Superpower Uganda
Interesting development. Hope it's a trend. The latest civil war in South Sudan appears to be ending (for the moment anyway) in response to pressure from united African countries. Specifically pressure from neighboring Uganda, acting as the spearhead for a united Africa.

There have been "all-Africa" organizations since independence in 1960, but they were useless. Typically they sat back and let the UN commit its usual evil acts, resulting in longer and harsher wars. This time Uganda is exerting real moral pressure and implied military pressure, and the Sudanese sides appear to be respecting the pressure.

Uganda and Rwanda are turning into moral superpowers. After experiencing long periods of maximum evil and maximum corruption, both countries are exercising a new brand of moral strictness coupled with a firm desire to improve the condition of their own people.

Labels: Zero Problems

  ¶ 3:44 AM

  Validate?
NPR was running some standard commie shit about The Imperative Requirement For Die-Versity In The Cinemaw. Quoted a black woman: "I want to see my life as a Black Wyymmyyn validated in the movies."

What a fantastically stupid idea. Nobody wants to see their own life validated by entertainment. Obviously mass media like The Cinemaw have to speak in a language that most folks understand. Shakespeare and Chaucer won't do for modern audiences. But beyond that, the whole point of entertainment is to see someone else's fucking life, for fuck's sake. And ideally we want to see their life de-validated, not validated. We want to see tyrants and tycoons slipping on a banana peel (comedy) or we want to see tyrants and tycoons knifed by ambitious underlings (tragedy).

I don't want my life validated. I like the way my narrow little life runs. Took many years of work and sacrifice to reach the point of zero drama, and this is exactly how I want it.

But a life with zero drama would be excruciatingly boring for anyone else to watch, and completely pointless for me to watch.
  ¶ 7:44 AM

  Whats the opposite of Healthcare.gov?
Romneycare, a Repooflican program, is used by Repooflicans as evidence that government can't do anything right. Aside from the wild tangled garble of cross-party rebranding and contradictions, the basic point is unfortunately correct. Every aspect of Romneycare is utterly wrong and utterly incompetent and totally destructive, and it will never go away. It will grow multi-layered convoluted exceptions and exemptions and epicycles until it brings the whole country to a grinding halt.

Though it's probably too late, I like to remember that the government can do some things well. It does an excellent job on hydropower despite an increasing pile of genocidal Gaian limitations imposed by evil parts of the same gov't. Most of the govt's efforts in agriculture are competent and useful.

MyPlate.gov is a website that communicates its main point perfectly and helpfully. It's a vast improvement over previous attempts at nutrition advice, such as the idiotic Bush-admin recommendation of "5 to 9 portions of vegetables and fruits". What's a portion? What's a vegetable? Raw or cooked? Does that mean you should eat 9 meals per day? Or just 9 blueberries? How in the fuck are you going to acquire "5 to 9" whatevers without spending all your time cooking? Result: Let's just go to McDonalds and have a Happy Meal.

In stark contrast, MyPlate shows you visually what a balanced meal should look like, and shows you how to get there. It's a perfect use of graphics and a well-built lively website with lots of resources for different types of people.

However..... a short article reports on a survey of households. Only 10% of "trendsetting moms" (huh?) were even aware of MyPlate.

Bring back Home Ec, dammit!
  ¶ 5:08 AM

  Constants and Variables 7
If Romneycare premiums are a "tax", as the Supremes claim, then those premiums should be uniform by state. Standardization is pretty much the main point of rolling a system into the federal government. And it's required by the old Constitution, not that any "judge" has ever read the old Constitution.

"..all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;"

Well, is Romneycare a uniform Excise? Not hardly. An easy-to-read map from Health Research Institute shows the high points and low points. The data is for certain counties or cities, not for the whole state. Still the same problem. Non-uniform by city is still non-uniform.

Constants and variables.

These points stand out:

AK and HI are at opposite ends of the premium scale. Both states have extremely high prices and wages, essentially a different value of the dollar because of shipping costs. If we're going to ignore the old Constitution and allow differences based on dollar value, BOTH should be up at the top.

WY is far above all its neighbors, despite having the same demography as its neighbors.

MS is far above all its neighbors, despite etc.

IN is far above etc.

My first thought was "Aha! Malpractice! Mississippi is notoriously litigious!" Nope, doesn't work. This hard-to-read graph (an outstanding example of overgraphication) destroys that hypothesis. Look down to the Per-capita payouts section. MS, despite reputation, is near the bottom in malpractice payouts. IN is also near the bottom and WY is in the middle.

So we have a tax that fails every possible test. It fails the old Constitution's requirement of uniformity. Ignoring that, it fails to adjust for cost of living. Ignoring that, it fails to adjust for legal costs. Ignoring that, it fails the ideal of progressivity. MS, the poorest state, has some of the highest Romneycare taxes.
  ¶ 2:44 AM

  Bullies need theories. Theories need bullies.
Polistra has been hammering on this point forever, and it's hardly an original one. Still, the above six-word title seems to pull it all together nicely.

Tyranny runs on theories, and theorists depend on tyrants for work.

A highly centralized political system always has an intense ideology behind it. Marx, Nietzsche, Locke. All of these systems eventually go wild and collapse. A more natural parliamentary system runs without ideology, without a written constitution. It simply adapts to circumstances like any living thing.

A highly centralized religion always has a complex theology, a set of strange statements about God and angels and saints and grace and trinities. Entia multiplicant like rabbits. Centralized religions seem to last longer than centralized political systems, but they last in a collapsed and corrupt condition. A more natural religion runs with minimum theology, relying on direct personal experience with God, plus a set of experimental observations about human behavior and consequences. (eg Proverbs and Leviticus.) Natural religions stick to the basics, leaving details to individual churches or provinces.

A highly centralized economic system relies on economic theories, and economists invent those theories to enrich the masters of the system. Friedman and Krugman feed the two complementary bellies of our modern all-consuming beast, and their theories would be treated as evidence of schizophrenia if the beast wasn't roaring ahead and "creating" "prosperity" for the friends and relatives of Friedman and Krugman. Healthy economic systems take pains to avoid all abstractions. No options, no interest, no bets. Simply exchange money for various forms of labor.

A highly centralized scientific system is NOTHING BUT weird theories. Global warming, evolution, big bang, multiverse, quantum. These theories are either obviously wrong or essentially unprovable, which makes them ideal vehicles for intensive and unending research. Just like grace and trinities. The granting bureaucracies and educrats need the theories to maintain their ever-growing budgets, and the theoreticians would be harmless cranks without the bureaucracies.

Bullies need theories. Theories need bullies.

Labels: Blinded by Stats, Carbon Cult, Experiential education, Natural law = Sharia law, the broken circle

  ¶ 5:21 PM

  600 millibags
Heard an ad for a monstrous refrigerator.... "holds 31 cubic feet, or 32 bags of groceries."

I hadn't thought about this before, but "bag of groceries" is a natural unit that has recently changed.

Paper or plastic? A typical paper bag holds 1 cubic foot, and a typical plastic bag holds about 0.6 cuft.

This probably contributes to silent inflation, the same trick that grocery manufacturers use with toilet paper and candy bars. You're carrying the same number of bags but getting less actual content.

I'm not complaining. Though I initially resisted the change, the plastic bag is vastly superior for walking. Paper bags stand upright and fit neatly in a car seat or trunk, but there's no comfortable way to carry a full-size paper bag.

  ¶ 6:47 AM

  What's wrong with Putin?
Now is not the time to go wobbly, boy. You CORRECTLY arrested the ecopirates for piracy. Piracy is piracy. Boarding a vessel at sea is piracy, even when it's done for COOL reasons.

The CORRECT followup, the ZERO PROBLEMS step, would have been to shoot the pirates as soon as they were safely away from the vessel.

Now that you've dropped the charges, you've not only failed to supply justice, you've diluted your national sovereignty and strengthened the enemies of humanity and destroyers of civilization. They're doing a satanic victory dance.

= = = = =

Of course I'm not in any position to second-guess a competent leader; I'm really trying to observe and learn from apparent mysteries. Russia has already gone through the inevitable collapse that resulted from sticking with an ideology. Putin's mission is to pull Russia out of the collapsed condition. Some of his moves are puzzling, just as some of Stalin's moves were puzzling. In both cases I have to assume that the move is aimed at improving Russia's position, and try to learn from it. America is still on the leftward path toward our collapse. Different ideologies ... Russia followed Marx to suicide, we're following Gramsci to suicide ... same destination.
  ¶ 3:55 AM

  Manwellernomics
Various bloggers have been pointing out that Romneycare depends on the false idea of "shopping around." Economists always start with the bizarre assumption that consumers are constantly choosing all products from an infinite range of options. Supposedly we buy everything based on a precise balance between purposes and prices. If eggs go up too high, we try another store; if all stores have high-priced eggs, we buy some eggs and some cheese instead of all eggs.

This is physically impossible in health care, and it's thoroughly impractical for food and most other categories. The only way to get a lower price for health care is to be part of an insurance plan. Hospitals start with a price that's 10 times higher than necessary. If you're "shopping" on your own, you're stuck. You have to pay 10 times the normal price because the hospital doesn't give a fuck about displeasing you. If you're part of a giant insurance plan, the insurer can throw its weight around to acquire the normal price, because the hospital doesn't want to lose half their customer base at once by displeasing the insurer.

Shopping around does work in a few situations. Gas stations run solely on price. People will drive 20 extra miles to "save" a few pennies per gallon, which they've already lost by driving 20 extra miles.

Sudden realization: It's just like Manweller's Rule.

In politics, Manweller's Rule holds that elections will only happen where elections don't matter. In countries like South Sudan or Central African Republic, the opposing parties have serious differences of policy, and the winner gets serious financial rewards from oil or diamonds. Result: Decision is made by AK-47. In countries like US, all parties slavishly serve Goldman, and the winner and loser get roughly similar rewards because of Polistra's Dog Bowl Rule. Result: Winner and loser are merely symbolic, so we have merely symbolic elections to determine which letter goes on the president's shirt.

Thus in Manwellernomics: Shopping around only happens in situations where shopping around doesn't matter. You're free to choose gas stations by price, because they all sell the same gas and you'll end up using the same amount anyway. You're not able to choose hospitals by price. Only armies (WalMart, pension funds, insurers) can truly choose products by price, because they can kill a supplier whose prices are too high.
  ¶ 12:14 PM

  Winterheimatkunde [repost]
The nesting drive grows strong in winter. As I walked this morning through gray air with a few snowflakes, I noted woodsmoke from chimneys and lights in windows. Though the technology changes over the years, those two markers of specifically human homes remain constant. The hearth and the lamp.


More from Richard Elwood Dodge's 1903 Home Geography:

Every child who goes to school spends his days partly in school, partly in playing or working, and partly at home. At home he eats, sleeps, perhaps plays with his brothers and sisters, and gets the clothes that keep him warm and dry. ...

People are not the only dwellers in homes, however, for the small birds and the wild animals have homes, but they do not always live in the same home all year.

Every country boy knows the homes of certain birds. He has probably watched them build the homes and seen the way they live and the way the old birds feed the young birds and teach them to fly. ...

No matter where we go, we shall find people living in homes. So, if we can find out why we live in homes, and what we do there, we will be better able to understand other people who do many things that seem strange to us now, but who are busy earning a living in different ways.

An old deserted farmhouse, such as one often sees in the country, is not a home. Neither is an empty city house or a vacant apartment a home. But they would become homes if somebody moved into them.

People are, therefore, a necessary part of every home, and a house is only a place for a family to live in and to make into a home.

Note the emphasis on human presence, and the calibration to human scale. The rest of the book has the same focus. All is defined by the connections and relations between you and the rest of the universe. All verbs, no nouns. All about how you respond to the world and influence the world, nothing about raw facts.

We need to teach everything this way.

= = = = =

Wonder if bees feel the same longing, the same inward pull toward the nest, when they sense the bee equivalent of hearth and lamp? [Would those equivalents be Hexagon shapes and Larva smell?]


Artistic sidenote: I was going to use the iconic dome-shaped beehive in this picture, but a little googling convinced me that American and Euro bees don't build their hives in that form. Their hives are generally built into and around a hole in a tree. Using a realistic nest in the same image with toonish bees and toonish trees probably violates art rules... but I respect bees and want to give them a proper home in my picture.

= = = = =

[Posted last year, decided it deserves to be a regular Xmas item.]

Labels: 20th century Dark Age, bee, Heimatkunde

  ¶ 1:53 AM

  Sign of God 2
This is surpassingly odd. It appears to be an English-language online newspaper called Tottenham News, but it's not QUITE English. I'd guess it was machine-translated from English to Turkish, then hand-edited in Turkish, then machined back into English. As with the delightfully nonsensical signer at Terrorist Mandela's funeral, the Tottenham News turns evil official nonsense into innocent and funny nonsense.

Here's the Tottenham version of a "climate" "science" story:

Scientists, despite sub-zero temperatures all year round, will remain liquid under the Greenland ice sheet have discovered a huge reservoir of fresh water. Effects of global warming, they may serve as a lead indicator, because they say it is important discoveries. The study is published online in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The huge aquifer in southeast Greenland , half the size of New York City covers an area of 27,000 square kilometers - State and located on the land is not very different from an underground aquifer , the researchers say . Crew , indicating that water remains liquid during the cold winter before the start of the summer melt season has discovered reservoir .

Utah and Columbus, Ohio State University, Byrd Polar Research Center at the University of scientists from the surface of the ice sheet , while extracting core samples , April, reservoir discovered in 2011 and was hit by a layer of snow with water . Firn snow compacted in an area known as the aqueous layer , was 33 feet below the surface .

The official nonsense in the original story says that the aquifer is caused by "Global Warming", even though there's no possible way the water UNDER A GLACIER can be affected by air chemistry or air temperature. Water always forms under heavy ice, because compression makes freezing impossible. If this does turn out to be a new development, it would prove that the current warm phase of the Northern Hemisphere is coming FROM BELOW, as in volcanic activity or magnetic core changes. Not from above as in CO2. Lots of other stuff also points in the same downward direction.

The Tottenham version says that the scientists will remain liquid, and the scientists was hit by a layer of snow with water. This makes much more sense, in a Godly-fool way.



Seriously, I've never seen so much line-jumble in a machine translation. Seems highly unlikely as a digital glitch. Reminds me of a pied Linotype form rather than digital errors. Are we dealing with steganography here, or just someone's divinely inspired idea of fun?
  ¶ 5:03 PM

  Two //// EDIT no, only one ///// little bright spots
Two minor victories against the mostly unstoppable juggernaut of Die-Versity.

In US, some star of some show about ducks makes a precisely accurate statement about the Biblical definition of sin. Media satans fire him for stating a fact. Customers start a firestorm of protest. Media satans back off slightly, continue the show.

In UK, a Die-Verse retailer allows a Muslim checkout clerk to refuse to sell alcohol, without any warning or indication that this is a "Muslim-only" aisle. Customers start a firestorm of protest. Business satans back off.

Both of these situations began in the standard modern style: a business says "Fuck the customers, we're only interested in share value, and Die-Versity increases share value." What happened next was a departure from standard modern customer-fucking. Normally the customers lay back and enjoy same. This time they used Twitter and Facebook to resist the rape.

Should be interesting to watch. In other precincts of Satan's realm, new media are loyally serving Satan by liquidating facts about "global warming" and "evolution". Will Twitter decide to shut down all dissent on Die-Versity? I'd bet yes, but at this point I wouldn't make a large bet. The natives may finally be getting seriously restless.

A bit later: Well, that bet was unnecessary. Turns out Twitter has ALREADY blocked all references to facts. I'm never paranoid enough.
  ¶ 4:34 AM

  RIP light


We say a final tragic farewell to the incandescent bulb. Bringer of light to the world. Viciously and sadistically murdered by Supertraitor Bush and Supertraitor Obama, with conspiratorial assistance from every supertraitor politician in this hyperdamned hyperfucked hyperwacked former so-called alleged accused quote "nation" unquote.

The incandescent is not dead everywhere. A few sane countries continue to produce and use it. It's only dead in the Progressive and "Enlightened" (Orwellian) places.

Labels: Carbon Cult, Danbo

  ¶ 3:39 AM

  Vector politics
Semi-random thought triggered by yesterday's semi-random thoughts on Non-Partisan. I was trying to imagine a left-right axis something like this:



What goes on the right side of center? What's the opposite of Pol Pot? Dunno.

Made me realize that our static definitions of political positions are absurd and useless. Placing the fulcrum in the middle forced me to think in vector form.

Leaders who pull a society toward mass death and destruction in the name of some abstract ideology are on the left end. Leaders who pull a society toward security for normal citizens by restoring or improving normal social connections are on the right end of the scale.

Vector form factors out the verbal content of the ideology. If you're trying to implement an ideology, you're pulling leftward. If you're trying to remove an ideology, you're pulling rightward.

This definition leaves Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin, Hitler and Lincoln at the far left of the scale, and it fills in the right side of the vector diagram in a satisfying way. Some names that come to mind would be FDR, Pinochet, Putin and Clinton. All were experimentalists, willing to do what's needed to eradicate a theory that had crippled a country. They faced different sizes of theory and performed with varying degrees of success, but all belong on the same side.
  ¶ 2:00 AM

  Another NP
This NP stands for Non-Partisan, and it always means "Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off to the left of Pol Pot."

Classic example: a new "Non-Partisan" action committee called Franklin's List hopes to support more candidates who have real career experience in science and technology. From that basic phrase you could imagine a truly neutral organization. Many engineers and technologists and biomed types are non-Communist. Those who measure reality directly and purposefully, like geologists or weathercasters or X-ray technicians, are often genuinely scientific. The problem is with the theoretical types, who are universally insane.

Don't worry. The basic standard of "career experience in science and technology" has nothing in common with Franklin's List. Their Non-Partisan nature is blazingly clear. Here's the FIRST paragraph of their mission statement:

Science is under threat from policy makers at every level of government. Denialist politicians are confusing and distorting evidence on scientific theories such as climate change and evolution while funding for scientific research and development continues to be cut. In addition to perpetuating ignorance on scientific subjects, such misinformation can diminish State’s educational standards, negatively affect the Country's economic competitiveness, and, in the case of climate change or meteorite impact, can be fatal.

An amazingly terse and compact statement of fashionable genocide. Covers all the poison bases and uses all the toxic terminology in exactly 73 words. I doubt that Pol Pot ever stated his anti-civilization goals and dreams so concisely.

Labels: Blinded by Stats, Carbon Cult

  ¶ 5:38 PM

  Score one for the librarians!
Librarians and English teachers are always trying various tricks and campaigns to get kids to read more. I suspect they've got a convert in Seattle:

A 16-year-old girl was spared serious, possibly fatal injuries after the glasses she was wearing deflected a bullet that struck her in the face in a drive-by shooting Saturday night.

  ¶ 4:17 PM

  What does NP stand for?
I sometimes call NPR by various other initials, indicating their pro-WallStreet or pro-Israel or pro-Satan tendencies. Silly. The initials are exactly right.

This year NPR has been getting down to the absolute basics of leftist thinking, showing us what Progressives are all about. Every day's news includes at least one feature on DEATH. Not death in a statistical sense or death in a lamenting sense, but death in a sexual sense, death as a fetish.

You can hear Rachel Martin approaching orgasm as she breathlessly whispers to the dying people.

So: NP stands for NecroPhilia. NPR = NecroPhiliac Radio.

  ¶ 6:59 AM

  Reverse causation as usual
Yet another idiot "study" looks at a well-known set of facts, finds them surprising, and imputes reverse causation.

When looking across many countries, Oishi and Diener found that people in wealthier nations were more educated, had fewer children, and expressed more individualistic attitudes compared to those in poorer countries – all factors that were associated with higher life satisfaction but a significantly lower sense of meaning in life.

The data suggest that religiosity may play an important role: Residents of wealthier nations, where religiosity is lower, reported less meaning in life and had higher suicide rates than poorer countries.

According to the researchers, religion may provide meaning in life to the extent that it helps people to overcome personal difficulty and cope with the struggles of working to survive in poor economic conditions.

Nothing new there. You can find the same correlations in written wisdom from 5000 years ago.

These authors assume, in classic Commie-atheist style, that poverty is the basic problem. In their "minds" religion is a low-IQ pathological condition which mysteriously arises among low-IQ people who are stuck in low socioeconomic conditions. If only we could eliminate poverty, everyone would automatically abandon religion and take up our Dawkinsian-Darwinian worship of Gaia and worship of IQ. (Or more to the point, everyone would worship us.)

It's not that simple. Undoubtedly religion is a comfort in difficult circumstances, but that doesn't mean poverty causes religion. More likely a life filled with meaning doesn't need to be filled with material stuff. When you have strong ties to family, community, productive work and morality, you don't need a new car and a new iPhone every six months.

Western governments and businesses understand the causative mechanism perfectly. It's no coincidence that your TV carries Satanic "entertainment" designed to suck all meaning and structure and logic from your life. The "entertainment" alternates with ads instructing you to acquire iPhone and Pepsi and Cadillac to fill the void created by the "entertainment". It's all perfectly synchronized.

Real meaning surgically ablated, prosthetic meaning installed. One-stop shopping for Satan.

Labels: Blinded by Stats

  ¶ 5:12 AM

  Makes sense, but never seen before
It's easy to tell which type of window is most useful. Useful windows get opened, non-useful windows don't get opened. The vast majority of windows around here are double-hung, and double-hung windows are never open. Only awning-style windows, like this :



are routinely open. No mystery. Awning-style windows shed rain, awning-style windows are uninviting to intruders, and awning-style windows can be opened by a crank or lever without raising the blinds or straining your back. Double-hung windows fail all of those tests.

Therefore: When I see an open double-hung window, I pay attention. It's unusual, and it required considerable effort. This morning I saw an open double-hung window while waiting for the bus. Soon an arm appeared through the window, which was even more unusual. Took me a while to figure it out....



Oh! It's a clever way of smoking outside your rented house without standing on the porch in 20-degree weather!

Makes sense. Makes even more sense when you think of cars instead of houses. This gesture is exactly how most people used to smoke in a car.

Labels: Heimatkunde

  ¶ 9:33 AM

  Pluperfect =/= Future subjunctive 2
Yet another example of a writer who picks up a trend that was fully completed 100 years ago, and treats it as a horrible possibility that we need to avoid at all costs!!!!!

If we aren't careful, those newfangled horseless carriages might take over the roads!!!!! Beware!!!

Richard Redding, apparently a mature and well-educated academic, has just now realized that sociology may possibly become contaminated by politics at some time in the near future! No! We must fend off this incipient trend before it gets started!

It is not surprising, nor is it indicative of nefarious scientific misconduct, that researchers of different ideological persuasions would produce findings consistent with their own ideology. It is human nature to frame research questions and interpret findings in ways that confirm one’s political beliefs. Such biases are the norm, even among scientists. This is particularly true when it comes to research on social issues because social scientists, many of whom were attracted to social science because of its progressive ideology, often have values invested in the issues they research. One can find such ideological tilt throughout social science research. For instance, how researchers interpret data on the relative contributions of hereditary factors versus environment to intelligence, or on biological factors in personality styles, seems to be partly a function of their political views.

Welcome to the 19th century, dummy.

Sociology was always Marxism pure and simple. Sociology was INVENTED BY MARXISTS as a pseudoscientific tool to spread Communism.

Here's a 1921 writer discussing Lenin's new curriculum in Soviet schools:



Since 1920, everyone who pays the slightest attention to "social" "sciences" has figured this out. The only people who don't talk about it are the "social" "scientists" themselves, who are still trading on the ignorance and innocence of people like Redding.
  ¶ 8:33 AM

  Beeps and boops
Super-random chain of thought on space-agey-ness.....

A couple years ago I thoroughly debunked the notion that Sputnik "woke up" American education.

Now I'm wondering if Sputnik started anything at all. Space-age gadgetry and space-age styling were common at least two years before Sputnik. Look at the '57 Lincoln or '57 Mercury or any household stuff of the mid-50s. Starbursts, planets, orbits, rockets, computers. The Merc had a gadget called Seat-O-Matic with a dial that you could program to your chosen seat position in three dimensions, then 'recall' with a single setting. I suspect it was done with Strowger relays, but nevertheless it was the first computerish gadget seen by ordinary consumers. [Bear in mind that Detroit engineered cars at least two years in advance, so those '57 cars were designed in '55.]

What started this chain of thought was the 'interval signal' used by the Money-Talk radio station that I halfway listen to. It's a series of satellite-style beeps and boops that pops in to fill dead air when local announcers aren't quick on the draw. But it's not just any old beeps and boops; it's the Monitor Beacon, stolen from the old NBC radio Monitor program which aired from 1955 to 1975. Those beeps and boops came to be an audio icon for satellites and Sputniks, but they were on NBC before the space age.

So. Sputnik didn't wake up our education system and didn't start anything. It merely verified and amplified a trend that was well under way.
  ¶ 12:01 PM

  JR of the Bakken?
The original oil boom in Texas and Oklahoma involved plenty of intrigue and violence. Claim-jumping, theft, and the usual boom-town circus of gamblers and whores. The soap opera 'Dallas' was based on a real phenomenon.

For some reason the current North Dakota oil boom hasn't generated much intrigue yet, but we may be starting to see it.

News item about an "execution-style" murder in the richest section of Spokane:

KHQ's Alex Rozier has obtained new details after speaking with a law enforcement source. The source told Rozier that the victim's son believes the suspect(s) are "involved in the oil industry in North Dakota." Family and friends told Rozier that the victim does business in Spokane, Moses Lake and North Dakota.

Must admit the item caught my attention because the mansion closely resembles the Arcade Hotel in Ponca, which was a major center of intrigue in the Oklahoma oil boom. Pure coincidence?
  ¶ 3:29 AM

  Useful dream
Lately I've been feeling a bit more stressed than usual from dealing with publisher. Hurry up and wait.

Yesterday I got into one of those "Hmph. What's it all for?" moods. This usually indicates full moon, and (checking online) sure enough today is full.

My dream generator provided a sufficient answer just before waking this morning.

Someone had herded me into a restaurant on the promise that a couple of Hungarian girls would provide conversation and companionship. (Why Hungarian? Who knows?) I went into the restaurant, which felt like a large Subway or Taco Bell. Ordered rice pilaf (Why? Who knows?) and sure enough the Hungarian girls came over, sat with me, ate hamburgers, and talked at me in nearly incomprehensible pidgin English.

After a while they moved off, and I realized my pilaf had never arrived. The Hungarian girls left me with an empty belly and the check. I paid the check, which came to $29.45. (Why? etc)

I thought: "Well fuck. This is enough money for three full days of eating. Now I've spent three days of food money and in return got no food and no meaningful companionship. This is ridiculous! It must be 2:15, time to wake up." Woke up, and of course it was 2:15.

Thanks, dream generator. That's what it's all for. Companionship is fleeting and dubious and expensive. Having enough money to live and eat is solid and definite.

Or putting it another way, the dream was instructing me: "You're an introvert. Companionship works for extroverts. It doesn't work for you. Suck it up and live with it."
  ¶ 3:00 AM

  Miscast
Introverts are steadily annoyed by official or commercial misunderstandings. People who really should know better (i.e. shrinks and marketers) simply assume that all humans are bouncy loud extroverts because they don't know anyone who isn't. Most of the time we take this crap silently, because we take everything silently, because we're introverts.

Occasionally a misunderstanding is just too bizarre to take silently. One such is a new Toyota radio ad. It's supposedly a phone call between an uncool dude and a Toyota "customer representative." An old theme: Can your product make me cool? Doesn't work because this dude is already cool. His intonation and prosody indicate that he is accustomed to having authority, accustomed to being heard and obeyed, able to pause for several seconds without fear of being interrupted. This is a man who has always been in charge, a man who expertly sets the pace and structure of conversations.

Uncool dudes, when we bother to speak at all, keep it short and simple. We know that our information will not be heard or obeyed, and we know that a long sentence or a long pause will be interrupted and rolled over. No point in wasting air.
  ¶ 6:54 AM

  Qailertetang
We're constantly hearing variations on this: "Well, it seems Mother Nature can't read the calendar. Winter is still a week away, but you wouldn't think so with 10 inches of snow on the ground."

When did this stupid business of applying an astrologer's calendar to ordinary weather start? Maybe around 30 years ago? Formerly everyone understood that Dec 21 represents the middle of winter and June 21 represents the middle of summer. Think of Midsummer's Night, or the Victorian-era carol In the Bleak Midwinter.

Plain fact: In every place that has a proper winter, proper winter runs from Nov 1 to April 1. In places that don't have a true winter, winter doesn't have any schedule because it doesn't exist. There is no place on Earth where winter begins on Dec 21. There is no place on Earth where summer begins on June 21.

Maybe we can get the Weather Channel to name the real seasons while it's naming storms.

Semi-related: AOL has a nice set of pix from the Middle East, which is getting a proper snowstorm for the first time in 100 years. Ragged Palestinian kids building snowmen (with Muslim headgear and cigarettes, of course!) and Israelis swimming in heated pools in super-lux hotels. Worth 1000 words.

Snow is clearly part of the Grand Blueprint. Plants use it for their own ends. Smart mammals instantly want to play in it, even if they've never seen it before.

Yes indeed. Global warming. Right.

Labels: Carbon Cult, Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 5:48 PM

  Wrong warning
I've been walking daily for two years now. Started in mid-Dec 2011. During those two years, I've always tried to make the usual loop. Exactly three times I've had to short-circuit the expedition immediately after leaving the house. Once because of extreme wind that was dropping trees and branches; twice because of a much more subtle weather phenomenon. Freezing fog doesn't damage houses, doesn't interfere with most normal activities, but it makes walking and bicycling impossible. Yesterday was one of those freezing-fog days, which is why the subject comes to mind just now.

The Weather Bureau doesn't give any warnings or watches for this phenomenon. Last week they put out a Warning for Wind Chill, which is completely pointless.

Think about it. Who is likely to need a Wind Chill Warning? People who walk, bike and work outside. Who is likely to need a Freezing Fog Warning? People who walk, bike and work outside. And which of these phenomena can cause serious problems if you're not warned? Freezing fog.

Wind chill is self-notifying. You know it's Goddamn Cold as soon as you open the door, and you can dress and act accordingly.

Freezing fog is not self-notifying. It looks like slight dampness on the street. You proceed as usual... Oh boy! Walking! My favorite! Not too cold, not too ....AAAAAAAAA!



  ¶ 4:51 AM

  Humans are Dead-Eats
The most surprising idea I've run across this year was a concept that seems to be boringly familiar to botanists, but far from conventional wisdom.

Fruits are alive and intelligent.

An apple or tomato doesn't die at the moment when it falls from the 'active' part of the plant. It has to do an important job. It must protect seeds and attract the right carrier for those seeds. Toward those goals, the fruit monitors its environment (light, heat, chemical signals) and adapts to those signals.

Seeds, whether contained in fruit or dispensed separately, are also alive and intelligent. If they get the chance they will become full-grown plants. A seed constantly monitors its environment, waiting for the right moment to germinate.

These concepts break down the conventional division between alive and dead.

Our rules of dietary morality are based on a simple dividing line. Large visible animals, moved by an intelligence that we recognize, count as alive and require special attention. Religions make kosher/halal rules or absolute prohibitions against eating large visible animals.

Wise walnuts and astute apples ruin this nice neat distinction.

Applying this broader standard, the live/dead distinction moves to a new place. Raw plants are alive when eaten. Raw animals are generally dead when we eat them, but not always. Japs seem to enjoy eating things that wiggle as they go down. Even if the sushi isn't looking you in the eye and waving at you, it still contains lots of bacteria and other microbes. Teeming with life.

Only cooked food, whether plant or animal, is totally dead. Fruit-life halted, seed-potential halted, microbes dead.

And that's the newly formed distinction. Intentionally using fire to cook our food is the only truly unique human activity. Tools are not unique, language is not unique. Only fire.

In other words, we are the only species that eats dead food.

= = = = =

For those of us who aren't inside one of the older religious traditions, should this new understanding lead to guilt? Should we stop eating entirely? No. The Grand Blueprint gives some answers. We are part of the blueprint of life and we have our own purposes. Purely for my own purposes, not intending to make rules for others, I observe that plants want to be eaten and animals don't want to be eaten. Fruits and flowers are designed to be picked up and consumed, or picked up and carried away. That's why they're colorful and tasty.

Labels: Grand Blueprint, Smarty-plants

  ¶ 9:17 AM

  Fairlaning grades
A commentator on Bloomberg yesterday came up with an interesting idea on a very old subject.

The old subject: Grade inflation, which has been recently noted at Harvard. Nearly everyone at Harvard gets A's.

Bloomberg's new thought, probably semi-serious: Since grades aren't numerical like currency, we should introduce a new grade beyond A and let the existing five letters slide downward so D becomes failing and F disappears.

Basically Fairlaning the scale. Fairlane (along with Bel Air and Belvedere) started out as a special name for a top-level sports coupe. A couple years later it became the name for the entire top trim level. Then the top level acquired a fresh new name (Galaxie, Impala, Fury) pushing the Fairlane class down one step. And so on until Fairlane moved down to a dull compact then disappeared.

Neat idea, but wouldn't really work with grade inflation.

There are three ways to inflate a packaged product: (1) Raise the price (2) Shrink the size (3) Dilute or adulterate the substance. With food, the Pure Food laws make (3) difficult, so (2) is the most common technique. Most notably, toilet paper and candy bars have shrunk to near-microscopic size in recent years.

Bloomberg sees grade inflation as a case of (1), raising the price within a numerical range that has a strict maximum. (Monetary analogy: A price control limits cars to $10000, so all cars end up at $10000.) If that were the case, Fairlaning would work beautifully. It would remove the maximum and reassert a linear mapping of letters to underlying values.

Unfortunately, grade inflation is actually done by a mix of (2) and (3), plus another mechanism that isn't available with toilet paper. Colleges shrink the subjects, sticking to specialized facts that can be parroted in rote form; and they adulterate the content, replacing normal facts and logic with brain-mincing all-destroying toxic weapons like Climate "science", Economics, Critical Queer Theory and Hate Studies.

What's happening at Harvard can't be analogized to ordinary pricing. The "humanities" have already been through (2) and (3). Harvard's curriculum contains nothing but rote recitation of poisonous shit. Now Harvard can guarantee high grades by admitting only students who are preconditioned to parrot the poisonous shit.

I suppose the commercial analogy would be the Tesla "car" or wind "power". These objects have negative value in a strict mechanical sense. The Tesla "car" works only occasionally and requires tremendously costly repairs when it doesn't work. Wind turbines work only when they're not needed, and require costly coal-fired generators to maintain the fiction that the turbine is "adding" power. Any rational person would have to be paid to accept these objects. But because Western idiots have been preconditioned to consider Tesla and turbines as supercool, we gladly pay high prices for these worse-than-useless things.
  ¶ 4:30 AM

  Bong bong bong Why why why
It's the one-year anniversary of some school-shoot. We're all doing the BONG BONG BONG thing as always. Americaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Remembaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaas! BONG! BONG! BONG! WHY? WHY? WHY?

Always asking WHY.

Why did Adam Lanza shoot up a school? Well, he's dead so you can't ask him. And if you could ask him, the answer wouldn't make any sense because he was crazy.

Better WHY: Why was the school so easy for him to shoot up? These incidents didn't happen 60 years ago when every crazy kid knew that every adult male had served in the Army, and many adult males carried a gun all the time and knew how to use it. In school, at home, everywhere. Does this suggest a fucking solution? No, of course not. Sanity is crazy. We'll just keep asking WHY.

Or another dumb question from the same dumb part of the country:

WHY did Superstorm Snooki destroy our beach house?

Well, you can't ask a storm, so you conclude that the storm was somehow guided and steered by Evil KKKarbon. This is utterly wacko, since East Coast hurricanes of equal strength have occurred roughly three times per century as long as we've been around to record them. The storms took various paths, so each coastal city was affected differently. If you want to blame KKKarbon for steering this particular storm to hit your particular house, you've got a mighty complex set of theories and mechanisms and epicycles to build.

Better WHY: Why did you build your house near a coast? If you're close enough to see tides, you're close enough to be smashed by tides. Guaranteed sooner or later. If you don't want to be destroyed by a tidal wave, build inland. No, of course not. Sanity is crazy. We'll just keep rebuilding in the same fucking place and keep charging the taxpayers for our losses.

Or another from today's news: A rockslide smashed a house that was built at the bottom of a cliff.

Exact quote from the sheriff:

"Just Mother Nature. Nothing you can do about it. House was right under the cliff."

NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT? WHY did Nature decide arbitrarily and randomly to smash this house? Well, you answered your own question. If the house hadn't been built at the base of the cliff, the rockslide wouldn't have damaged the house because there WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN A FUCKING HOUSE THERE.

LESUS H. CHRIST.

Labels: Loughnerian Logic, Zero Problems

  ¶ 6:38 AM

  Full-wave rectifier
Kim 3 has just done a classic burnt sacrifice. Uncle Jang was taken out, and with him all the problems of the regime were taken out.

Dumb. Old-fashioned one-sided sacrificing doesn't work well, because people quickly realize the problems are still around after the smoke clears. Best example of all is Jesus. When he was executed, his followers expected the Kingdom of Heaven to arrive. It didn't, so they had to rig up a complex new story that would give him a second try.

Kim 3 needs to learn the modern American technique of Symmetrical Scapegoating. When each half of the population serves as scapegoat for the other half, you never lose the goat. For the half that wears R-shirts, all problems are caused by the current or previous D president. For the half that wears D-shirts, all problems are caused by the current or previous R president. Result: All presidents can keep loyally serving Goldman, can keep taking the same murderous actions over and over and over and over and over and over and over to starve the poor and enrich the super-rich. No president ever needs to blame his own actions or change his own actions.
  ¶ 3:28 AM

  Well, that did work!
I hesitate to deal in household hints because I was so wildly wrong about "ants" that turned out to be termites.... but this one has no space for stupidity. I know the habits of my house's plumbing, and I know that only Drano has worked when the kitchen drain gets completely clogged. Drano takes 15 minutes to clear the clog. When it starts to move, the plunger helps it along.

Last week the drain clogged and I didn't have any Drano. The clog was urgent because the single-digit outside temperature required the "drip like a pencil" routine to keep water liquid. Well, what did I have that might help? CLR and vinegar. Checked the web to see if either of these had a record of working, and a few tips said vinegar would work.



I was dubious because some people impute magical powers to vinegar, but in this case the tip was exactly right. Poured half a bottle. After 15 minutes the clog started to move. Plunger completed the job. Same performance as Drano, but cheaper and less harsh.

= = = = =

Artistic sidenote: The left-right placement of the Before/After causes a perspective illusion. Because the After part is to the right, we expect the sink to be closer to perpendicular, so it looks more angled by comparison to our template. It feels like the camera is farther to the right in the After part. In fact both pix have the same camera angle.

Labels: Danbo

  ¶ 2:36 AM

  Cops and nuts
Cops and nuts, London version.

Cops and nuts, Spokane version.


The latter arises from a case several years ago in which the cops subdued a nut who was going wild. Satan dba "ACLU" and Satan dba "Democrat Party" and Satan dba "Media" and Satan dba "Repooflican Party" all conspired to imprison the cop who had done exactly what cops are supposed to do. Thanks, Satan. All of your divisions and branches worked perfectly together to make Spokane more dangerous.
  ¶ 8:34 AM

  Well, that didn't work
Spokane's city govt has a neat GIS map showing all structures and dimensions, with some data on property ownership.

The map includes a 1958 aerial map for comparison. I've noticed before that this neighborhood, first settled in 1908, was pretty much completed by '58. The houses haven't changed much since then; main change is lots of little garden sheds and huge metal RV-size garages. Of course the huge RV-size garages don't hold RVs, just as the normal detached garages don't hold cars. All vehicles are parked in front of their intended shelters. A firm rule in Spokane, which probably accounts for our fine auto theft tradition.

Decided to try a blinky-graph GIF thing to show the sameness, but it didn't work very well. Color schemes and focus are too different. You'd think an airplane flying at 1000 feet would be able to focus better than a satellite flying at 100 miles. Nope, it's the other way around!


  ¶ 8:09 AM

  Sign of God
The fake interpreter at Terrorist Mandela's long-overdue funeral is clearly God's way of mocking this monstrous meeting of God-mocking civilization-smashing satans. While the little satans centrifuge their poison-filled heads and spray toxic verbiage in unholy tribute to their satanic mentor, Mr Interpreter gives us the pure plain truth. It's all repetitive nonsense.

In a broader and less celestial sense, Mr Interpreter represents Africa's best talent: Hugely creative improvisation. He reminds me of Guy Goma, the taxi driver who got stuck in a Savile Broadcasting studio and ended up on the air as an 'expert'. With no preparation or warning, Goma proceeded to give an interview that made vastly more sense than the economist who was supposed to be there.

Africa can save the world if we'll let it. We've used up and eunuchized all of our creative impulses. Africa retains a moral code and a Godly force.

Your turn, Africa. We've fucked ours.
  ¶ 3:11 AM

  "More adaptable than previously thought"
Anthropologists have found a new skeleton of a well-known 'missing link', leading to new conclusions about its way of life...

"We knew about the kind of food it ate -- it was omnivorous, leaning more toward plant material -- but now we know more: how it walked around and now we know it was a tree climber."

The size of the arm bones suggests strong forearms and a powerful upper body. "It's a different branch on our ancestry tree," Musiba said. "It came later than the other hominins, so the question now is 'what happened to it?' We're going to do more work on biomechanics and see what else this creature was doing."

He noted that the creature likely stood 3.5 to 4.5 feet tall and possessed a robust frame. "We know that it was very strong," Musiba said. "It's unprecedented to find how strong this individual was. The stronger you are the more adaptive you are."

How many millions of times will scientists have to be surprised by the "adaptability" of life before they finally realize that life is not the same thing as non-life? Living things adapt to change and learn from experience. Negative feedback. That's the whole fucking point. Unfortunately scientists are not living things.

Labels: Blinded by Stats

  ¶ 3:21 AM

  Another self-defeating practice
Another self-defeating item, the other way around ... I'm listening to EWTN radio this morning because it's the only live broadcast that isn't wallowing in the putrid grave-juice of Comrade Terrorist Mandela.

One EWTN program was discussing the current pope's push toward evangelization. Leaving aside Miss Francine's confusion on some points, this is basically a good thing. A religion that focuses on spreading its message tends to become cleaner, while a religion that focuses inward tends to stagnate in corruption.

One caller said that evangelism would work best if Catholics would avoid using the plain name "Mary" for Mary. When speaking to outsiders, Romans should always use officially accurate phrases like "The Ever-Virgin Blessed Mother."

NO! Dammit, you've got to see outside your bubble before you can spread the word outside your bubble. Complex official phrases are INSIDER JARGON, specifically designed to make the outsider feel excluded! When we feel excluded, we stop listening. It's similar to the constant repetition of [pbuh] and [swh] in Islamic writing.

If you want to hold the attention of outsiders, you've got to talk plain and straight. Most Protestant evangelists understand this point perfectly. Romans and Muslims need to learn it.
  ¶ 6:49 AM

  Self-disproving petition
A collection of 500 supersatans has written a petition or something complaining about NSA/GCHQ monitoring.

First, of course, they're 30 years late. NSA's universal spying has been perfectly well-known for a long time. These satans didn't understand reality until Snowden told them about it, which means that they do not perceive facts. Like all literary fuckheads, they are inbred aristocrats and asslickers. Any statement made by cool people is true. Any statement made by uncool people is untrue. Snowden is cool, therefore his statements are true.

Second, they haven't actually been censored or bothered or arrested during the 30 years that NSA has been monitoring everything.

The world would be better off if these particular satans stopped writing and stopped breathing. I don't know all the names on the list, but the ones I recognize are pure reagent-quality evil.

The fact that they haven't been bothered by NSA proves that NSA, or more broadly the DC government, is ON THEIR SIDE. When the DC gov't is seriously displeased by a writer or thinker, the writer or thinker is always tinfoiled and sometimes suicided. These people have not even been tinfoiled; they are still honored by the media, welcomed by publishers and eagerly followed by their fellow commie idiots.
  ¶ 6:18 AM

  Cheap design vs cheap design
Local news notes that plumbers have been super-busy with frozen pipes. Most of the problems are with modular and mobile homes:



Fantastically dumb design for cold places! Note that those pipes have been insulated and they're still freezing. No wonder! Pipes are on the outside of the house, shielded only by a metal door. I suppose it's cheaper to manufacture that way, or maybe just cheaper to design.

By contrast, my crappy little house has lots of problems but it never has frozen pipes. It was built with a different kind of cheapness: all plumbing is clustered in the center. I try to do the "drip like a pencil" thing when temps are below 10, but I've forgotten the drip thing several times with no ill results.


  ¶ 5:52 AM

  Old dickhead
We're supposed to sympathize with the rich old dickhead who decided to take a "sight-seeing trip" to North Korea and ended up in prison.

No sympathy. If you're rich and influential enough to arrange travel to a place that's on every conceivable NO-TRAVEL blacklist, you're rich and influential enough to get advice from sane people. Presumably this old dickhead decided not to listen to advice. His problem.
  ¶ 3:10 AM

  Evolved. Think about it.
Don't they ever stop to think?

In a PRX feature on why video games are so addictive....

"As an animal we're evolved to delight in big explosions and big flashes of light."

It's unquestionably true that humans love big noisy spectacles. Fireworks, gladiators, NASCAR. Now try to imagine how natural selection "evolved" this delight.

Og is sitting in his cave gnawing on a big chunk of barbecued brontosaurus. Suddenly a thunderstorm approaches with big explosions and big flashes of light. Og is scared. Og moves back into his cave and hides behind a rock. Og survives.

Guk is sitting in his cave gnawing on a big chunk of tyrannosaurus T-bone. Suddenly a thunderstorm approaches with big explosions and big flashes of light. Guk is delighted. Guk runs out to enjoy the big explosions and big flashes of light. Guk is killed by a big flash of light.

Yes indeed. We've been "evolved" to seek out such things.

Raw tyrannosaurus-shit as usual.

Irrelevant sidenote: I wonder where we got the clichéd notion that primitive people talk in uvular grunts like Og and Guk? Some primitive tribes do talk that way, but some "highly evolved" people (eg Dutch) also talk that way. Most primitive tribes talk with plenty of music and vowels. If our proverbial caveman had a name, it would probably be more of a song than a croak.
  ¶ 3:13 AM

  Kudos to KREM
Broadcasters have to follow the format, have to turn everything into a big scary horribleness, and they also have to read "warnings" when the Weather Bureau gives "warnings", even though the "warning" is silly.

We've got one of those silly "warnings" today, a Wind Chill Warning. In other words, it's winter.

Fortunately, KREM went beyond the format. They provided the requisite scary horribleness in the headline, then went on to show the real story.

= = = = =

Scary horribleness headline: "Frostbite could set in quickly during Spokane’s sub-zero temperatures!" Oh no! Look at what happened to the pig's ear! It got all crispy and blue, just like you will!

Actual story: Yeah, it's cold. We're still out walking around, doing our chores, enjoying life.

= = = = =

Scary horribleness headline: "Dropping Temperatures push power usage up!" Oh no! We're out of electricity! We'll all die!

Actual story: Power usage is up about 13% from average December, but not putting any strain on Avista. We've seen worse. Nicely shows the benefits of good insulation and sensible use of heat. Put on an extra blanket.

= = = = =

Kudos to KREM for doing the required "I love lamp" stuff, then devoting most of the story to the sheer normalcy of the situation.

People are different. People are adaptable. People can find ways to enjoy life if they haven't been trained to fear life. That's the truly exciting story every time, even if it doesn't love lamp.
  ¶ 3:05 AM

  Where's Upton Sinclair when you need him?
The DC lunatics are at work again. The annual ritual of assembling The Farm Bill has come disassembled, which may lead to an accidental repeal of current milk subsidy regulations. Repeal is usually desirable but not in this case. (The modern rule, of course, is perfectly consistent. Every action by DC will smash America. If a new law will smash the country more effectively, make a new law. If repeal will smash the country more effectively, repeal.)

Specifically, the milk policy will revert to a 1949 version designed for a time when dairy producers needed help. The 1949 policy requires the Feds to purchase any and all dairy products offered, at a price which automatically adjusts for inflation. This price is double the current milk subsidy. Dairies will find this offer irresistibly attractive, which means much less milk will find its way to the free market, and market prices will leap upward.

Agricultural subsidies, properly planned with proper feedback, are an extremely good thing. Offering a minimal base price can keep farms and dairies running in times when the market is glutted or demand is low. It's crucial to keep good farms running because a farm is NOT the sort of business you can start anywhere and anytime. The best farms are long-lasting family operations, passing on carefully maintained land and skills and seeds and livestock. Too many good farms inevitably fail for natural reasons like drought or death. It's unforgivable to let good farms be destroyed by foreign fussiness or traitorous speculators.

But a subsidy that suddenly doubles the price in a fairly balanced market is perfectly destructive.

High-priced milk means malnourished kids. This happened in the 1920s when brief government wartime purchases followed by postwar inflation caused high-priced milk and eggs. Poor urban families, who were mainly immigrants at that time, stopped buying milk.



Incidentally 1: The name for Polish egg-drop soup, rosolzlazankamt, is delightfully clattery but has to be a bad transcription. The amt at the end must be ami, the Slavic instrumental plural. Thus the phrase is probably rosol z lazankami. Online translators are no help. An 1896 German-Polish dictionary with a focus on food partly solves the problem. Rosół is one word for soup, so rosół z łazankami is soup with łazanki. Łazanki is translated as Nudelteigfleckchen, an equally clattery word that seems to mean little pieces of pasta. All of that clatter for plain old Noodle Soup? Aw come on. Both words have diminutive endings (ka and chen) implying that these particular bits of pasta are cherished; but I can't go beyond the dictionary.

Incidentally 2: The 1920 essay on immigrant nutrition recognizes the benefits of what we now call the Mediterranean Diet.



Later, on a hunch: Łazanka doesn't seem to have any relatives in Polish but it sounds a lot like lasagna. Checking etymology for lasagna: from Vulgar Latin *lasania, from Latin lasanum "a pot," from Greek lasanon "pot with feet, trivet." That's got to be it. Roman missionaries carried the food and its word to Poland, where it settled down and grew a diminutive ending.

Labels: 20th century Dark Age, Turkey

  ¶ 4:38 AM

  Hellzapoppin


Party time in Hell! Get out the tires! Everyone gets a necklace!

Needless to say, all of Satan's buddies in the media, and all of Satan's buddies in "both" "parties" of the political crime syndicate, are weeping and wailing. Don't worry, genocidal fuckheads. You'll get your necklace sooner or later.
  ¶ 3:58 PM

  Chutzpah
Obama joins a noble tradition of great problem-solvers.

Obama: "The combined trends of increased inequality and decreasing mobility pose a fundamental threat to the American dream."

Dillinger: "The combined trends of robbing banks and killing policemen pose a fundamental threat."

Dahmer: "The combined trends of killing sexual partners and eating them pose a fundamental threat."

Mao: "The combined trends of intentional famine and jailing people for Incorrect Thought pose a fundamental threat."
  ¶ 5:46 AM

  Perfection
First real cold in a couple of years. Near zero at night. Nature always reverts to the mean.



Beautiful walking weather!

Sidenote: Been a little sparse on blogging lately, because working hard on courseware. This project, like most software, has rutted-road phases and Autobahn phases. During the rutted phases, when the next step seems to be blocked, I distract the mind with other graphics and writing. The blog gets more attention at those times. During the Autobahn phases I push straight ahead on coding.

Labels: Danbo, Heimatkunde

  ¶ 5:29 PM

  Democracy is dead. Long live democracy!
The disputation about 'nearly nude' espresso shops continues with a beautiful and unique development.

Normally a dispute like this would involve the city council. Both sides would lobby the council and the side with more money or more blackmail power would win. In states that have referenda, both sides would set up competing referenda with clever phrasing to deceive people into voting the wrong way, and nobody would be satisfied with the result because nobody would believe that the people understood the question.

This time something new and utterly unique has happened in Spokane. Both sides are pushing for the SAME REFERENDUM, because both sides are willing to TRUST AND OBEY THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE.

Amazing!
  ¶ 4:34 AM

  Bring on the chimps!
Some animal "rights" group has brought a suit on behalf of an elderly chimpanzee, trying yet again to establish that chimps are legally identical to humans. This sort of shit has been running since 1970, and so far it hasn't worked.

Frankly, I hope it works this time, because it will eventually lead to destroying the whole insane suicidal concept of "rights".

Genetic knowledge has changed drastically since 1970. It's no longer possible to draw neat inheritance diagrams based on percent of identical genes; it's quite possible that all animals and plants are just partial implementations of one big plan. (The family tree has been replaced by a family garden, with everything popping out of the same soil.) If chimps are injected by God with the same mysterious package of "rights" that humans supposedly receive from God, there's no longer any way to draw the next line. You have to assume that all living things were injected by God with the "right" to abortion, the "right" to steal money from savers, the "right" to education, the "right" to medical care, the "right" to refuse medical care, the "right" to absolute free speech, the "right" to shut up everyone else's free speech, the "right" to privacy from surveillance, the "right" to acquire all data from everyone else........

We will then have, for instance, lawsuits brought by human lawyers representing bacteria, claiming that bacteria have the inalienable "right" to infect people without interference from antibiotics.

And there won't be any logical or legal way to deny those suits. The practice of medicine will have to be abolished.

The survivors, if any, can then start anew without the insane concept of "rights".

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 3:43 AM

  Parallel or opposite?
UK Telegraph notes that several hundred Englishmen, who have converted to Islam, are fighting on the rebel side in Syria. 'Experts' are worried that the jihadists will return to pursue jihad in England.

Something like this happened before, with the opposite result. Hundreds of Englishmen, who had converted to Communism, fought on the rebel side in Spain in 1939. Most of them returned disillusioned, not newly committed to pursuing Communism.

If these jihadists return with a new commitment, it will prove two things: (1) England is too fucking stupid to control its borders, which we already know. (2) Islam is a better ideology for Westerners than Communism.
  ¶ 2:12 AM

  Only one
When the Weather Channel started naming winter storms, Polistra had some fun with the practice, showing symbolic snowfalls or trying to find even better Winter Gods.

This week's storm is named Cleon for some reason. Reminded me instantly of W. Cleon Skousen, the prophetic anti-Commie who exposed the Marxist agenda for America.

I tried to think of a symbolic snowflake representing Anti-Communism. Nope. There isn't a symbol. The people who develop symbols are hardline Satanist-Stalinists. Well then, can I think of an organization that remained consistently anti-commie? Catholics? Nope, turned by John 23. The military? Nope, turned in 1954 by Roy Cohn. Birchers? Nope, turned in the '70s, ALSO by Roy Cohn. Baptists? Stayed on the correct side but not really political. Mormons? Same as Baptists. FBI? The best of all anti-commies back when Skousen was an agent, but flipped in 1989 by Bush The Father.

Only one major organization was both actively and consistently on the anti-Commie side without ever flipping. The Italian Mafia. Can I 'iconize' them for a snowfall cartoon? Severed horseheads? Nah, that doesn't work.
  ¶ 5:59 AM

  Dumb Ukrainians
Ukrainian protesters are raging in the streets because their president is refusing to sign an agreement that would move toward joining EU.

Meanwhile in most of Ukraine's neighbors, EU is destroying economies and protesters are raging to get OUT of EU.

The protesters in Ukraine really need to pay more attention to nearby countries. If they think joining EU will help, they are purely and wildly wrong.

Their motives are understandable. Ukraine has always been wedged between the Kraut empire and the Russki empire, and their experience with the Russki empire is more recent and hugely unpleasant. But at this point in history, they'd be better off in Russia's sphere of influence.
  ¶ 4:40 AM