Lots of highly legitimate things
Down below the union thugs with their billion-dollar thefts, actual teachers are doing some purely wonderful things with hundreds of dollars. These actual teachers are looking for direct contributions to specific projects via DonorsChoose.org.

Most of these projects have costs in the hundreds, which means that one donor can easily fund an entire project, or "fill it" after several smaller donations.

Scanning through math-related projects, one correlation shows clearly, and should be a hint to teachers: Be descriptive. Vague needs like "more tech" or "more laptops" weren't getting much support. Specific projects involving work-like learning (cooking, electronics) were getting fast support. This is exactly how it should be.

I found one involving math via electronics ... right inside my old wheelhouse ... and "filled" it. Highly satisfying because I know it will help those students. Guaranteed.



Tempted to throw LOTS of money into similar projects, but I need to put on the frugal brakes before I get carried away!

Labels: defensible spaces, Experiential education

  ¶ 1:54 PM

  Three illegitimate things
School starts this morning in Spokane, but it may stop a few days later. The union thugs are preparing to strike for more money.

There's a good argument for more money. School days are 30 minutes longer now (which is a stupid and pointless change), so teachers should be paid more. For some reason the thugs aren't using that sensible and understandable argument; instead they're hitting the public with incomprehensible junk about Appropriated Reserve Funds that should be used differently. Another unpersuasive argument is that "support staff" like ACHIEVEMENT GAP MONITORS should be paid more.

Nope, ACHIEVEMENT GAP MONITORS shouldn't exist at all. They exist as a way of defending the genocidal Marxist Lie that All Humans Are Identical Passive Grains Of Sand.

If the thugs would simply admit the plain ordinary SCIENTIFIC FACT that

they wouldn't need ACHIEVEMENT GAP MONITORS.

So. We have three totally illegitimate things running together.

(1) The nine criminals illegitimately posing as the "State Supreme Court" illegally ordered the legislature to pay the thugs more.

(2) The thugs aren't satisfied with the illegal increase, so they're going to illegally strike for an even larger illegal increase.

(3) The thugs are justifying the illegal strike by the need to pay more to maintain their SCIENCE DENIALISM.
  ¶ 8:06 AM

  Like a Grand Re-Opening, I guess.
I'm purely puzzled by the news that Obama is going to officially name Mt McKinley to Mt Denali. That happened 20 years ago. Maybe it didn't get recorded on some official document, but the mountain and the park have been Denali on maps for a LONG time.

Aside from the redundancy, I'm still wondering why some things MUST have Injun names while other things CANNOT have Injun names. Mountains, golf courses, islands, and casinos MUST be Injun. Ball teams and commercial products CANNOT be Injun.

Golf is an honor, baseball is an obscenity?

A casino is an honor, a car is an obscenity?

I fucking dare you to find a logical reason for this ratshit.

= = = = =

Couple days later: Now the full reason for Obama's visit emerges, and it makes an odd combination.

(1) Rename a mountain that was already renamed.

(2) Push for total genocide, elimination of all animal life on Earth, to propitiate the Angry Goddess Gaia.

(3) Advocate for more Navy ICEBREAKERS to compete with Russian oil exploration.

That's a strange mix. One redundant and pointless action, one infinitely evil action, and one perfectly normal action, exactly what the leader of a major country should be doing.

But the perfectly normal act is bizarre after the genocidal act. Obama tells us that the Arctic is BOILING BURNING VAPORIZED STEAMY HOTTER THAN 100,000 SUNS AND GETTING INFINITELY HOTTER BY THE DAY! Therefore we need to build more ICEBREAKERS.

Funny, I always thought ICEBREAKERS were designed to get through ICE, not to navigate through superheated plasma.

Labels: Carbon Cult

  ¶ 6:29 AM

  Power defends power
Berezow at RCS pulls together some quotes from "theologians" that conveniently favor Big Science in its current form. Unsurprising. Berezow always defends Big Science.

Two of the quotes strike me as particularly noxious.

"No doubt those who really founded modern science were usually those whose love of truth exceeded their love of power."
--C.S. Lewis (The Abolition of Man)

Nope. Nobody in science "loves truth". Many working scientists are deeply fascinated by the pursuit itself; fascinated by atoms or octopuses or curing disease. That's not the same thing as truth, and the structure of academia doesn't select for truth. It selects for currently fashionable theories. "Founders" by definition love power. Anyone who tries to set up a new discipline or department is trying to push the old fogeys out of power. Not always bad. In some cases the old fogeys are wrong and deserve to be pushed out. This is exactly how truth happens: accidentally as a side-effect of power.

"Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes."
--Pope John Paul II (Letter to Director of the Vatican Observatory)

I won't argue with the cans. These purifications could happen in some ideal world. They never actually happen in THIS world. Science as a public force considers ALL religions except Gaia to be errors because non-Gaian religions compete for the attention and money of politicians. Genuine religion does try to oppose the idolatries of science (eg evolution, Global Warming, economics, "social" "science", quantum shit), but religion as a public force is fully aligned with those idolatries. The public agents of Protestant and Catholic churches ferociously support those idolatries, with occasional reservations about certain details of economics. Public religion works WITH public science to accelerate the evils caused by those idolatries, and to oppose genuine religion.

Labels: Alternate universe, Carbon Cult

  ¶ 1:46 AM

  An alternate explanation
Like everyone else, I've been trying to figure out what Antipope Francine is trying to do.

(1) If you're thinking in Godly terms as described in the Old and New Testaments, there's no doubt that she's a traitor to God and a representative of Satan.

(2) Some evidence indicates that she's not aiming in any particular direction. She's too dumb to carry out intellectual tasks like planning.

(3) Maybe there's an alternate secular explanation. I make no claim of truth or validity for this narrative. It's consistent with human nature, and that's all.

= = = = =

Going back about 10 years ... Benny XVI tried to organize the Church Militant against both secularism and Islam. Unfortunately he found that Stalin was right.

If you're going to be Militant you need Divisions. Against the militant parts of Islam, you need actual guns and bombs working for you. Without a connection to actual force, you're just going to generate piles of martyrs for no advantage. Against secularism, you need protection from the blackmailing fairies of the Curia. He didn't have that either.

So Benny, a hugely intelligent man, backed off. Hold em or fold em.

In this narrative Bergoglio, an unintelligent power-loving man, saw what happened to BXVI. He wanted to be a Pope with power so he could be powerful. He decided to realign the Church to agree with the holders of power in EU/US/UK. This has a nice side-effect of slowing down the Curia fairies, because the Pope is now on their side.

Presto! A Pope with Divisions! No need to use them for any religious purpose. Power is sufficient to a power-loving man.
  ¶ 4:53 PM

  New track, same acceleration toward Hell
Well, no doubt now about Satan's next step. I knew it wasn't going to be polygamy, but I wasn't quick enough to spot the sudden acceleration toward euthanasia.

Wesley Smith points out that Colorado's proposed euthanasia law gets rid of all the old unenlightened restrictions.

No need to be terminally ill. If you want to die, you can force a doctor to kill you. It's that simple and direct.

Coloradans do not currently have the liberty to pursue happiness by obtaining a medical professional's assistance in achieving a peaceful death thru the administration of oral or intravenous drugs. The people of Colorado hereby proclaim that mentally competent adult residents of Colorado are Sovereign in the matter of personal medical decisions and have the liberty at life's end to set the time and tone of their own deaths, asking permission of no person or organization.​

Catch that?

Liberty is death.

Happiness is death.

I have no idea what Liberty means, but Happiness is well defined.

All the old wisdom tells us, and everyone who lives long enough realizes: Happiness (or Satisfaction or Contentment) is available to anyone in any condition. It's all about setting your expectations properly and noticing the positive departures from expectations.

Defining happiness as death CLOSES OFF this process of adjustment and appreciation. It OPENS the path for doctors or parents or "support groups" to administer the prescription of Happiness when a youngster only needs an Expectation Adjustment, or an experience of completing a useful project, or maybe just a little tiny scrap of motherfucking RESPECT.

Labels: 20th century Dark Age

  ¶ 3:34 PM

  RAIN


One odd non-barking dog ... normally when we get rain after a period of dry dusty weather, lots of power transformers pop. Water + dust = arcing path between terminals. This rain comes after TWO MONTHS of EXTREME DUST and GREASY WOODSMOKE. It's been raining for two hours now, and no popped xfmrs yet. Maybe yesterday's wind cleaned the xfmrs.

Later: Spoke too soon. Or non-barked too soon. After another hour of rain, there are about 7 popped xfmrs and pole fires. Nothing abnormal after all. Oddly, these pops caused a LOT more actual outages in Spokane than yesterday's wind.

Seems like a solution should be available. Mounting the xfmr upside down, with terminals on bottom, would solve rain, dust and squirrels all at once. Indent the bottom so rain and dust can't flow there under any circumstances.

Labels: Heimatkunde

  ¶ 9:03 AM

  YAAAAAAYYYY! for real this time.
Today, FINALLY, some ACTUAL RAIN on the fiery areas!


  ¶ 2:52 AM

  What local media?
During yesterday's storm, the Spokane-News facebook page posted this belated (as usual) Official Warning from the Weather Bureau:





= = = = =

CHECK LOCAL MEDIA? WHAT FUCKING LOCAL MEDIA?

Spokane DOES NOT HAVE local media, EXCEPT for the Spokane-News facebook page. TV and radio pay no attention to actual events. TV is too busy obeying Our Lord And Prophet Alphonse Sharpton Junior's Holy Cop-Killing Instructions. Radio stations run on autopilot except during Morning Zoo Time on weekdays. Anything that happens outside of Morning Zoo Time does not exist. You can't even find out what fucking TIME it is from radio, as I realized during the last prolonged power outage. Everything is designed to Go National, which means you can't mention time or weather or facts.

Thanks again to Spokane-News for being THE LOCAL MEDIA.
  ¶ 2:03 AM

  Deer likes my yard
I saw this deer early this morning along Wellesley. He was casually munching someone's marigolds. After the storm he decided to settle in my yard. He seemed to be looking toward the kitchen window even before I caught his eye; maybe he liked the smell of my vegy chili. He's not getting any of it.

Two views from different windows. This dude is LARGE, almost horse-size. I don't feel like messing with him, so he can sleep there if he wants.


Tried calling Animal Control, but they don't deal with non-domestic animals, and the department that does is closed.

5:30: He got up and sauntered elsewhere.

Observation based on an N of 2**: Deer seem to be remarkably streetwise and humanwise. They figure out how cars move and how humans behave, and they aren't constantly surprised by predictable behavior. In this respect they are on the same IQ level as dogs, and way above cats and climate "scientists", who are unable to process sequences. The orange cat I've mentioned and pictured often has wandered around the neighborhood for 5 years, sees me daily, and hangs out in my yard almost daily. You'd think he would recognize me as a non-threatening and non-interesting item, the way neighborhood dogs do after a few days of acquaintance. Nope. Cats always look at you with complete alien puzzlement. "What is this strange vertical object? I've never seen one before! What will it do? I need to be ready for anything!" I've concluded that cats survive solely because of their unique athletic abilities, not because of their brainpower.

= = = = =

Correction after some googling: This is clearly a mule deer, and the absence of antlers probably marks it as female. So I apologize for calling her a him. I know less about ruminants than they know about me!

= = = = =


**Footnote on N of 2: A different deer hung around the neighborhood last year. Not a mule deer, an archetypal Bambi. Spotted sides, tufted tail, little ears. Showed the same level of street smarts.

9/24 update: Looks like she's still around town, though I haven't seen her since that day. Someone posted this pic without location on the SpokaneNews Facebook page. Appears to be in Audubon Park.

10/22: Another bunch of sightings on the Facebook page. Clearly this deer, and her entire family, are well known in this part of town!

Labels: Heimatkunde

  ¶ 4:50 PM

  Merkel, Obama, Ebola
Merkel is HELPING the criminal migrants to move into Germany, and VIOLENTLY SUPPRESSING all attempts by normal Germans to resist the invasion.

Obama is HELPING the criminal "Dreamers" to move into USA STRONG, and VIOLENTLY SUPPRESSING all attempts by normal Americans to resist the invasion.

This is absolutely bizarre.

Animals have skin. The job of skin is to let in good stuff like air and water and keep out bad stuff. Larger things (food) must enter through specific ports. Any virus that gets past the skin is killed by an unbelievably complex system of organs and cells.

Nations have fences. The job of a fence is to let in good stuff like air and water and keep out bad stuff. Larger things (freight and humans) must enter through specific ports. Any criminal that gets past the skin is killed or at least pushed back out; any contraband freight that gets through the skin is destroyed or pushed back out.

Borders are necessary for life. When you break the cell walls or skin or bark or fence, the cell or animal or tree or nation dies.

EU/US/UK governments have been treasonously breaking the cell wall to invite the invaders for a long time. Merkel and Obama are adding a new element, SUPPRESSING the normal immune response. This is how Ebola behaves.

XENOPHOBIA IS LIFE. "WELCOMING" IS DEATH.

Labels: defensible spaces

  ¶ 2:35 AM

  YAAAAAAYYYY! /// Edit: Shit.
Look at this!!!!!!!



RAIN just where it's needed most!

MORE, MORE MORE!!!!!!!

= = = = =

Later: It looks like we'll finally get some solid rain on Sunday, but we have to get through a big wind on Saturday first. The big wind could ignite and explode lots of new fires. Shit.

= = = = =

Update Sat aft: Seems to be mostly done. Wasn't terrible. Pretty much the usual summer-to-fall transition storm, an hour of 35G45 type wind. A few trees and poles down, no massive damage.



= = = = =

Lewiston got the real shit. A half hour of 60-70!



Serious trouble there.
  ¶ 2:43 AM

  Fantastically stupid idea
This sort of shit keeps popping up over and over with slight variations. A whole lot of work by well-meaning people, with exactly zero result.

He envisions a movement where funds are raised to build slightly larger homes — from 200 to 800 square feet — that would still be considered part of the tiny-home market and provide an option below the lowest rungs of market rent, which is soaring. In the first quarter of 2015, the average monthly rent in the Nashville area stood at $975, according to Colliers market report. Such housing would fill the gaps between such high-cost rental spaces and the low-income units, like those subsidized by Section 8, for which there are often long waits.

But for now, Carr continues to work with homeless organizations and local faith-based communities to identify land for micro villages. Green Street, he hopes, is just the first; and it has room, Carr said, to expand to a total of 25 micro homes. So the effort continues. "We'd love to pepper this yard with houses," said Tripp Hunt, the church's attorney.

... Those people will move in this weekend, continuing to use the other amenities provided by the church like restrooms and showers, but it is not meant to be a permanent placement.

... Living in a small house with four walls and a roof, which is a good way for the homeless to sample apartment-style living as they work toward new independence.

= = = = =

What's wrong?

1. The homeless are not involved in BUILDING the homes. They're still jobless, still feeling useless and charitized, still outside the circle of dignity.

2. If you're going to spend $7500 for a portable home, buy a used travel trailer instead. It's completely livable, self-contained and wonderfully well-designed. In every town there are hundreds of travel trailers sitting in driveways, never traveling. A church could run a campaign to buy them and pay the homeless dudes to spruce them up.

3. A "community of microhomes" in a yard with communal kitchen and bathroom is exactly the same as a tent camp. You're not "sampling apartment-style living". Apartments are typically LARGER than houses for the same rent, not 6 feet wide.
  ¶ 2:30 AM

  OPT 5
Following on earlier observations of things that have 'regularized' with age.....

Several superstitious Rules of Inversitude formerly dominated my life.

(1) If you want to find X, you need to catch Nature off guard by looking for Y.

(2) If you're ready for a weather event, it won't happen. If you're unprepared, it will happen.

(3) A day that starts badly will end well. A day that starts well will end badly.

(4) When looking for one item in an unmarked stack like a shelf of magazines or a pile of CD's in envelopes, the one you want will always be the LAST one you could possibly pick up. It doesn't matter which direction you search, where you start, or how you cut the deck. The desired object is the LAST.

= = = = =

With age, all of these rules except (4) have disappeared.

(1): Not sure why it faded. Maybe I've simply lowered my expectations to the point where I'm not seeking much.

(2): Easy to explain. Now that I have money, time and experience, I'm always 'ready enough' for bad weather and power outages. I've controlled all the hazards that I can afford to control.

(3): Direct result of switching to Old Peoples Time, sleeping from 8PM to 2AM. Now I always wake up in a good mood. Some days go bad, most remain good, but there's no negative correlation involved because wakeup is a constant.

(4): Still holds true. I could probably eliminate it by setting up filing systems, but the problem doesn't happen often enough to make the labor worthwhile.

Labels: coot-proofing, Zero Problems

  ¶ 1:05 AM

  Ashley Mobius?
It's genuinely surprising, and maybe a leeeeetle bit reassuring, that the Ashley Madison hack has caused so much trouble for the hackees. Adultery hasn't been officially punished for 100 years, and has been thoroughly normal for 50 years. Even among famous fuckheads, you'll never see anyone exposed for adultery.

It does get punished indirectly in divorces, especially when big money is available for the wife to steal, but never directly.

Most likely the divorce-money connection is why we're seeing so much ass-covering.

Or maybe: Now that most sins have been normalized, Natural Law is sneaking around the unguarded side of Satan's fort to de-normalize an old exhausted sin that Satan thought he could safely leave for dead.

In less mystical terms ... People know that they can be ruined, jailed or killed for saying the wrong thing about the latest sins, the sins that have been Officially Required by the Black-Robed Inquisitors. The same Inquisitors haven't made any rulings or decisions on adultery in more than a century, so it may be permissible to say bad things about cheaters.
  ¶ 4:05 PM

  Extreme? Yup.
I had the strong impression that July and Aug were sort of warmer than usual, while June was extreme. My impressions can be faulty, but this time NCDC verifies it with a BANG.

Here's July compared to the last century or so of Julys:


Yup, warm but not record-breaking.

And here's August:


Closer to normal.

And here's JUNE!@!$&@^%%$#%!



Even more dramatic because it comes after two decades of resolutely nonextreme Junes. There's your forest fires in one graph. Add in Mary Verner, an emergency manager who is KNOWN to be incompetent in emergencies, and you've got a guaranteed total disaster.
  ¶ 11:02 AM

  Last bastion?
Convective thought: Plain old public schools may be the last bastion of localism.

Two different news items show a strong crossgrained stubbornness and a resistance to national or global "solutions".

= = = = =

(1) Murdoch's attempt to break into Innovative And Disruptive ed tech with big money fails.

My first thought was "No duh. Idiot union thugs won't allow Murdoch in because KKK BUSHITLER NAZI SEXIST RACIST HOMOPHOBE CLIMATEDENIALIST TRANSPHOBE, even though Murdoch is actually 10 times more Commie and 100 times more Green than any union thug." Nope. The facts aren't nearly that simple. There was some political shit in NY, mainly because Murdoch had hired former NY school official Joel Klein to head the project. Even there it wasn't really R vs D. Klein is firmly D but earned the hatred of union thugs by trying to reform the schools. In other states Murdoch's people arrogantly assumed they could Innovate And Disrupt existing business relationships. Didn't work. School boards were happy with existing publishers and didn't see any reason to switch.

= = = = =

(2) Chicago parents are staging a hunger strike to keep their neighborhood school open. Jesse Jackson is getting involved, yet again the dispute isn't racial or partisan. Everyone on both sides is both D and black.

By objective standards the school deserves to be closed. Its last graduating class had only 13 kids. But the neighborhood likes its school and wants to keep it open.


= = = = =

(3) Semi-related... Spokane's first public charter school has started, several days before the regular public system. The school's agenda is suspiciously leftist and internationalist, but the classroom itself is old-fashioned. The short video shows serious kids working hard, using nothing but #2 pencils and paper. No technology or distraction in the room at all, nobody peeking at iPhones or Innovating And Disrupting. Only one thing in the classroom was different from the room where I started school in 1955: markers on whiteboard instead of chalk on slate. And that's a definite improvement. (Old tech isn't better just because it's old. SIMPLE tech is always better, and markers are better SIMPLE tech than chalk.)  ¶ 2:15 AM

  No such thing as part-time rigging.
A couple years ago commentators were talking mainly about oil prices. Some said the upward moves were rigged and the downstrokes were natural. Others said the downs were rigged and the ups were natural.

Now we're hearing the same thing about stock bubbles. "The Fed has lost control!" or "PBOC has lost control!"

Nonsense.

If you know a game is rigged for even one second, you know by induction that it's ALWAYS rigged.

Let's say you're driving on a smooth interstate. You turn on cruise control and take your foot off the gas. Whoops, now you need to exit into city streets. You turn off cruise control and resume direct foot action.

This does NOT mean you "lost control" during the times when cruise was on. You were fully in control the whole time. You chose when to turn cruise on and off, based on your judgment of where you wanted to go. You're rigging the drive to suit your purposes. Cruise control is part of the rig.

Same with the central banks. We know that they're rigging the upstrokes with QE and ZIRP. That's a plain and admitted fact. No secret. Now we have the appearance of "natural" markets for ... what, about three minutes at a time? Between the halts and circuit breakers?

It's all rigged. The drop isn't a "loss" or a "failure", it's designed to benefit someone massively. The only question is who.
  ¶ 3:43 PM

  It's damn hard
Will the earth stop rotating counterclockwise?

Will pigeons stop pooping on statues?

Will ham operators stop being square?

Will gardeners stop hating squirrels?

Will fire stop being hot?

Will journalists stop aiding and abetting Sharpton's race war now that the effects have hit home?

= = = = =

It's damn hard to find good rhetorical constants now that the Pope is no longer Catholic and apple pie is a gluten-infested poison and motherhood is an unimaginable sin. You have to invent some clunky misfit metaphors that don't resonate well. I think I finally hit the mark with the last one.
  ¶ 12:25 PM

  Constants and variables, Ductape and foil
Last year I noticed the dramatic difference that metal siding makes in a fire situation. And the opposite difference for vinyl siding. A house with vinyl siding will ignite from a little warmth. Breathe on it and you've got a fire. Wood or beaverboard takes a real flame to ignite. Metal won't ignite at all.

The US Forest Service noticed it a long time ago. Since 1980 they've been protecting 'historic' buildings like log cabins and old fire towers by wrapping them in heavy-duty aluminum foil, fastened with ductape. Smart and cheap. It looks dumb but it works.

Big question: WHY IN THE HOLY HELL DON'T WE REQUIRE ALL HOUSES TO HAVE METAL SIDING? Or stone or brick? It's an extremely old lesson, but we still haven't learned it.

Labels: Constants and Variables, defensible spaces

  ¶ 8:42 AM

  Why landau?
I've been puzzling over the long-lasting landau theme on cars.

It began with a direct copy of the elegant carriage style:


An open driver's compartment, a closed mid-section, and an openable rear.

Then it disappeared for a long time, except for a few peculiar DeSoto taxis.

Finally it returned in archetypal form on the original Ford Crown Victoria:


Since then it hasn't gone away. Rambler picked it up just after Ford:


'Personal sport coupes' of the '70s are landaus, and often used the name:


Station wagons and SUVs can be landau-ish:


Utes and Rancheros are landaus with the back roof lowered:


= = = = =

I finally light-bulbed the correct explanation today when reading an article about the good but ill-fated AMC Pacer. The Pacer was a strange thingamajig that didn't quite look like a car, but nevertheless hit the landau theme HARD, especially in two-tone:


= = = = =

The strangeness lit the light bulb.

You have to start by asking What Is A Car?

Cars began life as buggies, from 1895 to 1905. Literal horseless carriages:


Briefly and weirdly, cars became carriages with a horse out front:


Since 1910, a car is a horse. It has four legs, two eyes, a mouth, a head, a body, and a tail. From 1920 to 1940 the impression was strong:


After 1940 cars started to dehorsify. The friendly ruminant eyes moved down onto the face and became predator eyes, then lost all semblance of eyeness:


Something was missing. Cars were no longer horsy enough. So we had to add:


a saddle!

= = = = =

Humans have been riding ruminants (yak, ox, donkey, horse, car) for as long as we've had the other pieces of organized civilization. (Fire, business and beer.) That's enough time to imprint the epigenes. Or from the other end, the fact that these pieces have always been part of humanity tells us that they're part of our original design. We need to cook and trade and ferment and ride. Those are the defining purposes of the human species.

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 4:36 AM

  Beautiful science writing!
Article on a 'rediscovery' of a species of nautilus.

The subject could have been dull, but author Devin Coldewey makes it exciting. Haven't heard of the author before; now I'll start watching for more.

Last two paragraphs:

The nautilus is also a living fossil. Animals extremely similar to today's nautiluses can be found as far as 500 million years back into the fossil record. That means they saw the dinosaurs come and go without missing a beat — but overfishing and disappearing niches may put an end to that long history.

"As it stands now, nautilus mining could cause nautiluses to go extinct," Ward said. He isn't optimistic about upcoming talks to classify the nautilus as a protected animal, either. But nautiluses didn't survive two mass extinctions and half a billion years of sharp-toothed competition by being pushovers.

Gets two major points exactly right, points that science writers nearly always fuck up.

(1) If a creature has lasted through many changes of climate and chemistry, it's going to continue. The fact that it's still here tells us that it's adaptable.

(2) Overfishing and overhunting are the actual causes of extinction. We may crowd out subpopulations with urban sprawl, but that doesn't have a long-term effect on the whole species because the critters can usually move elsewhere. If we shoot or net a critical mass, they can't move elsewhere.
  ¶ 5:47 PM

  Well, I guess that makes it OK.
I accidentally listened to this grotesquely awful 1950 radio play last night. Produced by NY Dept of Ed. Unbelievably atrocious, the worst sort of 'educational' presentation. Horrible writing, horrible acting, maximum intensity preachiness and screechiness at every moment. Like a Murphy Brown episode scored as Chinese opera.

It's about an obscure event in early NYC history, the 'Flushing Remonstrance'. Back in 1657, some Quakers moved into Flushing from Massachusetts. Governor Stuyvesant saw this as a threat to his authority and outlawed 'secret meetings' of religious groups. Local authorities in Flushing, already tired of Manhattan arrogance, sent an official petition (remonstrance) which pissed off Stuyvesant even more. He jailed several of them, and ultimately the colony's supervisors in Holland interceded to restore some degree of religious tolerance.

It's clear that the NY Dept of Ed was not really talking about Quakers in 1950. It was talking about Jews.

Well. Now that Jews have been in full control of NYC for many decades, how is religious freedom faring in the boroughs?

The Dept of Ed's nightmare came true! Jews ARE being persecuted now. But it's not QUITE how the 1950 Dept of Ed predicted. Religious Jews are being persecuted BY THE DEPT OF ED, at the behest of the super-rich secular Jews. And in this case the 'remonstrance' is FOR the persecution, not against.

These schools have been operating for a very long time," said Weber, one of 52 former students, parents or former teachers who signed a letter requesting the investigation into 39 yeshivas. "They have kind of perfected their method for pulling the wool over the eyes of authorities."

The investigation itself is shrouded in secrecy. The names of the specific yeshivas that are being targeted have not been released because of fears of retaliation. And aside from Weber and Moster, who agreed to speak out, the names of those who called for the probe have also not been publicly released.

What is known is that 38 of the 39 yeshivas are in Brooklyn, the center of the city's Hasidic community.

What are the yeshivas doing wrong? Why do they need to be secretly investigated? They're teaching actual Jewish doctrine instead of the established Gaian/Satanic doctrine of the elites. Moses and Abraham instead of Michael Mann and Michael Bloomberg.

Well, at least the location is different. Brooklyn, not Queens.
  ¶ 9:12 AM

  What's the opposite
What's the exact opposite of a flat LCD monitor?

This.

Damn! Imagine the velocity of those electrons. I wouldn't want to sit in front of that screen!
  ¶ 6:40 AM

  War on drugs ----> war on pugs?
A new trend. Probably exaggerated, but if it spreads it will force governments to make a truly hard decision.

He said: "These puppy dealers have given up drug dealing and cigarette importing because there's as much money to be made and considerably less risk.

"The big dealers are making between £25,000 and £30,000 a week. I've seen evidence that some gangs are selling 800 puppies over a six-month period, for between £500 and £1,000 a dog."

There are also fears animals smuggled into Britain could bring diseases, such as rabies - which has been absent in the UK for many years due to strict quarantine rules. Paula Boyden, of the Dogs Trust charity, said: "The implications are huge — for consumers who are being duped and the puppies that suffer horribly, plus the risk of disease that is kicking at our shores."

Just as with slavery, the "rights" activists are forgetting the consequences of commerce and ownership. Smugglers want to sell the dogs for a high price, so they can't injure or sicken the dogs. Nobody will buy a starved or rabid dog for $1000.

Better question: How will the War On Drugs types handle this?

Some drugs are unquestionably harmful, especially the uppers. Meth and coke will kill you FAST. Other drugs like heroin and pot are a mixed bag. They help some people get through life, and when properly controlled aren't instantly deadly. Because the harmful drugs are so dramatically bad, it was possible for Anslinger and his successors to generalize.

Can't use the same logic about dogs. Having a dog is nearly always helpful. Dogs often save lives directly, and make your life longer and better indirectly.

Movies and shows like "Terrier Madness" or "Spaniels: Pit of Despair" or "The Corgi Fiends" or "Breaking Basset" aren't likely to stir up the requisite horror.
  ¶ 3:34 AM

  Trumpoleth
It's interesting to watch mediasatans responding to the Trump phenomenon. Most of them totally fail, sticking with their usual indescribable evil and insanity beyond insanity beyond insanity beyond insanity beyond insanity beyond insanity beyond insanity beyond insanity. But a few are managing to pick up a little bit of reality, despite all their infinitely evil instincts and genocidal training.

Surprisingly the NYTimes DOES get it. Normally NYTimes leads the way in stupidity, but their reporter actually LISTENED to real Trump supporters, REALIZED that not all of them were KKK Saddam Hitler, and even more amazingly UNDERSTOOD why they appreciate Trump's agenda.

Not quite so surprisingly, Politico also gets it. Covering a Jeb rally near the Mexican border, the reporter found nobody happy with Jeb and lots of people wanting Trump. He LISTENED and UNDERSTOOD.

Unsurprisingly, BBC got halfway there, and then suddenly fell back into standard criminal genocidal stupidity AFTER listening to real people.

But The Donald has tapped into a deep well of anger about Washington, distrust of conventional politicians, and fear about the future. His poll lead seems incredibly durable. As Republicans know, the Democratic party won the popular vote in five out of the last six presidential elections. If the Republicans are going to win this time, they need a Hispanic strategy and a strategy for women. The question is whether either of those can be viable if the Donald show continues much longer.

Popular vote doesn't exist, fuckhead. It's all about a few hundred voters in two or three states. You don't need millions, you need THE RIGHT DOZEN. And "Hispanic strategy and wyymmyynnseses strategy" are EXACTLY what the voters are pukingly shittingly disgusted with. (Incidentally, Mr BBC, Hispanic isn't correct any more. It's "Latina/o" now.)

Even Mexicans and women are dead tired of the fagass Repoof "strategies", as NYTimes and Politico explicitly realized but BBC couldn't fathom.

Labels: Leth

  ¶ 1:03 AM

  Dynamic aural camouflage?
Convective thought after hearing the sound of a hawk in the neighborhood.

The typical hawk call is a downsweep in freq. Sounds just like a receding Doppler.

Is that the purpose? Fool the prey into thinking you're flying away?

Presumably this has been suggested and tested already. If not, there it is.

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 3:36 PM

  Metric bully
I check Weather.com radar regularly because it's unquestionably the best. Accurate 95% of the time. I almost never use their website for anything else because they're annoyingly Carbon Cultist. Recently I checked the radar view from Calgary ONCE while trying to answer the question about Canada's superior fire handling.



Now Weather.com thinks I'm Canadian, even though the bookmark clearly led to 99205. They've switched ALL temps to Centigrade! Gave me a heart-bump when I checked the local radar just now and saw 27 degrees.

Looks like Calgary's weather today is Partly Lasagna.

Later, 1AM 8/25:


Rain is coming! Not much, but some. ... Nope, we got one flash of lightning but no raindrops. Still, some places did receive a few drops. First rain in the area for many many many days. 4:35AM: Nope again! REAL RAIN! Can hear it on the windows, can catch it in my hand, can even SMELL IT! HALLELUJAH! (For 5 minutes.)

Labels: Metrology

  ¶ 12:44 PM

  Language update for Aug

Professor Polistra brings another bucket of mixed linguistic nuts. The first two are tasty, the last two are toxic.

= = = = =

Mean mugged:

Great phrase. Seen in a discussion on Spokane-News facebook page about the fucking assholes who are repeatedly starting fires in the Rutter Parkway area......

Didn't know they were looking for a white truck and I was driving one right by there. I was wondering why I was getting mean mugged by the family on the side of the road... Now it all makes sense.

= = = = =

Grow garden:

Parallel to drive truck.

In an article on community gardens:

"They bring people together with a common theme. People who like to grow garden."

These formations are new and grammatically interesting. Drive truck is obviously not the same as drive a truck, and grow garden is not the same as grow a garden. In the latter phrases the emphasis is on the single truck or garden that you own (and operate). Instead, these new forms emphasize the operating, which is constant whether you own the item or not. They fill in the previously missing indicative side of the nominal participles truck-driving and garden-growing. What's your job? Truck-driving. What do you do? I drive truck. What's your hobby? Garden-growing. What do you do? I grow garden.

= = = = =

Rewriting:

Russian FM Lavrov, meeting with Chinese leaders:

Rewriting history shatters the pillars of the world order.... The world's fate cannot be held in the hands of just one state, he added. “Today we see barefaced craving to falsify the history of war (WWII) and equalize victims and slaughterers.

He's perfectly right, but the word rewrite is dangerous in this context.

History is always being rewritten. The problem now is not rewriting. The problem is that USA STRONG is rewriting WW2 into a false version that paints Russia as the aggressor.

If you define rewriting as bad, you leave room for Satan to call you a hypocrite when you attempt to rewrite BACK toward truth.

We should simply acknowledge that history is constantly reshaped, and we should recommend reshaping history TOWARD observed facts and AWAY from provable falsity.

This is strongly parallel to the idiotic recommendation of 'judicial restraint' by conservatives. You lost the battle for 'restraint' in 1803. Case law and precedent are now thousands of light years away from logic, facts, and civilization. If you insist on 'restraint' now, you are explicitly FORCING the current genocidal lunacy to continue. What's needed is not 'restraint' but AK47s.

= = = = =

Disappointing:

The official response by alleged "conservatives" to Satan's final coup. "This decision is DISAPPOINTING and we HOPE the Justices will rethink it."

Fucking fakers. You're not disappointed, you're fabulously exquisitely delighted.

You don't hope anything. Hope does not exist in Satan's world. Only raw power exists, and you own the power. You fuckers went along with the appointment of the black-robed turbosatans who made this decision. You could have shot the turbosatans but instead you appointed them. Billions of gallons of blood are on your nasty filthy vile unspeakable hands.

Labels: Language update

  ¶ 8:57 AM

  More, please.
Good news!



Polistra is happy.



Polistra WANTS MORE!


  ¶ 3:03 AM

  Innovation + Disruption = ?
Power switched off last night for no obvious reason; no bad weather, not especially hot. (Avista later showed it as 'equipment failure'.) Messed up my usual bedtime routine, so I just plopped into bed early. Power returned before I actually drifted down to sleep, and everything seems OK. The change of routine opened up some mental passages. After waking I finally assembled a thought that has been sort of itching for a while.

= = = = =

The cognitive itch had been raised to a burning mosquito bite by two Innovators and Disruptors heard yesterday on the 'Innovation Hub' program. Both of these I and D knew how to talk the talk; their sentences were jammed with I and D buzzwords.

One of them has started an online pharmacy that delivers packaged daily pills to elderly customers. A good idea but not a new idea. Old-fashioned drugstores often provided daily deliveries to customers who could afford it. The newness is using the Web instead of the telephone.

The other one was an explicitly genocidal Gaian superwacko who was urgently telling us to use new tech to kill all animal and human life. He didn't say those exact words, but implementing his goal of Zero CO2 Output requires those exact actions. Disruptive for fucking sure.

= = = = =

Blamo! Scratched the itch after some Disrupted sleep.

Innovators and Disruptors are not Innovating. All the Disruptive Innovations of the last 10 years are simple re-uses of old business techniques or re-uses of old devices or re-uses of old social and cultural systems. What makes them Innovative and Disruptive is that the old pattern gets rebuilt using the Web instead of humans.

Using the Web accomplishes two specific I and D goals:

(1) Eliminates jobs, thus eliminating the need for humans.

(2) Places all transactions where NSA can monitor them.

All of these Innovations have been opened by the design of the iPhone, and finalized by 'wearables'. 'Wearables' include all the necessary sensors and communication channels to automate and surveil every aspect of life. Innovators simply write the necessary code to use the existing sensors, or to connect accessory sensors. Nobody is inventing new sensors, nobody is using channels outside the official NSA channel.

So: I + D = Eliminate civilization.

A very old goal, but finally within our grasp thanks to Apple and Amazon and Google.

Labels: 20th century Dark Age, Age of Stings, Carbon Cult

  ¶ 1:01 AM

  Why is Canada less fiery?
Using an interactive map found here.

Screencap from a large view:



Screencap from closeup:



Notice something? Fires start in Canada but don't explode. One US fire almost hits the border but doesn't cross.

The forest is the same. When you scan any satellite view, you can see the same terrain, same types of trees, apparently the same general density. There is no fence or road on the border in these forests. If the map didn't add the line, you couldn't tell where the border is. (This isn't generally true at borders. In farmland or urban areas, you can ALMOST ALWAYS distinguish states and countries without the added line. Street patterns and farming methods are distinctive.)

Canada and US are treating their forests differently. I don't know what the difference is. More logging? Quicker warning of fires? More watchers? Less bureaucracy? Less idiocy about "endangered species"?

SOMETHING is different, and the correlation to GOVERNMENT is BLAZINGLY obvious.

We're doing everything wrong. Canada isn't.

Labels: STRONG!

  ¶ 3:07 PM

  BBC slow to join the parade
For two or three years NecroPhiliac Radio has been hammering HARD on a new topic, along with its standard obsessions of Selma and Global Warming and Trans shit. Opening up new territory for Satan's media.

DEATH.

Admittedly all news is about death in various glancing or indirect ways. Murder, destruction, war. But those are specific instantiations of the Death Object. They have names and locations and times. NPR has peeled off the details, rolling back to raw simple DEATH all by itself, embracing and pounding it with orgasmic delight.

BBC, normally Satan's chief pathfinder, has been slow on this topic. This morning they finally grabbed the rail and jumped on the Death Porn Express.


Let the competition begin!

Labels: 20th century Dark Age

  ¶ 3:46 AM

  Everything-proof
Here is the ultimate in defensible space, short of a missile silo. A cement egg. Obviously fireproof, and also impervious to wind**, rain, snow, termites and quakes. It's on top of a hill, making it floodproof.

That's how you do it.


= = = = =

**Wind: This particular egg has large windows with big panes. Not good for wind. A tornado or an 80 MPH gust would bust them out and ruin the interior. Ideally you'd want to get ventilation through small ports, thoroughly filtered in HEPA style, and light through something like glass bricks.

Labels: defensible spaces

  ¶ 2:45 AM

  More Game Theory
More Game-Theory crap. The same nonsense that ruined Greece's chance to get out of EU. These Danes --- Well, I could just stop there, couldn't I?

but I won't. These Danes "analyzed" the behavior of lines or queues that start moving at a specific time, like theater tickets or sports games or the latest Apple Deviltool. This was NOT for constant queues like grocery checkouts or bank tellers.

Alleged solution: The line moves faster if you do LIFO instead of FIFO. Give the first ticket to the last person who arrives.

Well, I'll grant that SOMETHING would happen faster if you did that. You'd have a riot, with everyone jumping through the ticket window and squashing the clerk.

Unusually for Game-Theory idiots, these "researchers" acknowledged that LIFO might not work in such situations but should work in non-physical computer-based lines where people can't see how many are in front, and can't tell how many "clerks" are working.

Nope. Even in that situation, with most of the human aspects eliminated, the "researchers" have still ignored one basic human fact.

People who arrive early KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING. They KNOW what the line is for. They are organized and have their money or tax info or whatever READY TO GO.

People who join a line late are less organized and less prepared. They may not even know what the line is for. It takes MORE TIME to handle them, so the organized people are delayed even more than they would be by a LIFO with equal people.
  ¶ 5:48 PM

  Three levels, none should have been needed.
KREM has stories about three levels of courage in the face of fire.

(1) A man who didn't evacuate but stayed to defend his own property. Gutsy but basically normal. I might do that ... in fact I did that in the 1991 firestorm. Evac was encouraged, but I stayed and sprayed. It made a difference.

(2) A man who didn't evacuate, and is patrolling the streets to help his neighbors. Gutsy and beyond normal. I couldn't do that. In a small town it's not quite so abnormal; everyone is accustomed to doing a little of everything; still tremendously courageous.

(3) A man who didn't evacuate, bought a firetruck that wasn't being used, gathered a crew, and went out to fight fires. WAY beyond normal. Superhero is the only word. Admittedly it took some existing 'superpowers'. He's a lawyer who had enough money to afford a firetruck and enough influence and connections to gather the crew.

If the idiot state and evil feds had been taking the necessary steps to PREVENT explosive fires for the last 30 years, we wouldn't need a superhero. If normal logging had been allowed, the forests wouldn't have built up to explosive density. If we had prevented developers from putting cedar-roofed McMansions in the middle of the forest, we'd have more room for the small fires that Nature needs. If we hadn't placed banks of wind turbines in the forest, the bats would have killed the bugs, and the trees would have been healthy. If we hadn't busted down dams to avoid embarrassing the earthworms, there would be more moisture in the air.

We are doing everything wrong.

Superheroes are wonderful, but they can't really fix 30 years of evil.

Labels: Carbon Cult, defensible spaces, STRONG!

  ¶ 7:04 AM

  This is why
Kasich soils his own nest:

"If I were not president, but if I were King of America, I would abolish all teachers' lounges, where they sit together and worry about 'woe is us,'" Kasich said at an education conference in New Hampshire sponsored by education group The Seventy-Four and The American Federation for Children. The comment drew a few laughs from the crowd, which is spending the day hearing from Republican presidential candidates.

Kasich is known for being blunt and direct [WHAT?], but earlier in his talk, he noted some times where he had worked with the teachers' unions in Ohio before.

Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols said that the governor didn't mean literally replacing teachers' lounges in schools and said he using a metaphor.

This is why Trump keeps winning. Other Repoofs delicately dance around the facts and end up saying shit that hurts without helping. Kasich managed to repel anti-union teachers who might have supported him otherwise. He didn't bother the union at all.

Kasich was daintily pirouetting around the OBVIOUS FUCKING FACT that we need to ELIMINATE TEACHERS UNIONS.

If that's what you mean, then FUCKING SAY IT. If you can't bring yourself to STATE THE FUCKING FACTS, go home and get out of the way. Take a nap or something.

= = = = =

Semi-relevant sidenote: I was thinking about teachers lounges yesterday after reading this account of how doctors behave when the patient is knocked out. Raw evil. Astoundingly evil. Schoolyard bullies at their worst.

I asked myself if teachers did the same thing in the teachers lounge. At least during the years when I was teaching, the answer is No. We did cuss and discuss problem students, but it was always in a context of sharing useful info. Jeff is a violent dickhead; I couldn't get the admin to do anything about him; maybe you'll have better luck this semester. Watch out! Or, JoAnn tries hard but probably doesn't have the basic skills. Give her some room, but don't expect too much.

We never sang 'La Cucaracha' with our hands stuffed into a student's cunt. Only doctors do that.
  ¶ 4:52 AM

  Constants and variables 31
Speaking of unspoken expertise, and speaking of defensible spaces, here's an unorthodox view from a real expert.

Spokane Valley Fire Marshal Greg Rogers said it doesn’t make much difference whether the lot is mowed or not when it comes to how fast a fire spreads.

“An overgrown lot may produce bigger flames, but the wind determines how fast the fire spreads,” Rogers said.

Rogers is much more worried about potential ignition sources than the size of the weeds. And the most common igniters aren’t surprising: children with matches and lighters, cigarette butts thrown out of car windows or off hiking trails and cigarettes put out in dry potting soil.

Though he didn't say it (or at least wasn't quoted as saying it) this obviously applies to urban situations, not the big forest fires.

Most experts will emphasize the defensible space vastly more than the igniters. With good reason, I guess; the difference is real and dramatic out in the forest. You don't want to confuse the public.

Still, this don't confuse approach has led to a lot of bad advice in other situations. People who deal with prisons and insane asylums know with certainty that tobacco controls impulses and keeps inmates calm. Despite this, they go along with prohibitions of smoking based on "second-hand smoke" crap, causing unneeded problems inside the walls. Diet experts have known for a long time that animal fats and cholesterol were not the main problem, but they went along with the nonsense, causing a lot of unneeded deaths.

Looking at the fire starts in recent days, temperature is the ONLY relevant variable within Spokane. Wind doesn't count. During several days with T>90 and ZERO wind, we had a barrage of little brush fires. Today, 72 degrees with wind in the 20s, absolutely NO new fires in town.

Using the Rogers assumption: Is this difference a temperature gradient on combustible materials? Does it take 90 instead of 70 to get a fire going? Or is it a gradient on combustible humans? It's unquestionably true that assholes like it hot. Assholes go out and break things when T>90. Assholes do NOT like cool or rainy or weird weather, and today's dense smoke is definitely weird.

Labels: Constants and Variables, defensible spaces

  ¶ 5:11 PM

  Wildcatter vs wildcatter
I've constantly used E W Marland as an icon of Social Economics. He wasn't as important as Henry Ford, but I've lived in Marland's world and have direct knowledge of his accomplishments.

What did he accomplish? Conoco. A company that took care of its loyal employees. Ponca. A beautiful city with excellent parks and schools, and a lingering tone of solid civilization. 50 years of prosperous living for 20,000 people.

The prosperity is gone now, after many layers of LBOs that finally removed all of Conoco from Ponca, but the beauty remains.

That's an accomplishment by any definition. You won't find modern capitalists setting the tone for a city.

Now a different comparison pops up. Marland was originally a wildcatter. He must have been a sharp operator because he succeeded. But the modern definition of Sharp Wildcatter is somewhat different, just as the modern definition of Industrialist is different.

= = = = =

For an icon of the Modern Sharp Wildcatter, let's take James Henrikson.

What did he accomplish? Massive fraud, at least four murders, two escape attempts, heroin peddling.

Conoco's upper-level employees lived in neighborhoods like this:



Conoco's lower-level employees lived in neighborhoods like this:



Henrikson's employees live in neighborhoods like this:



Marland had to negotiate with Indian tribes for the best oil land. Result: The Osage got rich, with individual incomes well above Conoco's upper-level employees.

Henrikson had to negotiate with Indian tribes for the best oil land. Result: The Mandan chief got rich but the tribe gained nothing.

Marland's most famous legacy:


Henrikson's most recent legacy:


A failed escape attempt yesterday.


Yes, we are indeed fortunate to live in Progressive Times, when Market Efficiency has conquered all. Chiefs get everything. Negative Externalities get graves.

Labels: Carbon Cult, the broken circle

  ¶ 1:30 AM

  Not predicting
A cute video of dogs waking up a few seconds before a quake hits.

The article says the dogs are predicting the quake. Nonsense. Even my dull old tinnitus-ridden ears can detect the sounds of a quake a few seconds before it hits. That's not predicting, it's just sensing the actual event.

This misuse of prediction devalues the much more interesting, and much more valuable, EARLY predictions by many animals and humans, including dull old me. From a week to a day before the quake, SOMETHING happens that can be sensed, especially by ground-dwellers like frogs. If we can pin down this SOMETHING, we'll have a lifesaver.

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 9:12 AM

  A prayer
One 'Strange as it Seems' episode dramatized an unusual prayer for rain that supposedly worked. In July 1934 a classified ad appeared in a Missouri newspaper. Two days later, rain finally arrived.

Polistra and friends decided to try a modified version of the ad.



As a prayer it's a little unfair, because the real weather problem was in June. August weather is normal. We're abnormally fiery because the soil and plants were pre-baked in June. Also unfair because idiot Gaians have been stacking the deck FOR fire by removing dams, and by forbidding logging during the last 20 years.

Nevertheless, one solid rain would solve the problem. Perhaps the weather gods will have mercy, understanding that the people who are suffering and dying are NOT the Gaian fuckheads who created the problem. The Gaian fuckheads won't learn no matter what happens. They need to die in extreme agony. But of course they won't. They will keep killing the rest of us. Genocide is our product. Our most important product.

= = = = =

Update 8/30: Prayer answered. Not speedy service, but shouldn't complain. As abovementioned, this is a normal summer-ending pattern; June was the abnormal part.

Labels: Carbon Cult, defensible spaces

  ¶ 1:42 AM

  Would be
China's QE-by-infrastructure is coming to an end, which means that prices for all sorts of commodities are dropping back to pre-bubble levels. It also means that DEMAND for commodities and 'intermediates' like refined steel and concrete is dropping back to normal levels. China is no longer buying up all the available STUFF.

If USA STRONG had a functioning government or functioning businesses, this would be a great opportunity to resume building our own infrastructure. Necessary materials are cheap and available, interest is low.

It might even be an opportunity to resume manufacturing. (Yeah, I know it's an arcane obsolete word. Look it up.)

Won't happen. USA STRONG does not have business or government. We only have STRONG.

Labels: STRONG!

  ¶ 3:30 PM

  What's missing is what's missing
Nothing can save us from the Tech Tyrants. They will continue to automate everything and eliminate useful work. Starve the poor, enrich the rich.

But at some point in each area of invasion, Nature will fight back. There's something missing in any Google operation, and there's a type of question that search engines or 'machine intelligence' can't answer.

= = = = =

In returning to active fiddling with electronics, I'm aiming to get relicensed as a ham. The first time I got licensed was in 1965. I didn't do a lot of actual operating; shortly after getting the license, hippie shit grabbed my life. Stupid. Should have stayed with electronics and enlisted in the Navy. But I didn't. Still, I kept the '64 ARRL Handbook (the 50th Anniversary Edition) for many years, and kept the knowledge and the Morse fairly active.

Resumed electronics from a digital angle in the late '70s and turned it into a career, which I should have done the first time. Started programming in the '80s, which gradually pushed out the hardware in terms of fun and profit. After 1990 it's been all graphics and software, and my electronics tools and junkbox got tossed.

Now I'm pushing back into electronics with a specifically non-modern intention. Sticking with analog. Working up code and theory toward a ham license again, though the code is no longer required. Getting back in touch with ARRL, buying books, finding that the Handbook is now the 100th anniversary edition. I'm old!



Lucky Polistra! Cartoon characters don't get old unless they want to.

= = = = =

While looking up some obscure Morse punctuation, I bumped into this discussion of codes in general. It focuses on what's called the 'prefix property', which Bell Tel had to handle in creating an international system of phone numbers. The problem arises when you have a code with variable-length chunks. Before mechanical dialing, phone numbers could range from two to seven digits within the same city. Bell was able to standardize somewhat but ran into legacy resistance in towns that were accustomed to dialing only 5 digits. How do you know whether the first digit is an area code, the two-letter prefix, or the 5-digit part after the prefix? How do you separate the segments? Bell solved it by restricting the available digits in each position. If you wanted long distance (or Bell internal service numbers) you started with 1. None of the area codes or prefixes could start with 1 or 0, and the letters for prefixes enforced this restriction. (Strowger solved the problem more directly with an "I'm Done Dialing" button on the base of the phone!)

The article mentions Morse as a variable-length code, but misses the point badly:

You can see from figure 6 that the code words used in Morse code don't possess the prefix property: the code word for 'A', for example, is a prefix of the code word for 'J', and for 'L' (and others). This leads to some interesting questions for you to ponder:

In transmitting Morse code messages, telegraph operators left a time gap between letters (and a longer gap between words). Why do you think they did this?

Well, okay ... but the gap between letters is NOT just something you do because it's convenient. It's PART OF THE CODE. There are standard lengths for the inter-pulse interval, the inter-letter interval, and the inter-word interval. When representing Morse in computer form, each of these intervals requires a distinct symbol. When the program hits the IPI or ILI symbol, it adds a one-beat pause or a three-beat pause to the sound it's outputting. These actions are on the same level as dots (one-beat beep) and dashes (three-beat beep).

Result: No prefix problem at all, because each element always has a determinate POSTFIX.

Because the author didn't have Morse in her muscles, she didn't know what was missing in her understanding.

= = = = =

Another code-like example in today's "science" news about the whistled version of Turkish. Though this is actually an old subject that has been studied before, it's getting studied again with the help of MRI. Unsurprising result: whistled languages require both the language and music sides of the brain.

What's missing? I wanted to know if the whistling was arbitrary or a direct output of the formants in the vowels. The writeup doesn't tell us, because the writer didn't know it was missing. The author clearly wasn't familiar with linguistics.

= = = = =

Third example: It's clear that Wash state Destroyer of Natural Resources (DNR) has completely failed. Last year they were actually PREVENTING farmers and citizens from fighting fire on their own property. This year DNR didn't fight FOR the fire, but obviously botched the response on the big fires. (Smaller fires are still being handled well, which indicates that the equipment and personnel are not the problem.) Now, after several deaths, idiot governor Inslee is finally taking things out of DNR's hands and calling in the National Guard.

What's the problem? Not visible from anything you could look up on Google. Clearly visible to everyone who lived in Spokane in 2008. Mary Verner was mayor in 2008. She completely failed when the Supersnow hit, and FAILED IN A FIRE as well. The governor (at that time the highly competent Gregoire) had to fly in and take over in both situations. Now Verner is head of DNR's wildfire response. Failing in an emergency just as she did before.

= = = = =

Every discipline and every human action, all the way down to turning a doorknob or putting on a shoe, has these undescribed depths. Because these deep points are contained in muscle memory or intuition, experts rarely discuss them in public. They don't get expressed in a format where search engines can find them. Google can't tell you what's missing.

= = = = =

Of course none of this will slow down the Tech Tyrants. They are psychopaths. Sharks. Keep moving forward, eat all obstacles. When the Negative Externalities start to get smelly, Tech Tyrants will simply process the Negative Externalities into 3D-printed Soylent and keep moving forward forward forward.

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

Footnote for clarity: I'm not blaming Verner for the failure. Steering a bureaucracy through an emergency is a rare talent. You don't know who will succeed until the emergency actually happens. She tried in 2008, but she didn't have the special talent. Not her fault. I am specifically blaming Inslee for appointing Verner to an EMERGENCY-HANDLING job after her lack of EMERGENCY-HANDLING talent was ALREADY KNOWN.

Labels: 20th century Dark Age, Language update

  ¶ 4:51 AM

  Thanks to the sane parts
Another brush fire started in one of the usual places just west of Spokane. The various city, county and state forces, including county inmates from nearby Geiger, organized quickly and attacked it, stopping it at 60 acres and squashing it in three hours.

Good work! Even while the upper levels of government go totally crazy, the lower parts are still functioning properly.

At any rate, big thanks to the quick-moving forces.

These fires starting in the usual places are NOT natural. They're caused by human idiocy or malice, and the usualness implies the latter.
  ¶ 3:02 AM

  Excellent question
Jamie Bartlett at UK Telegraph asks a deeply important question. Why do radical politicians like Corbyn and Sanders completely ignore the problems of technology? Bartlett includes the more obvious stuff like self-driving cars, and names several that we don't normally worry about:

The rise of machine learning algorithms that, according to author Andrew Keen, will soon replace a huge amount of skilled middle-class jobs like teachers, lawyers and authors – decimating what he calls "the 20th Century Meritocracy", that has been the backbone of modern democratic societies.

Or the fact that information of all types – secrets, copyright, creative content, illegal images – is becoming increasingly more difficult to contain and control.

Or the dangers of the centralisation of power of the internet into the hands of a very small number of large companies based overseas, and what that might mean for job opportunities, access to information or who controls the public space.

Well, the last item answers the question. Fans of Corbyn and Sanders include lots of Luddite Localists and lots of Tech Tyrants. Luddite Localists don't have millions. Tech Tyrants have millions. And Tech Tyrants are not going to oppose the listed tendencies because Tech Tyrants ARE the listed tendencies.

Corbyn and Sanders know where their money comes from.

This goes beyond technology itself. Corbyn and Sanders are not going to oppose immigration and outsourcing because Apple and Google depend on cheap Hindoo programmers and Bangladeshi slave labor.

Tech wouldn't exist without slavery.

Meanwhile, Corbyn and Sanders join All Respectable Humans in tearing down Confederate flags and statues of anti-slavery Robert E. Lee and every word that might possibly contain the evil letters S-O-U-T-H. Like Lincoln, the modern industrialists need to eliminate all traces of Slavery Conducted By The Wrong Sort Of People, in order to clear the scorched earth for Slavery Conducted By The Right Sort Of People.

No, wait. A minute ago I wrote 'Tech wouldn't exist without slavery.'

Dead wrong. Exactly diametrically wrong. Railroads, Lincoln's bosses, used Chinese slaves to build their tracks. Just like Lincoln's modern admirers. But after railroads we have a long string of new technologies that grew and developed WITHOUT slavery and exploitation. Telegraph, telephone, automobile, radio, petroleum, aircraft, and pre-PC computers grew explosively and PROFITABLY without any Chinese or Hindoo slaves.

In precise fact those industries were FAMOUS for GOOD WORKING CONDITIONS AND GOOD WAGES. Henry Ford, John Patterson, E.W. Marland. All were advocates of Social Economics, now abandoned in USA STRONG but moved to Korea and Japan with great success.

Constants and variables. It's not TECHNOLOGY that depends on slavery. It's GOOGLE AND APPLE AND AMAZON that depend on slavery. Their share-value model requires zero labor costs.
  ¶ 6:36 AM

  You need to understand the situation
The mayor of Airway Heights, after trying to hold firm, has resigned. This comes from a really dumb and unnecessary joke.

I can't defend him. If we still had a normal sane country, you would be able to say dumb things without Gulag. We no longer have a normal sane country. We no longer have a country. We have a monstrous alien indescribable unnameable _______ that has eviled out beyond all possible words in all possible languages. We have lost our tickets to Hell.

This has been true for at least 40 years and obvious for at least 20.

If you want to exert power, you need to avoid certain kinds of jokes and words. This has always been good advice, but it's INFINITELY true now. Even now, it's not a huge burden. Not doing a thing takes less work than doing it.

Yes, it's grossly unfair. Yes, all journalists and politicians on the other side made the exact same joke about Bush and got rewarded with Pulitzers and billions for making the exact same dumb joke.

You are not on the other side. You are not the Right Sort Of People. You can't make jokes. Before the joke you could steer a few things in the right direction. Now you can't.

= = = = =

Part of the problem is the usual Repooflican establishment fags and hags, who continue chirping and squealing and prancing about Happy Warrior and Morning In America and Best Education In The World and Best "Justice" In The World and Best Economy In The World and Best Health Care In The World and Best Freedom In The World and Benghazi and Benghazi and Benghazi and Benghazi and Benghazi and Benghazi and Benghazi and Benghazi and Benghazi and Benghazi and Benghazi and Benghazi and Benghazi and Benghazi and Benghazi.

A lower-level Repoof who listens to these bizarre hyperfreaks can gain a false picture of the situation.

Trump gets it right. We are doing everything wrong. Everything must change. Maybe he doesn't mean it, but at least his words are accurate.

Labels: STRONG!

  ¶ 4:07 AM

  Thank you.
Trump says "Everything we do is wrong."

Exactly.

I've been waiting 65 years to hear a politician say the truth.

Trump hasn't yet proposed ACTIONS on most of Everything, but his proposals on immigration are specific and comprehensive and perfectly correct. BUILD A FUCKING WALL AND USE IT.

If his proposals on the rest of Everything are equally solid, we'll finally have a valid candidate.

= = = = =

In case the meaning of ACTION isn't clear, let's contrast Trump with the other Repoofs. The others are proposing the following ACTIONS:

(1) Benghazi.

(2) Hillary's email server.

For any political proposal, exactly one question suffices to test its validity.

HOW WILL YOUR PROPOSED ACTION IMPROVE THE LIVES OF ORDINARY AMERICANS?

Applying this to the other Repoofs:

How will ordinary Americans benefit from more Benghazi? Or how will ordinary Americans benefit from less Benghazi?

How will ordinary Americans benefit from more Hillary's email server? Or how will ordinary Americans benefit from less Hillary's email server?

These questions are total and complete nonsense, which tells you that the words of other Repoofs are total and complete nonsense.

Applying it to Trump:

How will ordinary Americans benefit from building a fucking wall and using it?

The question makes perfect sense, and the answer is perfectly clear. Ordinary Americans will have more jobs and better wages. The improvement won't be universal, but it will be REAL in some jobs and some states.

Labels: defensible spaces

  ¶ 5:01 AM

  Radar mystery
Weather.com radar shows a fairly decent amount of rain over eastern Wash this morning. Doesn't act like a glitch; the clouds seem to move properly through an hour of recording.



Wunderground shows nothing for the same period:

Normally Wunderground's radar is considerably too sensitive, showing green in many places where no rain is falling, while Weather.com is close to perfect. These two seem to be backwards today.

No raindrops here, but looks cloudy (no stars visible) and the wind is variable and restless like something is about to happen.

Hope it's real; those areas around Colville NEED some rain.

Labels: Metrology

  ¶ 4:29 AM

  Rich world problem 2
Finally two blessedly COOL days after way too many hots.

Weather Bureau shows the extent.... from 102 to 38.

During hot periods I skip some weekly-type chores like cleaning the stove, and skip some fun stuff like electronics. No extra brainpower available. Air conditioner maintains a 20-degree delta, which is fine when the outside hits 95 but not fine when the outside hits 100 repeatedly.

When the outside finally gets cool I think OH BOY! Now I can enjoy the fun stuff!

Nope. I do get the weekly-type chores done. But instead of fun stuff I just sleep extra.

Annoying but revealing. What I'm REALLY missing in the heat is not fun but proper sleep.

After the cool continues for more than two days, the fun can resume.

= = = = =

Later thought: The curve is interesting. It's not a sine. More like an RC with a time constant around 18 hours, charging and discharging in response to a square-wave input.

Labels: TMI

  ¶ 4:15 PM

  Transing the wrong things
Lately we're all trans-y about qualities that can't be transed.

Gender is binary and permanent. You're either male or female from birth, and there is NO way to change it. This is simple straightforward biology.

Race or ethnicity is much less binary** but equally permanent. You may be born 1/16 Cherokee, 3/16 North German, 5/16 West African, and 7/16 Celtic. If that's how you were born, that's how you'll die. No way to change it. Plain biology.

We suffer from the bizarre delusion that these permanent qualities can be changed at will, but only by people with the correct ideological credentials, which is even more bizarre.

At the same time we FAIL to allow trans-ing of qualities that are purely nominal and purely temporary, like some occupations.

Most people voluntarily trans their occupation several times through life. Nothing special or remarkable.

Trans-occupationing can also happen involuntarily. If you throw a hamburger at a customer instead of serving it to him, you have transed out of waitressing. If you burn down a building instead of dousing it, you are now a trans-criminal with a fireman background. If you steal the company's checking account instead of auditing it, you are a trans-criminal with a bookkeeper background.

Perfectly well understood for waitresses or firemen or bookkeepers.

Why don't we understand it when it happens to judges?

The 9 humans who sit in the room labelled as "US Supreme Court" ceased to be judges in 1803 when they stole the power of the legislature. At that point the Constitution that had given them specific limited authority ceased*** to exist, and the humans in that room ceased to be judges. They trans-ed into criminals with a judge background.

The 9 humans who sit in the room labelled as "Washington State Supreme Court" ceased to be judges in 1978 when they stole the power of the legislature. At that point the Constitution that had given them specific limited authority ceased to exist, and the humans in that room ceased to be judges. They trans-ed into criminals with a judge background.

This should be obvious in the same way as the fireman burning down the building. Instead we treat judging the same way we SHOULD treat gender and race. We blindly obey black-robed criminals when they commit blazingly obvious crimes, because Judging is the only permanent quality in the world.

We're fucked.


= = = = =

** Much less binary: In mathy terms, gender is a one-digit binary fraction and race is a more fine-grained binary fraction. In theory it could have as many binary digits as the generations since start of Homo sapiens. In fact it rarely needs more than 10 digits because ethnic groups tend to remain pure and stable for centuries. Outside of professional genealogy, we typically run back 6 generations = 6 binary digits = denominator of 64.

*** Ceased to exist: May not be clear. Go back to the restaurant. Let's say a restaurant had 9 waitresses, and all of them permanently transed into food-throwers instead of food-servers. The place itself might continue to do business but it wouldn't be a restaurant. You'd have to call it a fight club or an Avant-Garde Art Installation because its license to serve food would be revoked. So: when the 9 judges permanently trans into mass-murdering criminals with a judge background, a major part of the constitution is no longer implemented. The building now falsely labelled "Supreme Court" continues to operate, but it's no longer a court. You'd have to call it a Criminal Syndicate or a Gang. The Court assumed by the constitution has disappeared, so the constitution is no longer valid.
  ¶ 10:10 AM

  Drive American = Drive 1970s
Apple and Google and others are moving FAST to develop self-driving cars. Honda and Apple have rented the abandoned Concord Naval Weapons facility........

The 5,000-acre site has 20 miles of paved roads, including overpasses, tunnels and railroad crossings, according to the agency’s website, which calls it “the largest secure test facility in the world.”

GoMentum Station already has an agreement with Honda, which plans to test automated vehicle systems there. Hall said his agency hopes to partner with other companies for testing self-driving cars and “connected vehicles” — cars that use the Internet and local networks to exchange a variety of information with other devices and vehicles.

The tech giant’s interest in the facility was first reported by the Guardian newspaper, which cited email correspondence obtained under a public-records request. The newspaper also quoted another official at the transportation authority who said Apple insisted on a non-disclosure agreement which barred him from saying any more.

I've already noted the importance of 1970's American household items. They weren't the best of American-made, but they were the last of American-made. The best products from the '30s through the '60s are fragile and rare, but '70s stuff is still usable and still CHEAP. Electronics was strictly analog with no CPUs, using discrete and sturdy transistors. Control was strictly manual, with feedback done by bimetal thermostats and centrifugal governors instead of optical sensors feeding CONNECTED software.



The '70s rule also applies to cars. Not the best but the last. Unconnected. Still cheap. Pay attention.

= = = = =

From the Guardian article:

However, when engineers from Tesla Motors tried to tour GoMentum Station in April, armed soldiers at the base refused entry to foreign-born workers and a manager who would not divulge his social security number. “At this point, I’ll retract our interest in this test site until the process is worked out,” he huffed in an email to GoMentum Station’s Jack Hall.

Wouldn't it be strange and maybe even interesting if armed soldiers would protect something other than Apple from FOREIGN-BORN WORKERS? Or protect something other than Apple from ANY FUCKING THING AT ALL? Nah. Completely crazy thought. Something other than Apple is a bizarre impossible concept. Apple is all, all is Apple.

Labels: defensible spaces

  ¶ 2:35 AM

  UFFO
Via Science Codex:

If an unidentified flying object suddenly appeared in the sky, it's likely your heart would beat faster. Now, researchers have found that the same is true for bears.

The UFOs in this case are actually unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which have become increasingly valuable to wildlife researchers, allowing them to observe animals, including endangered species, in their natural settings from long distances and over difficult terrain. It had appeared as though the animals were taking these encounters in stride. For instance, American black bears rarely seem to startle or run away when a UAV comes near. But the new study reveals that despite the bears' calm demeanor when in the presence of UAVs, their heart rates soar, a sign of acute stress.

The researchers fitted free-roaming American black bears living in northwestern Minnesota with Iridium satellite GPS collars and cardiac biologgers. The collars sent the researchers an email with each bear's location every 2 minutes while the biologgers captured every heartbeat. Then Ditmer and his colleagues programmed a UAV to fly to the bear's most recent location.

"Some of the spikes in the heart rate of the bears were far beyond what we expected," says Mark Ditmer of the University of Minnesota, St. Paul. "We had one bear increase her heart rate by approximately 400 percent--from 41 beats per minute to 162 beats per minute."

AmazonGoogAppleNSA's researchers will not be surprised by this transhuman replication of their own studies. What's the overall purpose of AmazonGoogAppleNSA? To keep humans scared shitless, helpless and obedient. What's the best way? Constant exposure to new and unknown and threatening objects and actions. A new threat every second.

Tyrants have known this for a long time. Maintain the fight-or-flight reaction, in a situation where fighting and fleeing are impossible. Perfect way to pulverize the human soul.



Danbo continues to attempt quiet decoupling, without much success.

Labels: 20th century Dark Age, defensible spaces

  ¶ 4:32 PM

  Constants and variables 30
This summer is horrendously fiery. Early heat set up a constant ready-to-flash condition that normally wouldn't happen until mid-August (ie just about now). After the extreme heat in June, the weather pattern returned to normal, but the soil and plants are NOT normal.

The constant hair-trigger reactivity has allowed a couple of variables to stand out clearly.

In short: Humans cause most fires, and humans stop most fires.

In Spokane we've had a constant barrage of small fires started by stupidity or malice, but all of them were caught and extinguished quickly because people were watching.

Until this week, we didn't see the usual number of wildland fires. Most wildland fires are caused by lightning, which didn't happen until this week. Now that some storms have passed through areas like Chelan, those fires are growing huge because nobody was around to catch them.

Watching can go too far.... maybe. Firemen have responded to some 'alarms' where people were spotting smoke from a distant fire that was already being worked.

I suppose this item from last night was too far, but it's not the sort of alarm you'd want to punish. Somebody saw a porch light through the overall smokiness and haze, and thought it was a new flare.

Better safe than sorry. Doesn't apply in all situations, but definitely applies to fire.

Later thought: Another variable. This year the state Destroyer of Natural Resources (DNR) hasn't yet intervened on the side of fire. Last year the Pateros fire exploded because DNR was preventing people from defending their own property. Ruined farmers and property owners filed a lawsuit, which is still grinding through the system. I don't know if DNR is slowed down by the processes of the lawsuit, or simply doesn't feel ready to commit murder yet.

Labels: Constants and Variables, defensible spaces

  ¶ 4:09 AM

  Maybe there is a 'next step'
It's obvious that polygamy is NOT the 'next stage' after same-sex "marriage". I further assumed that the whole idea of 'next stage' was wrong. I assumed that the sole purpose of this atrocity is to build the foundation for a total pogrom against Christians and Muslims.

Pogrom is undoubtedly underway, which means (by inferred intent) that pogrom was unquestionably ONE purpose. Maybe it's not the SOLE purpose.

There is a fairly clear 'next stage'....

Religious teachings that elevate suffering and pain as something “sacred” should not be used to prevent terminally ill people taking their own lives, leading Christian and Jewish clerics have insisted.

An alliance of bishops, priests and rabbis have broken ranks with the religious establishment to voice support for plans to change the law to allow a form of assisted suicide in the UK for the first time.

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, they argue that far from being a sin, helping terminally ill people to commit suicide should be viewed simply as enabling them to “gracefully hand back” their lives to God.

These particular demons aren't breaking ranks, of course. Breaking ranks would mean following the laws of God and Nature, which is physically impossible for demons. They are simply the officially assigned Vanguard, the Early Adopters, laying down the path for other demons to roar through, smashing and obliterating everything except the Chosen.

The pattern of change in so-called "laws" also reflects this, as a couple of states and countries have been leading the way toward total ETHICS. Kill everything but the Chosen.

Labels: Ethics

  ¶ 2:11 AM