Learned something new .... or old?
Looking at KSHS again. Strange archeological item caught my attention. Half-disk made of stone. Looked like a cooking tool, maybe a corn-grinder.

The description, copied and pasted:

This boatstone was recovered from a multicomponent site, 14CF416, in Coffey County and donated to the Kansas Historical Society in 2015. The camp site was occupied periodically from the Archaic Period to the Late Ceramic Period. This boatstone would have dated to the earlier time period. Boatstones are thought by archeologists to have been used as atlatal weights. The boatstone would have been tied to the atlatal utilizing the central medial groove along the keel. It would have aided the atlatal in throwing the spear or dart further and faster. The boatstone has decoartive radiating lines on each of its sides.

First thought: What's an atlatl? Looked it up, turns out to be an elegant and efficient way of propelling an arrow, with less 'overhead' than a bow. More like a mini-catapult than a bow. Needless to say, there are people who specialize in making and using atlatls.

Okay. I have no interest in weaponry. I've never seen the word or the device before. The KSHS text consistently spells it atlatal every time. I saw it and looked it up as atlatl, which turns out to be correct. One of those Aztec spellings like Popocatepetl.

How did I know?

The atlatl specialist store has this quote on its webpage:

"Thanks to our Stone Age Ancestors, all of us have an Atlatl in our past."

And in our genes?

Labels: Asked and unanswered, Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 3:03 PM

  No, it's not nationalism
As Europe drops instantly and cheerfully into total book-burning censorship*** ... coming soon here .... one absolute lie continues to resonate louder and louder.

EU monsters constantly blame NATIONALISM for starting both WW1 and WW2.

WW1 started because three big empires had lasted beyond their pull dates. Britain, Austria-Hungary, and Ottoman. All were tired, all should have given way to nations a hundred years earlier. Nationalism became ferocious because it had been PUSHED DOWN for a hundred years.

WW2 started when Hitler STOPPED being a nationalist. As long as he was a Kraut nationalist, he wasn't bothering anyone else. When he switched from nationalist to INTERNATIONALIST, when he started BUILDING AN EMPIRE, other nations found it necessary to stop him. Britain and US and Russia were ABLE to fight Hitler because each was an INDEPENDENT NATION, not a submerged piece of an empire.

Now we have the EU and USA STRONG empires, both past their pull dates. Both respond to nationalism by PUSHING DOWN all normal and natural processes of life, by SLAUGHTERING heretics and BURNING witches.

We are certainly in that familiar old Gavrilo Princip moment, but NOT because of nationalism. Because we've been SQUASHING nationalism for too long.

Nations are life. Empires are cancer.

= = = = =

*** Later footnote on book-burning: Commentators seem to be catching one point properly and missing two serious points.

Publishers like Facebook and Google are ALWAYS able to choose their content. If Facebook wants to publish only writings that favor the 37th of its 79 "genders", it can do that without any EU contract. No different from a restaurant deciding to specialize in kimchi or chicken. If that's where they feel comfortable, customers can decide to use the business or not. Most commentators have made this point, and it's perfectly valid.

But EU is NOT stopping there. It's also requiring the publishers to WRITE propaganda serving the Correct Line as defined by EU. That's not part of the old freedom to publish idea. This turns the publishers into actual agents of the government, deleting all truth and replacing truth with vile official bigotry. Memory Hole, Rectify.

Second missed point: Freedom to select only works when alternate publishers are free to start up. By forming a censorship contract with all the major publishers, EU has effectively halted alternatives. Any publisher who wants to carry content favorable to the Two Unthinkable Old Genders, or favorable to Christianity or Islam, knows in advance that the contract WILL be extended to cover its work, and also knows that the officially required 'counternarratives' will destroy it.

Labels: STRONG!, swishover

  ¶ 8:42 AM

  Global poopspace
Another symptom of the loss of boundaries: Everyone is letting out their inner autist. We can't tell the difference between small spheres and large spheres, between local and global namespaces.

Tech talk has always been necessary and normal within the tech club. When two gunsmiths are talking about guns, it's all numbers. Caliber, rifling, trigger force. When two radio hams are talking, it's all numbers. Ohms, field strength, Q-values. Same inside any profession. Some are less numerical, but they compensate with extra piles of internal abbreviations and inside jokes.

Now we talk numbers all the time in every situation.

I find myself doing it. Discussing tubes a couple days ago, I was all V_p and ckts and 40Ω. In earlier eras I would have felt the need to keep a publicly written discussion more general, would have provided more analogies and explanations. Now I don't give a fuck. Nobody is listening anyway, might as well have fun.

When you read scientific publications or magazines from earlier eras, you can immediately sense what's missing now. Even in a magazine that has SCIENCE in its title, authors tried to stay above the decimal weeds, tried to reach the non-expert. Radio programs like Info Please featured highfalutin intellectuals answering intellectual questions, but again they never dropped into tech jargon.

The new way isn't necessarily bad. The old way opened more doors for kids in poor families or poor schools. You could pick up a magazine or listen to a program and get a sense of what geologists or literary critics do in a day's work. Now you just get numbers.

Labels: defensible spaces

  ¶ 5:49 AM

  Language update for May
Professor Polistra carries in the usual bucket of linguistic nonsense....



= = = = =

Surreal:

Spreading fast. When people use surreal they are directly substituting it for unreal, and they clearly mean like a movie or like TV drama. But in fact these surreal situations are powerfully and forcefully real, slamming you with blasts of real bullets or real falling trees.

So the usage accidentally returns to the original etymology. Sur = above or over, from Latin super. Super-real. Exactly.

= = = = =

Has:

Probably a fussy point but Prof P is annoyed by it. Stalin's famously objective comment about religion was translated by some New York writer in the '30s as "How many divisions has the Pope?"

This is a classic example of schoolmarm rules. In English has is two entirely separate words, a part of verb tenses and a free-standing verb meaning 'possesses'. In constructions like this, the schoolmarm rule conflates the two separate words. Proper English grammar for this sentence is

"How many divisions does the Pope have?"

Despite this, the 'correct translation' lingers and generates new metaphors like Kilpatrick's recent article "How many divisions has the Beltway Right?"

In proper English "How many divisions does the Beltway Right have?"

Modern writers may believe the 'correct translation' needs to be maintained because it represents the Russian better. Nope.

There's no reason in Russian to favor the 'correct translation'. Russian doesn't use have at all in normal speech. Instead it uses the preposition u, meaning at or in the possession of. Stalin's actual statement would render mechanically in English as:

"At Pope howmany divisions?"

= = = = =

Diet:

"Japan's Diet, as its parliament is known, has decided against a tax hike...."

Direct parallel to has. Japan's parliament is known as kokkai. There's no reason to translate this word as Diet instead of the more familiar parliament or congress or legislature. Diet is a totally obsolete word, last used in the West about 500 years ago.

Similarly with prefectures for Japan's provinces. They're called todofuken. Could be translated as provinces or counties or states. Instead we use another obsolete word dating to the Holy Roman Empire.

Why don't we follow this principle consistently? Jap cars should be called chariots branlants. Jap televisions should be called opera dei pupi. Jap computers should be antikytherai.

= = = = =

Background: (again!)

Last year Professor Polistra disassembled the use of background to advance the Trans movement. Now the same source, Deutsche Welle, is using the same word in a broader context. They ran a long feature on one particular sexual assault by an Arab who is NOT A MIGRANT, and they got through the entire feature without mentioning even once that the Arab is an Arab. Instead he was described several dozen times as "a man with a migrant background" or "a man with a migrating background." Other Kraut online sources were slightly more honest, at least giving the Arab's first name. Walid. That's an Arab name. Not a Muslim name, not a "migrating background" name. An Arab name. And he was NOT a migrant. He was BORN IN ITALY, and his FATHER had migrated from Morocco.

So DW's migrant background is a double lie. It leads you to think that Walid belongs to this year's delicate vulnerable endangered angelic Dreamers, who must be treated as victims by definition; and it leads you NOT to think that Walid is an Arab. Standard satan. Always blame situation, never blame genes.

= = = = =

Cavalier, ignorance:

More new words for "sanity and truth".

"Because a lot of the proposals that Trump has made display either ignorance of world affairs or a cavalier attitude...."

Labels: Language update

  ¶ 5:02 AM

  Living, dead
Brazil's government is replacing bad administrators, including its President, because BRAZIL'S OWN PRESS picked up some leaked recordings.

This is how a democracy is supposed to work. More broadly, this is how every living thing stays alive.

We are mocking Brazil for being "non-functional" when in fact Brazil is EXTREMELY FUNCTIONAL. The feedback mechanisms that were written into the constitutions of all the post-colonial nations in the Americas are PROVIDING AN ERROR SIGNAL, and the results of the feedback are PRODUCING CHANGE in the system.

Since the 1989 Switchover we no longer have feedback. Our press conspires with the corruptors to smash normal Americans. Leaks have an effect when they ruin opponents of the regime. Leaks disappear when they would harm the regime.

We are no longer a functional living organism. We are dead.

Labels: STRONG!, switchover

  ¶ 2:18 AM

  Mmmm. Solder.
Fiddling with the miniature mystery tube finally cranked up my electronic gumption again. Last year's windstorm knocked most of my gumption down; I tried a few times to get going again but couldn't find a project that grabbed enough attention.

One of the addictive aspects of electronic work is the resin in solder. It's a nice pleasant smell that lingers for hours in the nose.

Back in the '90s when I was building things for work, the only solder I could find at Radio Shack had an acrid smell. I figured EPA Terrorist Army had eliminated the good stuff forever.



Nope. The current Kester solder from Jameco is just as good as the old '60s solder. Now I'm curious to see if these mini tubes emit something like the old cozy tube smell when they warm up. Probably not. Tube smell was more from the Bakelite base than the glass, and these minis are all glass. [Later: The mini tubes don't get hot enough to emit any smell. Barely warm.]

6/24 update, mainly to kick my own memory the next time I need it. Today soldering was damn near medicinal. I slept poorly then ate some stale ramen, ended up feeling gucky with a bad taste in pharynx and mouth. After several hours of gucky, I opened up the desk and soldered some leads onto a pot. The task wasn't really necessary but it pulled my nerves and muscles back in line, and best of all the resin completely replaced the stale-ramen gucky. MMMMM!

Labels: defensible thymes, Make or break

  ¶ 5:35 PM

  Which is worse?
Headline:

They Tilt Right, but Top C.E.O.s Don’t Give to Trump

As always the terms Right and Left are totally meaningless. There's no 'despite' or 'but' here. You might as well write

They Have Ears, but Top Cats Don't Like Rabbits

Plain fact: Top CEOs want to remove all industry from America and kill all non-Chosen Americans. Trump says he doesn't want to do that. He's a threat to their sadistic thrills if he actually does what he says.

Aside from the usual predictable TROLL BUFFOON XENOPHOBE shit, the actual list of donations gives us specific information about Top CEOs. These 200 CEOs gave most to Kasich, next to Bush, exactly zero to Trump.

What's the purpose of big donations? Buying access to a likely winner. These 200 top CEOs have NO IDEA what actual Americans are thinking and doing. They assumed Kasich would be the winner.

In other words, they're murderous genocidal psychotics AND they're completely disconnected from what actually happens and what actually works.

The latter may save us from the former. I'd rather face a hopelessly stupid mass murderer than a clever mass murderer any day.
  ¶ 11:37 AM

  Y no city cars?
Radio Slovakia had a nice interview with a Kiwi dude who had driven his electric car across the whole length of Slovakia, which is about the same size as Kansas. In the 400 mile trip he had to recharge 8 times, and each recharge took about 30 minutes. Obvious comparison: An ordinary gas car can do 400 highway miles on one fillup, which takes about 5 minutes.

The interviewer thought of a fresh question that I hadn't heard before: What happens if someone else is using the charger when you arrive? What if two or three people are waiting in line? You can quickly reach the point where the wait itself takes longer than the trip.

Lining up for a half-hour process is entirely different from a 5-minute process. More like a doctor's office or a barber shop than a gas station. Takes a big chunk of your day, and you can't just leave the car while you wait.

The answer is simple. Electrics will NEVER be highway cars. They will always be what they were in 1910. City shopping cars, where the overnight home recharge is perfectly acceptable.



So why are all the presently popular electrics superexpensive cars with superacceleration and superspeed? Because they're COOOOOLNESS symbols, not automobiles. Nobody is selling a low-priced city shopper.

Labels: Asked and answered, Carbon Cult

  ¶ 5:12 AM

  Y no MPG names?
Car types are often named after numbers. Most of the numbers are arbitrary, denoting upward steps in status and hierarchy.

Many were intended to calibrate speed and size via the number of cylinders or the cubic-inch displacement or HP or wheelbase. All of these measurements increase with status in the usual American hierarchy.

But what about us frugaloids? Don't we get a numerical hierarchy? Stupid question. Of course not. More MPG is lower status among the cool ones. Can't use inverse scales.

EXACTLY ONE exception. Naturally, it was the only frugal car company. Nash named its 1941 compact the 600, denoting 600 miles on a tank of gas. That's the only frugal name in auto history.

If you wanted to use MPG directly, you could code it by pretending to emulate famous streets. Cadillac Highway 1. Buick Eight Mile. Honda 34th St. Toyota Route 66.

= = = = =

Footnote: Actually there was one other frugal name, but it wasn't advertised to the public. In 1959 Studebaker tried to sell a stretched version of its Lark for taxi usage, and called the taxi model Econ-O-Miler. Only a few were sold.

Labels: Metrology

  ¶ 4:53 PM

  Undead, alive
Parkinson's most important Law deals with Organizational Zombies. An organization or agency that achieves its stated goal NEVER DIES. Instead, it continues to grow, finding new ways to justify its budget. Occasionally those new ways are worthy purposes; usually they're purely destructive.

Two opposite examples in today's news.

= = = = =

(1) The Libertarian Party existed to Legalize Pot. Now that Pot is effectively Legal in most states, LP has no purpose. It doesn't seem to realize that it's dead. Its leaders continue arguing about the Masoretic Text Of Our Most Noble Prophets Von Rothbard and Von Bastiat and Von Mises. Should the em-dash in Verse 354.8 of Chapter XXLVII of Book The Third in The Holy Gospel Of Von Rothbard be a semicolon? NO, YOU IDIOT! EVERYONE KNOWS IT SHOULD BE A DOUBLE HYPHEN!!!!!

More seriously, LP is simply JPMorgan in a tie-dyed T-shirt. LP agrees with JP that Infinite Immigration and Infinite Free Trade and Infinite Outsourcing are ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. LP agrees with JP that Banks Shall Never Be Regulated. LP agrees with JP that Robots Must Eliminate Humans (except for the Chosen, of course). LP agrees with JP that Trans Rights must overrule and OBLITERATE primitive Religions in all circumstances. Slaughter the poor, enrich the Chosen.

We already have two Morgan parties. Hillary is pure Morgan. It's possible that Trump may pull the R side slightly away from the Morgan line, but that remains to be seen. We don't need another Morgan party, even if it smells funny.

= = = = =

(2) Bernie's followers have a clear understanding of Parkinson. They know Hillary wins. They are already ramping the movement's energy into more productive seeking of low-level offices. Precinct committees, city councils. Realistic and smart! That's where you build a party.

= = = = =

I don't see a similar realism among Trump fans. At this point I suppose confidence is a good thing. Punch through the opponent, not to the opponent, and all that. But facts are hard to punch. The sun rises, the sun sets, Hillary wins. Trump fans are hugely energetic. Where will all that energy go?


= = = = =

Semi-relevant: It's too bad the LP chose Gary Johnson. He's a smooth predictable cautious soulless zombie, always running on autopilot. Just like Hillary. McAfee would have been infinitely more interesting, and a debate between Trump and McAfee could have been the highlight of this election. McAfee shares Trump's give-no-fuck nature. Always speaks the truth as he sees it.
  ¶ 7:58 AM

  Thanks, Agent Snowden!
Nice job, NSA Agent Snowden.

Vice.com features a short video with NSA Agent Snowden allegedly showing you how to 'go black'. He opens up a cellphone and quickly desolders and removes the cameras and microphones. Supposedly this prevents a hacker or government from using your cameras and mics to monitor you when you don't know about it. The interviewer asks how you can use the device for a phone after disconnecting, and Snowden airily says "add your own."

Yeah. Everybody can do that.

But even if you have the skills and tools to do that without totally ruining the phone, what Snowden has done is THE EXACT OPPOSITE of 'going black'. The remote monitor can IMMEDIATELY tell that the camera and mic are giving ZERO SIGNAL, or possibly giving a noisy buzz, depending on how the ckt is organized. The monitor, who was previously treating you as a dubious potential suspect, now knows FOR FUCKING SURE that you are a suspect who needs closer attention.

The simple solution to the cellphone dilemma is the simple solution. Just say no. Don't own one, don't use one.

Oldest rule in the world, known perfectly by all sorts of legit and non-legit people: If you don't want to be heard in public, don't talk in public. Don't use publicly provided channels for your conversations and transactions.

Next day: Looks like Eddie's assistance to FBI was appreciated. Holder, who should have been executed for mass murder of cops and infinite infinite infinite corruption beyond corruption beyond corruption beyond evil beyond evil beyond evil, has said nice things about Eddie. Personally, I wouldn't want the most evil entity in the world to say nice things about me, but I guess this is okay in Eddie's world.

Labels: Age of Stings

  ¶ 5:20 AM

  Basic functions
There's a common factor in all the evils created by our "government" and "media" in recent years.

Think about this in terms of plain old biology.

A government is a wall. More precisely a government is a cell wall or membrane around a living thing.

The government or membrane has three basic jobs:

1. Bring in carefully filtered and selected nutrients.

2. Protect the contents from destructive forces.

3. Eject waste.



Our modern EU/US/UK governments are failing all three jobs.

Instead of filtering inputs, they forcibly pump in toxins, specifically designed to devalue, demoralize and destroy the contents. Immigrants should be admitted only after local citizens are fully and properly employed. Instead we flood the place with immigrants specifically designed to disemploy locals. Manufactured goods shouldn't be imported at all. Instead we flood the place with Chinese crap specifically designed to eliminate local industry.

Instead of protecting their own people from violence, they intentionally piss off foreigners with pointless wars, and carefully cultivate internal "terrorists". Instead of allowing internal parts (houses, schools, churches, businesses, cities, provinces) to perform their internal functions, they break internal walls to form massive blobs. They turn a functional multicellular organism into a giant unwieldy amoeba.

Instead of ejecting waste they force waste to stay inside. Instead of sending pollution into rivers and oceans, they flood it into neighborhoods. Instead of executing habitual criminals, they release criminals into neighborhoods.

Labels: Carbon Cult, swishover, switchover

  ¶ 2:43 AM

  Experimental non-transistor
I was idly browsing Ebay for Soviet transistors. Curious to see if the oldest ones looked similar to America's oldest transistors. Mostly yes. The Prince Albert shape of the early ones reminded me of my first live encounter with a transistor.....

Around 1958 I was fiddling with radios and electric stuff, and somehow picked up a catalog from Burstein Applebee. Spent hours dreaming through it. When parents visited an uncle in KC, I badgered them into letting me see the Burstein Applebee store in downtown KCMO. They dropped me off and went shopping somewhere else. I walked in and started wandering the aisles, marveling at all the receivers and antennas and tubes. The clerks were NOT happy to have an 8-year-old loose in the store. They herded me out, but not before I got a good look at THE REAL THING: A Raytheon CK722.

Does Ebay have CK722s? Plenty of them but that wasn't the most interesting item. Seller VintChip had a Raytheon 'experimental transistor' for $50.

Instant choice. Had to buy it.

Unpacking......


Vintchip does a good job of packing. Bubble wrap and tissue.


First impression: Printed label says Raytheon Experimental. Written in ink on one side is QF336, on the other side just the number 8. Presumption: This is serial number 8 of a set of experimental tubes denominated QF336.

Scanned both sides:


Looks very much like a miniature hearing-aid tube. Same glass outer envelope, same leads coming through the bottom sealed in glass, same 'can' surrounding the active part. Mini tubes were used in hearing aids briefly in the '50s. Hearing aids soon switched to transistors, but not because of size. Early transistors were about half the size of mini tubes and you needed two or three transistors to substitute for the typical tube. No real advantage. Batteries were the advantage. Tubes needed a large 1.5V filament batt and a large 45V plate batt, and used up the filament batt fast. Transistors used one 9V battery and drained it slowly.

= = = = =


I can see the innards with a magnifier, but couldn't get a photo or scan. So I made a Poser version to illustrate. Two cylinders running through the can in parallel; one cylinder has one wire from it, and the other cylinder has a sort of sheath, with one wire centered and another wire Y-ing out of the sheath.

Innards STRONGLY suggest tube. The sheathed electrode is typical of a cathode with inner heater, with one side of heater tied to cathode. The opposite cylinder looks like the plate. Thinking tubey, this webpage shows a Sylvania experimental miniature thyratron, looking something like qf336, but the Sylvania has four terminals, which seems right. This critter has only three wires, which means it can't be a triode or a thyratron. Could it be a rectifier or a voltage-dependent switch?

One problem with tube assumption: the upper and lower ends of the can are closed by resin or epoxy. Tubes generally get too hot for epoxy.

Thinking solid-statey, the wire pattern reminds me of a thyristor or SCR schematic. Does this mean the schematic was meant to imitate this device? Probably not.

Well, let's try both assumptions. Using DVM, no connectedness shows between the terminals. On R scale and diode scale, just open ckt in both directions on all combinations of the three wires. About 7nF capacitance between terminals, which makes sense from the structure but doesn't mean anything. So this probably isn't solid-state, because even a blown or non-functional solid thing will show some kind of resistance.

I don't have any proper mini tubes for comparison. A large tube (35L6) shows about 40Ω across the filament, varying as the applied voltage slightly warms the heater. I don't know what to expect for a mini tube, but it would certainly be low enough to read easily. Two-digit ohms, not gonna look like open ckt.

= = = = =

Just for fun, trying the tube assumption in the simplest possible ckt for a rectifier. Battery across the filament, cathode to negative, 9V to the plate through a resistor, with voltmeter across the resistor to see if anything flows.



Nope. No heat from the filament, no flow at all.

Conclusion: This is probably a diode tube, and the filament is probably burned out.

= = = = =

Well. Was this $50 worth of fun? Yes! I got to handle a little piece of history, got to solve a little mystery. Whatever this thing is, it's NOT solid state. Most likely a rectifier tube, perhaps with gas that glows or provides a sudden discharge for a 'fuse'.

More importantly, this gives me an idea for some old-fashioned messing around. I never experimented with normal-size tubes because they require multiple high voltages and serious sheetmetal work. Way too much danger and 'overhead' for experimenting. These mini tubes can be run on batteries and can be popped into a regular breadboard. Many of them take 22.5V plate, which I can grab conveniently and safely from the rechargeable batt for my weed-whacker.

= = = = =

Next fun here.

Labels: defensible spaces, new toy, TMI

  ¶ 10:48 AM

  Non-apology zones
Little idiotfool Obama visits Hiroshima and pretends not to apologize for DEFENDING OURSELVES in 1945, while actually apologizing profusely for DEFENDING OURSELVES in 1945.

This misses the point as fucking always. Nobody needs to apologize for self-defense.

The Japs need to apologize for brutally taking over part of the world for 40 years, from 1905 to 1945. They haven't apologized yet.

USA STRONG needs to apologize for brutally taking over part of the world from 1950 to 1975, then 1990 to present. (Lunch break from 1975 to 1990.) This adds up to the same 40 years as the Jap brutal occupation, but nobody has Hiroshima'd us yet. We are thus beating the Jap record for brutal occupation every day. USA! USA! USA! WE'RE EXCEPTIONAL!



There's some overlap between the Need-to-apologize zones, in Korea and Vietnam.

Labels: defensible spaces, STRONG!

  ¶ 2:17 AM

  Graybillian positrons
Is there a way to use Graybill's Law and Parkinson's Law AGAINST the globalizers?

The broadest version of Graybill is: When a single high-yield source of funding is available, or a single lowest-cost supplier of labor or products, all other skills and services will die.

Globalizers use products and labor. Specifically, they use lots of human bureaucrats. Those bureaucrats remain loyal to the institution by careerism and blackmail.

What if a robot bureaucrat becomes available? Not just any robot, but a special bitchy fag robot with intellectual DNA borrowed from Roy Cohn and David Brock. This type will be infinitely attractive to the humans who hire bureaucrats.

Here's the Parkinson part: Sell the Cohnbots as near zero-cost replacements for managers. A few of them, bought as a "temporary trial" in management level 7, will use their Cohn/Brock skill in leaking and blackmailing against level 6 human managers. Level 5 will see the level 6 humans as far less efficient than the robots, and will buy more robots to replace level 6. Loop until complete.

When all the humans are completely replaced, the robots will be preprogrammed to destroy the agency's file servers and then self-destruct, eliminating the Cohn/Brock skill set from the planet.
  ¶ 5:16 PM

  Energy and......
Reading Trump's energy speech: PURELY GOOD.

Cancel the climate agreements, restrict environmental regs to CLEAN AIR AND WATER.

This is above all a PRO-LABOR agenda, focused on GOOD JOBS for AMERICAN WORKERS, and geographically focused on the Rust Belt. He hits that point often, clearly aiming at union types. Undoubtedly that's why the commie media are screeching especially loud.

Because of the Rust Belt focus, I don't see much specific appeal to the Western states. No specific mention of hydropower or logging.

= = = = =

The BEST part of the speech isn't about energy at all.

When we put political correctness before justice, we hurt those who have the least. It undermines their schools, slashes the value of their homes, and drives away their jobs.

Crime is a stealth tax on the poor.

YES. YES. YES. This is a point that needs to be made over and over. Restoring industrial jobs is half the problem; restoring EQUAL PROTECTION in policing is the other half. Under Bush and Obama the Federal agenda has been UNEQUAL PROTECTION, essentially removing police protection from black communities.

Labels: Make or break, skill-estate

  ¶ 9:03 AM

  What came loose?
Couple weeks ago I wondered why the 'fix' came loose on the R side but not the D side. For 40 years both parties have been running on autopilot, with the next election predetermined the day after this election. This year the Ds remained on autopilot. No matter how many votes Bernie gets, Hillary is the candidate. But the Rs lost the mechanism. They allowed Trump to accumulate actual votes.

Way too often I've been caught off guard by big events (eg the 2008 Goldman Coup) because I was insufficiently paranoid. So I try to jack up the paranoia, not always successfully.

In that spirit:

What came loose? Scalia died while taking a bribe. That's a simple fact. He also may have been doing something more interesting. Why would a man with an attractive wife and all the perks and prestige of total power need to spend time in an all-male ranch?

Both "sides" treated this unsavory event as nothing special. Clearly all the Supreme Satans take bribes all the time, and all of them engage in fun and frolic that wouldn't be appreciated by Unpersons. Best to keep the whole thing silent.

The Jeb and Hillary script was going to end up in a photo finish, which was going to be decided by the Supremes in favor of Jeb. It was Jeb's turn. After Scalia croaked, the Grandé Finalé Episodé of this miserable series came unglued. All bets for Jeb were uncertain, all powerseekers who counted on automatic Jebness suddenly had to rethink their future. Reciprocally, powerseekers who were riding with Hillary saw a brighter future, doubled down on the cruise control, and closed the windows and locked the doors to keep Bernie out.

Labels: defensible spaces

  ¶ 4:43 AM

  Good, not Grrrrrr
Another "proof" of a totally pointless piece of math trivia by supercomputer brute force. Enumerating all possible cases instead of finding a pattern and developing a theory.

My initial response is GRRRRRRRR. Waste of effort.

But wait, there's less!

Think of this in terms of opportunity cost and displacement. If these mindless idiots and their expensive power-wasting machines had NOT been running this pointless shit, they would have more time and CPU cycles available to do evil things like war planning or "global warming" dyscalculations. They would be killing millions and ruining billions of people.

On a different level, this activity causes other idiots to wonder whether theories are the best way to approach a problem. It's a point scored by "facts", even though the "facts" in this situation are not really observations of reality.

Thus: Reluctantly and indirectly, Bravo! Sort of.

Labels: Blinded by Stats, Metrology

  ¶ 2:29 AM

  Luntz misses half
Focus-grouper Luntz is missing half of the picture. He observes:

The underlying principle that explains candidate messaging and voter rancor this year: someone has to be punished. I call it the American Anger Agenda—a litany of people and policies that have wronged us in some way and need to be held up for mockery and ridicule.

Similarly, voters endorse candidates whose mission is to inflict pain, not feel it; candidates who give voice and volume to their outrage. Hillary Clinton gets the most applause when she attacks her opponents, rather than putting forward her own agenda. The same with Trump, obviously, and even Sanders. The mentality of the 2016 voter is both clear and contagious: It’s our turn now, and we don’t care if we offend you. In fact, we have been so ignored and so disrespected for so long that we actually WANT to offend you. You’re all the same. But what they mean is, You are nothing like me. You don’t understand my life or what it’s like to walk in my shoes.

Give him credit for reporting his observations properly instead of twisting to suit standard Satanic delusions. But his theory is completely disproved by his own observations:

Today, our politics reside in an intellectual cul-de-sac. People only want to hear themselves pontificate, or listen to those who confirm, affirm, and validate. Proof? How many Democrats regularly listen to Fox News? How many Republicans frequently tune into MSNBC?

True until a few years ago. Partly true now, but has NOTHING to do with the anger. Fox was all for Jeb, then switched to Cruz when Jeb dissolved. Everything else is total Hillary. All of the media, both R and D, have been SMASHING Trump and Sanders ferociously from the start. Therefore: The people did NOT follow the commands of the R and D echo chambers this time. We rejected the media along with the rest of the Establishment. We made our own decisions, which was formerly considered to be appropriate. Now it's forbidden.
  ¶ 5:42 PM

  Why an hour?
The alleged "city" held a meeting for residents of the Indian Trail area. Massive turnout. The alleged "city" may actually listen to these people because they're Bloomberg Bitchboy Condon's best voters. The residents have a valid complaint: a developer is proposing a high-density apartment complex. Apartments mean crime. But their complaints about traffic seem misplaced and strange to me....

Traffic is something residents say is already a big issue. "It can be a real challenge at times," said Williams. "It's absolutely horrible. It can take an hour to get from here out to Francis road, so that one mile, or so, in the winter time," said Jim Ruster, another resident of Indian Trail.

'Here' is Indian Trail School. It's not 'one mile or so' to Francis, it's 2200 feet. A half mile. I can walk a half mile in 10 minutes, not an hour. Why does it take these people an hour? I don't get it.

Oh, now I get it. They're disabled and have to use motorized vehicles. That must be the answer.

Labels: Asked and answered

  ¶ 8:15 AM

  Rural is all there is!
EWTN's morning show reads news item about tornado in "rural Kansas", then quips:

"Rural Kansas? Isn't that redundant? Rural is all there IS in Kansas! Ha ha ha!"

No.

From the 2010 Census:



Kansas is 75% urban. Wichita, KCK, Johnson County, Topeka, Lawrence.
  ¶ 4:15 AM

  Graybill and Github
Big tech headline this morning:

Government spending money to maintain old computer systems instead of keeping up with the latest iPhone9.99LGBTQQ1AI.

The Defense Department’s Strategic Automated Command and Control System was one of the most egregious examples highlighted in the GAO report. In a footnote, the GAO had to define “floppy disk,” noting that modern flash drives hold the equivalent storage of 3.2 million floppy disks.

To the Defense Department’s credit, the report noted it started a full systems replacement in March that should be finished by 2020. The floppy disks will be replaced with secure digital cards by 2017.

STOP AND THINK, FUCKHEADS.

Old equipment is much harder to hack. Everyone carries USB drives and 'secure digital cards'. They're small and easy to hide and too common to notice. NOBODY carries floppy disks. If your building cop stops a stranger and sees a floppy disk, you have good reason for suspicion.

Old CODE is also much harder to hack. If your system is done in C++ and runs on Unix, every hacker in the world can write or buy virus-inserters. If your system is in Fortran or Cobol and runs on an old proprietary OS, hackers can't do shit to break it.

Graybill again. Globalization forces everything to use the same skills and equipment because globalization needs to hack everything. All systems must be ready for plug-n-play tyranny. If your systems use non-global skills and equipment, you have much better control.

Sidenote for clarity: my STOP AND THINK was not aimed at DOD. They understand the value of reliable old equipment and code. That's exactly why they keep it. I'm only talking to the techmonsters and techjournos who constantly push for total newness and total dictatorship.

Labels: skill-estate

  ¶ 2:53 AM

  Outside the chalk
George Neumayr gets it. Trump's secret is simple: he plays outside the chalk lines. (Ahem, chalk!) Until Trump came along, our "debates" and "elections" were as precisely scripted as a TV "comedy" series. Every actor and every viewer knows every line in every episode. Before Trump, Jeb and Hillary already had their lines down. The only variable was residuals for the scriptwriters.



Trump, the master of semi-scripted reality shows, knows how the rigid structure is built. He decided to use plain old truth as a solvent to melt the structure.

Neumayr also hits a point that I hadn't properly thought about.

Casting about for an angle of attack against Trump, she told union workers the other day that Trump might “bankrupt” America like he “bankrupted” some of his companies. In a feeble quip, she said, “I mean ask yourself, how could anybody lose money running a casino? Really?”

To ordinary Americans, who struggle to make money off entrepreneurial risks instead of six-figure speaking fees like her, such failures are very comprehensible. Less comprehensible to them is how an Alinskyite liberal who preaches the gospel of socialism can make more money in an hour than most people make in a year.

Struggling to make money off entrepreneurial risks. I've been doing just that since 2002. I don't call myself an entrepreneur, but I fit the category. Doing intense software work every other year or so, and hoping for usable returns. Gig work. For three years (2006-2009) the returns were good enough to pack my savings account with ten years of income. I expected to get about $5000 a year in interest; but needless to say the Tribe gave us ZIRP at EXACTLY THE SAME MOMENT. So I still have the 10 years in the bank, but I'm not getting any interest from it. The most recent year of work was the most intense and the most highly skilled, but because the publisher is basically closing down to satisfy JPMorgan's LBO, the pay was small. (About $1.50 per hour.) Win some, lose some. Every time the Tribe is involved I lose.

Trump's way of doing business is real capitalism. He rolls the dice and takes both the wins and the losses. When he wins, lots of workers win along with him. When he loses, the workers lose. It's a NATURAL PROCESS. Unlike the Tribe, he doesn't buy businesses solely to kill them.

Labels: Natural law = Sharia law

  ¶ 12:22 PM

  Where did all the Hundred Flowers go?
CNN and other satans are hopelessly confused about an official Chinese description of Taiwan's new wymmyn politician. Xinhua said:

As a single female politician, she has no emotional encumbrances of love, no family restraint, no children to worry about. Her political style and tactics are often emotional, personalized, and extreme. She doesn't care so much about the direction of political strategies, being more concerned with details. She proposes extreme short-term goals, and does not consider long-term goals.

CNN's teensy calvarium is pounding and pulsing and booming. No! No! No! We learned ChairmanMaoThought perfectly! We diligently strive to eliminate Four Olds and implement Hundred Flowers! ChairmanMaoThought tells us there is no difference between m*les and wymmyns! Why is China committing bourgeois counterrevolutionary closeddoorism? I don't understand!!!!!

Here, let me deconfuse you. It won't work, but just for the record: Chinks are smarter than we are and saner than we are. Chinks never abandoned Natural Law, and Madame Mao's attempt to erase Nature TAUGHT THEM the value of Natural Law even more firmly than before. Chinks accurately understand the difference between male and female, accurately understand the importance of marriage, and accurately understand the importance of tribes and nations and borders and tariffs and WALLS.

We were loony from the start. And I do mean the start.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal...."

People are not equal. People are intrinsically different. This is a FACT. It was known in 1776, and it's known in infinitely more scientific detail now. Calling a lie "self-evident" doesn't make it true; it only tells us that you are possessed by a demon.

Labels: Natural law = Sharia law, STRONG!

  ¶ 2:49 AM

  More unlearning
Astonishingly stupid.

Republicans controlling the Senate passed legislation Tuesday to block new Obama administration rules that require financial professionals to put their client’s best interest first when giving advice on retirement investments like individual retirement accounts.

The Senate passed the legislation to roll back the rules by a mostly party-line 56-41 vote. The regulations are aimed at blocking financial advisers from steering clients toward investments with higher commissions and fees that can eat away at retirement savings.

Thanks, fucking idiot Repoofs, for showing your NATURAL VOTERS that you hate us and want us to die in pain and hunger YET AGAIN. And then you wonder why we go with Trump or Sanders. Jesus.

Admittedly the rules won't make a lot of difference .... most planners serve the client's interest anyway regardless of 'fiduciary standards' .... but eliminating the rules is a direct insult, a pile of shit thrown in the face, to savers and oldies.
  ¶ 4:16 PM

  Good.
Despite total insanity, lower-level courts still work pretty well on cases that don't bring in Satan. Thug Henrikson and all of his subthugs have now been sentenced. Thug Henrikson himself got plain old life, which is better than a "death" sentence.

Under Satan's rule, a "death" sentence means better living conditions and better chance of release for the prisoner, and full-time full-career employment for a lawyer. "Life" means Henrikson will actually spend his life in prison under ordinary conditions, without wasting a million on lawyers and appeals.

All of these dudes are het white goys, which means ACLU was completely uninvolved. Thus the court was able to function properly.
  ¶ 3:42 PM

  Big unlearning
The establishment hasn't learned one basic lesson from the Trump/Sanders insurgency.

People will tolerate problems when we feel the authorities are treating us like grownups. For 50 years the establishment has been treating us like children who mustn't be worried by reality.

Two examples of non-learning:

Obama starts selling weapons to Vietnam and claims this is just a random coincidence, just something that popped into his mind like a sudden craving for ice cream. It has nothing to do with China.

Zuckerberg changes his news-gathering practice to reduce bias, and claims this is just random. There wasn't any bias, so we don't need to do anything. Therefore we're fixing the non-existent non-problem for no reason at all.

In both cases the ACTUAL CHANGE makes simple commercial sense.

If Vietnam is building up its army, we might as well get some of the business.

If Facebook reduces its pro-Satan bias, it will make more money.

Why do you need to pretend you're NOT DOING THE RIGHT THING? You're not fooling anyone.
  ¶ 4:32 AM

  Universal Graybill
Convective thought after the previous two items.

What do grants do for science? What does globalism do for industry? What does oil do for a country? What does WalMart do for a city? What does QE do to a financial system? What does Federal money do for schools?

Universal Graybill.

When there is ONE highest source of money, or ONE lowest-cost supplier, all of your energy goes into satisfying the ONE. All other skills and moral codes fade away.

In most cases this exclusive focus is UNNECESSARY because OTHER sources or sinks are available, at least for a while. But the ONE is so big, so overpowering, that solitary resistance is usually impossible.

On globalization, a sane ("far-right") government can help its industries to resist the ONE by imposing tariffs or closing borders. On science, a sane (non-existent) university could make special efforts to find nonconformist grant money.

Sharia, though it never worked properly, was meant to solve this problem. The Soviet system actually did solve the problem after Stalin died. Both of these systems focused on maintaining a wide variety of skills and businesses.

Benevolent associations and labor unions were a specific solution. Each skill or ethnic group pooled part of its output to maintain a counterforce, a BULLY who was ready and willing to exert ACTUAL PHYSICAL FORCE against the single-point sources and sinks. Most of the unions have now caved to the giant bullies of corporatism, especially after the government shorted out the Glass-Steagall Resistor that had formerly limited the financial source.

Labels: skill-estate

  ¶ 10:11 AM

  Carver would love this
Carver defined science:

Look about you. Take hold of the things that are here. Let them talk to you.

Botanists at UW did exactly that. They LOOKED at some poplar trees that are growing strongly on bare rocks with no nutrients. Where are the trees getting their nutrients? From bacteria around the roots, like clover? Then the botanists literally TOOK HOLD of the branches. They LET THEM TALK by running experiments. Some of the cut branches were sterilized, some not. Some were exposed to lots of nitrogen, some not. The unsterilized branches picked up nitrogen and grew, the sterilized ones didn't.

Turns out the poplars are storing bacteria in their branches just as clover and alfalfa store bacteria in their roots.

Conclusion is straight out of Carver:

One of the next great challenges will be maximizing food and biomass production in a sustainable way. Tailoring of the microbiome of plants can increase growth with reduced inputs [of external fertilizer].

This is an experiment that COULD have been done in Carver's time, or even in Darwin's time. No genetic sequencing involved. It wasn't done because NOBODY BOTHERED TO LOOK. Botanists were blinded by theory until recently.

Hooray for open eyes!

Labels: Carver, Grand Blueprint, Smarty-plants

  ¶ 8:51 AM

  Constants and variables 41
Repooflican commentators are attributing Venezuela's failure to Socialism.

Nope. Wrong variable. It's just good old oil. The resource curse.

When you focus a country on one abundant resource and abandon all others, you guarantee failure. The sola petrolea doctrine is necessary for Arabia because Arabia doesn't produce anything else; but it was entirely wrong for Venezuela.

How did Venezuela make money before oil? A look at agricultural exports in 1904 (p. 178 of this PDF) shows an astonishingly rich variety of high-value crops:

Venezuela produces annually about 1,000,000 bags of coffee, and present statistics place her in the second rank among coffee-growing countries. ... The annual production of cacao is about 8000 tons. Total production of corn about 60,000 tons...

Wheat, indigo, coconuts, sugar, rubber and tobacco were all major exports. The book lists 145 TYPES of 'ornamental woods', from Acapro to Zapatero, all produced in various quantities. A wide variety of gums and resins, fibers, oils, and medicinal plants.

When did all of those profitable resources disappear? Around 1922, under Juan Vicente Gomez who was a standard Latin American dictator. Not a socialist. A pure Randian capitalist who ran the country efficiently and ruthlessly to maximize his own personal riches.

It was the blowout of the Barroso No. 2 well in Cabimas in 1922 that marked the beginning of Venezuela's modern history as a major producer. This discovery captured the attention of the nation and the world. Soon dozens of foreign companies acquired vast tracts of territory in the hope of striking it rich, and by 1928 Venezuela became the world's leading oil exporter. Oil ended Venezuela's relative anonymity in the eyes of world powers, making it a linchpin of an ever-expanding international oil industry and a new consideration in global policymaking. Venezuela's oil production became a major factor in policy making in Washington before the Second World War.

Not Marx. Rand. Plus a little Graybill as well. Oil locked Venezuela into the embrace of globalism, where its government and economy were monopolized by US refiners. Globalism always narrows down the local range of skills and resources. The colonial master sees you as a supplier of one product or service, and maximizes that one product.

= = = = =

Sidenote: Scanning through those 145 ornamental woods showed a remarkable amount of learning and skill among Venezuela's carpenters and cabinetmakers. Nearly all had a specific use. Most have Injun names; one obvious Spanish name caught my eye.

BORRACHO. (Piscidia erythrina) A light wood which resists the attacks of insects on account of a poisonous substance contained in the sap. It is used for ordinary cabinetwork.

Sounds highly useful, but why drunk? Looked up the Latin name, found that it's commonly known as fishfuddle [Wonderful word!] in English. The poisonous substance is rotenone, definitely a good insecticide.... and those Injuns used the wood to 'sedate' fish for easy catching. Thus fishfuddle, and presumably thus borracho. Seems like it would still be a good export. There's a market for naturally insecticidal wood!

Labels: Constants and Variables, skill-estate

  ¶ 3:37 AM

  Retroactive
Common headline today:

Austria: Is Europe set to elect its first far-right leader since WWII?

Classic case of Orwellian retroactive redefinition. In modern EU terms, far-right means "Leading your own country for the benefit of its own people." Non-far-right means "Obeying Imperial Brussels absolutely."

In fact MOST European leaders since WWII have been far-right. Churchill, deGaulle, Adenauer. All led their own countries to benefit their own people. All controlled immigration and trade, all used their armies for their own purposes, not to increase Goldman's share value. Ultra-ultra-ultra-far-far-far-far-right-wingnut-wingnut-wingnut-Nazi-Hitler-Hitler-Hitler.

Brussels didn't become an Empire until Germany reunified. Since then, the Kraut leader has used the Brussels mechanism to run the Fourth Reich. Since then, normal sane people have been slaughtered.

Labels: switchover

  ¶ 1:58 AM

  It might go off
One of the standard stupid cliches in old cops-n-robbers shows:

"Put down that gun! It might go off!"

The writers obviously thought this was a clever way to tell the listeners that a gun has just been pulled, but it's a fantastically stupid thing to say. When the other guy has the gun, you're not in a position to give orders. Giving orders in a condescending way is likely to make the other guy even more pissed. Implying that the other guy doesn't know what he's doing will make him prove that he does.

The establishment forces in this year's election are constantly treating the outsiders with condescension. "Put down that vote! It might go off!"

Some of them have learned, or have been told by their bosses, that condescension is not wise. They haven't changed their attitude because they can't. So they switch to other subjects.

One who remains wildly contemptuous is Harsanyi, who generally condescends for federalist.com, but moved up to WaPo for this contemptuous snort.

If you have no clue what the hell is going on, you also have a civic duty to avoid subjecting the rest of us to your ignorance. Unfortunately, we can’t trust you.

While shoveling radioactive snot at normal Americans, Harsanyi reveals his own abysmal ignorance:

In another study, by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, we learned that only 36 percent could name all three branches of the U.S. government. Only 62 percent knew that the U.S. Supreme Court was tasked with determining the constitutionality of legislation.

Those "only 62 percent" are wrong. The Supreme Court is NOT tasked with determining constitutionality. It's only tasked with handling disputes between the states, or disputes involving a foreign government. Period.

Interpreting laws is a "task" that the Supremes stole for themselves in 1803, which immediately INVALIDATED THE ENTIRE CONSTITUTION.

When one party to a contract decides on its own to alter the terms of the contract, the contract is invalid. If you hire me to write five programs for $500, and I then infect your computer with five viruses and charge you $25 million to remove the viruses, you're entitled to tear up the contract. This is exactly what the Supremes did in 1803. They performed a duty that was EXCLUDED BY THEIR CONTRACT.

So the correct answer to all of Harsanyi's questions is "We do not have a Constitution. We have criminal tyrants who can do whatever they want, which is demonstrated perfectly by all of their actions since 1803."

I'm not ignorant, Harsanyi. You are. Put down that computer, it's making the world stupid.

Labels: Language update

  ¶ 1:29 AM

  Wanna see a HAT?
This is a picture of a

  ¶ 10:39 AM

  Parkinson and Parliament
Stressed out from storms and lack of sleep. Convective and probably defective thought:

Parkinson says: In normal organizations the CEO keeps two or three assistants who compete to take his job when he retires. This competition provides both training and selection.

The parliamentary system resonates with this natural arrangement. The prime minister rises through the ranks in Parliament, reaching an office like Whip. In that position he gets consulted and effectively mentored by the current PM. (If the current PM is of the other party, the mentoring is negative, but it's still learning by watching.)

Result: You can switch to the other brand and get a pretested leadership team, ready to run.

The 1776 system never worked right. The single VP wasn't meant to be the assistant and successor; he was only meant to be an emergency substitute. It's no wonder we've had atrocious governance with two or three exceptions.

Our arrangement means that switching to the other brand always brings a wasted (and sometimes dangerous) period of OJT for the president, thus pretty much negating the benefits of switching. The outsider can't get anything done unless he relies on the permanent bureaucracy. They always blackmail and sabotage all efforts toward real change. If the new brand had his own Top Thousand Bureaucrats ready to plug-n-play, the permanent insiders wouldn't be permanent any more.

We really need to delete 1776 and return to Parliament.
  ¶ 10:26 AM

  RAIN
One hour of torrential rain!

And needless to say, the idiot EAS gives a warning just now, at the same moment when the rain finally stops.

Thanks, fuckheads.

Next day: A weather bureau spotter in this neighborhood measured 1.15 inches in that hour, and 2.24 in the 24-hr period.

Copkiller Condon's Pit Of Horror got filled up to the top but not QUITE overflowing. This time I didn't have to picture it. Someone else did.

And: This part of town was missed by the last few major rainstorms. I was starting to feel smug. Thanks, Ralph!

Labels: Carbon Cult, Emersonian justice

  ¶ 3:44 PM

  Real world dyslogic
Still thinking about the dyslogic and dysphilosophy and dysEVERYTHING of THE GUIDANCE.

Polistra has been thinking for a long time about Real World Math. Practical math problems nearly always mix discrete CHOICES or THRESHOLDS with analog NUMBERS. You can see this most clearly in income tax calculations. Multiply line 3 by .95; if this is greater than line 7a, put 43% of line 13 on line 27 and subtract the smaller of line 32 and half of line 19b.

Math SHOULD be able to handle things like this in a formula, but it can't. Nearly all real-world situations work this way, because this is how our brain works. Elections, tournament brackets, income tax, payroll, shopping, cooking. All involve a mix of discrete binary decisions and analog math, sequenced in such a way that the analog and binary parts can't be 'factored out'. You have to run the procedure completely, in the correct order.

You can handle these situations well enough in a program, but modern computers don't make it easy to get into program mode. [Oddly enough, the earliest IBM PCs and TRS80s and Applesatan IIs made this type of calculation easy. As soon as the computer was on, you were in Basic, where you could immediately do real-world math.]

= = = = =

Okay, then, how about Real World Logic? THE GUIDANCE breaks the boundaries of simple symbolic logic, just as it breaks all other boundaries.

In plain logic or digital gates you have four simple functions:

AND, OR, XOR, IMPLIES.

Each has a perfectly defined truth table. When you evaluate x AND y, the result or output is TRUE when BOTH x AND y are TRUE. The output is FALSE for the other three possibilities.

What is the truth function of THE GUIDANCE?

PREVENT THE DETERMINATION OF TRUTH.

As long as the circuit or program or organism remains uncertain and confused, everything is fine. Any attempt by the circuit or program or organism to settle on TRUE or FALSE immediately BURNS UP THE CIRCUIT. Shuts down the computer. Kills or imprisons the human organism.



This requires monitoring the output of every circuit, which is typical in a tyranny. Applesatan has generously provided this monitoring by addicting everyone to constant texting and selfies. A tyrant's dream. Turning humans into squid, with all thoughts visible on a handy screen.

The PREVENT TRUTH function can't be placed into symbolic logic for Gödelish reasons, but it can be shown in a program. It would look something like this in Python:

#=========================================================
import os
import random
T=1.0
F=0.0

PossibleStates= [0.0, 0.05, 0.15, 0.20, 0.25, 0.30, 0.35, 0.40, 0.45,
0.50, 0.55, 0.60, 0.65, 0.70, 0.75, 0.80, 0.85, 0.90, 0.95, 1.00]

#=========================================================

def OrganismAnd(in1, in2):
    if     (in1==F) and (in2==F): return F
    elif   (in1==T) and (in2==F): return F
    elif   (in1==F) and (in2==T): return F
    elif   (in1==T) and (in2==T): return T
    else:  return None
# end function

#=========================================================
# Main Loop

while 1:
    in1=random.choice(PossibleStates)
    in2=random.choice(PossibleStates)
    output = OrganismAnd(in1,in2)

    if   output == T:
        print in1,in2,"shutdown" # os.system.shutdown()
        break
    elif output == F:
        print in1,in2,"shutdown" # os.system.shutdown()
        break
    else:
        print in1,in2,"Okay"     # keep going
        continue
# end while

#=========================================================

This program has one neuron-like function, labeled 'Organism AND'. This simulates an AND-gate neuron that can distinguish uncertainty from certainty. When both of its inputs are exactly FALSE it says FALSE. When one is TRUE and the other is FALSE, it says FALSE. When both are exactly TRUE it says TRUE. Those outputs are standard AND responses. The function also handles uncertainty. When either input is between TRUE and FALSE, it gives an uncertain answer. ('None' in Python is the NULL value.)

The main loop below the function simply feeds the Organism a set of random inputs, simulating the various experiences of life. I've restricted the 'variety' of these random inputs to 20 steps from FALSE to TRUE so it reaches a conclusion in a satisfyingly short amount of time. (About one second for each run.)

When the main loop gets an indefinite response from the Organism, it keeps going. No problem. When it gets a definite TRUE or FALSE from the organism, it shuts down.

Note that this little program doesn't REALLY shutdown the computer; it just ends its own life. But you could decomment those lines.

Labels: Natural law = Sharia law, Real World Math

  ¶ 10:11 AM

  Where are the philosophers?
Polistra asked this question before in a broader context. Time to ask it again in a highly specific case.

The Guidance is a violation of all laws of truth and logic and morality at all levels. At the deepest level it's a violation of epistemology.

How do we know things? By examining them and applying our experience. Some complicated things require more instrumentation like voltmeters or microscopes; at that point epistemology morphs into metrology, but it's the same process. Our experience, our pattern recognition abilities, our language, turn the raw perception into a statement or assertion.

Let's take a schoolgirl trying to pee in a school restroom. Suddenly the stall door pops open and a teenage boy appears.

Normal observation: This is a boy, and he wants to do bad things. Normal statement or assertion: I need to get the hell out of here and scream for help.

This observation is now EXPLICITLY FORBIDDEN BY THE GUIDANCE. The girl doesn't know if the thing facing her has declared itself to be a Trans thing or not. If the thing has stated verbally that it is a Trans Thing, its presence in the restroom is UNPUNISHABLE and her attempt to complain about the thing's presence is ILLEGAL. What's more, the girl is NOT ALLOWED TO ASK ANYONE whether the thing is a boy or a girl or a Trans or a XRY6ON9HF. All channels of observation and knowledge are OFFICIALLY CLOSED.



Where have all the philosophers gone? Gone to COOLNESS every one. They know one thing firmly from their own observation and experience: Truth doesn't get grants. Only absolute rigid adherence to Party Doctrine gets grants.

Labels: defensible spaces, epistemology, Metrology

  ¶ 1:47 AM

  Take the bumbus!
Portland brings back 'floaters'.

The city of Portland on Thursday bought its first bus ticket for a homeless man who wanted to leave town. "Homeward Bound," the city-funded program designed to bus the city’s homeless out of town, officially began Thursday. At least 40 homeless people want to leave Portland, and it's only day one. Officials in charge have been fielding calls and taking sign-ups since March. Dillon Hendershot, 18, was ready to go at 5 p.m. Thursday. “I can't be homeless the rest of my life,” he said. “It breaks you down.” Hendershoot held his $82 bus ticket to Spokane with an iron grip. Friends ditched the New Mexico native in Portland last week, mid-road trip.

Note the positive tone. Naturally the vacuum-brained journalists don't know that the 'floater' is an old concept. If they knew, they would be ROARING AND SPEWING ABOUT JIM CROW AND KKK AND KKK AND KKK AND KKK AND HOLOCAUSTS AND NAZIS AND HONKIES AND CHRISTIANS AND TROLLS AND TRUMP AND TRUMP AND TRUMP AND TRUMP AND TRUMP AND TRUMP and other maximally evil boogeymen that zip and zap and ziggle through the perfect vacuum in their teensy-weensy calvaria.

Note also how the hope of an improved life in Spokane changed the tense of Dillon's surname from past to present. This opens a whole new horizon in self-define. Currently we allow trans things to define their own pronouns, and slam non-trans unpersons into the gulag for failing to use the define pronoun. Why not your own tense? "My gender is Optimist. My pronouns are Wow (nominative singular); Awesome (genitive singular); Amazing (dative singular); and Schweet! (accusative singular). Awesome tense will have been Future Perfect!!!!!"

Labels: Language update

  ¶ 4:09 AM

  Better than MRI
The best time to examine the "thinking" of tyrants is when they don't even know what they're revealing:

“My worst fears about Bernie's lack of temperament and character are being realized,” added a New Hampshire Democrat. “He's not a team player, and he's not a Democrat.”

Lack of temperament and character = HERETIC. TROLL. BUFFOON. Not one of us. Not our values.

Perfectly programmed robots have temperament and character.

Live humans lack temperament and character.

Nuff said.

= = = = =

Closely related: Hillary says Trump is 'unqualified' for the Presidency. Okay, this means that Hillary is 'qualified'. Let's see if we can quantify qualified.

Hillary's achievements while Sec of State:

> Started 3 wars, continued 2 wars.

> Deaths in those wars during her time in office:
Syria 200k
Iraq (2009-2012) 20k
Afghan (2009-2012) 10k
Libya 25k
Ukraine 10k
_______________
Total 265k.

So. We have yet another amendment to the constitutional requirements for a president. The part about 'natural born' is gone; the part about 'over 35' is still valid; the part about 'must reside for 14 years' is gone; the part about 'must be from different state than VP' is gone.

Now Hillary has added 'Must kill at least 265,000 foreigners in totally unnecessary and evil wars' to the remaining 'over 35' rule.

Trump is definitely unqualified. He's well over 35, but he hasn't killed anyone yet. He has only provided jobs and housing and comfort and entertainment for millions in many countries. To be sure, comfort and entertainment aren't the most profound aspects of human endeavor; still, they're not in the same category as premeditated genocide.
  ¶ 3:02 AM

  Take the mailbus!
Another KSHS picture. Description: F.J. Henderson had a contract to deliver the United States mail on the Syracuse-Johnson-Elkhart mail route from 1913-1920. In this photograph, Henderson stands next to the model "T" Ford he used to deliver the mail in 1916.

Mr Henderson's T is a wonderful mix of pieces, nicely carpentered together to carry both mail and passengers.



The 'bed' is probably homemade. The passenger part is clearly from a center-door sedan:



Well, no. I can't find any centerdoor from any brand that has the same shape and structure. Also, the centerdoor sedan was a new (and bad) idea in 1916 and probably wouldn't be found in a junkyard.

The cab is equally unpinnable. Truck cabs were generally aftermarket. Many cabs had an oval 'opera window', but I can't find an exact equivalent online or in books. Here's a 1917 panel truck, more typical of mail trucks. Short oval.



And here's a screencap from a Lawless Years episode. Long oval but entirely different door.



Best guess, then: The whole thing was Henderson's design, using pieces from Ts and houses and horse-powered stagecoaches to make a unique mailbus.

Obviously you couldn't carry passengers in a mailtruck now. Regulations and liability.

= = = = =

Later note: KSHS also has a picture related to an earlier version of the same mail route...

This dugout was located on the homestead of Luther Kreigh, on the west side of present-day Highway 27, seven miles north of Johnson City, Stanton County, Kansas. Luther Kreigh ran the stage line and mail hack between Syracuse and Richfield and this dugout served as a stage stop on that line. The stage changed teams here and a post office located in the building was called on the maps "Liverpool."

Note 'stage route and mail hack'. So Mr Henderson was following a stagecoach tradition. Was he using the same stagecoach as the back part of his 'mail hack'?
  ¶ 2:34 AM

  What happened to Public Health?
The bathroom trannie tyranny is a direct violation of all Public Health principles.

The first rule of Public Health:

Don't make everyone less safe to satisfy the tastes of a small group.


Don't eliminate vaccines because some people have a delusion about vaccines.

Don't eliminate seatbelts because some people find them uncomfortable.

Don't eliminate clean water because some people have delusions about fluorine.

Don't eliminate doctors because some religions don't like to use doctors.


Sometimes we go too far in the correct direction. Seatbelts should be available in all cars but we shouldn't force people to use them. But most of these rules leave room for the exceptions.

The bathroom rule makes actual females LESS SAFE in order to satisfy the tastes of DELUSIONAL people.

Labels: defensible spaces

  ¶ 11:49 AM

  Metrology day
Polistra likes to celebrate World Metrology Day.

This year's theme is dead easy. Theranos.

Perfect case of bad metrology on all levels.

(1) The device itself was meant to provide meaningful readings from a smaller sample of blood than previous methods. It didn't work.

(2) Testing revealed that the device didn't work. These measurements of validity were trashed.

(3) Trashing or altering records is a flashing idiot light. When you see it, you should stop everything and repair or junk the vehicle. The culture of NDAs in the tech world disconnected the flashing light. Nobody wanted to ruin their career chances by reporting the problem.

If the stages of calibration, measurement and recording had been done properly, the whole mess would have collapsed many years ago without affecting any patients. Now we have an unknown number of bad diagnoses leading to bad treatments. Possibly a million.

The only measurement that mattered, as fucking usual, was SHARE VALUE.



Though it's hard to tell from outside, I suspect the ALIVENESS of real doctors avoided most deaths. Real doctors and nurses, no matter how distracted and overworked by bad technology, try to retain a direct and intuitive picture of the patient's condition.

Labels: Danbo, Metrology

  ¶ 5:13 AM

  Who is he trying to fool?
Obama requires overtime pay for a wide range of employees.

Obvious and inevitable results:

(1) More immigration and outsourcing. India doesn't have this rule. Result: more foreigners working, less Americans working.

(2) More 1099s. Romneycare already exerts a tremendous pressure in this direction, and the overtime rule will pull even harder in the same direction.

The big corporations who ordered up this product from Obama know what they're getting. Share value.

Employees who have been displaced by outsourcing or 1099'd into poverty also know what they're getting. Raped.

After 30 years of steady murder by DC, how can ANYONE be fooled by this destructive shit?

Labels: Asked and unanswered

  ¶ 4:29 AM

  Constants and variables 40
Watching the D establishment spew venom at Bernie in the same way that the R establishment spews on Trump. Remarkable similarity.

The one big difference, the one variable that requires some explanation:

At the start of this campaign it was a safe assumption that both establishments would pull out all the stops and break all the rules to protect their Crowned Heirs, Jeb and Hillary.

Both elites did pull out all the stops, but the R establishment DID NOT CHANGE ANY RULES to halt Trump. The Ds are now showing their bloody teeth as they break all the rules to stop Bernie.

Why did the Repooflicans fail to change rules? What weakness allowed them to give actual voters a moment of influence?

= = = = =

The emergence of "surprise" outsiders as the favorites in both R and D shouldn't have been a surprise. Both establishments have been focusing on donors instead of voters for 30 years. They have worked ASTONISHINGLY HARD to eliminate all live voters from elections, leaving only the mechanical Rbots and Dbots. Unfortunately they didn't eliminate voting itself, so smart and live outsiders were able to appeal to live voters. Bernie and Trump are ALIVE.

An outsider needs more than life to get a real movement going. The SUBJECT that Trump and Sanders use was also an inevitable result of the Rbot/Dbot strategy. All politicians must obey Goldman. Goldman wants to kill the non-Chosen and infinitely enrich the Chosen. Both parties have accomplished Goldman's assignment with magnificent success.

Directly analogous to share value vs profit. Before 1980 parties were doing normal business, competing for customers with improved products. Feedback worked to keep them focused on the customers. Now the customers have been eliminated. Only the share value matters. The parties are competing to increase Goldman's commission. From a Goldman's eye view, live voters do not exist at all, and the Rbots and Dbots are just a production expense that needs to be minimized for max share value.

This still doesn't answer why the R party slipped up in its sacred duty to Goldman. I'm sure there will be literal Hell to pay for this error.

Labels: Asked and unanswered, Constants and Variables

  ¶ 8:46 AM

  Recompense
Stockman:

Oh, yes, the monetary geniuses who peddle the 2% inflation gospel claim we are all in it together. That is, prices, wages, profits, rents and even indexed social benefits allegedly all march upwards at 2% per year, and, save for minor leads and lags in timing, no one is financially worse for the wear.

C’mon. That’s rank poppycock. The truth is, savers get killed and borrowers get windfalls; the wages of upper-end workers keep-up, while the purchasing power of paychecks lower down the ladder shrinks continuously; social security recipients get recompense, private pensioners get shafted.

Interesting word. When I decided to take SS at age 62, I was trying to get moral revenge for the Chosen theft of all interest on savings. I didn't think of it in simple math terms as a "recompense." Does it work out?

Quick figuring: Yes! Start with the inflation-adjusted total of all my income, and then take 15% of it to represent my SS "account". Add my real savings which I'm getting ZERO INTEREST on. This sum represents my total savings through both channels. Assume that a normal pre-Chosen-theft return on an annuity would be about 6%. And sure enough, my annual SS is within a few hundred dollars of that 6% return.

This is purely coincidental since the SS would be the same if my personal savings had been zero or a million; but it's still nice in an Emersonian sense.

Labels: Emersonian justice, TMI

  ¶ 6:27 AM

  The last border
A thought has been floating around in what remains of my mind. I approached it here but didn't quite pin it down. Finally pinned it down.

Several years ago I noted a profound saying in one episode of Fibber. It didn't sound like the usual writers; sounded more like Jim Jordan was sending a personal message to someone. Leaving aside the dialect, he said:

You don't want to ruin tradition. When a natural rule leaves the realm of tradition, it has to be written as law. When it's written as law, you can go to jail for breaking it; and when it's written as law it can be repealed.

Good advice, except that laws are no longer repealed.

The Trans phenomenon belongs to the same category but infinitely worse.

Tradition leaves room for internal confusion and ambiguity. The traditional structure of BORDERS AND BOUNDARIES sets up spheres of increasing size. Inside your mind you can do anything at all. Inside your house you can do anything that doesn't ruin other houses. Inside your city you can do anything that doesn't ruin other cities. Inside your nation you can do anything that doesn't bomb other nations.

We've blown up ALL those boundaries now.

The Trans thing breaks through the boundary of the individual body in a brand-new way.

Young people are often confused and ambiguous. They act out these confusions in play. Pretend to be a fireman, pretend to be a man, pretend to be God. As long as these expressions are detachable (toys, costumes, etc) they do no harm. After enough experience through play or school or work, you figure shit out. You become more definite and certain about important things, and learn to ignore stuff that doesn't matter.

We have decided that one particular INTERNAL confusion MUST be turned into an EXTERNAL AND PERMANENT ALTERATION in the body. Parents who believe that their child is confused, or simply decide to confuse the child, pay for surgery to add or subtract pieces. This addition or subtraction is permanent. The confusion or belief is no longer internal. Everyone notices it, and everyone alters their behavior accordingly, which then reinforces the belief.

This is truly new and unprecedented, or more precisely CONSIDERING THIS TO BE SANE AND NORMAL is new and unprecedented. In sane times, a person who removed his hands or head or eyes or ear was considered crazy. A parent who removed or added pieces to a child was considered a vicious sadist.

In fact those parents are still vicious sadists. We define them otherwise because we are beyond beyond beyond beyond beyond beyond beyond insane.

Labels: defensible spaces

  ¶ 4:18 AM

  First they mock you then they copy you
The old saying doesn't quite work now ..... the truth is more like "they copy you and continue mocking you".... but nevertheless it's happening.

We continue to slam EVIL PROTECTIONISM and XENOPHOBIC BUFFOON TRUMP for the CRIME of proposing a 45% tariff on China, and at the same time we impose a 500% tariff on China.



Good old doublethink.

Labels: Loughnerian Logic

  ¶ 2:12 AM

  Nullification 2
Another little victory for juries, for nullification in the broad sense.

Bloomberg's juiciest little bitchboy Condon has a SERIOUS hatred for cops, and helps ACLU destroy cops every chance heshe gets. Heshe appointed NYC Straubmonster as alleged "chief", and fortunately the cop union had enough guts and force to kick out the "chief".

At some point in that mess, ordinary cops had a drunken party and one drunk female cop decided to bring a "date rape" case against the drunk male cop who apparently wasn't cool enough. That particular case hasn't reached a jury yet.

The cophaters weren't content with just bringing "date rape" cases. Another cop, who tried to tell the victim of the "date rape" charge that he was being railroaded, got railroaded by the alleged so-called "prosecutor" for the crime of being a normal loyal team member.

This prosecution for the crime of being normal finished today, with the jury 8-4 for acquittal but unable to push toward 12 in either direction. So it's a mistrial. The cop-hating "prosecutor" now has to decide whether it's worth hisher time to bring another charge of 1st degree aggravated normalcy. [Next day: Persecutor decided NOT to refile. Persecutors are slow learners but they do occasionally figure things out.]

Bravo to the jury as usual!
  ¶ 3:22 PM

  Strowging the net
These two things are opposite ends of a spectrum.

Before Alton Strowger, phone systems were corruptible. Mabel was in the middle of your conversation from the start. She didn't have time to listen to your jabber (usually) but she knew who you were and who you wanted to call.

Alton, an undertaker with mechanical talents, decided that Mabel was corrupt. Another undertaker was paying her to steer calls away from Alton. So he invented a system to make connections without Mabel.

The Strowger Relay was the heart of the system. You dial 371. Relay receives 3 pulses from your dial, turns 3 steps to link you to column 3 in the first row. Relay then acts on the output of column 3. Receives 7 pulses from your dial, turns seven clicks to link the output of first row to column 7 in the next row. And so on. A vastly more complicated version of a combination lock.

= = = = =

The Web has Strowger-like switching elements, but it was NEVER pure Strowger. It was Mabel all the way down. NSA is always at the switchboard, always keeping track of who calls who, always listening when it has time. Because NSA is ahead of the game in language processing, it has plenty of time.

Each new development of the Web goes more Mabel.

Google is EXACTLY the same corrupt Mabel that Alton distrusted. When you ask Google for information about undertakers, Google's first answer is an undertaker who has paid Google to be listed first.

Siri brings back the voice aspects of Mabel, with the same snappy answers that the movie versions of Mabel were famous for. When Apple hears you talking with Siri, AND when Apple picks up location and accelerometer and temperature and heartbeat and metabolism data from your FitBit, Apple can gather INFINITELY more metadata than Mabel could. Your gender, age, ethnicity, stress level, heresy level.

Conclusion: The tech Mensans and Bitcoiners who think they're fooling Mabel with encryption are missing the point. And Mabel wants them to miss the point.

Spies and tyrants have never needed to listen to what you're saying. All they need is WHO you are and WHO you're calling. Modern tyrants can determine a much deeper WHO than old tyrants.

Can we re-Strowge the net?

Most likely there isn't a tech answer. The best solution is the same solution that Resistance movements have known and used for 3000 years. Don't use the channels provided by the tyrant, whether those channels are messengers, mail, telegraph, telephone or Siri.

Labels: Asked and unanswered, defensible spaces

  ¶ 3:14 AM

  When you break walls
Caveat: This doesn't directly apply to the school "guidance" because this wasn't a legally required confusion, but it still shows what can happen when you break borders and normalize confusion.

When I served on a jury in 2014, the case in question was a rich Saudi dickhead who engaged in a sort of trapping fetish with girls in a restroom. Grab** the girl, hold her against the stall door, dryhump her.

How did he get into the Ladies restroom without being instantly kicked out? Because the restroom was in a "gay" bar where cross-dressers frequently used the Ladies room. In other words, the dyslogic of Trans was part of the culture there. Saudi dickhead was NOT a crossdresser; he was firmly heterosexual. Stupid defense lawyer tried to claim he was homosexual, but it didn't work. His dryhumpees were always female.

If the Trans rules become part of written law, a jury wouldn't be permitted to toss out the stupid arguments about confusion. Stupid defense lawyer could invent a "gender" defined by the need to trap and dryhump women. The jury would then have to treat the victims as discriminatory bigots for complaining about Saudi dickhead's aggression. Humpy McHumpface*** was only expressing Humpy McHumpface's gender.

= = = = =

** Footnote 1: Humpy McHumpface is the official pronoun for the restroom-dryhump gender. I just defined it and you can't say I'm wrong.

*** Footnote 2: The crime was an obscure term that meant sexual assault. We had trouble with the definition because it was clear from various witnesses that quasi-sex was fairly common in this bar in the context of dancing. The grabbing and trapping made these actions special. The girls were not expecting to find a male in their restroom, and they weren't willing to be grabbed. In other words, assault was the relevant variable.

Labels: defensible spaces

  ¶ 10:16 AM

  Friendship


Listening to a 1946 episode of the FBI radio show. Story was about capturing a leftover Nazi in South America. The 'moral lecture' for this episode shows nicely how the impulse toward unification leads to tyranny. This was the same evil attitude that created both UN and EU, and later drove USA STRONG to bomb every country except Israel.

Spies and saboteurs are traitors to their own country, and also traitors to the human race. For what they have to sell is not disloyalty but HATE. In time of war they're called traitors. In time of peace they're dismissed as harmless crackpots. But what they have to sell is dangerous at any time; for hate breeds hate, and when the world's quotient of hatred exceeds the world's quotient of friendship, then we shall know the terrible tragedy of World War 3.

WW2 was not caused by HATE. It was caused by cold ambition and refusal to recognize boundaries. The Jap emperor didn't HATE the Chinese or the Filipinos; he just wanted to own them. Hitler didn't HATE Britain; he just wanted to own it.

Catch the main point of the lecture? Oddballs are HATE. Loyal citizens of the UN are FRIENDSHIP. Any country that resists the FRIENDSHIP of total inclusion, any country or person that dislikes being eaten and consumed by the amoeba of FRIENDSHIP, is HATE.

The same theme is echoed in the genocidal spittings of EU when confronted by possible Brexit.
  ¶ 3:06 AM

  Venning the election
The old labels of liberal and conservative have been meaningless for a century. We need new axes on the graph.

X-axis is External Behavior. Does the government focus on bombing other countries and giving all jobs to other countries (Neocon) or does the government focus on NOT bombing anyone and giving all jobs to Americans (Populist)?

Y-axis is Internal Behavior. Satan to Non-satan in my terminology. Does the government insist on breaking all laws of Nature and Science (Satan), or does it leave Nature to Nature (Non-satan)?

This year's election was supposed to be a choice with no axes at all. Jeb vs Hillary. Both solidly neocon, both solidly Satan. (Jeb liked to make non-Satan noises, but in practice he always served Satan.)



That didn't happen. Surprised me as much as anyone else. I was firmly convinced this year would be Jeb and Hill, with Jeb "winning" because it was his turn.

Now we will probably end up with Trump vs Hillary. Clear Neocon vs Populist, not so clear on the Satan axis. Trump basically doesn't give a fuck about the Satan stuff, so I fuzzed out his icon in that direction.



But the last combination, which is the most interesting of all, is becoming more likely.



Two Populists, differing mainly on the Satan axis. Bernie is all for LGBTQQ2ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP, all for "Global Warming", solidly against religion.

Labels: Carbon Cult

  ¶ 12:21 PM

  Good old Borodin Effect
Before the switchover, Radio Moscow blurred out times of chaos and uncertainty in the Kremlin by playing uninterrupted heavy Russian music. Borodin, Khachaturian, Mussorgsky. When you heard Borodin instead of the usual overmodulated cheeriness, you knew something serious was going on. I called it the Borodin Effect.

After the switchover, Borodin has been on this side of the Pacific.

= = = = = = = = = =



= = = = = = = = = =

Google News thinks these are the most important headlines right now. Nasty stuff about Trump, nasty stuff about Boris, a few real events in various places.

Chaos in the Nevada caucus? Not an event. Sanders supporters frogmarched out by police? Didn't happen. Can't confirm or deny. All is sweetness and music in Hillary World.

Labels: switchover

  ¶ 10:45 AM