those are complex devices with lots of old electronics and several stages of chemical explosive. The nuke material has been irradiating the electronics and chemicals for 40 years, which is known to cause damage. Details are classified, but the wonks say maintenance has been badly neglected. And if the CFR boys have reached that conclusion, you can be damn sure the Chinese have also figured it out. They have spies everywhere.

So our A-bombs don't deter and probably won't work. Definitely time to recycle the material into reactor fuel, as we've already been doing with old Russian bombs.
 
Monday, February 13, 2012
  It's that awful ColdWarming again!

Classic set of headlines on today's Anti-Scientific Anti-American website.



I've highlighted the two Andes items just in case it's not obvious....

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  AUDIN rebuild

Putting this up front in the unlikely event that someone was waiting for the fix to AUDIN, my old public-domain audiology courseware.

This week, after seeing indications that people were actually downloading the program, I decided to check out the setup file to be sure everything is OK. It wasn't OK! The setup file had acquired a virus. I located the original CD and set up AUDIN on my computer, in order to build a new installer.

While playing around, realized the existing version (built in 2004, tested on 98 and XP) was crashing in Win 7.

For what it's worth: the problem was memory 'access violation', and it came from using HeapAlloc/HeapFree for class constructors/destructors, instead of GlobalAlloc/GlobalFree. It appears that I wrote it first using Global, then switched to Heap for some unrecorded reason. Perhaps the Heap pair ran better in Win 3.1 or some other very old system.

I switched back to GlobalAlloc/GlobalFree, recompiled with newer Visual C++, and built a new installer in dull but standard MSI form.

Now it works for sure in Win 7 and Win 2000-Server. I no longer have an XP computer for testing, but if it works in 2000-Server, it should also work in XP.

For more background, see here.

Download the new setup file here.

NOTE: Because the stupid website refuses to download an MSI file for stupid "security" reasons, I had to change the file to "AUDIN-SETUP.msi.txt" for permissible download. Just rename it without the .TXT part and run it to install AUDIN.

There is also a ZIPPED container including the same MSI. For some reason the stupid website handles a ZIP but won't handle an MSI by name.

Update 5/19/2015: Modified and rebuilt the program again to make it look right on newer displays. It was 'hard-wired' for 800 x 600 and looked too wide on bigger displays. Now it's not resizable, but holds its correct aspect ratio. Same names for files as above.
 
  Best article of the year

Last week I noted (and transcribed) a wonderful BBC interview with Mahathir Mohamed, former prime minister of Malaysia. He advised Europe and America to get realistic, to start producing instead of manipulating, to stop living rich when there's no real money.

He observed that Asians are more realistic:

"When we are poor we live as poor people."

Now it appears that one part of Europe may finally be absorbing facts, coming to terms with reality.

In a beautifully written article on Greece by Maria Margaronis:

When you ask people on the street if they would rather Greece went bankrupt than submit to further measures, many now point out that it is already bankrupt, that public sector workers have gone unpaid for months, that hospitals have no supplies, that the poor are being wrung dry in order to pay the banks. "Let's get it over with," a woman who works for the education ministry said to me. "Then we'd know we only had €250 a month and we could start again.

Mahathir Mohamed would approve!

I have to quote the final paragraph, simply to bask in the reflected glory of perfect logic and lyrical prose:
The trouble with historical metaphors is that they can obscure the present: what's really at stake here is not Greece's identity but Europe's. All eyes are fixed on Athens, but the way out of the crisis requires a choice about what kind of Europe we want. The one we have now, with its deep structural inequalities and its rigid adherence to a failed economic ideology, protects neither democracy nor human rights. Stiff-necked and punitive, it prefers to eat its children.

How can anyone dare to support the EU after reading that?

The dismal answer: Because Goldman maximizes its profit when EU eats its children. That's all we need to know.

=======================================

Meanwhile, one of EU's most valuable children is screaming in pain, but EU continues to rip out its guts:
Global planemaker Airbus joined a chorus of concern that a European scheme to charge airlines for carbon emissions risks triggering a full-blown trade war, with implications for plane deals and even Europe's crippling sovereign debt crisis.

The EU's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), introduced on January 1, has drawn howls of protest from airlines around the world, with China banning its carriers from taking part.

Airbus Chief Executive Tom Enders said he was increasingly concerned at the potential fall-out if tensions are not defused. "I am very worried about the consequences of that. What started out as a solution for the environment has become a source of potential trade conflict and that should be a worry for all of us," he told an aviation conference on Monday ahead of the Singapore Airshow.

EU Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas acknowledged the growing opposition to the scheme, and said he was willing to be flexible in finding a solution, but the 27-nation bloc would not bow to pressure to suspend the scheme, which it says is part of a global fight against climate change.

"Trading Scheme" = Profit for Goldman.
"Fight Against Climate Change" = Profit for Goldman.
All you need to know.
 
Sunday, February 12, 2012
  Perfect summation

Perfectly phrased description of Modern Times in an NPR interview with Anne Rice.

"If there's a modern temper, it's that we are alone now. A lot of the institutions in the past that gave us guidance are now suspect or moribund."

Needless to say, this was the ultimate goal of Stalin and his agents in America. Didn't work in Russia, but worked perfectly here.

Stalin and Betty Friedan, who are spending eternity raping each other, looked up from their mutually condign punishment and smiled for a moment.
 
  Confusion comes to a head, maybe

Hardly surprising news:

Zawahiri gives support to rebels in Syria, and part of the violence there is believed to be run by al-Qaeda.

As I noted a year ago, this shouldn't have surprised anyone. Nevertheless, both "sides" of American politics are completely confused and convoluted by the whole Arab Spring.

I'm cheering for these uprisings from a nationalist perspective.

Stalinist multi-culturalism doesn't work. 60 years of misery and chaos in US and EU have proved that beyond a doubt.

Muslim countries should have Muslim rulers, Christian countries should have Christian rulers, and people who violate the standards of each culture should expect to have trouble. That's called civilization, and it does work.

But cheering is not the same as material support. On the governmental level we should be standing back. Way back. No sanctions, no military aid, no diplomatic pressure, no air support, no troops. Just let it happen. Don't jump in on either side. We're too fucking stupid to predict the consequences of an intervention, as the last 60 years have also proved beyond a doubt.
 
Saturday, February 11, 2012
  Real capitalism

The textbook form of the Free Market still works in niches where Wall Street and its cute little pet governments haven't ruined things!
A group of traveling prostitutes suspected of settling in Spokane told police they were making good money here because the local competition is so ugly.

One woman is in custody and other arrests are possible as part of an ongoing investigation into a 36-year-old California man who investigators believe has been brokering sex deals while living out of motels in Portland, Seattle and Spokane. Two motel rooms in Spokane were searched this week.

Shaquisha L. Jenkins, 22, was arrested on a misdemeanor prostitution charge Tuesday when the Spokane Regional Gang Task Force searched rooms at the Stratford Suites, 11808 W. Centre Lane in Airway Heights, and the Bel Air Motel, 1303 E. Sprague Ave. in Spokane.

A Spokane police officer contacted Jenkins and an 18-year-old woman on East Sprague Avenue Jan. 31 and was told “that because there is a lack of attractive prostitutes in the area, they are able to make fairly good money,” according to court documents.

No chance of a discrimination lawsuit, no complaints from NOW/NARAL. Just facts and realism!

Sidenote: Though I haven't window-shopped in the East Sprague big-box stores in many years, I'll admit that the merchandise I see on the bus lately tends to verify the esthetic judgments stated in the article.
 
  Not a universal curse

Polistra recently discussed the 'Curse of Natural Resources', the idea that a country is generally better off without a valuable resource like oil or diamonds.

Taki has a vivid account of Nigeria's cursedness, with constant civil wars between various tribal and religious factions driven by oil. We've seen the same thing across Africa and Central Asia for a LONG time.

It's easy to see why this happens.

A resource-poor country like Japan needs oil and has none of its own, so Japan has two choices: (1) Take over the world; (2) Make enough money to buy oil. Japan tried the first choice from 1905 to 1945. Fun while it lasted, but rather unpleasant at the end. Since 1945 they've taken the second choice, which turned out a lot better for Japan's own people. They work productively, they receive money for work, and they don't get bombed.

The exact same thing happened to Germany.

Resource-rich countries like Nigeria or Iraq or Congo have plenty of oil or diamonds or copper, so they don't need to learn how to work. In such places the reciprocity is not Work for Money, but Ownership for Money. The tribe or government or rebel group that owns the resource-bearing land gets the money. Net result: endless war.

But the curse is not universal. North America has plenty of natural resources but doesn't fight tribal wars about them. Oddly enough, our biggest dispute is not about who gets to own the resources, but whether we get to use them at all. Normal businesses are trying to extract the oil and copper and gas in a civilized way; the marauding enemy army EPA is trying to prevent us from extracting any of it.

Why no curse? Maybe because our culture came from England, a resource-poor island. Admittedly the colonization of North America happened because England was trying to take over the world at that time, but England's reason for colonizing here was agriculture, not minerals. Thus the emphasis was still on working, not extracting.

It's one hypothesis, anyway.
 
Friday, February 10, 2012
  Untwisting an axis

Today's mini-furore over the contraception provisions of Obamacare shows a very slight return toward the natural alignment of parties and ideologies.

Popes in the 20th Century have consistently favored more 'socialistic' economic views, with the state protecting the poor against the rampaging rich. Popes have also consistently favored protecting life in all conditions. They've gone beyond proper Christian moral logic in recent years as they reject the death penalty, but before that change their position on all aspects of human existence was fully consistent with Christ. He founded a church of the oppressed, not a church of the elite. Anyone who is endangered by the wealthy and the powerful should be protected by his church; and that includes helpless unborn infants who are endangered by their more powerful mothers.

In Europe, Catholic political parties (usually called Christian Democrats) have run along the same lines, and still do.

American politics also followed the same lines until 1973. FDR held most of the Catholic voters because he was truly on the side of the poor, firmly restraining the vultures of Wall Street. Republicans held Protestant voters by supporting the vultures. In those years most of the big vultures were Presbyterian, and other Protestants felt their interests aligned with the vultures. (Evangelicals weren't a significant faction at that time.)

In 1968 the two parties switched part of their message, for reasons that didn't make much sense. Democrats picked up the value set of the old rich, which is also the value set of the criminal class at the bottom and the hippie children of the bourgeoisie.

Republicans then picked up the value set of the bourgeoisie, which included most Catholics.

At the same time, the parties retained their original economic positions. On economics, D was still nominally aligned with the working class and R with the old rich.

Roe v Wade in 1973 hardened up this strange twist. Catholics and Evangelicals, whose economic interests should have been D, moved to R. Presbyterians and similar anti-Christian Protestants, whose economic interests should have been R, moved to D. The richest of the rich are now Jews, who learned to be Democrats when they were mainly poor; they stayed with D but switched from economic loyalty to values loyalty.

And there we've stood ever since. Neither party has a consistent set of values, so American politics has degenerated into pure team-cheering and meaningless random slogans, attempting to swing those few hundred Floridians whose votes actually count. Nobody else exists.

There have always been a few members of Congress who stayed with the old consistent lines, making them 'incomprehensible mavericks' as seen from the conventional twisted view. Ron Paul is a pre-1968 Republican, favoring the economic interests AND the hippieshit values of the super-rich. Marcy Kaptur (and several other Rust Belt types) are close to pre-1968 Dems, favoring the economic interests AND the strict values of working class Romans.

= = = = =

If NPR's analysis of Obama's backdown is valid, he's acting out of respect for the more socialistic Dorothy Day-style impulses of Catholics. If so, this little halfway compromise could start to untwist the large contradiction.
 
  Tin ears

Lots of 'tin ears' in the news.

Misteromney gives us a fresh example every day. Not concerned with the poor, loves to fire people, and so on.

Jerry Sandusky wants to get out of house arrest so he can visit his grandkids.

Bernie Marcus and other rich bastards think they're doing smart PR when they say things like "Who gives a crap about some imbecile? Are you kidding me?"

Pseudoscientist charlatans think they're doing smart PR when they say things like "The social controversy over climate change is in part due to climate change denial. In order to defend and support the teaching of climate change, it is important to understand — and be able to rebut — arguments about climate science, and to understand why people choose to attack such well-tested science."

= = = = =

A generation ago these 'tin ears' weren't nearly as common.

Wrong-doers weren't innately different then. They didn't have any more conscience about their wrong-doing than now. They slept easily, just as modern wrong-doers sleep easily.

But old-fashioned malefactors had a clear intellectual understanding that their deeds were abnormal and disapproved by the rest of society, and knew how to avoid saying such brazenly dumb things!

I'm inclined to blame our tight caste system.

A couple generations ago, most people shopped in the same stores, rode the same streetcars, and attended the same movies and organizations.

Most of us smoked the same cigarettes, which gave us a natural ice-breaker. Most didn't brush our teeth regularly, most didn't shower daily. We were much less fussy about smell.

Rich folks had to ask a poor stranger for information at times, teaching them that poor strangers were capable of knowing things; poor folks had to answer a rich stranger's question at times, teaching them that rich strangers didn't know everything. Now Siri has taken over this job, allowing us to keep our pet illusions about strangers.

Rich people had black American domestic servants who schooled them in working-class ethics. (Redundant: should just say ethics.) Vice-versa, the blacks serving in rich homes understood with perfect and cynical clarity how rich bastards behave. Now the rich have disposable Mexican servants who barely speak English and go home to Mexico when they're fired.

The bad/good distinction also works both ways. Modern wrong-doers can't picture how a normal mind works, how a normal mind perceives their words. Vice-versa, modern innocents fail to understand how the criminal or con-man mind works, and can't conceive that the criminal sleeps well at night. They say fantastically stupid things like "Well, I'd rather see him get life than the gas chamber, because life will give him time to regret his mistakes." No it won't, you hopeless idiot. Life will just give him time to train lots of young criminals.

= = = = =

Bet you're expecting me to issue a disclaimer. Expecting me to say "Well ha ha, we may look back fondly on olden times, but we wouldn't really want all of that to return, would we? We can't go back to racism, classism, ageism, fatism, somethingelseism, homophobia, somethingelseophobia, etc, etc, etc. We're past all that now. This is, after all, 2012, ha ha."

Nope. Not gonna say that.

All of those idiotic -ism words are fancy Orwellian ways of saying just one -ism.

REALISM.

We could go back to realism if we wanted to. We don't want to, because we've been hopelessly stupefied by 57 years of Die-Versity in "laws" and "courts", 57 years of Leninist propaganda on TV.

And even if some of us wanted to recover realism, we know perfectly well that the Gulag awaits, the Delta Force is ready to rumble. Not worth it.

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  Language update for Feb



Professor Polistra has gathered a pretty good load of verbal ratshit for this season's Language Update.

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Curating:

Formerly just museums, now suddenly applies to any type of organizing or collecting activity.

"One big benefit of curating your Facebook feed..."

"Absolut Soni explores the past 20 years with curating space with mixed media installations from audio-visual to sculptures and couture..."

"Although we'd like to think that nothing genuine can come from curating a bevy of social media platforms..."

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BCE / CE:

Secular tyrants have taken this up with a vengeance lately.

"The earthquake happened in 529 BCE. That means Before The Common Era."

They always specify what BCE means, so that we unwashed unenlightened unprogressive religious yahoos can perhaps gain a slight vague glimmering of the Enlightened Progressive Secular Scientific Gift that has been bestowed upon our lowly undeserving ears.

YOU AGGRESSIVE CONDESCENDING MOTHERFUCKING SCHOOLYARD BULLIES, WE ALREADY KNOW PERFECTLY FUCKING WELL WHAT BCE MEANS. BCE MEANS "I'M A HIGH PRIEST WITH MANY GRADUATE DEGREES, AND YOU'RE A DUMB FUCKING IGNORANT LOSER." LISTEN, ASSHOLES, IF YOU ACTUALLY WANTED TO COMMUNICATE FACTS TO US, YOU WOULD SPEAK NORMAL FUCKING ENGLISH. IN NORMAL FUCKING ENGLISH, THE TWO ERAS ARE CALLED BC AND AD, NOT BCE AND CE.

These monsters smash civilization with every single fucking toxic nasty filthy word they utter, and then they wonder why HUMANS fail to respect them.

Tumbril time, citoyens.

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Contextualize:

100% Pure buzzword. Zero calories, zero semantics.


"But those fires were in the forests of south-east Australia – nowhere near the savannahs of northern Australia where you propose introducing elephants. We had to contextualise."

"The post has been expanded to better contextualize Sen. Jeff Sessions’ remarks."

"As for Mr. Payne, he responded curtly when asked about Searchlight’s shifting strategy this week. 'Ask the studio,' he said. 'I just make them. I don’t contextualize them.'"

"In that way, we can all reap the privilege of being able to contextualize ourselves through life’s toughest hurdles."

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Personal Journey / Evolve:

Another name for re-education, another name for Room 101. The end of every Personal Journey is I Love Die-Versity, I Love Fag Marriage, I Love Free Trade, I Love Open Borders. Not one iota of thought remains in my vacuum-packed brain after my Personal Journey. My vacuum-packed brain functions only to receive and implement today's Official Diktat from every single program on my Official Cable TV Telescreen.

The endpoint of Evolving is the same. Humans are rapidly Evolving in the direction of total chaos and destruction of our species. Darwinists should be protesting loudly at the abuse of Evolving to mean Eliminating reproduction, but they won't protest because they are not really Darwinists at all. They're just bloodsucking Death Fetishists like the rest of the mass-slaughtering ruling class.

One question to you Commie fuckheads: If you're really Darwinists, how come you believe that your own personal belief set as of this millisecond is the ultimate absolute final conclusive goal of all conceivable evolution? And if you look back to, say, last year, you also felt that your own personal belief set as of that millisecond was the ultimate absolute final conclusive goal of all conceivable evolution. No further progress was possible. What happens if your personal belief set, rigidly obeying the commands of your 500-foot plasma telescreen, adopts a different belief next week? Since this week's belief is the ultimate, does that mean next week's belief is impossible?

Classic example of both from Gov Gregoire:

Governor Chris Gregoire of Washington wishes she'd supported marriage equality for gays and lesbians years ago -- and she hopes President Obama evolves in his thinking soon. But she respects the president’s “personal journey” and asked people to “give him the time” to see it through.



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Tri-Yoka:

Probably unique, but worth recording and watching because pronunciations spread through the elite. The latest futile effort to keep Greece enslaved by the monstrous EU conspiracy is run by EU itself, IMF and Euro Central Bank. This Gang Of Three calls itself the Troika for some reason. One commentator on Bloomberg this morning pronounced it "Tri-Yoka", which is accidentally appropriate. Troika literally means a sled or vehicle pulled by a yoke of three horses.

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  Fraser Nelson gets it

Nelson in the Telegraph:
But the Bank of England cannot create wealth. All it can do is transfer it, from savers to debtors. Every extra penny enjoyed by those whose mortgage rate is now lower than inflation is a penny not going into a savings account – and the full effects are only now becoming apparent.

As those in the pensions industry know, what is happening is nothing short of a crisis. Pension Corporation, an insurance firm, estimates that the hole blown in British company pension schemes by the first round of QE was £74 billion. Firms are legally obliged to make up this shortfall – so they will need to find £20 million a day of real cash to repair the damage.

Same in US. Substitute Arch-Criminal Bugsy Bernanke, Greatest Thief In History, for Sir Mervyn King, and substitute Federal Reserve for Bank of England.

It's not just pension schemes that suffer, it's also insurance companies and the people who buy insurance. Many pension funds and insurance companies have legal or contractual restrictions on the types of investments they can make. With safe bonds yielding negative interest, those companies are earning less. This forces insurance premiums to go up.

I'm puzzled by this. Surely pension funds and insurance co's are big enough and financial enough to have influence in Congress. Why haven't they complained? Or if they have complained, why hasn't their influence moved Congress? I suppose the answer is obvious: Goldman Sachs wants it this way, and nothing else exists.

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Update 2/14/2012: Pension plans in Britain are finally starting to complain publicly. I guess Goldman holds only 99.9999999% of the cards there.
 
Thursday, February 09, 2012
  BRAVO OBAMA!

Obama the Texas Cowboy Oilman is leaving Bush the Gandhian Green Hippie in the dust.

Two new nuclear plants APPROVED FOR CONSTRUCTION, for the first time since Three Mile Island!

Time for Polistra to do the Energy Dance, not seen in a few years:



 
  Lake Vostok

News:
Valery Lukin, the head of Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, said reaching the lake was akin to the Americans winning the space race in 1969.

"I think it's fair to compare this project to flying to the moon," said Lukin, who oversaw the mission and announced its success.


My first response to Lukin's moon-landing comparison was "Yeah, okay, you Russkis were late to the moon so you have to say that."

Then I thought about it for a moment. He's perfectly right. Maybe more than right.

We've been examining the moon forever. In fact, plants and animals have been shaping their lives around the moon's influence for as long as life has existed. And humans have been looking closely at the moon with telescopes for 400 years. Our moon landings didn't tell us anything we didn't already know.

This under-ice Great Lake is much less familiar, much less explored, than the moon. We didn't even know it existed until 30 years ago, and we haven't been able to 'see' it at all until now.

When your entire culture is based on sadistically aggressive imperial expansion, you're blind to most aspects of reality. When your only question is "What's out there?" you never ask "What's in here?" After the end of the Space Race a few Americans are starting to ask the latter question, which turns out to be far more interesting and USEFUL.
 
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
  Burble

Since I've been paying more attention to the outdoors I've been noticing California Quail on and around my tiny property.

A couple years ago I began to hear their distinctive call occasionally, and enjoyed the tone which reminds me of Martha Mears. Last summer a family of quail settled in a little micro-forest, about 30 by 8 feet, along the west side of my yard. This copse is bounded on the back by a fence and on the front by tall yellow roses. In between are a dozen narrow trees or shrubs. In summer the ground under this micro-forest is nicely shaded and cool; in winter it stays fairly dry; and the thorny roses block humans and dogs. Good shelter for a quail-sized animal.

Most likely the quail decided to stay when I was planting and reseeding the back yard to replace the trees and pine crap that had made the yard unusable. They consumed about half the seeds that I put down. Seemed like a fair bargain in exchange for the entertainment they provide. Plump critters marching around in formation with their cartoonish head-antennae bobbing up and down: just plain fun to watch.



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Related bit of science: Univ of Surrey is looking into the human impact of bird sounds.
Listening to five minutes of birdsong every day can be said to help beat the winter blues, but what other benefits can it bring? A new three year research project that will look into the impact of birdsong on human wellbeing and behaviour is being launched today by the University of Surrey in partnership with the National Trust and Surrey Wildlife Trust.

These quail produce one sound that soothes my soul. When foraging they burble together, sounding like 'wurp? wurp? wurp?' Unmistakable meaning even to my dull mammalian brain: We're all here. We're all here. We're all here. We're all here.

Humans don't make that sound, though I suppose small talk or humming while working may serve the same purpose.

Clearly there are common acoustic elements in the sounds emitted by most vertebrates, and there are common mechanisms in the cochlea and auditory system to detect these common factors. Hissing and growling are understood to signify danger. Infant sounds are universal, and most birds and mammals respond to them protectively.

And now we're back to the Grand Blueprint, aren't we?

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Artistic note: this is the first real animation I've done in a while. Mostly I've been recycling old ones with a few variations. Feels good, and serendipity added some interest. Due to Poser's interpolation, the quail make some cute moves that weren't part of my explicit keyframing.

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  Not fair

Honest and scientific people have noticed for a long time that the Gaian form of pseudoscience fills all the slots of a religion. By now this observation is trite. Gaia has an apocalypse, a messiah, and typical forms of sin and redemption. It makes predictions that are 100% wrong, and continues to maintain faith that someday all of its predictions will come true. The Hidden Warmth will get ya if ya don't watch out! Just you wait, unbelievers!

Suddenly realized.... this comparison is unfair to religion.

Traditional religions, at least in their more solid forms, make very few bad predictions.

They say lots of presently untestable things about presently untestable areas of life: souls, heaven, the thoughts of God, etc.

But when they make testable predictions about the consequences of actual human behavior, they're generally right. And they're closer to the mark than secular "sciences" like psychology and economics.

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  Probably wise



Perfect typo ... or is it more like an auto-correct? ... in latest UK Telegraph Anglopanic over an inch of snow. Probably a good idea, since clearly Brits have no idea how to drive in winter.
 

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