Saturday, March 31, 2012
It's Earth Hour again!
Polistra and Happystar celebrate Earth Hour again! This time with a boost from one of Edison's everlasting nickel-iron batteries.
= = = = =
Special salute this year to Canada, the only nation that is officially breaking loose from the all-consuming mass-slaughtering brain-deleting Gaian tyranny. In Canada the lights are truly going ON again, signaling the end of the Green Dark Ages in one place.
If you're not familiar with the strength of Canada's sudden return to sanity, check out this screechy infantile tantrum by a leading Canadian Stalinist. He documents every aspect of the emergence into the light ... as seen through Satan's funhouse mirror, in which light is "dark", cold is "hot", feverish apocalyptic fantasies are "science", and total censorship is "open debate."
Polistra and Happystar celebrate Earth Hour again! This time with a boost from one of Edison's everlasting nickel-iron batteries.
= = = = =
Special salute this year to Canada, the only nation that is officially breaking loose from the all-consuming mass-slaughtering brain-deleting Gaian tyranny. In Canada the lights are truly going ON again, signaling the end of the Green Dark Ages in one place.
If you're not familiar with the strength of Canada's sudden return to sanity, check out this screechy infantile tantrum by a leading Canadian Stalinist. He documents every aspect of the emergence into the light ... as seen through Satan's funhouse mirror, in which light is "dark", cold is "hot", feverish apocalyptic fantasies are "science", and total censorship is "open debate."
Labels: Carbon Cult
¶ 5:56 PM
Whoda thunk it? Well, no.
Often when a murder suspect is identified, people say "He was such a polite boy!" or "He just seemed like an ordinary guy."
For some reason nobody is saying those things about these dudes. Wonder why? ¶ 2:16 PM
For some reason nobody is saying those things about these dudes. Wonder why? ¶ 2:16 PM
Canada cuts pennies
Canada eliminates pennies, prepares to cut nickels.
We could easily phase out pennies, nickels and dimes. Quarters probably deserve to stay because they're still used in some vending machines and they're still a halfway meaningful unit of value.
How to make it work: Program cash registers so they round up or down RANDOMLY. Then the customer and the store would each get the advantage half the time, and both would come out even in the long run.
Females would have trouble with this procedure because females don't understand math, but it would be irrelevant because females never pay with cash. Older females pay by check, younger ones with food stamp debit cards. ¶ 4:22 AM
We could easily phase out pennies, nickels and dimes. Quarters probably deserve to stay because they're still used in some vending machines and they're still a halfway meaningful unit of value.
How to make it work: Program cash registers so they round up or down RANDOMLY. Then the customer and the store would each get the advantage half the time, and both would come out even in the long run.
Females would have trouble with this procedure because females don't understand math, but it would be irrelevant because females never pay with cash. Older females pay by check, younger ones with food stamp debit cards. ¶ 4:22 AM
Friday, March 30, 2012
Lottery mania
The idiot mania over MegaBalls or whatever impels me to reprint this thought from a few months ago, leaving off an initial part referring to then-current news.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Since 2006 our economy has been trying to run on the counterfeit Wealth Effect generated by homeowners borrowing against a nonexistent increase in fictional value. At the same time we have completely canceled and deleted the honest Wealth Effect of stability and frugality.
In a civilized economy, storage of value allows people, businesses and governments to feel secure and confident. When you feel secure and confident, you're willing to spend money in sensible ways. You're less likely to gamble.
In a chaotic 'bets and debts' economy, with no storage of anything, you're always on the edge. You're vulnerable to every exigency of nature, to every scam and fraud, to every loss and expense. You're ready to risk it all on one roll of the dice.
The song, of course, expressed the attitude of a working man in Gilded Age Version 1, which we see repeated now in Gilded Age v2. Cynical and utterly realistic. The working man knew damn well that a Little Bit wouldn't help. When you owe your soul to the company store, when every dollar of income has to outgo immediately, only a one-in-a-billion Superball is enough blooming luck.
However: In a civilized economy where jobs are stable, money is constant, storage is secure and saving yields a meaningful return, you only need a Little Bit of luck. When your money goes into savings first, each small bonus, each slight increase in sales, gives you a permanent gain.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Since 2006 our economy has been trying to run on the counterfeit Wealth Effect generated by homeowners borrowing against a nonexistent increase in fictional value. At the same time we have completely canceled and deleted the honest Wealth Effect of stability and frugality.
In a civilized economy, storage of value allows people, businesses and governments to feel secure and confident. When you feel secure and confident, you're willing to spend money in sensible ways. You're less likely to gamble.
In a chaotic 'bets and debts' economy, with no storage of anything, you're always on the edge. You're vulnerable to every exigency of nature, to every scam and fraud, to every loss and expense. You're ready to risk it all on one roll of the dice.
The song, of course, expressed the attitude of a working man in Gilded Age Version 1, which we see repeated now in Gilded Age v2. Cynical and utterly realistic. The working man knew damn well that a Little Bit wouldn't help. When you owe your soul to the company store, when every dollar of income has to outgo immediately, only a one-in-a-billion Superball is enough blooming luck.
However: In a civilized economy where jobs are stable, money is constant, storage is secure and saving yields a meaningful return, you only need a Little Bit of luck. When your money goes into savings first, each small bonus, each slight increase in sales, gives you a permanent gain.
Labels: the broken circle
¶ 5:23 PM
Still roaring downward
Two years ago all English-speaking countries were zooming toward chaos and destruction in lockstep.
Now Canada, Britain and Australia are tentatively creeping toward sanity, and only America is still roaring full speed into Hell.
News from ABC:
Incorrect, fuckheads. Each gigawatt of wind "power" will require a new gigawatt of coal or natural gas generation.
Incorrect, fuckhead. It will create jobs in China, and will have no effect on foreign energy sources. It will, however, increase the profits of utility companies, because the newly built coal plants will enable them to raise rates even more.
Now Canada, Britain and Australia are tentatively creeping toward sanity, and only America is still roaring full speed into Hell.
News from ABC:
The Obama administration and five states have reached an agreement to speed up approval of offshore wind farms in the Great Lakes, which have been delayed by cost concerns and public opposition.
...
Administration officials said the region's offshore winds could generate more than 700 gigawatts — one-fifth of all potential wind energy nationwide. Each gigawatt of offshore wind could power 300,000 homes while reducing demand for electricity from coal, which emits greenhouse gases and other pollutants, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo.
Incorrect, fuckheads. Each gigawatt of wind "power" will require a new gigawatt of coal or natural gas generation.
Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn said developing offshore wind energy would "promote economic development and create jobs, while reducing our dependence on foreign energy sources."
Incorrect, fuckhead. It will create jobs in China, and will have no effect on foreign energy sources. It will, however, increase the profits of utility companies, because the newly built coal plants will enable them to raise rates even more.
Labels: Carbon Cult
¶ 4:36 AM
Thursday, March 29, 2012
That's grim.
Article in the latest Collectible Automobile magazine mentions something I hadn't heard before. The 1918 influenza epidemic killed so many children that baby coffins became a significant industry, and car companies like Studebaker produced special small hearses to carry those coffins.
Brrrr. Sobering. ¶ 8:15 AM
Brrrr. Sobering. ¶ 8:15 AM
First blood!
The newly elected government in the Aussie province of Queensland is getting down to BUSINESS immediately!
DEEEEEEEEEELICIOUS!!!!!!!
First blood. Revenge at last.
It's not jail or death, but this is by fucking god the FIRST PUNISHMENT EVER GIVEN to a genocidal all-slaughtering sadistic Gaian. The first discomfort actually administered by a superior authority, and a sweetly condign discomfort it is.
Especially sweet since Australia has been suffering worst of all the Western countries under the Gaian whips and chains.
By fucking god, why can't America have politicians like Newman?
This is the final final final final proof that our system has utterly totally entirely completely ceased to function in every single imaginable way, and we need to return to a Parliamentary system. Now.
Mr Newman yesterday declared his LNP government would axe seven other green schemes, on the grounds the carbon tax would make them redundant. "We now have a federal government that is imposing a great big carbon tax on us and the rest of the country that is meant to solve all these (environmental) problems," he said.
Mr Newman has given the job of dismantling the programs to the bureaucrat who set them up - Greg Withers, who is married to Ms Bligh.
"We want him to unravel those programs 'cause he's the bloke who set them up," Mr Newman said. "There are rumours going around that he's packed up his office. I want to say very clearly that is news to me; he is, as far as I'm concerned, an employee of the Queensland government, and we would like him to do a few things for us at the moment."
DEEEEEEEEEELICIOUS!!!!!!!
First blood. Revenge at last.
It's not jail or death, but this is by fucking god the FIRST PUNISHMENT EVER GIVEN to a genocidal all-slaughtering sadistic Gaian. The first discomfort actually administered by a superior authority, and a sweetly condign discomfort it is.
Especially sweet since Australia has been suffering worst of all the Western countries under the Gaian whips and chains.
By fucking god, why can't America have politicians like Newman?
This is the final final final final proof that our system has utterly totally entirely completely ceased to function in every single imaginable way, and we need to return to a Parliamentary system. Now.
Labels: Carbon Cult
¶ 3:25 AM
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Mr Broccoli is pissed.
The bottom frame is serious. In the last month I've finally returned to eating lots of veggies, after a couple years of increasing frustration with Campbell's chunky soups. They've been sneaking in more and more onions, and my digestive system was getting more and more stormy.
Back in October I tried to get back to home-cooked combinations, but it didn't come out right; no real decrease in storminess, and seemed wrong somehow. I was trying to focus on programming at that point, so I fell back to Campbell's Chunky.
This spring the onions finally became completely unavoidable, so I sez to myself,
"HEY DUMMY! You're always growling about doing what works. This didn't work because you weren't following your own instructions; you weren't cooking the same veggie combination that had worked well from 1970 to 1990."
So I went back to the exact original.
Recipe, sorta:
Once a week boil up a cup of barley; leave it fairly crunchy and keep it in the fridge. Each day, take a few big spoons of the barley; add fresh broccoli and carrots and various other stuff, but NO DAMN ONIONS. Low boil for 10 minutes, then add a can of Tomato Bisque Soup and cook another 10 minutes.
When you do what works, you'll find that it works.
Perfectly satisfying, and barley and broccoli seem to be performing their proper function. Specifically, the complex nutrients force the digestive system to work for its living, instead of sitting around and grousing as it was doing with the over-processed stuff. Also slightly cheaper than the pre-processed (around $1.90 a day versus $2.25 a day) but that's not the main purpose. ¶ 6:22 PM
The bottom frame is serious. In the last month I've finally returned to eating lots of veggies, after a couple years of increasing frustration with Campbell's chunky soups. They've been sneaking in more and more onions, and my digestive system was getting more and more stormy.
Back in October I tried to get back to home-cooked combinations, but it didn't come out right; no real decrease in storminess, and seemed wrong somehow. I was trying to focus on programming at that point, so I fell back to Campbell's Chunky.
This spring the onions finally became completely unavoidable, so I sez to myself,
"HEY DUMMY! You're always growling about doing what works. This didn't work because you weren't following your own instructions; you weren't cooking the same veggie combination that had worked well from 1970 to 1990."
So I went back to the exact original.
Recipe, sorta:
Once a week boil up a cup of barley; leave it fairly crunchy and keep it in the fridge. Each day, take a few big spoons of the barley; add fresh broccoli and carrots and various other stuff, but NO DAMN ONIONS. Low boil for 10 minutes, then add a can of Tomato Bisque Soup and cook another 10 minutes.
When you do what works, you'll find that it works.
Perfectly satisfying, and barley and broccoli seem to be performing their proper function. Specifically, the complex nutrients force the digestive system to work for its living, instead of sitting around and grousing as it was doing with the over-processed stuff. Also slightly cheaper than the pre-processed (around $1.90 a day versus $2.25 a day) but that's not the main purpose. ¶ 6:22 PM
Every now and then
Once a year or so, a Federal judge shows both courage and sanity. It takes special courage to act against the FBI's normal job of creating crimes, and truly heroic courage to defend white people against the FBI's special mission of freeing all blacks and jailing all whites.
Judge Victoria Roberts fully deserves the title of judge!
These 'militia members' were dumb enough to think that white people could still speak and act openly. FBI proved them wrong.
In this special case the dumb folks got amazingly lucky, running across one of the few non-Soviet judges.
Can't count on such rare luck, though. You can be sure the case won't set a precedent. You can also be sure that FBI will never stop creating crimes, never stop stings, never stop pushing gullible white Christians and Muslims into criminal behavior that wouldn't have happened otherwise.
Still, bravo for JUDGE Victoria Roberts! ¶ 6:34 AM
Judge Victoria Roberts fully deserves the title of judge!
These 'militia members' were dumb enough to think that white people could still speak and act openly. FBI proved them wrong.
In this special case the dumb folks got amazingly lucky, running across one of the few non-Soviet judges.
Can't count on such rare luck, though. You can be sure the case won't set a precedent. You can also be sure that FBI will never stop creating crimes, never stop stings, never stop pushing gullible white Christians and Muslims into criminal behavior that wouldn't have happened otherwise.
Still, bravo for JUDGE Victoria Roberts! ¶ 6:34 AM
Is Obama as smart as Clinton?
Random thought: We knew with absolute certainty in 2008 that Misteromney would be the R nominee in 2012. Repooflicans are perfectly predictable. It's his turn. Only an untimely death could change destiny.
Given that hard fact, Bill Clinton might have used it as follows:
(1) Note that Misteromney implemented an awful health-care program in Massachusetts.
(2) Realize that this awful health-care program benefits Wall Street and harms the people.
(3) Implement the same awful health-care program on the whole country, instead of the simple and good "Medicare for all" option that would help the people and hurt Wall Street.
Clinton would see this as a total win.
More monopoly for Wall Street means vastly more money for the party that guaranteed the monopoly.
Best of all, it puts Misteromney in a hopeless wedge position. Either he has to defend the program because it's his own brainchild, or he has to condemn it as an awful program. If he defends it, he loses Repooflican voters. If he condemns it, he's saying "Everything I touch turns to shit. Elect me so you can eat my shit!"
Is Obama shrewd enough to pull this switcheroo? I dunno. He strikes me as plenty smart but not Machiavellian. However, Hillary is in his inner circle, capable of passing along Bill's advice...... ¶ 5:05 AM
Given that hard fact, Bill Clinton might have used it as follows:
(1) Note that Misteromney implemented an awful health-care program in Massachusetts.
(2) Realize that this awful health-care program benefits Wall Street and harms the people.
(3) Implement the same awful health-care program on the whole country, instead of the simple and good "Medicare for all" option that would help the people and hurt Wall Street.
Clinton would see this as a total win.
More monopoly for Wall Street means vastly more money for the party that guaranteed the monopoly.
Best of all, it puts Misteromney in a hopeless wedge position. Either he has to defend the program because it's his own brainchild, or he has to condemn it as an awful program. If he defends it, he loses Repooflican voters. If he condemns it, he's saying "Everything I touch turns to shit. Elect me so you can eat my shit!"
Is Obama shrewd enough to pull this switcheroo? I dunno. He strikes me as plenty smart but not Machiavellian. However, Hillary is in his inner circle, capable of passing along Bill's advice...... ¶ 5:05 AM
Undersea fizzle
James Cameron has returned from his undersea record-breaking voyage with nothing much.
I can't complain about the mission; he's using his own money to satisfy his own ego, and not hurting anyone in the process. That's the way ego is supposed to work! You're not supposed to start Civil Wars or create vast useless tax-supported projects purely for your own fetish fun.
Good for Cameron! He's doing it the right way.
Nevertheless, the expedition shows the pointlessness of manned exploration in extreme places like space and deep ocean. This is one task that robots unquestionably do better. They don't need to carry oxygen and toilets and food; they can be built exclusively for the task with minimum weight and energy usage. Robots can stay in the extreme environment as long as needed to gather the data, and they don't even need to come home.
Ironic, isn't it? We happily replace ordinary people with robots, often doing tasks where humans are superior. But we ferociously insist on using humans for these few extraordinary jobs where humans are wildly impractical. ¶ 4:33 AM
I can't complain about the mission; he's using his own money to satisfy his own ego, and not hurting anyone in the process. That's the way ego is supposed to work! You're not supposed to start Civil Wars or create vast useless tax-supported projects purely for your own fetish fun.
Good for Cameron! He's doing it the right way.
Nevertheless, the expedition shows the pointlessness of manned exploration in extreme places like space and deep ocean. This is one task that robots unquestionably do better. They don't need to carry oxygen and toilets and food; they can be built exclusively for the task with minimum weight and energy usage. Robots can stay in the extreme environment as long as needed to gather the data, and they don't even need to come home.
Ironic, isn't it? We happily replace ordinary people with robots, often doing tasks where humans are superior. But we ferociously insist on using humans for these few extraordinary jobs where humans are wildly impractical. ¶ 4:33 AM
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Nature don't do linear
Back in January when our winter had been typically cold but exceedingly dry, the idiot linear extrapolators were furrowing their idiot brows about the lack of snowpack. Now La Nina has returned to the mean, much more quickly than usual.
News:
That's Nature.
Always cycling, always balancing, always returning to the same point.
Rerunning an animation from a long time ago:
Here's a little quiz. What do you think will happen to the car at the end of this repeating clip?
(A) Do you think it will go Up like this?
(B) Do you think it will go Down like this?
If you chose Up (A), congratulations! You are either a six-week-old kitten or a Professional Climatologist!
= = = = =
Artistic note: Obviously the standing-wave animation a couple days ago made me remember this older one! ¶ 5:59 PM
News:
The winter season started out mild, but recently the weather has changed. There's been nearly a record amount of rainfall in the valleys during the month of March, but all that precipitation is coming down as snow in the mountains.
In late February, hydrologists with Avista Utilities took a snow survey in the Lolo National Forest. Their measurements showed snow levels to be at 110% the normal average for this time of year.
That's Nature.
Always cycling, always balancing, always returning to the same point.
Rerunning an animation from a long time ago:
Here's a little quiz. What do you think will happen to the car at the end of this repeating clip?
(A) Do you think it will go Up like this?
(B) Do you think it will go Down like this?
If you chose Up (A), congratulations! You are either a six-week-old kitten or a Professional Climatologist!
= = = = =
Artistic note: Obviously the standing-wave animation a couple days ago made me remember this older one! ¶ 5:59 PM
More natural justice
More natural justice. We're seeing this increasingly: The economic collapse resulting from our long adherence to atrociously evil and murderous theories is finally eliminating the budgets needed to "work" on the theories.
In this case:
Love it!
Aside from the whole question of theories, neutrino research is just perfectly useless. It will never yield an improvement in a product or an improvement in human life. Nothing but a peculiar form of masturbation practiced by a peculiar priesthood. If they want to do that with their own money, fine. ¶ 4:38 PM
In this case:
The future of a pioneering project to study the lightest matter particles known was thrown into jeopardy last week, when officials at the US Department of Energy (DOE) announced that they were reluctant to fund the Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment (LBNE) in its current form.
At a cost of between US$1.2 billion and $1.5 billion, the LBNE was expected to come online in 2022–24, and to have a construction budget peaking at roughly $200 million per year. But that is now considered too great a slice of the DOE’s annual high-energy physics budget, which was cut by $6 million to $757 million in US President Barack Obama’s 2013 budget request.
Love it!
Aside from the whole question of theories, neutrino research is just perfectly useless. It will never yield an improvement in a product or an improvement in human life. Nothing but a peculiar form of masturbation practiced by a peculiar priesthood. If they want to do that with their own money, fine. ¶ 4:38 PM
Monday, March 26, 2012
How many ways can you miss the point?
NPR feature is supposedly about noise bothering trees. Claims to be the first research on this connection. Basically misses every point that could be missed.
First, the research was actually about noise affecting birds, which is unsurprising. Birds are thoroughly sound-oriented critters. The birds changed their habits under different sound exposures, which changed their poop-seed-transfer effects on plants in the neighborhood. So the plants were just indirect 'targets' of the birds.
Second, lots of new-agey research has dealt with effects of music on plants. Far as I know it's inconclusive and meaningless, but that doesn't tell us whether a good experiment would show an effect. I wouldn't be surprised to find an effect; I'm no longer convinced that you can draw a sharp line between plants and animals!
Third, this 'unbiased' research appears to be mainly a weapon against natural gas drilling, so it was dealing with sounds from big drilling apparatus, compressors, and such. Those sounds, along with the sounds from wind turbines, are more seismic than acoustic. Ultra-low-frequency sound wiggles the soil. I'd expect such sounds to affect plants directly by loosening roots, and indirectly by changing the behavior of earthworms, bacteria, fungi, etc within the soil. I'd bet on these influences before I'd bet on a meaningful effect from changing bird poop habits.
= = = = =
Sidenote: One sentence in the feature does make good sense.
"You kind of hit yourself on the forehead and think, why didn't I think of that?"
It's even more forehead-y when you know how much acoustical research already deals with plants as filters for noise. When I worked at PSU, several projects were laid out in forests and cornfields, to find out how highway and industrial noise could be diffused and absorbed by various types of plantings. One of those projects was in a PSU ag dept experimental cornfield, where the growth of the plants was already carefully monitored. If anyone had thought of it, we could have checked the corn's response to the sound without making any extra measurements!
An experiment that might work: Start with a field of uniform crops or grass. Set up a vibration at a frequency that creates a standing wave in the soil. Run the vibration for a couple weeks. Compare the plants along the max-amplitude lines (shown here by Happystar) against the plants along the zero-amplitude lines (shown by Polistra). Since those sets are interspersed, all other variables should be identical.
Probably more practical to place a large flat electrostatic transducer under an area of soil. Setting up and maintaining a standing wave in such a transducer would be much easier than forming a wave in the soil itself.= = = = =Followup thoughts here.
First, the research was actually about noise affecting birds, which is unsurprising. Birds are thoroughly sound-oriented critters. The birds changed their habits under different sound exposures, which changed their poop-seed-transfer effects on plants in the neighborhood. So the plants were just indirect 'targets' of the birds.
Second, lots of new-agey research has dealt with effects of music on plants. Far as I know it's inconclusive and meaningless, but that doesn't tell us whether a good experiment would show an effect. I wouldn't be surprised to find an effect; I'm no longer convinced that you can draw a sharp line between plants and animals!
Third, this 'unbiased' research appears to be mainly a weapon against natural gas drilling, so it was dealing with sounds from big drilling apparatus, compressors, and such. Those sounds, along with the sounds from wind turbines, are more seismic than acoustic. Ultra-low-frequency sound wiggles the soil. I'd expect such sounds to affect plants directly by loosening roots, and indirectly by changing the behavior of earthworms, bacteria, fungi, etc within the soil. I'd bet on these influences before I'd bet on a meaningful effect from changing bird poop habits.
= = = = =
Sidenote: One sentence in the feature does make good sense.
"You kind of hit yourself on the forehead and think, why didn't I think of that?"
It's even more forehead-y when you know how much acoustical research already deals with plants as filters for noise. When I worked at PSU, several projects were laid out in forests and cornfields, to find out how highway and industrial noise could be diffused and absorbed by various types of plantings. One of those projects was in a PSU ag dept experimental cornfield, where the growth of the plants was already carefully monitored. If anyone had thought of it, we could have checked the corn's response to the sound without making any extra measurements!
An experiment that might work: Start with a field of uniform crops or grass. Set up a vibration at a frequency that creates a standing wave in the soil. Run the vibration for a couple weeks. Compare the plants along the max-amplitude lines (shown here by Happystar) against the plants along the zero-amplitude lines (shown by Polistra). Since those sets are interspersed, all other variables should be identical.
Probably more practical to place a large flat electrostatic transducer under an area of soil. Setting up and maintaining a standing wave in such a transducer would be much easier than forming a wave in the soil itself.= = = = =Followup thoughts here.
Labels: Grand Blueprint
¶ 9:33 AM
Two chances, two fuckups
Today the Supreme foofaraw over Obama's Worst Of All Possible Medical Worlds Act Of 2010 starts in earnest.
Dammit, dammit, dammit. Complete fuckup.
The solution was remarkably easy:
(1) Kill all the lawyers. If that's too messy and smelly, just invoke Loser Pays for all lawsuits.
(2) Disconnect employers from insurance.
(3) Extend Medicare to everyone and increase Medicare tax accordingly. Wouldn't need any Supreme action, because Medicare is already law.
That's all.
Remember: Something like 70% of all medical expense is already under the supervision of Medicare, so the expansion would be much less than a doubling. Medicare already works in concert with private insurance for those who can afford it.
But no, Obama couldn't do the right thing. He had to do the Goldman thing, the Romney thing. Had to guarantee total monopoly to predatory insurance companies.
Dammit, dammit, dammit TWICE. This man had the opportunity, the political capital, and the intelligence to do TWO hugely important things in his term.
Reimpose FDR's securities regulations, and create a proper single-payer medical system.
He could have cured our biggest problems almost immediately, but he chose not to.
I don't know why. Looks like he's totally enslaved to Goldman, but it might be more weakness than enslavement. ¶ 5:12 AM
Dammit, dammit, dammit. Complete fuckup.
The solution was remarkably easy:
(1) Kill all the lawyers. If that's too messy and smelly, just invoke Loser Pays for all lawsuits.
(2) Disconnect employers from insurance.
(3) Extend Medicare to everyone and increase Medicare tax accordingly. Wouldn't need any Supreme action, because Medicare is already law.
That's all.
Remember: Something like 70% of all medical expense is already under the supervision of Medicare, so the expansion would be much less than a doubling. Medicare already works in concert with private insurance for those who can afford it.
But no, Obama couldn't do the right thing. He had to do the Goldman thing, the Romney thing. Had to guarantee total monopoly to predatory insurance companies.
Dammit, dammit, dammit TWICE. This man had the opportunity, the political capital, and the intelligence to do TWO hugely important things in his term.
Reimpose FDR's securities regulations, and create a proper single-payer medical system.
He could have cured our biggest problems almost immediately, but he chose not to.
I don't know why. Looks like he's totally enslaved to Goldman, but it might be more weakness than enslavement. ¶ 5:12 AM
Old rule
Perfect example of the inviolate and absolute rule:
More money means worse education.
Last week I happily noted a small organic farming project in WSU's agriculture department. The project was initially funded through a grant carried by one grad student. When that student finished, the project made an outstandingly smart decision: Sell the food to people in the community. It thus became a closed-loop arrangement, where the results of the learning are evaluated and paid for by real consumers. You can't get any better than that.
Note: WSU was UNWILLING to fund the project in the usual governmental way, so the project had to escape from academic mediocrity and achieve REAL LEARNING and REAL RESEARCH via monetary feedback from actual consumers.
Today we find out what WSU is WILLING to spend taxpayer money on:
Green shit. Completely useless, serving only to impress vacuum-brained totally indoctrinated Gaia-worshipping kiddies.
Old rule, correct every time. ¶ 3:48 AM
More money means worse education.
Last week I happily noted a small organic farming project in WSU's agriculture department. The project was initially funded through a grant carried by one grad student. When that student finished, the project made an outstandingly smart decision: Sell the food to people in the community. It thus became a closed-loop arrangement, where the results of the learning are evaluated and paid for by real consumers. You can't get any better than that.
Note: WSU was UNWILLING to fund the project in the usual governmental way, so the project had to escape from academic mediocrity and achieve REAL LEARNING and REAL RESEARCH via monetary feedback from actual consumers.
Today we find out what WSU is WILLING to spend taxpayer money on:
Washington State University’s effort to go green got a boost last week with the purchase of three all-electric cars. The vehicles, produced by Global Electric Motorcars, use gel batteries and are capable of speeds to 25 mph, making them suitable for on-campus transportation. One of the cars will be dedicated to providing orientation tours for incoming students.
Green shit. Completely useless, serving only to impress vacuum-brained totally indoctrinated Gaia-worshipping kiddies.
Old rule, correct every time. ¶ 3:48 AM
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Senegal
BBC mentions a real election in the small West African nation of Senegal. The long-time leader Abdoulaye Wade intended to have his son take over in true dynastic form. But after some public dissatisfaction (not serious riots) he called an actual election, and a younger man named Macky Sall won the election. Wade conceded.
Caught my attention because a real election is a sign of a healthy government, a sign of a functioning nation. Elections DO NOT CREATE healthy governments, just as fevers and vomiting do not create health; but a body that can heat up and puke when necessary is a body with a good immune system. (America has lost this ability. We caught national AIDS in 1989. Death is our destiny.)
What makes Senegal healthy? I know nothing about it except how it looks on a map.
The CIA's 'factbook' for Senegal summarizes:
Sounds like it was doing fairly well (by African standards) under the guidance of various NGOs, but started to deteriorate when IMF stepped in. That's an unfortunately common pattern.
USDA's country page also indicates reasonable competence:
Population: 12.8 million (2008 est.)
GDP per capita: $8,400 (2008 est.)
Agriculture: 17% of GDP
Agricultural Production: groundnut, millet, sorghum,
rice, cotton, mangoes, vegetables, melons, corn and cattle
Major Senegal Agricultural Exports: fish, groundnuts, phosphates, cotton and petroleum products
Major U.S. Agricultural Exports to Senegal: rice, pulses, soybean oil, poultry meat and vegetable oils
Note the GDP per capita, well above most of Africa.
Senegal seems to have been mildly affected by a 2010 West Africa famine, but escaped the serious fate of its neighbors.
Nothing dramatic, but taken together, depicts an African country with some hope for the future. Rare enough to be worth a little celebration! ¶ 5:26 PM
Caught my attention because a real election is a sign of a healthy government, a sign of a functioning nation. Elections DO NOT CREATE healthy governments, just as fevers and vomiting do not create health; but a body that can heat up and puke when necessary is a body with a good immune system. (America has lost this ability. We caught national AIDS in 1989. Death is our destiny.)
What makes Senegal healthy? I know nothing about it except how it looks on a map.
The CIA's 'factbook' for Senegal summarizes:
Senegal relies heavily on donor assistance. The country's key export industries are phosphate mining, fertilizer production, and commercial fishing. The country is also working on iron ore and oil exploration projects. In January 1994, Senegal undertook a bold and ambitious economic reform program with the support of the international donor community. Government price controls and subsidies have been steadily dismantled. After seeing its economy contract by 2.1% in 1993, Senegal made an important turnaround, thanks to the reform program, with real growth in GDP averaging over 5% annually during 1995-2007. Annual inflation had been pushed down to the single digits. The country was adversely affected by the global economic downturn in 2009 and GDP growth fell to 2%. As a member of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), Senegal is working toward greater regional integration with a unified external tariff and a more stable monetary policy. High unemployment, however, continues to prompt illegal migrants to flee Senegal in search of better job opportunities in Europe. Under the IMF's Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) debt relief program, Senegal benefited from eradication of two-thirds of its bilateral, multilateral, and private-sector debt. In 2007, Senegal and the IMF agreed to a new, non-disbursing, Policy Support Initiative program which was completed in 2010. The IMF approved a new three-year policy support instrument in December 2010 to assist with economic reforms. Senegal receives disbursements from the $540 million Millennium Challenge Account compact it signed in September 2009 for infrastructure and agriculture development. In 2010, the Senegalese people protested against frequent power cuts. The government pledged to expand power capacity by 2012 and to promote renewable energy, but until Senegal has more capacity, more protests are likely. Foreign investment in Senegal is retarded by Senegal's unfriendly business environment.
Sounds like it was doing fairly well (by African standards) under the guidance of various NGOs, but started to deteriorate when IMF stepped in. That's an unfortunately common pattern.
USDA's country page also indicates reasonable competence:
Population: 12.8 million (2008 est.)
GDP per capita: $8,400 (2008 est.)
Agriculture: 17% of GDP
Agricultural Production: groundnut, millet, sorghum,
rice, cotton, mangoes, vegetables, melons, corn and cattle
Major Senegal Agricultural Exports: fish, groundnuts, phosphates, cotton and petroleum products
Major U.S. Agricultural Exports to Senegal: rice, pulses, soybean oil, poultry meat and vegetable oils
Note the GDP per capita, well above most of Africa.
Senegal seems to have been mildly affected by a 2010 West Africa famine, but escaped the serious fate of its neighbors.
Nothing dramatic, but taken together, depicts an African country with some hope for the future. Rare enough to be worth a little celebration! ¶ 5:26 PM
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Facts will get you through....
I've been pulling on these strings for a long time, without noticing how they come together.
The strings are a number of truly bad theories that totally control the actions of our governing, business and scientific establishment.
(1) Global warming
(2) Egalitarian views of genetics and behavior
(3) 'Neoclassical' economics
(4) Evolution
(5) Quantum physics
(6) Big bang and multiverse cosmology
= = = = =
They fall into two categories of invalidity:
1,2,3 are absolutely false, can be disproved in one second.
4,5,6 are not quite false. They're poorly designed, vague and untestable, and lead to all sorts of contradictions when you apply them.
= = = = =
And two categories of evil:
1,2,3 have killed millions of innocent people.
4,5,6 have given us a monstrous pile of wasted expense, wasted effort and terrible education.
= = = = =
Another thing I've been seeing and saying for a long time: you can live your life quite well without using these theories.
You can do meteorology without believing in Global Warming or an alternative theory. The alternative would be equally bad because it would be an alternative explanation of "global temperature", which is an invalid concept. Just check your forecasts against measured reality and adjust.
You can run a business without macroeconomics. Just measure your customer satisfaction by profit, not by share value.
You can perform every necessary biological or medical task without believing in evolution or creationism.
And so on.
= = = = =
What finally knitted it together was Shepardson, plus one sentence from a book review.
Shepardson wrote in 1901, a quarter century before the bad quantum idea was imagined, but ALSO a few years before the Bohr picture of the atom was well developed. He may have heard news about Thomson's 1899 notion of 'corpuscles', later named 'electrons', but he didn't use that notion. AND HE DIDN'T NEED IT.
His description of the chemical and physical processes of electricity is complete, objective and usable even today, despite terminology ("chip") that seems odd. Atoms and molecules were enough detail. Knowing the exact internal parts of the atom was UNNECESSARY. The Bohr model helped later on, because it was strictly derived from chemical and electrical observation. The quantum model has never helped. [The original bijunction transistor is often cited as an example of quantum guidance, but the original bijunction transistor was just a 20-year detour. The direct line of development, starting with an idea in 1840, would have given us the FET without invoking quantum explanations at any point.]
The final stitch for me came today, from an article pointed via Uncommon Descent.
The author is talking specifically about quantum physics, criticizing the modern tendency to attempt quantum explanations for everything.
Here's the sudden stitch: These bad theories are bad and unnecessary; AND the good theories that "should" replace them are ALSO unnecessary.
= = = = =
A bad theory is a sign that you don't need ANY THEORY at this level of abstraction.
Or in terms of actions and consequences:
Our natural response to a bad theory is to replace it with a testable and valid theory. This is wrong. Instead, we should pull back from the level of generalization where the bad theory grew. We should be happy to function without any theory at that level, because in fact we DO function perfectly well without it! If and when the known facts lead inexorably to a new stage of generality, then we can climb to that step. Until then, keep your theorizing in the realms of fiction or philosophy. Don't try to use it as science.
As the Freak Brothers almost said,
Facts will get you through times of no theory better than theory will get you through times of no facts.
The strings are a number of truly bad theories that totally control the actions of our governing, business and scientific establishment.
(1) Global warming
(2) Egalitarian views of genetics and behavior
(3) 'Neoclassical' economics
(4) Evolution
(5) Quantum physics
(6) Big bang and multiverse cosmology
= = = = =
They fall into two categories of invalidity:
1,2,3 are absolutely false, can be disproved in one second.
4,5,6 are not quite false. They're poorly designed, vague and untestable, and lead to all sorts of contradictions when you apply them.
= = = = =
And two categories of evil:
1,2,3 have killed millions of innocent people.
4,5,6 have given us a monstrous pile of wasted expense, wasted effort and terrible education.
= = = = =
Another thing I've been seeing and saying for a long time: you can live your life quite well without using these theories.
You can do meteorology without believing in Global Warming or an alternative theory. The alternative would be equally bad because it would be an alternative explanation of "global temperature", which is an invalid concept. Just check your forecasts against measured reality and adjust.
You can run a business without macroeconomics. Just measure your customer satisfaction by profit, not by share value.
You can perform every necessary biological or medical task without believing in evolution or creationism.
And so on.
= = = = =
What finally knitted it together was Shepardson, plus one sentence from a book review.
Shepardson wrote in 1901, a quarter century before the bad quantum idea was imagined, but ALSO a few years before the Bohr picture of the atom was well developed. He may have heard news about Thomson's 1899 notion of 'corpuscles', later named 'electrons', but he didn't use that notion. AND HE DIDN'T NEED IT.
His description of the chemical and physical processes of electricity is complete, objective and usable even today, despite terminology ("chip") that seems odd. Atoms and molecules were enough detail. Knowing the exact internal parts of the atom was UNNECESSARY. The Bohr model helped later on, because it was strictly derived from chemical and electrical observation. The quantum model has never helped. [The original bijunction transistor is often cited as an example of quantum guidance, but the original bijunction transistor was just a 20-year detour. The direct line of development, starting with an idea in 1840, would have given us the FET without invoking quantum explanations at any point.]
The final stitch for me came today, from an article pointed via Uncommon Descent.
Although microphysics can help illuminate the chemical bond and the periodic table, very little physics and chemistry can actually be done with its fundamental concepts and methods, and using it to explain life, human behavior or human society is a greater challenge still.
The author is talking specifically about quantum physics, criticizing the modern tendency to attempt quantum explanations for everything.
Here's the sudden stitch: These bad theories are bad and unnecessary; AND the good theories that "should" replace them are ALSO unnecessary.
= = = = =
A bad theory is a sign that you don't need ANY THEORY at this level of abstraction.
Or in terms of actions and consequences:
Our natural response to a bad theory is to replace it with a testable and valid theory. This is wrong. Instead, we should pull back from the level of generalization where the bad theory grew. We should be happy to function without any theory at that level, because in fact we DO function perfectly well without it! If and when the known facts lead inexorably to a new stage of generality, then we can climb to that step. Until then, keep your theorizing in the realms of fiction or philosophy. Don't try to use it as science.
As the Freak Brothers almost said,
Facts will get you through times of no theory better than theory will get you through times of no facts.
Labels: 20th century Dark Age, Carbon Cult, the broken circle
¶ 4:17 PM
Right move, wrong reason
On rare occasions a Western government does the right thing, but it's always for weird illogical reasons that make the right move hard to maintain.
Example: US imposes an actual tariff on a Chinese product! Welcome news in any case, but it's done for reasons that make it hard to justify to anyone.
We're placing a 30% tariff on Chinese solar panels because China subsidizes them. China complains that we also subsidize our solar industry, and they're exactly right. The whole industry exists solely to suck subsidies. In places like UK and Germany where the subsidy is fading, the industry is also fading.
Rationally we should be placing a tariff on all Chinese crap, for the obvious and PATRIOTIC reason of keeping jobs here. (And for a secondary but equally good reason: taxing sinful behavior!)
But no American government can do that, because American governments slavishly obey the vicious sadistic traitorous arch-criminals who run Wall Street and major corporations.
Instead, we use a tariff only to protect our subsidies on fashionable idiocy from competing subsidies on fashionable idiocy.
We're fucked. ¶ 6:02 AM
Example: US imposes an actual tariff on a Chinese product! Welcome news in any case, but it's done for reasons that make it hard to justify to anyone.
We're placing a 30% tariff on Chinese solar panels because China subsidizes them. China complains that we also subsidize our solar industry, and they're exactly right. The whole industry exists solely to suck subsidies. In places like UK and Germany where the subsidy is fading, the industry is also fading.
Rationally we should be placing a tariff on all Chinese crap, for the obvious and PATRIOTIC reason of keeping jobs here. (And for a secondary but equally good reason: taxing sinful behavior!)
But no American government can do that, because American governments slavishly obey the vicious sadistic traitorous arch-criminals who run Wall Street and major corporations.
Instead, we use a tariff only to protect our subsidies on fashionable idiocy from competing subsidies on fashionable idiocy.
We're fucked. ¶ 6:02 AM
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Supreme reality pills?
What's with the Supremes this week? First they rule AGAINST the mass-slaughtering enemy occupation army, and now they've finally given guidance to REAL county and state courts. They must be taking reality pills.
I suspect the details of this decision on plea-bargaining are bad (favoring the defendant more than necessary), but the acknowledgment of reality is a huge step in the right direction. Until now the Supremes have operated on the bizarre assumption that jury trials were the sole mechanism of the American court system. Hasn't been true for half a century. In most states only 5% of cases reach a jury, and 95% are worked out by plea bargains. (Or settlements in civil cases.)
The real system makes perfect sense for the ordinary crimes that pass through county courts. With burglaries, assaults and standard-brand murders, the police are right and everyone knows it. No decision is needed, thus the cumbersome mechanism of trials is not needed. The handful of cases that reach a jury fall into two categories: (1) Genuinely dubious cases, with false accusation or police malpractice; (2) Rich dickheads who can afford a predatory lawyer.
Until now the Supremes have given guidance only to those rare cases that don't really depend on legal guidance anyway. (1) The seriously difficult cases require a wise and hard-nosed judge above all. (2) The rich dickheads will win 100% of the time, regardless of laws or judges or anything. Money trumps all.
Supremes have finally picked up the fact that real trials are more of a business proposition than a legal procedure, and many lawyers are bad at the business of negotiation. ¶ 5:35 PM
I suspect the details of this decision on plea-bargaining are bad (favoring the defendant more than necessary), but the acknowledgment of reality is a huge step in the right direction. Until now the Supremes have operated on the bizarre assumption that jury trials were the sole mechanism of the American court system. Hasn't been true for half a century. In most states only 5% of cases reach a jury, and 95% are worked out by plea bargains. (Or settlements in civil cases.)
The real system makes perfect sense for the ordinary crimes that pass through county courts. With burglaries, assaults and standard-brand murders, the police are right and everyone knows it. No decision is needed, thus the cumbersome mechanism of trials is not needed. The handful of cases that reach a jury fall into two categories: (1) Genuinely dubious cases, with false accusation or police malpractice; (2) Rich dickheads who can afford a predatory lawyer.
Until now the Supremes have given guidance only to those rare cases that don't really depend on legal guidance anyway. (1) The seriously difficult cases require a wise and hard-nosed judge above all. (2) The rich dickheads will win 100% of the time, regardless of laws or judges or anything. Money trumps all.
Supremes have finally picked up the fact that real trials are more of a business proposition than a legal procedure, and many lawyers are bad at the business of negotiation. ¶ 5:35 PM
Silly argument
On Point is discussing the new NSA data center in Utah, which will process and filter much more info than before. The discussers are worrying about whether this will allow NSA to intercept everything, worrying about whether NSA should be required to get warrants.
Stupid. Of course NSA intercepts everything. NSA has been one of the central nodes of the Net since the Net started in 1968. If you don't think they've been intercepting everything for 40 years, you're remarkably foolish. If you think it was worse under Bush or worse under Obama or worse under Clinton, you're too dumb to live. It's constant and maximal. NSA listens to everything it can physically manage to process.
If you think this is new, you're wrong. Back to 1940: our communication was carried by telephone, telegraph, radio and mail. Telephone operators could listen to any conversation; telegraphers had to consciously send and receive every message; radio could be heard by anyone, including government monitors; and mail was routinely opened if it seemed suspicious.
The only way to avoid interception of the content is by encryption. True in 1940 and true now. But encryption immediately raises red flags. True in 1940 and now. If the content is coded, spies can always do traffic analysis, tracing the location and identity of sender and receiver. This often tells spies more than the actual message. True in 1940 and now.
Interception is NOT the important question in any era. The important question is what the interceptors DO with their acquired info. Do they use it for personal enrichment via blackmail? Do they use it only to catch real criminals? Or do they use it to bomb and snipe people with currently unfashionable beliefs such as Christianity? ¶ 9:22 AM
Stupid. Of course NSA intercepts everything. NSA has been one of the central nodes of the Net since the Net started in 1968. If you don't think they've been intercepting everything for 40 years, you're remarkably foolish. If you think it was worse under Bush or worse under Obama or worse under Clinton, you're too dumb to live. It's constant and maximal. NSA listens to everything it can physically manage to process.
If you think this is new, you're wrong. Back to 1940: our communication was carried by telephone, telegraph, radio and mail. Telephone operators could listen to any conversation; telegraphers had to consciously send and receive every message; radio could be heard by anyone, including government monitors; and mail was routinely opened if it seemed suspicious.
The only way to avoid interception of the content is by encryption. True in 1940 and true now. But encryption immediately raises red flags. True in 1940 and now. If the content is coded, spies can always do traffic analysis, tracing the location and identity of sender and receiver. This often tells spies more than the actual message. True in 1940 and now.
Interception is NOT the important question in any era. The important question is what the interceptors DO with their acquired info. Do they use it for personal enrichment via blackmail? Do they use it only to catch real criminals? Or do they use it to bomb and snipe people with currently unfashionable beliefs such as Christianity? ¶ 9:22 AM
Real education!
News from WSU:
Perfect in every way.
(1) Students get their hands directly on the subject matter, which is REAL EDUCATION. Lectures and theory may have a place, but the plain fact is: Hands learn, eyes don't.
(2) Along with the major benefit of muscle-learning, these students also gain from working with soil, which will make them happier and smarter.
(3) The project depends financially on selling the product, which is also the subject matter. Disconnected and securitized taxpayers are presumably supporting salaries and overhead, but without sales the project can't continue. Closed-loop operation! If the customers don't like the product, improvement is needed. That's real research.
(4) Students in other subjects participate in designing the farm, thus striking a blow against tunnel-vision specialization.
= = = = =
Organic agriculture involves a lot of Green quackery, but the basic idea is
unquestionable. We all have to eat, and something is wrong with the typical American diet. Though I suspect lack of exercise is a bigger factor than diet, restoring the full natural content of food will undoubtedly help.
This picture, though completely unrelated to WSU, illustrates the problem.
It's from a 1992 TV news blooper reel. Old dude was probably born in 1920 and grew up on home-cooked food, sun and exercise. Reporter was probably born in 1970 and grew up on Big Macs, no sun, no exercise. Both are solidly typical of their respective generations. [Incidentally, the blooper itself didn't involve these two; immediately after this frame the cameraman tripped and fell, and the rest of the shot is mainly his shoes.]
WSU offered the first organic agriculture major in the country. The program now has almost 30 major students, said John Reganold, regents professor of soil science and agro-ecology. The organic farm provides a working laboratory for those students.
“It’s really outgrown itself,” Reganold said. “That’s partially why we need the new land: to continue to carry out the day-to-day mission of the farm.”
Reganold said the money is coming from efforts by the WSU Foundation to find donors and sponsors.
Construction on the new site, including roads, greenhouses and some croplands, could begin as early as this summer, said Laurie Mooney, a graduate student in landscape architecture who helped design the expansion.
...
The farm lost its operational grant money when Colen-Peck graduated ... The funding solution was a community supported agriculture system, as well as weekly income from a Wednesday farmers market in Pullman. A community supported agriculture system provides paying members with packed boxes of produce each week during the growing season. For the WSU Organic Farm, that season is from May through October and supports approximately 300 members per week.
“Sometimes we don’t have enough membership spots for everyone at the height of demand,” Jaeckel said.
Perfect in every way.
(1) Students get their hands directly on the subject matter, which is REAL EDUCATION. Lectures and theory may have a place, but the plain fact is: Hands learn, eyes don't.
(2) Along with the major benefit of muscle-learning, these students also gain from working with soil, which will make them happier and smarter.
(3) The project depends financially on selling the product, which is also the subject matter. Disconnected and securitized taxpayers are presumably supporting salaries and overhead, but without sales the project can't continue. Closed-loop operation! If the customers don't like the product, improvement is needed. That's real research.
(4) Students in other subjects participate in designing the farm, thus striking a blow against tunnel-vision specialization.
= = = = =
Organic agriculture involves a lot of Green quackery, but the basic idea is
unquestionable. We all have to eat, and something is wrong with the typical American diet. Though I suspect lack of exercise is a bigger factor than diet, restoring the full natural content of food will undoubtedly help.
This picture, though completely unrelated to WSU, illustrates the problem.
It's from a 1992 TV news blooper reel. Old dude was probably born in 1920 and grew up on home-cooked food, sun and exercise. Reporter was probably born in 1970 and grew up on Big Macs, no sun, no exercise. Both are solidly typical of their respective generations. [Incidentally, the blooper itself didn't involve these two; immediately after this frame the cameraman tripped and fell, and the rest of the shot is mainly his shoes.]
Labels: the broken circle
¶ 4:57 AM
Good lesson
And there they go again....
Al Sharpton, whose continued breathing is perfect proof of God's nonexistence, is running his usual kangaroo court. The Satanist Poison Vendors, best proof of the same fact, are following Sharpton in their genocidal rush to SMASH SMASH SMASH SMASH SMASH SMASH SMASH SMASH SMASH America into unrecognizable scragkpnfg. Note 3880 SMASHINGS on the Google entry.
For sane Caucasians this Trayvon shit has one lesson: Try to live in a cold place with near-zero black population. Then Al Sharpton and the Satanist Poison Vendors WILL NOT HAVE AN EXCUSE TO DESTROY YOUR CITY OR STATE. They will still try, but they won't have much leverage.
White liberals take this lesson to heart best of all, because white liberals are wealthy enough to move at will. White liberals joke about Idaho and Vermont, and white liberals move to Idaho and Vermont. White liberals pay Sharpton's wages, and they don't want to live anywhere that invites his lethal presence. ¶ 4:02 AM
Al Sharpton, whose continued breathing is perfect proof of God's nonexistence, is running his usual kangaroo court. The Satanist Poison Vendors, best proof of the same fact, are following Sharpton in their genocidal rush to SMASH SMASH SMASH SMASH SMASH SMASH SMASH SMASH SMASH America into unrecognizable scragkpnfg. Note 3880 SMASHINGS on the Google entry.
For sane Caucasians this Trayvon shit has one lesson: Try to live in a cold place with near-zero black population. Then Al Sharpton and the Satanist Poison Vendors WILL NOT HAVE AN EXCUSE TO DESTROY YOUR CITY OR STATE. They will still try, but they won't have much leverage.
White liberals take this lesson to heart best of all, because white liberals are wealthy enough to move at will. White liberals joke about Idaho and Vermont, and white liberals move to Idaho and Vermont. White liberals pay Sharpton's wages, and they don't want to live anywhere that invites his lethal presence. ¶ 4:02 AM
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Giant news.....
I'm genuinely and seriously surprised, amazed, shocked, and astonished.
Not the usual disingenuous shockedshockedshocked.
Biggest news of the year:
Admittedly this only opens the way for the owners to actually sue, but still it's a 9-0 decision against the mass-slaughtering occupation army. ¶ 11:16 AM
I'm genuinely and seriously surprised, amazed, shocked, and astonished.
Not the usual disingenuous shockedshockedshocked.
Biggest news of the year:
A Priest Lake, Idaho, couple has prevailed in a property rights case involving the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled that Mike and Chantell Sackett can go to court to challenge an EPA order that blocked construction of their new home and threatened fines of more than $30,000 a day.
The Sacketts’ property has sat undisturbed since the EPA ordered a halt in work in 2007. The agency said part of the property was a wetland that could not be disturbed without a permit.
Admittedly this only opens the way for the owners to actually sue, but still it's a 9-0 decision against the mass-slaughtering occupation army. ¶ 11:16 AM
again
I've paid very little attention to the Repooflican festivities this season. No point in wasting any blood pressure on Soviet-bloc "elections".
Romney has always been the brand-R nominee and Obama has always been President for two terms. The sun will rise at 6:50 PDT this morning. Goldman hath spoken.
There was a little more activity this time because a couple of Jews outside the House Of Goldman had their privately-owned horses in the race, but after Illinois those other Jews will have to give way to the universal Lord Above All Lords, Goldman.
Now we have to endure an even more obnoxious stream of toxic publicity and buzz. Since Romney and Obama are both run by Goldman, and nearly identical in agenda, the only reason to prefer one over the other is color. Those who want to see a light-skinned Goldman avatar will make their decorative little X marks for Romney; those who want a dark-skinned Goldman avatar will decorate for Obama.
The publicity machines for both "parties" will try to get us excited about nonexistent differences and meaningless slogans, but color is really the only difference. Just like 2008. ¶ 4:33 AM
Romney has always been the brand-R nominee and Obama has always been President for two terms. The sun will rise at 6:50 PDT this morning. Goldman hath spoken.
There was a little more activity this time because a couple of Jews outside the House Of Goldman had their privately-owned horses in the race, but after Illinois those other Jews will have to give way to the universal Lord Above All Lords, Goldman.
Now we have to endure an even more obnoxious stream of toxic publicity and buzz. Since Romney and Obama are both run by Goldman, and nearly identical in agenda, the only reason to prefer one over the other is color. Those who want to see a light-skinned Goldman avatar will make their decorative little X marks for Romney; those who want a dark-skinned Goldman avatar will decorate for Obama.
The publicity machines for both "parties" will try to get us excited about nonexistent differences and meaningless slogans, but color is really the only difference. Just like 2008. ¶ 4:33 AM
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Not even wrong
I'm always irritated by wildly overused cliches.
Two of them are wrong in so many ways you can hardly count them.
I've already noted the first one: The fake "Ben Franklin" quote about security and freedom. Franklin didn't say it; his print shop merely published it in a book by another author. Franklin did say something on a related subject, but his meaning was the opposite of the cliche. And the cliche is just bad advice in a broad way. Very few people actually want freedom; most want security and stability.
The second one is the fake "Einstein" quote about insanity and repetition. Albert didn't say it; Wiki thinks it was first written in a novel by Rita Mae Brown in the '80s, which would explain why Clinton liked to use it.
= = = = =
What strikes me now is that both sayings are intentionally misapplied in modern Western governments and institutions.
(1) Our problem is way beyond freedom vs security. Agencies like FBI, DHS, TSA claim to be "giving us security in exchange for freedom". Well, they're stealing something that seems like freedom, but what they're really stealing is stability and normalcy, and giving us nothing but confusion and despair in return.
Society always has rules. Some societies have stricter rules than others, but people don't feel less free in those cases. Human brains adapt to constants. When you know the rules firmly, you don't feel the rules. Thus you feel free no matter how strict the rules. But when the rules are unknowable and continually changing, you have neither security nor freedom. You're forever trying to adapt, forever running into new obstacles that your mind is unprepared for. That's real tyranny, that's the single sole solitary purpose of those agencies, and that's modern America.
(2) And our problem is way beyond sanity vs insanity. Governments, schools, universities, corporations, and cultural institutions are failing, but not because they are repeating evil actions and expecting good things to happen. They're not that dumb, for fuck's sake. THEY DO EVIL THINGS BECAUSE THEY EXPECT AND DESIRE EVIL RESULTS. That's the problem. They're not crazy at all, they're Satanic.
The constant repetition of the saying about constant repetition is a constant misdirection, forcing us to believe that all of our institutions are merely crazy.
= = = = =
Later: The Santayana quote about repeating history is also misused, but in a more complex way.
The usual short quote is not fake, but it's misleading. In context it appears that Santayana was thinking of the full reality, but didn't quite say it.
The full reality: Repeating isn't always wrong or always right. If you truly learn from personal experience or from written history, you will repeat what works and avoid what fails.
Our problem is not that we keep repeating.
It's that we do the wrong fucking thing EVERY FUCKING TIME..
When history tells us to repeat, we do the opposite. FDR fixed the 1929 bubble by clamping down hard on speculators. That solved the problem completely. We then deleted the solution in 1999, guaranteeing a repeat of the problem. When the problem repeated in 2008, we did the opposite of FDR. We gave the speculators an infinite gift, so the problem has gotten worse.
And when history tells us to avoid an action, we repeat. Vietnam told us to avoid engaging in pointless unwinnable wars. So we engaged in pointless unwinnable wars THREE TIMES, and we're ginning up for the fourth right now.
Perfectly wrong every time. Perfectly evil every time. Perfectly Satanic every time. ¶ 7:48 PM
Two of them are wrong in so many ways you can hardly count them.
I've already noted the first one: The fake "Ben Franklin" quote about security and freedom. Franklin didn't say it; his print shop merely published it in a book by another author. Franklin did say something on a related subject, but his meaning was the opposite of the cliche. And the cliche is just bad advice in a broad way. Very few people actually want freedom; most want security and stability.
The second one is the fake "Einstein" quote about insanity and repetition. Albert didn't say it; Wiki thinks it was first written in a novel by Rita Mae Brown in the '80s, which would explain why Clinton liked to use it.
= = = = =
What strikes me now is that both sayings are intentionally misapplied in modern Western governments and institutions.
(1) Our problem is way beyond freedom vs security. Agencies like FBI, DHS, TSA claim to be "giving us security in exchange for freedom". Well, they're stealing something that seems like freedom, but what they're really stealing is stability and normalcy, and giving us nothing but confusion and despair in return.
Society always has rules. Some societies have stricter rules than others, but people don't feel less free in those cases. Human brains adapt to constants. When you know the rules firmly, you don't feel the rules. Thus you feel free no matter how strict the rules. But when the rules are unknowable and continually changing, you have neither security nor freedom. You're forever trying to adapt, forever running into new obstacles that your mind is unprepared for. That's real tyranny, that's the single sole solitary purpose of those agencies, and that's modern America.
(2) And our problem is way beyond sanity vs insanity. Governments, schools, universities, corporations, and cultural institutions are failing, but not because they are repeating evil actions and expecting good things to happen. They're not that dumb, for fuck's sake. THEY DO EVIL THINGS BECAUSE THEY EXPECT AND DESIRE EVIL RESULTS. That's the problem. They're not crazy at all, they're Satanic.
The constant repetition of the saying about constant repetition is a constant misdirection, forcing us to believe that all of our institutions are merely crazy.
= = = = =
Later: The Santayana quote about repeating history is also misused, but in a more complex way.
The usual short quote is not fake, but it's misleading. In context it appears that Santayana was thinking of the full reality, but didn't quite say it.
The full reality: Repeating isn't always wrong or always right. If you truly learn from personal experience or from written history, you will repeat what works and avoid what fails.
Our problem is not that we keep repeating.
It's that we do the wrong fucking thing EVERY FUCKING TIME..
When history tells us to repeat, we do the opposite. FDR fixed the 1929 bubble by clamping down hard on speculators. That solved the problem completely. We then deleted the solution in 1999, guaranteeing a repeat of the problem. When the problem repeated in 2008, we did the opposite of FDR. We gave the speculators an infinite gift, so the problem has gotten worse.
And when history tells us to avoid an action, we repeat. Vietnam told us to avoid engaging in pointless unwinnable wars. So we engaged in pointless unwinnable wars THREE TIMES, and we're ginning up for the fourth right now.
Perfectly wrong every time. Perfectly evil every time. Perfectly Satanic every time. ¶ 7:48 PM
Bravo ER!
Old Elizabeth continues to make it clear, though words and actions, that she wants Chuckie The Microwit to get his Epsilon-minus ass out of the way and let the competent William take over.
Good on ya, Lizzie.
And good for old Phil as well, who has intervened as strongly as he can to stop the Green "power" nonsense that is destroying Britain's landscape and killing its people.
Long live the Queen!
Short live Chuckie The Microwit!
Very short, please! ¶ 5:37 PM
"I have been privileged to witness some of that history and, with the support of my family, rededicate myself to the service of our great country and its people now and in the years to come.” Her words were widely interpreted as a signal of the 85 year-old’s determination to remain on the throne for the rest of her life.
Good on ya, Lizzie.
And good for old Phil as well, who has intervened as strongly as he can to stop the Green "power" nonsense that is destroying Britain's landscape and killing its people.
Long live the Queen!
Short live Chuckie The Microwit!
Very short, please! ¶ 5:37 PM
1901 Smart meter
Yup, Shepardson again!
While reading the printed edition, this gadget caught my attention:
Direct ancestor of the 'smart meter' now infesting many electric systems.
Holds an unalterable physical record of the highest current used since the last reset of the meter. Presumably the reset lever was only accessible after unlocking the outer case, so the customer couldn't reset.
Note two important differences between the 1901 and 2012 smart meters:
(1) Directness and honesty. The 1901 demand meter was analog and physical, and the reading was visible to the customer without any question. The modern version is digital and virtual, and the electric company can rig the reading without the customer's knowledge.
(2) In 1901 the utility used the highest current to figure a discount for large consumers. The generating company wanted to sell more electricity in order to bring the cost per unit down, and in order to have more cash available to improve their facilities. Now the 2012 smart meter serves to enforce the opposite policy, discounts for minimal use, thus increasing the cost per KWH and decreasing available capital.
We're stuck in this perpetual one-way mentality. Consumption of energy and water and trash must constantly decrease, even though the decrease causes huge inconvenience to the customer and new problems for the utilities.
Electric grids are overloaded with current from wind generators at the exact times when demand is lowest. Sewer pipes are clogging up, and the bacterial digesters are running badly, because lo-flo toilets don't dilute the shit enough. Some sewer systems constantly pour water into the sewer lines to compensate for the lo-flo!
Before the securitized Enron grid, we had balanced utility systems. We had learned how to make the systems work well, and we knew how to expand them. Now, thanks to Phil Gramm and the Gaians, we have unbalanced systems that require unnecessary maintenance. On top of the increased maintenance, lower consumption means rate per KWH must go up to cover expenses. And the raised rates make it impossible for many people to afford heat in winter, so they die.
Smart.
= = = = =
Here is an excellent article on the financial and commercial context of the Wright demand meter.
While reading the printed edition, this gadget caught my attention:
Direct ancestor of the 'smart meter' now infesting many electric systems.
Holds an unalterable physical record of the highest current used since the last reset of the meter. Presumably the reset lever was only accessible after unlocking the outer case, so the customer couldn't reset.
Note two important differences between the 1901 and 2012 smart meters:
(1) Directness and honesty. The 1901 demand meter was analog and physical, and the reading was visible to the customer without any question. The modern version is digital and virtual, and the electric company can rig the reading without the customer's knowledge.
(2) In 1901 the utility used the highest current to figure a discount for large consumers. The generating company wanted to sell more electricity in order to bring the cost per unit down, and in order to have more cash available to improve their facilities. Now the 2012 smart meter serves to enforce the opposite policy, discounts for minimal use, thus increasing the cost per KWH and decreasing available capital.
We're stuck in this perpetual one-way mentality. Consumption of energy and water and trash must constantly decrease, even though the decrease causes huge inconvenience to the customer and new problems for the utilities.
Electric grids are overloaded with current from wind generators at the exact times when demand is lowest. Sewer pipes are clogging up, and the bacterial digesters are running badly, because lo-flo toilets don't dilute the shit enough. Some sewer systems constantly pour water into the sewer lines to compensate for the lo-flo!
Before the securitized Enron grid, we had balanced utility systems. We had learned how to make the systems work well, and we knew how to expand them. Now, thanks to Phil Gramm and the Gaians, we have unbalanced systems that require unnecessary maintenance. On top of the increased maintenance, lower consumption means rate per KWH must go up to cover expenses. And the raised rates make it impossible for many people to afford heat in winter, so they die.
Smart.
= = = = =
Here is an excellent article on the financial and commercial context of the Wright demand meter.
Labels: 20th century Dark Age
¶ 9:02 AM
Blood apples
Apple issues a dividend for the first time in many years, making it even more attractive to investors of all types, but especially "Socially Responsible Investors."
Thinking logically for a moment:
Apple specializes in Chinese sweatshop labor, which permanently disables and kills many of its workers. It removed all production from America and transferred it to the deadly Foxconn. It removed most of its vast loot from America and placed it in offshore tax-shelters, thus shirking the Social Responsibility of the rich to support the poor in their own country.
Logically, Apple should be placed in the same class as those diamond and copper companies that foment wars in Congo. Blood money.
Nevertheless, the Socially Responsible Murderers adore Apple.
From Motley Fool:
Okay. Well then, maybe slavery isn't one of the important factors in Socially Responsible Genocide. Let's see what Wiki has to say on the main topic:
Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Quakers. Slavery. Seems like I was just thinking about Quakers last night. I don't quite remember the context, though.
And Wesley talked about "not harming your neighbor" and "industries ... which harm the health of workers."
iBlood iMoney. iPure and iSimple.
Apple is exempt from all rules and morals, of course, because Steve China-Jobs was cool and hip. Hipness overcomes all sins. Aristocrats are sinless by definition. ¶ 3:00 AM
Thinking logically for a moment:
Apple specializes in Chinese sweatshop labor, which permanently disables and kills many of its workers. It removed all production from America and transferred it to the deadly Foxconn. It removed most of its vast loot from America and placed it in offshore tax-shelters, thus shirking the Social Responsibility of the rich to support the poor in their own country.
Logically, Apple should be placed in the same class as those diamond and copper companies that foment wars in Congo. Blood money.
Nevertheless, the Socially Responsible Murderers adore Apple.
From Motley Fool:
The following are 5 very well known companies that have been recognized as socially responsible and have a CAPS rating of "appealing" or higher:
Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL)
CAPS Rating: 3 Stars
Social Responsibility: According to the latest Apple Supplier Responsibility progress report, Apple requires that their suppliers "provide safe working conditions, treat workers with dignity and respect, and use environmentally responsible manufacturing processes wherever Apple products are made."
Okay. Well then, maybe slavery isn't one of the important factors in Socially Responsible Genocide. Let's see what Wiki has to say on the main topic:
The origins of socially responsible investing may date back to the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). In 1758, the Quaker Philadelphia Yearly Meeting prohibited members from participating in the slave trade–buying or selling humans.
One of the most articulate early adopters of SRI was John Wesley (1703–1791), one of the founders of Methodism. Wesley's sermon "The Use of Money" outlined his basic tenets of social investing – i.e. not to harm your neighbor through your business practices and to avoid industries like tanning and chemical production, which can harm the health of workers.
Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Quakers. Slavery. Seems like I was just thinking about Quakers last night. I don't quite remember the context, though.
And Wesley talked about "not harming your neighbor" and "industries ... which harm the health of workers."
iBlood iMoney. iPure and iSimple.
Apple is exempt from all rules and morals, of course, because Steve China-Jobs was cool and hip. Hipness overcomes all sins. Aristocrats are sinless by definition. ¶ 3:00 AM
Monday, March 19, 2012
Better than 84
Looking for the exact Orwell quote about Quakers to buttress the previous entry, I ran into another Orwell essay that I'd never read before.
What is Science? from 1945.
This will do:
Exactly. And the situation has grown massively worse since 1945, with vastly narrower specialization and professional tunnel vision.
But even Orwell isn't perfect. In other parts of the essay he bemoans the fact that "scientists" in his time gravitated toward Nationalism, helping America and Britain to develop the A-bomb.
He was factually wrong, but the facts weren't public in 1945. Many of the top-level physicists were in fact internationalists just like Orwell, and were working for America and Britain as a temporary tactic to help Stalin defeat Germany, while quietly feeding secret info to Stalin.
When Stalin turned against the West the very next year, those same physicists followed him, helping to create the United Nations and the pro-Soviet peace movement, thus unraveling the Western victory. ¶ 5:41 PM
What is Science? from 1945.
This will do:
But does all this mean that the general public should not be more scientifically educated? On the contrary! All it means is that scientific education for the masses will do little good, and probably a lot of harm, if it simply boils down to more physics, more chemistry, more biology, etc., to the detriment of literature and history. Its probable effect on the average human being would be to narrow the range of his thoughts and make him more than ever contemptuous of such knowledge as he did not possess: and his political reactions would probably be somewhat less intelligent than those of an illiterate peasant who retained a few historical memories and a fairly sound aesthetic sense.
Clearly, scientific education ought to mean the implanting of a rational, sceptical, experimental habit of mind. It ought to mean acquiring a method — a method that can be used on any problem that one meets — and not simply piling up a lot of facts. Put it in those words, and the apologist of scientific education will usually agree. Press him further, ask him to particularize, and somehow it always turns out that scientific education means more attention to the sciences, in other words — more facts. The idea that science means a way of looking at the world, and not simply a body of knowledge, is in practice strongly resisted. I think sheer professional jealousy is part of the reason for this. For if science is simply a method or an attitude, so that anyone whose thought-processes are sufficiently rational can in some sense be described as a scientist — what then becomes of the enormous prestige now enjoyed by the chemist, the physicist, etc. and his claim to be somehow wiser than the rest of us?
Exactly. And the situation has grown massively worse since 1945, with vastly narrower specialization and professional tunnel vision.
But even Orwell isn't perfect. In other parts of the essay he bemoans the fact that "scientists" in his time gravitated toward Nationalism, helping America and Britain to develop the A-bomb.
He was factually wrong, but the facts weren't public in 1945. Many of the top-level physicists were in fact internationalists just like Orwell, and were working for America and Britain as a temporary tactic to help Stalin defeat Germany, while quietly feeding secret info to Stalin.
When Stalin turned against the West the very next year, those same physicists followed him, helping to create the United Nations and the pro-Soviet peace movement, thus unraveling the Western victory. ¶ 5:41 PM
Smooth as satan
PM Cameron's proposal to redefine marriage as farriage is running into multi-culti opposition.
Sentamu, probably the next head of the Anglicans, has come out against it, and Roman leaders have been refreshingly solid. Now the Sikhs and Muslims are speaking:
Both are rigorous and clear. The state can give welfare benefits to any combination of people and pigs if it wants to; but marriage is a religious concept that has helped to build civilization, and the state is not free to alter it.
Breaking into religion is pure dictatorship.
The Satanic Quakers, as usual, show us how to break in without a baseball bat.
Pure single-malt Satan. Quakers "affirm and celebrate" all sorts of civilization-wrecking deviancy. Quakers were the first Leninists.
If that's as far as it went, it would just be private devil-worship.
The second sentence is where the batless burglary happens.
"We are clear that we can't impose our beliefs on others."
Sounds good until you think about it.
By officially forcing the pro-civilization faiths to abandon their foundations, the Brit government is specifically and explicitly imposing its beliefs on others.
What the Quakers really mean, of course, is "We can't allow the government to impose civilized beliefs on us, and on our fellow mass-slaughering destroyers. Wacked-out genocidal maniacs like us must be free to SMASH SMASH SMASH SMASH SMASH normal culture and decent people. KILL! KILL! KILL!" ¶ 5:17 PM
Sentamu, probably the next head of the Anglicans, has come out against it, and Roman leaders have been refreshingly solid. Now the Sikhs and Muslims are speaking:
Farooq Murad, Secretary General of the MCB, said: “Whilst we remain opposed to all forms of discrimination, including homophobia, redefining the meaning of marriage is in our opinion unnecessary and unhelpful.
“With the advent of civil partnerships, both homosexual and heterosexual couples now have equal rights in the eyes of the law. .... In common with other Abrahamic faiths, marriage in Islam is defined as “a union between a man and a woman”, he said. “So while the state has accommodated for gay couples, such unions will not be blessed as marriage by the Islamic institutions.”
Lord Singh, head of the Network of Sikh Organisations, said the proposed reforms represented “a sideways assault on religion”.
“It is an attempt by a vocal, secular minority to attack religion,” he said.
Both are rigorous and clear. The state can give welfare benefits to any combination of people and pigs if it wants to; but marriage is a religious concept that has helped to build civilization, and the state is not free to alter it.
Breaking into religion is pure dictatorship.
The Satanic Quakers, as usual, show us how to break in without a baseball bat.
However, Rachel Muers, a Quaker theologian and senior lecturer in Christian studies at the University of Leeds, said Quakers wanted to “affirm and celebrate” same-sex couples in a religious context.
“We are clear that we can't impose our beliefs on others.”
Pure single-malt Satan. Quakers "affirm and celebrate" all sorts of civilization-wrecking deviancy. Quakers were the first Leninists.
If that's as far as it went, it would just be private devil-worship.
The second sentence is where the batless burglary happens.
"We are clear that we can't impose our beliefs on others."
Sounds good until you think about it.
By officially forcing the pro-civilization faiths to abandon their foundations, the Brit government is specifically and explicitly imposing its beliefs on others.
What the Quakers really mean, of course, is "We can't allow the government to impose civilized beliefs on us, and on our fellow mass-slaughering destroyers. Wacked-out genocidal maniacs like us must be free to SMASH SMASH SMASH SMASH SMASH normal culture and decent people. KILL! KILL! KILL!" ¶ 5:17 PM
Sunday, March 18, 2012
'Deep pipes'
This 'study' is all over the media. Nothing new about the subject, and as far as I can tell from the writeups, this 'study' partly misses the point.
Correlations between authority and speech patterns have been studied for a LONG time in speech research circles.
What's known: Authority correlates with low FORMANTS, not with a low PITCH.
The larynx creates the basic pitch: about 120 cycles per second for most males, about 180 for most adult females, about 300 for young kids.
But the laryngeal wave is not a simple sine wave by any means. The larynx opens briefly to let air through, then slams shut for most of the cycle.
Here's a schematic of larynx action with the resulting waveform below:
These repeated openings create pulses of pressure in the mouth; each pulse 'rings' the air cavities of the throat, nose and mouth. Those 'rings' are the real carriers of both meaning and feeling in speech.
Consider a woodwind instrument like a saxophone. The reed, like the larynx, makes a buzzing sound that has no particular character. The reed isn't what you hear; it only triggers vibrations in the tube and bell. The valves change the dimensions of the tube, which changes the note and timbre of the resultant sound.
Each person has a default pattern of those 'rings', based on the dimensions and shapes of your mouth, nasal cavity and throat. This default pattern is constant whether you pitch your voice high or low. When you move your tongue and lips into various positions for vowels and consonants, you're making further adjustments in the 'rings', technically called formants.
Easy proof: Whispering is just as understandable as voiced speech, even though a whisper has no pitch at all. (Or more precisely, it's white noise with all pitches mixed together.) And you can distinguish a male whisper from a female. It's all in the shaping by the mouth; the pitch of the larynx is just one way of triggering the formants.
Our perception of authority also comes from the shaping of those formants. If the formants indicate a large or loose cavity, we associate it with maturity and confidence. If the formants indicate a small cavity with high muscle tension, we associate it with youth and nervousness.
NPR finishes off their piece with a brief sample of Obama singing an Al Green song in a high voice, with the implication that this tends to disprove or counter the 'study'. Not at all. Obama has confident formants, and those formants still come through when he tunes his larynx to a high note.
= = = = =
Bit later: After writing the above, I was looking for more good stuff by George Shepardson, whose 1901 'Electrical Catechism' inspired me a few weeks ago. I bought the printed version of that book and have been hungrily reading it, and now I want more! The first thing I found in Google ebooks was his 'Telephone Apparatus' from 1917. Started reading, and sure enough....
Shepardson's description of the speech mechanism is precisely accurate, beautifully clear, and superior to most modern descriptions. He got the pressure-based operation of the larynx exactly right. Most of the 'real' speech scientists at that time pursued a provably false theory that the vocal folds were directly vibrated by muscles; they didn't fully abandon the bad theory (i.e. they didn't all die) until 1970. Later, on p. 27, Shepardson covers the connection of emotional content with formants. Precisely right again.
Why did Shepardson disappear into obscurity? Well, I don't need to answer that, do I? Because he was correct and brilliant.
= = = = =
Later followup here.
Correlations between authority and speech patterns have been studied for a LONG time in speech research circles.
What's known: Authority correlates with low FORMANTS, not with a low PITCH.
The larynx creates the basic pitch: about 120 cycles per second for most males, about 180 for most adult females, about 300 for young kids.
But the laryngeal wave is not a simple sine wave by any means. The larynx opens briefly to let air through, then slams shut for most of the cycle.
Here's a schematic of larynx action with the resulting waveform below:
These repeated openings create pulses of pressure in the mouth; each pulse 'rings' the air cavities of the throat, nose and mouth. Those 'rings' are the real carriers of both meaning and feeling in speech.
Consider a woodwind instrument like a saxophone. The reed, like the larynx, makes a buzzing sound that has no particular character. The reed isn't what you hear; it only triggers vibrations in the tube and bell. The valves change the dimensions of the tube, which changes the note and timbre of the resultant sound.
Each person has a default pattern of those 'rings', based on the dimensions and shapes of your mouth, nasal cavity and throat. This default pattern is constant whether you pitch your voice high or low. When you move your tongue and lips into various positions for vowels and consonants, you're making further adjustments in the 'rings', technically called formants.
Easy proof: Whispering is just as understandable as voiced speech, even though a whisper has no pitch at all. (Or more precisely, it's white noise with all pitches mixed together.) And you can distinguish a male whisper from a female. It's all in the shaping by the mouth; the pitch of the larynx is just one way of triggering the formants.
Our perception of authority also comes from the shaping of those formants. If the formants indicate a large or loose cavity, we associate it with maturity and confidence. If the formants indicate a small cavity with high muscle tension, we associate it with youth and nervousness.
NPR finishes off their piece with a brief sample of Obama singing an Al Green song in a high voice, with the implication that this tends to disprove or counter the 'study'. Not at all. Obama has confident formants, and those formants still come through when he tunes his larynx to a high note.
= = = = =
Bit later: After writing the above, I was looking for more good stuff by George Shepardson, whose 1901 'Electrical Catechism' inspired me a few weeks ago. I bought the printed version of that book and have been hungrily reading it, and now I want more! The first thing I found in Google ebooks was his 'Telephone Apparatus' from 1917. Started reading, and sure enough....
Shepardson's description of the speech mechanism is precisely accurate, beautifully clear, and superior to most modern descriptions. He got the pressure-based operation of the larynx exactly right. Most of the 'real' speech scientists at that time pursued a provably false theory that the vocal folds were directly vibrated by muscles; they didn't fully abandon the bad theory (i.e. they didn't all die) until 1970. Later, on p. 27, Shepardson covers the connection of emotional content with formants. Precisely right again.
Why did Shepardson disappear into obscurity? Well, I don't need to answer that, do I? Because he was correct and brilliant.
= = = = =
Later followup here.
Labels: 1901, 20th century Dark Age
¶ 8:16 AM
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Btfsplk'd
Big Niña pranked me today.
Normally I do my walks, both purposeful and random, between 8 and 11 in the morning. After three days of nearly continuous rain I was getting unsure. No actual rain this morning, but it felt like it was ready to roar at any moment. At 1 PM nothing was visible on the Weather.com radar, and a sunbreak was peeping through the clouds. Good enough. Out the door.
Three steps off the front porch, a raindrop. The rain increased, then turned to painful graupel; but I kept to the usual route. As home came back into view, the graupel stopped; and the last raindrop fell as I opened the door.
Gee thanks, Ma Nature. What was the lesson? Don't walk in the afternoon? Don't trust radar? Or were you just having a laugh?
[More likely, the sunbreak provided just enough energy for a tiny convective burst. I should have treated the absence of sunbreaks as a sign of safety!] ¶ 8:01 PM
Normally I do my walks, both purposeful and random, between 8 and 11 in the morning. After three days of nearly continuous rain I was getting unsure. No actual rain this morning, but it felt like it was ready to roar at any moment. At 1 PM nothing was visible on the Weather.com radar, and a sunbreak was peeping through the clouds. Good enough. Out the door.
Three steps off the front porch, a raindrop. The rain increased, then turned to painful graupel; but I kept to the usual route. As home came back into view, the graupel stopped; and the last raindrop fell as I opened the door.
Gee thanks, Ma Nature. What was the lesson? Don't walk in the afternoon? Don't trust radar? Or were you just having a laugh?
[More likely, the sunbreak provided just enough energy for a tiny convective burst. I should have treated the absence of sunbreaks as a sign of safety!] ¶ 8:01 PM
Two-way redundant acronym
Grammar freaks often bitch about redundant acronyms, where the word you say after the acronym is also the last word inside the acronym.
A few examples among many:
ATM machine = Automatic Teller Machine machine
PIN number = Personal Identification Number number
RAM memory = Random-Access Memory memory
CD disk = Compact Disk disk
GIF format = Graphics Interchange Format format
ISBN number = International Standard Book Number number
UNFCCC Climate Change Secretariat = United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Climate Change Secretariat
Triple-A Auto Club = AAA Auto Club = American Automobile Association Auto Club
The bitching of the grammarrhoids is stupid because people are fully capable of deciding whether a word is redundant. In the above cases the last word needs to be explicit because the acronym no longer represents separate words; it's simply an adjective or descriptor. When you talk about a CD disk, you're not thinking Compact Disk disk, you're only distinguishing a CD disk from a DVD disk or a floppy disk or a USB disk. All four of those descriptors fit into the same mental slot :) though CD and DVD are redundant acronyms, floppy is a plain word, and USB is a non-redundant acronym in this context.
= = = = =
Today I heard the first two-sided redundant acronym, which is also the first fully redundant acronym:
"Oprah Winfrey's OWN Network cancels Rosie's show."
Expanded:
Oprah Winfrey's {Oprah Winfrey's Network} Network cancels Rosie's show.
In this case the grammarrhoid bitching is probably right, since OWN is still felt to mean Oprah Winfrey's Network, if anyone even thinks about it at all.
A few examples among many:
ATM machine = Automatic Teller Machine machine
PIN number = Personal Identification Number number
RAM memory = Random-Access Memory memory
CD disk = Compact Disk disk
GIF format = Graphics Interchange Format format
ISBN number = International Standard Book Number number
UNFCCC Climate Change Secretariat = United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Climate Change Secretariat
Triple-A Auto Club = AAA Auto Club = American Automobile Association Auto Club
The bitching of the grammarrhoids is stupid because people are fully capable of deciding whether a word is redundant. In the above cases the last word needs to be explicit because the acronym no longer represents separate words; it's simply an adjective or descriptor. When you talk about a CD disk, you're not thinking Compact Disk disk, you're only distinguishing a CD disk from a DVD disk or a floppy disk or a USB disk. All four of those descriptors fit into the same mental slot :) though CD and DVD are redundant acronyms, floppy is a plain word, and USB is a non-redundant acronym in this context.
= = = = =
Today I heard the first two-sided redundant acronym, which is also the first fully redundant acronym:
"Oprah Winfrey's OWN Network cancels Rosie's show."
Expanded:
Oprah Winfrey's {Oprah Winfrey's Network} Network cancels Rosie's show.
In this case the grammarrhoid bitching is probably right, since OWN is still felt to mean Oprah Winfrey's Network, if anyone even thinks about it at all.
Labels: Language update
¶ 11:05 AM
The sun RISES on the British Empire!
News in UK Guardian:
Finally.
Sounds like they're not slowing down the Carbon Crime yet, but all of these changes are still important.
Needless to say, the ecowackos are screeching. Good. About fucking time for them to screech. There will never be justice for the millions they've killed, but at least their genocide is losing some of its official support.
Finally.
= = = = =
Couple days later: Wonder if the sanity is spreading to BBC? They ran a lengthy feature on Australia's switch from drought to flood, and DIDN'T MENTION CARBON EVEN ONCE! Instead, they did something wildly radical for any media and strictly unprecedented for BBC: they simply told us what's happening! Can't draw conclusions from a few absences, but lately I'm getting the sense that the Cult is losing its force in media. I find myself screaming at the radio much less often than before.
And again: More evidence that the British media is lurching into lucidity, while America's Satanist Poison Vendors are still locked in lethal lunacy. Daily Mail reports on the failure of wind turbines in Hawaii and California. Last I looked, those places were part of America. Last I looked, none of America's Satanist Poison Vendors had noticed this problem. ¶ 4:50 AM
Scores of environmental regulations are to be slashed under government plans to be announced on Monday, the Guardian has learned.
The rules affected include controls on asbestos, invasive species and industrial air pollution; protection for wildlife and common lands; as well as restrictions on noise nuisance and deadly animal traps.
The impending announcement follows intense pressure from David Cameron and George Osborne to remove what the chancellor has called the "ridiculous costs" of "endless social and environmental goals".
Finally.
Sounds like they're not slowing down the Carbon Crime yet, but all of these changes are still important.
Needless to say, the ecowackos are screeching. Good. About fucking time for them to screech. There will never be justice for the millions they've killed, but at least their genocide is losing some of its official support.
Finally.
= = = = =
Couple days later: Wonder if the sanity is spreading to BBC? They ran a lengthy feature on Australia's switch from drought to flood, and DIDN'T MENTION CARBON EVEN ONCE! Instead, they did something wildly radical for any media and strictly unprecedented for BBC: they simply told us what's happening! Can't draw conclusions from a few absences, but lately I'm getting the sense that the Cult is losing its force in media. I find myself screaming at the radio much less often than before.
And again: More evidence that the British media is lurching into lucidity, while America's Satanist Poison Vendors are still locked in lethal lunacy. Daily Mail reports on the failure of wind turbines in Hawaii and California. Last I looked, those places were part of America. Last I looked, none of America's Satanist Poison Vendors had noticed this problem. ¶ 4:50 AM
It never stops.
BBC runs a serious and troubling piece on the use of music as interrogation and torture.
My first thought: We should be worrying instead that so much of our popular "music" is so perfectly suited for torture.
What's happening to the youngsters who listen to it voluntarily and constantly, with permanently attached earphones? Of course we already know. They become riotous idiots.
But that's not really the main point.
As usual, the Experts are furrowing their brows about MEANS when they should be worrying about ENDS.
If we forbid the MEANS, if we forbid effective torture and interrogation, we will be helpless against real enemies.
We should be focusing on the GOAL question: Are these enemies real? Is this whole war real? Or is it an intentional misdirection?
And the BBC utterly fails there. While they're furrowing about musical torture, they're enthusiastically pushing for MORE WAR! MORE WAR! MORE WAR! ATTACK LIBYA! ATTACK SYRIA! ATTACK PERSIA!
In other words, the worry about MEANS is itself a misdirection to prevent us from thinking about the main misdirection.
It never stops. ¶ 4:27 AM
My first thought: We should be worrying instead that so much of our popular "music" is so perfectly suited for torture.
What's happening to the youngsters who listen to it voluntarily and constantly, with permanently attached earphones? Of course we already know. They become riotous idiots.
But that's not really the main point.
As usual, the Experts are furrowing their brows about MEANS when they should be worrying about ENDS.
If we forbid the MEANS, if we forbid effective torture and interrogation, we will be helpless against real enemies.
We should be focusing on the GOAL question: Are these enemies real? Is this whole war real? Or is it an intentional misdirection?
And the BBC utterly fails there. While they're furrowing about musical torture, they're enthusiastically pushing for MORE WAR! MORE WAR! MORE WAR! ATTACK LIBYA! ATTACK SYRIA! ATTACK PERSIA!
In other words, the worry about MEANS is itself a misdirection to prevent us from thinking about the main misdirection.
It never stops. ¶ 4:27 AM
Stealing and stealing and..... 2
News item:
Needless to say, there's nothing new about amorphodites and fairies and babyrapers being placed in protective custody while in jail. When I was in Mansfield there was a whole floor (3NE) reserved for such types.
What's new is two things: (1) LEGALLY REQUIRED RESPECT for amorphodites. (2) Now that the Donna/Douglas thing is going to be in jail for a while, we can be sure that it will get a state-paid operation to finish and refine its "transition".
Stealing and stealing and stealing. Aristocratic privilege trumps law.
Jesus save us. Allah save us. One of you guys, get cracking. Now. ¶ 3:21 AM
The Spokane woman arrested in a federal raid Wednesday made her first court appearance Friday.
Donna Perry is being held at the Spokane County Jail, where a complication concerning her gender has her isolated from other inmates.
She’s listed on the jail roster by the name Douglas Perry, but her gender is listed as female. Perry underwent a gender change which now means she has to be kept separate from the rest of the jail population.
Authorities say people who are transgender, transsexual, intersex or transitioning are kept separate from the population for their own safety.
Perry was taken into custody Wednesday on a federal criminal complaint as a felon is possession of a firearm. Agents pulled ammunition and weapons from her Spokane home.
Needless to say, there's nothing new about amorphodites and fairies and babyrapers being placed in protective custody while in jail. When I was in Mansfield there was a whole floor (3NE) reserved for such types.
What's new is two things: (1) LEGALLY REQUIRED RESPECT for amorphodites. (2) Now that the Donna/Douglas thing is going to be in jail for a while, we can be sure that it will get a state-paid operation to finish and refine its "transition".
Stealing and stealing and stealing. Aristocratic privilege trumps law.
Jesus save us. Allah save us. One of you guys, get cracking. Now. ¶ 3:21 AM
Stealing and stealing and stealing and stealing.
News item:
The Wall Street Mafia never stops stealing and stealing and stealing and stealing and stealing.
The poor have already paid to SUBSIDIZE the prices of these extravagant fucking useless toy "cars". Now the poor are paying to RUN the "cars".
Everyone is required to support Conspicuous Consumption so the mass-murdering criminals can get to their next criminal destination without ever having to pay anything.
Jesus save us. Allah save us. Either one will do. Get on with it. ¶ 2:56 AM
Following a trail blazed by Indians and pioneers in covered wagons, electric car drivers hit the road Friday to inaugurate the first major section of a West Coast “Electric Highway” dotted with stations where they can charge up in 20 minutes.
The stretch of 160 miles of Interstate 5 served by eight stations marks the next big step in developing an infrastructure that until now has been limited primarily to chargers in homes and workplaces.
Spaced about every 25 miles, the stations allow a Nissan Leaf with a range of about 70 miles to miss one and still make it to the next. Electric car drivers will be able to recharge in about 20 minutes on the fast chargers, which are free for now.
The Wall Street Mafia never stops stealing and stealing and stealing and stealing and stealing.
The poor have already paid to SUBSIDIZE the prices of these extravagant fucking useless toy "cars". Now the poor are paying to RUN the "cars".
Everyone is required to support Conspicuous Consumption so the mass-murdering criminals can get to their next criminal destination without ever having to pay anything.
Jesus save us. Allah save us. Either one will do. Get on with it. ¶ 2:56 AM
Friday, March 16, 2012
Wakeup time!
Looked closely at my roses and lilacs a few days ago. They weren't starting to bud yet.
Yesterday we had a date-record rainfall: 1.2 inches in 24 hours. La Niña is finally getting in her whacks, after giving us a dry winter. Can't really complain, though; if the same precipitation had come in December per the usual Niña plan, it would have been two feet of snow!
Today the lilacs and roses are enthusiastically budding. Did the deluge give them a wakeup call?
¶ 1:40 PM
Yesterday we had a date-record rainfall: 1.2 inches in 24 hours. La Niña is finally getting in her whacks, after giving us a dry winter. Can't really complain, though; if the same precipitation had come in December per the usual Niña plan, it would have been two feet of snow!
Today the lilacs and roses are enthusiastically budding. Did the deluge give them a wakeup call?
¶ 1:40 PM
Could get interesting
According to UK Telegraph, John Sentamu is the most likely successor to Rowan Williams as head of the Anglican church.
I've mentioned Sentamu before, hoping he'd end up in a leadership position.
He's a hard man with a hard sense of morality, who has earned the privilege of talking about morality.
Under the modern system of censorship by genes, only a real African like Sentamu can talk sense into the niggers who are besmirching their African heritage, and the idiot wiggers who are mindlessly emulating the niggers. Remains to be seen whether he can do anything about the relentless "Personal Journey" of fags and bulldykes into total power; they grabbed most of the Anglican hierarchy a long time ago, and he doesn't have the genetic privilege to criticize them. ¶ 7:46 AM
I've mentioned Sentamu before, hoping he'd end up in a leadership position.
He's a hard man with a hard sense of morality, who has earned the privilege of talking about morality.
Dr Sentamu, the sixth of 13 brothers and sisters, and a former barrister and judge, came to the UK in 1974 having fled Uganda where he was a critic of the dictator Idi Amin.
The Archbishop has gained a reputation for supporting the armed forces - sky-diving to raise money for families of servicemen wounded or killed in Afghanistan - and for speaking out against bankers and traders responsible for the financial crisis.
He has called for the English to mark St George's Day properly on April 23, warning that the failure of England to rediscover its culture would lead only to greater political extremism.
As Bishop of Stepney in east London, Dr Sentamu acted as an adviser to the inquiry into the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence. He has also campaigned against guns, knives, drugs and gangs.
More recently, he attracted controversy - and racist emails - when he spoke out against gay marriage. Dr Sentamu is married with two grown-up children and two grown-up foster children.
Under the modern system of censorship by genes, only a real African like Sentamu can talk sense into the niggers who are besmirching their African heritage, and the idiot wiggers who are mindlessly emulating the niggers. Remains to be seen whether he can do anything about the relentless "Personal Journey" of fags and bulldykes into total power; they grabbed most of the Anglican hierarchy a long time ago, and he doesn't have the genetic privilege to criticize them. ¶ 7:46 AM
Lethal optimism
Big examples:
(1) American economists like Jeffrey Sachs get involved in Russia, trying to turn it into a Young Democracy. Result: Tragedy.
(2) Grotesque Idiot Soviet Agent Bush The Son gets involved in Iraq, trying to turn it into a Young Democracy. Result: Tragedy.
(3) Grotesque Idiot Soviet Agent Bush The Son gets involved in Afghanistan, trying to turn it into a Young Democracy. Result: Tragedy.
= = = = =
One small example:
In Spokane, a good samaritan who feels temporarily responsible for a neighbor's rental house hears a drug party with dozens of jungle-bunnies. He gets involved in the party, trying to make the niggers act like humans. Result: Tragedy. The niggers remain niggers and the good samaritan dies.
= = = = =
Solution:
Stop being an optimist. Get rid of the delusion that you can "make a difference". Stop believing that your own private idea of goodness is shared by all humans. Stop believing that all humans can be converted to your own private form of goodness. Understand that people are different in deep and innate ways, and have unbreakably different notions of goodness. Understand that these differences cannot be resolved by smooshing people together into an amorphous blob. Understand that Nature invented cell walls, organisms, boundaries and borders for a good reason. Understand that Nature gave all living things a miraculous power to distinguish and discriminate for a good reason. Eliminate the monstrous genocidal world-destroying concept of "democracy".
Above all, learn when to say
(1) American economists like Jeffrey Sachs get involved in Russia, trying to turn it into a Young Democracy. Result: Tragedy.
(2) Grotesque Idiot Soviet Agent Bush The Son gets involved in Iraq, trying to turn it into a Young Democracy. Result: Tragedy.
(3) Grotesque Idiot Soviet Agent Bush The Son gets involved in Afghanistan, trying to turn it into a Young Democracy. Result: Tragedy.
= = = = =
One small example:
In Spokane, a good samaritan who feels temporarily responsible for a neighbor's rental house hears a drug party with dozens of jungle-bunnies. He gets involved in the party, trying to make the niggers act like humans. Result: Tragedy. The niggers remain niggers and the good samaritan dies.
= = = = =
Solution:
Stop being an optimist. Get rid of the delusion that you can "make a difference". Stop believing that your own private idea of goodness is shared by all humans. Stop believing that all humans can be converted to your own private form of goodness. Understand that people are different in deep and innate ways, and have unbreakably different notions of goodness. Understand that these differences cannot be resolved by smooshing people together into an amorphous blob. Understand that Nature invented cell walls, organisms, boundaries and borders for a good reason. Understand that Nature gave all living things a miraculous power to distinguish and discriminate for a good reason. Eliminate the monstrous genocidal world-destroying concept of "democracy".
Above all, learn when to say
Labels: defensible spaces, Grand Blueprint
¶ 3:17 AM
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Blago
As the inimitable Blagojevich heads for jail, just one thought.
Business and politics have the same goal: sell goods or services to customers.
In business, it's normal for the customer to pay for what he receives.
In politics, it's abnormal for the customer to pay for what he receives.
= = = = =
Normal business: I order a pair of shoes from LL Bean. I send them $70 and in return they send me shoes. Nobody else pays.
Abnormal business: LL Bean sends me a pair of shoes and tries to get $70 from everyone except me. (This is so bizarre that it isn't even a crime, because nobody tries it!)
= = = = =
In politics normal and abnormal are reversed.
Normal politics: Soviet Agent Bush The Son sells a Medicare Prescription drug program to 700 widows in Palm Beach in order to gain their votes, because those 700 widows are the only real voters. Everybody else pays $1 trillion for those 700 votes.
Abnormal politics: Blago sells a Senate office to one man who wants it. In return the man pays Blago $100k. Nobody else pays.
= = = = =
The same rule should apply to both situations. You receive a thing or a service, you pay for it. Nobody else pays for it.
Blago is being punished for honest dealing. ¶ 7:35 AM
Business and politics have the same goal: sell goods or services to customers.
In business, it's normal for the customer to pay for what he receives.
In politics, it's abnormal for the customer to pay for what he receives.
= = = = =
Normal business: I order a pair of shoes from LL Bean. I send them $70 and in return they send me shoes. Nobody else pays.
Abnormal business: LL Bean sends me a pair of shoes and tries to get $70 from everyone except me. (This is so bizarre that it isn't even a crime, because nobody tries it!)
= = = = =
In politics normal and abnormal are reversed.
Normal politics: Soviet Agent Bush The Son sells a Medicare Prescription drug program to 700 widows in Palm Beach in order to gain their votes, because those 700 widows are the only real voters. Everybody else pays $1 trillion for those 700 votes.
Abnormal politics: Blago sells a Senate office to one man who wants it. In return the man pays Blago $100k. Nobody else pays.
= = = = =
The same rule should apply to both situations. You receive a thing or a service, you pay for it. Nobody else pays for it.
Blago is being punished for honest dealing. ¶ 7:35 AM
Good sign for the future!
AP item:
Note the all-encompassing Stalinist 'we' from the psych prof.
As usual, when experts use a despite construction [as in "go against widespread belief..."] the truth is really because.
Teens are naturally inclined to rebel against the beliefs of the previous generation. When the previous generation treats the young with arrogant condescension and officially censors all unorthodox thoughts, the rebellion gets vastly stronger. Kids want to know what the adults are hiding, and since the advent of the Web, it's much easier for them to find out.
This applies to all the pseudosciences of the modern Establishment: Environment, Evolution, Economics, Cosmology, and Psychology. In all those areas, only one opinion is permitted in mass media and schools. In Environment and Evolution, heresy is officially prohibited in the schools.
= = = = =
Sidenote for fairness: In each of those areas some honest science does exist, but the officially approved theories are fraudulent. The public spokesmen, the people who control the discussion and grants, are pushing provably wrong pseudotheories. ¶ 5:33 AM
An academic analysis of surveys spanning more than 40 years has found that today's young Americans are less interested in the environment and in conserving resources — and often less civic-minded overall — than their elders were when they were young.
The findings go against the widespread belief that environmental issues have hit home with today's young adults, known as Millennials, who have grown up amid climate change discussion and the mantra "reduce, reuse, recycle." The environment is often listed among top concerns of young voters.
"I was shocked," said Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University who is one of the study's authors. "We have the perception that we're getting through to people. But at least compared to previous eras, we're not."
Note the all-encompassing Stalinist 'we' from the psych prof.
As usual, when experts use a despite construction [as in "go against widespread belief..."] the truth is really because.
Teens are naturally inclined to rebel against the beliefs of the previous generation. When the previous generation treats the young with arrogant condescension and officially censors all unorthodox thoughts, the rebellion gets vastly stronger. Kids want to know what the adults are hiding, and since the advent of the Web, it's much easier for them to find out.
This applies to all the pseudosciences of the modern Establishment: Environment, Evolution, Economics, Cosmology, and Psychology. In all those areas, only one opinion is permitted in mass media and schools. In Environment and Evolution, heresy is officially prohibited in the schools.
= = = = =
Sidenote for fairness: In each of those areas some honest science does exist, but the officially approved theories are fraudulent. The public spokesmen, the people who control the discussion and grants, are pushing provably wrong pseudotheories. ¶ 5:33 AM
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Intuition
Sometimes I start thinking that my minimalist lifestyle is unusual, and then sometimes I realize it isn't.
This morning I went to Safeway on one of my regular MWF store trips. The list was a bit shorter than usual. The checkout lady said: "Load's a little light this morning. Gets you out of the house, eh?"
Yup. She's got me pegged!
When I picture the usual set of customers at that hour of the morning, they fall into two categories:
(1) 300-pound single moms with food stamps and toddlers.
(2) Compact oldsters, most of whom act well-exercised and alert but not athletic or wealthy.
I probably fit into (2) pretty well, which means the checkout lady knows my type thoroughly!
Makes me wonder. Will the 300-pound single moms ever get to be oldsters? Or will they be finished at 45?
How did so many in that generation grow so heavy? ¶ 7:39 PM
This morning I went to Safeway on one of my regular MWF store trips. The list was a bit shorter than usual. The checkout lady said: "Load's a little light this morning. Gets you out of the house, eh?"
Yup. She's got me pegged!
When I picture the usual set of customers at that hour of the morning, they fall into two categories:
(1) 300-pound single moms with food stamps and toddlers.
(2) Compact oldsters, most of whom act well-exercised and alert but not athletic or wealthy.
I probably fit into (2) pretty well, which means the checkout lady knows my type thoroughly!
Makes me wonder. Will the 300-pound single moms ever get to be oldsters? Or will they be finished at 45?
How did so many in that generation grow so heavy? ¶ 7:39 PM
Process again
Two especially egregious examples of Process over Fact.
(A) After the Sergeant carefully demonstrated the utter insanity and futility of our presence in Afghanistan, the Army and the administration are setting up 4,674 new Task Forces, which will give lifetime employment to 57,212 lawyers, to Investigate This Heinous And Unprecedented And Unthinkable Action. Same old Lone Gunman shit, as always. Meanwhile, it's forbidden to move or touch anything while an Investigation is underway, so we'll stay in Afghanistan forever.
Correct response: If we were sane, we would listen to what this desperate Sergeant is telling us. We'd hear his message loud and clear: "You have given your soldiers an absolutely impossible job. There is no mission. There is no goal. There can never be a mission or goal. It is logically and physically impossible. All we can do is mindlessly kill or be killed." And we would respond to his message by GETTING THE FUCK OUT. NOW. NOW. NOW. THIS SECOND. OUT. OUT. OUT. OUT. NOW. NOW. NOW.
(B) China is keeping its minerals to itself. Nothing wrong with that; the advantage of being a nation is that you can decide what to sell and what to keep. We don't like this particular keeping because we've been too fucking stupid to keep or develop our own minerals. Our initial response to China's economic normalcy is process. We're begging various international agencies, owned by China, to investigate China's actions and reach a conclusion.
Correct response: We must recover our own nationhood, which was lost 23 years ago. An actual nation would respond to China's move in one of two ways: (1) Cut off all trade and outsourcing that benefits China. Buy back their bonds so they don't have a handle on us. Resell the bonds at a profit, by force if necessary, to the traitorious corporations that have served China, and require those traitors, by force if necessary, to keep the bonds until maturity. Or (2) devote a huge crash program to developing our own minerals. Eliminate EPA. Open all Federal land to exploration and mining. Redesign our idiot shit so it doesn't need any exclusively Chinese materials. This will require us to give up some of our idiot shit entirely, which will be a pure gain for Americans. And it will also reduce our dependence on the Chinese slaves who make our idiot shit, and provide an ancient unknown thing called "work" to skilled Americans. ¶ 5:04 AM
(A) After the Sergeant carefully demonstrated the utter insanity and futility of our presence in Afghanistan, the Army and the administration are setting up 4,674 new Task Forces, which will give lifetime employment to 57,212 lawyers, to Investigate This Heinous And Unprecedented And Unthinkable Action. Same old Lone Gunman shit, as always. Meanwhile, it's forbidden to move or touch anything while an Investigation is underway, so we'll stay in Afghanistan forever.
Correct response: If we were sane, we would listen to what this desperate Sergeant is telling us. We'd hear his message loud and clear: "You have given your soldiers an absolutely impossible job. There is no mission. There is no goal. There can never be a mission or goal. It is logically and physically impossible. All we can do is mindlessly kill or be killed." And we would respond to his message by GETTING THE FUCK OUT. NOW. NOW. NOW. THIS SECOND. OUT. OUT. OUT. OUT. NOW. NOW. NOW.
(B) China is keeping its minerals to itself. Nothing wrong with that; the advantage of being a nation is that you can decide what to sell and what to keep. We don't like this particular keeping because we've been too fucking stupid to keep or develop our own minerals. Our initial response to China's economic normalcy is process. We're begging various international agencies, owned by China, to investigate China's actions and reach a conclusion.
Correct response: We must recover our own nationhood, which was lost 23 years ago. An actual nation would respond to China's move in one of two ways: (1) Cut off all trade and outsourcing that benefits China. Buy back their bonds so they don't have a handle on us. Resell the bonds at a profit, by force if necessary, to the traitorious corporations that have served China, and require those traitors, by force if necessary, to keep the bonds until maturity. Or (2) devote a huge crash program to developing our own minerals. Eliminate EPA. Open all Federal land to exploration and mining. Redesign our idiot shit so it doesn't need any exclusively Chinese materials. This will require us to give up some of our idiot shit entirely, which will be a pure gain for Americans. And it will also reduce our dependence on the Chinese slaves who make our idiot shit, and provide an ancient unknown thing called "work" to skilled Americans. ¶ 5:04 AM
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Smart kids!
From Northwest Public Radio:
Those kids, presumably led by their parents, are EXACTLY RIGHT. They see how their future can be successful. They're returning to the pre-1970 secret of American success, which is the only way America will succeed again. Good technical training will serve those kids well for a lifetime, and will also serve the whole country.
Sounds like the educrats in Oklahoma (no surprise!) and Idaho (slight surprise!) are on the right track. Let's hope educrats in other states can see this trend and adjust accordingly. Cut colleges to the bone, strip out the pointless college orientation of high schools. Focus entirely on getting the kids into a job with the best possible training! ¶ 5:03 PM
An over-enrolled technical high school opening for the first time this fall in north Idaho indicates an unmet hunger for practical job training. The multi-district collaboration in Rathdrum doesn’t even have a roof yet, and enrollment already exceeds capacity. Now, the school is on the hunt for more instructors.
The Kootenai Technical Education Campus, or KTEC, is due to open this fall. Enrollment is offered to public school students from around the Coeur d’Alene area. Those lucky enough to be admitted will spend half-days learning in-demand skills like welding, computer repair or diesel mechanics. The school was originally designed to have 280 students, but 900 have signed up.
KTEC director Mark Cotner says when it comes to hiring instructors, these courses require a higher level of expertise than the shop class you might remember from school. “These programs are really based on industry certifications," Cotner explains. "So that when a student comes out of say the welding program, they are already certified for the welding industry.”
North Idaho voters approved a property tax levy in 2010 to build the Kootenai Technical Education Campus. It uses an Oklahoma model that bases technical curriculum on the needs of the regional economy. Another similar school was built in Wilder, Idaho.
Those kids, presumably led by their parents, are EXACTLY RIGHT. They see how their future can be successful. They're returning to the pre-1970 secret of American success, which is the only way America will succeed again. Good technical training will serve those kids well for a lifetime, and will also serve the whole country.
Sounds like the educrats in Oklahoma (no surprise!) and Idaho (slight surprise!) are on the right track. Let's hope educrats in other states can see this trend and adjust accordingly. Cut colleges to the bone, strip out the pointless college orientation of high schools. Focus entirely on getting the kids into a job with the best possible training! ¶ 5:03 PM
Monday, March 12, 2012
2 down, a few dozen to go
Mass murderer Stephen Schneider blessedly died last year. Now mass murderer F. Sherwood Rowland has blessedly died.
Two criminal monsters down, but a whole lot still unfortunately living and slaughtering.
Thousands of people are unnecessarily starving, dying in coal mines, dying in biofuel plant explosions, freezing because heat is unaffordable.
Please, O Kuhnian Gods, speed up the process!
Two criminal monsters down, but a whole lot still unfortunately living and slaughtering.
Thousands of people are unnecessarily starving, dying in coal mines, dying in biofuel plant explosions, freezing because heat is unaffordable.
Please, O Kuhnian Gods, speed up the process!
Labels: Carbon Cult
¶ 6:34 AM
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Infill
Since December I've doubled my weekly exercise, infilling between the usual M-W-F trips to the store. Walking every day makes a noticeable difference in mood and health.
These infill walks required fighting two old internal rules made by my Kraut chromosomes.
Rule 1: «Achtung! Valk must haff Purpose! No Valk mitout Utility!»
This rule never made any sense. In younger years I felt free to drive or bike without a destination, but walking has always needed a firm reason. No idea why. Breaking this rule was easy; just one pleasant random walk deconditioned it.
Rule 2: «Achtung! All Valking Routes must be Maximally Efficient! Cut all Corners, never go around Unnecessary Block!»
This rule does make sense for a lifetime pedestrian, and I've learned quite a few tricks to find the shortest possible path. But it's completely wrong for a random walk, where the only destination is Back Home, and the purpose is to maximize distance without getting overly tired. Because it's logical, this rule is harder to break, and still requires some Strangelovian internal slapdowns.
= = = = =
Useful walks always head south and east from my house, because that's where the stores and bus stops are. So the random walks have headed north and west, to explore unfamiliar territory. And there's a surprising amount of unfamiliar stuff within a one-mile radius, because I simply never looked in those directions before!
Earlier I noted a 'locus of new growth' that seems to be propagating from the city's beautiful repaving of Wellesley. Flips, sales, existing remodels, and new construction. Infill as usual in Spokane, the Infill Capital of the West. Nevertheless, an indication of positive economic activity in this part of town. The new construction is on lots that have been vacant for a hundred years!
Now I'm noticing a 'locus of decay' in the other direction, propagating from the only apartment building in the neighborhood. This apt is a two-story wood structure, possibly a WW2 barracks extensively remodeled. It's been decaying for a long time and fully abandoned for a couple years. The apt seems to be infecting nearby houses with Who-Gives-A-Fuck-Itis. Near the apt are several collapsing failed remodels, mixed as usual in Spokane with beautiful and elegant 1930's cottages.....
These infill walks required fighting two old internal rules made by my Kraut chromosomes.
Rule 1: «Achtung! Valk must haff Purpose! No Valk mitout Utility!»
This rule never made any sense. In younger years I felt free to drive or bike without a destination, but walking has always needed a firm reason. No idea why. Breaking this rule was easy; just one pleasant random walk deconditioned it.
Rule 2: «Achtung! All Valking Routes must be Maximally Efficient! Cut all Corners, never go around Unnecessary Block!»
This rule does make sense for a lifetime pedestrian, and I've learned quite a few tricks to find the shortest possible path. But it's completely wrong for a random walk, where the only destination is Back Home, and the purpose is to maximize distance without getting overly tired. Because it's logical, this rule is harder to break, and still requires some Strangelovian internal slapdowns.
= = = = =
Useful walks always head south and east from my house, because that's where the stores and bus stops are. So the random walks have headed north and west, to explore unfamiliar territory. And there's a surprising amount of unfamiliar stuff within a one-mile radius, because I simply never looked in those directions before!
Earlier I noted a 'locus of new growth' that seems to be propagating from the city's beautiful repaving of Wellesley. Flips, sales, existing remodels, and new construction. Infill as usual in Spokane, the Infill Capital of the West. Nevertheless, an indication of positive economic activity in this part of town. The new construction is on lots that have been vacant for a hundred years!
Now I'm noticing a 'locus of decay' in the other direction, propagating from the only apartment building in the neighborhood. This apt is a two-story wood structure, possibly a WW2 barracks extensively remodeled. It's been decaying for a long time and fully abandoned for a couple years. The apt seems to be infecting nearby houses with Who-Gives-A-Fuck-Itis. Near the apt are several collapsing failed remodels, mixed as usual in Spokane with beautiful and elegant 1930's cottages.....
Labels: infill, Shack people - Cottage people
¶ 1:58 PM
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Electric day
Today is the first sunny warmish day of the year. The plants know it, the squirrels know it, and the electric cars know it.
(1) I got out into the yard with a rake and started fiddling around.
Since last year's reclaiming, I've made a firm practice of walking in the back yard once a day, if only for a moment, to maintain the sense of possession. Like a dog patrolling its territory. Now that I've retaken the yard from trees and trash and wind-fear, I'm not going to slack off. This year's task: smooth out the humps and dips and replant where needed; maybe build a tiny deck to sit on.
(2) A new generation of squirrels is also reclaiming this block. Their parents wisely abandoned the area last year after a hawk ate one of them. I was curious to see if the parents would somehow pass on the warning to the next generation, but apparently not.
(3) This morning I saw a Nissan Leaf and a Tesla for the very first time. What's more, I saw them at the same time in the same intersection. Amazingly the Tesla was moving!
This indicates the permanent niche for the pure electric car. Rich boy's toy to be displayed in warm sunny weather, like an Avanti or a Nash Metropolitan. You don't start it in winter or drive it in snow. ¶ 5:09 PM
(1) I got out into the yard with a rake and started fiddling around.
Since last year's reclaiming, I've made a firm practice of walking in the back yard once a day, if only for a moment, to maintain the sense of possession. Like a dog patrolling its territory. Now that I've retaken the yard from trees and trash and wind-fear, I'm not going to slack off. This year's task: smooth out the humps and dips and replant where needed; maybe build a tiny deck to sit on.
(2) A new generation of squirrels is also reclaiming this block. Their parents wisely abandoned the area last year after a hawk ate one of them. I was curious to see if the parents would somehow pass on the warning to the next generation, but apparently not.
(3) This morning I saw a Nissan Leaf and a Tesla for the very first time. What's more, I saw them at the same time in the same intersection. Amazingly the Tesla was moving!
This indicates the permanent niche for the pure electric car. Rich boy's toy to be displayed in warm sunny weather, like an Avanti or a Nash Metropolitan. You don't start it in winter or drive it in snow. ¶ 5:09 PM
Separation anxiety
A local public radio program discusses movies. The regular panelists are just what you'd expect: elite-bubble academics, confirmed leftists.
Today they had to confront their prejudices in an unusual way. They were discussing the Persian movie 'Separation', which has gone international. Everything about the movie was shocking to them: the Western attitudes of Persians, the educated and lively women, the contrast between sophisticated upper-class and strict lower-class. To their credit, they were trying to absorb the reality instead of blindly rejecting it.
These progressives had exactly the same biases about Persia as any Repooflican. You can see the same shared idiocy among the Israel-enslaved media on both "sides": Fox, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, NRO, NPR, all agree that "Iran" is an insane backward pile of 5th-century primitives. All agree that "Iran" is an "existential threat" to the world, and must be EXTERMINATED EXTERMINATED EXTERMINATED!
Fucking stupid bigoted Yankee shitheads.
Okies understand the situation better because we've known Persians for a long time. Persians have been part of Oklahoma since the '60s, mainly because of oil connections. Nothing in that movie would surprise an Okie. ¶ 4:08 PM
Today they had to confront their prejudices in an unusual way. They were discussing the Persian movie 'Separation', which has gone international. Everything about the movie was shocking to them: the Western attitudes of Persians, the educated and lively women, the contrast between sophisticated upper-class and strict lower-class. To their credit, they were trying to absorb the reality instead of blindly rejecting it.
These progressives had exactly the same biases about Persia as any Repooflican. You can see the same shared idiocy among the Israel-enslaved media on both "sides": Fox, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, NRO, NPR, all agree that "Iran" is an insane backward pile of 5th-century primitives. All agree that "Iran" is an "existential threat" to the world, and must be EXTERMINATED EXTERMINATED EXTERMINATED!
Fucking stupid bigoted Yankee shitheads.
Okies understand the situation better because we've known Persians for a long time. Persians have been part of Oklahoma since the '60s, mainly because of oil connections. Nothing in that movie would surprise an Okie. ¶ 4:08 PM
