Fatima says "Relax!"
This is actually another Emerson thing, but I was tired of putting 'Thanks, Ralph' in the title.

Part of the instructions given by BVM in the Fatima prophecy:

If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church.

Since 1917, Romans have been praying for Russia to convert.

Well, it happened. After Sovietism moved to USA STRONG in 1990, Russia 'reverted' to its native Eastern Catholicism. Or more precisely reopened the package after storing it in freeze-dried form, where it was PROTECTED FROM GOVERNMENTAL CORRUPTION.

Yeah, okay, the Romans wanted conversion to Rome, but they were wrong. Rome constantly turns rotten and putrid. Orthodox tends to hold its potency and purity better.

The basic point of the prophecy, re-consecration, was fulfilled.

Earlier, Stalin's agents had planted the seeds of wild decadence and insanity in the West, and we've been spreading the Soviet errors through the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. Again not quite the way Romans were reading the prophecy, but still fulfilling the basics.

Since 1960 the West has been accelerating down into a level of decadence not seen since Caligula.

Now the reconsecrated Russia has come roaring back to life, attempting to break our chaos generator and restore stability in Syria and other places.

Many in the West have been hoping or praying for something like this ever since the Switchover. I'm retarded; I didn't catch on until 2011.

Now it's happening. The hand of God is busting down the new Caligula. Putin is fulfilling Fatima. Russia has been converted and peace is on the way.

In a more practical sense, it comes down to plain physics. Fools have been attempting to use guns or "votes" or money to oppose and control Caligula. None of those things work. Low-level force only makes Caligula clamp down harder. Only an EQUAL OR GREATER force can slow or stop a monster like this.

And finally we have one.

So the best advice for us now is to FUCKING RELAX. Pray for Putin, and let him figure out how to make it happen.

Labels: defensible spaces, Emersonian justice, switchover

  ¶ 12:36 PM

  Golden calf
An interesting interfaith initiative....

At the Lubar Institute, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim undergraduates have started to overcome religious intolerance through candid conversations about cartoon controversies, gender issues, and prayer practices. Shared trips to mosques, churches, and synagogues have enabled them to form relationships of trust and respect by learning about each other’s sacred spaces, texts, and rituals. Through debate and dialogue the students have been startled and comforted by the fact that they share sacred sources, stories of prophets, and a social obligation to care for the poor (Tzedakah, Zakat, social gospel). With each new revelation of their commonality, their bounds of moral imagination have expanded, and their “they” has given way to a “we.” All this gives good reason to believe that the Abrahamic paradigm is not just a noble idea but a promising new foundation for civic discourse and interfaith understanding.

Might be onto something. I don't see the need for a literal focus on Abraham the man. Seems overly complex and off-center. The real center of all these religions is a protest against greed and idolatry, and an attempt to enforce Natural Law.

As I've been saying repeatedly: Natural Law, as described in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, is God's lab notebook. Long experimentation taught us what God wants. We may be able to skip a few of the finer details, but we need to realize that the basics are OBJECTIVELY PROVEN FACTS.

Four major religions arose when reformers tried to break the golden calf of greed and idolatry, and tried to restore Natural Law.

Moses tried to reform the greedy idolatrous Jews and didn't get very far.

Jesus tried to reform the greedy idolatrous Jews, along with their Greek and Roman equivalents, and didn't get very far ... but ended up founding a completely separate group.

Mohammed tried to reform the greedy idolatrous Jews, along with Christian equivalents, and didn't get very far ... but ended up founding a completely separate group.

Luther tried to reform the greedy idolatrous Romans, and didn't get very far ... but ended up founding a completely separate group.

In more modern times, the Islamist movement is trying to reform greedy idolatrous secular Muslims. Like previous reforms, it also opposes greedy idolatrous Jews and Christians, but Osama's original target was the hypocritical Saudi elites.

The real permanent conflict is between Natural Law supporters and decadent elites, not between the four traditions. Southern Baptists and hardass Muslims have nearly everything in common, but theological idiocy makes them enemies.

The problem with this set of simple parallels, of course, is that you're not allowed to say "greedy idolatrous Jews". So it won't work.

Labels: Natural law = Sharia law

  ¶ 5:44 AM

  Double-hung sashes WORK.
Polistra has approached this point a couple times without any conclusions.



The double-hung sash was originally meant to assist ventilation in summer. Supposedly cooler air comes in at the bottom and warmer air exits at the top. Very few people actually used both sashes, so the upper sash usually ended up static. It was either painted shut or physically locked with steel or wooden brackets. Windows made after 1940 pretty much abandoned the pretense of an openable upper.

During last week's power outage I was keeping my 'sciencey' mind occupied by measuring temperatures in various places. At one point I tried checking outside temp without actually going outside, by poking the thermocouple through the screen. Got a surprisingly high reading. Realized that I was at the top of this little window, so just for fun tried the bottom.



These pix were made right now, with blessed light and blessed heat inside, so the delta is larger than it was during the outage. Ambient in the room is 62; outside temp as given by the Weather Bureau is 19. But even with 45 inside during the outage, the delta was still there.

Conclusion: The cold-in warm-out effect doesn't require two openings or a tall window. Even on this single 18" high window, the in and out are SHARPLY separated.

Later, tried to watch the flow direction with a match. The inflow at bottom is strong; outflow at top is weak.

Labels: Metrology

  ¶ 3:32 AM

  Resting


Heat. Light. Blessed warmth. That's enough for a while.

Labels: Zero Problems

  ¶ 3:13 PM

  Brrrrr. That was cold.
The storm that was beginning in previous entry lasted all day 11/17, peaking between 4 PM and 7 PM.



11/17 4:52 PM Power off.

= = = = =

My neighborhood DIDN'T get the worst of this storm, which was mainly focused southward. You can see it coming in the map in previous entry, and you can see a clearer picture of the pattern in the gust maps at Cliff Mass's blog. The deepest pressure gradient was centered around Tekoa, and extended into the south part of Spokane. Northside got a few MPH less, which made a difference in the wind-force parabola.

South of the river got thoroughly squashed this time.

Last July's storm focused DIRECTLY on my area with 20 or 30 trees down and 8 squashed houses. This time I saw 3 trees down and one partly damaged house. (Incidentally, that same house was partly damaged on the OTHER side by the July storm. Now BOTH of his trees are gone, so he's safe from further damage.)

No obvious damage to my house. Roof looks OK. Back door is hard to open, indicating that the storm might have 'pushed' those walls more than usual. Door has been similarly hard to open before, and later recovered. Need to check that out after things calm down. Nothing seems to be broken or popped. Fence fixed in 2011 held up fine. The trees I cut down in 2011 are still absent, so they couldn't cause any damage.

THE ONLY GOOD PINE TREE IS AN ABSENT PINE TREE. A nonexistent pine tree can't squash you or burn you. Pine trees may be part of Nature, but they're a part that DOES NOT BELONG anywhere near houses.



This storm carried a lot of dust but not much rain. The dust coated the windows.

= = = = =

Observations on temperature:

I normally maintain 65.

First day, walls and floors and air held heat pretty well. 55, which is tolerable.

Second day, 51.

After that, asymptote at 44-47, which is pretty much the default soil temp and the default crawl space temp. Not tolerable.

Shivering seems to be a delta-dependent thing. Obviously you need as many blankets as possible over the body, but that doesn't stop shivering. Found a trick that works for me: Control the delta T at nasal air inlet. I sleep facing sideways, so the pillow already warms one side of the head. Pull up blankets and sheets to cover the upward side of the head, then arrange sheet (no blanket) just under the nose to form a sort of heat exchanger. Outgoing air warms the 'filter', and you draw incoming air through the warmed 'filter'. When you don't feel sharp cold coming into your nose, you will be able to damp down the shivers and get to sleep. For a while anyway.

Lesson to remember: Now that heat has returned, I'm fine. A considerable amount of shivering is not harmful!

= = = = =

Things that worked:

Sun! Using front door and windows for 'passive solar' added 5 degrees to living room for three hours on clear days. Mainly the sun helped to warm my body. Spent those hours standing or sitting in front of the door like an old cat, reading the same TR Pearson novels that reliably pull me through other disasters like jury service.



Candles. Already had 4 long ones, didn't fully use them up. Bought a couple of smelly ones when stores were out of good ones. (This picture captures the atmosphere of the week nicely.)

One observation on big smelly candle: After it burns for a while it falls into a firm flashing rhythm. Thought the pool of liquid was responsible, so I cut a notch in the side to let the liquid out. The flashing stopped BEFORE any liquid flowed out. Hypothesis: The flashing is some kind of relaxation oscillator, resonating with the shape of the crater. When the crater is opened, no osc.



LED Clip lights. Already had three of them, normally illuminating computer keyboard and electronic work. Mounted one on a high shelf in kitchen, one on main table in LR, one in bath. Left them on for safety. Good task-focused illumination.



Old Sanyo radio. Found it in a dumpster 30 years ago. Serves beautifully every time it's needed.



Propane stove. Best helper of all. Uses gas sparingly, heats pans quickly. I had 3 bottles of propane left from previous preparation after 1996 icestorm. Two bottles were half used, third was full. Tied the stove to one of the half-full ones. In the middle of this week, bought 2 new bottles at WalMart. Should have bought more, because WalMart was out the next day. Got through 7 days of fairly normal cooking on the original part bottle; ran out on the 8th day. Had one remaining new bottle. Made it!


Coffeemaker in 'manual' mode. Put grounds in filter, fill glass pot with proper amount of water, transfer to metal pan, put glass pot back where it belongs, boil water in metal pan, pour into filter. Tricky part is keeping the pour centered, avoiding 'peeling back' the filter. Probably would work better with a teapot as both boiler and pourer, but this method was working so I didn't bother. Disaster is no time for idle experimentation.

= = = = =

Things that didn't work:

Refrigerator. An old non-auto-defrost fridge holds its cool for a day or so. This auto-defrost gets WARMER than room temp in a few hours, and starts stinking. I had to break out of my recent mostly from-scratch diet and fall back to eating from cans. Survivable but not ideal. Scratch requires refrigeration.


Coleman 'Sportcat' alleged heater. Maybe it works in a tent, but it's no better than candles in a regular room. Doesn't add even one degree. It warms hands, and warms the inside of shoes before putting them on, but candles do those tasks equally well plus light. Wasted two precious bottles of propane before I realized how useless it is.



This crank-powered light. Even when fully cranked the LEDs with reflector don't illuminate anything. It holds charge for many hours, which makes it OK for a safety 'marker beacon', but useless as a real light.

= = = = =


Endpoint 6:31pm 11/25
Power finally came back! Eight days plus two hours. I had exhausted all supplies of patience and hope and energy, made a strong prayer and vow: I will swallow all my bitching about external factors like radio stations and Avista. A few minutes later, LIGHT!

I'll stick to the vow. I had a whole bunch of bitching in mind, but it disappears. When superstition pays, I obey!

After I determined that the LIGHT was not a hallucination from desperation, I spent the next couple hours merging back into normal bedtime routine, reactivating electrical stuff, and sort of leaping and squeaking like a dog who really didn't expect Master to return.

Water heater took 45 mins to reach normal. At first it was making a sound that I'd never heard before. After about 10 minutes the unusual sound clicked off and the usual hiss clicked on. Is there a separate 'starter' element?

Baseboard heaters took 2 hrs to reach 55, which is tolerable. Will gradually get back to 65.

... Next morning, after finally reaching 65 with a boost from the sun: Aaaaah. Pure comfort.

Oddly, the house seemed to prefer being cold. When the air above the floor was the same temp as the crawl space below, the old floors were unusually quiet. Now the usual clunks and creaks are back. It's all about delta T!

Moral: Preparedness pays. I was fully prepared for about 6 days; 8 days stretched my material and mental abilities but worked out in the end.

Resolution: After the web gets reconnected I need to order a few things for better preparation next time. Mainly a real propane room heater, and a WHOLE FUCKING BUNCH of propane bottles. Maybe a tent-like thing for bed, and maybe a camp shower.

Labels: defensible spaces, Metrology

  ¶ 3:07 PM

  Why wind turbines are useless
Solid windstorm today. Still have power here, but probably will lose it before the storm's over. Trying to keep my mind busy.....

Wunderground's radar plus windflag display.



No doubt where the warm front is! Warmer temps = more wind.

3 PM: still have power! Praying hard.

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

11/27: Well, that was a long interruption. No damage to my house, but 8 days without power. More later.

Labels: Carbon Cult, Metrology

  ¶ 1:17 PM

  Why is that so annoying? Oh.
KXLY has started using a little three-note upstroke chime as a segue between pieces of the newscast. Sounds like B3, E4, F#4, with an echo note after each main note. It's less stale than the Fox asthma segue, which most broadcasters have copied in various ways. But it strikes something SCARY in my mind. Why?

Aha. Last year when I was working hard for the annoying NYC publisher, I had to spend an hour each week on a pointless conference call. After I called the number and got into the hold chain, their phone system played a dumb repetitive piece of music. At random intervals the music was interrupted by this very same three-note chime, which seemed to indicate that the call was being picked up. Gave me a little squirt of adrenaline every time. But it didn't actually mean anything. It was just part of the music.

Labels: TMI

  ¶ 6:32 AM

  Huh?
Article at NPR is discussing an increasing suspicion that consciousness is not just the product of specific parts of the brain. It's more diffuse, including at least the whole nervous system and possibly a LOT more. Makes sense. The more we learn about plant intelligence and gut biomes and the Grand Blueprint, the more uncomfortable we become with the standard division between Humans and Everything Else.

Unfortunately the author doesn't make a readable argument. He says:

"Put simply, for a conscious organism, there is 'something it is like' to be that organism." It's worth noting that this characterization of what it is for an organism to be conscious — that there is something that it is like to be that organism — was first advanced in the 70s by the philosopher Thomas Nagel.

WTF? There is something that it is like to be that organism? The sentence doesn't even parse properly. By my best guess, it's not a statement about the organism itself; it's only declaring that we can draw analogies to some other organism. Says nothing at all about consciousness, let alone the location of awareness.

Reminds me of the usual translations of Anselm:

"God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived"

or Kant:

"Act only on that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."

Both of these statements are perfectly empty and meaningless, but the indecipherable formulation makes them sound HEAVY and DEEP.

Labels: Grand Blueprint, Smarty-plants

  ¶ 5:01 AM

  More sophisticated
Kerry, heard just now on BBC:

"... we need to do more to hit them at the core ... and obviously we need to do more at borders, to control the movement of people."

Hear that? The first time a modern USA STRONG leader has acknowledged the importance of borders.

He also listed the attacks in Egypt, Beirut, Ankara and Paris on the same level, thus acknowledging for the first time that #RussianLivesMatter.

Maybe we're getting somewhere.

Kerry has placed himself on the same side of the argument as all the R-team governors who are vainly complaining against forced Fed invasion. He's opposing the D-team governors who are eagerly slaughtering the citizens they were hired to protect.

Until quite recently Kerry was a simple team player. He enlisted in the Vietnam War when it was run by D and protested when it was run by R. The rest of his career was the same. D war good, R war bad.

In the last two years he's been a more sophisticated figure, capable of working with opposite-team players like Putin to achieve real national objectives. He shouts the usual D nonsense through his everpresent megaphone, then quietly negotiates.

Labels: STRONG!

  ¶ 3:11 AM

  They were right. I apologize.
Following on previous item.

After the Paris attack, which mattered a whole lot more than the Russian airliner attack or the similar Beirut attack because France shares our hypersatanic religion instead of our ethnicity, we're seeing a renewal of the same shit we saw in 2001.......

This is a WAR OF IDEAS, therefore we need MORE INTERNAL SECURITY and MORE GUN CONTROL and MORE INTERNAL SPIES.

I'm seriously retarded. Just now figured this out.

A war of ideas IS thought control. Same thing. Exact identity.

Nations that make wars for territory or resources generally end up imposing some level of internal tyranny, but it's not based on THOUGHTS. In WW2 we impounded some Japs and Wops and Krauts BECAUSE OF THEIR NATIONAL ORIGIN, not because of their ideas. These were recent immigrants who showed some ACTUAL SIGNS of participating in sabotage.

When you erase ethnicity from your categories, YOU HAVE TO MONITOR THOUGHTS. No two ways around it.

Now we have a truly unprecedented array of thought-monitoring mechanisms, including direct brain-reading for the first time in history. Every tyrant's wet dream and every schizy's nightmare.

The schizies and 666ers were right. I apologize for calling them crazy. They were the sane ones.

Labels: Asked and answered, defensible spaces

  ¶ 11:50 AM

  Why is France so important?
Why do we pretend to have a strong connection to France? KHQ tried hard and finally found someone in Spokane with French connections.

We paid very little attention to the Russian plane that was brought down by the very same ISIS a couple weeks ago, with a somewhat larger death toll. Didn't bother to find any local connections, even though 10% of Spokane is recent emigrants from Russia, Ukraine, and Bosnia. You could find 10,000 people here with an immediate Russian connection. One on every block. Nope, didn't bother.

Russia is Christian, so it's our enemy even while we're quietly acknowledging that Putin is doing the right thing in Syria even while we're LOUDLY SHRIEKING that Russia is evil even while we're maintaining harsh sanctions against the only fucking country in the world that is actually doing some fucking GOOD.



I understand why we don't pay attention to the million deaths in Iraq and Syria and Libya. We're doing the murders there, and the people being murdered are mainly Muslims. Our Prophet Netanyahu gives the orders, we obey. It's our job.

Aside from all that, the first question remains. Very few Americans have French ancestry. France helped to finance 1776 but it's been a thorn in our flesh most of the time. Not exactly an enemy but never a helper. We have stronger connections with most other Euro countries.

This neat interactive graph shows major countries of origin for each decade since 1960. Italy and Germany and USSR/Russia are big slices of the pie in every decade, but France is never big enough to get out of 'Other'.

Solved the puzzle in next item.

Labels: Asked and answered

  ¶ 9:17 AM

  Didn't need experiments
Headlines: Single Artificial Neuron Taught to Recognize Hundreds of Patterns

Biologists have long puzzled over why neurons have thousands of synapses. Now neuroscientists have shown they are crucial not just for recognizing patterns but for learning the sequence in which they appear.

Why were you puzzled? Dendrites have different lengths and go to different spots on the skin or retina or whatever. Therefore some patterns of touch or light will reach threshold and fire the axon of this particular neuron. Other patterns won't push enough dendrites to trigger. Others will be affected by decay times and refractory periods within the longer dendrites.

Tack on another basic fact, that junctions which get used often tend to strengthen while junctions that don't get much 'current' tend to fade, and you've got a trainable pattern recognizer for very small patterns. Follow this up through the layers of condensation, and you have different responses to different patterns.

All of that is pretty much obvious from "reading the schematic." The system that truly needs more research and experimentation is the active feedback from center to periphery. This has been seen but not fully understood in the cochlea, and is just now being seen in the retina. Central control sends signals to elements in the cochlea that are more like muscles than nerves, and these elements seem to physically alter the configuration of the cochlea.
  ¶ 4:49 AM

  Come on, dudes. Fight the right enemy
Listening to a discussion between a couple of theologian types on EWTN. Good dudes, clearly on God's side, not followers of Antichrist Francine. Complaining about Modern Yoots...

"Reductionism and materialism are running rampant... If I can't see it with my eyes it didn't happen ... Only science counts .... Anything that isn't comprehended by science doesn't exist...."

Sorry, boys. You're in the wrong century. At least you didn't cite the equally obsolete "relativism", so maybe you're learning SOMETHING.

Dammit, if you're going to argue on God's side, you need to understand Satan's CURRENT war, not his 1890 war!

Reductionist materialism was standard among American leftists from 1890 to 1968. It disappeared FAST after Madame Mao's influence took over.

Modern yoots are TOTALLY anti-physical and anti-materialist. Everything in their nasty little calvariums is explicitly contrary to observed facts. EVERY FUCKING THING.

Yoots believe in: (1) Hate crime incidents (2) Date "rape" (3) Institutional racism (4) Race is a construct (5) All humans are alike (6) Evolution (7) Global Warming (8) Endangered Species (9) GMO BAD MKAY (10) Gender is a construct.

These idiocies fall into four categories.

1,2,3,4 are total violations of observed facts but not within the realm of academic "science".

5 is the only one of these lies that was shared by the old pre-Mao leftists. Moderns still maintain it, even though all the rest of their shit contradicts it. Everything else implies voluntary variability, which is equally nonsensical.

6,7,8,9 are within the "science" curriculum. They are false but not AUTOMATICALLY AND IMMEDIATELY wrong. You have to know some actual facts, see historical graphs, and apply logic to catch the falseness. And to be fair, the yoots may turn out to be right that GMO BAD MKAY. So far GMO looks clean, but health effects can be long delayed.

10 Trans is unique, and trans could be the breaking point for the handful of yoots who are still capable of some slight reasoning. The falseness of Trans is NOT ARGUABLE. You don't need background, graphs, or logic. Every atheist biology book will tell you that the sex chromosomes are in every cell and can't be altered by operations or hormones or magic words. Trans is AUTOMATICALLY AND IMMEDIATELY WRONG, no matter what source you consult.

Why is this important? Because young fuckheads WILL encounter this simple fact in biology class. They WILL have to answer questions on tests. One or two of them may possibly stop and think for a brief moment.....

Wait! I know you can switch any time you want, just by saying the magic words. That's a fact. Everyone knows it. But this book says the opposite! The TA is not a raving neanderthal fundy or a primitive 7th century Islamofascist or a Rethuglican Koch Koch Koch Koch Koch Koch. She seems to be a cool normal fuckhead like me. Why isn't she correcting the obviously wrong book? Hmm.


Sidenote: 4 Race is a construct is equally false but much harder to see. Race is permanent but not binary, and the usual categories are partly meaningful and partly arbitrary. Almost everyone is a mix of various ethnicities, and the legal or cultural categories often shift to include or exclude your mix. Nevertheless, your own ethnic mix was set in stone when the sperm entered the egg. You can't do what Dolezal claimed to do.

Labels: 20th century Dark Age, Carbon Cult, Ethics

  ¶ 3:26 AM

  Language update for ungrateful monsters
Professor Polistra doesn't normally have visitors in the classroom, but this time she makes an exception.


= = = = =

Setback:

... means Russia.

This WashPost article cites several possible reasons why ISIS might have been froggy enough to attack Paris. The main theme:

"On Saturday, a theory began circulating about why ISIS attacked Paris: Since the Islamic State's drive to gain and hold territory in Syria has suffered setbacks lately, perhaps the group was lashing out to kill people far beyond its borders to compensate."

Any mentions of Putin or Russia in the article? Nope.

Russia is saving our evil ass, and we can't even MENTION them let alone THANK them. Prof P tries to remedy this atrocious ingratitude in her small symbolic way.

= = = = =

Holdback:

Idiots are wondering why Baltimore has a whole fucking lot more homicides this year. After listing a dozen bizarre delusional non-reasons, the article AMAZINGLY TACKS ON THE FUCKING TRUTH as a footnote!

"Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey last month said that murder rates were soaring in many cities partly because police were holding back from aggressive tactics, fearful of being video recorded and accused of brutality."

Truth gets into print! Rare event, worth celebrating, just as Comey is worth celebrating.

= = = = =

Comeback:

... means Invasion.

"The fragile comeback of wolves to Oregon is deepening a cultural divide over how much protection they need. With 81 adult gray wolves now calling Oregon home, wildlife officials last week recommended taking them off the state's list of protected animals. They'll vote on the recommendation on Monday."

= = = = =

Facing:

... means 'caused by'.

From idiot Cameron's "demands" to EU, which are not actually demands because he won't do anything if the "demands" aren't met.....

"The challenges facing the European Union have not diminished, they have grown. Migration flows across Europe, the rise of Isil and the spread of parties of protest across Europe need a response...."

All of those challenges 'facing' EU were DIRECTLY AND TOTALLY CREATED by EU. They aren't meteors that suddenly smashed into the landscape.

This is exactly like the tired idiocy "died while battling alcohol". No, you didn't battle alcohol. You surrendered. You chose to drink. If you had been battling, you would have stopped drinking long before you died.

= = = = =

Shameful:

Another word for "protecting our own people from invasion." At some time in the obscure geological past, "protecting our own people from invasion" was called Government for some obscure arcane reason. We are much smarter now. Protecting our own people from invasion is Shameful and Not American and Not who we are.

Our own Dear Leader provided these new and authoritative definitions. Who am I to judge?

= = = = =

B'Gaunt:

Willy Brandt. as pronounced by good old BBC in an obit on Helmut Schmidt.

= = = = =

Excepting them-self:

From an article about Satan University's "International Day Of Tolerance":

“It's about excepting and embracing everyone,” said Keisha Hood, who works at the Unity Multicultural Education Center and is a second year nursing student at Gonzaga. “It's symbolic with the stuff happening with Paris and Mizzou. Honestly, it's just so important to come together as a school and to make a statement and reminder.

Gonzaga President Thayne McCulloh ... spoke of the important role tolerance plays in the world: “By being human, each individual reserves to them-self a fundamental set of human rights,” he said.

Excepting is precisely the right word. Die-Versity is precisely about excepting the Unpersons and embracing the Coooooooooooooool persons.

= = = = =

Groundbreaking:

... means "more obvious than 2 + 2 = 4."

Groundbreaking research establishes the astonishing unimaginable fact that 2 + 2 is a sequence of three symbols: a number, then a symbol made up of a vertical line and a horizontal line, then a number. Who could possibly have guessed? I'm gobsmacked! Fantastic new discovery!

Example:

Being born into privilege can pay dividends throughout life, according to ground-breaking new research ... A study by academics at the London School of Economics found that people from working class families are not only less likely to secure jobs in high-status occupations in the first place, but will earn thousands of pounds a year less when they get there.

Nuff said.

Labels: Language update, Гром победы

  ¶ 9:47 AM

  Now I understand
I used to wonder why Japan kept on fighting and fighting and fighting as we burned and bombed more and more of their cities. Only the A-bomb stopped them. Those two little bombs didn't create much more damage than plain old fire in Japan's rice-paper cities, but the absolute newness, and the potential for vastly greater destruction, was finally enough for the Jap government. (Japan was developing its own A-bombs, so they knew the possibilities.)

Japan had been BRUTALLY raping and smashing huge areas of Asia and Siberia for 40 years. After Pearl Harbor, it finally got a competent response. Even after our response had been mounting for 4 years, the Japs didn't understand. In fact the Japs STILL don't understand. They still haven't figured out that THEY WERE THE AGGRESSORS.

Now I understand the attitude. We see the same attitude all over the New Axis. It's good old STRONG. I shared the attitude myself until 2007, when I retardedly began to perceive reality.

The attacks were “committed by a terrorist army, the Islamic State group, a jihadist army, against France, against the values that we defend everywhere in the world, against what we are: A free country that means something to the whole planet,” French President Francois Hollande said earlier Saturday. France “will be merciless toward the barbarians of Islamic State group” and “will act by all means anywhere, inside or outside the country,” he added.

Every disaster makes us MORE GRIMLY DETERMINED TO REPEAT THE DISASTER. We never learn any proper lessons, never run a negative feedback loop as LIVING THINGS normally do. Instead we only run positive feedback like a disease. More infection creates more inflammation creates more infection.

The same unimaginable shit about OUR VALUES and OUR FREEDOMS is heard everywhere in the Axis. No opposition voices are permitted. This is more egregious than the Jap version of STRONG. They didn't have delusions about OUR FREEDOMS; they were only defending OUR VALUES as embodied in the Emperor.

We've been BRUTALLY raping and smashing huge areas of Asia and Africa for 25 years. Now we're finally getting a response from the rapees and smashees, and we DON'T UNDERSTAND. We haven't figured out that WE ARE THE AGGRESSORS. We continue to blame the response on the "primitive" religious beliefs of normal sane moral humans, or (beyond beyond beyond beyond beyond insane!) CLIMATE CHANGE.

I guess we'll have to wait for an A-bomb or something equally surprising. When a population has ceased using its nervous system for normal learning, the only learning is natural selection.

Labels: STRONG!

  ¶ 2:49 AM

  Temple Lane
Still pissing around with maps, still another Manhattan mystery. Semi-solved, or at least semi-guessed. Most likely wrong, but I'm having fun so fuck it.

Here's what I remember from the early '60s when I was driving around town a lot: The SE corner of town was the City Dump. Its boundaries were rather indefinite, fading down into the river on the east and slopping over to 4th or 5th on the west. The city map indicated a little road called Temple Lane, heading south from the west end of the City Dump. I tried to find it once, and remember the image clearly. Temple Lane went south for a few blocks and ENDED at a big old brick mansion. The mansion was wildly out of place in this abandoned area, accessible only through the Dump. Looked haunted.

Later my memory was oddly verified by a novel that used this haunted 'mansion at the end of the world' as its location. At the climax of the novel, the river flooded and tore the horrible mansion off, with considerable screaming and so on.

This '40 map doesn't show Temple Lane. I'm sure it was there, though maybe not named. The map does show where the real end of town was; I've highlighted those lines with blue, and added Temple in orange.




Now back to the present.

Top view by Bing. The south end of town was completely redone in 1970. A levee was built and Pottawatomie Av, formerly just a theory, became an active industrial and commercial street. There's Temple Lane, and there's the mansion.




Front view by Googlestreet, driving on Pott Av. Perspective drastically lengthened by Google; the previous map shows the driveway is about 100 feet long. Unquestionably the same mansion I saw in 1965 and the same mansion shown on the 1885 map, though it's been renovated with an added porch. An old brick mansion is highly unusual around Manhattan; nearly all the surviving old stuff is limestone.




But Temple Lane runs off to the side of the mansion, not down toward it. Here's a side view of the mansion FROM Temple Lane, with an old wellhouse or something in the foreground.



Temple Lane goes on and on through the old floodplain of Hunters Island, past farmland with a few rural houses that date from the '20s or so. You'd never know this was a mile from downtown! Clearly not haunted, but not eagerly sought by developers either. Manhattan has grown TREMENDOUSLY in the opposite direction, not at all to the south. Maybe floodplain rules prevent development because this is beyond the levee line.




Two hypotheses. I've built a stupid BlinkyGif with the current top view, then Hyp 1 added in orange, then Hyp 2 in violet. Bear in mind that Pott Av and all the industrial stuff wasn't there.



Hypothesis 1: (orange) The mansion's long driveway must have been a whole lot longer before 1970, because it had to reach all the way to Riley Lane (blue). Possibly the driveway was treated as an extension of 5th St. At that time Riley Lane wasn't named; it was just the 'drivable version' of Pottawatomie. I would have been driving on Riley Lane. I would have seen the two-block driveway and assumed that was Temple Lane. The real Temple Lane, perhaps just an unmarked set of ruts, was there but I didn't notice it.

Hypothesis 2: (violet) Maybe the driveway and Temple weren't separate intersections. Because the east end of Riley Lane was pretty much the end of Manhattan, maybe the mansion's driveway led to the mansion then branched off to Temple Lane. Unlikely.

= = = = =

Later addendum, not especially helpful.... Found a couple of USGS topo maps, one from 1950 and one from 1965 or so.



This blinkyGIF gives a better sense of the 'informal' roads around the City Dump. Green arrow points to the mansion, violet arrow to the Mexican restaurant discussed here. Looks like I must have turned onto 'drivable Pott' aka 'Riley Lane' from Manhattan Ave, and then 'drivable Pott' turned into actual Pott, most likely without the clear corners shown on map. At the point where Temple Lane turns south, you're in the Dump.


= = = = =

June 2017 addendum: The chimney was the remnant of a steam flour mill.

Labels: new toy

  ¶ 5:27 PM

  More consistency by Antichrist
Antichrist Francine is, by definition, the Chief Confuser. That's what Antichrist does.... but sometimes she manages to be consistent.

Earlier she had stated firmly and solidly that the Allies should not have defended themselves against Hitler and Tojo. Europe and Russia and America should have laid down and died when ordered to do so by Hitler and Tojo. Self-defense is the worst thing in the world in Catholic minds.

Now she's making the exact same point in the current war.

When asked if this is part of the “piecemeal Third World War” the Holy Father has mentioned many times before, Pope Francis said “this is a piece of it,” adding “there is no religious or human justification for it.”

No justification for responding to attacks. We are slaughtering MILLIONS of Muslims in Syria, Iraq and Libya. Muslims MUST NOT defend themselves against the modern Axis of EU/US/UK. When EU/US/UK bombs your country down to bedrock, you are required to TAKE IT. Just die quietly. Don't respond.

Perfect consistency. No confusion at all when it's time to support pure evil.

Labels: defensible spaces

  ¶ 2:29 PM

  NYC Straub gets even weirder
Latest from KXLY, which is pretty good at following up stories sometimes....

Sources say Straub cursed at Cotton in department head meetings even though Cotton was doing a good job getting the department's public information efforts heading in the right direction. Those sources wondered how a young woman could quickly be promoted to a director's position where she had more authority than police captains. Those veteran officers felt they knew the answer when one of them was inadvertently sent a message Straub sent to Cotton......

Read the rest. It's simply bizarre.

The only valid conclusion is that Straub is flatout loony. Not violently loony in the way I typically use the word, as in the genocidal psychosis of an insane collapsing imperialist empire. Just fucking GONE. All out of sane juice.

Straub isn't nearly old enough for his looniness to be senility or stroke. I have to assume he's been this way for a long time, which is why previous police departments allowed him to spend more time with his nonexistent family.

This isn't a criticism of Straub. He didn't intend to damage a city, he's just not all there. If he hadn't been placed in a position of power, his non-compos-ness wouldn't have mattered much.

Parallel to Dolezal. Dolezal has been a criminal for a long time, and his/her/its criminality was on the public record at the time when Bloomberg's best bitchboy Condon picked him/her/it for a police Ombuds commission. His/her/its criminality wouldn't have been a city problem if BBB Condon hadn't hired him/her/it.

This is purely the fault of Bloomberg's best bitchboy Condon, who specifically hired and supported both Dolezal and Straub. Condon threw away good advice from insiders and consultants. He wanted Dolezal and Straub for some reason.

Without BBB Condon, both of these problematic people would have remained someone else's problem; they wouldn't have been able to damage Spokane.
  ¶ 8:52 AM

  Thanks, Ralph 18
Headline:



SHUTTING BORDERS? UNTHINKABLE! UNACCEPTABLE! INTOLERABLE! SCHENGEN ÜBER ALLES! SCHENGEN ÜBER ALLES! SCHENGEN ÜBER ALLES!

Hmm. Is it possible that the dark heart of the EU is finally LEARNING something? Nah. After a couple days they'll return to Welcoming And Loving The Dear Unfortunates And Then Passing Them Along To England Which Has Better Welfare Benefits. Invade and invite. Invade and invite. Invade and invite.

Nevertheless, let it be recorded for posterity: France had at least one day of sanity before the final curtain dropped.

= = = = =

Next day:

Headline ... France Says It’s ‘Essential’ To Fight Global Warming In Wake Of Paris Terror Attacks

Toldja so. One day of momentary semi-sanity. Back to genocidal psychopathic all-consuming civilization-smashing "normal" again.

Labels: Asked and answered, Emersonian justice

  ¶ 3:50 PM

  Mr Sun is happy
Amid the spiraling hyperlooniness of Federal crimes and rackets, plain old public schools are starting to move in several good directions. Nothing dramatic or political about this Chicago project but it's BIG.

But for years, CPS officials considered school garden produce too dangerous to serve in cafeterias. Then, quietly in 2013, the district decided to reconsider the policy and launched a program called “Eat What You Grow.”

Today, more than 80 schools have gone through safety training to allow students and faculty to bring produce into the classroom and even work it into lunchroom food.

Drew Thomas, the school garden coordinator for CPS, sees the program as a powerful tool to connect kids to healthful foods. “We recognize the research that has demonstrated the value of a farm-to-school approach to nutrition education,” he said. “And our school gardens are kind of the pillars of that program.”

80 schools = a LOT of kids are getting regularly exposed to sanity-inducing activities and intelligence-raising microbes and life-giving SUNLIGHT.

Nature wants us to work in the soil.

The picture with the article shows all the kids wearing food-handling gloves like Taco Bell employees. Probably required by regs but not a good idea. Those gloves won't protect your hands from thorns but they will protect your hands from the good bacteria. Wear serious leather gloves or no gloves.

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 3:08 PM

  Why which way?
Reading latest Collectible Auto mag. Feature on '47 cars predictably includes the joke supposedly told by "wags" (always that word) about the beautiful Studie. "Which way is it going?" I listen to a lot of radio comedy from those years and I've never heard the joke from radio "wags", but let that go. We'll assume somebody said it.

The article explains, as always, that the rounded back window on the Starlight coupe led to the remark. Nonsense. Wraparound windshields didn't happen until '55, so a rounded window wasn't an indicator of frontness in '47. The explanation had to be something else.

Was it the three-box shape? Could be, but coupes had ALWAYS been three-box cars. Sedans were in the middle of reshaping toward three-box in '47. Before '39, sedans had been two-box, with the passenger compartment extending at full height all the way to the rear. Now sedans are finally returning to two-box, which is obviously better for a family car.

But why did Studie's SPECIFIC rendition of the three-box coupe lead to directional puzzlement?

Finally figured it out.


Start from the idea that a car is a horse, as I explained here.

The three-box coupe has the same parts as a horse with rider.



We expect a beast of burden to have certain shapes. The head is a wedge-shape with nearly vertical axis. The rump is a quarter-cylinder with transverse axis.



From 1920 until 1946, coupes and roadsters satisfied these expectations. The head was a wedge, vertical or slanting slightly backwards. The rump was a quarter-cylinder with transverse axis.



I apologize for pulling a clumsy trick in the next picture! I couldn't find any Poser-suitable models of the '47-49 Studie, so I used pictures to suggest the pattern.



Here's a model of the airplane-nose '50 which makes the same point, though both ends have departed from pure wedginess.


The point is: In '47-49, Studie had wedge shapes, head shapes, on both ends. This was an absolute first, except for a very few custom "boattail" sports cars. All other '47 cars, even the halfway radical Kaiser, stayed with conventional rumps.

After '49 these conventions broke down entirely. Some fronts became rumps, some grew tits, and then the Edsel ..... But mostly, all three boxes became literal rectangular boxes, losing the horse pattern altogether.

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 3:56 AM

  No, that's not the racket.
Convective thought.

Earlier I made the fairly obvious point that we don't have TV or radio shows warning us of rackets and scams now, because the entire economy is rackets and scams.

Tonight while watching this 1952 Racket Squad episode I came to a deeper realization.

Most of the economy ISN'T a racket as such.

A successful scam is complicated. Lots of staging and scripting and acting. Layers of deception that can be impenetrable. Inheritances that don't exist, oil wells that don't exist, companies and patents that don't exist. In this episode a large amount of real money moves around, appearing to the sucker as legit transactions while never truly leaving the control of the scammers. At the end, the real money rejoins the scammers, PLUS a large amount of the sucker's money.

Our economy is NOT sophisticated. When you look up the OBJECTIVE definition of things like QE or options or derivatives or shorts or HFT, you can see with brutal clarity that they are pure theft. The transaction is based on things that don't exist; lots of money moves around; at the end you lose and Goldman wins. But nothing is hidden. When Bugsy started QE, he TOLD US openly and directly that he was doing it to pump up the stock market, and that's exactly what happened.

ZIRP is the simplest of all. You put money in the bank. You have an expectation, an implicit contract, based on NINE HUNDRED FUCKING YEARS OF BANKING, that the bank will pay you a little bit of interest on your savings. Goldman steals the interest. You have no recourse. There are no competing banks, no alternatives, no banks operating outside the crime syndicate. All banks steal your interest. Nothing hidden, nothing mysterious. Goldman wins, you lose.

NOT A RACKET because you have NO EXCUSE for being deceived. The entire robbery is OUT IN THE OPEN. It succeeds because Goldman owns the government and the "laws". It doesn't matter if you understand. You lose and Goldman wins. That is all.

But other aspects of USA STRONG do qualify as rackets. Consider the world of "hate crimes" and "date rapes" and "terrorism" and Dolezal. These are based on "events" that did not occur at all, or "events" that are intentionally staged, or actions like "transing" that cannot possibly exist; but everyone tells the same fake story about the "events" and "transitions". Or consider Big Science. Based on pseudotheories and pseudothings like Climate Change and evolution and dark matter and parallel universes that DO NOT EXIST, but everyone tells the same fake story about the "theories" and "universes".

All of these rackets involve a lot of work and drama. A lot of real money is sloshing around. In the end you lose your money or your education or your mind or your soul or your life, and you DON'T KNOW HOW IT HAPPENED.

That's a racket.

Labels: Carbon Cult, the broken circle

  ¶ 7:11 PM

  Eliza Paso
Since I'm pissing around with maps today, here's a Manhattan oddity.

Found a nice 1885 townsite map contained in a PDF found here. The full map is too large to display on this page, so I stored it here.

One nice thing about the map is that it shows buildings. Not immediately obvious because it's not sharp, probably scanned and resized into the original PDF; but the blobs along Poyntz are clearly the correct shapes for business blocks, and blobs are scattered elsewhere in the patterns I'd expect for houses in that era. The oldest neighborhoods have more blobs. Note the house circled in blue at bottom. More about it later.



Another nice thing about the map: It shows where both the Kaw and the Blue ran before the 1903 flood. Both courses changed drastically. On this piece of the map you can see the Kaw pushing up toward the SW corner of town, then turning and running along the SE. The Blue ran directly along the E side. After 1903, the Kaw moved south, letting Wildcat Creek take the former riverbed along the S side. This formed Hunter's Island, which wasn't exactly an island. The Blue moved about a mile east, leaving a floodplain that wasn't settled until 1970 or so.

But what I'm really noticing on this map is Eliza Street, circled in red. Eliza soon became El Paso, and soon acquired a railroad down its middle just as Riley St already had. After 1900, El Paso and Riley were nominally streets but actually railroads. Only El Paso had houses and sidewalks facing the railroad; Riley had houses that more honestly faced the drivable alleys. Now I know why El Paso had those strangely faced houses! It began as a real drivable street with a different name.

It's possible that Eliza was simply a mapmaker error, like Rustic St in Spokane.
All the other horizontal streets are named after locations or 'founders', with the partial exception of Poyntz, named after Col John Poyntz, a relative of one of the early land-sellers, thus probably an investor.

= = = = =

Aug 2017 update: The original of the Eliza map is page 72 of an atlas at KSHS. Much clearer image than the scanned scan above. The mapmaker made two other odd errors. Ratone St becomes RATBNOE, Tenth is TENTENTH. So it's RATBNIOAL to ASSUSSUME that ELIZA is just a misread.

Labels: new toy

  ¶ 10:52 AM

  Tomato myth
A really loooooooooooooose chain of thought, reaching an interesting question....

1. Been having tooth/gum trouble this week. Before I added tomatoes to my diet three years ago, gum trouble was nearly constant. After tomatoes, it's rare. This little infection lasted only a couple of days, but it was still no fun.

2. Why did it take so long for humans to figure out that tomatoes are both yummy and necessary? The conventional story is that Euros believed tomatoes were poison, and didn't start eating them until about 300 years ago when explorers brought them back from South America.

3. Much earlier I'd wondered about this from the standpoint of neural templates. I had a STRONG HUNGER for tomatoes even though I hadn't been eating them. This makes sense. We didn't rely on culture and books to teach us about correct diet until quite recently, and no other animal relies on culture or teaching. Every living thing, INCLUDING HUMANS, innately knows what's good, and tries to find what's good.

4. Well then, was the tomato really a recent arrival to the Eastern Hemisphere?

5. HELL NO. The fucking Babylonians used tomatoes extensively. Mediterranean people never stopped eating tomatoes.

6. Large parts of Babylonian knowledge and culture passed down to Northern Euros through various channels, and Northern traders and travelers certainly would have encountered tomatoes in Greece or Mesopotamia. Tomato plants grow easily in every climate; not exclusively tropical like bananas or coffee.

7. So what the fuck happened? How did Euros forget the tomato? Or did they? Was the 'poison' myth nothing more than propaganda inculcated by a conqueror to weaken the Northerners? Or inculcated by a king to insure that his own soldiers were stronger than the people? Or was there never a 'poison' myth at all? Was the STORY ABOUT the 'poison' myth propaganda for some unknown purpose?

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 6:37 AM

  Even more fun
Following on earlier fun.

Thought I'd try a tricky one. The Soviet mapmakers got the big Spokane in Wash right. (Спокан) What would they do with the little Spokane in Mo?



1. They got it even more right! Споукейн = Spokain. (Even more because оу fits the English long o better than Russian о by itself.)

2. I thought I'd caught the mapmaker using the old tradition of г for English h, as in Gmmmm! or Gollivud. Голлоуей must be Halloway, right? Wrong. It's not on the modern Google map at all, but the town was in fact Galloway.

3. Probably wrong but not for sure. The transliterator used French Буа-д'арк for Bois d'Arc. Missourans might pronounce it that way, but I doubt it. The tree is normally Боудак (Bodock) in that part of the country. [Later check: Both of us were wrong. According to Wiki, the locals pronounce it Bodark.]

4. The mapmaker consistently used the newer and more accurate х for English h, as in Хайлендвил for Highlandville.

Pretty firm conclusion now: The Midwestern mapmakers were using better sources than the Wash mapmakers. Probably human sources.

Labels: new toy

  ¶ 5:22 AM

  More fun with Soviet maps
Following on yesterday's fun. By a nice happenstance, local TV KREM featured a dumb song produced by some Idaho radio station, designed to teach the insider pronunciation of Idaho cities.

So let's check those Russian maps against these correct pronunciations.

The Mapstor set for Idaho is more complete and more close-up than the Kan and Okla sets. It includes a couple of notations that look intriguingly military, like this circle around Steens Mountain in Oregon:



= = = = =

Now the cities:

I've numbered them here and on the maps.



1. Boise: Should be Бойси. Outsiders say Бойзи. Map has Бойзе, which is just dumb.

2. Kuna: Should be Кьюна, map is correct.

1a. Compare with Boise City in Okla, Бойзе Сити on the map. Okies pronounce it Бойзи, not Бойси. Nobody pronounces it Бойзе.



= = = = =



3. Buhl: Should be Бьюл, map is right. (Not sure why this was in the song; it's not hard.)

4. Filer: Again not a hard name. Should be Файлер by the usual trans conv, map is right.

= = = = =



5. Shoshone: Should be Шошон, map has Шошони, the outsider version. (Sidenote: It's interesting that Americans have a 'standard' way of dealing with names that look Injun to us. We automatically pronounce the final e in such names, even though regular English spelling would leave it silent. In this case the final e follows regular English, but we don't like it.)

3a. This map also includes Buhl, which is wrong on this map! Бул. Maybe it is hard after all.

= = = = =



6. Moscow: Correct is Москоу. Map gets it exactly right. Maybe Russian dictionaries pay special attention to this name for some mysterious reason. Incidentally, Idahoans pronounce the Moscow in Russia as Москaу to distinguish it from the local Москоу.

= = = = =



7. Coeur d'Alene: Outsiders get both the pron and spelling wrong, and the mapmaker outdid the outsiders. Should be Кор-д'алэйн, map has Кер-д'ален. Probably using Rus trans for French, not Rus trans for English.

= = = = =



8. Kamiah: Should be Камиай or maybe Кемиай. Map has Камиа, outsider version.

9. Weippe: Should be Уиайп, strong stress on first syllable. Map has Уэйпп, more or less phonetic.

Labels: new toy

  ¶ 3:58 AM

  Fun with Soviet maps
Was reading about an archive of highly detailed old Soviet maps of America.
Some of these are available commercially, though only a scattered and incomplete set. Couldn't resist buying some familiar areas from Mapstor.com.

These maps are old but accurate. Looks to me like they're from the early '50s. Interesting variation in transliteration, indicating that some areas were based on personal observation (ie spies) and some by reading American atlases and dictionaries.

= = = = =



The area around Менхеттан shows the Big Blue undammed (circled in red). Tuttle Creek Reservoir was built in '56. The little towns like Randolph, Garrison and Stockdale are still there on this map, not drowned yet. Most pronunciations on this map are by actual listeners. Some of the town names are NOT obvious to a stranger, like Wamego and Wabaunsee (circled in green). Those are correct, given the usual transliteration conventions. But Lee-o-nardvill (circled in violet) should have been easy!

[I get a tickle out of reading these names aloud with full Russian trills and palatals.]

= = = = =



The Спокан map is less accurate on names. Спокан itself is right (ie not Спокэйн) but Country Homes is oddly wrong, even by the dictionary. Just below Cowntry Homes is the VA Hospital (circled in red) with buildings. In general military facilities and major industries are shown in detail. Note that I-90 wasn't built yet, and also the Greenwood Tunnel (circled in green, indicated as 'tun') is present on the map. This tunnel was eliminated in 1970.

= = = = =

The transliterator for Oklahoma was GOOD but a little sloppy. He not only got the local oddities mostly right, he also moved away from the standard conventions to get a close rendering of real American pron. I couldn't downscale this picture without losing stuff, so it overflows.

The date on this one is puzzling. It does show the tiny Kegelman Field near the Salt Plains, but doesn't show the giant Vance AFB near Enid. Both were established in WW2. Have to assume the missing Vance is an oversight. Everything else fits the same early '50s pattern as the Kansas map.



I've numbered some notables. 1. Meno, correct local, not predictable. 2. Hokomis should be Waukomis. Oops. 3. Bison, just right. Didn't try to put the o in. 4. Lucien, interesting use of the soft sign, but I think (not entirely sure of old memory) it's actually pronounced luSEEN. 5. Kremlin. No problem there! 6. White Eagle, just right, no unnecessary vowels. Also, part of the Arkansas river is on this map but the labels aren't quite in the frame. It's spelled Арканзас all along its length, and the state is also Арканзас. This Kansas version of the name was not well known in dictionaries; a normal American dictionary would lead a Russian to write Аркэнсо for the river and the state. Makes me think they had a spy in Kansas.


= = = = =

More fun next day.

Labels: new toy

  ¶ 1:41 PM

  Holiday observation
Probably a bad observation about holidays.

Factual part: In recent decades there's an increasingly sharp divide between Real Holidays that everyone observes, vs Unreal Holidays that only SOME government offices observe. Some of this division is leftist crap, like the erasing of Columbus. Most of it comes from the loss of work-leisure balance. 50 years ago most people worked reliable 8-hour shifts, 5 days or 6 days a week, with reliable holidays and vacations. Now those who are lucky enough to work are expected to be on duty all the time.

Dubious part: I'm noticing a contrary trend locally in the last two or three years. Previously, only the Realest of the Real, like Xmas and Thanksgiving, cleared out traffic. I could walk in the middle of any street on Xmas, but the Lesser Holidays looked about the same as regular workdays. Now even the Unreals like Veterans are sparsely trafficked.

If this is a valid observation, it could mean that the remaining employees in this part of town are mainly working for government.
  ¶ 11:22 AM

  Climate change ate my homework
Little Slovenia is building a fence. Good.

Walls work. Boundaries work. Skin works. Bark works. Cell membranes work.

Anyone who claims that walls are crazy should be skinned alive with a cheese grater so his internal organs can "lovingly welcome" viruses and fungi and bacteria and rats and Dreamer worms.

In the NYTimes article on Slovenia we find this:

Meanwhile, European and African leaders converged on Malta for talks aimed at speeding the return of migrants who do not qualify for asylum and to address longer-term issues like poverty, climate change and conflict, which are forcing people to leave.

What's missing in that list? The ACTUAL FUCKING CAUSE is missing. The current massive migration is specifically caused by EU/US/UK wars to obliterate all countries that insult Our Prophet Netanyahu. That's the relevant VARIABLE. Instead, they blame poverty (a constant) and "Climate Change" (a bizarre myth) and conflict (a constant).


Infinite chutzpah. Monsters. Monsters. Monsters.

Labels: Carbon Cult

  ¶ 4:11 AM

  Waste of time
There's a whole pile of writing and talking about the newly found essay by Shelley. Sounds deep and wise, so I decided to read it.

The actual essay is here.

Not deep, not wise. Pretty much "War's bad, mkay?" except that the syntax is all fucked up so it says "Bad m'war is kay?" Someone named BURDETT (all caps) seems to be advertised as the proper alternative to M'Bad Is Kaywar. Whoever BURDETT (all caps) was, he didn't end M'is Kay Warbad.

If you want to read deep and wise from that era, read Swift. He got everything right, and all of his wisdom is still PRECISELY AND LITERALLY APPLICABLE today. No metaphors needed. The same people are still doing the same things.

Later thought: I'm genuinely surprised that Swift hasn't been totally banned. Way too much truth. It's hard to search this on Google because a newer Swift pretty much saturates everything, but the real Swift doesn't seem to be a prime target for libraries or schools.
  ¶ 3:24 AM

  Maybe not a mirror
The current egregious mess on campuses is almost but not quite a mirror image of the 1968 egregious mess. There's a basic difference that I can't quite tease out. See if I can pull it out by writing.

In 1968 I was in the middle of the hippieshit side of an egregious mess at Bowling Green. In the previous year a general strike by faculty had led to the resignation of president MacDonald, a solid old-fashioned conservative who enjoyed touring campus at night, literally beating the bushes to drive out PDA. The faculty were not hard-left; they were pretty much normal LBJ Democrats.

MacDonald was replaced by a soft-left Ivy League type named William Travers Jerome The Third. Jerome The Third was a direct descendant of Churchill's nympho American mother. (Hmm. Seems familiar today for some reason.)

In my first year the draft came down hard, and hippieshits started demonstrating. Down deep the hippieshits were right. Vietnam was a total betrayal of American national interest. But we weren't interested in national interest, to put it mildly. Our demonstrations started AFTER Nixon was elected, because he promised to end the war. Everyone knew that Nixon was evil and LBJ was angelic because the war was evil and ending the war was angelic. Perfectly logical. We hippieshits didn't stop to think that we were simply serving the Democrat Party, which HATED HATED HATED Nixon more than anything else in the world because Nixon existed. Raw personal bitterness. Nothing deeper. We hippies were immersed in the zeitgeist, and the zeitgeist HATED HATED HATED Nixon, so we HATED HATED HATED Nixon.

The soft-left Jerome The Third turned out to be just as conservative as Old MacDonald when the rubber hit the road. "I need some muscle over here!" He called out the Phi Delts (jock frat) to bash some hippie heads, and the Phi Delts happily obliged.

Okay, there's the confused sort-of-mirror image.

Try to condense it:

In '68 the Left was driving both students and faculty, and the admin was confused.

In '15 the Left is driving both students and faculty, and the admin is confused.

Well, maybe it's not a mirror at all. In terms of named participants, pretty much the same.

Within the university only the jocks have switched sides.

Outside, though the named sides are the same, the real alignment has changed drastically. In '68 the Left was anti-banker and pro-Russia, while the Right was pro-banker and anti-Russia. In '15 the bankers and Russia have switched, so the Left (rationally for once!) is now pro-banker and anti-Russia. Unfortunately the idiot Right is STILL pro-banker and anti-Russia, which means it's now identical to the Left.

So that's it. Inside the university, basically the same. Outside, the Left has consolidated its power and owns both "sides". A large part of the people are NOT owned, but they have no support or representation within the power structure so they don't exist.

= = = = =

Language note: Think about the evil "I need some muscle over here." Resorting INSTANTLY to raw force, and calling it muscle, is the habit of a Mafia executive or more likely a private security executive. Normal cops are accustomed to calling in extra force when they're in actual danger, but this wasn't actual danger. Normal teachers, even hard-left teachers, don't think or talk like this. You talk this way when you're accustomed to having a dozen thugs under your direct command, and when you're accustomed to protecting a politician or celebrity from prying eyes.

Labels: 20th century Dark Age, switchover

  ¶ 6:01 PM

  2.95 cheers
Damn close to 3 cheers for this one!

The U.S. Forest Service says it has increased the pace and scale of its forest restoration work since 2011, but progress waned this year and the agency risks falling further behind. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is using a new report to press Congress to change the way in which the federal government funds wildfire fighting.

The report states that the Forest Services was able to thin out more than 4.6 million acres of forest lands in 2014, a 9 percent increase from 2011. The amount of timber produced for public consumption increased by about 12 percent during that same period.

FINALLY doing what they should have started 20 years ago.

GOOD!

My only quibble is that they can't describe the change in a way that would attract public support. They're calling it "restoration" and briefly mentioning "public consumption". They're still talking only to the enviroloons.

Call it LOGGING.

Instead of apologizing for "public consumption", boast that you're returning to the Forest Service's PROPER AND ORIGINAL BUSINESS of MANAGING forests, to produce LUMBER and bring a PROFIT to the government.

Labels: Carbon Cult

  ¶ 6:12 AM

  Honeytraps
Interesting short feature on BBC about Churchill's campaign to bring America into the war.

Churchill honeytrapped Murrow and Harriman, using his daughters and daughters-in-law as bait. Murrow and Harriman succumbed, becoming British patriots and American traitors. Both remained traitors for the rest of their lives, doing immense harm to American interests.

FDR stoutly and CORRECTLY resisted Murrow and Harriman's propaganda, remembering what happened in WW1 and representing the will of the American people. The italicized words are meaningless now, but apparently had some meaning in 1940. FDR did use the war as an opportunity to boost American industry, with considerable success. He didn't ENTER the war until we were actually attacked. Again I'm puzzled by the concept, but apparently Americans at that time had strange delusions about just war and national interest.

Fortunately we have been cured of those delusions. We're all Murrow now.

Not Polistra. She remembers.



Note the change of wardrobe. Since 2007 Polistra has been wearing a 1930's shirt, indirectly representing the spirit of FDR without specific national reference. Now it's abundantly clear that the nearest approach to FDR's ideas is in Russia.
  ¶ 3:52 AM

  Dueling trivialities 2
Last month I noted a comparison between Trump and Jeb on a trivial point. Even in trivia, the basic difference stands. Trump is observing current facts and proposing a solution. Bush is just babbling.

And here we go again, with two items that appeared together in DailyMail:



Trump notes a problem and proposes a practical solution. Jeb says meaningless crap, sounding firm and decisive and "manly" about a decision that CANNOT BE ACTED ON in the current configuration of the universe. Perhaps he has secret plans for a Tardis up his sleeve, but somehow I doubt it.

Sidenote: I thought the idiotic fake collective word for crows was "a murder of crows". Apparently it has changed to "a capacity of crows". This new term actually makes more sense. Crows are no more murderous than other birds, but they are highly capable AND highly charged. Not that it matters, because none of these idiotic terms are ever used. A group of birds is a flock. That's specific enough.
  ¶ 2:22 AM

  Terrifying moment!
Dramatic headline:

Terrifying moment when great white shark attacks cage-divers in South Africa!

Heart-stopping footage shows a great white shark ploughing into a divers' cage in Gansbaai, luckily missing tourists by inches!


Well, okay... but these divers are in a cage. They're WORKING FOR A LIVING, and they know what they're doing.

Why don't we have headlines for other scary activities, like what I was doing earlier today?



Terrifying moment when TOXIC MOLTEN LEAD flowed uncontrollably over TWISTED STRIPPED NAKED COPPER FILAMENTS! Heart-stopping footage shows a SHARP 400 DEGREE IRON penetrating the MOLTEN TOXIC LEAD!

The simple answer is that sharks are natural predators and solder isn't. We have an innate and thoroughly rational fear of sharks.

But in strictly objective terms the scariness is opposite. You can get killed by electrical work. About 450 deaths each year, compared to an average of 0.5 deaths from sharks per year. So you're 1000 times more likely to die from a shock than a shark. (Unless you're in Boston, where FUCKIN SHAWKS and FUCKIN SHAWKS are the same thing.)

What do I think when I complete a junction? "Gray? No, shiny. Melted to both wires? Yup. Good one."

I've never done anything remotely like shark fishing, but I'll BET those dudes are thinking along similar lines. They're mentally checking the qualities of the shark and its suitability for sale. "Smooth? Yup. Scarred? Nope. Good one."

It's a job.

Serious point: I doubt that soldering will ever be terrifying or even appealing as a displayable art. Nevertheless it IS a craft. It's part of MAKING THINGS, and it has its own little satisfactions of sight, sound and smell.

We outsourced electronic assembly before anything else, suicidally giving the consumer radio/TV business to Japan in 1958. We not only outsourced manufacturing, we redesigned things to be disposable instead of fixable.

Russia didn't outsource electronics or ANY of the basic skills of industry. Russia kept making things to be fixable.

Now we wonder why their military is able to function quickly and unconfusedly in Syria. We wonder why their rockets fly and ours flounce. We wonder why our men are drinking death and rioting.

A man needs to make things. If he can't make things he will break things.

Labels: Make or break, switchover

  ¶ 5:05 PM

  Asked and answered, microaggression edition
Mizzou has fired its president in response to protests by the usuals, who are angry about some fake "incidents".

How do I know they're fake? They "happened" on campus. Precisely 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000% of "incidents" that "happen" on campus are precisely 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000% fictional.

Firing the pres is just a tiny tiny tiny baby step toward the direction of the hint of a tiny tiny eeentsy-weeeentsy fetus step. We know with 100000000000000000000000% certainty that no replacement president will be suitable. [Next day: Toldja so.] There is no way the college can continue to operate. After you give a millimeter to Satan, you've given the whole universe.

So let's get it over with NOW. Close the fucking university, turn off power and water and natural gas, implode the buildings, and let the "microaggressed" faculty and students figure out what to do with their so-called alleged "lives". NOW.

Best education possible. Perfect preparation for the Goldman world of LBOs and mergers and counterfeit value. Work hard for many years and lose your fucking job in an instant, lose a year of pay, lose the records of your education. Ideally the records should serve one purpose before they're permanently deleted: Each NON-microaggressed student should receive the name, address and phone number of one microaggressed student. Sort of like the assigned gift list at the office Xmas party. Then the NON-microaggressed students could give the gift of REAL aggression to the microaggressees. Provide a proper baseline for future measurements.

THIS IS WHAT YOU WANT. YOU ASKED FOR IT, YOU GOT IT, ASSFUCKERS.

(As always I apologize to poor old Satan for blaspheming his comparatively holy name, and I apologize to normal assfuckers, and I apologize to all living things including Ebola viruses for blaspheming the word "lives" in connection with these grotesque unimaginable entities.)

Labels: Asked and answered, Metrology

  ¶ 8:51 AM

  Hey, that's neee.... no.
Sorta cute news item...

The New York Public Library will try to defend its title as the world's quickest library-sorting system against Washington state's King County Library System. The New York Times reported that on Tuesday morning, mechanized conveyor belts in both libraries will start rolling for one hour.

In New York, a multimillion-dollar unit dubbed the "Tin Man" sorts bar coded items.

At last year's fourth annual contest, New York took the title by coming in with 12,570 in an hour - 702 more than the Seattle area crew. The two competitors are tied at 2-2.

First thought: It's neat that libraries are trying to do something lively and 'viral'. Contests between grocery baggers or hotel cleaners are good for the employees, who rarely get a chance to shine, and good publicity for the stores and hotels.

Second thought: No. It's not a contest between HUMAN sorters. It's not human vs machine like John Henry. It's only a competition between MACHINES, which means a budget-size contest. New York is going to win on average because New York has more money.

Stupid.
  ¶ 5:23 AM

  You'd think....
After all these years, you'd think "protesters" would have figured out that they're helping the opposition.

In theory there may be some genuinely spontaneous protests that genuinely move the authorities in the desired direction. There's no logical reason why this shouldn't happen, but in plain fact it has NEVER happened. Not once.

Fine example in Trump's TV appearance last week. Mexican protesters and the rich bigot Larry David provided the best possible evidence for Trump's correct observations about reality. If you weren't sure about Trump's accuracy before the show, you'd be perfectly sure afterward.

Another this morning:

David Cameron had to halt his speech at the CBI conference after protesters stood up shouting “CBI Voice of Brussels” mid way through his speech.

Cameron is a lethal monster. He is defending the infinitely evil EU while pretending to be making plans to consider thinking about the possibility of a feasibility study on the subject of pondering an exit sometime after the end of the known universe.

These protesters, stupidly shouting an inscrutable slogan, appear to be on the correct side. But they helped Cameron postpone thinking about Brexit until the end of the NEXT known universe.

Most protesters are mindlessly obeying leaders who know EXACTLY what they're doing. In some cases the leaders or Agents Provocateurs are directly working for the other side, mobilizing the protesters to create sympathy for the other side. In some cases the leaders or APs are playing an Alinsky game, making the situation worse in order to make the ultimate chaos more deadly and more advantageous to the leaders. More chaos = more volatility for options and derivatives. Kill the poor, enrich the Chosen.
  ¶ 2:45 AM

  Old definition is sorta right after all
I've constantly slammed the misuse of old dictionary definitions for political tendencies. Conservative and liberal no longer have any meaning at all. Socialism no longer means 'state control of the means of production' ... But wait. Yes it does, from a different angle.

Under Stalin the definition was precisely accurate. The Politburo decided everything, set quotas for size 8 shoes and size 9 shoes and size 10 shoes, produced limos for the commissars and bicycles for the proles. Result: scarce and low-quality consumer products for the masses.

The precision softened after Stalin died, but the basic system remained.

Just for fun, this is an official stamp from the manual of the late-Soviet Электронный конструктор, which I bought and reviewed here. Everything had similar OTK (Technical Control Division) stamps. Note the personal signature of a bureaucrat! Full employment was the GOOD part of the USSR system.

Stalin's USSR provided money for wages, equipment and maintenance directly to State-owned farms and factories, and ordered them to turn out the correct mix of products. Farms and factories generated real excess value, which was returned to the State as taxes.

= = = = =

In the post-switchover USSA we have returned to the Politburo, with an added layer that provides single-knob control. It's a neat hydraulic trick, saving considerable work for the Chosen.

In Bernanke's USSA, the central bank provides free money to State-Approved Corporations, who are then free to use it for gambling in the central bank's casino, where they can win even more free money just by being Approved. This is the only added value, and it's so abundantly poured into the Approved Corporations that they no longer need to generate real value through farms and factories. The megagallons of counterfeit value fill the pipes, leaving no room for real value.

A quaint remnant of the old private sector still survives, but it has to operate on narrow margins without investment or savings, burdened and menaced by a huge load of regulations and litigation. Because no real value is being generated anywhere, the proles are no longer getting paid for helping to make real value, and no longer able to save the few pennies they earn.

Result: Limos for the Commissars, flip-flops for the proles. Walmart shelves look a LOT like the shelves of 1960 Russian stores. Lots of empty spaces, scarce low-quality products with very little variety. It gets worse every month. Less variety, lower quality.

Labels: Make or break, switchover

  ¶ 12:19 PM

  Fort Marcy lives
News written by Satan:

A controversial Russian millionaire who was credited with creating Vladimir Putin’s powerful domestic propaganda machine has been found dead in his hotel room in Washington.

Or in plain English, the US government took advantage of his visit to assassinate him.

No speculation needed. RT was starting to threaten our project of infinite evil, so we acted.

In Cold War I this type of assassination was mainly performed by Russia. Now that we are the Soviets, this type of assassination is our department.

Labels: switchover

  ¶ 2:55 AM

  Astonishing! Amazing! Unthinkable! Who could expect it?
From Los Angeles:

... The teacher steps between them. When she tries to regain order, another boy tells her: "Screw you."

It's another day of disruption on this campus in the Los Angeles Unified School District, which has been nationally hailed by the White House and others for its leadership in promoting more progressive school-discipline policies. The district moved to ban suspensions amid national concern that they imperil academic achievement and disproportionately affect minorities, particularly African Americans.

What a monstrous surprise! Nobody expected it! Couldn't have been foreseen! First time in the universe!

Snideness aside, here's the GENUINELY amazing part:

At Los Angeles Academy Middle School in South L.A., teachers ... say they are overwhelmed by what they consider ineffective responses to students who push, threaten and curse them. The stress over discipline prompted two teachers to take leaves of absence in the last two months.

"My teachers are at their breaking point," Art Lopez, the school's union representative, wrote to union official Colleen Schwab in a letter obtained by The Times. "Everyone working here is highly aware of how the lack of consequences has affected the site. Teachers with a high number of students with discipline issues are walking a fine line between extreme stress and a emotional meltdown."

A UNION THUG speaking truth! A UNION THUG pushing for common sense!

This is truly unprecedented, truly 'nobody could have expected it'. Especially since these no-discipline policies were pushed and approved by a D-team president.

Nothing will change, of course. Teachers will continue to leave the profession permanently, and sensible parents will continue to find private schools.

Sounds dismally familiar. Happened to me 30 years ago, in a DeVry school where the admin's refusal to suspend bad students had a different cause but the same result.

Labels: Experiential education

  ¶ 2:35 AM

  Not the same circuits
BBC website has a fairly interesting article on daydreaming. Retard "neuroscientists" are just starting to acknowledge a bunch of facts that observant people have always known.

One of the unknown questions is whether the 'rehearsals' provided by daydreaming are the same as the 'rehearsals' provided in sleep.

I've just recently answered this for my own mind: A solid No.

I always run a playlist of old-time radio shows during sleeptime. Usually I'm awake for the first 30-minute show, then fade out during the next one. Most of these shows are thoroughly familiar, but I try to keep a fresh episode at the start to snatch my brain away from whatever idiot stuff I was worrying about in the day.

Several times I've dropped off during a familiar episode, then popped back up for unknown reasons. This in/out process enabled me to note the scenery and characters generated by the mind in both modes.

In wake mode, familiar episodes always repeat the location and characters that I 'built' the first time I heard the episode; and obviously use the story that was in the script.

I dropped down into sleep while 'in' the familiar location. In early sleep the ear circuit is still connected, so I was hearing at least part of the dialog. The in-sleep version of the location and characters and story was ENTIRELY DIFFERENT from the familiar waking version. The dream-generator instantly wrote its own houses and terrain, its own characters, and its own STORY LINE, to fit the words that were filtering inward. Needless to say, all of these were considerably more interesting and original than the waking version.



Question 1: Is the high-quality dream generator always running in parallel with the crappy waking imagination? That would explain why it can instantly produce original characters and sets. Question 2: Why is the dream generator higher quality? Shouldn't the imagination that's available 75% of the time get better material than the rarely available dream process? Do we have an internal caste system, like NSA running high-quality secret research in parallel with crappy academic research?

(I think I wrote about this once before, but it makes sense as a link to the BBC story.)

Labels: TMI

  ¶ 5:27 PM

  Super Caitlyn
Our fine milifairy has been testing a new trans-continental ballistic missile (TCBM) called Super Strypi. Needless to say, he/she failed miserably.

Polistra and Happystar had the misfortune to witness the test launch:


Nuff said.

Labels: swishover

  ¶ 12:31 PM